History Of Modern Philosophy by Richard Falckenberg

the right to defend himself against attack and to revenge himself on the evil-doer; but in the political community, founded by contract, personal revenge is replaced by punishment decreed by the civil power. The aim of punishment is not retribution, but reformation and deterrence. It belongs to God alone to punish because of sin committed, the state can punish only to prevent it. (The antithesis _quia peccatum est_–_ne peccetur_ comes from Seneca.)

[Footnote 1: Natural law would be valid even if there were no God. With these words the alliance between the modern and the mediaeval philosophy of law is severed.]

This energetic revival of the distinction already common in the Middle Ages between “positive and natural,” which Lord Herbert of Cherbury brought forward at the same period (1624) in the philosophy of religion, gave the catchword for a movement in practical philosophy whose developments extend into the nineteenth century. Not only the illumination period, but all modern philosophy down to Kant and Fichte, is under the ban of the antithesis, natural and artificial. In all fields, in ethics as well as in noÃ«tics, men return to the primitive or storm back to it, in the hope of finding there the source of all truth and the cure for all evils. Sometimes it is called nature, sometimes reason (natural law and rational law are synonymous, as also natural religion and the religion of the reason), by which is understood that which is permanent and everywhere the same in contrast to the temporary and the changeable, that which is innate in contrast to that which has been developed, in contrast, further, to that which has been revealed. Whatever passes as law in all places and at all times is natural law, says Grotius; that which all men believe forms the content of natural religion, says Lord Herbert. Before long it comes to be said: that _alone_ is genuine, true, healthy, and valuable which has eternal and universal validity; all else is not only superfluous and valueless but of evil, for it must be unnatural and corrupt. This step is taken by Deism, with the principle that whatever is not natural or rational in the sense indicated is unnatural and irrational. Parallel phenomena are not wanting, further, in the philosophy of law (Gierke, _Althusius_). But these errors must not be too harshly judged. The confidence with which they were made sprang from the real and the historical force of their underlying idea.

As already stated, the “natural” forms the antithesis to the supernatural, on the one hand, and to the historical, on the other. This combination of the revealed and the historical will not appear strange, if we remember that the mediaeval view of the world under criticism was, as Christian, historico-religious, and, moreover, that for the philosophy of religion the two in fact coincide, inasmuch as revelation is conceived as an historical event, and the historical religions assume the character of revealed. The term arbitrary, applied to both in common, was questionable, however: as revelation is a divine decree, so historical institutions are the products of human enactment, the state, the result of a contract, dogmas, inventions of the priesthood, _the results of development, artificial constructions_! It took long ages for man to free himself from the idea of the artificial and conventional in his view of history. Hegel was the first to gather the fruit whose seeds had been sown by Leibnitz, Lessing, Herder, and the historical school of law. As often, however, as an attempt was made from this standpoint of origins to show laws in the course of history, only one could be reached, a law of necessary degeneration, interrupted at times by sudden restorations–thus the Deists, thus Machiavelli and Rousseau. Everything degenerates, science itself only contributes to the fall–therefore, back to the happy beginnings of things!

If, finally, we inquire into the position of the Church in regard to the questions of legal philosophy, we may say that, among the Protestants, Luther, appealing to the Scripture text, declares rulers ordained by God and sacred, though at the same time he considers law and politics but remotely related to the inner man; that Melancthon, in his _Elements of Ethics_ (1538), as in all his philosophical text-books,[1] went back to Aristotle, but found the source of natural law in the Decalogue, being followed in this by Oldendorp (1539), Hemming (1562), and B. Winkler (1615).[2]

[Footnote 1: The edition of Melancthon’s works by Bretschneider and Bindseil gives the ethical treatises in vol. xvi. and the other philosophical treatises in vol. xiii. (in part also in vols. xi. and xx.).]

[Footnote 2: Cf. C.v. Kaltenborn, _Die VorlÃ¤ufer des Hugo Grotius_, Leipsic, 1848.]

On the Catholic side, the Jesuits (the Order was founded in 1534, and confirmed in 1540), on the one hand, revived the Pelagian theory of freedom in opposition to the Luthero-Augustinian doctrine of the servitude of the will, and, on the other, defended the natural origin of the state in a (revocable) contract in opposition to its divine origin asserted by the Reformers, and the sovereignty of the people even to the sanctioning of tyrannicide. Bellarmin (1542-1621) taught that the prince derives his authority from the people, and as the latter have given him power, so they retain the natural right to take it back and bestow it elsewhere. The view of Juan Mariana (1537-1624; _De Rege_, 1599) is that, as the people in transferring rights to the prince retain still greater power themselves, they are entitled in given cases to call the king to account. If he corrupts the state by evil manners, and, degenerating into the tyrant, despises religion and the laws, he may, as a public enemy, be deprived by anyone of his authority and his life. It is lawful to arrest tyranny in any way, and those have always been highly esteemed who, from devotion to the public welfare, have sought to kill the tyrant.

%5. Skepticism in France.%

Toward the end of the sixteenth century, and in the very country which was to become the cradle of modern philosophy, there appeared, as a forerunner of the new thinking, a skepticism in which that was taken for complete and ultimate truth which with Descartes constitutes merely a moment or transition point in the inquiry. The earliest and the most ingenious among the representatives of this philosophy of doubt was Michel de Montaigne (1533-92), who in his _Essays_–which were the first of their kind and soon found an imitator in Bacon; they appeared in 1580 in two volumes, with an additional volume in 1588–combined delicate observation and keen thinking, boldness and prudence, elegance and solidity. The French honor him as one of their foremost writers. The most important among these treatises or essays is considered to be the “Apology for Raymond of Sabunde” (ii. 12) with valuable excursuses on faith and knowledge. Montaigne bases his doubt on the diversity of individual views, each man’s opinion differing from his fellow’s, while truth must be one. There exists no certain, no universally admitted knowledge. The human reason is feeble and blind in all things, knowledge is deceptive, especially the philosophy of the day, which clings to tradition, which fills the memory with learned note-stuff, but leaves the understanding void and, instead of things, interprets interpretations only. Both sensuous and rational knowledge are untrustworthy: the former, because it cannot be ascertained whether its deliverances conform to reality, and the latter, because its premises, in order to be valid, need others in turn for their own establishment, etc., _ad infinitum_. Every advance in inquiry makes our ignorance the more evident; the doubter alone is free. But though certainty is denied us in regard to truth, it is not withheld in regard to duty. In fact, a twofold rule of practical life is set up for us: nature, or life in accordance with nature and founded on self-knowledge, and supernatural revelation, the Gospel (to be understood only by the aid of divine grace). Submission to the divine ruler and benefactor is the first duty of the rational soul. From obedience proceeds every virtue, from over-subtlety and conceit, which is the product of fancied knowledge, comes every sin. Montaigne, like all who know men, has a sharp eye for human frailty. He depicts the universal weakness of human nature and the corruption of his time with great vivacity and not without a certain pleasure in the obscene; and besides folly and passion, complains above all of the fact that so few understand the art of enjoyment, of which he, a true man of the world, was master.

The skeptico-practical standpoint of Montaigne was developed into a system by the Paris preacher, Pierre Charron (1541-1603), in his three books _On Wisdom_ (1601). Doubt has a double object: to keep alive the spirit of inquiry and to lead us on to faith. From the fact that reason and experience are liable to deception and that the mind has at its disposal no means of distinguishing truth from falsehood, it follows that we are born not to possess truth but to seek it. Truth dwells alone in the bosom of God; for us doubt and investigation are the only good amid all the error and tribulation which surround us. Life is all misery. Man is capable of mediocrity alone; he can neither be entirely good nor entirely evil; he is weak in virtue, weak in vice, and the best degenerates in his hands. Even religion suffers from the universal imperfection. It is dependent on nationality and country, and each religion is based on its predecessor; the supernatural origin of which all religions boast belongs in fact to Christianity alone, which is to be accepted with humility and with submission of the reason. Charron lays chief emphasis, however, on the practical side of Christianity, the fulfillment of duty; and the “wisdom” which forms the subject of his book is synonymous with uprightness (_probitÃ©_), the way to which is opened up by self-knowledge and whose reward is repose of spirit. And yet we are not to practice it for the sake of the reward, but because nature and reason, i.e., God, absolutely (entirely apart from the pleasurable results of virtue) require us to be good. True uprightness is more than mere legality, for even when outward action is blameless, the motives may be mixed. “I desire men to be upright without paradise and hell.” Religion seeks to crown morality, not to generate it; virtue is earlier and more natural than piety. In his definition of the relation between religion and ethics, his delimitation of morality from legality, and his insistence on the purity of motives (do right, because the inner rational law commands it), an anticipation of Kantian principles may be recognized.

Under Francis Sanchez (died 1632; his chief work is entitled _Quod Nihil Scitur_), a Portuguese by birth, and professor of medicine in Montpellier and Toulouse, skepticism was transformed from melancholy contemplation into a fresh, vigorous search after new problems. In the place of book-learning, which disgusts him by its smell of the closet, its continued prating of Aristotle, and its self-exhaustion in useless verbalism, Sanchez desires to substitute a knowledge of things. Perfect knowledge, it is true, can be hoped for only when subject and object correspond to each other. But how is finite man to grasp the infinite universe? Experience, the basis of all knowledge, gropes about the outer surface of things and illumines particulars only, without the ability either to penetrate to their inner nature or to comprehend the whole. We know only what we produce. Thus God knows the world which he has made, but to us is vouchsafed merely an insight into mediate or second causes, _causae secundae_. Here, however, a rich field still lies open before philosophy–only let her attack her problem with observation and experiment rather than with words.

The French nation, predisposed to skepticism by its prevailing acuteness, has never lacked representatives of skeptical philosophy. The transition from the philosophers of doubt whom we have described to the great Bayle was formed by La Mothe le Vayer (died 1672; _Five Dialogues_, 1671), the tutor of Louis XIV., and P.D. Huet(ius), Bishop of Avranches (died 1721), who agreed in holding that a recognition of the weakness of the reason is the best preparation for faith.

6. %German Mysticism%.

In a period which has given birth to a skeptical philosophy, one never looks in vain for the complementary phenomenon of mysticism. The stone offered by doubt in place of bread is incapable of satisfying the impulse after knowledge, and when the intellect grows weary and despairing, the heart starts out in the quest after truth. Then its path leads inward, the mind turns in upon itself, seeks to learn the truth by inner experience and life, by inward feeling and possession, and waits in quietude for divine illumination. The German mysticism of Eckhart[1] (about 1300), which had been continued in Suso and Tauler and had received a practical direction in the Netherlands,–Ruysbroek (about 1350) to Thomas Ã Kempis (about 1450),–now puts forth new branches and blossoms at the turning point of the centuries.

[Footnote 1: Master Eckhart’s _Works_ have been edited by F. Pfeiffer, Leipsic, 1857. The following have written on him: Jos. Bach, Vienna, 1864; Ad. Lasson, Berlin, 1868; the same, in the second part of Ueberweg’s _Grundriss_, last section; Denifle, in the _Archiv fÃ¼r Litteratur und Kulturgeschichte des Mittelalters_. ii. 417 _seq_.; H. Siebeck, _Der Begriff des Gemuts in der deutschen Mystik (BeitrÃ¤ge zur Entstehungsgeschichte der neueren Psychologie_, i), Giessen Programme, 1891.]

Luther himself was originally a mystic, with a high appreciation of Tauler and Thomas Ã Kempis, and published in 1518 that attractive little book by an anonymous Frankfort author, the _German Theology_. When, later, he fell into literalism, it was the mysticism of German Protestantism which, in opposition to the new orthodoxy, held fast to the original principle of the Reformation, _i.e._, to the principle that faith is not assent to historical facts, not the acceptance of dogmas, but an inner experience, a renewal of the whole man. Religion and theology must not be confounded. Religion is not doctrine, but a new birth. With Schwenckfeld, and also with Franck, mysticism is still essentially pietism; with Weigel, and by the addition of ideas from Paracelsus, it is transformed into theosophy, and as such reaches its culmination in BÃ¶hme.

Caspar Schwenckfeld sought to spiritualize the Lutheran movement and protested against its being made into a pastors’ religion. Though he had been aroused by Luther’s pioneer feat, he soon saw that the latter had not gone far enough; and in his _Letter on the Eucharist_, 1527, he defined the points of difference between Luther’s view of the Sacrament and his own. Luther, he maintained, had fallen back to an historical view of faith, whereas the faith which saves can never consist in the outward acceptance of an historical fact. He who makes salvation dependent on preaching and the Sacrament, confuses the invisible and the visible Church, _Ecclesia interna_ and _externa_. The layman is his own priest.

According to Sebastian Franck (1500-45), there are in man, as in everything else, two principles, one divine and one selfish, Christ and Adam, an inner and an outer man; if he submits himself to the former (by a timeless choice), he is spiritual, if to the latter, carnal. God is not the cause of sin, but man, who turns the divine power to good or evil. He who denies himself to live God is a Christian, whether he knows and confesses the Gospel or not. Faith does not consist in assent, but in inner transformation. The historical element in Christianity and its ceremonial observances are only the external form and garb (its “figure”), have merely a symbolic significance as media of communication, as forms of revelation for the eternal truth, proclaimed but not founded by Christ; the Bible is merely the shadow of the living Word of God.

Valentin Weigel (born in 1533, pastor in Zschopau from 1567), whose works were not printed until after his death, combines his predecessors’ doctrine of inner and eternal Christianity with the microcosmos-idea of Paracelsus. God, who lacks nothing, has not created the world in order to gain, but in order to give. Man not only bears the earthly world in his body, and the heavenly world of the angels in his reason (his spirit), but by virtue of his intellect (his immortal soul) participates in the divine world also. As he is thus a microcosm and, moreover, an image of God, all his knowledge becomes self-knowledge, both sensuous perception (which is not caused by the object, but only occasioned by it), and the knowledge of God. The literalist knows not God, but he alone who bears God in himself. Man is favored above other beings with the freedom to dwell in himself or in God. When man came out from God, he was his own tempter and made himself proud and selfish. Thus evil, which had before remained hidden, was revealed, and became sin. As the separation from God is an eternal act, so also redemption and resurrection form an inner event. Christ is born in everyone who gives up the I-ness (_Ichheit_); each regenerate man is a son of God. But no vicarious suffering can save him who does not put off the old Adam, no matter how much an atheology sunk in literalism may comfort itself with the hope that man can “drink at another’s cost” (that the merit of another is imputed to him).[1]

[Footnote 1: Weigel is discussed by J.O. Opel, Leipsic, 1864.]

German mysticism reaches its culmination in the GÃ¶rlitz cobbler, Jacob BÃ¶hme (1575-1624; _Aurora, or the Rising Dawn_; _Mysterium Magnum, or on the First Book of Moses_, etc. The works of BÃ¶hme, collected by his apostle, Gichtel, appeared in 1682 in ten volumes, and in 1730 in six volumes; a new edition was prepared by Schiebler in 1831-47, with a second edition in 1861 _seq_.). BÃ¶hme’s doctrine[1] centers about the problem of the origin of evil. He transfers this to God himself and joins therewith the leading thought of Eckhart, that God goes through a process, that he proceeds from an unrevealed to a revealed condition. At the sight of a tin vessel glistening in the sun, he conceived, as by inspiration, the idea that as the sunlight reveals itself on the dark vessel so all light needs darkness and all good evil in order to appear and to become knowable. Everything becomes perceptible through its opposite alone: gentleness through sternness, love through anger, affirmation through negation. Without evil there would be no life, no movement, no distinctions, no revelation; all would be unqualified, uniform nothingness. And as in nature nothing exists in which good and evil do not reside, so in God, besides power or the good, a contrary exists, without which he would remain unknown to himself. The theogonic process is twofold: self-knowledge on the part of God, and his revelation outward, as eternal nature, in seven moments.

[Footnote 1: Cf. Windelband’s fine exposition, _Geschichte der neueren Philosophie_, vol. i. Â§19. The following have written on BÃ¶hme: Fr. Baader (in vols. iii. and xiii. of his _Werke_); Hamberger, Munich, 1844: H. A. Fechner, GÃ¶rlitz, 1857; A. v. Harless, Berlin, 1870, new edition, Leipsic, 1882.]

At the beginning of the first development God is will without object, eternal quietude and rest, unqualified groundlessness without determinate volition. But in this divine nothingness there soon awakes the hunger after the aught (somewhat, existence), the impulse to apprehend and manifest self, and as God looks into and forms an image of himself, he divides into Father and Son. The Son is the eye with which the Father intuits himself, and the procession of this vision from the groundless is the Holy Ghost. Thus far God, who is one in three, is only understanding or wisdom, wherein the images of all the possible are contained; to the intuition of self must be added divisibility; it is only through the antithesis of the revealed God and the unrevealed groundless that the former becomes an actual trinity (in which the persons stand related as essence, power, and activity), and the latter becomes desire or nature in God.

At the creation of the world seven equally eternal qualities, source-spirits or nature-forms, are distinguished in the divine nature. First comes desire as the contractile, tart quality or pain, from which proceed hardness and heat; next comes mobility as the expansive, sweet quality, as this shows itself in water. As the nature of the first was to bind and the second was fluid, so they both are combined in the bitter quality or the pain of anxiety, the principle of sensibility. (Contraction and expansion are the conditions of perceptibility.) From these three forms fright or lightning suddenly springs forth. This fourth quality is the turning-point at which light flames up from darkness and the love of God breaks forth from out his anger; as the first three, or four, forms constitute the kingdom of wrath, so the latter three constitute the kingdom of joy. The fifth quality is called light or the warm fire of love, and has for its functions external animation and communication; the sixth, report and sound, is the principle of inner animation and intelligence; the seventh, the formative quality, corporeality, comprehends all the preceding in itself as their dwelling.

The dark fire of anger (the hard, sweet, and bitter qualities) and the light fire of love (light, report, and corporeality), separated by the lightning-fire, in which God’s wrath is transformed into mercy, stand related as evil and good. The evil in God is not sin, but simply the inciting sting, the principle of movement; which, moreover, is restrained, overcome, transfigured by gentleness. Sin arises only when the creature refuses to take part in the advance from darkness to light, and obstinately remains in the fire of anger instead of forcing his way through to the fire of love. Thus that which was one in God is divided. Lucifer becomes enamored of the tart quality (the _centrum naturae_ or the matrix) and will not grow into the heart of God; and it is only after such lingering behind that the kingdom of wrath become a real hell. Heaven and hell are not future conditions, but are experienced here on earth; he who instead of subduing animality becomes enamored of it, stands under the wrath of God; whereas he who abjures self dwells in the joyous kingdom of mercy. He alone truly believes who himself becomes Christ, who repeats in himself what Christ suffered and attained.

The creation of the material world is a result of Lucifer’s fall. BÃ¶hme’s description of it, based on the Mosaic account of creation, may be passed without notice; similarly his view of cognition, familiar from the earlier mystics, that all knowledge is derived from self-knowledge, that our destination is to comprehend God from ourselves, and the world from God. Man, whose body, spirit, and soul hold in them the earthly, the sidereal, and the heavenly, is at once a microcosm and a “little God.”

Under the intractable form of BÃ¶hme’s speculations and amid their riotous fancy, no one will fail to recognize their true-hearted sensibility and an unusual depth and vigor of thought. They found acceptance in England and France, and have been revived in later times in the systems of Baader and Schelling.

%7. The Foundation of Modern Physics%.

In no field has the modern period so completely broken with tradition as in physics. The correctness of the Copernican theory is proved by Kepler’s laws of planetary movement, and Galileo’s telescopical observations; the scientific theory of motion is created by Galileo’s laws of projectiles, falling bodies, and the pendulum; astronomy and mechanics form the entrance to exact physics–Descartes ventures an attempt at a comprehensive mechanical explanation of nature. And thus an entirely new movement is at hand. Forerunners, it is true, had not been lacking. Roger Bacon (1214-94) had already sought to obtain an empirical knowledge of nature based upon mathematics; and the great painter Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) had discovered the principles of mechanics, though without gaining much influence over the work of his contemporaries. It was reserved for the triple star which has been mentioned to overthrow Scholasticism. The conceptions with which the Scholastic-Aristotelian philosophy of nature sought to get at phenomena–substantial forms, properties, qualitative change–are thrown aside; their place is taken by matter, forces working under law, rearrangement of parts. The inquiry into final causes is rejected as an anthropomorphosis of natural events, and deduction from efficient causes is alone accepted as scientific explanation. Size, shape, number, motion, and law are the only and the sufficient principles of explanation. For magnitudes alone are knowable; wherever it is impossible to measure and count, to determine force mathematically, there rigorous, exact science ceases. Nature a system of regularly moved particles of mass; all that takes place mechanical movement, viz., the combination, separation, dislocation, oscillation of bodies and corpuscles; mathematics the organon of natural science! Into this circle of modern scientific categories are articulated, further, Galileo’s new conception of motion and the conception of atoms, which, previously employed by physicists, as Daniel Sennert (1619) and others, is now brought into general acceptance by Gassendi, while the four elements are definitively discarded (Lasswitz, _Geschichte der Atomistik_, 1890). Still another doctrine of Democritus is now revived; an evident symptom of the quantification and mechanical interpretation of natural phenomena being furnished by the doctrine of the subjectivity of sense qualities, in which, although on varying grounds, Kepler, Galileo, Descartes, Gassendi, and Hobbes agree.[1] Descartes and Hobbes will be discussed later. Here we may give a few notes on their fellow laborers in the service of the mechanical science of nature.

[Footnote 1: Cf. chapter vi. in Natorp’s work on _Descartes’ Erkenntnisstheorie_, Marburg, 1882, and the same author’s _Analekten zur Geschichte der Philosophie_, in the _Philosophische Monatshefte_, vol. xviii. 1882, p. 572 _seq_.]

We begin with John Kepler[1] (1571-1630; chief work, _The New Astronomy or Celestial Physics, in Commentaries on the Motions of Mars_, 1609). Kepler’s merit as an astronomer has long obscured his philosophical importance, although his discovery of the laws of planetary motion was the outcome of endeavors to secure an exact foundation for his theory of the world. The latter is aesthetic in character, centers about the idea of a universal world-harmony, and employs mathematics as an instrument of confirmation. For the fact that this theory satisfies the mind, and, on the whole, corresponds to our empirical impression of the order of nature, is not enough in Kepler’s view to guarantee its truth; by exact methods, by means of induction and experiment, a detailed proof from empirical facts must be found for the existence not only of a general harmony, but of definitely fixed proportions. Herewith the philosophical application of mathematics loses that obscure mystical character which had clung to it since the time of Pythagoras, and had strongly manifested itself as late as in Nicolas of Cusa. Mathematical relations constitute the deepest essence of the real and the object of science. Where matter is, there is geometry; the latter is older than the world and as eternal as the divine Spirit; magnitudes are the source of things. True knowledge exists only where quanta are known; the presupposition of the capacity for knowledge is the capacity to count; the spirit cognizes sensuous relations by means of the pure, archetypal, intellectual relations born in it, which, before the advent of sense-impressions, have lain concealed behind the veil of possibility; inclination and aversion between men, their delight in beauty, the pleasant impression of a view, depend upon an unconscious and instinctive perception of proportions. This quantitative view of the world, which, with a consciousness of its novelty as well as of its scope, is opposed to the qualitative view of Aristotle;[2] the opinion that the essence of the human spirit, as well as of the divine, nay, the essence of all things, consists in activity; that, consequently, the soul is always active, being conscious of its own harmony at least in a confused way, even when not conscious of external proportions; further, the doctrine that nature loves simplicity, avoids the superfluous, and is accustomed to accomplish large results with a few principles–these remind one of Leibnitz. At the same time, the law of parsimony and the methodological conclusions concerning true hypotheses and real causes (an hypothesis must not be an artificially constructed set of fictions, forcibly adjusted to reality, but is to trace back phenomena to their real grounds), obedience to which enabled him to deduce _a priori_ from causes the conclusions which Copernicus by fortunate conjecture had gathered inductively from effects–these made our thinker a forerunner of Newton. The physical method of explanation must not be corrupted either by theological conceptions (comets are entirely natural phenomena!) or by anthropomorphic views, which endow nature with spiritual powers.

[Footnote 1: See Sigwart, _Kleine Schriften_, vol. i. p. 182 _seq_.; R. Eucken, _BeitrÃ¤ge zur Geschichte der neueren Philosophie_, p. 54 _seq_.]

[Footnote 2: Aristotle erred when he considered qualitative distinctions (_idem_ and _aliud_) ultimate. These are to be traced back to quantitative differences, and the _aliud_ or _diversum_ is to be replaced by _plus et minus_. There is nothing absolutely light, but only relatively. Since all things are distinguished only by “more or less,” the possibility of mediating members or proportions between them is given.]

Intermediate between Bacon and Descartes, both in the order of time and in the order of fact, and a co-founder of modern philosophy, stands Galileo Galilei (1564-1641).[1] Galileo exhibits all the traits characteristic of modern thinking: the reference from words to things, from memory to perception and thought, from authority to self-ascertained principles, from chance opinion, arbitrary opinion, and the traditional doctrines of the schools, to “knowledge,” that is, to one’s own, well grounded, indisputable insight, from the study of human affairs to the study of nature. Study Aristotle, but do not become his slave; instead of yielding yourselves captive to his views, use your own eyes; do not believe that the mind remains unproductive unless it allies itself with the understanding of another; copy nature, not copies merely! He equals Bacon in his high estimation of sensuous experience in contrast to the often illusory conclusions of the reason, and of the value of induction; but he does not conceal from himself the fact that observation is merely the first step in the process of cognition, leaving the chief rÃ´le for the understanding. This, supplementing the defect of experience–the impossibility of observing all cases–by its _a priori_ concept of law and with its inferences overstepping the bounds of experience, first makes induction possible, brings the facts established into connection (their combination under laws is thought, not experience), reduces them to their primary, simple, unchangeable, and necessary causes by abstraction from contingent circumstances, regulates perception, corrects sense-illusions, _i. e_., the false judgments originating in experience, and decides concerning the reality or fallaciousness of phenomena. Demonstration based on experience, a close union of observation and thought, of fact and Idea (law)–these are the requirements made by Galileo and brilliantly fulfilled in his discoveries; this, the “inductive speculation,” as DÃ¼hring terms it, which derives laws of far-reaching importance from inconspicuous facts; this, as Galileo himself recognizes, the distinctive gift of the investigator. Galileo anticipates Descartes in regard to the subjective character of sense qualities and their reduction to quantitative distinctions,[2] while he shares with him the belief in the typical character of mathematics and the mechanical theory of the world. The truth of geometrical propositions and demonstrations is as unconditionally certain for man as for God, only that man learns them by a discursive process, whereas God’s intuitive understanding comprehends them with a glance and knows more of them than man. The book of the universe is written in mathematical characters; motion is the fundamental phenomenon in the world of matter; our knowledge reaches as far as phenomena are measurable; the qualitative nature of force, back of its quantitative determinations, remains unknown to us. When Galileo maintains that the Copernican theory is philosophically true and not merely astronomically useful, thus interpreting it as more than a hypothesis, he is guided by the conviction that the simplest explanation is the most probable one, that truth and beauty are one, as in general he concedes a guiding though not a controlling influence in scientific work to the aesthetic demand of the mind for order, harmony, and unity in nature, to correspond to the wisdom of the Creator.

[Footnote 1: Cf. Natorp’s essay on Galileo, in vol. xviii. of the _Philosophische Monatshefte_, 1882.]

[Footnote 1: This doctrine is developed by Galileo in the controversial treatise against Padre Grassi, _The Scales (Il Saggiatore_, 1623, in the Florence edition of his collected works, 1842 _seq_., vol. iv. pp. 149-369; cf. Natorp, _Descartes’ Erkenntnisstheorie_, 1882, chap. vi.). In substance, moreover, this doctrine is found, as Heussler remarks, _Baco_, p. 94, in Bacon himself, in _Valerius Terminus (Works_, Spedding, vol. iii. pp. 217-252.)]

One of the most noted and influential among the contemporaries, countrymen, and opponents of Descartes, was the priest and natural scientist, Petrus Gassendi,[1] from 1633 Provost of Digne, later for a short period professor of mathematics at Paris. His renewal of Epicureanism, to which he was impelled by temperament, by his reverence for Lucretius, and by the anti-Aristotelian tendency of his thinking, was of far more importance for modern thought than the attempts to revive the ancient systems which have been mentioned above (p. 29). Its superior influence depends on the fact that, in the conception of atoms, it offered exact inquiry a most useful point of attachment. The conflict between the Gassendists and the Cartesians, which at first was a bitter one, centered, as far as physics was concerned, around the value of the atomic hypothesis as contrasted with the corpuscular and vortex theory which Descartes had opposed to it. It soon became apparent, however, that these two thinkers followed along essentially the same lines in the philosophy of nature, sharply as they were opposed in their noÃ«tical principles. Descartes’ doctrine of body is conceived from an entirely materialistic standpoint, his anthropology, indeed, going further than the principles of his system would allow. Gassendi, on the other hand, recognizes an immaterial, immortal reason, traces the origin of the world, its marvelous arrangement, and the beginning of motion back to God, and, since the Bible so teaches, believes the earth to be at rest,–holding that, for this reason, the decision must be given in favor of Tycho BrahÃ© and against Copernicus, although the hypothesis of the latter affords the simpler and, scientifically, the more probable explanation. Both thinkers rejoice in their agreement with the dogmas of the Church, only that with Descartes it came unsought in the natural progress of his thought, while Gassendi held to it in contradiction to his system. It is the more surprising that Gassendi’s works escaped being put upon the Index, a fate which overtook those of Descartes in 1663.

[Footnote 2: Pierre Gassendi, 1592-1655: _On the Life and Character of Epicurus_, 1647; _Notes on the Tenth Book of Diogenes LaÃ«rtius, with a Survey of the Doctrine of Epicurus_, 1649. _Works_, Lyons, 1658, Florence, 1727. Cf. Lange, _History of Materialism_, book i. Â§ 3, chap, 1; Natorp, _Analekten, Philosophische Monatshefte_, vol. xviii. 1882, p. 572 _seq_.]

As modern thought derives its mechanical temper equally from both these sources, and the natural science of the day has appropriated the corpuscles of Descartes under the name of molecules, as well as the atoms of Gassendi, though not without considerable modification in both conceptions (Lange, vol. i. p. 269), so we find attempts at mediation at an early period. While PÃ¨re Mersenne (1588-1648), who was well versed in physics, sought an indecisive middle course between these two philosophers, the English chemist, Robert Boyle, effected a successful synthesis of both. The son of Richard Boyle, Earl of Cork, he was born at Lismore in 1626, lived in literary retirement at Oxford from 1654, and later in Cambridge, and died, 1692, in London, president of the Royal Society. His principal work, _The Sceptical Chemist (Works_, vol. i. p. 290 _seq_.), appeared in 1661, the tract, _De Ipsa Natura_, in 1682.[1] By his introduction of the atomic conception he founded an epoch in chemistry, which, now for the first, was freed from bondage to the ideas of Aristotle and the alchemists. Atomism, however, was for Boyle merely an instrument of method and not a philosophical theory of the world. A sincerely religious man,[2] he regards with disfavor both the atheism of Epicurus and his complete rejection of teleology–the world-machine points to an intelligent Creator and a purpose in creation; motion, to a divine impulse. He defends, on the other hand, the right of free inquiry against the priesthood and the pedantry of the schools, holding that the supernatural must be sharply distinguished from the natural, and mere conjectures concerning insoluble problems from positions susceptible of experimental proof; while, in opposition to submission to authority, he remarks that the current coin of opinion must be estimated, not by the date when and the person by whom it was minted but by the value of the metal alone. Cartesian elements in Boyle are the start from doubt, the derivation of all motion from pressure and impact, and the extension of the mechanical explanation to the organic world. His inquiries relate exclusively to the world of matter so far as it was “completed on the last day but one of creation.” He defends empty space against Descartes and Hobbes. He is the first to apply the mediaeval terms, primary and secondary qualities, to the antithesis between objective properties which really belong to things, and sensuous or subjective qualities present only in the feeling subject.[3]

[Footnote 1: Boyle’s _Works_ were published in Latin at Geneva, in 1660, in six volumes, and in 1714 in five; an edition by Birch appeared at London, 1744, in five volumes, second edition, 1772, in six. Cf. Buckle, _History of Civilization in England_, vol. i. chap. vii. pp. 265-268; Lange, _History of Materialism_, vol. i. pp. 298-306; vol. ii. p. 351 _seq_.; Georg Baku, _Der Streit Ã¼ber den Naturbegriff, Zeitschrift fÃ¼r Philosophie_, vol. xcviii., 1891, p. 162 _seq_.]

[Footnote 2: The foundation named after him had for its object to promote by means of lectures the investigation of nature on the basis of atomism, and, at the same time, to free it from the reproach of leading to atheism and to show its harmony with natural religion. Samuel Clarke’s work on _The Being and Attributes of God_, 1705, originated in lectures delivered on this foundation.]

[Footnote 3: Eucken, _Geschichte der philosophischen Terminologie_, pp. 94, 196.]

%8. Philosophy in England to the Middle of the Seventeenth Century.%

%(a) Bacon’s Predecessors.%–The darkness which lay over the beginnings of modern English philosophy has been but incompletely dispelled by the meritorious work of Ch. de RÃ©musat _(Histoire de la Philosophie en Angleterre depuis Bacon jusqu’a Locke_, 2 vols., 1878). The most recent investigations of J. Freudenthal _(BeitrÃ¤ge zur Geschichte der Englischen Philosophie_, in the _Archiv fÃ¼r Geschichte der Philosophie_, vols. iv. and v., 1891) have brought assistance in a way deserving of thanks, since they lift at important points the veil which concealed Bacon’s relations to his predecessors and contemporaries, by describing the scientific tendencies and achievements of Digby and Temple. The following may be taken from his results.

Everard Digby (died 1592; chief work, _Theoria Analytica,_ 1579), instructor in logic in Cambridge from 1573, who was strongly influenced by Reuchlin and who favored an Aristotelian-Alexandrian-Cabalistic eclecticism, was the first to disseminate Neoplatonic ideas in England; and, in spite of the lack of originality in his systematic presentation of theoretical philosophy, aroused the study of this branch in England into new life. His opponent, Sir William Temple [1] (1553-1626), by his defense and exposition of the doctrine of Ramus (introduced into Great Britain by George Buchanan and his pupil, Andrew Melville), made Cambridge the chief center of Ramism. He was the first who openly opposed Aristotle.

[Footnote 1: Temple was secretary to Philip Sidney, William Davison, and the Earl of Essex, and, from 1619, Provost of Trinity College, Dublin. His maiden work, _De Unica P. Rami Methodo_, which he published under the pseudonym, Mildapettus 1580, was aimed at Digby’s _De Duplici Methodo_. His chief work, _P. Rami Dialectics Libri Dua Scholiis, Illustrati_, appeared in 1584.]

Bacon was undoubtedly acquainted with both these writers and took ideas from both. Digby represented the scholastic tendency, which Bacon vehemently opposed, yet without being able completely to break away from it. Temple was one of those who supplied him with weapons for this conflict. Finally, it must be mentioned that many of the English scientists of the time, especially William Gilbert (1540-1603; _De Magnete_, 1600), physician to Queen Elizabeth, used induction in their work before Bacon advanced his theory of method.

%(b) Bacon%.–The founder of the empirical philosophy of modern times was Francis Bacon (1561-1626), a contemporary of Shakespeare. Bacon began his political career by sitting in Parliament for many years under Queen Elizabeth, as whose counsel he was charged with the duty of engaging in the prosecution of his patron, the Earl of Essex, and at whose command he prepared a justification of the process. Under James I, he attained the highest offices and honors, being made Keeper of the Great Seal in 1617, Lord Chancellor and Baron Verulam in 1618, and Viscount St. Albans in 1621. In this last year came his fall. He was charged with bribery, and condemned; the king remitted the imprisonment and fine, and for the remainder of his life Bacon devoted himself to science, rejecting every suggestion toward a renewal of his political activity. The moral laxity of the times throws a mitigating light over his fault; but he cannot be aquitted of self-seeking, love of money and of display, and excessive ambition. As Macaulay says in his famous essay, he was neither malignant nor tyrannical, but he lacked warmth of affection and elevation of sentiment; there were many things which he loved more than virtue, and many which he feared more than guilt. He first gained renown as an author by his ethical, economic, and political _Essays_, after the manner of Montaigne; of these the first ten appeared in 1597, in the third edition (1625) increased to fifty-eight; the Latin translation bears the title _Sermones Fideles_. His great plan for a “restoration of the sciences” was intended to be carried out in four, or rather, in six parts. But only the first two parts of the _Instauratio Magna_ were developed: the _encyclopaedia_, or division of all sciences[1], a chart of the _globus intellectualis_, on which was depicted what each science had accomplished and what still remained for each to do; and the development of the _new method_. Bacon published his survey of the circle of the sciences in the English work, the _Advancement of Learning_, 1605, a much enlarged revision of which, _De Dignitate et Augmentis Scientiarum_, appeared in Latin in 1623. In 1612 he printed as a contribution to methodology the draft, _Cogitata et Visa_ (written 1607), later recast into the [first book of the] _Novum Organum_, 1620. This title, _Novum Organum_, of itself indicates opposition to Aristotle, whose logical treatises had for ages been collected under the title _Organon_. If in this work Bacon had given no connected exposition of his reforming principles, but merely a series of aphorisms, and this an incomplete one, the remaining parts are still more fragmentary, only prefaces and scattered contributions having been reduced to writing. The third part was to have been formed by a description of the world or natural _history, Historia Naturalis_, and the last,–introduced by a _Scala Intellectus_ (ladder of knowledge, illustrations of the method by examples), and by _Prodromi_ (preliminary results of his own inquiries),–by natural _science, Philosophia Secunda_. The best edition of Bacon’s works is the London one of Spedding, Ellis & Heath, 1857 _seq_., 7 vols., 2d ed., 1870; with 7 volumes additional of _The Letters and Life of Francis Bacon, including His Occasional Works_, and a Commentary, by J. Spedding, 1862-74. Spedding followed this further with a briefer _Account of the Life and Times of Francis Bacon_, 2 vols., 1878[2].

[Footnote 1: According to the faculties of the soul, memory, imagination, and understanding, three principal sciences are distinguished; history, poesy, and philosophy. Of the three objects of the latter, “nature strikes the mind with a direct ray, God with a refracted ray, and man himself with a reflected ray.” Theology is natural or revealed. Speculative (theoretical) natural philosophy divides into physics, concerned with material and efficient causes, and metaphysics, whose mission, according to the traditional view, is to inquire into final causes, but in Bacon’s own opinion, into formal causes; operative (technical) natural philosophy is mechanics and natural magic. The doctrine concerning man comprises anthropology (including logic and ethics) and politics. This division of Bacon was still retained by D’Alembert in his preliminary discourse to the _EncyclopÃ©die_.]

[Footnote 2: Cf. on Bacon, K. Fischer, 2d ed., 1875; Chr. Sigwart, in the _Preussische JahrbÃ¼cher_, 1863 and 1864, and in vol. ii. of his _Logik_; H. Heussler, _Baco und seine geschichtliche Stellung_, Breslau, 1889. [Adamson, _Encyclopedia Britannica_, 9th. ed., vol. iii. pp. 200-222; Fowler, English Philosophers Series, 1881; Nichol, Blackwood’s Philosophical Classics, 2 vols., 1888-89.–TR.]] Bacon’s merit was threefold: he felt more forcibly and more clearly than previous thinkers the need of a reform in science; he set up a new and grand ideal–unbiased and methodical investigation of nature in order to mastery over nature; and he gave information and directions as to the way in which this goal was to be attained, which, in spite of their incompleteness in detail, went deep into the heart of the subject and laid the foundation for the work of centuries.[1] His faith in the omnipotence of the new method was so strong, that he thought that science for the future could almost dispense with talent. He compares his method to a compass or a ruler, with which the unpractised man is able to draw circles and straight lines better than an expert without these instruments.

[Footnote 1: His detractors are unjust when they apply the criterion of the present method of investigation and find only imperfection in an imperfect beginning.]

All science hitherto, Bacon declares, has been uncertain and unfruitful, and does not advance a step, while the mechanic arts grow daily more perfect; without a firm basis, garrulous, contentious, and lacking in content, it is of no practical value. The seeker after certain knowledge must abandon words for things, and learn the art of forcing nature to answer his questions. The seeker after fruitful knowledge must increase the number of discoveries, and transform them from matters of chance into matters of design. For discovery conditions the power, greatness, and progress of mankind. Man’s power is measured by his knowledge, knowledge is power, and nature is conquered by obedience–_scientia est potentia; natura parendo vincitur_.

Bacon declares three things indispensable for the attainment of this power-giving knowledge: the mind must understand the instruments of knowledge; it must turn to experience, deriving the materials of knowledge from perception; and it must not rise from particular principles to the higher axioms too rapidly, but steadily and gradually through middle axioms. The mind can accomplish nothing when left to itself; but undirected experience alone is also insufficient (experimentation without a plan is groping in the dark), and the senses, moreover, are deceptive and not acute enough for the subtlety of nature–therefore, methodical experimentation alone, not chance observation, is worthy of confidence. Instead of the customary divorce of experience and understanding, a firm alliance, a “lawful marriage,” must be effected between them. The empiricists merely collect, like the ants; the dogmatic metaphysicians spin the web of their ideas out of themselves, like the spiders; but the true philosopher must be like the bee, which by its own power transforms and digests the gathered material.

As the mind, like a dull and uneven mirror, by its own nature distorts the rays of objects, it must first of all be cleaned and polished, that is, it must be freed from all prejudices and false notions, which, deep-rooted by habit, prevent the formation of a true picture of the world. It must root out its prejudices, or, where this is impossible, at least understand them. Doubt is the first step on the way to truth. Of these Phantoms or Idols to be discarded, Bacon distinguishes four classes: Idols of the Theater, of the Market Place, of the Den, and of the Tribe. The most dangerous are the _idola theatri_, which consist in the tendency to put more trust in authority and tradition than in independent reflection, to adopt current ideas simply because they find general acceptance. Bacon’s injunction concerning these is not to be deceived by stage-plays (_i.e._, by the teachings of earlier thinkers which represent things other than they are); instead of believing others, observe for thyself! The _idola fori_, which arise from the use of language in public intercourse, depend upon the confusion of words, which are mere symbols with a conventional value and which are based on the carelessly constructed concepts of the vulgar, with things themselves. Here Bacon warns us to keep close to things. The _idola specus_ are individual prepossessions which interfere with the apprehension of the true state of affairs, such as the excessive tendency of thought toward the resemblances or the differences of things, or the investigator’s habit of transferring ideas current in his own department to subjects of a different kind. Such individual weaknesses are numberless, yet they may in part be corrected by comparison with the perceptions of others. The _idola tribus_, finally, are grounded in the nature of the human species. To this class belong, among others, illusions of the senses, which may in part be corrected by the use of instruments, with which we arm our organs; further, the tendency to hold fast to opinions acceptable to us in spite of contrary instances; similarly, the tendency to anthropomorphic views, including, as its most important special instance, the mistake of thinking that we perceive purposive relations everywhere and the working of final causes, after the analogy of human action, when in reality efficient causes alone are concerned. Here Bacon’s injunction runs, not to interpret natural phenomena teleologically, but to explain them from mechanical causes; not to narrow the world down to the limits of the mind, but to extend the mind to the boundaries of the world, so that it shall understand it as it really is.

To these warnings there are added positive rules. When the investigator, after the removal of prejudices and habitual modes of thought, approaches experience with his senses unperverted and a purified mind, he is to advance from the phenomena given to their conditions. First of all, the facts must be established by observation and experiment, and systematically arranged,[1] then let him go on to causes and laws.[2] The true or scientific induction[3] thus inculcated is quite different from the credulous induction of common life or the unmethodical induction of Aristotle. Bacon emphasizes the fact that hitherto the importance of negative instances, which are to be employed as a kind of counter-proof, has been completely overlooked, and that a substitute for complete induction, which is never attainable, may be found, on the one hand, in the collection of as many cases as possible, and, on the other, by considering the more important or decisive cases, the “prerogative instances.” Then the inductive ascent from experiment to axiom is to be followed by a deductive descent from axioms to new experiments and discoveries. Bacon rejects the syllogism on the ground that it fits one to overcome his opponent in disputation, but not to gain an active conquest over nature. In his own application of these principles of method, his procedure was that of a dilettante; the patient, assiduous labor demanded for the successful promotion of the mission of natural investigation was not his forte. His strength lay in the postulation of problems, the stimulation and direction of inquiry, the discovery of lacunae and the throwing out of suggestions; and many ideas incidentally thrown off by him surprise us by their ingenious anticipations of later discoveries. The greatest defect in his theory was his complete failure to recognize the services promised by mathematics to natural science. The charge of utilitarianism, which has been so broadly made, is, on the contrary, unjust. For no matter how strongly he emphasizes the practical value of knowledge, he is still in agreement with those who esteem the godlike condition of calm and cheerful acquaintance with truth more highly than the advantages to be expected from it; he desires science to be used, not as “a courtezan for pleasure,” but “as a spouse for generation, fruit and comfort,” and–leaving entirely out of view his isolated acknowledgments of the inherent value of knowledge–he conceives its utility wholly in the comprehensive and noble sense that the pursuit of science, from which as such all narrow-minded regard for direct practical application must keep aloof, is the most important lever for the advancement of human culture.

[Footnote 1: Bacon illustrates the method by the explanation of heat. The results of experimental observation are to be arranged in three tables. The table of presence contains many different cases in which heat occurs; the table of absence, those in which, under circumstances otherwise the same, it is wanting; the table of degrees or comparison enumerates phenomena whose increase and decrease accompany similar variations in the degree of heat. That which remains after the _exclusion_ now to be undertaken (of that which cannot be the nature or cause of heat), yields as a preliminary result or commencement of interpretation (as a “first vintage”), the definition of heat: “a motion, expansive, restrained, and acting in its strife upon the smaller particles of bodies.”]

[Footnote 2: This goal of Baconian inquiry is by no means coincident with that of exact natural science. Law does not mean to him, as to the physical scientist of to-day, a mathematically formulated statement of the course of events, but the nature of the phenomenon, to be expressed in a definition (E. KÃ¶nig, _Entwickelung des Causalproblems bis Kant_, 1883, pp. 154-156). Bacon combines in a peculiar manner ancient and modern, Platonic and corpuscular fundamental ideas. Rejecting final causes with the atomists, yet handing over material and efficient causes (the latter of which sink with him to the level of mere changing occasional causes) to empirical physics, he assigns to metaphysics, as the true _science_ of nature, the search for the “forms” and properties of things. In this he is guided by the following metaphysical presupposition: Phenomena, however manifold they may be, are at bottom composed of a few elements, namely, permanent properties, the so-called “simple natures,” which form, as it were, the alphabet of nature or the colors on her palette, by the combination of which she produces her varied pictures; _e. g_., the nature of heat and cold, of a red color, of gravity, and also of age, of death. Now the question to be investigated becomes, What, then, is heat, redness, etc.? The ground essence and law of the natures consist in certain forms, which Bacon conceives in a Platonic way as concepts and substances, but phenomenal ones, and, at the same time, with Democritus, as the grouping or motion of minute material particles. Thus the form of heat is a particular kind of motion, the form of whiteness a determinate arrangement of material particles. Cf. Natge, _Ueber F. Bacons Formenlehre_, Leipsic, 1891, in which Heussler’s view is developed in more detail. [Cf. further, Fowler’s _Bacon_, English Philosophers Series, 1881, chap. iv.–TR.]]

[Footnote 3: The Baconian method is to be called induction, it is true, only in the broad sense. Even before Sigwart, Apelt, _Theorie der Induction_, 1854, pp. 151, 153, declared that the question it discussed was essentially a method of abstraction. This, however, does not detract from the fame of Bacon as the founder, of the theory of inductive investigation (in later times carefully elaborated by Mill).]

Bacon intended that his reforming principles should accrue to the benefit of practical philosophy also, but gave only aphoristic hints to this end. Everything is impelled by two appetites, of which the one aims at individual welfare, the other at the welfare of the whole of which the thing is a part (_bonum suitatis_–_bonum communionis_). The second is not only the nobler but also the stronger; this holds of the lower creatures as well as of man, who, when not degenerate, prefers the general welfare to his individual interests. Love is the highest of the virtues, and is never, as other human endowments, exposed to the danger of excess; therefore the life of action is of more worth than the life of contemplation. By this principle of morals Bacon marked out the way for the English ethics of later times.[1] He notes the lack of a science of character, for which more material is given in ordinary discourse, in the poets and the historians, than in the works of the philosophers; he explains the power of the affections over the reason by the fact that the idea of present good fills the imagination more forcibly than the idea of good to come, and summons persuasion, habit, and morals to the aid of the latter. We must endeavor so to govern the passions (each of which combines in itself a masculine impetuosity with a feminine weakness) that they shall take the part of the reason instead of attacking it. Elsewhere Bacon gives (not entirely unquestionable) directions concerning the art of making one’s way. Acute observations and ingenious remarks everywhere abound. In order to inform one’s self of a man’s intentions and ends, it is necessary to “keep a good mediocrity in liberty of speech, which invites a similar liberty, and in secrecy, which induces trust.” “In order to get on one must have a little of the fool and not too much of the honest.” “As the baggage is to an army, so is riches to virtue. It cannot be spared nor left behind, but it hindereth the march; yea, and the care of it sometimes loseth or disturbeth the victory” (impedimenta–baggage and hindrance). On envy and malevolence he says: “For men’s minds will either feed upon their own good or upon others’ evil; … and whoso is out of hope to attain another’s virtue will seek to come at even hand by depressing another’s fortune.”

[Footnote 1: Cf. Vorlaender, p. 267 _seq_.]

In ethics, as in theoretical philosophy, Bacon demands the completion of natural knowledge by revelation. The light of nature (the reason and the conscience) is able only to convince us of sin and not to give us complete information concerning our duty,–_e.g._, the lofty moral principle, Love your enemies. Similarly, natural theology is quite sufficient to place the existence of God beyond doubt, by reasoning from the order in nature (“slight tastes of philosophy may perchance move one to atheism but fuller draughts lead back to religion”); but the doctrines of Christianity are matters of faith. Religion and science are separate fields, any confusion of which involves the danger of an heretical religion or a fabulous philosophy. The more a principle of faith contradicts the reason, the greater the obedience and the honor to God in accepting it.

%(c) Hobbes%.–Hobbes stands in sharp contrast to Bacon both in disposition and in doctrine. Bacon was a man of a wide outlook, a rich, stimulating, impulsive nature, filled with great plans, but too mobile and desultory to allow them to ripen to perfection; Hobbes is slow, tenacious, persistent, unyielding, his thought strenuous and narrow. To this corresponds a profound difference in their systems, which is by no means adequately characterized by saying that Hobbes brings into the foreground the mathematical element neglected by his predecessor, and turns his attention chiefly to politics. The dependence of Hobbes on Bacon is, in spite of their personal acquaintance, not so great as formerly was universally assumed. His guiding stars are rather the great mathematicians of the Continent, Kepler and Galileo, while Cartesian influences also are not to be denied. He finds his mission in the construction of a strictly mechanical view of the world. Mechanism applied to the world gives materialism; applied to knowledge, sensationalism of a mathematical type; applied to the will, determinism; to morality and the state, ethical and political naturalism. Nevertheless, the empirical tendency of his nation has a certain power over him; he holds fast to the position that all ideas ultimately spring from experience. With his energetic but short-breathed thinking, he did not succeed in fusing the rationalistic elements received from foreign sources with these native tendencies, so as to produce a unified system. As Grimm has correctly shown (_Zur Geschichte des Erkenntnissproblems_), there is an unreconciled contradiction between the dependence of thought on experience, which he does not give up, and the universal validity of the truths derived from pure reason, which he asserts on the basis of the mathematico-philosophical doctrines of the Continent. A similar unmediated dualism will meet us in Locke also.

Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) was repelled while a student at Oxford by Scholastic methods in thought, with which he agreed only in their nominalistic results (there are no universals except names). During repeated sojourns in Paris, where he made the acquaintance of Gassendi, Mersenne, and Descartes, he devoted himself to the study of mathematics, and was greatly influenced by the doctrines of Galileo; while the disorders of the English revolution led him to embrace an absolutist theory of the state. His chief works were his politics, under the title _Leviathan_, 1651, and his _Elementa Philosophiae_, in three parts (_De Corpore, De Homine, De Cive_), of which the third, _De Cive_, appeared first (in Latin; in briefer form and anonymously, 1642, enlarged 1647), the first, _De Corpore_, in 1655, and the second, _De Homine_, in 1658. These had been preceded by two books [1] written, like the two last parts of the _Elements_, in English: _On Human Nature_ and _De Corpore Politico_, composed 1640, printed without the author’s consent in 1650. Besides these he wrote two treatises _Of Liberty and Necessity_, 1646 and 1654, and prepared, 1668, a collected edition of his works (in Latin). In Molesworth’s edition, 1839-45, the Latin works occupy five volumes and the English eleven.[2]

[Footnote 1: Or rather one; the treatise _On Human Nature_ consists of the first thirteen chapters of the work, _Elements of Law, Natural and Politic_, and the _De Corpore Politico_ of the remainder.]

[Footnote 2: Cf. on Hobbes, G.C. Robertson (Blackwood’s Philosophical Classics, vol. x.), 1886; TÃ¶nnies in the _Vierteljahrsschrift fÃ¼r wissenschaftliche Philosophie_, Jahrg. 3-5, 1879-81.]

Philosophy is formally defined by Hobbes as knowledge of effects from causes and causes from effects by means of legitimate rational inference. This implies the equal validity of the deductive and inductive methods,–while Bacon had proclaimed the latter the most important instrument of knowledge,–as well as the exclusion of theology based on revelation from the domain of science. Philosophy is objectively defined as the theory of body and motion: _all that exists is body; all that occurs, motion_. Everything real is corporeal; this holds of points, lines, and surfaces, which as the limits of body cannot be incorporeal, as well as of the mind and of God. The mind is merely a (for the senses too) refined body, or, as it is stated in another place, a movement in certain parts of the organic body. All events, even internal events, the feelings and passions, are movements of material parts. “Endeavor” is a diminutive motion, as the atom is the smallest of bodies; sensation and representation are changes in the perceiving body. Space is the idea of an existing thing as such, _i. e_., merely as existing outside the perceiving subject; time, the idea of motion. All phenomena are corporeal motions, which take place with mechanical necessity. Neither formal nor final causes exist, but only efficient causes. All that happens takes its origin in the activity of an external cause, and not in itself; a body at rest (or in motion) remains at rest (or in motion) forever, unless affected by another in a contrary sense. And as bodies and their changes constitute the only objects of philosophy, so the mathematical method is the only correct method.

There are two kinds of bodies: natural bodies, which man finds in nature, and artificial bodies, which he himself produces. By the latter Hobbes refers especially to the state as a human artefact. Man stands between the two as the most perfect natural body and an element in the political body. Philosophy, therefore, besides the introductory _philosophia prima_, which discusses the underlying concepts, consists of three parts: physics, anthropology, and politics. Even the theory of the state is capable of demonstrative treatment; moral phenomena are as subject to the law of mechanical causation as physical phenomena.

The first factor in the cognitive process is an impression on a sense-organ, which, occasioned by external motion, continues onward to the heart and from this center gives rise to a reaction. The perception or sensation which thus arises is entirely subjective, a function of the knower merely, and in no way a copy of the external movement. The properties light, color, and sound, which we believe to be without us, are merely internal phenomena dependent on outer and inner motions, but with no resemblance to them. Memory consists in the lingering effects or residuary traces of perception; it is a sense or consciousness of having felt before _(sentire se sensisse meminisse est_), and ideas are distinguished from sensations as the perfect from the present tense. Experience is the totality of perceptions retained in memory, together with a certain foresight of the future after the analogy of the past. These stages of cognition, which can yield prudence but not necessary and universal knowledge, are present in animals as well as men. The human capacity for science is dependent on the faculty of speech; words are conventional signs to facilitate the retention and communication of ideas. As the memory-images denoted by words are weaker, fainter, and less clearly discriminated than the original sensations, it comes to pass that a number of similar ideas of memory receive a common name. Thus abstract general ideas and generic concepts arise, to which nothing real corresponds, for in reality particulars alone exist. The universal is a human artefact. The combination of words into propositions, being an addition or subtraction of arbitrary symbols or marks, is called judgment; the combination of propositions into syllogisms, inference; the united body of true or demonstrated principles, science–hence mathematics is the type of all knowledge. In short, thought is nothing but calculation and the words with which we operate are mere counters; he who takes counters for coin is a fool. Animals lack reason, _i.e._, this power of combining artificial symbols.

Hobbes’s theory of the will is characterized by the same! sensationalism and mechanism as his theory of knowledge. All spiritual events originate in impressions of sense. Man responds to the action of objects by a double reaction, adding to the theoretical reaction of sensation a practical one in the feeling of pleasure or pain (according as the impression furthers or hinders the vital function), whence desire and aversion follow in respect to future experience. Further developments from the feelings experienced at the signs of honor (the acknowledgment of superior power) and the contrary, are the affections of pride, courage, anger, of shame and repentance, of hope and love, of pity, etc. Deliberation is the alternation of different appetites; the final, victorious one which immediately precedes action is called will. Freedom cannot be predicated of the will, but only of the action, and even in this case it means simply the absence of external restraints, the procedure of the action from the will of the agent; while the action is necessary nevertheless. Every motion is the inevitable result of the sum of the preceding (including cerebral) motions.

Things which we desire are termed good, and those which we shun, evil. Nothing is good _per se_ or absolutely, but only relatively, for a given person, place, time, or set of circumstances. Different things are good to different men, and there is no objective, universal rule of good and evil, so long as men are considered as individuals, apart from society. A definite criterion of the good is first reached in the state: that is right which the law permits, that wrong which it forbids; good means that which is conducive to the general welfare. In the state of nature nothing is forbidden; nature gives every man a right to everything, and right is coextensive with might. What, then, induces man to abandon the state of nature and enter the state of citizenship? The opinion of Aristotle and Grotius that the state originates in the social impulse is false; for man is essentially not social, but selfish, and nothing but regard for his own interests bids him seek the protection of the state; the civil commonwealth is an artificial product of fear and prudence. The highest good is self-preservation; all other goods, as friendship, riches, wisdom, knowledge, and, above all, power, are valuable only as instruments of the former. The precondition of well-being, for which each man strives by nature, is security for life and health. This is wanting in the state of nature, in which the passions govern; for the state of nature is a state of war of everyone against everyone _(bellum omnium contra omnes_). Each man strives for success and power, and, since he cannot trust his fellow, seeks to subdue, nay, to kill him; each looks upon his fellow as a wolf which he prefers to devour rather than submit himself to the like operation. Now, as no one is so weak as to be incapable of inflicting on his fellows that worst of evils, death, and thus the strongest is unsafe, reason, in the interest of everyone, enjoins a search after peace and the establishment of an ordered community. The conditions of peace are the “laws of nature,” which relate both to politics and to morals but which do not attain their full binding authority until they become positive laws, injunctions of the sovereign power. Peace is attainable only when each man, in return for the protection vouchsafed to him, gives up his natural right to all. The compact by which each renounces his natural liberty to do what he pleases, provided all others are ready for the same renunciation,–to which are added, further, the laws of justice (sanctity of covenants), equity, gratitude, modesty, sociability, mercifulness, etc., whose opposites would bring back the state of nature,–this compact is secured against violation by the transfer of the general power and freedom to a single will (the will of an assembly or of an individual person), which then represents the general will. The civil contract includes, then, two moments: first, renunciation; second, irrevocable transference and (absolute) submission. The second unites the multitude into a civil personality, the most perfect unity being vouchsafed by absolute monarchy. The sovereign is the soul of the political body; the officials, its limbs; reward and punishment, its nerves; law and equity, its reason.

The social contract theory has often experienced democratic interpretation and application, both before and since Hobbes’s time; and, in fact, it does not include _per se_ the irrevocability of the transfer, the absoluteness of the sovereign power, and the monarchical head, which Hobbes considered indispensable in order to guard against the danger of anarchy. In every abridgment of the supreme power, whether by division or limitation, he sees a step toward the renewal of the state of nature; and he defends with iron rigor the omnipotence of the state and the complete lack of legal status on the part of all individuals in contrast with it. The citizen is not to obey his own conscience, which has simply the value of a private opinion, but the laws, as the public conscience; while the supreme ruler, on the contrary, is superior to the civil laws, for it is he that decrees, interprets, alters, and abrogates them. He is lord over the property, the life, and the death of the citizens, and can do no one wrong. For he alone has retained his original natural right to all, which the rest have entirely and forever renounced. He must have regard, indeed, to the welfare of the people, but he is accountable to God alone. The obligation of the subject to obey is extinguished in one case only,–when the civil power is incapable of providing him further with external and internal protection. For the rest, Hobbes declares the existing public order the lawful one, the evils of arbitrary rule much more tolerable than the universal hostility of the state of nature, and aversion to tyrants a disease inherited from the republicans of antiquity.

The sovereign, by the laws and by instruction, determines what is good and evil; he determines also what is to be believed. Religion unsanctioned by the state is superstition. The temporal ruler is also the spiritual ruler, the king, the chief pastor, and the clergy his servants. One and the same community is termed state in so far as it consists of men, and church in so far as it consists of Christian men (the ecclesiastical commonwealth). The dogmas which the law prescribes are to be received without investigation, to be swallowed like pills, without mastication.

The principle that every passion and every action is in its nature indifferent, that right and wrong exist only in the state, that the will of a despot is to determine what is moral and what immoral, has given just offense. Moreover, this was not, in fact, Hobbes’s deepest conviction. Even without ascribing great importance to isolated statements,[1] it must be admitted that his doctrine was interpreted more narrowly than it was intended. He does not say that no moral distinctions whatever exist before the foundation of the state, but only that the state first supplies a fixed criterion of the good. Moral ideas have a certain currency before this, but they lack power to enforce themselves. Further, when he ascribes the origin of the state to self-interest, this does not mean that reason, conscience, generosity, and love for our fellows are entirely wanting in the state of nature, but only that they are not general enough, and, as against the passions, not strong enough to furnish a foundation for the edifice of the state. Not only exaggeration in statement but also uncouthness of thought may be forgiven the representative of a movement which is at once new and strengthened by the consciousness of agreement with a naturalistic theory of knowledge and physics; and the vigor of execution compels admiration, even though many obscurities remain to be deplored _(e. g_., the relation of the two moral standards, the standard of the reason or natural law and the standard of positive law). And recognition must be accorded to the significant kernel of doctrine formed, on the one hand, by the endeavor to separate ethics from theology, and on the other, by the thoughts–which, it is true, were not perfectly brought out–that the moral is not founded on a natural social impulse, but on a law of the reason, and first gains a definite criterion in society, and that the interests of the individual are inseparably connected with those of the community. In any case, the attempt to form a naturalistic theory of the state would be an undertaking deserving of thanks, even if the promulgation of this theory had done no further service than to challenge refutation.

[Footnote 1: God inscribed the divine or natural law (Do not that to another, etc.) on the heart of man, when he gave him the reason to rule his actions. The laws of nature are, it is true, not always legally binding (_in foro externo_), but always and everywhere binding on the conscience (_in foro interno_). Justice is the virtue which we can measure by civil laws; love, that which we measure by the law of nature merely. The ruler _ought_ to govern in accordance with the law of nature.]

%(d) Lord Herbert of Cherbury.%–Between Bacon (1605, 1620) and Hobbes (1642, 1651) stands Lord Herbert of Cherbury (1581-1648), who, by his work _De Veritate_ (1624),[1] became the founder of deism, that theory of “natural religion,” which, in opposition to the historical dogmatic faith of the Church theology, takes the reason, which is the same in all men, as its basis and morality for its content. Lord Herbert introduces his philosophy of religion by a theory of knowledge which makes universal consent the highest criterion of truth (_summa veritatis norma consensus universalis_), and bases knowledge on certain self-evident principles (_principia_), common to all men in virtue of a natural instinct, which gives safe guidance. These common notions (_notitiae communes_) precede all reflective inquiry, as well as all observation and experience, which would be impossible without them. The most important among them are the religious and ethical maxims of conscience.

[Footnote 1: _Tractatus de Veritate prout distinguitur a Revelatione, a Verisimili, a Possibile, et a False_. Also, _De Religione Gentilium_, 1645, complete 1663.]

This natural instinct is both an impulse toward truth and a capacity for good or impulse to self-preservation. The latter extends not only to the individual but to all things with which the individual is connected, to the species, nay, to all the rest of the world, and its final goal is eternal happiness: all natural capacities are directed toward the highest good or toward God. The sense for the divine may indeed be lulled to sleep or led astray by our free will, but not eradicated. To be rational and to be religious are inseparable; it is religion that distinguishes man from the brute, and no people can be found in which it is lacking. If atheists really exist, they are to be classed with the irrational and the insane.

The content of natural religion may be summed up in the following five articles, which all nations confess: 1. That there is a Supreme Being (_numen supremum_). 2. That he ought to be worshiped. 3. That virtue and piety are the chief elements of worship. 4. That man ought to repent of his sins. 5. That there are rewards and punishments in a future life. Besides these general principles, on the discovery of which Lord Herbert greatly prides himself, the positive religions contain arbitrary additions, which distinguish them from one another and which owe their origin, for the most part, to priestly deception, although the rhapsodies of the poets and the inventions of the philosophers have contributed their share. The essential principles of natural religion (God, virtue, faith, hope, love, and repentance) come more clearly to light in Christianity than in the religions of heathendom, where they are overgrown with myths and ceremonies.

The _Religio Medici_ (1642) of Sir Thomas Browne shows similar tendencies.

%9. Preliminary Survey.%

In the line of development from the speculations of Nicolas of Cusa to the establishment of the English philosophy of nature, of religion, and of the state by Bacon, Herbert, and Hobbes, and to the physics of Galileo, modern ideas have manifested themselves with increasing clearness and freedom. Hobbes himself shows thus early the influence of Descartes’s decisive step, with which the twilight gives place to the brightness of the morning. In Descartes the empiricism and sensationalism of the English is confronted by rationalism, to which the great thinkers of the Continent continue loyal. In Britain, experience, on the Continent the reason is declared to be the source of cognition; in the former, the point of departure is found in particular impressions of sense, on the latter, in general concepts and principles of the understanding; there the method of observation is inculcated and followed, here, the method of deduction. This antithesis remained decisive in the development of philosophy down to Kant, so that it has long been customary to distinguish two lines or schools, the Empirical and the Rationalistic, whose parallelism may be exhibited in the following table (when only one date is given it indicates the appearance of the philosopher’s chief work):

_Empiricism. Rationalism_. Bacon, 1620. (Nicolas, 1450; Bruno, 1584). Hobbes, 1651. _Descartes_, died 1650. _Locke_, 1690 (1632-1704). Spinoza, (1632-) 1677. Berkeley, 1710. _Leibnitz_, 1710. Hume, 1748. Wolff, died 1754.

We must not forget, indeed, the lively interchange of ideas between the schools (especially the influence of Descartes on Hobbes, and of the latter on Spinoza; further, of Descartes on Locke, and of the latter on Leibnitz) which led to reciprocal approximation and enrichment. Berkeley and Leibnitz, from opposite presuppositions, arrive at the same idealistic conclusion–there is no real world of matter, but only spirits and ideas exist. Hume and Wolff conclude the two lines of development: under the former, empiricism disintegrates into skepticism; under the latter, rationalism stiffens into a scholastic dogmatism, soon to run out into a popular eclecticism of common sense.

If we compare the mental characteristics of the three great nations which, in the period between Descartes and Kant, participated most productively in the work of philosophy,–the Italians, with their receptive temperament and so active in many fields, exerted a decisive influence on its development and progress in the transition period alone,–it will be seen that the Frenchman tends chiefly to acuteness, the Englishman to clearness and simplicity, the German to profundity of thought. France is the land of mathematical, England of practical, Germany of speculative thinkers; the first is the home of the skeptics, though of the enthusiasts as well; the second, of the realists; the third, of the idealists.

The English philosopher resembles a geographer who, with conscientious care, outlines a map of the region through which he journeys; the Frenchman, an anatomist who, with steady stroke, lays bare the nerves and muscles of the organism; the German, a mountaineer who loses in clear vision of particular objects as much as he gains in loftiness of position and extent of view. The Englishman describes the given reality, the Frenchman analyses it, the German transfigures it.

The English thinker keeps as close as possible to phenomena, and the principles which he uses in the explanation of phenomena themselves lie in the realm of concrete experience. He explains one phenomenon by another; he classifies and arranges the given material without analyzing it; he keeps constantly in touch with the popular consciousness. His reverence for reality, as this presents itself to him, and his distrust of far-reaching abstraction, are so strong that it is enough for him to take his bearings from the real, and to give a true reproduction of it, while he willingly renounces the ambition to form it anew in concepts. With this respect for concrete reality he combines a similar reverence for ethical postulates. When the development of a given line of thought threatens to bring him into conflict with practical life, he is honest enough to draw the conclusions which follow from his premises and to give them expression, but he avoids the collision by a simple compromise, shutting up the refinements of philosophy in the study and yielding in practice to the guidance of natural instinct and conscience. His support, therefore, of theories which contradict current views in morals is free from the levity in which the Frenchman indulges. Life and thought are separate fields, contradictions between them are borne in patience, and if science draws its material from life it shows itself grateful for the favor by giving life the benefit of the useful outcome of its labors, and, at the same time, shielding it from the revolutionary or disintegrating effect of its doubtful paradoxes.

While the deliberate craft of English philosophy does not willingly lose sight of the shores of the concrete world, French thought sails boldly and confidently out into the open sea of abstraction. It is not strange that it finds the way to the principles more rapidly than the way back to phenomena. A free road, a fresh start, a straight course–such is the motto of French thinking. Whatever is inconsistent with rectilinearity is ignored, or opposed as unfitting. The line drawn by Descartes through the world between matter and spirit, and that by Rousseau between nature and culture, are distinctive of the philosophical character of their countrymen. Dualism is to them entirely congenial; it satisfies their need for clearness, and with this they are content. Antithesis is in the Frenchman’s blood; he thinks in it and speaks in it, in the salon or on the platform, in witty jest or in scientific earnestness of thought. Either A or not-A, and there is no middle ground. This habit of precision and sharp analysis facilitates the formation of closed parties, whereas each individual German, in philosophy as in politics, forms a party of his own. The demand for the removal of the rubbish of existing systems and the sanguine return to the sources, give French philosophy an unhistorical, radical, and revolutionary character. Minds of the second order, who are incapable of taking by themselves the step from that which is given to the sources, prove their radicalism by following down to the roots that which others have begun (so Condillac and the sensationalism of Locke). Moreover, philosophical principles are to be translated into action; the thinker has shown himself the doctrinaire in his destructive analysis of that which is given, so, also, he hopes to play the dictator by overturning existing institutions and establishing a new order of things,–only his courageous endeavor flags as soon in the region of practice as in that of theory.

The German lacks the happy faculty, which distinguishes the two nations just discussed, of isolating a problem near at hand, and he is accustomed to begin his system with Leda’s egg; but, by way of compensation, he combines the lofty flight of the French with the phlegmatic endurance of the English, _i.e._, he seeks his principles far above experience, but, instead of stopping with the establishment of points of view or when he has set the note, he carries his principles through in detail with loving industry and comprehensive architectonic skill. While common sense turns the scale with the English and analytical thought with the French, the German allows the fancy and the heart to take an important part in the discussion, though in such a way that the several faculties work together and in harmony. While in France rationalism, mysticism, and the philosophy of the heart were divided among different thinkers (Descartes, Malebranche and Pascal, Rousseau), there is in every German philosopher something of all three. The skeptical Kant provides a refuge for the postulates of thought in the sanctuary of faith; the earnest, energetic Fichte, toward the end of his life, takes his place among the mystics; Schelling thinks with the fancy and dreams with the understanding; and under the broad cloak of the Hegelian dialectic method, beside the reflection of the Critique of Reason and of the Science of Knowledge, the fancies of the Philosophy of Nature, the deep inwardness of BÃ¶hme, even the whole wealth of empirical fact, found a place. As synthesis is predominant in his view of things, so a harmonizing, conciliatory tendency asserts itself in his relations to his predecessors: the results of previous philosophers are neither discarded out of hand nor accepted in the mass, but all that appears in any way useful or akin to the new system is wrought in at its proper place, though often with considerable transformation. In this work of mediation there is considerable loss in definiteness, the just and comprehensive consideration of the most diverse interests not always making good the loss. And since such a philosophy, as we have already shown, engages the whole man, its disciple has neither impulse nor strength left for reforming labors; while, on the other hand, he perceives no external call to undertake them, since he views the world through the glasses of his system. Thus philosophy in Germany, pursued chiefly by specialists, remains a professional affair, and has not exercised a direct transforming influence on life (for Fichte, who helped to philosophize the French out of Germany, was an exception); but its influence has been the greater in the special sciences, which in Germany more than any other land are handled in a philosophic spirit.

The mental characteristics of these nations are reflected also in their methods of presentation. The style of the English philosopher is sober, comprehensible, diffuse, and slightly wearisome. The French use a fluent, elegant, lucid style which entertains and dazzles by its epigrammatic phrases, in which not infrequently the epigram rules the thought. The German expresses his solid, thoughtful positions in a form which is at once ponderous and not easily understood; each writer constructs his own terminology, with a liberal admixture of foreign expressions, and the length of his paragraphs is exceeded only by the thickness of his books. These national distinctions may be traced even in externals. The Englishman makes his divisions as they present themselves at first thought, and rather from a practical than from a logical point of view. The analytic Frenchman prefers dichotomy, while trichotomy corresponds to the synthetic, systematic character of German thinking; and Kant’s naÃ¯ve delight, because in each class the third category unites its two predecessors, has been often experienced by many of his countrymen at the sight of their own trichotomies.

The division of labor in the pre-Kantian philosophy among these three nationalities entirely agrees with the account given of the peculiarities of their philosophical endowment. The beginning falls to the share of France; Locke receives that tangled skein, the problem of knowledge, from the hand of Descartes, and passes it on to Leibnitz; and while the Illumination in all three countries is converting the gold inherited from Locke and Leibnitz into small coin, the solution of the riddle rings out from KÃ¶nigsberg.

PART I.

FROM DESCARTES TO KANT.

CHAPTER II.

DESCARTES.

The long conflict with Scholasticism, which had been carried on with ever increasing energy and ever sharper weapons, was brought by Descartes to a victorious close. The new movement, long desired, long sought, and prepared for from many directions, at length appears, ready and well-established. Descartes accomplishes everything needful with the sure simplicity of genius. He furnishes philosophy with a settled point of departure in self-consciousness, offers her a method sure to succeed in deduction from clear and distinct conceptions, and assigns her the mechanical explanation of nature as her most imperative and fruitful mission.

RenÃ© Descartes was born at La Haye in Touraine, in 1596, and died at Stockholm in 1650. Of the studies taught in the Jesuit school at La FlÃ¨che, mathematics alone was able to satisfy his craving for clear and certain knowledge. The years 1613-17 he spent in Paris; then he enlisted in the military service of the Netherlands, and, in 1619, in that of Bavaria. While in winter quarters at Neuburg, he vowed a pilgrimage to Loretto if the Virgin would show him a way of escape from his tormenting doubts; and made the saving discovery of the “foundations of a wonderful science.” At the end of four years this vow was fulfilled. On his return to Paris (1625), he was besought by his learned friends to give to the world his epoch-making ideas. Though, to escape the distractions of society, he kept his residence secret, as he had done during his first stay in Paris, and frequently changed it, he was still unable to secure the complete privacy and leisure for scientific work which he desired. Therefore he went to Holland in 1629, and spent twenty years of quiet productivity in Amsterdam, Franecker, Utrecht, Leeuwarden, Egmond, Harderwijk, Leyden, the palace of Endegeest, and five other places. His work here was interrupted only by a few journeys, but much disturbed in its later years by annoying controversies with the theologian Gisbert VoÃ«tius of Utrecht, with Regius, a pupil who had deserted him, and with professors from Leyden. His correspondence with his French friends was conducted through PÃ¨re Mersenne. In 1649 he yielded to pressing invitations from Queen Christina of Sweden and removed to Stockholm. There his weak constitution was not adequate to the severity of the climate, and death overtook him within a few months.

The two decades of retirement in the Netherlands were Descartes’s productive period. His motive in developing and writing out his thoughts was, essentially, the desire not to disappoint the widely spread belief that he was in possession of a philosophy more certain than the common one. The work entitled _Le Monde_, begun in 1630 and almost completed, remained unprinted, as the condemnation of Galileo (1632) frightened our philosopher from publication; fragments of it only, and a brief summary, appeared after the author’s death. The chief works, the _Discourse on Method_, the _Meditations on the First Philosophy_, and the _Principles of Philosophy_ appeared between 1637 and 1644,–the _Discours de la MÃ©thode_ in 1637, together with three dissertations (the “Dioptrics,” the “Meteors,” and the “Geometry”), under the common title, _Essais Philosophiques_. To the (six) _Meditationes de Prima Philosophia_, published in 1641, and dedicated to the Paris Sorbonne, are appended the objections of various savants to whom the work had been communicated in manuscript, together with Descartes’s rejoinders. He himself considered the criticisms of Arnauld, printed fourth in order, as the most important. The Third Objections are from Hobbes, the Fifth from Gassendi, the First, which were also the first received, from the theologian Caterus of Antwerp, while the Second and Sixth, collected by Mersenne, are from various theologians and mathematicians. In the second edition there were added, further, the Seventh Objections, by the Jesuit Bourdin, and the Replies of the author thereto. The four books of the _Principia Philosophiae_, published in 1644 and dedicated to Elizabeth, Countess Palatine, give a systematic presentation of the new philosophy. The _Discourse on Method_ appeared, 1644, in a Latin translation, the _Meditations_ and the _Principles_ in French, in 1647. The _Treatise on the Passions_ was published in 1650; the _Letters_, 1657-67, in French, 1668, in Latin. The _Opera Postuma_, 1701, beside the _Compendium of Music_ (written in 1618) and other portions of his posthumous writings, contain the “Rules for the Direction of the Mind,” supposed to have been written in 1629, and the “Search for Truth by the Light of Nature.” The complete works have been often published, both in Latin and in French. The eleven volume edition of Cousin appeared in 1824-26.[1]

[Footnote 1: Of the many treatises on the philosophy of Descartes those of C. Schaarschmidt (_Descartes und Spinoza_, 1850) and J.H. LÃ¶we, 1855, may be mentioned. Further, M. Heinze has discussed _Die Sittenlehre des Descartes_, 1872; Ed. Grimm, _Descartes’ Lehre von den angeborenen Ideen_, 1873; G. Glogau, _Darlegung und Kritik des Grundgedankens der Cartesianisch. Metaphysik (Zeitschrift fÃ¼r Philosophie_, vol. lxxiii. p. 209 _seq_.), 1878; Paul Natorp, _Descartes’ Erkenntnisstheorie_, 1882; and Kas. Twardowski, _Idee und Perception_ in Descartes, 1892. In French, Francisque Bouillier (_Histoire de la Philosophie CartÃ©sienne_, 1854) and E. Saisset (_PrÃ©curseurs et Disciples de Descartes_, 1862) have written on Cartesianism. [The _Method, Meditations, and Selections from the Principles_ have been translated into English by John Veitch, 5th ed., 1879, and others since; and H.A.P. Torrey has published _The Philosophy of Descartes in Extracts from his Writings_, 1892 (Sneath’s Modern Philosophers). The English reader may be referred, also, to Mahaffy’s _Descartes_, 1880, in Blackwood’s Philosophical Classics; to the article “Cartesianism,” _Encyclopedia Britannica_, 9th ed., vol. v., by Edward Caird; and, for a complete discussion, to the English translation of Fischer’s _Descartes and his School_’ by J.P. Gordy, 1887.–TR.]]

We begin our discussion with Descartes’s noÃ«tical and metaphysical principles, and then take up in order his doctrine of nature and of man.

%1. The Principles%.

That which passes nowadays for science, and is taught as such in the schools, is nothing but a mass of disconnected, uncertain, and often contradictory opinions. A principle of unity and certainty is entirely lacking. If anything permanent and irrefutable is to be accomplished in science, everything hitherto considered true must be thoroughly demolished and built up anew. For we come into the world as children and we form judgments of things, or repeat them after others, before we have come into the full possession of our intellectual powers; so that it is no wonder that we are filled with a multitude of prejudices, from which we can thoroughly escape only by considering everything doubtful which shows the least sign of uncertainty. Let us renounce, therefore, all our old views, in order later to accept better ones in their stead; or, perchance, to take the former up again after they shall have stood the test of rational criticism. The recognized precaution, never to put complete confidence in that which has once deceived us, holds of our relation to the senses as elsewhere. It is certain that they sometimes deceive us–perhaps they do so always. Again, we dream every day of things which nowhere exist, and there is no certain criterion by which to distinguish our dreams from our waking moments,–what guarantee have we, then, that we are not always dreaming? Therefore, our doubt must first of all be directed to the existence of sense-objects. Nay, even mathematics must be suspected in spite of the apparent certainty of its axioms and demonstrations, since controversy and error are found in it also.

I doubt or deny, then, that the world is what it appears to be, that there is a God, that external objects exist, that I have a body, that twice two are four. One thing, however, it is impossible for me to bring into question, namely, that I myself, who exercise this doubting function, exist. There is one single point at which doubt is forced to halt–at the doubter, at the self-existence of the thinker. I can doubt everything except that I doubt, and that, in doubting, I am. Even if a superior being sought to deceive me in all my thinking, he could not succeed unless I existed, he could not cause me not to exist so long as I thought. To be deceived means to think falsely; but that something is thought, no matter what it be, is no deception. It might be true, indeed, that nothing at all existed; but then there would be no one to conceive this non-existence. Granted that everything may be a mistake; yet the being mistaken, the thinking is not a mistake. Everything is denied, but the denier remains. The whole content of consciousness is destroyed; consciousness itself, the doubting activity, the being of the thinker, is indestructible. _Cogitatio sola a me divelli nequit_. Thus the settled point of departure required for knowledge is found in the _self-certitude of the thinking ego_. From the fact that I doubt, _i.e._, think, it follows that I, the doubter, the thinker, am. _Cogito, ergo sum_ is the first and most certain of all truths.

The principle, “I think, therefore I am,” is not to be considered a deduction from the major premise, “Whatever thinks exists.” It is rather true that this general proposition is derived from the particular and earlier one. I must first realize in my own experience that, as thinking, I exist, before I can reach the general conclusion that thought and existence are inseparable. This fundamental truth is thus not a syllogism, but a not further deducible, self-evident, immediate cognition, a pure intuition–_sum cogitans_. Now, if my existence is revealed by my activity of thought, if my thought is my being, and the converse, if in me thought and existence are identical, then I am a being whose essence consists in thinking. I am a spirit, an ego, a rational soul. My existence follows only from my thinking, not from any chance action. _Ambulo ergo sum_ would not be valid, but _mihi videor_ or _puto me ambulare, ergo sum_. If I believe I am walking, I may undoubtedly be deceived concerning the outward action (as, for instance, in dreams), but never concerning my inward belief. _Cogitatio_ includes all the conscious activities of the mind, volition, emotion, and sensation, as well as representation and cognition; they are all _modi cogitandi_. The existence of the mind is therefore the most certain of all things. We know the soul better than the body. It is for the present the only certainty, and every other is dependent on this, the highest of all.

What, then, is the peculiarity of this first and most certain knowledge which renders it self-evident and independent of all proof, which makes us absolutely unable to doubt it? Its entire clearness and distinctness. Accordingly, I may conclude that everything which I perceive as clearly and distinctly as the _cogito ergo sum_ is also true, and I reach this general rule, _omne est verum, quod clare et distincte percipio_. So far, then, we have gained three things: a challenge; to be inscribed over the portals of certified knowledge, _de omnibus dubitandum_; a basal truth, _sum cogitans_; a criterion of truth, _clara et distinct a perceptio_.

The doubt of Descartes is not the expression of a resigned spirit which renounces the unattainable; it is precept, not doctrine, the starting point of philosophy, not its conclusion, a methodological instrument in the hand of a strong and confident longing for truth, which makes use of doubt to find the indubitable. It is not aimed at the possibility of attaining knowledge, but at the opinion that it has already been attained, at the credulity of the age, at its excessive tendency toward historical and poly-historical study, which confuses the acquisition and handing down of information with knowledge of the truth. That knowledge alone is certain which is self-attained and self-tested–and this cannot be learned or handed down; it can only be rediscovered through examination and experience. Instead of taking one’s own unsupported conjectures or the opinions of others as a guide, the secret of the search for truth is to become independent and of age, to think for one’s self; and the only remedy against the dangers of self-deception and the ease of repetition is to be found in doubting everything hitherto considered true. This is the meaning of the Cartesian doubt, which is more comprehensive and more thorough than the Baconian. Descartes disputed only the certitude of the knowledge previously attained, not the possibility of knowledge–for of the latter no man is more firmly convinced than he. He is a rationalist, not a skeptic. The intellect is assured against error just as soon as, freed from hindrances, it remains true to itself, as it puts forth all its powers and lets nothing pass for truth which is not clearly and distinctly known. Descartes demands the same thing for the human understanding as Rousseau at a later period for the heart: a return to uncorrupted nature. This faith in the unartificial, the original, the natural, this radical and naturalistic tendency is characteristically French. The purification of the mind, its deliverance from the rubbish of scholastic learning, from the pressure of authority, and from inert acceptance of the thinking of others–this is all. Descartes finds the clearest proof of the mind’s capacity for truth in mathematics, whose trustworthiness he never seriously questioned, but only hypothetically, in order to exhibit the still higher certainty of the “I think, therefore I am.” He wants to give philosophy the stable character which had so impressed him in mathematics when he was a boy, and recommends her, therefore, not merely the evidence of mathematics as a general example, but the mathematical method for definite imitation. Metaphysics, like mathematics, must derive its conclusions by deduction from self-evident principles. Thus the geometrical method begins its rule in philosophy, a rule not always attended with beneficial results.

With this criterion of truth Descartes advances to the consideration of ideas. He distinguishes volition and judgment from ideas in the narrow sense (_imagines_), and divides the latter, according to their origin, into three classes: _ideae innatae, adventitiae, a me ipso factae_, considering the second class, the “adventitious” ideas, the most numerous, but the first, the “innate” ideas, the most important. No idea is higher or clearer than the idea of God or the most perfect being. Whence comes this idea? That every idea must have a cause, follows from the “clear and distinct” principle that nothing produces nothing. It follows from this same principle, _ex nihilo nihil fit_, however, that the cause must contain as much reality or perfection–_realitas_ and _perfectio_ are synonymous–as the effect, for otherwise the overplus would have come from nothing. So much (“objective,” representative) reality contained in an idea, so much or more (“formal,” actual) reality must be contained in its cause. The idea of God as infinite, independent, omnipotent, omniscient, and creative substance, has not come to me through the senses, nor have I formed it myself. The power to conceive a being more perfect than myself, can have only come from someone who is more perfect in reality than I. Since I know that the infinite contains more reality than the finite, I may conclude that the idea of the infinite has not been derived from the idea of the finite by abstraction and negation; it precedes the latter, and I become conscious of my defects and my finitude only by comparison with the absolute perfection of God. This idea, then, must have been implanted in me by God himself. The idea of God is an original endowment; it is as innate as the idea of myself. However incomplete it may be, it is still sufficient to give a knowledge of God’s existence, although not a perfect comprehension of his being, just as a man may skirt a mountain without encircling it.

Descartes brings in the idea of God in order to escape solipsism. So long as the self-consciousness of the ego remained the only certainty, there was no conclusive basis for the assumption that anything exists beyond self, that the ideas which apparently come from without are really occasioned by external things and do not spring from the mind itself. For our natural instinct to refer them to objects without us might well be deceptive. It is only through the idea of God, and by help of the principle that the cause must contain at least as much reality as the effect, that I am taken beyond myself and assured that I am not the only thing in the world. For as this idea contains more of representative, than I of actual reality, I cannot have been its cause.

To this empirical argument, which derives God’s existence from our idea of God (from the fact that we have an idea of him), Descartes joins the (modified) ontological argument of Anselm, which deduces the existence of God from the concept of God. While the ideas of all other things include only the possibility of existence, necessary existence is inseparable from the concept of the most perfect being. God cannot be thought apart from existence; he has the ground of his existence in himself; he is _a se_ or _causa sui_. Finally, Descartes adds a third argument. The idea of perfections which I do not possess can only have been imparted to me by a more perfect being than I, which has bestowed on me all that I am and all that I am capable of becoming. If I had created myself, I would have bestowed upon myself these absent perfections also. And the existence of a plurality of causes is negatived by the supreme perfection which I conceive in the idea of God, the indivisible unity of his attributes. Among the attributes of God his veracity is of special importance. It is impossible that he should will to deceive us; that he should be the cause of our errors. God would be a deceiver, if he had endowed us with a reason to which error should appear true, even when it uses all its foresight in avoiding it and assents only to that which it clearly and distinctly perceives. Error is man’s own fault; he falls into it only when he misuses the divine gift of knowledge, which includes its own standard. Thus Descartes finds new confirmation for his test of truth in the _veracitas dei_. Erdmann has given a better defense of Descartes than the philosopher himself against the charge that this is arguing in a circle, inasmuch as the existence of God is proved by the criterion of truth, and then the latter by the former: The criterion of certitude is the _ratio cognoscendi_ of God’s existence; God is the _ratio essendi_ of the criterion of certitude. In the order of existence God is first, he creates the reason together with its criterion; in the order of knowledge the criterion precedes, and God’s existence follows from it. Descartes himself endeavors to avoid the circle by making _intuitive_ knowledge self-evident, and by not bringing in the appeal to God’s veracity in _demonstrative_ knowledge until, in reflective thought, we no longer have each separate link in the chain of proof present to our minds with full intuitive certainty, but only remember that we have previously understood the matter with clearness and distinctness.

Our ideas represent in part things, in part qualities. Substance is defined by the concept of independence as _res quae ita existit, ut nulla alia re indigeat ad existendum_; a pregnant definition with which the concept of substance gains the leadership in metaphysics, which it held till the time of Hume and Kant, sharing it then with the conception of cause or, rather, relinquishing it to the latter. The Spinozistic conclusion that, according to the strict meaning of this definition, there is but one substance, God, who, as _causa sui_, has absolutely no need of any other thing in order to his existence, was announced by Descartes himself. If created substances are under discussion, the term does not apply to them in the same sense (not _univoce_) as when we speak of the infinite substance; created beings require a different explanation, they are things which need for their existence only the co-operation of God, and have no need of one another. Substance is cognized through its qualities, among which one is pre-eminent from the fact that it expresses the essence or nature of the thing, and that it is conceived through itself, without the aid of the others, while they presuppose it and cannot be thought without it. The former fundamental properties are termed attributes, and these secondary ones, modes or accidents. Position, figure, motion, are contingent properties of body; they presuppose that it is extended or spatial; they are _modi extensionis_, as feeling, volition, desire, representation, and judgment are possible only in a conscious being, and hence are merely modifications of thought. Extension is the essential or constitutive attribute of body, and thought of mind. Body is never without extension, and mind never without thought–_mens semper cogitat_. Guided by the self-evident principle that the non-existent has no properties, we argue from a perceived quality to a substance as its possessor or support. Substances are distinct from one another when we can clearly and distinctly cognize one without the other. Now, we can adequately conceive mind without a corporeal attribute and body without a spiritual one; the former has nothing of extension in it, the latter nothing of thought: hence thinking substance and extended substance are entirely distinct and have nothing in common. Matter and mind are distinct _realiter_, matter and extension _idealiter_ merely. Thus we attain three clear and distinct ideas, three eternal verities: _substantia infinita sive deus, substantia finita cogitans sive mens, substantia extensa sive corpus_.

By this abrupt contraposition of body and mind as reciprocally independent substances, Descartes founded that dualism, as whose typical representative he is still honored or opposed. This dualism between the material and spiritual worlds belongs to those standpoints which are valid without being ultimate truth; on the pyramid of metaphysical knowledge it takes a high, but not the highest, place. We may not rest in it, yet it retains a permanent value in opposition to subordinate theories. It is in the right against a materialism which still lacks insight into the essential distinction between mind and matter, thought and extension, consciousness and motion; it loses its validity when, with a full consideration and conservation of the distinction between these two spheres, we succeed in bridging over the gulf between them, whether this is accomplished through a philosophy of identity, like that of Spinoza and Schelling, or by an idealism, like that of Leibnitz or Fichte. In any case philosophy retains as an inalienable possession the negative conclusion, that, in view of the heterogeneity of consciousness and motion, the inner life is not reducible to material phenomena. This clear and simple distinction, which sets bounds to every confusion of spiritual and material existence, was an act of emancipation; it worked on the sultry intellectual atmosphere of the time with the purifying and illuminating power of a lightning flash. We shall find the later development of philosophy starting from the Cartesian dualism.

Descartes himself looked upon the fundamental principles which have now been discussed as merely the foundation for his life work, as the entrance portal to his cosmology. Posterity has judged otherwise; it finds his chief work in that which he considered a mere preparation for it. The start from doubt, the self-certitude of the thinking ego, the rational criterion of certitude, the question of the origin of ideas, the concept of substance, the essential distinction between conscious activity and corporeal being, and, also, the principle of thoroughgoing mechanism in the material world (from his philosophy of nature)–these are the thoughts which assure his immortality. The vestibule has brought the builder more fame, and has proved more enduring, than the temple: of the latter only the ruins remain; the former has remained undestroyed through the centuries.

%2. Nature.%

What guarantee have we for the existence of material objects affecting our senses? That the ideas of sense do not come from ourselves, is shown by the fact that it is not in our power to determine the objects which we perceive, or the character of our perception of them. The supposition that God has caused our perceptions directly, or by means of something which has no resemblance whatever to an external object extended in three dimensions and movable, is excluded by the fact that God is not a deceiver. In reliance on God’s veracity we may accept as true whatever the reason declares concerning body, though not all the reports of the senses, which so often deceive us. At the instance of the senses we clearly and distinctly perceive matter distinct from our mind and from God, extended in three dimensions, length, breadth, and depth, with variously formed and variously moving parts, which occasion in us sensations of many kinds. The belief that perception makes known things as they really are is a prejudice of sense to be discarded; on the contrary, it merely informs us concerning the utility or harmfulness of objects, concerning their relation to man as a being composed of soul and body. (The body is that material thing which is very intimately joined with the mind, and occasions in the latter certain feelings, _e.g._, pain, which as merely cogitative it would not have.) Sense qualities, as color, sound, odor, cannot constitute the essence of matter, for their variation or loss changes nothing in it; I can abstract from them without the material thing disappearing.[1] There is one property, however, extensive magnitude (_quantitas_), whose removal would imply the destruction of matter itself. Thus I perceive by pure thought that the essence of matter consists in extension, in that which constitutes the object of geometry, in that magnitude which is divisible, figurable, and movable. This thesis (_corpus = extensio sive spatium_) is next defended by Descartes against several objections. In reply to the objection drawn from the condensation and rarefaction of bodies, he urges that the apparent increase or decrease in extension is, in fact, a mere change of figure; that the rarefaction of a body depends on the increase in size of the intervals between its parts, and the entrance into them of foreign bodies, just as a sponge swells up when its pores become filled with water and, therefore, enlarged. The demand that the pores, and the bodies which force their way into them, should always be perceptible to the senses, is groundless. He meets the second point, that we call extension by itself _space_, and not body, by maintaining that the distinction between extension and corporeal substance is a distinction in thought, and not in reality; that attribute and substance, mathematical and physical bodies, are not distinct in fact but only in our thought of them. We apply the term space to extension in general, as an abstraction, and body to a given individual, determinate, limited extension. In reality, wherever extension is, there substance is also,–the non-existent has no extension,–and wherever space is, there matter is also. Empty space does not exist. When we say a vessel is empty, we mean that the bodies which fill it are imperceptible; if it were absolutely empty its sides would touch. Descartes argues against the atomic theory and against the finitude of the world, as he argues against empty space: matter, as well as space, has no smallest, indivisible parts, and the extension of the world has no end. In the identification of space and matter the former receives fullness from the latter, and the latter unlimitedness from the former, both internal unlimitedness (endless divisibility) and external (boundlessness). Hence there are not several matters but only one (homogeneous) matter, and only one (illimitable) world.

[Footnote 1: They are merely subjective states in the perceiver, and entirely unlike the motions which give rise to them, although there is a certain agreement, as the differences and variations in sensation are paralleled by those in the object.]

Matter is divisible, figurable, movable quantity. Natural science needs no other principles than these indisputably true conceptions, by which all natural phenomena may be explained, and must employ no others. The most important is motion, on which all the diversity of forms depends. Corporeal being has been shown to be extension; corporeal becoming is motion. Motion is defined as “the transporting of one part of matter, or of one body, from the vicinity of those bodies that are in immediate contact with it, or which we regard as at rest, to the vicinity of other bodies.” This separation of bodies is reciprocal, hence it is a matter of choice which shall be considered at rest. Besides its own proper motion in reference to the bodies in its immediate vicinity, a body can participate in very many other motions: the traveler walking back and forth on the deck of a ship, for instance, in the motion of the vessel, of the waves, and of the earth. The common view of motion as an activity is erroneous; since it requires force not only to set in motion bodies which are at rest, but also to stop those which are in motion, it is clear that motion implies no more activity than rest. Both are simply different states of matter. Since there is no empty space, each motion spreads to a whole circle of bodies: A forces B out of its place, B drives out C, and so on, until Z takes up the position which A has left.

The ultimate cause of motion is God. He has created bodies with an original measure of motion and rest, and, in accordance with his immutable character, he preserves this quantity of motion unchanged: it remains constant in the world as a whole, though it varies in individual bodies. For with the power to create or destroy motion bodies lack, further, the power to alter their quantity of motion. By the side of God, the primary cause of motion, the laws of motion appear as secondary causes. The first of these is the one become familiar under the name, law of inertia: Everything continues of itself in the state (of motion or rest) in which it is, and changes its state only as a result of some extraneous cause. The second of these laws, which are so valuable in mechanics, runs: Every portion of matter tends to continue a motion which has been begun in the same direction, hence in a straight line, and changes its direction only under the influence of another body, as in the case of the circle above described. Descartes bases these laws on the unchangeableness of God and the simplicity of his world-conserving (_i.e._, constantly creative) activity. The third law relates to the communication of motion; but Descartes does not recognize the equality of action and reaction as universally as the fact demands. If a body in motion meets another body, and its power (to continue its motion in a straight line) is less than the resistance of the other on which it has impinged, it retains its motion, but in a different direction: it rebounds in the opposite direction. If, on the contrary, its force is greater, it carries the other body along with it, and loses so much of its own motion as it imparts to the latter. The seven further rules added to these contain much that is erroneous. As _actio in distans_ is rejected, all the phenomena of motion are traced back to pressure and impulse. The distinction between fluid and solid bodies is based on the greater or less mobility of their parts.

The leading principle in the special part of the Cartesian physics,–we can only briefly sketch it,–which embraces, first, celestial, and, then, terrestial phenomena, is the axiom that we cannot estimate God’s power and goodness too highly, nor ourselves too meanly. It is presumptuous to seek to comprehend the purposes of God in creation, to consider ourselves participants in his plans, to imagine that things exist simply for our sake–there are many things which no man sees and which are of advantage to none. Nothing is to be interpreted teleologically, but all must be interpreted from clearly known attributes, hence purely mechanically. After treating of the distances of the various heavenly bodies, of the independent light of the sun and the fixed stars and the reflected light of the planets, among which the earth belongs, Descartes discusses the motion of the heavenly bodies. In reference to the motion of the earth he seeks a middle course between the theories of Copernicus and Tycho BrahÃ©. He agrees with Copernicus in the main point, but, in reliance on his definition of motion, maintains that the earth is at rest, viz., in respect to its immediate surroundings. It is clear that the harmony of his views with those of the Church (though it was only a verbal agreement) was not unwelcome to him. According to his hypothesis,–as he suggests, perhaps an erroneous hypothesis,–the fluid matter which fills the heavenly spaces, and which may be compared to a vortex or whirlpool, circles about the sun and carries the planets along with it. Thus the planets move in relation to the sun, but are at rest in relation to the adjacent portions of the matter of the heavens. In view of the biblical doctrine, according to which the world and all that therein is was created at a stroke, he apologetically describes his attempt to explain the origin of the world from chaos under the laws of motion as a scientific fiction, intended merely to make the process more comprehensible. It is more easily conceivable, if we think of the things in the world as though they had been gradually formed from elements, as the plant develops from the seed. We now pass to the Cartesian anthropology, with its three chief objects: the body, the soul, and the union of the two.

3. %Man.%

The human body, like all organic bodies, is a machine. Artificial automata and natural bodies are distinguished only in degree. Machines fashioned by the hand of man perform their functions by means of visible and tangible instruments, while natural bodies employ organs which, for the most part, are too minute to be perceived. As the clock-maker constructs a clock from wheels and weights so that it is able to go of itself, so God has made man’s body out of dust, only, being a far superior artist, he produces a work of art which is better constructed and capable of far more wonderful movements. The cause of death is the destruction of some important part of the machine, which prevents it from running longer; a corpse is a broken clock, and the departure of the soul comes only as a result of death. The common opinion that the soul generates life in the body is erroneous. It is rather true that life must be present before the soul enters into union with the body, as it is also true that life must have ended before it dissolves the bond.

The sole principles of physiology are motion and heat. The heat (vital warmth, a fire without light), which God has put in the heart as the central organ of life, has for its function the promotion of the circulation of the blood, in the description of which Descartes mentions with praise the discoveries of Harvey _(De Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus_, 1628). From the blood are separated its finest, most fiery, and most mobile parts, called by Descartes “animal spirits” _(spiritus animales sive corporales_), and described as a “very subtle wind” or “pure and vivid flame,” which ascend into the cavities of the brain, reach the pineal gland suspended in its center _(conarion, glans pinealis, glandula_), pass into the nerves, and, by their action on the muscles connected with the nerves, effect the motions of the limbs. These views refer to the body alone, and so are as true of animals as of men. If automata existed similar to animals in all respects, both external and internal, it would be absolutely impossible to distinguish them from real animals. If, however, they were made to resemble human bodies, two signs would indicate their unreality–we would find no communication of ideas by means of language, and also an absence of those bodily movements which take their origin in the reason (and not merely in the constitution of the body). The only thing which raises man above the brute is his rational soul, which we are on no account to consider a product of matter, but which is an express creation of God, superadded. The union of the soul or the mind _(anima sive mens_) with the body is, it is true, not so loose that the mind merely dwells in the body, like a pilot in a ship, nor, on the other hand, in view of the essential contrariety of the two substances, is it so intimate as to be more than a _unio compositionis_. Although the soul is united to the whole body, an especially active intercourse between them is developed at a single point, the pineal gland, which is distinguished by its central, protected position, above all, by the fact that it is the only cerebral organ that is not double. This gland, together with the animal spirits passing to and from it, mediates between mind and body; and as the point of union for the twofold impressions from the (right and left) eyes and ears, without which objects would be perceived double instead of

History Of Modern Philosophy by Richard Falckenberg (page 2)