The soul has passions; it is therein that, without dependence on the body,
it has intimate relations with and is modified by it, not radically, but in
its daily life. There are operations of the soul which cannot strictly be
termed passions, and yet which are directed or at least _influenced_
by the body. Memory is passive, and consequently memory is a species of
passion. The lively sensations which the body transmits to the brain leave
impressions (Malebranche would say "traces"), and according to these
impressions the soul is moved a second or a third time, and that is what is
called memory. "The impressions of the brain render it suitable to stir
the soul in the same way as it has been stirred before, and also to make it
recollect something, just as the folds in a piece of paper or linen make it
more suitable to be folded anew as it was before than if it had never been
thus folded." Similarly, the association of ideas is passive, and in
consequence is a kind of passion. The association of ideas is the fact that
thought passes along the same path it has already traversed, and follows in
its labyrinth the thread which interlinks its thoughts, and this thread is
the traces which thoughts have left in the brain. In abandoning ourselves
to the association of ideas, we are passive and we yield ourselves freely
to a passion. That is so true that current speech itself recognizes this:
musing is a passion, it is possible to have a passion for musing, and
musing is nothing else than the association of ideas in which the will does
not intervene.
THE PASSIONS.--Coming to the passions strictly speaking, there are
some which are of the soul and only of the soul; the passion for God is a
passion of the soul, the passion for liberty is a passion of the soul; but
there are many more which are the effects of the union of the soul with the
body. These passions are excited in the soul by a state of the body or a
movement of the body or of some part of the body; they are "emotions" of
the soul corresponding to "movements" of the machine. All passions have
relation to the desire for pleasure and the fear of pain, and according as
they relate to the former or the latter are they expansive or oppressive.
There are six principal passions, of which all the rest are only
modifications: admiration, love, desire, joy, having relation to the
appetite of happiness; hatred, sadness, having relation to the fear of
pain. "All the passions are good and may become bad" (Descartes in this
deviates emphatically from Stoicism for which the passions are simply
maladies of the soul). All passions are good in themselves. They are
destined (this is a remarkable theory) to cause the duration of thoughts
which would otherwise pass and be rapidly effaced; by reason of this, they
cause man to act; if he were only directed by his thoughts, unaccompanied
by his passions, he would never act, and if it be recognized that man is
born for action, it will at the same time be recognized that it is
necessary he should have passions.
But, you will say, there can be good passions (of a nature to give force to
just ideas) and evil passions.
No, they are all good, but all also have their bad side, their deviation,
rather, which enables them to become bad. Therefore, in each passion no
matter what it be, it is always possible to distinguish between the passion
itself, which is always good, and the excess, the deviation, the
degradation or corruption of this passion which constitutes, if it be
desired to call it so, an evil passion, and this is what Descartes
demonstrates, passion by passion, in the fullest detail, in his _Treatise
on the Passions_.
THE PART OF THE SOUL.--If it is thus, what will be the part of the
soul (the soul is the will)? It will be to abandon itself to good passions,
or more accurately to the good that is in all passions, and to reduce the
passions to be "nothing more than themselves." In courage, for example,
there is courage and temerity. The action of the will, enlightened by the
judgment, will consist in reducing courage to be nothing but courage. In
fear, there is cowardice and there is the feeling of self-preservation
which, according to Descartes, is the foundation of fear and which is a
very good passion. The action of the soul is to reduce fear to simple
prudence.
But _how_ will the will effect these metamorphoses or at least these
departures, these separations, these reductions to the due proportion?
_Directly_ it can effect _nothing_ upon the passions; it cannot
_remove_ them; it cannot even remove the baser portions of them; but
it can exercise influence over them by the intermediary of reasoning; it
can lead them to the attentive consideration of the thought that they carry
with them, and by this consideration modify them. For instance, if it is a
question of fear, the soul forces fear to consider that the peril is much
less than was imagined, and thus little by little brings it back to simple
prudence.
Note that this method, although indirect, is very potent; for it ends by
really transforming the passions into their opposites. Persuade fear that
there is less peril in marching forward than in flight and that the most
salutary flight is the flight forward and you have changed fear to
courage.--But such an influence of the will over the passions is
extraordinarily unlikely: it will never take place.--Yes, by habit! Habit
too is a passion, or, if you will, a passive state, like that of memory or
the association of ideas, and there are men possessed only of that passion.
But the will, by the means which have been described, by imposing an act, a
first act, creates a commencement of habit, by imposing a second confirms
that habit, by imposing a third strengthens it, and so on. In plain words,
the will, by reasoning with the passions and reasoning with them
incessantly, brings them back to what is good in them and ends by bringing
them back there permanently, so that it arrives at having only the passions
it desires, or, if you prefer it, for it is the same thing, at having only
the passion for good. Morality consists in loving noble passions, as was
later observed by Vauvenargues, and that means to love all the passions,
each for what is good in it, that is to reduce each passion to what real
goodness is inherent in it, and that is to gather all the passions into
one, which is the passion of duty.
THE METHOD OF DESCARTES.--As has been observed, not only had
Descartes influence through all that he wrote, but it was by his method
that he has exerted the greatest and most durable sway, and that is why we
conclude with the examination of his method. It is all contained in this:
to accept nothing as true except what is evident; to accept as true all
that is evident. Descartes therefore made evidence the touchstone of
certainty. But mark well the profound meaning of this method: what is it
that gives me the assurance of the evidence of such or such an idea? How
shall I know that such an idea is really evident to me? Because I see it in
perfect clearness? No, that does not suffice: the evidence may be
deceptive; there can be false evidence; all the wrong ideas of the
philosophers of antiquity, save when they were sophists, had for them the
character of being evident. Why? Why should error be presented to the mind
as an evident truth? Because in truth, in profound truthfulness, it must
be admitted that judgment does not depend upon the intelligence. And on
what does it depend? On will, on free-will. This is how. No doubt, error
depends on our judgment, but our judgment depends on our will in the sense
that it depends on us whether we adhere to our judgment without it being
sufficiently precise or do not adhere to it because it is not sufficiently
precise: "If I abstain from giving my judgment on a subject when I do not
conceive it with sufficient clearness and distinction, it is evident that I
shall not be deceived." Evidence is therefore not only a matter of
judgment, of understanding, of intelligence, it is a matter of energetic
will and of freedom courageously acquired. We are confronted with evidence
when, with a clear brain, we are capable, in order to accept or refuse what
it lays before us, of acting "after such a fashion," of having put
ourselves in such a state of the soul that we feel "that no external force
can constrain us to think in such or such a way."
These external forces are authority, prejudices, personal interest, or that
of party. The faculty of perceiving evidence is therefore the triumph both
of sound judgment in itself and of a freedom of mind which, supposing
probity, scrupulousness, and courage, and perhaps the most difficult of all
courage, supposes a profound and vigorous morality. Evidence is given only
to men who are first highly intelligent and next, or rather before all
else, are profoundly honest. Evidence is not a consequence of morality; but
morality is the _condition_ of evidence.
There is the foundation of the method of Descartes; add to it his advice on
the art of reasoning, which even in his time was not at all novel, but
which with him is very precise; not to generalize too hastily, not to be
put off with words, but to have a clear definition of every word, etc., and
thus a sufficient idea of it will be obtained.
Now first, to this method Descartes was unfaithful, as always happens, and
often accepted the suggestions of his magnificent imagination as the
evidences of his reason; secondly, the touchstone of evidence is certainly
the best, but is far from being infallible (and Vico has ridiculed it with
as much sense as wit) and the freest mind can still find false things
evident; yet, thirdly, favouring freedom of research self-controlled,
individual and scornful of all authority, the method of Descartes has
become a banner, a motto, and a flag for all modern philosophy.
DESCARTES THE FATHER OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY.--And from all that the
result has been that all modern philosophy, with few exceptions, has
recognised Descartes as its parent--that individual evidence, if it may be
thus expressed, favouring temerity and each believing himself closer to the
truth the more he differed from others, and consequently was unable to
suspect himself of being subject to influences, individual evidence has
provided a fresh opportunity for self-deception; finally, that Descartes,
by a not uncommon metamorphosis, by means of his system which he did not
follow, has become the head or the venerated ancestor of doctrines which he
would have detested and which he already did detest more than all
others. Because he said that evidence alone and the free investigation of
evidence led to truth, he has become the ancestor of the sceptics who are
persuaded that surrender must be made only to evidence and that evidence
cannot be found; and he has become the ancestor of the positivists who
believe that evidence certainly exists somewhere, but not in metaphysics or
in theodicy, or in knowledge of the soul, of immortality, and of God,
branches of knowledge which surpass our means of knowing, which are in fact
outside knowledge. So that this man who conceived more than any man, this
man who so often constructed without a sure foundation, and this man, yet
again, as has been aptly said, who always thought by innate ideas, by his
formula has become the master and above all the guarantor of those who are
the most reserved and most distrustful as to philosophic construction,
innate ideas, and imagination. This does not in the least diminish his
brilliant merit; it is only one of those changes of direction in which the
history of ideas abounds.
CHAPTER II
CARTESIANS
All the Seventeenth Century was under the Influence of Descartes.
Port-Royal, Bossuet, Fenelon, Malebranche, Spinoza, Leibnitz.
CARTESIAN INFLUENCE.--Nearly all the seventeenth century was
Cartesian, and in the general sense of the word, not only as supporters of
the method of evidence, but as adherents of the general philosophy of
Descartes. Gassendi (a Provencal, and not an Italian), professor of
philosophy at Aix, subsequently in Paris, was not precisely a faithful
disciple of Descartes, and he opposed him several times; he had leanings
towards Epicurus and the doctrine of atoms; he drew towards Hobbes, but he
was also a fervent admirer of Bacon, and so approached Descartes, who
thought very highly of him, though impatiently galled by his criticisms.
After the example of Epicurus he was the most sober and austere of men, and
of the two it was Descartes rather than he who was Epicurean in the common
use of the word. According to a tradition, which to my mind rests on
insufficient proof, he was an instructor of Moliere.
All the thinkers of the seventeenth century came more or less profoundly
under the Cartesian influence: Pascal, Bossuet, Fenelon, Arnauld, and all
Port-Royal. This influence was to diminish only in the eighteenth century,
though kept up by the impenitent Fontenelle, but outweighed by that of
Locke, to reappear very vigorously in the nineteenth century in France in
the school of Maine de Biran and of Cousin.
MALEBRANCHE.--A separate niche must be made for the Cartesians,
almost as great as Descartes, who filled the seventeenth century with their
renown,--the Frenchman Malebranche, the Dutchman Spinoza, and the German
Leibnitz. Pushing the theories of Descartes further than Descartes would
himself in all probability have desired to, from what Descartes had said
that it was only _through God_ that we perceived accurately,
Malebranche declared that it was only _in God_ that we perceived
accurately, and fundamentally this is the same idea; it can only be deemed
that Malebranche is the more precise: "God alone is known by Himself [is
believed in without uncertainty]; there is only He that we can see in
immediate and direct perspective." All the rest we see in Him, in His
light, in the light He creates in our minds. When we see, it is that we are
in Him. Evidence is divine light. He is the link of ideas. (And thus
Malebranche brought Plato near to Descartes and showed that, without the
latter being aware of it, they both said the same thing.) God is always the
cause and as He is the cause of all real things, He is cause also of all
truths, and as He is everywhere in real objects, He is also everywhere in
the true ideas which we can have, or rather in which we can participate.
When we seek a truth we pray without thinking we do so; attention is a
prayer.
In the same way, from the saying of Descartes that the universe is a
continuous creation, Malebranche deduced or rather concluded that our
thoughts and actions are acts of God. There can be no action of the body on
the soul to produce ideas; that would be inconceivable; but on the
occasion, for instance, of our eyes resting on an object, God gives us an
idea of that object, whether in conformity or not we cannot tell; but at
any rate He gives us that idea of the object which He wishes us to have.
There is no action of our soul on our body; that would be
inconceivable. But God to our will adds a force having a tendency towards
goodness as a rule, and to each of our volitions adds a force tending to
its execution and capable of executing it.
Then, when our will is evil and we execute it, does God sin in our name?
Certainly not; because sin is not an act; it consists in doing nothing; it
consists precisely in the soul not acting on the body; therefore it is not
a force but a weakness. Sin is that God has withdrawn Himself from us. The
sinner is only a being who is without strength because he is lacking in
grace.
The principle of morality is the respect for order and the love of
order. That makes two degrees, the first of which is regularity and the
second virtue. To conform to order is highly rational but without merit
(_e.g._, to give money to the poor from habit or possibly from
vanity). To love order and to desire that it should be greater, more
complete, and nearer to the will of God, is to adhere to God, to live in
God, just as to see rightly is to see in God. All morality, into the
details of which we will not enter, evolves from the love of order. The
universe is a vast mechanism, as was stated by Descartes, set in motion and
directed by God--that is to say, by the laws established by God; for God
acts only by general dispositions (which are laws) and not by particular
dispositions. In other words, there exists a will, but there are no
volitions.
MIRACLES.--But then you will say there are no miracles; for miracle
is precisely a particular will traversing and interrupting the general
will.
To begin with, there are very few miracles, which therefore permits order
to subsist; it would be only if there were incessant miracles that order
would be non-existent. Next, a miracle is a warning God gives to men
because of their weakness, to remind them that behind the laws there is a
Lawgiver, behind the general dispositions a Being who disposes. Because of
their intellectual weakness, if they never saw any derogation from the
general laws they would take them to be fatalities. A miracle is a grace
intervening in things, just as grace properly so-called intervenes in human
actions. And it is not contradictory to the general design of God, since
by bringing human minds back to the truth that there is a Being who wills,
it accustoms them to consider all general laws as permanent acts, but also
as the acts of the Being who wills. The miracle has the virtue of making
everything in the world miraculous, which is true. Hence the miracle
confirms the idea of order. Therein, perhaps alone, the exception proves
the rule.
SPINOZA.--Spinoza, who during his life was a pure Stoic and the
purest of Stoics, polishing the lenses of astronomical telescopes in order
to gain his living, refusing all pensions and all the professorial
positions offered to him, and living well-nigh on nothing, had read
Descartes and, to conform to the principle of evidence, had begun by
renouncing his religion, which was that of the Jews. His general outlook
on the world was this: There is only one God. God is all. Only He has His
attributes--that is to say, His manners of being and His modes, that is His
modifications, as the sun (merely a comparison) has as its manners of
being, its roundness, colour, and heat, as modifications its rays,
terrestrial heat, direct and diffused light, etc. Now God has two
attributes, thought and extension, as had already been observed by
Descartes; and for modifications He has exactly all we can see, touch, or
feel, etc. The human soul is an attribute of God, as is everything else; it
is an attribute of God in His power. It is not free, for all that comes
from God, all that _is of God_, is a regular and necessary development
of God Himself. "There is nothing contingent" [nothing which may either
happen or not happen]. All things are determined, by the necessity of the
divine nature, to exist and to act in a given manner. There is therefore
no free-will in the soul, the soul is determined to will this or that by a
cause which is itself determined by another and that by another, and so on
to infinity.
Nevertheless we believe ourselves to be free and according to the principle
of evidence we are; for nothing is more evident to us than our liberty. We
are as intimately convinced of our liberty as of our existence and we
_all_ affirm, I am free,--with the same emphasis that Descartes
affirms: I am. I am and I am free are the two things it is impossible for
man to doubt, no matter what effort he makes.
No doubt, but it is an illusion. It is the illusion of a being who feels
himself as cause, but does not feel himself as effect. Try to imagine a
billiard ball which feels it moves others, but which does not feel that it
is moved. What we call decision is an idea which decides us because it
exercises more power over us than the others do; what we term deliberation
is a hesitancy between two or three ideas which at the moment have equal
force; what we name volition is an idea, and what we call will is our
understanding applied to facts. We do not want to fight; we conceive the
idea of fighting and the idea carries us away; we do not want to hang
ourselves; we have the obsessing idea of hanging ourselves and this thought
runs away with us.
HIS MORAL SYSTEM.--Spinoza wrote a system of morality. Is it not
radically impossible to write a system of morality when the author does not
believe in free-will? The admirable originality of Spinoza, even though
his idea can be contested, is precisely that morality depends on belief in
the necessity of all things--that is, the more one is convinced of this
necessity so much the more does one attain high morality--that is, the more
one believes oneself free the more one is _immoral_. The man who
believes himself free claims to run counter to the universal order, and
morality precisely is adherence to it; the man who believes himself free
seeks for an individual good just as if there could be an individual good,
just as if the best for each one were not to submit to the necessary laws
of everything, laws which constitute what is good; the man who thinks
himself free sets himself against God, believes himself God since he
believes himself to be creator of what he does, and since he believes
himself capable of deranging something in the mechanism and of introducing
a certain amount of movement. As a matter of fact, he does nothing of the
kind; but he believes that he does it, and this mere thought, false and low
as it is, keeps him in the most miserable condition of life; to sum up, a
man who believes himself free may not perhaps be an atheist, but he is
ungodly.
On the contrary, the man who does not believe himself free believes he is
in the hands of God, and that is the beginning of wisdom and the beginning
of virtue. We are in the hands of God as the clay is in those of the
potter; the mad vase would be the one which reproached the potter for
having made it small instead of big, common instead of decorative. It is
the beginning of wisdom to believe oneself in the hands of God; to see Him,
to see Him the least indistinctly that we can, therein lies the highest
wisdom; we must see His designs, or at least His great design and associate
ourselves with it, thus becoming not only part of Him, which we always are,
but a conscient part of Him.
This is the love of God, and the love of God is virtue itself. We ought to
love God without consideration of the good He can do us and of the
penalties He can inflict upon us; for to love God from love of a beneficent
God or from fear of a punitive God is not to love God but to love oneself.
THE PASSIONS.--We have our passions as enemies and as obstacles to
our elevation to this semi-perfection. It is they which cause us to do
immoral acts. "Immoral," has that a meaning from the moment that we do
nothing which we are not obliged to do? Yes, just as when led by our
deceitful mind we have arrived necessarily at a false idea, the fact of
this thought being necessary does not prevent it from being false; we may
have been led by necessity to commit a villainous action, but that does not
prevent its being immoral. The passions are our imperfections, omissions,
gaps in a soul which is not full of the idea of God and of universal order
and the love of God and of universal order, and which, in consequence,
lives individually--that is, separated from the universe.
The passions are infinite in number and Spinoza, in a bulky volume,
furnished a minute and singularly profound description of the principal
ones alone, into the details of which we regret that we cannot enter. The
_Ethics_ of Spinoza is an incomparable masterpiece.
The study of the passions is very salutary, because in studying them one
gets so detached from them that one can perceive their emptiness, their
meanness, and their puerile, nay, even bestial character. It might even be
added that the mere thought of studying them is already an act of
detachment in reference to them. "Thou wouldst not seek Me, hadst thou not
already found Me," said God to Pascal. "Thou wouldst not make
investigations about us, hadst thou not already quitted us," the passions
might say to the philosopher.
SANCTIONS OF MORALITY.--What are the sanctions of morality? They are
necessary sanctions; just as everything is necessary and may even be said
to be mechanical. There is neither merit nor demerit and the criminal is
not culpable; only he is outside order, and everything must be in order.
"He who is maddened by the bite of a mad dog is certainly innocent; yet
anyone has the right to suffocate him. In the same way, the man who cannot
govern his passions by fear of the law is a very excusable invalid; yet he
cannot enjoy peace of mind, or the knowledge of God, or even the love of
God, and it is necessary that he perish." Through death he has re-entered
within order.
But does the sanction of beyond-the-grave exist, and is the soul immortal,
and are we to be rewarded therein in another life? The conclusion of
Spinoza on this matter is hesitating, but at the risk of misrepresenting
it, which I fear to do, it seems to me that it can be thus summed
up--_The soul makes itself immortal_, in proportion as by the
knowledge and love of God it participates more in God. In proportion it
makes itself divine; and approaching perfection, by the same progress it
also approaches immortality. It is conceivable that by error and sin it
kills itself, and by virtue renders itself imperishable. This immortality
is not or does not seem to be personal, it is literally a definite re-entry
into the bosom of God; Spinozian immortality would therefore be a
prolongation of the same effort which we make in this life to adhere to
universal order; the recompense for having adhered to it here below is to
be absorbed in it there, and in that lies true beatitude. Here below we
ought to see everything from the point of view of eternity (_sub specie
aeternitatis_), and this is a way of being eternal; elsewhere we shall
be in eternity itself.
LEIBNITZ.--Leibnitz possessed a universal mind, being historian,
naturalist, politician, diplomatist, scholar, theologian, mathematician;
here we will regard him only as philosopher. For Leibnitz the basis, the
substance of all beings is not either thought or extension as with
Descartes, but is force, productive of action. "What does not act does not
exist." Everything that exists is a force, either action or tendency to
action. And force, all force has two characteristics: it desires to do, it
wishes to think. The world is the graduated compound of all these
forces. Above all there is the supreme force, God, who is infinite force,
infinite thought; by successive descents those base and obscure forces are
reached which seem to have neither power nor thought, and yet have a
minimum of power and even of thought, so to speak, latent. God thinks and
acts infinitely; man thinks and acts powerfully, thanks to reason, which
distinguishes him from the rest of creation; the animal acts and thinks
dimly, but it does act and think, for it has a soul composed of memory and
of the results and consequences of memory, and by parenthesis
"three-fourths of our own actions are governed by memory, and most
frequently we act like animals"; plants act, and if they do not think, at
least feel (which is still thought), though more dimly than animals; and
finally in the mineral kingdom the power of action and thought slumber, but
are not non-existent since they can be transformed into plants, animals,
and men, into living matter which feels and thinks.
Therefore, as was later on to be maintained by Schopenhauer, everything is
full of souls, and of souls which are forces as well as intelligences. The
human soul is a force too, like the body. Between these two forces, which
seem to act on one another and which certainly act in concert in such
fashion that the movement desired by the soul is executed by the body or
that the soul obviously assents to a movement desired by the body, what can
be the affinity and the relation, in what consists their concurrence and
concord? Leibnitz (and there was already something of the same nature
suggested by Descartes) believes that all the forces of the world act, each
spontaneously; but that among all the actions they perform there exists an
agreement imposed by God, a concord establishing universal order, a
"preestablished harmony" causing them all to co-operate in the same
design. Well, then, between the soul, this force, and the body, this force
also, this harmony reigns as between any force whatever in nature and one
and all of the others; and that is the explanation of the union and concord
between the soul and the body. Imagine two well-constructed clocks wound up
by the same maker; they indicate the same hour, and it might appear that
this one directs the other, or that the other directs the first. All the
forces of the world are clocks which agree with each other, because they
have been regulated in advance by the divine clockmaker, and they all
indicate the eternal hour.
THE RADICAL OPTIMISM OF LEIBNITZ.--From all these general views on
matter, on mind and on the mind, Leibnitz arrived at a radical optimism
which is the thing for which he has since been most ridiculed, and by
which, at any rate, he has remained famous. He believes that all is good,
despite the evil of which no one can dispute the existence; and he believes
that all is the best _possible_ in the best of _possible_
worlds. In fact, God is supreme wisdom and supreme goodness; that was quite
evident to Descartes, who in the matter of evidence was not easily
satisfied. This perfect wisdom and perfect goodness could choose only what
is best.--But yet evil exists! Diminish it as much as you choose, it still
exists.--It exists by a necessity inherent in what is created. Everything
created is imperfect. God alone is perfect; what is imperfect is by its
definition evil mingled with good. Evil is only the boundary of good, where
God was compelled to stop in creating beings and things other than Himself,
and if He had created only according to absolute goodness, He could have
created only Himself. And that is the precise meaning of this phrase "the
best of possible worlds"; the world is perfect so far as that which is
created, and therefore imperfect, can be perfect; so far as what is not God
can be divine; the world is God Himself as far as He can remain Himself
whilst being anything else than Himself. THE THREE EVILS.--Let us
distinguish in order to comprehend better. There are three evils: the
metaphysical, the physical, and the moral. Metaphysical evil is this very
fact of not being perfection; it is natural enough that what emanates only
from perfection should not be perfection. Physical evil is suffering; God
cannot _will_ suffering, desire it, or cherish it; but He can permit
it as a means of good, as a condition of good; for there would be no moral
good if there were not occasion for struggle, and there would be no
occasion for struggling if physical evil did not exist; imagine a paradise;
all the inhabitants merely exist and never have cause to show the slightest
endurance, the least courage, the smallest virtue. And finally, as to
moral evil, which is sin, God can even less desire that it should exist,
but He can admit its existence, _allow it to be_, to afford men
occasion for merit or demerit. Nothing is more easy than to criticize God
whilst considering only a portion of His work and not considering it as a
whole. He must have created it to be a whole and it is as a whole that it
must be judged. And precisely because the whole cannot be comprehended by
anyone, "hold thy peace, foolish reason," as Pascal said, and judge not or
judge _a priori_, since here it is not possible to judge by
experience; and declare that the Perfect can have willed only the most
perfect that is possible.
THE POSSIBLE AND THE IMPOSSIBLE.--There still remains the
fundamental objection: to reduce God to the conditions of the possible is
to limit Him, and it is useless to say that God is justified if He has done
all the good possible. He is not; the words "possible" and "impossible"
having no meaning to Him who is omnipotent, and by definition infinite
power could effect the impossible.
Yes, Leibnitz replies, there is a metaphysical impossibility, there is an
impossibility in the infinite; this impossibility is absurdity, is
contradiction. Could God make the whole smaller than the part or any line
shorter than a straight one? Reason replies in the negative. Is God
therefore limited? He is limited by the absurd and that means He is
unlimited; for the absurd is a falling away. It is therefore credible that
the mixture of evil and good is a metaphysical necessity to which I will
not say God submits, but in which He acts naturally, and that the absence
of evil is a metaphysical contradiction, an absurdity in itself, which God
cannot commit precisely because He is perfect; and no doubt, instead of
drawing this conclusion, we should actually see it, were the totality of
things, of their relations, of their concordance, and of their harmony
known to us.
The optimism of Leibnitz was ridiculed specially in the _Candide_ of
Voltaire, ingeniously defended by Rousseau, magnificently defended by
Victor Hugo in the following verses, well worthy of Leibnitz:
"Oui peut-etre au dela de la sphere des nues,
Au sein de cet azur immobile et dormant,
Peut-etre faites-vous des choses inconnues
Ou la douleur de l'homme entre comme element."
CHAPTER III
THE ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
Locke: His Ideas on Human Liberty, Morality, General
Politics, and Religious Politics.
LOCKE.--Locke, very learned in various sciences--physics, chemistry,
medicine, often associated with politics, receiving enlightenment from
life, from frequent travels, from friendships with interesting and
illustrious men, always studying and reflecting until an advanced old age,
wrote only carefully premeditated works: his _Treatise of Government_
and _Essay on the Human Understanding_.
Locke appears to have written on the understanding only in order to refute
the "innate ideas" of Descartes. For Locke innate ideas have no
existence. The mind before it comes into contact with the external world is
a blank sheet, and there is nothing in the mind which has not first come
through the senses. What, then, are ideas? They are sensations registered
by the brain, and they are also sensations elaborated and modified by
reflection. These ideas then commingle in such a manner as to form an
enormous mass of combinations. They are commingled either in a natural or
an artificial manner. In a natural manner, that is in a way conforming to
the great primary ideas given us by reflection, the idea of cause, the idea
of end, the idea of means to an end, the idea of order, etc., and it is the
harmony of these ideas which is commonly termed reason; they become
associated by accident, by the effects of emotion, by the effect of custom,
etc., and then they give birth to prejudices, errors, and
superstitions. The passions of the soul are aspects of pleasure and pain.
The idea of a possible pleasure gives birth in us to a desire which is
called ambition, love, covetousness, gluttony; the idea of a possible pain
gives birth in us to fear and horror, and this fear and horror is called
hatred, jealousy, rage, aversion, disgust, scorn. At bottom we have only
two passions, the desire of enjoyment, and the fear of suffering.
THE FREEDOM OF MAN.--Is man free? Appealing to experience and
making use only of it and not of intimate feeling, Locke declares in the
negative. A will always seems to him determined by another will, and this
other by another to infinity, or by a motive, a weight, a motive power
which causes a leaning to right or left. Will certainly exists--that is to
say, an exact and lively desire to perform an action, or to continue an
action, or to interrupt an action, but this will is not free, for to
represent it as free is to represent it as capable of wishing what it does
not wish. The will is an anxiety to act in such or such a fashion, and this
anxiety, on account of its character of anxiety, of strong emotion, of
tension of the soul, appears to us free, appears to us an internal force
which is self-governed and independent; we feel consciousness of will in
the effort. This tension must not be denied, but it must be recognised as
the effect of a potent desire which the obstacle excites; this tension,
therefore, is an indication of nothing except the potency of the desire and
the existence of an obstacle. Now this desire, so potent that it is
irritated by the obstacle, and, so to speak, unites us against it, is a
passion dominating and filling our being; so that we are never more swayed
by passion than when we believe ourselves to be exercising our will, and in
consequence the more we desire the less are we free.
It is not essential formally and absolutely to confound will with
desire. Overpowered by heat, we desire to drink cold water, and because we
know that that would do us harm we have the will not to drink; but although
this is an important distinction it is not a fundamental one; what incites
us to drink is a passion, what prevents us is another passion, one more
general and stronger, the desire not to die, and because this passion by
meeting with and fighting another produces in all our being a powerful
tension, it is none the less a passion, even if we ought not to say that it
is a still more impassioned passion.
LOCKE'S THEORY OF POLITICS.--In politics Locke was the adversary of
Hobbes, whose theories of absolutism have already been noticed. He did not
believe that the natural state was the war of all against all. He believed
men formed societies not to escape cannibalism, but more easily to
guarantee and protect their natural rights: ownership, personal liberty,
legitimate defence. Society exists only to protect these rights, and the
reason of its existence lies in this duty to defend them. The sovereign
therefore is not the saviour of the nation, he is its law-maker and
magistrate. If he violates the rights of man, he acts so directly contrary
to his mission and his mandate that insurrection against him is
legitimate. The "wise Locke," as Voltaire always called him, was the
inventor of the Rights of Man.
In religious politics he was equally liberal and advocated the separation
of Church and State; the State, according to him, should not have any
religion of its own, its province being only to protect equally the liberty
of all denominations. Locke was discussed minutely by Leibnitz, who,
without accepting the innate ideas of Descartes, did not accept the ideas
through sensation of Locke, and said: "There is nothing in the intelligence
which has not first been in the senses," granted ... "except the
intelligence itself." The intelligence has not innate ideas born ready
made; but it possesses forms of its own in which the ideas arrange
themselves and take shape, and this is the due province of the
intelligence. And it was these forms which later on Kant was to call the
categories of the intellect, and at bottom Descartes meant nothing else by
his innate ideas. Locke exerted a prodigious and even imperious influence
over the French philosophers of the eighteenth century.
CHAPTER IV
THE ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS OF THE
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
Berkeley: Highly Idealist Philosophy which Regarded Matter as Non-existent.
David Hume: Sceptical Philosophy.
The Scottish School: Common Sense Philosophy.
BERKELEY.--To the "sensualist" Locke succeeded Berkeley, the
unrestrained "idealist," like him an Englishman. He began to write when
very young, continued to write until he was sixty, and died at
sixty-eight. He believed neither in matter nor in the external world. There
was the whole of his philosophy. Why did he not believe in them? Because
all thinkers are agreed that we cannot know whether we see the external
world _as it is_. Then, if we do not know it, why do we affirm that it
exists? We know nothing about it. Now we ought to build up the world only
with what we know of it, and to do otherwise is not philosophy but yielding
to imagination. What is it that we know of the world? Our ideas, and
nothing but our ideas. Very well then, let us say: there are only
ideas. But whence do these ideas come to us? To explain them as coming from
the external world which we have never seen is to explain obscurity by
denser darkness. They are spiritual, they come to us without doubt from a
spirit, from God. This is possible, it is not illogical, and Berkeley
believes it.
This doctrine regarded by the eyes of common sense may appear a mere
phantasy; but Berkeley saw in it many things of high importance and great
use. If you believe in matter, you can believe in matter only, and that is
materialism with its moral consequences, which are immoral; if you believe
in matter and in God, you are so hampered by this dualism that you do not
know how to separate nature from God, and it therefore comes to pass that
you see God in matter, which is called pantheism. In a word, between us and
God Berkeley has suppressed matter in order that we should come, as it
were, into direct contact with God. He derives much from Malebranche, and
it may be said he only pushes his theories to their extreme. Although a
bishop, he was not checked, like Descartes, by the idea of God not being
able to deceive us, and he answered that God does not deceive us, that He
gives us ideas and that it is we who deceive ourselves by attributing them
to any other origin than to Him; nor was he checked, like Malebranche, by
the authority of Scripture, which in Genesis portrays God creating
matter. He saw there, no doubt, only a symbolical sense, a simple way of
speaking according to the comprehension of the multitude.
DAVID HUME.--David Hume, a Scotsman, better known, at least in his
own times, as the historian of England than as a philosopher, nevertheless
well merits consideration in the latter category. David Hume believes in
nothing, and, in consequence, it may be said that he is not a philosopher;
he has no philosophic system. He has no philosophic system, it is true; but
he is a critic of philosophy, and therefore he philosophizes. Matter has no
existence; as we know nothing about it, we should not say it exists. But we
ourselves, we exist. All that we can know about that is that in us there is
a succession of ideas, of representations; but _we_, but _I_,
what is that? Of that we know nothing. We are present at a series of
pictures, and we may call their totality the _ego_; but we do not
grasp ourselves as a thing of unity, as an individual. We are the
spectators of an inward dramatic piece behind which we can see no
author. There is no more reason to believe in _oneself_ than in the
external world.
INNATE IDEAS.--As for innate ideas, they are simply general ideas,
which are general delusions. We believe, for instance, that every effect
has a cause, or, to express it more correctly, that everything has a cause.
What do we know about it? What do we see? That one thing follows another,
succeeds to another. What tells us that the latter proceeds from the
former, that the thing B must necessarily come, owing to the thing A
existing? We believe it because every time the thing A has been, the thing
B has come. Well, let us say that every time A has been (thus far) B has
come; and say no more. There are regular successions, but we are completely
ignorant whether there are causes for them.
THE LIBERTY AND MORALITY OF HUME.--It results from this that for
Hume there is no liberty. Very obviously; for when we believe ourselves
free, it is because we believe we can fix upon ourselves as a cause. Now
the word "cause" means nothing. We are a succession of phenomena very
absolutely determined. The proof is that we foresee and nearly always
accurately (and we could always foresee accurately if we completely knew
the character of the persons and the influences acting on them) what people
we know will do, which would be impossible if they did as they wished. And
I, at the very moment when I am absolutely sure I am doing such and such a
thing because I desired to, I see my friend smile as he says: "I was sure
you would do that. See, I wrote it down on this piece of paper." He
understood me as a necessity, when I felt myself to be free. And he,
reciprocally, will believe himself free in doing a thing I would have
wagered to a certainty that he would not fail to do.
What system of morality can Hume have with these principles? First of all,
he protests against those who should deduce from his principles the
immorality of his system. Take care, said he wittily (just like Spinoza,
by the way), it is the partisans of free-will who are immoral. No doubt! It
is when there is liberty that there is no responsibility. I am not
responsible for my actions if they have no connection in me with anything
durable or constant. I have committed murder. Truly it is by chance, if it
was by an entirely isolated determination, entirely detached from the rest
of my character, and momentary; and I am only infinitesimally
responsible. But if all my actions are linked together, are conditional
upon one another, dependent on one another, if I have committed murder it
is because I am an assassin at every moment of my life or nearly so, and
then, oh! how responsible I am!
Note that this is the line taken up by judges, since they make careful
investigation of the antecedents of the accused. They find him all the more
culpable if he has always shown bad instincts.--Therefore they find him the
more responsible, the more he has been compelled by necessity.--Yes.
Hume then does not believe himself "foreclosed" in morality; he does not
believe he is forbidden by his principles to have a system of morality and
he has one. It is a morality of sentiment. We have in us the instinct of
happiness and we seek happiness; but we have also in us an instinct of
goodwill which tends to make us seek the general happiness, and reason
tells us that there is conciliation or rather concordance between these two
instincts, because it is only in the general happiness that we find our
particular happiness.
THE SCOTTISH SCHOOL: REID; STEWART.--The Scottish School (end of the
eighteenth century) was pre-eminently a school of men who attached
themselves to common sense and were excellent moralists. We must at any
rate mention Thomas Reid and Dugald Stewart. They were bent especially on
opposing the transcendent idealism of Berkeley and the scepticism of David
Hume, also in some measure Locke's doctrine of the blank sheet. They
reconstituted the human mind and even the world (which had been so to speak
driven off in vapour by their predecessors), much as they were in the time
of Descartes. Let us believe, they said, in the reality of the external
world; let us believe that there are causes and effects; let us believe
there is an _ego,_ a human person whom we directly apprehend, and who
is a cause; let us believe that we are free and that we are responsible
because we are free, etc. They were, pre-eminently, excellent describers of
states of the soul, admirable psychological moralists and they were the
ancestors of the highly remarkable pleiad of English psychologists of the
nineteenth century.
CHAPTER V
FRENCH PHILOSOPHERS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
Voltaire a Disciple of Locke.
Rousseau a Freethinking Christian, but deeply Imbued
with Religious Sentiments.
Diderot a Capricious Materialist.
D'Holbach and Helvetius Avowed Materialists.
Condillac a Philosopher of Sensations.
VOLTAIRE; ROUSSEAU.--The French philosophy of the eighteenth
century, fairly feeble it must be avowed, seemed as if dominated by the
English philosophy, excepting Berkeley, but especially by Locke and David
Hume, more particularly Locke, who was the intellectual deity of those
Frenchmen of that epoch who were interested in philosophy.
Whenever Voltaire dealt with philosophy, he was only the echo of Locke
whose depths he failed to fathom, and to whom he has done some injury, for
reading Locke only through Voltaire has led to the belief that Locke was
superficial.
Rousseau was both the disciple and adversary of Hobbes, as often occurs,
and dealt out to the public the doctrines of Hobbes in an inverted form,
making the state of nature angelic instead of infernal, and putting the
government of all by all in the place of government by one, invariably
reaching the same point with a simple difference of form; for if Hobbes
argued for despotism exercised by one over all, Rousseau argued for the
despotism of all over each. In _Emile_, he was incontestably inspired
by the ideas of Locke on education in some degree, but in my opinion less
than has been asserted. On nearly all sides it has been asserted that
Rousseau exercised great influence over Kant. I know that Kant felt
infinite admiration for Rousseau, but of the influence of Rousseau upon
Kant I have never been able to discover a trace.
DIDEROT; HELVETIUS; D'HOLBACH.--It was particularly on David Hume
that Diderot depended. The difference, which is great, is that David Hume
in his scepticism remained a grave, reserved man, well-bred and discreet,
and was only a sceptic, whilst Diderot was violent in denial and a man of
paradoxes and jests, both impertinent and cynical.
It is almost ridiculous in a summary history of philosophy to name as
sub-Diderots, if one may so express it, Helvetius and D'Holbach, who were
merely wits believing themselves philosophers, and who were not always
wits.
CONDILLAC.--Condillac belongs to another category. He was a very
serious philosopher and a vigorous thinker. An exaggerated disciple of
Locke, while the latter admitted sensation _and_ reflection as the
origin of ideas, Condillac admitted only pure sensation and transformed
sensation--that is to say, sensation transforming itself. The definition of
man that he deduces from these principles is very celebrated and it is
interesting: "The _ego_ of each man is only the collection of the
sensations that he feels and of those his memory recalls; it is the
consciousness of what he is combined with the recollection of what he has
been." To Condillac, the idea is a sensation which has fixed itself and
which has been renewed and vivified by others; desire is a sensation which
wishes to be repeated and seeks what opportunity offers for its renewal,
and the will itself is only the most potent of desires. Condillac was voluntarily and systematically limited, but his system is well knit and presented in admirably clear and precise language. |
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