LAYING THE FOUNDATIONS OF CIVILIZATION IN THE AGE OF RATIONALISM
The Mentality and the Achievements of the Ethical Belief in Progress
THANKS to the fully worked out optimistic-ethical world-view with
which the belief in progress surrounds itself in the course of the
eighteenth century, these generations prove capable of thinking out
the ideals of civilization and advancing towards their realization.
The fact that all attempts to give ethics a foundation in reason have
turned out on the whole unsatisfactory does not move them, if indeed
they give the point any consideration at all. By the conviction that
they have formed a rational conception of the world which gives it an
optimistic-ethical meaning, they are carried on over all the inner
problems of ethics. The alliance which belief-in-progress and ethics
have in the course of modern times contracted with one another is
sealed by means of their world-view, and now they set to work
together. Rational ideals are to be realized.
The ethical and the optimistic come into power, therefore, in the
world-view of the eighteenth century, although they have not yet
received any real foundation. Scepticism and materialism range around
the fortress like hordes of unconquered enemies, though at first
without being dangerous; as a rule they have themselves absorbed no
small amount of belief-in-progress and of ethical enthusiasm. Voltaire
is an example of the sceptic who stands under the restraint exercised
by the prevalent optimistic and ethical thought.
So far as its elements are concerned the world-view of rationalism
hides itself under the optimistic-ethical monism [pg 091] of Kungtse
(Confucius) and the Later Stoics, but the enthusiasm which supports it
is incomparably stronger than any felt by them. The circumstances,
too, amid which it appears are far more favourable, and so it becomes
an elemental power throughout a whole people.
In a world-view which springs from a noble faith, but is remarkable
also for the extent of its knowledge, the men of the eighteenth
century begin to think out ideals of civilization and to realise them
in such measure that the greatest epoch in the history of human
civilization now dawns.
The great feature of the mentality of this belief in progress which is
ever showing itself in works is its magnificent want of respect for
all existing things, whether belonging to the past or the present.
These are to it in all their various forms the imperfect, which is
destined to be replaced by a perfect.
The eighteenth century is thoroughly unhistoric. In what is good as in
what is bad it cuts itself loose from whatever was or is, and is
confident of being able to put in its place something that is more
valuable, because more ethical or more in accordance with reason. In
this conviction the age feels itself so creative that it has no
understanding for creations of original genius. Gothic buildings,
early painting, J. S. Bach’s music, and the poetry of earlier ages,
are felt by these generations as art which was produced at a time when
taste had not yet been purified. Activity which follows rules in
accordance with right reason will, they think, introduce a new art
which will be superior in every respect to any that has preceded it.
Full of this self-confidence, a mediocre musician like Zelter in
Berlin works over the scores of Bach’s Cantatas. Full of this
self-confidence, honourable poetasters re-write the texts of the
wonderful old German chorales and replace the originals in the hymn
books with their own wretched productions.
That they so naïvely push forward right into the sphere [pg 092] of
art the boundaries of the creative faculties with which nature endowed
them is a mistake made by these men for which they have often been
laughed at. But mockery cannot do them much harm. In those departments
of life in which the important matter is the shaping of things
according to ideals given by reason—and work done upon such things
means for the establishment of civilization very much more than any
work spent in the promotion of art—they are as creative as any
generation ever has been, and as scarcely any will be in the future.
They are frightened by nothing which has to be undertaken in this
sphere, and in every department they make the most astonishing
advance.
They venture also to deal with religion. That religion should be split
up into various antagonistic confessional bodies is to them an offence
against reasonable reflexion. Only a relative, not any absolute
authority, they maintain, can be allowed to the belief which is handed
down in historical formulas. Finding expression in so many and such
varied forms it can, of course, be nothing but a more or less
imperfect embodiment of the ethical religion taught by reason, which
must be equally intelligible to all men. The right thing is,
therefore, to strive after the religion of reason, and to accept as
true only such parts of the various confessions as are in harmony with
it.
The churches, naturally, put themselves on the defensive against this
spirit, but against the strong general convictions of the age they are
unable in the long run to hold out. Protestantism succumbs first,
because the elements already within it allow such considerations to
find easy access. It carries within itself impulses to rationalism,
inherited from Humanism, from Huldreich Zwingli (1484-1531) and from
the Italians Lælius (1525-1562) and Faustus Socinus (1539-1604), and
these impulses, hitherto suppressed, now find themselves set
free._(_30_)_
[pg 093]
Catholicism shows itself more capable of resistance. Nothing in its
past makes it inclined to enlist under the banner of the spirit of the
age: its strong organization serves as a protection against this. Yet
it, too, has to yield considerably, and to allow its doctrines to
pass, so far as may be, for a symbolic expression of the religion of
reason.
While utilitarian ethics are on the whole the product of the English
spirit, the whole of Europe takes part in the expounding of the
religion of reason. Herbert of Cherbury (1582-1648), John Toland
(1669-1722), Anthony Collins (1676-1729), Matthew Tindal (1655-1733),
David Hume (1711-1776), Pierre Bayle (1647-1706), Jean-Jacques
Rousseau (1712-1778), Voltaire (1694-1778), Denis Diderot (1713-1784),
Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694-1768), Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
(1646-1716), Christian Wolff (1679-1754), Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
(1729-1781), Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1786), and a host of others,
whether standing nearer to or further from the Church, and whether or
not going further than others in systematic criticism, all bring
stones for the erection of the great building in which the piety of
illuminated mankind is to live._(_31_)_ The researches in the history
of religion made by the Germans, like Johann Salomo Semler
(1725-1791), Johann David Michaelis (1717-1791), and Johann August
Ernesti (1707-1781), provide scientific data which throw light upon
the division between eternal truths and the time-conditioned
convictions of religion.
The creed of the religion of reason is simply the optimistic-ethical
world-view reproduced in a Christian phraseology, that is in one
preserving within it the Christian theism, and the belief in
immortality. An all-wise and wholly benevolent Creator has produced
the world, and he upholds it in [pg 094] corresponding fashion. Men
are endowed with free will, and discover in their reason and their
heart the moral law which is meant to lead individuals and mankind to
perfection, and to accomplish in the world God’s highest purposes.
Every man has within him an indestructible soul, which feels his moral
life as the highest happiness, and after death enters a state of a
pure, spiritual existence.
This belief in God, in virtue, and in immortality was held to have
been taught in its purest form in previous ages in the teaching of
Jesus, but it was acknowledged that elements of the same beliefs were
to be found in all the higher religions._(_32_)_
If the eighteenth century attained to an optimistic-ethical world-view
which preached itself so confidently and was so widely accepted, the
reason is that it was able to re-interpret Christianity—which had by
that time got rid of the world- and life-denial that was originally
inherent in it—in that sense. Jesus was to it a teacher who even in
his own age and then through all the intervening centuries had been
misunderstood, and was now first rightly accepted as a revealer of the
religion of reason. Let anyone read a rationalistic Life of Jesus,
such as those of Franz Volkmar Reinhard (1753-1812) or Karl Heinrich
Venturini (1768-1849)._(_33_)_ They hold Jesus up to admiration as the
champion of enlightenment and of blessings for the common people. This
transformation of the historical picture is made easier for them by
the fact that the chief component element of the Gospel narrative is
ethical teaching, while the late-Jewish pessimistic world-view which
it presupposes is hardly more than hinted at.
[pg 095]
As an immediate result of the wiping out of confessional differences
the middle of the eighteenth century sees the beginning of a period of
tolerance in place of the persecution of all rejecters of orthodoxy
which had been common till then. The last serious act of confessional
intolerance was expulsion of all evangelicals from the Salzburg
district by the Archbishop of that town, Count von Firmian, in the
years 1731 and 1732.
About the middle of the century there begins also the movement of
opposition to the Jesuits, who were recognized as the enemies of
tolerance, and this led to the suppression of the order in 1773 by
Pope Clement XIV._(_34_)_
But the religion of reason fought superstition as well as intolerance.
In 1704 the philosopher and jurist of Halle, Christian Thomasius
(1655-1728), published his essays condemning trial for
witchcraft,_(_35_)_ and about the middle of the century the law courts
in most of the States of Europe refused to concern themselves any
longer with the crime of magic. The last death sentence on a witch was
passed in 1782 at Glarus, in Switzerland.
About the end of the century it became good form to detest anything
which had even a remote connexion with superstitious convictions.
Again, the will-to-progress of the eighteenth century deals with
nationalist prejudices in the same way as it deals with religious
ones. Above and beyond individual nations it points to mankind as the
great object towards which ideals are to be directed. Educated people
accustom themselves to see in the State not so much an organ of
national feeling as a mere organization for legal and economic
purposes. Cabinets may carry on war with each other, but in the
thought of the common people there grows up a recognition of the
brotherhood of nations.
In the sphere of law, too, the will-to-progress acquires [pg 096]
strength. The ideas of Hugo Grotius get accepted. The law of reason is
exalted in the convictions of the men of the eighteenth century to a
position above all traditional maxims of jurisprudence. It alone is
allowed to have permanent authority, and legal decisions have to be in
harmony with it. Fundamental principles of law, but principles equally
indisputable everywhere, have to be deduced from human nature. To
protect these and to ensure to every human being a human value with an
inviolable measure of freedom of which he can never be robbed, is the
first task of the State. The proclamation of “the Rights of Man” by
the States of North America, and the French Revolution, do no more
than give recognition and sanction to what, in the convictions of the
time, had already been won.
The first State in which torture was abolished was Prussia, and this
was secured by an administrative order of Frederick the Great’s in
1740. In France a certain amount of torture was practised down to the
Revolution— and somewhat later, for the thumb-screw was used under the
Directory during the examination which the royalist conspirators had
to undergo._(_36_)_
Side by side with the fight against absence of law and the existence
of inhuman laws, go efforts to adapt law to circumstances. Bentham
raises his voice against laws which tolerate usury, against senseless
customs duties, and against inhuman methods of colonization.
There dawns an age in which the purposive and the moral are the ruling
authorities. Officialdom acquires during these generations familiarity
with the notions of duty and honour, which later become natural to it.
Far-reaching beneficial reforms are introduced into administration
without any outcry.
The education of mankind in citizenship makes splendid progress. The
general good becomes the criterion of [pg 097] excellence both for the
commands of rulers and the obedience of their subjects, while at the
same time a beginning is made of securing that everyone shall be
educated in a manner corresponding to his human dignity and the needs
of his personal welfare. The war against ignorance is begun.
The way is prepared, too, for a more rational method of living. Houses
are built so as to be more comfortable, and the land is better
cultivated. Even the pulpit uses its influence to promote improvements
of this kind. The theory that reason has been given to man to be used
consistently and in every department of life plays at this time an
important and beneficent part in the preaching of the Gospel, even if
the way in which this is done often makes queer demands on our belief.
Sermons, for example, often treated incidentally of the best methods
of manuring, irrigating, and draining the fields. That Jenner’s
discovery of vaccination was so readily adopted in many districts was
due to the enlightenment which was spread abroad by the clergy.
Characteristic of the age of rationalism are the private societies
formed to promote the moral and utilitarian progress of mankind. In
1717 members of the higher ranks of society in London reorganize as
“The Order of Freemasons” the brotherhood which in earlier times had
been built up by the union in a single body of the members of the
mediæval building-lodges, but was now in a state of decay, and to this
new organization was assigned the duty of labouring to build up a new
humanity. About the middle of the century this order had spread all
over Europe, and reached the zenith of its success. Princes,
officials, and intellectuals alike joined it in great numbers, and
were inspired by it to the achievement of a huge amount of reform.
Similar aims were pursued by the “Order of the Illuminate” (or
enlightened) which was founded in Bavaria in 1776, but was suppressed
in 1784 by the reactionary Bavarian Government, which was still under
the influence [pg 098] of the Jesuits. It is said to have been the
intellectual counterpart of the Jesuit order, on the model of whose
organization it was formed.
That private societies aiming at the rational and moral perfecting of
mankind should work effectively seemed to the men of the eighteenth
century so much a matter of course that they assumed them to have
existed in earlier times. In a series of rationalist descriptions of
the life of Jesus it is assumed that the sect of the Essenes, near the
Dead Sea, of whom we learn from Josephus, the Jewish writer of the
first century A.D., was such an order, and that it was in touch with
similar brotherhoods in Egypt and India. Jesus, it is said, was
trained by them, and then helped by them to carry through the _rôle_
of the Messiah, in order that with the authority given by a holy yet
popular personality he might work to spread true illumination. The
famous _Life of Jesus_ by Karl Venturini carries this assumption out
in complete detail. According to him, the miracles of Jesus were
staged by brothers of this secret association.
Be that as it may, the fact that the will-to-progress of the
eighteenth century created for itself in these private societies
organizations which spread throughout Europe, contributed much to its
ability to influence the age.
It must be admitted indeed that the men of the rationalistic period
were smaller than their achievements. True, they all possessed
personality, but it did not reach very deep. It was produced by the
enthusiasm which they found in the mentality of the time and which
they shared with all their contemporaries. The individual imbibed
personality through the taking over of a ready-made world-view, which
gave him firm standing-ground together with ideals. His own
contribution was really nothing more than the capacity for enthusiasm.
That is why the men of this age are so remarkably like one another.
They all graze side by side in the same nourishing pasture land.
Nevertheless, the ideas of the purposive and the ethical [pg 099] have
never exercised so much influence over reality as they did among these
men of shallow optimism and sensitive morale. No book has been written
yet which fully describes their achievements, doing justice to their
origin, their character, their number, and their significance. We can
then only really comprehend what they accomplished when we recognize
the tragic fact that the most valuable part of it is lost to us, while
we do not feel in ourselves any ability to reproduce it. They were
masters of the facts of life to an extent which we are to-day quite
unable to realize.
Only a world-view which accomplishes all that rationalism did has a
right to condemn rationalism. The greatness of that philosophy is that
its hands are blistered.
Obstacles to the reform movement. The French Revolution
The great work of reform is never completed, partly because external
circumstances arise which check it, but also because the world-view of
rationalism becomes convulsed from within. In its confidence in the
enlightening power of all that is in accordance with reason the
will-to-progress was inclined to underestimate the resisting power of
the traditional, and to wish to carry through reforms where minds had
not been sufficiently prepared for their reception. On these
unsuccessful advances followed reaction which permanently injured the
work. This was the case in south-eastern Europe. Joseph II. of
Austria, who was emperor from 1764 to 1790, is the type of the
reforming prince. He discontinued the use of torture, opposed the
infliction of the death penalty, abolished serfdom, gave the Jews full
civic rights, introduced a new method of legislation and a new system
of legal administration, took away all class privileges, contended for
the equality of all before the law, protected the oppressed, founded
schools and hospitals, guaranteed the freedom of the Press and freedom
of domicile, abolished all State monopolies, and promoted the
development of agriculture and industry.
[pg 100]
But he is a ruler in the wrong place. He decrees these reforms and
then similar shocks, one after another, in countries which, being in
spiritual things still wholly under the dominion of the Catholic
Church of that time, are not prepared for them, and moreover in other
things as well display a specially backward attitude, because they
belong to the zone in which the Europe of that day passed over into
Asia. The Emperor is therefore unable to count upon either any
willingness to make sacrifices in the classes which are to give up
their privileges, or upon any understanding of his ideas in the common
people. In his attempts to organize the monarchy as a unity and in an
effective way for practical purposes, he comes into conflict with the
nationalities themselves of which it is composed. The reduction in the
number of the religious houses, which he undertakes out of economic
considerations, with the introduction of the freedom of the Press and
of a system of State education, bring on him the hostility of the
Church. Finally, because he is a ruler in the wrong place, this noble
reforming emperor dies of a broken heart, while Europe, because the
will-to-progress in Austria can accomplish nothing even at the time of
its greatest strength, owing to unfavourable circumstances, is
condemned to a period of the deepest misery over the problems of that
huge State, which have in this way been rendered insoluble, and over
the portion of Asia beyond it along the southern Danube.
In France, too, the wrong men are in control. There the spread of the
new ideas prepares the way splendidly for reform, but the reforms are
not undertaken, because its rulers cannot understand the signs of the
times, and allow the State to collapse in ruin. Consequently the
reform movement has to take the road of violence, whereby it slips
away from the guidance of the educated, and falls into the hands of
the mob, from which it is taken by the powerful genius of Napoleon.
Native of an island in which the Europe of that day passed over into
Africa, and lacking all [pg 101] deeper education, he is uninfluenced
by the valuable convictions of his time. Guided solely by the force of
his own personality, he decides what is to happen in Europe, and hurls
it into wars through which it sinks into misery. Thus from East and
from West alike disaster overtakes the work of the will-to-progress.
The French Revolution is a snowstorm falling upon trees in blossom. A
transformation which promises great things is in progress, but
everywhere softly and slowly. Extraordinarily valuable results are
being prepared in the thoughts of men. Provided that circumstances
remain even tolerably near the normal, there stands before humanity in
Europe an extraordinarily desirable development. But in place of that
there sets in a chaotic period of history in which the
will-to-progress has to cease more or less completely from its work,
and becomes a bewildered spectator. The first stage of the advance of
reforming thought, thought bent with full consciousness of its aims on
securing the practical and the ethical, comes to a complete stop.
An experience for which it was in no wise prepared now falls to the
lot of the will-to-progress. Up to this time it had always been a more
or less obsolescent reality with which it had had to come to terms. In
the French Revolution, however, and in the following period, it
becomes familiar with a reality which has at its disposal elemental
forces. Up to this time the only factor to be reckoned with had been
the force of originality exercised by rational thought. In Napoleon it
has to learn to recognize as power a personality with creative genius
of its own.
By his reorganization of France, a magnificent work but concerned only
with the technical matters of administration, Napoleon creates a new
State. His work, too, has had the way prepared for it by the labour of
rationalism, so far as this upset the equilibrium of the old and made
current the idea of something new but necessary. But the new State
which now comes into existence is not the State [pg 102] which is
ethical and in harmony with reason, but merely the State which works
well. Its achievements compel our admiration. In the nursery garden
which the will-to-progress was laying out in order to plant it with
noble flowers an individual ploughs for himself a piece of ordinary
arable land which at once produces an excellent crop. With the
elemental creative forces of reality revealing their power in so
imposing a fashion, the noble but unoriginal spirit of the age, with
all its higher aims, finds itself in a state of instability from which
it never completely recovers. Hegel, who saw Napoleon ride past after
the Battle of Jena, tells us that he then saw the World-spirit on
horseback. In these words we can hear all the confused spiritual
experience of that time expressing itself.
The undermining of the rationalistic world-view
There now sets in a development which works against the spirit of the
times, and the hitherto unopposed authority of the rational ideal is
undermined. Forces in reality which are not guided by it, obtain
recognition.
While the will-to-progress remains an amazed spectator of events,
respect for what is historical recovers itself, though it seemed to
have been banished for ever. In religion, in art, and in law, men
begin, though at first only quite shyly, to look again with other eyes
on the traditional. It is no longer reckoned as merely something which
is to be replaced, but men venture to admit to themselves that it
conceals within itself original values. The forces of reality, which
had been taken by surprise, now begin everywhere to act on the
defensive, and a guerilla warfare develops against the
will-to-progress.
The various religious bodies revoke the abdications which they had
made before the religion of reason. The law which has grown up in the
course of time begins to set itself in opposition to the law laid down
by reason. In the atmosphere of passion produced by the Napoleonic
wars, [pg 103] national thought takes on a new character, directing on
itself, and beginning to absorb, the universal enthusiasm for ideals.
The struggles carried on no longer by chancelleries but by whole
nations are fatal to the ideals of cosmopolitanism and national
brotherhood, and by this awakening of national thought a whole series
of political problems affecting the whole of Europe are rendered
insoluble. Just as the organization of Austria as a unified modern
State has now become impossible, so also has the civilizing of Russia,
and the destiny of Europe, viz. to be shipwrecked over these
territories which are in it but not of it, begins to reveal itself.
At the close of the Napoleonic era the whole of Europe is in a
condition of misery. Far-seeing ideas of reform can be neither thought
out nor worked out; only extemporized palliative measures suit the
time. The will-to-progress is therefore unable to recover its former
vigour.
It is fatally affected, too, by the fact that everybody with any
capacity for independent thought feels himself attracted by this new
valuation of things and facts, and thereby drawn on to irritation at
the one-sided, doctrinaire character of the rationalist way of looking
at life.
Nevertheless, the position of the will-to-progress is far from being a
critical one. The first attacks are made by Romanticism and the
feeling for reality, but are mere outpost-skirmishes, and for a long
time yet the will-to-progress remains master of the field. Bentham
remains still the great authority. Alexander II. of Russia, Tsar from
1801 to 1825, instructs the legislative commission which he sets up to
obtain on all doubtful points the opinion of the great Englishman.
Madame de Staël expresses the opinion that the fateful period she has
lived through will one day be called by posterity not the Napoleonic
age but the Benthamite._(_37_)_
The noblest men of the period still live in the unshaken [pg 104]
conviction that nothing can delay the speedy and conclusive victory of
the purposive and moral. The philosophically minded mathematician and
astronomer, the Marquis Marie Jean de Condorcet (1743-1794), though
put by the Jacobins upon the list of the proscribed, writes, while
living in concealment in Paris in a dismal room in the Rue des
Fossoyeurs, his _Historical Sketch of the Progress of the Human
Spirit_._(_38_)_ Then, having been betrayed, he wanders about the
Clamart quarries, is recognized by the labourers, in spite of his
disguise, as an aristocrat, and while confined in the prison of Bourg
la Reine, puts an end to his life by poison. The document in which he
gave his exposition of the ethical belief in progress concludes with a
forward glance at the time, now soon to appear, when reason, having
attained a position of permanent sovereignty, will put every human
being in possession of the rights which belong to man as man, and will
establish purposive and ethical relations in every department of life.
There is one thing, it must be admitted, which Condorcet and those who
share his views overlook. Their belief that the final result will be
good might be considered justifiable if the will-to-progress had been
endangered only through unfavourable outward circumstances, the
revival, that is, of the higher estimation of reality, and the
romantic idealizing of the past. But it is threatened far more
seriously by something else than it is by them. The assurance
displayed by rationalism rests on the fact that it regards the
optimistic-ethical world-view as something proved to be correct. But
it is not that. It rests like the world-views of Confucius and the
Later Stoics on a naïve interpretation of the world. All deeper
thought, therefore, even if it is not directed against rationalism, or
even if it aims at strengthening its position, must in the long run
have a damaging effect upon it. Hence Kant and Spinoza mean doom to
it. Kant undermines it by his attempt to [pg 105] provide a deeper
foundation for the essence of the ethical. Spinoza, the thinker of
the seventeenth century, brings it to confusion when his
nature-philosophy begins, a hundred years after his death, to occupy
people’s attention.
It is about the beginning of the new century, the nineteenth, just
when the pressure exerted by material and spiritual circumstances
alike begins to make itself felt, that the optimistic-ethical
world-view begins to suspect the existence of the serious problems
which are cropping up within it.
[pg 106]