Spinoza then ascribes freedom and necessity to God: “God is the absolute

free cause, who is determined by nothing outside of Himself, for He

exists solely by the necessity of His nature. There is no cause which

inwardly or outwardly moves Him to act, except the perfection of His

nature. His activity is by the laws of His Being necessary and eternal;

what therefore follows from His absolute nature, from His attributes,

is eternal, as it follows from the nature of the triangle from eternity

and to eternity that its three angles are equal to two right angles.”

That is to say, His Being is His absolute power; _actus_ and _potentia_,

Thought and Being, are in Him one. God has not therefore any other

thoughts which He could not have actualized. “God is the immanent cause

of all things, not the transient (_transiens_),” _i.e._, external

cause. “His essence and His existence are the same, namely, the truth.

A thing which is determined to perform some action, is, since God is

cause, necessarily determined thereto by God; and a thing which is thus

determined cannot render itself undetermined. In nature nothing is

contingent. Will is not a free cause, but only a necessary cause, only a

mode; it is therefore determined by another. God acts in accordance with

no final causes (_sub ratione boni_). Those who assert that He does so,

appear to establish something apart from God, which does not depend on

God, and which God in His working keeps in view, as though it were an

end. If this view is taken, God is not a free cause, but is subject to

fate. It is equally inadmissible to subject all things to the arbitrary

pleasure of God, _i.e._, to His indifferent will.”[197] He is determined

solely by His own nature; the activity of God is thus His power, and that

is necessity. He is then absolute power in contrast to wisdom, which

sets up definite aims, and consequently limitations; particular aims,

thoughts of what is about to come to pass, and the like are therefore put

out of the question. But beyond this universal, no advance is made; for

it must be noticed as specially singular, that Spinoza in the fiftieth

Letter (Oper. T. I. p. 634) says that every determination is a negation.

Moreover, if God is the cause of the world, it is implied that He is

finite; for the world is here put beside God as something different from

Him.

b. The greatest difficulty in Spinoza is, in the distinctions to which

he comes, to grasp the relation of this determinate to God, at the same

time preserving the determination. “God is a thinking Being, because all

individual thoughts are modes which express God’s nature in a certain

and determinate manner; there pertains therefore to God an attribute the

conception of which all individual thoughts involve, and by means of this

they also are conceived. God is an extended Being for the same reason.”

This means that the same substance, under the attribute of thought, is

the intelligible world, and under the attribute of extension, is nature;

nature and thought thus both express the same Essence of God. Or, as

Spinoza says, “The order and system of natural things is the same as

the order of the thoughts. Thus, for instance, the circle which exists

in nature, and the idea of the existing circle, which is also in God,

are one and the same thing” (they are one and the same content), “which

is” merely “expressed by means of different attributes. If we therefore

regard nature either under the attribute of extension or of thought,

or under any other attribute whatever, we shall find one and the same

connection of causes, _i.e._, the same sequence of things. The formal

Being of the idea of the circle can be conceived only by means of the

mode of thought, as its proximate cause, and this mode again by means of

another, and so on infinitely; so that we must explain the order of the

whole of nature, or the connection of causes, by the attribute of thought

alone, and if things are considered by the attribute of extension, they

must be considered only by the attribute of extension,—and the same holds

good of other causes.”[198] It is one and the same system, which at one

time appears as nature, and at another time in the form of thought.

But Spinoza does not demonstrate how these two are evolved from the

one substance, nor does he prove why there can only be two of them.

Neither are extension and thought anything to him in themselves, or in

truth, but only externally; for their difference is a mere matter of the

understanding, which is ranked by Spinoza only among affections (Eth. P.

I. Prop. XXXI. Demonst. p. 62), and as such has no truth. This has in

recent times been served up again by Schelling in the following form:

In themselves, the intelligent world and the corporeal world are the

same, only under different forms; so that the intelligent universe is in

itself the whole absolute divine totality, and the corporeal universe is

equally this same totality. The differences are not in themselves, but

the different aspects from which the Absolute is regarded are matters

external to it. We take a higher tone in saying that nature and mind

are rational; but reason is for us no empty word, for it means the

totality which develops itself within itself. Again, it is the standpoint

of reflection to regard aspects only, and nothing in itself. This

defect appears in Spinoza and Schelling in the fact that they see no

necessity why the Notion, as the implicit negative of its unity, should

make a separation of itself into different parts; so that out of the

simple universal the real, the opposed, itself becomes known. Absolute

substance, attribute and mode, Spinoza allows to follow one another as

definitions, he adopts them ready-made, without the attributes being

developed from the substance, or the modes from the attributes. And more

especially in regard to the attributes, there is no necessity evident,

why these are thought and extension in particular.

c. When Spinoza passes on to individual things, especially to

self-consciousness, to the freedom of the ‘I,’ he expresses himself in

such a way as rather to lead back all limitations to substance than

to maintain a firm grasp of the individual. Thus we already found the

attributes not to be independent, but only the forms in which the

understanding grasps substance in its differences; what comes third,

the modes, is that under which for Spinoza all difference of things

alone falls. Of the modes he says (Ethic. P. I. Prop. XXXII. Demonst. et

Coroll. II. p. 63): In every attribute there are two modes; in extension,

these are rest and motion, in thought they are understanding and will

(_intellectus et voluntas_). They are mere modifications which only exist

for us apart from God; therefore whatever refers to this difference and

is specially brought about by it, is not absolute, but finite. These

affections Spinoza sums up (Ethices, P. I. Prop. XXIX. Schol. pp. 61, 62)

under the head of _natura naturata_: “_Natura naturans_ is God regarded

as free cause, in so far as He is in Himself and is conceived by Himself:

or such attributes of substance as express the eternal and infinite

essence. By _natura naturata_, I understand all that follows from the

necessity of the divine nature, or from any of the attributes of God,

all modes of the divine attributes, in so far as they are regarded as

things which are in God, and which without God can neither exist nor be

conceived.” From God proceeds nothing, for all things merely return to

the point whence they came, if from themselves the commencement is made.

These then are Spinoza’s general forms, this is his principal idea. Some

further determinations have still to be mentioned. He gives definitions

of the terms modes, understanding, will, and of the affections, such

as joy and sadness.[199] We further find consciousness taken into

consideration. Its development is extremely simple, or rather it is not

developed at all; Spinoza begins directly with mind. “The essence of

man consists of certain modifications of the attributes of God”; these

modifications are only something related to our understanding. “If we,

therefore, say that the human mind perceives this or that, it means

nothing else than that God has this or that idea, not in so far as He

is infinite, but in so far as He is expressed by the idea of the human

mind. And if we say that God has this or that idea, not in so far as

He constitutes the idea of the human mind, but in so far as He has,

along with the human mind, the idea of another thing, then we say that

the human mind perceives the thing partially or inadequately.” Truth

is for Spinoza, on the other hand, the adequate.[200] The idea that

all particular content is only a modification of God is ridiculed by

Bayle,[201] who argues from it that God modified as Turks and Austrians,

is waging war with Himself; but Bayle has not a trace of the speculative

element in him, although he is acute enough as a dialectician, and has

contributed to the intelligent discussion of definite subjects.

The relation of thought and extension in the human consciousness is dealt

with by Spinoza as follows: “What has a place in the object” (or rather

in the objective) “of the idea which constitutes the human mind must be

perceived by the human mind; or there must necessarily be in the mind

an idea of this object. The object of the idea which constitutes the

human mind is body, or a certain mode of extension. If, then, the object

of the idea which constitutes the human mind, is the body, there can

happen nothing in the body which is not perceived by the mind. Otherwise

the ideas of the affections of the body would not be in God, in so far

as He constitutes our mind, but the idea of another thing: that is to

say, the ideas of the affections of our body would not be likewise in

our mind.” What is perplexing to understand in Spinoza’s system is, on

the one hand, the absolute identity of thought and Being, and, on the

other hand, their absolute indifference to one another, because each

of them is a manifestation of the whole essence of God. The unity of

the body and consciousness is, according to Spinoza, this, that the

individual is a mode of the absolute substance, which, as consciousness,

is the representation of the manner in which the body is affected by

external things; all that is in consciousness is also in extension, and

conversely. “Mind knows itself only in so far as it perceives the ideas

of the affections of body,” it has only the idea of the affections of its

body; this idea is synthetic combination, as we shall immediately see.

“The ideas, whether of the attributes of God or of individual things,

do not recognize as their efficient cause their objects themselves, or

the things perceived, but God Himself, in so far as He is that which

thinks.”[202] Buhle (Geschichte der neuern Philos. Vol. III. Section

II. p. 524) sums up these propositions of Spinoza thus: “Thought is

inseparably bound up with extension; therefore all that takes place in

extension must also take place in consciousness.” Spinoza, however, also

accepts both in their separation from one another. The idea of body,

he writes (Epistol. LXVI. p. 673), includes only these two in itself,

and does not express any other attributes. The body which it represents

is regarded under the attribute of extension; but the idea itself is

a mode of thought. Here we see a dividing asunder; mere identity, the

undistinguishable nature of all things in the Absolute, is insufficient

even for Spinoza.

The _individuum_, individuality itself, is thus defined by Spinoza

(Ethic. P. II. Prop. XIII. Defin. p. 92): “When several bodies of the

same or of different magnitudes are so pressed together that they rest on

one another, or when, moving with like or different degrees of rapidity,

they communicate their movement to one another in a certain measure, we

say that such bodies are united to one another, and that all together

they form one body or individuum, which by this union distinguishes

itself from all the other bodies.” Here we are at the extreme limit

of Spinoza’s system, and it is here that his weak point appears.

Individuation, the one, is a mere synthesis; it is quite a different

thing from the Ichts or self-hood of Boehme (_supra_, pp. 205-207), since

Spinoza has only universality, thought, and not self-consciousness. If,

before considering this in reference to the whole, we take it from the

other side, namely from the understanding, the distinction really falls

under that head; it is not deduced, it is found. Thus, as we have already

seen (p. 270) “the understanding in act (_intellectus actu_), as also

will, desire, love, must be referred to _natura naturata_, not to _natura

naturans_. For by the understanding, as recognized for itself, we do not

mean absolute thought, but only a certain mode of thought—a mode which is

distinct from other modes like desire, love, etc., and on that account

must be conceived by means of absolute thought, _i.e._ by means of an

attribute of God which expresses an eternal and infinite essentiality

of thought; without which the understanding, as also the rest of the

modes of thought, could neither be nor be conceived to be.” (Spinoza,

Ethices, P. I. Propos. XXXI. pp. 62, 63). Spinoza is unacquainted with

an infinity of form, which would be something quite different from that

of rigid, unyielding substance. What is requisite is to recognize God as

the essence of essences, as universal substance, identity, and yet to

preserve distinctions.

Spinoza goes on to say: “What constitutes the real (_actuale_) existence

of the human mind is nothing else than the idea of a particular”

(individual) “thing, that actually exists,” not of an infinite thing.

“The essence of man involves no necessary existence, _i.e._ according

to the order of nature a man may just as well be as not be.” For the

human consciousness, as it does not belong to essence as an attribute,

is a mode—a mode of the attribute of thought. But neither is the body,

according to Spinoza, the cause of consciousness, nor is consciousness

the cause of the body, but the finite cause is here only the relation

of like to like; body is determined by body, conception by conception.

“The body can neither determine the mind to thought, nor can the mind

determine the body to motion, or rest, or anything else. For all modes

of thought have God as Cause, in so far as He is a thinking thing, and

not in so far as He is revealed by means of another attribute. What

therefore determines the mind to thought, is a mode of thought and not

of extension; similarly motion and rest of the body must be derived from

another body.”[203] I might quote many other such particular propositions

from Spinoza, but they are very formal, and a continual repetition of one

and the same thing.

Buhle (Gesch. d. neuern Phil. Vol. III. Section 2, pp. 525-528),

attributes limited conceptions to Spinoza: “The soul experiences in the

body all the ‘other’ of which it becomes aware as outside of the body,

and it becomes aware of this ‘other’ only by means of the conceptions

of the qualities which the body perceives therein. If, therefore, the

body can perceive no qualities of a thing, the soul also can come to

no knowledge of it. On the other hand, the soul is equally unable to

arrive at the perception of the body which belongs to it; the soul knows

not that the body is there, and knows itself even in no other way than

by means of the qualities which the body perceives in things which are

outside of it, and by means of the conceptions of the same. For the

body is an individual thing, determined in a certain manner, which can

only gradually, in association with and amidst other individual things,

attain to existence, and can preserve itself in existence only as thus

connected, combined and associated with others,” _i.e._ in infinite

progress; the body can by no means be conceived from itself. “The soul’s

consciousness expresses a certain determinate form of a Notion, as the

Notion itself expresses a determinate form of an individual thing. But

the individual thing, its Notion, and the Notion of this Notion are

altogether and entirely one and the same thing, only regarded under

different attributes. As the soul is nothing else than the immediate

Notion of the body, and is one and the same thing with this, the

excellence of the soul can never be anything else than the excellence

of the body. The capacities of the understanding are nothing but the

capacities of the body, if they are looked at from the corporeal point of

view, and the decisions of the will are likewise determinations of the

body. Individual things are derived from God in an eternal and infinite

manner” (_i.e._ once and for all), “and not in a transitory, finite and

evanescent manner: they are derived from one another merely inasmuch

as they mutually produce and destroy each other, but in their eternal

existence they endure unchangeable. All individual things mutually

presuppose each other; one cannot be thought without the other; that is

to say they constitute together an inseparable whole; they exist side

by side in one utterly indivisible, infinite Thing, and in no other way

whatever.”

3. We have now to speak of Spinoza’s system of morals, and that is

a subject of importance. Its great principle is no other than this,

that the finite spirit is moral in so far as it has the true Idea,

_i.e._ in so far as it directs its knowledge and will on God, for

truth is merely the knowledge of God. It may be said that there is no

morality loftier than this, since its only requisite is to have a clear

idea of God. The first thing Spinoza speaks of in this regard is the

affections: “Everything strives after self-preservation. This striving

is the actual essence of the thing, and involves only indefinite time;

when referred exclusively to mind, it is termed will; when referred to

both mind and body together, it is called desire. Determination of

the will (_volitio_) and Idea are one and the same thing. The sense of

liberty rests on this, that men do not know the determining causes of

their actions. The affection is a confused idea; the more clearly and

distinctly, therefore, we know the affection, the more it is under our

control.”[204] The influence of the affections, as confused and limited

(inadequate) ideas, upon human action, constitutes therefore, according

to Spinoza, human slavery; of the passionate affections the principal are

joy and sorrow; we are in suffering and slavery in so far as we relate

ourselves as a part.[205]

“Our happiness and liberty consist in an enduring and eternal love to

God; this intellectual love follows from the nature of mind, in so far

as it is regarded as eternal truth through the nature of God. The more

a man recognizes God’s existence and loves Him, the less does he suffer

from evil affections and the less is his fear of death.”[206] Spinoza

requires in addition the true kind of knowledge. There are, according to

him, three kinds of knowledge; in the first, which he calls opinion and

imagination, he includes the knowledge which we obtain from an individual

object through the senses—a knowledge fragmentary and ill-arranged—also

knowledge drawn from signs, pictorial conceptions and memory. The second

kind of knowledge is for Spinoza that which we derive from general

conceptions and adequate ideas of the properties of things. The third

is intuitive knowledge (_scientia intuitiva_) which rises from the

adequate idea of the formal essence of certain attributes of God to

the adequate knowledge of the essence of things.[207] Regarding this

last he then says: “The nature of reason is not to contemplate things

as contingent, but as necessary ... to think of all things under a

certain form of eternity (_sub quadam specie œternitatis_);” _i.e._ in

absolutely adequate Notions, _i.e._ in God. “For the necessity of things

is the necessity of the eternal nature of God Himself. Every idea of an

individual thing necessarily includes the eternal and infinite essence of

God in itself. For individual things are modes of an attribute of God;

therefore they must include in themselves His eternal essence. Our mind,

in so far as it knows itself and the body under the form of eternity,

has to that extent necessarily the knowledge of God, and knows that it

is itself in God and is conceived through God. All Ideas, in so far

as they are referable to God, are true.”[208] Man must trace back all

things to God, for God is the One in All; the eternal essence of God is

the one thing that is, the eternal truth is the only thing for man to

aim at in his actions. With Spinoza this is not a knowledge arrived at

through philosophy, but only knowledge of a truth. “The mind can succeed

in tracing back all affections of the body or images of things to God. In

proportion as the mind regards all things as necessary, it has a greater

power over its affections,” which are arbitrary and contingent. This is

the return of the mind to God, and this is human freedom; as mode, on the

other hand, the spirit has no freedom, but is determined from without.

“From the third kind of knowledge there arises the repose of the mind;

the supreme good of the mind is to know God, and this is its highest

virtue. This knowledge necessarily produces the intellectual love of

God; for it produces a joyfulness accompanied by the Idea of God as

cause—_i.e._ the intellectual love of God. God Himself loves Himself with

an infinite intellectual love.”[209] For God can have only Himself as aim

and cause; and the end of the subjective mind is to be directed on Him.

This is therefore the purest, but also a universal morality.

In the thirty-sixth Letter (pp. 581-582) Spinoza speaks of Evil. The

allegation is made that God, as the originator of all things and

everything, is also the originator of evil, is consequently Himself evil;

in this identity all things are one, good and evil are in themselves the

same thing, in God’s substance this difference has disappeared. Spinoza

says in answer to this: “I assert the fact that God absolutely and truly”

(as cause of Himself) “is the cause of everything that has an essential

content” (_i.e._ affirmative reality) “be it what it may. Now if you can

prove to me that evil, error, crime, etc., are something that expresses

an essence, I will freely admit to you that God is the originator of

crime and evil and error. But I have elsewhere abundantly demonstrated

that the form of evil cannot subsist in anything that expresses an

essence, and therefore it cannot be said that God is the cause of evil.”

Evil is merely negation, privation, limitation, finality, mode—nothing

in itself truly real. “Nero’s murder of his mother, in so far as it had

positive content, was no crime. For Orestes did the same external deed,

and had in doing it the same end in view—to kill his mother; and yet he

is not blamed,” and so on. The affirmative is the will, the intention,

the act of Nero. “Wherein then consists Nero’s criminality? In nothing

else but that he proved himself ungrateful, merciless, and disobedient.

But it is certain that all this expresses no essence, and therefore

God was not the cause of it, though He was the cause of Nero’s action

and intention.” These last are something positive, but yet they do not

constitute the crime as such; it is only the negative element, such

as mercilessness, etc. that makes the action a crime. “We know that

whatever exists, regarded in itself and without taking anything else

into consideration, contains a perfection which extends as widely as

the essence of the thing itself extends, for the essence is in no way

different therefrom.”—“Because then,” we find in the thirty-second letter

(pp. 541, 543), “God does not regard things abstractly, or form general

definitions,” (of what the thing ought to be) “and no more reality is

required of things than the Divine understanding and power has given

and actually meted out to them; therefore it clearly follows that such

privation exists only and solely in respect to our understanding, but

not in respect to God;” for God is absolutely real. It is all very well

to say this, but it does not meet the case. For in this way God and

the respect to our understanding are different. Where is their unity?

How is this to be conceived? Spinoza continues in the thirty-sixth

letter: “Although the works of the righteous (_i.e._ of those who have

a clear idea of God, to which they direct all their actions and even

their thoughts), and” also the works “of the wicked (_i.e._ of those

who have no idea of God, but only ideas of earthly things,”—individual,

personal interests and opinions,—“by which their actions and thoughts

are directed), and all whatsoever exists, necessarily proceed from God’s

eternal laws and counsels, and perpetually depend on God, they are

yet not distinguished from one another in degree, but in essence; for

although a mouse as well as an angel depends on God, and sorrow as well

as joy, yet a mouse cannot be a kind of angel, and sorrow cannot be a

kind of joy,”—they are different in essence.

There is therefore no ground for the objection that Spinoza’s philosophy

gives the death-blow to morality; we even gain from it the great result

that all that is sensuous is mere limitation, and that there is only one

true substance, and that human liberty consists in keeping in view this

one substance, and in regulating all our conduct in accordance with the

mind and will of the Eternal One. But in this philosophy it may with

justice be objected that God is conceived only as Substance, and not

as Spirit, as concrete. The independence of the human soul is therein

also denied, while in the Christian religion every individual appears as

determined to salvation. Here, on the contrary, the individual spirit is

only a mode, an accident, but not anything substantial. This brings us to

a general criticism of the philosophy of Spinoza, in the course of which

we shall consider it from three different points of view.

In the first place Spinozism is asserted to be Atheism—by Jacobi, for

instance (Werke, Vol. IV. Section I. p. 216)—because in it no distinction

is drawn between God and the world; it makes nature the real God, or

lowers God to the level of nature, so that God disappears and only nature

is established. But it is not so much God and nature that Spinoza sets up

in mutual opposition, as thought and extension; and God is unity, not One

made up of two, but absolute Substance, in which has really disappeared

the limitation of the subjectivity of thought and nature. Those who

speak against Spinoza do so as if it were on God’s account that they

were interested; but what these opponents are really concerned about is

not God, but the finite—themselves. The relationship between God and the

finite, to which we belong, may be represented in three different ways:

firstly, only the finite exists, and in this way we alone exist, but God

does not exist—this is atheism; the finite is here taken absolutely,

and is accordingly the substantial. Or, in the second place, God alone

exists; the finite has no reality, it is only phenomena, appearance. To

say, in the third place, that God exists and we also exist is a false

synthetic union, an amicable compromise. It is the popular view of the

matter that the one side has as much substantiality as the other; God

is honoured and supreme, but finite things also have Being to exactly

the same extent. Reason cannot remain satisfied with this “also,” with

indifference like this. The philosophic requisite is therefore to

apprehend the unity of these differences in such a way that difference

is not let slip, but proceeds eternally from substance, without being

petrified into dualism. Spinoza is raised above this dualism; religion is

so also, if we turn its popular conceptions into thoughts. The atheism

of the first attitude—when men set up as ultimate the arbitrariness of

the will, their own vanity, the finite things of nature, and the world

dwells for ever in the mind—is not the standpoint of Spinoza, for whom

God is the one and only substance, the world on the contrary being merely

an affection or mode of this substance. In the respect that Spinoza does

not distinguish God from the world, the finite, it is therefore correct

to term his theory atheism, for his words are these: Nature, the human

mind, the individual, are God revealed under particular forms. It has

been already remarked (pp. 257, 258, 280) that undoubtedly Substance

with Spinoza does not perfectly fulfil the conception of God, since

it is as Spirit that He is to be conceived. But if Spinoza is called

an atheist for the sole reason that he does not distinguish God from

the world, it is a misuse of the term. Spinozism might really just as

well or even better have been termed Acosmism, since according to its

teaching it is not to the world, finite existence, the universe, that

reality and permanency are to be ascribed, but rather to God alone

as the substantial. Spinoza maintains that there is no such thing as

what is known as the world; it is merely a form of God, and in and for

itself it is nothing. The world has no true reality, and all this that

we know as the world has been cast into the abyss of the one identity.

There is therefore no such thing as finite reality, it has no truth

whatever; according to Spinoza what is, is God, and God alone. Therefore

the allegations of those who accuse Spinoza of atheism are the direct

opposite of the truth; with him there is too much God. They say: If

God is the identity of mind and nature, then nature or the individual

man is God. This is quite correct, but they forget that nature and the

individual disappear in this same identity: and they cannot forgive

Spinoza for thus annihilating them. Those who defame him in such a way

as this are therefore not aiming at maintaining God, but at maintaining

the finite and the worldly; they do not fancy their own extinction and

that of the world. Spinoza’s system is absolute pantheism and monotheism

elevated into thought. Spinozism is therefore very far removed from being

atheism in the ordinary sense; but in the sense that God is not conceived

as spirit, it is atheism. However, in the same way many theologians are

also atheists who speak of God only as the Almighty Supreme Being, etc.,

who refuse to acknowledge God, and who admit the validity and truth of

the finite. They are many degrees worse than Spinoza.

The second point to be considered is the method adopted by Spinoza for

setting forth his philosophy; it is the demonstrative method of geometry

as employed by Euclid, in which we find definitions, explanations,

axioms, and theorems. Even Descartes made it his starting-point that

philosophic propositions must be mathematically handled and proved, that

they must have the very same evidence as mathematics. The mathematical

method is considered superior to all others, on account of the nature

of its evidence; and it is natural that independent knowledge in its

re-awakening lighted first upon this form, of which it saw so brilliant

an example. The mathematical method is, however, ill-adapted for

speculative content, and finds its proper place only in the finite

sciences of the understanding. In modern times Jacobi has asserted

(Werke, Vol. IV. Section I. pp. 217-223) that all demonstration, all

scientific knowledge leads back to Spinozism, which alone is a logical

method of thought; and because it must lead thither, it is really of

no service whatever, but immediate knowledge is what we must depend on.

It may be conceded to Jacobi that the method of demonstration leads

to Spinozism, if we understand thereby merely the method of knowledge

belonging to the understanding. But the fact is that Spinoza is made a

testing-point in modern philosophy, so that it may really be said: You

are either a Spinozist or not a philosopher at all. This being so, the

mathematical and demonstrative method of Spinoza would seem to be only

a defect in the external form; but it is the fundamental defect of the

whole position. In this method the nature of philosophic knowledge and

the object thereof, are entirely misconceived, for mathematical knowledge

and method are merely formal in character and consequently altogether

unsuited for philosophy. Mathematical knowledge exhibits its proof on

the existent object as such, not on the object as conceived; the Notion

is lacking throughout; the content of Philosophy, however, is simply

the Notion and that which is comprehended by the Notion. Therefore this

Notion as the knowledge of the essence is simply one assumed, which falls

within the philosophic subject; and this is what represents itself to

be the method peculiar to Spinoza’s philosophy. Of this demonstrative

manner we have already seen these examples: (α) The definitions from

which Spinoza takes his start—as in geometry a commencement is made

with the line, triangle, &c.—concern universal determinations, such as

cause of itself, the finite, substance, attribute, mode, and so on,

which are solely and simply accepted and assumed, not deduced, nor

proved to be necessary: for Spinoza is not aware of how he arrives at

these individual determinations. (β) He further speaks of axioms, for

instance (Ethic. P. I. Ax. I. p. 36): “What is, is either in itself or

in another.” The determinations “in itself” and “in another” are not

shown forth in their necessity: neither is this disjunction proved, it

is merely assumed. (γ) The propositions have, as such, a subject and

predicate which are not similar. When the predicate is proved of the

subject and necessarily combined with it, the discrepancy remains that

the one as universal is related to the other as particular: therefore

even although the relation is proved, there is present at the same time

a secondary relation. Mathematical science, in its true propositions

respecting a whole, escapes from the difficulty by proving also the

converse of the propositions, in this way obtaining for them a special

definiteness by proving each proposition in both ways. True propositions

may, therefore, be looked on as definitions, and the conversion is the

proof of the proposition in the form in which it is expressed. But this

means of escaping the difficulty Philosophy cannot well employ, since

the subject of which something is proved is itself only the Notion or

the universal, and the proposition form is therefore quite superfluous

and out of place. What has the form of the subject is in the form of an

existent thing, as contrasted with the universal, the content of the

proposition. The existent thing is taken as signifying existent in the

ordinary sense; it is the word which we use in every-day life, and of

which we have a conception that has nothing of the Notion in it. The

converse of a proposition would simply read like this: The Notion is

that which is thus popularly conceived. This proof from the usage of

language—that we also understand this to be the meaning in every-day

life, or in other words that the name is correct—has no philosophic

significance. But if the proposition is not one like this, but an

ordinary proposition, and if the predicate is not the Notion, but some

general term or other, a predicate of the subject, such propositions are

really not philosophic: we might instance the statement that substance

is one and not several, but only that in which substance and unity are

the same. Or, in other words, this unity of the two moments is the very

thing which the proof has to demonstrate, it is the Notion or the

essence. In this case it looks as if the proposition were the matter

of chief importance, the truth. But if in these really only so-called

propositions, subject and predicate are in truth not alike, because one

is individual and the other universal, their relation is essential,

_i.e._ the reason for which they are one. The proof has here a false

position indeed, as if that subject were implicit or in itself, whereas

subject and predicate are, fundamentally even, moments in separation;

in the judgment “God is One,” the subject itself is universal, since

it resolves itself into unity. On the other side it is implied in this

false position that the proof is brought in from outside merely, as in

mathematics from a preceding proposition, and that the proposition is not

therefore conceived through itself; thus we see the ordinary method of

proof take its middle term, the principle, from anywhere it can, in the

same way as in classification it takes its principle of classification.

The proposition is then, as it were, a secondary affair; but we must

ask if this proposition is true. The result as proposition ought to be

truth, but is only knowledge. The movement of knowledge, as proof, falls

therefore, in the third place, outside of the proposition, which ought

to be the truth. The essential moments of the system are really already

completely contained in the presuppositions of the definitions, from

which all further proofs have merely to be deduced. But whence have we

these categories which here appear as definitions? We find them doubtless

in ourselves, in scientific culture. The existence of the understanding,

the will, extension, is therefore not developed from infinite substance,

but it is directly expressed in these determinations, and that quite

naturally; for of a truth there exists the One into which everything

enters, in order to be absorbed therein, but out of which nothing comes.

For as Spinoza has set up the great proposition, all determination

implies negation (_supra_, p. 267), and as of everything, even of thought

in contrast to extension, it may be shown that it is determined and

finite, what is essential in it rests upon negation. Therefore God alone

is the positive, the affirmative, and consequently the one substance;

all other things, on the contrary, are only modifications of this

substance, and are nothing in and for themselves. Simple determination or

negation belongs only to form, but is quite another thing from absolute

determinateness or negativity, which is absolute form; in this way

of looking at it negation is the negation of negation, and therefore

true affirmation. This negative self-conscious moment, the movement of

knowledge, which pursues its way in the thought which is present before

us, is however certainly lacking to the content of Spinoza’s philosophy,

or at least it is only externally associated with it, since it falls

within self-consciousness. That is to say, thoughts form the content, but

they are not self-conscious thoughts or Notions: the content signifies

thought, as pure abstract self-consciousness, but an unreasoning

knowledge, into which the individual does not enter: the content has

not the signification of ‘I.’ Therefore the case is as in mathematics;

a proof is certainly given, conviction must follow, but yet the matter

fails to be understood. There is a rigid necessity in the proof, to

which the moment of self-consciousness is lacking; the ‘I’ disappears,

gives itself altogether up, merely withers away. Spinoza’s procedure

is therefore quite correct; yet the individual proposition is false,

seeing that it expresses only one side of the negation. The understanding

has determinations which do not contradict one another; contradiction

the understanding cannot suffer. The negation of negation is, however,

contradiction, for in that it negates negation as simple determination,

it is on the one hand affirmation, but on the other hand also really

negation; and this contradiction, which is a matter pertaining to reason,

is lacking in the case of Spinoza. There is lacking the infinite form,

spirituality and liberty. I have already mentioned before this (pp. 93,

94; 129-137) that Lullus and Bruno attempted to draw up a system of form,

which should embrace and comprehend the one substance which organizes

itself into the universe; this attempt Spinoza did not make.

Because negation was thus conceived by Spinoza in one-sided fashion

merely, there is, in the third place, in his system, an utter blotting

out of the principle of subjectivity, individuality, personality, the

moment of self-consciousness in Being. Thought has only the signification

of the universal, not of self-consciousness. It is this lack which has,

on the one side, brought the conception of the liberty of the subject

into such vehement antagonism to the system of Spinoza, because it

set aside the independence of the human consciousness, the so-called

liberty which is merely the empty abstraction of independence, and in

so doing set aside God, as distinguished from nature and the human

consciousness—that is as implicit or in Himself, in the Absolute; for

man has the consciousness of freedom, of the spiritual, which is the

negative of the corporeal, and man has also the consciousness that his

true Being lies in what is opposed to the corporeal. This has been

firmly maintained by religion, theology, and the sound common sense of

the common consciousness, and this form of opposition to Spinoza appears

first of all in the assertion that freedom is real, and that evil exists.

But because for Spinoza, on the other hand, there exists only absolute

universal substance as the non-particularized, the truly real—all that is

particular and individual, my subjectivity and spirituality, has, on the

other hand, as a limited modification whose Notion depends on another,

no absolute existence. Thus the soul, the Spirit, in so far as it is

an individual Being, is for Spinoza a mere negation, like everything

in general that is determined. As all differences and determinations

of things and of consciousness simply go back into the One substance,

one may say that in the system of Spinoza all things are merely cast

down into this abyss of annihilation. But from this abyss nothing comes

out; and the particular of which Spinoza speaks is only assumed and

presupposed from the ordinary conception, without being justified. Were

it to be justified, Spinoza would have to deduce it from his Substance;

but that does not open itself out, and therefore comes to no vitality,

spirituality or activity. His philosophy has only a rigid and unyielding

substance, and not yet spirit; in it we are not at home with ourselves.

But the reason that God is not spirit is that He is not the Three in

One. Substance remains rigid and petrified, without Boehme’s sources or

springs; for the individual determinations in the form of determinations

of the understanding are not Boehme’s originating spirits, which energize

and expand in one another (_supra_, pp. 202, 203). What we find regarding

this particular then is that it is only a modification of absolute

substance, which, however, is not declared to be such; for the moment of

negativity is what is lacking to this rigid motionlessness, whose single

form of activity is this, to divest all things of their determination

and particularity and cast them back into the one absolute substance,

wherein they are simply swallowed up, and all life in itself is utterly

destroyed. This is what we find philosophically inadequate with Spinoza;

distinctions are externally present, it is true, but they remain

external, since even the negative is not known in itself. Thought is the

absolutely abstract, and for that very reason the absolutely negative; it

is so in truth, but with Spinoza it is not asserted to be the absolutely

negative. But if in opposition to Spinozism we hold fast to the assertion

that Spirit, as distinguishing itself from the corporeal, is substantial,

actual, true, and in the same way that freedom is not something merely

privative, then this actuality in formal thought is doubtless correct,

yet it rests only upon feeling; but the further step is that the Idea

essentially includes within itself motion and vitality, and that it

consequently has in itself the principle of spiritual freedom. On the one

hand, therefore, the defect of Spinozism is conceived as consisting in

its want of correspondence with actuality; but on the other side it is to

be apprehended in a higher sense, I mean in the sense that substance with

Spinoza is only the Idea taken altogether abstractly, not in its vitality.

If, in conclusion, we sum up this criticism that we have offered, we

would say that on the one hand with Spinoza negation or privation is

distinct from substance; for he merely assumes individual determinations,

and does not deduce them from substance. On the other hand the negation

is present only as Nothing, for in the absolute there is no mode; the

negative is not there, but only its dissolution, its return: we do not

find its movement, its Becoming and Being. The negative is conceived

altogether as a vanishing moment—not in itself, but only as individual

self-consciousness; it is not like the _Separator_ we met with in

Boehme’s system (_supra_, p. 206). Self-consciousness is born from this

ocean, dripping with the water thereof, _i.e._ never coming to absolute

self-hood; the heart, the independence is transfixed—the vital fire is

wanting. This lack has to be supplied, the moment of self-consciousness

has to be added. It has the following two special aspects, which we

now perceive emerging and gaining acceptance; in the first place the

objective aspect, that absolute essence obtains in self-consciousness

the mode of an object of consciousness for which the “other” exists, or

the existent as such, and that what Spinoza understood by the “modes” is

elevated to objective reality as an absolute moment of the absolute; in

the second place we have the aspect of self-consciousness, individuality,

independence. As was formerly the case with respect to Bacon and Boehme,

the former aspect is here taken up by the Englishman, John Locke, the

latter by the German Leibnitz; in the first case it did not appear

as a moment, nor did it in the second appear as absolute Notion. Now

while Spinoza only takes notice of these ordinary conceptions, and the

highest point of view he reaches in regard to them is that they sink

and disappear in the one Substance, Locke on the contrary examines the

genesis of these conceptions, while Leibnitz opposes to Spinoza the

infinite multiplicity of individuals, although all these monads have one

monad as the basis of their Being. Both Locke and Leibnitz therefore came

forward as opponents of the above-mentioned one-sidedness of Spinoza.

3. MALEBRANCHE.

The philosophy of Malebranche is in point of matter entirely identical

with that of Spinoza, but it has another, a more religious and more

theological form; on account of this form it never encountered the

opposition met with by Spinoza, and for the same reason Malebranche has

never been reproached with Atheism.

Nicholas Malebranche was born at Paris in 1638. He was sickly and

deformed in body, and was hence brought up with great care. He was

diffident and loved solitude; in his twenty-second year he entered the

_congrégation de l’oratoire_, a sort of spiritual order, and devoted

himself to the sciences. In passing a bookseller’s shop he happened

accidentally to see Descartes’ work _De homine_; he read it, and it

interested him greatly—so much so that the reading of it brought on

severe palpitation and he was forced to cease. This decided his future

life; there awoke in him an irrepressible inclination for Philosophy. He

was a man of most noble and gentle character, and of the most genuine and

unswerving piety. He died at Paris in 1715, and in the seventy-seventh

year of his age.[210] His principal work bears the title: _De la

recherche de la vérité_. One part of it is entirely metaphysical, but the

greater part is altogether empirical. For instance, Malebranche in the

first three books treats logically and psychologically of the errors in

sight and hearing, in the imagination and understanding.

a. What is most important in this book is his idea of the origin of our

knowledge. He says: “The essence of the soul is in thought, just as that

of matter is in extension. All else, such as sensation, imagination and

will, are modifications of thought”. He thus begins with two sides,

between which he sets an absolute chasm, and then he follows out in

detail the Cartesian idea of the assistance of God in knowledge. His main

point is that “the soul cannot attain to its conceptions and notions

from external things.” For when I and the thing are clearly independent

of one another and have nothing in common, the two can certainly not

enter into relation with one another nor be for one another. “Bodies are

impenetrable; their images would destroy one another on the way to the

organs.” But further: “The soul cannot beget ideas from itself, nor can

they be inborn,” for as “Augustine has said, ‘Say not that ye yourselves

are your own light.’” But how then comes extension, the manifold, into

the simple, into the spirit, since it is the reverse of the simple,

namely the diverse? This question regarding the association of thought

and extension is always an important one in Philosophy. According to

Malebranche the answer is, “That we see all things in God.” God Himself

is the connection between us and them, and thus the unity between the

thing and thought. “God has in Him the ideas of all things because He has

created all; God is through His omnipresence united in the most intimate

way with spirits. God thus is the place of spirits,” the Universal

of spirit, “just as space” is the universal, “the place of bodies.

Consequently the soul knows in God what is in Him,” bodies, “inasmuch

as He sets forth” (inwardly conceives) “created existence, because all

this is spiritual, intellectual, and present to the soul.”[211] Because

things and God are intellectual and we too are intellectual, we perceive

them in God as they are, so to speak, intellectual in Him. If this be

further analyzed it in no way differs from Spinozism. Malebranche indeed

in a popular way allows soul and things to subsist as independent,

but this independence vanishes away like smoke when the principle is

firmly grasped. The catechism says: “God is omnipresent,” and if this

omnipresence be developed Spinozism is arrived at; and yet theologians

then proceed to speak against the system of identity, and cry out about

Pantheism.

b. We must further remark that Malebranche also makes the universal,

thought, the essential, by placing it before the particular. “The soul

has the Notion of the infinite and universal: it knows nothing excepting

through the Idea which it has of the infinite; this Idea must hence come

first. The universal is not a mere confusion of individual ideas, it is

not a union of individual things.” According to Locke the individual from

which the universal is formed precedes (_infra_, p. 299); according to

Malebranche the universal Idea is what comes first in man. “If we wish

to think of anything particular we think first of the universal;” it is

the principle of the particular, as space is of things. All essentiality

precedes our particular conceptions, and this essentiality comes

first. “All essential existences (_essences_) come before our ordinary

conception; they cannot be such excepting by God’s presence in the mind

and spirit. He it is who contains all things in the simplicity of His

nature. It seems evident that mind would not be capable of representing

to itself the universal Notions of species, kind, and suchlike, if it

did not see all things comprehended in one.” The universal is thus in and

for itself, and it does not take its rise through the particular. “Since

each existent thing is an individual, we cannot say that we see something

actually created when, for example, we see a triangle in general,” for

we see it through God. “No account can be given of how spirit knows

abstract and common truths, excepting through the presence of Him who can

enlighten spirit in an infinite way,” because He is in and for Himself

the universal. “We have a clear idea of God,” of the universal: “We can

have such only through union with Him, for this idea is not a created

one,” but is in and for itself. As with Spinoza, the one universal is

God, and in so far as it is determined, it is the particular; we see

this particular only in the universal, as we see bodies in space. “We

already have a conception of infinite Being, inasmuch as we have a

conception of Being without regard to whether it is finite or infinite.

To know a finite we must limit the infinite; and this last must thus

precede. Thus spirit perceives all in the infinite; this is so far

from being a confused conception of many particular things that all

particular conceptions are merely participations in the universal Idea

of infinitude—in the same way that God does not receive this Being from”

finite “creatures, but,” on the contrary, “all creatures only subsist

through Him.”[212]

c. As regards the turning of the soul to God, Malebranche says what

Spinoza said from his ethical point of view: “It is impossible that God

should have an end other than Himself (the Holy Scriptures place this

beyond doubt);” the will of God can only have the good, what is without

doubt universal as its end. “Hence not only is it essential that our

natural love, _i.e._ the emotion which He brings forth in our spirit,

should strive after Him”—“the will is really love towards God”—“but

it is likewise impossible that the knowledge and the light which He

gives to our spirit should make anything else known than what is in

Him,” for thought only exists in unity with God. “If God were to make

a spirit and give it the sun as an idea or as the immediate object of

its knowledge, God would have made this spirit and the idea of this

spirit for the sun and not for Himself.” All natural love, and still

more knowledge, and the desire after truth, have God as their end. “All

motions of the will as regards the creatures are only determinations of

motion as regards the creator.” Malebranche quotes from Augustine “that

we see God even from the time we first enter upon this life (_dès cette

vie_), through the knowledge that we have of eternal truths. The truth

is uncreated, unchangeable, immeasurable, eternal above all things; it

is true through itself, and has its perfection from no thing. It makes

the creator more perfect, and all spirits naturally seek to know it:

now there is nothing that has these perfections but God, and thus the

truth is God. We perceive these unchangeable and eternal truths, hence

we see God.” “God indeed sees but He does not feel sensuous things. If

we see something sensuous, sensation and pure thought are to be found

in our consciousness. Sensation is a modification of our spirit; God

occasions this because He knows that our soul is capable of it. The Idea

which is bound up with the sensation is in God; we see it, etc. This

relation, this union of our mind and spirit with the Word (_Verbe_) of

God, and of our will with His love, is that we are formed after the

image of God and in His likeness.”[213] Thus the love of God consists in

relating one’s affections to the Idea of God; whoever knows himself and

thinks his affections clearly, loves God. We further find sundry empty

litanies concerning God, a catechism for children of eight years of age

respecting goodness, justice, omnipresence, the moral order of the world;

in all their lifetime theologians do not get any further.

We have given the principal of Malebranche’s ideas; the remainder of his

philosophy is composed partly of formal logic, and partly of empirical

psychology. He passes to the treatment of errors, how they arise, how

the senses, the imagination, the understanding, deceive us, and how we

must conduct ourselves in order to effect a remedy. Then Malebranche goes

on (T. III. L. VI. P. I. chap. i. pp. 1-3) to the rules and laws for

recognizing the truth. Thus here the term Philosophy was even applied

to the manner in which reflections on particular objects are drawn from

formal logic and external facts.

B. SECOND DIVISION.

It was Locke who became the instrument of setting forth this entire

manner of thinking in a systematic way, for he worked out Bacon’s

position more fully. And if Bacon made sensuous Being to be the truth,

Locke demonstrated the universal, Thought, to be present in sensuous

Being, or showed that we obtained the universal, the true, from

experience. From Locke a wide culture proceeds, influencing English

philosophers more especially; the forms adopted by this school were

various, but the principle was the same; it became a general method of

regarding things in a popular way, and calls itself Philosophy, although

the object of Philosophy is not to be met with here.

1. LOCKE.

When experience means that the Notion has objective actuality for

consciousness, it is indeed a necessary element in the totality; but

as this reflection appears in Locke, signifying as it does that we

obtain truth by abstraction from experience and sensuous perception,

it is utterly false, since, instead of being a moment, it is made the

essence of the truth. It is no doubt true that against the hypothesis

of the inward immediacy of the Idea, and against the method of setting

it forth in definitions and axioms, as also against absolute substance,

the demand that ideas should be represented as results, and the claims

of individuality and self-consciousness, assert their rights to

recognition. In the philosophy of Locke and Leibnitz, however, these

necessities make themselves known in an imperfect manner only; the one

fact which is common to both philosophers is that they, in opposition to

Spinoza and Malebranche, take for their principle the particular, finite

determinateness and the individual. According to Spinoza and Malebranche

substance or the universal is the true, the sole existent, the eternal,

that which is in and for itself, without origin, and of which particular

things are only modifications which are conceived through substance. But

hereby Spinoza has done an injury to this negative; he hence arrived at

no immanent determination, for all that is determined and individual

is merely annihilated in his system. Now, on the contrary, the general

inclination of consciousness is to maintain the difference, partly

in order to mark itself out as implicitly free in opposition to its

object—Being, nature, and God, and partly in order to recognize the unity

in this opposition, and from the opposition itself to make the unity

emerge. But those who were the instruments of this tendency comprehended

themselves but little, they had still no clear consciousness of their

task, nor of the manner in which their claims could be satisfied. With

Locke, this principle makes its first entrance into Philosophy in a

manner so completely at variance with the inflexible undifferentiated

identity of the substance of Spinoza, that the sensuous and limited, the

immediate present and existent, is the main and fundamental matter. Locke

does not get beyond the ordinary point of view of consciousness, viz.

that objects outside of us are the real and the true. The finite is thus

not grasped by Locke as absolute negativity, _i.e._ in its infinitude;

this we shall not find until we come to deal in the third place with

Leibnitz. It is in a higher sense that Leibnitz asserts individuality,

the differentiated, to be self-existent and indeed objectless, to be

true Being. That is to say, it is not according to him finite, but is

yet distinguished; thus, each monad is itself the totality. Leibnitz

and Locke hence likewise stand in a position of mutual independence and

antagonism.

John Locke was born in 1632, at Wrington, in England. He studied for

himself the Cartesian philosophy at Oxford, setting aside the scholastic

philosophy which was still in vogue. He devoted himself to the study of

medicine, which, however, on account of his delicate health, he never

really practised. In 1664 he went with an English ambassador for a year

to Berlin. After his return to England, he became acquainted with the

intellectual Earl of Shaftesbury of that time, who availed himself of his

medical advice, and in whose house he lived without requiring to give

himself up to practice. When Lord Shaftesbury became Lord Chancellor

of England, Locke received an office from him, which, however, he soon

lost by a change of ministry. Owing to his dread of falling a prey to

consumption, he betook himself in 1675 to Montpellier for the benefit of

his health. When his patron came into power again he once more recovered

the place he had lost, only to be again deposed on a fresh overthrow of

this minister, and he was now compelled to flee from England. “The act by

means of which Locke was driven from Oxford” (what post he held there we

are not told) “was not an enactment of the University, but of James II.,

by whose express command, and by the peremptory authority of a written

warrant, the expulsion was carried out. From the correspondence that took

place, it is evident that the college submitted itself against its will

to a measure which it could not resist without compromising the peace

and quiet of its members.” Locke went to Holland, which was at that time

the land wherein all who were obliged to effect their escape from any

oppression, whether political or religious, found protection, and in

which the most famous and liberal-minded men were to be met with. The

Court party persecuted him even here, and by royal warrant he was ordered

to be taken prisoner and sent to England; consequently he had to remain

hidden with his friends. When William of Orange ascended the English

throne, after the Revolution of 1688, Locke returned with him to England.

He was there made Commissioner of Trade and Plantations, gave to the

world his famous treatise on the Human Understanding, and finally, having

withdrawn from public office on account of the delicacy of his health,

he spent his remaining years in the country houses of English nobles; he

died on the 28th day of October, 1704, in the seventy-third year of his

life.[214]

The philosophy of Locke is much esteemed; it is still, for the most part,

the philosophy of the English and the French, and likewise in a certain

sense of the Germans. To put it in a few words, it asserts on the one

hand that truth and knowledge rest upon experience and observation; and

on the other the analysis of and abstraction from general determinations

is prescribed as the method of knowledge; it is, so to speak, a

metaphysical empiricism, and this is the ordinary method adopted in the

sciences. In respect of method, Locke thus employs an exactly opposite

system to that of Spinoza. In the methods of Spinoza and Descartes an

account of the origin of ideas may be dispensed with; they are accepted

at once as definitions, such as those of substance, the infinite, mode,

extension, etc., all of which constitute a quite incoherent list. But we

require to show where these thoughts come in, on what they are founded,

and how they are verified. Thus Locke has striven to satisfy a true

necessity. For he has the merit of having deserted the system of mere

definitions, which were before this made the starting point, and of

having attempted to make deduction of general conceptions, inasmuch as

he was, for example, at the pains to show how substantiality arises

subjectively from objects. That is a further step than any reached

by Spinoza, who begins at once with definitions and axioms which are

unverified. Now they are derived, and no longer oracularly laid down,

even if the method and manner whereby this authentication is established

is not the right one. That is to say, here the matter in question is

merely subjective, and somewhat psychological, since Locke merely

describes the methods of mind as it appears to us to be. For in his

philosophy we have more especially to deal with the derivation of the

general conceptions, or ideas, as he called them, that are present in our

knowledge, and with their origin as they proceed from what is outwardly

and inwardly perceptible. Malebranche no doubt likewise asks how we

arrive at conceptions, and thus he apparently has before him the same

subject of investigation as has Locke. But firstly, this psychological

element in Malebranche is merely the later development, and then to him

the universal or God is plainly first, while Locke commences at once with

individual perceptions, and only from them does he proceed to Notions,

to God. The universal to Locke is, therefore, merely a later result,

the work of our minds; it is simply something pertaining to thought,

as subjective. Every man undoubtedly knows that when his consciousness

develops empirically, he commences from feelings, from quite concrete

conditions, and that it is only later on that general conceptions come

in, which are connected with the concrete of sensation by being contained

therein. Space, for example, comes to consciousness later than the

spacial, the species later than the individual; and it is only through

the activity of my consciousness that the universal is separated from

the particular of conception, feeling, etc. Feeling undoubtedly comes

lowest, it is the animal mode of spirit; but in its capacity as thinking,

spirit endeavours to transform feeling into its own form. Thus the course

adopted by Locke is quite a correct one, but all dialectic considerations

are utterly and entirely set aside, since the universal is merely

analyzed from the empirical concrete. And in this matter Kant reproaches

Locke with reason, the individual is not the source of universal

conceptions, but the understanding.

As to Locke’s further reflections, they are very simple. Locke considers

how the understanding is only consciousness, and in being so is something

in consciousness, and he only recognizes the implicit in as far as it is

in the same.

a. Locke’s philosophy is more especially directed against Descartes,

who, like Plato, had spoken of innate ideas. Locke likewise makes

special examination of the “inborn impressions (_notiones communes in

foro interiori descriptæ_)” which Lord Herbert assumes in his work _De

veritate_. In the first book of his work Locke combats the so-called

innate ideas, theoretic as well as practical, _i.e._ the universal,

absolutely existent ideas which at the same time are represented as

pertaining to mind in a natural way. Locke said that we arrive first

at _that_ which we call idea. By this he understands not the essential

determinations of man, but conceptions which we have and which are

present and exist in consciousness as such: in the same way we all have

arms and legs as parts of our bodies, and the desire to eat exists in

everyone. In Locke we thus have the conception of the soul as of a

contentless _tabula rasa_ which is by-and-by filled with what we call

experience.[215] The expression “innate principles” was at that time

common, and these innate principles have sometimes been foolishly spoken

of. But their true signification is that they are implicit, that they are

essential moments in the nature of thought, qualities of a germ, which do

not yet exist: only in relation to this last there is an element of truth

in Locke’s conclusions. As diverse conceptions essentially determined

they are only legitimatized by its being shown that they are implied in

the essential nature of thought; but as propositions which hold good as

axioms, and conceptions which are immediately accepted as laid down in

definitions, they undoubtedly possess the form of that which is present

and inborn. As they are regarded they are bound to have value in and for

themselves; but this is a mere assertion. From the other point of view

the question of whence they come is a futile one. Mind is undoubtedly

determined in itself, for it is the explicitly existent Notion; its

development signifies the coming to consciousness. But the determinations

which it brings forth from itself cannot be called innate, for this

development must be occasioned by an external, and only on that does the

activity of mind react, in order that it may for the first time become

conscious of its reality.

The grounds on which Locke refutes innate ideas are empirical. “There

is nothing more commonly taken for granted than that there are certain

principles, both speculative and practical, universally agreed upon

by all mankind: which therefore, they argue, must needs be constant

impressions which the souls of men receive in their first Beings.”

But this universal consent is not to be found. We may instance the

proposition, “Whatsoever is, is; and It is impossible for the same thing

to be and not to be; which of all others I think have the most allowed

title to innate.” But this proposition does not hold good for the Notion;

there is nothing either in heaven or earth which does not contain Being

and non-Being. Many men, “All children and idiots,” says Locke, “have

not the least apprehension of these propositions.” “No proposition can

be said to be in the mind which it never yet knew, which it was never

yet conscious of.... ’Tis usually answered, That all men know and assent

to them” (the propositions) “when they come to the use of reason....

If it be meant that the use of reason assists us in the knowledge of

these maxims, it would prove them not to be innate.” Reason is said to

be the deriving from principles already known unknown truths. How then

should the application of reason be required to discover supposed innate

principles? This is a weak objection, for it assumes that by innate ideas

we understand those which man possesses in consciousness as immediately

present. But development in consciousness is something altogether

different from any inherent determination of reason, and therefore the

expression innate idea is undoubtedly quite wrong. Innate principles

must be found “clearest and most perspicuous nearest the fountain, in

children and illiterate people, who have received least impression from

foreign opinion.” Locke gives further reasons of a similar nature, more

especially employing those which are of a practical kind—the diversity in

moral judgments, the case of those who are utterly wicked and depraved,

devoid of sense of right or conscience.[216]

b. In the second book Locke goes on to the next stage, to the origin of

ideas, and seeks to demonstrate this process from experience—this is

the main object of his efforts. The reason that the positive point of

view which he opposes to any derivation from within, is so false, is

that he derives his conceptions only from outside and thus maintains

Being-for-another, while he quite neglects the implicit. He says:

“Every man being conscious to himself, that he thinks; and that which

his mind is applied about, while thinking, being the ideas that are

there; ’tis past doubt, that men have in their minds several ideas,

such as those expressed in the words, whiteness, hardness, sweetness,

thinking, motion, man, elephant, army, drunkenness, and others.” Idea

here signifies both the ordinary conception and thought; we understand

something quite different by the word idea. “It is in the first place

then to be inquired, how he comes by them” (these ideas)? Innate ideas

have already been refuted. “Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we

say, white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas; how comes it

to be furnished?... To this I answer in a word, from Experience: in that

all our knowledge is founded.”[217]

As to the question in point we must in the first place say that it is

true that man commences with experience if he desires to arrive at

thought. Everything is experienced, not merely what is sensuous, but

also what excites and stimulates my mind. Consciousness thus undoubtedly

obtains all conceptions and Notions from experience and in experience;

the only question is what we understand by experience. In a usual way

when this is spoken of the idea of nothing particular is conveyed; we

speak of it as of something quite well known. But experience is nothing

more than the form of objectivity; to say that it is something which is

in consciousness means that it has objective form for consciousness or

that consciousness experiences it, it sees it as an objective. Experience

thus signifies immediate knowledge, perception, _i.e._ I myself must

have and be something, and the consciousness of what I have and am is

experience. Now there is no question as to this, that whatever we know,

of whatever kind it may be, must be experienced, that rests in the

conception of the thing. It is absurd to say that one knows anything

which is not in experience. I undoubtedly know men, for instance, from

experience, without requiring to have seen them all, for I have, as man,

activity and will, a consciousness respecting what I am and what others

are. The rational exists, _i.e._ it is as an existent for consciousness,

or this last experiences it; it must be seen and heard, it must be there

or have been there as a phenomenon in the world. This connection of

universal with objective is however in the second place not the only

form, that of the implicit is likewise absolute and essential—that

is, the apprehension of what is experienced or the abrogation of this

apparent other-being and the knowledge of the necessity of the thing

through itself. It is now quite a matter of indifference whether anything

is accepted as something experienced, as a succession of empirical

ideas, if one may so say, or conceptions; or whether the succession is a

succession of thoughts, _i.e._ implicitly existent.

Locke treats of the various kinds of these ideas imperfectly and

empirically merely.

α. According to Locke simple ideas arise partly from outward, and partly

from inward experience. For experiences, he says, are in the first place

sensations; the other side is reflection, the inward determinations

of consciousness.[218] From sensation, from the organs of sight for

instance, the conceptions of colour, light, etc., arise; there further

arises from outward experience the idea of impenetrability, of figure,

rest, motion and such like. From reflections come the ideas of faith,

doubt, judgment, reasoning, thinking, willing, etc.; from both combined,

pleasure, pain, etc. This is a very commonplace account of the matter.

β. After Locke has presupposed experience, he goes on to say that it

is the understanding which now discovers and desires the universal—the

complex ideas. The Bishop of Worcester made the objection that “If

the idea of substance be grounded upon plain and evident reason, then

we must allow an idea of substance which comes not in by sensation or

reflection.” Locke replies: “General ideas come not into the mind

by sensation or reflection, but are the creatures or inventions of

the understanding. The mind makes them from ideas which it has got by

sensation and reflection.” The work of the mind now consists in bringing

forth from several simple so-called ideas a number of new ones, by means

of its working upon this material through comparing, distinguishing and

contrasting it, and finally through separation or abstraction, whereby

the universal conceptions, such as space, time, existence, unity and

diversity, capacity, cause and effect, freedom, necessity, take their

rise. “The mind in respect of its simple ideas is wholly passive, and

receives them all from the existence and operation of things, such as

sensation or reflection offers them, without being able to make any one

idea.” But “the mind often exercises an active power in making these

several combinations. For it being once furnished with simple ideas

it can put them together in several combinations.” According to Locke

therefore thought itself is not the essence of the soul, but one of

its powers and manifestations. He maintains thought to be existent in

consciousness as conscious thought, and thus brings it forward as a fact

in his experience, that we do not always think. Experience demonstrates

dreamless sleep when the sleep is profound. Locke quotes the example of a

man who remembered no dream until he had reached his twenty-fifth year.

It is as in the Xenien,—[219]

Oft schon war ich, und hab’ wirklich an gar nichts gedacht.

That is to say, my object is not a thought. But sensuous perception and

recollection are thought, and thought is truth.[220] Locke, however,

places the reality of the understanding only in the formal activity of

constituting new determinations from the simple conceptions received

by means of perception, through their comparison and the combination

of several into one; it is the apprehension of the abstract sensations

which are contained in the objects. Locke likewise distinguishes (Bk. II.

chap. xi. § 15-17) between pure and mixed modes. Pure modes are simple

determinations such as power, number, infinitude; in such expressions as

causality we reach, on the other hand, a mixed mode.

Locke now explains in detail the manner in which the mind, from the

simple ideas of experience, reaches more complex ideas; but this

derivation of general determinations from concrete perception is most

unmeaning, trivial, tiresome and diffuse; it is entirely formal, an empty

tautology. For instance we form the general conception of space from the

perception of the distance of bodies by means of sight and feeling.[221]

Or in other words, we perceive a definite space, abstract from it,

and then we have the conception of space generally; the perception of

distances gives us conceptions of space. This however is no deduction,

but only a setting aside of other determinations; since distance itself

is really space, mind thus determines space from space. Similarly we

reach the notion of time through the unbroken succession of conceptions

during our waking moments,[222] _i.e._ from determinate time we

perceive time in general. Conceptions follow one another in a continual

succession; if we set aside the particular element that is present we

thereby receive the conception of time. Substance (which Locke does not

accept in so lofty a sense as Spinoza), a complex idea, hence arises

from the fact that we often perceive simple ideas such as blue, heavy,

etc., in association with one another. This association we represent to

ourselves as something which so to speak supports these simple ideas, or

in which they exist.[223] Locke likewise deduces the general conception

of power.[224] The determinations of freedom and necessity, cause and

effect, are then derived in a similar way. “In the notice that our senses

take of the constant vicissitude of things, we cannot but observe, that

several particulars, both qualities and substance, begin to exist; and

that they receive this their existence from the due application and

operation of some other being. From this observation we get our ideas

of cause and effect,” for instance when wax is melted by the fire.[225]

Locke goes on to say: “Every one, I think, finds in himself a power to

begin or forbear, continue or put an end to several actions in himself.

From the consideration of the extent of this power of the mind over the

actions of the man, which every one finds in himself, arise the ideas of

liberty and necessity.”[226]

We may say that nothing can be more superficial than this derivation of

ideas. The matter itself, the essence, is not touched upon at all. A

determination is brought into notice which is contained in a concrete

relationship; hence the understanding on the one hand abstracts and

on the other establishes conclusions. The basis of this philosophy is

merely to be found in the transference of the determinate to the form

of universality, but it was just this fundamental essence that we had

to explain. As to this Locke confesses of space, for example, that he

does not know what it really is.[227] This so-called analysis by Locke

of complex conceptions, and his so-called explanation of the same, has,

on account of its uncommon clearness and lucidity of expression, found

universal acceptance. For what can be clearer than to say that we have

the notion of time because we perceive time, if we do not actually see

it, and that we conceive of space because we see it? The French have

accepted this most readily and they have carried it further still; their

_Idéologie_ contains nothing more nor less.

γ. When Locke starts by saying that everything is experience and we

abstract for ourselves from this experience general conceptions regarding

objects and their qualities, he makes a distinction in respect of

external qualities which was before this made by Aristotle (De anima,

II. 6), and which we likewise met with in Descartes (_supra_, pp. 245,

246). That is to say, Locke distinguishes between primary and secondary

qualities; the first pertain to the objects themselves in truth, the

others are not real qualities, but are founded on the nature of the

organs of sensation. Primary qualities are mechanical, like extension,

solidity, figure, movement, rest; these are qualities of the corporeal,

just as thought is the quality of the spiritual. But the determinations

of our individual feelings such as colours, sounds, smells, taste, etc.,

are not primary.[228] In Descartes’ case this distinction has however

another form, for the second class of these determinations is defined

by him in such a way as that they do not constitute the essence of

body, while Locke says that they exist for sensation, or fall within

existence as it is for consciousness. Locke, however, no doubt reckons

figure, etc., as still pertaining to reality, but by so doing nothing is

ascertained as to the nature of body. In Locke a difference here appears

between the implicit and being ‘for-another,’ in which he declares the

moment of ‘for-another’ to be unreal—and yet he sees all truth in the

relation of ‘for-another’ only.

c. Since the universal as such, the idea of species, is, according to

Locke, merely a product of our mind, which is not itself objective, but

relates merely to objects which are germane to it, and from which the

particular of qualities, conditions, time, place, etc., are separated,

Locke distinguishes essences into real essences and nominal essences;

the former of these express the true essence of things, while species

on the other hand are mere nominal essences which no doubt express

something which is present in the objects, but which do not exhaust these

objects. They serve to distinguish species for our knowledge, but the

real essence of nature we do not know.[229] Locke gives good reasons

for species being nothing in themselves—for their not being in nature,

or absolutely determined—instancing in exemplification the production

of monstrosities (Bk. III. chap. iii. § 17): were species absolute no

monster would be born. But he overlooks the fact that since it pertains

to species to exist, it thereby likewise enters into relationship with

other determinations; thus that is the sphere in which individual things

operate upon one another, and may hence be detrimental to the existence

of the species. Locke thus argues just as one would who wished to prove

that the good does not exist in itself, because there are likewise evil

men, that the circle does not exist absolutely in nature, because the

circumference of a tree, for example, represents a very irregular circle,

or because I draw a circle badly. Nature just signifies the lack of

power to be perfectly adequate to the Notion; it is only in spirit that

the Notion has its true existence. To say that species are nothing in

themselves, that the universal is not the essential reality of nature,

that its implicit existence is not the object of thought, is tantamount

to saying that we do not know real existence: it is the same litany which

has since been so constantly repeated that we are tired of listening to

it:

Das Innere der Natur kennt kein erschaffener Geist,

and which goes on until we have perceived that Being-for-another,

perception, is not implicit; a point of view which has not made its way

to the positive position that the implicit is the universal. Locke is far

back in the nature of knowledge, further back than Plato, because of his

insistence on Being-for-another.

It is further noteworthy that from the sound understanding Locke argues

(Vol. III. Bk. IV. chap. vii. § 8-11) against universal propositions

or axioms such as that A = A, _i.e._ if anything is A it cannot be B.

He says they are superfluous, of very little use or of no use at all,

for nobody yet has built up a science on a proposition which asserts a

contradiction. From such the true may be proved as easily as the false;

they are tautological. What Locke has further achieved in respect of

education, toleration, natural rights or universal state-right, does not

concern us here, but has to do with general culture.

This is the philosophy of Locke, in which there is no trace of

speculation. The great end of Philosophy, which is to know the truth,

is in it sought to be attained in an empiric way; it thus indeed serves

to draw attention to general determinations. But such a philosophy not

only represents the standpoint of ordinary consciousness, to which all

the determinations of its thought appear as if given, humble as it is

in the oblivion of its activity, but in this method of derivation and

psychological origination that which alone concerns Philosophy, the

question of whether these thoughts and relationships have truth in and

for themselves, is not present at all, inasmuch as the only object aimed

at is to describe the manner in which thought accepts what is given to

it. It may be held with Wolff that it is arbitrary to begin with concrete

conceptions, as when our conception of identity is made to take its

origin from such things as blue flowers and the blue heavens. One can

better begin directly from universal conceptions and say that we find

in our consciousness the conceptions of time, cause and effect; these

are the later facts of consciousness. This method forms the basis of

the Wolffian system of reasoning, only here we must still distinguish

amongst the different conceptions those that are to be regarded as most

essential; in Locke’s philosophy, this distinction cannot really be said

to come under consideration. From this time, according to Locke, or in

this particular aspect of Philosophy, there is a complete and entire

change in the point of view adopted; the whole interest is limited to the

form in which the objective, or individual sensations, pass into the form

of conceptions. In the case of Spinoza and Malebranche, we undoubtedly

likewise saw that it was made a matter of importance to recognize this

relation of thought to what is sensuously perceived, and thus to know it

as falling into relation, as passing into the relative; the main question

hence was: How are the two related? But the question was answered to the

effect that it is only this relation for itself that constitutes the

point of interest, and this relation itself as absolute substance is thus

identity, the true, God, it is not the related parts. The interest does

not lie in the related parts; the related parts as one-sided are not the

existent, presupposed and permanently established, they are accidental

merely. But here the related sides, the things and the subject, have

their proper value, and they are presupposed as having this value.

Locke’s reasoning is quite shallow; it keeps entirely to the phenomenal,

to that which is, and not to that which is true.

There is another question however: Are these general determinations

absolutely true? And whence come they not alone into my consciousness,

into my mind and understanding, but into the things themselves? Space,

cause, effect, etc., are categories. How do these categories come into

the particular? How does universal space arrive at determining itself?

This point of view, the question whether these determinations of the

infinite, of substance, etc., are in and for themselves true, is quite

lost sight of. Plato investigated the infinite and the finite, Being and

the determinate, etc., and pronounced that neither of these opposites is

of itself true; they are so only as together constituting an identity,

wherever the truth of this content may come from. But here the truth

as it is in and for itself is entirely set aside and the nature of the

content itself is made the main point. It does not matter whether the

understanding or experience is its source, for the question is whether

this content is in itself true. With Locke, the truth merely signifies

the harmony of our conceptions with things; here relation is alone in

question, whether the content is an objective thing or a content of

the ordinary conception. But it is quite another matter to investigate

the content itself, and to ask, “Is this which is within us true?” We

must not dispute about the sources, for the Whence, the only important

point to Locke, does not exhaust the whole question. The interest of the

content in and for itself wholly disappears when that position is taken

up, and thereby the whole of what is aimed at by Philosophy is given up.

On the other hand, when thought is from the beginning concrete, when

thought and the universal are synonymous with what is set before us, the

question of the relation of the two which have been separated by thought

is destitute of interest and incomprehensible. How does thought overcome

the difficulties which itself has begotten? Here with Locke none at all

have been begotten and awakened. Before the need for reconciliation can

be satisfied, the pain of disunion must be excited.