in the philosophy-dyed atmosphere of Germany. The triumph lasted for ten
years and by no means subsided with the death of Hegel. On the contrary,
from 1830 to 1840 Hegelianism was exclusively supreme and had fastened
itself upon its opponents to a greater or less degree. During this
period Hegel's views, consciously or unconsciously, penetrated the
different sciences, and saturated popular literature and the daily press
from which the ordinary so-called cultured classes derive their mental
pabulum. But this victory down the whole line was only preliminary to a
conflict within its own ranks.
The entire doctrine of Hegel left, as we have seen, plenty of room for
the bringing under it the most diverse practical opinions, and the
practical, in the then theoretic Germany, consisted in only two
things--religion and politics. He who laid the greatest stress upon the
Hegelian system, might be moderately conservative in both these
respects, while he who considered the dialectic method of the greatest
importance could belong to the extreme left in religious and political
affairs. Hegel himself, in spite of the frequent outbursts of
revolutionary wrath in his books, was inclined, on the whole, to the
conservative side. His system, rather than his method, had cost him the
hard thinking. At the end of the thirties, the division in the school
grew greater and greater. The left wing, the so-called Young Hegelians,
in their fight with the pious orthodox, abandoned little by little, that
marked philosophical reserve regarding the burning questions of the day,
which had up to that time secured for their teachings State toleration
and even protection, and as in 1840 orthodox pietism and absolutist
feudal reaction ascended the throne with Frederick William IV., open
partisanship became unavoidable. The fight was still maintained with
philosophical weapons, but no longer along abstract philosophical lines;
they went straight to deny the dominant religion and the existing state,
and although in the "Deutschen Jahrbuechern" the practical aims were
still put forward clothed in philosophical phraseology, the younger
Hegelian school threw off disguise in the "Rheinische Zeitung," as the
exponents of the philosophy of the struggling radicals, and used the
cloak of philosophy only to deceive the censorship.
But politics were at that time a very thorny field, and so the main
fight was directed against religion. But this was also, particularly
since 1840, indirectly a political fight. Strauss' "Leben Jesu,"
published in 1835, had given the first cause of offense. The theory
therein developed regarding the origin of the gospel myths Bruno Bauer
later dealt with, adding the additional proof that a whole series of
evangelical stories had been invented by their authors. The fight
between these two was carried on under a philosophical disguise, as a
battle of mind with matter; the question whether the marvellous stories
of the gospel came into being through an unconscious myth-creation in
the womb of society, or whether they were individually invented by the
evangelists broadened into the question whether in the history of the
race, mind or matter carried the real weight, and lastly came Stirner,
the prophet of modern anarchism--Bakunine has taken very much from
him--and overtopped the sovereign power of consciousness with his
sovereign power of the individual.
We do not follow the decomposition of the Hegelian school on this side
any further. What is more important for us is this: The mass of the most
decided young Hegelians were driven back upon English-French materialism
through the necessities of their fight against positive religion. Here
they came into conflict with their school system. According to
materialism, nature exists as the sole reality, it exists in the
Hegelian system only as the alienation of the absolute Idea, as it were
a degradation of the Idea; under all circumstances, thought, and its
thought-product, the Idea, according to this view, appears as the
original, nature, which only exists through the condescension of the
Idea as the derived, and in this contradiction they got along as well or
as ill as they might.
Then came Feuerbach's "Wesen des Christenthums." With one blow it cut
the contradiction, in that it placed materialism on the throne again
without any circumlocution. Nature exists independently of all
philosophies. It is the foundation upon which we, ourselves products of
nature, are built. Outside man and nature nothing exists, and the higher
beings which our religious phantasies have created are only the
fantastic reflections of our individuality. The cord was broken, the
system was scattered and destroyed, the contradiction, since it only
existed in the imagination, was solved. One must himself have
experienced the delivering power of this book to get a clear idea of it.
The enthusiasm was universal, we were all for the moment followers of
Feuerbach. How enthusiastically Marx greeted the new idea and how much
he was influenced by it, in spite of all his critical reservations, one
may read in the "Holy Family."
The very faults of the book contributed to its momentary effect. The
literary, impressive, even bombastic style secured for it a very large
public and was a constant relief after the long years of abstract and
abstruse Hegelianism. The same result also proceeded from the
extravagant glorification of love, which in comparison with the
insufferable sovereignty of pure reason, found an excuse, if not a
justification. What we must not forget is, that just on these two
weaknesses of Feuerbach "true Socialism" in educated Germany fastened
itself like a spreading plague since 1844, and set literary phrases in
the place of scientific knowledge, the freeing of mankind by means of
love in place of the emancipation of the proletariat, through the
economic transformation of production, in short lost itself in nauseous
fine writing and in sickly sentimentality, of the type of which class of
writers was Herr Karl Gruen.
We must furthermore not forget that though the Hegelian school was
destroyed the Hegelian philosophy was not critically vanquished. Strauss
and Bauer took each a side and engaged in polemics. Feuerbach broke
through the system and threw it as a whole aside. But one has not
finished with a philosophy by simply declaring it to be false, and so
enormous a work as the Hegelian philosophy which has had so tremendous
an influence upon the mental development of the nation did not allow
itself to be put aside peremptorily. It had to be destroyed in its own
way, which means in the way that critically destroys its form but saves
the new acquisitions to knowledge won by it. How this was brought about
we shall see below.
But for the moment, the Revolution of 1848 put aside all philosophical
discussion just as unceremoniously as Feuerbach laid aside Hegel. And
then Feuerbach was himself crowded out.
II.
The great foundation question of all, especially new, philosophies is
connected with the relation between thinking and being. Since very early
times when men, being in complete ignorance respecting their own bodies,
and stirred by apparitions,[1] arrived at the idea that thought and
sensation were not acts of their own bodies, but of a special soul
dwelling in the body and deserting it at death, ever since then they
have been obliged to give thought to the relations of this soul to the
outside world. If it betook itself from the body and lived on, there was
no reason to invent another death for it; thus arose the conception of
their immortality, which, at that evolutionary stage, did not appear as
a consolation, but as fate, against which a man cannot strive, and often
enough, as among the Greeks, as a positive misfortune. Not religious
desire for consolation but uncertainty arising from a similar universal
ignorance of what to associate with the soul when once it was
acknowledged, after the death of the body, led universally to the
tedious idea of personal immortality. Just in a similar fashion the
first gods arose, through the personification of the forces of nature,
and these in the further development of the religions acquired greater
and greater supernatural force, until by a natural process of
abstraction, I might say of distillation, from the many more or less
limited and mutually limiting gods, in the course of spiritual
development, at last the idea of the one all embracing god of the
monotheistic religions took its place in the minds of men.
The question of the relation of thinking to being, of the relation of
the spirit to nature, the highest question of universal philosophy, has
therefore, no less than all religion, its roots in the limited and
ignorant ideas of the condition of savagery. It could first be
understood, and its full significance could first be grasped, when
mankind awoke from the long winter sleep of Christian Middle Ages. The
question of the relation of thought to existence, a question which had
also played a great role in the scholasticism of the Middle Ages, the
question what is at the beginning spirit or nature, this question was in
spite of the church now cut down to this: "Has God made the world or is
the world from eternity?"
As this question was answered this way or that the philosophers were
divided into two great camps. The one party which placed the origin of
the spirit before that of nature, and therefore in the last instance
accepted creation, in some form or other--and this creation, is often
according to the philosophers, according to Hegel for example, still
more odd and impossible than in Christianity--made the camp of idealism.
The others, who recognized nature as the source, belong to the various
schools of materialism.
The two expressions signify something different from this. Idealism and
materialism, originally not used in any other sense, are not here
employed in any other sense. We shall see what confusion arises when one
tries to force another signification into them.
The question of the relationship of thinking and being has another
side; in what relation do our thoughts with regard to the world
surrounding us stand to this world itself? Is our thought in a position
to recognize the real world? Can we, in our ideas and notion of the real
world, produce a correct reflection of the reality? This question is
called in philosophical language the question of the identity of
thinking and being, and is affirmed by the great majority of
philosophers. According to Hegel, for example, its affirmation is
self-evident, for that which we know in the actual world is its content,
according to our thought, that which compels the world to a progressive
realization as it were of the absolute Idea, which absolute idea has
existed somewhere, unattached from the world and before the world; and
that thought can recognize a content which is already a thought content
herein, from the beginning, appears self-evident. It is also evident
that what is here to be proved is already hidden in the hypothesis. But
that does not hinder Hegel, by any means, from drawing the further
conclusion from his proof of the identity of thought and existence that
his philosophy, because correct for his thought, is, therefore, the only
correct one, and that the identity of thought and existence must show
itself in this, that mankind should forthwith translate his philosophy
from theory to practice and the whole world shift itself to a Hegelian
base. This is an illusion which he shares alike with all philosophers.
In addition there is still another class of philosophers, those who
dispute the possibility of a perception of the universe or at least of
an exhaustive perception. To them belong, among the moderns, Hume and
Kant, and they have played a very distinguished role in the evolution of
philosophy. This point of view has been now refuted by Hegel, as far as
possible, from the idealistic standpoint. The materialistic additions
made by Feuerbach are more ingenious than deep. The most destructive
refutation of this as of all other fixed philosophic ideas is actual
result, namely experiment and industry. If we can prove the correctness
of our idea of an actual occurrence by experiencing it ourselves and
producing it from its constituent elements, and using it for our own
purposes into the bargain, the Kantian phrase "Ding an Sich" (thing in
itself) ceases to have any meaning. The chemical substances which go to
form the bodies of plants and animals remained just such "Dinge an Sich"
until organic chemistry undertook to show them one after the other,
whereupon the thing in itself became a thing for us, as the coloring
matter in the roots of madder, alizarin, which we no longer allow to
grow in the roots of the madder in the field, but make much more cheaply
and simply from coal tar. The Copernican system was for three hundred
years a hypothesis, with a hundred, a thousand, or ten thousand chances
in its favor, but still a hypothesis. But when Leverrier by means of the
data of this system not only discovered the existence of a certain
unknown planet, but even calculated the position in the heavens which
this planet must necessarily occupy, and when Galles really found this
planet, then the Copernican system was proved. If, nevertheless, the
resurrection of the Kantian idea in Germany is being tried by the
Neo-Kantians, and of that of Hume in England (where they never died),
by the agnostics, that is, in the face of the long past theoretical and
practical refutation of these doctrines, scientifically, a step
backwards, and practically, merely the acceptance of materialism in a
shame-faced way, clandestinely, and the denial of it before the world.
But the philosophers were during this long period from Descartes to
Hegel and from Hobbes to Feuerbach by no means, as they thought,
impelled solely by the force of pure reason. On the contrary, what
really impelled them was, in particular, the strong and ever quicker
conquering step of natural science and industry. Among the materialists
this very quickly showed itself on the surface, but the idealistic
systems filled themselves more and more with materialistic content and
sought to reconcile the antagonism between spirit and matter by means of
pantheism, so that finally the Hegelian system represented merely a
materialism turned upside down, according to idealistic method and
content.
Of course Starcke in his "Characteristics of Feuerbach" enquired into
the fundamental question of the relations of thinking and being. After
a short introduction in which the ideas of preceding philosophers,
particularly since Kant, are portrayed in unnecessarily heavy
philosophical language and in which Hegel, owing to a too formal
insistence on certain parts of his work does not receive due credit,
there follows a copious description of the development of the
metaphysics of Feuerbach, as shown in the course of the recognized
writings of this philosopher. This description is industriously and
carefully elaborated, and, like the whole book, is overballasted with,
not always unavoidable, philosophical expressions, which is all the more
annoying in that the writer does not hold to the vocabulary of one and
the same school nor even of Feuerbach himself, but mixes up expressions
of very different schools, and especially of the present epidemic of
schools calling themselves philosophical.
The evolution of Feuerbach is that of a Hegelian to materialism--not of
an orthodox Hegelian, indeed--an evolution which from a definite point
makes a complete breach with the idealistic system of his predecessor.
With irresistible force he brings himself to the view that the Hegelian
idea of the existence of the absolute idea before the world, the
pre-existence of the logical categories before the universe came into
being, is nothing else than the fantastical survival of the belief in
the existence of an extra-mundane creator; that the material, sensible,
actual world, to which we ourselves belong, is the only reality, and
that our consciousness and thought, however supernatural they may seem,
are only evidences of a material bodily organ, the brain. Matter is not
a product of mind, but mind itself is only the highest product of
matter. This is, of course, pure materialism. When he reached this point
Feuerbach came to a standstill. He cannot overcome ordinary
philosophical prejudice, prejudice not against the thing, but against
the name materialism. He says "Materialism is for me the foundation of
the building of the being and knowledge of man, but it is not for me
what it is for the physiologists in the narrow sense, as Moleschott, for
example, since necessarily from their standpoint it is the building
itself. Backwards, I am in accord with the materialists but not
forwards."
Feuerbach here confuses materialism, which is a philosophy of the
universe dependent upon a certain comprehension of the relations between
matter and spirit, with the special forms in which this philosophy
appeared at a certain historical stage--namely in the eighteenth
century. More than that he confuses it with the shallow and vulgarized
form in which the materialism of the eighteenth century exists today, in
the minds of naturalists and physicians, and was popularized during a
period of fifty years in the writings of Buechner, Vogt and Moleschott.
But as idealism has passed through a series of evolutionary
developments, so also has materialism--with each epoch-making discovery
in the department of natural science it has been obliged to change its
form; since then, history also, being subjected to the materialistic
method of treatment, shows itself as a new road of progress.
The materialism of the preceding century was overwhelmingly mechanical,
because at that time of all the natural sciences, mechanics, and indeed,
only the mechanics of the celestial and terrestrial fixed bodies, the
mechanics of gravity, in short, had reached any definite conclusions.
Chemistry existed at first only in a childish, phlogistic form. Biology
still lay in swaddling clothes; the organism of plants and animals was
examined only in a very cursory manner, and was explained upon purely
mechanical grounds; just as an animal was to Descartes nothing but a
machine, so was man to the materialists of the eighteenth century. The
exclusive application of the measure of mechanics to processes which are
of chemical and organic nature and by which, it is true, the laws of
mechanics are also manifested, but are pushed into the background by
other higher laws, this application is the cause of the peculiar, but,
considering the times, unavoidable, narrowmindedness of the French
materialism.
The second special limitation of this materialism lies in its incapacity
to represent the universe as a process, as one form of matter assumed in
the course of evolutionary development. This limitation corresponded
with the natural science of the time and the metaphysic coincident
therewith, that is the anti-dialectic methods of the philosophers.
Nature, as was known, was in constant motion, but this motion, according
to the universally accepted ideas, turned eternally in a circle, and
therefore never moved from the spot, and produced the same results over
and over again. This idea was at that time inevitable. The Kantian
theory of the origin of the solar system was at first exhibited and
considered as a mere curiosity. The history of the development of the
earth-geology was still unknown, and the idea that the living natural
objects of to-day are the result of a long process of development from
the simple to the complex could not be scientifically established at
that time. This anti-historical comprehension of nature was, therefore,
inevitable. We cannot reproach the philosophers of the eighteenth
century with this, as the same thing is also found in Hegel. According
to him, nature is the mere outward form of the Idea, capable of no
progress as regards time, but merely of an extension of its manifoldness
in space, so that it displays all the stages of development comprised in
it at one and the same time together, and is condemned to a repetition
of the same processes. And this absurdity of a progress in space but
outside of time--the fundamental condition of all progress--Hegel loads
upon nature, just at the very time when geology, embryology, the
physiology of plants and animals, and inorganic chemistry, were being
built up, and when above all genial prophecies of the later evolution
theory appeared at the very threshold of these new sciences (e. g.,
Goethe and Lamark), but the system so required it, and the method, for
love of the system, had to prove untrue to itself.
This unhistoric conception had its effects also in the domain of
history. Here the fight against the remnants of the Middle Ages kept the
outlook limited. The Middle Ages were reckoned as a mere interruption of
history by a thousand years of barbarism. The great advances of the
Middle Ages--the broadening of European learning, the bringing into
existence of great nations, which arose, one after the other, and
finally the enormous technical advances of the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries--all this no one saw. Consequently a rational view of the
great historic development was rendered impossible, and history served
principally as a collection of examples and illustrations for the use
of philosophers.
The vulgarizing peddlers who during the fifties occupied themselves with
materialism in Germany did not by any means escape the limitations of
their doctrine. All the advances made in science served them only as new
grounds of proof against the existence of the Creator, and indeed it was
far beyond their trade to develop the theory any further. Idealism was
at the end of its tether and was smitten with death by the Revolution of
1848. Yet it had the satisfaction that materialism sank still lower.
Feuerbach was decidedly right when he refused to take the responsibility
of this materialism, only he had no business to confound the teachings
of the itinerant spouters with materialism in general.
However, we must here remark two different things. During the life of
Feuerbach science was still in that state of violent fermentation which
has only comparatively cleared during the last fifteen years; new
material of knowledge was furnished in a hitherto unheard of measure but
the fixing of interrelations, and therewith of order, in the chaos of
overwhelming discoveries was rendered possible quite lately for the
first time. True, Feuerbach had lived to see the three distinctive
discoveries--that of the cell, the transformation of energy and the
evolution theory acknowledged since the time of Darwin. But how could
the solitary country-dwelling philosopher appreciate at their full value
discoveries which naturalists themselves at that time in part contested
and partly did not understand how to avail themselves of sufficiently?
The disgrace falls solely upon the miserable conditions in Germany owing
to which the chairs of philosophy were filled by pettifogging eclectic
pedants, while Feuerbach, who towered high above them all, had to
rusticate and grow sour in a little village. It is therefore no shame to
Feuerbach that he never grasped the natural evolutionary philosophy
which became possible with the passing away of the partial views of
French materialism.