CHAPTER VI
KANT
Kant Reconstructed all Philosophy by Supporting it on Morality.
KNOWLEDGE.--Kant, born at Konigsberg in 1724, was professor there
all his life and died there in 1804. Nothing happened to him except the
possession of genius. He had commenced with the theological philosophy in
use in his country, that of Wolf, which on broad lines was that of
Leibnitz. But he early read David Hume, and the train of thought of the
sceptical Scotsman at least gave him the idea of submitting all philosophic
ideas to a severe and close criticism.
He first of all asked himself what the true value is of our knowledge and
what knowledge is. We believe generally that it is the things which give us
the knowledge that we have of them. But, rather, is it not we who impose on
things the forms of our mind and is not the knowledge that we believe we
have of things only the knowledge which we take of the laws of our mind by
applying it to things? This is what is most probable. We perceive the
things by moulds, so to speak, which are in ourselves and which give them
their shapes and they would be shapeless and chaotic were it
otherwise. Consequently, it is necessary to distinguish the matter and the
form of our knowledge: the matter of the knowledge is the things
themselves. The form of our knowledge is ourselves: "Our experimental
knowledge is a compound of what we receive from impressions and of what our
individual faculty of knowing draws from itself on the occasion of these
impressions."
SENSIBILITY; UNDERSTANDING; REASON.--Those who believe that all we
think proceeds from the senses are therefore wrong; so too are those wrong
who believe that all we think proceeds from ourselves. To say, Matter is an
appearance, and to say, Ideas are appearances, are equally false doctrines.
Now we know by sensibility, by understanding, and by reason. By sensibility
we receive the impression of phenomena; by the understanding we impose on
these impressions their forms, and link them up together; by reason we give
ourselves general ideas of things--universal ones, going beyond or
believing they go beyond the data, even when linked up and systematized.
Let us analyse sensibility, understanding, and reason. Sensibility already
has the forms it imposes on things. These forms are time and space. Time
and space are not given us by matter like colour, smell, taste, or sound;
they are not perceived by the senses; they are therefore the forms of our
sensibility: we can feel only according to time and space, by lodging what
we feel in space and time; these are the conditions of sensibility.
Phenomena are thus perceived by us under the laws of space and of time.
What do they become in us? They are seized by the understanding, which also
has its forms, its powers of classification, of arrangement, and of
connection. Its forms or powers, or, putting it more exactly, its active
forms are, for example, the conception of quantity being always equal:
through all phenomena the quantity of substance remains always the same;
the conception of causality: everything has a cause and every cause has an
effect and it is ever thus. Those are the conditions of our understanding,
those without which we do not understand and the forms which within us we
impose on all things in order to understand them.
It is thus that we know the world; which is tantamount to stating that the
world exists, so far as we are concerned, only so long as we think
so. Reason would go further: it would seize the most general, the
universal, beyond experience, beyond the limited and restricted
systematizations established by the understanding; to know, for instance,
the first cause of all causes, the last and collective end, so to speak, of
all purposes; to know "why is there something?" and "in view of what end is
there something?" in fact, to answer all the questions of infinity and
eternity. Be sure that it cannot. How could it? It only operates, can only
operate, on the data of experience and the systematizations of the
understanding, which classify experience but do not go beyond it. Only
operating upon that, having nothing except that as matter, how could it
itself go beyond experience? It cannot. It is only (a highly important
fact, and one which must on no account be forgotten)--it is only a sign,
merely a witness. It is the sign that the human spirit has need of the
absolute; it is itself that need; without that it would not exist; it is
the witness of our invincible insistence on knowing and of our tendency to
estimate that we know nothing if we only know something; it is itself that
insistence and that tendency: without that it would not exist. Let us pause
there for the moment. Man knows of nature only those impressions which he
receives from it, co-ordinated by the forms of sensibility, and further the
ideas of it which he preserves co-ordinated by the forms of his
understanding. This is very little. It is all, if we consider only pure
reason.
PRACTICAL REASON.--_But_ there is perhaps another reason, or
another aspect of reason--to wit, practical reason. What is practical
reason? Something in us tells us: you should act, and you should act in
such a way; you should act rightly; this is not right, so do not do it;
that is right, do it. As a fact this is uncontestable. What is the
explanation? From what data of experience, from what systematization of
the understanding has our mind borrowed this? Where has it got it? Does
nature yield obedience to a "you ought"? Not at all. It exists, and it
develops and it goes its way, according to our way of seeing it in time and
space, and that is all. Does the understanding furnish the idea of "you
ought"? By no means; it gives us ideas of quantity, of quality, of cause
and effect, etc., and that is all; there is no "you ought" in all
that. Therefore this "you ought" is purely human; it is the only principle
which comes exactly from ourselves only. It might therefore well be the
very foundation of us.--It may be an illusion.--No doubt, but it is highly
remarkable that it exists, though nothing gives it birth or is of a nature
to give it birth. An illusion is a weakness of the senses or an error of
logic and is thus explained; but an illusion in itself and by itself and
only proceeding from itself is most singular and not to be explained as an
illusion. Hence it remains that it is a reality, a reality of our nature,
and given the coercive force of its voice and act, it is the most real
reality there is in us.
THE CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE.--Thus, at least, thought Kant, and he
said: There is a practical reason which does not go beyond experience and
does not seek to go beyond it; but which does not depend on it, is
absolutely separated from it, and is its own (human) experience by
itself. This practical reason says to us: you ought to do good. The crowd
call it conscience; I call it in a general way practical reason, and I call
it the categorical imperative when I take it in its principle, without
taking into account the applications which I foresee. Why this name? To
distinguish it clearly; for we feel ourselves commanded by other things
than it, but not in the same way. We feel ourselves commanded by prudence,
for instance, which tells us: do not run down that staircase _if_ you
do not wish to break your neck; we feel ourselves commanded by the
conventions which say: be polite _if_ you do not wish men to leave you
severely alone, etc. But conscience does not say _if_ to us: it says
bluntly "you ought" without consideration of what may or may not happen,
and it is even part of its character to scorn all consideration of
consequences. It would tell us: run down that staircase to save that child
even at the risk of breaking your neck. Because of that I call all the
other commandments made to us hypothetical imperatives and that of
conscience, alone, the categorical or absolute imperative. Here is a
definite result.
MORALITY, THE LAW OF MAN.--Yet reflect: if the foregoing be true,
morality is the very law of man, his especial law, as the law of the tree
is to spread in roots and branches. Well. But for man to be able to obey
his law he must be free, must be able to do what he wishes. That is
certain. Then it must be believed that we are free, for were we not, we
could not obey our law; and the moral law would be absurd. The moral law is
the _sign_ that we are free. Compared to this, all the other proofs of
freedom are worthless or weak. We are free because we must be so in order
to do the good which our law commands us to do.
Let us examine further. I do what is right in order to obey the law; but,
when I have done it, I have the idea that it would be unjust that I should
be punished for it, or that I should not be rewarded for it, that it would
be unjust were there not concordance between right and happiness. As it
happens, virtue is seldom rewarded in this world and often is even
punished; it draws misfortune or evil on him who practises it. Would not
that be the sign that there are two worlds of which we see only one? Would
not that be the sign that virtue unrewarded here will be rewarded elsewhere
_in order that there should not be injustice?_ It is highly probable
that this is so.
But for that it is necessary that the soul be immortal. It is so, since it
is necessary that it should be. The moral law is accomplished and
consummated in rewards or penalties beyond the grave, which pre-suppose the
immortality of the soul. All the other proofs of the immortality of the
soul are worthless or feeble beside this one which demonstrates that were
there no immortality of the soul there would be no morality.
GOD.--And, finally, if justice is one day to be done, this supposes
a Judge. It is neither ourselves who in another life will do justice to
ourselves nor yet some force of circumstances which will do it to us. It is
necessary to have an intelligence conceiving justice and a will to realise
it. God is this intelligence and this will.
All the other proofs of God are weak or worthless beside this one. The
existence of God has been deduced from the idea of God: if we have the idea
of God, it is necessary that He should exist. A weak proof, for we can have
an idea which does not correspond with an object. The existence of God has
been deduced from the idea of causality; for all that is, a cause is
necessary, this cause is God. A weak proof, for things being as they are,
there is necessity for ... cause; but a cause and a _single_ cause,
why? There could be a series of causes to infinity and thus the cause of
the world could be the world itself. The existence of God has been deduced
from the idea of design well carried out. The composition, the ordering of
this world is admired; this world is well made; it is like a clock. The
clock supposes a clock-maker; the fine composition of the world supposes an
intelligence which conceived a work to be made and which made it. Perhaps;
but this consideration only leads to the idea of a manipulation of matter,
of a demiurge, as the Greeks said, of an architect, but not to the idea of
a _Creator;_ it may even lead only to the idea of several architects
and the Greeks perfectly possessed the idea of a fine artistic order
existing in the world when they believed in a great number of deities. This
proof also is therefore weak, although Kant always treats it with respect.
The sole convincing proof is the existence of the moral law in the heart of
man. For the moral law to be accomplished, for it not to be merely a tyrant
over man, for it to be realised in all its fullness, weighing on man here
but rewarding him infinitely elsewhere, which means there is justice in all
that, it is necessary that somewhere there should be an absolute realizer
of justice. God must exist for the world to be moral.
Why is it necessary for the world to be moral? Because an immoral world
with even a single moral being in it would be a very strange thing.
Thus, whilst the majority of philosophers deduced human liberty from God,
and the spirituality of the soul from human liberty, the immortality of the
soul from human spirituality, and morality from human immortality, Kant
starts from morality as from the incontestable fact, and from morality
deduces liberty, and from liberty spirituality, and God from the
immortality of the soul with the consequent realization of justice.
He has effected an extraordinarily powerful reversal of the argument
generally employed.
THE INFLUENCE OF KANT.--The influence of Kant has been incomparable
or, if you will, comparable only to those of Plato, Zeno, and
Epicurus. Half at least of the European philosophy of the nineteenth
century has proceeded from him and is closely connected with him. Even in
our own day, pragmatism, as it is called--that is, the doctrine which lays
down that morality is the measure of truth and that an idea is true only if
it be morally useful--is perhaps an alteration of Kantism, a Kantian
heresy, but entirely penetrated with and, as it were, excited by the spirit
of Kant.
CHAPTER VII
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY: GERMANY
The great reconstructors of the world, analogous to the
first philosophers of antiquity.
Great general systems: Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, etc.
FICHTE.--Fichte, embarrassed by what remained of experience in the
ideas of Kant, by the part, restricted though it was, which Kant left to
things in the external world, completely suppressed the external world,
like Berkeley, and affirmed the existence of the human _ego_
alone. Kant said that the world furnished us with the matter of the idea
and that we furnished the form. According to Fichte, form and matter alike
came from us. What then is sensation? It is nothing except the pause of the
_ego_ encountering what is not self, the impact of the _ego_
against what limits it.--But then the external world does exist, for how
could our mind be encountered by nothing and there be an impact of our mind
against nothing?--But this non-self that encounters self is precisely a
product of self, a product of the imagination which creates an object,
which projects outside us an appearance before which we pause as before
something real which should be outside us.
This theory is very difficult to understand, but indicates a very fine
effort of the mind.
Yet outside ourselves is there anything? There is pure spirit, God. What
is God? For Fichte He is moral order (a very evident recollection of
Kant). Morality is God and God is morality. We are in God, and it is the
whole of religion, when we do our duty without any regard to the
consequences of our actions; we are outside God, and it is atheism, when we
act in view of what results our actions may have. And thus morality and
religion run into one another, and religion is only morality in its
plenitude and complete morality is the whole of religion. "The holy, the
beautiful, and the good are the immediate apparition [if it could be] in us
of the essence of God."
SCHELLING.--Schelling desired to correct what, according to him, was
too radical in the idealism of Fichte. He restored the external world; for
him the _non-ego_ and the _ego_ both exist and the two are
_nature_, nature which is the object in the world regarded by man, the
subject when it regards man, subject and object according to the case; in
itself and in its totality neither subject nor object, but absolute,
unlimited, indeterminate. Confronting this world (that is nature and man)
there is another world which is God. God is the infinite and the perfect,
and particularly the perfect and infinite will. The world that we know is a
debasement from that without our being able to conceive how the perfect can
be degraded, and how an emanation of the perfect can be imperfect and how
the non-being can come out of being, since relatively to the infinite, the
finite has no existence, and relatively to perfection, the imperfect is
nothing.
It appears however that it is thus, and that the world is an emanation of
God in which He degrades Himself and a degradation of God such that it
opposes itself to Him as nothing to everything. It is a fall. The fall of
man in the Scriptures may give an idea, however distant, of that.
HEGEL.--Hegel, a contemporary of Schelling, and often in
contradiction to him, is the philosopher of "_becoming_" and of the
idea which always "becomes" something. The essence of all is the idea, but
the idea in progress; the idea makes itself a thing according to a rational
law which is inherent in it, and the thing makes itself an idea in the
sense that the idea contemplating the thing it has become thinks it and
fills itself with it in order to become yet another thing, always following
the rational law; and this very evolution, all this evolution, all this
becoming, is that absolute for which we are always searching behind things,
at the root of things, and which is _in_ the things themselves.
The rationally active is everything; and activity and reality are synonyms,
and all reality is active, and what is not active is not real, and what is
not active has no existence.
Let not this activity be regarded as always advancing forward; the becoming
is not a river which flows; activity is activity and retro-activity. The
cause is cause of the effect, but also the effect is cause of its cause.
In fact the cause would not be cause if it had no effect; it is therefore,
thanks to its effect, because of its effect, that the cause is cause; and
therefore the effect is the cause of the cause as much as the cause is
cause of the effect.
A government is the effect of the character of a people, and the character
of a people is the effect also of its government; my son proceeds from me,
but he reacts on me, and because I am his father I have the character which
I gave him, more pronounced than before, etc.
Hence, all effect is cause as all cause is effect, which everybody has
recognized, but in addition all effect is cause of its cause and in
consequence, to speak in common language, all effect is cause forward and
backward, and the line of causes and effects is not a straight line but a
circle.
THE DEISM OF HEGEL.--God disappears from all that. No, Hegel is very
formally a deist, but he sees God in the total of things and not outside
things, yet distinct. In what way distinct? In this, that God is the
totality of things considered not in themselves but in the spirit that
animates them and the force that urges them, and because the soul is of
necessity in the body, united to the body, that is no reason why it should
not be distinct from it. And having taken up this position, Hegel is a
deist and even accepts proofs of the existence of God which are regarded by
some as hackneyed. He accepts them, only holding them not exactly as
proofs, but as reasons for belief, and as highly faithful descriptions of
the necessary elevation of the soul to God. For example, the ancient
philosophers proved the existence of God by the contemplation of the
marvels of the universe: "That is not a 'proof,'" said Hegel, "that is not
a proof, but it is a great reason for belief; for it is an exposition, a
very exact although incomplete account rendered of the fact that by
contemplation of the world the human mind rises to God." Now this fact is
of singular importance: it indicates that it is impossible to think
strongly without thinking of God. "When the passage [although
insufficiently logical] from the finite to the infinite does not take
place, it may be said that there is no thought." Now this is a reason for
belief.'
After the same fashion, the philosophers have said "from the moment that we
imagine God, the reason is that He is." Kant ridiculed this proof. Granted,
it is not an invincible proof, but this fact alone that we cannot imagine
God without affirming His existence indicates a tendency of our mind which
is to relate finite thought to infinite thought and not to admit an
imperfect thought which should not have its source in a perfect thought;
and that is rather an invincible belief than a proof, but that this belief
is invincible and necessary in itself is an extremely commanding proof,
although a relative one.
HIS POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY.--The philosophy of the human mind and
political philosophy according to Hegel are these. Primitive man is mind,
reason, conscience, but he is so only potentially, as the philosophers
express it; that is to say, he is so only in that he is capable of becoming
so. Really, practically, he is only instincts: he is egoist like the
animals [it should be said like the greater part of the animals], and
follows his egoistical appetites. Society, in whatever manner it has
managed to constitute itself, transforms him and his "becoming" commences.
From the sexual instinct it makes marriage, from capture it forms regulated
proprietorship, out of defence against violence it makes legal punishment,
etc. Hence-forth, and all his evolution tends to that, man proceeds to
substitute in himself the general will for the particular will; he tends to
disindividualize himself. The general will, founded upon general utility,
is that the man be married, father, head of a family, good husband, good
father, good relative, good citizen. All that man ought to be in
consideration of the general will which he has put in the place of his own,
and which he has made his own will. That is the first advance.
It is realized (always imperfectly) in the smallest societies, in the
cities, in the little Greek republics, for example.
Here is the second advance. By war, by conquest, by annexations, by more
gentle means when possible, the stronger cities subdue the weaker, and the
great State is created. The great State has a more important part than the
city; it continues to substitute the general will for the particular wills;
but, _in addition,_ it is an idea, a great civilizing idea,
benevolent, elevating, aggrandizing, to which private interests must and
should be sacrificed. Such were the Romans who considered themselves, not
without reason, as the legislators and civilizers of the world.
THE IDEAL FORM OF STATE.--Putting aside for a while the continuation
of this subject, what political form should the great State take to conform
to its destiny? Assuredly the monarchical form; for the republican form is
always too individualist. To Hegel, the Greeks and even the Romans seem to
have conceded too much to individual liberty or to the interests of class,
of caste; they possessed an imperfect idea of the rights and functions of
the State. The ideal form of the State is monarchy. It is necessary for the
State to be contracted, gathered up, and personified in a prince who can be
personally loved, who can be reverenced, which is precisely what is
needed. These great States are only really great if they possess strong
cohesion; it is therefore necessary that they should be nationalities, as
it is called--that is, that they should be inwardly very united and highly
homogeneous by community of race, religion, customs, language, etc. The
idea to be realized by a State can only be accomplished if there be a
sufficient community of ideas in the people constituting it. However the
great State will be able to, and even ought to, conquer and annex the small
ones in order to become stronger and more capable, being stronger, of
realizing its idea. Only this should be done merely when it is certain or
clearly apparent that it represents an idea as against a people which does
not, or that it presents a better, greater, and nobler idea than that
represented by the people it attacks.
WAR.--But, as each people will always find its own idea finer than
that of another, how is this to be recognized?--By victory itself. It is
victory which proves that a people ... was stronger than another!--Not
only stronger materially but representing a greater, more practical, more
fruitful idea than the other; for it is precisely the idea which supports a
people and renders it strong. Thus, victory is the sign of the moral
superiority of a people, and in consequence force indicates where right is
and is indistinguishable from right itself, and we must not say as may
already perhaps have been said: "Might excels right," but "Might is right"
or "Right is might."
For example [Hegel might have said], France was "apparently" within her
rights in endeavouring to conquer Europe from 1792 to 1815; for she
represented an idea, the revolutionary idea, which she might consider, and
which many besides the French did consider, an advance and a civilizing
idea; but she was beaten, _which proves_ that the idea was false; and
before this demonstration by events is it not true that the republican or
Caesarian idea is inferior to that of traditional monarchy? Hegel would
certainly have reasoned thus on this point.
Therefore war is eternal and must be so. It is history itself, being the
condition of history; it is even the evolution of humanity, being the
condition of that evolution; there-fore, it is divine. Only it is purifying
itself; formerly men only fought, or practically always, from ambition; now
wars are waged for principles, to effect the triumph of an idea which has a
future, and which contains the future, over one that is out of date and
decayed. The future will see a succession of the triumphs of might which,
by definition, will be triumphs of right and which will be triumphs of
increasingly fine ideas over ideas that are barbarous and justly condemned
to perish.
Hegel has exercised great influence on the ideas of the German people both
in internal and external politics.
ART, SCIENCE, AND RELIGION.--The ideas of Hegel on art, science, and
religion are the following: Under the shelter of the State which is
necessary for their peaceful development in security and liberty, science,
literature, art, and religion pursue aims not superior to but other than
those of the State. They seek, without detaching the individual from the
society, to unite him to the whole world. Science makes him know all it
can of nature and its laws; literature, by studying man in himself and in
his relations with the world, imbues him with the sentiment of the possible
concordance of the individual with the universe; the arts make him love
creation by unravelling and bringing into the light and into relief all
that is beautiful in it relatively to man, and all that in consequence
should render it lovely, respected, and dear to him; religion, finally,
seeks to be a bond between all men and a bond between all men and God; it
sketches the plan of universal brotherhood which is ideally the last state
of humanity, a state which no doubt it will never attain, but which it is
essential it should imagine and believe to be possible, without which it
always would be drawn towards animality more and much more than it is.
The Hegelian philosophy has exercised an immense influence throughout
Europe not only on philosophic studies, but on history, art, and
literature. It may be regarded as the last "universal system" and as the
most daring that has been attempted by the human mind.
SCHOPENHAUER.--Schopenhauer was the philosopher of the
will. Persuaded, like Leibnitz, that man is an epitome and a picture of the
world, and that the world resembles us (which is hypothetical), he takes up
the thought of Leibnitz, changing and transforming it thus: All the
universe is not thought, but all the universe is will; thought is only an
accident of the will which appears in the superior animals; but the will,
which is the foundation of man, is the foundation of all; the universe is a
compound of wills that act. All beings are wills which possess organs
conformed to their purpose. It is _the will to be_ which gave claws to
the lion, tusks to the boar, and intelligence to man, because he was the
most unarmed of animals, just as to one who becomes blind it gives
extraordinarily sensitive and powerful sense of hearing, smell, and
touch. Plants strive towards light by their tops and towards moisture by
their roots; the seed turns itself in the earth to send forth its stalk
upwards and its rootlet downward. In minerals there are "constant
tendencies" which are nothing but obscure wills; what we currently term
weight, fluidity, impenetrability, electricity, chemical affinities, are
nothing but natural wills or inconscient wills. Because of this, the
diverse wills opposing and clashing with one another, the world is a war of
all against all and of _everything_ literally against _everything_; and
the world is a scene of carnage.
The truth is that will is an evil and is the evil. What is needed for
happiness is to kill the will, to destroy the wish to be.--But this would
be the end of existence?--And in fact to be no more or not to be at all is
the true happiness and it would be necessary to blow up the whole world in
an explosion for it to escape unhappiness. At least, as Buddhism desired
and, in some degree, though less, Christianity also, it is necessary to
make an approach to death by a kind of reduction to the absolute minimum of
will, by detachment and renunciation pushed as far as can be.
NIETZSCHE.--A very respectful but highly independent and untractable
pupil of Schopenhauer, Nietzsche "turns Schopenhauer inside out" as it
were, saying: Yes, assuredly the will to be is everything; but precisely
because of that it is essential not to oppose but to follow it and to
follow it as far as it will lead us. But is it not true that it will lead
to suffering? Be sure of that, but in suffering there is an intoxication of
pain which is quite comprehensible; for it is the intoxication of the will
in action; and this intoxication is an enjoyment too and in any case a good
thing; for it is the end to which we are urged by our nature composed of
will and of hunger for existence. Now wisdom, like happiness, is to follow
our nature. The happiness and wisdom of man is to obey his will for power,
as the wisdom and happiness of water is to flow towards the sea.
From these ideas is derived a morality of violence which can be
legitimately regarded as immoral and which, in any case, is neither
Buddhist nor Christian, but which is susceptible of several
interpretations, all the more so because Nietzsche, who was a poet, never
fails, whilst always artistically very fine, to fall into plenty of
contradictions.
CHAPTER VIII
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY: ENGLAND
The Doctrines of Evolution and of Transformism:
Lamarck (French), Darwin, Spencer.
TRANSFORMISM AND EVOLUTION.--The great philosophic invention of the
English of the nineteenth century has been the idea, based on a wide
knowledge of natural history, that there never was creation. The animal
species had been considered by all the philosophers (except Epicurus and
the Epicureans) as being created once and for all and remaining
invariable. Nothing of the kind. Matter, eternally fruitful, has
transformed itself first into plants, then into lower animals, then into
higher animals, then into man; our ancestor is the fish; tracing back yet
more remotely, our ancestor is the plant. Transformation (hence the name
_transformism_), discrimination and separation of species, the
strongest individuals of each kind alone surviving and creating descendants
in their image which constitute a species; evolution (hence the name
_evolutionism_) of living nature thus operating from the lowest types
to the highest and therefore the most complicated; there is nothing but
that in the world.
LAMARCK; DARWIN; SPENCER.--The Frenchman Lamarck in the eighteenth
century had already conceived this idea; Darwin, purely a naturalist, set
it forth clearly, Spencer again stated it and drew from it consequences of
general philosophy. Thus, to Spencer, the evolutionist theory contains no
immorality. On the contrary, the progressive transformation of the human
species is an ascent towards morality; from egoism is born altruism because
the species, seeking its best law and its best condition of happiness,
perceives a greater happiness in altruism; seeking its best law and its
best condition of happiness, perceives that a greater happiness lies in
order, regular life, social life, etc.; so that humanity raises itself to a
higher and yet higher morality by the mere fact of adapting itself better
to the conditions of the life of humanity. Morality develops
physiologically as the germ becomes the stem and the bud becomes the
flower.
As for religion it is the domain of the unknowable. That is not to assert
that it is nothing. On the contrary it is something formidable and
immense. It is the feeling that something, apart from all that we know,
surpasses us and that we shall never know it. Now this feeling at the same
time maintains us in a humility highly favourable to the health of the soul
and also in a serene confidence in the mysterious being who presides over
universal evolution and who, no doubt, is the all-powerful and eternal soul
of it.
CHAPTER IX
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY: FRANCE
The Eclectic School: Victor Cousin.
The Positivist School: Auguste Comte.
The Kantist School: Renouvier.
Independent and Complex Positivists: Taine, Renan.
LAROMIGUIERE: ROYER-COLLARD.--Emerging from the school of Condillac,
France saw Laromiguiere who was a sort of softened Condillac, less
trenchant, and not insensible to the influence of Rousseau; but he was
little more than a clear and elegant professor of philosophy. Royer-Collard
introduced into France the Scottish philosophy (Thomas Reid, Dugald
Stewart) and did not depart from it or go beyond it; but he set it forth
with magnificent authority and with a remarkable invention of clear and
magisterial formulae.
MAINE DE BIRAN.--Maine de Biran was a renovator. He attached himself
to Descartes linking the chain anew that had for so long been
interrupted. He devoted his attention to the notion of _ego_. In full
reaction from the "sensualism" of Condillac, he restored a due activity to
the _ego_; he made it a force not restricted to the reception of
sensations, which transform themselves, but one which seized upon,
elaborated, linked together, and combined them. For him then, as for
Descartes, but from a fresh point of view, the voluntary deed is the
primitive deed of the soul and the will is the foundation of man. Also, the
will is not all man; man has, so to say, three lives superimposed but very
closely inter-united and which cannot do without one another: the life of
sensation, the life of will, and the life of love. The life of sensation is
almost passive, with a commencement of activity which consists in
classifying and organizing the sensations; the life of will is properly
speaking the "human" life; the life of love is the life of activity and yet
again of will, but which unites the human with the divine life. By the
ingenious and profound subtlety of his analyses, Maine de Biran has placed
himself in the front rank of French thinkers and, in any case, he is one of
the most original.
VICTOR COUSIN AND HIS DISCIPLES.--Victor Cousin, who appears to have
been influenced almost concurrently by Maine de Biran, Royer-Collard, and
the German philosophy, yielded rapidly to a tendency which is
characteristically French and is also, perhaps, good, and which consists in
seeing "some good in all the opinions," and he was eclectic, that is, a
borrower. His maxim, which he had no doubt read in Leibnitz, was that the
systems are "true in what they affirm and false in what they deny."
Starting thence, he rested upon both the English and German philosophy,
correcting one by the other. Personally his tendency was to make
metaphysics come from philosophy and to prove God by the human soul and the
relations of God with the world by the relations of man with matter. To him
God is always an augmented human soul. All philosophies, not to mention all
religions, have rather an inclination to consider things thus: but this
tendency is particularly marked in Cousin. In the course of his career,
which was diversified, for he was at one time a professor and at another a
statesman, he varied somewhat, because before 1830 he became very Hegelian,
and after 1830 he harked back towards Descartes, endeavouring especially to
make philosophic instruction a moral priesthood; highly cautious, very
well-balanced, feeling great distrust of the unassailable temerities of the
one and in sympathetic relations with the other. What has remained of this
eclecticism is an excellent thing, the great regard for the _history_
of philosophy, which had never been held in honour in France and which,
since Cousin, has never ceased to be so.
The principal disciples of Cousin were Jouffroy, Damiron, Emile Saisset,
and the great moralist Jules Simon, well-known because of the important
political part he played.
LAMENNAIS.--Lamennais, long celebrated for his great book, _Essay
on Indifference in the Matter of Religion_, then, when he had severed
himself from Rome, by his _Words of a Believer_ and other works of
revolutionary spirit, was above all a publicist; but he was a philosopher,
properly speaking, in his _Sketch of a Philosophy_. To him, God is
neither the Creator, as understood by the early Christians, nor the Being
from whom the world emanates, as others have thought. He has not created
the world from nothing; but He has created it; He created it from Himself,
He made it issue from His substance; and He made it issue by a purely
voluntary act. He created it in His own image; it is not man alone who is
in the image of God, but the whole world. The three Persons of God, that
is, the three characteristics, power, intelligence, and love are
found--diminished and disfigured indeed, but yet are to be found--in every
being in the universe. They are especially our own three powers, under the
form of will, reason, sympathy; they are also the three powers of society,
under the forms of executive power, deliberation, and fraternity. Every
being, individual or collective, has in it a principle of death if it
cannot reproduce however imperfectly all the three terms of this trinity
without the loss of one.
AUGUSTE COMTE.--Auguste Comte, a mathematician, versed also in all
sciences, constructed a pre-eminently negative philosophy in spite of his
great pretension to replace the negations of the eighteenth century by a
positive doctrine; above all else he denied all authority and denied to
metaphysics the right of existence. Metaphysics ought not to exist, do not
exist, are a mere nothing. We know nothing, we can know nothing, about the
commencement or the end of things, or yet their essence or their object;
philosophy has always laid down as its task a general explanation of the
universe; it is precisely this general explanation, all general explanation
of the aggregate of things, which is impossible. This is the negative part
of "positivism." It is the only one which has endured and which is the
_credo_ or rather the _non credo_ of a fairly large number of
minds.
The affirmative part of the ideas of Comte was this: what can be done is to
make a classification of sciences and a philosophy of history. The
classification of sciences according to Comte, proceeding from the most
simple to the most complex--that is, from mathematics to astronomy,
physics, chemistry, biology to end at sociology, is generally considered by
the learned as interesting but arbitrary. The philosophy of history,
according to Comte, is this: humanity passes through three states:
theological, metaphysical, positive. The theological state (antiquity)
consists in man explaining everything by continual miracles; the
metaphysical state (modern times) consists in man explaining everything by
ideas, which he still continues to consider somewhat as beings, by
abstractions, entities, vital principle, attraction, gravitation, soul,
faculty of the soul, etc. The positive state consists in that man explains
and will explain all things, or rather limits himself and will limit
himself to verifying them, by the links that he will see they have with one
another, links he will content himself with observing and subsequently with
controlling by experiment. Also there is always something of the succeeding
state in the preceding state and the ancients did not ignore observation,
and there is always something of the preceding state in the succeeding
state and we have still theological and metaphysical habits of mind,
theological and metaphysical "residues," and perhaps it will be always
thus; but for theology to decline before metaphysics and metaphysics before
science is progress.
Over and above this, Comte in the last portion of his life--as if to prove
his doctrine of residues and to furnish an example--founded a sort of
religion, a pseudo-religion, the religion of humanity. Humanity must be
worshipped in its slow ascent towards intellectual and moral perfection
(and, in consequence, we should specially worship humanity to come; but
Comte might reply that humanity past and present is venerable because it
bears in its womb the humanity of the future). The worship of this new
religion is the commemoration and veneration of the dead. These last
conceptions, fruits of the sensibility and of the imagination of Auguste
Comte, have no relation with the basis of his doctrine.
RENOUVIER.--After him, by a vigorous reaction, Renouvier restored
the philosophy of Kant, depriving it of its too symmetrical, too minutely
systematic, too scholastic character and bringing it nearer to facts; from
him was to come the doctrine already mentioned, "pragmatism," which
measures the truth of every idea by the moral consequence that it contains.
TAINE.--Very different and attaching himself to the general ideas of
Comte, Hippolyte Taine believed only in what has been observed,
experimented, and demonstrated; but being also as familiar with Hegel as
with Comte, with Spencer as with Condillac, he never doubted that the need
of going beyond and escaping from oneself was also a fact, a human fact
eternal among humanity, and of this fact he took account as of a fact
observed and proved, saying if man is on one side a "fierce and lascivious
gorilla," on the other side he is a mystic animal, and that in "a double
nature, mysterious hymen," as Hugo wrote, lay the explanation of all the
baseness in ideas and actions as well as all the sublimity in ideas and
actions of humanity. Personally he was a Stoic and his practice was the
continuous development of the intelligence regarded as the condition and
guarantee of morality.
RENAN.--Renan, destined for the ecclesiastical profession and always
preserving profound traces of his clerical education, was, nevertheless, a
Positivist and believed only in science, hoping everything from it in youth
and continuing to venerate it at least during his mature years. Thus
formed, a "Christian Positivist," as has been said, as well as a poet above
all else, he could not proscribe metaphysics and had a weakness for them
with which perhaps he reproached himself. He extricated himself from this
difficulty by declaring all metaphysical conceptions to be only "dreams,"
but sheltered, so to say, by this concession he had made and this
precaution he had taken, he threw himself into the dream with all his heart
and reconstituted God, the immortal soul, the future existence, eternity
and creation, giving them new, unforeseen, and fascinating names. It was
only the idea of Providence--that is, of the particular and circumstantial
intervention of God in human affairs, which was intolerable to him and
against which he always protested, quoting the phrase of Malebranche, "God
does not act by particular wills." And yet he paid a compliment, which
seems sincere, to the idea of grace, and if there be a particular and
circumstantial intervention by God in human affairs, it is certainly grace
according to all appearances.
He was above all an amateur of ideas, a dilettante in ideas, toying with
them with infinite pleasure, like a superior Greek sophist, and in all
French philosophy no one calls Plato to mind more than he does.
He possessed a charming mind, a very lofty character, and was a marvellous
writer.
TO-DAY.--The living French philosophers whom we shall content
ourselves with naming because they are living and receive contemporary
criticism rather than that of history, are MM. Fouillee, Theodule Ribot,
Liard, Durckheim, Izoulet, and Bergson.
THE FUTURE OF PHILOSOPHY.--It is impossible to forecast in what
direction philosophy will move. The summary history we have been able to
trace sufficiently shows, as it seems to us, that it has no regular advance
such that by seeing how it has progressed one can conjecture what path it
will pursue. It seems in no sense to depend, or at all events, to depend
remarkably little, at any period, on the general state of civilization
around it, and even for those who believe in a philosophy of history there
is not, as it appears to me, a philosophy of the history of philosophy. The
only thing that can be affirmed is that philosophy will always exist in
response to a need of the human mind, and that it will always be both an
effort to gather scientific discoveries into some great general ideas and
an effort to go beyond science and to seek as it can the meaning of the
universal enigma; so that neither philosophy, properly speaking, nor even
metaphysics will ever disappear. Nietzsche has said that life is valuable
only as the instrument of knowledge. However eager humanity may be and
become for branches of knowledge, it will be always passionately and
indefatigably anxious about complete knowledge. |
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