f}ri>A*RY *^ S-AN.Ii ;£&'->. THE urnVEnSfTY LICRART UN!VERsn"Y or awr : • han dieqc KANT AND SPENCER A STUDY OF TH« FALLACIES OF AGNOSTICISM DR. PAUL CARUS CHICAGO THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING COMPANY LONDON AGENTS: Kegan Paul, Trench, TrObnkr & Co., Ltd, 1899 PREFACE. TV /rODERN philosophy begins with Kant because Kant bioke •^*-'- with the traditional Dogmatism and supplanted it by Crit icism. He proposed the new plan of building doctrines upon the firm ground of experience. Kant was the first positivist in the sense that all philosophy must be based upon facts. How strange that in France and England his views were misunderstood by those who endeavored to progress along the same lines ! Auguste Comte denounced Kant as an antiquated metaphysician and Herbert Spencer looks upon him as the champion of mediaevalism and dog- matism. The truth is that neither the former nor the latter knew anything of Kant and so wasted their powder without demolishing their enemy but they did a great deal of harm by leading the public astray and perverting the real issues. They themselves failed in their main aspirations ; neither Comte nor Spencer succeeded in proposing a scientific philosophy ; both ended in agnosticism, which is practically a declaration of philosophical bankruptcy.* The merits of both Comte and Spencer cannot be underrated ; both did good work in collecting and systematising material, — the former, a mathematical genius, in a truly scientific manner, the latter as a populariser. Comte became better acquainted with Kant in his advanced age and regretted deeply that he had mis- understood the trend of his thought, because he thus missed the benefit of his wholesome influence. I do not say that it is necessary to be a Kantist in any sense ; but to be a leader of thought, a leader that leads onward and for- ward, it is indispensable to understand Kant. Mr. Spencer's atti- tude toward Kant has remained disdainful and even hostile. This * For a discussion of French positivism as represented by Auguste Comte and his most illustrious disciple Emile Littr^ see Monitt, Vol. II, pp. 403-417 2 PREFACE. IS the more to be regretted as Mr. Spencer possesses many rare accomplishments that would naturally have fitted him to become an apostle of progress. He is regarded so by many of his ad- herents and enemies, but only by those who are superficially ac- quainted with philosophical problems. I do not hesitate to say that Mr. Spencer is a reactionary spirit. He seems progressive because he objects to the religious dogmas that have been estab- lished by tradition, but he is reactionary because he boldly sets up nescience as a philosophical principle, and the time is near at hand when his very enemies will take refuge in his doctrines. We have a high respect for Mr. Spencer as a man and a thinker, but it is a great pity that with all his brilliant talents, with all his ambition and energy, he has been deficient in thoroughness and earnestness. As a philosopher, he is a dilettante. Dilettantism is a marked feature not only of his entire system but also of the way in which he has worked it out. Kant was too heavy reading for him and the labor of studying his works did not seem prom- ising. Mr. Spencer, as a thinker, follows the principle of Hedon- ism ; he shirks the toil of research and engages in such subjects only as can easily be woven into feuilletonistic essays. For those who think that this opinion is too severe, the articles on Kayit and Spencer, including a discussion of Spencerian Ag- nosticism, all of which appeared some time ago in The Open Court and The Monist, are here republished in book form. The present little volume contains also Mr. Spencer's reply in full and his let- ter in which he declines further to enter into the subject. In fine we have to add that these articles are not purely con- troversial. While they are a criticism of Mr. Spencer's flagrant mistakes they are intended to serve the higher purpose of promot- ing the comprehension of philosophy. They are a contribution to the history of philosophy ; but the historical and literary ques- tions here treated are after all merely the background upon which problems of basic significance are elucidated. La Salle, III., U. S. A. The Author. CONTENTS. PAGE The Ethics of Kant 5 Kant on Evolution 3^ Mr. Spencer's Agnosticism 5* Mr. Spencer's Comment and the Author's Reply 7^ THE ETHICS OF KANT. MR. Herbert Spencer published in The Popular Science Monthly for August 1888 an essay on the Ethics of Kant; a translation of this article pre- viously appeared in the Revue Fhilosophique, and it cannot fail to have been widely noticed. It is to be regretted that unfamiliarity with the German language and perhaps also with Kant's terminology has led Mr. Spencer into errors to which attention is called in the following discussion.* Mr. Spencer says : "If, before Kant uttered his often-quoted saying in which, "with the stars of Heaven he coupled the conscience of Man, as " being the two things that excited his awe, he had known more of "Man than he did, he would probably have expressed himself "somewhat otherwise." Kant, in his famous dictum that two things excited his admiration, the starry heaven above him and the conscience within him, contrasted two kinds of sub- limity.f The grandeur of the Universe is that of size and extension, while the conscience of man commands respect for its moral dignity. The universe is won- derful in its expanse and in its order of mechanical • Quotations from Mr. Spencer's essay will be distinguished by quotation- marks, while those from Kant will appear in hanging indentations. t Kant distinguishes two kinds of sublimity: (i) the mathematical, and (2) the dynamical. His definitions are: (i) sublime is that in comparison with which everything else is small; and (2) sublime is that the mere ability to conceive which shows a power of emotion (Gemiith), the latter transcend- ing any measurement by the senses.— [(i) Erhaben ist, mit welchem im Ver- gleich alles andere klein ist. (2) Erhaben ist, was auch nur denken zu konnen ein Vermogen des Gemiiths beweist, das jeden Maasstab der Sinne iibertrittt. Editio Hartenstein, Vol. V., pp. 257, 258.] 6 THE ETHICS OF KANT. regularity; the -conscience of man is grand, being in- telligent volition that aspires to be in harmony with universal laws- Mr. Spencer continues: "Not, indeed, that the conscience of Man is not wonderful "enough, whatever be its supposed genesis; but the wonderfulness " of it is of a different kind according as we assume it to have been " supernaturally given or infer that it has been naturally evolved. "The knowledge of Man in that large sense which Anthropology "expresses, had made, in Kant's day, but small advances. The "books of travel were relatively few, and the facts which they con- "tained concerning the human mind as existing in different races, " had not been gathered together and generalized. In our days, the' " conscience of Man as inductively known has none of that univer- " sality of presence and unity of nature which Kant's saying tacitly " assumes." Mr. Spencer apparently supposes that Kant be- lieved in a supernatural origin of the human con- science. This, however, is erroneous. Mr. Spencer's error is excusable in consideration of the fact that some disciples of Kant have fallen into a similar error. Professor Adler, of New York, who at- tempts in the Societies for Ethical Culture to carry into effect the ethics of Pure Reason, maintains that the commandments of the ought and "the light that shines through them come from beyond, but its beams are broken as they pass through our terrestrial me- dium, and the full light in all its glory we can never see." Ethics based on an unknowable power, is mys- ticism; and mysticism does not essentially differ from dualism and supernaturalism. Kant's reasoning is far from mysticism and from supernaturalism. He was fully convinced that civilized man with his moral and intellectual abilities THE ETHICS OF KANT. 7 had naturally evolved from the lower state of an animal existence. We read in his essay, " Presumable Origin of the History of Mankind" (Muthmasslicher Anfang der Menschengeschichte. Editio Hartenstein, Vol. IV, p. 321): "From this conception of the primitive history of mankind it fol- lows that the departure of man from the paradise represented to him by his reason as the earliest place of sojourn of his race, has been nothing else than the transition from the rude condition of a purely animal existence to the condition of a human being; a transition from the leading-strings of instinct to direction by reason, in a word, from the protectorate of na- ture to a status of freedom." The view that the conscience of man is innate, in the sense of a non-natural, of a mysterious, or even of a supernatural origin, is untenable. Those disciples of Kant who entertain such views have certainly mis- interpreted their great master, and the passages ad- duced by Mr. Spencer from so many sources are suffi- cient evidence of the fact that " there are widely dif- ferent degrees " [we should rather say kinds] " of con- science in the different races." Mr. Spencer continues: "Had Kant had these and kindred facts before him, his con- "ception of the human mind, and consequently his ethical con- "ception, would scarcely have been what they were. Believing, "as he did, that one object of his awe— the stellar Universe— has "been evolved,* he might by evidence like the foregoing have "been led to suspect that the other object of his awe— the human " conscience— has been evolved; and has consequently a real "nature unlike its apparent nature." * * * "If, instead of assuming "that conscience is simple because it seems simple to careless in- "trospection he had entertained the hypothesis that it is per- "haps complex— a consolidated product of multitudinous expe- " riences received mainly by ancestors and added to by self — "he might have arrived at a consistent system pf Ethics." * * * * The stellar Universe, of course, has not been evolved; Mr. Spencer means that according to Kants mechanical explanation the planetary systems and milky ways of the stellar Universe are in a state of constant evolution. 8 THE ETHICS OF KANT. "In brief, as already implied, had Kant, instead of his incon- "gruous beliefs that the celestial bodies have had an evolutionary "origin, but that the minds of living beings on them, or at least on "one of them, have had a non-evolutionary origin, entertained the "belief that both have arisen by Evolution, he would have been ' ' saved from the impossibilities of his Metaphysics, and the untena- " bilities of his Ethics." Mr. Spencer believes that Kant had assumed con- science to be " simple, because it seems simple to careless introspection." But there is no evidence in Kant's works for this assumption. On the contrary, Kant reversed the old view of so-called "rational psy- chology " which considered conscience as innate and which was based on the error that consciousness is simple. Des Cartes's syllogism cogito ergo sicin is based on this idea, which at the same time served as a philosophical evidence for the indestructibility and immortality of the ego. The simplicity of conscious- ness had been considered as an axiom, until Kant came and showed that it was a fallacy, a paralogism of pure reason. Dr. Noah Porter has written, from an apparently dualistic standpoint, a sketch entitled "The Ethics of Kant," in which he says: "The skepticism and denials of Kant's speculative theory in respect to noumena, both material and psychical, had unfortunately cut him off from the possibility of recognizing the personal ego as anything more than a logical fiction." Kant says in his " Critique of Pure Reason" : * " In the internal intuition there is nothing permanent, for the Ego is but the consciousness of my thought. * * * From all this it is evident that rational psychology has its origin in a mere misunderstanding. The unity of consciousness, which lies at the basis of the categories, is considered to be an intuition of the subject as an object; and the category of substance is applied to the intuition. But this unity is nothing more thao * Translation by J. M. D Meiklcjohn, pp. 244, 249. THE ETHICS OF KANT. 9 the unity in //^('//^C''''!', by which no object is given; to which therefore the category of substance cannot be applied."* Concerning the statement that Kant had believed in the non-evolutionary origin of living beings, we quote from his essay on The Different Races of Men, Chap. Ill, where Kant speaks of " the immediate causes of the origin of these different races." He says: " The conditions {Griindc) which, inhering in the constitution of an organic body, determine a certain evolutionary process (.-lits- wickelung]) are called, if this process is concerned with par- ticular parts, germs; if, on the other hand, it touches only the size or the relation of the parts to one another, I call it natural capabilities {natiirliche Anlagen)."\ And in a foot-note Kant makes the following re- mark: "Ordinarily we accept the terms natural science. {JVattirbeschrei- bung) and natural history in one and the same sense. But it is evident that the knowledge of natural phenomena, as they now are, always leaves to be desired the knowledge of that which they have been before now and through what succession of modifications they have passed in order to have arrived, in every respect, to their present state. Natural History, which at present we almost entirely lack, would teach us the changes that have affected the form of the earth, likewise, the changes in the creatures of the earth (plants and an- imals), that they have suffered by natural transformations and, arising therefrom, the departures from the prototype of the original species, that they have experienced. It would probably trace a great number of apparently different va- rieties back to species of one and the same kind and would * Compare also Kant's " Prol. zii jeder kunftigen Metaphysik," § 46. t We call attention to Kant's peculiar expression, in this passage, ol Aut- ■wickelung which has now yielded to the term Entwickeluttp;. X Die in der Natur eines organischen KOrpers (Gew.tchses oder Thieres) lie- genden Grunde einer bestimmten Auswickelung heissen, wenn diese Aus- wickelung besondere Theile betrifft, Keime; betrifft sie aber nur die GrOsse Oder das Verhaltniss der Theile unter einander, so nenne ich sie nattirluhe Ant a gen. 10 THE ETHICS OF KANT. convert the present so intricate school-system of Natural Science into a natural system in conformity with reason." * Kant has nowhere, so far as we know, made any objection to the idea of evolution. But he opposed the theory that all life should have originated from one single kind. In reviewing and epitomizing Joh. Gottfr. Herder's work, '^ Ideen zur Geschichte der Menschheit," Kant says: X- * * "Book II, treats of organized matter on the earth. * * * The beginnings of vegetation. * * * The changes suffered by man and beast through climatic influences. * * * In them all we find one prevailing form and a similar osseous structure. * * * These transitional links render it not at all impossible that in marme animals, in plants, and, indeed, possibly in so-called inanimate substances, one and the same fundamental principle of organization may prevail, although infinitely cruder and more complex in operation. In the sight of eternal being, which beholds all things in one connection, it is possible that the structure of the ice-particle, while re- ceiving form, and of the snovvflake, while being crystal- lized, bears an analogous relation to the formation of the embryo in a mother's womb. * * * The third book com- pares the structure of animals and plants with the organization of man. * * * it was not because man was ordained to be a rational creature that upright stature was given him for using his limbs according to reason; on the contrary he ac- quired his reason as a consequence of his upright stature. * * * From stone to crystals, from crystals to metals, from metals ♦ Wir nehmen die Benennungen Naturbeschreibung und Naturgeschichte gemeiniglich in einerlei Sinne. AUein es ist klar, dass die Kenntniss der Na- turdinge, wie siejetzt sind, immer noch die Erkenntniss von demjenigen wun- schen lasse, was sie ehedem geweseti sind und durch welche Reihe von Ver- anderungen sie durchgegangen, um an jedem Ort in ihren gegenwartigen Zustand zu gelangen. Die Naturgeschichte, woran es uns noch fast ganzlich fehlt, wurde uns die Veranderung der Erdgestalt, imgleichen die der Erdgeschopfe (Pflan- zen und Thiere), die sie durch naturliche Wanderungen (sici I take it as a misprint for Wandelungen) erlitten haben, und ihre daraus entsprungenen Abartungen von dem Urbilde der Stammgattung lehren. Sie wiirde ver- muthlich eine grosse Menge scheinbar verschiedener Arten zu Racen eben- derselben Gattung zuruckfiihren, und das jetzt so weitlauttigte Schulsystem der Naturbeschreibung in ein physisches System fiir den Verstand verwandeln. THE ETHICS OF KANT. II to plant-creation, from thence to the animal, and ultimately to man, we have seen the form of organization advancing, and with it the faculties and instincts of creatures becoming more diversified, until at last they all became united in the human form, in so far as the latter could comprise them. * * * As the body increases by food, so does the mind by ideas: in- deed, we notice here the same laws of assimilation, of growth, and of generation. In a word, an inner spiritual man is be- ing formed within us, which has a nature of its own and which employs the body as an instrument merely. * * * Our humanity is merely a preliminary trainmg. the bud of a blossom to come. Step by step does nature cast off the igno- ble and the base, while it builds and adds to the spiritual and continues to fashion the pure and refined with increasing niceness; thus are we in a position to hope from the artist- hand of nature that in that other existence our bud of hu- manity will also appear in its real and true form of divine manhood." * * * [Herder's idea of evolution would stand on the whole if his conception of "the spiritual" did not im- ply a preternatural agent.] "The present state of man is probably the link of junction be- tween two worlds. * * * Yet man is not to investigate himself in this future state; he is to believe himself into it." Kant makes no objection whatever to the evolu- tionary ideas of Herder. But Herder was not free from supernaturalism and from fantastic ideas in reference to the future development of man. He had not yet dropped the dualistic conception of the 'duplicity' of man and believed in the immortality of a distinct spiritual individual within his body. Kant's objection, therefore, is twofold; i) against Herder's supernaturalism which leads him beyond this world; and, 2) against the descent of all species from one and and the same genus. He says: "In the gradation between the different species and indi- viduals of a natural kingdom, nature shows us nothing else 12 THE ETHICS OF KANT. than the fact that it abandons individuals to total destruction and preserves the species alone. * * * As concerns that invisible kingdom of active and independent forces, we fail to see why the author, after having believed he could confidently infer from organized beings, the existence of the rational prin- ciple in man did not rather attribute this principle directly to him merely as spiritual nature, instead of lifting it out of chaos through the structural form of organized matter. * * * As to the gradation of organized beings, our author is not to be too severely reproached, if the scheme has not met the requirements of his conception, which extends so far be- yond the limits of this world; for its application even to the natural kingdoms here on earth leads to nothing. The slight differences exhibited when species are compared with refer- ence to their common points of resemblance, are, where there is such great multiplicity, a necessary consequence of just this multiplicity. The assumption of common kinship between them, inasmuch as one kind would have to spring from another and all from one original and primitive species, or from one and the same creative source (Mutterschoss) — the assumption of such a common kinship would lead to ideas so strange that reason shrinks from them, and we cannot attribute this idea to the author without doing him injustice. Concerning his suggestions in comparative anatomy through all species down to plants, the workers in natural science must judge for themselves whether the hints given for new observations, will be useful and whether they are justified. * * * It is desirable that our ingenious author who in the continu- ation of his work will find more terra Jirma, may somewhat restrain his bright genius, and that philosophy (which consists rather in pruning than in fostering luxuriant growth) may lead him to the perfection of his labors not through hints but through definite conceptions, not by imagination but by ob- servation, not by a metaphysical or emotional phantasy but by reason, broad in its plan but careful in its work." Kant rejected certain conceptions of evolution, but he did not at all show himself averse to the idea in general. He touched upon the subject only incident- ally and it is certain that he did not especially favor THE ETHICS OF KANT. I 3 or entertain tlie belief in a non -evolutionary origin of living beings. Before proceeding to the main points of his criti- cism, Mr. Spencer calls attention to what he designates as Kant's ab?ior?nal ved^somng. Mr. Spencer says: " Something must be said concerning abnormal reasoning as " compared with normal reasoning." * * * " Instead of setting out with a proposition of which the nega- " tion is inconceivable, it sets out with a proposition of which the " affirmation is inconceivable, and therefrom proceeds to draw con- " elusions. " * * * " The first sentence in Kant's first chapter runs thus: ' Noth- " ing can possibly be conceived in the world, or even out of it, "which can be called good without qualification, except a Good "Will."' * * * "Most fallacies result from the habit of using words without "fully rendering them into thoughts — passing them by with recog- "nitions of their meanings as ordinarily used, without stopping to ' ' consider whether these meanings admit of being given to them in " the cases named. Let us not rest satisfied with thinking vaguely "of what is understood by ' a Good Will,' but let us interpret the "words definitely. Will implies the consciousness of some end to "be achieved. E.xclude from it every idea of purpose, and the con- " ception of Will disappears. An end of some kind being necessa- "rily implied by the conception of Will, the quality of the Will is "determined by the quality of the end contemplated. Will itself, ' ' considered apart from any distinguishing epithet, is not cognizable " by Morality at all. It becomes cognizable by Morality only when " it gains its character as good or bad by virtue of its contemplated " end as good or bad." * * * " Kant tells us that a good will is one that is good in and for " itself without reference to ends." It is unfortunate that Mr. Spencer misunderstood the first sentence of Kant's book {Gruniiicgung zur Meiaphysik dcr Sii/cn). Kant does not speak of " a good will without qualification," nor does the expres- sion " without qualification" refer to " a will without reference to ends." Kant speaks of good will in 14 THE ETHICS OF KANT. opposition to other good things. Nothing, he says, can without qualification {ohne Einschrdnkung) be called good, except a good will.* Dr. Porter sums up the first page of Kant's essay in the following words: "The first section of the treatise opens with the memorable and often-quoted utterance, that ' nothing can be possibly con- ceived in the world, or even out of it, which can be called good without qualification, except a good will.' If character is com- pared with gifts of nature, as intelligence, courage, and gifts of fortune, as riches, health, or contentment, all these are defective, ' if there is not a good will to correct their possible perversion and to rectify the whole principle of acting, and adapt it to its end.' \ A man who is endowed with every other good can never give pleasure to an impartial, rational spectator unless he possesses a good will. 'Thus a good will appears to constitute the indispen- sable condition of being worthy of happiness.' * * * 'Moreover, a good will is good not for what it effects but for what it intends, even when it fails to accomplish its purposes, * * * as when the man wills the good of another and is impotent to promote it, or actually effects just the opposite of what he proposes or wills.' " In the passages quoted by Dr. Porter, Kant speaks of "the e77d to which good will adapts other goods "; and in another passage of the same book, Kant di- rectly declares that " it is the end that serves the will as the objective ground of its self-determination." Mr. Spencer must have overlooked these sentences. Kant says: "The will is conceived as a power of determining itself to action in accordance with the conception of certain laws. And such a power can only be met with in rational beings. Now it is the END that serves the will as the objective ground of its self- determination, and this end, if fixed by reason alone, must hold equally good for all rational creatures." * * * Mr. Spencer interrupts his essay on the Ethics of * The original of the first sentence reads: " Es ist uberall nichts in der Welt, ja uberhaupt auch ausser derselben zu denken moglich, was ohne Ein- schrSnkung fur gut konnte gehalten werden, als allein ein guter Wille." t Italics are ours. THE ETHICS OF KANT. 15 Kant by a digression on Kant's conception of time and space. It would lead us too far at present if we would follow Mr. Spencer on this ground also. A comparison of Spencer's remarks on the subject with Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason" will show that Kant's view of space and time is radically different from that view which Mr. Spencer represents as the Kantian conception of time and space. * Kant rejects the idea that happiness is the end and purpose of life and at the same time he declares that ethics must be based not on the pursuit of happiness but on the categorical imperative or more popularly expressed on our sense of duty. Mr. Spencer argues: "One of the propositions contained in Kant's first chapter is "that 'we find that the more a cultivated reason applies itself with "deliberate purpose to the enjoyment of life and happiness, so "much the more does the man fail of true satisfaction." " » * * "That which Kant should have said is that the exclusive pur- " suit of what are distinguished as pleasures and amusements is dis- " appointing." * * * "It is not, as Kant says, guidance by ' a cultivated reason,' "which leads to disappointment, but guidance by an uncultivated " reason." The passage quoted by Mr. Spencer from Kant, reads in its context as follows: "In the physical constitution of an organized being we take it for granted* that no organ for any purpose will be found in it but ♦The phrase " we take it for granted " (in the original " nehmen wir es als Grundsatzan)" reads in the translation quoted by Mr. Spencer: "we take it as a fundamental principle." Mr. Spencer objects to the passage declaring that there are many organs (such as rudimentary organs) in the construction of organized beings which serve no purpose This however does not stand in contradiction to Kanfs assumption that organs of organized beings serve a special purpose The rudimentary organs have under other conditions served a purpose for which they then were fit and well adapted and are disappearing now because no longer used. l6 THE ETHICS OF KANT. such as is also the fittest and best adapted for that purpose. If in a being possessing reason and will, the preservation, the prosperity, in a word, the happiness of that being, con- stituted the actual purpose of nature, nature had certainly adopted an extremely unwise expedient to this end, had it made the reason of that being the executive agent of its pur- poses in this matter. For all actions that it had to perform with this end in view, and the whole rule of its conduct, would have been far more exactly prescribed by instinct, and this end would have been far more safely attained by this means than can ever take place through the instrumentality of reason." * * * " As a matter of fact we find that the more a cultivated reason occu- pies itself with the purpose of enjoying life and happiness, the farther does the person possessing it recede from the state of true contentment; and hence there arises in the case of many, and pre-eminently in the case of those most experienced in the exercise of reason, if they are only frank enough to confess it, a certain degree of misology or hate of reason; for after weighing every advantage that they derive, I will not say from the invention of all arts facilitating ordinary luxury, but even from the sciences, (which after all are in their eyes a lux- ury of the intellect,) they still discover that virtually they have burdened themselves more with toil and trouble than they have gained in point of happiness, and thus, in the end, they are more apt to envy than contemn the commoner type of men who are more immediately subject to the guidance of natural instinct alone, and who do not suffer their reason to influence in any great degree their acts and omissions." Kant uses the expression " cultivated reason " not in opposition to "uncultivated reason," but "to in- stinct " as that inherited faculty which teaches a being to live in accordance with nature and its natural con- ditions, without the interference of thought and re- flection. That uncultivated reason would lead to disappoint- ment, Kant never would have denied. He would have added: " It does more, it leads to a speedy ruin." THE ETHICS OF KANT. I 7 But if reason does not produce happiness, what then is the use of reason? Kant answers, reason pro- duces in man the good will. It is reason which enables man to form abstrac- tions, to think in generalizations and to conceive the import of universal laws. When his will deliberately and consciously conforms to universal laws, it is good. Kant says: "Thus will (viz. the good will) can not be the sole and whole Good, but it must still be the highest Good and the con- dition necessary to everything else, even to all desire of hap- piness." * * * "To know what I have to do in order that my volition be good, requires on my part no far-reaching sagacity. Unexperienced in respect of the course of nature, unable to be prepared for all the occurrences transpiring therein, I simply ask myself: Can'st thou so will, that the maxim of thy conduct may become a universal law? vVhere it can not become a universal law, there the maxim of thy conduct is reprehensible, and that, too, not by reason of any disadvantage consequent there- upon to thee or even others, but because it is not fit to enter as a principle into a possible enactment of universal laws." If a maxim of conduct is fit to enter as a principle into a possible enactment of universal laws, it will be found in harmony with the cosmical laws; if not, it must come in conflict with the order of things in the universe. It then cannot stand, and will, if persist- ently adhered to, lead (perhaps slowly but inevitably) to certain ruin. Concerning the proposition that happiness may be regarded as the purpose of life Kant in his review of Herder's "Ideen zur Philosophic der Geschichte der Menschheit" Ed. H. IV, p. 190), speaks of the relativity of happiness and its insufficiency as a final aim of life: l8 THE ETHICS OF KANT. * * * " First of all the happiness of an animal, then that of a child and of a youth, and lastly that ofman! In all epochs of human history, as well as among all classes and conditions of the same epoch, that happiness has obtained which was in exact conformity with the individual's ideas and the degree of his habituation to the conditions amid which he was born and raised. Indeed, it is not even possible to form a comparison of the degree of happiness nor to give precedence to one class ,' of men or to one generation over another. * * * if this shadow-picture of happiness. . . .were the actual aim of Provi- dence, every man would have the measure of his own happi- ness within him. * * * Does the author (Herder) think perhaps that, if the happy inhabitants of Otaheite had never been visited by more civilized peoples and were ordained to live in peaceful indolence for thousands of years to come — that we could give a satisfactory answer to the question why they should exist at all and whether it would not have been just as well that this island should be occupied by happy sheep and cattle as that it should be inhabited by men who are happy only through pure enjoyment?" Concerning the mission or purpose of humanity and its ultimate realization, Kant interprets Herder's views as follows: "It involves no contradiction to say that no individual member of all the offspring of the human race, but that only the species, fully attains its mission (Bestimmung). The mathematician may explain the matter in his way. The philosopher would say: the mission of the human race as a whole is unceasing progress, and the perfection (Vollendung) of this mission is a mere idea (although in every aspect a quite useful one) of the aim towards which, in conformity with the design of provi- dence, we are to direct our endeavors." We learn from the passages quoted from Kant that his idea of good will is neither mystical and su- pernatural, nor is it vague. It is a conception as logi- cally and definitely defined as any mathematical defi- nition. Good will in the sense in which Kant defines it, is only possible in a reasonable being by the power THE ETHICS OF KANT. I9 of its reason. The good will is the intention of con- forminff to universal principles and thus of being in harmony with the All. This good will is the corner- stone of Kant's ethics; it appears as the categoric im- perative of duty, so to act that the maxim of one's conduct may be fit to become a universal law. It is formulated in another passage: " Act soas if the maxim JjJul^ of thy conduct by thy volition were to become a natural law." It is easily seen that, in Kant's conception, the ought of morals (viz. of the categoric imperative) does not stand in contradiction to the t?iusi of natural laws. Kant's conception is monistic, not dualistic. Kant says: "The moral ought is man's inner, necessary volition as being a member of an intelligible world and is conceived by him as an ought only in so far as he considers himself also as a member of the sensory world."* Our way of explaining it would be: Man ftwls in his activity the categoric imperative as an ought. So the snow crystal, if it were possessed of sensation, would feel its formation as an "ought." But both are,and to an outside observerwill appear, as a "must." * * * In the Spencerian system of ethics, which is utili- tarianism, the moral maxim or the idea of duty is not distinguished from the feeling of pleasure or pain that accompanies ethical thoughts and acts, and their consequences. This lack of distinction induces Mr. Spencer to consider man's pursuit of happiness as the basis of ethics. Accordingly the aim of ethics, he * Das moralische SoUen ist also ein eigenes nothwendises Wollen als Gliedes einer intelligiblen Welt, und wird nur sofern von ihm als Sollen ge- dacht, als er sich zugleich wie ein died der Sinnenwell bctrachtet. Ed. Har- tenstein vol IV. p. 303. 20 THE ETHICS OF KANT. maintains, is not the performance of duty, not the re- alization of the good; to the utilitarian this is only the means. The end of ethics is the greatest happiness of the greatest number. It is strange that Mr. Spencer's essay contains a passage which, although intended as a point of objec- tion to Kant, is a corroboration of Kant's ethics, and a refutation of Mr. Spencer's own views. While de- nying the statement that "a cultivated reason, if ap- plied with deliberate purpose to the enjoyment of life and happiness, will fail to produce true satisfaction," Mr. Spencer says: " I assert that it is untrue on the strength of personal experi- " ences. In the course of my life there have occurred many in- " tervals, averaging a month each, in which the pursuit of happi- " ness was the sole object, and in which happiness was success- " fully pursued. How successfully may be judged from the fact ' ' that I would gladly live over again each of those periods ' ' without change, an assertion which I certainly cannot make of "any portions of my life spent in the daily discharge of duties." This statement, if it proves anything, proves that happiness is one thing and duty is another; it proves that Kant's theory of ethics, which is based on the discharge of duty and not on the pursuit of happiness, is correct, and that Mr. Spencer's theory which iden- tifies duty with the pursuit of happiness, is wrong. However, we must in this place express our opin- ion that Mr. Spencer's statement cafinot be quite correct. The discharge of duty, unpleasant though the drudgery part of it may have been, was un- doubtedly accompanied and followed by a certain sat- isfaction, which perhaps was less in quantity, but cer- tainly higher in quaHty than the pleasure derived from the mere pursuit of happiness. And in the valuation of the intrinsic and of the moral worth of pleasures, the THE ETHICS OK KANT. 21 quality alone should be taken into consideration, not the quantity. In this sense only can an ethical hedon- ism or utilitarianism be acceptable. The man whose pleasures and pains are of a higher kind, of a nobler form, and of a better quality, is morally and generally the more evolved man. And then, the basis of ethics would be, not so much pleasure or happiness as the quality of pleasure or happiness; it would be an as- piration to evolve toward a higher plane of life, to shape our lives in nobler forms, and to enjoy nobler, greater, and more spiritual pleasures, or, as Kant says, " unceasing progress." Mr. Spencer's assertion, if taken in the sense in which it stands, is a contradiction of his ethical theory. But even if Mr. Spencer had declared that the discharge of duty affords a kind of happiness or satisfaction, as it truly does, there would still remain a deep gap between his and Kant's ethics. Mr. Spencer reduces ethics to mere worldl}^ prudence; he says that we must do the good in order to be happy, and for the sake of its utility, and Kant says we must act so as to be in agreement with universal law. Mr. Spencer says : "But now, supposing we accept Kant's statement in full, "what is its implication? That happiness is the thing to be " desired, and, in one way or another, the thing to be "achieved." * * * " An illustration will best show how the matter stands. To a "tyro in archery the instructor says: 'Sir, you must not point "your arrow directly at the target; if you do, you will inevitably "miss it; you must aim high above the target, and you may then "possibly pierce the bull's-eye.' What now is implied by the "warning and the advice? Clearly that the purpose is to hit the "target. Otherwise there is no sense in the remark that it will "be missed if directly aimed at; and no sense in the remark that "to be hit, something higher must be aimed at. Similarly with " happiness. There is no sense in the remark that happiness will 22 THE ETHICS OF KANT. "not be found if it is directly sought, unless happiness is a thing "to be somehow or other obtained." * * * " So that in this professed repudiation of happiness as an end, "there lies the inavoidab'e implication that it is the end." The pursuit of happiness is by no means repudi- ated by Kant as wrong or immoral; it is only main- tained to be insufficient as a foundation of ethics. Kant's remark that happiness will not be found if it is directly sought has no reference to his own ethics. Kant, speaking from the standpoint of one who takes the view of utilitarianism, says that if a cultivated reason applies itself to the sole purpose of enjoying life and happiness, it will meet with a failure.* Any other explanation of the moral ought than that from the Good Will, Kant declares to be heteronomy. Will would no longer be itself, and the principle of action would lie in something foreign to the will. Kant says: "Will in such a case would not be a law to itself; but the object by its relation to the will would impose the law upon the will." * * * This would admit of hypothetical impera- tives only : "I ought to do a certain thing, because I want some- thing else." The moral and therefore categorical imperative, on the contrary, says: ' I ought to act so or so, even if I had nothing else in view.' For instance: the hypothetical impera- tive of heteronomy says: 'I ought not to lie, if I ever wish to preserve my honor.' The categorical imperative says: ' I ought not to lie even if it would not in the least bring me to shame.' " Mr. Spencer quotes the following passage from Kant: "I omit here all actions which are already recognized as incon- sistent with duty, although they may be useful for this or that purpose, for with these the question whether they are done from duty can not arise at all, since they even conflict with it. I also set aside those actions which really conform to duty, * The passage referred to is quoted in full on page i6. THE ETHICS OF KANT. 2$ but to which men have no direct inclination, performing them because they are impelled thereto by some other inclination. For in this case we can readily distinguish whether the action which agrees with duty is done from duty, or from a selfish view. It is much harder to make this distinction when the action accords with duty, and the subject has besides a direct inclination to it. For example, it is always a matter of duty that a dealer should not overcharge an inexperienced pur- chaser, and wherever there is much commerce the prudent tradesman does not overcharge, but keeps a fixed price for every one, so that a child buys of him as well as any other. Men are thus honestly served; but this is not enough to make us believe that the tradesman has so acted from duty and from principles of honesty: his own advantage required it; it .8 out of the question in this case to suppose that he might besides have a direct inclination in favor of the buyers, so that, as it were, from love he should give no advantage to one over another [!]. Accordingly the action was done neither from duty nor from direct inclination, but merely with a selfish view. "On the other hand, it is a duty to maintain one's life, and, in addition, every one has also a direct inclination to do so. But on this account the often anxious care which most men take for it has no intrinsic worth, and their maxim has no moral import. They preserve their life as duty requires, no doubt, but not because duty requires. On the other hand, if adversity and hopeless sorrow have completely taken away the relish for life; if the unfortunate one, strong m mind, in- dignant at his fate rather than desponding or dejected, wishes for death, and yet preserves his life without loving it — not from inclination or fear, but from duty — then his maxim has a moral worth. "To be beneficent when we can is a duty; and besides this, there are many minds so sympathetically constituted that without any other motive of vanity or selt-interest, they find a pleas- ure in spreading joy around them, and can take delight in the satisfaction of others so far as it is their own work. But 1 maintain that in such a case an action of this kind, how- ever proper, however amiable it may be, has nevertheless no true moral worth, but is on a level with other inclinations " (PP 17-19) 24 THE ETHICS OF KANT. Kant's metaphysics of ethics is to practical ethics what pure mathematics is to applied mathematics, or what logic is to grammar. Kant's method of reason- ing /;/ abstracto everywhere shows the mathematical bent of his mind. In a foot-note (Editio Hartenstein, IV), p. 258, he says: ' ' As pure mathematics is distinguished from applied mathematics and pure logic from applied logic, so may the pure philosophy (the metaphysics) of ethics be distinguished from the applied philosophy of ethics, that is, as applied to human nature. By this distinction of terms it at once appears that ethical princi- ples are not based upon the peculiaiities of human nature but that they must be existent by themselves a priori, — whence, for human nature, just as well as for any rational nature, practical rules can be derived." Schleiermacher says: "A good is any agreement ("unity") of definite sides [cer- tain aspects] of reason and nature. * * * The end of tthical praxis is the highest good, i. e., the sum of all unions of nature and reason. * * * The moral law may be compared to the algebraic formula which (in analytical geometry) determines the course [path] of a curve; the highest good may be compared to the curve itself, and virtue, or moral power, to an instrument ar- ranged for the purpose of constructing the curve according to the formula." (Quoted from a translation of Ueberweg.) Kant declares in other passages that in examples taken from practical life, it will be difficult to separate clearly and unmistakably the sense of duty as the real moral motive from other motives, inclinations, habits, etc. But such a distinction must be made, if the moral value of motives is to be considered in abstracto. This is necessary for a clear conception of the essen- tial features of morality. Mr. Spencer has on other occasions highly praised the power of generalization, which indeed is fundamentally the same faculty, as thinking in abstracto; here, however, he does not follov^ THF. ETHICS OF KANT. 25 Kant's argument, but declares "that the assumed dis- tinction between sense of duty and inclination is un- tenable." He says: "The very expression sense of duty implies that the mental "state signified is a feeling; and if a feeling it must, like other feel- "ings, be gratified by acts of one kind and offended by acts of an " opposite kind. If we take the name conscience, which is equiva- " lent to sense of duty, we see the same thing. The common ex- "pressions 'a tender conscience,' 'a seared conscience, ' indicate the "perception that conscience is a feeling — a feeling which has its " satisfactions and dissatisfactions, and which imiines a. mzn to acts "which yield the one and avoid the other — produces an incli- " nation," (p. 476). It is quite true that every state of consciousness is a feeling, but we can and must discriminate between consciousness or feeling and the idea or thought which becomes conscious, in which the feeling appears, and which is, so to speak, the special form of a certain feeling. The consciousness and its special form, the feeling and the mental object of feeling, are in reality one and the same. Yet they are different and must in abstracto be well distinguished. Mr. Spencer's method is that of generalization, but generalizing can lead to no satisfactory results, if it is not constantly accompanied by discrimination. We must generalize and discriminate. If a certain group of states of consciousness takes the form of a logical syllogism, it must not be expected that logic will find its explanation in feeling, although it cannot be denied that all the states of consciousness are feelings. Not the feeling in this case is to be ex- plained, but logic. In our generalizations we must discriminate in abstracto between the feeling and the idea which feels. We must positively abstract from feeling and cannot consider whether the feeling of log- 26 THE ETHICS OF KANT. ical arguments is pleasant or unpleasant. Mr. Spencer's method of explaining ethics, if applied to logic, would be as follows: "Man's logical sense is a very complex feeling and has developed from simple percepts such as can be observed in the lowest animals; percepts are a higher evolved form of reactions against irrita- tions such as take place in protoplasm. The old method of explaining logic is that of deduction, mod- ern logic will be inductive. Formerly pure logic was considered as a science a priori; but the evolution- philosophy shows that logic is developed by steps, it appears a priori to the individual now, but it is in reality a consolidated product of multitudinous expe- riences received mainly by ancestors and added to by self. Logical sense accordingly finds its explanation in most simple feelings. Our conceptions of logically incorrect feelings will be more and more avoided be- cause they will ultimately be found to be unpleasant; logical correctness is striven for because of the feeling of satisfaction that accompanies the conception of a logically correct conclusion." Sense is feeling, there can be no doubt. Logical sense and mathematical sense are feelings and if a person thinks a mathematical axiom or a logical syl- logism or an ethical maxim, he has a feeling. Logical sense of reason is the product of evolution, and it cannot be denied either that one man has a more logical or mathematical or moral sense than another. But it does not follow that an explanation of mathematics, or logic, or ethics, must be derived from feeling pleasure and pain, or happiness. On the contrary we must abstract from feeling altogether and concern ourselves with the object of feeling only, which is the idea or the special form in which and as which feeling THE ETHICS OF KANT. VJ appears. States of consciousness (never mind whether they are painful or pleasurable) must be considered as moral if their mental object, /. c\ic's, and for that end the position best adapted to his internal struc- ture, to the lay of the foetus, and to his preservation in danger, was the quadrupedal position ; we see, moreover, that a germ of reason is placed in him, whereby, after the development of the same, he is destined for social intercourse, and by the aid of which he assumes the position which is in every case the most fitted for this, namely, the bipedal position, — thus gaining upon the one hand infinite advantages over animals, but also being obliged to put up with many inconveniences that result from his holding his head so proudly above his old companions." 45 KANT ON EVOLUTION. In the double-leaded quotation on pages 43 and 44 Kant speaks about the explanation of organised life from man down to the polyp "according to mechan- ical laws like those which work in the production of crystals," and he adds, in organised beings the whole technic of nature is so incomprehensible to us "that we imagine another principle is necessitated for their \ explanation." This "other principle" would be the principle of design, or the teleological explanation of phenomena. In his old age Kant inclined more to teleology than in his younger years, and it is for this reason that Professor Ernst Haeckel accuses Kant of inconsist- ency. After having pointed out that "Kant is one of the few philosophers that combine a well-founded knowl- edge of the natural sciences with extraordinary preci- cision and depth of speculation" and further that "he was the first who taught 'the principle of the struggle for existence' and 'the theory of selection.' " Haeckel says in his "Natiirliche Schopfungsgeschichte," 8th edition, p. 91 : "Wir wiirden daher unbedingt in der Geschichte der Ent- wickelungslehre unserem gewaltigen Konigsberger Philosophen den ersten Platz einraumen miissen, wenn nicht leider diese bewun- dernswiirdigen monistischen Ideen des jungen Kant spater durch den iiberwaltigenden Einfluss der dualistisch christlichen Welt- anschauung ganz zuriickgedrangt worden waren." This "influence of the dualistic Christian world- conception" is according to Haeckel, Kant's recogni- tion of a teleological causation in the realm of organ- ised life. Haeckel says in the same place : "Er behauptet, dass sich im Gebiete der anorganischen Natur unbedingt sammtliche Erscheinungen aus mechanischen Ursachen, KANT ON EVOLUTION. 47 aus bewegenden Kraf ten derMaterie selbst, erklaren lassen, im Ge- biete der anorganischen Nutur dagegen nicht." Haeckel does not stand alone in denouncing the old Kant. Schopenhauer distinguishes between the au- thor of the first and the author of the second edition of the " Critique of Pure Reason," regarding the former only as the real Kant. These accusations are not with- out foundation, but we believe with Max Miiller that they have been unduly exaggerated. As to teleology for which Kant's preference appears to be more strongly marked in his later than in his younger years we should say that it is a problem that should, in an historical investigation, as to whether or not Kant was a consistent evolutionist, be treated inde- pendently. No one can deny that there is an adaptation to ends in the domain of organised life. It is not so much required to deny teleology in the domain of or- ganised nature as to purify and critically sift our views of teleology. There is a kind of teleology which does not stand in contradiction to the causation of efficient/' causes so called. Mr. Spencer's denunciations of Kant would have some foundation, if he had reference to the old Kant alone. But everyone who censures Kant for the errors of his later period is bound to qualify his statement, \ and indeed whenever such strictures of Kantism ap- / pear I find them expressly stated as having reference [ to "J:he old Kant." I That Kant who is a living power even to-day is the young Kant, it is the author of the first edition of the "Critique of Pure Reason." He is generally called "the young Kant," although he was not young ; he was, as we say, in his best years. The old Kant who proclaimed that he "must abolish knowledge in order 48 KANT ON EVOLUTION. 'to make room for faith" is a dead weight in our col- leges and universities. The young Kant is positive, the I old Kant is agnostic. The young Kant was an inves- ' tigator and naturalist of the first degree ; he gave an im- petus to investigation that it had never before received from philosophy. The old Kant, I should not exactly say reverted but certainly, neglected the principles of his younger years and thus became the leader of a re- actionary movement from which sprang two offshoots very unlike each other but children of the same father ; the Oxford transcendentalism as represented by Green and the English agnosticism as represented by Mr. Spencer. It is strange that Mr. Spencer has so little knowl- edge concerning the evolution of the views he holds. If he were more familiar with the history of the idea "that the world-problem is insolvable, he would show more reverence toward the old Kant and his mystical inclinations ; for Kant, whatever Mr. Spencer may say against it, is the father of modern agnosticism.*] * The history of Mr. Spencer's philosophical devel- opment shows that the first idea which took posses- sion of his mind and formed the centre of crystalisa- tion for all his later views was M. Condorcet's optim- ism. Condorcet believed in progress ; he was con- vinced that in spite of all the tribulations and anxie- Y * In this connection we call attention to a book, Kant und Darwin, ein. Bcitrag zur Geschichte der Entwickelungslehre, Jena, 1875, by Fritz Schultze, formerly Privat decent in Jena, now Professor of philosophy at the Polytechnic j Institute in Dresden. This little book is a collection of the most important passages of Kant's views concerning evolution, the struggle for existence, and the theory of selection, and it is astonishing to find how much Kant had to say on the subject and how strongly he agrees with and anticipates Darwin. If Kant had not lived before Darwin one might be tempted to conclude that , be was familiar with his Origin 0/ Species and The Descent of Man. k KANT ON EVOLUTION. 49 ties of the present, man would at last arrive at a state of perfection. He saw a millennium in his prophetic mind, which alas ! — if the law of evolution be true — can never be realised. Condorcet died a martyr to his ideals. He poisoned himself in 1799 to escape death by the Guillotine. The influence of Condorcet's work Esqiiisse d'tin tableau historique des progrcs de r esprit huviain is trace- able not only in Mr. Spencer's first book, "Social Statics," published in 1850, but in all his later writ- ings. How can a true evolutionist believe in the Utopia of a state of perfect adaptation? Does not each progress demand new adaptations? Take as an instance the change from walking on four feet to an upright gait. Did not this progress itself involve man in new difficulties, to which he had to adapt himself ? Let a labor-saving machine be invented, how many laborers lose their work and how many others are in demand ! The transition from one state to the other is not easy, and as soon as it is perfected new wants have arisen which inexorably drive humanity onward on the infinite path of progress which can never be lim- ited by any state of perfection. There is a constant readjustment necessary, and if we really could reach a state of perfect adaptation human life would drop into the unconsciousness of mere reflex motions. Any one who understands the principle of evolu- lution and its universal applicability, will recognise that there can be no standstill in the world, no state of perfect adaptation. Our solar system has evolved,' / as Kant explained in his "General Cosmogony and' % Theory of the Heavens," out of a nebula, and is going' to dissolve again into a nebular state. So our social development consists in a constant realisation of ideals. 50 KANT ON EVOLUTION. We may think that if we but attain our next and dear- est ideal, humanity will be satisfied forever. But as soon as we have realised that ideal, we quickly get ac- customed to its benefits. It becomes a matter of course and another ideal higher still than that just realised appears before our mental gaze. Herder, in his "Ideas for a Philosophy of the His- tory of Mankind," not unlike Mr. Spencer, was also under the spell of the Utopian ideal, that humanity will reach at last a state of perfect happiness. Kant, in his review of Herder's book, discusses the relativity of happiness and its insufficiency as a final aim of life. He says : "First of all the happiness of an animal, then that of a child and of a youth, and lastly that of man ! In all epochs of human history, as well as among all classes and conditions of the same epoch, that happiness has obtained which was in exact conformity with the individual's ideas and the degree of his habituation to the conditions amid which he was born and raised. Indeed, it is not even possible to form a comparison of the degree of happiness nor to give precedence to one class of men or to one generation over another. ... If this shadow-picture of happiness .... were the actual aim of Providence, every man would have the measure of his ov.n happiness within him. . . . Does the author (Herder) think perhaps that, if the happy inhabitants of Otaheiti had never been visited by more civilised peoples and were ordained to live in peaceful indolence for thousands of years to come — that we could give a satisfactory answer to the question why they should exist at all, and whether it would not have been just as well that this island should be occupied by happy sheep and cattle as that it should be inhabited by men who are happy only through pure enjoyment ? " " It involves no contradiction to say that no individual mem- ber of all the offspring of the human race, but that only the spe- cies, fully attains its mission (Bestimmung). The mathematician may explain the matter in his way. The philosopher would say : the mission of the human race as a whole is unceasing progress, and the perfection (Vollendung) of this mission is a mere idea (al- KANT ON EVOLUTION. 5I though in every aspect a very useful one) of the aim towards which in conformity with the design of providence, we are to direct our endeavors." It is indubitable that Kant's views of evolution agree better with the present state of scientific inves- tigation than does Mr. Spencer's philosophy, which has never been freed from Condorcet's ingenuous op- timism. The assumption of a final state of perfection by absolute adaptation is irreconcilable with the idea of unceasing progress, which must be true if evolution is a universal law of nature. * Soon after the publication of this article, the au- thor's proposition that Kant's writings are difficult reading (made on page 33, line 4) found an unexpected and vigorous opposition. Mr. Charles S. Peirce made the following inciden- tal remark in a letter to the author (Sept. 6, i8go): " I have heard too much of Kant's being hard reading. I think he is one of the easiest of philosophers ; for he generally knows what he wants to say, which is more than half the battle, and he says it in terms which are very clear. Of course, it is quite absurd to try to read Kant without preliminary studies of Leibnitz and English philosophers, as well as of the terminology of which Kant's is a modification or transmogrification. But there is a way of making out what he meant, while such writers as Hume and J. S. Mill, the more you study them the more they puzzle you." I agree with Mr. Peirce's proposition, though I should prefer to express it differently. I say Kant is hard reading, but if we read him with care we can easily know what he means. Mr. Spencer's writings are easy reading, but considering the looseness of his thoughts he is difficult to comprehend, and his many contradictory statements are hard to reconcile. MR. SPENCER'S AGNOSTICISM. MR. Herbert Spencer as a philosopher and as a thinker is a power in our age, not only because he understands how to deal with deep problems so as to impress his conception of them upon the reader, but also because his views strongly coincide with the Zeitgeist of the present generation. I am fully aware of the fact that in some most vital principles the phi- losophy which I uphold is in perfect sympathy with the spirit of Mr. Spencer's views, but at the same time I recognise that there are points not less impor- tant in which there is no agreement, and perhaps the most important one is the doctrine of agnosticism. Now there is a certain truth in agnosticism, which has been felt and recognised at all times and may be considered as a truism. It is this, that existence ex- ists, and we do not know whence it comes. We may imagine that existence did not exist, and it seems that non-existence ought to be the natural and aboriginal condition. But we do exist ; we are here and are a part of a great whole. We can understand how we originated from prior conditions, and can trace the forms of being back indefinitely, but we are utterly incapable of tracing them back to nothingness, and all attempts at deriving existence from non-existence finally end in lamentable failures. Thus the suspicion rises that the question, "Whence does existence come ? " itself may be illegitimate. Prof. W. K. Clifford in his lecture on "Theories of Physical Forces" endeavors to explain the redun- MR. SPENCERS AGNOSTICISM. 53 dancy of the question "Why? " in science. Science teaches that it is so and tliat it must be so. Given one moment of the world-process, and we can calcu- late the next following or any other one with certainty: we can say that it must be such or such a state of things. But the "Why?" of things, Clifford says, does not lie in the range of science, for the question has no sense. Clifford's proposition is directed against metaphys- ical philosophers to whom there is a "Why?" of facts, that is to say, a reason for the world at large, or as it is sometimes expressed, "a First Cause." Clifford's conception of the "Why?" and the "That," it ap- pears to us, is simply a denunciation of the so called great world-enigma as a sham problem which has no sense. Goethe makes a similar remark. He says : "Wie, Wann, und Wo?— Die Gotter bleiben stumm. Du halte dich an's Weil und frage nicht Warum." That is to say, why, when, and where existence originated, are questions which do not admit of any answer. Trace the Because, and leave the Why alone. We should prefer to say, the tracing of the "that" is the only legitimate conception of the "why?" The "that," however, appears as a triple enigma, which can be formulated as the problem of creation, of eternity, and infinity. There is the "that" of ac- tuality, the "that" of its extent, and the "that" of its duration.* Experience teaches us that there is something stir- *A discussion of Eniil Du nois-Raymond's "Seven World-Riddles' would here lead us too far. That he selected the sacred number "seven" was a pure self-mystification and shows his inclination to mysticism. 54 MR. SPENCER'S AGNOSTICISM. ring about. It is as Goethe calls it in the words of Mephistophelfs : "\\':is sich dem Nichis entgegenstellt, Das Etwas, diese plumpe Welt." This something stirring about (reduced to general ideas) is substance moving in space, and thus the metaphysical question shows three aspects, the prob- lem of substance, the problem of motion (viz., of cau- sation or succession of events in time), and the prob- lem of space. The question whence they come, where and when they originated, receives no other answer than that they exist; they exist now, have always ex- isted, and will always exist, which finds expression in three negations, three nots: substance does 7iot rise from nothing, time has not either a beginning or an end, space is ;/^^/ limited. In other words : substance is uncreate, time is eternal, space is infinite. Man's reluctance to be satisfied with the fact of the "that," and his expectation to derive facts some- how from nothingness, finds expression in three un- warranted assumptions: 1. The a'ssumption of creation, based on the argu- ment that reality took its rise from non-existence, or else being uncreated should not exist; 2. The assumption of a beginning of the world- p»-ocess, which must have been caused by some exter- nal agent or else could not have started ; and 3. The assumption of the limitations of space, an idea expressed in many ancient illustrations of the universe, but now utterly abandoned. Space is sup- posed to come somewhere to an end, as if it were a big box, and the world is supposed to be contained in it. It goes without saying that science does not coun- MR. SPENCER'S AGNOSTICISM. 55 tenance these assumptions. If the "that" of exist- ence is accepted as a given fact, the world-problems lose their metaphysical significance, for the stubborn- ness of reality is as little mysterious as are the ideas of infinity and eternality.* To a positivist the three problems are disposed of by the simple recognition of the "that." Positivism starts from facts as the data of cognition, and does not deem itself responsible to explain the "why" of the "that," but traces the "why" in the "that." When we know more about the whole of the stellar universe we may be able to say more about its limits in time and space and perhaps also about the irritation that caused the whirls in the primordial ether; but the basic question, why existence exists, whence the ether comes, would remain as it is now. The existence of existence is simply the brutal self-assertion of facts — das Eiwas, diese plumpe Welt ! Knowledge means a representation of facts in mental symbols, and comprehension means a unifica- tion or harmonious systematisation of these symbols. At any rate, we have to start with facts. As soon, however, as we attempt to start with nothing and hope by some sleight of hand to create facts or to evolve them out of non-existence, we are confronted with an insolvable world-problem. Yet the proposi- tion of this world-problem can bear no close investi- gation. It rests upon a misstatement of the case, for the very demand to produce positive facts out of noth- ing, is itself contradictory and is as absurd as the idea of a First or Ultimate Cause. • The idea of infinity has caused a great deal of trouble, but the infinite (if understood in its proper sense, which is that of mathematics) is actually a much simpler conception than the finite. See the author's Homilies of Science, pp. 108-111. 56 MR. spencer's agnosticism. The idea of a first cause rests upon a confusion of 'he terms "cause" and "raison d'etre.'" A first cause cannot exist, because every cause is the effect of a former cause, but we may conceive of an ultimate raison d'etre. Every raison d'etre of a natural process is formulated in a natural law, and all these natural laws, if they were all known and investigated, would form one great system of laws which can serve as a means of orientation in this world. The most general of these laws, being the most comprehensive state- ment of facts, would be the ultimate raison d'etre or ground of the world. The idea of an ultimate ground or raison d'etre of the world is legitimate, but the idea of a "First Cause '* is spurious. A First Cause is inscrutable, indeed, not because it is so profound an idea that "it passes all comprehension," but simply because it is a self-con- tradictory and nonsensical idea.* * * A philosophy which grants that the world exists and builds its world-conception out of the facts of ex- perience, leaving the problem how existence can be derived from non-existence to metaphysicians of the old school, is called Positivism, and a genuine posi- tivism has no need of blocking the way of science with the bugbears of unknowables. But Mr. Spencer makes of the unknowable the cornerstone of his phi- losophy and is not satisfied until he finds every- thing incomprehensible, mysterious, and inscrutable. Through the spectacles of his philosophy even science herself proves ultimately a mere systematisation of nescience. *For further details on the problem of causation see the author's i^««iur in dcr Erfattrung ist W'ahr- heii: " "The doctrine of all genuine idealists from the Eleatic School down to Bishop Berkeley is contained in this formula : All cogni- tion through the senses and experience is nothing but illusion ; and in the ideas of the pure understanding and reason alone is truth. "The principle, however, that rules and determines my ideal- ism throughout is this ; All cognition out of pure understanding or pure reason is nothing but mere illusion and in experience alone is truth." Kant then proposes in order to avoid equivocation to call his views "formal or critical idealism," adding that his idealism made any other idealism impossible. Criticism truly is the beginning of philosophy as an objective science. It gives the foi//) de grace to those worthless declamations which still pass among many as philosophy. Says Kant : "So viel ist gczviss: zver einmal Kritik gekostet hat, den ekclt auf immer allcs dogmatische Gewdsche." " That much is certain : He who has once tasted critique will be forever disgusted with all dogmatic twaddle." It is strange that in spite of Kant's explicit declara- tion, which leaves no doubt about the positive spirit that pervades the principles of his philosophy, he is still misunderstood by his opponents and frequently no less by those who profess to be his disciples. There is no occasion now to treat the subject ex- haustively, but it may be permitted to add a few re- marks on Kant's proposition that space and time are atsights. 82 THE author's REPLY. We must distinguish three things : i) Objective space. 2) Space as atsight, and 3) Space-conception. Space as atsight is the datum. It is the immediate presence of relations among the sensory impressions. This, however, is not as yet that something which we generally call space. That which generally goes by the name of, space is a construction built out of the rela- tional data that obtain in experience and we propose to call it space-conception. Our space-conception, accordingly, (and here I include the mathematician's space-conception) is based upon space as atsight, but it is more than atsight. It is an inference made there- from, it is the product of experience. Space-concep- tion, however, is, as are all legitimate noumena, no mere subjective illusion, it possesses objective validity, it describes some real existence and this real existence represented in space-conception is what may be called objective space. Objective space is the form of reality. Space as atsight is the form of sensibility. Space as space-con- ception is a construct of an abstract nature and serves as a description or plan of the form of reality. The same is true of Time. Time as atsight is the relation of succession obtaining in the changes of ex- perience. Time as time conception is the noumenon constructed out of these data to describe and deter- mine the succession of events, that feature of reality which may be called objective time. Briefly : Space and Time are not things, not es- sences, not entities, but certain features of existence. They are the forms of reality. When existence finds a representation in the feelings of a sentient being. I THE author's reply. 83 time and space appear as their forms, and these forms furnish the material out of which are built the concep- tions of Space and Time. * * * It appears tliat Mr. Spencer for some strange rea- sons, which seem to be based upon mere preposses- sion, is incapable of grasping Kant's meaning and the significance oi his terms. Not minding the purport of Kant's investigation, Mr. Spencer knows nothing of the significance of the contrast made in the Critique of Pure Reaso7i between Anschauung (intuition or "atsight," i. e., the direct and concrete data of per- ception) and Dcnkcn (thought, i. e., the abstractions and generalisations made from these data), and he censured Kant in the first edition of his Principles of Psychology for calling Space and Time "forms of thought " and attributing them to the ego. Kantians called Mr. Spencer's attention to the fact that Space and Time according to Kant are "forms of intuition" not " form: of thou:'ht," and so Mr. Spencer proceeds to replace in the second edition the term "forms of thought" by "forms of intuition," but he claims that some Kantians have u::e;: th'. phrase "forms of thought" and adds that "relatively to the question at issue, whether Time and Space belong to the ego or the non-ego, the distinction is wholly unimportant, and indeed irrelevant." Here are Mr. Spencer's own words : "Throughout this discussion I use the expression "forms of intuition," and avoid the expression "forms of thou^jht," which I used in the first edition of this work ; and for using which I have, along with other writers, been blamed. In the course of a contro- versy carried on in A'alure, from January 3 to February loth, 1870, it was pointed out by Mr. Lewes, who was one of those §4 THE author's reply. charged with this misrepresentation, that among others who have used the phrase "forms of thought" to express this doctrine of Kant, are sundry professed Kantists, as Dr. Whewell and Sir W. Hamilton (a great stickler for precision) ; and he might have added to these. Dr. Mansel, who is also an exact writer, not likely to have misapprehended or misstated his master's meaning The fact is that, relatively to the question at issue, whether Time and Space belong to the ego or to the 7ion-ego, the distinction is wholly un- important, and indeed irrelevant. If some one were to quote the statement of a certain chemist, to the effect that broadcloth is a nitrogenous substance ; and if another were to contradict him, say- ing—no, his statement is that wool is a nitrogenous substance ; the objection would, I think, be held frivolous, when the question in dispute was whether the matter of wool contains nitrogen or not. And I do not see much more pertinence in the objection that Kant called Time and Space "forms of intuition" (raw material of thought), and not "forms of thought" itself (in which the raw material is woven together) ; when the thing contended is, that Time and Space belong neither to woven thought nor to its un- woven materials." Mr. Spencer apparently believes that according to Kant, Space and Time have no application in the world of objects (i. e., the no7i-egd).'^ * Kant never said that Space and Time belonged to the ego and not to the non-ego, he claims that they are ideal, they are forms of Anschauung. Kant's mode of reasoning indeed suggests the idea that he would attribute them to the ego and preclude them from the non-ego. But when criticising an author, - we ought to use his expressions and condemn his mistakes in his own words. ■ Mr. Spencer has no right to substitute his own language for Kant's. It is like " pronouncing a verdict without allowing the defendant to plead his case, but to have it pleaded by the state's attorney, who like the judge represents the prosecuting party. I do not agree with Kant's conception of Time and Space, but I claim that his views if stated in his own language are not so senseless and idiotic as they appear in Mr. Spencer's recapitulation dressed up by Mr Spencer for the special purpose of overthrowing them. Kant says for instance in § 3 under the caption Schliisse second Paragraph : " Der Raum ist nichts anderes als nur die Form aller Erscheinungen ausserer Sinne," and further down: Unsere Erorterungen lehren demnach die Realitat (d. i. objective Gil- tigkeit) des Raumes in Ansehung alles dessen, was ausserlich als Gegenstand uns vorkommen kann, aber zugleich die Idealitat des Raumes in Ansehung der Dinge, wenn sie durch die Vernunft an sich selbst erwogen werden, d. i. ohne Riicksicht av.f die Beschaffenheit unserer Sinnlichkeit zu nehmen. Wir behaupten also die enipirische Realitat des Raumes (in Ansehung allermog- THE author's reply. 85 Professor Sylvester one of r^Ir. Spencer's critics said of Mr. Spencer's misinterpretation of Kant : " It is clear that if Mr. Spencer had been made aware of the broad line of demarcation in Kant's system between Intuition, the action or the product of the Sensibility, and Thought, the action or product of the Understanding (the two belonging, according to Kant, to entirely different provinces of the mind), he would have seen that his supposed refutation proceeded on a mere misappre- hension of Kant's actual utterance and doctrine on the subject. If Mr. Spencer will restore to Kant the words really used by him, the sentence will run thus : — ' If space and time are forms of intuition, they can never be thought of; since it is impossible for anything to be at once the/oj-m of thought and the ynatteroi thought ;' and his epigram (for Mr. Spencer must have meant it rather as an ep- igram than as a serious argument) loses all its point. Was it h frio7-i that Kant {the Kant) should have laid himself open to such a scholar's mate at the very outset of his system ? " How little Mr. Spencer is capable of catching the sense of either Kant or Professor Sylvester's criticism appears from the reply which he makes. He says : "I have only to remark that Professor Sylvester's mode of rendering my criticism pointless, is a very curious, but not, I think, a very conclusive one. He has substituted Kant's words for my words in one part of the sentence quoted (from First Frincif'h'S, p. 49), while he has made no corresponding substitutions in the correlative parts of the sentence. Had he put 'intuition' for 'thought' everywhere, instead of only in one place, my sentence would have run thus : 'If space and time are forms of intuition they can never be intuited ; since it is impossible for anything to be at once ihe/orm of intuition and the matter of intuition.'" Why should space and time, if they are forms of intuition (i. e., Kant's Afischauung), never be intuited, i. e. , be immediately perceived as atsights, as directly lichen ausseren Erfahrung)." This does not sound so ridiculous as Mr, Spencer would make us believe. Kant obviously does not deny the objective validity of Space and Time, and most emphatically extends its validity to the non-tgo (i. e., the objective world). 86 THE author's reply. given data of our perception?* In fact Kant main- tains that they are and I do not know of any sane man who would deny the statement if he understands it. Space and Time are the forms of our sensibility, which implies that they belong :o concrete phenomena, not to the domain of abstractions. It is true that a thing can not be at the same time form and matter, and so Space and Time can not be at the same time iheform of intuition and waiter of intuition. But both matter and form can be perceived or intuited at the same time. The alteration which Mr. Spencer deems just, if Professor Sylvester's change in one case be allowed, would not save Mr. Spencer's position but only renders his mistake more obvious. His criticism is as mean- ingless as before, but Mr. Spencer finds not much dif- ference between either renderings, except that he has now brought out the point more clearly. He adds : " I fail to see that in the sentence as thus altered the point is lost : if it was there before, it is there now. Indeed, as I think the text shows, the change of expression which Professor Sylvester's objection has led me to make, renders the disproof much clearer than it was before." What can we expect of a philosopher who is so persistent in perverting the meaning of terms ! f * Mr. Spencer seems to understand " forms of intuition " in the sense of "organs of intuition," and believes that as the eye cannot see itself, so the forms of intuition cannot be intuited ; but that is a perversion of the meaning of the term. "To be intuited " is equivalent to the German angeschaut wer- den, and I fail to understand Mr. Spencer's logic why when beholding mate- rial objects we should be unable to behold their forms. t Mr. Spencer claims in his letter, published on page loi of this book that his " use of the expression forms of thought instead of forms of intuition was simply an inadvertence." We learn from the passages quoted above that Mr- Spencer felt urged by his critics to substitute the latter term for the former one, and that it was, indeed, a mere inadvertence on his part to use the term again; but his claim that the change is indifferent alone proves how little Spencer understood the meaning of his critics. The fact remains that Mr. THK author's REPLV. 87 I shall now take up the details of Mr. Spencer's reply. I. I am sorry to see that Mr. Spencer, instead of frankly acknowledging his errors, has taken refuge in discrediting the translations, which might very easily have been examined either by himself or by friends of his ; especially as the German original of the most im- portant passages, wherever any doubt might arise, and also of those expressions on the misconception of which Mr. Spencer bases his unfavorable opinion of Kant, was added in foot-notes. II. But Mr. Spencer adduces, as if it were a fact, an instance of my grave mistakes. He says that I failed to distinguish between "consciousness" and "con- scientiousness." Mr. Spencer is obviously mistaken ; but even if it were as he assumes, we are astonished how much he makes of a small matter, which if as alleged, should be considered as a mere misprint. Mr, Spencer's statement is so positive that it must make on any reader the impression of being indubi- tably true. However, in the whole first article of mine, and indeed in both articles, "conscientiousness" is nowhere mentioned and it would be wrong to replace the word "consciousness" in any of the passages in which it occurs by "conscientiousness." I should be glad if Mr. Spencer would kindly point out to me the passage which he had in mind when making his statement, for since there is not even so much as an occasion for confounding consciousness Spencer does not criticise Kant (with whose philosophy he is utterly unfamil- iar) but a straw man built of his own misconceptions of Kant's philosophy. 88 THE author's reply, and conscientiousness, I stand here before a psycho- logical problem. Mr. Spencer's statement is a perfect riddle to me. Either I have a negative hallucination, as psychologists call it, so that I do not see what is really there, or Mr. Spencer must have had a positive hallucination. That which Mr. Spencer has read into my article, was never written and it is not there. The alleged fact to which he refers, does not exist. This kind of erroneous reference into which Mr. Spencer has inadvertently fallen is a very grievous mistake. It appears more serious than a simple slip of the pen, when we consider that Mr. Spencer uses the statement for the purpose of incrimination. He justifies upon this exceedingly slender basis his doubt concerning the correctness of the translations of the quoted passages, and Mr. Spencer's doubt concerning the correctness of these translations is his main argu- ment for rejecting my criticisms in toto. It is not impossible, indeed it is probable, that Mr. Spencer meant "conscience" instead of "conscien- tiousness." We have become accustomed to worse cases of inadvertence in his criticism and censures. There is one passage in which a superficial reader might have expected "conscience" in place of "con- sciousness." However that does not occur in any of the translations, but in a paragraph where I speak on my own account. This passage appears on page 25, line 14, and in the following sentences. Whatever anybody might have expected in that passa°:e, I cer- tainly intended to say "consciousness," am -^nly a hasty reader, only he who might merely read tne first line of the paragraph, would consider the word "con- sciousness" a mistake. To avoid any equivocation, however, even to hasty THE author's reply. 89 readers, and to guard against a misconstruction such as Mr. Spencer possibly has given to the sentence, I would be willing to alter the passage by adding a few words as follows : "It is quite true that not only conscience, but every state of consciousness is a feeling," etc.* The italicised words are inserted, simply to show that here I mean "consciousness," wf/ conscience and not conscientiousness. For the rest, they do not alter in the least the sense of the sentence. In this passage as throughout the whole article the terms " conscious- ness," and " conscience" have been used properly. * * * Observing that Mr. Spencer himself appears to have committed the mistake for which he erroneously blames me, I do not mean to say that he "failed to distinguish between " conscientiousness and con- science. I should rather regard it as trifling on my part if I drew this inference from what is either a slip of the pen or an oversight in proof-reading. But it strikes me that that knavish rogue among the fairies whom Shakespeare calls Puck and scientists define as chance or coincidence played in a fit of anger and per- haps from a sentiment of pardonable irony a humorous trick upon Mr. Spencer. The moral of it is that when an author censures his fellow authors with undue severity for things that might be mere misprints, he should keep a close eye on his own printer's devil. HI. Mr. Spencer discredits my knowledge of Kant. He says of me : siWe have not altered the passage in tlie present reprint, which remains ^s Mr. Spencer read it. 90 THE author's reply. 'One maybe excused for thinking that possibly Dr. Carus has read into some of Kant's exprsssions, meanings which they do not rightly bear." I did not give Mr. Spencer any occasion for mak- ing this personal reflexion. I do not boast of any extraordinary familiarity with Kant's writings. There are innumerable German and also English and Amer- ican scholars and philosophers who know Kant almost by heart. But the question at issue is not what I conceive Kant's ideas to be, but what Kant has really said, and I was very careful to let Kant speak for him- self. My criticism of Mr. Spencer's conception of Kant consisted almost exclusively in collating and contrast- ing Mr. Spencer's views of Kant with quotations from Kant's works. How can I read anything into some of Kant's expressions, if I present translations of the expressions themselves, adding thereto in foot-notes the original whenever doubts could arise? And the general drift of the quotations alone suffices to over- throw Mr. Spencer's conception of Kant. The truth is that Mr. Spencer himself committed the mistake, for which he censures me unjustly. ** Mr. Spencer has read into some of Kant's expres- sions meanings which they do not rightly bear." IV. But Mr. Spencer adduces a fact, which, if it were as Mr. Spencer represents it, would show an inability on my part of making important distinctions. He says of me : "He blames the English for mistranslating Kant, since they have said 'Kant maintained that Space and Time are intuitions,' which is quite untrue, for they have everywhere described him as maintaining that Space and Time are forms of intuitions." I THE AUTHOR'S REPLY. QI This is a double mistake : (i) Kant and his trans- lators did not make the distinction of which Mr. Spencer speaks, and (2) the quotation Mr. Spencer makes from my article is represented to mean some- thing different from what it actually means in the con- text. Before I speak for myself as to what I actually said, let us state the facts concerning Kant's usage of the terms "intuitions" and "forms of intuition." Kant defines in § i of his "Critique of Pure Rea- son" what he understands by "Transcendental ^Esthetic. " He distinguishes between "empirical in- tuition " {evipirische Anschauung) und "pure intuition" (reine Afisc/iauung). He says : " That sort of intuition which relates to an object by means of sensation, is called an empirical intuition." Representations contain besides that which be- longs to sensation some other elements. Kant says : " That which effects that the content of the phenomenon can be arranged under certain relations, I call lis/orms." lAnd later on he continues : "This pure form of sensibility I shall call pure intuition." These are Kant's phrases in J. M. D. Meiklejohn's well known translation. The term " pure intuition " is repeated again and again, and we find frequently added by way of explanation the phrases "as a mere form of sensibility," "the mere form of phenomena," "forms of sensuous intuition," and also (as Mr. Spencer emphasises as the only correct way) "forms of intuition." Kant sa}s : i) " Di'ese reive Form der Sinnlichkiit uird tiuih setber reine Anschauung heisscn. g i. g2 THE author's reply. 2) " Zweitens uuerdeti zvir von diescr (der emfirisclicn An- schaming) noch alles abtrennen, damit 7iichts als reine Ajischau- ung 2ind die blosse Form der Erscheinungen iibrig bleibe. § i. 3) " Raum .... muss urs;prunglich Ayischauung scin. § 3. 4) " Der Raum ist nichts anderes als nur die Form aller Erscheinu7igen ausserer Sinjie. § 3. 5) "Der Raum aber betrifft nur die reine Form der An- schauung. (This passage appears in the first edition only, the paragraph containing it is omitted in the second edition. § 3. 6) ' ' Die Zeit ist .... eine reine Form, der sijinlichen An schauuyjg . ... § 4. 7) " Es muss ihr * u)imittelbare Anschauung zum Grunde lie gen. § 4. 8) ' ' Die Zeit ist nichts anderes als die Form des huieren Siiines. § 6. 9) " . . . . dass die Vorstellung der Zeit selbst Anschauujig sei. §6. 10) " IVir haben nun .... reine Anschauung a friori, Raum 2ind Zeit. § 10. Beschluss der transce7ide?italeti ^s- thetiky These quotations do not pretend to be exhaustive, nor is that necessary for the present purpose. Kant, as we learn from these quotations, makes no distinction between rehie Anschauung and Form der Anschauung. He uses most frequently the term reine Anschauung and designates in several places Space and Time simply as Anschauung. (See the quotations 3, 7, and g.) So far as I can gather from a renewed perusal, the expression proposed by Mr. Spencer, "form of intuition," Fortn der Anschauung, occurs only once and that too in a passage omitted in the second edition. It is almost redundant to add that the English translators and interpreters of Kant follow the original pretty closely. Accordingly it is actually incorrect ♦Second edition roads " /7;«r« " in place of " z7;^," viz. der Zeit. The word " ihnen " refers to 1 hcilvorsteUiingcn der Zeit. THE AUIHOR S REPLY. 93 "that they have everywhere (!) described Kant as maintaining that Space and Time are forms of intui- tion." In addition to the quotations from Meiklejohn, I call Mr. Spencer's attention to William Flemming's "Vocabulary of Philosophy" (4th ed., edited by Henry Calderwood) which reads sub voce " Intuition," p. 228 with reference to Kant's view : " Space and time are intuilions of sense." To say "Time and Space are forms of intuition" is quite correct according to Kantian terminology. No objection can be made to Mr. Spencer on that ground. But to say "Time and Space are intuitions" is also quite correct, and Mr. Spencer is wrong in cen- suring the expression. Why does Mr. Spencer rebuke me so severely on a point which is of no consequence? He appears con- fident that I have betrayed an unpardonable miscon- ception of Kant's philosophy. But the obstinacy with which he sticks to that expression alone which his critics taught liim, is only fresh evidence of both his confusion of mind and unfamiliarity with the subject. * * Having pointed out by quotations from Kant that the expression "space is Anschauu7}g'' is as legiti- mately Kantian as the other phrase that it is "a form oi Anschauung,'" I shall now proceed to explain why the quotation which Mr. Spencer makes from my ar- ticle, although the eight words in quotation marks are literally quoted, is a misquotation. It is torn out of its context. I did not blame the English translators of Kant at all, but I blamed his interpreters, among whom the English interpreters (not all English interpreters, but certainly some of them) are the worst, for "mutilat- 94 THE AUTHOR'S REPLY. ing Kant's best thoughts, so that this hero of progress appears as a stronghold of antiquated views" ; and as an instance I called attention to the misconception of Kant's term Anschauung, saying : " How different is Kant's philosophy, for instance, if his posi- tion with reference to time and space is mistaken ! " ' Time and Space are our Ayischauung ' Kant says. But his English trans- lators declare ' Kant maintained that space and time are intui- tions." What a difference it makes if intuition is interpreted in the sense applied to it by the English intuitionalist school instead of its being taken in the original meaning of the word Anschau- ung." The word "intuition" which is used by English translators is not wrong in itself; but it is hable to be misinterpreted. The word "intuition" implies something myste- rious ; the word Anschauung denotes that which is immediately perceived, simply, as it were, by looking at it. So especially the sense-perceptions of the things before us are Anschauungen. There is absolutely nothing mysterious about Anschauung. Mr. Spencer, believing that he had caught me in making unawares a blunder, tears the passage out of its context, ignores its purport, makes a point of an antithesis which had nothing in the world to do with the topic under discussion, only to throw on me the opprobrium of incompetence. Even if Mr. Spencer's antithesis of "intuition" and "forms of intuition" were of any consequence (as, unfortunately for Mr. Spencer, it is not), it would count for nothing against me because I did not speak of ' ' forms ' ' in the passage referred to, I simply alluded to one misinterpretation of the term Anschauung which is quite common among English Kantians. It was not required by the purpose THE author's reply. 95 I had in vi«w, to enter into any details as to what kind of Anschauung I meant, and an allusion to "form" or to any other subject would have served only to con- found the idea which I intended to set forth in the paragraph from which Mr. Spencer quotes. Misquotation of this kind, into which Mr. Spencer was inveigled by a hasty reading, should be avoided with utmost care, for it involves an insinuation. It leads away from the main point under discussion to side issues, and it misrepresents the author from whom the quotation is made. It insinuates a meaning which the passage does not bear and which was not even thought of in the context out of which it is torn. Mr. Spencer quotes the passage as if I had pre- ferred the term "intuition" to the term "form of in- tuition," or at least, as if I had no idea that Kant con- ceives Time and Space as "forms." Yet Mr. Spencer in trying to make out a point against me betrays hig own lack of information. Kant insisted most emphat- ically on calling the forms of our sensibility (i. e. space and time) '^ Anschauu?igen.'^ But Mr. Spencer's case is worse still. While he insists upon the statement that according to the trans- lators of Kant space and time are "forms of intui- tion," which is at least correct, he uses twice in the very same paragraph the expression that according to Kant "space and time are forms of thought," which is incorrect. The forms of thought according to Kantian terminology are not space and time but the domain of the transcendental logic. Any one who confounds the two terms "forms of intuition" and "forms of thought" proves himself unable to form a correct opinion on Kant's philosophy. That is just characteristic of Kant that he regards time and space 96 THE author's reply. not as thought, nor as forms of thought, but as An- schauungen and in contradistinction to sense-intuitions (i. e. sensations) he calls them reine Anschauungen or Formen der Anschauung.* V. Mr. Spencer commenting upon his criticism of Kant's idea of a Good Will, says : • ' I find that in the above three paragraphs I have done Kant less than justice and more than justice — less, in assuming that his evolutionary view was limited to the genesis of our sidereal system, and more, in assuming that he had not contradicted himself. "Clearly, I am indebted to Dr. Carus for enabling me to prove that Kant's defence of his theory of ' a good will ' is, by his own showing, baseless. " Kant's idea of a good will has nothing to do with evolution, and we can abstain here from discussing whether or not Kant was an evolutionist. Whether evolution is true or not, what difference does it make to the proposition, that a good will is the only thing which can be called good without further qualification {ohne Einschrdnkung~) ? Pleasure is good, but is not absolutely good, there are cases in which pleasure is a very bad thing. We must qualify our statement and limit it to special cases. A good will, however, says Kant, is in itself good under all circumstances. Mr. Spencer's arguments and the logical syllogisms which are peculiarly his own, are a severe tax on the patience of the most charitable reader. Did Mr. Spencer prove the baselessness of Kant's proposition by proving evolution? Is it inconsistent to believe in evolution and at the same time to regard ♦ This is the only point which Mr. Spencer answers in his letter, on page loi, admitting the mistake and saying that it " was simply an inadvertence.'. But it is an inadvertence with aggravating circumstances, furnishing an ad- ditional evidence of the tact that Mr. Spencer talks at random. THE author's reply. 97 a good will as absolutely good, as good without re- serve or limitation? I think not! VI. Mr. Spencer in admitting that "the general drift of the passages quoted makes it tolerably clear that Kant must have believed in the operation of natural causes .... in producing organic forms," adds: " He does not, however, extend the theory of natural genesis to exclusion of the theory of supernatural genesis." How does Mr. Spencer prove his statement? Does he quote a passage from Kant which expresses his be- lief in supernaturalism ? No, Mr. Spencer does not quote Kant, and it would be difficult to find a passage to suit that purpose. Mr. Spencer adduces a few un- meaning phrases gleaned at random and torn out of their context, and from these phrases he concludes that Kant believed in the supernatural. Kant spoke somewhere of "the wisdom of nature" who has things so arranged that the species might be preserved. If the wisdom of nature in preserving the species is to be taken literally, the phrase might prove that Kant believed nature to be a wise old woman. Kant spoke further of "the germ of reason placed in man where- by he is destined to social intercourse." Does the usage of the word " destined " really "imply divine intervention?" Mr. Spencer adds: "And this [viz. Kant's usage of these phrases] shows that I was justified in ascribing to him the belief that Space and Time, as forms of thought [sic!], are supernatural endowments." What might we not prove by this kind of loose argumentation ! Mr. Spencer should sweep before his own door ere he complains of Kant's abnormal reason- ing. g8 THE author's reply. Kant did not introduce any supernatural explana- tions ; on the contrary, he proposed to exclude "super- natural genesis." He says e. g. in a passage of the " Critique of Judgment " quoted on page 39 : " If we assume occasionalism for the production of organised beings, nature is thereby wholly discarded .... therefore it can- not be supposed that this system is accepted by any one who has had to do with philosophy." And furthermore Kant rejects the partial admission of the supernatural, saying : "As though it were not the same to make the required forms arise in a supernatural manner at the beginning of the world as during its progress." Mr. Spencer charges Kant with inconsistency. We do not intend to say that Kant was in all the phases of his development consistent with himself. But we do say that the charge of Mr. Spencer against Kant consists in this : the real Kant had said things which are incompatible with Mr. Spencer's view of Kant. This settles the sixth point. VII. Mr. Spencer's reply to my criticism is a very strange piece of controversy and I have actually been at a loss, how to account for it. The situation can be explained only by assuming that Mr. Spencer, being an impatient reader, when finding out that he disagreed with my propositions, could go no further and wrote his reply to me without having read my articles. This is very hard on a critic who, carefully avoiding everything that might look like fault-finding, is painstakingly careful in giving to the author criticised every means of investigating the truth himself and helps him in a friendly way to cor- rect his errors. THE AUTHOR S REPLY. QQ There is only one consolation for nie, which is, that I am in good company. The great thinker of Koenigsberg is very severely censured in almost all of Mr. Spencer's writings for ideas which he never held. And now Mr. Spencer confesses openly and with ingenuous sincerity, that his knowledge of Kant's writings is extremely limited. But why he condemns a man of whom he knows so little Mr. Spencer does not tell us. Mr. Spencer says : "My knowledge of Kant's writings is extremely limited. In 1844 a translation of his 'Critique of Pure Reason' (then I think lately published) fell into my hands, and I read the first few pages enunciating his doctrine of Time and Space ; my peremptory re- jection of which caused me to lay the book down. "Twice since then the same thing has happened ; for, being an impatient reader, when I disagree with the cardinal propositions of a work I can go no further. " One other thing I knew. By indirect references I was made aware that Kant had propounded the idea that celestial bodies have been formed by the aggregation of diffused matter. Beyond this my knowledge of his conceptions did not extend ; and my supposi- tion that his evolutionary conception had stopped short with the genesis of sun, stars, and planets was due to the fact that his doc- trine of Time and Space, as forms of thought [sic] anteceding ex- perience, implied a supernatural origin inconsistent with the hy- pothesis of natural genesis." Kant has been a leader in thought for the last cen- tury. It is very important to criticise his ideas wher- ever they are wrong, but his errors cannot be conquered by ex cathedra denunciations. Darwin's habits in investigating and weighing the pros and cons of a question were very different from Mr. Spencer's, and Darwin's success is in no small degree due to the sternness with which he adhered to cer- tain rules of reading and studying. We find in his lOO THE author's REPLY. " Autobiography" certain reminiscences labelled "im- portant " from which the following is instructive : "I had also, during many years, followed a golden rule, namely, that whenever a published fact, a new observation or a thought, came across me, which was opposed to my general re- sults, to make a memorandum of it without fail, for I had found by experience that such facts and thoughts were far more apt to escape from the memory than favorable ones." Experience teaches that we can learn most from those authors with whom we do not agree. The ethics of reading and studying demand other habits than lay- ing a book down when we disagree with its cardinal propositions. Such habits prevent progress and create prejudices. ^ * * Mr. Speecer has not answered my criticism at all. Mr. Spencer did not even take into consideration the passages quoted from Kant. He republished all the false statements of Kant's views, so inconsiderately made, together with all the perverse opinions based upon them. The assurance with which Mr. Spencer makes statements which have no foundation whatever is really perplexing even to a man who is well informed on the subject, and it will go far to convince the un- wary reader.* What, however, shall become of the general tenor of philosophical criticism and contro- versy if a man of Mr. Spencer's reputation is so in- different about being informed concerning the exact views of his adversary, if he is so careless in presenting them, if he makes positively erroneous statements on confessedly mere "supposition," and finally, if in consequence thereof he is flagrantly unjust in censur- ing errors which arise only from his own too prolific imagination ? *The late Henry George called Mr. Spencer " the perplexed philosopher.' THE author's reply. IOI We feel confident that Mr. Spencer will explain his side of the question satisfactorily. His mistakes being undeniable, we do not believe that he will seek to deny them. Yet we trust that Mr. Spencer as soon as he finds himself at fault, will not even make an attempt at palliation, that he will not blink the frank aknowledgment of his misstatements and also of hav- ing treated Kant with injustice. A man who has de- voted his life to the search for truth will not suffer any blot to remain on his escutcheon. [I abstain from altering the last paragraph which seems now out of date and will add only by way of Postscript my regret that Mr. Spencer has failed to fulfil my expectations. The only answer he ever made is the letter which is reproduced as the end of this discussion. I have been tardy in the repub- lication of these criticisms, perhaps too tardy, but I still hoped that Mr. Spencer would by and by understand the situation and by a frank confession of his mistakes relieve me of the unpleasant task of repeating my charges and of having them appear in book form. I have come to the conclusion that for the sake of truth, of justice, and in the interest of the growing generation they should become more accessible to the reading public] A LETTER FROM MR. HERBERT SPENCER. As I feel it a duty to reserve, for other purposes, the very small power of work now left to me, I am obliged to decline entering upon a controversy. I must leave readers to examine for themselves — little hoping, however, that they will do so. One point only I wish to note. The use of the ex- pression "forms of thought," instead of "forms of in- tuition," was simply an inadvertence;* as will be man- ifest on observing that though I have used the wrong expression in the note, I have used the right expres- sion in the text (p. 203), as also throughout my crit- icism of Kant's doctrine in The Principles of Psychology, Part VII, Chapter IV, "The Reasonings of Meta- physicians," § 399. Herbert Spencer. •This subject is discussed on pp. 83-86 and 95-96 of the present booklet. INDEX. Abnormal" reasoning, Kant's, 13. Adler, Prof. Felix, 6. Aggressive, not defensive, 75. Agnosticism, shallowness of, 30; Mr. Spencer's, a popularisation of Kant's view, 34; Spencer's, 57; like a fog, 61 ; arrogance of, 69 ; as an attitude, 6g: reactionary, 69 ; tran- sitional, 6g. Aim of Providence, 50. Anschauung, 33, 75-80, 95 ; Kant's term, 76; Kant designates space and time as, 92 ; and intuition, 94. Archery, ethics compared to, 21. Argumentation, Spencer's loose, 97. Berkeley, Bishop, 81. Bestimmung (Mission), 18, 50. Carus, P.,g6; referred to by Spencer, 72-74- Clifford, Prof. W. K., 52, 53- Comte, August, 1. Condorcet, 48, 49, 51. Conscience, 66; a feeling, 25, 27; of man, 5-6; Mr. Spencer on, 7. Conscientiousness, 89. Consciousness, 25, 87, 89. Criticism, 81. Critique of Pure Reason, 32. Cultivated reason, 16, 22. Darvfin, 48; his golden rule, 99, 100. Descartes, 8. Dilettantism in philosophy, 68. Du Bois Reymond, 53. Duty, 20; and pleasure, ig; sense of, 25. Ego, according to Kant a logical fic- tion, 8. Empirical intuition, 91. Encyclopadia Britannica, on Spen- cer's generalisation, 37. End of Will, 13, 14. Epigenesis, 38 et seq. Ethics compared to archery, 21; ra duced to prudence, Spencer's, 3i ; universal principles in, 30. Evolution, Kant's, 9-10; Herder's idea of, 11; Kant's conception of, 21; Karl von Baer on, 35 et seq.; in the old sense as unfolding, 38 et seq.; and good will, 96. Existence, triple enigma of, 53. Feeling and ideas, discrimination between, 25. Feeling creature, man a, 28. First cause, 55, 56. Fog, agnosticism like a, 61. Forms, defined by Kant, 91 ; of intui- tions, 90, 91, 93. Generalisation, 24, 37. George, Henry, 100. Goethe, 53, 54, 79; on intuition, 79. Good will, 13, 14, 18, 22 ; and the Good 17 ; and evolution, 96. Haeckel, Prof. Ernst, 46. Happiness, Herder on, 18; of the greatest number, greatest, 20, 68 quality of, 21 ; Spencer on, 21 ; pur suit of, 22; state of perfect, 50. Happy sheep, 50. Harris, Dr. W. T., 77. Herder, Johann Gottfried, 10, 17, 50 Kant's objections to, 11 ; on happi ness, 18. Heteronomy, 22. History, natural, defined by Kant, 9 Idealism, Kant's, 80, Si. Ideas, strata of, 32. Impatient reader, 98, 99. Inadvertence, Spencer's, 86, 88. Inconsistency, of Kant. 98 ; of Spen cer's philosophy, 63, 64. 104 INDEX. Individuals, nature abandons to total destruction (Kant), 12. Infant's cry at birth, Kant on, 44. Infinite, 67. Infinity not mysterious, 55. Instinct, 16. Intuition, 79, 80, 83 ; six meanings, 78 ; forms of, 83, 90, 91, 93 ; Spencer on forms of, 83, 84 ; empirical, 91 ; pure, 91 ; and Anschauung, 94. Kant, I, 2, 46; his objections to Her- der, II ; his abnormal reasoning, 13; his conception of time, 15; on a cultivated reason, 15, 16; on hate of reason, 16; on misology, 16: his moral maxim, 17; his reasoning, 24; his conception of evolution, 31 ; his reasoning abnormal, 31 ; ar- raigned by Mr. Spencer, 32; too radical, 35; did not recognise sta. bility of species, 40 et seq.; on the origin of man, 43; on infant's cry at birth, 44; calls man's animal na- ture quadrupedal, 45 ; the old, 46 et seq.; Charles S. Peirce on, 51; his idealism, 80, 81 ; his conception of the objective validity of space, 84, 85 : his definition of forms, 91 ; designates space and time as An- schauung, 92; his inconsistency, 98. Knowledge, 55 ; eliminated by Spen- cer, 66; is relative, 61. Kroeger, 77. Mach, Prof. Ernst, 34. Man, conscience of, 5-6; a feeling creature, 28 ; Kant on the origin of, 43 ; bis animal nature quadrupedal, according to Kant, 45. Maxim, Kant's moral, 17. Mechanical laws, explanation ac- cording 10,46; nature derived ac- cording to, 41 et seq. Meiklejohn, 77. Mission, 50; of the human race, 18; unceasing progress man's, 18. Misology, Kant on, 16. Moscati, Dr., 44. Motion, 59; Spencer's idea of, 57, 58. Mysterious, Spencer's method of making ideas, 60. Mystery-isation of knowledge, 57. Mystery, Spencer's absolute, 64. Nature derived according to mechan- ical laws, 41 et seq. Nescience, 56, 66. Non-existent. 61. Objective validity of space, accord- ing to Kant, 84, 85. Occasionalism, 38 et seq., 39. Open Court, The, 2 ; referred to by Spencer, 72. Paradise, 7. Peirce, Charles S., 77, 78, 79; on Kant, 51. Perplexed Philosopher, the, 100. Pleasure and duty, 19. Porter, Dr. Noah, 8, 14. Positivism, 56. Prestabilism, 38, 39. Progress, unceasing, 50. Prototype of the original species, 9. Providence, aim of, 50. Pure intuition, 91. Reactionary agnosticism, 69. Reason, cultivated, t6, 22 ; Kant on a cultivated, 15, 16; Kant on hate of, 16. Reasoning, Kant's, 24. Reconciliation of religion and sci- ence, 66; Spencer's, 65. Religion based upon the known, 65. Religion of science, 67. Revue Philosophique, 5. Russell, F. C, 80. Schiller, 27-29, 35. Schleiermacher, on good, 24. Schopenhauer, 47. Schultze, Fritz, 48. Science, natural, contrasted with natural history, g; religion of, 67. Sense, logical, 26. Sense of duty, 25-27. Sentimentality, 27. Sentiment, import of, 28. Space and time discussed, 81-83. k INDEX. 105 Space, objectiva validity of same, according to Kant, 84, 8}. Species, Kant traces diSerent varie. ties back to one, 9-10 ; stability of not recognised by Kant, 40 et seq.; preservation of, 44, 45. Spencer, Herbert, i ; a reactionary spirit, 2; bis dilettantism, 2; on conscience, 7; his ethics reduced to prudence, 21 ; on happiness, 2: ; his agnosticism a popularisation of Kant's view, 34 ; Encyclopudia Britannica on, 37; his philosoph- ical development, 48 ; his Utopian ideal. 50; a power in our age, 52 \ coincides with the Zeitgeist, 52; sympathy with, 52; his agnosticism, 57; his idea of motion, 57, 58; his method of making ideas mysteri- ous, 60; his philosophy, inconsis- tency of, 63, 64 ; his absolute mys- tery, 64 ; his reconciliation of reli- gion and science, 65 ; eliminates knowledge, 66; an awakener from traditionalism, 70; his comment, 71, et seq.; his reference to The Open Court, 72; his reference to P. Carus, 72-74; on forms of intuition, 83,84, Sylvester on, 85; his inad- vertence, 86, 88 ; his main argu- ment, 88; his loose argumentation, 97; his letter, loi. Stellar universe, 7. Strata of ideas, 32. Sublimity, two kinds of, 3. Substance of the mind, 67. Sylvester, Professor, 86; on Spencer 85- Sympathy with Spencer, 52. Thing in itself superfluous, 34, Things in themselves are ghosts, 60 Three assumptions, 54. Time and space, 33; discussed, 81-83. Time, Kant's conception of, 15. Transitional agnosticisip, 69. Triple enigma of existence, 53. Ueberweg, 63, 64. Unceasing progress, 50; is essential. 21; man's mission, 18. Unknowable, the, 6i ; had better be discarded, 62; convenient for sleight of hand, 64. Utilitarianism, 19. Von Baer, Karl, 36, 37; on evolution 35 et seq. Watson, Professor, 35. Why, the question, 53 et seq., 55. Will, end of, 13, 14. IVirklichkeit, 61. Wolft, Caspar Friedrich, 38. World-riddles, the seven, 53. Xenions, 28, 35. Zeitgeist, 34 ; Spencer coincides with the, 52. CATALOGUE OF PUBLICATIONS OF THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING CO. COPE, E. D. THE PRIMARY FACTORS OF ORGANIC EVOLUTION. 121 cuts. Pp. xvi, 547. Cloth, 82.00 net (los.). MULLER. F. MAX. THREE INTRODUCTORY LECTURES ON THE SCIENCE OF THOUGHT. 128 pages. 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