THE NATURAL SCIENCE PERIOD OF THE RENAISSANCE (1600–1690)[5]
=The Philosophers of the Natural Science Period.=
1. Galileo, 1564–1641, and the group of scientists.
2. Bacon, 1561–1626.
3. Hobbes, 1588–1679.
4. The Rationalists.
Descartes, 1596–1650.
Spinoza, 1632–1677.
Leibnitz, 1646–1716.
Countries other than Italy and Germany come upon the philosophic stage
during the eighty-nine years of the period of teeming natural science.
England is represented by Bacon and Hobbes, France by Descartes,
Holland by the Jew, Spinoza, and, at the end of the period, Germany
by Leibnitz. Still Italy yields the most influential thinker of
them all,――Galileo, who is the most prominent of a long series
of astronomers coming from many countries. The most completely
representative is Descartes, who was the founder of the Rationalistic
school; for he was not only interested in mathematics itself, but
in the application of mathematics to metaphysical questions. Neither
as influential as Galileo, nor as comprehensive as Descartes, the
Englishmen, Bacon and Hobbes, were nevertheless important as the
forerunners of the English empirical school. Spinoza is more of a
“world’s philosopher” than any of the others, and he joins in his
doctrine the scholasticism of the Middle Ages and the mathematics
of the Renaissance; while Leibnitz occupies the position between the
Enlightenment and the Renaissance.
=The Mathematical Astronomers.= After enthusiastically canvassing
the traditional theories of antiquity, the Humanists had been unable
to find one which would explain and organize the newly accumulated
materials of their “new world.” But working in more or less narrow
circles, natural science had already made a beginning in the midst
of the Humanists. Beginning with Copernicus, an interest in physics
and astronomy had been aroused, but in these early days it was more
speculative than empirical. The speculations of the astronomers had
but little influence upon their own time. However, when the ancient
theories proved inadequate to explain the facts of the “new world,”
and especially when the empirical researches of Galileo confirmed the
speculations of his predecessors, the Renaissance turned away from
antiquity to nature herself for an explanation. This was about the year
1600, the year of the beginning of the Natural Science period.
The most prominent of these astronomers were――
Copernicus, 1473–1543, a Pole.
Bruno, 1548–1600, an Italian.
Tycho Brahe, 1546–1601, a Dane.
Kepler, 1571–1630, a German.
Galileo, 1564–1641, an Italian.
Huyghens, 1629–1695, a Hollander.
Newton, 1642–1722, an Englishman.
While the greatest of these scientists is Newton, who belongs to
the next period, the most influential is Galileo. Modern _methods
in science_ began with Galileo. Of the four predecessors of Galileo
three――Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, and Bruno――are in spirit Humanists;
for their final explanation of nature is the world of spirits. Kepler
belongs to both the Humanistic and Natural Science periods; for at
first he constructed his natural science by an amalgamation of the
doctrine of spirits and the Copernican theory; but in the latter
part of his life he adopted completely the mechanical view of nature.
The above scientists may be divided for convenience into two groups:
(1) the speculative scientists before Galileo; (2) Galileo and the
following empirical investigators.
For fourteen centuries the ancient Ptolemaic astronomy had been
regarded by the learned as beyond question. Although complex and
unwieldy, it explained all phenomena satisfactorily enough as they
appeared to the senses; and it brought phenomena into a system. (The
Ptolemaic system has been fully described in vol. i, pp. 322 ff.) To
recapitulate it: the world-all was conceived as a hollow sphere with
the earth as the centre and the fixed stars in the periphery, while the
planets were supposed to move in epicycles. The universe was divided
into the heavenly and terrestrial realms, which were occupied by
various spirits. God resided outside this hollow sphere and held it,
as it were, in his lap.
The history of the changes leading up to our modern astronomical
conception makes a vivid chapter. How Copernicus contributed the idea
of placing the sun at the centre of things, Kepler the idea of the
orbits of the planets as ellipses, Bruno the idea of the boundlessness
of space and time, and how Galileo, corroborating these theories by
empirical investigations, was put under the ban of the church――all this
shows what heroism must have been required to tear down a time-honored
and firmly intrenched traditional conception. Probably the speculative
astronomers were not conscious that they were undermining the whole
astronomical structure, and probably their sole motive was to simplify
the Ptolemaic conception, not to destroy it. For Copernicus accepted
the Ptolemaic system, except that he put the sun instead of the
earth at the centre, and thereby simplified it by making many of the
epicycles unnecessary; and Kepler simplified it further by supplanting
the epicycles with ellipses. However, the result was inevitably an
entirely new conception of the universe, and with it a new conception
of the relation among particular material things. It was in this way
that new scientific methods arose.
The universe now comes to be regarded as a mechanism, and what was
formerly looked upon as the influence of spirits or as Providential
guidance becomes an impersonal law of causal necessity. In the heavens
above and the earth beneath there are no longer vital forces and
supernatural influences. _The universe becomes a homogeneous whole
throughout_, in which there is no difference between the fall of
an apple and the revolution of the planets, no distinction between
terrestrial and celestial spheres. The Christian heaven is nowhere
in it; the Mediæval spirits are banished from it. The Greek gods have
been pushed out, and the Christian God has been made to stand aside.
The demand that the new conception of the universe be verified in
concrete experiments, if it were to replace the old Ptolemaic system,
the revival of the study of Archimedes, the rivalry in trade and
inventions among the Italian towns, were three causes for the demand
for greater exactness. Investigation, experiment, and invention
came into vogue. Magic, alchemy, astrology, and conjurations were no
longer accepted as serious methods. In the Middle Ages deduction had
been purely the logical employment of the syllogism in theological
discussions, while induction, so far as it was used at all, had been
the reference of nature phenomena to spiritual forces. Now deduction
and induction[6] come to be used for other purposes, and mathematics
is necessarily conjoined with both. The new Natural Science period
is essentially a “strife of methods”; it is the period when the true
plan of scientific procedure is being determined. It is here that the
importance and influence of Galileo is seen upon modern science and
philosophy.
The influence of mathematics in modern times grew up from these
astronomical beginnings among the Humanists; and the Natural Science
period with its contention as to methods was the immediate result.
Bacon, for example, regarded final causes as one of the “idols.” Hobbes
maintained that physics has only to do with efficient causes; Descartes
held that it is audacious in man to think of reading the purposes of
God in nature; while Spinoza thought it absurd to attribute divine
purpose to nature. By degrees everything in nature came to be regarded
as a mechanism, and there was no distinction between the animate and
the inanimate. The discovery of the mechanical circulation of the blood
by Harvey, in 1626, became a vigorous impulse toward the mechanical
study of animal life. Descartes regarded animals as complex automata
and on this line he published essays on dioptrics, musical law, and
the fœtus. Hobbes applied mechanical law to psychological phenomena.
The study of reflex action was carried on with great vigor in the Low
Countries and France. The mechanical theory was rendered complete in
this early time by the exclusion of the soul from the explanation of
the body of man, just as God had been pushed into the background of the
universe.
=Galileo Galilei= (1564–1641).[7] The dates of the life of Galileo
show him to have been a younger contemporary of Bruno, and, like Bruno,
to have been a victim of the ecclesiastical reaction that was sweeping
away all scientific freedom in Italy. But while Bruno belonged both
chronologically and in spirit to the first period of the Renaissance,
Galileo is the true beginner of the second period. Bruno was a
philosopher of nature, while Galileo was a true scientist. _Galileo
gave to all future thought a wisely formulated method of dealing with
the new materials of the nature world._ His laws of projectiles,
falling bodies, and the pendulum created a new theory of motion. He set
the hypothesis of Copernicus upon an experimental basis and made the
future work of Newton possible. He was professor at the Universities of
Padua and Pisa, and he was mathematician and philosopher at the court
of Tuscany. That he perjured himself and thereby saved his life from
the Inquisition, there is no doubt; but instead of death he had an
old age of great bitterness. He gave open adherence to the Copernican
system in 1610, when he constructed a telescope and discovered the
satellites of Jupiter; and after this there followed discovery after
discovery, like the spots on the sun and the phases of Venus, which
latter discovery confirmed the Copernican hypothesis. He invented
the hydrostatic balance, the proportional compass, the thermoscope,
microscope, and telescope. His two most noteworthy writings are
_The Dialogue concerning the Two Most Important World-Systems_, and
_Investigations into Two New Sciences_.
_As to method_, Galileo objected to formal logic, that it is not a
means of discovering new truth, although valuable as a corrective
of thought. New truth is discovered when we frame an hypothesis from
certain experiences, and then infer the truth of other cases from
that hypothesis. The hypothesis is first formed by induction from
a few characteristic cases; the inference to other cases is made
by deduction. He therefore linked induction and deduction closely
together, and conceived them as necessarily complementary in scientific
investigation. Either induction or deduction alone is absurd and
impossible. By induction alone we should be obliged to examine all
cases, an impossible undertaking. By deduction alone we should be
in the same straits as the Scholastics, and never discover new laws.
We must begin with our perceptual experiences and make an induction
from them; then we must bring mathematics into use in constructing
the hypothesis from which to deduce (calculate) new cases. This is the
true, modern method and reveals the great genius of Galileo.
A mathematical law never exactly coincides with any particular concrete
relations. A mathematical law is an hypothesis or ideal construction.
What value, then, has a mathematical law for science? The orbits of
planets[8] are described as ellipses, but no actual planet moves in
a perfect ellipse. The ellipse is an hypothetical, mathematical orbit
for a planet which has no disturbing influences upon it. We get at such
a law by the method of concomitant variations;[9] and the value of it
consists in the simplification and system that it gives the facts. For
example, knowing that a planet would move in an ellipse if it suffered
no perturbations, and then knowing the influences upon any particular
planet, we can calculate its orbit. Mathematical law, although ideal,
is the common rule under which all nature phenomena can be brought.
However, only by measurements founded on the tests of observation
and experiment can we know how far the claims of such deduction are
supported. Measure everything measurable, and calculate the measurement
of those things not directly measurable.
Nature, therefore, must be called upon to explain her own phenomena.
Since the laws of nature are found by investigating nature phenomena
as we experience them, the laws must be a part of nature and can be
found nowhere else. To explain nature phenomena by referring them to
spiritual influence is no real explanation. To say that God moves the
planets is to involve the subject in mystery. Here is where Galileo
shows that he does not belong to the Scholastics or the Mystics or the
Humanists. He searched for some constant element, and not for a “vital
force” behind nature phenomena. He declared this constant element
to be motion――measurable motion. He is the author of the theory that
mechanics is the mathematical theory of motion. Science was therefore
taken by him out of the paralyzing grip of the theologian.
=The Life of Francis Bacon, Baron Verulam= (1561–1626). Francis
Bacon was a native of London and received his university education at
Cambridge. He was in the English diplomatic service at an early age,
but he later returned to London and took up the legal profession. At
the age of thirty-two he entered Parliament and became immediately
distinguished as a debater. At forty-three he became legal adviser of
the crown, and when he was fifty-six he was made Lord Chancellor. After
a brilliant career in public office he was accused and convicted of
bribery and corruption, deposed from office, and heavily fined. His
most notable writings are his _Essays_, two parts of his uncompleted
_Instauratio Magna_, viz., _De Dignitate et Augmentis Scientiarum_ and
_Novum Organum_, and his _New Atlantis_, a Utopian fragment.
=The Position of Bacon in Philosophy.= Tradition has frequently placed
Bacon as the founder of modern philosophy. This estimate is due to a
remark by Diderot, which was repeated by many French writers. The
estimate, however, rests on a misapprehension of Bacon’s influence.
Bacon was more of a Humanist than a technical philosopher, and in his
constructive philosophy he seems not only to have had no influence upon
his contemporaries, but also to have been uninfluenced by them. He was
unconscious of the influence of Kepler and Galileo and their mighty
scientific constructions. Bacon’s _Novum Organum_, which embodies his
scientific methods, had no influence upon his own time, nor was it
read in the seventeenth century. Its influence was first felt in the
eighteenth century. However, all this must be qualified in one respect.
Bacon’s _New Atlantis_ did have an immediate influence. The ideal of
a college of science, which Bacon presented in his _New Atlantis_, was
not only the cause of the work of Diderot in his _Encyclopedia_ in the
eighteenth century, but what is more important, it had effect in his
own time. It led to the founding of the Royal Society, thirty-six years
after Bacon’s death, and later to the founding of similar academies
abroad. While the reader may be confused by the conflicting estimates
of Bacon, the words of his own countryman, Sir David Brewster, may be
accepted as embodying the truth: “Had Bacon never lived, the student
of nature would have found in the works and writings of Galileo not
only the principles of inductive philosophy, but also its practical
application to the noblest efforts of invention and discovery.” So
far from being the founder of modern science, Bacon developed only one
side of it, the inductive side, and that without success. He identified
deduction with the Aristotelian syllogism, and he was therefore unaware
of the importance of the use of mathematics in the method of deduction.
He did not seem to have the slightest idea that mathematics was going
to be the scientific method; consequently science has gone much further
than Bacon dreamed it would go. Bacon’s importance in the Renaissance
does not consist in his contribution to the content of philosophy or to
his successful formulation of the scientific method.
Wherein then lies the value of Bacon’s work as a philosopher?[10]
Bacon was the first in England to collect the fruits of the Renaissance
and give them a secular character. Taking them out of the hands of
the theologian, he, a lawyer, “gave them a legal existence by the most
eloquent plea that has ever been made for them.” It was a time when
philosophy and science were passing out of the hands of the theologian;
and Bacon, feeling that science, including philosophy, should be
secularized, drew a sharp line between the work of science and that
of theology. Out of his great contempt for antiquity, Bacon voiced for
England the contemporary reaction against the old scholastic methods.
_He set up the ideal_ and gave directions for following it. He issued
the call to go from abstractions back to things. A man of worldly
wisdom and pungency, his nature was buoyant in its belief in the coming
age. He had confidence amounting to an optimism that final principles
would be found to explain all the particulars of the “new world.”
He was a prophet who outlined his prophecy. He felt that not only
nature but all the activities of man would be reduced to some simple
principles. He shared and expressed the confidence of his time that
wonderful things were to be revealed; that nothing is impossible to
man, provided man hits upon the right key to nature’s secrets. Just as
every age, that feels itself upon the threshold of a new epoch, writes
Utopias,[11] so Bacon wrote the _New Atlantis_, the Utopian fragment,
for his age. This is the literary expression of his optimism about
the future of a distinctively secular science. The world of the
_New Atlantis_ is the world of new machines. Bacon’s most ambitious
scientific contribution to the same end is his _Instauratio Magna_.
Of this only two parts were completed: _De Dignitate et Augmentis
Scientiarum_ and _Novum Organum_. Bacon is best known in philosophy by
the second part, which was thus named to contrast it with the “old”
_Organum_ of Aristotle.
The high influence that Bacon gained later among philosophers may
therefore be accounted for by the association of his eminent position
and wonderful personality with his bold expression of this congenial
utilitarianism. Even in that rich Elizabethan age of English literature,
he was prominent as a writer and politician. He had occupied high
political positions under James I; but his peculiar personality would
in itself have attracted attention, for his genius was such that any
of the products of that age――even the plays of Shakespeare――have seemed
possible to him. Pope describes him as “the wisest, brightest, meanest
of mankind.” Macaulay says in his essay, _Bacon_, that there were many
things that he loved more than virtue and many that he feared more than
guilt. His career shows that he loved himself, wealth, and learning.
His unusual love for learning may be safely taken as his excuse for
his unscrupulous lust for wealth. His great versatility prevented his
success in any one direction, but he had the power of expressing the
feeling of his impressive age and of becoming its personal
representative.
=The Aim of Bacon.= Bacon sought to secularize philosophy by making
it the same as science. It was the age when Nature was conceived to
be identical with the world of the natural sciences. Bacon stood in
this age as the formulator of the scientific usefulness of philosophy.
Philosophy is to ameliorate social conditions and enrich human life
by bringing nature under control. Ancient and mediæval times had not
been occupied with the improvement of human society, but Bacon was
inspired with the feeling of the modern statesman for such improvement.
The true test of philosophy, according to Bacon, is what it will do.
That philosophy is worth while which will effectively remove the
weighing conditions upon human society, so that there are no longer two
classes,――those that sacrifice and those that satisfy their ambitions.
This dominant utilitarian motive in Bacon sets him in opposition to
pure theoretical and contemplative knowledge, and makes him the father
of utilitarianism and positivism[12] in England.[13] Knowledge is
the only kind of permanent power, and man can master the world when
he gives up verbal discussions and belief in magic. Man must gain a
positive insight into nature. Science and philosophy must be separated
from theology, and philosophy must be reduced to science. Thus while
aiming to give a tangible form to the scholastic doctrine of the
“twofold truth,” Bacon through his utilitarianism missed the goal
reached by Galileo and Descartes.
=The Method of Bacon.= Bacon says that the method of the scientist
should not be like that of the spider that spins a web out of himself,
nor like that of the ant which merely collects material, but like
that of the bee which collects, assimilates, and transforms. Bacon’s
original inspiration had been his respect for method, and this grew
more pronounced. Philosophy, _i. e._ science, is method. With Bacon
we see the beginning of philosophy cut loose from personality and
over-valued because it had mechanical accuracy. Nevertheless, the
method of Bacon was very comprehensive. It included on the one hand a
critical survey of the past, and on the other an anticipatory programme
for the science of the future. Let us now turn to these two aspects of
his method.
(a) _Bacon’s criticism of the past_ was a trenchant criticism of
prevailing philosophy, and amounted to a break with the past. Bacon
felt that what passed for science in his day was but a pretence. In
the presence of the facts of life traditional science was but empty
words. The early thinkers are not the ancients. We are the ancients,
for we embody in ourselves all the preceding centuries. Thus does Bacon
swing from the mediæval blind acceptance of the past to an equally
blind rejection of the past. But why did the ancient thinkers err?
Not because they were not men of talent, nor because they lacked in
intellectual opportunity; but because their method of procedure led
them astray. The early thinkers followed wrong paths, and their results,
which we now possess, are vain.
What must be our attitude in the presence of this traditional
philosophy? We must dispossess ourselves of the prejudices that have
misled the past, for they form the obstacles to our true knowledge of
the world. The roots of the errors that have infected philosophy are
“fantastic, contentious, and delicate learning.” We must not, indeed,
trust to our every-day perceptions; for although science is based
on our perceptions, our every-day perceptions are corrupted by our
uncritical habits of thought. Thus there have arisen perversions and
falsifications, of which we must first of all be rid. Bacon calls these
Idols.[14] Idols are false images, that intervene between us and the
truth and are mistaken for reality. Bacon makes four general classes
of Idols:――
(1) The Idols of the Tribe, or the presuppositions common to the human
race.
(2) The Idols of the Cave,[15] or individual prejudices due to natural
individual disposition, situation in life, etc.
(3) The Idols of the Forum, or the traditional meanings of words,
by which we substitute the word for the idea. These are the worst
illusions.
(4) The Idols of the Theatre,[16] the theories or philosophic dogma,
which command discipleship from groups of men and have not been
subjected to our own criticism.
Bacon’s classification of our prejudices as Idols is a critical attempt
to separate, in what passes for knowledge, the subjective, which has
become traditional, from the real. Logic, religion, and poetry have
had a bad effect on science, as is especially shown in the theatrical
character of philosophy.
(b) Having dispossessed ourselves of our prejudices or Idols, we are
ready to proceed to a positive construction of a scientific method of
work. By what, in general, ought science to be guided? By induction and
experience. Bacon suggests the following steps for the science of the
future:――
(1) There must be an exhaustive collection of particular instances.
(2) There must then be an analysis and comparison of these instances,
for to Bacon induction was not a mere enumeration of single instances.
Negative instances, and instances of difference of degree, must be
taken into account. Hasty generalizations must be avoided, and we must
ascend gradually from the particular to the general.
(3) The simple “form” of the phenomenon must be discovered. Of the four
causes of Aristotle, Bacon emphasizes the “formal.” By “form” Bacon
means the nature that is always present when the phenomenon is present,
absent when the phenomenon is absent, and increases or decreases with
the phenomenon. The “form” is the abiding essence of the phenomenon.
=The English Natural Science Movement.= The natural science movement
in England thus received at the start the impression of the sober
Anglo-Saxon mind. Through its entire history English philosophy
differed from that of the Continent. Here at the outset the Englishman
is skeptical, not only of scholastic deductions from dogma, but
also of deductions of all kinds.[17] He prefers the slow road of
patient empirical discovery. Even pure contemplative knowledge and
the deductions of mathematics have little charm for him. To be sure,
induction even in the hands of an Englishman demands by its nature the
establishment of a general principle, but Bacon would have refused to
use such a deduction to establish a new truth in the way that Galileo
used his mathematical hypotheses. According to Bacon, an hypothesis is
true only so far as it has already received the indispensable sanction
of experience.
=Thomas Hobbes[18] and his Contemporaries.= During a certain period
Bacon had under him a secretary by the name of Thomas Hobbes. Here
was an obscure man turning to philosophy because of his interest in
politics; whose point of attachment to philosophy was the mechanical
theory of nature, so universally accepted by the scientists of
that time. No contemporary of Hobbes――neither Bacon, Descartes, nor
Galileo――had so systematic a philosophy. No other man succeeded better
in expressing all that was in his mind. Hobbes was one of a large group
of political theorists of the Renaissance. When the mediæval idea of
the universal Christian state, such as was embodied in Augustine’s
_City of God_, was no longer held, many of the Humanists tried to
construct theoretical systems of political government that would meet
the demands of the time. Macchiavelli, Thomas More, Bodin, Althusius,
and Grotius[19] belong to this group. Hobbes is best known in modern
times as a writer on this aspect of morals and politics; but politics
is only a part of his general mechanical system of the universe. He
is the forerunner of modern materialism, and his peculiar theory of
society is only an exemplification of this theory.
In passing from Bacon to Hobbes we come to a very different type of man.
Bacon had risen to fame by his own genius, in spite of the hostility
of his powerful relatives; Hobbes was a hard-headed man, with a narrow
outlook, but with undoubted talents, which were fostered all his life
under the patronage of the Devonshire family. Bacon was a practical
politician; Hobbes was a doctrinaire and theoretical political writer.
Of the voluminous literary remains of Bacon his philosophy forms but a
small part; Hobbes had a general philosophical system, with which his
classical and theological studies have connection.
In the succeeding chapter we shall review the philosophy of the
rationalist, Descartes, who was a contemporary of Hobbes. We shall
find that Descartes and Hobbes are alike in this: that both employed
Galileo’s mathematical theory as authoritative. They differed, however,
in the way in which they used Galileo’s theory. Descartes reduced
mathematics to the rational, and conceived it to be the instrument
of the reason; Hobbes reduced the rational to the mathematical, and
conceived the reason as a form of mechanics. The starting-point of
Descartes was the subjective, and he was held at a standstill until
the relation of thought and mechanics was solved by him. The point
of view of Hobbes was objective, and since all was mechanical, he
discussed only incidentally the relation between thought and mechanical
existence. Hobbes conceived the world in the terms of only one series,
the mechanical. Descartes’ main motive was to preserve the rational;
and, consequently, the world to him consisted of a double or dualistic
series of terms. We therefore place Descartes, with Spinoza and
Leibnitz, in a group called Rationalists. Hobbes was a materialist,
and his greatness consisted in going the full length of materialism: he
went beyond all the scientists of his time by extending the mechanical
theory to the mental life.
=The Life and Writings of Hobbes= (1588–1679). The life of Hobbes falls
into five natural periods. In his first and last periods he was the
classical scholar. During his middle period of about thirteen years
he was the philosopher. Furthermore, at one time he was absorbed in
mathematics and at another in controversy. His period as mathematician
was begun not until he was forty years old, and was preparatory to his
creative philosophical period, which was begun when he was about fifty.
1. _As a Classical Scholar_ (including his early years)
(1588–1628)――the first forty years of his life. At Oxford (1603–1608);
first journey abroad (1608–1612); beginning of his relations with the
Devonshire family and also of his acquaintance with the “new science”;
time of leisurely study (1612–1628) and acquaintance with Bacon,
Herbert of Cherbury, and Ben Jonson; translation of _Thucydides_ (1628).
2. _As Mathematician_ (1628–1638). Second journey abroad (1629–1631)
for eighteen months as tutor to the son of Sir Gervase Clifton; reads
_Euclid_ while abroad; third journey abroad (1634–1637), when he meets
Galileo; begins to develop the conception of motion and sensation;
by 1638 he is counted among the notable philosophers and he meets the
Parisian scientists, Mersenne and Gassendi.
3. _As Philosopher_ (1638–1651). Plans his philosophy under title of
_Elements of Philosophy_: _De Corpore_, _De Homine_, and _De Cive_,
which is interrupted by the English Revolution; _Elements of Law_
(“little treatise”) written in 1640, read by a few in manuscript,
published without his consent in 1650 in two parts: _Human Nature_
and _De Corpore Politico_; flees to Paris (1640) and enters again the
scientific circle at Paris; criticises Descartes’ _Meditations_; _De
Cive_ published (1642), which is _De Corpore Politico_ enlarged; acts
for a time as tutor to Charles II in Paris; engages upon his general
philosophical theory (1642–1645); _Liberty and Necessity_, written
(1646), published (1654); _Leviathan_ published (1651).
4. As Controversialist (1651–1668). Flees back to London (1651); _De
Corpore_, published (1655); _Behemoth_, written (1668), proscribed and
not published until after his death; controversies with Bramhall, Ward,
Wallis, and Boyle; _De Homine_, published (1658).
5. As Classical Scholar (1668–1679). Translation of _Iliad_ and
_Odyssey_ (1675).
In Molesworth’s edition (1839–1845), Hobbes’ Latin works occupy
five volumes, the English eleven. The _Elements of Philosophy_――the
_De Corpore_, _De Homine_, and _De Cive_――were not published in the
sequence in which they were planned, but, on account of political
exigencies, in the above order.
=The Influences upon the Thought of Hobbes.= 1. The premature birth of
Hobbes had no inconsiderable influence upon his life. When his mother
was carrying him, she had suffered a great fright, at the announcement
of the approach of the Spanish Armada. Was it in consequence of this
that Hobbes’s life was a series of panics and controversies? He was
extremely conservative in politics. He saw the new changes without
sympathy with either party, and he had no political ideals――only
fear. The time in which he lived reinforced this natural conservatism.
When he was translating _Thucydides_, Buckingham was assassinated
and the Petition of Rights was presented. Henry IV of France had been
assassinated not many years before, and the Puritan element had become
a disturbing factor in England. His study and his alliance with the
Devonshire family confirmed him in his conservative position. All signs
of the time pointed toward decentralization of government, toward war
and rebellion. In fear he was “the first that fled” to France at the
beginning of the troubles of Charles I; in fear he fled back to London
eleven years later, lest the Roman Catholics, whom his _Leviathan_ had
offended, should murder him. Hobbes was again in great panic over the
London fire and looked upon it as a divine penalty, on account of the
impurity of the English court. Hobbes was always in fright lest he
might not have peace.
2. The father of Hobbes was one of the unworthy clergymen of the
English Established Church in the reign of Elizabeth. He was a
dissolute man, and after many escapades he abandoned his family.
In consequence of this Hobbes always had an antipathy toward the
offices of the church and toward theology. Although he claimed to be a
communicant, his allegiance was only nominal, as his theory will show.
3. Hobbes was very much influenced by the new mathematical science. His
years at Oxford left little impression upon him, and he was but little
interested in the scholasticism which was taught there. Yet his twenty
years on the Continent brought him into the midst of the scientific
circles of Italy and France. He was well along into maturity when
he felt this influence. On his second journey, he read _Euclid_ for
the first time. He was then forty-three. On his third journey, he met
Galileo and the French scientists, Mersenne and Gassendi, and it was
then that he began his reflections concerning motion and sensation.
The writings of Kepler, Descartes, and Galileo influenced him mightily.
Although he acted as Bacon’s secretary after the latter’s fall, Bacon’s
influence upon him was little and has been overestimated. The mental
powers of Bacon and his secretary were different, and Bacon knew
nothing of the mathematical method. Hobbes shows to some degree the
empirical tendency of his nationality, and he believed that knowledge
must spring from experience. Further than this, the method that Bacon
pursued does not appear in him. _The mission of Hobbes was to construct
a mechanical view of the world._
Of the three influences upon Hobbes, his inherited timidity is seen in
his conservative political theory; the influence of his father is seen
in his theory of religion; the influence of the “new” mathematical
science is seen in his whole philosophy, especially in his psychology.
=The Fundamental Principle in the Teaching of Hobbes.= The assumption
from which Hobbes deduced his entire philosophy was the mechanical
conception of the physical world,――the characteristic philosophical
assumption of his age. Hobbes’s contemporaries, both the natural
scientists and the philosophers, had, however, on the whole, restricted
the conception of mechanism to the physical world. Hobbes differed from
them all in universalizing the conception. He extended its application
from the physical over upon the mental realm, and thereby reduced
the mental world to physics. He stated this mechanical principle in
two parts: _all that exists is body_; _all that occurs is motion_.
Hobbes applies this assumption to the physical world and it gives
him materialism;[20] he applies it to knowledge and it gives him
sensationalism;[21] he applies it to the will and it gives him
determinism;[22] he applies it to morals and politics and it gives him
naturalism.[23] Body is nature; body is everything. Body is the first
term leading through man up to the State. With Hobbes, as with others
of his time, the political field was the whole ground to be penetrated.
The fundamental principle, by which Hobbes thought the whole field was
to be explained, is body in motion. The mental world became drawn into
the physical, and thereby his mechanical conception became the more
natural.
There was one realm which Hobbes left untouched by his principle:
the realm of the spirit, _i. e._ God, souls, angels. The science of
bodies cannot deal with the supernatural, for the supernatural does not
consist of bodies in motion. Matter and mind are homogeneous; matter
and spirit are not. The contrast in Hobbes is not between matter and
mind, the material and the psychical, but between matter and spirit,
the material and the supra-material.
=The Method of Hobbes.= Hobbes made the method of Galileo his own.
He believed that all knowledge is rooted in mathematics. There is one
true method of treating all subjects: the mathematical calculation of
them as motions of bodies. Knowledge consists in using words as the
signs of experience and in reckoning with them. Scientific thought is
the combination of signs. It is the rationalizing of our experiences.
Science has a truth in itself and stands as a rationally organized
world, quite different from the world of experience which it has
organized. The world of bodies in causally related motions is such
an organized world, the most systematized and most simply constructed
world that science can devise. But how does the scientist proceed? He
begins with a phenomenon, which is a body in motion, and finds out the
causes of the phenomenon, which causes are nothing more nor less than
the elements of the phenomenon in question. Then the scientist proceeds
from the causes to other phenomenal effects. These new effects are
like the original phenomenon and its causes,――bodies in motion. Thus
the world of the scientist is a world of causes and effects, for “the
natural reason of man is busily flying up and down among the creatures,
and bringing back a true report of their order, causes, and effects.”
Thus we find Hobbes to be a nominalist (see vol. i, p. 358) who,
nevertheless, used the deductive method――rather a strange combination.
Like all his English successors, he employed induction and deduction,
but the two processes never became fused.[24] Moreover for induction
he has no method.
The order in which the writings of Hobbes appeared seems to have been
the sport of outward events, for they were not written according to his
original plan. On his return from his third journey to the Continent
(1638), Hobbes, then fifty years old, had adopted the mechanical theory
and had planned his philosophy. His comprehensive work was to be called
the _Elements of Philosophy_, and was to be divided into three parts:
_De Corpore_, treating physical bodies; _De Homine_, treating man as a
psychological individual; _De Cive_, treating man as the citizen of a
State. Hobbes’s philosophy was therefore to be a universal philosophy,
and he intended to bring his works out in logical order――first, the
science of physics, then of human nature, and last of society. However,
the growing disturbances in the political world at that time moved him
to publish several treatises on politics first, and his physics and
psychology more than fifteen years later.
=The Kinds of Bodies.= There are two kinds of bodies, natural and
artificial. Natural bodies are those belonging to the physical world.
The artificial bodies are the institutions of society, of which the
most important is the State. Man belongs to both classes of bodies――he
has a physical nature and he is a member of the State. Man is the
connecting link between natural and artificial bodies. Philosophy
is therefore divided into three parts: _physics_, which treats of
purely natural bodies; _psychology_, which treats of man in his rôle
as a natural individual; _politics_, which treats of man in social
congregations with his fellows. Looking at the situation from the
other end, political bodies are decomposable into men, men are in
turn decomposable into physical bodies. Political bodies are dependent
on the psychical nature of men, and the psychical nature of men is
dependent on the nature of physical bodies, _i. e._ on bodies and their
motions. Thus all bodies, natural and artificial, must be explained in
terms of motion, if they are explained scientifically. Physical bodies
are the first term leading up through man to the last term in the
series, which is the State.
=Hobbes’s Application of the Mathematical Theory to Psychology.=
Although the prime interest of Hobbes lay in the political life of
man, he nevertheless made an original contribution to psychology.
He snatched the science of mental phenomena from the hands of the
scholastic theologian and made it for the first time an independent
science. Psychology had been based upon the assumptions of the
theologian; for these Hobbes substituted the assumptions of the
mathematician. Consciousness became in his hands not a soul, but the
motion of bodies. It is described by him as “the movement of certain
parts of the organic body.” The states of consciousness, such as
sensations, perceptions, etc., are brain movements or the refined
movements of atoms in the nervous system. Memory and imagination
are “decaying sensations”; thought is the sum of several sensations;
experience is the totality of sensations bound together by the rigid
laws of association. Hobbes was the father of what is known as the
Associational Psychology, or the theory that consciousness is composed
of mental atoms under fixed laws of association.
But although Hobbes took psychology out of the hands of the theologian
and made it a mechanical science, he did not identify it with physics.
It is still psychology. The mental states are the physical motion of
bodies, but they are not external motions, nor are they the copies of
the external motions of bodies. Mental states are brain movements; they
are the _result_ of external motions. They come about in this way. A
moving body in the outer world makes an impression on the sense organ,
and this motion is transmitted by the nerves to the heart and brain.
A reaction is effected in the brain, and this is a mental state. The
brain transformations, and not the movement of the external object,
is that of which we are conscious. The mental state is an “apparition”
of the actual fact in the external world; it is an effect in a causal
series. Our perception of light is, for example, a modification of the
cerebral substance, and not of the external body itself. We deceive
ourselves when we think that the sensations of light, sound, heat are
outside us. These qualities of things are modifications of ourselves.
There is nothing external to us, except the motions of bodies which
are the causes of these modifications. The external world is no doubt
real, but we have no knowledge of it――no knowledge of aught save the
motions of bodies within ourselves. _This is the point of view of
all subsequent English philosophy: the substance of things is quite
different from our knowledge of them. The substance of things is real;
but is not the object of our knowledge. The object of our knowledge is
a modification of ourselves._
The independence of knowledge with reference to theology on the one
side, and to physical reality on the other, is well illustrated in
Hobbes’s discussion of language. Speech consists of words, which are
only the counters of things. Words are markers by which men may know a
thing as “seamen mark a rock.” Science consists in their manipulation.
Science combines them by addition and subtraction into judgments and
syllogisms, and thereby constructs a body of demonstrated principles.
Words are only counters, and he is a fool who mistakes the counter for
the coin of reality. Words only represent reality, and the law of their
use is mathematics. Truth and falsity are terms that are concerned with
the correct or incorrect manipulation of these verbal counters and not
with real things.
=Hobbes’s Application of the Mathematical Theory to Politics.= In the
same way that material bodies in motion give rise to mental states, and
mental states as bodies in motion give rise to the human consciousness,
so men as individuals are the source of the artificial body,――the State.
In every individual man the impulse to self-preservation is innate,
and is, in fact, his absolute and universal characteristic. Just as
the law of the mechanical association of ideas is the fundamental
principle of the human mind, so the mechanical law of self-preservation
is the principle of man’s ethical and political life. All our
political institutions are the result of the striving of men for
self-preservation. In his natural state――when, as Hobbes conceived,
man lived without social organization――man had no other standard
for conduct than his own self-interest; in the artificial political
state, which man has constructed, self-interest is still his motive.
Egoism is the sole working principle of human beings both before and
after they live in societies; but the political state is the most
ingenious contrivance which egoism has hit upon for its own profit.
Hobbes conceived that the original state of man, which under the name
of “state of nature” was a common problem in the Renaissance, was
a condition in which every man was making war against every other
man. (Compare Locke and Rousseau.) But such a condition of things
was obviously self-destructive. Consequently man arbitrarily and
artificially formed the political State to avoid this self-destructive,
internecine warfare. Under the circumstances it was the most effective
way in which man could gain his personal ends, for the political State
was the only possible means to peace. In the “state of nature” the
right of every man to everything was the equivalent of the right of
every man to nothing. So men made a compact with one another under
which each relinquished a portion of his rights in order that each
might have a portion of them secure. But what gives security to this
compact? The sovereign to which the powers of the many have thus been
delegated. What is the sovereign? It is the soul of the State, the
general will,――represented by a single person in a monarchy, by
an assembly in a republic. This sovereign, in whom the contract is
vested, is absolute; for the sovereign was not a party to the original
contract, since he did not then exist. The contract was made among the
individuals, at that time in a “state of nature.” So long as the State
preserves its power among the people, the people must render their
obedience to the State,――to the sovereign in whom the contract was
vested. The might of the political State makes right. Whatever the
State commands is right; whatever is forbidden is wrong. There was no
right and wrong in the “state of nature,” only the possible and the
impossible. An act is a crime when it breaks the contract, and thus
the ground of morality is political legislation. Even the religion of
the people is determined by the State. Any political State is better
than a revolution. Here was philosophical justification of Charles I.
A reversion to war is a reversion to the “state of nature.”
When Hobbes was in France as a refugee he wrote the _Leviathan_,
which contained this doctrine of political society. He presented a
vellum-bound copy to Charles II, hoping to gain favor with that prince.
However, the _Leviathan_, unfortunately for Hobbes’s purpose, contained
two paragraphs that antagonized the royalists and the Catholics. One
was, that when a commonwealth is unable to protect its citizens in
peace, that commonwealth is dissolved and a new sovereign commonwealth
is formed. The second was, that while the sovereign state shall
decide what the religion of its people shall be, no religion is
infallible――neither Anglican, Catholic, nor Puritan. The religion that
the sovereign makes legal is only a temporary one; the true religion
will come not until the Last Judgment. The church is subordinate to
the State, like everything else, and it does not matter much what the
State religion shall be, provided there be peace. Religion is only a
superstition resting on a defective knowledge of nature, and it is of
little consequence what particular religion the State makes binding.
It hardly need be said that the _Leviathan_ pleased neither Charles II
nor the Catholics. The sequel of its publication was that Hobbes fled
back to England from fear of assassination.
=The Renaissance in England after Hobbes.= The philosophies of Bacon
and Hobbes do not exhaust, but merely represent the philosophy of
England during the Renaissance. Empiricism[25] had to wait for Locke in
the next period before it became dominant. After Hobbes Scholasticism
was narrowly confined to limited circles and appeared under the form of
Skepticism or of Platonism, neo-Platonism, or Mysticism. The reaction
toward Platonism was centred in a group of ethical scholars, called
the Cambridge School. It included Culverwell, Cudworth, Henry More,
and Cumberland. This Platonic movement was short-lived. The scientific
spirit, represented in the Renaissance by Bacon and Hobbes, dominated
the next period,――the Enlightenment,――and we shall find it spreading
its influence over France and Germany in the form that Locke gave to it.
But the history of the philosophy of the Renaissance is not yet
completed. Contemporary with Bacon and Hobbes, there was a movement
on the Continent which was more characteristic of the Renaissance, and
indeed more important to it than the movement in England. This was the
school of Rationalists, to which we now turn.