Yet in spite of these considerations Taine believes in a definitely

guaranteed progress. Man’s lower nature does not inspire optimism, but

his high power of reason does, and it is on this faith in reason that

Taine confidently founds his assertions regarding progress. He sees in

reason the ultimate end and meaning of all else. The triumph of reason

is an ideal goal to which, in spite of so many obstacles, all the

forces of the universe are striving. In this intellectual progress,

this gradual rationalisation of mankind, Taine sees the essential

element of progress upon which all other goods depend. The betterment

of social conditions will naturally follow; it is the spiritual and

mental factor which is the keynote of progress Reason, he contends,

will give us a new ethic, a new politic and a new religion.

Renan shares with Taine the belief in reason and its ultimate triumph.

His views on progress are, however, more discursive, and are extremely

interesting and suggestive. He was in his later years shrewd enough to

discover the difficulties of his own doctrine. Thus although he

believed in a “guaranteed” progress, Renan marks a stage midway between

the idea of progress as held by Comte and Taine on the one hand, and by

Cournot and Renouvier on the other.

His early book, _L’Avenir de la Science_, glows with ardent belief in

this assured progress, which is bound up with his confidence in science

and rationality. “Our creed,” he there declares, “is the reasonableness

of progress.” This idea of progress is almost as central a point in

Renan’s thought as it was in that of Comte, and he gave it a more

metaphysical significance. His general philosophy owes much to history,

and for him the philosophy of history is the explanation of progress.

By this term he means an ever-growing tendency to perfection, to fuller

consciousness and life, to nobler, better and more beautiful ends. He

thinks it necessary to conceive of a sort of inner spring, urging all

things on to fuller life. He seems here to anticipate vaguely the

central conception of Guyau and of Bergson. But, like Taine, Renan

founds his doctrine of progress on rationalism. He well expresses this

in one of his _Drames philosophiques (L’Eau de Jouvence)_, through the

mouth of Prospero, who represents rational thought. This character

declares that “it is science which brings about social progress, and

not progress which gives rise to science. Science only asks from

society to have granted to it the conditions necessary to its life and

to produce a sufficient number of minds capable of understanding

it.”[4] In the preface written for this drama he declares that science

or reason will ultimately succeed in creating the power and force of

government in humanity.

[4] _L’Eau de Jouvence_, Act 4, Scene I., Conclusion.

These thoughts re-echo many of the sentiments voiced on behalf of

progress by Condorcet, Saint-Simon and Comte. It is interesting,

however, to note an important point on which Renan not only parts

company with them, but ranges himself in opposition to them. This point

is that of socialism or democracy, call it what one will.

In the spring of 1871 Renan was detained at Versailles during the

uproar of the Commune in Paris, and there wrote his _Dialogues et

Fragments philosophiques_, which were published five years later. In

these pages certain doctrines of progress and history are set forth,

notably in the “dialogues of three philosophers of that school whose

ground-principles are the cult of the ideal, the negation of the

supernatural and the investigation of reality.” Renan raises a

discussion of the end of the world’s development. The universe, he

maintains, is not devoid of purpose: it pursues an ideal end. This goal

to which the evolutionary process moves is the reign of reason. But

there are striking limitations to this advance. From this kingdom of

reason on the earth the mass of men are shut out. Renan does not

believe in a gradual improvement of the mass of mankind accompanied by

a general rationalisation which is democratic. The truth is that Renan

was an intellectual aristocrat and, as such, he abhorred Demos. His

gospel of culture, upon which he lays the greatest stress, is for the

few who are called and chosen, while the many remain outside the pale,

beyond the power of the salvation he offers. The development of the

democratic idea he looks upon as thoroughly mischievous, inasmuch as it

involves, in his opinion, degeneration, a levelling down to mediocrity.

In his philosophy of history he adopts an attitude somewhat akin to

that of Carlyle in his worship of Great Men. The end of history is,

Renan states, the production of men of genius. The great mass of men,

the common stuff of humanity, he likens to the soil from which these

Great Ones grow. The majority of men have their existence justified

only by the appearance upon the scene of “Heroes of Culture.” In this

teaching the parallelism to the gospel of the Superman is apparent, yet

it seems clear that although Renan’s man of culture despises the

ignorance and vulgarity of the crowd, he does so condescendingly as a

benefactor, and is free from the passionate hatred and scorn to which

Nietzsche’s Superman is addicted. Nevertheless, Renan’s attitude of

uncompromising hostility to democratic development is very marked. He

couples his confidence in Science to his anti-democratic views, and

affirms the “Herd” to be incapable of culture. Although the process of

rationalisation and the establishment of the kingdom of reason is

applicable only to the patrician and not to the _plebs_, this process

is claimed by Renan to be capable of great extension, not in the number

of its adherents but in the extent of culture. In this final reign of

reason, instinctive action and impulse will be replaced by

deliberation, and science will succeed religion.

His famous letter to Berthelot includes a brief statement of his views

on progressive culture, which, for him, constitutes the sign of

progress. “One ought never,” he writes, “to regret seeing clearer into

the depths.” By endeavouring to increase the treasure of the truths

which form the paid-up capital of humanity, we shall be carrying on the

work of our pious ancestors, who loved the good and the true as it was

understood in their time. The true men of progress, he claims, are

those who profess as their starting-point a profound respect for the

past. Renan himself was a great lover of the past, yet we find him

remarking in his _Souvenirs d’Enfance et de Jeunesse_ that he has no

wish to be taken for an uncompromising reactionist. “I love the past,

but I envy the future,” and he thinks that it would be extremely

pleasant to live upon this planet at as late a period as possible. He

appears jealous of the future and of the young, whose fate it will be

to know what will be the outcome of the activities of the German

Emperor, what will be the climax of the conflict of European

nationalities, what development socialism will take. His shrewd mind

had alreadv foreseen in a measure the possible development of German

militarism and of Bolshevism. He regards the world as moving towards a

kind of “Americanism,” by which he means a type of life in which

culture and refinement shall have little place. Yet, although he has a

horror and a dread of democracy, he feels also that the evils

accompanying it may be, after all, no worse than those involved in the

reactionary dominance of nobles and clergy.

Humanity has not hitherto marched, he thinks, with much method. Order

he considers to be desirable, but only in view of progress. Revolutions

are only absurd and odious, he asserts in _L’Avenir de la Science_, to

those who do not believe in progress. Yet he claims that reaction has

its place in the plan of Providence, for it works unwittingly for the

general good. “There are,” to quote his metaphor, “declivities down

which the _rôle_ of the traction engine consists solely in holding

back.”

Renan thinks that if democratic ideas should secure a clear triumph,

science and scientific teaching would soon find the modest subsidies

now accorded them cut off. He fears the approach of an era of

mediocrity, of vulgarity, in fact, which will persecute the

intellectuals and deprive the world of liberty. He is not thoughtlessly

optimistic; he was far too shrewd an intellect for that. Our age, he

suggests, may be regarded in future as the turning point of humanity’s

history, that point where its deterioration set in, the prelude to its

decline and fall. But he asserts, as against this, that Nature does not

know the meaning of the word “discouragement.” Humanity, proving itself

incapable of progress, but only capable of further deterioration, would

be replaced by other forms. “We must not, because of our personal

tastes, our prejudices perhaps, set ourselves to oppose the action of

our time. This action goes on without regard to us and probably is

right.”[5] The future of science is assured. With its progress, Renan

points out, we must reckon upon the decay of organised religion, as

professed by sects or churches. The disappearance of this organised

religion will, however, result most assuredly in a temporary moral

degeneration, since morality has been so conventionally bound up with

the Church. An era of egoism, military and economic in character, will

arise and for a time prevail.

[5] Preface to _Souvenirs d’Enfance et de Jeunesse_.

Yet we must not, Renan reminds us, grumble at having too much unrest

and conflict. The great object in life is the development of the mind,

and this requires liberty or freedom. The worst type of society is the

theocratic state, or the ancient pontifical dominion or any modern

replica of these where dogma reigns supreme. A humanity which could not

be revolutionary, which had lost the attraction of “Utopias,” believing

itself to have established the perfect form of existence would be

intolerable. This raises also the query that if progress be the main

feature of our universe, then we have a dilemma to face, for either it

leads us to a _terminus ad quem_, and so finally contradicts itself, or

else it goes on for ever, and it is doubtful then in what sense it can

be a progress.

Renan’s own belief was essentially religious, and was coloured by

Christian and Hebrew conceptions. It was a rationalised belief in a

Divine Providence. He professed a confidence in the final triumph of

truth and goodness, and has faith in a dim, far-off divine event which

he terms “the complete advent of God.” The objections which are so

frequently urged by learned men against finalism or teleology of any

kind whatsoever Renan deemed superficial and claimed, rightly enough,

that they are not so much directed against teleology but against

theology, against obsolete ideas of God, particularly against the dogma

of a deliberate and omnipotent Creator. Renan’s own doctrine of the

Deity is by no means clear, but he believed in a spiritual power

capable of becoming some day conscious, omniscient and omnipotent. God

will then have come to himself. From this point of view the universe is

a progress to God, to an increasing realisation of the Divinity in

truth, beauty and goodness.

The universe, Renan claims, must be ultimately rooted and grounded in

goodness; there must be, in spite of all existing “evils,” a balance on

the side of goodness, otherwise the universe would, like a vast

banking-concern, fail. This balance of goodness is the _raison d’être_

of the world and the means of its existence. The general life of the

universe can be illustrated, according to Renan, by that of the oyster,

and the formation within it of the pearl, by a malady, a process vague,

obscure and painful. The pearl is the spirit which is the end, the

final cause and last result, and assuredly the most brilliant outcome

of this universe. Through suffering the pearl is formed; and likewise,

through constant pain and conflict, suffering and hardship, the spirit

of man moves intellectually and morally onward and upward, to the

completed realisation of justice, beauty, truth and infinite goodness

and love, to the complete and triumphant realisation of God. We must

have patience, claims Renan, and have faith in these things, and have

hope and take courage. “One day virtue will prove itself to have been

the better part.” Such is his doctrine of progress.

II

With Cournot and Renouvier our discussion takes a new form. Renan,

Taine, Vacherot and the host of social and political writers, together

with August Comte himself, had accepted the fact of progress and clung

to the idea of a law of progress. With these two thinkers, however,

there is a more careful consideration given to the problem of progress.

It was recognised as a problem and this was an immense advance upon the

previous period, whose thinkers accepted it as a dogma.

True to the philosophic spirit of criticism and examination which

involves the rejection of dogma as such, Cournot and Renouvier approach

the idea of progress with reserve and free from the confidently

optimistic assertions of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century.

Scorning the rhetoric of political socialists, positivists and

rationalists, they endeavour to view progress as the central problem of

the philosophy of history, to ascertain what it involves, and to see

whether such a phrase as “law of progress” has a meaning before they

invoke it and repeat it in the overconfident manner which characterised

their predecessors. We have maintained throughout this work that the

central problem of our period was that of freedom. By surveying the

general character of the thought of the time, and in following this by

an examination of the relation of science and philosophy, we were able

to show how vital and how central this problem was. From another side

we are again to emphasise this. Having seen the way in which the

problem of freedom was dealt with, we are in a position to observe how

this coloured the solutions of other problems. The illustration is

vivid here, for Cournot and Renouvier develop their philosophy of

history from their consideration of freedom, and base their doctrines

of progress upon their maintenance of freedom.

It is obvious that the acceptance of such views as those expressed on

freedom by both Cournot and Renouvier must have far-reaching effects

upon their general attitude to history, for how is the dogma of

progress, as it had been preached, to be reconciled with free action?

It is much easier to believe in progress if one be a fatalist. The

difficulty here was apparent to Comte when he admitted the influence of

variations, disturbing causes, which resulted in the development of

mankind assuming an oscillating character rather than that of a

straight-forward progress. He did not, however, come sufficiently close

to this problem, and left the difficulty of freedom on one side by

asserting that the operation of freedom, chance or contingency (call it

what we will), issuing in non-predetermined actions, was so limited as

not to interfere with the general course of progress.

Cournot and Renouvier take up the problem where Comte left it at this

point. Each of them takes it a stage further onward in the development.

The fundamental ideas of Cournot we have briefly noted as being those

of order, chance and probability. The relation of these to progress he

discusses, not only in his _Essai sur les Fondements de nos

Connaissances_ and the _Traité de l’Enchaînement d’Idées_, but also in

a most interesting manner in his two volumes entitled _Considérations

sur la Marche des Idées et des Evènements dans les Temps modernes_.

Like Comte, he is faithful, as far as his principles will allow, to the

idea of order. There is order in the universe to a certain degree;

science shows it to us. There is also, he maintains, freedom, hazard or

chance. Looking at history he sees, as did Comte, phenomena which, upon

taking a long perspective, appear as interferences. Pure reason is, he

claims, really incapable of deciding the vital question whether these

disturbances are due to a pure contingency, chance or freedom, or

whether they mark the points of the influence of the supernatural upon

mankind’s development. He refers to the _enchaînement de circonstances

providentielles_ which helped the early Jews and led to the propagation

of their monotheism; which helped also the development of the Christian

religion in the Roman Empire. Hazard itself, he claims,[6] may be the

agent or minister of Providence. Such a view claims to be loyal at once

to freedom and to order.

[6] _Essai sur les Fondaments de nos Connaissances_, vol. i, chap. 5.

Cournot continues his discussion further and submits many other

considerations upon progress. He claims that it is absurd to see in

every single occurrence the operations of a divine providence or the

work of a divine architect. Such a view would exalt his conception of

order, undoubtedly, but only at the expense of his view of freedom. He

will not give up his belief in freedom, and in consequence declares

that there is no pre-arranged order or plan in the sense of a “law.” He

sets down many considerations which appear as dilemmas to the pure

reason, and which only action, he thinks, will solve. He points out the

difficulty of economic and social progress owing to our being unable to

test theories until they are in action on a large field. He shows too

how conflicting various developments may be, and how progress in one

direction may involve degeneration in another. Equality may be good in

some ways, unnatural and evil in others. Increase of population may be

applauded as a progress from a military standpoint, but may be an

economic evil with disastrous suffering as its consequence. The

“progress” to peace and stability in a society usually involves a

decrease in vitality and initiative. By much wealth of argument, no

less than by his general attitude, Cournot was able to apply the breaks

to the excessive confidence in progress and to call a halt for sounder

investigation of the matter.

Renouvier did much more in this direction. In his _Second Essay of

General Criticism_ he touched upon the problem of progress in relation

to freedom, and his fourth and fifth essays constitute five large

volumes dealing with the “Philosophy of History.” He also devotes the

last two chapters of _La Nouvelle Monadologie_ to progress in relation

to societies, and brings out the central point of his social ethics,

that justice is the criterion of progress. Indeed, all that Renouvier

says regarding history and progress leads up, in a manner peculiarly

his own, to his treatment of ethics, which will claim attention in our

next chapter.

_The Analytic Philosophy of History_ forms an important item in the

philosophical repertoire of Renouvier. He claims it to be a necessary

feature of the neo-critical, and indeed of any serious, philosophy. It

is, he claims, not a branch of knowledge which has an isolated place,

for it is as intimately connected to life as is any theory to the facts

which it embraces. That is not to say, and Renouvier is careful to make

this clear, that we approach history assuming that there are laws

governing it, or a single law or formula by which human development can

be expressed. The “Philosophy of History” assumes no such thing; it is

precisely this investigation which it undertakes, loyal to the

principles of General Criticism of which it, in a sense, forms a part.

In a classification it strictly stands between General Criticism or

Pure Philosophy and History itself.

“History,” says Renouvier, “is the experience which humanity has of

itself,”[7] and his conclusions regarding progress depend on the views

he holds regarding human personality and its essential attribute,

freedom. The philosophy of history has to consider whether, in

observing the development of humanity on the earth, one may assert the

presence of any general law or laws. Can one say legitimately that

there has been development? Is there really such a thing as progress?

If so, what is our idea of progress? What is the trend of humanity’s

history? These are great questions.

[7] _Introduction à la Philosophie de l’Histoire_, Préface.

The attitude which Renouvier adopts to the whole course of human

history is based upon his fundamental doctrines of discontinuity,

freedom and personality. There are, he claims, real beginnings,

unpredicable occurrences, happenings which cannot be explained as

having been caused by preceding events. We must not, he urges, allow

ourselves to be hypnotised by the name “History,” as if it were in

itself some great power, sweeping all of us onward in its course, or a

vast ocean in which we are merely waves. Renouvier stands firm in his

loyalty to personality, and sees in history, not a power of this sort,

but simply the total result of human actions. History is the collective

work of the human spirit or of free personalities.[8]

[8] Renouvier’s great objection to Comte’s work was due to his

disagreement with Comte’s conception of Humanity. To Renouvier, with

his intense valuation of personality, this Comtian conception was too

much of an abstraction.

It is erroneous to look upon it as either the fatalistic functioning of

a law of things or as the results of the action of an all-powerful

Deity or Providence. Neither the “scientific” view of determinism nor

the theological conception of God playing with loaded dice, says

Renouvier, will explain history. It is the outcome of human action, of

personal acts which have real worth and significance in its formation.

History is no mere display of marionettes, no Punch-and-Judy show with

a divine operator pulling strings from his concealed position behind

the curtain. Equally Renouvier disagrees with the view that history is

merely an unrolling in time of a plan conceived from eternity. Human

society and civilisation (of which history is the record) are products

of man’s own thought and action, and in consequence manifest

discontinuity, freedom and contingency. Renouvier thus opposes strongly

all those thinkers, such as the Saint-Simonists, Hegelians and

Positivists, who see in history only a fatalistic development. He joins

battle especially with those who claim that there is a fatalistic or

necessitated progress. History has no law, he claims, and there is not

and cannot be any law of progress.

The idea of progress is certainly, he admits, one with which the

philosopher is brought very vitally into contact in his survey of

history. Indeed an elucidation of, this notion might itself be a part

of the historian’s task. If so, the historians have sadly neglected

part of their work. Renouvier calls attention to the fact that all

those historians or philosophers who accept a comforting doctrine of

humanity’s assured progress make very plausible statements, but they

never seem able to state with any clearness or definiteness what

constitutes progress, or what significance lies in their oft-repeated

phrase, “the law of progress.” He rightly points out that this

insistence upon a law, coupled with a manifest inability to indicate

what it is, causes naturally a certain scepticism as to there being any

such law at all.

Renouvier brands the search for any law of progress a futile one, since

we cannot scientifically or logically define the goal of humanity or

the course of its development because of the fact of freedom and

because of our ignorance. We must realise that we, personally at

firsthand, see only an infinitesimal part of humanity’s life on this

planet alone, not to speak of a destiny possible beyond this globe, and

that, at second-hand, we have only evidence of a portion of the great

procession of human events. We do not know humanity’s beginning and

primitive history, nor do we know its goal, if it has one. These

factors alone are grave hindrances to the formulation of any conception

of progress. Reflection upon them might have saved men, Renouvier

observes, from the presumptuous belief in assured progress. We cannot

presume even to estimate the tendencies, the direction of its course,

because of the enormous and ever-increasing complexity of free human

activity.

By his large work on the “Philosophy of History,” Renouvier shows that

the facts of history themselves are against the theory of a universal

and continuous progress, for the record shows us conflict, advance,

retrogression, peoples rising, others degenerating, empires

establishing themselves and passing away by inward ruin or outer

assaults, or both, and civilisations evolving and disintegrating in

their turn. The spectacle does not readily promote an optimistic view

of human development at all, much less support the doctrine of a sure

and certain progress. Renouvier does not blind himself to the constant

struggle and suffering. The theatre, or rather the arena, of history

presents a curious spectacle. In politics and in religion he shows us

that there are conflicts of authority and of free thought, a warfare of

majorities with minorities, a method of fighting issues slightly less

savage than the appeal to pure force, but amounting to what he terms “a

pacific application of the principle of force.” History shows us the

corruption, tyranny and blindness of many majorities, and the tragic

and necessary resort to force as the only path to liberty for

down-trodden minorities. How, Renouvier asks, can we fit this in with a

doctrine of assured progress, or, indeed, progress at all?

Further, he does not find it difficult to show that much unthinking

utterance on the part of the optimists may be somewhat checked by calm

reflection on even one or two questions. For example, Was progress

involved in the change from ancient slavery to the wage-slavery of

modern industrialism? Was Christianity, as Nietzsche and others have

attempted to maintain, a retrogression? Or, again, Was the change from

Greek city life to the conditions of the Middle Ages in any way to be

regarded as a progress?

Renouvier considers it quite erroneous to assert, as did Comte, that

there is a steady and continuous development underlying the

oscillations, and that the variations, as it were, from the direct line

of progress cancel one another or balance each other, leaving, as Renan

claimed, a balance always and inevitably on the side of goodness.

Such a confidence in the great world banking concern Renouvier does not

possess. There is no guarantee that the account of goodness may not be

overdrawn and found wanting. He reminds us sternly and solemnly of the

terrible solidarity which characterises evil. Deceit, greed, lust,

violence and war have an enormous power of breeding each other and of

supporting one another increasingly. The optimistic doctrines of

progress are simply untrue statements of the facts of history, and

falsely coloured views of human nature. It is an appalling error in

“social dynamics” to overlook the clash of interest, the greed of

nation and of class, the fundamental passionate hate and war. With it

is coupled an error in “social statics,” in which faith is put in

institutions, in the mechanism of society. These, declares Renouvier,

will not save humanity; they will, indeed, ruin it if it allow itself,

through spiritual and moral lethargy, to be dominated by them. They

have been serviceable creations of humanity at some time or other, and

they must serve men, but men must not be bound down to serve them. This

servitude is evil, and it has profoundly evil consequences.

Having attacked Comte’s view of progress and of order in its static and

dynamic point of view, Renouvier then brings up his heavy artillery of

argument against Comte’s idealisation of the Middle Ages. To assert

that this period was an advance on the life of the Greek city,

Renouvier considers to be little short of impudence. The art and

science and philosophy of the Greeks are our best heritage, while the

Middle Ages, dominated by a vicious and intolerant Church, with its

infallible theology and its crushing power of the clergy, was a “dead

hand” upon the human spirit. While it provided an organic society, it

only succeeded in doing so by narrowing and crushing the human

intellect. The Renascence and the Reformation proved that there were

essential elements of human life being crushed down. They reached a

point, however, where they exploded.

Not only does Renouvier thus declare the Middle Ages to be a regress,

but he goes the length of asserting that the development of European

history _could_ have been different. This is his doctrine of freedom

applied to history. There is no reason at all for our regarding the

Middle Ages or any such period as necessitated in the order of

mankind’s development. There is no law governing that development;

consequently, had mankind, or even a few of its number, willed and

acted upon their freedom differently, the whole trend of the period we

call the Dark Ages might have been quite other than it was. Renouvier

does not shirk the development of this point, which is a central one

for his purpose. It may seem fantastic to the historians, who must of

course accept the past as given and consequently regard reflection on

“what might have been” as wasted time. Certainly the past cannot be

altered—that is not Renouvier’s point. He intends to give a lesson to

humanity, a stern lesson to cure it of its belief in fatalism in regard

to history. This is the whole purpose of the curious volume he

published in 1876, entitled _Uchronie_, which had as its explanatory

sub-title _L’Utopie dans l’Histoire, Esquisse historique du

Développement de la Civilisation européenne, tel qu’il n’a pas été, tel

qu’il avail pu être_. The book, consisting of two manuscripts supposed

to be kept in the care of an old Dutch monk, is actually an imaginary

construction by Renouvier himself of European history in the period 100

to 800 A.D., written to show the real possibility that the sequence of

events from the Emperor Nerva to the Emperor Charlemagne might have

been radically different from what it actually was.

All this is intended by Renouvier to combat the “universal

justification of the past.” He sees that the doctrine of progress as

usually stated is not only a lie, but that it is an extremely dangerous

one, for it justifies the past, or at least condones it as inevitable,

and thus makes evil a condition of goodness, demoralises history,

nullifies ethics and encourages the damnation of humanity itself. This

fatalistic doctrine, asserts Renouvier with great earnestness, must be

abandoned; freedom must be recognised as operative, and the human will

as making history.There is no law of progress, and the sooner humanity

can come to realise this the better it will be for it. Only by such a

realisation can it work out its own salvation. “The real law lies”,

declares Renouvier,”only in an equal possibility of progress or

deterioration for both societies and individuals.” If there is to be

progress it can only come because, and when, humanity recognises itself

as collectively responsible for its own history, and when each person

feels his own responsibility regarding that action. No acceptance of

events will avail; we must _will_ progress and consciously set

ourselves to realise it. It is possible, but it depends on us. Here

Renouvier’s considerations lead him from history to ethics. “Almost all

the Great Men, men of great will, have been fatalists. So slowly does

humanity emerge from its shadows and beget for itself a just notion of

its autonomy. The phantom of necessity weighs heavily,” he laments,

“over the night of history.”[9] With freedom and a recognition of its

freedom by humanity generally we may see the dawn of better things.

Humanity will then consciously and deliberately make its history, and

not be led by the operations of herd-instinct and fatalistic beliefs

which in the past have so disgraced and marred its record.

[9] _Psychologie ralionnelle_, vol. 2, p. 91.

The existing condition of human society can only be described frankly,

in Renouvier’s opinion, as a state of war. Each individual, each class,

each nation, each race, is actually at war with others. It matters not

whether a diplomatic state of peace, as it is called, exists or not;

that must not blind us to the facts. By institutions, customs, laws,

hidden fraud, diplomacy, and open violence, this conflict is kept up.

It is all war, says Renouvier. Modern society is based on war,

economic, military or judicial. Indeed, military and naval warfare is a

clear issue, but only a symbol of what always goes on. Might always has

the upper hand, hence ordinary life in modern society is just a state

of war. Our civilisation does not rest on justice, or on the conception

of justice; it rests on power and might. Until it is founded on

justice, peace, he urges, will not be possible; humanity will be

enslaved in further struggles disastrous o itself. This doctrine of the

_état de guerre_, as descriptive of modern society, he makes a feature

of his ethics, upon which we must not here encroach, but may point out

that he insists upon justice as the ultimate social criterion, and

claims that this is higher than charity, which is inadequate as a basis

for society, however much it may alleviate its ills. One of the chief

necessities, he points out, an essential to any progressive measure

would be to moralise our modern notion of the state.[10] In the notes

to his last chapter of the _Nouvelle Monadologie_ Renouvier attacks the

Marxian doctrine of the materialistic determination of history.

[10] This point was further emphasised by Henri Michel in his work,

_L’Idée de l’Etat_.

This same book, however, we must note, marks a stage in Renouvier’s own

thought different from his doctrines in the earlier _Essais de Critique

générale_, and this later philosophy, of which the _Monadologie_ and

_Personnalisme_ are the two most notable volumes, displays an attempt

to look upon progress from a more ultimate standpoint. His _théodicée_

here involves the notion, seen in Ravaisson, of an early perfection,

involving a subsequent “fall,” the world now, with its _guerre

universelle_, being an intermediate stage between a perfect or

harmonious state in the past and one which lies in the future.

The march of humanity is an uncertain one because it is free. The

philosophy of history thus reiterates the central importance of

freedom. The actual end or purpose of this freedom is not simply, says

Renouvier, the attainment of perfection, but rather the possibility of

progress. It was this thought which led him on in his reflections

further than any of the thinkers of our period, or at least more

deliberately than any, to indicate his views on the doctrine of a

future life for humanity. So far from this being a purely religious

problem, Renouvier rightly looks upon it as merely a carrying further

afield of the conception of progress.

For him, and this is the significant point for us here, any notion of a

future life for humanity, in the accepted sense of immortality, is

bound up with, and indeed based upon, the conception of progressive

development. It is true that Renouvier, like Kant, looks upon the

problems of “God, Freedom and Immortality” as the central ones in

philosophy, true also that he recognises the significance of this

belief in a Future Life as an extremely important one for religious

teaching; but his main attitude to the question is merely a

continuation of his general doctrine of progress, coupled with his

appreciation of personality. It is in this light only that Renouvier

reflects upon the problem of Immortality. He makes no appeal to a world

beyond our experience—a fact which follows from his rejection of the

Kantian world of “noumena”; nor does he wish the discussion to be based

on the assertions of religious faith. He admits that belief in a Future

Life involves faith, in a sense, but it is a rational belief, a

philosophical hypothesis and, more particularly, according to

Renouvier, a moral hypothesis. He asserts against critics that the

undertaking of such a discussion is a necessary part of any Critical

Philosophy, which would be incomplete without it, as its omission would

involve an inadequate account of human experience.

Renouvier claims that, in the first instance, the question of a future

existence arises naturally in the human mind from the discrepancy which

is manifest in our experience between nature on the one hand and

conscience on the other. The course of events is not in accord with

what we feel to be morally right, and the demands of the moral law are,

to Renouvier’s mind, supreme. He realises how acutely this discrepancy

is sometimes felt by the human mind, and his remarks on this point

recall those of the sensitive soul, who, feeling this acutely, cried

out:

“Ah, Love! could thou and I with Fate conspire

To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire,

Would we not shatter it to bits—and then

Re-mould it nearer to the heart’s desire.”

These lines well express the sharpness of Renouvier’s own feelings, and

he claims that, such a conspiracy being impossible, the belief in

Immortality becomes a necessary moral postulate or probability.

The grounds for such a postulate are to be found, he claims, even in

the processes of nature itself. The law of finality or teleology

manifests itself throughout the universe: purpose is to be seen at work

in the Cosmos. It is true that in the lower stages of existence it

seems obscure and uncertain, but an observer cannot fail to see “ends”

being achieved in the biological realm. The functions of organisms,

more particularly those of the animal world, show us a realm of ends

and means at work for achieving those ends. This development in the

direction of an end, this teleology, implies, says Renouvier, a

destiny. The whole of existence is a gradual procession of beings at

higher and higher levels of development, ends and means to each other,

and all inheriting an immense past, which is itself a means to their

existence as ends in themselves. May one not then, suggests Renouvier,

make a valid induction from the destiny thus recognised and partially

fulfilled of certain individual creatures, to a destiny common to all

these creatures indefinitely prolonged?[11]

[11] _Psychologic rationnelle_, vol. 2, pp. 220-221.

The objection is here made that Nature does not concern herself with

individuals; for her the individual is merely a means for the carrying

on and propagation of the species. Individuals come into being, live

for a time and pass away, the species lives on perpetually; only

species are in the plan of the universe, individuals are of little or

no worth. To this Renouvier replies that species live long but are not

perpetual; whole species have been wiped out by happenings on our

planet, many now are dying out. The insinuation about the worthlessness

of individuals rouses his wrath, for it strikes at the very root of his

philosophy, of which personality is the keynote. This, he says, is to

lapse into Pantheism, into doctrines of Buddhists and of Spinoza.

Pantheism and all kindred views are to be rejected. It is not in the

indefinable, All-existing, the eternal and infinite One, that we find

help with regard to the significance of ends in nature. Ends are to be

sought in the individuals or the species. But while it behoves us to

look upon the world as existing for the species and not the species for

the sake of the world, we must remember that the species exists for the

sake of the individuals in it. It is false to look upon the individuals

as existing merely for the sake of the species.

If we subordinate the individual to the species, sacrificing his

inherent worth and unique value, and then subordinate species to genus

and all genera to the All, we lose ourselves in the Infinite substance

in which everything is swallowed up. Again, Pantheism tends to speak of

the perfection of individuals, and speaks loudly of progress from one

generation to another. But it tells only of a future which involves the

entire sacrifice of all that has worth or value in the past. It shows

endless sacrifice, improvement too, but all for naught. “What does it

matter to say that the best is yet to be, if the best must perish as

the good, to give place to a yet better ‘best’ which will not have the

virtue of enduring any more than the others? Do we offer any real

consolation to Sisyphus,” asks Renouvier, “by promising him

annihilation, which is coupled with the promise of successors capable

of lifting his old rock higher and still higher up the fatal slope, by

offering him the eternal falling of this rock and successors who will

continually be annihilated and endlessly be replaced by others?” The

rock is the personal life. On this theory, however high the rock be

pushed, it always is destined to fall back to the same depth, as low as

if it had never been pushed up hill at all. We refuse to reconcile a

world containing real ends and purposes within it with such a game,

vast and miserable, in which no actor plays for his own sake, and all

the false winners lose all their gains by being obliged to leave the

party while the play goes on for ever. This is to throw away all

individual worth, the value of all personal work and effort, to declare

individuality a sham, and to embrace fatality. It is this mischievous

Pantheism which is the curse of many religions and many philosophies.

Against it Renouvier wages a ceaseless warfare. The individuals, he

asserts exist both for their own sake and worth, also for the sake and

welfare of others. In the person, the law of finality finds its highest

expression. Personality is of supreme and unique value.

This being so, it becomes a necessary postulate of our philosophy, if

we really believe in the significance of personalities and in progress

(which Renouvier considers to have no meaning apart from them), to

conclude that death is but an event in the career of these

personalities. They are perpetuated beyond death.

For Renouvier, as for Kant, the chief arguments for survival are based

on considerations of a moral character, upon the demands of the moral

ideal for self- realisation, for the attainment of holiness or, more

properly, “wholeness.” This progress can only be made possible by the

continued existence after bodily death of the identical personality,

unique and of eternal worth in the scheme of things, capable of further

development than is possible amid the conditions of life as we know it.

We must, however, present to ourselves Immortality as given by the

development of appearances in this world of phenomena, under the

general laws with which we are acquainted to-day, thus correcting the

method of Kant, who placed Immortality in a noumenal world. The

salvation of a philosopher should not be of such a kind. We must treat

Immortality as a Law, not as a miracle. The thinker who accepts the

latter view quits the realm of science—that is, of experience and

reason—to establish a mystic order in contradiction with the laws of

nature. The appeal to the “supernatural” is the denial of nature, and

the appellant ruins his own case by his appeal. If Immortality is a

fact, it must be considered rationally.

Is Death—that is, the destruction of individuals as such, or the

annihilation of personalities—a reality? Renouvier reminds those who

jeer at the doctrine of Immortality that “the reality of death (as so

defined) has not been, and cannot be, proved.” Our considerations must

of necessity be hypothetical, but they can be worthy of rational

beings. We must then keep our hopes and investigations within the realm

of the universe and not seek to place our hope of immortality in a

region where nothing exists, “not even an ether to support the wings of

our hope.”

Renouvier’s general considerations led him to view all individuals as

having a destiny in which their individuality should be conserved and

developed. When we turn in particular to man, these points are to be

seen in fuller light. The instinctive belief in Immortality is bound up

with his nature as a thinking being who is capable of setting up, and

of striving after, ends. This continual striving is a marked

characteristic of all human life, a counting oneself not to have

attained, a missing of the mark.

The human consciousness protests against annihilation. At times this is

very keenly expressed. “At the period of the great aspirations of the

heart, the ecstasy of noble passions is accompanied by the conviction

of Immortality. Life at its highest, realising its richest personality,

protests, in virtue of its own worth, and in the name of the depths of

power it still feels latent in itself, against the menace of

annihilation.”[12] It cries out with its unconquerable soul:

“Give me the glory of going on and not to die!”

[12] _Psychologie rationnelle_, vol. 2, p. 249.

Renouvier finds a further witness in the testimony of Love—that is to

say, in nature itself arrived at the consciousness of that passion in

virtue of which it exists and assuring itself by this passion, of the

power to surmount all these short-comings and failures. Love casteth

out fear, the dread of annihilation, and shows itself “stronger than

death.” Hope and Love unite in strengthening the initial belief in

Immortality and the “will to survive.”

Renouvier admits that this is _a priori_ reasoning, and speedily _a

posteriori_ arguments can be brought up as mighty battering-rams

against the fortress of immortal life, but although they mav shake its

walls, they are unable to destroy the citadel. Nothing can demonstrate

the impossibility of future existence, whereas the whole weight of the

moral law and the teleological elements at work in the universe are,

according to Renouvier, in favour of such a belief.

Morality, like every other science, is entitled to, nay obliged to,

employ the hypothesis of harmony. Now in this connection the hypothesis

of harmony (or, as Kant styled it, the concurrence of happiness and

virtue necessary to a conception of order) finds reinforcement from the

consideration of the meaning and significance of freedom. For the

actual end or purpose of freedom is not simply the attainment of

perfection, but rather the possibility of progress. Immortality becomes

a necessary postulate, reinforced by instinct, reason, morality, by the

fact of freedom, and the notion of progress. Further, Renouvier feels

that if we posit death as the end of all we thereby give an absolute

victory to physical evil in the universe.

The postulate of Immortality has a certain dignity and worth. The

discussion of future life must, however, be kept within the

possibilities of law and phenomena. Religious views, such as those of

Priestley, by their appeal to the miraculous debase the notion of

Immortality itself. Talk of an immortal essence, and a mortal essence

is meaningless, for unless the same identical person, with his unique

character and memory, persists, then our conception of immortality is

of little or no value. The idea of an indestructible spiritual

substance is not any better or more acceptable. Our notion of a future

life must be based upon the inherent and inalienable rights of the

moral person to persistence and to chances of further development or

progress. Although we must beware of losing ourselves in vain

speculations, which really empty our thought of all its content,

Renouvier claims that we are quite entitled to lay down hypotheses.

The same general laws which we see in operation and which have brought

the universe and the beings in it to the stage of development in which

they now are may, without contradiction, be conceived as operating in

further developments after the change we call bodily death. There is no

incongruity in conceiving the self-same personality continuing in a

second and different organism. Renouvier cites the case of the grub and

the butterfly and other metamorphoses. In man himself he points to

organic crises, which give the organism a very different character and

effect a radical change in its constitution. For example, there is the

critical exit from the mother’s womb, involving the change from a being

living in an enclosure to that of an independent creature. When once

the crisis of the first breath be passed the organism starts upon

another life. There are other crises, as, for instance, the radical

changes which operate in both sexes at the stage of puberty. Just as

the personality persists in its identity through all these changes, may

it not pass through that of bodily death?

The Stoics believed in a cosmic resurrection. Substituting the idea of

progress for their view of a new beginning, Renouvier claims that we

may attain the hypothesis that all human history is but a fragment in a

development incomparably greater and grander. Again, we may conceive of

life in two worlds co-existing, indeed interpenetrating, so that the

dead are not gone far from us into some remote heaven.

But, whatever form we give to our hypothesis regarding progress into

another existence beyond this present one, Renouvier does not easily

allow us to forget that it must be based upon the significance of

freedom, progress and personality supported by moral considerations.

Even this progress is not guaranteed, and even if it should be the

achievement of some spirits there is no proof that it is universal. Our

destiny, he finally reminds us, lies in our own hands, for progress

here means an increased capacity for progress later, while spiritual

and moral indifference will result finally, and indeed, necessarily, in

annihilation. Here, as so often in his work, Renouvier puts moral

arguments and appeals in the forefront of his thought. Progress in

relation to humanity’s life on earth drew from him an appeal for the

establishment of justice: progress in a further world implies equally a

moral appeal. Our duty is to keep the ideal of progress socially and

individually ever before us, and to be worthy of immortality if it be a

fact, rather than to lose ourselves in the mistaken piety of “other-

worldliness.” About neither progress can we be dogmatic; it is not

assured, Renouvier has shown, and we must work for it by the right use

of our freedom, our intelligence and our will.

III

No thinker discussed the problem of progress with greater energy or

penetration than Renouvier. The new spiritualist group, however,

developed certain views arising from the question of contingency, or

the relation of freedom to progress. These thinkers were concerned more

with psychological and metaphysical work, and with the exception of

Fouillée and Guyau, they wrote little which bore directly upon the

problem of progress. Many of their ideas, however, have an indirect

bearing upon important points at issue.

In Ravaisson, Lachelier and Boutroux, we find the question of teleology

presented, and also that of the opposition of spirit and matter. From

the outset the new spiritualism had to wrestle with two difficulties

inherent in the thought of Ravaisson. These were, firstly, the

reconciliation of the freedom and spontaneity of the spirit with the

operations of a Divine Providence or teleology of some kind; and,

secondly, the dualism assumed in the warfare of spirit and matter,

although spirit was held to be superior and anterior to matter. This

last involved a complication for any doctrine of progress, as it

required a primitive “fall” to account for matter, even a fall of the

Deity himself. This Ravaisson himself admits, and he thinks that in

creating the world God had to sacrifice some of his own being. In this

case “progress” is set over against a transcendental existence, and is

but the reawakening of what once existed in God, and in a sense now and

eternally exists. Progress there is, claims Ravaisson, towards truth

and beauty and goodness. This is the operation of a Divine Providence

acting by attracting men freely to these ideals, and as these are

symbols of God himself, progress is the return of the spirit through

self-conscious personalities to the fuller realisation of harmony,

beauty and love—that is, to the glory of God, who has ever been, now

is, and ever shall be, perfect beauty, goodness and love.

Thus, although from a temporal and finite standpoint Ravaisson can

speak of progress, it is doubtful if he is justified in doing so

ultimately, _sub specie æternitatis_. To solve the problem in the way

he presents it, one would need to know more about the ultimate value

and significance of the personalities themselves, and their destiny in

relation to the Divinity who is, as he claims, perfect harmony, beauty

and love. It was this point, so dear to an upholder of personality,

which had led Renouvier to continue his discussion of progress in

relation to history as generally understood, until it embraced a wider

field of eternal destiny, and to consider the idea of a future life as

arising from, and based upon, the conception of progress. It is this

same point which later perplexes Bergson, when he recognises this

self-conscious personality as the ultimate development of the évolution

créatrice, and so constituting in a sense the goal of the spirit,

although he is careful to state that there is no finalism involved at

all. Ravaisson stands for this finalism, however, in claiming that

there are ends. He does not see how otherwise we could speak of

progress, as we should have no criterion, no _terminus ad quem_; all

would be simply process, not progress.

_“Détachement de Dieu, retour à Dieu, clôture du grand cercle cosmique,

restitution de l’universel équilibre, telle est l’histoire du monde.”_

Such is Ravaisson’s doctrine, much of which is akin to, and indeed

re-echoes, much in Christian theology from St. Augustine, with his idea

of an eternal and restless movement of return to the divinity, to the

Westminster divines in their answer to the important query about the

chief end of man, which they considered to be not only to glorify God

but to enjoy Him for ever. This last and rather strange phrase only

seems to have significance if we conceive, in Ravaisson’s manner, of

beauty, truth and goodness as expressions or manifestations of the

Divinity to whom the world-process may freely tend.

For Lachelier the universal process presents a triple aspect, mechanism

which is coupled with finalism and with freedom. These three principles

are in action simultaneously in the world and in the individual. Each

of us is at once matter, living soul and personality—that is,

necessity, finality and freedom. The laws of the universe, so far from

being expressed entirely by mechanical formulae, can only be expressed,

as Ravaisson had claimed, by an approach to harmony and beauty, not in

terms of logic or geometry. All this involves a real progress, a

creativeness, which differs from Ravaisson’s return, as it were, to the

bosom of God.

Boutroux combines the views of Ravaisson and Lachelier by insisting on

freedom and contingency, but maintaining at the same time a

teleological doctrine. Already in discussing his conception of freedom

we have referred to his metaphor of the sailors in the ship. His

doctrine of contingency is directly opposed to any rigid pre-ordained

plan of reality or progress, but it does not prevent the spirit from a

creative teleology, the formation of a plan as it advances. This is

precisely, is it not, the combination of free action and of teleology

which we find in our own lives? Boutroux is thus able to side with

Ravaisson in his claim to see tendencies to beauty and truth and

goodness, the fruits of the spirit, which it creates and to which it

draws us, while at the same time he maintains freedom in a manner quite

as emphatic as Lachelier. He is careful to remind us that “not all

developments are towards perfection.”[13] In particular he dislikes the

type of social theory or of sociology which undervalues the personal

life.[14]

[13] _Contingence des Lois de la Nature_, p. 127.

[14] Thus he agrees with Renouvier’s objection to Comte’s view and to

Communism.

Similar in many ways to the ideas of Ravaisson and of Boutroux are

those expressed by Blondel. He is concerned deeply with the problem of

God and progress, which arises out of his view of the Deity as immanent

and as transcendent. He is quite Bergsonian in his statement that God

creates Himself in us, but he qualifies this by asking the significant

question, “If he does not EXIST how can He create Himself in us.” This

brings us back to Ravaisson’s view. Other remarks of Blondel, however,

recall the doctrine of Vacherot and of Renan, that God is the ideal to

which we are ever striving. “It is a necessity that we should be moving

on, for He is always beyond.” All action is an advance, a progress

through the realm of materialistic determinism to the self-conscious

personality in man, but it is from a transcendent teleology, a Divine

Providence, that this action proceeds.

This is the line of thought pursued by Fouillée, who in many of his

writings gives considerable attention to the doctrines of progress. It

may be doubted, however if he ever surpassed the pages in his _Liberté

et Déterminisme_ and _L’Evolutionnisme des Idées-forces_, which deal

with this point. These are the best expressions of his philosophy, and

Fouillée repeated himself a great deal. We might add, however, his

_Socialism_ and his book on _L’Avenir de la Métaphysique_.

We have observed the importance attached by Comte to his new science of

sociology. Fouillée endeavours to give to it a metaphysical

significance with which Comte did not concern himself. He suggests in

his volume on _La Science sociale contemporaine_ that as biology and

sociology are closely related, the laws common to them may have a

cosmic significance. Is the universe, he asks, anything more than a

vast society in process of formation, a vast system of conscious,

striving atoms? Social science which Fouillée looks upon, as did Comte,

as constituting the crown of human knowledge, may offer us, he thinks,

the secret of universal life, and show us the world as the great

society in process of development, erring here and blundering there in

an effort to rise above the sphere of physical determinism and

materialism to a sphere where justice shall be supreme, and brotherhood

take the place of antagonism, greed and war. The power at the heart of

things, which is always ready to manifest itself in the human

consciousness when it can, might be expressed, says Fouillée, in one

word as “sociability.”

Life in its social aspect displays a _conspiration_ to a common end.

The life of a community resembles a highly evolved organism in many

respects, as Fouillée shows; but although he thus partially adopts the

biological and positivist view of the sociologists, Fouillée does not

overlook the idealistic conceptions of Renouvier and his plea for

social justice. He rather emphasises this plea, and takes the

opportunity to point out that it represents the best political thought

of his country, being founded on the doctrine of the _contrat social_

of Rousseau, of which social theory it is a clear and modern

interpretation.

We may take the opportunity afforded here by Fouillée’s mention of

sociology, in which he was so keenly interested, to observe that the

positivist tendency to emphasise an indefinite progress remained with

most of the sociologists and some of the historians. It is seen in the

two famous sociological works of Tarde and Durkheim respectively, _Les

Lois de l’Imitation_ and _La Division du Travail social_. Two writers

on history deserve mention as illustrating the same tendency: Lacombe,

whose work _De l’Histoire considérée comme Science_ (1894) was very

positivist in outlook, and Xénopol. This last writer, treating history

in 1899 in his _Principes fondamentaux de l’Histoire_,[15]

distinguished cause in history from causality in science, and showed

that white the latter leads to the formation of general laws the former

does not. History has no laws, for it is succession but never

repetition. Much of his book, however, reflects the naturalism and

positivism which is a feature of the sociological writers.[16]

[15] This work, revised and considerably augmented, was re-issued in

1905 with the new title, _La Théorie de l’Histoire_.

[16] It was this which made Enouvier criticise sociology. He disagreed

with its principles almost entirely. On this, see his notes to “_La

Justice_,” Part VII. of _La Nouvelle Monadogie_, pp. 527-530.

It was his doctrine of _idées-forces_ and its essential spiritualism or

idealism which distinguished Fouillée’s attitude from that of these

sociologists who were his contemporaries. It was the basis, too, of his

trenchant criticisms of socialism, particularly its Marxian forms.

Fouillée agrees with Comte’s doctrine that speculation or thought is

the chief factor and prime mover in social change. For Fouillée the

idea is always a force; and it is, in this connection, the supreme

force. The history of action can only be understood, he asserts, in

relation to the history of ideas. This is the central gospel of the

_évolutionnisme des idées-forces_. The mental or spiritual is the

important factor. This he opposes to the Marxian doctrine of economic

determinism. Will is, he claims a greater reality than brute forces,

and in will lies the essence of the human spirit. It is a will,

however, which is bound up with reason and self-consciousness, and

which is progressive in character.

Summing up his work, _Histoire générale de la Philosophie_, Fouillée

refers in his Conclusion to the idea of progress as having become the

dominant note in philosophy. He looks upon the history of philosophy

as, in some measure, witness to this. Above the ebb and flow of the

varied systems and ideas which the ages have produced he sees an

advance accomplished in the direction to which humanity is

tending—perfect knowledge of itself or collective self-consciousness

and perfect self- possession. This type of progress is not to be

equated with scientific progress. He points out that in the development

of philosophy, which is that of human reflection itself, two

characteristics appear. The distinction of two kinds or aspects of

truth is seen in philosophy; one section, dealing with logic,

psychology, aesthetic and applied ethics, or sociology, approaches to a

scientific character of demonstrability, while the other section, which

constitutes philosophy in the strict sense of metaphysic, deals with

ultimate questions not capable of proof but demanding a rational faith.

Obviously the same kind of progress cannot be found in each of these

sections. This must be realised when progress in knowledge is spoken

about. He suggests, as illustrative of progress even in the speculative

realm, the fact that humanity is slowly purifying its conception of

God—a point for further notice in our last chapter.

However much Fouillée is concerned with establishing; a case for

progress in knowledge, it is clear that his main stress is on the

progress in self-consciousness or that self- determination which is

freedom. This freedom can only grow as man consciously realises it

himself. It is an _idée-force_, and has against it all the forces of

fatalism and of egoism. For Fouillée quite explicitly connects his

doctrine of freedom with that of altruism. The real freedom and the

real progress are one, he claims, since they both are to be realised

only in the increasing power of disinterestedness and love. He believes

in the possibility of a free progress. Fatality is really egoism, or

produces it.

Fouillée has a rather clear optimism, for he finds in the development

of real freedom a movement which will involve a moral and social union

of mankind. The good- will is more truly human nature than egoism and

selfishness. These vices, he maintains in his _Idée moderne du

Droit_,[17] are largely a product of unsatisfied physical wants. The

ideal of the good-will is not a contradiction of human nature, because,

he asserts, that nature desires and wills its good. More strikingly, he

states that the human will tends ultimately not to conflict but to

co-operation as it becomes enlightened and universalised. He disagrees

with the pessimists and upholds a comparatively cheerful view of human

nature. Egoism is much less deeply rooted than sympathy, and therefore,

he says, war and strife are transitory features of human development.

One contrasts the views of Taine and Renouvier with this, and feels

that man’s history has been, as far as we know it, entirely of this

“transitory” nature, and is long likely to be so.

[17] _L’Idée moderne du Droit_, Livre IV.

Fouillée’s optimism seems to be overdrawn mainly because of his

doctrine of the _idée-force_. He exaggerates the response which human

nature is likely to make to the ideal good. Even if it be lifted up, it

is not likely to draw _all_ men to it. Yet Fouillée’s social and

ethical doctrines stand entirely upon this foundation. They are

valuable views, and Fouillée is never better than when he is exhorting

his fellows to act upon the ideas of freedom, of justice, of love and

brotherhood. He is right in his insistence upon humanity’s power to

create good- will, to develop a new order. For the good man, he says,

fatality and egoism are obstacles to be overcome Believing in freedom

and in sympathy, he acts to others in a spirit of freedom and love. By

his very belief in universal good-will among men, he assists largely in

creating it and realising it in the world.[18]

[18] Conclusion to _Liberté et Déterminisme_.

But did not Fouillée, one asks, overrate the number of good men (as

good in his sense), or rather did he not exaggerate the capacities of

human nature to respond to the ideal which he presents? Much of his

confidence in moral and social progress finds its explanation here.

His step-son, Guyau, was not quite so optimistic, although he believed

in a progress towards “sociability” and he adopted many of the

doctrines of the _philosphie des idées-forces_. He attacks cheerful

optimism in his _Esquisse d’une Morale sans Obligation ni Sanction_,

where he remarks[19] that an absolute theory of optimism is really an

immoral theory, for it involves the negation of progress in the strict

and true sense. This is because, when it dominates the mind, it

produces a feeling of entire satisfaction and contentment with the

existing reality, resulting in resignation and acceptance of, if not an

actual worship of, the _status quo_. In its utter obedience to all

“powers that be,” the notions of right and of duty are dimmed, if not

lost. A definitely pessimistic view of the universe would, he suggests,

be in many respects better and more productive of good than an

outrageous optimism. Granting that it is a wretched state in which a

man sees all things black, it is preferable, Guyau thinks, to that in

which all things appear rosy or blue.

[19] _Esquisse d’une Morale_, p. 10.

Guyau concludes his _Esquisse d’une Morale sans Obligation ni Sanction_

by remarking: “We are, as it were, on the _Leviathan_, from which a

wave has torn the rudder and a blast of wind carried away the mainmast.

It is lost in the ocean as our earth is lost in space. It floats thus

at random, driven by the tempest, like a huge derelict, yet with men

upon it, and yet it reaches port. Perhaps our earth, perhaps humanity,

will also reach that unknown end which they will have created for

themselves. No hand directs us; the rudder has long been broken, or

rather it has never existed; we must make it: it is a great task, and

it is our task.” This paragraph speaks for itself as regards Guyau’s

attitude to the doctrine of an assured progress.

In his notable book _L’Irreligion de l’Avenir_, the importance of which

we shall note more fully when we deal with the religious problem in our

last chapter, Guyau indicates the possibilities of general intellectual

progress in the future. The demand of life itself for fuller expression

will involve the decay of cramping superstitions and ecclesiastical

dogmas. The aesthetic elements will be given a larger place, and there

will be intellectual freedom. Keen as Guyau is upon maintaining the

sociological standpoint, he sees the central factor in progress to be

the mental. “Progress,” he remarks,[20] “is not simply a sensible

amelioration of life—it is also the achievement of a better

intellectual formulation of life, it is a triumph of logic. To progress

is to attain to a more complete consciousness of one’s self and of the

world, and by that very fact to a more complete inner consistency of

one’s theory of the world.” Guyau follows his stepfather in his view of

“sociability” or _fraternité_ (to use the watchword of the Revolution)

as the desirable end at which we should progressively aim—a conclusion

which is but the social application of his central concept of Life.

[20] Introduction to _L’Irreligion de l’Avenir_.

The next step in human progress must be in the direction of human

solidarity. Guyau thinks it will arise from collective, co-operative

energy (_synergie sociale_). Further progress must involve

simultaneously _sympathie sociale_, a community of fellowship or

comradeship, promoted by education of a true kind, not mere

instruction, but a proper development and valuation of the feelings.

Here art will play its part and have its place beside science, ethics

and philosophy in furthering the ideal harmony in human society. Such

Progress involves, therefore, that the Beautiful must be sought and

appreciated no less than the True and the Good, for it is a revelation

of the larger Life of which we ourselves are part. These ideals are in

themselves but manifestations of the Supreme Vitality.

The same spontaneous vital activity of which Guyau makes a central

doctrine characterises Bergson’s view of reality. He upholds, like

Boutroux, freedom and contingency, but he will not admit finalism in

any shape or form, not even a teleology which is created in the process

of development. He refuses to admit as true of the universal process in

nature and in human history what is certainly true of human life—the

fact that we create ends as we go on living. For Bergson there is no

end in the universe, unless it be that of spontaneity of life such as

Guyau had maintained. There is no guarantee of progress, no law of

development, but endless possibility of progress. Such a view, as we

have already insisted, is not pessimistic. It is, however, a warning to

facile optimism to realise that humanity, being free, may go “dead

wrong.” While Boutroux maintains with Ravaisson that there is at the

heart of things a tendency to superior values such as beauty, goodness

and truth, and while Renan assures us that the balance of goodness in

the world is a guarantee of its ultimate triumph, Bergson, like

Renouvier, gives us stern warning that there is no guarantee in the

nature of things that humanity should not set its heart on other

values, on materialistic and egoistic conceptions, and go down in ruin

quarrelling and fighting for these things. There is no power, he

reminds us, keeping humanity right and in the line of desirable

progress. All is change, but that is not to say that all changes are

desirable or progressive. Here we arrive at a point far removed from

the rosy optimism of the earlier thinkers. Progress as a comfortable

doctrine, confidently accepted and dogmatically asserted, no longer

holds ground; it is seen to be quite untenable.

In Bergson the difficulty which besets Ravaisson reappears more

markedly—namely, the relation of spirit and matter to one another, and

to the power at the heart of things, which, according to Bergson

himself, is a spiritual principle. Here we seem forced to admit

Ravaisson’s view of a “fall” or, as the theologians would say, a

“Kenosis” of the deity in order to create the material universe. Yet in

the processes of nature we see spirit having to fight against matter,

and of this warfare Bergson makes a great point. These considerations

lead to discussions which Bergson has not touched upon as yet. He does

not follow Ravaisson and Boutroux into the realm of theological ideas.

If he did he might have to make admissions which would compromise, or

at least modify, other doctrines expressed by him. He will have none of

Hegel or of the Absolute Idealism which sees the world process as a

development of a Divine Idea. It is new and it is creation; there is no

repetition. Even God himself _se fait_ in the process, and it may be,

suggests Bergson, that love is the secret of the universe. If so we may

well ask with Blondel, “If God _se fait_ in the process, then does he

not already exist and, in a sense, the process with him?” Instead,

however, of reverting to Ravaisson’s view of the whole affair being a

search for, and return to God, Bergson claims that the development is a

purely contingent one, in which a super-consciousness develops by

experiment and error.

Bergson’s God, if he may be so-called, is not so much a Creator, but a

power creative of creators—that is, human personalities capable of free

action. The Deity is immanent in man, and, like man, is ignorant of the

trend of the whole process. The universe, according to Bergson, is a

very haphazard affair, in which the only permanence is change. There is

no goal, and progress has little meaning if it be only and merely

further change, which may be equally regress rather than progress. To

live is not merely to change, but to triumph over change to set up some

values as of absolute worth, and to aim at realising and furthering

these. Apart from some philosophy of values the conception of progress

has little meaning.

Interesting discussions of various aspects of the problem are to be

found in the writings of the sociologist we have mentioned, Durkheim,

particularly _La Division du Travail sociale_, _Le Suicide_ and _Les

Formes élémentaires de la Vie religieuse_. There is an interesting

volume by Weber, entitled _Le Rythme du Progres_, and there are the

numerous books of Dr. Gustave Le Bon.

Although he is not strictly a philosopher in the academic or

professional sense, and his work belongs to literature rather than to

the philosophy of the period, we cannot help calling attention briefly

here, at the conclusion of this chapter, to the genial pessimism of

Bergson’s great literary contemporary, Anatole France, the famous

satirist of our age. His irony on questions like that of progress is

very marked in _L’Ile des Penguins_ and in _Jérôme Coignard_. A remark

from one of his works, this latter, will sufficiently illustrate his

view on progress. “I take little interest,” remarks his character, the

Abbé Coignard, “in what is done in the King’s Cabinet, for I notice

that the course of life is in no way changed, and after reforms men are

as before, selfish, avaricious, cowardly, cruel, stupid and furious by

turns, and there is always a nearly even number of births, marriages,

cuckolds and gallows-birds, in which is made manifest the beautiful

ordering of our society. This condition is stable, sir, and nothing

could shake it, for it is founded on human misery and imbecility, and

those are foundations which will never be wanting.” The genial old Abbé

then goes on to remind socialist revolutionaries that new economic

schemes will not radically change human nature. We easily see the ills

in history and blind ourselves with optimism for the future. Even in

Sorel, the Syndicalist, who has added to his articles on _Violence_

(which appeared in 1907 in the periodical _Le Mouvement socialiste_) a

work on _Les Illusions du Progrès_, we find the same doctrines about

the vices of modern societies, which he considers no better than

ancient ones in their morality; they are filled with more hypocrisy,

that is all. France and Sorel only add more testimony to the utter

collapse of the old doctrine of assured and general progress.

* * * * * * * * *

To such a final position do we come in following out the development of

the idea of progress. The early assurance and dogmatic confidence which

marked the early years of the century are followed by a complete

abandonment of the idea of a guaranteed or assured progress, whether

based on the operations of a Divine Providence, or on faith in the

ultimate triumph of reason, or on merely a fatalistic determinism.

Progress is only a possibility, and its realisation depends on

‘humanity’s own actions. Further, any mention of progress in future

must not only present it as quite contingent, but we have to reckon

with the fact that the idea of progress may itself progress until it

resolves itself into another conception less complicated and less

paradoxical, such as “the attainment of a new equilibrium.” Some effort

must be devoted also to a valuation of criteria. Various values have in

the past been confused together, scientific, materialistic, hedonistic,

moral, aesthetic. Ultimately it seems that we shall find difficulty in

settling this apart from the solution offered by Renouvier—namely, that

true progress is not merely intellectual, but moral. It involves not

merely a conquest of material nature but of human nature—a self-

mastery. Progress is to be measured not by the achievements of any

aristocracy, intellectual or other, but by the general social status,

and our criterion of progress must be ultimately that of social

justice. This itself is a term needing interpretation, and to this

question of ethics we now turn.

CHAPTER VI

ETHICS

INTRODUCTION : Difficulties of the moral problem as presented in the

nineteenth century—Recognised as a social problem—Influence of Comte

important in this connection—Other influences—Christianity—Kant—The

practical reason.

I. Taine and Renan—Renan’s critique of Christian morality—Early

socialistic views—Change in his later life—Prefers criterion of beauty

to that of goodness.

II. Renouvier the great moralist of our period—Relation to Kant —His

Science de la Morale—Personality in Ethics—Justice.

III. Fouillée, Guyau, Ollé-Laprune and Rauh pass further from the

Kantian rigorism to an ethic in harmony with the philosophy of

idées-forces of life and action—Humanitarianism of Fouillée and

Guyau—Idées-forces and Morale sans Obligation ni Sanction —Rauh’s

doctrines—Other thinkers.

CONCLUSION: Action and belief—Ethics and Religion.

CHAPTER VI

ETHICS

Moral philosophy is probably the most difficult branch of those various

disciplines of the human spirit summed up in the general conception of

philosophy. This difficulty is one which all the thinkers of our period

recognised. Many of them, occupied with other problems on the

psychological or metaphysical side, did not write explicitly upon

ethics. Yet the problem of ethics, its place, significance and

authority, is but the other side of that problem of freedom which has

appeared throughout this development as central and vital. The ethical

consciousness of man has never been content for long with the assertion

that ethics is a purely positive science, although it has obviously a

positive side. The essence of morality has been regarded as not merely

a description of what exists, but what might, should or ought to exist.

Ethics is normative, it erects or endeavours to outline a standard

which is an ideal standard. This is the characteristic of ethics, and

so long as the moral conscience of humanity, individually and

collectively, does not slumber nor die, it will remain so. This

conflict between the ideal and the real, the positive and normative is

indeed the chief source of pain and conflict to man, but without it he

would cease to be human.

Whatever the difficulties, the philosopher who aspires to look upon

human life as a whole must give _some_ interpretation of this vital

aspect of human consciousness. It is in this connection that a solution

of the problem of freedom is so valuable, for under a purely

determinist and positivist reading of life, the moral sentiments become

mere data for an anthropological survey, the hope and tragedy of human

life are replaced, comfortably perhaps for some, by an interpretation

in which the true significance of ethics is lost.

One of the outstanding features of the discussion upon ethics in our

period is the fact that the social standpoint colours most of the

discussion. This was largely due to the impulse given by Comte and

continued by the sociologists. We have already remarked the importance

which he attached to his new science of society or “sociology.” However

much the development of this branch of study may have disappointed the

hopes of Comte, it has laid a powerful and necessary emphasis upon the

solidarity of the problems of society. As Comte claimed that psychology

could not be profitably studied in the isolated individual alone, so he

insisted that ethics could only be studied with profit from a social

standpoint. This was not forgotten by subsequent thinkers, even by

those who were not his followers, and the main development of the

ethical problem in our period is marked by an increasing insistence

upon sociability and solidarity. Comte was able to turn the thoughts of

philosophers away from pre-occupation with the isolated individual,

conceived as a cold and calculating intellectual machine, a “fiction”

which had engrossed the minds of thinkers of the previous century. He

was able also to indicate the enormous part played by instincts,

particularly “herd-instincts,” by passion and feelings of social hatred

and social sympathy. It was the extension of social sympathy upon which

Comte insisted as the chief good. The great defect of Christianity from

an ethical standpoint was, Comte pointed out, due to its

individualistic ethic. To the doctrine of “saving one’s own soul” Comte

opposed that of the salvation of humanity. The social unit is not the

individual man or woman, it is the family. In that society which is not

a mere association but a union, arising from common interests and

sympathy, the individual realises himself as part of society. The

highest ethical conception, however, arises when the individual,

transcending himself and his family, feels and acts as a member of

humanity itself, not only in his public, but also in his private life.

In the idea of humanity Comte finds the concrete form of that universal

which in the ethic of Kant was the symbol of duty itself.

It was by this insistence on human social solidarity that Comte left

his mark upon the ethical problem. Many of the details of social ethics

given in the last three large volumes of his work are extremely

thoughtful and interesting, in spite of their excessive optimism, but

we can only here indicate what is sufficient for our purpose, his

influence over subsequent thought. That is summed up in the words

“solidarity” and “social standpoint.”

We may observe that the supreme problems in social ethics Comte

regarded as being those of education or mental development and the

“right to work.”[1] He foresaw, as did Renan, that Culture and Economic

Justice were the two _foci_ around which the ethical problems were to

be ranged in the immediate future. He regretted that the proletariat in

their cry for justice had not sufficient culture to observe that they

themselves are not a class apart, however class-conscious they be. They

stand solid with the community, and Comte prophesied that, finding this

out sooner or later, they would have to realise the folly of violent

revolution. Only a positive culture or education of the democracy

could, he believed, solve this social problem, which is there precisely

because the proletariat are not sufficiently, and do not feel

themselves to be, incorporated in the life of the community or of

humanity. Only when they realise this will work be ennobled by a

feeling of service. The Church has a moral advantage here, in that she

has her organisation complete for furthering the conception of service

to God. Comte realised this advantage of religious morality, but he

thought it would come also to “positive” morality when men came to a

conception of service for humanity To this great end, he urged, our

education should be directed, and it should aim, he thought, at the

decline and elimination of militarism which, in Comte’s view

corresponds to the second stage of development (marked also by

theology), a stage to be superseded in man’s development, by an era in

which the war-spirit will be replaced by that of productive service

performed not only _pour la patrie_, but _pour l’humanité_.

[1] Comte criticised the teaching given to the young in France as

being “instruction” rather than “education.” This has frequently been

insisted upon since his time.

In viewing the general influences which bore upon the study of the

ethical problem in our period this stress upon the social character of

morality is supreme, and is the most distinctly marked. But in addition

to the sociological influence there are others which it is both

interesting and important to note briefly. There is the influence of

traditional religious morality, bound up with Christianity as presented

by the Roman Catholic Church. The deficiencies of this are frequently

brought out in the discussion, but in certain of the thinkers, chiefly

the “modernists,” it appears as an influence contributing to a

religious morality and as offering, indeed, the basis of a religion.

Other writers, however, while rejecting the traditional morality of the

Church, lay stress upon a humanitarian ethic which has an affinity to

the idealistic morality preached by the founder of Christianity, a

morality which manifests a spirit different from that which his Church

has usually shown. Indeed, the general tendency of the ethical

development in our period is one of opposition to the ecclesiastical

and traditional standpoint in ethics.

Then there is the influence of Kant’s ethics, and here again, although

Renouvier owed much to Kant, the general tendency is to get away from

the formalism and rigorism of his “categorical imperative.” The current

of English Utilitarian ethics appears as rather a negative influence,

and is rather scorned when mentioned. The common feature is that of the

social standpoint, issuing in conceptions of social justice or

humanitarianism and finding in action and life a concrete morality

which is but the reflection of the living conscience of mankind

creating itself and finding in the claims of the practical reason that

Absolute or Ideal to which the pure reason feels it cannot alone

attain.

I

Taine and Renan were influenced by the outlook adopted by Comte. It

might well be said that Taine was more strictly positivist than Comte.

In his view of ethics, Taine, as might be expected from the general

character of his work and his philosophical attitude, adheres to a

rigidly positivist and naturalist conception. He looks upon ethics as

purely positive, since it merely states the scientific conditions of

virtue and vice, and he despairs of altering human nature or conduct.

This is due almost entirely to his doctrine of rigid determinism which

reacts with disastrous consequences upon his ethical outlook. This only

further confirms our contention that the problem of freedom is the

central and vital one of the period. We have already pointed out the

criticism which Fouillée brought against Taine’s dogmatic belief in

determinism, as an incomplete doctrine, a half-truth, which involves

mischievous consequences and permits of no valuable discussion of the

ethical problem.

More interesting and useful, if we are to follow at all closely the

ethical thought of our period, is it to observe the attitude adopted to

ethics by Taine’s contemporary, Renan.

The extreme confidence which Renan professed to have in “science,” and

indeed in all intellectual pursuits, led him to accord to morality

rather a secondary place. “There are three great things,” he remarks in

his _Discours et Conférences_,[2] “goodness, beauty and truth, and the

greatest of these is truth.” Neither virtue, he continues, nor art is

able to exclude illusions. Truth is the representation of reality, and

in this world the search for truth is the most serious occupation of

all. One of his main charges against the Christian Church in general is

that it has insisted upon moral good to such an extent as to undervalue

and depreciate the other goods, expressed in beauty and in truth. It

has looked upon life from one point of view only—namely, the moral—and

has judged all action by ethical values alone, despising in this way

philosophy, science, literature, poetry, painting and music. In its

more ascetic moods it has claimed that these things are “of the devil.”

Thus Christianity has introduced a vicious distinction which has done

much to mutilate human nature and to cramp the wholesome expression of

the life of the human spirit. Whatever is an expression of spirit is,

claims Renan, to be looked upon as sacred. If such a distinction as

that of sacred and profane were to be drawn it should be between what

appertains to the soul and what does not. The distinction, when made

between the ethical and the beautiful or true, is disastrous.

[2] _Discours_, dated November 26th, 1885.

Renan considers that of the two, the ethical and the beautiful, the

latter may be the finer and grander distinction, the former merely a

species of it. The moral, he thinks, will give place to the beautiful.

“Before any action,” he himself says in _L’Avenir de la Science_, “I

prefer to ask myself, not whether it be good or bad, but whether it be

beautiful or ugly, and I feel that I have in this an excellent

criterion.”

Morality, he further insists, has been conceived up to now in far too

rigid a manner as obedience to a law, as a warfare and strife between

opposing laws. But the really virtuous man is an artist who is creating

beauty, the beauty of character, and is fashioning it out of his human

nature, as the sculptor fashions a statue out of marble or a musician

composes a melody from sounds. Neither the sculptor nor the musician

feels that he is obeying a law. He is expressing and creating beauty.

Another criticism which Renan brings against the ethic of Christianity

is its insistence upon humility as a virtue. He sees nothing virtuous

in it as it is generally interpreted: quite rightly he suspects it of

hypocritically covering a gross pride, after the manner of the

Pharisees. He gives a place to honest asceticism which has its

nobility, even although it be a narrow, misconceived ideal. Much nobler

is it, he thinks, than the type of life which has only one object,

getting a fortune.

This leads him to another remark on the moral hypocrisy of so many

professedly religious folk. Having an easy substance and possessing

already a decent share of this world’s goods, they devote all their

energies to the pursuit of pleasure or of further superfluous wealth.

From this position they criticise the worker who endeavours to improve

his lot, and have the audacity to tell him in pious fashion that he

must not be materialistic, and must not set his heart on this world’s

goods. It would be laughable were it not so tragic. The whole question

of the relativity of the two positions is overlooked, the whole ethic

of the business ignored. Material welfare is good and valuable, says

Renan, in so far as it frees man’s spirit from mean and wretched

dependence and a cramped life which injures development, physical and

spiritual. These goods are a means to an end. When, therefore, a man,

already comfortably endowed, amasses more and more for its own sake, he

commits both a profane and immoral act. But when a worker endeavours to

augment his recompense for his labour, he is but demanding “what is the

condition of his redemption. He is performing a virtuous action.”[3]

[3] _L’Avenir de la Science_, p. 83.

Sound as many of these considerations undoubtedly are, they come from

the Renan, who wrote in the years 1848-9 _L’Avenir de la Science_. He

lived long enough to see that these truths had complements, that there

might be, even ethically, another side. In speaking of Progress this

has been noted: in his later years he forecasted the coming of an era

of egoism, of national and industrial selfishness, working itself out

in policies of military imperialism among the nations, and of economic

greed and tyranny among the proletariat. His remarks about the virtuous

action of the worker bettering his lot were inspired by the socialism

of Saint-Simon. Renan did not at that time raise in his own mind the

question of the workers themselves carrying their reaction so far, that

it, although just at first, might reach a point where it became a

dictatorship decreed by self-interest alone. It is in Renouvier that we

find this danger more clearly indicated. In so far as Renan felt it,

his solution was that which he suggested for the elimination of all

social wickedness— namely, the increase of education. He looked upon

wickedness as a symptom of a lack of culture, particularly the lack of

any moral teaching.

It was precisely this point, the education of the democracy, morally no

less than intellectually, which presented a certain difficulty to the

French Republic when, after several unsuccessful attempts, the plan for

state education of a compulsory, gratuitous and secular character was

carried in 1882, largely through the efforts of Jules Ferry.[4]

[4] In 1848 Hippolyle Carnot had this plan ready. The fall of the

Ministry, in which he was Minister of Education, was due partly to the

discussion raised by Renouvier’s book (see p. 61 of the present work).

With the fall of the Ministry, and in 1851, of the Republic, the

scheme went too. France had to wait eleven years longer than England

for free, compulsory education. Her educational problem has always

been complicated by the attitude of the Roman Catholic Church to

religious education and its hostility to “lay” schools. Brilliant as

France is intellectually, there are numbers of her people who do not

read or write owing to the delay of compulsory state education. The

latest census, that of 1921, asked the question, “_Savez-vous à la

fois lire et écrire?_” in order to estimate this number.

II

The great moralist of our period was Renouvier. Not only, as we have

already seen, did ethical considerations mark and colour his whole

thought, but he set forth those considerations themselves with a

remarkable power. His treatise in two volumes on _The Science of

Ethics_ is one of the most noteworthy contributions to ethical thought

which has been made in modern times. Although half a century has

elapsed since its publication on the eve of the Franco-Prussian War,

its intense pre-occupation with the problems which beset our modern

industrial civilisation, its profound judgments and discussions

concerning subjects so vital to the world of to-day (such as the

relations of the sexes, marriage, sex-ethics, civil liberty, property,

communism, state intervention, socialist ideals, nationalism, war, the

modern idea of the State, and international law), give to it a value,

which very few works upon the subject possess. Long as the work is, it

has the merit of thoroughness, and difficulties are not slurred over,

but stated frankly, and some endeavours are made to overcome them.

Consequently, it is a work which amply repays careful study. It is

almost presumption to attempt in a few pages to summarise Renouvier’s

important treatise. Some estimate of its significance is, however,

vital to our history.

The title itself is noteworthy and must at that date have appeared more

striking than it does to us now by its claim that there is a _science_

of ethics.[5] We are accustomed to regard physics, mathematics and even

logic as entitled to the name Sciences. Can we legitimately speak of a

Science of Ethics?

[5] It is interesting for comparative study to note that Leslie

Stephen’s _Science of Ethics_ was a much later production than

Renouvier’s treatise, appearing thirteen years later.

Renouvier insists that we can. Morality deals with facts, although they

are not embraced by the categories of number, extension, duration or

becoming (as mathematical and physical data), but rather by those of

causality, finality and consciousness. The facts “are not the natural

being of things, but the _devoir-être_ of the human will, the

_devoir-faire_ of persons, and the devoir-être of things in so far as

they depend upon persons.”[6] Personal effort, initiative and

responsibility lie at the basis of all ethics. Morality is a

construction, like every science, partly individual and partly

collective; it must lay down postulates, and if it is to justify the

claim to be a science, these postulates must be such as to command a

_consensus gentium_. Further, if ethics is to be scientifically based

it must be independent. In the past this has unfortunately not been the

case, for history shows us ethics bound up with some system of religion

or metaphysics. If ethics is to be established as a science, Renouvier

points out that it must be free from all hypothesis of an irrelevant

character, such as cosmological speculations and theological dogmas.

Renouvier’s insistence upon the independence of ethics was followed up

in an even clearer and more trenchant manner by Guyau in his famous

_Esquisse d’une Morale sans Obligation ni Sanction_.

[6] _Science de la Morale_, vol. I, p. 10.

Although, generally, ethics has suffered by reason of its alliance to

theological and metaphysical systems, Renouvier affirms that, in this

connection, there is one philosophy which is not open to

objection—namely, the Critical Philosophy of Kant. This is because it

subordinates all the unknown to phenomena, all phenomena to

consciousness, and, within the sphere of consciousness itself,

subordinates the speculative reason (_reinen Vernunft_) to the

practical reason (_praktischen Vernunft_). Its chief value, according

to Renouvier, lies precisely in this maintenance of the primacy of

moral considerations.

Two standpoints or lines of thought which are characteristic of

Renouvier, and whose presence we have already noted in our first

chapter, operate also in his ethics and govern his whole treatment of

the nature of morality and the problems of the moral life. Briefly

stated these are, firstly, his regard for the Critical Philosophy of

Kant; secondly, his view of man as “an order, a harmony of functions

reciprocally conditioned, and, by this fact, inseparable.”[7] As in his

treatment of Certitude, Renouvier showed this to be a psychological

complex into which entered elements not only of cognition, but of

feeling and will, the same insistence upon this unity of human nature

meets us again in his ethics. “Any ethical doctrine which definitely

splits up the elements of human nature is erroneous.”[8] Abstraction is

necessary and useful for any science, even the science of ethics, but

however far we may carry our scientific analysis, we must never lose

sight of the fact that we are dealing with abstractions. To lose sight

of the relationship of the data under observation or discussion is,

indeed, working away from the goal of scientific knowledge.

[7] _Science de la Morale_ (first edition, 1869), vol. I, p. 189.

[8] _Ibid_.

“Nothing,” remarks Renouvier in this connection, “has done more to

hinder the spread of Kant’s doctrines in the world than his assertion

that the morally good act must be performed absolutely without

feeling.” In view of man as he is, and in so far as we understand human

nature at all, it seems a vain and foolish statement. For Kant, Duty

was supreme, and the sole criterion of a good act was, for him, its

being done from a consciousness of Duty. He himself had to confess that

he did not know of any act which quite fulfilled this ideal of moral

action. With this view of morality Renouvier so heartily disagrees that

he is inclined to think that, so far from a purely rational act (if we

suppose such an act possible) being praiseworthy, he would almost give

greater moral worth to an act purely emotional, whose “motive” lay, not

in the idea of cold and stern Duty, but in the warm impulses of the

human heart, springing from emotion or feeling alone. Emotion is a part

of our nature—it has its role to play; the rational element enters as a

guide or controlling power. It is desirable that all acts should be so

guided, but that is far from stating, as does Kant, that they should

proceed solely from rational considerations. Ultimately reason and

sentiment unite in furthering the same ends. No adequate conception of

justice can be arrived at which is not accompanied by, and determined

by, correlatively, love of humanity. Kant rigorously excluded from

operation even the most noble feelings, whose intrusion should dim the

worth and glory of his moral act, devoid of feeling. But “without

good-will and mutual sympathy of persons, no society could ever have

established itself beyond the family, and scarcely the family

itself.”[9]

[9] _Science de la Morale_, vol. I, p. 184.

Renouvier confesses that in most of this treatment of the problem of

ethics he follows Kant[10] and although his admiration for Kant’s work

is not concealed, nevertheless he is not altogether satisfied with it,

and does not refrain from criticism. Indeed this reconstruction of the

Critical Philosophy in a revised version is the main effort of the

neo-critical philosopher, and it is constantly manifest.

[10] On p. 108 (vol. I) he refers to “_le philosophie que je suis, et

que j’aimerais de pouvoir suivre toujours_.”

He complains that Kant did not adhere rigorously to his own principles,

but vainly strove to give an objectivity to the laws of the practical

reason by connecting them to metaphysics. But, he says, “on the other

hand I maintain that the errors of Kant can be corrected in accordance

with the actual principles of his own philosophy. I continue my serious

attachment to this great reformer in spite of the very serious

modifications I am endeavouring to make in his work.”[11]

[11] _Science de la Morale_, vol. I, p. no. 110.

In the opinion of Renouvier, Kant’s work, the _Metaphysic of Morals_,

is marred by its neglect of history in its relation to ethics, by a

disfigured picture of right which does not make it any more applicable

to existing human conditions, also by the rather artificial and

complicated nature of its doctrines. He further reproaches Kant for

excessive rigorism and formalism, accompanied by a vagueness which

prevents the application of much of his teaching. This, it seems to us,

is a reproach which can be hurled easily at most of the ethical

teachers whom the world has seen. The incessant vagueness of

paradoxical elements in the utterances of such teachers has inevitably

compelled their disciples to find refuge in insisting upon a “right

spirit” of action, being devoid of any clear teaching as to what might

constitute right action in any particular case.

The rudiments of morality, according to Renouvier, are found in the

general notion of “obligation,” the sense of ought (_devoir-faire_)

which the human consciousness cannot escape. Any end of action is

conceived as a good for the agent himself; and because of liberty of

choice between actions or ends, or between both, certain of these are

deemed morally preferable. There are certain obligations which are

purely personal, elementary virtues demanded from any rational being.

It is his interest to preserve his body by abstaining from excesses; it

is his interest also to conserve and develop the faculties of his

nature. This is the point upon which Guyau makes such insistence in

common with Nietzsche—the development, expansion and intensification of

life. There are, Renouvier points out, duties towards oneself,

involving constant watchfulness and intelligence, so that the agent may

be truly self-possessed under all circumstances, maintaining an empire

over himself and not falling a constant victim to passion. “Greater is

he that ruleth himself than he that taketh a city,” are not vain words.

This is the rudimentary but essential virtue which Renouvier calls

“virtue militant”—moral courage. Intellectually it issues in Prudence

or Wisdom; on the side of sense and passion it is represented by

Temperance. These duties are present to conscience, which itself arises

from a doubling of consciousness. “We have the empirical person with

his experience of the past, and we have the ideal person—that is to

say, that which we wish to be,”[12] our ideal character. In so far as

we are conscientious we endeavour to bring “what we are” into line with

“what we conceive we should be.” The moral agent thus has duties

towards himself, obligations apart from any relation to or with others

of his kind.

[12] _Science de la Morale_, vol. I, p. 25.

This elementary morality is “essentially subjective,”[13] but this only

shows us that the most thorough-going individualism does not by its

neglect of others, its denial of altruism, thereby escape entirely from

moral obligations. There are always duties to one’s higher self, even

for a Robinson Crusoe. Frequently it is stated that duties and rights

are co-relative; but Renouvier regards Duty as more fundamental than

Right, which he uses only of man in association with his fellows.

Between persons, right and duty are in a synthesis, but the person

himself has no rights as distinct from duties to himself; he has no

right not to do what it is his duty to perform. From this it follows

that if his personal notion of obligation changes, he has no right

whatever to carry out actions in accordance with his judgments made

prior to his change of conscience, merely for the sake of consistency.

He is in this respect a law to him- self, for no man can act as a

conscience for another. The notion of rights only arises when others

are in question, and only too often the word has been abused by being

employed where simply power is meant, as, for example, in many views of

“natural right.” This procedure both sullies the usage of the term

Right and lowers the status of personality. It is always, Renouvier

claims, to “the inherent worth and force of personality, with its

powers of reflection, deliberation, liberty, self-possession and

self-direction, that one must return in order to understand each and

every virtue.”

[13] _Science de la Morale_, vol. I, p. 81.

Renouvier’s insistence upon the inherent worth, the dignity and moral

value of personality becomes clearer as he proceeds from his treatment

of the lonely individual (who, it may be objected, is to such an extent

an abstraction, as to resemble a fiction) to associated persons. The

reciprocal relation of two persons brings out the essential meaning of

Justice. Two personalities co-operating for a common end find

themselves each possessed of duties and, inversely therefore, of rights

which are simply duties regarded from the point of view not of the

agent, but of the other party. The neo-critical ethic here brings

itself definitely into line with the principle of practical reason of

the Critical Philosophy. This, says Renouvier,[14] is the profound

meaning of Justice, which consists in the fact that the moral agent,

instead of subordinating the ends of other people to his own, considers

the personalities[15] of others as similar to his own and possessing

their own ends which he must respect. This principle is that which Kant

formulated under the name of “practical obligation” or “supreme

principle.”[16] “Recognise the personality of others as equal in nature

and dignity, as being an end in itself, and consequently refrain from

employing the personality of others merely as a means to achieve your

own ends.”

[14] _Science de la Morale_, vol. I, pp. 82-83.

[15] Personality is a better translation, as it avoids the rather

legal and technical meaning of “person” in English.

[16] In a footnote to this passage, Renouvier states his own

preference for “moral obligation” rather than “imperative of

conscience.”

This doctrine of Personalism is an assertion not only of _Liberté_,

_Egalité_, _Fraternité_ as necessary and fundamental principles, but

also of the value of personality in general and the relativity of

“things.” It constitutes an ethical challenge to the existing state of

society which is not only inclined, in its headlong pursuit of wealth,

its fanatical worship of Mammon, to treat its workers as purely “means”

to the attainment of its end, but further minimises personality by its

legal codes and social conventions, which both operate far more readily

and efficiently in the defence of property than in the defence or

protection of personality. From the ethical standpoint the world is a

realm of ends or persons and all other values must be adjusted in

relation to these.

We have been told by religious ethical teachers that we must love our

neighbour as ourself, and have been reminded by moralists continually

of the conflict between Egoism and Altruism. Renouvier points out that

ultimately obligation towards others is reducible to a duty to oneself.

He does not do this from the point of view of Hobbes, who regarded all

actions, however altruistic they appeared to be, as founded purely upon

self-interest, but rather from the opposite standpoint. “We should make

our duty to others rank foremost among our duties to ourselves.”[17]

This is the transcendent duty through the performance of which we

achieve a realisation of the solidarity of persons, demonstrate an

objective value for our own existence, and gain a fuller and richer

life.

[17] _Science de la Morale_, vol. I, p. 85.