PHILOSOPHY OUT OF GERMANY.
%1. Italy.%
The Cartesian philosophy, which had been widely accepted in Italy, and had
still been advocated, in the sense of Malebranche, by Sigismond Gerdil
(1718-1802), was opposed as an unhistorical view of the world by
Giambattista Vico,[1] the bold and profound creator of the philosophy of
history (1668-1744; from 1697 professor of rhetoric in the University
of Naples). Vico's leading ideas are as follows: Man makes himself the
criterion of the universe, judges that which is unknown and remote by the
known and present. The free will of the individual rests on the judgments,
manners, and habits of the people, which have arisen without reflection
from a universal human instinct. Uniform ideas among nations unacquainted
with one another are motived in a common truth. History is the development
of human nature; in it neither chance nor fate rules, but the legislative
power of providence, in virtue of which men through their own freedom
progressively realize the idea of human nature. The universal course of
civilization is that culture transfers its abode from the forests and huts
into villages, cities, and, finally, into academies; the nature of the
nations is at first rude, then stern, gradually it becomes mild, nay,
effeminate, and finally wanton; at first men feel only that which is
necessary, later they regard the useful, the convenient, the agreeable
and attractive, until the luxury sprung from the sense for the beautiful
degenerates into a foolish misuse of things. Vico divides antiquity into
three periods: the divine (theocracy), the heroic (aristocracy), and the
human (democracy and monarchy). The same course of things repeats itself in
the nations of later times: to the patriarchal dominion of the fanciful,
myth-making Orient correspond the spiritual states of the migrations; to
the old Greek aristocracy, the chivalry and robbery of the period of the
Crusades; to the republicanism and the monarchy of later antiquity, the
modern period, which gives even the citizens and peasants a share in the
universal equality. If European culture had not been transplanted to
America, the same three-act drama of human development would there be
playing. Vico carries this threefold division into his consideration of
manners, laws, languages, character, etc.
[Footnote 1: Vico: _Principles of a New Science of the Common Nature of
Nations_, 1725; _Works_, in six volumes, edited by G. Ferrari, 1835-37,
new ed.. 1853 _seq_. On Vico cf. K. Werner, 1877 and 1879. [Also Flint's
_Vico_, Blackwood's Philosophical Classics, 1884.--TR.]]
If Vico anticipates the Hegelian view of history, Antonio Genovesi
(1712-69), who also taught at the University of Naples, and while the
former was still living, shows himself animated by a presentiment of the
Kantian criticism.[1] Appreciating Leibnitz and Locke, and appropriating
the idea of the monads from the one and the unknowableness of substance
from the other, he reaches the conviction--according to statements in his
letters--that sense-bodies are nothing but the appearances of intelligible
unities; that each being for us is an activity, whose substratum and
ground remains unknown to us; that self-consciousness and the knowledge
of external impressions yield phenomena alone, through the elaboration of
which we produce the intellectual worlds of the sciences. For the rest,
Genovesi thus advises his friends: Study the world, devote yourselves to
languages and to mathematics, think more about men than about the things
above us, and leave metaphysical vagaries to the monks! His countrymen
honor in him the man who first included ethics and politics in
philosophical instruction, and who used the Italian language both from the
desk and in his writings, holding that a nation whose scientific works are
not composed in its own tongue is barbarian.
[Footnote 1: In the following account we have made use of a translation of
the concluding section of Francesco Florentine's _Handbook of the History
of Philosophy_, 1879-81, which was most kindly placed at our disposal by
Dr. J. Mainzer. Cf. _La Filosofia Contemporanea in Italia_, 1876, by the
same author; further, Bonatelli, _Die Philosophic in Italien seit_, 1815;
_Zeitschrift für Philosophic und philosophische Kritik_, vol. liv. 1869, p.
134 _seq._; and especially, K. Werner, _Die Italienische Philosophic des
XIX. Jahrhunderts_, 5 vols., 1884-86. [The English reader may be referred to
the appendix on Italian philosophy in vol. ii. of the English translation
of Ueberweg, by Vincenzo Botta; and to Barzellotti's "Philosophy in Italy,"
_Mind_, vol. in. 1878.--TR.]]
The sensationalism of Condillac, starting from Parma, gained influence over
Melchiore Gioja (1767-1828; _Statistical Logic_, 1803; _Ideology_, 1822)
and Giandomenico Romagnosi (1761-1835; _What is the Sound Mind?_ 1827), but
not without experiencing essential modification from both. The importance
of these men, moreover, lies more in the sphere of social philosophy than
in the sphere of noëtics.
Of the three greatest Italian philosophers of this century, Galluppi,
Rosmini, and Gioberti, the first named is more in sympathy with the Kantian
position than he himself will confess. Pasquale Galluppi[1] (1770-1846;
from 1831 professor at Naples) adheres to the principle of experience, but
does not conceive experience as that which is sensuously given, but as
the elaboration of this through the synthetic relations _(rapporti)_ of
identity and difference, which proceed from the activity of the mind.
Vincenzo de Grazia (_Essay on the Reality of Human Knowledge_, 1839-42),
who holds all relations to be objective, and Ottavio Colecchi (died 1847;
_Philosophical Investigations_, 1843), who holds them all subjective,
oppose the view of Galluppi that some are objective and others subjective.
According to De Grazia judgment is observation, not connection; it finds
out the relations contained in the data of sensation; it discovers, but
does not produce them. Colecchi reduces the Kantian categories to two,
substance and cause. Testa, Borelli (1824), and, among the younger men,
Cantoni, are Kantians; Labriola is an Herbartian.
[Footnote 1: Galluppi: _Philosophical Essay on the Critique of Knowledge_,
1819 _seq.; Lectures on Logic and Metaphysics_, 1832 _seq.; Philosophy
of the Will_, 1832 _seq.; On the System of Fichte, or Considerations on
Transcendental Idealism and Absolute Rationalism_, 1841. By the _Letters
on the History of Philosophy from Descartes to Kant_, 1827, in the later
editions to Cousin, he became the founder of this discipline in his native
land.]
Antonio Rosmini-Serbati[1] (born 1797 at Rovereto, died 1855 at Stresa)
regards knowledge as the common product of sensibility and understanding,
the former furnishing the matter, the latter the form. The form is one: the
Idea of being which precedes all judgment, which does not come from myself,
which is innate, and apprehensible by immediate inner perception _(essere
ideale, ente universale)_. The pure concepts (substance, cause, unity,
necessity) arise when the reflecting reason analyzes this general Idea
of being; the mixed Ideas (space, time, motion; body, spirit), when the
understanding applies it to sensuous experience. The universal Idea of
being and the particular existences are in their being identical, but in
their mode of existence different. In his posthumous _Theosophy_,
1859 _seq_., Rosmini no longer makes the universal being receive its
determinations from without, but produce them from its own inner nature
by means of an _a priori_ development. Vincenzo Gioberti[1] (born 1801 in
Turin, died 1852 at Paris) has been compared as a patriot with Fichte, and
in his cast of thought with Spinoza. In place of Rosmini's "psychologism,"
which was advanced by Descartes and which leads to skepticism, he seeks to
substitute "ontologism," which is alone held capable of reconciling science
and the Catholic religion. By immediate intuition (the content of which
Gioberti comprehends in the formula "Being creates the existences") we
cognize the absolute as the creative ground of two series, the series of
thought and the series of reality. The endeavors of Rosmini and Gioberti to
bring the reason into harmony with the faith of the Church were fiercely
attacked by Giussepe Ferrari (1811-76) and Ausonio Franchi (1853), while
Francesco Bonatelli _(Thought and Cognition_, 1864) and Terenzio Mamiani
(1800-85; _Confessions of a Metaphysician_, 1865), follow a line of thought
akin to the Platonizing views of the first named thinkers. The review
_Filosofia delle Scuole Italiane_, called into life by Mamiani in 1870, has
been continued since 1886 under the direction of L. Ferri as the _Rivista
Italiana di Filosofia_.
[Footnote 1: Rosmini: _New Essay on the Origin of Ideas_, 1830 (English
translation, 1883-84); _Principles of Moral Science_, 1831; _Philosophy
of Right_, 1841.] [Footnote B: Gioberti: _Introduction to the Study of
Philosophy_, 1840; _Philosophical Errors of A. Rosmini_, 1842; _On the
Beautiful_, 1841; _On the Good_, 1842; _Protology_ edited by Massari, 1857.
On both cf. R. Seydel, _Zeitschrift für Philosophie_, 1859.]
The Thomistic doctrine has many adherents in Italy, among whom the Jesuit
M. Liberatore (1865) may be mentioned. The Hegelian philosophy has also
found favor there (especially in Naples), as well as positivism. The former
is favored by Vera, Mariano, Ragnisco, and Spaventa (died 1885); the
_Rivista di Filosofia Scientifica_, 1881 _seq_., founded by Morselli,
supports the latter, and E. Caporali's _La Nuova Scienza_, 1884, moves in
a similar direction. Pietro Siciliani _(On the Revival of the Positive
Philosophy in Italy_, 1871) makes the third, the critical, period of
philosophy by which scholasticism is overthrown and the reason made
authoritative, commence with Vico, and bases his doctrine on Vico's
formula: The conversion (transposition) of the _verum_ and the _factum_,
and _vice versa_. Subsequently he inclined to positivism, which he had
previously opposed, and among the representatives of which we may mention,
further, R. Ardigò of Pavia _(Psychology as Positive Science_, 1870; _The
Ethics of Positivism_, 1885; _Philosophical Works_, 1883 _seq_.), and
Andrea Angiulli of Naples (died 1890; _Philosophy and the Schools_, 1889),
who explain matter and spirit as two phenomena of the same essence;
further, Giuseppe Sergi, Giovanni Cesca, and the psychiatrist, C. Lombroso,
the head of the positivistic school of penal law.
%2. France.%
Among the French philosophers of this century[1] none can compare in
far-reaching influence, both at home and abroad, with Auguste Comte,[2] the
creator of positivism (born at Montpellier in 1798, died at Paris in 1857),
whose chief work, the _Course of Positive Philosophy_, 6 vols., appeared in
1830 42. [English version, "freely translated and condensed," by Harriet
Martineau, 1853.]
[Footnote 1: Accounts of French philosophy in the nineteenth century have
been given by Taine (1857, 3d ed., 1867); Janet _(La Philosophie Française
Contemporaine_, 2d ed., 1879); A. Franck; Ferraz (3 vols., 1880-89); Felix
Ravaisson (2d ed., 1884); the Swede, J. Borelius _(Glances at the Present
Position of Philosophy in Germany and France_, German translation by Jonas,
1887); [and Ribot, _Mind_, vol. ii., 1877].]
[Footnote 2: On Comte cf. B. Pünjer, _Jahrbücher für protestantische
Theologie_, 1878; R. Eucken, _Zur Würdigung Comtes und des Positivismus_,
in the _Aufsätze zum Zellerjubiläum_, 1887; Maxim. Brütt, _Der
Positivismus_, Programme of the _Realgymnasium des Johanneums_, Hamburg,
1889; [also, besides Mill, p. 560, John Morley, _Encyclopedia Britannica_,
vol. vi. pp. 229-238, and E. Caird, _The Social Philosophy and Religion of
Comte_, 1885.--Tr.]]
The positive philosophy seeks to put an end to the hoary error that
anything more is open to our knowledge than given facts--phenomena and
their relations. We do not know the essence of phenomena, and just
as little their first causes and ultimate ends; we know--by means of
observation, experiment, and comparison--only the constant relations
between phenomena, the relations of succession and of similarity among
facts, the uniformities of which we call their laws. All knowledge is,
therefore, relative; there is no absolute knowledge, for the inmost essence
of facts, and likewise their origin, the way in which they are produced,
is for us impenetrable. We know only, and this by experience, that the
phenomenon A is invariably connected with the phenomenon B, that the
second always follows on the first, and call the constant antecedent of a
phenomenon its cause. We know such causes only as are themselves phenomena.
The fact that our knowledge is limited to the succession and coexistence of
phenomena is not to be lamented as a defect: the only knowledge which is
attainable by us is at the same time the only useful knowledge, that which
lends us practical power over phenomena. When we inquire into causes we
desire to hasten or hinder the effect, or to change it as we wish, or at
least to anticipate it in order to make our preparations accordingly. Such
foresight and control of events can be attained only through a knowledge
of their laws, their order of succession, their phenomenal causes. _Savoir
pour prévoir_. But, although the prevision of facts is the only knowledge
which we need, men have always sought after another, an "absolute"
knowledge, or have even believed that they were in possession of it; the
forerunners of the positive philosophy themselves, Bacon and Descartes,
have been entangled in this prejudice. A long intellectual development was
required to reach the truth, that our knowledge does not extend beyond
the cognition of the succession and coexistence of facts; that the same
procedure must be extended to abstract speculation which the common mind
itself makes use of in its single actions. On the other hand, the positive
philosophy, notwithstanding its rejection of metaphysics, is far from
giving its sanction to empiricism. Every isolated, empirical observation
is useless and uncertain; it obtains value and usefulness only when it is
defined and explained by a theory, and combined with other observations
into a law--this makes the difference between the observations of the
scholar and the layman.
The positive stage of a science, which begins when we learn to explain
phenomena by their laws, is preceded by two others: a theological stage,
which ascribes phenomena to supposed personal powers, and a metaphysical
stage, which ascribes them to abstract natural forces. These three periods
denote the childhood, the youth, and the manhood of science.
The earliest view of the world is the theological view, which derives the
events of the world from the voluntary acts of supernatural intelligent
beings. The crude view of nature sees in each individual thing a being
animated like man; later man accustoms himself to think of a whole class
of objects as governed by one invisible being, by a divinity; finally
the multitude of divinities gives place to a single God, who creates,
maintains, and rules the universe, and by extraordinary acts, by miracles,
interferes in the course of events. Thus fetichism (in its highest form,
astrolatry), polytheism, and monotheism are the stages in the development
of the theological mode of thought. In the second, the metaphysical,
period, the acts of divine volition are replaced by entities, by abstract
concepts, which are regarded as realities, as the true reality back of
phenomena. A force, a power, an occult property or essence is made to dwell
in things; the mysterious being which directs events is no longer called
God, but "Nature," and invested with certain inclinations, with a horror
of a vacuum, an aversion to breaks, a tendency toward the best, a _vis
medicatrix_, etc. Here belong, also, the vegetative soul of Aristotle, the
vital force and the plastic impulse of modern investigators. Finally the
positive stage is reached, when all such abstractions, which are even yet
conceived as half personal and acting voluntarily, are abandoned, and
the unalterable and universally valid laws of phenomena established by
observation and experiment alone. But to explain the laws of nature
themselves transcends, according to Comte, the fixed limits of human
knowledge. The beginning of the world lies outside the region of the
knowable, atheism is no better grounded than the theistic hypothesis, and
if Comte asserts that a blindly acting mechanism is less probable than a
world-plan, he is conscious that he is expressing a mere conjecture which
can never be raised to the rank of a scientific theory. The origin and the
end of things are insoluble problems, in answering which no progress has
yet been made in spite of man's long thought about them. Only that which
lies intermediate between the two inscrutable termini of the world is an
object of knowledge.
It is not only the human mind in general that exhibits this advance from
the theological, through the metaphysical, to the positive mode of thought,
but each separate science goes through the same three periods--only that
the various disciplines have developed with unequal rapidity. While some
have already culminated in the positive method of treatment, others yet
remain caught in the theological period of beginnings, and others still are
in the metaphysical transition stage. Up to the present all three phases
of development exist side by side, and even among the objects of the most
highly developed sciences there are some which we continue to regard
theologically; these are the ones which we do not yet understand how to
calculate, as the changes of the weather or the spread of epidemics. Which
science first attained the positive state, and in what order have the
others followed? With this criterion Comte constructs his _classification
of the sciences_, in which, however, he takes account only of those
sciences which he calls abstract, that is, those which treat of "events" in
distinction from "objects." The abstract sciences (as biology) investigate
the most general laws of nature, valid for all phenomena, from which the
particular phenomena which experience presents to us cannot be deduced, but
on the basis of which an entirely different world were also possible. The
concrete sciences, on the other hand (_e.g._, botany and zoölogy), have to
do with the actually given combinations of phenomena. The former follow out
each separate one of the general laws through all its possible modes of
operation, the latter consider only the combination of laws given in an
object. Thus oaks and squirrels are the result of very many laws, inasmuch
as organisms are dependent not only on biological, but also on physical,
chemical, and mathematical laws.
Comte enumerates six of these abstract sciences, and arranges them in such
a way that each depends on the truths of the preceding, and adds to these
its own special truths, while the first (the most general and simplest)
presupposes no earlier laws whatever, but is presupposed by all the
later ones. According to this principle of increasing particularity and
complexity the following scale results: (i) Mathematics, in which the
science of number, as being absolutely without presuppositions, precedes
geometry and mechanics; (2) Astronomy; (3) Physics (with five subordinate
divisions, in which the first place belongs to the theory of weight, and
the last to electrology, while the theory of heat, acoustics, and optics
are intermediate); (4) Chemistry; (5) Biology or physiology; (6) Sociology
or the science of society. This sequence, which is determined by the
increasing complexity and increasing dependence of the objects of the
sciences, is the order in which they have historically developed--before
the special laws of the more complicated sciences can be ascertained, the
general laws of the more simple ones must be accurately known. It is also
advisable to follow this same order of increasing complexity and difficulty
in the study of the sciences, for acquaintance with the methods of those
which are elementary is the best preparation for the pursuit of the higher
ones. In arithmetic and geometry we study positivity at its source; in the
sociological spirit it finds its completion.
Mathematics entered on its positive stage at quite an early period,
chemistry and biology only in recent times, while, in the highest and most
complicated science, the metaphysical (negative, liberal, democratic,
revolutionary) mode of thought is still battling with the feudalism of the
theological mode. To make sociology positive is the mission of the second
half of Comte's work, and to this goal his philosophical activity had been
directed from the beginning. Comte rates the efforts of political economy
very low, with the exception of the work of Adam Smith, and will not let
them pass as a preparation for scientific sociology, holding that they are
based on false abstractions. Psychology, which is absent from the above
enumeration, is to form a branch of biology, and exclusively to use the
objective method, especially phrenology (to the three faculties of the
soul, "heart, character, and intellect," correspond three regions of the
brain). Self-observation, so Comte, making an impossibility out of a
difficulty, teaches, can at most inform us concerning our feelings and
passions, and not at all concerning our own thinking, since reflection
brings to a stop the process to which it attends, and thus destroys its
object. The sole source of knowledge is external sense-perception. In his
_Positive Polity_ Comte subsequently added a seventh fundamental science,
ethics or anthropology.
Sociology,[1] the elevation of which to the rank of a positive science is
the principal aim of our philosopher, uses the same method as the natural
sciences, namely, the interrogation and interpretation of experience by
means of induction and deduction, only that here the usual relation of
these two instruments of knowledge is reversed. Between inorganic and
organic philosophy, both of which proceed from the known to the unknown,
there is this difference, that in the former the advance is from the
elements, as that which alone is directly accessible, to the whole which is
composed of them, while in the latter the opposite is the case, since here
the whole is better known than the individual parts of which it consists.
Hence, in inorganic science the laws of the composite phenomena are
obtained by deduction (from the laws of the simple facts inductively
discovered) and confirmed by observation; in sociology, on the other
hand, the laws are found through (historical) experience, and deductively
verified (from the nature of man as established by biology) only in the
sequel. Since the phenomena of society are determined not merely by the
general laws of human nature, but, above all, by the growing influence of
the past, historical studies must form the basis of sociological inquiry.
[Footnote 1: Cf. Krohn: _Beiträge zur Kenntniss und Würdigung der
Soziologie, Jahrbücher für Nationalökonomie und Statistik_, New Series,
vols. i. and iii., 1880 and 1881.]
Of the two parts of sociology, the Statics, which investigates the
equilibrium (the conditions of the existence, the permanence, and the
coexistence of social states), and Dynamics, which investigates the
movement (the laws of the progress) of social phenomena, the first was in
essence established by Aristotle. The fundamental concept of the Statics
is the _consensus_, the harmony, solidarity, or mutual dependence of the
members of the social organism. All its parts, science, art, religion,
politics, industry, must be considered together; they stand in such
intimate harmony and correlation that, for every important change of
condition in one of these parts, we may be certain of finding
corresponding changes in all the others, as its causes and effects.
Besides the selfish propensities, there dwell in man an equally original,
but intrinsically weaker, impulse toward association, which instinctively
leads him to seek the society of his fellows without reflection on the
advantages to be expected therefrom, and a moderate degree of
benevolence. As altruism conflicts with egoism, so the reason, together
with the impulse to get ahead, which can only be satisfied through
labor, is in continual conflict with the inborn disinclination to regulated
activity (especially to mental effort). The character of society depends on
the strength of the nobler incentives, that is, the social inclinations and
intellectual vivacity in opposition to the egoistic impulses and natural
inertness. The former nourish the progressive, the latter the conservative
spirit. Women are as much superior to men in the stronger development of
their sympathy and sociability as they are inferior in insight and reason.
Society is a group of families, not of individuals, and domestic life is
the foundation, preparation, and pattern for social life, Comte praises the
family, the connecting link between the individual and the species, as a
school of unselfishness, and approves the strictness of the Catholic Church
in regard to the indissolubility of the marriage relation. He remarks the
evil consequences of the constantly increasing division of labor, which
makes man egoistic and narrow-minded, since it hides rather than reveals
the social significance of the employment of the individual and its
connection with the welfare of the community, and seeks for a means of
checking them. Besides the universal education of youth, he demands
the establishment of a spiritual power to bring the general interest
continually to the minds of the members of all classes and avocations, to
direct education, and to enjoy the same authority in moral and intellectual
matters as is conceded to the astronomer in the affairs of his department.
The function of this power would be to occupy the position heretofore held
by the clergy. Comte conceives it as composed of positive philosophers,
entirely independent of the secular authorities, but in return cut off from
political influence and from wealth. Secular authority, on the other hand,
he wishes put into the hands of an aristocracy of capitalists, with the
bankers at the head of these governing leaders of industry.
The Dynamics, the science of the temporal succession of social phenomena,
makes use of the principle of development. The progress of society,
which is to be regarded as a great individual, consists in the growing
predominance of the higher, human activities over the lower and animal. The
humanity in us, it is true, will never attain complete ascendency over the
animality, but we can approach nearer and nearer to the ideal, and it is
our duty to aid in this march of civilization. Although the law of progress
holds good for all sides of mental life, for art, politics, and morals,
as well as for science, nevertheless the most important factor in the
evolution of the human race is the development of the intellect as the
guiding power in us (though not in itself the strongest). Awakened first by
the lower wants, the intellect assumes in increasing measure the guidance
of human operations, and gives a determinate direction to the feelings. The
passions divide men, and, without the guidance of the speculative faculty,
would mutually cripple one another; that which alone unites them into
a collection force is a common belief, an idea. Ideas are related to
feeling--to quote a comparison from John Stuart Mill's valuable treatise
_Auguste Comte and Positivism_, 3d ed., 1882, a work of which we have made
considerable use--as the steersman who directs the ship is to the steam
which drives it forward. Thus the history of humanity has been determined
by the history of man's intellectual convictions, and this in turn by the
three familiar stages in the theory of the universe. With the development
from the theological to the positive mode of thought is most intimately
connected, further, the transition from the military to the industrial
mode of life. As the religious spirit prepares the way for the scientific
spirit, so without the dominion of the military spirit industry could not
have been developed. It was only in the school of war that the earliest
societies could learn order; slavery was beneficial in that through it
labor was imposed upon the greater part of mankind in spite of their
aversion to it. The political preponderance of the legists corresponds to
the intermediate, metaphysical stage. The sociological law (discovered by
Comte in the year 1822) harmonizes also with the customary division which
separates the ancient from the modern world by the Middle Ages.
In his philosophy of history Comte gives the further application of these
principles. Here he has won commendation even from his opponents for a
sense of justice which merits respect and for his comprehensive view. The
outlooks and proposals for the future here interspersed were in later
writings[1] worked out into a comprehensive theory of the regeneration
of society; the extravagant character of which has given occasion to his
critics to make a complete division between the second, "subjective or
sentimental," period of his thinking, in which the philosopher is said to
be transformed into the high priest of a new religion, and the first, the
positivistic period, although the major part of the qualities pointed out
as characteristic of the former are only intensifications of some which may
be shown to have been present in the latter. Beneath the surface of the
most sober inquiry mystical and dictatorial tendencies pulsate in Comte
from the beginning, and science was for him simply a means to human
happiness. But now he no longer demands the independent pursuit of science
in order to the attainment of this end, but only the believing acceptance
of its results. The intellect is to be placed under the dominion of the
heart, and only such use made of it as promises a direct advantage for
humanity; the determination of what problems are most important at a given
time belongs to the priesthood. The systematic unity or harmony of the
mind demands this dominion of the feelings over thought. The religion of
positivism, which has "love for its principle, order for its basis, and
progress for its end," is a religion without God, and without any other
immortality than a continuance of existence in the grateful memory of
posterity. The dogmas of the positivist religion are scientific principles.
Its public _cultus_ with nine sacraments and a large number of annual
festivals, is paid to the _Grand Être_ "Humanity" (which is not omnipotent,
but, on account of its composite character, most dependent, yet infinitely
superior to any of its parts); and, besides this, space, the earth, the
universe, and great men of the past are objects of reverence. Private
devotion consists in the adoration of living or dead women as our guardian
angels. The _ethics_ of the future declares the good of others to be the
sole moral motive to action (altruism). Comte's last work, the _Philosophy
of Mathematics_, 1856, indulges in a most remarkable numerical mysticism.
The historical influence exercised by Comte through his later writings is
extremely small in comparison with that of his chief work. Besides
Blignières and Robinet, E. Littré, the well-known author of the
_Dictionnaire de la Langue Française_ (1863 _seq_.) who was the most
eminent of Comte's disciples and the editor of his _Collected Works_ (1867
_seq_.), has written on the life and work of the master. Comte's school
divided into two groups--the apostates, with Littré (1801-81) at their
head, who reject the subjective phase and hold fast to the earlier
doctrine, and the faithful, who until 1877, when a new division between
strict and liberal Comteans took place within this group, gathered about P.
Laffitte (born 1823).[2] The leader of the English positivists is Frederic
Harrison (born 1831). Positivistic societies exist also in Sweden, Brazil,
Chili, and elsewhere. Positivism has been developed in an independent
spirit by J.S. Mill and Herbert Spencer.
[Footnote 1: _Positivist Catechism_, 1852 [English translation by Congreve,
1858, 2d ed., 1883]; _System of Positive Polity_, 4 vols., 1851-54 [English
translation, 1875-77]. Cf. Pünjer, _A. Comtes "Religion der Menschheit_" in
the _Jahrbücher für protestantische Theologie_, 1882.]
[Footnote 2: On this division cf. E. Caro, _M. Littré et le Positivisme_,
1883, and Herm. Gruber (S.J.), _Der Positivismus vom Tode Comtes bis auf
unsere Tage_, 1891.]
The following brief remarks on the course of French philosophy may also be
added. Against the sensationalism of Condillac as continued by Cabanis,
Destutt de Tracy (see above, pp. 259-260), and various physiologists, a
twofold reaction asserted itself. One manifestation of this proceeded from
the _theological school_, represented by the "traditionalists" Victor de
Bonald (1818), Joseph de Maistre (1753-1821; _St. Petersburg Soirées_,
1821), and F. de Lamennais (1782-1854), who, however, after his break with
the Church (_Words of a Believer_, 1834) developed in his _Sketch of a
Philosophy_, 1841 _seq_., an ontological system after Italian and German
models. The other came from the _spiritualistic school_, at whose head
stood Maine de Biran[1] (1766-1824; _On the Foundations of Psychology_; his
_Works_ have been edited by Cousin, 1841, Naville, 1859, and Bertrand) and
Royer Collard (1763-1845). Their pupil Victor Cousin (1792-1867; _Works_,
1846-50), who admired Hegel also, became the head of the _eclectic school_.
Cousin will neither deny metaphysics with the Scotch, nor construe
metaphysics _a priori_ with the Germans, but with Descartes bases it on
psychology. For a time an idealist of the Hegelian type (infinite and
finite, God and the world, are mutually inseparable; the Ideas reveal
themselves in history, in the nations, in great men), he gradually sank
back to the position of common sense. His adherents, among whom Théodore
Jouffroy (died 1842) was the most eminent, have done special service in the
history of philosophy. From Cousin's school, which was opposed by P. Leroux
and J. Reynaud, have come Ravaisson, Saisset, Jules Simon, P. Janet (born
1823),[2] and E. Caro (born 1826; _The Philosophy of Goethe_, 1866). Kant
has influenced Charles Renouvier (born 1817; _Essays in General Criticism_,
4 vols., 1854-64) and E. Vacherot (born 1809; _Metaphysics and Science_,
1858, 2d ed., 1863; _Science and Consciousness_, 1872).
[Footnote 1: Cf. E. König in _Philosophische Monatshefte_, vol. xxv. 1889,
p.160 _seq_.]
[Footnote 2: Janet: _History of Political Science in its Relations to
Morals_, 1858, 3d ed., 1887; _German Materialism of the Present Day_, 1864,
English translation by Masson, 1866: _The Family_, 1855; _The Philosophy of
Happiness_, 1862; _The Brain and Thought_, 1867; _Elements of Morals_,
1869 [English translation by Corson, 1884]; _The Theory of Morals_, 1874
[English translation by Mary Chapman, 1883]; _Final Causes_, 1876 [English
translation by Affleck, with a preface by Flint, new ed., 1883].]
Among other thinkers of reputation we may mention the socialist Henri de
Saint-Simon (1760-1825; _Selected Works_, 1859), the physiologist Claude
Bernard (1813-78), the positivist H. Taine (1828-93; _The Philosophy of
Art_, English translation by Durand, 2d ed., 1873; _On Intelligence_, 1872,
English translation by Haye, 1871), E. Renan (1823-92; _The Life of
Jesus_, 1863, English translation by Wilbour, _Philosophical Dialogues and
Fragments_--English, 1883), the writer on aesthetics and ethics J.M. Guyau
(_The Problems of Contemporary Aesthetics_, 1884; _Sketch of an Ethic
without Obligation or Sanction_, 1885; _The Irreligion of the Future_,
1887), Alfred Fouillée _(The Future of Metaphysics founded on Experience_,
1889; _Morals, Art, and Religion according to Guyau_, 1889; _The
Evolutionism of the Idea-Forces_, 1890), and the psychologist Th. Ribot,[1]
editor of the _Revue Philosophique_ (from 1876).
[Footnote 1: Ribot: _Heredity_, 2d ed., 1882 [English translation, 1875];
_The Diseases of Memory_, 1881 [English translation, 1882]; _The Diseases
of the Will_, 1883 [English. 1884]; _The Diseases of Personality_, 1885
[English, 1887]; _The Psychology of Attention_, 1889 [English, 1890];
_German Psychology of To-day_, 2d ed., 1885 [English translation by
Baldwin, 1886].]
%3. Great Britain and America.%
Prominent among the British philosophers of the nineteenth century[1]
are Hamilton, Bentham, J.S. Mill, and Spencer. Hamilton is the leading
representative of the Scottish School; Bentham is known as the advocate of
utilitarianism; Mill, an exponent of the traditional empiricism of English
thinking, develops the theory of induction and the principle of utility;
Spencer combines an agnostic doctrine of the absolute and thoroughgoing
evolution in the phenomenal world into a comprehensive philosophical
system.[2] In recent years there has been a reaction against empirical
doctrines on the basis of neo-Kantian and neo-Hegelian principles. Foremost
among the leaders of this movement we may mention T.H. Green.
[Footnote 1: Cf. Harald Höffding, _Einleitung in die englische Philosophie
unserer Zeit_ (Danish, 1874), German (with alterations and additions by the
author) by H. Kurella, 1889; David Masson, _Recent British Philosophy_,
1865, 3d ed., 1877; Ribot, _La Psychologie Anglaise Contemporaine_, 1870,
2d ed., 1875 [English, 1874] Guyau, _La Morale Anglaise Contemporaine_,
1879 [Morris, _British Thought and Thinkers_, 1880; Porter, "On English and
American Philosophy," Ueberweg's _History_, English translation, vol.
ii. pp. 348-460; O. Pfleiderer, _Development of Theology_, 1890, book
iv.--TR.]]
[Footnote 2: Cf. on Mill and Spencer, Bernh. Pünjer, _Jahrbücher für
protestantische Theologie_, 1878.]
The Scottish philosophy has been continued in the nineteenth century by
James Mackintosh (_Dissertation on the Progress of Ethical Philosophy_,
1830, 3d ed., 1863), and William Whewell (_History of the Inductive
Sciences_, 3d ed., 1857; _Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences_, 1840, 3d
ed., 1858-60). Its most important representative is Sir William Hamilton[1]
of Edinburgh (1788-1856), who, like Whewell, is influenced by Kant.
Hamilton bases philosophy on the facts of consciousness, but, in antithesis
to the associational psychology, emphasizes the mental activity of
discrimination and judgment. Our knowledge is relative, and relations its
only object. Consciousness can never transcend itself, it is bound to
the antithesis of subject and object, and conceives the existent under
relations of space and time. Hence the unconditioned is inaccessible to
knowledge and attainable by faith alone. Among Hamilton's followers belong
Mansel (_Metaphysics_, 3d. ed., 1875; _Limits of Religions Thought_, 5th
ed., 1870) and Veitch. The Scottish doctrine was vigorously opposed by J.F.
Ferrier (1808-64; _Institutes of Metaphysics_, 2d ed., 1856), who himself
developed an idealistic standpoint.
[Footnote 1: Hamilton: _Discussions on Philosophy and Literature_, 1852, 3d
ed., 1866; _Lectures on Metaphysics_, 2d ed., 1860, and on _Logic_, 2d ed.,
1866, edited by his pupils, Mansel and Veitch; _Reid's Works_, with notes
and dissertations, 1846, 7th ed., 1872. On Hamilton cf. Veitch, 1882, 1883
[Monck, 1881].]
In the United States the Scottish philosophy has exercised a wide
influence. In recent times it has been strenuously advocated, chiefly in
the spirit of Reid, by James McCosh (a native of Scotland, but since 1868
in America; _The Intuitions of the Mind_, 3d ed., 1872; _The Laws of
Discursive Thought_, new ed., 1891; _First and Fundamental Truths_, 1889);
while in Noah Porter (died 1892; _The Human Intellect_, new ed., 1876; _The
Elements of Moral Science_, 1885) it appears modified by elements from
German thinking.
Jeremy Bentham[1] (1748-1832) is noteworthy for his attempt to revive
Epicureanism in modern form. Virtue is the surest means to pleasure, and
pleasure the only self-evident good. Every man strives after happiness, but
not every one in the right way. The honest man calculates correctly, the
criminal falsely; hence a careful calculation of the value of the various
pleasures, and a prudent use of the means to happiness, is the first
condition of virtue; in this the easily attainable minor joys, whose
summation amounts to a considerable quantum, must not be neglected. The
value of a pleasure is measured by its intensity, duration, certainty,
propinquity, fecundity in the production of further pleasure, purity or
freedom from admixture of consequent pain, and extent to the greatest
possible number of persons. Every virtuous action results in a balance of
pleasure. Inflict no evil on thyself or others from which a balance of good
will not result. The end of morality is the "greatest happiness of the
greatest number," in the production of which each has first to care for
his own welfare: whoever injures himself more than he serves others acts
immorally, for he diminishes the sum of happiness in the world; the
interest of the individual coincides with the interest of society. The two
classes of virtues are prudence and benevolence. The latter is a natural,
though not a disinterested affection: happiness enjoyed with others is
greater than happiness enjoyed alone. Love is a pleasure-giving extension
of the individual; we serve others to be served by them.
[Footnote 1: Bentham: _Introduction to the Principles of Morals and
Legislation_, 1789; new ed., 1823, reprinted 1876; _Deontology_, 1834,
edited by Bowring, who also edited the _Works_, 1838-43. _The Principles
of Civil and Criminal Legislation_, edited in French from Bentham's
manuscripts by his pupil Etienne Dumont (1801, 2d ed., 1820; English by
Hildreth, 5th ed., 1887), was translated into German with notes by F.E.
Beneke, 1830.]
Associationalism has been reasserted by James Mill (1773-1836; _Analysis of
the Phenomena of the Human Mind_, 1829), whose influence lives on in the
work of his greater son. The latter, John Stuart Mill,[1] was born in
London 1806, and was from 1823 to 1858 a secretary in the India House;
after the death of his wife he lived (with the exception of two years of
service as a Member of Parliament) at Avignon; his death occurred in
1873. Mill's _System of Logic_ appeared in 1843, 9th ed., 1875; his
_Utilitarianism_, 1863, new ed., 1871; _An Examination of Sir William
Hamilton's Philosophy_, 1865, 5th ed., 1878; his notes to the new edition
of his father's work, _Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind_, 2d
ed., 1878, also deserve notice. With the phenomenalism of Hume and the
(somewhat corrected) associational psychology of his father as a basis,
Mill makes experience the sole source of knowledge, rejecting _a priori_
and intuitive elements of every sort. Matter he defines as a "permanent
possibility of sensation"; mind is resolved into "a series of feelings with
a background of possibilities of feeling," even though the author is not
unaware of the difficulty involved in the question how a series of feelings
can be aware of itself as a series. Mathematical principles, like all
others, have an experiential origin--the peculiar certitude ascribed to
them by the Kantians is a fiction--and induction is the only fruitful
method of scientific inquiry (even in mental science). The syllogism is
itself a concealed induction.
[Footnote 1: Cf. on Mill. Taine, _Le Positivisme Anglais_, 1864 [English,
by Haye]; the objections of Jevons _(Contemporary Review_, December, 1877
_seq_., reprinted in _Pure Logic and other Minor Works_, 1890; cf. _Mind_,
vol. xvi. pp. 106-110) to Mill's doctrine of the inductive character of
geometry, his treatment of the relation of resemblance, and his exposition
of the four methods of experimental inquiry in their relation to the law of
causation; and the finely conceived essay on utilitarianism, by C.
Hebler, _Philosophische Aufsãtze_, 1869, pp. 35-66. [Also Mill's own
_Autobiography_, 1873: Bain's _John Stuart Mill, a Criticism_, 1882; and
T.H. Green, Lectures on the _Logic, Works_, vol. ii.--TR.]]
When I assert the major premise the inference proper is already made, and
in the conclusion the comprehensive formula for a number of particular
truths which was given in the premise is merely explicated, interpreted.
Because universal judgments are for him merely brief expressions for
aggregates of particular truths, Mill is able to say that all knowledge is
generalization, and at the same time to argue that all inference is from
particulars to particulars. Inference through a general proposition is not
necessary, yet useful as a collateral security, inasmuch as the syllogistic
forms enable us more easily to discover errors committed. The ground of
induction, the uniformity of nature in reference both to the coexistence
and the succession of phenomena, since it wholly depends on induction,
is not unconditionally certain; but it may be accepted as very highly
probable, until some instance of lawless action (in itself conceivable)
shall have been actually proved. Like the law of causation, the principles
of logic are also not _a priori_, but only the highest generalizations from
all previous experience.
Mill's most brilliant achievement is his theory of experimental inquiry,
for which he advances four methods: (1) The Method of Agreement: "If two
or more instances of the phenomenon under investigation have only one
circumstance in common, the circumstance in which alone all the instances
agree is the cause (or effect) of the given phenomenon." (2) The Method of
Difference: "If an instance in which the phenomenon under investigation
occurs, and an instance in which it does not occur, have every circumstance
in common save one, that one occurring only in the former; the circumstance
in which alone the two instances differ, is the effect, or the cause, or an
indispensable part of the cause, of the phenomenon," These two methods (the
method of observation, and the method of artificial experiment) may also be
employed in combination, and the Canon of the Joint Method of Agreement and
Difference runs: "If two or more instances in which the phenomenon occurs
have only one circumstance in common, while two or more instances in
which it does not occur have nothing in common save the absence of that
circumstance, the circumstance in which alone the two sets of instances
differ is the effect, or the cause, or an indispensable part of the
cause, of the phenomenon." (3) The Method of Residues: "Subduct from any
phenomenon such part as is known by previous inductions to be the effect of
certain antecedents, and the residue of the phenomenon is the effect of the
remaining antecedents." (4) The Method of Concomitant Variations: "Whatever
phenomenon varies in any manner whenever another phenomenon varies in some
particular manner, is either a cause or an effect of that phenomenon, or is
connected with it through some fact of causation." When the phenomena are
complex the deductive method must be called in to aid: from the inductively
ascertained laws of the action of single causes this deduces the laws
of their combined action; and, as a final step, the results of such
ratiocination are verified by the proof of their agreement with empirical
facts. To explain a phenomenon means to point out its cause; the
explanation of a law is its reduction to other, more general laws. In all
this, however, we remain within the sphere of phenomena; the essence of
nature always eludes our knowledge.
In the chapter "Of Liberty and Necessity" (book vi. chap, ii.) Mill
emphasizes the position that the necessity to which human actions are
subject must not be conceived, as is commonly done, as irresistible
compulsion, for it denotes nothing more than the uniform order of our
actions and the possibility of predicting them. This does not destroy
the element in the idea of freedom which is legitimate and practically
valuable: we have the power to alter our character; it is formed _by_ us
as well as _for_ us; the desire to mould it is one of the most influential
circumstances in its formation. The principle of morality is the promotion
of the happiness of all sentient beings. Mill differs from Bentham,
however, from whom he derives the principle of utility, in several
important particulars--by his recognition of qualitative as well as of
quantitative differences in pleasures, of the value of the ordinary rules
of morality as intermediate principles, of the social feelings, and of the
disinterested love of virtue. Opponents of the utilitarian theory have
not been slow in availing themselves of the opportunities for attack thus
afforded.[1] A third distinguished representative of the same general
movement is Alexander Bain, the psychologist (born 1818; _The Senses and
the Intellect_, 3d ed., 1868; _The Emotions and the Will_, 3d ed., 1875;
_Mental and Moral Science_, 1868, 3d ed., 1872, part ii., 1872; _Mind and
Body_, 3d ed., 1874).
[Footnote 1: On the relation of Bentham and Mill cf. Höffding, p. 68:
Sidgwick's _Outlines_, chap. iv. § 16; and John Grote's _Examination of the
Utilitarian Philosophy_, 1870, chap. i.]
The system projected by Herbert Spencer (born 1820), the major part of
which has already appeared, falls into five parts: _First Principles_,
1862, 7th ed., 1889; _Principles of Biology_, 1864-67, 4th ed., 1888;
_Principles of Psychology_, 1855, 5th ed., 1890; _Principles of Sociology_
(vol. i. 1876, 3d ed., 1885; part iv. _Ceremonial Institutions_, 1879, 3d
ed., 1888, part v. _Political Institutions_, 1882, 2d ed., 1885, part vi.
_Ecclesiastical Institutions_, 1885, 2d ed., 1886, together constituting
vol. ii.); _Principles of Ethics_ (part i. _The Data of Ethics_, 1879, 5th
ed., 1888; parts ii. and iii. _The Inductions of Ethics_ and _The Ethics of
Individual Life_, constituting with part i. the first volume, 1892; part
iv. _Justice_, 1891). A comprehensive exposition of the system has been
given, with the authority of the author, by F.H. Collins in his _Epitome of
the Synthetic Philosophy_, 1889.[1] The treatise on _Education_, 1861, 23d
ed., 1890, his sociological writings, and his various essays have also
contributed essentially to Mr. Spencer's fame, both at home and abroad. The
_First Principles_ begin with the "Unknowable." Since human opinions, no
matter how false they may seem, have sprung from actual experiences, and,
when they find wide acceptance and are tenaciously adhered to, must have
something in them which appeals to the minds of men, we must assume that
every error contains a kernel of truth, however small it be. No one of
opposing views is to be accepted as wholly true, and none rejected as
entirely false. To discover the incontrovertible fact which lies at their
basis, we must reject the various concrete elements in which they disagree,
and find for the remainder the abstract expression which holds true
throughout its divergent manifestations. No antagonism is older, wider,
more profound, and more important than that between religion and science.
Here too some most general truth, some ultimate fact must lie at the basis.
The ultimate religious ideas are self-contradictory and untenable. No
one of the possible hypotheses concerning the nature and origin of
things--every religion may be defined as an _a priori_ theory of the
universe, the accompanying ethical code being a later growth--is logically
defensible: whether the world is conceived atheistically as self-existent,
or pantheistically as self-created, or theistically (fetichism, polytheism,
or monotheism), as created by an external agency, we are everywhere
confronted by unthinkable conclusions. The idea of a First Cause or of
the absolute (as Mansel, following Hamilton, has proved in his _Limits
of Religious Thought_) is full of contradictions. But however widely the
creeds diverge, they show entire unanimity, from the grossest superstition
up to the most developed theism, in the belief that the existence of the
world is a mystery which ever presses for interpretation, though it can
never be entirely explained. And in the progress of religion from crude
fetichism to the developed theology of our time, the truth, at first but
vaguely perceived, that there is an omnipresent Inscrutable which manifests
itself in all phenomena, ever comes more clearly into view.
[Footnote 1: Cf. also Fiske's _Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy_, 2 vols.,
1874. Numerous critiques and discussions of Spencer's views have been given
in various journals and reviews; among more extended works reference may be
made to Bowne, _The Philösophy of Herbert Spencer_, 1874; Malcolm Guthrie,
_On Mr. Spencer's Formula of Evolution_, 1879, and the same author, _On Mr.
Spencer's Unification of Knowledge_, 1882; and T.H. Green, on Spencer and
Lewes, _Works_, vol. i.--TR.]
Science meets this ultimate religious truth with the conviction, grasped
with increasing clearness as the development proceeds from Protagoras to
Kant, that the reality hidden behind all phenomena must always remain
unknown, that our knowledge can never be absolute. This principle maybe
established inductively from the incomprehensibility of the ultimate
scientific ideas, as well as deductively from the nature of intelligence,
through an analysis of the product and the process of thought. (1) The
ideas space, time, matter, motion, and force, as also the first states of
consciousness, and the thinking substance, the ego as the unity of subject
and object, all represent realities whose nature and origin are entirely
incomprehensible. (2) The subsumption of particular facts under more
general facts leads ultimately to a most general, highest fact, which
cannot be reduced to a more general one, and hence cannot be explained or
comprehended. (3) All thought (as has been shown by Hamilton in his essay
"On the Philosophy of the Unconditioned," and by his follower Mansel)
is the establishment of relations, every thought involving relation,
difference, and (as Spencer adds) likeness. Hence the absolute, the idea
of which excludes every relation, is entirely beyond the reach of an
intelligence which is concerned with relations alone, and which always
consists in discrimination, limitation, and assimilation--it is trebly
unthinkable. Therefore: Religion and Science agree in the supreme truth
that the human understanding is capable of relative knowledge only or of a
knowledge of the relative (Relativity). Nevertheless, according to Spencer,
it is too much to conclude with the thinkers just mentioned, that the
idea of the absolute is a mere expression for inconceivability, and its
existence problematical. The nature of the absolute is unknowable, but
not the existence of a basis for the relative and phenomenal. The
considerations which speak in favor of the relativity of knowledge and its
limitation to phenomena, argue also the existence of a non-relative, whose
phenomenon the relative is; the idea of the relative and the phenomenal
posits _eo ipso_ the existence of the absolute as its correlative, which
manifests itself in phenomena. We have at least an indefinite, though not
a definite, consciousness of the Unknowable as the Unknown Cause, the
Universal Power, and on this is founded our ineradicable belief in
objective reality.
All knowledge is limited to the relative, and consists in increasing
generalization: the apex of this pyramid is formed by philosophy. Common
knowledge is un-unified knowledge; science is partially unified knowledge;
philosophy, which combines the highest generalizations of the sciences into
a supreme one, is completely unified knowledge. The data of philosophy
are--besides an Unknowable Power--the existence of knowable likenesses and
differences among its manifestations, and a resulting segregation of the
manifestations into those of subject and object. Further, derivative data
are space (relations of coexistence), time (relations of irreversible
sequence), matter (coexistent positions that offer resistance), motion
(which involves space, time, and matter), and force, the ultimate of
ultimates, on which all others depend, and from our primordial experiences
of which all the other modes of consciousness are derivable. Similarly the
ultimate primary truth is the _persistence of force_, from which, besides
the indestructibility of matter and the continuity of (actual or potential)
motion, still further truths may be deduced: the persistence of relations
among forces or the uniformity of law, the transformation and equivalence
of (mental and social as well as of physical) forces, the law of the
direction of motion (along the line of least resistance, or the line of
greatest traction, or their resultant), and the unceasing rhythm of
motion. Beyond these analytic truths, however, philosophy demands a law of
universal synthesis. This must be the law of _the continuous redistribution
of matter and motion_, for each single thing, and the whole universe
as well, is involved in a (continuously repeated) double process of
_evolution_ and _dissolution_, the former consisting in the integration of
matter[1] and the dissipation of motion, the latter in the absorption of
motion and the disintegration of matter. The law of evolution, in its
complete development, then runs: "Evolution is an integration of matter and
concomitant dissipation of motion; during which the matter passes from an
indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to a definite, coherent heterogeneity;
and during which the retained motion undergoes a parallel transformation."
This is inductively supported by illustrations from every region of nature
and all departments of mental and social life; and, further, shown
deducible from the ultimate principle of the persistence of force, through
the mediation of several corollaries to it, viz., the instability of the
homogeneous under the varied incidence of surrounding forces, the
multiplication of effects by action and reaction, and segregation. Finally
the principle of equilibration indicates the impassable limit at which
evolution passes over into dissolution, until the eternal round is again
begun. If it may be said of Hegel himself, that he vainly endeavored to
master the concrete fullness of reality with formal concepts, the criticism
is applicable to Spencer in still greater measure. The barren schemata of
concentration, passage into heterogeneity, adaptation, etc., which are
taken from natural science, and which are insufficient even in their own
field, prove entirely impotent for the mastery of the complex and peculiar
phenomena of spiritual life.
[Footnote 1: Organic growth is the concentration of elements before
diffused; cf. the union of nomadic families into settled tribes.]
Armed with these principles, however, Mr. Spencer advances to the
discussion of the several divisions of "Special Philosophy." Passing over
inorganic nature, he finds his task in the interpretation of the phenomena
of life, mind, and society in terms of matter, motion, and force under the
general evolution formula. This procedure, however, must not be understood
as in any wise materialistic. Such an interpretation would be a
misrepresentation, it is urged, for the strict relativity of the standpoint
limits all conclusions to phenomena, and permits no inference concerning
the nature of the "Unknowable." The _Principles of Biology_ take up the
phenomena of life. Life is defined as the "continuous adjustment of
internal relations to external relations." No attempt is made to explain
its origin, yet (in the words of Mr. Sully) it is clear that the lowest
forms of life are regarded as continuous in their essential nature with
sub-vital processes. The evolution of living organisms, from the lowest to
the highest, with the development of all their parts and functions, results
from the co-operation of various factors, external and internal, whose
action is ultimately reducible to the universal law.
The field of _psychology_ is intimately allied with biology, and yet
istinguished from it. Mental life is a subdivision of life in general, and
may be subsumed under the general definition; but while biological truths
concern the connection between internal phenomena, with but tacit or
occasional recognition of the environment, psychology has to do neither
with the internal connection nor the external connection, but "the
connection between these two connections." Psychology in its subjective
aspect, again, is a field entirely _sui generis_. The substance of mind,
conceived as the underlying substratum of mental states, is unknowable; but
the character of those states of which mind, as we know it, is composed,
is a legitimate subject of inquiry. If this be carefully investigated, it
seems highly probable that the ultimate unit of consciousness is something
"of the same order as that which we call a nervous shock." Mind is
proximately composed of feelings and the relations between feelings;
from these, revived, associated, and integrated, the whole fabric of
consciousness is built up. There is, then, no sharp distinction between the
several phases of mind. If we trace its development objectively, in terms
of the correspondence between inner and outer phenomena, we find a gradual
progress from the less to the more complex, from the lower to the higher,
without a break. Reflex action, instinct, memory, reason, are simply
stages in the process. All is dependent on experience. Even the forms of
knowledge, which are _a priori_ to the individual, are the product
of experience in the race, integrated and transmitted by heredity, and
become organic in the nervous structure. In general the correspondence of
inner and outer in which mental life consists is mediated by the nervous
organism. The structure and functions of this condition consciousness and
furnish the basis for the interpretation of mental evolution in terms of
"evolution at large, regarded as a process of physical transformation."
Nevertheless mental phenomena and bodily phenomena are not identical,
consciousness is not motion. They are both phenomenal modes of the
unknowable, disparate in themselves, and giving no indication of the
ultimate nature of the absolute. Subjective analysis of human consciousness
yields further proof of the unity of mental composition. All mental action
is ultimately reducible to "the continuous differentiation and integration
of states of consciousness." The criterion of truth is the inconceivability
of the negation. Tried by this test, as by all others, realism is superior
to idealism, though in that "transfigured" form which implies objective
existence without implying the possibility of any further knowledge
concerning it,--hence in a form entirely congruous with the conclusion
reached by many other routes.
_Sociology_ deals with super-organic evolution, which involves the
co-ordinated actions of many individuals. To understand the social unit, we
must study primitive man, especially the ideas which he forms of himself,
of other beings, and of the surrounding world. The conception of a mind or
other-self is gradually evolved through observation of natural phenomena
which favor the notion of duality, especially the phenomena of sleep,
dreams, swoons, and death. Belief in the influence of these doubles of the
dead on the fortunes of the living leads to sorcery, prayer, and praise.
Ancestor-worship is the ultimate source of all forms of religion; to it
can be traced even such aberrant developments as fetichism and idolatry,
animal-, plant-, and nature-worship. Thus the primitive man feels himself
related not only to his living fellows, but to multitudes of supernatural
beings about him. The fear of the living becomes the root of the political,
and the fear of the dead the root of the religious, control. A society is
an organic entity. Though differing from an individual organism in many
ways, it yet resembles it in the permanent relations among its component
parts. The Domestic Relations, by which the maintenance of the species is
now secured, have come from various earlier and less developed forms; the
militant type of society is accompanied by a lower, the industrial type
by a higher stage of this development. Ceremonial observance is the most
primitive kind of government, and the kind from which the political and
religious governments have differentiated. Political organization is
necessary in order to co-operation for ends which benefit the society
directly, and the individual only indirectly. The ultimate political force
is the feeling of the community, including as its largest part ancestral
feeling. Many facts combine to obscure this truth, but however much it may
be obscured, public feeling remains the primal source of authority. The
various forms and instruments of government have grown up through processes
in harmony with the general law. The two antithetical types of society are
the militant and the industrial--the former implies compulsory co-operation
under more or less despotic rule, with governmental assumption of functions
belonging to the individual and a minimizing of individual initiative;
in the latter, government is reduced to a minimum and best conducted by
representative agencies, public organizations are largely replaced by
private organizations, the individual is freer and looks less to the state
for protection and for aid. The fundamental conditions of the highest
social development is the cessation of war. The ideas and sentiments at the
basis of Ecclesiastical Institutions have been naturally derived from the
ghost-theory already described. The goal of religious development is the
final rejection of all anthropomorphic conceptions of the First Cause,
until the harmony of religion and science shall be reached in the
veneration of the Unknowable. The remaining parts of Mr. Spencer's
Sociology will treat of Professional Institutions, Industrial Institutions,
Linguistic Progress, Intellectual, Moral, and Aesthetic Progress.
The subject matter of _ethics_ is the conduct termed good or bad. Conduct
is the adjustment of acts to ends. The evolution of conduct is marked by
increasing perfection in the adjustment of acts to the furtherance of
individual life, the life of offspring, and social life. The ascription of
ethical character to the highly evolved conduct of man in relation to
these ends implies the fundamental assumption, that "life is good or bad
according as it does, or does not, bring a surplus of agreeable feeling."
The ideal of moral science is rational deduction: a rational utilitarianism
can be attained only by the recognition of the necessary laws--physical,
biological, psychological, and sociological--which condition the results of
actions; among these the biological laws have been largely neglected in
the past, though they are of the utmost importance as furnishing the link
between life and happiness. The "psychological view," again, explains the
origin of conscience. In the course of development man comes to recognize
the superiority of the higher and more representative feelings as guides
to action; this form of self-restraint, however, is characteristic of the
non-moral restraints as well, of the political, social, and religious
controls. From these the moral control proper has emerged--differing from
them in that it refers to intrinsic instead of extrinsic effects--and the
element of coerciveness in them, transferred, has generated the feeling of
moral compulsion (which, however, "will diminish as fast as moralization
increases").
Such a rational ethics, based on the laws which condition welfare rather
than on a direct estimation of happiness, and premising the relativity of
all pains and pleasures, escapes fundamental objections to the earlier
hedonism (_e.g._, those to the hedonic calculus); and, combining the
valuable elements in the divergent ethical theories, yields satisfactory
principles for the decision of ethical problems. Egoism takes precedence
of altruism; yet it is in turn dependent on this, and the two, on due
consideration, are seen to be co-essential. Entirely divorced from the
other, neither is legitimate, and a compromise is the only possibility;
while in the future advancing evolution will bring the two into complete
harmony. The goal of the whole process will be the ideal man in the ideal
society, the scientific anticipation of which, absolute ethics, promises
guidance for the relative and imperfect ethics of the transition period.
Examination of the actual, not the professed, ideas and sentiments of men
reveals wide variation in moral judgments. This is especially true of the
"pro-ethical" consciousnesses of external authorities, coercions, and
opinions--religious, political, and social--by which the mass of mankind
are governed; and is broadly due to variation in social conditions. Where
the need of external co-operation predominates the ethics of enmity
develops; where internal, peaceful co-operation is the chief social need
the ethics of amity results: and the evolution principle enables us to
infer that, as among certain small tribes in the past, so in the great
cultivated nations of the future, the life of amity will unqualifiedly
prevail. The Ethics of Individual Life shows the application of moral
judgments to all actions which affect individual welfare. The very fact
that some deviations from normal life are now morally disapproved, implies
the existence of both egoistic and altruistic sanctions for the moral
approval of all acts which conduce to normal living and the disapproval of
all minor deviations, though for the most part these have hitherto remained
unconsidered. Doubtless, however, moral control must here be somewhat
indefinite; and even scientific observation and analysis must leave the
production of a perfectly regulated conduct to "the organic adjustment of
constitution to [social] conditions."
The Ethics of Social Life includes justice and beneficence. Human justice
emerges from sub-human or animal justice, whose law (passing over gratis
benefits to offspring) is "that each individual shall receive the benefits
and evils of its own nature and its consequent conduct." This is the law
of human justice, also, but here it is more limited than before by the
non-interference which gregariousness requires, and by the increasing need
for the sacrifice of individuals for the good of the species. The egoistic
sentiment of justice arises from resistance to interference with free
action; the altruistic develops through sympathy under social conditions,
these being maintained meanwhile by a "pro-altruistic" sentiment, into
which dread of retaliation, of social reprobation, of legal punishment, and
of divine vengeance enter as component parts. The idea of justice emerges
gradually from the sentiment of justice: it has two elements, one brute or
positive, with inequality as its ideal, one human or negative, the ideal
of which is equality. In early times the former of these was unduly
appreciated, as in later times the latter, the true conception includes
both, the idea of equality being applied to the limits and the idea of
inequality to the benefits of action. Thus the formula of justice becomes:
"Every man is free to do that which he wills, provided he infringes not the
equal freedom of any other man "--a law which finds its authority in the
facts, that it is an _a priori_ dictum of "consciousness after it has been
subject to the discipline of prolonged social life," and that it is also
deducible from the conditions of the maintenance of life at large and of
social life. From this law follow various particular corollaries or rights,
all of which coincide with ordinary ethical concepts and have legal
enactments corresponding to them. Political rights so-called do not exist;
government is simply a system of appliances for the maintenance of private
rights. Both the nature of the state and its constitution are variable:
the militant type requires centralization and a coercive constitution;
the industrial type implies a wider distribution of political power, but
requires a representation of interests rather than a representation of
individuals. Government develops as a result of war, and its function of
protection against internal aggression arises by differentiation from its
primary function of external defense. These two, then, constitute the
essential duties of the state; when war ceases the first falls away, and
its sole function becomes the maintenance of the conditions under which
each individual may "gain the fullest life compatible with the fullest life
of fellow-citizens." All beyond this, all interference with this life of
the individual, whether by way of assistance, restraint, or education,
proves in the end both unjust and impolitic. The remaining parts of the
_Ethics_ will treat of Negative and Positive Beneficence.
If J.S. Mill and Spencer (the latter of whom, moreover, had announced
evolution as a world-law before the appearance of Darwin), move in a
direction akin to positivism, the same is true, further, of G.H. Lewes
(1817-78; _History of Philosophy_, 5th ed., 1880; _Problems of Life and
Mind_, 1874 _seq_).
Turning to the discussion of particular disciplines, we may mention as
prominent among English logicians,[1] besides Hamilton, Whewell, and Mill,
Whately, Mansel, Thomson, De Morgan, Boole (_An Investigation of the Laws
of Thought_, 1854); W.S. Jevons (_The Principles of Science_, 2d ed.,
1877); Venn (_Symbolic Logic_, 1881; _Empirical Logic_, 1889), Bradley, and
Bosanquet. Among more recent investigators in the field of psychology we
may name Carpenter, Ferrier, Maudsley, Galton, Ward, and Sully (_The Human
Mind_, 1892), and in the field of comparative psychology, Lubbock, Romanes
(_Mental Evolution in Animals_, 1883; _Mental Evolution in Man_, 1889), and
Morgan (_Animal Life and Intelligence_, 1891). Among ethical writers the
following, besides Spencer and Green, hold a foremost place: H. Sidgwick
_(The Methods of Ethics_, 4th ed., 1890), Leslie Stephen _(The Science of
Ethics_, 1882), and James Martineau _(Types of Ethical Theory_, 3d ed.,
1891). The quarterly review _Mind_ (vols. i.-xvi. 1876-91, edited by G.
Croom Robertson; new series from 1892, edited by G.F. Stout) has since its
foundation played an important part in the development of English thought.
[Footnote 1: Cf. Nedich, _Die Lehre von der Quantifikation des Prädikats_
in vol. iii. of Wundt's _Philosophische Studien_; L. Liard, _Les
Logiciens Anglais Contemporains_, 1878; Al. Riehl in vol. i. of the
_Vierteljahrsschrift für wissenschaftliche Philosophie_, 1877 [cf. also
appendix A to the English translation of Ueberweg's _Logic_.--TR.].]
German idealism, for which S.T. Coleridge (died 1834) and Thomas Carlyle
(died 1881) endeavored to secure an entrance into England, for a long
time gained ground there but slowly. Later years, however, have brought
increasing interest in German speculation, and much of recent thinking
shows the influence of Kantian and Hegelian principles. As pioneer of this
movement we may name J.H. Stirling _(The Secret of Hegel_, 1865); and as
its most prominent representatives John Caird _(An Introduction to the
Philosophy of Religion_, 1880), Edward Caird _(The Critical Philosophy of
Immanuel Kant_, 1889; _The Evolution of Religion_, 1893), both in Glasgow,
and T.H. Green (1836-82; professor at Oxford; _Prolegomena to Ethics_,
3d ed., 1887; _Works_, edited by Nettleship, 3 vols., 1885-88).[1] In
opposition to the hereditary empiricism of English philosophy--which
appears in Spencer and Lewes, as it did in Locke, Berkeley, and Hume,
though in somewhat altered form--Green maintains that all experience is
constituted by intelligible relations. Knowledge, therefore, is possible
only for a correlating self-consciousness; while nature, as a system of
relations, is likewise dependent on a spiritual principle, of which it is
the expression. Thus the central conception of Green's philosophy becomes,
"that the universe is a single eternal activity or energy, of which it is
the essence to be self-conscious, that is, to be itself and not itself
in one" (Nettleship). To this universal consciousness we are related as
manifestations or "communications" under the limitations of our physical
organization. As such we are free, that is, self-determined, determined by
nothing from without. The moral ideal is self-realization or perfection,
the progressive reproduction of the divine self-consciousness. This is
possible only in terms of a development of persons, for as a self-conscious
personality the divine spirit can reproduce itself in persons alone; and,
since "social life is to personality what language is to thought,"
the realization of the moral ideal implies life in common. The nearer
determination of the ideal is to be sought in the manifestations of the
eternal spirit as they have been given in the moral history of individuals
and nations. This shows what has already been implied in the relation of
morality to personality and society, that moral good must first of all be
a common good, one in which the permanent well-being of self includes the
well-being of others also. This is the germ of morality, the development of
which yields, first, a gradual extension of the area of common good, and
secondly, a fuller and more concrete determination of its content. Further
representatives of this movement are W. Wallace, Adamson, Bradley; A. Seth
is an ex-member.
[Footnote 1: Cf. on Green the Memoir by Nettleship in vol. iii. of the
_Works_.]
The first and greatest of American philosophical thinkers was the
Calvinistic theologian Jonathan Edwards (1703-58; treatise on the _Freedom
of Will_, 1754; _Works_, 10 vols., edited by Dwight, 1830). Edwards's
deterministic doctrine found numerous adherents (among them his son, who
bore his father's name, died 1801) as well as strenuous opponents (Tappan,
Whedon, Hazard among later names), and essentially contributed to
the development of philosophical thought in the United States. For a
considerable period this crystallized for the most part around elements
derived from British thinkers, especially from Locke and the Scottish
School. In 1829 James Marsh called attention to German speculation [1] by
his American edition of Coleridge's _Aids to Reflection_, with an important
introduction from his own hand. Later W.E. Channing (1780-1842), the head
of the Unitarian movement, attracted many young and brilliant minds, the
most noted of whom, Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-82), became a leader among
the New England transcendentalists. Metaphysical idealism has, perhaps, met
with less resistance in America than in England. Kant and Hegel have been
eagerly studied (G.S. Morris, died 1889; C.C. Everett; J. Watson in Canada;
Josiah Royce, _The Spirit of Modern Philosophy_, 1892; and others); and
_The Journal of Speculative Philosophy_, edited by W.T. Harris, has since
1867 furnished a rallying point for idealistic interests. The influence
of Lotze has also been considerable (B.P. Bowne in Boston). Sympathy
with German speculation, however, has not destroyed the naturally close
connection with the work of writers who use the English tongue. Thus
Spencer's writings have had a wide currency, and his system numbers many
disciples, though these are less numerous among students of philosophy by
profession (John Fiske, _Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy_, 1874).
[Footnote 1: Cf. Porter, _op. cit._]
In the latest decades the broadening of the national life, the increasing
acquaintance with foreign thought, and the rapid development of university
work have greatly enlarged and deepened the interest in philosophical
pursuits. This is manifested most clearly in the field of psychology,
including especially the "new" or "physiological" psychology, and the
history of philosophy, though indications of pregnant thought in other
departments, as ethics and the philosophy of religion, and even of
independent construction, are not wanting. Among psychologists of the day
we may mention G.S. Hall, editor of _The American Journal of Psychology_
(1887 seq.), G.T. Ladd (_Elements of Physiological Psychology_, 1887),
and William James (_Principles of Psychology_, 1890). _The International
Journal of Ethics_ (Philadelphia, 1890 seq.), edited by S. Burns Weston, is
"devoted to the advancement of ethical knowledge and practice"; among the
foreign members of its editorial committee are Jodl and Von Gizycki. The
weekly journal of popular philosophy, _The Open Court_, published in
Chicago, has for its object the reconciliation of religion and science; the
quarterly, _The Monist_ (1890 seq.), published by the same company under
the direction of Paul Carus (_The Soul of Man_, 1891), the establishment of
a monistic view of the world. Several journals, among them the _Educational
Review_ (1891 seq., edited by N.M. Butler), point to a growing interest in
pedagogical inquiry. _The American Philosophical Review_ (1892 seq.,
edited by J.G. Schurman, _The Ethical Import of Darwinism_, 1887) is a
comprehensive exponent of American philosophic thought.
%4. Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Holland.%
In _Sweden_ an empirical period represented by Leopold (died 1829) and Th.
Thorild (died 1808), and based upon Locke and Rousseau, was followed, after
the introduction of Kant by D. Boëthius, 1794, by a drift toward idealism.
This was represented in an extreme form by B. Höijer (died 1812), a
contemporary and admirer of Fichte, who defended the right of philosophical
construction, and more moderately by Christofer Jacob Böstrom (1797-1866),
the most important systematic thinker of his country. As predecessors of
Böstrom we may mention Biberg (died 1827), E.G. Geijer (died 1846), and S.
Grubbe (died 1853), like him professors in Upsala, and of his pupils,
S. Ribbing, known in Germany by his peculiar conception of the Platonic
doctrine of ideas (German translation, 1863-64), the moralist Sahlin
(1877), the historian, of Swedish philosophy[1] (1873 seq.) A. Nyblaeus of
Lund, and H. Edfeldt of Upsala, the editor of Böstrom's works (1883).
[Footnote 1: Cf. Höffding, _Die Philosophie in Schweden_ in the
_Philosophische Monatshefte_, vol. xv. 1879, p. 193 seq.]
Böstrom's philosophy is a system of self-activity and personalism which
recalls Leibnitz and Krause. The absolute or being is characterized as a
concrete, systematically articulated, self-conscious unity, which dwells
with its entire content in each of its moments, and whose members both bear
the character of the whole and are immanent in one another, standing in
relations of organic inter-determination. The antithesis between unity and
plurality is only apparent, present only for the divisive view of finite
consciousness. God is infinite, fully determinate personality (for
determination is not limitation), a system of self-dependent living beings,
differing in degree, in which we, as to our true being, are eternally and
unchangeably contained. Every being is a definite, eternal, and living
thought of God; thinking beings with their states and activities alone
exist; all that is real is spiritual, personal. Besides this true,
suprasensible world of Ideas, which is elevated above space, time, motion,
change, and development, and which has not arisen by creation or a process
of production, there exists for man, but only for him--man is formally
perfect, it is true, but materially imperfect (since he represents the real
from a limited standpoint)--a sensuous world of phenomena as the sphere of
his activity. To this he himself belongs, and in it he is spontaneously to
develop the suprasensible content which is eternally given him (i.e., his
true nature), namely, to raise it from the merely potential condition of
obscure presentiment to clear, conscious actuality. Freedom is the power
to overcome our imperfection by means of our true nature, to realize our
suprasensible capacities, to become for ourselves what we are in ourselves
(in God). The ethics of Böstrom is distinguished from the Kantian ethics,
to which it is related, chiefly by the fact that it seeks to bring
sensibility into a more than merely negative relation to reason. Society
is an eternal, and also a personal, Idea in God. The most perfect form
of government is constitutional monarchy; the ideal goal of history, the
establishment of a system of states embracing all mankind.
J. Borelius of Lund is an Hegelian, but differs from the master in regard
to the doctrine of the contradiction. The Hegelian philosophy has adherents
in _Norway_ also, as G.V. Lyng (died 1884; _System of Fundamental Ideas_),
M.J. Monrad (_Tendencies of Modern Thought_, 1874, German translation,
1879), both professors in Christiania, and Monrad's pupil G. Kent (_Hegel's
Doctrine of the Nature of Experience_, 1891).
The _Danish_ philosophy of the nineteenth century has been described
by Höffding in the second volume of the _Archiv für Geschichte der
Philosophie_, 1888. He begins with the representatives of the speculative
movement: Steffens (see above), Niels Treschow (1751-1833), Hans Christian
Oersted (1777-1851; _Spirit in Nature_, German translation, Munich,
1850-51), and Frederik Christian Sibbern (1785-1872). A change was brought
about by the philosophers of religion Sören Kierkegaard (1813-55) and
Rasmus Nielsen (1809-84; _Philosophy of Religion_, 1869), who opposed
speculative idealism with a strict dualism of knowledge and faith, and were
in turn opposed by Georg Brandes (born 1842) and Hans Bröchner (1820-75).
Among younger investigators the Copenhagen professors, Harald Höffding[1]
(born 1843) and Kristian Kroman[2] (born 1846) stand in the first rank.
[Footnote 1: Höffding: _The Foundations of Human Ethics_, 1876, German
translation, 1880; _Outlines of Psychology_, 1882, English translation by
Lowndes, 1891, from the German translation, 1887; _Ethics_, 1887, German
translation by Bendixen, 1888.]
[Footnote 2: Kroman: _Our Knowledge of Nature_, German translation, 1883;
_A Brief Logic and Psychology_, German translation by Bendixen, 1890.]
Land (_Mind_, vol. iii. 1878) and G. von Antal (1888) have written on
philosophy in _Holland_. Down to the middle of the nineteenth century the
field was occupied by an idealism based upon the ancients, in particular
upon Plato: Franz Hemsterhuis (1721-90; _Works_, new ed., 1846-50), and the
philologists Wyttenbach and Van Heusde. Then Cornelius Wilhelm Opzoomer[3]
(1821-92; professor in Utrecht) brought in a new movement. Opzoomer
favors empiricism. He starts from Mill and Comte, but goes beyond them in
important points, and assigns faith a field of its own beside knowledge.
In opposition to apriorism he seeks to show that experience is capable of
yielding universal and necessary truths; that space, time, and causality
are received along with the content of thought; that mathematics itself is
based upon experience; and that the method of natural science, especially
deduction, must be applied to the mental sciences. The philosophy of mind
considers man as an individual being, in his connection with others, in
relation to a higher being, and in his development; accordingly it
divides into psychology (which includes logic, aesthetics, and ethology),
sociology, the philosophy of religion, and the philosophy of history.
Central to Opzoomer's system is his doctrine of the five sources of
knowledge: Sensation, the feeling of pleasure and pain, aesthetic, moral,
and religious feeling. If we build on the foundation of the first three
alone, we end in materialism; if we leave the last unused, we reach
positivism; if we make religious feeling the sole judge of truth, mysticism
is the outcome. The criteria of science are utility and progress. These are
still wanting in the mental sciences, in which the often answered but never
decided questions continually recur, because we have neither derived the
principles chosen as the basis of the deduction from an exact knowledge
of the phenomena nor tested the results by experience. The causes of this
defective condition can only be removed by imitating the study of nature:
we must learn that no conclusions can be reached except from facts, and
that we are to strive after knowledge of phenomena and their laws alone. We
have no right to assume an "essence" of things beside and in addition to
phenomena, which reveals itself in them or hides behind them. Pupils of
Opzoomer are his successor in his Utrecht chair, Van der Wyck, and Pierson.
We may also mention J.P.N. Land, who has done good service in editing
the works of Spinoza and of Geulincx, and the philosopher of religion
Rauwenhoff (1888).
[Footnote 1: Opzoomer: _The Method of Science_, a Handbook of Logic, German
translation by Schwindt, 1852; _Religion_, German translation by Mook,
1869.]
On the system of the Hungarian philosopher Cyrill Horváth (died 1884 at
Pesth) see the essay by E. Nemes in the _Zeitschrift für Philosophie_,
vol. lxxxviii, 1886. Since 1889 a review, _Problems of Philosophy and
Psychology_, has appeared at Moscow in Russian, under the direction of
Professor N. von Grot.