FIRST ATTITUDE OF THOUGHT TO OBJECTIVITY.
28.] The first of these attitudes of thought is seen in the method
which has no doubts and no sense of the contradiction in thought, or of
the hostility of thought against itself. It entertains an unquestioning
belief that reflection is the means of ascertaining the truth, and of
bringing the objects before the mind as they really are. And in this
belief it advances straight upon its objects, takes the materials
furnished by sense and perception, and reproduces them from itself as
facts of thought; and then, believing this result to be the truth, the
method is content. Philosophy in its earliest stages, all the sciences,
and even the daily action and movement of consciousness, live in this
faith.
27.] This method of thought has never become aware, of the antithesis
of subjective and objective: and to that extent there is nothing to
prevent its statements from possessing a genuinely philosophical and
speculative character, though it is just as possible that they may
never get beyond finite categories, or the stage where the antithesis
is still unresolved. In the present introduction the main question
for us is to observe this attitude of thought in its extreme form;
and we shall accordingly first of all examine its second and inferior
aspect as a philosophic system. One of the clearest instances of it,
and one lying nearest to ourselves, may be found in the Metaphysic of
the Past as it subsisted among us previous to the philosophy of Kant.
It is however only in reference to the history of philosophy that this
Metaphysic can be said to belong to the past: the thing is always and
at all places to be found, as the view which the abstract understanding
takes of the objects of reason. And it is in this point that the real
and immediate good lies of a closer examination of its main scope and
its _modus operandi._
28.] This metaphysical system took the laws and forms of thought to be
the fundamental laws and forms of things. It assumed that to think a
thing was the means of finding its very self and nature: and to that
extent it occupied higher ground than the Critical. Philosophy which
succeeded it. But in the first instance (i) _these terms of thought
were cut off from their connexion,_ their solidarity; each was believed
valid by itself and capable of serving as a predicate of the truth. It
was the general assumption of this metaphysic that a knowledge of the
Absolute was gained by assigning predicates to it. It neither inquired
what the terms of the understanding specially meant or what they were
worth, nor did it test the method which characterises the Absolute by
the assignment of predicates.
As an example of such predicates may be taken; Existence, in the
proposition, 'God has existence:' Finitude or Infinity, as in the
question, 'Is the world-finite or infinite?': Simple and Complex,
in the proposition, 'The soul is simple,'--or again, 'The thing is
a unity, a whole,' &c. Nobody asked whether such predicates had any
intrinsic and independent truth, or if the propositional form could be
a form of truth.
The Metaphysic of the past assumed, as unsophisticated belief always
does that thought apprehends the very self of things, and that things,
to become what they truly are, require to be thought. For Nature and
the human soul are a very Proteus in their perpetual transformations;
and it soon occurs to the observer that the first crude impression of
things is not their essential being.--This is a point of view the very
reverse of the result arrived at by the Critical Philosophy; a result,
of which it may be said, that it bade man go and feed on mere husks and
chaff.
We must look more closely into the procedure of that old metaphysic.
In the first place it never went beyond the province of the analytic
understanding. Without preliminary inquiry it adopted the abstract
categories of thought and let them rank as predicates of truth. But in
using the term thought we must not forget the difference between finite
or discursive thinking and the thinking which is infinite and rational.
The categories, as they meet us _prima facie_ and in isolation, are
finite forms. But truth is always infinite, and cannot be expressed
or presented to consciousness in finite terms. The phrase _infinite
thought_ may excite surprise, if we adhere to the modern conception
that thought is always limited. But it is, speaking rightly, the very
essence of thought to be infinite. The nominal explanation of calling
a thing finite is that it has an end, that it exists up to a certain
point only, where it comes into contact with, and is limited by, its
other. The finite therefore subsists in reference to its other, which
is its negation and presents itself as its limit. Now thought is always
in its own sphere; its relations are with itself, and it is its own
object. In having a thought for object, I am at home with myself.
The thinking power, the 'I,' is therefore infinite, because, when it
thinks, it is in relation to an object which is itself. Generally
speaking, an object means a something else, a negative confronting me.
But in the case where thought thinks itself, it has an object which
is at the same time no object: in other words, its objectivity is
suppressed and transformed into an idea. Thought, as thought, therefore
in its unmixed nature involves no limits; it is finite only when it
keeps to limited categories, which it believes to be ultimate. Infinite
or speculative thought, on the contrary, while it no less defines,
does in the very act of limiting and defining make that defect vanish.
And so infinity is not, as most frequently happens, to be conceived as
an abstract away and away for ever and ever, but in the simple manner
previously indicated.
The thinking of the old metaphysical system was finite. Its whole mode
of action was regulated by categories, the limits of which it believed
to be permanently fixed and not subject to any further negation. Thus,
one of its questions was: Has God existence? The question supposes that
existence is an altogether positive term, a sort of _ne plus ultra._
We shall see however at a later point that existence is by no means a
merely positive term, but one which is toe low for the Absolute Idea,
and unworthy of God. A second question in these metaphysical systems
was: Is the world finite or infinite? The very terms of the question
assume that the finite is a permanent contradictory to the infinite:
and one can easily see that, when they are so opposed, the infinite,
which of course ought to be the whole, only appears as a single aspect
and suffers restriction from the finite. But a restricted infinity is
itself only a finite. In the same way it was asked whether the soul was
simple or composite. Simpleness was, in other words, taken to be an
ultimate characteristic, giving expression to a whole truth. Far from
being so, simpleness is the expression of a half-truth, as one-sided
and abstract as existence:--a term of thought, which, as we shall
hereafter see, is itself untrue and hence unable to hold truth. If the
soul be viewed as merely and abstractly simple, it is characterised in
an inadequate and finite way.
It was therefore the main question of the pre-Kantian metaphysic to
discover whether predicates of the kind mentioned were to be ascribed
to its objects. Now these predicates are after all only limited
formulae of the understanding which, instead of expressing the truth,
merely impose a limit. More than this, it should be noted that the
chief feature of the method lay in 'assigning' or 'attributing'
predicates to the object that was to be cognised, for example, to
God. But attribution is no more than an external reflection about the
object: the predicates by which the object is to be determined are
supplied from the resources of picture-thought, and are applied in
a mechanical way. Whereas, if we are to have genuine cognition, the
object must characterise its own self and not derive its predicates
from without. Even supposing we follow the method of predicating, the
mind cannot help feeling that predicates of this sort fail to exhaust
the object. From the same point of view the Orientals are quite correct
in calling God the many-named or the myriad-named One. One after
another of these finite categories leaves the soul unsatisfied, and
the Oriental sage is compelled unceasingly to seek for more and more
of such predicates. In finite things it is no doubt the case that they
have to be characterised through finite predicates: and with these
things the understanding finds proper scope for its special action.
Itself finite, it knows only the nature of the finite. Thus, when
I call some action a theft, I have characterised the action in its
essential facts: and such a knowledge is sufficient for the judge.
Similarly, finite things stand to each other as cause and effect,
force and exercise, and when they are apprehended in these categories,
they are known in their finitude. But the objects of reason cannot be
defined by these finite predicates. To try to do so was the defect of
the old metaphysic.
29.] Predicates of this kind, taken individually, have but a limited
range of meaning, and no one can fail to perceive how inadequate they
are, and how far they fall below the fulness of detail which our
imaginative thought gives, in the case, for example, of God, Mind, or
Nature. Besides, though the fact of their being all predicates of one
subject supplies them with a certain connexion, their several meanings
keep them apart: and consequently each is brought in as a stranger in
relation to the others.
The first of these defects the Orientals sought to remedy, when, for
example, they defined God by attributing to Him many names; but still
they felt that the number of names would have had to be infinite.
30.] (2) In the second place, _the metaphysical systems adopted a
wrong criterion._ Their objects were no doubt totalities which in
their own proper selves belong to reason,--that is, to the organised
and systematically-developed universe, of thought. But these
totalities--God, the Soul, the World,--were taken by the metaphysician
as subjects made and ready, to form the basis for an application of
the categories of the understanding. They were assumed from popular
conception. Accordingly popular conception was the only canon for
settling whether or not the predicates were suitable and sufficient.
31.] The common conceptions of God, the Soul, the World, may be
supposed to afford thought a firm and fast footing. They do not really
do so. Besides having, a particular and subjective character clinging
to them, and thus leaving room for great variety of interpretation,
they themselves first of all require a firm and fast definition by
thought. This may be seen in any of these propositions where the
predicate, or in philosophy the category, is needed to indicate what
the subject, or the conception we start with, is.
In such a sentence as 'God is eternal,' we begin with the conception of
God, not knowing as yet what he is: to tell us that, is the business of
the predicate. In the principles of logic, accordingly, where the terms
formulating the subject-matter are those of thought only, it is not
merely superfluous to make these categories predicates to propositions
in which God, or, still vaguer, the Absolute, is the subject, but it
would also have the disadvantage of suggesting another canon than
the nature of thought. Besides, the propositional form (and for
proposition, it would be more correct to substitute judgment) is not
suited to express the concrete--and the true is always concrete--or
the speculative. Every judgment is by its form one-sided and, to that
extent, false.
This metaphysic was not free or objective thinking. Instead of letting
the object freely and spontaneously expound its own characteristics,
metaphysic pre-supposed it ready-made. If any one wishes to know what
free thought means, he must go to Greek philosophy: for Scholasticism,
like these metaphysical systems, accepted its facts, and accepted them
as a dogma from the authority of the Church. We moderns, too, by our
whole up-bringing, have been initiated into ideas which it is extremely
difficult to overstep, on account of their far-reaching significance.
But the ancient philosophers were in a different position. They were
men who lived wholly in the perceptions of the senses, and who,
after their rejection of mythology and its fancies, pre-supposed
nothing but the heaven above and the earth around. In these material,
non-metaphysical surroundings, thought is free and enjoys its own
privacy,--cleared of everything material, and thoroughly at home. This
feeling that we are all our own is characteristic of free thought--of
that voyage into the open, where nothing is below us or above us, and
we stand in solitude with ourselves alone.
32.] (3) In the third place, _this system of metaphysic turned into
Dogmatism._ When our thought never ranges beyond narrow and rigid
terms, we are forced to assume that of two opposite assertions, such as
were the above propositions, the one must be true and the other false.
Dogmatism may be most simply described as the contrary of Scepticism.
The ancient Sceptics gave the name of Dogmatism to every philosophy
whatever holding a system of definite doctrine. In this large sense
Scepticism may apply the name even to philosophy which is properly
Speculative. But in the narrower sense, Dogmatism consists in the
tenacity which draws a hard and fast line between certain terms
and others opposite to them. We may see this clearly in the strict
'Either--or': for instance, The world is either finite or infinite;
but one of these two it must be. The contrary of this rigidity is the
characteristic of all Speculative truth. There no such inadequate
formulae are allowed, nor can they possibly exhaust it. These formulae
Speculative truth holds in union as a totality, whereas, Dogmatism
invests them in their isolation with a title to fixity and truth.
It often happens in philosophy that the half-truth takes its place
beside the whole truth and assumes on its own account the position
of something permanent. But the fact is that the half-truth, instead
of being a fixed or self-subsistent principle, is a mere element
absolved and included in the whole. The metaphysic of understanding is
dogmatic, because it maintains half-truths in their isolation: whereas
the idealism of speculative philosophy carries out the principle of
totality and shows that it can reach beyond the inadequate formularies
of abstract thought. Thus idealism would say:--The soul is neither
finite only, nor infinite only; it is really the one just as much as
the other, and in that way neither the one nor the other. In other
words; such formularies in their isolation are inadmissible, and only
come into account as formative elements in a larger notion. Such
idealism we see even in the ordinary phases of consciousness. Thus we
say of sensible things, that they are changeable: that is, they _are,_
but it is equally true that they are _not._ We show more obstinacy
in dealing with the categories of the understanding. These are terms
which we believe to be somewhat firmer--or even absolutely firm and
fast. We look upon them as separated from each other by an infinite
chasm, so that opposite categories can never get at each other. The
battle of reason is the struggle to break up the rigidity to which the
understanding has reduced everything.
33.] The _first_ part of this metaphysic in its systematic form is
Ontology, or the doctrine of the abstract characteristics of Being.
The multitude of these characteristics, and the limits set to their
applicability, are not founded upon any principle. They have in
consequence to be enumerated as experience and circumstances direct,
and the import ascribed to them is founded only upon common sensualised
conceptions, upon assertions that particular words are used in a
particular sense, and even perhaps upon etymology. If experience
pronounces the list to be complete, and if the usage of language, by
its agreement, shows the analysis to be correct, the metaphysician is
satisfied; and the intrinsic and independent truth and necessity of
such characteristics is never made a matter of investigation at all.
To ask if being, existence, finitude, simplicity, complexity, &c. are
notions intrinsically and independently true, must surprise those who
believe that a question about truth can only concern propositions (as
to whether a notion is or is not with truth to be attributed, as the
phrase is, to a subject), and that falsehood lies in the contradiction
existing between the subject in our ideas, and the notion to be
predicated of it. Now as the notion is concrete, it and every character
of it in general is essentially a self-contained unity of distinct
characteristics. If truth then were nothing more than the absence
of contradiction, it would be first of all necessary in the case of
every-notion to examine whether it, taken individually, did not contain
this sort of intrinsic contradiction.
34.] The _second_ branch of the metaphysical system was Rational
Psychology or Pneumatology. It dealt with the metaphysical nature of
the Soul,--that is, of the Mind regarded as a thing. It expected to
find immortality in a sphere dominated by the laws of composition,
time, qualitative change, and quantitative increase or decrease.
The name 'rational,' given to this species of psychology, served
to contrast it with empirical modes of observing the phenomena of
the soul. Rational psychology viewed the soul in its metaphysical
nature, and through the categories supplied by abstract thought. The
rationalists endeavoured to ascertain the inner nature of the soul as
it is in itself and as it is for thought.--In philosophy at present we
hear little of the soul: the favourite term now is mind (spirit). The
two are distinct, soul being as it were the middle term between body
and spirit, or the bond between the two. The mind, as soul, is immersed
in corporeity, and the soul is the animating principle of the body.
The pre-Kantian metaphysic, we say, viewed the soul as a thing. 'Thing'
is a very ambiguous word. By a thing, we mean, firstly, an immediate
existence, something we represent in sensuous form: and in this meaning
the term has been applied to the soul. Hence the question regarding the
seat of the soul. Of course, if the soul have a seat, it is in space
and sensuously envisaged. So, too, if the soul be viewed as a thing,
we can ask whether the soul is simple or composite. The question is
important as bearing on the immortality of the soul, which is supposed
to depend on the absence of composition. But the fact is, that in
abstract simplicity we have a category, which as little corresponds to
the nature of the soul, as that of compositeness.
One word on the relation of rational to empirical psychology. The
former, because it sets itself to apply thought to cognise mind and
even to demonstrate the result of such thinking, is the higher; whereas
empirical psychology starts from perception, and only recounts and
describes what perception supplies. But if we propose to think the
mind, we must not be quite so shy of its special phenomena. Mind is
essentially active in the same sense as the Schoolmen said that God
is 'absolute actuosity.' But if the mind is active it must as it were
utter itself. It is wrong therefore to take the mind for a processless
_ens,_ as did the old metaphysic which divided the processless inward
life of the mind from its outward life. The mind, of all things, must
be looked at in its concrete actuality, in its energy; and in such a
way that its manifestations are seen to be determined by its inward
force.
35.] The _third_ branch of metaphysics was Cosmology. The topics
it embraced were the world, its contingency, necessity, eternity,
limitation in time and space: the laws (only formal) of its changes:
the freedom of man and the origin of evil.
To these topics it applied what were believed to be thorough-going
contrasts: such as contingency and necessity; external and internal
necessity; efficient and final cause, or causality in general and
design; essence or substance and phenomenon; form and matter; freedom
and necessity; happiness and pain; good and evil.
The object of Cosmology comprised not merely Nature, but Mind too, in
its external complication in its phenomenon--in fact, existence in
general, or the sum of finite things. This object however it viewed not
as a concrete whole, but only under certain abstract points of view.
Thus the questions Cosmology attempted to solve were such as these: Is
accident or necessity dominant in the world? Is the world eternal or
created? It was therefore a chief concern of this study to lay down
what were called general Cosmological laws: for instance, that Nature
does not act by fits and starts. And by fits and starts (_saltus_) they
meant a qualitative difference or qualitative alteration showing itself
without any antecedent determining mean: whereas, on the contrary, a
gradual change (of quantity) is obviously not without intermediation.
In regard to Mind as it makes itself felt in the world, the questions
which Cosmology chiefly discussed turned upon the freedom of man and
the origin of evil. Nobody can deny that these are questions of the
highest importance. But to give them a satisfactory answer, it is above
all things necessary not to claim finality for the abstract formulae
of understanding, or to suppose that each of the two terms in an
antithesis has an independent-subsistence or can be treated in its
isolation as a complete and self-centred truth. This however is the
general position taken by the metaphysicians before Kant, and appears
in their cosmological discussions, which for that reason were incapable
of compassing their purpose, to understand the phenomena of the world.
Observe how they proceed with the distinction between freedom and
necessity, in their application of these categories to Nature and
Mind. Nature they regard as subject in its workings to necessity;
Mind they hold to be free. No doubt there is a real foundation for
this distinction in the very core of the Mind itself: but freedom and
necessity, when thus abstractly opposed, are terms applicable only in
the finite world to which, as such, they belong. A freedom involving no
necessity, and mere necessity without freedom, are abstract and in this
way untrue formulae of [thought. Freedom is no blank indeterminateness:
essentially concrete, and unvaryingly self-determinate, it is so far at
the same time necessary. Necessity, again, in the ordinary acceptation
of the term in popular philosophy, means determination from without
only,--as in finite mechanics, where a body moves only when it is
struck by another body, and moves in the direction communicated to it
by the impact.--This however is a merely external necessity, not the
real inward necessity which is identical with freedom.
The case is similar with the contrast of Good and Evil,--the favourite
contrast of the introspective modern world. If we regard Evil as
possessing a fixity of its own, apart and distinct from Good, we are
to a certain extent right: there is an opposition between them: nor
do those who maintain the apparent and relative character of the
opposition mean that Evil and Good in the Absolute are one, or, in
accordance with the modern phrase, that a thing first becomes evil
from our way of looking at it. The error arises when we take Evil as a
permanent positive, instead of--what it really is--a negative which,
though it would fain assert itself, has no real persistence, and is, in
fact, only the absolute sham-existence of negativity in itself.
36.] The _fourth_ branch of metaphysics is Natural or Rational
Theology. The notion of God, or God as a possible being, the proofs of
his existence, and his properties, formed the study of this branch.
(a) When understanding thus discusses the Deity, its main purpose is
to find what predicates correspond or not to the fact we have in our
imagination as God. And in so doing it assumes the contrast between
positive and negative to be absolute; and hence, in the long run,
nothing is left for the notion as understanding takes it, but the empty
abstraction of indeterminate Being, of mere reality or positivity, the
lifeless product of modern 'Deism.'
(b) The method of demonstration employed in finite knowledge must
always lead to an inversion of the true order. For it requires the
statement of some objective ground for God's being, which thus acquires
the appearance of being derived from something else. This mode of
proof, guided as it is by the canon of mere analytical identity,
is embarrassed by the difficulty of passing from the finite to the
infinite. Either the finitude of the existing world, which is left as
much a fact as it was before, clings to the notion of Deity, and God
has to be defined as the immediate substance of that world,--which is
Pantheism: or He remains an object set over against the subject, and in
this way, finite,--which is Dualism.
(c) The attributes of God which ought to be various and precise, had,
properly speaking, sunk and disappeared in the abstract notion of pure
reality, of indeterminate Being. Yet in our material thought, the
finite world continues, meanwhile, to have a real being, with God as a
sort of antithesis: and thus arises the further picture of different
relations of God to the world. These, formulated as properties, must,
on the one hand, as relations to finite circumstances, themselves
possess a finite character (giving us such properties as just,
gracious, mighty, wise, &c.); on the other hand they must be infinite.
Now on this level of thought the only means, and a hazy one, of
reconciling these opposing requirements was quantitative exaltation
of the properties, forcing them into indeterminateness,--into the
_sensus eminentior._ But it was an expedient which really destroyed the
property and left a mere name.
The object of the old metaphysical theology was to see how far
unassisted reason could go in the knowledge of God. Certainly a
reason-derived knowledge of God is the highest problem of philosophy.
The earliest teachings of religion are figurate conceptions of God.
These conceptions, as the Creed arranges them, are imparted to us in
youth. They are the doctrines of our religion, and in so far as the
individual rests his faith on these doctrines and feels them to be
the truth, he has all he needs as a Christian. Such is faith: and the
science of this faith is Theology. But until Theology is something more
than a bare enumeration and compilation of these doctrines _ab extra,_
it has no right to the title of science. Even the method so much in
vogue at present--the purely historical mode of treatment--which for
example reports what has been said by this or the other Father of the
Church--does not invest theology with a scientific character. To get
that, we must go on to comprehend the facts by thought,--which is the
business of philosophy. Genuine theology is thus at the same time a
real philosophy of religion, as it was, we may add, in the Middle Ages.
And now let us examine this rational theology more narrowly. It was
a science which approached God not by reason but by understanding,
and, in its mode of thought, employed the terms without any sense of
their mutual limitations and connexions. The notion of God formed the
subject of discussion; and yet the criterion of our knowledge was
derived from such an extraneous source as the materialised conception
of God. Now thought must be free in its movements. It is no doubt to
be remembered, that the result of independent thought harmonises with
the import of the Christian religion:--for the Christian religion is
a revelation of reason. But such a harmony surpassed the efforts of
rational theology. It proposed to define the figurate conception of God
in terms of thought; but it resulted in a notion of God which was what
we may call the abstract of positivity or reality, to the exclusion
of all negation. God was accordingly defined to be the most real of
all beings. Any one can see however that this most real of beings, in
which negation forms no part, is the very opposite of what it ought
to be and of what understanding supposes it to be. Instead of being
rich and full above all measure, it is so narrowly conceived that it
is, on the contrary, extremely poor and altogether empty. It is with
reason that the heart craves a concrete body of truth; but without
definite feature, that is, without negation, contained in the notion,
there can only be an abstraction. When the notion of God is apprehended
only as that of the abstract or most real being, God is, as it were,
relegated to another world beyond: and to speak of a knowledge of him
would be meaningless. Where there is no definite quality, knowledge is
impossible. Mere light is mere darkness.
The second problem of rational theology was to prove the existence
of God. Now, in this matter, the main point to be noted is
that demonstration, as the understanding employs it, means the
dependence of one truth on another. In such proofs we have a
pre-supposition--something firm and fast, from which something else
follows; we exhibit the dependence of some truth from an assumed
starting-point. Hence, if this mode of demonstration is applied to the
existence of God, it can only mean that the being of God is to depend
on other terms, which will then constitute the ground of his being.
It is at once evident that this will lead I to some mistake: for God
must be simply and solely the I ground of everything, and in so far
not dependent upon anything else. And a perception of this danger has
in modern times led some to say that God's existence is not capable
of proof, but must be immediately or intuitively apprehended. Reason,
however, and even sound common sense give demonstration a meaning quite
different from that of the understanding. The demonstration of reason
no doubt starts from something which is not God. But, as it advances,
it does not leave the starting-point a mere unexplained fact, which is
what it was. On the contrary it exhibits that point as derivative and
called into being, and then God is seen to be primary, truly immediate
and self-subsisting, with the means of derivation wrapt up and absorbed
in himself. Those who say: 'Consider Nature, and Nature will-lead you
to God; you will find an absolute final cause: 'do not mean that God
is something derivative: they mean that it is we who proceed to God
himself from another; and in this way God, though the consequence, is
also the absolute' ground of the initial step. The relation of the two
things is reversed; and what came as a consequence, being shown to be
an antecedent, the original antecedent is reduced to a consequence.
This is always the way, moreover, whenever reason demonstrates.
If in the light of the present discussion we cast one glance more on
the metaphysical method as a whole, we find its main characteristic
was to make abstract identity its principle and to try to apprehend
the objects of reason by the abstract and finite categories of the
understanding. But this infinite of the understanding, this pure
essence, is still finite: it has excluded all the variety of particular
things, which thus limit and deny it. Instead of winning a concrete,
this metaphysic stuck fast on an abstract, identity. Its good point was
the perception that thought alone constitutes the essence of all that
is. It derived its materials from earlier philosophers, particularly
the Schoolmen. In speculative philosophy the understanding undoubtedly
forms a stage, but not a stage at which we should keep for ever
standing. Plato is no metaphysician of this imperfect type, still less
Aristotle, although the contrary is generally believed.