as well as suffers it. In this way the external idea of an artificial adaptation is avoided. The essence of each thing is simply the position which it occupies in the organic whole of the universe; each member is related to every other and shares actively and passively in the life of all the rest. The history of the universe is a single great process in numberless reflections.
The metaphysics of Leibnitz begins with the concept of representation and ends with the harmony of the universe. The representations were multiplicity (the endless plurality of the represented) in unity (the unity of the representing monad); the harmony is unity (order, congruity of the world-image) in multiplicity (the infinitely manifold degrees of clearness in the representations). All monads represent the same universe; each one mirrors it differently. The unity, as well as the difference, could not be greater than it is; every possible degree of distinctness of representation is present in each single monad, and yet there is a single harmonic accord in which the unnumbered tones unite. Now order amid diversity, unity in variety make up the concept of beauty and perfection. If, then, this world shows, as it does, the greatest unity in the greatest multiplicity, so that there is nothing wanting and nothing superfluous, it is the most perfect, the best of all possible worlds. Even the lowest grades contribute to the perfection of the whole; their disappearance would mean a hiatus; and if the unclear and confused representations appear imperfect when considered in themselves, yet they are not so in reference to the whole; for just on this fact, that the monad is arrested in its representation or is passive, _i.e._, conforms itself to the others and subordinates itself to them, rest the order and connection of the world. Thus the idea of harmony forms the bridge between the Monadology and optimism.
As in regard to the harmony of the universe we found it possible to distinguish between a half-mythical, narrative form of presentation and a purely abstract conception, so we may make a similar distinction in the doctrine of creation. This actual world has been chosen by God as the best among many other conceivable worlds. Through the will of God the monads of which the world consists attained their reality; as possibilities or ideas they were present in the mind of God (as it were, prior to their actualization), present, too, with all the distinctive properties and perfections that they now exhibit in a state of realization, so that their merely possible or conceivable being had the same content as their actual being, and their essence is not altered or increased by their existence. Now, since the impulse toward actualization dwells in every possible essence, and is the more justifiable the more perfect the essence, a competition goes on before God, in which, first, those monod-possibilities unite which are mutually compatible or compossible, and, then, among the different conceivable combinations of monads or worlds that one is ordained for entrance into existence which shows the greatest possible sum of perfection. It was, therefore, not the perfection of the single monad, but the perfection of the system of which it forms a necessary part, that was decisive as to its admission into existence. The best world was known through God’s wisdom, chosen through his goodness, and realized through his power.[1] The choice was by no means arbitrary, but wholly determined by the law of fitness or of the best (_principe du meilleur_); God’s will must realize that which his understanding recognizes as most perfect. It is at once evident that in the competition of the possible worlds the victory of the best was assured by the _lex melioris_, apart from the divine decision.
[Footnote 1: In regard to the dependence of the world on God, there is a certain conflict noticeable in Leibnitz between the metaphysical interests involved in the substantiality of individual beings, together with the moral interests involved in guarding against fatalism, and the opposing interests of religion. On the one side, creation is for him only an actualization of finished, unchangeable possibilities, on the other, he teaches with the mediaeval philosophers that this was not accomplished by a single act of realization, that the world has need of conservation, _i.e._, of continuous creation.]
This law is the special expression of a more general one, the principle of sufficient reason, which Leibnitz added, as of equal authority, to the Aristotelian laws of thought. Things or events are real (and assertions true) when there is a sufficient reason for their existence, and for their determinate existence. The _principium rationis sufficientis_ governs our empirical knowledge of contingent truths or truths of fact, while, on the other hand, the pure rational knowledge of necessary or eternal (mathematical and metaphysical) truths rests on the _principium contradictionis_. The principle of contradiction asserts, that is, whatever contains a contradiction is false or impossible; whatever contains no contradiction is possible; that whose opposite contains a contradiction is necessary. Or positively formulated as the principle of identity, everything and every representative content is identical with itself.[2] Upon this antithesis between the rational laws of contradiction and sufficient reason–which, however, is such only for us men, while the divine spirit, which cognizes all things _a priori_, is able to reduce even the truths of fact to the eternal truths–Leibnitz bases his distinction between two kinds of necessity. That is metaphysically necessary whose opposite involves a contradiction; that is morally necessary or contingent which, on account of its fitness, is preferred by God to its (equally conceivable) opposite. To the latter class belongs, further, the physically necessary: the necessity of the laws of nature is only a conditional necessity (conditioned by the choice of the best); they are contingent truths or truths of fact. The principle of sufficient reason holds for efficient as well as for final causes, and between the two realms there is, according to Leibnitz, the most complete correspondence. In the material world every particular must be explained in a purely mechanical way, but the totality of the laws of nature, the universal mechanism itself, cannot in turn be mechanically explained, but only on the basis of finality, so that the mechanical point of view is comprehended in, and subordinated to, the teleological. Thus it becomes clear how Leibnitz in the _ratio sufficiens_ has final causes chiefly in mind.
[Footnote 2: Within the knowledge of reason, as well as in experiential knowledge, a further distinction is made between primary truths (which need no proof) and derived truths. The highest truths of reason are the identical principles, which are self-evident; from these intuitive truths all others are to be derived by demonstration–proof is analysis and, as free from contradictions, demonstration. The primitive truths of experience are the immediate facts of consciousness; whatever is inferred from them is less certain than demonstrative knowledge. Nevertheless experience is not to be estimated at a low value; it is through it alone that we can assure ourselves of the reality of the objects of thought, while necessary truths guarantee only that a predicate must be ascribed to a subject (_e.g._, a circle), but make no deliverance as to whether this subject exists or not.]
To the broad and comprehensive tendency which is characteristic of Leibnitz’s thinking, philosophy owes a further series of general laws, which all stand in the closest relation to one another and to his monadological and harmonistic principles, viz., the law of continuity, the law of analogy, the law of the universal dissimilarity of things or of the identity of indiscernibles, and, finally, the law of the conservation of force.
The most fundamental of these laws is the _lex continui_. On the one hand, it forbids every leap, on the other, all repetition in the series of beings and the series of events. Member must follow member without a break and without superfluous duplication; in the scale of creatures, as in the course of events, absolute continuity is the rule. Just as in the monad one state continually develops from another, the present one giving birth to the future, as it has itself grown out of the past, just as nothing persists, as nothing makes its entrance suddenly or without the way being prepared for it, and as all extremes are bound together by connecting links and gradual transitions,–so the monad itself stands in a continuous gradation of beings, each of which is related to and different from each. Since the beings and events form a single uninterrupted series, there are no distinctions of kind in the world, but only distinctions in degree. Rest and motion are not opposites, for rest may be considered as infinitely minute motion; the ellipse and the parabola are not qualitatively different, for the laws which hold for the one may be applied to the other. Likeness is vanishing unlikeness, passivity arrested activity, evil a lesser good, confused ideas simply less distinct ones, animals men with infinitely little reason, plants animals with vanishing consciousness, fluidity a lower degree of solidity, etc. In the whole world similarity and correspondence rule, and it is everywhere the same as here–between apparent opposites there is a distinction in degree merely, and hence, analogy. In the macrocosm of the universe things go on as in the microcosm of the monad; every later state of the world is prefigured in the earlier, etc. If, on the one side, the law of analogy follows as a consequence from the law of continuity, on the other, we have the _principium (identitatis) indiscernibilium_. As nature abhors gaps, so also it avoids the superfluous. Every grade in the series must be represented, but none more than once. There are no two things, no two events which are entirely alike. If they were exactly alike they would not be two, but one. The distinction between them is never merely numerical, nor merely local and temporal, but always an intrinsic difference: each thing is distinguished from every other by its peculiar nature. This law holds both for the truly real (the monads) and for the phenomenal world–you will never find two leaves exactly alike. By the law of the conservation of force, Leibnitz corrects the Cartesian doctrine of the conservation of motion, and approaches the point of view of the present day. According to Descartes it is the sum of actual motions, which remains constant; according to Leibnitz, the sum of the active forces; while, according to the modern theory, it is the sum of the active and the latent or potential forces–a distinction, moreover, of which Leibnitz himself made use.
We now turn from the formal framework of general laws, to the actual, to that which, obeying these laws, constitutes the living content of the world.
%2. The Organic World.%
A living being is a machine composed of an infinite number of organs. The natural machines formed by God differ from the artificial machines made by the hand of man, in that, down to their smallest parts, they consist of machines. Organisms are complexes of monads, of which one, the soul, is supreme, while the rest, which serve it, form its body. The dominant monad is distinguished from those which surround it as its body by the greater distinctness of its ideas. The supremacy of the soul-monad consists in this one superior quality, that it is more active and more perfect, and clearly reflects that which the body-monads represent but obscurely. A direct interaction between soul and body does not take place; there is only a complete correspondence, instituted by God. He foresaw that the soul at such and such a moment would have the sensation of warmth, or would wish an arm-motion executed, and has so ordered the development of the body-monads that, at the same instant, they appear to cause this sensation and to obey this impulse to move. Now, since God in this foreknowledge and accommodation naturally paid more regard to the perfect beings, to the more active and more distinctly perceiving monads than to the less perfect ones, and subordinated the latter, as means and conditions, to the former as ends, the soul, prior to creation, actually exercised an ideal influence–through the mind of God–upon its body. Its activity is the reason why in less perfect monads a definite change, a passion takes place, since the action was attainable only in this way, “compossible” with this alone.[1] The monads which constitute the body are the first and direct object of the soul; it perceives them more distinctly than it perceives, through them, the rest of the external world. In view of the close connection of the elements of the organism thus postulated, Leibnitz, in the discussions with Father Des Bosses concerning the compatibility of the Monadology with the doctrine of the Church, especially with the real presence of the body of Christ in the Supper, consented, in favor of the dogma, to depart from the assumption that the simple alone could be substantial and to admit the possibility of composite substances, and of a “substantial bond” connecting the parts of living beings. It appears least in contradiction with the other principles of the philosopher to assign the rôle of this _vinculum substantiate_ to the soul or central monad itself.
[Footnote 1: Cf. Gustav Class, _Die metaphysischen Voraussetzungen des Leibnizischen Determinismus_, Tübingen, 1874.]
Everything in nature is organized; there are no soulless bodies, no dead matter. The smallest particle of dust is peopled with a multitude of living beings and the tiniest drop of water swarms with organisms: every portion of matter may be compared to a pond filled with fish or a garden full of plants. This denial of the inorganic does not release our philosopher from the duty of explaining its apparent existence. If we thoughtfully consider bodies, we perceive that there is nothing lifeless and non-representative. But the phenomenon of extended mass arises for our confused sensuous perception, which perceives the monads composing a body together and regards them as a continuous unity. Body exists only as a confused idea in the feeling subject; since, nevertheless, a reality without the mind, namely, an immaterial monad-aggregate, corresponds to it, the phenomenon of body is a well-founded one _(phenomenon bene fundatum)_. As matter is merely something present in sensation or confused representation, so space and time are also nothing real, neither substances nor properties, but only ideal things–the former the order of coexistences, the latter the order of successions.
If there are no soulless bodies, there are also no bodiless souls; the soul is always joined with an aggregate of subordinate monads, though not always with the same ones. Single monads are constantly passing into its body, or into its service, while others are passing out; it is involved in a continuous process of bodily transformation. Usually the change goes on slowly and with a constant replacement of the parts thrown off. If it takes place quickly men call it birth or death. Actual death there is as little as there is an actual genesis; not the soul only, but every living thing is imperishable. Death is decrease and involution, birth increase and evolution. The dying creature loses only a portion of its bodily machine and so returns to the slumberous or germinal condition of “involution”, in which it existed before birth, and from which it was aroused through conception to development. Pre-existence as well as post-existence must be conceded both to animals and to men. Leuwenhoek’s discovery of the spermatozoa furnished a welcome confirmation for this doctrine, that all individuals have existed since the beginning of the world, at least as preformed germs. The immortality of man, conformably to his superior dignity, differs from the continued existence of all monads, in that after his death he retains memory and the consciousness of his moral personality.
%3. Man: Cognition and Volition.%
In reason man possesses reflection or self-consciousness as well as the knowledge of God, of the universal, and of the eternal truths or _a priori_ knowledge, while the animal is limited in its perception to experience, and in its reasoning to the connection of perceptions in accordance with memory. Man differs from higher beings in that the majority of his ideas are confused. Under confused ideas Leibnitz includes both sense-perceptions–anyone who has distinct ideas alone, as God, has no sense-perceptions–and the feelings which mediate between the former and the perfectly distinct ideas of rational thought. The delight of music depends, in his opinion, on an unconscious numbering and measuring of the harmonic and rhythmic relations of tones, aesthetic enjoyment of the beautiful in general, and even sensuous pleasure, on the confused perception of a perfection, order, or harmony.
The application of the _lex continui_ to the inner life has a very wide range. The principal results are: (1) the mind always thinks; (2) every present idea postulates a previous one from which it has arisen; (3) sensation and thought differ only in degree; (4) in the order of time, the ideas of sense precede those of reason. We are never wholly without ideas, only we are often not conscious of them. If thought ceased in deep sleep, we could have no ideas on awakening, since every representation proceeds from a preceding one, even though it be unconscious.
In the thoughtful _New Essays concerning the Human Understanding_ Leibnitz develops his theory of knowledge in the form of a polemical commentary to Locke’s chief work.[1] According to Descartes some ideas (the pure concepts) are innate, according to Locke none, according to Leibnitz all. Or: according to Descartes some ideas (sensuous perceptions) come from without, according to Locke all do so, according to Leibnitz none. Leibnitz agrees with Descartes against Locke in the position that the mind originally possesses ideas; he agrees with Locke against Descartes, that thought is later than sensation and the knowledge of universals later than that of particulars. The originality which Leibnitz attributes to intellectual ideas is different from that which Descartes had ascribed and Locke denied to them. They are original in that they do not come into the soul and are not impressed upon it from without; they are not original in that they can develop only from previously given sense-ideas; again, they are original in that they can be developed from confused ideas only because they are contained in them _implicite_ or as pre-dispositions. Thus Leibnitz is able to agree with both his predecessors up to a certain point: with the one, that the pure concepts have their origin within the mind; with the other, that they are not the earliest knowledge, but are conditioned by sensations. This synthesis, however, was possible only because Leibnitz looked on sensation differently from both the others. If sensation is to be the mother of thought, and the latter at the same time to preserve its character as original, _i.e._, as something not obtained from without, sensation must, first, include an unconscious thinking in itself, and, secondly, must itself receive a title to originality and spontaneity. As the Catholic dogma added the immaculate conception of the mother to that of the Son, so Leibnitz transfers the (virginal) origin of rational concepts, independent of external influence, to sensations. The monad has no windows. It bears germinally in itself all that it is to experience, and nothing is impressed on it from without. The intellect should not be compared to a blank tablet, but to a block of marble in whose veins the outlines of the statue are prefigured. Ideas can only arise from ideas, never from external impressions or movements of corporeal parts. Thus _all_ ideas are innate in the sense that they grow from inner germs; we possess them from the beginning, not developed (_explicite_), but potentially, that is, we have the capacity to produce them. The old Scholastic principle that “there is nothing in the understanding which was not previously in sense” is entirely correct, only one must add, except the understanding itself, that is, the faculty of developing our knowledge out of ourselves. Thought lies already dormant in perception. With the mechanical position (sensuous representation precedes and conditions rational thought) is joined the teleological position (sensuous representations exist, in order to render the origin of thoughts possible), and with this purposive determination, sensation attains a higher dignity: it is more than has been seen in it before, for it includes in itself the future concept of the understanding in an unconscious form, nay, it is itself an imperfect thought, a thought in process of becoming. Sensation and thought are not different in kind, and if the former is called a passive state, still passivity is nothing other than diminished activity. Both are spontaneous; thought is merely spontaneous in a higher degree.
[Footnote 1: A careful comparison of Locke’s theory of knowledge with that of Leibnitz is given by G. Hartenstein, _Abhandlungen der k. sächs. Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften_, Leipsic, 1865, included in Hartenstein’s _Historisch-philosophische Abhandlungen_, 1870.]
By making sensation and feeling the preliminary step to thought, Leibnitz became the founder of that intellectualism which, in the system of Hegel, extended itself far beyond the psychological into the cosmical field, and endeavored to conceive not only all psychical phenomena but all reality whatsoever as a development of the Idea toward itself. This conception, which may be characterized as intellectualistic in its content, presents itself on its formal side as a quantitative way of looking at the world, which sacrifices all qualitative antitheses in order to arrange the totality of being and becoming in a single series with no distinctions but those of degree. If Leibnitz here appears as the representative of a view of the world which found in Kant a powerful and victorious opponent, yet, on the other hand, he prepared the way by his conception of innate ideas for the Critique of Reason. By his theory of knowledge he forms the transition link between Descartes and Kant, since he interprets necessary truths not as dwelling in the mind complete and explicit from the start, but as produced or raised into consciousness only on the occasion of sensuous experience. It must be admitted, moreover, that this in reality was only a restoration of Descartes’s original position, _i.e._, a deliverance of it from the misinterpretations and perversions which it had suffered at the hands of adherents and opponents alike, but which Descartes, it is true, had failed to render impossible from the start by conclusive explanations. The author of the theory of innate ideas certainly did not mean what Locke foists upon him, that the child in the cradle already possesses the ideas of God, of thought, and of extension in full clearness. But whether Leibnitz improved or only restored Descartes, it was in any case an important advance when experience and thought were brought into more definite relation, and the productive force in rational concepts was secured to the latter and the occasion of their production to the former.
The unconscious or minute ideas, which in noëtics had served to break the force of Locke’s objections against the innateness of the principles of reason, are in ethics brought into the field against indeterminism. They are involved whenever we believe ourselves to act without cause, from pure choice, or contrary to the motives present. In this last case, a motive which is very strong in itself is overcome by the united power of many in themselves weaken The will is always determined, and that by an idea (of ends), which generally is of a very complex nature, and in which the stronger side decides the issue. An absolute equilibrium of motives is impossible: the world cannot be divided into two entirely similar parts (this in opposition to “Buridan’s ass”). A spirit capable of looking us through and through would be able to calculate all our volitions and actions beforehand.
In spite of this admitted inevitableness of our resolutions and actions, the predicate of freedom really belongs to them, and this on two grounds. First, they are only physically or morally, not metaphysically, necessary; as a matter of fact, it is true, they cannot happen otherwise, but their opposite involves no logical contradiction and remains conceivable. To express this thought the formula, often repeated since, that our motives only impel, incite, or stimulate the will, but do not compel it (_inclinant, non necessitant_), was chosen, but not very happily. Secondly, the determination of the will is an inner necessitation, grounded in the being’s own nature, not an external compulsion. The agent determines himself in accordance with his own nature, and for this each bears the responsibility himself, for God, when he brought the monads out of possibility into actuality, left their natures as they had existed before the creation in the form of eternal ideas in His understanding. Though Leibnitz thus draws a distinction between his deterministic doctrine and the “fatalism” of Spinoza, he recognizes a second concept of freedom, which completely corresponds to Spinoza’s. A decision is the more free the more distinct the ideas which determine it, and a man the more free the more he withdraws his will from the influence of the passions, _i.e._, confused ideas, and subordinates it to that of reason. God alone is absolutely free, because he has no ideas which are not distinct. The bridge between the two conceptions of freedom is established by the principle that reason constitutes the peculiar nature of man in a higher degree than the sum of his ideas; for it is reason which distinguishes him from the lower beings. According to the first meaning of freedom man is free, according to the second, which coincides with activity, perfection, and morality, he should become free.
Morality is the result of the natural development of the individual. Every being strives after perfection or increased activity, _i.e._, after more distinct ideas. Parallel to this theoretical advance runs a practical advance in a twofold form: the increasing distinctness of ideas, or enlightenment, or wisdom, raises the impulse to transitory, sensuous pleasure into an impulse to permanent delight in our spiritual perfection, or toward happiness, while, further, it opens up an insight into the connection of all beings and the harmony of the world, in virtue of which the virtuous man will seek to promote the perfection and happiness of others as well as his own, _i.e._, will _love_ them, for to love is to find pleasure in the happiness of others. To promote the good of all, again, is the same as to contribute one’s share to the world-harmony and to co-operate in the fulfillment of God’s purposes. Probity and piety are the same. They form the highest of the three grades of natural right, which Leibnitz distinguishes as _jus strictum_ (mere right, with the principle: Injure no one), _aequitas_ (equity or charity, with the maxim: To each his due), and _probitas sive pietas_ (honorableness joined with religion, according to the command: Lead an upright and morally pure life). They may also be designated as commutative, distributive, and universal justice. Belief in God and immortality is a condition of the last.
%4. Theology and Theodicy.%
God is the ground and the end of the world. All beings strive toward him, as all came out from him. In man the general striving toward the most perfect Being rises into conscious love to God, which is conditioned by the knowledge of God and produces virtuous action as its effect. Enlightenment and virtue are the essential constituents of religion; all else, as cultus and dogma, have only a derivative value. Religious ceremonies are an imperfect expression of the practical element in piety, as the doctrines of faith are a weak imitation of the theoretical. It is a direct contradiction of the intention of the Divine Teacher when occult formulas and ceremonies, which have no connection with virtue, are made the chief thing. The points in which the creeds agree are more important than those by which they are differentiated. Natural religion has found its most perfect expression in Christianity, although paganism and Judaism had also grasped portions of the truth. Salvation is not denied to the heathen, for moral purity is sufficient to make one a partaker of the grace of God. The religion of the Jews elevated monotheism, which, it is true, made its appearance among the heathen in isolated philosophers, but was never the popular religion, into a law; but it lacked the belief in immortality. Christianity made the religion of the sage the religion of the people.
Whatever of positive doctrine revelation has added to natural religion transcends the reason, it is true, but does not contradict it. It contains no principles contrary to reason (whose opposite can be proved), but, no doubt, principles above reason, _i.e._, such as the reason could not have found without help from without, and which it cannot fully comprehend, though it is able approximately to understand them and to defend them against objections. Hence Leibnitz defended the Trinity, which he interpreted as God’s power, understanding, and will, the eternity of the torments of hell (which brought him the commendation of Lessing), and other dogmas. Miracles also belong among the things the how and why of which we are not in a position to comprehend, but only the that and what. Since the laws of nature are only physically or conditionally necessary, _i.e._ have been enacted only because of their fitness for the purposes of God, they may be suspended in special cases when a higher end requires it.
While the positive doctrines of faith cannot be proved–as, on the other hand, they cannot be refuted–the principles of natural religion admit of strict demonstration. The usual arguments for the existence of God are useful, but need amendment. The ontological argument of Descartes, that from the concept of a most perfect Being his existence follows, is correct so soon as the idea of God is shown to be possible or free from contradiction. The cosmological proof runs: Contingent beings point to a necessary, self-existent Being, the eternal truths especially presuppose an eternal intelligence in which they exist. If we ask why anything whatever, or why just this world exists, this ultimate ground of things cannot be found within the world. Every contingent thing or event has its cause in another. However far we follow out the series of conditions, we never reach an ultimate, unconditioned cause. Consequently the sufficient reason for the series must be situated without the world, and, as is evident from the harmony of things, can only be an infinitely wise and good Being. Here the teleological proof comes in: From the finality of the world we reason to the existence of a Being, as the author of the world, who works in view of ends and who wills and carries out that which is best,–to the supreme intelligence, goodness, and power of the Creator. A special inferential value accrues to this position from the system of pre-established harmony–it is manifest that the complete correspondence of the manifold substances in the world, which are not connected with one another by any direct interaction, can proceed only from a common cause endowed with infinite intelligence and power.
The possibility of proving the existence of one omnipotent and all-beneficent God, and the impossibility of refuting the positive dogmas, save the harmony of faith and reason, which Bayle had denied. The conclusion of the _New Essays_ and the opening of the _Theodicy_ are devoted to this theme. The second part gives, also against Bayle, the justification of God in view of the evil in the world. _Si Deus est, unde malum_? Optimism has to reckon with the facts of experience, and to show that this world, in spite of its undeniable imperfections, is still the best world. God could certainly have brought into actuality a world in which there would have been less imperfection than in ours, but it would at the same time have contained fewer perfections. No world whatever can exist entirely free from evil, entirely without limitation–whoever forbids God to create imperfect beings forbids him to create a world at all. Certain evils–in general terms, the evil of finitude–are entirely inseparable from the concept of created beings; imperfection attaches to every created thing as such. Other evils God has permitted because it was only through them that certain higher goods, which ought not to be renounced, could be brought to pass. Think of the lofty feelings, noble resolves, and great deeds which war occasions, think of national enthusiasm, readiness for sacrifice, and defiance of death–all these would be given over, if war should be taken out of the world on account of the suffering which it also brings in its train.
If we turn from the general principles to their application in detail, we find a separate proof for the inevitableness or salutary nature of each of the three kinds of evil–the metaphysical evil of created existence, the physical evil of suffering (and punishment), and the moral evil of sin. Metaphysical evil is absolutely unavoidable, if a world is to exist at all; created beings without imperfection, finiteness, limitation, are entirely inconceivable–something besides gods must exist. The physical evil of misery finds its justification in that it makes for good. First of all, the amount of suffering is not so great as it appears to discontented spirits to be. Life is usually quite tolerable, and vouchsafes more joy and pleasure than grief and hardship; in balancing the good and the evil we must especially remember to reckon on the positive side the goods of activity, of health, and all that which affords us, perchance, no perceptible pleasure, but the removal of which would be felt as an evil (_Theodicy_, ii. § 251). Most evils serve to secure us a much greater good, or to ward off a still greater evil. Would a brave general, if given the choice of leaving the battle unwounded, but also without the victory, or of winning the victory at the cost of a wound, hesitate an instant to choose the latter? Other troubles, again, must be regarded as punishment for sins and as means of reformation; the man who is resigned to God’s will may be certain that the sufferings which come to him will turn out for his good.
Especially if we consider the world as a whole, it is evident that the sum of evil vanishes before the sum of good. It is wrong to look upon the happiness of man as the end of the world. Certainly God had the happiness of rational beings in mind, but not this exclusively, for they form only a part of the world, even if it be the highest part. God’s purpose has reference rather to the perfection of the whole system of the universe. Now the harmony of the universe requires that all possible grades of reality be represented, that there should be indistinct ideas, sense, and corporeality, not merely a realm of spirits, and with these, conditions of imperfection, feelings of pain, and theoretical and moral errors are inevitably given. The connection and the order of the world demands a material element in the monad, but happiness without alloy can never be the lot of a spirit joined to a body. Thirdly, in regard to moral evil also we receive the assurance that the sum of the bad is much less than that of the good. Then, moral evil is connected with metaphysical evil: created beings cannot be absolutely perfect, hence, also, not morally perfect or sinless. But, in return for this, there is no being that is absolutely imperfect, none only and entirely evil. With this is joined the well-known principle of the earlier thinkers, that evil is nothing actual, but merely deprivation, absence of good, lack of clear reason and force of will. That which is real in the evil action, the power to act, is perfect and good, and, as force, comes from God–the negative or evil element in it comes from the agent himself; just as in the case of two ships of the same size, but unequally laden, which drift with the current, the speed comes from the stream and the retardation from the load of the vessels themselves. God is not responsible for sin, for he has only permitted it, not willed it directly, and man was already evil before he was created. The fact that God foresaw that man would sin does not constrain the latter to commit the evil deed, but this follows from his own (eternal) being, which God left unaltered when he granted him existence. The guilt and the responsibility fall wholly on the sinner himself. The permission of evil is explained by the predominantly good results which follow from it (not, as in physical evil, for the sufferer himself, but for others)–from the crime of Sextus Tarquinius sprang a great kingdom with great men (of. the beautiful myth in connection with a dialogue of Laurentius Valla, _Theodicy,_ iii. 413-416). Finally, reference is made again to the contribution which evil makes to the perfection of the whole. Evil has the same function in the world as the discords in a piece of music, or the shadows in a painting–the beauty is heightened by the contrast. The good needs a foil in order to come out distinctly and to be felt in all its excellence.
In the Leibnitzian theodicy the least satisfactory part is the justification of moral evil. We miss the view defended in such grand outlines by Hegel, and so ingeniously by Fechner, that the good is not the flower of a quiet, unmolested development, but the fruit of energetic labor; that it has need of its opposite; that it not merely must approve itself in the battle against evil without and within the acting subject, but that it is only through this conflict that it is attainable at all. Virtue implies force of will as well as purity, and force develops only by resistance. Although he does not appreciate the full depth of the significance of pain, Leibnitz’s view of suffering deserves more approval than his questionable application to the ethical sphere of the quantitative view of the world, with its interpretation of evil as merely undeveloped good. But, in any case, the compassionate contempt of the pessimism of the day for the “shallow” Leibnitz is most unjustifiable.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE GERMAN ILLUMINATION.
%1. The Contemporaries of Leibnitz.%
The period between Kepler and Leibnitz in Germany was very poor in noteworthy philosophical phenomena. The physicist, Christoph Sturm[1] of Altdorf (died 1703), was a follower of Descartes, Joachim Jungius[2] (died 1657) a follower of Bacon, though not denying with the latter the value of the mathematical method in natural science. Hieronymus Hirnhaym, Abbot at Prague (_The Plague of the Human Race, or the Vanity of Human Learning_, 1676), declared the thirst for knowledge of his age a dangerous disease, knowledge uncertain, since no reliance can be placed on sense-perception and the principles of thought contradict the doctrines of faith, and harmful, since it contributes nothing to salvation, but makes its possessors proud and draws them away from piety. He maintained, further, that divine authority is the only refuge for man, and moral life the true science. Side by side with such skepticism Hirnhaym’s contemporary, the poet Angelus Silesius (Joh. Scheffler, died 1667), defended mysticism. The teacher of natural law, Samuel Pufendorf[3] (1632-94, professor in Heidelberg and Lund, died in Berlin), aimed to mediate between Grotius and Hobbes. Natural law is demonstrable, its real ground is the will of God, its noëtical ground (not revelation, but) reason and observation of the (social) nature of man, and the fundamental law the promotion of universal good. The individual must not violate the interests of society in satisfying his impulse to self-preservation, because his own interests require social existence, and, consequently, respect for its conditions.
[Footnote 1: Chr. Sturm: _Physica Conciliatrix_, 1687; _Physica Electiva_, vol. i. 1697, vol. ii. with preface by Chr. Wolff, 1722; _Compendium Universalium seu Metaphysica Euclidea_.]
[Footnote 2: J. Jung _Logica Hamburgiensis_, 1638; cf. Guhrauer, 1859.]
[Footnote 3: Pufendorf: _Elementa Juris Universalis_, 1660; _De Statu Imperii Germanici_, 1667, under the pseudonym Monzambano; _De Jure Natures et Gentium_ 1672, and an abstract of this, _De Officio Hominis et Civis_, 1673.]
Pufendorf was followed by Christian Thomasius[1] (1655-1728; professor of law at the University of Halle from its foundation in 1694). He was the first instructor who ventured to deliver lectures in the German language–in Leipsic from 1687–and at the same time was the editor of the first learned journal in German (_Teutsche Monate, Geschichte der Weisheit und Thorheit_). In Thomasius the characteristic features of the German Illumination first came out in full distinctness, namely, the avoidance of scholasticism in expression and argument, the direct relation of knowledge to life, sober rationality in thinking, heedless eclecticism, and the demand for religious tolerance. Philosophy must be generally intelligible, and practically useful, knowledge of the world (not of God); its form, free and tasteful ratiocination; its object, man and morals; its first duty, culture, not learning; its highest aim, happiness; its organ and the criterion of every truth, common sense. He alone gains true knowledge who frees his understanding from prejudice and judges only after examining for himself; the joy of mental peace is given to no one who does not free his heart from foolish desires and vehement passions, and devote it to virtue, to “rational love.” The positive doctrines of Thomasius have less interest than this general standpoint, which prefigured the succeeding period. He divides practical philosophy into natural law which treats of the _justum_, politics which treats of the _decorum_, and ethics which treats of the _honestum_. Justice bids us, Do not to others what you would not that others should do to you; decorum, Do to others as you would that they should do to you; and morality, Do to yourself as you would that others should do to themselves. The first two laws relate to external, the third to internal, peace; legal duties may be enforced by compulsion, moral duties not.
[Footnote 1: Thomasius: _Institutionum Jurisprudentiae Divinae Libri Tres_, 1688; _Fundamenta Juris Naturae et Gentium_, 1705, both in Latin; in German, appeared in 1691-96 the _Introduction and Application of Rational and Moral Philosophy_.]
If Thomasius was the leader of those popular philosophers who, unconcerned about systematic continuity, discussed every question separately before the tribunal of common sense, and found in their lack of allegiance to any philosophical sect a sufficient guarantee of the unprejudicedness and impartiality of their reflections, Count Walter von Tschirnhausen (1651-1708; _Medecina Mentis sive Artis Inveniendi Praecepta Generalia_, 1687), a friend of Spinoza and Leibnitz, became the prototype of another group of the philosophers of the Illumination. This group favored eclecticism of a more scientific kind, by starting from considerations of method and seeking to overcome the antithesis between rationalism and empiricism. While fully persuaded of the validity and necessity of the mathematical method in philosophical investigations, as well as elsewhere, Tschirnhausen still holds it indispensable that the deductions, on the one hand, start from empirical facts, and, on the other, that they be confirmed by experiments. Inner experience gives us four primal facts, of which the chief is the certainty of self-consciousness. The second, that many things affect us agreeably and many disagreeably, is the basis of morals; the third, that some things are comprehensible to us and others not, the basis of logic; the fourth, that through the senses we passively receive impressions from without, the basis of the empirical sciences, in particular, of physics. Consequently consciousness, will, understanding, and sensuous representation _(imaginatio)_, together with corporeality, are our fundamental concepts. Not perception _(perceptio)_, but conception _(conceptio)_ alone gives science; that which we can “conceive” is true; the understanding as such cannot err, but undoubtedly the imagination can lead us to confuse the merely perceived with that which is conceived. The method of science is geometrical demonstration, which starts from (genetic) definitions, and from their analysis obtains axioms, from their combination, theorems. That which is thus proved _a priori_ must, as already remarked, be confirmed _a posteriori_. The highest of all sciences is natural philosophy, since it considers not sense-objects only, not (like mathematics) the objects of reason only, but the actual itself in its true character. Hence it is the divine science, while the human sciences busy themselves only with our ideas or the relations of things to us.
%2. Christian Wolff.%
Christian Wolff was born at Breslau in 1679, studied theology at Jena, and in addition mathematics and philosophy, habilitated at Leipsic in 1703, and obtained, through the instrumentality of Leibnitz, a professorship of mathematics at Halle, in 1706. His lectures, which soon extended themselves over all philosophical disciplines, met with great success. This popularity, as well as the rationalistic tendency of his thinking, aroused the disfavor of the pietists, Francke and Lange, who succeeded, in 1723, in securing from King Frederick William I. his removal from his chair and his expulsion from the kingdom. Finding a refuge in Marburg, he was called back to Halle by Frederick the Great a short time after the latter’s ascension of the throne. Here he taught and wrote zealously until his death in 1754. In his lectures, as well as in half of his writings,[1] he followed the example of Thomasius in using the German language, which he prepared in a most praiseworthy manner for the expression of philosophical ideas and furnished with a large part of the technical terms current to-day. Thus the terms _Verhältniss_ (relation), _Vorstellung_ (representation, idea), _Bewusstsein_ (consciousness), _stetig (continuus)_, come from Wolff, as well as the distinction between _Kraft_ (power) and _Vermögen_ (faculty), and between _Grund_ (ground) and _Ursache_ (cause),[2] Another great service consisted in the reduction of the philosophy of Leibnitz to a systematic form, by which he secured a dissemination for it which otherwise it would scarcely have obtained. But he did not possess sufficient originality to contribute anything remarkable of his own, and it showed little self-knowledge when he became indignant at the designation Leibnitzio-Wolffian philosophy, which was first used by his pupil, Bilfinger. The alterations which he made in the doctrines of Leibnitz are far from being improvements, and the parts which he rejected are just the most characteristic and thoughtful of all. Such at least is the opinion of thinkers to-day, though this mutilation and leveling down of the most daring of Leibnitz’s hypotheses was perhaps entirely advantageous for Wolff’s impression on his contemporaries; what appeared questionable to him would no doubt have repelled them also. Leibnitz’s two leading ideas, the theory of monads and the pre-established harmony, were most of all affected by this process of toning down. Wolff weakens the former by attributing a representative power only to actual souls, which are capable of consciousness, although he holds that bodies are compounded of simple beings and that the latter are endowed with (a not further defined) force. He limits the application of the pre-established harmony to the relation of body and soul, which to Leibnitz was only a case especially favorable for the illustration of the hypothesis. By such trifling the real meaning of both these ideas is sacrificed and their bloom rubbed off.–While depth is lacking in Wolff’s thinking, he is remarkable for his power of systematization, his persevering diligence, and his logical earnestness, so that the praise bestowed on him by Kant, that he was the author of the spirit of thoroughness in Germany, was well deserved. He, too, finds the end of philosophy in the enlightenment of the understanding, the improvement of the heart, and, ultimately, in the promotion of the happiness of mankind. But while Thomasius demanded as a condition of such universal intelligibility and usefulness that, discarding the scholastic garb, philosophy should appear in the form of easy ratiocination, Wolff, on the other hand, regards methodical procedure and certainty in results as indispensable to its usefulness, and, in order to this certainty, insists on distinctness of conception and cogency of proof. He demands a _philosophia et certa et utilis_. If, finally, his methodical deliberateness, especially in his later works, leads him into wearisome diffuseness, this pedantry is made good by his genuinely German, honest spirit, which manifests itself agreeably in his judgment on practical questions.
[Footnote 1: _Reasonable Thoughts on the Powers of the Human Understanding_, 1712; _Reasonable Thoughts on God, the World, and the Soul of Man, also on All Things in General_, 1719 (_Notes_ to this 1724); _Reasonable Thoughts on the Conduct of Man_, 1720; _Reasonable Thoughts on the Social Life of Man_, 1721; _Reasonable Thoughts on the Operations of Nature_, 1723; _Reasonable Thoughts on the Purposes of Natural Things_, 1724; _Reasonable Thoughts on the Parts of Man, Animals, and Plants_, 1725, all in German. Besides these there are extensive Latin treatises (1728-53) on Logic, Ontology, Cosmology, Empirical and Rational Psychology, Natural Theology, and all branches of Practical Philosophy. Detailed extracts may be found in Erdmann’s _Versuch einer wissenschaftlichen Darstellung_, ii. 2. The best account of the Wolffian philosophy has been given by Zeller (pp. 211-273).]
[Footnote 2: Eucken, _Geschichte der Terminologie_^ pp. 133-134.]
Wolff reaches his division of the sciences by combining the two psychological antitheses–the higher (rational) and lower (sensuous) faculties of cognition and appetition. On the first is based the distinction between the rational and the empirical or historical method of treatment. The latter concerns itself with the actual, the former with the possible and necessary, or the grounds of the actual; the one observes and describes, the other deduces. The antithesis of cognition and appetition gives the basis for the division into theoretical and practical philosophy. The former, called metaphysics, is divided into a general part, which treats of being in general whether it be of a corporeal or a spiritual nature, and three special parts, according to their principal subjects, the world, the soul, and God,–hence into ontology, cosmology, psychology, and theology. The science which establishes rules for action and regards man as an individual being, as a citizen, and as the head or member of a family, is divided (after Aristotle) into ethics, politics, and economics, which are preceded by practical philosophy in general, and by natural law. The introduction to the two principal parts is furnished by formal logic.
Philosophy is the science of the possible, _i.e._, of that which contains no contradiction; it is science from concepts, its principle, the law of identity, its form, demonstration, and its instrument, analysis, which in the predicate explicates the determinations contained in the concept of the subject. In order to confirm that which has been deduced from pure concepts by the facts of experience, _psychologia rationalis_ is supplemented by _psychologia empirica_, rational cosmology by empirical physics, and speculative theology by an experimental doctrine of God (teleology). Wolff gives no explanation how it comes about that the deliverances of the reason agree so beautifully with the facts of experience; in his naïve, unquestioning belief in the infallibility of the reason he is a typical dogmatist.
A closer examination of the Wolffian philosophy seems unnecessary, since its most essential portions have already been discussed under Leibnitz and since it will be necessary to recur to certain points in our chapter on Kant. Therefore, referring the reader to the detailed accounts in Erdmann and Zeller, we shall only note that Wolff’s ethics opposes the principle of perfection to the English principle of happiness (that is good which perfects man’s condition, and this is life in conformity with nature or reason, with which happiness is necessarily connected); that he makes the will determined by the understanding, and assigns ignorance as the cause of sin; that his philosophy of religion, which argues for a natural religion in addition to revealed religion (experiential and rational proofs for the existence of God, and a deduction of his attributes), and sets up certain tests for the genuineness of revelation, favors a rationalism which was flexible enough to allow his pupils either to take part in orthodox movements or to advance to a deism hostile to the Church.
Among the followers of Wolff, Alexander Baumgarten (1714-62) deserves the first place, as the founder of German aesthetics _(Aesthetica_, 1750 _seq_.). He perceives a gap in the system of the philosophical sciences. This contains in ethics a guide to right volition, and in logic a guide to correct thinking, but there are no directions for correct feeling, no aesthetic. The beautiful would form the subject of this discipline. For the perfection (the harmonious unity of a manifold, which is pleasant to the spectator), which manifests itself to the will as the good and to the clear thinking of the understanding as the true, appears–according to Leibnitz–to confused sensuous perception as beauty. From this on the name aesthetics was established for the theory of the beautiful, though in Kant’s great work it is used in its literal meaning as the doctrine of sense, of the faculty of sensations or intuitions. Baumgarten’s pupils and followers, the aesthetic writer G.F. Meier at Halle, Baumeister, and others, contributed like himself to the dissemination of the Wolffian system by their manuals on different branches of philosophy. To this school belong also the following: Thümmig (_Institutiones Philosophia Wolfianae_, 1725-26); the theologian Siegmund Baumgarten at Halle, the elder brother of the aesthete; the mathematician Martin Knutzen, Kant’s teacher;[1] the literary historian Gottsched [2] at Leipsic; and G. Ploucquet, who in his _Methodus Calculandi in Logicis_, with a _Commentatio de Arte Characteristica Universali_ appended to his _Principia de Substantiis et Phaenomenis_, 1753, took up again Leibnitz’s cherished plan for a logical calculus and a universal symbolic language. The psychologist Kasimir von Creuz (_Essay on the Soul_, in two parts, 1753-54), and J.H. Lambert,[3] whom Kant deemed worthy of a detailed correspondence, take up a more independent position, both demanding that the Wolffian rationalism be supplemented by the empiricism of Locke, and the latter, moreover, in anticipation of the Critique of Reason, pointing very definitely to the distinction between content and form as the salient point in the theory of knowledge.
[Footnote 1: Benno Erdmann, _M. Knutzen und seine Zeit_, 1876.]
[Footnote 2: Th. W. Danzel, _Gottsched und seine Zeit_, 1848.]
[Footnote 3: Lambert: _Cosmological Letters_, 1761; _New Organon_, 1764; _Groundwork of Architectonics_, 1771. Bernoulli edited some of Lambert’s papers and his correspondence.]
Among the opponents of the Wolffian philosophy, all of whom favor eclecticism, A. Rüdiger[1] and Chr. Aug. Crusius,[2] who was influenced by Rüdiger, and, like him, a professor at Leipsic, are the most important. Rüdiger divides philosophy according to its objects, “wisdom, justice, prudence,” into three parts–the science of nature (which must avoid one-sided mechanical views, and employ ether, air, and spirit as principles of explanation); the science of duty (which, as metaphysics, treats of duties toward God, as natural law, of duties to our neighbor, and deduces both from the primary duty of obedience to the will of God); and the science of the good (in which Rüdiger follows the treatise of the Spaniard, Gracian, on practical wisdom). Crusius agrees with Rüdiger that mathematics is the science of the possible, and philosophy the science of the actual, and that the latter, instead of imitating to its own disadvantage the deductive-analytical method of geometry, must, with the aid of experience and with attention to the probability of its conclusions, rise to the highest principles synthetically. Besides its deduction the determinism of the Wolffian philosophy gave offense, for it was believed to endanger morals, justice, and religion. The will, the special fundamental power of the soul (consisting of the impulses to perfection, love, and knowledge), is far from being determined by ideas; it is rather they which depend on the will. The application of the principle of sufficient reason, which is wrongly held to admit of no exception, must be restricted in favor of freedom. For the rest, we may note concerning Crusius that he derives the principle of sufficient reason (everything which is now, and before was not, has a cause) and the principle of contingency from the principles of contradiction, inseparability, and incompatibility, and these latter from the principle of conceivability; that he rejects the ontological argument, and makes the ground of obligation in morality consist in obedience toward God, and its content in perfection. Among the other opponents of the Wolffian philosophy, we may mention the theologian Budde(us)[3] _(Institutiones Philosophiae Eclecticae_, 1705); Darjes (who taught in Jena and Frankfort-on-the-Oder; _The Way to Truth_, 1755); and Crousaz (1744).
[Footnote 1: Rüdiger: _Disputatio de eo quod Omnes Idea Oriantur a Sensione_, 1704; _Philosophia Synthetica_, 1707; _Physica Divina_, 1716; _Philosophia Pragmatica_, 1723.]
[Footnote 2: Crusius: _De Usu et Limitibus Principii Rationis_, 1743; _Directions how to Live a Rational Life_ (theory of the will and of ethics), 1744; _A Sketch of the Necessary Truths of Reason_, 1745; _Way to the Certainty and Trustworthiness of Human Knowledge_, 1747.]
[Footnote 3: J.J. Brucker _(Historia Critica Philosophiae_, 5 vols., 1742-44; 2d ed., 6 vols., 1766-67) was a pupil of Budde.]
%3. The Illumination as Scientific and as Popular Philosophy.%
After a demand for the union of Leibnitz and Locke, of rationalism and empiricism, had been raised within the Wolffian school itself, and still more directly in the camp of its opponents, under the increasing influence of the empirical philosophy of England,[1] eclecticism in the spirit of Thomasius took full possession of the stage in the Illumination period. There was the less hesitation in combining principles derived from entirely different postulates without regard to their systematic connection, as the interest in scholastic investigation gave place more and more to the interest in practical and reassuring results. Metaphysics, noëtics, and natural philosophy were laid aside as useless subtleties, and, as in the period succeeding Aristotle, man as an individual and whatever directly relates to his welfare–the constitution of his inner nature, his duties, the immortality of the soul, and the existence of God–became the exclusive subjects of reflection. The fact that, besides ethics and religion, psychology was chosen as a favorite field, is in complete harmony with the general temper of an age for which self-observation and the enjoyment of tender and elevated feelings in long, delightfully friendly letters and sentimental diaries had become a favorite habit. Hand in hand with this narrowing of the content of philosophy went a change in the form of presentation. As thinkers now addressed themselves to all cultivated people, intelligibility and agreeableness were made the prime requisites; the style became light and flowing, the method of treatment facile and often superficial. This is true not only of the popular philosophers proper–who, as Windelband pertinently remarks (vol. i. p. 563), did not seek after the truth, but believed that they already possessed it, and desired only to disseminate it; who did not aim at the promotion of investigation, but the instruction of the public–but to a certain extent, also, of those who were conscious of laboring in the service of science. Among the representatives of the more polite tendency belong, Moses Mendelssohn[2] (1729-86); Thomas Abbt (_On Death for the Fatherland_, 1761; _On Merit_, 1765); J.J. Engel (_The philosopher for the World_, 1775); G.S. Steinbart (_The Christian Doctrine of Happiness_, 1778); Ernst Platner (_Philosophical Aphorisms_, 1776, 1782; on Platner cf. M. Heinze, 1880); G.C. Lichtenberg (died 1799; _Miscellaneous Writings_, 1800 _seq_.; a selection is given in _Reclam’s Bibliothek_); Christian Garve (died 1798; _Essays_, 1792 _seq.; Translations from the Ethical Works of Aristotle, Cicero, and Ferguson_); and Friedrich Nicolai[3] (died 1811). Eberhard, Feder, and Meiners will be mentioned later among the opponents of the Kantian philosophy.
[Footnote 1: The influence of the English philosophers on the German philosophy of the eighteenth century is discussed by Gustav Zart, 1881.]
[Footnote 2: Mendelssohn: _Letters on the Sensations_, 1755; _On Evidence in the Metaphysical Sciences_, a prize essay crowned by the Academy, 1764; _Phaedo, or on Immortality_, 1767; _Jerusalem_, 1783; _Morning Hours, or on the Existence of God_, 1785; _To the Friends of Lessing_ (against Jacobi), 1786; _Works_, 1843-44. Cf. on Mendelssohn, Kayserling, 1856, 1862, 1883.]
[Footnote 3: Nicolai: _Library of Belles Lettres_, from 1757; _Letters on the Most Recent German Literature_, from 1759; _Universal German Library_, from 1765; _New Universal German Library_, 1793-1805.]
Among the psychologists J.N. Tetens, whose _Philosophical Essays on Human Nature_, 1776-77, show a remarkable similarity to the views of Kant,[1] takes the first rank. The two thinkers evidently influenced each other. The three fold division of the activities of the soul, “knowing, feeling, and willing,” which has now become popular and which appears to us self-evident, is to be referred to Tetens, from whom Kant took it; in opposition to the twofold division of Aristotle and Wolff into “cognition and appetition,” he established the equal rights of the faculty of feeling–which had previously been defended by Sulzer (1751), the aesthetic writer, and by Mendelssohn (1755, 1763, 1785). Besides Tetens, the following should be mentioned among the psychologists: Tetens’s opponent, Johann Lossius (1775), an adherent of Bonnet; D. Tiedemann (_Inquiries concerning Man_, from 1777), who was estimable also as a historian of philosophy (_Spirit of Speculative Philosophy_, 1791-97); Von Irwing (1772 _seq_.; 2d ed., 1777); and K. Ph. Moriz (_Magazin zur Erfahrungsseelenlehre_, from 1785). Basedow (died 1790), Campe (died 1818), and J.H. Pestalozzi (1745-1827) did valuable work in pedagogics.
[Footnote 1: Sensation gives the content, and the understanding spontaneously produces the form, of knowledge. The only objectivity of knowledge which we can attain consists in the subjective necessity of the forms of thought or the ideas of relation. Perception enables us to cognize phenomena only, not the true essence of things and of ourselves, etc.]
One of the clearest and most acute minds among the philosophers of the Illumination was the deist Hermann Samuel Reimarus[1] (1694-1768), from 1728 professor in Hamburg. He attacks atheism, in whatever form it may present itself, with as much zeal and conviction as he shows in breaking down the belief in revelation by his inexorable criticism (in his _Defense_, communicated in manuscript to a few friends only). He obtains his weapons for this double battle from the Wolffian philosophy. The existence of an extramundane deity is proved by the purposive arrangement of the world, especially of organisms, which aims at the good–not merely of man, as the majority of the physico-theologists have believed, but–of all living creatures. To believe in a special revelation, _i.e._, a miracle, in addition to such a revelation of God as this, which is granted to all men, and is alone necessary to salvation, is to deny the perfection of God, and to do violence to the immutability of his providence. To these general considerations against the credibility of positive revelation are to be added, as special arguments against the Jewish and Christian revelations, the untrustworthiness of human testimony in general, the contradictions in the biblical writings, the uncertainty of their meaning, and the moral character of the persons regarded as messengers of God, whose teachings, precepts, and deeds in no wise correspond to their high mission. Jewish history is a “tissue of sheer follies, shameful deeds, deceptions, and cruelties, the chief motives of which were self-interest and lust for power.” The New Testament is also the work of man; all talk of divine inspiration, an idle delusion, the resurrection of Christ, a fabrication of the disciples; and the Protestant system, with its dogmas of the Trinity, the fall of man, original sin, the incarnation, vicarious atonement, and eternal punishment, contrary to reason. The advance of Reimarus beyond Wolff consists in the consistent application of the criteria for the divine character of revelation, which Wolff had set up without making a positive, not to speak of a negative, use of them. His weakness[2] consists in the fact that, on the one hand, he contented himself with a rationalistic interpretation of the biblical narratives, instead of pushing on–as Semler did after him at Halle (1725-91)–to a historical criticism of the sources, and, on the other, held fast to the alternative common to all the deists, “Either divine or human, either an actual event or a fabrication,” without any suspicion of that great intermediate region of religious myth, of the involuntary and pregnant inventions of the popular fancy.
[Footnote 1: H.S. Reimarus: _Discussions on the Chief Truths of Natural Religion_, 1754; _General Consideration of the Instincts of Animals_, 1762; _Apology or Defense for the Rational Worshipers of God_. Fragments of the last of these works, which was kept secret during its author’s life, were published by Lessing (the well-known “Wolffenbüttel Fragments,” from 1774). A detailed table of contents is to be found in _Reimarus und seine Schutzschrift_, 1862, by D. Fr. Strauss, included in the fifth volume of his _Gesammelte Schriften_.]
[Footnote 2: Cf. O. Pfleiderer, _Philosophy of Religion_, vol. i. p. 102, p. 106 _seq_.]
The philosophico-religious standpoint of G.E. Lessing (1729-81), in whom the Illumination reached its best fruitage, was less one-sided. Apart from the important aesthetic impulses which flowed from the _Laocoon_ (1766) and the _Hamburg Dramaturgy_ (1767-69), his philosophical significance rests on two ideas, which have had important consequences for the religious conceptions of the nineteenth century: the speculative interpretation of certain dogmas (the Trinity, etc.), and the application of the Leibnitzian idea of development to the history of the positive religions. By both of these he prepared the way for Hegel. In regard to his relation to his predecessors, Lessing sought to mediate between the pantheism of Spinoza and the individualism of Leibnitz; and in his comprehension of the latter showed himself far superior to the Wolffians. He can be called a Spinozist only by those who, like Jacobi, have this title ready for everyone who expresses himself against a transcendent, personal God, and the unconditional freedom of the will. Moreover, in view of his critical and dialectical, rather than systematic, method of thinking, we must guard against laying too great stress on isolated statements by him.[1]
[Footnote 1: A caution which Gideon Spicker (_Lessings Weltanschauung_, 1883) counsels us not to forget, even in view of the oft cited avowal of determinism, “I thank God that I must, and that I must the best.” Among the numerous treatises on Lessing we may note those by G.E. Schwarz (1854), and Zeller (in Sybel’s _Historische Zeitschrift_, 1870, incorporated in the second collection of Zeller’s _Vorträge und Abhandlungen_, 1877); and on his theological position, that of K. Fischer on Lessing’s _Nathan der Weise_, 1864, as well as J.H. Witte’s _Philosophie unserer Dichterheroen_, vol. i. _(Lessing and Herder_), 1880. [Cf. in English, Sime, 2 vols., 1877, and _Encyclopedia Britannica_, vol. xiv. pp, 478-482.–TR.]]
Lessing conceives the Deity as the supreme, all-comprehensive, living unity, which excludes neither a certain kind of plurality nor even a certain kind of change; without life and action, without the experience of changing states, the life of God would be miserably wearisome. Things are not out of, but in him; nevertheless (as “contingent”) they are distinct from him. The Trinity must be understood in the sense of immanent distinctions. God has conceived himself, or his perfections, in a twofold manner: he conceived them as united and himself as their sum, and he conceived them as single. Now God’s thinking is creation, his ideas actualities. By conceiving his perfections united he created his eternal image, the Son of God; the bond between God representing and God represented, between Father and Son, is the Holy Spirit. But when he conceived his perfections singly he created the world, in which these manifest themselves divided among a continuous series of particular beings. Every individual is an isolated divine perfection; the things in the world are limited gods, all living, all with souls, and of a spiritual nature, though in different degrees. Development is everywhere; at present the soul has five senses, but very probably it once had less than five, and in the future it will have more. At first the actions of men were guided by obscure instinct; gradually the reason obtained influence over the will, and one day will govern it completely through its clear and distinct cognitions. Thus freedom is attained in the course of history–the rational and virtuous man consciously obeys the divine order of the world, while he who is unfree obeys unconsciously.
Lessing shares with the deistic Illumination the belief in a religion of reason, whose basis and essential content are formed by morality; but he rises far above this level in that he regards the religion of reason not as the beginning but as the goal of the development, and the positive religions as necessary transition stages in its attainment. As natural religion differs in each individual according to his feelings and powers, without positive enactments there would be no unity and community in religious matters. Nevertheless the statutory and historical element is not a graft from without, but a shell organically grown around natural religion, indispensable for its development, and to be removed but gradually and by layers–when the inclosed kernel has become ripe and firm. The history of religions is an _education of the human race through divine revelation_; so teaches his small but thoughtful treatise of 1780.[1] As the education of the individual man puts nothing extraneous into him, but only gives him more quickly and easily that which he could have reached of himself, so human reason is illuminated by revelation concerning things to which it could have itself attained, only that without God’s help the process would have been longer and more difficult–perhaps it would have wandered about for many millions of years in the errors of polytheism, if God had not been pleased by a single stroke (his revelation to Moses) to give it a better direction. And as the teacher does not impart everything to the pupil at once, but considers the state of development reached by him at each given period, so God in his revelation observes a certain order and measure. To the rude Jewish people he revealed himself first as a national God, as the God of their fathers; they had to wait for the Persians to teach them that the God whom they had hitherto worshiped as the most powerful among other gods was the only one. Although this lowest stage in the development of religion lacked the belief in immortality, yet it must not be lightly valued; let us acknowledge that it was an heroic obedience for men to observe the laws of God simply because they are the laws of God, and not because of temporal or future rewards! The first practical teacher of immortality was Christ; with him the second age of religion begins: the first good book of elementary instruction, the Old Testament, from which man had hitherto learned, was followed by the second, better one, the New Testament. As we now can dispense with the first primer in regard to the doctrine of the unity of God, and as we gradually begin to be able to dispense with the second in regard to the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, so this New Testament may easily contain still further truths, which for the present we wonder at as revelations, until the reason shall learn to derive them from other truths already established. Lessing himself makes an attempt at a philosophical interpretation of the dogmas of the Trinity (see above), of original sin, and of atonement. Such an advance from faith to knowledge, such a development of revealed truths into proved truths of reason, is absolutely necessary. We cannot dispense with the truths of revelation, but we must not remain content with simply believing them, but must endeavor to comprehend them; for they have been revealed in order that they may become rational. They are, as it were, the sum which the teacher of arithmetic tells his pupils beforehand so that they may guide themselves by it; but if they content themselves with this solution–which was given merely as a guide–they would never learn to calculate. Hand in hand with the advance of the understanding goes the progress of the will. Future recompenses, which the New Testament promises as rewards of virtue, are means of education, and will gradually fall into disuse: in the highest stage, the stage of purity of heart, virtue will be loved and practiced for its own sake, and no longer for the sake of heavenly rewards. Slowly but surely, along devious paths which are yet salutary, we are being led toward that great goal. It will surely come, the time of consummation, when man will do the good because it is good, this time of the new, eternal Gospel, this third age, this “Christianity of reason.” Continue, Eternal Providence, thine imperceptible march; let me not despair of thee because it is imperceptible, not even when to me thy steps seem to lead backward. It is not true that the straight line is always the shortest.
[Footnote 1: _Die Erziehung des Menschengeschlects_.]
With the thought that every individual must traverse the same course as that by which the race attains its perfection, Lessing connects the idea of the transmigration of souls. Why may not the individual man have been present in this world more than once? Is this hypothesis so ridiculous because it is the oldest?
If Lessing abandoned the ranks of the deists by his recognition of the fact that the positive religions contain truth in a gradual process of purification, by his free criticism, on the other hand, he broke with the orthodox, whose idolatrous reverence for the Bible was to him an abomination. The letter is not the spirit, the Bible is not religion, nor yet its foundation, but only its records. Contingent historical truths can never serve as a proof of the necessary truths of reason. Christianity is older than the New Testament.
Already, in the case of Lessing, we may doubt, in view of his historical temper and of certain speculative tendencies, whether he is to be included among the Illuminati. In the case of Kant a decided protest must be raised against such a classification. When Hegel numbers him among the philosophers of the Illumination, on account of his lack of rational intuition, and some theologians on account of his religious rationalism, the answer to the former is that Kant did not lack the speculative gift, but only that it was surpassed by his gift of reflection, and, to the latter, that in regard to the positive element in religion he judged very differently from the deists and appreciated the historical element more justly than they–if not to the same extent as Lessing and Herder. We do not need to lay great stress on the fact that Kant had a lively consciousness that he was making a contribution to thought, and that the Illumination contemplated this new doctrine without comprehending it, in order to recognize that the difference between his efforts and achievements and those of the Illumination is far greater than their kinship. For although Kant is upon common ground with it, in so far as he adheres to its motto, “Have courage to use thine own understanding, become a man, cease to trust thyself to the guidance of others, and free thyself in all fields from the yoke of authority,” and, although besides such formal injunctions to freedom of thought, he also shares in certain material tendencies and convictions (the turning from the world to man, the attempt at a synthesis of reason and experience, and the belief in a religion of reason); yet in method and results, he stands like a giant among a race of dwarfs, like one instructed, who judges from principles, among men of opinion, who merely stick results together, a methodical systematizer among well-meaning but impotent eclectics. The philosophy of the Illumination is related to that of Kant as argument to science, as halting mediation to principiant resolution, as patchwork to creation out of full resources, yet at the same time as wish to deed and as negative preparation to positive achievement. It was undeniably of great value to the Kantian criticism that the Illumination had created a point of intersection for the various tendencies of thought, and had brought about the approximation and mutual contact of the opposing systems which then existed, while, at the same time, it had crumbled them to pieces, and thus awakened the need for a new, more firmly and more deeply founded system.
%4. The Faith Philosophy.%
The philosophers of feeling or faith stand in the same relation to the German Illumination as Rousseau to the French. Here also the rights of feeling are vindicated against those of the knowing reason. Among the distinguished representatives of this anti-rationalistic tendency Hamann led the way, Herder was the most prolific, and Jacobi the clearest. That the fountain of certitude is to be sought not in discriminating thought, but in intuition, experience, revelation, and tradition; that the highest truths can be felt only and not proved; that all existing things are incomprehensible, because individual–these are convictions which, before Jacobi defended them as based on scientific principles, had been vehemently proclaimed by that singular man, J.G. Hamann (died 1788) of Königsberg. From an unprinted review by Hamann, Herder drew the objections which his “Metacritique” raises against Kant’s Critique of Reason–that the division of matter and form, of sensibility and understanding, is inadmissible; that Kant misunderstood the significance of language, which is just where sensibility and understanding unite, etc.
In Herder[1] (1744-1803: after 1776 Superintendent-General in Weimar) the philosophy of feeling gained a finer, more perspicuous and harmonious nature, who shared Lessing’s interest in history and his tendency to hold fast equally to pantheism and to individualism. God is the all-one, infinite, spiritual (non-personal) primal force, which wholly reveals itself in each thing _(God: Dialogues on the System of Spinoza_, 1787). To the life, power, wisdom, and goodness of God correspond the life and perfection of the universe and of individual creatures, each of which possesses its own irreplaceable value and bears in itself its future in germ. Everywhere, one and the same life in an ascending series of powers and forms with imperceptible transitions. Always, an inner and an outer together; no power without organ, no spirit without a body. As thought is only a higher stage of sensation, which develops from the lower by means of language–reason, like sense, is not a productive but a receptive faculty of knowing, perceiving (“_Vernehmen_”)–so the free process of history is only the continuation and completion of the nature-process (_Ideas for the Philosophy of the History of Mankind_, 1784 _seq_.). Man, the last child of nature and her first freedman, is the nodal point where the physical series of events changes into the ethical; the last member of the organisms of earth is at the same time the first in the spiritual development. The mission of history is the unfolding of all the powers which nature has concentrated in man as the compendium of the world; its law, that everywhere on our earth everything be realized that can be realized there; its end, humanity and the harmonious development of all our capacities. As nature forms a single great organism, and from the stone to man describes a connected development, so humanity is a one great individual which passes through its several ages, from infancy (the Orient), through boyhood (Eygpt and Phoenicia), youth (Greece), and manhood (Rome), to old age (the Christian world). The spirit stands in the closest dependence upon nature, and nature is concerned in history throughout. The finer organization of his brain, the possession of hands, above all, his erect position, make man, man and endow him with reason. Similarly it is natural conditions, climate, the character of the soil, the surrounding animal and vegetable life, etc., that play an essential part in determining the manners, the characters, and the destinies of nations. The connection of nature with history by means of the concept of development and through the idea that the two merely represent different stages of the same fundamental process, made Herder the forerunner of Schelling.
[Footnote 1: On Herder cf. the biography by R. Haym, 2 vols., 1877, 1885; and the work by Witte which has been referred to above (p. 306, note).]
His polemic against Kant in the _Metacritique_, 1799 (against the _Critique of Pure Reason_), and the dialogue _Calligone_, 1800 (against the _Critique of Judgment_), is less pleasing. These are neither dignified in tone nor essentially of much importance. In the former the distinction between sensibility and reason is censured, and in the latter the separation of the beautiful from the true and the good, but Kant’s theory of aesthetics is for the most part grossly misunderstood. The “disinterested” satisfaction Herder makes a cold satisfaction; the harmonious activity of the cognitive powers, a tedious, apish sport; the satisfaction “without a concept,” judgment without ground or cause. The positive elements in his own views are more valuable. Pleasure in mere form, without a concept, and without the idea of an end, is impossible. All beauty must mean or express something, must be a symbol of inner life; its ground is perfection or adaptation. Beauty is that symmetrical union of the parts of a being, in virtue of which it feels well itself and gives pleasure to the observer, who sympathetically shares in this well-being. The charm and value of the _Calligone_ lie more in the warmth and clearness with which the expressive beauty of single natural phenomena is described than in the abstract discussion.
Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (1743-1819) gave the most detailed statement of the position of the philosophy of feeling, and the most careful proof of it. He was born in Düsseldorf, the son of a manufacturer; until 1794 he lived in his native place and at his country residence in Pempelfort; later he resided in Holstein, and, from 1805, in Munich, where, in 1807-13, he was president of the Academy of Sciences. Of his works, collected in five volumes, 1812-25, we are here chiefly concerned with the letters _On the Doctrine of Spinoza_, 1785; _David Hume on Faith, or Idealism and Realism_, 1787; and the treatise _On Divine Things_, 1811, which called out Schelling’s merciless response, _Memorial of Jacobi_. Besides Hume and Spinoza, the sensationalism of Bonnet and the criticism of Kant had made the most lasting impression on Jacobi. His relation to Kant is neither that of an opponent nor of a supporter and popularizer. He declares himself in accord with Kant’s critique of the understanding (the understanding is merely a formal function, one which forms and combines concepts only, but does not guarantee reality, one to which the material of thought must be given from elsewhere and for which the suprasensible remains unattainable); in regard to the critique of reason he raises the objection that it; makes the Ideas mere postulates, which possess no guarantee for their reality. The critique of sensibility appears to him still more unsatisfactory, as it does not explain the origin of sensations. Without the concept of the “thing-in-itself” one cannot enter the Kantian philosophy, and with it one cannot remain there. Fichte has drawn the correct conclusion from the Kantian premises; idealism is the unavoidable result of the Critique of Reason and foretold by; it as the Messiah was foretold by John the Baptist. And by the evil fruit we know the evil root: the idealistic theory is philosophical nihilism, for it denies the reality of the external world, as the materialism of Spinoza denies a transcendent God and the freedom of the will. Reality slips away from both these systems–they are the only consistent ones there are–material reality escaping from the former and suprasensible reality from the latter; and this must be so, because reality, of whatever kind it be, cannot be known, but only believed and felt. The actual, the existence of the noumenal as well as of the external world, even the existence of our own body, makes itself known to us through revelation alone; the understanding comprehends relations only; the certainty that a thing exists is attained only through experience and faith. Sense and reason are the organs of faith, and hence the true sources of knowledge; the former apprehends the natural, the latter, the supernatural, while for the understanding is left only the analysis and combination of given intuitions.
Philosophy as a science from concepts must necessarily prove atheistic and fatalistic. Conception and proof mean deduction from conditions. How shall that which has no cause from which to explain it, the unconditioned, God, and freedom, be comprehended and proved? Demonstration rises along the chain of causes to the universe alone, not to a transcendent Creator; mediate knowledge is confined to the sphere of conditioned being and mechanical becoming. The intuitive knowledge of feeling alone leads us beyond this, and along with the wonderful, the inconceivable power of freedom in ourselves, which is above all nature, shows us the primal source of all wonders, the transcendent God above us. The inference from our own spiritual, self-conscious, free personality to that of God is no unauthorized anthropomorphism–in the knowledge of God we may fearlessly deify our human existence, because God, when he created man, gave his divine nature human form. Reason and freedom are the same: the former is theoretical, the latter practical elevation to the suprasensible. Nevertheless virtue is not based upon an inflexible, despotic, abstractly, formal law, but upon an instinct, which, however, does not aim at happiness. Thus Jacobi attempts to mediate between the ethics of the Illumination and the ethics of Kant, by agreeing with the former in regard to the origin of virtue (it arises from a natural impulse), and with the latter in regard to its nature (it consists in disinterestedness). Hence with the Illumination he rejects the imperative form, and with Kant the eudemonistic end. At the same time he endeavors to introduce Herder’s idea of individuality into ethics, by demanding that morality assume a special form in each man. Schiller and the romantic school take from Jacobi their ideal of the “beautiful soul,” which from natural impulse realizes in its action, and still more in its being, the good in an individual way.
%PART II. FROM KANT TO THE PRESENT TIME.%
CHAPTER IX.
KANT.
The suit between empiricism and rationalism had continued for centuries, but still awaited final decision. Are all our ideas the result of experience, or are they (wholly or in part) an original possession of the mind? Are they received from without (by perception), or produced from within (by self-activity)? Is knowledge a product of sensation or of pure thought? All who had thus far taken part in this discussion had resembled partisans or advocates rather than disinterested judges. They had given less attention to investigation than to the defense of the traditional theses of their schools; they had not endeavored to obtain results, but to establish results already determined; and, along with real arguments, popular appeals had not been despised. Each of the opposing schools had given variations on a definite theme, and whenever timid attempts had been made to bring the two melodies into harmony they had met with no approval. The proceedings thus far had at least made it evident to the unbiased hearer that each of the two parties made extravagant claims, and, in the end, fell into self-contradiction. If the claim of empiricism is true, that all our concepts arise from perception, then not only the science of the suprasensible, which it denies, but also the science of the objects of experience, about which it concerns itself, is impossible. For perception informs us concerning single cases merely, it can never comprehend all cases, it yields no necessary and universal truth; but knowledge which is not apodictically valid for every reasoning being and for all cases is not worthy the name. The very reasons which were intended to prove the possibility of knowledge give a direct inference to its impossibility. The empirical philosophy destroys itself, ending with Hume in skepticism and probabilism. Rationalism is overtaken by a different, and yet an analogous fate–it breaks up into a popular eclecticism. It believes that it has discovered an infallible criterion of truth in the clearness and distinctness of ideas, and a sure example for philosophical method in the method of mathematics. In both points it is wrong. The criterion of truth is insufficient, for Spinoza and Leibnitz built up their opposing theories–the pantheism of the one and the monadology of the other–from equally clear and distinct conceptions; tried by this standard individualism is just as true as pantheism. Mathematics, again, does not owe its unquestioned acceptance and cogent force to the clearness and distinctness of its conceptions, but to the fact that these are capable of construction in intuition. The distinction between mathematics and metaphysics was overlooked, namely, that mathematical thought can transform its conceptions into intuitions, can generate its objects or sensuously present them, which philosophical thought is not in a position to do. The objects of the latter must be given to it, and to the human mind they are given in no other way than through sensuous intuition. Metaphysics seeks to be a science of the real, but it is impossible to conjure being out of thought; reality cannot be proved from concepts, it can only be felt. In making the unperceivable and suprasensible (the real nature of things, the totality of the world, the Deity, and immortality) the special object of philosophy, rationalism looked on the understanding as a faculty of knowledge by which objects are given. In reality objects can never be given through concepts; these only render it possible to think objects given in some other way (by intuition). It is true that concepts of the suprasensible exist, but nothing can be known through them, there is nothing intuitively given to be subsumed under them.
With this failure to perceive the intuitive element in mathematics was joined the mistake of overlooking its synthetic character. The syllogistic method of presentation employed in the Euclidean geometry led to the belief that the more special theorems had been derived from the simpler ones, and these from the axioms, by a process of conceptual analysis; while the fact is that in mathematics all progress is by intuition alone, the syllogism serving merely to formulate and explain truths already attained, but not to supply new ones. Following the example of mathematics thus misunderstood, the mission of philosophy was made to consist in the development of the truths slumbering in pregnant first principles by means of logical analysis. If only there were metaphysical axioms! If we only did not demand, and were not compelled to demand, of true science that it increase our knowledge, and not merely give an analytical explanation of knowledge. When once the clearness and distinctness of conceptions had been taken in so purely formal a sense, it was inevitable that in the end, as productivity became less, the principle should be weakened down to a mere demand for the explanation and elucidation of the metaphysical ideas present in popular consciousness. Thus the rationalistic current lost itself in the shallow waters of the Illumination, which soon gave as ready a welcome to the empirical theories–since these also were able to legitimate themselves by clear and distinct conceptions–as it had given to the results of the rationalistic systems.
It was thus easy to see that each of the contending parties had been guilty of one-sidedness, and that in order to escape this a certain mean must be assumed between the two extremes; but it was a much more difficult matter to discover the due middle ground. Neither of the opposing standpoints is so correct as its defenders believe, and neither so false as its opponents maintain. Where, then, on either side, does the mistaken narrowness begin, and how far does the justification of each extend?
The conflict centers, first, about the question concerning the origin of human knowledge and the sphere of its validity. Rationalism is justified when it asserts that some ideas do not come from the senses. If knowledge is to be possible, some concepts cannot originate in perception, those, namely, by which knowledge is constituted, for if they should, it would lack universality and necessity. The sole organ of universally valid knowledge is reason. Empiricism, on the other hand, is justified when it asserts that the experiential alone is knowable. Whatever is to be knowable must be given as a real in sensuous intuition. The only organ of reality is sensibility. Rationalism judges correctly concerning the origin of the most important classes of ideas; empiricism concerning the sphere of their validity. The two may be thus combined: some concepts (those which produce knowledge) take their origin in reason or are _a priori_, but they are valid for objects of experience alone. The conflict concerns, secondly, the use of the deductive (syllogistic) or the inductive method. Empiricism, through its founder Bacon, had recommended induction in place of the barren syllogistic method, as the only method which would lead to new discoveries. It demands, above all things, the extension of knowledge. Rationalism, on the contrary, held fast to the deductive method, because the syllogism alone, in its view, furnishes knowledge valid for all rational beings. It demands, first of all, universality and necessity in knowledge. Induction has the advantage of increasing knowledge, but it leads only to empirical and comparative, not to strict universality. The syllogism has the advantage of yielding universal and necessary truth, but it can only explicate and establish knowledge, not increase it. May it not be possible so to do justice to the demands of both that the advantages which they seek shall be combined, and the disadvantages which have been feared, avoided? Are there not cognitions which increase our knowledge (are _synthetic_) without being empirical, which are universally and necessarily valid (_a priori_) without being analytic? From these considerations arises the main question of the _Critique of Pure Reason_: How are synthetic judgments _a priori_ possible?
The philosophy of experience had overestimated sense and underestimated the understanding, when it found the source of all knowledge in the faculty of perception and degraded the faculty of thought to an almost wholly inactive recipient of messages coming to it from without. From the standpoint of empiricism concepts (Ideas) deserve confidence only in so far as they can legitimate themselves by their origin in sensations (impressions). It overlooks the _active_ character of all knowing. Among the rationalists, on the other hand, we find an underestimation of the senses and an overestimation of the understanding. They believe that sense reveals only the deceptive exterior of things, while reason gives their true non-sensuous essence. That which the mind perceives of things is deceptive, but that which it thinks concerning them is true. The former power is the faculty of confused, the latter the faculty of distinct knowledge. Sense is the enemy rather than the servant of true knowledge, which consists in the development and explication of pregnant innate conceptions and principles. These philosophers forget that we can never reach reality by conceptual analysis; and that the senses have a far greater importance for knowledge than merely to give it an impulse; that it is they which supply the understanding with real objects, and so with the content of knowledge. Beside the (formal) activity (of the understanding), cognition implies a passive factor, a reception of impressions. Neither sense alone nor the understanding alone produces knowledge, but both cognitive powers are necessary, the active and the passive, the conceptual and the intuitive. Here the question arises, How do concept and intuition, sensuous and rational knowledge, differ, and what is the basis of their congruence? Notwithstanding their different points of departure and their variant results, the two main tendencies of modern philosophy agree in certain points. If the conflict between the two schools and their one-sidedness suggested the idea of supplementing the conclusions of the one by those of the other, the recognition of the incorrectness of their common convictions furnished the occasion to go beyond them and to establish a new, a higher point of view above them both, as also above the eclecticism which sought to unite the opposing principles. The errors common to both concern, in the first place, the nature of judgment and the difference between sensibility and understanding. Neither side had recognized that the peculiar character of judgment consists in _active connection_. The rationalists made judgment an active function, it is true, but a mere activity of conscious development, of elucidation and analytical inference, which does not advance knowledge a single step. The empiricists described it as a process of comparison and discrimination, as the mere perception and recognition of the relations and connections already existing between ideas; while in reality judgment does not discover the relations and connections of representations, but itself establishes them. In the former case the synthetic moment is ignored, in the latter the active moment. The imperfect view of judgment was one of the reasons for the appearance of extreme theories concerning the origin of ideas in reason or in perception. Rationalism regards even those concepts which have a content as innate, whereas it is only formal concepts which are so. Empiricism regards all, even the highest formal concepts (the categories), as abstracted from experience, whereas experience furnishes only the content of knowledge, and not the synthesis which is necessary to it. On the one hand too much, and on the other too little, is regarded as the original possession of the understanding. The question “What concepts are innate?” can be decided only by answering the further question, What are the concepts through which the faculty of judgment connects the representations obtained from experience? These connective concepts, these formal instruments of synthesis are _a priori_. The agreement of the two schools is still greater in regard to the relation of sense and understanding, notwithstanding the apparently sharp contrast between them. The empiricist considers thought transformed, sublimated perception, while the rationalist sees in perception only confused and less distinct thought. For the former concepts are faded images of sensations, for the latter sensations are concepts which have not yet become clear; the difference is scarcely greater than if the one should call ice frozen water, and the other should prefer to call water melted ice. Both arrange intuition and thought in a single series, and derive the one from the other by enhancement or attenuation. Both make the mistake of recognizing only a difference in degree where a difference in kind exists. In such a case only an energetic dualism can afford help. Sense and understanding are not one and the same cognitive power at different stages, but two heterogeneous faculties. Sensation and thought are not different in degree, but in kind. As Descartes began with the metaphysical dualism of extension and thought, so Kant begins with the noëtical dualism of intuition and thought.
Much more serious, however, than any of the mistakes yet mentioned was a sin of omission of which the two schools were alike guilty, and the recognition and avoidance of which constituted in Kant’s own eyes the distinctive character of his philosophy and its principiant-advance beyond preceding systems. The pre-Kantian thinker had proceeded to the discussion of knowledge without raising _the question of the possibility of knowledge_. He had approached things in the full confidence that the human mind was capable of cognizing them, and with a naïve trust in the power of reason to possess itself of the truth. His trust was naïve and ingenuous, because the idea that it could deceive him had never entered his mind. Now no matter whether this belief in man’s capacity for knowledge and in the possibility of knowing things is justifiable or not, and no matter how far it may be justifiable, it was in any case untested; so that when the skeptic approached with his objections the dogmatist was defenseless. All previous philosophy, so far as it had not been skeptical, had been, according to Kant’s expression, dogmatic; that is, it had held as an article of faith, and without precedent inquiry, that we possess the power of cognizing objects. It had not asked _how_ this is possible; it had not even asked what knowledge is, what may and must be demanded of it, and by what means our reason is in a position to satisfy such demands. It had left human intelligence and its extent uninvestigated. The skeptic, on the other hand, had been no more thorough. He had doubted and denied man’s capacity for knowledge just as uncritically as the dogmatist had believed and presupposed it. He had directed his ingenuity against the theories of dogmatic philosophy, instead of toward the fundamental question of the possibility of knowledge. Human intelligence, which the dogmatist had approached with unreasoned trust and the skeptic with just as unreasoned distrust, is subjected, according to the plan of the critical philosopher, to a searching examination. For this reason Kant termed his standpoint “criticism,” and his undertaking a “Critique of Reason.” Instead of asserting and denying, he investigates how knowledge arises, of what factors it is composed, and how far it extends. He inquires into the origin and extent of knowledge, into its sources and its limits, into the grounds of its existence and of its legitimacy. The Critique of Reason finds itself confronted by two problems, the second of which cannot be solved until after the solution of the first. The investigation of the sources of knowledge must precede the inquiry into the extent of knowledge. Only after the conditions of knowledge have been established can it be ascertained what objects are attainable by it. Its sphere cannot be determined except from its origin.
Whether the critical philosopher stands nearer to the skeptic or to the dogmatist is rather an idle question. He is specifically distinct from both, in that he summons and guides the reason to self-contemplation, to a methodical examination of its capacity for knowledge. Where the one had blindly trusted and the other suspected and denied, he investigates; they overlook, he raises the question of the possibility of knowledge. The critical problem does not mean, Does a faculty of knowledge exist? but, Of what powers is it composed? are all objects knowable which have been so regarded? Kant does not ask whether, but how and by what means, knowledge is possible. Everyone who gives himself to scientific reflection must postulate that knowledge is possible, and the demand of the noëtical theorists of the day for a philosophy absolutely without assumptions is quite incapable of fulfillment. Nay, in order to be able to begin his inquiry at all, it was necessary for Kant to assume still more special postulates; for that a cognition of cognition is possible, that there is a critical, self-investigating reason could, at first, be only a matter of belief. This would not have excluded a supplementary detailed statement concerning the _how_ of this self-knowledge, concerning the organ of the critical philosophy. But Kant never gave one, and the omission subsequently led to a sharp debate concerning the character and method of the Critique of Reason. On this point, if we may so express it, Kant remained a dogmatist.
Kant felt himself to be the finisher of skepticism; but this was chiefly because he had received the strongest impulse to the development of his critique of knowledge from Hume’s inquiries concerning causation. Brought up in the dogmatic rationalism of the Wolffian school, to which he remained true for a considerable period as a teacher and writer (till about 1760), although at the same time he was inquiring with an independent spirit, Kant was gradually won over through the influence of the English philosophy to the side of empirical skepticism. Then–as the result, no doubt, of reading the _Nouveaux Essais_ of Leibnitz, published in 1765–he returned to rationalistic principles, until finally, after a renewal of empirical influences,[1] he took the position crystallized in the _Critique of Pure Reason_, 1781, which, however, experienced still other, though less considerable, changes in the sequel, just as in itself it shows the traces of previous transformations.
[Footnote 1: Cf. H. Vaihinger’s _Kommentar zu Kants Kritik der reinen Vernunft_, vol. i., 1881, pp. 48-49. This is a work marked by acuteness, great industry, and an objective point of view which merits respect. The second volume, which treats of the Transcendental Aesthetic, appeared in 1892.]
It would be a most interesting task to trace in the writings which belong to Kant’s pre-critical period the growth and development of the fundamental critical positions. Here, however, we can only mention in passing the subjects of his reflection and some of the most striking anticipations and beginnings of his epoch-making position. Even his maiden work, _Thoughts on the True Estimation of Vis Viva_, 1747, betokens the mediating nature of its author. In this it is argued that when men of profound and penetrating minds maintain exactly opposite opinions, attention must be chiefly directed to some intermediate principle to a certain degree compatible with the correctness of both parties. The question under discussion was whether the measure of _vis viva_ is equal, as the Cartesians thought, to the product of the mass into the velocity, or, according to the Leibnitzians, to the product of the mass into the square of the velocity. Kant’s unsatisfactory solution of the problem–the law of Descartes holds for dead, and that of Leibnitz for living forces–drew upon him the derision of Lessing, who said that he had endeavored to estimate living forces without having tested his own. A similar tendency toward compromise–this time it is a synthesis of Leibnitz and Newton–is seen in his _Habilitationsschrift, Principiorum Primorum Cognitionis Metaphysicae Nova Dilucidatio_, 1755, and in the dissertation _Monadologia Physica_, 1756. The former distinguishes between _ratio essendi_ and _ratio cognoscendi_, rejects the ontological argument, and defends determinism against Crusius on Leibnitzian grounds. In the _Physical Monadology_ Kant gives his adherence to dynamism (matter the product of attraction and repulsion), and makes the monads or elements of body fill space without prejudice to their simplicity. A series of treatises is devoted to subjects in natural science: The Effect of the Tides in retarding the Earth’s Rotation; The Obsolescence of the Earth; Fire (Inaugural Dissertation), Earthquakes, and the Theory of the Winds. The most important of these, the _General Natural History and Theory of the Heavens_, 1755, which for a long time remained unnoticed, and which was dedicated to Frederick II., developed the hypothesis (carried out forty years later by Laplace in ignorance of Kant’s work) of the mechanical origin of the universe and of the motion of the planets. It presupposes merely the two forces of matter, attraction and repulsion, and its primitive chaotic condition, a world-mist with elements of different density. It is noticeable that Kant acknowledges the failure of the mechanical theory at two points: it is brought to a halt at the origin of the organic world and at the origin of matter. The mechanical cosmogony is far from denying creation; on the contrary, the proof that this well-ordered and purposive world necessarily arose from the regular action of material forces under law and without divine intervention, can only serve to support our assumption of a Supreme Intelligence as the author of matter and its laws; the belief is necessary, just because nature, even in its chaotic condition, can act only in an orderly and regular way.
The empirical phase of Kant’s development is represented by the writings of the 60’s. _The False Subtlety of the Four Syllogistic Figures_, 1762, asserts that the first figure is the only natural one, and that the others are superfluous and need reduction to the first. In the _Only Possible Foundation for a Demonstration of the Existence of God_, 1763, which, in the seventh Reflection of the Second Division, recapitulates the cosmogony advanced in the _Natural History of the Heavens_, the discussions concerning being (“existence” is absolute position, not a predicate which increases the sum of the qualities but is posited in a merely relative way), and the conclusion, prophetical of his later point of view, “It is altogether necessary that we should be _convinced_ of the existence of God, but not so necessary that his existence should be _demonstrated_” are more noteworthy than the argument itself. This runs: All possibility presupposes something actual wherein and whereby all that is conceivable is given as a determination or a consequence. That actuality the destruction of which would destroy all possibility is absolutely necessary. Therefore there exists an absolutely necessary Being as the ultimate real ground of all possibility; this Being is one, simple, unchangeable, eternal, the _ens realissimum_ and a spirit. The _Attempt to introduce the Notion of Negative Quantities into Philosophy_, 1763, distinguishes–contrary to Crusius–between logical opposition, contradiction or mere negation (_a_ and _not-a_, pleasure and the absence of pleasure, power and lack of power), and real opposition, which cannot be explained by logic (+_a_ and -_a_, pleasure and pain, capital and debts, attraction and repulsion; in real opposition both determinations are positive, but in opposite directions). Parallel with this it distinguishes, also, between logical ground and real ground. The prize essay, _Inquiry concerning the Clearness_ (Evidence) _of the Principles of Natural Theology and Ethics_, 1764, draws a sharp distinction between mathematical and metaphysical knowledge, and warns philosophy against the hurtful imitation of the geometrical method, in place of which it should rather take as an example the method which Newton introduced into natural science. Quantity constitutes the object of mathematics, qualities, the object of philosophy; the former is easy and simple, the latter difficult and complicated–how much more comprehensible the conception of a trillion is than the philosophical idea of freedom, which the philosophers thus far have been unable to make intelligible. In mathematics the general is considered under symbols _in concrete_, in philosophy, by means of symbols _in abstracto_; the former constructs its object in sensuous intuition, while the object of the latter is given to it, and that as a confused concept to be decomposed. Mathematics, therefore, may well begin with definitions, since the conception which is to be explained is first brought into being through the definition, while philosophy must begin by seeking her conceptions. In the former the definition is first in order, and in the latter almost always last; in the one case the method is synthetic, in the other it is analytic. It is the function of mathematics to connect and compare clear and certain concepts of quantity in order to draw conclusions from them; the function of philosophy is to analyze concepts given in a confused state, and to make them detailed and definite. Philosophy has also this disadvantage, that it possesses very many undecomposable concepts and undemonstrable propositions, while mathematics has only a few such. “Philosophical truths are like meteors, whose brightness gives no assurance of their permanence. They vanish, but mathematics remains. Metaphysics is without doubt the most difficult of all human sciences _(Einsichten)_, but a metaphysic has never yet been written”; for one cannot be so kind as to “apply the term philosophy to all that is contained in the books which bear this title.” In the closing paragraphs, on the ultimate bases of ethics, the stern features of the categorical imperative are already seen, veiled by the English theory of moral sense, while the attractive _Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime_, which appeared in the same year, still naïvely follow the empirical road.
The empirical phase reaches its skeptical termination in the satire _Dreams of a Ghost-seer explained by the Dreams of Metaphysics_, 1766, which pours out its ingenious sarcasm impartially on spiritualism and on the assumed knowledge of the suprasensible. Here Kant is already clearly conscious of his new problem, a theory of the limits of human reason, conscious also that the attack on this problem is to be begun by a discussion of the question of space. This second question had been for many years a frequent subject of his reflections;[1] and it was this part of the general critical problem that first received definitive solution. In the Latin dissertation _On the Form and Principles of the Sensible and Intelligible World_, 1770, which concludes the pre-critical period, and which was written on the occasion of his assumption of his chair as ordinary professor, the critique of sensibility, the new theory of space and time, is set forth in approximately the same form as in the _Critique of Pure Reason_, while the critique of the understanding and of reason, the theory of the categories and the Ideas and of the sphere of their validity, required for its completion the intellectual labor of several more years. For this essay, _De Mundi Sensibilis atque Intelligibilis Forma et Principiis_, leaves unchallenged the possibility of a knowledge of things in themselves and of God, thus showing that its author has abandoned the skepticism maintained in the _Dreams of a Ghost-seer_, and has turned anew to dogmatic rationalism, whose final overthrow required another swing in the direction of skeptical empiricism. In regard to the progress of this latter phase of opinion, the letters to M. Herz are almost the only, though not very valuable, source of information.
[Footnote 1: _New Theory of Motion and Rest_, 1758; _On the First Ground of the Distinction of Positions in Space_, 1768; besides several of the works mentioned above.]
The _Critique of Pure Reason_ appeared in 1781, much later than Kant had hoped when he began a work on “The Limits of Sensibility and Reason,” and a second, altered edition in 1787.[1] After the _Prolegomena to every Future Metaphysic which may present itself as Science_, 1783, had given a popular form to the critical doctrine of knowledge, it was followed by the critical philosophy of ethics in the _Foundation of the Metaphysics of Ethics_, 1785, and the _Critique of Practical Reason_, 1788; by the critical aesthetics and teleology in the _Critique of Judgment_, 1790; and by the critical philosophy of religion in _Religion within the Limits of Reason Only_, 1793[2] (consisting of four essays, of which the first, “Of Radical Evil,” had already appeared in the _Berliner Monatsschrift_ in 1792). The _Metaphysical Elements of Natural Science_, 1786, and the _Metaphysics of Ethics_, 1797 (in two parts, “Metaphysical Elements of the Theory of Right,” and “Metaphysical Elements of the Theory of Virtue “), are devoted to the development of the system. The year 1798 brought two more larger works, the _Conflict of the Faculties_ and the _Anthropology_. Of the reviews, that on Herder’s _Ideen_ maybe mentioned, and among the minor essays, the following: _Idea for a Universal History in a Cosmopolitan Sense, Answer to the Question: What is Illumination f_ both in 1784; _What does it mean to Orient oneself in Thought_? 1786; _On the Use of Teleological Principles in Philosophy_, 1788; _On a Discovery according to which all Recent Criticism of Pure Reason is to be superseded by a Previous One_, 1790; _On the Progress of Metaphysics since the Time of Wolff; On Philosophy in General, The End of all Things_, 1794; _On Everlasting Peace_, 1795. Kant’s _Logic_ was published by Jäsche in 1800; his _Physical Geography_ and his _Observations on Pedagogics_ by F.T. Rink in 1803; his lectures on the _Philosophical Theory of Religion_ (1817; 2d. ed., 1830) and on _Metaphysics_ (1821; cf. Benno Erdmann in the _Philosophische Monatshefte_, vol. xix. 1883, p. 129 _seq_., and vol. xx. 1884, p. 65 _seq_.) by Pölitz. If we may judge by the specimens given by Reicke in the _Altpreussische Monatsschrift_, 1882-84, and by Krause himself,[3] the promised publication of a manuscript of Kant’s last years, now in possession of the Hamburg pastor, Albrecht Krause, and which discusses the transition from the metaphysical elements of natural science to physics, will hardly meet the expectations which some have cherished concerning it. Benno Erdmann has issued _Nachträge zu Kants Kritik der reinen Vernunft aus Kants Nachlass_, 1881, and _Reflexionen Kants zur kritischen Philosophie aus handschriftlichen Aufzeichnungen_–the first volume first _Heft (Reflexionen zur Anthropologie_) appearing in 1882, the second volume _(Reflexionen zur Kritik der reinen Vernunft, aus Kants Handexemplar von Baumgartens Metaphysica)_ in 1884. Max Müller has made an English translation of the _Critique of Pure Reason_, 2 vols., 1881.[4]
[Footnote 1: There has been much discussion and much has been written concerning the relation of the two editions. In opposition to Schopenhauer and Kuno Fischer it must be maintained that the alterations in the second edition consist in giving greater prominence to realistic elements, which in the first edition remained in the background, though present even there.]
[Footnote 2: This publication was the occasion of a conflict between Kant and the censorship concerning the right of free religious inquiry; cf. Dilthey in the _Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie_, vol. in. 1890, pp. 418-450.]
[Footnote 3: A. Krause: _I. Kant wider K. Fischer, zum ersten Male mit Hülfe des verloren gewesenen Kantischen Hauptwerkes vertheidigt_, 1884 (in reply, K. Fischer, _Das Streber- und Gründerthum in der Litteratur_, 1884); also, _Das nachgelassene Werk I. Kants, mit Belegen populär-wissenschaftlich dargestellt_, 1888.]
[Footnote 4: Besides this (centenary) translation the English reader may be referred to the earlier version of Meiklejohn in Bonn’s Library; to the versions of the _Prolegomena_ by Bax (also in Bonn’s Library, and including the _Metaphysical Elements of Natural Science_), and Mahaffy and Bernard, new ed., 1889; to Abbot’s _Kant’s Theory of Ethics_, 4th ed., 1889, containing the _Foundation of the Metaphysics of Ethics_ and the _Critique of Practical Reason_ entire, with portions of the _Metaphysics of Ethics_ and _Religion within the Limits of Reason Only_; to Bernard’s translation of the _Kritik of Judgment_, 1892; and to Watson’s _Selections from Kant_, 2d ed., 1888 (in Sneath’s Modern Philosophers, 1892).–TR.]
The best complete edition of the works of Kant is the second edition of Hartenstein, in eight volumes, 1867-68, which is chronologically arranged and excellently gotten up. Simultaneously with the first edition of Hartenstein in ten volumes, in 1838 _seq_., appeared the edition in twelve volumes by K. Rosenkranz and F.W. Schubert (containing in the last volumes a biography of Kant by Schubert, and a history of the Kantian philosophy by Rosenkranz, 1842). Kehrbach’s edition of the principal works in Reclam’s _Universal-Bibliothek_, with the pagination of the original and collective editions (1877 _seq_.), is more valuable than Von Kirchmann’s edition of the complete works in his _Philosophische Bibliothek_.
Among the works on Kant those of Kuno Fischer (vols. iii.-iv. of the _Geschichte der neueren Philosophie_, 3d ed., 1882; also Kant’s _Leben und die Grundlagen seiner Lehre_, 1860) take the first place. The writings of Liebmann, Cohen, Stadler, Riehl, Volkelt, and others will be mentioned later, in connection with the neo-Kantian movement; here we may give some of the more important monographs and essays, selected from the enormously developed Kantian literature:
Ad. Böhringer, _Kants erkenntnisstheoretischer Idealismus_, 1888; K. Dieterich, _Die Kantische Philosophie in ihrer inneren Entwickelungsgeschichte_, 2 parts, 1885 (first published separately, _Kant und Newton_, 1877; _Kant und Rousseau_, 1878); W. Dilthey, _Aus den Rostocker Kanthandschriften_ in the _Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie_, vols. ii.-iii. 1889-90; M.W. Drobisch, _Kants Ding an sich und sein Erfahrungsbegriff_, 1885; B. Erdmann, _Kants Kritizismus in der I. und II. Auflage der Kritik der reinen Vernunft_, 1878; the same, _Kants Prolegomena herausgegeben und erläutert_, 1878, Introduction (in reply Emil Arnoldt, _Kants Prolegomena nicht doppelt redigiert_, 1879; cf. also H. Vaihinger, _Die Erdmann-Arnoldtsche Kontroverse_ in the _Philosophische Monatshefte_, vol. xvi. 1880); Franz Erhardt, _Kritik der Kantischen Antinomienlehre_, 1888; R. Eucken, _Ueber Bilder und Gleichnisse bei Kant, Zeitschrift für Philosophie_, vol. lxxxiii, 1883, reprinted in his _Beiträge zur Geschichte der neueren Philosophie_, 1886; F. Frederichs, _Der phänomenale Idealismus Berkeleys und Kants_, 1871; the same, _Kants Prinzip der Ethik_, 1879; Ed. von Hartmann, _Das Ding an sich und seine Beschaffenheit_, 1871, in the 2d ed., 1875, and the 3d, 1885, entitled _Kritische Grundlegung des transzendentalen Realismus_; C. Hebler, _Kantiana_, in his _Philosophische Aufsätze_, 1869; Alfred Hegler, _Die Psychologie in Kants Ethik_, 1891; A. Hölder, _Darstellung der Kantischen Erkenntnisstheorie_, 1873 J. Jacobson, _Die Auffindung des Apriori_, 1876; the same, _Ueber die Beziehungen zwischen Kategorien und Urtheilsformen_, 1877; Wilhelm Koppelmann, _Kants Lehre vom analytischen Urtheil, Philosoph. Monatshefte_, vol. xxi, 1885; the same, _Lotzes Stellung zu Kants Kritizismus, Zeitschrift für Philosophie_, vol. lxxxviii, 1886; the same, _Kants Lehre vom kategorischen Imperativ_, 1888; the same, _Kant und die Grundlagen der Christlichen Religion_, 1890; E. Laas, _Kants Analogien der Erfahrung_, 1876; the same, _Einige Bemerkungen zur Transzendentalphilosophie_, Strassburg _Abhandlungen_, 1884; J. Mainzer, _Die kritische Epoche in der Lehre von der Einbildungskraft_, 1881; J.B. Meyer, _Kants Psychologie_, 1870; F. Paulsen, _Was Kant uns sein kann, Vierteljahrsschrift für wissenschaftliche Philosophie_, 1881; B. Pünjer, _Die Religionslehre Kants_, 1874; R. Quaebicker, _Kants und Herbarts metaphysische Grundansichten über das Wesen der Seele_, 1870; J. Rehmke, _Physiologie und Kantianismus_, address in Eisenach, 1883; Rud. Reicke, _Lose Blätter aus Kants Nachlass_, 1889 (on this H. Vaihinger in the _Zeitschrift für Philosophie_, vol. xcvi. 1889); O. Riedel, _Die monadologischen Bestimmungen in Kants Lehre vom Ding an sich_, dissertation at Kiel, 1884; O. Schneider, _Die psychologische Entwickelung des Apriori_, 1883; the same, _Transzendentalpsychologie_, 1891; F. Staudinger, _Noumena_, 1884; M. Steckelmacher, _Die formale Logik Kants_, Breslau Prize Essay, 1879; A. Stern, _Die Beziehung Garves zu Kant, nebst ungedruckten Briefen_, 1884; C. Stumpf, _Psychologie und Erkenntnisstheorie, Abhandlungen der bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften_, 1891; G. Thiele, _Kants intellectuelle Anschauung als Grundbegriff seines Kritizismus_, 1876; the same, _Die Philosophie Kants nach ihrem systematischen Zusammenhange und ihrer logischhistorischen Entiwickelung_, I. (1) _Kants vorkritische Naturphilosophie_, 1882; (2) _Kants vorkritische Erkenntnisstheorie_, 1887; Ad. Trendelenburg, _Ueber eine Lücke in Kants Beweis von der ausschliessenden Subjectivität des Raumes and der Zeit_ in vol. iii. of his _Historische Beiträge zur Philosophie_, 1867; Ueberhorst, _Kants Lehre von dem Verhältnisse der Kategorien zu der Erfahrung_, 1878; H. Vaihinger, _Eine Blattversetzung in Kants Prolegomena, Philosoph. Monatshefte_, vol. xv. 1879; the same, _Zu Kants Widerlegung des Idealismus_, Strassburg _Abhandlungen_, 1884; J. Walter, _Zum Gedächtniss Kants, Festrede_, 1881; Th. Weber, _Zur Kritik der Kantischen Erkenntnisstheorie_ (from the _Zeitschrift für Philosophie_), 1882; W. Windelband, _Ueber die verschiedenen Phasen der Kantischen Lehre vom Ding an sich, Vierteljahrsschrift für wissenschaftliche Philosophie_, 1877 (cf. the same author’s _Geschichte der neueren Philosophie_, § 58); J. Witte, _Beiträge zum Verständniss Kants_, 1874; the same, _Kantischer Kritizismus gegenüber unkritischem Dilettantismus_ (against A. Stöhr), 1885; Wohlrabe, _Kants Lehre vom Gewissen_, 1889; E. Zeller, _Ueber das Kantische Moralprinzip_, 1880; R. Zimmermann, _Ueber Kants Widerlegung des Idealismus von Berkeley_, 1871; the same, _Ueber Kants mathematisches Vorurtheil und dessen Folgen_, 1871.
Popular expositions have been given by the following: K. Fortlage (in his _Philos. Vorträge_, 1869); E. Last, _Mehr Licht! Die Haupsätze Kants und Schopenhauers_, 1879; the same, _Die realistiche und die idealistische Anschauung entwickelt an Kants Idealität von Raum und Zeit_, 1884; H. Romundt, _Antaeus, neuer Aufbau der Lehre Kants über Seele, Freiheit, und Gott_, 1882; the same, _Grundlegung zur Reform der Philosophie, vereinfachte und erweiterte Darstellung von Kants Kritik der reinen Vernunft_, 1885; the same, _Die Vollendung des Socrates, Kants Grundlegung zur Reform der Sittenlehre_; the same, _Ein neuer Paulus, Kants Grundlegung zu einer sicheren Lehre von der Religion_, 1886; the same, _Die drei Fragen Kants_, 1887; A. Krause, _Populäre Darstellung von Kants Kritik der reinen Vernunft_, 1881; K. Lasswitz, _Die Lehre Kants von der Idealität des Raumes und der Zeit_, 1883; Wilhelm Münz, _Die Grundlagen der Kantischen Erkenntnisstheorie_, 2d ed., 1885.
Among foreigners Villers, Cousin, Nolen, Desdouits, Cantoni, E. Caird [_\A Critical Account of the Philosophy of Kant_, 1877; _The Critical Philosophy of Immanuel Kant_, 2 vols., 1889], Adamson _[On the Philosophy of Kant_, 1879, and a valuable article in the _Encyclopedia Britannica_, 9th ed., vol. xiii.], Stirling [_Text-book to Kant_, 1881], [Watson, _Kant and his English Critics_, 1881], Morris _Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason_, Griggs’s Philosophical Classics, 1882, [Wallace, _Kant_, Blackwood’s Philosophical Classics, 1882; Porter, _Kant’s Ethics_, Griggs’s Philosophical Classics, 1886; Green, _Lectures_, Works, vol. ii., 1886.–Tr.], have among others made contributions to Kantian literature. Of the older works we may mention the dictionaries of E. Schmid, 1788, and Mellin (in six volumes), 1797 _seq_., the critique of the Kantian philosophy in the first volume of Schopenhauer’s chief work, 1819, and the essay of C.H. Weisse, _In welchem Sinne hat sich die deutsche Philosophie jetzt wieder an Kant zu orientieren_, 1847.
Kant’s outward life was less eventful and less changeful than his philosophical development.[1] Born in Königsberg in 1724, the son of J.G. Cant, a saddler of Scottish descent, his home and school training were both strict and of a markedly religious type. He was educated at the university of his native city, and for nine years, from 1746 on, filled the place of a private tutor. In 1755 he became _Docent_, in 1770 ordinary professor in Königsberg, serving also for six years of this time as under-librarian. He seldom left his native city and never the province. The clearness which marked his extremely popular lectures on physical geography and anthropology was due to his diligent study of works of travel, and to an unusually acute gift of observation, which enabled him to draw from his surroundings a comprehensive knowledge of the world and of man. He ceased lecturing in 1797, and in 1804 old age ended a life which had always, even in minute detail, been governed by rule. A man of extreme devotion to duty, particularity, and love of truth, and an amiable, bright, and witty companion, Kant belongs to the acute rather than to the profound thinkers. Among his manifold endowments the tendency to combination and the faculty of intuition (as the _Critique of Judgment_ especially shows) are present to a noticeable degree, yet not so markedly as the power of strict analysis and subtle discrimination. So that, although a mediating tendency is rightly regarded as the distinguishing characteristic of the Kantian thinking, it must also be remembered that synthesis is everywhere preceded by a mighty work of analysis, and that this still exerts its power even after the adjustment is complete. Thus Kant became the energetic defender of a qualitative view of the world in opposition to the quantitative view of Leibnitz, for which antitheses (_e.g._, sensation and thought, feeling