The spirit of the times took this new direction; it forsook the

intellectual world, and looked upon its present world, this hither side.

The finite heaven, the content which had lost its religious character,

drove it to the finite present. With this revolution the scholastic

philosophy sinks and is lost, as its thoughts are outside of reality.

While the Church heretofore believed itself to be in possession of

divine truth, so now the temporal government, as it received into itself

order and right, and worked its way out through the hard discipline

of service, felt itself to be a divine institution, and consequently

considered that it had the divine element here present in it, and that

it was justified in having an independent existence in opposition to

the divine element in the Church, which takes up an exclusive position

as regards the laity. Since in this way the temporal power, the worldly

life, self-consciousness, has taken into itself the higher and more

divine ecclesiastical principle, the harsh contrast has disappeared. The

power of the Church appeared as the violence of the Church, not aiming

at operating in accordance with reality and in reality, but at being

mighty in the spirit. There at once came into the secular element the

consciousness that abstract Notions were filled with the reality of the

present, so that this was no longer a nullity, but had truth also in

itself.

With this commerce and the arts are associated. It is implied in the

arts that man brings what is divine out of himself; as artists were

at one time so pious that as individuals they had self-abnegation as

their principle, it was they from whose subjective abilities these

representations were produced. With this is connected the circumstance

that the secular knew that it had in itself the right to hold to such

determinations as are founded on subjective freedom. In his handicraft

the individual is taken in reference to his work, and is himself the

producer. Thus men came to the point of knowing that they were free,

and insisting on the recognition of that freedom, and having the power

of exercising their activity for their own objects and interests. Thus

spirit came again to itself; it drew itself together again, and looked

into its reason, as if looking into its own hands. This new birth is

pointed out as the revival of the arts and sciences which were concerned

with present matter, the epoch when the spirit gains confidence in

itself and in its existence, and finds its interest in its present. It is

in reality reconciled with the world, not implicitly, far away in mere

thought, at the last day, at the world’s transfiguration, _i.e._ when

the world is reality no more, but it has to do with the world as not by

any means annihilated. The man who was moved to seek what was moral and

right, could no longer find it on such soil, but looked round about him

to seek it elsewhere. The place which was pointed out to him is himself,

his inner life, and external Nature; in the contemplation of Nature the

spirit begins to have a sense of being present therein.

SECTION THREE

REVIVAL OF THE SCIENCES

The deeper interest of the subject had been lost sight of, as we have

seen, in the dryness and dulness of the content of thought, and in

speculations which went wandering off into endless details. But now

spirit gathered itself together, and rose to claim the right to find

and know itself as actual self-consciousness, both in the supersensuous

world and in immediate nature. This awakening of the self-hood of

spirit brought with it the revival of the arts and sciences of the

ancient world. This looked like a falling back into childhood, but it

was really a spontaneous ascent into the Idea, a movement originating

with self—while up to this time the intellectual world had been rather

something given from without. From this proceeded all efforts and all

inventions, the discovery of America and of the way to the East Indies.

Thus in a very special way the love for the old, so-called heathen

sciences once more awoke, for men turned to the works of the ancients,

which had now become objects of study, as _studia humaniora_, where man

is recognized in what concerns himself and in what he effects. These

sciences, though at first they were placed in opposition to the divine,

are rather themselves the divine, as living, however, in the reality of

spirit. Men, because they are men, find it interesting to study men as

men. With this a further consideration is intimately connected, namely,

that when the formal culture of the mind, found among the Scholastics,

became transformed into the Universal, the result necessarily was that

thought knew and found itself in itself; from this the antithesis between

the finite understanding and ecclesiastical dogma or faith consequently

arose. The idea became prevalent that the understanding can recognize

something to be false which the Church affirms to be true; and it was of

importance that the understanding did so apprehend itself, although it

was in opposition to the positive in general.

A. STUDY OF THE ANCIENTS.

The first way in which the desire to find the human element in reference

to what pertains to science manifested itself, was that an interest in

such matters sprang up in the West, a receptive power where the ancients

in their definiteness and beauty are concerned. But the revival of the

arts and sciences, and especially of the study of ancient literature

bearing on Philosophy, was at first in some measure a simple revival of

the old philosophy in its earlier and original form, without anything new

being added; this working up of old philosophies, to which a great number

of writings were devoted, was thus the restoration of something forgotten

only. The study of the Greeks was more especially revived; the knowledge

of the Greek originals which the West acquired is connected with external

political events. The West kept up constant intercourse with the Greeks

through the Crusades, and Italy did so by means of commerce; yet there

were no special diplomatic relations. Even the Roman laws were brought

back from the East, until a code of the _corpus juris_ was by chance

discovered. But the West was again, and more effectually, brought into

touch with the Greek East when, on the disastrous fall of the Byzantine

Empire, the noblest and most distinguished of the Greeks fled to Italy.

Earlier than this even, when the Greek Empire was being harassed by the

Turks, ambassadors had been sent to the West in order to solicit help.

These ambassadors were men of learning, and by their means—for as a rule

they settled in the West—there was transplanted thither that love for

antiquity to which we have referred. Petrarch in this way learned Greek

from Barlaam, a monk in Calabria, where dwelt many belonging to the order

of St. Basil; this order had monasteries in the south of Italy, and used

Greek ritual. In Constantinople Barlaam had made the acquaintance of

Greeks, particularly of Chrysoloras, who from 1395 chose Italy as his

permanent dwelling-place. These Greeks made the West familiar with the

works of the ancients, especially of Plato.[55] Too much honour is done

to the monks when it is asserted that they preserved for us the writings

of the ancients; these works, at least such as were in Greek, came rather

from Constantinople, while the Latin portion of them, it is true, were

preserved in the West. Acquaintance was now also for the first time

made with Aristotle’s own writings (_supra_, p. 75), and thereby the

old philosophies were again revived, although mingled with intellectual

vagaries of the utmost wildness.

Thus it was partly the old Platonic philosophy that was sought out,

and partly the Neo-Platonic, as also the Aristotelian and Stoic, the

Epicurean as far as it regarded physics, and the popular philosophy of

Cicero in its first form; these were brought forward as authorities

against Scholasticism, being in direct contradiction to it. Such

endeavours are, however, connected rather with the history of literature

and culture, and with the advancement of the same; we do not find

originality in this philosophic work, nor can we recognize therein

any forward step. We have still writings of that period, by which we

find that each school of the Greeks found its adherents, and that

Aristotelians, Platonists, and so on appeared on the scenes, though

they were of a very different stamp from those of olden times. For true

instruction in philosophy we must, however, go to the original sources,

the ancients.

1. POMPONATIUS.

Pomponatius was one of the most remarkable of these Aristotelians; among

other subjects he wrote in 1534 on the immortality of the soul, and in

so doing he showed—following a practice which was specially in vogue

at that time—that this dogma, which he believed as a Christian, was

according to Aristotle and reason incapable of proof.[56] The disciples

of Averroës alleged that the universal νοῦς, which is present in thought,

is immaterial and immortal, while the soul as numerically one is mortal;

and Alexander Aphrodisiensis also maintained its mortality. Both of

these opinions were condemned in 1513 at the Council of Benevento, under

Leo X.[57] The vegetative and sensitive soul Pomponatius asserted to be

mortal (c. VIII. p. 36; c. IX. pp. 51, 62-65): and he maintained that

it is only through thought and reason that man partakes of immortality.

Pomponatius was summoned before the Inquisition; but as cardinals

protected him, no further notice was taken of the matter.[58] There were

many other pure Aristotelians; especially among the Protestants at a

later time were they general. The Scholastics were erroneously termed

Aristotelians; therefore the Reformation was opposed to Aristotle only in

appearance, but to the Scholastics it was opposed in fact.

2. BESSARION, FICINUS, PICUS.

Men now began to form acquaintance more especially with Plato, when

manuscripts of his works were brought from Greece; Greeks, refugees from

Constantinople, gave lectures on Plato’s philosophy. Cardinal Bessarion

of Trapezunt, at one time Patriarch of Constantinople, was specially

active in making Plato known in the West.[59]

Ficinus, who was born in Florence in 1433, and died in 1499, the

accomplished translator of Plato, was a man of note; it was mainly due

to him that the study of Neo-Platonism, as presented by Proclus and

Plotinus, was again revived. Ficinus wrote also a Platonic Theology. One

of the Medici in Florence, Cosmo II., went so far as to found a Platonic

Academy even in the fifteenth century. These Medici, the elder Cosmo,

Lorenzo, Leo X., Clement VII., were patrons of all the arts and sciences,

and made their court the resort of classical Greek scholars.[60]

Two counts of the name of Pico della Mirandola—Giovanni, and Giovanni

Francesco, his nephew—were influential rather by virtue of their marked

personality and their originality; the elder propounded nine hundred

theses, fifty-five of which were taken from Proclus, and invited

philosophers one and all to a solemn discussion of the same; he also in

princely fashion undertook to pay the travelling expenses of those at a

distance.[61]

3. GASSENDI, LIPSIUS, REUCHLIN, HELMONT.

Somewhat later, and specially by Gassendi, the opponent of Descartes, the

atom theory of Epicurus was again revived. As a development therefrom

the theory of molecules maintained its place thenceforth in physical

science.

The revival of Stoic philosophy due to Lipsius was not so clearly

evidenced.

In Reuchlin (Kapnio), who was born at Pforzheim in Swabia in 1455, and

who was himself the translator of several comedies of Aristophanes,

the Cabalistic philosophy found a defender. He endeavoured also to

reconstruct the Pythagorean philosophy proper; but he mingled with it

much that is vague and mysterious. There was in hand a project to destroy

all Hebrew books in Germany by an imperial decree, as had been done in

Spain; Reuchlin deserves great credit for having prevented this.[62]

On account of the entire lack of dictionaries, the study of the Greek

language was rendered so difficult that Reuchlin travelled to Vienna for

the purpose of learning Greek from a Greek.

Later on we find many profound thoughts in Helmont, an Englishman, who

was born in 1618, and died in 1699.[63]

All these philosophies were carried on side by side with belief in

Church dogmas, and without prejudice thereto; not in the sense in

which the ancients conceived them. A mass of literature exists on this

subject, containing the names of a multitude of philosophers, but it is

a literature of the past, without the vitality characteristic of higher

principles; it is in fact not a true philosophy at all, and I shall

therefore not dwell any longer upon it.

4. CICERONIAN POPULAR PHILOSOPHY.

Cicero’s mode of philosophizing, a very general mode, was revived in an

especial degree. It is a popular style of philosophizing, which has no

real speculative value, but in regard to general culture it has this

importance, that in it man derives more from himself as a whole, from his

outer and inner experience, and speaks altogether from the standpoint of

the present. He is a man of understanding who says,—

“What helps a man in life, is what life itself has taught him.”

The feelings, &c., of man obtained due recognition, we must observe,

as against the principle of self-abnegation. A very large number of

writings of this kind were issued, some of them simply on their own

account, others aimed against the Scholastics. Although all that great

mass of philosophical writings—much, for instance, that Erasmus wrote

on similar subjects—has been forgotten, and though it possesses little

intrinsic value, it was still of very great service, as succeeding

the barrenness of the Scholastics and their groundless maunderings in

abstractions:—groundless I say, for they had not even self-consciousness

as their basis. Petrarch was one of those who wrote from himself, from

his heart, as a thinking man.

This new departure in Philosophy applies in this regard to the reform of

the Church by Protestantism also. Its principle is simply this, that it

led man back to himself, and removed what was alien to him, in language

especially. To have translated for German Christians the book on which

their faith is grounded, into their mother-tongue, is one of the greatest

revolutions which could have happened. Italy in the same way obtained

grand poetic works when the vernacular came to be employed by such

writers as Dante, Boccaccio and Petrarch; Petrarch’s political works were

however written in Latin. It is not until a thing is expressed in my

mother tongue that it becomes my own possession. Luther and Melancthon

cast the Scholastic element quite aside, and drew their conclusions from

the Bible, from faith, from the human heart. Melancthon presents to us

a calm popular philosophy, in which the human element makes itself felt,

and which therefore forms the most striking contrast to the lifeless and

jejune Scholasticism. This attack against the Scholastic method was made

in the most different directions and in the most various forms. But all

this belongs rather to the history of Religion than to that of Philosophy.

B. CERTAIN ATTEMPTS IN PHILOSOPHY.

A second series of writers who now appeared have mainly to do with

particular attempts made in Philosophy which remained attempts merely,

and are only found while this terrible time of upheaval lasted. Many

individuals of that period saw themselves forsaken by what had hitherto

been accepted by them as content, by the object which up to this time had

formed the stay and support of their consciousness—by faith. Side by side

with the peaceful reappearance of the ancient philosophy there displayed

itself, on the other hand, a multitude of individuals in whom a burning

desire after the conscious knowledge of what is deepest and most concrete

was violently manifested. It was spoilt, however, by endless fancies,

extravagances of the imagination and a craze for secret, astrological,

geomantic and other knowledge. These men felt themselves dominated, as

they really were, by the impulse to create existence and to derive truth

from their very selves. They were men of vehement nature, of wild and

restless character, of enthusiastic temperament, who could not attain

to the calm of knowledge. Though it cannot be denied that there was

in them a wonderful insight into what was true and great, there is no

doubt on the other hand that they revelled in all manner of corruption

in thought and heart as well as in their outer life. There is thus to

be found in them great originality and subjective energy of spirit;

at the same time the content is heterogeneous and unequal, and their

confusion of mind is great. Their fate, their lives, their writings—which

often fill many volumes—manifest only this restlessness of their being,

this tearing asunder, the revolt of their inner being against present

existence and the longing to get out of it and reach certainty. These

remarkable individuals really resemble the upheavals, tremblings and

eruptions of a volcano which has become worked up in its depths and has

brought forth new developments, which as yet are wild and uncontrolled.

The most outstanding men of this nature are Cardanus, Bruno, Vanini,

Campanella, and lastly Ramus. They are representative of the character of

the time in this interval of transition, and fall within the period of

the Reformation.

1. CARDANUS.

Hieronymus Cardanus is of their number; he was remarkable as an

individual of world-wide reputation, in whom the upheaval and

fermentation of his time manifested itself in its utmost violence. His

writings fill ten folio volumes. Cardanus was born in 1501 at Pavia, and

died at Rome in 1575. He recounted his own history and described his

character in his book _De vita propria_, where he makes an extraordinary

confession of his sins, passing the severest possible judgment upon them.

The following may serve to give a picture of these contradictions. His

life was a series of the most varied misfortunes, external and domestic.

He speaks first of his pre-natal history. He relates that his mother,

when pregnant with him, drank potions in order to produce abortion. When

he was still at the breast, there was an outbreak of the plague; the

nurse who suckled him died of the pestilence, he survived. His father

was very severe in his treatment of him. He lived sometimes in the most

crushing poverty and the utmost want, sometimes in the greatest luxury.

Afterwards he applied himself to science, became a Doctor of Medicine,

and travelled much. He was celebrated far and wide; summons came to him

from every quarter, several times he was called to Scotland. He writes

that he cannot tell the sums of money that were offered to him. He was

professor at Milan, first of mathematics and then of medicine; after that

he lay for two years in Bologna in the strictest imprisonment, and had to

undergo the most frightful tortures. He was a profound astrologer, and

predicted the future for many princes, who on that account held him in

the greatest awe and reverence.[64] He is a name of note in mathematics;

we have from him still the _regula Cardani_ for the solution of equations

of the third degree, the only rule we have had up to this time.

He lived his whole life in perpetual inward and outward storms. He says

that he suffered the greatest torments in his soul. In this inward agony

he found the greatest delight in inflicting torture both on himself and

others. He scourged himself, bit his lips, pinched himself violently,

distorted his fingers, in order to free himself from the tortures of

his spiritual disquietude and induce weeping, which brought him relief.

The same contradictions were to be seen in his outward demeanour, which

was sometimes quiet and decorous, while at other times he behaved as if

he were crazy and demented, and that without any external provocation

whatever, and in matters the most indifferent. Sometimes he put on decent

clothes and made himself neat and trim, at other times he went in rags.

He would be reserved, diligent, persevering in his work, and then would

break out into excesses, wasting and squandering all that he had, his

household goods and his wife’s jewels. Sometimes he would walk quietly

along, like other men; at other times he would rush on as if he were mad.

The upbringing of his children, as was quite to be expected under the

circumstances, was very bad. He had the unhappiness of seeing his sons

turn out ill; one of them poisoned his own wife and was executed with the

sword; he had his second son’s ears cut off, to chastise him for being

dissipated.[65]

He himself was of the wildest temperament, brooding deeply within

himself, and yet breaking out into violence in the most contradictory

manner; within him there also raged a consuming restlessness. I have

epitomized the description which he gives of his own character, and now

quote it: “I have by nature a mind of philosophic and scientific cast; I

am witty, elegant, well-bred, fond of luxury, cheerful, pious, faithful,

a lover of wisdom, reflective, enterprising, studious, obliging, emulous,

inventive, self-taught. I have a longing to perform prodigies, I am

crafty, cunning, bitter, versed in secrets, sober, diligent, careless,

talkative, contemptuous of religion, vindictive, envious, melancholy,

malicious, treacherous, a sorcerer, a magician, unhappy; I am surly to my

family, ascetic, difficult to deal with, harsh, a soothsayer, jealous, a

ribald talker, a slanderer, compliant, inconstant; such contradictoriness

of nature and manners is to be found in me.”[66]

His writings are in parts just as utterly unequal as his character.

In them he gave vent to the wild vehemence of his nature; they are

disconnected and contradictory, and were often written in the direst

poverty. They contain a medley of all kinds of astrological and

chiromantic superstition, yet lit up here and there with profound and

brilliant flashes; there are Alexandrine and Cabalistic mysteries side

by side with perfectly lucid psychological observations of his own. He

treated astrologically the life and deeds of Christ. His positive merit

consists, however, rather in the stimulus which he gave to original

production, and in this direction he exercised an important influence

on his times. He boasted of the originality and novelty of his ideas,

and the craze to be original drove him to the strangest devices. This

represents the first form taken by the newly awakened and energizing

reason in its spontaneous activity; to be new and different from others

was regarded as tantamount to possessing a private claim to science.

2. CAMPANELLA.

Tommaso Campanella, a student of Aristotle, represents just such another

medley of all possible dispositions. He was born at Stilo, in Calabria,

in 1568, and died at Paris in 1639. Many of his writings still remain

to us. For seven-and-twenty years of his life he was kept in strict

imprisonment at Naples.[67] Such men as he aroused enormous interest and

gave great offence, but on their own account they were productive of very

little result. We have still to make special mention of Giordano Bruno

and Vanini as belonging to this period.

3. BRUNO.

Giordano Bruno was of an equally restless and effervescent temperament,

and we see in him a bold rejection of all Catholic beliefs resting

on mere authority. In modern times he has again been brought into

remembrance by Jacobi (Werke, Vol. IV. Section II. pp. 5-46), who

appended to his letters on Spinoza an abstract of one of Bruno’s

works.[68] Jacobi caused great attention to be paid to Bruno, more

especially by his assertion that the sum of Bruno’s teaching was the One

and All of Spinoza, or really Pantheism; on account of the drawing of

this parallel Bruno obtained a reputation which passes his deserts. He

was less restless than Cardanus; but he had no fixed habitation on the

earth. He was born at Nola in the province of Naples, and lived in the

sixteenth century; the year of his birth is not known with certainty. He

roamed about in most of the European states, in Italy, France, England,

Germany, as a teacher of philosophy: he forsook Italy, where at one time

he had been a Dominican friar, and where he had made bitter reflections

both upon various Catholic dogmas—for instance, on transubstantiation and

the immaculate conception of the Virgin—and upon the gross ignorance and

scandalous lives of the monks. He then lived in Geneva in 1582, but there

he fell out in the same way with Calvin and Beza, and could not live with

them: he made some stay in several other French cities, such as Lyons;

and after a time he came to Paris, where in 1585 he formally challenged

the adherents of Aristotle, by following a practice greatly in favour

in those days (_supra_, p. 112), and proposing for public disputation

a series of philosophic theses, which were specially directed against

Aristotle. They appeared under the title _Jord. Bruni Nol. Rationes

articulorum physicorum adversus Peripateticos Parisiis propositorum,

Vitebergæ apud Zachariam Cratonem, 1588_; he was not successful in them,

however, as the position of the Aristotelians was still too well assured.

Bruno was also in London; he visited Wittenberg in the year 1586; he

likewise stayed in Prague and other universities and towns. In Helmstedt

he was high in the favour of the Dukes of Brunswick-Lüneburg in 1589;

after that he went to Frankfort-on-Main, where he had several of his

works printed. He was a wandering professor and author. Finally he came

back to Italy in 1592, and lived in Padua for some time undisturbed, but

at last he was seized in Venice by the Inquisition, cast into prison,

sent on to Rome, and there in the year 1600, refusing to recant, he

was burned at the stake as a heretic. Eye-witnesses, and amongst them

Scioppius, recount that he met death with the most unflinching courage.

He had become a Protestant when in Germany, and had broken the vows of

his order.[69]

Among both Catholics and Protestants his writings were held to be

heretical and atheistic, and therefore they were burned and destroyed, or

kept in concealment. His complete works are hence very seldom met with;

the greatest number of them are to be found in the University Library at

Gottingen; the fullest account of them is given in Buhle’s History of

Philosophy (_supra_, Vol. I. p. 113). His works are for the most part

rare, and in many cases interdicted; in Dresden they are still included

among prohibited writings, and are therefore not to be seen there.

Lately[70] an edition of them in the Italian language was prepared,[71]

which possibly has never yet been issued. Bruno also wrote a great deal

in Latin. Wherever he took up his abode for a time, he gave public

lectures, wrote and published works; and this increases the difficulty

of making complete acquaintance with his books. Many of his writings are

for the above reason very similar in their matter, the form only being

different, and in the evolution of his thoughts he never consequently

advanced very much nor attained to any results. But the leading

characteristic of his various writings is really to some extent the grand

enthusiasm of a noble soul, which has a sense of indwelling spirit, and

knows the unity of its own Being and all Being to be the whole life of

thought. There is something bacchantic in his way of apprehending this

deep consciousness; it overflows in becoming thus an object of thought,

and in the expression of its riches. But it is only in knowledge that

spirit can bring itself forth as a whole; when it has not yet attained

to this point of scientific culture, it reaches out after all forms,

without bringing them first into due order. Bruno displays just such an

unregulated and multiform profusion; and on that account his expositions

have frequently a dreamy, confused, allegorical appearance of mystical

enthusiasm. Many of his writings are in verse, and much that is fantastic

finds a place in them, as for instance when he says in one of his works,

entitled _La Bestia Trionfante_, that something else must be put in

place of the stars.[72] He sacrificed his personal welfare to the great

enthusiasm which filled him, and which left him no peace. It is easy to

say that he was “a restless being, who could get on with nobody.” But

whence did this restlessness come to him? What he could not get on with

was the finite, the evil, the ignoble. Thence arose his restlessness.

He rose to the one universal substantiality by putting an end to this

separation of self-consciousness and nature, whereby both alike are

degraded. God was in self-consciousness, it was admitted, but externally,

and as remaining something different from self-consciousness, another

reality; while Nature was made by God, being His creature, not an image

of Him. The goodness of God displayed itself only in final causes, finite

ends, as when it is said: “Bees make honey for man’s food; the cork tree

grows to provide stoppers for bottles.”[73]

As to his reflections, Jacobi has by his recent[74] exposition of them

made it seem as if it were a theory specially characteristic of Bruno

that one living Being, one World-Soul, should penetrate all existence,

and should be the life of all. Bruno asserted, in the first place, the

unity of life and the universality of the World-Soul, and, in the second

place, the indwelling presence of reason; but Bruno in so saying is far

from being original, and in fact this doctrine is a mere echo of the

Alexandrian. But in his writings there are two specially marked features.

The first is the nature of his system, based as it is on his leading

thoughts, or his philosophic principles generally, namely the Idea as

substantial unity. The second, which is closely connected with the first,

is his use of the _Art_ of Lullius; this is specially emphasized and

highly esteemed by him, the art of finding differences in the Idea: it he

wished to bring into special recognition.

a. His philosophic thoughts, to express which he sometimes made use of

Aristotle’s concepts, give evidence of a peculiar, highly strung and

very original mind. The substance of his general reflections is found

in the greatest enthusiasm for the above-mentioned vitality of Nature,

divinity, the presence of reason in nature. His philosophy is thus on

the whole certainly Spinozism, Pantheism. The separation of man from God

or the world, all such relations of externality, have been superadded

to his living idea of the absolute, universal unity of all things, for

the expression of which idea Bruno has been so greatly admired. In his

conception of things the main points are that, on the one hand, he gives

the universal determination of matter, and, on the other hand, that of

form.

α. The unity of life he thus determines as the universal, active

understanding (νοῦς), which manifests itself as the universal form of

all the world, and comprehends all forms in itself; it bears the same

relation to the production of natural objects as does the understanding

of man, and moulds and systematizes them, as the human understanding

moulds the multitude of its concepts. It is the artist within, who shapes

and forms the material without. From within the root or the seed-grain

it makes the shoot come forth; from this again it brings the branches,

and from them the twigs, and from out of the twigs it calls forth the

buds, and leaves, and flowers. All is planned, prepared and perfected

within. In the same way this universal reason within calls back their

saps from the fruits and blossoms to the twigs, and so on. The universe

is thus an infinite animal, in which all things live and move and have

their being in modes the most diverse. The formal understanding is

thus in no wise different from the Final Cause (the Notion of end, the

entelechy, the unmoved principle, which we meet with in Aristotle); but

these are just as truly also active understanding, the efficient cause

(_causa efficiens_), this same producing force. Nature and Spirit are not

separated; their unity is the formal understanding, in which is contained

the pure Notion, not as in consciousness, but as free and independent,

remaining within itself, and at the same time exercising activity and

passing beyond itself. The understanding working towards one particular

end is the inward form of the thing itself, an inward principle of the

understanding. What is continually produced is in accordance with this

form, and contained within it; what appears is determined as the form is

in itself determined.[75] With Proclus in the same way the understanding,

as substantial, is that which includes all things in its unity: life

is the outgoing, the producing force: and the understanding as such

similarly includes the returning force, which brings all things back into

unity. In dealing with Kant’s philosophy we shall have again to mention

this determination of final purpose. That which has organic life, whose

principle is formative, which has its efficacy in itself, and in the same

only remains at home with itself and maintains itself, is nothing but the

end, the activity determined in itself, which in its relation to what is

different does not comport itself as mere cause, but returns upon itself.

β. Bruno, who asserts the final cause to be immediately operative, and

the life immanent in the universe, asserts it also to be existent,

as substance; he is therefore opposed to the conception of a merely

extra-mundane understanding. To a certain extent Bruno distinguishes

form and matter in substance, which itself, as the aforesaid activity

of the Idea, is the unity of form and matter; thus matter has life in

itself. The permanent element in the endless changes of existence is,

he says, the first and absolute matter; although without form, it is

nevertheless the mother of all forms, and receptive of all forms. Because

matter is not without the first universal form, it is itself principle

or in itself final cause. Form is immanent in matter; the one simply

cannot exist without the other; thus matter itself brings about these

changes of form, and the same matter runs through them all. What was at

first seed becomes blade, then ear, then bread, chyle, blood, seed of

animal, an embryo, a human being, a corpse, then once more earth, stone,

or other substance; from sand and water frogs are produced. Here then

we can perceive something which, although it transforms itself into all

these things in turn, yet still in itself remains one and the same. This

matter cannot be a body, for bodies have form; nor can it belong to the

class which we term properties, attributes, or qualities, for these are

liable to change. Thus nothing seems to be eternal and worthy of the name

of a principle, except matter. Many have for this reason held matter to

be the only reality, and all forms to be accidental. This error arises

from the fact of their recognizing only a form of the second kind, and

not that necessary first and eternal form, which is the form and source

of all forms. In the same way the aforesaid matter, on account of its

identity with the understanding which causes form beforehand, is itself

intelligible, as the universal presupposition of all corporeality.

Because it is everything in general, it is nothing in particular, neither

air nor water, nor anything else, abstract or otherwise; it has no

dimensions, in order to have all dimensions. The forms of matter are the

inward power of matter itself; it is, as intelligible, the very totality

of form.[76] This system of Bruno’s is thus objective Spinozism, and

nothing else; one can see how deeply he penetrated.

Bruno here asks the question: “But this first universal form and that

first universal matter, how are they united, inseparable? Different—and

yet one Being?” He answers by making use of the Aristotelian forms of

δύναμις and ἐνέργεια: Matter is to be regarded as potentiality; in this

way all possible forms of existence in a certain sense are included

in the Notion of it. The passivity of matter must be regarded as pure

and absolute. Now it is impossible to attribute existence to a thing

which lacks the power to exist. Existence has, however, such an express

reference to the active mode, that it is at once clear that the one

cannot exist without the other, but that each of them presupposes the

other. If therefore at all times a capacity of working, producing,

creating, was there, so must there also have been at all times a capacity

of being worked upon, produced, created. The perfect potentiality of

the existence of things (matter) cannot precede their actual existence,

and just as little can it remain after that is past. The first and

most perfect principle includes all existence in itself, can be all

things, and is all things. Active power and potentiality, possibility

and actuality are therefore in it one undivided and indivisible

principle.[77] This simultaneousness of acting and being acted upon is a

very important determination; matter is nothing without activity, form

is therefore the power and inward life of matter. If matter were nothing

but indeterminate potentiality, how would the determinate be arrived at?

This simplicity of matter is itself only one moment of form: in wishing

therefore to tear asunder matter and form, matter is at once established

in one determination of form, but in so doing there is immediately

established also the existence of the Other.

Thus the Absolute is determined for Bruno: it is not so with other

things, which may exist and also may not exist, and which may be

determined in one way or in another way. In regard to finite things and

in finite determinations of the understanding the distinction between

form and matter is thus present. The individual man is at every moment

what he may be at that moment, but not everything which he may be in

general and with reference to substance. The things which appear to be

different are only modifications of one single thing which includes in

its existence all other existence. The universe, unbegotten Nature, is,

however, everything which it can be in reality and at one time, because

it includes in itself the whole of matter, as well as the eternal,

unchangeable form of its changing forms. But in its developments from

moment to moment, its particular parts, qualities, individual existences,

in its externality as a whole, it is no more what it is and may be;

but a part such as this is only a shadow of the image of the first

principle.[78] Thus Bruno wrote also a book, _De umbris idearum_.

γ. This is Bruno’s fundamental idea. He says: “To recognize this unity

of form and matter in all things, is what reason is striving to attain

to. But in order to penetrate to this unity, in order to investigate all

the secrets of Nature, we must search into the opposed and contradictory

extremes of things, the maximum and the minimum.” It is in these very

extremes that they are intelligible, and become united in the Notion; and

this union of them is infinite Nature. “To find the point of union is

not the greatest matter; but to develop from the same its very opposite,

this is the real and the deepest secret of the art.”[79] It is saying

much if we speak of knowing the development of the Idea as a necessity

of determinations; we shall see later how Bruno proceeded to do this.

He represents the original principle, which is elsewhere known as the

form, under the Notion of the minimum, which is at the same time the

maximum—One, which at the same time is All; the universe is this One in

All. In the universe, he says, the body is not distinguished from the

point, nor the centre from the circumference, nor the finite from the

infinite, nor the maximum from the minimum. There is nothing but centre

point; or the centre point is everywhere and in everything. The ancients

expressed the same by saying of the Father of the gods, that he really

had his dwelling-place in every point of the universe. It is the universe

that first gives to things true reality; it is the substance of all

things, the monad, the atom, the spirit poured out on all things, the

innermost essence, the pure form.[80]

b. The second object to which Bruno devoted himself was the so-called

Lullian Art, which received its name from its first inventor, the

Scholastic Raymundus Lullus (_supra_, pp. 92-94). Bruno adopted this

and carried it to completion; he termed it also his _ars combinatoria_.

This art is in some respects like what we met with in Aristotle under

the name of the Topics (Vol. II. pp. 217, 218), seeing that both give an

immense number of “places” and determinations which were fixed in the

conception like a table with its divisions, in order that these headings

might be applied to all that came to hand. But the Topics of Aristotle

did this in order to apprehend and determine an object in its various

aspects, while Bruno rather worked for the sake of lightening the task

of memory. He thus really connected the Lullian Art with the art of

mnemonics as practised by the ancients, which has come into notice again

in recent times, and which will be found described in greater detail in

the _Auctor ad Herennium_ (Libr. III. c. 17, _sqq._). To give an example:

one establishes for oneself a certain number of different departments in

the imagination, which are to be chosen at pleasure; there may be perhaps

twelve of these, arranged in sets of three, and indicated by certain

words, such as Aaron, Abimelech, Achilles, Berg, Baum, Baruch, etc., into

which divisions one inserts, as it were, what has to be learnt by heart,

and forms it into a succession of pictures. In this way when we repeat

it, we have not to say it from memory or out of our head, as we are

accustomed to do, but we have only to read it off as if from a table.

The only difficulty lies in making some ingenious connection between the

content in question and the picture; that gives rise to the most unholy

combinations, and the art is therefore not one to be commended. Bruno

also soon abandoned it, since what had been a matter of memory became a

matter of imagination; which was, of course, a descent. But since with

Bruno the diagram is not only a picture of external images, but a system

of universal determinations of thought, he certainly gave to this art a

deeper inward meaning.[81]

α. Bruno passes over to this art from universal ideas which are given.

Since namely one life, one understanding is in all things, Bruno had the

dim hope of apprehending this universal understanding in the totality

of its determinations, and of subsuming all things under it—of setting

up a logical philosophy by its means, and making it applicable in all

directions.[82] He says: The object of consideration therein is the

universe, in so far as it enters into the relation of the true, the

knowable and the rational. Like Spinoza he distinguishes between the

intelligible thing of reason and the actual thing: As metaphysics has for

object the universal thing, which is divided into substance and accident,

so the chief matter is that there is a single and more universal art

which knits together and compasses round the thing of reason and the

actual thing, and recognizes them both as harmonizing with one another,

so that the many, be they of what kind they may, are led back to simple

unity.[83]

β. For Bruno the principle in all this is the understanding generally:

None other than the understanding whose activity extends beyond itself,

which brings into existence the sensuous world. It is related to the

illumination of the spirit as the sun is related to the eye: it relates

therefore to a phenomenal manifold, illuminating this, not itself. The

Other is the active understanding in itself, which is related to the

objects of thought in their various classes, as the eye is to things

visible.[84] The infinite form, the active understanding which dwells

in reason, is the first, the principle, which develops; the process in

some respects resembles what was met with in the Neo-Platonists. Bruno’s

great endeavour is really now to apprehend and demonstrate the modes of

organizing this active understanding.

γ. This is presented more in detail as follows: To the pure truth itself,

the absolute light, man approaches only; his Being is not absolute Being

itself, which alone is the One and First. He rests only under the shadow

of the Idea, whose purity is the light, but which at the same time

partakes of the darkness. The light of substance emanates from this pure

First Light, the light of accident emanates from the light of substance.

This we met with also in Proclus (_supra_, Vol. II. p. 446) as the third

moment in the first triad. This absolute principle in its unity is for

Bruno the first matter, and the first act of this principle he names the

original light (_actus primus lucis_). But substances and accidents,

which are many, cannot receive the full light, they are therefore only

included in the shadow of the light; in like manner the ideas also are

only shadows thereof.[85] The development of Nature goes on from moment

to moment; created things are only a shadow of the first principle, not

the first principle itself.

δ. Bruno continues: From this super-essential (_super-essentiale_)—an

expression which is also met with in Proclus (_supra_, Vol. II. p.

441)—advance is made to the essences, from the essences to that which

is, from that which is to their traces, images and shadows, and that in

a double direction: both towards matter, in order to be produced within

her (these shadows are then present in natural fashion), and also towards

sensation and reason, in order to be known by means of these. Things

withdraw themselves from the First Light towards the darkness. But since

all things in the universe are in close connection, the lower with the

middle, and those with the upper, the compound with the simple, the

simple with those which are more simple, the material with the spiritual,

in order that there may be one universe, one order and government of the

same, one principle and aim, one first and last; so, following the sound

of the lyre of the universal Apollo (an expression which we saw used by

Heraclitus, Vol. I. pp. 284, 285), the lower can be led back step by

step to the higher, as fire was condensed and transformed into air, air

into water, water into earth. Thus One Being is in all. That process is

the same as this return, and they form a circle. Nature within her limits

can produce all from all, and so the understanding can also know all from

all.[86]

ε. The unity of opposites is explained more in detail as follows: The

diversity of shadows is no real opposition. In the same conception the

opposites are known, the beautiful and the ugly, the appropriate and the

inappropriate, the perfect and the imperfect, the good and the evil.

Imperfection, evil, ugliness, do not rest upon special ideas of their

own; they become known in another conception, not in one peculiar to

themselves, which is nothing. For this that is peculiarly theirs is

the non-existent in the existent, the defect in the effect. The first

understanding is the original light; it streams its light out of the

innermost to the outermost, and draws it again from the outermost to

itself. Every Being can, according to its capacity, appropriate somewhat

of this light.[87]

ζ. The real element in things is just that which is intelligible, not

that which is perceived or felt, or what is peculiar to the individual;

whatever else is termed real, the sensuous, is non-Being. All that

comes to pass beneath the sun, all that dwells in the region of matter,

falls under the notion of vanity (finitude). Seek to take from Ideas

a firm basis for thy conceptions, if thou art wise. The pure light of

things is nothing but this knowableness, which proceeds from the first

understanding and is directed towards it; the non-existent is not known.

What is here contrast and diversity, is in the first understanding

harmony and unity. Try therefore if thou canst identify the images thou

hast received, if thou canst harmonize and unite them; thus thou wilt not

render thy mind weary, thy thoughts obscure, and thy memory confused.

Through the idea which is in the understanding a better conception of

anything will be formed than by means of the form of the natural thing

in itself, because this last is more material: but that conception is

reached in a supreme degree through the idea of the object as it exists

in the divine understanding.[88] The differences which are here given,

are therefore no differences at all; but all is harmony. To develop this

was therefore Bruno’s endeavour; and the determinations, as natural in

that divine understanding, correspond with those which appear in the

subjective understanding. Bruno’s art consists only in determining the

universal scheme of form, which includes all things within itself, and in

showing how its moments express themselves in the different spheres of

existence.

η. The main endeavour of Bruno was thus to represent the All and

One, after the method of Lullus, as a system of classes of regular

determinations. Hence in the manner of Proclus he specifies the three

spheres: First, the original form (ὑπερουσία) as the originator of all

forms; secondly, the physical world, which impresses the traces of the

Ideas on the surface of matter, and multiplies the original picture in

countless mirrors set face to face; thirdly, the form of the rational

world, which individualizes numerically for the senses the shadows of the

Ideas, brings them into one, and raises them to general conceptions for

the understanding. The moments of the original form itself are termed

Being, goodness (nature or life), and unity. (Something similar to this

we also met with in Proclus, Vol. II. p. 445) In the metaphysical world

the original form is thing, good, principle of plurality (_ante multa_);

in the physical world it manifests itself in things, goods, individuals;

in the rational world of knowledge it is derived from things, goods and

individuals.[89] Unity is the agent that brings them back once more; and

Bruno, while distinguishing the natural and metaphysical world, seeks to

set up the system of the above determinations, in order to show at once

how the same thing is in one way a natural appearance, and in another way

an object existing for thought.

Since Bruno sought to apprehend this connection more closely, he

considers thinking as a subjective art and activity of the soul,

representing inwardly and in accordance with the ordinary conception, as

it were through an inward writing, what Nature represents externally, as

it were, through an outward writing. Thinking, he says, is the capability

both of receiving into one’s self this external writing of nature and

of imagining and substantiating the inward writing in the outward. This

art of thinking inwardly and organizing outwardly in accordance with the

same, and the capacity to reverse the process—an art possessed by the

soul of man—Bruno places in the closest connection with the art of the

nature of the universe, with the energy of the absolute World-principle,

by means of which all is formed and fashioned. It is one form which

develops; it is the same world-principle which causes form in metals,

plants and animals, and which in man thinks and organizes outside

himself, only that it expresses itself in its operations in an endlessly

varied manner throughout the entire world. Inwardly and outwardly there

is consequently one and the same development of one and the same

principle.[90]

In his _Ars Lulliana_ Bruno made the attempt to determine and systematize

these various writings of the soul, by means of which also the organizing

world-principle reveals itself. He assumes therein twelve principal

kinds of writing, or classes of natural forms, to form a starting-point:

“_Species, Formæ, Simulacra, Imagines, Spectra, Exemplaria, Indicia,

Signa, Notæ, Characteres et Sigilli_. Some kinds of writing are connected

with the external sense, like external forms, pictures and ideals

(_extrinseca forma, imago, exemplar_); these painting and other plastic

arts represent, by imitating Mother Nature. Some are connected with

the inner sense, where—with regard to mass, duration, number—they are

magnified, extended in time and multiplied; such are the products of

fancy. Some are connected with a common point of similarity in several

things; some are so divergent from the objective nature of things that

they are quite imaginary. Finally, some appear to be peculiar to art, as

_signa, notæ, characteres et sigilli_; by means of these the powers of

art are so great that it seems to be able to act independently of Nature,

beyond Nature, and, when the matter in question involves it, even against

Nature.”[91]

So far all, on the whole, goes well; it is the carrying out of the same

scheme in all directions. All respect is due to this attempt to represent

the logical system of the inward artist, the producing thought, in such

a way that the forms of external Nature correspond thereto. But while

the system of Bruno is otherwise a grand one, in it the determinations

of thought nevertheless at once become superficial, or mere dead types,

as in later times was the case with the classification of natural

philosophy; for Bruno merely enumerates the moments and contrasts of

the system, just as the natural philosophers developed the three-fold

character in every sphere, regarded as absolute. Further or more

determinate moments Bruno has done nothing more than collect together;

when he tries to represent them by figures and classifications, the

result is confusion. The twelve forms laid down as basis neither have

their derivation traced nor are they united in one entire system, nor

is the further multiplication deduced. To this part of his subject he

devoted several of his writings (_De sigillis_), and in different works

it is presented in different ways; the appearances of things are as

letters, or symbols, which correspond with thoughts. The idea is on the

whole praiseworthy compared with the fragmentariness of Aristotle and the

Scholastics, according to whom every determination is fixed once for all.

But the carrying out of the idea is in part allied with the Pythagorean

numbers, and consequently unmethodical and arbitrary; and in part we find

metaphorical, allegorical combinations and couplings, where we cannot

follow Bruno; in this attempt to introduce order, all things are mingled

together in the wildest disorder.

It is a great beginning, to have the thought of unity; and the other

point is this attempt to grasp the universe in its development, in the

system of its determinations, and to show how the outward appearance is a

symbol of ideas. These are the two aspects of Bruno’s teaching which had

to be taken into consideration.

4. VANINI.

Julius Cæsar Vanini has also to be mentioned as belonging to this

period; his first name was really Lucilius. He has many points of

similarity with Bruno, and, like him, he suffered as a martyr on account

of philosophy; for he shared Bruno’s fate, which was to be burned at

the stake. He was born in 1586 at Taurozano in the province of Naples.

He wandered from country to country; we find him in Geneva, and then

in Lyons, whence he fled to England in order to save himself from

the Inquisition. After two years he returned to Italy. In Genoa he

taught Natural Philosophy on the system of Averroës, but did not bring

himself into favour. In his travels he met with all manner of strange

adventures, and engaged in many and various disputations on philosophy

and theology. He became more and more an object of suspicion, and fled

from Paris; he was summoned before the tribunal on a charge of impiety,

not of heresy. Franconus, his accuser, stated on oath that Vanini had

uttered blasphemies. Vanini protested that he had remained faithful to

the Catholic Church, and to his belief in the Trinity; and in answer to

the charge of atheism he took up a straw from the ground in the presence

of his judges, and said that even this straw would convince him of

the existence of God. But it was of no avail; in 1619 at Toulouse in

France he was condemned to the stake, and before the carrying out of

this sentence his tongue was torn out by the executioner. How the case

was proved against him is not, however, clear; the proceedings seem to

have been in great part due to personal enmity, and to the zeal for

persecution which filled the clergy in Toulouse.[92]

Vanini derived his chief stimulus from the originality of Cardanus. In

him we see reason and philosophy taking a direction hostile to theology,

while Scholastic philosophy went hand in hand with theology, and theology

was supposed to be confirmed thereby. Art developed in the Catholic

Church, but free thought broke off from, and remained alien to it. In

Bruno and Vanini the Church took her revenge for this; she renounced

science, and took up a position of hostility to it.

Vanini’s philosophy does not go very far; he admires the living energy

of Nature; his reasonings were not deep, but were more of the nature of

fanciful ideas. He always chose the dialogue form; and it is not evident

which of the opinions stated are his own. He wrote commentaries on

Aristotle’s works on Physics. We have two other works by Vanini, which

are very rare. The one is styled: _Amphitheatrum æternæ providentiæ

divino-magicum, christiano-physicum, nec non astrologo-catholicum,

adversus veteres philosophos, Atheos, Epicureos, Peripateticos et

Stoicos. Auctore Julio Cæsare Vanino, Lugd. 1615_; in this he gives a

very eloquent account of all these philosophies and their principles, but

the manner in which he refutes them is rather feeble. The second work is

entitled “On the Wonderful Secrets of Nature, the Queen and Goddess of

Mortals” (_De admirandis Naturæ, reginæ Deæque mortalium, arcanis libr.

IV., Lutetiæ 1616_); it was printed “with the approval of the Sorbonne,”

which at first found in it nothing “which contradicted and was hostile

to the Catholic Apostolic and Roman religion.” It contains scientific

investigations into various matters belonging to physics and natural

history, and is also in dialogue form, without definite indication being

given as to which of the characters is made the mouthpiece of Vanini’s

own opinions. What one finds is assurances from him that he would believe

this or that doctrine if he had not received Christian teaching. Vanini’s

tendency, however, was towards naturalism; he showed that it is Nature

that is the Deity, that all things had a mechanical genesis. He therefore

explained the whole universe in its connection by efficient causes alone,

not by final causes; but the statement of this is made in such a way

that the writer does not give it as his own conclusion.[93]

Thus Vanini placed reason in opposition to faith and church dogma, as

had already been done by Pomponatius (_supra_, p. 111) and others.

Yet all the time that they were proving by reason this or that dogma

which is in direct contradiction to the Christian belief, they were

declaring that they submitted their conviction to the Church—a course

which was always adopted by Bayle afterwards in the reformed church.

Another practice of these philosophers was to bring forward all sorts of

arguments and theories contradictory of theological dogmas, as so many

insoluble difficulties and contradictions brought about by reason, which

were, however, by them submitted to faith. Thus, for instance, Bayle

says in the article “Manichæans” found in his critical _Dictionnaire_—in

which he touches on many philosophic conceptions—that the assertion of

the existence of two principles cannot be disproved, but that we must

submit herein to the Church. In this fashion all possible arguments

were advanced against the Church. Vanini thus states objections against

the Atonement, and brings forward arguments to prove that Nature is

God. Now men were convinced that reason could not be contradictory of

the Christian dogmas, and no faith was placed in the sincerity of a

submission which consisted in giving up what one was convinced of by

reason; therefore Galileo, because he defended the system of Copernicus,

had to recant on his knees, and Vanini was burned at the stake. Both of

them had in vain chosen the dialogue form for their writings.

Vanini certainly made one of the speakers in the Dialogues prove (_De

naturæ arcanis_, p. 420) even “out of the text of the Bible, that the

devil is mightier than God,” and that therefore God does not rule the

world. Among his arguments are the following: It was against the will

of God that Adam and Eve sinned, and thus brought the whole human race

to ruin (_ad interitum_): Christ also was crucified by the powers of

darkness. Moreover it is the will of God that all men should be saved.

But of Catholics there are very few in comparison with the rest of the

world, and the Jews often fell away from their faith; the Catholic

religion extends only over Spain, France, Italy, Poland and a part of

Germany. If there were to be deducted also the atheists, blasphemers,

heretics, whoremongers, adulterers, and so on, there would be still fewer

left. Consequently the devil is mightier than God. These are arguments

of reason; they are not to be refuted; but he submitted himself to the

faith. It is remarkable that no one believed this of him; the reason

thereof being that it was impossible for him to be in earnest with the

refutation of what he asserted to be rational. That the refutation was

but weak and subjective does not justify anyone in doubting Vanini’s

sincerity; for poor reasons may be convincing for the subject, just as

the subject holds to his own rights in respect of objective matters. What

lies at the bottom of the proceedings against Vanini is this, that when a

man by means of his reason has come to perceive something which seems to

him incontrovertible, he cannot but adhere to these definite perceptions,

he cannot believe what is opposed to them. It is impossible to believe

that faith is stronger in him than this power of perception.

The Church in this way fell into the strange contradiction of condemning

Vanini, because he did not find her doctrines in accordance with reason,

and yet submitted himself to them; she thus appeared to demand—a demand

which she emphasized with the burning pile—not that her doctrines should

be considered above reason, but in accordance with it, and that reason

should have merely the formal function of explaining the content of

theology, without adding anything of her own. This susceptibility of the

Church is inconsistent, and entangled her in contradictions. For in

earlier times she certainly admitted that reason could not grasp what

was revealed, and that it was consequently a matter of little importance

to refute and solve by reason the objections which reason itself brought

forward. But as she now would not permit the contradiction of faith

and reason to be taken seriously, but burned Vanini at the stake as an

atheist for professing so to do, it was implied that the doctrine of the

Church cannot contradict reason, while man has yet to submit reason to

the Church.

There is kindled here the strife between so-called revelation and reason,

in which the latter emerges independently, and the former is separated

from it. Up to this time both were one, or the light of man was the

light of God; man had not a light of his own, but his light was held to

be the divine. The Scholastics had no knowledge having a content of its

own beyond the content of religion; philosophy remained entirely formal.

But now it came to have a content of its own, which was opposed to the

content of religion; or reason felt at least that it had its own content,

or was opposing the form of reasonableness to the immediate content of

the other.

This opposition had a different meaning in former times from what it

bears now-a-days; the earlier meaning is this, that faith is the doctrine

of Christianity, which is given as truth, and by which as truth man has

to remain. We have here faith in this content, and opposed to this stands

conviction by means of reason. But now this faith is transferred into the

thinking consciousness itself; it is a relation of self-consciousness

itself to the facts which it finds within itself, not to the objective

content of the doctrine. In respect to the earlier opposition a

distinction must be drawn in the objective creed; the one part of it is

the teaching of the Church as dogma, the teaching as to the nature of

God, that He is Three in One; to this pertains the appearing of God in

the world, in the flesh, the relation of man to this divine nature, His

holiness and divinity. That is the part which has to do with the eternal

verities, the part which is of absolute interest for men; this part is

in its content essentially speculative, and can be object only for the

speculative Notion. The other part, belief in which is also required, has

reference to other external conceptions, which are connected with that

content; to this pertains the whole extent of what belongs to history,

in the Old and New Testament as well as in the Church. A belief in all

this finite element may be demanded also. If a man, for instance, did

not believe in ghosts, he would be taken for a free-thinker, an atheist:

it would be just the same if a man did not believe that Adam in Paradise

ate of the forbidden fruit. Both parts are placed upon the one level; but

it tends to the destruction of Church and faith, when belief is demanded

for these parts alike. It is to the external conceptions that attention

has been chiefly directed by those who have been decried as opponents of

Christianity and as atheists, down to the time of Voltaire. When external

conceptions such as these are held to firmly, it is inevitable that

contradictions should be pointed out.

5. PETRUS RAMUS.

Pierre de la Ramée was born in 1515 in Vermandois, where his father

worked as a day-labourer. He early betook himself to Paris, in order

to satisfy his desire for learning: he was, however, obliged on two

occasions to leave it on account of the difficulty he experienced in

procuring a subsistence, before he obtained employment as a servant at

the _Collége de Navarre_. Here he found an opportunity of extending his

knowledge; he occupied himself with the Aristotelian philosophy and with

mathematics, and he distinguished himself in disputation by extraordinary

oratorical and dialectical readiness. In a disputation for obtaining the

degree of _magister_, he came publicly forward with a thesis that caused

a great sensation: “All that Aristotle taught is not true;” and the

honour fell to him. Having became _magister_, he attacked so bitterly and

violently the Aristotelian logic and dialectic, that the government took

notice of it. He was now accused of undermining by his anti-Aristotelian

opinions the foundations of religion and science; this accusation was

brought before the parliament of Paris by the enemies of Ramus, as a

criminal case. But because the parliament appeared disposed to act in a

judicial way, and seemed favourably inclined to Ramus, the complaint was

withdrawn, and brought before the council of the king. The latter decided

that Ramus should hold a disputation with his opponent Goveanus before a

special commission of five judges, two of whom Goveanus was to choose,

and two Ramus, while the king was to appoint the president; these judges

were to lay their opinion of the result before the king. The interest

of the public was intense, but the contest was conducted in the most

pedantic way. On the first day Ramus maintained that the Aristotelian

logic and dialectic were imperfect and faulty, because the _Organon_ did

not begin with a definition. The commission decided that a disputation or

a dissertation requires indeed a definition, but in dialectic it is not

necessary. On the second day Ramus criticized the Aristotelian logic for

its want of arrangement; this, he asserted, is essential. The majority

of the judges, consisting of the commissioner of the king and the two

nominees of the opponent Goveanus, now wished to annul the investigation

as far as it had gone, and to set to work in another way, since the

assertions of Ramus put them in a difficulty. He appealed to the king,

who, however, refused to hear him, and decided that the decision of

the judges should be considered final. Ramus was hence condemned, but

the other two took no share in the matter, and, indeed, resigned. The

decision was publicly placarded in all the streets of Paris, and sent

to all the academies of learning throughout Europe. Plays aimed against

Ramus were performed in the theatres, greatly to the delight of the

Aristotelians. The public generally took a very lively interest in such

disputes, and a number of contests of this kind had already taken place

on similar questions of the schools. For example, the professors in a

royal _Collége_ disputed with the theologians of the Sorbonne whether

_quidam_, _quisquis_, _quoniam_ should be said or _kidem_, _kiskis_,

_koniam_, and from this dispute a case before parliament arose, because

the doctors took away his benefice from a theologian who said _quisquis_.

Another hot and bitter controversy came before the magistrates as to

whether _ego amat_ was as correct as _ego amo_, and this dispute had

to be suppressed by them. Finally Ramus obtained a public educational

appointment, a professorship in Paris; but because he had become a

Huguenot he had to vacate this office several times in the internal

disquietude that prevailed; on one occasion he even went to travel in

Germany. On St. Bartholomew’s Eve in 1572, Ramus finally fell, murdered

through the instrumentality of his enemies; one of his colleagues who was

among his bitterest enemies, Charpentier, had engaged assassins for the

purpose, by whom Ramus was frightfully maltreated, and then thrown down

from an upper window.[94]

Ramus aroused great interest, more especially by his attacks on the

Aristotelian dialectic as it had hitherto existed, and he contributed

very greatly to the simplification of the formal nature of the rules

of dialectic. He is specially famed for his extreme hostility to the

scholastic logic, and for having set up in opposition to it a logic of

Ramus—an opposition which has spread so far that even in the history

of literature in Germany we find various factions of Ramists and

anti-Ramists and semi-Ramists mentioned.

There are many other remarkable men who come within this period and who

are usually mentioned in the history of Philosophy, such as Michael

of Montaigne, Charron, Macchiavelli, etc. The popular writings of

the first two contain pleasing, refined and spiritual thoughts on

human life, social relationships, the right and good. The efforts

of such men are counted as philosophy in as far as they have drawn

from their consciousness, from the sphere of human experience, from

observation, from what takes place in the world and in the heart. It

is in a philosophy of life that they have comprehended and imparted

such experiences; they are thus both entertaining and instructive. In

accordance with the principle on which they worked, they entirely forsook

the sources from which Scholastic knowledge had up to this time been

derived, and also the methods hitherto prevalent of acquiring it. But

because they do not make the question of highest interest to Philosophy

the object of their investigation, and do not reason from thought, they

do not properly belong to the history of Philosophy, but to general

culture and to the healthy human understanding. They have contributed

to man’s taking a greater interest in his own affairs, to his obtaining

confidence in himself; and this is their main service. Man has looked

within his heart again and given to it its proper value; then he has

restored to his own heart and understanding, to his faith, the essence of

the relationship of the individual to absolute existence. Although still

a divided heart, this division, this yearning, has become a disunion

within itself; and man feels this disunion within himself, and along with

that his rest in himself. But here we must notice a transition, with

which we are concerned, on account of the universal principle which in it

is known in a higher way and in its true authority.

C. THE REFORMATION.

It was in the Lutheran Reformation that the great revolution appeared,

as, after the eternal conflicts and the terrible discipline which the

stiff-necked Germanic character had undergone and which it had to

undergo, mind came to the consciousness of reconciliation with itself,

a reconciliation whose form required that it should be brought about

within the mind. From the Beyond man was thus called into the presence

of spirit, as earth and her bodily objects, human virtues and morality,

the individual heart and conscience, began to have some value to him. In

the church, if marriage was not held to be immoral, self-restraint and

celibacy were considered higher, but now marriage came to be looked on as

a divine institution. Then poverty was esteemed better than possession,

and to live on alms was considered higher than to support oneself

honestly by the work of one’s hands; now, however, it becomes known that

poverty is not the most moral life, for this last consists in living by

one’s work and taking pleasure in the fruits thereof. The blind obedience

by which human freedom was suppressed, was the third vow taken by the

monks, as against which freedom, like marriage and property, was now also

recognized as divine. Similarly on the side of knowledge man turned back

into himself from the Beyond of authority; and reason was recognized

as the absolutely universal, and hence as divine. Now it was perceived

that it is in the mind of man that religion must have its place, and

the whole process of salvation be gone through—that man’s salvation is

his own affair, and that by it he enters into relationship with his

conscience and into immediate connection with God, requiring no mediation

of priests having the so-called means of grace within their hands. There

is indeed a mediation present still by means of doctrine, perception, the

observation of self and of one’s actions; but that is a mediation without

a separating wall, while formerly a brazen wall of division was present

separating the laity from the church. It is thus the spirit of God that

must dwell within the heart of man, and this indwelling spirit must

operate in him.

Although Wycliffe, Huss, and Arnold of Brescia had started from

scholastic philosophy with similar ends in view, they did not possess

the character requisite to enable them modestly, and without any learned

scholastic convictions, to set aside everything but mind and spirit.

It was with Luther first of all that freedom of spirit began to exist

in embryo, and its form indicated that it would remain in embryo. This

beginning of the reconciliation of man with himself, whereby divinity

is brought into man’s actuality, is thus, at first principle alone. The

unfolding of this freedom and the self-reflecting grasp of the same was a

subsequent step, in the same way as was the working out of the Christian

doctrine in the Church in its time. The subjective thought and knowledge

of man, which enables him, being satisfied in his activity, to have joy

in his work and to consider his work as something both permissible and

justifiable—this value accorded to subjectivity now required a higher

confirmation, and the highest confirmation, in order to be made perfectly

legitimate, and even to become absolute duty; and to be able to receive

this confirmation it had to be taken in its purest form. The mere

subjectivity of man, the fact that he has a will, and with it directs

his actions this way or that, does not constitute any justification: for

else the barbarous will, which fulfils itself in subjective ends alone,

such as cannot subsist before reason, would be justified. If, further,

self-will obtains the form of universality, if its ends are conformable

to reason, and it is apprehended as the freedom of mankind, as legal

right which likewise belongs to others, there is therein only indeed

the element of permission, but still there is much in the end being

recognized as permitted, and not as absolutely sinful. Art and industry

receive through this principle new activity, since now their activity is

justified. But we always find the principle of personal spirituality and

independence at first limited to particular spheres of objects merely,

in accordance with its content. Not until this principle is known and

recognized in relation to the absolutely existent object, _i.e._ in

relation to God, and is likewise grasped in its perfect purity, free from

desires and finite ends, does it receive its highest confirmation, and

that is its sanctification through religion.

This, then, is the Lutheran faith, in accordance with which man stands

in a relation to God which involves his personal existence: that is, his

piety and the hope of his salvation and the like all demand that his

heart, his subjectivity, should be present in them. His feelings, his

faith, the inmost certainty of himself, in short, all that belongs to

him is laid claim to, and this alone can truly come under consideration:

man must himself repent from his heart and experience contrition; his

own heart must be filled with the Holy Ghost. Thus here the principle

of subjectivity, of pure relation to me personally, _i.e._ freedom,

is recognized, and not merely so, but it is clearly demanded that

in religious worship this alone should be considered. The highest

confirmation of the principle is that it alone has value in the eyes of

God, that faith and the subjection of the individual heart are alone

essential: in this way this principle of Christian freedom is first

presented and brought to a true consciousness. Thereby a place has been

set apart in the depths of man’s inmost nature, in which alone he is

at home with himself and at home with God; and with God alone is he

really himself, in the conscience he can be said to be at home with

himself. This sense of being at home should not be capable of being

destroyed through others; no one should presume to have a place therein.

All externality in relation to me is thereby banished, just as is the

externality of the Host; it is only in communion and faith that I stand

in relation to God. The distinction between the laity and the priests

is by it removed; there are no longer any laymen, for in religion each

by himself is enjoined to know personally what it is. Responsibility is

not to be avoided; good works without spiritual reality in them are no

longer of avail; there must be the heart which relates itself directly to

God without mediation, without the Virgin, and without the Saints.

This is the great principle—that all externality disappears in the

point of the absolute relation to God; along with this externality,

this estrangement of self, all servitude has also disappeared. With

it is connected our ceasing to tolerate prayer in foreign tongues, or

to study the sciences in such. In speech man is productive; it is the

first externality that he gives himself, the simplest form of existence

which he reaches in consciousness. What man represents to himself, he

inwardly places before himself as spoken. This first form is broken

up and rendered foreign if man is in an alien tongue to express or

conceive to himself what concerns his highest interest. This breach with

the first entrance into consciousness is accordingly removed; to have

one’s own right to speak and think in one’s own language really belongs

to liberty. This is of infinite importance, and without this form of

being-at-home-with-self subjective freedom could not have existed; Luther

could not have accomplished his Reformation without translating the

Bible into German. Now the principle of subjectivity has thus become a

moment in religion itself, and in this way it has received its absolute

recognition, and has been grasped as a whole in the form in which it can

only be a moment in religion. The injunction to worship God in spirit

is now fulfilled. Spirit, however, is merely conditioned by the free

spirituality of the subject. For it is this alone which can be related

to spirit; a subject who is not free does not stand in an attitude

of spirituality, does not worship God in spirit. This is the general

signification of the principle.

Now this principle was at first grasped in relation to religious objects

only, and thereby it has indeed received its absolute justification,

but still it has not been extended to the further development of the

subjective principle itself. Yet in so far as man has come to the

consciousness of being reconciled to himself, and of only being able to

reconcile himself in his personal existence, he has in his actuality

likewise attained another form. The otherwise hearty and vigorous man may

also, in as far as he enjoys, do so with a good conscience; the enjoyment

of life for its own sake is no longer regarded as something which is to

be given up, for monkish renunciation is renounced. But to any other

content the principle did not at first extend. Yet further, the religious

content has more specially been apprehended as concrete, as it is for

the recollection, and into this spiritual freedom the beginning and the

possibility of an unspiritual mode of regarding things has thus entered.

The content of the _Credo_, speculative as it is in itself, has, that is

to say, an historical side. Within this barren form the old faith of the

church has been admitted and allowed to exist, so that in this form it

has to be regarded by the subject as the highest truth. The result then

follows that all development of the dogmatic content in a speculative

manner is quite set aside. What was required is man’s inward assurance of

his deliverance, of his salvation—the relation of the subjective spirit

to the absolute, the form of subjectivity as aspiration, repentance,

conversion. This new principle has been laid down as paramount, so

that the content of truth is clearly of importance; but the teaching

respecting the nature and the process of God is grasped in the form in

which it at first appears for the ordinary conception. Not only have all

this finality, externality, unspirituality, this formalism of scholastic

philosophy, been on the one hand discarded, and with justice, but, on

the other, the philosophic development of the doctrines of the church

has been also set aside, and this is done in connection with the very

fact that the subject is immersed in his own heart. This immersion, his

penitence, contrition, conversion, this occupation of the subject with

himself, has become the moment of first importance; but the subject has

not immersed himself in the content, and the earlier immersion of spirit

therein has also been rejected. Even to this present day we shall find

in the Catholic Church and in her dogmas the echoes, and so to speak

the heritage of the philosophy of the Alexandrian school; in it there

is much more that is philosophic and speculative than in the dogmatism

of Protestantism, even if there is still in this an objective element,

and if it has not been made perfectly barren, as though the content were

really retained only in the form of history. The connection of Philosophy

with the theology of the Middle Ages has thus in the Catholic Church

been retained in its essentials; in Protestantism, on the contrary, the

subjective religious principle has been separated from Philosophy, and

it is only in Philosophy that it has arisen in its true form again. In

this principle the religious content of the Christian Church is thus

retained, and it obtains its confirmation through the testimony of spirit

that this content shall only hold good for me in as far as it makes

its influence felt in my conscience and heart. This is the meaning of

the words: “If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine

whether it be of God.” The criterion of truth is how it is confirmed in

my heart; the fact that I judge and know rightly—or that what I hold

to be true is the truth—must be revealed to my heart. Truth is what it

is in _my_ mind; and, on the other hand, my spirit is only then in its

proper attitude to truth when truth is within it, when the spirit and

its content are related thus. One cannot be isolated from the other.

The content has not thus the confirmation in itself which was given to

it by philosophical theology in the fact that the speculative Idea made

itself therein effectual; neither has it the historic confirmation which

is given to a content in so far as it has an outward and historic side

in which historic witnesses are heard in evidence, and in which its

correctness is determined by their testimony. The doctrine has to prove

itself by the condition of my heart, by penitence, conversion and joy

in God. In doctrine we begin with the external content, and thus it is

external only; but taken thus, independently of the state of my mind,

it properly speaking has no significance. Now this beginning is, as

Christian baptism and education, a working upon the nature in addition to

an acquaintance with externals. The truth of the gospel and of Christian

doctrines only, however, exists in true relation to the same; it is

really so to speak a use of the content to make it educative. And this is

just what has been said, that the nature is reconstructed and sanctified

in itself, and it is this sanctification for which the content is a true

one. No further use can be made of the content than to build up and

edify the mind, and awaken it to assurance, joy, penitence, conversion.

Another and wrong relation to the content is to take it in an external

way, _e.g._ according to the great new principle of exegesis, and to

treat the writings of the New Testament like those of a Greek, Latin or

other author, critically, philologically, historically. Spirit is alone

in true relation to spirit; and it is a wrong beginning of a wooden and

unyielding exegesis to prove in such an external and philological way

the truth of the Christian religion. This has been done by orthodoxy,

which thereby renders the content devoid of spirituality. This, then, is

the first relation of spirit to this content; here the content is indeed

essential, but it is as essential that the holy and sanctifying spirit

should bear a relation to it.

This spirit is, however, in the second place really thinking spirit

likewise. Thought as such must also develop itself therein, and that

really as this form of inmost unity of spirit with itself; thought

must come to the distinction and contemplation of this content, and

pass over into this form of the purest unity of spirit with itself. At

first thought, however, reveals itself as abstract thought alone, and

it possesses as such a relation to theology and religion. The content

which is here in question, even in so far as it is historic merely and

externally accepted, must yet be religious; the unfolding of the nature

of God must be present therein. In this we have the further demand

that the thought for which the inward nature of God is, should also

set itself in relation to this content. But inasmuch as thought is at

first understanding and the metaphysic of the understanding, it will

remove from the content the rational Idea and make it so empty that only

external history remains, which is devoid of interest.

The third position arrived at is that of concrete speculative thought.

According to the standpoint which has just been given, and as religious

feeling and its form are here determined, all speculative content as

such, as well as its developments, are at first rejected. And as for the

enrichment of the Christian conceptions through the treasures of the

philosophy of the ancient world, and through the profound ideas of all

earlier oriental religions, and the like,—all this is set aside. The

content had objectivity; but this merely signified that the objective

content, without subsisting for itself, was to constitute the beginning

only, on which the mind had spiritually to build up and sanctify itself.

All the enrichment of the content whereby it became philosophic, is thus

abandoned, and what follows later simply is that the mind, as thinking,

again immerses itself in itself, in order to be concrete and rational.

What forms the basis of the Reformation is the abstract moment of a mind

being within self, of freedom, of coming to self; freedom signifies the

life of the spirit in being turned back within itself in the particular

content which appears as another; while spirit is not free if it allows

this other-being, either unassimilated or dead, to exist in it as

something foreign. In as far as spirit now goes on to knowledge, to

spiritual determinations, and as it looks around and comes forth as a

content, so far will it conduct itself therein as in its own domain,

as in its concrete world, so to speak—and it will there really assert

and possess its own. This concrete form of knowledge which, however, in

the beginning remains but dim, we have now to consider, and it forms

the third period of our treatise, into which we properly step with the

Reformation, although Bruno, Vanini and Ramus, who lived later, still

belong to the Middle Ages.

PART THREE

MODERN PHILOSOPHY

INTRODUCTION

If we cast a glance back over the period just traversed, we find that

in it a turning-point had been reached, that the Christian religion

had placed its absolute content in the mind and will of man, and that

it was thus, as a divine and supersensuous content, separated from the

world and shut up within itself in the centre-point of the individual.

Over against the religious life an external world stood as a natural

world—a world of heart or feeling, of desire, of human nature—which

had value only in as far as it was overcome. This mutual independence

of the two worlds had much attention bestowed on it throughout the

Middle Ages; the opposition was attacked on all quarters and in the end

overcome. But since the relation of mankind to the divine life exists

upon earth, this conquest at first presented the appearance of bringing

with it the destruction of the church and of the eternal through the

sensuous desires of man. The eternal truth was likewise grafted upon the

dry, formal understanding, so that we might say that the separation of

self-consciousness has in itself disappeared, and thereby a possibility

has been given of obtaining reconciliation. But because this implicit

union of the Beyond and the Here was of so unsatisfactory a nature that

the better feelings were aroused and forced to turn against it, the

Reformation made its appearance, partly, no doubt, as a separation from

the Catholic Church, but partly as a reformation from within. There

is a mistaken idea that the Reformation only effected a separation

from the Catholic Church; Luther just as truly reformed the Catholic

Church, the corruption of which one learns from his writings, and from

the reports of the emperors and of the empire to the Pope; if further

evidence be required, we need only read the accounts given even by the

Catholic bishops, the Fathers of the councils at Constance, Basle, &c.,

of the condition of the Catholic priesthood and of the Roman Court. The

principle of the inward reconciliation of spirit, which was in itself the

very Idea of Christianity, was thus again estranged, and appeared as a

condition of external, unreconciled alienation and discord; this gives

us an example of the slow operation of the world-spirit in overcoming

this externality. It eats away the inward substance, but the appearance,

the outward form, still remains; at the end, however, it is an empty

shell, the new form breaks forth. In such times this spirit appears as

if it—having so far proceeded in its development at a snail’s pace, and

having even retrograded and become estranged from itself—had suddenly

adopted seven-leagued boots.

Since thus the reconciliation of self-consciousness with the present is

implicitly accomplished, man has attained to confidence in himself and

in his thought, in sensuous nature outside of and within him; he has

discovered an interest and pleasure in making discoveries both in nature

and the arts. In the affairs of this world the understanding developed;

man became conscious of his will and his achievements, took pleasure

in the earth and its soil, as also in his occupations, because right

and understanding were there present. With the discovery of gunpowder

the individual passion of battle was lost. The romantic impulse towards

a casual kind of bravery passed into other adventures, not of hate or

revenge, or the so-called deliverance from what men considered the

wrongs of innocence, but more harmless adventures, the exploration of the

earth, or the discovery of the passage to the East Indies. America was

discovered, its treasures and people—nature, man himself; navigation was

the higher romance of commerce. The present world was again present to

man as worthy of the interests of mind; thinking mind was again capable

of action. Now the Reformation of Luther had inevitably to come—the

appeal to the _sensus communis_ which does not recognize the authority of

the Fathers or of Aristotle, but only the inward personal spirit which

quickens and animates, in contradistinction to works. In this way the

Church lost her power against it, for her principle was within it and no

longer lacking to it. To the finite and present due honour is accorded;

from this honour the work of science proceeds. We thus see that the

finite, the inward and outward present, becomes a matter of experience,

and through the understanding is elevated into universality; men desire

to understand laws and forces, _i.e._ to transform the individual of

perceptions into the form of universality. Worldly matters demand to be

judged of in a worldly way; the judge is thinking understanding. The

other side is that the eternal, which is in and for itself true, is also

known and comprehended through the pure heart itself; the individual mind

appropriates to itself the eternal. This is the Lutheran faith without

any other accessories—works, as they were called. Everything had value

only as it was grasped by the heart, and not as a mere thing. The content

ceases to be an objective thing; God is thus in spirit alone, He is not a

beyond but the truest reality of the individual.

Pure thought is likewise one form of inwardness; it also approaches

absolute existence and finds itself justified in apprehending the same.

The philosophy of modern times proceeds from the principle which ancient

philosophy had reached, the standpoint of actual self-consciousness—it

has as principle the spirit that is present to itself; it brings the

standpoint of the Middle Ages, the diversity between what is thought

and the existent universe, into opposition, and it has to do with the

dissolution of this same opposition. The main interest hence is, not so

much the thinking of the objects in their truth, as the thinking and

understanding of the objects, the thinking this unity itself, which is

really the being conscious of a presupposed object. The getting rid of

the formal culture of the logical understanding and the monstrosities

of which it was composed, was more essential than the extension of it:

investigation in such a case becomes dissipated and diffused, and passes

into the false infinite. The general points of view which in modern

philosophy we reach are hence somewhat as follows:—

1. The concrete form of thought which we have here to consider on its own

account, really appears as subjective with the reflection of implicitude,

so that this has an antithesis in existence; and the interest is then

altogether found in grasping the reconciliation of this opposition in its

highest existence, _i.e._ in the most abstract extremes. This highest

severance is the opposition between thought and Being, the comprehending

of whose unity from this time forward constitutes the interest of all

philosophies. Here thought is more independent, and thus we now abandon

its unity with theology; it separates itself therefrom, just as with the

Greeks it separated itself from mythology, the popular religion, and did

not until the time of the Alexandrians seek out these forms again and

fill the mythological conceptions with the form of thought. The bond

remains, but for this reason it is clearly implicit: theology throughout

is merely what philosophy is, for this last is simply thought respecting

it. It does not help theology to strive against philosophy, or to say

that it wishes to know nothing about it, and that philosophic maxims

are thus to be set aside. It has always to do with the thought that it

brings along with it, and these its subjective conceptions, its home and

private metaphysics, are thus frequently a quite uncultured, uncritical

thought—the thought of the street. These general conceptions are, indeed,

connected with particular subjective conviction, and this last is said to

prove the Christian content to be true in a sense all its own; but these

thoughts which constitute the criterion are merely the reflections and

opinions which float about the surface of the time. Thus, when thought

comes forth on its own account, we thereby separate ourselves from

theology; we shall, however, consider one other in whom both are still

in unity. This individual is Jacob Boehme, for since mind now moves in

its own domains, it is found partly in the natural and finite world, and

partly in the inward, and this at first is the Christian.

While earlier than this, moreover, the spirit, distracted by outward

things, had to make its influence felt in religion and in the secular

life, and came to be known in the popular philosophy so-called, it

was only in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that the genuine

Philosophy re-appeared, which seeks to grasp the truth as truth because

man in thought is infinitely free to comprehend himself and nature, and

along with that seeks to understand the present of rationality, reality,

universal law itself. For this is ours, since it is subjectivity. The

principle of modern philosophy is hence not a free and natural thought,

because it has the opposition of thought and nature before it as a

fact of which it is conscious. Spirit and nature, thought and Being,

are the two infinite sides of the Idea, which can for the first time

truly make its appearance when its sides are grasped for themselves in

their abstraction and totality. Plato comprehended it as the bond, as

limiting and as infinite, as one and many, simple and diverse, but not as

thought and Being; when we first thinkingly overcome this opposition it

signifies comprehending the unity. This is the standpoint of philosophic

consciousness generally; but the way in which this unity must be

thinkingly developed is a double one. Philosophy hence falls into the two

main forms in which the opposition is resolved, into a realistic and an

idealistic system of philosophy, _i.e._ into one which makes objectivity

and the content of thought to arise from the perceptions, and one which

proceeds to truth from the independence of thought.

a. Experience constitutes the first of these methods, viz. Realism.

Philosophy now signified, or had as its main attribute, self-thought and

the acceptance of the present as that in which truth lay, and which was

thereby knowable. All that is speculative is pared and smoothed down in

order to bring it under experience. This present is the existent external

nature, and spiritual activity as the political world and as subjective

activity. The way to truth was to begin from this hypothesis, but not to

remain with it in its external self-isolating actuality, but to lead it

to the universal.

α. The activities of that first method operate, to begin with, on

physical nature, from the observation of which men derive universal

laws, and on this basis their knowledge is founded; the science of

nature, however, only reaches to the stage of reflection. This kind of

experimental physics was once called, and is still called philosophy,

as Newton’s _Principia philosophiæ naturalis_ (Vol. I. p. 59) show.

This work is one in which the methods of the finite sciences through

observation and deduction are alone present—those sciences which the

French still call the _sciences exactes_. To this, the understanding

of the individual, piety was opposed, and hence in this respect

philosophy was termed worldly wisdom (Vol. I. p. 60). Here the Idea in

its infinitude is not itself the object of knowledge; but a determinate

content is raised into the universal, or this last in its determinateness

for the understanding is derived from observation, just as is, for

instance, done in Keppler’s Laws. In Scholastic philosophy, on the

other hand, man’s power of observation was set aside, and disputations

respecting nature at that time proceeded from abstruse hypotheses.