GIFT OF )/7/n/ f*r THE NEW SYSTEM OF THOUGHT Which Dr. Snider has been specially engaged upon for some years, now embraces the following works : 1. PSYCHOLOGY AND THE PSYCHOSIS 2. THE WILL AND ITS WORLD . . . 3. SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS 4. THE STATE ......... 5. ANCIENT EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY 6. MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY $1.50 1.50 1.50 1.50 1,50 1.50 It is hoped that the latter may be completed in the course of the present year (1903). As far as can be now foreseen, the Aesthetic, or the Psychol- ogy of the Fine Arts will follow. SIGMA PUBLISHING Co. MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY The History of Modern Philosophy Psychologically Treated. BY DENTON J. SNIDER. ST, LOUIS, MO. SIGMA PUBLISHING CO. 210 PINE ST. COPYRIGHT BY D. J. SNIDE B, 1904. NIXON-JONES PTQ. CO.. 213 PINE ST., ST. LOUIS. PROF. HOWARD SANDISON of tfvc State Sto^wal ecc- /f /i r\ CONTENTS. PART FIRST. THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY RENASCENCE. PAGE. INTRODUCTION . . . ...... . . 5 1. DESCARTES . , . . ... . 28 2. SPINOZA ... ..' ... 118 3. LEIBNIZ . . -. . ,. . . . . 278 PART SECOND. THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY REVOLUTION. INTRODUCTION ... . . . . . .368 1. LOCKE .. ........ 389 2. HUME .... .: . . . . . 456 3. KANT . . . V . . . . . . 493 PART THIRD. THE NINETEENTH CENTURY EVOLUTION. . . , . . '. . . 4 INTRODUCTION . . . . " . . . . 595 1. HEGEL . . <" 7 ' . . 610 2. DARWIN . . '.. . . . . 820 3. PHYSIO-PSYCHIS3I . . . . . .824 (3) J art Jfirst THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. RENASCENCE. Modern Philosophy, emancipated and self- unfolding, properly begins its new historic career in the Seventeenth Century. Undoubtedly men were philosophizing in an independent Spirit during the preceding Century. We cannot deny to Bruno, Boehme, and Bacon the name of phi- losophers. But their works are more in the nature of protests against the past, irregular excursions into the future, prophetic intimations of the coming science. In the Seventeenth Cen- tury, however, the philosophic Norm itself is re-born and is made to hold the new thought of the age which is thus the true Renascence of Philosophy. * * , I * 6 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. With this Century, then, we begin our his- toric account of Modern European Philosophy, and embrace in it three supreme men, Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz. Looked at through the intervening Centuries, these three are seen to be the loftiest peaks f>f thought, though between them and around them lie lesser heights which are likewise mountainous. The latter, however, we shall have to pass by in the present survey, and concentrate our attention upon those who express the three distinctive phases of the phi- losophy of the Seventeenth Century, and show its process not only in their systems of thought but also in their lives and characters. I. The great historical fact of this Century was the terrific struggle between Southern and Northern Europe, between the Latin and Teutonic Peoples, between the old Mediterranean civiliza- tion with its stress upon authority and the new- born civilization beyond the Alps with its stress upon freedom. The German tribes and the Ger- man emperors during the Middle Ages had a tendency to go South, to become fused with Latin Peoples and permeated with Latin culture. But now the situation is changed. Something has departed or is departing from the Latin or Latinized Peoples which they are desperately seeking to recover and retain. In the preceding Fifteenth Century the shifting had already be- gun to take place with the Reformation. Teu- THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 7 tonia had previously sought her center outside of herself, in the South ; but now she has found her center within herself. The result is, the Latin world, both in Church and State, conies North and tries to recapture the fugitive, and to subject her to a fresh domination. But such was not to be the outcome of their effort. The separation had taken place forever. And that was not all. The Spirit of the Ages, Civiliza- tion, the World-Spirit, or whatever else it may be called, having hovered around the Mediter- ranean shores from East to West for thousands of years, breaks the course of its flight, and, wheeling Northward and crossing the lofty Alpine watershed of Europe, finds its new home. Now the grand object of the Latin Peoples during the Seventeenth Century was in some way to bring back to its former abode or to control in its new abode the Spirit which had distinctly chosen the Teutonic world as its supporter and representative. The Latin Church will use all its spiritual power with unparalleled skill and per- sistency ; the Latin States, Spain and France, and even the German Emperor, will employ all their political forces in wars which last generations ; but' it is to no purpose, or rather their mighty endeavors deepen the rift and establish the more firmly the new seat of Civilization. II. We naturally ask: What was the principle at stake in this desperate conflict? It is indeed 8 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. just the function of Philosophy to grasp such a principle and to formulate it in categories- Philosophy, if it be worth anything, reflects the deepest fact of its age in the most universal form. The man as such has come to the front in the North and is asserting the supreme human value of himself against the crushing might of exter- nal dominion in Church and State. The indi- vidual has arisen and demands that, if he is to live an institutional life, he must have a part at least in establishing the institutions which he obeys. The Ego, the selfhood of man, having become aware of itself and its worth, will not be put down till its right be recognized. When Descartes in Holland says : 1 think therefore I am, he speaks of the thinking, self-conscious Ego affirming its existence, affirming that it now truly is, but before was not, at least not in its present significance. The European man has come to know himself, yea to know his Self, and with it the meaning of all Selfhood. With such knowledge the Church, the State, all Institutions as well the moral life are to be transformed, gradually but surely. Such a transformation unrolls the modern world and carries it down through the later centuries till the present. Sci- ence also is to undergo a marvelous metamorpho- sis, and Philosophy begins a new independent career, quite parallel to her ancient movement, no longer a handmaiden, but a free discipline TEE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 9 unfolding in her own right. Thus she becomes young again, fresh and interesting. The free man in the North is to make a free world, or at least relatively free, both theoreti- cally and practically, both in the realm of thought and of action. The liberated Ego, having become aware internally of its own enfranchisement starts about its task which is to produce a correspond- ing outer enfranchisement. This is the all-domi- nating task of the Seventeenth Century, begetting a wrestle not only of contending nations but also of contending civilizations. Now it is the func- tion of Philosophy to give the pure reflection of this mightiest struggle of its age in the trans- parent forms of Thought, impersonal, unim- passioned, universal. But this vast strivirig for freedom calls up the enemy, who is thereby deprived of his accus- tomed domination. Already we have designated the organized Latin world to be the possessors and upholders of the ancient order. With it, therefore, begins the fight which has three lead- ing phases, political, religious and maritime, each of which we may briefly note. III. Already in the Fifteenth Century a small Teutonic country in North-Western Europe had made itself the political center of the new epoch. The Netherlands declared their independence of Spain, a Latin country, and formed the Dutch Kepublic. Eighty years the conflict lasted, ex- 10 MODERN E UR OPE AN PHILOSOPHY. tending into the Sixteenth Century and only ending with the Peace of Westphalia. In this long war terminating in the freedom of the Dutch, Latin domination, both in Church and State, received its hardest blow. The small self- determined State showed on all sides the re_ newed worth of the free man : Commerce flour- ished, Science advanced, a mighty forward movement of the Spirit took place. In fact it may be said that the Dutch Republic at this time stood in the very front of the new epoch and bore the chief burden of the rising Civiliza- tion. Thus she drove out one Latin assailant, but it was only to call up another and nearer. In the person of Louis XIV, France assumed the task of vindicating the Latin heritage in State and Church, and with right instinct aimed its blows at the Republic in the North. But again the outcome was failure for the assailant, the Latin nation had to fall back into its boundaries, and to suffer the small Teutonic State to pursue its own inner free development in its own way. Even strong, large France could not turn the World-Spirit, and the absolute Monarch had to give up his ambition to put himself in the place of Civilization. Now it was this region of Dutch liberty to which Philosophy took her flight in the Seven- teenth Century . Descartes , the greatest French- THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 11 man of his age, left his native country and all the charms of its fair capital to dwell in the Netherlands, foggy but free. In fact he could not philosophize in France ; if he was to utter the oracle of the Spirit of the Age, he had to go to its shrine. His flight from the Latin world to the Teutonic Republic was in deep correspond- ence with what Civilization itself was doing. Thus he showed himself a typical man, performing the typical act of his epoch in making with it his deepest spiritual transition. In the same general locality rose and wrought the next philosopher, Spinoza, being one step re- moved in descent from the Spanish Peninsula. Born in Holland of Jewish parents who had fled from the Inquisition of the South, and witness- ing in his mature manhood the attack of France upon his native land, he took up into his spiritthe Latin and Teutonic dualism as no other thinker of his time, reproducing it in all its depth and in- tensity, we may say in all its ferocity, since that God of his is the Absolute One devouring every form of individuality, which, however, rises up and asserts itself, even to the point of re-con- structing God Himself in and through intellec- tual love. Finally Leibniz, the third supreme philosopher of the Century, is a born Teuton, living most of his life not far from the Low Countries and representing in many ways the Teutonic Spirit seeking to free itself from its 12 MODERN E UHOPEAN PHIL OSOPH T. Latin tutelage, yet never fully succeeding in the attempt during the present Century. IV. The name of Leibniz recalls the fact that he was born two years preceding the Peace of Westphalia and so passed his active life in the Germany which resulted from the Thirty Ye*ars' War. The motive of this war was chiefly re- ligious, though political ends also played in. The Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, in obedience to the Latin Church, sought to ex- tirpate all heresy, that is, all difference of opinion in religious matters. The outcome of the War gave equality to the Protestant de- nominations, and the Old Church was forced to acknowledge that the new religion had come to stay. Luther's doctrine of justification by faith had borne its fruit : the individual was to work out his own salvation. Thus the chief Latin authority in Europe was broken in twain, after a final attempt to overcome the Spirit of the Age. The individual in re- ligion had asserted his claim in the North. But the Latin Church did not propose to give up ; it still had much work to do in stamping out heresy within its own territory. The Order of Jesuits and the Inquisition took up the cause, but could not reach the Spirit which was cherished and protected in the Teutonic countries. What could not be done by force was sought to be accom- plished by cunning, by secret intimidation, and THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 13 even by education. But in spite of all changes, the division remained, and the individualistic character of the Protestant religion has been left O free to bear its fruits, good and bad. But one result is certain : Philosophy as an independent discipline has remained a Protestant, and has unfolded to its full bloom in Teutonic lands. Ever since Descartes fled from his own Latin France and philosophized in a Northern country, thus indicating the great transition of the Seventeenth Century, Philosophy has stayed where he brought it, and has developed in its own free way through the succeeding Centuries. This does not mean that Philosophy was not studied in the Catholic Schools but that it was essentially determined in its purpose from the outside, es- pecially through Theology. It was not free in its development, and hence could not adequately reflect the new Spirit. It would almost seem as if the Latin Church burned Philosophy herself at the stake along with Bruno at Rome in the opening year of the Seventeenth Century. At any rate the Latin peoples have produced no su- preme philosopher after him, perhaps none equal to him in originality. Bruno's influence also crossed the Alps, and left his impress upon the systems of Spinoza and Leibniz, not to speak of lesser philosophers. V. Another great sphere in which the struggle between the Latin and Teutonic peoples mani- 14 MODERN EUROPEAN' PHILOSOPHY. f ested itself in the Seventeenth Century was the maritime. It was the Mediterranean navigators who first broke into the unknown seas and made the great discovery of a new, extra-European world, which was to be possessed by Europe. In particular to America was brought the two- fold division of Europe into North and South, each with its corresponding character. The re- sult was that Teutonic and Latin separation, with the accompanying political and religious institu- tions, appeared in North and South America. The ships of the Spanish and English mariners did not simply carry merchandise and human bodies, but the two conflicting ideas of their peoples, yea, of their respective races. It was not long before their two ideas began clashing on the seas, the question being, Which of them is to rule the boundless billowy element encom- passing the globe. Spain made one herculean effort to reach the seat of this new naval Spirit, which was only another form of that Spirit of the Ages or of Civilization which had come to the North and was incarnating itself in various shapes among the different Teutonic peoples. But the Spanish Armada dashed itself to pieces against England who then sallied forth in her turn and ended the Spanish absolutism on the Ocean. Holland also took part in limiting the maritime domination of the Latins, and her greatest jurist, if not the greatest genius she THE SEVENTEENTH CENTUEY. 15 ever produced, Hugo Grotius, first proclaimed the Freedom of the Sea (mare liberum) as a part of the Law of Nations, and as a necessary correlate of the Freedom of the Land. This principle of marine Freedom, however, lay deep in the past of the two peoples, and in their long primitive training through elemental Nature. For the Teutonic peoples (Scandina- vian, North German, Dutch and English) lived around the Open Sea, and thus had the perpetual outlook upon the unlimited Ocean, with which they had to grapple when they left their immedi- ate shores. But the Mediterranean peoples clus- tered for thousands of years around a Closed Sea, whose limits they soon came to know and to follow in outline upon their voyages. For the early navigators clung to the shore, which they seldom lost from view. Thus they were trained to a prescribed line laid down by Nature, or as they thought, by the Gods. The sea itself trained them to prescription, to a path in which they were to go, and made them directly obedient to what was established from without. Quite the opposite was the sea's discipline for the Northern peoples, since the sea also keeps a school for those who dwell on its borders and a stern school it is, in which corporeal punish- ment is not abolished. The Northern sailor was slowly trained to drawing his own lines upon the unlimited main, and became in the end the more 16 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. daring navigator. The result has been that no Latin navy has been able to hold its own against the English. Thus we behold the mighty struggle of the Seventeenth Century on land carried out into the Ocean and re-enacting itself there with the same general results. This struggle, we repeat, is what the Philosophy of the time is seeking to express and does express in abstract categories of thought. Philosophy utters the Spirit of the Age in its purest form, giving the innermost process thereof, and its profoundest conflict. The conflict shows many forms of manifestation in the world of reality, but Philosophy beholds in all these varied forms the one underlying prin- ciple. Naturally Spain is the pivot of the great turn from South to North. Spain, being located doubly, both upon the closed and the open sea, strives to transfer the old Mediterranean limits to the unlimited Ocean, and thence to the North. But she fails, and with her failure she loses her prestige and even her power, of inner develop- ment, which indeed she has sought to destroy. VI. Philosophy in the Seventeenth Century still speaks Latin chiefly, but it has also begun to employ the Latinized tongues, as French, English and Italian. Any native Teutonic dia- lect it is very chary of using, though some phil- osophic writing may be found in Dutch and in German. The significant fact then is that the THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 17 Teutonic idea clothes itself in a Latin garb. Categories of thought coming from the past are taken and filled with the spirit of the present. Thus the utterance of Philosophy in the Seven- teenth Century is a case of putting new wine into old bottles. The thought of the North, born naked, has at first to borrow its clothes from the South in spite of their age. This state of things will of course change with time. Thus the conflict between the Latin and the Teuton is carried over into the very expression of Philoso- phy, and becomes a struggle between its Form and its Content. The Greco-Koman world, even in Jurisprudence, furnishes the Law and the outer forms, into which, however, the new spirit is to pour itself. Thus the German tongue is put under the discipline of service for hundreds of years, till in the Nineteenth Century it be- comes the great implement of Teutonic thought, a?nd in power and subtlety of philosophic expres- sion is only paralleled by the Greek. The intermediate link in this transition from old Latin to modern German is the northern Latinized tongues, notably French and English, which are mainly, though not wholly, the prod- uct of Teutons trying to talk Latin. The result is a transformation of speech which becomes a mediating principle between the two extremes. In the Seventeenth Century this mediating speech breaks forth into a literary splendor which it has 2 18 MODERN E UROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. hardly since attained, in England represented by Shakespeare, in France: by Corneille and Moliere. Philosophy also began talking this speech in both countries, and produced writings of a popular cast, and more or less free of the philosophic trammels transmitted from the old tongue of the Past and of the South. But a new difficulty also showed itself in these writings : in throwing off the ancient form, they had a tendency to become formless, not yet having the new form. VII. But something far deeper than the old language with its old categories was inherited by the philosophers of the Seventeenth Century from the Past and the South. This was the philosophic Norm, which was transmitted by Latin culture through the ages from the Greek world where it originated. All three Des- cartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz were learned men, profoundly versed in the thought of the Past, and fundamentally influenced by it, even if Descartes affected to despise it. All three wrote in Latin and thought in Latin, especially Spinoza, whose tongue it became, he having properly no mother-tongue. They could not study deeply the transmitted Phi- losophy of the Middle Ages or of Antiquity without penetrating to the Norm, or to the basic procedure which makes Philosophy. They could only be philosophers through their thought un- folding not irregularly, or even artistically, but THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 19 philosophically, that is, after the inherent pre- established Norm of Philosophy. They did not found a Eeligion (which has its own distinct Norm) but a Philosophy; still less did they reach the Norm of Psychology, though they were on the way thereto, being in the supreme outlook stages in the evolution of this last Dis- cipline. Accordingly the philosophers of the Seven- teenth Century will follow, in fact cannot help following, the philosophic Norm which comes down to them quite from the beginning of their Science. On this side, accordingly, there is something pre-formed, pre-deter mined in their work, something which upholds it and prescribes its deepest process. But on the other hand this far-descended Norm is completely transfused with a new content furnished by a new world of thought, which makes the old trunk bud and blossom afresh with thousandfold flowers and fruits, in which it is quite hidden. Still the Norm is there underneath and is supporting the whole harvest. And it is the duty of the ex- positor to bring it out to the surface and to show it performing its function, which is to give philo- sophic structure to thought and to conjoin the same with all its previous manifestations. It is this new content which creates Modern Philosophy as distinct from Ancient and Me- dieval, the last two having essentially same 20 MODERN' EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. philosophic Norm as the first. We repeat, it is the Norm which makes each and all of them Philosophy. VIII. We have already stated in a very gen- eral way what we hold to be the principle of the Seventeenth Century and its Philosophy. It places its stress upon the free internal self, the individual, the Ego, which Descartes picks up immediately and then starts. When the move- ment has reached Leibniz we see that he has found the process of the Ego, and puts it into his primary metaphysical form, the Monad. Such is, in our judgment, the distinctive, most original fact of this Century's Philosophy: be- ginning with the Ego as immediate, it unfolded in the same the process, and formulated this process metaphysically (not psychologically). The next step is also of great significance. This Ego having found itself, is now to find the world, and to be reconciled with it, is to discover in Nature a corresponding harmony with itself. Hence arises the love of Nature, and the marvel- ous progress of Natural Science. The medieval damnation of the world is set aside or rather is overcome ; man finds in Nature not the Destroyer but a friend who on good acquaintance will as- sist him in surprising ways. The Philosophy of the Seventeenth Century will seek to bring man to the knowledge of the world, while the previ- THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 21 ous Medieval Philosophy sought to turn man away from the world in order that he might know God. This brings us to the part which the Seven- teenth Century assigns to God, for He is present in all its manifestations. Its Philosophy declares that through God Man is to know the World, and to be organically connected with it in the process of the All. Really God has become the means for Man's knowing the object. Thus the grand medieval separation and antagonism between Man and the World is now overcome by the act of God Himself, to be sure somewhat externally and mechanically. Here we must note the fact that the Seven- teenth Century regards the universe on the whole as a mechanism. It is the age of mechanics, of great mechanical discoveries, celestial and ter- restrial . Mathematics, which is the ideal machine governing the real one, made the greatest progress and occupied the deepest minds of the Century. When Kepler mathematically showed mechani- cal laws controlling the heavenly bodies, the idea lay near that God's thought was mathemat- ical. Philosophy showed the tendency to pro- ceed after the method of Mathematics, and God moved the Ego as if this were a machine. The philosophic Norm was a kind of Pan-Mechanism ; God, World and Man were the parts of the ma- 22 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. chine of the Universe. We may say that the Pampsychosis, or the psychical process of the All, attained and formulated its pan-mechanical stage in the Seventeenth Century. IX. The movement of the Philosophy of the Seventeenth Century will show three stages, which taken together form a psychical process (Psychosis), constituting the very essence of its thought. But each of these stages is represented by a supreme philosopher, who has likewise his own psychical process, and indeed many of them. Three great philosophic Egos, asserting the val- idity of the Ego, form the innermost movement of the Century. The personal triad of philoso- phers making a school of thought was the start- ing-point of Philosophy at ancient Miletus, and continued through the entire history of thought till in modern Philosophy it becomes emphatically explicit. Here we may take a brief survey of the supreme philosophic triad of the Seventeenth Century. 1. Descartes. The self -knowing Ego is on One side as Thought, and the World is on the other side as Extension. God unites the two in the act of knowledge by his direct fiat. Descartes takes the Universe at first as given with three elements or substances God, World, Man which he unites in a process. It is, therefore, a mistake to call Descartes the dual- THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 23 1st of the Seventeenth Century. Undoubtedly he separates profoundly Thought and Extension, but his very principle is to bring them together again, even if externally. The same is true of the other great Cartesian dualism, that between Soul and Body. These indeed he divides deeply, but for the very purpose of bringing them together again. Some readers have thought and may still think that he has made these divisions so deep that he has been unable to bring them back into unity, but that was certainly not his opinion, and it is not the object of his Philoso- phy as he understands it. A true exposition ought not to put the stress upon the dualism of the philosopher, but upon the overcoming of it according to his method. In Descartes, then, God is the supreme rec- onciler of dualism, even if He has created it. The chief function of God is to make me know the world, which is my opposite, my other. The medieval idea is that the chief function of the world is to make me know God, who is the sole object, not the means, of knowledge. Herein too we may see why Descartes had no use for Final Causes (Teleology), God being means, not end. Such we deem to be the first or immediate stage of the philosophic movement of the Seventeenth Century. God immediately, arbi- 24 MODERN E UBOPEAN PHIL SOPHY. trarily, by fiat, solves the problem of man's knowing truth. But this is just what begets more deeply in the soul the grand dualism be- tween God on the one side and man on the other, which dualism expresses itself in the next supreme philosopher of the period. 2. Spinoza. The self-knowing Ego as Thought and the World as Extension are at first posited as one and the same with God ; all differ- ence vanishes in God, the three Substances of Descartes become one all-embracing, yea all-con- suming Substance, who is God, the One and the only One. This is the metaphysical, monistic, pantheistic side of Spinoza. But he has just the opposite side in equal if not greater strength, namely the ethical, individ- ualistic, even theistic. Spinoza has, therefore, two movements completely contradictory: the descending one we may call it, which begins with God and moves down to the vanishing individual (modus) ; the ascending one which begins with the individual and rises not only to unity with God, but perpetually re-creates through Intellec- tual Love the divine source of itself, instead of being absorbed and lost in the same. Here, then, lies the real dualism of the Seven- teenth Century, expressed in what many consider its greatest Philosophy. There can be no doubt that Spinoza has both these movements, and that THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 25 they are in direct contradiction, each with the other. But just this is what makes him the true representative of the Century, especially in its seconder separative stage. The conflict between North and South, between Mediterranean and Teutonic Spirit reflects itself directly in the cleavage of his system. It is the wide-open Philosophy, split from top to bottom, yet very distinctly showing the philosophic Norm in its cleft structure. Thus it reveals in its deepest form the modern spiritual dualism, which we shall find reaching out far beyond the Seven- teenth Century. Such, then, is the second or separative stage of the present period, which is to be followed by the third or returning stage of the complete psy- chical process of this Century. 3. Leibniz. The self -knowing Ego as Monad and the World as Monad (though unconscious) are united by God in a pre-established Harmony. The starting-point of Leibniz is the Monad or the individual representing the universe, and the Monad is the essence of all being. The move- ment is from the Monad back to the One, or Monad of Monads, God, who creates and sets in order this monadal world. Thus we see that the fundamental fact of the Philosophy of Leibniz is the return of the indi- vidual as Monad to the One, not the descent from 26 MODERN' EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. the One (so in Spinoza) to the individual as a seeming something or mode. The whole is a grand flight of the Monads toward God in whom they do not vanish, but who sends them forth in harmonious order. Hence the present is the third or returning stage in the total thought of the Seventeenth Century. Really Leibniz shows the desperate struggle to overcome, not the Car- tesian, but the Spinozan dualism which lies be- tween the two movements already set forth, the descending and the ascending, or the metaphy- sical and the ethical. In what way Leibniz pro- ceeds in order to accomplish his purpose, will be told more fully later on. Here, however, we may say in advance that he puts the process of the Ego into his metaphysical movement, thus making the latter ascending and thereby rescuing the Ego from the all-devouring maw of Spinoza's metaphysical Substance. A great step was this, in our judgment the greatest Leibniz ever took, prophetic indeed, even if from afar, of the new Psychology. Accordingly Leibniz has reached, affirmed, and formulated Substance as the self-conscious Ego, yet still as Substance. So his form re- mains metaphysical, but his content is psycho- logical, showing the movement of the Self in Feeling, Will and Intellect, though this move- ment be conceived vaguely and scatteringly, in THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 27 Leibiiizian fashion. But it is a very high point to reach, and the disguised Ego is made ready to burst forth into its own shape with its own right all of which we shall find taking place in the next Century. With this brief outline of our future task in mind, suggesting the ever-present inner process of the age, we may begin the grapple with the details. MODEEN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. l. Descartes. There were philosophers of the Kenascence before Descartes, but with him properly begins the movement of modern Philosophy in its dis- tinctive, consciously expressed purpose. He starts with the Ego, and proceeds through in- trospection to unfold its nature before trying to solve its problem of knowing the object. It is Descartes looking at the Self of Descartes and ascertaining its existence first of all. / think, therefore,^ I am seems now a rather trivial statement, but in it lies imbedded the whole movement of modern philosophic thought. The thinking Ego grasps itself and affirms its own reality as the center from which the universe is to be constructed. No such point of view can we find in the Greek or Medieval systems of Philosophy. We shall regard Descartes under three dif- ferent aspects his Life, his Writings, and his Philosophy. These may be considered three different forms of utterance of the man and through him of his age, moving as it were from the outside acts of the individual in his setting of time, to his inmost principle which is the eternal and universal element of him. Our phi- losopher lived, wrote, and thought; in this triple DESCARTES. LIFE. 29 relation we are to comprenend him. as far as possible. I. THE LIFE OF DESCARTES. It has been already noticed in the lives of certain ancient philosophers that they seem to have had a period of instruction and preparation (Lehrjahre), then a period of travel and of wandering ( Wander j ahre) , finally a period of fulfillment and mastery (Meisterjalire). This fact we may observe most fully in the biographies of Plato, Aristotle and Plotinus, the three greatest philosophic writers of antiquity (see our account of them in the previous volume, Ancient European Philosophy). The foregoing periods are the three stages in the life and development of every workman, high and humble; moreover they have been suggested by one of the greatest literary books that Europe has produced, Goethe's Wilhelm Meister. Descartes in his career has all three distinctly developed, as one of his biog- raphers, Kuno Fischer, has indicated. But Des- cartes himself has suggested these three periods of his life in his Discourse on Method (premiere parti e), where he first gives a somewhat extended account of his years of study, in which " I had an extreme desire of appropriating knowledge." But he became disgusted with mere erudition, and " as soon as my years permitted me to pass from under the control of my preceptors, I abandoned wholly the study of letters, and resolved to seek 30 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. no other science but that which could be found in myself and in the great book of the world (le grand livre du monde). Accordingly I spent the rest of my youth in traveling, in seeing courts and armies, in conversing with people of differ- ent characters and ranks," etc. Still we must not " pass too much time in traveling," else the estrangement from our own land and from our- selves may become too great. Hence, " after I had spent some years in studying the book of the world aforesaid, and in acquiring some experi- ence, I resolved to study my self ( the book of my Self ) , and to employ all the energies of my mind in choosing the paths which I ought to follow : which has succeeded much better, it seems to me, than if I had never separated myself from my books or my country." So our philosopher, looking back at the past in his forty-first year or thereabouts, distinguishes its three epochs which at once we see to bear the lineaments of a typical life, or of the biographical norm common to many careers lofty and Iow Accordingly we shall briefly follow out on these leading lines the main occurrences in the life of Rene Descartes from his birth in 1596 till his death in 1650. 1. First Period (1596-1617). He was born in La Haye, France, where his family belonged to the old nobility, and had held distinguished positions in Church and State. His grandfather DESCAETES.LIFE. 81 had fought against the Huguenots, and Descartes himself was present at the surrender of their last stronghold, La Rochelle. These traditions of his family he never openly violated ; to the end of his -days, he would go out of his way to de- clare his submission to the old Church and State. Yet he took an early opportunity to get beyond the reach of both ; he preferred to spend his fruitful years away from France and from her religion. He protested his devotion, but at a distance. This is one of the striking discrep- ancies which run through his whole career. Theologically he was determined not to break with Catholicism, though philosophically he was the most Protestant of all Protestants. So his French birth-mark stayed upon his features through the greatest mutations of his spirit. His early education by the Jesuits proba- bly accentuated this double element in his char- acter. Externally submissive to established institutions, but internally a daring innovator; his freedom of thought he maintained along with an almost servile obedience to authority in spir- itual matters. The same twofoldness seemed to lie in the gifts of nature to this man : bodily he was weak, inheriting a tendency to consumption from his mother, who died a few days after his birth, he being kept alive during infancy only by the skill and care of his nurse ; mentally he was endowed with a strength at which the world 32 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. still marvels. We shall find him timidly shrink- ing from any grapple with the actual conditions of his age; but in the minds of men he will plant the seeds of a mighty revolution. Descartes at school took the ordinary course in languages and in literature, showing aptitude in both. But there were two studies particu- larly upon which his future turned. The first of these was Mathematics, which gave him his supreme intellectual satisfaction all the rest of his life. " I was specially pleased with Mathe- matics on account of their certainty," and he compares this science with the writings of the old pagans, which seemed like " magnificent palaces built on sand and mud." Deeply dissat- isfied he is with ancient learning in spite of its eloquence, its beauty, and its poetry ; the human- ities of the "Renascence are to him a kind of plaything, lacking the severeness and precision of Mathematics. Here is a mental strand which accompanies his entire life. Another branch, whose rudiments he learned from the Jesuits, was Philosophy, embracing Logic, Metaphysics and Ethics, to which we may add Physics, taught probably after the medieval Aristotelian fashion. In this sphere (that of Philosophy) the many diverse opinions among its greatest masters made him question the truth of the whole science. Here, then, is the begin- ning of the Cartesian doubt : de omnibus dubi- DE8CAR TES. LIFE. 33 tandum. At the same time the bright pupil laid just at this point the foundation of his future greatest work. He acquired the philosophical Norm as transmitted from the ancient and* per- petuated through the medieval thinkers : Meta- physics, Physics, and Ethics. How his whole spiritual striving and accomplishment hovered around these three grand disciplines, especially the first two, will be shown hereafter. After staying with the Jesuits eight years, he leaves their school at the age of sixteen, with two main acquisitions: faith in the certainty of Mathematics, and doubt in regard to pretty much everything else, specially Philosophy. Herein also we can see the problem of his life dawning upon him, which runs somehow thus : Can I transfer this mathematical certainty into philosophic doubt and make Philosophy as clear and consequent as a proposition in geometry? With such a struggle fermenting in him the youth goes to Paris in order to see the court and the society of the capital, following herein the custom of the French nobleman. But again that double nature of his asserted itself. For a time he indulged in the fashionable dissipations of the city, and then suddenly disappeared. He went to a secluded house in the suburbs, and gave himself up entirely to his mathematical passion. Finally he was discovered in his retreat and had to return to society. But he 3 54 MODEEN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. was sated with that Parisian world and soon quit Paris and France, which separation was far deeper than he was himself aware of. Thus ends his First Period, in the year 1617 at the age of 21. He will now see the European world outside of his own nation, and so he enters upon a prolonged time of travel and foreign expe- riences. 2. Second Period (1617-29). There is little doubt that Descartes quit his native land in a state of deep inner scission. He had seen the French court at one of its weakest and most disgraceful epochs. A feeble king was on the throne, the royal palace was a continued scene of debauchery, intrigue and assassination. Des- cartes had been already at school disgusted with books and all learning ; now he is disgusted with his country, and particularly with its capital. He is not the only philosopher^who has felt an incompatibility of temper with the fair city on the Seine, declaring it to be the very con- centration of all earthly vanities. Our Emerson puts his gentle damnation upon it. One may toy with the question: what would ancient Plato, if he could be set down for a while in modern Paris, say to the spectacle? A grand phantas- magory of bewitching appearances without any reality or truth he would be apt to deem it, a gorgeous empty show appealing merely to the wicked senses and gotten up by the demons for DESCARTES. LIFE. 35 the bewilderment of humanity. Little of the Divine would he find in it, and he might hear a word from some of the Parisians themselves who have not hesitated to proclaim their city to be the gay attractive courtesan for all Europe. Away from such witchery of Appearance we imagine Plato taking rapid flight to his realm of Ideas, without even once looking back. Descartes, our modern philosopher, did some- thing similar. He quit the charming capital of his country, and, though a born Frenchman, he was never afterwards restored in heart to France. Though he came back again and again, apparently with the design of staying at home, he soon felt himself not at home, and fled over the border. What is the meaning of it? Some deep and lasting estrangement from his people and from the French spirit we have to read in these repeated returns and flights, even if he never openly broke with his nation and its re- ligion. He declares that the atmosphere of Paris breeds in his mind chimeras rather than truth. He seems to have regarded self-deception as a veritable disease in the French capital. He con- fesses that he became a prey to delusions along with the rest of the population if he stayed there. So he had to run away from the mental epidemic of his own people, who would take the false for the true and irresistibly impart the contagion. 36 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. Accordingly Descartes resolves to go forth and " read the great book of the world" outside of Paris and France. He enters the service of Hol- land, enlisting as a cadet under the Stadtholder, a Protestant. In progress and in cultivation of the sciences Holland was at that time the first country of Europe. A freedom of thought had arisen there which made the country very con- genial to young Descartes, full of doubts and inner protests. He must have felt a great relief when he found the iron hand of authority re- laxed, if not altogether prevented, from stran- gling thought in its birth. The result was Hol- land became his true home, the dwelling-place of his free spirit, where it was creatively at its best. This fact he must now have discovered, though he is not yet ready to settle down in the land of his genius. After staying two years in Holland { 1617-19) he goes to Germany and takes service with the imperial army. The Thirty Years' War had broken out, the great struggle between Catholi- cism and Protestantism had opened. Descartes now draws his sword for the Catholic cause, and takes part in several campaigns. Another two years (1619-21) pass, when he quits the service of the Emperor. During this time he is reported to have had a great inner experience, nothing less than the discovery of his true vocation in life. He is to renovate Philosophy by bringing DESCARTES. LIFE. 37 into it the same certainty which he has found in Mathematics. The same general method which he employed in his analytical Geometry he will apply to mind. A certain exaltation seems to have taken possession of him ; under such in- fluence he made a vow to go on a pilgrimage to the shrine of Loretto, which vow he fulfilled five years later. He became subject to dreams, in one of which he read the words : Quod vitce sec- tabor Her? indicating that he had come to the Parting of the Ways in the journey of life. He also tampered with that great mystification of the time, the Rosicrucians. For a while he seems to have surrendered himself to that self-decep- tion from which he proposed to free mankind, and from which he had fled out of Paris. Having given up his military career abroad, he resolves to see the rest of Europe. He traverses Northern Germany from East to West, reaches Holland and thence returns to France, But there he could not stay. He had not yet seen Italy and Rome. Accordingly he goes thither, and after another two years (1623-5) he is back again in Paris. Once more he tries to isolate himself in a retired suburb, but does not succeed. During this period he witnesses the final conflict with the Huguenots, being present at the surrender of their last fortress, La Rochelle (1628). By this blow the absolutism of the French Monarchy was made complete. 38 MODERN" EUROPEAN' PHILOSOPHY. Already during his youthful sojourn at Paris, Descartes saw the assembling and the dissolv- ing of the States General (1614-15) which did not meet again till 1789, on the eve of another and greater Revolution in the opposite direc- tion. The strong arm of Richelieu had extin- guished the last spark of French liberty ; the powers of Church and State dominated soul and body in France. Such a condition could not possibly have been congenial to Descartes, although he said nothing. Quietly he makes his preparations, and bidding good-bye only to a few intimate friends, he slips out of Paris and France in the spring of 1629, turning his face again toward his beloved Holland, the home of his genius. Thus the period of his travels is brought to a conclusion. What had he seen? He had come into direct personal contact with the great strug- gles of his age, chiefly religious. He had wit- nessed a triumphant Protestantism in the Neth- erlands, and even served in its cause; he had also witnessed a defeated Protestantism in France, and had helped to defeat it; thus he shows the deep rent of his time to be present in his own soul by this double service, sincere in both cases. Then he beholds the desperate conflict between the old and new forms of faith in his German campaigns. In fact the Thirty Years' War stands in the background of his entire mature DESCARTES. LIFE. 39 life. That mighty struggle which lay essentially between the right of the Self and absolutism was reflected in his thoughts as he gazed at the con- tending parties from his distant perch in the North. But he held aloof from the religious controversy, his utterance was philosophic. When he claimed the right of his Ego to call into question everything, all the past, present, and even future, and when he declared that his thinking was the very ground of his being, he was in his way fighting a Thirty Years' War against the children of darkness. In Theology he was still medieval, a timid, shrinking, unhe- roic figure ; but in Philosophy he was supremely modern, the daring innovator and the hero of a new epoch. 3. Third Period (1629-50). Descartes has stated a number of reasons why he preferred Holland. He could there be rid of all social demands upon him, and give himself up unre- servedly to . his inner call ; the climate was more congenial than the Southern ; he enjoyed con- templating the busy commercial life of the people though he took no part in it. But chiefly he saw there a greater realization of freedom than elsewhere on the continent of Europe. In one of his letters written in 1631 he says that there is " no country which has a higher degree of civil freedom," showing that he was not wholly indifferent to the political 40 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. condition of the time, though he kept silent about it. Then there was just at this period great intellectual activity in Holland, the greatest in Europe. Descartes put himself into the center of it and felt its strongest pulsations everywhere about him. The Spirit of the Age selects some nation as its chief supporter and represent- ative. This, in the earlier part of the Seven- teenth Century, was Holland. The insight, or possibly ; the instinct, of the philosopher, who rightly belongs to an epoch rather than to a nation, chose that spot where the Thought of the Time was most manifestly present and at work. For it is this Thought of the Time which the philosopher has at last to express, not merely his own individual thoughts, opinions, and reflections. Holland had substantially settled the mighty religious controversy, that between Catholicism and Protestantism, in favor of the latter, though this conflict was still being fought out in Ger- many. But in the form of Protestantism itself a new struggle arose, that between Free-Will and Determinism, which was hotly carried on in Holland between the Armenians and the Gomar- ists (Calvinists). This conflict had an influence upon Descartes, who, however, transferred it from the sphere of the Will into that of Intel- lect. The outcome was that he too became in- volved in the religious disputes of the land, and DESCARTES. LIFE. 41 at last, after a residence of twenty years, quit it and went to Sweden, whither he had been invited by the Queen, Christina. There he died in 1650. It is remarkable that Descartes who wandered all over Europe, never seems to have visited England, or to have taken any interest in her history. England's function in Europe has chiefly been to work out the polit- ical problem, to which Descartes never showed much inclination. Just over the channel from Holland the struggle for constitutional liberty had begun, culminating in a civil war between Parliament and the House of Stuart. With certain members of this royal House Descartes stood on intimate terms, especially with the prin- cess Elizabeth, to whom he dedicated his most complete work, The Principles of Philosophy (Principia). The supreme fact of Descartes' stay in Hol- land was that he wrote books. It may be doubted if he - would have taken to author- ship in France, where he had to maintain the dignity of a French nobleman. His own brother deemed him to have disgraced his family by writ- ing books. As it was, he frequently declared his aversion to such an occupation, and he left school disgusted with all literature. Still, Des- cartes felt supremely the need of expression and he came to Holland that he might be free to utter what was in him. No sooner had he set- 42 MODERN' E UBOPEAN PHIL SOPHY. tied down than he was laboring at his great work on the Cosmos. It was almost finished in the year 1633, when its publication was stopped by a peculiar incident. Descartes had in his book defended the Coper- nican system, which had been supported by Galileo in a famous dialogue published in 1622. Galileo had been condemned for this view at Kome in 1633. This was the thunderbolt which also knocked the life out of Descartes' Cosmos. As a submissive son of the Church, he bowed to her decision; yet he could write to his friend, that " if this doctrine (Copernican) is false, all the principles of my philosophy are wrong." Here we see the character of our philosopher. He sought no reformation of institutions through his thinking. He maintains repeatedly that his work was chiefly to satisfy his own mind and to develop his own Ego. Nevertheless Descartes sought for disciples and formed a Cartesian School during his lifetime. It is true that he was not a professor in a University or a teacher by vocation ; he claimed always to be the French nobleman, above any such menial callings. Still the form of his Principia and especially the introductory letter to his translators show that his mind was dwelling upon the Schools of the ancient philosophers when he composed that work. Four years after the ecclesiastical ban upon DESCAE TES. LIFE. 43 Galileo, Descartes ventures to send forth a small treatise in French called a Discourse on Method which is the beginning of his philosophical emi- nence. During the next seven years his main works were published, though he kept up his writing till the close of his life. His produc- tions belong substantially to one Period of his life, the last; in fact his greatest books, the three by which he is best known, belong to one phase of his last Period. This fact brings us to observe that his long third Period, extend- ing through twenty-one years of his not very long life (1629-1650), may well be divided into three sub-periods or stages which can be dis- tinctly marked off by his writings about as follows : First is his work on the Cosmos (Le Monde) which came to an unhappy end as already narrated. Second are his two brief treatises which bear a strong personal stamp Discourse on Method and the Meditations. These are subjective in character and form, leaning more toward the psychological procedure. The third stage tends more to the metaphysi- cal procedure. It opens with the Principia, and shows a decided return to formal Phi- losophy, especially of the Aristotelian pattern. More will be said upon these works later. Parallel to this literary activity of the last 44 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. Period runs a line of external events, made up of personal experiences, changes of abode, multi- plied vexations, and chiefly a great deal of con- troversy. Into this side of Descartes' life we cannot enter ; the curious reader can find in the detailed biographies how the theologians, both Catholic and Protestant, kept troubling him and his disciples, while the latter in their turn often caused chagrin to the Master. Him we shall pass to consider where he is at his best and pre- sents to us the true fruits of his genius, namely as a writer of books. II. THE WRITINGS OF DESCARTES. There is no intention here of giving an account of all that Descartes has written. Only the important works can be considered, first according to their order in time, secondly by groupings which show their development. It has been already indi- cated that the main works of Descartes, though they all belong to his last Period, reveal a pro- cess going on within that Period. This process we shall try to unfold in a general way, seeking it in those books of his which Time has selected as the best. .1. The Discourse on Method. This is a part of a larger work called JEssais Philosophiques, printed in 1637, and containing in addition to the Discourse three other treatises, on Geometry, Dioptrics, and Meteors. Thus we may infer that Descartes included in his idea of Philosophy the DE8CAE TES. WRITINGS. 45 sciences of Mathematics and Physics. These, however, have in the present case been over- shadowed by the Discourse, which gives the first and simplest statement of his pure Philosophy. It seeks to be easy and popular, and shows a decided didactic vein, being written in French by the author himself instead of Latin, which was at that time the language of the learned, and being addressed to the people " who use their pure natural reason," and who, therefore, c ' will be better judges of my opinions than those who believe only in old books." This is a great, far-sounding note. It appeals, even in the matter of Philosophy, to the people in de- fiance of the erudite professors and clergymen ; it proclaims, too, that Philosophy must begin to talk a modern and popular tongue a re- quirement which Descartes himself did not always follow. Furthermore, the treatise proposes (in its title) to teach people ' the right conduct of their reasons," as well as how to " seek for truth in the sciences." Thus our philosopher attempts to break down the learned barrier which shuts out the people from the cultivation of their mind and from the pursuit of truth. The form of the Discourse is unique. It may be called the spiritual autobiography of a philos- opher. It speaks in the first person : I, Kene Descartes, have flung aside all my books, have 46 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY, freed myself of all my preconceived opinions, and now I am going forth in search of pure truth as certainty. Such is the supreme as- piration of my nature, and this truth is what God is to give me, if He is at all. I doubted everything; " but as soon as I observed that I, while doubting, had to be somewhat (namely the doubter), I came upon this truth : I think, there- fore I am, and I concluded that I could without scruple take it as the first principle of my Phil- losophy " (Discourse, Part 4). It is important to note the empirical procedure of Descartes in this account. He is purely in- trospective, seeking his first principle within; he examines his Ego, and from its activity in thought he infers its existence. Here too we see the distinct psychological strain which char- acterizes the whole course of modern Philoso- phy, in contrast with the ancient. Descartes does not say that Thinking is Being already some of the old Greeks had said that but he does affirm my Ego's Thinking is my Ego's Being a very different matter. Such maybe fairly deemed the opening sentence of modern Philosophy: / think, therefore, I am. Much, however, lies implicit in it which time will make explicit, and which we are to see unfolding in this book of ours. Hegel has called it " the most interesting idea of recent times," and he might DESCARTES. WRITINGS. 47 have added, the most fruitful, being such a germ of future thought. Amid numerous personal reminiscences, Des- cartes comes to the second great fact of his Philosophy: the proof of the existence of God. He also relates that Mathematics gave him that certainty which he wished to transfer to philo- sophical truth. The function of God in human cognition is also set forth. Nor is a brief treat- ise upon Physics omitted. In fact we have in this Discourse an outline of Descartes' Philoso- ophy, though this outline is skillfully overlaid with personal experiences and events of his inner history, It is the philosopher's Ego telling of itself and hew it came really to know itself. The subjective form is, therefore, deeply conso- nant with the theme. This gives to the treatise an artistic character which has caused it to be read by many who are not philosophers. We must not, therefore, regard the present book as a dry, abstract disquisition upon philosophic method, as its general title might suggest. A fundamental trait of the character of Descartes is indicated in the following: " My first maxim was to obey the laws and customs of my country " (Discourse, Part 3) ; he was careful to shun the reputation of apolitical innovator. "Adhering faithfully t the religion 'in which I had been educated from my infancy, I followed in all things the moderate course.'" So he declared 48 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. himself hostile to any change in Church or State, he would not touch institutions. Little aware does he seem that thought, once possessing the minds of men, must affect also the established order, political and religious. 2. The Meditations. This work was published in* 1641 at Paris (the Discourse appeared in Leyden, Holland), written in Latin by Descartes himself. It was called Meditationes de prima philosophia; this last term, First Philosophy, goes back to Aristotle, who thus designated his metaphysical doctrines, in contrast with his physi- cal, which he called Second Philosophy. We soon observe that this is a far more ambitious book than the Discourse; it proposes to compete with the Stagirite in his greatest work. Now Descartes appeals to the learned and writes in Latin, with a dedication to the theologians of the Sorbonne. The content of this Philosophy is stated in the title of the second edition (some- what changed from the first edition .herein) as consisting of proofs for the existence of God and of the distinction of the soul from the body. So Descartes writes a book in spite of his repeatedly expressed dislike of books and of writing books. As there was no external neces- sity upon him to do so, we must suppose that he h#d an inner need of ' utterance deeper than any repugnance. Amusing it is to see him twist and squirm about in making excuses for doing what DESCAE TE8. WETTING 8. 49 he did not want to do and did not need to do. In this he is somewhat like Plato who pretended to despise the written word, yet wrote all his life, and became great through his books for all time. Both philosophers were aristocrats by birth, and could not help showing their aristocratic disdain by making wry faces at their own genius. The Meditations have an inner movement and content similar to the Discourse, of which they are a new and improved edition. The peculiar Cartesian norm of philosophizing shows itself : the negative start with doubt ; the first positive truth attained in the self-conscious Ego (I think therefore I am); the second positive truth reached in the existence of God; the employ- ment of clear and distinct ideas; the Ego's cognition of the object through God ; the sepa- ration between soul and body, as well some observations on Physics; all these show the sweep as well as the subject-matter of the Medi- tations. We see how completely this metaphy- sical movement has taken possession of the mind of the philosopher. For four years, ever since the publication of the first sketch in the Dis- course he has been turning over these germinal thoughts, unfolding and purifying them from everything extraneous. Yet the form of exposition is essentially the same as in the Discourse, being still largely autobiographical. Descartes could not get rid 4 50 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. of his own Self in treating of the Self, which is his fundamental fact and positive starting-point. Yet there are fewer outer events of life recorded, the procedure is more completely the Ego's account of itself than in the Discourse. The discussion is about Man, God and the World, but it is in the form of the Self, indeed of my Self. The tone is subjective; the reader is turned back into his own Ego, where he is made to see himself going through a like process with the author. Thus the manner and spirit are modern, and show a new dawning world of sub- jectivity, very different from the objective way of the old Greeks. On the other hand Descartes is much more abstract and metaphysical in this work than in the Discourse. We may see that he is struggling with his subjective form while at the same time intensifying it. Such are the two tendencies in these Meditations; one he is leaving behind, while into the other he is advanc- ing. The latter tendency will next show itself in a new book, which decidedly suggests that Descartes is turning away from his popular audi- ence to the trained student, and is seeking to form a School of Philosophy after the manner of the ancients. 3. The Principles (Principia) of Philosophy . Printed in Latin at Amsterdam in 1644. It is ostensibly divided into four parts, but in fact it has only two subjects, Metaphysics and Physics; DESCAK TES. WRITINGS. 5 1 to the former the first part is devoted, to the latter, the three other parts. The author now proceeds abstractly, or, as he would say, synthetically; whereas in the two fore- going works his method he has called analytic. The autobiographic manner is dropped, and the principles of his Philosophy are stated directly ; hence the title of the work. In other words, his writing is now objective and leaves out the per- sonal subjective element which we have noticed both in the Discourse and the Meditations. The style is no longer in the form of an individual experience outer and inner, but runs rather to universal propositions stated more or less dog- matically. Though he often uses here the pro-, noun we (in place of the former /), his word has the tone of an authoritative command and not that of tentative experience. It is a decided change in form and spirit; he has become more certain of himself within, and less fearful of the outer powers. He dedicates the book to Prin- cess Elizabeth, a profound admirer of his Philos- ophy, as well as a royal patroness of it ; with her favor he seems to defy the rest of the world. Still this change of manner and of exposition we can well deem an inner evolution of the philosopher himself. He, as philosopher, must naturally rise out of the particular to the uni- versal both in thought and in statement. More- over he has been studying the ancient thinkers of 52 MODERN E UROPEAN PHIL SOPHY. Greece whose special characteristic is to proceed objectively. A letter of Descartes to the French translator of the Principia is prefixed to the French edition (Paris, 1647). In that letter the author cites Plato and Aristotle, specially dis- paraging the latter, and assailing the Logic of the Schools. Still Descartes shows that he has before himself the philosophic Norm Meta- physics, Physics, and Ethics though he is a good deal confused over the last. He has a scheme of " giving to the world a complete body of Philosophy." It is evident such a scheme floated before .his mind in writing this book on The Principles of Philosophy. So we put together the philosophical books of Descartes, in which we see a decided evolution of one fundamental process of thought. This starts as a germ in the Discourse, develops to its full meaning in the Meditations, and finally as- sumes its philosophic form in the Principles. Through all these stages, which we may name bud, flower, fruit, runs the one idea in a three- fold process: the Ego's consciousness of Self, the Ego's consciousness of God, and the Ego's consciousness of the non-Ego or the World. Into and around these central themes entwine many other important doctrines with much ar- gumentation and reflection. Still just here lies the genetic thought of Descartes and of modern Philosophy. DESCARTES. WHITINGS. 53 An unconscious evolution (destined to .become conscious in a later century) we find in these three books of the philosopher. But into what does he unfold? We have noted that his third book, the Principles, moves essentially upon the lines of the philosophic Norm, which we have already found lurking in every system of thought from the ancients down, that is, whenever thought develops into a system. In fact the title Principles (Principia in Latin, archai in Greek) has been rightly regarded as a direct translation from Aristotle. 4. To these three central works of Descartes we may add a fourth, the treatise on The Passions of the Soul, printed in French at Amsterdam in 1650, the year of Descartes' death. This work helps us supply the stage of Ethics, which is very defective in Descartes. It treats of the Soul and Body in its first part, and so makes a connection with Cartesian Physics, in fact it dis- tinctly joins on to the last sections of the Prin- cipia and also to the Sixth Meditation, which latter likewise discusses toward its close the dis- tinction between Soul and Body. Moreover this treatise shows the same change in style and manner of philosophizing, which we have already noted in the Principia. Aristotle is certainly the pattern, though Descartes takes special pains to reject and scoff at the old Greek philosopher, affirming his own originality. In 54 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. general, Descartes deemed himself the most original soul that had ever been born ; he was his own God who first gave to mankind " clear and distinct ideas " for knowing the world. In spite of some professions of modesty, which always have a peculiar hollow sound, he had no question about his own primacy and infallibility. He considered himself to stand alone, he had no notion of his own evolution in the History of Philosophy, no glimmer that he was but a link in the great philosophical development which had been going on long before him, and which was to go on long after him. Undoubtedly, he was a very important link, still he was but a link. It is true that the History of Philosophy, which is the grand training out of such egotism as that of Descartes, was substantially unknown to his age, as it is now known, namely as one of the most important evolutionary disciplines of the Nineteenth Century. Descartes had then in mind the Metaphysics and the Physics of Aristotle in writing his Principia; in like manner he takes his cue from Aristotle's Ethics in writing his Passions of the Soul. Already we have commented on this change of philosophic style and of method from that which we see in the earlier Discourse and Meditations. The philosopher is passing into the transmitted philosophic Norm; he is going from his first DESCARTES. WETTINGS. 55 subjective, experimental, inductive manner to his second deductive, synthetic, objective pro- cedure. He has both ways in his career, yet not both at the same time. Between 1641 (when the Meditations were published), and 1644 (when the Principia were published) we may consider this change to have culminated though it had been a good while before fermenting in him. In fact, we may take this change as the return to his earlier studies with the Jesuits at La Fleche, from which he had so long and so powerfully re-acted. He has come to feel the need of system which is not merely a method of philosophizing (this he has already employed) but is the ordered Whole of Philosophy. Hence it is that he is thrown back upon Aristotle in whom the philosophical Norm had its first ex- plicit and complete manifestation (see our Ancient European Philosophy, pp. 374-5, 495, 614, etc.) Moreover it runs through all Medie- val Philosophy. Descartes, therefore, falls into line with the philosophical movement of the ages, in spite of his protest to the contrary, and works over his earlier productions in the same spirit (seethe First Part of the Principia). 5. In the philosophical series we must-not omit to mention two other works, which have their significance in relation to the total philosophy of Descartes. The first is JRules for the Direction of the Mind, which shows Descartes in the process 56 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. of his own self -training for his work, and has many a connecting link with his first two books above mentioned. The second is the Investiga- tion of Truth by the Light of Nature (la himiere naturelle), originally written in French and first published over fifty years after Descartes' death (1701). The whole title is suggestive: "The Investigation of Truth by the Light of Nature, which of itself and without the help of religion and philosophy determines the opinions which a gentleman ought to have on all things which should be the object of his thoughts, and which penetrates the most abstract sciences." The work is incomplete and is in the form of a dialogue, in which fact as well as in its Greek names one cannot help being reminded of Plato, though Descartes, as usual, disclaims the idea of his having borrowed anything from the books of the ancients. The content is, of course, Car- tesian. The emphatic point is that the philoso- pher is now going to dismiss " the help of philosophy and religion," and employ only "the natural light " of human reason. The interfer- ence of God is left away, it would seem that man is by his own mental power " to penetrate the most abstract sciences," or to know the world. It may in general be said that Descartes, as he advances in years, has a tendency to put into the background the divine element, or the part of God, in his Philosophy. Already the deity DE8CAE TES. WRITINGS. 57 appears less in the Principia than before, though he appears often enough. The difficulties con- nected with the mechanical view of God seem to have become more and more apparent to Descar- tes. At least in this last book he deems that knowledge can be acquired <; by the natural light " alone, without " the divine concourse." All this looks as if Descartes himself were on the way toward Spinoza who is to give a new construction of the Cartesian divinity. III. THE PHILOSOPHY OF DESCARTES. We are now to concentrate the philosophic doctrines of Descartes, which are set forth with varying degrees of maturity and completeness in his dif- ferent works. But in them all is a common body of principles, even the same general move- ment in exposition. They pertain to Man, God, and Nature, which are treated separately and in connection. Hence, Descartes will have the phi- losophic Norm embracing the sciences of these three themes which constitute the Universe Metaphysics, Physics, and a somewhat uncertain and incomplete third science which may still be called Ethics. This threefold Norm, after being thrown away by Descartes in his Period of reaction, was slowly returning to him with the deepening of life and thought during his third Period, which revealed to him the profundity of its meaning. We have already noted evidence of this return 58 MODERN' E UROPEAN PHIL O SOPHY. to Philosophy as such in the Meditations, we have also seen that the Principia is consciously based upon the philosophic Norm. This is plain from the introductory letter in which Descartes lays down a kind of curriculum for the student who, after a stated preparation, "should com- mence to apply himself to true Philosophy, of which the first part is Metaphysics." Then " the second part is Physics," but the third part seems to be composed, in the scheme of Des- cartes, of three "principal branches, Medicine, Mechanics, Ethies." Here is some confusion; still, he adds: " By the science of Ethics I un- derstand the highest and most perfect science, being the final degree of wisdom, and presup- posing an entire knowledge of the other sciences." This last statement puts Ethics where it belongs in the Norm, though there is certainly fluctua- tion in other statements. He also speaks of "a complete body of Philosophy" already outlined in his mind after the above-mentioned Norm. This Norm is, accordingly, what an exposition of the Cartesian Philosophy must follow. A. METAPHYSICS. This is, by all means, the epoch-making por- tion of Descartes' doctrine. It deals with ontology or the science of Being, like all Metaphysics; it takes up Being as immediate, or as Nature (the DESCAR TES. ME TAPE YSICS. 59 subject of the Greek philosopher) ; it has much to say of the Being of God (the subject of the Medie- val thinker) ; but it also grapples with the Being of the Ego, which is the new point in modern Phi- losophy. So the Metaphysics of Descartes has for its content the three Beings or Substances Man, God, and the World opening with the first in the famous declaration, / think, there- fore, JAM. This Ego (or /) is, accordingly, the starting- point of Descartes and the moderns, consciously so, wherein lies his difference from the previous thinkers who also started with the Ego (had to do. so in fact), though unconscious of their own Self in their procedure. But in Descartes the Ego turns back upon itself and knows itself as the primal philosophic act, and takes up its new position from which to move the Uni- verse, knowing itself to be self-knowing, hence, existent. But the Ego now turns back, not only upon itself, but also upon former Philosophies and wheels them into line with its own process. The Being of the Ego is to be not simply self-con- scious within itself or subjectively, but it has to return and take up Pure or Immediate Being (Greek), and God's Being (Medieval) into its movement. Thus we see that Descartes is a re- turn to the very beginning of Philosophy in or- der to bring its total sweep into the new advance. 60 MODEEN EUEOPEAN PHILOSOPHY. In this sense we observe that Descartes still be- longs to the Eenascence, going back, indeed, to ancient thought but integrating it vitally with the modern. Accordingly we shall have to look at this met- aphysical stage of Descartes' Philosophy under three heads: the Ego's knowing itself as exist- ent, the Ego's knowing God as existent, the Ego's knowing the world (objective) as existent. These are the three elements of the philosophic Norm unfolding in Cartesian order. I. The first thing that Descartes as a philoso- pher sets himself about doing is to come into clearness concerning his own Ego. After his first period embracing his years of study, he had cast away his books as the source of error. And after his second period of travel in which he read for a number of years " the great book of the world," he has to throw this book also aside as unable to give him truth, the object of his soul's search. " Then I resolved to make myself (my Ego) an object of study " which last undertak- ing he thinks has been crowned with success. Introspection is thus the fundamental fact of his procedure in spite of all that he says about his mathematical method. But with his Ego he was, on close examination, not satisfied. For he finds its knowledge so called a commingled mass of truth and false- hood. It is largely composed of things given by DESCAB TES. ME TAPBYSICS. 6 1 the senses, whose report of objects is often not correct. Then he may be dreaming instead of actually seeing; since for him " there are no certain marks by which the state of waking can ever be distinguished from sleep." What a world of illusion! "I almost persuade myself that I, am dreaming just now "in writing this book. Something must be done at once and in a heroic fashion ; so Descartes reaches his first grand mental maxim in a fit of. defiance : Doubt everything and everybody ; de omnibus dubitan- dum. (1) This we may name his negative Ego, since it is his Ego which now turns upon its own content or knowledge with a universal negation. It finds within itself an entire world of beliefs, accepted doctrines, preconceptions. Is it not evident that all of them must be overhauled and questioned as to their right of being true knowl- edge? It is indeed a big job, that of " ridding myself of all the opinions I had adopted and of commencing afresh the work of building from the foundation," the edifice of a true Ego. But hold! while the philosopher's Ego is lay- ing about itself within its own domain and chal- lenging every opinion, a reflection comes: I cannot doubt the doubter; this doubting Ego must be in order that I may doubt, or indeed perform any act of thought. I may and do deceive myself; but in order to deceive myself there 62 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. must be a Self (or Ego) to be deceived. It is I who doubt, but without this /, there is no doubt. (2) This we may name the positive Ego, whose existence is posited even by the negative doubt. Thus in the ocean of uncertainty and dubitation, Descartes has reached one certain, indubitable point, his own Self. From this point he is to ray out and illumine the universe- Through the Ego's doubting and thinking, it is; thus comes before us the famous Cartesian say- ing, / think, therefore I am. Here is a twofold- ness, to think and to be, both of which are united through and in the Ego. Its form has doubted all its content, till finally it takes its own form as content, which it has to affirm even in order to doubt. There has been a good deal of discussion about the meaning of / think, therefore I am. This resolution of all doubt has been itself much doubted. It has been charged with being an empty tautology, inasmuch as / think already means / am thinking. Is Descartes trying to prove per- sonal existence by a syllogism? The form seems to indicate such, as we may see by the following: All that thinks is, I think, therefore I am. But this is not what Descartes means ; his apparent inference is an intuition rather than a deduction, immediate insight rather than mediate reasoning ; he intends to say that my personal existence is implicitly contained in my thinking, though not DE8CAE TES. ME TAPHYSICS. 63 explicitly, till I make it explicit by a special act of my thought. Gassendi's objection lay in the fact that a major premise was implied, and hence that there was apetitio principii in the statement. Thus the thing to be proved is tacitly assumed. Descartes answered this objection by affirming that "there is no major premise implied, it is a particular truth which enters the mind without logical deduction, a natural truth which strikes at once and irresistibly the intelligence." In an- other reply he says: "The notion of existence is a primitive notion, not obtained by any syllogism ; it is evident of itself, and our mind discovers it by intuition." (See Cousin's comment on this topic.) This would seem decisive of Descartes' purpose. Still the form is unquestionably deductive, while the meaning is intuitive ; it is an immediate insight expressed in mediated reasoning. Hence the am- biguity of I think, therefore lam; no Delphic oracle was ever more two-edged. Though Des- cartes deems it the one certain fact in the uni- verse and indeed the foundation of all certitude which has rescued the Ego from its sea of doubts, it has nevertheless caused in many of his readers more doubts than they had ever had before they were thus rescued. Still this sentence is said to have dominated the best minds for a century after Descartes (the seventeenth) ; then it begins to be denied and even covered with ridicule in 64 MODERN E UROPEAN PHIL SOPHY. the next century (the critical eighteenth); during the present century (the nineteenth) it has again come into estimation, at least as an epoch-making historic fact in Philosophy. In this statement Descartes has turned the Ego back into itself and made it affirm its own existence through thinking, that is, through self-knowing. (3). Thus we come to the self-conscious Ego, whose self-conscious activity is its being, which may be regarded as the true interpretation of the Cartesian maxim, the interpretation given by time. In Descartes when the Ego thinks (cogito) it turns back upon itself and knows itself, and hence is (ergo sum). It must have this process within itself in order to be. In other words we have here the first vague statement of the Psychosis, or the process of the Ego as the basis of all true science. We may trace its primal implicit stage, then its separation into subject and object which correspond to Descartes' think- ing and being, finally the return to unity in self- consciousness, That threefold movement (the Psychosis) which we find in Greek thought as purely ontological, we see in Descartes commenc- ing to be psychological, and so starting the great movement of modern thinking toward its end in pure Psychology. Still Descartes cannot give up his philosophical standpoint, which is indeed European, so he projects his self -consciousness into being, his cogitare into esse. He cannot get x DESCARTES. METAPHYSICS 65 rid of the ontological substrate, though his be the Ego : s ontology. With him the end of the Ego's thinking is its being, but time is destined to turn the two terms around and show that the Ego's being is its thinking. With this latter conception fully unfolded, a new epoch and a new discipline of thought open together. Very characteristic of the Seventeenth Cen- tury is the fact that Descartes designs to throw away the syllogism in his / think, therefore I am, and to fall back upon the immediate act of know- ing (intuition) instead of the mediated one through the syllogism. And yet he does not fully succeed Nothing is plainer than that the syllogistic form underlies his famous enthymeme Still its meaning or content is intuitive, imme- diate, as he declares. So his effort to free him- self of scholastic trammels is but half a success. The old transmitted forms he has to use, even if he pours into them his new thought. This same fact we have already noted as true of all the great philosophers of the Seventeenth Century. Such are the three phases or activities \)f the Ego negative, positive, and self-conscious in this first movement of Cartesian Philosophy, which is the movement from absolute skepticism with its doubt to absolute certainty with its truth, namely to the Ego as self-knowing. Thus, a criterion of truth is obtained : it must be known with the same certainty that the Ego knows 5 66 MODERN' EUROPEAN' PHILOSOPHY. itself in self -consciousness. Two terms are used by Descartes to express such knowledge Clear- ness and distinctness, I know anything clearly when my mind grasps it immediately, as it is in it- self ; I know anything distinctly, when my mind separates it from all that is alien to it. Hence one of Descartes' rules for the direction of mind is ' to accustom ourselves to see the truth clearly and distinctly." In fact * whatever we see clearly and distinctly is true," cannot help being true without upsetting the Ego, and still more, without upsetting God Himself. At this point we may find the transition to the next stage of Cartesian thinking, to grasping and grounding the existence of God. Whence comes this clear and distinct knowledge of things? Behind it must be a cause, such a cause, accord- ing to Descartes, is God. II. The second truth which Descartes in his investigation of First Philosophy or Metaphysics seeks to ascertain is the existence of God as the necessary counterpart to the existence of the Ego. As he picked up the Ego and unfolded its existence, so now he seems to pick up God and to set about the problem of His existence. Though the manner is empirical and apparently fortuitous, we shall find in Descartes a profound connection between these two stages of the ex- position, the Ego's being and God's being. In fact, that self-consciousness cannot be without DESCAR TES.~ ME TAPHT8ICS. 67 God-consciousness is one of Descartes' deepest and most fruitful thoughts. Still further, man cannot know the object except through God, who removes the grand barrier between the Microcosm and the Macrocosm. According to the Cartesian notion, the Ego is lying helpless in its own prison-house till God comes and breaks down the door from the outside, letting forth that incarcerated Self into the world, where it is to attain unto true knowledge c Previously, in the Middle Ages, it might be said in one sense that God was the Ego's jailer, but Descartes has secretly called up a new God, or at least a new Divine Spirit, whose function now is to set that very Ego free which it before jailed (often with good reason let it be added in passing). In the mind's getting hold of the existence of God, there is a movement which may be set forth as follows : (1) God's existence is inborn in my Ego; or, as Descartes expresses it, the idea of God is innate. It comes to me not through the senses, nor primarily through any other means except God. It is an immediate divine gift of Himself to man. This gift is, however, no external one, but the gift of his very Self to his creature. He is not only the artist, but also the pattern of his own work , he is the archetype producing itself in a finite ^form. " From the fact that God made me, I believe that He made me in his image, and 68 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. that I am like Him. * * * I know the idea of God just as I know myself." Hence this idea is innate, it is immediately one with my Ego ; from this side my Ego is what God's Ego is, inborn yet put there by God in birth. On the other hand the Ego, contemplating itself, finds that it is different from God, being dependent, imperfect, finite. I therein separate Him from myself, hold Him up before myself as the ideal of perfection and as the goal of my striv- ing. Now, I have conceived of God, and from this conception of Him I pass to His existence, which is an inference, a deduction, and is no longer an immediate insight. Thus I attempt to prove the existence of God by argument. (2) The two sides now appear: the concep- tion or idea of the most perfect Being on the one side (subjective), and on the other the neces- sary reality (objective) of such a being inferred through the idea of Him. I have a clear and distinct idea of God, therefore He is. Such an idea is a fact of my consciousness, indeed a fund- amental fact of it, which cannot originate with me, since it is greater and more perfect than I am. Hence, it comes from God who must exist in order to impart it to me. This is the so- called ontological proof of God's existence, which was brought into medieval Theology by Anselm and which made it conscious of its deepest purpose. For as Greek thought grap- DESCARTES. METAPHYSICS. 69 pled with Being as such, so Medieval thought grappled with God's Being, making it an element in the experience of every individual Ego which had the idea of the PerfectOne. In the ontolog- ical proof God is first, producing in me the idea of the Perfect, through which idea I am to know His existence. Thus I am in a manner the spirit of God who puts into me his idea, whereby I am to return and recognize Him. This proof was not altogether acceptable to Descartes. From my conception of anything I do not have to infer that it exists. Indeed I have many conceptions (or ideas) which I know do not exist. Why should God be the exception? That is just the matter requiring proof. It must therefore be shown how the existence of God necessarily follows from the conception of Him, If there are many conceptions which have no reality, how can I be made certain that the con- ception of God is not one of that sort? So Descartes will proceed to make an addition to the ontological proof which secures its necessity. Before we pass to that subject, it may be stated that Descartes did not apparently see the full validity of the ontological argument. It is true that this argument infers reality from the idea, and that such inference is not a necessary one in general. But God as the Perfect One is rightly the exception. All other ideas are the imperfect, finite, and hence may be unreal. But 70 MODERN EUBOPEAN PHILOSOPHY. the idea of God as perfect must have reality, else he would be conceived as imperfect, finite, unreal. The idea of the Perfect without reality is already imperfect, and hence is a contradiction. The vice of the ontological proof is not its lack of necessity, as Descartes supposes, but its exclu- sion of the Ego's participation, which Descartes will, partly, at least, supply. For without the Ego knowing itself there cannot be its knowing of God in any adequate degree. Self-conscious- ness and God-consciousness are in correspondence and move in one process. This fact Descartes knows and will set forth. (3) The scholastic ontological proof is trans- formed by Descartes into what may be called the modern psychological proof of God's existence. There is still the idea of the Perfect One, but now the stress is placed upon the fact that I the imperfect one, have this idea of the Perfect Being. The Ego is to know itself as imperfect really, yet also to know itself as having the idea of perfection. This is the psychological basis of the Cartesian proof. First of all, the Ego must cognize itself in its double character, then it sees that it, the imperfect, cannot produce the idea of the perfect out of itself, andfinally that this idea in it can only spring from what is actually per- fect. Thus the existence of God necessarily fol- lows from the idea of the Perfect Being which necessary consequence Descartes did not seem- DESCARTES. ME TAPHYSICS. 7 1 ingly attribute to the ontological proof. The two formulas (ontological and psychological) might run according to Descartes : The idea of Perfect Being may have reality and the idea of Perfect Being in an imperfect Being must have reality. Still further, the ontological proof knows the Ego only as having the idea of perfec- tion, from which idea divine reality is inferred, but the psychological proof knows the Ego as self -knowing, as conscious of itself as the imper- fect one with the idea of the Perfect One, from which divine reality necessarily follows. Herewith ends the Cartesian movement for the mind's getting the existence of God from the idea, whereof we have seen three stages which we may summarily call the innate, the ontological and the psychological stages. But having obtained, or one might almost say, evolved God, what is Descartes going to do with Him? This question brings us to the next phase of his metaphysical scheme. III. We have seen man (or his Ego) getting to know itself as existent, also man (or his Ego) getting to know God as existent; now we are to behold man getting to know the World as ex- istent. Descartes takes the World for granted as something which he is to know, he picks it up from the outside, as he also picked up the Ego and God, who are now to be seen in a process with the World. This process is that God causes 72 MODERN E UB OPE AN PHIL OS OPE Y. man to know the world by putting into his mind clear and distinct ideas of objects. Thus Descartes opens up this great problem of all modern Philosophy, the problem of cognition. There seems to be an impassable chasm between Man and the World, between the realms of the Ego and non-Ego. How can they be bridged? The answer of Descartes is, by the act of God, who therein finds his new function in the universe. He imparts to the Ego clear and distinct Ideas of the object, which must have reality unless God is a deceiver. Yet this is not the only way God moves the Ego to know the object, for there is also mathematical knowl- edge. Finally God is conceived by Descartes as creating both Ego and object (or mind and mat- ter) and thus producing the very difference which it is his great function to overcome. God, therefore, makes the Ego know the world by his immediate act (granting clear and distinct Ideas) ; then He makes the Ego know the world by his mediated act (through Mathematics), then he makes both Ego and the World (the one infinite Substance producing the two finite Substances). For short, we may call these three stages, God as immediate, God as mathematical, and God as creative, of which stages the following account presents the leading points: ( 1 ) The separation between Ego and non-Ego is the grand rent in the universe which God, if he DESCAR TES. ME TAPHYSICS. 73 have any function, must heal. Not by a direct act of power but by giving to the Ego a Reason, which has clear and distinct ideas of things, is the Divine activity conceived by Descartes. These ideas of Reason are really the creative thought of the object, by which the Ego re-thinks the gener- ative principle of the World, though our philoso- pher does not express the matter in this way. For he conceives these Ideas of Reason as coming from God directly and as giving to the Ego the capacity to grasp the objective world in its truth. Whatever is clear and distinct to me is of Divine sending and authority ; I cannot reject it without rejecting God. Still I am often deceived, am indeed very fal- lible, whence comes my errors? From myself; all error is self-deception. Descartes assigns to a particular faculty or mental activity the ground of error : it is the Will, which can affirm or deny any kind of conception or judgment. It is pos- sible for the Will to choose the indistinct, unclear, and hence undivine conception whereby comes untruth , delusion , the lie. But how are we to know that such untruth may not be from a supernal source, that God Himself may not will at times to deceive us, as He does will at all times to let us be deceived. Here we are met by a new Cartesian assumption. This is the inherent, necessary veracity of God, who cannot tell a lie to man. After im- 74 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. parting to the latter a clear and distinct idea of an object, He cannot employ such an affirmation of Himself as a means of deception. He would then be God and Devil in one, no better than that lying heathen God of the old Greeks, Zeus, who sent a deceptive dream to Agamemnon, and otherwise played fast and loose with poor mor- tals. Error, then, comes from man, not from God, specially from man's Will, not his Intelli- gence, and still more specially from man's lower Will affirming undivine unclearness and indis- tinctness of Ideas, not from his higher Will affirming God-given clear and distinct Ideas. Really this choice of the Will is man's own act of destiny, choosing whether he will be the victim of delusion knocked about by lying fiends or the successful follower of truth. Undoubtedly this character of God, which ex- cludes the negative, gives rise to great difficul- ties. Is He not then made limited in his infinity, made imperfect through His very perfection? These and similar questions, Theology, and particularly Protestant Theology, will thresh over with enormous heat, which will sometimes become the literal heat of the burning stake. This part we may drop, and turn to another rising interrogation which is more relevant: What manifestation of this Divine certainty in human science? Perceived subjectively we find it in clear and distinct Ideas ^ but that which DESCARTES. METAPHYSICS. 75 gives us objective reality ought to have in itself a form of objective reality, Descartes has his answer to this question also : Mathematics, especially Geometry. This is a new stage in the Cartesian conception of God. The first stage was the immediate act of God in granting clear and distinct Ideas to man for knowing the object. But now a science for man's knowing the object is interjected be- tween God and man, the latter having primarily to learn this science in order to know objective truth. Such a science, taken by itself, is truly God's science, being the divine thought ruling m the world. (2) Mathematical science, then, is the manifesta- tion of God's certainty in a real process or method. We have reached the great scientific purpose of Descartes, which is to introduce into Metaphysics the certainty and method of Mathematics. This seems to have been a faint gleam of insight while he was still in school at La Fleche; but it came upon him as a light illuminating his whole future in his spiritual crisis at Neuburg. We have al- ready noted his strong reaction against the meta- physical scholastic philosophy in which he had been instructed. He is now going to conceive a machine for working the world without any in- tervention of caprice. In the previous (imme- diate) stage the individual could choose the un- 76 MODEEN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. clear and indistinct Ideas; but in Mathematics there is no such choice. Thus Descartes makes God essentially mathe- matical, and gives a turn to the whole Seventeenth Century, or rather expresses the essence of the science of that Century. This science sought to formulate the mechanical .Universe mathemati- cally; it was the age of Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo. Nature has a mathematical determinant which man must find; thereby he finds God who is essentially a geometric process control- ling all matter ideally. Philosophy becomes a kind of universal Geometry which starts with its three axioms or postulates, Man, God, World. These are properly abstractions from the Uni- verse which contains all these in its process. In like manner Geometry abstracts its three postu- lates, surface, line, and point, from solid matter, and works over these ideal elements into geo- metric science. God utters himself geometrically, and Philosophy, as the supreme science, is to follow the same method. This thought will be taken up and carried out by Spinoza, whose chief work will have the formal geometric procedure. But Descartes did not realize his own doctrine as to method. Mathematics may be called an ideal machine constructed by mind for controlling matter. The science proceeds mechanically, by determining its object from without. In the time of Des- DESCAE TES. ME TAPE Y8IC8. 77 cartes the Universe was deemed a huge machine, and the grand object was to find its ideal princi- ple. Hence it comes that Descartes was both mathematician and philosopher, being equally great in both fields and for the same fundamental reason. Or we may say that in Descartes the math- ematician and the philosopher are not yet differen- tiated. If he started modern Philosophy by his assertion of the Being of the Ego, he also gave a decided bent to modern mathematics by his dis- covery of Analytical Geometry. In this he is a return to ancient Pythagoreanism which likewise saw in Mathematics a divine principle. Here, however, the difficulty of this view appears. The machine made or discovered by mind for controlling nature, is brought to turn about and to control that mind which made it. Descartes, through his mathematical God, puts the creature over the creator, the mind-made over the mind making it. Hence mind will begin to be dissatisfied with such a conception of God. It is at this point that we may place another well- known principle of Descartes, his hostility to Final Causes, or Design. He says that he will not " examine the ends which God proposed to Himself in creating the world ; ' ' that lies beyond our reach, and it is " presumptuous for us to think that God has taken us into his counsel " in such a far-reaching transaction. Hence man ought to confine himself to " efficient Causes," 78 MODERN E UR OPE AN PHIL SOPHY. which are the direct laws of Nature derived from our senses, and seen by us as " clear and distinct Ideas/ 7 Thus Descartes rejects the teleologic principle as out of the range of the human mind. The mathematical God does not permit teleology ; he made mathematics as nature-controlling ; what ulterior design he had in such an act it is imper- tinent and indeed foolish to ask. So Descartes would confine us to knowing God as machine- maker. But it is soon seen that this narrow view con- tradicts both God's and Man's nature. Whence comes this Ego which is to know and this object which is to be known? Is God simply reduced to a means for uniting in knowledge these two opposite elements, Ego and World, as given? Of necessity Descartes himself is pushed to his third conception of God, which regards Him as creative. (3) The creative God must go back and create these presuppositions which Descartes has hitherto taken for granted, Ego and World, or mind and matter. Thus the Substances hitherto three become of two kinds, the uncreated (or self-created) and the created. This thought makes very plainly a new phase in the Cartesian Philosophy. God primarily was the cause of Man's knowing the object; but now He is the cause of Man and Object, and hence the cause of their difference and opposition, which DESCAE TES. ME TAPHTSIC8. 79 it was his first function to overcome, according to Descartes. Thus the grand separation be- tween mind and matter is God's own work, which separation it is His further work to undo. Herein we have God conceived as the process of the total universe, positing and canceling its differ ences, whereby all division and multiplicity is reduced to a mere play or appearance in God. This is the side of Descartes which will be devel- oped through Malebranche.into Spinoza, who will make the one creative God of Descartes just the one Substance of the Universe, of which the two created Substances are but attributes (Thought and Extension), which, becoming individualized, are merely transitory modes. Thus Cartesian- ism passes over into Spinozisin by its own inner development. The three main categories of Spinoza's Meta- physics are derived from Descartes Substance, Attribute , Mode . It is true that Spinoza uses them all in a new sense, yet in a sense directly evolved out of that of Descartes. Both of these created Substances have Attributes that of matter is Extension, that of mind is Thought. Thus Thought and Extension are not yet direct At- tributes of the One Substance, as in Spinoza. Every other predicate of matter presupposes Extension, hence is a Mode of it according to Descartes. Everything predicated of mind pre- supposes Thought, of which it is, therefore, a 80 , MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. Mode. Thus Descartes furnishes Spinoza with his main categories and suggests their evolution. God is likewise self-cause (causa sui) according to Descartes, of which conception Spinoza will make great use, beginning with it his Ethics. Such are the three Gods of Descartes, or his views of God, the immediate, the mathematical and the creative. It is evident that Descartes falls between those mighty opposites, the Trans- cendence and the Immanence of God. On the one hand he asserts God as supremely trans- cendent, as creating everything, even the true and the false, right and wrong, by an act of his arbitrary will from the outside; strictly then God must be also the intentional author of evil, of the negative. On the other hand Descartes makes God implicitly immanent in the total process of the Universe of which He is the Creator from the inside, including Himself (causa sui). Such is the deepest contradiction in Descartes' view of God, that between an explicit Trans- cendence and an implicit Immanence, the latter becoming explicit in the next great philosopher of the Seventeenth Century, Spinoza. It is at this point specially that we catch a glimpse of the Pampsychosis working in Descar- tes, of which he takes one stage or member, sep- arates the same from the total process and makes it completely transcendent. Thus the other two members (World and Man) become dependent, DESCARTES METAPHYSICS, 81 unnecessary, a mere appearance. God in himself is the All ; what is different is a vanishing, not a necessary part of the process of the All. Thus the Spiriozan Pantheism rises to the surface, and absolute Transcendence dialectically begets its antithesis, absolute Immanence. Such is the first or metaphysical stage of the philosophical Norm as manifested in Descartes. We observe its psychological character, which requires the presence of the Ego as the start- ing point. First, I know myself as existent, secondly, I know God as existent, thirdly, I know the World as existent. All three form a process which may be seen in the following statement : the self -knowing Ego (as existent) knows the World as existent through God (as existent). Thus the total process of the Universe God, World, and Man interlinks with that of the Ego in order that the latter may know the object (or the World). The Ego is explicitly introduced into the process of the All, which determines it to cognition. On the one hand it asserts itself as present and self-conscious in the philosophical Norm, yet it is on the other hand still determined by that Norm. The time is coming, however, when it will determine its Norm and thereby begin a new Discipline. The greatness of the present step will be manifest when we think that in the Greek and Medieval Periods the Ego did not appear directly, in its own right. Hence 6 82 MODERN E UROPEAN PHIL OSOPH T. it comes that Modern Philosophy is a Philosophy of Psychology, not a Psychology of Philosophy, which is something very different. The Being of the Ego is here the theme, which will lead up to the Ego of Being. In these thoughts we may see the great significance of Descartes, and under- stand what a new epoch he began in the History of Philosophy. We have noted that the outcome of the fore- going metaphysical stage of Descartes is that God makes Man to know the Object or the World. But the next stage is the second or the physical, which seeks to tell what this knowledge is, and so carries us over from the knowing to the known. To this, then, we pass. B. PHYSICS. Throughout the previous stage of Metaphysics there was always something given : the World, Nature, Object. This was what the Ego was to know and the process of such knowledge consti- tuted the main interest. But now comes the sec- ond great question : what is this knowledge of the Object or of the World? Having- found out that we can know, and how we know, we wish to find out the content of such knowledge. This must be important, indeed the real purpose of the whole discussion, since it would hardly be worth while to take so much trouble to discover the How, if the DESCAR TES. PHYSICS. 83 What were insignificant. Descartes has intro- duced God as a means for my knowing the world ; the philosopher is now to unfold the World as known, in terms or categories of thought. This will give Physics, or the science of the World as natural . It is well known that Descartes was occupied with physical science, before he turned specially to Metaphysics, Seven yeacs before he pub^ lished the Discourse in 1637, we know from his letters that he was busy with a work which he called The World (Le Monde). Among other matters it supported the theory of Copernicus as to the motion of the Earth, He was preparing to print his book, when the news reached him that the Church authorities at Rome had con- demned Galileo for supporting the Copernican doctrine. At once he gave up the idea of pub- lication, and even thought of burning his papers. Many years afterwards his leading physical doctrines were embodied m the Pnncipia, and printed, Thus Descartes was thrown back from the object to the subject, from the World out- side to the Self inside, from the product of knowing to its process. Without denying openly the authority of the Church, he de- velops and asserts the Ego, and so he passes from the physicist to being the philosopher of Europe, which was just ready to make this turn inward along with him. For Descartes voiced the 84 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. Spirit of his Age far more deeply and adequately in his ^Discourse and in his Meditations than he could have done in his book on The World. Still his Physics is properly the second stage of the philosophical Norm which was working within him, even if Nature occupied him first. The physical Universe Descartes summons before himself, seeking to grasp and to categorize its leading manifestations, and to order them ac- cording to their essential principles. He will see in the Cosmos three such elementary principles, which form in themselves the total process of Physical Science as he conceived it. They are Extension (extended Matter), Motion, Body (the Human Organism with the Soul). These three stages belong to Nature, or to the objective World, whose characteristic is external determination. First, the World as externally determined is pure continuity, pure Matter (as Descartes holds), having no separation within itself, no limit inside, no void outside, the primal potentiality of all separation. Second is the world as moving, as internally separated and de- termined by God; yet this external Motion is circular or self -returning, the counterpart of inner self -returning Mind or Ego. Third is the World as Organic Body which is internally self- moving and so self -returning, being automatic temporarily (during life) and being joined to the DESCAE TES. PHYSICS. 85 Soul which is self -moving eternally, and hence immortal. In these three stages we note the effort of Nature to become circular or self-returning like the Ego, or the struggle of the externally de- termined in its rise toward the completely self- determined, which is at last manifested in the life of the Human Organism. I. Extension. Already we have seen that Descartes designated Matter along with Mind as a created substance, opposite to Mind in essence. For if Mind be essentially the self- conscious, self-determined, self-returning, Matter on the contrary is the externally determined, the outward going, the separating. Extended sub- stance cannot be self -centered : its center is every- where, even outside of itself, pure materiality. But this pure materiality of the Universe must be, according to Descartes, a material, a real object yet the essence of all objects. It is not empty space, but filled; it is extended Substance in fact, the Body in all Bodies. It is not a mere thought, or pure intuition (as Kant held) ; it is matter, the one matter opposite to all thinking. " The nature of Body consists not in its hardness, weight, color, or in any other sensible property, but in its extension into length, breadth and thickness." (Principia II. 4.) Not gravity, not impenetrability is the essential fact of the 86 MODERN E UEOPEAN PHILOSOPHY. corporeal world around us, but Extension, or Matter as universal. Thus Descartes asserts a single ultimate prin- ciple for the entire material Universe, which prin- ciple itself must be material. Earth, Heaven, Sun and Planets to the remotest stars are mani- festations of this real Extension, which also fills the seemingly vacant intermundane spaces. Through it everything touches everything else ; through it the Sun smites me in the face and the object yonder tickles my eye-ball. It is the uni- versal Matter possessing this outer universality as Mind has the inner. Accordingly the physical Universe is ( 1 ) un- limited, can have no bounds in Extension, which is always outside the limit, even its own limit. Pure Extension can suffer no limitation ; it is beyond every bounded Body, hence beyond itself when bounded. Herein Descartes differs from the chief Greek thinkers, who with their sense of form could not tolerate an unlimited Cosmos, which seemed to them rather Chaos. Melissos the Eleatic was a notable exception. (2) The physical universe is full, has no Void, and so no atoms. The smallest particle is still divisible; there is no limit where separation ceases. Ex- tension is thus boundless in both directions: toward the infinitely small as well as toward the infinitely large. The doctrine of Democritus (atomism), to which modern physical science DESCAE TES. PHYSICS. 87 tends so decidedly, is not accepted by Descartes. Material Extension simply fills the Universe, al- lowing no vacancy. (3) Hence it is in unbroken continuity, a continuum, the connecting element in and through all things. It is in contact with everything ; it is outside of each material object of which it is also the inside (or the essence). We may metaphorically deem it the connecting tissue of the Universe itself a tissue connect- ing all tissues. We have already seen that this Extension was a direct creation of God along with Mind. Moreover we can see God's purpose in such cre- ation: to bring together into connection all the separated objects in the Cosmos. As in the met- aphysical sphere he united the two disparate substances, Mind and Matter, in an act of knowl- edge, so he now interconnects all the diverse forms of the physical Universe in a common medium. But Extension by its very name and nature cannot stay with itself and be at rest ; it must be active and get outside ; it must extend itself. If it were merely passive, it could be bounded. So we come to Motion in Descartes. (It is at this point, however, that Leibniz sees Force in Ex- tension.) II. Motion. We now enter the physical Uni- verse in a state of motion, of perpetual change. Here we must go back to Extension to which 88 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. Descartes gives three main capacities : forma- bility, divisibility and mobility. "I recognize no other Matter than that formable, divisible and movable one in corporeal things," and hence the subject of physical science can only be ' these Forms, Divisions, and Movements," or Extension formed, divided and moved. (Principia II. 64.) But as bodies are formed and are divided by means of Motion, these three elements can be reduced to one, namely, to Motion, which is thus funda- mental with Descartes. It is chiefly of Motion that Descartes treats in the physical portion of his Principia (2nd, 3rd and 4th Books). To him it was the grand fact of the Cosmos, the real manifestation of Nature. Extension, indeed, lies back of it, is the one of which Motion is the manifold, is the essence of which Motion is the appearance. The phenomena of Nature are in one form or other cases of Mo- tion which is itself a modification or attribute of Extension. We are not to forget that Extension is invisible, though material; it is the invisible Universe as Matter, which becomes visible in Motion. We shall seek to follow the order of Descartes' treatment of Motion, as he unfolds it in his Prin- cipia, which is a complete Philosophy of Nature, one of the greatest and most influential after Aristotle's. It deeply worked upon Newton and probably suggested the title to his most important DESCAETES. PHYSICS. 89 book. Descartes evidently conceives his subject- matter as Motion in its Principles (General Physics), Motion in the Heavens (Cosmical Physics), Motion on Earth (Terrestrial Physics). A brief outline of each of these portions will give a survey of the Cartesian Cosmos. 1. Fundamentally, all manifestation, all what we name phenomena in the physical world comes of Motion; " all multiplicity of Nature, all her forms depend on Motion." (Prin. II. 23.) What is Motion? Descartes gives two defini- tions, a simpler and a more exact. The first runs: "Motion is an activity whereby a body passes from one place into another." (II. 24.) From -this definition which gives the appearance, he passes to the true definition. " Motion is a transportation of a part or of a body from the neighborhood of bodies which are in immediate contact with it, and which are deemed to be at rest, into the neighborhood of other bodies." (II. 25.) Here the emphasis is upon transport- ation (or transference). The body in Motion is carried from one environment into another. Therewith we come to the first great fact of all motion. (a) All the changes we see in the phenomena of the physical Universe spring from external causes. A body remains where it is, unless moved from without. This is usually called the law of inertia. Descartes insists that bodies do 90 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. not strive to come to rest of themselves. The motion of a body continues till some external cause stops it and brings it to rest. In like man- ner when it is at rest it is brought to move by an external cause. Motion thus is determined from without, is transferred to bodies, and so can be measured on account of its mechanical char- acter. The physical Universe is in motion, is one whirl of the finite movements of bodies. Who started this line of external Motion? The answer of Descartes is, God. (6) The quantity of Motion in the physical Universe is always the same. " God in the be- ginning created Matter with motion and rest, and preserves the same amount of motion and rest that He created in the beginning." (II. 36.) But the distribution of this motion and rest is variable, though the quantity be constant. Sec- ondary causes play in and break up this solid mass of motion into the millionfold phenomena we witness around us, which are, according to Descartes, modifications of Motion. (c) The physical universe is a vast congeries of motions, which intertwine and participate in one another. The watch in my pocket has its motion or series of motions ; still it moves with rny body, which also has a great complexity of motions, inner and outer; my body with all its motions along with my watch and all its motions, DESCARTES. PHYSICS. 91 being on shipboard, participates in the motion of the ship which itself moves to water and wind. Moreover the motion of a body has a tendency to become circular. There is no vacant space and so no vacant place in the Universe ; all are taken. If a body leaves its place, another body must take that place, while the first body moves into another place, dispossessing still another body which in its turn has to do the same. And so the line goes on till it returns to the first moving body, forming a circle of Motion. Says Descartes : "As all places are filled with bodies, so every body must be moving in a circle, for it must expel the body from the place into which it moves, which expelled body must expel another body out of its place, and so on till the last ex- pelled body enters the place abandoned by the first body at the very moment of its abandon- ment." (11.33.) Thus Descartes tries to elimi- nate time as an element of motion in order to get rid of any Void wherein lies a tremendous difficulty for him. Still we see that every mov- ing body is in a cycle of motion, wherein we may behold the beginning of his vortices which are soon to be witnessed on a much vaster scale. The principle of Motion in Descartes is, there- fore, circular; every fragment of Motion is, when seen by thought, the segment of a circle, and so is really geometric. Extension, by its own inner nature extending itself, becomes Motion, 92 MODERN E UBOPEAN PHIL SOPHY. I which again returns into itself and produces the typical phenomenon, or the universal principle of Physics in the realm of movement, as we behold it above us in the Heavens and around us on Earth. 2. Descartes passes to the application of the principles of Motion, first considering the celes- tial world (called by him the visible world). This science has been named Cosmical Physics, whose treatment we find in the Third Part of his Principia. It is an attempt to account for the visible Heavens by the laws of Motion. The first thing which we are to get rid of in order to place ourselves upon the Cartesian standpoint, is the idea of universal gravitation, which has become deeply ingrown with the Anglo-Saxon mental fibre through the influence of Newton. All Motion in the physical Universe is produced by immediate contact or impact of body with body ; there is no such thing as the action of one body upon another at a distance. Hence the attraction of gravitation, which is such an actio in distans, is not accepted by Descartes. Bodies have no occult qualities or hidden powers by which they can work upon other bodies far away. Herein Descartes is different from both Galileo and Newton, though it is said that New- ton deliberated a good while before giving up the Cartesian view which he thoroughly studied. DESCAKTES. PHYSICS. 93 The next point we have to consider is that the Universe is full of a fluid matter in which are the solids, namely planets, sun, stars, and all the heavenly bodies. There is no vacant space; where there is no solid, there is a fluid. Thus the heavenly bodies are floating in a cosmic fluid, which may well be the material extension already described. Now if Motion be externally imparted to the cosmic fluid in which the celestial spheres are lying at rest, a current will be started which will carry them forward. All those which are in the same general current will remain in the same relative position toward one another. The Motion of this current is circular, whirling around a center, and in this whirl are borne along the solid objects which are in the fluid. This is the Cartesian vortex, or whirlpool of cosmic fluid. The physical Universe is full of such vortices; indeed we have seen that every motion of an object has a tendency to round itself out into a circle, so that upon the earth there is an infinite complex of rings of Motion. Passing by the more distant vortices, we may observe the one which is of most interest to us, namely, the vortex of the solar system, of which the Sun is the center. Round this center the planets (including our Earth) are spinning in the cosmic fluid which bears them onward in their orbits, while they are at rest. (Prin. III. 30.) 94 MODERN E UBOPEAN PHILOSOPHY. It is an external cause which makes them rotate (ultimately the act of God), and thus produces the vortex (or tourbitton). Now it was upon this cosmical theater that Descartes played a comedy with the theologians at which the world is still laughing. As already stated, the Church had condemned the doctrine of Copernicus that the Earth moves around the Sun instead of standing still. We have seen that at first he was struck dumb by the sentence against Galileo, and refused to print his book on The World. But after many years (some four- teen), he gathers courage enough to publish his views in a new book (the Principia), in which the theory of the vortex appears with the Earth at rest yet at the same time moving around the Sun. To the theologians who tried to catch him he could say and did actually say, Behold, my theory maintains that the Earth is at rest. But to the scientists he could also say, Behold, my theory maintains the Earth's revolution around the Sun. There is no doubt that this last view was his real conviction. At the same time he did not openly wish to break with the Church. Moreover his theory of vortices he honestly held, it was not twisted to avoid eccle- siastical censure. Descartes was too good a man to pervert scientific truth, but he was not too good a man to use it, when honestly found, to foil his enemies. The theory of vortices runs through DESCARTES. PHYSICS. 95 his whole Philosophy of Nature, it was not applied merely to the earth and the solar system. To Descartes it was the honest truth, which, however, he used dishonestly. Nothing else can be made out of his own statement in a letter : " You see that in terms I deny the motion of the Earth, while I really affirm the system of Copernicus/* 3. In the Fourth Part of his Principia, Des- cartes conies to the phenomena of the Earth, for explaining which he proposes to use the hypothesis already set forth. So we have here a treatise upon Terrestrial Physics, which em- braces a great variety of subjects pertaining to Natural Science. As his principle has been already given, we need not go into these details. In the last section (IV. 207) he says: "I submit everything to the authority of the Cath- olic Church, as well as to the judgment of those who know." But suppose this authority and this judgment should conflict, which is to be followed? Descartes does not tell us in words, but in action he stays in Holland out of the reach of his Church, which at last after his death put his philosophical writings upon the index of books forbidden (in 1663). This prohibition was brought about through the Jesuits, who had been Descartes' teachers, and whose instruction probably did not mend the inborn duplicity which runs through his character, particularly 96 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. in reference to religion, even if he be deemed true to science. But faith in his scientific fidelity is put to a great strain when he expressly says that his hypothesis of the Universe not simply may be, but actually is false, in certain respects. Still he always winds up his submis- siveness with a declaration similar to the one which we find at the close of the Principia: " I would not have anybody accept anything as true but what he is convinced of by clear and irrefutable grounds." Here lies his real convic- tion round which plays so much Jesuitry, chiefly employed, be it said, in wheedling Jesuits, 'who never could put their grip upon their foxy pupil till he had lain thirteen years in his grave. Then his ashes were refused interment in a French Church, a monument to him was for- bidden, his doctrines were not allowed to be taught in the Schools of France. King Louis XIV., the absolutist, could not tolerate the ref- erence of truth to the individual Ego, and so he sought to extirpate Cartesianism as he did Protestantism. Looking back upon this second stage of Physics which treats of the Universe in Motion, we may recall the thought which unifies it with the Carte- sian Philosophy as a whole. It is God who sets this vast machine in motion, "giving to its parts all their varied movements at the creation of Matter, and preserving the same quantity of DESCARTES PHYSICS. 97 motion forever." (II. 36.) God is thus the external cause of the external causation of the Universe. He creates the mechanism and sets it a-going through the primitive impact, which reproduces itself in all the variety of motion ac- cording to mechanical laws. God is thus the means of movement just as He is of knowledge. In this sphere specially He manifests Himself mathematically, since all these motions, celestial and terrestrial, are not capricious acts of His will, but are controlled by laws which it is the function of physical science to discover. Still it is God who establishes and works through these laws. But now the Body moving in a circle outside itself, and thus manifesting motion externally, is to have the circular motion inside itself and thus become the living organism. III. Body (as organic and connected with the Soul) . The circular principle (the vortex) , which we have noticed throughout the Cartesian Phys- ics, is now internalized in Body, and constitutes the vital element of the same, which thereby has its own round of existence within itself. Still the motion of the organic Body is mechanical, though internally so ; it moves its own mechanism, and hence is called an automaton. With the bodily organism of Man is joined another principle, the Soul, which is also self- moved and has its own separate round of exist- 7 98 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. ence. Body and Soul are the Siamese twins, each with its own individual life and movement, yet indissolubly bound together. To Physics belongs the consideration of the Soul, in so far as it is directly connected with the human Body, specially in sensation. Hence Descartes. intro- duces a discussion of the Five Senses toward the end of his Principia. The complete separation between Soul and Body is one of the best known doctrines of Des- cartes. The body is an independent machine, and is moved within itself by mechanical causes like the rest of the physical Universe. The liv- ing Body as such is not moved by the Soul, as is the common opinion. Life is not a result of the Soul, but the condition of the latter 's enter- ing the Body. When the Body is dead the Soul leaves it. The Body is an automaton, or a mechanism with a principle of temporary self- movement within itself, like a watch, which runs of itself while it is wound up. Life is but the manifestation of this automatic motion of the Body. Very different is the Soul which simply dwells in the Body as in its house. An animal has no Soul, having no self-conscious activity; it is simply Body with life, an automaton. Still, in spite of this separation, Soul and Body are intimately connected together, and each influences the other. Descartes insists in the first place, that " the Soul is joined to DESCAE TES. PHYSICS. 99 the whole Body in every member," but that, in the second place, "there is in the Body a part in which the Soul exercises its functions more particularly than in all the rest of the parts." (Passions of the Soul, Art. 30,31.) This part in which the union takes place is "a very small gland situated in the middle of the brain," the so-called conarium or pineal gland. This is Descartes' famous "seat of the Soul," in which the transfer is made, from the extended to the non-extended, from the material to the spiritual, from the passive (sensory) to the ac- tive (motor) principle (and vice versa in each case). Of course, Descartes brings us no nearer an explanation of this phenomenon. Though he confines it to ' ' one very small gland ' ' in which seems unified the doubleness of the body (two sides of the brain, two eyes, two hands, etc.), the chasm between Soul and Body is as great as ever just there. The Soul (or Ego) cannot be moved to take up the stimulating object even in the finest recess of the pineal gland without the help of God, who is the ulti- mate power bringing me to know the world. Such is the Cartesian principle, even when Des- cartes does not directly introduce it into his ex- position, which gets to be the case more and more, as he advances in life. If we now consider the process of Body and Soul in its physical aspect, we observe the fol- 100 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. lowing stages : (1) The Body is an automatic totality on the one side, and on the other side the Soul is a similar, though higher, totality ; each is independent, yet Soul is joined to Body " in every member," each influencing the other. (2) This universal relation between Body and Soul is specialized, localized, materialized in one particular organ, the pineal gland, which can be moved " by the animal spirits in as many differ- ent ways as there are sensible differences in ob- jects " on the one hand, and at the same time it " can be moved in divers ways by the Soul," which responds in its impressions according to the movement of the gland, and thus reacts, " impelling the animal spirits outward, through the pores of the brain, and thence to the nerves and the muscles," which cause the motions of the Body. (3) Thus the Soul is determined by the Body through the gland. It is to be noticed that here " the concourse of God" is omitted as is usual in the Treatise on the Passions, which is in this regard distinguished from the earlier Treatises. The determination of the Soul through the Body is the first stage of what Descartes calls Passion of the Soul, which, however, reacts and determines the Body, wherewith the stage of Cartesian Physics is brought to a conclusion, since Nature as an external principle is now sub- ordinated to an internal principle. DESCABTES. PHYSIC'S. If we now take a glance back at the three stages of Physics Extension, Motion, Organic Body we find that properly God is employed as an ex- ternal mechanical means for determining each of them to activity. He is not only the machine- maker of the Universe, but primarily the ma- chine-mover. Such is the philosopher ' s conception of the physical world. Yet this conception tallies with the metaphysical process in which the Ego gets to know the object through help of God. There is no doubt, however, that Descartes in his later writings showed more and more the tendency to leave out this principle of divine interference, particularly between Soul and Body. The Soul has manifested a doubleness within itself: it is determined from without by the Body, and even dwells in a material abode. But it is also determined from within, it reacts against the influence of the Body and controls or puts down the corporeal stimulations which come to it mechanically. In the first case the Soul is still a portion of the mechanical Universe and belongs to Physics. But in the second case it definitely overcomes its own mechanical side and so reaches beyond Physics into a new realm. The Soul is the turning-point over into the fol- lowing sphere which is Ethics. Herein the essentially mechanical genius of Descartes, hav- ing performed its greatest work, has reached its 102 MODERN E UROPEAN PHIL OSOPH Y. limit, and will manifest a decline of native power. The Organic Body in its circular process may be deemed to be Extension realized; what lies implicit in Extension is made explicit, since the extended as Body is turned back into itself internally. Thus the second stage of the philo- sophic Norm, Physics, rounds itself out to a completed movement. The Soul having taken up the highest physical process, that f the Body, into itself and determined the same, has borne us forward into the next stage. C. ETHICS. This third stage of the philosophical Norm is not very strong in Descartes. In his life the ethical element (in the widest and deepest sense of the word) must be pronounced to be deficient, and the same lack is discoverable in his system of Philosophy as a whole. Still this element is not wholly wanting. Descartes knew of Ethics from the ancient moralists, knew that this science belonged to the philosophic totality as developed by the great masters of antiquity. He has, therefore, his ethical strand, but it is fragmen- tary. His doctrine of morals is not set forth in any special work, but is given cursorily in his various books and essays, and specially in his letters to the Princess Elizabeth, and in those DESCAKTES. ETHICS. 103 intended for the Queen of Sweden. These letters in both cases show his starting-point to be the ancient heathen moralists, whom he criticises, yet in a manner follows. The ethical return to God or to the First Prin- ciple he has not in its complete sweep, such as we see it already in Plato and Aristotle. Des- cartes (as before observed) has little sense for the meaning of institutions. Their ethical purport and position he quite ignores. This deficiency we may trace to the circumstances of his life, to his separation from his own State and Church ; still such a separation was his own free act, and indicates his character. At this point there is a deep gap in his Philosophy as a Whole ; the ultimate nexus joining the last to the first, con- necting the individual and the universe, is not dis- tinctly present, though not altogether absent. What there is of it, we shall seek to give in brief outline. The consideration of the movement of Carte- sian Ethics goes back to his doctrine of the Soul, whose activities must be grasped in their right relation, and in their subordination of the higher to the lower, for instance of impulse to reason. Thus the psychical furnishes the basis for the ethi- cal, or rather the pyschical is a stage of the ethi- cal. Then there is a distinct moral stage in con- trast with the institutional stage, the one giving the subjective behest, the other giving the objective 104 MODERN E UROPEAN PHIL OSOPH Y. law. That is, the entire range of Ethics, as the third division of the philosophical Norm, will show three stages, the psychical, the moral, and the institutional. Descartes is to be considered in his relation to each of these stages. I. THE PSYCHICAL ELEMENT. In his treatise called The Passions of the Soul, Descartes gives the psychical principles underlying his Ethics. Man is the union of Soul and Body, which are wholly separate in their human union, as we have already seen. Thought is the essence of Soul, Motion is the essence of Body, the Passions result from the connection of the two, and are a kind of mediating principle between the opposites. The Passions are peculiar to man, animals have no souls and hence no passions strictly. Animals have bodies with sensation and desire, but have no souls with self-conscious thought, have no clear and distinct ideas. Man is, therefore, dual, and this dualism is chiefly manifested in his Passions, in which lies the possibility of his moral being. The primal notion of Descartes is that the Soul in Passion is passive, that is, is determined from without by " the animal spirits which are like a very fine wind, or better, a pure flame which is constantly ascending to the brain," being com- posed of the finest, most fiery and mobile par- ticles of the blood." In the pineal gland (which is at the center of the brain) these animal DESCARTES. - ETHICS. 105 spirits somehow reach and stimulate the Soul which is immaterial and non-extended, properly by the " concourse of God." So after all this elaborate machinery of the Body has performed its work, the little miracle lies couched in the little gland. At any rate'' the animal spirits " coming from the outside, determine the Soul, which responds, suffers, is passive. This is the original source of the Passions, but the Soul is in its essence, thought, self-conscious and self-determined ; hence this yielding to Passion or to determina- tion from without contradicts its deepest nature. Accordingly the Will with its suppression of Pas- sion enters at this point, wherewith the Soul asserts its freedom. Such is the conflict which lies properly between Soul and Body, each seeking to be the determinant of the other. It is wrong to say (declares Descartes) that this contest takes place in the mind, between two opposite parts of the Soul, for the Soul is one and indi- visible. The central or at least the intermediate agent in the foregoing conflict, is the Will, which is of two kinds : in the one kind its end is the Soul itself, and in the other its end is the Body. The weak Soul is one that has a Will " which is carried away by immediate Passions," and which "does not employ its proper arms, namely a fixed and firm judgment pertaining to the knowl- 1 06 MODE UN E UBOPEAN PHIL OSOPH Y. edge of good and evil." (Passions of the Soul, Part I, Art. 48, 49.) Moreover there may be a false judgment, hence the chief object is to know the truth; " there is a great difference between the volitions which proceed from a false opinion and those which rest upon the knowledge of the truth." The latter can of course only come through " clear and distinct ideas," which are, accordingly, the highest content of the Will, being given by Reason itself. From the preceding remarks it is evident that Descartes employs, in a vague and uncertain man- ner, the fundamental psychical process. This is : (1) Feeling, which is the essence of Passion, or the Soul (Ego) determined externally by the outside world; (2) Will, or the active power, which is double, on the one hand obeying and executing Passion, on the other hand subordin- ating it and asserting the Soul's self-determina- tion; (3) Intellect, Judgment, Reason, clear and distinct Ideas, which form the supreme con- tent of the Will. These three distinctions or activities of the Soul (or Ego), which have a great future before them, may be found com- mingled with many other and less pertinent dis- tinctions, in the First Part of the above men- tioned treatise on The Passions of the Soul, in- dicating that the germ of Psychology was deeply imbedded in the mind of Descartes, though tin- separated as yet from many foreign ingredients. DESCAE TES. E THICS. 107 It is evident that the preceding psychical move- ment has unfolded the specially moral element which comes to light in the subordination of Pas- sion to Reason, of outer necessity to inner free- dom, of Body to Soul, of the obscure and con- fused in thought to the clear and distinct. The word Passion in Descartes has a wide usage, and often seems to correspond nearly to what we call a faculty of mind, or mental activity. The Soul is Ego, and the Passions of the Soul are its activities. Perception and Imagination he regards as Passions. At times he distinguishes Will, or the reaction of the Soul, from Passion; then, again, he seems to regard it under the gen- eral head of Passion, which in the widest sense is the Soul both suffering and doing, active and passive. He has begun classifying the activities of the Ego as it subordinates the outer world, and thereby can become ethical. Passion in Descartes' view is a natural condition of the Soul and is to be noted and investigated like the facts of nature in Physics. Such an investigation is the first stage (the psychical) of Ethical Science. It is important to observe that he has the notion of self -consciousness, even if somewhat dim. This he calls perception " which has as its cause the Soul," not the Body, which gives an- other kind of perception. Through the Soul's perception we perceive " our volitions, our imag- inations, or other thoughts which depend on 108 MODEEN E UEOPEAN PHILOSOPHY. these; " that is, the Soul perceives its own acts; 4 'for it is certain that we cannot will anything without our perceiving by the same means that we will it; " and hence "one can say that the Soul has a passion of perceiving that it wills ' ' when it wills. Self -consciousness also is, then, with Descartes, a passion. By Leibniz this kind of perception, to distinguish it from that of the Body, will be called apperception. (See Passions of the Soul, I, Art. 19.) Thus the psychical movement of the Ego, un- folding in Descartes the Passions of the Soul, begins to show itself in its three main forms of Feeling, Will, and Intellect, together with the underlying self-conscious activity, which is like- wise a Passion. Note the place in the Cartesian system assigned to this psychical movement of the Ego, for it is hereafter to occupy a very dif- ferent position in the Norm, being transferred to the first place and made the basis for a total transformation of Philosophy itself. With the power of controlling its own move- ments through the Will and Intellect, the Soul rises to the next sphere. IL THE MORAL ELEMENT. The Passions in themselves are neither moral nor immoral, ac- cording to Descartes. Hence in his treatise on the Passions he indicates that his procedure is not that of a preacher or of a moralist, but that of a physicist. They are natural phenomena DE8CAETE8. ETHICS. 109 which are to be investigated, defined and classi- fied. Still they lead directly to good and evil, to pleasure and pain, to advantage and disadvantage, and so have to be moralized. Says he : " We see that the Passions are all good of their own nature, and that we have nothing to avoid in them except their excess or improper employment," through which they become injurious (III, Art. 211). On the latter score he gives various warnings against the sudden surprise of Pas- sion ; we are never to forget that * ' everything presenting itself to the imagination tends to deceive the Soul." Those succeed best " who accustom themselves to make some reflection upon their actions before proceeding to act." The judgment of the Reason should always be obtained for the conduct of the Will (note that Descartes here regards Passion in its first or im- mediate form). Descartes gives a classification of the Passions, with a description, usually brief, of the most important ones. It is not every object presented by the senses, which has the power of exciting 44 the animal spirits," and so producing Passion. Each individual differs in regard to what may stimulate Passion, and the same individual varies according to his mood or the state of his Soul. Thus there is an endless variety of Passions, each of which has its own distinct character. Descartes reduces them to two fundamental 110 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. forms : admiration ( wonder) which is ' ' the sudden surprise of the Soul leading it to regard rare and extraordinary objects," and desire (wish to possess), which is " an agitation of the Soul caused by the animal spirits disposing it to will agreeable objects for the future." Thus the one is essentially incoming and the other outgoing. From these two Descartes develops what he calls his six primitive Passions, which * are as it were the genera whose species are all the other Pas- sions " (III, Art. 149). After these come "the particular Passions" as he names them, one of which stands out very prominent, called by him generosity, " which causes a man to esteem himself at the highest point which can be legitimately allowed." This generosity ( noble - mindedness ) also named by him magnanimity, is not Pride (orgueil) but rather the opposite, proceeding from the consciousness of freedom from all Passion. It is the free disposition, not determined from without, but self-determined, hence ' ' naturally impelled to do great things," but restrained from " under- taking anything of which it does not feel itself capable. ' ' So we behold the picture of * * the gener- ous ' ' man or gentleman, who is ' ' always perfectly courteous, affable, full of services toward every- body. He is completely master of his Passions, particularly of his desires; without envy, without hate or fear or wrath." (Ill, Art. 155-6.) DESCAE TES E THIC8. 1 1.1 Thus "generosity" seems to be the supreme virtue, the highest moral attainment. In the foregoing description Descartes is generally sup- posed to be looking at himself, and in a manner justifying his own character which had in it quite a portion of self-esteem, or, as the poet would call it, self -reverence. In fact, the introduction to this treatise on the Passions gives a specimen of his " generosity." He blames the ancients for their lack of all information on the present subject, " so that I have no hope of getting at the truth except by separating myself from them." Hence he feels himself obliged to write " as if I were treating a matter which nobody before me had ever touched." Yet our author's work is plainly constructed after Aris- totle's Ethics, to which it is vastly inferior; in fact, Descartes' own ' generosity," has a dis- tinct likeness to Aristotle's magnanimity (megalo- psychia) in which Descartes must have found himself. Still our philosopher has the great merit of seeing and declaring that freedom is the end and content of the moral Soul. The moral catharsis is the ascent into complete freedom. Of this ascent we may note three stages in Descartes : (1) The first is the freedom from Passion, from external determination, which the Soul must strive for through the exercise of its Free- Will 112 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. moving from within against the outer determin- ant. Of this stage enough has been already said. (2) The second is the freedom from Error, whose source lies just in the Free- Will, which can affirm the false or the true judgment, the obscure or the distinct idea. For Will in its freedom is the unlimited, while Intellect (as memory or imagination) is " very small and lim- ited in me." So it seems that " in my Free-Will I experience something greater than anything else I can conceive of ; " so great is it that 44 through it principally I am brought to recog- nize that I bear the image of God " (Meditation, IV ) . Hence my Will must be trained to take the well grounded judgment, the clear and dis- tinct idea, re-affirming what reason affirms, rejecting all that is ungrounded or obscure. We are the source of our errors, not God, who cannot deceive us, being the source of truth. But behind this last source we cannot go, hence we cannot know the purposes of God, or final causes. The teleological explanation of nature is therefore erroneous. God gives us clear and distinct ideas for knowing the world, not for knowing himself; He is means for us, not end. We are to keep our Will in the limits of our In- telligence (entendement) , if we wish to escape from error. Hence there is need of the suspen- sion of judgment till the Idea is given clear and distinct. DESCARTES. ETHICS. 113 We are, accordingly, to acquire freedom from error as a habit (habitude); " for in this con- sists the greatest and principal perfection of man " (Meditation, IV). So our moral perfec- tion is decidedly intellectual : not to permit our Will to have any other content but the clear and distinct Idea. Thus our actions will be good, being filled with the highest rational content. And yet this is not quite enough for Descartes. (3) Man is unceasingly to affirm his freedom, securing it, willing it, fighting for it as the chief boon of life. This is properly the most exalted feature in the character of the generous man : he sacrifices all for his freedom, he is determined to live his own life as a free being; fortune, family, and even country he can throw away (as Descartes did) for the sake of personal freedom. He may live for philosophy or science, but first he must live for freedom, which he has to safe- guard as the possibility of* all lofty activity. Free-will has, therefore, to will not only clear and distinct Ideas, or the soul's enfranchisement from error, but also to will freedom itself as its own ultimate end or content. Descartes has this exalted consciousness of freedom as the world in which his work is to be done. But the limita- tion is likewise present. His conception of free- dom is essentially individual, not institutional a fact which we may next note. 8 1 1 4 MODERN E UEOPEAN PHIL SOPHY. III. THE INSTITUTIONAL ELEMENT. What we may call the realm of Social Institutions Family, Society, State, Church whose great object as a whole is to secure to man his free- dom and to give him a free world to live in, was not distinctly present to Descartes, at least it does not appear in his Philosophy as an integral part of his system. Already in the Life of Descartes we have spoken of his relations to State and Church. He shunned both as something which he knew not what to do with ; he had a horror of political and religious innovation ; there was none of the martyr or even of the institutional reformer in his blood. He kept out of the way of his own country and his own religion by living as a vol- untary exile in a foreign country and under a dif- ferent religion. Nor did he ever join the Family, nor take part in the commercial and industrial order. Aloofness -from the institutional world was his principle and his life. On the whole his concentration turned primarily upon his Ego, and its cognition of Truth, its knowledge of itself, of God and of Nature. A complete freedom Descartes, therefore, can- not attain, since he has no institutions. There is no free World in his Philosophy to mediate Man's individual Free-will with the divinely providential Order, which is the creation of God's volition. Hence the doctrine of Descartes DESCARTES. - ETHICS. 115 shows both freedom and determinism, not in their process but in their opposition. Quite after the same fashion we have seen in it Transcend- ence and Immanence unreconciled, though both are stages of the one divine process, and cannot be held apart without becoming mutually destruc- tive. What underlies the philosophic act of Des- cartes? Let us see. The philosopher is con- struing God as determining the Ego to know the object. That is, the Ego of Descartes determines in thought God who determines it to knowledge. To be sure this individual Cartesian Ego is kept in the background, though it is just what creates the entire new fabric of Divinity before us. The philosopher determines the God who de- termines him unto his knowledge. Yet he leaves himself out of this process which he produces, and of which he is certainly a very important, indeed the first member. But just that is the peculiarity of all Philosophy : it formulates the Law, Cause, Principle of the Universe which is over all, but it keeps silent about itself as formu- lator. Philosophy is, therefore, not only abso- lute, but absolutistic, not only imperial but imperious. For this reason it can never formu- late a complete freedom. Descartes is still a philosopher and employs the philosophic Norm, though he begins to put into it a psychological content, that of the Self. He 116 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. posits a God causing the thinking Ego to know the object. Yet he is not aware that he is just that thinking Ego in positing such a God, or absolute principle. If he could have formulated the total process and have included himself in it, he would have transcended the philosophic Norm, and have given us not merely a new Philosophy, or a new Period of Philosophy, but a new Norm with its corresponding Discipline. And yet, how near to this does he seem ! If he only could have seen and stated that the thinking Ego makes in thought the absolute Principle or God who makes it think, he would have broken through the transmitted Norm of Philosophy into that of Psychology. But this was not yet to be. The Seventeenth Century is to go to school to Cartesianism, and receive a great training from it in many things, but especially in the new conception of God as distinct from the medieval. The divine world is not beyond but is here and now at work; God is not simply religious but is also secular, and must be seen even in the little act of knowing a thing. In fact three Centuries will have to be trained in the school of Descartes and his suc- cessors, and the training is not over yet. The philosopher of to-day has to go back to him in order to go through him to the more modern philosophic inheritance and thus to behold the DESCARTES. - ETHICS. 117 evolution of himself. What else is the meaning of this book of ours? The Spirit of Philosophy voiced by Descartes speaks: "I have been thinking of Being out- side of me hitherto, but now I am going to think of my own Being, the Being of my Ego, of my self-conscious Self." Thus the Ego turns back upon itself and is. aware of itself, but as Being, or rather as the essence of Being. This is still philosophic, since it seeks the essence of Being (the ousia of the on) as the given. Thus the Ego knows itself simply to be, not yet knowing itself to be creative of Being. The Being of self-consciousness is asserted, not yet the self-consciousness of Being. The first is the beginning, the second is the end, of Modern Philosophy. So much for Descartes who is now to be fol- lowed by Spinoza in the supreme philosophic succession. Already we noted the main point of development out of the one toward the other. Bat there are many little touches in Descartes which hint the approaching Philosophy. One such we may cite: " I have already established that Soul and Body are united in substance (substantiellement unis)." (See Responses aux qiiatriemes objections.) One may well catch in these two words a brief gleam of the coming Spinozan substance, which will next appear in all its fullness. 1 1 8 MODERN E UROPEAN PHIL SOPHY. 2. Spfnoja* We have already stated that Spinoza is the second of the three supreme philosophers over- arching the Seventeenth Century, and forming together one great philosophic process. In this process he is not merely the second, but also the second stage of it, which is the sepa- rative stage revealing the deepest dualism of the Century. It seems a strange fact in the history of thought that the most students of Spinoza hitherto have only seen, or at least only empha- sized, the pantheistic, monistic, unitary side of his work. But there is also an individualistic, personally ethical side to him, upon which several commentators in recent years have put strong stress, thus counterbalancing the previous one-sidedness. In this way the profound two- sidedness of Spinoza has come to light as never before; he has in him the abyss of his age, its deepest contradiction. If he makes God swallow up the individual on the one hand, on the other he makes the individual return to God, and in a manner reproduce Him in such return. Both these sides rose up in the Seventeenth Century, grappled with each other, and fought with desperation. There was the man-devouring divine absolutism of Louis XIV, in whom all in- SPINOZA. LIFE. 119 dividuality was quite lost; then there was the counterpart in Holland, man-asserting, God- liberating. Spinoza, living in the heart of this conflict, has precipitated it into its essence, into the pure impersonal form of Thought. The three fundamental utterances of the man Spinoza are his Life, his Writings, and his Phi- losophy. Between them all is a remarkable like- ness; each seems to reflect the essence of the other in being itself, and to reflect the entire man at the same time. We may well say that these three parts constitute the whole called Spinoza, who cannot be conceived adequately except through " those things which are equally in each part and in the whole," as his own state- ment runs (Ethics, II, 37). I. SPINOZA'S LIFE. There can be no doubt that Spinoza's Life, when fully taken up and ap- propriated by a human Soul, is a great inspira- tion. In this regard we recognize him at once to be one of the philosophic heroes of the race, of the same type and moral composition as Soc- rates. He had the same steady glance beyond the present into eternity, the same serene pursuit of the ideal end in defiance of consequences, the same calm look straight into the face of the De- stroyer. But his we can hardly deem a com- pleted task. Dying at the early age of 44, he could not round out his philosophic life to its final fulfillment. Artists and poets may mature 120 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. in youth and pass away ; but the philosopher ripens slowly at his best. Plato's Republic is not the product of a young or even of a middle- aged man, nor is Aristotle's Metaphysics. Kant's Critique of Pure Reason did not appear till the author was in his fifty-seventh year. Hegel's Logic was published when he was forty-six, and Hegel matured still more afterwards. Spinoza's life is a grand torso in which we can descry the outline of the colossal Whole which lay in him. Great as is his performance, it is a frag- ment, whose conclusion is broken off by the blow of Fate which gives to the undertone of his life a plaintive cast. Still we may well regard it as the most inspiring, soul-elevating modern philosophic Life. 1. First Period (1632-1656). Baruch de Spinoza was born of Jewish parents at Am- sterdam, the 24th of November, 1632. After his expulsion from the synagogue (1656) he changed the Hebrew Baruch into the Latin Benedictus. His family name had already in it a Latin ele- ment brought from the Spanish peninsula, whence his ancestors had come to Holland. With this complete Latinization of the name was coupled a similar process in the man, for Spinoza wrote and apparently thought in Latin, which was still in his time the language of intercourse between the learned throughout Europe. SPINOZA. LIFE. 121 One cannot fully make out from the evidence whether Spinoza was a Spanish or Portuguese Jew. It perhaps is of no great consequence; both classes were closely allied, both were fugitives from the Spanish Inquisition, both were joined in one synagogue at Amsterdam, whose popular language seems to have been Portuguese, as the anathema pronounced by it upon Spinoza (which has been found and printed) was written in that tongue. The home speech of the Spinozas, how- ever, seems to have been Spanish, a knowledge of which passed to the child. The father was probably one of those refugees who had been coming to Holland for more than a generation before Spinoza's birth. The Spanish inquisitors had forced Christianity upon many Jews who still secretly adhered to their old faith, and only waited the first opportunity to throw off their disguise. This new sort of Chris- tians (called Marranos) had heard with delight of the successful revolt of the Netherlands, and of the tolerant principles of the House of Orange. They were not allowed to emigrate openly, so they escaped furtively ; the first boat-load from Portugal is said to have reached Holland in 1593. Three years later the English fleet under Essex landed a large contingent of these Marranos. And they kept coming, till in 1598 the first syna- gogue was opened in Amsterdam by permission 1 22 MODERN E UEOPEAN PHIL SOPHY. of the civil authorities. And still they kept coin- ing, till in 1608 a new synagogue was needed. What did these people bring to their new home? The commercial skill and energy of their race for one thing ; also the knowledge of numerous mechanical trades, which they were all required to learn. But they likewise brought a peculiar hardy and defiant spirit which could not be made to submit to external force though armed with the authority of State and Church. That little Portuguese craft the Jewish May- flower turned from Spain to the North, not to the South, not to Africa, not following the ex- pelled Moors cognate in blood and also perse- cuted by the Spaniards. They were Semites, but they directed their course away from Semitic lands to those of a different race. In fact the Spanish people is strongly impregnated with Semitic blood. Spain has from the earliest ages been the chief gateway of the Semites into Europe. The old Phenicians had settlements in Spain, one of which was Cadiz, a city still ex- isting. The Carthagenians came next, planting numerous colonies. But the greatest Semitic invasion was that of the Arabians, whose power in Spain lasted some seven hundred years, and under whom the Jews prospered and multiplied. Thus the Spanish peninsula had been a second Semitic home, the European one, of that race. But both branches, Arabians and Jews, with SPINOZA. LIFE. 123 their respective religions had been driven from this European home of theirs, and were seeking a new abode in other lands. Thus a small fragment of the disrupted Jewish people flees from the warm Southern zone of its ancestors, quite the same in Palestine and in Spain, and turns to the cold North for its future dwelling-place. Certainly a very daring, obstinate body of men chosen by a kind of Natural Selection to face the dangers of the sea as well as a wholly foreign latitude and race for the sake of their conviction. They came to stay, bringing family, religion and God along. They had heard that Holland had defeated Spain, their persecutor, that it had a certain degree of religious toleration, that it was becoming the first commercial nation in Europe, thus furnishing a fine field for native Jewish ability. But as these Jews were not ignorant people, they felt or possi- bly were fully aware of something much deeper : this was that Holland in the Sixteenth Century was fighting the battle of the world's civiliza- tion, being the self -chosen protagonist of the Spirit of the Age. Anyhow these Jewish emi- grants, bearing in their souls the inheritance of Semitic culture for 3000 years and more, from old Egypt and Judea through Greece and Rome and the Middle Ages, turned Northward from that Mediterranean world in whose development they had participated from its beginning, and 124 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. plunged into the verj heart of the new epoch. For it was in Holland at this time that the scepter of power, both spiritual and material, was seen passing from the South to the North, from the Romanic to the Teutonic peoples. Truly the movement of these Jews, be it sprung of mere chance, or of some unfathomable instinct peculiar to their race, seemed to be in subtle correspondence with the movement of the World's History, which had already started to leave its old Mediterranean seats, and was cross- ing the Alps to ingraft itself upon a new stock of human kind. The defeat of Spain by Holland, and the Thirty Years' War gave to the Teutonic peoples independence which afterwards ripened into supremacy. These thoughts we must bring before ourselves if we would fully grasp the spiritual descent of Spinoza. . For in him must have lain by inherit- ance that long Jewish line of Mediterranean culture, which we shall find determining his early education, and which the Jewish colony of Am- sterdam kept alive and propagated in their school. Spinoza's father was a merchant and lived " in a good house not far from the old Portuguese Synagogue " (Colerus). He is declared to have been of good family and of good education. He sent his* son to the Jewish school connected with the Synagogue, giving to this son the same SPINOZA. LIFE. 125 mental and religious training which he and his ancestors doubtless had received. Young Spinoza first studied the Hebrew tongue and the Hebrew Bible; then came the long line of Hebrew comments upon the Bible, especially the Talmud and the Cabbala he made his own. The Hebrew writers of the Middle Ages, such as Mai- onides and Ibn-Ezra, he knew in part at least. Also the Greco-Jewish literature he must have worked at, though he claims not to have had a critical knowledge of the Greek tongue in a pas- sage (Th. Pol. Treatise, c. 10) which sounds a good deal like an excuse for not doing what he did not want to do. Still Spinoza shows a thoughtful study of the New Testament and he cites the most famous Greco-Jewish writers of antiquity, Josephus and Philo. The educated Jews of the Spanish peninsula must have known something of the great Arabian philosophers, their Semitic cousins, and Spinoza could hardly help getting a notion of the Arabian philosophy, though only by hearsay. In some such fashion we may conceive the extent of Spinoza's Semitic inheritance coming through many centuries, the general nature of which we can trace in numerous chapters of his Theologico-Political Treatise. His ability made him a marked pupil from the beginning ; he was intended for Theology, says Colerus, for a Rabbi or Teacher; doubtless the 126 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. curse of his people against him was intensified by the disappointment at losing their most prom- ising scholar. There are hints that at an early age he began to ask hard questions of his instructor, whose answers did not satisfy the boy. It would have been strange if the Cartesian spirit, rife at this time, of interrogating the validity of all transmitted beliefs, had not crept into the soul of the aspiring youth. Nor should we fail to throw a glance into the family circle of the boy and try to image what was chiefly talked of there. The escape from the Spanish Inquisition, tales of relatives who perished by its torture, the many dangers of the voyage to the new home every man and woman could tell some thrilling story of personal experience which tested the spirit's mettle. Every old Jew of the neighborhood could look back upon deeds worthy of the hero, which he did not fail to set forth to the younger generation born in Holland. A general jubilation must have been in that colony at the news of the peace of Westphalia, in which Spain acknowl- edged the independence of the United Provinces after a struggle of almost a century. Still there must have been an underlying strain of love for their old romantic home in the South where their ancestors had lived so many generations. As already said, the family language of the Spinozas was Spanish, the tongue of their SPINOZA. LIFE. 127 oppressors, and the same fact seems to have been general. Business relations, stirring events at home and abroad, even boyish play upon the streets must have at an early age brought Spinoza out of his confined Jewish community into the great world throbbing around him in Amsterdam, which was then an important European center,, Indeed as there was no external repression the Jewish exclusiveness would begin of itself to relax. The new generation could not possibly be held so rigidly to the old tenets, hence we read of troubles in the Amsterdam Synagogue. The young Jews never having experienced Span- ish oppression, would refuse to live so completely in the past, but would give some response to the call of the Spirit of the Time. The old set would complain of the lack of respect for age and authority on the part of the rising generation, and would start a course of discipline more or less severe to curb the headstrong youth. Do we not see something of the same sort to-day in America? To this party of young Jews Spinoza belonged and was probably the leader. After his school years we can not tell the exact time a new element was introduced into his life by the choice of a trade. " The Law and the ancient Jewish Doctors do expressly say that it is not enough for a man to be learned, but that he ought besides to learn a profession 128 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. or mechanical art, that it may help him in case of necessity" (Colerus). Accordingly Spinoza is to acquire a handicraft, which became a very important thing in his future, for by it he was to maintain himself in his independence of thought in spite of all anathemas, and to live his own life in freedom. But what handicraft did he choose? One which brought him into direct contact with the most recent movement of Physics : the preparation of lenses for the tele- scope recently invented. It had been the true means of bringing to view a new Heaven, quite as much as the voyages of those times had drawn the curtain from a new Earth. Galileo had already discovered the satellites of Jupiter ; the most famous Dutch scientist, Christian Huy- gens, born four years before Spinoza, had turned his telescope upon Saturn, and in 1654 he dis- covered the rings of that planet. Spinoza knew Huygens, and later they became competitors in the art of polishing lenses (Spinoza's Letters, XV, 1665). Everybody began looking up at the skies through a telescope, which was very serviceable to the navigator also. Still it is a nightly amusement on the streets of the great city for the passer to take a peep at the moon. Spinoza, working at his lenses, had to investigate the mathematical properties of light which fact may well have had some influence upon his purely philosophical studies. For light SPINOZA. LIFE. 129 seems to have a geometric soul in its movements, as Spinoza's philosophy has a geometric soul in its method. Thus his handicraft, going in- ward, found, or produced, its spiritual counter- part in his thought. At any rate, our worthy Colerus (Spinoza's biographer), is right in say- ing that Spinoza, " finding himself more dis- posed to inquire into natural causes, gave over Divinity and betook himself altogether to Natural Philosophy.'' So our young Jew in the choice of his calling did not follow the generality of his countrymen in taking up with the past, usually in the form of old clothes and old shoes, but seized upon the very newest mechanical art, and one which brought his daily task into line with the latest discoveries in physical science. No writings, however, he has left pertaining to this practical field of his, except one small treatise on the Rainbow. Of course Spinoza did not necessarily confine himself to the making of telescopic lenses. The microscope also had been invented and was re- vealing its wonders. This instrument, it seems, was a favorite with Spinoza, who observed with a microscope the different parts of the smallest insects, from whence he drew such con- sequences as seemed to him to agree best with his discoveries." (Colerus.) Into Spinoza's early life came another influence of much more immediate importance than his 9 130 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. handicraft in separating him from his Jewish en- vironment. He became assistant teacher in the private school of Francis van den Ende, who was deeply imbued with the learning and the skepticism of the Renascence, and was also de- voted to physical science. It was indeed a school quite the opposite of that first school con- nected with the Synagogue. No theology of any kind was here in evidence ; superstition was mercilessly satirized, and superstition was quite one with religion for van den Ende, who seems to have had in his library the books of the lead- ing free-thinkers of Europe. Here was a mine in which Spinoza delved for about two years (1653-55). It was probably in this library that Spinoza became acquainted with some of the writings of Giordano Bruno, and deepened his knowledge of Descartes by a study of the printed books of this philosopher, whose influ- ence, however, he must have already felt, as it was working profoundly in the thought of the time. It is to be observed that Spinoza lived in van den Ende's house, and so was separated from his own family and the Jewish com- munity, being thereby able to give himself up freely to his new studies. He perfected his Latin style with van den Ende, who was a good humanist; previously he had studied Latin with a German teacher, but the bright boy must have picked up during childhood many a frag- SPINOZA. LIFE. 131 ment of that tongue, which was so generally em- ployed in Holland by the learned, both Jewish and Christian. Three important acquisitions may be attributed to Spinoza's stay with van den Ende: some teaching experience, a considerable dip into the secular philosophy of the time, and the mastery of a Latin style, which was to be the medium of expression for all of his works, being more nearly a mother-tongue to him than any other language. And in this record we must not omit to men- tion a fourth experience very natural to a young fellow in the early twenties. Says our voucher, the honest Colerus : " Van den Ende had an only daughter who understood the Latin tongue as well as music so perfectly that she was able to teach her father's pupils in his absence. Spinoza, having often occasion to see and speak to her, grew in love with her, and he has often confessed that he designed to marry her. She was none of the most beautiful, but she had a great deal of wit, a great capacity and a jovial humor, which wrought upon the heart of Spinoza as well as upon another scholar of van den Ende whose name was Kerkering, a native of Hamburg. The latter did soon perceive that he had a rival and grew jealous of him. This moved him to redouble his care and his attendance upon his mistress, which he did with good success. But a necklace of pearls of the value of two or three 132 MODEEN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY, hundred pistoles which he had before presented to that young woman did without doubt con- tribute to win her affection. She therefore promised to marry him, which she did faithfully perform when Herr Kerkering had abjured the Lutheran religion, which he professed, and em- braced the Roman Catholic." So Spinoza was distanced by a rival who could buy a pearl necklace and change his religion. Such is the gleam of romance which seems to enter Spinoza's life at this period, and which Berthold Auerbach has wrought over in his novel, Spinoza, a Thinker's Life. But a cruel investi- gator has shown that van den Ende's daughter, Clara Maria, could have been hardly twelve years old when Spinoza, being twice that age, left Amsterdam on account of his excommunica- tion. What of it? The impossibility of the affair does not follow. Then we can take the suggestion of Pollock that Spinoza often visited Amsterdam from his retreat and took occasion to drop in upon the household of van den Ende ; thus he could have an opportunity to talk Latin to Clara Maria, and to admire her maturing woman- hood, for she did not get married till fifteen years after Spinoza had left the city (accord- ing to the record consulted by Van Vloten, her marriage took place in 1671). Some commen- tators on Spinoza claim to see traces of this un- fortunate love in his Ethics, and are inclined to SPINOZA. LIFE. 133 assign it as the reason why he never afterwards married. But other grounds are more apparent. No Jewess would be inclined to take a renegade, and no Christian girl would be inclined to take a Jew. Then the insidious disease of which Spi- noza died had begun to show its early traces, and to a rational man like him forbade matrimony. Besides was he not wedded to Philosophy, a very jealous mistress brooking no rival? We now come to the great act of separation and expulsion of Spinoza from his kindred, his race, and his religion Already we have noticed the growing inner separation which made him ready for the final blow, and which caused him to say afterwards that his persecutors merely anticipated his own action. It was observed that he seldom attended the Synagogue, that he shunned the society of the Jewish doctors, ap- parently avoiding discussion. Two former class- mates succeeded by an artifice in worming out of him compromising opinions, and then played the part of informers. There was a great stir, Spinoza was cited before the court of the Syna- gogue, which laid upon him the lesser anathema, demanding a recantation within thirty days. But he refused to recant, he probably desired to be cast out, which for him had become liberation. To quiet the scandal it would seem that there was an attempt to bribe Spinoza to silence, by the offer of a pension of a thousand gulden, without 134 MODERN- E UROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. the condition of recantation. But this offer he rejected with scorn, protesting that " he was not a hypocrite, and minded nothing but the Truth." Evidently he had resolved upon authorship as his highest vocation, and he did not propose to sell out his career. After such contumacy came an attempt to assassinate him. Spinoza himself did often tell them that one evening, as he was coming out of the old Portuguese Synagogue, he saw a man by him with a dagger in his hand; whereupon standing upon his guard and going backward, he avoided the blow which reached no further than his clothes" (Colerus reporting Spinoza's conversation with the latter 's landlord and landlady). Nor must we leave out this trait of Spinoza himself ; " He kept still the coat that was run through with the dagger, as a memorial of that event." It is no wonder that he " did not think himself safe at Amsterdam," and soon left the city. Not simply out of terror did he take this step, but " he was desirous to go on with his studies in a quiet retreat." Nothing was left in the opinion of the rab- binate but to excommunicate the refractory member, and to pronounce upon him the grand anathema. The latter was written out and read before the congregation. The Portuguese origi- nal has been preserved and is a very important document for estimating aright the character and the work of Spinoza. It runs as follows : SPINOZA. - LIFE. 135 44 With the judgment of the saints and angels we excommunicate, cast off, curse and execrate Baruch de Espinoza, with the consent of the elders and of all this holy congregation, in the presence of the Holy Books, cursing him with the anathema wherewith Joshua cursed Jericho, and Elisha cursed the boys, and with all the curses written in the Law. Cursed be he by day and cursed by night ; cursed be he in sleeping and in waking, cursed in bis going out and coming in. , / May the Lord never pardon him; may the Lord make His fury and anger burn up the man ; may the Lord separate him for evil from all the tribes of Israel. .And you who cleave to the Lord your God : let none of you speak with him by word of mouth or by writing, let no one do him any kindness, or stay under one roof with him, or come within four cubits of him, nor read anything written by him." Such is the document of damnation, breathing all the venom of the fiercest tribal revenge of the Old Testament. We can now see from what Spinoza was determined to separate himself. Better than anything else does this piece of writ- ing show how impossible it was for him to stay in a communion which kept alive and perpetuated such a spirit. Out of this execration looms up his character. Indeed we can see why he sought 136 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. to transform the old God of his fathers into an ethical Deity. Motives for his future career and doctrine may well be found in this Jewish curse upon a Jew who had defiantly broken over the tribal limits into freedom, and had become in thought a universal man. What shall we say to the people who deliber- ately could utter and set down in writing such anathemas against one of their own blood who differed from them in religion? They were not ignorant, they had suffered persecution, still they could become as fierce persecutors as the Span- ish inquisition. There is no doubt that if they had possessed the civil power, they would have crucified Spinoza, as once Christ was crucified. Moreover the report goes that they sought to get a decree of banishment against Spinoza from the Dutch authorities. The further question will come up : Does this incident show a persistent trait of Jewish character? Do they carry with them wherever they go, in spite of culture and the stern discipline of suffering, some of the old tribal hate which is sure to beget hate? That many individual Jews do not, is very manifest. But the community, the nation? The philoso- pher, determined, if he be worthy of the name, not to hate the Jew or anybody else, still has to seek by virtue of his vocation the cause of the animosity which the Jews as a body seem to ex- cite among all peoples where they settle. The SPINOZA. LIFE. 137 treatment of Spinoza, on account of the great- ness of the man, has risen to be a European act, done in the presence of all time; it has turned out to be a scene of the World's History in which not only its few obscure participants in Amsterdam, but their entire nation from the beginning are called to the bar of judgment. The greatest Jew that Europe has produced has been cast out, cursed, and in spirit crucified by a body of European Jews, apparently repeating history. One asks with interest : Did they ever after- wards show any signs of repentance or shame for their action? In this connection the follow- ing extract from Colerus would seem to have some meaning : * * The sentence of excommunication was pub- licly pronounced by old man Chacham Abuabh, a Rabbi of great reputation among them. I have desired in vain the sons of that old Rabbi to communicate that sentence to me; they answered that they could not find it among the papers of their father, but I could easily perceive that they had no mind to impart it to me." Colerus published his biography of Spinoza in 1705 in IJutch, and the next year it appeared in French. Thus the document was known to exist long before it was published. It was unquestionably the State which saved Spi- noza a fact which impressed him strongly, and 138 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. which will enter deeply into his speculations here- after. It is quite possible that the Protestant Church might have joined hands with the Syna- gogue in driving him out of the country. But the civil authorities evidently would not disturb him in his quiet retreat. This important fact of his life will become one of his main doctrines, and will generate the pivotal point upon which turns one of his greatest books, the Theologico- Political Treatise, of which an account will be given later. If Spinoza suffered the modern crucifixion at the hands of the modern Jews, it must be con- fessed that his doctrine has been adopted and cultivated by the Aryan, who has taken it up into the movement of the Aryo-European Philoso- phy. To be sure, Spinoza has not been with- out his Jewish apostolate, but it is the Aryan philosopher who has adopted him and given him his place in the grand philosophic descent of the Ages. Another Jew, or rather the other Jew of History, has had a strikingly analogous destiny as regards doctrine. 2. Second Period ( 1656-1670). Theresultof the excommunication of Spinoza was his retire- ment from all public relations of life. He quit Amsterdam and went to a country place not far from the city and lived in the house of a friend who belonged to a sect of Dutch dissenters called Collegiants whose doctrines had been condemned SPINOZA LIFE. 139 by the Synod of Dort. Thus the persecuted Jew and the persecuted Protestant dwelt together in the mutual sympathy of a common mis- fortune. Both were victims of organized Re- ligion, but both were secretly tolerated by the State. We shall find this fact coloring Spinoza's life and writings : the political Institution is to save man's freedom of thought from the fury of the religious Institution. Particularly in the Theologico- Political Treatise his pre-supposi- tion is that any form of the religious Institution, Synagogue, Mosque or Church, Protestant or Catholic, though bitterly persecuted in its weak- ness, will turn persecutor when it gets the power, and inflict the same wrong which it has suffered. Spinoza's inference is that Religion must be wholly separated from the civil govern- ment. In no sense does he propose to do away with the religious Institution, but to assign to Church and State their true limits in relation to the individual. In such a thought we can well understand that there was harmony between Spinoza and his new environment of Collegiants. For fourteen years Spinoza remained in this condition of retirement and separation from the world, social and institutional. This does not mean that he was incomplete isolation, holding himself aloof from friends and from all outsiders. On the contrary he was quite accessible to the few who might wish to visit him. Still his life 140 MODEBN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. during this Second Period was that of the retired student, even if not of a recluse. He turned inward and wrought over his materials in solitude. Really this was a great opportunity for making out of himself a philosopher. We know very little of his personal history during these four- teen years ; we know far more of his preceding Period, which was largely enacted in the face of the world. But now he withdraws from public notice into himself, and there constructs a new world of his own, in which act we can follow him only in his books. To grasp this Second Period in its full sweep, it seems best to look at it in two successive por- tions or epochs, each of which lasted about seven years. These we may name the Collegiant Epoch and the Voorburg Epoch. (1) Altogether Spinoza remained with his Collegiant friends some seven years, and even changed locality with them once, accompanying them from their shelter near Amsterdam to Rhynsburg, near Ley den. At the same time he kept up his trade of polishing lenses, and became a famous expert, so that Leibniz, investigating certain optical problems, wrote to him (1671), recognizing the optician but not the philosopher, whom he will afterwards find and in his own way appropriate. We also hear of a class coming to him in his retreat and studying Descartes under his guid- SPINOZA. LIFE. 141 ance. Already he had known something of Descartes, whose spirit was in the atmosphere of the place and of the time. He had doubtless read the Discourse and the Meditations, essen- tially popular books. But he has now to grapple with the Principia, a far more difficult as well as more comprehensive work, which was then making a great stir among the learned circles in Holland. A small class of aspiring young men came to him and asked him to assist them in mastering the new philosophy. Spinoza had already had some experience in teaching the im- mature pupils of a school in the common branches of education, but now he has to instruct a class of cultivated men in a system of thought. It is evident that he must make special effort to ac- quire that system in order to give it out and to explain it in detail. Thus Spinoza is brought in his retreat -to study Descartes very thoroughly, and slowly to remodel the Cartesian principle from his own point of view. Moreover the philo- sophical club becomes more or less a band of disciples, and thus the School of Spinoza starts, which is by no means dead to-day. The literary result of this instruction is still to be seen in Spinoza's Commentary on the Principia of Descartes, furnished with an ap- pendix called Cogitata Metaphysica. This book, printed in 1663, is expressly declared by Spinoza (in Letter IX) to have been written and pub- 142 M ODEEN E UE OPE AN PHIL OSOPHI , lished at the request of friends who knew of it, and who doubtless were members of the before- mentioned philosophical club. It should be noticed that these Cartesian studies were agree- able also to his Collegiant friends, who may have shared in his instruction, and who were known to lean toward Cartesianism (at this time like- wise under the ban of the dominant Theology, which was Calvinistic) on account of its doctrine of Free-Will. In the Appendix to his book Spinoza supports this doctrine, probably repro- ducing it simply as the view of Descartes, and possibly not forgetting that such a view was con- sonant with his Collegiant environment. This fact may suggest the inner ground why Spinoza at last came to feel that he must quit the Col- legiants, for he was a determinist in his way from the beginning. To the Cartesian strand of Spinoza's life dur- ing these years we can now add another and quite different one, which is found in a little book of his not long since discovered and published, bear- the title of a Short Treatise on God, Man, and the latter' s Happiness. This book seems also to have been the product of work with a class. It shows the full sweep of pinoza's plan, as it was afterwards far more -fully developed in his Ethics. Here, in fact, we find the Spinozan Norm of Thought in its germ, this Norm more nearly approaching the Neo-Platonic than any other. SPINOZA. - LIFE. 143 And the Neo-Platonic Norm has had affinities with Jewish thinking from the beginning. Cer- tain learned Jews of Alexandria, notably Philo, maintained several doctrines which were after- wards taken* up by the Neo-Platonic movement, and this movement in turn strongly influenced certain learned Jews of the Middle Ages Mai- monides, Gersonides, and Chasdai Crescas who is cited by Spinoza in the Theologico-Political Treatise. To these probably is to be added Giordano Bruno, whose doctrine of the identity of God and Nature is to be found in the two dialogues which are included in the /Short Treatise. This book, however, shows Spinoza's Jewish inheritance intermingling and coalescing with Cartesian ideas, which it also contains in abundance. We can now see what lay before the mind of Spinoza as his chief problem during these seven years. The philosophic Norm transmitted to him through the ages he was to fill anew and to transform with a fresh content derived directly from the fundamental thought of his time. Both strands will remain in his work always visible, often separable, and at bottom contradictory, producing what we may well name the Spinozan dualism, far deeper than any so-called Cartesian dualism. For the transmitted Norm will furnish chiefly the metaphysical portion of Spinoza's system, and will remain largely true to its 144 MODERN" EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. Neo-Platonic pantheistic pattern; but the psy- chological and with it the ethical portion, chiefly derived from Descartes, will be individualistic rather than pantheistic, and will run directly counter to the previous metaphysical portion. Here, then, lies the source of the Spinozan mo- nism, and far more profoundly, the source of the Spinozan dualism, which last really classifies the whole system as belonging to the second or sep- arative stage in the total philosophic movement of the Seventeenth Century. But the time has now arrived when he is to give up his long domicile with the Collegian ts. The cause of this separation is not known, but we can reasonably conjecture that Spinoza had outgrown his environment and felt no longer in harmony with its people either philosophically or religiously. He had transcended their Carte- sianism, and had come to hold a view very dif- ferent from theirs of God and the Divine Order. He began to feel his freedom restrained (his dear libertas philosphandi) , and moreover he wished to publish some books which would hardly accord with the principles of the Collegi- ants. One of these books was already finished and waiting for its opportunity; others were partly written. These unborn children of his brain were lustily struggling for a chance to live ; surely the hour has struck, he is up and off. SPINOZA. LIFE. 145 (2) So Spinoza removes in 1663 to Voorburg, a village not far from The Hague, where he stays the next seven years. Very little is known of him during this time ; he continued his various works, and began a new one, on The Improvement of the Intellect, which seems to have been in- tended as an introduction to the Ethics. The most significant fact about this work is that it is a kind of psychological propaedeutic to phi- losophy ; Spinoza proposes to examine the mind itself before dealing with the metaphysical con- cepts which are the products of the mind. Of course he did not and could not then carry out any such plan; if he had been able to do so, his Ethics would have been a part of his psychology, instead of his psychology being a part of his Ethics, as is the actual case. The introduction is peculiar as showing Spinoza in a subjective mood, during which he indulges in reflections upon his past life and recounts his inner experi- ences and purposes somewhat after the manner of Descartes. Such a personal overture corre- sponds, however, to the psychological content of the treatise, which deals with the mind or Ego. Obstacles long prevented the publication of Spinoza's book which had been for some time substantially completed. Finally at the very close of the seven long Voorburg years of wait- ing, in 1670, The Theologico- Political Treatise appears, without the author's name, giving on 10 1 46 MODERN E UB OPE AN PHIL SOPHY. the title-page a fictitious publisher and a fictitious place of publication. Spinoza seemed well aware of the outcry which would be made against the book, particularly by the clergy. At the same time its doctrines seemed to have won for him powerful political friends, who probably held opinions similar to those of Spinoza in regard to the relations of State and Church. At any rate he must have felt that he had strong protection before he made the next change, which was to take up his permanent abode at The Hague, the political center of the Dutch Republic. This took place in 1670, and lasted about another seven years, terminating in Spinoza's death. 3. Third Period (1670-1677). This Period, though brief and incomplete, being cut short by the early demise of the philosopher, deserves its position through the fact that Spinoza now conies out of his long retirement, and to a degree shares in the institutional life of his country, especially in its political phase. We are told that already in 1665 his work on Ethics was nearly complete ; we may suppose that he carried the almost finished book with him to The Hague. Doubtless it was his growing interest in the State which first made him gravitate to Voorburg, from which suburb to the capital was but a step, which he could take when the time was ripe . In fact the Dutch Republic about the year SPINOZA. LIFE. 147 1670 was the center of the political problem of Europe. It was still engaged in a desperate struggle with England for maritime supremacy, which brought about three different wars, the last of which (16724) Spinoza saw while living at The Hague. But the greatest conflict which arose during this time was with the king of France (Louis XIV) who sought to destroy Hol- land as the strongest foe of his political and religious ideas, of Absolutism and of Catholi- cism. With a right instinct or perchance insight Spinoza placed himself where the fate of Euro- pean liberty in that age was being decided. Though not an actor, he was on the ground looking and thinking. The literary outcome of this Period is seen in the work which is doubtless the last he ever wrote, the Political Treatise. His thought has now turned away from Religion and Metaphysics, and is devoting itself to the State. We see at once his views are directly connected with the Poli- tics of his time, even when he speaks no names. The theory of Institutions, never wholly dormant in his speculation, has now become the paramount, if not the exclusive interest (see remarks on the Political Treatise later, under the head of Spinoza's Writings). It was a great shock to him when the Dutch statesmen, the brothers DeWitt, were murdered by a mob in 1672. They had given him a small 148 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. pension, and had shown him friendship in various ways. It is highly probable that it was their influence which brought him to The Hague and gave a political direction to his latest thinking. But after their death he must have kept up his relations to the people in authority, for we find him engaged in what appears to be a political mission. He went to the camp of the French invaders of his country, then at Utrecht, in order to see the Prince of Conde, the commander of the enemy. But Spinoza did not get any interview with the Prince, and returned home where the populace began to suspect him of being a spy. Spinoza's landlord became alarmed lest a mob might attack his house, but Spinoza 44 put him in heart again" by saying to him: " Fear nothing, I can justify myself. There are some of the most considerable persons in the State who know what put me upon that journey. As soon as the mob makes the least noise at your door, I'll go and meet them, though they were to treat me as they treated poor Messieurs De Witt. I am a good KepubJican, and I always aimed at the glory and welfare of the State ' ' (Colerus). Such is the small and somewhat uncertain gleam of Spinoza's only political per- formance. In the year 1673 he received in his quiet re- treat at the Hague, where he lived in a rented room and boarded himself, a remarkable offer SPINOZA. LIFE. 149 which showed his increasing fame. The Elector Palatine asked him to become Professor at the University of Heidelberg, cum ampUssima libertate philosophandi, though he must not attack the established religion. The offer was declined as Spinoza felt that any such position would interfere with his freedom. It had been his life to keep aloof from all sects, from all patrons, from all great schools and universities, in order that he might be free to utter the truth as he saw it. He was "right. In his little room at Van der Spyck's, the Universe itself was his and all that it contains ; in the considerable University of Heidelberg he would have been cramped to death by his environment. During these seven years at The Hague Spi- noza was slowly dying of consumption. His con- stitution had never been strong, and he " had been troubled with a Phthysic above twenty years," says Colerus, drawing information from those who knew him well. This signified much in the career and thought of Spinoza. Since his twenty-fourth year and earlier, hence during his whole mature life an insidious disease kept gnaw- ing at his vitals, and being incurable, hung over him like an inexorable Fate. This fact colors his doctrine and his life. His strong belief in necessity on the one hand, yet on the other his triumph over outer destiny and his complete self-mastery while in the very jaws of the fiend, 150 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. were intensified, if not caused, by this desperate struggle with a life-long malady. The account of Spinoza's last moments are given by Colerus in a quaint, yet deeply signifi- cant and pathetic way: " The landlord being come from Church at four o'clock or thereabouts, Spinoza went down stairs and had a pretty long conversation with him, which did particularly run upon the sermon ; and having taken a pipe of tobacco he retired into his chamber which was forward, and went to bed betimes." Yet there can be no doubt that Spinoza was very ill during this talk, though he said nothing of himself, for his conversation ran " upon the sermon." Still he had sent for a physician from Amster- dam who was a special friend of his, Ludwig Meyer by name, as if conscious of what was approaching. " Upon Sunday morning (the next day) before Church-time he went down stairs again, and discoursed with his landlord and his wife," apparently saying not a word of his condition and showing no sign, though he must have been then dying. Meantime the physician had arrived, and he " ordered them to boil an old cock immediately that Spinoza might take some broth about noon, which he did." In the afternoon the people of the house returned to Church, while the physi- cian stayed alone with Spinoza. ' But as they were coming from Church, they were very much SPINOZA. WRITINGS. 151 surprised to hear that Spinoza had expired about three o'clock in the presence of that physician, who that very evening returned to Amsterdam by the night-boat." That surprise of the house- hold tells much of the perfect equanimity of Spinoza gazing straight into the face of death ; there could be no stronger evidence that he had realized in his own spirit his doctrine. Such was the transition into the Beyond of the philosopher, the change usually so much dreaded, but not at all dreaded by him. In that humble house where he rented a room, in which he wrote his books, polished his lenses, and even boarded himself, was the final scene enacted whereby he showed himself a free man, having made real in the deed his own words: "Homo liber de nidla re minus quam de morte cogitat, et ejus sapientia non mortis sed vitce meditatio est." (Ethica, Pars IV, Prop. 78.) II. SPINOZA'S WRITINGS. Latin was the lan- guage employed by Spinoza in communicating his thought to the world. Many European philosophers before him had used their mother tongue for philosophy. But what was the mother-tongue of Spinoza? It is not so easy to say ; he seems to have employed with a fair de- gree of freedom Teutonic, Romanic and Semitic speech, hovering between them all. In his Jewish home the language was Spanish and in the synagogue' it was Portuguese ; after his ex- 152 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. pulsion he must have heard and talked chiefly Dutch, though it is declared that he never mastered it in a literary sense. In fact the Dutch themselves have not produced any great work of Literature in their tongue, they have no Shakespeare or Dante, no Calderon or Camoens. Probably the greatest literary Dutchman was Grotius and he used Latin. The Renascence developed marvelously the Romance languages and literatures Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, French ; we must recollect that the English of Chaucer, Shakespeare and Milton is largely a Romance tongue. But Teutonic speech had to wait for its literary bloom till Goethe and Lessing. Thus the Dutch vernacular seems to have been rejected by its own sons for the highest literary expression. Spinoza did not try to change this; though born in Holland, he was in speech more Latin than Teutonic, and easily went back to the parental source of his Spanish or Portuguese. Moreover Philosophy still spoke Latin throughout Europe, even in those countries where Poetry had found its loftiest expression in the vulgar tongue. German as the vehicle of philosophic thought had not yet de- veloped its power. Among Latin-writing philos- ophers, Spinoza ranks easily alongside of the two greatest Cicero and Aquinas, and he is, in certain respects, to be placed before both SPINOZA. WRITINGS, 153 these in the grand philosophic evolution of the ages. . * The Dutch were truly the foremost European people in the Seventeenth Century, the bearers of the world-historical destiny of Europe. But they somehow gave no vernacular utterance of their mighty task and its fulfillment in prose or verse ; they produced no printed words reflecting their heroic deeds and thrilling the civilized nations of to-day. This is doubtless the reason why .their work has not been duly appreciated. We have, therefore, to think that Teutonic speech, in its Dutch and other varieties, was as yet incapable of giving an adequate literary, still l6ss an adequate philosophical expression of the age. From this point of view also, Spinoza showed a right linguistic instinct by composing his philosophy in Latin. 1. The Theologico- Political Treatise. The pres- ent work was written in Latin and published in 1670, Spinoza being then 38 years old. More- over, this was the year in which Spinoza changed his residence from Voorburg to The Hague, hav- ing resolved, apparently, to print and to propa- gate his philosophy after his long study and retirement. His system was substantially com- plete at this date; his great central work, the Ethics, was also finished with the possible excep- tion of a few additions and interpolations, and was to be published shortly after the present 154 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. book, which may well be deemed a kind of intro- duction to the whole Spinoza. Such we may consider to be the opening of the third period of his life. Spinoza well foreknew the outcry which the book would produce. Accordingly we read upon the title-page of the first edition that it was printed by Heinrich Kiiherath of Hamburg, whereas the real printer was Christopher Conrad, of Amsterdam. The author's name was not given. Soon the uproar started, the refutations began pouring in, and the author duly anathe- matized. The Church, of course, took the alarm. Jewish writers controverted it, the Protestant States General of Holland prohibited it, Rome placed it upon the Index, even the Cartesians disclaimed and denounced it, though it was a direct, legitimate fruit of the doctrine of their master. What was the matter? No book could create such *a universal shout of pain, if it did not hit the sore spot of the age. The unanimity of damnation from Jew and Gentile, Protestant and Catholic, Church and State, could only mean that all those affected with the malady of the time, were undergoing a probing, painful, but in the end salutary, to the very seat and source of their disease. For like the individual, the age gets angry at the man who tells to its face the truth about itself. In times past this wrath has often found expression in torture, burning at the SPINOZA. WETTINGS. 155 stake, and crucifixion. If we now read the Theologico-Political Treatise we cannot find much sulphur in it ; we have to throw ourselves back into Spinoza's time and spiritual environment in order to understand the tempest it produced on all sides of the horizon. Already the age was in a deep struggle with its presuppositions, philosophical, religious, and political. The center of this struggle was un- doubtedly Holland, the land where Thought had won its greatest freedom, both in Church arid State. Holland, then, was questioning all that had been hitherto taken for granted in profound correspondence with her movement for inner and outer liberty. Still there was a strong party in reaction, hesitating, refusing, resisting. But, moved largely by Descartes, whose thought-life belonged to Holland, the leading spirits of that country had learned to doubt, to grapple with their presuppositions, particularly in philosophy, above any other land of Europe. Yet this was not done without many a protest from more conser- vating minds who dimly foresaw and shuddered at the Heaven-scaling step to which such a principle was driving forward the time. Into this mightily fermenting period enters the Amsterdam Jew with his book. Of all his con- temporaries he is the most apt pupil of Des- cartes, having pushed the latter' s doctrine far beyond its original limits, and applied it in a 156 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY, sphere and in a way that would have made the old master shake in terror with his careful, politic adjustment to the existent order in Church and State. For Spinoza in his quiet study has come to the conclusion, that in this general overhauling of all transmitted opinions and beliefs, the grand presupposition of the civilization of Europe, the Bible both Hebrew and Christian, is to be summoned before this new tribunal of Eeason and made to give an ac- count of itself. Is not this Bible with its doctrines and ceremonies the chief assumption of the world around me? If all is to be interro- gated afresh (de omnibus dubitandum) as the indispensable prerequisite for the coming order, why make an exception of the fundamental thing? Colossal audacity is this, truly Jewish, not to be expected of any European ; only can it be paralleled by the audacity of another Jew, Christ himself, who also challenged the faith of his fathers and introduced the new dispensation. So Spinoza goes back sixteen centuries to the Christian beginning, and then back another six-, teen centuries (or more) to the Hebrew begin- ning, and along the whole line he drags out all the presuppositions of Monotheism itself and brings them before the judgment-seat of his indi- vidual Reason. For Spinoza likewise challenges the one only God, the common presupposition of both Jew and Christian, investigating sharply SPINOZA. WETTINGS. 157 the revelation He has made of Himself in the transmitted Holy Books of His people. It would seem that according to Spinoza, God too needs reconstruction and must be made rational in accord with the Spirit of the Age. We may now see why it came that a Jew was chosen to do such a work, namely to take the next great step in philosophy. Many writers have felt the profound correspondence of Spinoza with his call, which was at that time the call of Europe. The cry is for a man who can go back, and as it were in his own blood can find and dig out the religious presuppositions of European civilization. At the same time he must be modern, the most modern of men, filled with the new thought of his epoch. Again the Aryan consciousness, unable to find itself spiritually, is to be passed through a Jewish mind, as was the case in Christianity. This means not the overthrow of the Bible, but a new knowledge of it, which is still working deeply in Theology. The so-called higher criticism of to-day goes back to this work .of Spinoza. Thus the Holy Book of the Ages shows a power of self -renewal down Time, having revealed such a character through the three greatest Jews Moses, Christ and Spinoza. Such new birth seems to come to it only through a Jewish mind ; only a Jew can successfully grapple with the Jewish Jehovah, and make Him transform Himself. The primi- 158 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. tive tribal God of the Hebrews can become uni- versal only through a man of the same tribe who has become universal himself. The reader may now understand the loud uproar as well as the fierce persecution which greeted this book at its birth and has followed it down to the present. In the foregoing fact also we begin to see the vast significance of Spinoza as an historic link in the coming ages, for the battle which he so emphatically opened is by no means over yet. The Theologico-Political Treatise is not an organic book with its parts carefully ordered into a systematic Whole. It is rather a series of essays loosely connected pertaining to Theology and the State; the title of the edition of 1670, printed during Spinoza's lifetime and probably emanating from him, calls it a Treatise " con- taining several dissertations " (continens aliquot dissertationes see Pollock's Spinoza, In trod. , p. XVI). It may be considered a kind of framework into which he arranged his thoughts on the pre- ceding topics for a long time, probably for twenty years (1650-1670). We have here echoes of the studies of the youthful Spinoza, while still a student at the school of the Synagogue ; we can well imagine the precocious genius of seventeen or eighteen summers with the blood of the South hot in his veins, propounding hard problems to his teacher in the Hebrew Bible. SPINOZA. WETTINGS. 159 Moreover such a youth living in the great active city of Amsterdam would unconsciously imbibe something of the spirit of the time, which was already taking a decided Cartesian trend. The Principles of Descartes had been printed in Latin at Amsterdam in 1644, and his earlier works had created a great stir. To our mind the Jewish boy could hardly help catching some- what of the spirit of inquiry then abroad in a free land, and engrafting it upon his Hebrew studies. At first it was only a germ, but the germ grew to an unshaken conviction, which finally caused his expulsion from the Synagogue when he was twenty-three years old. We hold that the Treatise under consideration contains, particularly in some of its earlier por- tions, the substance of the thought and of the discussions which led to Spinoza's separation from his religion and his people. It was most natural that he should put down in writing such a fearful personal experience, really his re-birth into a new world. But as time ran on and as he was absent from the scene of his troubles, other interests began to come predominantly into his life. His purely speculative studies undoubtedly stood first, but not far behind was his interest in the State. For after all it was the State which had saved him through its toleration. This fact took strong hold of him, and so another element was introduced into his book, which he desig- 160 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. nates as theologico-politicus on its title-page, and in which he seeks to show that Free Thought (libertas philosophandi) will not only not endan- ger but will benefit the Eepublic. Accordingly we find two portions, whose divid- ing line is plainly marked (at Chap. 16). Of these the first portion treats of Eeligion, and embraces three-fourths of the whole work, while the second portion treats of the State, which takes up the remaining fourth. The latter seems considerably later in composition than the former, and shows a new object of interest. It has a double character : though the Hebrew State still furnishes examples for illustrating principles, it is plain that the Dutch State is always in the background of the author's thought, and is some- times cited in its own name. We may, therefore, say that the present Treatise shows the religious and political develop- ment of Spinoza for some twenty years, but not directly his philosophical development which was going on at the same time in another line of works. It is a very striking evolution of a great soul in spite of its inconsistencies and incongru- ities. Particularly we may trace in this book Spinoza's evolution of God who in the earlier pas- sages is still the transcendent Hebrew Jehovah, but in the later passages decidedly approaches the immanent God of Nature, such as we find in the Ethics. Still the work is Jewish from first SPINOZA. WETTINGS. 161 to last ; Jewish in its affirmation and in its nega- tion; when he denies, he is still a Jew denying Judaism. Christ and the Apostles he puts on a line of development with Moses and the Prophets. That he is the third in this great line of Jewish Eevelation, he does not directly say, at least he cloes not emphasize any such idea. Still he seems at times somewhat conscious of such a mission, that of uttering the Jew of Europe. Into this vast biblical reconstruction inter- weaves the doctrine of Descartes as a trans- forming power. The enthronement of Reason with its clear and distinct ideas is everywhere taken for granted, and means the summoning of the Universe before the bar of the Ego, though Descartes does not seem to have intended any such universal application of his doctrine. Descartes doubted the truth of the transmitted Philosophy, but Spinoza dared doubt the truth of the transmitted Religion and its Bible, yea of the transmitted God. This is his tremendous significance; he makes universal the Cartesian starting-point; that is his genius universality. But his effort is not merely destructive; it is also reconstructive; he too might answer his antagonists: *' I come not to destroy but to fulfill." In general, the Theologico- Political Treatise springs from Spinoza's grand separation from his religion and his race and his race's God. 11 162 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. Hence its underlying character must be pro- nounced separative. It shows three great separations : 1. The Individual with his Reason, self-deter- mined in Thought, must be allowed freedom of Thought and Speech in matters of Religion. Reason is not to be accommodated to Scripture, and hence may be unscriptural. On the other hand Scripture is not to be accommodated to Reason, but is self-determined in its sphere (is to be interpreted through itself). Neither is to force the other into conformity with itself in Thought. 2. The Individual with his Reason is to be allowed Free Thought in political matters, also. Yet he is to obey in his action the commands of the State as authoritative, which on its side is also self-determined. Neither is to force the other into conformity with its sphere ; the indi- vidual is not to assail the State's law, and the State is not to assail the individual's Thought even in its expression. So the separation is complete as to Intellect but not as to Will ; the latter remains for the future problem. 3. These two Institutions, the religious and the political, Spinoza will now separate from each other, after having separated himself as Reason or Thought, from both of them. The State is not to prescribe Religion and Religion is not to determine the State. This is a great SPINOZA. WRITINGS. 163 idea, one in which Spinoza reaches not only out of his own time but out of Europe. The com- plete separation of Church and State has not yet been attained even in the most tolerant and enlightened European nations. Only in America has such a separation been attained. Spinoza may well seem the prediction of that provision in the Constitution of the United States, which says: " Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." This is still distinctive to America, though France is now (1903) striving for its attainment. The other conten- tion of Spinoza in the present connection, free- dom of Thought and Speech, is European, yet with emphatic exceptions. Such are the three great separations in this Treatise : as thinking individual, the man is to be free of the domination of both Church and State, and each of these is to be free of the domination of the other. The Church has its sphere in teaching and enforcing justice and charity; the State has its sphere in securing man's rights ; the individual in outer conduct is determined by both according to their ends, but in thought and speech he is self-determined, free of both Church and State. There is no doubt that such an outcome leaves the individual in a deep dualism, that between Thought and Action, Intellect and Will. Thus 164 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. in Spinoza the speculative and practical sides of human Spirit remain in contradiction which is bound to show itself in the shrillest sort of discord hereafter. The conclusion of the Treatise gives Spinoza's attitude : < ' I have written nothing which I do not most willingly submit to the judgment of my country's rulers. For if they think that any- thing I have said is hostile to the laws of the land or to the common welfare, I shall retract it. I have taken care first of all that whatever I might write should conform to patriotism, religion and good morals." These, however, do not con- flict with, but are furthered by Free Thought and Free Speech in a State which allows men " to think as as they please and to say what they think." (Compare Descartes' submission to the authority of the Catholic Church " at the end of his Principia.} 2. The Political Treatise. The reader will be at once struck with this title, similar to yet dif- ferent from the preceding one. What is indi- cated by the change is true : Spinoza has quite thrown off the theological element in the present book which sets forth the purely secular State, freed from its connection with religion. The old Hebrew theocratic substrate lay deep in the pre- vious Treatise, as its double title suggests. But now the State is looked at as it is in itself, in its own right, as a distinctive institution ; the point SPINOZA. WRITINGS. 165 of view is more Greek than Hebrew, and indicates a significant new stage in the development of Spinoza. The Political Treatise was one of those books which were not printed during the author's life, but which first appeared in the Opera Post- huma, dated Amsterdam, 1677, the year of Spinoza's death. It is generally considered his last work, though the exact time of its composi- tion cannot be ascertained. It is our opinion that it must have been writ- ten chiefly after 1672, the year of the overthrow and death of Jan DeWitt, who had held the chief authority in Holland since the death of William II. of Orange in 1650. Spinoza seems to have been a personal acquaintance and possi- bly a close friend of DeWitt; he certainly sym- pathized with the latter 's party in its opposition to the House of Orange. This party was really a moneyed aristocracy, composed of the rich burghers of Holland, especially of Amsterdam, though it called itself republican in contrast with the monarchical tendency of the party of the Stadtholder, who was the Prince of Orange. This conflict between monarchy and aristoc- racy gives the real germ out of which the Polit- ical Treatise of Spinoza unfolds itself. We see that it was not merely the ideal projection of the secluded philosopher, though it be that too; along with its speculative side turned toward the 1 66 MODERN E UEOPEAN PHILOSOPHY. upper world, it had also an actual practical side turned toward the lower world. The book, in spite of its impartial and impersonal manner, springs out of the time and circumstances of its author, who shows a deep, warm interest in what was going on in his party and in his country. Fervid heart-beats both of sympathy and antag- onism the attentive reader will feel here and there breaking up through the impassive exterior of the philosopher in spite of his strong self- suppression. Spinoza then favored the Aristocracy of wealthy citizenship, against the Monarch above and the People below. One might think at the first glance that this runs counter to Spinoza's Philos- ophy, to his God who seems such an all-devour- ing absolutist. But the fact is that the monar- chical principle of the Stadtholder had more popular elements 'than the close aristocracy of the Dutch merchants. Hence the people even of Amsterdam sided with William III of Orange (later the king of England) in the grand crisis of the struggle with France under Louis XIV, who deemed it necessary to crush Holland in taking his first step to ward universal domination. The horrible death of the two De Witts (Jan and Cornelius) at the hands of a mob in 1672 was substantially the end of the rule of the aristo- cratic (republican) party, and was followed by the complete supremacy of the Stadtholder and SPINOZA. WRITINGS. 167 his party. These two facts, the fall of the Aris- tocracy and the rise of the Monarchy, are the central principle and the creative cause of the present Treatise. We may consider the first and most external point as showing the interest of Spinoza : nearly one-half of the book is devoted to the discussion of Aristocracy, which has a fullness of detail and a certain emphasis and sometimes warmth of style found in no other portions of the work. His short chapter on Democracy (the last) has more in it about Aristocracy than about Democracy, in which he could 'have no local interest, as it did not in its pure form exist in Holland. Upon Monarchy, however, he has somewhat to say, both for and against. He shows heat against dictatorships (Chap. 10) in passages which un- doubtedly have the Prince of Orange in mind, who was substantially dictator of the inner revo- lution of 1672, which upheld the war with France. And it was well that he was, we have now to say, looking back at these events through the lapse of time. In this respect Spinoza was not the voice of the Ages, though in other respects he certainly was., He traces the cause of the de- struction of the Roman State to the fact that everybody in a time of terror from enemies " turns toward the man who is renowned for his victories and sets him free of the laws, thereby establishing the worst of precedents. ' ' So Spinoza 1 68 MODERN E UEOPEAN PHIL 080PH Y. saw " the death of liberty " in the stadtholder- ship of the Prince of Orange, hitting him not directly, but through a Roman example. Thus we get to see underneath the surface to the real cause and purpose of the present work. But when it comes to his own party, Spinoza does not lack criticism. He complains that the men in authority have neglected their duty, handing over the business to secretaries and other officials who have thereby become the real authority in the State: Which thing has been fatal to the Dutch . ' ' But his most important criticism of his own party is (IX, 14) where he declares that " the Dutch thought that to keep their liberty, they had only to get rid of their Count " (or Stadtholder), which is evidently an allusion to the suspension of the office of Stadt- holder after the death of William II, and the accession to supreme power of the grand pen- sioner, Jan DeWitt. " Still they (the Dutch) never thought of remoulding the body of their government,'* but they left it organized just as it was, namely on a monarchical principle, yet without a true head, so that " most of the sub- jects never knew where lay the authority of the Government." And so the conclusion is plain that " the overthrow of said republic has arisen from its misforrned condition and the fewness of its rulers." Both these evils Spinoza will cor- rect by a reform of the aristocratic principle SPINOZA. WETTINGS. 169 which he unfolds in the present book. Hence he puts so much stress upon making the govern- ing class a large one, and upon preventing its diminution. Also he will reconstruct the con- stitution, making it aristocratic through and through, according to the principle of such a government. Thus Spinoza, in spite of his protest to the contrary (see his Introduction) is building, after the fashion of Plato and Aristotle and Sir Thomas More and others of less note, an ideal Republic. The reality has turned out inadequate, so the thinker will excogitate a new scheme of Government, which is the old form remodeled and relieved of its defects, so that there will arise in the present case a true consistent Aris- tocracy. In like manner, Aristotle in ancient Hellas sought to set forth a reconstruction of the Greek City-State which was in his time declining. The same purpose runs through Plato's Republic, though in many respects it is very different from Aristotle's Politics. But both have at bottom the one object, the rehabil- itation of the Greek City- State and the restora- tion of it to its pristine glory. To make the comparison more complete, Aris- totle did not see, though he was the friend and teacher of Alexander the Great, that the latter with his Empire had introduced a new political principle into the World's History, in presence 1 70 M ODEEN E UE OPE A N PHIL O SOPHY. of which the old City-State could not exist, in- deed had no right to exist. Similar to the ancient philosopher was our modern philosopher, who likewise did not see that the close, moneyed Aristocracy of his native Amsterdam, in whose profits his Jewish compatriots had a good share, had departed forever with the death of Jan De Witt, being wholly unequal to meet the great coming crisis, which demanded a strong central authority. Upon Holland had been laid the burden of defending freedom and civilization in the Seventeenth Century; to the calculation of timid capitalists such a work could not be sub- jected. Money is not to rule, but to be ruled in the mighty national emergency. Spinoza, there- fore, did not see the bearing of the events hap- pening around him ; he was the opponent of the House of Orange, which had to face the hardest problems of the World's History, not to be solved from the standpoint of the Amsterdam Bourse. The greatness of William of Orange is that he first conquered Dutch capital, and then by means of it went forth to conquer French armies. At that moment Holland under his guidance was the bearer and executor of the decree of the World's Spirit against the new threat of Latin imperialism, quite as decisively as was Athens, when her citizens marched out to Marathon against Oriental imperialism. And in the present contest the House of Orange beat SPINOZA. WBITINGS. 171 back France, as in the preceding struggle lasting eighty years it had beaten back Spain and left it to sink down into insignificance under its own self-torturing Inquisition. After these two supreme acts, altogether the greatest of their time on the stage of Universal History, Hol- land's work was done; her political, maritime, and commercial supremacy passed to England and her learning and science, after a century's lapse, found a new life in Germany. And the House of Orange after giving to its country, not the most capable single ruler, but the most capable line of rulers for one hundred and fifty years that Europe has seen, lost its power of transmitting its greatness and vanished from the scene. Our philosopher, then, though placed in the very heart of the World's History, in the midst of the time's two contending principles, did not see their significance. What contemporary does even to-day? Indeed, we may say that the great but far-off end of education is to train man, every man, to read not merely books, but the purposes and decrees of the World-Spirit in the events taking place in his environing world. That is yet to become a science taught in the School a science which, we see, the greatest philosophers did not know. Hence it comes that Spinoza is such an interesting figure as we watch him in this last book of his, seeking to 172 MODERN E UROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. conceal with an imperturbable inien what he nevertheless reveals surging so intensely and so deeply through his personal experience. It was doubtless written at The Hague, where Spinoza stayed the last seven years of his life (1670-77) amid the political throbbings of the period. Having thus noted that this Treatise has emphatically its roots in its own age, we may next inquire what thinkers of the past furnished help to Spinoza. We have no doubt of the decided influence of Aristotle's Politics. Whether this influence came directly from the original text of Aristotle which Spinoza could read, or through the medium of the Schoolmen, is a mooted point ; there is no reason why he might not have employed both ways. His opening thrust against the making of ideal com- monwealths, and his final construction of such a commonwealth himself is in profound corre- spondence with the movement of Aristotle's book. The threefold division of the forms of Government (Monarchy, Aristocracy, and De- mocracy), and the further subdivision of each of these into the good and bad sorts, is Aristote- lian. Both the philosophers (as above remarked) show a common underlying spirit and purpose in seeking to reconstruct in thought and by means of reforms, to re-establish a decadent and indeed transcended form of Government; such a motive, however, is usually found in every con- SPINOZA. WRITINGS. 173 struction of an ideal State or Society. Other points of connection might be noticed, but the greatest inheritance coming down to Spinoza from Aristotle, doubtless both directly and indi- rectly, is the philosophic Norm Metaphysics, Physics and Ethics whereof we shall speak more fully in another place. Many other connecting links with writers past and present can be traced in Spinoza's book, showing its spiritual descent in time. He advo- cates the State's ownership of all the land for his Monarchy though not for his Aristocracy, wherein may lie a reminiscence of Plato or of Sir Thomas More, with their thoroughgoing communism. Ideas may be pointed out which he holds along with the great publicists of his age Bodiu, Albericus Gentilis, and also Hugo Grotius, his distinguished countryman. Ma- chiavelli'sPrmce suggests to him what is really the deepest spiritual conflict in his book, the conflict between the moral and the institutional. His indebtedness to the contemporary English philoso- pher Hobbes has been much insisted upon by some writers, but it is superficial. The purpose of the Leviathin of Hobbes was to ground the absolute Monarchy, which was certainly distasteful to Spinoza whose party sought to set aside even the limited Monarch in the Stadtholder. On meta- physical points we may indeed find coincidences, most of which, however, were the common prop- 174 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. erty of the time's thought, and were hardly copied by Spinoza out of Hobbes. Yet even in this field he distinctly declared in a letter (No. 50) his fundamental difference from Hobbes inasmuch " as I always preserve natural right intact," allotting to the magistrates only so much right over the individual as they have of actual power. But the chief fountain of modern political science both in theory and practice, the English Constitution, seems to have been unknown to Spinoza. Here again he cannot be blamed. The Great Civil War of England which Spinoza wit- nessed from a distance, had obscured and tempo- rarily sullied the English Constitutional develop- ment which did not come out from its partial eclipse into full splendor till the revolution of 1688, eleven years after Spinoza's death. That event also had to vindicate itself by time. It was largely through Montesquieu in his Esprit des Lois (appeared in 1748) that Europe became informed of the character of the English Con- stitution. It is probable that Spinoza had no great love for the English. During his whole life there was the bitter rivalry for maritime supremacy between England and Holland, which repeatedly culminated in war. During the time he was writing this Political Treatise England was aiding France in her assault upon Holland, though the latter was fighting the battle for the SPINOZA. WRITINGS. 175 civil and religious liberty of Europe against the French absolutist Louis XIV. Representative government, the most distinctive trait of the English Constitution, seems to be hardly known to Spinoza. His political contrivances do not em- brace representation of the People, the mightiest fact of the modern State which is still devel- oping in that direction. Another query-provoking characteristic of the present Treatise is that the author now drops his geometric method, to which he had so strictly adhered in his Ethics. What is the reason? He may have intended this book for a more general circle of readers, he may have grown weary of the rigid formalism of his previous work, or he may have even become doubtful of its validity. Really, however, we may see that this change of expression lies in the change of the subject. Spinoza starts his Ethics with the conception of God, who is, indeed, the beginning and end of the whole book. Now Descartes had already taught in substance that God's thought is mathematical, and that the expression of the thought of God in philosophy must show the same certainty and necessity as mathematics. So Spinoza applies the geometric method to his Ethics, in true accord with its divine theme. But he proposes at the start to treat political science empirically, humanly, and hence he feels under no constraint to make it speak as God 176 MODERN E UEOPEAN PHILOSOPHY. speaks but rather as man speaks For which change of method the reader, being human, is thankful. Moreover we may connect this change of pro- cedure with another fact which goes to the bottom of Spinoza's entire philosophy : the as- cending or ethical movement of his thought in contrast with its descending or metaphysical movement. Thus the present treatise would show correspondence with the second phase of the grand Spinozau dualism which starts with the individual (or mode) and ascends to Sub- stance or God. If this be his last book, it shows that he was evolving out of the stage of Sub- stance, and putting stress upon its opposite or the Individual. In fact, the theory of the State is a constituent part of Ethics, belonging to the in- stitutional element thereof. It is true that Spinoza never brought the State into a complete organic relation with his total system, though he was certainly working upon this subject at the time of his death. The next book of Spinoza which we shall men- tion is that which goes by the name of Ethics, though it has both sides metaphysical and ethical not by any means reconciled but rather in opposition. The Political Treatise just con- sidered belongs to one side, or rather to one portion of one side, and hence is of limited con- tent and also is unfinished. But the Ethics is SPINOZA. WHITINGS. 177 the universal book of Spinoza, into which and from which all his other writings may be seen to proceed. 3. The HJthics. This is not only the most important work of Spinoza but is to be regarded as one of the great philosophical books of the world, ranking with Aristotle's Metaphysics and Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Such is the place to which it has been slowly assigned by the judgment of two centuries and more. It first appeared in the Opera Posthuma of Spinoza (Amsterdam, 1677). To our mind it is not a thoroughly digested, consecutively organ- ized book; it shows gaps, overlappings, contra- dictions, in fact the supreme contradiction between his metaphysical and his ethical views. This is the line upon which we would divide it into two large portions. The first portion embracing in the main Parts I and II, is essen- tially metaphysical ; the second portion embrac- ing Parts III, IV and V, is on the whole ethical. These two portions, as we shall endeavor to show later, are just opposite in tendency, and strikingly reveal the Spinozan dualism. It is highly probable that each belongs to a different period in the author's career. The fact is well known that he was writing upon the JZthics for many years, and was at least twice on the point of publishing it, when some unfavorable occur- rence prevented. A careful genetic exposition 12 178 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. of the Ethics would show that it was a growth, and quite a long one. The general scheme of the book is a sweep from Substance down to Mode (as self-conscious Ego), then a sweep back again from Mode to Substance or God. This scheme has a general resemblance to theNeo- Platonic (see Plotinus in Ancient European Philosophy, p. 614-6), which doubtless came to Spinoza through the medieval Jewish philoso- phers. But the content of the scheme unfolds chiefly out of Cartesian doctrines, in whose atmosphere Spinoza lived, wrought and thought. (a) Taking the first or metaphysical portion by itself (first two Parts), we observe that the author begins with Substance, the One, God, and moves from it through Attribute down to Mode. This we call the descent, since we pass from the substantial to the insubstantial, to the vanishing, to the appearance. Still Spinoza has a good deal to say of the Mode, which appears in the form of the individ- ual the material object, the human body and its soul. Properly speaking, these themes belong to Physics, but with Spinoza they are hardly more than a development out of his Metaphysics. It is in the middle of his Second Part that he makes the grand turn to the self-conscious act, or "the idea of mind " (II. 20, 21), though in connection with the body. But in the Third Part he begins to treat of the Emotions, and SPINOZA, WRITINGS. 179 thus to give some validity to the human individ- ual, to whose psychical life the Emotions belong. (b) Distinctively with the Third Part the ascent starts, and continues, with some rever- sions, to the end of the work. Already we have noticed the self-conscious act or the turn of the mind upon itself. A more general assertion of individuality is the following: *' Each thing, in so far as it is in itself, endeavors to persevere in its own being (in suo esse perseverare con- atur" III. -6). Thus the Mode begins to assert itself, " to perservere in its own being" not merely the self -knowing mind, but each partic- ular thing of Nature. In our special exposition we shall unfold quite fully these two main portions of Spinoza's book on Ethics. There we shall try to show the philosophical Norm underlying it and controlling it, through which Norm it becomes truly a Phi- losophy. Specially just this dual character of the Ethics gives Spinoza his distinctive place in the history of the world's thought, and also ranks him in the philosophical movement of the Seven- teenth Century. The chief contents of the Ethics are discussed and ordered in our succeeding section on the Philosopy of Spinoza, to which we refer the reader for further details about this book. 4. Minor Writings. Several of the earlier works of Spinoza have been preserved which show the 180 MODEEN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY, development of his system, particularly as it appears in the Ethics. These works also give us a glimpse of Spinoza's studies of preceding lines of thought. (1) In the first rank must be placed A Brief Treatise on God, Man and the latter'' s Happiness, first published in 1862 in a Dutch translation of the original Latin which has been lost. This little book was probably written some time after Spi- noza tad retired from Amsterdam in 1656, that it might serve as a kind of manual for -his friends and followers. It was not published but quietly passed around in manuscript copies of which two have been preserved in the Dutch language. This fact shows that Spinoza had already his disciples and was forming them into a kind of School, which doubtless met secretly in his abode and received lessons from him in his phi- losophy, which the present work shows to be decidedly in the process of growth. In fact it may be regard as the author's first sketch of his Ethics, showing the same in its bud, undevel- oped, yet the whole coming flower. The most striking point about this book is that it has essentially the same general movement and total organic structure as the Ethics. First it treats of God with whom is joined Nature. Then it passes to man and considers his mind, the kinds of knowing and the passions, till it reaches Happiness and Freedom. The title SPINOZA. WRITINGS. 18 1 itself suggests the general sweep of the Ethics, which also treats of God, Man, the latter 's Hap- piness (or Blessedness). Such is the interesting fact: the germinal Norm of Spinoza's greatest and most mature book must have been present to his mind at the age of 24 or thereabouts. To be sure the work is unripe, undeveloped, man- ifesting a struggle both for thought and ex- pression. Yet herein it has an advantage: it is free of the formal, cramped, geometric method of the Ethics; it has the fresh, keen, dialectical utterance of the young thinker, even if he some- times cuts himself to pieces with his own acute- ness. Besides the general sweep of the Whole, we are surprised at the many points of agreement in details between the two books (it and the Ethics.) Here are Substance, Attribute and Mode, in their line of descent, yet all of them not yet unfolded to what they are in the Ethics. For instance, God is first and before Substance in the Brief Treatise; while Substance is first and before God in the Ethics. This example indi- cates Spinoza's transition from Theology to Philosophy in his two highest categories. The ethical return to God through love, which is also the highest knowledge, is likewise indicated, though not so fully unfolded as in the Ethics. Moreover the union with God through love and the highest knowledge (here the fourth kind) is 182 MODERN E UEOPEAN PHIL SOPHY. immediate, and becomes a sort of Plotinian ecstasy. At this point enters a mystical element into the philosophy of Spinoza, and connects him with the Neo-Platonists and the medieval Jewish philosophers, and with the whole line of pantheistic thinkers from the Alexandrians down to his own time. This line has been quite fully explored by recent commentators on Spinoza in connection especially with the present treatise. In fact, this is the strand of culture which Spinoza had received from Jews who had brought it with them from Spain. (2) Another important minor work is Spi- noza's Commentary on Descartes' Principles of Philosophy ( Principia ) . This shows the second chief strand which entered into and determined Spinoza's philosophy. Descartes was the con- temporary influence working upon Spinoza, while the Short Treatise represents the past, the in- herited stream of thought which came to him chiefly on the ancestral lines of his people's cul- ture. Wholly to be discredited, therefore, are the recent attempts to make Spinoza purely the offshoot of the Jewish-Cabbalistic Medieval think- ers ; if such were really the case he could not have his present position in the modern philoso- phy of Europe. At the same time Spinoza is not exclusively a Cartesian, a literal follower of the master, or simply a later phase of Cartesian- ism, to which view most of the older commenta- SPINOZA. WHITINGS, 183 tors were inclined. In one sense, of course, Spi- noza was a pupil of Descartes, in fact the latter 's greatest pupil, because he was able to develop the master's doctrine into a higher stage which was the next great system of thought in the line of philosophical development. So Spinoza if he is to perform his world-historical task has to go through and get out of Descartes into himself as the philosophical representative of his age. In a general way, therefore, we may see Spi- noza's training to Cartesianism by means of the present book which was first published in 1663 at Amsterdam. The original itself (Descartes' Principia) was not yet twenty years old, hav- ing been published in 1644, also at Amsterdam. Its difficulties evidently called up the private teacher who could expound its doctrines. Such a class of friends intimately gathered round Spinoza for the more thorough study of the work, the outcome being the present exposition. These friends very naturally re- quested its publication (see Spinoza's Letter, IX), as they always do. That it was a familiar subject to him is indicated by the fact that he completed the Second Part of the Principia in two weeks, and gave it " into the hands of my friends" who of course " soon begged me to have it printed." But Spinoza is careful to indi- cate (in the letter just cited) that the book does not contain his own views, which have already 184 MODERN E UROPEAN PHIL SOPHY. become quite different from those of Descartes. Moreover he gives these significant hints about his doctrines seemingly already in manuscript: "Through this occurrence (the aforesaid publi- cation) it may be that some persons who hold the foremost places in my country, will be found who may desire to see what I have written and what I acknowledge as my own, and that they will take care that I can publish them without any danger of inconvenience from the law." It is evident that Spinoza felt that he might be prose- cuted if he published his own works at this time unless he had the protection of some patron powerful in the State. For he always looks to the State for succor against the theological ran- cor of both Jew and Protestant. In the fore- going passage Spinoza was evidently thinking of his Theologico- Political Treatise which was lying in his desk, destined not to see the light till seven years more had passed away. His "acquiescence of spirit" shines forth in some words of the same letter: " If I can obtain no such protection, I shall keep silent rather than obtrude my opinions upon my unwilling fatherland (invita patria) , and render its people hostile to me." This was the fate of Spinoza: he obtained little or no personal fruition of his writings during his life ; but it shows the adaman- tine grit of the man that he would do his work SPINOZA. WHITINGS. 185 anyhow, without recompense in money or honor from his people and his age. In the present work on Descartes Spinoza claims to be merely the expositor, but he is in spite of himself the interpreter. Repeatedly, the ideas of Spinoza creep into the explanation . of Cartesianism especially in the demonstrations. Not well otherwise could it be. For Spinoza is really interpreting a lower stage of Philosophy by a higher; in fact he is pushing the lower into the higher which is his own. Properly this is the chief value of the book : it gives the genesis of Cartesianism into Spinozism, though frag- mentarily, and in part at least unintentionally. One important change he makes purposely: the book of Descartes he transforms completely in its method, and applies to it the geometric manner of exposition. The certainty which 'be- longs to Mathematics he will transfer to philos- ophy, following herein a precept of Descartes, who, however, declined to carry it out himself. Spinoza, accordingly, gets the training for the peculiar form which he imposes upon his Ethics, in his present work. So upon this point he stands quite alone in the History of Philosophy, though herein he is seeking to realize Descartes. Spinoza's comment extends only to the first two Parts of Descartes' book, with a small frag- ment of the Third Part. But there is an appen- dix called " Metaphysical Thoughts," in which 186 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. Spinoza works with a somewhat freer hand upon his Cartesian materials, and throws aside his geometric method. It may also be added that the present book was published the same year that Spinoza left the Collegiants, who were inclined to Cartesianism ; his separation may well indicate that he bad outgrown them, and that he no longer felt at home in his old environ- ment with them. Putting together and comparing the two minor works already designated we observe that the Short Treatise has the tendency to the infinite, to the transcending of alllimits andto the union of man in God, after the Neo-Platonic, pantheistic man- ner; while the Commentary on the Principles of Descartes has quite the opposite tendency, namely, to put limits upon the mind and to thrust the infinitude of thought into a rigid and narrow geometric mold. Both these tendencies in their opposition Spinoza will carry over into his Ethics, making God Himself on the one hand Substance and on the other mathematical. (3) There is a third minor work On the Improvement of the Intellect (De Emendatione Intellectus) , which must likewise be regarded as a preparatory phase of the Ethics. The impor- tance of the Intellect in the scheme of Spinoza is very great. It is the controller, he seeks to make it swallow up the Will. Through it, in its highest form (intuition in the Ethics) man SPINOZA. WRITINGS. 187 beholds the divine act in its creative power creating the world; through it he sees the ultimate truth of things. In the present treatise the Intellect has four kinds of knowing or perception. These four are reduced to three in the Ethics, which fact indi- cates an advance. About this part of his sub- ject Spinoza reflected a great deal ; the kinds of knowledge or the modes of perception he turns over and over in manifold repetition, which we need not repeat here after him. But his strug- gle to co-ordinate the separate activities of the Intellect is very manifest. He seems to feel dimly that just in this Psychology of the Mind, of which Emotion, Will and Intellect are three forms or stages, lay the real germ of his work and of all Philosophy a germ which the future was to develop. But Spinoza and Spinoza's age were not ready for any such development. Still it is impressive to notice that there lurked in one little corner of his philosophical system the germinal movement of the coming Psy- chology. This Treatise remained unfinished, almost as if the author had run upon some obstacle which he could not surmount. We deem it highly probable that what stopped him was the deduc- tion of the geometric method as the proper one for Philosophy. If so, he never reached his object. He had developed this method in con- 188 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. struing Descartes' Prineipia, but he had not grounded it in Reason or Intellect. This seems to be the gap which lies between the present treatise and the Ethics, which simply takes the geometric method for granted and proceeds to apply it without justifying its employment. We conceive that Spinoza, starting without this method in his Improvement of the Intellect, in- tends to pass over into it as the final outcome and attainment of such Improvement. Thus it would be ready for his Ethics. Another point should be noted. The beginning of this treatise is evidently an imitation of Des- cartes' Discourse on Method, as regards form. Spinoza here becomes autobiographical, and narrates his personal experience in his philo- sophical strivings. He tells how he renounced all finite ends, such as Riches, Famine, and Pleas- ure, "for Love toward a thing eternal and infinite," which fills <* the mind wholly with joy" (or with Blessednsss, in the Ethics). " The fixed Good," not the fleeting, was the great end with him. This declares his decided ethical bent, while Descartes sought after a cri- terion for knowing truth from falsehood. More- over Spinoza seeks to impart his end and to '* endeavor that many attain it with me." He longs for a following, he must have a kind of school. On the whole, however, personal experi- ences fit Descartes better than Spinoza, who has SPINOZA. WRITINGS. 189 the tendency, at least in one direction, to make the individual a mere mode or appearance. The Letters of Spinoza can here be only alluded to. They have biographical value, and they also constitute a kind of running commen- tary upon his philosophy, extending from 1661 till a short time before his death. 5. /Summary. If we now look back of the totality of Spinoza's works, we find that they are fragments of one great fragment of a vast philosophic Whole. We may well place the Ethics as the central achievement, but it is a part or fragment round which cluster other frag- ments somewhat in the following order. Pre- paratory to it and showing the genesis of it are the three minor works which have been mentioned. But after it and completing it in its institutional stage are the two Treatises, Politico-Theolo- gical and Political. Still with all these portions added, the Ethics remains incomplete on a num- ber of sides as a system of Philosophy. It is most defective in the matter of Physics, though in this sphere Spinoza has something. The edifice is not finished, though enough has been done to show its colossal proportions. And now we shall attempt to outline this vast philosophic totality which has had the peculiar trait of increasing in influence and importance with the centuries. Spinoza's system does not crumble, but actually grows with time, unfolding 190 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. more and more into completeness, as if it were a Hebrew prophecy moving toward its fulfill- ment. III. SPINOZA'S PHILOSOPHY. There is no sin- gle work of Spinoza's which gives the complete system of his Thought. This has to be put to- gether out of all his Writings, which sprang up according to time and accident. In these Writ- ings is lurking and working a necessary princi- ple, which never comes to a full expression and organization of itself, yet which is the source and impelling power in all of Spinoza's philoso- phizing. He is seeking to formulate the great threefold principle of the Universe, the Abso- lute (or God), the World (or Nature), and Man (or Mind, oul), in his way, or after his concep- tion. It is this Norm, unfolded in an original manner, which makes him the philosopher, for all philosophers must have something in common which causes them to be designated by the com- mon name, philosophers. Spinoza has, there- fore, as his deepest element, the philosophic Norm, not the religious or the psychological, though we shall find that he has much to do with religion connecting him with Past, and with psychology connecting him with the Future. Spinoza is, therefore, the philosopher, and is moved, often unconsciously, by the philosophic Norm, after which the thinking Ego is formu- lating or categorizing the Universe, but it on the SPINOZA. PHILOSOPHY. 191 whole leaves itself out of the fundamental process of its own thought. Spinoza declares the essence of Being (the ousia of the on) to be Substance; yet he, the philosopher, producing in thought this Substance, is himself something very unsub- stantial and vanishing a mere mode ; he is really not a part or stage of his own process. This characteristic, however, he shares with all phi- losophers, since it lies in the very nature of the philosophic Norm, which he employs and of which he is but one expression, namely the Spinozan. This Norm moves through the three stages, which have been generally called Metaphysics, Physics, and Ethics. These are all seen unfold- ing in Spinoza though with different degrees of strength and validity. The place of Physics or the science of Nature as such has a tendency in Spinoza to drop down to a secondary or even a vanishing stage ; still it cannot be left out of the normal development of his system. In fact the thought of Spinoza divides or rather is cleft fundamentally into the two grand divisions, the metaphysical and the ethical, which constitute the profoundest dualism in the Philosophy of the Seventeenth Century. This basic fact we shall seek to make manifest in the following exposi- tion, which, however, proceeds on the lines of the total Norm of the philosopher. 192 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. A. METAPHYSICS. The distinctively metaphysical part of Spinoza's system shows us his bridge out of Descartes to his own original Thought. Everywhere we find Cartesian starting-points both in word and con- cept, till the philosopher takes us by the hand and leads' us over into his own new territory. Spinoza himself did not make this transition all at once. He had first to come to Descartes from his Jewish and other antecedents, linger awhile on the outskirts of the Cartesian temple, then enter it and pass through it in all its details till he finally moved out of it into the promised land of his own genius. Thus Spinoza appropri- ates and then transcends his master, who therein shows himself to be truly a master, being able to rear a pupil who can surpass him. In a general way we can trace his development into, through, and out of Descartes in several of his earlier writings, especially in his Short Treatise and in his commentary on the Principia of the French philosopher. Atlast in his great work, the Ethics, he gave his final statement of this spirit- ual transition from philosophic pupilage to phil- osophic independence a pupilage which lasted probably a dozen years. Not too long is this to assimilate a great system of thought, to carry it out to its consequences in life, and then to mount above it into a world of your own creation. Such SPINOZA. ME TA PHYSICS. 1 93 a movement we may read in the First Part of the Ethics, divested indeed of all personal reference and precipitated into the purest abstractions of Thinking. The categories in which the present metaphys- ical part of Spinoza's system unfolds itself are three Substance, Attribute, and Mode. He seeks to express the pure thought of the All, such as it is in itself, freed from every pre-sup- position. At first he seems to shun the intro- duction of God (though defining Him) ; soon, however, he has to identify God with Substance (Deus sive substantia I. Prop. 11). It will conduce, we think, to a more definite notion of the present sphere, if we cling to the abstract term, Substance, though it is not to be forgotten that Spinoza's deepest trait is to carry everything up into God. I. Substance. This t6rm in its narrow sense applies to the first stage of the present sphere, though in its larger sense it includes the whole sphere, embracing also Attribute and Mode, which are declared to be of Substance. Spinoza, in accord with his geometric method, starts with a definition of Substance: By Sub- stance I understand that which is in itself, and is conceived through itself; that is, the concep- tion of it does not need the conception of some- thing else in order to be formed." Here we are to note the act of conception (the Ego) intro- 13 194 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. duced into the definition of Substance which is that which I must conceive in and through itself, not through another object. This lurking Ego we shall find to be the subtle secret demiurge constructing Spinoza's Philosophy, and then driving it beyond itself into a higher synthesis. At present, however, we are to give the char- acteristics which belong to the conception of Substance, and which are supposed to follow from the preceding definition. (1) Substance is one, indeed the One, and the one only One in the universe. There cannot exist in the universe two or more Substances (I. Pr. 5), for they would limit each other, and thus manifest finitude or determination, which is the negation of Substance. (2) Substance is infinite, indivisible, indeter- minate. These three predicates all express the negative side of Substance as the One, negating the finite, the divisible and the determinate. These latter, however, have really the negative principle according to Spinoza, since they negate Substance (omnis determinatio est nega- tio), which is truly the positive in the universe. (3) Substance is the cause of itself (causa sui). This we place as the third predicate of Substance, though Spinoza gives it as the first definition in his Ethics-. " By self -cause I mean that of which the essence involves exist- ence, or that of which the nature can only be SPINOZA. ME TAPH 7 SIC 8. 1 95 conceived as existent." Thus it combines in one the separate concepts of essence and existence. Self -cause also hints the inner process of division within itself and return to itself, or the Psychosis. The reality corresponding to self-cause is the Ego with its movement into seli-separation and self -return, whose very essence is its existence, whose internality is its externality. Thus Spi- noza defining self-cause and putting it as his start- ing-point, is unconsciously defining the Ego (or Self) as his first principle and the true Sub- stance. This is a great thing to do and prophetic of much that is to follow. There is no doubt, however, that this category of self-cause as metaphysical shows itself imper- fect. It may be said that if a thing causes itself , or is the effect of itself, it has to exist before itself, has to be before its own being in order to be. Even the speculative mind has to take a considerable leap before it can find anything but contradiction in any such statement. Or if the cause is simply one with the effect, it is no cause at all, it vanishes into the effect which in its turn vanishes also since it cannot be without a cause. Such a negative dialectical seesaw lies in the category of self-cause, inviting the skeptical spirit to seize hold of it and to turn it inside out. Still the thought here is true and profound, but it must free itself of its own metaphysical en- tanglements by being grasped and formulated 196 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. psychologically. Taken as a process and as the very process of the Self, the thought is indeed new-born, though it can find traces of its an- cestry in Spinoza's self -cause. It is true that our philosopher does not put an Ego or self -consciousness into his Substance, denying to the same both Intellect and Will which are rather Modes belonging far down in the individual Self, and are hardly worthy of a place in the Supreme One. Nor yet is any such thing possible ; the worth of the individual has not yet fully dawned upon him or upon Europe, and particularly upon that most aristocratic of all sciences, Philosophy. If Spinoza could have put the self-conscious Ego into the heart of his Substance and have wrought it out into a consist- ent system of thought, he would have made a spring out of his own century into ours, which is a feat that the Time-Spirit has never yet per- mitted to mortal man. Still our chief interest is to watch our thought fermenting and struggling already in Spinoza and to trace out of him the descent of our own Age's deepest principle. On the other hand there is a decided backward tendency in Spinoza's Substance. These predi- cates of it remind us of Neo-Platonism, es- pecially of Plotinus, whose one only One was also above self -consciousness, was above Intellect and Will, above all determination, finitude, and separation ; yet somehow mind .and matter had to SPINOZA. METAPHYSICS. 197 separate from it and overflow out of it, becoming individualized in soul and body, like the Modes of Spinoza (see our Ancient European Philosophy, pp. 618-23). Pantheism this doctrine is usually named a much-abused and uncertain designa- tion. But it shows an important strand of the past running through Spinoza which connects him with Jewish writers of the middle ages, who in turn reach back to the Greek Neo-Platonists, and still further back to earlier Alexandrian thinkers, such as Philo. Still Spinoza took his Substance directly from Descartes, to whom it came from the schoolmen. In fact we can plainly see our philosopher rising above his master and removing a fundamental dif- ficulty in the Cartesian conception of Substance which is said to be of two kinds, uncreated and created, the latter being likewise of two kinds, mind and matter, whose attributes are Thought and Extension. Descartes holds that God alone is really Substance, which term has not the same meaning when applied to created objects. Still Descartes, after having made the distinction, does not use it, but continues to speak of Thought and Extension as Substances along with God. This ambiguity Spinoza avoids by employ- ing the term Attributes for Thought and Exten- sion as derived from the underived One, namely, Substance or God, and by giving them a distinct place in the metaphysical sphere of his system. 198 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. That is, he wipes out mind and matter (the created Substances of Descartes), but preserves their Attributes, and applies these directly to the one uncreated Substance. II. Attributes. It is declared that'* Substance consists of infinite Attributes " (Ethics^. Prop. II.), infinite in character and in number. Here we see a separative principle pertaining to Sub- stance, and endowing it with infinite division. This is what places the Attributes in the second stage of the present sphere. Spinoza has given a definition of Attribute, as it is one of the things with which he has to start. Says he : " By Attribute I understand that which the Intellect perceives concerning Substance, as constituting the essence of the same." Out of this definition two very different meanings have developed according as the division into Attri- butes is considered to be put into Substance from the outside by the Intellect or to be unfolded from within the Substance itself. (1) Looking into the definition, we observe that the Intellect (or Ego) has to perceive this Attribute, and to find it in Substance, as the essence of the latter. The Attribute is "that which the Intellect perceives," in regard to Sub- stance : in which statement the stress is upon the subjective derivation of the Attribute. A view similar to this is found among medieval Jewish theologians who held that the Attributes of God SPINOZA. METAPHYSICS. 199 (or of Substance) were not the actual determin- ations of God Himself, who was the infinite and indeterminate and so above every Attribute, but were the ways in which the Intellect (or Ego) conceived God or Substance. Such a doctrine may be supposed to have come into Spinoza's life through the religious teachings of his people. (2) Equally certain is it that Spinoza affirms the inner character of Substance as dividing and unfolding itself into many Attributes, which are therefore not merely subjective, but objective, inherent in Substance itself. Infinite in number are the Attributes of Substance, yet we know only two Thought and Extension. That is, we know that there must be an infinite division of Substance, yet we can grasp definitely and name only two of these divisions. But thus Spinoza is aware that he destroys the unity of the infinite One or Substance. He must somehow keep out all division, hence he declares that * * no Attribute can be conceived from which it would result that Substance can divided" (Ethics , I. Prop. 12). Also " a completely in- finite Substance is indivisible" (Ditto, Prop. 13). This Substance Spinoza identifies with God: ' No Substance can exist or can be conceived except God" (Ditto, Prop. 14). Here we see the same struggle to exclude division from the One or God which can be observed in Neo-Pla- tonism. And there is the same failure. Sub- 200 MODERN E UEOPEAN PHIL SOPHY. stance must be deemed as passing over into its Attributes, separating within itself and positing itself in infinite forms of which we can know only two, Thought and Extension. But how about these two? Between them is the grand difference, as between mind and matter, soul and body. Here again we see Spinoza working over a phase of the Cartesian dualism. Thought and Extension are indeed infinite, but they are relatively infinite, not abso- lutely infinite like Substance. Still further they mutually exclude each other as opposites. This is the gulf: " Body does not determine mind to think, nor does the mind determine the body to move" (Ethics III, Prop. 2). Still the two must and do co-operate ; mind must ideate the object, and the object must stimulate the mind. Or is all knowing of the object a Maya, a mere subjective delusion? So Orienial thinkers have held, but Spinoza, to avoid such a conclusion, introduce his conception of parallelism (named also correspondence and consubstantiality). (3) This is uttered by Spinoza in one of his most striking propositions : The order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of objects" (II, Prop. 7). But what causes this complete correspondence be- tween two opposite and mutually exclusive pro- cesses? " Substance thinking and Substance extended are one and the same thing," namely SPINOZA. ME TAPHYSICS. 201 Substance as such, which is thus the cause and first source of the two Attributes, Thought and Extension. These run exactly parallel though wholly independent of each other, and must manifest a divine correspondence "in their order and connection." This is another phase of Spinoza's evolution out of Descartes, who made God solve the dual- ism between Thought and Extension by direct fiat, hence externally. But Spinoza solves the same problem by the inner unfolding of God's own nature God being Substance. It is not God's Will, for God has no Will according to Spinoza, but it is His very Being which issues into Thought and Extension, opposite yet in complete correspondence through Him. They are consubstantial , moving in harmony not through themselves but through their first cause which is Substance. We now see the real purpose of the doctrine of the Attributes : it is to unite Thinking and Being, Mind and Matter, Soul and Body through the principle of correspondence, or, to use the better word, consubstantiality. It is still the grand question which was especially started by Descartes : How can I know the external world? Long will the discussion hold out; it is still going on. But Spinoza has given his answer, and from it will un- fold his system of Philosophy, which will show 202 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. an inner necessity interlocking the whole uni- verse. His Ego thinking the object is really the thinking Substance which at the same time is the object thought in exact counterpart (ordo idea- rum est idem ac ordo rerum) without a break. Hence Spinoza's pantheism can hardly be said to maintain the doctrine of the Maya, or the world's illusion, as does the Hindoo pantheism. Still it has great difficulties which have been uncovered by critics and have driven philosophic thought out of Spinoza into other and later sys- tems. Some of these difficulties we shall men- tion in other connections ; but there is one which may well be considered now. Though Substance determines Thought, as it were absolutely, Spi- noza's Thought is certainly here determining Sub- stance, thinking that which thinks it or posits it as thought. Spinoza's Ego is, therefore, a very important factor in the present exposition, for it returns to the Substance which creates it, re- creating the same in Thought, and requiring all his readers to do likewise. Kenlly, then, the function of Substance is to unfold an Attribute (Thought) which is to unfold it unfolding into its Attributes. Spinoza's Ego secretly projects the God who makes him, yet makes him the God- maker. Such is again that demiurgic Ego lurk- ing in Spinoza's and in all Philosophy, driving it forward from one system to another, and finally SPINOZA. METAPHYSICS. 203 driving it out of itself, and perchance out of Europe. The important point won by Spinoza in the doctrine of Attributes is the principle of consub- stantiality in Thought and Extension. It will furnish the ground of explanation for all dualism in the world of manifestation which is next to be considered under the category of Modes. Properly the Attributes have no individuals, no consciousness, no Self. This is what is next to appear. III. Modes. These are changes from Substance, since they exist not in themselves (like Sub- stance) but through another. Yet they belong to the All, are determinations of Substance (affectiones substantial) . Spinoza has given the definition of Mode as follows: "By Mode I understand determinations of substance, or that which exists in another, through which (other) it is conceived." (Ethics I. Def. 5.) In an opposite way the definition of Substance declares it to be " that which exists in itself and is con- ceived through itself." Mode is, therefore, Substance determined, finitized, individualized; still there is an infinite side to Mode (infinite Modes, as Spinoza says). Motion, for instance, is a Mode of Substance being infinite, without end or beginning, yet this general motion (infinite Mode) is made up of many particular Motions (finite Modes) which arise and pass away. In 204 MODERN E UROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. like manner all the particulars of Intellect (in- finite Mode) such as perception, memory, imagi- nation, are finite Modes when taken sepa- rately, and are transitory. The links of the chain are finite Modes, but the total chain is the infinite Mode. Or, to take another illustration, the genus is Mode as infinite, while the individ- uals constituting the genus make the Mode as finite and transitory. Spinoza repeatedly speaks as if the Universe was made up of Substance and Modes ; what then, is the function of the Attributes? It is to divide Substance into two mutually exclusive spheres, Thought and Exten- sion, which have no connection, no relation with each other. They can be made to correspond only through Substance, which thus determines them. On the other hand each Attribute has its. divisions also which are called Modes, that is determinations or modifications of the Attribute, and through it of the Substance. But the further fact is that the division of the Attribute, namely the Modes of that Attribute, are not mutually exclusive. For instance, the divisions of Thought as Attribute are Intellect and Will, which even in their difference as faculties or mental activities, are united in the mind. In like manner the divisions of Extension such as Motion and Rest, can have direct relations to each other, though not to Thought or any of its divisions. SPINOZA. METAPHYSICS. 205 Thus the original rift remains, passing from Substance, through the Attributes down into the Modes. Each Attribute has, therefore, within itself a world of Modes, all of which stand in connection with one another, but not in any connection with the Modes of a different Attri- bute. Thus the Modes constitute two independ- ent worlds, except as they are mediated with each other through Substance, which is the supreme determiner. Spinoza seems at first to have had only two stages in this metaphysical process Substance and Modes. But he interjected the Attribute in order to win his doctrine of consubstantiality which explains the Cartesian dualism of Thought and Extension as well as settles definitely the function of Substance. Then he could fix more precisely the significance of the Mode, which is (1) finite, or the world of separate individuals; (2) these constitute the Mode as infinite, when joined together as genus; (3) the Mode is also consubstantial, coming into relation with the Mode of a different Attribute through the me- diation of the Highest, namely Substance. Here, in the Mode, another Cartesian dualism, that of mind and body, is explained in Spinozan fashion. Mind and body are Modes, the one of Thought and the other of Extension; " the mind cannot determine the body to move, nor can the body determine the mind to think " (III. Prop. 2). 206 MODERN E UBOPEAN PHILOSOPHY. Still mind and body are consubstantial; both are determined in their order and connection by Substance. In Descartes it is properly the fiat of God which makes soul and body co-operate, uniting the unextended and the extended through and in the pineal gland. Looking back at the three stages of the meta- physics of Spinoza's Philosophy Substance, Attribute, and Mode we observe that each of them goes back to Descartes and is employed to solve a problem which he left unsolved, at least unsolved for Spinoza. The latter builds upon Cartesian foundations, but seeks to transcend his master, calling to his aid antecedent Jewish and Neo-Platonic philosophers, though in his own independent way. We see Spinoza breaking through Descartes into himself in the foregoing metaphysical development; he rises from pupil- age to mastery. It is usually felt that there is a process in these three categories. Hegel looks at them in this light, and regards them as the forerunners of his own three categories of the Conception (Begriff), namely the Universal, the Particular, and the In- dividual. Still further, there is the suggestion of the psychical process (Psychosis), though it is by no means distinct and consciously present to Spinoza, who would keep the self-conscious Ego out of Substance and Attribute, putting it down into the realm of the Modes, though certainly not SPINOZA. ME TAPHYSICS. 207 extinguishing it in Substance. Still the Ego of Spinoza (as already pointed out) is the chief factor in constructing this entire system, though thrust down to the bottom of the system which it has built. Thus Spinoza, while solving the dualisms of Descartes, has fallen into a far deeper dualism himself, the nature of which will be more fully seen when we come to his final or Ethical stage. Still in the Mode we can spy out a partial re- turn to and participation in the primal Substance. For when Spinoza speaks of an infinite Mode, he applies to this Mode a predicate which he has already assigned to Substance. In spite, therefore, of the emphatic descent of Substance to Mode, quite like the Neo-Platonic lapse, there is also a line of ascent and return of the latter to the former, even if incomplete. Indeed it would seem that all particular, finite Modes can rise to the genus as infinite and thus share in Substance. Hence the underlying psychical return can be discerned even in the metaphysical stage of Spinoza. But when we include the philosopher in his own process of thought, we find that just this is what he has been doing. Spinoza's Ego, which is Mode, must go back to Substance, and think it, thus creating or at least re-creating it in thought. When he says per substantiam intelligo (I. Pr. 3) he as Ego is defining, thinking, reproducing 208 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. Substance. It is "that which is conceived in itself" by whom? By a Mode (Ego) which has been derived from it. Thus that which is derived or caused, returns to its source or cause, and derives or conceives that. Metaphysically this is a complete contradiction according to Spinoza, for Substance is its own eternal cause and not Mode. But he is unconsciously doing just what he says cannot be done, and is psycho- logically correct in doing so. It has been also noted that the Attribute was the second or divisive stage in the total movement of Substance, psychically conceived. Yet according to the Spinozan metaphysics, Sub- stance is indivisible, indeterminate. And still the Attribute can hardly be other than some kind of determination of Substance. In fact, Spinoza makes the Attribute just the realm of division ; and ultimately what is there to be divided but Substance, the One and All? At least three divisions of these Attributes of Substance appear in Spinoza : ( 1) Attributes are infinite in number, and it would seem in quality. This indicates that the Attribute is the principle of division. Of what else can this be but of Substance? (2) Attributes are further divided into the known and unknown two known, all the rest un- known. This division regards the subject, the Ego, within its supposed limits. (3) The explicit SPINOZA. METAPHYSICS. 209 division of the Attributes is into Thought and Extension. Thus it appears that the Attribute is the realm of division, of multiplicity, for Spinoza ; how then can it lie outside of the All or Sub- stance? Indeed the Attribute of Substance is closely related to the essence of Being, which is the old formula of Philosophy, and which Spi- noza sought to set aside as implying the division of Being (or Substance). For when we say essence, cause, principle of Being, we imply that there is something apart from or behind Being which determines it. Spinoza's Substance is, therefore, its own essence, its own tfause (causa sui) ; it is the One and All in itself. Still it has Attributes, through which alone it can be con- ceived by the Ego, without which therefore, it could not be an object of knowledge. Notwith- standing all of Spinoza's efforts to exclude divi- sion from his Substance, it creeps in and stays, both subjectively and objectively. Here we may allude to a controversy between two famous historians of Philosophy concerning this matter J.E. Erdmann and K.Fischer (both of the Hegelian School). Primarily the dis- pute turns upon the translation of tanquam in Spinoza's definition of Attribute, which is " that which the Intellect perceives concerning Sub- stance as (or as if) constituting its essence (TANQUAM ejusdem essentiam constituens) ." The 14 210 M ODEEN E UE OPE AN PHIL SOPHY. first translation (as) implies that the Attributes are real constituents of Substance ; the second translation (as if) implies that they are appar- ent constituents of Substance, are merely in the perceiving Intellect, not in God. Without going into further details of this discussion, the reader can see at once that both sides are right in a sense and both are wrong in a sense. Spinoza has both in his conception, both the objective and the subjective, both the real and the apparent. This is one phase of his dualism which is not to be wiped out by taking one side or the other. Both the above-mentioned philo- sophic gentlemen are just alike and both wrong in taking antagonistic sides in this matter. We are to see that Spinoza has both sides and both in a process with each other, which process is completed by a third principle (consubstantiality ) which in its way unites both, that is, both object and subject. It is true that this process is not explicitly given by Spinoza, still it is the inner unconscious germ unfolding in his Philosophy. Evidently there is but one solution for all these contradictions in Spinoza: they must be seen as a process, and that too as a psychical pro- cess (or the Psychosis), whose stages if held apart become purely separative and contradictory. For this the manner of Spinoza is largely to blame. He proceeds mathematically, by defini- tion, axiom, postulate. Thus the actual process SPINOZA. METAPHYSICS. 211 is cut to pieces and thrown out bit by bit, which the reader has to put together again if he will form a consistent Whole out of these fragments. The geometric manner starts with the solid real world, and abstracts surface (or plane), line and point, out of which it constructs the new geo- metric ideal world. Spinoza's procedure in Philosophy seeks to be similar ; starting with the Universe it abstracts Substance, Attribute, and Mode, in a descending conscious line to the last, which, however, as Mode (or Point) returns unconsciously to the first and secretly makes the whole a process. In spite of his Metaphysics and Mathematics, Spinoza is psychological under- neath his formalism, and must be ultimately so interpreted. In fact, just this is his greatness and his importance for the future. Spinoza's great aim in his doctrine of Sub- stance is to assail and batter down the capricious God of his time the God of Catholicism and Augustine as well as the God of Protestantism and Calvin. For this reason he has been called an atheist by the theologians, but he is not. By Hegel and others he is named an acosmist, or one who denies the world, but this title also does not fit. Others call him just the opposite, a cosmotheist, others a pantheist, the latter being his most common designation. The im- partial reader will see some ground for all these epithets, yet he will be inclined to reject them 212 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. all as insufficient. For they all leave out that inwardly working psychical process without which Spinoza is pure absurdity and contradic- tion. In fact, the interpretations of Spinoza have made a history of themselves, which we shall allude to more fully in another connection. Is not Spinoza himself somewhat like his own God? The anthropomorphic capricious deity of his people had driven him forth like Hagar, to the wilderness, out of his Hebrew world. But he finds not a wilderness, not a Godless realm; jmthe contrary, he possesses the inner power to reconstruct the whole universe and to re-make its God, who in this- new domain cannot be capri- cious, or even transcendent like the Cartesian deity. God is now immanent in the world, works according to His law and nature by an inner necessity which banishes caprice from the universe. God is a geometric movement and requires no special Will or Intellect in unfold- ing. Such is the colossality of Spinoza's thought, truly absolute and all-comprehending. But it also shows great limitations, having no explicit process, DO Ego, no self -consciousness in its metaphysical aspect. The result is, Spinoza's thought shows within itself on its descending side inner self -opposition and disintegration, which finally compels it to overcome itself and rise to its opposite. SPINOZA. PHYSICS. 2 13 The outcome then of the preceding metaphysi- cal movement is the absoluteness of Substance, which not only determines the world but is the world. This Substance is God, who is therefore immanent in Nature, is really Nature, so that Spinoza says Deus sive Natura. This brings us to the second grand division of the philosophic Norm, Nature, which we are now to see through the eyes of Spinoza. B. PHYSICS. In this sphere Spinoza connects with, yet also separates from Descartes. Both consider the essence of the material world to be Extension ; but Descartes makes Extension an Attribute of Matter as a created Substance, while Spinoza makes Extension directly an Attribute of the one uncreated (or self-created) Substance, and thus wipes out the intervening Cartesian Matter. Hence we have the statement (II. 2): "Ex- tension is an Attribute of God, or God is an extended thing (res extensa)." In Descartes Extension is material, indeed the Primal Matter; in Spinoza it is " an Attribute of God " who is the Extended, and is not Matter directly, as created by God. At the same time Spinoza asserts that God is indivisible; though *< an extended thing," He cannot be divided; also He is in- corporeal. Still He is Substance, is the All, the 2 1 4 MODERN E UEOPEAN PHIL SOPHY. self -caused. The divided, the corporeal, the material world would thus seem to be insub- stantial, illusory, a mere Appearance. Such is one side, the metaphysical of Spinoza, which, being carried over into Physics, reduces this science to be a kind of unreal phantasm. But there is another side to Spinoza, just the oppo- site, in fact, and these sides are seen grappling just in the present field of Nature. It is evident that the system of Spinoza in strong contrast to that of Descartes, cannot present a very sympathetic face to Physics, the second stage of the philosophic Norm, the one dealing with Nature, the finite world of phenomena. " Particular things are Modes, by which the Attributes of God (Thought and Extension) are expressed in a certain and determinate man- ner.' (I. 25. cor.) The realm of Physics is specially the realm of " particular things," which have not only no existence, but n essence ex- cept in God. Thus a finite object has no reality in itself, as is inferred from the following : " God is not only the efficient cause of the existence of things, but also of their essence " (I. 25) ; or their true essence, the essence of essences, is God. * A thing which has been determined by God for performing something cannot make itself undetermined" (I. 27). Still less can it be self-determined. Such is the expression of Spinozan necessity. All forms of particularity SPINOZA. PHYSICS. 215 are Modes having neither essence nor existence in themselves, but having only an apparent, illusory being through our way of conceiving them. *' In the Universe there is nothing con- tingent, but all is determined from the necessity of the divine nature to exist and to act in a certain manner." (I. 29.) It is, then, the essence of God to produce things which have no essence. But just here Spinoza makes a peculiar dis- tinction. Every particular finite thing is not determined by God directly, but by another cause which is itself finite and determined; still further this finite cause is determined by another finite cause, and so on indefinitely (I. 28). Thus the whole determined finite world of causation is separated from God, who does not immediately finitize himself, but through some medium. From the absolute (as God or his attributes) only the absolute follows, and from the finite only the finite. How can the chasm be crossed from infinite to finite, from God to the world? On the whole, the chasm is not crossed, the dualism remains and is profoundly characteristic of Spinoza. Still he often seems aware of it and makes a struggle to unite the two sides as follows: "The finite thing must result from and be determined to existence and activity by God or one of his Attributes, in so far this Attribute is modified by a modification 216 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. which is finite and has determinate existence " (I. 28, Dem). So the Attribute (and God, too, it would seem) can be modified in turn by a Mode, or a finite modification. Very important is this suggestion for the coming portion of Spinoza's system. We also read that a Mode can " exist necessarily and as infinite " (whereby there are two kinds of Modes at least, and quite opposite), and that such a Mode " can be derived either from the absolute nature of some Attri- bute of God, or from some Attribute modified by some modification, which exists necessarily and as infinite" (I. 23). All these fine distinctions show one thing very decisively: Spinoza's tre- mendous struggle to keep his God one and above all division, and yet to find some ground for the multiplicity of Nature, of the finite world, and its existence. He recognizes that the Mode (or a certain form of it) can go back and modify its modifier, the Attribute, and even God, as we shall see more fully later. Already let the reader carefully note this turning- back of the Mode, its reaction against the iron chain of necessity in which it has been placed hitherto. So Spinoza in his treatment of Nature will have to give some substantality to finite things even if he proclaims also their insubstantial character. Though it be merely a modification of the Attribute, it is at times endowed with the SPINOZA. PHYSIC 8. 2 1 7 power of modifying the Attribute. Though the finite, determined object is simply a negation, yet it " is really a negation in part " not altogether (I. 8, Schol. 1). Then this negation is not to be left out, it belongs to the universe, and can- not rightly be omitted from Substance or God, though Spinoza hardly knows what to do with it. His trouble with the finite is indeed fundamen- tal, he will always be driving it out, yet always letting it back again in spite of himself. After being banished from his process, it will secretly assert itself as a part of that process. The twofoldness will particularly show itself in his Physics, which we may look at under three heads: Extension, Body (as material), and Body (as human, with Soul). I. Extension. As this is one of the two Attri- butes of Substance, and in a general way embraces the material or finite world, we shall con- sider it as first under the head of Physics. Spinoza declares emphatically that his conception of Ex- tension is, different from that of Descartes (in Epist. 69 and 70). For "Descartes makes Ex- tension an inert mass, from which it is impossible to prove the existence of bodies." Furthermore, according to the Cartesian view, God sets this mass in motion, so that motion comes from the outside into it, and is not a Mode of it coming from within, this Extension itself being an At- tribute which comes from Substance. In these 218 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. views we see plainly the distinction between the systems of Spinozaand Descartes. The external mechanical agency of God, so characteristic of the Cartesian Philosophy, Spinoza puts inside the Universe, in fact inside of God, who is thus immanent in all things, even the immanent cause, not transcendent. To be sure, Spinoza will find it quite impossible to carry this thought through his entire system with consistency. We feel his trouble already in the term immanent cause , and also in self -cause. Accordingly, Spinoza holds that Motion and Rest are the modifications of Extension, these being named infinite Modes an expression which has already been noticed and which has given rise to much questioning. Why should the very predicate of Mode, the finite, be suddenly changed to infinite, which is the fundamental predicate of Substance? (I. 8.) Here is an- other instance of that return of the Mode to its starting-point in Substance, whereby the finite is made to partake of the infinite, for. the phrase infinite Mode puts really the two adjectives to- gether, even if opposites. Thus Extension has Motion and Rest and their inter-relation perpetu- ally going on within itself, and herein manifests a kind of self-activity, which, though a Mode, is infinite and so substantial. Undoubtedly Spinoza does not state these two phases of his Mode as two stages of a process, but as two sides of a SPINOZA. PHYSICS. 2 1 9 dualism, which, as far as he goes, remains in unreconciled contradiction. Still less does he see this self -returning activity of his Mode as the very necessity of his own Ego to complete its process in its thinking. Nevertheless it is wonderful to observe how his true philosophic instinct, against his conscious purpose drives him covertly to turn back his separated and estrayed Finite into the Infinite. II. Body (as material) . The corporeal world is one with which Spinoza has little congeniality, being just the manifestation of finitude, multi- plicity, division, all of them hateful categories to the idealist. Yet this Appearance will not van- ish, but persists in being and finally has to be reckoned with. It will somehow creep into the system of thought from which it has been ex- cluded, and usually splits the same wide-open, making that which sought to be monistic pain- fully dualistic. When we come to Body we pass from Exten- sion to Mode, " which" as Spinoza puts it, ' expresses the essence of God, in so far as He is an extended thing (res extensa), in a certain and determinate manner." (II. Def. 1.) Extension, as Attribute, is still infinite, but now in Body as Mode it becomes finite, divided, determined, and really is not, according to the metaphysics of Spinoza, in which all determination is negation. Yet we shall find here too that the particular 220 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. thing, or the finite realm, vanishes on one side, and then rises and returns on the other. The two Modes of Extension already noticed, Motion and Rest, presuppose the material body for their manifestation, hence " all bodies are either in motion or rest " (II. 13 Ax. 1). So it comes that each body in Motion or at Rest is determined thereto by another body in Motion or at Rest, which second body has been deter- mined thereto by still another, and so on indefi- nitely. Thus the physical world presents a very changeful countenance, which Spinoza seems to call * ' the face of the whole universe ' ' (fades tolius universi, Epist. 66) ; this term, however, may include both Attributes, Thought and Ex- tension. But in this totality of all things with their changes is the infinite Mode which is always the same. " We may conceive the whole of Nature to be one individual, whose parts, that is, all bodies, vary in infinite modes without any change of the one total individual." Spinoza says he would unfold this subject more fully, if he were writing specially on body (II. Lemma 1 Schol. 1 ) . It is plain , however , that he conceives of the vast changeful multiplicity of Nature as one internally self -developing totality, the same beneath all its mutations. To put now the stress upon the particular element, we may cite the pivotal Proposition (V. 24) : The more we understand particular SPINOZA. PHYSICS. 22 1 things, the more we understand God," who is their " efficient cause " as to both their existence and essence. So if we grasp the totality of things as " one individual" self -moving within itself, or as " the face of the total universe," we may see God by the act of intuition (which is the third stage of knowledge, to be set forth hereafter). Herein we observe that the supreme act of the Intellect is to bring back the separated particular thing to its unity with the All. Moreover, Spinoza distinctly marks an ele- ment which is '* equally in the part and in the whole" (ceque in parte ac in toto), which is the unifying principle between the All and its particulars, or between the Infinite and Finite, or between Substance and Mode. It is this element which is " common to all things," and which is " equally in the part and in the whole," which, therefore, has to be " conceived ade- quately," or " represented by an adequate idea in the mind," if we are to think the world aright (see II. 38-39). Again Spinoza catches a glimpse of a very fruitful thought, which would unify his whole system if carried out completely, but having taken a peep he drops back into his dualism. He certainly declares that if the mind is to reach truth, it must see "that which is equally in the part and in the whole." To be sure he does not tell us what this is, nor indicate that it is a process, nor even remotely hint that 222 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. it is the mind's own proeess. He belongs to the middle of the 17th century and leaves profound suggestions which are to be developed by those philosophers who come after him . We say that when he seems on the point of rising out of his contradiction and dualism, and states the very principle of such a rise, he drops back and affirms just the opposite. Let us look at one of his Propositions (II. 37), already touched upon in the present connection: " That which is common to all, and which is equally in the part and in the whole does not constitute the essence of any particular thing (nullius rei singu- laris)." Now it seems to us that just the opposite is the true statement, namely, " that which is equally in the part and in the whole " is just the element " which does constitute the essence of the particular thing," and of all par- ticularity. At the same time it is plain that if Spinoza had made any such statement, he would have contradicted the outcome of his entire pre- ceding metaphysical movement, which ends in the illusory, negative character of the finite or par- ticular world, as the realm of Modes. So much for the material body in Nature, which shows the Spinozan characteristic of the open lapse into, yet the secret return out of, vanishing finitude. The explicit descent of Nature into nothingness is counteracted by its implicit ascent into participation with Substance. SPINOZA. PHYSICS. 223 But now we come to the Human Body with its Soul, in which field Spinoza develops a dis- tinctive movement of his own. III. Body (human, with Soul or Mind). The relation of Body and Soul (the latter is often called mens by Spinoza), as a philosophical ques- tion was inherited directly from Descartes. Body and Mind are correlates, consubstantial. " The human Mind must perceive all that takes place in the Body." Spinoza seems to conceive at first an immediate unity or rather consub- stantiality between Mind and Body. . The human Mind is adapted for perceiving many things," namely all the modifications of its Body (II. 14). Thus the Body shows its nature, since it can stimulate the Mind, indeed this is what makes the Body human. " The idea of any Mode in which the Body is affected from external bodies, must involve the nature of the human Body" (II. 16). That is, the human Body, being stimulated from without finds an immediate response in the Mind, which response is an idea. The human Body is thus a kind of medium between external bodies and the idea of them in the Mind. " If the human Body is affected in a manner which involves the nature of the external body (material), the human Mind will contemplate this external body as actually existing or as present to itself " (II. 17). This is Spinoza's view of sense-perception, which 224 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. brings into the consubstantial process of Body and Mind the outer world of material objects. Hence follows an important conclusion: "The human Mind does not know body itself, not even that it exists, except through the ideas of that body's modifications " (II. 19). A great history lies in this statement, nothing less than the Kantian Thing-in-itself , of which all knowledge is denied. Already in Descartes a similar germ of denial can be found. Both philosophers, how- ever, fall back upon God to vindicate the reality of the objective world: Descartes upon divine veracity, Spinoza upon divine Substance in and through whom " the order of ideas is the same as the order of things." But when the Eight- eenth Century has undermined this divine inter- ference of the Seventeenth Century, Hume and Kant will shine forth in all their skeptical glory. This central position of the human Body, lying between the idea and the outer material world, is dwelt upon quite fully by Spinoza (in the Sec- ond Part of his Ethics) . It is a fresh elaboration of the Cartesian doctrine of Body and Soul from the new standpoint of consubstantiality. The mediating God between these opposites is no longer transcendent, outside of them, but imma- nent, within them, and they in Him. As in Descartes, so in Spinoza, the primary stage of the human Mind (or Soul) as the ideal correlate of the human Body belongs to the stage of SPINOZA. PHYSICS. 225 Physics, inasmuch as the latter shows it deter- mined by the Body which is, therefore, his start- ing-point in the present sphere. " The object of the idea constituting the human mind is the Body" (II. 13). The Body is the object or thing (mode of extension) which gives the primal idea constituting the mind. "Thus we know the human mind to be not only united to the Body, but also what is the nature of such union." ' But no one will be able to understand the mind adequately or distinctly without first adequately knowing the nature of our Body." (Do. Schol.) So the Body furnishes the primal content of mind, in a manner determining the same, not directly but through Substance or " in God." Wherefore it comes that if we would find out the difference between the Mind and other things, " it is necessary for us to know the nature of the Mind's object, namely the human Body." And in general, "the first element con- stituting the actual existence of the human Mind is the idea of some particular thing actually ex- isting." (II. 11.) In these passages the drift is that the human Body comes first, determining and stimulating the mind to an idea, < which is a concept of the mind as the thing which thinks (res cogitans)" (II. Def. 3). But Mind and Body are wholly separate, hav- ing no direct connection according to Spinoza. 15 226 MODERN E UROPEAN PHIL SOPHY. Hence the question arises, How can the Body get to be an object of the Mind, or of an idea? This carries us back to Substance or God whose attributes are Thought and Extension. Now Mind is a mode of Thought, and Body is a mode of Extension ; of these two modes God is the essence, cause, source, or the whole of which they are apart. '* Hence it follows that the human Mind is a part of the infinite intellect of God. So, when we say the Mind perceives this or that object, we affirm nothing else than that God (not in so far as he is infinite, but in so far as he is unfolded by the nature of the human Mind), has this or that idea." (II. 11. Cor.) Perception is, therefore, the act of Mind re- ceiving from God the idea of Body. Yet all this must take place in God, who does not move the Mind from the outside to know the Body which would be to fall back into Cartesianism, though some of Spinoza's expressions cannot escape this charge. Here it is that the principle of consubstan- tiality plays its part. The human Mind (as a mode of Thought) and the human Body (as a mode of Extension) are consubstantial : they have or share in the common Substance which is God, who has the two attributes (Thought and Extension), which are therefore of one Sub- stance (consubstantial). This is Spinoza's method of getting rid of the external causation SPINOZA. PHYSIOS. 227 of God, making the latter immanent, in con- trast to the Cartesians. Body is ideally in the Mind, and so can stimulate it in and through the common Substance which causes the idea of Mind as the correlate of the Body. Mind and Body thus correspond and are united, but they can no more interpenetrate than can the obverse and reverse sides of a coin, whose common material (also popularly called substance) holds them indissolubly together. In general, the Body as a mode of Extension determines, through God by the principle of consubstantiality, the Mind as a mode of Thought. This principle is declared in the statement, " the order of ideas is the same as the order of things" (II. 7), the ideas follow- ing the things in and through the common Sub- stance. But now comes a great change. Spinoza be- gins to speak of " the idea or cognition of the Mind ' ' by itself ( II. 20) , or the Mind as self -know- ing, self-conscious. To be sure such an idea ' ' fol- lows in God," and is to be referred to God " in the same manner as was the idea of Body . ' ' This can hardly mean other than that God or Substance is self-conscious. Moreover " this idea of Mind is united to Mind in the same way that Mind is united to Body " (11.21). Mind is thus its own Body and has its own idea of itself, " in and through God." Here we see the principle 228 MODERN E U ROPE AN PHIL OSOPH T. of consubstantiality passing over into the prin- ciple of Self -consciousness, in which the mind becomes its own content (or body). "For the idea of the Mind and the Mind itself are one and the same thing, conceived under one and the same attribute, that of Thought." But Spinoza assigns no such power to Body, namely of turn- ing back upon itself and knowing itself. Here, then, is the point at which the true separation of Mind from Body takes place, for Mind bends around (so to speak) away from Body and takes up itself. ' For as soon as any person knows anything, he knows that he knows, and at the same time he knows that he knows that he knows, et sic in infinitum." (II. 21, Schol.) Here Spinoza appeals directly to the self-con- scious Ego as the ultimate. Yet he does this covertly, as it were, nodding; when he wakes up fully, the self-conscious act must follow in and through God. The self-activity of the idea he also affirms, for we are not to think " the idea to be something dumb or inactive (mutum) like a picture on a tablet, but a mode of thinking, the act of intellect itself." (II. 43, Schol.) But with this transition of Mind (Ego, Soul) from consubstantiality to self- consciousness, wo have passed out of the realm of Physics with its three stages of Extension, of Body as material, and of Body as human with Mind. In each of these stages we have watched the secret pro- SPINOZA. PHYSICS. 229 cess lurking and working in the abstract, dis- joined formulas of the philosopher forcing his concrete thought into his geometric mould. At last we have touched bottom in the long descent from Substance, and found the self-conscious Mind, whose very nature is self -returning, and which can now start the grand return and restora- tion to the Supreme One, whence has been the lapse. That is, we have reached the ethical or more particularly the psychological stage whose very essence is the self-conscious Ego. Pro- tracted and possibly tedious has been the philo- sophic flight downwards through Metaphysics and Physics, since the latter with its basic attribute of Extension is but an appendage of the former. But we have struck the mighty recoil of the Self wherewith a new movement and a new world must begin. It is true that Spinoza does not explicitly say this, but rather the contrary. " The being of Substance does not pertain to the essence of man " for man is but a mode of an attribute of Substance, and hence two removes from the latter. He, therefore, has no substantial being, really no divine participation, since " Substance does not constitute the form (actuality) of man." Spinoza uses also the argument that Substance would have to be divided were it individualized in men. " There is but one Sub- stance but there are many men," which multi- 230 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. plicity makes them insubstantial (see II. Prop. 10, with Scholia and Corollary). Moreover the activity of the Mind (intellectus actu) in will, desire, love, must be referred to passive nature (natura naturata), not to active nature (nalura naturans or Substance). Indeed there is no Will as free cause or as self-determined, but only as determined (I. 31, 32). Still the mind turns back upon itself, is not only idea of Body (-consubstantial), but is also idea of mind or idea of idea (self-conscious). It is true that God determines man to this act, which can only mean that God determines man to be self-determined. We may repeat that just at this point is the grand turn in Spinoza, the turn from the metaphysical to the psychological and ethical. Not, however, does he show these as the two great stages in the process of the Universe; he has no such process except far down in his unconscious Self. Hence these two stages remain explicitly two and thus con- stitute the dualism of Spinoza, and also that of his Century, and more remotely that of all Philosophy. C. ETHICS. To his chief philosophical work Spinoza gave the name of Ethics, as if he deemed its essential character to be ethical in the widest sense. We SPINOZA. E THICS. 23 1 hold that this view of his book is correct. Un- doubtedly it has two very marked portions, the metaphysical and the ethical, which we have named the descent from Substance to Mode (as self-conscious individual), and the ascent from Mode to Substance. Under the first head we can in a general way place the first two Parts of the Ethics, under the second head the last three Parts. This second portion, the ethical, contains almost twice as much matter as the first, which fact goes to show where Spinoza placed his chief stress. To be sure the dividing line cannot be sharply drawn, the two sides often overlap and intermingle; still the division holds in the main. In this connection another curious fact may be mentioned : the interpreters of Spinoza have generally emphasized his metaphysical side, and have thrust into the background or quite left out his ethical side. Look into the great historians of Philosophy : they give a very full exposition of Substance, Attribute, and Mode, dwelling upon Spinoza's so-called pantheistic view of the world. But when they come to his ethical side, their exposition is brief, often confused, and, as far as our knowledge of them goes, always un- cor related with the rest of the system. No single expression about Spinoza has been cited oftener and with more approval than the com- parison of a celebrated historian of Philosophy who says that Spinoza's system is a lion's lair 232 MODERN E UEOPEAN PHIL SOPHY. which many footsteps enter, but from which none are ever seen to emerge. That is true only of the metaphysical side, but just the opposite is true of the ethical side, which is just the emerg- ence of the individual from the lion's lair and the capture of the lion. And Hegel would never have declared that Spinoza conceives only of Substance and not of Subject if he had fully seen and realized the ethical movement of his great predecessor. In fact the German inter- pretation has chiefly seized upon the metaphysical (pantheistic) element of Spinoza with a national predilection. On the other hand certain British thinkers have begun recently to put stress upon his ethical side. It would seem that the two great elements of Spinoza's system divide also the Teutonic race into its two chief branches, the one of which dwells upon his absolutistic impe- rial Substance swallowing the individual, the other of which selects the individual making himself valid by his ethical return to and repro- duction of Substance. Are not these traits true respectively of the German and Anglo-Saxon, and also true of their institutions? Still Spinoza must be seen to have both sides not one or the other, but both. Briefly stated, the content of Spinoza's Ethics is the return to God. There is no doubt that we find in his book the ethical sweep upward, and that this is the chief strength and great- SPINOZA. ETHICS. 233 ness of it. Herein our philosopher follows the Norm originating in Plato and Aristotle, both of whom have a sphere of Ethics which brings man back to the Idea, or to the Absolute, or to God. The Neo-Platonists in their system show the same ethical return to the Supreme One. The Spinozan form of this return is now what we are to study with some care and fullness, as it is the profoundest fact of his Philosophy. We may again recall to our reader that here lies the third and completing stage of the pro- cess of the All (the Pampsychosis). Really Spinoza, the Mode, returns and reconstructs the God who made him merely Mode. The ethical movement of Spinoza, as we con- template it in the present connection, shows three leading stages, the psychical, the moral, and the institutional, to each of which we shall devote some details. I. THE PSYCHICAL ELEMENT. Already in Physics the psychical element has been intro- duced under the head of Mind, which Spinoza represents as consubstantial with Body, the lat- ter being the stimulator or determinant of the former " in God." But that peculiar power which the mind has of turning back upon itself in its own activity (idea mentis, or even idea idece in Spinoza's terms) is the great act of separation from the Determined, and the beginning of the Self-determined. Here, then, is the starting- 234 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. point of Ethics proper, which science, however, will often have to go back to the unconscious, un- free, determined state of the mind in order to take its bearings and to grasp consciously its problem. For this return of the mind upon itself is the mediating stage of its return to God, which is the purpose and culmination of the ethical move- ment in Spinoza. " The human mind has an adequate knowledge of the eternal and infinite essence of God" (II. 47). Thus the individual as Mode, being able to know himself "in and through God after the same manner in which he knows the human body " (II. 20), goes back in turn to God, the source of his own self-knowing, and knows Him " in His eternal and infinite essence." We see here the round of spiritual existence which hovers before Spinoza in the present case : If God produces self-conscious man , the latter must return to and reproduce God, This process plays a most important part, usually under the name of Love: "The intellectual Love of the mind for God is part of the infinite Love wherewith God loves Himself ' ' (V. 36). Thus God is conceived as the infinite process of Love, of which man with his intellectual Love of God, is a stage or necessary link whereby " God loves Himself with an infinite intellectual Love " (V. 35). Accordingly we find moving through Spinoza's work and joining together (though not systematic- SPINOZA. ETHICS. 235 ally) three psychical stages which represent the fundamental process of the Mind or Ego, both human and divine. These stages are first the Mind as unconscious, as moved from without, as Feeling, Emotion, Passion; secondly the Mind as moving outwards, determining the world, sepa- rating within and going forth, as Volition, Will; thirdly the Mind as coming back to itself and bringing the world along in knowledge, the self- returning stage, as Intellect, or Understanding in its general sense. These three divisions, which we shall call Emotion or Feeling, Will, and Intellect, are at present recognized as the basis of all Psychology and will be found to be the organizing process of Spinoza's ethical world, though he is always fragmentary and often con- tradictory in his statements pertaining to this sphere. Still if we put together all the pieces, we shall behold his psychical doctrine quite fully elaborated. 1. JZmotion (Peeling). Spinoza has devoted the Third Part of his greatest work, the Ethics to the Origin and Nature of the Emotions, which he calls affects of the Mind (a word found in older English, for instance in Shakespeare). He specially claims originality in his treatment : " Nobody, as far as I know, has determined the nature and power of these affects, nor on the other hand the ability of the mind for moderating them.'* He cannot, however, pass by the work 236 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. done in this field by Descartes, who " believed the mind to have absolute power over its actions," and who sought "to unfold human affects (passions) into their primary causes " and also " to point out the way by which the mind can obtain absolute dominion over the passions." Now Spinoza does something very similar and on similar lines. Still he declares his opinion that Descartes " shows nothing but the subtlety of his great genius." This is a curious statement on the part of Spinoza. The reader if he will compare the Third Part of the Ethics with Descartes' Pas- sions of the Soul, will find a striking likeness in thought, purpose, and movement of the two works (see some points of comparison on a pre- ceding page ). And Spinoza is here like Descartes in asserting his exclusive originality. Spinoza too seems to have no idea that he, however original he may be, is but a stage in the grand evolution of Philosophy. He regards his thought as isolated, purely individual, like unto itself and unto nothing else, as did also Descartes in reference to his work. Such a view seems to the present time not only a mistake in doctrine but a piece of personal vanity. But we are to recollect a very significant difference between us and them : our culture has passed through the training of the ^Nineteenth Century, which is, in the movement of all Philosophy, just the evo- SPINOZA. ETHICS. 237 lutionary Century. This fact is to be set forth in its fullness later on, but now we are to note that evolution, both spiritual and physical, both Hegel's and Darwin's, has become thoroughly ingrown in the mental fibre of our period. Very different in this respect was the Seventeenth and also the Eighteenth Century. At present it is only the uncultivated genius who will deem his idea wholly original and newly descended from heaven, and will talk like Descartes and Spinoza, unpretentious as the latter was in most respects. In his doctrine of Emotion Spinoza starts from the proposition : " Each particular thing, in so far as it is in itself, strives to persist in its own being" (III. 6). For the particular thing is a mode by which an attribute of God is expressed in a determinate way, hence it manifests the power and being of God. Moreover ' Nothing can be destroyed except by a cause which is ex- ternal to itself " (III. 4), for each thing in itself persists in existence. Still further this quality, this self-persistence in being " is nought but the actual essence of the thing itself " (III. 7). It is evident that in these passages is strongly as- serted the side of the individuality of all exist- ence, its essentiality in contrast to what seemed its delusive appearance and nothingness, as un- folded chiefly in the First Part of the Ethics, or the metaphysical portion. Now we come to a distinction : mind and also 238 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. body have this same principle of self -persistence ; each "strives to persevere in its own being" yet in different manners. This difference lies in the fact that the mind is conscious, while the body is not. * The mind, in so far it has clear and distinct ideas (and hence has activity), and also in so far as it has confused ideas (and hence has passivity), strives to persist in its being for an indefinite duration. Of this striving it is con- scious " (III. 9.) We have already noticed that at this point Spinoza makes his transition out of the physical (idea corporis) into the ethical (idea idece). But now we are to see this gen- eral fact of Ethics applied specially to the sphere of Emotion. Mind as the idea of body modified, returning upon itself and striving to keep its own being in the self-conscious act, is Emotion. Here we have manifestly the following process : First, the start is made with a modification of the Body; secondly Mind is determined by the modified Body to the idea of Body (already set forth under Physics) ; thirdly, Mind asserts it- self against this determination from without in the self -returning (self-conscious) act. Still in this last stage the first content (which is Body modified) remains, yet it no longer merely deter- mines the mind externally, but determines it to determine itself, that is, to be self-determined," " to persist in its own being." Hence we see that the mind in the preceding process is at one SPINOZA ETHICS. 239 stage passive, and at another is active ; wherefore Spinoza says : ' Our mind is partially active, and is partially passive " ; the former, when it has an adequate idea, that is, when it has an idea of itself or is self-conscious ; the latter, when it has an inadequate idea or is merely the idea of body (see III. 1). Spinoza does not define Emotion very connectedly in spite of his careful summary at the end of the Third Part of the Ethics. At the start he calls it " a modification of the body," and also "the idea of such modification " (III. Def. 3). At the end he says : " Emotion which is a passivity (pathema) of the mind, is a con- fused (inadequate) idea," still " the mind affirms the body's power of existence," wherein it must be active (see III, at the conclusion). Putting all these statements together, we may define Emotion as follows : It is the idea of the idea of modified body, having an active, a passive, and an external element in its process. Or we may say : the external world, determining the mind to its primal self-determine.d (self-con- scious) activity, is Emotion. Man in this emotional stage begins to declare himself a free being against the determination of his body, which has also to be present and to be a part of the process. Emotion is produced by the struggle of two forms of self -persistence, that of mind and that of body. This general thought of Emotion Spinoza 240 MODEEN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. develops into three forms which he calls Desire, Pleasure, and Pain, in each of which the modified Body is supposed to stimulate the mind as passive to " persist in its own being," that is, to be active and to assert itself, (a) Desire is the sim- ple immediate act of Emotion, as the effort (conatus) for self -persistence, wherein man is conscious: " Desire is appetite with the con- sciousness thereof " (III. 9, Schol). Desire is primal: ' We do not desire a thing because we think it good, but we think it good because we desire it." In a different statement Spinoza says: Desire is the mind as determined to think of one thing rather than another ' ' through the body's power of existence." (6) Pleasure is the "passive condition (passio) in which the mind moves to a greater perfection" (III. 11, /Schol). Another statement : " Pleasure is that Emotion or passivity of soul, by which the mind affirms a greater power of existence of the body " (III. ad jinem), which would seem to mean a greater perfection ( seethe previous passage) . (c) Pain is " the passive condition by which the mind moves to a lesser perfection," or it is that '* Emotion or passivity of soul by which the mind affirms a lesser power of existence of the body." Such are the three different forms of Emotion in which we see three different modifi- cations of the Body determine the mind as passive to that activity which is called Emotion. SPIXOZA. - ETHIOS. 241 These are the three primary Emotions De- sire, Pleasure, Pain from which Spinoza educes all the other Emotions by combining them and further unfolding them in various ways. For instance, hate and love in their manifold forms are derived from pain and pleasure primarily. Thus Spinoza proceeds to give a treatise on- the Emotions, mentioning and defining each in turn, which exposition takes up the most of the Third Part of his Ethics. It is evident that he is following the work of Descartes on the Passions, who also has his primary and derived forms. Moreover Spi- noza's Emotion is not so very different from Descartes' Passion. Both philosophers conceive the mind or soul as first determined from the outside by body, and then as determining itself in a self-conscious act, at which point, however, Descartes introduces the Will. This with him is the power of choosing either way, and so can yield to Passion or to the external determinant, but on the other hand can subordinate the same through its own self-determined, self-conscious act. It is also at this point that Spinoza takes up the Will which evidently exercised his mind a good deal. At first he only traverses the posi- tion of Descartes, but at last he will be found covertly agreeing with his French predecessor, apparently unconscious of his own evolution. 2. Will. Spinoza's exposition of the Will has 16 242 MODERN EURO rEAN PHIL OSO PHY. this difficulty: he holds its different stages apart, sees their opposition, but not their process. We have already found the same difficulty in other portions of his book. He will deny Free-Will, yet will also affirm Freedom; he will make man's act a part of nature's chain of causation, yet he will also con- ceive man as responsible for his bondage to nature. These contradictions he sometimes puts side by side, apparently without seeing, certainly without expressly unfolding the total sphere or process of which they may be valid parts. We, if we are to understand him fully, have to supply this process though we are always to recognize it as supplied by ourselves. (1) There is no Free-Will. "The mind is determined to will this or that by a cause, which is determined by another cause, and this by still another, and so on in an infinitely regressive series " (II. 48). The Will cannot be separated from the mind as * ' an absolute faculty ; " it is always in the concrete act. "In the mind there is no volition except that which the idea, as idea, involves" (II. 49). Hence the corollary: "Will and Intellect are one and the same." They do not exist apart from the single act of mind ; so that "a single volition and a single idea are one and the same." For the idea is not " like a mute picture on a tablet" (tabula rasa), but is self- SPINOZA. ETHICS. 243 asserting, self -returning (idea idece) through its own inner activity. In this way Spinoza claims that he " has removed the cause of error," which is supposed to lie in the Will (allusion to Des- cartes). All conflicts between Will and Reason he resolves into a difference between adequate and inadequate ideas asserting themselves. Man is but a ' part of nature," a link in the grand concatenation of things. There is certainly a sphere in which we have to grant the validity of Spinoza's view. With every activity of the Intellect is necessarily im- plied Will, otherwise there would be no such activity. The whole mind Feeling, Will, and Intellect is present in some form in every special act of Mind. Volition is at least im- plicitly contained in each thought. But is there no separation of the Will, no distinct activity of it taken by itself? Often Spinoza uses the term conatus sese conservandi and other kindred terms, in order to express the effort of self -per- sistence. This is certainly Will, or self -activity which asserts itself against external determina- tion. (2) There is Free-Will but it is in bondage. Such is the contradiction which Spinoza labors over in many places, but specially in the Fourth Part of his Ethics, w r hich is entitled Concerning Human Bondage. But if there is no Free-Will, man being simply a part of nature in its endless 244 MODERN E UROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. chain of external causation, then there can be no bondage, which word certainly implies that man ideally at least, is free. A stone which falls to the earth by gravitation cannot be said to be enslaved. Only a free being can be enslaved, that is, externally determined against his own nature. Spinoza often acknowledges this fact. In the introduction to his Fourth Part of the Ethics he says in the first sentence : " Man's impotence in moderating and restraining his Emotions (or Pas- sions) I call bondage." Such language can only be used of a man as the Free- Will who suffers himself to be made unfree. Still further : " A man who is controlled by his Emotions is not his own master but is in the power of fortune (ex- ternality) which often compels him to follow the worse when he sees the better." Here is surely a difference be.tween willing and knowing, be- tween intellect and volition. So Spinoza has also the separation of the Will from the Intellect and the possible subor- dination of the latter to the former. But he has likewise the opposite, the subordination of the Will to the Intellect or Reason. That is, Will can have Reason as the content of its activity, whereby it becomes free. (3) There is Freedom. Following the Fourth Part of the Ethics, whose theme is Human Bond- age, is the Fifth Part, whose theme is Human DESCARTES. PHYSICS. 245 Liberty. This is stated in the title which has likewise the alternate, the Power of the Intellect. Here, then, we have again the unity of Intellect and Will, not in the implicit form as before, but explicit, complete. Intellect or Reason furnishes its content to the Will which executes the same in the deed. This is not the implicit Will which accompanies every mental act of which we have above taken note. Already in the Fourth Part (treating of Human Bondage) Spinoza .reached the free man and sought to detine him in a number of ways. " A free man thinks of death least of all; " he is not determined by fear or hope, he is free of the dominion of the passions. Moreover the strik- ing statement may be here cited: "The man who is governed by reason is more free in the State than in solitude where he obeys himself alone" (IV. 73). In this we see that Spinoza strongly affirms institutional freedom as com- pared with merely individual freedom. In the Will as activity Spinoza places perfec- tion and immortality: " The more of perfection anything has, the more it acts and the less it suffers" (V. 40). This activity, however, Spinoza unites with the Intellect: " The im- mortal part of the mind is the intellect through which we act " (Z>o. Carol.), while the perish- able part is the passive, or what is determined from without. But the supreme attainment of 246 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. freedom is that the individual who was but " a part of nature " or merely *' a link in the chain of causes ' ' has become not only self -asserting against such external bondage, but has returned to the great totality of Nature, to God Himself, and shares in His process. The mind of man, once but a mode and determined by the All from the outside, has risen to a participation in the All from the inside. This is the highest freedom and produces that acquiescence of the spirit with the divine order which constitutes the truly wise man (or philosopher). Spinoza, however, con- siders this phase more fully under Intellect, to which we next pass. 3. Intellect. This word is used by Spinoza in two fluctuating senses, a wider and a narrower. In the latter the term is applied to the rational principle in man ; but in the former, which is the general usage of Spinoza, Intellect means the sphere of cognition, and embraces all the acts by which man knows, that is, appropriates men- tally and assimilates the object. It is, there- fore, the third, or self-returning stage in the total process of mind. It is evident that Spinoza reflected more upon Intellect than upon any other faculty of mind. He was very partial to it, indeed too partial, for he extends its sphere at the expense of the Will, in regard to which he had a kind of spite, or at least a lack of due appreciation. The theoretical SPINOZA. - ETHICS. 247 sphere in his view enormously overbalances the practical; which fact he shows in his own ca- reer by his devotion to a contemplative, intellec- tual life. May we not find something Oriental in this, as distinct from the European stress upon will-power? At any rate the complete subordination of the Will to the Intellect, we might say the complete absorption of the Will into the Intellect at times, is highly characteristic of Spinoza's mind. Of course there are gradations of Intellect or of Knowledge. Spinoza's great distinction in this sphere is that of adequate (clear and dis- tinct) and inadequate (partial and confused) knowledge or ideas. Upon this distinction chiefly he builds his intellectual structure. Even the moral principle is located here. " The knowl- edge of good and evil is an inadequate knowl- edge " (IV. 64). All immediate sensuous experience is inadequate, such as the knowledge of body. But " all ideas, in so far as they are referred to God are true," since they agree wholly with their objects or are adequate (II. 32). But what are these varieties of Intellect, or kinds of knowing? Spinoza employs three main ones, not, however, with consistency always. In the " Improvement of tlie Intellect '," Spinoza has four ways of " perceiving " or of acquiring knowledge. But here we shall follow the Ethics, 248 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. which repeatedly speaks of three kinds of knowl- edge though in this book too there are places which seem to suggest other divisions. 1. "I shall call in the future the first kind of knowledge Opinion, Imagination " (II. 40. Schol. 2). But this first kind of knowledge is itself of various grades : that of * ' partic- ular things presented confusedly through our senses," or immediate sensation ; then that which comes from " signs or words heard and read," whereby we recall the image of the object. This act of imaging plays a great part in Spinoza's psychology. He seems inclined in places to put both sense-perception and representation under the one head of imagination, thus forming his first class of knowledge. Both these activities, it is true, deal with the image, but in sense-per- ception it is implicit and unconscious, while in representation it becomes explicit and conscious. But Spinoza has no such distinction, at least not as an organizing principle. Sense-perception and representation are not yet fully differentiated in his mind notwithstanding some scattered hints. This entire field of imagination (both sensuous and representative) is inadequate, perishable, of the body. " The mind can imagine nothing, nor even recall things past, except while the body lasts" (V. 21). Still the mind can transcend this limitation. " It is possible for the mind to refer all images of things to the idea of God ' ' SPINOZA. ETHICS. 249 (V. 14), and thus form adequate ideas of them, though they be primarily " affects of the body.'* For there is " necessarily in God an idea which expresses the essence of each particular human body under the form of eternity " (V. 22). Thus we are brought to one of Spinoza's most famous and pivotal statements, sub specie eterni- tatis. When we come to know the particular under the form of eternity, we have reached adequate ideas, wherewith we pass to the second stage of knowledge. 2. This is called Reason by Spinoza, and brings us into the realm of truth out of falsehood. 4 'Knowledge of the first kind is the one only cause of untruth, while knowledge of the second kind (and third) is necessarily true " (II. 41). Reason perceives the necessity of things; but this necessity of things is the very necessity of God's eternal nature in which reason partici- pates. " To see things under a certain form of eternity" is the nature of Reason, which there- fore sees " those things which are common to all, and which are equally in a part and in the whole ' ' (II. 39). Reason rises to the universal and eternal element in the particular thing, which contains also the essence of God. It may do so through inference or reasoning. " Whatever ideas in the mind follow from ideas which are adequate are themselves adequate" (II. 40). Still Reason as here defined simply attains the 250 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. common or universal from the given particulars. But can the mind reach the point of seeing the universal create its particulars, behold God mak- ing the world, or the infinite becoming finite? Spinoza answers yes, though he contradicts his entire metaphysical doctrine of Substance in such a response. This brings us to the third kind of knowing. 3. Spinoza calls it Intuition (scienlia intui- tivcC), which he somewhat stiffly defines as " the Knowledge which proceeds from an adequate idea of the formal essence of certain attributes of God, to the adequate knowledge of the essence of things." This terminology is highly Spino- zan, describing that vision or intuition of God or Substance, as it moves through the attribute to the mode which is the particular thing, wherein our knowledge as Intuition follows after and takes up the divinely creative process, as set forth in the metaphysical portion (see preceding, p. 192). For every particular thing participates in the divine Substance, hence " the more we know particular things, the more we know God " (V. 24) . And we can know Him, " for the human mind has an adequate knowledge of the infinite and eternal essence of God " (II. 47). And " as all things are in God and conceived through God," we are able to form adequate ideas of these things, to see them under the form of eternity, which is to see them creatively. This SPINOZA. ETHICS. 251 is Intuition proper which first grasps the original absolute One and thence moves along with its world-creating energy to the Many, to the par- ticular things which make up the phenomenal universe. Such is the unity immanent in and imparting itself to all multiplicity, for each par- ticular thing though determined from without by other particular things, perseveres in its own being, which fact is its very essence coming from the eternal and necessary essence of God. And the human mind with its intuitive power, can seize this essence of the thing coming from the essence of God. Thus Spinoza endows the human mind with the power of returning to God and of re-enact- ing His creative act of producing the Universe. The individual is no longer a fleeting, insub- stantial, unreal mode, but has within himself the divinely creative process of the One and the Many, which process he goes through mentally in o rder to know each particular thing, placing it by Intuition under the form of eternity. Such is the complete sweep of Intellect or of the movement of Knowledge with its three stages, starting with Imagination which deals with the particular as immediately given, then rising to Reason which sees the universal, or that which is " equally in the part and in the whole," and finally attaining Intuition which seizes all things in their generative principle, and so gets back of 252 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. and creates the starting point of Intellect, which was the particular thing as immediately given in Imagination. Moreover the entire psychical element in Spinoza, embracing the far larger process com- posed of Emotion, Will, and Intellect is herewith brought to a conclusion. How these three stages of the total mind will rise out of their subordinate position in Spinoza and other phi- losophers, and take the place of Philosophy itself, unfolding it into a new discipline of thought and furnishing the very process of all science, even that of Philosophy, belongs to a chapter far ahead. But it is instructive to observe the bud present and starting to burst in the work of the Jewish philosopher, in whom the psychical process (the Psychosis), manifests a striking phase in its evolution. For this reason we have unfolded this element with a fullness somewhat disproportionate to the general scope of our task. But now for the transitional point to our next sphere: ' The supreme effort of mind (summus conatus) and the supreme virtue (summa virtus) is to know things by this third kind of knowl- edge " (V. 25). With such a conception of virtue which man strives to realize in life we have entered the realm of morality in the Spinozan sense. II. THE MORAL ELEMENT. Here again the SPINOZA. ETHICS. 253 reader is to note that the Moral is a stage or phase of the Ethical, the latter including the total process of man's return to God, or to Sub- stance in the Spinozan sense. We have just seen the psychical return which culminates in man's knowing the process of God through intel- lectual intuition (a term afterwards used by Schelling). But now we are to behold the moral return which culminates in the intellectual Love of God. The moral problem is the problem of the individual manifesting the divine essence not only in his mind or intellect but particularly in his life and conduct. Love now is not merely the seeing God, but the being God; Love reproduces the divine process in the man practically as well as theoretically; thus in a sense God becomes man, is or may be incarnated in every living person (without the mediation of Christ in the present case, for Spi- noza was still a Jew and so was naturally loth to acknowledge the only Jew greater than himself and who suffered somewhat like himself from his own race). So it results that when the Divine Process is taken up into the man, and is made his very essence, he has attained complete free- dom, as far as this can be attained by the indi- vidual in himself ; externality is morally within him, no longer outside of him and determining him. The moral element manifests several stages in 254 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. Spinoza, which as usual are held apart and pre- sented in the form of isolated propositions, after the geometric procedure . Being thus given with- out any inner movement, they seem deeply con- tradictory. In our exposition we shall try to put these separate stages together in such a manner that their process, namely, that which brings them into unity both with themselves and with the mind seeking to understand them, will be at least suggested. In this process of the moral element in man, he will show not only the assertion of himself but also the submission of himself, and finally his complete self-determination. 1. Self-assertion. This is one of Spinoza's salient doctrines, often reiterated by him in diverse connections. ' By virtue and by power I mean the same thing " (IV. Def. 8). Virtue is primarily man's power of self-persistence (per- severandi in suo esse), as it is the essence in every particular thing. "The effort of self-preserva- tion is the first and sole foundation of virtue." " No virtue can be conceived prior to this one " (see IV. 22, Dem. et CoroL). The good is what I know to be useful to me, and the bad is what hinders any such good (IV. Def. land 2). Herein Spinoza certainly puts strong emphasis upon the individual, upon the egoistic element of human nature, which is often at the present time expressed as the will-to-live. But now comes something very different, in- SPINOZA. E THICS. 255 deed opposite. This power of self -persistence both in man and in the thing " is the power of God or of Nature" (IV- 4. Dem), and this power is also " the essence of God." Man's will-to-live is, therefore, the Divine in Man. Thus each individual asserts himself divinely against other individuals asserting themselves with same divine right of individuality. This gives a universe in struggle. Another point must be added : * ' The power by which a man persists in his being is limited and is infinitely surpassed by the power of ex- ternal causes " (IV. 3), which come from the rest of the world asserting itself. Thus man is determined from without or through Emotion (Passion) which he has to meet and suppress for the sake of his inner moral freedom. Still we are not to forget that this conflict has come o through man's assertion of himself as his divine essence, hence as his primal moral act. In the foregoing statements we find a move- ment which runs as follows: (1) Self-assertion as immediate, the first right of the individual to be himself, and nothing else and nobody else. Here is the starting-point of morality, according to Spinoza. (2) But this self-assertion is not only immediate, but God-given, not only man's essence, but God's essence in man, has not only a human but a divine right, is not merely self- ishness but is selfhood, is the universal in the 256 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. individual. (3) Thus each individual is divinely endowed with self-assertion against all others, who are likewise self -asserting, and the world of conflict opens in which the individual would lose his freedom and indeed would perish, unless he could elevate himself, or rather humble himself into a new moral sphere. 2. Stlf -submission. In the world of conflict to which the Self-assertion of the individual has led, he finds himself completely overwhelmed by the outside powers; for " his force of persisting in his own being is infinitely surpassed by the force of external causes" (IV. 3). In some manner he must yield and submit himself to the course of circumstances which is that of grim necessity. Yet out of this necessity he is to win not only life but freedom. The manifestation of this necessity or external determination in him is Emotion (or Passion) ; the outside power drives him to a re-action against it, which is essentially passionate. This is what he must get rid of by the moral discipline of self -sub- mission, which is, in general, to submit himself to God, or to the divine order of things. In such a discipline there is likewise a movement of which we may observe the following stages : (1) The mind primarily controls itself as Emotion by the act of self -consciousness. When the Ego in passion can simply think of itself in passion, it is far on the way of curbing SPINOZA. ETHICS. 257 its passion. It beholds its passionate self as another, as an object different from itself which object it is looking at. Thus it others its pas- sion and throws it off as something not itself, or transforms it into something which is itself. Such is the primal " reniedj for the Emotions," which is the clear and distinct idea of them. ' An Emotion which is a passion ceases to be a passion as soon as we form a clear distinct idea of the same " (V. 3). As soon as we turn upon it and see what it is, it no longer controls us, but we control it and can subordinate it or can still give w T ay to it consciously, in which last case we become the more depraved. But if we subor- dinate the passions to reason, we fill them with a new purpose and transform them into the bearers of the Divine. (2) The mind controls itself as Emotion, when it beholds itself in the necessary order of things. Man, recognizing his place in the grand totality of the universe, ascends to God for his view, and acquiesces in his lot. "In so far as the mind recognizes all things as necessary, it possesses greater power over its Emotions, or suffers less from them" (V. 6). This is the stoical phase of Spinoza's morality, but we must remember that it is not the only phase. If he has resignation, he also has self-assertion and self-determination. The self-submission to a necessary and unchanging order is the relief 17 258 MODERN EUROPEAN- PHILOSOPHY. from the Emotion which is stimulated by the particular things in that order. We must rise to the thought that the causing object is necessi- tated, is not an independent self -active some- thing, even if it have the power of self- persistence. (3) Thus we can moralize all our Emotions, wheeling them into the line of the universal order, which is to subordinate them to reason. When the Emotion has the inadequate idea as its content, it is passionate ; but when it has the adequate idea as its content, it is rational, truly ethical (see IV. 59. Schol.). " We must seek, as far as possible, to obtain a clear and distinct idea of every Emotion" in order to free it of its external particular cause, and to fill it with its rational end, whereby " appetites and desires which usually spring from Emotions will become in- capable of excess " (V. 4. SchoL). So Spinoza shows the way in which we may transfigure our whole emotional world by this self -submission to the divinely necessary order of things. In such ' acquiescence of the spirit" we make ourselves a part of God's process, but by this very act we also make God's process a part of ourselves. Thus through self-submission to the necessity of the divine order, we have disciplined our Emotion into an ethical character, and made SPINOZA. ETHICS. 259 necessity internal, wherewith we pass to a new stage. . 3. Self -determination. This is the culmina- tion and conclusion of the moral movement in Spinoza, expressed in a term of Will which, in general, signifies complete inner freedom. But this state must have a corresponding activity of Intellect which has to know God, the world and itself in the highest way. " The supreme effort of mind and the supreme virtue is to know things by the third kind of knowledge " (V. 25). This third kind of knowledge we have already seen to be Intuition, "from which springs the highest possible form of acquiescence " (V. 27), in which statement we may note the hint that Spinoza's acquiescentia mentis may be of various kinds or grades. But Spinoza has also an emo- tional term to express the present stage, Love or the Love of God, to which he joins the adjective intellectual, indicating the relation of this Love to Intellect, and to its faculty of Intuition, which transfigures the immediate Emotion of Desire into THE INTELLECTUAL LOVE OF GOD. This is justly considered the supreme attainment, both in a practical and a theoretical aspect, of Spinoza's Philosophy. It is also to be observed that the whole man as Emotion, as Will, and as Intellect, now unites himself .in one all-embrac- ing return to God, in passion, in action, and in thought. 260 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. Moreover, it is in this connection that Spinoza introduces his doctrine of immortality. ' The intellectual Love of God, which arises from the third kind of knowledge is eternal" (V. 23), and makes the mind eternal which has it, by its power of seeing all things " under the form of eternity." There is also an immortal human body. " In God there is necessarily an idea which expresses the essence of each human body under the form of eternity" (V. 22), which is not, therefore, perishable. The consubstan- tiality of mind and body makes the latter also of the divine and eternal Substance. Each of them, mind and body, has a mortal and immortal part in correspondence. Imagination (in mind) and externality (in body) are vanishing, unreal, illusory, both of them. Yet both mind and body have their essence in God, and so must endure. Thus Spinoza conceives a kind of bodily immortality, an eternity incorporate. In the present sphere there is also a movement with its distinctive stages which are separately given by the author in his geometric fashion, but which we shall try to connect together by their underlying thought. (1) God loves Himself. This is declared directly: "God loves Himself with an infinite intellectual Love" (V. 35). He turns back upon Himself and sees Himself in his infinite perfection which he loves. In this manner God SPINOZA. ETHICS. 261 is conceived as the process of the Absolute Self, making Himself an object to Himself and re- turning into Himself " in Love." This can only mean that God is a self-conscious Ego, to which thought Spinoza has now risen, for such a conception of God does not correspond with what he says elsewhere. (2) Man loves God. His Love toward God is that same intellectual Love with which God loves Himself, in so far as this infinite Love can be made finite, " or in so far as it can be un- folded through the essence of the human mind considered under the form of eternity " ( V. 36 ) . Man's love toward God is " a part of the infinite Love with which God loves Himself." So God grants Man to share in the infinite process of Himself. " Hence it follows that God, in so far as He loves Himself loves Man and also that God's Love of Man and Man's Love of God are one and the same " (V. 36 Corol.) ; that is, both these Loves coming from the extremes of the Uni- verse, from God and Man toward each other, form the one divine process of the All. It is evident that in this process Man has become not only a part but an essential part of God Himself. So we reach the following thought : (3) God loves Himself through loving Man who loves Him. So Man has to return in Love to God, in order to fulfill the cycle of divine 262 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. Love, of which Man has become a necessary stage just through his Love of God as this pro- cess. He, though a part, has in himself the whole of that process of which he is a part, and so he is an integral member of the divine order. Already we have seen in another connection that " those things which are equally in a part and in the whole cannot be conceived otherwise than adequately " (II. 38). Man is a part, God is the whole, intellectual Love is common to both, is in both, whereby each has the same process in which both are included. That, is both con- stitute one process, which is nevertheless in each wholly. To be sure, Spinoza does not speak of a process in this matter, nor does he explicitly grasp intellectual Love as a process. Still it moves from Man to God and from God to Man, embracing both, and also in each. This certainly involves a process, in fact just the process of the All, which we have called the Pampsychosis, here and elsewhere lurking in the movement of Philosophy. God, in this final stage of Spinoza, has des- cended into man, has become Man, whose essence He is through intellectual Love. Thus Man has attained his supreme self-determination, God being within him as his own very self. God completes himself in Man who returns in Love to God within himself. The Moral Element, or the second genera] SPINOZA. ETHICS. 263 stage of Spinoza's Ethics, has now brought itself to a conclusion. This stage, as conceived by Spinoza, turns on the separation between the individual and God, and shows the discipline of the former into harmony and unity with the latter. First the individual asserts himself in order to exist, which throws him into conflict with the grand totality of things; secondly the individual submits himself, subduing passitfn and making himself a link in the great Whole outside of him, suffering and so mastering the external determination of the world through which he finally comes to determine himself, having within him now the Whole of which he was but a part outside, attaining such a condition through the intellectual Love of God. This condition is man's supreme happiness, called by Spinoza Blessed- ness (Beatitudo), which " is not the reward of virtue, but virtue itself" (V. 42, the last Proposition in Spinoza's Ethics). Moreover this state of Blessedness is attainable by man here and now upon this earth, and is not relegated to a future life. ; .;.?. Thus the individual instead of being lost in God, as he seemed to be in the metaphysical portion, now has God in himself, as his own essence. Substance before swallowed him, but now he has just about swallowed Substance. Such is the enormous difference between the be- ginning and the end of Spinoza's Ethics, a chasm 264 MODEBN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. as wide as the universe, as great as that between God and Man. Has Spinoza bridged it? Was it even his purpose to bridge it? At any rate here lies the Spinozan dualism, certainly the deepest of his century. Often there is a direct contradiction in state- ments quite close together. In the Fifth Part (Pr. 17) he declares that God is without love, and a little later (Pr. 19) that " the man who loves God cannot seek to have God love him in return." This is true of Spinoza's metaphysical God or of Substance. But his ethical God who appears in the same Fifth Part a few pages further on, is just the opposite, loving man with the same love which He has for Himself (V. 36 CoroL). What does such a flat contradiction mean? In our judgment Spinoza's Ethics is made up of doctrines formed at two different periods of the philosopher's development, and are represented on the whole by th e metaphysical and the ethical portions of the book. It is well known that the Ethics was published after the author's death, and doubtless did not receive his final revision. The two preceding contradictory passages belong to two different periods of Spi- noza's thought, which we have called the meta- physical and the ethical. Though we have reached the end of the book called Ethics, this is not the end of the total ethical movement in Spinoza. The individual SPINOZA. ETHICS. 265 has attained Blessedness essentially through him- self, and it is his own. The intellectual love of God is a moral act, a personal development, of course with divine co-operation. But what about the fellow-man? In one proposition occurs the following: "The Love of God is the more fostered the more men we conceive to be joined with God in the same bond of Love " (V. 20). So we desire that " all should have this happi- ness," which is reached by the study of Spi- noza's philosophy. Such a principle of union could hardly produce more than a religious fraternity or a philosophical school. From it the great institutions of the world have not sprung. Yet Spinoza had his eye upon these institutions even in his Ethics. Over and over again he speaks of the advantages of human association. Says he : " To man nothing is more useful than man ; nothing is more excellent for self-preser- vation than that all should agree in all things to the extent that the minds and bodies of all should constitute one mind as it were, and one body for the purpose of striving to preserve their being " (IV. 18, Schol.). This " one mind and ojie body " has as its end the conservation of the indi- vidual's existence, or, as we say, to secure life and property. But Spinoza does not develop this idea of the institution, nor could he with his doctrine of the Will, which according to his view 266 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. is quite swallowed up in the Intellect. The union of all into " one mind and one body" is the union of thought and power, of Intellect and Will ; but this union is really for the purpose of willing the individual's Will-to-live (conatus sese conservandi). Herewith we catch a glimpse of the institutional principle rising out of and supplementing the moral element, which is essentially individual even at its very highest point in the intellectual Love of God. This glimpse will guide to the next great field or por- tion of Ethics cultivated by Spinoza. III. THE INSTITUTIONAL ELEMENT. In the Fourth Part of his Ethics our philosopher gives quite a little dissertation on the Free Man, to whose characteristics he devotes a number of Propositions with their adjuncts. He evidently has before his mind the Stoic pattern of the Wise Man, who has become internally free through reason, and who has transformed his moral life according to its behests. Finally, in the last Proposition of this Fourth Part, Spinoza gives us something of a surprise by introducing a new element: " The man who is^guided by reason is more free in the State where he lives under a common law, than in solitude where he obeys nly himself" (IV. 73). This declaration has in the highest degree an in- stitutional purport as distinct from the moral view of man as individual. Here association is the SPINOZA. - ETHICS. 267 principle, with the subsumption of the individual under the decree (or Will) of the social Whole. Thus man can become more free than by living alone, more free by obeying objective law than by following his own subjective caprice, out of which the Moral Element as such never com- pletely rises. "The rational man in so far as he seeks to live in freedom, desires to live the common life according to the laws of the State " (Ditto Dem.). Thus Spinoza emphatically de- clares that true freedom is only to be obtained through the civil Institution. At this point he substantially drops the sub- ject from his Ethics. Yet much remains to be unfolded. If the rational man finds true free- dom only in the State, then this institution must be a chief means for his attaining the intellectual Love of God, which certainly cannot be reached by the unfree man. The State, therefore, (and with it the whole institutional world) ought to be shown as a necessary stage in man' s complete return to God. Blessedness comes through freedom, and freedom as real comes thro ugh the State (and other institutions). The ethical movement as a whole should have the institutional element as an integral part of itself, otherwise there is a gap or rather a lack of connection in the total process of the philosophical Norm. This lack of connection is found in Spinoza's scheme. He has two great institutional works, 268 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. the Political Treatise, and the Theologico- Poli- tical Treatise (see the contents of both given under the head of Spinoza's Writings). But these two works are not organically conjoined with the Ethics, though their general connection is cer- tainly suggested. The above hint regarding man's freedom involves a discussion of State, Church and Society in order to complete the Ethics as a totality. But Spinoza concludes his book with the supreme moral attainment, the virtue called Blessedness, or the intellectual Love of God, which is reached through the individual without the aid of institutions. It is our opinion that Spinoza was working at this problem of the inner connection of his system when he died at the age of 44 years. The various parts of his philosophy had grown piecemeal out of that ideal totality of his spirit which was as yet unexpressed though gradually developing. The result is Spinoza's philosophic edifice appears before us as composed of vast fragments, from which, however, we can catch the outlines, even if vague in places, of the mighty Whole, nothing less than an intellectual construction of the Universe. His early death prevented completion, for the philosopher rarely if ever reaches his supreme architectonic develop- ment till he is in the fifties. The serious reader, coming to love Spinoza's personality, and dwelling in contemplation upon SPINOZA ETHICS. 269 his incomplete edifice, will long to fill out men- tally the parts that are wanting, particularly this institutional part. The following suggestions may help him rear some of the missing portions of the structure : 1. We must first consider Spinoza as holding to the immediate unity of Church and State. This is distinctly his primal Jewish inheritance, the theocracy, which, however, belongs to the whole Orient. The title of his early work, Theologico- Political Treatise, indicates this fact (seethe preceding discussion of it p. I53etseq.). The institutional movement of Spinoza is toward separation of Church and State, Hence the following : 2 . In the Political Treatise we have an expo- sition of the State without its ecclesiastical counterpart, as the title indicates (see the discus- sion of this work beginning on p. 164). 3. There are allusions to Education and faint outlines of the Educative Institution scattered through Spinoza's books. A school of pupils and followers began to gather around him early in his career; he deemed it among the highest func^ tions to be engaged in " so training men that they come at last to live under the dominion of their own reason " (IV. App. 9). The follow- ing passage from the Improvement of the Intellect shows how deeply Spinoza was impelled to im- part his philosophy : " This, then* is the end for 270 MODERN" EUROPEAN- PHILOSOPHY. which I strive : first to attain an harmonious nature, and then to assist many others to attain it with me." Such is the true spirit of the teacher: "it is a condition of my own happi- ness that many others may know as I know." Nor is this work done at random: "We must form such a society as will enable men in general to attain it in the easiest way. To this end we are to study Moral Philosophy," in which Spi- noza's ^Ethics may have been written as a text- book. Also " The Theory of Education "is to be studied, along with Medicine and the Physical Sciences. Such is a brief outline of Spinoza's ideal school which had one supreme end: "to reach that highest human perfection which we have designated." This comes through the improvement and education of the Intellect till it can behold all things " under the form of eternity." Spinoza had around himself all his life a school of this sort, private indeed, but con- stituting a small band of zealous disciples who kept his apostolate alive long after his death and published his books. What else means that posthumous edition of his works printed only a few months after he had died almost penniless? 4. Of one other kind of association or institu- tion we catch a glimpse in Spinoza: " The Love of God is the more fostered, the greater the number of men we conceive to be joined with God in the bond of Love " (V. 20). A passing SPINOZA. ETHICS. 27 i glimpse is this of Theopolis, the City of God, which Leibniz will somewhat more fully set forth as the conclusion of his Philosophy. But Spinoza has the germ of this final association of men joined together in the supreme institution, the Church Universal, through the common Love of God. Here, then, we bring to an end the Philosophy of Spinoza, whose deepest fact, as we see it, is its double or dualistic character : its descent on the one side from Substance to Mode, meta- physical, pantheistic, at bottom negative; then its ascent on the other side from Mode to Sub- stance or God, ethical, theistic, at bottom posi- tive. Already we have sufficiently emphasized this Spinozan dualism as representing the pro- foundest struggle of the Seventeenth Century in its political, religious, and social history. But now we approach the third great philoso- pher of this Century, Leibniz, whose supreme philosophic function is to harmonize the dualism of Spinoza, out of whom he directly grows. It is, therefore, characteristic of Leibniz that he leaves out the descent and starts immediately with the ascent; the Spinozan Mode he trans- forms into the Leibnizian Monad, putting into the same the principle of Substance. It is true that Spinoza had already brought his Mode back to its fountain-head of Substance, so that it be- came an integral element of the Divine Process. 272 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY, Thus we may say that Leibniz begins where Spinoza leaves off, namely with the Mode de- veloped out of itself into the Monad, which Leibniz himself calls at first a form of Substance or substantial form. And we shall also find the consubstantial doctrine of Spinoza's Attribute passing over into the Leibnizian Pre-established Harmony. We shall likewise see Leibniz de- veloping, clarifying, and universally applying that element which Spinoza dimly saw as " equally in the part and in the whole/' Finally, the power of self-persistence (pereverandi in suo esse) is modal in Spinoza, but becomes monodal in Leibniz. Such is the significant evolution which we are next to trace in the third member of the great tri-personal movement of the Philosophy of the Seventeenth Century. LEIBNIZ. LIFE. 273 3* Xetbntj* The career of Leibniz falls into the latter part of the Seventeenth Century, and runs over into the Eighteenth. This period witnessed the great culminating struggle between what may be called Absolutism and Individualism, and our Philos- opher reflects, of course in his way the spirit of the age. The very year he arrived at Paris, Louis XIV., the political and religious absolutist, was throwing his troops into the Netherlands for another fierce attack upon the liberty there in- trenched. He was seeking to do what Spain had utterly failed to accomplish in the preceding cen- tury. It was another attempt of Latin Europe to wrest the scepter of temporal and spiritual dom- ination from Teutonic Europe, to which it had been gradually passing. The great conflict of the Thirty Years' War in Germany, which lay chiefly between the Latin and the Teutonic religions, had ended in a peace which recognized the rift, and really had made it perpetual. That same peace left Germany a cluster of separate States, political atoms, or in Leibnizian phrase, Monads. Such is the main European situation which lies back of our philosopher and determines his work. Leibniz was a Teuton, and philosophized the 18 274 MODERN E UROPEAN PHIL OSOPEY. Teutonic side, with its individualistic bent on the one hand, yet on the other with the effort to bring order and harmony out of these atomic struggles. Hence the metaphysical portion of Leibniz 'Philosophy will have two main categories, quite opposite if not contradictory : the Monad and Pre-established Harmony, or the individual in his own separate little world (microcosm) and also in the great total scheme of the universe (macrocosm). Spinoza's God in His meta- physical aspect was an all-devouring Cronus, in whom the individual was but a fleeting appear- ance, a phantasm which had no reality. Herein Spinoza gives a true reflection of one mighty tendency of the time, which was also the Seven- teenth Century. This was the tendency to absolutism, which like a monster of legend, opened its prodigious mouth to swallow little Holland, the supreme bearer of personal liberty. Such is the first stress of Spinoza, though he has also a second and different stress; Leibniz, how- ever, puts his first stress upon the opposite principle, the individual, the Monad, and moves in the opposite direction, toward authority, toward * * the Monad of Monads ' ' which is the highest. In general we may conceive the philosophy of Leibniz to start with the Monad as the given thing and to show its movement toward the Supreme One which does not destroy it, but LEIBNIZ. LIFE. 275 preserves it in its integrity, and harmonizes it with the rest of the Monads. The whole ex- hibits the grand flight of the independent, mutually repellent Monads towards a central authority which keeps them in order. This was the living Teutonic problem, especially of Prot- estant Teutonia after she had cut loose from the old Church and Empire, from the transmitted institutions. Leibniz during his long and busy life will work at this problem in quite all of its essential phases, being himself a Monad trying to bring order into a monadal universe, yet always by his very nature dropping back into Monadism. It is no wonder, then, that his philosophy is called a Monadology, or science of the Monads, he himself being the creative Monad in his scheme. Hence we may expect that the man Leibniz, in all the three main phases in which we may regard him, in his Life and Writings, as well as in his Philosophy, will be monadal, wherein he will strikingly represent his country and his age in their innermost spirit and essence. I. LIFE OF LEIBNIZ. In contrast with the simple, retired life of Spinoza, that of Leibniz is very diversified. The latter was a public man all his active years, as well as a scholar. He had two streams of existence, practical and theoreti- cal, rushing through him, often parallel, often 276 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. intercrossing and cutting up his activity into fragments. This condition, however, was not an accident, but lay in his own deepest nature. To our inind the central stage of his philo- sophic development is the Hanoverian Period, which includes chiefly his middle life, and during which he was slowly unfolding his fundamental thought. Of course there is a Period before and a Period after this middle one. It is doubtless something of a problem to grasp the events of Leibniz' life in such a way as to show their true meaning as well as their connec- tion with the time. Externally his career is full of manifold changes changes of place, of occupa- tions, of opinions and thoughts. We may well say that his life is monadal, made up of little centers of effort of all sorts, yet constituting an order, or at least striving for the principle of an order. Such, too, is his character, a continual explosion of single thoughts into deeds and words. 1. First Period (1646-1676). Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was born at Leipzig on the 21st day of June, 1646, two years before the Peace of Westphalia which left Germany in its monadal condition, morally as well as politically and religiously. In such an ethical world Leib- niz grew up, and could not help imbibing its character. In his fifteen thy ear he began his studies at the University of Leipzig and worked in philosophy, LEIBNIZ. LIFE. 277 jurisprudence, and mathematics. It is significant that his first printed dissertation should treat of the Principle of the Individual, being written in Latin and showing considerable philosophic eru- dition. His next important production is quite a lengthy mathematical treatise (De Arte Com- binatoria) . There is no doubt that Leibniz was a precocious youth, especially in his power of reading many books, and these often of very abstruse contents. Leipzig, however, refused him a degree, which he obtained at the Univer- sity of Altdorf , where he was offered a profes- sorship. This he declined, doubtless feeling it to be unfavorable to his free, full development in science. We recollect that Spinoza also refused such a place, from which Descartes likewise held himself aloof. The three great philosophers of the Seventeenth Century, were not, therefore, University Professors. After various experiences Leibniz became as- sociated with Baron von Boineburg (1667), wrote several tracts pertaining to jurisprudence, and advocated a more general use of the German tongue in legal business. He tried to bring about an internal alliance of the small German States, and to raise some kind of bulwark against the ambition of Louis XIV. To this monarch he addressed a memorial suggesting an expedition to Egypt in order to divert him from his attack upon Holland, and to point out the importance 2 78 MODERN E UB OPE AN PHIL OSOPHT. of conquering Mohammedan Turkey. But the crusading spirit was dead, and Louis had other schemes closer at home. Still the French king seemed for a while to entertain the thought, or, as is more likely, was entertained by it ; so he graciously permitted Leibniz to appear at Paris, and to present his scheme in person. For more than four years (from March, 1672, till December, 1676) Leibniz was absent from Germany, spending most of the time in Paris, which city he evidently liked. His political mission was a total failure from the start ; he must have seen the French armies moving in the direction of Holland as he journeyed toward the capital. With the greater intensity he threw himself upon Natural Science, Mathematics, and Philosophy. He studied Descartes afresh and became acquainted with French Cartesians of distinction like Arnauld; it is highly probable that he found out something about Spinoza's doctrines through the latter 's friend, Tschirn- hausen. But the great event of his stay at Paris was his invention of the Differential Calculus, which was claimed by Newton and Newton's friends. The result was a controversy about priority, which has not wholly ceased at the present day. He also learned the use of the French tongue to such perfection that it became his chief philosophic vehicle. The fact is that Leibniz in a number of ways Gallicised, in striking LEIBNIZ. - LIFE. 279 contrast with the Frenchman Descartes, who ran away from France and Paris, which produced in him unreal phantoms, according to his own statement. But Leibniz, apparently for financial reasons, could no longer remain at Paris. His friend Boineburg had died, and it was necessary to seek a new position. He could not live in philo- sophic retirement like Spinoza, but longed for a court with its external life and ceremony. By way of England where he did not see Newton, and through Holland where he saw Spinoza, he returned to Germany about the close of the year 1676, with his years of learning and appro- priation (Lehrjahre) passing over into a time of inner elaboration and original effort. Paris was the important turning-point; in Physics certainly and doubtless in Metaphysics he had begun to rise out of Descartes into a new stage, and in Mathematics he had made a permanent contribution to the science. Philosophically we may consider his visit with Spinoza in Holland as the time of his transition from his First into his Second Period, though this transition had already started at Paris where Cartesianism had pushed beyond itself, devel- oping its inherent pantheistic tendency. In 1675, the year before Leibniz quit Paris, the Cartesian Nicolas Malebranche had published his Recherche de la Verite, in which he maintains that " the 280 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. mind dwells in God, thinks in God, sees in God." Really it is God who thinks in me. We do not behold material objects immediately, but their " types, their ideal substance as this exists in God." It needed only Spinoza to say: God is just this substance and nothing else, not a person with Intellect and Will. Thus we reach Spinoza's first, or metaphysical, pantheistic stage. There is little doubt that Leibniz went over into Spinozism with the evolving spirit of the age, and stayed fermenting there for a season. Indeed he had to work through this stage in order to come to himself, to his own doctrine. Hence the significance of his visit with Spinoza, who was undoubtedly the magnet which drew him to Holland. Leibniz loved human inter- course, loved the individual (Monad), and always sought him out to talk with him face to face. At Paris already Leibniz had discovered where the next great stage of Philosophy was in the throes of birth. In France the Church would surely strangle the infant; during that age, it could only be born in free Holland and be allowed to live. Truly a marvelous, world-forecasting instinct was it that led Leibniz to The Hague, to talk over the present state of the Universe with Spinoza, who was then so near the borderland of the Beyond (he died the fol- lowing year). LEIBNIZ. - LIFE. 281 A recent investigator (Stein) affirms that Leibniz stayed with Spinoza a full month in continuous intercourse, discussing various prob- lems and reading portions of the Ethics^ then in manuscript. When this book was published the next year, in the postumous edition (1677), Leibniz is known to have studied it with great care, appropriating it profoundly and letting it germinate in his own soul. Now it is just this book with its doctrine which gives to Leibniz his great philosophical task at which he keeps laboring during his entire Second Period of some twenty years. He has to adopt, then refute, and finally transcend Spinozism on its metaphysical side. There was awhile during which he was a Spinozist, then he became an anti-Spinozist, till at last he dis- covered himself in the Monad. Still to the end of his life he would at times fall back into Spi- nozism. Cases of such reversion are found in his latest writings, for instance in his Monadology and in his Principes. Astonishing is the fact but he never could quite escape from the all-de- vouring maw of Spinozan Substance, even while exploiting his Monad in opposition to it. At this point we should note the fact, very important for the inner connection of the Phi- losophy of the Seventeenth Century, that Leib- niz developed positively out of the second or ethical stage of Spinoza, while toward the latter's 282 MODEEN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. first or metaphysical (pantheistic), stage he bore himself negatively in the main, even if some- times he had a relapse. Of these two stages Leibniz seems to have been dimly aware, though but dimly, if we may judge by his Refutation of Spinoza (translated in Duncan's Leibniz). It is plain, however, by this same Refutation, that his arguments are directed against the first or metaphysical stage of Spinoza's Philosophy, from which he undoubtedly re -acted after having adopted it and then worked through it to his own independent position. Here is a confession from the New Essays, written probably some twenty-five years after the time to which it refers : " You know that formerly I went a little too far, and began to lean to the side of the Spinozists who leave only infinite power to God. But the new light has cured me of this," an allusion to his own doctrine. He acknowledges a native tendency, seeing ' how much I am imbued with admiration and with love for this sovereign o fountain of things and beauties." It is manifest that Leibniz spans the entire philosophical move- ment of the Seventeenth Century: first a Carte- sian, then a Spinozist, then himself, in which last case he shows on a number of points a return to Descartes. We have now marked, with a fair degree of distinctness, we hope, his transition into his Second Period which begins with his Spinozism LEIBNIZ. LIFE. 283 and ends with the full development and formu- lation of his own doctrine. 2. Second Period (1676-1696). In grouping the Life of Leibniz according to his philosophic evolution, the Second Period offers grave diffi- culties. Regarding the system of Monads and of Pre-established Harmony, we find that its devel- opment was very slow, and proceeded by sudden brief insights, in monadal fashion. Leibniz the politician, Leibniz the mathematician, and Leibniz the philosopher, seem to have some- what different periods, and thus each demands its own classification. But we are here dealing specially with Leibniz the philosopher, and we place the dividing line between his Second and Third Periods at the time when the two distinctive categories of his system are decisively uttered. This was about 1696-7. The term Pre-estab- lished Harmony makes its first printed appear- ance rather shrinkingly in the following passage : " That which results in the other substances is only by virtue of a Pre-established Harmony (if I may be permitted to employ this word) and not through an actual influence or through the trans- mission of any kind or quality from one to the other" ( ' claircissemenl , in reply to M. Fou- cher). It is evident from this very passage that Leibniz sorely needs another more distinctive term in place of the word substance, which has been worn out by Descartes and Spinoza, not to 284 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. speak of the enormous task it had been made to do by the medieval thinkers. 'Hence, the next year (1697) an expression is found in a letter of his (Epistola ad Fardellam), alluding to ' the nature of Monads and Substances," the two words being coupled together in one phrase before final separation. He continues: De origins earum puto me jam fixisse, implying that he had now come to clearness concerning a fundamental principle of his system. " The Monads do not arise in the course of nature but by divine crea- tion, nor do they pass away by a natural process, but by annihilation ." (jSame Letter). Thus after fully twenty years' incubation, Leibniz has elaborated his thought and expressed it in two distinctive categories, with which he will be forever associated in the History of Philosophy. It would have been well if he could have found a third category equally definite and distinctive, in which to fix firmly his idea of con- tinuity or imperceptible difference which hovers between and overcomes all separation in the universe. There is no doubt, however, that Leibniz had a general conception of his system long before 1696. In his correspondence with Arnauld ten years previous to this date, he gives a fairly complete account of his leading ideas. During the whole Second Period he was throwing out his thoughts sporadically, without much order. The Monad was born in a monadal LEIBNIZ. LIFE. 285 fashion and showed its character by its sudden, explosive, dynamic appearance at quite any time in any kind of writing. The outer life of Leibniz during this score of years shows the same peculiarity. On his return from Paris in 1676 he entered the service of Duke John Frederick, to whom he was librarian and privy councillor with residence at the court of Hanover. A great number of small duties were imposed upon him, all of which he sought to perform in a large sense, as if each little task reflected the universe. It was indeed a strong contrast: from the macrocosm of Paris he is suddenly whisked into the microcosm of Han- over. The court was small, the land was small, the Duke was small, his policy being on the whole the narrow particularism common to the German Princes of that time. All this smallness Leibniz tried to see * * under the form of eternity," but such a task was not small . He had to write the history of the little dynasty, which gave him an opportunity to get away from the court in search of documents in Italy and elsewhere ; but his best years passed in the mean- time without organizing his philosophy. His chief business was with the little States of Germany, political Monads which he sought to bring into some kind of harmony. Then religion also had become separative, monadal; first was the great separation between Catholics and Prot- 286 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. estants; but the Protestants in turn separated among themselves into manifold sects or religious Monads mutually exclusive and combative a trait which they have not yet lost. Quite a portion of our philosopher's life was occupied with an attempt to bridge the chasm between Catholicism and Protestantism; this failed, still he also tried his hand at reconciling the Lutheran and Reformed divisions among Protestants. So we may say that Leibniz had a great deal of practical experience with political and religious Monadology while he was working out his phi- losophical Monadology. His monadal philosophy is verily a reflection of his age, of his people, and of their moral and institutional condition ; also a reflection of his outer active life and of his inner personal character. For Leibniz himself is a Monad, yea a Monad over all these Monads, reflecting their reflection in his writing, seeking to establish that Pre-established Harmony of his both practically and theoretically. Great was his endeavor to recognize the monadal nature in everything, in each person, each State, each Religion, and then to find the reconciling prin- ciple, which he naturally deemed to be an ideal divine thing. At this point we place the substantial comple- tion of the monadological scheme of Leibniz and therewith the end of the Second Period. It is true that already ten years before this time he LEIBNIZ. LIFE. 287 shows its fundamental thoughts in his Discourse on Metaphysics, and in the Arnauld Letters (both translated by Montgomery, Open Court Publishing Co., Chicago). But his doctrine is not yet formulated in its own right, possessing its own distinctive categories. We feel still the struggle for the word and consequently for the thought. All philosophic thought is not yet fully born till it has found its own distinctive speech. To be sure in a sense the Philosophy of Leibniz was never built out into a fixed system. The Monads he will use during the coming Period as so much plastic material which he twists and forms and transforms somewhat according to his necessities. Still the Monads remain with their Pre-established Harmony throughout all these manifold metamorphoses. 3. Third Period (1696-1716). Still another twenty years Leibniz lived, full of ideas and activities, which exploded themselves on many subjects and in many directions. Characteristic of the present Period is the fact that he broke loose from his narrow sphere in Hanover and ranged pretty freely over all Germany including Austria- He founded the Academy of Sciences at Berlin and sought to found similar institutions at Vienna and Dresden, and even at St. Peters- burg. He became the friend and intimate of German rulers and princesses ; he met and con- ferred with Peter the Great of Russia no less 288 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. than three times at different places in Germany. He lived at Vienna for nearly two years and was appointed Imperial Councillor. Thus Leibniz was making himself universal in the Teutonic world, and was disseminating his philosophy by personal discourse as well as by the written word. Two of his largest books, applications of his doctrines, belong to this Period, the Essais and the Theodicee. Moreover he brought himself to put into something like a systematic exposition his explosive, centrifugal thoughts, truly Monads, in the Monadology. At last the old rover turned his footsteps back to his post at Hanover, which he had never given up. There he spent the last two years of his life (171416) in tasks which must be pro- nounced unworthy of his genius, namely, in completing the petty annals of the House of Brunswick and in a theological controversy with the English clergyman, Dr. Clarke. He died in Hanover, Nov. 14, 1716, discredited by the court, disappointed in his main plans, and leaving his work in fragments. The lowly but self-determined life of Spinoza is far more inspiring than that of Leibniz with his excessive fondness for people of high birth and station. There is often a certain polished servility in his words which is out of keeping with the true philosopher. Though he advo- cated the use of his native homely German, he L EIBNIZ LIFE. 289 wrote his chief works in foreign courtly French. On the whole he is not an ideal character. But of his extraordinary talents there can be no doubt. It has been truly declared that he was the most universal man since Aristotle, equally marvelous in powers of acquisition and of originality. It was his chief bane that he loved to display these powers before high individuals without concen- trating upon one great fundamental task. He cannot be acquitted of intellectual vanity which had to be continually gratified by fresh admira- tion daily renewed. So his work is largely made up of short brilliant coruscations before or for applauding friends who could not help giving him what they saw he wanted. The reader to-day is excited to similar admiration by these little lit- erary Monads, each having the power of reflect- ing the universe. The man who could at court give such a thaumaturgic display of intellect must have been in daily demand. His system still bears the appearance, which is derived from the manner of its origin: it has an unreal, fan- tastic outside, which makes it look like a pure play of the imagination. The whole thing seems at first sight a philosophical romance constructed with a magician's ingenuity. It takes usually quite a little while for most readers to find out that the author is really serious in his thought ; some readers never find him out. Still there can be no doubt that we have here a genuine 19 290 MODERN E UROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. philosophy, that is, a formulation of the essence or principle of the All. Nay, it is one of the most important philosophies, in direct line with the most exalted achievements in this field. II. THE WRITINGS OF LEIBNIZ. These are very numerous, and, it seems, have not yet been fully published. J. E. Erdmann printed 101 pieces in his edition of the Philosophical Works of Leibniz (1840), many of which had never before been given to the public. The very sight of this edition of Erdmann's shows the scattered, separative, monadal character of our philosopher's production. Even the long pieces, like the Evsais and the Theodicee, are really made up of short pieces, or essays, on topics which are not closely connected. We cannot help noting that the writings of Leibniz were as fragmentary as the German nation of his age, so that the German thinker himself seems to be a product of the peace of Westphalia. The author's literary style and expression bear the same mark. On this point we may cite the words of one of the greatest German critics, who possessed in certain respects a genius kin- dred to Leibniz. Says Herder: "Leibniz re- vealed his whole system not otherwise than as it presented itself to him, in glimpses of wit and imagination, as it lived in his soul, hence in short essays. It had to be felt in the warmth of this origin and of this connection, otherwise the spirit LEIBNIZ. WRITINGS. 291 of Leibniz was gone, and with it all original and primitive truth of the expression." Herder goes on to censure Wolff " for making theorems out of these prospects and glimpses of wit, so that they lost their spontaneousness " (see Merz' Leibniz). This extract in our judgment hits the salient fact in the character of these manifold Writings. They abound in sudden flashes of insight, in- genious comparisons, bright images which often shoot forth with an instantaneous explosive effect. They are monadal, giving a brief repre- sentation of the universe in their little world, being " figurations of the divinity from moment to moment," to use a Leibnizian phrase employed in a similar connection. It should be added, .however, that Herder, in the above extract, is not fair to Wolff, who, even if somewhat formal, was a great systematizer of thought and fur- nished to the work of Leibniz what the latter lacked, namely organization. Herder was him- self a genius of the Leibnizian cast, bubbling over with detached insights, very stimulating, essentially monadal, but without any abiding sense of an organic Whole, at least in his own case, for his sharp critical eye could detect this fault in others, when so minded. Hence the above defense of Leibniz is a kind of self- defense. Unquestionably the most important philo- 292 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. sophical work, though not the most bulky, is the Monadology, first printed by Erdmann in the original French in 1840, though there was a German translation from the manuscript by Kohler in 1720. Leibniz wrote the original in 1714 at the request of Prince Eugene of Savoy who wished to have a brief survey of the author's philosophy. This fact, however, has been de- nied by Gerhardt, an editor of Leibniz' Works, who says that the Principes, and not the Monad- ology was written for Prince Eugene, who was the most distinguished general of his age, and with whom Leibniz became intimately acquainted at Vienna. It certainly accords with the char- acter of Leibniz that he should write his chief work for a chief celebrity of Europe; nobody else could draw it out of him. Still it should be stated that the original manuscript of the Mo- nadology has no title ; the present one is said to have been given to it by Erdmann. At any rate in this booklet the philosophy of Leibniz is stated in a more concise and orderly manner than anywhere else, though the work is not a well-connected piece of writing; it shows the monadal tendency in treating of Monads. After giving the psychical element of the Monad and reaching the Ego, the author jumps to con- sidering his two favorite logical categories of Contradiction and of Sufficient Reason, one of which furnishes necessary truth (whose opposite LEIBNIZ PHILOSOPHY. 293 is impossible), and the other contingent truth (whose opposite is possible). Parallel to the two kinds of knowledge are the two kinds of causes, final and efficient. ' The ultimate reason of things must be in a necessary substance in which all the particular changes exist only potentially, as if in the source this reason is what we call God, one and sufficient" (Hon. 37, 38), outside of whom there is nothing independent. " From which it follows that God is absolutely perfect, as per- fection is nothing else than the greatness of the positive reality seized with exactness by setting aside all limits," God being the unlimited and so the perfect, the absolutely infinite. Thus Leibniz endeavors to grasp the All, very faintly and dubiously seeing in it some kind of a process. We can observe that he is wrestling with what we call the Pampsychosis, catching hold of shreds of it and tearing them off, seek- ing to thrust them into sentences and into cate- gories. Though all these multifarious gleams and insights, and even phantasms, runs a fun- damental principle which is indeed common to all Philosophy, but to which Leibniz has given his own unique and distinctive form. III. PHILOSOPHY OF LEIBNIZ. Kepeatedly has the point been urged that Leibniz has no fully jointed, organic system of thought, that, indeed, he lacks in organizing power. Still he 294 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. would not be a philosopher unless he revealed the philosophic Norm, either by way of adoption or of opposition. It lay deep in the nature of Leibniz to keep his first principle plastic, adjustable, not rigidly systematic ; thus he could mould it over continually according to occasion, being essen- tially a formable material ready to shot into any shape. This constitutes a great difficulty in the giving an organic exposition of the Leibnizian Philosophy; in its details it gets recalcitrant to order and consistency; the further we go down in it toward minuteness, the more self- repellent and monadal it becomes, being ulti- mately composed of individual self-sufficient Monads. On the other hand, as we rise toward the totality, there is order, yea harmony pre-es- tablished divinely, which controls and arranges the infinitely divided world of Monads. Accordingly we shall not fail to find in Leibniz the general sweep of the Norm, the primal order- ing principle of all Philosophies, which likewise show themselves as Monads requiring a Pre-es- tablished Harmony. Our philosopher, therefore, will reveal his spiritual kinship by his mighty en- deavor to formulate the Universe in its threefold process of God, World, and Man, which gives the three basic sciences of Philosophy Meta- physics, Physics, and Ethics. Within this uni- versal Norm, Leibniz will have his own peculiar movement, thought, and expression, wherein con- LEIBNIZ. - METAPHYSICS. 295 sists his originality. Such is the general fact which is now to be set forth in its more impor- tant details. A. METAPHYSICS. This portion of Philosophy seeks to formulate the essence of Being in the pure categories of Thought, as these are employed by Leibniz. His first work is " a metaphysical dissertation/' whose theme is the principle of the individual (principium individui), and in which he sides with the Medieval Nominalists in assigning reality only to individuals, since whatever exists must by its very existence be an individual. The reader should observe the relation of this early thought of Leibniz (written when he was net more than 17 years old) to his matured view of the Monad, which will often be called an individual. Beside this scholastic connection, Leibniz stands in close relation to Descartes, whose dual- ism of Thought and Extension he strives to har- monize by filling up the gap with his Monads. He cites Descartes more than any other philoso- pher, usually for the purpose of showing his own different view. This he did so often and with so strong an emphasis, that he was accused '* of wishing to establish his reputation on the ruins of that of Descartes." Such an imputation he denies with warmth, though he has a keen eye 296 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. for the shortcomings not only of the doctrine but also of the character of Descartes, " who had an unbounded ambition to elevate himself into being the head of a party." Nevertheless Leib- niz declares: " it is my custom to say that the Cartesian Philosophy is as it were the ante-cham- ber of Truth, and that it is difficult to penetrate very far in advance without having passed through that Philosophy." This shows that he deems Cartesianism a necessary stage in the evo- lution of the thought of the time. But he con- tinues: " Still you deprive yourself of the true knowledge of the basis of things, if you stop there" (see Reponse aux Reflexions, p. 142, Erdmannj. That is, you must move forward to my Philosophy, which is the true solution of the previous difficulties. Such a statement sounds doubtless egotistical, still every philosopher makes it, has to make it, if he believes in his own work. Time has confirmed the opinion of Leibniz in this matter. Very certain is it that Leibniz was deeply indebted to another philosopher, to whom he pays scant recognition Spinoza. It is the Spinozan doctrine of the consubstantiality of Thought and Extension, which suggested to Leibniz his method of solving the Cartesian dualism. The poor, humble Jew of Amsterdam does not receive his dues from the philosophic LEIBNIZ METAPHYSICS. 297 courtier, who never misses an opportunity to name the French nobleman as antagonist. The metaphysical development of Leibniz* thought will show itself in three main stages which are designated as follows : The Monad taken by itself, the Continuity of Monads, and finally Pre-established Harmony. These three categories are employed by Leibniz himself in the formulation of his work, though often in a desultory manner, so that their process is not manifest. He never gave any complete organi- zation of his system ; we have to think that he was not a great organizer of thought. His genius was monadal as well as his philosophy. His way of writing is to set clown scattered in- sights in any shape which may happen to be at hand letter, essay, article, remark each of which is a little Monad with a brief dynamic energy all its own. Still they all show a common character and principle, a Pre-established Har- mony from that original Monad, the philosopher himself. 1. The Monad. The conception of the Monad is the most distinctive as well as fundamental thing in the philosophy of Leibniz. It takes the place of the substance of Spinoza, which is now infinitely divided, yet each division is substance. Hence Leibniz called his Monad first by the name of substantial forms (a scholastic term) or points of substance. The idea of punctate- 298 M ODEEN E UE OP BAN PHIL OSOPH Y. ness enters into them strongly, the universe is reduced to its points, which however are not physical, as they are not extended, nor mathematical as they have force, life, and even self-consciousness. Hence Leibniz gives to his Monads likewise the name of entel- echies or pure activities, an Aristotelean term which designates the total process within itself, or the self-determined. From this point of view the Universe is made up of an in- finite number of processes, quite independent of each other, yet each reflecting the All. The essence of Being is, then, according to Leibniz, the Monad, which does not arise or pass away, though it has internal changes. These Monads have also an atomic character, still they are not the atoms of Democritus, to whose doctrine Leibniz once leaned, since they have an inner self -active energy. They are individualized, and no two individuals are alike; to be different in their principle, their nature has in it difference, separation, multiplicity. The vast crystallized pyramid of Spinoza is smitten by the blow of Leibniz and reduced to very powder. The mo- nistic All becomes the monadal Many. Still the purpose of Leibniz is not to lemain in this stage of separation and discord ; his grand object is harmony. Hence these individualistic Monads into which the Cosmos has seemingly been pulverized are to be harmonized into a new LEIBNIZ. ME TAPHTS1CS. 299 totality. In general the life and thought of our philosopher were largely devoted to the recon- ciliation of differences. We have seen how he sought to bring together the two divisions of Christians, Protestant and Catholic, and also the two divisions of Protestants, Lutheran and Reformed. On the same line runs his philo- sophic endeavor, so that his other great category is Pre-established Harmony, as the reconciling principle of his independent self-asserting Mo- nads. Even these he employs for harmonizing the Cartesian opposites, Thought and Extension, whose abyss he will fill up with a continuity of Monads, thus making a road over which anybody can pass. Coining back to the conception of the .Monad, we are to grasp it primarily as self-sufficient, self-dependent, not determined from without by any other Monad. It is itself and nothing else; it is a simple substance, not composite, but is the element of all that is composite. " The Monads have no windows, by which anything can enter or go forth" (Monadology , c. 7). Still " each Monad represents the Universe," each element or part reflects the All of which it is a part, other- wise it would not be a part. " Each spirit being a little God in its department, it results that such a spirit can enter into society with God " (Do. c. 83, 84). This is a great insight : each Monad has in it the image of the All, not only at rest 300 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. but in movement. Each portion of matter is not only divisible to infinity, but also each minute subdivision "has its own movement; otherwise it would be impossible for each portion of matter to express the Universe " (Do. c. 65). Such is the general conception of the Monad, which must still reveal the Whole in all its division. But this can only be brought about through movement, through action. The Monad cannot represent the Universe as a placid motionless pic- ture, for this would not be a true representation of the Universe with its force, its energy, its eternal activity. Hence each Monad has its pro- cess, which process, strange to say,^is expressed by Leibniz in terms more psychological than metaphysical. In brief, the following is the pro- cess of the Monad : T (a) There is an unconscious element in the Monad, not only as human Ego, but even as material. Everything that exists is a soul, ac- cording to Leibniz ; body or extension is a con- fused perception, and manifests force or soul. Thus the Cartesian separation of body and soul is mediated; properly soul alone exists, and it has always perception in some form. The lower the being, the more complete is its unconscious, or purely potential nature. Still, even the higher being, endowed with intelligence, has around its conscious self an enveloping sphere of uncon- sciousness, the unborn realm of its potentialities. LEIBNIZ. METAPHYSICS. 301 Leibniz calls them little or insensible perceptions, " in consequence of which the present is full of the past, yet big with the future " (JVouveaux Essais, Avant-Propos). Into this unconscious realm the mind returns in sleep, swoon, and dream, not to speak of other similar states. Feelings, instincts, impulses, the inheritance of an incalculable ancestry belong to these little perceptions. They are the underlying links which secretly join together not only all life but all being, so that " Nature makes no leaps," and continuity is the law over al'l separation. Such is the unconscious stage of the Monad, reflecting the universe ( as it must) in a confused, undeveloped, chaotic way, whose manifestation is matter. But in this unseparated disordered state lies force, the tendency to separation and order which must be looked at by itself in the total scheme. (6) The Monad has in its internal process what Leibniz calls Appelition, which is " the action of the inner principle that causes change or the transition from one perception to another" (Monadology r , c. 15 ). This Appetition rises from the previous unconscious realm (des perceptions insensibles), being " an effort of which we are not aware" (Nouveaux Essais, Book II. ch. 21, 5). Here we see the element of Will in the Monad, properly the second element or stage of it (as suggested in the extract just preceding), 302 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. though Leibniz often places it after perception proper, which would make it the third stage in the process of the Monad. This Will or Appetitiou is not simply the voli- tion of a self-conscious being, but belongs like- wise to matter, is, in fact, the force which Leib- niz finds in all material objects, being just the principle of their extension. The Pan-dynam- ism of our philosopher is the manifestation of Will in the Cosmos, which Will must show itself in every Monad from the lowest to the highest. But the Monad, having no windows for egress or ingress, must keep its Will within itself, making the same its principle of inner change, or " the transition from one perception to another." So we properly pass through Will or Appetition, to Perception, which is the third stage of the process of the Monad. (c) All Monads are endowed with Perception, from highest to lowest, which enables them to reflect the Universe. There are many degrees of Perception, or reflections of the Universe, from the confused and unconscious up to the clear and conscious. "The Monad is limited and defined by the degrees of distinctness in Perception " (Mon. c. 60). Thus Perception is universal, it is not simply thought, not neces- sarily sensation even. The Monad, however, cannot perceive any- thing outside of itself, being windowless, unable LEIBNIZ. METAPHYSICS. 303 to give or receive. The Monad, high and low, perceives itself in perceiving the Universe. The upper Monad, the Ego, can perceive only its own states ; the external world it cannot reach ; what seems the outside reality is only a projection of its own inner modification. That such modifica- tion corresponds to the reality, depends on another principle which will be considered later. Here we see the reason why Leibniz is called the father of German idealism. Thus Percep- tion determines the gradation of all being. The Monad in which the Universe reflects itself most clearly and distinctly, has the most exalted Per- ception, and is itself in the most exalted rank of Monads. The human soul approaches perfec- tion in proportion to its adequate Perception or representation of the All Perception being that " state which envelops or represents multiplic- ity in unity or in the simplicity of substance" (Mon. c. 14). The Monad, then, cannot perceive anything but itself, and such Perception of Self is of various gradations. When the Monad clearly and dis- tinctly reflects itself within itself (and so becomes like God, or " a little divinity " ), it is rational, it is called Spirit. * Such a Spirit is capable of performing reflexive acts and of considering that which is named Ego (Moi), Substance, Monad, Soul, Spirit." Thus Perception rises to Apper- ception. " It is well to make the distinction be- 304 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. tween Perception and Apperception ; the former is the interior state of the Monad representing external things, the latter is the reflexive knowl- edge of that interior state, which is conscious- ness " (conscience), or self-knowledge, the return of Perception upon itself or its reflexive act (see Principes de la Nature et de la Grace, c. 4, 5). Thus Leibniz grapples with the self-conscious Ego, calling its activity Apperception. And in the Monadology (c. 30) we have the following : " It is by the knowledge of necessary truths and by their abstractions that we are elevated to reflex- ive acts which cause us to think of that which is called Ego (Moi), and of considering that this or that is in us." Thus Leibniz reaches the self -reflection of the Ego, though in a some- what roundabout way. He continues: "Thus it is that in thinking about ourselves we think of Being, Substance, the Immaterial, even of God, conceiving that what is limited in us is in Him without limits. Such reflexive acts fur- nish the chief objects of our reasonings." The interest of these passages is that Leibniz begins to see the self-conscious Ego as the basis of all philosophic thought. It is true that he has but a glimpse which soon vanishes into his meta- physical concepts. If he could have developed all that lies in that Ego (Moi), whose reflex activity so excites his curiosity, there would have been no Leibnizian Philosophy, strictly speaking, LEIBNIZ. METAPHYSICS. 305 but something very different, nothing less than a new discipline Psychology. Still it is to be noted that the foregoing pro- cess of the Monad is psychological, rather than purely metaphysical. Its three stages, the Un- conscious (Feeling), Appetition (Will), Percep- tion (Intellect, Spirit), will be recognized at once as the three fundamental activities of Psychology, which form in their process a Psy- chosis. Undoubtedly Leibniz was not conscious of any such procedure ; we have to pick out and piece together from scattered notices these stages, each of which is a kind of Monad, inde- pendent, self-sufficient, occupied with its own little world. Still they come at last into a kind of mutual rhythmic movement, though each remains as distinct as a planet whirling around the Sun. A question begins to obtrude itself at this point: How does that Monad called Leibniz, whose soul has no window through which he can get out or let anything in, know so much about other Monads, which are of like character, never giving or receiving any visits? He seems doubly penned in, being shut up within his own house and shut out of his neighbor's house a situation not favorable to getting information about matters abroad. This question, not un- importunate now, will be sure to come up again with renewed importunity. 20 306 MODERN E UEOPEAN PHILOSOPHY. We have found that the Monad, taken by itself, has a process involving three stages, which constitute its own inner life or movement. But no two Monads can be alike, they have degrees of condition, lower and higher, according to which they are now to be arranged. 2. The Order of the Monads. It has been already stated that every Monad represents, or in a way reproduces the Universe, but such re- production in each case is different, according to the clearness and distinctness of the Perception. Monads, therefore, show degrees of perfection, and so there rises the idea of an ascending line of them, from the lowest to the highest. Ejich Monad has been called a point, and the line of ascent is composed of an infinite number of points (substantial, not physical or mathemat- ical) which are separated from one another by intervals not perceptible, though real. This line of continuity is everywhere, and permits no gaps or leaps, which the continuous Monads prevent. Upon this principle of continuity Leibniz lays great stress, since he thinks that with it he has done away with all the grand separations in the Universe, such as soul and body, man and brute, animal and vegetable, even life and death. He has a veritable horror of any visible breach , and he starts to connecting the extremes with a line of his Monads. Still a small breach always remains, for the LEIBNIZ. - METAPHYSICS. 307 Monads cannot strictly interlink, being mutually exclusive. But the separation is reduced to invisibility ; Leibniz is satisfied if the gap is not perceptible. The ideal line of ascent, however, is not broken, but shows a hierarchical order, between whose Monads there is complete differ- ence which has to be thought even if it be not perceived. This is truly a Leibnizian compro- mise: the independent Monad is preserved, but we must close our eyes to its independence. (a) The gradation of the Monads from lowest to highest has already been alluded to ; each Monad as microcosm reflects the great Whole or the Macrocosm, but each does this in its own way, " from its own point of view." If the Perception of the Monad is confused and chaotic, it is low down in the scale ; but if its Perception is not only clear but self-clear, rising to Apperception, it is proportionately high in the monadal scale. Here the modern reader begins to think of evolution. And there are passages in Leibniz as in so many philosophers and poets, which may be regarded as far-off flashes of the coming doctrine. But the monadal order is not evolu- tionary ; evolution itself has yet to evolve. (6) Next comes the authority with which the higher Monads are endowed. The most perfect of them are the rulers, the less perfect have to obey. The dominant Monad (or Entelechy, 308 MODERN E UE OPE AN PHIL OSOPH T. Soul) exercises the supreme government in the Leibnizian Order. " Every living body has a dominant Monad, which is the soul of it; like- wise each of the members of this living body is full of other living bodies of which each in turn has its dominant Monad or soul" (Mon. c. 70). Such is the hierarchical arrangement in every organic thing which has rule and subordi- nation of parts; inorganic objects, such as a stone, is without self -movement because it has no dominant Monad, but is simply an aggregation of Monads not obeying a central authority. Still even the inorganic object is not soulless, but properly a collection of souls. < ' There is a world of creatures, animals, entelechies, souls in the smallest particle of matter" (Mon. c. 66). Every portion of matter may be deemed a pond full of fish, each fish is in turn a pond full of Monads, nay each drop of the pond is a world full of monadal inhabitants. Thus Leibniz cajsts his glance into the infinitely small, and sees there his Universe. With his microscopic bent of mind he beholds a heaven peopled with in- numerable stars " in the smallest particle of matter." Not the telescope but the microscope is his instrument, and he is going to minimize the vast outer Copernican Universe, finding it in the least constituent of itself, even in a grain of dust. Here too he sees that which is " equally in the part and in the whole." LEIBNIZ. - METAPHYSICS. 509 In another passage, Lettre d M. Dangicourt, Leibniz says: I believe that there are only Monads in Nature, the rest is merely a phenom- enon which results from them. Each Monad is a mirror of the Universe according to its point of view, accompanied by a multitude of other Monads composing its organic body, of which there is the dominant Monad. " Even the Monads have their king or ernper or as supreme ruler, while down the line run a large number of lesser authorities duke, count, baron, etc., terminating in the mass of plebeian Monads, whose Perception of the Universe is very con- fused and disordered. This was not unlike the Germany of his time. (c) None the less does the Monad possess autonomy m its field, being determined from within, having its own inner process unassailable by any outside power. The governing Monad cannot subordinate it by a direct exercise of power. The act of obedience must be the obey- ing Monad's own act. No arbitrary ruler can be permitted in this monadal realm. If there be submission to law, it must somehow be the Monad's own law. Does he make the law which governs him? Hardly; not yet can such a doc- trine be thought of even by a Leibniz, who, however, will not tolerate any capricious despot exercising authority over his beloved Monads. It is evident that here an old, old trouble has 310 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. shown itself, the conflict between hegemony and autonomy, over which those Monads, the ancient Greek cities, worried themselves so long and so helplessly, till a new supreme Power (or Monad), coming from the outside (Macedon), seized them all and subjected them to its sway. In the monadal world of Leibniz a similar con- flict has arisen. There is the individual Monad impervious, independent, all alone, existent in his own self. But he must be brought into order, must be obedient to authority, and dwell in a cosmos, to which he has to contribute his share. But is it possible to do anything with him if he gets refractory? So it comes that the ordering of the Monads has called up the sharpest kind of a dualism, which threatens to precipitate the whole scheme into chaos. The all-excluding individuality of the Monad, which is its freedom, must be main- tained ; yet it must also be made to fit into the established order, and not use its liberty to kick out of the Universe. To overcome this dire trouble which his own principle, his dear Monad, has begotten for him, he excogitates a grand plan of reconciliation, which is a master-stroke of its kind. To be sure, the hint for the solution of his problem he unqestionably derives from Spinoza. 3. Pre-established Harmony. Such is the famous category which Leibniz flings into the LEJBNIZ. ME TAPH YSICS. 3 1 1 philosophic stream of speech, for the purpose of allaying the discord which has arisen in his monadal Order. Above these mutually impene- trable Monads, which cannot possibly influence one another directly, there is a common creative principle which has established all in a Harmony, and this must, therefore, be in itself pre-estab- lished, pre-existent, determining the Monads in their inner character. So it comes that the lower Monad obeys through the necessity of its own Heaven-descended nature, and the higher Monad rules by the same necessity, which is indeed its divine right of authority. The dominant and the subject Monads stand in their external relations not directly through each other but through their Pre-estab- lished Harmony. Leibniz illustrates this princi- ple particularly by the conformity which exists between those two wholly separate Monads, Soul and Body. "The Soul follows its own laws; and the Body follows its own; they meet together in virtue of the Pre-established Har- mony which exists between all substances, since they are representations of one and the same Universe " (Mon. c. 78). Every Monad, re- flecting the Universe, has a content harmonious with that of all other Monads, though each does this differently, " from its own point of view.'* Soul and body exist together and co-operate, not immediately through each other, but through the 3 1 2 MODERN E UBOPEAN PHIL SOPHY. supreme principle, Pre-established Harmony. * * In this system the Body acts as if there were no Soul, and the Soul acts as if there were no Body and both act as if one influenced the other ' ' (Mon. c. 81). Such is the world of appearance (as if) in which each Monad seems to determine the other, but behind this appearance is the true determiner of all, Pre-established Harmony. Similarly in the solar system the earth seems to determine the Sun, but the truth is that the Sun determines the Earth. The planets seem to be wanderers going whither they list, but we now know that all their motions are determined by the celestial law of Pre-established Harmony. The principle of the Macrocosm is transferred to the Microcosm, and Copernicus becomes univer- sal in Leibniz. But this Pre-established Harmony must be conceived as active within itself, indeed creative, and hence it has a process. It too is a Monad or rather it is the attribute of the Supreme Monad of the Universe, which every created Monad reflects. Thus arises the difference be- tween the kinds of Monads, created and uncre- ated, or creating. The creating Monad, having created the monadal Universe brings us back to our starting-point, the Monad as existent and created. But first a few words about this process. (a) The Monad of Monads has pre-established Harmony in the lesser Monads, which are derived LEIBNIZ. - METAPHYSICS. 313 or created, being born " by the continual ful- gurations of the Divinity (Monad of Monads) from moment to moment " (Mon. c. 47). This sounds a good deal like Neo-Platonic emanation. It asserts the continuity of the divine process of creation, which is not once for all. This Monad of Monads is God, " the primordial unity or the simple original substance," which, however, Leibniz protests is not one with the Universe, but distinct from it, not immanent but transcen- dent. He seeks to avoid the Substance of Spinoza, by putting his Monad of Monads out- side of the world of created Monads. (5) Thus the Universe of Leibniz is cleft in twain by the two kinds of Monads, created and uncreated. This is a return to the Cartesian dualism of two substances, created and uncreated, which Spinoza seeks to overcome by his doctrine of the one absolute substance. From this point of view Leibniz has again dualized the One of Spinoza who could not think of putting God outside the Universe, and thus have two Uni- verses. The created Monads cannot perish naturally, nor begin naturally; they can be de- stroyed or be created only by the act of God (the Monad of Monads). They have no parts nor extension, nor figure, nor can they be divided. They are the veritable Atoms of Nature, and in a word the elements of things (Mon. c. 3-6) . Such is the Leibnizian contribution: the self-deter- 314 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. mined Monad, exploiting itself in its own world. Yet all these movements, seemingly free and from within, are really given to it from without. Here is the relapse to Descartes, whose God determines the substance directly. Leibniz has this side of external determination, but with it also the self- determination of the Monad. (c) The outcome is that the Monad of Monads determines all the created Monads to be self- determining. "The fulgurations of Divinity" are these perpetual acts of God reproducing the self-determination of the Monad which is as yet too weak to stand on its freedom. Individual liberty in the age of Leibniz was helpless with- out God's continual support. That was never- theless a great thing to do : the philosopher makes God the fountain of man's freedom. The correspondence and co-operation of Monad with Monad through their common Pre-estab- lished Harmony is derived from Spinoza's con- substantial principle (ordo rerum est idem ac ordo idearum^). Through this principle the Mo- nads are substances which correspond with one another and so can unite and even work together. c3 It is then Spinoza who has transformed that unsocial, exclusive Monad into all forms of asso- ciation, as well as endowed it with the possi- bility of love and charity. Still it is the merit of Leibniz (as against Spinoza) that he has made the individual truly substantial and endowed him LEIBNIZ. ME TAPHYSICS. 3 15 with self-determination. For in Spinoza the Mode (as metaphysical) is powerless, being wholly absorbed in Substance ; but in Leibniz the Mode becomes the Monad, and is in its sphere self-determined. This rise, however, of the Mode to God follows also Spinoza, but in his second or ethical stage. Pre-established Harmony, then, has to order a world of Monads which God has created in separation, each being independent with its own distinct character, according to its degree of perception. Thus we come to a new begin- ning nothing less than Nature, or the World of Monads, which is next to be shown in its arrangement through Pre-established Harmony. The preceding stage of Metaphysics has unfolded the principle of the Monad ; now we are to see that principle applied to the monadal Universe, which here must start with Nature, whose science is Physics. Observations. 1. The reader, seeking to inte- grate all Philosophies into one great move- ment, can now see the close connection between Spinoza and Leibniz. The following points may here be suggested: () The ascent of the Monad to its Divine Source is given in the sec- ond or ethical stage of Spinoza. The latter 's descent or metaphysical stage is not only left out, but assailed by Leibniz. (5) The Mode of Spinoza through " the persistence in its own be- 316 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. ing," may well have suggested the Monad which is also self -asserting. Both Mode and Monad are brought at last by their respective promulga- tors to a participation in God. (c) The consub- stantial principle of Spinoza becomes the Pre- established Harmony of Leibniz. Yet here is a great difference : Leibniz holds that God through Will brings about this correspondence, for in- stance between mind and matter; but Spinoza holds that these are already God or in God, be- ing simply modifications of Him. Here we have on the one hand the Leibnizian Transcendence, and on the other the Spinozan Immanence, of God. Moreover it is at this point that we may see the chief propelling motive which drove Leibniz to make a new Philosophy for succeeding that of Spinoza: he sought to rescue the Christian idea of a transcendent Creator. Hence the world with Leibniz is contingent, sprung of the direct Will of God, and not necessitated or emanated as it is with Spinoza, (d) The highest char- acteristic of the Monad is that it represents the Universe, it is the part which ideally con- tains the whole in a more or less perfect manner. Spinoza also has that which is * equally in the part and in the whole," whence comes " the adequate idea." Thus the Leibnizian perception or representation of the Monad has its sugges- tion, rather dim to be sure, in Spinoza. 2. Thus the ethical Spinoza is transferred into LEIBNIZ. METAPHYSICS. 3 17 the metaphysical sphere by Leibniz, for the Monad belongs to Metaphysics, not to Ethics. This is seen in the fact that Spinoza has God as Substance, while Leibniz has the Monad as Sub- stance. The first sentence of the Monadology says: " The Monad is nothing else than a sim- ple Substance, which goes to make up com- posites." Now Leibniz shows (as already set forth) the psychical process in his "metaphysical form" or Monad, whereas Spinoza shows this process in his ethical stage. Thus Leibniz makes the Monad the First, the Absolute, the essence of Being, even God, who is Monad of Monads. 3. The term Monad is old, going back to the Pythagoreans. Some have supposed that Leib- niz took it from Bruno, the Italian philosopher. Most likely is the conjecture that it came to him from his friend, Van Helmont. At any rate he uses the word in a sense peculiar to himself. Leibniz was quite fifty years old before his nomenclature took its final shape in the terms Monad and Pre-established Harmony. The latter came first (about 1695 or 1696). Here is said to be the first use of the term: " All sub- stances have activities, but properly such activities belong only in the substance itself ; that which results in the others (substances) is only in vir- tue a Pre-established Harmony (if I may be per- mitted to use this word)." (See First Explan- 318 MODEEN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. ation of the Neiv System, Erdmann, p. 133.) The reader will note in this passage the need of the word Monads for substances in contrast with the term substance itself. The next year the word needed will appear, and Leibniz will be in full possession of his two most significant cate- gories. 4. The influence of Copernicus supplemented by Kepler produced a mighty impression upon Leibniz. The fact that man must deny his immediate sensations in order to reach truth found its happiest illustration in the Copernican System which forces him to see the Sun stand and the earth move around it instead of the opposite. To be rational we must become heliocentric instead of geocentric. The heliocen- tric idea Leibniz sought to bring down from the skies and enthrone in the kingdom of mind. The plan of the outer Cosmos was true of the inner, both in fact were one Pre-established Harmony, both were " figurations of Divinity." 5. The Soul, the Ego, is to make a center of order in the little world (microcosm) and thus be what God is in the great world (macrocosm). The science of Mathematics, especially in the Seventeenth Century, unfolded God's method of regulating the physical universe. Herein man is to imitate in his own sphere the Divine act, and become as it were a second Providence. Says Leibniz: ' Our soul is architectonic in its LEIBNIZ. PHYSICS. 3 1 9 voluntary actions, and uncovering the sciences according to which God has regulated things (by weight, measure, number), it imitates in its little world that which God does in the great world " (Principes de la Nature et de la Grace, c. 14). Our next duty, then, is to think after God the realm of Nature, and to see its Pre-established Harmony, following its inner connection through the continuity of the Monads. We now go down to the bottom of the World, and see it in its primeval form or chaos, which Leibniz calls the First Matter. Thence we rise to the Soul, and thus compass the science of Physics, after which there is a still further rise (the ethical), of which we shall speak in its place. B. PHYSICS. The metaphysical sphere just concluded has given the inner principle of all things ; now we are to see that principle taking on its outer shape and manifesting itself in the World. Just as the metaphysical movement showed an ascent, so the present physical [movement will show an ascent, beginning with the lowest and rising by imperceptible gradations through nature and beyond it to the ethical sphere, which keeps up the ascent to the supreme attainment, to God. At this point we may observe a difference of 820 MODERN- EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. procedure between Spinoza and Leibniz. The former tacks his Physics on the end of his Meta- physics, inasmuch as Nature for the metaphysical Spinoza was but a vanishing Mode, quite illusory. Hence his rise begins with his ethical sphere, as we have often observed, But Leibniz com- mences his ascent with Nature and continues it through Man to God, since Nature was for Leibniz not wholly an illusion, in spite of certain Spinozan tendencies. The personal starting-point of Leibnizian Physics, indeed of Leibnizian Philosophy, is the philosopher's re-action against the Cartesian dualism of Thought and Extension. Matter is something more than passive Extension; its power of resistance, when it is assailed, shows that. But Extension itself, as a state, implies something that extends itself. It is not simply inert and dead, but has within itself a separa- tion, a going forth out of itself, without which it could not be conceived. Thus behind Exten- sion is a somewhat which is always reproducing it, renewing it, extending it. The absolutely impassable chasm which the Cartesians place between Thought and Extension cannot be allowed to exist. For Thought ap- proaches Extension in a line of minute differ- ences, and Extension approaches Thought in a similar line; each, so to speak, reaches out the hand to the other, and touches the tips of the LEIBNIZ. PHYSICS. 321 fingers across the abyss. Thus there is the Leib- nizian continuity between Cartesian extremes of the Universe. The self-conscious mind has in it countless unconscious conditions (little per- ceptions) which run back toward the material world, while matter shows its essence to be an immaterial principle, which gives to it Exten- sion. The physical Philosophy of Leibniz, there- fore, begins with affirming, first, that matter as extended is not inactive, but must always be ex- tending itself in order to stay extended ; secondly, that matter, through its resistance to any outside impact, shows an inner force comparable to power of Will, defending itself, as it were, and revealing character and individuality; thirdly, matter, by this activity, suggests a process con- tinually going on within itself, which is funda- mentally that of Thought, Mind, Ego. Thus it comes that Leibniz calls every particle of matter a soul, and thereby binds together mind and matter with a chain having an infinite number of links. Matter properly belongs to the sensible world, but the essence of matter is immaterial, not ac- cessible to the senses, which can only give a per- verted view of it, as they do of the planetary world. We thus conceive Matter in its first or immediate stage as dividing within itself, and revealing the immaterial and insensible as its own essential principle, which Leibniz calls Force at 21 322 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. first, but which will in time be baptized with its philosophical name, Monad. This, however, suggests the complete process, which we shall name Soul in the present connection. Thus the Physics (philosophy of Nature) of Leibniz may be considered under the three leading heads: Matter, Force, Soul. I. Matter. Leibniz has scattered a good many observations about Matter up and down his writ- ings. We see that its conception gave him no small trouble, as it did to the ancient Philoso- phers. Primarily he divides it into the First and Second Matter, or in general Passive and Active Matter. He makes God the " cause of Matter," not like the Platonic Demiurge, who has Matter as given, and with it models the world ; nor like Aristotle's First Mover, whom Matter (also given) desires, and so it moves toward the Perfect One, producing Motion and the Cosmos. Leibniz was too good a Christian theologically to assert Matter to be uncreated, even if he affirms it to be eternal. Though he emphasizes so strongly the dyna- mic principle of Matter in general, he feels that he must get back to a passive Matter '* without any soul or life united to it." This he does in order to preserve the mechanical view of the world with its Mathematics, which had been o marvelously developed in his time, he being a great mathematician himself. LEIBNIZ. PHYSICS. 323 ( a ) He says : * ' Matter taken in itself or nude is constituted through Antitypia (resistance, coun- terstroke) and Extension. Through the first of these Matter exists in space (maintains its place or locality) ; through the second Matter is continued through space, and has figure and magnitude (De anima brutorum, c. 1). Such is the First Matter of Leibniz (prima maferia) which properly ought to lie back of even these two divisions of it, which are two attributes (attri- buta). Somewhat differently he says in another passage: "In this passive power of resisting I place the notion itself of the First Matter " (Zte ipsa Natura^ c. 11). Elsewhere he asserts that the characteristic of Matter lies in its resistance, impenetrability (Antitypria) . Matter was a dark uncertain thought to Leibniz as it was to Plato who confesses its obscurity. It would seem that Leibniz holds this First Matter to be the com- plete opposite of God, who alone is Substance separate from all Matter, since he is pure activity Cactus purus} , endowed with no passive power, which, wherever it be, constitutes Matter. " Now all created substances have Antitypia, "etc. (Epist. ad Wagnerium, c. 4). But created sub- stances are not then really the First Matter, which must be conceived previous to Matter in- dividualized, and so having resistance. If God be the absolutely self-determined, his opposite must be the absolutely determinable or Primeval 324 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. Mutter, which however is not something given (as in Greek thought and even in Origen) but is itself created. (5) The Second Matter (materiel secnnda, ves- tita) of our philosopher is also called Mass or Body "in which there is extension along with resistance." This Second Matter comes from the First Matter, the latter being now individual- ized, limited, made corporeal. Moreover, it is the phenomenon, as it were the universal Iris whose function is to appear. Hence the First Matter does not consist in mass or impenetra- bility, or extension which properly characterize the Second Matter; " the First Matter is essen- tial to every Monad or Soul and cannot be sepa- rated from it " being the very potentiality of it, while the Second Matter as clothed (vestita), specialized, phenomenal, can change. Hence it conies that " God through his absolute power can deprive a substance of Second Matter, but not of the First," for, taking away all its poten- tiality, it would remain pure activity (actus purus) which is Himself (Epist. ad Des Bosses, No. 7). This Second Matter may be compared to the garments of the Harlequin, who remains the same in putting on and off all his various costumes. Second Matter is, therefore, the realm of cor- poreality, of phenomena which are again divided by Leibniz into real and imaginary. With real LEIBNIZ. PHYSICS. 325 phenomena, such as masses of matter, the prin- ciple of mechanism enters, since they determine one another in a variety of ways externally, whereby their relations become measurable. Taken together, they form the grand mechanical totality, which the Seventeenth Century particu- larly sought to determine. (c) The material universe may thus be con- ceived as one vast world-machine, the working of whose parts can be calculated and measured. At this point mathematics, itself a grand cal- culating machine, must be developed and ap- plied. So it comes that the idea of Pan-mechan- ism dawns upon the human mind, which it investigates and formulates mathematically. " The machines of Nature, being machines even in their smallest parts, are indestructible, inas- much each little machine is enveloped by a larger one, and this by a still larger, till infinity " (/Sur le Principe de Vie, Erdmann, p. 431). God is the ultimate maker and controller of this world-ma- chine; when He calculates and thinks, the world arises ( Cum Deus calculat et cogitalionem exercet, fit mundus. Erdmann, p. 77). God's thought of the world is mathematical ; so it comes that Science shows " how God has regulated things (pondere, mensura, numero)," that is mathemat- ically. Thus the divinely creative thought of the Universe is found in Mathematics ideally con- structing the Pan-mechanism. 326 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. Undoubtedly this conception comes from Des- cartes, whose God is mechanical, determining all things by fiat from without. We shall soon see what limits Leibniz places upon this principle. He says (Epist. de Rvb. Phil.) " adempta rebus vi agendi, non posse eas a divina Substantia distingui, incidique in Spinosismum." Thus Leibniz plainly sees that Descartes logically leads to Spinoza ; to avoid such an outcome he develops his doctrine of Force which calls for the Monad. The statements of Leibniz about Matter scat- tered through many years and originating in many different occasions are by no means con- sistent. Particularly are his distinctions be- tween First and Second Matter fluctuating. Still in a general way we can see that his First Matter is potential, passive, the primordial possi- bility of the physical universe ; while his Second Matter is active, real, is Body individualized, and so introduces the mechanical process of the physical Universe, whose expression is properly Mathematics. Thus we may put together his conception which winds about through a good many obscure and contradictory utterances. But in this sphere all nature becomes one vast machine, composed of many machines great and small, whose controlling idea is the mathematical. For when God starts to figuring, there springs into being the Universe as Pan- mechanism. LEIBNIZ. PHYSICS. 327 Already Matter has shown a secret inner power of resistance, even when called inert, and also an active energy going outwards as Body. Now this activity, Leibniz will separate from its material and look at by itself, calling it Force, which he deems the essence of Matter. The thought he might have derived from Spinoza, who assigns to everything "the effort to perse- vere in its own being" (Elk* III. Prop. 6). But it is Leibniz specially who abstracts and as it were isolates this effort of all Nature, formu- lating and to a degree organizing it, and thereby passing from a purely mechanical view of things to a new stage which is next to be considered. II. Force. On the whole this is the most im- portant physical conception of Leibniz and rep- resents a great stage in the movement of Science and Philosophy. The scientists of to-day are still dealing with Force, and it was Leibniz in particular who made the transition from a me- chanical to a dynamical view of the universe, though undoubtedly the idea of Force had been philosophized upon before his time. Still it is the most distinctive thing in the Leibnizian con- tribution to the World's thoughts about Nature. Leibniz does not fail to give us some personal glances into the evolution of this principle in his own mind. In his Systeme nouveau de la Nature, he tells how he has dared to publish " these meditations though they are not popular and not 328 MODE RN E UR OPE AN PHIL SOPHY. fit to be tasted by every sort of spirit." Mathe- matics and Philosophy he had studied from his youth . Modern authors charmed me by their beautiful methods of explaining nature mechan- ically. But after trying to fully comprehend the principles of Mechanics, in order to find the rea- son for the laws of Nature which experience showed, I perceived that this consideration alone of the extended mass was not sufficient, and that it was necessary to employ in addition the notion of Force." His stay at Paris ( 1672-6) with his special study of Descartes at that time, laid the foundation of these views which revealed the tran- sition out of the Cartesian Pan-mechanism into the Leibnizian Pan-dynamism. " So I had to recall and reinhabilitate substantial forms (of the Scho- lastics), so decried to-day/' giving them a new meaning, so that their nature consisted in Force. * * From this it follows that they have something analogous to feeling and appetite/' they are a kind of self or Ego (Monads). Thus Leibniz has conceived his principle of universal Force, but also the vast multiplicity of Forces which he is to order into a world of their own. (a) As there is a First Matter, so there is a First Force (vis primitiva agendi) " which is the immanent principle or law (of Nature), impressed by divine decree" (De ipsa N'atura, c. 12). Upon the First Matter is to be impressed this LEIBNIZ. PHYSICS. 329 First Force * * in order to make it complete sub- stance." This First Force is also called the First Entelechy by Leibniz, using an Aristote- lian term. But this First Entelechy is not simply affixed to a particle of Matter, but is its principle or law. " For matter changes like a river, but the Entelechy remains while the machine (or movement) lasts " {Epist. ad Des Bosses, No. 2). There is a second meaning of Entelechy in Leibniz, equivalent to Monads, Souls, which show the total process, or the First Entelechy actualized. Always passive Matter has an active principle, says our philosopher in a well-known passage: " I know not those vain, useless, inactive masses, of which people talk. There is activity every- where; no body without motion, no substance without effort." Extension means Force, Re- pulsion means Force, all Nature is full of Forces. Thus the First Force differentiates itself into a multiplicity of Forces, each of which has its own life and even self. (5) Hence it comes that Leibniz speaks so often in the plural of Forces real unities, sub- stantial points or forms, Monads, Entelechies. This is the atomic side of the Leibnizian doctrine, but his atom is not mechanical but dynamic. As we saw Matter individualize itself in Bodies (the Second Matter), so the First Force (vis primi- 330 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. tiva) individualizes itself m Forces derivative, which Leibniz classes under the head of Effort (Nouveaux Essais, Book II., c. 21), hinting of Spinoza's conalus. The world-machine above considered "has an Entelechy adequate to itself, and this machine contains other machines endowed with their own adequate Entelechies, but these machines are in- adequate to the previous Entelechy " (Epist. ad Des Bosses No. 2). Thus Leibniz seeks t show the dynamic element in his former Mechanism. The world-machine has as its moving power (Entelechy or Soul) a world-force, which drives the wheels of the universe through its own inner energy. The outer power has become inner throughout the great Whole, and each little ma- chine generates its own Force, which, however, minutely individualized, has unity, is indeed one vast dynamic totality. Thus Leibniz has worked through the Cartesian Pan-mechanism, which makes even God a mechanical power, into Pan- dynamism, which puts the moving energy inside the object great and small and all. In the physical universe he has asserted the idea of immanence against the Cartesian transcendence, unfolding on a line with Spinoza. Thus Leibniz seeks to universalize Force, making the universe its store-hause in the whole and in each smallest part. Mechanical externality of Motion must be supplemented by LEIBNIZ. - PHYSICS. 331 dynamical internality of Force. He does not throw away the Mechanics of Nature, but marks its sphere as that of " the particular phenomena of Nature which can be explained mathematically or mechanically;" but on the other hand " the general principles of Nature are metaphysical rather than geometric," hence beyond mathemat- ics ; still further these general principles ' ' belong rather to certain indivisible forms or entities as the causes of the appearances than to the cor- poreal mass of extension" (Discours de Met. 35). Such an "indivisible form " is the Monad which term Leibniz had not yet adopted at the time of this Discours (1786). In this concep- tion of Force working in the smallest element (Monad) and in the total universe, we are again reminded of Spinoza whose adequate idea is found ** equally in a part and in the whole " (Eth. II. 38). For the Leibnizian Force is common to all things " and is conceived as equally in the part and in the whole " in the Monad and in the All. This latter phase we may now glance at. (c) The totality of Force is always the same in the universe and is always going the amount of it is one, not to be increased or dimin- ished, and so is eternally preserved. Great stress is placed by Leibniz upon the conservation of Force. "It is not the quantity of Motion which is preserved, but that of Force. * * * There 332 MODEEN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. is preserved the same quantity of motor action in the world; that is, in any given hour there is as much motor action in the universe as in any other hour." (LeMre a Mr. Bayle.) The uni- verse is a vast reservoir of Force which remains the same in quantity. Descartes held that "the same quantity of Motion is preserved in bodies, but I have shown that the same moving Force is preserved, for which he took the quantity of Motion . ' ' ( Eclaircissement , etc . ) Thus Leibniz put behind all Motion of bodies their gener- ating Force which is the same in quantity, being the essence of all things material, Such is his conception of Pan-dynamism; all action, all mo- tion of bodies is the manifestation of Force which is never lost, never diminished in quantity, the reservoir being always full and receiving back what it sends forth, without a drop ever splashing out. Thus Force has its process (like the Ego or Moi) showing its immediate, separative, and returning stages, and having "something analo- gous to feeling and appetite (or will). It is a soul, which term is used by Leibniz in a very wide sense, quite embracing the whole sweep from Matter to Spirit. Really we get the idea of Force from our own inner experience, from the Self or Soul, which manifests itself in phenomena. Leibniz says directly that we have to conceive these LEIBNIZ. PHYSICS. 333 metaphysical atoms (Monads) after the image of our souls. Then he calls them souls. We think that he is on the point of passing into psychology purely and making all things, "both in the part and in the whole," a process of the Ego, but he cannot give up his metaphys- ical wrappage. Great is his labor ; we feel like shouting to him across two centuries, "Drop your substantial forms, drop your metaphysical atoms, fling away even your Monads and come over to us." Vain is the exhortation, and yet just listen to him. "This world is not a ma- chine as Descartes would make it. Everything in it is force, soul, life, thought, desire;" if so, why not make that your philosophy? " What we see is the machine but this is only the out- side of Being." What is, then, the inside? ( Being is that which itself sees " and also sees itself. And yet Leibniz is unable to free his Soul or Ego from its " metaphysical form," but subjects its process still to the Monad. He has, however, reached the point of saying the whole Universe is Soul both in its oneness and in its manyness . On this line we shall fol- low him out. III. Soul. We have to think that Leibniz rose, partially at least, above the dynamical into the psychical principle, and endeavored to formulate its process. The Soul is a return to Matter or the outer manifestation of the inner Force; 334 MODERN EUROPEAN" PHILOSOPHY. the Soul is the total process of the inner and outer, or of Force and Matter, which are no longer in a state of separation and opposition, but are united in one movement, which is that of Soul and Body. Says Leibniz: " Soul is the principle of inner activity in the Monad, to which the outer activity corresponds." This correspondence of the external in the internal is representation, which is also called perception by Leibniz, as has been already set forth. All that has been hitherto called Matter, and all that has been hitherto called Force, is now found to be Soul. To Leibniz the world was one vast Soul made up of an infinite number of Souls, greater and smaller. Thus the Mechan- ical and Dynamical had their essence and end in the Psychical. The first two showed the work- ing of efficient or finite Causes. The last re- vealed the final Cause. Herein lay a mighty thought which makes the Leibnizian doctrine a very significant stage in the movement of all Philosophy. The author sees and formulates, even if dimly and fantastically, the principle that there is the process of the Ego in everything, and that the Universe is to be grasped as one great process of the Ego, embracing and order- ing all other processes, minute and colossal. Souls do not arise and pass away, being "in- generable and imperishable." Each Soul is as old as the world, " expresses the Universe, is as LEIBNIZ. - PHYSICS. 335 durable, as subsistent and as absolute as the Uni- verse itself." It is the indestructible unit of individuality which can perish just as little as the Universe which it represents. The succession of the Soul's representations (more or less distinct according to the nature of the given Soul) re- sponds naturally to the changes of the Universe itself. " Immortality of the Soul belongs not merely to man, but to the whole realm of Nature through its monadal character ' ' ( Systeme nouveau, c. 15, 16). Every Soul reflects the Infinite with greater and greater distinctness, till God is reached who is pure self-reflection (actus purus) , and so without body, which belongs to every other Soul but God. Thus Nature, according to Leibniz, rises to Pan-psychism, the Universe from Matter up to God is a Soul and is full of Souls. These are manifold and of infinite gradation ; still we may find in Leibniz himself the authority for ordering them in three main groups the material Soul, the organic or living Soul, the rational Soul or Soul as Spirit. (a) First we may glance at the material Soul. " I accord an existence as ancient as the world, not only to the Souls of animals, but in general to all Monads; and I maintain that every Soul or Monad is always accompanied by an organized body, which, however, is in a state of perpetual change." (Lettre a Mr. Des 336 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. Maizeaux.) We have already cited the Monad- ology wh.ere the author says that " there is a world full of Souls in each particle of matter," or, taking a more moderate comparison, " each particle of matter is like a garden full of plants or a pond full of fish" (c. 66, 67). There is nothing dead in the universe, no Chaos, no confu- sion, but in appearance. So " there is an infinity of creatures in the least portion of Matter" (Theodicte. 195), active, self-moving Souls. It is only through this conception that Leibniz can see that each material part, however small, belongs to the great Whole, to the Universe, which it reflects in being Soul. If each particle did not have its own movement or process rep- resenting the All, it would not belong to the All, it would have to be a universe by itself. The predominance of the passive element, mere inertia (materia prima) drags down the perceptive power of the Monad, which power is properly its active Soul. On this account the Soul or Mumad becomes passive and material, when this First Matter has the upper hand and blurs its power of representing the Universe. But on the other hand a diminution of this First Matter may allow the Monad or Soul to be self- active; thus the latter is organic, moving itself from within. (b) The organic or living Soul rises above the material Soul, since its representation of the LEIBNIZ . PHYSIOS. 337 Universe is more distinct, hence higher. " Even of living things there is an infinity of degrees " in accord with the degrees of their representa- tions, " every Monad or Soul being a mirror of the Universe after its fashion." Very important for Leibniz as for Decartes is the relation between Soul and Body. " The organic Body of a living thing is a kind of divine Machine or a natural automaton, which surpasses infinitely all artificial automatons " or those which are merely mechan- ical. "For these living machines (or organic Bodies) are still machines in their smallest parts, till infinity " (Mon. c. 64, 65). The automatic principle or self -movement be- longs to the living body as a whole, it is a Ma- chine which moves itself, and is composed of an infinite number of self-moving machines. The total organic Monad, the living Body, is reflected in its self-movement by its countless atomic Monads also self-moving (a curious anticipation of the cell in modern Biology). Leibniz, there- fore, holds that the Body is a Soul, a stage of monadal existence. There is thus no difference between them, and the Cartesian dualism of Soul and Body vanishes. There is much fluctuation in the numerous statements of Leibniz regarding Soul and Body. He was a reconciler, and often a trimmer ; it can- not be denied that he trims his doctrine in his letters to suit his correspondents. To a Catholic 22 338 MODERtf E UEOPEAN PHIL O SOPHY. he seeks to. explain how his principle of Monads can comport with transubstantiation. His good Cath- olic friends, especially Des Bosses and Arnauld, he wishes to win to his Philosophy ; the result is he makes an adjustment of it to their religious presuppositions, which may be very ingenious, but which gives both to the man and his doctrine an uncertain tinge. Just a little too much of policy runs_ through his philosophic utterances. Possibly here we may find a reason why he never formulated his scheme in anything like a com- plete system. He would not compromise him- self: litera scripta manet. Thus his Philosophy becomes so much plastic material in his hands, always ready for a new form according to circumstances. (c) The third class of Souls Leibniz calls Spirits. " When the Soul is elevated to Reason it is something more sublime (than the animal or living soul) and it is counted among Spirits " (Principes de la Nature et de la Grace, c. 4) . It is these Spirits or rational animals that know necessary truths (like those of Mathematics and Logic). Such Souls are also capable of reflexive acts (self -consciousness) and they can consider the Ego (Moi), or Spirit can look at Spirit (Do. c. 5). This is what Leibniz calls Apper- ception, " which is not given to all Souls nor always to the same Soul," for even the rational Soul has its unconscious sphere. LEIBNIZ. PHYSICS. 339 In fact, Leibniz seems to maintain the doctrine that the self-conscious, rational Soul or Spirit has developed from a previous and lower state. Says he: "I believe that human Souls have pre-existed, not as rational but merely as sensi- tive Souls, which did not arrive at the higher stage, that is, of Reason, till the man whom the Soul was to animate, was conceived" (Lettre a Des Maizeaux). This means that there is a development from the organic or sensitive Soul to the rational; but is there likewise a devel- opment of the material or inorganic Soul to the organic? "Every Soul or Monad is subject to continual changes, and these natural changes must come from an internal principle, since noexternal- influence can enter within it '\Mon. 10-11). We can scarcely regard these statements as explicitly affirming that there is an inner evolution from the lowest to the highest, but such a doctrine seems to be suggested. Leibniz, however, rejects anything like Metem- psychosis or the Transmigration of Souls, which " never quit all their body or pass into an en- tirely new body." Still there is Metamorphosis or Transformation ; " souls are developed, envel- oped, despoiled, reclothed, transformed," all of which means only change, not loss, of body. The .sensitive Soul with its body may develop into the rational Soul with its body ; but such a corresponding change in the organism is not the 340 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. work of Nature but of God Himself through Pre-established Harmony. "God alone is de- tached wholly from body," being pure activity. He is not the soul of the Universe, though he be present everywhere ; he is the ruler or monarch of it; he is the exception, the world is not his body, but his machine. Intimations of evolution seem to have been started in some minds by the doctrine of Leib- niz. One of his correspondents, M. Rernond, in a letter (1715) asks him: " By what means, by what degrees can a central and dominant Monad, which constitutes an animal at a certain time, produce or even be at another time, Mr. Leibniz himself? " This seems to call for Darwin or indeed something beyond Dar- win. The answer of Leibniz has a curious thought: "A perfect Intelligence (God) rec- ognizes for a long time in advance the future man in the present animal both as to soul and as to body," since He has pre-established just this evolution of both together in harmony. This is not far from saying that the reciprocal evolution of the soul and body of man from lower animals belongs to the doctrine of Pre- established Harmony. At any rate the general outcome of Leibnizian Physics is a Universe full of Soul, which has been preceded by a Universe full of Force, and still further back by a Universe full of Motion. LEIBNIZ. PR YSICS. 34 1 Underlying these three stages is not only an evolu- tion but a process since Soul takes up into itself both Motion and Force, the external and internal, culminating in its own self-returning process within itself, called Apperception by Leibniz, but usually known now as self-consciousness. Looking back at the movement of Leibnizian Physics we see that our philosopher has substan- tially undone the Cartesian dualism between Mat- ter and Mind by making the Universe all Soul, rising through the principles of Pan-mechanism or the Universe as moved from without, of Pan- dynamism or the Universe as moved simply from within, to Pan-psychism, or the Universe as self- moved or self -reflect ing, of which the Ego or Spirit is the culmination with its self-conscious Reason. But now what? Man as Spirit is " the image of Divinity itself, or of the author of Nature, being capable of recognizing the system of the Universe, and of imitating somewhat of it creatively" (Mon. c. 83). Thus a new sphere arises in which man is to employ his Reason in its supreme activity, reproducing the Universe after the divinely creative power, of which he has "an architectonic coruscation." Thus the Soul as Spirit or Ego, returning upon itself in the reflexive act or self -consciousness can return to God, and re-think the thought of the Universe. Already the rational Soul or Spirit seemed 342 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. to rise beyond the sphere of Physics proper, but Leibniz connects it so closely with the two pre- vious stages, material and organic, that it could not be well separated from them in an exposi- tion. But the Soul as rational not only is the principle of nature and hence her lord,,but knows itself to be such. With this self-knowledge the Soul can and must assert its primacy over Nature, whereby it becomes ethical. The object of Physics is attained when Nature is wheeled into line with the monadal Universe, and has reached rational Man, who is still to go forward in his ascent, but this ascent is like- wise a return to and participation in his Divine Source. C. ETHICS. Leibniz has touched upon every leading phase of Ethics, but his ideas here too are in the main monadal, separated, disconnected. We find in his various lucubrations something on the moral, the institutional and the religious spheres, but not joined together in any complete order. In fact, if the Monad be taken strictly, it is hard to see how Leibniz can have any Ethics, in the fundamental form of this science. Man is a Monad and God is the Monad of Monads; in what way then can any return of man to God take place? The Monad has ' no windows " through LEIBNIZ. ETHICS. 343 which anything can go out or come in, they have in strictness no mutual participation; thus the ethical return in its wide sense seems quite impossible. And yet Leibniz will at last bring it about. Moreover the Monad, in its complete isolation and individualism, is supremely unsocial, each having its own little world all to itself. How, then, can Monads associate and form together the realm of Social Institutions? Though Leib- niz was an official of the State, it is difficult to see in what way a State could arise and exist in his monadal universe. And so with all institu- tions, which come of human association. Still also here the unexpected will take place. Nay, if morals pertain to the conduct of the individual toward other individuals and toward the rest of the world, it is hard to see how the Monad can be a moral being. Man the Monad is set in order by the Supreme Monad, and runs harmoniously with the rest of the universe through a predetermined principle ; his action, attuned to the movement of the All, can- not be called his own, and hence cannot be called moral in the customary sense, being adjusted primordially by and in a Pre-established Har- mony . Such a Monad can hardly have Duty and Responsibility in the matter of conduct, which predicates are the basic ones for morality. Still he will not fail to employ these predicates. 344 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. Of these difficulties Leibniz himself is more or less aware. Hence we may observe, when he enters the ethical sphere in his writings, he begins to shift, to tack about, and to re-adjust his metaphysical sphere, in which he gave the pure derivation and conception of the Monad. Thus a separation shows itself between his Meta- physics and his Ethics, which calls to mind that of Spinoza, though in various respects different. It must be confessed, however, that Leibniz in the ethical sphere has not wholly overcome the Spinozan dualism. In fact he sees or at least dwells on only the monism (or metaphysical part of Spinoza), not the dualism which appears when the ethical portion of the Spinozan Norm is considered. Thus the Ethics of Leibniz, from the standpoint of his system as a whole, seems to hang in the air. The truth is, the return of the Monad to con- nection and harmony with God or the Monad of Monads has already been made; it is the main fact of the foregoing metaphysical sphere of the Leibnizian Norm, as we have already set forth. Thus Leibniz has in strictness no ethical return. Still he, being a man learned in the history of Philosophy, knew of Ethics as a philosophical discipline from the ancients down to his own time. He was also a jurist and a statesman, so that Institutions came into his daily life and thought. Moreover in spite of his formalism and even his LEIBNIZ. ETHICS. 345 doubleness, we hold Leibniz to have been a relig- ious man, and hence his mind was much occupied with God, Church, and Religion. He has left writings in all these departments, but irregular, unorganized, recalcitrant to his Monadology. Such is the negative view of Leibnizian Ethics, springing out of his Metaphysics of the Monad as above set forth. But this is by no means the whole of the ethical Leibniz, who has another strand, even if contradictory to the preceding metaphysical movement. It is this second strand which, at first suppressed, rises to the surface and in the end sings a song of triumph in the City of God. Both sides must be seen in their struggle, in their .process and in their outcome which is reconciliation, is that true Harmony which, pre-established by God, returns and re- establishes Him and His work. I. THE PSYCHICAL ELEMENT. This must be caught up and put together from many different utterances of many years, for it is monadal like everything Leibniz did, like his life and like him- self. There is a good deal of it, with numerous variations, yet an underlying oneness of material which is essentially plastic, capable of taking many forms according to the occasion. We have already noted that the Monad as a metaphysical substance has in it a psychical pro- cess Feeling the (Unconscious), Will (Ap- petition) and Intellect (Perception). This must 346 MODEEN E UEOPEAN PHIL SOPHY. be deemed the primal inheritance of Leibnizian Ethics, along with the doctrine of Pre-established Harmony, both coming down from the Metaphy- sics of our philosopher. That is, we have on the one hand the monadal Ego, internally self -active, and so free ; on the other we have the monadal God, determining this Ego as subject to harmony with the objective world. Thus the dualism be- tween the Determined and the Self-determined, or between Necessity and Freedom rises with full intensity in the Leibnizian Monad as Ego. The science of Ethics is, in its complete sweep, as we have often said, the Return to God, to the Absolute Spirit on the part of the separated and alienated Self or Monad. The ethical problem of Leibniz is, then, to restore the monadal Self out of its state of isolation and to make it, from within and from without, an integral element of the total Divine Process. It is our judgment that Leibniz in the sphere of the psychical, never succeeded in working him- self out of his dualism. Hence all his thoughts upon this subject have a tendency to run double, they go in pairs of contradictories, which he can- not fully bring together in reconciliation, or in the unity of their process. Our exposition will try to show this characteristic by unfolding along the line of his main doubles. First, Feeling will show itself as Pain and Pleasure; secondly, Will as determined and free Will; thirdly, Intellect LEIBNIZ. E THICS. 347 as Evil and Good. Thus the psychical element is seen to dualize itself in each stage of its process. 1. Pain and Pleasure. As these two feelings enter into all our moral states, Pleasure being " one of the principal points of Blessedness," while Pain is the accompaniment of Evil, they are passingly defined by Leibniz. Pleasure is ' the feeling of rare perfection " (Letter to Ni- caisse, 1698), or is " a sense of perfection" (Def. Eth). On the other hand "Pain is the feeling of imperfection," limitation, finitude. We may say, therefore, that in proportion as the Monad can feel its passivity (or First Matter) , it is capable of Pain ; and in proportion as it can feel its activity (or free Self) it is capable of Pleasure. Limitation brought home to a free (self -limited) being, is painful, but to transcend such limitation must be pleasurable to its deepest nature. This idea of Pain and Pleasure comes from Spinoza, who says: " Pleasure (Icetitia) is the transition from a less to a greater perfection. Pain (tristitia) is the transition from a greater to a less perfection" (Ethica III., Prop. 59, Def. 2 and 3). Spinoza puts stress upon the movement (transition). Moreover we may note wherein this perfection lies according to Spinoza. It is "through our participation in the divine nature ' ' whereby our actions become more perfect as well as our knowledge of God 348 MODERN E UROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. (Elh. II., Prop. 49, Scholium adfinem). This thought will also deeply influence Leibniz, as we shall see further on when we come to his City of God. We should observe, too, that Spinoza here shows his second or ethical stage of the Norm, not his first or metaphysical. The former was that portion of Spinoza which Leib- niz profoundly, and in part unconsciously, ap- propriated and transformed into his own system ; but the latter or metaphysical portion he rejected. In the preceding passage Spinoza conceives his Ego (we) or Mode to ascend to and share in God, which is not the Spinozan descent but his ascent, the latter being the determining fact of the Leibnizian Philosophy. Feeling leads to Will, is indeed the potential stage of activity; to feel perfection (which is Pleasure) leads us to will it, to make it real. The Leibnizian view of Will reveals still more deeply than Feeling the dualism in his psychical thought. 2. Determinism and Freedom. Already in the metaphysical portion the double character of the Monad has been set forth, on the one hand free and self -moving within and even self-conscious, but on the other hand determined from without by Pre-established Harmony and so necessitated. No subject gave Leibniz more trouble, and on none is he more two-edged. He calls it "a famous labyrinth where our reason very often LEIBNIZ. E TRIGS. 349 goes astray." He seeks to distinguish the kinds of freedom, and to define the term; at bottom his labor seems to little purpose. " There is the freedom which is opposed to the imperfection of the spirit," to its passivity or passion, when it is dominated by Nature or the First Matter. In this sense God alone is free, being pure activity Cactus purus). " Then there is the freedom which is opposed to necessity," to external de- termination. But how can a thinker whose doc- trine is Pre-established Harmony through God, vindicate man's freedom? Still Leibniz grapples with the task and excogitates his doctrine of contingency, which, he says, is the true oppo- site of necessity and not freedom. To go back to the beginning, God chose among innumerable sorts of worlds, to create the best possible one which is ours. But God was under no necessity to make just our kind of a world, unless we call his a moral necessity to choose the best. This is not the metaphysical necessity like that of Spinoza. Still if we grant this free- dom to God, has man, the created, the pre-estab- lished, any of it? Leibniz tries to say yes, and declares that all human action is contingent, the opposite being logically possible. Still it is really impossible. Says he: " All things are cer- tain and predetermined in man as in everything else, and the human Soul (or Ego) is a kind of spiritual automaton" (Th. 54). Very curious 350 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. is his shifting from necessity to inclination or con- tingency : " In Adam there was no moral neces- sity of sinning, but only this, that the inclina- tion to sin prevailed in him . ' ' He followed inclin- ation or the stronger motive, but could he help himself? Hear the next sentence: " There was a certain pre-determination (in Adam's sin) but no necessity . ' ' He might have done the opposite , still he could not help himself . So Leibniz will give us a determined contingency for freedom instead of downright necessity. Ideally you are free, but really you are not. The Monad may be free within itself (though this can be questioned), but in the world it must be deter- mined. What, then, is freedom worth? Leibniz sought to transcend the immediate capricious Free- Will of Descartes ; he also sought to circumvent the determinism of Spinoza. But in the latter case he hardly succeeds meta- physically, though in the ethical sphere we shall be able later to chronicle a success (see the doc- trine of association of the Monads). The ada- mantine chain of Spinozan Necessity was too strong for Leibniz, he could not quite break it nor shake it off. And the reason is, in our opinion, because he sought to overthrow it di- rectly, by counter-argument, and then by com- promise. But really it overthrew him. Still we must remember his protest with hand stretched to Heaven even while he is sinking LEIBNIZ. ETHICS. 351 under the waves of Spinoza's all-devouring Ocean. But Will must have a content, something must be willed, " we do not will to will." At this point a new pair of moral terms appears, yet very old, coming to the Will from Intellect, according to Leibniz. 3. Evil and Good. Three kinds of Evil (and also of Good) are distinguished by our philoso- pher: metaphysical (imperfection or limitation), physical (suffering), and moral (sin). There can be little doubt that the first is the source of the other two. Evil is the negation of perfec- tion, and this negation is nothing else than the lack of clear and distinct ideas or perceptions. '* There is an original imperfection in the crea- ture, since he is limited in knowledge and can be mistaken," from which fact spring all his de- linquencies. Leibniz takes pains to controvert the position of Descartes that the source of error lies in the Will more than in the Intellect (see preceding p. 112). Moreover with Des- cartes the Will in its freedom is the unlimited, while the Intellect is the limited ; but with Leib- niz the Intellect in its clear perceptions possesses the element of the unlimited, while the Will must be finite from its being determined. The Leib- nizian Will has apparently no power of re-acting against the suggestions of Intellect with its erroneous judgments. Descartes gives it the 352 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. power of resisting them. Leibniz has to say that if we always judged aright, we would act aright; if our intelligence were perfect, our conduct would be perfect. We read in his Abridgment of the Theodicy : "God is infinite, and the Devil is limited; Good may and does advance ad infinitum, while Evil has its bounds. " If this were carried out, the Devil ought to be the First Matter, purely pas- sive, simply inert: which would certainly over- throw his supposed power in the world. " The blessed approach Divinity, and make such progress in the Good as is impossible for the damned to make in Evil " (see Duncan's Leib- niz,^. 196). Progress in the infinite has un- doubtedly far greater potentialities than progress in the finite. At this point it can be seen what a hubbub Leibniz would be sure to call up around his ears. For instance, the idea that the Devil might be Pure Matter, without activity, would assuredly not be in favor with a certain class of theolo- gians, who had been fighting the arch-fiend all their lives in a kind of ever-lasting drawn battle. And we hold they would be right. One might as well reduce the Devil to Pure Space, and be done with him, as another philosopher once did. But when such a controversy, especially a reli- gious one, waxes hot, Leibniz the reconciler, the compromiser, the grand intellectual acrobat of LEIBNIZ. ETHICS. 353 the age begins his marvelous contortions, his double somersaults through an intricate array of definitions, distinctions and explanations, in which he says that what he says means some- thing different from what he says. In these excursions there is no need of following him, for the simple reason that it is impossible to believe him, or to believe that he believes himself. Of course this tendency is the weak, perchance the weakest, spot in a great man. The Intellect returns to Feeling (the first psy- chical stage) and includes Pain and Pleasure in its Evil and Good. This is indicated in the following passage: " The Good is what is proper to produce and increase Pleasure in us, or to abridge and diminish some Pain. Evil is proper to produce or increase Pain in us, or to diminish some Pleasure." Then Feeling leads to Activity, to Will, whose content is furnished by Intellect. Thus the psychical round of the Mind is com- pleted in its ethical phase, showing each of its three stages dualized in pairs of opposites. Evil, then, belongs to the Intellect, and con- sists in the absence of clear perceptions in the monadal Ego. God is the presence of such per- ceptions. Hence God is supremely good, be- cause He is perfect in perception, or knowledge. The good man is good by virtue of sharing in this divine perfection of perception, and men are 23 354 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. graded in goodness according to the different degrees of it in their intellect. Hence arises an inseparable connection in Leib- niz between Morals and Religion. An inde- pendent science of Duty is not the Leibnizian morality. For this reason these two principles (moral and religious) must be considered to- gether. II. THE MORAL AND RELIGIOUS ELEMENT. If God makes man moral by giving him distinct perceptions, and also grades man's morality by grading his preceptions, morality vanishes in the divine act and becomes religion. This result, however, Leibniz does not like, it savors too much of Spinozan necessity, of which, however, he could never fully rid himself, and with which we see him in a perpetual struggle. So he in- jects, or, we might say, smuggles into his deter- mined, pre-established Monad as Ego, a limited quota of self-determination, so that it can, apparently through itself, suppress Passion and Appetite, and thus have some morality of the traditional kind. In the writings of Leibniz we find many echoes of what Descartes and Spinoza have said of the Passions and Emotions. Some of these he has defined specially in his own way. Also he has listed the virtues with accompanying explana- tions. All this is done in his individualistic manner, in separate shots hitting and missing. LEIBNIZ. E THIC8. 355 His general view of the moral universe may be illustrated by the following extracts from the Theodicee (147): " God plays with those little Gods (so to speak) whom He has seen fit to create." Such a " little God is man, in his own world or microcosm, which he governs after his own fashion," namely with Free- Will which the Creator has given him " permitting him to range freely in his own department." One asks here, How can such a Monad of a man be moral, all to himself? Still our little God " does wonders in his little sphere ; ' ' but also ' ' he is guilty of great faults, because he abandons himself to his pas- sions, and because God abandons him to his senses." Such misdeeds of his, however, can only be done to himself, not to his neighbor, not to institutions, nor to God, in monadal strictness. Still " God punishes him for them, now as a father or preceptor chastising his children, now as a just judge punishing those who abandon him." Thus our philosopher injects into his Monad Free-Will and Responsibility for the deed, which do not belong to its constitution meta- physically, as it is set in order and runs accord- ing to Pre-established Harmony. Moreover it is evident that the Pre-established Harmony, through Free-Will and its evil con- duct has become inharmonious. This difficulty Leibniz recognizes and tackles in the following fashion: "God, by a marvelous artifice, turns 356 MODEEN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. all the defects of these little worlds into the greater ornamentation of his large World." What a cunning fellow God must be, quite equal to Leibniz himself, as the supreme diplomat, permitting all the little courtiers their Free- Will, yet turning all their cabals against him and their meanness into the universal har- mony of the State. This Leibnizian note runs through the whole Theodicee : God is the adroit manager of all these willful Monads per- petually doing evil and making discord which he skillfully turns into the universal concord. " So the apparent deformities of the little World are re-united in the beauties of the great World and show no opposition to the unity of the one Principle, universal and infinitely perfect; on the contrary, these little worlds just in their deformities augment our admiration of divine Wisdom which makes evil serve for the greatest good." Such is the famous Leibnizian optimism, a very fragile part of the mail if he be really in earnest about it, which we cannot help doubting at times, for the thing sounds just a little too comic. Let those who may, be edified by such pious reflections, which are drawn out to an appalling length in the Theodicee. From the foregoing citations it is manifest that Religion is very closely interwoven with Morals in Leibniz. God alone has clear and dis- tinct knowledge, hence he is the wholly free being LEIBNIZ. ETHICS. 357 and thus supremely moral. Man in like manner has liberty, in so far as he knows clearly and distinctly. His reason is the source of his morality, while his senses, having confused ideas, are the source of servitude and evil. If he knows God truly, he has clear and distinct ideas and is moral. Thus knowledge is the good and ignorance is the evil. Herein Leibniz goes back quite to Socrates who identified knowledge and virtue. Evil appearing to be good to our in- telligence deceives us, and Jeads us into wicked- ness, for no person is willingly bad he mistakes or is ignorant. It is always worth while to keep in mind what a part is played in the Philosophy of the Seventeenth Century by the doctrine of " clear and distinct ideas/' It was started by Descartes, retained by Spinoza, and still further elaborated by Leibniz. But all hold that a clear and dis- tinct idea is God's and is the connecting principle between the human and the divine minds. It belongs to Reason and is what makes Morality and Religion, man and God, rational. The dualism of the Monad is also divine, and so there are two different or rather opposite conceptions of God in Leibniz, each of these conceptions having several distinct shades or sub- divisions. As the Monad of Monads he must be in isolation like the simple Monad, having no windows ; as supreme he must be the most in- 358 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. dividualistic of all Monads. Still he has to perform one action at the start, even if inactive afterwards : he must pre-establish Harmony among the Monads. Another turn of the same thought declares that he is this pre-established Harmony, and thus is continually bringing it forth. These are variations in the metaphysical Monad as God. On the other hand, God is declared to be the creator of Monads, which are conceived to be the products of Divine Will; thus the Monad of Monads has " a window," and communicates himself freely to a world of his own creation. But such creation is again spoken of as a kind of emanation or Neo-Platonic overflow of God into the Monads which come forth " by the continual figurations of the Deity from instant to instant/' which do not appear to be acts of creation. At any rate instead of divine isolation we have here divine communication, which makes some kind of a return to God possible and hence is ethical in the wide sense of the term. It can- not be denied, however, that Leibniz has a pan- theistic tinge in his conception of God, in fact he is both theistic and pantheistic. Leibniz postulates Free-Will in the realm of Morals and Religion, yet it must have its content given by Reason, so that it 'is not capricious. But in the purely metaphysical sphere the Monad cannot have Free-Will, since it is determined by L EIBNIZ . E THICS. 351) Pre-established Harmony. Here again, in the matter of liberty we note the contradiction between the Ethics and the Metaphysics of Leibniz, who injects from the outside a Free- Will into the Monad. Is Leibniz a necessitarian or a libertarian? It is a disputed question, but really he is both, he is the one in Metaphysics, the other in Ethics. Thus Leibniz seeks in his way to rescue, par- tially at least, Free- Will. Next we shall look at him taking a still greater step, even if incon- sistent with his previous system. He actually affirms the association of " spirits or reasonable beings," between whom and ordinary souls or Monads, there is a great difference. For these spirits are not merely images of the universe in general, but they are in addition "images of God Himself, capable of knowing the universe," of consciously turning back upon it and of re- producing it in thought, or of building it over again by "architectonic coruscations" of the divinely creative energy. Now we reach the re- sult: "it is this capacity which makes spirits (or reasonable beings) capable of entering into a kind of association with God," and through Him with one another. " Thus God is no longer in their regard such as is an inventor in relation to his machine, but such as is a prince to his subjects, or even a father to his children" (Mon. 83, 84). What now has become of God as the 360 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. mechanical orderer of the Monads, or as the pre- established harmonizer of all things? He has created a Monad which is not simply to be put into order from the outside, but which can turn back and in some part reproduce the divinely creative act of God Himself. Such a Monad can now associate with God and with its fellow Monad wherewith we enter a new stage. III. THE INSTITUTIONAL ELEMENT. Thus rises to view the supreme conception of Leibniz : the City of God, which is " the assemblage of the spirits/' in a community, and which consti- tutes " the most perfect State possible, under the most perfect of Monarchs." Such is the glimpse, and it is but a glimpse, a gleam, re- vealing like a flash of lightning the Heavenly City in outline. It is not developed, not de- scribed; it comes with a sudden explosion, mo- nadal, dynamic, Leibnizian and then darkness. The aged philosopher here ascends to the highest pinnacle of his genius and views for a moment (at the end of the Monadology) the future, like Moses on the mountain beholding before he dies, the promised land. Thus Leibniz sees, in the clouds to be sure, the City of God, but did he also see, with his new principle of associa- tion, that he would have to reconstruct his whole system of Philosophy from the beginning? In this conception Leibniz draws deeply upon the past as well as looks out upon the future. L E1BN1Z. E THICS. 36 1 First we think of Saint Augustine's Civitas Dei, which, however, goes back to Plato for many of its lineaments. Thus Leibniz too, like so many philosophers, ancient and modern, had an ideal State hovering before him, a kind of Monadopolis, in which the Monads exchange their isolation for association. It need hardly be said that this is just the reverse of their character as set forth in the metaphysical portion of the Leibnizian Philos- ophy. Thus, however, a universal institutional world hovers before him as the ethical outcome of his system, appearing already in his Dis- cours de Metapliysique (36, 37), whereby God 4 'humanizes himself" and enters "into social relations with us." Thus he answers himself, in fact transcends himself into a new Philos- ophy. " This City of God, this universal monarchy, is a moral world in the natural world;" yet it is more than moral, it is in- stitutional. " It is by virtue of this divine City that God reveals his goodness, rather than his wisdom and power which are shown every- where " (Mon. 86). Thus there is also a trans- formation of God who may now be called good for the first time, through the Insti- tution. Truly Leibniz has not only moralized but institutionalized God Himself, who is, therefore, to be considered not simply as '* the architect of the machine of the universe " (which he is for the lower Monads of the 362 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. Kingdom of Nature), but he is also " the sovereign of the divine City of Spirits" (who belong to the Kingdom of Grace). Thus He is the principle of all human association, the central source of the Social Institutions of Man, who accordingly requites Him with ' pure Divine Love, which causes us to take pleasure in the supreme happiness of that which we love." It is this Love of God which makes " all wise and virtuous persons act in conformity to the Divine Will," that is, they will the Will of God not as arbitrary but as institutional, or, in Leibnizian phrase, as "the Sovereign of the Divine City " (Mon. 86-90). Still even for this City of God, in which all are associated through Divine Love, the sugges- tion is found also in Spinoza. Says he: " This Love toward God cannot be soiled by envy or jealousy ; but it is the more fostered, the more men we conceive to be joined with God in the same bond of Love" (V. Prop. 20). Such is the hint, not developed by Spinoza; but we have the right to say that he was going toward the City of God when he died. The second or ethical portion of his great work (the Ethics) moves also in the same direction, as has been already indicated, and this was the portion which especially influenced Leibniz. . ' Nevertheless, with this institutional outline of the grand Kepublic, or rather Monarchy of LEIBNIZ. ETHICS. 363 Spirits, which signifies the association of rational beings in a world of Institutions, Leibniz takes a distinct step in advance of Spinoza, who though supremely an institutional man (naturally more so than Leibniz) never quite succeeded in working out and formulating his principle of association. So he was as yet unable to make definitely the transition from the moral to the institutional sphere, though he was certainly far on the way thereto, being prevented by his early death, as we have often to say to ourselves in pathetic retrospect. It must also be acknowledged that the Leib- nizian Pure Love of God as institutional, that is of God, as founder and ruler of the Divine City which is the center and source of all asso- ciation, is a more concrete and loftier conception than the Spinozan Intellectual Love of God, which remains an individual relation, and hence is moral or subjectively religious, but not insti- tutional. Through his form of Divine Lov r e Spinoza does not explicitly bring his fellow-men into association with one another, and thereby call forth Institutions. To be sure, Leibniz does not develop his conception of Divine Love, he holds it by no means with a firm mental grip, sometimes he grasps and sometimes he does not seem to grasp its institutional side, but keeps it as individual as Spinoza's (compare the two statements of Love pure, veritable, in the Monad- 364 MODERN E UEOPEA .V PHIL SOPHY. ology and in the Principes de la Nature et de la Grace). Thus it would seem that Leibniz has risen be- yond his metaphysical system which has become an incumbrance to him, a sort of shell which once subserved a purpose, but which now bur- dens him, having outgrown it quite when he enters the City of God. Unconsciously he has sloughed it off, though he still seeks to carry it along in his ascent to his new world. He cannot yet part from his metaphysical edifice, even when he passes into the future, but the coming century will smite it and shivei it to pieces. At this point the ethical stage of Leibniz comes to its conclusion and with it the entire Norm Metaphysics, Physics and Ethics as manifested in his Philosophy. It is to be noted that the ethical stage in the end overcomes the isolated metaphysical Monad (of the first stage) which becomes socialized through God. In Spinoza likewise we observed the Mode rising above its merely phenomenal metaphysical stage. Thus the Monad (and also the Mode) undoes itself along with the entire monadal order, whereby the whole domain of the Metaphysics of the Seven- teenth Century has risen through its own inner movement into a stage beyond itself, of which we shall hear in the coming Century. Moreover with the conclusion of the Leib- nizian Philosophy, the philosophical movement LEIBNIZ. E THICS. 365 of the entire Century has concluded itself. The main problem of this Century we may formulate in this wise : How can I (Ego) be made to know the object? The answer is through God in some way, and the three ways give the three Philoso- phies Cartesian, Spinozan, and Leibnizian. There is a famous illustration of the two clocks belonging to the whole period, from Des- cartes down. We cite here the turn which Leibniz (^Erdmann^ p. 133) gives to it: " Imag- ine two clocks which agree perfectly. Such agreement can be brought about in three ways: 1st, by mutual influence; 2nd, by a workman who keeps both together at every moment; 3rd, by constructing the two clocks so accurately that they move in accord continuously. Put now soul and body in place of those two clocks. The first way is that of vulgar philosophy ; the second is that of continual assistance of the Creator; the third is that of Pre-established Harmony, which is my hypothesis." This comparison of two clocks had been used before by Descartes, by Geulinx and also by others. It is a distinct Cartesian inheritance, and has now descended to Leibniz who readjusts it to his own doctrine. This one comparison reflects the whole movement of the philosophy of the Seventeenth Century in its various stages. For in tha't century God is the grand clockmaker fixing and keeping in order the two clocks of the 366 MODERN E UR OPE A Y PHIL SOPHY. Universe which represent its dualism. The great thinkers of that period Descartes, Spi- noza, and Leibniz assign to God the task of uniting Thought and Extension, Mind and Matter, Soul and Body. But each philosopher makes God perform this task in a different way . In Descartes He does it by fiat, in Spinoza by mak- ing the two sides consubstantial, in Leibniz by Pre-established Harmony. From this illustration we can see the mechan- ical and hence the mathematical bent of the time. The function of God is conceived by the Philosophy of the Eighteenth Century in a mathematical fashion. For this reason Spinoza is peculiarly the expression of his age: he adopted the geometric method for his Phi- losophy. He applied the science of exten- sion (Geometry) to mind, inasmuch as we have no science of the mind as such. The two attributes of Substance are ex- tension and mind, which must -be, there- fore, consubstantial. Hence Geometry must be the principle of mind through the common Substance. Herein, too, we may note the pantheistic tendency: Mathematics is the Sub- stance of the phenomenal world of forms, con- trolling it by an inherent necessity. The world mathematically follows from the definition of God, who does not create but is the world; as cause of it, he is simply causa sui. Hence LEIBNIZ ETHICS. 367 there is a monistic and even pantheistic tinge in Geometry, which reduces all the multi- plicity of nature to the one abstract process of point, line and surface. Spinoza declares that there can be no truth without Mathematics, God Himself or Substance being mathematical. The implicit separation between the trans- cendent and the immanent spheres, which runs through the Seventeenth Century, and which were held together by Leibniz with great difficulty and doubtful success, becomes an explicit acknowledged separation in the Eighteenth Century, and is expressly formu- lated as that between the unknowable and the knowable. It is still the modern problem of the Ego knowing the object, but this takes place no longer through " the concourse of God," whch is now to be relegated to a realm outside of the knowledge of the Ego. $t THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. REVOLUTION. The general character of the Eighteenth Cen- tury is that- of re-action against what has been transmitted in thought and institutions. The human mind, though active in the preceding Century and asserting itself, still adopted for its expression the formulas coming down from the past. The Eighteenth Century is a revolt on the part of the human Self against the swaddling clothes in which it has been wrapped from ages immemorial. It proposes to tear them off and even to burn them up. It is, therefore, the revolutionary Century of our modern time, if not of all time.. (368) THE EIGHTEENTH CENTUEY. 369 Its declared, explicit attitude is, accordingly, negative. It assails and seeks to destroy what is established at times with a ferocity which has rarely had a parallel. But underneath this neg- ative energy there is secretly at work a positive, constructive spirit which is preparing the new order. Both these forces, the open negative and the latent positive, go together and cannot be neglected in any adequate exposition of this Century or of its Philosophies. The manifestation of such a negative might in Philosophy is what is known as Skepticism. Man becomes skeptical of truth, of all thought, indeed of himself. From the philosophic point of view the Eighteenth is the great skeptical Century, in which the whole objective realm be- gins to grow unreal and become a phantasm. The World-Spirit itself seems to turn skeptic. To be sure the History of Philosophy shows other periods of Skepticism. The old Greeks started it as they did nearly everything else good and bad. But Mephistopheles, " the spirit that denies," appears never before to have gotten such a complete grip on a whole Century. I. If we look at the European political History of the Eighteenth Century, we find that it lies, both in its outer sweep and in its inner signifi- cance, between two great epoch-making Revolu- tions the English Revolution of 1688 and the French Revolution beginning about one hundred 24 370 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. years later. They form the revolutionary set- ting of the whole Century, and constitute the most striking, the most overwhelmingly spectacu- lar expression of its very soul. The Revolution of 1688 in England made a. dynastic change at the command of the English people. The House of Stewart was deprived of its regal inheritance by the new power, and another line of rulers was put in its place. Thus the established right was set aside; the inherit- ance coming down from the fathers and intrenched in law was annulled in England, and soon came to be questioned everywhere in Europe. By this act England places herself at the head of the world-historical movement of the age. Her character is action, and she has acted with deci- sion. Thus we may say that her revolutionary deed in 1688 is a typical deed, deeply forecasting the future. In the beginning of the Seventeenth Century the transmitted thought of the age was denied, but England passes at once to action and denies the transmitted right of the ages, and summons it before a higher tribunal. Thereby she really opens the Eighteenth Century as far as any special opening can be designated . The result is Philosophy crosses the channel from the Teu- tonic continent where it has dwelt for a century, and an Englishman, John Locke, becomes the philosopher of Europe. It is true that England only changed from one THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 371 dynasty to another; the dynastic principle, long inherited and deeply ingrown with her national life, she preserved, to be sure with certain strict limitations. But after a hundred years the sec- ond great and greatest Eevolution of Europe takes place in France which seeks to destroy root and branch the dynastic principle along with the total inheritance of the ages. The world has been all wrong hitherto, particularly its estab- lished rights, its law; so France proposes to wipe out the entire past and to begin over again. Thus the Eighteenth Century expires in the most tremendous negative act in all history, if we take into account its brevity and its com- pleteness. That a new positive order lay ger- minating in this destructive energy is never to be forgotten. Such are the two tone-giving European Revo- lutions of the Century, but we must not fail to note that there was a third extra-European Revo- lution which took place during the same Century, and which was at bottom the true positive solu- tion of this negative epoch of- Europe. The American Revolution also rejected the dynastic principle and in its stead advanced to the new principle of government in the Constitution of the United States. But another Century, the nineteenth, will have to pass, before any such fact can be generally recognized and thus weave 372 MODERN' EUEOPE 'AN PHILOSOPHY. its strand into the historic evolution of civiliza- tion. II. The Wars of Europe during the Eighteenth Century have the same general cast: they are chiefly dynastic struggles in which the prin- ciple of monarchical inheritance falls into con- flct with itself and largely destroys its own valid- ity. The two chief wars openly turn on the right of dynastic Succession : so we have the wars of the Spanish and the Austrian Succession. Legiti- macy assails legitimacy, and really undermines itself. The two dynasties which had most stren- uously maintained the supreme privilege of birth in their own respective lines, were the Bourbons and the Hapsburgers. Now these two houses fall out with each other and quarrel over their in- heritance, each side claiming lands and peoples as their birthright. These personal quarrels of sovereigns convulsed Europe for the greater part of the Eighteenth Century. The war of the Spanish Succession (1701-14), starting with the century, was a great training for all Europe,- educating it to disregard legiti- macy. Louis XIV. was the leader ; the most hide- bound defender of the divine right of kings, he did most to destroy it by violating it everywhere for what he deemed his own interest. In him royalty destroyed royalty. At first this took place in other countries ; but finally his negative act must come back to his own France and slay THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 373 the representative of his own House. The peace of Utrecht (1*714) already contains the germs of the French Revolution. Legitimacy denies itself, recognizing that something mightier than it is, has it by the throat and uses it as a means. Toward the middle of the century arose the war of the Austrian Succession, repeating in Teutonic lands substantially the same lesson. The established right of birth is questioned, denied ; the State is no longer merely a royal per- quisite. Kingly privilege has been overthrown by kings ; title by birth cannot stand in the way of another and mightier title. It is manifest that the supreme institutional conflict of the Eighteenth is different from that of the Seventeenth Century. During the latter we saw the struggle of Religions, the Latin against the Teutonic. But at present the relig- ious contest has receded into the background; the dual Church, Protestant and Catholic, is acknowledged as a fact by both parties. Divi- sion now enters the Catholic side and splits asunder its two chief defenders, the Bourbons and the Hapsburgers, not on a religious but on a political question. The outcome is that each undermines the legitimacy of the other; each assails the established order of succession coming down from the past, while pretending to main- tain it. Thus it comes that right itself as transmitted 374 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. down the ages is made to contradict itself. For each party trumps up a claim supported by a long string of precedents, for the purpose of justifying its view of its own case. The double line of soldiers in battle array has as its coun- terpart a similar double line of jurists in battle array. Thus right has divided within itself and gives the lie to itself, and certainly proves one thing: the truth of its own self-contradiction. Such is the general condition of old Europe, Latin and Teutonic, moribund, in a state of self- negation which means Revolution. But is there no positive principle lurking in this mass of national decay? Already in the North a new State has been slowly evolving, Teutonic and Protestant. This is Prussia whose greatness has been built upon the ruins of legitimacy. In 1701 the Duke Frederick III. makes his country a kingdom, wrenching his new title from Austria as the price of his sup- port. The next king, Frederick William I., strengthens the army and organizes the new State into a huge fighting machine. Those giant grenadiers of his have been much laughed at, but they are truly typical of the com- ing Prussia. He never uses his implement, but hoards up a vast reservoir of. power for his successor who will use it with tremendous en- ergy. This successor is none other than Frederick the Great, who starts with seizing TEE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 375 Silesia (1740), certainly in violation of long- established right. To be sure Frederick also can play the European game of digging up some antiquated claim from the dusty legal documents of the past. Johann Peter von Ludewig, Pro- fessor of Jurisprudence at Halle, will refute all established rights in favor of this right of Frederick, very old and yet very .new. The Kantian antinomy has indeed entered the realm of right, since each side proves the complete validity of its claim, yet the two claims are di- rectly opposite. The result is the Silesian Wars, at the end of which Frederick holds Silesia, to the decided defeat of legitimacy. He is the great revolutionist of his time, though a king, whose prerogative rests upon the destruction of prerogative. He founds the new European State, whose royal title springs from the denial of royal title. And yet Prussia will continue still to assert strongly royalty and legitimacy, and that is just the Prussian contradiction to-day. Kant is truly the philosopher of this epoch. His conflict of the Antinomies is named after and directly taken from the conflict of Laws, which we have just designated. Intellect has thus become inherently self-contradictory and self-annulling. Such is the fierce criticism of the Eighteenth Century handed down to us by Kant. What is to be done? His answer is: Fall back upon Will, upon the assertion of your 376 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. Ego's power, for your Intellect is a hopeless maze of bewilderment. That is what Fred- erick the Great actually did. The strong man, the strong nature alone can settle this con- fusion, this approaching cataclysm in which all Europe threatens to be submerged. In fact the law of inheritance can no longer be allowed to control; if you go back far enough, every royal House and many of the nobility, and some of the common herd, can make out a claim for king- doms as their birthright. Moreover, provinces and whole peoples can no longer be made a foot- ball with which monarchs play against one an- other the game of legitimacy. The whole thing must stop by an act of Will, the imperial, truly the Kantian imperative. III. Such we see to be the external manifes- tation of the Spirit of the Eighteenth Century in the events of History. In correspondence with this spirit we shall behold the individual turning against his philosophical inheritance and denying it in the interest of his free Self. It was no accident that England was the chosen arena for this new beginning. For nature her- self has individualized England, making it an island, yet large enough for a nation, truly the island-nation, isolated, separated from the con- tinental mass of nations with their undefined and ever-changing boundaries. England is, there- fore, the natural home of individuality, the real THE EIGHTEENTH CENTUIiY. 377 monadal land, full of Monads and itself a Monad, or indeed the Monad of all national Monads. Yet with the metaphysical shell of Leibnizian monad- ism England and her philosophy can have nothing to do ; that is just what they will break to pieces and fling away, asserting the Ego in its own naked right, without being dressed up in its monadal trappings, which really hide it from the English mind. Such is, in general, the act of Locke, veritably the English philosopher, philos- ophizing against Philosophy the transmitted, and asserting his Ego as the determining center of thought for the future. When William of Orange, Stadtholder of Hol- land, passed over the channel and made himself king of England with the consent of its people, there was enacted a great historic deed, typical, universal, reflecting the movement of European civilization. He destroyed the dynastic idea of mere inheritance and thereby founded a new dy- uasty. Philosophy left the Continent with him and kept its headquarters in Great Britain till its negative work was completed in Hume, when it was brought back by Kant to the new con- tinental State, Prussia, where it was destined to celebrate its greatest modern triumph. Such was its extraordinary leap from the extreme West to the extreme East of Teutonic Europe, from the Anglo-Saxon to the German at Konigs- berg, as if making ready for a supreme at- 378 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. tempt to philosophize the spirit of the whole Teutonic race. And that is just what will be done in the coming Nineteenth Century. Such is the vast spatial stride of Philosophy, turning back from the Western boundary of its modern supporters to their primitive seat in the East, thus overarching all Teutonia. This philosophic arch of the Eighteenth Cen- tury we may conceive as extending from the birthplace of John Locke in Western England to the home of Inimanuel Kant in East- ern Prussia. From rim to rim is the sweep, after which is to come a mighty concentration. Very different was the topographical character of the Philosophy of the Seventeenth Century. It was confined to one small Teutonic country, Holland, and to the not very distant province of Hanover, the chief home of Leibniz. But Leib- niz was the philosopher who burst these narrow bounds with his dynamic energy and scattered his monadal thoughts through all Germany, even unto Berlin and Vienna. Indeed Leibniz may be said to have Germanized modern Philoso- phy in his later years, when he had substantially given up his earlier attempt to Gallicise it, which was impossible on account of the dominant Catholic Church, with its own established Philos- ophy. Thus Philosophy during the Eighteenth Century becomes the chief intellectual Discipline TEE EIGHTEENTH CENTUEY. 379 of Teutonic Europe, but of the Protestant part thereof. IV. Philosophy in its greatest masters no longer speaks Latin during the Eighteenth Cen- tury, but Teutonic. In the previous century we noted that its chief language was Latin or the French daughter of the Latin. Now it is to speak first English and then German. Of course English has a strong Latin element, but its linguistic structure and soul remain essentially Teutonic. Talking in the vernacular, Philos- ophy now passes from speaking French (Descartes and Leibniz) to speaking English (Locke and Hume). Distinguishing for our present purpose French and English, we may say that in general French is a Teutonized Latin, and English is a Latinized Teutonic. Thus in the movement of philosophic speech, English is the intermediate between French and German, while French and English are intermediate be- tween Latin and German. In the movement of this line of languages, we may observe the movement of Philosophy itself, which is slowly passing, stepping by centuries, as it were, from the Latin to the German world and its speech. Thus Philosophy as the great Teutonic Dis- cipline begins to talk its mother tongue as the immediate direct utterance of the Ego, throwing aside its inherited speech as old clothes. This again we see to be characteristic of the Eight- 380 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. eenth Century in its revolt against the trans- mitted, the established, the past inheritance generally. The spontaneous expression of the Self in its native tongue had already manifested itself with unequaled power in English Litera- ture. But now English Philosophy, or we may say European Philosophy is to talk English, for a while at least. It should be observed, however, that both Locke and Hume have a very decided Latin element in their English style. Both show a Latin culture, which passes over into their writ- ings; particularly is this the case with Hume. In fact we may hear a pronounced Latin accent in the English of the Eighteenth Century. Its literature has a tendency to be classical, formal, Latinized ; witness Pope and Dr. Samuel Johnson. Not till the end of the Century, when the Romantic revival had started its ferment, do we again hear the Anglo-Saxon accent in English. Even in language we may thus observe that the transmitted principle has become negative to itself; Locke with his Latin culture belittles the study of Latin in his work on Education. So Philosophy talks English even if a Latinized English; when it wants to talk Teutonic, it will quit England and go back to the old Teutonic home. V. In this manner we conceive the Philoso- phy of the Eighteenth Century as reflecting its THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 381 character in the language which it uses, flinging away its alien speech transmitted from the ages, and betaking itself to the spontaneous fountain of the mother-tongue, even if we see the old Latin categories lying imbedded everywhere in the linguistic stream. But a much deeper, in- deed just about the deepest fact of the present Century's Philosophy, comes to light at this point: its attitude toward the Norm, that philo- sophical Norm running through and transmitted from all past Philosophy. Will it reject that, too, in keeping with its revolt against everything handed down from the fathers? The answer must be, Yes. The very process which makes Philosophy and has made it from the beginning, must be passed through the fiery furnace of neglect, unconscious denial, and finally of con- scious refutation and rejection. On the other hand it cannot get rid of its own Norm ; Philosophy denying Philosophy will still show itself to be philosophical in spite of itself. It cannot assail itself without furnish- ing the very weapons of such assault. One can- not philosophize without treating of God, World, and Man. Herein the Eighteenth Century will show that inner self-opposition and self -nega- tion which we have already seen to be its pro- foundest characteristic. It is truly a dialec- tical Century (in the Platonic sense), being divided within itself and torn to pieces in the 382 MODERN E UEOPEAN PHILOSOPHY. strife of its own self-warring Dialectic. It turns against the established world outwardly, but in doing so it turns against itself inwardly. Thus it is revolutionary to the core, without and within, and shows the complete sweep of the spirit as negative. It is true that Locke and Hume and the English thinkers generally must be acquitted of any acquaintance with the philosophical Norm. This could only be derived from the History of Philosophy, from that past speculation which Locke and Hume thought so frivolous, though they knew so little of it. To be sure they can hardly be blamed for such ignorance, which is that of the educated men of their time and country. It required the. evolutionary Nine- teenth Century, returning to all forms of the past with sympathetic study, to bring out the deep significance of the History of Philosophy. What could the Eighteenth Century do but spurn it as something transmitted? The negative movement against the Norm is seen in all three of this Century's greatest philosophers, though in different degrees of intensity. Locke neglects it, Hume denies it unconsciously, while Kant refutes it consciously and rejects all the knowl- edge which it has hitherto given. Such is the purpose of what we may well consider the central and pivotal portion of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, namely the section on the Transcenden- THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 383 tal Dialectic. This we may deem the culminat- ing point' of the Century's negation of Philoso- phy, in which the philosophic Norm itself is assailed fiercely and for a time quite obliterated by a philosopher. Kant in his way knew about the Norm which had come down to him from the Seventeenth Century in a kind of undercurrent through Wolf chiefly, who clung to it and also to Latin speech in part, for philosophic exposi- tion. Kant is, therefore, the philosophic hero of negation, and, as Hegel declares, is the philo- sophic counterpart of the French Revolution. Still we must not forget the other side already mentioned. Each of these philosophers cannot do without the Norm of their science, otherwise none of them would be philosophers. They all pre-suppose it even when denying it; their work, even when negative, proceeds on the lines of the Norm and shows its divisions, metaphysical, phy- sical, ethical. But it seems out of place to foist this Norm upon these philosophers when they leave it out or deny it on principle. Accordingly we shall have to begin with them a new procedure by placing the Norm in a subordinate position. We shall try to follow each of them in his own way . Each has set forth his fundamental thought in a book which is his central work. This work we shall analyze in our exposition and unfold the standpoint of the author after his own method . Still we shall not fail to note the Norm, which, 384 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. despite his implicit or expressed opposition, will lurk in his Philosophy as a whole. Thus we shall follow each individual philos- opher in his normative book, in which he to a degree makes his own Norm, asserting himself or his Ego against the transmitted Norm, which, however, will be found to be secretly underlying all his work. VI . We should also note the character of the Natural Science of the Eighteenth Century. It is the great chemical Century, as the preceding was mechanical. The visible material world is analyzed and reduced to its simple elements. Thus the separative tendency of the period shows itself in the treatment of Nature. Chemistry now passes out of its uncertain alchemistic stage into a true science. Moreover, the great original chemical philosophers of the Eighteenth Cen- tury are English Black, Cavendish, Priestley. The discovery of oxygen may be considered the new birth of chemistry. When water was sep- arated into its two elemental gases, oxygen and hydrogen, the typical genetic fact of all Chem- ism was brought to light. Like the English philosophy of the Eighteenth Century, English chemical ideas passed over to France when they were organized anew, particularly by Lavoisier. Thus the new forces of Nature which divide and drive bodies asunder into their elements were developed and specially cultivated by minds THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 385 which were themselves in this separative condi- tion, and which were just therein deeply accord- ant with their Century's spirit. This in the realm of Natural Science we may deem dy- namical; an explosive, revolutionary, dissolving principle is made to show itself everywhere in the material universe. Thus after the preceding Pan-mechanism follows the period of Pan-dyna- mism, which was indeed foreshadowed theoreti- cally in the Philosophy of Leibniz, but was realized in the Century after him. Descartes makes God mathematical for controlling the caprice of the Ego; Spinoza does the same still more emphatically, at least on one side of him ; Leibniz, however, gives to his Monad (as Ego) a sphere of self -activity, even if this is pre- established. But in the Eighteenth Century the dynamic Ego is let loose by Locke, though in a limited field, and is allowed free range, till it runs up against the walls of the universe, which walls constitute the grand separation between the known and the unknown. VII. In a general way we may thus bring be- fore ourselves the deep inner scission and self- separation of the Century. It is in one inces- sant war against its own past, against its own origin and parentage. Hence it is in a war against itself. If what produced the child be so utterly bad and worthless, what must the child itself be, and what must the child say about 25 386 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. itself? So it comes that Philosophy as the purest and most transparent expression of the age, will have such a poor opinion of itself, and show its own self-inflicted wounds to the gaze of the whole world. Its great object from the begin- ning is to know Truth, Truth, as objective and real ; but now it has come to deny that it can know Truth, or cognize the object as it is in itself. We have already indicated that the three supreme philosophers of the Eighteenth Century are Locke, Hume and Kant. Each is to be re- garded singly, in his own right, but the final fruit of studying them is to see them as the three great stages of the one process which spans the entire Eighteenth Century, and makes it a philosophic Whole. The tri-personal move- ment we behold rise to the surface again, as we have seen it throughout the History of Philos- ophy from the starting-point in ancient Miletus. We may deem it a manifestation of what lies deepest in the grand philosophic development through the ages, a kind of personal epiphany and incarnation of the Pampsychosis. To be sure, there are other lesser movements, though important, in connection with the one supreme movement ; but it is the purpose of the present work to concentrate attention upon this one all- comprehending sweep of the Philosophy of the Century. This sweep in the main lies between two un- THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 387 knowable realms which we may call the Ego- in-itself and the Object-in-itself. Such is the limit to knowledge which essentially shows the phenomenal Ego (the counterpart of the Ego-in-itself) seeking to grasp the phe- nomenal Object (the counterpart to the Object- in-itself). Thus both sides', Ego and Object, are divided into an essence (that which is in itself) and an appearance (that which is phe- nomenal). This is the fundamental divisive principle of the Eighteenth Century which makes its Philosophy the second stage of the total modern movement of Philosophy. This division is accepted by Locke, Hume and Kant; they all aim to show the relation of the phenomenal Ego to the phenomenal Object in the act of knowing. But within the field, thus marked off (that of the Eighteenth Century) they form a process of which each of them is a stage. This fact we may briefly set forth in advance as follows : 1. Locke. The phenomenal Ego can know the phenomenal Object immediately the latter be- ing the direct cause of Sensation in the former. Here lies Locke's meaning of experience. 2. Hume. The phenomenal Ego cannot know the phenomenal Object the latter as the ex- tended cannot reach the former as the unextended, and hence cannot directly cause even Sensation . Here lies Hume's denial of experience. His is the great separative doctrine of this separative 388 MODEEN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. century, separating the Ego knowing and the Object known by an impassable line. Yet this denial of his we shall find him denying. 3. Kant. The phenomenal Ego can know the phenomenal Object mediately the latter being first wrought over and put into the Ego's own forms of Sense-perception and then into the categories of the Understanding (all of which is to be explained when we come to Kant specially). Such is, very generally stated, the philosophic process of the Eighteenth Century, in which we see that Kant is a return to Locke through Hume, and thus completes within himself the total movement of the Century. They all recog- nize an unknown realm outside their known one, which is secretly determined in some way by the former. For all three this unknown realm is properly that of God, who is for them the third element of the Norm. The essence or innate- ness of things cannot be known, as being the God-given. The Eighteenth Century seems to have made a kind of compromise with God: You keep in your sphere (the unknown) and I (Ego) shall keep in mine (the known). Thus the Ego asserts that it can know in its limited sphere without " the concourse of God," who always in the previous Century " assisted " the Ego to know the Object. LOCKE. PHILOSOPHIC CHARACTER. 389 I. Xocfce* The great function of Locke is to circumscribe human intelligence. He seeks to draw a sphere within which man can have knowledge, but out- side of this sphere man cannot know anything on account of the limitation of his faculties. We may conceive Locke with a huge pair of com- passes in his hand drawing a circle and saying : Here is the boundary line beyond which the mind is not to go. Moreover Locke will naturally claim that this boundary line is laid down by God Himself at the creation, and that he, the philosopher, has simply found it and is brushing away the rub- bish of former philosophers who had covered it over and obscured it with meaningless terms. God is, therefore, the limit-maker for man; His supreme decree laid upon His creature is : " Thus far and no farther." Quite different is the God of the previous Seventeenth Century, who imparts to man immediately Ideas clear and distinct through which he knows the object in its truth, without limitation. But Locke beholds God as the Idea-limiting, not the Idea-giving, and ridicules the very notion of man's knowing absolutely what God can give, except the limit. Thus our philosopher runs a line of demarca-. 390 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. tion between the knowable and the unknowable which is destined to remain in Anglo-Saxon thinking down to the present. Moreover we s.ee wherein he divides the total field of cognition of the previous Century into two new fields, the knowable and the unknowable. This division is what gives the fundamental characteristic to the whole Philosophy of the Eighteenth Century: it is separative, divisive, analytic, hostile to unity, to the transmitted system, indeed to the con- ceived totality of things. It divides the Universe and throws one-half away, thus knowing only one half or one side, which is sure to show its halfness or one-sidedness. Hence this Century is inherently self -annulling, negative to its own negation, or, as we say, dialetical ; and we should make haste to add that herein lies its surpassing interest and its meaning for humanity's culture, even if the lesson need not be prolonged for a hundred years. Locke, then, reflecting the spirit of , the age, had an overwhelming sense of human limitation. It is the theme to which he returns again and again, and is the creative thought which brought his supreme book into existence. Still the com- pensation must not be left out. If he ran a wall around the human mind not to be scaled, within that wall he left the mind free, self -active, capa- ble of having its own Ideas without the interfer- ence even of God. So Locke has a sphere of L OCKE. PHILOSOPHIC CHARACTER. 391 individual freedom, even if limited. Moreover this spirit of freedom belongs to every Ego, is peculiarly its own. Hence no other Ego is to lord it over me in my inner sphere ; therein I am to be tolerated. Hence Locke's strong defense of Toleration which with him is not only a polit- ical and religious doctrine, but reaches to the bottom of his Philosophy, and springs out of his view of man. It may be said that Locke's as- sault is upon absolutism in all its forms, in State, Church and Mind. The Kevolution of 1688 was a Revolution in favor of Limitation, and intro- duced into England a limited Monarchy, a lim- ited Church, a limited God, and even a limited Universe in full contradiction with itself as ex- pressed in the Lockian Philosophy of Limitation. Herein England took the lead of the Century, overthrowing absolutism and Louis XIV. in ex- ternal war, but even more decisively taking pos- session of the French and indeed the European mind through the Philosophy of Locke. With this general outlook upon the vast ex- pansion and influence of Locke's thought, we may turn back to find the original source of it in his life, the primordial cell, as it were, of this marvelous development. In the Epistle to the Reader, which is prefixed to Locke's supreme work, the Essay concerning Human Under- standing^ the author indulges in a little piece of reminiscence about the origin and history of his 392 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. book. He speaks of " five or six friends meet- ing at my chamber, and discoursing on a subject very remote from this, found themselves quickly at a stand by the difficulties that arose on all sides." Such was the impassable wall limiting their understanding of one another. " After we had a while puzzled ourselves without coming any nearer a resolution of those doubts which perplexed us, it came into my thoughts that we took a wrong course, and that before we set ourselves upon inquiries of that nature, it was necessary to examine our own abilities, and see what objects our understandings were or were not fitted to deal with." To find the limitations of Human Intelligence, to discover what we can and cannot know, should be now the first object. "This I proposed to the company who all readily assented ; and thereupon it was agreed that this should be our first inquiry." Truly it was high time ; not only that little private club, but the whole age was demanding such an in- vestigation. " Some hasty undigested thoughts on a subject I had never before considered, which I set down against our next meeting, gave the first entrance into this Discourse." Thus Locke describes the occasion and the motive of his book, glancing backward from its final completed state (probably in 1689) just on the eve of publication, and contemplating its starting-point. Just when this was cannot now L CKE. PHILOSOPHIC CHARACTER. 393 be told with exactness. But in Locke's common- place book of the year 1671 we find that he was thinking about " the human Intellect," in this fashion: " First I imagine that all knowledge is founded on and ultimately derives itself from sense or something analogous to it, and may be called Sensation." To this first source of knowl- edge, Locke in his Essay will add another, which he calls Eeflection. Still further back in a frag- ment, De Arte Medico, , dated 1668 we find Locke declaring with some warmth that " true knowl- edge grew first in the world by experience and rational observations ; but proud man, not con- tent with that knowledge he was capable of, and which was useful to him, would needs penetrate into the hidden causes of things, lay down principles and establish maxims to himself about the operations of nature and then expect that Nature (or in truth God) should proceed ac- cording to those laws which his (man's) maxims had prescribed to Him (God)." Almost bitter is the note here; Locke's dislike of Cause, Principle, Maxim, all of them metaphysical categories seeking to express the essence of Being, crops out with emphasis ; he seems to think that " proud man " in employing them presumes to foist them upon God. Very insolent, indeed blasphemous, is such conduct in man whose " narrow weak faculties could reach no farther than the observation and memory of 394 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. some few facts produced by visible external causes, but in a way utterly beyond the reach of his apprehension." Thus the presumptuous mortal has undertaken to determine God, instead of letting God (and Nature) determine him, while he quietly receives and records the message from above on that blank piece of white paper called his mind. But this is not the end of the evil. ** Man still affecting something of Deity, labored by his imagination to supply what his observation and experience failed him in; and when he could not discover the principles, causes and methods of nature's workmanship, he would need fashion all those out of his own thought, and make a world to himself, framed and gov- erned by his own intelligence," in a kind of rivalry with God. Surely a Satanic act is it that man should dare be an independent world- maker an act of revolt like that of Satan's. But even here the evil does not end. " This vanity spread itself into many useful parts of Natural Philosophy; and by how much the more it seemed subtle, sublime, and learned, by so much the more it proved pernicious and hurt- ful, by hindering the growth of practical knowl- edge," which is indeed the only knowledge worth having, according to our philosopher who finds yet another bad result. "Thus the most acute and ingenious part of the man being by custom and education engaged in empty specula- LOCKE. PHILOSOPHIC CHARACTER. 395 tions, the improvement of useful arts was left to the meaner sort of people." What a prodigious echo has followed these words, which are still heard with a loud resonance in the present. Such is the result of the existing education: absolute perversion of the mind. We shall have to look into this matter and write our book on education, though the world be " filled with books and disputes" on account of the fore- going perverse use of intellect. ** Books have multiplied without the increase of knowledge," that is, true knowledge and not " dry barren notions, empty and impracticable," which " are but the puppets of men's fancies and imagina- tions," and which " remain puppets still after forty years' dawdling." In such fashion the philosopher " lets himself loose into the ocean " of indignation at the way things are going in Oxford and elsewhere. His words break open his soul and let us see what is hotly fermenting there, and preparing some future task in the way of correcting these evils. For Locke believes in the practical, and surely here is enough to set him to work. In this fragment just cited we may indeed trace germs of his future performance, particularly do we hear the ground tones of his Essay echoing mightily through his troubled spirit. This frag- ment written primarijy about medicine and cor- poreal ailments, has another distinction : it shows 396 MODERN E UROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. Doctor Locke making his transition from bodily to mental therapeutics, the latter being his true vocation for the future. He starts with speak- ing contemptuously of the man who * shall reduce medicine into the regular form of a science" as one who "has indeed done some- thing to enlarge the art of talking and perhaps laid the foundation for endless disputes," but nothing at all " to bring men to a knowledge of the infirmities of their own bodies with the safe and discreet way of their cure." He hates sys- tem and systematized science as a creation of the speculative imagination dealing in empty words and unproved assertions. From the preceding extracts we can also see why Locke in his earlier career at Oxford was considered turbulent and discontented before the pressure cf the timed made him the most prudent and taciturn of men. The above cited fragment (Zte Arte Medico, ) has for us another important purpose : it marks a great turning-point in Locke's life. It is evident that he is disgusted at Oxford, disgusted with books, with study, with all kinds of erudi- tion. It seems highly probable, if he has the chance, he will quit the halls of learning, at least for a time, and try his hand at a practical vocation. At the critical moment as usual, the Goddess Opportunity appears and opens for him a new career. In the year 1666 he meets Lord Ashley by accident ; the acquaintance soon ripens LOCKE. LIFE. 897 into warm and enduring friendship. The fol- lowing year Locke goes to London and lives in the home of his Lordship into whose service he enters. In 1668, the date of the above frag- ment, Locke was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, whose object was the promotion and cultivation of Natural Science. According to one of Locke's friends (Lady Mashain), the meeting " at my chamber" above narrated took place in 1670 or 1671, though another friend (Sir James Tyrrell), places it in 1673. Still, even if this meeting was the starting-point of the composition of the Essay , the ideas in it were certainly seething through Locke's mind years before and taking shape. Here, then, we have ascertained what may be deemed the main turning-point in Locke's philosophic life, and have found the pivotal fact for viewing organ- ically his entire career. I. LOCKE'S LIFE. This we shall now sees to behold in the three customary epochs or periods into which every complete career seems to fall with more or less distinct- ness. Accordingly, we may suppose that the great change in Locke's outer life, the change from Oxford to London, from the studi- ous routine at the University to the stirring prac- tical work of the world, corresponded to an inner change which, though previously prepared for, began to show itself in new plans and pur- 398 MODERN E UROPEAN PHIL Q SOPHY. poses. The turn toward his new career may be placed approximately in 1667, at which point he enters what may be called the Second Period lasting some twenty -two years, till the printing of the Essay in 1689. After this came the pro- pagation and defense of his works, along with other employments. These three Periods we shall fill out with some details. 1. First Period (1632-67). John Locke was born at Wrington, county of Somerset, England, August 29th, 1632, of Puritan stock. His boy- hood thus falls into the stirring times of the Great Civil War, in which his father was for a while an officer on the parliamentary side, that is, against the king. Locke's youth was passed amid discussions on the question of royal author- ity. The people of England were summoning their ruler to their judgment seat, claiming the right to scrutinize his acts after their standard. Such must have been the atmosphere in the boy's home, and he could hardly help sharing the spirit around him. When he was ten years old the War began, and he must have seen with a beating heart his father marching among the soldiers who were going to fight against the king. He was mature enough to follow with sympathy the ups and downs of the struggle which surged in his own neighborhood, particularly when the Royalists under Prince Rupert took Bristol in 1643. Finally by the decisive battle of Naseby LOCKE. LIFE. 399 the contest of arms was substantially over when our youth was nearly thirteen years old ; he saw the established authority humbled, he saw revo- lution triumphant. 4 Such an experience could not help producing a strong impression upon the susceptible boy an impression which showed its traces through all his future actions and writings. Locke con- tinued in a state of protest against authority his whole life. His great Essay is a long protest against the authority of the Schools, and the transmitted thought of the ages. His letters on Toleration assert the right of the individual in the matter of religious and political opinions. A critique of the established State, Church, and Education runs through his books, often in a kind of unconscious undercurrent. Such a stream of tendency we can well track to its fountain- head in the experiences of his youth. The time, voicing itself, not only in fierce discussion, but also in deadly conflict, gave to the boy his early training, imparting to him that bent of mind which he carried with him to the grave. An important change of environment came to him when in 1646 he was admitted to the West- minster School, London, where he stayed six years There can be no doubt that here also he was in a state of protest, particularly against both method and material of instruction. He was accustomed to say in after life that he got 400 MODEEN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. little good out of his early education. In the Westminster School he was drilled in Latin and Greek, had to write themes and make verses in the dead languages, was compelled to " learn by heart great parcels of the authors which are taught;" in fine, the erudition of the past was pumped into his memory by that energetic pedagogical forcing-pump called Dr. Busby, head-master of the school, whose fame in this line is not extinct to this day. We can still read between lines of Locke's Some Thoughts concerning Education what view he took of his instruction at Westminster. He would like to " find a school wherein it is possible for the Master to look after the manners" and morals of his scholars instead of spending so much time 4 ' about a little Latin and Greek" which have small utility in after life. " I know not why any- one should waste his time and beat his head about Latin Grammar " evidently an unpleasant reminiscence] to Locke and to many others. Often one cannot help noting a vein of queru- lousness in these remarks, which, even when just, does not enhance their value. And it is highly probable that Locke under- valued the strict and somewhat formal training which he received at Westminster. It was good for him, it was just what he needed. The re- mark has come down that he in his later years at Oxford was a turbulent discontented fellow, LOCKE. LIFE. 401 evidently in the habit of criticising things right and left. When he went to Holland, he had often to converse in Latin with the learned men of the country, and he wrote his first Letter on Toleration in that dead tongue. One has the right to surmise that without a very powerful and persistent pressure he would not have learned Latin, seeing that he so disliked " the charging the mind with the multiplied rules and intricacies of Latin Grammar," which must have been particularly hard for Locke's mind, as were all intricacies, especially intricacies of thought, as we shall see later. Moreover, the spirit of the time was also educating the youth, as it never fails to take a hand in such matters. What did not happen in London and in England during the six years that young John Locke was in school at W^est- minster? These years lay between 1646 and 1652. They saw the king, Charles the First, defeated, captured, imprisoned, beheaded by his own people who had indeed called him to account. They saw Parliament going through a variety of transformations with a rapidity that still makes the head dizzy. They saw the victorious party, after getting rid of its royal enemies and breaking down the established authority, shiver itself into a hundred fragments, each of which asserted the divinity of its own doctrine and the damnability of everybody 26 402 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. else's. Finally tney saw the strong hand rise out of and above this struggling, fighting mass of atoms, into which the nation had resolved it- self, and seize it with a mighty grip and coerce the chaos into an order which it could not bring out of itself. In 1652, the last year of Locke's stay, the Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell was already a fact, though it was not formally pro- claimed till the following year. With truth it may be said that no other revolution ever re- volved with a mightier energy, so many, so great, so sudden, and so far-reaching were the changes which England was whirled through in the mentioned six years. The student Locke was one of these struggling atoms, wrestling and fighting against the transmitted education which was being forced upon him in his school. Still he passed to the University, matriculating in 1652 at Christ Church, Oxford, having been elected to what is called a Junior Studentship. He could not help finding the same enemies at Oxford that he knew at Westminster : traditional lore, memorizing of empty words, in general the formal erudition transmitted from the past, against which past he and all England were then in open revolt. But there was one important difference between the University and the School : he found little or no pressure exerted from the outside. There was here no furious, remorseless Dr. Busby ready to trounce the hated Latin Grammar or LOCKE. LIFE. 403 other learned lumber into his recalcitrant brain. Of this difference Locke was not slow to take advantage. So we hear that ' he spent a good part of his first year at the University in reading romances," since he did not like the disputations, chiefly metaphysical and Aristotelian, which were still in vogue at Oxford. Great was his discour- agement also, for he did not understand the subtleties of philosophy. His friend, Lady Masham, reporting Locke's own conversations late in life, says rather softly: "This dis- cour^gement kept him from being any very hard student at the University and put him upon seeking the company of pleasant and witty men," and so he had a jolly good time after all. " I have often heard him say," records the same reporter, " that he had so small satisfaction from his Oxford studies that he became discon- tented with his manner of life," and blamed his father for his present untoward destiny. Still there came a ray of light. Whence? From reading Descartes. Listen again to our gentle reporter: " He was rejoiced, for though he very often differed in opinion from the writer " he was bound to do that " yet he found what he (Descartes) said was very intelli- gible " and hence very different from the other metaphysical books at Oxford " from which (fact) he was encouraged to think that his not having understood others had possibly not 404 MODERN E UEOPEAN PHILOSOPHY. proceeded from a defect in his own under- standing." So he pats himself moderately on the back. But this remark gives a true glimpse into the nature and limits of Locke's mind, which had little or no grip on Metaphysics proper. But the popular manner of Descartes, especially in his Discourse on Method, attracted and en- couraged Locke, who now might think that he too could become a philosopher. In fact Locke's Essay very palpably imitates the general manner of Descartes who is decidedly inclined to intro- duce his personal experiences, his Ego, inte his philosophical exposition. Both record " what I think," my particular determinations, though such a manner fits Locke's theme better than it does that of Descartes. Thus we may see a positive pnilosophical strand begin to develop itself in Locke, who is otherwise so very negative to speculation. In- deed his general attitude was negative, critical, fault-finding. Anthony Wood, the Oxford anti- quarian, who was his fellow-student, gives the following report of him: "This same John Locke was a man of turbulent spirit, clamorous and discontented; while the rest of our club took notes deferentially from the mouth of the master, the said Locke scorned to do so, but was ever prating and troublesome," These words have in them a touch of personal dislike, but they suggest the truth. The two men, Wood LOCKE. - LIF.E. 405 and Locke, were indeed opposites; Wood was archaeological in his tastes and studies, and so lived in the past, while Locke had broken with the past, and ridiculed its devotees. Moreover they belonged to different political parties in that age when party meant hate and even blood. At any rate " this John Locke " is not now going to take notes deferentially from the mouth of any master. During fifteen years (1652-1667) Locke re- mained almost uninterruptedly at the University employed in various relations. He took his two degrees, he was lecturer in Greek and Rhetoric, he held the censorship of Moral Philosophy ; and he seems at one time to have thought of enter- ing holy orders. But he could not screw him- self up to the point of taking any decided step. He disliked sacerdotalism, he had grown averse to the dogmatism and narrowness of the sects, he had become a latitudinarian and a believer in toleration. While he was at Oxford in this unsettled state of mind, a great political event took place : the restoration of Charles the Sec- ond in 1660. England returned to monarchy and authority, to its past traditions in Church and State. There is no doubt that Locke shared in this return, at least for a time. We begin to hear distinctly a new note : "As for myself there is no one can have a greater respect and veneration for authority than I." Mark the 406 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. declaration, as it will remain in a limited sense true for the future, though not wholly true. Casting a look backwards he further states: " I no sooner perceived myself in the world, but I found myself in a storm which has lasted almost hitherto, and therefore cannot but entertain the approaches of a calm, with the greatest joy and satisfaction." Such was the new hope of Locke and of England at the Res- toration. He shows a reaction against liberty and its asserters, who " are the greatest engros- sers of it, too," and, moreover, " I find that a general freedom is but a general bondage." Wait ; we shall see how he holds out, and whether this incoming Stewart is still a Stewart. But there is one change which should be noted : the " turbulent prating John Locke " of Anthony Wood will learn to hold his tongue, will become famous for his taciturnity. Such is clearly the dictate of prudence henceforth at Oxford. The spoken word is soon to become dangerous to the speaker unless it tally with authority. Accord- ingly we may now begin to apply to Locke one of his own favorite sayings: Nullum numen abest si sit Prudentia. After 1660 Locke remained at the University with the exception of a brief absence in Ger- many, during which he was secretary to an English diplomatist. In 1667, however, came a separation, when he went to live in London, and LOCKE. LIFE. 407 entered the service of Lord Ashley, who after- wards became the first Lord Shaftesbury, with whose varied fortunes Locke was for many years connected. 2. Second Period (1667-1689). ThusLocKe withdrew from Oxford not wholly and forever, still it is a withdrawal. On a former page we have given reasons why about this time the germ of his chief work had begun to show itself. He was now thirty-five years old, he was dissat- isfied with learning, and longed for practical life in which experience was the main thing. He had already been following the trend of the time and had made numerous experiments in Natural Science, and specially in Medicine. There is little doubt that he had likewise felt the rein tightening on him at Oxford, and foreseen the restraints about to be placed upon free thought and free speech. It was getting plainer every year that Charles the Second, like the rest of the Stewarts, would not permit himself to be summoned to the bar of Public Opinion in England. The Kestoration in his view meant that the revolutionary right of individual judg- ment was to be put down. We have seen that in 1660 Locke hailed the return of the old order, but during the next seven years he had begun to react from his reaction. This fact will manifest itself in his writings of the present Period, which will show the author erecting 408 M ODE UN E UB OPE AN PHIL SOPHY. bulwarks on all possible sides against external authority. Such an object we shall find particu- larly in his Essay as regards the transmitted knowledge of the whole past. Another doubt not to be omitted enters Locke's life about this time : the doubt about his health. His physical constitution had never been robust ; his brother died of consumption at an early age. He begins to be troubled with asthma, which followed him through his entire life. This ca- pricious disease is well known to have a peculiar effect upon the imagination of its victim. We hear a good deal of Locke's hacking cough, in- dicative of a lung disease. It led him to take a short journey to France in 1672, and to plan a long stay in some southern latitude. He did no small amount of work, but his health was never out of his mind. He became a confirmed valetudi- narian. One reason why he studied medicine was to look into his bodily troubles, to experi- ment with his manifold maladies, and to test his own remedies. This tendency not only influenced his mind, but colored his temperament. It helped to make him one of the most circumspect of mortals, being always on the lookout for something unexpected to crash in upon his health. It intensified his bent toward the exper- imental side of knowledge. Every physician knows how difficult it often is to trace the relation of cause to effect in disease. Locke shows a LOCKE. LIFE. 409 tendency to question causation generally, which questioning becomes downright denial in Hume, who was a logical development out of Locke. But the preservative principle of this disease must not be forgotten. Locke, sickly, asthmatic, wheezing, coughing, lived a long life and did an enormous amount of work, because he took care of himself, watching and observing with fore- thought the physical and mental limits of his powers. If he had been a stronger man, he would have died sooner and done less. Great is the conservative force of the valetudinarian who often seems able to turn his very disease into a source of vital energy. This is by no means in- tended to imply that Locke feigned his illness or that his physical troubles were imaginary. On the contrary they were real and gave him a great lesson in the art of life, teaching him how to transform the destructive assaults upon his body into a means for its preservation and activity. And from body he will pass to mind, which he will subject to a similar treatment. In a letter from Paris dated June, 1677, there is a humorous glance into this side of his life, giv- ing a playful account of his unceasing efforts to woo his capricious mistress Hygeia. "My health is the only mistress I have a long time courted, and so coy a one that I think it will take up the remainder of my days to obtain her good graces and keep her in a good humor." 410 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. This seems to have been about the only serious courtship of his life and so he never got married, spending his days in pursuing a fair maiden whom he never caught, who had the perverse habit of always fleeing from him when he followed her and of coming back when he ceased pursuit. After entering the service of Lord Ashley, Locke is much engaged in public business. It is supposed he had a hand in drawing up The Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina, issued on March 1st, 1669. This is notable as an early instance of a written Constitution for governing an English Colony in America. Locke, how- ever, could hardly have been the author of the entire instrument, which, originating with English noblemen, has a decided feudal tendency. Quite different are the early New England documents of this sort, springing as they did from the people. During 1672-3 he held various Govern- ment offices, his patron Shaftesbury having become Lord Chancellor of England. With the latter's fall from power, Locke's fortunes changed. In 1675 he took his long contem- plated trip abroad, staying four years in France. During this lengthy period of leisure he worked chiefly at his Essay, which he brought back to England " completed," according to one state- ment. After hi* return Locke remained faithful to LOCKE. LIFE. 411 his patron Shaftesbury, who had become deeply obnoxious to the king, and who, in consequence, was arrested and tried for treason, but acquitted, in 1681. Being discovered in a conspiracy against the king the next year, this restless no- bleman, so different from Locke, was compelled to flee to Holland, where he soon died. Thus our quiet philosopher was danced up and down on the political intrigues of the time, when he too became an object of suspicion. The following report from a government spy, who was watch- ing him at Oxford, has been published in recent years : " John Locke lives a very cunning and un- intelligible life here, being two days in town and three out, and no one knows where he goes or when he goes, or when he returns." Evidently Locke knew his man and was on his guard. ' ' Not a word ever drops from his mouth that discovers anything of his heart within. Now that his master (Shaftesbury) is fled, I sup- pose we shall have him altogether." Locke had not always been so close-mouthed at Ox- ford. But now, though the suspicion contin- ually hovers about him ' that there is some Whig intrigue a managing," he cannot be in- veigled into a compromising word. Later, in 1684, another spy, none other than Doctor Fell, Dean of Christ Church and also Bishop of Oxford, thus reports to the Government concerning Locke: *' I have for divers years had an eye 412 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. upon him, but so close has been his guard on himself that after strict inquiries I may confi- dently affirm there is not one in the College, however familiar with him, who has heard him speak a word either against or so much as con- cerning the Government. ' ' No more criticism, no more citation of the king's acts to the bar of indi- vidual judgment ; our former universal critic has become so foxy that he cannot be trapped by the best-laid snare of a cunning priest. Listen to the following confession from the same high- stationed spy: " Very frequently both in public and private discourses have been purposely introduced to the disparagement of his master, the Earl of Shaftesbury ; he (Locke) could never be provoked to take any notice or discover in word or look the least concern; so that I believe there is not in the world such a master of taci- turnity and passion." Can this be the Locke of Anthony Wood, " turbulent, discontented, prating? " That Goddess of his, Prude ntia, seems to have wrought a miracle as regards his tongue. All of which seems to us very indicative of what is going on internally in the spiritual development of the author of the Essay. Though Locke gave no pretext to his enemies, he knew that they would soon seize him without any pretext. The terrors of a prison must have been doubly redoubled to the imagination of a valetudinarian. If he could hardly meet the re- LOCKE. LIFE. 413 quirements of his health when in freedom, what would he do when in jail? The very idea must have made him shiver. Accordingly that fickle mistress of his, ever to be wooed and never to be won, gave peremptorily the command to flee from England. So in 1683 Locke slips off and goes to Holland, at that time the asylum of fugitives from oppression. There he stays for the next six years. This is so large a fragment of human life that one asks what influence did it have upon the life and works of Locke? First he there became an author and began to publish his writings, to be sure in a timid, anonymous fashion. Says he in a letter dated December, 1684: " Bating these (a few youthful verses), I do solemnly protest that I am not the author, not only of any libel, but not of any pamphlet or treatise whatever, good, bad, or indifferent." The chief acquaintance he made in Holland was Peter van Limborch, a theologian belong- ing to the sect of Arminians or Remonstrants (this name comes from a remonstrance which they presented to the States-General in 1610). They had been condemned at the Synod of Dort (1619) and had been persecuted by the Calvin- ists ; hence they too favored toleration, and they were also latitudinarians. Still they had sur- vived the attacks of their enemies and were quite numerous in certain parts of Holland. It was 414 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. natural that Locke should sympathize with these people, finding in them his counterpart in his new home. It is also to be noted that Spinoza had his refuge within this same sect, or a sect of this sect, for many years and in the same general locality. But Spinoza lived among the humble of this denomination, while Locke was the friend of their greatest man and leader. Spinoza was a few months (three) younger than Locke, and had died some six years before the latter 's arrival in Holland. How far Locke ever became acquainted with the writings of Spinoza, which had been published in 1677 and were making their way in Holland while he was there, does not appear. The two philosophers, different as they were, had important things in common; both were persecuted for opinion's sake and both believed in toleration. In 1685 the English Government demanded the extradition of Locke as one of eighty-five dangerous Englishmen then in Holland. For a time he had to hide himself though there was probably no serious attempt to catch him on the part of the Dutch authorities. Under such circumstances his thoughts naturally turned to Toleration, upon which subject he had already thought at Oxford. Accordingly in his hid- ing-place this victim of intolerance solaces him- self by composing his Epistola de Tolerantia, LOCKE. LIFE. 415 sometimes said to be his most original pro- duction. Another important literary acquaintance of this period was Jean Le Clerc, who was certainly imbued with Spinozism, and in biblical interpre- tation followed largely the doctrines of the Theologico- Political Treatise. What Locke got of Spinoza probably came through Le Clerc, who stimulated Locke greatly, and induced him to write articles for publication, though as yet anonymously. Thus Locke, who had .written privately all his life, now begins to print and publish in free Hol- land. It was a considerable step for our exceed- ingly cautious and indeed timid man to take. Moreover, he could now quietly look back upon life and his country's history during the stormy period of the previous half century. Locke had reached the fifties, and had experienced much; it was time that he, as philosopher, should take a survey. So it resulted that all his chief works during his Dutch exile began coming to a head. In addition he seemed to acquire a new power of work, the climate of Holland agreed with him better than the English or French. There is no doubt that Locke had to separate from England in order to look back and see it and himself con- sciously and philosophically, and then formulate such a view. The Essay was probably the center of thought during this period, and his other writ- 416 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. ings were hardly more than applications and illus- trations of its principle. Lady Mashani remarks suggestively: " In Holland he had full leisure to prosecute his thoughts on the subject of the Human Understanding a work which, in all probability, he would never have finished, had he continued to live in England." The last year or even two years of Locke's stay in Holland must have been much interrupted by the scheming and preparation for the redemp- tion of England from the House of Stewart. James the Second had shown himself the worst man of his family. Three Stewarts had been tried in succession, they had all shown them- selves hostile to the deepest demand of English spirit. They were bent on absolutism, they were determined not to give any account of their ac- tion to the nation . Another K-e volution was clearly impending, another citation of the king to the judgment seat of the people would have to take place. Even the nobility were taking part in such a demand, in fact, were the leaders. The Rev- olution of 1640 had to be wrought over, if not fought over. The place of preparation was Holland, and Locke for a while was at the storm center. At last, in 1688, the expedition of William of Orange sailed and accomplished the new Revolution peaceably. In 1689 Locke, in the retinue of Queen Mary, returned to En- gland. For him, and indeed for the people of LOCKE. LIFE . 417 England, the so-called Revolution of 1688 was not so much a Revolution as a Restoration. Locke saw his principle realized, made the prin- ciple of his country's Government. 3. Third Period (1689-1704). This is es- sentially Locke's Period of Publication. He was 57 years old when he returned to England in 1689, and he had previously published almost nothing. The Revolution gave him the requi- site freedom to express his thought, which under the Stewarts had been held down in silence. He began to realize his life ; his return to En- gland was in the deepest sense a return to himself out of estrangement, separation, banishment, which characterized his Second Period. The result was seen in his work. He lived fifteen years more, which were the happy time of his life in spite of increasing age and his chronic maladv- Moreover he became a public man again, and was handsomely rewarded by King William for the services rendered to the latter's cause. One of his offices brought him a thousand pounds a year with- out seriously interfering with his literary work. He took an interest in public questions, and wrote several small tracts in reference to the coinage. o He was consulted by statesmen such as Somers and Halifax. During all this time he continued to propagate his philosophical doctrines. He entered the 27 418 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. religious field also, writing on miracles and on the Bible. He was likewise drawn into several controversies in reference to both his religion and his philosophy. His death took place Octo- ber 28th, 1704, at Gates in Essex. II. LOCKE'S WRITINGS. It has been already stated that Locke published his Writings dur- ing his last Period, which is hardly more than a record of his literary works. Moreover the pub- lication of his chief books belongs to the early years of the last period, they being ready in the main for the press when he stepped on English soil in 1689. First comes the English transla- tion of his Epistola de Tolerantia, or his first Letter on Toleration (1689). It is a curious fact that Locke's first important work was composed in Latin, the study of which tongue he had so disparaged. The next year a second letter on the same subject followed, and in 1692 a third. The two treatises on Government appeared in 1690, and his book on Education in 1693. But the great literary event of Locke's life was the publication of the Essay concerning the Human Understanding, which he began to print early in 1689, but which was not ready for cir- culation till March, 1690, This is the work which contains what Locke deemed his Philoso- phy, and which must be explained and analyzed in its own right and under its own name, famil- iarly known as Locke's Essay. LOCKE. WEI TINGS. 419 In one sense it may well be said that Locke's Philosophy is the denial of Philosophy. The search for the Essence of Being (the ousia of the on) is declared fruitless, indeed impossible by the English philosopher, wherein he expresses his nation's spirit. But in his denial of Philosophy Locke is still philosophizing, he is not merely negative to the old conception of this science, but he is positive also, putting into it anew con- tent, and giving to it a new direction. He will endeavor to destroy the previous metaphysical side of Philosophy, and make it face toward Psychology. In Locke the Self (or Ego) begins to be the point of departure, and starts to ordering and classifying its own activities through itself. In the movement of the Seventeenth Century we have always found this Ego and even its pro- cess present somewhere, but smothered in its metaphysical wrappage, as was noted in the Leibnizian Monad. Philosophy is now to give an account of what the mind does when stimu- lated to its process by the external world. Thus two very different elements come together in the Philosophy of Locke, often in shrill contradic- tion, yet often in co-operation. On the one hand the mind or Ego is the source of its own activities, is self-acting, self-determined ; on the other it is moved to this activity by Nature, by the outside world, and so is externally determined. 420 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. Accordingly we shall often find Locke restlessly shifting from one side to the other of these contradictory elements in what he says of both Intellect and Will. He asserts strongly liberty; with equal emphasis he asserts determinism ; then he asserts that neither has anything to do with the other. The nut is really too hard for him to crack. Frequently he turns with a male- diction upon all philosophic thinking, and flings it out of the window. And yet it somehow flies back again and stands before him with its riddle. Thus Locke sees and proclaims that thf view he has reached Philoso- phy in its transmitted order, in which light we may briefly glance at him. Ill, LOCKE'S PHILOSOPHY. Locke begins to get philosophical in the old sense, with the introduction of the Norm ( in the Fourth Book of 448 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. the Essay). The result is a number of changes and adjustments which do not comport with what he has previously said (in the First and Second Books). Here, however, we shall only mention the fact that he completely re-adjusts his psychology to the newly appeared Norm. For now we have three kinds of knowledge : " I say, then, that we have the knowledge of our own existence by Intuition; of the existence of God by Demonstration; and, of other things by Sensation." Thus we have the threefold Norm of all Existence : Ego (Man), God (the Absolute), and Nature (or the world of things) (Book IV. Chap. 9). Moreover our knowledge is here ordered according to this Norm; it is no longer that of Sensation and Eeflection (Book II.). And we must also note the complete change in procedure : an external principle of ordering knowledge is adopted, the mind no longer arranges its own content directly out of itself, but according to a transmitted Norm. This is not the Locke of the First and Second Books of the Essay, not the revolutionary, epoch-making Locke. Still we may take a short look at him clothing himself in the old vesture of thought, as he once deemed it. 1. Metaphysics. Locke was aware of his en- tering a wholly new sphere when he began to grapple with the metaphysical problem concern- ing ** the reality of knowledge." Having gotten LOCKE. PHILOSOPHY. 449 this Idea, how can I know that it corresponds to the object of which it is an Idea? A hard, in fact a disagreeable question for Locke, for he has tacitly to unsay some of the severe things which he said about the previous Philosophy, specially about Innate Ideas. That Intuition of his which sees immediately existence how far is it from the clear and distinct Idea (innate) of the Seventeenth Century? In fact Locke uses the two expressions interchangeably: "I think it is beyond question that man has a clear Idea of his own being ' ' which he also calls * an Intuition of his own existence " (Book IV. Chap. 10). Also such Intuition Locke holds to be a God-given faculty of mind. All of which shows a decided tendency to reversion, to fall back upon what he had previously abandoned. Locke, having constructed his Theory of knowledge (Book II.), shows visible signs of trouble in the following passage in which he projects his own questionings into his reader : "I doubt not but my reader (really Locke himself) by this time may be apt to think that I have been building all this while only a castle in the air? " What is the good of the whole thing if " knowl- edge is only the perception of the agreement or disagreement of our Ideas? " For thus knowl- edge is purely subjective, and cannot be distin- guished from the chimeras of " the most extrava- gant fancy in the world." Accordingly Locke 29 450 MODERN E UEOPEAN PHILOSOPH Y. braces himself up for a desperate tussle with the grand metaphysical problem concerning " the reality of knowledge." The theme is not to his taste, as we divine him, and is certainly not adapted to his genius. Already we have given his solution of this problem. 2. Physics. There is a realm of " other things" besides God and the human Self, the knowledge of which is given by Sensation according to Locke. This kind f knowledge is, moreover, not intuitive, not demonstrative, but only probable. Hence our philosopher gets a^ain into a congenial field human limitation. o o The result is we have quite a long discussion of probability as opposed to certainty (Book IV. Chaps. 14, 15, 16, etc.). It is declared by Locke that we can have no certain knowledge concerning natural bodies. " Every man's reasoning and knowledge is only about the ideas existing in his own mind, which are truly, every one of them, particular exist- ences. The perception of the agreement or dis- agreement of our particular ideas is the whole and utmost of all our knowledge " (IV. 17. 9). Properly there is no universality, this being simply " accidental " to particular knowledge, and consisting only in this "that the particular ideas about which it is are such as more than one particular thing can correspond with or be represented by." The universal as genus or as LOCKE. PHILOSOPHY. 451 creative principle of the object is thus denied, or rather is totally unknown to Locke. Hence the truths of Nature can only be prob- able, and Natural Science is the field of Probabil- ism. The induction of particulars, out of which is said to flow a general principle, cannot give certainty. But the immediate sensation of the object is indubitable. The old skeptics doubted the report of the senses, with Locke it is the only sure knowledge of the objective world. Certainty " extends only as far as the present tes- timony of the senses employed about partieu^ir objects." The whole realm of the laws, princi- ples, universal processes of Nature, is but a region of Probabilities. The particular is the true, the certain, is indeed the universal. With such a view Locke is not going to give a Philosophy of Nature in the old sense of the word. The thought which is creative of the Cosmos and which is really its principle, is alien to Locke who starts with particulars as the real truth and at most binds them in a dubious gen- erality. To connect Physics with Metaphysics in one great process of the All, as in Greek and German Philosophy, is not simply repugnant to Locke, but lies quite outside of his mental hori- zon. Locke's infinite is but a never-ending series of particulars (infinitum imaginationis) , not the infinite of self -returning thought (infini- turn rationis). Thus he is separative, analytic, 452 MODERN- EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. particular. He has, instead of creative Thought, the discursive forms Abstraction and General- ization, for his treatment of facts. Herein his influence reaches through Anglo-Saxon Psychol- ogy down to the present, for its text-books still repeat him on this point. Locke has left us a little book on the " Elements of Natural Philosophy," in which he follows his procedure. He picks up the particulars of Nature and recounts them, beginning with Mat- ter and Motion which have given so much trouble to those philosophers who ask after essence and inner principle. Locke, however, is satisfied to set down certain facts about them, and then he passes to the Universe, which with him is the sensible one. We need not follow him in his details which he carries through the mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms, ending with man who has Understanding, of which our philoso- pher gives a brief abstract connecting with his Essay. Thus he connects outwardly his Natural with his Mental Philosophy. The external world is thus called to the bar of " private judgment " which makes science prob- able the Ego probabilizes the non-Ego. Al- ready in Ancient Philosophy we have seen a simi- lar event, when Carneades of the Middle Academy developed his doctrine of Probabilism against the dogmatic Metaphysics of a previous period. This doctrine is specially fitted for a people of LOCKE. PHILOSOPHY. 453 the will (like the Romans and the English) who care little for speculative knowledge in itself. Science will help me to act successfully if it will aid me in finding the probabilities of a course of conduct, in fact that is all it is good for. 3. Ethics. Locke has no distinct idea of the connection of Ethics with the other two stages of the Norm, nor does he show any articulated knowledge of the total ethical sphere taken by itself. Still if we cared to select judiciously and put together all of Locke's scattered statements which pertain to Ethics, we might make a toler- able showing for this stage of the Norm. But such a task we cannot here undertake, even if it were worth the while, which is doubtful. At present we can only note the institutional element in Locke, which is dominantly secular, even if he has a good deal to say about the Church in some of his books. He dislikes sacerdotalism and the transmitted authority which is connected with a religious estab- lishment. Still he is by no means ready to break with it, in spite of its lack of Toleration (Locke's great category). But when Locke comes to the State he is far more at home and has produced works of much greater import. His "Treatises on Govern- ment ' ' have a high place in the history of politi- cal science. He is truly the philosopher of the English Revolution of 1688. One point is of spe- 454 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. cial interest to Americans : he formulated the threefold division of Government into the legislative, executive and judicial powers, which was realized in the Constitution of the United States. Locke, however, was not the first to make this division, it is as old as Aristotle. But he brought it home to the Anglo-Saxon con- sciousness, and through its adoption by Montes- quieu (in the Spirit of the Laws) it became a matter of European knowledge. Nor must we omit to mention in this connec- tion Locke's works on Education, which are still to be read by the teacher who wishes to know the history of his profession. Locke has no Public School in the modern sense, no great Educative Institution. The development of the individual boy has the stress, and this boy is conceived as the English gentleman's son, who is to acquire useful knowledge in order to make himself useful. The purpose of Education is not information, but formation. Locke was a mediocre man, he knows it and hence his praise of mediocrity. He was men- tally a limited man, and by virtue of his inner character he became the philosopher of limita- tion. His pft-repeated note is, I cannot under- stand this word and that principle. This we may deem modesty, a proper appreciation of one's own limits. Still Locke had sufficient Egotism to think that what he could not understand, no LOCKE. PHILOSOPHY. 455 one else could. Certain words which have meant much to other thinkers and other ages, have little or no meaning for him. Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz did have some brains, and they all employed the word Substance which Locke could not really understand and so deemed quite idea- less, though he picked it up again after throwing it away with contempt. Hence it conies that Locke has fared hard at the hands of certain critics. But the people have adopted him, and he is the most popular of the great philosophers. In fact if greatness be measured by extent and persistence of influence, he is the greatest of them. all. Just-through his limitations he became the voice of his age and of his nation, and has remained to this day the philosopher of Anglo-Saxondom. In lecture, sermon, speech, we still hear Locke with his fundamental view of human limitation. In read- ing Locke's Essay, the style may seem a little antiquated, but its thoughts are modern, famil- iar, in fact common-place. They have been served up to us from infancy, at home, at school, at church, in numberless books, articles, edi- torials, by people who have never read Locke, but who participate in that consciousness which has so completely appropriated him. His great- ness is not to have been too great for his time and his nation. 456 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. 2* Ibume, We have now reached the supreme represen- tative of the Philosophy of the Eighteenth Cen- tury in its second phase. Of this the great fact is Skepticism, which is essentially Philosophy denying Philosophy, and yet remaining philo- sophical ; or Philosophy as negative turns upon its positive or dogmatic form, undermining the same and therewith undermining itself. For when Skepticism has done its work, it itself must be at an end, as the fire dies which has consumed its fuel. Such is the inherent dialec- tical process of Skepticism, since it finds out that it is as dogmatic in negation as Dogmatism is in affirmation. The skeptic cannot help get- ting skeptical of his own system and indeed of himself; he denies that he can know truth, but therein implies the truth of his denial. In time he becomes conscious of this implied denial of his own principle ; in fact antagonists will not fail to point it out ; then he will seek to bolster up his negation by a fresh denial, which is, however, the denial of his own denial. Such is the movement that lies immanent in the very nature of Skepticism, which movement shows itself in full reality in the rise, growth and out- HUME. PHILOSOPHIC CHARACTER. 457 come of ancient Greek Skepticism, as it unfolded itself from Pyrrho to Sextus Empiricus. Now the great and abiding interest of Philoso- phy in Hume is that he repeated this skeptical process for modern thought, in the heart of the Eighteenth Century. Hume was a Scotchman ; in this fact, too, we would believe, lies a mean- ing. For of all dogmatic forms of Prostestant- ism,. Scotch Presbyterianism was the most dog- matic, and it has by no means yet lost its love for heresy-hunting. Hume is primarily a Scotch reaction against Scotch religious dogmatism; but his skeptical bent soon carried him out of Religion into Philosophy, in which also he did not fail to uncover the nega- tion. To the end of his life Hume was fond of baiting the Presbyterian bear, his next neighbor. His chief regret for the utter failure of his first book, the Treatise on Human Nature, seems to have been that it did not reach " such distinction as even to excite a murmur' among the zealots." Modern Philos- ophy is essentially a Protestant discipline and has a religious background ; in Hume it calls up its denier and becomes the Protestant protest not only against Protestantism, but against all Relig- ion and Philosophy. And yet Hume in his uni- versal skeptical protest will claim to remain both religious and philosophical. Herein he shows the inner contradiction of himself, of his life, 458 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. and also of his time. For just this skeptical spirit is the true dualistic character of his century . We must not, therefore, take Hume too seri- ously. He cannot well be a zealous advocate of the truth of Skepticism, when Skepticism means that there is no truth. If he was inclined to such a folly in his youth, when he wrote and published his Treatise, he will get over it with the years. For he must come to see that if Skepticism is the truth, then its attainment is its destruction. He cannot be very eager to form a school or a band of followers for the propa- gation of his doctrine, since if Skepticism is really believed, that is the end of Skepti- cism. Fervent disciples with faith in their hearts he does not want; their enthusiasm would annihilate his whole business. Hence we shall find a deep characteristic of Hume to be his hate of enthusiasm; this is a salient trait of his Writings, notable of his History of England. Skepticism cannot be enthusiastic about anything, least of all about itself; to be true to itself it must be skeptical of itself. Hence the leading maxim of the old Skeptics was to keep yourself in reserve (Epoche), do not commit yourself. Still the cunning foe re- plied that even in this maxim you committed yourself to non-committal. Thereupon follows a second maxim: Say nothing (Aphasia), for HUME. PHILOSOPHIC CHARACTEE 459 the word in and of itself must assert and so be dogmatic. Such consistency lies not in the character of Hume, who has violated these two skeptical maxims on all sides. He has not held his tongue, as we see by his numerous books, nor has he failed to commit himself on many topics, partic- ularly on Skepticism. He sees the inherent comedy in the skeptical attitude, nevertheless he assumes it, and so gives to his entire life a comic undertone, which often breaks out into a jest or laugh at himself. In his Dialogues concerning Natural Religion says one of the characters : " I shall never assent to so harsh an opinion as that of a celebrated writer who says that the skeptics are not a sect of philosophers : they are only a sect of liars. I may, however, affirm, (I hope without offence) that they are a sect of jesters or ralliers. A comedy, a novel, or at most a history seems a more natural recreation than such metaphysical substitutes and abstrac- tions," but every one according to his liking. Hume is aware that his Philosophy is self-de- stroying, that its fulfillment is its annihilation, that he is pursuing a nugatory, self-undoing end, that he is a comic figure in such pursuit. Yet we must recollect that this is not merely a per- sonal whim of his own ; he is the truest repre- sentative of the negative spirit of his own age ; in fact, the whole Eighteenth Century sees its 460 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. own Comedy in his Philosophy, which is inher- ently self -annulling and ridiculous even to itself. Still we must not think that it has no function in the movement of thought. When the world turns comic, Philosophy must follow and turn comic too, in order to let that world see itself in its essence. Philosophy brings the age to a con- sciousness of itself most adequately in its pure forms of thinking. Through Hume the age looked at itself and raised a shout of laughter or a cry of anger, according to the character of the spectator ; but all had to acknowledge that the picture was true in the main, and come at last to the conclusion that there should be a profound change in the soul of the century. Hume in spite of himself was a preacher and was calling sinners to conversion, and this was the uncon- scious part of his Comedy. This was the part which the Spirit of the Age made him play as its instrument for its purpose, which was quite the opposite of his own purpose. I. HUME'S LIFE. Before passing to the details of this part of our subject it is well to take notice of Hume's views of Life (as practical) in its opposition to Philosophy (as theoreti- cal). Says he: "The great subverter of the excessive principles of Skepticism (Pyrrhon- ism) is action, and employment, and the occupations of common life." Such is, in Hume's view, the inherent dualism between HUME, LIFE. 461 Thought and Action : the one leads necessarily to Skepticism, the other corrects it. He goes on : " These (skeptical) principles may flourish and triumph in the schools, where it is, indeed, diffi- cult, if not impossible, to refute them. But as soon as they leave the shade, and by the pres- ence of real objects which actuate our passions and sentiments, are put in opposition to the more powerful principles of our nature, they vanish like smoke, and leave the most determined skeptic in the same condition as other mortals." This is Hume the skeptic, who furthermore de- clares that Skepticism cannot " have any con- stant influence on the mind," being just that uncertainty which is uncertain of all things, and most uncertain of itself. "All discourse, all action would immediately cease, and menVemain in a total lethargy." The skeptic's Thought must destroy his Will; that is, all Philosophy being Skepticism, hamstrings Action. " The first and most trivial event in Life will put to flight all his doubts and scruples," and he will become like any other sensible man. "When he awakes from his dream, he will be the first to join in the laugh against himself, and to con- fess that all his objections are mere amusement, and can have no other tendency than to show the whimsical condition of mankind." Surely this is a letting of the cat out of the bag ; Hume here confesses that Skepticism is a "dream, its 462 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. play of subtlety a mere amusement;" the skeptic " will be the first to join in the laugh against himself," he being at bottom a comic character, and consciously comic at that. All these extracts are taken from a Section (XII. Part II.) of An Enquiry concerning the Human Understanding, in which Section he casts a glance back at Skepticism generally and at himself in particular. He makes a distinction between excessive or Pyrrhonian Skepticism ( to which he applies the previous description), and the mitigated or Humian Skepticism, " which may be both durable and useful," though having but a '* small tincture of Pyr- rhonism," if this be " corrected by common sense and reflection." And yet Hume is a Pyrrhonist theoretically, and cannot help him- self. Our senses do not give us any certain knowledge of the object, says Pyrrho. Now listen to Hume: " Men always suppose the very images presented by the senses to be the external objects. This very table which we see white, and which we feel hard, is believed to exist, inde- pendent of our perception, and to be external to our mind which perceives it. But this universal and primary opinion of all men is soon destroyed by the slightest philosophy, which teaches us that nothing can ever be present to the mind but an image or perception, and that the senses are only the inlets through which these images are con- HUME. LIFE. 4G3 veyed without being able to produce any imme- diate intercourse between the mind and the object." (Enquiry, XII. Part I.) Tyrrhenian Skepticism never said more, never could say more than this. But when we add Hume's denial of causation, declaring that the object can never be known as the cause of the image, he is more Pyrrhonian than Pyrrho himself. It is true that he does not always maintain this posi- tion. But here he does, just in his criticism of Pyrrho, whom he will " mitigate ' ' and make use- ful by the addition of a little " common sense," of which Hume has such an abundance. A word upon these utilities of " mitigated" Skepticism. First, it " might abate the pride " of the dogmatists, since "the greater part of mankind are naturally apt to be affirmative and dogmatical in their opinion," and ought to be taken down a peg. But the chief advantage is the second: thereby we would be brought to limit * ' our inquiries to such subjects as are best adapted to the narrow capacity of human under- standing." What, then, are these subjects? First, " abstract reasoning about quantity and number," that is, Mathematics. Second, " ex- perimental reasoning about matter of fact and existence," that is, empirical science. All the rest "commit to the flames, for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion." Suppose we apply this test to David Hume's works. Has 46 4 MODE EN E UEOPEAN PHIL OSOPH T. he written anything on Mathematics? Appar- ently not a page. Has he devoted his pen to the empirical sciences? To some extent, doubt- less; yet this part of his work has a tendency to drop into the background, while his Philoso- phy keeps advancing in importance, though con- taining ' nothing but sophistry and illusion," according to his own judgment. Again we must bethink ourselves and not take Hume too seriously, not more seriously than he takes himself. We have already seen that he deems the skeptic not a liar indeed, but a rallicr, a sort of world- joker. The matter which the rest of mankind are very earnest about, namely, the knowledge of Truth, he turns into a self- contradiction, the pursuit of which makes life an enjoyable comedy. What has such a man left for himself but to gratify his senses? Still Hume did not indulge his appetites to excess ; though a born voluptuary, he turned his nature into philosophy, and advocated that which he never tried to realize. Hume seems ancient Epi- curus re-incarnated, who also practiced temper- ance, but preached indulgence. Sensation is the man, so let him see that it be pleasant while he lasts. To be sure Hume did not literally follow any such doctrine to its consequences in conduct. He was frugal, sober, industrious. Still the thing lay in him naturally and came out not HUME. LIFE. 465 through his body but through his brain, not through his action but through his thought. And yet that body of his had its suggestion. The following bit of description touches this point, and has been selected and handed down by friendly biographers: "Nature. I believe, never formed any man more unlike his real character than David Hume. The powers of physiognomy were baffled by his countenance ; neither could the most skillful in that science pretend to discern the smallest trace of the faculties of his mind in the unmeaning feature of his visage. His face was broad and flat, his mouth wide, without any other expression than imbecility; his eyes vacant and spiritless; and the corpulence of his whole person was far better fitted to convey the idea of a turtle-eating alderman than that of a refined philosopher. His speech in English was rendered ridiculous by the broadest Scotch accent, and his French was, if possible, still more laughable; so that wisdom most certainly never disguised herself before in such an uncouth garb." (Written by Lord Charlemont who saw Hume at Turin in 1748.) This report is given by an admirer, and may be taken as trustworthy, though in our opinion, the first sentence should be modified. Nature knew what she was about when she put David Hume into such a body, making him on the one 30. 466 MODEEN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. hand a great flabby, lubberly fat man, and on the other a philosopher, and then uniting the two in one person whose Philosophy will necessarily be the contradiction of all Philosophy. His picture by Allan Ramsey says something of the kind. A contemporary anecdote of him cele- brates the fact " that even David Hume, for all his great figure as a Philosopher and Historian, or his greater as a fat man, was obliged to make one of three in a room " at a crowded inn. We understand a little humorous touch of self-de- scription in the same way : I am " a sober, discreet, virtuous, frugal, regular, quiet, good-natured man, of a bad character." Hume never dis- guised his own view of himself and of his part ; if all the world is a comedy, he, as a member of the troupe, must be comic also even to himself, and " be the first to join in the laugh against him- self." Let the philosopher of idealism be lean and hollow-eyed ; the philosopher of sensism, who holds that all there is of him is a huge periphery of sensation, should be a fat man of no small diameter, and thus truly represent his Philoso- phy incarnate. Report makes of Hume a jolly, all-round, good fellow, who could " join in the laugh against himself." Still there was to this a limit also, in the nature of the case. Doubt- less a chief reason why Hume did not like the Londoners was their excessive merriment at the fat philosopher; his puffing, shuffling manner, HUME. - LIFE. 467 his broad Scotch dialect, his provincial ways amused the literary cockneys of the metropolis just a little too much for him "to join in the laugh against himself ;" on the contrary, twice at least, after intending to settle at London, he took to flight from that unappreciative city, speeding sooner or later back to auld Scotland and bonnie Edinboro, where ruled the canny Scotch accent, and where he was easily the chief of the literary clan. 1. On the whole the First Period of Hume's Life may be considered to conclude with the publication of his first and greatest philosophical work, which is still regarded as his epoch-making production. This is A Treatise of Human Nature, the final volume of which was given to the world when Hume was twenty-nine years old (1740). It is one of the very rare instances in which a philosophical work is composed by a young man, who never afterwards equals his youthful attempt. But the exception is only apparent. Hume's book is not a great constructive effort of philoso- phy, but is critical, negative, destructive. Archi- tectonic power of thought it does not show ; that is always a later fruit of philosophic genius. A young fellow usually thinks he knows better than the old heads around him, and is inclined to at- tack what has been transmitted. In this respect Hume remained young as long as he philoso- 468 MODERN E UROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. phized, though in other respects he toned down not a little. David Hume was born in Edinburg, April 26th, 1711 (O. S.). This city remained all his life the center from which he often went forth and to which he as often returned. Of his early edu- cation little is known. In his autobiography he merely says: " I passed through the ordinary course of education with success." But the chief fact of it in his memory is that ' I was seized with a passion for literature, which has been the ruling passion of my life." His people intended him for the law, but while they fancied he was poring upon jurisprudence, " Cicero and Virgil were the authors I was secretly devouring." From these hints we can trace certain general lines of his future literary tendencies. His ancient culture was Latin, not Greek directly: that is, it was derived from the Roman reflection of Hellenic learning, particularly of Hellenic Philosophy. He never drank, or at best but very little, from the great original sources of Greek Thought, Plato and Aristotle. He hardly knew their tongue at the formative period of his doctrine. Not till after he had published his Treatise, his most original book, and the first part of his Essays, when he was already past thirty and beyond his First Period, did he recover "the knowledge of the Greek language which I had too much neglected in my early youth," HUME. LIFE. 469 during school years. His model and his moulder was unquestionably Cicero. His style and the attitude of his mind are largely though not wholly Ciceronian. To our taste, Hume's philo- sophical style is in the main an improvement on that of Cicero, being quite devoid of the wordy rhetorical roll of the thrice-repeating Roman rhetorician. The question comes up whether Hume ever drew anything from Sextus Empiricus, the great fountain of learning in regard to Greek Skepti- cism. From the frequent mention Hume makes of the name of Pyrrho, a book by Sextus is brought to mind, called the Pyrrhonian Hypoty- poseis. But the Skepticism of Hume (as he re- peatedly declares) is not Pyrrhonian and Greek, but Academic and Eclectic, that is Ciceronian and Roman. At least such he claimed and in- tended it to be, even if he was in part mistaken. The Roman age of Cicero was a disbelieving, skeptical, revolutionary age like the Eighteenth Century. The Romans, Cicero's audience, were essentially a will-people and still remained Roman even when accepting some intellectual varnish from Greek culture. A late Greek, Plutarch, has specially set forth this fact in his Parallel Lives, and the same fact is strongly brought out by Shakespeare in his Roman play, Julius Ccesar. Now, the English are also a will-people, and have been a hundred times called the modern Romans. 470 MODEUN E UROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. They have, likewise, the Eoman trait of permit- ting a little philosophic varnish to be applied to their marvelous active life, if it be not rubbed m too deep, after the German or Greek fashion, and if it be kept strictly within the limits of its decorative purpose. This was Hume's audience, and his literary function was similar to that of Cicero, with a similar relation to his age and na- ture. It is no wonder, then, that the literary Ro- man became his teacher, from whom he took his skeptical attitude rather than from Sextus Empi- ricus or the Greeks. To this Roman source we must add the Eng- lish influence which brought him philosophically into his own century. This influence was Locke* whose theory of knowledge was the chief means through which Hume's Latin culture was trans- formed into the philosophy of the time. Locke's psychological forms are taken by * Hume and pushed into Skepticism, which is not by any means alien to them. The skeptical bent and training of Hume easily put a corresponding content into what was already facing in that direction. Such are the two main sources of the Treatise on Human Nature. Hume wrote this book after some struggles and fluctuations. His means being limited, he went to Bristol to try a mercantile calling; ' but in a few months I found that scene totally un- suitable to me." He gave it up forever; thence HUME. LIFE. 471 he passed over to France for the purpose of study, where he stayed three years, chiefly at La Fleche, the scene of the early education of Descartes who also began his doubt there, his de omnibus dubitandum. In this French village the most of Hume's book was written. Return- ing with his manuscript to London, he succeeded in getting a publisher, but the work " fell dead- born from the press," in the words of his auto- biography. The failure of Hume's first book undoubtedly makes a turning-point in his career. Like all young authors, and some old ones, he dreamed that his production was the greatest of its time, and that it would at once bring him money and fame. The first part of the dream was largely true, the second part was totally false. Hume did not see that the very merit of his book doomed it to failure at the start. But experi- ence teaches him the lesson. Moreover he must have bread to satisfy the one appetite, and he must have literary success to satisfy the other appetite, " the ruling passion of my life." He starts out to get both in a fresh pursuit. 2. This gives the Second Period (1740-1763), which shows him succeeding in both objects. He will put abounding cash into his pocket, and will get such a dose of fame, particularly at Paris, that even his enormous greed for it will turn to satiety; at least he will say so. The trend of' 472 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. his life now is the practical. He will not re- nounce literature, "his ruling passion," but he will adjust it to his audience. He takes a new measure of the public, and carefully spies out the way to capture the citadel of popular applause. He does not propose to run his head against its stone walls any more. The failure of the Trea- tise has taught him the important practical principle of accommodation. The result is a significant change in his literary attitude, which extends even to his style. Previously (in the First Period) his standpoint was the thing to be done, now (in his .Second Period) it is in his audience, to which he intends to accommodate himself. He will storm the fortress, if not of Truth at least of Popularity, and for the rest of his life he will revel in the good things which he finds there as the spoils of his victory. The Second Period will show two strands run- ning separately and yet intertwining in a double life-line. These two strands we may call the speculative and the practical, the turning within and the turning without, the realm of thought and the realm of affairs . Hume will show him- self doubly successful as a writer of books and as a man of business. His books, however, mean business, and his business means books. In his two volumes of Essays, published in 1741 and in 1742, he began to win that literary renown which was his chief ambition. A year HUME. LIFE. 473 or so later he seems to have been spoken of for the chair of Moral Philosophy in the University of Edinburg, but the plan carne to naught, and Hume, like the four great modern philosophers who preceded him, did his work outside of any University. In 1745 he went to live with the Marquis of Annandale, a crazy young nobleman of great wealth who had been " charmed with something contained in the Essays." It was a melancholy situation, and ended in a lawsuit; still Hume records that " my appointments during that time made a considerable accession to my small fortune." He then received an invitation from General St. Clair to attend him as a secretary to his expedition, " which was at first meant against Canada, but ended in an incursion on the coast of France " a miserable business. In 1747 he attended the same General on an embassy to the courts of Vienna and Turin, during which " I wore the uniform of an officer, and was introduced at these courts as aide-de- camp to the General." Thus he catches glimpses of high life. It was at Turin that Lord Charlemont saw him and celebrated his corpulence, his broad Scotch accent, and his ridiculous French. Hume, however, was pro- foundly satisfied with himself during this pe- riod, for, besides having an agreeable time and good company, " my appointments, with my frugality, had made me reach a fortune which I 474 MODERN" EUROPEAN' PHILOSOPHY. called independent ; in short I was now master of near a thousand pounds." At the end of this tour Hume gravitates back to Scotland, first to the county seat of his family and then to Edinburg. In 1752 the Faculty of Advocates chose him as their Librarian, which office, though the pay was small, "gave me the command of a large library. I then formed the plan of writing the History of England," altogether the most widely read of Hume's literary productions, and by no means left be- hind in the race to-day, as the numerous popular editions testify. There is no question about the abiding charm of this historical work, which no amount of hostile criticism (certainly justifiable in many ways) can seriously affect with the great public. We are of the opinion that the fame of Hume the historian has decidedly helped to preserve the fame of Hume the phi- losopher. But this work too was very un- favorably received on its appearance, and the failure touched Hume deeply. The grapes were indeed very sour, if we may judge by the fol- lowing extract from a letter to a friend: "As to the approbation of those blockheads who call themselves the public whom a bookseller, a lord, a priest or a party can guide, I do most heartily despise it." His disgust becomes so great, that he resolves to leave Edinburg and go to London, " probably to remain there during life." Yet HUME. LIFE. 475 his dislike of Englishmen was too deep, and Eng- lishmen had no great love for the thrifty Scotch. Accordingly he is soon back in Edinburg again, and takes a house, as if he meant now to stay. Meantime his books have been selling rapidly ; " the copy-money given me by the booksellers much exceeded anything formerly known in England ; I was become not only inde- pendent but opulent." He has attained the object of his ambition ; he is famous and rich. Great is his satisfaction; "I retired to my native country of Scotland, deter- mined never more to set foot out of it ; " and being now turned of fifty , * * I thought of passing all the rest of my life in this philosophi- cal manner." He has written his books, having finished his History of England ; he has carried, through successfully both strands of life, the practical and theoretical, with which his Second Period started. Those two great antagonists, Philosophy and Business, he has harmoniously combined in his career, in spite of all the cap- rices of fortune. Let him enjoy henceforth his philosophic leisure. But a voice comes to him in his retirement which stirs anew " my ruling passion, my love of literary fame." He is invited to go to Paris, the literary center of Europe; can he resist? Hardly. 3, So a Third Period (1763-1776) of Hume's 476 MODERN E UBOPEAN PHILOSOPHY. life opens, lasting till his death. It is a time of fruition; having done his work, he will enjoy the rewards of fame and money, these being about all that there is in life according to Hume. He never had a family of his own, no wife and children; he has no great thought, whose truth he wishes to propagate, for his philsophy, is that there is no truth. Very different was Hume's successor in the philosophic line, Kant, who wrote his greatest book at fifty-seven, and kept up the battle for the Idea till he was eighty. And Locke, Hume's predecessor, tilled and sowed to the last, with faith in his heart. One thing, however, will rouse Hume; a further opportunity for indulging in ' my ruling pas- sion, the love of literary fame," with some money thrown in. In 1763 Hume " received an invitation from the Earl of Hertford to attend him on his embassy to Paris, with a near prospect of being appointed secretary to the embassy." He at first declined, but then accepted " on his lordship's repeating the invitation," evidently with the addition that the uncertain prospect should be made certain, for we soon read that " I was secretary to the Embassy." But here again trouble arose. The appointment had been given to an incapable man, who stayed in London, but drew the salary (1200 pounds). From this fact the American politician will have to acknowledge that he did HUME. LIFE. 477 not originate what in the slang of to-day is called " graft." Poor Hume had to be contented with a temporary pension of 200 pounds and a prom- ise. It is no wonder that his letters at this time show an increased dislike of " those barbarians who inhabit the banks of the Thames." But if the side of money did not turn out as well as was expected, the side of flattery, the gratification of " my ruling passion," transcended all bounds. At Paris the first question usually addressed to an Englishman was, " Do you know Mr. Hume? " With truth the latter might now write to a friend : * ' Paris is the place I have al- ways admired most, ' ' It is said that the Dauphin at Versailles had his three boys recite prepared speeches praising Hume when the latter visited the royal palace. But even the colossal appetite of Hume began to be sated. He writes to Adam Smith : " Dur- ing two days at Fontainebleau I have suffered (the expression is not improper) as much flattery as almost any man has ever done in the same time." So the deluge kept pouring, pouring; royalty, nobility, the ladies, and chiefly the French philosophers and literary men, went wild with enthusiasm over a man who did not believe in enthusiasm unless perchance it was directed toward himself. We hear of Diderot, D'Alem- bert, the French encyclopedists, uniting in a kind of religious procession to burn incense to their 478 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. God who 8eems suddenly to have appeared in person. What is the meaning of it all? the reader of to-day still queries. What had Hume done to call forth such a tremendous outburst of recogni- tion at Paris, so that * no author ever attained to an equal degree of reputation during his life- time?" In order to get an answer we have to look into what was then simmering and ferment- ing in the spirit of the French people. The Revo- lution was preparing itself for an outbreak in the heart of that gay fluttering mass which surged around Hume, and for once manifested something like worship. The greatest European prophet of Negation had appeared right in the center of his fellow-believers who believed not. The result was a mighty shout of saluta- tion and welcome which shook that Pari- sian Pandemonium to its nethermost depths, and gave to all who could look into the seeds of Time, a shiver of foreboding at the deed which was rapidly approaching. The negative, de- structive Eighteenth Century celebrated a kind of prelude to its real drama in this reception of Hume, which can only be understood by taking into account the state of France at that time. Paris was the scene where the spectacle was to be played from beginning to end, and Paris now gives a greeting to the foreign philosopher of her coming destiny, which not only illustrates his HUME. LIFE. 479 doctrine in its world-historical meaning, but vividly reflects that city's present disposition and future possibilities. In some such fashion we may explain to ourselves the magnitude of Hume's reception; it was a symbol of the time and a symptom of what all felt to be about to break forth. Hume was truly recognized as the supreme representative of the Spirit of the Age, as the very soul of the Eighteenth Century now marching forward to its last act. To that God- less set he appeared as the God-destroying God, and was at once hailed with divine honors. But how is it across the Channel? England looks on with a passive, stolid amazement; one thing is clear, she is not going to travel that Parisian road to the future, and she will not take any such God. Hume feels this, and it is the deepest source of his dislike of Englishmen, " those barbarians who inhabit the banks of the Thames," and who have no " taste for litera- ture," at least, such as Paris raves over. Hume shouts across the water (by letter) in answer to the warnings of a friend: " Am I an English- man? I am a citizen of the world, but if I were to adopt any country, it would be that in which I live at present." Hume refused to follow Lord Hertford from Paris to Dublin in the position of secretary. That were ** like stepping out of light into darkness." France was Humian, England was not ; France was pushing forward to the com- 480 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. pletion of her negative thought, to Revolution; England was not going in that direction. She had turned down another road at the dethrone- ment of the House of Stewart, of which Hume had made himself the panegyrist in his history. Just in this separation lay the profound antago- nism between Hume and the English conscious- ness which, though sensist in philosophy, like Locke, stops short with him at its negative con- sequences. One of the interesting episodes of this last Period was Hume's connection with Rousseau, the great French apostle and incarnation of the Eighteenth Century, whom Hume at first re- garded as " a greater genius than Socrates," but afterwards as " a compound of wickedness and madness." The story cannot be told here, but it may fairly be said that Rousseau brought home to Hume in person a considerable foretaste of the consequences of the latter 's own negative doctrine. The philosophical activity of Hume was now closed and he had attained fame and wealth. These he enjoyed till the end, which came at Edinburg, August 25th, 1776. II. HUME'S WRITINGS. It is a unique fact in the literary career of Hume that he wrote his great philosophical work first of all his works ? in young-manhood. Thus he unfolds out of a cen- tral production into his special lines. Locke and HUME. LIFE. 481 Kant develop in the opposite way the master- piece in each of their cases ripens late ; they un- fold into it, not out of it, making it the end rather than the beginning. And so it has been with quite all the great philosophers. The Treatise of Human Nature, written when Hume was between twenty-one and twenty-five years of age, is his greatest book in the eyes of the pres- ent age, and has required the longest time for its appreciation. We may deem it an explosive book, bursting outwards from a pent-up center, a kind of bomb, an outbreak like that of a Revolution. Thus the manner of its production is characteristic of its theme and of its period. This is, accordingly, the book of Hume's which we shall specially single out in the present connection. It is more direct, more sincere, than any later book of his ; in fact he never afterward forgave his own sin- cerity in the writing of it. It abounds in self- reference, in a naive Egoism; indeed he is doing nothing else but examining his own Ego, in which lies all knowledge, according to his view. We find again that it is the single work which we are to study and analyze in order to acquire the Philosophy of Hume, who goes his own way without any conscious regard for the Norm . This work is known under its short title as 31 482 MODERN" EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. HUME'S TREATISE. In the introduction we see our philosopher seeking for some principle of organizing his theme. This pertains to what he calls Hu- man Nature, or those original endowments which Nature (not God) has conferred upon man. These endowments properly ordered and set forth would constitute "the Science of Man," which Hume deems the fundamental Science, since " all the Sciences have a relation greater or less to Human Nature/' and ultimately "return back to it by one passage or other." They are " dependent on the Science of Man," inasmuch as they "lie under the cognizance of men and are judged of by their powers and faculties." Thus Human Nature can only be man's Ego with "its powers and faculties," and its Science (which is properly Psychology) is the funda- mental one. This is a very important statement, even if Hume sees this Science as merely subjec- tive. Moreover Hume mentions two other great de- partments of knowledge, or, as we may say, of Philosophy, so that his scheme is as follows : (1) Mathematics, Natural Philosophy, and Natural Religion he puts together as farthest removed from the Science of Man, yet going back to it for " cognizance." HUME'S TREATISE. 483 (2) Logic, Morals, Criticism and Politics form another class of Sciences whose "connexion with Human Nature is more close and intimate." (3) The basic Science is that of Human Na- ture, and this is just the Science which our phi- losopher proposes to set forth in the present Treatise really the Science of all Sciences, treated in a new way, " experimentally," that is, by the self-analysis of the Ego. Hume calls it also Metaphysics, a designation for Psychology or Mental Science which reaches down to the present time. Hume will pay small attention to this classifi- cation, but it has an interest for us as it shows a dim consciousness of the philosophical Norm. Here is the threefold division of the normative Sciences which suggest from afar the trans- mitted division into Metaphysics, Physics, and Ethics. So we have the right to say that Hume also shows remotely the influence of the Norm. In fact, he cannot well help himself if he is going to philosophize at all. But in the present book Hume proposes to deal with the Science of Human Nature (his Meta- physics). So we seek for his division of this subject, and are at first surprised that he gives none at the start. But looking through his en- tire book, and observing its main topics, we find that he has primarily a threefold division, as follows : 484 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. A. The Understanding. B. The Passions. C. Morals. He does not deem it necessary to give any justi- fication of this division, he simply finds it in his mind " experimentally " and that is enough. Of course the analysis of the book must proceed on these same lines. A. The Understanding. Hume now begins classifying, of which there gets to be an excess, for he does not use all the divisions which he makes. The result is confusion, for Hume is not an easy writer to organize, his much-praised clearness is on the surface, but underneath he often grows turbid. He starts with "Perceptions of the mind," which are of two kinds Impressions and Ideas. The Idea is "a faint Impression," primarily, but it is also called "a faint image" of an Impression. Each of these two divisions is sub-divided. Impressions are of two kinds, Sensation and Re- flection. Sensation is immediate, is an Impres- sion which " strikes upon the senses; " but this Sensation becomes an image which in its turn produces a new Impression which Hume calls an Impression of Reflection or Passion. The Idea as Image is repeated by the mind in two ways the more lively and immediate is Memory, the less vivacious is the Imagination. To these two HUME'S TREATISE. 485 is added the uniting principle of the separate Ideas in the mind, which principle is the Asso- ciation of Ideas. We notice in this inventory that Hume does not deduce or introduce directly the faculty of which he is treating, the Understanding, though it is spoken of by the way. Still less does he attempt to formulate the nature of Reason. We notice also that back of his procedure lurks the mind which is, however, not brought to the sur- face and shown making all these distinctions and separate ' faculties " of itself. We shall, however, proceed at once to the nerve of Hume's treatment of the Understanding : his doctrine of causation. The idea of cause (a priori) in the mind is an illusion, since there is no impression of sense from which it can be derived as image. The relation of cause and effect in the object is also an illusion, since it is inconceivable that cause should produce effect. How then do we come by the notion of cause? Simply by custom; we are accustomed to see two particular things or events in succession or conjunction, and so we get into the habit of say- ing that one causes the other. All that we can see or is, is the particular; anything universal or necessary like cause is a figment of the mind. Such is Hume's denial of causation which, if carried out strictly, would destroy both physical and mental Science. We could not even have 486 MODERN E UROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. the Impression, which Hume himself declares to be caused by something unknown. It is mani- fest that Hume, starting with Locke's limited sphere of knowledge, that of the phenomenal Ego knowing the phenomenal object, has run his dividing line between these two sides of it and separated them entirely. Having accom- plished this negative feat which completely un- does the Understanding of which he has been treating, he passes to his next leading division. B. The Passions. To this subject the Second Book of the Treatise is devoted. Hume derives the Passion from the original or immediate Im- pression. He conceives the Passion to spring from a reflective activity of the Impression, ' either immediately or by the interposition of its Idea." That is, the original Impression is a sensation (say a pain), while the secondary Im- pression is a reflection of the original one (say, fear, which is a reflection of the pain, in Hume's technique). Thus Passion has a double ele- ment, it is an Impression of an Impression, or an inner sensation responding to an outer one. Of these Passions or reflected Impressions Hume gives three main divisions : (1) Pride and Humility. These, "though directly contrary, have the same object." More- over "this object is the Self" which Hume defines as " a succession of related ideas and im- pressions of which we have an intimate memory TREATISE. 487 and consciousness" (Treatise Bk. II. Pt. I. Sect. II.). These two Passions Hume calls natural, being " original qualities of the mind " belonging to Human Nature of which he is here treating. (2) Love and Hatred. These are still reflected Impressions or inner sensations, but with a changed object which is no longer our own self, but another -self, " some other person," or "some sensible being external to us." (3) The Will and direct Passions. (The preceding are indirect Passions, as arising from pain or pleasure, not purely, but "by the con- junction of other qualities.") Direct Passions are " the Impressions which arise immediately from good and evil, from pain and pleasure ' ' (Bk. II. Pt. III. Sec. I.). Here Hume places the Will, which with him is " the internal Impression we feel and are conscious of when we knowingly give rise to any new motion of the body, or new perception of our mind." It is well to note the declaration, " we give rise " to the movement of the body and of the mind ; for Hume also holds that there is the same necessity ' ' in all the op- erations of the mind," as is seen " in the actions of matter." Reason cannot control Passion, but * is, and ought to be, the slave of the Passions," in which statement we can see the germ of Hume's Morals on its negative side. Moreover, 488 MODERN E UBOPEAN PHIL SOPHY. "Passion is an original existence," and cannot be subject to Reason. C. Morals. Hume deemed this work (in the later form of the Inquiry) as ** incomparably the best of all my writings, historical, philo- sophical, or literary." This judgment posterity has not confirmed. In fact, if we compare the first section of the Treatise with the first section of the Inquiry on the subject of Morals, we can see how much the former surpasses the latter in force of statement and sincerity of purpose, and how much Hume (in his Second Period) could water his style and even his con- viction for the sake of popularity. The next question is, What kind of an Im- pression is the moral one? " Here we cannot remain long in suspense, but must pronounce the Impression arising from virtue to be agreeable and that proceeding from vice to be uneasy ' (Bk. III. Pt. I. Sect. II.). We call an action virtuous if it produces a pleasant impression; vice on the contrary makes us uneasy. A sense of duty or morality cannot of itself be a motive to virtuous conduct. By nature we are so con- stituted that we praise certain deeds, and blame others. Such is the moral sense or sentiment, original, natural, subjective, a feeling or impres- sion. The Third Book (on Morals) opens with a strong attack on Reason as the source of moral HUME. PHILOSOPHY. 489 distinctions. Passion is not and cannot be sub- ordinated to Reason, as writers on Morals have said from old Greek times down to the present. Reason can at most compare and put together Ideas, whereas Morality is an Impression prima- rily, and " excites passions and produces or pre- vents actions." Hence it is "an original fact and reality, complete in itself," without compari- son or any relation. In this way Morality is brought back to Impression, with which the Understanding also started. Thus Hume has reduced mind to Impression or Feeling. Knowledge^comes from Impression, so does Passion, so does Morality. These Im- pressions are an original endowment of Human Nature, the given, the presupposed, really the transmitted. The immediate spontaneous activ- ity of Feeling is the true original thing in man, being the basic fact of Human Nature. Even the conflict of duty is the conflict of pain and pleasure. In a number of points Hume is the forerunner of the recent Physiological Psy- chology. III. HUME'S PHILOSOPHY. Already we have noted that in the introduction to his Treatise Hume shows a faint glimmer of the philosophi- cal Norm. Moreover, if we put together his writings, he would furnish a good deal of mate- rial for Metaphysics and Ethics, or, in the 490 MODERN E UROPEA N PHILOSOPHY. language of the time, Mental and Moral Philosophy. On the other hand Hume would furnish little or nothing for Physics or Natural Philosophy, though he claims to have derived his method of treating mind or Human Nature (as distinct from Material Nature) from the new natural Science. In fact Hume proceeds chemically in his Treatise. He takes all the varied complex phenomena of mind, and reduces them to certain simple irre- ducible elements called Impressions or Feelings. To decompound this composite Human Nature, to analyze it into its final units, is his procedure, showing him to belong in the heart of the chem- ical Century. Thus Hume seeks to get back to the primary immediate act of Human Nature as Impression or Feeling, which can only be subjective and par- ticular. Any objective universal truth he denies. His rejection of causation cuts the mind off from any knowledge of the object, even of the phe- nomenal object. And yet the mind (according to Hume) must accept the object, accept the very thing which it rejects, know the very thing which it cannot know. Thus the mind as knowledge dwells in a perpetual contradiction with itself ; cognition has to cognize the very thing which it cannot cognize. Intelligence is completely cleft in twain, separated within itself from itself by an impassable chasm. To such an inner dualism HUME. PHILOSOPHY. 491 the Century of Negation has brought itself. All mind is so deeply self-divided that it cannot get back to itself. There is no return within, no reconciliation of the two sides; the divided consciousness we may call it, the age's own consciousness reflected in its representative phi- losopher, who here commits philosophical suicide. For Philosophy denies the possibility of our knowing the object which nevertheless we know. To think is simply to annihilate thought. We have already seen that Locke has left us a circumscribed sphere of knowledge, beyond which the mind cannot pass. But through this limited sphere Hume has run a second line of division, a diametral line, as it were, which cuts off all knowledge of the object and confines our knowing to the subject, and even this is reduced to Impression or Feeling. Now it is at this point that our next great philosopher of the Century, Kant, begins to wake up and to stir himself, having been shaken out of his " dogmatic slumber " by the negation of Hume. Kant's question is, How can I save knowledge? In what way can I rescue experience, or at least some fragment of it? Kant will still re- main inside the circumscribed sphere marked out by Locke, to whom he is a return, though not a relapse. By a new and thorough analysis of the process of knowledge he will seek to break down 492 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. or rather break over (through his Ego) that dia- metral line drawn so remorselessly by Hume against all cognition of the objective world, and also to vindicate by the way very impor- tant powers for the subject. At the same time Kant will have his negative side, which in one direction will be even deeper than that of Hume. KANT. PHILOSOPHIC CHARACTER. 493 3* IRant, The Philosophy of the Eighteenth Century now passes back from England to the Teutonic Continent, where we saw Modern Philosophy in its supreme representatives start and stay during the Seventeenth Century. But this return is not to Holland or to the Western branch of the Conti- nental Teutons ; it reaches to the extreme Eastern border where the Teutonic race touches and is intermingled with the Slavonic. Thus, Philoso- phy seems to turn back to the primal boundary of its present racial supporter and propagator, as if to embrace the entire kindred, Anglo-Saxon and Germanic. We have already called this the grand philosophic arch of the Eighteenth Century bending over the whole Teutonic world from the birthplace of John Locke in Western England to the birthplace of Irnmanuel Kant in Eastern Prussia. The extreme European limits of the great migration of the Teutons are thus joined together by the supreme Teutonic discipline, Modern Philosophy. In such fashion the Eight- eenth Century rounds itself out even topograph- ically in an all-embracing act of consanguine thought. And here we may state that the connection between Locke and Kant is far more direct and 494 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. complete than is usually supposed by the Ger- man expositors of Kant, who are remarkably neglectful of this relation. They dwell upon the influence of Hume over Kant, chiefly because Kant himself has emphasized it; but first of all, what is Hume without Locke? At present we may point out one fundamental fact: Kant's demar- cation of the sphere of knowledge as lying between the Ego-in-itself and the Thing-in-itself is that of Locke, though, of course, the two Philosophers differ as to the process of knowl- edge within these circumscribed limits. Putting Locke and Kant together we may say that in the Eighteenth Century Teutonia draws her boundary lines both externally and internally, both in space and in thought. In Kant Philosophy makes another noticeable transition : It goes to the University for its culti- vation, and even for its origination, in which environment it will stay during the next Century and attain its supreme modern development. This is in striking contrast to what has preceded. For the five greatest modern philosophers of the antecedent time were not professors, and did their original work outside of Universities ; some of them declined professorships as unfavorable to freedom of thought. The prescribed routine with its ever-recurring formalism weighs down creative thought; moreover, the first function of the University professor is to impart and to transmit KANT. PHILOSOPHIC CHAEAGTEE. 495 the culture of the past, in whose erudition he always runs the danger of getting ossified. And we can see that Kant, in his chief work, has be- come formal and schematic to excess, and finally is overwhelmed and enslaved by his own system. Very different is the philosophic manner of those non-professorial philosophers, Locke and Hume. Already we have found that England has com- pelled Philosophy, the most aristocratic and ex- clusive of Sciences, to drop the Latin and to talk the vernacular. This trait Kant will inherit and will make Philosophy speak German altogether. Kant has no Latin works of importance. The basic Teutonic discipline is now to speak the mother-tongue, the pure Teutonic, not a Latin- ized Teutonic like English. Undoubtedly the custom of using the vulgar tongue for philo- sophic discourse had been growing. But Kant, through the greatness of his works and their widespread study, will establish German philo- sophic speech, even if his style be imperfect, somewhat as Luther established the literary tongue of Germany by his translation of the Bible. This we may take as an instance of his gen- eral breach with the traditions of the past. He reflected the spirit of his century in his sympathy with all sorts of Revolution. He defended warmly the revolt of the American Colonies from Great Britain. When he heard of the formation 496 MODERN EUEOPEAN PHILOSOPHY. of the French Republic, he is reported to have said with tears in his eyes : " I can now say like Simeon: Lord, let thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation." He seemed to be in an inner revolt against whatever was established. He would have nothing to do with the transmitted forms of religion ; it is said that he never entered a church after reaching manhood. Law and medicine as formulated and practiced were the objects of his dislike. He was his own doctor and elaborated a system of hygiene upon which he loved to talk. When we learn that Rousseau was his favorite French author and that the Emile was the only book that ever kept him from taking his customary walk, we can understand how deeply he drank of the spirit of the revolutionary Century. Kant, like Locke, was a valetudinarian all his life. He was born a weakling physically, a kind of dwarf, being barely five feet in height, and partially deformed ; he was never well yet never seriously ill; to understand his body was his first care, and he evidently learned his lesson well. Heine and others have made fun of his regularity, but this was the very condition not only of his working but of his living at all. He knew his physical limits, which knowledge had been burned into his soul by suffering. He had to watch every little transgression of his hygienic conscience, otherwise the penalty was KANT. LIFE. 497 upon him for violating the categorical imperative of his body. Astonishing was the result. Though his life was one continued fight for life, he nevertheless lived till he was quite eighty years old, and did a very considerable amount of work. We cannot help thinking that these bodily con- ditions emphasized, even if they did not produce, certain mental tendencies. The limits of his physical being were so ground into him that they left a corresponding impress upon the mind, whose limits Kant has fixed with such remorse- less precision and force. We feel that in the conditions which he draws around experience lies a deep experience of his own, as we may also find in the similar case of Locke. Kant and his Philosophy have a profound con- nection with Frederick the Great and the rise of the Prussian State on the Eastern side of the Teutonic world. The rejuvenation of German spirit finds expression in the new institution and in the new philosophy. Other similar manifesta- tions in the literary sphere are seen in Lessing and Goethe. Kant is, therefore, by no means an isolated phenomenon. He is part of a great European palingenesis, which at first shows itself in the form of Revolution. I. KANT'S LIFE. Kant was born April 22d, 1724, at Konigsberg, Prussia, and died in the same city February 12th, 1804. He supposed 32 498 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. himself to be of Scotch descent on his father's side, but his accuracy on this point has recently been questioned. Every biographer points out a very significant change in the spiritual development of our phi- lospher which hovers about his fortieth year, before and after. It was slow, not without re- actions and even relapses. In general, this was Kant's break with the past, with the established, the transmitted his awakening from his "dog- matic slumber." He had been in philosophy mainly a follower of Wolff, he had studied pro- foundly the physical doctrines of Newton, he had appropriated the erudition of preceding times after the manner of the University. What now causes the separation ? First of all, we are to look at what was going on in the institutional world that environed Kant. The Seven Years' War (1756-63) with the career of Frederick the Great, could not help having a strong influence on Kant who was a Prussian subject. He saw the conflict near at hand, Konigsberg was occupied by the Russians for several years during the war. As already said, the right of legitimacy was substantially annulled by the Prussian monarch who asserted another and deeper right. The title to rule transmitted from the past was assailed by a king and broken down after a tremendous conflict in which 853,000 fighting men are said to have perished. Berlin, the KANT. LIFE. 499 Prussian capital, was captured by the enemy, and still Frederick triumphed in the end. His was the assertion of WILL above all the mazes which the Intellect of the time sought to throw in his way by means of old claims, established rights, in- herited titles. Well may one say that Frederick the Great was the arch revolutionist of the Cen- tury, whose spirit he represented in its deep- est depths. The receptive Kant could not help catching this spirit in his own way, and becoming the philosophic counterpart of Fred- erick, who indeed may never have heard of him, and who, moreover, tried to be his own phi- losopher after the French distillation of English philosophy (Locke). To our mind the French Revolution is an historic development and ful- fillment of the spirit underlying the Seven Years' War, through both of which events Kant lived, seeing the outcome of both in the Primacy of Will of two great rulers, Frederick and Napoleon. Still Kant was too old to represent philosophically the concrete French Revolution, that belongs to the generation of philosophers who succeeded him. The European Literature of the time, specially in its French and English sources, profoundly stirred our philosopher. We have already men- tioned Rousseau and Hume, both of them giving a literary expression to the revolutionary spirit of the age. So Kant far off: to one side of Eu- 500 MODERN' E UEOPEAN PHILOSOPHY. rope was the chosen man to give a philosophical expression to this same spirit. 1. First Period. In the sixties of the Eight- eenth Century Kant was undergoing a change from being a receptive vessel for the erudition of the past into becoming a source of ideas in him- self ; he was getting possession of his own v genius. In the year 1763 the Seven Years' War closed, and a time of peace and reflection set in. In 1770 he was elevated from a tutorship to a pro- fessorship in the University of Konigsberg. On this occasion he wrote a dissertation bearing the title, "Concerning the Form and Principles of the Sensible and Intelligible World." He shows that he has reached his philosophic standpoint and has only to develop it to completeness. We feel a hesitation about setting exact dates in this matter of slow evolution. Still the need of something fixed for the mental grip is great. The reader will not be far out of the way if he takes Kant's fortieth year (1764) as the land- mark of his great transition to his conscious task, which continues to develop during his whole middle life, till old age begins to show his decline. 2. Second Period. Kant is now fairly launched on his philosophic career; he has passed from the Macrocosm (Newton) to the Microcosm (Kousseau), from the World to his Ego, whose limits he is now to subject to his criticism, and thus his philosophy is named the critical. It is KANT. LIFE. ' 501 manifest that the Lockian boundary of cognition is still with him, but he is going to overhaul what lies within that boundary. In such an overhauling he starts from Hume's negation, which on one side he accepts, but on another he denies. He proposes to rescue Locke's experience of the object, yet not after Locke's manner. His Second Period would accordingly begin about 1764, and last for some twenty-four years, ending with the publication of the Critique of the Practical Reason in 1788, after which Kant's writings begin to show diminished power. Of course the culmination of this Second Period as well as of Kant's life is thb publication of the Critique of Pure Reason in 1781, when the author was 57 years old. This is the work to which we shall have to pay special attention as the central statement of Kant's philosophy as well as the profoundest outcome of the thought of his age. 3. Third Period. With this part of Kant's life (from 1789 till his death in 1804) we can have little to do in the present account, since the philosopher has already in the preceding Period accomplished his epoch-making task, which gives him his supreme place in the intellectual devel- opment of the Eighteenth Century. Of a single matter, however, mention should be made. After the publication of his work on Religion within the bounds of Pure Reason, 502 MODERN E UROPEAtf PHILOSOPHY. there reached him one day a cabinet order from Berlin dated October 1st, 1794, which ran as follows: " Our highest person has been greatly displeased to observe how you misuse your phi- losophy to undermine and destroy " the Christian Religion. Then came the command that " in the future you give no such cause of offence," and that you write hereafter in due accord with "our paternal purpose," otherwise " you may expect unpleasant consequences to yourself." We must recollect that Frederick the Great, the scoffer and priest-hater, had been dead several years and the new king had introduced the reign of so-called pietism. Kant has_ attained just the age of the dying Socrates, being seventy years old, and here is the modern cup of hemlock offered him, not by a democracy but by an absolute government. Will he drink it? Not a bit of it. At first he was full of fight, and thought of defending him- self against the charges which impugned his Christianity; then he would maintain the right of the philosopher to think what he pleased and to say what he thought ; but he ended by pro- claiming himself "his Majesty's most faithful servant," and by promising " I shall refrain in the future from all public lecturing and writing on religion, both natural and revealed." The incident leaves a painful, degrading im- KANT. WRITINGS. 503 pression of Kant. But apart from all motives of fear, what else could he logically do, ac- cording to his own Philosophy? Here was the Ego of the absolute Monarch issuing his uncon- ditional imperative to a subject. From the Kantian standpoint there was no questioning the right. Kant could only behold the gigantesque image of his own doctrine smiting him to the earth. Really he had no inner means of defend- ing himself. With this picture of the aged Kant crouching under the blow of his own principle returning upon him, we may close the book of his life. II. KANT'S WRITINGS. These are quite numerous and belong to all three Periods . In a general way .Kant writes during the First Period after a literary fashion, he cultivates the graces of style, and pays less attention to the formal order. Herein |he follows his models, English and French, Hume and Rousseau, who never failed to put into their writings a literary quality, which often dominates the purely philosophic element. But in the Second Period the style of Kant changes, his exposition becomes more involved and rigidly formulated. He passes from his literary to his schematic manner and therewith from imi- tation into originality. For there is no denying that his great original works are schematic, in 504 MODERN- EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. fact this is the standing literary objection to them. But Kant is not Kant without his strictly tabulated scheme, which, being an integral part of his genius, cannot be left out in any complete exposition of his doctrine. We are not to for- get that Kant never came to his true self by any other road than through his scheme. It is true that in his Third Period his adherence to his scheme becomes painfully external, he forces his content into it with a kind of violence. This, however, is one indication of his decline, in which the Primacy of the Will over Intellect gets to be purely arbitrary. The monumental structure to which all the earlier Writings of Kant lead up and from which all his later Writings recede, is built .of the three Critiques of Pure Reason, of Practical Reason, and of Judgment, and of these three there is one supreme central edifice, the Critique of Pure Rea- son. And of this one work there is a central portion with many outlying divisions. The century since Kant has very decidedly selected the kernel of his greatest book, which is indeed the kernel of all his writings and of his life, and has in many ways appropriated and de- veloped it. In our exposition we shall in the main confine ourselves to this kernel as the truly original creative element of Kant. KANT. CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON, 505 A. THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON. In accord with our method of treating the philosophers of the Eighteenth Century, we select the greatest work of Kant for analysis and interpretation. It would be a violent treatment to force the book into the philosophic Norm which it is seeking to destroy, even if it has to recognize this Norm in the act of destruction. Undoubtedly Kant himself deemed the present work as a preparatory training (propaedeutic) for his new system of Philosophy, but in this case the vestibule becomes emphatically the temple. The student of Kant is, therefore, to grapple with the Critique of Pure Reason first of all, and from it pass in thought to that which comes after and also to that which goes before. For the whole is a growth ; Kant must be con- ceived as gradually growing into it and producing it, when the work itself becomes the source of new growths not only for Kant himself, but for all future Philosophy. It is thus one of the great germinal centers in which the Thought of the Ages gathers itself together and formulates itself anew, thence spreading forth throughout the world. The actual name of the book, Critique of Pure Reason, is said to be first mentioned in a letter of Kant's to Herz dated Feb. 21st, 1772. 506 MODERN E UROPEAN PHIL SOPHY. But indications of it under other titles and descriptions appear before this date. There is no doubt that Kant was working upon it chiefly during the greater part of his Second Period. In a letter to Mendelssohn he says that it was * ' the product of twelve years' reflection at least" (being published in 1781), but that it was " put into shape in about four or five months," which can only mean that large portions were already written, and were inserted into the Whole, of course after revision and elaboration. It grew in parts and from several independent centers till boundaries came together, or in repeated in- stances were brought together by a kind of external force. Still the sutures may be traced where the parts are intergrown, and gaps may be observed which the author was unable to fill. Hence come the repetitions as well as omissions, the decided independence of its leading divisions, the inner separation in the outer unity. For these reasons the book has been subjected to a dissecting process very similar to what has happened to another great constructive work of this same period, Goethe's Faust, which was like- wise the growth of many years of the poet's life. As the literary critic has separated the poem into a series of layers in chronological order, so the philosophical critic has separated this Critique into successive sections, arranged according to their origin in time. Indeed old Homer himself KANT. CRITIQUE OF PURE EEASON. 507 has (in his two poems) been cut up into strata by the Germans. Now the curious fact comes to light that the source of all this dissection and stratification applied to literature by the German mind goes back chiefly to the Critique of Pure Reason, which is thus having its own doctrine served up to itself. The Prolegomena of Wolf, the fountain of the whole Homeric controversy, has its thought in Kant's book, though of course this critical separative spirit lay in the age, in the entire Eighteenth Century. It is, therefore, not surprising to hear that attempts have been made in Germany to trace the chronological order of the individual sections of the work, as they arose in the mind of the author. Such an effort springs out of the evolutionary spirit pervading the Nineteenth Century. Kant also says in the letter above cited that his chief attention was given to the subject-mat- ter, while " little care was bestowed upon the style, or upon making it easy for the reader." Well may he make some apology for the composition of the book, which is not good. It has often the long involved sentences, so much complained of in German writing; he is careless of grammar, especially of his pronouns, and his exposition is not seldom disorderly. His style has little or no relief from a certain rigid procedure, a sort of metallic hardness is felt in it, which must have belonged to Kant's character, and which sug- 508 MODERN E UROPEAN PHIL SOPHY. gests his imperious unbending disposition. The categorical imperative we can feel in his- very phrasing, and the postulate of his Ego as Will sounds out of every sentence. When we read these Critiques we seem to hear the stern, almost rude word of individual authority which brooks no questioning of its judgments. This Kantian style is peculiarly German, being found with varying degrees of intensity in many literary and historical productions of Germany, and comes, in part at least, from the deep study and appropriation of Kant's work by the German mind. The title is suggestive. The word Critique is derived from a Greek verb with two mean- ings : to separate and to judge, or to dis- tinguish and to subsume. Both these meanings seem to be interlinked in Kant's usage. There o is the primal separation from the sense-world which calls forth the world of Ideas, and with this latter world (as that of Pure Reason) the Critique specially deals, analyzing it and making in it many distinctions. But all this demands continuously the act of judging, and Kant is the judge. It is he (or his Ego) who furnishes the criterion or law, who makes the analysis, and who finally renders the decision. This judicial process is called the Critique of Pure Reason; that is, Pure Reason as a sort of cul- prit, at least as one making many claims not KANT. CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON. 509 valid, is called to the bar of the judge, Kant himself and none other, who examines these claims and sets many of them aside as fraudulent but establishes others. Now the fundamental claim of Pure Reason is that it can know the object as it is, or the thing in itself; this claim, however, though propounded and asserted since the beginning of Philosophy, Judge Kant throws out of court with no little emphasis. Such is the primal 'act. of criticism, an act in every way famous and full of significance for the future. Substantially it negatives the question which started Philosophy into existence in the old Greek world, which question is : What is the essence of Being? It can't be known, answers Kant (with a punning negative echo in English, which may also be heard in German). It should not be forgotten that this Pure Rea- son which Kant calls to the judgment seat is really his own, is himself. Kant summons him- self as claiming to know the world of reality, before himself, and then in his own presence- chamber arbitrates and decides this claim of his in the negative. In such procedure we see two opposite characteristics which reveal the deeply dualistic nature of Kant : on the one hand a pro- digious act of self-assertion, and on the other a prodigious act of self-denial. He makes the claim of being the absolute judge in his own case and then decides his own case against himself. 510 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. After making himself the arbiter of knowing the objective world, he then affirms that he cannot know it. Though he denies his own Intellect, he asserts his own Will. To such an inner self -opposition has the philosopher attained, and with him all philosophy, whose dualism he reflects in its latest and most intense phase. Scheme. Throughout the Critique of Pure Reason we find a scheme or plan according to which it is constructed. Evidently Kant deemed this Scheme of great importance, since it is em- ployed with little variation in the other two Crit- iques, and may be traced in different writings of his, especially those which are later. It is a just surmise that he gradually unfolded into a con- sciousness of his Scheme, as he progressed with the present work. One often thinks that his Scheme came last as the framework for holding his various essays and treatises together and con- joining them into a book. To be sure Kant de- rived the Scheme largely from the Logic which he lectured upon at the University, so that it may be deemed the logical skeleton upon which he hangs his thoughts. To get a clear notion of this Scheme, at least in outline, is the first step in a serious study of Kant. The fundamental division of the Critique of Pure Reason is into two parts : Transcend- ental Doctrine of Elements and Transcendental Doctrine of Method, both of which divisions are KAN T. CEITiq UE OF PURE REASON. 5 1 1 taken from the traditional Formal Logic used by Kant. But the second division is inclined to fall away ; it is by no means as important as the first, which occupies more than five times as many pages. All the great problems introduced by Kant into Philosophy are discussed in the first division. Kant is the most German, the most Gothic of all philosophers. The infinite division of the Schematism of this Critique is like the Gothic Cathedral ; its divisions often seem to lose them- selves in infinite details, yet with a certain sym- metrical proportion, even if sometimes a part breaks loose and reveals its capricious independ- ence. This Schematism is an integral part of the study of Kant ; it belongs to German Black- Letter Teutonic, not to the clean-cut English Latinized Teutonic, such as we see in Locke and Hume. Such a Scheme seems to belong to the German Spirit. In the tabular statement we have by no means given all the manifold divisions and sub-divisions of the Kantian edifice. We have omitted a good deal, and have abbreviated other minor parts. Still the reader can see at a glance how minutely organized the Scheme is, and can feel the Gothi- cism of its structure, which is an element not to be left out of its consideration. 512 MODERN E UROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. A TRANSCENDENTAL DOCTRINE OF ELEMENTS, FIRST PART. Transcendental Aesthetic, I. Space. II. Time. SECOND PART. Transcendental Logic. FIRST DIVISION. Transcendental Analytic. First Book Analytic of ConceptSc I. Clue to discovery of Concepts. 1. Logical use of Understanding. 2. Logical Function of Understanding. 3. Categories. II. Deduction of Pure Concepts, 1. Principles. 2. Transcendental Deduction. Second Book Analytic of PrinciplGSc I. Schematism of Concepts, II. System of all principles of the Understanding, 1. Highest principle of analytic judgments. 2. Highest principle of synthetic judgments. 3. Systematic representation, etc. (1) Axioms of Intuition, (2) Anticipations of Perception. (3) Analogies of Experience. A. Principle of Persistence of substance, B. Time-Succession according to Law of Causality. C. Principle of Co-existence, etc. (4) Postulates of empirical thought. III. Ground for distinguishing Phenomena and Noumena. KANT. CRITIQ UE OF PURE E EASON. 5 1 3 SECOND DIVISION Transcendental Dialectic. First Book Of the Ideas of Pure Reason. I, Of Ideas in general. II. Of transcendental Ideas. III. System of transcendental Ideas. Second Book Dialectical Conclusions of Pure Reason. I, Paralogisms of Pure Reason. II. Antinomies of Pure Reason. 1. System of cosmological Ideas. 2. Conflict of Pure Reason. (1) First Antinomies. (2) Second Antinomies. (3) Third Antinomies. (4) Fourth Antinomies. 3. Interest of Reason in the Conflict. Ten other divisions. III. The Ideal of Pure Reason. 1. Of the Ideal in general. 2. Of the Transcendental Ideal. 3. Of Arguments for proving God. 4. Impossibility of Ontological Proof. 5. Impossibility of Cosmological Proof. 6- Impossibility of Physico-Theological proof. 7. Critique of all Theology. B. TRANSCENDENTAL DOCTRINE OF METHOD. Four main divisions with numerous sub-diyisions. 33 514 MODEEN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. The first reflection to be made upon the preced- ing Scheme is its fundamental classification by twos. Its main divisions run into dyads, and show most strikingly in an external form the dualistic character of Kant's philosophizing. Even if he obtained most of these divisions from an outside source, he certainly adopted them and increased them. The bare inspection of the foregoing table gives us a glimpse into the inner- most workings of Kant's mind, and reveals its inherently separative character. Still we may observe reactions in which the total Ego of the philosopher asserts itself more or less instinct- ively, and not simply its separative stage. For in spite of and underneath all these dyads runs quite unconsciously a threefold division which is fundamental, and which is the real process of the book. This is the division into Aesthetic, Analytic, and Dialectic. Whoever deals with the book in its essential movement has in mind these three elements of it, either singly or in a process together. Every citation or discussion going to the heart of the theme will be found to involve one or all of these three divisions. An exami- nation will show that Kant himself, when in the full and free swing of his spirit, throws overboard his formal dyadal distinctions, and becomes un- consciously triadal in the procedure of his Critique of Pure Reason. In like manner his best critics, striking home to the basic thought KANT. CEITIQUE OF PUEE REASON* 515 of the work, circle about the Aesthetic, the Ana- lytic, and the Dialectic in their exposition of the Kantian doctrine. This fact the reader should know at the start, as it may save him from much wandering and possibly from losing himself in the mazes of Kant's complicated Scheme, which of itself is so deeply separative. It may be here observed that Kant became aware, or at least more fully aware of this deeply separative tendency in himself and sought to correct it in some of his later writ- ings. To our mind his third Critique, that of Judgment, is such a correction. For the primal inner movement of Kant's thought is seen in his two Critiques, of Pure Reason and of Practical Reason, or of Intellect and Will, which divide the Ego into two wholly antithetic activities, and which move in just opposite directions. It was a later idea that there must be a mediating third placed with or between these two, that the mind, to be complete, must also have Feeling as well as Intellect and Will. Still Kant re mains essentially a judge, not an arbitrator (as he is sometimes called) or mediator. Another thought arises in the present con- nection: the preceding Scheme is not organic, does not grow out of the subject-matter, but is largely though not wholly foisted upon it from the outside, through metaphysical categories taken from Formal Logic. This fact can be historically 516 MODEEN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. verified by an inspection of Kant's Logic, edited by one of his pupils (Jasche) from notes to a book on Logic, during the author's lifetime. Here we find it that Logic is *' a science of reason, not according to matter but according to form; " that is, the content of Reason must be subjected to the logical form. Moreover Logic is " a science, a-priori, of the necessary laws of thought," and shows "the right use of the Reason and of the Understanding . ' ' Still further it is " divided into Analytic and Dialectic," of which the former " reveals through separation all the activities of Reason," while the latter "is the Logic of Appearance which springs from a misuse of the Analytic" by producing "a merely false show of true knowledge." Other leading categories and divisions found in the Critique of Pure Reason we come upon in this book on Logic. It furnishes essentially the Scheme of the Critique apart from its content . Thus we mark a decided separation between Form and Matter, the first being superposed upon the second. This fact has been recognized and often re- gretted by commentators on Kant. Still we. cannot help thinking that it belongs naturally to the man's work, that it is a phase of the Kantian dualism. Indeed these abstract cate- gories dominating the free activity of the Ego make the procedure in all Philosophy. So the KANT. CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON. 517 foregoing logical forms rule more or less ex- ternally all three of Kant's Critiques, which in themselves have a psychical origin. We may, therefore, say that Kant's Schema- tism is not altogether happy, is not perfect. The result is that some writers cry out against any Scheme whatever. This is a mistake in just the opposite direction. The Scheme may be in- adequate, let it be improved, but not thrown away. It is subject to evolution, like everything else. In fact it cannot be dispensed with, especially in any systematic thin'king. It may be imperfect, still thera is a movement toward the perfect Scheme, as there is toward the per- fect man or toward the highest good, and toward the supreme thought. The Kantian Scheme has its own sins, but also its own merits; its chief merit is that it orders, even if externally and autocratically, a great complex, refractory book, whose recalcitrant materials have a tendency, if left to themselves, to pitch into chaos. More- over every philosophic Scheme is absolutistic and Kant is a philosopher in a very decided sense, having as his deepest principle the categorical imperative, which makes him in his sphere an imperator. So his logical Scheme projected by himself into a dominating order is imperious and imperial (kaiserlich) and so national, he being the philosophus leutonicus of his time as truly as was old Jacob Boehnie. 518 MODERN EUBOPE AN PHILOSOPHY. So Kant, in his hostility to the transmitted Phi- losophy, throws overboard its Norm, and makes one of its own, which is the preceding Scheme. Something similar we have already seen in the other philosophers of the Eighteenth Century; each asserts his philosophic freedom by making his own Norm, which thus becomes an individual Scheme, and is no longer the universal Norm of Philosophy. Herein too we see Thought turning against itself and assailing its own transmitted order, in the true revolutionary spirit. It is, therefore, a significant fact that Kant dethrones the Norm and sets up the : Scheme as the govern- ing principle of his all thinking. We must, however, not fail to appreciate the positive, and not merely the negative, signifi- cance of such an act in the greatest philosopher of the Century. The old Norm with its corre- sponding Discipline is indeed coming to an end, its own followers (the philosophers) are destroy- ing it. The new Norm with its corresponding new Discipline (Psychology) is in the process of being born, and is the real cause of all these painful throes convulsing the ancient formulas of venerable Philosophy. This psychological infant, as yet unborn but lustily struggling to come to light, is the secret demonic energy, which is all unconsciously driving Kant forward to his supremely negative deed, undoing Philoso- KANT. TRANSCENDENTAL AESTHETIC. 519 phy with its Norm, but with the same blow undoing himself, for he is still the philosopher. Our exposition will, therefore, have to abandon the Kantian Scheme and proceed on the lines which time has shown to underlie its movement. As already indicated, the three fundamental and internally connected divisions of the Critique of Pure Reason are: (I.) The Transcendental Aesthetic, (II.) The Transcendental Analytic, (III.) The Transcendental Dialectic. These three themes we shall discuss in order, not neg- lecting to cast often a glance back at the Scheme of which Kant deemed them integral portions. I. TRANSCENDENTAL AESTHETIC. It is called Aesthetic , because it pertains to knowledge through the senses. It is transcendental, be- cause it pertains to principles given a-priori (not through the Senses but from the Ego directly). These are the non-empirical (transcendental) principles of empiricism (sensism). Hence Kant's definition: " I call Transcendental Aes- thetic a science of all a-priori principles of sen- sism ( Sinnlichkeil) ." Or we may call it a science of the ideal elements of reality, that is a science of the supersensible Forms through which we know the sensible world. Thus the old Platonic dualism of two worlds emerges again, though in a new shape and with a new problem, (mundus intelligibilis et sensibilis). 520 MODERN E UEOPEAN PHILOSOPHY. The question is, How can I, with the one world in me, know the other world outside of me? It is evident that the first thing to be looked into is the nature of that " world outside of me," in general the object ( Gegenstand). Ac- cordingly this is what Kant grapples with at the start, in his very first sentence pertaining to the present topic. When we are impressed or affected by the object, this affection of our Ego (Gemiith) is called a Sensation. On the other hand the object as affected or changed by our Ego in sensation is an Appearance or Phe- nomenon (JZrscheinung). Here again we have two opposing but interrelated terms, which will often be used in the course of the discussion. At once there begins to spin around this phenomenon a number of new difficulties, which can only be allayed by new divisions and defi- nitions. Is the object as phenomenon a mere appearance without objective validity? Again and again this question comes up to bother Kant and his reader; the latter it has not ceased to bother to this day . At present it need only be said that Kant does not deny reality to his phenomenon, yet he is not able to assure this reality; he affirms it indeed, but cannot confirm his affirmation. Still further, at this point begins another and even more virulent dualism : the phe- nomenon splits wide open, and becomes KANT. TRANSCENDENTAL AESTHETIC. 521 twofold; on the one side as related to the Ego, it is the phenomenal thing; on the other side as beyond the Ego, it is the Thing-in-itself, which cannot be known or even sensed. This is the most galling contradic- tion probably in the whole Critique, causing the reader to hesitate and halt and hobble over the rough pathway, with mind bouncing from this side to that in a state of never ending dubitation. For it is just this unknown Thing-in-itself which sets the machinery to moving, first stimulating the Ego to sensation and then to the construc- tion of the entire vast superstructure of Pure Reason, the whole being erected ostensibly in order to know this unknown Thing-in-itself. And the outcome is seemingly a drawn battle, if not defeat. Still very wonderful results are dropped by the way in the course of this re- sultless expedition. Coming back from these more remote outlooks pertaining to the Phenomenon, we may next glance at another distinction concerning it which is of imuieidate use. Says Kant: "In the Phenomenon I call that which corresponds to sen- sation the Matter thereof, while that which renders the multiplicity of the Phenomenon capable of being ordered I call the Form." Hence comes the important distinction that the Matter of the Phenomenon in sensation "is given a posteriori ," that is empirically, while 522 MODERN' EUROPEAN- PHILOSOPHY. "the Form of the Phenomenon in sensation must lie ready in the Ego (Gemiith) a-priori." Thus in the Phenomenon or sensed object the Ego determines the Form out of itself, but is determined by the Matter out of the object. This is the source of the a-priori or ideal Forms of sensation or sense-perception which soon come into play. Such is the general purport of the introduction to the Transcendental Aesthetic which deals spe- cially with these a-priori Forms of the Phenomenon in sensation. These he calls for the most part Pure Forms of Intuition (Anschauung) or Sense- perception, and declares that there are two and only two, Space and Time. He gives an exposi- tion of both according to the Scheme on a pre- vious page, which we shall here follow. 1. /Space. This is the first theme of the Transcendental Aesthetic and the first fact of the sensible world. Says Kant: " By means of the external sense (a property of our Ego, Gemiith) we bring before ourselves objects which are outside of us, these being all in Space and having a certain form, size and relation to one another." Such is the first appeal to experience in which we notice that an external (or spatial) sense is assumed by the author, which has its counterpart in the internal sense, whereby we represent to ourselves Time. Thus the Ego is endowed for its present work with KANT. TRANSCENDENTAL AESTHETIC. 523 two senses, a Space-sense (external) and a Time- sense (internal) each of which has a central part to perform, though Kant introduces them simply by the way. Externally we cannot perceive Space as such, yet we perceive things in Space. Hence rise the questions, What is it and how do we get it? Is it an actual object out yonder in the world, or is it some relation between objects? Kant's answer is, Space is not an object, not a percept, but a Form of perceiving existent in the mind, hence a Form ideal, a-priori, coming from the Ego and imposed upon the object. I cannot sense the object except by means of the inner Space-Form of my Ego, which co-operates with my external sensation in making the object ap- pear to me, thus producing the Phenomenon already mentioned. To show the existence of this Space-Form of Sense-perception Kant gives two kinds of exposition which he calls metaphys- ical and transcendental. (a) The exposition is metaphysical when it deals with those points which show the concept of Space as given a-priori. (1) When I refer my sensation to an object outside of me, and in a different place from that in which I am, I must have the Idea of Space beforehand, in order to perceive and bring together these two separate places. (2) It is impossible for me to conceive Space not to be, though I can conceive spatial 524 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. objects not to be, that is, a pure or empty space. Hence the Idea of Space does not spring from or depend upon sensible objects, but these depend upon it. (3) Space is a pure Sense-perception (or Intuition) given as a-priori, one and homo- geneous, conceived as infinite in magnitude, since no spatial limit is valid against Space itself. (6) Kant calls his exposition transcendental when from this science (or cognition) of Space as a subjective Form of Sense-perception, uni- versal and necessary, are derived other sciences (or cognitions) of Space universal and neces- sary, that is, not empirical. Herein an ex- ample is Geometry as the Science of the Pure Forms of Space, derived a-priori, pro- jected by the Ego out of itself, and made by it into a Science which controls the entire material realm. T hus the Ego by means of its pure Ideas of Sense-perception pre-constructs a Form-world which determines the Sense-world, and is not determined by it, or empirically. This a-priori Form-world determining all matter is Mathemat- ics, and can only originate in a subject (or Ego) possessing in its own right the pure Form of ex- ternal Sensation which is stimulated to activity by the object. With this thought of Mathematics rises an- other and much more comprehensive thought: If there is one limited science in which the ideal Forms of Space show themselves valid in the KANT. TRANSCENDENTAL AESTHETIC. 525 realm of reality, may there not be a far wider science in which other or all transcendental Ideas can be shown as having objective validity? In other words, is a Transcendental Metaphysics possible? In fact this Critique of Pure Reason is the pro- paedeutic or preliminary investigation for such a science, which would embrace all necessary and universal truths. Though Kant busied himself a great deal about such a work, he never wrote it, indeed could not write from his subjective point of view. II. Time. Corresponding to the external sense, by means of which we get Space, is the internal Sense *' by means of which the Ego ( Gemuth) beholds itself or its inner condition, but which gives no perception of the soul itself as an object. Still it is a determinate Form under which the perception of the inner condi- tion of the soul is alone possible so that every- thing which belongs to our inner activities, is represented in the relations of Time." Time is not, therefore, a sensed object, is not something which can be seen, being in this respect like Space. Thus Kant endows the Ego with a Time-sense which is its power of self-beholding or self -consciousness, whereby we get the idea of succession pure and simple, or Time. Of this there are also two kinds of exposition, meta- physical and transcendental. (a) The metaphysical exposition of Time sets 526 MODERN E UEOPEAN PHIL O SOPHY. forth the arguments for the a-priori character of Time: (1) You cannot represent things exist- ing at the same time (cotemporaneously) or at different times (successively), without the pre- existent idea of time, which is not, accordingly, an empirical concept derived from temporal experiences. (2) You cannot obliterate Time itself, though you can obliterate (mentally) things and events in Time. This shows it to be a necessary Form of the Ego in all perception, a universal condition of the possibility of Phe- nomena. (3) Upon this necessity are founded the axioms of Time as universal and necessary, for example that different times must be succes- sive. (4) Time is no general concept (of the Understanding), but a pure Form of Sense-per- ception. (5) The infinity of Time means that Time is at once beyond any limit put upon it. Thus there is the one Time, the condition under- lying all times. (b) The transcendental exposition of Time ought to show the science or sciences which spring from the a-priori conception of Time. But here Kant gives no exposition at all, he can only refer us back to a part of the metaphysical exposition, with a vague allusion to the concepts of change and motion, " which are possible only through the idea of Time." There is no doubt that Kant's Scheme at this point shows a big hole. Possibly, we might expect the science of Number KANT. TRANSCENDENTAL AESTHETIC. 527 (Arithmetic) as correlative to the science of Form (Geometry) to be given in this connection, but it does not appear. So much for the Transcendental Aesthetic, which is one of the most prominent and original portions of the Kantian Philosophy. The doctrine that Space and Time are not objective, but are pure Forms of the percipient Ego, was a very striking and novel view, which soon took hold of the age already predisposed to subjectivity. As this portion occurs early in the Critique, being really its first note, the reader became curious to explore further in the difficult book whose good fortune was to give forth its most peculiar and stunning idea at the start . To be sure it main- tained its originality in other portions which fol- lowed, though this first portion has continued to be the favorite with many readers. We must, however, understand that Kant does not deny the empirical reality of Time as belong- ing to the object. In our experience which is sensuous, there can be no object which is not in Time. In regard to the Phenomenon Time has objective validity but not in itself, as absolute, as abstracted from the Phenomenon. The object in Time is, therefore, very different from Time itself, which belongs to the Ego perceiving the object, which has, accordingly, no sensuous reality, but in Kant's phrase, possesses transcen- dental ideality. Through its own Forms of Sen- 528 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. sation, Space and Time, the Ego can sense its own other, its opposite, which is the material object. Observations on the Transcendental Aesthetic. An inspection of Kant's discussion shows that his appeal is almost entirely to the Ego and its processes. It is really the fundamental pre- supposition or postulate to which every deduc- tion goes back ultimately. If we look closely at the so-called metaphysical exposition of Space and Time, we shall find it to be essentially intro- spective, while the transcendental exposition seeks to derive mathematical science through such introspection. In general, the terms are not happy, for is not transcendental also meta- physical? According to Kant himself this whole book of transcendental principles is only a part of a total science of Metaphysics. \\ 7 e should call both these discussions psychological, as being really spun out of the process of the Ego. Another pre-supposition which Kant intro- duces from the outside is the two senses, exter- nal and internal, or the Space-sense and the Time-sense. These are not a mentioned portion of Kant's Scheme, still they have a very impor- tant part in his discussion, so important that they ought to take an organic place in the expo- sition. They are special activities of the Ego, which we have already seen to be the center from which everything rays out. Kant intro- KANT. TRANSCENDENTAL AESTHE TIC. 529 duces it somewhat covertly by calling it "we," "the mind," etc.; especially the word Gemuth whose counterpart is hard to find in English, he uses for Ego, as we have tried to bring out in several preceding passages. So we have in this Transcendental Aesthetic to dig out and hold up the Ego as the implicit source of two explicit senses, the external and internal. Herewith we begin to find a new process or rather series of processes underlying Kant's pro- cedure. His Scheme is openly dyadal, but it is not complete till it is supplemented by another phase (which he gives indirectly), whereby it be- comes triadal. Thus, however, the Scheme is psychological, following the movement of the Ego. It is true that Kant would consciously reject such a Scheme, as he holds that the Ego in itself or as object cannot be known, being like the Thing-in-itself . Still he unconsciously im- plies its process all the while ; indeed the internal sense, by which the idea of Time is obtained, is that activity " through which the Ego ( Gemiith) or mind views itself or its inner States," that is, possesses self -consciousness. Still, after making this declaration, he begins to suspect its conse- quences, and makes haste to add, that this in- ternal sense "can give no view of the soul (Ego) as object," as if the soul or Ego were not by its very nature self-viewing, self-conscious. Herein Kant shows himself still the philosopher, 530 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. unable to conceive the soul as pure self -activity without a metaphysical substrate. Yet what can be plainer than that the Ego called Kant is look- ing at itself and determining itself through itself without any such substrate? In the Ego as in- ternal unknown Thing-in-itself the contradiction is far louder and more insistent than in the object as external unknown Thing-in-itself, since the Ego in the former case has to see itself and to tell about itself, and still remain unknown to itself in all this knowing of itself. It is not our purpose to elaborate these pre- suppositions and implications of Kant's treat- ment ; still we shall briefly note the three pro- cesses, which seem to underlie it, and which now and then rise to the surface of it in fragmentary statements . 1. The immediate process, which shows the elements implied in order to make a start: (a) the Ego as sensory or potential sensation, the possibility of it as special sensation; (6) the extevnal object as opposite of the Ego, as Thing- in-itself; (c) the Percept or the Phenomenon, which appears to the Ego, being generated by the external object stimulating the Ego to activity, which is sensation. 2. The separative process, which shows the Ego externalizing itself and becoming spatial : (a) the external sensation as the Ego's activity determined by the object ; (6) The object appears KANT. - TRANSCENDENTAL AESTHETIC. 531 to the Ego as extended or in extension (Space), hence as real, empirical, a-posteriori ; (c) This extension is separated from the sensed object, and regarded alone by itself, as it is in itself, hence is ideal, subjective, a-priori. Thus it is pure Space, not something in Space, but the Ego's pre-existing Form of external sensation, by which it sensed the object. 3. The self-returning process which shows the Ego internalizing itself and thus becoming in itself successive or temporal: (a) the internal sensation as the Ego's activity determined by the object to determine itself or "to see itself and its states ;" (&) The object appears to the Ego as in succession or in a line of changing con- ditions (in Time) which are real, empirical, a-posteriori; (c) This succession is separated from the sensed object, and regarded alone by itself, as it is in itself, hence is ideal, subjective, a-priori. This is pure Time, not something in Time, but the Ego's pre-existent Form of in- ternal sensation by which it sensed the object changing or in motion. Such is the threefold (or indeed thrice three- fold) psychical process which we find in Kant's discussion of Space and Time, if we bring to light and order all its pre-suppositions. But in Kant's view Space and Time are two primordial general senses found a-priori in the mind, and mediating the external world with the 532 MODEEN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY, particular senses. The Ego has to look through its own Space and Time before it can see any spatial or temporal object. Still there remains the mysterious object starting this movement, or the cause of it all, which cause Kant takes for granted as a power or property of the unknown- able object. Thus in spite of all denials causa- tion is at work from the beginning, is indeed just the beginning which renders any sensation of the object possible. The mediational power of Space and Time, which was Kant's main object, does not mediate therefore, does not bridge the chasm between the external world and Ego, which Hume's skepticism rent in twain and declared to be impassible. Locke held that the knowledge of the object by the Ego was immediate; but Hume easily showed this to be impossible, wliich fact drives Kant to make such knowledge mediated, primarily through Space and Time. These three points of view, connected together as stages of one process, con- stitute the main philosophical movement of the Eighteenth Century. By making Space and Time subjective, Kant rescues the a-priori nature of pure Mathematics, which, therefore are not derived from experience. But these mathematical forms control the natural world; so the old question conies up, though in inverse order. For we now must ask : How can these pure forms of subjective knowledge reach KANT. TRANSCENDENTAL ANAL YTIC. 533 the object in order to determine it? The only answer which Kant is able to give is : they do so, try it and see. Here we can observe why Kant deems the ultimate fact of his Ego to be will, pure, absolute will, which solves the difficulties which knowledge or intellect throws across our path. But Kant is not yet done with his criti- cism of intellect, and so we pass to the next grand division of his Critique. II. TRANSCENDENTAL ANALYTIC. If we look at Kant's Scheme we observe that the Transcen- dental Analytic is the first division of the Tran- scendental Logic. But it conduces to clearness of exposition, and we follow Kant's inner movement of thought better, if we regard the present division as on a line with the preceding Transcendental Aesthetic, and the succeeding Transcendental Dialectic. Thus it is properly the second stage of the grand transcendental process Aesthetic, Analytic, and Dialectic which is the very soul of this whole work, The Critique of Pure Reason. Note again that these three divisions or stages o o belong together in one process even in Kant's underlying conception though he in our judgment forces them asunder into artificial and alien parts* of his Scheme. Also a new activity of the Mind is now intro- duced and specially emphasized, the Understand- ing ( Verstand) with its Concepts on the one hand and its Categories on the other. This is 534 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY, ', Y the second great faculty employed by Kant, on a line with Sense-perception (Anschauung) below and with Reason ( Vernunft) above. The Under- standing through its Concepts elaborates the Per- cepts of Sense-perception into the Categories, the great implements of Intelligence. The act of categorizing the world in order that it may be known is the work of the Understanding. The chief object then of the Transcendental Analytic is to categorize the world in order that man may know it in so far as it can be known. For this purpose there must be the existent categories (1) which Kant will put into a table or ordered Scheme; (2) the object or phenom- enon must be given as that which is to be duly cate- gorized and so known; (3) the mediating princi- ple must be found between these two sides the categories of the Understanding and the sensuous object which principle with Kant is Time. I. The Table of Categories. From the be- ginning Philosophy has expressed itself in ab- stract Categories, that is, words or terms which utter in speech its principle. To this fact Aris- totle specially called attention, and gave a list of the fundamental Categories of his Logic. But if we look into his Metaphysics we find that it can be reduced to a discussion of philosophical Cate- gories, of which also he gives a list, some -thirty in number (Met. Book IV.). The Categories may be deemed the counters which human Intel- KANT. TRANSCENDENTAL ANAL YTIC. 5 35 ligence makes for imparting, exchanging, and transmitting Thought. They are the circulating medium of Mind between man and man, and also from age to age. We still use some of Plato's and Aristotle's mental coinage in the form of Categories. Now this fact attracted the attention of Kant as a philosopher. He proposed to give a new list of the basic Categories which man employs in his thinking. Moreover this list must be an ordered list after the fashion of a scheme or table. (1) The starting-point is the act of judgment, that is, of subsuming a subject under a predi- cate. Says Kant: " The Understanding can in general be represented as the faculty of judg- ing.'* The next question: What are the funda- mental judgments? Kant finds (finden wir) twelve; four " titles " have each " three move- ments;" that is, the four subjects, Quantity, Quality, Relation, Modality, have each three predicates, making the twelve fundamental judg- ments. These are what Kant finds ready-made for him in Formal Logic. ( 2) The next step is to transform these twelve Predicates into twelve Categories three under each of the four titles. It is essentially the same act of mind which we saw in judgment. '* The same function which unifies in one judg- ment its different constituents also unifies in one percept its different constituents," and thus 536 MODERN E UEOPEAN PHIL SOPHY. forms the Categories. " This unity of the manifold in Sense-perception introduces a tran- scendental content" which comes from the Understanding and which is applied to objects. The explicit act of subsumption in a judg- ment, is implicit in a Category, subsuming in one word the various elements of a Sense- perception. Thus we come to know the object, in so far as it can be known. The stamp of unity upon the multiplicity of sensations is derived from the Understanding, and is tran- scendental, in Kantian phrase. (3) The final step is to give the number and order of the Categories. By the same necessity which produces just twelve judgments (taken for granted by Kant from Formal Logic), there must be just twelve Categories under the four given titles: Quantity, Quality, Relation, Mo- dality. Accordingly we can construct a table of the pure or basic Categories, " which are all that the Understanding contains in itself a-priori, and through which it is the pure Understanding." I. Quantity. (1) Unity (oneness.) (2) Multiplicity (manyness). (3) Totality(allness). II. Quality. (1) Eeality. (2) Negation. (3) Limitation. KANT. TRANSCENDENTAL ANAL YT1C. 537 III. Relation. (1) Inherence and Substance. (2) Cause and Effect (Dependence). (3) Reciprocal Action. IV. Modality. (1) Possibility and Impossibility. (2) Being and Non-being. (3) Necessity and Chance. Such is Kant's attempt to set forth and to order the fundamental Categories of all know- ing, for " only through them can the Under- standing understand think an object given in Sense-perception." Of course this table has been exposed to much criticism. Some think that the Categories are too many, some too few. Very naturally their derivation from Formal Logic is objected to as being no proper derivation. But for the present we shall pass by their further discussion, remarking that by Kant it seems to have been regarded as a kind of universal frame- work for organizing his thoughts. 2. The Object in Sense-perception. This is in general the material which the Understanding through its Categories is to appropriate, that is, to know. Already we have had to deal with this object as phenomenon in Transcendental Aesthetic. There we found that the Ego cannot even sense the thing as it is in itself, but imposes upon it a-priori forms of its own (Space and Time) . Thus the Object in Sense-perception 538 MODEEN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. has been already transformed by the Ego, in order to be Phenomenon, in order to exist at all for us. Such is the mental condition which the Understanding finds already prepared as its material : the mind is full of Phenomena, single percepts, in a state of separation. On the other hand we have seen the Understanding fitted out with its ordered store of Categories. But behind both these extremes, the Phenomena and the -Categories, lies the unifying principle common to both, the Ego as self-consciousness. Accom- panying Sense-perception on one side, and the Understanding on the other side is the principle which binds together both sides, which Kant calls the original unity of Apperception, 11 because it is the self -consciousness which calls forth the mental act / think, and which accom- panies all mental acts, but is itself accompanied by none." Hence it is transcendental, remaining always one and the same in the diversity of the mind's activity. Such is " the transcendental unity of self -consciousness," nothing less than the Ego with its ever-present self-returning and hence unifying power in all its infinitely varied functions. As here the philosopher begins to touch bottom, in fact to reach beyond himself, it is worth while to see the process in the fore- going discursive statements. (1) First we are to grasp the store of mani- fold Phenomena, or Percepts, which have come KAN T. TRANSCENDENTAL ANAL YTIC. 539 into the Ego as depository by way of Sense- perception. Here they are not ordered, as they have no ordering principle according to Kant. (2) Next we are to grasp the store of mani- fold Categories, which stand over against the Phenomena in which fact we see the stage of separation in this sphere, the Phenomena versus the Categories, or Sense-perception versus the Understanding. The Categories, however, are ordered, even if externally, by Kant, and at the same time they are to be the orderers of the dis- ordered Phenomena. (3) Lastly comes the unitary principle lying back of and connecting both sides, the self -con- sciousness of the Self itself, always one and the same, accompanying every mental activity, but accompanied by none but itself. It is both the attendant and the unifying power of Sense-per- ception and of the Understanding. This self-con- sciousness Kant deems the original (ursprung- lich) unity, or that which properly makes or cre- ates unification of the separative activities of the mind. An act of pure Spontaneity of the Ego he declares it, or pure Apperception in contrast to sensuous Perception, hence transcendental and not empirical. This thought as well as the term Apperception Kant takes from Leibniz. One thinks that our philosopher has reached his truly genetic principle, creative of all unity amid the multiplicity of human faculties. But 540 MODEBN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. now follows a most astonishing fact : Kant, having formulated the self -active Ego in its purity (actus purus) as the generative unit out of which unfold all the diverse special activities, of which Sense-perception and Understanding are but two, drops suddenly his principle which is profoundly psychological, and picks up another which is essentially metaphysical, taking it from his Scheme of Transcendental Aesthetic. This principle we must briefly note. 3. Time as the unifying principle. That is, the synthesis of Phenomena and Categories is brought about chiefly through the idea of Time, though Kant not infrequently adds that of Space. Still it is the inner sense (that of Time) which naturally controls this inner movement. . Time is connected with Sense-perception and so with the sensuous object on the one side, yet it is also a pure a-priori form on the other. Thus Kant deems it the supreme mediating element between the opposites, the Phenomenon and the Cate- gory, in both of which it to a degree participates. In this way too the Transcendental Aesthetic is interlinked with the Transcendental Analytic; the inner separation of the latter is mediated by the former into unity. Kant felt the externality of this solution. To make Time bridge over the chasm from Object to the Category, as it were from the outside, is an explanation which sorely needs an explana- KANT. TRANSCENDENTAL ANAL YTIC. 541 tion. The question rises : By what means does Time perform this act of synthesis? Through its capacity of being an image of every thing sensed. Says Kant: ' The pure image of all objects of the senses is Time." Thus Time is the a-priori image, the counterpart to all images of sense or a-posteriori ; indeed Time is now made by Kant a pure form of Representation (or Imagination), as it was a pure Form of Intuition (or Sense-percep- tion) in the Transcendental Aesthetic. The re- sult, however, is that there are two kinds of im- ages, and the dualism is still present. The one he calls a scheme (form), the other is the true image, being a picture of some individual object. Both are products of the Imagination, yet even this faculty he dualizes into the empirical Imagi- nation producing images, and the pure transcen- dental Imagination producing the scheme, which is very near to the Categories. It is useless to pursue Kant further through his vain and intricate struggles to unite Object and Category, which he can never effect by the means which he employs. The gap remains between scheme and image as between Category and Object. And the reason is evident. The free process of the Ego he subjects to his metaphysical forms, which, being alien, are soon shivered to pieces by the secret energy they seek to subordinate. Still Kant, seeing his structure falling asunder, strives to patch it up and splice 542 MODERN E UEOPEAN PHILOSOPHY. it together by some new contrivance which never fails to show the same old trouble. To our mind he reveals the struggle between the vanish- ing metaphysical and the rising psychological principles, the former of which he in part at least would save. For we must note that throughout his whole exposition the psychological element is present, and is employed, though not in its own right, but to help the philosopher out of his metaphys- ical difficulties. Note how he introduces the Imagination in this last exposition, in order to assist Time in mediating the difference between Object and Category. Thus a power or activity of the Ego is made to serve the metaphysical idea of Time, instead of being allowed to do its work in its freedom. Kant even calls its func- tion the transcendental synthesis of the Imagina- tion , but he still employs it as a means and the word transcendental is a badge of its servitude. Nevertheless we should carefully observe what he has done psychologically, since herein lies the meaning of his work for the future. Between Sense-perception and Understanding, which before stood apart, he has interjected the mediating activity of the Imagination (Representation). Quite unintentionally is the thing done, but really he has designated the three stages of Intel- lect, and has furthermore implied (though not expressly stated) that these three stages form a KANT. TEANSCENDENTAL ANAL TTIC. 543 process together which makes a unity. And he does not fail to hint that behind them all and containing them all is the Ego, or the primordial unity of Apperception, as he calls it. Thus we find lurking in this whole Kantian development of the Transcendental Analytic the psycho- logical process of Intellect Sense-perception, Imagination (Representation), and Understand- ing ( Thought as abstract) . This underlying psy- chological element the philosopher evokes for the support of his metaphysical superstructure which, however, is secretly undermined and destroyed by it, since it is the new principle evolving itself out of its old metaphysical shell. Another significant fact should be mentioned in this connection. In the first edition of this Critique, Kant elaborates fully these three stages of Intellect which he directly names ' the threefold synthesis which necessarily takes place in every act of knowing." While he calls the whole a synthesis, yet he also names each of the three stages a synthesis, as follows; "(1) the synthesis of Apprehension in Sense-perception ; (2) the synthesis of Reproduction in Imagi- nation; (3) the synthesis of Recognition in Thought (Begriff) ' It is well to observe specially that in the third stage the principle of Recognition is declared to be that of Thought. Morever this whole synthesis is carried back 544 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. to " the unity of consciousness" or to "the function of the Ego " expressly. Now comes the surprising fact that Kant threw out of his second edition of the present Critique (1787) this entire psychological development as it had been presented in the first edition (1781). What was his true motive in' doing so? This has been a question with all the commentators, who * have answered it variously. Kant himself im- plies in his Preface that he cut .the passage out in order " to prevent his book from getting too voluminous," which is of course a mere pretext, since the passage is not very long and since he does not show the same anxiety to abridge irrele- vant portions elsewhere in his work. Our own opinion is that Kant begins to feel, if not to see, that just "this synthesis of the Ego" meant a complete reconstruction of his whole system. The play of discussion for six years upon his book as well as his own inner re- flections had revealed to him where lay the germinal principle which was destined to out- grow and even to swallow up his painfully elab- orated structure. Kant was not ready, internally no$ externally, to abandon his philosophic house and to build a new one at his time of life. He was going to live in it to the end, eliminating only those parts which opened a vista to its evanish- ment in an entirely new edifice. Who can have the heart to blame the old man? KANT. TRANSCENDENTAL ANAL YTIC. 545 Soon Fichte began the work of the inner metamorphosis of the Kantian Philosophy by bringing out and putting to the front just that Ego which Kant had tried so hard to limit, if not to suppress. Fichte obliterated at a blow the Thing-in-itself which cannot be known, yet is the starting-point according to Kant. Really this is the Ego, which alone is, declares Fichte, and thus wipes out the Kantian dualism be- tween subject and object, by turning the latter back into the former as its true source and reality. But of course Fichte will not be the end of this movement. So Kant issues forth from his Transcendental Analytic with his ordered table of Categories, through which he is to subsume and thus unify all the multiplicity of the sensuous object as given in Sense-perception. It is a great and fecund thought whose mightiest progeny will be Hegel, whose Logic is a new discussion and ordering of the Categories as the fundamental problem of Philo- sophy. But Hegel goes back and reconstructs that Logic from which Kant adopted his Categor- ies ready-made, in this case accepting the trans- mitted system (that of Formal Logic) contrary to his revolutionary wont. Hegel is, therefore, the greatest pupil of the Transcendental Analytic, getting back of its pre-suppositions, and rebuild- ing the whole edifice after an entirely new prin- ciple. To this he is seemingly driven by the 35 546 MODEEN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. limits which Kant puts upon the present sphere. For Kant will next proceed to circumscribe a field of knowledge to which the preceding Categories do not apply. That is, there is a domain of knowledge or intellect which the Categories can- not categorize. Now we are to see what this is. III. TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC. This is gi ven in the Scheme as the second Divisionof Trans- cendental Logic, which is itself a subordinate part of a still higher Division of the entire Critique. This Kantian Gothicism we have felt compelled to throw aside, as already noted, and to drop back upon what we deem the simple innermost movement of the book, whereof the present is the third stage. As the Transcendental Aesthetic deals with the Phenomena of Sense-Perception, and the Transcendental Analytic with the Cate- gories of the Understanding, now the Transcen- dental Dialectic is to deal with the Ideas of Reason. Moreover if we may judge by the title of his book (Critique of Pure Reason), the author has now come to that portion which was the real purpose and aim of his whole work. What are these Ideas of Pure Reason? In general they are expressed by the Infinite, the Unconditioned, the Whole or Totality. The Understanding gives only the Finite, the Condi- tioned, the Particular; the result is the Mind or Ego drives it beyond itself with its limitation into some form of the Unlimited. Such a function KANT. TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC. 547 of the mind is called by Kant Eeason, which is thus the limit-transcending principle, and posits its forms named Ideas of Reason. It is hence the faculty of the supreme unity over against the faculty of separation which. is the Understanding. Or we may say that Reason is the faculty of the Infinite, while the Understanding is the faculty of the Finite. Reason calls up the Universe, the Understanding calls up a portion thereof, which of course is limited by another portion. Reason, then, must have its Categories likewise, which, however, mean the one thing, and are really but one Category. Hence these Ideas of Reason, even if differently applied, are at bottom one Idea, which is the Idea of the All, the Uni- verse. Still this Idea of the Universe unfolds itself into three fundamental forms God, World, and Man, with which Philosophy has occupied itself from the beginning. But now comes the trouble which calls forth the negative soul of Kant in its full intensity. The Ideas of Reason are simply regulative prin- ciples for the Categories of the Understanding, lying back of them and unifying them, but not subject to them, not regulated by them. Now, when the Understanding applies its Categories, conditioned, finite, derived from experience, to the Ideas of Reason, unconditioned, infinite, the Totality (properly just one Idea and that is the All), there rises the deepest contradiction of 548 MODEEN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. Philosophy. Two wholly opposite predicates are affirmed of every form of these Ideas of Reason, and the Universe itself is split asunder with two completely diverse meanings, whose conflict produces the-Transcendenta] Dialectic. Kant's procedure will give in three separate discussions the three elements or stages Soul (Ego), World, God to each of which the Understanding will apply (or rather has applied in the old Metaphysics) its Categories, for the purpose of bringing these three subjects into the realm of scientific knowledge. But thus springs up the contradiction with Reason and its Ideas, which are always present in the mind with their Totality or Universe. Accordingly we shall now have the following order : A. The Ego (Soul) as the source of conflict between Reason and Understanding, giving rise to the Paralogisms of Pure Reason. B. The World as the source of conflict between Reason and Understanding, giving rise to the Antinomies of Pure Reason. C. God as the source of conflict between Reason and Understanding, giving rise to the conflicting Ideal of Pure Reason. On these lines we shall unfold this part, doubt- less the most important and influential of Kant's Philosophy. A. Ego Paralogisms of Pure Reason. In KANT. TEANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC. 549 the Kantian Scheme this is the first head under the Second Book of Transcendental Dialectic. The word Paralogism is applied by Kant to the contradictions of this sphere, which is that of the old Rational Psychology coming down through Wolff from Leibniz and the Seventeenth Century. It is the Psychology dominated by Metaphysics, and this domination is the central point of Kant's assault. The theme is now the Ego or Soul, as think- ing or self-conscious. " I (Ego) as thinking am an object of the inner Sense and am called Soul." That is, I cognize myself to be self- conscious. This is also expressed in the sen- tence I think, " which is the single text of Rational Psychology, out of which all its wisdom is to be developed." Moreover it is " the simple Apperception (self-conscious act) which makes all transcendental concepts possible," for I (my Ego) must think Substance, Cause, aud the rest. This Ego, then, by its very nature is the source of all the illusions of the Idea, being itself double. It has an object, but this object is only apparent, since it is itself or subject. The content of Rational Psychology or the Science of the Self is " what can be in- ferred, independent of all experience, from the concept Ego in so far as this manifests itself in thinking." The empirical element is to be strictly excluded; the Self is to look at itself 550 M ODEE N EUR OPE AN PHIL SOPHY. EN . % - purely and turn away from all content given from the outside, telling what it is accord- ing to its stock of categories. At this point the difficulty begins, since these categories apply to concepts of the Understanding, which are derived from experience. But now they are applied to what is beyond experience, to the pure Ego, which in Kantian phrase is transcen- dent. Or, the knowledge of the Conditioned is transferred to the Unconditioned, and thus pro- duces a mere show of knowledge which state of things was the untruth inherent in the old Metaphysics, according to Kant. When Ego as subject applies to itself categories which belong to it as object in experience, it commits the Kantian Paralogism. The mistake of Rational Psychology was to take subject for object and to name it thing or substance. This gives rise to the Transcendental Dialectic, based upon a finite or conditioned category applied to an unconditioned content. Our first effort must be to grasp Kant's view of the Ego. " It is not even a concept of the Understanding, but a mere consciousness which accompanies all concepts/' Very disparaging toward the Ego is such a remark; Kant almost shows impatience with this accompanying Self, whose presence is indeed not to be gotten rid of by calling it hard names, by designating it as '* an utterly empty idea, without any content." KANT. TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC. 551 Our philosopher seems to have a premonition that just from this Ego is to come his chief trouble. He goes on : " Through this Ego (or thing) which thinks there is nothing conceived but a transcendental subject (an unknown x) of which we cannot have the least notion apart from the thoughts which are its predicates." The Ego, therefore, as thinking thing (res cogi- tans) cannot be known as it is itself. Still it is always present in thinking and at work, returning upon itself " in a continuous circle," which gives positive discomfort ( Unb^quemlichlceit) to Kant, who seems to be dimly aware that he does not grasp it in its complete, self -re turning pro- cess. For it is quite impossible for even him to escape " turning around in the everlasting cir- cle " when Le wishes " to form any judgment about it." Thus hisEgo has to take his Ego as its content, though it is " utterly empty and without content " in such an act. Very plainly does Kant give evidence of wrestling with a great difficulty in his own doctrine. In fact is he not unconsciously denying all that he consciously says? Does not his Ego, in the preceding account of itself, turn back upon itself and tell a great deal about itself, which it was not supposed to be able to know? Is it so utterly devoid of content when it has itself as content? And is it not a very important item of self- knowledge when Kant says that his Ego can- 552 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. not know what it is in itself? Thus Kant's negation comes back to himself though after slaying the enemy. His negative argument is directed against the old Rational Psychology, but it is equally good against himself. And if we study his text and his temper, we cannot help believing that he was at times half aware of the fact. Kant persists, however, in maintaining openly that the Ego cannot separate itself from its con- cepts or categories and conceive and categorize itself. "The subject (Ego) of the categories cannot, through the fact that it thinks these, ob- tain a concept of itself as an object of the cate- gories." The Ego cannot turn around and apply to itself the categories which it thinks (these being derived from experience), without commit- ting a Paralogism. Rational Psychology applies the category of substance to the Ego, as if this were perceived like an object, whereas the Ego cannot be known according to Kant, who in the main denies the Ego's power of separating itself from its thoughts, and making itself its own con- cept. Yet Kant is doing this very thing all the time, even while he says it cannot be done. He does not recognize the self-separation of the Ego ; he would have only the immediate unity of consciousness which lies at the basis of the cate- gories," and which properly cannot be known at all. The Ego as fully functional or as complete KANT. TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC. 553 process is as little employed by Kant as by the older metaphysicians whom he assails. He holds that the Ego cannot judge of the Ego, since it is the Ego who is the judge; that is, I cannot be judge and litigant also. But the fact is, this is just the nature of the Ego, this act of self -divi- sion and self -judgment. Indeed, is not Kant's Ego in the present discussion, playing the part of a judge of itself, and laying down the law in its own case, even while deny ing its own jurisdiction? To our mind, then, Kant's own treatment of the Dialectic of these Ideas of the transcendental Ego is itself dialectical, and his own negative con- clusion comes faack to itself, negating itself as well as the notion of the soul's substance. What is the outcome of this double negative? Some- thing positive, we may be sure; as we think, the positive Ego with its true process, is pretty cer- tain to emerge, as it is really what is underlying and fermenting in all these struggles, we might almost say at times, convulsions of the phi- losopher. The leading Categories of the Soul as tran- scendental are next investigated and denied. These Kant makes four in accordance with his scheme of the four fundamental Categories. So the four chief predicates of Rational Psychology are the soul's immateriality, simplicity, self- identity (personality), and immortality. The same difficulty inheres in all these predicates : 554 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. they, derived from experience, are made to apply to that which is beyond experience, which is in fact unknown. For instance to say that the soul is an immaterial substance is to be guilty of a Paralogism, and is equivalent to declaring matter to be immaterial. It ought to be added, however, that really there are not four but three predicates in the preceding list, Kant adding the fourth in order to force the treatment into his scheme. These are (1) the Soul or Ego as immaterial, not ex- tended; (2) the Soul as not ^divided or divisible, hence not limited from without or within, and thus immortal; (3) the Soul as self-identical, or as Person the self -re turning principle which Kant denies but employs even in his denial. Particularly this last principle is Kant's boom- erang the missile with which he smites the enemy, but which is certain to come back to himself, it being just the self-returning princi- ple which he is employing all the time, but which his whole proof declares to be an illusion. Observations. We shall emphasize separately several points in the foregoing exposition, as Kant here touches the very germ of the future of his science. 1. He sees that the Ego is the source of this Transcendental Dialectic, and affirms it to be source of all illusions in this field. Hence he places it first, dwelling .upon its double nature KANT. TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC. 555 as subject and object. Yet Kant's Ego (the source of illusion) is doing this and declaring it to be truth. 2. Kant's view is that there can be no pos- sible category for the self -returning Ego. For every category of the Understanding, being derived from experience, can only apply to objects which are without any self -return, or are without consciousness. 3. Every attempt of the Ego to categorize itself metaphysically must be paralogistic, ap- plying to the unconditioned what belongs only to the conditioned. There results a double con- tradiction: (a) I, declaring (for example) the Soul to be substance, take that as an experi- ential object which is beyond experience, (b) I, having affirmed the soul to be an immaterial object, give to it two contradictory predicates, like immaterial matter. But both these contra- dictions go back to the one source : the attempt of the Ego to formulate itself through the cate- gories of the Understanding. 4. Kant's criticism holds of the Ego as meta- physical (as distinct from the psychical). One cannot apply to the self-returning, self-conscious Ego the categories derived from the object or thing not self -returning, not self-conscious. Thus Kant destroys not only the old, but all meta- physical Psychology, even those systems of it which come after him are slain in advance. 556 M DEBN E UROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. 5. The negation of Kant, however, reaches all introspection, and assails the very principle of the self-return. At this point we can see how completely our philosopher undoes himself, for his Ego is looking at itself while denying that it can look at itself, or while declaring that such introspection is the source of illusion . According to his own logic, then, his very negation is an illusion which it is. 6. The positive outcome of Kant's negative criticism is that the Ego must make its own categories applicable to itself and to its own processes. It has already formulated the object in categories, why should it not formulate itself, being just the self -returning, self-conscious principle? Then we shall have the psychical categories of the Ego versus the metaphysical ones of the Understanding, which Kant seems to think the; only possible ones. Indeed if he had ever come upon the other set (the psychical), his whole Scheme would have been capsized, and he would have been compelled to re-construct his entire Philosophy. We may note here by the way, that it is the new Psychology (not the rational or the empirical) which is lurking in these negative throes of Kant, and is seeking to get rid of its old metaphysical fetters in order to be born, and to speak in its own name and with its own categories. 7 . The Ego is the source of all the contradic- KANT. TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC. 557 tions which Kant will seek to show in the following Antinomies and in the Ideal of the Pure Reason. They all go back to that self -returning principle which cannot be categorized metaphysically with- out involving a contradiction, and which has its primordial starting-point in the Ego. The at- tempt to apply the Categories of the Understand- ing (derived from Experience) to the World and to God will bring to light the same fundamental difficulty. B. The World The Antinomies of Pure Reason. Such is the second head under the Second Book of Transcendental Dialectic (see Scheme). Here Kant passes from the science of the Ego as Substance (Rational Psychology) to the science of the World or Nature (Rational Cosmology). The theme embraces, therefore, the second stage of the philosophical Norm, whose traditional treatment in Philosophy is now to be subjected to the fire of Kantian criticism. As in the preceding case of the Ego, so now the difficulty arises when the categories of expe- rience are applied to the Ideas of Reason, or when the conditioned is predicated of the un- conditioned. "It is the Understanding which produces pure and transcendental concepts," not the Reason which has merely a regulative power over them, seeking " to extend them beyond the limits of experience yet in connection with the same," and thus projecting them into a 558 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. series. Kant makes much of the distinction between Reason and Understanding. " If the conditioned is given (by the Understanding), so is the whole sum of conditions given also (by the Reason)," which is simply the unconditioned, whereby the conditioned is possible. There would be no movement of the Understanding out of its limits unless it were spurred up by Reason to transcend them and to take another step. It is the function of the Understanding to form concepts from the percepts of sense, and to ex- press such concepts in categories. But if the Understanding turns back and undertakes to formulate the Reason propelling it always beyond itself in these categories derived by it from experience, there rises what Kant calls the Dia- lectic of the Ideas of Reason, of which we have already seen the first stage, that of the Soul or Ego. The Ideas bf Pure Reason now produce in the realm of Cosmology a new kind of difficulty. We have Antinomies instead of Paralogisms which, as we have just seen, arise from the Ego applying to itself categories taken from the object, and thus contradicting its own nature. But the Antinomy doubles this contradiction, making it two-sided instead of one-sided. It is 11 a conflict of the laws (anti, nomos) of Pure Reason," of which there are two; each is valid before Reason, yet each is the opposite of the KANT. TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC. 559 other. What is poor Reason to do? Each prin- ciple (or law) receives her assent, yet each con- tradicts the other. For instance, if it is said that the World has a beginning in Time, Reason assents ; but if it is also said that the World has no beginning in Time, Reason is unable to deny the proposition. This is the Kantian Antinomy which has a different subject-matter from the Paralogism, namely the World or the Universe as the totality of all things, of which two oppo- site predicates are affirmable before Reason. It will thus be seen that the Paralogism is different from, yet closely related to, the Anti- nomy. In the first the contradiction lies in a single proposition between subject and predicate, and thus is implicit; in the second, the contradic- tion lies between the two propositions themselves, and thus is explicit. We may, therefore, say that the Ego (as metaphysical) is paralogistic, while the World (as metaphysical) is antinomian. And now we shall seek to grasp the ground of the cosmological contradiction or Antinomy. The subject throughout is the World, which is declared to have two contradictory predicates, each of which is affirmed to be true by Reason. But if we note carefully we shall find that this subject, the World, is used by Kant in two contradictory senses, which fact is simply de- clared in the predicate. In one case it means the Whole, in the other a part of the Whole. When 560 MODERN EUROPEAN- PHILOSOPHY. it is said that ''the World has no beginning in Time," the World is the Universe and includes Time ; but when it is said that " the World has a beginning in Time," it is manifestly a part of the Universe and does not include Time. The Antinomies or contradictory predicates really spring from a double meaning of the one subject. The first question, then, must be in the given case : Does the World mean the Universe or only a part of it, or perchance a stage of its process? A further question at once springs up : How does it happen that these two meanings of the World are so intimately bound together in the mind? A full answer cannot at present be given; in fact such an answer would lead us beyond Kant. The main point now is to take notice of this double meaning, or, as we may call it, this Double World which underlies the Kantian Antinomies, with the hope of finding the clew later. The Antinomies are four according to Kant, who here applies to them the four kinds of judg- ment taken from his logical scheme (Quantity, Quality, Modality, Relation). Such a schematic application is unquestionably forced, though the Antinomies be real. These we .may proceed to consider at once in their order, the contradictory propositions being indicated by the terms Thesis and Antithesis. KANT. TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC. 561 I. The first Antinomy, or " the first conflict of transcendental Ideas.'' (1) Thesis. The World has a beginning in Time and a limit in Space. If there were no limit in Time, there would be no Now; if there were no limit in Space there would be no complete World. (2) Antithesis. The World has no beginning in Time, and no limit in Space. If it had such limits, it would not be the World, the all-including totality of existence (the Universe). Thus these two contradictory principles, or universal laws (nomoi) seem equally valid for the Reason, even while saying opposite things. We must look carefully at the subject of these propositions, the World, for in it lies the chief difficulty. By means of it Kant summons before himself the absolute Totality, the All, the One as unconditioned, in fine the Universe. Such is properly not only the subject but the subject- matter of these Antinomies. In such case Space and Time must be inside the world. And yet on the other hand the World as created, or as beginning or begun, is conceived as in Space and Time, is here and now, is a reality present to me immediately, empirically, while the World as the absolute totality is not thus present. One asks : Over what is all this mental strug- gle? Ultimately over the creation of the World and its Creator. Is He inside the Universe He 36 562 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. creates or outside? In other words, is He im- manent or transcendent? Is He a creative part of the Whole or is He the Whole creative? To be sure the theological question is as yet implicit, but we shall find it becoming explicit in a later portion of the Transcendental Dialectic. Moreover the World is seen here with its two meanings. In the one case it is contained in Time and Space, in the other it is " the absolute Totality" and contains Time and Space. II. The second Antinomy Kant makes quali- tative, as the first was quantitative. (1) Thesis. Everything composite in the World consists of or is divisible into simple parts (atoms). Otherwise it would be c.omposed of vvhat is not simple or what is itself composite. (2) Antithesis. Nothing composite in the World consists of or is divisible into simple parts. For the simplest part or atom must be extended, and so divisible, hence composite. The World as material is the subject of this Antinomy. Matter is extended and thus com- posite. Of what is it composed? Primarily of ultimate particles which are simple and indi- visible. But thus these particles would not be extended and so not material ; out of the unex- tended we cannot compose the extended. Hence the World as material is infinitely divisible. If the atom or ultimate particle be truly in- divisible, it must exclude all difference from KANT. TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC. 563 itself, not only quantitative but also qualitative. Then all atoms are finally of the same kind, or homogeneous, and are the one constituent element to which all the variety of the world can be reduced. Thus the Atom has become the principle of Natural Science, which, however, is troubled with the Antinomy of making what is extended indivisible. Here again we find two meanings of the World or specially of the World as composite. As a part or stage, it can have division from the outside, and so is divisible ; but as the Universe, it cannot have external division or divisibility. Its only division is division from within or self- division, which is at the same time one and itself. The second Antimony thus shows the Double World; first as partial and so divisible, secondly as Whole and so one or rather one process which includes division with the return to unity. This we shall find to be the psychical process, that of the Ego, which Kant notices in connection with present Antinomy, though he persists in denying its self-dividing power. III. The third Antinomy pertains to the con- flict between Causation and Freedom. (1) Thesis. The world with its phenomena is governed not only by natural causes, but by a free cause, or self -cause. Each natural cause is itself an effect produced by a preceding cause, and so on in a series. But there must be a 5C4 MODERN E UEOPEAN PHILOSOPHY. cause which is not effect for starting the series, this is the free cause, called by Kant " spon- taneity of causes." The dependent depends on the self-dependent, the determined on the self- determined. (2) Antithesis. The world with its phenom- ena is governed only by natural laws, and there is no free cause. For if the world has a cause different from it, or outside of it, then it is not the world as absolute Totality, or the Whole. Here rises another phase of the creative prin- ciple of the Universe : Is it transcendent or im- manent? A free-acting First Cause which origi- nates the World with its phenomena is conceived as outside that World. On the other hand the idea of the World demands that everything, even the cause be included in itself. Thus all causa- tion must be construed as immanent. More plainly than in the previous Antinomies does the Double World now show itself. The World as a part, or the caused or created, has its cause outside of itself. On the other hand the World as the All must have its cause inside itself, or immanent. Moreover, it again becomes ap- parent that this total world or Universe is a pro- cess made up of three stages, Cause, Caused, and Self -Cause. Here we can see that the World as caused, in which " everything happens simply according to natural laws," is properly KANT. TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC. 565 the second stage of the total process of the Universe. IV. The fourth Antinomy treats of the conflict which lies in the idea of a necessary being. (1) Thesis. To the world belongs something which as a part of it (inside) or as cause of it (outside) is a purely necessary being. Every conditioned thing pre-supposes a complete series of conditions up to the Unconditioned which is the necessary. (2) Antithesis. There exists no purely neces- sary being, neither in the World nor outside the World as a cause. If there was a necessary or unconditioned Being in the conditioned World, it would lie outside of this World, which would thus not be the Whole. So also with neces- sary Being as cause of the World. In his remarks on this Antinomy Kant seems for a moment to see that it is a double view of the World which produces the contradictory predi- cates. " The first argument regards solely the absolute Totality of the series of conditions and thereby reaches an unconditioned and necessary." On the other hand " the second Argument regards only the contingency of everything in the series," from which can arise nothing uncon- ditioned and necessary, since each is conditioned through the other. That is, the Totality is con- sidered in the one case and the Part in the other. It is evident that the last two Antinomies 566 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY, belong together, being only slight variations of the same theme. We see that Kant's fourfold scheme of the Categories is the machine which compels him to duplicate the last Antinomy. In strictness, then, there are here but three Antino- mies., and these show themselves related together as a process of the Ego (Psychosis). We shall have, then, the following three stages : (a) The Double World as immediate (in Time and Space ) . Both limited and unlimited in each . (b) The Double World as divisive (the mate- rial World). Both divisible (from without), and indivisible (self-divided). (c) The Double World as determined (caused, created). Both determined (conditioned or necessitated) and not determined (which means self-determined, though Kant does not directly say so). Such is the true outcome of the process of the Antinomies: we are made conscious of the World as Universe, self-determined, positing within itself it own divisions and conditions, which World Kant, even when calling it by such names as Absolute Totality, could never fully separate from an externally conditioned World, and grasp in its own process. The source of his failure lies in his not seeing the process of the Ego as self -separating and self- returning, thus having within itself and creating ideally all division and all unity. The World in KANT. TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC. 567 its truth is just this process of the Ego realized, or, as we have elsewhere called it, the Pampsy- chosis. Now this Pampsychosis (or the Uni- verse as psychical process) hovers dimly before Kant; it is in fact the thing which he seeks to grasp and to formulate. But he cannot get out of his own separative stage (which is supremely that of his Century) and return to the unity of the All or Universe, thus reproducing the complete movement of his Self in that of the Universe. His own inner division he carries over into the World, which thus becomes as dualistic as he is. Still we must not forget the great service of Kant : he has com- pelled the philosophy of his age to grapple with this lurking process both in the Ego and in the Universe, so that what in him is as yet but implicit will become explicit with time. Moreover, Kant has in these Antinomies brought to light the World's Dialectic, which is verily of far-reaching import. The incessant struggle between the Finite and the Infinite, the Particular and the Universal, the Many and the One, in their thousand transformations, he has here seized with a giant's hand and held up before all coming generations. Thus we have the World's Antinomies, as pre- viously we had the Ego's Paralogisms. The reader now begins to see that Kant's negative procedure is following the philosophic Norm, 568 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. whose third member, the Absolute or God, he next proceeds to consider. C. God, The Ideal of Pure Reason. This is the title which Kant gives to the third head (Hauptstiick) of the Second Book of the Tran- scendental Dialectic. Corresponding, then, to the Paralogism and the Antinomy, is the Ideal of Pure Reason, which is now to be discussed. This Ideal will also show an inner contradiction between Reason and Experience which makes it dialectical. But its content or subject-matter is a new Totality, nothing less than God Himself, the sum total of all things (omnitudo realitatis, or the Allness of reality) , truly the Whole of all wholes. Thus we come to the third Whole, God, in a line of succession with the two preceding Wholes, the Ego and the World. Moreover the Kantian battery is turned against the metaphysi- cal science of this Whole or of God which in the philosopher's time went under the name of Rational Theology. Note again that the idea of the Whole or of the absolute Totality is the source of the entire dialectical trouble from the begin- ning. For it is the idea given by Reason and unattainable by Experience ; yet to this idea entirely beyond the Understanding the latter will apply the categories derived from Experience, making it thereby dialectical. The reader of to-day, who studies Kant to see KANT. TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC. 569 that which lies potential in him, and which is to come out of him, will take note of the fact that he is moving in this dialectical pro- cedure on the lines of the philosophical Norm, whose three stages he employs in the following order: Ego, World, and God. It is likewise to be observed that Kant is assailing the metaphy- sical view of this Norm in all three of its stages, by showing that their concepts in the previous Phi- losophy was dialectical, giving rise to an inner contradiction. Thus we shall find that Kant quite unconsciously is following the philosophic Norm ; and if we look more deeply into him, we shall find that he employs it as a process, in fact as an implicit psychicial process. To be sure, these things lie not distinctly in the Kantian Scheme, but they often break up into it, and often control his exposition, as it were, from under- neath. Kant seeks to explain his new term, the Ideal. It is, of course, derived from Idea, but is one step further removed from Experience than Idea. He conceives his supersensible world in three gradations from the sensible world. First are "the Concepts of the Understanding, which, though a mere form of thinking, can be represented concretely," by a real object. Sec- ond are the Ideas " which are still more distant from the objective reality than the Concepts, inasmuch as no phenomenon can be found which 570 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY can represent them concretely." Thus we have a World of Ideas, the realm of Pure Reason. But now this World of Ideas must be united and concentrated in one Supreme Idea, the Ideal " which is yet further removed from the object- ive reality," lying, in fact, just on the other side of the Universe. Thus according to Kant the Idea is individualized (in individuo), is the Whole in all Wholes, which Wholes we have already seen as given by Reason in its Ideas, and producing the dialectical conflict of the Antino- mies. Now these Wholes are likewise dialecti- cal in their sphere (though Kant does not apparently see this), and reduce themselves to one Whole, which is their essence, the Whole in all Wholes, the Allness of the Universe (omnitudo realitatis). Such is the absolute Ideal (not simply Idea) of Pure Reason, or God conceived metaphysically in His essence. It is this new Whole in which Kant proposes to uncover the contradiction, and thus show to be dialectical. The question is, Does it exist? Is it real? At once we begin to spy trouble in this predicate real, as here applied to the new Totality. In fact, if we look into the above cited Kantian phrase, Allness (Omnitudo) of reality (realitatis), we find its two words drop- ping into complete self-opposition and dualism, flashing their antagonism across the whole diam- eter of the Universe. Can the category taken KANT. TRANSCENDENTAL .DIALECTIC. 571 from the sense-world apply to the All-in- All, God? Emphatically not, according to the fore- going Kantian doctrine. But on the other hand are you going to deny God's existence and thus shiver the whole fabric of Theology from Anselm down to the present? The situation shakes Kant up from the bottom, and he squares himself for a prodigious effort. He well knows the colossal edifice which he proposes to batter to pieces. Accordingly he will here go into details and show the inherent Dialectic in all the proofs of the Existence of God descending from the old Meta- physics. Again appears the same ambiguity which we noticed in treating of the Paralogism and the Antinomy. Kant has two meanings of the word God, one of which takes God as the total- ity of the Universe and the other as a part or stage thereof. Hence He becomes the subject of two opposite predications . As the Omnitudo realitatis he must be the All, the Universe, in- cluding the World and Man (or Ego). But, as the distinctive Creator or the individual divine Spirit, he must be different from the World and Man. Hence we observe here in Kant a Double God, as we saw a Double Wol-ld, and also a Double Ego. Upon this doubleness the Dia- lectic of the Ideal (God) of Pure Reason hinges. On the one hand if we think God as the totality of the Universe, he must exist; but if we think 572 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. him as a part, then existence does not follow from conception. These Proofs of God's existence are three, according to Kant, which he sets forth in the following order Ontological, Cosmological, and Physico-theological (Teleological). Let the alert reader again note the threefold division, and observe that Kant now drops his Scheme with its fourfold division which he applied so rigidly to the Paralogisms and the Antinomies. Possibly too an underlying psychical process may again be lurking in the order of these three Proofs. I. The ontological Proof infers the existence of God from my (the Ego's) conception of Him as the most real Being (ens realissimum, or better ens perfectissimum) . The unreality of the most real, or the limitation of the most perfect Being contradicts itself directly in thought, and so cannot be. Kant denies the inference. From the concep- tion of anything real, its existence does not follow. 44 If I conceive of a Being possessing the highest reality (without defect), there still remains the question whether it exists or not." Anyhow, to say a thing exists " is a mere tautology " for existence adds nothing to reality. " Existence (/SWn) is no real predicate." Hence Kant makes his famous statement that ' a hundred actual (existent) dollars contain no more than a KANT. TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC. 573 hundred possible (conceived) " dollars." The real thing cannot be gotten from the concept, but only from sense-perception. God as " the most real Being " can only be obtained through immediate experience. Most people would answer: " Our God is not that sort of a reality.'* The existence of God as sought to be proved by the ontological argu- ment does not mean that He is present to the senses. Kant thus assumes his own meaning for the term real, and then says the argument is not valid . Who said it was valid to prove any such reality? Certainly not Anselrn, not Descartes, the latter of whom Kant seems specially to have had in mind. His objection, however, is old, going back to the monk Gaunilo, who pertinently asks Anselm : From my conception of an en- chanted island in the middle of the ocean, am I to infer its existence? To this question Anselm would have his answer: the conception of finite sensible objects in no way corresponds to the conception of God, the supersensible and infinite One of the Universe. The weakness of Kant in the refutation of this ontological argument has always excited sur- prise. It betrays not only a lack of acumen (in which Kant was certainly not deficient), but also a strange ignorance of the History of Philosophy. Various reasons have been assigned for Kant's drop at this point : one is that he really believed 571 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. the ontological proof and yet he had to refute it to complete the negative sweep of his system. That is, he disbelieved his own refutation, and may have been convinced of the opposite by the weakness of his own argument (a very doubt- ful ground). It is evident that Kant in his refutation does not grasp God simply as the Alluess of reality, but also as a stage of this reality, as a real thing. Properly he recognizes both meanings and hence comes the Dialectic. (This might be called the psychological Proof instead of ontological, since it springs from the Ego's conception of God,) II. The cosmological Proof of God's existence comes through the medium of the World (Cosmos). Through a series of causes and effects, which latter are again causes, the World shows itself to be conditioned, contingent. But such a series presupposes a First Cause or neces- sary Being, on which all depends. Thus we reach the unconditioned necessary Being which is through itself or self-subsistent. This same argument has already been given in the fourth Antinomy, But the cosmological addition in the present argument is: Such a necessary Being is God. Kant has already shown to his satisfaction that an unconditional necessary Being cannot be inferred from a conditioned World (fourth Antinomy). There remains for him to deny KANT. TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC. 575 the second inference which grounds the cosino- logical argument. Hence he declares that even if we grant the reality of such a necessary Being, it does not follow that this Being is the personal God of Theology. III. The third proof of the existence of God. Kant calls the Physico-theological, since it starts out with something in Nature given us by expe- rience. This is the order and design which we behold in the physical world about us, and from which we rise to the conception of God as the source of such order and design. Kant again denies the inference which leaps from a matter of experience to an entity be- yond experience. Even if we should grant all these evidences of design in the world (and they may be questioned) we are not justified in con- cluding from them the existence of a personal God. At best this argument, usually called the teleologic, shows an order of the world, an archi- tect who finds his material ready at hand and shapes it and puts it into place. But the Chris- tian God is not simply a world -builder or demi- urge, but a world-creator, creating all, even his material. The fact is, the teleologic argument here employed is heathen, is old Greek, and was first used by a Greek philosopher, ancient Anaxa- goras. It implies the eternity of matter, a doc- trine which gave much trouble to the early Chris- tian Church before getting rid of it. Hence, 576 MODERN' EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. Theology must go forward to the ontological argument for proving the existence of God as the all-creative, which it did in the history of the Church through Anselm. But in the present case it must go back to that argument. Such, then, is the negative outcome of the Ideal of Pure Eeason when the attempt is made through it to prove the existence of God. The reader will again observe that the three Proofs follow in the given order Ego, World, God. The first Proof starts immediately with the Ego conceiving the most real Being within itself and thence rising to God. The second Proof starts with the World as contingent and conditioned, and thence rises to God (through the idea of a necessary Being). The third Proof starts with God as manifested in the order and purpose of the World, and thence rises to his separate ex- istence. But this Proof (as Kant observes) must go back for its confirmation to the onto- logical Proof, that is to the Ego conceiving, and so realizing God. And it is also the Ego which has to conceive of necessary Being and thereby elevate God out the conditioned World. Thus underneath all these Proofs lies the process of Ego formulating God out of itself immediately, out of the World as contingent, and out of God in the World as ordered. Moreover we have now reached the conclusion of the total movement of the Transcendental KANT. TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC. 577 Dialectic which we find has been dealing with three leading themes Ego, World, and God. These we have observed through the whole His- tory of Philosophy as constituting the philosophi- cal Norm and forming together the absolute pro- cess of Universe, which is the fundamental subject of Philosophy. Thus we can rightly say that Kant is grappling with the profoundest matter that has occupied human thought. What is his treatment of it? This we may summarize as follows : (a) First of all, the Norm, though present and determin- ing his work, is not always explicitly and con- sciously present to Kant's mind. Hence his exposition seems often wandering and uncertain of its purpose, (b) He changes the order of the Norm as transmitted (God, World, Man) into his own separative arrangement (Man, World, God), which is an inversion of the order, (c) The reason of this is because he does not con- sciously grasp the process of these three elements of the Norm, which really constitute the basic movement of the Universe or the " Absolute Totality." (d) From this same lack of grasp- ing the process of the All comes the double nature of his Dialectic, namely, the two mean- ings which he gives respectively to Self, World, and God. (e) Hence he seeks to invalidate Self, World, and God as double and inherently 37 578 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. contradictory, as being merely the illusion of knowledge. Thus we see that Kant's result is the destruc- tion of the philosophic Norm and with it of Philosophy as a Discipline which has been pro- duced by this Norm. Such is the extreme nega- tive outcome of the revolutionary Eighteenth Century in its philosophic aspect, which, as we have already seen, has its correspondence in the institutional world. To be sure, Kant saves a limited sphere of knowledge for man, but in that sphere the Norm is not included. Still the Norm is just what underlies all of Kant's efforts, and is pushing forward to a new birth. Kant does not really destroy the Norm, for that is indestructible, but the old metaphy- sical incumbrances of the Norm, which is to appear in its own native form, that is, to become psychical. All along we have found hints of this psychical process bursting up through Kant's oppressive schematic wrappage of Metaphysics. It was observed how his discussion of the Para- logism and of the Antinomy became secretly psychical in spite of his fourfold scheme clapped on from the outside. Really he is calling not for a new Philosophy to answer his difficulties, but for a new Discipline, the truly psychical Discipline, which will bring to light and order that secret process of the Ego which gives him so much trouble. KANT. CRITIQ UE OF PEA C TICAL BE AS ON. 579 Still another and greater sweep is here con- cluded : that which embraces essentially this whole Critique in its three fundamental divi- sions, namely the Aesthetic, the Analytic, and the Dialectic. These constitute the three main stages in the Kantian process of knowing the objective world. This is first taken up by Sense- perception, after being put under its forms, Space and Time; these given percepts the Under- standing then elaborates into its Categories, while Reason unifies the latter into its Ideas, which in one way or other express the Universe in its threefold elements of Ego, World, and God (or subject, object, and subject-object as absolute). Kant treats of many other topics in his Crit- ique of Pure Reason, but these we cannot attempt to discuss. B. THE CRITIQUE or PRACTICAL REASON. This is the second of the Three Critiques which best represent Kant's Philosophy. It appeared in 1788, seven years after the publication of the Critique of Pure Reason, of which it is in a manner the counterpart, though decidedly in- ferior. In the preceding year (1787) a new edition of the first Critique had been published in which is seen Kant's tendency to tone down a number of the extreme views which he had ex- pressed in the first edition. This same tendency 580 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. is far more decided in the present second Critique, which shows the philosopher in a con- siderable reaction on a number of points against his earlier self. The mood of the book is, therefore, of a rela- tively positive cast; by an act of Will which seems almost violent Kant proposes to put a stop to the destructive work of his previous book. The motives assigned for this change in Kant have been stated variously. Some say that he got scared at the wrecks strewn about him as the consequences of his own work. Others think that the changed attitude of the State (Prussia) influenced him. Frederick the Great, who had declared that during his reign everybody should be permitted to get to Heaven in his own fashion, had died in 1786, and had been succeeded by Fred- erick William II, whose reign was to be pietistic, as the Germans call it, with a strict religious surveillance over doctrinal matters. There can be no doubt that Kant felt far freer to say what he thought in 1781 than he did in 1788. He could hardly help having much respect for, if not fear of that Will in the State, which in him- self he regarded as final. We are not to forget his later submission to governmental authority and humiliating promise of silence in matters of religion. The Critique of Practical Reason deals with what is usually called Ethics, but properly it is KANT. CRITIQUE OF PRACTICAL REASON. 581 a treatise on Morals as subjective. A work on Ethics in the old Greek and wider sense it is not, for it excludes institutions. In this respect the example of Kant has been unfortunate for the present science. The truth is that in him appear the pronounced dualism and mutual op- position between the moral and institutional, which went over into the following (nineteenth) Century with such power. Though Kant treats of both Church and State in his writings, those institutions are not organically connected with his fundamental thought. His freedom remains subjective, individual, moral; that the State, for instance, is ideally a Free-Will whose end is to secure Free- Will, lies not in his horizon. The categorical Imperative of the Ego has the pri- macy, which is sure to beget a conflict with other Egos and their categorical Imperatives, which conflict the State can only solve externally by law. Kant's freedom is not institutional, but moral ; in which fact he represents his country and his age. It was his Century that made the fiercest attack on institutions as the established and transmitted, which has ever been known in history. The individual Ego of that time showed its deepest breach with its environing social order, and Kant was the philosopher of that revolutionary Ego, placing supreme stress upon the Imperative of the inner Self. It is of the greatest interest to the student 582 MODEEN E UROPEAN PHIL OSOPHY. of the History of Philosophy to see how Kant turns to the Will and emphasizes it in his Practical Reason. From this point of view the work shows a psychical advance. In the inter- vening years Kant has decisively experienced that in his first Critique he has not considered one supreme activity of the mind Volition. He has dealt only with Intellect, which he has limited on all sides. To be sure he calls his book a Critique of the Pure Reason, but it is really a Critique of the Intellect, and embraces Sense-perception, Imagination (or Representa- tion), Understanding, besides Keason. When he takes up the Will and correlates it with his preceding work, we can see that his own spirit- ual evolution is becoming psychical, which fact we deem decided progress and a pointing toward the future. When we look into this second Critique, we observe that its procedure is anything but a real- ization of Kant's Will as absolute spontaneity. In the first place it is not strictly a Critique at all, as Kant acknowledges; in the next place it lies not in the sphere of Reason. Still Kant forces this title upon his book to make it seem parallel with his first Critique. Then the divi- sions of it into Analytic and Dialectic are equally violent, being dragged in from his first Critique, and hammered into a kind of uniformity. Thus his exposition of freedom is about as unfree as KANT. CRITIQUE OF PRACTICAL REASON. 583 can be conceived. There is no inner spontane- ous development of his theme, but its adjust- ment to a predetermined scheme contradictory to its very nature. And yet even in this matter Kant reflects his world, or rather his nature and his age. This Kantian dualism between inner freedom and outer determinism was the Germany of his time, and is the Germany of to-day: an unlimited lib- erty within, privately, for yourself; but an unlimited absolutism without, publicly, for the world. Here lies the fundamental difference between the two great branches of the Teutonic race. The Anglo-Saxon is going to have public, institutional freedom, or die ; the German is going to have private, subjective freedom, and is will- ing to let himself be determined in public rela- tions by authority, which he has no hand in selecting. For this and other reasons Kant is supremely the philosopher of his people, is so to-day; he never has been and never can be the philosopher of Anglo-Saxondom though of course we can all learn much from him. What the Intellect cannot know, the Will postulates, namely, God, Freedom, Immortality. If I undertake to think the Universe as real, I commit a contradiction, I apply to the Infinite a finite predicate. But I CSLU postulate the Universe with its process, which I can never know. In other words, I must make or remake God in 584 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. order to possess Him. This is a valid thought, but Kant leaves out the other side : God must create me as creative ere I can re-create Him. Primarily, then, Kant simply assumes the Ego and its freedom as something given, as an ultimate fact of consciousness. But the Ego will ask of itself: whence this postulating power of mine, which can even postulate my Maker? The answer to this question lies outside of Kant's horizon. Will thus takes possession of the whole Ego, and sets to one side the Intellect. The primacy of the Will it is called ; herein we see the origin of the doctrine of Voluntarism, which has recently been held up as the final word of Phi- losophy. But Will and Intellect are equally valid stages in the process of the complete mind ; there is properly no primacy of one or of the other. The Kantian dualism between Intellect and Will, belongs specially to the Eighteenth Century, and is already stated by Hume explicitly, who says that action gives the lie direct to all that theory holds. A similar view, though more implicit, we can trace in Locke . We may now see that Will has been the secret hostile demiurge who has been destroy- ing the a-priori element of Intellect, till at last it comes to itself and then it proceeds despot- ically to postulate itself as the true a-priori principle which postulates the other a-priori principles God, Freedom, Immortality. Thus KANT. CRITIQUE OF PRACTICAL REASON* 585 Will not only postulates itself as primordial, bat postulates itself as the postulator of all that it has denied to Intellect. This looks as if our Free- Will had become an intoler- ant tyrant in the citadel of liberty. How very similar to the movement of the French Revolution! The Will, assailing the Intellect for the tyranny of its transmitted doctrines, destroys its foe in the name of freedom, and then seizes absolute power with its own hands. It may be said that Kant gets his Freedom by violence, in true revolutionary fashion, wrench- ing it through postulation from the Ego, which knows it not, as he supposes. The Will postulates Freedom immediately, as the primordial essence of the Ego, Then it postu- lates Immortality through the ideal of perfect Vir- tue which an imperfect being can realize only in an endless continuance of Time. Finally it postu- lates God through the ideal of perfect Happiness which an imperfect being can realize only through an absolute Being or God. You are to act as if you had immortal life for attaining perfect Vir- tue, though you can have no knowledge of such a life. You are to act as if there were a God for securing your perfect Happiness, though you can never know that there is a God. But especially you are to act as if you. were a free man, though you cannot know that you are really free. Is it a wonder that the ardent student of Kant, Schop- 586 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. euhauer, sucked out of this doctrine his pessimistic conclusion that this was the worst of all possible worlds? One may sum up Kant's Critique of the Practical Reasoni Go it with all your might, but you will have to go it blindly. C. THE CRITIQUE or JUDGMENT. We have now reached the third of the three Critiques, in a descending order. The present Critique was published in 1790, two years after the second one, and is distinctly to be placed in the period of Kant's decline. Again the title is arbitrary and misleading, for the faculty of Judgment is here essentially Feeling. Again the scheme of the first Critique is clapped upon the content in a violent and external manner. The formalism appears to be more crushing and capricious in this than in the last Critique. Still we are to note what may well be deemed an advance. Kant sees or feels that there is still another stage or faculty of the Ego which he has not accounted for, namely Feeling. As he puts it, there was a gulf between the specu- lative and the practical Reason, which had to be bridged over by a new activity of mind. This he calls the Faculty of Judgment which deals with the laws for the feelings of Pleasure and Pain. Thus he seeks to find a middle link for overcoming the deep dualism which he has made between Intellect and Will. KANT. CRITIQUE OF JUDGMENT. 587 Kant divides his subject into two faculties, which he names the Aesthetic and Teleologic Faculties of Judgment. Each of these he fur- nishes with an Analytic and a Dialectic, derived of course from the scheme of the first Critique. But into his detailed discussion of these various parts we cannot follow him. Thus Kant has reached the three fundamental forms of the psychical Ego, one after the other, in his Three Critiques. But he inverts their order and does not see them in their true pro- cess. He places Intellect first, whereas it ought to be third as the self -returning, self-conscious stage. Then he places Feeling last whereas it ought to be first or the implicit unconscious stage. Finally the three are to be seen as a psychical process together, which we have called the Psychosis, and which is the real genetic principle of mind and its science. Thus we may say that Kant at the end of his life-work has properly reached the starting- point for organizing the Thought of the Uni- verse. The final thing which has been born of his long travail is the threefold movement of mind. This is really what has been lurking in his struggles from the beginning the principle of the new epoch, which is to be psychological, not philosophical, as he still imagines. Thus his unconscious and unintended result is much more significant than his conscious and intended. 588 MODEEN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. We should also see that Kant is right in seek- ing for a scheme or plan common to his three Critiques. It is true that his scheme is a mis- take, is not unfolded from within, but is exter- nally applied to a content far greater and deeper than it is. Still from such a wrong application of the scheme we are not to reject all schema- tism ; that would be more negative than Kant himself, and leave us in blank chaos. The great object in this field -is to find the right scheme, which has to evolve along with its content or thought. Hence though we reject Kant's scheme as such, we fully acknowledge his principle of having a scheme as the very nerve of all organized thought. Here we must bring to an end our view of Kant's Three Critiques. * Again we cannot help remarking how our philosopher unconsciously runs everywhere into triadism in spite of his conscious and purposed dyadism. The latter connects him with his own Century, the former joins him to the future. Even if he did develop backward or downward in his psychical evolution, he nevertheless reached bottom at last, so that he gives us the three stages of the Psychosis though inverted Intellect, Will, Feeling. This we may well regard as the final deposit of Kant's thought. III. KANT'S PHILOSOPHY. In the preceding Three Critiques we have given the fundamental KANT. PHILOSOPHY. 589 movement of the Philosophy of Kant in accord with the author's own development. Still we might apply the Norm Metaphysics, Physics, and Ethics to Kant's Writings, though such an application of it would be somewhat external. Kant's negation of the Norm is the deepest phi- losophical fact of him ; he made his own Norm in the Three Critiques, rejecting the transmitted one, and this is his revolutionary spirit in Philos- ophy. Nevertheless the transmitted Norm lurks unconsciously in his thought while consciously denying it, and he cannot well help himself. The traditional Philosophy came to him chiefly through Wolff from Leibniz. We have already noted how Teutonic thought in the Eighteenth Century bifurcated into two streams, the Anglo- Saxon and the German; the former through Locke and Hume became the dominant Euro- pean Philosophy. But the latter continued in an undercurrent down to Kant, who assailed it as dogmatic, and proceeded to weave into German thinking the Anglo-Saxon thread, which then lost its European supremacy, and vanished through Kant into the German movement. The most common statement concerning Kant's Philosophy is that it destroyed dogmatism and established in its place criticism. Both these assertions must be modified. Kant may have destroyed the old dogmatism, but he left his own, for Kant is as dogmatic as any philosopher that 590 MODEEN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY, ever lived. In fact his doctrine of Will is the very apotheosis of the dogmatic Self. If he sought to curtail and to limit the arrogance of the Intellect, he turns loose the arrogance of the Will, which is certainly worse, because more tyrannical. Kant shows these two contradictory elements in his personal character ; they can also be seen in the Germany of his time, and even of to-day. Is not Voluntarism or the primacy of the Will its present leading Philosophy, in so far as it has any at all? It is likewise said that Kant established criti- cism instead of skepticism. But he holds through all" his ins and outs that man cannot know the truth of the object. How far is such a doctrine from the Humian skepticism? Hume's chief assault is upon the cause or the essence of the thing (the ousia of the on, with which Greek Philosophy started). Kant's chief as- sault is upon the essence or being of the Ego (the Cartesian I think, there 'fore 1 am , with which modern Philosophy started). Thus the Eight- eenth Century ends in the voice of Kant de- nying the content of both ancient and modern Philosophy. Still we should not forget that both Hume and Kant deny their denial and thus make their own self-contradiction complete. Kant claims to be the grand rescuer of knowledge ; this rescue is accomplished by making it ignorant KANT. PHILOSOPHY. 591 of truth. What is such a rescue worth? The supreme act of philosophical salvation is to save a knowledge which does not know anything, or perchance knows only the lie. Yet we are to see the positive implication in all this negative work. When Immanuel Kant says that we cannot know God in Himself, he tells us something about God which we are to know, and also about his own Ego. Really he presupposes that he can know God, and is cate- gorizing Him in and through thought. Kant is in his way re-creating God who created him. The underlying implication of Kant's negative formula is that God as creative must create a being or an Ego who can re-create Him in thought. Such an unfolding of the implicit Kant, however, lies ahead even of the coming Century, whose answer to Kant's denial is Evolution, the devel- opment of the Being of the Ego or of man. For Kant denies that thought is Being, but Evolution shows the rise of Being to Thought which re- turns upon itself and thinks its own rise as its true Being. Transition. What is the essential line of transition out of the Eighteenth into the Nine- teenth Century? The Philosophy of Limitation is peculiarly that of the former ; Locke, Hume, and Kant all press home to human -Intellect its limits, beyond which it cannot go without com- mitting a spiritual transgression somewhat like 592 MODERN- E UEOPEAN PHIL SOPHY. original sin. To tamper with the thought of the Absolute Kant considers to be the eating of the forbidden fruit of the tree of Knowledge Kant himself laying upon the Ego his divine prohibition as if he might be God's vicegerent. The general formula of the Eighteenth Century runs : The Ego-in- itself cannot be known, nor can the Thing-in- itself; only the phenomenal Ego can know the phenomenal Thing. God, Freedom, and Im- mortality are outside the limits of the Intellect, they are the forbidden fruit of Philosophy. Now it lies in human nature old as Adam, that man will hanker after just this forbidden fruit, and the philosopher is no exception. Mind, the self -limited, will begin to kick against its limits and insist on climbing over the wall, though it be the wall of Paradise. So it will happen that already during Kant's life philosophers will break over the bounds so imperiously laid down in the Critique of Pure Reason. Such is the line of transition which will form a process shared in by three eminent thinkers, each of whom finds his starting-point in one of the Three Critiques, be- ginning with the last or at the bottom. 1 . Jacobi asserts the validity of Peeling against the Kantian negation. He accepts Kant in part ; the Ideas of Reason God, Freedom, Immortal- ity cannot be demonstrated, but they can be felt, and that is the final and all-sufficient test of KANT - PHILOSOPHY. 593 their validity. They are to be gotten not medi- ately, through Intellect, but immediately, through Feeling in the form of Faith. 2. Fickle asserts the validity of Will against the negative results of Kant's treatment of In- tellect. The Thing-in-itself can be known by the Ego, for it is really the product of the Ego. Here Fichte uncovers Kant's contradic- tion : if you cannot know the Thing-in-itself, how can you say that it is the producer or the cause of sensations? Moreover, how can you apply to it the category of cause, which can be properly applied only to phenomena and not to the Thing-in-itself? The latter must be known, cannot lie outside of the Ego of which it is a creation. It is posited, therefore, by an act of Will of which Fichte asserts the true primacy, since it must go before and create the object of Intellect. Thus he breaks down the barrier of Intellect through Will, which is the starting-point of Kant's Critique of Practical Reason. 3. ScheUing asserts the validity of Intellect (in the form of Intellectual Intuition) against Kant's liminations of the Intellect. Schelling in this way reaches his Absolute as the identity of subject and object, or of the Ego and non-Ego, which identity is above both and produces both. Such an Absolute is the impersonal One or sub- stance, which, however, posits or creates both 594 MODERN E UROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. Man (Ego) and the World (non-Ego). Intel- lect thus breaks down the Kantian limitation through itself (intuitively or immediately), and grasps the unconditioned. This is, of course, a very brief account of these three philosophers, each of whom has carried out his fundamental thought into extensive works. At present we wish to see them in their common character of transcending Kant through Kant, and forming a kind of three-arched bridge out of the Eighteenth into the Nineteenth Century. Moreover, they as a whole turn Kant's psychical descent in the Three Critiques through Intellect, Will, and Feeling into a corresponding psychical ascent through Feeling, Will, and Intellect. But this psychical element is not pronounced, is not explicit as a process in their case. The next great philosopher is Hegel, who puts the process inside the Absolute which is also the result of a process. Hence with him arises the idea of development, of evolution as an integral element of the Absolute. With the dawning of such an idea, in which the Absolute or the All must go back upon itself and take up its own self -unfolding, we have passed out of the revo- lutionary Eighteenth into the evolutionary Nine- teenth Century. latt ftfeirb* THE NINETEENTH CENTURY EVOLUTION. If we seek to express the general tendency of the spirit of the Nineteenth Century, we shall have to call it evolutionary. It dwells upon the rise, the process, the history of things; its car- dinal word is Development, and its chief de- mand is to see the ascending side of the Universe. Man, looking into the past, has been made aware of his own self-unfolding as well as that of everything else. His institutions have become what they are through a progressive series of forms or stages, each of which, though no longer existent singly, has still its validity in the total (595) 596 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. order. What is immediately present cannot be understood except through its genesis in the past. This is in decided contrast with the preced- ing Century, which we have designated as the revolutionary Century, which has broken with the past, reacted against everything transmitted, destroyed the established. Thus the Eighteenth Century assails its own origin, rejects as utterly worthless its own parentage, and so in the end undoes itself. But the Nineteenth Century takes the opposite trend : it goes back and fraternizes with all antecedent stages of man and his insti- tutions, as being the source of itself. Thus it is a period of reconciliation, not of separation; it is a return to its own ancestry and a re-estab- lishment of its progenitors, putting into its own new home all that had begotten it, rearward to the remotest ages. The Eighteenth Century may be deemed a descending movement, it goes back to Nature in order to get rid of the civil- ized world in which it exists. The Nineteenth Century shows an ascending and returning move- ment ; it seeks to rise out of Nature to itself, and to give due validity to every intervening stage. Down to the bottom and up from the bottom back again are the two complementary sweeps of the two Centuries. I. If we look into the historical setting of Eu- rope during the Nineteenth Century, we find at THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 597 its beginning that Revolution is passing into Evolution whose colossal product is Napoleon. France, the creative center of this revolution- ary epoch, had begotten the new absolute monarch by destroying the old order. Even authority has to be evolved afresh ; if transmit- ted, it will not be accepted. Napoleon was cer- tainly as despotic as the Bourbons. Absolutism is to receive its seal from Revolution, not from Legitimacy. In the world of thought the German philosopher of this time was seeking to evolve the Absolute which had so strikingly manifested itself in the French Emperor on the practical side. We shall see that Hegel on several different lines projects an evolution of the Absolute in deep correspondence with his age and its occurrences. But he was not alone, all Philosophy of the period went forth to search in the supersensible world for the ideal counterpart of the mighty phenomenon in the sensible world. Then came the Restoration of the old order, the culmination of the anti-revolutionary movement. The Bourbons were brought back to France by outside power, chiefly by the Teutonic nations, Germany and England, which had become the great supporters of Legitimacy, though in the previous Century they had defied it and had given to it the hardest blows. We recollect that England in 1688 had set aside the 598 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. dynastic right of inheritance, and that Prussia had done the same thing in the case of Silesia. The Teutonic and the Latin nations were still arrayed against each other, but they had quite changed sides. France, the Latin absolutist of the Seventeenth Century, had sought to destroy the national freedom of Holland, and even of England. But in the Nineteenth Century the Teutonic peoples interfere with the national freedom of France by reinstating the Legiti- macy which she had cast off, and which she persists in casting off till after more than two generations of struggle she gets her Republic permanently. Now this Restoration will also find its expression in Philosophy. There will be a going back to former systems of thought, a taking up of previous points of view, a study of all the transmitted formulations of the universe. Spirit asserts its worth, not in denying and destroying its anteced- ents, but in seeking for and appropriating them. It finds the truth of what it is in the whole line of its becoming. It returns upon itself from the very beginning, and will know itself gen'etically. Philosophy really starts Evolution, not natural science, though the latter will not be slow to do its part in realizing the principle of the Century. II. Philosophy remains essentially a Teutonic discipline during the Nineteenth Century, and in its most original manifestations it is still Prot- TEE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 599 estant. As long as the Latin Church has a pre- scribed Philosophy, it will feel no supreme need of independent philosophizing. Accordingly the two chief utterances of the thought of the Century come from the two chief Teutonic peo- ples, the German and the Anglo-Saxon. Each of them will give its own formulation of the one underlying doctrine of Evolution, and each will manifest therein its characteristic national ten- dency . The Teutonic race having substantially united in the grand act of putting down Eevolution and of restoring the old order as far as possible, proceeds next to separate into its two leading branches, each of which has its own distinct sphere of activity for the rest of the Century. Germany will develop its inner strength, restore the old imperial authority, and become the first power of continental Europe. It will realize the Absolute of its great thinkers. But the Anglo-Saxon branch will choose its field of action outside of Europe, revealing its limit-transcend- ing character by taking the whole globe as the arena of its Will. Its call is to go beyond the pale of civilization and deal with the backward man. Cette vieille Europe m'ennuie, is a reported saying of Napoleon, but it seems to be specially true of the English- man. He pushes forth to the less advanced extra-European races, which he develops or 600 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. destroys. Both in the Orient and in the Oc- cident he has gone back to the primitive human being and to primitive society, broken up their isolation, and connected them with the world's total movement. The scientific Evolution of man as a creature of Nature was properly the work of an Englishman. The German thinker confining himself to Europe for the most part, will set forth the Evolution of the Spirit and its works, since these are the supreme facts before him and his nation. But physical Evolution lies not so compellingly in his experience, while it may be deemed a national question with the Anglo-Saxon governing men in Asia, Africa, and America. Not without good reason was Darwin an Englishman. Ill . In this Century of Kestoration we naturally ask: Will the philosophical Norm be restored? We see that the previous Century neglected or denied it along with quite everything trans- mitted from the past. The answer is, the Nine- teenth Century will restore the philosophical Norm, but in its own special way. It will inject into the different stages of the Norm its prin- ciple of Evolution. The Absolute (Metaphysics), Nature (Physics), and Man (as Soul) will be unfolded separately and distinctly in an evolu- tionary procedure. Thus we see the old Norm restored but filled with the new thought of the Century. There is a return to the old philosoph- i THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 601 ical order, but this order is made the bearer of a new content. Let us note another distinction. The great Greek philosophers as well as those of the Seven- teenth Century embodied in their work the total Norm in its three stages, formulating in gen- eral the Universe of God or the Absolute, Nature, and Man. But in the Nineteenth Century we shall find the supreme thinker developing simply one stage of the Norm; for instance Hegel evolves the Absolute (or Logos), while Darwin evolves Nature (or the Cosmos) ; both being evolutionary in their procedure. Previously the individual philosopher possessed the Norm, now the Norm possesses the individual philosopher. Thus the Century itself posits the Norm with decided emphasis, taking it out of the hands of the philosopher who in the preceding Century had thrown it aside and sought to destroy it. The basic movement of the philosophy of the Nine- teenth Century in its threefold process will therefore show the Evolution of the three stages of the philosophic Norm, each of which will have its own distinctive philosopher. This is the grand philosophic restoration after the age of revolution and destruction, the truly spiritual restoration corresponding to that which takes place in the political and social world. In this way Philosophy has come to its com- plete outward expression, has made itself fully 602 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. explicit. Its fundamental process is no longer inside the individual Ego merely, from which it is thrown out into external existence, but the time, not the man, has become the process and follows the lines of the philosophical Norm in its highest spiritual utterance. The Century itself turns philosopher when the individual philoso- pher has renounced his philosophic birthright. The triple movement of the universe (the Pam- psychosis) which it is the function of Philosophy to reveal to the age, now seizes upon a cycle of Time and fills the same with itself and thereby makes itself an outer historic reality. IV. The great fact, then, of theNineteenth Cen- tury, is that man has become aware that he must return upon himself for his starting-point and take up into his thought and life all that he has passed through ; the Ego is to go back to its be- ginning and find its total inheritance of the past ; in order to know itself it must know its growth, its Evolution. Not what the man is immediately, here and now, is the true reality of him, but what he has made of himself from the beginning ; this is what shows his true worth. This princi- ple holds valid not only of the Ego, but of every- thing ; we can know the object aright only by knowing its history. Thus the Nineteenth Cen- tury is still dealing with the cognition of the object, whose truth however can be grasped only by seeing its Evolution, which has now become THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 603 the essence of all Being. We have often noted that all modern Philosophy during its three cen- turies from Descartes largely turns upon this problem of cognition. The Seventeenth Cen- tury made my knowing of the object a divine act. The Eighteenth Century took it out of God's hands and put it into the Ego, which soon discovered that it could not know the object im- mediately, as it is in itself, in its truth. But the Nineteenth Century declares : You can know the object, perchance not immediately but mediately, as evolved ; cognition of the truth now comes through Evolution ; you are to hunt up in every case the history of the past and see what the record of the thing has been. Thus you get back of what merely appears here and now into the essence, which has revealed itself unfolding. The present may be only the phenomenon, but the past in its development shows the reality. So the Nineteenth Century will seek to seize the process in so far as this is manifested in Evo- lution. Of course Evolution has long been at work and in a manner known, even if not con- sciously formulated. If we turn back to the Aryan race, or at least to the West-Aryan por- tion of it, we find that it has moved both exter- nally and internally through a long series of stages out of Asia, through Europe, to America. An unconscious impulse to push on, to be pro- gressive, to go West has now become conscious, 604 MODERN E UROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. the principle of the Century, the formula of its Philosophy. One may well ask : Why just now does this principle of Evolution break through into universal consciousness? Primarily on account of an inner necessity, which we have already tried to trace. But we may add that this mighty Aryan migration westward has seem- ingly reached the limit which Nature has placed upon it, having struck the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific, which barrier has halted it, deflected it, turned it back upon itself. The fact may well be deemed a racial crisis ; having surged forward several thousand years at least and run up against the obstructing wall of Nature, the whole race can well turn back and look at its entire career of development, thereby becoming conscious of its own innermost spirit of Evolution and formu- lating the same in its fundamental thought expressed by Philosophy. In all the great philosophic movements of the past we have gen- erally found an outer necessity corresponding with the inner compelling power of the Spirit. So the Aryan man in the Nineteenth Century has to return upon himself within and without, has to discover and formulate for himself what he really is through seeing what he has been, quite from the beginning not only of human but of animal existence. Thus the Nineteenth Century must be not simply evolutionary, but consciously so. It THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 605 reveals the Evolution of Evolution ; the process of the ages is no longer implicit, the soul of the race is no longer unconscious in its profoundest movement , but self -knowing. Not without draw- ing from the deepest fountain of his race's spirit did the greatest philosopher of the Century pro- claim the Absolute to be self-knowing. V. The philosophic movement of the Nine- teenth Century is dominated by three leading thoughts, which, though distinct, make a process together. That is, the one principle of Evolu- tion shows itself in three main forms, which are at bottom psychical . The same general fact we noticed in the two preceding Centuries. In each of them also the fundamental process of Thought embodied itself in a personal Triad of the greatest philosophers. In the Nineteenth Century Hegel and Darwin are the supreme heroes of Evolution ; but the third person of the process is not so manifest at present. Perhaps the sifting of Tim will bring him out. The third, and latest doc- trine, however, has undoubtedly appeared, and is to be assigned its true place. Its name, how- ever, is still fluctuating; we shall call it Physio- psychism, though a more common designation is Physiological Psychology. The Nineteenth Century may be said, there- fore, to manifest its chief philosophic function in evolving Evolution through the three stages of the Norm the Absolute, Nature, and Man. 606 MODERN E UROPEAN PHIL SOPHY. These stages we shall briefly designate in advance as follows : 1. Hegel representing metaphysical Evolu- tion, though he calls it logical, the Evolution of the Logos or of Eeason both in itself and in every- thing else. This also is named the Evolution of the Absolute, or Spirit evolving itself through itself. That is, Mind or Intelligence unfolds itself into and through its own forms expressed in categories. 2 . Darwin representing physical Evolution , which has quite monopolized the use of the word. In this stage Evolution becomes visible, explicit in an ascending order which is manifest to the senses, and is outwardly separated into a vast multitude of shapes. The Logos now really appears (particularly in Biology or in the forms of organic existence), throwing itself out into the natural world. This stage (Darwinism) is thus the separative one in the total sweep of the Cen- tury's Psychosis, and deals specially with the second stage of the philosophic Norm, namely Nature. : . 3. Physio-psychism representing the Evo- lution of the Soul (or Ego) in its reactions against the determination of Nature. An inner energy of an organism is seen unfolding itself through outer manifestations which arise from external stimulation. This hints a return, even if partial and imperfect, out of Nature toward TEE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 607 self-conscious Reason. Thus it suggests, as far as it goes, the third stage of the philosophic Norm. Physio-psychism. gives in its way the rise of the soul through its past inherited forms which can often be made to show themselves by experiment. This can also be called Evolution- ary Psychology and may well be deemed the preparation for the completer Psychology which has in it not merely the ascent but the self- returning principle of the Ego. In the sphere of Natural Science, therefore, the Nineteenth must be deemed creatively the biological Century, as we have had hitherto the mechanical (Seventeenth) and the chemical (Eighteenth) Centuries. The three in them- selves form an evolutionary process, in which we behold the third stage making Evolution its principle, which shows the Science of Nature re- turning upon itself and tracing its forms from the beginning, and therein striking mightily the fundamental note of the Century. More em- phatically than even before does this Science of Nature now assert itself as a necessary stage of the philosophic Norm, and proceed to rival if not to outstrip its metaphysical brother in affirm- ing and formulating Evolution as the Century's principle. VI. Evolution takes for granted an immanent principle in Spirit and in Nature which unfolds through itself and projects its manifold forms 608 MODERN E UTtOPEAN PHILOSOPHY. in gradation. The question rises, whence comes this principle, this formative energy? Evolution does not answer such a question, but assumes the mentioned principle and points out its trans- formations. Thus something lies back of Evo- lution and sets it going, propelling it into its onward career. Evolution therefore cannot fully evolve itself ; given its start it moves ahead to its end which somehow must get back to the beginning. When Evolution has evolved that which can return and evolve its starting-point or its principle, a new sphere is reached beyond Evolution, beyond the Nineteenth Century. For we must see that Evolution, of its own in- herent nature, has to evolve out of Evolution; it cannot stay with itself but must push beyond, till by its own inner movement it pushes beyond itself and then it is no longer strictly Evolution. When it reaches the end which returns to and makes the beginning, when it has evolved the principle which it starts with, then it is no longer an ascending evolutionary line but the total circle. Evolution is therefore, dialectical. When it has evolved that which evolves it as a conscious process, it has passed into a higher principle of which it is but a part, a stage, a moment. What is this higher principle which Evolution, working in the Nineteenth Century, has forced into existence, and which, after being thus THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 609 brought forth, has swallowed its own parent? We have often said in a general way that the Nine- teenth Century evolves Evolution ; but what is it that evolves itself evolving Evolution? Evi- dently the evolutionary Ego in its supreme creat- ive act has unfolded itself unfolding everything else, has evolved itself evolving Evolution, and has become conscious of itself as an integral part of this total process of Self-evolution. Where- with we have landed beyond the Nineteenth Century into the new order of which the careful reader has noted hitherto many an indication. Such is, however, the secret unconscious germ sprouting, growing, evolving in Evolution itself, which must at last, if it be true to its principle, show itself to be an evolutionary stage in its own complete Evolution. But we have already indi- cated that this Century of Evolution has several stages, the study of which must be our next object. 39 610 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY, I. 1be0eL The Nineteenth Century has closed, and Hegel still remains its greatest philosopher. It is declared that he is completely dethroned in his own country, but certainly no other man there has taken his place. Moreover his influence has gone beyond national limits, even beyond Euro- pean limits, and his thought has shown itself to be universal. Of course his doctrine* has met with strong, often bitter opposition; but just this opposition indicates its strength. In a supreme sense he is the last philosopher of Europe. To be sure, since his time it has produced more philosophers than ever before, but no peer of Hegel. One of the interesting facts of the time is that when he was rejected by his own people his spirit seemed to pass over to the practical Anglo-Saxon, both in England and in America, with whom it has found a new birth. Accord- ing to a recent estimate taken from the opinions of a number of competent and unbiased judges, Hegel is still the most influential philosophic thinker of our time. Hegel is, however, but a stage of the greater cycle of the Nineteenth Century, of which he was not conscious. He could not know what was to come after him and was to make him an HEGEUSLIFE. 611 element of a larger process. Still less could he be aware that his whole Century, after develop- ing into its entirety, was to show itself but a part of the complete movement of Modern Phi- losophy. Yet Hegel, more adequately than any other philosopher, has developed the idea of the cycle both in his own system and in all systems of thought. To be true to him in the deepest sense we shall have to unfold him as a portion of a vaster sweep than lay in his consciousness. Yet really we are thus applying to him his own principle. On the other hand, such a treatment militates with his claim of being the absolute philosopher. But this dualism lay in Hegel, in- deed it lies in ail philosophy, of which Hegel is in one way the last expression. Underneath him and often controlling his thought unconsciously, was working the deeper principle of the coming time and the new world. This deeper principle, unknown to the author yet determining and finally breaking up his system, is what the ex- positor of to-day, looking back through a vista of quite one hundred years, is chiefly to bring forth to the light. Hegel was conscious of the philosophic Norm, and embodied it after his manner in his system ; but he was not conscious that his whole sys- tem was only the first stage of the vaster and profounder evolution of the philosophic 612 M ODERN E UR OPE AX PHIL SOPHY. which the total Century was working out to its conclusion. For this Norm is no longer simply inside the thought of the individual philosopher, but his thought is inside of it, since it is the movement of the Century itself, which has now turned philosopher, and is philosophizing after the pattern of the philosophic Norm. When the Eighteenth Century in its thinkers had denied the truth of God, Nature and Man, the Nineteenth Century takes up the theme afresh, and estab- lishes it through its new principle of Evolution. This opens with Hegel. We must, therefore, keep in mind that the evolutionary idea of the total Century is afar vaster thing than Darwin- ism, which, however, is a very important stage of it. We shall next seek to give an exposition of Hegel as Whole in himself, for this he was too, though he was likewise but a part or a stage of a totality greater than himself. Three forms of utterance, the philosopher has: his Life connected with his Time his most immediate, instinctive expression; his Writings, which demand a sepa- ration of himself within and an external projec- tion of his thought into outward forms; his Philosophy which is his deepest Self organized along with his Time more or less distinctly after the philosophic Norm. I. HEGEL'S LIFE. About one-half of Hegel's years belonged to the Eighteenth Century, the HEGEL'S LIFE. 613 other half reach nearly a generation into the Nineteenth Century. The latter is of course his mature period, the time of fruitage and fulfillment. But the former is his stage of acquisition and inner development. His growth moves on a line with a great, perhaps the greatest modern epoch, the French Revolution, which seems to have mirrored itself with all its changes in his youth- ful soul. As his life in Time makes the grand transition out of the Eighteenth into the Nine- teenth Century, so does his thought in Philoso- phy. Though Hegel's life is cut in twain by the in- coming Century, we shall find that the second half, which is the time of ,his active, ripened spirit, contains two very distinct epochs. Hence we shall divide his life as a whole into three sepa- rate Periods, through which every complete, rounded-off career seems to pass, in one form or other. I. First Period (1770-1801). Most biog- raphers of Hegel have emphasized the impor- tance of his transition to Jena where he arrived in January, 1801. It was a great external change, and with it corresponded an internal change which soon began to show itself. From a pri- vate tutorship which brought him into con- tact chiefly with immature mindk or left him wholly to himself, he passes to being a public instructor in a University, whose society and 614 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. work call forth all his latent powers. He has had a long time of apprenticeship, of appro- priation; now begins a time of creation, of for- mulating, organizing and imparting what he has won from others and from himself. The main points of this First Period we shall briefly note. George William Frederick Hegel was born the 27th of August, 1770, at Stuttgart, the capital of Wiirternberg. His father was an official of State and seems to have had little influence upon the son. More interesting is the fact that an ances- tor some two hundred years before had left his native country, Carinthia, on account of religion, and had settled in Suabia which had become Prot- estant at the Reformation. Many of his descend- ants were clergymen ; we see that our philosopher had inherited a religious strand, which, however, had in it the original dissent of Protestantism. Hegel will hear the new protest of the age, not religious but political, and will not fail to give his response. In his seventh year Hegel was sent to the Gymnasium of his native town, where he remained till he was eighteen. He there made his first acquaintance with the Greek world which was destined to exercise so great an influence over him during his whole life. Particularly the works of Sophocles he read and absorbed ; from 'them he seems to have drawn his first concep- tion of the spirit of Hellas. Hegel may well be deemed a re-incarnated Greek; no other modern HEGEL'S LIFE. 615 man, not even Goethe, has so deeply penetrated the Hellenic view of the world. This became an anchor to him throughout all his later fluctu- ations. He also read books belonging to the new German literature then arising ; he partook of the spirit of the time with its revolutionary tendencies, quite the opposite of the classical repose of the old Greek. This dual culture, implanted in him already at the Gymnasium, he will retain to the end of his career. During this early period also his teachers noticed a hesitation in his speech, a mumbling and stammering over words in his delivery, as if there was something in him that refused to come out clearly, something deeper than language, which persisted in remaining within his spirit. It is recorded by his friendly biographer (Rosen- kranz) that Hegel not only spoke but wrote with difficulty to the last. His industry sought to conquer this obstacle by making extensive ex- cerpts from the authors whom he read, a habit which began with him in the Gymnasium. Hegel's books often show this primal struggle with human speech, which compels him to resort to the strangest compounds and combinations for the utterance of unutterable thought. At the age of eighteen Hegel went to the University of Tubingen, for the purpose of studying Theology. Little satisfaction he ob- tained from the direct instruction of his teachers. 616 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. But he kept up his Greek studies, and started to work seriously upon Kant. Indeed, Philosophy began secretly to get the upper hand, and to take the place of Theology, which he will philosophize in time. Hegel as a student could be jovial, he could upon occasion do his share of drinking, fencing, riding ; but on the whole he was not up to the mark, since his comrades nicknamed him the old man on account of his sedateness. Still he was not too old to be inaccessible to the tender passion, and to break into poetry over beautiful Fraulein Hegelmeier, daughter of a former professor. But it seems that he could not per- suade the German maiden to cut off the uncomely queue to her name and be called simply Hegel, and so was condemned to a long bachelorhood, the poor fellow ! During this time another instructor entered the University of Tubingen and roused the students to the highest pitch of enthusiam nothing less than the French Revolution. The year after Hegel's entrance, the States-General met in Paris and opened the series of events which constitute a new epoch in the World's History, and which are deeply interwoven with the life and thought of our philosopher. In 1790 trees of liberty were planted throughout France; the fashion crossed the Rhine and appeared among the students of Tubingen. It is said, though the report is not adequately HEGEL'S LIFE, 617 authenticated, that Hegel and his friend Schelling, also a student of Tubingen, planted a tree of liberty in German soil. One thing is certain : Hegel, already in a protest against the established Theology, becomes revolutionary; he reads French newspapers, French patriotic literature, especially he devours Eousseau. The Eevolution rushes on apace; in 1792 occurs the battle of Valmy, in which republican France hurls back her Teutonic invaders, and which Goethe marks as the dawn of a new era. In 1793 Hegel ends' his course at the University ;* this same year saw the French king beheaded and the Eeign of Ter- ror, the character of which left its traces upon him through life. It is recorded that he was a member of a political club and did not fail to express his sentiments in favor of liberty, equality and fraternity for all mankind. The training of such an epoch is greater than that of any University. Through his strong sympathy with the French Revolution, Hegel transcends the limits of nationality and makes himself European. It is an instance of the dis- cipline of self -estrangement ; spiritually he sepa- rates from his own immediate environment and becomes French and republican, for a time at least. It is a preliminary schooling to that uni- versality which he is to formulate in thought. The negative Eighteenth Century, with its assault upon the established and transmitted, he is to 618 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY experience in its final supreme, destructive out- come. The past, with all its forms, is to be reduced to an appearance, to become a line of phenomena, of which Hegel will hereafter write the science (in his Phenomenology). He becomes himself the negative process of the French Revolution ; its Dialectic seizes him and whirls him through its remorseless stages till he turns and seizes it, making himself its master in his thought. Thus he will pass out of Revo- lution into Evolution, out of the Eighteenth into the Nineteenth Century, out of Kant into Hegel. To this point in his career we have not yet come, though we must now emphasize the revo- lutionary Hegel and his experience at Tubingen. In 1793 he enters upon a new phase of his First Period, the tutorial, which lasts seven years or more, till he reaches Jena. He goes to Switzerland, where he remains three years as tutor in a high-born family. During this time he studies zealously, his chief topics being The- ology and History. Nor is Philosophy neglected. In fact, he is philosophizing Theology. But he grows tired of his solitary life in Switzerland ; he wishes for more books, for literary and philosophical intercourse. Accordingly, in 1796, he quits Berne and returns to his native Stuttgart for a brief visit. Once more he takes the position of tutor in a private family. To this end he goes to Frank- HEGEL'S LIFE. 619 fort in 1797, where he finds congenial com- panions, and stays another three years and more. Here also he devotes himself to study. Espe- cially he works at the thought of the State. He writes a political pamphlet pertaining to the constitution of his native Wiirteinberg. In this pamphlet he distinctly shows the two opposite principles struggling within him. On the one side is the Social Contract of Rousseau with its stress upon the individual; on the other is the Republic of Plato (which he studied at Frank- fort) with its absorption of the individual into the State. The modern French and the ancient Greek principles are both present and at work in Hegel who thus reveals the dualism in him at this time. He is still revolutionary, but with a growing conservative reaction. In this he follows instinctively the movement of the period ; at the excesses of the Revolution all Europe and France herself had grown reactionary. These excesses were simply the final outcome of the Eighteenth Century which in them was manifesting its negative character to the point of self -negation. In the depths of his own spirit Hegel was working through this experience of the age, whose inner movement he will here- after grasp and formulate in writing as the Dialectic. But the distinctive fact of his stay at Frank- fort is that he definitely works out and appro- 620 MODEBX EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. priates the philosophic Norm. Undoubtedly this came chiefly from his study of Greek Philosophy. Plato and Aristotle show the threefold Norm Metaphysics, Physics, and Ethics and after them it becomes the conscious possession of the Greek thinkers. How it dominates the Philos- ophy of the Seventeenth Century has been shown in the First Part of the present work. How it was lost in the Eighteenth Century, and was assailed by Kant has also been set forth. But now comes the philosopher who recovers it and will make use of it hereafter. To be sure, Hegel will not simply go back to the old Norm and reproduce that; on the contrary, he will fill it with the new thought of the age, after a good long struggle, however. The protesting, revolu- tionary Ego on one side, on the other the trans- mitted Norm are the two recalcitrant elements which it is his philosophic function to unite. Rosenkranz has given a pretty full account (see his Hegel's Leben, s. 99 et seq.) of this Norm, which he calls Hegel's System. The out- lines are as follows : I. Logic and Metaphysic. These Hegel has not yet brought into complete unity, which he will do later. But through the mass of thoughts struggling to organize themselves we can see many a coming category and even triads of cate- gories taking their permanent position in the future order. It is surprising how much of his HEGEL'S LIFE. 621 later work can be found here arranging itself by a kind of inner evolution around independent centers of development. II. Nature (Physics). Another surprise meets us when we find what an elaborate Philosophy of Nature Hegel has wrought out so early in his career. He has already its later main divisions into Mechanics, Physics, and Organics. This sounds modern, but the old Greek thinkers here also furnish their contingent; especially do we catch the note of Plato in his Timceus (as Rosenkranz observes). III. Spirit (Geist). This is really a system of Ethics in the large Greek sense, embracing both the moral and institutional principles. It is what he will call later (in the Encyclopedia) Objective Spirit. In this sphere will occur some of Hegel's grandest results. Already he has begun to see and to formulate the meaning of Institutions (Family, Society, State), and to incorporate them in his Philosophy. Here lies largely his vast positive contribution to the Nineteenth Century, for it was the distinctive character of the Eighteenth Century to deny and to destroy Institutions. Such is Hegel's first appropriation of the Norm which makes him a philosopher, and which runs through all his works. It had been evolv- ing slowly for a long time, especially from his study of the History of Greek Philosophy. Now 622 MODERN E UROPEA N PHIL SOPHY. he has seized it and uttered it, at Frankfort about 1798-9. Hereafter he will write out two other explicit statements of the Norm ten years later in the Propaedeutic, and then after another nine or ten years in the Encyclopedia. With this Norm his soul, deeply fermenting, and partially expressed but longing for still completer expression, Hegel feels that he has something to add to the Philosophy of his time. Accordingly he prepares to quit Frankfort and the tutorial business forever. A small sum of money left him by his father, who had died in 1799, will fortify him against want for a time. In his crisis he writes a very suggestive letter (which is still extant) to his friend Schelling who has acquired great fame at Jena. The pur- pose of this letter as we make it out (see it in Rosenkranz Hegel's Leben, s. 142) is that Hegel wishes to come to Jena, for he too has been " driven forward to Philosophy," and has " transformed the ideal of his youth into a sys- tem," which he evidently wants the opportunity to propagate. To be sure Hegel says not a word about coming to Jena, on the contrary he speaks of going to Bamberg and asks his friend for some addresses there. But Schelling manifestly reads the letter aright between the lines; the re- sult is, Hegel appears at the University of Jena in January, 1801, and enters upon a new epoch of his philosophical career. HEGEL'S LIFE. 623 2. Second Period (1801-1818). These seven- teen years are the creative time of Hegel, who now writes his main works and goes through the various stages of his inner philosophical develop- ment. He brings to Jena his revolutionary Ego, though much toned down from his Tubingen days, for he has also appropriated something transmitted, notably the philosophic Norm. Thus he shows two tendencies quite opposite, which are, however, to seek reconciliation in the coming Period. That revolutionary Ego of his, first of all, is to become evolutionary, to which it has already some inner leanings, especially through his study of the History of Philosophy. Let us first note that Jena when Hegel entered it in 1801, was the center of a great intellectual movement, the most original in Europe. Fichte was already gone, but had left his influence ; Schelling was there in the bloom of his philo- sophic power; and now Hegel comes. Nor must we forget that in Weimar not far distant Goethe and Schiller were in the full splendor of their genius. The Romantic school in the two preced- ing years had concentrated at Jena, and then had gone forth to conquer Germany and even Europe. But the philosopher of Romanticism, Schelling, was still on hand, and with him Hegel at once formed a close alliance. There is no doubt that Hegel at first absorbed deeply this Romantic movement. It gave 624 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. validity to the Ego and nourished the same for the wildest flights ; it. also went back to the past and sympathized with the Art, Literature, and Philosophy of former ages, reconstructing the Medieval Period, translating Shakespeare, Calderon, Plato, and even digging up the old Hindoo world in the Valley of the Ganges. This historic sympathy Hegel shared, and Romanti- cism was one of the currents (but not the only one) which carried him over into his evolu- tionary stage whose presence soon began to show itself in his work at Jena. The transition of Hegel to Jena was not a mere -individual act of his, but was in a way representative of the time. The new-born German spirit was collecting itself for a great coming effort of expansion. Kant on the north- eastern border of Germany, had begun the reju- venation of Philosophy, which through his chief disciple, Fichte, had come to Jena, the heart of the country. From the opposite direction, .from the southwestern portion, the two young Swabian philosophers, Schelling and Hegel, had now reached the same center. From the periphery of all Germany there was a gathering of the intellectual heroes of the age in one spot that spot was the little territory of Jena and Weimar. Hegel felt the pulsation of time, and joined the stirring centripetal movement of the spirit, which surged inwardly and outwardly HEGEVS LIFE. 625 through the land. Of course all this multitude of great men could not stay long in the little University. They came there and drank of the fountain which had burst up to the surface at that point from the deepest hidden sources of the Teutonic spirit. Then they went away to impart what they had received. As before stated, the leading Romanticists (the Schlegels and Tieck) were already gone; two years after the arrival of Hegel (1803) Schelhng took his departure. Hegel himself held out till 1807, winding up his career there with the publication of the Phenomenology of Spirit, in which he not only abjures but undoes Romanticism. During the six years Hegel passed through a variety of subordinate phases. At first he was the disciple of Schelling, and the two in conjunction established the Critical Journal of Philosophy, which published a number of Hegel's earlier writings. There was, however, a deep difference between them. They might agree upon the doc- trine that there was an "Absolute, but concerning the nature of this Absolute they disagreed fundamentally. Schelling makes it a processless identity above all separation ; Hegel sees every- where the process, even in the Absolute. Hegel is becoming more and more evolutionary, while Schelling postulates dogmatically his first princi- ple, out of which everything flows, or emanates in a Neo-Platonic way. Moreover the characters 40 626 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. of the two men are quite opposite. Hegel ma- tured slowly, step by step, in a true evolutionary manner; he had reached middle age before his first original book was published. On the other hand Schelling was suddenly ripe, before he was twenty-one; his philosophic precocity is, we believe, without a parallel. He was a dynamic, explosive genius, not a gradually developing one, emanative like his Philosophy. Five years younger than Hegel, he had already done his chief work in Philosophy, when the two began their co-operation at Jena. The two souls had to separate, going in opposite directions: the one being emanative (descending), and the other evolutionary (ascending). Schelling leaves Jena in 1803 whereby the spiritual separation becomes spatial, and their journalistic union is also dis- solved. Four years more Hegel remained at Jena, working out his philosophical problem. He gave courses of lectures to the students of the Uni- versity, the number of hearers being small. Rosenkranz has published the topics of some of these lectures (Hegel's Leben, s. 159), which evidently circled about the philosophic Norm Logic and Metaphysics, Philosophy of Nature, Philosophy of Mind. We also hear of other subjects, for instance the Aesthetic (1802), and the History of Philosophy (1805), and the Phenomenology (1806). HEGEUS LIFE. 627 This last title gives the clew to what he had been chiefly doing ever since his separation from Schelling. The Norm which he had brought from Frankfort had furnished the main material for his formal lectures, but his mind and his heart had been occupied with an evolutionary work, the Phenomenology of Spirit, which appeared in 1807, showing all the stages of the evolution of Spirit to the culmination in the Absolute. Development (Entwickelung) is the pivotal world which Hegel himself employs to designate this work, its whole movement being in the form of an ascent from the lowest stage of human consciousness .to the highest. It is thus a kind of overture to the coming Century whose key-note it strikes from the start. More- over it is deeply connected with the condition of Europe at the time of its composition, especially with the career of Napoleon, who seemed to Hegel during these years as the incarnation of the Absolute. After leaving Jena in 1807 Hegel became editor of a newspaper at Bamberg. Hardly a greater change can be conceived for the author of the Phenomenology which is spun out of the finest gossamer threads of thought, so fine that it requires a subtle mind to see them at all. Napoleon kept his hand upon the journalism of Southern Germany ; no editorials or reflections were allowed. Hegel had simply to gather items 628 MODERN E UEOPEAN PHILOSOPHY. and write them out. But imagine him springing at a leap from the Absolute to an item in a news- paper. As he once treated reality as an appear- ance, so now he has to treat appearance as a reality. And he himself is now hardly more than an appearance. During this time he like- wise began to formulate a constitution for Ger- many, in which his political interest is at least indicated. But after a year's service he obtained a new place which comported better with his genius. In 1808 he received a call to go to Niirnberg as rector of its Gymnasium, in which position he remained eight years. Hegel now found the quiet which enabled him to think out and for- mulate his Philosophy. During this time he produced two main works. One was the Propae- deutic, in which he gave a brief summary of Philosophy for his pupils, following the phi- losophic Norm which he had already elaborated at Frankfort. The other was his Logic, doubtless his greatest production. This also is essentially the Evolution of the Absolute, as we shall see later. The work is in three volumes, the first of which appeared in 1812, the last in 1816. Thus it starts when Napoleon was at the height of his power and concludes with his fall and evanish- ment from Europe. Such was the fate of the incarnate Absolute, " the World-Spirit on horse- back." HEGEL'S LIFE. 629 While at Niirnberg our philosopher got married, aged 41. Marie von Tucher, a daugh- ter of one of the patrician families of the city, accepted the hand of the schoolmaster, who thereupon overflowed again into verse, sweet enough in words but often pretty rough in meter (see some of it in Rosenkranz' Life of Hegel). A well-bred, cultured lady, a friend of Jean Paul, and somewhat addicted to romanticism, which Hegel disliked ; it was probably this topic upon which they once had a little spat, for which we read a humble apology made to her by Hegel, humbler than he ever made afterwards to any man, for the absolute philosopher actually confesses to a failing. But let us celebrate the glorious event ; it is the first wedding which the reader has been present at among all these great- est modern philosophers; Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz of the Seventeenth Century, Locke, Hume and Kant of the Eighteenth Century not one of the whole set was ever married, but kept Philosophy tainted with a kind of monkish celibacy. Hegel, however, starts a new era for Philosophers by his marriage, though a little tardy about it (possibly on account of that first set-back from Miss Hegelmeier). But now he goes to work philosophizing mightily ; the next year the first volume^ of his Logic is finished and printed, a book not to be read like a love romance. 630 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. No Formal Logic of the Schools is this of Hegel; it deals not merely with the Form of Thought, but with the inherent movement of the Matter or Content. Not the abstract Forms but the Pure Essences (reine Wesenheiten) which produce reality are the theme, showing " an immanent development" or inner evolution ascending to the Absolute. Hegel calls his Logic "the exposition of God as He is in His eternal essence before the creation of the world." This statement shows his transition from the Theology to Philosophy, his great struggle being to define " God or Absolute Spirit." To this supreme goal we shall find him, when we come to his written works, taking three different roads, each of which is laid down in a book. Such was the noiseless inner development of Hegel at Niirnberg. It was not his nature to get into conflict with the existent order, being therein different from Socrates,- even from Fichte. He was inclined at present to accept the established institutions and to account for their existence in the world no longer revolutionary but evolutionary. He, the abso- lute idealist so-called, is also supremely the philosopher of reality. His attempt is to bridge this widest and deepest chasm of Spirit, whose dualism has plagued Philosophy from the beginning. Has he made the nexus? A ques- HEGEL'S LIFE. 631 tion not to be answered now, but in the end we shall see. Hegel was hostile to the use of tobacco, he would declaim to his pupils on the danger and filth of the weed, but would take a pinch of snuff during his tirade. His papers lay scattered upon his desk in utter confusion to the eye of the housekeeper, though in his vision they must have constituted an image of the cosmos, con- sidering what an universal order came out of them afterwards into printed books. Hegel could also drink his quota of wine, and one of his questions concerning a city to which he thought of moving, was, Has it good beer? We should also note that at Niirnberg Hegel passed for a friend of Napoleonic domination, and he sought to break up anti-French agitation among his pupils by turning their German patriotism back into old Greek Homer and the Trojan War for an outlet. Chiefly in consequence of the fame of his Logic Hegel obtains three calls to Universities Erlangen, Heidelberg, Berlin. Inasmuch as the call to Berlin was coupled with a doubt concern- ing his delivery ( Vortrag) and a request to rec- ommend himself, our philosopher took a fit of spleen and answered somewhat gruffly : "I am already engaged in Heidelberg." This on the whole was a good move for Hegel. He was not yet quite ready to go to the center of philosophic 632 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. Germany, not till he had written his Encyclo- pedia. For at Berlin he is destined to turn down an entirely new road of life, for which he ought to have a little more quiet preparation. Not yet, cry the Fates of existence, two years more of inner development in this placid South Germany, and then we shall snip in twain every thread which holds thee back. Consequently Hegel becomes professor at Heidelberg (1816-1818), where according to one of his letters the rule was, ' Every one for him- self and the Lord for us all." Not brilliant was the beginning: " At one lecture I had only four hearers." But the number gradually increased. Probably Hegel reached at Heidelberg the depth of his introspective nature, since " he often for- got entirely the external world." Students pass- ing by his house would usually see him " at the window gazing toward the distant mountains and forests as they swam in the hazy atmospbere." Crossing the street after a shower he left his shoe sticking in the mud and went home without noticing h or pure Self-consciousness. I have indeed con- cepts, or specific conceptions, but Ego is the pure Conception, which as Conception has come to existence." (V. 13). This is in a number of ways a very significant statement. It may be considered Hegel's explanation of Hegel, the metaphysical or philosophical Hegel for the nonce turning psychological. He declares 732 M ODE EN E UR OPE AN PHIL tiOPH Y. openly that the" Ego with its process as self- consciousness is just his Conception as existent, as a reality in the world. Yet his Conception is the principle which underlies and propels his Logic and consequently his whole philosophy from beginning to end. Hence one asks at this point, why he did not- install the Ego directly and by name as the ultimate process of his system, the process of his own Self always on hand and at work? Or has he done so? In a manner he has, but in a more de- cided manner he has not. Just here indeed lies Hegel's grand uncertainty, his dualism, his fluctuation between the purely philosophical and the psychological points of view. For though he acknowledges again and again that his Conception is Ego, he will abstract it from the Ego and keep it abstracted as a metaphysical category, till its connection with its fountain head seems obscured if not lost. Still, having once heard this key-note of his entire system, we shall not forget it, through all the vast and intricate mazes of our philosopher. Nor can we help noticing in the preceding passage a sort of hesitation, as if he were unwilling to speak the matter out. Why such an undertone in his words? Each reader will naturally make his own interpretation in such an uncertain matter; but our opinion is that Hegel caught a glimpse of the fact that such a HEGEUS LOGIC CONCEPTION. 733 declaration ultimately involves a complete recon- struction of his system. He would have to carry all his categories back to the process of the Ego and explain their origin and movement by that process directly. But thus Hegel's Philosophy would push beyond itself, indeed beyond Philos- ophy itself, and entes a new world-discipline, namely, Psychology. Such a step he did not and could not make in his epoch nor in Europe, since he had no actual institutional realm for the ground- work and the illustration of his thought. Hegel himself has often said that Philosophy can only utter the thought underlying the institutions and civilization of the country and age in which it appears. Philosophy cannot, any more than can man, leap out of its skin. In the same passage Hegel describes or per- chance defines the Ego as " the pure unity which relates itself to itself," which is " the abstraction from all content and determinateness," and in such act " returns into the freedom of unlimited equality with itself." This is the absolute free- dom of the Ego, and is " Universality which is the result of the previous negative procedure," the abstracting from all determinate content. Yet, on the other hand, the Ego is Individuality just by this procedure, " since it places itself in opposition to everything else and excludes the same;" thus it is "individual personality." Note now the change: the abstract terms with 734 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. which Hegel here characterizes the Ego are Uni- versality and Individuality, which we shall later find in the treatment of Conception, though Particularity, or inner separation will have to be introduced in order to make the process complete. Still further: " each of these is the totality, each contains the determination of the other in itself, and they are One, which One, however, is the disruption of itself into Two," namely, the Universal and the Individual (V. 12). Such is not only Conception, but " the Conception of the Conception," or the Ego grasping and formu- lating its own process. It is plain that Hegel has here before his mind the Psychosis, but is expressing it metaphysically and not psycholo- gically. What necessity, inner and outer, lay upon him to do just thus, has been already touched upon. In the same connection Hegel sets forth an- other important point : his relation to antecedent philosophies. Specially does he trace the devel- opment of his Conception out of the Substance of Spinoza. He emphasizes the fact that he will not and cannot refute the system of Spinoza, as if his own were the truth and the latter false. Refutation is not the right word or thought to express the evolution of one System out of the other. ' The doctrine -of Spinoza is a neces- sary standpoint, upon which the Absolute places itself " in its movement. " But it is not the HEGEL'S LOGIC CONCEPTION. 735 highest standpoint," though it is to unfold into the latter, which is to contain it as a subordinate element. " This implies a deficiency, a lack of completeness; it is imperfect truth, but not un- truth. The only refutation of Spinozism, is first, to recognize its principle as essential and necessary, and then to elevate this principle out of itself into the higher. Substance (Spinoza's doctrine) is to be seen as a stage in the genesis of the Conception," into which it unfolds and becomes a moment (V. 9-11). In like manner Hegel goes back (in his Intro- duction to Conception) to Kant, and shows us on what lines his Logic is an evolution from Kantian thoughts. Even to ancient Aristotle he returns (V. 30) and, while giving great ap- preciation, indicates wherein the supreme Greek philosopher has to be transcended. For Logic must now- concern itself not simply with the Forms of Thought, but " must investigate in how far these forms correspond to Truth." It is plain that Hegel seeks to connect himself with antecedent philosophies, as they come down the stream of time, regarding his own philosophy as the last point of view into which the rest have developed, and from which they are to be judged. Very closely he joins his Logic to the History of Philosophy, which is evidently pres- ent to him all the while, and from which he draws as from his primal sources. 736 MODERN E UROPEA N PHIL SOPHY. Another reflection the alert reader will not fail to make at this point. The whole line of the philosophies of the past has unfolded into the Hegelian, which thus becomes their test and final arbiter. But is Hegel's own doctrine to be subjected to the same law? Is he in the process of Evolution or is this to stop with him? If his is truly the absolute philosophy, it would seem to be the end of the philosophic world-movement, and the beginning of something else. There is no doubt that Hegel at times speaks as if his system were the philosophic finality. Particu- larly during his last period at Berlin, his auto- cratic spirit in philosophy increased, and practi- cally at times he tried to play the part of dictator. Equally certain is it that the opposite trend can be shown in Hegel; he regards his own work as being no exception to the evolu- tionary principle in philosophy, of which he has been the stoutest champion. The present is, then, another case of what we have already noted as the Hegelian dualism, and the same dualism lies deep in all philosophy. In the foregoing state- ments Hegel decidedly stands for evolution of thought, find he explains his Conception as devel- opment, till at last the Absolute Idea is reached. Just here can be seen the germinal point of the new thought, which is to reconcile the Hegelian dual- ism and that of all philosophy. Yet this must be done in accord with Hegel's own principle a$ HEGEL' 8 LOGIC CONCEPTION. 737 heretofore set forth. His philosophy is not to be refuted by argumentation, nor is it to be set down as false. On the contrary it is to develop its own inadequacy from within, and so bring forth the higher point of view. What he says he has done to Spinoza and to Kant, must be done to him, if his doctrine be universal, and not a caprice of his own. It is a necessary stage in the movement of philosophy, but shows itself inadequate and contradictory, wherein its own Dialectic must apply to itself. To be true to Hegel in the deepest sense, we are to unfold Hegel out of Hegel. He cannot be battered down from without, but he can and must be evolved *' into the higher standpoint." Thus he is eternally preserved in his own History of Philosophy, and is the whole by being truly the part. And we may state here that not only Hegel's philosophy, but Philosophy itself as a world- discipline is also to be put into this development. The time has come when not only separate phi- losophies are to unfold, one out of the other, in an endless chain, of succession, but Philosophy itself, the whole of it, as a world-discipline is to be thrown into the cauldron of Evolution, in order that out of it may come forth not merely another new Philosophy, but another world- discipline, which is ' the higher standpoint " not 47 738 MODERN EUROPEAN- PHILOSOPHY. merely in relation to some special philosophy, but in relation to the totality of Philosophy. Hegel, however, cannot entirely avoid discuss- ing the psychological side of his logical process. This comes up prominently with the question, What is it to conceive? (V. 15.) The answer runs: "To conceive an object consists really in nothing more than that the Ego makes the same its own, penetrating the same and bringing it into its form, which is the Universal made individual, or the Individual made universal" (as set forth in the preceding process of Con- ception). Emphatic is here the statement that the Ego must perform the process of Concep- tion, is indeed just that process. But what is this Ego? It has several stages very different, which are in general sense-perception (or sensu- ous intuition), representation, and this Concep- tion (or Thought). But how are these stages graded in importance? "The object in sense- perception or in representation is still external, still something foreign. But in Conception (the third stage), the independence or the immediacy of the object, which it has in sense-perception and representation, is transformed into some- thing posited or mediated ; the Ego in thinking penetrates the same," assimilating it, in fact re-creating it and making it truly object. Thus Conception (or Thought) is seen to return to the first immediate Being given by the senses, and to EEQEU S L OGIC CONCEPTION. 739 mediate it, completing the process. Such is tte difference in the same object sense-perceived and conceived (or thought) . The house in sense- perception is something given immediately to the senses ; but the house in Conception is no longer merely this given something, but we get behind it (so to speak), and behold its creative principle in Thought. Now it is truly objective, when con- ceived or thought. Previously it was ' an ap- pearance; " not till we think it, do we reach the truth of the object. " This objectivity or the Conception is nothing other than the nature of self-consciousness, and has no other moments or determinations than the Ego itself" (V. 16). Objective truth is, therefore, the very process of Ego, or the Conception. This is the process which we are to find in all things, if we would know them in their truth. But this is properly the psychological process, and really underlies the logical, or is one with it. Here, then, one is compelled to inquire into the relation between Psychology and Logic. Hegel says: "Concerning this matter, the observation is to be made, at the very start, that those forms, sense-perception, representa- tion, and the like, belong to self-conscious mind which as such is not considered in logical o science " (V. 17). Here he omits the mention of Conception or Thought, which is considered in Psychology as well as in Logic, being really 740 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. the third stage of both. " The pure (logical) determinations of Being, Essence and Concep- tion, constitute, it is true, the foundation and inner fabric of the Mind (or Ego); but this Mind, when sense-perceiving, is in the determi- nateness of Being, and, when representing (or imaging), has risen out of Being to Essence." Thus he parallels the first two stages of Logic (Being and Essence) with the first two stages of Mind (or Intellect in Psychology). He declares that these concrete forms of Mind (sense-per- ception and representation) have as little to do with the science of Logic as the forms of Nature have (for instance Space and Time). Ac- cording to him Logic determines both Nature and Mind. But what about the third form, Con- ception? " As the act of the self-conscious Understanding (or Ego) Conception too is not to be considered a part of logical science, which treats Conception as it is in and for itself (or objective)." This is peculiarly Hegelian; the Conception in Logic must be divorced from the Conception in the Mind (or Ego), which is somehow to be put out of sight. Though the Ego as subjective Conception has had to recreate objective Conception, and put it into its catego- ries, whereby logical science arises, still that first (or psychological) Conception must be in a manner suppressed as something too individual for the universality of Logic. Thus the latter HEGEL ' 8 L OGIC C ON CEP TION. 74 1 becomes the determinant of the Ego, though this Ego has really determined it, and our phi- losopher establishes a new logical autocracy of the universe. Now such autocracy has its valid- ity, yet not complete validity; it is, yet Is not the whole which Hegel claims for it; Logic as science is not to cast out of its process the Ego which made it, aud which must be perpetually re-making it in order that it be at all. Logic after obtaining absolute authority in the City of the Spirit, being called by Hegel just the Ab- solute in its highest potence, cannot be allowed to turn around and thrust down the individual Ego through which it rose to power, and which is an essential part of its process. That is absolu- tism with a vengeance. It is true that the in- dividual Ego must be subordinate to the Law as absolute and must obey the same. But the other side is not to be left out ; that same in- dividual is ultimately to make the Law which he obeys, and he is properly to obey none other in any complete institutional condition. We can- not help thinking that the logical autocracy of Hegel has its counterpart in the social and political autocracy we still find in Europe, which, however, is gradually throwing off this form of absolutism. We have given with greater detail the preced- ing analysis of Hegel's introduction to the Third l*art of his Larger Logic ( Werke V. ) because it 742 MODERN EURO PEAN PHIL SOPHY. shows the philosopher at the Parting of the Ways in the deepest depth of his thought. Which road will he turn down and proceed upon for the future, the philosophical or the psycho- logical? Just these two elements he has found in his Conception which as creative Ego has solved his primal problem of uniting Metaphy- sics and Logic in a common process with itself. And he declares that the truth of the object is just this process of Ego and contains no other moments than those of self -consciousness. The reader may well ask, why not then show this Logic and with it show the whole objective world as containing the process of the Ego directly, that is psychologically? But Hegel at once throws away the psychological element of the Conception, though he knows that just that has created his whole science. He seems afraid of the Fichtean or Kantian solipsism (or subjec- tive idealism), and hence places all his emphasis upon the metaphysical reality of Conception, giving to its process, which is properly psycho- logical, three metaphysical categories (Universal, Particular, Individual) which quite ignore and even conceal its psychical origin. Thus his Absolute Science as creative leaves out the very principle that created it and keeps it going. And then how can it be absolute if it leaves out that or anything? Here we see the deepest breach in Hegel's HEGEVS LOGIC CONCEPTION. 743 thought, really the dualism between Philosophy and Psychology, between the outgoing and in- coming world-disciplines. In Hegel Philosophy here openly rejects Psychology even while acknowledging that the latter has created it. Now we must be careful to consider that this proceeds from no insincerity on the part of Hegel, yea from nothing which can rightly be called weakness in the man. He represents his deepest self, as well as his age and Europe; he represents Philosophy which has now evolved itself to the point of the most piercing dualism, which dualism, however, has been in it more or less implicitly from the beginning. The great- ness of Hegel is that Philosophy herself takes him as her final representative and expositor. His voice is her voice, his character is her char- acter, at least as far as the Nineteenth Century is concerned. And through him and also through her the man of thought has to pass in order to reach the Twentieth Century. There is no road around them or over them. This move- ment of the Ages runs through them, and, we think, out of them into the next stage, for which they are the necessary preparation. Thus Hegel, having penetrated to the last Parting of the Ways before the Future, turns down, or rather turns back, upon the Way of Philosophy which he will reconstruct from the beginning, showing its evolution in the Nine- 74: 4 M ODE UN E UE OPE AN PHIL SOPHY. teenth Century and within himself through the Principle of Evolution. In the same Introduction (V. 25), Hegel comes to speak of the relation of Logic to Nature and Mind. Thus he has before him the philosophic Norm with its threefold division Logic, Nature and Mind. This is fundamentally tbeoldGreekNorm of all Philosophy, though in place of Metaphysics Hegel substitutes Logic, which he expressly declares to be the customary Metaphysics, as far as its general character is con- cerned. The sciences of Nature and Mind he calls the concrete sciences, though they are created by Logic, the abstract science, which is " the inner con- structive artist of the concrete sciences/' is what un- folds them into reality. Yet ' ' Logic is also the arche- typal producer " of the forms after which Nature and Spirit are patterned, and is conceived as creative, or the true genetic conception of the physical and spir- itual worlds. Thus Mind as Ego is created by it, yet this same Ego has to recreate it by thinking in order to attain to science or knowledge. We here come to the division of the Conception, which has been the secret power dividing and organ- iz'ng both Being and Essence. But now it must be grasped as that which divides and organizes itself. It has been hitherto the determinant of the Other, but now this determinant must determine itself. Hence Conception is the self-determined, the free, or is that which, in going forth from itself, is always with itself. It is the totality seized as process, which must sepa- rate within itself (otherwise it could not proceed), yet be one with itself in all its separation. Its sepa- rated parts must be, accordingly, what the Whole is, or EEOEUS LOGIC CONCEPTION. 745 must have its process, in order to be identical with it. Such is, in general, Hegel's Conception conceived, or the Conception of the Conception (Begrift des Be- griffs). Now this we are to seize in its division, or rather in its self-division, for its division does not come from the outside, butis its own, is through itself. Really it is Conception dividing and ordering Con- ception itself and so seeing what it itself is. The division of Conception through itself is triple into subject, object, and the unity of the two, or the return of object to subject. Hence Hegel's divi- sions of the Conception are Subjectivity, Objectivity, and the Idea in the Hegelian sense. These divisions we are to see unfolding out of the Conception as a Whole, which divides within itself into its parts Sub- jectivity, Objectivity and Idea ; yet each of these parts is the Whole and a Conception, and so has the total process as its own. We shall, therefore, behold each of these parts dividing within itself and unfold- ing in the threefold process which is Conception. Or Conception is conceiving Conception and developing it, which is thus its own genetic process. Here occurs a difficulty in nomenclature. Hegel uses this term Conception for no less than three differ- ent phases of his scheme. It is applied to this whole sphere, then to the first stage of this sphere, then again to the first form of this first stage. The inherent difficulty of the work is thus heightened by a confu- sin which comes from using the same word for differ- ent grades of the same thought. This ambiguity we found also in Being, and is not infrequent in Hegel. It is true that he sometimes helps himself out by using adjectives and other special designations in order to 746 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. keep his distinctions clear. Herein we shall follow him and employ adjectives or brief descriptions to mark these subtle divisions which so easily slide into one another. A. Subjectivity. It can be called also subjective Conception, or Conception as subject. Hegel calls it formal Conception, which develops the forms of itself, or of thinking. Hence it includes formal logic with its three spheres usually stated as Conception, Judg- ment and Reasoning. It is properly the ratiocinative process put into its place in the Hegelian Logic. It is called Subjectivity since the subject or Ego is dealing with its own shapes; Conception, unfolding in itself is determining the forms of Conception, the categories into which it precipitates the stages of its own process. Yet each of these stages is again the total process. This fact may be indicated by putting stress upon the subjective Processes in the following outline, which are three the first or germinal one (Conception proper), the second or separative one (Judgment), and the third or returning one (Syllogism). (1) The first subjective Process of Conception as a Whole is still called Conception by Hegel though with a special emphasis (Conception as such in his smaller Logic). Conception now seizes its own inner process as self-conscious and puts its three stages into meta- physical categories Universality, Particularity and Individuality. That is, Conception, though it is the Ego just here, throws its own process out of itself and makes the same the process of all existence, including itself. So it is universal and indeed creates the Uni- versal. But this Universal as Conception divides within itself and becomes particular, being separated HEGEL'S LOGIC CONCEPTION. 747 from itself and put in opposition to itself. Thus the division of the Conception at this stage produces the Particular. But this Particular is a moment or part of the Whole and so has the process of the Whole in itself, whereby it becomes individual. But the Indi- vidual must have within it the total process of Con- ception and so is universal, which is a return to the first stage. Thus Hegel evolves his three fundamental categories (a) Universality (6) Particularity and (c) Individuality as the three stages of Conception in its first subjective Process. This, as already stated, is the germinal Pro- cess of Hegel's Logic, and indeed of Hegel's whole Philosophy. Here is the embryonic cell out of which his entire system unfolds. Really it is the Conception, the one basic Conception at which we have now arrived the Conception of all Conception, and all the rest is Conception in some form. That is, the Universe and all its parts, even the smallest, is a Conception and has to be grasped ultimately as a Conception by the Conception. It is the original genetic act of the All- Mother when " she conceives and bears a son." The Universal, the Particular and the Individual form the primal creative process, with which Thought truly begins, for Being and Essence were but abstract, preliminary stages of the Mind penetrating to its inner generative principle, to its own Self. Does this Conception exist as an actual object which can be pointed out? Already we have found Hegel intimating more than once that it is the Ego. Every individual as person is a manifestation of it, every act of self-consciousness is a recreation of the 748 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. Universe in little, an embryonic reproduction of the All. The Ego, in order to be, must be the universal Process, or the Process as universal. This is the first fact of it, the fact of universality, which ulti- mately can only mean the creative Process of the Universal. But creation means separation, division, particularity, which has been noted as the second stage. Yet such a state of division cannot remain, it separates from itself or negates itself and so returns to the Universal whereby it becomes Individuality. Here lies (specially in connection with the second stage) what Hegel calls the Dialectic, the movement of Conception into an^l out of the Finite, the Par- ticular, the Negative, ending in the completion of the Process. It is to be again observed that Hegel was not the first to reach the Universal. It belongs to Greek Philosophy and was the grand attainment of the supreme philosophical Period (the Athenian) of antiquity. Socrates, Plato and Aristotle elaborated and unfolded the Universal. The fundamental for- mula of them all may be given in the statement that the Essence of Being is the Universal (or the Conception). Yet each of these philosophers shows a different stage in its development (see our Ancient European Philosophy, pp. 204, 211; also the whole account of the mentioned philosophers). The old Greek thinkers, however, regarded this process of Conception (or Thought) as One with Being immedi- ately; not even Aristotle seems to be conscious that his principle of Thought-thinking-Thought (noesis noeseos) has any reference to the subjective Ego. But Hegel is aware of this ; he makes his Universal HEGEL'S LOGIC - CONCEPTION. 749 an abstraction from the self-knowing Ego, which he thus metaphysicizes consciously. With him the pro- cess of Conception as universal, particular and indi- vidual, is thrown out from the Self and formulated in its metaphysical abstractness. But after doing this and knowing that he has done it and saying that he has done it, he drops the part of the Ego ; he will not take it as an element of the process which it has created and must always recreate in order to know. In other words, Hegel is not psychological, but philosophical (or metaphysical). Now it is emphatically our thought that this Process of Conception is to be brought back to the Ego, to the primal source whence it originally sprang, in order to drink perpetually of its own creative foun- tain-head. The abstraction thus is eternally revivified out of the source of life itself, of all creation. We can- not do without the precious heritage of Universality, Particularity and Individuality, derived from the old Greeks, transmitted through the medieval thinkers, and wrought over by the moderns till these terms have become an ingrown element of thought and language. But they need to be psychologized. They must be seen as the inner process of the Ego creating its own purest forms of self- activity. They are indeed the necessary shapes which the Ego takes in all thinking ; they show the way it works and must work. So w can in a sense say that this process (Universal, Par- ticular, and Individual), dominates the Ego, giving to it its law, and prescribing the way it must go. Such is the side of necessity, of the Absolute, of autocracy, the side of Hegel. But on the other hand it is the Ego which makes this process, which dominates it, and 750 M ODEEN E UK PEAN PHIL OSOPB Y . establishes the law which it obeys, creating the very Constitution by which it is controled. Now this self-legislative power of the Ego must be acknowl- edged in our Psychology as fully as it has been ac- knowledged in our government. Such is the side of self-determination, of institutional freedom, of democ- racy, which also must have its science of thought, which is Psychology. This is not, however, the old Psychology, rational or experimental, but is the science of the Psychosis, the threefold Process of the Ego which explicitly determines the above Process of Conception and is not simply determined by it. (Those who may wish to see these three stages of Conception Universal, Particular, and Individual psychologized and thus brought back to the psychical Process of the Ego from which Hegel separated them and metaphysicised them, can see the exposition in our Psychology and Psychosis, pp. 478-495.) (2) The second subjective Process of Conception is called Judgment by Hegel, using a traditional term of Formal Logic. The German word is Urtheil, whose etymology suggests the meaning of primordial division, or the original part. It is thus the second or separative stage of Conception as Subjectivity. ''Judgment can, therefore, be called the realization of Conception, in so far as reality designates the pass- ing into a determinate existence.'* The previous process of Conception was simply that of the subjec- tive Ego within itself; but in Judgment the stages of this process step forth as separate products and are uttered in distinct categories, which, however, are still united in thought and in expression. * ' The nature of this realization of Conception is, first, that the HEGEUS LOGIC CONCEPTION. 751 moments (or stages) of Conception (in its first forru) are independent totalities through individuality. But in the second place these totalities are joined together in Conception which is their relation, and which is now Judgment." But these independent totalities which are still a unity, must be named or categorized ; they are called in the present connection Subject and Pred- icate, each of which is separate and a Whole taken by itself, yet both form a new Whole which is a proposition or Judgment (V. 64). This is manifestly a new stage of separation, differ- ent from yet closely related to the previous stage. In the latter we had conception, separating itself into the Universal and the Individual primarily (V. 12) as implicitly subjective. But now Conception has become explicit, though still subjective, a Judg- ment. That is, Judgment realizes or utters the as yet immediate Conception which is, of course, the germ of such utterance. Hence, as the process of Conception separates itself into the Universal and the Individual, so the process of Judgment separates itself into Subject and Predicate. " Judgment is the division of Conception through itself ; this unity (of Conception) is, therefore, the ground from which it (Judgment) is regarded according to its true objec- tivity. Judgment ( Urtheil) is accordingly the origi- ginal dividing into parts (Theilung) of the original One." (V. 66.) But after such division comes uni- fication, or the return to the primal One of Conception ; this unifying of the separated Subject and Predicate is expressed by the Copula, with which the process of Judgment is completed. Thus the second Process of Conception has un- 752 MODERN' EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. folded out of the first, which showed the Universal (or Generic) developing into the Individual. But now the Individual goes back to its origin, and asserts itself as universal. That is, Judgment explicitly de- clares that the Individual is universal (or generic), or that the process of the Individual is to return and to re-create the Universal from which it originally sprang. Such is the essence of every Judgment, of every proposition uttered by the human mind. The act of EJTO in expressing itself has just this funda- mental form: the Conception as the Universal (gen- eric or genetic) unfolds the Individual, which as Conception also (or Ego) goes back to and recreates its origin, the Universal. -To be sure, Hegel does not give this exact statement to his formulation of Judgment. But it underlies what he says and it may be developed out of his basic Judgment: the Indi- vidual is the Universal. This is, however, a philo- sophical formula which needs to be distinctly psychol- ogized by throwing it back into the process of the Ego whence it came. Every Conception must become a Judgment, and the Universe is a vast concourse of Judgments, being judged by the Ego after the inner- most norm of itself, which is the Psychosis. Hegel gives four classes of Judgments : (a) that of Existence ; (6) of Reflection ; (c) of Necessity ; (d) of Conception. Each of these has its own three stages. (3) The third subjective Process of Conception is called bv Hegel Syllogism or Conclusion, for the term (Schluss) means both. Etymologically in German it has an opposite meaning to Judgment, since it signi- fies a bringing together while Judgment means sepa- HEGEUS LOGIC CONCEPTION 753 ration. It suggests the restoration of the unity of Conception after its division in Judgment. How is this brought about? The subsumption of the Individual under the Universal in Judgment is direct, their unity is hence an immediate one. But in the Syllogism this subsumption is mediated, is through a reason or ground which is formally the middle term. Judgment as yet gives no reason, it is the autocratic judge who puts down the Individual under the Universal. But in the Syllogism (or Con- clusion) is contained the mediating word which con- nects the two extremes by a common link. But when we come to look into this mediating word or link, we find that it too is a Judgment, or an im- mediate subsumption of the Individual under the Universal. Thus between the extremes (the major and minor terms) a mean or middle term is interjected, making a series or hierarchy of subsumptions. In each case, however, the Individual is subsumed under the Universal, and the mediation between two imme- diate Judgments is but another immediate Judgment. Thus the mediation in the Syllogism is still external, in fact contradictory. To mediate the Individual with the Universal, the Individual must be subsumed under the Universal in the act of mediation. If the original problem underlying the Syllogism is to remove the harshness of immediately subsuming the Individ- ual under the Universal, then the Syllogism has only repeated in its mediation the original problem. The mediator (if we may personify this process) commits the same acts in essence against the Individual, which he is called upon to mediate. Still this process has in it the formal side of mediation. 48 754 MODERN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY Hegel is an exceedingly warm friend of the Syllogism. 4i It is the Rational, since it is Conception completely posited (or realized). But not only is the Syllogism rational, but everything rational is a Syllogism." (V. 115.) The universe as rational must be a Syllo- gism, so is all philosophy of it, specially Hegel's philosophy, whose supreme work from this point of view is to subsume the Individual under the Universal through a middle term which is itself an immediate subsumption. Europe is syllogistic in the same gen- eral sense ; it will not crush the Individual under the Universal immediately, as does the Orient (in the form of State, Religion, Law, and Institutions gener- ally) ; it will have some form of harmonizing and mediating the Individual with the Universal. Still this mediatorial act is the subsumption of the Indi- vidual, not through himself, but externally, more or less. We may say that the Oriental Consciousness takes the form of an immediate Judgment, while the European consciousness is a Syllogism. In his lesser Logic Hegel says: *' The Syllogism is the essential ground of all truth, and the definition of the Absolute now is that it is a Syllogism. All is a Syllogism" (VI. 345). That is, the syllogistic process is the absolute or divine one, God is a Syl- logism. Every single thing is a Syllogism in itself, is to be mediated with other things by the Syllogism and with the All which is itself a Syllogism. Thus we behold a syllogistic Universe, which is fundamentally hierarchical, as we see in the example of the medieval mind and its devotion to formal Logic, whose acme is the Syllogism. It is manifest, nowever, that the Syllogism does not HEGEVS LOGIC CONCEPTION. 755 completely mediate the Individual with the Universal, the Self with Law, or Man with God. The missing point is that the Individual in the Syllogism does not posit its own mediatorial principle, does not create or re-create the power which subsumes it. Here, then, is at bottom the same difficulty which we found in Judg- ment as the ultimate principle: the Individual (or the Ego) does not determine the Universal, even as mediator, which determines it. That is, the Uni- versal as middle term, is still subsumptive directly of the Individual, though it has been itself subsumed under the summum genus. But the mediatorial prin- ciple must be finally determined not by what is above it but by what is below it, by the Individual which it determines. Thus dawns a real world of freedom, which cannot be given by the Syllogism or its con- sciousness, since it but half-way furnishes the mediat- ing link between what subsumes and is subsumed. What now is the situation in regard to the Syllogism? Evidently it has failed to mediate the Individual with the Universal in an adequate manner, which problem really underlies the whole sphere of Subjectivity, whose inherent contradiction has thus become ex- plicit. The statement is that the Universal is to subsume the Individual; but who is it that makes the statement, thinks this thought? Just the Indi- vidual as Ego, Subject. So the Individual has been secretly unfolding and expressing this Universal which openly is affirmed to control and subsume it (the Individual). Thus the Individual all the while has been implicitly making the power which subordi- nates it. Or the subject, subjecting itself to the Universal, subjects that which subjects it, and brings 756 MODERN E UBOPEAN PHILOSOPHY. to a conclusion this whole process of Subjectivity in its three stages:" Conception, Judgment, Syllogism. For the subjective is no longer that which is sub- jected merely, but has become also that which subjects. What is the next stage ? Evidently the implicit sub- ject which has become explicit; the Individual which has hitherto been subsumed by the Universal, must now subsume its subsumer, determine its determinant. The Syllogism must take up into its process the syllo- gizer making it. The Ego having recognized itself as the maker of the Syllogism which subsumes the Ego, must now consciously assert its place in a new order, which is to our mind, Reason. (See this entire sphere of Subjectivity Conception, Judgment, Reasoning or Syllogism unfolded psychologically under the name of Ratiocination as properly the second stage of the Process of Thought, whose third stage is the before mentioned Reason, in Psychology and Psy- chosis. ) Hegel gives three kinds of Syllogisms : (a) that of Existence; (6) that of Reflection; (c) that of Neces- sity. There is no Syllogism corresponding to the fourth kind of Judgment. To these we may well add the philosophical Norm as the absolute Syllogism, which is the conclusion that man (or Mind) must return to God (or the Infinite). Thus God, Nature, and Man are the three terms, really the Syllogism of Syllogisms, Summum Genus or the Universal as such being the first Term. The Universe is truly the primordial Syllogism, or (as before said) the Syllogism of all Syllogisms. But when formalized, it is cut off from its source and thus HEGEUS LOGIC CONCEPTION. 757 made abstract; the creative element is left out of the Syllogism and there is the mere subsumption of the lesser under the greater. Of course Hegel has no such Syllogism; in fact there can be (properly speaking) no such Syllogism, since it has no subsumption of the Individual by the Universal, except with the counterpart of this move- ment. Nor does Hegel rise out of his subjective Pro- cess to Reason that would be psychological. So he makes a skip at this point from Subject to Object and gives us a surprise by introducing a Philosophy of Nature into his purely logical Process. This skip has always caused doubt and trouble to his followers. For the Philosophy of Nature properly springs from and hence comes after the total Logic according to Hegel himself, who has, therefore, two Philosophies of Nature at different points in his system, to be sure somewhat differently ordered. But let us make the skip with Hegel into his new domain and see what we can find there. B. Objectivity. This is the second phase or part of the movement of Conception as a whole, the objective process thereof. We may deem it real Conception, or Conception as a reality, in contrast to formal Concep- tion which is the preceding (subjective) phase, in which Conception develops its own inner Forms, often called Forms of Thought. But now these inner Forms are thrown out into the world and become Objects, sepa- rate from the Subject and from one another. Thus they have independence on the one hand, and are im- mediately existent ; yet on the other they are posited by the Subject or Conception and still show its process. Here, then, we may deduce the characteristic of the 758 MODERN E UEOPEAN PHIL SOPHY. Object; it is an immediate entity in form, yet it is mediated mediated still by Conception. In Sub- jectivity Conception (as Ego) divided within itself and unfolded its own shapes, which in all their separation were still connected together directly by the Subject. But now this subjective thread of connection is cut by the Subject itself and each shape is posited, or medi- ated as immediate by the same. Thus Objectivity is twofold and self-opposed, has a positive contradiction in the statement of it as an im- mediate (object) which is mediated, as an independ- ent something which is none the less dependent. Or it is Subjectivity turned inside out, yet through itself, and still remaining Conception with its process. Such is the general relation, according to Hegel, between the subjective and objective Process of Con- ception. ' ' The Object is the one undetermined Whole (the side of the Universal) ; but it is also the separa- ted, the differenced (the side of the Particular), and so falls asunder into the indefinite multiplicity of the world, in which each object is an individual (the side ( f individuality), a concrete, independent, complete entity." (VI. 361.) Herein we see the process of Con- ception as objective, grasped indeed as the external Universe, which still has its internal process of Con- ception. So Hegel says that the Object is God, is the Absolute. The movement of Subjectivity has been all along toward Objectivity, toward getting out of itself into reality. Such a movement is implied in the first pro- cess of Conception, when it particularizes itself of its own inner necessity. Then Judgment is a more advanced stage in which the Individual is expressly HEGEL'S LOGIC CONCEPTION. 759 present, yet subsumed under the Universal immedi- ately. Finally the Syllogism seeks to mediate this immediacy through the middle term, which, however, is itse an immediate subsumption of the Individua under the Universal by the Subject (or Ego). Thus the Syllogism mediates the Individual as immediate ; such an Individual is Object, according to Hegel. But now the movement of Objectivity is toward Subjectivity, which it seeks to recover and put inside of itself. Still it will not be the first Subjectivity bat a new one, which Hegel names the Idea. This is the Conception adequately realized ; in the forms of Ob- jectivity it is inadequately realized, these forms do not fully represent Conception, though advancing always in that direction. But the Idea lies ahead of us ; we must set forth the stages of Objectivity, which are primarily three. We start with the object as immediate and separated while the mediation is external (mechanical); but it slowly moves toward internal mediation in this sphere, becoming more and more a manifestation of the Pro- cess of the subject. ( 1 ) The first objective Process of Conception. This is Mechanism in which the objects are independent and outside of one another. Still the Conception controls them, though externa/ly. (a) The mechani- cal object, individual and impenetrable; (6) The finite mechanical Process (between bodies) ; (c) The absolute mechanical Process (the individual center has a universal center controlling it within the totality of bodies, as in the solar system). (2) The second objective Process of Conception, or Chemism. This stage is separative, since the Object 760 MODERN E UROPEAN PHIL SOPHY. now divides within itself, separates into its constitu- ents. The outside division of Mechanism between Objects, has turned inside the Object a kind of Judgment or Subject and Predicate of Nature, one side subordinating the other as in acid and alkali. The object is mediated from within: (a) The chemi- cal Object; (&) The chemical Process; (c) Transi- tion: when the object mediated within (chemically) is determined from without (mechanically) ; thus are suggested the doctrines of immanence and transcend- ence. (3 ) The third objective Process of Conception Hegel designates as Teleology. The Object is still im- mediate, though it has a process in itself which, how- ever, has a design determined from without. Thus it is a unity of Mechanism and Chemism ; according to Hegel: " The End or Design is the Conception which has become free from the immediacy in which it was sunk in Chemism and exists in and for itself over against the immediate Object" (VI. 374). It is therefore posited or mediated through Chemism whose process externalized is the teleologic. (a) The subjective End; (6) The Means; (c) The real- ized End. This, when it becomes Objective with the Conception inside of it and creating it, is Idea, or the Conception realized. C. Idea. The Conception having attained reality is Idea (this is Hegel's use of the word which is un- usual). Conception as subject has mved through the object, and has become one with it (subject- object). Or the transcendent Conception in Tele- ology enters the object as the All and becomes its immanent process. Or the Idea is the immediate as HEGEUS LOGIC CONCEPTION. 761 such (real) mediating itself. Thus " Being (the Im- mediate) has reached the significance of Truth," for "anything has Truth in so far as it is Idea" (V. 229), otherwise it is not true (in Hegel's sense). Idea is the Conception not simply objectified (made into different objects), but realized (making itself object and forming the latter's process). Conception as Idea will show three stages vital, recognitive and absolute. (1) First Process of Conception as Idea is Life (the vital, organic Process) which is the Conception immediately realized in the object, not yet grasping itself as Process (as it does in the Ego). The divi- sion of the Conception is not from the inside, but is ex- ternal in the members of the living body, each of which is alive through the Whole, of which it is a member, but not in itself. Life shows the threefold Process: (a) The living Individual ; The Process of Life in separation and return through organs ; (3) The Genus or Genetic Process the reproduction of the Individual externally which Process, when it becomes internal, is the next stage. (2) Second Process of Conception as Idea is here called Recognition (Erkennen). We have now reached that which can recognize itself: divide itself within itself, and take this division of itself back into itself and thus know itself. This is the primal separation (Hegel's Urtheil) of the second stage of the Idea which still makes itself one by returning into itself. "Thought, Spirit, Self-consciousness are designations of the Idea" as Recognition (V. s. 255). In other words Hegel here evolves the Ego out of the preceding 762 MODERN EUEOPEAN PHILOSOPHY. Process of Life, in which this separation between sub- ject and subject-object is as yet but implicit. And still the recognitive Process of Conception, or the self-conscious Ego, is one-sided as different from the outside world. Its inner movement is to overcome this difference, which movement Hegel makes of two kinds. (a) Recognition a second time, which is now the Ego taking up and assimilating the external world of objects "into its Representation and Thought" the theoretic activity of the Idea (VI. s. 399). Here Hegel again commits his too frequent sin against expo- sition by giving the same name to different stages. Moreover, there is a good word for this second or special form of Recognition : it is the Intellect proper. Later in his Psychology Hegel will call it Intelligence. The reader may well note at this point that Hegel's Logic is becoming psychological. The Ego has been deduced, and its first great activity, that of Intellect, has been designated. We even catch stray hints of the leading subdivisions of Intellect sense perception (An- schauen), representation (Vorstellen) and thought (Denken). Still these are not Hegel's explicit divi- sions of this sphere, which are analytic and synthetic. (b) The Will or the act of Willing (Wollen) the practical activity of the Idea. Now the Ego, in- stead of taking up the outer world into itself, moves outward and transforms that world, putting into the same its own purpose and end. Thus the Will seeks to make the world good, or to realize the Idea of the Good, the Good being the Process of Spirit or Ego objectively realized. On the other hand Intellect seeks to find the Truth of the object, to realize within HEGEL 1 S LOGIC CONCEPTION. 763 itself the Idea of the True, which is also the Process of the Spirit or Ego beheld in the object. Such are the two formulations found in this sphere, the one being psychological (Intellect, Will), the other being philosophical (the Idea of the True and of the Good). Hegel uses the latter in the nomencla- ture of his laiger Logic, but he employs the former in that of his smaller (and later) Logic. The change is significant, showing that Hegel during his theoreti- cal Period (before he went to Berlin) was becoming more and more psychological a fact of which we shall find numerous other indications, specially in the Encyclopedia. Such is the dualism here getting manifest, that be- tween Philosophy and Psychology, as the Evolution of the Logic draws toward its close. Moreover the division now is dual instead of triadal the only important stage of the Logic in which this takes place. And one of the leading subdivisions here is also dual (analytic and synthetic). Hegel seems to be getting badly shaken up toward the conclusion of his work. What is the cause of it? Does he glimpse the other principle (the psychological) breaking up through his metaphysical scheme and demanding its total re-construction ? At least the Logic seems to be undergoing a gradual metamorphosis into Psy- chology. Intellect and Will are here in their own name, and we may obtain the realm of Feeling partially from the preceding stage (Life). Nor should we fail to add that in. this whole sphere of Conception there is an underlying movement of the philosophic Norm : the purely logical and metaphysical element in subjective Conception; the physical element or 764 MODERN E UEOPEAN PHIL SOPHY. Philosophy of Nature in the objective Conception ; and now comes Man as individual Ego in the Idea, which Ego is next to grasp the absolute, self-con- scious Idea which is also Ego. (3) Third Process of Conception as Idea is called by Hegel the absolute Idea. It is Conception which knows itself as the self-knowing Absolute, dividing within itself and still remaining itself in such division. " The absolute Idea is alone Being, imperishable Life, self-conscious Truth and all Truth." It contains within itself all Finitude, Determinateness, Negation as canceled, and " is the single theme and content of Philosophy" (V. 318). With such intensity does Hegel assert the absoluteness of the Idea that. some- times he borders on making it the all-devouring pan- theistic One: 4t Everything else is delusion, darkness, caprice, transitoriness ' ' namely the finite world. Thus the absolute Idea is the self-separating and self-returning Process of Conception or Ego in all and in the All. It is the Universe grasped as self- conscious, or as self-mediating absolutely. Self- mediation is not now outside of the object as in Recognition, but is inside ; it is the Whole as absolute self-mediation which has no objective world beyond itself to recognize through Intellect, and no subject- ive world within itself to realize through Will. For both are one and one Process of the Absolute, which is Intellect whose thought is Will, and Will whose act is Intellect. It is not only the cycle of the Universe, but cycle-producing, with "periphery composed of a vast multitude of lesser cycles whose entirety is a grand succession of Evolutions bending around into itself." HEGEVS LOGIC CONCEPTION. 765 It is manifest that Hegel has here reached the same goal the Absolute which he attained through his History of Philosophy and his Logic. Such are the three roads along which the evolutionary Hegel has traveled to the same destination. But as the roads are different, the books are different. Along the first route we beheld all the philosophers with their doctrines personally pass before us ; the second route unrolled before us an inner scenery of the Forms of Consciousness or Appearances of the Ego to itself ; but the third journey has led us through the bodi- less Shapes of the Absolute itself which underlie all existence. Such is the Logic of Hegel, which attempts to teach us the language of the self-conscious All in its Evo- lution unto itself as it thinks and even talks to itself, thus projecting into speech the logical categories. It is the absolute Idea which makes its own language in order to know itself adequately ; in this language man participates, having to remake it for himself whereby he can communicate with man, which renders human association possible. No individual man ever made a language at first hand, though he must re-make it. What then produces it primarily? Spirit (Geist) utters speech for all in common which each has to learn. Ordinary speech is to express the objects of sense and the relations of life. But logical speech is dif- ferent : it utters the Pure Thought of the absolute Idea in its unfolding into self-consciousness, and furnishes its categories to man who is moving in the same direction. Hegel would have to say that God's speech to man now is the Logic, though He may have talked differently to Adam in the Garden a long time 766 MODEEN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY. ago. Hegel says that each category may be taken as one definition of the Absolute in the process of defining itself; this goes on till at last it reaches Hegel's definition, when it turns back and includes all its definitions within itself as its own Evolution into self-consciousness. Properly through Hegel the Absolute has for the first time adequately defined itself, having become now the self-conscious Self which knows all its evolutionary stages up to the absolute Idea which is just this self-knowing Self. The evolutionary Hegel has now reached his cul- mination and finality, having evolved the absolute Idea upon three different lines, and therein expressed the fundamental thought of the Century. The Abso- lute is Evolution, is the outcome, and this Evolution moves forward till it attains the absolute Idea as self-conscious, that is, conscious of its evolutionary Self, and categorized and ordered in all of its stages. (Unfortunately the reader of English possesses no printed complete translations of Hegel's two chief evolutionary works, the Phenomenology and the Logic, though translated portions of both can be found scat- tered through American and British Hegelian Litera- ture. There are, however, unprinted translations of these two most original books of Hegel, complete, we are informed, made by Gov. Brockmeyer, of St. Louis.) Having thus evolved the Absolute on all the im- portant, if not possible, lines, the author must ask : What next? What are we going to do with it? This question arose in Hegel's mind with tremendous pressure, and brought him face to face with the grand difficulty of his system. For now he has to HEGEUS LOGIC CONCEPTION, 767 meet the problem of creation itself, the transcend- ence and immanence of the creative principle, the theistic and the pantheistic solutions of the problem of the Universe. The difficulty centers itself in the movement from the absolute Idea to Nature, from the Infinite to the Finite, from the Perfect to the Imper- fect. Already in Frankfort we can see that he was worrying over the matter, while he was engaged in putting together the philosophical Norm. But at the end of the Phenomenology as well as of the larger Logic he grapples with the question in a manner which must be here briefly noted. Hegel says in the closing pages of his Phenome- nology that the self-knowing Spirit in the phenomeno- logical process 4t has not won its complete freedom, since it still stands in relation to the object," which makes it limited. " This it knows, knows its own lim- itation, which means that it knows how to sacrifice itself," to give up its own absoluteness. ' ' Such a sacri- fice is alienation " of itself from itself, whereby it drops down " to a free accidental happening " or to Chance, in which it " beholds its pure Self as Time and its Being as Space." Thus " the alienated (or outered) Spirit" as logical or absolute, is Nature, and has won its freedom by becoming " a free accidental hap- pening." But here one may well ask, What has become of the Absolute, thus