Why did the realists cling so to their universals, held to be realities and
the sole realities? For many reasons. If the individual alone be real,
there are not three Persons in the Godhead, there are three Gods and the
unity of God is not real, it is only a word, and God is not real, He is
only an utterance of the voice. If the individual is not real, the Church
is not real; she does not exist, there only exist Christians who possess
freedom of thought and of faith. Now the Church is real and it is not only
desirable that she should be real, but even that she alone should possess
reality and that the individuals constituting her should exist by her and
not by themselves. (This is precisely the doctrine with regard to society
now current among certain philosophers: society exists independently of its
members; it has laws of its own independently of its members; it is a
reality on its own basis; and its members are by it, not it by them, and
therefore they should obey it; M. Durckheim is a "realist.")
ABELARD of Nantes, pupil of the nominalist, William of Champeaux,
learned man, artist, man of letters, an incomparable orator, tried to
effect a conciliation. He said: "The universal is not a reality, certainly;
but it is something more than a simple word; it is a conception of the
mind, which is something more than an utterance of the voice. As conception
of the mind, in fact, it lives with a life which goes beyond the
individual, because it can be common to several individuals to many
individuals, and because in fact it is common to them. The general idea
that I have and which I have communicated to my hearers, and which returns
to me from my hearers, is more than a word since it is a link between my
hearers and myself, and an atmosphere in which I and my hearers live. Is
the Church only to be a word? God forbid that I should say so. She is a
bond between all Christians; she is a general idea common to them all, so
that in her each individual feels himself several, feels himself many;
although it is true that were she not believed in by anyone she would be
nothing." At bottom he was a nominalist, but more subtle, also more
profound and more precise, having a better grasp of what William of
Champeaux had desired to say. He shared in his condemnation.
Apart from the great dispute, his ideas were singularly broad and
bold. Half knowing, half guessing at ancient philosophy, he held it in high
esteem; he found there, because he delighted in finding there, all the
Christian ideas: the one God, the Trinity, the Incarnation, the imputation
of the merits of the saints, original sin; and he found less of a gulf
between ancient philosophy and Christianity than between the Old and the
New Testament (this is because the only Christianity known to Abelard, not
the primitive but that constituted in the fourth century, was profoundly
impregnated with Hellenism). He believed the Holy Ghost to have revealed
Himself to the wise men of antiquity as well as to the Jews and the
Christians, and that virtuous pagans may have been saved. The moral
philosophy of Abelard is very elevated and pure. Our acts proceed from
God; for it is impossible that they should not; but He permits us the
faculty of disobedience "in order that virtue may exist," to which it
tends; for if the tendency to evil did not exist, there would be no
possibility of effort against evil, and if no efforts, then no virtue; God,
who cannot be virtuous since He cannot be tempted by evil, can be virtuous
in man, which is why He leaves him the tendency to evil for him to triumph
over it and be virtuous so that virtue may exist; even if He were Himself
to lead us into temptation, the tendency would still be the same; He would
only lead us into it to give us the opportunity for struggle and victory,
and therefore in order that virtue might exist; the possibility of sin is
the condition of virtue, and in consequence, even in the admission of this
possibility and above all by its admission, God is virtuous.
The bad deed, furthermore, is not the most considerable from the point of
view of guilt; as merit or demerit the intention is worth as much as the
deed and he is criminal who has had the intention to be so (which is
clearly according to the Gospel).
HUGO DE SAINT-VICTOR; RICHARD.--Abelard possessed perhaps the
broadest and greatest mind of the whole of the Middle Ages. After these
famous names must be mentioned Hugo de Saint-Victor, a somewhat obscure
mystic of German origin; and the not less mystical Richard, who, thoroughly
persuaded that God is not attained by reason but by feeling, taught
exaltation to Him by detachment from self and by six degrees: renunciation,
elevation, impulsion, precipitation, ecstasy, and absorption.
CHAPTER II
THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY
Influence of Aristotle
His Adoption by the Church.
Religious Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas.
ARISTOTLE AND THE CHURCH.--From the thirteenth century, Aristotle,
completely known and translated into Latin, was adopted by the Church and
became in some sort its lay vicar. He was regarded, and I think rightly, as
of all the Greek thinkers the least dangerous to her and as the one to whom
could be left all the scientific instruction whilst she reserved to herself
all the religious teaching. Aristotle, in fact, "defended her from Plato,"
in whom were always found some germs of adoration of this world, or some
tendencies in this direction, in whom was also found a certain polytheism
much disguised, or rather much purified, but actual and dangerous;
therefore, from the moment when it became necessary to select, Aristotle
was tolerated and finally invested with office.
ST. THOMAS AQUINAS.--As Aristotelian theologians must be cited
William of Auvergne, Vincent of Beauvais, Albertus Magnus; but the
sovereign name of this period of the history of philosophy is St. Thomas
Aquinas. St. Thomas Aquinas wrote several small works but, surpassing them
all, the _Summa_ (encyclopaedia) which bears his name. In general
philosophy St. Thomas Aquinas is an Aristotelian, bending but not
distorting the ideas of Aristotle to Christian conceptions. Like
Aristotle, he demonstrated God by the existence of motion and the necessity
of a first motive power; he further demonstrated it by the contingent,
relative, and imperfect character of all here below: "There is in things
more or less goodness, more or less truth." But we only affirm the more or
less of a thing by comparing it with something absolute and as it
approaches more or less to this absolute; there is therefore an absolute
being, namely God--and this argument appeared to him better than that of
St. Anselm, which he refuted.
HIS CONCEPTION OF NATURE.--He showed the whole of nature as a great
hierarchy, proceeding from the least perfect and the most shapeless to the
most complete and determinate; from another aspect, as separated into two
great kingdoms, that of necessity (mineral, vegetable, animal), and that of
grace (humanity). He displayed it willed by God, projected by God, created
by God; governed by God according to antecedent and consequent wills, that
is, by general wills (God desires man to be saved) and by particular wills
(God wishes the sinner to be punished), and the union of the general wills
is the creation, and the result of all the particular wills is
Providence. Nature and man with it are the work not only of the power but
of the goodness of God, and it is by love that He created us and we must
render Him love for love, which is involuntarily done by Nature herself in
her obedience to His laws, and which we must do voluntarily by obedience to
His commandments.
THE SOUL.--Our soul is immaterial and more complete than that of
animals, for St. Thomas does not formally deny that animals have souls; the
instinct of animals is the sensitive soul according to Aristotle, which is
capable of four faculties: sensibility, imagination, memory, and
estimation, that is elementary intelligence: "The bird picks up straw, not
because it gratifies her feelings [not by a movement of sensibility], but
because it serves to make her nest. It is therefore necessary that an
animal should perceive those intuitions which do not come within the scope
of the senses. It is by opinion or estimation that it perceives these
intuitions, these distant ends." We, mankind, possess a soul which is
sensibility, imagination, memory, and reason. Reason is the faculty not
only of having ideas, but of establishing connections and chains of
connection between the ideas and of conceiving general ideas. Reason pauses
before reaching God because the idea of God precisely is the only one which
cannot be brought to the mind by the interrelation of ideas, for God
surpasses all ideas; the idea of God is given by faith, which can be
subsequently helped by reason, for the latter can work to make faith
perceptible to reason.
Our soul is full of passions, divisible into two great categories, the
passions of desire and those of anger. The passions of desire are rapid or
violent movements towards some object which seems to us a good; the
passions of anger are movements of revolt against something which opposes
our movement towards a good. The common root of all the passions is love,
for it is obvious that from it are derived the passions of desire; and as
for the passions of wrath they would not exist if we had no love of
anything, in which case our desire not coming into collision would not turn
into revolt against the obstacle. We are free to do good or evil, to master
our evil passions and to follow those of which reason approves. Here
reappears the objection of the knowledge God must have beforehand of our
actions: if God foresees our actions we are not free; if free, we act
contrary to his previsions, then He is not all-powerful. St. Thomas makes
answer thus: "There is not prevision, there is vision, because we are in
time whereas God is in eternity. He sees at one glance and instantaneously
all the past, present, and future. Therefore, He does not foresee but see,
and this vision does not hinder human freedom any more than being seen
acting prevents one from acting. Because God knows our deeds after they are
done, no one can plead that that prevents our full liberty to do them; if
He knew them before it is the same as knowing them after, because for Him
past, present, and future are all the same moment." This appears subtle but
is not, for it only amounts to the statement that in speaking of God time
must not be mentioned, for God is as much outside time as outside space.
THE MORAL SYSTEM OF ST. THOMAS.--The very detailed and
circumstantial moral system of St. Thomas may thus be summarized: there is
in conscience, first, an intellectual act which is the distinction between
good and evil; secondly, an act of will which leads us to the good. This
power for good urges the practice of virtue. There are human virtues, well
known to the ancient philosophers, temperance, courage, wisdom, justice,
which lead to happiness on earth; there are divine virtues, inspired in man
by God, which are faith, hope, and charity, and they lead to eternal
happiness. We practise the virtues, when we are well-disposed, because we
are free; but our liberty and our will do not suffice; it is necessary for
God to help us, and that is "grace."
FAITH AND REASON.--On the question of the relation of reason to
faith, St. Thomas Aquinas recognizes, or rather proclaims, that reason will
never demonstrate faith, that the revealed truths, the Trinity, original
sin, grace, etc., are above reason and infinitely exceed it. How, then, can
one believe? By will, aided by the grace of God. Then henceforth must no
appeal be made to reason? Yes, indeed! Reason serves to refute the errors
of the adversaries of the faith, and by this refutation to confirm itself
in belief. The famous _Credo ut intelligam_--I believe in order to
understand--is therefore true. Comprehension is only possible on condition
of belief; but subsequently comprehension helps to believe, if not more, at
least with a greater precision and in a more abundant light. St. Thomas
Aquinas here is in exactly the position which Pascal seems to have taken
up: Believe and you will understand; understand and you will believe more
exactly. Therefore an act of will: "I wish to believe"--a grace of God
fortifying this will: faith exists--studies and reasoning: faith is the
clearer.
ST. BONAVENTURA; RAYMOND LULLE.--Beside these men of the highest
brain-power there are found in the thirteenth century mystics, that is,
poets and eccentrics, both by the way most interesting. It was St.
Bonaventura who, being persuaded, almost like an Alexandrine, that one
rises to God by synthetic feeling and not by series of arguments, and that
one journeys towards Him by successive states of the soul each more pure
and more passionate--wrote _The Journey of the Soul to God_, which is,
so to speak, a manual of mysticism. Learned as he was, whilst pursuing his
own purpose, he digressed in agreeable and instructive fashion into the
realms of real knowledge.
Widely different from him, Raymond Lulle or de Lulle, an unbridled
schoolman, in his _Ars magna_ invented a reasoning machine, analogous
to an arithmetical machine, in which ideas were automatically deduced from
one another as the figures inscribe themselves on a counter. As often
happens, the excess of the method was its own criticism, and an enemy of
scholasticism could not have more ingeniously demonstrated that it was a
kind of mechanism. Raymond de Lulle was at once a learned man and a
well-informed and most enquiring naturalist for whom Arabian science held
no secrets. With that he was poet, troubadour, orator, as well as very
eccentric and attractive. He was beloved and persecuted in his lifetime,
and long after his death still found enthusiastic disciples.
BACON.--Contemporaneously lived the man whom it is generally the
custom to regard as the distant precursor of experimental science, Roger
Bacon (who must not be confused with Francis Bacon, another learned man who
lived much nearer to our own time). Roger Bacon, a Franciscan friar,
occupied himself almost exclusively with physical and natural science. He
passed the greater portion of his life in prison by reason of alleged
sorcery and, more especially, perhaps, because he had denounced the evil
lives of his brethren. He had at least a presentiment of almost all modern
inventions: gunpowder, magnifying glass, telescope, air-pump; he was
distinctly an inventor in optics. In philosophy, properly speaking, he
denounced what was hollow and empty in scholasticism, detesting that
preference should be given to "the straw of words rather than to the grain
of fact," and proclaiming that reasoning "is good to conclude but not to
establish." Without discovering the law of progress, as has too often been
alleged, he arrived at the conclusion that antiquity being the youth of the
world, the moderns are the adults, which only meant that it would be at our
school that the ancients would learn were they to return to earth and that
we ought not to believe blindly in the ancients; and this was an
insurrection against the principle of authority and against the idolatry of
Aristotle. He preached the direct study of nature, observation, and
experiment with the subsequent application of deduction, and especially of
mathematical deduction, to experiment and observation. With all that, he
believed in astrology; for those who are in advance of their time none the
less belong to it: but he was a very great man.
CHAPTER III
THE FOURTEENTH AND FIFTEENTH CENTURIES
Decadence of Scholasticism. Forebodings of the Coming
Era. Great Moralists. The Kabbala. Sorcery.
DECADENCE OF SCHOLASTICISM.--The fourteenth century dated the
decadence of scholasticism, but saw little new. "Realism" was generally
abandoned, and the field was swept by "nominalism," which was the theory
that ideas only have existence in the brains which conceive them. Thus
Durand de Saint-Pourcain remains famous for having said, "To exist is to be
individually," which at that epoch was very audacious. William of Ockham
repeated the phrase with emphasis; there is nothing real except the
individual. That went so far as to cast suspicion on all metaphysics, and
somewhat on theology. In fact, _although a devout believer_, Ockham
rejected theology, implored the Church not to be learned, because her
science proved nothing, and to content herself with faith: "Science belongs
to God, faith to men." But, or rather in addition, if the ministers of God
were no longer imposing because of their ambitious science, it was
necessary for them to regain their sway over souls by other and better
means. It was incumbent on them to be saintly, to revert to the purity, the
simplicity, and the divine childishness of the primitive Church; and here
he was virtually a forerunner of the Reformation.
Ockham was indeed one of the auxiliaries of Philip the Fair in his struggle
with the Holy See, suffered excommunication, and sought refuge with the
Duke of Bavaria, the foe of the Pope.
BURIDAN: THE LIBERTY OF INDIFFERENCE.--Realists and nominalists
continued their mutual strife, sometimes physically even, until the middle
of the fifteenth century. But nominalism always gained ground, having
among other celebrated champions, Peter d'Ailly and Buridan; the one
succeeded in becoming Chancellor of the University of Paris, the other in
becoming its Rector. Buridan has remained famous through his death and his
donkey, both alike legendary. According to a ballad by Villon, Buridan
having been too tenderly loved by Joan of Navarre, wife of Philip the Fair,
was by his order "thrown in a sack into the Seine." By comparison of
dates, the fact seems impossible. According to tradition, either in order
to show the freedom of indifference, or that animals are mere machines,
Buridan declared that an ass with two baskets full of corn placed one on
each side of him and at equal distance from him, would never decide from
which he should feed and would die of starvation. Nothing of the kind is to
be found in his works, but he may have said so in a lecture and his pupils
remembering it have handed it down as a proverb.
PETER D'AILLY; GERSON.--Peter d'Ailly, a highly important
ecclesiastic, head of the College of Navarre, chevalier of the University
of Paris, Cardinal, a leader in the discussions at the Councils at Pisa and
Constance, a drastic reformer of the morals and customs of the Church, did
not evince any marked originality as a philosopher, but maintained the
already known doctrines of nominalism with extraordinary dialectical skill.
Among his pupils he numbered Gerson, who was also Chancellor of the
University of Paris, another highly zealous and energetic reformer, a more
avowed enemy of scholasticism and mysticism, of exaggerated austerity and
astrology, eminently modern in the best sense of the word, whose political
and religious enemies are his title of respect. He was the author of many
small books devoted to the popularization of science, religion, and
morality. To him was long attributed the _Imitation of Jesus Christ_,
which on the whole bears no resemblance to his writings, but which he might
very well have written in old age in his retreat in the peaceful silence of
the Celestines of Lyons.
THE KABBALA.--From the beginning of the fifteenth century the
Renaissance was heralded by a revival of Platonism, both in philosophy and
literature. But it was a Platonism strangely understood, a quaint medley of
Pythagoreanism and Alexandrinism, the source of which is not very clear
(the period not having been much studied). Then arose an incredible
infatuation for the Kabbala--a doctrine which was for a long while the
secret of the Jews, brooded over by them so to speak during the darkness of
the Middle Ages, in which are to be found traces of the most sublime
speculations and of the basest superstitions of antiquity. It contained a
kind of pantheistic theology closely analogous to those of Porphyry and
Iamblichus, as well as processes of magic mingled with astrology. The
Kabbalists believe that the sage, who by his astrological knowledge is
brought into relation with the celestial powers, can affect nature, alter
the course of phenomena, and work miracles. The Kabbala forms part of the
history of the marvelous and of occult science rather than of the history
of philosophy. Nevertheless men of real learning were initiated and were
infatuated, among them the marvelous Pico della Mirandola, Reuchlin, not
less remarkable as humanist and Hebraist, who would have run grave risk at
the hands of the Inquisition at Cologne if he had not been saved by Leo
X. Cardan, a mathematician and physician, was one of the learned men of the
day most impregnated with Kabbalism. He believed in a kind of infallibility
of the inner sense, of the intuition, and regarded as futile all sciences
that proceeded by slow rational operations. He believed himself a mage and
magician. From vanity he spoke of himself in the highest terms and from
cynicism in the lowest. Doubt has been cast on his sincerity and also on
his sanity.
MAGIC.--There were also Paracelsus and Agrippa. Paracelsus, like
Cardan, believed in an intense light infinitely superior to bestial
reasoning and calls to mind certain philosophy of intuition of the present
day. He too believed himself a magician and physician, and effected cures
by the application of astrology to therapeutics. Agrippa did the same with
yet stranger phantasies, passing from absolute scepticism through mysticism
to magi and demonology; in his own time and in subsequent centuries
enjoying the reputation of a devil incarnate as man.
CHAPTER IV
THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
It Is Fairly Accurate to Consider that from the Point of
View of Philosophy, the Middle Ages Lasted until Descartes.
Free-thinkers More or Less Disguised.
Partisans of Reason Apart from Faith, of Observation,
and Of Experiment.
THE FREEDOM OF PHILOSOPHY: POMPONAZZO.--The freedom and even the
audacity of philosophy rapidly increased. Learned and convinced
Aristotelians were bent, either from sheer love of truth or from a more
secret purpose, on demonstrating to what extent Aristotle, accurately read,
was opposed to the teaching of the Church. For instance, Pomponazzo
revealed that nothing could be drawn from Aristotle in favour of the
immortality of the soul, in which he himself believed fervently, but in
which Aristotle did not believe, hence it was necessary to choose between
the Church and Aristotle; that without the immortality of the soul there
could be no rewards beyond the grave, which was entirely his own opinion,
but whoever should desire to offer excuses for Aristotle could say it was
precisely the existence of punishments and rewards which deprived virtue of
existence, which did away with virtue, since the good that is done for the
sake of reward or from fear of punishment is no longer good; that, still
according to Aristotle, there could never be miracles; that he, Pomponazzo,
believed in all the miracles recorded in the Scriptures; but that Aristotle
would not have believed in them, and could not have believed in them, a
fact which demanded consideration, not assuredly in order to reject belief
in miracles, but in order not to bestow on Aristotle that confidence which
for so long had been too readily placed in him.
In the same way, he took up again the eternal question of the prescience of
God and of human liberty, and showed that no matter what had been said it
was necessary to choose: either we are free and God is not omnipotent, or
God is omnipotent and we are not free. To regard as true this latter
hypothesis, towards which the philosopher evidently leans, would cause God
to be the author of evil and of sin. It would not be impossible for God to
be the author of evil as an essential condition of good, for if evil were
not to exist then there could not be good; nor would it be impossible that
He should be the author, not of sin, but of the possibility of sin in order
that virtue might be possible, there being no virtue where it is impossible
to commit sin; but therein lies a mystery which faith alone can solve, and
which Aristotle at any rate has not solved, therefore let us not place
reliance on Aristotle.
This disguised freethinker, for he does not appear to me to be anything
else, was one of the most original thinkers of the period intermediate
between the Middle Ages and Descartes.
MICHAEL SERVETUS; VANINI.--Such instances of temerity were sometimes
fatal to their authors. Michael Servetus, a very learned Spanish physician
who perhaps discovered the circulation of the blood before Harvey,
disbelieved in the Trinity and in the divinity of Jesus, and, as he was a
Platonist, perceived no intermediaries between God and man save
ideas. Persecuted by the Catholics, he sought refuge at Geneva, believing
Calvin to be more merciful than the Inquisitors, and Calvin burned him
alive.
Vanini, half a century later, that is at the commencement of the
seventeenth, a restless, vain, and insolent man, after a life full of
sudden changes of fortune, and yet distinguished, was burnt alive at
Toulouse for certain passages in his _De admirandis ... arcanis_, and
for having said that he would not express his opinion on the immortality of
the soul until he was old, a Jew, and a German.
BRUNO; CAMPANELLA.--Giordano Bruno, an astronomer and one of the
first to affirm that the sun was the centre of the world, professed,
despite certain precautions, a doctrine which confused God with the world
and denied or excluded creation. Giordano Bruno was arrested at Venice in
1593, kept seven years in prison, and finally burnt at Rome in 1600.
Campanella, likewise an Italian, who spent twenty-seven years in a dungeon
for having conspired against the Spanish masters of his country, and who
died in exile in Paris in 1639, was a sceptic in philosophy, or rather an
anti-metaphysician, and, as would be said nowadays, a positivist. There are
only two sources of knowledge, observation and reasoning. Observation makes
us know things--is this true? May not the sensations of things which we
have be a simple phantasmagoria? No; for we have an internal sense, a sense
of our own, which cannot deceive us, which affirms our existence (here is
the _Cogito_ of Descartes anticipated) and which, at the same time,
affirms that there are things which are not ourselves, so that coincidently
the ego and the non-ego are established. Yes, but is this non-ego really
what it seems? It is; granted; but what is it and can we know what it is?
Not without doubt, and here scepticism is unshakable; but in that there is
certitude of the existence of the non-ego, the presumption is that we can
know it, partially, relatively, very relatively, while we remain infinitely
distant from an absolute knowledge, which would be divine. Therefore let us
observe and experiment; let us make the "history" of nature as historians
make the history of the human race. And this is the simple and solid
philosophy of experiment.
But Campanella, like so many more, was a metaphysician possessed by the
devil of metaphysics, and after having imperiously recommended the writing
of only the history of nature, he himself wrote its romance as well. Every
being, he said (and the thought was a very fine one), exists on condition
of being able to exist, and on condition that there be an idea of which it
is the realization, and again on condition that nature is willing to create
it. In other words, nature can, knows what she wishes, and wishes. Now all
beings, in a greater or less degree according to their perfection or
imperfection, feel this triple condition of being able, knowing, and
wishing. Every being can, knows, and wishes, even inorganic matter (here
already is the world as will and representation of Schopenhauer), and God
is only absolute power, absolute knowledge, and absolute will. This is why
all creative things gravitate to God and desire to return to Him as to
their origin, and as the perfection of what they are: the universe has
nostalgia for God.
Campanella was also, as we should say nowadays, a sociologist. He made his
"Republic" as Plato had made his. The Republic of Campanella was called the
_City of the Sun_. It was a community republic, leavened with
aristocracy with "spiritual power" and "temporal power" somewhat after the
manner of Auguste Comte. Campanella was a great sower of ideas.
FRANCIS BACON.--Francis Bacon, lawyer, member of Parliament, Lord
Chancellor of England, personal friend of James I, friend, protector, and
perhaps collaborator with Shakespeare, overthrown as the result of
political animosity and relegated to private life, was a very learned man
with a marvellous mind. Like his namesake, Roger Bacon, but in an age more
favourable to intellectual reform, he attempted a sort of renewal of the
human mind (_Instauratio Magna_) or at least a radical revolution in
the methods and workings of the human mind. Although Francis Bacon
professed admiration for many of the thinkers of antiquity, he urged that
it was wrong to rely on them because they had not sufficiently observed;
one must not, like the schoolmen, have ideas _a priori_, which are
"idols," and there are idols of tribe, of party, of school, of eras;
intentions must not be perceived everywhere in nature, and we must not,
because the sun warms, believe it was created to warm, or because the earth
yields nourishment believe her creation was for the purpose of feeding us,
and that all things converge to man and are put at his service. It is
necessary to proceed by observation, by experiment, and then by induction,
but with prodigious mistrust of induction. Induction consists in drawing
conclusions from the particular to the general, from a certain number of
facts to a law. This is legitimate on condition that the conclusion is not
drawn from a few facts to a law, which is precipitate induction, fruitful
in errors; but from a very large number of facts to a law, which even then
is considered as provisional. As for metaphysics, as for the investigation
of universal law, that should be entirely separated from philosophy itself,
from the "primary philosophy" which does not lead to it; it has its own
field, which is that of faith: "Give to faith what belongeth to faith." In
the main he is uninterested in metaphysics, believing them always to
revolve in a circle and, I do not say, only believes in science and in
method, but has hope only from knowledge and method, an enthusiast in this
respect just as another might be about the super-sensible world or about
ideas, saying human knowledge and human power are really coincident, and
believing that knowledge will support humanity in all calamities, will
prolong human life, will establish a new golden age, etc.
Moreover, let there be none of that eternal and unfounded fear that
knowledge will cause the disappearance of the religious feeling. With
profound conviction and judging by himself, Bacon said: "A little
philosophy inclineth a man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy
bringeth a man's mind about to religion." Such is true philosophy,
"subordinate to the object," attentive to the object, listening to the
voices of the world and only anxious to translate them into human language:
"that is true philosophy which renders the voices of the world the most
accurately possible, like an echo, which writes as if at the dictation of
the world itself, adding nothing of its own, only repeating and
_resounding_."
And, as a man is always of his time, he believed in alchemy and in the
possibility of transmuting base metals into gold. But note how he
understood it: "To create a new nature in a given body or to produce new
natures and to introduce them ... he who is acquainted with the forms and
modes of super-inducing yellowness, weight, ductility, fixity, fluidity,
solution, and the rest, with their gradations and methods, will see and
take care that these properties be united in some body, whence its
transformation into gold may follow." Modern chemistry, with scientific
methods highly analogous to those which Bacon indicated or foresaw, has not
made gold, which is not a very useful thing to do, but has done better.
THOMAS HOBBES.--At the end of the sixteenth century, another
Englishman, Thomas Hobbes, began to think. He was, above all else, a
literary man and a sociologist; he translated Thucydides and Homer, he
wrote _Leviathan, or the Matter, Form, and Power of a Commonwealth_,
which is a manual of despotism, demonstrating that all men in a natural
state were beasts of prey with regard to one another, but that they escaped
this unpleasant fate by submission to a prince who has all rights because
he is perpetually saving his subjects from death, and who can therefore
impose on them whatever he pleases, even scientific dogma or religious
beliefs. Merely regarded as a philosopher, properly so called, Hobbes has
an important position in the history of ideas. Like Francis Bacon, but more
rigorously and authoritatively, he began by separating metaphysics and
theology from philosophy. Philosophy is the art of thinking. That which is
not sensible--mind, soul, God--cannot be thought: can only be believed;
philosophy does not deny all that; merely it does not concern itself
therewith. Here is the whole of positivism established in principle. What
we can think is what we feel. Things are known to us only through
sensations; a thought is a sensation, the human mind is a compound of
sensations.
No; for I can think of a thing without hearing, seeing, feeling it, etc.
This is because we have memory, which is itself a sensation; it is a
sensation which prolongs itself; to remember is to feel that one has felt;
it is to feel a former sensation which the brain is able to preserve. We
think only by combining current sensations with other current sensations,
or much more often indeed, thanks to memory, by combining current
sensations with older ones, or former sensations with each other. This is
but a fragile basis for knowledge and thought, for sensation is only a
modification of ourselves caused by an external object, and consequently
gives us nothing at all of the external object, and of itself the external
world is eternally unknown to us; but we combine with each other the
illusions that the external world deposits in us through the delusive or
doubtful intermediary of our senses.
When the sensation thus combined with other sensations has become thought,
then ideas begin to exist. They are products of sensation detached from
sensation. They are interassociated by laws that are obscure, yet which can
be vaguely perceived. They awake, so to speak, and call to one another;
every time an idea previously acquired reappears, it is followed by the
thought which accompanied it when it was acquired. In a conversation a
traitor is spoken of. Someone asks what was the value of a piece of silver
in ancient times. This appears incoherent; really it is a natural and
simple association of ideas in which there are few intermediate steps. The
person who listened as the traitor was mentioned thought of Judas, who was
the first traitor of whom he had heard, and of the thirty pieces of silver,
the price of the betrayal by Judas. The association of ideas is more or
less close, more or less loose; it is disconnected in dreams, irregular in
musing, close directly it is dominated and in consequence directed by an
end pursued, by a goal sought; for then there is a desire to attain which
associates nothing of itself, but which, eliminating all ideas that are not
pertinent to the end pursued, permits only the association of those which
have relation to it.
Seeing in the human soul only successive impulses arising from those first
impulses which are the sensations, Hobbes does not believe we are free to
do what we wish; we are carried away by the strongest impulse of our
internal impulses, desire, fear, aversion, love, etc. Nevertheless we
deliberate, we consider different courses to pursue and we decide on the
one we desire to choose. No; we do not deliberate, we only imagine we
deliberate. Deliberation is only a succession of different feelings, and to
the one that gains the day we give the name of volition. "In the
[so-called] deliberation, the final desire or the final fear is called
will." Therefore liberty has no more existence among men than among
animals; will and desire are only one and the same thing considered under
different aspects.
UTILITARIAN MORALITY.--Henceforth there is no morality; without the
power to will this and not to will that, there is no possible
morality. Hobbes retorts with "utilitarian morality": What man should seek
is pleasure, as Aristippus thought; but true pleasure--that which is
permanent and that which is useful to him. Now it is useful to be a good
citizen, a loyal subject, sociable, serviceable to others, careful to
obtain their esteem by good conduct, etc. Morality is interest rightly
understood, and interest rightly understood is absolutely blended with the
morality of duty. The criminal is not a criminal but an idiot; the honest
man is not an honest man but an intelligent one. Observe that a man is
hardly convinced when preached to in the name of duty, but always convinced
when addressed in the name of his own interest.
All this is fairly sensible; but from the time that freedom ceases there
can be no morality, _not even utilitarian_; for it is useless even
from the point of view of his own interests, to preach to a man who is only
a machine moved by the strongest force; and, if he be only that, to lay
down a moral code for him either from the point of view of his own
interests, or from that of morality, or from that of the love of God are
things which are the same and which are as absurd the one as the other. All
philosophy, which does not believe in human liberty, yet which enunciates a
system of morality, is in perpetual contradiction.
PART III
MODERN TIMES
CHAPTER I
THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
Descartes. Cartesianism.
DESCARTES.--The seventeenth century, which was the greatest
philosophic century of modern times and perhaps of any time, began with
Rene Descartes. Descartes, born at La Haye in Touraine in 1596, of noble
family (his real name was des Quartes), was educated by the Jesuits of the
college of La Fleche, followed the military profession for several years,
then gave himself up to mathematics and became one of the greatest
mathematicians of Europe, traveled all over Europe for his own amusement
and instruction, wrote scientific and philosophical works, of which the
most famous are the _Discourse on_ METHOD, the _Meditations_, and
the _Rules for the Control of the Mind_, resided sometimes in Paris,
sometimes in Holland, and finally, at fifty-four years of age, unhappily
attracted by the flattering invitations of Queen Christina of Sweden,
proceeded to Stockholm, where he succumbed in four months to the severity
of the climate. He died in February, 1650.
THE SYSTEM OF DESCARTES.--In the works of Descartes there are a
general system of philosophy, a psychology, and a method. This order is
here adopted because of the three, in Descartes; it is the third which is
the most important, and which has left the most profound traces. The
foundation of the system of Descartes is belief in God and in the goodness
of God. I say the foundation and not the starting-point. The starting-point
is another matter; but it will be clearly seen that the foundation is what
has just been stated. The starting-point is this: I do not believe,
provisionally, in anything, not wishing to take into account what I have
been taught. I doubt everything. Is there anything I cannot doubt? It
seems to me there is: I cannot doubt that I doubt. Now if I doubt, I
think; if I think, I am. There is one certainty, I am.
And having arrived there, Descartes is at a dead stop, for from the
certitude of one's own existence nothing can be deduced save the certitude
of one's existence. For instance, shall I believe in the existence of
everything that is not myself? There is no reason why I should believe in
it. The world may be a dream. But if I believe in God and in a God of
perfect goodness, I can then believe in something outside of myself, for
God not being able to deceive Himself or me, if He permits me to see the
external world, it is because this external world exists. There are
already, therefore, three things in which I believe: my own existence, that
of God, and that of the universe. Which of these beliefs is the fundamental
one? Evidently, the one not demonstrated; the axiom is that upon which one
rests to demonstrate everything except itself. Now of the three things in
which Descartes believed, his own existence is demonstrated by the
impossibility of thinking or feeling, without feeling his own existence;
the other is demonstrated by the existence of a good God; the existence of
a good God is demonstrated by nothing. It is believed. Hence belief in a
good God is Descartes' foundation. This has not been introduced in order
that he may escape from the _I am_ at which he came to a stop; that
belief certainly existed previously, and if he had recourse to it, it was
because it existed first. Without that, he had too much intellectual
honesty to invent it for a particular need. He had it, and he found it as
it were in reserve when he asked himself if he could go beyond _I
am_. Here was his foundation; all the rest would complete the proof.
THE EXISTENCE OF GOD.--Although Descartes rests on God as being his
first principle, he does not fail to prove His existence, and that is
begging the question, something proved by what has to be proved. For if
Descartes believed only in something outside himself because of a good God,
that Being outside himself, God, he can prove only because of the existence
of a good God, who cannot deceive us, and thus is God proved by the belief
in Him. That is begging the question. Descartes does not fail to prove the
existence of God by superabundance as it were; and this, too, in itself
indicates clearly that faith in God is the very foundation of the
philosophy of Descartes. After having taken it as the basis of reasoning,
he takes it as the goal of reasoning, which indicates that the idea of God,
so to speak, encircled his mind and that he found it at every ultimate
point of thought.
He proves it, therefore, first by an argument analogous to that of
St. Anselm, which is this: we, imperfect and finite, have the idea of a
perfect and infinite Being; we are not capable of this idea. Therefore it
must have come to us from a Being really perfect and infinite, and hence
this perfect Being exists.
Another proof, that of God regarded as cause. First: I exist. Who made me?
Was it myself? No, if it had been myself I should have endowed myself with
all the perfections of which I can conceive and in which I am singularly
deficient. Therefore it must be some other being who created me. It was my
parents. No doubt, but who created my parents and the parents of my
parents? One cannot go back indefinitely from cause to cause, and there
must have been a first one.
Secondly: even my own actual existence, my existence at this very moment,
is it the result of my existence yesterday? Nothing proves it, and there is
no necessity because I existed just now that I should exist at
present. There must therefore be a cause at each moment and a continuous
cause. That continuous cause is God, and the whole world is a creation
perpetually continued, and is only comprehensible as continuous creation
and is only explicable by a Creator.
THE WORLD.--Thus sure of himself, of God, and of the world,
Descartes studies the world and himself. In the world he sees souls and
matter; matter is substance in extensions, souls are substance not in
extension, spiritual substance. The extended substance is endowed with
impulse. Is the impulse self-generated, are the bodies self-impelled? No,
they are moved. What is the primary motive force? It is God. Souls are
substances without extension and motive forces. In this respect they are
analogous to God. They are united to bodies and act on them. How? This is
an impenetrable mystery, but they are closely and substantially united to
the bodies, which is proved by physical pains depressing the soul and moral
sufferings depressing the body; and they act on them, not by creating
movements, for the quantity of movements is always the same, but by
directing the movements after this fashion or that. Souls being spiritual,
there is no reason for their disaggregation, that is, their demise, and in
fact they do not die.
It is for this reason that Descartes lays such stress on animals not having
souls. If they had souls, the souls would be spiritual, they would not be
susceptible to disaggregation and would be immortal. "Save atheism, there
is no doctrine more dangerous and detestable than that," but animals are
soulless and purely mechanism; Descartes exerts himself to prove this in
great detail, and he thus escapes avowing the immortality of the souls of
animals, which is repugnant to him, or by allowing that they perish with
the bodies to be exposed to the objection: "Will it not be the same with
the souls of men?"
THE FREEDOM OF THE SOUL.--The human soul is endowed with freedom to
do good or evil. What proof is there of this freedom? First, the inward
feeling that we have. Every evident idea is true. Now, not only have we
the idea of this freedom, but it would be impossible for us not to have it.
Freedom "is known without proofs, merely by the experience we have of it."
It is by the feeling of our freedom, of our free-will that we understand
that we exist as a being, as a thing which is not merely a thing. The true
_ego_ is the will. Even more than an intelligent being, man is a free
individual, and only feels himself to be a man when feeling himself free,
so that he might not believe himself to be intelligent, nor think himself
sensible, etc., but not to think himself free would for him be moral
suicide; and in fact he actually never does anything which he does not
believe himself to be free to do--that is, which he does not believe that
he might avoid doing, if he so wished. Those who say, "It is simply the
feeling that it is better for ourselves which tends to make us do this
instead of doing that," are deeply in error. They forget that we often
prefer the worst for ourselves in order to prove to ourselves that we are
free and therefore have no other _motive power than our own freedom_.
(And this is exactly what contemporaneous philosophy has thus formulated:
"Will is neither determinate nor indeterminate, it is determinative.")
"Even when a very obvious reason leads us to a thing, although morally
speaking it is difficult for us to do the opposite, nevertheless, speaking
absolutely, we can, for we are always free to prevent ourselves from
pursuing a good thing clearly known ... provided only that _we think it
is beneficial thereby to give evidence of the truth of our free-will_."
It is the pure and simple wish to be free which _creates an action;_
it is the all-powerful liberty.
As has been happily observed, in relation to the universe the philosophy of
Descartes is a mechanical philosophy; in relation to man the philosophy of
Descartes is a philosophy of will. As has also been remarked, there are
very striking analogies between Corneille and Descartes from the point of
view of the apotheosis of the will, and the _Meditations_ having
appeared after the great works of Corneille, it is not so much that
Corneille was a Cartesian, as that Descartes was a follower of Corneille.
PSYCHOLOGY OF DESCARTES.--Descartes has almost written a psychology,
what with his _Treatise on the Passions_ and his letters and, besides,
certain passages in his _Meditations_. The soul thinks and has
passions. There are three kinds of ideas, the factitious, the adventitious,
and the innate; the factitious ideas are those which the imagination forms;
the adventitious ideas are those suggested by the external world through
the intermediary of the senses; the innate ideas are those constituting the
mind itself, the conditions under which it thinks and apart from which it
cannot think: we cannot conceive an object not extended, nor an object
apart from time, nor anything without a cause; the ideas of time, space, and cause are innate ideas; we cannot conceive ourselves as other than free; the idea of liberty is an innate idea. |
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