THE FRENCH CLEARING UP (_Aufklaerung_) AND MATERIALISM.
1. It has already been remarked (§ XXX.) that the carrying out of
empiricism to its extremes, as was attempted in France, was most
intimately connected with the general condition of the French people and
state, in the period before the revolution. The contradictory element in
the character of the Middle Ages, the external and dualistic relation to
the spiritual world, had developed itself in Catholic France till it had
corrupted and destroyed every condition. Morality, mainly through the
influence of a licentious court, had become wholly corrupted; the state
had sunk to an unbridled despotism, and the church to a hierarchy as
hypocritical as it was powerful. Thus, as every intellectual edifice was
threatened with ruin, nature, as matter without intellect, as the object
of sensation and desire, alone remained. Yet it is not the materialistic
extreme which constitutes the peculiar character and tendency of the
period now before us. The common character of the philosophers of the
eighteenth century is rather, and most prominently, the opposition
against every ruling restraint, and perversion in morals, religion, and
the state. Their criticism and polemics, which were much more ingenious
and eloquent than strictly scientific, were directed against the whole
realm of traditional and given and positive notions. They sought to show
the contradiction between the existing elements in the state and the
church, and the incontrovertible demands of the reason. They sought to
overthrow in the faith of the world every fixed opinion which had not
been established in the eye of reason, and to give the thinking man the
full consciousness of his pure freedom. In order that we may correctly
estimate the merit of these men, we must bring before us the French
world of that age against which their attacks were directed; the
dissoluteness of a pitiful court, the slavish obedience exacted by a
corrupt priesthood, a church sunken into decay yet seeking worldly
honor, a state constitution, a condition of rights and of society, which
must be profoundly revolting to every thinking man and every moral
feeling. It is the immortal merit of these men that they gave over to
scorn and hatred the abjectness and hypocrisy which then reigned; that
they brought the minds of men to look with indifference upon the idols
of the world, and awakened within them a consciousness of their own
autonomy.
2. The most famous and influential actor in this period of the French
clearing up, is _Voltaire_ (1694-1778). Though a writer of great
versatility, rather than a philosopher, there was yet no philosopher of
that time who exerted so powerful an influence upon the whole thinking
of his country and his age. Voltaire was no atheist. On the contrary, he
regarded the belief in a Supreme Being to be so necessary, that he once
said that if there were no God we should be under the necessity of
inventing one. He was just as little disposed to deny the immortality of
the soul, though he often expressed his doubts upon it. He regarded the
atheistic materialism of a La Mettrie as nothing but nonsense. In these
respects, therefore, he is far removed from the standpoint of the
philosophers who followed him. His whole hatred was expended against
Christianity as a positive religion. To destroy this system he
considered as his peculiar mission, and he left no means untried to
attain this anxiously longed-for end. His unwearied warfare against
every positive religion prepared the way and gave weapons for the
attacks against spiritualism which followed.
3. The Encyclopedists had a more decidedly sceptical relation to the
principles and the basis of spiritualism. The philosophical Encyclopedia
established by _Diderot_ (1713-1784), and published by him in connection
with d’Alembert, is a memorable monument of the ruling spirit in France
in the time before the revolution. It was the pride of France at that
age, because it expressed in a splendid and universally accessible form
the inner consciousness of the French people. With the keenest wit it
reasoned away law from the state, and freedom from morality, and spirit
and God from nature, though all this was done only in scattered, and,
for the most part, timorous intimations. In Diderot’s independent
writings we find talent of much philosophic importance united with great
earnestness. But it is very difficult to fix and accurately to limit his
philosophic views, since they were very gradually formed, and Diderot
expressed them always with some reserve and accommodation. In general,
however, it may be remarked, that in the progress of his speculations he
constantly approached nearer the extreme of the philosophical direction
of his age. In his earlier writings a Deist, he afterwards avowed the
opinion that every thing is God. At first defending the immateriality
and immortality of the soul, he expressed himself at a later period
decidedly against these doctrines, affirming that the species alone has
an abiding being while the individual passes away, and that immortality
is nothing other than to live in the thoughts of coming generations. But
Diderot did not venture to the real extreme of logical materialism; his
moral earnestness restrained him from this.
4. The last word of materialism was spoken with reckless audacity by _La
Mettrie_ (1709-1751), a contemporary of Diderot: every thing spiritual
is a delusion, and physical enjoyment is the highest end of men. Faith
in the existence of a God, says La Mettrie, is just as groundless as it
is fruitless. The world will not be happy till atheism becomes
universally established. Then alone will there be no more religious
strife, then alone will theologians, the most odious of combatants,
disappear, and nature, poisoned at present by their influence, will come
again to its rights. In reference to the human soul, there can be no
philosophy but materialism. All the observation and experience of the
greatest philosophers and physicians declare this. Soul is nothing but a
mere name, which has a rational signification only when we understand by
it that part of our body which thinks. This is the brain, which has its
muscles of thought, just as the limbs have their muscles of motion. That
which gives man his advantage over the brutes is, first, the
organization of his brain, and second, its capacity for receiving
instruction. Otherwise, is man a brute like the beasts around him,
though in many respects surpassed by these. Immortality is an absurdity.
The soul perishes with the body of which it forms a part. With death
every thing is over, _la farce est jouée_! The practical and selfish
application of all this is—let us enjoy ourselves as long as we exist,
and not throw away any satisfaction we can attain.
5. The _Systéme de la Nature_ afterwards attempted to elaborate with
greater earnestness and scientific precision, that which had been
uttered so superficially and so superciliously by La Mettrie, viz., the
doctrine that matter alone exists, while mind is nothing other than
matter refined.
The _Systéme de la Nature_ appeared in London under a fictitious name in
1770. It was then published as a posthumous work of Mirabaud, late
secretary of the Academy. It doubtless had its origin in the circle
which was wont to assemble with Baron Holbach, and of which Diderot,
Grimm, and others formed a part. Whether the Baron Holbach himself, or
his tutor Lagrange is the author of this work, or whether it is the
joint production of a number, cannot now be determined. The _Systéme de
la Nature_ is hardly a French book: the style is too heavy and tedious.
There is, in fact, nothing but matter and motion, says this work. Both
are inseparably connected. If matter is at rest, it is only because
hindered in motion, for in its essence it is not a dead mass. Motion is
twofold, attraction and repulsion. The different motions which we see
are the product of these two, and through these different motions arise
the different connections and the whole manifoldness of things. The laws
which direct in all this are eternal and unchangeable.—The most weighty
consequences of such a doctrine are:
(1.) _The materiality of man._ Man is no twofold being compounded of
mind and matter, as is erroneously believed. If the inquiry is closely
made what the mind is, we are answered, that the most accurate
philosophical investigations have shown, that the principle of activity
in man is a substance whose peculiar nature cannot be known, but of
which we can affirm that it is indivisible, unextended, invisible, &c.
But now, who should conceive any thing determinate in a substance which
is only the negation of that which gives knowledge, an idea which is
peculiarly only the absence of all ideas? Still farther, how can it be
explained upon such a hypothesis, that a substance which itself is not
material can work upon material things; and how can it set these in
motion, since there is no point of contact between the two? In fact,
those who distinguish their soul from their body, have only to make a
distinction between their brain and their body. Thought is only a
modification of our brain, just as volition is another modification of
the same bodily organ.
(2.) Another chimera, the belief in the being of a God, is connected
with the twofold division of man into body and soul. This belief arises
like the hypothesis of a soul-substance, because mind is falsely divided
from matter, and nature is thus made twofold. The evil which men
experienced, and whose natural cause they could not discover, they
assigned to a deity which they imagined for the purpose. The first
notions of a God have their source therefore in sorrow, fear, and
uncertainty. We tremble because our forefathers for thousands of years
have done the same. This circumstance awakens no auspicious
prepossession. But not only the rude, but also the theological idea of
God is worthless, for it explains no phenomenon of nature. It is,
moreover, full of absurdities, for, since it ascribes moral attributes
to God, it renders him human; while on the other hand, by a mass of
negative attributes, it seeks to distinguish him absolutely from every
other being. The true system, the system of nature, is hence atheistic.
But such a doctrine requires a culture and a courage which neither all
men nor most men possess. If we understand by the word atheist one who
considers only _dead_ matter, or who designates the _moving power_ in
nature with the name God, then is there no atheist, or whoever would be
one is a fool. But if the word means one who denies the existence of a
spiritual being, a being whose attributes can only be a source of
annoyance to men, then are there indeed atheists, and there would be
more of them, if a correct knowledge of nature and a sound reason were
more widely diffused. But if atheism is true, then should it be
diffused. There are, indeed, many who have cast off the yoke of
religion, who nevertheless think it is necessary for the common people
in order to keep them within proper limits. But this is just as if we
should determine to give a man poison lest he should abuse his strength.
Every kind of Deism leads necessarily to superstition, since it is not
possible to continue on the standpoint of pure deism.
(3.) With such premises the freedom and immortality of the soul both
disappear. Man, like every other substance in nature, is a link in the
chain of necessary connection, a blind instrument in the hands of
necessity. If any thing should be endowed with self-motion, that is,
with a capacity to produce motion without any other cause, then would it
have the power to destroy motion in the universe; but this is contrary
to the conception of the universe, which is only an endless series of
necessary motions spreading out into wider circles continually. The
claim of an individual immortality is absurd. For to affirm that the
soul exists after the destruction of the body, is to affirm that a
modification of a substance can exist after the substance itself has
disappeared. There is no other immortality than to live in the
remembrance of posterity.
(4.) The practical consequences of these principles are in the highest
degree favorable for the system of nature, the utility of any doctrine
being ever the first criterion of its truth. While the ideas of
theologians are productive only of disquiet and anxiety to man, the
system of nature frees him from all such unrest, teaches him to enjoy
the present moment, and to quietly yield to his destiny, while it gives
him that kind of apathy which every one must regard as a blessing. If
morality would be active, it can rest only upon self-love and
self-interest; it must show man whither his well-considered interest
would lead him. He is a good man who gains his own interest in such a
way that others will find it for their interest to assist him. The
system of self-interest, therefore, demands the union of men among each
other, and hence we have true morality.
The logical dogmatic materialism of the _Système de la Nature_ is the
farthest limit of an empirical direction in philosophy, and consequently
closes that course of the development of a one-sided realism which had
begun with Locke. The attempt first made by Locke to explain and derive
the ideal world from the material, ended in materialism with the total
reduction of every thing spiritual to the material, with the total
denial of the spiritual. We must now, before proceeding farther,
according to the classification made § XXVII., consider the idealistic
course of development which ran parallel with the systems of a partial
realism. At the head of this course stands _Leibnitz_.