How is it that primitive man, provided with five senses which bring him
into contact with the material world only, has found it possible to
conceive the existence of an invisible world peopled with beings whom
his eyes cannot see, nor his hands touch, nor his ears hear?
Between the birth of human reason and the invention of writing a long
period of time elapsed; when the art of writing was followed by that of
printing, man then printed all that he had thought and written, and at
present we possess thousands of volumes which will inform us on all the
truths and errors which have alternately illuminated and obscured the
human mind.
Whoever would take the trouble to examine this mass of documents, and
read those which furnish an approximate estimate of the mental activity
of our primitive ancestors, will see that the human _ego_ pursued
science unconsciously long before scholars appeared, and applied the
name of philosophers to themselves, because they had sought patiently
and with many discussions, through thousands of centuries, to find the
best way of arriving at the truth.
These ancestors of ours were of an enquiring turn of mind.
The appearance of religion amongst men is at the same time the most
natural and the most supernatural fact in the history of humanity.
The greater number of philosophers have recognised that the tendency of
the human mind to turn towards that which is outside the domain of the
senses is as powerful in man as the desire of eating and drinking is in
all living beings. The ancients acknowledged this to be a true sense,
as irresistible as the rest of the operations of our external senses,
and they have well named it _sensus numinis_--the consciousness of the
divine. The desire of understanding the secrets with which the Unknown
was invested naturally led to the investigation of the influence which
these secrets might exercise on the destinies of mankind. Amongst
certain peoples this gave birth to the art of divination. To this they
abandoned themselves in all sincerity, not doubting that omnipotent
beings would always be ready to make their will known to mortals.
The men of modern times have shown that they have the critical faculty
more highly developed, and their investigations have dealt more with
practical matters. In the eighteenth century, writers, historians and
philosophers--Voltaire amongst the number--wishing to know how the
phenomenon of mental religion appeared in the world, collected all the
data to be obtained from travellers concerning savages; they found
that without exception all believed in occult powers, as distinct from
material or human forces, and doubted not the efficacy of certain magic
arts in use amongst them to attract these powers to themselves, and
to constrain them to act on their behalf. Judging by analogy these
writers contend that primitive man, doubtless impressed by the alarming
phenomena of nature, would make search for the unknown beings around
him, whom the storms, the thunders and the lightnings obey, but these
beings were invisible, consequently there must be an invisible world in
communication with the visible or human world.
In this way were the beliefs of the present-day savages supposed to be
those current at the dawn of religious conceptions of humanity.
The ignorance of a subject, of whatever nature, has never prevented
the laying down of axioms concerning that subject. Towards the end of
the eighteenth century some Portuguese navigators, who never embarked
without providing themselves with talisman and amulet,--to protect
them during their voyages,--which they called _feitiços_, seeing
some negroes of the Gold Coast prostrating themselves with every
appearance of reverence, before bones, stones, or the tails of some
animals, concluded at once without further investigation that these
were considered as divinities by the negroes; and on their return to
their native land, they spread the report that savage races worshipped
_feitiços_. This word _feitiços_ corresponds to the Latin _factitius_,
meaning that which is made by hand, as the amulets were which belonged
to the Portuguese sailors. The well-known President de Brosses used the
name and promulgated the idea, and without having set foot on countries
inhabited by negroes, composed and published a book on their fetishes.
In this manner the French language was enriched in 1760 by the new
word fetish. All this seemed so natural and plausible that the word,
and the idea of the adoration of fetishes became quite general; the
theory of the worship of fetishes penetrated rapidly, and took deep
root in the public mind, it found its way very readily into school
books and manuals, and we were taught that the religion of savages
consists solely in the worship of fetishes, and learned writers draw
the conclusion that fetishism must necessarily have been the primitive
religion of humanity.
With what readiness do well-instructed persons, no less than the
ignorant, allow themselves to speak without sufficiently reflecting
on what they say. In order to elevate material objects, of whatever
kind, to the rank of divinities, it would be necessary previously to
possess the concept of a divinity. Writers on religion speak of that as
existing in primitive times which they seek to describe; they might
as well say that primitive men mummified their dead before they had
_mûm_ or wax to embalm them with. Fetishism cannot be considered as
absolutely primitive, seeing that from its nature it must presuppose
the previous growth of the predicate God. This idea of De Brosses and
his successors will remain for ever a striking anachronism in the
history of religion.
The history of all primitive races opens with this note. “Man is
conscious of a divine descent, though made from the dust of the earth;
the Hindoo doubted it not, though he called Dyn his father, and Prithvi
his mother; Plato knew it when he said the earth produced men, but that
God formed them.”
On the banks of the Rhine, Tacitus listened to the war-songs of the
Germans; they were to him in an unknown tongue. “It resembles the
whisperings of birds,” he said, but added, “They are cries of valour,”
and his ear caught the sound of two words which recurred frequently,
“Tuisto Mannus!”
We now know what formed the basis of these songs; the Germans were
celebrating their lineal ancestors under the names of Tuisto, and
Mannus, his son. Tuisto appears to have been one form of Tiu, the
Aryan god of light. Tacitus tells us that the Germans “called by the
names of gods that hidden thing which they did not perceive except by
reverence.”[62] Mannus, so the Germans considered, sprang from the
earth, which they venerated as their mother-earth who before nourishing
her children on its fruits first gave them life. This Mannus, grandson
of the god of light, meant originally man.
Certain races living beyond the pale of organised religious systems
having been interrogated have furnished the following information
concerning their belief.
A very low race in India is supposed to worship the sun under the name
of Chando or Cando; they declared to the missionaries who had settled
amongst them that Chando had created the world. “How is that possible!
Who then has created the sun itself?” They replied with “We do not mean
the visible Chando, but an invisible one.”[63]
“Our god,” said the original natives of California to those who asked
in what god they believed, “our god has neither father nor mother, and
his origin is quite unknown. But he is present everywhere, he sees
everything even at midnight, though himself invisible to human eyes. He
is the friend of all good people, and he punishes the evil-doers.”
A Blackfoot Indian, when arguing with a Christian missionary, said:
“There were two religions given by the Great Spirit, one in a book for
the guidance of the white men, who, by following its teaching, will
reach the white man’s heaven; the other is in the heads of the Indians,
in the sky, rocks, rivers and mountains. And the red men who listen to
God in nature, will hear his voice, and find at last the heaven beyond.”
These Indians consider that that external nature which to us is at the
same time the veil and the revelation of the Divine, is sufficient to
teach them so much concerning the Supreme Being that missionaries are
superfluous.
Amongst those whose thoughts are occupied by the origin of religious
perception in man, there exist several theories; the first, that
the idea of infinity is a necessity to the mind of man, and that by
enlarging the boundaries of space and of time, it arrives at that
which is without space and without time. Thus may a true philosopher
reason; but primitive man was no philosopher, and the infinite of
philosophy had no existence for him. Another theory is that man is
naturally endowed with religious instincts, which render him--alone
of all living creatures--capable of perceiving the infinite in the
invisible; but the nature of this innate instinct not being clearly
defined, it is in vain that we try to explain one mystery by another.
Others again affirm that religious impressions were the result of a
supernatural revelation, but they seem vague with regard to the time in
the life of humanity, to which people, and in what manner this came to
pass. At the same time they draw attention to the fact that men have
always arrived at conclusions rapidly, and, as they consider, without
due reflection; one of these conclusions is that _God is_. Let us, for
the sake of argument, replace the word _man_ by the word _intuitive
sense_ or apprehension, and we shall understand why this intuitive
sense renders it a superfluous task to make great researches as to the
reasons of man’s decision that _God is_. This intuitive sense is wise,
and utters at times great truths; but the philosophers who consider it
their metier to seek for the reason of things are not content with what
satisfies intuitive sense, and they act on their right.
In our days the religious problem is viewed from two sides. What
is understood by these words--the conception of God? This is the
question of questions; and the names of the writers on the subject,
both philosophical and theological, are too numerous to give. It is a
psychological and thought impelling study.
How did the idea of God first arise in the minds of primitive man? This
is another question which few try and answer. It is a historical study.
This presentation of the problem is perhaps not calculated to inspire
excitement or let loose agitating passions; and apparently the
end of the nineteenth century will not witness the renewal of the
philosophical debates on the subject which characterised the last half
of the eighteenth.
Never either, before or since, has there been so much agitation, nor
have men’s minds been so tossed by diverse currents. Many various
theories were promulgated at the time, but opinions grouped themselves
chiefly round two diametrically opposite schools of thought, towards
one or the other of which they leaned.
According to Hume, Condillac and their adherents, matter alone exists;
our understanding, our feelings, our will are only transformed
sensations. This was pure materialism. Pure idealism was represented by
Berkeley, who went so far as to deny the reality of matter; according
to him the bodies making up the universe have no real existence; the
true realities were God and the ideas He produced in us.
Those who preserved their ancient beliefs were the most troubled, they
began to ask themselves whether the foundations of their faith were
solid, and they much desired to see certain problems solved. These
thoughts had exercised the minds of the sages of India, the thinkers of
Greece, the dreamers of Alexandria, and the divines and scholars of the
Middle Ages. They were the old problems of the world, what we know of
the Infinite, the questions of the beginning and end of our existence;
the questions of the possibility of absolute certainty in the evidence
of the senses, of reason or of faith.
How much was comprehended in these enquiries.
One hundred years previously, the cautious reasoner, Descartes, instead
of asking “What do we know?” posed in its place the question, “How do
we know?”
This was in fact a fundamental question which appealed to philosophers
who followed Descartes, as of the utmost importance, and they also
asked themselves, “After what manner does the human mind acquire what
it knows?”
What is called Locke’s tenet, “Nihil est in intellectu quod non ante
fuerit in sensu,” Leibnitz answered by “Nihil--nisi intellectus.” Noiré
gives this sentiment a fresh turn by saying: “There is nothing in this
plant that was not already in the soil, the water and the atmosphere,
but that which causes this plant to be a plant.”
Condillac, who agreed with Locke, thus formulated his opinion: “Penser
c’est sentir”; or, “In order to feel it is necessary to possess
senses,” which is self-evident.
Nevertheless, this sentence scandalised some of the philosophers, they
considered it degraded thought. It degraded thought only in Condillac’s
mouth, since he and his school had previously taken out of _sentir_ or
sensation all that possessed the right to be called thought; but for
those who admit that sensation is really impregnated with thought it is
no degradation; it is then true to say that thought is sensation, in
the same way as an oak-tree may be said to be the acorn; and a little
reflection will show us that “the acorn is far more wonderful than
the oak, and perceiving far more wonderful than thinking.” This was
not acknowledged by some who disagreed as to the nature of reason and
sensation; they considered the former a mysterious power that could
only be a direct gift of the Creator, and the senses, to which we owe
our perceptions, appeared so natural and simple, as not to require a
scientific explanation.
If philosophers, such as Descartes and Leibnitz, succeeded in
influencing certain enlightened spirits, their language was not
understood by the general public; and Berkeley’s idealism when pushed
to the extreme point, proved too abstract to counterbalance the
sensualist doctrines; its language hardly penetrated beyond the inner
circle of the experts dealing with the subject, whereas the writings of
Locke, Condillac and Hume permeated all classes of society; everywhere
the same questions were asked, and often unanswered amidst the maze of
metaphysics, in which it would have been difficult to obtain a precise
explanation of a science not yet clearly defined.
It is natural that reason after its high flight in pursuit of
truth, frightened by the obstacles met in its ascent, and by the
contradictions found in itself, should fall heavily to earth,
exclaiming with Voltaire, “O metaphysics, we are as advanced as in the
times of the Druids.” This same feeling of distrust towards proceedings
which resulted only in hypothesis, was also expressed by Newton, who,
recognising that philosophy moved nowhere so freely nor with such
certainty as in the domain of facts, recently cried, “O physics,
preserve me from metaphysics.”
“Towards the end of the eighteenth century the current public opinion
had been decidedly in favour of materialism, but a reaction was slowly
setting in in the minds of independent thinkers when Kant appeared”; he
came so exactly in the nick of time that one almost doubts whether the
tide was turning, or whether he turned the tide.
To sketch briefly the chief points in Kant’s system such as he has
given us in his book called _Critique of Pure Reason_, is a rash
proceeding; my object, which is to satisfy the imperious and more
immediate wants of our moral being, could only be attained by ignoring
the irradicable difficulties; this is excusable if we, unlearned
members of society, are to form any idea of this same philosophy.
The technical terms which abound in philosophical works are useful in
the exposition of a system, but rather the reverse for those who are
striving to grasp its salient features; for understanding these terms
partially only, or not understanding them at all, they are tempted to
imagine that they take in the meaning; this leads to vague notions
being entertained on a subject which is nevertheless earnestly studied.
Generally I abstain from the use of esoteric terms, but Kant having
coined fresh ones to express his ideas it behoves us to use his own
formula. To paraphrase them so as to render them intelligible without
multiplying them might only further obscure the sense, and yet, on the
other hand, to enter freely into further developments would require a
volume, and the end would be better served by going direct to Kant’s
work. Hence the embarrassment I feel on approaching the subject.
KANT’S TEACHING.
Kant undertook a work which no one before him had attempted.
Instead of criticising, as was then the fashion, the result of our
knowledge, whether in religion or in history, or science, he shut
his eyes resolutely to all that philosophy, whether sensualistic or
spiritualistic asserted as true, and making Descartes his starting
point he boldly went to the root of the matter; he questioned whether
human reason had the power of perceiving the truth, and in cases where
this power existed--but with limits--he sought to discover why these
limits existed. He therefore resolved to subject reason itself to his
searching analysis, and thus to assist, as it were, at the birth of
thought. He accomplished this extraordinary task with an ease of which
no one previously would have been capable.
The world is governed by immutable laws, and the human race is subject
to them. Kant gives an account of those which it must necessarily obey
in order to pass from a passive “mirror” into a conscious mind.
SENSATION.
In any material object I may seek to obtain, such as a table, my
interests are concentrated in the table itself, not on the tools which
the workman has used in its manufacture; but if it were a question of
thought, then the means by which it was produced by the human mind
engage us; and these means, of course, consist in the proper use of the
instruments at man’s disposal.
That which was at the origin of mankind is repeated at the birth of
every human being; he comes into the world in a lethargic condition,
but endowed with latent instincts which we name in one word, sense;
common to man and to animals, it places them in relationship with the
things exterior to themselves; this sense, or capability of sensation,
is merely the general faculty of feeling. No newly-born child would
emerge from its torpor if it were not surrounded by material objects
which affirm their presence by reacting on him; his first act, at the
moment when he perceives his surroundings is the transference of his
own mind, until now isolated in itself alone, towards the objects which
solicit his attention.
The sense which operates in each child is inward, we name it
briefly--sensation--to distinguish it from the five external senses,
which are more familiar to us, since even at school their functions and
modes of action have been explained to us.
For instance, we know that it is only necessary to touch the strings of
an instrument to cause them to vibrate, the vibrations are communicated
to the air, and are then called waves of sound; they diffuse themselves
with an incredible swiftness in space, advancing and retreating in the
manner of the waves of the sea, they reach our ears, touch the auditory
nerve, cause the tympanum to vibrate, penetrate to the brain, and give
us instantaneously the sensation of sound. And it is to the waves of
light passing through the ether, and communicating with the optic
nerve of the organ of sight, that we owe the sensation of sight of the
objects before us.
The vacant look of a newly-born infant, implies that it has undergone
an experience, it has felt something of the nature of a shock; a shock
always implies resistance and yielding. In the child it is the human
eye becoming conscious of itself amidst the impressions produced on
it by the confused sight of external objects, and hearing the noises
which occur around him. This instance is analogous to the vibratory
movement of the waves described and even drawn in all manuals on
physics.
It is strange that a natural phenomenon which learned men have taken
some trouble to analyse, should find expression in the following
commonplace phrase. “From the clash of opinions light is generated.” If
this phrase were not only on our lips, but also implanted in our mind,
we should more readily have grasped the physiological fact of sensation.
Sensation plays such an important part in the world of humanity, that
all the sciences, both physical and moral, deal with it; but we, who
grumble so readily and continuously at feeling either too hot or too
cold, probably never enquire what philosophy has to do with purely
bodily impressions.
Sensations come to us from without, but they would leave us in a
condition of perturbation only, if whilst receiving them we were
passive as a mirror on which external objects are reflected; we might
have continued to sleep--perchance to dream--if a mental act on our
part did not mark the awakening of our intelligence when in contact
with the material world, and thus have proved the existence of a power
within us hitherto latent, but quite capable of accepting, knowing, and
realising sensations which come to us without having been summoned.
We are nearing the solution of the problem. Descartes had asked: How
we know. Kant had clearly explained that all our knowledge has its
commencement in our senses, which give us pure intuitions, that is to
say, a clear direct view of external objects, and he also proved that
intelligence would not have been aroused without the aid of material
objects. But still greater discoveries awaited Kant.
We feel that nothing in ourselves is so free as thought. It comprehends
the whole world, it mounts to the stars, it descends to the bowels of
the earth, arrested perhaps in its path by special objects on which it
dwells at will; but although free to encircle the universe, it may not
choose its path, thought is obliged--like the sun--to follow one which
has been previously traced out for it; of this we can readily convince
ourselves.
SPACE AND TIME.
All objects of which we become conscious must be placed by us in the
imagination side by side in space, and at a distance from ourselves,
here or there; as being now present, or as having been, or about to
be; but always in succession, _i.e._, in time, time past, present and
future.
According to Kant, Space and Time are two fundamental or inevitable
conditions of all sensuous manifestations, and he was the first to
observe that they are imposed by so absolute a power that no effort, on
our part, would enable us to escape from them, any more than we could
avoid seeing the light of day at noon, unless we are either blind or
have our eyes shut.
We must make it clear that what we call Space and Time, being forms of
our sensuous intuition, do not exist apart from ourselves, or, as Max
Müller says, “depend on us as recipients, as perceivers.” It is we who
say there can be no _Here_ without a _There_, and no _Now_ without a
_Then_; and this is necessary, since we are dependent on the mould of
our minds, which work in accordance with their constitutions.
PHENOMENA.
When opening a dictionary at the letters P. H. E. we should soon arrive
at the word Phenomenon and its meaning: whatever is presented to the
senses, or affects us physically or morally.
As long as knowledge comes to us only by the way of our senses, it
follows that in speaking of affinity, electricity and magnetism as
natural phenomena, which are known to us only by their effect on Space
and Time, we speak in accordance with our method of representation, and
not as they are _in themselves_, since we have not the least idea what
these natural forces are _in themselves_. We recognise musical sounds
because our ears hear them, and we appreciate colours because our eyes
see them; we take cognisance of them as they appear to us, but we are
ignorant of both the one and the other as they are in actuality, that
is independently of our organs which correspond to them. Thus all the
objects that we know--from the manner of our knowledge--become for us
phenomena, and the world in which we live is a world of phenomena.
THE CATEGORIES OF THE UNDERSTANDING.
Besides these fundamental forms of sensuous intuition Space and Time,
Kant by his analysis of Pure Reason discovered other conditions of our
knowledge which could not have come from without. He divides them into
twelve distinct classes, and in the phraseology of philosophy they
are called Categories of the Understanding. Aristotle had previously
arranged a table of Categories, but in his Logic Aristotle concerns
himself with the laws of thought in general, the abstraction derived
from the practical use made of them; whilst Kant studies the facts
first themselves, or first principles, in their relation with certain
fixed objects.
The different categories have certain traits in common, not a single
one of our thoughts but will find a place in the one or the other.
Another feature which characterises all is, that without them no
experience would be possible, they rule our understanding. This is
very marked in the category called Plurality. Let us try to think
of anything without thinking of it at the same time as one or many,
and we shall find it an impossibility. We cannot think of an apple or
speak of an apple without picturing more than one; and Max Müller has
demonstrated that rational speech is impossible, if we cannot when
speaking decide whether the subject of a sentence consists of one or
many.
CAUSE AND EFFECT.
The ideas of _Cause_ and _Effect_ belong to those first principles
that reason draws from itself, and the category of causality is one
of the most important. We never experience a sensation, of whatever
kind, without attaching it, involuntarily and necessarily, to some
external object which we know possesses the qualities corresponding to
our sensations. Thus the impressions of heat or cold, sweet or bitter,
blue or yellow, evoke immediately the picture of certain objects which
are hot or cold, such as fire or ice; or which are sweet or bitter,
such as sugar or absinth; or blue, as the sky; or yellow, as the lemon;
and these external objects we consider as the causes, and our bodily
sensations as the effects.
AXIOMS.
There are certain universal truths which are self-evident, and were
evolved not by experience only or argument, nor science, as they are
the natural appanage of common-sense, _e.g._, such axioms as the
following: the whole is greater than the part; a straight line is the
shortest distance between two points; each body occupies space; every
event occupies time; every effect has a cause. All these are more
certain than that the sun will rise to-morrow; common-sense has always
known them, and the entire human race has not waited for the coming of
Kant to recognise these facts.
It is strange that the majority of men who know so many things that are
true by intuition, often make mistakes when they begin to reflect. They
imagine that all things falling under their observation have the power
of making themselves known directly, as if they entered an empty space
in the imagination which was ready to receive them. Are they ignorant
of the fact that in order to think of an external object, it is not
necessary to have it in actuality--as it exists in nature--before one’s
eyes, but that it suffices to imprint its image on the mind? This is
very simple, and no doubt common-sense itself would see a truism which
might be passed in silence. “What is there extraordinary,” common-sense
might say, “if in thinking of a lemon, for instance, there should be at
once presented to the mind a yellow fruit, of acid flavour, and of a
certain shape--a lemon in fact?”
This remark is useful only in showing our natural incapacity for
experiencing a sensation, of whatever kind, without connecting it
with an external object possessing corresponding attributes to the
sensation, and which was its cause.
In any case the truism is not to be ignored, since Aristotle, great
philosopher as he was, did not consider it beneath his dignity to
employ it. He said: “I think of a stone; the stone is not in my mind,
but its form is.”
To prove to common-sense that its remark has no connection with
the thesis recently laid down, would serve no good purpose. A
personal mental act, if it be lawful to personate a quality, would
alone convince common-sense of its error; but when once convinced
common-sense would then have changed to something higher than it had
previously been. It will have mounted up one stage towards reason, and
in following this route under the guidance of increasing reason, it
will end by understanding this truth as demonstrated by Kant: he who
cannot distinguish a real object from its representation will never
understand the working of the human mind.
The importance of this truth must excuse my digression.
METAPHYSICS.
The name of Kant will always be intimately connected with the word
metaphysics, not because he buried himself in it, as some have supposed
who only know his system of philosophy by hearsay; but because his
labours consisted in forbidding reason to approach this science which
is constantly threatening to invade it, and to get the upper hand by
putting itself in its place.
Kant was the first to trace with decision the line of demarcation
between the knowledge of which our reason is capable, and that of
which it is incapable. No one has drawn so sharp a line between the
knowable and the unknowable; this was to explain metaphysics. Alfred
Fouillée has defined them as “the critical study of problems which the
mind seeks to unravel from a necessity of its nature, although another
necessity of its nature renders it incapable of solving them”--such is
metaphysics.
This definition is excellent, but for those who make no preparatory
studies in philosophy it would present itself rather in this form. If
certain questions are of necessity presented to the mind which it finds
it impossible to solve, it follows that the mind would necessarily
contradict itself. Thus this succinct definition of Fouillée requires
to be itself defined.
Noiré, whilst giving more details, is also more exact. “Metaphysics
is only explained on the condition that we understand the nature
of our power of understanding, in so far as, on the one part, this
power is actively manifested in experience, and secondly, in so
far as it possesses anteriorly to any experience, and to anything
observed, certain ideas without which there could not possibly or even
conceivably, be any impression made in the human mind.” I am afraid
that this explanation of Noiré will also be lost upon those who are not
experienced in the subject.
The explanation of Schopenhauer is not less definite, and is more
concise than the two preceding. The foundation upon which all our
knowledge and all our science rests, is the incomprehensible--I fancy
that the uninitiated will be equally unable to understand this.
It is not surprising. Philosophers speak a language of their own, which
must be learnt before it can be understood, which is the case with all
languages.
Kant develops this thesis with greater simplicity and clearness. “As
long as the human intellect moves in the sphere of the senses and of
experience it is safe; this sphere is very vast; it is there that all
phenomena may be known which appears in space and time, that is to say,
all belonging to the phenomenal world in which we live. But if the
intellect rebels against the gaoler which holds it captive in the magic
circle, breaks its chains and enters into the region of ideals, it will
err.”
Kant relates the following anecdote: “A dove, which found great
pleasure in spreading its wings, was troubled because this pleasure
was of short duration; the simple bird was ignorant of the fact that
its structure did not admit of its taking flights such as the swallow
enjoys; not divining the real cause of its inability, it blamed the
fluid ether whose resisting power it had felt, and thought how much
better it would fly ‘in vacuo.’” The dove was mistaken.
Kant’s crowning merit is having discovered the object of metaphysics
not only in the categories of the understanding, without which, as
Noiré says, no impression on the human mind would be possible, or even
conceivable, but chiefly in the power, inherent in our nature, of
resisting or yielding to impressions. It is this power, according to
Kant, which constitutes the transcendental side of our knowledge.
The empirical school of philosophers is tried by Kant’s recognition
of the transcendental principle in man. Its members accuse the
spiritualists of seeking to raise human nature beyond its proper level,
and of wishing at the same time to open an inlet for other truths which
claim a mysterious character and a superhuman authority. But Kant is
the very last person to encourage the thought; on the contrary, through
the whole of his philosophy he insists that these _à priori_ forms, or
antecedent conditions of knowledge, have no authority whatever “except
in and for experience,” and to use the category of causality, for
instance, in order to establish the existence of God is, according to
Kant, a philosophical blunder.
“If only we could always remember the first intentions of our words,
many philosophical difficulties would vanish.” In Greek οἰδα meant
originally, I have seen, and therefore I know. In a court of justice
the witness who says, “I saw” can hardly say anything more convincing.
To apply such a word to our knowledge of causes, forces, and faculties
would be a solecism--to apply it to God would be self-contradictory.
Each of the abstract definitions of metaphysics given by Alfred
Fouillée, Noiré, and Schopenhauer contains the leading conception of
the subject; if presented in more simple language it would be within
the comprehension of all; our understanding is blind to all with which
it is not made acquainted by intuition derived from experience. Those
things for which we have a strong desire, of which we have a certain
conviction, but which are outside the sphere of our actual life,
“for these,” as Max Müller says in this connection, “we want another
word which should mean--I have not seen and yet I know, and that
is--faith.”[64] Our senses may not always authorise us to affirm their
reality. God and the future life are not made the subjects of phenomena.
All that I have said as to what distinguishes knowledge acquired by
the senses from that which is anterior to all experience (Kant was the
first to make this distinction), might seem simple to those heedless
minds which are surprised at nothing, but complicated and confused
to minds however little attentive, and quite useless to the rest of
us. There may be something of truth in each of these primitive and
superficial estimations, but the whole truth is that all this is very
scientific, so scientific as to require a Kant to enable those who
reflect to give a lucid account of it.
It was by the help of this learned science that Kant broke the serried
ranks of his antagonists. Confronted by two philosophical opinions,
both of which he considered erroneous, he proved to the materialists
Condillac, Hume, and Locke, that there is something within us which
could never have been supplied from without, which therefore belongs to
our ego, that is to say to the subject thinking and not to the object
thought of, or matter; then turning against the Idealists of the time
of Berkeley, he shows that there is something without us which could
never have been supplied from within; and when he proved that intellect
and matter are correlative, that they exist for each other, depend on
each other, form together a whole that should never have been torn
asunder, two streams of philosophic thought, which had been running in
separate beds, met for the first time.
The existence of the phenomenal world being proved by the irrefragable
testimony of the senses, is admitted also by reason, and, as a
necessary consequence, another, not only in appearance, but which _will
be_, assuredly; as sound is independent of our hearing, as material
objects are independent of our sight; for though Kant declares our
inability to know objects as they are in themselves, he does not
deny their existence, since he says, “We should be capable, if not
of knowing things as they are in themselves, at least of knowing
them as they are to us, otherwise we should arrive at the irrational
conclusion, that there may be appearances without something that
appears.”
Kant undertook to make an exact science of the necessary and universal
ideas of the human mind, such as logic and mathematics, which are parts
of human knowledge; to this end he wrote _Critique of Pure Reason_,
afterwards he composed another work, the _Critique of Practical
Reason_. Practical reason may also be called pure, in as much as it
does not allow itself to be influenced by anything but what proceeds
from itself, and reason becomes practical when it seeks an independent
principle which determines the will. This principle is formulated by
Kant in the following terms: “Let each individual follow commands which
may be considered as a universal law imposed alike on all human beings.”
This law, which man possesses in his conscience, does not stop half way
in its exactions from man since it aims at perfection, it commands man
to love his neighbour, and to do good even to his enemy. To love and to
do acts of kindness when pleasant to oneself is natural, and requires
no command, but, otherwise, a law is required to coerce the will, the
man who submits is free, since he can choose to infringe or to obey it;
obedience to the moral law constitutes duty, which must be accomplished
because it is our duty, and embodies the satisfaction felt in its
performance.
Man is under an obligation to be moral and to do his duty, but not
necessarily to be happy, yet he demands happiness. The union of virtue
and happiness being the _summum bonum_, we must acknowledge the
existence of a power external to ourselves, endowed with intellect
and will, which makes this union possible; this power is known to us
by the name of God. The perfect good is holiness; this life is too
short to enable us to attain to it in its perfection, it is therefore
a necessity that our life should be prolonged beyond the term of years
spent on this earth, thus we are assured of the survival of the soul
after what we term death.
Thus Kant speaks in his _Critique of Practical Reason_.
I may now be permitted to speak and give my own opinion. I hear the
Positivist perhaps say: “This result might be considered conceivable
if all that has been previously said were true; but to infer from the
desire for happiness that a supernatural power must infallibly satisfy
it might be a hallucination, or at least a hypothesis.” If this were
so we need not deride hypotheses; in the domain of human knowledge
reason would not be itself if it never made ventures in scientific
discoveries; its path starts from the possible in making excursions
from the known to the unknown, in going from darkness to light--hence
then hypothesis.
There is also this fact to notice, some of the most important of our
acts are not guided by reason, it acts as a spectator; for instance,
reason is not active when we have perception of an object, and
intuitions occur in us without the intervention of reason.
This was well understood by certain men who have come forward from time
to time from the multitude, the bearers of inspired messages to the
world; they have spoken of those things which “eye hath not seen nor
ear heard,” and they were hard to be understood of the people; but each
one alike said: “I give no proof of the truth of what I assert; do as I
say, and you will know the truth of my words.”
There remains little more to be said on the subject of Kant. There is
a serious omission in the system of this profound thinker.
Nothing has so stopped the progress of Darwin’s great conception as
the injudicious efforts of his so-called disciples to bring it to
perfection. Instead of correcting their chief, they should have weighed
thoughtfully all Kant’s arguments against the materialism of his
adversaries, and have sought to refute them; if they had succeeded in
proving that Kant makes a mistake when he admits that there is in man a
principle quite distinct from his body, they would have been authorised
in replacing Darwin’s theory by their own; if they had not succeeded,
Darwin and his theory would have remained unshaken, but they would be
annihilated.
Max Müller examines the question from another point of view. “We admit
that as we know nothing, except by analogy, of the mind of animals,
we could not with the weapons that Kant has placed in our hands, make
head against the assertion that they might possess, for all we know,
the same forms of sensuous intuition and the same categories of the
understanding which we possess. Nothing, therefore, could have been
said from a purely philosophical point of view, against treating man
as a mere variety of some other genus of animals.”[65] But as the
origin of language was to Kant less than a secondary question--it
might almost be said to have no existence for him--it belongs to the
science of language to show, what Kant had never shown, that for all
human knowledge not only were percepts and concepts necessary, but also
names. How was it that it did not occur to Kant since he perceived that
there were mathematics of the forms or manifestations of sensation,
namely, time or duration and space? He said well: Each object of which
we think is attached in time or space to another; this can only be done
by the use of such indications as _now_, _then_, _here_, _there_; and
he saw in this gradation of perception, the first step towards the act
of counting, that is to say of reasoning, and consequently of speaking;
all of which was comprehended by the Greeks in their word Logos. As
an instance the word _cent_ exists in every language, but _cent_ in
French consists only of four letters placed side by side one after the
other, and would never be anything else to us if we could not count;
but to count is to add and to take away, that is to say, addition and
subtraction, thus to conceive and name; in order to possess a hundred
objects, it does not suffice to see them only, it is necessary to count
them up to the hundred.
These two works of Kant’s, the _Critique of Pure Reason_ and the
_Critique of Practical Reason_ appear to emanate from two different
pens; in the first, whatever is asserted is proved. The second work is
dictated by a personal experience; Kant affirms that thus it is and
that it cannot be otherwise. But here again I perceive a lack, a want,
if not from the believer’s point of view, yet from that of those people
who ask what could be the religion of our primitive ancestors; personal
experience is not expressed as Kant expresses it, unless it is the
result of a long series of meditations and examinations of conscience;
in a word, experiences which have been transmitted from generation to
generation. This is a religion that has achieved much, it is not that
form of it which would be found amongst the generality of men, and
still less would it spring to life in the heart of primitive man.
But here are two positivist philosophers who undertake to solve this
great problem: they consider reason as ready with a reply to those who
seek to know the meaning of God and of religion, two concepts which
are inseparable, the one from the other; and even ready to explain how
these two concepts have penetrated into the consciousness of all human
beings. These philosophers speak no doubt from experience, for having
questioned their reason it has replied to them: God and religion form
one conception.
The first explanation is--man is conscious of his condition; he is
possessed with the desire of happiness, and is unable to realise it;
but his imagination represents to him another state in which the desire
of happiness will exist and in which there will be no obstacle to its
realisation; the first of these states is real, the other visible to
the mind’s eye; they are therefore not identical; to will and not to
have the power is to be man; to will and to be omnipotent is to be God.
Little by little man understands that these two states of conditions
having been conceived by the same mind, have the same origin; the
notion fixes itself firmly in his mind that the two states seem
gradually to approach each other, and are not always distinguishable;
the union of desire and power is the Divine essence; the growing
consciousness of this union is religion, which dawns and increases in
man.
Man does not desire immortality because he believes in it, nor because
it is demonstrable; but he believes in it and demonstrates its
existence because he desires it. The sentence, “God sees all,” does not
mean, so we are told, what it appears to mean; it expresses the feeling
God knows all of which man is ignorant, but which he fain would know;
and the sentence, “God is beneficence,” is the cry of man who desires
happiness. All the predicates applied by man to the Deity in the course
of history and humanity have never, in the opinion of philosophers, had
any other origin than the representation of our wishes.
But the inner combat, which has been long and unhappy, with no truce,
has exhausted man’s powers, and when the despondency checks, and at
times almost paralyses his flight after happiness, the instinct of
self-preservation leads him towards religion; as this instinct with the
incapacity of satisfying it is inseparable in man, motives of religion
are renewed continually in each individual and consequently in the
multitude.
God and religion, _i.e._ the outward sign of our union with God,
yet emanates from ourselves. This system, of which Feuerbach is the
exponent, has many followers amongst the Positivists.
The second explanation comes from a learned member of the extreme
Positivist school in Germany; but, as Max Müller says, it would
be impossible to represent religion in a worse light ... “and it
would be difficult to take a lower view of it.”[66] According to Dr
Gruppe, religion exists simply because it satisfies certain selfish
instincts of man. He notices two. The first instinct is common to all
organic beings; it tends towards the preservation of the individual,
and consequently to that of the race; it is elementary, and acts
from within outwards. The second instinct belongs only to man taken
collectively, and has vitality only in numbers; it belongs to a more
advanced stage, and acts from without inwardly. Man instinctively
grasps the greatest amount of happiness possible; he therefore seeks
that which he considers his greatest good, not after the fashion of the
beasts, but in his own way.
“We call religious belief,” says Dr Gruppe, “a belief in an indefinable
state or being which we strive to bring into our sphere, and to render
permanent by means of sacrificial ceremonies, prayers, penances, and
self-denial.”[67]
This indefinable something, the professor considers, would never
have appeared in the world without an impulsion, however light; an
accidental movement, a casual combination of a disordered brain, and
a personality endowed with a certain amount of energy, would have
sufficed to make a single individual the author of an idea totally
opposed to man’s good possession common sense, and the originator of
a movement which must find in the surroundings in which it came to
life, all facilities for its indefinite perpetuation. It is of no
consequence whether this mental phenomenon has been produced in one
individual or in more; figures are of little account in the matter.
If this disease called hallucination[68] had remained confined in the
circumscribed sphere of one individual or a few, a personal intelligent
effort might have overcome it, but being contagious and spreading
amongst the people it became impossible to conquer it. The natural laws
of reason once violated, the perturbed mind created a succession of
sophistical arguments which appeared to satisfy the ineradicable desire
for happiness in man; and an incredibly tenacious opposition on the
side of error assumed menacing proportions. If the belief that the sun,
instead of disappearing each night below the horizon, would continue to
shine during the night could in any way contribute to the happiness of
mankind, men would slowly but surely have accepted it.
The man who isolates himself from his fellow men and becomes
self-absorbed is peculiarly apt to create for himself mental pictures
which give him pleasure; if, then, joy is indispensable to man’s
existence, the religion which gives it, or the illusion of it, enables
him to forget the tangible world, and substitute an imaginary one
peopled with phantoms. But the solitary man is a rare phenomenon, and
we judge favourably those men who live in the midst of their social
surroundings, and whose community of ideas and sentiments has made a
homogeneous whole, during many centuries. Each one will find means
to develop his personal faculties, and to strengthen his power of
resistance in the struggle of all against all, and the good which is
illusive in the solitary man becomes a benefit to the members of the
society.
Religion might possibly cease to exist, in Gruppe’s opinion, were it
not for the inequalities of man’s condition, and for the troubles which
follow him; but the action of religion is helpful to society.[69] It
tells the poor not to hanker after riches which are not lasting. It
mirrors for them images of future compensations, thus the rich and the
noble here are enabled to enjoy their pleasures on earth in safety. In
its name bright hopes are built up for the wretched, and it takes its
stand in front of the palaces of the rich; sedatives are prescribed
for incurables, and rich foods for those who can pay for them. Charity
is preached to the compassionate, and persecutions to the fanatics: at
times it encourages the use of arts and sciences; at times it warns
its followers not to love overmuch the beautiful in art, nor to seek
too earnestly the truth in science. But the outcome of this religion,
whether good or the reverse, is of small importance compared with the
benefits it renders to society. It is the support of the civil and
moral law, and in lighting the hymeneal torch it adds to the sanctity
of families.
Without attributing selfish motives, in the lowest sense, to the
founders of the various religions and sects which flourish in our
midst, Gruppe considers all of them unconscious egoists; he thinks that
had they been calm psychologists, which sincere prophets are not, they
would have recognised in themselves the attraction that glory had for
them; but in that case they would not have remained faithful unto the
death, and the power of communicating their own spirit and force to
their adherents would have failed them. Gruppe distinguishes with great
keenness the reflex action of our desire for happiness, which is no
other than the instinct of self-preservation, from the motives which
are sufficient to inspire certain enthusiasts to found new religions;
these two things are in reality quite distinct, although they may act
in concert; the desire for universal and permanent happiness paves the
way for the manifestation of individual enthusiasm; he asserts that
religions, while professing to found a new kingdom of heaven, only
succeed in inheriting the kingdom of this world.
The struggle between an extreme positivism and a true idealism is a
sight that energises earnest men. Evidently impressed by the exposition
of the spiritualist doctrine, the learned doctor remarks: “The first
perception of the infinite, of law and order in nature, communicated an
impulse to the mind of man; but this force, when once in movement, did
not slacken before having called forth in our ancestors the conviction
that all is right and good, and the hope--even more than hope--that
all would be right and good. Such is the celebrated system of Max
Müller. It is not only the great personal worth of the author that
obliges us to give it close consideration, but also the fact that this
system is the most eloquent exposition of an idea which has also been
expressed by other writers in some remarkable works on the history of
religions. The position in which Max Müller has placed himself for a
starting-point is, from a positivist point of view, impregnable.”
This commendation, which is particularly striking, coming as it does
from one of Max Müller’s fiercest adversaries, I have quoted word for
word.
Gruppe is not only a positivist philosopher, but also learned in
Eastern languages and literature, and a clever mythologist; it would
have been better had he confined himself to fields of labour with which
he was acquainted. But as he admits that there is psychological and
spontaneous thought in man, side by side with the rational, he cannot
but acknowledge the right of humanity to say what it thinks. There
are certain literary documents which show us what the human mind has
thought in all ages and in all places, and we are of opinion that these
sentiments have not varied.
It is said that an universal belief in any fact is not a proof of
the existence of this fact, and that consequently the conception of
super-sensible things need have no real basis; the observation is
just; I shall reply to it by a question. Is it possible to demonstrate
that this belief in things that cannot be proved is not only universal
but even inevitable? If it were possible much would be gained. In
geometrical calculations it is sufficient to know that three dimensions
only exist,--at least in this world--that the straight line is the
shortest, that two parallel lines never meet; it should suffice to know
that in this world belief, whether rational or illusory, in one or more
divinities, is inevitable for men constituted as we are.
Our first fathers no doubt pictured a large space situated on the
further side of all that they could see, and we know how their
imagination peopled it with confused images, either hidden, or seen in
the visible phenomena.
These flights of fancy, which may have lasted thousands of centuries,
became crystallised at last in the mythologies of all peoples, and it
is these mythologies by which we gain access to this initial stage
in the life of humanity, and which preserves for us the traces of
this eternal truth amidst many extravagances of the fancy misled
by language, which guided their first steps. There is a petrified
philosophy in mythology.
Since history and legend, in one form or another, have voiced the
feelings called religion, these feelings, variously interpreted, have
changed their aspect from age to age, and from country to country; as
long as we have not traced the stream to its source, the question, as
to the manner in which the conception of God had birth in the human
mind, will always be before us.
We take man at the time when he had recently appeared on the earth,
his sole possession being his five senses, which place him in contact
with the external world. We must distinguish between two classes of
senses; those of touch, scent, and taste being more evident; from the
evolutionist’s point of view the sense of touch has the largest share
in the building up of the human edifice which arose later; its use
is chiefly connected with the hands, and has thus given us the word
_manifest_; that which we call certainty hardly exists for us apart
from what is manifest. The two other senses, sight and hearing, are
less sure, and have frequently to be verified by those first named.
The objects of which we obtain knowledge by means of our senses can be
divided into tangible, semi-tangible and intangible. The first are,
for instance, a stone, a bone, a fruit, the skin of an animal, these
can be touched as it were all round, and we are able to assert their
reality. The second, the semi-tangible, might be a river, a mountain,
the earth, a tree. We stand by the banks of a river and dip our hand
in the small volume of water passing away before our eyes; we can also
touch the ground on which we are standing, also the trunk of the tree
beneath which we are sitting; but it is only an insignificant part of
which we assert the reality by touching it, all the other parts remain
unknown to us; for the river itself consists of a large mass of waters
springing from a source which is not seen and flowing towards a spot
which we may never see; we are told that the earth is in the shape of
a globe, and that this globe is suspended in air, which fact it would
be difficult to verify; the tree is small in comparison with the river
and the earth, and yet how little we know of it, whence come its buds,
and its leaves, and the sap which rises each spring in the branches?
We say of a beam that it is dead wood, but of the tree we say that it
grows and lives; what is this life of the tree? We are in the presence
of the unknown. These are samples of semi-tangible objects. The sense
of touch has no place with regard to the sky, the stars, the clouds,
the winds; those are intangible objects, which we see and feel without
knowing them by personal grasp; the proof of their existence is also
in the fact that years of work are required to know astronomy and
meteorology.
We now have primitive man provided with fine senses, in presence of
these natural phenomena, and the problem to be solved is this: How is
it that this man is able to think and to speak of things which are not
finite, finite things being the only ones of which his senses make him
cognisant?
“I have before me,” says Max Müller, “a school of philosophy adverse
to my views; I am warned that nothing I say will be accepted, unless
I submit to the conditions imposed on me. I am told: ‘You pretend
to prove that man can know that God exists; whereas we affirm that
the great triumph of our age is that we have proved that religion is
an illusion. All knowledge must pass through two gates, the gate of
the senses and the gate of reason, consequently religious knowledge
even can enter by no other gate.’ In this way does positivism bar
the entrance which Kant left open, who in his definition of religion
considered morality the basis of it, which with him presupposed the
existence of God. Positivism refuses to hear a psychological and
historical explanation of one of the greatest psychological and
religious facts--namely, religion; it stops its ears when we say _Nihil
est in fide quod non ante fuerit in sensu_; but we are not discouraged
by the absurdity of imagining that by shutting our eyes, we can
annihilate facts; we accept the struggle on the common ground on which
the positivist and we have decided to fight; we also agree to use the
weapons chosen for us. Let us inspect the battlefield and measure the
ground. Both sides seem in accord that all consciousness begins with
sensuous perception, with what we feel, and hear, and see; what is
likewise granted is that out of this we construct what may be called
conceptual knowledge, consisting of collective and abstract concepts.
The conditions of the combat are fixed; at the two gates of the senses
and reason we take our stand; whatever claims to have entered in by
any other gate, whether that gate be called primeval revelation, or
religious instinct,[70] must be rejected as contraband of thought; and
whatever claims to have entered in by the gate of reason without having
first passed through the gate of the senses, will equally be rejected,
as without sufficient warrant.”[71]
FOOTNOTES:
[62] Tac. Germ. 9. “Deorumque nominibus appellant secretum illud quod
sola reverentia vident,” from Max Müller’s _Origin and Growth of
Religion_, p. 94.
[63] _Origin and Growth of Religion_, p. 214.
[64] _Science of Thought_, p. 609.
[65] _Science of Thought_, p. 125.
[66] _Natural Religion_, pp. 74, 77.
[67] _Ibid._, p. 76.
[68] It is not surprising that Max Müller says, “We are not likely
to allow ourselves to be persuaded by Dr Gruppe that the only source
of religion all over the world was hallucination.”--_Anthropological
Religion_, p. 126.--TRANSLATOR’S NOTE.
[69] Max Müller remarks: “His (Dr Gruppe’s) definition of religion
is at all events too narrow; it might possibly be found to apply
to religion, not in its original, but in its most depraved
state.”--_Natural Religion_, p. 77.--TRANSLATOR’S NOTE.
[70] _Natural Religion_, p. 194.
[71] Max Müller does not exclude faith in making this statement, which
also occurs in his work _The Origin and Growth of Religion_, as on the
next page he says, “What we call sense, reason, and faith are three
functions of one and the same perceptive self.”--_Origin and Growth of
Religion_, p. 227.