[27] Renouvier’s phenomenalism should be compared with that of

Shadworth Hodgson, as set forth in the volumes of his large work on

_The Metaphysic of Experience_, 1899. Hodgson has given his estimate

of Renouvier and his relationship to him in _Mind_ (volume for 1881).

[28] _Psychologie de Hume : Traité de la Nature humaine_, Renouvier

Préface par Pillon, p. lxviii.

It may be doubted whether Pillon’s eulogy is altogether sound in its

approval of the “reconciliation” of Hume and Kant, for such a

reconciliation of opposites may well appear impossible. Renouvier

himself faced this problem of the reconciliation of opposites when at

an early age he inclined to follow the Hegelian philosophy, a doctrine

which may very well be described as a “reconciliation of opposites,”

_par excellence_. Dissatisfied, however, with such a scheme Renouvier

came round to the Kantian standpoint and then passed beyond it to a

position absolutely contrary to that of Hegel. This position is frankly

that opposites cannot be reconciled, one or the other must be rejected.

Renouvier thus made the law of contradiction the basis of his

philosophy, as it is the basis of our principles of thought or logic.

He rigorously applied this principle to that very interesting part of

Kant’s work, the antinomies, which he held should never have been

formulated. The reasons put forward for this statement were two: the

principle of contradiction and the law of number. Renouvier did not

believe in what mathematicians call an “infinite number.” He held it to

be an absurd and contradictory notion, for to be a number at all it

must be numerical and therefore not infinite. The application of this

to the Kantian antinomies, as for example to the questions, “Is space

infinite or finite? Had the world a beginning or not?” is interesting

because it treats them as Alexander did the Gordian knot. The admission

that space is infinite, or that the world had no beginning, involves

the admission of an “infinite number,” a contradiction and an

absurdity. Since, therefore, such a number is a pure fiction we _must_

logically conclude that space is finite,[29] that the world had a

beginning and that the ascending series of causes has a first term,

which admission involves freedom at the heart of things.

[29] It is interesting to observe how the stress laid by Renouvier

upon the finiteness of space and upon relativity has found expression

in the scientific world by Einstein, long after it had been expressed

philosophically.

As Renouvier had treated the antinomies of Kant, so he makes short work

of the Kantian conception of a world of noumena (_Dinge an sich_) of

which we know nothing, but which is the foundation of the phenomena we

know. Like Hume, he rejects all notion of substance, of which Kant’s

noumenon is a survival from ancient times. The idea of substance he

abhors as leading to pantheism and to fatalism, doctrines which

Renouvier energetically opposes, to uphold man’s freedom and the

dignity of human personality.

In the philosophy of Kant personality was not included among the

categories. Renouvier draws up for himself a new list of categories

differing from those of Kant. Beginning with Relation they culminate in

Personality. These two categories indicate two of the strongholds of

Renouvier’s philosophy. Beginning from his fundamental thesis “All is

relative,” Renouvier points out that as nothing can possibly be known

save by or in a relation of some sort it is evident that the most

general law of all is that of Relation itself. Relation is therefore

the first and fundamental category embracing all the others. Then

follow, Number, Position, Succession, Quality. To these are added the

important ones, Becoming, Causality, Finality proceeding from the

simple to the composite, from the abstract to the concrete, from the

elements most easily selected from our experience to that which

embraces the experience itself, Renouvier comes to the final category

in which they all find their consummation-Personality. The importance

which he attaches to this category colours his entire thought and

particularly determines his attitude to the various problems which we

shall discuss in our following chapters.

As we can think of nothing save in relation to consciousness and

consequently we cannot conceive the universe apart from personality,

our knowledge of the universe, our philosophies, our beliefs are

“personal” constructions. But they need not be on that account merely

subjective and individualistic in character, for they refer to

personality in its wide sense, a sense shared by other persons. This

has important consequences for the problem of certitude in knowledge

and Renouvier has here certain affinities to the pragmatist standpoint.

His discussion of certitude is very closely bound up with his treatment

of the problem of freedom, but we may indicate here Renouvier’s

attitude to Belief and Knowledge, a problem in which he was aided by

the work of his friend Jules Lequier,[30] whom he quotes in his second

_Essai de Critique générale_. Renouvier considers it advisable to

approach the problem of certitude by considering its opposite, doubt.

In a famous passage in his second _Essai_ he states the circumstances

under which we do not doubt—namely, “when we see, when we know, when we

believe.” Owing to our liability to error (even seeing is not

believing, and we frequently change our minds even about our “seeing”),

it appears that belief is always involved, and more correctly “we

believe that we see, we believe that we know.” Belief is a state of

consciousness involved in a certain affirmation of which the motives

show themselves as adequate. Certitude arises when the possibility of

an affirmation of the contrary is entirely rejected by the mind.

Certitude thus appears as a kind of belief. All knowledge, Renouvier

maintains, involves an affirmation of will. It is here we see the

contrast so strongly marked between him and Renan, who wished us to

“let things think themselves out in us.” “Every affirmation in which

consciousness is reflective is subordinated, in consciousness, to the

determination to affirm.” Our knowledge, our certitude, our belief,

whatever we prefer to call it, is a construction not purely

intellectual but involving elements of feeling and, above all, of will.

Even the most logically incontrovertible truth are sometimes

unconvincing. This is because certitude is not purely intellectual; it

is _une affaire passionnelle_.[31] Renouvier here not only approaches

the pragmatist position, but he recalls the attitude to will, assumed

by Maine de Biran. For the Cartesian formula De Biran had suggested the

substitution of _Volo, ergo sum_. The inadequacy of the the _Cogito,

ergo sum_ is remarked upon by Lequier, whose treatment of the question

of certainty Renouvier follows. As all demonstration is deductive in

character and so requires existing premises, we cannot expect the

_première vérité_ to be demonstrable. If, from the or certainty, we

must turn to the will to create belief, or certainty, we must turn to

the will to create beliefs, for no evidence or previous truths exist

for us. The _Cogito, ergo sum_ really does not give us a starting

point, as Descartes claimed for it, since there is no proper sequence

from _cogito_ to _sum_. Here we have merely two selves, _moi-pensée_

and _moi-objet_. We need a live spark to bridge this gap to unite the

two into one complete living self; this is found in _moi-volonté_, in a

free act of will. This free act of will affirms the existence of the

self by uniting in a synthetic judgment the thinking-self to the

object-self. “I refuse,” says Renouvier, quoting Lequier, “to follow

the work of a knowledge which would not be mine. I accept the certainty

of which I am the author.” The _première vérité_ is a free personal act

of faith. Certainty in philosophy or in science reposes ultimately upon

freedom and the consciousness of freedom.

[30] Jules Lequier was born in 1814 and entered the Ecole

polytechnique in 1834, leaving two years later for a military staff

appointment. This he abandoned in 1838. He died in 1862 after having

destroyed most of his writings. Three Years after his death was

published the volume, _La Recherche d’une première Vérité, fragments

posthumes de Jules Lequier_. The reader should note the very

interesting remarks by Renouvier at the end of the first volume of his

Psychologie rationnelle, 1912 ed., pp. 369-393, on Lequier and his

Philosophy, also the Fragments reprinted by Renouvier in that work,

_Comment trouver, comment chercher_, vol. i., on Subject and Object

(vol. ii.), and on Freedom.

[31] Lotze employs a similar phrase, eine Gemüths-sache.

Here again, as in the philosophy of Cournot, we find the main emphasis

falling upon the double problem of the period. It is in reality one

problem with two aspects—the relation of science to morality, or, in

other words, the place and significance of freedom.

The general influence of Renouvier has led to the formation of a

neo-critical “school” of thought, prominent members of which may be

cited: Pillon and Prat, his intimate friends, Séailles and Darlu, who

have contributed monographs upon their master’s teaching, together with

Hamelin, Liard and Brochard, eminent disciples. Hamelin (1856-1907),

whose premature and accidental death deprived France of a keen thinker,

is known for his _Essai sur les Eléments principaux de la

Représentation_ (1907), supplementing the doctrines of Renouvier by

those of Hegel.

In the work of Liard (1846-1917), _La Science positive et la

Métaphysique_ (1879), we see a combination of the influence of

Vacherot, Renouvier and Kant. He was also perplexed by the problem of

efficient and final causes as was Lachelier, whose famous thesis _De

l’Induction_ appeared eight years earlier. While Lachelier was

influenced by Kant, he, none the less, belongs to the current of the

new spiritualism which we shall presently examine. Liard, however, by

his adherence to many critical and neo-critical standpoints may be

justly looked upon as belonging to that great current of which

Renouvier is the prominent thinker.

Brochard (1848-1907) is mainly known by his _treatise De l’Erreur_

(1879) and his volumes on Ethics, _De la Responsabilité morale_ (1876),

and _De l’Universalité des Notions morales_ (1876), in all of which the

primacy of moral considerations is advocated in a tone inspired by

Renouvier’s strong moral standpoint. The work _De l’Erreur_ emphasises

the importance of the problem of freedom as being the crux of the whole

question involved in the relation of science and morality. Adhering to

the neo-critical doctrines in general, and particularly to the value of

the practical reason, Brochard, by his insistence upon action as a

foundation for belief, has marked affinities with the doctrines of

Blondel (and Olle-Laprune), the significance of whose work will appear

at the end of our next section.

The phenomenalism of Renouvier was followed up by two thinkers, who

cannot, however, be regarded as belonging to his neo-critical school.

In 1888 Gourd published his work entitled _Le Phénomène_, which was

followed six years later by the slightly more coherent attempt of

Boirac to base a philosophy upon the phenomenalism which expresses

itself so rigidly in Hume. In his book _L’Idée du Phénomène_ (1894), he

had, however, recourse to the Leibnitzian doctrines, which had finally

exercised a considerable influence over Renouvier himself.

III

The reaction against positivism and against eclecticism took another

form quite apart from that of the neocritical philosophy. This was the

triumphant spiritualist philosophy, as we may call it, to give it a

general name, represented by a series of great thinkers—Ravaisson,

Lachelier, Fouillée, Guyau, Boutroux, Bergson and, we may add, Blondel.

These men have all of them had an influence much greater than that of

Renouvier, and this is true of each of them separately. This is rather

noteworthy for, if we exclude Fouillee, whose writings are rather too

numerous, the works of all the other men together do not equal in

quantity the work of Renouvier. There is another point which is worthy

of notice. While Renouvier worked in comparative solitude and never

taught philosophy in any college or university, being, in fact,

neglected by the University of Paris, all the company—Ravaisson,

Lachelier, Fouillée, Guyau, Boutroux and Bergson—had a connection with

the University of Paris in general, being associated with the Sorbonne,

the Collège de France or the important Ecole Normale Supérieure.

The initiator of the spiritualistic philosophy was Ravaisson

(1815-1900), who himself drew inspiration from Maine de Biran, to whose

work he had called attention as early as 1840 in a vigorous article

contributed to the _Revue des Deux Mondes_. This roused the indignation

of Victor Cousin and the eclectics, who in revenge excluded Ravaisson

from the Institute. His independent spirit had been shown in his thesis

_De l’Habitude_ (1838)[32] and his remarkable study of the metaphysics

of Aristotle (1837-1846).

[32] Reproduced in 1894 in the _Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale_.

Ravaisson’s chief title to fame, however, lies in his famous

philosophic manifesto of 1867, for such, in fact, was his _Rapport sur

la Philosophie en France au XIXè Siècle_. This Report, prepared for the

_Exposition universelle_ at the request of the Ministry of Education,

marks an epoch, for with it began the current of thought which was to

dominate the close of the century. The “manifesto” was a call to free

spirits to assert themselves in favour of a valid idealism. It, in

itself, laid the foundations of such a philosophy and dealt a blow to

both the Eclectic School of Cousin and the followers of Auguste Comte.

Ravaisson wrote little, but his influence was powerful and made itself

felt in the University, where in his office of president of the

_agrégation en philosophie_ he exercised no little influence over the

minds of younger men. His pupils, among whom are to be found Lachelier,

Boutroux and Bergson, have testified to the profound and inspiring

influence which this thinker exercised. A notable tribute to his memory

is the address given by Bergson when he was appointed to take

Ravaisson’s place at the _Académie des Sciences morales et politiques_

in 1904.

Various influences meet in Ravaisson and determine his general attitude

to thought. He reverts, as we have said, to Maine de Biran, whose

insistence upon the inner life he approves. We must examine human

consciousness and make it our basis. We have in it powers of will, of

desire and of love. Ravaisson blends the Aristotelian insistence upon

Thought with the Christian insistence upon Love. In his method he

manifests the influence of the German philosopher, Schelling, whose

lectures he attended at Munich in company with the young Swiss thinker,

Secretan.[33] This influence is seen in his doctrine of synthesis and

his intellectual intuition. Science continues to give us analyses ever

more detailed, but it cannot lead us to the absolute. Our highest, most

sublime knowledge is gained by a synthesis presented in and to our

consciousness, an intuition. Further, he argues that efficient causes,

about which science has so much to say, are really dependent upon final

causes. Spiritual reality is anterior to material reality, and is

characterised by goodness and beauty. Himself an artist, imbued with a

passionate love of the beautiful (he was guardian of sculptures at the

Louvre), he constructs a philosophy in the manner of an artist. Like

Guyau, he writes metaphysics like poetry, and although he did not give

us anything like _Vers d’un Philosophe_, he would have endorsed the

remarks which Guyau made on the relation of poetry and philosophy if,

indeed, it is not a fact that his influence inspired the younger man.

[33] Charles Secretan (1815-1895), a Swiss thinker with whom Renouvier

had interesting correspondence. His _Philosophie de la Liberté_

appeared in 1848-1849, followed by other works on religious

philosophy. Pillon wrote a monograph upon him.

After surveying the currents of thought up to 1867 Ravaisson not only

summed up in his concluding pages the elements of his own philosophy,

but he ventured to assume the role of prophet. “Many signs permit us to

foresee in the near future a philosophical epoch of which the general

character will be the predominance of what may be called spiritualistic

realism or positivism, having as generating principle the consciousness

which the mind has of itself as an existence recognised as being the

source and support of every other existence, being none other than its

action.”[34] His prophecy has been fulfilled in the work of Lachelier,

Guyau, Fouillée, Boutroux, Bergson, Blondel and Weber.

[35] _Rapport_, 2nd ed., 1885, p. 275.

After Ravaisson the spiritualist philosophy found expression in the

work of Lachelier (1832-1918), a thinker whose importance and whose

influence are both quite out of proportion to the small amount which he

has written.[36] A brilliant thesis of only one hundred pages, _Du

Fondement de l’Induction_, sustained in 1871, together with a little

study on the Syllogism and a highly important article on _Psychologie

et Métaphysique_, contributed to the _Revue philosophique_ in May of

1885, constitute practically all his written work.[37] It was orally

that he made his influence felt; by his teaching at the Ecole Normale

Supérieure (1864-1875) he made a profound impression upon the youth of

the University and the Ecole by the dignity and richness of his

thought, as well as by its thoroughness.

[36] Dr. Merz, in his admirable _History of European Thought in the

Nineteenth Century_, is wrong in regard to Lachelier’s dates; he

confuses his resignation of professorship (1875) with his death. This,

however, did not occur until as late as 1918. See the references in

Mertz, vol. iii., p. 620, and vol. iv., p. 217.

[37] The thesis and the article have been published together by Alcan,

accompanied by notes on Pascal’s Wager. The _Etude sur le Syllogisme_

also forms a volume in Alcan’s _Bibliothèque de Philosophie

contemporaine_.

Lachelier was a pupil of Ravaisson, and owes his initial inspiration to

him. He had, however, a much more rigorous and precise attitude to

problems. This is apparent in the concentration of thought contained in

his thesis. It is one of Lachelier’s merits that he recognised the

significance of Kant’s work in a very profound manner. Until his thesis

appeared the influence of Leibnitz had been more noticeable in French

thought than that of Kant. It was noticeable in Ravaisson, and

Renouvier, in spite of his professed adherence to Kant, passed to a

Leibnitzian position in his _Nouvelle Monadologie_.

The valuable work _Du Fondement de l’Induction_ is concerned mainly

with the problem of final causes, which Lachelier deduces from the

necessity of totality judgments over and above those which concern

merely efficient causes. On the principle of final causes, or a

ideological conception of a rational unity and order, he founds

Induction. It cannot be founded, he claims, upon a mere empiricism.

This is a point which will concern us later in our examination of the

problem of science.

Lachelier was left, however, with the dualism of mechanism, operating

solely by efficient causes, and teleology manifested in final causes, a

dualism from which Kant did not manage to escape. In his article

_Psychologic et Métaphysique_ he endeavoured to interpret mechanism

itself as a teleological activity of the spirit.[38] He indicates the

absolute basis of our life and experience, indeed of the universe

itself, to be the absolute spontaneity of spirit. In spirit and in

freedom we live and move and have our being. We do not affirm ourselves

to be what we are, but rather we are what we affirm ourselves to be. We

must not say that our present depends upon our past, for we really

create all the moments of our life in one and the same act, which is

both present to each moment and above them all.[39] Here psychology

appears as the science of thought itself and resolves itself into

metaphysics. Here, too, we find the significance of the new

spiritualism; we see its affinity with, and its contrast to, the

doctrines of the older spiritualism as professed by Cousin. Lachelier

here strikes the note which is so clearly characteristic of this

current of thought, and is no less marked in his work than in that of

Bergson—namely, a belief in the supremacy of spirit and in the reality

of freedom.

[38] It is interesting to compare this with the attitude taken by

Lotze in Germany.

[39] _Psychologie et Métaphysique_, p. 171.

The notion of freedom and of the spontaneity of the spirit became

watchwords of the new spiritualist philosophers. Under the work and

influence of Boutroux (1845-1921) these ideas were further emphasised

and worked out more definitely to a position which assumes a critical

attitude to the dogmatism of modern science and establishes a

contingency in all things. Boutroux’s thesis _De la Contingence des

Lois de la Nature_ appeared in 1874 and was dedicated to Ravaisson. His

chief fame and his importance in the development of the spiritualist

philosophy rest upon this book alone. In 1894 he published a course of

lectures given at the Sorbonne in 1892-3, _Sur l’Idée de Loi

naturelle_, which supplements the thesis. Outside his own country

attention has been more readily bestowed upon his writings on the

history of philosophy, of which subject he was Professor. In his own

country, however, great interest and value are attached to his work on

_The Contingency of the Laws of Nature_. In this Boutroux combines the

attitude of Ravaisson with that of Lachelier. The totality of the laws

of the universe manifests, according to him, a contingency. No

explanation of these laws is possible apart from a free spiritual

activity. The stress laid upon contingency in the laws of nature

culminates in the belief in the freedom of man.

The critique of science which marked Boutroux’s work has profoundly

influenced thinkers like Hannequin, Payot and Milhaud,[40] and in the

following century appears in the work of Duhem and of Henri Poincaré,

the noted mathematician, whose books on _La Science et l’Hypothèse_

(1902), _La Valeur de la Science_ (1905), and _Science et Méthode_

(1909) have confirmed many of Boutroux’s conclusions.[41]

[40] Hannequin’s notable work is the _Essai critique sur L’Hypothèse

des Atomes_ (1896). Payot’s chief book is _La Croyance_ (1896).

Milhaud’s critique of science is contained in his _Essai sur les

Conditions et les Limites de la Certitude logique_ (1894), and in _Le

Rationnel_ (1898). Duhem’s book is _La Théorie physique_ (1906).

[41] It is interesting to note that Boutroux married Poincaré’s

sister, and that his son, Pierre Boutroux, whose education was guided

by both his uncle and his father, is now Professor at the Collège de

France. Emile Boutroux was a pupil of Zeller, whose lectures on Greek

philosophy he attended in Heidelberg, 1868. He expressed to the writer

his grief at the later prostitution of German thought to nationalist

and materialist aims. He was Professor of the History of Philosophy in

Paris from 1888, then Honorary Professor of Modern Philosophy. In 1914

he gave the Hertz Lecture to the British Academy on _Certitude et

Vérité_. He was until his death Directeur de la Fondation Thiers, a

college for post-graduate study, literary, philosophical and

scientific.

While the new spiritualist current was thus tending to a position far

removed from that of Taine, at the commencement of our period, a

wavering note was struck by the idealist Fouillée (1838-1912), who,

while maintaining a general attitude in harmony with the new doctrines

endeavoured to effect a reconciliation with the more positive attitude

to science and philosophy. In his _philosophie des ideés-forces_[42] he

endeavoured to combine and reconcile the diverging attitudes of Plato

and of Comte. He shows a scorn of the neo-critical though of Renouvier.

He wrote in his shorter life more books than did Renouvier, and he is

conspicuous among this later group of thinkers for his mass-production

of books, which appeared steadily at the rate of one _per annum_ to the

extent of some thirty-seven volumes, after he gave up his position as

_maître de conférence_ at the Ecole Normale owing to ill-health.[43]

[42] His _Evolutionnisme des Idées-forces_ appeared in 1890, _La

Psychologie des Idées-forces_ three years later. His _Morale des

Idées-forces_ belongs to the next century (1907), but its principles

were contained already in his thesis _Liberté et Déterminisme_.

[43] He only held this for three years, 1872-75.

Fouillée, with the noblest intentions, set himself to the solution of

that problem which we have already indicated as being the central one

of our period, the relation of science and ethics, or, in brief, the

problem of freedom. This was the subject of his thesis, undoubtedly the

best book he ever wrote, _La Liberté et le Déterminisme_, which he

sustained in 1872.[44] The attitude which he takes in that work is the

keynote to his entire philosophy. Well grounded in a knowledge of the

history of systems of philosophy, ancient and modern, he recognises

elements of truth in each, accompanied by errors due mainly to a

one-sided perspective.[45] He recalls a statement of Leibnitz to the

effect that most systems are right in their assertions and err in their

denials. Fouillée was convinced that there was reconciliation at the

heart of things, and that the contradictions we see are due to our

point of view. Facing, therefore, in this spirit, the problems of the

hour, he set himself “to reconcile the findings of science with the

reality of spirit, to establish harmony between the determinism upheld

by science and the liberty which the human spirit acclaims, between the

mechanism of nature and the aspirations of man’s heart, between the

True which is the object of all science and the Good which is the goal

of morality.”[46]

[44] This work created quite a stir in the intellectual and political

world in France just after the war. Fouillée’s book led to an attack

on the ministry, which did not go so far as that occasioned by

Renouvier’s volume in 1849. (See p. 61.)

[45] Fouillée stands in marked contrast to Comte in his general

acquaintance with the history of ideas. Comte, like Spencer, knew

little of any philosophy but his own. Fouillée, however, was well

schooled, not only in Plato and the ancients, but had intimate

knowledge of the work of Kant, Comte, Spencer, Lotze, Renouvier,

Lachelier, Boutroux and Bergson.

[46] This is also the idea expressed at length in his _Avenir de la

Métaphysique_, 1889.

Fouillée had no desire to offer merely another eclecticism _à la mode

de Cousin_; he selects, therefore, his own principle of procedure. This

principle is found in his notion of _idée-force_. Following ancient

usage, he employs the term “idea” for _any_ mental presentation. For

Fouillée, however, ideas are not _idées-spectacles_, merely exercising

a platonic influence “remote as the stars shining above us.” They are

not merely mental reproductions of an object, real or hypothetical,

outside the mind. Ideas are in themselves forces which endeavour to

work out their own realisation. Fouillée opposes his doctrine to the

evolutionary theory of Spencer and Huxley. He disagrees with their

mechanism and epiphenomenalism, pointing out legitimately that our

ideas, far from being results of purely physical and independent

causes, are themselves factors, and very vital factors, in the process

of evolution. Fouillée looks upon the mechanistic arrangement of the

world as an expression or symbol of idea or spirit in a manner not

unlike that of Lotze.

He bears out his view of _idées-forces_ by showing how a state of

consciousness tries to realise its object. The idea of movement is

closely bound up with the physiological and physical action, and,

moreover, tends to produce it. This realisation is not a merely

mechanistic process but is teleological and depends on the vital unity

between the physical and the mental. On this fundamental notion

Fouillée constructs his psychology, his ethic, his sociology and his

metaphysic. He sees in the evolutionary process ideas at work which

tend to realise themselves. One of these is the idea of freedom, in

which idea he endeavours to find a true reconciliation of the problem

of determinism in science and the demands of the human spirit which

declares itself free. The love of freedom arising from the idea of

freedom creates in the long run this freedom. This is Fouillée’s method

all through. “To conceive and to desire the ideal is already to begin

its realisation.” He applies his method with much success in the realm

of ethics and sociology where he opposes to the Marxian doctrine of a

materialist determination of history that of a spiritual and

intellectual determination by ideas. Fouillée’s philosophy is at once

intellectual and voluntarist. He has himself described it as

“spiritualistic voluntarism.” It is a system of idealism which reflects

almost all the elements of modern thought. In places his doctrine of

reconciliation appears to break down, and the psychological law summed

up in _idées-forces_ is hardly sufficient to bear the vast erection

which Fouillée builds upon it. The idea is nevertheless a valuable and

fruitful one. Fouillée’s respect for positive science is noteworthy, as

is also his great interest in social problems.[47]

[47] At the end of the century these problems received highly

specialised attention in the work of the sociologists inspired by

Comte’s influence. Works of special merit in this direction are:

tspmas, with his _Société’s animales_ (1876) and Tarde, predecessor of

Bergson at the Collège de France (1843-1907), with his _Criminalité

comparée_ (1898) and _Les Lois de l’Imitation_ (1900), also Durkheim’s

work _De la Division du Travail social_ (1893) and _Les Régles de la

Méthode sociologique_ (1894), and Izoulet, with his _La Cité moderne_

(1894). Note those of Levy-Bruhl, Bouglé, and Le Bon.

The importance of the sociological aspect of all problems was

emphasised in a brilliant manner by Guyau (1854-1888), the step-son of

Fouillée. Guyau was a gifted young man, whose death at the early age of

thirty-four was a sore bereavement for Fouillée and undoubtedly a

disaster for philosophy. Guyau was trained by his step-father,[48] and

assisted him in his work. When ill-health forced both men from their

professorships,[49] they lived in happy comradeship at Mentone at the

same time, it is interesting to note, that Nietzsche was residing

there. Equally interesting is it to observe that although Guyau and

Fouillée were unaware of the German thinker’s presence or his work,

Nietzsche was well acquainted with theirs, particularly that of Guyau.

Doubtless he would have been pleased to meet the author of the

_Esquisse d’une Morale sans Obligation ni Sanction_ (1885) and

_L’Irreligion de l’Avenir_ (1887). Editions of these books exist in the

_Nietzsche-Archiv_ bearing Nietzsche’s notes and comments.

[48] Some authorities are of opinion that Fouillée was actually the

father of Guyau. Fouillée married Guyau’s mother.

[49] Guyau taught at the Lycée Condorcet (1874) where young Henri

Bergson was studying (1868-1878).

Guyau himself has a certain affinity with Nietzsche, arising from his

insistence upon Life and its power; but the author of the delightful

little collection _Vers d’un Philosophe_ (1881) is free from the egoism

expressed in _Der Wille zur Macht_. Guyau posits as his

_idée-directrice_ the conception of Life, both individual and social,

and in this concept he professes to find a basis more fundamental than

that of force, movement or existence. Life involves expansion and

intension, fecundity and creation. It means also consciousness,

intelligence and feeling, generosity and sociability. “He only lives

well who lives for others.” Life can only exist by extending. It can

never be purely egoistic and endure; a certain giving of itself, in

generosity and in love, is necessary for its continuance. Such is the

view which the French philosopher-poet expresses in opposition to

Nietzsche, starting, however, from the concept of Life did Nietzsche.

Guyau worked out a doctrine of ethics and of religion based upon this

concept which will demand our special attention in its proper place,

when we consider the moral and religious problem. He strove to give an

idealistic setting to the doctrines of evolution, and this alone would

give him a place among the great thinkers of the period.

In his doctrine of the relation of thought and action Guyau followed

the _philosophie des idées-forces_. On the other hand there are very

remarkable affinities between the thought of Guyau and that of Bergson.

Guyau is not so severely intellectual as Fouillée; his manner of

thought and excellence of style are not unlike Bergson. More noticeably

he has a conception of life not far removed from the _élan vital_. His

“expansion of life” has, like Bergson’s _évolution créatrice_, no goal

other than that of its own activity. After Guyau’s death in 1888 it was

found that he had been exercised in mind about the problem of Time, for

he left the manuscript of a book entitled _La Genèse de l’Idée de

Temps_.[50] He therein set forth a belief in a psychological,

heterogeneous time other than mathematical time, which is really

spatial in character. In this psychological time the spirit lives. The

year following Guyau’s death, but before his posthumous work appeared,

Bergson published his thesis _Les Données immédiates de la Conscience_

(1889), which is better described by its English title _Time and Free

Will_, and in which this problem which had been present to Guyau’s mind

is taken up and treated in an original and striking manner. In Guyau,

too, is seen the rise of the conception of activity so marked in the

work of Bergson and of Blondel. “It is _action_ and the power of life,”

he insists, “which alone can solve, if not entirely at least partially,

those problems to which abstract thought gives rise.”[51]

[50] This work was edited and published by Fouillée two years after

Guyau’s death, and reviewed by Bergson in the _Revue philosophique_ in

1891.

[51] _Esquisse d’une Morale sans Obligation ni Sanction_, p. 250.

Bergson, born in 1859, Professor at the Collège de France from 1901 to

1921, now retired, has had a popularity to which none of the other

thinkers of this group, or indeed of our period, has attained. He is

the only one of the new idealists or spiritualists who is well known

outside his own country. For this reason foreigners are apt to regard

him as a thinker unrelated to any special current of thought, an

innovator. Although much is original and novel in his philosophy, his

thought marks the stage in the development to which the spiritualist

current has attained in contemporary thought. The movement of which he

forms a part we can trace back as far as Maine de Biran, to whom

Bergson owes much, as he does also to Ravaisson, Lachelier, Boutroux

and Guyau.

Two important books by Bergson came prior to 1900, his _Time and Free

Will_ (1889) and his _Matter and Memory_ (1896). His famous _Creative

Evolution_ appeared in 1907. It is but his first work “writ large,” for

we have in _Time and Free Will_ the essentials of his philosophy.

He makes, as did Guyau, a central point of Change, a universal

becoming, and attacks the ordinary notion of time, which he regards as

false because it is spatial. We ourselves live and act in _durée_,

which is Bergson’s term for real time as opposed to that fictitious

time of the mathematician or astronomer. He thus lays stress upon the

inward life of the spirit, with its richness and novelty, its eternal

becoming, its self-creation. He has his own peculiar manner of

approaching our central problem, that of freedom, of which he realises

the importance. For him the problem resolves itself into an application

of his doctrine of _la durée_, to which we shall turn in due course.

Bergson insists with Guyau and Blondel upon the primary significance of

action. The importance attached to action colours his whole theory of

knowledge. His epistemology rests upon the thesis that “the brain is an

instrument of action and not of representation,” and that “in the study

of the problems of perception the starting- point should be action and

not sensation.” This is a psychology far different from that of

Condillac and Taine, and it is largely upon his merit as a psychologist

that Bergson’s fame rests. He devoted his second work, _Matter and

Memory_, to showing that memory is something other than a function of

the brain. His distinction between “pure” memory and mere memorising

power, which is habit, recalls the _mémoire_ of Maine de Biran and of

Ravaisson upon _Habit_. Bergson sees in memory a manifestation of

spirit, which is a fundamental reality, no mere epiphenomenon. Spirit

is ever striving against matter, but in spite of this dualism which he

cannot escape, he maintains that spirit is at the origin of things.

This is a difficulty which is more clearly seen in his later book,

_Creative Evolution_. Matter is our enemy and threatens our personality

in its spiritual reality by a tendency to lead us into habit, away from

life, freedom and creativeness.

Further we must, he claims, endeavour to see things _sub specie

durationis in a durée_, in an eternal becoming. We cannot expect to

grasp all the varied reality of life in a formula or indeed in any

purely intellectual manner. This is the chief defect of science and of

the so-called scientific point of view. It tries to fix in concepts,

moulds and solid forms a reality which is living and moving eternally.

For Bergson all is Change, and this eternal becoming we can only grasp

by intuition. Intuition and intellect do not, however, oppose one

another. We are thus led to realise that Life is more than logic. The

Bergsonian philosophy concludes with intuitionism and contingency,

which drew upon it the severe criticisms of Fouillée,[52] who termed it

a philosophy of scepticism and nihilism. Of all the spiritualist group

Fouillée stands nearest the positive attitude to science, and his

strong intellectualism comes out in his criticism of Bergson, who well

represents, together with Blondel, the tendency towards

non-intellectual attitudes inherent in the spiritualist development.

Blondel has endeavoured to treat the great problems, a task which

Bergson has not attempted as yet, partly because he (Bergson) shares

Renan’s belief that “the day of philosophic systems has gone,” partly

because he desires to lay the basis of a philosophy of the spirit to

which others after him may contribute, and so he devotes his attention

to method and to those crucial points, such as the problem of freedom

upon which a larger doctrine must necessarily rest.[53]

[52] Particularly in his work _Le Mouvement idéaliste et la Réaction

contre la Science positive_ (cf. .206), 1896, and later in _La Pensée

et les nouvelles Ecoles anti-intellectualistes_, 1910.

[53] For a fuller appreciation of the Bergsonian doctrines than is

possible in such a survey as this, the reader is referred to the

author’s monograph, _Bergson and His Philosophy_, Methuen and Co.,

1920.

The current of the new idealism or spiritualism reaches a culminating

point in the work of Blondel (born about 1870), whose remarkable and

noteworthy book _L’Action_ appeared in l893.[54] The fundamental thesis

of the Philosophy of Action[55] is that man’s life is primarily one of

action, consequently philosophy must concern itself with the active

life and not merely with thought. By its nature, action is something

unique and irreducible to other elements or factors. It is not the

result of any synthesis: it is itself a living synthesis, and cannot be

dealt with as the scientist deals with his data. Blondel lays emphasis,

as did Bergson, upon “the living” being unique and inexpressible in

formulae. Intellect cannot grasp action; “one penetrates the living

reality only by placing oneself at the dynamic point of view of the

will.”[56] His words recall Bergson’s attitude to the free act. “The

principle of action eludes positive knowledge at the moment at which it

makes it possible, and, in a word that needs to be better defined, it

is subjectivity.”[57]

[54] The same year in which the philosophic interest in France,

growing since 1870, and keener in the eighties, led to the foundation

of the famous _Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale_ by Xavier Léon. In

1876 (the same year in which Professor Croom Robertson in England

established the periodical _Mind_) Ribot had founded the _Revue

philosophique de la France et de l’Etranger_. These journals, along

with the teaching in the Lycées, have contributed to make the French

people the best educated, philosophically, of any people.

[55] It is interesting to note that this designation has been used by

its author to replace his original term “_pragmatisme_,” which he

employed in 1888 and abandoned upon becoming acquainted with the

theory of Peirce and James, and with their use of the term in another

manner, with which he did not agree. See _Bulletin de la Société

française de Philosophie_, 1902.

[56] _L’ Action_, p. 100.

[57] _Ibid_., p. 87.

Blondel, however, leads us beyond this subjectivity, for it is not the

will which causes what is. Far from that, he maintains that in so far

as it wills it implies something which it does not and cannot create of

itself; it wills to be what it is not yet. We do not act for the mere

sake of acting, but for some end, something beyond the particular act.

Action is not self-contained or self- sufficing: it is a striving to

further attainment or achievement. It therefore pre-supposes some

reality beyond itself. Here appear the elements of “passion” and

“suffering” due to resistance, for all action involves some opposition.

In particular moral action implies this resistance and a consciousness

of power to overcome the resistance, and it therefore involves a

reality which transcends the sphere in which we act.

Owing to this inequality between the power and the wish, we are obliged

to complete our actions or our activity in general by a belief in a

Reality beyond. It is, however, “a beyond that is within,” a Divine

power immanent in man. This view, Blondel claims, unites the idea of

God “transcendent” with the idea of God as “immanent.” Man’s action

partakes of both, for in so far as it results from his own will it is

immanent; transcendence is, however, implied in the fact that the end

of man’s action as a whole is not “given.” Blondel leads us to a

conception of a religious idealism in which every act of our ordinary

existence leads ultimately to a religious faith. Every action is

sacramental. Blondel and his follower Laberthonnière, who has taken up

this idea from his master in his volume of _Essais de Philosophie

réligieuse_ (1901), go beyond a purely pragmatist or voluntarist

position by finding the supreme value of all action, and of the

universe, not in will but in love. For Blondel this word is no mere

sentiment or transient feeling, but a concrete reality which is the

perfection of will and of intellect alike, of action and of knowledge.

The “Philosophy of Action,” asserts Blondel, includes the “Philosophy

of the Idea.” In the fact of love, he claims, is found the perfect

unity between the self and the non-self, the ground of personality and

its relation to the totality of persons, producing a unity in which

each is seen as an end to others as well as to himself. “Love,” says

Laberthonnière, “is the first and last word of all. It is the

principle, the means and the end. It is in loving that one gets away

from self and raises oneself above one’s temporal individuality. It is

in loving that one finds God and other beings, and that one finds

oneself.” It is, in short, these idealists claim, the _Summum Bonum_;

in it is found the Absolute which philosophers and religious mystics of

all ages have ever sought.

The “philosophy of action” is intimately bound up with the “philosophy

of belief,” formulated by Ollé-Laprune, and the movement in religious

thought known generally as Modernism, which is itself due to the

influence of modern philosophic thought upon the dogmas of the

Christian religion, as these are stated by the Roman Church. Both the

Philosophy of Belief and Modernism are characterised by an intense

spirituality and a moral earnestness which maintain the primacy of the

practical reason over the theoretical reason. Life, insists

Ollé-Laprune in his book _Le Prix de la Vie_ (l885),[58] is not

contemplation but active creation. He urges us to a creative evolution

of the good, to an employment of _idées-forces_. “There are things to

be made whose measure is not determined; there are things to be

discovered, to be invented, new forms of the good, ideas which have

never yet been received—creations, as it were, of the spirit that loves

the good.” This dynamism and power of will is essential. We must not

lose ourselves in abstractions; action is the supreme thing: it alone

constitutes reality.

[58] This has been followed in the new century by _La Raison et le

Rationalisme_, 1906. As early as 1880, however, he issued his work _La

Certitude morale_, which influenced Blondel, his pupil.

A similar note is sounded by the Modernists or Neo-Catholics,

particularly by the brilliant disciple and successor of Bergson, Le

Roy, who in _Dogme et Critique_ (1907) has based the reality of

religious dogma upon its practical significance. We find Péguy (who

fell on the field of battle in 1914) applying Bergsonian ideas to a

fervid religious faith. Wilbois unites these ideas to social ethics in

his _Devoir et Durée_ (1912). In quite different quarters the new

spiritualism and philosophy of action have appeared as inspiring the

Syndicalism of Sorel, who endeavours to apply the doctrines of Bergson,

Ollé-Laprune and Blondel to the solution of social questions in his

_Réflexions sur la Violence_ (1907) and _Illusions du Progrès_ (1911).

It would be erroneous to regard Bergson’s intuitional philosophy as

typical of all contemporary French thought. Following Renouvier,

Fouillée and Boutroux, there prevail currents of a more intellectualist

or rationalist type, to which we are, perhaps, too close to see in true

and historical perspective. The _élan vital_ of French thought

continues to manifest itself in a manner which combines the work of

Boutroux and Bergson with Blondel’s idealism. A keen interest is being

taken in the works of Spinoza, Kant and Hegel, and this is obviously

influencing the trend of French philosophy at the moment, without

giving rise to a mere eclecticism. French thought is too original and

too energetic for that. In addition to these classical studies we

should note the great and growing influence of the work of Durkheim and

of Hamelin, both of whom we have already mentioned. The former gave an

immense impetus to sociological studies by his earlier work. Further

interest arose with his _Formes élémentaires de la Vie religieuse_ in

1912. Hamelin indicated a turning-point from _neo-criticisme_ through

the new spiritualist doctrines to Hegelian methods and ideas.

Brunschwicg, who produced a careful study of Spinoza, wrote as early as

1897 on _La Modalité du Jugement_, a truly Kantian topic. This

thinker’s later works, _Les Etapes de la Philosophie mathematique_

(1912) and the little volume _La Vie de l’esprit_, illustrate a

tendency to carry out the line taken by Boutroux—namely, to arrive at

the statement of a valid idealism disciplined by positivism. The papers

of Berthelot in his _Evolutionnisme et Platonisme_ are a further

contribution to this great end. In the work of Evellin, _La Raison pure

et les Antinomies_ (1907), the interest in Kant and Hegel is again

seen. Noël, who contributed an excellent monograph on Lachelier to the

_Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale_ (that journal which is an

excellent witness in itself to the vitality of contemporary French

philosophy), produced a careful study of Hegel’s Logik in 1897. Since

that date interest has grown along the lines of Boutroux, Bergson and

Blondel in an attempt to reach a positive idealism, which would combine

the strictly positivist attitude so dear to French minds with the

tendency to spiritualism or idealism which they also manifest. This

attempt, which in some respects amounts to an effort to restate the

principles of Hegel in modern or contemporary terms, was undertaken by

Weber in 1903 in his book entitled _Vers le Positivisme absolu par

l’Idéalisme_. Philosophy in France realises to-day that the true course

of spiritual development will be at once positive and idealistic.

CHAPTER III

SCIENCE

INTRODUCTION: The scientific outlook—Progress of the sciences—The

positivist spirit, its action on science, philosophy and literature—The

problem as presented to philosophy.

I. Comte’s positivism—Work of prominent scientists—Position maintained

by Berthelot and Bernard—Renan’s confidence—Vacherot and

Taine—Insufficiency of sciences alone.

II. Cournot and Renouvier attack the dogmatism of science.

III. The neo-spiritualist group continue and develop this attack, which

becomes a marked feature in Lachelier, Boutroux, and Bergson.

Entire change of attitude in the development of the period.

The problem of freedom opened up in the process.

CHAPTER III

SCIENCE

Having thus surveyed the main currents of our period and indicated the

general attitude adopted to knowledge by the various thinkers, we

approach more closely to the problem of the relation of science and

philosophy. The nineteenth century was a period in which this problem

was keenly felt, and France was the country in which it was tensely

discussed by the most acute minds among the philosophers and among the

scientists. French thought and culture, true to the tradition of the

great geometrician and metaphysician Descartes, have produced men whose

training has been highly scientific as well as philosophical. Her

philosophers have been keenly versed in mathematics and physical

science, while her scientists have had considerable power as

philosophical thinkers.

One of the very prominent tendencies of thought in the first half of

the nineteenth century was the growing belief and confidence in the

natural sciences. In France this was in large measure due to the

progress of those sciences themselves and to the influences of Comte,

which was supported by the foreign influences of Kant’s teaching and

that of the English School, particularly John Stuart Mill. These three

great streams of thought, widely different in many respects, had this

in common—that they tended to confuse philosophy and science to such a

degree that it seemed doubtful whether the former could be granted any

existence by itself. Science, somewhat intoxicated by the praise and

worship bestowed upon her, became proud, arrogant and overbearing. She

scorned facts which could not be adapted to her own nature, she ignored

data which were not quantitative and materialistic, and she regarded

truth as a system of laws capable of expression by strict mathematical

methods and formulae*. Hence science became characterised by a firm

belief in absolute determinism, in laws of necessity operating after

the manner of mathematical laws. This “universal mathematic”

endeavoured also to explain the complex by reference to the simple.

Difficulties were encountered all along the line, for experience, it

was found, did not quite fit into rigid formulae*, “new” elements of

experience presented a unique character and distressing discrepancy.

Confidence in science, however, was not shaken by this, for the perfect

science, it was imagined, was assured in a short time. Patience might

be needed, but no doubt was entertained of the _possibility_ of such a

construction. Doubters were told to look at the rising sciences of

psychology and sociology, which, as Auguste Comte had himself

prophesied, were approaching gradually to the “type” venerated—namely,

an exact and mathematical character. Biology, it was urged, was merely

a special branch of physico-chemistry. As for beliefs in freedom, in

art, morality and religion, these, like philosophy (metaphysics)

itself, belonged to the earlier stages (the theological and

metaphysical) of Comte’s list, stages rapidly to be replaced by the

third and final “positive” era.

Such, briefly stated, were the affirmations so confidently put forward

on behalf of science by its devoted worshippers. Confidence in science

was a marked feature of the work written by Renan in the years

1848-1849, _L’Avenir de la Science_. Yet, paradoxical as it may seem,

Renan himself played a large part in undermining this confidence. Yet

the time of his writing this work is undoubtedly the period when the

confidence in science was most marked. By this it is not implied that

an even greater confidence in science has not been professed since by

many thinkers. That is probably true, but the important point is that

at this time the confidence in science was less resisted than ever in

its history. It seemed to have a clear field and positivism seemed to

be getting unto itself a mighty victory.

The cult of facts, which is so marked a characteristic of the

scientific or positivist temper, penetrated, it is interesting to note,

into the realm of literature, where it assumed the form of “realism.”

In his Intelligence we find Taine remarking, “_de tout petits fails

bien choisis, importants, significatifs, amplement circonstanciés et

minutieusement notés, voilà aujourd’hui la matière de toute

science_.”[1] It was also, in the opinion of several writers, the

_matière de toute littérature_. The passion for minute details shows

itself in the realism of Flaubert and Zola, in the psychology of

Stendthal* and the novels of the Goncourts. It was no accident that

their works were so loved by Taine. A similar spirit of “positivism” or

“realism” animated both them and him.

[1] Preface to _Intelligence_.

With the turn of the half century, however, a change manifested itself

by the fact that the positivist current began to turn against itself,

and our period is, in some respects, what Fouillée has called _la

réaction centre la science positive_.[2] The function of philosophy is

essentially criticism, and although at that period the vitality of

philosophy was low, it nevertheless found enough energy to criticise

the demands and credentials of Science.

[2] Compare also Aliotta’s book, _The Idealistic Reaction against

Science_, Eng. trans., 19l4.

The publication of Claude Bernard’s volume _Introduction à la Médecine

experimentale_[3] drew from the pen of Paul Janet, the last of the

Eclectic School dominated by Cousin, an article of criticism which

appeared in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, and was later published in his

volume of essays entitled, _Les Problèmes du XIXe Siècle_. Although

Janet’s essay reveals all the deficiencies of the older spiritualism,

he makes a gallant attempt to combat the dogmatism and the assumed

finality of Bernard’s point of view and that of the scientists in

general. Janet regarded the sciences and their relation to philosophy

as constituting an important problem for the century and in this

judgment he was not mistaken.

[3] _Cf_. Livre III., _Science_, chap, i., on “Method in General”;

chap, ii., on The Experimental Method in Physiology,” pp. 213-279.

I

We have, in our Introductory Chapter, reckoned Auguste Comte among the

influential antecedents of our period. Here, in approaching the study

of the problem of science, we may note that the tendency towards the

strictly scientific attitude, and to the promotion of the scientific

_spirit_ in general, was partly due to the influence of his positivism.

Comte’s intended Religion of Humanity failed, his system of positive

philosophy has been neglected, but the SPIRIT which he inculcated has

abided and has borne fruit. We would be wrong, however, if we

attributed much to Comte as the originator of that spirit. His positive

philosophy, although it greatly stimulated and strengthened the

positive attitude adopted by the natural sciences, was itself in large

measure inspired by and based upon these sciences. Consequently much of

Comte’s glory was a reflected light, his thought was a challenge to the

old spiritualism, an assertion of the rights of the sciences to

proclaim their existence and to demand serious consideration.

Although he succeeded in calling the attention of philosophy to the

natural sciences, yet owing to the mere fact that he based himself on

the sciences of his day much of his thought has become obsolete by the

progress and extension of those very sciences themselves. He tended,

with a curious dogmatism, to assign limits to the sciences by keeping

them in separate compartments and in general by desiring knowledge to

be limited to human needs. Although there is important truth in his

doctrine of discontinuity or irreducible differences, the subsequent

development of the natural sciences has cleared away many barriers

which he imagined to be impassable. There still are, and may always be,

gaps in our knowledge of the progress from inorganic to organic, from

the living creature to self-conscious personality, but we have a

greater conception of the unity of Nature than had Comte. Many new

ideas and discoveries have transformed science since his day,

particularly the doctrines dealing with heat as a form of motion, with

light, electricity, and the radio-activity of matter, the structure of

the atom, and the inter-relation of physics and chemistry.

Comte’s claim for different methods in the different departments of

science is of considerable interest, in view of present-day biological

problems and the controversies of vitalists, mechanists and

neo-vitalists.[4] Although Comte insisted upon discontinuity, yet he

urged the necessity for an _esprit d’ensemble_, the consideration of

things synthetically, in their “togetherness.” He feared that analysis,

the _esprit de détail_ or mathematisation, was being carried out _à

l’outrance_. This opinion he first stated in 1825 in his tract entitled

_Considérations sur les Sciences et les Savants_. On the social side he

brought this point out further by insisting on the _esprit d’ensemble_

as involving the social standpoint in opposition to a purely

individualistic view of human life.

[4] See, for example, _The Mechanism of Life_, by Dr. Johnstone,

Professor of Oceanography in the University of Liverpool. (Arnold,

1921.)

Comte was slow to realise the importance of Ethics as an independent

study. Psychology he never recognised as a separate discipline, deeming

it part of physiology. He gave a curious appreciation to phrenology.

Unfortunately he overlooked the important work done by the

introspectionist psychologists in England and the important work of

Maine de Biran in his own country. One is struck by Comte’s inability

to appreciate the immense place occupied by psychology in modern life

and in particular its expression in the modern novel and in much modern

poetry. An acquaintance with the works of men like De Regnier, Pierre

Loti and Anatole France is sufficient to show how large a factor the

psychological method is in French literature and life. It is to be put

down to Comte’s eternal discredit that he failed to appreciate

psychology. Here lies the greatest defect in his work, and it is in

this connection that his work is now being supplemented. Positivism in

France to-day is not a synonym for “Comtism” at all; the term is now

employed to denote the spirit and temper displayed in the methods of

the exact sciences. For Comte, we must never forget, scientific

investigation was a means and not an end in itself. His main purpose

was social and political regeneration. Positivism since Comte differs

from his philosophy by a keen attention bestowed upon psychology, and

many of Comte’s inadequate conceptions have been enriched by the

introduction of a due recognition of psychological factors.

It is to be noted that Comte died two years before Darwin’s

_chef-d’œuvre_ appeared, and that he opposed the doctrine of evolution

as put forward by Lamarck. Although Comte’s principle of discontinuity

may in general have truth in it, the problem is a far more complicated

one than he imagined it to be. Again, while Comte’s opposition to the

subjectivism of Cousin was a wholesome influence, he did not accord to

psychology its full rights, and this alone has been gravely against the

acceptance of his philosophy, and explains partly the rise and progress

of the new spiritualist doctrines. His work served a useful purpose,

but Comte never closed definitely with the problem of the precise

significance of “positivism” or with its relation to a general

conception of the universe; in short, he confined himself to increasing

the scientific spirit in thought, leaving aside the difficulty of

relating science and philosophy.

Comte stated in his _Philosophie positive_[5] that he regarded attempts

to explain all phenomena by reference to one law as futile, even when

undertaken by the most competent minds well versed in the study of the

sciences. Although he believed in discontinuity he tried to bridge some

gaps, notably by his endeavour to refer certain physiological phenomena

to the law of gravitation.

[5] Vol. i., pp. 53-56.

The chief work which this undoubtedly great mind accomplished was the

organisation of the scientific spirit as it appeared in his time. Renan

hardly does justice to him in his sarcastic remark in his _Souvenirs

d’Enfance et de Jeunesse_. “I felt quite irritated at the idea of

Auguste Comte being dignified with the title of a great man for having

expressed in bad French what all scientific minds had seen for the last

two hundred years as clearly as he had done.” His work merits more than

dismissal in such a tone, and we may here note, as the essence of the

spirit which he tried to express, his definition of the positive or

scientific attitude to the universe given at the commencement of his

celebrated Cours de _Philosophie positive_. There, in defining the

positive stage, Comte speaks of it as that period in which “the human

spirit, recognising the impossibility of obtaining absolute

conceptions, abandons the search for the origin and the goal of the

universe and the inner causes of things, to set itself the task merely

of discovering, by reasoning and by experience combined, the effective

laws of phenomena—that is to say, their invariable relations of

succession and of similarity.”[6] This positive spirit Comte strove to

express rather than to originate, for it was already there in the

sciences. Undoubtedly his work made it more prominent, more clear, and

so we have to note an interaction between positivism in the sciences

and in philosophy.

[6] Leçon i.

It is equally important for our purpose to notice that the period was

one rich in scientific thought. The work of Lavoisier and Bichat, both

of whom as contemporaries of Maine de Biran, belong to the former

century, was now bearing fruit. Lavoisier’s influence had been great

over chemistry, which he established on a modern basis, by formulating

the important theory of the conservation of mass and by clearing away

false and fan- tastic conceptions regarding combustion.[7] Bichat, the

great anatomist and physiologist, died in 1802, but the publication of

his works in a completed form was not accomplished until 1854. The work

and influence of the _Académie des Sciences_ are noteworthy features of

French culture at this time. There stands out prominently the highly

important work of Cuvier in anatomy, zoology and palæontology.[8] The

nineteenth century was a period of great scientists and of great

scientific theories. Leverrier, applying himself to the problem of the

motions of Uranus, found a solution in the hypothesis of another

planet, Neptune, which was actually discovered from his calculations in

1846. This was a notable victory for logical and scientific method. In

1809 Lamarck had outlined, prior to Spencer or Darwin, the scheme of

the evolutionary theory (Transformism).[9] Spencer’s work, which

appeared from 1850 onwards, has always commanded respect and attention

in France even among its critics.[10] Interest increased upon the

publication of Darwin’s _Origin of Species_ in 1859, and its

translation into French in 1862. These dates coincide with the rise of

the _Société d’Anthropologie_ de Paris, founded by Broca in the same

year that Darwin’s book appeared. Another translation from Darwin’s

work followed in 1872, _Descendance de l’Homme_, which aroused further

interest in the evolutionary theory. At the same time the work of men

such as Pasteur, Bertrand, Berthelot and Bernard gave an impetus and a

power to science. Poincare belongs rather to the twentieth century.

Pasteur (1822-1895) showed mankind how science could cure its ills by

patient labour and careful investigation, and earned the world’s

gratitude for his noble work. His various _Discours_ and his volume,

_Le Budget de la Science_ (1868), show his faith in this progressive

power of science. In Bertrand (1822-1900), his contemporary who held

the position of Professor of Mathematics at the College de France, a

similar attitude appears.

[7] Lavoisier perished at the guillotine in 1794, and his death was a

tragic loss to science.

[8] Cuvier’s _Anatomie comparée_ appeared in the years 1800-1805,

following his _Histoire naturelle_ (1798-1799). Later came his

_Rapport sur les Sciences naturelles_ (1810) and his work _Le Regne

animal_ (1816).He died in 1832. We may note that Cuvier opposed the

speculative evolutionary doctrines of Lamarck, with whom he indulged

in controversy.

[9] In his work, _Philosophie zoologique, ou Exposition des

Considérations relatives a l’Histoire naturelle des Animaux_, 2 vols

Paris, Dentu, 1809.

[10] His _Social Statics_ was published in 1850, and his _Psychology_

five years later. His life work, _The Synthetic Philosophy_, extends

over the period 1860-1896.

One of the foremost scientific minds, however, was Claude Bernard

(1813-1878), a friend of Renan, who held the Chair of Medicine at the

College de France, and was, in addition, the Professor of Physiology at

the Faculté des Sciences at the Sorbonne. Science, Bernard maintained,

concerns itself only with phenomena and their laws. He endeavoured in

his celebrated _Introduction à l’Etude de la Médécine expérimentale_,

published in 1865, to establish the science of physiology upon a sound

basis, having respect only to fact, not owning homage to theories of a

metaphysical character or to the authority of persons or creeds. He

desired to obtain by such a rigorous and precise method, objectivity.

“The experimental method is,” he insists, “the really scientific

method, which proclaims the freedom of the human spirit and its

intelligence. It not only shakes off the yoke of metaphysics and of

theology, in addition it refuses to admit personal considerations and

subjective standpoints.”[11]

[11] _Introduction à l’Etude de la Médécine expérimentale_, chap. ii,

sect. 4.

Bernard’s attitude is distinctly that of a positivist, and the general

tone of his remarks as well as his attitude on many special points

agrees with that of Comte. His conclusions regarding physiology are

akin to those expressed by Comte concerning biology. Bernard excludes

any metaphysical hypothesis such as the operation of a vital principle,

and adheres strictly to physicochemical formulas. He accepts, however,

Comte’s warning about the reduction of the higher to terms of the

lower, or, in Spencerian phraseology, the explanation of the more

complex by the less complex. Consequently, he carefully avoids the

statement that he desires to “reduce” physiology to physics and

chemistry. He makes no facile and light-hearted transition as did

Spencer; on the contrary, he claims that the living has some specific

quality which cannot be “reduced” to other terms, and which cannot be

summed up in the formulae of physics or chemistry. The physiologist and

the medical practitioner must never overlook the fact that every living

being forms an organism and an individuality. The physiologist,

continues Bernard, must take notice of this unity or harmony of the

whole, even while he penetrates the interior to know the mechanism of

each of its parts. The physicist and the chemist can ignore any notion

of final causes in the facts they observe, but the physiologist must

admit a harmonious finality, a harmony pre-established in the organism,

whose actions form and express a unity and solidarity, since they

generate one another. Life itself is _creation_; it is not capable of

expression merely in physico-chemical formulae. The creative character,

which is its essence, never can be so expressed. Bernard postulated an

abstract, _idée directrice et créatrice_, presiding over the evolution

of an organism. “_Dans tout germe vivant, il y a une idée créatrice qui

se développe et se manifeste par l’organisation. Pendant toute sa durée

l’être vivant reste sous l’influence de cette même force vitale,

créatrice, et la mort arrive lorsqu’elle ne peut plus se réaliser. Ici

comme partout, tout dérive de l’idée, qui, seule, crée et dirige_.”[12]

[12] _Introduction à l’Etude de la Médécine expérimentale_, p.151 ff.

The positivist spirit is again very marked in the doctrines of

Berthelot (1827-1907), another very great friend of Renan, who, in

addition to being a Senator, and Minister of Education and of Foreign

Affairs, held the Chair of Organic Chemistry at the Collège de France.

In 1886 he published his volume, Science et Philosophie, which contains

some interesting and illuminating observations upon _La Science idéale

et la Science positive_. Part of this, it may be noted, was written as

early as 1863, in correspondence with Renan, and as a reply to a letter

of his of which we shall speak presently.[13] Berthelot states his case

with a clearness which merits quotation.

[13] See the _Fragments_ of Renan, published 1876, pp 193-241.

_Reponse de M. Berthelot_.

“Positive science,” he says, “seeks neither first causes nor the

ultimate goal of things. In order to link together a multitude of

phenomena by one single law, general in character and conformable to

the nature of things, the human spirit has followed a simple and

invariable method. It has stated the facts in accordance with

observation and experience, compared them, extracted their relations,

that is the general facts, which have in turn been verified by

observation and experience, which verification constitutes their only

guarantee of truth. A progressive generalisation, deduced from prior

facts and verified unceasingly by new observations, thus brings our

knowledge from the plane of particular and popular facts to general

laws of an abstract and universal character. But, in the construction

of this pyramid of science, everything from base to summit rests upon

observation and experience. It is one of the principles of positive

science that no reality can be established by a process of reasoning.

The universe cannot be grasped by a _priori_ methods.”

Like Comte, Berthelot believed in the progress of all knowledge through

a theological and metaphysical stage to a definitely scientific or

positive era. The sciences are as yet young, and we cannot imagine the

development and improvement, social and moral, which will accrue from

their triumph in the future. For Berthelot, as for Renan, the idea of

progress was bound up essentially with the triumph of the scientific

spirit. In a Discourse at the Sorbonne given in commemoration of the

fiftieth anniversary of his being appointed Professor at the Collège de

France, we find this faith in science reiterated. “To-day,” he remarks,

“Science claims a triple direction of societies, materially,

intellectually and morally. By this fact the role of the men of

science, both as individuals and as a class, has unceasingly come to

play a great part in modern states.”

These scientific men, Berthelot and Bernard, with whom Renan was on

terms of friendship, had a large influence in the formation of his

thought, after he had quitted the seminary and the Church. As a young

man Renan possessed the positive spirit in a marked degree, and did not

fail to disclose his enthusiasm for “Science” and for the scientific

method. His book _L’Avenir de la Science_, which we have already noted,

was written when he was only twenty-five, and under the immediate

influence of the events of 1848, particularly the socialist spirit of

Saint-Simon and the “organising” attitude of Auguste Comte. It did not,

however, see publication until 1890, when the Empire had produced a

pessimistic temper in him, later accentuated by the Commune and the

Prussian War. The dominant note of the whole work is the touching and

almost pathetic belief in Science, which leads the young writer to an

optimism both in thought and in politics. “Science” constitutes for him

the all-in-all. Although he had just previously abandoned the seminary,

his priestly style remained with him to such a degree that even his

treatment of science is characterised by a mixture of the unction of

the _curé_ and the subtilty of the dialectician. Levites were still to

be necessary to the people of Israel, but they were to be the priests

of the most High, whose name, according to Renan, was “Science.”

His ardour for Science is not confined to this one book: it runs

through all his writings. Prospero, a character who personifies

rational thought in _L’Eau de Jouvence_, one of Renan’s _Drames

philosophiques_, expresses an ardent love for science continually. In

his preface to _Souvenirs d’Enfance et de Jeunesse_ we find Renan upon

the same theme. Quaintly enough he not only praises the objectivity

which is characteristic of the scientific point of view, but seems to

delight in its abstraction. The superiority of modern science consists,

he claims, in this very abstraction. But he is aware that the very

indefatigability with which we fathom nature removes us, in a sense,

further from her. He recognises how science leads away from the

immediacy of vital and close contact with nature herself. “This is,

however, as it should be,” asserts Renan, “and let no one fear to

prosecute his researches, for out of this merciless dissection comes

life.” He does not stay to assure us, or to enlighten us, as to how

that life can be infused into the abstract facts which have resulted

from the process of dissection. Fruitful and suggestive as many of his

pages are, they fail to approach the concrete difficulties which this

passage mentions.

Writing from Dinant in Brittany in 1863 to his friend, Berthelot, Renan

gives his view of the Sciences of Nature and the Historical Sciences.

This letter, reprinted in his _Dialogues et Fragments philosophiques_,

in 1876, expresses Renan’s.views in a clear and simple form upon the

place of science in his mind and also upon the idea of progress, as for

him the two are intimately connected. Extreme confidence is expressed

in the power of science. Renan at this time had written, but not

published, his _Avenir de la Science_. In a brief manner this letter

summarises much contained in the larger work. The point of view is

similar. Science is to be the great reforming power.

The word “Science” is so constantly upon Renan’s lips that we can see

that it has become an obsession with mm to employ it, or a device.

Certainly Renan’s extensive and ill-defined usage of it conceals grave

difficulties. One is tempted frequently to regard it as a synonym for

philosophy or metaphysics, a word which he dislikes. That does not,

however, add to clearness, and Renan’s usage of “Science” as a term

confuses both science and philosophy together. Even if this were not

the case, there is another important point to note— namely, that even

on a stricter interpretation Renan, by his wide use of the term,

actually undermines the confidence in the natural sciences. For he

embraces within the term “Science” not merely those branches of

investigation which we term in general the sciences of nature, but also

the critical study of language, of history and literature. He expressly

endeavours to show in the letter to Berthelot that true science must

include the product of man’s spirit and the record of the development

of that spirit.

Renan assumed quite definitely a positivist attitude to metaphysics.

“Philosophy,” he remarks, “is not a separate science; it is one side of

every science. In the great optic pencil of human knowledge it is the

central region where the rays meet in one and the same light.”

Metaphysical speculation he scorned, but he admitted the place for a

criticism of the human mind such as had been given by Kant in _The

Critique of Pure Reason_.

Kantian also, in its professions at least, was the philosophy of

Vacherot, who stated that the aim of his work, _La Métaphysique et la

Science_, was “the reconciliation of metaphysics with science.”[14]

These dialogues between a philosopher and a man of science, for of such

discussions the book is composed, never really help us to get close to

the problem, for Vacherot’s Kantianism is a profession which merely

covers an actual positivism. His metaphysical doctrines are

superimposed on a severe and rigid naturalism, but are kept from

conflict with them, or even relation with them, by being allotted to a

distant limbo of pure ideals, outside the world which science displays

to us.

[14] See particularly his statements to this effect in his Preface,

pp. xxxvii-xl.

Taine, in spite of his severely positive attitude, was a strong

champion of metaphysics. The sciences needed, he claimed, a science of

first principles, a metaphysic. Without it, “the man of science is

merely a _manœuvre_ and the artist a _dilettante_.” The positive

sciences he re- garded as inferior types of analysis. Above them “is a

superior analysis which is metaphysics, and which reduces or takes up

these laws of the sciences into a universal formula.” This higher

analysis, however, does not give the lie to the others: it completes

them.

It was indeed a belief and hope of Taine that the sciences will be more

and more perfected until they can each be expressed in a kind of

generic formula, which in turn may be capable of expression in some

single formula. This single law is being sought by science and

metaphysic, although it must belong to the latter rather than to the

former. From it, as from a spring, proceeds, according to Taine, the

eternal roll of events and the infinite sea of things.

Taine’s antagonism to the purely empirical schools centres round his

conception of the law of causality. He disagrees with the assertion

that this law is a synthetic, a _posteriori_ judgment, a habit, as Hume

said, or a mechanical _attente_, as Mill thought, or a generalisation

of the sensation of effort which we feel in ourselves, as was suggested

by Maine de Biran. Yet he also opposes Kant’s doctrine, in which

causality is regarded as a synthetic _a priori_ judgment. His own

criticism of Hume and Kant was directed to denial of the elements of

heterogeneity in experience, which are so essential to Hume’s view, and

to a denial of the distinction maintained by Kant between logical and

causal relations. Taine considered that all might be explained by

logical relations, that all experience might some day be expressed in

one law, one formula. The _more geometrico_ of Spinoza and the

“universal mathematic” of Descartes reappear in Taine. He even essays

in _L’Intelligence_ to equate the principle of causality (_principe de

raison explicative_) with that of identity.

His attempt to reduce the principle of causality to that of identity

did not succeed very well, and from the nature of the case this was to

be expected. As Fouillée well points out in his criticism of Taine,

both in _La Liberté et le Déterminisme_ and the concluding pages of his

earlier work on Plato,[15] the notion of difference and heterogeneity

which arises in the action of cause and effect can never be reducible

to a mere identity, for the notion of identity has nothing in common

with that of difference. Differences cannot be ignored; variety and

change are undeniable facts of experience. Fouillée here touches the

weak spot of Taine’s doctrine. In spite of a seemingly great power of

criticism there is an underlying dogmatism in his work, and the chief

of those dogmas, which he does not submit to criticism, is the

assertion of the universal necessity of all things. To this postulate

he gives a false air of objectivity. He avoids stating why we do

objectify causality, and he diverts discussion from the position that

this postulate may itself be subjective.

[15] Vol. 4.

The particular bearing of Taine’s psychology upon the general problem

of knowledge is interesting. He defines perception in _L’Intelligence_

as _une hallucination vraie_. His doctrine of the “double aspect,”

physical and mental, recalls to mind the Modes of Spinoza. In his

attitude to the difficult problem of movement and thought he rests in

the dualism of Spinoza, fluctuating and not enunciating his doctrine

clearly. The primacy of movement to thought he abandoned as too

mechanical a doctrine, and regarded the type of existence as mental in

character. Taine thus passes from the materialism of Hobbes to the

idealism of Leibnitz. “The physical world is reducible to a system of

signs, and no more is needed for its construction and conception than

the materials of the moral world.”

When we feel ourselves constrained to admit the necessity of certain

truths, if we are inclined to regard this as due to the character of

our minds themselves (_notre structure mentale_), as Kant maintained,

Taine reminds us that we must admit that our mind adapts itself to its

environment. He here adopts the view of Spencer, a thinker who seems to

have had far more influence upon the Continent than in his own country.

Although Taine thus reposes his epistemology upon this basis, he does

not answer the question which the Kantian can still put to him—namely,

“How do we know the structure of things?” He is unable to escape from

the difficulty of admitting either that it is from experience, an

admission which his anti-empirical attitude forbids him to make (and

which would damage his dogma of universal logical necessity), or that

our knowledge is obtained by analysing our own thoughts, in which case

he leaves us in a vicious circle of pure subjectivity from which there

is no means of escape.

The truth is that Taine vainly tried to establish a phenomenal

doctrine, not purely empirical in character like that of Hume, but a

phenomenalism wedded to a necessity which is supposed to be

self-explanatory. Such a notion of necessity, however, is formal and

abstract. Rather than accept Taine’s view of a law, a formula, an

“eternal axiom” at the basis of things, we are obliged to postulate an

activity, creative in character, of whose action universal laws are but

expressions. Law, formula, axiom without action are mere abstractions

which can of themselves produce nothing.

Taine’s positivism, however, was not so rigid as to exclude a belief in

the value of metaphysics. It is this which distinguishes him from the

Comtian School. We see in him the confidence in science complemented by

an admission of metaphysics, equivalent to a turning of “positivism” in

science and philosophy against itself. Much heavier onslaughts upon the

sovereignty of science came, however, from the thinker who is the great

logician and metaphysician of our period, Renouvier. To him and to

Cournot we now turn.

II

While Taine had indeed maintained the necessity of a metaphysic, he

shared to a large degree the general confidence in science displayed by

Comte, Bernard, Berthelot and Renan. But the second and third groups of

thinkers into which we have divided our period took up first a critical

attitude to science and, finally, a rather hostile one.

Cournot marks the transition between Comte and Renouvier. His _Essai

sur les Fondements de nos Connaissances et sur les Caractères de la

Critique philosophique_ contains some very calm and careful thought on

the relation of science and philosophy, which is the product of a

sincere and well-balanced mind.[16] He inherits from the positivists an

intense respect for scientific knowledge, and remarks at the outset

that he is hostile to any philosophy which would be so foolish as to

attempt to ignore the work of the modern sciences.

[16] See in particular the second chapter of vol. 2, _Du Contraste de

la Science et de la Philosophie et de la Philosophie des Sciences_,

pp. 216-255.

His work _Matérialisme, Vitalisme, Rationalisme_ is a striking example

of this effort on Cournot’s part, being devoted to a study of the use

which can be made in philosophy of the data afforded by the sciences.

Somewhat after the manner of Comte, Cournot looks upon the various

sciences as a hierarchy ranging from mathematics to sociology. Yet he

reminds the scientists of the insufficiency of their point of view, for

the sciences, rightly pursued, lead on to philosophy. He laments,

however, the confusion of the two, and thinks that such confusion is

“partly due to the fact that in the realm of speculations which are

naturally within the domain of the philosopher, there are to be found

here and there certain theories which can actually be reduced to a

scientific form”[17] He offers, as an instance of this, the theory of

the syllogism, which has affinities to algebraical equations—but this

interpenetration should not cause us, he argues, to abandon or to lose

sight of the distinction between science and philosophy.

[17] _Essai sur les Fondements de nos Connaissances_, vol. 2, p. 224.

This distinction, according to Cournot, lies in the fact that science

has for its object that which can be measured, and that which can be

reduced to a rigorous chain or connection. In brief, science is

characterised by quantity. Philosophy, on the other hand, concerns

itself with quality, for it endeavours not so much to measure as to

appreciate.

Cournot reminds the apostles of science that quantity, however

intimately bound up with reality it may be, is not the essence of that

reality itself. He is afraid, too, that the neglect of philosophy by

science may cause the latter to develop along purely utilitarian lines.

As an investigation of reality, science is not ultimate. It has limits

by the fact that it is concerned with measurement, and thus is excluded

from those things which are qualitative and incapable of quantitative

expression. Science, moreover, has its roots in philosophy by virtue of

the metaphysical postulates which it utilises as its basis. Physics and

geometry, Cournot maintains, both rest upon definitions which owe their

origin to speculative thought rather than to experience, yet these

sciences claim an absolute value for themselves and for those

postulates as being descriptions of reality in an ultimate sense.

Following out his distinction between philosophy and the sciences,

Cournot claims in a Kantian manner that while the latter are products

of the human understanding the former is due to the operation of

reason. This apparent dualism Cournot does not shrink from maintaining;

indeed, he makes it an argument for his doctrine of discontinuity. The

development of a science involves a certain breach with reality, for

the progress of the science involves abstraction, which ever becomes

more complicated. Cournot here brings out the point which we noticed

was stressed by Renan.[18]

[18] See above, p. 105.

Reason produces in us the idea of order, and this “idea of order and of

reason in things is the basis of philosophic probability, of induction

and analogy.”[19] This has important bearings upon the unity of science

and upon the conception of causality which it upholds. In a careful

examination of the problems of induction and analogy, Cournot

emphasises the truth that there are facts which cannot be fitted into a

measured or logical sequence of events. Reality cannot be fitted into a

formula or into concepts, for these fail to express the infinite

variety and richness of the reality which displays itself to us.

Science can never be adequate to life, with its pulsing spontaneity and

freedom. It is philosophy with its _vue d’ensemble_ which tries to

grasp and to express this concreteness, which the sciences, bound to

their systematic connection of events within separate compartments,

fail to reach or to show us. Referring to the ideas of beauty and of

goodness, Cournot urges a “transrationalism,” as he calls it, which,

while loyal to the rational requirements of science, will enable us to

take the wider outlook assumed by philosophy.[20]

[19] _Essai sur les Fondements de nos Connaissances_, p. 384.

[20] The parallelism of some of Cournot’s ideas here with those

expressed by Bergson, although they have been enunciated by the later

thinker in a more decided manner, is so obvious as hardly to need to

be indicated.

Like Cournot, the author of the _Essais de Critique générale_ was a

keen antagonist of all those who sought to deify Science. It was indeed

this which led Renouvier to give this title to his great work, the

first part of which was published at a time when the confidence in

Science appeared to be comparatively unassailed. We find him defending

philosophy as against the scientists and others by an insistence upon

its critical function.

In examining Comte’s positivism in his work _Histoire et Solution des

Problèmes métaphysiques_, Renouvier points out that its initial idea is

a false one—namely, that philosophy can be constituted by an assembling

together of the sciences.[21] Such an assembly does not, he objects,

make a system. Each science has its own postulates, its own data, and

Science as a whole unity of thought or knowledge does not exist. He

attacks at the same time the calm presumption of the positivist who

maintains that the scientific stage is the final and highest

development. Renouvier is considerably annoyed at this unwarranted

dogmatism and assumed air of finality.

[21] Book X.: _De l’Etat actuel de la Philosophie en France_, chap.

1., _De l’Aboutissement des Esprits au Positivisme_, pp. 416-417.

Owing to the excellent training he had received at the Ecole

Polytechnique, and by his own profound study, Renouvier was able on

many technical points to meet the scientists on their own ground. His

third _Essai de Critique générale_ is devoted to a study of “the

Principles of Nature,” in which he criticises many of the principles

and assumptions of mechanism, while many pages of his two previous

_Essais_ are concerned with the discussion of questions intimately

affecting the sciences.[22]

[22] This is particularly noticeable in the matter printed as

appendices to his chapters. (_Cf_. the _Logic_, vol 2.)

An important section of his second Essay, _Psychologie rationnelle_,

deals with the “Classification of the Sciences.”[23] Renouvier there

points out that the attempt to classify the sciences in accordance with

their degrees of certainty ends in failure. All of them, when loyal to

their own principles, endeavour to display equal certainty. By loyalty

Renouvier shows that he means adherence to an examination of certain

classes of phenomena, the observation of facts and laws, with the

proposal of hypotheses, put forward frankly as such. He draws a line

between the logical and the physical sciences—a division which he

claims is not only a division according to the nature of their data,

but also according to method. Following another division, we may draw a

line between sciences which deal with objects which are organic, living

creatures, and those which are not.

[23] Vol. 2, chap. xviii., _De la Certitude des Sciences et leur

Classification rationnelle_, pp. 139-186, including later observations

on Spencer.

Renouvier’s line is not, it must be remembered in this connection, a

purely imaginary one. It is a real line, an actual gap. For him there

is a real discontinuity in the universe. Taine’s doctrine of a

universal explanation, of a rigid unity and continuity, is, for

Renouvier, anathema, _c’est la mathématisation a l’outrance_. This

appears most markedly in the pages which he devotes to the

consideration of _la synthèse totale_.

An important section of his _Traité de Logique_ (the first _Essai de

Critique générale_) deals with the problem of this Total Synthesis of

all phenomena.[24] This is a conception which Renouvier affirms to be

unwarrantable and, indeed, in the last analysis impossible. A general

synthesis, an organisation or connected hierarchy of sciences, is a

fond hope, an illusion only of a mind which can overlook the real

discontinuity which exists between things and between groups of things.

[24] Vol. I, pp. 107-115, and also vol. 2, pp. 202-245.

He sees in it the fetish of the Absolute and the Infinite and the lure

of pantheism, a doctrine to which he opposes his “Personalism.” He

reminds the scientists that personality is the great factor to which

all knowledge is related, and that all knowledge is relative. A law is

a law, but the guarantee of its permanence is not a law. It is no more

easy, claims Renouvier, to say why phenomena do not stop than it is to

know why they have begun. Laws indeed abide, but “not apart from

conscious personalities who affirm them.”[25] Further, attacking the

self-confident and dogmatic attitude in the scientists, Renouvier

reminds them that it is impossible to demonstrate _every_ proposition;

and in an important note on “Induction and the Sciences”[26] he points

out that induction always implies a certain _croyance_. This is no

peculiar, mystical thing; it is a fact, he remarks, which colours all

the interesting acts of human personality. He here approaches Cournot

in observing that all speculation is attended by a certain coefficient

of doubt or uncertainty and so becomes really rational belief. With

Cournot, too, Renouvier senses the importance of analogy and

probability in connection with hypotheses in the world of nature and of

morals. In short, he recognises as central the problem of freedom.

[25] _Logique_, vol. 2, p. 321.

[26] Note B to chap. xxxv. of the _Logique_, vol. 2, p. 13.

Renouvier attacks Comte’s classification or “hierarchy” of the sciences

as mischievous and inexact. It is not based, he claims, upon any

distinction in method, nor of data. It is not true that the sciences

are arranged by Comte in an order where they successively imply one

another, nor in an order in which they have come to be constituted as

“positive”.[27]

[27] This outburst of attack is a sample of Renouvier’s usual attitude

to Positivism. (_Deuxième Essai_, vol. 2, pp. 166-170.)

He justifies to the scientist the formulation of hypothesis as a

necessary working method of co-ordinating in a provisional manner

varying phenomena. Many hypotheses and inductions of science are,

however, unjustifiable from a strictly logical standpoint, Renouvier

reminds us. His chief objection, however, is that those hypotheses and

inductions are put forward so frequently as certainties by a science

which is dogmatic and surpasses its limits.

Science, Renouvier claims, does not give us a knowledge of the

absolute, but an understanding of the relative. It is in the light of

his doctrine of relativity and of the application of the law of number

that he criticises many of the attitudes adopted by the scientists.

Whatever savours of the Absolute or the Infinite he opposes, and his

view of cause depends on this. He scorns the fiction of an infinite

regress, and affirms real beginnings to various classes of phenomena.

Causality is not to be explained, he urges in his _Nouvelle

Monadologie_, save by a harmony. He differs from Leibnitz, however, in

claiming in the interests of freedom that this harmony is not

pre-established. In meeting the doctrine of the reduction of the

complex to the simple, Renouvier cites the case of “reducing” sound,

heat, light and electricity to movement. This may be superficially

correct as a generality, but Renouvier aptly points out that it

overlooks the fact that, although they may all be abstractly

characterised as movement, yet there are differences between them as

movements which correspond to the differences of sensation they arouse

in us.

Renouvier upholds real differences, real beginnings, and, it must be

added, a reality behind and beyond the appearances of nature. His

_Monadologie_ admits that “we can continue to explain nature

mathematically and mechanically, provided we recognise that it is an

external appearance—that thought, mind or spirit is at the heart of

it.” This links Renouvier to the group of new spiritualists. His

attitude to science is akin to theirs. He does not fear science when it

confines itself to its proper limits and recognises these. It has no

quarrel with philosophy nor philosophy with it. Advance in science

involves, he believes, an advance also in theology and in metaphysics.

The sciences are responsible for working out the laws determining the

development of the Universe. But between Science, an ideal unachieved,

and the sciences which in themselves are so feeble, imperfect and

limited, Renouvier claims that General Criticism, or Philosophy, has

its place. “In spite of the discredit into which philosophy has fallen

in these days, it can and ought to exist. Its object has been always

the investigation of God, man, liberty, immortality, the fundamental

laws of the sciences. ‘All these intimately connected and

interpenetrating problems comprise the domain of philosophy.” In those

cases where no science is possible, this seeming impossibility must

itself be investigated, and philosophy remains as a “General Criticism”

(_Critique générale_) of our knowledge. “It is this notion,” he says,

“which I desired to indicate by banishing the word ‘Philosophy’ from

the title of my Essays. The name ought to change when the method

changes.”[28] Thus Renouvier seeks to establish a “critique” midway

between scepticism and dogmatism, and endeavours to found a philosophy

which recognises at one and the same time the demands of _science et

conscience_.

[28] _Logique_, vol. 2, p. 352.

III

On turning to the spiritualist current of thought we find it, like the

neo-criticism, no less keen in its criticism of science. The inadequacy

of the purely scientific attitude is the recurring theme from Ravaisson

to Boutroux, Bergson and Le Roy. The attitude assumed by Ravaisson

coloured the whole of the subsequent development of the new

spiritualist doctrines, and not least their bearing upon the problem of

science and its relation to metaphysics.

Mechanism, Ravaisson pointed out, quoting the classical author upon

whom he had himself written so brilliantly (Aristotle), does not

explain itself, for it implies a “prime mover,” not itself in motion,

but which produces movement by spiritual activity. Ravaisson also

refers to the testimony of Leibnitz, who, while agreeing that all is

mechanical, carefully added to this statement one to the effect that

mechanism itself has a principle which must be looked for outside

matter and which is the object of metaphysical research. This spiritual

reality is found only, according to Ravaisson, in the power of goodness

and beauty—that is to say, in a reality which is not non-scientific but

rather ultra-scientific. There are realities, he claims, to which

science does not attain.

The explanation of nature presupposes soul or spirit. It is true,

Ravaisson admits, that the physical and chemical sciences consider

themselves independent of metaphysics; true also that the metaphysician

in ignoring the study of those sciences omits much from his estimate of

the spirit. Indeed, he cannot well dispense with the results of the

sciences. That admission, however, does not do away with the

possibility of a true “apologia” for metaphysics. To Newton’s sarcastic

remark, “Physics beware of metaphysics,” Hegel replied cogently that

this was equivalent to saying, “Physics, keep away from thought.”

Spirit, however, cannot be omitted from the account; it is the

condition of all that is, the light by which we see that there is such

a thing as a material universe. This is the central point of

Ravaisson’s philosophy. The sciences of nature may be allowed and

encouraged to work diligently upon their own principles, but the very

fact that they are individual sciences compels them to admit that they

view the whole “piecemeal”. Philosophy seeks to interpret the whole as

a whole. Ravaisson quotes Pascal’s saying, “_Il faut avoir une pensée

de derrière la tête et juger de tout par là_.” This _pensée de derrière

la tête_, says Ravaisson, while not preventing the various sciences

from speaking in their own tongue, is just the metaphysical or

philosophical idea of the whole.

It is claimed, Aristotle used to say, that mathematics have absolutely

nothing in common with the idea of the good. “But order, proportion,

symmetry, are not these great forms of beauty?” asks Ravaisson. For him

there is spirit at the heart of things, an activity, _un feu primitif

qui est l’âme_, which expresses itself in thought, in will and in love.

It is a fire which does not burn itself out, because it is enduring

spirit, an eternal cause, the absolute substance is this spiritual

reality. Where the sciences fall short is that they fail to show that

nature is but the refraction of this spirit. This is a fact, however,

which both religion and philosophy grasp and uphold.

These criticisms were disturbing for those minds who found entire

satisfaction in Science or rather in the sciences, but they were

somewhat general. Ravaisson’s work inculcated a spirit rather than

sustained a dialectic. Its chief value lay in the inspiration which it

imparted to subsequent thinkers who endeavoured to work out his general

ideas with greater precision.

It was this task which Lachelier set himself in his _Induction_. He had

keenly felt the menace of science, as had Janet;[29] he had appreciated

the challenge offered to it by Ravaisson’s ideas. Moreover, Lachelier’s

acute mind discovered the crucial points upon which the new

spiritualism could base its attack upon the purely scientific

dogmatism. Whatever Leibnitz might have said, creative spontaneity of

the spirit, as it was acclaimed by Ravaisson, could not easily be

fitted into the mechanism and determinism upheld by the sciences.

Ravaisson had admitted the action of efficient causes in so far as he

admitted the action of mechanism, which is but the outcome of these

causes. In this way he endeavoured to satisfy the essential demands of

the scientific attitude to the universe. But recognising the inadequacy

of this attitude he had upheld the reality of final causes and thus

opposed to the scientists a metaphysical doctrine akin to the religious

attitude of Hellenism and Christianity.

[29] We refer here to the quotation from Janet’s _Problèmes du XIXe

Siècle_, given above on p. 95. Janet himself wrote on _Final Causes_

but not Wlth the depth or penetration of Lachelier.

Lachelier saw that the important point of Ravaisson’s doctrine lay in

the problem of these two types of causality. His thesis is therefore

devoted to the examination of efficient and final causes. This little

work of Lachelier marks a highly important advance in the development

of the spiritualist philosophy. He clarifies and re-affirms more

precisely the position indicated by Ravaisson. Lacheher tears up the

treaty of compromise which was drafted by Leibnitz to meet the rival

demands of science with its efficient causes and philosophy with its

final causes. The world of free creative spontaneity of the spirit

cannot be regarded, Lachelier claims (and this is his vital point), as

merely the complement of, or the reflex from, the world of mechanism

and determinism.

He works out in his thesis the doctrine that efficient causes can be

deduced from the formal laws of thought. This was Taine’s position, and

it was the limit of Taine’s doctrine. Lachelier goes further and

undermines Taine’s theories by upholding final causes, which he shows

depend upon the conception of a totality, a whole which is capable of

creating its parts. This view of the whole is a philosophical

conception to which the natural sciences never rise, and which they

cannot, by the very nature of their data and their methods, comprehend.

Yet it is only such a conception which can supply any rational basis

for the unity of phenomena and of experience. Only by seeing the

variety of all phenomena in the light of such an organic unity can we

find any meaning in the term universe, and only thus, continues

Lachelier, only on the principle of a rational and universal order and

on the reality of final causes, can we base our inductions. The

“uniformity of nature,” that fetish of the scientists which, as

Lachelier well points out, is merely the empirical regularity of

phenomena, offers no adequate basis for a single induction.

Lachelier developed his doctrines further in the article, _Psychologie

et Métaphysique_. We can observe in it the marks which so profoundly

distinguish the new spiritualism from the old, as once taught by

Cousin. The old spiritualism had no place between its psychology and

its metaphysics for the natural sciences. Indeed it was quite incapable

of dealing with the problem which their existence and success

presented, and so it chose to ignore them as far as possible. The new

spiritualism, of which Lachelier is perhaps the profoundest speculative

mind, not only is acquainted with the place and results of the

sciences, but it feels itself equal to a criticism of them, an advance

which marks a highly important development in philosophy.