REACTIONS IN PHILOSOPHY
VICISSITUDES OF IDEALISM.--At the beginning of the last chapter we
noticed the early collapse of idealism in Germany. But the prophets
of Romanticism, when they were no longer honoured at home, found an
hospitable reception elsewhere, and especially in England. Indeed,
even before the prestige of idealism had begun to decline in Germany,
Englishmen had been introduced to it by the writings and translations
of S. T. Coleridge (1772-1834) and Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881). These
two popularisers of German ideas were _litterateurs_ rather than
professional philosophers, but for that very reason their vogue and
influence were the wider.
COLERIDGE.--Coleridge was in spirit a genuine Romanticist; being, as
were some of the most notable of the German school--e.g., Goethe and
Schiller--a poet as well as a philosopher. In his _Biographia Literaria_
he has left behind the story of his intellectual and spiritual
development. He acknowledges his debt to Kant, to the Romanticists, and
in particular to Schelling, whose "intuitionism" was naturally congenial
to him. Coleridge was never able to embody his philosophical creed in
any single work; he does not seem to have possessed the necessary power
of application. He was unfortunate in being a man of weak character,
and his ineffectiveness struck his contemporaries. But in spite of these
disadvantages--his sentimentality, the lack of clearness of his thought,
his weakness for opium--he certainly exercised an important influence,
especially in the realm of theology. His ideas, though vague, were
calculated to awaken the speculative habit, and, introduced as they
were, to a wide circle, were fruitful and stimulating. English theology
had been, in the eighteenth century, of an arid kind, and the English
philosophical tradition lacked, for the most part, appreciation of those
deeper aspects of reality which had appealed to German thinkers.
Coleridge, by introducing German speculation to his countrymen, was able
"to free theology of some of its narrowness, and to deepen and enlarge
the spiritual outlook of his age."[48]
THOMAS CARLYLE.--Carlyle was a man of a very different temper, whose
attitude towards Coleridge was "half contemptuous, half compassionate."
A typically Carlylean characterisation of him may be found in the _Life
of Sterling_:
"He was thought to hold--he alone in England--the key of German and
other Transcendentalisms.... A sublime man, who alone in those dark days
escaped from black materialisms and revolutionary deluges with God,
Freedom, Immortality, still his. The practical intellects of the world
did not much heed him, or carelessly reckoned him a metaphysical
dreamer; but to the rising spirits of the young generation he sat there
as a kind of Magus, girt in mystery and enigma...."
"The good man ... gave you the idea of a life that had been full of
sufferings ... the deep eyes, of a light hazel, were as full of sorrow
as inspiration; confused pain looked mildly from them, as in a kind of
mild astonishment. The whole figure and air, good and amiable otherwise,
might be called flabby and irresolute; expressive of weakness under
possibility of strength.... He spoke as if preaching--preaching
earnestly and hopelessly the weightiest things."
Carlyle himself had all the character and industry that Coleridge
lacked, and it was another side of German idealism that had appealed to
him. The Scotchman was of the same fibre and stock as that other
half-Scotchman, Kant. Here was the source from which he had drawn his
inspiration. We see in Carlyle the same moral earnestness, the same
"toughness" of thought, the same absence of "sentimental moonshine."
From Kant, too, he derives a vigorous independence of thought, a
religious respect for individuality, a horror of shams and affectation.
Kant was a true child of the Reformation, and Carlyle is a genuine
disciple.
In a single important respect, however, he differed from (and improved
upon) his master. Kant lacked, or at least did not display, the saving
grace of humour; in Carlyle this quality looks out from every
page--keen, satirical, sometimes bitter, sometimes grotesque; he
ridiculed his own generation, its vices, its prejudices, its
superstitions.
SARTOR RESARTUS.--For our purpose, _Sartor Resartus_--that profound and
humorous book--is Carlyle's masterpiece: here all the characteristic
Kantian doctrines may be found.
The "philosophy of clothes"--which is the quaint title behind which
Kantian idealism is made to masquerade--starts from the thought that
just as an acquaintance with his clothes will not reveal to us the man,
so an acquaintance with _phenomena_ (which is all that science can claim
to give us) cannot reveal to us the real ground of existence, which
remains an inscrutable mystery. We must "look on clothes till they
become transparent," if we could understand reality.
"To the eye of vulgar Logic what is man? An omnivorous biped that wears
breeches. To the eye of pure Reason what is he? A Soul, a Spirit, and
divine Apparition."
And so with Nature; to science it is a mechanism, to the understanding
heart it is "the living garment of God."
"It is written, the Heavens and the Earth shall fade away like a
Vesture; which indeed they are: the Time-Vesture of the Eternal.... The
whole External Universe and what it holds is but Clothing...."
The visible world is but a symbol of a profound and awful reality; and
all Nature's products, in their degree, symbols as well: but of these,
man is the highest. "The true SHEKINAH is Man: where else is the GOD'S
PRESENCE manifested, not to our eyes only, but to our hearts, as in our
fellow-man?"
This leads up to the essential doctrine of the Kantian system: that man
is a creature of two worlds, who has a foot in either; hence in the
phenomenal world he can never find satisfaction.
"Man's Unhappiness, as I construe, comes of his Greatness; it is because
there is an infinite in him, which, with all his cunning, he cannot
quite bury under the Finite. Will the whole Finance Ministers and
Upholsterers and Confectioners of modern Europe undertake, in
jointstock company, to make one Shoeblack Happy? They cannot accomplish
it, above an hour or two, for the Shoeblack also has a Soul quite other
than his Stomach...."
"There is in man a HIGHER than Love of happiness: he can do without
happiness and instead thereof find Blessedness! has it not been to
preach forth this same HIGHER that sages and martyrs ... have spoken and
suffered; bearing testimony to the God-like that is in man?"
CARLYLE'S INFLUENCE.--In spite of Carlyle's strange literary mannerisms
and his grotesquely Germanic phrases, his writings had great
attractiveness for those of his contemporaries who felt themselves
smothered by the materialism and utilitarianism of early Victorian
England. He was able to re-vitalise idealism amongst them. Moreover he
appealed strongly to those to whom the Coleridgean speculations were
uncongenial. The strongly developed _moral_ element, both in his
writings and in his own somewhat stern and austere personality--what
Taine called his "puritanism"--appealed strongly to a certain side of
English feeling. His countrymen felt that his was a native genius that
they could understand. In fact we may say that the influence of Carlyle,
especially among the young and generous minded, has been incalculable in
extent and invaluable in quality. Spiritual life in England stands under
a deep obligation to him.
ROMANTICISM AT OXFORD.--Englishmen were thus not entire strangers to
German idealism, which had possessed its interpreters in the earlier
half of the nineteenth century. Not, however, until it had experienced a
decline in Germany (a reaction which occupied our attention in the last
chapter), did Romanticism become naturalised in England by being
adopted in academic circles.
Among the most notable of English idealists was T. H. Green--fellow and
tutor of Balliol College, Oxford. In this thinker we have a widely
different type of mind from that of either Coleridge or Carlyle. He was
a thinker rather than a poet or a prophet, and he belonged to what we
have noticed as the intellectualist--i.e. Hegelian--wing of Romanticism.
Green's chief work was his _Prolegomena to Ethics_ (published
posthumously in 1883), where arguments, which were familiar to those
acquainted with Hegel, presented themselves. Green begins with an
analysis of experience, and leads to the conclusion that Nature--if by
it we mean "the connected order of experience"--implies "something other
than itself, as the condition of its being what it is." And "of that
'something' we are entitled to say, positively, that it is a
self-distinguishing consciousness" (section 52).
If these conclusions be valid, the bottom falls out of Naturalism, for
if nature "implies something other than itself," it does not stand
alone; and that nature _does_ stand alone is the beginning and end of
all naturalist theory. And, furthermore, this "something other than
itself," which Nature involves, is "a self-distinguishing
consciousness"; i.e. something to which we can attribute personality.
GREEN AND SPENCER CONTRASTED.--This theory has only to be compared with
that of Herbert Spencer for a fundamental difference to declare itself.
The two systems do indeed adopt as axiomatic the conception of the
uniformity and unity of nature, which works in accordance with a single
law. But Spencer saw in that law the expression of a blind force, an
unknowable power, of which it would be no more and no less true to say
that it was "spiritual" than that it was "material." But for Green the
law was the expression of a spiritual principal analogous to our own
intelligence--a manifestation (to use theological language) of God.
F. H. BRADLEY.--Undoubtedly the most notable of English Hegelians is F.
H. Bradley, whose metaphysical essay, _Appearance and Reality_, was a
work of genuine originality. The book is not of a type to make much
appeal outside academic circles, though it is written in an easy and
attractive style: its results may seem, to the unsophisticated reader,
somewhat too ambiguous. "Ultimate Doubts" is the title of the last
chapter, and "It costs us little to find that in the end Reality is
inscrutable," is a remark not uncharacteristic of the author. Yet this
really profound thinker and acute reasoner played an important part in
helping to discredit that negative dogmatism which was so much in vogue
during his own lifetime. He pointed out the limits beyond which natural
science could not transgress without lapsing into "dogmatic
superstition."
"Too often the science of mere Nature, forgetting its own limits and
false to its true aims, attempts to speak about first principles. It
becomes transcendent, and offers us a dogmatic and uncritical
metaphysics" (p. 284).
Though the fault has not always been on the side of the scientists:
"Metaphysics itself, by its interference with physical science, has
induced that to act, as it thinks, in self-defence, and has led it, in
so doing, to become metaphysical. And this interference of metaphysics I
would admit and deplore, as the result and the parent of most injurious
misunderstanding.... So long as natural science keeps merely to the
sphere of phenomena and the laws of their occurrence, metaphysics has no
right to a single word of criticism" (p. 285).
This critical handling of the problem of the relations of science and
philosophy did much to draw attention to the confusion of thought lying
at the base of much popular materialism. It began to be realised that
the principles of physical science are only fruitful of good results in
the sphere properly belonging to them; and that the uncritical use of
these principles results in a hybrid philosophy, which is neither sound
science nor rational metaphysics.
A. J. BALFOUR.--Before Bradley's essay was published, a somewhat similar
line of criticism had been developed by Mr. A. J. Balfour in his
_Defence of Philosophic Doubt_ (1879). Its title sounds unpromising, but
the book voiced a demand for a rational philosophy of science which was
practically non-existent at that time; and consequently, in the absence
of any adequate examination of the principles of science, uncritical
dogmatism flourished quite unchallenged. Balfour, elsewhere, indicates
the objects with which he wrote the book--to elicit from the disciples
of natural science a _rationale_ of their method:
"A full and systematic attempt, first to enumerate, and then to justify,
the presuppositions on which all science finally rests, has, it seems to
me, still to be made. After the critical examination which I desiderate
has been thoroughly carried out, it may appear that at the very root of
our scientific system of belief lie problems of which no satisfactory
solution has yet been devised."[49] Thus Balfour drew attention to the
fact that the common-sense philosophy of naturalism rested upon a tacit
agreement to overlook certain important problems which are the
indispensable preliminaries to any thinking which can be called
critical, or lay claim to be regarded as philosophy in the strict sense.
That some of these problems seem artificial, and the questions raised by
them gratuitous, to the eye of "common sense" is an irrelevant
consideration, for "nothing stands more in need of demonstration than
the obvious."
NATURALISM CHECKED.--Thus Bradley and Balfour between them, merely by
adopting a critical attitude, created an embarrassing situation for
naturalism. Between them these writers administered a serious check to
that naively uncritical dogmatism which, backed by the prestige of
natural science, had sought to impose itself on the world as a new
orthodoxy less liberal, in some ways, than the old.
Nor did they stop short at negative criticism, but substituted
(according to the idealistic tradition) a spiritual view of reality for
the mechanistic materialism that had become so popular. _Appearance and
Reality_ is a book of which the trend might seem too obscure, but it
ends with a note that is definite enough:
"Outside of spirit there is not, and there cannot be, any reality; and,
the more that anything is spiritual, so much the more is it veritably
real," are Bradley's closing words.
As for Balfour, he leads his readers up to a point which he describes as
"the threshold of Christian Theology." And having propounded the
perplexities in which the "common sense" philosophy (on which naturalism
depends) is involved, he says:
"I do not believe that any escape from them (the perplexities) is
possible, unless we are prepared to bring to the study of the world the
presupposition that it was the work of a rational Being, who made _it_
intelligible, and at the same time made _us_, in however feeble a
fashion, able to understand it."[50]
REVIVAL OF IDEALISM IN GERMANY. LOTZE.--We have perhaps dwelt at too
great length upon the backwash of the idealistic wave in England, for
idealism is not a native philosophy amongst us; possibly, because we are
not metaphysically-minded in the same sense as are the purer Teutonic
breed. And it is time to pass on to pay a brief tribute to the work of a
German philosopher who accepted the mechanical theory in its totality,
without sacrificing what we may call the spiritual values of existence.
Hermann Lotze (1817-1881) was inclined to feel that the weakness of
Romanticism lay in a tendency to despise or overlook what Kant had
called "the fertile bathos of experience." The Romanticists had too
often neglected natural science, which, in the shape of naturalistic
materialism, had its revenge by destroying them. Buechner was the Nemesis
of an idealism which was at once vague and sentimental.
LOTZE'S "MICROCOSMOS."--Lotze's attitude and method are conspicuous in
his well-known work, which took him eight years to complete
(1856-1864)--the _Microcosmos_. After guiding his readers "through the
realms of natural phenomena and historical evolution," thus constructing
a sufficiently stable basis out of _facts_--he leads them on to an ideal
world composed of what he calls "values."
His position may thus be summarised: The world presents itself to the
observer in three aspects--(1) The world of individual "things," which
are bewildering and intricate; (2) the laws (i.e., "laws of nature")
which the human intellect has discovered among them, thus finding
regularity and order; (3) the "values" which the human soul applies to
things, and which it is the human task to cultivate.
This world of ideals or values (3) is that for the sake of which the
worlds of phenomena and law (1 and 2) exist. These (1 and 2) constitute
respectively the material _in_ which, and the forms _through_ which, the
world of "values" is to be realised.[51]
Thus phenomena and law are the raw material out of which "values" are
created; and these "values" themselves constitute (in the eyes of Lotze)
a higher reality. Thus the central doctrine of his system is that the
truly Real is what has supreme worth: it is _worth_ that creates
reality. The paradoxicality of this may make it difficult to accept; but
Lotze is only expressing in his own way the fundamental thesis of all
forms of idealism, that "the ideal is the real"; that the world of
phenomena is secondary to and dependent upon a "world of spirit," or an
"ideal world."
Lotze himself in the introduction to the _Microcosmos_, expresses what
is at once the foundation and the kernel of his system: he says it is
his purpose to show "_how absolutely universal is the extent_, and at
the same time how _completely subordinate the significance, of the
mission which mechanism has to fulfil in the structure of the world_."
(E.T., p. xvi.)
Mechanism is universal, _because_ it is the raw material, so to speak,
out of which reality is to be made. That reality can be expressed in
terms of mechanism is true, just as a poem can be described as a scrap
of paper scratched upon with a pen; but this reduction of reality to its
lowest terms, ends by emptying reality of content. Mechanism is a
_universal_ feature, but it is a _subordinate_ feature, of reality.
Nature requires, if we are to arrive at the truth about it, not only to
be described and analysed, but also interpreted in the light of the idea
of _value_ or _worth_.
LOTZE AND THEOLOGY.--Lotze's theories exercised an important influence
upon the development in Germany and elsewhere of a type of theology
known as Ritschlianism. Albrecht Ritschl, a disciple of Lotze, attempted
to dissociate religion from metaphysics, and to base it upon "judgments
of value." Christian dogma, for instance, is an attempt to express, in
philosophical terms, _the unique value to humanity of the moral and
religious consciousness of Christ_. So far as a dogma is faithful to
that central idea, and makes a genuine attempt to express it, so
far--and so far only--is it true.
This type of theology, uniting itself with certain philosophical
tendencies which will engage our attention later, became the basis of
what was known as the Modernist movement in the Roman Catholic Church.
CONCLUSIONS.--Thus in the nineteenth century, in England (and indeed on
the continent also) the idealistic attitude, though it sometimes might
seem compromised, was never submerged; in spite of the materialistic
outlook of an age only too preoccupied with scientific discovery and
commercial expansion.