element that were absent from a philosophy like that of Hume, it
supplies them in an abstract and rationalistic way. It does not
satisfy the craving for immediacy. Those who felt this craving
sought to gratify it by basing ethics on the emotions. Kant’s
“Critique of Practical Reason” suggests that the ultimate reality,
the “thing-in-itself,” is very closely related to will. Schopenhauer
actually pushes on to the identification of reality and will. Only
the will that he sets up is very different from the categorical
imperative.[162] It is a cosmic will conceived as a will to live and
at the same time as the source of evil. Schopenhauer does not oppose to
this cosmic _nisus_ a higher will that may control it and even renounce
it; if he had he might have achieved a true dualism. Instead he affirms
expressly that the will, as he understands it, should include only that
which is common to man and beast.[163] He hopes to get the equivalent
of a true dualism by a recourse to the benevolent theory of ethics,
especially, as we have seen (p. 73), to Rousseau’s doctrine of natural
pity. At the same time Schopenhauer inclines on occasion to see in
actual nature not pity but ruthless struggle, thus anticipating Darwin.
Nietzsche follows Schopenhauer in according the primacy to will but
denies natural pity and affirms that the will that is fundamental in
man is the will to power. He is thus related, on the one hand, to
Hobbes and the Machiavellians, and, on the other, to the evolutionists.
One should note that those who gratify their thirst for immediacy by
basing ethics on instinct or impulse, whether they conceive of the
resulting “will” as a will to brotherhood or a will to power, agree
in denying that the element of inhibition is primary or vital; they
dismiss everything that interferes with the free expansion of “will” as
artificial or conventional. Moreover, the attempt to recover the unity
and spontaneity of instinct usually involves another dualism--that
between a man’s “heart” (in the sense of his impulsive and emotional
self) and his “head” (in the sense of his analytical intellect) which
destroys unity and leads him to see things, as Wordsworth phrases it,
“in disconnection dead and spiritless.”
The difficulties in the way of maintaining the benevolent theory
of ethics have increased in direct measure as the nature “red in
tooth and claw” of the evolutionist has been substituted for the
idyllic nature of Rousseau. These difficulties may be illustrated
from Huxley’s attempt to deal with the problem of the will. In his
“Evolution and Ethics” (Romanes Lecture, 1893) he develops the thesis
that civilization and the cosmic process are sharply at variance with
one another. A man should therefore in the interests of society seek
to rise superior to this process. The lecture ends with an eloquent
exhortation to effort and struggle along these anti-cosmic lines.
At the same time Huxley denies that man has a will that transcends
the cosmic process and moves in an opposite direction from it. He
adopts unreservedly the determinism of Hume.[164] He proclaims that
“man, physical, intellectual and moral, is as much a part of nature,
as purely a part of the cosmic process as the humblest weed.”[165]
In that case, if one is to avoid the Nietzschean conclusion, it
would seem necessary to affirm like Rousseau and the sentimentalists
some principle of benevolence in Nature herself. On the contrary,
Huxley declares in the most uncompromising fashion that Nature is
ruthless.[166] When one confronts with one another passages of the kind
I have been citing it is hard to avoid the conclusion reached by Mr. P.
E. More[167] that Huxley is in his main trend a naturalistic sophist.
Recent philosophers like Bergson and James and Croce cannot be said
to differ essentially in their dealings with the will from the older
partisans of a subrational unity and spontaneity as a mode of escape
from mechanism. Bergson exalts a type of “intuition” that involves a
more or less complete turning away from the analytical intellect on the
ground that it leads to the setting up of a “block universe”; at the
same time he eliminates the will to refrain (_frein vital_) in favor of
_élan vital_. He differs however from many of his romantic forbears,
as I have already remarked (p. 17), by associating _élan vital_ not
with a will to brotherhood but with a will to power. Signor Piccoli
points out that Croce’s view of the will has much in common with that
of Bergson.[168] Croce is not, however, so frankly imperialistic.
James, again, though he felt himself in intimate accord with the ideas
of Bergson, is nearer to the older romantic psychology. Consider,
for example, his essay “On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings.” Men
are not most human, it would seem, in their moments of strenuous
effort with reference to a human law that they possess in common; on
the contrary, they are most themselves in the reveries of their idle
and irresponsible moments:[169] they should at least try to enter
sympathetically into one another’s romantic dreams. In general the
difficulty of discovering any basis for a genuine ethical communion
among men becomes acute if one seeks, like James and Bergson, to prove
freedom and spontaneity by the “gushing forth” of novelty in the cosmic
process.[170] It is hard to see how men can come together in their
differences. Moreover, Nature herself may be active in producing the
vital variations that the intellect can neither foresee nor formulate,
but the man in whom the “creative” evolution is taking place is not
active; from a truly human point of view, he remains both passive and
purposeless. In the popular summing up of this whole philosophical
trend, he does not know where he is going but merely that he is on the
way. He may be sure in any case that, as a result of his failure to put
forth a specifically human quality of will, he is not on the way to
peace or brotherhood.
I have already said something about two contemporary doctrines,
psycho-analysis and behaviorism, that, at least as popularly
interpreted, tend to break down the principle of control in human
nature, and to that extent to disintegrate civilization. It may be
well to add a word about behaviorism. Man is an animal among other
animals, and in so far is subject to laboratory methods. When, however,
one attempts to base a complete explanation of conduct on such
methods,[171] when, on the pretext that one must be “objective,” one
refuses to discriminate qualitatively between the behavior of a man
and that of a frog, the result is naturalism gone mad. The behaviorist
is not only pushing the mechanistic view of life to a point where he
denies certain “immediate data of consciousness” but, in his eagerness
to reduce everything to stimuli and physical reactions, he is in a fair
way to eliminate consciousness itself. If, as Dr. Johnson says, all
experience bears witness to the freedom of the will, one must conclude
that the extreme behaviorist is turning his back on something that is
highly experimental in favor of a theory.
In general, this very inadequate review of theories of the will held
by the professional philosophers seems to confirm the wider survey I
have attempted in the body of this volume. If the older treatment of
the will led to a theological nightmare, the more recent treatment
has only too often resulted in a metaphysical bewilderment. There has
been a failure, on the whole, to assert in a positive and critical
form certain truths of the inner life that were compromised by the
interminable wranglings of the religious sects about God’s will and its
mode of operation.
APPENDIX B
ABSOLUTE SOVEREIGNTY
By their distrust of absolutism combined with their respect for
standards and the discipline in the State that only standards can give,
our liberals of the unionist type are, as I have remarked (p. 246),
close to the English political tradition of which the best exponent is
Burke. Much of the Englishman’s concern for personal liberty, it has
been maintained, is merely an aspect of his humorousness (in the older
sense of the word), of his dislike of conformity and regimentation; and
so is in a way a denial of standards. But this is not the whole truth.
English statesmen at their best have attained to some conception of
the liberty that is at the heart of genuine Christianity and have been
more successful than the statesmen of any other country in making this
conception politically effective.
The lover of personal liberty is inclined to esteem it a fortunate
circumstance that the common law never gave way in England, as it
did in various European countries, to Roman law. I am not competent
to discuss so vast a subject as the influence of Roman law on the
mediæval and modern world, nor does my present subject require it. It
is enough for my purpose to point out that the conception of liberty
found in Roman law, even at its best, is very inferior to the Christian
conception; it reflects unduly Stoic rationalism and, like all Greek
and Roman political philosophy, is ready to sacrifice in a quite
unwarranted measure the individual to the State. At its worst Roman
law does not deserve to be called Roman at all but Byzantine. One
should note the origin assigned in Roman law to the idea of _plenitudo
potestatis_ or unlimited sovereignty, an idea that can be shown to
have had a considerable influence on the absolutists of the late
mediæval and early modern period. By the _lex regia_, we read in the
“Digest,”[172] the Roman people made over its unbounded power to the
emperor. The reasons for this renunciation are worth pondering. At the
instigation of its demagogues, the Roman people had refused to limit
itself and had at the same time tended towards the type of equality
that is won at the expense of quality and the due subordination
to standards that quality always requires. So far as our modern
democracies are pursuing a merely quantitative equality, their fate
would seem to be foreshadowed by this Roman development. The moment
comes, sooner or later, when the concentration of power in the hands of
one man is felt as a relief from the irresponsible tyranny of the mob.
This is at all events the process by which a radical democracy passes
over normally into what I have termed a decadent imperialism.
The genuinely mediæval conception of sovereignty is very different
from the conception I have been associating with the _lex regia_ and
Roman law. For the Christian, sovereignty does not derive from the
people as in Roman law but from God, who is conceived primarily not
as reason but as will. The whole tendency of the doctrine of grace
is to make this will seem absolute and irresponsible, a sort of
supernatural _bon plaisir_. I have already said something about the
historical justification of the doctrine of grace; one may maintain
without exaggeration that it saved Western civilization. By historical
justification I do not mean that the doctrine is to be regarded as a
“useful fiction”; the saving element in it is its truth--its emphasis
on the higher will. At the same time I have hinted at the difficulties
that the doctrine offers to the individualist. The acceptance of the
maxim that man is the measure of all things--and all individualists
must accept the maxim in some form[173]--is fatal to every absolute
whether of will or reason. Absolute and unlimited will in the
religious sense has often run over into a will to power, even when
the rulers who asserted it have professed to do so only as the humble
recipients of the grace of a divine sovereign. The tendency of a belief
in the arbitrary sovereignty of God to result imperialistically may be
illustrated not only from the history of royalty by divine right but
also from that of the papacy.
In my first chapter I attempted to trace the transition through
an intermediary period of rationalism from the mediæval belief in
absolute will to another form of the same belief,--the transition, in
short, from the sovereignty of God to the sovereignty of the people.
The superiority of the person who conceives of the political problem
in terms of will in any sense of the word is that he is taking his
stand for something vital and primary, something compared with which
reason will finally prove to be only secondary and instrumental. It
is interesting to consider from this point of view the rationalistic
absolute of Hegel. According to Hegel the Idea, after various
incomplete historical manifestations, finally found its perfect
incarnation in the Prussian State. The absolute reason that is supposed
to animate this State has shown itself in practice, most persons would
agree, the servant of the will to power.
The rival claims of reason and will may also be studied interestingly
in connection with international law. This whole subject is now under
the suspicion of being chimerical. If this suspicion should prove to
be justified, the explanation is either that international law has
given a primacy to reason that does not belong to it or else has been
unduly superficial in its treatment of will. The representatives of the
so-called positive school of international law have tended to confine
themselves to recording the unfolding wills of various sovereign
states in their relations with one another. If this record is to
deserve the name of law at all, it should surely be distinguishable
from mere force, from the will to power of some state or league of
states at any particular international crisis. At this point one
perceives that the fortunes of international law are closely bound
up with the new doctrine of will that has tended to take the place
of the mediæval dependence on the divine will as well as of the
later reign of rationalism. The question as to the quality of will
that the sovereign people is likely to display is subordinate to the
question as to the truth or falsity of Rousseau’s underlying dogma
of natural goodness. The tendency of this dogma is to discredit both
inner and outer control. With the disappearance of control, popular
will becomes only another name for popular impulse. I have already
concluded that what manifests itself in a people that has reached
this stage of naturalistic expansion is not a will to brotherhood
but a will to power. One must admit the imperialistic elements that
insinuated themselves into the humanistic and religious traditions of
the Occident, especially in connection with theories of absolute and
unlimited sovereignty. Yet these traditions were after all in some
measure genuine and so did something to set bounds to the _libido
dominandi_. For at the heart of genuine religion is a will to peace
and at the heart of genuine humanism is a will to justice; whereas, if
my analysis be correct, radical democracy and imperialism are in their
essence identical.
I have already said something about the other side of the modern
movement in its relation to theories of sovereignty (p. 296 f.).[174]
The utilitarian is tending to conceive of the State in a more and
more absolute fashion. He feels that its power should suffer no
restriction when it is seeking to promote what is socially useful, the
greatest good of the greatest number. The underlying fallacy of the
utilitarian, I have said, is that he conceives of the “greatest good”
and of happiness in general in terms of pleasure or else in terms of a
merely outer working. Society is bound to protect itself against the
unrestraint of the individual, but if it is not to push this necessary
assertion of its authority to an oppressive extreme, it needs to take
cognizance not only of outer working but also of the inner working
that is the final source of a sound individualism. To do so is not
to become abstract but on the contrary to turn from sociological
theorizing to positive psychological observation.
This brief survey of theories of absolute sovereignty would seem to
confirm the passage of John Adams that serves as one of the epigraphs
of this volume. From the _lex regia_ to the utilitarian-sentimental
movement these theories have been associated with a series of
theological and metaphysical conceits that have, in their ultimate
implications, been subversive of personal liberty.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
I have included in this bibliography the more important works mentioned
in the body of this volume; also a few others that, for one reason or
another, seem especially relevant to the topics I have discussed.
Acton, Lord:
_Letters of Lord Acton to Mary Gladstone._ 1904.
_The History of Freedom and Other Essays._ 1907.
Althusius, J.:
_Politica methodice digesta._ 1603.
Aristotle:
_Nicomachean Ethics._ Tr. by D. P. Chase. 1847. (Reprint in
Everyman’s Library.)
_Politics._ Tr. by B. Jowett. 1905.
Arnim, H. von:
_Die politischen Theorien des Altertums._ 1910.
Atger, F.:
_Essai sur l’histoire des doctrines du contrat social._ 1906.
Augustine, Saint:
_De Civitate Dei._ Ed. E. Hoffman. 2 vols. 1898. Tr. by M. Dods.
1897.
Barker, E.:
_Political Thought in England from Herbert Spencer to the Present
Day._ 1915.
_Greek Political Theory._ 1918.
Beveridge, A. J.:
_The Life of John Marshall._ 4 vols. 1916.
Mr. Beveridge brings out interestingly the irreconcilable
opposition between Marshall and Jefferson. He should, however, at
some point in his work have discriminated sharply between the
unionist and the nationalist of imperialistic leanings. Marshall is
very far from being a precursor of Roosevelt.
Bossuet, J. B.:
_Politique tirée de l’écriture sainte._ 1709.
Bourgeois, E.:
_Manuel historique de politique étrangère._ 3 vols. 4^e éd. 1909.
Burke, E.:
_Works._ 8 vols. (Bohn Library.) 1854-61.
_Reflections on the Revolution in France._ 1790.
_Letter to a Member of the National Assembly._ 1791.
Bury, J. B.:
_The Idea of Progress._ 1921.
Carlyle, R. W., and A. J.:
_A History of Mediæval Political Theory._ 4 vols. 1903-22.
Chateaubriand, F. R. de:
_Essai historique, politique et moral sur les Révolutions._ 1797.
_Mémoires d’Outre-Tombe_ (1848). Ed. E. Biré. 6 vols. 1898-1901.
Confucius:
_The Sayings of Confucius_ (Analects). Tr. by L. Giles. 1907.
_The Conduct of Life._ Tr. by Ku Hung Ming. 1906.
This is the Confucian treatise usually entitled _The Doctrine of
the Mean_. A still more literal rendering of the two Chinese words
that make up the title, if we accept Mr. Ku Hung Ming’s explanation
of them, would be the “universal norm” or “centre.”
Cumberland, R.:
_De Legibus naturæ._ 1672.
Dante Alighieri:
_De Monarchia._ About 1310. Ed. Moore. 1904. Tr. by P. H. Wicksteed
in Temple Classics.
Dedieu, J.:
_Montesquieu et la tradition politique anglaise en France._ 1909.
Diels, H.:
_Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker._ 2 vols. (in 3). 2d ed. 1906-10.
Dunning, W. A.:
_A History of Political Theories._ 3 vols. 1902-20.
Ferguson, W. F.:
_Greek Imperialism._ 1913.
Fester, R.:
_Rousseau und die deutsche Geschichtsphilosophie._ 1890.
Figgis, J. N.:
_Studies of Political Thought from Gerson to Grotius._ 1907. 2d ed.
1916.
An excellent treatment of the all-important period of transition
from a theocratic Europe to a Europe of great territorial
nationalities.
_The Divine Right of Kings._ 1914.
Filmer, R.:
_Patriarcha; or The Natural Power of Kings._ 1680. (Reprinted
together with Locke’s _Treatises of Government_ in Morley’s
Universal Library.)
Frank, T.:
_Roman Imperialism._ 1914.
Fustel de Coulanges, N. D.:
_La Cité antique._ 1864. 16th ed. 1898. Tr. by W. Small. 1874.
It is difficult to exhibit the relation between ethos and political
forms without seeming, and perhaps without being, too systematic.
_La Cité antique_ has been criticized severely from this point of
view. C. Bémont, however, goes too far when he asserts (article on
Fustel in the 11th edition of _Encyclopædia Britannica_) that it
“has been largely superseded”; on the contrary, it is, in certain
important respects, a work of almost definitive excellence.
Gierke, O.:
_Political Theories of the Middle Age._ Tr. and ed. by F. W.
Maitland. 1900.
_Johannes Althusius._ 1880. 3d ed. 1913.
A valuable repertory of information on such topics as natural
rights and the social contract. Gierke probably exaggerates,
however, the influence of Althusius on Rousseau who mentions him
only once (end of 6^e _Lettre écrite de la Montagne_).
Gomperz, T.:
_Griechische Denker._ 2d ed. 3 vols. 1903-09. Tr. by L. Magnus and
G. G. Berry. 1901-12.
Gooch, G. P.:
_Germany and the French Revolution._ 1920.
Grotius, H.:
_De Jure belli et pacis._ 1625. Tr. by Whewell. 3 vols. 1853.
Hearnshaw, F. J. C. (editor):
_The Social and Political Ideas of some Great Mediæval Thinkers._
1923.
In one of the articles of this volume Eileen Power points out
that Pierre Du Bois, a lawyer in the service of Philippe le Bel,
formulated a plan of European peace that anticipated in some
respects the Grand Dessein of Sully. This plan, like that of Sully,
would have resulted practically in the French domination of Europe.
Hobbes, T.:
_Leviathan._ 1651. Ed. W. G. Pogson Smith. 1909.
Hooker, R.:
_Ecclesiastical Polity._ 1592. (Reprint in Everyman’s Library.)
Hume, D.:
_A Treatise of Human Nature._ 1739-40. (Reprint in Everyman’s
Library.)
Janet, P.:
_Histoire de la science politique._ 2 vols. 1858. 4th ed. 1913.
Jefferson, T.:
_Works._ 10 vols. Ed. P. L. Ford. 1892-99.
Laski, H. J.:
_Political Thought from Locke to Bentham._ 1920.
Lecky, W. E. H.:
_Democracy and Liberty._ 2 vols. 1896.
Locke, J.:
_Two Treatises of Government._ 1690. (Reprint in Morley’s Universal
Library.)
Louter, J. de:
_Le Droit international positif._ 1920.
MacDonald, J. R.:
_The Socialist Movement._ 1911.
Machiavelli, N.:
_Del modo tenuto dal duca Valentino nell’ ammazzare Vitellozzo
Vitelli_, etc. 1502.
_Il Principe._ 1513.
_Vita di Castruccio Castricani._ 1520.
Translations of all three pieces appear in the same volume of
Everyman’s Library.
Maine, Sir H. J. S.:
_Ancient Law._ 1861. (Reprint in Everyman’s Library.) See
especially ch. IV, “The Modern History of the Law of Nature.”
Maistre, J. de:
_Du Pape._ 1819.
_Soirées de Saint-Pétersbourg._ 1821.
The “Premier entretien” contains the celebrated “Portrait du
bourreau.”
Mandeville, B.:
_The Fable of the Bees._ 1714. (_The Grumbling Hive_, the verses
that form the nucleus of this volume, appeared originally in 1705).
5th ed., 2 vols. 1728-29.
Marsilius of Padua:
_Defensor Pacis._ 1324. Text in Goldast, _Monarchia S. Imperii
Romani_.
Merriam, C. E.:
_American Political Theories._ 1903. New ed. 1920.
Michel, H.:
_L’Idée de l’état._ 1896.
Mill, J. S.:
_On Liberty._ 1859. (Reprinted together with the essays on
_Utilitarianism_ and _Representative Government_ in Everyman’s
Library.)
Montesquieu, Charles de Secondat de la Brède, Baron de:
_De l’Esprit des Lois._ 1748.
Oliver, F. S.:
_Alexander Hamilton; an Essay on American Union._ 1907.
Pascal, B.:
_Pensées et opuscules._ Ed. L. Brunschvicg. 1917.
Plato:
_Works._ Tr. by B. Jowett. 5 vols. 3d ed. 1892.
Pound, R.:
_The Spirit of the Common Law._ 1921.
_An Introduction to the Philosophy of Law._ 1922.
Powers, H. H.:
_America among the Nations._ 1917.
Renan, E.:
_La Réforme intellectuelle et morale._ 1871.
Ritchie, D. G.:
_Natural Rights._ 1894. 3d ed. 1916.
The notion of natural rights is, according to Ritchie, chimerical
and leads to an unsound individualism. What he opposes to this
unsoundness is not a sound individualism but social expediency,
which is itself, in virtue of the doctrine of evolution, constantly
changing. A useful feature of this book is the appendix which
contains the more important eighteenth-century declarations of
rights in France and America.
Rousseau, J.-J.:
_Œuvres complètes._ 13 vols. (Hachette.)
There is no good complete edition.
_The Political Writings._ 2 vols. Ed. C. E. Vaughan. 1915.
Vaughan has done good work on the text. In his introductory
material, on the other hand, he develops ideas--for example, the
idea that Rousseau is politically a true Platonist--which will not
bear serious scrutiny.
Saint-Pierre, Abbé de:
_Projet pour rendre la paix perpétuelle en Europe._ 1712-17.
Schopenhauer, A.:
_Grundlage der Moral._ 1840. Tr. by A. B. Bullock. 2d ed. 1915.
Seillière, E.:
_L’Impérialisme démocratique._ 1907.
_Le Mal romantique._ 1908.
_Introduction à la philosophie de l’impérialisme._ 1911.
_Le Péril mystique dans l’inspiration des démocraties modernes._
1918.
_Balzac et la morale romantique._ 1922.
_Vers le socialisme rationnel._ 1923.
M. Seillière intends this last volume as a summary of his whole
point of view. Among the expositions of his philosophy that have
been published by others the best is that by R. Gillouin: _Une
nouvelle philosophie de l’histoire moderne_ (1921). See also _La
Pensée d’Ernest Seillière_, twelve studies by contemporary French
writers. 1923 (Bibliography at the end). M. Seillière has been
criticized for giving an undue extension to the term imperialism.
A more legitimate objection is that to his use of the word
“mysticism.” On this latter point see Henri Bremond: _Histoire
littéraire du sentiment religieux en France_, vol. IV (1920), p.
566 n.
Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper, Third Earl of:
_Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions and Times._ 1711. 2d
ed. 1714. Ed. J. M. Robertson. 1900.
_The Life, unpublished Letters and Philosophical Regimen._ Ed. B.
Rand. 1900.
Smith, A.:
_The Theory of Moral Sentiments._ 1761. 6th ed. with critical and
biographical memoir by Dugald Stewart, 1790. (Reprint in Bohn’s
Library.)
_The Wealth of Nations._ 1776. (Reprint in Everyman’s Library.)
Spengler, O.:
_Der Untergang des Abendlandes._ 2 vols. 1919-22.
Stephen, Fitzjames:
_Liberty, Equality, Fraternity._ 2d ed. 1874.
Tagore, Rabindranath:
_Nationalism._ 1917.
Tröltsch, E.:
_Augustin, die christliche Antike und die Mittelalter._ 1915.
Viallate, A.:
_L’Impérialisme économique et les relations internationales pendant
le dernier demi-siècle (1870-1920)._ 1923.
Whitman, W.:
_Leaves of Grass._ 1855.
_Democratic Vistas._ 1871.
Zanta, L.:
_La Renaissance du stoïcisme au XVI^e Siècle._ 1914.
INDEX OF NAMES
Acton, Lord, 2, 94, 127, 178, 184, 298 n.
Adams, Henry, 231 n., 252 n.
Adams, Herbert B., 305 n.
Adams, John, 306, 335.
Adams, John Quincy, 248.
Addison, 13.
Alexander, 139.
Anselm, Saint, 118 n.
Aquinas, Saint Thomas, 2, 30, 164, 320.
Aristophanes, 148, 149.
Aristotle, 2, 27, 30, 31, 32, 35 n., 44, 46, 54, 61, 64, 70, 78, 83,
92, 117, 149, 150, 152 n., 163, 164, 165, 192, 199, 204, 205,
209, 213, 214, 258, 273, 276, 299, 301, 302, 308, 309, 320.
Arnold, Matthew, 160, 243, 281.
Asoka, 159, 160.
Asquith, 289.
Asquith, Mrs., 203.
Attila, 158.
Augustine, Saint, 2, 21, 30, 31, 176, 319.
Austin, John, 334 n.
Bacon, Francis, 30, 94, 103, 113, 143, 159, 190, 192, 197, 259, 314,
321.
Bacon, Roger, 113.
Bagehot, W., 106.
Balzac, Honoré de, 17 n., 21 n.
Barabbas, 264.
Barker, Ernest, 286 n.
Bentham, 224 n., 296 n.
Bergson, Henri, 17, 18, 162, 169, 183 n., 224, 229, 301, 328, 329.
Bernard, Saint, 108 n., 178 n.
Bismarck, 41.
Blair, Dr., 85 n.
Bodley, J. E. C., 287 n.
Boerhaave, 324 n.
Boileau, 277.
Bordes, 74 n.
Borgia, Cæsar, 39.
Bossuet, 21, 55, 56, 57, 58, 60, 67, 187, 219, 260, 276, 277, 301.
Bourgeois, E., 130 n.
Boutroux, E., 131.
Brownell, W. C., 167 n.
Bryan, W. J., 240, 282, 285.
Bryce, Lord, 241.
Buddha, 32, 33, 36, 67 n., 158, 160, 161, 162, 163, 168, 169, 170,
173, 184, 194, 195, 199, 202, 209, 214, 222, 273, 275.
Burke, 22, 69, 96, 97-116, 126, 128, 141, 157, 166, 178, 199, 202,
207, 221 n., 246, 251, 258, 262, 272, 293, 331.
Byron, Lord, 244.
Cæsar, 29, 31, 44, 54, 92, 98, 196, 270, 284, 285, 286, 288.
Calhoun, J., 247.
Caligula, 141.
Calkins, Mary W., 330 n.
Calvin, 54, 74, 188, 189, 190 n., 253.
Carlyle, 7, 131, 137, 138, 140, 209, 211.
Castricani, Castruccio, 39.
Chaplin, Charlie, 240.
Chateaubriand, 126 n., 128, 140, 217, 220.
Chavannes, E., 163 n.
Chesterton, G. K., 125.
Christ (Jesus), 33, 34, 98, 130, 132, 140, 158, 159, 160, 161, 163,
164, 170, 172, 177, 195, 264, 269, 273, 275, 283, 284, 289,
291, 298.
Chu Hsi, 164.
Chuquet, A., 130 n.
Cicero, 2, 19, 47, 149 n., 268, 270, 291, 292.
Cimon, 148 n.
Cineas, 271.
Cleon, 281.
Cleveland, Grover, 288.
Cloots, Anacharsis, 124.
Coleridge, 13, 130 n., 221.
Comte, Auguste, 258.
Condorcet, 132.
Confucius, 3, 33, 34, 35, 36, 61, 154, 158, 163, 164, 165, 184, 199,
200, 273, 277 n., 279, 301, 310 n.
Cowdray, Lord, 153.
Ford, Henry, 5, 146, 212, 239, 241, 253, 282.
Forke, Alfred, 151 n.
Fosdick, Raymond B., 255 n.
Fouillée, A., 327 n.
France, Anatole, 81, 294, 295.
Francia, Dr., 211.
Frank, Tenney, 270 n.
Franklin, Benjamin, 311.
Frederick the Great, 41, 131, 211.
Fustel de Coulanges, 27, 54, 253 n.
Croce, B., 328.
Cromwell, 113.
Cumberland, R., 47, 216.
Curzon, Lord, 153.
Galileo, 321.
Galley, Mademoiselle, 79.
Genghis Khan, 158.
George III, 77.
Gervinus, 135.
Dante, 25, 29, 142, 161, 219.
Danton, 126.
Darwin, 164, 327.
Daudet, Léon, 228.
Dedieu, J., 63 n.
Descartes, 62, 68, 224, 226, 319 n., 321, 322, 323, 324, 327 n.
Dewey, John, 312, 313.
Diderot, 10, 67, 293.
Diels, H., 168 n.
Disraeli, 103, 106, 215, 275.
Dreiser, Theodore, 254.
Dryden, 141, 265, 266.
Duns Scotus, 113, 190, 319, 320, 321.
Geulincx, 324 n.
Gilson, E., 320 n., 321.
Gladstone, Mary, 2 n.
Goethe, 130, 138, 145, 211, 241, 264.
Gompers, Samuel, 232, 307.
Gomperz, 51 n.
Gooch, G. P., 130 n.
Graffenried, Mademoiselle, 79.
Grey, Viscount, 289.
Grotius, 45, 52, 71, 122.
Halifax, 105.
Hamilton, Alexander, 248 n.
Hardy, Thomas, 132, 140.
Hawkins, Sir John, 72.
Edison, 241.
Edwards, Jonathan, 89, 141, 189, 257, 290 n.
Eldon, Lord, 77.
Eliot, Charles W., 290, 303.
Emerson, R. W., 167.
Epictetus, 50, 216, 278 n.
Erasmus, 25, 180, 189.
Erastus, 53.
Euripides, 181.
Hay, John, 249 n.
Hazlitt, W., 279.
Hearnshaw, F. J. C., 71 n.
Hearst, Wm. Randolph, 240, 264, 281.
Hegel, 333.
Heine, H., 121.
Heliogabalus, 271.
Henry IV (Holy Roman Emperor), 28.
Henry IV (of France), 121, 122.
Fabricius, 74.
Faguet, E., 64, 108 n., 165.
Fester, Richard, 79 n.
Fielding, 72.
Filmer, R., 53, 54, 58.
Flamininus, 270.
Hesiod, 205.
Hildebrand, 178 n.
Hobbes, 22, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 59, 72, 74, 87, 90, 94,
100, 121, 122, 232, 324, 327.
Hooker, R., 71.
Horace, 271.
Hugo, Victor, 129, 231.
Hume, D., 51, 85, 165 n., 216, 224, 225, 234, 324, 325 n., 326, 328.
Hutcheson, F., 48, 51.
Huxley, 325, 326 n., 328.
Jackson, Andrew, 246.
Jacobi, 325 n.
James, Wm., 328, 329.
Jefferson, Thomas, 196, 240, 242, 246, 247, 248, 249, 251, 305.
Jhering, 296 n.
Johnson, Samuel, 72, 206, 228, 325, 330.
Joubert, 12, 63, 74, 112, 113, 273, 279 n.
Judas, 190 n.
Juvenal, 18.
Kahl, Wilhelm, 319 n., 321 n.
Kant, I., 131, 224, 225, 226, 324, 325, 326.
Krishna, 80.
La Mettrie, 324 n.
Lanson, G., 84, 85, 86.
La Rochefoucauld, 41, 48.
Laski, Harold J., 223, 224.
Lear, Edward, 80.
Lecky, 115.
Legge, Dr., 36.
Lenin, 266, 312.
Leonidas, 108 n.
Lilly, W. S., 83.
Lincoln, A., 81, 248, 249, 250, 251, 280.
Livy, 236, 271.
Lloyd George, D., 1.
Locke, J., 42, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 71, 74, 102, 103, 191, 224 n.,
324.
Louis XIV, 56, 57, 124.
Louis XV, 65.
Louis, Saint, 56.
Louter, J. de, 266 n.
Lowell, James R., 218, 234.
Lucretius, 217.
Luther, 25, 53, 188, 189.
Lycurgus, 74, 89.
Macaulay, 103.
MacDonald, J. Ramsay, 315.
McDougall, Wm., 245.
Machiavelli, 22, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 43, 44, 46, 48, 63, 70, 94, 119,
134, 135, 137, 314.
Maistre, Joseph de, 57, 58.
Malesherbes, 79 n.
Mallet du Pan, 108.
Mandeville, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 65 n., 72, 73.
Manu, 32.
Marat, 281.
Marcus Aurelius, 11, 46, 50, 167, 216.
Marie Antoinette, 104, 124.
Marshall, John, 248, 250, 251, 307.
Marsilius of Padua, 58.
Marvell, 113.
Marx, Karl, 191, 223, 280.
Masson, P. M., 95 n.
Mei-ti, 151.
Melancthon, 190 n.
Mencius, 151 n., 193.
Mencken, H. L., 274.
Mercier, Cardinal, 28.
Méricourt, Mlle. Théroigne de, 126 n.
Michel Angelo, 108 n.
Mill, J. S., 103, 111, 201, 286 n., 324 n.
Milnes, Monckton, 231.
Milton, 80.
Mirabeau, Marquis de, 86, 152.
Mohammed, 161.
Montaigne, 274 n.
Montesquieu, 18, 63, 64, 65, 66, 87, 219.
More, P. E., 328.
Murry, J. Middleton, 135 n.
Mussolini, 312.
Napoleon, 10, 128, 129, 130, 132, 139, 140, 141, 256.
Nero, 18, 141, 264.
Newman, Cardinal, 156, 182.
Nicolay, 249 n.
Nietzsche, 228, 327.
Occam, William of, 113, 321.
Oliver, F. S., 248 n.
Origen, 319.
Ovid, 172.
Page, Walter H., 280.
Paine, Tom, 104.
Paley, 77.
Palmer, George H., 272 n.
Papini, 284 n.
Pascal, 12, 25, 37, 42, 62, 166, 167, 179, 180, 237, 274 n., 301, 322.
Pater, Walter, 107.
Paul, Saint, 159, 160, 173, 190 n.
Pericles, 36, 148 n.
Philo Judæus, 171.
Piccoli, R., 328.
Pindar, 168.
Pius IX, 144.
Plato, 11, 12, 30, 31, 32, 33, 51 n., 87, 92, 149, 150, 168, 169,
171, 172, 173, 176, 177, 202, 231.
Pontius Pilate, 172.
Pope, A., 48, 58.
Pound, Roscoe, 296 n.
Powers, H. H., 268 n.
Proal, L., 77 n.
Proudhon, 108 n.
Pyrrhus, 139, 271.
Rambouillet, Marquise de, 124.
Raphael, 191.
Rehberg, 100 n.
Renan, E., 118, 130 n., 292.
Repington, Colonel, 203.
Richelieu, 124, 139.
Rickaby, Joseph, 324 n.
Rivarol, 229.
Roberts, Lord, 289.
Robespierre, 89, 95, 125, 126, 127, 217, 266.
Rockefeller, J. D., 212.
Roosevelt, Theodore, 249, 269.
Rousseau, 1, 2, 4, 17, 18, 20, 21, 51 n., 52, 58, 59, 69, 70-96, 97,
99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 107, 108, 109, 115, 117, 118, 119, 121,
122, 123, 125, 127, 132, 167, 178, 183, 192, 195, 215, 216,
217, 218, 219, 222, 228, 229, 232, 237, 245, 276, 277, 279,
287, 300, 327, 328, 334.
Sainte-Beuve, 9, 90.
Saint-Evremond, 139, 187.
Saint-Just, 126.
Saint-Pierre, Abbé de, 67, 121, 122, 131.
Sanson, 126 n.
Savigny, 100 n.
Schiller, 81, 325 n., 329 n.
Schopenhauer, 73, 227, 326, 327.
Schwab, 239.
Ségur, Comte de, 125.
Seillière, E., 17 n., 20, 21, 22, 260.
Selden, John, 265.
Seneca, 50 n., 71 n.
Shaftesbury, Third Earl of, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 72, 216, 325 n.
Shakespeare, 137, 147.
Shelley, P. B., 76, 77, 136, 137, 220, 222.
Shelley, Mrs., 133.
Sherman, Stuart P., 251, 252.
Shun, 200.
Smith, Adam, 51, 191, 213.
Smith, Vincent A., 160 n.
Socrates, 32, 149, 165, 167, 172, 173, 179, 264, 278, 283, 284, 298.
Solomon, 80.
Sophocles, 147, 295.
Speed, 81.
Spengler, Oswald, 20, 21.
Spinoza, 322, 323, 324.
Staël, Mme. de, 5, 96.
Stephen, Fitzjames, 286 n.
Stephen, Leslie, 209.
Sully, 121.
Sunday, Rev. William A., 240.
Swift, Jonathan, 137.
Synesius, 14.
Tacitus, 232.
Tagore, Rabindranath, 161, 162.
Taine, H., 83, 100, 124, 127.
Tamerlane, 158.
Taylor, Jeremy, 137.
Tennyson, 81 n., 258.
Tertullian, 177 n.
Thompson, D. W., 164 n.
Thrale, 206.
Thucydides, 38, 150.
Tiberius, 18, 271.
Ticknor, George, 305 n.
Tyrrell, 141.
d’Urfé, H., 124.
Vaihinger, 326.
Vaughan, C. E., 115, 119 n., 122 n.
Victoria, Queen, 276.
Villon, 28.
Virgil, 231.
Vogüé, Vicomte M. de, 117.
Voltaire, 48, 63, 68, 99, 323.
Ward, Wilfrid, 81 n.
Washington, George, 246, 247, 248, 249, 250, 251, 263, 269, 270.
Watson, J. B., 330 n.
Way, A. S., 181 n.
Webster, D., 247.
Weems, “Parson,” 249 n.
Whitman, Walt, 4, 219, 228, 249, 260, 267, 268.
Wicksteed, P. H., 320 n.
Wilson, Woodrow, 196, 268, 280, 288.
Wordsworth, Wm., 227, 327.
Wright, Harold Bell, 240.
Wulf, M. de, 320 n.
Young, E., 15.
Zanta, L., 71 n.
FOOTNOTES
[1] See _Letters of Lord Acton to Mary Gladstone_, p. xii.
[2] See _The Masters of Modern French Criticism_ (1912), p. 188.
[3] _Cratylus_, 386 E. It goes without saying that no philosopher
affords better examples of the higher uses of the imagination (in the
extended sense that we have come to give to the word) than Plato. As
for the Platonic theory of the imagination in this extended sense, it
is not altogether easy to grasp, even after every allowance has been
made for changes in terminology.
[4] See Bergson’s introductory note to _Balzac et la morale
romantique_, par E. Seillière.
[5] _Balzac et la morale romantique_, p. 42.
[6] Cf. Aristotle, _Politics_, 1273a: “Whenever the chiefs of the state
deem anything honorable, the other citizens are sure to follow their
example.”
[7] _The Prince_, ch. XV.
[8] _The Prince_, ch. XIX.
[9] _Ibid._, ch. VII.
[10] _Leviathan_, Part I, ch. IX.
[11] See Seneca, _de Clem._, II, 4-6.
[12] The following passage from Rousseau (_Emile_, Livre IV) may serve
as a sample of the fully developed emotional ethics of which the
beginnings are found in Shaftesbury: “Cet enthousiasme de la vertu,
quel rapport a-t-il avec notre intérêt privé?... Otez de nos cœurs cet
amour du beau, vous ôtez tout le charme de la vie. Celui dont les viles
passions ont étouffé dans son âme étroite ces sentiments délicieux;
celui qui, à force de se concentrer au dedans de lui, vient à bout de
n’aimer que lui-même, n’a plus de transports, son cœur glacé ne palpite
plus de joie, un doux attendrissement n’humecte jamais ses yeux, il
ne jouit plus de rien.” This type of “enthusiasm” assumes at times a
Platonic coloring, as in _Nouvelle Héloise_, Pt. II, Lettre XI. Plato,
however, as Gomperz points out (_Griechische Denker_, II, p. 411),
“would have utterly despised the sentimentalism of Rousseau.”
[13] Book II, ch. III.
[14] _Ibid._, ch. XI.
[15] See J. Dedieu: _Montesquieu et la tradition politique anglaise en
France_.
[16] _Esprit des Lois_, liv. XXIV, ch. 26.
[17] _Ibid._, ch. 5.
[18] _Ibid._, liv. XIV, ch. 3.
[19] Yet in another chapter--and this is a good sample of his
inconsistency--he adopts Mandeville’s arguments in favor of luxury.
(_Ibid._, liv. XIX, ch. 9.)
[20] Buddha, for example, bestowed his final homage not upon Providence
in the Christian sense, but upon the Law (“Dhamma”), a law, one
scarcely need add, quite distinct from that of physical nature.
[21] See L. Zanta, _La Renaissance du stoïcisme au xvi^e siècle_.
[22] The Stoical influence can be traced here also. See Seneca,
_Epistles_, XIV, 2. Cf. also _The Social and Political Ideas of Some
Great Mediæval Thinkers_ (edited by F. J. C. Hearnshaw), pp. 43 ff.
[23] _Grundlage der Moral_, ‡ 19, 9.
[24] See, for example, _Dernière Réponse à M. Bordes_: “Qu’ils paissent
même, s’il le faut: j’aime encore mieux voir les hommes brouter l’herbe
dans les champs que s’entre-dévorer dans les villes ... Osera-t-on
prendre le parti de l’instinct contre la raison? C’est précisément ce
que je demande.”
[25] For the testimony of a French magistrate on this point, see L.
Proal: “L’Anarchisme au xviii^e siècle,” _Revue philosophique_, vol.
82, pp. 135-60, 202-42.
[26] See Richard Fester: _Rousseau und die deutsche
Geschichtsphilosophie_.
[27] _Lettre à M. de Malesherbes_, 26 janvier, 1762.
[28] This story was a favorite of Tennyson’s. I abridge it from Wilfrid
Ward, _Problems and Persons_, pp. 204-05.
[29] Letter of Hume to Dr. Blair, 25 March, 1766. This letter was
written, it will be noticed, while Hume was still on friendly terms
with Rousseau.
[30] _Annales de la Société Jean-Jacques Rousseau_, VIII, p. 31.
[31] Strictly enforced this distinction makes party government
impossible. It also points the way to the decision reached by the
States General in 1789 that the deputies should vote individually and
not as members of an order, a decision that meant practically the
triumph of the Third Estate over the clergy and nobility.
[32] _Contrat Social_, liv. IV, ch. III.
[33] Cf. P.-M. Masson, _La Religion de J.-J. Rousseau_, III, ch. V.
[34] On Rehberg, Savigny, etc.
[35] _Emile_, liv. II.
[36] Cf. _Rousseau and Romanticism_, p. 49 f.
[37] It would not be easy to find in an English author of anything
like the same intellectual distinction the equivalent of the following
passage from Proudhon (_Œuvres_, II, p. 91): “L’enthousiasme qui nous
possède, l’enthousiasme de l’égalité, ... est une ivresse plus forte
que le vin, plus pénétrante que l’amour: passion ou fureur divine que
le délire des Léonidas, des Saint Bernard et des Michel-Ange n’égala
jamais.”
[38] Cf. E. Faguet, _Politiques et moralistes_, vol. I, p. 117: “Il est
à peu près impossible à un Français d’être libéral, et le libéralisme
n’est pas français.” See also _ibid._, III, p. 95.
[39] _Introduction à l’Iconographie de J.-J. Rousseau_, I, pp. vii-viii.
[40] I have cited some of these passages in _Rousseau and Romanticism_,
p. 194 n.
[41] _Réforme intellectuelle et morale_, p. 194.
[42] See _Political Writings_ (Vaughan), II, p. 172.
[43] See the opening paragraphs of _Emile_ (“Tout patriote est dur aux
étrangers,” etc.).
[44] _Political Writings_ (Vaughan), I, p. 392 n.
[45] Cf. Chateaubriand, _Mémoires d’Outre-Tombe_, II, pp. 12-14:
“Tandis que la tragédie rougissait les rues, la bergerie florissait au
théâtre; il n’était question que d’innocents pasteurs et de virginales
pastourelles: champs, ruisseaux, prairies, moutons, colombes, âge d’or
sous le chaume, revivaient aux soupirs du pipeau devant les roucoulants
Tircis et les naïves tricoteuses qui sortaient du spectacle de la
guillotine. Si Sanson en avait eu le temps, il aurait joué le rôle
de Colin, et Mademoiselle Théroigne de Méricourt celui de Babet. Les
Conventionnels se piquaient d’être les plus bénins des hommes: bons
pères, bons fils, bons maris, ils menaient promener les petits enfants;
ils leur servaient de nourrices; ils pleuraient de tendresse à leurs
simples jeux; ils prenaient doucement dans leurs bras ces petits
agneaux, afin de leur montrer le _dada_ des charrettes qui conduisaient
les victimes au supplice. Ils chantaient la nature, la paix, la pitié,
la bienfaisance, la candeur, les vertus domestiques; ces béats de
philanthropie faisaient couper le cou à leurs voisins avec une extrême
sensibilité, pour le plus grand bonheur de l’espèce humaine.”
[46] Chateaubriand. _Mémoires d’Outre-Tombe_, II, p. 243.
[47] Both monarchists and revolutionary idealists had of course other
motives in addition to those they professed. For this whole period, see
E. Bourgeois, _Manuel historique de politique étrangère_, II, pp. 1-184.
[48] According to M. Chuquet, the remark of Goethe to which I refer
dates from 1820 and not from the evening of the battle (20 Sep., 1792).
See article in _Revue hebdomadaire_, 18 Déc., 1915.
[49] “La Révolution française fut le fait générateur de l’idée de
l’unité allemande.” Renan, _Réforme intellectuelle et morale_, p. 130.
[50] See Coleridge’s _France: an Ode_. For corresponding German
developments, see G. P. Gooch, _Germany and the French Revolution_,
_passim_.
[51] See _Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus_, ch. 15.
[52] See _Mandragola_, Act 3, Scene 4. The application of the principle
in this particular passage is, however, ironical.
[53] This point has been well made by Mr. J. Middleton Murry in
his essay on _The Nature of Civilization (The Evolution of an
Intellectual_, p. 168).
[54] _De Monarchia_, III, ch. XVI.
[55] See Introduction to _Rousseau and Romanticism_.
[56] The typical democratic-imperialistic statesman of this age
is Pericles. For a sense of the dangers of the policy of Athenian
expansion and also of the importance of union among the Greeks, one has
to turn to conservatives of the type of Cimon.
[57] Cicero, whom no one will accuse of being an enemy of the Greeks,
has a passage on this subject that may be regarded as definitive. See
his _Oratio pro L. Valerio Flacco_, IV.
[58] See Athenaeus, XII, 26.
[59] A German translation of Mei-ti (with a laudatory introduction) has
recently been published by Alfred Forke. It should be noted that _jên_,
the virtue on which the Confucian puts his final emphasis, though
usually rendered by “benevolence” or some such term, is something very
different from altruism. This should be plain from the uncompromising
hostility of Mencius to Mei-ti. The exaltation of _jên_ is simply the
Confucian way of affirming that love is the fulfilment of the law.
Inasmuch as _jên_ manifests itself on the humanistic rather than on
the religious level, the nearest Western equivalent is probably the
treatment of friendship by Aristotle in the _Nicomachean Ethics_ (Books
VIII-IX).
[60] See _La Vie des peuples_, Tome VII, p. 195.
[61] The question arises as to the influence of the older religion
on Christianity. Much has been asserted on this subject and little
or nothing proved. All we know positively is that Asoka sent out
missionaries to Syria, Egypt, Cyrene, Macedonia and Epirus. As to the
results of this missionary effort we are not informed. A translation of
the different inscriptions will be found in _Asoka_ by Vincent A. Smith
(2nd ed., 1909).
[62] _Dhammapada_, v. 96.
[63] See his book on _Nationalism_, _passim_.
[64] The tracing of the so-called “chain of dependent origination.”
[65] Of Confucius, for example, the late Professor Chavannes of the
Collège de France says: “He was, as it were, five hundred years
before our era, the national conscience which gave precision and
corroboration to the profound ideas of which the classic books of
remote antiquity reveal to us the first outlines.... He went about
proclaiming the necessity of conforming to the moral idea that China
had slowly conceived in the course of the centuries; the men of his
time refused to obey him because they found it too difficult to give
up their comforts or their interests; they felt, nevertheless, that
his voice had a more than human authority; they were moved and stirred
to the depths of their being when they were touched by the potent
spirit coming from the distant past which summoned up in them the
truths glimpsed by their fathers.” _Quelques Idées morales des Chinois_
(lecture originally given at the Sorbonne and published in _Bulletin de
la Société autour du Monde_, Janvier-Mai, 1918, pp. 47 ff.).
[66] See article on Aristotle by D. W. Thompson in _The Legacy of
Greece, p_. 144.
[67] Hume has a discussion of humility in animals! (_Treatise of Human
Nature_, Book II, Part I, Sect. xii.)
[68] Mr. Brownell goes so far as to say that it would be impossible to
have less humility than Emerson (_American Prose Masters_, p. 176).
[69] See Diels, _Fragmente der Vorsokratiker_, I, p. 117.
[70] Eight words in the Pali original. See _Dhammapada_, v. 186.
[71] “Video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor.” “Nitimur in vetitum
semper, cupimusque negata.”
[72] The phrase _Credo quia absurdum_ does not actually occur in the
famous fifth chapter of Tertullian’s _De Carne Christi_, but sums up
correctly the total sense of the chapter.
[73] “Then followed the ages which are not unjustly called the Dark
Ages, in which were laid the foundations of all the happiness that has
been since enjoyed, and of all the greatness that has been achieved
by men.... It was not an age of conspicuous saints, but sanctity was
at no time so general. The holy men of the first centuries shine with
an intense brilliancy from the midst of the surrounding corruption.
Legions of saints--individually for the most part obscure, because
of the atmosphere of light around them--throng the five illiterate
centuries, from the close of the great dogmatic controversies to the
rise of a new theology and the commencement of new interests with
Hildebrand, Anselm, and Bernard.” (_History of Freedom_, p. 200.)
[74] See his _Fragment d’un Traité du vide_.
[75] _Pensées_, 434.
[76] _The Madness of Hercules_, 744 ff., translated by A. S. Way.
[77] One may illustrate from Cardinal Newman himself: “What is
intellect itself,” he asks, “but a fruit of the Fall, not found in
paradise or in heaven, more than in little children, and at the utmost
but tolerated by the Church, and only not incompatible with the
regenerate mind?... Reason is God’s gift, and so are passions.... Eve
was tempted to follow passion and reason, and she fell.” (_Parochial
and Plain Sermons_, V, p. 112.)
[78] “L’intelligence est caractérisée par une incompréhension naturelle
de la Vie.” (Bergson, _Evolution créatrice_, p. 179.)
[79] See Luther’s _De servo arbitrio_ (1526).
[80] “Dieu non seulement a prévu la chute du premier homme et en elle
la ruine de toute sa postérité, mais il l’a ainsi voulu.” (Calvin,
_Inst. chrét._, liv. III, ch. XXIII, par. 7.) Melancthon declares
in his _Commentary on Epistle to Romans_ (1525) that “God works all
things.... He is the author of the treason of Judas as well as of the
conversion of Paul.”
[81] The Church was supposed to be able to work efficaciously in this
sense because of the grace that had been delegated to it.
[82] “Un rentier que l’Etat paie pour ne rien faire ne diffère guère à
mes yeux d’un brigand qui vit aux dépens des passants,” etc., _Emile_,
Livre III.
[83] The writer of some verses in an Ohio newspaper, after complaining
of the failure of the millennium to arrive in spite of the efforts of
“many scores of dreamers, poets, orators and schemers,” concludes as
follows:
And so I hold it is not treason
To advance a simple reason
For the sorry lack of progress we decry.
It is this: instead of working
On himself, each man is shirking,
And trying to reform some other guy.
The author of this doggerel is nearer to the wisdom of the ages than
some of our college presidents.
[84] _Sutta-Nipâta_, v. 135.
[85] _Politics_, 1267b.
[86] _Ibid._, 1266b.
[87] See beginning of _Works and Days_.
[88] _Past and Present_, ch. XI (beginning).
[89] Justice is, according to Hume, an “artificial” virtue; its
immediate source is an enlightened self-interest. Its ultimate source,
like that of all the other virtues, is “an extensive sympathy with
mankind.”
[90] “Laugh and the world laughs with you, weep and you weep alone.”
[91] See _France: an Ode_ (1798), Part V. The beginnings of this part
of the poem is pure Burke:
The Sensual and the Dark rebel in vain,
Slaves by their own compulsion! etc.
After striking this Burkian note, Coleridge proceeds to fall into sheer
pantheistic bewilderment.
[92] _Sutta-Nipâta_, v. 654.
[93] _Political Thought from Locke to Bentham_, p. 270.
[94] See Appendix A.
[95] I take the anecdote from _The Education of Henry Adams_, p. 143.
[96] _Works_ (Ford ed.), X, p. 143.
[97] For example, 41 per cent of the residents of New York City are
actually foreign-born; if we add those whose father or mother or both
were born abroad, the more or less foreign element in its population
amounts to 80 per cent.
[98] He drafted, for example, the so-called Kentucky Resolutions
(November, 1799).
[99] A similar opposition existed, of course, between Jefferson and
Alexander Hamilton. The _Life of Hamilton_, by F. S. Oliver, is to be
commended for the clearness of the insight it displays into the nature
of this opposition.
[100] A specially influential book in the creation of this myth was the
_Life of Washington_ (1800), by “Parson” Weems.
[101] Lincoln actually defended himself against the charge of having
spoken disparagingly of Jefferson. See _Works_ (Nicolay and Hay ed.),
VI, p. 60.
[102] See _Works_ (Ford ed.), III, p. 195.
[103] _American and Allied Ideals_ (War Information Series, No. 12), p.
9.
[104] Strange things have been happening to the Puritan conscience of
late even in the most authentic descendants of the Puritans. Thus Henry
Adams inserts in a hymn to the Virgin a hymn to the dynamo. The whole
conception has little relation to mediæval Christianity and none at
all to Puritanism. It is, however, closely related to the tendency of
the nineteenth century to see in a sympathy that is emancipated from
justice the proper corrective of a power that is pursued without regard
to the law of measure.
[105] It is estimated that 62,014 statutes were passed by our national
and state legislatures in the period 1909-13. Some of these laws--for
example, those regulating finger-bowls and the length of sheets in
hotels--remind one of the minute prescriptions indulged in by the
ancient city-states at their worst. Cf. Fustel de Coulanges, _La Cité
antique_, p. 266: “L’Etat exerçait sa tyrannie jusque dans les plus
petites choses; à Locres, la loi défendait aux hommes de boire du vin
pur; à Rome, à Milet, à Marseille, elle le défendait aux femmes. Il
était ordinaire que le costume fût fixé invariablement par les lois de
chaque cité; la législation de Sparte réglait la coiffure des femmes,
et celle d’Athènes leur interdisait d’emporter en voyage plus de trois
robes. A Rhodes la loi défendait de se raser la barbe; à Byzance,
elle punissait d’une amende celui qui possédait chez soi un rasoir; à
Sparte, au contraire, elle exigeait qu’on se rasât la moustache.”
[106] In 1885 there were 1808 homicides in the United States with 108
executions; in 1910, 8,975 homicides with 104 executions.
[107] “In 1918 Chicago had 22 robberies for every one robbery in London
and 14 robberies for every one robbery in England and Wales.... Cities
like St. Louis and Detroit, in their statistics of robbery and assault
with intent to rob, frequently show annual totals varying from three
times to five times greater than the number of such crimes reported
for the whole of Great Britain. Liverpool is about one and a third
times larger than Cleveland, and yet in 1919 Cleveland reported 31
robberies for every one reported in Liverpool.” (Raymond B. Fosdick,
_Crime in America and the Police_, 1920, p. 18.) Mr. Fosdick ascribes
our imperfect administration of justice to our legalism (p. 48) and our
sentimentalism (p. 44).
[108] “This is a chain of galley-slaves,” cried Sancho, “who are going
to the galleys.”... “Be it how it may,” replied Don Quixote, “these
people, since they are being taken, go by force and not of their own
will.... Here comes in the exercise of my office, to redress outrages
and to succor and aid the afflicted.” “Let your worship reflect,” said
Sancho, “that justice, which is the King’s self, does no violence
or wrong to such people, but chastises them in punishment of their
crimes.” (_Don Quixote_, Part I, ch. XXII.)
[109] “To be always seeking after the useful does not become free and
exalted souls” (_Politics_, 1338b.)
[110] To suppose, as Bacon did, not only that nature is exhaustible,
but that it may be exhausted by the accumulated observations of a
number of essentially commonplace specialists is to be wrong at the
centre. Cf. _Novum Organum_, Book I, Aphorism CXXII: “My way of
discovering sciences goes far to level men’s wits, and leaves but
little to individual excellence.”
[111] “The American demands a poetry ... that will place in the van and
hold up at all hazards the banner of the divine pride of man in himself
(the radical foundation of the new religion). Long enough have the
People been listening to poems in which common humanity, deferential,
bends low, humiliated, acknowledging superiors. But America listens to
no such poem. Erect, inflated, and fully self-esteeming be the chant;
and then America will listen with pleased ears.” (_Democratic Vistas._)
[112] “... the American Soul, with equal hemispheres, one Love, one
Dilation or Pride.”
[113] For a tabulation of these tests see vol. XV of the _Memoirs of
the National Academy of Sciences_.
[114] In _Le Droit international public positif_ (1920), I, pp. 77
ff., J. de Louter has traced historically the opposition between those
who base international law on “jus naturale,” conceived as universal
reason, and those who incline rather to see in it an expression of will
(“jus voluntarium”).
[115] This consistent imperialism has been traced by H. H. Powers in
his volume: _America among the Nations_.
[116] See Tenney Frank’s _Roman Imperialism_, especially ch. VIII
(“Sentimental Politics”).
[117] As the rural philosopher remarked: “Things ain’t what they used
to be--in fact they never was.”
[118]
Ætas parentum peior avis tulit
Nos nequiores, mox daturos
Progeniem vitiosiorem.
_Carminum_, Lib. III, 6.
[119] Professor G. H. Palmer has written from his own memories an
article on “The Puritan Home.” (_Atlantic Monthly_, November, 1921.)
[120] Cf. Pascal, _Pensées_, 64: “Ce n’est pas dans Montaigne, mais
dans moi que je trouve tout ce que j’y vois.”
[121] Cf. Confucius: “Alas! I have never met a man who could see his
own faults and arraign himself at the bar of his own conscience.”
[122] See Epictetus, _Dissert._ I, 17.
[123] Cf. Joubert on the writings of Rousseau: “La paresse y prend
l’attitude d’une occupation philosophique.”
[124] In his _Life of Christ_ Papini not only attacks Socrates
specifically, but bases his whole point of view on an abdication of the
critical spirit.
[125] “It was an easier thing to consecrate the fighting instinct than
to curb it.... [The crusader] might butcher all day till he waded
ankle deep in blood and then at nightfall kneel sobbing for very joy
at the altar of the Sepulchre--for was he not red from the winepress
of the Lord? One can readily understand the popularity of the Crusades
when one reflects that they permitted men to get to the other world
by fighting hard on earth and allowed them to gain the fruits of
asceticism by the way of hedonism.” (Article on “Crusades,” by Ernest
Barker, in eleventh edition of _Encyclopædia Britannica_.)
[126] The predominance of the imperialistic over the religious motif is
especially conspicuous in the fourth Crusade (1202-04).
[127] Fitzjames Stephen has submitted this formula to a drastic
analysis in _Liberty, Equality, Fraternity_. This book contains also a
refutation of Mill’s essay on _Liberty_.
[128] This tendency was noted by various observers even before the war,
for example, by J. E. C. Bodley in his essay _The Decay of Idealism in
France_ (1912).
[129] If one wishes to measure the wideness of the gap between
President Eliot’s doctrine and that of the Puritans, let him read
together Jonathan Edwards’s sermon on “A divine and supernatural
Light,” a bit of quintessential Puritanism, and “Five American
Contributions to Civilization.”
[130] The passage of the _Antigone_ (vv. 450 ff.) needs to be
associated with the passage of the _Œdipus_ (vv. 863 ff.): “... laws
that in the highest empyrean had their birth, of which Heaven is the
father alone, neither did the race of mortal men beget them, nor shall
oblivion ever put them to sleep. The power of God is mighty in them and
groweth not old.”
[131] See ch. IV (“The Rights of Man”) in _The Spirit of the Common
Law_ (1921), by Roscoe Pound. Professor Pound is in sympathy with the
second tendency to which I refer--the tendency towards what he terms
the “socialization of justice.” His point of view is closely related
to that of the German Jhering, who may himself be defined as a sort of
collectivistic Bentham.
[132] “Individuals and families, associations and dependencies were so
much material that the sovereign power consumed for its own purposes.
What the slave was in the hands of his master, the citizen was in the
hands of the community. The most sacred obligations vanished before the
public advantage. The passengers existed for the sake of the ship. By
their disregard for private interests, and for the moral welfare and
improvement of the people, both Greece and Rome destroyed the vital
elements on which the prosperity of nations rests, and perished by the
decay of families and the depopulation of the country. They survive
not in their institutions but in their ideas, and by their ideas,
especially on the art of government, they are--
The dead, but sceptred sovereigns who still rule
Our spirits from their urns.
To them, indeed, may be tracked nearly all the errors that are
undermining political society--communism, utilitarianism, the confusion
between tyranny and authority, and between lawlessness and freedom.”
(Lord Acton: _History of Freedom and Other Essays_, p. 17.)
[133] _Politics_, 1310a. Cf. also _ibid._, 1337a.
[134] See Herbert B. Adams: _Thomas Jefferson and the University of
Virginia_ (1888), especially ch. IX (“The University of Virginia and
Harvard College”). Cf. also letter of Jefferson to George Ticknor, 16
July, 1823. Superficially, Jefferson was friendly to classical study;
his underlying philosophical tendency (of which his encyclopædic
inclusiveness and encouragement of specialization are only symptoms)
was unfavorable to it.
[135] See Appendix B.
[136] _Eth. Nic._, 1166b.
[137] Cf. Confucius: “The moral man, by living a life of simple truth
and earnestness, alone can help to bring peace and order in the world.”
“When the men are there, good government will flourish, but when the
men are gone, good government decays and becomes extinct.”
[138] See his _Moral Principles in Education_, p. 22: “The child is
born with a _natural_ desire to give out, to do, to _serve_.” (My
italics.)
[139] The statement has been made by those who should be in a position
to know that poison gases have recently been invented at least a
thousand times more deadly than any employed during the war.
[140] _The Socialist Movement_, p. 90.
[141] The work of Wilhelm Kahl, _Die Lehre vom Primat des Willens
bei Augustinus, Duns Scotus und Descartes_, is a useful repertory of
material for the whole subject.
[142] See his _De Trinitate_ for this and other subtle psychological
observations on the will.
[143] P. H. Wicksteed has collected passages from Saint Thomas in
illustration of the relation between intellect and will in his
_Reactions between Dogma and Philosophy_, pp. 582-620.
[144] For this struggle between faith and reason during the scholastic
period see _La Philosophie au moyen âge_, par E. Gilson (the point of
view is on the whole that of a scientific intellectual); also _History
of Mediæval Philosophy_, by M. de Wulf (the point of view is Catholic).
[145] According to M. Gilson (_op. cit._, II, pp. 83-84), “Duns Scot
revendique les droits du Dieu chrétien et les défend instinctivement
contre la contamination de la pensée hellénique.” In view of Arabian
influence on Duns Scotus, one may perhaps go further and say that in
his treatment of the will an Asiatic is arrayed against a European
psychology.
[146] M. Gilson, however, disagrees with Kahl as to the nearness of
Descartes’s conception of the divine will to that of Duns Scotus. See
his work, _La Doctrine cartésienne de la liberté et la théologie_, pp.
128-49.
[147] _Op. cit._, ch. III; also p. 210.
[148] _Principes de la philosophie_, Livre I, 9.
[149] _Méditations métaphysiques_, IV (_Du vrai et du faux_).
[150] _Ibid._
[151] See especially his _Lettres à la princesse Elisabeth_.
[152] “... par conséquent il est pour le moins aussi certain que Dieu
... est ou existe, qu’aucune démonstration de géométrie le saurait
être.” (_Discours de la Méthode._)
[153] See _Ethics_, II, Prop. 7, scholium.
[154] “Voluntas et intellectus unum et idem sunt.” (_Ethics_, II, Prop.
49, corollary). In _Ethics_, III, Prop. 9, scholium, a different view
of the will appears; it is there identified with impulse, possibly, as
has been conjectured, under the influence of Hobbes.
[155] I am dealing with the main influence. Certain Cartesians
like Geulincx developed in connection with the doctrine known as
“Occasionalism” a sense of man’s dependence on the divine will that
reminds one of mediæval humility.
[156] La Mettrie, a disciple of the Cartesian Boerhaave, published
_L’Homme-machine_ in 1747.
[157] See _Free Will and Four English Philosophers_ (Hobbes, Locke,
Hume and Mill), by the Reverend Joseph Rickaby, S. J. Father Rickaby
is of course a traditionalist, but makes remarks (see, for example,
p. 205) that are decidedly perspicacious even from a strictly
psychological point of view.
[158] See his _Hume_, ch. X (end).
[159] Schiller wrote satirically of the categorical imperative from
this point of view in his poem _Die Philosophen_ (v. 35 ff.). Elsewhere
(_Werke_, Goedeke Ed., X, p. 101) he opposes to what seems to him the
“Draconian” severity of the Kantian reason, the point of view of the
“beautiful soul.” Kant himself tended at the outset to base ethics
on feeling. About 1770, however, he repudiated Shaftesbury and his
followers on the ground that they were guilty of Epicureanism.
[160] Jacobi has this aspect of the categorical imperative in mind
when he exclaims: “Yes, I am that atheist and godless man who will lie
as dying Desdemona lied; will lie and deceive as Pylades did when he
feigned to be Orestes, will murder as Timoleon did, etc.”
[161] Cf. p. 225. See also _Rousseau and Romanticism_, p. 370 n., where
I touch on the philosophy of Vaihinger in its relation to the problem
of the imagination.
[162] For Schopenhauer’s attack on the categorical imperative see the
first nine sections of his _Grundlage der moral_. The reconciliation
of liberty with necessity that Huxley ridicules seems to Schopenhauer,
however, to be, along with his “transcendental æsthetics,” Kant’s most
distinguished achievement.
[163] _Neue Paralipomena._ Fouillée seems to have missed the point
seriously when he affirms (_Descartes_, p. 198) that in giving the
primacy to will Schopenhauer continues Descartes. So far as Descartes’s
emphasis on the divine will is genuine, it is a survival of Christian
voluntarism.
[164] See _Hume_, ch. X.
[165] _Works_ (Eversley Ed., IX, p. 11).
[166] _Works_ (Appleton Ed., IX, p. 200).
[167] _Shelburne Essays_, VIII, p. 193 ff.
[168] _Benedetto Croce_, p. 198.
[169] “The holidays of life are its most vitally significant portions,
because they are, or at least should be, covered with just this kind of
magically irresponsible spell.” The point of view is related to that of
Schiller when he says (_Werke_, Goedeke Ed., X, p. 327): “Der Mensch
ist nur da ganz Mensch, wo er spielt.”
[170] For attempts of James to prove free will in this way see _A
Pluralistic Universe_, p. 391 n.; also _Some Problems of Philosophy_,
p. 145.
[171] For an attempt of this kind see J. B. Watson: _Psychology from
the Standpoint of a Behaviorist_ (1919). For a discussion of the whole
tendency see Mary W. Calkins: _The Truly Psychological Behaviorism_
(_Psychological Review_, vol. 28, p. 1-18).
[172] Book I, 4.1; see also _Institutes_, Book I, 2.6. So far as it
refers to one specific transaction, the _lex regia_ is of course a
juristic fiction. The concentration of power in the hands of the
emperor was more gradual.
[173] I have discussed the various meanings that this maxim may have in
the last chapter of _The Masters of Modern French Criticism_.
[174] Perhaps the best known attempt to base a theory of sovereignty on
utility and social expediency is that of John Austin in his _Province
of Jurisprudence Determined_ (1832; 2nd ed., 1861). See especially ch.
VI.