THE GERMAN ILLUMINATION.
%1. The Contemporaries of Leibnitz.%
The period between Kepler and Leibnitz in Germany was very poor in
noteworthy philosophical phenomena. The physicist, Christoph Sturm[1] of
Altdorf (died 1703), was a follower of Descartes, Joachim Jungius[2] (died
1657) a follower of Bacon, though not denying with the latter the value of
the mathematical method in natural science. Hieronymus Hirnhaym, Abbot at
Prague (_The Plague of the Human Race, or the Vanity of Human Learning_,
1676), declared the thirst for knowledge of his age a dangerous disease,
knowledge uncertain, since no reliance can be placed on sense-perception
and the principles of thought contradict the doctrines of faith, and
harmful, since it contributes nothing to salvation, but makes its
possessors proud and draws them away from piety. He maintained, further,
that divine authority is the only refuge for man, and moral life the true
science. Side by side with such skepticism Hirnhaym's contemporary, the
poet Angelus Silesius (Joh. Scheffler, died 1667), defended mysticism.
The teacher of natural law, Samuel Pufendorf[3] (1632-94, professor in
Heidelberg and Lund, died in Berlin), aimed to mediate between Grotius and
Hobbes. Natural law is demonstrable, its real ground is the will of God,
its noëtical ground (not revelation, but) reason and observation of the
(social) nature of man, and the fundamental law the promotion of universal
good. The individual must not violate the interests of society in
satisfying his impulse to self-preservation, because his own interests
require social existence, and, consequently, respect for its conditions.
[Footnote 1: Chr. Sturm: _Physica Conciliatrix_, 1687; _Physica Electiva_,
vol. i. 1697, vol. ii. with preface by Chr. Wolff, 1722; _Compendium
Universalium seu Metaphysica Euclidea_.]
[Footnote 2: J. Jung _Logica Hamburgiensis_, 1638; cf. Guhrauer, 1859.]
[Footnote 3: Pufendorf: _Elementa Juris Universalis_, 1660; _De Statu
Imperii Germanici_, 1667, under the pseudonym Monzambano; _De Jure Natures
et Gentium_ 1672, and an abstract of this, _De Officio Hominis et Civis_,
1673.]
Pufendorf was followed by Christian Thomasius[1] (1655-1728; professor of
law at the University of Halle from its foundation in 1694). He was
the first instructor who ventured to deliver lectures in the German
language--in Leipsic from 1687--and at the same time was the editor of the
first learned journal in German (_Teutsche Monate, Geschichte der Weisheit
und Thorheit_). In Thomasius the characteristic features of the German
Illumination first came out in full distinctness, namely, the avoidance of
scholasticism in expression and argument, the direct relation of knowledge
to life, sober rationality in thinking, heedless eclecticism, and the
demand for religious tolerance. Philosophy must be generally intelligible,
and practically useful, knowledge of the world (not of God); its form, free
and tasteful ratiocination; its object, man and morals; its first duty,
culture, not learning; its highest aim, happiness; its organ and the
criterion of every truth, common sense. He alone gains true knowledge who
frees his understanding from prejudice and judges only after examining for
himself; the joy of mental peace is given to no one who does not free his
heart from foolish desires and vehement passions, and devote it to virtue,
to "rational love." The positive doctrines of Thomasius have less interest
than this general standpoint, which prefigured the succeeding period. He
divides practical philosophy into natural law which treats of the _justum_,
politics which treats of the _decorum_, and ethics which treats of the
_honestum_. Justice bids us, Do not to others what you would not that
others should do to you; decorum, Do to others as you would that they
should do to you; and morality, Do to yourself as you would that others
should do to themselves. The first two laws relate to external, the third
to internal, peace; legal duties may be enforced by compulsion, moral
duties not.
[Footnote 1: Thomasius: _Institutionum Jurisprudentiae Divinae Libri Tres_,
1688; _Fundamenta Juris Naturae et Gentium_, 1705, both in Latin; in
German, appeared in 1691-96 the _Introduction and Application of Rational
and Moral Philosophy_.]
If Thomasius was the leader of those popular philosophers who, unconcerned
about systematic continuity, discussed every question separately before
the tribunal of common sense, and found in their lack of allegiance to
any philosophical sect a sufficient guarantee of the unprejudicedness
and impartiality of their reflections, Count Walter von Tschirnhausen
(1651-1708; _Medecina Mentis sive Artis Inveniendi Praecepta Generalia_,
1687), a friend of Spinoza and Leibnitz, became the prototype of another
group of the philosophers of the Illumination. This group favored
eclecticism of a more scientific kind, by starting from considerations
of method and seeking to overcome the antithesis between rationalism and
empiricism. While fully persuaded of the validity and necessity of the
mathematical method in philosophical investigations, as well as elsewhere,
Tschirnhausen still holds it indispensable that the deductions, on the one
hand, start from empirical facts, and, on the other, that they be confirmed
by experiments. Inner experience gives us four primal facts, of which the
chief is the certainty of self-consciousness. The second, that many things
affect us agreeably and many disagreeably, is the basis of morals; the
third, that some things are comprehensible to us and others not, the
basis of logic; the fourth, that through the senses we passively receive
impressions from without, the basis of the empirical sciences, in
particular, of physics. Consequently consciousness, will, understanding,
and sensuous representation _(imaginatio)_, together with corporeality,
are our fundamental concepts. Not perception _(perceptio)_, but conception
_(conceptio)_ alone gives science; that which we can "conceive" is true;
the understanding as such cannot err, but undoubtedly the imagination can
lead us to confuse the merely perceived with that which is conceived. The
method of science is geometrical demonstration, which starts from
(genetic) definitions, and from their analysis obtains axioms, from their
combination, theorems. That which is thus proved _a priori_ must, as
already remarked, be confirmed _a posteriori_. The highest of all sciences
is natural philosophy, since it considers not sense-objects only, not (like
mathematics) the objects of reason only, but the actual itself in its true
character. Hence it is the divine science, while the human sciences busy
themselves only with our ideas or the relations of things to us.
%2. Christian Wolff.%
Christian Wolff was born at Breslau in 1679, studied theology at Jena, and
in addition mathematics and philosophy, habilitated at Leipsic in 1703,
and obtained, through the instrumentality of Leibnitz, a professorship of
mathematics at Halle, in 1706. His lectures, which soon extended themselves
over all philosophical disciplines, met with great success. This
popularity, as well as the rationalistic tendency of his thinking, aroused
the disfavor of the pietists, Francke and Lange, who succeeded, in 1723, in
securing from King Frederick William I. his removal from his chair and his
expulsion from the kingdom. Finding a refuge in Marburg, he was called back
to Halle by Frederick the Great a short time after the latter's ascension
of the throne. Here he taught and wrote zealously until his death in 1754.
In his lectures, as well as in half of his writings,[1] he followed the
example of Thomasius in using the German language, which he prepared in
a most praiseworthy manner for the expression of philosophical ideas and
furnished with a large part of the technical terms current to-day. Thus
the terms _Verhältniss_ (relation), _Vorstellung_ (representation, idea),
_Bewusstsein_ (consciousness), _stetig (continuus)_, come from Wolff, as
well as the distinction between _Kraft_ (power) and _Vermögen_ (faculty),
and between _Grund_ (ground) and _Ursache_ (cause),[2] Another great
service consisted in the reduction of the philosophy of Leibnitz to a
systematic form, by which he secured a dissemination for it which otherwise
it would scarcely have obtained. But he did not possess sufficient
originality to contribute anything remarkable of his own, and it showed
little self-knowledge when he became indignant at the designation
Leibnitzio-Wolffian philosophy, which was first used by his pupil,
Bilfinger. The alterations which he made in the doctrines of Leibnitz are
far from being improvements, and the parts which he rejected are just the
most characteristic and thoughtful of all. Such at least is the opinion
of thinkers to-day, though this mutilation and leveling down of the most
daring of Leibnitz's hypotheses was perhaps entirely advantageous for
Wolff's impression on his contemporaries; what appeared questionable to him
would no doubt have repelled them also. Leibnitz's two leading ideas, the
theory of monads and the pre-established harmony, were most of all affected
by this process of toning down. Wolff weakens the former by attributing
a representative power only to actual souls, which are capable of
consciousness, although he holds that bodies are compounded of simple
beings and that the latter are endowed with (a not further defined) force.
He limits the application of the pre-established harmony to the relation of
body and soul, which to Leibnitz was only a case especially favorable for
the illustration of the hypothesis. By such trifling the real meaning of
both these ideas is sacrificed and their bloom rubbed off.--While depth
is lacking in Wolff's thinking, he is remarkable for his power of
systematization, his persevering diligence, and his logical earnestness,
so that the praise bestowed on him by Kant, that he was the author of the
spirit of thoroughness in Germany, was well deserved. He, too, finds
the end of philosophy in the enlightenment of the understanding, the
improvement of the heart, and, ultimately, in the promotion of the
happiness of mankind. But while Thomasius demanded as a condition of such
universal intelligibility and usefulness that, discarding the scholastic
garb, philosophy should appear in the form of easy ratiocination, Wolff, on
the other hand, regards methodical procedure and certainty in results as
indispensable to its usefulness, and, in order to this certainty,
insists on distinctness of conception and cogency of proof. He demands
a _philosophia et certa et utilis_. If, finally, his methodical
deliberateness, especially in his later works, leads him into wearisome
diffuseness, this pedantry is made good by his genuinely German, honest
spirit, which manifests itself agreeably in his judgment on practical
questions.
[Footnote 1: _Reasonable Thoughts on the Powers of the Human
Understanding_, 1712; _Reasonable Thoughts on God, the World, and the
Soul of Man, also on All Things in General_, 1719 (_Notes_ to this 1724);
_Reasonable Thoughts on the Conduct of Man_, 1720; _Reasonable Thoughts on
the Social Life of Man_, 1721; _Reasonable Thoughts on the Operations of
Nature_, 1723; _Reasonable Thoughts on the Purposes of Natural Things_,
1724; _Reasonable Thoughts on the Parts of Man, Animals, and Plants_, 1725,
all in German. Besides these there are extensive Latin treatises (1728-53)
on Logic, Ontology, Cosmology, Empirical and Rational Psychology, Natural
Theology, and all branches of Practical Philosophy. Detailed extracts may
be found in Erdmann's _Versuch einer wissenschaftlichen Darstellung_, ii.
2. The best account of the Wolffian philosophy has been given by Zeller
(pp. 211-273).]
[Footnote 2: Eucken, _Geschichte der Terminologie_^ pp. 133-134.]
Wolff reaches his division of the sciences by combining the two
psychological antitheses--the higher (rational) and lower (sensuous)
faculties of cognition and appetition. On the first is based the
distinction between the rational and the empirical or historical method of
treatment. The latter concerns itself with the actual, the former with the
possible and necessary, or the grounds of the actual; the one observes and
describes, the other deduces. The antithesis of cognition and appetition
gives the basis for the division into theoretical and practical philosophy.
The former, called metaphysics, is divided into a general part, which
treats of being in general whether it be of a corporeal or a spiritual
nature, and three special parts, according to their principal subjects, the
world, the soul, and God,--hence into ontology, cosmology, psychology, and
theology. The science which establishes rules for action and regards man as
an individual being, as a citizen, and as the head or member of a family,
is divided (after Aristotle) into ethics, politics, and economics, which
are preceded by practical philosophy in general, and by natural law. The
introduction to the two principal parts is furnished by formal logic.
Philosophy is the science of the possible, _i.e._, of that which contains
no contradiction; it is science from concepts, its principle, the law of
identity, its form, demonstration, and its instrument, analysis, which in
the predicate explicates the determinations contained in the concept of the
subject. In order to confirm that which has been deduced from pure concepts
by the facts of experience, _psychologia rationalis_ is supplemented by
_psychologia empirica_, rational cosmology by empirical physics, and
speculative theology by an experimental doctrine of God (teleology). Wolff
gives no explanation how it comes about that the deliverances of the
reason agree so beautifully with the facts of experience; in his naïve,
unquestioning belief in the infallibility of the reason he is a typical
dogmatist.
A closer examination of the Wolffian philosophy seems unnecessary, since
its most essential portions have already been discussed under Leibnitz and
since it will be necessary to recur to certain points in our chapter on
Kant. Therefore, referring the reader to the detailed accounts in Erdmann
and Zeller, we shall only note that Wolff's ethics opposes the principle
of perfection to the English principle of happiness (that is good which
perfects man's condition, and this is life in conformity with nature or
reason, with which happiness is necessarily connected); that he makes the
will determined by the understanding, and assigns ignorance as the cause of
sin; that his philosophy of religion, which argues for a natural religion
in addition to revealed religion (experiential and rational proofs for the
existence of God, and a deduction of his attributes), and sets up certain
tests for the genuineness of revelation, favors a rationalism which was
flexible enough to allow his pupils either to take part in orthodox
movements or to advance to a deism hostile to the Church.
Among the followers of Wolff, Alexander Baumgarten (1714-62) deserves
the first place, as the founder of German aesthetics _(Aesthetica_, 1750
_seq_.). He perceives a gap in the system of the philosophical sciences.
This contains in ethics a guide to right volition, and in logic a guide
to correct thinking, but there are no directions for correct feeling, no
aesthetic. The beautiful would form the subject of this discipline. For the
perfection (the harmonious unity of a manifold, which is pleasant to the
spectator), which manifests itself to the will as the good and to the
clear thinking of the understanding as the true, appears--according to
Leibnitz--to confused sensuous perception as beauty. From this on the name
aesthetics was established for the theory of the beautiful, though in
Kant's great work it is used in its literal meaning as the doctrine of
sense, of the faculty of sensations or intuitions. Baumgarten's pupils
and followers, the aesthetic writer G.F. Meier at Halle, Baumeister, and
others, contributed like himself to the dissemination of the Wolffian
system by their manuals on different branches of philosophy. To this school
belong also the following: Thümmig (_Institutiones Philosophia Wolfianae_,
1725-26); the theologian Siegmund Baumgarten at Halle, the elder brother
of the aesthete; the mathematician Martin Knutzen, Kant's teacher;[1] the
literary historian Gottsched [2] at Leipsic; and G. Ploucquet, who in
his _Methodus Calculandi in Logicis_, with a _Commentatio de Arte
Characteristica Universali_ appended to his _Principia de Substantiis et
Phaenomenis_, 1753, took up again Leibnitz's cherished plan for a logical
calculus and a universal symbolic language. The psychologist Kasimir von
Creuz (_Essay on the Soul_, in two parts, 1753-54), and J.H. Lambert,[3]
whom Kant deemed worthy of a detailed correspondence, take up a more
independent position, both demanding that the Wolffian rationalism be
supplemented by the empiricism of Locke, and the latter, moreover, in
anticipation of the Critique of Reason, pointing very definitely to the
distinction between content and form as the salient point in the theory of
knowledge.
[Footnote 1: Benno Erdmann, _M. Knutzen und seine Zeit_, 1876.]
[Footnote 2: Th. W. Danzel, _Gottsched und seine Zeit_, 1848.]
[Footnote 3: Lambert: _Cosmological Letters_, 1761; _New Organon_, 1764;
_Groundwork of Architectonics_, 1771. Bernoulli edited some of Lambert's
papers and his correspondence.]
Among the opponents of the Wolffian philosophy, all of whom favor
eclecticism, A. Rüdiger[1] and Chr. Aug. Crusius,[2] who was influenced by
Rüdiger, and, like him, a professor at Leipsic, are the most important.
Rüdiger divides philosophy according to its objects, "wisdom, justice,
prudence," into three parts--the science of nature (which must avoid
one-sided mechanical views, and employ ether, air, and spirit as principles
of explanation); the science of duty (which, as metaphysics, treats of
duties toward God, as natural law, of duties to our neighbor, and deduces
both from the primary duty of obedience to the will of God); and the
science of the good (in which Rüdiger follows the treatise of the Spaniard,
Gracian, on practical wisdom). Crusius agrees with Rüdiger that mathematics
is the science of the possible, and philosophy the science of the actual,
and that the latter, instead of imitating to its own disadvantage the
deductive-analytical method of geometry, must, with the aid of experience
and with attention to the probability of its conclusions, rise to the
highest principles synthetically. Besides its deduction the determinism
of the Wolffian philosophy gave offense, for it was believed to endanger
morals, justice, and religion. The will, the special fundamental power of
the soul (consisting of the impulses to perfection, love, and knowledge),
is far from being determined by ideas; it is rather they which depend on
the will. The application of the principle of sufficient reason, which is
wrongly held to admit of no exception, must be restricted in favor of
freedom. For the rest, we may note concerning Crusius that he derives the
principle of sufficient reason (everything which is now, and before was
not, has a cause) and the principle of contingency from the principles of
contradiction, inseparability, and incompatibility, and these latter from
the principle of conceivability; that he rejects the ontological argument,
and makes the ground of obligation in morality consist in obedience toward
God, and its content in perfection. Among the other opponents of the
Wolffian philosophy, we may mention the theologian Budde(us)[3]
_(Institutiones Philosophiae Eclecticae_, 1705); Darjes (who taught in Jena
and Frankfort-on-the-Oder; _The Way to Truth_, 1755); and Crousaz (1744).
[Footnote 1: Rüdiger: _Disputatio de eo quod Omnes Idea Oriantur a
Sensione_, 1704; _Philosophia Synthetica_, 1707; _Physica Divina_, 1716;
_Philosophia Pragmatica_, 1723.]
[Footnote 2: Crusius: _De Usu et Limitibus Principii Rationis_, 1743;
_Directions how to Live a Rational Life_ (theory of the will and of
ethics), 1744; _A Sketch of the Necessary Truths of Reason_, 1745; _Way to
the Certainty and Trustworthiness of Human Knowledge_, 1747.]
[Footnote 3: J.J. Brucker _(Historia Critica Philosophiae_, 5 vols.,
1742-44; 2d ed., 6 vols., 1766-67) was a pupil of Budde.]
%3. The Illumination as Scientific and as Popular Philosophy.%
After a demand for the union of Leibnitz and Locke, of rationalism and
empiricism, had been raised within the Wolffian school itself, and still
more directly in the camp of its opponents, under the increasing influence
of the empirical philosophy of England,[1] eclecticism in the spirit of
Thomasius took full possession of the stage in the Illumination period.
There was the less hesitation in combining principles derived from entirely
different postulates without regard to their systematic connection, as
the interest in scholastic investigation gave place more and more to the
interest in practical and reassuring results. Metaphysics, noëtics, and
natural philosophy were laid aside as useless subtleties, and, as in the
period succeeding Aristotle, man as an individual and whatever directly
relates to his welfare--the constitution of his inner nature, his duties,
the immortality of the soul, and the existence of God--became the exclusive
subjects of reflection. The fact that, besides ethics and religion,
psychology was chosen as a favorite field, is in complete harmony with the
general temper of an age for which self-observation and the enjoyment of
tender and elevated feelings in long, delightfully friendly letters and
sentimental diaries had become a favorite habit. Hand in hand with this
narrowing of the content of philosophy went a change in the form of
presentation. As thinkers now addressed themselves to all cultivated
people, intelligibility and agreeableness were made the prime requisites;
the style became light and flowing, the method of treatment facile and
often superficial. This is true not only of the popular philosophers
proper--who, as Windelband pertinently remarks (vol. i. p. 563), did not
seek after the truth, but believed that they already possessed it, and
desired only to disseminate it; who did not aim at the promotion of
investigation, but the instruction of the public--but to a certain extent,
also, of those who were conscious of laboring in the service of science.
Among the representatives of the more polite tendency belong, Moses
Mendelssohn[2] (1729-86); Thomas Abbt (_On Death for the Fatherland_, 1761;
_On Merit_, 1765); J.J. Engel (_The philosopher for the World_, 1775); G.S.
Steinbart (_The Christian Doctrine of Happiness_, 1778); Ernst Platner
(_Philosophical Aphorisms_, 1776, 1782; on Platner cf. M. Heinze, 1880);
G.C. Lichtenberg (died 1799; _Miscellaneous Writings_, 1800 _seq_.; a
selection is given in _Reclam's Bibliothek_); Christian Garve (died 1798;
_Essays_, 1792 _seq.; Translations from the Ethical Works of Aristotle,
Cicero, and Ferguson_); and Friedrich Nicolai[3] (died 1811). Eberhard,
Feder, and Meiners will be mentioned later among the opponents of the
Kantian philosophy.
[Footnote 1: The influence of the English philosophers on the German
philosophy of the eighteenth century is discussed by Gustav Zart, 1881.]
[Footnote 2: Mendelssohn: _Letters on the Sensations_, 1755; _On Evidence
in the Metaphysical Sciences_, a prize essay crowned by the Academy, 1764;
_Phaedo, or on Immortality_, 1767; _Jerusalem_, 1783; _Morning Hours, or on
the Existence of God_, 1785; _To the Friends of Lessing_ (against Jacobi),
1786; _Works_, 1843-44. Cf. on Mendelssohn, Kayserling, 1856, 1862, 1883.]
[Footnote 3: Nicolai: _Library of Belles Lettres_, from 1757; _Letters on
the Most Recent German Literature_, from 1759; _Universal German Library_,
from 1765; _New Universal German Library_, 1793-1805.]
Among the psychologists J.N. Tetens, whose _Philosophical Essays on Human
Nature_, 1776-77, show a remarkable similarity to the views of Kant,[1]
takes the first rank. The two thinkers evidently influenced each other. The
three fold division of the activities of the soul, "knowing, feeling,
and willing," which has now become popular and which appears to us
self-evident, is to be referred to Tetens, from whom Kant took it; in
opposition to the twofold division of Aristotle and Wolff into "cognition
and appetition," he established the equal rights of the faculty of
feeling--which had previously been defended by Sulzer (1751), the aesthetic
writer, and by Mendelssohn (1755, 1763, 1785). Besides Tetens, the
following should be mentioned among the psychologists: Tetens's opponent,
Johann Lossius (1775), an adherent of Bonnet; D. Tiedemann (_Inquiries
concerning Man_, from 1777), who was estimable also as a historian of
philosophy (_Spirit of Speculative Philosophy_, 1791-97); Von Irwing
(1772 _seq_.; 2d ed., 1777); and K. Ph. Moriz (_Magazin zur
Erfahrungsseelenlehre_, from 1785). Basedow (died 1790), Campe (died 1818),
and J.H. Pestalozzi (1745-1827) did valuable work in pedagogics.
[Footnote 1: Sensation gives the content, and the understanding
spontaneously produces the form, of knowledge. The only objectivity of
knowledge which we can attain consists in the subjective necessity of the
forms of thought or the ideas of relation. Perception enables us to cognize
phenomena only, not the true essence of things and of ourselves, etc.]
One of the clearest and most acute minds among the philosophers of the
Illumination was the deist Hermann Samuel Reimarus[1] (1694-1768), from
1728 professor in Hamburg. He attacks atheism, in whatever form it may
present itself, with as much zeal and conviction as he shows in breaking
down the belief in revelation by his inexorable criticism (in his
_Defense_, communicated in manuscript to a few friends only). He obtains
his weapons for this double battle from the Wolffian philosophy. The
existence of an extramundane deity is proved by the purposive arrangement
of the world, especially of organisms, which aims at the good--not merely
of man, as the majority of the physico-theologists have believed, but--of
all living creatures. To believe in a special revelation, _i.e._, a
miracle, in addition to such a revelation of God as this, which is granted
to all men, and is alone necessary to salvation, is to deny the perfection
of God, and to do violence to the immutability of his providence. To these
general considerations against the credibility of positive revelation
are to be added, as special arguments against the Jewish and Christian
revelations, the untrustworthiness of human testimony in general, the
contradictions in the biblical writings, the uncertainty of their meaning,
and the moral character of the persons regarded as messengers of God, whose
teachings, precepts, and deeds in no wise correspond to their high mission.
Jewish history is a "tissue of sheer follies, shameful deeds, deceptions,
and cruelties, the chief motives of which were self-interest and lust for
power." The New Testament is also the work of man; all talk of divine
inspiration, an idle delusion, the resurrection of Christ, a fabrication of
the disciples; and the Protestant system, with its dogmas of the Trinity,
the fall of man, original sin, the incarnation, vicarious atonement, and
eternal punishment, contrary to reason. The advance of Reimarus beyond
Wolff consists in the consistent application of the criteria for the divine
character of revelation, which Wolff had set up without making a positive,
not to speak of a negative, use of them. His weakness[2] consists in the
fact that, on the one hand, he contented himself with a rationalistic
interpretation of the biblical narratives, instead of pushing on--as Semler
did after him at Halle (1725-91)--to a historical criticism of the sources,
and, on the other, held fast to the alternative common to all the deists,
"Either divine or human, either an actual event or a fabrication," without
any suspicion of that great intermediate region of religious myth, of the
involuntary and pregnant inventions of the popular fancy.
[Footnote 1: H.S. Reimarus: _Discussions on the Chief Truths of Natural
Religion_, 1754; _General Consideration of the Instincts of Animals_, 1762;
_Apology or Defense for the Rational Worshipers of God_. Fragments of the
last of these works, which was kept secret during its author's life, were
published by Lessing (the well-known "Wolffenbüttel Fragments," from
1774). A detailed table of contents is to be found in _Reimarus und seine
Schutzschrift_, 1862, by D. Fr. Strauss, included in the fifth volume of
his _Gesammelte Schriften_.]
[Footnote 2: Cf. O. Pfleiderer, _Philosophy of Religion_, vol. i. p. 102,
p. 106 _seq_.]
The philosophico-religious standpoint of G.E. Lessing (1729-81), in whom
the Illumination reached its best fruitage, was less one-sided. Apart from
the important aesthetic impulses which flowed from the _Laocoon_ (1766) and
the _Hamburg Dramaturgy_ (1767-69), his philosophical significance rests
on two ideas, which have had important consequences for the religious
conceptions of the nineteenth century: the speculative interpretation of
certain dogmas (the Trinity, etc.), and the application of the Leibnitzian
idea of development to the history of the positive religions. By both of
these he prepared the way for Hegel. In regard to his relation to his
predecessors, Lessing sought to mediate between the pantheism of Spinoza
and the individualism of Leibnitz; and in his comprehension of the latter
showed himself far superior to the Wolffians. He can be called a Spinozist
only by those who, like Jacobi, have this title ready for everyone
who expresses himself against a transcendent, personal God, and the
unconditional freedom of the will. Moreover, in view of his critical and
dialectical, rather than systematic, method of thinking, we must guard
against laying too great stress on isolated statements by him.[1]
[Footnote 1: A caution which Gideon Spicker (_Lessings Weltanschauung_,
1883) counsels us not to forget, even in view of the oft cited avowal of
determinism, "I thank God that I must, and that I must the best." Among the
numerous treatises on Lessing we may note those by G.E. Schwarz (1854), and
Zeller (in Sybel's _Historische Zeitschrift_, 1870, incorporated in the
second collection of Zeller's _Vorträge und Abhandlungen_, 1877); and on
his theological position, that of K. Fischer on Lessing's _Nathan der
Weise_, 1864, as well as J.H. Witte's _Philosophie unserer Dichterheroen_,
vol. i. _(Lessing and Herder_), 1880. [Cf. in English, Sime, 2 vols., 1877,
and _Encyclopedia Britannica_, vol. xiv. pp, 478-482.--TR.]]
Lessing conceives the Deity as the supreme, all-comprehensive, living
unity, which excludes neither a certain kind of plurality nor even a
certain kind of change; without life and action, without the experience of
changing states, the life of God would be miserably wearisome. Things are
not out of, but in him; nevertheless (as "contingent") they are distinct
from him. The Trinity must be understood in the sense of immanent
distinctions. God has conceived himself, or his perfections, in a twofold
manner: he conceived them as united and himself as their sum, and he
conceived them as single. Now God's thinking is creation, his ideas
actualities. By conceiving his perfections united he created his eternal
image, the Son of God; the bond between God representing and God
represented, between Father and Son, is the Holy Spirit. But when he
conceived his perfections singly he created the world, in which these
manifest themselves divided among a continuous series of particular beings.
Every individual is an isolated divine perfection; the things in the world
are limited gods, all living, all with souls, and of a spiritual nature,
though in different degrees. Development is everywhere; at present the soul
has five senses, but very probably it once had less than five, and in
the future it will have more. At first the actions of men were guided by
obscure instinct; gradually the reason obtained influence over the will,
and one day will govern it completely through its clear and distinct
cognitions. Thus freedom is attained in the course of history--the rational
and virtuous man consciously obeys the divine order of the world, while he
who is unfree obeys unconsciously.
Lessing shares with the deistic Illumination the belief in a religion of
reason, whose basis and essential content are formed by morality; but he
rises far above this level in that he regards the religion of reason not
as the beginning but as the goal of the development, and the positive
religions as necessary transition stages in its attainment. As natural
religion differs in each individual according to his feelings and powers,
without positive enactments there would be no unity and community in
religious matters. Nevertheless the statutory and historical element is
not a graft from without, but a shell organically grown around natural
religion, indispensable for its development, and to be removed but
gradually and by layers--when the inclosed kernel has become ripe and firm.
The history of religions is an _education of the human race through divine
revelation_; so teaches his small but thoughtful treatise of 1780.[1] As
the education of the individual man puts nothing extraneous into him, but
only gives him more quickly and easily that which he could have reached of
himself, so human reason is illuminated by revelation concerning things
to which it could have itself attained, only that without God's help the
process would have been longer and more difficult--perhaps it would have
wandered about for many millions of years in the errors of polytheism, if
God had not been pleased by a single stroke (his revelation to Moses) to
give it a better direction. And as the teacher does not impart everything
to the pupil at once, but considers the state of development reached by him
at each given period, so God in his revelation observes a certain order and
measure. To the rude Jewish people he revealed himself first as a national
God, as the God of their fathers; they had to wait for the Persians to
teach them that the God whom they had hitherto worshiped as the most
powerful among other gods was the only one. Although this lowest stage in
the development of religion lacked the belief in immortality, yet it must
not be lightly valued; let us acknowledge that it was an heroic obedience
for men to observe the laws of God simply because they are the laws of God,
and not because of temporal or future rewards! The first practical teacher
of immortality was Christ; with him the second age of religion begins: the
first good book of elementary instruction, the Old Testament, from which
man had hitherto learned, was followed by the second, better one, the New
Testament. As we now can dispense with the first primer in regard to the
doctrine of the unity of God, and as we gradually begin to be able to
dispense with the second in regard to the doctrine of the immortality of
the soul, so this New Testament may easily contain still further truths,
which for the present we wonder at as revelations, until the reason shall
learn to derive them from other truths already established. Lessing himself
makes an attempt at a philosophical interpretation of the dogmas of the
Trinity (see above), of original sin, and of atonement. Such an advance
from faith to knowledge, such a development of revealed truths into proved
truths of reason, is absolutely necessary. We cannot dispense with the
truths of revelation, but we must not remain content with simply believing
them, but must endeavor to comprehend them; for they have been revealed in
order that they may become rational. They are, as it were, the sum which
the teacher of arithmetic tells his pupils beforehand so that they
may guide themselves by it; but if they content themselves with this
solution--which was given merely as a guide--they would never learn to
calculate. Hand in hand with the advance of the understanding goes the
progress of the will. Future recompenses, which the New Testament promises
as rewards of virtue, are means of education, and will gradually fall into
disuse: in the highest stage, the stage of purity of heart, virtue will
be loved and practiced for its own sake, and no longer for the sake of
heavenly rewards. Slowly but surely, along devious paths which are yet
salutary, we are being led toward that great goal. It will surely come, the
time of consummation, when man will do the good because it is good, this
time of the new, eternal Gospel, this third age, this "Christianity of
reason." Continue, Eternal Providence, thine imperceptible march; let me
not despair of thee because it is imperceptible, not even when to me thy
steps seem to lead backward. It is not true that the straight line is
always the shortest.
[Footnote 1: _Die Erziehung des Menschengeschlects_.]
With the thought that every individual must traverse the same course as
that by which the race attains its perfection, Lessing connects the idea
of the transmigration of souls. Why may not the individual man have been
present in this world more than once? Is this hypothesis so ridiculous
because it is the oldest?
If Lessing abandoned the ranks of the deists by his recognition of the
fact that the positive religions contain truth in a gradual process of
purification, by his free criticism, on the other hand, he broke with
the orthodox, whose idolatrous reverence for the Bible was to him an
abomination. The letter is not the spirit, the Bible is not religion, nor
yet its foundation, but only its records. Contingent historical truths can
never serve as a proof of the necessary truths of reason. Christianity is
older than the New Testament.
Already, in the case of Lessing, we may doubt, in view of his historical
temper and of certain speculative tendencies, whether he is to be included
among the Illuminati. In the case of Kant a decided protest must be
raised against such a classification. When Hegel numbers him among the
philosophers of the Illumination, on account of his lack of rational
intuition, and some theologians on account of his religious rationalism,
the answer to the former is that Kant did not lack the speculative gift,
but only that it was surpassed by his gift of reflection, and, to the
latter, that in regard to the positive element in religion he judged very
differently from the deists and appreciated the historical element more
justly than they--if not to the same extent as Lessing and Herder. We
do not need to lay great stress on the fact that Kant had a lively
consciousness that he was making a contribution to thought, and that the
Illumination contemplated this new doctrine without comprehending it, in
order to recognize that the difference between his efforts and achievements
and those of the Illumination is far greater than their kinship. For
although Kant is upon common ground with it, in so far as he adheres to its
motto, "Have courage to use thine own understanding, become a man, cease
to trust thyself to the guidance of others, and free thyself in all fields
from the yoke of authority," and, although besides such formal injunctions
to freedom of thought, he also shares in certain material tendencies and
convictions (the turning from the world to man, the attempt at a synthesis
of reason and experience, and the belief in a religion of reason); yet in
method and results, he stands like a giant among a race of dwarfs, like one
instructed, who judges from principles, among men of opinion, who merely
stick results together, a methodical systematizer among well-meaning but
impotent eclectics. The philosophy of the Illumination is related to
that of Kant as argument to science, as halting mediation to principiant
resolution, as patchwork to creation out of full resources, yet at the same
time as wish to deed and as negative preparation to positive achievement.
It was undeniably of great value to the Kantian criticism that the
Illumination had created a point of intersection for the various tendencies
of thought, and had brought about the approximation and mutual contact of
the opposing systems which then existed, while, at the same time, it had
crumbled them to pieces, and thus awakened the need for a new, more firmly
and more deeply founded system.
%4. The Faith Philosophy.%
The philosophers of feeling or faith stand in the same relation to the
German Illumination as Rousseau to the French. Here also the rights of
feeling are vindicated against those of the knowing reason. Among the
distinguished representatives of this anti-rationalistic tendency Hamann
led the way, Herder was the most prolific, and Jacobi the clearest. That
the fountain of certitude is to be sought not in discriminating thought,
but in intuition, experience, revelation, and tradition; that the highest
truths can be felt only and not proved; that all existing things are
incomprehensible, because individual--these are convictions which, before
Jacobi defended them as based on scientific principles, had been vehemently
proclaimed by that singular man, J.G. Hamann (died 1788) of Königsberg.
From an unprinted review by Hamann, Herder drew the objections which his
"Metacritique" raises against Kant's Critique of Reason--that the division
of matter and form, of sensibility and understanding, is inadmissible;
that Kant misunderstood the significance of language, which is just where
sensibility and understanding unite, etc.
In Herder[1] (1744-1803: after 1776 Superintendent-General in Weimar) the
philosophy of feeling gained a finer, more perspicuous and harmonious
nature, who shared Lessing's interest in history and his tendency to
hold fast equally to pantheism and to individualism. God is the all-one,
infinite, spiritual (non-personal) primal force, which wholly reveals
itself in each thing _(God: Dialogues on the System of Spinoza_, 1787).
To the life, power, wisdom, and goodness of God correspond the life and
perfection of the universe and of individual creatures, each of which
possesses its own irreplaceable value and bears in itself its future in
germ. Everywhere, one and the same life in an ascending series of powers
and forms with imperceptible transitions. Always, an inner and an outer
together; no power without organ, no spirit without a body. As thought is
only a higher stage of sensation, which develops from the lower by means of
language--reason, like sense, is not a productive but a receptive faculty
of knowing, perceiving ("_Vernehmen_")--so the free process of history is
only the continuation and completion of the nature-process (_Ideas for the
Philosophy of the History of Mankind_, 1784 _seq_.). Man, the last child of
nature and her first freedman, is the nodal point where the physical series
of events changes into the ethical; the last member of the organisms of
earth is at the same time the first in the spiritual development. The
mission of history is the unfolding of all the powers which nature
has concentrated in man as the compendium of the world; its law, that
everywhere on our earth everything be realized that can be realized there;
its end, humanity and the harmonious development of all our capacities. As
nature forms a single great organism, and from the stone to man describes
a connected development, so humanity is a one great individual which passes
through its several ages, from infancy (the Orient), through boyhood
(Eygpt and Phoenicia), youth (Greece), and manhood (Rome), to old age (the
Christian world). The spirit stands in the closest dependence upon nature,
and nature is concerned in history throughout. The finer organization of
his brain, the possession of hands, above all, his erect position, make
man, man and endow him with reason. Similarly it is natural conditions,
climate, the character of the soil, the surrounding animal and vegetable
life, etc., that play an essential part in determining the manners, the
characters, and the destinies of nations. The connection of nature with
history by means of the concept of development and through the idea that
the two merely represent different stages of the same fundamental process,
made Herder the forerunner of Schelling.
[Footnote 1: On Herder cf. the biography by R. Haym, 2 vols., 1877, 1885;
and the work by Witte which has been referred to above (p. 306, note).]
His polemic against Kant in the _Metacritique_, 1799 (against the _Critique
of Pure Reason_), and the dialogue _Calligone_, 1800 (against the _Critique
of Judgment_), is less pleasing. These are neither dignified in tone nor
essentially of much importance. In the former the distinction between
sensibility and reason is censured, and in the latter the separation of the
beautiful from the true and the good, but Kant's theory of aesthetics is
for the most part grossly misunderstood. The "disinterested" satisfaction
Herder makes a cold satisfaction; the harmonious activity of the cognitive
powers, a tedious, apish sport; the satisfaction "without a concept,"
judgment without ground or cause. The positive elements in his own views
are more valuable. Pleasure in mere form, without a concept, and without
the idea of an end, is impossible. All beauty must mean or express
something, must be a symbol of inner life; its ground is perfection or
adaptation. Beauty is that symmetrical union of the parts of a being, in
virtue of which it feels well itself and gives pleasure to the observer,
who sympathetically shares in this well-being. The charm and value of the
_Calligone_ lie more in the warmth and clearness with which the expressive
beauty of single natural phenomena is described than in the abstract
discussion.
Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (1743-1819) gave the most detailed statement of
the position of the philosophy of feeling, and the most careful proof of
it. He was born in Düsseldorf, the son of a manufacturer; until 1794 he
lived in his native place and at his country residence in Pempelfort; later
he resided in Holstein, and, from 1805, in Munich, where, in 1807-13, he
was president of the Academy of Sciences. Of his works, collected in five
volumes, 1812-25, we are here chiefly concerned with the letters _On the
Doctrine of Spinoza_, 1785; _David Hume on Faith, or Idealism and Realism_,
1787; and the treatise _On Divine Things_, 1811, which called out
Schelling's merciless response, _Memorial of Jacobi_. Besides Hume and
Spinoza, the sensationalism of Bonnet and the criticism of Kant had made
the most lasting impression on Jacobi. His relation to Kant is neither that
of an opponent nor of a supporter and popularizer. He declares himself in
accord with Kant's critique of the understanding (the understanding is
merely a formal function, one which forms and combines concepts only, but
does not guarantee reality, one to which the material of thought must be
given from elsewhere and for which the suprasensible remains unattainable);
in regard to the critique of reason he raises the objection that it; makes
the Ideas mere postulates, which possess no guarantee for their reality.
The critique of sensibility appears to him still more unsatisfactory, as
it does not explain the origin of sensations. Without the concept of the
"thing-in-itself" one cannot enter the Kantian philosophy, and with it
one cannot remain there. Fichte has drawn the correct conclusion from the
Kantian premises; idealism is the unavoidable result of the Critique of
Reason and foretold by; it as the Messiah was foretold by John the Baptist.
And by the evil fruit we know the evil root: the idealistic theory is
philosophical nihilism, for it denies the reality of the external world, as
the materialism of Spinoza denies a transcendent God and the freedom of
the will. Reality slips away from both these systems--they are the only
consistent ones there are--material reality escaping from the former
and suprasensible reality from the latter; and this must be so, because
reality, of whatever kind it be, cannot be known, but only believed and
felt. The actual, the existence of the noumenal as well as of the external
world, even the existence of our own body, makes itself known to us through
revelation alone; the understanding comprehends relations only; the
certainty that a thing exists is attained only through experience and
faith. Sense and reason are the organs of faith, and hence the true
sources of knowledge; the former apprehends the natural, the latter, the
supernatural, while for the understanding is left only the analysis and
combination of given intuitions.
Philosophy as a science from concepts must necessarily prove atheistic and
fatalistic. Conception and proof mean deduction from conditions. How shall
that which has no cause from which to explain it, the unconditioned, God,
and freedom, be comprehended and proved? Demonstration rises along the
chain of causes to the universe alone, not to a transcendent Creator;
mediate knowledge is confined to the sphere of conditioned being and
mechanical becoming. The intuitive knowledge of feeling alone leads us
beyond this, and along with the wonderful, the inconceivable power of
freedom in ourselves, which is above all nature, shows us the primal source
of all wonders, the transcendent God above us. The inference from our
own spiritual, self-conscious, free personality to that of God is no
unauthorized anthropomorphism--in the knowledge of God we may fearlessly
deify our human existence, because God, when he created man, gave his
divine nature human form. Reason and freedom are the same: the former
is theoretical, the latter practical elevation to the suprasensible.
Nevertheless virtue is not based upon an inflexible, despotic, abstractly,
formal law, but upon an instinct, which, however, does not aim at
happiness. Thus Jacobi attempts to mediate between the ethics of the
Illumination and the ethics of Kant, by agreeing with the former in regard
to the origin of virtue (it arises from a natural impulse), and with the
latter in regard to its nature (it consists in disinterestedness). Hence
with the Illumination he rejects the imperative form, and with Kant the
eudemonistic end. At the same time he endeavors to introduce Herder's idea
of individuality into ethics, by demanding that morality assume a special
form in each man. Schiller and the romantic school take from Jacobi their
ideal of the "beautiful soul," which from natural impulse realizes in its
action, and still more in its being, the good in an individual way.
%PART II. FROM KANT TO THE PRESENT TIME.%