principles of natural religion (God, virtue, faith, hope, love, and
repentance) come more clearly to light in Christianity than in the
religions of heathendom, where they are overgrown with myths and
ceremonies.
The _Religio Medici_ (1642) of Sir Thomas Browne shows similar tendencies.
%9. Preliminary Survey.%
In the line of development from the speculations of Nicolas of Cusa to the
establishment of the English philosophy of nature, of religion, and of the
state by Bacon, Herbert, and Hobbes, and to the physics of Galileo, modern
ideas have manifested themselves with increasing clearness and freedom.
Hobbes himself shows thus early the influence of Descartes's decisive step,
with which the twilight gives place to the brightness of the morning. In
Descartes the empiricism and sensationalism of the English is confronted by
rationalism, to which the great thinkers of the Continent continue loyal.
In Britain, experience, on the Continent the reason is declared to be the
source of cognition; in the former, the point of departure is found in
particular impressions of sense, on the latter, in general concepts and
principles of the understanding; there the method of observation is
inculcated and followed, here, the method of deduction.
This antithesis
remained decisive in the development of philosophy down to Kant, so that it
has long been customary to distinguish two lines or schools, the Empirical
and the Rationalistic, whose parallelism may be exhibited in the following
table (when only one date is given it indicates the appearance of the
philosopher's chief work):
_Empiricism. Rationalism_.
Bacon, 1620. (Nicolas, 1450; Bruno, 1584).
Hobbes, 1651. _Descartes_, died 1650.
_Locke_, 1690 (1632-1704). Spinoza, (1632-) 1677.
Berkeley, 1710. _Leibnitz_, 1710.
Hume, 1748. Wolff, died 1754.
We must not forget, indeed, the lively interchange of ideas between the
schools (especially the influence of Descartes on Hobbes, and of the latter
on Spinoza; further, of Descartes on Locke, and of the latter on Leibnitz)
which led to reciprocal approximation and enrichment.
Berkeley and
Leibnitz, from opposite presuppositions, arrive at the same idealistic
conclusion--there is no real world of matter, but only spirits and ideas
exist. Hume and Wolff conclude the two lines of development: under the
former, empiricism disintegrates into skepticism; under the latter,
rationalism stiffens into a scholastic dogmatism, soon to run out into a
popular eclecticism of common sense.
If we compare the mental characteristics of the three great nations which,
in the period between Descartes and Kant, participated most productively in
the work of philosophy,--the Italians, with their receptive temperament and
so active in many fields, exerted a decisive influence on its development
and progress in the transition period alone,--it will be seen that the
Frenchman tends chiefly to acuteness, the Englishman to clearness and
simplicity, the German to profundity of thought. France is the land of
mathematical, England of practical, Germany of speculative thinkers; the
first is the home of the skeptics, though of the enthusiasts as well; the
second, of the realists; the third, of the idealists.
The English philosopher resembles a geographer who, with conscientious
care, outlines a map of the region through which he journeys; the
Frenchman, an anatomist who, with steady stroke, lays bare the nerves and
muscles of the organism; the German, a mountaineer who loses in clear
vision of particular objects as much as he gains in loftiness of position
and extent of view. The Englishman describes the given reality, the
Frenchman analyses it, the German transfigures it.
The English thinker keeps as close as possible to phenomena, and the
principles which he uses in the explanation of phenomena themselves lie in
the realm of concrete experience. He explains one phenomenon by another; he
classifies and arranges the given material without analyzing it; he keeps
constantly in touch with the popular consciousness. His reverence for
reality, as this presents itself to him, and his distrust of far-reaching
abstraction, are so strong that it is enough for him to take his bearings
from the real, and to give a true reproduction of it, while he willingly
renounces the ambition to form it anew in concepts. With this respect for
concrete reality he combines a similar reverence for ethical postulates.
When the development of a given line of thought threatens to bring him into
conflict with practical life, he is honest enough to draw the conclusions
which follow from his premises and to give them expression, but he avoids
the collision by a simple compromise, shutting up the refinements of
philosophy in the study and yielding in practice to the guidance of
natural instinct and conscience. His support, therefore, of theories which
contradict current views in morals is free from the levity in which the
Frenchman indulges. Life and thought are separate fields, contradictions
between them are borne in patience, and if science draws its material from
life it shows itself grateful for the favor by giving life the benefit of
the useful outcome of its labors, and, at the same time, shielding it from
the revolutionary or disintegrating effect of its doubtful paradoxes.
While the deliberate craft of English philosophy does not willingly lose
sight of the shores of the concrete world, French thought sails boldly and
confidently out into the open sea of abstraction. It is not strange that
it finds the way to the principles more rapidly than the way back to
phenomena. A free road, a fresh start, a straight course--such is the
motto of French thinking. Whatever is inconsistent with rectilinearity is
ignored, or opposed as unfitting. The line drawn by Descartes through the
world between matter and spirit, and that by Rousseau between nature
and culture, are distinctive of the philosophical character of their
countrymen. Dualism is to them entirely congenial; it satisfies their
need for clearness, and with this they are content.
Antithesis is in the
Frenchman's blood; he thinks in it and speaks in it, in the salon or on the
platform, in witty jest or in scientific earnestness of thought. Either A
or not-A, and there is no middle ground. This habit of precision and
sharp analysis facilitates the formation of closed parties, whereas each
individual German, in philosophy as in politics, forms a party of his own.
The demand for the removal of the rubbish of existing systems and the
sanguine return to the sources, give French philosophy an unhistorical,
radical, and revolutionary character. Minds of the second order, who are
incapable of taking by themselves the step from that which is given to the
sources, prove their radicalism by following down to the roots that which
others have begun (so Condillac and the sensationalism of Locke). Moreover,
philosophical principles are to be translated into action; the thinker has
shown himself the doctrinaire in his destructive analysis of that which
is given, so, also, he hopes to play the dictator by overturning existing
institutions and establishing a new order of things,--
only his courageous
endeavor flags as soon in the region of practice as in that of theory.
The German lacks the happy faculty, which distinguishes the two nations
just discussed, of isolating a problem near at hand, and he is accustomed
to begin his system with Leda's egg; but, by way of compensation, he
combines the lofty flight of the French with the phlegmatic endurance of
the English, _i.e._, he seeks his principles far above experience, but,
instead of stopping with the establishment of points of view or when he
has set the note, he carries his principles through in detail with loving
industry and comprehensive architectonic skill. While common sense turns
the scale with the English and analytical thought with the French, the
German allows the fancy and the heart to take an important part in the
discussion, though in such a way that the several faculties work together
and in harmony. While in France rationalism, mysticism, and the philosophy
of the heart were divided among different thinkers (Descartes, Malebranche
and Pascal, Rousseau), there is in every German philosopher something of
all three. The skeptical Kant provides a refuge for the postulates of
thought in the sanctuary of faith; the earnest, energetic Fichte, toward
the end of his life, takes his place among the mystics; Schelling thinks
with the fancy and dreams with the understanding; and under the broad cloak
of the Hegelian dialectic method, beside the reflection of the Critique of
Reason and of the Science of Knowledge, the fancies of the Philosophy of
Nature, the deep inwardness of Böhme, even the whole wealth of empirical
fact, found a place. As synthesis is predominant in his view of things, so
a harmonizing, conciliatory tendency asserts itself in his relations to his
predecessors: the results of previous philosophers are neither discarded
out of hand nor accepted in the mass, but all that appears in any way
useful or akin to the new system is wrought in at its proper place, though
often with considerable transformation. In this work of mediation there is
considerable loss in definiteness, the just and comprehensive consideration
of the most diverse interests not always making good the loss. And since
such a philosophy, as we have already shown, engages the whole man, its
disciple has neither impulse nor strength left for reforming labors; while,
on the other hand, he perceives no external call to undertake them, since
he views the world through the glasses of his system.
Thus philosophy in
Germany, pursued chiefly by specialists, remains a professional affair, and
has not exercised a direct transforming influence on life (for Fichte, who
helped to philosophize the French out of Germany, was an exception); but
its influence has been the greater in the special sciences, which in
Germany more than any other land are handled in a philosophic spirit.
The mental characteristics of these nations are reflected also in their
methods of presentation. The style of the English philosopher is sober,
comprehensible, diffuse, and slightly wearisome. The French use a fluent,
elegant, lucid style which entertains and dazzles by its epigrammatic
phrases, in which not infrequently the epigram rules the thought. The
German expresses his solid, thoughtful positions in a form which is at
once ponderous and not easily understood; each writer constructs his own
terminology, with a liberal admixture of foreign expressions, and the
length of his paragraphs is exceeded only by the thickness of his books.
These national distinctions may be traced even in externals. The Englishman
makes his divisions as they present themselves at first thought, and rather
from a practical than from a logical point of view. The analytic Frenchman
prefers dichotomy, while trichotomy corresponds to the synthetic,
systematic character of German thinking; and Kant's naïve delight, because
in each class the third category unites its two predecessors, has been
often experienced by many of his countrymen at the sight of their own
trichotomies.
The division of labor in the pre-Kantian philosophy among these three
nationalities entirely agrees with the account given of the peculiarities
of their philosophical endowment. The beginning falls to the share of
France; Locke receives that tangled skein, the problem of knowledge,
from the hand of Descartes, and passes it on to Leibnitz; and while the
Illumination in all three countries is converting the gold inherited from
Locke and Leibnitz into small coin, the solution of the riddle rings out
from Königsberg.
PART I.
FROM DESCARTES TO KANT.
CHAPTER II.
DESCARTES.
The long conflict with Scholasticism, which had been carried on with ever
increasing energy and ever sharper weapons, was brought by Descartes to a
victorious close. The new movement, long desired, long sought, and prepared
for from many directions, at length appears, ready and well-established.
Descartes accomplishes everything needful with the sure simplicity of
genius. He furnishes philosophy with a settled point of departure in
self-consciousness, offers her a method sure to succeed in deduction from
clear and distinct conceptions, and assigns her the mechanical explanation
of nature as her most imperative and fruitful mission.
René Descartes was born at La Haye in Touraine, in 1596, and died at
Stockholm in 1650. Of the studies taught in the Jesuit school at La Flèche,
mathematics alone was able to satisfy his craving for clear and certain
knowledge. The years 1613-17 he spent in Paris; then he enlisted in the
military service of the Netherlands, and, in 1619, in that of Bavaria.
While in winter quarters at Neuburg, he vowed a pilgrimage to Loretto if
the Virgin would show him a way of escape from his tormenting doubts; and
made the saving discovery of the "foundations of a wonderful science."
At the end of four years this vow was fulfilled. On his return to Paris
(1625), he was besought by his learned friends to give to the world his
epoch-making ideas. Though, to escape the distractions of society, he kept
his residence secret, as he had done during his first stay in Paris, and
frequently changed it, he was still unable to secure the complete privacy
and leisure for scientific work which he desired.
Therefore he went to
Holland in 1629, and spent twenty years of quiet productivity in Amsterdam,
Franecker, Utrecht, Leeuwarden, Egmond, Harderwijk, Leyden, the palace of
Endegeest, and five other places. His work here was interrupted only by
a few journeys, but much disturbed in its later years by annoying
controversies with the theologian Gisbert Voëtius of Utrecht, with Regius,
a pupil who had deserted him, and with professors from Leyden. His
correspondence with his French friends was conducted through Père Mersenne.
In 1649 he yielded to pressing invitations from Queen Christina of Sweden
and removed to Stockholm. There his weak constitution was not adequate to
the severity of the climate, and death overtook him within a few months.
The two decades of retirement in the Netherlands were Descartes's
productive period. His motive in developing and writing out his thoughts
was, essentially, the desire not to disappoint the widely spread belief
that he was in possession of a philosophy more certain than the common one.
The work entitled _Le Monde_, begun in 1630 and almost completed, remained
unprinted, as the condemnation of Galileo (1632) frightened our philosopher
from publication; fragments of it only, and a brief summary, appeared
after the author's death. The chief works, the _Discourse on Method_, the
_Meditations on the First Philosophy_, and the _Principles of Philosophy_
appeared between 1637 and 1644,--the _Discours de la Méthode_ in 1637,
together with three dissertations (the "Dioptrics," the
"Meteors," and the
"Geometry"), under the common title, _Essais Philosophiques_. To the (six)
_Meditationes de Prima Philosophia_, published in 1641, and dedicated to
the Paris Sorbonne, are appended the objections of various savants to whom
the work had been communicated in manuscript, together with Descartes's
rejoinders. He himself considered the criticisms of Arnauld, printed fourth
in order, as the most important. The Third Objections are from Hobbes, the
Fifth from Gassendi, the First, which were also the first received, from
the theologian Caterus of Antwerp, while the Second and Sixth, collected by
Mersenne, are from various theologians and mathematicians. In the second
edition there were added, further, the Seventh Objections, by the Jesuit
Bourdin, and the Replies of the author thereto. The four books of the
_Principia Philosophiae_, published in 1644 and dedicated to Elizabeth,
Countess Palatine, give a systematic presentation of the new philosophy.
The _Discourse on Method_ appeared, 1644, in a Latin translation, the
_Meditations_ and the _Principles_ in French, in 1647.
The _Treatise on the
Passions_ was published in 1650; the _Letters_, 1657-67, in French, 1668,
in Latin. The _Opera Postuma_, 1701, beside the _Compendium of Music_
(written in 1618) and other portions of his posthumous writings, contain
the "Rules for the Direction of the Mind," supposed to have been written in
1629, and the "Search for Truth by the Light of Nature."
The complete works
have been often published, both in Latin and in French.
The eleven volume
edition of Cousin appeared in 1824-26.[1]
[Footnote 1: Of the many treatises on the philosophy of Descartes those of
C. Schaarschmidt (_Descartes und Spinoza_, 1850) and J.H. Löwe, 1855, may
be mentioned. Further, M. Heinze has discussed _Die Sittenlehre des
Descartes_, 1872; Ed. Grimm, _Descartes' Lehre von den angeborenen
Ideen_, 1873; G. Glogau, _Darlegung und Kritik des Grundgedankens der
Cartesianisch. Metaphysik (Zeitschrift für Philosophie_, vol. lxxiii. p.
209 _seq_.), 1878; Paul Natorp, _Descartes'
Erkenntnisstheorie_, 1882;
and Kas. Twardowski, _Idee und Perception_ in Descartes, 1892. In French,
Francisque Bouillier (_Histoire de la Philosophie Cartésienne_, 1854) and
E. Saisset (_Précurseurs et Disciples de Descartes_, 1862) have written
on Cartesianism. [The _Method, Meditations, and Selections from the
Principles_ have been translated into English by John Veitch, 5th ed.,
1879, and others since; and H.A.P. Torrey has published _The Philosophy
of Descartes in Extracts from his Writings_, 1892
(Sneath's Modern
Philosophers). The English reader may be referred, also, to Mahaffy's
_Descartes_, 1880, in Blackwood's Philosophical Classics; to the article
"Cartesianism," _Encyclopedia Britannica_, 9th ed., vol.
v., by Edward
Caird; and, for a complete discussion, to the English translation of
Fischer's _Descartes and his School_' by J.P. Gordy, 1887.--TR.]]
We begin our discussion with Descartes's noëtical and metaphysical
principles, and then take up in order his doctrine of nature and of man.
%1. The Principles%.
That which passes nowadays for science, and is taught as such in the
schools, is nothing but a mass of disconnected, uncertain, and often
contradictory opinions. A principle of unity and certainty is entirely
lacking. If anything permanent and irrefutable is to be accomplished in
science, everything hitherto considered true must be thoroughly demolished
and built up anew. For we come into the world as children and we form
judgments of things, or repeat them after others, before we have come into
the full possession of our intellectual powers; so that it is no wonder
that we are filled with a multitude of prejudices, from which we can
thoroughly escape only by considering everything doubtful which shows the
least sign of uncertainty. Let us renounce, therefore, all our old views,
in order later to accept better ones in their stead; or, perchance, to
take the former up again after they shall have stood the test of rational
criticism. The recognized precaution, never to put complete confidence in
that which has once deceived us, holds of our relation to the senses as
elsewhere. It is certain that they sometimes deceive us-
-perhaps they do so
always. Again, we dream every day of things which nowhere exist, and there
is no certain criterion by which to distinguish our dreams from our waking
moments,--what guarantee have we, then, that we are not always dreaming?
Therefore, our doubt must first of all be directed to the existence of
sense-objects. Nay, even mathematics must be suspected in spite of the
apparent certainty of its axioms and demonstrations, since controversy
and error are found in it also.
I doubt or deny, then, that the world is what it appears to be, that there
is a God, that external objects exist, that I have a body, that twice
two are four. One thing, however, it is impossible for me to bring into
question, namely, that I myself, who exercise this doubting function,
exist. There is one single point at which doubt is forced to halt--at the
doubter, at the self-existence of the thinker. I can doubt everything
except that I doubt, and that, in doubting, I am. Even if a superior being
sought to deceive me in all my thinking, he could not succeed unless I
existed, he could not cause me not to exist so long as I thought. To be
deceived means to think falsely; but that something is thought, no matter
what it be, is no deception. It might be true, indeed, that nothing at all
existed; but then there would be no one to conceive this non-existence.
Granted that everything may be a mistake; yet the being mistaken, the
thinking is not a mistake. Everything is denied, but the denier remains.
The whole content of consciousness is destroyed; consciousness itself, the
doubting activity, the being of the thinker, is indestructible. _Cogitatio
sola a me divelli nequit_. Thus the settled point of departure required for
knowledge is found in the _self-certitude of the thinking ego_. From the
fact that I doubt, _i.e._, think, it follows that I, the doubter, the
thinker, am. _Cogito, ergo sum_ is the first and most certain of all
truths.
The principle, "I think, therefore I am," is not to be considered a
deduction from the major premise, "Whatever thinks exists." It is rather
true that this general proposition is derived from the particular and
earlier one. I must first realize in my own experience that, as thinking, I
exist, before I can reach the general conclusion that thought and existence
are inseparable. This fundamental truth is thus not a syllogism, but a
not further deducible, self-evident, immediate cognition, a pure
intuition--_sum cogitans_. Now, if my existence is revealed by my activity
of thought, if my thought is my being, and the converse, if in me thought
and existence are identical, then I am a being whose essence consists in
thinking. I am a spirit, an ego, a rational soul. My existence follows only
from my thinking, not from any chance action. _Ambulo ergo sum_ would not
be valid, but _mihi videor_ or _puto me ambulare, ergo sum_. If I believe
I am walking, I may undoubtedly be deceived concerning the outward action
(as, for instance, in dreams), but never concerning my inward belief.
_Cogitatio_ includes all the conscious activities of the mind, volition,
emotion, and sensation, as well as representation and cognition; they are
all _modi cogitandi_. The existence of the mind is therefore the most
certain of all things. We know the soul better than the body. It is for
the present the only certainty, and every other is dependent on this, the
highest of all.
What, then, is the peculiarity of this first and most certain knowledge
which renders it self-evident and independent of all proof, which makes
us absolutely unable to doubt it? Its entire clearness and distinctness.
Accordingly, I may conclude that everything which I perceive as clearly and
distinctly as the _cogito ergo sum_ is also true, and I reach this g