AN E PITOME OF TIHE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY, BIEING THE WORK ADOPTED BY THE UNIVERSITY OF FRANCE FOR INSTRUCTION IN THE COLLEGES AND, HIGH SCHOOLS. TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH, WITH ADDITIONS, AND A CONTINUATION OF THE HISTORY FROM THE TIME OF REID TO THE PRESENT DAY. BY 0. SI. HENRY, D1.,'ROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY AND IISTORY IN THE IUNIVERSITY OF THE CITY OF NEW-YORE IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. NEW YORK: HARAER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE. 1 86 9. PRE FACE. Tns work here offered to the American public was published a few years since by the Directors of the College of Jully, and has been adopted by the University of France. The translation has been made under the impression that it might prove a useful book for students, and for readers in general who feel an interest in such subjects. We have nq English book embracing a comprehensive, and, at the same time, elementary and didactic view of the his. tory of philosophical opinions; and the present work seemed to the translator to be, on the whole, the best that could be adopted to supply the want. The expositions are in general clear and adequate, and the spirit of the work is just and candid, compara. tively little affected by systematic bias. The space devoted to Oriental Philosophy is per. haps too great, and out of proportion with the rest of the work; only it may be said that it is a subject of some curious, if not of intrinsic interest, and the sour. ces of information respecting it are less generally ac. cessible than those which relate to the other portions of the history of Philosophy. As to the rest, it will be perceived that the work gives a simple exposition of Oriental systems, without going into the literary and iY PREFACE. historical questions respecting their authors, their antiquity, and their relations to each other: questions which have been discussed with much learning and acuteness, and with different conclusions, by various authors, among the most recent of whom is Ritter. A thorough, comprehensive view of the philosophy of the Christian Fathers is a thing hardly to be expected in a work like this. It connects itself in so many respects with so many and nice theological questions, as to require an extended volume for any complete and thorough treatment of it. Some gen. eral views on the leading points are all that is at. tempted. In preparing these volumes, the translator has ventured to insert into the body of the work some no. tices and expositions which he thought should prop. erly make a part of the work, and which at: all events will make it more complete, and may add to its in. terest and value for the student of English Philoso. phy. Thus, between the articles on Spinoza and Leibnitz, he has interposed a notice of Cudworth, Henry More, and some others; and between the exposition of the German and that of the Scottish phi. losophy, he has inserted an account of the views of a considerable number of English writers, from the time of Locke to that of Reid, whose works form an important part of the history of English Philosophy. A11 these insertions, as well as an occasional note or two, are included in brackets. PREFACE. V The original work ends with the account of the system of Reid. The translator has added an Apoendix, in which he has attempted to bring down the history from the time of Reid to the present day, on the same general plan as the rest of the work. How delicate and difficult a task he has undertaken, will be best comprehended by those who are most thor. oughly acquainted with the subject. Besides the writings of the authors of whose views he has attempted an analysis, he has made use of all the assistance which other (critical and historical) sources could supply. Those who are familiar with these sources will perceive what his obligations are: a more particular acknowledgment would be scarcely possible, and is not necessary, except that he should say he has in some cases relied wholly upon the authority of Tenneman, Krug, or Damiron. He hopes that no material mistake or error will be found in his state. ments, as he is certain he has endeavoured that they should be clearly and fairly made. C. S. HI Univerait y of New-York, Nov., 1R41, CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME. PRELIMINARY REFLECTIONS. page Christian Views respecting the Origin of Science. 13 Division of the History of Philosophy... 16 FIRST PERIOD. ORIENTAL PHILOSOPHY. Preliminary Observations...18 INDIA. PRIMORDIAL CONCEPTIONS. Historical Notices.. -9 Exposition..20 Observations. 22 PHILOSOPHICAL DEVELOPMENT. 24 FIRST CLASS. SYSTEMS CONFORMED TO THE DOCTRINE OF THE VEDAQ. 1. Mimansa System. Historical Notices.. 25 2. The Vedantl System. Historical Notices. 27 Exposition...... 28 Observations....32 SECOND CLASS. SYSTEMS IN PART CONFORMED AND IN PART CONTRARY TO 2 Bft DOCTRINE OF THE VEDAS. 1. The Sankhya Systems. Sankhya of Kapila. Exposition 34 Observations..43 Yoga Shastra, or Sankhya of Patandjali. 44 2. The Nyaya and Vaiseschika Systems. Historical Notices 45 Exposition.... 46 Observations..51 Viii CONTENTS. THIRD CLASS. HETERODOX SYSTEMS OF THE DJAINAS AND BUDDHISTS. Historical Notices.. 55 Exposition. Opinions of the Djainas. Of the Buddhists. 56 Observations... 58 General Observations on the Hindu Philosophy... 60 CHINA. PRIMORDIAL CONCEPTIONS. Historical Notices.......64 Exposition.......65 Observations..... 67 PHILOSOPHICAL DEVELOPMENT 68., Lao-Tseu. Historical Notices... Exposition....1 Confucius. Historical Notices. 74 Exposition.......76 Observations.......80 Principal Disciples of Confucius. 81 Chinese Philosophers in Modern Times. 82 PERSIA. PRIMORDIAL CONCEPTIONLS Historical Notices.......83 Exposition.... 84 Observations........87 EGYPT. Historical Notices.. 89 Exposition... 90 Observations... 92 CHALDEA. PH(ENICI&A Historical Notices.. 94 Exposition.. 95 Observations. ib. SECOND PERIOD. GREEK PHTLOSOPHY, Preliminary Observations... 98 CONTENTS. iX FIRST EVOLUTION. pagp 1o01C SCHOOL. Historical Notices. 100 Exposition. 101 Observations...105 iTALIC SCIIOOL. Historical Notices..106 Exposition..107 Observations...110 Observations on the Ionian and Italic Schools. 111 ELEATIC SCHOOLS.. ib. ELEATIC METrAPHYSICAL SCHOOL. Historical Notices. 112 Exposition. 113 Observations.114 ELEATIC PHYSICAL SCHOOL. Historical Notices.. 115 Exposition.116 Observations.] 19 Observations on the two Eleatic Schools. ib. INTERMEDIATE SCHOOL. Heraclitus and Empedocles. Historical Notices..122 Exposition. ib. THE SOPHISTS. Historical Notices. 124 Exposition. ib. Observations.125 SECOND EVOLUTION. Socrates. Historical Notices. 126 Character of the Philosophical Reformation attempted by Soc. rates. Historical Notices ib. INCREASING PHASIS OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY. I Minor Schools: Essays towards the Organization of Philosophy....128 First Class. Antisthenes, or the Cynic School. 129 Aristippus, or the Cyrenaic School... 130 Second Class. Pyrrho, or the Skeptical School. 131 Euclid, or the School of Megara. i.. b. 11. Great Schools: Organization of Philosophy. 132 Plato. Historical Notices. ib. Exposition..........133 Observations.......144 Epicurus. Historical Notices..... 147 Exposition...... ib. Observations... 152 Aristotle. Historical Notices 1. i53 Exposition... o ib. Stoicism. Historical Notices. 162 Exposition...,, e 163 Observations... o 166 X CONTENTS. DECLINING PHASIS OF GREEK PHILOSOPH, I Continuation of the Platonic School. Historical Notices. 167 Exposition..168 II. Continuation of the Aristotelian School. 171 III. Continuation of the School of Epicurus.. 172 IV. Continuation of the Stoic School.... 173 General Observations....175 Skeptical School. Historical Notices. 176 Exposition..... 177 Observations.... 182 General Observations on Greek Philosophy... 184 THIRD PERIOD. PHILOSOPHY OF THE FIRST CENTURIES OF THE CHRISTIAN ERA. FIRST CLASS. PHILOSOPHICAL SPECULATIONS OPPOSED TO THE CHRISTIAN CREED. FIRST SECTION. ORIENTAL DOCTRINES. Gnosticism. Historical Notices. 187 Exposition. Ideas common to most of the Gnostic Systems 191 Pantheistic and Dualistic Systems of Gnosticism. 397 Dualism. Saturninus, Bardesanes, Basilides... ib. Pantheism. System of Valentinus..199 Observations... 200 Manicheism. Historical Notices.. 202.Exposition 203 Transformation of Pantheistic and Dualistic Modes of Think ing in Connexion with Questions purely Christian. 205 SECOND SZiCTION. GRECO-ORIENTAL PHILOSOPHY. Historical Notices....207 Plotinus. Porphyry....210 [amblichus. Hierocles. Proclus., 211 Exposition..212 Observations..219 SECOND CLASS. SPECULATIONS IN GENERAL HARMONIZING WITH THE CHRISTIAN CREED. Philosophy of the Fathers of the Church. 221 Justin Martyr.... 22S CONTENTS. Xi Page Tattan. 223 Irenaeas. Hermias. Athenagoras, Tertullian.. 224 Clement of Alexandria.. 225 Works attributed to Dionysius the Areopagite. 226 Origen.... ib. Arnobius. Lactantius. 227 Augustine.......228 Exposition. The Divine Unity..229 Observations.... 231 The Creation.. 232 The Trinity....237 The Logos or Divine Word in Relation to the Creation. 238 Observations..... 239 Of Evil..241 Observations....243 Mind and Matter..246 General Observations..251 FOURTH PERIOD. PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES. Transition from Ancient Philosophy to the Philosophy cit the Middle Ages.. 251 Boethius.. ib John of Damascus.. 255 Philosophical Development in the Middle Ages. 25~ Arabian Philosophy. Historical Notices. ib. Logical Works..257 Rationalistic School..25S Skepticism..262 Intuitive and Mystic School....263 New Development of Spiritualism. Materialism. 264 Averroes.. 265 Material Pantheism. 268 Observations. ib. Philosophical Development among Christian Nations. 269 FIRST EPOCH. Alcuinus. Scotus Erigena... 272 SECOND EPocH. St. Anselm. Roscelinus. Historical Notices..277 Exposition 278 William of Champeaux. Abelard. Historical Notices. 282 Triple Reaction against the Abuse of Dialectics. 1. Contemplative School. Hugh and Richard of St. Victor. 284 2. Recall to Positive Studies. Peter Lombard. 286 3. Criticism of the Abuse of Dialectics. John of Salisbury. 287 Pantheistic Systems. Amaury de Chartres. David de Di. nant. 288 Philosophy of the Middle Ages in its highest Ascension. 289 Eli CONTENTS. rlag Bonaventura. Historical Notices..290 Exposition. ib. Thomas Aquinas..293 Exposition. 294 THlIRD EPOCH. 305 1. The Want of Experimental Studies begins to be felt. Roger Bacon.. 306 2. Inconveniences of the excessive Attachment to Dialectics begins to appear. Duns Scotus. Raymond Lully. ib. 3. The Continuance of the Disputes between the Nominal ists and Realists producing no Solution, makes felt the Necessity of seeking for another Order of Ideas, and other Points of View with respect to the Theory of the Human Mind.. 308 General Observations on the Philosophy of the Middle'Ages 309 AN EP ITOM E OF THIE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. PRELIMINARY REFLECTIONS. Christian Views respecting the Origin of Science. IF, as the most ancient recollections of the human race attest, man originally received the truth by revelation from God, man must, from his origin also, have been intelligent and moral; he must have pos. sessed at. the commencement of his existence those, notions which constitute the intellectual life, as well as those which are necessary to the preservation of the physical life. And, since reason is essentially active, it must, in exercising itself upon this fund of primitive cognitions, which are not the product of its own activity, at an early period have wrought out an explanation of things more or less analogous to what we designate by the name of Science. The character of that primitive science, so far as we can judge of it through the veil of sixty cenLuries, was determined by the concurrence of causes pecu. liar to that constituent epoch of humanity; for that epoch must have been governed in some respects by laws different from those which have governed the subsequent periods: periods, not of creation, but simply of development. In the first place, independently of sacred history, it is philosophically probable that prinlitive man, who 14 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. had just drawn his life from its first source, would possess a wonderful degree of energy and organic activity; and it rmay also be conjectured, frcm the intimate relation between organization and ihtelligence, that the intellectual force corresponded to this high degree of vital energy, and that a great power of intuition was then the endowment of humanity. But, whatever were its primitive faculties, humanity was not the less in a state of infancy; and this state has necessities peculiar to itself: Take two infants, the one endowed with the liveliest intellect, the other belonging to a race the most idiotic; the former, no less than the latter, requires to be subjected to the regimen of education. Such must have been, such was the condition of humanity. Sacred history teaches us that man at first formed with more perfect beings an exalted society. He conversed with superior intelligences at the same time that he lived with inferior creatures. As an intellectual being he was no more solitary than as an organic being: there was neither break nor chasm in the com. munications which united the different orders in the hierarchy of beings. Sin broke up this primordial society. There re. mained, however, some relies of it as long as rela. tions of this kind were necessary to the first educa. tion of humanity. Under this supernatural tuition it must have been initiated into secrets which it would not have penetrated by its own intelligence. But this higher knowledge, and the means of action corresponding to it, rmust, at the same time, through the abuse of which it was capable, have placed at the disposai of man an immense destructive force. The perversion of this kind of knowledge must needs give birth to crimes which o0 - thoughts are scarcely able to represenT.. PRELIMINARY REFLECTIIONS. 15 In the plans of Providence, which makes the catastrophes of physical nature concur with the necessities of moral government, the Deluge, that baptismal pu. rification of the earth, had for its object to abolish not only that gigantic corruption, but probably, also, the science which rendered it possible, and to bury it in the ruins of the Old World. Accordingly, after the Deluge we see humanity recalled at once to the state of simple faith. The human mind recommenced. In this light, in particular, the patriarchs are presented to our view: such, likewise, was the character of the Jewish people, from whom one day was to spring the Divine devel. opment of the primitive revelation, and whose special mission, on this account, it was to preserve the deposite of this revelation free from all alloy. It was needful, therefore, that they should be eminently a traditional, and not a philosophical people. But in other countries of the East philosophical conceptions soon arose. Some of them, and, above all, the primitive philosophy of India, appear to ascend to an epoch so near the Deluge; they exhibit, at the same time, such a character of grandeur and elevation, as to make it scarcely probable that in the midst of their physical wants and of their continual conflicts with the animals and the forces of a disor. dered nature, men could so rapidly have risen to speculations so lofty if they had not been supported by some relies of the anterior science. In what way was this scientific tradition handed down? We are entirely ignorant. Yet always, in hearkening to the philosophy of the Vedas, one seems to hear the echo of a great voice which sounded out in the pri. meval world. 16 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. Division of the History of Philosophy. SETTING out from the ancient conceptions of w hich India appears to have been the cradle, the history of philosophy, as it unfolds itself; may be divided into FJVE PERIODS. I. The period of the Oriental Philosophy, which embraces whatever is known of the speculations of the human mind in India, China, Persia, Chaldea, Phcenicia, and Egypt. II. The period of the Grecian Philosophy, which begins with Thales and Pythagoras, and continues to preserve its distinctive character down to the time of Sextus Empiricus, towards the end of the second century of the Christian era. III. The period which embraces the first five cen. turies of that era: laying out of view the purely Gre. cian movement, which was coming to an end, two principal facts predominate in this period; namely, first, the change wrought by the propagation of the Oriental philosophy, and its fusion with the most elevated portion of the Greek theories; secondly, the rise and development of the Christian philosophy. IV. The period of the Middle Ages. Christian philosophy in this period divides itself into two branches; the one has some analogy to the Oriental speculations; the other, and more important, has its roots in the Greek philosophy, and is known by the name of Scholasticism. On the confines of Christi. anDity appears the Arabian philosophy. V. The Modern period, or the philosophical move. ment which succeeded to Scholasticism. It begins in the fifteenth century, particularly in Italy, and ex. tends to the present time. Its three principal centres have been England, France, and Germany. It should be observed, that the epochs just indica PRELIMINAR Y REFLECTIONS. 17 ted form intellectual rather than strictly chronologi. cal periods; they correspond less to spaces of time precisely determined, than to grand developments of the philosophical spirit. The one often begins before the other is ended. The philosophy of India did not die on the day of the birth or of the death of the Greek philosophy; it has been perpetuated to the present day. The Old Greek philosophy had still its expounders at the time when the Graeco.Ori. ental philosophy was springing up, and when the Christian philosophy was making conquest of the human mind. The abstractions of the Scholastic philosophy maintained a kind of inert and passive power long after the activity of the minds which opened the new routes had begun to display itself, in another sphere. These epochs, besides, notwithstanding the pro. found differences by which they are distinguished, are intimately connected. In the history of philosophy we see, first, the influence of the East upon Greece; then Greece disengages. itself and proceeds alone. At a later period the East and Greece unite for mutual support in the Roman world; and the Christian philosophy, although it has its own proper basis, is seen borrowing methods and conceptions from both. These three philosophies, in their turn, act upon the Middle Ages; and, finally, Modern phi. losophy should not forget that all the laborious and earnest schools of the Middle Ages formed, as it were, a great college, in which the modern mind has receiv. ed a fruitful, because a strict and severe education. 18 HI1TSTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. FIRST PERIOD. ORIENTAL- PHILOSOPHY. PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS. UNDER the name of Oriental philosophy is eotn monly included two orders of ideas, which ought to be carefully distinguished, since they are to be re. ferred to two different aspects of the human mind. In the first place, among many cultivated nations of the East we find at the remotest antiquity a small number of conceptions, which, however diverse in certain respects, form, nevertheless, in other relations, a sort of homogeneous intellectual whole. For, on the one hand, they fall within the same circle, having for their scope and object the explanation of the primitive formation of things; and, on the other hand, these genetical speculations present the appearance less of artificial combinations than of rapid intuitions, the first gleams of philosophical thought. These we designate by the name of primordial conceptions. It is not easy to discriminate very precisely among the documents of the Oriental nations that which forms this primitive philosophy, because it is' intimately blended with doctrines preserved by popular tradition, and is frequently enveloped in poetic and mythic symbols. In regard to these we shall therefore limit ourselves to some general ndtices. In the second place, philosophical systems may be discovered in the East which reveal another age of.he intelligence. They embrace a great variety of questions, and evidently exhibit traces of laborious investigation. Pure intuition begins to yield to reasoning, and rolemics soon takes the place of the HINDU PHILOSOPHY. 19 frank and simple utterance of the primordial philos. ophy. These systems constitute what we call the philosophical development. China, Persia, and Egypt form, as it were, the three angles of a luminous triangle, within which the Oriental genius exerts its activity, and of which Chaldea and India occupy nearly the middle. Neither of these angles, in the actual state of our historical knowledge of the Oriental mind, presents any traces of a philosophical development on a large scale. To find this we must go to India. This magnificent country, which extends through every degree of temperature, from the icy summits of the Himalaya to the burning seas of the Polynesia, has been the scene of a vast and long-continued philo. sophical conflict, of which some monuments have aiready passed into the domain of European science. I N D I A. I. PRItMORDIAL CONCEPTIONS. fHistorical VNotices. INDIA has been subject from the remotest antiqui., ty to the domination of castes. The Brahmins, or sacerdotal caste, possessed a body of doctrines, par. ticular branches of which have been connected to. gether into divers philosophical systems. The most ancient writings in which to investigate the primordial philosophy of India, are the sacred books known by the name of the Vedas, which is a Sanscrit form of the Sanscrit word vidga, science, law. The Hindu legends attribute their compila. tion and collection to Vyasa. This collection is distributed into four books. The 20 HINDU PHILOSOPHY first, the Rig.-Veda, contains prayers and hymns in verse; the second, Yadjour-Veda, prayers in prose; the third, Sama-Veda, prayers that are to be chanted; the fourth, Ataimrvan, liturgical formulas. Each Veda comprises in general two parts, prayers, man. fras, and precepts or: doctrines, brahmanas. After the Vedas-which contain particularly the doctrine concerning God, the creation, the soul and its relations to God-come the Pouranas, which comprise a mythological theogony and cosmogony. These poems, also attributed to Vyasa, are eighteen in number. The third place is assigned to the great epic or historical poems: the Ramayan, in which are celebrated the exploits of Rama, and which, they say, was composed by Valmiki; the Mahabharata, composed by Vyasa, who has here sung the heroic wars of the Kourous and the Pandous, two families belonging to the race of the children of the Moon. The Bhagavat.Gita, of which Schlegel has given a Latin trans. lation, is a philosophical episode of the Mahabharata. Lastly, the Manava-Dharma-Shastra, or collection of the Laws of Menu, completes the series of sacred books to which the philosophy of the Hindus was originally consigned. But the doctrine of the Vedas is the source of most of the conceptions contained in the other and later sacred books. These latter were only emanations from the philosophy of their prototype, and probably, also, more or less corrupted. Exposition. 1. Brahm existed eternally, the first substanceinfinite-the pure unity. He existed in luminous shadows; shadows, because Brahm was a being irndeterminate, in whom nothing distinct had yet appeared; but these shadows were luminous, because PRIMORDIAL CONCEPTIONS. 21 being is itself light. Brahm is represented also as originally plunged in a divine slumber, because the creative energy, as yet inactive, was, as it were, asleep. 2. When he came out of this slumber, Brahm, Bhe indeterminate being, of the neuter gender, became the creative power, Brahma,%of the masculine gender. Brahm became also the light, determinate intelligence, and pronounced the fruitful Word which preceded all creation. 3. There came forth besides from the bosom of Brahrnm, the Trimourti: Brahma, the creator, Vichnu, the preserver of forms, and Seeva, the destroyer of forms, who by this very destruction causes the return of beings to unity and their re-entrance into Brahm. But the Trimourti does not develop itself in Brahm until he has produced another principle, Maya, of which it is now necessary to speak. 4. In Brahm there was originally existent Swada, or the golden womb, the receptacle of all the types of things, when he produced Maya, matter or illusion, the source of all phenomena, and by means of which individual existences made their appearance. Maya existed at first as a liquid element: the primitive water, which in itself has no particular form. In Maya reside three qualities, goodness, impurity, ob. scurity. 5. From the union of Brahm, which contained the types of all things, with Maya, the principle of individualization, and under the influence of the three qualities, resulted the whole creation. But the universe existed at first in two original productions, which were, so to say, the two great germes of it; these were Mahabhouta, which is the condensation of all souls, all the subtile elements, and Pradjapati, which is the condensation of all the gross elements. 22 HINDU PHILOSOPHY. 6. From Pradjapati, combined with Mahabhouta, sprang all the genii, and the human race in particular. Pradjapati was thus the primitive man, who, dividing himself into two, produced man and woman. 7. Human souls are subject, as also the genii themselves, to the universal law of transmigratioA, which consists in passing successively into bodies more or less perfect before being finally united to the great soul, Atma. The object of religion is to pro. cure more favourable transmigrations, or to abridge the duration of them, or to secure even a complete exemption from them, provided one has followed with perfect fidelity the prescriptions of the Vedas. The reunion of the soul with Atma constitutes its final salvation. We observe here, once for all, that the doctrine of transmigration is common to all the philosophical schools of India, of which we are to give an exposi. tion. Each school has for its object to furnish by its teachings an effectual means of deliverance from the necessity of transmigration. Observations. The philosophy of the Vedas has been often regarded as a rigorous system of Pantheism. But, in the first place, there are many strong reasons for believing that these ancient books have been interpo. lated by the Brahmins; and, -in the next place, the grounds on which this charge of pantheism rests are by no means unassailable. Must the strong expres. sions which occur in the Vedas, and which represent God as the sole being, and creatures as illusory, un. real beings, necessarily be taken in an absolute sense? May they not have a relative meaning, and signify merely that creatures have only an imperfect, a derived, a sort of unreal being in comparisons wit PRIMORDIAL CONCEPTIONS. 23 God, who alone possesses completely and perfectly truth and reality of being? Similar forms of expression are met with even in Christian writers the farthest removed froum pantheism. Do we not say, speaking of God, that feeble mortals are all before his eyes as though they were not? The ancient Oriental genius, with its bold and vivid language, might still more naturally adopt these strong forms in order to characterize strikingly what we ourselves call the nothingness of the creation in the presence of God, without intending to express pantheism; although it is, as to the rest, an unquestionable fact. that these expressions became, in subsequent systems, the proper and official formulas of pantheism. However this may be, it is certain that, starting from the conceptions of the Vedas, which in our opinion have been corrupted, we come very soon to pantheism properly so'called. The Bhagavat.Gita, that brilliant episode in the poem of the Mahabharata, develops the system in all its metaphysical strictness and in its principal moral consequences. Having taken the ground that the Infinite is the sole existence, and, consequently, the only being that wills and acts, or, rather, seems to act, the author of the B-hagavat-Gita infers not only the uselessness of works, but their absolute indifference, or thle nullity of all distinction between virtue and vice. This metaphysical work, which clothes the deduc. tions of reflection in the forms of poetry, may be considered as forming the transition from the intel. lectual state represented by the Vedas to that other state which we have designated by the name of philosophical development. This transition is likewise reflected in the Institutes of Mena. 24 HINDU PHILOSOPHY. II. PHILOSOPHICAL DEVELOPMENT. The Roman Catholic missionaries of the seven. teenth and eighteenth centuries had already made some contributions to the knowledge of the philoso. phy of India, when the investigations of the Calcut. ta Academy, in Bengal, began gradually to throw new light upon this important portion of the history of the human mind. But the most extensive and the most accurate information which Europe pos. sesses on this subject has been furnished by the Es. says of Mr. Colebrook, published from 1824 to 1829, in the Transactions of the Asiatic Society of London. This learned Orientalist has drawn his knowledge of the philosophical systems of India from the fountain head. His residence in that country, and his relations with the Brahmins, enabled him to consult a great number of Sanscrit works, which he has interpreted with a rare talent for exposition. We shall analyze these essays, and give an outline of the systems in question; and we shall add some obser. vations intended to facilitate the understanding of them, and to determine their characteristics. The Hindus divide philosophical theories into two classes, orthodox theories, or those which are con. sidered as conformed to the doctrine of the Vedas, and heterodox theories, or those that are contrary to that doctrine. These two categories have given rise to a third, including systems which are partly ortho. dox and partly heterodox. The two Mimansa systems are orthodox. The first, which is called Pourva, teaches the art of rea. soning applied to the interpretation of the Vedas. The second Mimansa, attributed to Vyasa, and which is designated by the. title of Vedanta, deduces from MIMANSA SYSTEM. 25 the sacred books of India a subtle metaphysics, which results in the denial of a material world, and even of all individual existence. Under the head of systems which are partly or. thodox and partly heterodox belong: 1. The Sankhya, which consists of two systems, she one retaining properly the name of Sankhya, the Mther being called Yoga. 2. The Nyaya, which is a sort of logical philoso. phy, and the Vaisechika, which is closely connected with the former, and is a physical philosophy. The systems Mf the Djainas and the Buddhas are ar. ranged in the category of systems entirely heterodox. FIRST CLASS. SYSTEMS CONFORMED TO THE DOCTRINE OF THE VEDAS. I, 1II1ANSA SYSTEM. Historical Notices. THE ancient doctrine, which is particularly desig. nated by the name of Mimansa in order to distinguish it fiom the new Mimansa, more specially known under the title of Vedanta, is attributed to an author of the name of Djaimini. It is comprised in aphorisms or soutras, which are said to have been put in form and arranged by some of his disciples. As they are very obscure, they are commonly accompanied with commentaries, the most celebrated of which are those of Sabara-Swami and those of Kou. marila-Swami. The object of the Mimansa is to give rules by means of which the Vedas may be correctly inter. 3 HINDU PHILOSOPHY. preted, and the true sense of revelation accurately seized. It is divided into two parts: the one prac. tical, Karma-Mimansa, which treats of works; the other theological, Brahma-Mimansa, which relates to points of belief. Avoiding more particular details of this casuistical philosophy, which constitutes a sort of theologi. cal jurisprudence, we remarkiupon the following points: 1. In respect to its method, each case is treated under five heads or topics, very analogous to the method of many of the Scholastic phtlosophers of the Middle Ages. 2. In respect to the sources of knowledge, the Mi. mansa admits that verbal communication or testi. mony alone can lay the foundation for a duty. The Vedas contain a supernatural testimony; but, besides this revelation, there exist human testimonies, and hese, in so far as duties are concerned, are contained in the traditions of the ancient sages, preserved ~rom age to age without interruption. The tradition must, however, be substantially conformed to the Vedas, and, in case of opposition, tradition must yield to the sacred text. 3. In respect to the notion of virtue, the Mimansa admits, in the first place, of merit, that is to say, that invisible efficacy which subsists independently of an external action that has ceased, and which continues in another world to connect the consequence of an act with its past cause; and, secondly, of the effica. cy of sacrifice, as an act of the highest merit, and which, as to the rest, has four forms: oblation, the death of a victim, the offering of the juice of a plant called soma, and, lastly, the destruction of an object oy the flames. 4. In a theological and cosmological relation, in the VEDANTA SYSTEM. 27 Minansa the breath of God is represented as the pri. mary Divine emanation, from whence proceed the sounds which produce letters. These sounds, these letters are, as it were, an ethereal word or writing, of which beings are the grosser forms. The Miman. sa hence concludes that the relation of articulate sounds to ideas is not conventional, but original and necessary, human speech being itself a reproduction of the creative word. Hence the efficacy of invoca tion and of incantation. 2. THE VEDANTA SYSTEM. Historical Notices. COLEBROOKE has postponed the publication of his memoir on the Vedanta philosophy, and for want of this assistance we must glean elsewhere what information we can find in the most recent investigations.* The original sources of this philosophy are the Ou. 2anischads, ancient extracts from the Vedas. Ac. cording to the Hindu legends, the founder of this sys-.em was Vyasa; but probably this is a collective or generic name given to several ancient philosophical masters, and perhaps it represents an entire epoch. The legends also give other names, which may be. long to the early times of the Vedanta school, but in general there is great uncertainty in regard to their origin. Many learned men have thought that the Laws of Menu (the Manava-Dharma-Shastra) were anterior to the conquest of India by Alexander the Great; and since several passages in this collec. tion seem to contain allusions to the Oupanischads, the priority of which is, besides, confirmed by many 9ther considerations, they have concluded that the * See Hug. Windischmanni, de Theolog,,.j Vdtienticorum. tonna, 1833. 28 HINDU PHILOSO}PHY. Vedanta school dates from a still earlier peric c ti han the code of Menu.* Since the Christian era numerous writings have been devoted to the exposition and defence of this philosophy; it makes a brilliant figure in the writings of Sancara, who appears to have lived about the seventh or eighth century; and it has been prolonged to the present day. The celebrated Ram. Mohun-Roy, who died in England in 1833, had be. longed to the Vedanta school. Exposition. Man aspires to perfect repose, and seeks, accordingly, to attach himself to something fixed and abso. lute, that he may be freed from all vicissitude and all transmigration. There are but two ways to attain this, science and good'works. But good works, transient in their nature, can produce only a transient satisfaction; science, devoted to the contemplation of that which passes not away, can alone elevate man above all change. WVhat are the means of attaining this science? The senses are insufficient, for sensation apprehends nothing but that which is ever changing; reasoning is insufficient, for this faculty, being in proportion to the endowment of each individual mind, is essentially relative, and can never be the measure of the abso. lute. It is necessary, then, to ascend to the revela* [The date assigned to the Institutes of Menu by Sir William Jones is 880 B.C. A still higher antiquityis attributed to the work by Schlegel, who places it at a period earlier than the Homeric poems. The Vedas are supposed by Colebrooke to have been compiled in the fourteenth century before Christ, by Sib William Jones in the sixteenth. Ritter, in his History of Ancient Philosophy, comies to a conclusion precisely the opposite of the one given in the text; and, in general, rejects the pretensions to high antiquity advanced in behalf of the Hindu philosophy.-Ed.j VEDANTA SYSTEM. 29 tion of the absolute, immutable Being; a revelation preserved from age to age by the masters of doctrine. But, in order that the disciple may be initiated into this science, preparatory dispositions are requisite. He must divest himself of all desire for that which is temporal, whether it be earthly enjoyments, or whether it be the happiness, transient at its longest duration, which in other worlds will be the reward of works done in this in fulfilment of the precepts of the Vedas. He must close the gates of his soul against all external objects; recall his senses within himself, and become absorbed in pious meditation. In fine, he must stir up in himself a strong desire for science. As the sick man comes to the fountain to cool his burning brow, so the disciple, tormented with the burning anguish imposed on man by the eternal law of transmigration, must come to the instructed master, bringing in his hand a gift as the symbol of the desires of his soul. After this preparation the disciple can receive the revelation of science; and that science is all com. prised in this formula: Brahma alone exists; everything else is an illusion. The Vedantists prove this capital axiom by setting out from the very idea of Brahma. He is the one eternal, pure, rational, unlimited being. If there existed out of him realities, manifold, limited, com. pounded, they must have been produced by Brahma. But the production of them would be impossible except so far as Brahma possessed in himself the real principle of imperfection, limitation, multiplicitythings which are all repugnant to his very essence. It follows from this that the mind of man in rela. tion to truth exists in two states, the one correspond. ing to the condition of sleep or dreaming, the other 30 HINDU PHILOSOrHY. to that of being awake. When he regards the world, men, and himself as beings distinct from Brahma, he is in the state of dreaming, he realizes phantoms: when he recognises that Brahma is everything, he rises to the waking state, and science is this awaking of humanity. The images which man perceives in the illusion or dream-state of the intelligence, may aid him to comprehend how nothing exists but Brahma. He is like a mass of clay, of which particular beings are the forms; the eternal spider, which spins from its own bosom the tissue of creation; an immense fire, from which creatures ray forth in myriads of sparks; the ocean of being, on whose surface appear and vanish the waves of existence; the foam of the waves, and the globules of the foam, which appear to be distinct from each other, but which are the ocean itself. To borrow other images, Brahma is like an infinite man; the fire is his head, the sun and the moon his eyes; he has for his ears the resounding vault of the heavens, his voice the revelation of the Vedas; the winds are his breath, universal life his heart, the earth his feet. But all these images are very.mperfect; the variety of beings can, at the most, be conceived only as multiplied names of Brahma, and these names are also as false as names can be; for they are not like words spoken in the intercourse of life, but only like the fantastic and arbitrary words which belong to the language of dreams. When, contemplating Brahma through the veil of illusion, it is asked how the spectacle of creation goes on, Brahma appears at once active and passive: active, because he produces the phenomenal transformations - assive. because he who transforms is at the same time ne who is transformed. These VEDANTA SYSTEM. di transformations follow a diminishing progression from more perfect to less perfect, the2 is to say, the distinctive' forms which constitute the illusory world are more and more definite. Brahma desired to be multiple, and he produced light. The light desired to be multiple, and it produced water. The water desired to be multiple, and it produced the terrestria or solid element. The more visible things are, the greater is the predominance of forms, and the more intense is the illusion. Brahma sees, but is altogeth. er invisible; the human intelligence sees, but, invisible in its essence, it is visible only in the qualities which affect it; the material eye sees and is visible; Ae forms of things are visible, but see not. But when we come out from the state of illusion and contemplate the universe, all forms, all names, all distinctions vanish, and we perceive no longer anything but substance, without distinction, without name, without form, the pure unity where the know. ing and the known are identical. When man has attained to this superior knowledge, he is at once freed from all error and all ignorance: from all error, because error is a particular affirmation which implies the distinction of beings; from all ignorance, because in affirming Brahma he affirms everything. H.e is free, likewise, from all sin and all possibility of sinning, as well as from all obligation whatever, because all these things suppose the distinction of right and wrong, which does not exist and cannot exist in Brahma. He is freed from all activity, because activity supposes two terms: something that acts and something acted upon, a duality which is illusory, since it is the negation of the unity, the absolute identity of all things. 32 HINDU PIIILOSOPHY. I-te is freed from all emotion, all desire; for he knows that he possesses everything. Before the phenomenon of death, the soul of the wise man *who has attained to the knowledge of Brahma continues, indeed, to perceive the illusory impressions, as the man who is aroused from a dream recollects when awake the impressions he received in sleep. But at death the soul of the sage is freed entirely from the dominion of illusion; he is disen thralled in all respects from every vestige of individ. uality, from every name, from every form; he is blended and lost in Brahma, as the rivers lose their names and their forms when swallowed up in the ocean. Observations. 1. The Vedanta philosophy is an exhibition of pantheism in its greatest metaphysical strictness, It has given a complete formula of it. All the systems of pantheism which have since been imagined have added nothing fundamental. 2. It is very clear that, from the processes follow. ed by the Vedanta philosophy, pantheism is a strictly necessary result. Refusing to admit as an ultimate truth.and an article of simple belief the existence of contingent or finite beings, it would rest this truth only on demonstration. But the elements of this demonstration can never be drawn from the only no tion it admits —the notion of the absolute, which implies in itself nothing finite. 3. In order to avoid misconception of the Vedan. tist reasoning, it must not be forgotten that this philosophy employs simultaneously two languages, the language of illusion and the language of science From hence result series of propositions, which are only in appearance contradictory; for the one ex VEDANTA SYSTEM. 33 press what is apparent, the other what is real; the one have a relative, the other an absolute sense; and all this is perfectly consistent, if it be granted that there are radically two orders of things, the one real, the other illusory. But the fundamental vice of Ve. dantism consists precisely in assuming the fact of these two orders; for it implies a contradiction, since it is impossible to find in the pure and absolute essence of Brahma the ground of the asserted illusion. 4. The Vedanta system shows us also how pan. theism must logically result in skepticism, the deu struction of human knowledge. It must needs reject as illusive, and it does reject, all distinct notions, all notions grounded on distinction, and pretends to re. tain only the idea of absolute unity. But this idea is also distinct and supremely distinct, since it is opposed to all others. If, therefore, as conformably to the principle of pantheism must be the case, this distinction has only an apparent validity, a validity relative to our minds, all human ideas, without exception, vanish away. In a word, the act by which the mind affirms unity to the exclusion of multiplicity, the absolute to the exclusion of the relative, can take place only in virtue of a distinction which is itself but a phenomenon, and a phenomenon without a principle, the hypothesis of absolute identity. 5. Besides the leading points which have been in. dicated in this exposition, Vedantism embraces in its wide comprehension a multitude of other concep. tions, which are common to it and to the other phi. losophies of India; conceptions which it elaborates, modifies, and appropriates by impressing upon them the seal -of its fundamental principle. 34 HINDU PHILOSOPHY. SECOND CLASS. SYSTEMS IN PART CONFORMED, AND IN PART CONTRARY TO THE DOCTRINE OF THE VEDAS. THESE systems are: 1. The Sankhya. 2. The Nyaya, with the Vaisechika. 1. THE SANKHYA. KAPILA, who is regarded as the founder of this sys. tern, is represented in the Hindu legends sometimes as one of the seven great Richis or Sants that emana. ted from Brahma, sometimes as an incarnation of the god Vischnu, the preserver of forms, or of Agni, the god of fire. To him is attributed a collection of Soutras or aphorisms, distributed into six books. But the most complete exposition of the Sankhya doctrine is the Karika, a work of small extent, in a metrical form, and divided into seventy.two stanzas. It has been the text of a great number of commentaries. By the name Sankhya is also designated the doctrine of the Yoga-Shastra, whose origin is carried back to a mythological personage named Patandjali, to whom many celebrated works are attributed. We shall speak first of the Sankhya of Kapila. Exrosition. Sankhya of Klapnla. As the word Sankhya signifies nunober, it has been thought to furnish ground for the conjecture that there was more or less of analogy between this system and the Pythagorean, in which numbers play so important a part. But what we know of the Sankhya doctrine does not confirm this conjecture. The root of the word signifies reasoning, deliberation; and it is more probable this denomination was applied either THE SANKHYA. 35 by the founder or by his disciples, as to a system em. inently founded upon the legitimate exercise of reason. However this be, the object of this system, as of all the doctrines of India, is to lead by science to beatitude, either during life or after death. It contains two parts, the one metaphysical, the other logical. Metaphysics of the Sankhya. Science, as conceived in the Sankhya. comprehends the knowledge, 1. Of the first principles of all things; 2. The combinations which result therefrom; 3. The consummation of all things. Such, at least, are the three heads under which the several parts of this doctrine may be arranged. Of the first principles of all things. Of these. there are twenty-five: 1. Nature, Prakriti, which is the root of all things, matter primordial and indeterminate, which may be perceived in itself, and which may be certainly in. ferred from its effects. 2. Intelligence or the Great Principle. It is the first product of Nature, and in its turn has produ. ced other principles. 3. Consciousness, or the sentiment of self. This is the Intelligence individualizing itself. 4-8. Five subtile particles or atoms, derived from the individualized Intelligence: they are, as it were, the first form of individuality, its most delicate en. velope, imperceptible to our senses. 9-19. Eleven organs of sense and activity. They are derived also from the Consciousness. Ten are internal, five of sensation and five of action. They unite in one internal organ, feeling, manas, which is at once the seat of sensation and the principle of ac. tion. HINDU PHILOSOPHY. 20-24. Five elements which proceed from the five subtile particles: the ethereal fluid, which is sono. rous' the air, which is sonorous and tangible; fire, which adds to these two properties that of colour; water, which possesses, in addition, savour; and, last. ly, the earth, which, besides the preceding proper. ties, has also that of odour. 25. The Soul, Atma, which is eternal, immaterial, unchangeable, individual, multiple, sensitive. Such are the twenty-five principles of things. The Soul implicated in the folds of Nature is the idea of the Universe, in which all these principles present a crowd of diversified combinations. Of the combinations of the principles of things, or the Universe. The various combinations from which result the universe constitute three sorts of creation: elementary creation, the gross creation, intellectual creation. Creation elementary or personal. One of the prin. cipal objects of the philosophy of Kapila would prop. erly be to explain how the soul becomes individual. Individuality, according to this system, may be ap. prehended under a form which envelops the soul, and to which the name of subtile or incorporeal per. son is given. This primordial form is independent of the gross elements which compose the body, and, consequently, it results only from the union of the intelligence, the consciousness, the five subtile parti. cles, and the organs which are attached to thenm. This order of creation is called elementary, because, in the formation of the incorporeal person, the evolution of the principles does not extend beyond the elementary rudiments anterior to the formation of gross bodies. Gross or corporeal creation, This creation, which Tile SAN IYA. 37 comprehends bodies formed of the five sensible ele ments, is divided into three worlds: Above is the world of goodness, where virtue pre. vails: it is inhabited by beings superior to man. Below is the world of obscurity or illusion: it is inhabited by beings inferior to man. Between these is the human world, where passion predominates. It is the theatre of a misery from which the soul will never be delivered till it shall have attained to freedom from its union with the incorporeal person. Intellectual creation. It comprehends the different states of the understanding, which may be clogged, or rendered incapable, or satisfied, or perfected. 1. The clogs of the understanding are error, presumptuous opinion, passion relative to objects of sense, envy, hatred, and fear. 2. The incapacity of the understanding comes from imperfection or injury of the organization, as blindness, deafness, etc. 3. The satisfaction of the understanding has its source in such' opinions and convictions as afford tranquillity, but which, not being grounded upon the knowledge of the true principles of things, can never work out the final deliverance of the soul. 4. The perfection of the understanding is to be found in the various means by which it is prepared for and attains to science, which alone secures salvation from evil. In order to comprehend the theory of the mind, it must be remarked farther that it possesses eight attributes, which are divided into two parallel but. an tipathic series. Virtue, knowledge, calmness of sense or impassibility, power, which is the ability to work miracles: these are of the nature of goodness. Sin, error, incontinence, infirmity, or weakness these are of the nature of darkness. 38 HINDU PHILOSOPHY. This mixture of opposite qualities produces the state of passion and misery which is the condition of mnan. Such are the ideas of Kapila respecting the three. fold creation. We have seen that three fundamental qualities, goodness, passion, darkness, play a great part, particularly in the corporeal and in the intel. lectual creation. These three qualities, which reside originally in Nature or the primordial matter (Prak. riti), spread from its bosom through all the orders of creation, modifying various principles, and forming the source of multitudes of phenomena. Goodness, or the essence of being, whose proper influence is to comfort, enlighten, elevate, when con. sidered as in the corporeal world, predominates in fire, which for this reason tends, as we see in flame, to rise. Considered as in the spiritual world, it is the principle of virtue, by which likewise the soul is elevated. Passion is tyrannical, impetuous, variable; con. sidered as in the corporeal world, it prevails in the air, which is in a natural state of agitation, and it is the cause of the transverse movements of the wind. In the world of spirits it is the cause of vice, which may be conceived in a transverse movement of the wind. Darkness, heavy and resisting, considered in the corporeal world, prevails in the water and earth, which for this reason tend to fall or gravitate downward. In the world of spirits it is the cause of stu. pidity, which is the depression of the reason. These three qualities, though opposite, concur to the same purpose, as the oil, the wick, and the flame, although contrary substances, concur in the produc. tioa of the light which is diffused from a lamp. THE SANKHYA. 39 Of thefinal end or ccnsumczmation of all thmng,. Salvation is the being set free from the bonds in -which nature has enveloped the soul. The soul becomes free from these bonds by recognising that they are nothing but phenomena or appearances. Thus, it begins by recognizing that the gross ele. ments are something purely phenomenal. This done, it is freed from the illusions of body; nevertheless, it is still enchained within the subtile (incorporeal) per. son through which its individuality is maintained. But next it recognises successively that the prin. ciples which enter into the composition of the incorporeal person are likewise nothing but illusions: In the first place, it perceives that the organs of sensation and of action, and the five subtile particles, that is to say, that which constitutes the organism of individuality, are nothing real. But it is still implicated in self, in consciousness, which is the internal form of individuality. From this it is in like manner enfranchised. There then remains no longer anything but the root of individuality, the intelligence, which, as a par. ticular form of matter or Prakriti, is still something determinate. But yet, inasmuch as it is still a form, it is also to be conceived as something phenomenal. Disengaged thus at last from all which produced the subtile person, the soul is set free from all the bonds of nature. Thus, by the study of the principles of all things, science conducts to this definitive, incontrovertible sole truth: neither do I exist, nor anything which pertains to myself. All individual existence is a dream. Such is the enfranchising truth! 40 IIINDU PHILOSOPHY. Logic. Kapila admits three sources of human knowledge. "The knowledge of sensible objects," says the Kari. ka, " is acquired by perception. Induction and rea. soning conduct to the knowledge of things which es. cape the senses. But when a truth can neither be directly perceived nor inferred by reasoning, it is to be derived from revelation." Does Kapila admit the revelation of the Vedas merely to avoid running counter to received opinions? Or, rather, does he resort to it as a means of filling up, by truths deemed incontestable, the chasms of his system, when the two other sources are at fault? Or, finally, is the human reason in his system really composed of two orders of knowledge of diverse origin? We do not undertake to answer these questions. Perception corresponding only to sensible objects, and the theory of the principles of things comprising a multitude of assertions which the senses can never verify, the philosophy of Kapila rests almost entirely upon induction. By combining the different examples of induction cited by Colebrooke, we may reduce to the following formula the character of this philosophical process in the Sankhya system: Induc. tion consists in transforming that which passes in the sphere of human experience into general laws of the universe, that is to say, in making anthropology the measure of ontology. It is by this process, in fact, that Kapila attempts to establish his theory of material nature and of the soul, Prakriti and Atma, the two cardinal points of his whole philosophy. In respect to the first point, he lays down the prin. ciple that the effect subsists anterior to the operation TIlE SANKHYA. 41 of the cause, that is to say, what we call an effect, being only an emission of that which is contained in the cause, existed already before the emission itself took place. This principle is proved by examples taken from the circle of human experience. The oil is in the seed before it is expressed; the rice is in the husk before it is extracted, etc. Kapila concludes from this principle that everything which ap. pears, everything which is distinct, is nothing but an emission, a manifestation of that which is contained in a general cause, in Prakriti. He concludes also, by induction, that this general cause must be indistinct, indeterminate. We see that every determinate form is an eftect proceeding from something which is indeterminate, at least relatively so. Thus a porcelain vase comes from some. thing anterior, a mass of clay, which has in itself no determinate form. Every fborm, then, of the gener. al cause, everything distinct, is an effect; the cause anterior to the effect is indistinct. The foundation upon which Kapila builds in establishingthe evolution of his original principles according to the order of succession above seen, ap. pears to be induction or inference drawn from analogies of human experience. We know that observable effects preserve less analogy to their causes the farther they are removed from their source.; firom whence it results that their order of succession Is rep. resented by their different degrees of conformity to the cause itself. Now the great first cause, Prak. riti, being indistinct, its first and most immediate effect should be one with the least definite representa. tion of form, the least individuality. Such is the nature of Intelligence as compared with self-consciousness, in which latter the determination is more dis. tinct Self'consciousness, in its turn, is something 4 42 IINDU PHILOSOPHY. less definite than the subtile elements;, and thus on io the gross elements, which have a form so distinct as to be perceptible by the senses. With respect to the soul Kapila proceeds in a sim. ilar manner. His way of proving the existence of the soul is this: a bed is destined for some one to sleep upon, a chair for some one to sit upon. G(eneralizing such cases, he affirms that the whole collection of sensible objects is for the use of some different and foreign being: this being must be the soul. As every spectacle supposes a spectator, so the vis. ible world supposes an observer of it, and this observer is the soul. So, again, it is matter of experience, that when a desire is common both to sages and to the mass of men, the satisfaction of that desire is possible. Now all men aspire after the termination of all vicissitude, the destruction of everything changeable; that is, all long for repose, for absolute abstraction. There must therefore exist a being ca. pable of this absolute abstraction, and, of course, detached from all qualities. This being is the soul. Kapila proves also, by various inductions, that souls are multiple and numerous. These inductions result in this general formula: birth, death, virtues, vices, happiness, misery, functions and actions, are not identical and simultaneous among all living be. ings, as they would be if one and the same soul ani. mated all bodies. Proceeding from previous conclusions, he proves the soul to be at once unproduced and unproductive It is uncreated, since it is as different from Nature as the perceiver is from the visible object, and cannot therefore be an emanation from Nature: it is anproductive, uncreative, because it is destitute of qualities. THE SANKHYA. 43 Observations. Although the Sankhya enumerates twentyv.five principles, it admits at bottom only two, Material Nature and the Soul, both real and substantial principles. Although the various principles which emanate from na'ture are purely phenomenal, yet nature itself is not represented in the system of Kapila as an appearance, but as the substance which supports the phe. noinena. Hence the doctrine of the Sankhya is a dualism. But it presents a combination of ideas found in no other systems of dualism. In the latter the spiritu. al principle is the active, the creative principle, while the material principle is passive. In the Sankhya, on the contrary, the Soul is passive and unproductive; Nature alone is fruitful; it is the only principle of generation and of action. Other dualist philoso. phies conceive spirit under the notion of unity, mat. ter under that of multiplicity, of division. With Ka. pila matter is the unity; real multiplicity does not exist except with respect to souls, which, eternal and imperishable, form a universe of spiritual atoms, where no original unity is found. Thus the consummation of all things is, on the one hand, nothing but the return of the phenomena into the material unity, and, on the other, the freedom, the complete development of spiritual multiplicity. Finally, dualism has almost always preserved, in the notion which it has formed of the uncreated spirit, some idea more or less modified of God. This idea disappears alto. gether in the doctrine of Kapila. This system was a protest against religious ideas. Kapi'a puts one portion o? the orthodox doctrine in conllt-adiction with another portion. A. special pre. cept of the orthodox religion says, Slay the conserra 44 HINDU PHIL OSOPHY. ted victim, but the general law says, Do harm to no living thing. He insists upon the insufficiency oA religious practices compared with the supreme effi. cacy of science. Sacrifice, the most excellent of pious actions, procures, even according to the Vedaks, only a finite reward, since the gods themselves per. ish, together with the universe, at the epochs of'its periodical dissolutions. "- Many thousands of Ind ras and other gods have vanished in successive periods, vanquished by time, for time is difficult to conquer." Science, on the contrary, by conducting the soul to the state of complete abstraction, frees it from the vi. cissitudes of time, and produces, not a transitory and relative, but an unchangeable and absolute happiness. And, since science is the only means which conduces to this definitive state, it follows, in the last result, that virtue is at the bottom nothing but the simplG development of the intelligence, and that actions are indifferent. Yoga Shastra, or the Sankhya of Patandjali. The doctrine of Patandjali agrees in a great many points-with that of Kapila; it is sufficient to note th6 principal points of difference. In the first place, Patandjali recognises a God who formed and governs the world.'i God, Iswara; the supreme Ruler, is a soul distinct from all other souls, inaccessible to the evils which afflict them; indiffer. ent to actions good or bad and to their consequences, and to the ephemeral thoughts of man, which are but as dreams." Infinite and eternal, he possesses oniscience, and was the instructer of the first created beings, the divinities of mythology. Kapila, on the contrary, expressly denies the ex. istence of an infinite being who formed and governs the universe. " If detached from nature, and unaf. THE NYAYA AND VAISLSCHIKA SYSTEMS. 45 fected by consciousness and the other principles, he would have no motive to create anything; if enchain. ed in nature, he would not have the power." This is the first point on which the Sankhya of Kapila and the Yoga Shastra differ. Secondly, although absolute abstraction is the com. mon, object of both systems, they still differ both in respect to the notion of this state and in respect to the means of attaining it. With Patandjali, complete abstraction is the absorption of the soul into God; with Kapila it is simple liberation from the bonds of nature. The practices of devotion, which have for their object the subjugation of the mind and the body -the mind by withdrawing it from every particular thought, the body by preventing the senses from disturbing the self-collection of the mind-are in the doctrine of Patandjali the most effectual means of at. taining to absorption into God; while Kapila considers philosophical investigations as the best preparation for the supreme knowledge by which the sou obtains its entire deliverance. 2. THE NYAYA AND VAISESCHIKA SYSTEMS Historical Notices. THE author of the Nyaya philosophy, or the phi. losophy of reasoning, is Gotama; the author of the Vaiseschika, or philosophy of individuality, is Kanada. The text of Gotama, which is a collection of apho. risms or routras, divided into five books, and the sou. tras of Kanada, have given rise to a multitude of com. mentaries, in which the object has been either the ex. planation of these works entire, or of special portions of them, or to furnish matter accessory to the doc. trine which they contain. Although the Nyaya system is a system of logic, 46 HINDU PHILOSOPHY. and the Vaiseschika a physical philosophy, the latter is considered as the complement of the former in certain respects, and on this account they are com. monly conjoined. Exposition. The Vedas prescribe,the following method in the study of truth: the enunciation or proposition, which is the designation of a thing by its proper name, that is, a revealed term; then the definition, which determines the characteristic qualities of the subject; and, lastly, the investigation, which discusses the defini. tion. This method, however, is not perceivable, at least not clearly and precisely, in Colebrooke's exposition of the system of Gotama. Perhaps his exposition embraces only what relates to the third and most im. portant part, namely, investigation. However this may be, Gotama enumerates sixteen logical categories: 1. Proof; 2. The Object or matter of Proof; 3. Doubt; 4. Motive; 5. Example; 6. The Truth demonstrated; 7. The regular Argu. ment; 8. Reduction to the Absurd; 9. Acquisition of Certainty; 10. Debate; 11. Conference or Interlocution; 12. Controversy; 13. -Fallacious Assertion; 14. Fraud and unfair Construction; 15. Futile Reply; 16 Defect in Argument. This enumeration may, for easier recollection, be divided into three parts. The first treats of proof, that is, of the principles which constitute it; the sec. ond comprehends everything relating to the objects of proof; the third refers to what may be called the organization of proofs. Principle of proof. (First category.) Proof,con. sidered in its principles, may be divided into four kinds: 1. Pertneption; 2. Induction, whic-h is of three THE NYAYA AND VAISESCHIKA SYSTEMS. 47 sorts: consequent, when it ascends from effect to cause; antecedent, when it descends from cause to effect; analogous, when it is based upon analogies; 3. Comparison; 4. Affirmation, which embraces revelation and tradition. Respecting the notion of cause, it should be re. marked that Gotama admits three sorts of causes: the cause direct or intimate, as, for instance, the wool in relation to cloth, of which it is the material; the cause mediate or indirect, as the carding of the wool, which concurs in the fabrication of cloth; the cause instrumental and concomitant, which is neither direct nor-indirect, as the craft which subserves the fabri. cation of the cloth. Objects of proof. (Second category.) 1. The first and most important object of proof is the soul. The supreme soul is one; it is the seat of eternal knowledge; it is the creative, or, rather, disposing princi. ple of all things. Individual souls are multiple. The proof of the existence of the individual soul of every man, as distinct from his body, results from his possessing particular attributes. Knowledge, desire, volition, etc., are characteristic attributes, and not, like number and quantity, common to all substances, T'he individual soul, present wherever the body transports itself, is for this reason infinite, and it is eter. nal also; for that which is infinite is necessarily eternal. 2. The second object of proof is body. Without speaking of bodies which exist in other worlds, terrestrial bodies are either produced by the aggregation of atoms, determined by an unknown cause, or b-, generation, which comprehends four classes: viviparous; oviparous; worms and insects engendered by fermentation; and, lastly, plants engendered by germination. 48 HINDU PHILOSOPHY. TLe nurrLan body is the seat of the soul, considered botl. as passive and as active; under the first relation it is the seat of enjoyment; under the second it is the seat of exertion. 3. The organs of sensation are the third object of proof. The external organs are not an emanation from consciousness, as in the Sankhya, but a material result of the following elements: the earth, which produces odour; water, which produces taste; light. which produces sight; the air, which produces touch; and, lastly. of the ethereal element, which produces hearing. This is the inverse of the doctrine of Ka. pila. Gotama explains the phenomenon of vision by supposing that a ray of light comes from the pupil ot the eye, and directs itself towards the object perceived. Although this ray is not commonly visible, yet the light which comes from the eye of the cat, and other animals in tha dark, is enough, according to Gotama, to prove its existence. He explains in a similar manner the phenomena of hearing, smell, etc. The manas, or intellectual sense, effects, by means of the external senses, the knowledge of outward objects, and, by internal sensations, the perception of pleasure and pain. 4. The objects of the senses are the fourth object of proof. These are the elements enumerated above. But here belong the categories of Kanada, which are particularly occupied with this subject. These categories are sin in number. The first is sub. stance; there are nine substances: earth, water, light, air, ether, time, place, soul, and manas. Ma. terial substances are composed of atoms or substan. ces simple, indivisible, and eternal. The existence of atoms is proved by this reason. that every com. posite must have components, and that the division ad infinitum of the components is absurd; for it would THE NYAYA AND VAISESCHIKA SYSTEMS. 49 impity that an elephant and a grain of sand contain each''n infinite number of parts, and must, consequently, be equal in extent. From whence it must be concluded that the mind necessarily decides fox atoms or simple, and, therefore, unproduced parts; for production cannot be conceived, according to Kanada, except as an aggregation. Thus substan. ces are eternal in the condition of atoms, although transient as aggregates. The five other categories of Kanada are quality and action, which reside in the substance; community, which makes many objects appear alike, and which includes genus and species; propriety or peculiarity, which is. opposed to commu. nity; and, finally, intimate relation or aggregation. We now return to the categories of Gotama. 5-12. The other objects of proof are: the intelli. gence, which is divided into notions and recollections, the manas, considered now not as the organ of the senses and as a substance, but as the instrument of intelligence; activity or determination, which is the cause of virtue and vice; faults; transmigration, or the condition of the immortal soul when it passes from one body which dissolves into another which is reproduced; retribution; punishment; and, finally, salvation or deliverance, which the soul attains by distinguishing, in meditation on itself, its own essence from all the objects which surround it. The organization of proofs. This part may be divided into three heads: the first relates to legitimate and conclusive proofs; the second to the discussion which brings proofs into play; the third to false proofs or so)phisms. Conditions of legitimate and conclusive proofs. (Third, fourth, and fifth categories of Gotama.) These are the doubt which is expressed by the posi. tion of the question; the motive, or reason; then the 5 60 HINDU PHILOSOPHY. example, which is a point upon which, in a conitro. versy, both parties are agreed. (Sixth category.) The truth demonstrated: this is recognised either universally or individually, either hypothetically or by concession. (Seventh category.) The regular or complete ar. gument: this is a syllogism composed of five mem. bers: the proposition, the reason, the example, the application, the conclusion. The following is an example of the Hindu syllogism: 1. This mountain is burning; 2. For it smokes; 3. That which smokes burns, as the kitchen fire, 4. Accordingly the mountain smokes; 5. Therefore it burns. (Eighth:category.) Reductio ad absurdum. It consists in deducing from (false) premises conclu. sions manifestly inadmissible, which obliges us to renounce the premises. (Ninth category.) The acquisition of certainty, which is the result of proof. Discussion. (Tenth, eleventh, and twelfth catego. ries.) Debate between two adversaries, where each endeavours to establish his own opinion and to sub. vert the opposite. Interlocution or conference takes place between two persons who confer together for the purpose of arriving at the truth. Disputation, which takes place when one of the controversialists seeks to overthrow the opinion of his adversary with. gut meaning to advance his own proper opinion. False proofs or sophisms (Thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth categories.) These are fallacious assertions or the semblance of reason; the non causa pro causd; fraud, or unfair construction, which consists either in altering the meaning of words, or in takinga literally what is said metaphorically, or in THE NYAYA AND VAISESCHOIKA SYSTEMS. 51 generalizing what is valid only in particular; the futile answer, or that which refutes itself; and, final. ly (sixteenth and last category), default of argument, or the ground of defeat, whereby discussions are brought to an end. Observations. 1. The foregoing exposition, though somewhat dry, shows us, even in the centre of the Oriental world, in India, that old country of imagination and mystic illuminism, a logical system, extended, complicated, and elaborate, the existence of which had hitherto been unsuspected. The sole cradle of logic, it has been commonly thought, was Greece. To explain its origin we have gone back to the time of Aris. totle, or, at the farthest, to Zeno of Elea. This ex. planation has become insufficient in face of the new questions which are now to be solved. Have the H-indu and the Greek logic a common origin? Was the one derived from the other at the period of the expedition of Alexander; or were fragments of the doctrine of the Brahmins carried into Greece, while, at the same time, some of the Greek systems suc. ceeded in penetrating beyond the Indus? Is it the Hindu logic which became Greek, or the Greek lo. gic which became Hindu? Or was it a parallel development, without any influence of one upon the other? These questions are not yet resolved. The last supposition appears the most reasonable. 2. Whatever may be the truth in regard to these questions, there are certainly many remarkable points of agreement between the logic of Aristotle, which has been the type of all European logic, and the lo. gical labours of India. The science, as we have seen, was divided in the Hindu philosophy into three prin. cipal parts: the enunciation or proposition, the defi. 52 HINDU PHILOSOPHY. nition, and the investigation. This method corre. sponds, except inthe difference of language, with the order followed by Aristotle, whose logic comprehends also three parts: the first treating of terms, which is the subject treated in India under the general head of enunciation; the second of propositions, which, by joining the attribute to the subject, deter. mine the characteristics peculiar to the subject; and this, in Hindu logic, is the proper office of definition; and the third of the theory of reasoning and demon stration, which corresponds precisely to the investi. gation of the Indinn logic. 3. The categories of Gotama, of which one part is a classification of the principal objects of philo. sophical investigation, and the other an exposition of the methods and processes of investigation itself, embrace also the two terms of human knowledge, the objective and the subjective; the realities which are the objects of cognition, and the laws of the mind itself as the cognitive subject. However imperfect the execution of the attempt may be, it denotes at once extended views, a spirit of analysis considerably de. veloped. But these categories by no means corre. spond, as will be more particularly seen hereafter, to those of Aristotle. Those of Kanada are, however, analogous to the predicaments and predicables of the Greek philosopher. 4. The Hindu syllogism deserves attention in several respects. In the first place, philosophical in. vestigation in its first development has scarcely any other process than the enthymeme; the syllogism, which necessarily implies general propositions, indicates a more advanced state when it is employed systematically as a complete form of human reason. ing. If we compare the European syllogism with that THE NYAYA AND VAISESCHIKA SYSTEMS 53 of the Hindu logic, we see that the last three propositions correspond exactly to our syllogism, with only this difference, that the first or major term containes always an example. Under this name the dialecticians of India comprehend either a sensible object, or some particular point admitted 6r supposed to be ad. mitted by those to whom the argument is addressed, and which in this relation becomes a fact. By means of the example as an integrant part of the syllogism, and inherent in the major premise, the general prop. osition is not presented except as realized in a posi. tive fact, and thus abstraction takes a body and form. The philosophical idea which influenced such a comn bination is certainly not to be despised. If we consider the five members of the Hindu syl logism, we shall perceive that it consists of two syllogisms resting on the same major proposition, or, rather, the same syllogisnm constructed in an inverse order. Setting out from the third, which is the ma. jor proposition, and which is placed in the centre, we find successively the minqr and the conclusion. wheth. er we go backward to the two anterior, or forward to the two posterior propositions. There exists a remarkable relation between this construction of the syllogism and the constitution of the human mind it. self, which proceeds alternately by analysis and by synthesis. The first syllogism, which begins with particular propositions in order to arrive at a general proposition, corresponds to the process of analysis; the second, which begins with general in order to deduce particular propositions, correspo(nds to the synthetic procedure. But, however ingenious in theory may be a combination which makes a simple argument reflect the two fundamental methods of the human mind, it is not the less true that the Indian syllogism, which makes the mind travel twice 54 HINDIf PHILOSOPHY through the same route without learning anything, and to move heavily from drawing so much luggage, is very infeior as an instrument of discussion to the European syllogism, which is equally sure and more rapid. The one is like the heavy armour of the Macedonian phalanx, the other like the light and easy, but strong armour of the Roman soldiers. As to the physical system of Kanada, the doctrine of atoms which is the basis of it differs in an essential respect from that developed by Epicurus. The latter supposes that atoms, diverse only as to their forms, are identical as to their essence; and, accordingly, he could not explain the universe except by laws purely mechanical, by the laws of motion, in virtue of which the diverse forms combine or separ. ate. In the hiypothesis of the Indian philosopher, there exist as many atoms, endowed with character. istic properties, and thereby essentially different, as there are general phenomena in nature. Sound proceeds from sonorous atoms, light from luminous, etc., so that the primitive formation of aggregates does not depend upon mechanical laws of motion, but upon intimate affinities, which tend to bring together atoms naturally analogous, and probably also to separate atoms that are essentially repugnant. Kanada attaches to his atomistic theory a series of explanations of material phenomena, among which we note the three following points as having some relation to modern discoveries: 1. Gravitation is the cause of the descent of particular bodies; 2. That there exist seven primitive colours, although, indeed, Kanada places white and black among the number of them; 3. That sound is propagated by undula. tions, raying forth in ail directions from a centra. point. SYSTEMS OF THE DJA.:'S AND BUDDHISTS. 55 THIRD CLASS. THE HETERODOX SYSTEMS OF THE DJAINAS AND BUDDHISTS. Historical Notices. THE Djainaso and the Buddhists, who agree in formally rejecting the authority of the Vedas, are not simply philosophical schools, but religious sects, which attack orthodoxy in its source. The Djainas are probably the Indian philosophers mentioned by the Greek writers under the name of Gymnosophists. In India, indeed, they are called Digarnbaras, which signifies devoid of clothes. The Buddhists of whom Colebrooke speaks form a branch of that religious revolution which is connected with the name of Buddha, and which is entitled to a prominent place in the history of worship and sects. At a period which is not yet precisely determined, Buddhism, the character of which, in the present state of historical knowledge, is equally far from being perfectly understood, sprung up in oppo. sition to the hierarchical constitution and doctrines of Brahminism, and maintained against it a long series of bloody struggles, which contributed at least to give a new impulse to philosophical activity. The documents collected by Colebrooke respect. ing the philosophical opinions of the Djainas and Buddhists are incomplete compared with those he acquired concerning the doctrines of the other schools, and unfortunately, also, they are not entitled to the same degree of' confidence. For, finding it impossible to procure original documents, he has formed hiq opinion from the testimony of their Brahmin oppo. 56 HINDU PHIJLOSOPHY. nents. In this deficiency of perfectly authentic sources, we must conclude this analytical exposition of the Hindu philosophy with some brief indications of the doctrine of these sects. The memoir of Colebrooke on the Djainas and Buddhists contains also some glances at other less considerable schools. The Tcharvakas or Lokayat. ikas profess materialism, and regard thinking as the product of organization. Other sects, attached to the worship of Seeva, resemble in their doctrines the Yoga-Shastra of Patandjali; yet it appears they hold that primitive matter is the product of Seeva, the sole principle of the universe. A similar belief is found among the Pantcharatras or Bhagavatas, who, as re. ligious sects, belong to the worship of Vishnu. Exposition. Opinions of the Djainas. Leaving out of view what concerns the worship of the Djainas, or the li. turgical and ritual part of their doctrine, we notice the following opinions: 1. The Djainas explain the formation of the universe by identical or homogeneous atoms, the differ. ence of existences being only the result of different combinations of these primitive elements. 2. Beings are divided into two great classes, ani. mate and inanimate. 3. The soul is the subject of enjoyment, inanimate existences the objects of enjoyment. 4. Animated beings are eternal, yet still composed of parts, because they have bodies. 5. Animated beings are formed by the fouir ele. menta, earth, water, fire, and air, which are therm selves aggregates of the primitive elements. 6. The soul exists in three states: it is either in bondage by its own activity, or liberated by the ful. SYSTEMS OF THE DJAINAS AND BUDDHISTS. 57 filment of precepts which are designed to destroy ac. tivity and the necessity of acting, or, finally, per.fct, when all activity has ceased. 7. The doctrine of the Djainas, in respect to the causes which impede or secure liberation, contain maxims which for the most part enter into the corn. mon doctrine of most Hindu systems on this point, although they are modified by the peculiar principles of the Djainas. Opinions of the Buddhists. It is much to be regretted that the philosophical opinions of the Buddhists are yet so imperfectly known. The little that is ascertained about them enables us to discover three schools very fir advanced in the career of negative philosophy. One school holds that everything is vacuum or non.being, and, as it distinguishes different degrees of,vacuum or non-being, its doctrine has appeared to the first Orientalists who formed any notion of it, a mere tissue of extravagances. But more lately it has been perceived that by void, vacuum, or noncent. ity, it designated immaterial being. It admits no other existence than that of mind or spirit, an existence which is revealed in reflection. It is a system of spiritualism and idealism. In the opposite extreme is another school. It professes sensualism and materialism. Its starting point is sensation, and it operates upon sensations by induction; but at this point the school divides. One section holds that the senses perceive external objects immediately, and that it is by induction we conelude the existence of the elements which compose these objects, that is, of the atoms, endowed with different qualities, which they communicate to the aggregates. The other section maintains that the sen. ses do nut perceive external objects immediately, but 58 HINDU PHILOSOPHYY. by means of images and intermediate forms, from whence they conclude that the existence of the ob. jects themselves, as well as their constituent atoms, is to be derived only by induction. Both sections agree, however, in holding that external objects have only a momentaneous existence; that they cease to exist As soon as they are not perceived, or, in other words, that the phenomena of external objects are perpetually changing; that their component atoms are perpetually separating to enter into new combi. nations, while the atoms themselves are the only in. variable and substantial existences. Finally, the third school, overpassing all the bounds of anterior philosophical negations, admits of' no oth-,,r real existence than that of set which is eternal, and draws from its own depths all phenomena. This is individual pantheism, the opposite of other systems of pantheism, in which self (myself, I), as well as all individuality whatever, are held to be purely phenomenal. The Buddhists conceive the series of phenomena which form both the physical and the moral or human world, as an infinite, necessary, and fatal chain of causes and effects, independent of all governing intelligence. For them the chief end, the salvation of the soul, consists in a state of complete apathy, where all thought is extinguished. Observations. The philosophical opinions of the Buddhist schools Agree much more than most of the other Hindu doc. trines which we have reviewed, with the systems professed in Europe in modern times. The spiritual. ism of the first school resembles that of Berkeley; the principles of the second coincide in many points with the materialism and sensualism of Cabanis; GENERAL OBSERVATIONS. 59 the individual pantheism of the third has been reproduced in Germany by Fichte. General Observations on the Hindu Philosophy. I We have thus far, with Colebrooke, classed the Hindu systems according to their external relations, that is, their conformity or opposition to the doctrine reputed orthodox. We must now, in recapitulating our survey of this great philosophical movement, con. sider these systems in respect to their intrinsic char. acteristics, by noticing the ideas which have predom. inaited in them, and given them in some respects a sort of unity, and by referring to their fundamental grounds the differences which constitute their diver. Slty. II. The ideas common to most of these systems are the following: 1. Of one infinite, eternal substance, which is clothed with an innumerable multitude of forms, and manifests itself in that collective whole of phenomena which we call the universe; 2. Of emanation, substituted for the notion of cause, properly so called, or of creation. The idea of creation implies giving reality to what did not before exist; the idea of emanation merely implies either the manifestation of what before existed in a latent state, or the disengagement of a reality before existing, but confused with other realities, or the de. velopment of what before existed with all its constit. uent parts in a germe. These three senses of the word emanation express at bottom only one and the same idea; 3. Of matter, considered as the means by which individual existences are formed. In most of the Hindu systems it has only an apparent existence; in the others, matter, possessing a real existence, is the 60 HINDU PHILOSOPHY. invisible source of phenomena, of everything which has merely apparent existence; 4. Of an infinite succession of periodical creations and destructions, giving to these words the meaning they have in the Hindu philosophy. When, by a gradual development, the series of emanations has reached its last term, the creation is complete. Then commences a destructive evolution. The emana. tions, falling back one into the other in the inverse order of their development, end by being absorbed into their substance. Then recommences the divine sleep of Brahma, the inaction of creative power, or, according to other conceptions, matter, the source of all production, returns to its state of indetermina. tion. As an image of these alternations of produc. tion and absorption, the Hindus have taken the sym. bol of the tortoise, which by turns extends and draws in its feet; 5. Of a state of abstraction by which the soul sep. arates itself completely from nature, and even of a state of annihilation resulting fiorn absorption into the substance: these are considered as states of perfect repose, supreme felicity, and the definitive ob. ject of science; 6. Of a tendency to absolute indifference and ap. athy: a tendency which is conceived as the condi. tion of human perfectionment even in man's earthly career. It does not radically exclude all activity; for the very existence of Hindu philosophy is prool of great intellectual activity. But activity is admitted only as a temporary means; that is to say, it should not be displayed except so far as its exercise is necessary to enable the soul to rise to that perfect repose where all activity entirely ceases. To resume: the idea of unity, of that by which all things are one, quit unum sunt, not only predominates GENERAl. OBSERVATIONS. 61 in most of the Hindu systems over the idea of particular, distinct, and individual existences, but even effaces and destroys it. One of the two terms of creation is absorbed by the other, the finite by the infinite. This characteristic tendency of the Hindu philosophy is perceptible even in the systems which have broken up the notion of the primitive unity by admitting two co-eternal principles. Thus, in the doctrine of Kapila, all the phenomena which compose the uni. verse end by vanishing into the bosom of the eternal matter, and souls themselves, however great their muitiplicity, arrive at an end common and identical to them all, of which it is hard to form a conception, but in which it is clear that all individuality disap. pears; for the general formula of this state is. neither I mysef, nor anything belonging to me, exists. 111.. Notwithstanding, however, the analogous ten. dency of most of these systems in many respects, yet this philosophy is divided by profound differences. Whenever and wherever human reason has attempted to solve the question of the origin of things, with. out taking for the basis of its efforts truths consecra.'ed by universal tradition, three routes are open be. fore it, three fundamental solutions present them. selves: Pantheism, which beholds in finite beings only forms, modifications, of the infinite substance, the only really existing being; Dualism, which di. vides being or substance between two uncreated prin. ciples; Materialism or Atheism, which in place of the Infinite One substitutes a sort of indefinite multiplici. ty by the doctrine of atoms, a doctrine which is noi explicitly brought out in all the systems of material ism, but which lies at the bottom of them all. These three conceptions are developed in the phi.osoDhv of India. Pantheism has never been redu. 62 HINDU PHILOSOPHY. ced to formulas more, strict, never been more boldly carried to its greatest height, than in the Vedanta school. In this pantheism particular beings are not even simple modifications of the Divine substance; the universe is nothing but the spectacle of his own thoughts, which. God represents to himself by contemplating all the combinations which they would present if'' they were to be realized out of himself. The dualistic conception predominates in the Sankhya school; and Kanada pursues the materialistic solution of the great problem of the universe. IV. If we possessed more complete information about Hindu views in regard to the origin of human knowledge, we should there also probably recognise solutions very different more or less explicitly adopted by the different schools. The Vedantist school, which regards matter as a mere illusion, and with it all the sensible world, and which aspires to the contemplation of the absolute being, could not seek in sensation for the source of human reason. It comes, on the contrary, to a re. sult the very opposite of sensualism, to illuminism, since it completely identifies the intelligence, of man with the intelligence of God, making all the opera. tions of human intelligence Divine acts. Kapila and Kanada stand at the opposite extreme. They admit, philosophically, but one primitive element of reason, sensations upon which induction operates. There is, indeed, in this respect a want of harmony, and even a contradiction, between their psychology and their systems respecting the universality of things; for in the latter we see brought forward the ideas of eternity and of infinity, ideas which no operation of the mind can derive from sensations, because no sensation can contain the germe of them. If the partisans of the Yoga.Shastra, or of tho GENERAL OBSERVATIONS. 63 Sankhya of Patandjali, had systematically occupied themselves with the question concerning the origin of knowledge, they would have been led to admit two primitive elements of the reason: sensations, by means of which material substance manifests itself to man, and conceptions of a higher kind, which reveal to him the Divine essence. Patandjali, in fact, seems to have combined the sensualist principles of Kapila with the illuminism of the Vedanta school, an illu. minism which is particularly reflected in his theory concerning the transcendental contemplation where. by the soul is absorbed into God. V. It would be interesting to know in what order of succession the philosophy of India has brought forth its different systems. While awaiting the his. toprical investigations which may clear up this ques. tion, if indeed it can ever be done, we are reduced to conjectures. It is probable that the ancient Miman. sa, the system most closely allied to the Vedas, was the first-born of this old philosophy. We should place next the Vedanta, because its spiritual panthe. ism, although it appears to us a corruption of the doctrine of the Vedas, harmonizes with it much more than any of the other systems. Possibly, this great idealism provoking, as all philosophical extremes, a reaction in the contrary direction, gave birth to the materialism represented by Kanada; and the Sank. hya, with its doctrine of two principles, might then arise, if not as a reconciler, at least as a moderator for the human mind, tossed between two extremes. It may, however, be conjectured that philosophy would separate itself from the primitive doctrine only by degrees; that it would not fall firom spiritual pantheism into materialism and atheism without passing through an intermediate doctrine; that, after having spiritualized everything into the absolute unity, it in. 64 CHINESE PHILOSOPHY. vented dualism, which preserved still the spiritual principle, but combined it. with a material principle, in older to- avoid difficulties insolvable by pantheism; and that, at last, attaching itself exclusively to the second principle recognised in dualism, it sought in matter alone solutions which the other systems had nct furnished. However this may be, yet as the nece.sity of logic, and'particularly of dialectics, would not begin to be felt but in the sequel of a -conflict of doctrines, we must not attribute to the logical system of Gotarma an origin prior to that of the other systems. As to the rest, in venturing these conjectures respect. ing the order of their succession, we intend to speak relatively on the period when the leading and essen. tial ideas of the several systems made their first ap. pearance in the evolution of Hindu philosophy. For it is needless to observe that a system springing up previous to another system can nevertheless, only at a much later period, receive those developments wvlAcE render its organization complete. C 1H I N A. PRIMORDIAL CONCEPTIGIlS. HIistorical Notices. TImE canonical books known by the name of King are the most ancient literary monuments of China. One of them, the Y-King, or Book of 67hatgeu, a sort of primitive encyclopedia, treats of a multitude of matters, which may be reduced to three heads: met. aphysics, physics, and.norals. Fohi, founder of the empire of China, is the repu. ted author of the Y. King in its primitive form. The Chinese annals relate that writing was then not yet PRIMORDIAL CONCEPTIONS. 65 invented, and that he composed this book with twen. ty-four characters or small lines, of which twelve were entire, and twelve cut in two or divided by a short space. The union of three lines formed a tri. gram. One of the first successors of Fohi perfected his work. He placed upon each of the eight primitive trigrams eight other trigrams, which produced sixty-four hexagrams. The founder of the dynasty of the Tscheous, King Ven-Vang, who lived twelve centuries before the Christian era, added to the hex. agrals some very short marks, which his son Tsche. ou-Kong still farther improved. In spite of' these successive additions, the Y-King would have become scarcely intelligible if; about five centuries before the Christian era, Confucius had not cleared up by his commentaries the table of Fohi, the notes of VenVang, and the interpretations of Tscheou-Kong. Exposition. All things rest upon Taiki, the great summit, as rafters upon the ridge-beam of a house. The old Chinese philosophers gave to the great summit the name of Tao. Tao is identified with primitive reason, Li, from which it differs only as act differs from power. Taiki has produced two forms or two natures, Yang and Yn, the one perfect, the other imperfect. These are matter refined and matter gross, the celestial and terrestrial, clearness and obscurity, heat and cold, dryness and moisture, heaven and earth. The two forms Yang and Yn have engendered four images, which appear to designate the two conditions of force or stability, of change or weakness, in which each of these two principles subsists. These two opposite states are expressed by the terms youth and age. Yang and Yn, or heaven and earth, or the perfect 6 66 CHINESE PHILOSOPHY. and imperfect matter, are considered as united in a marriage which, by means of the four images, pro. duced the universe. The four inmages, indeed, together with heaven and earth, produced the objects represented by the eight trigrams of Fohi, which correspond to all things. Besides this twofold matter, the Y.King speaks also of spirits called sometimes Kuei.Chin, and sometimes simply Chin. They flow from the primitive reason into the twofold matter. Their power of action comes from numbers. Here is placed a myste. rious theory very difficult to understand. We find a division of numbers into celestial and terrestrial, perfect and imperfect. Of the first ten numbers, the five unequal ones are celestial, the five equal terrestrial. The generation of the elements is represented by numerical combinations. Man has two souls: the faculty of feeling resides in the grosser soul; the other soul, called HangHoen, possesses the faculty of knowing. At death the former, sprung from earth, returns to it; the oth. er ascends to heaven, from whence it came, and be. comes Chin. The morals of the Y.King rest upon this principle, that man ought to imitate the celestial reason, Tao, who, sublime in splendour and majesty, stoops down even to the earth. By humility likewise man will deserve to be raised-up by Tao. This in its principal bases is the philosophy of the Y-King, a very remarkable book, not only for the matter of its ideas, but also for its form; for the eight trigrams of Fohi, and the sixty-four hexagrams obtained by their multiplication, represent by their position, their combinations and qualities, the changes which take place in te physical and moral world. PRIMORDIAL CONCEPTIONS. 67 Observations. 1. We find here, at the beginning of the Chinese philosophy, under an image proper to that philos. ophy, a conception which always appears at the head of all theological theories. It is this: that the human mind has always conceived the primitive ground or root of all things as in God; this is that incomprehensible something which can be conceived only as the support, the absolute basis of everything that exists, or, to speak after the Chinese fashion, the great summit which sustains the existence of all other beings. This figure of language is in some respects strikingly significant. The word substance, support, basis, expresses in itself something which lies beneath, but God is above all. It is needful, therefore, to indicate at once these two relations; and this is well expressed by the Chinese term which represents God as a sublime support. 2. But the great summit, inaccessible, impenetra. ble to human intelligence, is not a blind and formless principle. It is Li and Tao, reason and law; and, as such, reveals itself to our minds. 3. The conception of the universe in the Y-King contains an idea common also to nearly all philoso. phies. The creation which proceeds from the grand summiit comprehends two subordinate principles, the one active, the other passive. The Chin, the genii, which are the forces of Nature, are eminently the active principle; matter is, compared with them, the passive principle, moved and directed by them. But by the distinction of two kinds of matter, the Yang, in virtue of its perfection, is considered as ac. tive relatively to the Yn or imperfect matter. These two great principles of Nature enter also into- the composition of Man, who is thus a lesser world. a microcosm of the universe. 68 CHINESE. PHILOSOPHY. 4. Whatever may be the precise character oi value of the theory of numbers, one cannot help re. marking with interest, in one of the first attempts of ancient philosophy, the germe of the idea that the operations of Nature correspond in certain respects to mathematical laws. We meet with this idea in all periods of philosophy. It has been often a bar. ren, unproductive idea; it has been often falsified, profaned by a mixture of visionary conceits and by extravagant applications; yet the movement was to go on till at length it received a great and legitimate application, on which depended the progress of the physical sciences. The sciences which have for their object the inorganic world, have three things to do: they must first state facts; then observe their constant relations of coexistence or succession, from whence their laws are inferred; and, lastly, re. duce these laws to mathematical formulas, as Kepler and Newton have done in regard to the astronomical phenomena. By an admirable instinct, the author of the Y.King seems to have had a sort of confused presentiment of a truth which, thirty centuries later. was to organize the physical theory of the world. PHILOSOPHICAL DEVELOPMENT. Although China, at least so far as our knowledge goes, has never been the theatre of a great philo. sophical development which can be compared wits the Hindu philosophy, it has produced, nevertheless, about the sixth century before the Christian era, tw~ remarkable schools. The Y-King contained in the first place a meta. physical and cosmological doctrine; secondly, ar ethical doctrine, which is the foandation of two oth. eor Kings, the Chon.King, where it is blended with LAO-TSEU. 69 history, and the Che-King, where it is presented under the form of didactic poetry. Chinese philoso. phy is divided into two schools, corresponding to these two principal branches of the primitive science. The school of Lao.Tseu was metaphysical; ethical studies predominated in that of Confucius. LAO-TSEU. Historical 2Notices. LAo-TSEU was born in China, in the province of Hou-Koang, about the beginning of the sixth century B.C. The legends say that he came into the world with white hair, a type of his precocious wis. dom; hence the name of Lao-Tseu, which signifies the old child. In the memoir which Abel Remusat has devoted to this philosophy, may be seen the little that is known of the circumstances of his life. He appears to have taken a long journey to the regions of the West. Neither the place nor the date of' his death is known. It is said that, seeing the empire ruined by great disorders and tottering to its base, he withdrew into a remote province, to live there in solitude. The mandarin of the place received him with kindness, and desired him to compose a book in which the principles of his doctrine should be clearly expounded. Lao-Tseu composed the TaoTe-King, or Book of Doctrine or Virtue. This done, he sought another retreat and disappeared. He is said to have had an interview with Confu. cius, which is thus related by Father Amyot in a narrative composed from the Chinese legends. Lao. Tseu, fixing his eyes on Koung-Tsee (Confucius), said: " I have heard of you, and I know your repu. tation. They say you do not speak except from the ancients, and that you retail only the maxims they 70 CHINESE PHILOSOPHY. have taught. For what good do you take so much trouble to revive men of whom there exists no long. er any vestige upon the earth? The sage should occupy himself only with the times in which he live., and should have regard only to present- circumstances. If the times and circumstances are favourable, he should profit by them; if, on the contrary, they do not favour, he should retire and keep himself tranquil without troubling himself about what others are doing. He who possesses a treasure does not care to show it to all the world; he preserves it to use in a time of need: you would do the same if you were a true sage. It seems by your conduct that you are ostentatious in this, and that you are carried away by pride. Correct this fault; purge yourself from all desire of pleasure: this will make you much more useful than all you are trying to learn about the ancients. You were desirous to know in what my doctrine consists; I have just given you the substance of it; profit by it. I have no more to say to you." Koung-Tsee was not offended at the harsh manner in which the old man spake to him, but, de. parting from him, contented himself with saying to his disciples: "I have seen Lao-Tseu; and, now that I have seen him, I know him as little as I know the dragon. The birds cut the air with their wings, the fishes swim in the waters, the quadrupeds press the earth with their feet in walking: how all this is done I know. But as to the dragon, I know not how he can descend from the clouds and reascend again. I know, moreover, how it is necessary to catch birds in snares, fish with hook and line, and to strike down beasts with the dart; but I know not how to go about to take the dragon: and so it is with Lao. Tseu."* * Amyct, Memoire concernant les Chinus. L.AO-TSEU. 71 Exposition. Until the questions respecting the doctrine of ILao. Tseu are more completely settled, it must suffice to introduce here the comparison drawn by Abel Remusat of this doctrine with that of several Greek chilosophers. We interpose in this brief analysis the Chinese passages which are used as points of comparison. 1. Lao - Tseu maintair.s, like the Platonic and Stoic philosophers, that the first principle of all things is reason; a sublime, indefinable being, of whom there is no type but himself. Like Plato, he gives to this being a name which signifies reason and speech or word. "The (primordial) reason can be subjected to reason (or expressed by words); but it is a supernatural reason. We may give it a name, but it is ineffable. Without a name it is the principle of heaven and earth; with a name it is the mother of the universe. It is necessary to be without passions in order to contemplate its excellence; with passions we contemplate only its less perfect state. There are but these two ways of designating a single unique source, which may be termed impenetrable depth: this abyss contains all the most perfect beings. Before chaos, which preceded the birth of heaven and earth, there existed but one sole being, infinite and silent, immutable, always acting, yet never changing. We may regard it as the mother of the universe. I know not its name, but I designate it by the word reason." 2. Like Pythagoras, he makes all beings to be linked to a monad. "Reason has produced one; one has produced two; three has produced all things. " Unity," says Hoai-Nan-Tseu, " is the root of alk things; it is the reason which has nothing equal t:i 72 CHINESE PHILOSOPHY. itself." According to Wei-Kiao, the One is the substance of reason, the purity of celestial virtue, the origin of bodies, the principle of numbers." 3. Like Plato, he regards the world and man as the copy of a divine archetype. " Obliged to give a name to the principle of things, I call it magnitude, progression, remoteness, opposition. [These last names seem to signify that the reason is of an es. sence contrary to the finite and imperfect nature of beings.] There are in the world fbur magnitudes, that of reason, of heaven, of earth, and of the king, which is one of the four. Man has his type and model in the earth, the earth in heaven, heaven in reason, reason in itself." 4. Like Pythagoras and most of the Greek philosophers, he believes souls to be emanations of the ether, which are going to return to it at death; and like Plato, he denies to the wicked the power of re. uniting to the universal soul. Like Sallust, he imagines there is between the two principles matter and mind a bond of harmony, which is the air, the breath of life, the universal soul. " All things rest upon matter, and are enveloped by the ether. A subtile vapour, the breath of life, which keeps them in union, maintains harmony between them. Beings grow at the expense of the universal soul, which in its turn grows by their perishing. I teach in this only what I have been taught by others. But violent and evil men will not enjoy such a death [be united to the universal soul]: on this point it is I myself who am the father of doctrine."' In order not to misconceive the doctrine of many of the Greek philosophers, to whom the remark of Abel Remusat refers, and also, perhaps, the better to understand that of Lao-Tseu, we must keep in mind the distinction of two souls, the one gross and sensi LAo-rsEu. 73 tive, the other pure and intellectual: we have met with this distinction before, in the Y-King. It is probable that Lao-Tseu regarded the breath of life as the principle of the soul, and to which it was des. tined to be reunited. 5. Like the Platonic philosophers, he opposes the primitive state of the Divine intelligence before the creation of the world to its actual state since the unfolding of chaos, and since it has conceived and created the world. See the latter part of the passage cited in the first of the foregoing extracts. 6. With the Platonists, he also composes a mystic and supreme triad, either of three ages or periods of God, or of his principal, attributes; and this inef. fable triad he designates by a name taken from the sacred writings, and which has its root only in the Hebrew language. Compare the second of the previous quotations with the following: "That which you look at and do not see, is called I; that which you hearken after and do not hear, is called Hi; that which your hand reaches after and cannot grasp, is called WEI. These are three beings which cannot be comprehended, and which together make but one. That which is above is no more brilliant; that which is beneath is no mnore obscure. It is a chain without break, which cannot be named, which returns into nonentity. It is that which may be called form with. out form, image without image, being indefinable. If you go to meet it, you see not this principle; if you follow it, you see nothing beyond. He who grasps the old state of reason (that is, the negation of beings before the creation) in order to estimate present existences or the universe, he may be said to have hold of the chain of reason." 74 CHINESE PIIILOSOPHY. CONFUCIUS. Historical Notices. CONFucius, whose Chinese name is Koung-Tsee, was born, in the province of Lou in the year 551 B.C. Having lost his mother when he was twenty-four years old, he passed three years in solitude and grief, during which his vocation for philosophy was developed. China presented at that period symptoms of a threefold decline, religious, moral, and political. To remedy so many disorders, he undertook to re. establish the ancient maxims, to found a school for propagating them, and to apply them with all his in. fluence in the exercise of' the public functions to which he should be called. These three spheres of exertion employed his whole life. HIe did honour to the dignities with which he was clothed by making them subservient to the reformation of abuses, and did still more honour to himself by the tran'quil firm. ness with which he bore disgraces and persecutions. He had during his life more than three thousand dis. ciples scattered throughout the Chinese empire, the principal provinces of which he had travelled over, preaching his doctrine. Some of his disciples, who continually lived with him, followed him about everywhere till his death. But neither the foundation of his school, nor his labours as a magistrate, were anything but means for the accomplishment of the great project to which he was devoted, and which was the soul of all his teachings and journeyings. This was to revive the ancient doctrine; and he em. ployed many years in arranging the books of the Y-King, the venerable documents in which this doc. trine was deposited. He completed the restoration of them in his old age. The Chinese historians contain an affecting recital of the religious act with which CONFUCIUS. 75 he crowned his labours. "Having finished his literary career, he felt it his duty to return thanks to heaven for having given him life and strength to bring it to a conclusion. He assembled his most attached disciples, upon whom he most depended for the propagation of his doctrine after his death; and, having led them to the foot of one of those ancient hillocks near which a ting or pavilion had been built to preserve its memory, he directed them to prepare an altar. The altar being prepared, he laid thereon the six books of King; then, casting himself upon his knees, with his face to the north, he paid his adora. tions to heaven, and gave thanks, with expressions of the most sincere gratitude, for the distinguished favour which had been granted to him in prolonging his life long enough to accomplish the object for which alone he desired to live. He had prepared himself for this pious ceremony by purification and fasting, and he concluded it by the entire and unreserved of. fering up of the fruit of his labour."* He composed, besides, several works upon morals, which have been commented upon and unfolded by his disciples, of whom the most celebrated was MengTseu. Confucius died in the seventy.third year of his age, 479 B.C. A little while before his death he said to one of his disciples, "Kings have nowadays all degenerated from the virtue of their ancestors; none of them have liked the doctrine 1 have proclaimed; this is the true subject of my grief." He would have gone down to the grave without such a load of sorrow if he could have foreseen the influence which his doctrine was destined to exercise. Divine hon. ours were paid to his memory, and China reveres him as the most exalted of sages. * Memoires concernant les Chinois, t. xii. 76 CHINESE PHILOSOPHY. Exposition. The following passage contains the substance of the moral precepts of Confucius. "I teach you nothing," said he continually to his contemporaries," which you might not learn of yourselves, if you would only make a proper use of the faculties of your mind. Nothing is more natural, no. thing more simple, than the principles of the moral ity which I endeavour to inculcate in its salutary max ims. Everything I tell you has been practised by our ancient sages before you; and this practice, which in remote times Was universally adopted, re. solves itself into the observance of the three funda. mental laws pertaining to the relations of sovereigns and subjects, of fathers and children, of husband and wife, and the exact practice of five chief virtues, which it is enough to name in order to give you the idea of their excellence and the necessity of practising them. They are, humanity, that is to say, universal charity between all of our race without distinction; justice, which gives to every individual what is his due with. out favouritism or partiality; conformity to established usages and ceremonies, in order that those who live together may have the same manner of living, and share alike the same advantages and inconven. iences; uprightness, that is to say, that rectitude of mind and heart which leads one to seek and desire the truth in everything, without wishing to deceive himself or others; finally, sincerity or good faith, that frankness, that openness of heart, blended with confidingness, which excludes all feints, all disguise in conduct or action. These are the virtues which rendered our primitive teachers respectable during life, and which have immortalized their names after CONFUCIUS. 77 their death. Let us take them for our models; let us do our best to imitate them."" The peculiar character of the doctrine of Confu. cius is, that all the duties of man are presented as va. rious forms of domestic duties. The law of the fam-. ily is the universal law. It is the mother-idea of that philosophy which reduces all the virtues to the sin. gle one of filial piety. " Confucius, being seated with Theng-Tseu, said to him,' Do you know what was the supereminent virtue and essential doctrine which our ancient kings taught to all the empire in. order to maintain harmony between their subjects, and to banish discontent between superiors and inferiors?'' How should I know,' answered Theng-Tseu, respect. fully rising,' I, who am so little instructed?'' Fil. ial piety,' replied Confucius,' is the root of all the virtues, and the first source of all instruction.'' The spring of all evils is the strife that exists be. tween superiors and inferiors. From this antagonism conies everything which disturbs harmony. The virtue which would make this antagonism disappear is therefore the radical virtue; and this is the effect of filial piety. But, to conceive its universal efficacy, it is necessary to comprehend this virtue in all its extent. " It is divided into three vast spheres: the first is that of the care and respect due to pa. rents; the second embraces everything which relates to the service of prince and country; the last and most elevated is that of the acquisition of the virtues, and of that which constitutes our perfection." The family, the state, the universe, are facts of the same type. The father, the sovereign, God, are the heads of this threefold family. The authority of the father is the authority of God; the authority of the * Mbrmcrep concernant les Chinoir Yii. 78 CHINESE PHILOSOPHY. prince is that of the father. Children are to their father what subjects are to their prince, and what ari men are to God. First sphere offilialpiety, respect and care for pa. rents. This duty rests upon all, from the emperor to his lowest subject; it nowhere begins or ends. " The wisest emperors of antiquity served their fa. thers with true filial piety; hence you may see why they served Tien with so much intelligence. They served their mothers with true filial piety; thiB is the reason why they served Li with so much religion. They were full of condescension to old and young; this is the reason they governed so happily both su. periors and inferiors. Tien and Li being served with understanding and heart, the intelligent spirit was displayed." This general duty varies in its application accord. ing to different social conditions. The great, the, men of letters, should manifest their filial piety by appropriate acts; so the filial piety of the emperor has its appropriate manifestation; and, in fine, in the lowest ranks of society, this virtue consists summari. ly for the multitude in putting to advantage all the seasons of the year, drawing sustenance from all the land, and prudently economizing it for the support of their fathers and mothers. Second sphere of filial piety, the service of prince and of country. The relations of father and son give the first idea of prince and subject. "The prince is the father and mother of the people... Have for your father the love which you have for your mother, and the respect with which you are penetrated towards your prince. You will serve the orince with filial piety, and you will be a faithful sub. ject; you will be deferential to those who are above you, and you will be a submissive citizen.... He CONFUCIUS. 79 who revolts against his sovereign cannot bear to have any one above him; he sins in that he possesses in his heart no filial piety, the principle which inclines to obedience." Third sphere of filial piety, the acquisition of the virtues, and of that which constitutes our perfection. However great the respect of the child for his father or of the subject for his prince, it should not degenerate into a blind submission to their mere will. "I make bold," said Theng.-rseu, " to ask if a son who obeys the wishes of his father fufills thereby all the duties of filial piety?" " What is it you ask?" replied Confucius. "The emperor anciently had seven sa. ges as censors, and, although he gave way to great excesses, he did not carry them so far as to lose his empire. A prince had five sages to reprove him, and, although he gave way to great excesses, he did not go so far as to lose his states. A noble of the empire had three sages to admonish him, and, although he gave way to great excesses, he did not go so far as to lose his mansion. A man of letters had one friend to admonish him, and he never went so astray as to disgrace his name. A father had his son to admonish him, and he never erred so far as to fall into dissoluteness. As soon as a thing is decided to be wrong, a son can no more be free of the duty of reproving his father than a subject his sovereign. Now, since a son ought to reprove his father when he does wrong, how can he fulfil the duLies of filial piety if he limits himself to mere obe. dience to his father's will?" Thus there exists a law superior to that of a fa. ther and of a prince. Just as the commands of a father are subordinate to the just orders of the emperor, so the will of both the father and prince are subordinate to an invariable'and eternal rule, ote. 80 CCHINESE PHILOSOPHY. dience to which is the highest act, the supreme fulfilment of filial/piety. This law is the law of Tien or of heaven, the Divine law. The service of Tien is the source of the intelligent spirit or of true wis. dom, and it is necessary to ascend to him to find the origin of duties; " for the immutable relations of fa. ther and son flow from the very essence of Tien." Such are the three spheres of filial piety. The duties of husband and wife, brother and sister, stand in relation to domestic paternity, from whence they are derived, as the duties of citizen to citizen are derived from political paternity personified in the prince, the image of Tien, whose law is the {oundation of the relations which unite all mankind. Filled with admiration at the doctrine of his mas. ter, Theng.Tseu exclaims: "0 immensity of filial piety, how wonderful thou art!- As is the regular. ity of the stars to the firmament, the fertility of the plains to the earth, such continually is filial piety for the people. The heaven and earth are never disordered: let the people imitate them, and the har. mony of the world will likewise be as perpetual as the light of heaven and the productions of the earth. See here why it is that the doctrine of filial piety has no need of rebuking in order to amend, nor its politics of threats in order to govern." Most of the foregoing quotations have been extracted from Father Cibot's paraphrase of the Hiao King, or Book of Filial Piety, a work which is con. sidered in China as expressing the doctrine of Con. fucius, and whose author appears to have been one of his disciples, the very Theng-Tseu, indeed, who figures in the work only as a simple interlocutor. Observations. However beautiful and however pure in many Ye. DISCIPLES OF CONFUCIUS. 81 spects the moral doctrine of Confucius is, it yet con. tained a profound defect, which has- exercised a fatal influence upon the destinies of the vast empire of which he was the legislator. This vice is the rad. ical confusion of political society, the state, with the family, where all the possessions are the possessions of the father, and where all wills should be nothing but his will. This confusion, which is the basis of the Chinese institutions and the pivot of the doctrine of Confucius, excludes from human society the element of individual liberty in order to give exclusive predominance to that of obedience. Hence the im. mobility of the Chinese nation, whose only strength has been that of stability without progress, just as the Grecian nations have displayed great activity without possessing the principle of stability or long life. Christianity has communicated to the nations whom she has enlightened both these elements, whose different combinations form the principal phases of modern societies, as their harmony constitutes the perfection to which they have attained. Principal Disciples of Confucius. Theng-Tseu, born about 505 B.C. Ile commit. ted to writing the answers of Confucius, who had a great esteem for his knowledge and virtue. Besides the Hiab-King already mentioned, he composed the Tai.Hio, or Book of the Great Science, which treats of the different duties of man. The date of his death is unknown. Tseu-Sse, grandson of Confucius. After the death of his grandfather, whose instructions he had attended till his thirty.seventh year, he still continued his studies under the direction of Theng-Tseu. He is probably the author of the Tchoung-Young, or immutable Medium, which has been attributed to 7 82 CHINESE PHILOSOPHY. Confucius. In this treatise moral considerations are blended with metaphysical reflections. Tseu. Sse died about 353 B.C. Meng-Tseu, born about the beginning of the fourth century B.C., was the disciple of Tseu-Sse. Next to Confucius, he is the most celebrated of the Chinese philosophers. The book which bears his name develops the doctrine of Confucius in forms less austere and more lively than those adopted by the grave patriarch of the Chinese philosophy. Abel Remusat remarks that the method of discussion in the Meng-Tseu resembles the Socratic. Although he insists, after the example of his master, upon the duty cf -c!tcl ohobedience, he opposes energetic demnands in favour of the law of justice to the capr,,i. cious or tyrannical will of power. He died about 314. The book of Meng.Tseu has been lately translated into Latin by Mr. Stanislaus Julien. Chinese Philosophers in Modern Times. The thirteenth century after the Christian era wit. nessed the formation, in the native land of Confucius, of a school which has deviated from the path he had prescribed. It has put in vogue a sort of material pantheism, which gives to morality no religious basis, and has produced a bad physics, founded upon ab. stractions, which, while pretending to explain every. thing, explains nothing. PERSIAN PHILOSOPHY. 83 PERS IA. PRIMORDIAL CONCEPTIONS. Historical Notices. THE most ancient records of the doctrines of Per sia are contained in the collection known by the name of Zendavesta. In the latter half of the qighteenth century, Anquetil du Perron, a French scholar, travelled into the East to collect them, and, after many years of fatigue and danger, succeeded at last in malking this rich contribution to European knowledge. The translation which he has given of the worli is acco'mpanied by notes which prove the conscientious erudition of this learned Orientalist. The younger Burnouf has, published a new translation, with explanations. These writings, attributed to Zoroaster, belong to a very remote period, which has not yet been settled -.-'. L _2 _.; -, A l _ LI 1, A when they were composed, or, at least, when the doc. irines of which they are the depository were promulgated, the traditional truths that constituted the primitive religion had been corrupted in Persia by a gross star-worship. The object of the doctrine of Zoroaster was to ieform and purify the worship by recalling it to spiritualism; by representing, that is, the sensible world as the envelope and symbol of the spi rinual world. The Zendavesta comprises two sorts of docu. menlt s: The Vendidad, the Izeschnee, and the Vispcred, written in the Zend language, are principally liturgi. cal. But they contain, in the midst of a multitude 84 PERSIAN PHILOSOPIY. of prayers and ceremonial prescriptions, some doe. trinal notions. These scattered conceptions are not exhibited in the form of a system, nor even of a di. dactic composition. By comparing and combining them, we can, however, to a certain degree, reconstruct them as a whole. The Boundehech, or that which has been created from the beginning, written in the Pehlvi dialect, con. tains, as its title implies, a cosmogony which sheds great light upon many portions of the doctrine o(f the Zend documents. From this cosmogony proceeds. as so many branches, various series of notions rela. ting both to the intercourse of men with God, or religion, and to the intercourse of men with each other. The ideas which it contains respecting the first of an. cient sciences, astronomy, and the first of arts, agri. culture, reflect, under this twofold celestial and ter. restrial relation, the intellectual condition of the mvs. terious land of the Magi, a sacerdotal corporation which was to Media and Persia what the Brahmins have been to India. Exposition. 1. In the beginning existed Time illimitable. Under this name the Zendavesta recognises the primitive unity, the source of being. Here appears already a difference between the Persian and Hindu doctrines. The former embrace God in his complete character, his character of infinitude; the latter, in order to de. fine God, consider only one aspect of infinitude, eter. nity or infinity in duration. This abstraction, with which the Persian conceptions begin, would of itself be enough to lead to the conjecture that they would exhibit a body of ideas less extensive than that which has proceeded from the doctrine of the Vedas; and this is, in fact, the case. PRIMORDIAL CONCEPTIONS. 85 2. The Eternal, or Time without bounds, first produced Ormuzd, the supremely pure and good be. ing. He is the Light, and the Creative Word. 3. Time without bounds produced also Ahriman, the Evil Being, the principle of Darkness. He is the essence hidden in crime, the author of discord and anarchy, the chief of those who have no chief: 4. According to ancient Persian traditions, collected by Sharistani, Ormuzd should be regarded as properly the spiritual principle, and Ahriman as the genius of matter, which is the shadow of spirits. 5. Dependant originally upon these two Drinc'ples, the creation contains in its bosom a radical hostility, a secessary strife, and the idea of conflict becomes the general formula of the universe. This conflict is represented in the physical world by the succes. sion of' day and night, which dispute the empire of Time. and alternately put each other to flight. 6. Ormuzd at first produced the V'ervers, the iiv. ing types of all things, then the Amschaspands and the Izeds, kings of good genii, who believe and adore. Ahriman, to resist these powers of light created by Ormuzd, produced the Dews, powers of darkness, evil and unbelieving genii, one of whose offices it is to utter the formula of skepticism, perhaps. 7. Thus the superhuman creation is twofold: it comprises two opposite worlds; and this hostility is introduced also into the inferior creation, the human or terrestrial world. Ormuzd had produced the germe of this inferior creation a germe which contained the principles of human, and also of animal and vegetable life. This creation in the germe is represented by a bull, the symbol of organic force. Ahriman, after having urged his efforts against heav. en, redescend(ed to the earth, and wounded the mys. tic bull; hut his fiuitful death hecame the source of 86 I'ERSIAN PHILOSOPHY. life. From the left shoulder issued his soul, the vital and conservative principle of all animals, and from his right shoulder proceeded the first man. His blood produced the clean animals, and the wholesome plants sprang from his body. To maintain the conflict in this sphere of creation, Ahriman formed immediately the unclean animals and noxious plants. It may be observed here that the mythus of the primitive bull envelops the philosophical conception cf the unity of the vital principle in all organized beings. 8. To the world of genii created by Ormuzd, Ahri. man had opposed the world of evil genii; to the animal and vegetable creation placed below man in the scale of being, he had opposed a creation of the same order, but corrupt and corrupting. Man, placed be. tween these two extremes, had alone escaped this an. tagonism of the creation. Ahrimnan had not been able to find any means of creating a bad man. 1te had no other resource but to slay him; and the primitive man, Kaiomorts, who was at once man and woman, fell beneath his blows. From his blood sprang, by means of transformations, Meschia and Meschianee, ancestors of the human race, who were soon se. duced by Ahriman, and became worshippers of the Dews, to whom they offered sacrifice. 9. From thenceforward a great conflict between Ormuzd and Ahriman has been maintained in the human race. Men pass their lives upon the earth under a twofold influence, from the good genii and from the Dews, which tends to sanctify or to defile their souls, and under a twofold contact, with pure and with impure material objects, which produces either purity or defilement of body. Hence the necessity of a double purification, spiritual and corpo PRIMORDIAL CONCEPTIONS. 87 real. This purification is wrought by prayers and rites taught by Ormuzd to Zoroaster. 10. The souls of men who follow Ahriman will go to dwell with the Dews in the abyss of darkness: those who hearken to Ormuzd will be united to him and to the good genii in light and blessedness. How. ever, in the end, Ahriman himself shall be purified, evil shall be subdued, the antagonism of creation shall disappear. Observations. Traditional doctrines are so blended in the Zend. avesta with philosophical conceptions, that it was impossible to sketch the principal points of this old philosophy without bringing into the exposition views which are evidently only fragments of an earlier tra. dition. In a philosophical point of view, the Persian con. ceptions present a striking contrast to those of the Hindus. In the philosophy of the Vedas, the unity of the creation is the predominating idea, and in cer. tain respects the exclusive idea. The presiding idea of the Zendavesta is not only the duplicity, but the antagonism of creation throughout every sphere of it. This antagonism does not, however, constitute du. alism in the sense in which it designates subsequent developments in the history of philosophy; dualism, that is, as maintaining two co-eternal, necessary, and uncreated principles. The principle of light and the principle of darkness in the Zendavesta both proceed from a primitive unity, Time without bounds. Unity appears at the origin of creation; it appears again at the final consummation, in the ultimate triumph of good. It should be observed, also, that the unity of the creation, broken by the hostility of Ormuzd and Ahri. 88 PERSIAN PI1ILOSOPHY. man, nevertheless reappears and prolongs itself in each of its two immense fractions. On the one hand, moral purity and corporeal purity; on the other, the defilement of the soul and the defilement of the body, are respectively identified so far that they are only two modes, two aspects of the corresponding good or evil principle: a conception which tends to bind closely the laws of what may be termed the organ, ism of the universe to the superior laws of the intel. lectual or moral world. The character of the dualism of the philosophy ot the Zendavesta depends upon the determination of the question whether Ahriman is born evil by nature, or became so by the abuse of liberty. The lat. ter supposition is the more probable. However, in the philosophical traditions of the Magi, to which we have before referred, and which probably contained a transformation of the doctrines of the Zendavesta, the principle of darkness, identified with matter, is represented as essentially evil; but, in order not to attribute the origin of evil to God, the same traditions maintain that the production of this principle was not contained in the primary will of the Creator, but that it was solely an inevitable consequence of the crea. tion of good beings, because darkness follows light as his shadow follows man. Under this figure was it intended to couch the profound meaning that, as every created being is necessarily imperfect, the creation necessarily contains two principles, the one limiting, the other limited, and that in this sense the Creator (the limiting being) is the principle or author of imperfection and evil? It is very doubtful: yet the Persian conception under conasideration bears some analogy to this idea. EGYPTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 89 Note. History is silent with regard to any philosophical development in Persia. Perhaps the doctrines connected with the worship of Mithra, the explanation of which is still the subject of so much controversy, are themselves an index of such development. Be this as it may, we shall see hereafter, in treating of the period of gnosticism, that it is impossible to suppose a total extinction of philosophical speculations in Persia during the period immediately preceding the Christian era. E G Y P T. Historical Notices. THERe are reasons for believing that the germes of Egyptian civilization and science were brought from Ethiopia, which country itself, on this supposi. tion, must have been peopled by one of the first migrations from the East. The Ethiopian city of Me. roe seems to have been, relative to Upper Egypt, the metropolis of a sacerdotal corporation, which gradu. ally extended a theocratic government to the mouths of the Nile. It boasted the possession of a high and antique philosophy, and regarded itself as in som& sort the eldest daughter of Intelligence. You areo nothing but children, it said to the Greeks; there is among you no wisdom grown gray through time. No work of Egyptian origin has been handed down to us imbodying the philosophical conceptions, by means of which the sacerdotal colleges connected and organized the different branches of their knowledge. But the Greek historians Herodotus and Di. odorus Siculus, as well as Plutarch, and the Alexan. 8 EGYPTIAN PHILOSOPHY. drian philosophers Iamblicus and Porphyry, furnish materials for this part of the history of philosophy. Their representations, however, are broken by many a chasm, and the allegorical veil which covers most of the Egyptian doctrines is, moreover, not always transparent. We shall indicate only some leading points, without deciding whether they belong precisely to the class of conceptions which we have desig. nated by the name of primordial philosophy. Exposition. 1. The Egyptian philosophy places before all things the God without a name. It is the primitive obscurity, the incomprehensible being, the hidden principle of everything that exists, the invisible source of all light and all life, who is above all intelligence. He is designated by the title of Piromis, man supereminently, perhaps to signify that he is the most excellent of the gods, as man is the most excellent of terrestrial beings. 2. He becomes the producer, the generator. I-His first emanation is Kneph; this is the efficient reas. son of things, the creator, the demiurgus. 3. The second emanation is Phta. It is the organizer of the world, the god of fire, the vital principle. 4. After Phta and before Osiris many interpreters of the Egyptian symbols interpose two or three other emanations, which, however, can be nothing but particular modifications of the foregoing principles. T'he notion which: they form of them seems to be neither very precise nor very Constant. 5. The primitive as well as the later emanations proceed in a certain conjunction or syzygy. Each of them has a companion, which is, as it were, its diminutive, and sometimes pssesses opposite attri. EXPOSITION. 91 outes. We shall inquire presently what is the phil. osophical idea of which the syzygy is the emblem. But as to what is the syzygy of Piromis, of Kneph, and of Phta, and what their characteristics, we are in both respects left in great uncertainty. 6. Another emanation makes a figure in this system, sometimes under the name of Butos, sometimes under that of Athyr: an emanation of darkness, which is identical with primitive matter, of which the first form was water. 7. What appears most clearly is, that all the primitive divine powers, in as far as they are incorporated in the universe, or, rather, radically constitute it, are represented by a double emanation, Osiris and Isis. Osiris is the luminous and active princi. ple in nature; Isis is the passive, dark, material prin. ciple. Osiris is clothed with a robe of light without mixture of colours. The robe of Isis, or matter, is tinged with all the various shades which are displayed in the universe. Isis reflects in its variety the one light of Osiris, as matter, the subject of variety, receives all the forms which the active principle impresses upon it. Osiris is the father of beings; Isis is the mother, and she has all the at. tributes of maternity. Everything that exists, everything that breathes, is the product of the marriage of Osiris and Isis, of the union of spirit and matter. They are identified, Osiris with the. sun, and Isis with the moon. The sun, the source of light, is also the principal agent in nature. The moon is opaque, and passive with respect to the sun, receiving from it light and heat. The harmonious influences of the sun and moon, which everywhere diffuse fertility and life, represent the eternally fruitful marriage of the active and the passive principles. 8. After Osiris and Isis come other subordinate 92 EGYPTIAN PHILOSOPHY. emanations, which correspond to the great phenom. ena of nature, resulting from the combination of the active and the passive principles. These emanations are nothing but the special causes of these phenomena. 9. Thus far we have seen only the development of the primitive principles of the creation, considered either as in the bosom of Piromis, the divine being, or as in the plastic force of nature. But in the creation there is a law of destruction; there is disorder in order, evil in the good, death in life. The principle of Evil is Typhon. His origin is very obscure. His mother, it would seem, is Athyr, which probably represents the dark chaos, the primordial state of the elements. Typhon tears his mother's side at the moment she is giving him birth-. He is cl6thed in the Egyptian symbolism with all the at. tributes of evil and disorderly force. He is united to Nephthys, perfection, consummate beauty; hence the mixture of good and evil, which is, as it were, the essence of the world. Observations. 1. The word emanation bears ordinarily, in philo, sophical language, a meaning exclusive of creation, properly speaking. Yet in explaining the Egyptian doctrine we have not used it strictly in that sense. We have made use of it because the idea of creation, in the proper sense of the word, does not appear in that doctrine. But fiom its not appearing, it should not be hastily concluded that it is formally excluded. It is probable that this old philosophy, in admitting a production of things, did not feel pressed by any of the questions which subsequently have been raised respecting the essential mode of that production. It neither denied nor affirmed anything upon this point, OBSERVATIONS. 93 at least it does not appear that it perceived Any of those questions. This observation, if we mistake not, may be extended to the primitive philosophy of many other nations. 2. The doctrine of divine emanations or genera. tions by syzygies, a doctrine which is equally met with in the mythi of India, may have had a double basis. It may have rested at first upon an induction of analogy drawn from terrestrial generations, which suppose the union of two beings. But it may, perhaps, have connected itself' with a still higher philo. sophical idea. The active principle and the passive principle constitute the great distinction which appears in nature. It is easy to conceive that the active principle, or spirit, comes from God, since it is of an essence analogous to the divine, which is activity, life itself. But how is it conceivable that matter, the passive principle, should likewise come from him, since he exhibits attributes so opposite? They may have been led, in resolving this question, to suppose in God something corresponding in some way to the functions of matter in nature, as the di. vine energies in God correspond to the functions of mind or of the created active principle; and, accordingly, the divine emanations are represented under the double form of active and passive. Note. It is possible that some of the points expounded above, instead of forming a part of the primitive doc. trines of Egypt, were, on the contrary, the last form which their doctrines received. But we know too little of their history to distinguish the phases of a philosophical development. The meditations of the priests of Thebes and Memphis lie buried beneath the ruins of their mysterious sanctuaries. Egypt, 94 CHALDEAN PHILOSOPHY. so mighty in tombs, has been itself the tomb of its own science. The recent discoveries as to the man. ner of deciphering the papyrus which these tombs have preserved during the ravages of forty centuries, has given birth to the hope of recovering some pre. cious relics of this fossil knowledge, and possibly, by combining the results of these discoveries with the records preserved by Greek writers, we may suc. ceed in reconstructing at least the mummy of this old science. C H A L D E A. Historical Notices. THERE existed in Chaldea a sacerdotal corporation, the depositary of science, like the Magi of Persia. A conflict arose between these two rival corporations, and, when Babylonia passed under the yoke of Persian dominion, the Magi oppressed the college of Chaldean priests, and probably attempted to destroy it. It survived, however, or, at least, relics of it sub. sisted a long time afterward, since we meet with them at the period of the conquests of Alexander. But these persecutions must have compelled the learn. ed order in Chaldea to cover their doctrines more and more with the veil of mystery, which explains the fact that such a feeble light respecting this phi. losophy has come down to us from antiquity. The little we know has come to us through the medium of foreign witnesses. If we except the firagment of Berosus, which contains features of an allegorical and mythical cosmogony, we are reduced to details of information very slight and few, scattered it' the writings of Greek historians and philosoDhers. EXPOSITION. 95 Exposition. God, the source of being; a primitive chaos, which was nothing but darkness and water; a humid mat. ter containing monstrous animals; nature in this ori. ginal state personified under the emblem of a wornm an named Ormorca; God appearing in the bosom of chaos, dividing the body of the primordial woman, or nature, in order to form out of one half heaven, and out of the other half earth; producing the light which destroys the monsters, children of chaos, then causing the disorder of the elements represented by these monsters to give place to order and regularity; and, finally, from his own blood and that of inferior deities mixed with earth, creating the souls of men and animals, which are thus of divine origin, while the celestial and terrestrial bodies are formed from the sub. stance of Omorca, or from the material substance; this whole assemblage of ideas, the basis of which is evidently in primitive tradition, bears no token of philosophical reflection. But in another relation the doctrines of the Chaldeans reveal. in the midst of the sac-erdotft.al or.n.era tion, a scientific direction which was peculiar to it. The observation of astronomical facts was connected in their minds with a theoretical idea, according to which the events of the lower or human world depended upon the motions of the superior or celestial world. Observations. 1. The astrological philosophy of the Chaldeans is in contrast with the doctrines both of India and Persia. Brahminism, preoccupied almost exclusive. ly with the idea of the infinite, fell into idealism. Persian Magisin divided its meditations between the 96 CHALDEAN PHILOSOPHY. spiritual and the material world. The Chaldeans gave themselves up, above all, to the study of the ma. terial part of creation, and particularly to the phenomena of the heavens. In the two other philoso. phies spirit was conceived as predominant over matter; an inverse predominance is perceptible in the Chaldee philosophy, which in this respect contained the elements of fatalism and materialism. T.h. concurrence of h.um..an destiny with the side. real revolutions was conceived firom that period, as a passage in Plato seems to indicate, under the notion of the universal harmony of creation. The Hin. du philosophy regarded the universe as an immense spectacle which God represents to himself; the an. cient Persian philosophy conceived it under the no. tion of a grand conflict; Chaldean philosophy view. ed it as an immutable harmony. Note. There were in Chaldea various sects and schools, of which Strabo and Pliny make mention. There was also a conflict of doctrines, and, consequently, to some extent, a philosophical movement. But history has not preserved the records which would determine its nature and direction. This loss is the more ta be regretted, since a comparison of the physical phi. losophy of Chaldea with the metaphysics of India might enable us to pursue, at a very remote perio4 and among two learned nations, parallel develop. ments of idealism and empiricism. FPHENICIAN PHILOSOPHY. 97 P H CE N I C I A. THE cosmogony attributed by Philo to Sanchoniathon, a Phoenician writer, who flourished prior to the Trojan war, presents the draught of an explanation of the universe by material causes, in which, however, may be detected some traces of a coarse spiritualism. If we rely upon some indications furnished by Greek writers, Phcenicia was not entirely a stranger to philosophical systems analogous to some of those which were subsequently developed in Greece. They speak of the PhmEnician Moschus as the inventor of the doctrine which explains the format;n nf t.he universe by the combination of atoms. It is probably the first attempt at a material cosmology which was produced in Western Asia; at least we know of none more ancient. This tendency was favoured by the peculiar genius of the Phwenicians, an industrious and commercial people, where mental activity was particularly confined within the cir. cle of material things. is GREEK PHILOSOPHY. SECOND PERIOD. GRE EK PH IL O S OPI-IY. PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS. GRrErK ci vilization had its origin in the East, from whence it spread into Greece by three different chan. nels, at tile north, the south, and the east. Three names appear prominent in the origin of this civilization: Orpheus, from Thrace, Pheroneus, firom Egypt, and Cadmus, from Phoenicia. At that re, mote antiquity, religious doctrines, institutions, laws, and the arts were so closely united that it would be absurd to suppose the colonies that came to Greece from those different countries would bring with them each respectively only a single one of these elements of civilization. It may, however, with some reason, be thought that the dogmatic and- moral ele. ment, united with the arts, was particularly develo oped under what has been termed the Orphic rule; that the political element, including prescriptions civil with respect to their object, but religious as to their formls, predominated in the Egyptian influence; and that the industrious element occupied the chief place among the influences derived from Phoenicia. The blending of these three elements contributed to form the peculiar character of the Greek genius, while; i'vloc. i Tx m1 xFD whether for good or for evil, upon the institutions which took the place of the Oriental castes. Greek doctrines, in the point of view under which they are here to be considered, belong to two periods very distinct. The first is anterior to what may be properly called philosophical investigations, the sec. ond commences with those investigations. The first PRELIMINARY OBSERVAI IONS. 99 of these two periods itself presents two successive and opposite phases. At first we see theological doctrines evidently Oriental both in their substance and form. They bear no mark of the Greek genius; they are not yet wrought over by the Grecian mind; they influence it without being in turn influenced by it. These doctrines are principally represented in history by the name of Orpheus.'IThen, after a struggle between the military and the sacerdotal power, in which the latter lost a great share of its influence, a civil system of morals distinct from theology became established. This new phasis is specially represented by the philosophical heptad commonly known by the name of the Seven Wise Men of Greece. Something analogous is seen in the history of other nations, particularly in. China; but in these cases the development of a system of ethics merely human and disconnected with theology, comes only in the sequel of philosophical controversies, by which men's minds are detached from their religious creeds. In Greece, however, there was no such in. termediate stage; the transition firom the theological to the opposite state was by a violent and rapid reaction. Most of the seven sages, Solon, Chilon, Pittacus, Bias, Cleobulus, Periander, were merely moralists or legislators; they had nothing to do with scientific speculations. The first school was fbunded by Thales in Ionia, while about the same time the Italic school was founded by Pythagoras in Grla. cia Magna. Here begins the second period, the peo riod of philosophical investigations. The Greek colonies of Asia Minor and of Italy, connected by position, the former with Phoenicia and Ckaldea, the latter with Egypt, were the double era. die of Hellenic philosophy. In this respect thxey were in advance of Greece proper. We m.g'a. say 100 GREEK PHILOSOPHY. that, before throwing itself into the country which was destined to become the theatre of its great conflicts, philosophy took its position around it, and made, as it were, preparatory attempts at conquest. But the two tendencies remarked in the former period were reproduced in this. The Italic school continued under new forms the theological and metaphysical speculations of the East; the Ionic school separated philosophy much more fiom the traditional science preserved in the sanctuaries. Greek philosophy, taken as a whole, divides itself into two principal evolutions. The first extends from Thales to Socrates, the second from Socrates to Sextus Empiricus. FIRST EVOLUTION. THIS comprises: 1. The Ionic and Italic schools, 2. The two Eleatic schools, with the systems of Heraclitus and Empedocles; 3. The school of the Soph. ists. IONIC SCHOOL. Historical Notices. THALES of Miletus, whose family, according to an. cient testimonies, was of Phcenician origin, was born about six centuries before the Christian era. He sojourned some time in Egypt, in the reign of Amasis, for the purpose of becoming initiated into the science of which the priests of Thebes and Memphis were the depositaries, and probably also visited Phoenicia, closely connected as it was with Chaldea, which was then another centre of sacerdotal science. He became the founder of the Ionic school. The representatives of that school after him were suc-. cessively, Anaximander, Anaximenes, and Anaxago. IONIC SCHOOL. 101 ras. We do not speak of Pherecydes of Syros, of whose views much less is known than of those of the other lonians, though they seem to have been analogous on some points to those of Anaximenes his con. temporary, on others to those of Thales. Exposition. The general character of this school consists in this, that in explaining the origin of things, it follows the method of induction, that Is, attempts to conclude, from the observation of phenomena which fall within the circle of human observation, the principles and laws of the primitive formation of the universe. But this common method conducted the principal masters of this school to results -in many respects different. As to the rest, in speaking of the method of the lo. nians, we do not mean to say that they adopted it after having investigated and explained the grounds and validity of the method itself; for no trace of such an investigation is to be found. We mean only to say that the Ionic school made use of this method in a sort of instinctive way, and that its philosophical pro. cedure may, in a general sense, be characterized as inductive. Observation led Thales to suppose the existence of two principles. In the sphere of experience, no production takes place without a pre-existing matter. According to his manner of proceeding, the chief of the Ionic school, generalizing this observation, was led to infer that the formation of the universe presupposed a primary uncreated matter; for the proper notion of the creation of matter itself is not sug. gested to the human mind by pure experience. This primitive matter being destined to receive successive. ly all the forms which constitute the different beings, is represented as originally destitute of any fixed or i02 GREEK PHILOSOPHY. constant formr, and therefore in a state of fluidity, This seems to be the meaning of the maxim of Tha. les, that water is the elementary principle of things. This idea, to which his philosophical method very naturally led, may also have been furnished by the Phoenician cosmology, according to which the universe was primitively in the state of an aqueous sub. stance. But, on the other hand, an induction founded upon what passes in the sphere of human experience led him also to recognise, that wherever we perceive or., der, motion, life, there must be an intelligent and active principle, which is revealed by these phenomena. Thales consequently asserts, in addition to. matter, a principle essentially different, an intelligence, a soul, which, operating upon matter or tile primitive water, impressed upon it forms, gave it laws, from whence resulted the universe. Cicero has given a summary of the doctrine of Thales in the following terms: i' Thales of Miletus, the first who engaged in these inquiries, says that water is the original of things, and that God is that intelligence who from water fbrmed all beings." The dualism which forms the foundation of the cosmological philosophy of Thales differs from the Persian dualism, in which the two principles are rep. resented in a state of hostility and conflict. In the system of Thales, far from being reciprocally repugnant, they are mutually dependant. Without the in. telligent principle matter would forever have remain. ed destitute of form, and without matter, intelligence, the principle of forms, must have necessarily remained inactive for want of an object upon which to exert its activity. If the philosophy of the Ionic school had been unfolded from the conception of Thales as from its germe, the labours of his disciples would IONIC SCHOOL. 103 have been directed to a parallel development of the two elements of that conception, the notion of God and the notion of matter. But the case was other. wise; the germe was broken by his disciple Anaxi. mandrer. He laid aside the notion of God, at least as needless for a philosophical explanation of the world, and.thus entered upon the path of a purely material cosmology. He separated from his master also in another respect.'hales had admitted fluid matter, under the name of water, as the physical principle of things. But that conception still supposed in the principle some general form. Anaximander sought for a more abstract notion, and for the elementary water of Thales substituted something absolutely in. determinate, which he designated by the name of infinity, which, perhaps, was in his mind nothing but space without bounds. But, this indeterminate principle being admitted, how shall the production of form be accounted for? What reply he would make to this fundamental question, we do not know enough of the philosophy of Anaximander to enable us to decide. It was probably with a view of escaping this difficulty that his successor Anaximenes had recourse again to the notion of a general form as the attribute of the physical principle of things, which principle he made to be air; a principle more physical, that is, less abstract, than that of Anaximander, and, at the same time, a fluid more subtile, more refined than that which Thales had adopted as the image under which he designated primitive matter. It vwas an intermediate conception between that of Thales and that of Allaximander. But it still ever remained to be explained how, from'the abyss of this homogene. ous mass, the forms which constitutf particular be. ings could spring. 104 GREEK PHILOSOIPHY. The material cosmology of Anaximander and of Anaximenes fell at the first step into great embarrassment, whether it attempted to conceive the first physical principle without any determinate form, or whether it attempted to attribute to it a form that should not be merely arbitrary. To get clear of these inextricable difficulties, Anaxagoras, the philosopher of Clazomene, brought back the primitive conception of Thales, matter as the subject of forms, and inteiligence the active principle of forms. The union of these two principles was in his view the first principle of the universe. Anaxagoras developed the idea of God. He dis. tinguished, much more clearly than the founder of the Ionic school had done, the idea of matter from the idea of God, holding the latter to be a substance absolutely simple and pure. Denying to matter any internal energy, he conceived the spiritual substance as vie necessary principle of all motion, all activity. His attempts to determine the proper characteristics of tne divine essence, and to demonstrate the philosophical necessity of theology, have led most of the ancient writers to say that Anaxagoras was the first who rested philosophy upon this basis. By attend. ing to the manner of their testimony, it may be rec. onciled with other passages, particularly of Cicero, which seem to allow this honour to Thales. The latter had indicated, though in a manner very con. fiused, the idea which Anaxagoras developed, and of which he undertook a strict demonstration. In like manner, in modern times, the astronomical system which holds the revolution of the earth around the sue has received the name of Copernican, although this system had been already maintained, during the first half of thl fifteenth century, by Cardinal Cusa, a Pythagorean philosopher. IONIC SCHOOL. 105 Anaxagoras developed also the notion of the physical principle or the primitive matter. His prede. cessors had considered it as essentially extended and, of' course, divisible. Setting out with the idea that it was compounded, he inquired what were its comlponents, and thus arrived at the notion of prirni. tive elements, which he designated by the name of homeeomeriee, or similar parts. This term did not signify that those elements were similar to each oth. er; on the contrary, he supposed them to possess different qualities, but similar to the qualities which our senses discover in the different sorts of bodies. We have already noticed this conception in the phi. Iosophy of Kanada. All phenomena, according to the system of Anaxagoras, result: from the combination, in different degrees and in various proportions, of these elementary properties. Observations. In order to sum up these sketches of the Ionic school, we observe: 1. That this philosophy, regarded in its predomi. nant character, was a physiology, a philosophy of' na. ture; it was occupied with the universe in a physical and not in a moral point of view. 2. In comparing the doctrine of Anaxagoras with the ideas first sketched by Thales, we trace a philo. sophical progress in regard to the conception of God. 3. There was also progress in the conception of matter, since Anaxagoras explored this idea more profoundly than his predecessors, whatever, as to the rest, be the value of his hypothesis. 4. Although the explanations of the different phys. ical phenomena which the Ionic philosophers ima. gined have been exploded, most of them, at least, by subsequent science, yet this school tended to- causti9 106 GREEK PIIILOSOPHY. tute the unity of science by seeking to connect the explanation of particular facts with some notion of the general laws of the universe. ITALIC SCHIOOL. Historical Notices. WHILE the Ionian school was pursuing its labours, Pythagoras, born at Samos, in the last hal.f a,' ti sixth century before Christ, commenced, in that part of Southern Italy settled by Greek colonies, and known as Grtecia Magna, a new philosophical move.ment. Antiquity speaks of his travels in Egypt and in Babylonia; and, according to the common opin. ion, he penetrated also as far as India. He is represented in history in a threefold charac. ter: first, as a philosopher; secondly, as the founder of a philosophical institute or corporation, a typical society, after the pattern of which other societies ought to be formed; and, lastly, as a legislator. We have to do with him only in the first relation. The greatest obscurity envelops the doctrines of Pythagoras. Its records are defective; many portions of his doctrine are presented only under the veil of symbols; and the mathematical language which he adopted as the general language of philosophy, requires very often fobr our comprehension a lexicon which he did nut leave us. We shall ab. stain from entering into some parts of his doctrine, the interpretation of which is still a matter of con, troversy. Such, in particular, is his theory of num. bers, which, to be made intelligible even to the ex. tent of which it is susceptible, would require a special dissertation. All we shall say of his philosophy will be limited to some fundamental points, which will bring 6-t the contrast between the Ionian and Italic pireogoiohies in respect to their bases. ITALIC SCHOOL. 107 Exposition. Pythagoras took a point of departure opposite to that of the school of Thales, and followed a method the inverse of the empirical process of the Ionians.'fThe latter set out from facts, and endeavoured by generalization to arrive at their principles. Their logical process was that of induction. Pythagoras set out with the most general ideas, and proceeded by the method of deduction. The principle of things with him is absolute unity, which comprehenc.8 everything. He designates this by the name of Monad,-synonymous with the origina. ting being or God. The Monad includes spirit and matter, but without separation, without division. They are confounded together in it in absolute unity of substance. From unity proceeds multiplicity, and this multi. plicity is the universe, wherein that which exists in God in the state of unity is produced in the state of separation and multiplicity. Matter, in becoming detached from God, becomes the Dyad, the principle of the indefinite, of darkness, of ignorance, of instability, motion, change, of ine. quality, of discord, and, in general, of all imperfec. tion. Spiritual beings having emanated from God, and becoming enveloped in the Dyad, fall thereby into a state of imperfection, instability, and division. As the name Monad, although it expresses at once spirit and matter as held in absolute unity, is more particularly employed to designate the chief attribute of God, to wit, spirit; so the name Dyad, which be longs to the entire spiritual and corporeal world, con. sidered as imperfect, is particularly employed to designate matter, as beinD, the principle of imperfection, 108 GREEK PHIL.DSOHY, and, therefore, the chief element in the very notion itself of anything imperfect. The progress of creation has for its object the gradual enlargement of spirits from the bonds of the Dyad. The intelligence and will should therefore strive against the empire which the Dyad exercises over them. The Intelligence is implicated in the Dyad, inasmuch as it receives the images of the multiple, the mutable, the transient. Everything which is transient, mutable, and multiple, is not, as such, a real being, but a false, an illusory existence; this is very much like the Maia of the Hindus; and, indeed, this name has been applied by Nicomedes, a Pytha gorean. The Intelligence can therefore be liberated from the bonds of the Dyad only by breaking away from the false science of the variable in order to attain the knowledge of the true, of being invariable. In attaining this science there are different de. grees. Mathematics- which includes arithmetic; music, as founded upon the harmony of numbers; plane and spherical geometry-is the first degree, because it is, in a sort, intermediate between the variable and the invariable, since it regards immutable'relations under material forms. The mathematical language is therefore necessarily the lan. guage of initiation into science. Advancing in science, the initiated learns more and more to consider things so far as they are one, to reduce multiplicity to unity. The conception of this absolute unity is the high. est summit of science. Arrived at this point, the mind is freed from the bonds of the Dyad. The Will is involved in the Dyad by our love for particular and mutable good things, which, as partic. tlar and mutable, are only illusive good thnllgs. ITALIC SCHOOL. 109 The Will ought to strive to free itself from this false love, just as the Intelligence should strive to free itself from the false science of the multiple and mutable. From hence the general necessity of fasting and abstinence, that is, of a regimen by which the soul mortifies the senses in order to restrict their domin. ion. Upon these principles respecting the Intelligence and the Will rest all science and all morals. True politics should propose as its object the real. ization of thP-e principles in c.i. t y;- c.. r. -, — —? ing to Pythagoras, a community of goods, under the administration of a chief who shall distribute to eve. ry one according to his needs, ought to be the basis of civil society, because it reduces to unity the pos. session of the multifarious goods which are the source of discord among men. But souls are enslaved to the Dyad by bonds too strict, too strong, and too numerous for deliverance to be attained at one stroke. Consequently, the necessity of successive transformations or metempsy. chosis. Souls, which by a bad use of their liberty have plunged into false science and false love, descend by transformation into bodies more gross than they at first inhabited. Enlightened and virtuous souls as. cend and are clothed with bodies more pure, more free from the Dyad. The complete salvation of the soul is its transformation into God. Delivered from the multiple and va. riable, it is absorbed into the absolute unity. Such are the fundamental points of the Pythagorean philosophy. It is needless to remark its analo. gies with the Hindu systems. The germes of pantheism which this philosophy 110 GREEK PHILOSOPHY. contains must needs have received development, and, in fact, were developed, if the writings which bear the name of Timmus of Locrum and of Ocellus Lu. canus are really productions of the Pythagorean school. Timreus, in the work on the Soul of the World which is attributed to him, regards the universe at bottom only as one single being, an immense intelligent animal, of which God is the soul, and matter the organism. Under this view his system adheres to dualism, but it is not a dualism which admits two hostile principles; it is not even the dualism of Tha. les and Anaxagoras, which supposes two reciprocal. ly dependant principles; it is a dualism which considers mind and matter as the inseparable elements of one infinite individuality, and reduces them thus to unity, the grounding idea of the Pythagorean phi. losophy. Pantheistic conceptions are produced with a char. acter more strictly determined in the book which bears the name of Ocellus Lucanus. The universe is there represented as one sole being, uncreated, immutable, imperishable, under forms s-ubject to change by death and by perpetual renovations. Observations. Notwithstanding the errors combined in the Pyth. agorean system, it was in other lrespectsao al p' osophical progress. The Ionian school had constructed only a physical philosophy: the philosophy of the Italic school embraced the moral world. It shed light upon the necessity of referring the origin of things to a principle of unity in order even to constitute any unity for science. It began the distinction between sensations which ELEATIC SCHOOLS. 111 relate to the mutable order of things, and ideas which relate to immutable objects. It established the subordination of the senses to the mind. Observations on tie Ionian and Italic schools. A century had hardly passed away from the time Greece had begun to philosophize, and we have seen two, or, less expressly, three general systems of error already produced, dualism, atheism, and pantheism; erroneous systems which are the root of all other er. rors. Dualism shows itself in the philosophy of Thales and Anaxagoras. The germe of atheism was contained in that of Anaximander and Anaximenes. Pantheism was born in the Pythagorean school. Under another point of view: the method follow. ed by the Ionian school, at least down to the time of Anaxagoras, the method of taking sensation as the starting point, must needs conduct, in proportion as this principle of sensualism should be developed, to the denial of the spiritual world. On the other hand, the Pythagorean philosophy, which considered sen. sations as illusive, laid the foundation of idealism, and must logically go on to the denial of the material world. We shall proceed to notice, in the period which followed, how this twofold development actual. ly took place. ELEATIC SCHOOLS. THE city of Elea, situated in Grmcia Magna, gave its name to two new schools. The one continued in certain respects the philosophical progress commenced by the Pythagoreans, and was called the metaphysical school. The other, which was of a later 112 GREEK PHILOSOPHY. date, and to which the name of physical school has been given, carried forward the philosophical move. ment of the Ionian school. ELEATIC METAPHYSICAL SCHOOL. Historical NHotices. THIS school has three principal representatives: Xenophanes, Parmenides, and Zeno. Xenophanes, the founder of it, was born at Colo. phon. The date of his birth is uncertain. He seems to have flourished about the middle of the sixth cen. tury B.C. The city of Elea was the theatre of his teaching. He lived nearly a hundred years. According to Diogenes Laertius, he devoted himself in his youth to the study of the Pythagorean philosophy. HIis most celebrated work is one entitled, On Nature. Parmenides, originally of Elea, was his disciple. He renounced the splendour in which his wealth would have enabled him to live, in order to give himself up in retirement and stillness to the study of philosophy. Like Xenophanes his master, he wrote of his doctrine in verse. The ancients have preserved some few fragments of these verses. Plato gave the name of Parmenides to the one of his own dialogues which contains the most metaphysical part of his phi. losophy. Zeno, born also at F1ea, was the disciple of Parmenides, who adopted him for his son. He acquired a great reputation by his writings, none of which have come down to us. Implicated in a political conspiracy, he was put to the torture, in the midst of which he showed a strength of mind seldom dis. played. ELEATIC METAPHYSICAL SCHOOL. 113 Exiposition. The Pythagorean philosophy had maintained that everything is contained in the infinite unity, and that everything was produced by it. Xenophanes inquired if the production was possible, and denied the possibility. If anything has been made, said he, it has been made out of that which was, or out of that which was not. Out of that which was not is im. possible; for out of nothing, nothing can come. Out of that which was, impossible still; for since it al. ready was, it could not have been made. Setting out from the impossibility of any production whatever, he admits, in consequence, but one sole being, eternal, infinite, immutable. Perhaps Xenophanes acknowledged still the real. ity of finite beings as simple modifications or forms of the infinite being. But Parmenides, strictly consistent with the principle of absolute unity laid down by his master, denied even the reality of these forms. He held that the one Being must be in everything like himself, and, consequently, could not exist under different modifications. Hence all rlval distinction vanishes into the sole notion of pure and absolute unity. Melissus, his disciple, commented upon these views. Parmenides endeavoured also to connect his on. tological with a psychological theory. Adopting the Pythagorean distinction respecting ideas which come by the senses and the ideas of pure reason, he main. tained that the former, corresponding to something essentially variable, could not be the basis of an absolute affirmation; and that this basis could be found only in the conceptions of the reason, which, accord. ing to him, were red~ucible in the last analysis to the simple idea of unity. 114 GREEK PHILOSOPHY. Zeno presented the doctrine of this school under the critical and polemic form. He reviewed the ideas which are derived from the general idea of the finite, and set himself to prove that they are all contradictory, even to the notion itself which radically contains them. Led by the character of his mind, which inclined to argumentation, he investigated the laws which should govern this intellectual combat, and composed a logic. Observations. The labours of the Eleatic pantheists contributed to that progress of philosophy which results from the regular development even of error. For error can, not be developed except in virtue of certain logical laws, which are themselves truths. In proportion as the connexion which exists between the starting point and ultimate limit to which it conducts, between the principle and its last consequences, is made the more clearly manifest, the more decidedly is the de. structive nature of error exposed; and it is of the essential character of false principles that every step of their progress turns against themselves, while their full eveioprmeii is Lit1U11 UUdil. The primitive doctrines of the Italic school, while they retained the notion of a creation or production of things, had held it vaguely, or, rather, they represented the production of things under the idea of an emanation from the Divine substance. The Eleatics proved very easily that, as in the system of ema. nation, what appeared to begin to exist already before existed, the production could be only apparent. They proved also, in the next place, that if there wvas no real production, all distinct individual existence is also nothing but a mere phenomenon. Thus the doctri.e Af cmanatluol was conceived as containing, ELEATIC PHYSICAL SCHOOL. 115 and in fact did contain, the germe of the most complete pantheism. Their labours also gave prominence to a truth, which has been confirmed by all subsequent philo. sophical experience, namely, that, as soon as the existence of finite realities is called in question, it is impossible to demonstrate it by starting from the notion of the infinite. From whence it follows that, under peril of regarding the universe as a pure illusion, its existence must be admitted as one of the first truths, which the human mind believes of neces. sity, without any previous demonstration. ELEATIC PHYSICAL SCHOOL. The philosophical doctrine propounded by Xerl. ophanes and developed by his disciples, resulting as it did in the denial of the real existence of finite beings or of the universe, was a violent shock to convictions inherent in human nature. A reaction in a contrary direction was inevitable. It took place in the so-called Physical School. The two principal representatives of this school were Leu. cippus, and Democritus of Abdera. Historical Notices. Leucippus, who belongs to the beginning of the fifth century B.C., was born, according to some, at Elea; according to others, at Abdera. Zeno, whose doctrines he abandoned, was his master. He committed his own speculations to a work entitled Treatise of Physics, and to another On the Soul, both of which are lost. Democritus of Abdera, born about 480 B.C., was the disciple of Leucippus. He visited Egypt, Ethi. opia, Persia, and was even in relations, it is said, 116 GREEK PHILOSOPHY. with the Gymnosophists of India. We have no au. thentic work of his, although he wrote much. He lived nearly a hundred years. Exposition. The metaphysical school of Elea came to deny the existence of the world only by repudiating the testimony of the senses as illusory. The reaction which arose against it started from the opposite ex. treme: the physical school took sensation for its starting-point, joining with it induction, as the lonians had done; an induction, however, confined within the sphere of the sensible world. Thales and Anaxagoras had made use of induction to arrive at the existence of a Supreme Intelligence distinct from matter. But the Eleatic physicians employed the process only to arrive at the material principles of things. While separating fundamentally from the metaphysical school, Leucippus and Democritus agreed with it in the principle that all production is only ap. parent; that it is nothing, and can be nothing but the manifestation of something which previously had ex. istence. From this principle applied to the material world, which, in the view of this sensual philosophy, embra. ced all reality, it evidently resulted that all the phe. nomena of generation and dissolution presented in the world are only transformations of matter, and hence that all philosophy ought to limit itself to investigating the principle of these transformations. But here two roads were open to them, two hypotheses were possible. They could suppose the existence of one sole prin. ciple, one indeterminate material substance, endowed with an internal energy, in virtue of which it ELEATIC PHYSICAL SCIHOOL. 117 might produce all these transformations by perpetual self.modification. In this case they would arrive at a dynamic conception of the universe. Or they could suppose a plurality of material prin. ciples, the various aggregations of which, determined by the laws of motion alone, would produce the various phenomena; in other words, they might rest in a mechanical conception of the universe. The Eleatic physicians rejected the first of these conceptions. In the first place, to admit a sole and single material principle would have been to refer the origin of things, like the metaphysicians, to an eternal unity, which would imply at bottom some. thing distinct from matter, which does not present itself to the human mind except under the conditions of multiplicity. In the second, if they had represent ed this material principle as destitute of definite forms, it would have been difficult to account for the origin of forms. If, on the other hand, they had clothed it with a determinate form, it would have been equally difficult to explain why they should attribute to it one form rather than another. In a word, they would have fallen into the same difficulties that had already perplexed the physicians of the Ionian school. Rejecting, therefore, the conception of absolute anity, Leucippus and Democritus maintained a plucality of material principles, a plurality even to an in. definite number, because, once set free from the idea of unity, there was no reason for stopping at any particular determinate number. Hence the celebrated hypothesis of atoms as the constituent principles of the universe. These atoms were supposed innumerable, with an infinite variety of forms. By this means they be. lieved they could explain the prodigious and perpetu. at variety of secondary forms which resulted from their union or their separation. 118 GREEK PHILOSOPHY. The atoms were supposed to be endowed with the faculty of motion inherent in their essence, in virtue of which they united or separated: hereby they explained the formation and dissolution of bodies. Finally, they supposed the atoms to exist in a void abyss or space without bounds, whereby they ex. plained the possibility of motion. Leucippus and Democritus thus arrived at a conception of the universe the very opposite of that of Parmenides and Xenophanes. For infinite unity they substituted infinite plurality. We limit ourselves to remarking this result, without giving account of the slighter shades by which the fundamental hypothesis of atoms invented by Leucippus was modi. fied by Democritus. We shall see hereafter how this hypothesis was developed by Epicurus. Although Democritus added nothing considerable in this respect to the philosophy of his master, he endeavoured in other respects to strengthen and ex. tend it. He made first an attempt at a sensua. psychology, in accordance with his system of the universe. Sensations, according to him, are a sort ot images, which, detaching themselves from bodies, enter into. contact with the organization of man. Thus the mind is produced within from without; it is the result of the aggregate of images, just as the body is the result of an aggregate of atoms. The soul is a multiplex effect, and not a principle substantially one. He commenced also the application of the mate. rial philosophy to morals. If there are nothing but sensations in man, and nothing but atoms in the uni. verse, it is impossible to conceive the absolute idea of right and wrong. Morality can be nothing but a calculation of enjoyments, just as the souil is a cornm bination of sensations, just as the universe is a combination of atoms. This consequence appears to have been formally admitted by Democritus. OBSERVATIONS ON THE ELEATIC -l'IOOLS. 119 Metrodorus of Chios, a disciple of Democritus, pro. fessed skepticism, of which he presented the follow. ing formula: I do not even know that I know no. thing. Observations. The speculations of the Eleatic physical philoso. phers had the effect of evolving one great truth, namely, that it is impossible, if we confine ourselves to the material world, to find a principle of unity, and that induction can never produce -he notion of pure infinity. And this itself is a philosophical progress; for the characteristics, as well as the intimate essence of the materialist philosophy, became more manifest; and, we repeat, truth gains in proportion as the grounds of error are unfolded. As to the rest, by directing attention to the observation of phenomena, they represented one half of human reason, and supplied a counterbalance to ide alism. Observations on the two Eleatic schools, metaphysical and physical. The labours of these schools terminated in two results, the one positive, the other negative. In the first place, they exhibit a triple parallel development. Xenophanes and Leucippus devoted their attention to things in themselves, the one from the spiritualist point of view, the other from the ma. terialist. Parmenides and Democritus added to this philosophy of things (ontology) a theory respecting the ideas which represent things in the human mind (psychology), which was a theory of pure idealism on the part of Parmenides, of pure sensualism on the part of Democritus. Finally, Zeno, and probably -Metrodorus of Chios, studied the laws according to 120 GREEK PHILOSOPHY. which ideas are combined (logic). Ontology, psy. chology, and logic go together to constitute the sys. tematic whole of philosophy. This progress was necessary. For philosophy which is the universal science, aims continually, likq all the special sciences, to organize itself under alb its forms and to unite all its forces. It was natural, also, that the progress should proceed in the order in which it is represented. Eager to solve the great problem of the universe, the mind of man must needs first soar away into the regions of ontology, befbre falling back into itself to examine the instruments of knowledge, the cognitive faculties; and psychology, in its turn, naturally preceded logic, which is in some respects only the legislation of the intelligence. To this positive result there was added a negative result. Each of these schools sought for the solution of a problem which was insolvable in the shape in which it was propounded. The metaphysical school de. manded of its adversaries that, in setting out from rational conceptions alone, they should demonstrate the existence of the finite, or of the variable order of things. Now rational conceptions correspond to something invariable and absolute, and, of course, al, the consequences that can be deduced from them partake of the same character, and can never result in.the term sought for, which, as it is variable and rel*ative, has precisely the opposite character. On the other hand, the physical school proposed the same difficulty, only in the inverse sense; they required that, taking as the starting-point sensations alone, which relate to the contingent and variable, we should bring cjt a demonstration of the absolute and invariable order of things. It was on this con. dition only that it consented to recognise the exist. OBSERVATIONS ON THE ELEATIC SCHOOLS. 121 ence of anything absolute and invariable, and they safely defied their opponents to fulfil this condition. The insolvable objections which these two schools, between whom the empire of philosophy was divided, mutually threw back upon each other, had necessarily the effect of impairing the authority of the spec. ulative intellect. For the blows which each of them directed against one half of the human mind, fell upon the other half. In fact, both ideas and sensations have for their common support, in the last analysis, natu. ral convictions, which rest upon no previous demon. stration. If all ideas must be demonstrated, there must be an infinite series of demonstrations, and so no demonstration is possible..If, on the contrary, all demonstrations have for their basis an order of ideas indemonstrable, the human mind adheres to those primary ideas only by a simple and invincible belief. By requiring that the physical school should base its belief in sensations upon demonstration, and by rejecting on this point the convictions inherent in human nature, the metaphysicians thereby assaulted the very foundations of their own philosophy, since they themselves were obliged for their own systems to rest upon primary indemonstrable ideas, which they could no otherwise have than by falling back ul. timately upon pure belief. The physical philosophers, who admitted simple faith or necessary c(on-. viction as the ultimate ground of sensations, but re. jected it in regard to pure ideas, feil into the same inconsistency; and thus both schools, intent only on combating the doctrines peculiar to their adversaries, undermined the common foundation of all philosophy. 10 1 22 GREEK PHILO-.OPHY. INTERMEDIATE SCHOOL. Historical Notices. WHILE the two Eleatic schools were forming, an. other philosophical tendency began to show itself, represented at first by Heraclitus, and afterward by Empedocles. The former, born at Ephesus, had been connected with the physical school of Ionia; subsequently he attended the lectures of the founder of the metaphysical school of Elea, about the end of the fifth century B.C. Empedocles flourished at a later period, about 430 B.C. This philosopher, ori. ginally of Agrigentum, appears, like Heraclitus, to have studied philosophy under different masters, both physical and metaphysical. Exposition. The ideas of IHeraclitus and Empedocles, so far as they were in common, belong to a philosophy which is neither idealist, like that of Xenophanes and Par. menides, nor sensualist, like that of Leucippus. On the one hand, they attempted to construct a system of physics, and maintained fire to be the principle of all material phenomena. This principle act. ed in the production of phenomena according to two fundamental laws, the laws of love and hatred, con. cord and discord, or, to use the language of modern science, attraction and repulsion. Each _of these philosophers combined, with these general ideas, con. ceptions peculiar to themselves. But both of them, in the respect that they attempted a physical explanation of things, agreed with the physical schools of lonia and of Elea. But they separated from them, particularly from the Eleatic, in another point of view for above the HERACLITUS AND EMPEDOCLES. 123 physical world they acknowledged a spiritual and intellectual world; they distinguished ideas from sensations; they recognised God. In this part of their doctrine they fall in with the doctrine of Pythagoras, and with the spiritualism of the metaphysical school of Elea, without, however, adopting the idealism of the latter. The philosophy of Heraclitus is entitled to a particular remark. The inconsistency and opposition of the philosophical theories maintained by his pred. ecessors and by his contemporaries, had thrown his mind into a state of skepticism. He appears to have got free of it by establishing the basis of philosophy in common reason. Th'is seems to be the purport of the fragments of his writings preserved by Sextus Empiricus. "Universal and divine reason, accord. ing to him, is the criterion of truth. That which is universally believed is certain; for it is borrowed from that common reason which is universal and divine; and, on the contrary, every individual opinion is destitute of certainty.... Such being the character of reason, man remains in ignorance so long as he is deprived of the commerce of language; it is by means of this alone that he begins to know. Com. mon reason, therefore, rightly claims deterence. Now this common reason being nothing but the pic. ture of the order of the universe, whenever we derive anything from it, we possess the truth; and when we interrog(ate only our own individual understanding, we fall into error." (Sextus Empiricus, adv. Logic., 1. 8.) We possess, also, some fragments of a philosophical poem by Empedocles, too imperfect, however, to enable us to fornm a complete view of his system. rThe death of this phiiosopher wiis still more illustri. ou6 than his doctrine. He fel a manrtyr to his zeal 124 GREEK PHILOSOPHY. for science, having met his death in exploring the crater of Mount Etna. Whatever were the exertions of Heraclitus iand Empedocles to found a school that should avoid the excesses of idealist pantheism and of materialist atheism, it would appear, nevertheless, that the two schools of Elea exercised at this period a preponderating influence over Greek philosophy. This influ. ence resulted, as we have already said, in shakling the foundations of human reason, and leading to slkep. ticism, which was actually brought out, though under a peculiar form, in what may be called the epoch of tile sophists. THE SOPHISTS. HIistoricaZl Notices. HISTORY informs us that a host of sophists spread over Greece. Among the names which have esca. ped oblivion are enumerated Gorgias, Protagoras, Prodicus, Polus, Thrasymachus, Callicles, Hippias. The sophists may be divided into two classes. The first consisted of mere rhetoricians: they were absorbed in the science of words, and strangers to ev. ery philosophical idea. The other class, with whom alone we have anything to do, were dialecticians, who occupied themselves with human reason for no other end than to arm it against itself. We take, as types of this intellectual degradation, Gorgias of Leontium and Protagoras of Abdera. Exposition. Skepticism was evidently the ground of their common doctrine. They maintained that there exist. ed and could exist for man no absolute truths, but only relative truths. Gorgias supported his skepti. THE SOPHISTS. 125 cal conclusions, particularly by the principles of the metaphysical school of Elea, by attacking the existence of the finite; but he maintained, at the same time, that all notion of the infinite is utterly unattainable by human intelligence. He wrote a book entitled, Of that which is not, or of Nature.-Pro. tagoras connected his skeptical argumentation with the principles of the physical Eleatics. He maintained that tile phenomena of nature, as well as the modifications of the human mind, are in a state of perpetual variation, which excludes all possibility of certain knowledge. But among the sophists skepticism took a special form. It was not, with them, the gloomy despair of reason, which suicidally destroys itself; it was a frivolous levity and contempt. The sophists were skeptics who used reason only for sport. To amuse the youth of Greece, eager for all spectacles and games, they gave them the spectacle of an intellectual gymnastics, and, maintaining by turns both sides of a question, exhibited before them feats of argu-. mentative skill and force. They were repaid with great applause, and to many of these philosophical niountebanks this sad trade became a source of wealth. Observations. If the state of mind, characterized by the infatuation which the sophists excited, had long continued in Greece, philosophy would have perished; but it had strength enough to triumph at this critical peri. od, and the reaction which followed produced the most brilliant development of Greek philosophy. At the opening of this new epoch appears the great name of Socrates. 1 26 GREEIK PHILOSOPHY. SECOND EVOLUTION. SOCRATES. Historical Notices. SOCRATES was born at Athens 470, and died 400 B.C. He was the son of a sculptor named Sophroniscus. He exercised at first his father's profession, but afterward gave himself up to the study of philos. ophy. This study did not prevent him from fulfilling his duties as a citizen. He bore arms several times in defence of his country; he discharged also with firmness the public functions intrusted to him. But he devoted his life above all things to diffusing among his fellow-citizens the love of wisdom. The testi. mony of the ancients is not uniform as to the ques. tion whether he committed his doctrine to writing. However this may have been, yet his oral teaching, free from all scientific ostentation, contrasted strong. ly with the pompous lectures of most of the philosophers, and, above all, with the charlatanism ot the sophists, who honoured him by their hatred. The his. tory of his virtues and his persecutions is too well known to make it needful to go into details in this place. The Phtedo of Plato is the epopee of his heroic death. Character of the Philosophical Reformation attempted by Socrates. Historical Notices. Philosophy, in the degraded state to which the sophists had reduced it, was no longer a grave and serious thing. The first step to its reformation was to restore its true character by recalling it to an aim at once elevated and practical. This was the voca. tion of Socrates, who particularly devoted himself to SOCRATES. 127 the ethical branch of science. He acted in a cer. tain sense the part of a physician for Greek philoso. phy, about to perish from inanition. His influence was felt even in schools which differed.the most de. cidedly from his ethical doctrines: for Epicureanism, while totally corrupting philosophy, directed scientific speculations, in conformity with the recomn mendation of Socrates, to an order of ideas applica. ble to the conduct of life. The doctrine of Socrates is substantially a theory of virtue. The type of virtue is God, the author of everything that is good and beautiful, who governs the world by his providence. The seat of virtue is the soul, like God in its nature, and immortal as he is. The essence of virtue comprehends wisdom, which relates to the duties of man towards himself; Justice, which determines his duties to others; and pi. ety, which includes his duties towards God. The means of cultivating virtue, so far as they depend upon man, are self-knowledge and moderation of the desires; so far as they proceed from God, Divine in. fluence or inspiration. The ultimate consequence of virtue is felicity. God is the guaranty for their filnal harmony. The method adopted by Socrates in expounding his ideas resulted from the notions he had formed respecting the object of philosophy and the nature of the soul. Philosophy relates essentially to a practi. cal end, and the true method of teaching, he held, should have the same character. Instead, therefore, cf commencing with lofty speculations, often unintel. ligible for most of those whom one wishes to instruct, we should, in the opinion of Socrates, take hold of men's minds as they are, with their ideas, and even their prejudices, in order gradually to raise them to the knowledge of the truth. This process, besides, in 128 GREEK PHILOSOPHY. his view, agreed best with the nature of the soul. He was persuaded that the soul contained the germes of the truth, but enveloped and even smothered by vain opinions engendered by the passions. We should begin, therefore, by setting the soul free from this en. veiope, in order to give scope for the development of these innate germes. We should go in among these false notions, put them in opposition to each other, and make them destroy each other. Hence the subtile disputations to whiich Socrates did not disdain to descend. His method was the critical; it was negative in its processes, but positive as to its object. The philosophical evolution which commenced with Socrates presents a phasis of increase and a phasis of decline. The increasing phasis will bring before us, first, some schools which attempted the organization of philosophy; then the great schools in which this organization was accomplished, meaning thereby that a predominating view became the centre and vital principle of a vast body of ideas. These great schools are Platonism, Aristotelianism, Epicurean. ism, and Stoicism. The declining phasis will show us the gradual dis. solution of these philosophical organizations, down to the moment when, their theories being exhausted, skepticism undertook to present itself as a formal theory. INCREASING PHASIS OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 1. MINOR SCHOOLS: ESSAYS TOWARDS THE ORGANIZA. TION OF PHILOSOPHY. IN the interval of time which separates Socrates from Epicurus, various conceptions made theit ap. pearance, which may be terlmed fragmlentary, because THE CYNIC SCHOOL. 129 they contain only some few of the elements which were afterward combined in the other schools with a more extended system of ideas. These conceptions may be divided into two classes. The first, detaching from the fundamental doctrine of Socrates some portions and adulterating them, prepared the way for subsequent systems much more celebrated. The others were the continuation, somewhat restricted, of systems anterior to Socrates, but modified by the influence of the Socratic phi. losophy. To the first class belong the views of An. tisthenes and of Aristippus; to the second those of Pyrrho and of Euclid of Megara. FIRST CLASS. Antisthenes, or the Cynic School. ANTISTHENES, who taught about the year 380 B.C., was the founder of the Cynic school, of which Diogenes was the most perfect type. This school, in some respects, prepared the way for Stoicism. Antisthenes borrowed at first from the Socratic school the principle so well developed by Plato, that the chief good consists in virtue, or resemblance to God. Then starting from the idea that God is supremely independent, he made virtue consist of a proud independence of all external things. Every. thing that interfered with this independence was to be disregarded, contemned, and rejected by the wise man; hence his contempt not only for pleasures and lionours, but even for social civilities, the most respectable customs, and for scientific theories, which he rejected as a mass of barren subtleties. Thus, while Plato, equally with himself, making virtue the sovereign good, sought to unite it harmoniously with all the elements of human nature, Antisthenes sacri. 11 130 GREEK PHILOSOPHY. ficed human nature to an idea of virtue which was in reality, only the savage exaltation of egotism. Aristippus, or the Cyrenaic School. The school of Cyrene, founded by Aristippus, who also flourished about 380 B.C., was a preparation for. Epicureanism, as the Cynic school was fobr Stoicism. The principal representatives of this school' next to Aristippus were his grandson Aristippus, surnamed Metrodidactus, Hegesias, Anniceris, and Theodorus. The Cyrenaic school borrowed from the Socratic doctrine the principle that all philosophy ought to have a practical object, and that that this should be the happiness of mankind. But, instead of leading man to happiness by the fulfilment of duty, it repudiated the very notion of duty, or confounded it with that of pleasure. If it thus paved the way for Epicureanism, it nevertheless differed fromn it in that the Cyvrenaics, with the exception of Anniceris, had nothing in view but immediate actual enjoyment, and chiefly the gratifications of sense, while Epicureanism rested on a calculation of enjoyments which comprehend. ed the whole course of life, and in which intellectual pleasures had their place. Although the school of Cyrene paid very little attention to speculative questions, its moral principle led it to'admit no other source of knowledge than sensation. Some philosophers of this school, still more consistent, rejected the testimony of sensation itself as an organ of objective truth, and held only to its subjective character, that is, to the impression, agreeable or painful, which accompanies it..They forbade all inquiry after truth in itself, in order to limit all'human activity to the pursuit of pleasure. Skepticism and sensual gratification were the natu. ral conditions of man: this was the monstrous doc. THE SCHOOL OF MEGARA. 131 trine of which Theodorus, surnamed the atheist, was the father. SECOND CLASS. Pyrrho, or the Skeptical School. TIlE doctrine of Pyrrho of Elea, as developed by his disciple Timnon, presents a singular mixture. All philosophy should relate to virtue; this was the ele. ment that Pyrrho received from the Socratic doctrine But he deduced from it the inutility of science;, and, to prove. this inutility, he undertook to demonstrate the impossibility of science by borrowing the arguments of the sophists which Socrates had refuted-their ar. guments against human certainty. Pyrrhonism was thus, in its origin, a continuation of the sophistic phi. losophy, combined with a moral principle. Speculative philosophy being excluded, practical philosophy consisted in following the impulses of nature. Euclid, or the- School of Megara. The school of Megara, founded by Euclid about the year 400 B.C., to which may be joined the schools of Elis and Eretria, was, at least in the doctrine of its founder, a partial continuation of the doctrines of the metaphysical school of Elea, modified by the So. cratic influence. Euclid maintains, with that school, the primitive unity as the sole reality; but, instead of regarding it, as Xenophanes and Parmenides had done, specially under the ontological point of view, he considered it chiefly under a moral point of view, conformably to the tendency communicated by Soc. rates. The absolute being was contemplated by him as the absolute good. The other philosophers of the Megaric school present nothing noticeable- ev 132 ItIEEK PHILOSOPH7. cept a subtle dialectics, directed specially against cognitions founded upon the testimony of the senses. 2. GREAT SCHOOLS: ORGANIZATION OF P1I1LOSOPHY. TuE philosophical development promoted by Soc. rates produced four great schools. The school fobunded by Plato, inasmuch as it dedu. ces science fiom a sphere superior to the sensible world, takes its place at the point of view furnished by Pythagoras and the metaphysical Eleatics. The school of Epicurus takes its position at the point of view peculiar to the physical Eleatics, and, previously, to the Ionian materialists. The Aristotelian philosophy attempted to accomplish what had never before been attempted, except very imperfectly by the school of Heraclitus and Empedocles. It sought for a middle way between idealism and sensualism. Although the school of Aristotle appeared befitre that of Epicurus in the order of lime, yet we shall speak of the school of Epicurus first, because, in pointing out, in the doc. trines of Aristotle, something intermediate between Platonism and Epicureanism, we shall be able more easily to seize its peculiar character after having considered the two extiremes between which it vibrated. Finally, Stoicism, founded by Zeno, undertook to combine a speculative philosophy, of which the principle could be found in the sensualism of Epicurus, with a moral philosophy which had the most of its roots in Platonism. PLATO. Historical N.otices. PLATO, born in the island of Egina in the year 430 B.C., was descended - his father's side from PLATO. 133 the family of Cadmus, and on his nlothei's from that of Solon. He gave himself early to the study of the arts, painting, music, poetry, and to geometry. Matthematical knowledge and skill were united in his vast and noble genius with enthusiasm for the beautiful. The iectures of Socrates developed his philosophical vocation. After the death of his mas. ler he made several voyages for the purpose of' gaining instruction. He visited the philosophers of Greece and the priests of Egypt. He was also in relations with Dionysius the elder, afterward with Dionysius the younger, kings of Sicily. His love of justice, with which he strove to imbue them, drew upon him, on their part, the most odious persecutions. The school which he founded in the gardens of the Academy became the centre of a wide spread light. He died in 348 B.C. He published his phi. losophy in the form of dialogues, which have been classified in various ways. Exposition. We shall first exhibit the theory of Plato respect. ing ideas, which is the basis of his philosophy, and then sketch his theory of things. Theory of Ideas. Skepticism would be the condition of the human mind if it were not possible to find some foundation for absolute affirmation, affirmation reposing upon something necessary and invariable; for without it everything would be fluctuating in our conceptions. Now what do we find in our intellectual constitution? We find there, in the first pl;ce, sensations: but sensations present nothing necessary neit her in them. selves, nor in the objects to which they relate. In themselves sensations are puiely relative to the in 134 GREEK PHILOSOPHY. dividual who experiences them, more or less strong, more or less vivid, varying with individuals and with difle rent successive states of each individual. The objects to which they relate are contingent; they may exist or cease to exist; they are susceptible of more or less; they vary perpetually. Besides sensations what do we find? By general. izing the impressions furnished by experience, we come to form in our minds notions which represent not the individual object of each sensation, but a general object, which is, as it were, the summary of a whole class of sensations. But these notions, for the very reason that they are generalizations of sen. sations, partake fundamentally of the character of variableness essential to the sensations in which they have their root. If, then, there is nothing else in the human intelli. gence than sensations and notions, there is no way of finding the basis for an absolute affirmation. But is there nothing else? Suppose all the triangles which are realized in nature were destroyed: everything pertaining to them which falls within the sphere of sensation would then disappear; but something still remains; the properties of the triangle subsist immutably. Suppose that, believing I am exercising an act of beneficence, 1 render to a distressed person what proves to be a useless service: vary the supposition in any way you please; not only change all the circumstances, but the fact itself. Suppose that, wishing to give the man a remedy which shall save his life, I give him a poison which kills him. My action pre. serves a character which does not change with the variation of circumstances, and this character is derived from its relation to a conception superior to anything which passes within the sphere of the con. tingent and variable, to the conception which is call PLATO. 135 ed justice or holiness. Go now through all space and time, and everywhere and always the conception of the essential properties of the triangle, the conception of justice and holiness, are respectively one and the same. There is, then, in the human intelligence, something universal, because it is independent of space and time; something necessary in itself, since no variation affects it. This is ideas. Thus there are three things in the human intelligence: sensations, notions, ideas. Sensations cor. respond to the variable and individual; notions cor. respond to the variable abstracted from the individual object of each sensation; ideas correspond to the invariable and universal. From hence it follows that ideas are the only pos. sible basis of absolute affirmation, and constitute, strictly speaking, science. Sensations, destitute of any character of universality and necessity, are intelligible only in their relation to realities of which they are the shadows, to ideas. Notions, as far as they are distinct from sensations, are possible only through generalization, and generalization is possible only in virtue of a want which the reason feels of arriving at a term universal in itself. Everything in the human mind which is subordinate to ideas, is rendered clear only by a reflected light: ideas alone possess that light, or, rather, they are that light it. self. Theory of Things. God. That which is mutable, that which is limited or dependant upon time and space, has less of being than that which is universal and immutable. That which is manifested by ideas is therefore the su. preme reality the being pre-eminently, or, in other 136 GREEK PHILOSOPHY. terms, there exists a substance of which ideas form the essence: that substance is God. On the other hand, the variable order of things, as it can be known only relatively to a superior order, must have been formed on the model of ideas. The being, therefore, of whom ideas are the essence, must have acted upon the variable in order to impress upon it the form of ideas. Thus God is conceived under two different relations in the philosophy of Plato. He is conceived as substance and as cause; as the substance of ideas, as the cause of forms, which are, in the variable order, the external imprint of ideas. In this connexion we see why, in the philosophy of Plato, God is particularly represented under the notion, of the Logos or Word, which contains the eternal ideas, the types of all things. It is by ideas, and only by ideas, in the double relation which has been indicated, that Plato arrives at the conception of God; or, which comes to the same thing, God cannot be known, does not reveal himself to the mind, except by his Word. Creation. Unity, universality, immutability; these are the characteristics of God. Multiplicity, locality, varia. bleness; these are the characteristics of the world. God could not be the author of the world, since it has properties so diametrically opposite to his own. There exists, therefore, out of God a principle of the variable, the imperfect, the finite, which, as it could not be derived from God, must be self.existent. This principle is matter, passive, blind, indefinite, without forms. But does not the notion of these two substantial principles lead to the recognition of a third substance as necessary to the explanation of the world' PLATO. 137 Pkhe world would not exist if God had not acted upon matter.; for then, matter remaining in its state of passivity and indetermination, no form, no action, no order could have been produced. But, on the other hand, matter being in all these respects the antithe. sis of God, does not the action of God upon matter imply a reality, which is neither pure activity, like God, nor pure passivity, like matter? This inter. mediate principle, partaking of the nature of matter and of the nature of God, Plato designates by the name of soul of the world. The Platonic cosmology, considered in its root, may therefore be expressed by the following formula: God is to the soul of the world as the soul of the world is to matter; the uni. verse is a great law of proportion. If the notion of- the soul of the world be clearly the key to the cosmology of Plato, it is not less true that the notion itself is very obscure for us. The soul of the world, is it created or uncreated? If uncreated, there exists, then, between God and matter a third eternal principle, in which the variable and the invariable, the finite and the infinite, co. exist. But, if this be taken for granted, why could they not be supposed to coexist in God? and in this case, instead of the primitive dualism maintained by Plato, we arrive at the Pythagorean idea, according to which everything, even matter itself, proceeds from the substantial unity, the infinite Monad. But if the soul of the world, as some passages in Plato seem to imply, was created by God, who formed a compound of divine and of material qualities, then God was able to act primarily, without any intermediate principle, upon the primitive material; and in this case, is it not difficult to conceive on what grounds Plato concluded the necessity of this inter. mediate substance? 138 Gl EEK P.lIlLOSOPHY. Te, avoid in part these difficulties, it may be said that Plato has. not maintained the soul of the world as an essence necessary to render the action of God upon matter possible, but only as a necessary result of that action; that is, by the action of God on matter, the indivisible and the divisible, the invariable and the variable, the archetypal ideas and the formless matter, were to a certain degree blended together, and from thence has resulted this intermediate substance, partaking the nature of both. However this may be, the two primitive principles maintained by Plato have served him not only to ex. plain the form tion of the universe, but also to ex. plain the origin of evil, the highest philosophical ques. tion next to that of the creation. In the system of Plato, evil, taken in general, exists necessarily; for it is nothing else than the resistance itself of matter: it exists independently of God, since matter is self. existent. In thus placing the principle of evil out of God, Plato wished to avoid the immoral consequences of pantheism, which, referring this principle to God, destroys the purity of the divine essence. But evil exists necessarily in the material principle only so far as it is not informed by the divine ideas. In acting upon it, God tends to destroy evil- by bringing matter into subjection to the proper laws of ideas, and the creation, throughout its whole duration, is nothing but the development of this divine conflict. Cosmology. The cosmology of Plato has two parts, the one rel. ative to the spiritual principle, the soul of the world; the other relative to the material world, which is the body of that soul; and the two parts of this cosmology, or general science of the universe, unite together in the samle way as psychology and physiology PLATO. 139 unite to constitute the special science (anthropology) which has man tor its object. 1. The soul of the world, individualizing itself, dividing itself' into different souls, forms the gods, the demons, and men, in as far as they are intelligent beings. As there exists in nature a multitude of different centres of action, there are also as many particular emanations of the soul of the world, as many differ. ent souls, which are relatively to each part of nature what the soul of man is relatively to the organism which his soul animates and directs. But all these different souls, these different intelligences, have the soul of the world for their common centre, nearly in the same way as the different faculties of the human soul unite in a central point, which constitutes individual personality. 2. In the physical part of his cosmology Plato holds two principles of the material universe, the terrestrial element, without which nothing is solid; the igneous element, without which there is no light. The one is the principle of the tangibility of the world, the other of its visibility. But, as these two elements have no analogy, God, in order to unite them, has produced two intermediate elements, air and water, which, on the one hand, are analogous to each other by their common property of fluidity, and, on the other hand, are analogous to the two extremes, air to fire, water to earth. In the Timeaus, Plato has entered into extended speculations concerning the physical laws of the world, the exposition of which cannot be brought within the limits of this historical sketch. 3. The psychology and physiology of the universe form at the bottom but two branches of a science which is one in its object, since the universe is no. thing but one immense animal. 140 GREEK PHILOSOPHY. This animal acts in time and by motion; time is the mutable and fluid image of eternity, immutable in ito unity; motion is the activity of the soul of the world and of the souls derived fiom it. The world will endure forever, because it is good; but this immortal life of the world is divided into periods, at the end of each of which things return to their primitive state. This constitutes what Plato calls the great year. Anthropology, or Science of Man. Anthropology comprises two parts, the one psy. chological, which treats of the soul; the other phys. iological, which treats of the body. The soul may be considered under two relations, as a being capable of intelligence, and as a being capa. ble of love. Under the first relation we have already seen that Plato distinguishes three spheres of the human soul, that of sensations, of notions, and of ideas. He maintains three corresponding spheres in the affective part of the soul, in the soul as capable of love: the love of the absolutely good corresponds to ideas; sensual or animal love, which corresponds to sensations; and between these two, intermediate affections, passions, which, on the one hand, are not immediately directed to animal objects, and, on the other, do not relate to the absolutely good, and thus correspond to notions, which are a sort of middle term between sensations and ideas. These interme. diate affections are designated by him by the name of gvTog, the irascible principle. Ambition, tove of glory, anger, etc., belong to this category. Plato connected physiology with psychology in the following way: the superior part of the soul, that which lives in ideas and the affections or desires PLATO. 141 which correspond to them, has its organ in the head. The seat of the passions is in the heart; that of the inferior part of the soul is in the intestines. The harmony of these three organic centres, according to the laws of subordination which hold them togeth. er, constitutes the foundation of organic life. Logic and Morals. Logic expresses the rules which the soul, as intelligence, ought to follow; morals is the expression of the rules which the soul, as affective, ought to follow. Logic. There are three sorts of logic. The first is apo. dictical or absolute, and corresponds to the necessary, the invariable, or, in a word, to ideas. Probable, or epicheirematic logic, is a middle term between abso. lute logic, which produces certainty, and the third kind of logic, the imperfect, which is soon to be explained. Notions are the element of probable logic. Inferior to the first kind, because mere notions can never constitute certainty, which belongs only to ideas, it is yet superior to the third kind, because it embraces elements freed from all individuality. The third kind is imperfect, or enthymematic logic, which is limited to individual objects. Major or general propositions cannot be finrnished by sensations which relate only to individual objects. This logic, unable to employ the syllogism, is obliged to restrict itself to the enthymeme, and as the enthymeme is a mutilated syllogism, enthymematic logic is imperfect or mutilated logic. We find the fundamental precepts of the logic of Plato in the theories of Aristotle, notwithstanding the essential differencets necessitated by their differ i42 GREEK PHILOSOPHY. ent starting points. We observe in passing, Ihat it; in his own meditations, in the internal processes of his own mind, Plato evidently followed the a priori method, which descends from generals to particulars, he preferred ordinarily in the exposition of his heories the inverse method, which concerns itself first with particulars, in order to bring out from them the universal and absolute. Morals Morals expresses the laws of the soul as loving, and, consequently, as acting, in virtue of the affections which govern it. Just as in logic, taken in a comprehensive sense, the soul imitates the Logos, the divine Word, so in morals the soul imitates God as loving and acting. God,- who loves ideas with an infinite love, acts without himself only in order to realize these arche. types of all things. Man ought, therefore, in like manner, to subordinate inferior loves, the love of sen. sible and mutable good, to the love of ideas, of the absolute good; and to act only for the sake of real izing within the sphere of his activity, and accord. ing to the measure of his power, the divine ideas. The general principle of morality is therefore im. itation of God. The good is the realization of the true, of which the beautiful is the brightness or splen. dour. This notion of the beautiful is the foundation of Plato's esthetics. Politics. Politics is the application of morals to social in. stitutions. The object of the latter should be the gradual elevation of' men to the worship of ideas, to the love of good properly called, and thereby to reduce multiplicity to unity, by destroying the influence PLATO. 143 of causes of division among men. Abusiig these sound principles, Plato deduced from them two anti. social consequences, the abolition of marriage and the abolition of property. Both of these being in opposition, according to him, to social unity, individualize and divide men.* In this respect he misconceived the true notion of social unity, which needs not be destructive of individualities and personal possessions, but, on the contrary, tends to maintain, complete, and develop them, and thus to bring them into harmonious union. As to the rest, his political theories are closely connected in other respects with his whole previous philosophy. If Politics be only an application of Morals, and if Morals correspond to the different faculties of man, society or collective man should be constituted as an individual. Hence the reason why every perfect society should rest upon the distinction of' three ranks or castes. The first, the learned, or philosophical class, should be devoted to the contemplation of ideas;- this class is the social intelligence; it should make the laws. The second class is the depositary of the public force; it is the a9v&toq, the irascible element of society. Like that, it corresponds to notions, because it exerts itself in a sphere inferior to science and superior to manual labour. The third class is composed of labourers and artisans; it is re. lated to the physical wants; it holds in society the same rank as sensations in the soul of man, and plays the same part. From hence it follows that so. * [These views are to be found in the Republic. Entirely oppo.'site ground is taken in the Laws, the genuinentess of which has been called in question. If Plato be the author of the Laws as well as of the Republic, the contradictilon is to be explained as a change of' opinion. The Laws express his maturer views at a more advanced period of life.-Ed.] 144 GREEK PHILOSOPHY. cial perfection consists in uniting these three classes to the laws, by which sensations and physical love, notions and irascibility (6vftoC), are subordinated to ideas, the supreme rule of all love. The Feuture Life. Plato formed a twofold demonstration of the immortality of the soul, conformable to his double the. ory of God. He regarded God, as has been noticed, as both substance and cause; as the infinite substra. turn, in which ideas have their eternal reality; and as the author of the forms which constitute the order of the universe. Now souls, as far as they are united to ideas, partake of the divine substance, and thus are in their nature imperishable. In this point of view God is the immanent root of their existence. But, besides this, as the creator or author of forms, God is good and just, and these two attributes re. quire that souls who have imitated the divine activity should be rewarded, and that souls who have formed themselves upon the evil principle, or matter, should be punished. Thus the views of Plato respecting the last end of things correspond to his views respect. ing their origin. Such are the fundamental principles of the philosophy of Plato. The immense variety of consequences in which the unity of' this system displays itself; surpasses the limits set to this work, otherwise a greater service could scarcely be done for the in. struction of students than to exhibit, as completely as possible, the riches contained in this sanctuary ol Greek philosophy. Observations. 1. Plato, with respect to his starting-point, separ ates himself fundamentally from the two great Eleat PLATO. 145 cle schools. Theyh hd demanded, the one, a demonstration of' the existence of the absolute or infinite, the other, a demonstration of' the existence of the finite. Plato admits tlis twofold existence as a primordial conception; he takes it as the very condition and basis of all science, as containing a truth without which to philosophize is impossible. He thus avoid. ed the rocks on which most of his predecessors had split. 2. The philosophy of Plato united two characteristics rarely combined, the most extended variety with the most perfect unity. To present within a narrow circle ideas well connected is not a difficult thing; nor is it difficult for a philosophical mind to make a collection of thoughts extending to a host of objects, but without mutual connexion, dispersed and floating. The difficult thing, the grand and beautiful thing, is to penetrate through diversified orders of ideas, seizing and reducing them all to unity by means of fundamental conceptions which govern them all. In respect of extent and variety, the philosophy of Plato surpasses that of all the anterior Greek philos. ophers. He borrowed from them, it is true, a certain number of elements, but he made them his own by enlarging, unfolding, and combining them with his own ideas. The school which had advanced the farthest in the field of speculation, had traversed, so to say, only some particular regions of the human mind. Plato surveyed them all. In him philosophy displayed its proper character and authority; it ap. peared as the science which constitutes the unity of the different sciences. The logical unity of Platonism is radically found in his theory of ideas, which contains at the same time an objective unity, because ideas are being itself. 12 146 GREEK PHILOSOPHY The subordination of sensations to notions, and of notions to ideas, is reproduced in different forms throughout every branch of the philosophy of Plato, and determines an analogous order, as we have seen, in each particular circle of reality. This may be easily seen in casting the eye over the following ta. ble: Theory of Knowledge. Notions, intermeIdeas. cdiate between ideas Sensations. and sensations. Theory of the Universe. God, absolute, ne-World, partaThe Soul of Matter, principle of cessary, immutable, the nature Of the varable, the rel etc. ative. and of that of matter. The Human Soul. Region of the Intel- Region of the In- Region of the Inligence and of the telligence and of the telligence and of the Love corresponding Love corresponding Love corresponding to ideas. to notions. to sensations. Human Organism. The Head, organ of The Intestines, orthe superior part of the og. gan of the intimate the soul. of the affections of the soul. Logic. Epicheirematic LoApodictic Logic. gic, which is inter- Enthymematic Lo. mediate between the gic. two others. Morals. Love of the Abso- Complex Love Sensual- Love. iuae(Platonic Love). Complex Love. Politics. Learned class, de- Intermediate class Labouring or indus voted to the contem- between the philoso- trious class, devoted plation of truth. phers and labourers. to agriculture, hand l icrafts, etc. EPICURUS. 147 In respect to form, the philosophy of Plato, cloth. ing its most lofty conceptions with the drapery of poetry, full of life, beauty, and splendour, surpasses all the philosophies which sprang from the fruitful soil of Greek genius. EPICURUS. Historical Notices. EPIcuRus was born at Samos in the year 341 B.C. He gave himself to the study of philosophy from his earliest youth. He attended successively the lectures of the disciples of Plato and of Democritus. He gave the preference to the doctrines of the latter; but he wished to improve it, to extend it to a lar. wer system. The founder of a new school, like Plato, ne taught in a garden at Athens. But his lectures were never public: his disciples formed a sort of se. cret society. Epicurus died at the age of seventy. two years. Some of his writings have been recov. ered from the ruins of Herculaneum. Exposition. The sole object of the philosophy of Epicurus is to lead man to happiness or complete enjoyment. This object clearly characterizes his system. Truth, ab. solute good, order, are no longer, as with Plato, the highest term of philosophy. Moral good, which.nites and subordinates each individual to the whole, fisappears, and enjoyment, directly relative to the individual, takes its place. Man can attain happiness only by the right use of reason; for thereby'alone can he learn to secure himself against, or to triumph over, the causes of suf. fering whlich surround him. Consequentlv. he pauts at the head of his philoso 148 GREEK PHILOSOPHY. phy what he called his canonical doctrine, because, it contained the legislation of reason. He distinguished two things in the human intelligence, sensations and anticipations. Sensations are the impressions which external ob. jects make upon man. To explain their nature and formation, Epicurus adopted the hypothesis of Democritus. Emanations, flowing from objects and combining with the human organization, produce the phenomenon of sensation. Anticipations (conceptions) are sensations generalized. If man possessed nothing but pure sensations, he would not differ from the brutes; he could not' reason, because reasoning implies general notions, and sensations correspond only to individual objects. There is, therefore, in man a faculty whereby he forms general notions, and these general no. tions.have the name of anticipations (presumptions), because they are the starting-point of all reasoning. Human reason is, then, the result of two princi. ples, an external principle, which is the action of external objects, and an internal principle, which is the reaction of the understanding. But the understanding neither acting nor being able to act upon any. thing but sensations, these two principles reduce hu. man knowledge to one primary source, to a single germe, namely, sensation, which, according as it is crude or elaborated, exists in different states of development. This established, it is manifest that error, which springs from a wrong use of reason, cannot be found in simple sensations, which are nothing but the work of nature, and not the product of man's activity. It is only the general notions, the anticipations, which are the product of man, that can be vitiated by error. From whence it follows that the fundamental rule of EPICURUS. i49 reason is to try our anticipations by sensations, to analyze them and reduce them to their primitive ele. ments, and to verify them by this reduction. Such is the substance of the philosophical canon of Epi. curus. Provided with the rules which should direct the exercise of his reason, man should apply himself to know the truth, in order that he may avoid all causes of suffering. These causes are internal and external; they exist within himself and without him; and the external causes are divided into two great classes, for man is connected with two worlds, the world of nature, and the social world. Philosophy should therefore teach iiirn to know himself, to know na. ture, or the principles of things, and, finally, to know the true laws of society. 1. Sef. knowledge. Setting out from the principle that nothing exists in the mind but sensations, man comes to the conclusion that all his faculties should be applied to a single object, the avoidance of pain and the securing ofpleasure: his sole duty is to make himself happy. The simple knowledge of this fundamental principle will set man free frotm one of the chief causes of unhappiness. The bulk of mankind, strangers to the lights of philosophy, are subject to perpetual torment, because they fancy that there exists a moral motive *distinct firom pleasure. The law of pleasure being found frequently in opposition to this chimerical law of duty, conflict is stir. red up in the soul, disquietude, and remorse. But after having recognised that pleasure and duty are identical, man ought to calculate his enjoyments so as to avoid all injurious excesses, whether as re. spects his physical wellbeing or as respects tranquil. lity, which is the health of the soul. 2. Know7edge of nature. or the principle of things. 150 GREEK PHILosornlY. Here Epicurus renewed the theory of DIemocritus. Admitting nothing in mind but sensations, and nothing in nature but bodies, he inquired after the com. ponents of these compounds, and came thus to the idea of indivisible, eternal, and indestructible atoms, which are the principles of all things. Democritus had supposed that atoms were put in motion in a right line in the infinite void. Epicurus observed that this hypothesis was not sufficient to explain the universe even in a purely mechanical way; for it could not be conceived how the atoms'could meet so as to fobrm bodies. He endowed them, consequently, with a sect ond motion in an oblique line, by which, carried in every direction, they would come, by their successive contacts and separations, to produce the different phenomena which compose the universe. Among these phenomena he included the soul, which is of a more refined matter than the body, but so united to it that the dissolution of the one involves the dissolu tion of the other. Epicurus did not contrive this atomistic cosmology from any love of philosophical speculations, but in order to deduce from it, conformably with the scope of his system, practical results favourable to the happiness" of man, such as he conceived it. These results were of two sorts. In the first place, the knowl. edge of nature furnished man with means of augment. ing the sum of his pleasures, by applying this knowl. edge to his wants. In the second place, physical science freed man from innumerable evils born of superstition, by which name Epicurus designated re. ligion, the fear of the gods and of another life. Atheism, the basis of his system, is represented by him as the essential condition of happiness. He speaks, it is true, of the gods, of beings supe. rior to man, endowed with bodies resembling humah EPICURUS. 151 bodies in their form, but composed in a more perfect manner, and living in the enjoyment of unchangeable felicity. Now, without inquiring if Epicurus did not make this concession to the popular faith merely for the sake of securing his private tranquillity firom the denunciation which he would have drawn upon himself by a strictly formal profession of atheism, it is enough to say that this part of his doctrine is an ap. pendage to his system perfectly compatible with the atheism which lies at the foundation of it. It is merely an admission that man is not the only being en. dowed with intelligence and the capacity of happi. ness. But between the notion of such beings more perfect than man, and the true notion of God, there is an infinite distance; and, on the other hand, Epicurus declares these gods to be indifferent to this world, which is not their creation, and unconcerned with the destiny of man. His system, which denies all idea of Providence, after having denied the divine substance itself, presents the two characteristics which have always distinguished complete atheism. 3. Knowledge of the true laws of society. These are nothing but different ramifications of the one sole fundamental law, self-iaterest. Men, originallyv dis. persed and roving, like wild animals, began by little and little to associate, because they found that society was a means of augmenting their pleasures and di. minishing their pains. The social compact rests for every one upon a calculation of advantage; the advantage ceasing, the compact is dissolved. Consietent with his principles, Epicurus excluded from his theory of society all idea of justice, and, still more, all idea of a divine law originally revealed. He main. tains that man invented language. 152 GREEK PHIILOSOPHY. Observations. 1. Compared with the material systems whether of the Ionian or the physical Eleatic school, the doctrine of Epicurus, in its psychology, logic, cosmolo. gy, morals, and politics, presents a vast development of germes antecedently sown. If; on the other hand, it is compared with the material systems which ap. peared in subsequent periods down to the last moments of Greek philosophy, we shall equally perceive that these later systems are all included within the circle traced by Epicurus. Greek and Roman antiquity never carried materialism any farther than this philosopher left it, just as the real progress of spiritualism never overpassed the limits marked out by Plato; and, accordingly, these two names have remained as representatives of these two philosophies. 2. We have already remarked that the doctrine of Epicurus, though diametrically opposed in its very foundations to the doctrine of Socrates, felt, never. theless. the impulse given to philosophy by the mas. ter of Plato, and in recalling it from barren specula. tions to a practical object, Epicurus formed no theo. ry purely theoretical; his logic, his cosmology, his psychology, and his politics all terminated in a prac. tical morality, but radically vitiated by the absorp. tion of the idea of duty into that of pleasure. 3. Platonism had shown itself, by its spiritual theories, eminently favourable to the inspirations of art, which lives in the element of sentiment and imagina. tion. These faculties aspire after something superior to the world which our eyes see and our hands touch.'rhe materialism of Epicurus, concentrated in sensation, showed itself,-as it consistently should do, hostile to those faculties which rise higher than the senses, and attacked the arts, which are their language. ARISTOTLE. 153 ARISTOTLE. Historical Notices. ARISIOTLE, born at Stagira, in Macedonia, in the year 384 B.C., began at first to study medicine. He afterward came to Athens, where he attended the lectures of Plato. He soon attained great success in the career of philosophy and the other sciences. His reputation induced Philip of Macedon to invite him to his court, and to confide to him the education of his son Alexander. The conqueror of Asia die: not forget in the midst of his triumphs the master who had developed his genius. He was careful to send him the historical and scientific documents which his victories put at his disposal. Aristotle taught at Athens in the gymnnasium called the Lyceum. Besides his public lectures, which were the exposition of his doctrine for the mass, he gave to a small number of chosen disciples lectures of a higher order. After the death of Alexander he was the object of divers persecutions. Dreading the fate of Socrates, he withdrew to Chalcis, in the island of Eu. baea, where he died at the age of sixty-three. Exposition. In speaking of the philosophy of Plato and of Epicurus, we began by expounding their ideas concerning the primary sources of human knowledge; we follow a similar order in regard to Aristotle. Aristotle, who combated on this point the theory of Plato, attacked also that of Epicurus, not, indeed, as taught by Epicurus, who lectured at a later period, but the sensualism professed by the physical school of Elea. He however advanced principles, soIme of which seem to belong to the idealism of Pla. to, others to the sensualism of Epicurus. 154 GREEK PHILOSOPHY. Thus, on the one hand, his celebrated maxim that there is nothing in the intelligence which was not first in sensation, nihil in intellectu quod non prius in sensu, seems to refer all ideas to sensation as their source. But, on the other hand, Aristotle insists upon the distinction between the contingent and the necessary, the relative and the absolute; and as the contingent and the relative are derived in the intelligence from sensations; the notions which correspond to the necessary and the absolute have a radical anal. ogy with what Plato called ideas. One thing is clear: that Aristotle sought a middle way between idealism and sensualism; but in what that middle way precisely consisted is far from being equally clear. Perhaps the fundamental points of the doctrine of Aristotle may be represented in the following manner: The human mind has two- constituent parts, logical forms, and the elements furnished by sensation. In virtue of the forms by which it is essentially constituted, reason produces affirmations that stamp upon the variable and individual the character of logical necessity and universality, resolvable into the principle of contradiction, so called, namely, that the same thing cannot be and not be at the same time. But these forms of the reason, and the affirmations which proceed from them, require a subject-matter to which they may be applied; this matter is furnish. ed by sensation, by experience. This being supposed, we'see how the doctrine of Aristotle concerning human knowledge in certain respects agrees with that of Plato and with that of Epicurus, while in other respects it differs from them both. It maintains. with Plato, that knowledge contains an element radically distinct from sensation. It ARISTOTLE 155 maintains, with Epicurus, that without sensation there could be no knowledge. It differs from Plato, because in the doctrine of the latter, ideas, the source of absolute affirmations, which are not resolvable into purely logical truths, are eternal realities, independent of human reason, external to it, and merely manifested in it. It differs from Epicurus, because the anticipations (conceptions) of his system are nothing but the generalizations of sen. sations themselves, while in the system of Aristotle, the forms of the reason, although they cannot, indeed, be applied to anything but sensations, yet add to them, in constituting knowledge, an element inde. pendent of experience. If these be in fact the fundamental positions of Aristotle, it is easy to see why.he himself always rep. resented his system as radically distinct both from Platonism and from sensualism. If, on the contrary, the view we have taken be incorrect and false, his doctrine must appear as nothing but an amalgamation of principles manifestly incompatible, and which run, of necessity, into Platonism and Epicurism. Now, although it is assuredly possible that his syS. tem contains a radical inconsistency, yet it is not to be presumed that so superior a mind as his would lay down evident contradictions for the fbundation of his philosophy; and we think he can be acquitted only by supposing that he took his position, or, at least, endeavoured to take it, at a point of view analogous, or partially so, to that which Kant took in modern times. From thence it would follow that philosophy ought to begin by determining the internal laws of the rea. son, or, in other terms, that it depends principally upon logic. His logic is, in fact, the master work of Aristotle, the key to all his speculations, the bond 156 GREEK PHILOSOPHY. which unites all the portions of his immense labours. Amid all changes of philosophy, logic has remained substantially what he made it. He has ceased to rule by his metaphysics, but his logic still maintains its dominion. Logic, comprising the laws of'demonstration, and thereby of science, supposes, as Aristotle remarks, indemonstrable notions, which serve as its basis. He refutes on this point two classes of philosophers: the one maintains that everything should be demonstra. ted, and that everything is actually demonstrated; the other, that everything should' be demonstrated, but that this universal demonstration has not yet been found. The first represents the collective whole of truth as a circle, and each particular truth as a point in the circle, in such way that each truth is at once principle and consequence; principle relatively to that which immediately follows, and consequence rel. atively to that which immediately precedes it. Aristotle had no difficulty in showing that this universal circular demonstration was nothing but the sophism of the vicious circle which nobody would take for the basis of a partial demonstration. As respects the other philosophers, who, without possessing univer. sal demonstration, limit themselves to maintaining the necessity of it in order to constitute science, Aris. totle replies to them, that man, from his very nature, must believe something, while, on:the contrary, their doctrine would render him unable to believe anything, since it implies an impossible condition; to wit, an infinite series of demonstrations. These foundations of logic being established, Aris. totle divides the science into three parts. The first treats of terms, the expression of ideas; the second of propositions, the expression of judgments; the third of argulnentation. As argumentation, whichis ARISTOTLE. 157: the instrument of scientific demonstration, is the proper object of logic, it is essential to know its elements. It is composed of propositions; propositions must first,.therefore, be examined. But propositions are themselves composed of terms; we must, therefore, commence with terms, which are the primary ele. ments of argumentation. in this first part of logic Aristotle reduces terms, and thereby human ideas, to ten primitive catego. ries, which are: substance, quantity, quality, rela. tion, action, passion, time, place, position, habit. But, in order to operate upon these categories, or predicaments as they were also called, the mind must combine them with categoremas called predicables, which are five in number; genus, species, difference, property, and accident. The distinction between the predicaments and predicables consists in this, that the former express what is inherent in beings, while the latter, express. ing the mind's own points of view, are for the most part nothing but formulas, by means of which we combine the predicaments. In this first part of logic Aristotle propounds a multitude of views, which would have their proper place in universal grammar. In the second part he classifies and analyzes prop. ositions, making them fall into a scheme determined by the predicaments and predicables. His views concerning the division of propositions into simple, complex, affirmative, negative, universal, particular, indefinite, singular, moral; the opposition of propositions, which is -either contradictory or-contra. ry; their identity, and their conversion, have been brought together in most modern treatises of logic. The same is true of his theory of argumentation, all the processes of which he reduces to some sim. 158 GREEK PHILOSOPHY. ple rules, and all the forms to a single form, the syl logisin. Such are the foundations of demonstrative logic But besides this logic, which sets out from that which is certain and arrives at certain conclusions, there is another logic, which is nothing but the art of conjec. ture; it is applied to probabilities, and takes the name of dialectics. Its laws are fundamentally the same as those of demonstrative logic, its validity only is different. After having spoken of logic, the instrument of science, let us pass to science itself. Science is the product of the activity of reason. This activity has two principal directions, the speculative and practical. Hence the classification of the sciences. The SPECULATIVE, or THEORLTICAL SC1IENCES, are divided into three classes. I. Sciences purely rational: these are metaphysics and mathematics. 1. Metaphysics, or, as Aristotle calls it, the first philosophy, treats of being in general, abstracted from everything which constitutes the different species of beings. Aristotle attaches his whole metaphysics to a lo. gical principle expressed in these words: the same thing cannot be and not be at the same time. Gui. ded by this principle, he draws out from the general notion of being a series, as it were, of logical emanations. The first of these logical emanations is substance, which is being considered as implying a uni ty, the support of its modifications. If' we abstract the substance from the modifications, we arrive at the idea of the primary matter of being. But matter cannot be indeterminate; that which determines it isform, the third logical emanation. Finally, being, *composed of matter and form, contains the notion of ARISTOTLE. 159 power, active or passive. Passive power is the susceptibility of being modified by the action of another oeing. Active power is the modifying principle. Power manifests itself by motion. It is by the idea of motion that Aristotle is led to the idea of God, con. sidered as the immutable mover of the universe. The metaphysics of Aristotle may be considered is the antipode of the great systems of emanation brought out by Oriental philosophy. In those, every emanation, every development of the primitive being, is personified; in Aristotle, all the developments of being appear only under the form of abstract notions. Abstractions beget abstractions, as persons engender persons. It is in order to indicate at once these re. lations and differences that we have used the term logical emanations. 2. The Mathematics.'I'here are only two treatises of Aristotle upon this subject extant. They re. quire here only a simple mention. II. The second class of theoretical sciences com. prehends the experimental sciences; namely, 1. Natural History, for which Aristotle collected numerous materials, which he put together with su. perior sagacity. To this part of his works belong: the History of Animals, treatises concerning their mo. tion., organization, generation; Of Respiration, Of Plants, Of Physiognomy, Of the Duration of Life, Mlarvellous Narratives, Problems. 2. Psychology. The soul is an entelechy, energy, or activity, the principle of organic, sensitive, and intellectual life. The acts of the organic life are gen. eration and nutrition. It is common to all beings. The sensitive life is peculiar to animals. But every external sense perceiving only that which character. izes the object to which it is applied, the comparison of sensations could not take place if there were not a 160 GREEK PHILOSOPHY. common internal sense, receiving the impressions transmitted by all the others. Here we are remind. ed of the manas of the Hindu philosophy. Sensa. tions are accompanied by an appetite corresponding to them, which, joined with the images perceived by the senses, completes the sensitive life. The intel. lectual life, which is peculiar to man, exists in two modes; for the intellect is passive as far as it invests things with forms, active as far as by its own power it reacts upon those forms. The intellect has also a corresponding appetite, the rational appetite, the desire for truth, which completes the intellectual life. The intellect is not merely theoretical, or concerned with conceiving of that which exists; it is also prac. tical, indicating what should be done or avoided. From the practical intellect, combined with appetite, proceeds the activity of intellectual beings, by which they seek what is good, or turn from what is injuri. OUS. Of the psychological works of Aristotle are his treatises On the Soul, On the Memory, On the Senses and Sensible Things, On Sounds, On Colours, On, Dreams, On Waking, On Youth and Age. III. The third class of theoretical sciences com. prehends the mixed sciences, which are only different branches- of general physics, which itself is only the application of metaphysical notions to the general. phenomena of the universe. Aristotle's physical explanation of the world in volves the concurrence of three orders of conceptions principles, causes, and the elements. 1. Principles. Some anterior philosophers had maintained that the universe resulted from similar, principles; others, that it resulted from opposite principles, as cold and heat, the bases of the physics of Empedocles. According to Aristotle, opposite prin. ARISTOTLE. 161 eiples reciprocally subvert each other, while simi. lar principles could never produce the diversified phe. nomena of nature. He therefore maintained two op. posite principles, form and privation, combined with a third principle, namely, matter, which lies at the ground of the two others. 2. Causes. These are of four sorts: the material cause, ex qua aliquid fit; the formal cause, per quam; the efficient cause, d qud; the final cause, propter quam. 3. The Elements. There are two primordial ele. ments: earth, which is dense; fire, which is elas. tic. They are united by two other elements, water and air, which are analogous to each other, and par. take, at the same time, of the nature of the others, the one of that of earth, the other of that of fire. This idea occurs in the philosophy of Kanada and in that of Plato. The three principlts, the four causes, and the four elements, combined, with the laws of motion: these are the sources of general physics. To this department of his philosophy belong his treatises, Of Things physical, Of Generation and Decay, Of the World, Of Heaven. Tle PRACTICAL SCIENCES comprehend: 1. Morals or Ethics; 2. Politics; 3. Economics. 1. The principle of the morals of Aristotle is the moderation of the desires according to the decisions of reason. In place of the positive principle of duty maintained by Plato, and of the positive principle of pleasure maintained by Epicurus, he substitutes, conformably with the general character of his phi. losophy, an abstract rule. Virtue, by this rule, con. sists in a medium. between opposite passions. The object of morals is the satisfaction which results from this moderation of the desires. 13 162 GREEK PHILOSOPHY. We ought to notice, in respect to what Aristotle says of justice, a distinction which has since been generally adopted by theological casuists and by jurists, to wit, the distinction between commutative justice, which regulates the transactions and rela. tions between individual and individual according to a sort of arithmetical proportion, and distributive justice, which in a state proportions rewards and punishments in a sort of geometrical progression. 2. Politics, like morals, is concerned witn the mu. tual relations of men, but it has to do with those relations which are regulated by external laws. From whence it follows that good politics consists, like morals, in a moderation between contraries, in a medium between tyranny and anarchy, that is, in a con. stitution where monarchy, aristocracy, and democra. cy are combined. Aristotle, by making utility the political criterion, as he had made the happiness of moderation the mor. al criterion, deduced from this'principle the legitima. cy of slavery as a condition of society. Thus, in. stead of looking at the common happiness of the hu. man family, his common utility means at the bottom only the conditions requisite for the existence of an egotistical state, founded upon the distinction of vic. tors and vanquished, that is to say, not upon the equality of nature, but upon the preponderance of force. STOICISM. Historical Notices, ZENO, founder of the Stoic school, was born at Citium, in the island of Cyprus, in the year 362 B.C. Commercial affairs brought him to Athens, and philosophy retained him there. Having acquired a STOICISM. 163. knowledge of the doctrines professed by the different schools, he undertook to establish a new school, which took its name from the portico (a-'oa) in which he gave his lectures. He died in 262, at the age of ninety-eight. The Athenians paid distinguished hon. ours to his tomb and his memory. Chrysippus, who held the second rank in the old Stoic school, was born in the year B.C. 280, at Soles, in Cilicia. He was the disciple of Cleanthes, who himself had been the disciple of Zeno. He died in the year 207. Exposition. Stoicism is distinct both from the partial systems of which we took notice in the preceding pages, and fromr the great systems of Plato, Aristotle, and Epicurus. It cannot be ranked with the partial systems; for, on the contrary, it is completely organized into a comprehensive philosophy, containing a logic, which comprises at once the rules of reason and those of language; a physics, that is, a theory of the world; and, finally, a morals, the chief part of Stoicism, for which the two others serve as'a preparation. But, on the other hand, there is not the real unity of principle and tendency which characterizes, though in different ways, the Epicurean, Aristotelian, and Pla. tonic systems. For it was a combination of two contradictory elements; of' an element of sensualism and materialism, which sinks man to the animal, and of an element which elevates and ennobles him, which cannot be conceived except on the principles of spir. itualism. Yet this union, or, rather, attempt at union, was the predominant idea in Stoicism. In order to form a just idea of this system, we must recosanise its double nature, which touches upon Epicureanism on the one hand, and upon Platonism on the other. 164 GREEK PHILOSOPHY. Stoicism, as it was established by Zeno and devel, oped by Chrysippus, derives all human knowledge from sensations, elaborated and generalized by the understanding. Conformably to this principle of sensualism, the Stoics maintained: 1. That there exists no other beings than bodies. 2. That the corporeal beings which compose the universe may be divided into two classes, the one active, the other passive, the universe presenting here two great characteristics of activity and passivity. 3. That the passive principle, designated by the name of matter, has been informed, ensouled, by the active principle, which is designated by the name of God; a principle corporeal and intellectual, which is the pure ether and the primordial fire. 4. That the universe is thus a great animal. 5. That the souls of the gods, of genii, and of men, are emanations from the primitive fluid. 6. That everything is subject to the laws of Fate; for God, or the primitive intelligent fluid, can act only according to his nature, and the nature of the passive principle which he ensouls; and souls emanated from the universal soul are, for the same rea. son, subject to fatal laws in their sphere of action. 7. That souls, perishable in their nature, will one day vanish away by returning to the great soul. 8. That the world itself, formed by fire, will ba dissolved by fire, and undergo a palingenesia or regeneration. To resume: the intelligence enclosed within the circle of sensations, the universe an assemblage o corporeal principles, with fatality for its law-these are the elements of sensualism and materialism-in. herent in the Stoic doctrine at the first stages of ihv development. STOICISM. 165 But it comprised also other elements, which, hav. ing an opposite tendency, belong to another order of doctrines. 1. It is the just, the honourable, the holy, and not pleasure, which should be the motive of human ac. tions. 2. The wise man should endeavour to repress in himself all excitements of the soul, which carry away the will in spite of judgment and reason, that he may attain to that perfect tranquillity in which the soul, ~ree from every unreasonable affection, inclines en. tirely to the honesty and justice which reason reveals. 3. The right is the only good, wrong the only evil: everything that is neither right nor wrong is neither good nor evil, as, for example, privations, pain, death; none of these will shake the tranquillity of the wise man. 4. The sole effort-of the wise man should be to resemble God: man, a part of the universal whole, should live according to the laws of the whole or of nature; and these laws have their most excellent manifestation in the divine essence, and in the action of God upon the world. 5. For God is in his essence order, justice, holiness. All this moral teaching implies two fundamental principles incompatible with the other part of Stoi. cism. On the one hand, the notion of the just, the holy, cannot be derived from sensation; and, on the other hand, the idea of duty, of obligation, cannot be allied with the idea of fatality. This radical incompatibility of the two constituent elements of Stoicism explains the contradictions which its doctrines exhibit in the diverse series of its consequences. Of these, however, we must omit the detail. 1-66 GREEK PHILOSOPHY. Observations. 1. In order to characterize Stoicism in a single word, we may say that in respect of morals it was *the intermediate between Platonism and Epicurean. ism, just as Aristotelianism was the intermediate be. tween them in respect of logic. 2. Platonism tended to elevate the human mind; Epicureanism to abase it; Aristotelianism sought to regulate it: Stoicism exerted less influence upon the intellect than upon the character of man. 3. The noble and elevated part of Stoicism gained gradually the upper hand, in many respects at least, of the consequences of the sensual and material principles combined with it, and the great and noble souls who subsequently embraced the doctrine of Chrysippus and Zeno were chiefly attracted to it by the severe majesty of its morality. 4. Nevertheless, in relation to morality, it con. tained radically the vice which we have already remarked in the Cynic school, and which became ef fectually grounded in Stoicism. This vice was the exaltation of human pride. The consistent Stoic believed himself morally equal with God, because, like Him, he depended upon nothing but the laws of nature; because he was just, as well as God, by the sole en'ergy of his own will; and because he expected to attain to a tranquillity of soul as absolute as the calmness which God enjoys. Stoicism was, in this point of view, a deification of man, wrought by the powers of man alone. DECLINING PHASIS OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY. TaHE increasing phasis, which we have surveyed, has presenmed four great systems, around which re. volve the particular conceptions produced in that pe. PLATONIC SCHOOL. 167 nod of time. We now go on to observe, in the suc. reeding period, the continuation of philosophical la. bours in these same four directions; continuations which will exhibit symptoms of a gradual dissolution. We shall follow to the end of its career the move. ment of Greek philosophy, properly so called, re. serving to another place what we have to say of Greek philosophy as modified by Orientalism. Although in this declining period the philosophical ge. nius of Greece lost the vigour and grandeur that char. acterized the labours of Plato, of Aristotle, of Epi. curus, and of the founders of Stoicism, it neverthe. less displayed a great force of expansion and propa. gation. Two new centres of intellectual activity were established, the one at Alexandria, under the Ptolemies, the other at Rome. But the Romans were in reality nothing but organs of the Greek phi. losophy speaking Latin, and on this account we com. prehend them in its last period. J. CONTINUATION OF THE PLATONIC SCHOOL. Historical Notices. THE school founded by Plato received, as we have already said, the name of the Academy. The epoch during which the disciples of Plato adhered to the principles laid down by their master has been desig. nated by the name of the Old Academy, while the name of New Academy has been given to the epoch in which fundamental alterations were made in the Platonic school as originally instituted. This second epoch of Platonism may itself be di. vided into two periods. The first commences with the reformation attempted by Arcesilaus of Pitane, born about the year 316 B.C.; a reformation to which many historians of philosophy give the name 168 GREEK PHILOSOPHY. of the Second or Middle Academy. The second pe. riod dates from Carne'ades, born at Cyrene about the year 215 B.C., who is considered, according to the threefold designation now indicated, as the founder of the New Academy. Exposition. Of all the Greek schools, Platonism had the most elevated pretensions. Its theory of ideas involved the complete and absolute knowledge of things in themselves. Platonism, in this point of view, repre. sented, so to say, the high aristocracy of the intellect, and must needs have been, accordingly, the par. ticular object of attack by the other schools, whom a common jealousy united against it. But the more attractive this science was, which was to dissipate all the darkness of the human mind, the more diffi. cult it was to hold firmly to it, in the midst of the incessant objections opposed to it on all hands by its adversaries. As the Platonists held in contempt all the theories of knowledge maintained in the other schools, they would naturally, when once they admitted a doubt as to their own theory, begin to despair of the human intelligence itself. This explains the apparently singular phenomenon, namely, that Platonism, which exalted the human mind to the greatest height, was the first to descend towards the opposite extreme, the first to establish a mitigated skepticism. In the period which we are surveying, it no longer attributed to the human intelligence the power of knowing things in themselves and with cer. tainty; it allowed to the reason no other criterion than probable appearances. It was, besides, led to this doctrine in another way. The schools which believed in the possibility of ar. riving at the knowledge of things, but not that supe. PLATONIC SCHOOL. 169.ior and absolute knowledge which Platonism had promised, firmly maintained, for that very reason, their confidence in their own theories much longer, and, animated by that confidence, attacked their principal enemy, Platonism, with a much bolder tone. In order to lower the pretensions and disconcert the polemic pride of their adversaries, the Platonists, in their turn, attacked the dogmatism which all their adversaries displayed, even while denying to the human mind the power of attaining, in any certain way, to the reality of things. In a word, in the impossibility of knowing what is, man can know only what appears to be; he must therefore renounce certainty, and limit himself to probability: such is the fundamental principle which constitutes the unity of the speculations of the Middle and of the New Academy; a principle which char. acterizes their common tendency. Arcesilaus devoted his efforts particularly to the development of the purely negative part of this prin. ciple; he insisted uipon the impossibility of knowing things in themselves, and upon the necessity of ab. staining from all dogmatical judgments. In the sphere of practical life, he maintained opinion to be the rule of our judgments, that is, appearances more or less probable. This doctrine of probability was chiefly developed by Carneades. Between the cognitive intellect and the objects of reputed cognition he placed phantasy, the representative appearance, which is relative to both. As it is impossible to compare the appear. ance with the object, since that would presuppose the previous knowledge of the object, so there is no means of attaining a certain knowledge of things. But as the phantasy, the appearance or impression, may be tlrue, we should not absolutely refuse all re14 170 GREEK PHILOSOPHY. liance upon it, but should endeavour to distinguish what is probable from what is not. This probability evidently cannot be derived from the object, which as yet is unknown; it must therefore be sought for in the subject, the mind, which thinks it knows. It may have three sources or three degrees: 1. The liveliness of the impression produced in the mind; 2. The agreement of one appearance with other ap. pearances, which, far from contradicting, confirm it; 3. The examination of the appearance itself under its different aspects. If, under whatever aspect it be regarded, it still remains always alike, we ought to place a: greater reliance upon it. The combination of these conditions constitutes the highest de. gree of probability, or the most complete criterion to which man can pretend. The principles of the New Academy were propagated in the Roman world. Their most illustrious representative was Cicero, born B.C. 108, celebrated for his eloquence, his political influence, and his philosophical labours. Cicero asserted nothing as certain in regard to the most important objects which can occupy the mind of man, God, religion, and a future life, except when he could support himself upon the common consent of mankind, which he consid. ered as the voice of nature. But when he reasoned in a purely philosophical way, conformably to the doctrines of the New Academy, he admitted nothing but probabilities, as may be seen particularly in his treatise On the Nature of the Gods, which begins and ends with a "perhaps." In morals, however, he inclines in many respects to Stoicism. Cicero has played an important part in the philo-;sophical world, far less on account of any original contributions of his own,. than because he filled the office of factor for philosophy between Greece and ARISTOTELIAN SCHOOL, 171 Romec; of Latin secretary to the Greek sethools, whose numerous systems he made known to his country. men in clear and elegant forms. His writings con. tain a multitude of details of information of the great. est value in the history of philosophy. II. CONTINUATION OF THE ARISTOTELIAN SCHOOL. THE labours of the continuators of the Peripatetic, school present no new order of ideas of any great im., portance in the history of philosophy; and we shall confine ourselves to noticing, among the principal Aristotelians whose speculations have come down, at least partially, to us, those who modified in any no. ticeable degree the primitive doctrine of the Lyceum, indicating, as far as possible, with respect to each one, the characteristic traits of their philosophy. 1. Theophrastus, who attended the lectures of Aristotle. He is particularly known by his Charac. teristics, a work imitated in modern titnes by La Bruyere, who has risen far above his model. Theophrastus seems to have endeavoured to reduce the various phenomena of the physical world, as well as the faculties and operations of the soul, to the laws of motion, by referring these laws themselves to the predicaments of Aristotle. The importance thus given to the theory of motion, as the universal prin. ciple of explanation both in the physical and moral worlds agrees very well with the theology of Aristo. tle, which recognised God only as the prime mover of the universe. 2. Dicuaarchus of Messina, who lived about the year 320 B.C. He denied the existence of spiritual forces, and held the principle of life to be a purely ma. terial energy, which at the ground is a reduction of everything to the laws of motion. 3. Strato of Lampsacus, who lived fabout the year 172 GREEK PHILOSOPHY 270 B.C. In metaphysics he denied the reality of the general notion of being, and considered it as no. thing but an abstraction, which represented simply the idea of the permanence of particular beings. In psychology he seems to have identified thinking with sensation. In logic he maintained that all truth foc man was merely verbal. In cosmology he rejected the existence of a divine power, and recognised only the blind force of nature. All phenomena, according to him, were derived from two principles: motion, which is inherent in all bodies, and gravity, which is likewise essential to bodies, and in virtue of which they all tend to their centre. To these Peripatetic philosophers may be added the names of several who flourished from the epoch of Aristotle down to about the year 100 B.C. Eu. d'mus of Rhodes, Aristoxenes of Tarentum, Herac. litus of Pontus, Demetrius of Phalerum, Lycon, Critolaus of Phaselis, Diodorus of Tyre. Of these, some offer nothing noteworthy; others were distin. guished by the extent of their knowledge, but their writings arke lost. Andronicus of Rhodes carried to Rome the phi. losophy of Aristotle, whose works he expounded in the capital of the world about the year 80 B.C. Al. exander of Aphrodisia, in the close of the second and beginning of the third century of the Christian era, founded a Peripatetic school at Alexandria. No rec. ollection of any importance attaches to the names of the other disciples of Aristotle who spread his dor trine in the Roman empire. III. CONTINUATION OF THE SCHOOL OF EPICURUS. THIS school continued for a very long time without producing any remaIkable work. From Epicurus down to the age of Augustus we reckon ten successive STOIC SCHOOL. 173 chiefs of this school who have left no iraces of any importance in the history of philosophy. The doctrine of Epicurus gained a footing at Rome in the. last years of the Republic, and the corruption of manners which characterized that period was at once the cause and effect of its rapid spread. A singular spectacle was then presented. Platonism, which looked upon the creation as a divine epopee; Stoicism, with its dramatic ideas about the struggle of human Free.will and Fate, were naturally allied to poetry, yet neither of them had a poet for their interpreter. Nothing can be less poetical in itself than the mechanical philosophy of Epicurus: yet poetry lent it its forms. Lucretius sang of nature, of matter, of pleasure, and of non.existence; for poetry is never anything but the expression of ideas that live in men's minds, and, at that period of struggle after religious convictions, materialism was the expression of what remained of pensive enthusiasm in the human mind. But, apart from the brilliancy shed upon it by the poem of Lucretius, Epicureanism continued its work of corruption in obscurity, and no longei figured upon the theatre of philosophical theories. IV. CONTINUATION OF THE STOIC SCHOOL. STOICISM, as we have seen, contained two parts, the one scientific, the other moral, and incompatible with each other in certain fundamental points. This incompatibility must needs show itself in the history of Stoicism. It had already manifested itself' even in the time of Zeno. Two of his disciples, Aristo of Chios and Herillus of Carthage, endeavoured, in two opposite directions, to render one of the elements of Stoicism predominant over the other. The first rejected physics and logic, and reduced all philoso. 174 GREEK PHILOSOPHY. phy to morals. The second, on the other hand, de. rived morals fiom science. As the distinctive character of the Stoic philoso. phy was chiefly determined by its moral doctrines, as its principal power of propagation lay in its eth. ics, which struck and attracted the mind with far more force than the speculative ideas of Zeno and Chrysippus, the moral branch of the system would, it was to be expected, gain in the long run an exclusive predominance. It is true that Sphmrus, Athen. od6rus, Cleanthes, Zeno of Tarsus, Diogenes of Babylon, Antipater of Tarsus, maintained almost inviolate the deposite of original Stoicism. But the time arrived when its speculative part was decomposed, while its moral part subsisted in its integrity. Two celebrated Stoics, Antiochus of Ascalon and Panretius of Rhodes, at a period near to the Christian era. endeavoured to blend the theories of Zeno with those of Plato and Aristotle. From that moment the spec. ulative part of Stoicism proper began to fall into dissolution. Seneca, however, the preceptor of Nero, did for Stoicism what Lucretius had done for Epicureanism, He commented upon it, developed, and adorned it; and, though without resorting to poetry, clothed the doctrines of' the Portico in forms not wanting in beauty and attraction. But the last representatives of Stoicism that have commanded the attention of pos. terity, Epictetus the slave and Antoninus the em. peror, cultivated chiefly its morals. Cynicism, which was nothing but a sort of brutal S3toicismn, produced some names little renowned, down to the time when it ascended the funeral pyre of Per. egrinus, who is said to have burned himself at Olym. pia in the second century of the Christian era. GENERAL OBSERVATIONS. 175 General Observatzons. We have now followed in.their development, or, rather, in their degeneracy, the four great schools of Greek philosophy. Stoicism, as a scientific doctrine, was gradually dissolved away. Epicureanism, which buried the notion of truth in the sentiment ot pleasure, had, in crowning itself with flowers, celebrated the funeral obsequies of the intellect. - Peri. pateticism had become exhausted; its dialectics, the instrument of disputation, alone survived of all its vast assemblage of doctrines. For a longtime, too, the New Academy had cast doubt upon the corner stone of the human mind. It is true that, in the first and second centuries of the Christian era, some phi. losophers endeavoured to revive the Platonic specu. lations, among whom may be named Plutarch of Cheronea, more remarkable, however, for his learn. ing and good sense than for his theoretical ideas. About the same period the attempt was also made to resuscitate Pythagoreanism. But these exceptions do not destroy the general fact of the dissolution of philosophical doctrines. Such a state of philosophy must naturally produce a startling resurrection of skepticism. Philosophy was in a situation analogous to that which, in the first phasis of the. development of Greek genius, had immediately preceded the skepticism of the Sophists. But the philosophical spirit had undergone too prolonged labours; it was too much worn out during these long and laborious experiments; it was be. come too old to fall back again, as the Sophists had done, and seize upon the mind as a child's play-game. The new skepticism was, therefore, to exhibit a character eminently serious; it was to offer to wearied reason an asylum and a place of repose. Such, in 176 GREEK PHILOSOPHY. fact, was its character as it was sketched by Ene. sidemus, who seems, however, not to have established skepticism except in the sphere of science; such also was its character as constituted by Sextus Empiricus, who represented it as the normal or proper state of the human mind, taken in its universal rela. tions. SKEPTICAL SCHOOL. Historical Notices. IN proportion as doubt gained entrance into the schools of philosophy, under different forms and in different degrees, the proper physiognomy of the skeptical school founded by Pyrrho must needs be gradually effaced. Skepticism grew weak as a sect in proportion as its influence gained in extent. Nev. ertheless, in most of the schools, which felt this. influ. ence deaeply, it was a vague discouragement of the rea'. son, and not an avowed doctrine. There was a tendency to doubt, a sort of passive and mitigated skepticism, which was not produced as a system, and still less as a complete and thorough.going system. But this disposition of mind must needs none the less terminate in a resuscitation of the old skeptical Pyr. rhonic school, which, in systematizing doubt anew, in raising it to an active, polemic, and predominant doctrine, constituted it the centre of all philosophical tendencies, as the general formula of everything which preceding philosophical investigations had re. vealed concerning the nature and laws of the hu. man mind. The New Skeptical School extends firom IEnesid. emus, contemporary with Cicero, to Sextus Empiricus, who lived in the reign of Marcus Aurelius. Be. tween these two philosophers, of whom the first. was SKEPTICAL SCHOOL 177 the prime mover, and the second the legislator of the new skepticism, occur names much less known. Zeuxippus, Antiochus of Laodicea, Menodotus, The odas, Herodotus of Tarsus, respectively mark peri. ods in the genealogy of the doctrine. AEnesidemus, originally of Crete, composed a work on Pyrrhonism, divided into eight books, of which Photius has given us a summary. But the great documents of the school are the works of Sextus Erm. piricus, his Institutes of Pyrrhonism, and his eleven books Against the Mathematicians, that is to say, against all dogmatic philosophers. The native coun. try of Sextus is unknown: he appears to have lived for some time at Alexandria, where also.Eneside. mus had resided. He received the name of Empiricus, because he belonged to a school of medical men who limited themselves to experiment, and rejected every medical theory. Exposition. As.Enesidemus is commonly placed at the head of the skeptical movement which terminated with Sextus Empiricus, it might be concluded that the doctrines of the former were identical with those of the latter. This, however, is not certain. There is room for doubting whether _Enesidemus professed skepticism in the strict sense of the word. We know, from the testimony of Sextus, that 2Enesidemus, who was attached to the doctrine of Heraclitus, borrowed from that philosopher the principle that the notions common to all minds are the rule for the thinking of each one. If he considered these as a practical rule, the only one to which recourse can be had in the absolute uncertainty of all positive faith, of all dognmatic judgmnent, his doctrine was not essentially different from that of Sextus, who likewise ad. 178 GREEK PHILOSOPHY,. mitted a practical rule, though he conceived it in a different way. But'if these common notions were for him, as they seem to have been for Heraclitus, a real criterion of truth, then he did not profess skepticism, since he admitted one kind of certainty; he profess. ed skepticism only with respect to philosophy and science, since in his view all the results of intellectual activity, everything superadded to the primary universal notions inherent in human nature, was com. pletely uncertain. In denying scientific cognition, he destroyed, it is true, one of the necessary modes of the human mind, and left only bare belief: he attack. ed fundamentally, also, his very principle of common reason, for the possibility of science is one of its convictions. But this merely scientific skepticism was still different from that of Sextus, which embraced the human mind in its whole extent and in all its modes. Whatever be the truth on this- point, yet, as the arguments of JEnesidemus are to be found in the system of Sextus, it will be enough to expound the latter, which is, in fact, the most complete expression and the most powerful apology for skepticism. It sums up all anterior Pyrrhonic ideas, and succeeding skep. tics have added nothing fundamental. Skepticism sets out with a distinction which has for its object the reconciliation of speculation with practice. It distinguishes in man nature and reason. There exist in the nature of man indefinable instincts, which lead him to acquiesce in appearances. It is in virtue of these instincts that he provides for his wants, that he conforms himself to laws and customs: the whole of practical life rests upon this basis, and in this sense skepticism admits a practical criterion. But when, instead of confining himself to the instincts of nature, man calls for the intervention of reason; when he imagines that he can know with it and by SKEPTICAL SCHOOL. 179 it not merely phenomena, but things absolutely, in themselves; when, in a word, he admits a speculative criterion, he attempts what is impossible, he would seize what is not to be grasped. Hence there are but two great philosophical sects,* dogmatism and skepticism. Their radical difference turns not upon the necessity of a practical criterion, the necessity of yielding to appearances, but upon the possibility or the existence of a speculative criterion, which may establish a relation between the phenomenal and the real. Dogmatism maintains a speculative criterion, and all the polemics of skepti. cism is directed to overthrow this pretension of the dogmatists. The supposition of a speculative criterion con. tains in the first place, according to the skeptics, a radical contradiction. If we do not demonstrate the criterion, we must choose it at hazard; if we under. take to demonstrate it, the demonstration will still contain a principle adopted at hazard, or which, in its turn, requires to be demonstrated, and thus on in an infinite series. But the impossibility of such a criterion results from a multitude of other considerations, which may be referred to three principal heads: 1. The mind, or subject of cognition; 2. The object of cognition; 3. The relation of the subject to the object. The innumerable arguments brought forward by Sextus Ernpiricus may all be comprised within these three categories, although he himself has followed a more complicated classification. 1. The subject of knowledge, the mind, is affected by sensations and by conceptions, by phenomena and noumena. Now, in the first place, sensations and conceptions conduct to opposite results. On this point Sextus 180 GREEK PHILOSOPHY. reproduced the logical antagonism which the con. troversy between the idealists and sensualists had brought out. Secondly, conceptions are in themselves opposed to each other: this he proves by the history of phi. losophy. Thirdly, sensations are equally opposed to each other, because they vary and must vary according to differences of organization, distance of objects, and changes which take place in man, according as he is in a waking or sleeping state, in infancy or old age, in motion or at rest, preoccupied with joy or sorrow, love or hate: changes which modify not only the sensations, but the conceptions likewise. This threefold antithesis, which lies at the ground of the human mind, is reflected in an infinite diversity of laws, customs, mythologies, and creeds. 2. In regard to the objects of knowledge: each object being in relation to another, it is necessary to comprehend the whole in order to know really any part. Besides, no object presenting itself immediately to us, but only through a sign or medium, how are we to distinguish the one from the other? In fine, objects appear to us not in their simplicity, but as composed of divers elements, and these compositions undergo perpetual variations. 3. If we consider the relation of the cognitive sub. ject to the object of cognition, new difficulties arise. The process of the mind is intuitive or discursive, that is to say, it proceeds sometimes by spontane. ous rules anterior to any artificial combination of ideas, and sometimes by those combinations of ideas of which logic traces the laws. In order to arrive at a legitimate affirmation in virtue of simple perceptions, it is requisite to be able to distinguish in them what pertains to the subject SKEPTICAL SCHOOL. 18l and what to the object. This discrimination is im. possible, since the question in regard to the notions from which we are to set out will always recur for solution. Logic, the art of combining perceptions, an art which necessarily partakes of their uncertainty, treats of definitions, categories, and argumentation. Definitions are useless, since he who makes a definition is supposed already to comprehend the thing itself. If nothing is to be conceived without definiLion, it will be necessary to define everything: in this way we shall be forced into an infinite circle of definitions. If, on the contrary, we can form con. ceptions without their assistance, then definitions are of no value in the pursuit of truth. The categories, for instance those of genus and species, are either vain or false. They are vain if they are mere creations of the mind; for what could we in that case conclude from them in relation to the reality of things? They are false if they subsist, if they have their proper reality out of the soul. In fact, as soon as we suppose that the species exists independently of the genus, we can no longer con. ceive that the former is included in the latter. Argumentation combines universal propositions with particular propositions; but, on the one hand, it is necessary to set out from individual objects in orIer to be able to conclude the truth of universal prop)sitions; and, on the other hand, we rest upon unifersal when we wish to prove the existence of individual objects. Reasoning in general, and logic along with it, rests, then, for its basis upon particu. lar reasonings admitted to be false, the vicious cir. cle, and it can so much the less lead to truth, because, in requiring an examination of the individual objects, without exception, included'n the universal 182 GREEK PHILOSOPHY. proposition, it implies an operation manifestly impos sible for man. Skepticism cannot be invalidated by objecting that it renounces its character by the very fact of employing reasoning itself, by laying down principles and deducing consequences from them. The skep. tics take a stand in relation to dogmatism in general, much like that of the controversialist who attacks a particular system by hypothetical arguments, or arguments ad hominem. Just as the controversialist, in such a case, concedes for the moment the truth of the system, and concerns himself solely to show that it cannot be supposed true without being made to appear contradictory or false, so the skeptics admit the notions maintained by the dogmatists only for the sake of proving that they mutually destroy each other. The essence of skepticism is in the preten. sion that the intelligence finds its death in knowledge itself, that it fades and perishes away in contempla. ting itself. To general arguments against the grounding prin. ciples of dogmatism, Sextus added some special arguments against various theories of the dogmatists. Observations. 1. Perfect skepticism, taken by itself, is invincibly repudiated by human nature; but, at the same time, it cannot be refuted in an absolute way by human logic. For every refutation of this kind implies a certain principle on which it rests, and skepticism admits no certain principle. But nature, says Pas. cal, upholds feeble reason, and prevents it from wandering to such a degree of extravagance. Man nat. urally believes in truth from the very fact that he is an intelligent being. The mind repels skepticism, as life repels death, as being excludes non.being; for SKEPTICAL SCHOOL. 183 absolute skepticism would be the very extinction of reason. 2. The vice of skepticism does not consist in maintaining that it is impossible to demonstrate radically that man can have certain knowledge of truth, but precisely in requiring that demonstration. In maintaining the first point, it follows reason; in asserting the second, it abjures human nature, which believes in certainty in virtue of a vital, indestructible faith, which no objection can succeed in shaking. 3. In reality, complete skepticism is impossible: that of Sextus himself is incomplete.. He denies the relations of human intelligence to things objectively considered, but, in fact, he believes at least in the existence of the human intelligence, and he can admit that only in virtue of that invincible belief which he on all other points attacks. Ile yields to it in the very act of denying it. 4. The polemics of skepticism, summed up or con. structed by Sextus, have thrown great light upon the native condition of human reason. In sounding the depth of skeptical theories, we are led to recognise the fact that reason unfolds itself under a double law, a law of obscurity and a law of light, in a state which might be represented under the image of luminous shadows. It is shadowy, because it begins by believing, without explaining that belief; and thus belief, and thereby certainty, is at its origin a mystery. Biat these shadows are luminous, since this faith cannot subsist without attaching itself to notions, and every notion, every distinction in thought, is of the nature of light. We need not, therefore, be surprised that we find, in all stages of the development of the human mind, this mixture of darkness and light. It is nothing but the prolongation of that primitive dualism which exists at the very source of reason, and 184 GREEK PHILOSOPHY. which is itself derived from a still higher source, from the essence of every created intelligence. As intel. ligence, it is in the light, for it lives in God, the infi. nite reason; as a limited intelligence, it is in dark. ness, being by its very limitations separated from the infinite reason. In this point of view, these shadows become wonderfully luminous. For, if our in. telligence cannot penetrate beyond its limits, and comprehend in itself the darkness which surrounds it (which would be in contradiction with its finite ca. pacity), it can yet comprehend it as necessary, and, seeing the cause why it can see no more, it penetrates to the impenetrable; and it is a magnificent proof of its feebleness and its grandeur, that, all enveloped as it is in these shadows, which fall upon it from the heights of creation, it knows how to subject them in turn, and to look down upon them. GENERAL OBSERVATIONS ON GREEK PHILOSOPHY. THE observations already made upon each of the principal Greek systems render extended develop. ments here unnecessary. Some general views will be sufficient. 1.'raking collectively the schools which it pro. duced, Greek philosophy was much more occupied with the diversity of things than with their radical unity, with the finite element rather than with the infinite. In this respect it is the inverse of Oriental philosophy. 2. Theology was much less developed in it than cosmology, and cosmology than anthropology. The human element, or the science which has man for its object, predominates in it. Greek philosophy raised and discussed a multitude of questions respecting tile theory of human knowledge, morals, and politics, which the Hindu philosophy a pprars to have disdain. GENERAL OBSERVATIONS. 185 fully neglected, or which, from the heights of its pan. theism, it did not perceive. 3. Logical processes predominated also in Greek philosophy, as intuition predominated in the Orien. tal philosophy. 4. In respect of form, philosophy in most of the Greek schools is devoid of poetic images; but, in seeking a language rigorously exact, it has substitu. ted too often a vocabulary of subtile and barren abstractions in place of the antique symbolism. It fell in this respect into an extreme the opposite to the luxuriousness of imagination which is displayed in the Oriental philosophy. Perfect philosophical lan. guage ought to reflect the union of images and ideas which is exhibited in the real world. Plato so con. ceived it. 5. In respect to the question on which depends every explanation of things, the question concerning the original principle, dualism predominates in the Greek' schools. Idealistic pantheism and atheistic materialism occupy by the side of dualism scarcely so great a space in Greek philosophy as the dualis. tic and material systems occupied by the side of pre. dominant pantheism in the Hindu philosophy. 6. In the progress of these systems Greek philosophy encountered skepticism at the end of both its principal epochs. 7. While Greek philosophy in its decline was crawling, discouraged and without faith, among the fragments of its old schools, a new school sprang up from the union of Oriental doctrines with the most elevated partionr of the Greek speculations: a school which, far from yielding to doubt, carried its faith even to illuminism. This school, which does not belong to the purely Greek philosophical movement, will find its place in the following period. 15 186 FIRST CENTURIES OF THE CHRISTIAN ERA, THIRD PERIOD. PHILOSOPHY OF THE FIRST CENTURIES OF THE CHRISTIAN ERA. IT does not fall within the scope of this work to exhibit the proofs of the Divine origin of Christian. ity; regarded merely in a philosophical point of view, it presents the greatest fact in history. The regenerator of the Old World, the creator of the New, it evidently possesses within itself the principle of per. petual progress. The nations that have embraced it have risen superior to all the rest of the human race, and have progressively advanced to such a de. gree of intellectual development, moral ascendency, and political power, that it is now evident Christian civilization will go on step by step to accomplish the education of all the nations of the earth. Christianity is not, like this or the other doctrine of antiqui. ty, a source of culture and progress for a particular people or epoch, exhausting itself upon that people or that epoch: it is the immanent source of the culture and perfectionment of humanity. It must therefore possess in its mysterious depths a power, a light, a life superior to all philosophies ever known; and as its primitive documents prove that it did not spring up after the manner of any of the speculative and scientific theories, we are naturally led to the conclusion that it is not simply a sublime product of hu man reason, but that it had a higher origin. Setting out from the Christian era, philosophical speculations may be divided into two great classes: speculations opposed to the Christian creed, and spee ulations harmonizing with that creed. GNOSTICISM. ly7 FIRST CLASS. PHILOSOPHICAl SPECULATIONS OPPOSED IO THE CHRIS. TIAN CREED. THESE embrace two principal series of doctrines, which were developed nearly at the same time. 1. The Oriental doctrines, represented by Gnosticism, which, by modifying and corrupting Christian. ity, endeavoured to combine it with itself. 2. The Graeco-Oriental speculations, represented by the Alexandrian Eclecticism. The Oriental doctrines were also reproduced in the Cabala of the Jews, a notice of which will come in as an appendix to this class. FIRST SECTION. ORIENTAL DOCTRINES. GNOSTICISM. Historical Notices. IT is not to be supposed that the intellectual activ. ity was slumbering, during the five centuries which preceded the Christian era, in the bosom of those sa. cerdotal corporations which extended from Persia to Egypt. If antiquity has not preserved to us a body of testimonies and records which directly establish the philosophical progress of that period, it is nevertheless reflected in an undeniable way by a general fact, which was, so to say, its living monument. The powerful appearance of Oriental doctrines in the Greek and Roman world would be inexplicable if there were not some preparation for it. The mind does not pass suddenly from a state of lethargy to 188 FIRST CENTURIES OF THE CHRISTIAN ERA. so highly excited a state of intellectual interest; and Gnosticism cannot be conceived except as we consider it the manifestation of previous exertions of the philosophical spirit which at length issued from the depth of the Oriental sanctuary to perform a brilliant part upon the scene of the Occidental world. Gnosticism, taken as a whole, presents a combination of Persian, Chaldean, and Egyptian doctrines, united to conceptions of which India was the ancient source, and to ideas similar to those which among the Jews formed the basis of the so-called Cabalistic science. This mixture, this syncretism of doctrines, was gradually prepared by the multiplied and continually-increasing communications established between those nations by the conquests and policy of Alexander. The same cause likewise served to bring the Oriental and Greek world into contact. Thus a double fusion took place. When the Oriental speculations, between which very close mutual analogies existed, were brought together, and had formed by this connexion a stronger and more ex. tended whole, they aspired to invade the Western world, at the period when the decline of Greek philos. ophy, all exhausted by doubt, had stirred in men's minds a vague feeling of want, of desire for satis. factory speculations. The Gnostics flattered them. selves that they could meet this want. But the immediate cause of this philosophical movement was the shock produced by Christianity, then springing up. Orientalism beheld great numbers of its partisans attach themselves to Christian. ity, to which they were the more strongly attracted, in that, besides the peculiar proofs of its Divine ori. gin, they thought they recognised in its leading truths the development of the old doctrines of the East., Governed by this persuasion, their enthusiasm for GNOSTICISM. 189 fthose doctrines was increased by all the power with which Christianity seized upon their minds, and they were inspired with a great ardour for proselyting. But in embracing Christianity many of them fundamentally misconceived its essence and its spirit. Instead of subordinating philosophy to faith, they subordinated faith to philosophy. The word (yvwati, gnosis) from which the name Gnostics was derived had been previously employed in many schools to denote a science superior to the belief of the vulgar. In the mouth of the Gnostics the word expressed the threefold superiority of their doctrine: over the pagan rites and symbols, which it professed to explain; over the Hebrew doctrines, the imperfection and errors of which it pretended to un. fold; and, finally, over the common belief of the Christian Church, which in their view was nothing but the weak or corrupted envelope of the transcendent Christianity of which they averred themselves to be the depositaries. Some of them openly contemn. ed the doctrine and writings of the apostles; others pretended that the true apostolic teaching, distinct from the forms under which it had been presented to the common people incapable of comprehending it, had come down to them by means of secret tradi. tion; and there were also some among them' who limited themselves to interpreting, in a sense opposed to the faith of the Church, those of the canonical books which they in other respects received with veneration. Gnosticism is a very singular phenomenon, which has commonly occupied far too little space, whether in the history of the Church or in the history of phi. losophy. It was something intermediate between,the heretics, in the restricted sense of the word —that,s, those who rejected only this or that point of the 190 FIRST CENTURIES OF THE CHRISTIAN ERA. Catholic faith-and the pagan Orientalists, of whom we shall have occasion soon to speak. It had affinities and antipathies with respect to both. It agreed with the simple heretics in recognising the revelation of Christ. But the aim of the heretics, which was confined to effacing from the Catholic creed some doctrines which they disliked, was far below the pretensions of Gnosticism, which subordinated Christianity entirely to anterior doctrines, and cast them in some sort into its mould, to make them come out in a state of complete transformation. On one hand, like the philosophical school of Alexandria, it went back to Oriental sources; but it was profound ly distinct from that school, because it connected Christianity with the doctrines of the East, while the Alexandrians connected the Oriental doctrines with Greek philosophy, which the Gnostics despised. Al. though some individuals borrowed numerous ideas from Greek philosophy, the forms of which they admired, yet, generally speaking, this contempt of Greek philosophy formed one of the distinctive traits of Gnosticism. The Alexandrian philosopher Plotinus complains in bitter terms of the audacity of those who mocked at Plato, as well as the other divine ge. niuses of Greece, and by their sacrilegious criticisms obtained the applause of the people. These last words are a picture of the state of mind at that time: opposition to Greek philosophy had become a means of popular favour. Gnosticism produced divers systems, which, it considered in a purely historical view, may be referred to two centres; for their principal local seats were Syria and Egypt. Logically considered, they give ground for another distinction, according as the pantheistic or dualistic element prevailed in them This logical classification does not strictly agree GNOSTICISM. 191 with the historical; Basilides, for instance, one of the most brilliant interpreters of the Egyptian school, professed the dualism predominant in the Syriac school, which derived its doctrines more particularly from Persiam sources. The principle of pure pantheism is revealed in the systems of Apelles, of Valentinus, of Carpocrates, of Epiphanes, and of a sect which claimed exclusively the title of Gnostic. The speculations of Saturninus, of Bardesanes, of Basilides, set out with the principle of dualism modified by pantheistic conceptions. The Gnostic ideas which were developed from these two principles, concurred in the production of Manicheism, which was the highest combination of Persian dualism with everything compatible with it in Hindu pantheism. To these different systems there were numerous corresponding heresies less comprehensive, which were in some sort the transformation of them. We shall speak, 1. Of the ideas common to most of the Gnostic systems; 2. Of the Gnostic systems specially pantheistic or dualistic; 3. Of the continnation of Gnostic conceptions in Manicheism; 4. Of the transformation of these protypical errors into more limited heresies. Exposition. Ideas common to most of the Gnostic systems. 1. The distinction of two worlds, the superior world, the region of light, purity, bliss, immortality; and the inferior world, a prey to darkness, vice, mis. ery, death. What was the ground of this distinc. tion? What were the philosophical questions con. nected with it? The ideas which in this connexion form the basis of Gnosticism, may be expressed ip the following formula: the infinite being, the prio 192 FISRT CENTURIES OF THE CHRISTIAN ERA. mordial substance, could not remain inactive; it has rayed forth in emanations. The primary emanations, so closely united to their source, must have shared largely the attributes of the divine essence, and, consequently, the superior world is necessarily in contrast with the human world such as we know it. But in what way could the transition from one to the other have been ori. ginally effected? They conceived it by supposing that the divine emanations formed a series which went on diminishing in perfection in proportion as the distance from their origin increased. Thus we come to an emanation where perfection and imperfection are in a sort of equilibrium, and which was then capable of producing or of organizing the infe. rior world, with all its defects and all its disorders. Here a new question arises: In what way this latter emanation, this being placed at the lowest degree of the superior world, formed the inferior world? In replying to this question there is a division among the Gnostics, as we shall presently explain; but, in spite of the diversity of their replies, their common doctrine respecting the distinction of the two worlds is none the less maintained. If the being who formed the inferior world did not really create or produce it, if he merely exercised his power upon a matter eternal, existing out of the superior world, the dis. tinction between the two worlds would then begin at the point where the intervention of matter began. If, on the contrary, he really produced or brought it out from himself, this inferior world would then, it is true, be nothing but the last link in the chain of emanations, the most concrete, the most gross link, but, nevertheless, the universe would still comprehend two worlds, two parts, subject to opposite laws, since perfection and. imperfection would exist in in. GNOSTICISM. 193 verse proportions. Suppose a series of torches, the light from which follows a law of decrease to the point of becoming imperceptible and confounded with total darkness: in one portion of the series the light prevails over the darkness; in the other, the darkness prevails over the light. II. The infinite being, the source of all emanations, is in all the Gnostic systems something invisible, withdrawn into profound immense night, the Un. known Father, the Abyss, BvOo?. It is the Brahm indeterminate of the Hindu metaphysics, the Pironet of the Egyptian theology; it is, in the language of modern philosophy, the ground of being, the substance, incomprehensible in itself, and which is con. ceived as that which is concealed under that which appears. III. The emanations which compose the superior world are not the creation of that which did not ex. ist, but only the emission and manifestation of that which was contained in the bosom of the Abyss. They are nothing but the display of the substance, his attributes, his forms, his names. Taken togeth. er with him, they constitute the Pleroma, the pleni. tude of intelligences. They are generally called Eons, aitwves. Their number varies in different systems: in one of them it is carried as high as three hundred and sixty-five. They are commonly classified in subordinate series, which correspond to heptads, octeads, decads, and dodecads. The Gnos. tics do not determine arbitrarily the number of the Eons, nor the number of their series; all this is re. ferred to antique theories of numbers, which would seem to have some foundation, in appearance at least, in the conceptions of the human mind, since they are to be found in almost all theogonies and cosmogonies. 194 FIRST CENTURIES OF THE CHRISTIAN ERA. IV. The emanations proceed almost always two by two in syzygy. This idea, which belongs also to most of the ancient theogonies, may have had for its basis a double induction, as has already been remarked. V. The Demiurgusi who is the last emanation of the Pleroma, and the first power of the inferior world, which he produces or which he organizes, plays an important part in the Gnostic theories, since he is the bond between the two worlds. By this conception the creation is kept originally from the intervention of God, the Unknown Father: it is unworthy of him. The Demiurgus being a mixture of light and ignorance, of force and feebleness, the plan of creation, although it contains some good things, is radically vicious, and ought to be destroyed. Gnosticism, saving a few exceptions, is a sort of grand anathema hurled by man against the creation. VI. In all the Gnostic systems the idea reigns of a degradation, a Fall, which is one not only of the human race, but of the entire inferior world, and which, according to some of the systems, began in the very bosom of the Pleroma. It is known in two ways: sometimes as the descent, the imprisonment of souls in the corporeal world, an imprisonment brought about either by the will of the creator, the Demiurgus, or by an invasion, usurpation of matter, which he could not resist; sometimes as a primitive crime, which appeared either in the form of pride, jealous of all superiority, or in the form of pleasure, which attracts the souls of men, and even the genii themselves, to sensual good. VII. The idea of the Fall led to that of the Regeneration. As the latter consisted precisely in re. forming the work of the Demiurgus, it could not be wrought by him. It was requisite, therefore, that GNOSTICISM. 195one of the high powers of the Pleroma, that the first divine thought, intelligence, mind, should descend personally to the lower ranks of the creation, or, at least, communicate his gifts to a human being, to en. lighten man, and to tea(;h him the way of return to the bosom of the Pleroma. This redeeming virtue is Christ. Christ is the antagonist of the Demiurgus, the reformer of his plan, the destroyer of his creation. He is, so to say, the head of an immense Prot. estantism, which must go on working to the dissolution of the universe, corrupted at its very source. VIII. In the Gnostic theology concerning redemp. tion, two features, essentially connected with their philosophical principles, should be noticed. In most of their theories, the divine emanation, which was manifested under the form of Christ, was not clothed with a real body; it took only the appearance of one. This notion flowed as a consequence from their ideas of the evil nature of matter. In the second place, the law promulgated by our Saviour is not the de. velopment of the primitive law, nor, above all, of the Mosaic law. These two laws have Jehovah, who is nothing but the Demiurgus, for their author; they express only his mind, whereas the Christian law is the expression of the divine mind, the intelligence of the Unknown Father. IX. From hence were derived other consequences, which might have served as the basis of a singular philosophy of history, if the Gnostics had thought of constructing one. 1. The human race, considered with regard to its total duration, is divided into two categories, corre. sponding to two epochs: in the first epoch, from the creation to the redemption, men had the religion of the Demiurgus; in the second, they are the worship. pers of God. 196 FIRST CENTURIES OF THIE CHRISTIAN ERA. 2. Men may, besides, be divided into three class. es, according to the principle of life which reigns in them. Those who suffer themselves to be captiva. ted by the inferior world live only a hylic (material) life, of which matter ('v.y1) is the principle. Those who seek to return into the Pleroma partake of a higher life, which has its principle in itself, the pneu. matic, or spiritual principle. Finally, the psychical principle constitutes the life of those who content themselves with merely rising to the Demiurgus: the soul, ibvXy, anima, which is neither matter nor spirit, corresponds to the creator, whose essence is a combination of the pneumatic with the hylic princi. ple. This theory was particularly developed by Valentinus, but it follows naturally from doctrines com. mon to all the Gnostics. 3. The Jews, subject t6 the Demiurgus, Jehovah, were psychical; the pagans, plunged in the inferior world, were hylic; the pneumatic are true Christians. In forming this classification of the human race, Valentinus acknowledges that it admits of exceptions more or less numerous. Christianity itself contains two classes of persons: the one consisting of those who stop at the letter of its precepts, at creeds, at the rind of the fruit of life; the other of those who rise to the intuition of truth, and are nourished by the divine spirit. X.-From all the foregoing, it follows that the progress of the human race ought to consist in rising from the hylic and psychical to the spiritual or divine life. The hylic principle is subject to death, and, according to many Gnostics, those who remain under its control throughout their lives will then be completely annihilated. The psychical will obtain only the imperfect rewards which the Demiurgus can bestow: the pneumatic or spiritual will return to the bosom of the eternal Pleroma. GNOSTICISM. 197 Pantheistic or Dualistic Systems of Gnosticism. We should be forced into too many details if we attempted to follow, through all the different Gnostic systems, and under all the mythical forms in which they are clothed, the particular ideas by which their common doctrine is infinitely shaded. We shall confine ourselves to noticing the principal points of difference radically determined by the predominance of Pantheism or of Dualism. Dualism.-Saturninus, Bardesanes, Basilides. Saturninus was a Syrian by birth, and lived during the reign of the Emperor Hadrian. From what re. mains to us of his doctrines, it does not appear that he considered the principle of Evil to be an emana. tion from God, originally pure and subsequently cor. rupted. It is more probable that he conceived it as eternal. In his view the Evil principle, Satan, was at once spirit and matter. He was not a simple, but a compound being. It was natural to inquire which of these two elements was the primitive element, the generator of the other. This was done by Barde. sanes, originally a Syrian, who lived in the time of Marcus Aurelius. He represented matter as the primitive element of Evil, and Satan as a spiritual manifestation of matter. In the same way as the Abyss of Goodness, the BvOog, was the father, and produced intelligence, his son or daughter, and there. by a succession of emanations, all manifesting him. self under different aspects, so the Abyss of Evil, matter indeterminate, was the mother, and brought forth her own expression, her son Satan, and, through him, a series of analogous emanations. There was thus between the good and the evil creation, considered in their source and their development, a paral. 198 FIRST CENTURIES OF THE CHRISTIAN ERA. lelism, which reduced this dualistic system to a sort of hostile harmony, the unity of a grand and eternal antinomy. The manifestation of a double Unknown: such was the universe. It may be remarked, also, that Bardesanes, in as far as he conceived matter as producing its own manifestation, fell in with the Hindu idea of Kapila, according to which matter, Prakriti, engendered the intelligence, and thereby began to reveal itself. We know, besides, that Bardesanes made India a subject of critical inquiry. From information furnished by some ambassadors sent to that country about the time of the Emperor Verus, he published a work entitled Commentaries upon In. dia, of which, however, only two fragments are ex tant. Basilides, born in Syria, went to Egypt, and taught his doctrine at Alexandria. Although his ideas concerning the eternity of the two principles have nothing peculiar, his- mode of conceiving the mixture of good and evil, when compared with the concep. tions of most other Gnostics, throws light upon the foundation of these doctrines. According to Ba. silides, the beings that emanated from the principle of Darkness, smitten with love for the light, rise and rush towards the bosom of the Pleroma. Ac. cording to other Gnostics, the Pleroma, on the contrary, overflows, and descends to the kingdom of Darkness. In the first hypothesis, the mixture of good and evil is the product of the attractive power of the good; in the second, it results from its expansive force. However opposite these conceptions, and the images in which they are clothed, they tend towards a more elevated idea, which the human mind has always pursued whenever it has attempted to solve the great problem which has forever torment. ed the speculative intellect. It is constantly com GNOSTICISM. 199 pelled to conceive the mysterious combination of good and evil as connected originally, by a relation of some kind, with the efficiency of the principle of goodness itself. For the rest, all these dualist systems-dualist in what may be called their first act-resolve themselves in an instant into pantheistic conceptions, since all beings are nothing but forms, either of the good being or of the evil being, phenomena of a double sub atance. Pantheism.-System of Valentinus. This system represents the grounds of all the Gnostic theories in which pantheistic ideas predomi. nate. The origin of matter and of evil is the primary point of separation between pure Pantheism and Dualism. If matter is conceived as an emanation more gross, a form of spirit, or even as an illusion, Pantheism prevails: if it is eternal and uncreated, like spirit, Dualism is constituted. The first of these points of view appears to be that taken by Valentinus, who belonged to the Egyptian school, and who was the most celebrated of the Gnostics for the extent of his conceptions. He put out his doctrines in the first half or towards the middle of the second century. He probably held matter in the pantheistic sense. In its generality it was in his view the shadow of that-which really is; but, considered in the different states in which it is actually pre. sented, it proceeds from the mind. Valentinus propounds this idea in mythical language. Created wisdom, the universal symbol of souls, feels joy and pain. Its joy or its smile produces luminous matter; its pain produces aqueous and terrestrial matter. Matter, therefore, in its principal states, is at bottom nothing but a form of the soul, dilated by joy, or condensed and obscured by grief. 200 FIRST CENTURIES OF THE CHRISTIAN ERA. Evil has not its primary source in a principle sub. stantially existing out of the divine emanations; for evil commenced in the interior even of the Pleroma. It was produced by the opposition existing between the desire which urged the Eons to unite themselves to Bythus (BvOo?), the Abyss, that is, to comprehend it, and the limitations of their nature, which render. ed their desire impossible to be satisfied. In follow. ing this idea of Valentinus, we are led to conceive of evil as being simply a false direction of the good. For the desire to become united with the Unknown Father, the source of everything that is, is in itself good: it becomes evil when it -breaks the bounds which circumscribe everything that is not the Uni. versal Father. Evil is good gone astray.. Valentinus was also led, by his predilection for pure pantheism, to mark in a less decisive way the distinction between the superior and the inferior world. between which he supposed a third, which floated with a vague essence between the two: an idea ex. tremely vague in itself, but which Valentinus made use of, conformably with the object of pantheism, in order to explain with more ease how the primitive substance was able, by successive transformations, to produce itself at last under a material form. The ancient pantheism, particularly that of India, has constantly reached forward to the idea of something which, without being spiritual, was still not material, Observations. Although many of the Gnostic leaders have dedu. ced from their doctrine maxims which tend in cer. tain respects to the moral improvement of man,it iS not the less true that a great number of Gnostics have drawn from them consequences subversive of all virtue: which explains the reuroaches cast upon GNOSTICISM. 201 them of being profoundly immoral. They arrive systematically at these consequences in different ways. 1. Their pantheism and dualism lead directly to them. In the first of these systems, God is the o.nly agent; and how is it possible to conceive a real dis. tinction between virtue and vice? In the second, man, an emanation from.a double principle, is subject to forces which draw him irresistibly towards good or evil. Freedom is radically destroyed, and with it the very notion of virtue. 2. The Gnostic doctrines, which attribute the creation to an imperfect being subject to error, contain also results fruitful of immorality. The religious and moral law which the Creator imposed upon the human race was necessarily imperfect, vitiated like the creation itself. Perfection accordingly consisted in getting freed from it. Many Gnostics, it is true, distinguished in this law different elements, a vicious and transitory element, and an element good in itself. But many of them also passed from de. spising the work of the Creator to despise the moral precepts which had formed, from the time of the Cre. ation to that of the Redemption, the conscience of the human race. 3. Besides, as the universe was composed of two principles, the one spiritual and pure, the other ma. terial and impure, so religion contained two parts correlative to these two principles: the material part, the body, the letter of the law, which requires or for. bids external actions; and the spiritual part, the spir. it of the law, which produces internal perfection, the liberty of the sons of God, freed from the yoke of the letter. The imperfect, the weak, adhere to the let. ter of the law. Bit the true Gnostic, who is in pos. session of the spiritual sense, rises to a virtue so sub. 16 202 FIRST CENTURIES OF THE CHRISTIAN EflR lime that all distinction of good and evil in external actions disappears to his eyes. This distinction is as the phantom of virtue, a spectre without reality, which appears in the night of human mind, and which vanishes when, from the heights of science (gnosis), the soul sees the light of the Pleroma dawn, and the divine day begin. 4. History has preserved scarcely anything but faint indications of the application of the Gnosti( metaphysics to the laws of human society. We see. however, that Epiphanes, who appears to have be longed to the pantheistic school, had conceived a sort of political pantheism, which had for its basis absolute social unity, or the abolition of property and marriage, in place of which he substituted com. munity of women and of goods: a unity which de. stroys itself, since it can produce nothing but divis-, ion and complete anarchy. Other Gnostics derived from their dualism the distinction of the human race into two species, the one inferior or evil, the otheri superior or good. Most of the philosophers of antiquity, when they desired to justify slavery and the es. tablishment of castes, have resorted to similar ideas. Gnosticism thus touched, as far as we know anything of its social doctrines, upon the two extreme terms, which are perpetually reproducing each other, anar. chy and servitude, conceived as the natural and necessary lau s of human society. MANICHEISIM. tlistorical INotices. MANES, born in Persia about the beginning of the third century, appears to have drawn his doctrine from the lectures and writings of a personage named Terebinthus, who took also the Hindu name of? MANICHEISM. 203 Buddha. He endeavoured to combine the Persian dualism with the doctrines of Christianity. After travelling over a great part of the East, he returned to Persia, where he preached anew his doctrine. He was condemned to death and executed about the vear 2'74, by order of the King Behram I. Ex'position. The principal elements of Manicheism belong originally either to Gnosticism, or to the doctrines oI the Persian Magi, who had corrupted the ancient teaching of Zoroaster. We have, therefore, to recall those elements to mind merely to note the modifica. tions to which Manicheism subjected them. The doctrine of two principles, the spirit-light, and the dark matter personified in Satan, is evidently derived from the sources just indicated, as well as the pantheistic conception, according to which all souls are nothing but God himself individualizing him. self, as all bodies and all demons are the individual. ization of Satan and of matter. It is curious to see under what later form these old ideas reappeared at the overthrow of the pagan world. On this point we may consult two remarkable passages from the wri. tings of Manes, preserved by Saint Augustine.* It is there observed, among other things, that Manes did not insist, like'the Gnostics, upon the idea of the primitive abyss, the divine shadows which envelope the Unknown Father. The eternal distinction of the two principles undoubtedly appeared to him irreconcilable with a doctrine which placed night at the birth of good as well as at the source ot evil, and thus confounded them in an identical origin. In this respect the system of Manes bore to Gnosticism the same relation as the Vedanta system ill India * Lib. contr. Epist. fundament. 204 FISRT CENTURIES OF THE CHRISTIAN ERA. bore to the primitive doctrines of the'Vedas. Like Vendantism, it represented intelligence, the light,, as that which was primitive in God. It confounded the manifestation, the expression of the substance with the substance itself'. Manes explained the mixed state, the blending of good and evil, by the violent desire which impelled the powers of darkness to unite themselves with the light. This idea, as we have seen, belongs to some of the Gnostics. But Manes wished to improve it by answering an ulterior question implied in it. If the empire of good and evil, if God and matter were originally separate from each other, without contact, without communication, in what way could the evil beings even perceive the kingdom of good? Evil, matter, replied Manes, is naturally in a state of discord; discord begets war; war necessitates movements, evolutions in space; and at length, in the se. quel of these evolutions, the powers of darkness came to break through the interval which separated them from the light. This explanation, whether it had in the mind of Manes a symbolical meaning, or wheth. er he understood it in a literal sense, contains at least implicitly this principle, that evil is forced in some respects to propel beings towards goodness. and, therefore, always contains some degree of good: a principle which itself supposes the predominance of the good being. The divine essence, defiled in the souls which are, emanations from it, the human will subjected to th double fatality. which results from the double agen cy of God and of matter: these are the-two const quences which necessarily flow both from pantheism, when it continues to retain the notion of evil, and from dualism. They are expressed in formulas morei clear and bold in Manicheism than in most of tne MANICHEISM. 205 Gnostic systems. The Redemption appears only as the regeneration of God by himself. All these ideas were the fruitful source of immorality without remorse. Manicheism, in respect to the final consummation of things, agrees with Gnosticism in maintaining the return to God of all purified divine emanations; but differs from it with regard to the final destination of matter. It did not think that the hylic or material principle could be annihilated; from the fact that it'was uncreated, it must be indestructible. To reconcile the indestructibility of matter with the final triumph of God, it supposed that it would be reduced forever to a sort of cadaverous state; it attributed to matter a sort of immortal death. Its ashes would be consigned to the abyss from which it issued, and the souls who had suffered themselves to be seduced by it would be condemned to keep guard, motionless and sad, around this eternal sepulchre. Transformation of Pantheistic and Dualistic modes of thinking, in connexion with questions purely Christian. These modes of thinking underwent a kind of me. tempsychosis. The systems in which they had been organized were dissolved by the doctrines of Chris. tianity; but the modes of thinking themselves passed into other forms. They became imbodied in shades less grand and powerful, in which something of them was perpetuated. Arianism was a partial prolongation of Gnostic pantheism, which had given vogue to the doctrine of diminishing divine emanations. The Divine Word was, in the view of the Arians, an emanation inferior to the Father; and as, at the same time, they conceived him as a creature, the entire creation, of which 206 FIRST CENTURIES O0 THE CHRISTIAN ERA. the true notion was destroyed, became a series ot emanations. The same should be said of the heterodox doctrines concerning the Holy Spirit, which were nothing but Arianism applied to the third per. son of the divine Trinity. The consequences of dualism were perpetuated in some heresies, which perverted the ideas of Christianity respecting the fall of man, and the conflict of the flesh and the spirit, in order to calumniate a part of the work of the Creator, and to attack many of the laws which govern humanity. T'hese two systems reacted also upon the heretio cal doctrines respecting the incarnation of the Word. The dualists had divided the substantial unity of the Creator into two principles; the Nestorians divided the personal unity of the Redeemer into two persons. Nestorius did not set out precisely from dualist conceptions, but he reached his heresy by arguments corresponding to those by which they had been pro. duced. What he called the antithesis of two wills, two natures, the divine and the human, or the diffi. culty of conceiving them united in a single person, was the principal basis of his heresy, as the antithe. sis of spirit and matter, or the difficulty of referring them to a common origin, had been one of the principal bases of dualism. The doctrine of Eutyches, on the contrary, was a pantheistic mode of thinking applied to the incarna. tion. Pantheism denied the reality of the finite, and absorbed it into the infinite; Eutychianism denied the reality of the human nature in Christ, and absorbed it into the divine nature. The body of Christ was no. thing but a phantom, just as matter, in the view of pantheism, was only an illusion. In general it is a fact, even with regard to here. sies apparently the most limited, that most of the ALEXANDRIAN PHILOSOPHY. 207 questions raised by them were resolvable at bottom into very general philosophical questions, which comrn. monly escaped the limited view of most of the sectaries, but which yet influenced unconsciously the blfnd working of their minds. SECOND SECTION. GRuECO-ORIENTAL PHIILOSOPHY. Historical Notices. THE expedition of Alexander, and the institutions which succeeded it, had established, as we have already remarked, frequent communications between the Oriental and Greek world. Alexandria, which was, from its geographical position, the centre of com. mercial relations, became also, under the enlighten. ed reigns of the Ptolemies, the centre of intellectual commerce, the interchange of thought. All doctrines there met together. The name Alexandrian school sometimes designates all the learned and scientific men of whom the city was the cradle or the asylum. It resembled, in this point of view, a great and free University, rep. resenting the different faculties of the human mind, from grammar to astronomy, from philosophy to rhetoric. But, in its most celebrated meaning, the Alexan. drian school is that union, or, rather, succession of philosophers, who, from the third down to the end of the fifth century of the Christian era, endeavoured to unite the Oriental philosophy to the Greek. Similar attempts had been previously made by Jewish philosophers of Alexandria, perhaps by Aris. tobulus, certainly by Philo, in the first century. Phi. lo's knowledge of the Greek philosophy began with 208 FIRST CENTURIES OF THE CHRISTIAN ERA. Platonism, which he embraced with enthusiasm.; he was also acquainted with the Oriental ideas, especially those of Persia and of Egypt. He attempted to-bring these two extremes into agreement by the medium of Biblical doctrines, which he regarded for the most part as allegories that should be interpret. ed in a sense superior to the literal. But it was from the bosom of the Alexandrian school, founded in the third century by Plotinus, that sprang the greatest efforts to bring about the union of Orientalism and Hellenism. This union, as it was conceived by that school, implied many subor. dinate fusions. In the first place, there were in the world two forces, which in certain relations acted in opposite directions, and which mutually repelled each other: the Greek systems and polytheistic worship, the rationalist philosophy and religious rites. It was necessary to unite these. Again, Greek philosophy was divided into contrary systems, religious ritual. ism into hostile worships. Leaving out of view the atheistic systems, Greek philosophy was represented by Plato and Aristotle: the union of Platonism and Aristotelianism, upon which depended the unity of Greek philosophy in its largest portion, was therefore to be sought for by a more profound interpreta. tion of their doctrines. The union of the polytheis. tic worships depended, according to the Alexandri. ans, upon old Oriental doctrines particularly preserv ed in the Greek mysteries: doctrines which estab. lished, they averred, the harmony of all rites and all symbols. But this more elevated Hellenism, which drew into unity all the Greek systems, and the more elevated Orientalism, which drew into unlity all wor. ships, were themselves only two sides or two, elements of a still higher unity in which they were blended. ALEXANDRIAN PHILOSTPHY. 209 The school of which we are speaking has receiv. ed two names, the Eclectic and the Neo.platonic. These denominations appear to be incompatible; for attachment to a particular system appears inconsistent with the scope of eclecticism, which is the union of all systems. Both these names are, nevertheless, in some respects perfectly just. Eclecticism is not syncretism, which collects at hazard, without princi. ple and without rule, fragments of theories, and does nothing but put doctrines in a sort of juxtaposition. Eclecticism collects in order to unite, and accordingly presupposes something which is not eclectic. In order really to unite two or more terms, there must needs be a principle of union. Now the Alexandri. ans sought this principle of union in the higher portion of Platonism. Platonism appeared to them to be only one of the terms which it was the problem to bring together; but at the bottom it was, in the view of the Alexandrians, the regulator of their the. ories, the centre from which everything set out, and in which everything terminated. Their school was born Platonic, and became eclectic. In entering into the sphere of eclecticism, it did not travel out of that of Platonism, only it modified it in order to renew and extend it: hence the name of new, Neo-platonic. Ammonius Saccas, who lived about the end of the second century, and who appears to have been an apostate from the Christian faith, had opened an ec. lectic school, of which the principal object was to blend together Platonism and Aristotelianism. Po. tamon also taught eclecticism about the same period; but we do not know precisely the time in which he lived. The founder of the Neo-platonic school was properly Plotinus, who, under the teaching of Ammonius, was inspired with the idea of a still more comprehensive eclecticism. The principal repre. 17 210 FIRST CENTURIES OF THE CHRISTIAN ERA. sentatives of this school after him were Porphyry, Lamblichus, Hierocles, and Proclus. PLOTINUS. HE was born in 203, at Lycopolis, in Egypt. His earliest youth was already passed when he began to attend the different schools of Alexandria. But the state of philosophical instruction was far from satisfying him-it was even the source of profound sorrow -until he came to hear Ammonius, whose lectures he attended for eleven years. To great learning he united an enthusiastic spirit: he maintained that he was in direct communication with the gods. He, wrote a great number of works relating to philosophy, and especially to metaphysics. The most celebrated of these is the collection which bears the name of the Enneades: it consists of several treati. ses, which were arranged by his disciple Porphyry. Plotinus had visited the East and Rome. At the latter he resided twenty.six years. He died at Cam. pania in the year 270. PORPHYRY. PORPHYRY was born in Syria, in the year 233. Some have supposed he was originally of Jewish ori. gin. It appears, at least, that he was very early in life in relations both with the Jews and with Chris. tians. He was at first a disciple of Longinus, but subsequently of Plotinus, to whom he finally attach. ed himself. The doctrine of his master concerning matter, as the clog of the soul, and his own disposition to melancholy, led him to meditate suicide; but Plotinus deterred him from it. Porphyry likewise believed himself favoured with supernatural visions. After having travelled very extensively, he died at ALEXANDRIAN PHILOSOPHY. 211 Rome about the year 304. He was a bitter adver. sary to Christianity. Most of his writings are lost. Among those which have survived, the most remark. able are, the Life of Pythagoras, the Life qf Plotinus, a Treatise of Predicables, and one On Pythagorean Abstinence. IAI4BLICHUS. IAMBLICHUS, the disciple of Porphyry, was origi. nally from Chalcis, in Ccelo-Syria, and flourished about the year 310. He devoted himself to theurgical sciences and to the mathematics. Many of his writings were devoted to the philosophy of Py. thagoras, whose life he also wrote. His book upon the Mysteries of the Egyptians, Chaldeans, etc., con. tains valuable indications respecting Oriental doc. trines. Iamblichus died in 333. HIEROCLES. LITTLE is known of his life. Alexandria was his birthplace, and he lived in the fifth century. To him are attributed a book on Providence and Destiny, and a Commentary on the Golden Verses of Pythago. ras. Hierocles attempted to reconcile the doctrine of the Alexandrians with the Christian doctrine con. cerning the creation of matter. PROCLUS. PRoCLUS, born in 412, at Xanthus or at Byzantlum, attended at an early age the schools of Alexandria, and afterward betook himself to Athens, where he studied the Greek philosophy. He opened a school, and numerous disciples attended his lectures. After travelling in Asia, he returned to the land of Plato, resumed his labours as a teacher, and died in 212 FIRST CENTURIES OF THE CHRISTIAN ERA. 483. His life has been written by Marinus, and, though containing much that must be held as fabulous, it shows that, like the other Alexandrians, Proclus believed himself to be favoured with supe:natu. ral intercourse with the gods. He wrote a great number of works, of which a considerable portion is lost. The edition published by Mr. Cousin contains many treatises before unprinted. Exposition. In the primary unity, pure and absolute, there exists no distinction, not even the distinction between the object and subject of cognition. We should not attribute to it any of the qualities of which we are able to form an idea: the notion of unity excludes them. From this unity emanates the intelligence, which is its reflection; but this emanation is necessarily inferior to the principle from which it flows. This emanation produced another emanation infbrior to itself; this is the soul, which not being, like the intelligence, the immanent image of the immutable unity, is a native force, or the principle of motion. Plotinus opposed this triad to the Christian Trinity. Some of the Alexandrians, and Proclus in particular, modified this doctrine in order to bring it near. er to the Christian doctrine, of which they felt the superiority. They maintained the primeval unity to have developed itself' in three decreasing emanations: Being, which produced Intelligence; Intelligence, which produced the Soul; and the Soul, which pro. duced all other beings. When the unity had produced intelligence, when the distinction between the known and the know. ing commenced, then also commenced duality, the source of number. Unity became multiple. The intelligence, which contains all the ideas of' ALEXANDRIAN PHILOSOPHY. 213 possible things, contains in this relation the multiple also. Ideas being at once intelligence and the ob. ject of intelligence, there is an absolute identity between ideas and realities: that which knows and that which is known are one and the same thing. But, fiom the very fact that ideas exist in the intelligence as in a subject, there exists also the distinction be. tween the form and the matter. Ideas are the forms; intelligence, in so far as it is the subject of ideas, is their matter. In Plotinus ideas received the name of the intelligible gods. The soul, the principle of motion, the active, ex. pansive force, tends necessarily to produce ideas out. wardly; and the ideas produced are the diffebrent souls. But ideas or forms can exist only in a subject: it must needs be, therefore, that the soul, in producing ideas or forms, should produce also their matter. Matter is the habitation, the temple, which tihe soul itself constructs in order to dispose in it its gorms. But how is matter in itself produced? The koul, which partakes of the infinite light of the intel. ligence, yet, as an inferior emanation, participates it only in a limited degree. It perceives at the bound. aries of its own light the darkness upon which it im. presses its forms, and this darkness becomes the matter, or receptacle of ideas. The Alexandrians also conceived matter as a direct derivation from the intelligible world. This conception, which is full of obscurity and vagueness, has probably its founda. tion in the principle which we have before referred to, namely, that ideas reside in the intelligence as in a subject or matter. Matter, which in itself is an indeterminate subject, destitute of qualities, is a simple power, or capacity father, of receiving them. When it receives them, It passes from potentiality into action. The union 214 FIRST CENTURIES OF TIlE CHRISTIAN ERA. of the potentiality and the act produces the com. pound, corporeity or body. From all this it follows that the world is only a great soul, informing, giving form to, matter by the ideas or the souls which it produces. Procluts, however, and some other Alexandrians, distinguish two souls, the supermundane soul, and the soul of the world, an emanation from the former. Either way, however, the world is eternal, because the soul could never have been an inactive principle. It preceded the world by a priority of principle, but not by a pri. ority of time. In the production of the world concurred both in. telligence, the subject of ideas. and the soul, the prin. ciple of motion; from this union proceeded the sem. inal reason of the world, which is the collective whole of the ideas endowed by the soul with activity and life. This seminal reason, which is the immediate principle of all things, is particularized in the various phenomena, because there are necessarily as mans seminal reasons in the world as there are ideas in: the intelligence. Although the world is but one, it is divided into the intellectual and the sensible world. They are the same world, considered either in itself or in its image. The world is governed by necessity. As the great soul could not but have produced it, so all the souls which emanated from it act like it from the impulse of their essence; their will is nothing but their essence in activity. Everything that exists, everything that takes place, is determined by ideas, of wliich the universe is the necessary manifestation. The wheel of events revolves by the fatality of ideas. And, as the sensible world is parallel to the intellect, ual, its archetype, this correlation is the foundation ALE. ANDRIAN PHILOSOPHY. 215 of astrology and magic. It follows from hence that the world is perfect, everything is good. Evil is no. thing but the inequality of souls, or the manifestation of that inequality. The Alexandrians also as. signed to evil another origin, which they ascribed to matter. All this portion of their doctrine is very ob. scure. From this general notion of the world we pass to some details. The sensible wvorld being only the image of the in. tellectual world, it follows that the whole universe, all parts of the universe, contain souls, which are the ideas produced. But the souls, although all engen. dered by the soul of the world, form different classes. 1. The intellectual gods, exempt from all suffering and all passion, dwell in the contemplation of the intellectual gods, or ideas not produced. They ani. mate or govern the heavens and the stars. 2. The gods and men are as two extreme terms in a proposition, of which heroes and demons are the middle terms. The first are nearer to the nature of the gods, the second nearer to the nature of men. The first administer the universe and direct the creative forces; the second, who direct the vital forces, preside over the government of human aff;irs. But both have the common office of being in various respects mediators between the gods and men. 3. Below the human souls, of which we shall presently speak, are placed the souls of animals, of plants, and of other parts of nature: the soul of the world, united to vegetable and brute bodies, exists in them in a state of torpidity. We will now consider their doctrine concerning man. All souls born of the supreme soul have descended fiom the intellectual to the lower world. Souls in the intellectual world have no bodies: they 216 FIRST CENTURIES OF THE CHRISTIAN ERA. are clothed with bodies only at their entrance into the terrestrial world. The human soul, indivisible so far as it proceeds from the intellectual world, is susceptible of a certain divisibility in as far as it is united to a body, in the sense that, remaining in some- part in the intellectual world, it descends, as it were, by another part of itself into the corporeal world. The Alexandrians admitted two souls: the one, derived from the intellectual world, is independent of nature; the other is produced in man by the circular motion of the celestial world; it is dependant in its actions upon the revolutions of the stars. The soul is present entire in every part of the body. The body is in it rather than it in the body. For it is not present except in the vegetative and sensitive life; it escapes in the intelligence. The soul, which is active in its essence, is not passive in the impression of sensible objects. This impression has its seat in the body; but when it has taken place, the soul perceives it out of itself by directing its attention to it; it perceives actively the passive state of the body. Souls, which are emanations from the great soul, are, like4t, indivisible, indestructible, imperishable. Involved in the bonds of nature, their tendency is to break free in order to ascend to their primitive state, to be transformed into the great soul, to be confounded in the divine essence. By the evolution of the creation, souls, which are the last of the intellectual principles, and the first principle of sensible things, are alienated from God. There needs another evolution, which may recall them to God. But this ieturn depends on certain conditions. Those who, through abuse of their senses, have degraded themselves below even -he sensitive life, will after death ALEXANDRIAN PHILOSOPHY. 217 be born again into the bonds of the vegetative life of plants. Those who have lived only a sensitive life will be born again under the form of animals. Those who have lived a merely human life will take again a human body. Those only wvho have developed in themselves the divine life will return to God. The development of the divine life is subordinated to two conditions: the efforts of man, and the aid of the gods. The efforts of man are relative to his intelligence and his will; they produce science and virtue. The intelligence has two modes, the one imperfect, the other perfect. The first consists in what is corn monly called science, which rests upon various okgical processes, by means of which man combines ideas. This science is good, useful; it is a preparation for a superior knowledge. This part of the doctrine of tile Alexandrians has been specially treated by Porphyry, who has endeavoured to make the logical categories of Aristotle harmonize with the objective categories or development of the ema. nations. But this science is necessarily imperfect, because God, the pure, infinite unity, is above all these formulas. True science is acquired by means of illumination. It is less a science than an intimate presence of God in the soul. The soul can attain to this by placing itself, in virtue of a power innate to itself, in the state in which it was before descending from the intellectual world. The virtues correspond to science. Some of them are nothing but a preparation for the theurgical and divine virtues. Such are the physical virtues, which are relative to the improvement of the body; the moral and political virtues, which comprehend the duties of man as a social being; the purgative virtues, by 218 FIRST CENTURIES OF THE CHRISTIAN ERA. which man abstains from corporeal actions and af. feictions; the theoretical virtues, which are the con. templation of the soul by itself. It is in passing through these different degrees that men arrive at tile superior virtues called theurgical. He who possesses these, admitted to converse with the gods, can evoke thern, can control the demons, and fiee himself fiom the conditions of humanity. The last degree of the theurgical virtues constitutes the divine virtues, which effect the transformation of the soul into God. This moral theory has been particularly Qxpounded by Iamblichus. But the development of the.divine life depends. above all, upon the assistance of the gods. The gods communicate to us their power, both by means of prayer, which is only an impulse which they impress upon the soul in order to raise it to themselves, and by means of symbols and external rites. All sensible things are an image of intellectual things, and the gods are drawn to descend to those images in which they recognise themselves. This is the reason why symbols and rites, which are the most perfect representation of divine things, have a won. derful efficacy in attracting the gods. Iamblichus deduced fiom these principles the theory of sacrifi-. ces, of divination, of idolatry, and of all parts of the pagan worship. The soul, made free by the concurrence of all these means, is transformed into the gods: souls which neglect these means will be subjected, according to the ancient ideas of the Hindu philosophy, to the law of transmigration or metempsychosis, of which we have already stated the effects. Such is the collective body of the Alexandrian no. tions. The metaphysical part was chiefly devel. oped by Plotinus, the logical part by Porphyry, the ALEXANDRIAN PHILOSOPHY. 219 theosophic and liturgical part by Iamblichus. Proclus, combining the ideas of his predecessors, devoted himself specially to giving them systematic connexion. Observations. 1. Generally speaking, the Alexandrian philosophy contains no element which is not to be fbund in an. rerior doctrines. Its distinctive characteristic is the syncretism of those doctrines. This syncretism was at first confused; it was gradually organized into eclecticism; and the merit of Proclus consisted in elevating this eclecticism to its highest degree, by seeking to demonstrate strictly the unity and harmony of those different elements. 2. From the foregoing exposition, it is seen why and how the Alexandrians flattered themselves with having wrought a fusion, a harmonious blending of doctrines. In the first place, they united the Oriental philosophy by their ideas touching unity, emanations, matter, the law of transmigration, and final ab. sorption. 3. They connected together also in many ways the Greek philosophy represented by Plato and Aris. totle. Their conceptions concerning the primitive triad, composed of unity, intelligence, and the soul; many of their conceptions concerning the nature and functions of the soul of the world, the distinction of the world of ideas from the sensible world, demons, etc., contain Platonic elements, though modified or corrupted. They applied, on the other hand, the logical conceptions of Aristotle to the system of emanations. The distinction of form and matter, which plays so important a part in the philosophy of Aristotle, became also, as has been seen, one of the keys to the Alexandrian system. 220 FIRST CENTURIES OF TIIE CHRISTIAN ERA. 4. In respect to the condition of the human mind, their cultivation of logic as the instrument of science conciliated the Greek philosophical spirit, while, at the same time. their theory of illumination, of enthusiastic intuition, flattered the Oriental mind. 5. By their doctrine concerning emanation, combined with their doctrine of ideas personified as gods, heroes, and men, who governed and animated all parts of nature, they allowed an apology to be drawn for all worships, particularly for the worship of the stars and elements. 6. The Alexandrians pretended also to possess ali that was true in Christianity, from which they borrowed numerous particulars. We shall indicate only a few of them. They endeavoured to approximate in some respects, as has been indicated, to the doctrine of the Trinity, though they profoundly corrupted it. The Alexandrian doctrine contains also fragments of the high doctrine of Christianity concern. ing the necessity of a Mediator. Iamblichus, in his theory of symbolic rites as the channels of divine grace, copied the Catholic doctrine of the sacraments. NOTE CONCERNING THE CABALISTIC PHILOSOPHIY. THE Jews gave the name of Cabala to a philosoph ical doctrine which they pretended was perpetuated among them by a secret tradition, anterior to Chris. tianity, and ascending to a remote antiquity. The Rabbins, in the first centuries of the Christian era, wrote concerning this doctrine. It makes a great figure in the Talmud. As it presents scarcely any. thing in its bases but ideas common to most of the pantheistic systems of the East, clothed in singular symbols, it will be enough, in order to avoid repetitior, to notice the followvinc conceptions: 1. The primary substance is represented as'an FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 221 Ocean of Light. The creation, or, rather, emana. tion, is represented as a veil which the infinite light has spread out before itself; and upon which it wrote the forms of things. 2. There was a primitive emanation, which, un der the name of Adam Kadmon, is at once the im age )f God and the type of man, and from which pro ceed decreasing stages of emanations, called Sephi roth. 3. Matter has only an ideal existence, because i\ is nothing but the obscuration of the divine rays when arrived at the last stage of emanation. It is a sort of carbonization of the divine substance. SECOND CLASS. SPECULATIONS IN GENERAL HARMONIZING WITH THE CHRISTIAN CREED. PHILOSOPHY OF THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. ALTHOUGH Our summaries of the other philosophical doctrines have been in general very brief, our survey of the philosophy of the Christian fathers, we ought to say beforehand, besides being still brief. eor, will also be even relatively very incomplete. The speculations of the doctors of the Church, perpetual. ly intermingled with scriptural doctrines as their basis or their rule, could be placed in just light only by connecting with them a full exposition of' Christian orthodoxy, in its relations to a multitude of philosoph. ical questions, upon which it touches at all points. We do not take upon ourselves here this labour. Besides, as the views of the Christian fathers ought to be taken up successively in the theoretical portion of a course of phlilosophical study, in connexion with 222 FIRST CENTURIES OF THE CHRISTIAN ERA. the proof or explanation of various positions, it is the less necessary to give a full exposition of them in the historical part. We shall first say a few words respecting the principal Christian philosophers of the first centuries. We shall then cast a glance over some of their spec. ulations respecting the most general questions. JUSTIN MIARTYR. Historical NTotices. JUSTIN MARTYR, born about the year 103 in Pal. estine, studied philosophy in Egypt, and there embraced Christianity. He founded afterward a school of Christian philosophy at Rome, where he died a martyr in 167. The history of his conversion to Christianity, re. lated by himself, reveals the state in which the philosophy of his age left minds that were in search of salutary convictions: convictions corresponding to the moral wants of man. He first addressed himself to the Stoic school; but, although the ethics of Stoicism contained elevated maxims, it wvas radically corrupted by its theoretical paradoxes. The Peri. patetics, to whom also Justin turned for that light which is the life of the soul, offered him only dialectical abstractions. He knocked at the gate of the Pythagorean school: there he was told that he could not attain to true wisdom till he had studied music, astronomy, and geometry. Platonism was more in harmony with the wants of his soul; but he soon learned that what he admired in Platonism was at the bottom but a preparation for the Christian faith, and that revelation alone was the source front which man could derive with perfect certainty all the ligdht he needs to make clear his origin, his duties, ana his destination. FATHERS OF THE CHURCIIH. 223 TATIAN. TATIAN, born in Syria about the year 130, had been a Platonic philosopher. Being converted to Christianity, he was at first a disciple of Justin. His Discourse to the Greeks is the only one of his wri. tings which has come down to us. Although some portions of his work are not free from reproach in respect to orthodoxy, yet it was written before Ta. tian fell into those great errors which distinguished the sect (Encratitae or Hydroparastatue) founded by him: errors analogous to those of many of the Gnostics. While Justin Martyr combined with Christianity a portion of the Greek philosophy, seeking at the same time to purify it, Tatian endeavoured to Christianize the Oriental philosophy. But it is to be fiared, from some passages of the work referred to, that the Catholic doctrines concerning the generation of the Wtord and the production of creatures was corrupted by the doctrine of emanation. He appears also to have held the notion of a universal soul, the source of all the souls, diffused through all parts of nature. The human soul is in a state of darkness and corruption; it is separated from the HIoly Spirit, and tends to. wards matter. The Redemption has radically reestablished its union with the Holy Spirit, and restored to it the divine life. But this regeneration can be established in earch individual only by the concurrence of his own free will. By the doctrine of freedom, Tatian excludes the immoral consequences which flow from the Oriental philosophy. As to the rest, it is clear that lie attributed a great superiority to Greek philosophy, which he regard(ed as only a re. generation of more ancient doctrines, corrupted by idolatry. '24 FIRST CENTURIES OF THE CHRISTIAN ERA. IRENiEUS. —HEIRIIAS. OF the life of Hermias, a Christian philosopher of the second century, little is known. Ireneus, who was born about 120, was the disciple of Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, who was himself the disciple of St. John. He was sent into Gaul to preach Christianity there; and, after having governed the Church at Lyons for many years, he sealed his faith with his blood about the commencement of the third century. In his book entitled A Laugh at the Gentile Philosophers, Hermias attacked particularly the errors of Greek philosophy, while Ireneus, in his treatise Against Heresies, set himself chiefly to refute the Oriental errors which had invaded the Graco-Ro. man world, and which were attempting to corrupt Christianity. He showed that the doctrine of ema. nation destroyed the indivisible unity of the divine substance. or its incorruptible purity. If the emanations became separate fi'orn God, the divine essence becomes divided; if they take place within the bosom of God, the divine essence is corrupted by imperfection, ignorance, evil. The work of Irenmus contains a multitude of matters of information useful for tile history of the Oriental philosophy, which the Gnostics wvere at that time reviving. ATHEN AGORAS.-TERTULLIAN. ATITENAGORAS, originally of Athens, lived in the second ce~ntury. He opened a school of Christian phil )soplhy at A lc xandria. Tertuiiian, born at Carthage about the year 160, had been at first extremely hostile to Christianity. The courage of the martyrs made a deep impression upon him. After his conversion he wrote a great FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 225 numb-or of works, vwhich are remarkable for ltheir energy of' style. Hle died about the year 245. T'ile Apology for the Christians, by Athenagoras, prescitts a series of speculations and of philosophica. arourniltits corresponding to the doctrines of revelati(,). Tertullianl, who joined to his apologetic wri. titr's a multitude of other productions, is less re. markable for his theories than for his high and lively insight into the moral grandeur of Christianity. He understood it much better as a life than as a light. Tile speculative portion of his writings contains, nev. ertheless, speculative considerations, in which elevation of ideas is united with singular vigour of reason. ig. He excelled especially in polemics. But he was led into exaggeration, and ended by straying from the path of orthodoxy into the errors of the Miontanists. CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA. HE lived about the end of the second century. Born of pagan parents, he was converted by Pantie.. nus, a Christian philosopher of Alexandria. He was one of the most illustrious expounders of Christian science in the capital of Egypt. He died in 217. The most celebrated work of Clement of Alexan. dria is that which bears the title of Stronzata, so called, in allusion to carpet or tapestry-work, to denote the miscellaneous nature of its contents. It contains an immense variety of facts and speculations, which may be classified under three principal heads. The historical portion is a rich mine, from which has been drawn, and may still be drawn, great light concern. ing the ancient world. We owe to him a great many indications, which shed light upon the histoi y of phi. losophy, both Greek and Oriental.-To the logical part belong considerations relating to the distinction 18 226 FIRST CENTURIES OF THE CHRISTIAN ERA. between faith and science, as well as to the basis and the rule of rational investigations. —The theoretical part embraces the moral doctrines of Christianity, considered in a pthilosophical point of view. WORKS ATTRIBUTED TO DIONYSIUS THE AREOPAGITE. XVE mention these works immediately after those of Clement of Alexandria, not because we pretend that they may not be of a more ancient date, but because we do not believe that a more recent date can be assigned to them; because we cannot fix their origin, as many critics have done, in the fifth century.'I'he book of Divine Names was unquestionably earlier than the time of Origen, for he quotes it; and the book on the Celestial Hierarchy, always joined with the first, is by the same author. We shall see presently an extract from the philosophical views which these works contain: views which have been the object of ignorant and unjust scorn on the part of the exclusive admirers of Greek philosophy. ORIGEN. ORIGEN was born at Alexandria about the year 183. The repeated persecutions which his zeal for the spread of Christianity drew upon him, did not prevent his giving himself with indefatigable ardour to the study of theology, philosophy, history, and lan. guages. He was for many ages at the head of the Christian school at Alexandria. His principal works are the book on First Principles, and that Against Celsus. He died in 253. The philosophy of Origen bears the impress of the Oriental genius. God is the creator, because he is omnipotent: he is from all eternity lord and mas. ter: he must, therefore, from eternity have created FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 227 heings subject to his empire. He produced something passive, which is the subject of forms. This something passive is matter, but not bodies, of which the origin was subsequent. Spirit, which informs matter, is the intelligent, active principle; it is of the same nature as the Divine Logos, but circumscribed by matter. Spirits existed at first in the state of perfect intelligences, living a pure divine life. Love, being co0oled in a certain number of spirits, through abuse of their freedom, became hardened, and this hardening produced bodies. Thus the intelligences fell from the state of souls, and bodies became the prison of those fallen spirits. The creation —not cre. ation in general, but the formation of the actual world-is not, therefore, properly speaking, a creation, but a catastrophe, a fall. The prison of spir. its varies according to the degree of their demerit. Those whose guilt was less have the stars for their corporeal envelope. Hence the reason why it is right to say that the stars are intelligent, that they may be virtuous or vicious, that they supplicate and adore. The fallen world is subject to a law of restoration, which is fulfilled in a long series of periods. Spirits pass successively through different states till they are all purified; then matter itself wvill receive a glorious transfiguration, and God will be all in all. From these principles Origen deduced a philosophy of humanity, which partakes of an influence from what of heterodoxy there is in the general theory, but which, at the same time, in its union with Chris. tianity, projected a dazzling light upon questions the most profound. ARNOBIUS.-LACTANTIUS. THEY belong to the third and fourth centuries. Numidia was their common country. The Seven 228 FIRST CENTURIES OF THE CHRISTIAN ERA. Books against the Gentiles, by Arnobius, though re. markable in a philosophical point of view, are never. theless inferior in merit to the Divine Institutes of his disciple Lactantius, who was surnamed the Christian Cicero. The excellence of Christianity, compared with philosophy and with idolatry, is treated in this work with equal talent and learning. Lactantius is believed to have died at Treves, in Gaul, about the year 325. SAINT AUGUSTINE. BORN at Tagaste, in Africa, in 354. Augustine was attached during his youth to the heresy of the Manicheans. St. Ambrose brought him back to the bosom of the Church, of which he became one of its most illustrious doctors. He died Bishop of Hippo in 430, while the Vandals were besieging that city. St. Augustine combated all the errors of his time. Among his numerous writings there are two which are chiefly the reflections of his heart. In his Confessions he relates the history of his mind: in his book of Retractions he corrects what appeared to him incorrect in his other works. This work was, as it were, a confession of the intellect, which often costs self-love more than one of the heart. The views of Augustine, in spite of the variety of questions which they embrace, may be reduced to unity in the following manner. In his discussions with the philosophers, he treats chiefly of the question of creation, or of the infinite and finite. This question comes up again, under a special aspect, in his controversy with the Maniche ans, where the creation was considered in the point of view relative to good and evil. The question of the relation of the infinite to the finite is presented under still another aspect in the attacks which he FATHERS OF TIEt CHURCH. 229 directed against Pelagianism. Manicheism destroy. ed human freedom: Pelagianism was a reaction against Manichean fatality. But in maintaining hu. man freedom it took away the influence of the di. vine will, or grace. St. Augustine maintained the necessity of admitting at once both the freedom of tilhe finite will and the action of the divine will. In the part of his writings in which he treats of the relations of faith and science, he shows also that the human element, reasoning, ought to have as its point of support a divine element, revelation or faith. Finally, the great idea which reigns in his book, the City of God, is, that all human events are only the accomplishment of the plan of Providence, who, with. out destroying their freedom, makes all finite wills concur to the ends of infinite wisdom. The writings of Eusebius of Cesarea, of Didymus of Alexandria, of Gregory of Nyssen, of Synesius, of Marius Victorinus, and of others who might be named, contain also various classes of speculations which should have a place in a picture of the Chris. tian philosophy of the first centuries. Exposition. The Divine Unity. Although there can be in God no succession, we are obliged, by the necessity of our modes of think. ing, to represent in him a priority as respects our own reason. All the notions which we can form of the divine essence, according to the fathers, ascend and meet at last in a radical notion, beyond which the mind cannot go: that notion is the idea of substantial unity. This unity is ineffable in itself; that is, it is susceptible of no particular name; it is indistinct, invisible, 230 FISRT CENTURIES OF THE CHRISTIAN ERA. concealed, in such a sense that it presents to oiur minds no special quality upon which it can seize. "As all notions refer to existences, that which is above all existence evades all notion. It falls nei. ther under the senses, nor the imagination, nor thought, nor language. It is the One, unknown, su. persubstantial, who is Goodness itself;."-Lib. de di. vin. nominibus. In the ordinary sense of the words, " the One, if it be allowed so to say, is neither good nor beautiful; for these words express qualities, affections, modes of existence, and the One is conceived as something transcendent, ulterior to every particular quality."Pachymeres, Comment. de div. nominibus. "Tl'he One is infinite, unknown, undistinguishable; he is, properly speaking, the aorist, infinity and indeterminateness.... We are therefore forced, in speaking of him, to say that his essence, his life, his intelligence, are incomprehensible; that it is beyond everything which can be expressed; and, consequently, that he is without existence, without substance,. without intelligence, without life, not by privation of these things, but by superlation. Everything which those words express are in fact posterior to his uni. ty."-Marius Victorinus, against the Arians, lib. 4. "We are unable to give to God any particular name; for names have for their object the designation and distinction of things multiple and various." -Justin, Exhort. to the Greeks. But if God cannot receive any particular name, his only possible name is that which expresses being in general: He is He that is (I am that I am). If his unity is inconceivable in itself, we conceive it as the principle, the basis of everything which exists, as the root and ground of all being, " All things," say. St. Augustine, "exist in as far as they have unity FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 231 and this is a vestige of the hidden unity through which they exist."'Everything is in the unity and with the unity: x\he One is all, everythin,." —(3llarius Victorinus.) John Damascenus designates the being of God by name of the immaense sea of substance. Gregory Nazianzen, who used the same terms, says (Orat. 12, 38) " that we may fix the place of everything in him; that he contains everytling, because every being comes from him;" and Synesius (Hymn. iii., iv.), in his poetical language, calls him the unity of unities, the root of roots, the idea of ideas, the world of worlds. Observations. 1. The doctrine of the fathers concerning the substantial unity, unknown and hidden, reproduces the ideas we have met with in all old theologies. 2. The fathers distinguish the unity which excludes all idea of any division whatever, fiom the unity which constitutes only individual existence. The first pertains only to the infinite; for in every limit. ed being, the limit indicates its division, its separa. tion, from something more complete. Finite beings are susceptible of the second. The first is anterior to number or plurality, the second is the commence. ment of it. 3. When most of the fathers say that we can af. firm everything and deny everything of God, they mean, on the one hand, that he eminently contains everything; and, on the other hand, that he contains nothing under the various modes of existence which our minds can seize and comprehend, beinig superior to all such finite modes of conception. 4. rThe general idea of being is the foundation of all intelligence. We are able to affirm nothing ex. 232 FIRST CENTURIES OF THE CHRISTIAN ERA. cept by word lo be, and every particular affirmation is nothing but a determination, an application of this general idea. WVe are therefore intelligent only because we know God. The Creation. The fathers had to combat pantheism and dualism both at once. Their argumentation against pantheism, according to the formulas in which it was maintained by their adversaries, consisted in proving that it destroyed, in two fundamental respects, the proper notion of God. In the first place, in the system of emanations all beings are fractions, portions of God, who divides himself in producing them; the unity, the essential character of the divine substance, is thereby broken up. Secondly, evil, that is to say, infirmities, errors, crimes, according to this system, attach to the divine essence, inasmuch as created beings, subject to evil, are parts of that essence. The notion of infinite power, intelligence, and love, disappears. The general formula which they opposed to pantheism was therefore this: the divine essence is neither divisible, nor corruptible in any degree, nor under any relation. Their argumentation against dualism, reduced to its fundamental terms, is parallel with their reasonings against pantheism. They showed that, in attributing eternity, independence, and necessary being to matter, that is, to the variable and divisible, the very notion of God was destroyed, by taking from him his proper and incommunicable attributes: attributes for which there can be found no ground in the essence of matter, because the variable and indivisible have not the ground of their existence in themselves, but presuppose an invariable term, an ulterior unity. They showed equally that the necessary eternal ex. FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 233 istence of what was considered the Evil principle would impair the notion of infinite power, intelligence, and love; of infinite power, since that principle was held to be independent of God; of infinite intelligence, since matter, as essentially dark, was incomprehensible even to God; of infinite love, since the divine goodness was resisted and checked by an infinite principle of hatred, discord, and destruction. The general formula of Catholic doctrine, as exclusive of dualism, was this: God has made everything whic!: exists out of that which did not before exist, that iD, without pre-existent matter. But it should be remarked that these antipantheis. tic and antidualistic reasonings obliged reason to take refuge in the Catholic faith, not as thereby explaining the great act of creation, properly so called, but as showing the impossibility of stopping in either one or the other of those two opposite views. They are not a tenable post for the human intellect; we must therefore admit simultaneously that all things come from God, and nevertheless they are neither parts nor simply forms of God: such is the substance of the polemics and of the fathers. But how did finite beings proceed from the, infinite? This ulterior question has no solution in their polemics. In this respect the Christian metaphysicians main. tained, in general terms, that the act of creation contains an inevitable mystery; or, to translate these an. cient thoughts into modern language, that the relation of the finite to the infinite necessarily implies for man a question radically insolvable, since, in order to comprehend completely this relation, it would be necessary to embrace both the terms; that is to say, that it would be necessary for the finite intellirrence to transform itself into infinite intelligence. But, while altogether insisting upon this mystery, 234 FIRST CENTURIES OF THE CHRISTIAN ERA. many Christian philosophers endeavoured to throw some rays of intelligence into the depths of this abyss. The most lofty, perhaps, and the boldest theo. ry which was imagined at that period, was that of the celebrated Catholic Orientalist whose writings pass under the name of Dionysius the Areopagite. We will briefly sum up this theory; but, in order to comrn. prehend it, we shall have to recur to some notions which have been already indicated. 1. That which we conceive as primitive in God (that is, primitive in a logical sense, relatively to our necessary order of thinking) is being in its transcendent idea, meaning thereby that which is be. yond all our modes of conceiving this or that particular being: it is that something which is the support, the substratum of wisdom, of the divine life, and of all the other attributes of God; in a word, radical and absolue unity. Considered in this relation, God is not only incomprehensible, he is ineffable, unnameable. Being is a dark abyss, an infinite mystery. Consequently, under this first point of view the human mind cannot attain it in the way of knowledge, properly called; and, as it cannot comprehend it e:.cept as the incomprehensible, nor name it except as the unnameable, nor reach it except as the itaccessi. ble, the intelligence arrives at the idea of God only in the way of ignorance, that wise and enlightened ignorance which is the higlhest form of science in relation to the infinite; for the faculty of conception represents the infinite only in a finite manner, while this ignorance, being, like its subject, without limits, is in one sense adequate to it. 2. God, in as far as he can fall within the cogni. tion of man, is not known directly, as he is radically in himself, but we conceive of him by the divine attributes, of which, in a limited degree, his creatures FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 235 partake. When we call him wise, good, powerful, we designate by these expressions only the divine virtues which are derived to us from God. But how do they exist in their principle and in their proper seat? No human thought can conceive. 3. Our knowledge of God is therefore compounded at once of science and ignorance. God is at once the unknowni and the known, and both in the highest degree, since on the one hand everything which we know is derived firom him, and on the other he is, as infinite, above all our conceptions. 4. Considered in relation to that which is primitive in him in the radical Unity of Being, God is neither substance, nor power, nor intelligence, nor speech, nor goodness, nor life, nor spirit; for all these terms designate affections, qualities, and he is infinitely above and beyond all the affections, all the qualities which fall under our intelligence. And as, to speak of him less imperfectly, we must seek phra. seologies as absolute as himself, we must say at first of him that he is nothing. 5. But, on the other hand, he comprehends and contains everything in an absolute and unlimited manner; he is the prototypical, final, efficient, and formal principle of all things; he is the productive ground of all beings: and so, to employ again an ab. solute phraseology, we must say that God is every. thing. 6. Thus. in order to approximate to the true idea of God, it is necessary to define him by the contraries which unite in him. He is the super-substance residing incorruptibly in all substances, and he is dis. tinct and separate from every substance: he is unity inexhaustible, and multiplicity indivisible: he is without form, and, at the same time, the universal form: in a word, God is the Being of whom it may be said, 236 FIRST CENTURIES OF THE CHRISTIAN ERA. at the same time, that he is everything and that ihe is nothing. 7. Creatures can accordingly be conceived as ex. isting only by communication from God, and this idea of communication is the key to the mystery of creation. In order to conceive the creation, it is necessary to distinguish three things: God, individ. ual beings, and an intermediate order of realities called communications. God, so far forth as infinite, is essentially incom. municable. Individual beings, inasmuch as they are, as indi. vidual, necessarily finite, are the opposites of God. The communications are certain divine properties, attributes, or virtues, as power, wisdom, goodness, life, etc., which exist in creatures in finite degrees. They should be considered in two relations: In as far as they are divine properties, they exist in God; infinite, like himself, they are God himself. In as far as they are communicated in finite degrees, they sustain, besides, two different relations, one with God, the other with individual beings. In relation to God, they are created by him, they are his work; for nothing finite can be God, and everything that bears the character of finite must necessarily be created. They exist, therefore, out of God, and on this account they are called the divine processions. In relation to individuals, they are their constituent principles; created themselves, they are in turn the principle of every particular creation. It is for this reason that, without possessing the mode of duration peculiar to God, they may be conceived, nevertheless, as having been created before the beginning of time, meaning by time the measure of the duration of individual beings, and these proo FATHERS OF THE CHURCtI. 237 erties, as the constituent principles of particular be. ings, may be considered as anterior to the beings themselves. Summarily, these communications, in as far as they exist in God, are out of individual beings; in as far as they are the efficient principles of every individual or limited being, they exist out of God, and thus form the union of every particular being with God. The Trinity. The doctrine of the fathers concerning the Trinity has been summarily given in many writings, among others, in a learned work by Thomassin.* There are two parts, in their view, which should be distinguished; the exposition of the doctrine, and the ideas by which they endeavoured, not to make radically comprehensible the mystery of the eternal productivity of the infinite, but, leaving the mystery to itself, to point out its analogies with the purest and most elevated conceptions which human reason can form. It is on this side that we should be exposed, in setting out from phraseologies ill understood, to the danger of deducing the most false consequences respecting the philosophy of the fathers, unless we began with a clear and fully developed exposition of the doc. trine of the Trinity itself; and of the formulas by which it is expressed, particularly in relation to the errors, often extremely subtile and complicated, which those formulas were intended to exclude. This would lead us into a dissertation from which we must abstain. We must therefore abstain also from analyzing the philosophical conceptions of the fathers respecting the doctrine. Every philosophical pro. fessor can judge, from the time at his disposal, how * Tract. de Sanctissima Trinitate: Dogm, Theolbg., t. iii. 238 FIRST CENTURIES OF THE CHRISTIAN EIA. far he can go into the development of this subject, which is as delicate as it is fundamental, and in which inaccuracies of language, apparently the slightest, may altogether corrupt the notion of the highest of truths. Of the Logos or Divine Tord, irn relation to the Cre. ation. " Where is the truly religious man," says St. Au. gustine (De Qucesl. Octogint. trib. 46), " who, though he cannot have a clear vision of things, will dare deny, or, rather, will not acknowledge, that all the various beings, that is, all things which have a na. ture of their own, circumscribed Lby limits, have received their being by creation from God? that every living thing lives by him? that his supreme laws contain and govern, not only the order of the universe, by which the permanent integrity of the whole is secured, but also that order of things, in virtue of which the variable parts fulfil, according to fixed laws, their natural evolutions'! This being admitted, who will dare say that God produced things irrationally? If they have been created by reason, the creation of man did not have the same reason as that of the horse: for every being there was the proper reason for its creation. Where shall we place the reasons of things but in the intelligence of the Creator? For he did not contemplate any m:del lying out of himself, of which the creation might be a copy. Now there is nothing in the divine intelligence which is not eternal and immutable. Thus those reasons, those principles of things, which Plato calls ideas, are not merely ideas, but their essence is in the true su. preme essence. since they are immutable and eternal, and since everything which exists, in whatever way it exists, comes to existence only by communi. cation from them." FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 239 "Can we conceive," says Origen (in Evang. Jo. han.), " that he Ewho is called the firstborn of every creature is the world taken in a certain sense, par. ticularly in as far as it is multiform wisdom? The reason of things lying, according to the words of the prophet, in the Wisdom by which everything was,made, it follows that a world existed there, more beautiful, more vast than the sensible world, by all the superiority of pure reason to material realities." " It is evident," says Athanasius (Orat. 3, contr. Arcan.), " that the Word is called the firstborn, not as though he were himself anything created, not as though he had any relation, any affinity of essence with creatures, but because, in forming them at the beginning, he proportioned himself' to them, he reduced himself to their measure, in order that they might arrive to existence: they could never have sustained any relation to the nature of the Word, to the indefectible brightness of the Father, if, according to the love of the Father to mankind, the Word had not accommodated himself to the condition of created things, extending to them, so to say, a hand to raise them up to capacity of being." Observations. 1. The fathers regard the divine intelligence un. der two relations: first, as the most absolute unity since it is infinite intelligence; secondly, as contain. ing in this unity the principle, the reason of diversi. ty, that is, ideas, the types of all created things. It is under the second relation that they represent the Word as proportioning itself to the condition of creatures. We see also, in the passage fiom Athana. sius, that the Word, united with Love, is essentially the eternal mediator between the creation and the Father. 240 FIRST CENTURIES OF THIE CHRISTIAN ERA. 2. The notion of the divine intelligence containing the types, the ideas of things, is found in the Oriental philosophy, as also in Plato; the latter has particularly developed the notion. Augustine was ac. quainted with no philosophy more ancient than that which he mentions, but that appeared to him so ne. 2essarily the foundation of all wisdom, that he read. ily believed the philosophy of earlier periods and of other nations was not a stranger to this capital idea. "Plato," he says (Lib. de Qucest. Octogint. trib. 36), "was the first who applied the term ideas to this sub. ject; but if the term did not before exist, it follows not that the things themselves, which he calls ideas, were not comprehended by others under different names. It is, in fact, allowable for every one to give a name to any unknown thing which has not yet ac-. quired a name generally received. It is not likely that there existed no sages before Plato, nor that they failed to perceive a notion in which resides such powerful efficacy that no one could be truly wise who did not rise to this truth. It is rather credible that there were sages among other nations: Plato him. self attests this, not only by the travels he undertook to improve himself in wisdom, but by the memorials of them which he has preserved in his writings. If, therefore, sages existed, we cannot believe them ig. norant of ideas, though they might have employed different denominations to express them." Of Evil. Evil, considered generally, is not anything positive, but a simple privation of good. " We fear not to say that evil cannot proceed from good, and, if it proceed from good, it is not evil. It is not in the nature of heat to produce cold, nor in the nature of that which is good to produce that FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 241 which is not good. If everything which exists comes from the good —for it is tile nature of goodness to produce and to preserve, as that of evil is to corrupt and destroy-nothing which exists comes from evil, and evil cannot exist through itself; since it would then be evil for itself; and, conseque ntly, self-destruct. ive. Evil can exist, therefore, only as something not absolutely evil, as containing some portion of' good, which is all there is positive."-(De divin. nomlin., c. 4.) " Everything which is, is good; and evil, of which I sought the origin, cannot be a substance. It' it were a substance, it would be good. Incorruptible, it would be a chief good; corruptible, it could be cor. rupted only as having been previously good."-(August., Confess., 7, 12.) " It is easy to see that cor. ruption can do injury only because it attacks the nat. ural state of a being, and, consequently, it is not its natural state, but contrary to its nature."-(Contr. Epist. fundament., 33.) " Variable good was created and is governed only by the imrnutable good. It is good, because it comes from the -upreme good; it is variable, because it was made, not of him, but of nothing." —(Contr. advers. legis et proph., i., 6.) "'All natures are good, because their author is supremely good; but because they are not, like him, supremely and immutably good, their goodness can be augmented or diminished; now the diminution of goodness is evil."-(Enchir., 12.) "If, before the blending of good and evil, of which the Manicheans speak, good existed in no degree in that which they call the supreme evil, how could there be found in it any knowledge of good, and whence, then, could comne that so praiseworthy movement which, accord. ing to them, impelled the supreme evil to seek to unite itself with the good?"-(De duab. anim. contr. 19 242 FIRST CENTURIES OF THE C(IIRISTIAN ERA. Manich., 12.) " Evil," says St. Ambrose (Lib. de Isaac., 7), " is only the destitution of good." Evil is not in the universe as a whole,for as a whole the universe tends towards God. " Everything is referable to good, everything tends towards it: spiritual and intelligent beings, consciously; purely sensitive beings, by the instinct of feeling; beings destitute of feeling, by the innate motion of vital appetency; beings destitute of life, and possess. ing only mere existence, by an inclination which pro. duces in them the want of participation in the essential being."-(De divin. nomin., 4.) "There is no evil to thee, O God, nor to thy creation as a whole, because there is nothing from without thee which can break in and disturb that order which thou hast appointed.... Superior natures are better than the inferior, but all together are better than the superior natures if they existed alone."-(August., Conf:, vii., 13.) The mutability, that is, the birth and dissolution of things, is the necessary means by which the creation lends to its accomplishment. "Things begin to be; then they grow that they may attain perfection; then they wax old and with. er; and all grow not old, but all wither. Thus, when they begin and tend to be, the more rapidly they grow towards being, the more quickly they haste towards non-existence. Such is their law. But they are parts of a whole, and the decay and succession ol the parts is the progress of the whole. It is with the completion of the universe as with a human dis. course composed of' words. The discourse would never exist complete if each word, after having sound. ed out its syllables, did not withdraw to give place to another.... Yet thou wouldst not have the syllables remain fixed, but fly away that others mav come, FATHERS OF THE CIIURCH. 243 that thou mayst understand the whole discourse... Thus is completed this lower universe in all its parts. But dc I withdraw myself? says the Word of God. There, then, fix thy dwelling, there intrust whatsoever thou hast, O my soul, tired with vanities."(August., Conf., iv., 10, 11.) Aioral evil or sin, which proceeds'from thefree-will of intelligent creatures, does not destroy in their being thet predominance of good over evil. As a horse which strays is better than a stone which is incapable of straying, because it is destitute ot sense and motion, so a creature who sins by his free-will is more excellent than one that sins not, because destitute of free-will..... Although our soul be corrupted by sin, it is better than though it were changed into corporeal light; and yet how many souls, plunged in sense, do not praise God for creating that pre.eminent light. Because you blame souls that sin, do not let yourselves be so disturbed as to say that it would have been better if they had not existed."-(August., de lib. arbit., iii,, 3.) Observations. 1. We have indicated merely some general prin. ciples. Their consequences, their application to the question of the origin of evil, belongs to the theoretical part of a course of philosophical study. 2. Christian metaphysics considers moral evil as not being in any degree the product of necessity, but of created free-will. Theoretically superior to dualism and to pantheism-of which the on(e breaks the uniity of the infinite to pieces, and the other soils its urity —it is supe:ioir to them still more decidedly in Iciatiol to lol)ra11ls. The eternity and necessity-that is to say, at botto, n. the divinity-of'evil is not only the justiticailoil of all vice, but it contains its apothe. 244 FISRT CENTURIES OF THE CHRISTIAN ERA, osis. It is a doctrine which makes the cry of disorder reverberate without end throughout the abyss ot being; it is as an eternal word of destruction and death, which comes down to man to reveal to him the law of crime. The frightful practical consequences which antiquity saw spring firom it, have disappeared only under the influence of the Christian doctrine. Now experience of their practical working in thle moral sphere of tihings is the surest criterion of met. aphysical doctrines, just as the application of physical systems to the wants of man is their best test. The principles on which the Christian philosophers grounded a metaphysical theory concerning evil, and which the teaching of the Church has introduced into the mind of the mass of the people, have had the ef. fect of purifying the moral atmosphere. If the pan. theistic or the dualistic solution were either of them theoretically preferable, there would be a contradic. tion between the laws of the intelligence and the will, between reason and conscience. 3. Whatever light an elevated metaphysics may throw upon this question, it implies, nevertheless, a mystery, that is, a limit, beyond which human reason cannot pass. We have seen that the coexistence of the infinite and the finite, or the question how it is to be explained that anything can exist which is not infinite, contains an incomprehensible element. From this primordial mystery is derived, at every step, at every stage of the human reason, corresponding obscurities. The coexistence of a Su. preme Good and of Evil is an example. This ques. tion is the first transformation of the problemn of the coexistence of the infinite and finite; and wev must not, therefore, be surprised at the obscurities which it involves, since, touching immediately upon the generative source of al\ other mysteries, it falls i'ATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 245 within the thickest shadows which that mystery of mysteries casts. And in this connexion we may remark a law of tile intelligence. The more close. ly any question is connected with the radical ques. tion concerning the infinite and finite, the more, on one of its sides, is it illuminated by the rays which escape from the Being of beings, the only true source of intellectual light; and the more, also, on the other side, the side which is turned towards the primitive mystery, is it overshadowed with clouds. In proportion as the question is removed from that fundament. al problem, obscurities less sensible appear along with rays less distinct, until at last, abstracting the idea of being in itself to consider merely its limita. tions, reason encounters nothing but utter darkness; for the limitations of all reality can be made clear only when put in relation with the reality itself. 4. The Christian doctrine, which puts the suprem. acy of good in opposition to dualism, has entered so deeply into the human mind that it has changed the conditions and character of the error itself. Dualism has been broughlt out in two forms: at one time it has conceived two principles, under the notion of absolute good and evil, maintaining an eternal war; at another time it has conceived them merely under the notion of spirit and matter, two substances harmoniously united to form the universe, just as the soul and the body are united to form man. This lat. ter form of dualism, the physiological dualism, has made its appearance in modern times; the other, the moral dualism, can never again take root in any philosophical theory, so predominant has the idea of good become. 246 FIRST CENTURIES OF TIlE CHRISTIAN ERA. M1iind and Matter. The fathers agreed in admitting two general ele. ments of the creation, the spiritual principle and the material principle. They considered matter as something inert and passive, as a blind and opaque substance, at the lowest degree of existence; St. Augustine calls it an almost non-existence, and says that if there were a word which signified at once something which is and something which is not, he would give that name to matter. Spirit, or the superior principle, borders upon God, as matter bor. ders upon nothing. It is the source of activity and motion, of intelligence and life: spirit is the image of God, matter nothing but the shadow. Some writers have fallen into a great error in at. tributing a materialist doctrine to most of the Chris. tian fathers of the first centuries. Independently of all quotations, it may be at once remarked that spiritualism was the proclaimed doctrine both of the New Platonism of the Alexandrians and of Gnosti. cism. It would have been natural, then, that the fathers, in combating Alexandrianism and Gnosti. cism, should have preferred, on the question of the spirituality of the soul, the Epicurean system, which or. all other points they combated, to the philosophy of Plato, though so analogous, as they themselves remark, on many points to the doctrines of Christianitv. The materialism of the fathers could not have been the coarse sketch of a newly.forming philosopliy, as yet but little familiarized with higherl spec. ulations: it would have been a deliberate, chosen resistance to a pre existing and advanced spiritualism, and this resistancehaving. too, its chief motive in their attachment to Christianrity7, which, on the contrary, tends to spiritualize man! In order to establish suctl FATHIERS OF THE CIHURCH. 247 an anomaly as this would be, and so opposed to all the known laws of intellectual development,-it would be necessary to adduce a mass of quite positive testimo. nies. That two or three ecclesiastical writers may have expressed themselves in a way to authorize. in regard to themselves, the imputation of materialism, is of little moment. But this imputation, applied in general to tile Christian philosophers of that period, is based only upon a false interpretation of their doctrines. In the first place, in our philosophical language the word soul always designates the thinking, intelli. gent substance. But it was not so in the philosophical language of the times of which we are speaking. We know that many schools of antiquity distinguish. ed in man the body, corpus, aotSa; the soul, anima,,bvXq; the spirit or intelligence, spiritus, mens, rrvev. La. The principle of the organic life common to man and to the brutes, designated by the name anima, ~vvXr, was considered either as the most subtile form of matter, or as containing something material, or. lastly, as an essence intermediate between mat. ter and spirit. Some of the fathers adopted this opinion, and thus phrases or parts of phrases, in which they explain themselves respecting the soul (anima, ibvXrl), as something distinct fiom the intelligent principle (spiritus, mens, mrreva), have been taken by some modern writers as if the fathers had been speaking of the intelligent principle itself; although in other passages, and sometimes in the same passages, they formally lay it down that the spiritus, mnens, which is the thinking principle in man, par. takes of the spiritual nature of God. But there is another and mnore general cause of the mistake by which they have been accused of materialism. They were not all of one opinion on the 248 FIRST CENTURIES OF THE CHRISTIAN ERA. question whether all created intelligences are circurb scribed by a something which, by analogy, may be called their body. On this point the doctors of the first ages of the Chr.istian era were divided into three classes. The first class embraces those who thought that spirits superior to man, known under different names in the traditions of all people, and whom the Catholie theology designates by the name of angels, are not without some material envelopment. Some of these writers, as Justyn Martyr and Tertullian, appear to have thought that the angels are clothed with bodies analogous to ours: but this opinion was generally rejected. The fathers, who admitted in a cer tain sense that the angels are united to bodies, dis. tinguished between bodies of different kinds, or, rather, between bodies which are matter existing in a certain state, corresponding to the human organiza. tion, and matter in general, which may exist in a multitude of different states. We will cite some of the passages which express this opinion, because it is necessary to have them before the eye in order to explain the confusion of ideas on which rests, in great part, the reproach of materialism which has been cast upon them. Origen says it is peculiar to God that he can be conceived as existing without any material substance and without any sort of corporeal adjuncts. According to Methodius, the angels possess for bodies a substance formed of pure air and of fire which has no terrestrial quality. Angels, souls, demons, considered in their subsist. ence, figure, and image, are very subtile bodies, says Macarius, just as our subsistence consists in a gross body. Coesarius says that the angels are incorpo. real in comparison with us, but corporeal in compar. FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 249 ison, with God. We know nothing, says St. Am. brose, which is free from all material composition, except the substance of the adorable Trinity, which, pure and simple, alone possesses a nature absolutely exempt from all mixture. St. Augustine, who in some places calls the angels aeirial animals, makes this remark: " Our bodies un. doubtedly have life, and yet, compared with our future bodies, such as the angels have, they would seem as dead, although they still contain our souls." The same father, in many passages of his writings, maintains that the angels are united to bodies different from ours. Claudian Mamertius says that man is composed of a corporeal nature and of an incorporeal nature which are to be raised to a more perfect state: that the angels are composed of a body and of a spirit which both surpass in perfection all other creatures; for their spirits are more powerful than all other created spirits, and their sublime bodies are formed of the purest elements. They are incorporeal in that part of their nature which renders God visible to them, and corporeal in that part which renders them visible to men. Although we may say, observes Cassian, that the angels and other celestial powers are of a spiritual nature, yet we are not to believe that they are abso. lutely incorporeal; and he supports this opinion by the words of the apostle, who recognises celestial bodies, spiritual bodies. In his treatise on the Trin-. ity, Fulgentius says that the same is the opinion of learned and great men, who thus interpret the words of Scripture: Who maketh his angels spirits, and his ministers ajflamingofre. XVe do not here examine theologically the opinion we have just signalized; we only state it as a fact 20 250 FIRST CENTURIES OF THE CHIRISTIAN ERA. which it is essential to take into account in order to resolve the objection under consideration.'l'The second class, which is also very numerous, comprehends those fathers and ecclesiastical writers who, making, like the first, a distinction between such bodies as are known to men, and the different states in which the corporeal substance or matter may ex ist, maintain that angels are free, not only from bodies properly speaking, but from all material envelopment whatever. In a third class should, wve think, be placed thoso fathers who, without going into the distinction before mentioned, confine themselves to giving to angels the name of spirits, spiritual, intellectual, incorporeal natures. As the fathers who maintain that the angels are clothed with a mnaterial envelope applied the same terms, these expressions would not, in themselves, be the formula of' a contrary opinion. They prove, however, that the ecclesiastical writers who employ them, without discussing philosophically the relation of matter to spirit, intended to proscribe the anthropomorphism which awas blended wvith the ideas of Justin and Tertullian concerning the angels. It is easy to see from all this into what confusion of ideas one must fill who does examine carefully and discriminatingly the opinions of the fathers on this question. When some of them say that the angels are corporeal, material, like human souls; antd when others affirm that they are incorporeal, immaterial, in opposition to the corporeal or material soul of man, these expressions refer, with rare exceptions perhaps, not to the nature of spirits angelical or human, but only to their union with some material envelopment. On the contrary, in the present language of modern philosophy, such cx)ressions would signify the materiality of the soul FATHERS 02 THE CHURCH. 251 pr.perly s)peaking. When, therefore, in the inter. pretation of those ancient speculations, any one sets out Nwith attaching to their language the sense of modern phraseologies, misconceptions are inevitable. This method has been the source of innumerable er. rors in the history of philosophy. General Observations. The works of the Christian writers of the first centuries may be divided into two classes: the first comprehends treatises or parts of treatises whose sole object is to expound to the faithful the doctrines of the Gospel, the precepts of morality, and the rites of worship. These writings, as a body, form, properly speaking, only a great catechism, of which the forms, sometimes very simple, at others more elevated, are almost always animated by a lively and natural eloquence. This first class of writings is in itself foreign to the proper scope of a summary of the history of philosophy. 2. The works which belong to the second class do not limit themselves to a simple exposition of truths which are objects of faith, but relate to the harmony of faith and reason. Here the history of philosophy passes over everything in this class of writings which relates solely to the historical proof: of Divine Revelation. It concerns itself only with the speculative conceptions of the fathers. These conceptions are brought out either in a polemic form, as when they combat the anti-Christian philosophy, or in a didactic form, as when they develop their own thoughts. 3. Their philosophy, considered in general, had two principal objects: first, to prove the necessity of taking revelation as the basis or rule of rational speculations; secondly, to construct an order of 252 FIRST CENTURIES OF TIlE CIIRISTIAN ERA. speculations in harmony with revealed doctrines, These speculations had not their central ploint in tllemselves, but out of themselves ill revelation. 4. Thile philosophy of the fathers has always reference to a practical object. Doubt was withering men's minds; faith, revelation, was the remedy they off'ered them to save them from this mortal malady. The great systems of pantheism and dualismn had corrupted to the core the notion of God, the source of all duty, and with it all the notions derived from it. Christian philosophy would re-establish the notion of God and of the creation in its purity, and would deduce from it a moral order, firm in its basis and per. fected. The fathers always regarded science in its relation to virtue; all intellectual regeneration should resolve itself into a moral regeneration. Metaphys. ics, cosmology, logic, logic, psychology, were in their view only means: a moral life was the immediate end, the salvation of man the definitive end. 5. As they did not philosophize for the pleasure of it, none of them so much pretended to establish a theory more or less complete, as desired to throw light upon points which seemed to them to require explanation, conformably with the practical scope of all their writings. iMost of their works contain the partial elements of a Christian philosophly, which ap. pears only in their writings taken as a body. 6. Considered in relation to the anterior philoso. phies, the philosophy of the fathers takes the charac. ter of a vast eclecticism. They selected from all the schools the conceptions which, it seemed to them, could be best harmonized in the unity of revealed doctrine. In every eclecticism which does not rest upon the basis of faith, the principle of the union of the theo. ries which it is wished to reconcile is taken in a the FATHERS OF THE CHURCH. 253 ory wlhich stands on an equal footing: the rule for appreciation is of the same nature as the things which it is the problem to appreciate. It was not so with the eclecticism of the fathers: its centre and its rule was a principle of an order superior to the philosopihical theories to which it was applied. 7. It should be remarked, that, as philosophers, some of them drew )articularly from Oriental sources; as, for example, the author of the books attributed to Dionysius the Areopagite, Pantmnus, Origen, etc., fornm, as it were, tn Oriental school; while Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Lactantius, Augustine, and many others, pertain to what might be called the Greek school. Clement of Alexandria belongs to both of these schools. In order to form a correct estimation of the phi. losophy of the fathers as a whole, we should observe that it was requisite it should meet the wants of hu. manity, which were to be satisfied successively. It had first to purify the human mind firom the errors propagated by false systems of philosophy. The ge. nius of Christianity completely attained this result; those errors gradually gave way, and then disappear. ed before it. It had, in the next place, to organize all the sciences upon the basis of a Christian philos. ophy. The fathers made magnificent attempts in this direction; but all great things have need of Time. The labours of the fathers were repressed by the downfall of the Roman world. 254 PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES. FOIURTH PERIOD. PIHILOSOPHIY OF TIIE MIDDLE AGES. TRANSITION FROSI THE ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY TO THE PhILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES. TIIE period of time which extends from the sixth to about the ninth century, forms the transition fiom the ancient philosophy to the philosophical develop. ment of the Middle Ages. It constitutes, in the history of the human mind, an epoch by itself: The commencement of this epoch is marked by the interruption of the great philosophical movement of the first centuries of the Christian era: an interrllption occasioned by the overthrow and confusion of everything, which followed the invasions of the barbarians. The end of this epoch coincides with the awakening of the spirit of reflection in the West. This lapse of time does not, however, form a philosophical period, because philosophy makes n.o appearance in it but as an exception. BOETIIIUS. IN the West, Boethius appeared about the end of the fifth century. This illustrious Roman senator, born in 470, lived at the court of the Emperor'Fheodoric, who caused him to be unjustly put to death. Boethius fortms a link which unites the philosoplly of antiquity with that of the AIiddle Ages. It is probable that he had attended the lectures of Proclus, and that he studied under him Greek philosophy in its noblest productions, Platonism and Aristotelianism; and, as his mind was profoundly occupied with the doctrines of Christianity, he incorporated science TRIANSlTIoN FiOOM ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY. 256 with faith. An ancient philosopher in one aspect, a Christian theologian in another, he became a high authority in succceeding centuries. His name sounded for a long time in the schools, and his wri. tings were classical works. He attempted to trans. mit to future ages the heritage of his science by translations and commentaries, but his book on the Consolations of Philosophy-a venerable testament of his mind, written in the depths of a prison, in the prospect of death-reveals his true genius. The conceptions of antiquity are there presented under tlhe form of a Christian eclecticism, which predominates to purify them, and purifies to unite them. With Boethius, Cassiodorus, and Claudian Mamertius in the sixth century, Isidore of Seville in the seventh, Bede and Egbert, the master of Alcuinus, in the eighth, form, in Italy, Gaul, Spain, and England, fo. cal points, which sent out rays of light upon the poor pale schools that glimmer remotely through the shades of barbarism. JOHN OF DAMASCUS. IN the East, John Philoponus, and especially John of Damascus-the first towvards the end of the sixth century, the second in the first half of the eighthoerformed in the literary world an office similar to hat of Boethius in the West. They preserved the radition of philosophical knowledge, and particularly hristotelianism. John of Damascus, born at the tourt of the Caliphs, was there promoted to hirhlh dig. nities. He afterward withdrew to the monastery of St. Saba, to give himself up to the study of philosophy and theology. Like Boethius, he united these sciences together. His works at a later period obtained great credit in the schools of the West. 256 PHILOSOPHY OF TIlE MIDDLE AGES. PHILOSOPHICAL DEVELOPMIENT IN THE MIDDLE AGES. Setting out from the last years of the eighth century, two philosophical movements commence: the first springs up in Arabia, the other in France. We will first cast a glance over the brilliant period of the Arabian philosophy-a period which extends from the ninth century to the beginning of the thirteenth-in order that we may then follow, without interruption, the progress of philosophy in Christian nations. Philosophical Developmzent amnon1g the Arabians. Historical Notices.-Exposition. The Arabians received the germes of their philosophy from the Christians. John Philoponus, Mesue of Damascus, Honain, and many other learned Chris. tians, directed their intellectual education. Tile wri. tings of Aristotle, with the commentaries of the NewPlatonists, were communicated to them. The philosophical culture of the Arabians dates particularly from the reign of the Caliphs Haroun Al' Raschid and Al MIamoun. According to the testi. mony of Abulfeda, these princes, full of zeal for science, requested of the Greek emperors the philosophical books which they possessed, and had them trans. lated into their own language. Geuzi, an Arabic writer, relates, however, that Al Mamoun caused the texts to be burned when the translations were com. pleted. These two caliphs were engaged in promoting the spread of science in the East at the same time that it was awakening in the West at the voice of Charlemagne. It is a matter worthy of renlark, that t}his intellectual movement should display itself at the same epoch among the two races which possessed ARABIAN PHILOSOPHY. 257 the military preponderance, the Franks and the Saracens. It should be remarked, also, that this impulse was derived from Greece. Worn out by disputes, the Greek genius had run its course; but before its extinction, like one dying of old age, it had distributed to new or rejuvenated nations the archives of philosophy. Charles the Great and Al Mamoun were the testamentary executors. Derived from Aristotelianism, the Arabic pliloso phy particularly developed the logical element; but, as we shall see, another element was also there pro. duced. Logical MTorks. Alkendi, originally of Bassora, a city built by Omar near the Persian Gulf, stands at the head of the series of Arabian philosophers, which begins under Al Mamoun about the year 800. He wrote an Exhor. tation to the Study of Philosophy, and various treatises on the Categories, the Predicaments, Sophisms, and other parts of logic. IIe considered the mathe. matics as a necessary preparation for philosophy. Metaphysics, regarded from the Aristotelian point of view, that is to say, as a body of logical abstractions, was equally the object of his meditations. Such was also the predominant character of the wvorks of Al Farabi, born at Belah. He had studied at Bagdad under John Mesue. His writings were the complement of the teaching of Alkendi. "He penetrated," says Abulfeda, "the very depths of lo. gic, revealed its secrets, and facilitated the understaneling of it. The writings which he composed are filled with clear observations and acute concep. tions." He connected with this science metaphysi. cal, physical, and political treatises. He died about the middle of the tenth century. 258 PItILOSOPIHI OF HE MIIDDLL AGES. From these brief observatiwns it may be seen what was the original state of' Arabian philosophy. But: while imbibing from the writings of Aristotle a pro. digious taste for dialectics, it also found in the New-. Platonic commentaries traces of another mode of philosophizing. Through the complicated scaffolding of the Greek logic it had, therefore, got a sight of the bold processes of Oriental intuition. Thlis gave rise to two schools, the one dialectical and ra tionalistic, the other intuitive and enthusiastic. RATIONALISTIC SCHOOL. WVHILE still it continued its labours upon logic, the Arabian philosophy undertook to resolve by logical processes the problems of the moral and of thile phys. ical world. Mletaphysical and fMoral Speculations. From the earliest times of the Hegira, the ques. tion concerning the origin of evil, and especially of moral evil, had perplexed the Mohammedan theolo. gians. Some of them, in order to reconcile the existence of evil with the wisdom and holiness of God, denied his omnipotence. According to them, the actions of men were out of the empire of the divine power. This doctrine sprung up in the sect of the Motazalians. Other sectaries, and particularly that of the Al Jahamians, sacrificed the wisdom and goodness of God to his omnipotence. God, they said, does everything in all things, good as well as evil: the will of man is only an appearance; the divine will alone really acts. Placed between these two solutions, reason fluctuated between pantheism and atheism in germe. Abu Ali Al Jobba cut the difficulty by denying the existence of evil. He maintained that everything A tABIXN PfIILOsi'PiiY. 259 which befalls every man is for his best good. Al Jobba was embarrassed in attem!ptingi to prove di. rectly his thesis of optimism: but he felt himself strong in insisting upon the injurious consequences of tile two other systems, and lhe presented his own as a refuge in the nlidst of these two rocks. To es. cape from his arguments, it was necessary to find. an,intermediate solution. This was reduced to a de. fillitive form by Al Asshari and some of his disci. pI' les. Al Asshari had been at first a disciple of Al Job. ba. The Arabian writers have preserved a curious specimen of the attacks he made upon the doctrine of his master. In one of their disputations the following dialogue is represented as held between them: Al Asshari. I will suppose th ree brothers, of whom one has lived in obedience to God, the second in disobedience, the third died in infalcy: what think you of these persons? Al Jobba. T'rihe first will go to paradise, the second to hell, the thiird will neither be rewarded nor punished. Al Asshari. WVhat would God answer if the third should say, Lord, better vwould it have been for me that thou hadst permitted me to live, in order that I might have gained entrance into paradise with my brother? Al Jobba. The Lord would answer, I know thee; if thy life had been prolonged, thou wouldst have committed crimes which would have carried thee to hell. Al Asshari. But then the second will say, Lord, why didst thou not cause me to die in infancy. like my brother. that I might have avoided the crimes for which I now suffer? Al.Jobha. God prolonged his life that he might 260 PHILOSOPHY OF TIlE MIDDLE AGES. have it in his power to merit the highest reward, as-.l that itself was a greater favour. Al Asshari. It that be so, why then did not God. prolong the life of the third? for that would equally have been the greater favour. "'It is the Devil that instigates thy words." replies the master, disconcerted. The disciple triumphed: but it was not enough to have put to silence the op. timist doctor; it was necessary, in order not to fall into a difficulty at least equally great, to find a system in which one could admit the existence of evil without destroying either the notion of God or of man. If God was the author of men's actions, and if some of those actions were evil, God, they would tell him, was the author of evil. If, on the other hand, God was not the author of men's actions, they escaped the divine influence, and God ceases to be omnipotent. Al Asshari considered men's actions as produced by a concurrence of the human will with the divine, and his disciples, developing his fundamental idea, have said that God created the actions of men in as far as they are the result of a force, and that in this relation they are something purely physical, and have no quality of obedience or disobedience, virtue or vice, but that the human connects itself with the divine operation, and by this conjunction impresses a character of obedience or disobedience upon the physical act. This solution prevailed over the other systems, and the Arabian schoolmen have placed Al Asshari in the rank of their first doctors. Speculations relative to the ]lIaterial World. The material part of' Arabic philosophy is partic. ularly represented by Avicenna, who was surnamed the prince of physicians. He was Imrn towards the ARABIAN PHILOSOPHIY. 261 end of the tenth century (980), at Assena, near Bo. chara.'artakitlg thlt taste of' his nation, he devoted himself' passionately to the logic and metaphysics of Aristotle, and applied thlle to the study of the ma. terial world. From tile combination of that vast system of abstractions with the ph:nomena of nature resulted a ftantastic physics, which might be designated by the name of logical alchymy. The phenomena were connected accordinlg to an order determined by the categories of logic. The most general abstract notions expressed tile primary causes, the great powers of nature: from whence it followed that, by stripping these primitive agents of the circumstances in which each particular phenomenon clothed them, by endcavouring to seize them in a state of separation corresponding to the abstract formulas of' the categories, the philosopher could have at his disposal the causes in themselves, and, by directing their action, could produce wonderful ef-. fects. This alchymy, or transcendental physics, which consisted in supposing a perfect correlation, an intimate equation between the operations of na. ture and the operations of the human mind, had for its object the attainment of a point at which the dif. ferent realities of nature and the different categories of tihe mind would be lost in a primitive abstraction, whichi was at once idea and cause, and from which might be deduced, by correlative evolutions, both formulas and facts. WVe know too little of the wri. tings of Avicenna to be able to certify whether lie himself perfectly understood the essence of his logical alchyrny; but such was the tendency, perceived or unperceived, of his manner of philosophizing. As to the rest, his works contain two parts: the one is a syncretism quite confused of anterior physical knowledge' 9rrowed from the Greek wri. 262 PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AG ES. ters, the other a chaos of abstractions. The first is the subject matter of his philosophy, the second its form. Skepticism. Skepticism displayed itself in the Arabian philosophy in two degrees. There was a scientific skep.. ticism, which did not deny that man might have cer. tain knowledge of truth, but only maintained that there was no other way of attaining it than by faith in the Koran. There was also an absolute skepticism, which maintained the equal uncertainty of all things. The scientific skepticism was maintained by Al Gazel, born at Tus about the year 1038. As a defender of Islamism he excited great enthusiasm; he composed a refutation of Christianity, of Judaism, of Paganism and Miagism. As a philosopher his reputation was not less. He wrote upon almost all branches of dogmatic philosophy, whether physical or moral. But he afterward turned philosophy against itself. In his book on the Destruction of Philoso. phers, he employed all the resources of dialectics to batter to pieces all dogmatic systems, from whence resulted, according to him, the necessity of resorting to the revelation of the Koran in order to avoid absolute skepticism. Al Gazel thus displayed himself in three characters: as a Mussulman theologian, a dogmatic philosopher, and, finally, a skeptic philoso. pher in the interest of theology. This celebrated doctor taught at first at Bagdad, with great applause firom nobles and people. He afterward visited Svr. ia and Egypt, and returned to die, in 1111, on the scene of his first success. Absolute skepticism found partisans in the tled. daberim, talkers, vho devoted themselves particular. ly to dialectics. Some of them did nothing but ap. ARABIAN PH ILOSOPIII. 263 ply an acute argumentation to the Noran; but nlost of them played a part similar to that of the Greek sophists. Their philosophy consisted in throwing all questions into obscurity, in maintaining both sides of a contradiction. Truth to them was a word, and not a thing. INTUITIVE AND DMYSTIC SCHOOL. THE rationalist philosophers regarded the Aristotelian logic as the efficient cause of all science, atrd they had inferred that, by combining with it the doctrines of the Koran, the mind of man would attain its highest power. But in the view of many Mussulman theologians this combination had, on the con. trary, the effect of corrupting the doctrine of the Koran on many points. Accordingly, it was necessary either to renounce pthilosophy, or to seek aiother philosophical route. Some Arabic doctors denied to logical proofs the validity commonly attributed to them. They regarded them, not as the means of perceiving the truth, but only as an exercise by which the mind of man passes from abstraction to abstraction, till it arrives to a state of complete isolation, where he receives directly the illumination of the truth. Traces of this intuitive philosophy are found in the writings of Ebn Baiiah, otherwise called Avenpas, originally from Spain. who lived about the middle of the twelfth century. But it has been developed more systematically by Tophdiil, originally of Cordova. He flourished about the same time. Along wvith hlis doctrine, which wlas of Oriental origin, reappeared also the forms of the Oriental phi. losophy. In exp.,lndinyg Lhis ideas he disdained the dry processes of diale:ctics, arid substituted a me thod more lively and animating. His book, Thle Man of 264 PHILOSOPIIY OF THE MIDDLE AGES. Nature, or the Philosopher instructed by himself, is a sort of intellectual and mystical epopee, of which the hero is in infancy abandoned in a desert place, where he is nursed by a bitch, and who, without any inter. course with mankind, but solely in communication with nature, advances, as he increases in age, fiom contemplation to contemplation, to an intuitive union with God. Tophail at first uses the philosophy of Aristotle as a footstool: he dissertates, in a manner conformed to the peripatetic doctrines, upon bodies, animals, man, the heavens, and the author of' the universe. But at length, setting out with the principle that the imagination and the senses perceive only that which passes and perishes, he concludes that reason ought to separate itself fiom all sensible no. tions, that it ought to extinguish even the imagination; and, in consequence, he recommends to the philosopher who wishes to rise to the intuition of the truth, to inJitate the circular motion of the stars, in order to bring on a giddiness that may efface from his mind every trace, every recollection of the world of phenomena. In this state of isolation, the intelligence of man, freed fiom all material obstacles, finds itself in direct communication with God. Everything individual has vanished away; being only, the absolute being, appears in his essence, and the mind then comprehends that nothing exists, that nothing can exist out of that essence which is the sole reality. New development of Spiritualist Philosophy.-Devel opment of Iaterialism. The Arabian philosophy had been generally spir. itualist: it had acknowledged above the world of' the senses a world of intellectual realities. But this spiritualism had been shaker by the disputes of the ARABrAN PHIILOSOPHY. 265 different schools, by the dreams of illuminism, and, finally, by the formnal attacks of skepticism.'This state of things had, on the one hand, prepared the way for a great inaterialisi reaction, and, on the other hand, it had necessitated a reform, a recon. struction of' the spiritualist philosophy. Averroes, the most celebrated of the Arabian philosophers, un. dertook this reconstruction about the end of the twelfth century, while almost at the same time, anc in face of this new spiritualism, the materialist phi. losophy, applied to rcligion, morals, and politics, had a large number of adepts. Eclectic Spiritualism.-Averroes. Averroes, born at Cordova in the twelfth century, died at Morocco in 1198. The wvritings which he published on the doctrines of Aristotle, whose works he also translated, procured for hiim the surname of the Interpreter. T'lie pilitosephy of Averroes presents in certain respects an eclecticism, of which the Aristotelian doctrines-are tthe basis. Mlvstical intuition and dialectical methods at that time divided philosophy. Averroes attempted to unite themn. His book upon the Possibility of Communication with God belongs probably to the mystical philosophy, ef which Tophiil had been the prin cipal organ. ft is not surprising that Averroe, should have gone somewhat in this direction, for h( had studied the commentaries of the Alexandriai philosophers upon Aristotle. But the predominant character of his philosophy was logical. In compa ring his eclecticism with that of the New-Platonist: of Alexandria, we may say that with him logic heli the first rank, and mystical intuition the second, 2,1 266 PHILOSOPHIY OF TIlE MIDDLE AGES. while the Alexandrian eclecticism regarded logic a? nothing but the servant of illuminism. Averroes explained the origin of things by the Oriental doctrine of emanations, however well or ill they agreed with the logical categories of Aristotle. In this respect he did nothing but renew the ideas of Porphyry. He distinguished in man the intellect and the soul. By the intellect man knows universal and eternal truths; by the soul he is in relation with the phenomena of the sensible world. The intellect is active intelligence, the soul is passive intelligence. The for. mer is a substance common to all men, but distinct from each individual; the latter is what there is individual in the intelligence of each man. Tlhe intel. lect is eternal and incorruptible; the soul is corrruptible and mortal. The union of the two principles produces thought as it appears in man. But what was that universal intellect in the opinion of Aver. roes? According to some authors, it was the divine intelligence itself; immediately acting in every man; every intellectual operation was, not a human, but a divine act. It is more probable, however, that Averroes considered the intellect as being the last of the spiritual emanations, whlich came immediately into contact with the sensitive and material soul of man. But the emanations being nothing but a projection of the divine substance, all that doctrine returns necessarily into spiritualist pantheism. As to matter, did Averroes suppose that it also emanated from the di. vine essence, or, rather, that it existed eternally out of God? Was his philosophy in this respect pan. theistic or dualistic? Data are wanting to resolve this question. Averroes wrote a refutation of AI Gazel's work on the Destruction of Philosophers, entitling his own ARABIAN PHILOSOPHY. 267 p erformance The Destruction of the Destruction. Al Jazel had attacked the opinions of philosophers be. cause they were in opposition to the Mohammedan theology: Averroes could not shut his eyes to that opposition, but, in order to uphold philosophical systems, without appearing to destroy the truth of the. ological doctrines, he maintained, both in that work and in his other writings, the principle that a propo. sition true in theology may be false in philosophy, and reciprocally. This logical dualism, which was, perhaps, on the part of Averroes, nothing but a stroke of tactics to secure him fiom the charge of heterodoxy, might, however, be connected in his mind with a general theory. Theology, which in his view was nothing but the expression of the popular belief, had only a relative truth; it corresponded, that is, to the intelligence of the mass of men, which could seize only upon tile outside of things. Philosophy alone possessed the truth in itself, truth absolute. Accordingly, the same assertion might be absolutely true and relatively false. Perhaps all this doctrine of his was connected with his theory of the intelligence. Theology was truth for the soul, philosophy truth {br the intellect. However this might be, this con.:eption of a double truth, which effected an apparent iarmony of contradictions, comported sufficiently vell with the eclectic character of the philosophy of kverroes. But it should not be forgotten that all his eclecti.:ism resolved itself fundamentally into the mere com-,ination with Aristotelianism of some opinions bor. owed from other philosophies. Averroes venerated tristotle as a sort of inspired teacher, as the highest lanifestation of the universal intelligence. The octrine of the Greek philosopher was the religion of ie Arabian philosopher. 068 PHILOSOPHY OF TIHE MIDDLE AGES. A portion of the Peripatetic ideas of Averroes were developed by a Jewish disciple of his, Maimon. ides, who applied them to Judaism, and who raised himself far above the dark chaos of Rabbinical speculations. Material Pantheism. A great system of Materialism was organized in the heart of the secret societies principally established in Syria and Egypt. These societies had many degrees of initiation. In the last degree the veil was entirely dropped, and the initiated was admitted to the supreme science, which was reduced to the following maxims: There is no other God than material nature; no other religion than pleasure; no other right than the right of the strongest. Observations. In summing up the preceding notices, the episode in the general history of philosophy constituted by the Arabian doctrines may be thus characterized. The Arabian philosophy, through its whole dura. tion, was eminently dialectical; yet two principal schools divided it, the rationalist and the mystical. The rationalist school was devoted to moral and physical speculations. Its speculations relative to the moral order of the universe turned principally upon the question concerning the origin of evil, and upon the compatibili. ty of the divine attributes with human freedom. We perceive solutions successively produced more or less directly involving atheism and pantheism: then a gross optimism; then attempts to reconcile the free will of man with the influence of the divine will Then soon skepticism appears in various degree, in the heart of the rationalist school, and with it de CHRISTIAN NATIONS. 269 sp)air of science and even of human reason, while the enthusiastic or mystical school, proceeding to deny individual existences, identifies human reason with the infinite intelligence. Finally, Averroes, seeking to avoid the idealism of the enthusiastic school, attempts to conceive, by means of a logical philosophy, the production of the universe, but falls by his doctrine of emanations into the spiritualist pantheism of the Alexandrians. Other Arabian philosophers, going to the opposite extreme, take refuge in a monstrous doctrine analogous to the materialist system whl.ich Spinoza has in mod. ern times developed. PHILOSOPHICAL DEVELOPMENT AMIONG CHRISTIAN NATIONS. WE need not seek for traces of philosophical development in the Lower Empire. The decay of learning from the ninth to the fourteenth century fol. lowed the phases of political dissolution, until, in the new Roman empire, founded under the influence of the Papacy, both learning and civil society presented an almost continuous movement of ascension and progress. Not that the Greek empire did not still contain a number of learned men; they were even more numerous than in the Latin empire, at least at the commencement of this epoch. But the Greek mind had lost that vigour without which intellectual labours, so fatr at least as the benefit of a people is concerned, are nothing but a barren play of the mem. ory. Its old defects remained. The Byzantine despotism, which, after the schism between the Greek and Roman churches, gave law to the Church itself, renressed the civilizing influence of Clhristianity, and 270 PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES. with it the energies of the mind. Philosophy degen. erated into subtleties, as devotion was transformed into minute superstitions. The imbecile sovereigns who presided over this degeneracy and decay felt. themselves too weak to stand before a robust science and a generous Clhristianity; they suffered themselves to be governed by sophists, that they might rule over slaves. Everything was intrigue, even science, even faith; and among the men of talen'c who kept themselves from these fatal influences, the greatest number contented themselves with preserving some relies of past science, without any view to the future. History, however, recounts at long intervals some minds truly distinguished. The celebrated Bibliotheca of Photius displays great knowledge of ancient philosophy; and the Emperor Leo, the philosopher, the disciple of Photius, distinguished himself by his attainments. In the thirteenth century some inspirations of the metaphysical genius of Plato were displayed by George Pachymeres, the commentator upon the writings attributed to Dionysius the Arcopagite. The peripatetic philosophy had a learned interpreter in Theodorus Metochites. Michael Psel. Jus, the younger, united with Greek studies the science of the Chaldeans. This latter person, who united and reflected some few pale rays of light from both poles of ancient philosophy, seems to have pronounced the funeral oration over the ton-b of thei East and of Greece. But in the West a different spectacle was display. ed. The human mind there felt tile stirring of a new growth. The remains of science which had escaped in the overthrow of society were not, as in the Lower Empire, like an old tree that crumbles to dust. They were seeds or young shoots full of life, CHIRISTIAN NATIONS. 271 and the strong hand of the Papacy, everywhere present, directed a great and laborious culture. The popes worked with incredible activity, by their misr;onaries, their rules, their institutions, to gain a vic-. )ry over the barbarian element. Under their di"',ction tile Roman Catllolic clergy broke up the un. ultivated soil of the European mind. The philosophical developnment of the Middle Ages nay be divided into three epochs. From the ninth to the middle of the eleventh cenury nothing appears, if' we except Erigena, but )artial conceptions, without the idea of constulcting t philosophy. About the middle of the eleventh century the pro. ect of forming a regtlar body of philosophical spec. jlations was coriceived, adopted, and attempted in the ichools: philosophy was gradually becoming organ zed down to the thirteenth century, when St. Thomis Aquinas, combining and developing the ideas of'he preceding times, attempted to reduce all those various elements to systematic unity. Setting out from this epoch, the philosophical structure of the Middle Ages was the object of a mul..itudc of partial attacks; its unity was disturbed, its varlious elements thrown into agitation. The want )f another scientific development was felt; but there.vas, as yet, no clear and precise conception what it should be. WTe have here to premise an observation already madle respecting the philosoplhy of the first centuries of the Christian era. The philosophy of the Middle Ages is eminently theologi al. It would be extremely ditfficult to give an exact idea of it in this relation, without a previous dissertation going to the very groulnds of' the innumerable theological questions which it embraced. A great many of these ques. 272 PHILOSOPHY OF TIIE MIDDLE AGES tions must therefore be referred to the theoretical portion of a course of philosophy, where they would find a place without any inconvenience. FIRST EPOCH. ALCUINTUS. ALCUINUS occupies a distinguished l)lace in the his. tory of phlilosophy, though he owes it less to his writings. than to the impullse which he gave to his age. Science, such as could exist in those times, had sought an asylumn in the remiotest bounds of the Occiden.tal world. Great Britain had beconme a sort of scientific cloister, where learning, timi d and isolated, drew its breath under the protection of religion. From thence it was carried by Alcuinus into the tents of the Frankish race, which, possessed already of su. pretnacy of force, was destined, from its propagating disposition, to the intellectual apostolate. The la. bours of the Anglo-Saxon monk, the preceptor, firiend, the delicice, of Charlemagne, as lhe was then called, were directed to bring about the union of the two social elements, fo:ce and intellect; to make the throne of the one thle seat of the other. thie work attempted by him was thie more bold, inasmlluch as the scientific niaterials at his disposal were very inconsiderable. He was eminently a man of information. He was the professor of his age; he created schools, but not systems. SCOTUS ERIGENA. TirIs is not true of Joh011 S(:otus Erigena, a solitary genius, who founded no school, but who in the ninth centurIv construct(ed a system of phlilosolby, isolated froin all the conceptions of the precedilng period, and from all those of the period iimmediately following. SCOTUS ERIGENA. 273 Confucius, after having heard Lao-Tseu, said to his disciples that that philosopher seemed to him as a mysterious dragon: such in some respects appears Erigena. He is a sphinx stationed at the threshold of the Middle Ages; not that his philosophy is enigmatical, unintelligible, but that the appearance of this philosopher at such an epoch is a singular fact, a sort of historical enigma. The two names of Scotus Erigena are probably a pleonasm; they seem to have both come from the name of his native country, Ireland, the ancient Erin, which was also called Scotia, a name which subsequently became exclusively appropriated to Scotland. The Emperor Charles the Bald invited him to France, where he found himself the principal centre of intellectual activity. He there passed the greatest part of his life. Some historians have said that he re. turned at last to England, at the invitation of Alfred, and that he died there in 886. We pass by those of his writings which relate to questions purely theological. His philosophy is contained in his famous book De Divisione NAature. In its form. its method, and its dialectics, this work resembles the beautiful productions of Greek philosophy, which were admired by Erigena; but his ground. ing ideas were of Oriental origin. Michael Balbus, the emperor of the East, had sent to Louis the Good, emperor of the West, a copy of the writings attribu. ted to Dionysius the Areopagite. Charles the Bald, son of Louis, being desirous of knowing its contents, Erigena translated it into Latin. Those writings, as we have said in a preceding page, contained Oriental ideas purified from pantheism, and brought vithin the limits of orthodoxy. But Erigena, taking up some of these ideas, (lid not maintain the same reU'rXve, blt drew out from them a vast system of pan 274 PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES. theism. It is, however, difficult to believe that he did not draw also from other sources. Colebrooke remarks, in his memoir upon Kapila, that the book of Erigena begins with a passage which is found almost word for word in the Karika, an ancient document of the Sankhya philosophy. "Nature, the root of everything," says the Karika, "is not produced. Seven principles there are which are at once both produced and productive. Six are merely products. The soul is neither produced nor productive." Comnpare with this the passage from Erigena: " idetui mihi divisio naturm, per quatuor differentias, qtuatuor species recipere, quarum prima est qua creat et non creatur; secunda qum creatur et crcat; tertia qum creatur nec creat; et quarta denique qua neque creatur nec creat." How could it happen that this formula of Hindu philosophy, expressing an extraordinary class of ideas not to be found in any of the wvritings known to have been in the hands of Erigena, should have been inscribed, as it were, upon the fiontispiece of his philosophy? It would seem to confirm what has been related of his travels into the East, which some historians have treated as fabulous: he might in this way have had access to documents which, nearly a thousand years later, were first to come under the notice of European science. This direct communication of the reviving genius of Europe with the old Oriental agenius, effected in the ninth century by Erigena, would be an important fact for the history of philosophy. "Scotus Erigena," says the Abbe Gerbert, "ef. fected the construction of a system, which in grandeur, in gigantic character, rivalled the bold tenta. tives of the philosophy of India. He set out, like that philosophy, with the primary unity, that unitV represented, accordingl to himn, by the word nature SCO.TUS ERIGENA. 275 which comprehends the universal whole. This starting point taken, what would the office of philosophy be? Its object would be to explain how variety has proceeded from the radical unity, and hence the title of his book, De Divisione Natulrce. But under all phenomena, all diversities, he acknowledges nothing real but God, because his intelligence embraces all things, and intelligence is all things. This cognitive power knew all things before they existed, and knew them not as out of itself, since out of itself there is nothing, but in itself and as part of itself. If the intelligence is all things, all existence is only an expression of that universal unity. Everything thought and felt is but the apparition of something which in itself appears not, the comprehension of the incomprehensible, the name of the ineffable, the approach of the unapproachable One, the form and the body of that which has neither form nor body, the incar. nation of spirit, the number of the innumerable, the localization of that whichl has no place, the temporary duration of that which is eternal, the circumscrip. tion of the uncircumscribed, the apparent boundary of the infinite. Just as our own intelligence, while in itself altogether invisible, materializes itself in sounds and letters; just as, after forming for itself, by means of air and sensible figures, certain vehicles for reaching the senses of other men, it then drops the vehicles, and penetrates alone and pure into the depths of other souls, and blends with other intelli. gences, and yet remains always in itself unclhanged while passing through these different operations, and loses nothing of its essential simplicity; so the ineffable divine goodness, descending from the height of creation, and expanding from degree to degree to the last limits of existence, does all things, subsists in all things, is all things, without its infinite unity being 276 PHILOSOPIlY OF TIE MLtDDLE AGES. affected by any alteration or corruption. Everything proceeds from this unity, everything will one day return thither, according to the laws of a progress which will spiritualize all things. In the return to unity the body will be resolved into vital motion, vital motion into sentiment, sentiment into reason, reason into the soul, the soul into the science of all things which are below God, science into wisdom, which is the intimate and immediate contemplation of truth, so far as it can be attained by the creature. At this point of returning progress every spirit be. comes as an intellectual star, and thus is accomplish. ed the last consummation: the evening of creation, the lying down to rest of all intelligences in the lu. minous shadows where lie enshrouded the causes of all things, and then day and night will be one and the same." "It was not by a logical, but by a powerful intuitive process [contemplative imagination], that Erigena arrived at these conceptions. Logic figures in his book, but always as subordinate to metaphysics; he treats it, not as a sovereign, but as a servant: we can perceive in some passages of the work the thought of constructing a logical system corresponding to the system of nature. The primitive unity is the type of logical synthesis. The universe in which this unity is seen in diversified displays is a great analysis, and all human thoughts, dispersed also by analysis into their countless diversities, must afterward be absorbed by their luminous union into the union of synthesis, just as all beings must return into the divine unity." "The book of Erigena presents two series of ideas; in as far as he follows philosophical conceptions, he adheres to pantheism; but when he seeks to combine them with Christian ideas, he modifies ST. ANSLEM. 277 and attempts to correct his fundamental system. It is perhaps likely, that if the political chaos of the tenth century had not repressed intellectual freedom, a school would have grown up which, while it avoid. ed the errors of Erigena, would have kept near to the Oriental method."* SECOND EPOCH. ST. ANSEL3I.-ROSCELINUS. Historical Notices. ST. ANSELM was born in 1033, at Aost, in a valley of the Alps. He studied under Lanfranc, in the celebrated school of Bec in Normandy, entered the order of St. Benedict, and was afterward made archbishop of Canterbury. He died in 1109. His death was that of a saint, though of a philosophical saint; for his ardour for science glowed upon his deathbed. His disciples were around him, weeping and praying for him; the last holy rites had already enveloped him in the atmosphere of eternity; infinite truth was soon to be unfolded to him in clear vision; when at this last moment he cast his thoughts over the obscurities of earthly science, and, recalling the efforts he had made to render them more clear, said to his disciples, " I should have been glad before my death to have committed to writing my ideas upon the origin of evil, for I had got some explanations which will now be lost." A few moments afterward he gained a better solution of the great problem. The life of Roscelinus, canon of Compeigne, offers nothing remarkable. His book on Faith in the Trinity contained some dangerous or erroneous phrases. St. Anselm refuted those which were contrary to the * Troisieme Conference de Philosoph:e Catholique, par hi. I'Ab t, Gerbert. 278 PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES. exact expression of Catholic doctrine, and Roscelinus himself retracted them. He taught about the year 1089. Exp sition. We unite together here these two philosophers, because they more or less happily discussed the two orders of ideas which together form the essence of philosophy. It is the office of philosop0hy to furnish a theory of human knowledge and a theory of ob. jects; it is at once subjective and objective. St. An. selm sought for the general principle of the explanation of all things; Roscelinus, without, however, per. ceiving its full extent, raised a fundamental question concerning the theory of human knowledge. St. Anselm, Nwhile altogether admitting the cer. tainty of the mode of' knowledge which consists in faith, maintained that the human mind ought always to endeavour to unfold itself in another mode, that of science. According to him, the doctrine revealed by the Divine Word is the basis of metaphysical specu. lations, just as the phenomllena of nature revealed by the senses are the basis and subject matter of pliysical speculations. Consequently, he undertookl to form a systematic body of' speculations conformable to the revealed doctrines. He supposes a man seeking by the force of ttiinkincr alone to produce a system of rational cogritiolls. This idea is analogous to that which lies at the ground of the methodical doubt of Descartes. But it should be remarked that St. Anselm confines him. self exclusively within the sphere of science, after having admitted another mode of cognition, that of faith; that he did not make the process he followed the process of the human mind in scientific develop. ment; and as thlat implies, to a certain drcee, a pIr ST. ANSELM. 279 ception of truth, and as each in(lividual can see the truth only with his own ideas, science, essentially rel. ative for every individual to his own conceptions, is in this sense a product of the activity of' his own reason. Entering, then, into the sphere of science, Ansellm very well remarked, that, in constituting it a unity, it was needful to find a general principle for the explanation of things. This principle must unite two characteristics: the character of logical universality, that is to say, it should comprehend all other ideas; and the character of real or objective universality, that is to say, it should correspond to a reality conceived as the source of all other realities. Without the second of these characteristics, we should be reduced to iun round in a series of logical speculations, which might undoubtedly give orderly connexion to the conceptions of the human mind, but which would not attach to the reality of things. Without the first. the principle of the reality of things not presenting itself as also the principle of logical speculations human ideas could not be connected in an order corresponding to the real connexion of things, and science would cease to be the mirror of reality. In order to establish the radical correspondence of the logical and the real order, it was necessary to find an idea which could not be logically universal without being really so likewise; or, in other words, a universal idea which could not subsist as a perception of the mind, without equally implying at the same time the reality of its object. St. Anselmn endeavoured to show that there is in the human mind an idea which does unite these characters, and that there is but one. It is the idea of infinite perfection, of the supreme good, in a word, of God. If this idea had not a corresponding reality, it would not be the idea of supreme absolute perfection, since then a 2?,O0 PIlLOSOPIHY OF TIlE MIDDLE AGES. greater perfection than that represented by the idea might be conceived; and this greater perfection would be the absolute perfection, not merely as possible, but as existing; for it is more perfect to exist than to be merely possible. The idea of absolute perfec. tion would therefore imply a contradiction, and could not subsist as a perception of the mind, if it had not at the same time an objective reality. This idea has, therefore, logical and real universality both at once: logical universality, since all other ideas are only perceptions of some degree of being or perfection, and thus are contained in the general idea of infinite perfection; objective or real universality, since the infinite reality is the principle of the existence of all finite realities. But it is manifest at the same time that no other idea possesses these characteristics; the notion of a finite perfection can subsist as a percep. tion of the mind without a corresponding finite object actually existing, and has, besides, nothing universal in it. Thus the idea of God is the general principle of science: in the logical sphere God appears at the head of ideas; as in the sphere of reality, the objective sphere, he appears at the head of all beings; and it is necessary to carry the mind up to him, in order to conceive the correspondence and connexion between human conceptions and reality. Whatever be the value of these arguments of St. Anselm, renewed at a later period by Descartes, it is not the less true that this endeavour to constitute the principle of science is one of the boldesi tentatives made in the philosophical world. St. An. selm had attempted this process in his _Monologiunm, but in his Prosologium he has presented it in strict formulas. A monk named Gunailon attacked it in a treatise entitled Liber pro insipiente advtersus An. seinli in Prosologio ratiocinationern. This treatise ROSCEULNUS. 281 contains implicitly all the objections which have been brought against Descartes relative to the same class of ideas. This conception is the most salient point of Anselm's philosophy; although for the rest his speculations on the divine nature, creation, the relations of man to God, the incarnation, are remarkable for elevation of ideas and systematic connexion. By his side Roscelinus started a fundamental question which pertains to the very grounds of the theory of human knowvledge. He inquired whether general ideas, designated at that time by the name of universals, were merely abstractions of the mind represented by words, or whether they represented realities. He attributed to them only a verbal validity, and was the founder of the school of the Nominalists, who had to maintain long disputes with the Realists. The controversy excited by Roscelinus had in itself an extensive bearing. If individuals are the only realities, it follows that the senses which perceive individual existences are at bottom the only sources of knowledge: it follows, in the second place, that there can be no absolute affirmation respecting things, since all absolute affirmation implies a generi1 idea, which in this system is destitute of all real validity. Thus we are on the road to skepticism. if, on the contrary, the objects represented by gen. eral ideas are the only realities, properly speaking, or which individuals are nothing but the forms, the toad which terminates in pantheism is thrown oper to the human mind. If, finally, human cognitions contain at once both a general element and a partic-,dar element, it becomes the problem to determine the distinction between these two elements, as well as their validity and the laws of their combination. The question was not at the outset conceived in all 282 PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES. its depth; it was often enveloped in logical subtleties, which diverted the discussion from the ccurse it should have taken. But it was seen, however, from the first that there was at the foundation of the question matter of the greatest importance: it was felt that the destiny of human reason was involved in Lhis controversy. Thus, during their whole duration, the schools of the Middle Ages were disturbed by a question which has been reproduced under different forms in every epoch of philosophy. WILLIAMI OF CIIAMPEAUX.-ABELARD. Historical Notices. WILLIAM of Clhampeaux, in the province of Brie, born about the middle of the eleventh century, taught philosophy at Paris, and died in 1121. Abelard, his disciple, and afterward his adversary, was born in 1079, near Nantes. Iis faults, his er. rors, his genius, filled his life with continual agitation. His history is well known. He died a monk of the Benedictine order, at Chalons sur Saone, in 1142. In seeking to penetrate to the grounds of realism, William of Champeaux had arrived at the theory that universals individualize themselves in particular beings, in such a way that individuals, identical as their essence, differ only by the variety of their accidents or transient forms. Although he did not carry this theory to pantheism, it contained, at least potentially, the germe of pantheism, and we shall see, in fact, some pantheists of the Middle Ages claim it as the basis of their systems. Abelard attacked the realism of William of Champeaux, hut in maintaining nominalism he at the same time modified it. Roscelinus had considered univer. sals as nothing but words, pure conrventions; Abelard ABELARD. 283 considered them as forms of the mind. Nominalism from that time was divided into two sects, pure nominalists and conceptual nominalists. The first seem. ed to suppose that the science of universals was no. thing but a conventional grammar. The second held it to be at once grammar and psychology; and the grammar, too, far from being merely conventional and arbitrary, was the necessary representation of the conceptions and operations of the mind. This controversy was not enough for the active mind of Abelard. Like St. Anseim, he undertook to form a system of philosophical knowledge, or an explanation of the universe. But he appears to have inverted the relations between faith and science acknowledged by the learned Archbishop of Canterbury. The latter established faith as the rule of science; he admitted that faith had its own proper certainty, independent of the philosophical conceptions by which the reason attempts to penetrate to a comprehension of the revealed doctrine. In the system of Abelard faith had certainty only so far as it was transformed into science. Before this transformation it could be nothing but a provisional opinion. This rationalism was attacked with great vigour by St. Bernard, the representative of the principle of faith. That eloquent doctor did not attack the sphere of science, of philosophical investigation, but kept himself on the outside of that sphere. Abelard, who set himself up as the representative of philosophical investigation, unhappily destroyed its necessary rule. 284 PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES. TRIPLE REACTION AGAINST THE ABUSE OF DIALECTICS. 1. Contemplative School.-HUGH AND RICHARD OF ST VICTOR. THE method in use in the schools tended to dry up the mind. Speculations, founded too often upon abstractions, did not bring science into relation with the inward wants of the soul. The logical faiculty, to a certain extent, was satisfied; the other faculties suffered. Hence there sprung up a reaction, with the object of establishing harmony between the mind and the heart, between the faculty of knowing and the faculty of loving.'File contemplative school, also called the mystical school, reclaimed all speculation to love; it disdained abstract truth, and rested only in meditations, which are at once light and life. With this temper, the position which it took relative to all disputed questions was in singular contrast with that of the logical schools. We will give simply an example. A scholastic philosopher, who wished to prove by reason the plurality of persons in the Godhead, would have set out from abstract prin. ciples furnished by the categories. Richard of St. Victor sets out from the idea of' love. There must, says he, exist in God an infinite love, which could not have exercise if there were in God but one per. SOIl. It would be inferred, from the fact of this school being a reaction against dialectics, that it would seek ibr another process by which to attain to science. It preferred that of intuition. The dialecticians, in their theory of knowledge, dividing the human mind into compartments, put all upon the same footing: the contemplatists endeavoured to mark the degrees by which reason is elevated by becoming more and REACTION AGAINST DIALECTICS. 285 more pure. With the first the intelligence is a level floor, with the second a ladder. The former laid great stress upon artificial methods, the latter upon moral methods. They insisted upon the efficacy of purity of heart as a condition of science; and as all truth was, in their view, strictly united to substantial love, so they established, in what may be called their transcendental logic, a strict union between the ra. tional and the emotive faculties. The productions of these two schools differed not less in their forms than in their substance. The di. alecticians, who considered beings only in the light of abstractions, employed a dry style, without anima. tion, without figures, even though ideas referring to the senses played a great part in their philosophy. The mare spiritual piiliosophy of the contemplative school spoke in a language brilliant with imagery. As the contemplative philosophers considered beings in their real living condition, and that, in reality, bod. ies and spirits, the sensible and the intellectual world, are intimately united, they borrowed from external nature a vast body of symbols. The same differ. ence was manifested in Greece between Platonism -'nd Aristotelianism. The metaphysics attributed to Dionysius the Are. opagite, which, as has already several times been said, is a Christian emanation from Oriental philos. ophy, occupied in the estimation of the contemplative school the samne rank which logic, the emanation from the Greek philosophy, had in the estimation of the other school. For the rest, we are not to suppose that the contem. plative philosophers confined themselves to s5litar y meditations. lThle two prinlcipal chief's of this school. iHuigo and Richa(rd of St. Victor, the one originally from Belgium, the other from Scotland, and both 286 PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES. monks of the Abbey of St. Victor at Paris, embraced all the knowledge of their times. But science and knowledge were for them only as the pedestal for the intellectual statue, whose type they carried in their souls, and which they endeavoured to realize. Their writings deserve to be studied, not only as philosophical, but as literary monuments. Hugo, born about the end of the eleventh century, died in 1140; Richard, his disciple, died in 1175. To the contemplative school should also be referred some writings of Hildegarde, and also the cele. brated work onl thle Invitation of Christ, although they represent only the tendencies of the school. The latter bears evident marks of a reaction against the dialectic method.' What have we to do with the disputes about genera and species?" it is said at the beginning of tile book; "he for whom the eternal Word is enough, is freed from an infinite perplexity of opinions." But, leaving speculations alone, the writer contents himself with giving friendly counsels for the heart of man, which purify and console it. In the works of Hildegarde, ideas greately eievated, but forming no part of a philosophical whole, appear un. de r a symbolic style, which resembles the Oriental genius. 2. Recall to Positive Studies.-PETER LOMBxARD. The labours of Peter Lombard may be considered as a moderate reaction against the abuse of dialectics. He was born at Novarre, in Lombardy, in the twelfth century; pursued his studies at Paris, of which he became bishop, after having taught philos. ophy and theology at the Abbey of St. Genevieve. He died in 1160. He is chiefly known by his work entitled The llaster of Sentences. It is a collection of the opinions of the fathers upon the principal points REACTION AGAINST DIALECTICS. 287 of theology and philosophy. The influence of this woi:k, which for a long time was a classical text-.book for the explanations of professors, has been differently estimated: it has been pretended that it could have had no other effect than to excite more and more the mania for dialectics: it has also been said that it was eminently calculated to calm and moderate it. These contradictory judgments are neither of them correct. It is very true that Peter Lombard sacrificed to the subtle genius of his age: it is also true that, in referring, upon controverted questions, to the various opinions of the fathers of the Church, he furnished new food for disputation. But, on the other hand, he recalled the minds of men to positive studies; he led them to consecrate to the ancient documents of Christian philosophy a portion of the time they had spent in idle quarrels; and certainly the revival of historical inquiries in any degree could not but have the effect of diminishing in the same degree the abuse of dialectics. 3. Criticism of the Abuse of Dialectics. —JoIIN OF SALISBURY. John of Salisbury was born in England at the beginning of the twelfth century. He studied in France, and, after his return to his own country, he kept up frequent communications with the French schools, and often revisited that centre of the intellectual activity of his age. Associated in the struggles which Thomas B Becket had to maintain, he was the companion of his exile. After seven years absence he returned to England, but upon the death of his friend he repaired again to France, where he died Bishop of Chartres in 1180. John of Salisbury distinguished himself by a vigor. ous criticism directed against the vicious modes of 288 PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES. instruction. He very truly observed that dialectics remains a barren, or, rather, is a dead science, if it does not receive firuitfulness and life from other sci. ences: he reproached the dialecticians with never arriving at any applicable conclusions, and with re. versing the natural order of science. His works, which treat of physical, moral, and political philoso. phy, contain also valuable materials for the history of scholasticism. The philosophers of whom we have just spoken as connected with this reaction against scholastic dialectics, while endeavouring in various ways to give a better direction to the intellectual progress of the age, were influenced probably by a sort of presentiment of the approaching results which were coming from the vicious methods in use. The moment was arriving when pantheism was about to appear anew, like a great phantom, at the threshold of the schools of the Middle Ages. Pantheistkc Systems.-A-IAuRY DE CHARTRES. DAVID DE DINANT. Amaury was born at Bene, in the province of Chartres, about the end of the twelfth century. Da. vid de Dinant was his disciple. Gerson has summed the ideas of Amaury de Chartres in the following manner: "Everythinf is God, and God is everything. The creator and the creature are one and the same being. Ideas are at once creative and created. God is the end of all things, in the sense that all things must return to him in order to constitute with him an immutable individuality. Just as Abraham and Isaac are nothing but individualizations of human nature, so all beings are only individual forms of one sole essence."'I'his is ideal pantheism; ideas are the sole reality, all the rest is only a manifestation. PANTHEISTIC SYSTEMS. &89 The doctrine of David de Dinant is that of mate. rial pantheism. God is the universal matter: the forms, that is, everything not material, are but imaginary accidents. Amaury probably derived his ideas from the writings of Erigena; but it is probable, also, that he was led to adopt this philosophy by the realist doctrine of William of Champeaux, who, as we have seen, de. stroyed the notion of individuality. He had laid down principles of which the philosophy of Erigena was, in the view of Amaury, the inevitable corollary. David de Dinant modified this system by combi. ning it with the doctrine of Aristotle concerning primary matter. This matter, destitute of every quality, and conceived, nevertheless, as something positive, must, it appeared to him, be the common ground both of what is designated by the term spirit and of what is designated by the term body; and, as it must necessarily be everywhere identical for the very rea. son that it had no especia-l qualities, he inferred the absolute identity of all things. When he said that God is matter, he doubtless did not understand the word in the sense it has when applied solely to bod. ies; but his system none the less runs into material pantheism, since, on the one hand, he radically ideatifies spirit with matter, and, on the other hand, he represents the universal substance under the notion of matter. Philosophy of the Middle Ages in its highest ascenszon. The diffusion of the complete works of Aristotle in the schools which had before been acquainted with only a portion of them, and the appearance of the Arabian philosophy, gave a new activity to philo. sophical speculations in the last half of the twelfth 290 PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES. centUry; they found in the system of human knowl. edge, as it had been conceived and developed by Aristotle, a new aliment. Alexander of Hales, who distinguished himself by his rigorous logic, and Albert the Great, born in 1205, who possessed extensive learning, founded, properly speaking, the peripateticism of the Middle Ages. Around them are group. ed the names of Alain de Lille, Hugo Eterianus, Raymond, Pennafort, Vincent de Beauvais, William of Auvergne, Alfred the Philosopher, and Robert Capito. Then soon all anterior conceptions were summed up, co.ordinated, and enlarged by the labours of the two most celebrated doctors of the Middle Ages, Bonaventura and Thomas Aquinas. The first sought to establish the union of the Peripatetic phi. losophy with the doctrines of the contemplative school, the union of logic and intuition; the other reared upon the basis of logic a vast edifice, of which the different stories corresponded to all orders of hu. man knowledge. BONAVENTURA. liistorical Notices. BONAVENTURA was born in Tuscany in 1221. En. tering the order of minor friars, he studied at Paris under Alexander of Hales. He was made cardina. by Gregory X. When the hat was brought him he was engaged in wvashing dishes. He sat in the sec. ond council of Lyons, where he died in 1274. Exposition. Brucker has given a clear and precise exposition of the philosophy of St. Bonaventura, which we here extract: "Every good and perfect gift descends from the BONAVENTU RA. 291 Father of Light, but the light which emanates from this source is manifold. Althou(gh all illumination be internal, we may nevertheless distinguish four modes of the communication of the light: the exter. hal light, which explains the mechanical arts; the inferior light, which produces sensitive knowledge, the internal light, or philosophical knowledge; the superior light, which comes from Grace and the Holy Scriptures.'The light which illustrates the mechanic arts was designed to subserve the corporeal wants of man; it is divided into seven species of art, relating to weaving, the fabrication of arms, agriculture, hunt. ing, navigation, theatricals, and medicine. "The light which produces sensitive knowledge en. lightens external forms. The sensitive spirit is of a luminous nature; it resides in the nerves, whose es. sence is multiplied in the five senses. " The light of philosophical knowledge produces the vision of intellectual truths. It is called the internal light, because it seeks out hidden causes by means of principles of truth which are contained in the na. ture of man. Now the truths naturally known are of three sorts; they are relative either to words, or to things, or to actions. Philosophy, therefore, is divided into three branches; it is either Rational, or Natural, or Moral. Rational philosophy, taken in relation to the expression of ideas, is grammar, which refers to reason so far forth as the faculty of apprehension; taken in relation to teaching, it is logic, which refers to reason as indicative; and, finally, when its object is to produce emotions, it is rhetoric, which refers to reason as a motive principle. Nat. ural philosophy comprehends physics, which consid. ers the generation and decay of things by natural forces; mathematics. which considers abstract forms 292 PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES. according to intellectual principles; metaphysins. which, embracing the universe of beings, refers them back, according to typical ideas, to the source fromr which they sprang, that is, to God, as the principle, the end, and exemplar of all things. Moral philoso. phy is divided into monastic, economic, and political, according as it relates to the individual, to the fain ily, or to the state. " The light of Grace aid of Holy Scripture gI,_ knowledge of truths that sanctify: it is called the su. perior light, because it elevates man by manifesting to him that which is above reasin. T'his light i. simple and single in as far as it makes known the. literal sense of revelation; it is threefold in as fai as it makes known the spiritual sense, which is ei ther allegorical, or moral, or anagogical. Tile whole doctrine of Holy Scripture refers to three pointsthe eternal generation and the incarnation of the Lo. gos or Word, the rule of life, and the union of' Go(r and the soul; the first is treated by the doctors, the second by the preachers, the third by the contempla. tists. "All the illuminations of science, which are as so many days for the soul, corresponding to the six days of creation, have their evening; but they will be followed by a day of rest without night, because it is the eternal illumination." Bonaventura then seeks out, in the mechanic arts and in the sphere of sensitive knowledge, for images O,f the generation of the Logos, of the rule of life, and >f the alliance of the soul with God. The mysteries of the Logos are represented in rational philosophy by an internal word, the product and expression of an idea, which is clothed with a form by the voice; in natural philosophy by the seminal principles of material things, and by the in THOMAS AQUINAS. 293 tellectual principles residing in the soul, both which ale a shadow, an image of the ideal reason which is in God; in moral philosophy by the theory of' the union of extremes, which aids us to conceive that the union of God with man must be brought about by the God.man. These different philosophies con. cur also, each in its own way, in the service of divine science, which instructs us concerning the rule of life; and, on whatever side the mind turns its re. gards, it meets with wonderful figures, the prophetic emblems of the eternal union of the soul with God. Thus it is that the wisdom, one and multiform, which is contained in Scripture, lies enfolded in all knowledge and in all things; whereby we may see how broad is the path of illumination, since everything felt or known is a sanctuary that enshrines the deity. So much for the framework, direction, and scope of the philosophy of Bonaventura. This sketch might be enlivened, if there were space, with some of the pure and brilliant ideas scattered through the works of this contemplative genius. THOMAS AQUINAS. THIS philosopher, commonly called St. Thomas, and styled also the Angelical Doctor, was born in the kingdom of Naples in 1227. He embraced a religious life of the order of St. Dominic. After studying philosophy and theology at Bologna under Albert the Great, he followed his teacher to Paris, and taught there with the most brilliant success. In all the controversies which he was obliged to maintain, he always displayed great moderation. Bonaventura, though his rival in science, was his friend. He died in an Italian monastery in 1274. His numer. ous writings all bear the impress of his powerful 294 PIILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLF AGES mind. His Sumzma Theologica, his Commentartes upon all parts of the philosophy of Aristotle, and several special Treatises upon metaphysical and moral questions, are the works from which particu. larly may be gathered a knowledge of his philosophy. Exposition. Human sciences have one sole object, the perfec. tion of man. As, therefore, many things refer to one and the same object, there ought to be a regulative principle of their common action. The sciences form. therefore, a society, as individual men do: a society which, like a political association, implies a power to co-ordinate and direct. We see that in political society the power belongs to intellect; men of robust bodies but of feeble minds are destined to be ruled by those in whom intellect predominates. So the science which regulates all the others should be the most intellectual, that is, which occupies itself with objects of the most intellectual kind. The in. tellectual sphere may be considered under three relations. First, the knowledge of causes, in as far as it contains a certain explanation of effects, affords the mind a light superior to the simple knowledge of effects. Secondly, the intellect differs from the senses in this, that the senses refer to particular things, while the intellect embraces the universal. Third. ly, the intelligibility of things depends upon their pro. portion to the intellect, which is the greater the more it is freed from material conditions: things are there. fore the more intelligible the more they are separated from matter. From this it follows that the most intellectual science, and, consequently, the regulative science, is metaphysics, since, as the science of being in general and its properties, it considers primary causes in their greatest generality in their THOMAS AQUINAS. 295 greatest purity, All other speculative sciences consider being only under a particular and subordinate point of view; and as to the practical sciences, they are evidently destitute in themselves of the greatest generality, since they are relative to the particular activity of man. The radical unity of the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas is found in his metaphysics. Being, possibility, existence, one and many, cause and effect, ac. tion and passion, are as the matter of his central doctrine. But these notions a.re developed in a framework of extremely complicated divisions and subdivisions. They cannot be reproduced in a clear and distinct manner in this summary; and yet, in order to apprehend the collective body of the ideas of this philosopher, it would be necessary to go into these explanations. The bond which unites all parts of his speculations has its twistings and tyings in the depth of these categories. Having conceived the unity of science, it is necessary to see upon what basis it rests. Relatively to human science, Thomas Aquinas proposes this ques. tion: Do its principles result from a pre-existing experimental knowledge? In answering this funda. mental question, he distinguishes two elements in the principles of science; the terms, which are the mat. ter of these principles; and the relations of these terms.'Thus in the principle, the whole is greater than its part, the ideas of whole and part are the terms of the principle; the idea of greater extension is the relation of the terms. In the principle, the affirmative and the negative cannot be both true at the same time, the ideas of affirmation and negation are the terms, of which the mind perceives the relation. Setting out with this distinction, he replies that the knowledge of the terms of a principle depends upon '296 PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES. a notion fuirnished by experience; but that the knowl. edge of their relation, or, to speak in his own language, the complexus of the terms, is not derived from experience.' In the same way, he says, as the habit of a virtue exists prior to the act, and consists in a natural inclination, which is that virtue in incipiency, and which by exercise attains at length to its consummation, so the acquisition of science im. plies that there pre-existed in our minds the germes of rational conceptions. This solution resembles in some respects thle idea of Kant; but the philosopher of the Middle Ages and the modern German differ fundamentally with respect to the validity of these conceptions. The former attributes to them an ob. jective validity which is denied by the latter. According to the principles laid down by Thomas Aquinas respecting science, every demonstration results fircem the union of two elements, the one empirical, the other rational. The one is the matter of the demonstration, the other its productive form. In this relation logic corresponds to ontology, where the union of matter and form sustains so important a part. Here comes in the opinion held by Thomas Aqui. nas respecting the question of universals. He resolved it by applying his ideas concerning form and matter. Universals may be considered *either in regard to their matter or in regard to their form The matter of the universal idea of man, for exam. ple, is the union of the attributes of human nature. In this point of view universals are ac parte rei; their matter exists solely in each individual. Their form is the character of universality applied to this mat. ter: this character of universality is obtained only by abstracting what is peculiar to each individual in order to consider wvhat is comnlon to all. In this point of view universals are d parte intellects. THOMAS AQUINAS. 297 The method followed by St. Thomas to demon. strate the existence of God, exhibits to us an appli. cettion of his principles respecting science in general. But, in order to comprehend here his mode of pro. ceeding, it is necessary first to notice the distinction he made between two kinds of demonstration. In every demonstration the principle is anterior to the consequence. Now there are two species of ante. rioritv: absolute, which is in things, in the objects of cognition; and relative, which resides only in the cognitive subject, the mind of man. When we demonstrate effects by setting out from the cause, the relative priority agrees with the absolute: that which is conceived as the principle of the demonstration is conceived at the same time as the principle of things; the logical process corresponds with the order of reality. Whlen, on the contrary, we demonstrate the caue bv setting out firom the effects, this correspond. ence does not exist; the principle of the demonstra tlon is anterior to the consequence only relatively to our mode of cognition; it is the principle of the demonstration because it is more easily, more imme. diately known, and not because in the order of real. ity it precedes the consequence. This being laid down, Aquinas maintains that the being of God cannot be proved by the first kind of demonstration, but only by the second. Logical pro. cesses applied to the existence of God cannot repro. duce the real order of things, since God would ap. pear in the demonstration as the consequence, while in the real order he is the universal principle. The philosopher can therefore arrive at a demonstration of God only by following an order relative to the human mind, by taking effects as the principle of the demonstration, in order to ascend to the cause as a logical consequence. 23 298 PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES. In proceeding thus, we may, according to St Thomas, arrive at a demonstration of the existence of God in five different ways. 1. Experience establishes that there is motion in the world. Now everything that is moved is put in motion by something else. For, on the one hand, an object is not moved except in as far as it is poten. tial relatively to the object towards which it is moved; and, on the other hand, an object is not a mover except in as far as it is in action. To move is nothing but to make pass from the potential to the active state. Now an object can pass from the potential to the active only by the influence of a being which is in action itself, just as, for example, wood, which is only potentially hot, can come to the state of' actual heat only by the influence of fire, where the heat is already in a state of action. But, in another view, it is impossible that the same thing should be in the same relation both potential and active; that which is ac. tually hot cannot at the same time be actually cold, but only potentially so; thus mutable things, that is to say, things which potentially have motion, cannot have the same motion in action. The collective whole of mutable things cannot, then, pass from the potential to the active state, except there exist a be. ing that has motion in act, without having it in mere potentiality, or, in other words, a being that can cause to move without being himself mutable. This immutable prime mover is God. 2. Experience establishes that there exists in the sensible world a series of causes and effects. This laid down, everything is cause and effect, or there exists a being who is cause without being effect. The first supposition is contradictory, since then either we must suppose a being who is at once cause and effect of himself, which i- absurd, for to b! a THOMAS AQUINAS. 299 cause lie must act, and to act he must exist; or we must admit an infinite series of causes and effects, which is equally inadmissible, for that series is actually determinate, and reason cannot conceive the last term of a series without conceiving a first term. 3. Experience establishes that there exists in nature a law of generation and dissolution of things: now everything that is subject to this law is, as such, simply possible, and not necessary, since there was % time when it did not yet exist. But the possible supposes the necessary; for if there was a time when everything was simply possible, nothing would ever fhave existed, since nothing could have been produ. ced. Therefore, since something exists, there exists a being who is not simply possible, but necessary. 4. Observation recognises in the various beings that compose the universe various degrees of good. ness and perfection. But the more or less of per. fection cannot be conceived except as a greater or less participation of a perfection which admits of no degrees of more or less. 5. It is also a matter of experience, that beings destitute of intelligence, such as the bodies which together compose the world, tend constantly in their operations to a good and useful end. There is, then, intention, design in nature. But things destitute of intelligence cannot tend to an end except so far as they are directed by an intelligence, as the arrow is directed to its mark by the archer. There exists. therefore, an ordaining intelligence. It should be observed, that in each of these demonstrations there is a double element: an element furnished by experience, and a rational element. The element furnished by experience is, in the first demonstration, the existence of motion; in the sec. ond, the connexion, at least apparent, of cause and 300 PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES. effect; in the third, the fact of the generation and dissolution of things; in the fourth, variety of; beings with common qualities; in the fifth, operations of nature having well-being for their result. In the first demonstration the rational element is this: all motion supposes an immutable principle; in the second, every series of effects supposes a primary cause; in the third, the possible supposes the necessary; in the fourth, the relative supposes the absolute; in the fifth, order supposes intelligence. All these rational principles are themselves deduced from two notions: 1. The notion of necessary and absolute ex. istence, without which the relative and contingent are not conceivable; this is the foundation of the third and fourth demonstration: 2. The notion of cause, without which neither succession, nor motion, nor order of phenomena could be conceived. The second demonstration considers cause in general; the first considers it as a moving cause; the fifth as an intelligent cause. It is also seen, from the preceding expositions, in what sense Thomas Aquinas says that effects are a principle of demonstration. By the term effect he does not mean the fact merely as furnished by experience, but also as it is the matter of a rational conceptiori which is applied to it. In treating the relations of the universe to God, Aquinas reproduced, against dualism and against pantheism, the reasoning of the fathers of the Church, combined with the categories of scholastic metaphys. ics respecting being, substance, and cause. He ar. Rues for creation properly called. He says, indeed, that the creation is the emanation of all beings, inas. much as they all proceed fromrn the primary cause; but he expressly excludes the pantheistic sense of the word emanation. Just as the generation of a l aOMA, AQUINAS. 301 man, he says, is preceded by the non-being of that man, so the creation, which is the emanation of all being, is preceded by non being. He makes the observation on this subject that the expression out of nothing, ex nihilo, does not designate the material cause of the creation, but the relation of two states, or the passage from non-existence to existence. Nevertheless, in maintaining creation in its proper sense, St. Thomas did not believe reason could demonstrate that the world did not exist from all eternity, seeing that God could eternally have exercised his creative power. In default of demonstration on this point, he referred to the teachings of revelation. He connected the theory of the universe with God, cosmology with theology, by considering nature as a representative of that which is in God, as a mirror of the divine essence. But he distinguished a double representation of cause by the effect. The effect can represent the cause merely so far forth as cause: it is thus that the smoke represents the fire This representation is not an image, but a vestige, which, without reproducing the form of the cause, merely attests its action, and, so to say, its passage. Representation in the way of image reproduces the form of the cause; it is thus that one fire represents another fire from which it emanates. All creatures, rational and irrational, are, as creatures, the representation of the Trinity in the way of vestige. Each creature, in as far as it possesses being. in as far as it is a created substance, represents particularly the cause and principle, and contains thus a vestige of the Father, the principle without principle. In as far as it has a special form, it presents a vestirea of the Logos, the Son, in the same way as the fores of a work relates to the conception of the workman. v as far as it has relations of order witb soniethi.oiq' 302 PHILOSOPIIY OF TlE MIDDLE AGES. tinct from itself, it preserves a vestige of the Spirit of Love, the Holy Spirit, because the co-ordination of an effect to another thing depends upon the will of the Creator moved by love. Independently of this representation, common to all creatures, spirits and bodies represent the divine Trinity according to a mode which is peculiar to them. Spirits, which are, as immaterial beings, an image of the Father, the principle of' being, are also, as intelligent beings, an image of the Son, the Word, and, as endowed with will, an image of the Holy Spirit. Bodies exhibit vestiges of the Trinity under the triple relation of measure, number, and weight: measure relates to their substance as limited by their causes or prirci. ples; number to the form which distinguishes them, weight to the relation of order with other bodies. Thomas Aquinas has here reproduced analyticall3 conceptions borrowed from the ancient fathers, par ticularly Augustine. In comparing the changes of created things wit} their immutable principle, we form the idea of thre duration of things. Eternity is the measure of thie absolute permanence of being, that is, of God, who iv not only unchangeable in his essence, but is not sub. ject to any accidental modifications. Created thing, stand in various degrees of distance fiom this abso. lute permanence. There are some whose essence is permanent, but who are subject to variable modi fications: the measure of their duration is an cei,2t There are others whose essence itself is in perpetua mutation: the measure of their duration is time. In telligent creatures, in as far as they are subjectn o& successive modifications, are in time; in as far as their essence subsists incorruptible under those mod. diications, they correspond to the cevumn; in as far as they are destined to be united to God by intuitive vision, they partake of eternity. THOMAS AQUINAS. 303 Created beings are divided into three great classes: beings absolutely immaterial, beings material, and beings composed of spirit and matter. The perfection of the universe implies the exist. ence of beings free from everything material. The chief end of God in the creation is goodness, or assimilation to God. Now the perfect assimilation of the effect to the cause exists only when the effect im. itates the cause in its mode of operation. God creates by his intelligence and will; there should exist, therefore, creatures intellectual as he is: but intelli. gence can nev( r be an act of body; for body, corre. sponding solely to a point of space and time, has al. ways a determinate where and when, hic et nunc. The intelligence, on the contrary, corresponds to what is universal and eternal in itself. In respect to corporeal beings, Thomas Aquinas refutes the opinion of Origen, who maintained that bodies were created only to punish the faults of intelligent creatures; that they were the prison of the soul; and, accordingly, that their creation was not a part of the primitive plan of God. According to St. Thomas, bodies, from the very fact of their substan. tial existence, must partake of the quality of good, and are an effect of the divine goodness: they concur to the perfection of the universe, which ought to comprehend a hierarchy of beings subordinate one to another, according to the degrees of perfection they possess. Bodies should not be considered separate. ly, but as parts of a whole which is itself co-ordina. ted by God. The more they are considered separ. ately, the more their variety is manifested; but it is not so when we regard them as existing for the sake of spirits, because everything which relates to the spiritual order appears the more grand the more pro. foundly the idea is considered. 304 PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES. The theory of spirits and the theory of bodies come together in the science which has man for its object, in whom the two worlds unite. We may say there are three souls in nian, in this sense only, however, that the mind, which in its essence is one, possesses a threefold life: the rational life, which exerts its functions without any corporeal organ; the sensitive life, which has need of a corporeal organ; and the vegetative life, which needs not only a corporeal organ, but a corporeal force besides. Nutrition and spontaneous locomotion belong to the vegetative life. Here St. Thomas has a very complicated theory concerning this triple life. That of the rational life is divided into two branches, corresponding to intelligence and will. The human intelligence, united to a body, resides on the confines of two horizons: the horizon of infinite, eternal realities, and the horizon of finite and changeable things. It is the same with the will, which exerts itself on the confines of the double ho. rizon of absolute good and of relative good. The philosophy of the angelical doctor contained also political speculations. We should not, however, seek for them in the book de Reginline Principis at. tributed to Thomas Aquinas by some writers. It is extremely probable that this work was wr;tten by some other person. The political ideas of Aquinds are the combination of two principles. As the ne cessary means of order, power represents God; as residing in such or such individuals, it represents the community. We have now given some sketches which may serve to indicate the general character of the theo. ries of Thomas Aquinas; but these sketches, we re. peat, are by no means an analysis of his philosophy. That philosophy is an infinite world of questions: THIRD EPOCH. 305 the Summa Theologica alone is a vast encyclopedia, of which all the parts are regularly arranged and united by a wonderful logical chain. But in the intellectual world of the angelical doctor a language is spoken very different from the language of modern science. To be able to know one's place in that world, to travel through it, one must begin by learning the vocabulary of its language. This observa. tion applies likewise to nearly all the philosophy of the Middle Ages. THIRD EPOCH. IN the phasis which we have just been considering, the philosophy of the Middle Ages exhibits an ascending progress, a tendency to organize into a vast body of doctrines all the knowledge of the epoch. This was eminently the work of Thomas Aquinas. In the succeeding phasis, a movement in some respects the inverse is perceptible. This movement which took place in the heart of the schools tended in many directions to modify the scientific organization, and to prepare the way for another method of philosophizing. Three principal causes conspired to this result: 1. The want of experimental studies began to be felt. 2. The inconveniences of the excessive impor. tance attached to logical and dialectical combinations manifested themselves in a striking manner. 3. The continuation of the disputes between the realists and nominalists, having resulted in no new solution, led men to feel the need of seeking, in re. lation to the theory of the human mind, another or. der of ideas and other points of view than those that had hitherto been taken. 306 PhILOSOPHY OF TIE MIDDLE AGES 1. The want of experimental studies begins to befelt. -Roger Bacon. Roger Bacon, born in England in 1214, died in 1294, pursued his studies at Oxford and at Paris. He perceived very clearly that the logical categories, when applied to physical phenomena, gave no real explanation of them, and that every theory ot the physical world should have its basis in observation of the processes of nature. He saw, also, that to simple observation must be joined experiment. He was in this double relation the precursor of the scientific method founded upon experience, and began the work which Francis Bacon completed about the beginning of the seventeenth century. Roger Bacon united practice to theory. He did not confine him. self to laying down the principles of the scientific reformation of which he saw the necessity; he justi. fied his principles by their results. From his letter upon the secret operations of art and nature, and upon the folly of magic, it is evident that he had made or that he had a presentiment of many of the most important discoveries of modern science. Ro. ger Bacon was a Franciscan; his manuscripts, or copies of them, had been deposited in the library of a convent of his order in England. The convent was stormed, and his writings committed to the flames, in the earliest days of the Reformation. 2. Inconveniences of the excessive importance attach. ed to logic and dialectics legin to appear.-Duns Scotus.-Raymond Lully. John Duns Scotus was born in Great Britain about 1275. He founded a school opposed to that of Thomas Aquinas. The principal point of separation was the opinion of Scotus on the question of realism. DUNS SCOTUS. 307 According to him, the intelligence did not concur in any respect in the formation of universals, which he considered as indeterminate entities really subsisting out of the mind. In the production of particular beings he supposed the intervention of another enti. ty, which was the principle whereby universals were individualized. It is a mistake, however, to suppose that this combination of two efficient principles, of which one is the principle of beings so far as beings, and the other the principle of their individualization, was an idea peculiar to Duns Scotus. This solution is to be found in many philosophers of the Middle Ages who were anterior to him. He did nothing but modify it. But while he represented the intelligence as entirely passive in the formation of universals, he conceived on another subject the activity of the human free-will in a point of view which has led some of his adversaries to accuse him of Pelagianism, although he did not really deny the existence of divine grace. While certainly the questions started by Scotus excited earnest discussion, yet the school founded by him exerted more influence upon the destinies of philosophy in the Middle Ages by the method it followed than by the opinions peculiar to it. Scotus advanced the pretension of improving philosophy by bringing more precision into the investigation of the problems that engaged men's minds; but this pretension degenerated into a rage for dialectic subtleties, which obscured instead of explaining things. By an infinite division and subdivision of logical notions, science went backward instead of advancing; and the very excesses in which the purely dialectic meth. od resulted revealed the vices of the method itself. The logical works of Raymond Lully (born in 1234, in the island of Majorca) contributed to the 308 PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES. same result, although their first and immediate effec! was in a contrary direction. His Ars Magna made the mind a sort of automaton, whose action consist. ed in combining mechanically tables of ideas dispo. sed in such a way that their different correlations would furnish answers to all imaginable questions. The invention of Raymond Lully was really ingenious; and that universal instrument, whose easy ap. plication was to dispense with all other labour, exci. ted at first some enthusiasm in a number of the schools; but the barrenness of that mere verbal science was not long in showing itself; and as that intellectual mechanism was nothing but the dialectic method carried to its last consequences, the discredit into which it fell reacted against the method itself. 3. The continuance of the disputes between the nominalists and realists producing no new solution, makes felt the need of seeking for another order of ideas and other points of view with respect to the theory of the humang mind. This discussion was continued, in behalf of absolute nominalism, by William Occam, John Buridan, Peter d'Ailly, and Gregory Rimini, in the fourteenth century; by Vassel Gansfort, Gabriel Biel, and James Almain, in the fifteenth: on the side of absolute realism, by Francis of Mayron. surnamed the master of abstractions, and by other strict disciples of Scotus, who belonged to the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries: on the side of a doctrine both nominal and realist, according to the point of view given by the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas, by Giles Co. lonna, who died at the commencement of the four. teenth century, and by most of the doctors of the Thomist school. While these discussions went on without produ GENERAL OBSERVATIONS. 309 cing any result proportioned to the intellectual activ. ity displayed, the symptoms of a double reaction against the scholastic philosophy appeared. The intuitive or mystical philosophy was revived by Gerson, who excelled, however, in the logical method, which he regarded solely as preparative to a higher mode of knowledge. From his writings it may also be seen that Oriental mysticism had reappeared; for he refutes a contemporaneous book in which the doctrine of the final transformation of all creatures into pure divine ideas, or their absorption into God, had been expressly maintained. Gerson, chancellor of the University of Paris, was born in 1363, and died in 1429. The Natural Theology of Raymond of Sebond was, in the fifteenth century, the index of another tendency opposed to the dialectic philosophy; a tendency which had for its object to unite religious speculations with the observation of nature and of man. Observations on the Philosophy of the Middle Ages. 1. The philosophical conceptions of the Middle Ages, with a very few exceptions, are directed in their results to proving truths which are the principle and the sanction of virtue. This philosophy, while labouring, even at the expense of variety in its systems, to strengthen in men's minds the foundations of moral order, has more effectually served the cause of humanity than it could have done by giving itself to more various but contradictory speculations, which would have compromised those great foundations. Thanks to the intellectual unity, formed in the schools of the Middle Ages, the European mind acquired, while springing up, a temperament singular. ly robust: the errors even into which it has since fallen, in passing through three centuries of immense 310 PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES. discussions, have not been able to exhaust its origi. nal strength. 2. Christianity, in freeing the mind from ancient pantheism and from atheism, had rooted in the human intelligence two fundamental ideas, that of God and that of the creature. The philosophy of the Middle Ages was particularly engaged, as Christian philosophy has always been, with the relation of these two terms. 3. Many of the metaphysical and moral concep. tions of the scholastic philosophy are still fundament. ally living. What was in germe has been developed; what was restricted to a particular order of ideas has been at a later day combined with other classes of ideas; but the substance of those conceptions remains, the formns only have changed. 4. In respect to the human fa, ulties, it is acknowledged that the great logical force which distinguishes the modern mind is due to the education receiv. ed in the Middle Ages. Intuition, as awe have seen, was also represented in the schools of that epoch. 5. But the philosophical method generally employed during that period was radically vicious. T*ie schoolmen sought in conceptions purely logical the principle of the explanation of' things, whereas such conceptions can furnish nothing but the mneans of scientific classification and arrangement. They reared upon this basis an edifice of abstractions, often very ingeniously constructed, often very vast, but which was not at all a representation of the real world. 6. Thereby came the excessive importance attached to dialectics, which comnbines words without seizing the true relations of things. Subtleties and cav. ils could not but spring from this abuse. 7. Tile part of the philosophy of the Middle Ages which comprises speculations relative to the physical GENERAL OBSERVATIONS. 311 world, was most of all affected by this vicious meth. od. These speculations, which do not relate to an order of necessary truths, can be established only on a large basis given by observation. That basis was wanting in the philosophy of the schoolmen; and as, on the other hand, their categories embraced the universal whole of things, they were led to propose and to resolve many questions in physics without having previously acquired the elements of the solution. 8. Philosophical speculations concerning man, ana especially social man, have need equally of observa. tion of the facts unfold'ed in the history of the hu. man world. EIistorical knowledge was at that time so limited that this portion of the scholastic philosophy could not but present considerable defects. 9. All these causes naturally conspired to produce the decline of the scholastic philosophy. At first the barrenness of the dialectic method, as a method of discovery, was to be finally displayed. Then, farther, when the study of facts, whether in physics or history, had made some progress, there arose a great disproportion between those particular sciences and philosophy, then insufficient to embrace and sys. ternatize them. Now philosophy is the general sci. ence, sctentia universalis, and can exist only on con. dition of conr.stituting the unity of the different sci. ences. END OF VOL. 1. AN EPITOME OF THE h1ISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. BEING THE WORK ADOPTED BY THE UNIVERSITY OF FRANCE FOR INSTRUCTION IN THIE COLLEGES AN'D HIGH SCHOOLS. TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH, W\ITIH AI)DITIONS, AND A CONTINUATION OF THE HISTORY FROM TIlE TIME OF REID TO THE PRESENT DAY. BY C. S. HENRY, D.D., PROFES9OR OF PHILOSOPHY AND HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF TIlE CITY OF NEW-YORK. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOI,. II. NEWV YORK: HARPER & BROTIIERS, PUBLISTIR S, FRANKLT N SQUARE. 1 S 6 9. CONTE N TS OF THE SECOND VOLUMAE. FIFTH PERIOD. MODERN PHILOSOPHY. Page FIRST PHASE.... 7 I. OJtlogical Systems. Theistical Systems. Nicholas de Cusa..... 9'Theosophy. Paracelsus. Van Helmont 10 Naturalism. Telesio...... 13 Carmpanel!......14 Pantheism. Jordano Bruno...... 17 Atheism......19 I. Logical Systems........ 20 SECOND PHASE. IMPULSE GIVEN TO PIIILOSOPHY BY BACON, DESCARTES, AND I.EIBNITZ. FIRST PART. SECTION FIRST. Bacon. Historical Notlces... 21 K xpslstlion. 1. Reformation and Progress of Science. 22 11 Classification of Knowledge...... 26 I bservatiors...29.orltirllation of the Impulse given to Philosophy by Bacon. Hobbes. Historical Notices. Exposition. 31 asseiiii. Historical Notices. Exposition. 36 Locke. Colidillac. Hfistorlcal Notices. 38 Exposition.....39 Observations. 43 Hel3etius.. 44 IV CONTENTS. PAg" D'Holbach.45 Hume. 46 SECTION SECOND. Descartes. Historical Notices. 48 Exposition.49 Observations......59 Malebranche. Historical Notices...... 60 Exposition......ib. Observatios....... 70 Berkeley......71 Spinoza.. 72 Logic. Critical Skepticism...... 76 [,Supernaturalism. Mysticism].... 8. SECTION THIRD. Leibnitz. Historical Notices..... 8 1 Exposition.82 Observations.94 Thomasius. 96 Wolff..97 Observations.98 SECOND PART. GERMAN SCHOOLS. Kant. Historical iNotces. Exposition.... 99 Continuation of the Phllosophlcal Movement in Germany. Jacobi..112 Fichte. Exposition..11:3 Skeptical Reaction against Kant..118 [ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY IN TIIE PERIOD BETWEEN LOCKE AND REIDr. 119 Systems of Disinterested Miorals.. 120 Systems of the Moral Sense. Shaftesbury. 121 Butler.....1 Hutcheson. 123 Aloditications of the System of Moral Sene Hume. 125 Adam Sinliib..126 Rational Systen-s.'Wollaston..120 Samuel Clarke..132 Price..133 Sensualism in England. Hartley. 137 Abraliam Tucker]. 140 THE SCOTTISH SCHOOL. RKID. 141 Historical Notices.. 142 Exposition..143, bservations..... 153 CONTENTS. V APPENDIX. SKETCI1 OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOIHY FROMI REID TO THE PRESENT TIMIE. ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY IN THE CLOSE OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. Page Opponents of Hume. Oswald. Beattie. Priestley.. 157 Ethical Systems. Ferguson. Paley.159 Darwin..160 Bentham.. 161 Observations..165 PHILOSOPHY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. ENGTISH PHILOSOPHY. Stewart.. 167 Brown. Exposition.171 Observations.. 186 Mackintosh..190 Coleridge. 192 GERMAN PIIILOSOPHY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Schelling. Historical Notices..195 Exposition..196 Observations..199 Progress of the School of Schelling..201 Bouterwek. 202 New Developments of the Philosophy of Sentiment. 205 NOTE.-The most recent German Speculations. Hegel. 207 FRENCH PHILOSOPHY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Preliminary Observations..211 SENSUAL SCHOOL. Cabanis. Exposition..212 Observations..215 I)estutt de Tracy..... 216 Volney....18 G;all, Aza"s, and other XWriters..21 TIIEOLOGIC:.L SPIRITUALISM. De Maistre.. 223 La AMennais.. 224 Bonald..... 226 VI CONTENTS. RATIONAL PSYCHOLOOISrS, OR ECLECTIC SCHOOL., Page ferard.22, Virey..229 Keratry..230 Massias........... 231 Degerando. 232 Laromllgu~re. ib. Mairie De Biran..234 Royer-Collard.. 226 Cousin..238 Exposition. 239 Observations.. 256 NoTE.-Disciples of Cousin. Jouffroy.. 259 CHRONOLOGICAL, TABLE OF TlE lIISTORY UF PHILOSOPHY FROM TilE TIME OF THALES.. 261 AN EPITOME OF TIIE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. FIFTH PERIOD. MODERN PHILOSOPHY WE here distinguish two pleases. To the first be. long the systems resulting from a philosophical im. pulse communicated anterior to that determined by the great schools founded by Bacon, Descartes, and Leibnitz. The second phase comprehends the sys. tems more or less directly connected with the influence exercised by those three great reformers of phi. losophy. FIRST PHASE. THE fifteenth and sixteenth centuries produced a multitude of writings relating to philosophy. They nay be divided into several classes. 1. Works which consist chiefly of commentaries upon the books of the ancient philosophers. In this class belong the writings of many Greek authors who took refuge in Italy on the downfall of the Low. er Empire, as Gemisthius Pletho, Theodore Gaza, George Trebizond, Cardinal Bessarion; many of these commentaries contain discussions respecting the pre-eminence of Platonism above Aristotelianism. 2. Works produced by the controlersy between 8 MODERN PHILOSOPIIY. the Humanists against the schoolmen. This contro. versy was, however, rather literary than philosophicai. The Humanists, enthusiastic admirers of Greek and Roman literature, more frequently attacked the forms than the substance of scholasticism. These quarrels belong, nevertheless, to the history of phi. losophy, because all the blows struck at the scholas. tic systems had their effect in calling forth a new philosophy. In this conflict were particularly distinguished in Italy Hermolaus Barbarus and Angelo Politian; in Germany, Ulrich de Hutten and Eras. Im uS. 3. Works that united, either with commentaries or with philological explanations, some new conceptions, which, however, did nut constitute philosophi. cal systems. Here belong the writings of Marcellus Ficinus, a Florentine noticeable for his Platonism, as also those of John Picus of Mirandola in Italy, and of Reuchlin in Germany, who endeavoured to revive cabalistic ideas under a Christian form. The history of this epoch recites still many other writers who formed either apologists or adversaries of the principal doctrines of the Greek schools. We shall not go into any details respecting the different worls which we have just indicated; we shall occupy ourselves solely with such philosophical conceptions as present the characteristics of systems properly speaking. They are divided into two class. es: ontological systems, which have for their object the explanation of things; and logical systems, which relate either to the condition or to the processes of human reason. I. ONTOLOGICAL SYSTEMS. WE divide these, according to their different rela. tions to the question concerning the elrigin of things, THEISTICAL SYSTEMS 9 into theistical, pantheistic, and atheistic systems, remarking, however, that this classification should be combined wvith another division determined by the different points of view taken in regard to the origin and nature of human knowledge. Theistical Systems. NICHOLAS DE CUSA. BORN in the diocese of Treves in 1401. He died in Italy in the year 1464. The alliance of metaphysics and mathematics greatly engaged his mind. He devoted himself also to physical speculations, and preluded the Copernican system, by renewing the hypothesis of Pythagoras respecting the motion of the earth. In many respects he opened a differ. ent route from that which the schoolmen had travelled over, by attempting to construct a philosophy that exhibits a mixture of Pythagorean ideas with new conceptions, remarkable for their originality and often for their profoundness. We signalize the following points: 1. Philosophy may be divided into two orders: transcendental sci. ence, whose object is the primitive, absolute, infinite unity; and inferior science, which has multiplicity for its object. 2. The absolute unity is incomprehensible in itself; it can be known only by symbols. Transcendental science, as soon as it makes any pretension of being a direct knowledge, is full of uncertainties. [These ideas have some analogy with the principles developed by Kant.] 3. From the primal unity proceeded all beings, which would be as its fractions, if such a term could be applied to the indivisible unity. 4. The phenomena of nature correspond to math. II.-2 10 MODERN PHILOSOPHY. ematics. [This principle has been consecrated by the theories of Newton.] 5. Human reason, like nature, does not operate but by means of ideas of number, ideas which are its constitutive form. 6. Humanity aspires after unity or perfection, without wishing to lose its own proper nature. If we suppose an unlimited progress, man will be forever looking and reaching towards a higher perfection, and will never obtain the goal which he seeks. If this progress be limited, the innate desire of humanity will be still farther from being satisfied. WVe cannot, therefore, conceive that this perfection can be attained unless so far as the supreme perfection, God, shall unite himself to human nature. " Human. ity," says Nicholas de Cusa, " that by which all men are men, is one, and the movement of my human natlre has for its object the attainment of God in man." Theosophy. PARACELSUS. VAN IIELMIONT. THE physician Bombast de Hohenheim, born at Einsiedlen, in Switzerland, in 1493, known by the name of Theophrastus Paracelsus, distinguished himself by his opposition to the scholastic medical science. He travelled throughout Europe, and proba. bly, also, many countries of the East. Governed by an ardent imagination, he devoted himself to alchymy. He died in 1541, at Salzburg. Paracelsus took, as the basis of his physical speculations, theosophy; that is, a direct communication of the soul with God by means of illumnination. The soul, resembling God, contains in its own depths all truth that man can know; it is full of sci. ences, but all these notions, all these divine charac. THEOSOPHY. 11 tcrs are veiled or obscured. Conseq uently, it is not by the senses, by books, by reasoning, by factitious intelligence, that man can arrive at science; it is by retiring within himself, by withdrawing into the essential intelligence which is in the depths of his nature: there he perceives the truth, not actively, but passively, by divine illumination, of which purity of heart is the condition, and prayer the means. It is there that he recognises the plan of creation to be one, and, consequently, that the universe, the great world, is made after the same model as man, or the little world, which is as its child. Man is a }hidden world. God, who is life, has diffused life everywhere; all parts of the universe are full of souls, who, however, have not been gifted with intelligence, the privilege of man created in the image of God. Souls are envel. oped in bodies or matter, which is in itself a dark and dead thing: between souls and bodies exists the spirit, a sort of fluid, which is the physical means of the universal life. The soul, the fluid, the body: such is the trinity of nature, which in some respects is a counterpart of the divine Trinity. In the same way man contains in himself three principles, three worlds, three heavens: the soul, by which he communicates with God, or the archetypal world; the material body, which puts him in connex. ion with the elementary world; and the spiritual body, which, being formed of ethereal fluid, is in perpetual communication with the angelic.astral world. This spiritual body, the fine envelope of the soul, reminds one of the subtile person of the Sankhya phi. losophy. The triple nature of man and the triple nature of the world being identical, there exists in man a force of attraction by which he aspires to the life of 12 MODERN PtILOSOPHY. the world. He possesses at first a magnetic power which draws from the elements the nourishment of his flesh and blood. There is also in him a superior magnetism, which attracts the spiritual fluid, the principle of sensations and of worldly wisdom; and this magnetism is itself subordinated to the aspiration by which the soul is nourished from God. But, at the same time that he attracts all the forces of nature, man improves them in himself, and recalls them all to God, the universal centre. Thus the world is a flux and reflux of the divine life by means of man. Paracelsus combined with these ideas a multitude of physical speculations, more or less fantastic, which resulted in theurgy and magic. Van Helmont, originally of Brussels, was born in 1577, and died in 1664. He adopted the method and many of the ideas of' Paracelsus. He criticised the logical methods in order to demonstrate their insufficiency, and to substitute another process. The knowledge of the relation which exists between the terms of a syllogism exist in our minds prior to the conclusion; it follows, therefore, that logic is nothing hut a means of recapitulating anterior notions, which has no other use than to facilitate the exposition of ideas on the part of a speaker, and the recollection of them on the part of the hearer. All true science is therefore independent of demonstration, and can be acquired only by pure intuition. Van Helmont sought to discover the internal cause of phenomena, which he called archeus (ap271), and he decided it to consist in the union of spirit, of the vital breath. with the seminal image, or internal type of each being. Many of his ideas, as wvell as those of Paracelsus, are anialogonls to the modsern theories of magnetism lte connected, like the Swiss philosopher, physical spec NATURALISM. 13 ulations with an ecstatic contemplation of the 6iivine unity, to which one could elevate himself only by that state of abstraction, passivity, sielfannihilation, which formed the old dream of the Hindu philosophy. To these theosophists should be added Jacob Boehme, whose philosophy has its partisans at this dav in Germanyv. Theosophy divided itself into two branches. While in Germany and Belgium it produced, by means of illumination, a physical philosophy, it was applied in Spain and Italy to the moral world, and produced ir, that Quietism. Molines made true virtue, perfect piety, to consist in the annihlilation of all will, just as Paracelsus and Van Helmont had made true science to depend upon the annihilation of every intellectual operation. lVaturalismz. TELESIO. WHILE Paracelsus derived the science of nature from theosophy, Telesio, born in the kingdom of Naples in 15()0S, attempted to convert that science into speculations purely physical, which admit God as the creator, but as to the rest, allow no notion of his intervention in the theory of the world. WVe shall Ineet presently, in the physical part of the system of Campanella, the ideas of Telesio concerning the two constituent principles of nature and the universal diffusion of the faculty of feeling. The speculations of Patrizzi, born in 1529, are something intermediate between tile philosophy of Paoracelsus and that of Telesio. They are a mixture of mysticisnl and naturalism. II. A4 MODERN PHILOSOPHY. CAMIPANELLA. THOMIAS CAMIPANELLA was born at a town in Ca. labria in 1568. He entered the order of the Dominicans. He suffered greatly from the persecutions of his enemies, and at last took refuge in France under the protection of Cardinal Richelieu. He died in 1639, at Paris, in a convent of his order. Campanella formed a theory of human knowledge and a logic. He reduced the intelligence to the faculty of feeling, that is, of perceiving the modifica. tions of our own being; thought is nothing but the generalization of various perceptions, and sentiment is their collective whole. His logic, which differs on many points from the logic of Aristotle, correo sponds to his principles concerning the source of the intelligence. It is an intellectual instrument, appropriated particularly to the study of nature. Campanella, unfaithful therein to his theory of knowledge, rests all his speculations upon the basis of a vast metaphysics. All creatures are composed of being and non-being; and being in its transcendent composition is constituted by power, wisdom, and love, which have for their object essence, truth, and goodness; as non-being is weakness, ignorance, and hatred. These three primordial qualities subsist originally in the Supreme Being; are there united, according to an incomprehensible simplicity, without any mixture of non-being; they are one, though distinct. This being, in drawing all things fiom non-being, transfers his inexhaustible ideas into matter, under the condition of time, the image of eternity, and upon the basis of space, which has its solidity in God, and he comnmunic-ates to finite beings the three qualities which become the principles of the universe und,r the triple law of rcessity, of Providence, and CAMPANELLA. 15 of h&rmony. With this metaphysics as the centre of all the speculations of Campanella, are co-ordi. nated a physical philosophy, a physiological philosophy, and a social or political philosophy. In his physical philosophy he treats of the universe in as far as it is an aggregate of material phenomena. These phenomena are developed in.space and in time, which are at once something real and something relative. Space, taken in itself, is an incorporeal, immutable substance, the receptacle of bodies; but every measure of space, everything which we desig. nate by the terms high and low, is relative to ourselves. Time in itself is the duration of the essence of' things; relative to us it is number in motion. Matter, situated in time and space, is not constructed, but fitted for construction, which is effected by two universal agents, heat and cold. Heat, which vola. tilizes, formed heaven, which is composed of a deli. cate matter; cold formed the earth by condensing matter. The celestial element, the seat of heat, and the terrestrial element, the seat of cold, produce by combination all phenomena. Light and heat are identical; they are one and the same agent, which is heat in relation to the touch, light in relation to the sight. In relation to the touch, cold should be night. All colours are a compound of darkness and light, of black and white, for pure white is light itself. Such are the general principles of the physics of' Campanella:'we cannot follow him in the numerous applications he has made, or, rather, sought to make, of them. His physiology, which considers beings so far as having life, turns upon an induction by which he concliides from man to the universe. Lie distinguishes in man a triple life, corresponding to a triple sub. stance: the intelligence, which is the highest part of 16 MODERN PHILOSOPHY. the soul; the spirit, the vehicle of intelligence, the seat of the sensations, and the principle of tile appetites; and, lastly, the body, the vehicle and organ of the intelligence and of the spirit. But as all beings, even those which are called brutes, tend to their pres. ervation by motions as well arranged for this end as the motions of the human organization are to its preservation, Campanella concludes that all beings are endowed with instincts, and endowed also, like man, with the faculty of feeling, which is developed in nature in various degrees. Still farther, if man, besides spirit, possesses an immortal intelligence, d fortiori, the world, which is the most perfect of beings, ought to possess not only a sentient spirit, but also an intelligent soul, which presides over its totality. What though the world have neither eyes, nor ears, nor hands, nor feet; its intelligent substance, as well as its sentient substance, has superior organs: the expansive forces are its hands, the stars are its eyes, and it may be conjectured that the rays which the stars send forth from one to the other are a high language by which they mutually communicate their thoughts. Here Campanella enters upon astrology, which occupies a large place in his speculations. Social or political philosophy has for its object the reformation of humanity; and this reformation, if it were complete, would consist in re-establishing the integrity and harmony of power, wisdom, and love. the three primordial qualities, which the passions of man have corrupted or put at variance. In his book entitled Qf the City of the Sun, Campanella has traced the plan of a typical society. It is ruled by a supreme chief, who represents God, who has three ministers, presiding, the one over the physical force, the other over the propagation of science and wisdom, and the third over social union and the intercourse PANTHEISM. 17 of life. But, singularly enough, this treatise contains nearly all the bases of St. Simonianism: community of goods and wives, the destruction of family and domestic relations, the transformation of domestic service into public functions, and the public authority, which consists solely in directing the labourers, exercised in each degree of the hierarchy by one man and one woman. Campanella, however, presented this typical society, so far as it implied the destruction of marriage and all the immoral consequences resulting therefrom, only as something intermediate between the degradation of heathen soci. ety and the social perfection of which Christianity is the principle. Pantheism. JORDANO BRUNO. ABOUT the commencement of the sixteenth ronoj u ry, Pomponatius, an Italian, had borrowed from the philosophy of Averroes many principles incompatible with the Catholic faith; and some time afterward Jerome Cardan, of Pavia, who died in 1576, had equally infringed upon orthodoxy by his fantastic opinions. But greater errors were soon produced. A pantheistic system, the precursor of Spinoza's, appeared in the writings of Jordano Bruno, born at Nola, in the kingdom of Naples, about the middle of the sixteenth century. After having embraced the reli. gious life in a convent of the Dominicans, he fled to Geneva, where he made a profession of Calvinism, He afterward travelled in France, England, and Germany. He returned to Italy, when he was arrested and taken to Rome, where he was condemned and burned to death in 1600. The system of Jordano Bruno has been interpreted 18 MODIPRN PHILOSOPIIY. in various ways. The following is our conception of it in its fundamental principles, as we gather it by com-ibining various principles scattered through his wXiiting s Nothing exists which is not one; for everything which is not one is, in as far as it is multiple, only a compound, and every composition is only an ag. gregate of relations, and not a reality. Unity is therefore being, and being is reality. Unless we ad. mit that everything is relative, an opinion repugnan' to human reason, which tends to the absolute, we must acknowledge an absolute unity, without parts without limits. In that unity, the infinite and the finite, spirit and matter, equal and unequal, are con. founded. Hence results the absolute identity of ali things; for the most general principles of the difference of things are the infinite and the finite, spirit and matter; and this distinction, which cannot con. stitute a real difference in the essence of the abso. lute unity, indicates only a diversity of modifications in the same one and universal being. From this science of being is derived a subordinate science, the science of the universe. The world is nothing but the unity manifesting itself under the conditions of number. Taken in itself, the unity is God; considered as producing itself in number, it is the world. It there manifests itself under two prin cipal forms. The universe being necessarily conceived as illimitable, it manifests itself therein as infinitely great; and, on the other hand, all the beings of which it is composed being themselves composites, essentially reducible to simple unities or monads, it manifests itself under this relation as infinitely small, the minilmum. Finally, below the science of the universe ranks the science of particular or individual things, which, as such, are only pure shadows of re. ality. ATHEISM. 19 From this it may be understood how Jordano Bruno distinguishes in the human mind three regions corresponding to these three divisions of the great whole.- The senses, which are in relation only with particular phenomena, are like an eye which from the depth of a dark prison perceives through the cracks in the wall the colours which come from the surface of objects. The reason is an eye. which re. ceives through a window the light of the sun reflected by the moon; for reason regards not the light of unity in itself, but its reflection or refraction in the universe. Finally, the intellect resides in the highest region of the soul, as upon a height from which its glance, passing over all that is multiple, fixes directly on the sun, which is the unity of light. The senses perceive things explicatim, reason, complicatim, intellect, sunlmatiln. Bruno wms led by his system to maintain that good and evil, beauty and deformity, happiness and misery, have no absolute difference, but only a relative difference. According to Bayle, he has exhibited his theory as one that should ftee rnman fiom all fear of punishment in a future life, althoughll, nevertheless, there are other passages in his writings in which he has adopted the idea of metempsychosis in the sense of the Hindu philosophy. Atheism. Atheism seems to have been maintained by Vani. ni, born 1596, and burned at Toulouse in 1619. His doctrine, which has nothing very remarkable, rested urJon various passages (lrawn from the writings of Averroes, Poinponatius, and Cardan. 20 MODERN PHILOSOPHY. I1. LOGICAL SYSTEMS. THE logical works of the epoch we are surveying may be divided into two classes: the one trieated solely of logic as the organ, or of the processes of reasoning; the other referred to the condition itself of human reason, that is, to the means afforded man to acquire certainty. 1. In the first relation we may notice the attempt mnade by Peter Ramus, born at the begillning of' the sixteenth century in a village of Vermandois. He undertook the reform of logic. He reproached the logic of Aristotle, employed in the schools, as being inapplicable to the sciences, the arts, and affairs of life. In this point of view he subjected their methods to very severe criticism. But, in order to facilitate the employment of logic, he fell into an extreme the opposite of that which he blamed: for he reduced the theory of reasoning to the art of skilful disquisition. The attempt of Ramus produced great ex. citement in the schools; it was a progress in so far as it tended to break the classical bonds of' Aristotelianism. 2. Among the logical works which made the con. dition of human reason their special object, we may refer to those of a school which considered the reason of man as naturally uncertain, until it attained, by means of the Christian revelation, a supernaturat certainty. This class of ideas was developed by Montaigne in his apology for Raymond of Sebonde. It is perceptible in the book of the Three Verities by his disciple Charron. These principles wve re also those of the Portuguese Sanchez, professor at'You. louse, contemporary with 1Montaigne, fl'om whom he probably borrowed -them. Here likewise mlay be referred the scientific skepticism which Lamnothe BACON. 21 Levayer maintained in the seventeenth century, in MIis Discourse to show that the doubts of the skeptical philosophy have been of great use in the sciences. Pascal in some parts of his writings. and Huet in the first part of his Qucestiones Asnetane, and in his treatise of the Feebleness of the iHuLman Mlind, have defended this systen. SECOND PHASE. I3PULSE GIVEN TO PHILOSOPIY BY BACON, DESCARITES, AND LEIBNITZ. THIS second phase may be divided into two parts. In the first we shall speak of the systems peculiar to each of these three great philosophers, as well as of the systems which are connected more or less directly with the special influence exerted by each of them. In the second part we include the systems that have constituted the new schools, whose construction has been affected by the triple influence of the Baconian, Cartesian, and Leibnitzian philosophy to gether. FIRST PART. SECTION I. BACON. Hlistorical Notices. FRANCis BACON, son of a celebrated English law. er, was born at London in 1561. His superior abilities were manifested friom his childhood. He vwas early struck with the vices of the method employed in scientific instruction. His knowledge of jurisprudence opened to hin the career of public of. fice. IHe played an important part in the political 2'2 MODERN PHILOSOPI1Y. affairs of his country, and was made lord-chancellor, with the title of Baron Verulam, in the reign of James I. But his character was not as ierfect as his genius. Bacon died in 1626. His philosophical reputation rests most of all upon two works, the one entitled De Dignitate et Augmentis Scientiarum, the other Novum Organum Scientiarum. Most of his other works relate especially to the physical sciences; some of them pertain to morals. He wrote also the commencement of a History of Great Britain, and the History of the Reigns of Henry VII. and Henry VIII. Exposition. Bacon laid down this principle, that the activity of the intellect is exercised only upon data primitively furnished by sensation. This principle was in many respects the soul of his philosophy; but he did not undertake to develop it in the form of a theory. Apart from his principle, the works of Bacon in their general character may be divided into two parts: the first treats of the reform and progress of science; the second is a classification of human knowledge, with the purpose of establishing the bases of its organization. I. Of the Reformation and Progress of Science. Bacon investigates first the causes that have re. tarded and corrupted the sciences, then the methods which science should follow. The causes that have retarded and vitiated science are four in number. He gives them the name of idols, because false science is a sort of intellectual idolatry, which pays to errors the worship due to truth. 1. Idols of the tribe, idola tribes. These -,re prej. BACON. 23 udices common to all men. The hurran race is con. sidered by him as a great tribe, which, in relation to the universal society of beings, has its particular principles. 2. Idols of the cave, idola specits. These are in. dividual prejudices. Every man has in his own soul a sort of dark cave, where the rays of truth become broken and lost. 3. Idols of the forum, idolafori. This denomination comprehends all the prejudices men reciprocally communicate to each other by the influence they exert upon each other. 4. Lastly, idols of the theatre, idola theatri. These are the prejudices which spring from the ascendency that philosophers and masters acquire over their disciples. Bacon gives to these prejudices the name of idols of the theatre, because he represented to himself philosophical doctors as actors, who come to play in turn their part of comedy upon the scene of the world. Respecting the last cause of error, Bacon goes into particular developments. False philosophy has three principal branches: the rational, the empirical, and the superstitious philosophy. Rational philosophy takes up abstract notions as they present themselves, without examining them; and reason. separated from experiment, takes all the charge of constituting science. rhis philosophy has been very hurtful; but these evils will cease when men feel the necessity of adhering to experiment. The empirical philoso. phy begins with experience, but does not follow out the right road; it throws itself into hypothesis. The superstitious philosoplhy is an irrational mixture of philosophy and theology. Such, according to Bacon, was the philosophy of Plato and of many Christian writers, wvho, to conceal the weakness of their 24 RMODERN PHILOSOPH'Y. opinions, have represented them as necessarily bound up with revealed faith. From all these causes of error comes, first, a false contenmplation of nature: this was directed against Aristotle,,whom Bacon accused of mutilating nature to make it fall in to the fiamework of his categories; secondly, a false method of demonstration, which has in all times prevailed in the domain of science. This is proved by the little harmony which has reigned among philosophers, and the barrenness of science in results applicable to the welfare of humanity. It is easy, besides, to conceive that false methods of demonstration must inevitably have predominated, if we consider the permanent causes of this general fact. The basis of experiment has been neglected. T he human mind has languished in a long lethargy; for we see but three epochs, and those very brief, among particular nations, the Greeks, the Romans, and the moderns (Bacon knew nothing of Orient. al philosophy), in which there was any attempt to arouse from this slumber. Men who occupy themselves with philosophy, give themselves up at the same time to a crowd of distracting pursuits: we see nowhere bodies of men united together and entirely devoted to the progress of science, and the greatest part of philosophers are led by motives of individual interest. Moreover, an excessive reverence for an. tiquity, which allows no change, is an obstacle to dis. covery. In fine, the human mind gives over, de. spairs of science, says everything has been done, that nothing more remains to do. Having treated of the causes which retard and vi. tiate the sciences, Bacon lays down the methods which science should follow. They may be reduced to these three fundamental processes: 1. It is necessary to take facts from nature, to en. BACON. 25 rol the pure phenomena, without seeking at first to combine and explain them, because this premature attempt might be vitiated by preconceived notions. Such matters of observation, free from all mixture, phenomena simply as facts, Bacon calls instantice na. Surce. 2. After having noted the phenomena, it is neces. sary, in order to aid the mind, which would be crush. ed under such a mass of facts, to construct tables of them, comparationes instantiarum, in which the phe. nomena should be classed in an order easy to com. prehend. 3. Finally, when we have gotten these tables, it is necessary to advance to a real knowledge of nature by way of induction, either exclusive or affirmative. There are already, in all the sciences as they now exist, inductions more or less numerous. All these inductions must be referred to the tables of instances, and compared with the facts therein classified, in or. der to exclude those which do not agree with facts. Bacon then gives the laws of induction. He constructs practical categories relating to the method of observation, as Aristotle had made logical categories for the basis of the syllogistic method. These prac. tical categories are divided into secondary precepts, which are multiplied extremely. The following table will give an idea of the circle embraced by Bacon: 1. Prarogativae instantiarum: 2. Adminicula inductionis: 3. Ratificatio inductionis: 4. Variatio inductionis pro natura subjecti:.5. Pruerogativoe naturarum quatenus ad inquisi. tiones, sive quid est inquirendum prius et posterius: 6. Termini inquisitionis: 7. Reductio ad praxim: TI..3 26 MODERN PIIILOSOPHY. 8. Parasceue ad inquisitionem: 9. Schola ascensoria et descensoria axiomatum. II. Classyfication of Knowledge for the purpose of establishing the bases of their organization. This is the second part of the philosophical labours of Bacon. In the first he resembles a traveller, who, before setting out for an unknown country which he is proposing to explore, gets rid of' all bad instru. ments of observation that may have been handed down to him, and constructs better; in the second Bacon puts himself upon the road, and, after his re. turn from his travels, describes the places he has visited. His classification of the sciences is a cosmography of the human mind, or, in his own wav of speaking, a description of the intellectual globe. He refers all the productions of the human mind to three principal faculties: first, memory; secondly, phantasy, which, in the philosophy of Bacon, is the same as the active imagination of the schoolmen; thirdly, reason. To the memory corresponds poesy; to the reason is referred science properly speaking. History considers individual beings and facts; poesy seizes upon what the memory furnishes in order to form fictitious beings. Science, combining individ. ual facts, generalizes and explains them. History is a guide; poesy is a dream; science is being awake. 1. HISTORY. History is divided into Natural, and Civil, or Human History. Natural History is divided into three branches; for nature either freely follows its course, or deviates into disorder, or is subjugated by man. Natural History, therefore, comprehends the history of regu. lar phenomena, of monstrosities, and of the arts. The first is begun, but ought to undergo a reforma. tion; the second is not reduced to a science; the BACON. 27 hird does not exist. Bacon places it among the de.,iderala of the human mind. Civil History, or, rather, Human History, is also livided into three branches. First. Civil History properly so called. When ncomplete, it is composed of simple memoirs; when:omplete, it takes the name of chronicles if it considers events in succession, of biography if it concerns itself only with an individual, of narrative if it refers to an event. Secondly. Sacred History allows the same classification, but there are others peculiar to it. It comprehends the history of religion, the particular history of prophecies, and the history of the temporal government of Providence. Thirdly. Literary History, which is among the number of the desiderata, yet is nevertheless of the greatest importance, since it is the history of the human mind itself. Without it the mind is like Po. lyphemus deprived of his eye. 2. POESY. Poesy is either narrative, that is to say, historical fiction, or dramatic, when fictitious history is represented to the eyes; or parabolic, which is a fiction designed to veil and present some truth. In the Greek mythology the fable of Pan is a cosmological parable; that of Perseus a political parable; that of Bacchus a moral parable.* 3. SCIENCE PROPERLY SO CALLED. As there are waters which spring from the earth, and others whiclr descend from the skies, so there are sciences which man derives from the terrestrial world, and another * [From the representation above, it appears that Bacon takes Poesy only in the rest-icted sense of Poetry as commonly understood, namely, the representation of the Beautiful in words, and thus assigns no place amolg the productions of the Phantasy, or creative inaginatrmn, to the other arts of the beautifil, music, oaintmrg, sculpttri, and architecture.-Ed.] 28 MODERN PHILOSOPHY. science which comes from heaven by revelationRevelation is the complement of all the sciences that man has created by the sweat of his brow; the sab. bath of the intelligence, the divine day of repose and consim mation. Hamanl science, designated by the general name of philosophy, contains a multitude of different objects, and, therefore, as many sciences. To consti. tute their unity, it is necessary to have a general science, comprising a body of axioms common to all particular sciences. The special sciences have three principal objects: God, Nature, and Man. We know nature by a ray of direct light; man by a reflex ray; God by a refracted ray. After having said something of theology, Bacon occupies himself with natural science. It is either speculative or practical. The one penetrates into the interior of nature, the other places nature between the hammer and the anvil. The one observes, the other experiments. Speculative science comprehends physics and meti.physics. Physics investigates the efficient causes of phenomena; metaphysics occupies itself about the abstract forms and final causes of being. Practical science comprehends mechanics, by which name Bacon designates experimentation in general, and magic, which is experimentation applied to the production of extraordinary phenomena. As to mathematics, Bacon regards it as a science purely instrumental. It is divided into pure mathematics, in which he comprehends only geometry and algebra, and mixed mathematics, or mathematics ap. plied to the arts. Science relative to man treats of human nature and of civil society. BACON. 29 Man being composed of a body and a soul united together, Bacon holds that, before occupying our. selves with either of these separately, it is necessary to constitute a science relating to the unity of man, which should explain everything that concerns personality and the communication between the soul and the body. After this general science of human nature comes that which relates to the body. It is divided into as many branches as there are corporeal goods. To health corresponds medicine; to beauty, cosmical science, which comprises the arts of luxury; to strength, gymnastic science; to pleasure, music and painting. The science of the soul treats either of its substance, to ascertain whether it is material and im. mortal, or of its faculties, which are either logical or moral. Logic is either inventive or traditive; its object is either the investigation or the communication of truth. Under this second relation it comprehends grammar. rhetoric, criticism, and pedagogy. Speculative moral science exhibits the natural history of character: practical moral science is devoted to the culture of the affections. The second branch of the science of man refers to civil society: it is divided into three parts, because society should secure three sorts of good: 1. Solamen contra solitudinem; 2. Adjuvamen in negotiis; 3. Adjuvamen contra injurias. Bacon concludes with some reflections upon theology founded upon revelation, which crowns the edifice of all human knowledge. Observations. I. Bacon has been a founder of methods, and not 30 MODERN PHILOSOPHY a creator of great theories. He oc.,ied himself with the organization of the human mind far more than with the explanation of things. 2. We shall see soon how the principle of sensu. alism, insinuated by Bacon, corrupted by its gradual development nearly all branched of philosophy. 3. Bacon rendered eminent iervice to science by putting the mind upon the tra x of observation, which had not been travelled by t) a scholastic philosophy, entangled as it was in the c tcle of logical processes. Yet, as a method of observation, his method is not complete: he insisted upgn the observation of sensi. ble facts, and neglected to recommend the observation of psychological fivzts. 4. All his efforts wr re directed to the object of substituting induction f:r the syllogistic method. Induction is really th( legitimate process in the physi. cal sciences, which as founded upon experience, cannot admit of a superior process. In this relation the philosophy of Bainon has had useful results; but by representing indution as the sole and universal process in all branches of knowledge, he banished deduction, and consequently assumed that there did not exist in the humani intelligence truths, necessary, absolute, and independent of experience except merely as the condition of their development. In this relation, that is to say, in as far as it pretended to fur. nish the general law of the mind, the method of Bacon was radically vicious. 5. Induction necessarily supposes the relation of effect to cause; and the whole philosophy of Bacon is based upon the principle of causality. But if there existed in the human reason nothing hut elements furnished by experience, could reason ever affirm the universal principle that every phenomenon has a cause? And if it could not affirm it as an absolute HOBBES. 31 principle, would not the investigation of causes be reduced in every particular case to the creation of pure hypotheses? a result diametrically opposed to the pretensions of the philosophy of Bacon. Coltinuation of the Impulzse given to Philosophy by Bacon. The principle laid down by Bacon, that sensations are the sole matter of which the tissue of human knowledge is formed, contained a whole psychology; but, before it could develop itself completely, this principle was applied to cosmology by Gassendi, to morals and politics by EIobbes. Then it produced its proper psychology in the works of Locke and Condillac; and with the aid of this development, it was applied anew to morals and politics by Helvetius, to cosmology by the Baron d'Holbach, and by the whole materialist school of the eighteenth century, of which these two philosophers are the principal types. HOBBES. hiistorical Notices. TIIoMsIA HOBBES, born in 1588, at Malmesbury, in England, pursued his studies at the University of Ox. ford. His life was disturbed by the political dissensions which rent his country, and by the hostility his own opinions awakened against him. The most cel. ebrated of his writings is that which bears the title of the Leviathan, by which name Hobbes designated democracy. In his travels in France he formed relations of friendship with Gassendi and Father Mersenne, who made him acquainted with Descartes. lie died in England in 1679. Exposition. Hobbes expressly maintained that there is no 32 MODERN PHiILOSOPIlY. thought which is not engendered by sensation. Hp! joined to this principle some physiological considerations, the object of' which was to explain physically the nature of' sensations. He also deduced from it a very incomplete essay of psychology, in which his theory of reasoning deserves particular remark. Ac. cording to him, all reasoning is reduced to seeking either the whole by the addition of all its parts, or a part by the subtraction of the rest; from whence it follows that deduction and induction are only forms of equation, wbhich is the general process of the reason; or, in other terms, that all human cognitions should be expressible in mathematical formulas, and that everything which is not expressible in that way has no reality, or, at least, no reality accessible to our intelligence. These consequences have been drawn by modern materialists. But it is chiefly in a moral and political point of view that the theories of Hobbes should be examined. In order to seize their connexion, it is necessary first to take notice of two fundamental consequences which he deduces from his principle concerning the origin of knowledge. T'he first, relative to the intelligence, is this: all words which express the incorporeal, the infinite! have no meaning for the human mind, because they represent something not represented by sensations. They ought to be banished from philosophy as vai phantoms. He admits, however, that in virtue of tlhe law of association, which unites the sensations, and which leads the human mind to ascend from cause to cause, we arrive at the idea of God as a physical cause, although the whole notion of the divine nature is absolutely intellig ible. The second consequence, relative to the will, is that there exists no other motive to the will than sen. HOBBES. 33 sations of pleasure and pain, or the complex notions of happiness and misery which we form by generalizing our sensations. In a word, sensation, or, to speak in the language of Hobbes, sension, as passive, is the matter of the intelligence; as active, the motive force of the will. Now the desires, the appetites, by which each individual inclines to enjoyments, produces two gener. al and opposite results. This desire is of right unlimited; for we cannot conceive it as limited in point of right except by subordinating it to a moral law which is not derived from sensations, and which for that reason is chimerical, at least relative to man. Every man has, then, naturally a right to everything; he has the right to acquire everything he desires; and as each individual cannot acquire everything, possess everything, except at the expense of the happiness of others, it follows that men are naturally in a state of war. See the immediate consequence of the law of enjoyment as the sole law ot man. But, on the other hand, this state of war is destructive to security, enjoyment, and life. Consequently, the desire of enjoyment urges man to come out from this state. Now war resulting from the absolute and reciprocal independence of individuals, men cannot emerge from the primitive state of war but by renouncing their independence, and by con. stituting a public force whose will shall prevail over all other wills. Hence the social condition, the state, which may be established in two ways, because the sovereign force may be established in the way of in. stitution, as when it results friom a free contract, or in the way of acquisition, as when one or many individuals by violence compel other individuals to submit to their will; and, since the object to which humanity should tend, that is, the cessation of war, is 34 MODERN PHILOSOPHY. attained in the second case as well as in the first, the state founded in a consent violently obtained is as legitimate as the state founded in a free convention. It results from all this that the desire of enjoyment, although unlimited in point of right in a state of nature, must be limited in point of fact in a social state in order to attain its end. See the second consequence, which is a mediate consequence of the law of enjoyment. The theory of Hobbes supposes, then, radically a state of contradiction, of opposition, of war, not only between the individuals who compose mankind, but also between the elements of human nature itself. Setting out with the equality of rights, founded solely upon the desire of enjoyment, Hobbes arrives at the destruction of all liberty. He lays down as a principle absolute independence, and establishes as a consequence absolute despotism; for the public force in his system is nothing but despotism conceived in its greatest strictness and extension. In fact, the public force can be limited neither bv religious law, nor by moral law, nor by civil law. It cannot be limited by religious law; religion relates to objects lying beyond the domain of human intelligence: there can, therefore, be no other reason for preferring one kind of wvorship to another than the public utility, which is determined by the public force, which thus rules religion, and is not ruled by it. The public force cannot be limited by moral law. In the primitive state of war, every one having a right to everything, there is neither justice nor injustice, neither right nor wrong. In the social state morality is nothing but the public utility; and here again it is to the sovereign public force it be. longs to decide what is just or unjust: give this righ' to individuals, and the public corce is destroyed. Fi HOBBES. 35 nally, it cannot be limited by civil law, since civil law is nothing but an arrangement of means destined to secure the observance of the law of justice as it is arbitrarily understood and defined by the sovereign public force. Thus the public force is bound by no law whatever. It could not be limited in any de. gree without falling again, at least partially, into the state of war from which man emerged by society. This is also the reason why the bad administration of a state gives no right of overthrowing the govern. ing force. Such an overturn causes the state to retrograde to the condition of war or the destruction of society, and the worst social state is better than its destruction. Only it may happen that the public force falls to dissolution; then the social compact is likewise dissolved, and men return of necessity to independence and war in order to arrive again at a social state, that is, to a universal and absolute submission to a public force adequate to maintain the peace. Hobbes blends with this theory maxims concerning the necessity of faithfully observing agreements and other obligations of justice and mutual benevolence. He shows very clearly that society could not exist but by the application of these maxims; but in his system, which radically abolishes the idea of rights and duties, we can find no conceivable root of any obligation whatever. Summarily, this system is social materialism. This character is manifest even in the terms employ. ed by Hobbes to define the notion of philosophy. Setting out with sensations, he makes the sole object of philosophy to be the study of bodies, which he distinguishes into two classes, natural bodies and po. litical bodies. Physics, taken in an extended sense, becomes then the sole science, whose uni'versal in 36 MODERN PHILOSOPHY. strument is reasoning, reduced, as we have seen, to mathematical processes. In his political theories Hobbes goes into one branch of that science which modern materialists have called social physics. GASSENDI. Historical Notices. PETER GASSENDI was born at a village of Provence in 1592. He entered the ecclesiastical state, and for some time was professor of philosophy and theology at the University of Aix. He was afterward appointed lecturer on mathematics at the Royal Col. lege of France, where his lectures attracted a numerous audience. His works against the philosophy of Aristotle and that of Descartes, as well as his Syntagma philosophice Epicuri, and his book on the Life of Epicurus, deserve particular attention. Gas. sendi's learning was very extensive and various. He was the friend or the correspondent of most of the learned men of his age. His relations with Descartes were interrupted by a philosophical quarrel, but were renewed by a reconciliation. He died in 1655. Exposition. Gassendi, whose mind had been nurtured by the writings of Bacon, for whom he professed the liveliest admiration, maintains, as Bacon did, that sensations are the generative source of all human knowledge. Consistently with this principle, he gave to the primitive ideas the name of simple imagination, and composed a logic in which his theory of knowledge was brought out. He reduced all intelligence to the perception of facts furnished by sensation, and to the comlparison of facts by means of which the mind GASSENDI. 37 passes from singular to general notions. He had the idea of a genealogical tree, representing the growth of' the human mind or the generation of ideas by sensations, as the genealogical tree of Porphyry rep. resents the formation of logical abstractions. Setting out from logic, Gassendi divides his philos. )phy into two branches, physics and morals. Like Bacon, he excludes metaphysics in the ordinary sense of the word. He did not consider speculations concerning God and the soul as derivable fromn a spe. cial science such as metaphysics would be: accord. ing to him, we arrive at these notions either by phys. ics or morals. His morals, which contains principles borrowed from the system of Epicurus, which he endeavoured to rectify in conformity with Christian views, is not the most important portion of his works. He was most of all occupied by physical theories. Gassendi had remarked the little fruit for the progress of science which had been gathered from the abstractions of the Aristotelian philosophy applied to the study of the material world, and the obstacles opposed by this inert mass of abstractions to the true application of nature. Seeking to enlarge the path which was to lead to a more satisfactory physics, he undertook to throw out of the way these arbitrary constructions, and, in order to attack them in their basis. he made a severe criticism upon Aristotle, though rendering him justice in some respects. But to destroy is not to do everything; it behooved him also to lay the foundations of a new physical philosopy. Already Bacon had recommended the doctrine of Democritus concerning atoms as a luminous and fruitful hypothesis: already some writers, as Sebas. tian Basson, Beauregard, Magnen, Sennert, had at. tempted to revive this hypothesis. Gassendi brought 11. 38 MODERN PIIILOSOPHY. forward the two principles of Epicurus, vacuum and atoms, as the primary basis of any physical theory. But he guarded his orthodoxy by recognising God as the creator and prime mover of the universe, but the creation being taken for granted, he maintain. ed that from the atomistic doctrine the explanation of all phenomena could be deduced. His theory concerning the vacuum, which was attacked by Descartes, implied the existence of something neither spirit nor body, and which thus was excluded from the two great categories within which, according to the Cartesian philosophy, everything existing should find a place. For the rest, the physical philosophy of Gassendi had a general characteristic in common with that of Descartes; for it was the latter who said, " Give me matter and motion, and I will explain the universe." Both of them founded a mechanical philosophy, which must needs, in being developed, endeavour to refer to mathematical laws all phenomena, even the physiological phenomena which are the manifestation of life. Among the number of the disciples of Gassendi are reckoned Michael Nuraeus in France. and Walter Charleton in England. LOCKE.-CONDILLAC. rHistorical gNotices. JOHN LOCKE was born in England, at Wrington, ill the county of Bristol, in the year 1632. After hav. ing studied medicine, anatomy, and natural history, he conceived the plan of his Essay on the Iluman Understanding, upon which lie meditated for tvwenty years, and which he published in 1690. Implicated in the political quarrels of his country, he wvas sub). jected to frequent loss of public offices and to perse. LOCKE. 39 cutions until the revoluticn. He wrote an Essay on Civil Government, besides other writings upon reli — gious and economical questions. In his religious belief he belonged to the Socinians. He died in 1704. ETTIENNE BO-NNOT DE CON DILLAC, born at Grenoble in 1715, and died at Beaugencyjn 1780, was preceptor to the Duke of Parma, grandson of Louis XV. His Essay on the Origin of Human Knowledge, his Treatise of Sensations, and his Treatise of Systems, contain the bases and principal developments of his phil. osophical theories. His grammar and his logic make part of a course of study which he composed for the instruction of the prince whose. education had been confided to him. L'xposition. The principle of sensualism laid down by Bacon was particularly developed by Locke, who made it the basis of his psychology. The Essay on the Human Understanding relates to two capital questions: 1. The origin of ideas as modifications of the think. ing subject; 2. The principle of'knowledge, that is, of the correspondence of ideas to objects. I. Origin of ideas. Locke admitted twvo sources of ideas, sensation, and reflection, which is the knowl. edge the mind takes of its various operations. All ideas of things distinct from the thinking subject are derived from sensation; all ideas of the modes of being, or operations of the thinking subject, the ideas of perception, thought, doubt, belief, reasoning, knowledge, will, are derived from reflection. This latter, though different from sensation in that it does not refer to an external object, has a fundamental characteristic in common with sensation; for both of them imply a feeling, a sentiment, and we may give to reflection the name of internal sense as a denomination which 40 MODERN PHIlLOSOPHY. expresses at once its analogy with sensation and its difference. Ideas, in relation to tilings, may in turn be divided into two classes: simple ideas, direct products of sensation and reflection, and complex ideas, which the understanding forms from simple ideas by com. bining these primitive elements. Locke passes in review the principal ideas which have been or may be considered as simple and ele. mentary. The idea of space is given us by sight and touch; it is resolved at bottom into that of body. The idea of time comes from the reflection of the soul on the series of ideas;vhich follow after each other. The idea of infinity, very obscure and purely neg. ative, is resolved into the idea of number conceived as indefinitely repeated by the mind. The idea of personal identity fionom the union of memory and consciousness, a union in virtue of which we judge that such or such a past action was done by the same' being who actually represents it himself. The idea of substance cannot be a simple idea; it is nothing but the collection or combination of sim. ple ideas which we refer to a supposed subject. For the rest we have no clear idea of what is called sub. stance. The ideas of cause and effect are derived both from sensation and from reflection: from sensation, inasmuch as they express a succession of phenome. na, of which one constantly takes place after the other; from reflection, because the idea of power is principally furnished by the consciousness of our own internal activity or our will. The idea of right and wrong is radically nothing LOCKE. 41 ou* the idea of happiness or misery attached to the observance or infraction of a maxim proposed as a law, that is to say, to the idea of reward or punish. ment. After having treated the origin of simple ideas, Locke investigates the origin of complex ldeas. He undertakes to explain how, by combining simple ideas, then by combining the results of those first combinations, and so on to the end, the human mind, out of some primitive elements, by means of the law of association of perceptions, forms all the other ideas of which it is possessed. II. Locke passes then to the question concerning the principle of knowledge, or the correspondence of ideas to things. As language exerts a great influence in the formation of abstract ideas, and becomes the occasion of very many errors, he first treats of the relation of words to ideas, in order to discover the illusions of which words are the source, and comes then to the relation of ideas to things, or to knowledge. All knowledge depends upon the conformity of ideas to their objects. To prove this conformity, it would be necessary to confront the idea with its object; but, on the other hand, we know the object only by the idea itself. Locke did not solve this difficulty; he merely took for granted that all simple ideas are necessarily a representation of things. Sensible ideas are the representation of the quali. ties of bodies, as ideas produced by reflection are the representation of the operations of the under. standing. But, even if this were the fact, we could know on the system of Locke only the qualities of things, and never any,'ibstantial existence. To explain how sensations are representative, Locke re produces, under a different phraseology, the old hy. II.-4 42 MODERN PHILOSOPHY. pothesis of images or sensible species, which, coming from bodies, enter the human organism, and are transmitted by the organs to the soul. He inquires how our ideas can be representatives of finite spirits; and as he cannot find in the ideas, as he has conceived them, the principle of such a representation, he concludes we can no more know by our ideas the existence of finite spirits than we can know the existence of fairies by the ideas which we form of them. He has recourse to a supernatural order of instruction in order to obtain certainty as to the exist. ence of spirits. In the system of Malebranche, which we shall presently analyze, the existence of bodies cannot be proved by the idea of spirit and that of the infinite. Now in the theory of Locke, the idea of the infinite is nothing but that of indefinite num. ber, and no idea is representative of spirit as spirit. Consequently, there are no means of arriving logical. ly at the idea of God, notwithstanding the efforts he has made to avoid this consequence. The theory of Locke was developed in France by Condillac. These developments are of two sorts. His analysis of' the operations of the understanding, as well as his analysis of language, contain a multitude of considerations and observations in detail, which are modifications or complements more or less ingenious of the views of the English philos. opher. But they contain nothing fundamental for the development of sensualism.'rhis is not the case with respect to the principle of Condillac, according to which all ideas are nothing but sensations transformed. Locke had admitted two sources of ideas, sensation, and reflection, or the consciousness which the soul has of its cv n opera. tions. Condillac maintained, in the first place, that CONDILLAC. 43 all operations of the soul are reducible to a single one, namely, attention, which exists in various degrees and under various relations, and that reflection is itself only a mode of attention. But what is attention? According to Condillac, it is nothing but the effect of a predominant sensation. Everything, therefore, becomes resolved into a single element, sensation.. Thereby the unity of sensualism is constituted. Instead of two sources of ideas, there is but one: instead of two states of the soul, passive in sensation, active in reflection, the soul has but one only mode of being; it is throughout passive. This doctrine of Condillac had a more important influence in the development of sensualism than all other parts of' his philosophy taken together. By this doctrine sensualism attained, in point of ideology, its utmost limit. For the rest, the method followed by Condillac did not correspond with the principles of his philosophy. He pretended, on the one hand, to derive everything from observation, and, on the other hand, he proceeded by hypothesis; endeavouring, by the hypothesis of a statue endowed with the faculty of feeling, to explain the origin of knowledge; and by the hypothesis of two children abandoned in a desert, to explain the,origin of language. Observations. The radical vice of the theories of Locke and Condillac is in not conceiving that there are in the human mind necessary, universal, and absolute ideas, of which sensation cannot contain the principle. This has been shown by Reid, Stewart, and many others, and especially, with great force, by Cousin in his review of the system of Locke. These theories contain also a radical vice of meth. 44 MODERN PHILOSOPH Y. od. They suppose man exercising first one of his faculties, then another, and another. But this is only a factitious man, not real man. The intellectual life implies the simultaneous working of several faculties, very much as the organic life is conditioned by the simultaneous working of many organs. There is in both an intimate inward unity, which cannot be con. structed piecemeal. HELVETIUS. CONDILLAc applied sensualism to ideology. Hel. vetius (born at Paris in 1715, died in 1771), made ap. plication of it to morals. His whole theory may be reduced to this enthymeme: there is in the sphere of the intelligence nothing but sensations; there can therefore be in the sphere of the will nothing but pleasure or pain. The antecedent of this enthymeme was furnished by the dominant ideology. To prove the consequent, he rested upon the incontesta. ble principle that the will can act only upon elements furnished by the intelligence. Now sensations, in their relation to the will, are nothing more than pleasure or pain. The' system of Helvetius contains two orders of ideas. In as far as the object is to conclude from the principles of sensualism to the morality of selfinterest, as being the only possible morality, Helve. tius reasons very strictly: as a matter of deduction, this part of his writings is logically unassailable. But when he endeavours to find in this moral con. ception the root of duties and of virtue, all the art of sophisms is unable to conceal the enormous vice of his theory. The notion of virtue implies the subor. dination of particular inclinations to a rule which cannot be found in the mere sphere of enjoyment. since the desire of enjoyment, taken hy itself, aspires D"HCLBACH. 45 to exc.ude everything that would limit the gratifica. tion of particular inclinations. Doctrines analogous to those of Helvetius were maintained by St. Lambert, and by many other moralists of the eighteenth century. D'HOLBACH. THIS materialist, born in the Palatinate in 1723, died at Paris in 1789. He applied sensualism to a theory of the universe, which he developed in his book entitled the System of Nature. Thought is but the faculty of feeling, and sensa. tions correspond to nothing but sensible things. All idea of spiritual beings is therefore destitute of any basis. The senses discover to us nothing in the universe but matter endowed with certain properties and mo. tion, which is essential to it, since matter is the only existence. All particular beings are nothing but the different combinations which motion produces in matter. The moving force is developed in various degrees: besides the combination designated by the term rude bodies, it produces also another combination which constitutes organized beings, and, developing itself still farther, produces effective sensibility, which is only the effect of a certain kind of organization. All human actions are the necessary result either of the internal motion of the organization, or of ex. ternal motions by which they are modified. From his cosmological theory D'Holbach deduces consequences with respect to society fundamentally analogous to the system of Heavetius 46 MODERN PHILOSOPHY. IIUME. AWHILE sensualism was producing in France a selFish morality and an atheistic cosmology, David Hume (born at Edinburgh in 1711, died in 1776) carried it to its last consequences, and ended in skepticism. All the modifications of the mind which are distinguished from sensations, and usually termed ideas, judgments, etc., are, according to Hume, nothing bu-t sensations weakened by time or absence of the object, and, consequently, less certain than sensations strictly so called. But even the latter are themselves necessarily uncertain, because we have no rational basis which authorizes us to affirm that they corre. spond to their objects. Although Hume attacked the certainty of all fundamental notions, his skeptical argumentation may nevertheless be referred to three principal heads. All judgments relative to the physical world rest upon the notion of cause: all our judgments relative to the moral world imply the notion of virtue and of fiee-will: and, finally, every theory which would em. brace at once the physical and the moral world in order to explain their origin and to conceive their uni. ty, implies the notion of a universal principle of all being, or God. Hume undertook, setting out with sensualism, to prove that these three fundamental notions, considered as objective cognitions, are nothing but hypotheses or factitious ideas, destitute of any foundation in the human mind. In the physical world, experience shows us the re lations of succession or simultaneousness in facts, but it shows us nothing more. Now, from the fact that A coexists with B, we cannot conclude that one depends upon the other; so, if B comes after A, we HV ME. 47 cannot any more conclude that A is the cause of B. In a word, any affirmation of cause and effect goes beyond the simple relations established by sensation, which is the sole element of human knowledge; it is the unreasonable pretension of extracting from that primitive stock of the intelligence notions of which it does not contain the germes. But, at the same time, if we renounce the idea of cause, all our judgments respecting the physical world necessarily fall to pieces. For, in the first place, we cannot begin in the slightest degree to explain the phenomena of nature except by applying the idea of cause; and, in the next place, it is by this idea, and by this idea alone, that we can believe in the existence even of bodies; we believe in them, in fact, only because we consider them as causes of our sensations. The notions upon which rest our judgments rela. tive to the moral world have not a more real basis. Limited necessarily within the sphere of sensations, man can have no other reasonable motive of action than the notion of his own personal interest; the idea of virtue, on the contrary, implies something distinct from selfishness; it has, therefore, no prin. ciple in the intelligence. Virtue can proceed only from a sentiment destitute of all rational motive, and which Hume compares to taste; but as this sentiment, according to his system, has no foundation which the reason can conceive, we come again on this point to skepticism. And as to the idea of free. will, we feel very clearly that we will, but we feel nothing farther. Internal experience, which establishes the fact of volition, can teach us nothing in regard to the origin of the fact which is attributed to a free power. The notion of freedom is, besides, contradictory; the free choice is not possible without motives, and every determining motive is in the last 48 MODERN PHILOSOPHY. analysis only a stronger sensation, which necessarily constrains the will. Finally, the human mind is unable to ascend by any legitimate exercise of its faculties to the notion of a universal principle of beings. If we take ground upon the elements furnished by sensation (and this is all the ground we have to go upon), we can arrive at the idea of God only by way of induction, that is to say, by considering God as the cause and the universe as the effect. The notion of cause is radically uncertain; and, even if it had any real validity within the sphere of facts of observation, it would not follow that it must have the same validity when transferred out of the sphere of human experience. Hume applied the sensual philosophy to the history of religious beliefs. Men originally adored only the phenomena of nature, whose power appeared to them terrible or beneficent. From abstraction to abstrac. tion, they have been transformed into gods; the hu. man mind has formed beyond the visible world ano;her world of its own invention. SECTION II. DESCARTES. Historical Notices. R~ENE DESCARTES was born at La Haye, in Tou. raine, in 1596. He embraced the military profes. sion; but the life of the camp disturbed his medita. tions. After travelling in several countries of Eu. rope, he retired to Holland to give himself up exclusively to the works he had planned. His great discoveries in the mathematical and physical sciences had already revealed his genius, when he published his two principal philosophical works, his Discourse on the Method of rightly conducting reason and inves DESCARTES. 49 gating truth in the sciences, and his Meditations on lFirst Philosophy. The partisans of the philosophy of Aristotle, whom Descartes had vigorously attacked, did not always limit themselves to the use of the weapons of discussion against him. V6et, professor of theology in the Protestant University of Utrecht, pursued him with atrocious calumnies. Christina, queen of Sweden, offered him an asylum at Stock. holm, where he ended his days in 1650. At the request of the ambassador of France, his mortal remains were transported to Paris. Exposition. Descartes considered human science, and particu. larly philosophy, as an effort of human reason to deduce from first causes rules for the conduct of life and for the practical arts. Comparing the existing science of his times with this ideal standard, he con. cluded it was far from being conformed to it. On one hand, there were principles grounded not in reason, but in a blind confidence in the scientific traditions of the past; on the other, consequences which often had no practical results; in a word, uncertain. ty in its bases,barrenness in effects: such appeared to him the fundamental vices of contemporary science. He hence concluded the necessity of reconstructing the edifice of human knowledge. He could not proceed in this reconstruction except upon the ideas of others, or upon his own. To accept, by faith in another, the principles necessary to this great work, would be to throw science into the very condition from which he wished to rescue it. It was necessary, therefore, first of all to isolate himself from all ideas received among men, and to retire into his own thoughts. But these might themselves also be an II.-5 50 MODERN PHILOSOPHY. assemblage of errors, or, at least, a mixture of error and truth. There would be no means of discrimina. ting so long as he retained a single one of those ideas as true, or conformed to reality; for the error might be found in that very idea. It was requisite, there. fore, in the second place, to isolate himself from all his own ideas, that is, to hold them for doubtful, as lie had already held for doubtful the opinions of others. There remained, accordingly, nothing but doubt, and he was forced to seek in it the principle of the reconstruction of all human ideas. " It is not to-day for the first time.that I have perceived in myself that from my earliest years I have received a great many false opinions as true, and that what I have built upon principles so badly ascertained can be only very doubtful and uncertain. And, accordingly, I have decidedly judged that I must seriously undertake some time in my life to rid myself of all the opinions I had before taken upon trust, and begin altogether anew from the foundation, if I would establish any. -thing firm and constant in science." But doubt implies actual thinking, and actual thinking implies existence. I doubt, then 1 think; I think, then I exist: thus man finds himself in the very act of doubting. Here Descartes seized, or thought he seized, in self-consciousness, a fact and a principle. The fact was the doubting, the thinking, the exist. ing: the principle was the relation of doubt to thought, of thought to existence. He affirmed thought as contained in the idea of doubting; he af. firmed existence as contained in the idea of thinking; the perception of these relations transformed itself into this general principle: everything whicth is clear. ly contained in the idea of a thing, may be affirmed of that thing. But hitherto Descartes had not advanced beyond DESCARTES. 51 his own inward consciousness, and here the question was whether he could do so; whether, instead of pos. sessing solely the knowledge of himself as a thinking being, he could attain, by means of thought, to a knowledge of realities external to himself. The problem to be solved was this: To find an idea which could not subsist as a conception of the mind with. out its object itself having also existence: an idea which could be subjectively possible only as far as it was objectively real. Descartes propounded the idea of a supremely perfect being as the principle of the zonnexion of the ideal and real. The idea of su. preme perfection implies existence, since existence.s itself a perfection. "If we ask, not in regard to a lody, but in regard to anything, whatever it may be, which has in itself all the perfections which can be together, whether existence is to be reckoned among them, we may at first, it is true, be in doubt about it, because our mind, which is finite, not being accus.'omed to consider them except separately, may not,)erhaps perceive at the first glance how necessarily they are joined together. But if we carefully exam. ine whether existence belongs to a being supremely powerful, and what sort of existence, we shall find 3urselves able clearly and distinctly to know, first, that at least possible existence agrees with him, as well as with all other things of which we have in our. selves any distinct idea, even those which are composed of fictions of our own mind: and next, because we cannot think that his existence is possible, with. out knowing at the same time-keeping in mind his infinite power-that he can exist by his own force, we conclude that he really exists, and that he has been from all eternity; for it is very evident from the light of nature that that which exists by its own force exists always; and thus we shall know that 52 MIODERN PHILOSOPHY. necessary existence is contained in the idea of a su. premely powerful being, not by a fiction of the un. derstanding, but because it belongs to the true and immutable nature of such a being to exist; and it will be easy for us to know that it is impossible for this supremely powerful being not to have in himself all other perfections that are contained in the idea of God, in such sort that, of their own proper nature and without any fiction of the understanding, they are always joined together and exist in God." Thus, just as I affirmn my own existence, because its idea is contained in the notion,of thinking, so I affirm the existence of the supremely perfect being, because the idea of existence is contained in the very idea of such a being. The existence of an external reality rests, therefore, upon the same logical basis as the internal reality. In his third Meditation, which is the one where he seeks to pass out from the consciousness of seyf to God, Descartes endeavoured to demonstrate the ex. istence of God, not from the internal characteristics )f the idea of the infinite, but from its external re. lations, that is to say, by ascending from the idea to the cause of the idea. He had said: My intelligence, being finite, has not derived from itself the idea of the infinite; every finite cause, of whatever sort, is equally incapable of producing it; it must have been produced in me by the infinite himself. But in his Reply to the Objections brought against him, he insisted upon the proof deduced from the internal characteristics of the idea of God. The first of these proofs, the proof a posteriori, supposes, besides the idea of the infinitely perfect being, the certainty of the notion of cause; the proof a priori supposes nothing more than the logical notion of the infinite. T'his proof was conceived by Descartes as only tho DESCARTES. 53 simple affirmation of what is contained in that idea, just as the principle, I think, therefore I exist, was only the affirmation of what is contained in the idea of thinking. The second act of the intelligence was thus identical with the first; it was only a transform. ation of it. The proof a priori agreed, therefore, much better than the other with his fundamental process of the reason; and, accordingly, it has prevailed in the Cartesian philosophy. We have seen what, according to Descartes, is the necessary development of the mind contemplating itself: this development is not complete except as it implies God. Without the notion of God, man might suppose that even in his clearest ideas he is the sport of an evil genius devoted to deceiving him, or, at least, he could not find in his mind anything necessarily repugnant to such a supposition. But thought, resolving itself in the last analysis into the idea of the supremely perfect and supremely true being, excludes the possibility of such an external illusion, just as primitively the idea of thinking, resolving it. self into that of existence, excludes purely internal doubt. Descartes had thus arrived at the knowledge of an external reality, the source of all reality, by applying this principle: Everything which is contained in the idea of a thing must be affirmed of the thing itself. It was by carrying out the application of the same principle that he arrived at the knowledge of all re. alities. But, as he was liable to make false applications of it, it was needful to inquire how man is led into error, in order to avoid error in its cause. From whence, then, comes error? Does it come fromrn the intelligence or from the will? The intelligence pro. duces ideas, and no idea can be false, because then the idea of a thing would not contain what it con 54 MODERN PHILOSOPHY. tained. Error has not, then, its root in the intelli. gence; it can have place only when man, by an act of will, affirms what is not contained in ideas. "From whence, then, spring my errors? from this alone, that the will being more ample and extensive than the understanding, I do not restrain it within the same limits, but I extend it also to things I do not understand, in respect to which, being in itself indifferent, it gets very easily astray, and chooses the false for the true, the bad for the good; and thus I am led to err and to sin." The general rule of human judg. ments is reduced, therefore, to keeping the will with. in the limits of the understanding. Descartes believed he had ascertained by this se. ries of processes, which he called methodical doubt, the foundations of human certainty. This basis be. ing established, he began to work at the construction of the system of human knowledge. Man finds in his consciousness two sorts of ideas: the idea of thought, and the idea of extension. All human ideas belong to these two categories; for all other ideas, whether relative to what is called soul or to what is called body, express, the first only par. ticular attributes of thought, and the second only particular attributes of extension. And as these primary ideas are essentially distinct, he concluded that the substances whose fundamental attributes are re. spectively thought and extension are themselves ne. cessarily distinct. The world, then, comprehends two classes of beings of different nature, spirits, and matter or bodies. Thus reasoning, Descartes was led to maintain that the essence of spirit is in thought, and.he essence of matter in extension; and this was one of the fundamental principles of allhis theories, which thus fell into two divisions, the philosophy of spirits, and the philosophy of bodies. DESCARTES. 55 IThe theory of spirits comprehends that of God, and of man so far as he is a thinking being. The idea of God, implying unity, excludes divisibility and extension. God is then a spirit, and not a body. Sensation supposes a body: there is, therefore, no sensation in God; he is pure intelligence and pure will. In regard to created spirits, the most remarkable part of Cartesianism is its theory of innate ideas. The intelligence possesses the idea of the infinite; and as it is at the same time a finite intelligence, it could not acquire this idea by its own operations, limited like itself. This idea, then, and all others which are a derivation, a particularization of it, are not acquired ideas: they are communicated to the mind by the Creator; they are innate. Here Descartes took the opposite extreme fiom Bacon, who regarded the human soul as a tabula rasa, a blank surface. Descartes did not, however, pretend that these ideas were innate in the sense that they were constantly present to the mind. "When I say that any idea is born with us, or that it is naturally imprinted on our souls, I do not mean that it is always present in thought, for this would be contrary to fact; but only that we have in ourselves the faculty of reproducing it." Descartes maintained a great difference between the mode of proving the existence of spirit and that of proving the existence of body. It is true that in his system the divine veracity was the primitive and general guarantee of human ideas in the sense remarked above. But, this guarantee being supposed, we come to the conclusion that spirits exist by devel. oping what is contained in the very notion of thought, while, by developing the notion of extension alone, we could not conclude the existence of bodies. 56 MODERN PHILOSOPHY. Thought implies in itself the existence of the think. ing subject. But the notion of extension does not imply necessarily the existence of an extended object: it may be a simple modification of the mind. To demonstrate the existence of bodies requires the intervention of an element distinct from the idea; we must rest upon the natural impulse which leads us to believe in our sensations; this impulse or instinct cannot itself be conceived as having the truth for its end, except as an impulse from the author of our nature. The certainty of the existence of bodies depends, therefore, upon the divine veracity, inasmuch as it is the guarantee not only of our ideas, but of our instincts, which amounts to saying that we only believe the existence of bodies, while we conceive the existence of spirits. Having in this way established the existence of the corporeal world, Descartes made it the second object of his speculations. Here is manifested a correlation between his theory of spirits and his theory of bodies. In the spiritual substance we distinguish thought, which is essential; then will, which is in some sort thought in motion. In the corporeal substance we distinguish extension, which is essential, and then motion produced in it. Physical philosophy is, then, radically the theory both of the immutable properties of extension and of the changeable properties which depend upon motion. All explanations, therefore, of material phenomena ought to be deduced from me. chanies, resting on the basis of geometry. Descartes applied his mechanical philosophy first to the phenomena of the inorganic world. In his metaphysics he had recognised God as the creator of matter and the prime mover of the universe. rGod, according to the remark of Pascal, appeared at the head of the Cartesian cosmology only to give a jerk DESCARTES. 57 to the world at the beginning, and to set things ago. ing. But, this done, mechanics was to explain all the operations of nature. Thus Descartes banished from physical theories all inquiries after final causes. These inquiries, according to him, were presumption, and a hinderance to the progress of science: presump. tion, because the limited mind of man should not preo tend to discover the ends proposed by infinite intelli. gence; an obstacle to the progress of science, be. cause they diverted science from the observation of efficient causes to plunge it in speculations concern ing occult causes. Descartes banished also the idea of space, in as far as different from the idea of body. The idea of space is nothing but a modification of the idea of ex. tension; and, as extension is the essence of bodies, there can exist no space where body is wanting; in other words, a vacuum is impossible. He rejected also indivisible elements, called atolns; such an indivisibility is incompatible with the notion of exten. sion, and extension cannot be composed except of elements analogous to it. He held, consequently. the infinite divisibility of matter, and, at the same time, its unlimited extension. To suppose the ma. terial universe actually limited, would be to suppost beyond those limits an infinite void, a thing contra. dictory to the principles of his philosophy. He deduced from his ideas concerning extension and vacuum, combined with the general principles of mechanics, his celebrated theory of vortexes, which belongs to the history of physics. It has given way to the theory of Newton concerning gravitation. The vacuum, banished by Descartes, has reappeared in the system of his rival. Pursuing the development of his mechanical theory, Descartes applied it to organic beings. Animals 58 MODERN PHIL3SOPHY. are nothing but automata destitute of any faculty of feeling. The movements which they perform, however orderly they may be, do not prove, any more than the motions of a chronometer, the existence of a thinking principle in them; and as there is nothing useless in nature, it would be unreasonable to suppose souls created merely to produce an order of phe. nomena which might exist without their intervention. All the phenomena of organic life manifested in brutes, and still more those manifestedl in vegetables, may and should be referred to the laws of motion. It is the same with the organic life of man: the sen. sations and passions, without doubt, have their seat in the spiritual principle, but their physical causes fall under the general theory of mechanics applied to the human organization. If we cast a glance over the whole doctrine of Descartes, we see that his philosophy relative to the corporeal world is entirely separated from his philos. ophy of spirits. He had placed at the origin of all his theories two ideas, which were to contain all others, the idea of thought and the idea of extension. As there existed in his system no connexion, perceiv. ed by the mind, between these two radical ideas, the result was necessarily two orders of parallel speculations, which could never find any point of concurrence. How, then, was the action of the body upon the soul, and of the soul upon the body, or, at least, their mutual correlation, to be conceived? In this point the philosophy of Descartes had a great defect; many of his disciples, particularly Malebranche, en. deavoured to fill up the chasm by the hypothesis of occasional causes, of which we shall presently speak. DESCARTES. 59 Observations. 1. In regard to the philosophy of Descartes, we ought to distinguish between the theories he put forth and the impulse he gave to the human mind. Many of his theories have been abandoned; but the im. pulse communicated by Descartes in his resistance to the yoke of routine and the prejudices of the school men has always lasted. 2. The methodical doubt of Descartes has given rise in these later times to long discussions concern. ing the basis and rule of human reason, to which we shall return. 3. Most philosophers have sought for a certain logical process by which to pass from the internal to the external, from thought to outward realities. Descartes resolved this question by the process adopted by St. Anselm at the earliest period of scientific organization in the Middle Ages. The solidity of the Cartesian theories depends fundamentally upon, the question what validity is to be attributed to the demonstration of the existence of the infinite from the idea of- the infinite. 4. In maintaining that thought is all the essence of spirit, and that extension is all the essence of matter, Cartesianism laid down the principle of a radical divorce between the spiritual and physical sciences. 5. By its theory of innate ideas Cartesianism was a reaction against the sensualism of the English philosophy of Bacon, and particularly against the nominal philosophy of Hobbes. It has also furnished powerful considerations in favour of the immortality of the soul. 6. The pretension of reducing all the physical sciences to mechanical laws has not been favoured by 60 MODERN PHILOSOPHY. subsequent developments of those very sciences The progress of physiology, both animal and vegeta ble, has established that the phenomena of organic life adhere primitively to very different'laws. 7. Considered in respect to its principles and its starting point, the philosophy of Descartes excited the observation of internal facts, as the philosophy of Bacon excited the observation of external facts, The latter was the flowing outward of thought to. wards sensations, the former was the flowing back of thought upon itself. Modern psychology was born of Cartesianism. MALEBRANCHE..Historical Notices. NICHOLAS MALEBRANCHE, born at Paris in 1638, entered the congregation of the Oratory. The read. ing of Descartes's Treatise on Man determined his philosophical vocation, which he embraced with enthusiasm. He published successively his Search after Truth; Christian Conversations; Christian and Metaphysical Meditationsf a Treatise of Morals; Dialogues on Metaphysics and Religion; which drew the attention. of the most distinguished men of Europe. He had controversies to maintain with Arnaud, Bossuet, Father Lamy, and Regis. His la. bours ended only with his life. The contemplative genius of Malebranche led him to seek for peaceful seclusion. This Christian Plato loved to meditate under the shade of the beautiful trees of the college of Juilly, where his memory is still fresh. Exposition. The whole structure of Malebranche's philosophy rests upon the distinction between ideas and senti. MALEBRANCHE. 61 ments. The philosophers who had most insisted on the dualism of the human mind had confined them. selves for the most part to opposing sensations to ideas. Malebranche dug deeper into this dualism; he remarked that the element opposed to ideas, or, at least, essentially distinct from them, had a character. istic peculiar to itself, independently of the various causes which might produce it; that this element consists in the sentiment which informs the soul of its modifications, whatever might be the origin, internal or external, of the sentiment itself. Ideas are the sight, the vision of the mind. Now non-being, having no properties, is not visible. To see nothing and not to see anything are the same thing. Ideas are, then, only the vision of something which exists; an idea is, therefore, not a simple mod. ification of the soul, but the manifestation of an ob. ject really existing out of the soul. It is not so with the sentiments. Thereby the mind conceives nothing; it is only made aware of its actual state, without explaining, without compre. hending it; sentiment is nothing but a confused echo of a simple modification of the soul. The subjects of ideas are eternal, immutable, ne. cessary; either they do not appear to the mind, or they appear in that character. Sentiment corre. sponds only to modifications which might or might not be. It follows from these principles that everything of which we have an idea exists, and it is in vain to object that we have frequently an idea of things which do not exist. This objection rests upon a confusion of ideas with sentiments; and, in order to malie it clear, let us take two examples, one in the moral v orld, the other in the purely physical world. In the first place, I imagine a man performing a II. 62 MODERN PHILOSOPHIY. good and just action. If that man really existed, I could not be made aware of his existence and of his action but by my sensations, or, in the last analysis, by simple modifications of my own soul. In repre. senting to myself that action which does not actually exist, I remain, therefore, in the domain of sentiment, I do not enter into that of ideas. The object, the sole object of the idea, is not the action, but the good quality of the action; and this quality is nothing but a particularization of what the mind conceives as an eternal reality, namely, justice or rectitude. By the idea I see what is; in the way of sentiment my soul is modified without any object of that modification existing. Consider next the notions which we form of what is called the world of bodies. Everything which the mind therein conceives is reduced to relations of figure, and all relations of figure are resolvable into the general idea of extension, which particularizes itself in such or such a figure. This intelligible extension is very different from actual extension. The latter is determinate, limited; the former is conceived as infinite, since it contains all possible figures; but, although purely intellectual, it is supremely real, since it is infinite, and all the relations of figures which subsist in it are immutable and necessary. But if we have the idea of intelligible extension, we have only the sentiment of actual and determinate extension.'Sounds, colours, in a word, everything that does not fall within the relations of figures, make no. thing conceived by the mind, but only apprize it that it experiences such or such a sensation by occasion of a body which it believes to exist. This being es. tablished, when we represent to ourselves an object which does not really exist, what do we see? Our mind sees the figure which we attribute to it, and its MIALEBRANCHE. 63 relations with other figures; now all this exists /eal. ly in. the intelligible extension. As to the colours and other analogous properties which we give it in imagination, they express not the objects of ideas, but the objects of our sentiments; and, although the ob. ject of our sentiments does not exist, the object of our ideas subsists none the less. Everything which is relative to sentiment may or may not be; but here, as before, we can conceive of nothing which has not existence. Setting out with this theory, we must conclude that philosophy rests only on the connexion of ideas. Wherever this conn.exion is broken' wherever ideas fail and give way to sentiment, the mind remains in darkness. The philosopher should therefore seek for an idea to which he can attach by indissoluble bonds the whole chain of human ideas. After the example of Descartes, Malebranche pla. ces the principle of science in the idea of God, or of the infinitely perfect Being. On the one hand, this idea implies the existence of its object; and, on the other, the idea of the infinite contains all other ideas, which can never be anything but particular aspects of the one universal idea of being. And as the idea of self, of the me, which is the starting-point of phi. losophy, is finite, it follows that the finite coexists with the infinite. From hence the idea of creation, since the notion of the finite does not imply that of necessary existence. The universe is the most perfect which could exist. God, contemplating all possiblel.worlds, could not have wished to realize a less perfect world in preference to a world in which the divine perfections would be more completely reflected. For there could be no reason for preferring the less to the more perfect, and choice without reason would be contrary 64 MODERN PHIILOSOPHY. to the divine wisdom. But it should be remarked that the perfection of the world supposes that God, who is tile sovereign power and the sovereign wis. dom, acts by laws the most general and simple, just as finite agents act according to laws as much less simple and as much less general as they themselves are less wise and powerful. Placing ourselves in this point of view, we conceive how that which we take fobr imperfection in the work of the Creator is inherent in the very perfection of his work. These apparent imperfections are a sequence of the most general, that is, the most perfect laws; and the world is better with its general laws, spite of their particular inconveniences, than it would be by the suppression of the inconveniences, involving, as it would, the destruction of general laws. But of what beings is the universe composed? Do there exist spirits and bodies? Does there exist even a difference of nature between spirits and bodies? The idea of body or of matter resolves itself into that of actual extension. Is extension a substance or a mode? We cannot think of a circle or a square without thinking of extension; squareness and roundness are therefore only modifications of extension. But we can think of extension without thinking of anything else; it is, therefore, not a simple mode, it is a substance. Now the idea of extension does not imply that of thought: consequently, matter, whose essence is extension, must be, if it really exist, a sub. stance essentially different from the thinking substance or spirit. This distinction being established, it is clear that God, in creating the world, was behooved to give birth to a world of spirits. For he produces that which is most perfect; and beings capable of thinking, that is, of knowing and loving, are evidently of a nature MALEBRANCIIE. 65 superior to that of body. Thus the existence of spirits is contained in the very idea of creation. But does the connexion of ideas lead us equally to acknowledge the existence of bodies? In the first place, we conceive no necessary connexion between the impressions which are called sensations and the existence of external objects, since God, by the effi. cacy of his infinite power, mnight produce these same impressions if the corporeal world did not exist. If these impressions, considered in themselves, do not prove its existence, we must go higher; we must, as Descartes has done, combine the natural instinct which leads us to believe in the testimony of our senses with the veracity of God. But here again the chain of ideas is broken, when we wish to make it result in the existence of bodies. Without doubt, the veracity of God would be an infallible guarantee of our sensations, if the instinct which leads us to refer our sensations to external objects was really invincible. But it is not: God furnishes us with a means of resisting this impulse, and this means is the possibility conceived by us of sensations as constant and as uniform without the intervention of bod. ies as with their intervention. Malebranche con. cludes, therefore, that the existence of bodies cannot be known with certainty except by revelation. The objection has been made to this last opinion that it is reasoning in a circle, since revelation itself supposes faith in the senses which attest the facts im. plied in the idea of revelation. But the partisans of the philosophy of Malebranche contend that it avoids this paralogism. Even if bodies do not exist, still we must always admit that the sensible impressions respecting revelation are produced in us by divine power. Now it would be repugnant to the wisdom of God to produce such a system of appearances, if T11.- 6 4i6 IMODERN PHILOSOPHY. these appearances did not actually contain a divine revelation. This laid down, it would, they say, be indeed a vicious circle to conclude the existence of bodies from revelation, and revelation from the exist. ence of bodies. But this is not the case. From sensible appearances, whether the phenomena are or are not connected with real bodies, we conclude the existence of a divine revelation on the ground of the divine wisdom. Then, hearkening to the divine word, without pretending to know beforehand whether bodies have a substantial existence or not, we learn that it expressly teaches their existence. Thus we rec. ognise, upon the authority of revelation, that our sen. sible impressions do correspond to external objects called bodies; and we have admitted revelation by merely combining the fict of sensible impressions with another term, to wit, the divine wisdom. But if the universe is composed of two sorts of beings —of spirits, whose existence is demonstrated, and of bodies, whose existence is revealed-the general notion of the universe depends upon the idea we form of the relations that exist between these two parts of creation. Are they independent of each other, or do they reciprocally act upon each other? It is a fact, that when my soul wills it, a motion is produced in my arm, and by my arm in other bodies which it displaces. It is a fact, also, that sensations spring up in my soul as if they were a result of the action of the bodies that surround me. But the thinking substance and the extended substance are so essentially independent of each other, that it is impossible to admit that the one should produce a modification of the soul, which is a spiritual effect, and that the other should produce a material effect, such as motion. This reciprocal action is therefore only apparent; the correlation which exists between mind MALEBRANCHE. 67 and body results from the general laws established by the Creator, according to which he himself pro. duces both the motions of body by occasion of volitions of the soul, and the impressions or sensations of the soul by occasion of the presence of bodies. In moth cases God alone is the real and immediate cause of these effects; spirits and bodies are nothing but occasional causes. From the general notion of the universe he pass. as to the theory of mind and body, to psychology and'o physics. The general principle of physics is that all bodies are homogeneous, since extension, which is their essence, is the same in all. Material phenomena are nothing but differences in the external form of bodies, and in the configuration of the insensible particles of which they are composed, or differences in the relations of distance. All changes which take place in bodies are consequently produced by motion, which modifies both the external or internal form of the bodies, and the relations of distance which exist be. tween tnein. And as matter or extension imDli,~ no idea of motion, all the motions of nature are an immediate and permanent impulse of divine power, which acts conformably to sovereign wisdom, ac. cording to laws the most simple and general. That which is called the concussion of bodies is not the real cause of the communication of motion, it is only the occasional cause. The theory of spirits is divided into two parts: the one treats of the intelligence, the other of the will. The intelligence, as has been said, lives and sub. sists only in ideas, and ideas are the divine essence. it follows from this, first, that we see everything in God, even the corporeal world. For that which we really see in material nature is the intelligit.b rnfi. 68?MODERN PHILOSOPHY. nite, necessary extension, which is God himself; the rest is not the object of the vision of the mind. We do not really see it, we feel it; and the obscure sentiment attests only the modifications of our soul. It follows, in the second place, that intelligence is a perpetual revelation. Ideas not being in us, but out of us, it is God who produces them in our mind. But he does not produce them except by occasion of the attention which we will to bestow upon them. Thus God is the efficient cause of ideas; the attention of man is the occasional cause. It follows, in the third place, that progress in knowledge depends upon the strength of attention; and, as this power is limited, as well as the capacity of the soul, in order to derive from it the greatest advantage possible, we ought to withdraw it from the dark region of sentiment, and to concentrate it upon the luminous region of ideas. It follows, lastly, that error results only from the confusion of ideas and sentiments. It is an attempt to transform a sentiment into an idea, or to degrade an idea to the condition of a sentiment. This theory of the intelligence leads to a corre. sponding theory of the will. As God is at once the cause and the object of our intelligence, so he is at once the cause and object of our love. Our invincible love of good in general is nothing but an impulse of the love with which God loves his own na. ture or the immutable order of the universe, just as our knowledge of the true is nothing but a communication of the ideas by which he knows himself. Our particular desires are the occasional cause of the good that is done by [in] us, just as our attention is the occasional cause of the light which enlightens our soul. But, as we can turn oui' attention from the contem. MIALEBRANCHE. 69 plation of ideas, to wander and dissipate it in the shadows of sentiment, so we can pervert our desires fiom the immutable world represented by ideas, to fasten them in a sort upon the series of false judg. ments which sentiment leads us to pass. When we search for truth in our own mere modes of feeling, it is error; when we seek there for good, it is vice. In a word, everything that' there is positive and substantial in love or the emotion of the soul, is pro. duced by God: we produce, not that love in itself, but only good or bad applications of that love. Resuming the foregoing principles, we comprehend both the nature of man and the duties that flow from it. God is, by his power, the efficient cause of all motions executed by the body; our will is only the occasional cause. In this first relation, our funda. mental duty consists in regulating our motions ac cording to clear ideas, as God regulates his activity according to a clear view of all things. God is, by his intelligence, the efficient cause of all our ideas; our attention is only the occasional cause. In this second relation, our fundamental duty is to concentrate our attention upon ideas, and to consult them perpetually. God is, by his love, the efficient cause of ours, or of our inclination to happiness; our desires are only the occasional cause of our participation in happiness. In this relation our duty is to connect our desires with ideas, just as the Holy Spirit is united to the Word. Malebranche endeavoured in many ways to com. bine his philosophical theories with Christianity. From his doctrine of optimism he concluded that the incarnation of Christ was a necessary condition of the perfection of the creation itself. Without this intimate union of God with humanity, and through humanity with nature, the world would not have been 70 MODERN PHILOSOPHY. as perfect as it could be; it would not have been worthy of God, since God cannot prefer the less perfect to the more perfect. From his theory of ideas and sentiments he con. cluded that the propensity which inclines men to look rather to liveliness of sentiment than to clear. ness of ideas was the indication of a profound disorder in his being; a disorder which supposes an ori. ginal fall, with which is connected the doctrine of redemption. From the principle that the divine wisdom, choos. ing always the most perfect means, must act by laws the most simple and general, he inferred that the laws by which grace was distributed corresponded to the laws of the creation. He recognised in nature the symbols of the supernatural world. Observations. 1. Malebranche endeavoured to imprint upon his philosophy the characteristics of simplicity and unity which God had, in his view, given to the laws of creation. All parts off his system, which is very fruitful in varied applications, refers to some general principles with which they were in his view strictly connected. The unity of his conceptions is even more remarkable than their extent. 2. His theory of ideas is in many respects a reproduction of that of Plato. But he made it his own by his profound analysis of ideas and sentiments; by showing that if ideas are the vision of the infinite being, participated by creatures, sentiments are the consciousness of their limits. By the theory of intelligible extension he wished to fill up a chasm in Platonism which did not explain how the physical universe could be the object of ideas. T.he systenm of the vision of all things in God crowned that ele. vated psychology. BERKELEY. 71 3. The philosophy of Malebranche runs into ideal. ism, in the same sense that it excludes from the do. main of rational speculation the notion of the exist. ence of bodies. This notion is rested neither upon a natural belief nor upon a philosophical demonstra. tion. It results, on the other hand, from his theory of intelligible extension, that we see everything in the corporeal world except bodies. It results also from his system of occasional causes, that, properly speaking, we do not even feel bodies which are not represented as acting in any way upon the soul. 4. Malebranche has been reproached with having wished to establish that God is the only being really active; from whence it has been concluded that his philosophy contains the germes of pantheism. But it should be observed that he maintains an activity of creatures, which is to the divine activity what the substance of creatures is to the divine substance. Finite activity supposes infinite activity, as finite existence supposes the finite. 5. The philosophical style of Malebranche is a model of clearness and modest elevation. A serene light is diffused over all his writings. No metaphy. sician has conceived things in a manner more intellectual, and none has expressed them in a manner more enlivened by sensuous imagery. BERKELEY. GEORGE BERKELEY, bishop of Cloyne in Ireland, was born in 1684. He died in 1753. His princi. pal writings are, The Principles of tIuman Knowl. edge, Dialogues of Hylas and Philonous. The idealist doctrine of Berkeley destroys the ex. istence of the corporeal world. We can know substances only by the qualities inherent in them. Now there exists no quality which we can conceive as in. 72 MODERN PHILOSOPHY. herent in a corporeal substance. There exist two species of qualities called sensible: primary qualities, reducible to extension, and secondary qualities, such as colour, odour, savour, etc. The Cartesian philosophy has demonstrated that the secondary qualities do not exist in the bodies, but in us; that they are not properties of an external object, but modifications of the internal principle of the soul. Now, according to Berkeley, we ought to pass the same judgments concerning the primary qualities or extension. He maintains that all the arguments by which it is proved that odour, colour, etc., do not reside in the bodies, apply equally to extension, the notion of which besides contains, according to him, contradictions which cannot be removed except by considering extension, not as an entity, but a simple conception. And as we know matter only by extension, Berkeley concluded that the material world is only phenomenal, and that there exists nothing but spirits. He believed that he had found in this doctrine the means of destroying in their very foundations the materialist sys. tems to which the empirical philosophy of Locke had given rise in England, and which were already threatening the subversion of the whole moral order. SPINOZA. BENEDICT SPINOZA was born at Amsterdam in 1632, and died in 1677. He had been brought up in Judaism, which he renounced to embrace opinions destructive of all religious belief. He revived mate. rial pantheism. Many writers, and even Leibnitz himself, have pretended that Spinozism was born of Cartesianism. It has been noted that Spinoza commenced his career of metaphysical speculation by an exposition of the Cartesian philosophy; that he was at first nurtured SPINOZA 7-3in that philosophy; and that he afterward developed his system of pantheism with a great parade of terms and notions borrowed from the logic and ontology of Descartes. But from his use of those notions it does not follow that he deduced from them correct consequences. It has been pretended, also, that the definition of substance given by Descartes contains necessarily the foundations of Spinozism. Descartes had said that a substance is that which needs nothing else in order to its existence: from which it seemed to ro. suit, that all finite beings, having need of God in order to exist, could be conceived only as simple attributes of the sole substance or of the divine Being, who alone exists independently of any other thing. The Cartesian philosophers have, however, explained the definition of substance in a very different sense from that which Spinoza attributed to it. They said that a substance is that which has no need of anything else as the subject in which it resides, tanquam sub. jecto; but that a substance may have need of some. thing else as its principle and cause, tanquam principio et causd. This distinction presupposed, it follows indeed that God is the only complete and absolute substance, since in no respect, under no relation, has he need of anything else; but it also follows that finite beings, although they have need of God as their principle and cause, may be substances, incomplete to be sure, but real, since they are conceived as sub. jects of attributes, and not as simply attributes of a subject. It was this very distinction that Spinoza under. took to destroy by using other principles maintained by the Cartesian philosophy. He pretended that the principles which Descartes had employed to demon. strate the existence of two distinct substances, spirit II. 74 MODERN PHILOSOPHY. and matter, led, on the contrary, to the conclusion of the absolute identity of substance, in the sense that all particular beings could be conceived only as attributes of a single subject. The Cartesian defini. tion rested on the distinction between substance and cause; it implied that there existed, or might exist, not only substances, subjects of attributes, but a sub. stance, the productive cause of other substances. Now, according to Spinoza, this production is contradictory. For either the substance which produces and the substance produced have different attributes, or they have the same attributes. If they have dif. ferent attributes, we cannot conceive that one should be the cause of the other, since a cause cannot pro. duce what it does not contain. If, on the contrary, they have the same attributes, they are not distinct. How, in fact, did Descartes prove that mind and mat. t er are distinct? On this ground alone, that thought, the attribute of the one, is not extension, the attri. bute of the other. You cannot, then, said Spinoza, affirm the distinction of the substances, except on the ground of the distinction of their attributes; and, therefore, if the substance which you suppose crea. tive and the substance which you suppose created have the same attributes, they cannot be two differ. ent substances. All the arguments of which Spinoza availed himself to establish his fundamental principle are only developments, under very complicated and some. times not very intelligible forms, of the dilemma to which we have just reduced his reasoning. Bayle has made the observation that this dilemma did not demonstrate what Spinoza desired to demonstrate. It follows from it, says Bayle, that two substances which have the same attributes are not different spe. cifically but it does not follow that there cannot ex SPINOZA. 75 ist with the same attributes two substances individually or numerically distinct. This observation applies to the second part of Spinoza's dilemma; and as to the first part of it, that if the cause must contain everything that is in the effect, it does not follow that it must contain it in the same manner or under the same mode; that the infinite cause may contain pre-eminently, that is, under a perfect or infinite mode, that which it communicates to the effect under a finite mode; and, accordingly, though created substances should have the same attributes as the sub. stance which produced them, in the sense that they are found pre-eminently in the latter, they have, nevertheless, attributes essentially different, in the sense that what is imperfect in them is perfect in their cause. After having endeavoured to establish that all the various realities can be known only as attributes of a sole substance, Spinoza inquires into the nature of that substance, whether material or spiritual. We must judge of the nature of a substance by its attributes. Now, according to the philosophy of Des. cartes, there exist but two fundamental attributes, extension and thought; and, by the admission of the Cartesians, extension supposes a material substance. Appropriating their arguments on this point, and re. jecting the arguments by which they inferred the existence of spirit from the existence of thought, Spinoza pretended that thought, like extension, could be only a property of the material substance, existing simultaneously under these two attributes. From this ontology Spinoza deduced a multitude of consequences, which he applied to psychology, to morals, and to politics. In psychology he considered intelligence and will as simply modifications of the organism. 76 MODERN PHILOSOPHY. In morals he radically destroyed the notion of right and wrong, as incompatible with a system where everything is identical, where everything that happens is a necessary result of the energy of the sole substance. In'politics he maintained also, very consistently, that everything which is commonly designated by the name of rights is reduced to the notion of force. It followed, indeed, from his moral doctrine, essentially allied to his metaphysical doctrine, that justice relatively to each being can be conceived only as the measure of his power, since, in order to conceive it under any other notion, we must return to the ideas of an obligatory divine law and of free.will: two things evidently excluded by his fundamental principle. Spinoza thus reached, as the last consequence of his principles, the same monstrous maxims to which Hobbes had arrived by an opposite route. The Eng. lish philosopher set out from the diversity of human individuals as naturally hostile: the Dutch Jew start. ed from their absolute identity. The one excluded from the social theory the notion of the infinite element, the principle of moral obligation; the other excluded the notion of finite beings, subjects of these obligations; and both constructed the politics of force, which transformed itself in the system of Hobbes into pure despotism, in the system of Spi. noza into pure anarchy. LOGIC.-CRITICAL SKEPTICISM. BESIDES the theoretical results of the impulse givenl to philosophy by Descartes, we should also notice here two other sorts of philosophical exertion put forth in opposite directions, the Port Royal logic, and the critical skepticism of Bayle, who was born SKEPTICISM. 77 in the old county of Foy in 1647, and died in Holland in 1706. The logic of the Port Royal is a combination of the principles of Descartes with those of Aristotle. It furnishes. the art of demonstration by taking for granted, as the rule of all legitimate employment of artificial logic, the fundamental processes upon which Cartesianism made all certain knowledge of truth to depend.-The critical labours of Bayle were intend. ed, on the contrary, to shake the certainty of human knowledge, and take away all confidence -in demonstrations, by bringing forward upon the most impor. tant questions contradictory arguments. His cap. tious dialectics respected none of the truths upon which religion and morality rest. In this skeptical point of view he did not spare the Cartesian philosophy, of which he had at first been a partisan. [It should be added, that the speculations of De-s cartes and Malebranche were also combated by skepticism in an entirely different spirit from that of Bayle-a skepticism employed in the interest of re. vealed religion. In France, La Mothe le Vayer had denied the existence of any rational principle as the basis of religious truth, and maintained the principle of faith, implanted by divine grace, as the ground of religious knowledge. His disciples, Sorbiere and Foucher, propagated skepticism in the same spirit, and oppo. sed the philosophy of Descartes and Malebranche. In England, Joseph Glanvill, who died in 1680, likewise advanced the principles of skepticism in relation to science, in order to limit the pretensions of dogmatic speculation. Jerome Hirnhaym, doctor of theology at Prague, who died in 1679, gave also a religious tendency to 78 MODERN PHILOSOPHY. skepticism. He declaimed with much talent against the vanity and ignorance of speculative philosophers. Hie admitted no axiom of reason that might not be nullified by revelation. The sole grounds of cer. tain knowledge were divine revelation, supernatural grace, and inward illumination by God's spirit. In practical morality he deduced from his skepticism an extravagant asceticism. At this period skepticism was quite generally employed, from pious intentions, by learned Romanists, in order to bring back Protestants to the Church. SUPERNATURALISMI. —MYSTICISM. THE consequences of the empiricism of Hobbes on the one hand, and of the speculative rationalism of Descartes and Malebranche on the other, excited also a reaction in the direction of supernaturalism and of mysticism, though divine revelation, as the source of philosophical truth, was held in a less re. stricted sense than by the writers just mentioned. Theophilus Gale, who died in 1677, maintained that true philosophy was contained originally in the word of God addressed to his people, and since then revealed to other nations at different epochs and in various ways.* Ralph Cudworth, who was born in 1617 and died in 1688, adopted the same opinion, but applied it with much greater originality to the defence of religion against materialism and atheism. In his profound and learned work on the Intellectual System of the Universe, he gave demonstrations of the existence of God and of creation out of nothing. He maintained innate ideas in the sense of Plato, and derived therefrom a proof of the divine existence. Rejecting Malebranche's theory of occasional causes, in order * Theoph. Gale, Philosophia Universalis, Lond., 1676 Ailu Deorum Gentilium, Lond., 1676. CUDWORTH. 79 to explain the forms of things and the reciprocal in. fluence of mind and matter, he framed the hypothesis of a plastic nature, a spiritual but unintelligent principle. This is nothing but Plato's soul of the world, distinct from God and an instrument of God. He adopted this hypothesis in order to oppose, on the one hand, the doctrine of blind chance in the creao tion and changes of the world, and the doctrine of' mechanical necessity, and on the other, the notion of immediate and perpetual creation on the part of God. He censured Descartes for banishing from physics the-consideration of final causes. Against the moral system of Hobbes he wrote his Treatise concerning eternal and immutable Morality. In this treatise he taught that our ideas of good and evil are not communicated either by sense or experience; we neither acquire them from instinct, nor by deducing from instinct the notion of our greatest good. Reason instantly conceives them, from a contemplation of human actions, as absolutely as it conceives the idea of cause from the contemplation of events, or of space from that of bodies. We do not deduce the idea of cause from that of an event perceived, though the latter is the occasion of the former; neither do we deduce the ideas of good and. evil from actions perceived; actions are the occasion of awakening the ideas, which, when once conceived, become universal, being immediately apprehended by reason. These ideas come from the divine mind, which is their proper, eternal home, and of which human reason is an emanation. These ideas are latent in our minds till external occasions awaken them. Here also is the doctrine of Plato. Cud. worth reproduced it in order to prove that our moral ideas have not the relative character supposed in the system of Hobbes. Actions are not good on account SO MODERN PHILOSOPHY. of their relation to our sensitive nature, and there. fore transient and contingent. The idea of good is in. dependent of every particular act and of every individual being. It is as eternal and immutable as the Deity. Our reason does not create it, but necessarily conceives it. With the idea of good is associated the idea of obligation; and this idea is equally im. mutable. Finally, the idea of good is simple and in. definable. Henry More, who was born in 1614 and died in 1687, addicted himself more particularly to the doctrines of the New-Platonists. He wrote likewise an apology for the Cabala. He held intellectual intuition as the source of all philosophical knowledge, and maintained that all the true and legitimate notions which philosophy possesses proceeded from a divine revelation. He attempted to establish the ex. istence of an immutable space, distinct from all mu. table matter, as the principle of all life and all motion, both in the spiritual and material world. Reality consists in extension. God himself, in his being and absolute substance, is space. The human soul and the soul of animals are simple and yet extended. In morals, the science of living wisely and happily, he combines the principles of Plato and Aristotle. Samuel Parker, a contemporary of Cudworth and More, who died in 1688, likewise attacked with severity the doctrines of Descartes, particularly his atomistic physics and his proof of the divine existence. John Pordage (born about 1625, died in 1698, at London) wrote expressly in favour of mysticism, and attempted to reduce the theosophic extravagances of Jacob Baehme to a system, pretending to have learned the truth of' those ideas by a special revela. tion. His disciple, Thomas Bromley, propagated his opinions. LEIBNITZ. 81 To these names may be added that of Richard Cumberland (born in 1632, died in 1718), who in a more philosophical way attempted to refute the prin. ciples of Hobbes, particularly in relation to morals. He endeavoured to establish the fundamental truths of morals independently of revelation and by the meth. od of observation. HIe maintained disinterested vir. tue in opposition to the selfish system of Hobbes. But he did not, like Cudworth, attribute our moral ideas to reason; he made the principle of virtue to consist in a sentiment of benevolence towards God and towards man.] SECTION III. LEIBNITZ. Historical Notices. GODFREY WILLIAM LEIBNITZ, born at Leipsic in 1648, wrote at first upon jurisprudence. He afterward formed the plan of an encyclopedia which ern. braced all branches of science, the mathematics, physics, history, morals, public-law, metaphysics, the. ology. After having been attached for some years to the chancery of the Elector of Mayence, he was appointed counsellor by the Duke of Brunswick. He visited France, Holland, England, and Italy, formed friendships with the most celebrated men of science, and carried on a scientific correspondence with many of them. Leibnitz worked with indefatigable ardour: it is said to have often happened that he would not leave his chair for some weeks at a time. - He died in 1716. He did not publish any work in which his philosophical views are united into a systematic body. Some Latin theses which he had printed at Leipsic present a summary of them in the form of articles; we shall follow these in our exposition of his fundamental doctrines. II.-7 82 MODERN PHILOSOPHY. Exposition,, Leibnitz rejected the sensualism propounded in principle by Bacon and developed by Locke, whose book on the Human Understanding appeared to him a very slender performance. He maintained that sensations cannot be the source of notions which correspond to necessary truths, and that these notions are derived from an internal light, which is a participation in the infinite reason. But he did not confine himself to opposing sensualism; he threw himself into the opposite extreme. Not that he pretended that ideas alone constituted hu. man intelligence; he admitted the distinction between sensations and ideas in the sense that sensa. tions are the representations of facts, and ideas the representations of necessary truths. But, as we shall presently see, he was led by the general princi. ples of his philosophy to conclude that sensations have not an external origin, but only an internal; that they are solely the result of the activity of the soul, which produces them without the concurrence of any principle out of itself. In the system of Locke, all notions have an external source, even the most ab.stract; in the philosophy of Leibnitz, they all, even sensations, have an internal source. All branches of the philosophy of Leibnitz have a common trunk in his ontology or theory of sub stances: we must first comprehend that. Man is immediately in connexion with the universe, of which he himself forms a part. Now the uni. verse and the beings it contains present themselves to us as compounded. There cannot be composites without components; if these latter are themselves composites, they will also have their components, until we come in thought to components which are not LEIBNITZ. 83 composites, that is, to simple beings, or beings without parts, which may be termed monads, in order to express their unity, their indivisibility, their simpli. city, The monads are the only real substances, for everything which is not a monad must be a composition of monads, and the composition is not a sub. stance, but simply a relation. From this first step Leibnitz separates himself from Descartes. The Cartesian philosophy admitted two different substances: matter, whose essence was extension, and spirit, whose essence was thought. From the principle laid down by Leibnitz, it followed, on the contrary, that there exists but one kind of substances, simple substances: that which is designated by the term matter can be nothing more than an aggregation of monads, and extension is nothing but the phenomenon which manifests this aggregation. Investigating the essence of the monad, Leibnitz believed he discovered three principles: 1. An internal principle of variation: no monad that is not infinite implies immutability; as finite it is subject to change; and, in fact, the universe is subjected to a law of variation. Now changes could not take place in the aggregations of monads without a pre-existing change in the monads themselves. But the principle of these changes is necessarily in. ternal; for the monad, for the reason that it is with. out parts, cannot be modified by an external principle, that is to say, by the action of another monad. 2. Here is seen, again, a radical separation between Leibnitz and Descartes. All the changes that take place in the universe, all phenomena without exception. are referred by Leibnitz to a force internal in each simple substance. Descartes, on the contrary, explained all the phenomena of the material universe by the communication of motion, that is, by a princi. 84 MODERN PHILOSOPHY,, pie external to each body affected. In the view of Leibnitz every change resulted friom a dynamic cause; Descartes acknowledged only a mechanical cause. Changes in things are wrought actively from within outwardly: changes are wrought passively from without inwardly: such were the two opposite formulas whick disputed the theory of the universe. In this respect the cosmology of Leibnitz was to the cosmology of Descartes what its psychology was to that of Bacon. 3. Leibnitz held that in the essence of the monad there was a second principle, which produced the va. riety of the monads; a schema, which constitutes the peculiar characteristic, the intimate, essential, specific form of each of them. Not only has every monad qualities, for otherwise it would not be a being, but the qualities of each monad should have a character which determines their difference from other monads. Two radically undistinguishable from each other would be but one and the same thing under different names. Without this differential character there would not exist a plurality of monads; there would be but one. There would be, accordingly, neither composites nor components, and the notion of the universe would disappear. This was, again, the antithesis of the physical theories of Descartes. According to the French philos. opher, extension, the essence of matter, was identical in all bodies, and the difference of bodies resulted, not from anything internal to each, but from the general laws of motion, which produced various combi. nations in that universally the same extension. 4. Finally, the monad, as conceived by Leibnitz. should imply multiplicity in unity. Every change is wrought by degrees; something changes, something remains: therefore every simple substance, froln the LEIBNITZ. 85 very fact of its being subject to a law of change, contains in itself a plurality of susceptibilities, mod. ifications, and relations, that is, to multiplicity in unity. Leibnitz concluded from these considerations that every monad is representative of the universe. In virtue of its principle of internal variation, it can change or develop itself indefinitely. If it were composed of parts, the number of its possible varia. tions would be limited proportionably to the number of its parts. But as it is absolutely simple, we can. not conceive any necessary limit to the development of its activity: it comes into no condition that may not be replaced by another. It contains in itself, theretbre, the capacity of all modes of possible being, and thereby is representative of the whole universe. This variation of the monads, which implies the representation of the universe, is nothing else than what is called perception. The basis of this capital thesis of the philosophy of Leibnitz may be conceived in the following manner. Thought exists in the monads, that is, in a certain number of them. Now what is thought? Properly speaking, it is consciousness, or distinct perception of the changes which go on within the monad. Thought supposes, therefore, anterior to itself, a confused perception of these changes; Ior we can no more conceive that a perception should spring from that which was in no sense a perception, than that a motion should spring fiom that which was no movement. Every clear perception must be the development of an obscure perception; all consciousness, properly speaking, is the apprehension or coming to the understanding of a vague, insensible consciousness. Perception may therefore exist in two states: the state of perception simple and as yet confused, and the II. 86 MODERN PHILOSOPHY. state of distinct perception, which may be designated by the term apperception. In lethargy, deep sleep, or swoon, the soul is not without perception, for then it would be destitute of activity; and if it once became entirely passive, it could not become active again Nevertheless, the soul in those states does not experience any distinct sentiment. This state represents to us that of simple monads. The simple monads are, as it were, souls struck with stupor. The state of distinct perception has itself two degrees. We may distinguish only the simple facts corresponding to what is called sensations. Such is the state of animals, and of men so far as animals. To this knowledge may be joined the knowledge of the truths of reason, or necessary truths. Thus is the state peculiar to man. The general law of perception is a law of union, for, on the one hand, a perception can spring only from a perception. As any actual change in a mo. nad is in sequel to an anterior change, so is it the germe of a future change. On the other hand, the monad being representative of variety in unity, this representation, at once one and multiple, implies an intimate connexion of perceptions. Thus the connexion of confused perceptions with distinct perceptions, even though we may be uncon. scious of it, is none the less real. When we come out fiom the state of stupor, so to say, the primary perceptions of which we become conscious are the lingering echo of the last confused perceptions. The distinct perceptions of sensible things are bound together by memory, which is an imitation of reason. Rational perceptions are linked together by a law superior to that of memory; this law of the intelligence rests on two principles, which are the basis ol LEIBNITZ. 87 all reasoning, the principle of the suficient reason, and the principle of contradiction. By the principle of the sufficient reason we judge that no fact can take place without a reason sufficient for its occurring so rather than otherwise. This principle is the basis of all theories which have facts for their object. By the principle of contradiction we judge everything to be false which implies at once affirmation and negation: which comes to the same thing as taking for true everything which is contained in a no. tion, that is to say, all notions identical with it. The principle of contradiction is, therefore, at bottom the principle of identity. It is the basis of all theories which have necessary truths for their object. As the principle of the sufficient reason supposes facts to which it is applied, so the principle of con. tradiction supposes indemonstrable first truths, of which it effects the development. But, although these two principles are distinct, still, in as far as they correspond to two different orders of knowl. edge, the one is derived from the other. For the necessity of a sufficient reason for the existence of every fact is itself a necessary truth, the negative of which would imply a contradiction. The principle of contradiction is therefore the root of all the sci. ences; it constitutes the unity of the human mind. Thus far the human mind has only a subjective or logical unity. But it can advance thereby to an ob. jective unity, that is to say, it can find not only the principle of knowledge, but also the principle even of things. It is true, indeed, that, in ascending the se. ries of contingent facts, the sufficient reason of each particular facet is found in an anterior fact, this will nevertheless not give the sufficient reason for the existence of the whole series The principle of the suf. 88 MODIERN PHILOSOPHY, ficient reason, followed to its last extent, obliges us to predicate the ultimate reason of all facts in a sub stance not contingent, but necessary. In the same way, if necessary eternal truths have any reality, this reality must also have existence in a substance necessary as themselves. If the necessary being does not exist, there are neither necessary truths, noi, d fortiori, contingent things. We cannot deny his existence without denying all existence; without falling, consequently, into the greatest contradictions. Thus the principle of the sufficient reason leads us to acknowledge the ultimate reason of all contingent things. The principle of contradiction leads us t& an eternal sphere of essences. The being who is at once the source of existences and the substance of truth, is God; for this being possesses absolute per. fection, which is but the exclusion of all limitation. As he is the reason of the whole series of contingent things, he cannot be limited at any gradation of that series. Nor can a principle of limitation for him any more be found in the region of necessary truths; for necessity, so far from excluding in any degree existence, necessarily involves it. In a word, the idea of the supremely perfect Being, free from all limitations, implies his existence. If he did not ex. ist, he would be at the same time possible and impossible; possible, since we have the idea of him; impossible, since his non-existence could have no oth. er reason than just the impossibility of his existence. From the fact that the. notion of the Supreme Being is not contradictory, we must therefore conclude that he exists. God is the being whose logical possibility implies his actual existence. Here Leibnitz falls in with the demonstration of Descartes. Al. though he pretende'i that his proof ad priori of the existence of God was an improvement upon that of LEIBNI rZ. 89 Descartes, we cannot perceive any fundamental difference. Arrived at God, the human mind comes into the possession of objective unity. It has found the prime monad, the unity of unities, to which he can thence. forward attach the whole theory of the universe. The monads are produced by perpetual Jfashings (as of lightning) of the infinite monad, which are limited by the receptivity of creatures. That which exists in created monads, exists without limits in the un. created monad. There is in God a power which is the source of all beings, as there exists in monads a principle of activity which is the source of all their modes of being. There is in God an intelligence which contains the schema of ideas, as there is in the monads a schema which determines their own pecu. liar character. There is in God a good.will which is moved by the motive of the greatest good, as there is in the monads an internal appetency which makes them pass from one state to another state, and which is also a natural tendency towards their greatest good. The general theory of the universe should afford a solution of two problems, which, in the times of Leibnitz especially, were agitated by the most powerful minds. The universe may be considered in its relations with God, and in the relations of creatures to each other. Compared with the infinite being, is the universe, or total collection of finite beings, des. titute of infinite perfection solely from the nature of things, or is it, besides, destitute of any degree of finite perfection? This is the first of the problems. Leibnitz replied to it by optimism. Compared among themselves, do creatures exert upon each other a re. ciprocal influence? This is the second problem. The Cartesian philosophy sought the solution of it in I.- 8 90 MODERN PHLLOSC PHY. the theory of occasional causes: Leibnitz substitu. ted the theory of pre-established hlrmony. In respect to the first question, Leibnitz aimed first to establish optimism by deduction from the very notion of God. God, who is absolute perfection, can have been moved in the act of creation only by the relative perfection possible in creatures. He has not, therefore, in his wisdom preferred a world more remote from absolute perfection to a world that approached nearer to it. But Leibnitz did not limit himself to the a priori proof of optimism; he endeav. oured also to verify his system a posteriori, by recon. ciling the existence of evil with the existence of the most perfect world. Evil may be considered in its possibility and in its actual existence. The possibility of evil makes necessarily a part of the creation, because it is de. rived from the limitation of creatures. Considered in its actual existence, evil is divided into metaphysical, physical, and moral evil. Metaphysical evil, which is only the very imperfection of creatures, must subsist in the most perfect world, since created things are not susceptible of infinite perfection, which is peculiar to God.-Physical evil or pain is a supe. rior order of good, a moral good, in as far as it is the punishment of moral evil; it is also, in the mere sphere of enjoyment, often the principle of a greater good; and in all cases there is nothing to prove that it does not actually receive, or will not one day receive, a superabundant compensation; from whence it follows that in its sum total it cannot be affirmed that pain is not a good.-Moral evil or sin is not, indeed, like metaphysical evil, an absolute necessity of creation; it is not in itself, like physical evil, an efficient means of the greatest good, but its permission may be the condition of the greatest good; or, in LEIBNITZ. 91 other terms, nothing authorizes us to affirm that the perfection of the world, that is, the manifestation of the perfections of God in the world, did not require that God should permit this effect of the free-will of man. But if it be true that this was requisite, God not only could, but, moreover, must permit it, since lie could have prevented it only by committing evil himself, in the very fact of preferring, by a choice unworthy of his wisdom, a less perfect to the most perfect world. We pass to the relations of creatures to each other. The Cartesian philosophy had been led to the system of occasional causes by the impossibility of conceiving that the extended substance could act upon the thinking substance, and vice versa. This difficulty did not exist in the philosophy of Leibnitz, who recognised but one sole kind of substance. But another difficulty presented itself: Leibnitz had main. tained in principle that the monads could not act upon each other, inasmuch as they were essentially simple. How then to conceive the correlation which manifests itself between what takes place in one state and what takes place in another state, for instance, between the mind and the body with which it is united? It is very true, replied Leibnitz, that there is no physical connexion between the monads, but there is an ideal connexion. Their relations are contained in the di. vine ideas; and God, in creating a monad, predeter. mined its relations with other monads. He regula. ted in the beginning the internal principle of its variations in such a way that all the evolutions of the principle should concur with the evolutions that were to take place in other monads. The beings that we call spirits, that is, monads endowed with self-con. sciousness, and the beings that we call bodies, that is, aggregations of simple monads, act solely accord. 92 MODERN PHILtsO0PIIY. ing to their own internal force; the former as if there were no blodies in existence, the latter as if there were no spirits in existence. But, in virtue of the pre-established harmony, the corporeal world and the spiritual world are like two clocks, which, though reciprocally independent, mark simultaneously the same hours, in consequence of an internal mechanism in which the clockmaker has realized his own ideas. It is to be conceived that in this system, where each monad acts by itself without being modified by anoth,'r, the distinction of active and passive is not real, hut only phenomenal. It has its foundation, not in the objects, but in our mode of conceiving them. We say that one being is passive relatively to another being supposed active, when we use that which is distinctly known to us in the latter in order to conceive the sufficient reason of what takes place in the fiermer. Leibnitz not only considered the hypothesis of pre. established harmony as the most satisfactory expla. nation of the phenomena of the correlation of sub. stances, but, moreover, he saw in it a consequence of his system of optimism. The perfection of the universe requires the best order of combination, or the most complete unity with the most extended variety. The evolutions of each monad being adapted to the evolutions of all the others, a more perfect unity of plan cannot be conceived. But, at the same time, each monad, by its harmony with all the others, reflecting in its own point of view the whole uni. verse, there results from it the greatest possible va. riety. Just as a city seen from different points re. ceives optically a multiplied existence, so the universe, though essentially one, is multiplied by the different points of view furnished by the innumerable monads. The general consequence of all the foregoing prin LEMIBNITZ. 93 ciples is, on the one hand, that everything is aninia. ted, since nothing exists but monads essentially ac. tive; and, on the other hand, that each monad, representative of all nature, according to a mode of perception more or less developed, is constantly mod. ified by its internal activity, as if it received the echo of everything that passes in the universe to the farthest limits of creation. This life, one and uni. versal, is, in the view of Leibnitz, a magnificent con firmation of his optimist doctrine. But in the bosom of that unity, bodies and spirits act according to laws which are specific to them; the first observing the laws of efficient causes, the second the laws of final causes. By the general principles of his theory of bodies, Leibnitz combated at once Descartes and Newton. We have seen already how he attacked the bases of the Cartesian physics. As to Newton, who, through the medium of Clarke, maintained a controversy with Leibnitz, the principal points of separation wore relative to the most general cosmological notions. Newton had maintained the existence of a vacuum: Leibnitz asserted that there was no sufficient reason for a vacuum; for the more there is of matter in the universe, the more the power and wisdom of God are exercised. Newton considered space as a reality; he supposed beyond the material world a space without limits. Leibnitz replied, that if space were any. thing real in itself, it would doubtless be infinite and eternal, and so would be God; which would be contradictory, since space is divisible, and God is abso. lutely one and simple. Space, in the view of thet German philosopher, was nothing but a relation, like time. Time is the sphere of successions, space the sphere of coexistences. Finally, Newton had concluded from physical theories that the forces of nature MODERN PHILOSOPHY. would be gradually exhausted, and that the moment would come when God would stretch.forth again his creative hand to repair the universe. Leibnitz re. plied that it would not do to represent God as a feble or ignorant author of machines that may need repairs. By the side of his physical cosmology Leibnitz laid down the bases of a sort of moral cosmology, which also contained the foundations of politics. Spirits, which differ from inferior monads in that the latter represent only the universe, while the former repre. sent God himself, form, together with him, a perfect state, of which he is the monarch. All sociality has its source in resemblance to God. The universal law of this state of intelligences is love. Love unites beings to each other and to God, without destroying the propensity which leads each one to seek his own individual gratification; for love is the pleasure one takes in the happiness of another: justice is enlightened love.'But in order to demonstrate that the honesty and justice which secure the interest of all are in har. mony with utility or the interest of each, it is necessary to take in the universal sphere, to carry our thoughts up to God, and from this height to discover beyond this life a future life, where the divine plan shall be accomplished. Observations. 1. Bacon had traced a method, but had occupied himself much less with the explanation of things. Leibnitz devoted himself much more to the explana. tion of things than to the method to be followed in order to arrive at it. Descartes embraced at once method and the explanation of things. 2. We ha. e pointed out how, in certain respec~s, LE IBN ITZ. 95 the philosophy of' Leibnitz was a reaction against that of Bacon, in other respects against that of Des. cartes. It is necessary to take this double point of view in order to form an exact idea of it. 3. Considered as a whole, this philosophy aimed at combining in the highest degree unity and varie. tv. The notion that Leibnitz formed of perception, thie source of all knowledge, made him incessantly strive to obtain this result, since perception, as he conceived it, was the representation of variety in uni. ty. Philosophy, which was in some sort perception in the large, should accordingly produce this representation in the vastest proportions. 4. The theories of Leibnitz contain the principles of idealism. Material substance is at bottom only a pure phenomenon: the action and reaction of beings upon each other is only a simple conception of the mind. All ideas are only the product of the development of the monad. 5. The system of pre.established harmony attacks the common notion of the union of mind and body. It divides the universe into two worlds, whose apparent union implies their real and absolute separation. 6. The philosophy of Leibnitz contains, however, some portions that are admirable. It represents one of the essential elements of the human mind, the ide. al, as the philosophy of Bacon represents the other, the sensible element. 7. The influence of the philosophy of Leibnitz was felt in nearly the whole German philosophy of his epoch, to which he gave an inclination towards ide. alism, which showed itself at first in two forms, mystic idealism and rational idealism. Those df the German philosophers who, while professing doctrines opposed under certain aspects to the idealism of Leib. nitz, embraced under other aspects a mystic ideal 96 MODERN PHILOSOPHY. ism, are particularly represented by Christian Tho. inasius. The other philosophers, who were the con. tinuators of the Leibnitzian philosophy, are represented by Wolff, the most celebrated of the disciples of Leibnitz. TIHOMASIUS. CHRISTIAN THOMASIUS, whose father had been the master of Leibnitz, was born at Leipsic in 1655, and died at Halle in 1728. The fundamental doctrine of Thomasius presents a singular combination, the union of sensualism and mysticism. Thomasius had felt that it was impossible to deduce all truths from sensations, and, above all, the highest truths, those of religion and morality. On the other hand, in the analysis of the intelligence it seemed to him that it never operated but upon a stock furnished by sensation. In this point of view it is necessary either to deny the truths not contained in sensations, or to find in the human mind a source of knowledge distinct from sensation. Tho. masius held that it was false to say man was in re. lation with truth only by his intellect; he maintained that the human mind had in some sort two organs to apprehend truth, the intellect and the will. We at. tain possession of truth either by the view of the mind or by the inclination of the soul. Sensation is the principle of all the rational notions upon which the intellect operates; love is the principle of the truths of sentiment. By this theory Thomasius, leaving one half of philosophy in sensualism, carried the other half into mysticism. by admitting a percep. tion of the true radically independent of the intelli.. gence. The distinction of active and passive plays a great WOLFF. 97 part in the conceptions of Thomasius. The intel iect and the will are sometimes active and some. times passive. These two states correspond to dif. ferent principles. The passive state attests the pres. ence of a blind, dark, cold, corruptible principle; this is matter. The active state comes from a lu. minous, vital, energetic, incorruptible principle; this is of the nature of spirit. For the rest, though Thomasius treated of the va. rious branches of philosophy, yet he chiefly devoted himself to the task of reducing to theory morals and the science of rights. WOLFF. CHRISTIAN WOLFF, born at Breslau in 1679, died in 1764, was the correspondent and friend of Leibnitz. After the death of his master he was considered the first philosopher of Germany. He contributed powerfully to destroy the empire of the peripa. tetic philosophy in the schools. Wolff was in general only a continuator of the philosophy of Leibnitz; but he added much less to it in the way of substance than of form. 1. He endeavoured to combine and arrange all the views scattered in the works of Leibnitz, by referring that immense mass of ideas to some simple principles. The kind of unity established by Wolff con. sisted, however, far more in a methodical exposition of ideas than in their intimate logical connexion. In this respect he scarcely went beyond what had been done by Leibnitz. 2. He applied to the exposition of this philosophy the processes of the geometrical method, and considered all truths as sustaining to each other relations analogous to those that exist between numbers. 3. He attempted to form a sort of statistics of II. 98 MODERN PHILOSOPHY. philosophical problems, and of the solutions which they might receive. He undertook in this respect a labour of nomenclature and classification analogous to that of Bacon, but from a point of view different from that of the empirical philosopher. 4. He distinguished empirical reason, relating to the elements furnished by sensation, from pure reason, which perceives necessary truths. 5. As a consequence of this distinction, he assert. ed for ontology the importance denied to it by Ba. con. Observations. The doctrines of Leibnitz, defended and develop. Xd by Wolff and other philosophers of that period, encountered, particularly in Germany, numerous adversaries, who may be ranged around Crusius as their centre. But their attacks did not destroy the pre. dominating influence of those doctrines, which led the way in some degree to the philosophy of Kant. The distinction between empirical and pure reason opened the point of view at which Kant took his position. On the other hand, Thomasius, in denying to the intellect relatively to religious and moral truths the authority which he accorded to sentiment, or in. clination of the soul, preluded the conception of Kant, who allowed to the practical reason a validity denied by him to the speculative reason. There is undoubtedly a great difference between the theory of the one respecting the practical reason, and the the. ory of the other respecting truths perceived by love; yet, spite of this difference, a certain analogy subsists between them. We shall soon see how the system of Kant bore the impress of the threefold influence of the schools of Bacon, of Descartes, and of Leib. nitz. Howeve', by reason of his eminently idealist KANT. 99 character, he was no; an emanation of the school of Leibnitz, but a result of the intellectual habits which the philosophy of Leibnitz had propagated in Germany. SECOND PART. GE R MA1N SCHOOLS. KANT. Historical.Notices. EBIMANUEL KANT was born at Kdnigsberg in 1724. He there went through the University course. Af. ter having been for some time a tutor in private fam. ilies, he attained to the chair of logic and metaphysics, and afterwards the rectorship in his University. There is nothing striking inthe external events and circumstances of his history; his life was in a sort altogether internal. He died in 1804.'The most celebrated of his works is his Critique of Pure Rea. son, which he published in 1781, and in which he laid down the principles of the philosophical reformation he had undertaken to establish. IHe devel. oped and applied these principles in numerous other writings, among which may be named, the Prolegonm. ena to Metaphysics, Critique of Practical Reason, Critique of Judgment, Metaphysical Principles of the Science of Right, and an Essay on Anthopology. Exposition. Setting out with the principles of the empirical philosophy, Hurne had shaken the foundations of hu. man knowledge. Kant demanded if it were true, as that philosopher took for granted, that human knowl.. edge is composed solely of elements furnished by experience, if there were not, on the contrary, notions 100 MODERN PHILOSOPHY. independent of sensation, and produced by the under. standing alone. He noticed, in the first place, that the mathematical sciences imply notions of this kind. The judgment by which we pronounce the radii of a circle equal is not founded upon experience; for this judgment affirms something necessary, while experience gives us nothing but simply facts; it affirms something universal, while experience gives us nothing but particular facts. Besides empirical cognitions or knowledge a posteriori, there exists, then, cognitions ad priori, originally distinct from any sensible element. Struck with the character of the mathe. matical principles, Kant afterward inquired whether the entire system of cognitions did not rest upon judgments marked with the same character, and, in that case, what is the source of those judgments, and what are the conditions and limits of their legitimate application. He attempted to determine in the most precise manner the fundamental problem of the human mind, by considering that there were two sorts of judg ments. In the one the attribute or predicate is con. tained in the subject, as, for example, The infinitely perfect Being is good. Such judgments do nothing but develop a notion without adding to it any other notions, and in this sense they do not enlarge the circle of our knowledge. Kant gave them the name of analytical judgments. But there are other judgments where the attribute is not contained in the subject, as, for example, Every phenomenon has a principle or cause. The idea of principle or cause is not contain. ed in the simple notion of phenomenon. Such judg. ments increase our knowledge, in that they consist in the affirmation of something not comprised in the conception of the subject. Kant called them syn. thetic judgments. KANT. 101 Combining, then, the distinction of analytical and synthetic judgments with the distinction of knowledge d posteriori and knowledge a priori, he remark. ed, first, that all analytical judgments are d priori, since it is not necessary to have recourse to experience in order to affirm the relation of attribute to subject, when this relation is contained in the very conception of the subject. But, at the same time,-he believed he ascertained that of synthetic judgments some are d posteriori and others d priori. When I say, All bodies are heavy, I form a synthetic judgment d posteriori; the attribute heavy is not contained in the conception of the subject body; their rela. tion is furnished only by experience. But, on the contrary, this other synthetic judgment, Every phe. nomenon has a principle or a cause, is d priori, for experience gives only the simple phenomenon. This established, we see what, according to Kant, is the radical problem of the human mind. There is no difficulty in conceiving the possibility of syn. thetic judgments d posteriori, for this synthesis is only the expression of experience. Nor is it difficult to conceive that analytical judgments should be a priori, for they are only the expression of what is contained in the conception of the subject. But how to conceive the possibility of synthetic judgments d priori? In these judgments the relation of the attri. bute to the subject is neither given by the conception of the subject, as in analytical judgments d priori, nor by experience, as in synthetic judgments dposte. riori. Upon what foundation, then, do they rest? To solve this problem Kant undertook a general criti. cism of the grounds of human knowledge. His speculations are divided into three principal branches: criticism of theoretical reason; criticism of prac. tical reason; and, lastly, criticism of a third mode 102 MODERPN PHILOSOPHY. of reas In, whose office it is to establish the alliance of the theoretical and practical reason. Criticism of the Theoretical Reason. The mind is affected by impressions, which may be designated by the general name of sensations, be. cause, whatever be their cause, internal or external, they are perceived by man in as far as he Is a sensitive being. They produce in the mind a iepresentation which may be called intuition. The aptitude of the mind to be affected by them is called receptivity. In the sensibility or receptivity it is necessary to distinguish between the matter and the form. The clements furnished by experience are the matter. But these elements all fall within the framework of the notions of time and space. These notions are not given by experience, for we can suppose all the objects of sensation may be annihilated; on that supposition the notions of time and space are still more the less inherent in the mind. These notions d pri. ori are then the forms of the receptivity. But the simple sensibility which receives intuitions does not suffice to produce ideas, for an intuition and an idea are different things. When I see a house, I receive at first a variety of impressions corresponding to the different parts of the object per. ceived; but the idea of the house is not formed until the mind has combined these intuitions in the unity of consciousness. The formation of ideas supposes, then, in addition to the passive receptivity, an active intervention of the understanding, which may be des. ignated by the term spontaneity. But this is only the first act of cognition. After having united intuitions in order to form ideas, the understanding also recalls the idea of unity in order to produce judgments. Ideas are the matter of judg KANT. 103 ments; but, besides the matter of judgments,, there are also the forms which constitute them by being applied to the matter. All judgments are referable: Either to quantity: judgments are then either individual, or particular, or universal; Or to quality: judgments are then either affirmative, or negative, or limitative; Or to relation: judgments are then either cate. gorical, or hypothetical, or disjunctive; Or to modality: to which belong judgments prob. lematical, assertory, and necessary. The four fundamental modes of judgments give the following categories: ( Unity. Quantity... Plurality. Universality. Reality. Quality... Negation. Limitation. i Substance and accident. Relation... Causality and dependance. ( Action and reaction. Possibility, impossibility. Modality... Existence, non-existence. Necessity, contingence. All notions fall within the fiamework of these cat. egories, as all intuitions fall under the notions of time and space. These categories are not furnished by experience; they are the universal and neces. sary laws of the understanding. They are its forms. as time and space are the forms of the sensibility. The production of judgments corresponds to the production of ideas. Just as intuitions are the mat. ter of ideas, ideas are the matter of judgments. The spontaneity of the understanding reduces intuitions to unity, under the d priori conditions of time and space, expressed by the categories. But human knowledge implies still an ulterior uni. 101 MODERN PHILOSOPHY. ty. The judgments are in their turn brought to uni. ty. The act which produces this unity is reasoning, the faculty which operates in reasoning is called rea. son, to distinguish it from the understanding, inas. much as the latter word is relative solely to the for. mation of judgments and ideas. In all reasoning the conclusion depends on the premises: the letter contain the particular condition of the former. But if the premises themselves have particular conditions, they are nothing but conclu. sions, for which premises must be sought until we arrive at the totality of conditions, that is, to the absolute condition. The office of reason is therefore to seek for that condition, to establish the greatest possible unity of judgments. Now, as there are three general forms of reasoning, the categorical, hypothet. ical, and disjunctive, there are three ideas, which establish for each form of reasoning the absolute con. dition of unity. Reasoning is categorical when the understanding furnishes to the reason judgments in which the attri. bute is considered as residing in the subject. Reason should, then, seek for the idea of a subject which does not itself reside in any other: this idea is the idea of substance. Reasoning is hypothetical when the attribute of judgments is united to a subject only in virtue of a par ticular supposition. Reason should seek, then, for an absolute hypothesis; and as no particular phenome. non can give it, this absolute hypothesis is perhaps only the absolute totality of all phenomena, that is, the idea of the whole series of facts which compose the universe. Finally, reasoning is disjunctive when it refers to judgments where the predicate is united to the sub. ject as a part of a whole. But a whole can itself be KANT. 105 only a part of a larger whole, and thus an till we come to an absolute whole, which allows of making a complete or absolute division of all the parts. Rea. son, in order to work out this division, must there. fore seek for the idea of a being which comprehends all existences, or the idea of the Supreme Being. Now experience can furnish neither of these three radical ideas, on which depends in the last analysis the unity of judgments, which is the aim of reason. It cannot furnish the ontological idea of substance. for experience corresponds only to phenomena. It cannot furnish the cosmological idea of the absolute totality of phenomena; for, however large the num. ber of facts observed, the number is limited, and represents nothing absolute. Lastly, it cannot give the theological idea of the being that contains all existences, since particular existences are the sole objects of experience. Consequently, the notions by which reason con. stitutes the unity of judgments are ad priori, as also the notions by means of' which the understanding constitutes the unity of ideas, as also the notions bv means of which it brings intuitions to unity. Reason, considered with respect to the notions which are its forms, is pure reason. From these principles Kant concluded: 1. That human knowledge, taken in general, is composed of two elements, the empirical or a poste. riori element, and the a priori element, which is de. rived from the intelligence. If the intelligence did not apply its forms to the intuitions produced by sen sation, the intuitions would never become cognitions. But without the intuitions, without the data of expe. rienee, the forms of the intelligence would be empty forms, they would be inapplicable, they would be without employment. II.-9 106 MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 2. That all the notions of the pure reason are des. titute of objective reality, or, rather, that we have nc right to attribute to them such a reality, because reason does not operate upon the intuitions, but only upon the forms of the judgments which the under. standing has produced. 3. That we make an illegitimate use of reason when, attributing to these notions an objective reali ty, we would thereby apprehend existences which are not contained in the sphere of the sensible world. We would go beyond the limits of human knowledge, which are just the limits of experience. 4. That we equally violate the laws of the human mind when, instead of using the notions of reason solely to systematize our judgments, we would apply them immediately to the data of experience. This abuse produces the antinomies, that is, series of judgments which terminate in contradictory results: an. tinomies, which should apprize us that the attempt from which they result is radically vicious. 5. Lastly, that what we call the laws of nature are nothing put the laws of our own intelligence, which imposes them upon nature, or, in other words, that the order which we attribute to things is at bot. tom only the order of our perceptions, determined by the constituent forms of our intelligence. This system evidently conducts to consequences destructive of religion. If, in fact, all human cogni, tions are contained within the circle of experience, the ideas of God, of the future life, and all thos which flow therefrom, are ideas without real validity. Kant admitted that this consequence was an inevita. ble corollary of his criticism of the speculative rea. son; but he distinguished in man another reason, which he called practical, and which gave, according to him, a solid foundation for beliefs, which the spec. ulative reason was unable to establish. KANT. 107 Critzcism of the Practical Reason. Tlie object of speculative reason is the resolution of this question: What can I know? But man also asks another question: What ought I to do? In as far as it goes to solve this question, reason is practical: it seeks the determining principles of the will; and, as reason necessarily tends to unity, it seeks here also an absolute principle. Among the determining principles of the will should be distinguished, as in the theoretical principles, two elements, the one material, the other formal. The material element is composed of all the motives which act upon the sensibility, all the motives of enjoyment; the formal element comprehends disinterested motives, or motives relative, not to the sensibility, but to the pure reason. The first contain nothing universal and necessary; the second alone can furnish the absolute principle of determination. Now, as soon as sensible motives are put aside, no. thing can be conceived as the principle of determi. nation but that rule which alone is absolute, or independent of every particular condition: Act according to a maxim which would admit of being regarded as a general law for all acting beings. This Kant calls the categorical imperative. But this absolute principle of the practical reason is bound up with three theoretical principles or pos. tulates, without which it could not be conceived: the postulate of frQedom, the postulate of the immortality of the soul, the postulate of the existence of God. 1. If man be not free, he could attribute his de. terminations only to his propensities, that is, to that which corresponds to the sensibility: therefore the absolute princirtle,c the practical reason implies lib. erty. t10 MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 2. The principle of the practical reason, as an ab. solute rule, commands man to establish a perfect har. mony between his intentions and the moral law; a harmony which constitutes holiness, or the ideal of virtue. Man should therefore tend towards this ideal; but its complete realization is not possible, because man is subject to the conditions of the sensibility, which relate not to the idetl of virtue, but to the empiricism of enjoyment. It is necessary, there. fore, that man should. strive to approach this ideal by a perpetual progress, and the possibility of this indef. inite progress supposes the immortality of the soul. 3. Virtue is the supreme end. If happiness by itself were the supreme end, reasonable beings would not have had the faculty of self-determination; instinct would have sufficed. But, on the other hand, they are also formed with an invincible desire of hap piness. Now the harmony of virtue and of happi. ness cannot be established by man, because man, free in respect of his will, is dependant upon nature in respect of happiness, and nature itself does not accomplish this necessary harmony. Its realization therefore supposes a cause independent of nature, who both can and wills to produce this harmony, who is consequently endowed with intelligence and will. This sovereign cause is God. The ideas of freedom, of immortality, of the existence of God, have, according to Kant, as postu. lates of the practical reason, an objective validity, which they cannot obtain from the theoretical reason. The practical reason, determining actions, commands real effects; now it would be absurd that real effects should be produced by principles which were not themselves real. KANT. 109 Criticism of the Judgment. The theoretical reason furnishes the laws of na. ture, the practical reason furnishes the laws of free. dom. They have both their peculiar principles, which would remain constantly separate without a particular faculty, by which man could apply to the world of nature the conceptions of the world of freedom. The principle according to which this faculty operates is the agreement or fitness of means to ends; an agreement which exists in the actions of free be. ings, and which we can transfer into the actions of nature by conceiving the union of nature with the freedom which acts in it and by it. The faculty which serves as the bond between the speculative and the practical sphere is called by Kant the faculty of Judgment. This denomination has some inconveniences, because it is employed in a different sense in the criticism of the theoretical reason. Leaving this out of view, however, the faculty of judging (as now conceived) has two modes. When it considers the concurrence of means in the forms of things in such a way as to produce a sentiment of pleasure, it is esthetical; when it considers this concurrence under a purely logical point of view, in order to obtain the simple knowledge of things, with. out any regard to the sentiment of pleasure, it is te. leological. The criticism of the esthetic judgment is the the. ory of the beautiful and sublime. Both are purely subjective. The beautiful is the consciousness of being able easily to bring a variety, which the imagination represents to us, to one idea of the understanding: it is the sentiment of the harmony which exists between these two faculties. As this sentiment II. — 110 MODERN PHILOSOPHY. is the sentiment of our own power, it is accompanied with satisfaction. The sublime, on the contrary, is the consciousness of our inability to embrace by the imagination ideas which the reason presents to us. The sentiment of this disproportion is accompanied with a kind of sadness, because it apprizes us in one relation of our weakness; but in another relation it exalts us, because we feel ourselves superior by our reason to the world of sensible things. The,criticism of the teleological judgment contains the theory of nature, according to the principle of final causes, or the relation of means to ends, appli ed not to the forms, but to the constitution of things It considers beings as organized to attain certain particular ends, and each special organization as a dependance of a general organization of nature, in which particular ends are only the means of a su. preme and universal end. Here the criticism of the teleological judgment results in the religious ideas, of which the practical reason had demonstrated the re. ality. Observations. In order to a right apprehension of the character of the philosophy of Kant, it should be compared with the three great schools founded by Descartes, Bacon, and Leibnitz. 1. Like Descartes, Kant made psychology the ba. sis of philosophy. But Descartes, after having at the outset concentrated his mind upon the contemplation of the thinking me, attempted immediately to pass outward, and by the notion of God to connect the speculations of reason with an external reality, the source of all reality. Kant, on the contrary, fundamentally destroyed all relation between specu. lation and external realities; he confined himself KANT. 111 within an order of ideas purely subjective, from whence he could not come out, even by his theory of practical reason, but by doing violence to the princi. pies established in his theory of speculative reason. By attributing to the practical reason a validity which he denied to the speculative, he fell into a radical in. consistency, since the practical reason had its basis necessarily in ideas borrowed from the speculative reason. 2. The philosophy of Kant, while fundamentally separated from the sensualism of the school of Bacon, came near to it, nevertheless, in its consequen. ces. Three sorts of sensualism may be distinguished. There is a sensualism which maintains at once sensation as the sole principle of knowledge, and the sensible world as the sole sphere in which the intelli. gence can exercise itself. This is complete sensual. ism. There is another sensualism, which, while set. ting out from sensation, pretends to deducefrom it the knowledge of realities distinct from sensible ob. jects. Lastly, there are theories sensualist in their results, in the sense that they deny to man the pos. sibility of knowing realities lying beyond the senses, though they admit, in the formation of human knowl. edge, a principle distinct from sensation, but which can apply itself only to elements furnished by sensa. tion itself. Such is the foundation of the doctrine of Kant, although he attempted to escape this result in the practical sphere by the inconsistency that has just been noticed. 3. The idealist tendency of the philosophy of Leib. nitz is evidently reproduced in the theories of Kant. According to Leibnitz, the knowledge of nature an:d its laws is produced by the purely internal development of the soul. Accord;ng to Kant, the soul imposes upon nature its own laws. But Leibnitz ad. 112. MODERN PHILOSOPHY. mnitted that the soul is representative of external re. ality: Kant denied this representation. On the one hand, all ideas d priori are merely simple forms of the intelligence; on the other hand, intuitions teach us nothing of the nature of things. All that man can affirm is that he is placed in a world of appearances, which he combines according to the laws of his reason. 4. The influence of the philosophy of Kant is due particularly to two causes. First, it had, as we have seen, its roots in the three great anterior philoso. phies; secondly, it pretended to supply their insufficiency by determining, from a complete criticism of the reason, which had been partially attempted by Descartes, the laws according to which the sensualist principle, represented by Bacon, and the idealist prin. ciple, represented by Leibnitz, should be combined without overpassing their respective limits. Continuation of the Philosophical Movement in Ger. many. While. many German writers defended, with Her. der, the empirical philosophy against Kantism, and while others, with Eberhard and Platner, maintained many of the Leibnitzian doctrines, Kantism provoked two opposite results: the one was a reaction, represented by.acobi; the other was a development, rep. resented by Reinhold, and, above all, by Fichte. JACOBI. FRED. HENRY JACOBI, who was born in 1743 and died in 1804, maintained that all rationalistic philos. ophy resulted either in pantheism if it was dogmatical, or in skepticism, at least in respect to everything connected with religious or moral truth, if it confined itself within the limits of criticism as establish. FICHTE. 113 ed by Kant. Instead of taking reason as the basis of human knowledge, he substituted sentiment, which reveals to us in an immediate manner, instinctive and independent of all rational conception, both the sen. sible world and the moral and religious world. Sen. timent, which is originally a pure belief, destitute of all proof, produces in its development all the elements of which human reason is composed. On the other hand, Leonard Reinhold (born in 1759, died in 1825) pretended to complete the work of Kant, and believed he had given him the uni-J which he was accused of wanting, by reducing all parts of his system to a single principle, conscious. ness considered as the representative faculty. He devoted himself particularly to describing the char. acteristics of this fundamental faculty. FICHTE. BUT it was chiefly Fichte who developed the Kant. ian philosophy. JOHN THEOPHILUS FICHTE, born in Lusatia in 1762, succeeded Reinhold in the philo. sophical chair at Jena, afterward professed the trans. cendental philosophy at Erlangen, and was finally appointed rector of the University of Berlin. He died in 1814. The substance of his philosophy is contained in his work on the Fundamental Principles of all Scientific Doctrine. Exposition. Kant had attempted to avoid absolute idealism by admitting that sensible intuitions correspond to ex. ternal realities. Jacobi saw in this only an incon. sistency, and predicted that Kantism would resolve itself into pure idealism. And, in point of fact, why was it that Kant refused to the conceptions of reason 114 MODERN PHIItOSOPHY. an objective validity? It was because this validity could not be demonstrated. But it is equally impos. sible to demonstrate the objective validity of sensi. ble intuitions. They must, then, needs come to be considered likewise as simple subjective phenomena. Such was the point of view taken by Fichte. Accordingly, he held all realities to be only creations of the thinking principle, and all existence only thought itself. In separating the fundamental conceptions of Fichte from the logical circumlocutions in which he has enveloped them, and which involve them in great obscurity, we may, it seems to us, reduce his views to the following principles: 1. The me first posits itself in an absolute and unlimited manner by an act of pure free.will. 2. It is of the essence of the me to fall back upon itself in reflection. It is at once subject and object. 3. The me cannot thus posit itself without determining itself by the not-me. For the me as object must appear in a certain relation as not.me to the me as subject. 4. In determining itself by the not-me, the me arrests its own activity; it becomes limited and divisible. 5. Then springs up the faculty of feeling, which is only the faculty of perception, the limitation of the free activity of the me. 6. From hence are derived all our notions of a twofold reality,' of spirit and of the world, of freedom and of necessity. 7. The me, so far forth as will, recognises itself as independent of the universe and as acting upon it. So far forth as intelligence, it projects' itself as de. pendant upon the universe and dependant upon its action. FICHTE. 115 In his work on the Destination of Man, Fichte (telluces from his Doctrine of Science the necessity of belief or faith as the indispensable ground of all hu man activity. [The foregoing indications are so brief, that it is thought best to subjoin a few observations, less, however, in the expectation of rendering Fichte's views generally intelligible, than as due to a system so celebrated in the history of philosophy. Fichte's special object was to construct a system in which the matter and form of all science should be deduced from one and the same principle, and thus to solve the problem of the relation of ideas to their objects: a problem on which had always turn. ed the everlasting conflict between idealism and realism. He would thus give to philosophy the systematic unity, with the want of which the system of Kant had been reproached. Accordingly, he took for his starting-point a primitive act of the personal thinking self, from which he deduces consciousness itself, as well as all its phenomena. The popular philosophy assumes the reality of ex. ternal objects, and that the mind both acts upon them and is acted upon by them. But this leaves the essential contradiction between matter and spirit, and the possibility of this twofold action, unexplained. Fichte avoided the contradiction by making external or objective reality a mere limitation of the activity of the mind. The thinking principle posits itself as determined by the objective, and also as determin. ing the objective. Hence we have, as a fact of '116 MODERN PHILOSOPHY. consciousness, the conception of reality external to ourselves; but Fichte denies the veracity of consciousness; the conception is all the reality there is. When we conceive objects as external to ourselves, the mind merely removes a reality as out of itself, to transfer it as to something that is not itself. When we conceive external objects as acting upon our minds, it is merely the mind limiting its own activity, and positing the object as not ourselves, while in reality it is we ourselves that act, and not any real ob. jects out of ourselves. Everything is thus reduced to two different aspects of one and the same essential fact; sometimes we conceive the mind as active and objects as passive, sometimes the reverse. In order to find the ground of this self.limitation in the thinking principle, Fichte distinguishes between the thinking principle considered as activity and considered as intelligence. The absolute per. sonal self is an infinite free activity, containing in its essential nature the impulse to action, production, or creation; but the actions of an active principle, even of an infinite one, must of necessity be special determinations of its activity, that is, limited and finite. The absolute thinking principle, by this lim. itation, is evolved as intelligence; this limitation appears to the intelligence as the not.self opposed to the self, as the finite opposed to the infinite; and it constitutes all the objective reality there is. Thus the finite self or intelligence, and the world, are both equally demonstrated, indeed, because both are pro. ducts of the absolute active principle, the absolute self. Thus all contradiction between spirit and matter is removed on the system of Fichte, but it is only by the destruction of the latter. The chasm between the infinite and finite is also removed, but it is by FICHTE. 117 the absorption of the finite and of the infinite into consciousness, and of all into thought. All the reality in the universe is expressed in the single word I. Yet the whole system is built upon an assumption which is arbitrary and groundless; the absolute I of Fichte is contradictory and impossible. Besides, this primitive act of the thinking principle by which it absolutely posits itself, and the not-self as opposed to itself, is a fact not falling within the history of experience, and we are made to get it by a process which he calls intellectual intuition, which, in fact, is nothing but an hypothesis illegitimately imposed upon his theory. Fichte, after having thus destroyed by his speculative idealism the belief in the reality of an external world, and left nothing but a concatenation of purely phenomenal illusions, endeavoured in his moral system to ground the truths requisite for morality upon our belief in conscience. The principle of morals is ab. solute obedience to conscience, His ethics were of ascetic strictness. Faith in conscience requires us to believe in the existence of a spiritual world, and even of a sensible world, and also in the possibility of realizing the ideal prescribed by duty. God is merely the moral order of the universe, a conception to which the mind rises from the con. sciousness of duty. We need not conceive God as a distinct being by himself, intelligent and personal, and the cause of this moral order; and there are difficulties in the way of so conceiving him: by ascribing to him these attributes, we make him finite, like our. selves; and we have the notion of creation to ex. plain, which cannot rationally be done. The supreme good- is gained in the world of mor. 118 MODERN PHILOSOPHY. al order t-y virtue. The supreme good is not happi. ness, which does not and cannot exist. These views, unfolded in a paradoxical spirit, were considered a sort of atheism. They are inconsistent with all proper ideas of God; and, though Fichte did not admit this, yet he afterward renounced them. He varied his modes of expression, indeed, and even his doctrines, in his later writings. He had set out at first with the activity of the thinking principle; in the later form of his doctrine, he set out with the absolute existence of God as the sole reality and the sole life. In its first form, his doctrine was atheistical; in the second, pantheistical. The philosophy of Schelling seems to have contributed to this change of ideas.] Skeptical Reaction against Kant. Before complete idealism had been introduced by Fichte in the school of Kant, a skeptical reaction had been excited against Kantism. The philosophy of Kant had announced the pretension of establishing upon an immovable basis the structure of hu. man knowledge, and of sapping the foundations of skepticism. A philosopher (G. E. Schulze), under the name:2nesidemus, undertook to show, on the contrary, that it could do nothing but confirm the skeptical philosophy, because, after destroying the bases admitted by anterior systems, it substituted no. thing more solid in their place; and that the demon. strations with which it pretended to replace the gra. tuitous assertions of other philosophers, were them, selves at bottom only assertions equally devoid of proof. MODERN PIIILOSOPHlY. 119 [ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY IN THE PERIOD BETWEEN LOCKEZ AND REID. BEFORE proceeding to an exposition of the principles of the Scottish school, so called, of which the founder and chief representative is Reid, it seems proper to interpose, in addition to what has been said of Hume and Berkeley, some farther remarks on the progress of English philosophy in the interval be. tween Locke and Reid. It has already been seen how, in the seventeenth century, the moral consequences of Hobbes's empir. icism produced a reaction represented by Cudworth and others. The publication of Locke's Essay on the Understanding was followed by a rapid development of skepticism, materialism, and atheism. Opposition to his system was not, however, wanting; it was early assailed in behalf of religion by Henry Lee and John'Norris;. also by Bishops Stillingfleet and 3roawn; and its defects were pointed out by Shaftesoury, in his Letters of a Nobleman to a Young Man at the University. Among those who turned the principles of Hobbes and Locke against the received doctrines of religion and morals was William Coward, who wrote several treatises against the immateriality of the soul. He was combated by Turner and Brughton. The natural mortality of the soul was likewise maintained by Henry Dodwell. Anthony Collins, a friend and pupil of Locke, applied the principles of his master to skeptical and infidel conclusions, combating the freedom of man and the evidences of Christianity. Against these two latter, and particularly Collins, 120 MODERN PHILOSOPHY. numerous adversaries appeared, among the most em. inent of whom was the celebrated Dr. Samuel Clarke, who vigorously opposed the new doctrines of Hobbes and Locke. Maintaining a necessary harmony be. tween revealed religion and reason, he attempted to furnish a new demonstration of the Being and At. tributes of God. He held space and time to be at. tributes of a substance; and as they are necessarily conceived as infinite, so likewise must be the sub. ject of them. That infinite substance is God. He deduced the immortality of the soul from the idea of immaterial being. Systems of Disinterested Morals. But it was chiefly against the ethical system of Hobbes and Locke that the reaction of the English mind was directed. There arose a series of writers, who combated the selfish system with great ability, and maintained a disinterested morality, seeking at the same time to demonstrate the fundamental truths of morals, independently of revelation, by the method of psychological observation. They have shed great light upon the facts of man's moral constitution, and incidentally upon the origin of ideas and the mental faculties in general. These writers contributed very powerfully to check the progress of exclusive sensu. alism; to prevent such a development as it received in France; and to prepare the way for the more sys. tematic labours of Reid. But while these writers all agree in maintaining, in opposition to the selfish system, that our moral ideas cannot be resolved into sensations, and that the motive of moral action is disinterested, they diffei from each other as to the principle of morals. One class refers our moral ideas to a sentiment or instinct SHA FTESBURY. 121 which has its basis in a special faculty, termed sometimes the moral faculty, conscience, or, more strictly In conformity with their views, the moral sense. The other class refers our moral ideas to reason. To the first class belong Shaftesbury, Butler, and Hutcheson; to the second, Wollaston, Clarke, and Price. Intermediate between these is a class of writers who resolve our moral ideas into some form of in. stinctive sentiment, but not to a special moral sense of these are Hume and Adam Smith. Systems of the Moral Sense. Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of SHAFTESBURY, was born in 1671. Obliged by his delicate health to retire from public affairs, he devoted his leisure to philosophy and letters. He died in 1713. Shaftesbury was the first philosopher who profess. ed this system, and the first who introduced into the language of philosophy the term moral sense. He divided our desires into two distinct classes: benevolent or social, and personal affections. Affec. tions of the first class prompt us instinctively to love the happiness of others for its own sake. The approbation we feel for conduct conformed to the benev(;lent affections is distinct in its nature from anv reference to our own personal advantage. It is referable to the moral sense, which is a special faculty and a distinct part of our constitution, as much as our external senses are special faculties appropriated respectively to the apprehension of their special obiects. The office of the moral sense is to apprehend and approve moral good, and to feel obligation. The affections of our nature which are agreeable to this sense are, on that account, morally good; the con. trary, morally bad In our constitution, the moral II.-10 122 MODERN PHILOSOPHY. sense is superior to the outward senses; the benev. olent to the personal affections. Virtue consists in giving them this supremacy, in the actual predomi. nance of the former over the latter. Such is the system of Shaftesbury. The principle of our nature which distinguishes moral good and evil is a special instinct or sense, distinct from all other functions of the intelligence, whether sensation or reason; distinct also from the benevolent affections, which are the objects of its approval, and from the personal affections, which it subordinates to the benevolent affections. JOSEPH BUTLER was born in 1692. Ile studied at Oxford; was preacher at the Rolls, and clerk of the closet to Queen Caroline; made Bishop of Bristol in 1738, of Durham in 1750. He died in 1752. His Fifteen Sermons were published in 1726; his Analogy in 1736. His moral system is contained chiefly in the sermons. Without professedly adopting the theory of the moral sense, he contributed very powerfully to its development. His works contain the germes of some of the fundamental ideas afterward unfolded by Hutcheson. Butler, like Shaftesbury, divides our instinctive af. fections into personal and benevolent; but he was the first who recognised that both these classes of our instinctive affections are equally disinterested: fear, hunger, etc., are no more selfish than pity, sympathy, etc.; they equally seek their respective objects directly, and without seeking anything be. yond. Selfishness consists, not in the development of our personal instinctive affections, but in their be. ing made supreme by our reflection and consent. This distinction between the objects of our in. HUTCHESON. 123 stinctive affections, and the agreeable or disagreeable feelings attending their satisfaction or disappoint. ment, is the eminent original merit of Butler. But, besides the instinctive affections both person. al and benevolent, Butler recognises a superior principle, whose office it is to distinguish moral good and evil. This principle he calls conscience. In virtue of it we judge of our dispositions and affections, and feel the sentiment of obligation. Its perceptions are instinctive and immediate. Its authority is supreme. Moral good is that which conscience apprehends as such; the motive for doing it is that conscience so com mands. Butler does not precisely define the nature of con. science, and leaves it doubtful whether he considered it a sense or a rational faculty. He does not, however, explicitly declare the judgment of moral actions and the perception of obligation to be one of the functions of reason or intelligence in general; and on this account, as well as that his leading ideas have all been adopted by the sentimental moralists who followed him, he is classed among those who more expressly taught the system of the moral sense. FRANCIS HUTCHESON was born in Ireland in 1694; studied at Glasgow; returned to Dublin, where he resided for some years as a Dissenting preacher and head of an academy; became professor of philoso phy at Glasgow in 1729, where he died in 1747. His earliest work was an " Inquiry into our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue;" his last, a " System of Moral Philosophy," was published after his death by his son in 1755. From Hutcheson the system indicated by Shaftes. bury and Butler received a full development. He likewi.e divides our affections into personal and be. 124 MODERN PHII OSOPHY. nevolent; those which seek our own good, and those which seek the good of others. But the point which he particularly labours in the first place to illustrate is that we desire the happiness of others directly for its own sake, so that benevolence can no more be explained by selfishness than selfishness by benevolence. Benevolence is a simple original impulse, not to be resolved into any other any more than self.love. But, distinct from self-love and benevolence, there is a third affection of our nature, the moral senti. ment. The idea of moral good is distinct both from that of our own good and from that of another's good: it cannot be explained by them; it is primi. tive and simple. As the idea of moral good is simple, he concludes that the quality represented by it must be perceived by some sense, because all other simple qualities are perceived by particular senses; and that the sense must be a peculiar and distinct sense, because the quality it perceives is distinct from all others. This point, that the moral faculty is an internal sense, and not reason exercised in irelation to certain objects, Hutcheson takes great pains to prove. He therefore confirms the foregoing argument by two considerations, namely, that the perception of moral goodness produces pleasure, and that it appears to us a motive of' action. This pleasure is a result of the quality perceived, and therefore moral goodness cannot be resolved into the pleasure, any more than the quality of beauty can be resolved into the pleasure which accompanies the perception of it; a perception which Hutcheson also attributes to a special in. ternal sense. The moral sense is the supreme prin. ciple. The reality and supremacy of this principle being established, he next determines what are the dispo, HUME'S ETHICAL SYSTEM. 125 sitions of the soul in which reside the quality of moral goodness perceived by the moral sense. These are only the benevolent or disinterested affections. The personal affections which regard our own hap. piness may be innocent, when in subordination are so, but are not virtuous. The moral sense, not only perceiving moral qualities, but experiencing likewise pleasure and the de. sires connected therewith, becomes the motive of moral action. The office of reason is reduced to that of devising means to attain the ends which our senses make known and to which our desires im. pel us. Modifications of the System of Moral Sense. There were other philosophers, who, while agree. ing in the general views of the advocates of disinterested morality just expounded, that the words right and wrong express certain qualities in actions which it is the province, not of reason, but of feeling, to per. ceive, and that by this principle we are impelled to moral action instinctively, and therefore not by a view to our own personal pleasure or advantage, yet differed from Hutcheson and his predecessors by denying the moral sense as a special distinct faculty,. and by analyzing it into other more general princi. ples. Of these it will be sufficient to mention Hume and Adam Smith. HU-ME resolves our moral ideas into a feeling of approbation or disapprobation. The moral quality of goodness, or that which excites our approbation, is utility; not merely personal, but general utility. This leaves room to consider the personal affections as good when subordinated to the benevolent affec. tions. We approve or disapprove useful or hurtful 126 MODERN PHIILOSOPHY. actions by an instinct of our nature, which needs and can receive no explanation any more than our like or dislik, of sweet or bitter. This constitution of our nature, by which we approve of utility in the general, is what men call conscience; Hume calls it humanity. It is quite distinct from the selfish impulse, to which it is frequently allied. Good and evil, virtue and vice, are merely relative to our constitution. They have no objective reality no absolute and immutable character. But the most celebrated of all the theories of dis. interested morality, grounded in instinct or sentiment, is that of ADAM SMITH, contained in his Theory of the Moral Sentiments. Adam Smith was born at Kirkaldy, in Scotland, in 1723. He was educated at Glasgow and at Oxford; elected professor of logic in the University of Glasgow in 1751, of moral phi, losophy the year following; published his Theory of. Moral Sentiments in 1759; resigned his professor ahip in 1763; passed the last years of his life at Ed. inburgh, where he died in 1790. His celebrate0 Wealth of Nations appeared in 1771. He was one of the most original thinkers that have ever written in the English language. He was the founder oJ the science of political economy; and his work on morals is no less distinguished for its originality, in genuity, and comprehensiveness; containing such a rich collection of the most important facts, that. notwithstanding his erroneous conclusions, it is a work of the greatest value to the student of human nature. Only a brief sketch of his system can here be given. The principle of morals is with him sympathy or fellow-feeling. This is a principle deeply implanted in human nature. It disposes us to enter into the ADAM SMIIT. 127 feelings of others; it increases the strength of our feelings when shared by others; it begets in us a strong desire that our own feelings should be shared by others. This principle likewise manifests itself' in, or contains the explanation of antipathies. It is governed by various laws, which are acutely described and established by Smith. So much for the principle of sympathy in general, which Smith has employed for the explanation of a vast variety of facts of human nature. He applies this principle to the explanation of moral phenomena in the following way: We approve the sentiments of our fellow-men when we share them or instinctively sympathize with them; we disapprove when we do not share them; and in both cases in proportion to the degree of our instinctive sympathy or antipathy. In like manner we approve or disapprove their actions, according as we do or do not sympathize with the sentiments from which they spring. The measure of moral good, or rectitude, or, as Smith terms it, propriety, is this in. stinctive sympathy. In this way we judge of' the conduct of our fellow-men. Our moral judgments of our own conduct are only applications to our sentiments and actions of judgments we have already passed with respect to our fellow-men. We thus become, in a sort, spectators of our own dispositions and actions, and instinctively sympathize with them or feel repugnant to them, as though they were the dispositions and actions of other men.-Sympathy, however, being the sole root of moral judgment, and primarily excited towards oth. ers, it followers that, if man should live alone, he would have no moral feelings or judgments. From this twofold application of the principle of sympathy we get the most general and fundamental 128 MODERN PHILOSOPHY principle of morality: the goodness of an action is in direct proportion to the general approbation or sym. pathy it excites, the best actions exciting universal and unmingled sympathy. From hence, too, the fundamental maxim of morals: act so that mankind may sympathize with you Experience enables us to learn the feelings awa. kencd by sentiments and conduct; and the facts of experience generalized furnish. the various particular rules of' conduct which constitute practical ethics. We act from duty (in distinction from the im. mediate instinct of sympathy) when we act in conformity with these rules. The fundamental phenomenon of moral distinctions being thus explained, the secondary phenomena are all easily explained in a corresponding way. The sentiment of merit and demerit is awakened first in relation to others; it is compounded of indirect sym. pathy with the person to whom the action is beneficial or injurious, and of a direct sympathy or antipathy towards the affections and motives of the agent. Self approbation and remorse, with respect to our own disposition and conduct, are explained in like manner, through our power of constructing ourselves as spectators of ourselves, and thus experiencing the pleasurable or painful sympathy excited by proper or improper dispositions. Actions, which, by the instinctive principle of sym. pathy, are decided to be proper (right) and merito. rious, and which by experience we are enabled to generalize under rules of conduct, are also the subject of a rational judgment of approbation in mature and cultivated minds, who are able to perceive the harmony between the instinct and the rules of expe. rience, and also to perceive the tendency of such ac. ADAM SMITH. 129 tions to bring the sentiments of all men into harmo. ny, and promote the perfection of order. This order and harmony is felt to be beautiful. It is moral beauty, the source of all beauty, and produces a pleasure like that of a perfect piece of mechanism. This harmony of sentiment among men is the great end of our moral constitution. It is a strict consequence of the system of Smith, that whatever others approve and praise will appear to us good, and what they blame will appear to us bad; and that the rule of conduct is the approbation of our fellow-men. The instinctive desire of sympathy is the motive of all virtue, of all right conduct; a motive that sometimes operates directly, and sometimes indirectly, by the rules generalized from experience, but al. ways to the exclusion of other motives. Yet Smith confesses in many cases a good act will not always secure the sympathy and praise of men; that a virtuous man may sometimes have to brave the dislike of his fellows, and even the whole spirit of his age. To reconcile this with his system, he ap. peals to the judgment of a supposed impartial specta. tor, free from the passions and prejudices which per. vert the sympathies of particular men or communi. ties. But this impartial spectator is obviously but an abstract spectator, and is, in fact, nothing but the absolute and immutable judgment of that very reason or conscience which Smith repudiates, and to which he has, by his system, no right to appeal. ry a similar sophism of clandestine introduction of another principle, he endeavours to avoid the consequences of making the desire of praise the motive of virtue, by sliding from the idea of the desire of praise into that of being praiseworthy: a distinction 11.-11 130 MODERN PHII OSOPHY. which he cannot legitimately make, since it implies a standard not allowed in his system. The instinctive systems of morals weie animated by two different feelings: on the one hand, a dislike to the selfish system, and on the other, to the ration. al system. In Shaftesbury and Butler the predominant sentiment is opposition to the selfish system of Hobbes and Locke. They seem to have had no hostility to the rational system; Butler, indeed, as has been seen, leaves it doubtful whether by conscience, or the moral faculty, he meant anything more than a peculiar application of reason. Hutcheson and Hume, on the contrary, explicitly oppose the ration. al system. They no less distinctly deny reason to be the principle of moral ideas, than sensation in the meaning of the selfish school. Rational Systems. Of the rational systems, the characteristic common to them all is that of finding the origin of our moral ideas and judgments in reason. They take this ground in order to establish the absolute and immu. table nature of moral distinctions both against the selfish system and against the systems of sentiment. They agree with the latter in asserting the disinterested character of moral motives; but they object against them that they make right and wrong relative to a contingent and fluctuating principle, and destroy their objective reality Of those who held to the rational systems, some attempt to define the idea of good; others regard it as simple and undefinable. To the former class belong Wollaston and Clarke; to the latter, Price. WILLIAM WOLLASTON was born in 1659; educated WOLLASTON. 131 at Cambridge; was a teacher in Birmingham school until 1688, when, an ample fortune falling to him, he settled in London, and passed his life in studious re. tirement. He died in 1724. Of his writings, the best known is his Religion of Nature Delineated, in which his moral system is stated. According to Wollaston, good is truth; and the fundamental law of action is to conform our conduct to truth. Every action which denies a true proposition is bad. A true proposition may be denied by omission as well as by commission. The nature of moral evil being thus determined, and good being the opposite of evil, the nature of good is likewise determined, and, consequently, the nature of actions, whether good, bad, or indifferent. A good action is one whose omission or whose oppo. site would be bad, that is, contradictory to the truth. As truth and falsehood are in their nature immutable, so likewise are moral good and evil. Such is the system of Wollaston, who thus seeks to define the idea of good. It is obvious to remark upon it: 1. That ft mistakes one of the aspects or qualities of moral good for its essence: every- good action does indeed contain the practical expression of a true proposition; but every true proposition, when expressed in action, does not involve the qual. ity of moral good. 2. It confounds good and evil by its too comprehensive definition, for there is no bad action which does not contain some true propositions. 3. Many actions may imply the denial of true propositions, and therefore be absurd, while in a moral view indifferent. 4. This system is not in accordance with facts of consciousness; when we abstain from doing a wrong act, our motive is not the fear of contradicting a true proposition. 132 MODERN PIIILOSOPHY. SAMUEL' CLARKE was born in 1675; educated at Cambridge, and became a clergyman of the Estab. lished Cnurch. He published a great number of writings in theology, mathematics, metaphysics, and classical literature. He was the friend of Newton, some of' whose works he translated and commented upon. He distinguished himself as a controversial writer, particularly against Leibnitz. He died in 1724. Clarke seeks, as well as Wollaston, to define the nature of moral good. He sets out with the ques. tion concerning the motive of obligation, and brings out his idea of the nature of good in that connexion. He took this method because he was opposing the system of Hobbes, who made self-interest the fbund. ation of duty. He examines and rejects all the forms in which the selfish theory is presented, and then propounds his own system, which is as follows: All things in the universe have their proper nature, derived fiom God. According to the respective na. tures of things arise various relations. As the essence of things is immutable, so are their relations. These relations constitute universal order. These relations are conceived by reason; they are conceived as the laws of things; and reason immedi. ately concludes that they should be respected by ra. tional and free beings. Hence, from the perception of relations arises the idea of obligation. When actions are conformed to these relations, they are good; when contrary, bad. Thus he arrives at the idea of the nature of good in itself, namely, order. There is an essential agreement between order and reason. Reason recognises good as order, and there. upon immediately arises the conviction of obligation. The relations of things are not, the product of the mere arbitrary will of' G(od. PRICE. 133 This is the same system that was afterward main. tained by Montesquieu. It is liable to the same gen. eral objections as that of'Wollaston. It is too corn. prehensive; it mistakes ideas which are related to the idea of good for the essence of good: a good action is certainly conformable to the nature and relations of things; but not every action conformed to the nature of things is morally good; many are morally indifferent. RICHARD PRIcE was born in 1723. He was a Dissenting minister at Hackney. He wrote largely upon political subjects, in a democratic spirit. His moral system is contained in his Review of the Principal Questions and Difficulties in Morals. He died in 1791. As a moral philosopher, he maintained substantially the same system as that adopted by Cudworth, the principal difference being that the views of the latter received a particular fbrm of development, as against the selfish system of Hobbes, while those of Price were expounded chiefly in opposition to the system of Hutcheson. He was a thinker of admirable penetration and sagacity, and contributed very much not only to the support of dis. interested morals, but to resist the progress of the sensual system in general. Ilutcheson had taught that our ideas of good and evil are simple and original; as such, necessarily de. rived from a sense. From this it would follow, in strictness, that our ideas of good and evil do not designate real qualities of actions, but only the sensations which they produce in us, and therefore are as much relative to us as sweet and bitter. This conclusion Price perceived; he saw that the conse. quence of' Hutcheson's system was not substantially II. 134 MODERN PHILOSOPHY. different in this respect from that of the selfish sys. tem; for the selfish system makes the good and evil of an action relative merely to the pleasure or pain it produces. Hutcheson was led to his notion of a moral sense because, while, on the one hand, he wished to oppose the selfish system and to maintain disinterested morality, he yet, on the other hand, held the system of Locke, that all our simple ideas are derived from experience; he had, therefore, no way to avoid the moral consequences of Locke's system but to add to. the senses recognised by Locke a special sense, appropriated exclusively to the perception of moral objects, which he therefore termed the moral sense. In order, therefore, to establish a disinterested morality, and at the same time to establish that moral good and evil were not merely relative, but immutable and absolute, Price was led at the outset to attack the system of Locke. He therefore drew up a complete, simple, and beautiful demonstration of the insufficiency of the theory of Locke concerning the origin of ideas: a demonstration to which Reid, Stew. art, and succeeding writers have added nothing ori. ginal or material. He proved that there are ideas which cannot be resolved into experience, such as the ideas of cause, time, space, etc.; and as these ideas can neither be denied (as Hume attempted to do), nor resolved into experience in the sense of Locke, they must be admitted as simple primitive conceptions. If we admit them only as mere forms of the mind, as Kant afterward did, we fall into uni. versal skepticism. We have no alternative, there. fore, but to admit them as conceptions of real facts, as ideas which represent external realities, simply in. teiligible and not visible. These conceptions must therefore be referred to an exercise of the intelligence PRICE. 135 distinct from lhe empirical understanding which re. lates to the Sensible qualities of things; they must be referred to intuitive reason, which takes cognizance of invisible relations transcending all observa. tion and experience. Price therefore agrees with Hutcheson in consid. ering our ideas of good and evil as simple and prim. itive, and therefore derived from a faculty capable of giving them. Lie agrees with him in saying that we perceive good and evil in actions as we perceive extension and form in bodies. But here they part: Hutcheson concludes that these ideas can be only ideas of sensation, and therefore of a special (mor. al) sense, affected, as all sensibility, agreeably or dis. agreeably by the good or evil; Price denies this con. clusion, and attributes the ideas of good and evil to a source of simple and primitive ideas overlooked by fHutcheson-intuitive reason. Thus establishing the origin of our moral ideas in the a priori conceptions of reason, the relative and subjective character which they have in Hutcheson's system vanishes. Moral good and evil are immuta. bl,; they are what they are as necessarily and etern,y as a triangle or circle is what it is. Every t de moral judgment expresses absolute and eternal ath. Price asserts the idea of good to be simple, and herefore undefinable as much as any other simple juality. In this respect he differs from the other solders of the rational system, Wollaston and Clarke. In the way of direct proof that the idea of good is indefinable, of course nothing can be adduced beyond a simple appeal to consciousness, any more than in the case of whiteness, or any other simple notion. Indirectly he attempts to prove it, by reviewing the different definitions that have been given 136 MODERN PHILOSOPHY. both by rational and instinctive moralists. He shows that they are not definitions; that they are inade. quate; that they all presuppose the thing to be de. fined; that they are dangerous. Price recognises the fact that the contemplation of good. and evil actions produces a sentiment which we express in common language by calling them pleasing or displeasing, lovely or hateful, etc. But he makes a distinction which is original and peculiar to himself. This sentiment or affection is of two kinds, partly depending upon the constitutional sensibility of each individual, and partly independent of it, absolute, and attached to reason itself. Connected immediately with the idea of good is the idea of obligation, which springs up with it, rests upon it, and is equally immutable and absolute. This rational conception of obligation is the only motive of moral action. The conception of merit and demerit, that right doing deserves happiness, and evil doing punishment, is equally absolute, and springs up immediately upon the idea of good, and of obligation obeyed or violated. This rational conception is distinct from the fact that virtue is a source of pleasure, or that it is useful to society, and that vice is in both respects injurious: it is a necessary conception, independent of the consid. eration of the consequences of virtue and vice. Reason and free-will are indispensable conditions 9f moral action and accountability. Absolute virtue consists in freely and intelligently doing what is conformable to the moral law; practi cal virtue in doing what we believe to be conformable to it. Finite creatures are not absolutely exempt from mistake in moral any more than in other judgments. Guilt or innocence in regard to a mistake about duty are determined by the previous question whether the means of knowing were honestly used. HARTLEY. 137 Sensualism in England. But, while the advocates of a disinterested moral. ity were led, some of them, to repudiate altogether the empirical philosophy of Locke, and others, though continuing to hold his general theory of the origin of ideas, to reject its moral conclusions, the selfish system of morals was still maintained by others, and the empiricism of Locke was carried out to a comrn. p]ete system of materialism and fatalism. Of the names that occur in this connexion during the period now under review-the interval, namely, between Locke and Reid-the most noticeable is that of Hartley; to which, in respect to morals, may be added that of Abraham Tucker. DAVID HARTLEY was born in 1705; educated at Cambridge; practised medicine in Nottinghamshire and London; passed the latter part of his life at Bath, where he died in 1757. His Observations on Man were published in 1749. This work contains a system of physiology, psy. chology, morals, and theology. He grounds his whole theory of the operations of the mind upon the association of ideas, and that upon the hypothesis of vibrations of the nerves in an oscillating nervous ether. These vibrations are mechanically produced by the impression of outward objects upon the nerves, propagated in the medullary substance of the nerves and brain; and a connexion between our bodies and our souls is effected through the medium of a subtile elastic ether, of which whole process the result is the state of the mind called sensations or ideas. Different ideas may become associated from being pro. duced contemporaneously (which common condition of all the laws of association Hartley makes the sole 138 MODERN PHILOSOPHY. law), so that one idea or vibration will propagate itself to and reproduce another; though the proper ori. ginal cause of the latter, the external object, does not itself act at the time upon the nerves in reproducing its appropriate configurative vibration or idea. With this hypothesis of vibrations mechanically set in motion, and this one and only law of associa. tion, contemporaneousness, Hartley endeavoured to explain all the phenomena of consciousness. Ideas being with him nothing but certain determi. nate, configurative vibrations, it was a matter of course to find him analyzing Locke's theory of the origin of ideas into exclusive sensualism. Accordingly, he declares that " ideas of sensation are the elements of which all the others are compounded," and that he hopes to succeed in analyzing "all ideas of reflection and intellectual ideas into simple ideas of sensation;" and farther, that " reflection is not a distinct source [of ideas], as Mr. Locke makes it." Hartley thus proposed to perform for Locke's theory, by means of his principle of association, the same office that Condillac in another way attempted-to strip it, namely, of a needless and inconsistent appendage, by showing that all ideas of reflection, so called, were only sensations transformed. Hartley was not, however, a decided materialist, although his followers at a later period pretended-to simplify and perfect his theory by rejecting the notion of a thinking principle distinct from the body. Hartley allows that his theory is destructive of all the arguments" usually brought for the soul's imma. teriality from the subtilty of the internal senses and of the rational faculty," but at the same tinle acknowledges that " matter and motion," the only prin. ciples in his mechlanico-physiological theory of hu. man phenomena, "however subtly divided or rea. HARTLEY. 139 soned upon, yield nothing but matter and motion still." He therefore desires that "he may not in any way be interpreted so as to oppose the imma. teriality of the soul." From this it seems that he must consent to leave the mode of the connexion be. tween the brain and nerves and the soul, through the medium of his ether, inexplicable. But there are other conclusions concerning the soul, repugnant to consciousness and subversive of morals, which must necessarily follow, however they might be disclaimed by him. All the phenomena of the mind being merely sensations, or configurative vibrations mechanically pro. duced, the soul must be a mere passive theatre, in which the products of this blind mechanism are displayed. It is destitute of all distinct faculties, of all activities, whether spontaneous or voluntary, having no power to control, determine, or modify the associ. ations of ideas. The understanding, judgment, reason, imagination, and will, instead of actively concurring as determining or modifying causes of as. sociation, are merely its mechanical effects. This result Hartley expressly admits in respect to the human will, denying all freedom, all self-deter. mining power in man, and maintaining all volitions to be strictly necessary. But it is equally true of all other modes of human activity. In all human thinking, invention, and action, in science, art, and conduct, the human soul is merely the spectator of phenomena produced by an agent which itself knows nothing of what it is doing. We ourselves only fancy that we reason, love, and will. There is no intelligent activity in the universe except God, who is the grand contriver and prime mover of this mech. anism. And even the idea of God, as a rational and holy 140 MODERN PHILOSOPHY. will, is utterly inconceivable and inadmissible it Hartley's system. His theory admits of no idea of reason and free-will in man other than certain oie. chanical products of sensation; if these attributes be ascribed to God in this sense, we have no God properly speaking; and to suppose the mind to be in possession of different and higher ideas of these attributes as existing in God, would subvert his svstem. The pious and excellent author derived, however, no such conclusions. Though he holds the necessity of human actions, and analyzes all virtue into the love of happiness, yet his second volume, in which he reasons to the'common. conclusions concerning God and his attributes, is almost entirely independent of the conclusions of his first. He adopts, indeed, without seeming to be aware of the inconsistency, as grounding principles, ideas which, if the doctrines of his first volume be true, can have no existence except in the vibrations of his ether. ABRAHAM TUCKER, author of Edward Search's Light of Nature Pursued, 7 vols., 1768-1774, was an English gentleman of fortune, born in 1705, edu. cated at Oxford, and died in 1774. He adopted gen. erally the principles of Locke, which he employed chiefly in unfolding the mechanical proofs of the divine existence, and in his theory of morals. It is mainly in connexion with the latter that he is mentioned here as the author of a modification of the selfish system, which was afterward adopted and extended by Paley. Tucker cannot, indeed, be said to be the original author of it; for it is substantially the theory of Hartley, and before either of them, per. haps, of Law, bishop of Carlisle. According to this doctrine, our moral ideas are REID. 141 neitner referred to reason nor to a moral sense, nor any instinctive sentiment; they are merely the result of association, and are explained in the same way as the formation of avarice, or any other secondary affection. Money is at first desired for the agreeable things of which it is the means; but subsequently the agreeable feelings become associated with money itself, and it comes to be desired for itself, without immediate reference to the pleasures it procures. So certain dispositions and actions, call: ed moral, are atfirst approved or disapproved solely on account of their tendency to procure our pleas. ure or advantage; but in process of time we may come to associate the feelings of moral approbation and disapprobation with such dispositions and conduct, without reflecting on their tendency to procure our pleasure. In this way he contrived to elude the force of the arguments of Hutcheson and others against the fundamental principle of the selfish sys. tem, drawn from the undeniable fact of consciousness, that men do often judge and act in relation to moral objects instantaneously, and without any reference to their personal pleasure and advantage as the motive. He admits the fact, but denies that it was primitively so; and therefore maintains that all moral judgments and volitions originate at bottom in an interested personal motive.] THE SCOTTISH SCHOOL. REID. THE philosophy of Hobbes and the psychology of Locke had encountered resistance more or less powerful even in England. It was felt that sensualism 142 MODERN PHILOSOPHY. destroyed the principle of moral obligation, and that its true root must be sought elsewhere. Cumberland and Shaftesbury, in the seventeenth century, had pla. ced this principle in a sentiment of benevolence and of internal satisfaction. Hutcheson, in the eighteenth century, improving the theory of benevolent affections as the source of duties, had disengaged them fiom any interested motive. [Other theories bave also been noticed.] But this spiritualist reactioni was incomplete. It supposed, or left it to be supposed [except in the work of Price], that sensual. ism, unable to establish moral notions, might never. theless furnish the true basis of other orders of knowledge. Banished from the sanctuary of duty, it still reigned in the domain of speculation. But the reac. tion was soon generalized. Reid, who had been led by the objections of Hume to perceive the ultimate consequences of sensualism, attacked it not only as a false theory of morals, but as a false theory of the human mind. Historical iVotices. Thomas Reid was born at Glasgow in 1710. He was at first professor of philosophy at Aberdeen, where he had pursued his studies; but in 1763 he was called by the University of Glasgow to the chair of moral philosophy, which had just before been filled by Adam Smith. His philosophical theories are contained in a treatise published under the title of Es. says on the Powers of the Human Mind, which has been translated into French by Jouffroy. Reid had put out separately the part relative to the active and the part relative to the intellectual faculties; they were united into a single work by his disciple Du. gald Stewart. After the death of his master, Du. gald Stewart cultivated and enlarged the intellectual REID. 143 inheritance which Reid had left him. But this sec. ond representative of the Scottish school belongs, in respect to the greater part of his works, to the nine. teenth century. Exposition. All philosophy should rest upon the observation of the operations of the human mind, and, conse. quently, of the faculties which produce them. Thet vices of the method that proceeds upon hypotheses, and the uncertainty of that which proceeds upon analogy, make us feel the necessity of this experimental basis. The faculties of the human mind may be divided into two classes, the contemplative and the active faculties. The first relate to the understanding, the second to the will. But we must bear in mind that these powers do not work separately; the understanding intervenes in the operations of the will, and the will in the operations of the understanding. I. Intellectual or Contemplative Powers.-The in. tellectual faculties are commonly divided into simple apprehension, judgment, and reasoning. This classification is vicious: there are operations of the mind which do not belong to either of these. For example, consciousness, which makes me aware that I am thinking, is not simple apprehension, since the latter imports neither affirmation nor negatio n; nor is it judgment, which is said to rest upon the compar. ison of two ideas; for it is not in virtue of any such comparison that we affirm our thinking. Nor is this affirmation a product of reasoning. Renouncing the pretension of finding a strict and complete classification of the intellectual powers, Reid limits himself to enumerating those which he proposes to examine: they are: 1. The faculties 144 MODERN HlHILOSOPHY. which belong to our external senses; 2. Memory, 3. Conception; 4. The faculty of analyzing complex objects, and combining those that are simple; 5. Rea. soning; 6. Taste; 7. Moral perception; 8. Consciousness. In the faculties which belong to our senses, we must distinguish between the perception of external objects and the sensations which accompany it. Sen. sation is the feeling experienced by the mind at the presence of an external object; perception is the act by which I believe in the existence of that object. Perception is a pure belief, independent of all demonstration, and instinctively determined by the natural constitution of the human mind. Most philosophers have endeavoured to explain the fact of perception by saying that we do not perceive external objects themselves, but only their images present to our minds. Reid rejects this explanation: first, it is contrary to universal feeling; for all men, when they follow solely the impulse of their nature, believe they see the objects; secondly, this explana. tion gratuitously takes for granted the existence of images. To affirm their existence, they ground themselves upon the reason that a thing cannot act where it is not; from whence they conclude that the mind and external objects, not being in the same place, nor, consequently, immediately present to each other, there must exist an intermediate image. But Reid denies that in the fact of perception there is any action of the mind upon the object, or of the object upon the mind. For the rest, he undertakes not to substitute any explanation in the place of the one he rejects: perception is, in his view, an inexplica. ble fact, as the certainty of perceptions, that is,, the real existence of the qualities perceived, and of the subject called matter to which they belong, is in the REID. 145 philosophy of Reid a belief equally necessary and obscure. Memory implies a belief of the same nature, of which we can give no other reason than that it is an element in the constitution of our mind. Reid describes and examines the different theories that have been proposed respecting memory, and oarticularly those of Locke and Hume. These theories are a consequence of the hypothesis of inter. mediate images, as the means by which it has been,ttempted to explain perception. Conception, considered as being in general the dimple apprehension of any object, material or immnaterial, real or imaginary, implies in itself neither truth nor error. When we say that there are ideas, conceptions, true and false, we give to these expressions a sense which refers to an act of judgment, and not to pure conception. Reid describes the princi: pal characteristics of conception, and particularly its analogy with the representation of an object by paint. ing. But this analogy, true within certain limits, becomes a source of error if this comparison is trans. formed into an absolute similitude. Most philosophers have maintained that conception supposes, as well as perception and memory, two objects, the one interior and immediate, the other mediate and external; in a word, the image present to the mind, and the real object which produces the image. Reid here again attacks this opinion. On this occasion he refutes, though in a very feeble way, the theory of Plato concerning ideas. He considers, as one consequence of the distine tion between the internal and the external object, the opinion according to which conception is the measure of the possibility of things. Reid makes the observation that we can conceive a proiposition in two II.-12 !46 MODERN PHILOSOPHIIY. ways: first, by comprehending the signification of it; secondly, by judging that it is true. In the first case, it is false that conception is the measure of pos. sibility, since we perfectly comprehend the meaning of a contradictory and impossible proposition; in the second case, the maxim in question is still false, since it is a matter of experience that men pass op. posite judgments respecting the possibility or impossibility of things. After simple conception comes the power of forming general conceptions. They may be considered both in relation to the words which express them, and in themselves. And, first, how comes it that the greatest part of words are general words, while we perceive only individual existences? It should be observed, first, that there are but a very small number of individual ob. jects perceived by the generality of men. The most part of individual objects, being visible only to the men who reside in the localities where these objects exist, have proper names; common language ought, therefore, to be in great part composed of' general names. In the second place, we do not know objects in themselves, but only by their qualities or attributes, which being common to a certain number of individuals, can be expressed only by words general as them. selves. Finally, this multitude of general terms re. sults also from a want inherent in the human breast, which would be overwhelmed by the innumerable multitude of individual notions if it had not the faculty of classing them in genera and species, by means of terms which represent collections of things that have common attributes. If we consider general conceptions in themselves, we see three processes presiding over thbr forma. tion: the process of abstraction, by whic) a. suibject REID. 147 is resolved into its attributes; to each of which a special name is given; the process of generalization, by which we observe the qualities common to several subjects; the process of combination, by which we unite several attributes into one single abstract whole, which is represented by a particular denomination. The observations of Reid on the faculty of judgment contains his theory of common sense. The germe of this theory is found, as he himself has re. marked, in Father Buffier's Treatise of First Truths, and in several other writings. Common sense is the sound natural sense imparted to all men, in virtue of which they each and all spontaneously pass certain judgments, the evidence of which strikes all minds. Reason has two degrees: the one consists in judging of things evident in themselves, the other in deducing from those judgments consequences which were not evident in themselves. The first is the peculiar and the only function of common sense; from which it appears that common sense coincides in its whole extent with reason, and is only one of its degrees. This laid down, it is necessary to determine the judgments which are the product of common sense. These judgments should first be divided into two classes, according as they refer to contingent truths or to necessary truths. The judgments of common sense relating to con. tingent truths are, according to Reid, the following principles: 1. Everything which is attested to me by con. sciousness and the internal sense really exists. 2. The thoughts of which I am conscious are thoughts of a being whom I call I. 3. The things which memory distinctly recalls to me really hapirened. 148 MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 4. I am certain of my personal identity from the remotest period to which my memory can reach. 5. Objects which I perceive by the aid of my senses really exist, and are as I perceive them. 6. I exert some degree of power upon my actions and determinations. 7. The natural faculties by which I distinguish truth from error are not delusive. 8. My fellow-men are living and intelligent creatures like myself. 9. Certain expressions of countenance, certain sounds of the voice, and certain gestures, indicate certain thoughts and certain dispositions of mind. 10. We have naturally some regard fobr the testimony of men in matters of fact, and even for human authority in matters of opinion. 11. Many events which depend upon the free-will of our fellow-men may nevertheless be foreseen with more or less probability. 12. In the order of nature, that which is to take place will probably resemble that which has taken place in similar circumstances. With respect to the judgments of common sense which relate to necessary truths, Reid limits himself to dividing them into classes, indicating some exam. ples, to which he adds observations on such of these principles as have been the subject of controversies. These judgments of common sense are grammatical, logical, mathematical, esthetical, moral, and meta. physical. Among the metaphysical principles he distinguishes three which have been attacked by Hume, namely, that sensible qualities have a subject which we call body, and a subject which we call spirit; that everything which begins to exist is produced by a cause; and that evident marks of design and intelligence in the effect prove design and intel. REID. 145 hgence in the cause. Hume had maintained that these principles, if true, must have their foundation in experience; and yet, nevertheless, experience teach. es us nothing concerning their truth. Reid replied that it is not necessary to put their basis where Hume sought it; that it is found in the natural belief, which he designates by the term common sense. Reid then treats of the faculty of reasoning and of its general characteristics. In this connexion he inquires whether morals is susceptible of demonstra. tion; that is, whether the first principles of morals can be deduced from principles logically anterior: a question which he resolves in the negative. Moral axioms are perceived intuitively, and are an immedi. ate product of common sense. Taste, which is an intellectual faculty, analogous in certain respects to. the physical sense by which we perceive savours, has three principal objects, novelty, grandeur, beauty. The reason of the pleasure we experience from novelty is found in the very constitution of man, who, by nature active, feels the want of developing himself. Grandeur pleases be. cause it is a manifistation of power, naturally pref. erable to weakness. The sentiment of the beautiful is composed of two elements, of an agreeable emotion, and of the belief that there exists a real perfection in the objects which produce the emotion. Consciousness is the faculty that makes us aware of the actual modifications and operations of our own minds. Skeptics have assailed all other orders )f knowledge, but have never disputed the facts of -.onsciou.sness. But it will not do to confound con. iciousness with reflection. The first, which results aecessr rily from the very nature of man, is common to all the second requires a capacity of intellectual activ y which is given but to a few, and this is the x50 I.a1DERN PHILOSOPHY. reason there are so many disputes concerning the constitution and faculties of the human mind, al. though we have immediate knowledge of them. It is because it does not proceed upon consciousness alone, but depends in a great part upon reflection. As to moral perception, which is a faculty at once intellectual and active, Reid refers the questions re. lating to it to his observation on the second class of human faculties. II. Active Faculties.-These suppose the ideas of active power. That we have in ourselves such a power is proved by universal language, which implies the distinction of active and passive, and by the practical life of all men. This idea, it is true, is furnished neither by sensations nor by consciousness, which testifies solely the existence of the operations, and not the existence of the faculties. But, since this idea is. inherent in the human mind, we must look for its source in a belief resulting from the coi,. stitution of the human mind. Although the will be that which we can conceive most clearly under the notion of active power, we ought nevertheless to distinguish the principles of action into two classes, mechanical principles and voluntary principles. The mechanical principles, which suppose neither attention, nor deliberation, nor will to act, are the instincts and habits. Besides the instincts which are manifested in the child, there are some which survive infancy. Some are absolutely necessary to our physical preservation, such as the instinct which governs the act of swallowing. Others refer to actions which must be so frequently repeated that they would absorb our whole attention if they required any deliberation. Others, again, refer to actions which must be produced so suddenly that thought would not have time to intervene. We may REID. 151 attribute, at least partially, to instinct the natural propensity of man for imitation. As to habits, they suppose undoubtedly the action of the will, in the sense that they consist in a facility of action acquired by repeated acts; but the proper power of habit, taken in itself, has its root in a property of human nature distinct from simple will. The principles of voluntary actions are of two sorts, for the will or power of self-determination is influenced by two sorts of motives: irrational motives, relating to the faculty of feeling, and rational mo. tives, relating to the faculty of judging. The first, common to man and the brutes, are addressed to the animal part of our nature; the second correspond to the human element properly speaking. The animal principles of action are resolved into appetites, desires, and affections. The appetites are periodical, and accompanied by a disagreeable sensation peculiar to each. The desires are not accom. panied by a disagreeable sensation; nor are they periodical, but constant. The affections are princi. ples of action which imply a benevolent or malevo. lent disposition with respect to persons. When the desires and affections are carried to a certain degree of vehemence, they take the name of passions. The rational principles, or those relative to the faculty of judging, are enlightened- self.love and duty. Enlightened self love, taken as the sole regulative principle of human conduct, is insufficient. The gen. erality of men do not possess sufficient instruction to be able to make a skilful application of it at all times. It does not elevate man to the perfection of which humanity is susceptible; for disinterestedness and generosity are the most elevated objects of our sym. pathy and admiration. And, finally, it cannot by it. self procure the greatest amount of happiness, since 152 MODERN PHILOSOPHY. men who consult only their own welfare, however strictly their conduct may coincide in form with our notions of perfect virtue, are deprived of the high in. ternal satisfaction connected only with the fulfilment of duty. The notion of duty, which is found naturally in the minds of all men, testifies the existence of a [moral faculty, which Reid does not object to calling, with Hutcheson], moral sense, which inspires us with primitive moral judgments, as the senses inspire us with the primitive judgments we pass respecting bodies. But there is this difference between speculative and moral judgments, that the latter are accompanied by a sentiment of approbation or disapprobation, while the former are pure affirmations separate from any emotion. The moral sense, or conscience, has need, like all human faculties, to be cultivated in order to develop and perfict it. Summarily, enlightened self-interest is a rational principle, regulative of all the animal principles which refer to utility, and ought itself to be regulated by the rational principle of duty. But can it ever happen that these two principles should be really in op. position? Faith in divine Providence should per. suade us that we can never injure our own welfare by taking duty for our guide. Take away the be. lief in God, and these two constituent principles of our actions might came, and would necessarily come, into a state of hostility; and this is a proof that mor. als is necessarily connected with religion. But, whatever be the motives that excite it, the will is free. Wherever there is passivity, there is, properly speaking, no cause: to affirm that man is free is to affirm that he is really the cause of his own actions. In developing the proofs of human free. REID. 53 dom, and in rep.ying to the principal objections al. leged against it, Reid employs the grounding ideas found in anterior philosophies. The enumeration which he gives of first principles in morals, and the considerations which he offers upon the conditions of morality, on the character of the idea of justice, which is natural and not artificial, and upon the na. ture of the obligation of contracts, present also a class of ideas not pertaining to the Scottish philoso phy in its fundamental peculiarities. Observations. 1. In respect of method, the philosophy of Reid was a combination of the method of Descartes and that of Bacon. Descartes set out with internal observation, but he soon abandoned it. Bacon, on his part, had established that philosophy should rest upon a large basis of observation; but he had particularly applied his method to the knowledge of external facts. Reid, uniting these two points of view, took, as the basis of philosophy, the most complete obser. vation possible of internal facts, or of the constitu. tion of the human mind. 2. Whatever judgment be passed upon the general principles of his philosophy, it must be allowed to contain a multitude of views which evince remarkable sagacity. 3. That which specially characterizes his philosophy is his doctrine concerning ultimate conviction, or the judgments of common sense. The Scottish school has well perceived that the human mind im. plies radically, and under many relations, an element of belief independent of all demonstration, and that every philosophy which rejects this element under. mines the edifice it would construct. But, while most other philosophies require speculative concep. 1-54 MODERN PHILOSOPHY. tions where only the fact of belief is to be had,,los not the Scottish school take refuge too often In the convenient asylum of belief, in order to excuse itself from furnishing speculative grounds? 4. Many modern nietaphysicians, particularly in Germany, abandoning themselves to a philosophical intemperance, which misconceives the limits of the human; mind, have resembled a man who intoxicates himself under the pretext that it is necessary to drink. The Scottish school almost refuses to drink for fear af intoxication. Its tendency to error is that of an excess of circumspection, and that of other schools is that of an excess of boldness. But by its firm and practical good sense it has served as a most im. portant counterpoise to the license of speculation. APPENDIX. ~KETCH OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY FROM REID TO THE PRESENT TIMR. APPE NDI X. ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY IN THE CLOSE OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. FROmI the time of Reid to the end of the eighteenth century, a considerable degree of philosophical activ. ity prevailed in England and Scotland, and numer. ous works were produced, though in general the re. ligious and moral predominated over the purely spec. ulative interest. The philosophical writings of the period for the most part belong, in respect to their leading principles, to the school of Locke and Hart. ley, or to the Scottish school represented by Reid. A brief notice will be given of some of the more distinguished names, and of the position in-which they respectively stand in relation to anterior systems. Opponents of Hume. OSWALD.-BEATTIE; —PRIESTLEY. THE skepticism which Hume had deduced from the principles of Locke, assailing, as it did, not only the pretensions of speculation, but the certainty of all human knowledge, and especially the fundamental triths of religion, the existence of God, Providence, a future life, miracles, etc., called out many adver. saries, who in various ways sought to defend the truths of religion against the conclusions of Hume. JAMES OSWALD, a clergyman of the Established Church of Scotland, published in 1766-1772 am Ap. II 158 MODERN PHILOSOPHY. peal to Common Sense in Behalf of Religion, in which he made the Common Sense of mankind, or the uni. versal consent of humanity, the first principle and supreme criterion of all philosophical truth. JAMES BEATTIE (born in 1735, died in 1803), professor of Moral Philosophy at Edinburgh, and afterward at Aberdeen, produced in 1770 his Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth. He adopted the same general system as Reid, recognising certain principles of knowledge as not derived from experience in the meaning of Locke and Hume, but referable to Common Sense: he used these terms, however, in a very vague and exceptionable way. He defended the truths attacked by skepticism with great zeal, but with far less ability than Reid. He pub.lished also various treatises on 2Esthetics and Morals, in which last he maintained the system of the moral sense. As a writer, he is more remarkable for elegance and good taste than for philosophical genius.,JOSEPHI PRIESTLEY, who was born in 17.33 and died in 1804, is more celebrated at the present day for his contributions to physical science than for his philosophical writings. He attacked, however, both Hume and his adversaries. Priestley was a materialist, and an ardent disciple of Hartley, whose theory of association he adopted and revived, as explaining all the phenomena of the human mind. Accordingly, while he attempted to refute the objections of Hume against the truths of natural and revealed religion, he at the same time combated the doctrines Df Reid, Beattie, and Oswald concerning Common Sense, or instinctive principles of belief not resolva. i1e into sensation. These principles he ri iculed as occult qualities, which should be exploded from phi. losophy. With HEartley, he likewise denied the firee PALEY. 159 dom of the will, and maintained the necessity of all human volitions. Ethical Systems. FERGUSON. NEARLY at the same time with the first publication )f Reid appeared the " Institutes of Moral Philos,. phy" by Adam Ferguson. Ferguson was born in 1724, was professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh, which place he resigned in 1783 in favour of Dugald Stewart. His "Treatise on Moral and Political Science" was published in 1793. He died in 1816. He maintained the doctrine of the moral sense, and made virtue to consist in a continuous effort, by which the perfection of the soul is developed. PALEY. WILLIAM PALEY (born in 1743 and died in 1805) published his celebrated work on Moral Philosophy in 1785. He agrees with Hume in resolving the es. sence of virtue into utility, yet he differs from him, as well as from the other advocates of disinterested morality, by denying the existence of conscience, of any moral faculty, considered either as a moral sense, or as a modification of reason. Paley was a strenuous supporter of the selfish system, though not in its grossest form. T'lhe general consequences of actions is the sole criterion of their moral quality. Virtue is'defined by him to be " the doing good to mankind, in obedience to the will of God, for ti.e sake of everlasting happiness." Mackintosh makes the obser. vation that this is not so much a definition as a prop. osition. Taken, however, as a definition, it involves the gravest consequences: among others, that an act 160 MODERN PHILOSOPHY. even of obedience to the will of God (which, unless his definition involve a contradiction, must be taken only as the rule of action) is destitute of the charac. ter of virtue if a regard to our own happiness was not the motive. Conformably with his principles, he makes no distinction between Prudence and Virtue, except that the former relates to our regard to what we shall gain or lose in this world, the latter to what we shall gain or lose in the world to come; that is to say, he makes no essential distinction between them. DARWIN. ERASMUS DARWIN was born in 1732 and died in 1802. Besides several poetical works, he wrote nu. merous treatises on different subjects of physical and physiological science. His philosophical views are particularly developed in his Zoonomia, or Laws of Organic Life, published in 1793-1796. He belong. ed in general to the school of Hartley and Priestley, though he developed his views with much originality. He taught that all animated nature originates in sin. gle filaments, endowed with irritability, which is the cause of vital motion and organization. He carri. ed his materialism to such an exaggerated extreme as to maintain that " ideas are material things:" a position which he does not even attempt to prove, but reasons upon throughout his work as an established fact. It is worthy of notice, that the English physiological materialists of this period carried their views on this subject to a much greater length, and expressed them much more decidedly, than the French followers of Locke; for, while the latter held merely in a general way that thought is the result of ma. terial organization, and that "every idea must," in the language of Diderot, " necessarily resolve itself BENTHAM. 161 ultimately into a sensible representation or picture," several of the former advanced the special hypothesis that the immediate objects of thought are either particles of the medullary substance of the brain, or vibrations of these particles. The doctrine of the materiality of ideas cannot be said to be original with Darwin: it appeared in the seventeenth century in the writings of Sir Kenelmn Digby, and also of Dr. Robert Hooke, celebrated for his attempts to deprive Newton of the honour of his discoveries with respect to the law-of gravitation. One of the early works of Dr. Thomas Brown was devoted to the needless labour of refuting Darwin's theory. BENTHAMI. AMONG the modern advocates of the selfish system of morals, no one has attracted a greater share of public attention than Jeremy Bentham. This celebrated jurist was born in 1747; was educated at Oxford; was called to the bar, but soon abandoned the profession, and led a retired and singular mode of life in the heart of London, devoting himself to the composition of numerous works on jurisprudence, government, and various branches of political and moral science. He died. in 1832. The eccentricity of his character and habits; the peculiarities of his style; the decided and exclusive cast of his prin. ciples; the hardihood with which he carried them out to their consequences; the uncompromising hostili. ty with which he assailed all opinions differing from his own; and the seemingly practical character of his system: these circumstances have conspired to make him the head of an ardent school of disciples, who have continued to the present time to propagate the doctrines of their master with a zeal almost bordering upon fanaticism As a jurist, he has certain. I1.-13 162 MODERN PHILOSOPHY. ly rendered important service to humanity, and shed much original light upon many principles of legisla tion, in spite of the errors into which the unqualifie,, and exclusive character of his principles led him As a moralist, his system is substantially that of Hiobbes, his originality consisting only in the bold ness of his positions, and in the peculiar form in which he has clothed them. Hobbes was a metaphysician, Bentham a jurist: Hobbes sought to ground his prin. ciples in psychological analysis; Bentham assumed them without proof as obvious and undeniable facts. As! a- jurist, Bentham was led to regard human actions in the single point of their influence Upon soci. ety; for, though legislation does not, and ought not to, disregard the moral quality of actions, yet its pe. culiar and immediate object is the prevention of ac. tions injurious to society. Thus Bentham, setting out as a jurist, becomes a moralist only by extending the maxims of legislative enactment to all human ac. tions, and making their private and social utility the sole test of their morality. His moral system is mainly found in his Principles of Morals and Legis. lation, published in 1789, though it had been printed nine years before. The principles of his system are briefly as fol. lows t The desire of pleasure and the fear of pain are the only possible motives which can influence the human will. Consequently, pleasure is the only object of pur. suit, the sole end of human existence. The utility of actions is their property of increasing' the sum of happiness, or lessening the amount of suffering, in individuals or in the community. The lawfulness, justice, goodness, or morality of actions means only their utility in the sense defined: BENTHAM. 163 If these terms are not used in this sense, they are used without meaning. The principle of utility, or the greatest happiness principle, is that which determines the quality of ac. tions by their twofold property of producing pleasure or pain inll the individual or the community. This is the only test of the morality of actions, the sole ground of approbation or disapprobation, the sole rule for morals as well as legislation. The supreme interest of every individual is the at. tainment of the greatest happiness of which he is ca. pable; the supreme interest of society is the attainment of the greatest happiness possible to all the in. dividuals of which it is composed. All systems of ethics and of legislation which pro. ceed upon any other principle than utility are false: all false systems may be reduced to two classes: 1. Systems of asceticism, which adopt, indeed, the right criterion by judging of the quality of actions from their consequences, but apply it falsely and in contradiction to human nature by making good actions to be such as produce pain, and bad actions such as produce pleasure; 2. Systems of sympathy and antipathy, which judge of actions as good or bad in. dependently of their consequences. The principle of utility, being thus assumed as ab. solute, it follows that every kind of pleasure-even that felt by the perpetrator of the most atrocious crime-is good in itself; the man is not to be conlemned for the pleasure he took in the act, but only because its ulterior consequences will produce an overbalance of pain: this is the only reason why it is called wrong or criminal. It is in the practical application of these principles, and especially in his character of jurist, that the originality of Bentham is displayed. Having classified the various kinds of pleasure and pain, he seeks to 164 MODERN PIIILOSOPHY. determine their comparative value, and thus to fix a graduated scale for the moral valuation of human actions. To make this calculation, it is necessary to have the elements to be compared. These are re. ferred to four classes: 1. All the pleasures and pains of which human nature is susceptible, compared in the sixfold relation of intensity. duration, certainty or uncertainty, propinquity or. remoteness, fecundity, and purity; 2. Primary circumstances, tending to increase or lessen the value of those pleasures, as health, strength, etc.; 3. Secondary circumstances, affecting the degree of sensibility, and indirectly modifying the value of the pleasures and pains of individuals; 4. The multiplied consequences which fol. low a pleasurable or painful action, beginning with the individual, and extending through the various domestic and social relations to the community at large. Applying these elements of calculation, all practi. cal problems in morals are solved, and the moral value of every possible act is determined. If an action is useful, it is good; if injurious, bad; and in both cases in the degree of its utili'y or injuriousness: and to decide in every particular case, we must calculate all its possible effects to see which preponder. ates, the pleasurable or the painful consequences. To know which of two useful or of two injurious actions is the most so, the same rule applies. The relative goodness or badness of a given number of good or bad actions is determined in the same way. But the main value of this method, in the view of Bentham, is in its application to the grounds of le. gislation. To inquire whether mankind have the right to regard and punish certain actions as crimes, is the same thing as to inquire whether doing so is useful to society. But the crime (the injurious ac. tion) is an evil, and the penalty is an evil. The BENTHAM. 165 question, therefore, is to be decided by a balance struck between two evils: Will the penalty tend to prevent the crime; and is the evil of the penalty less than that of the consequences of the'act? If so, we may forbid and punish. That it is so in certain cases is easily proved; therefore society has in cer. tain cases the right to forbid and punish. As pleasure and pain are the only motives that can determine the will, they are the only sanctions which can operate with binding or obligatory force. There are four kinds of sanctions: physical, referring to the natural consequences of actions; moral or pop. ular, referring to the pleasures and pains resulting from the opinions and feelings excited towards us by our actions in the minds of our fellow-men; the religious, which result from the hope and fear of rewards and punishments in a future life; and, lastly, the political sanction, including the penalties attached to actions by law. Of these sanctions civil society, or government, can'directly use only the last. It can prohibit cer. tain actions, and punish them with certain pains; but it cannot control the physical or moral consequen. ces of actions. It should not, however, disregard the other sanctions; on the contrary, it should ren. der them as far as possible auxiliary to the influence of the legal sanction. Observations. The whole system of Bentham rests upon the po.. sition that pleasure and pain are the sole motives of human volition. Bentham assumes this principle as an axiom that needs no proof, and he offers none, except indirectly, in combating the systems that ad. mit another motive, The plausibility of many of his explanations of hu. man conduct is entirely owing, however. to a con. 166 MODERN PHILOSOPHY. fusion which he has made of two principles perfectly distinct: the principle of private utility, and the prin. ciple of general utility. Bentham made this confu. sion quite unconsciously; Hobbes was more clear. sighted and more consistent: he saw the distinction, and refused to make the substitution. To lay down, first, our own personal pleasure, advantage, or interest, as the sole and absolute rule of action, and then to lay down the pleasure, advantage, or interest of society, as if it were the same thing. is to confound two rules altogether distinct and different. Bentham did not perceive the confusion, because he did not perceive the distinction between the two rules. His mode of arguing, in respect to the reasons which lead us to regulate our conduct in accordance with the general welfare of society, shows that he makes a view to our personal advantage the motive even for obeying the rule of general utility. This is consistent with his system; for Iris fiundamental principle legitimately gives but one rule of action, regard to our private interest; any other rule is inconsistent: a regard to public utility can be a legitimate motive only as a means to a private end; that is to say, is not a motive at all. Yet, although his fundamental principle gives but this one motive, and although his own analysis resolves a regard for public utility into a mere regard for private and personal advantage as the ultimate and sole motive, he nevertheless, in other passages, reasons in a way which is correct only upon the ground that a regard for general utility is a rule and motive of itself; and it is to this inconsistency that his system owes much of its plausibility, its- seeming accordance with the facts of human nature. A regard to our own interest is undoubtedly one of the motives of human volition: the error of Benthamn, as of every selfish system, consists in making it the sole motive. MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 167 PHILOSOPHY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. SINCE the commencement of the present century, England, Germany, and France have continued to be, as they. were in the preceding century, the prin. cipal centres of philosophical activity. No original or important systematic work has appeared, and but few contributions to speculative science have been made in' any other country. Philosophy has been cultivated in England, however, much less generally, and with much less interest, than in Germany and France. ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. STEWART. DUGALD STEWART was born at Edinburgh in 1753, and was educated in the University of that city, though he afterward: attended the lectures of Reid at Glasgow. In 1785 he succeeded his father in the mathematical professorship in the University of Edinburgh, which he subsequently exchanged for the chair of Moral Philosophy, vacated by the resignation of Ferguson. He published the first volume of his Philosophy of the Human Mind in 1798; the re. mainder of his writings belong to the nineteenth century. He died in 1828. Stewart was the disciple of Reid, whose general system he adopted. A regular analysis of the lead. ing principles contained in his writings is, therefore, unnecessary in this place; and even the modifica. 168 MODERN PHILOSOPHY. tions which he introduced into the system of his mas ter are for the most part so cautiously suggested, and so generally connected with its subordinate principles or with its particular applications, that a detail. ed enumeration of them does not fall within the com. pass of this sketch. The general character of his labours should, however, be noticed: they occupy a distinct and important place in the history of modern philosophy, onl account of the important influence they exerted in diffusing a taste for philosophical studies, in spreading the principles of Reid, and in opposing the progress of sensualism, particularly in its relations to morals. Stewart was superior to Reid in elegance of taste, and in variety and extent of philosophical learning. To this, in connexion with the critical cast of his mind, and his modest and cautious disposition, it was owing, more, perhaps, than to the want of original power, that his works are mainly occupied with critical disquisitions attached to the principles of Reid, and present so little attempt at systematic peculiarities of his own. It is by no means true, however, that he contributed nothing to philosophy but criti. cal disquisitions and tasteful illustrations of the principles of his master. It has been said of him that he took more pains to conceal his originality than most men take to display their own. That he was not deficient in talent for original observation and in speculative ability, might be shown from various parts of his writings; as, for instance, his remarks on casual associations; on dreaming; on causation; and on the difference between man and the lowel' animals. He adopted the method of Reid, and he followed him in his controversy against the too narrow and exclusive principles of Locke; but on both these important subjects he has shed much light, particu. STEWART. 169 larly upon the latter, by his critical ability, anti by his talent for illustration. He accepted Reid's classification of the faculties of the human mind; but he has enlarged and com. pleted his system by a fuller and more perfect analysis of many important faculties. In the second volume of his Elements of the Philosophy of the Mind, by his discussions concerning the process of reasoning and the principles of evidence, he has contributed very valuable materials to logic, of the importance of which, as comprehending far more than the artificial systems of deduction, he had a very strong impression. Among the instances in which he has departed from the views of Reid, may be mentioned his doc. trines concerning association of ideas and habit. Reid denied that the association of ideas has its ground in an ultimate principle or fact of our mental constitution, and resolved it into habit, which he re. garded as an original principle. Stewart, on the other hand, resolves habit into association. But one of the most important modifications which Stewart has effected in the philosophy of Reid, consists in substituting the terms Fundamental Laws of Human Thought or Belief in place of Reid's principles of Common Sense. This change is made in his characteristic modest and cautious way. He vindicates Reid from the charge of holding this term in the vague and unphilosophical sense of Beattie, but none the less clearly does he see and expose the inconve. niences and objectionable consequences of retaining such a term at all, as referring to the absolute and necessary convictions of pure reason. In morals, Stewart has filled up many chasms left in Reid's works by his more systematic and com. plete analysis of the various practical principles of II.-t4 .170 MODERN PHILOSOPHY. human nature. Equally with Reid, he was the earnest opponent of every form of the selfish system; with still more clearness than his master, though in his usual guarded and, cautious tone, he distinguishes his system from the instinctive or sentimental sys. tems. He has contributed much to set in a strong light the essential and immutable difference of right and wrong, and the absolute authority of conscience as a conviction of obligation, grounded necessarily and immediately upon the perception of right and wrong. In regard to the term moral sense, which the influence of Hutcheson had brought into general use, and which Reid adopted, though Stewart does not repudiate it, yet he clearly shows, in his remarks on the objections to the objective reality and immu. tability of moral distinctions which may be drawn from the term, that he does not hold to the moral sense as a specialfaculty of perceiving moral ideas.'; The words cause and effect, duration, identity, and many others, express simple ideas, as well as the words right and wrong; and yet it would surely be absurd to ascribe each of them to a particular power of perception." From this it clearly appears that he takes the moral sense simply as a form of the reason, and that he regards the latter as the faculty in which our moral conceptions originate. In this view he expressly vindicates the use of the word by Cudworth and Price; with whose doctrines on this subject, as well as with that of Kant, his own is iden. tical. With respect to the last named philosopher, it may be remarked, that Stewart indulged himself in a prejudice which a better acquaintance with his principles would have materially modified. The strange and uncouth terminology of the German was likely to be peculiarly repulsive to a taste like Stew. art's; yet, in spite of their differences in this respect, BROWN. 171 and in spite of still more important differences in doctrine, the coincidence between their opinions, and the substance of their reasoning on many material points, is remarkable enough to have been the subject of frequent observation. BROWN. THOMAS BROWN was born in 1777, and educated at the University of Edinburgh. At the age of twenty he wrote a refutation of Darwin's Zoonomia, which at once distinguished him as a person of superior ability. In 1810 he succeeded Stewart as professor of Moral Philosophy at Edinburgh. He was the author of several poetical works, the principal of which is the Paradise of Coquettes, and displays considerable poetical talent. HIe also published an Inquiry into the Relation of Cause and Effect. His lectures on the Philosophy of the Human Mind were published after his death. HIe was cut off by consumption in 1820. Brown classes the subjects which fall within the scope of the Philosophy of the Human Mind under four general divisions: the Physiology of the Mind; Ethics, Politics, and Natural Theology. He makes the first the principal object of his inquiries. The following analysis exhibits the leading principles and main doctrines of his system: Psychology is with him a physiology or physical study of the mind, considered as a substance suscep. tible of various states of feeling. These various states of feeling are the phenomena of the mind, and are only the one mind itself existing in different modifications. It is the object of philosophy to observe and gen. eralize these phenomena until we arrive at general 172 MODERN PHILOSOPHY. laws, which laws are nothing but the most genci,. expression of the circumstances in which the phenornena are felt to agree. The principles of' the investigation of the phe. nomena of the mind are precisely the same as in the investigation of matter or external nature, the only difference being in the circumstance that in the physics of matter the object of inquiry and the inquiring subject are different, while in the physics of the mind they are the same. This leads to a discussion of the principles of physical iiquiry in general, as applicable to mind no less than to matter. All inquiry with respect to the various substances in nature must regard them either as they exist in space or as they exist in time: we inquire either into their composition or into their changes. A substance, considered as it exists in space, is the mere name which we give to bodies, similar or dissimilar, in ap. parent continuity; as it exists in time, it is that which is the subject or the antecedent of changes, and we inquire into its susceptibilities and into its powers. But here we note the intervention of a principle different from the mere present perception of particular phenomena in succession. Our senses, our ex. perience, show us only what is, not what has been nor what will be. Yet the observation of any chan. ges, any phenomena in succession, is accompanied with the irresistible belief that in the same circumstances the like changes have invariably taken place and will invariably take place, or, in other words, that the same antecedents will invariably be followed by the same consequents. As this belief cannot be derived from experiencei so neither can it be resolved into custom, as has been attempted by Hume. It is an instinctive belief. a BROWN. 173 feeling which on certain occasions arises in virtue of the original constitution of the mind, just as our sim. ple sensations or emotions arise on their proper occasions. As to the nature of the relation to which this be. lief attaches, it is merely one of invariable antecedence and consequence. The term Power signifies nothing more than the antecedence of phencmena to other phenomena in an invariable order; Cause signi. fies nothing but the invariable antecedent; and Effect nothing but the invariable consequent in a given se quence of phenomena. If we use these.words to signify anything more, we use them without mean. ing. There is no such thing as power or cause other than as a mere invariable antecedent; and no such thing as effect other than as a mere invariable consequent. The antecedent and the cause are not distinct, though inseparable; they are identical: so likewise of the consequent and the effect. In any invariable sequence of phenomena, as the explosion of powder following the contact of fire; or the mo. tion of the arm following a particular state of the mind; or the creation of the world following the will of God: if we suppose there is any bond qf connexion between the phenomena; anything except the mere fact of the succession itself; any ground of the succession which lies under it in the substances of the phenomena; any power, cause, or efficacy which de. termines the invariable antecedence and consequence, and makes it a necessary connexion, we delude ourselves with mere words without significance. The philosophy of matter and the philosophy of mind agree in this respect, that our knowledge of both is confined to the mere phenomena. They agree also in the two species of inquiry they admit: the phenomena of mind, like those of matter, may be 174 MODERN PHILOSOPHY. considered as complex, and susceptible of analysis, or they may be considered as successive in a certain or. der, and bearing, therefore, the reciprocal relations of cause and effect. The phenomena of the mind are, however, only relatively complex, and analysis is only the virtual decomposition of a seeming com. plexity. Analysis, in the science of the mind, is founded wholly upon the feeling of relation which one state of mind seems to us to bear to other states of mind as comprehensive of them. It is chiefly, if not wholly, as an analytical science that philosophy can be a science of progressive discovery.-So much for the nature, objects, and method of the physiology of the mind. Before proceeding to the classification and particular analysis of the various states of the mind, it is necessary to consider two general facts always implied in the variety of phenomena: these facts are comprehended in the terms consciousness and person. al identity. Consciousness is neither any special separate faculty of the mind, having the office of rendering us aware of the various feelings of the mind, as Doctor Reid makes it to be, nor, on the other hand, is it a fact or state of the mind distinct from the feelings themselves of which we are aware, and the condition of our being aware of them: it is merely a general cerm expressive of the collective whole of our various states of mind. There are n.ot sensations, thoughts, passions, AND also consciousness, any more than there is a quadruped apart from the particular animals included under the term. To be conscious of particular feelings, be they sensations, thoughts, om volitions, is nothing but to feel in a particular way, is nothing but to have the sensation, thought, or vo. BROWN. 175 lition. When we use the term as if it implied more than this-as if the sensation, etc., were one thing, and the consciousness of it another thing-we express nothing but the remembrance of former feelings, and a feeling of the relation of our different feelings to a permanent subject. This notion of the mind as the permanent subject of the all various feelings that come and go within us, is expressed in the words self, or personal identity. Consciousness and memory. are the conditions of the notion and belief of self, or personal identity. In memory it is not merely a past feeling that arises to us, but a feeling recognised to have been formerly felt by us as the same beings who now remember it. Brown makes no distinction between the notion of sef, merely as the subject of a feeling distinct from the feeling, and the notion of identity, as implying the unchanged sameness of the subject amid the changing of its feelings; and hence makes memory the condition of the notion, denying the view of Stewart that every exercise of consciousness, without reference to the past, implies the notion of self. Brown agrees with Stewart in referring the origin of the idea and belief of self and personal identity to a law of thought, or intuitive principle grounded in the constitution of the mind. He gives for char. acteristics of an intuitive principle, that the conception or belief which it expresses is universal, immediate, and irresistible; and vindicates the validity of such principles as the ground of belief. After these general views, the next thing is the more particular analysis and classification of the various phenomena of the mind. Dissatisfied with all previous classifications, and with the grounds upon which they have proceeded, Brown produce one sen 176 MODERN PHILOSOPHY. tirely new, both in its nomenclature and in the distinc. tions which are taken as the basis of the arrangement. All the phenomena of the mind are here ar. ranged under two divisions, External Affections of the Mind, or those which arise immediately in consequence of external things. and Internal Affections, which arise in consequence of previous affections of the mind itself. The following table exhibits the classification of the phenomena under this primary division: DIVISION I. CLASS IV. EXTERNAL AFFECTICNI OF Sensations of Touch. THE MIND. CLASS V. ORDER I. Sensations of Sight. THE LESS DEFINITE EXTERNAL AFFECTIONS. CLASS I. DIVISION II. Appetites; as Hunger, etc THE INTERNAL AFFECTIONS OF THE MIND. CLASS II. Muscular Pains. ORDER I. CLASS III. INTELLECTUAL STATES OF THlE MIND. Muscular Pleasures. CLASS I. ORDER II. Simple Suggestione.THE MORE DEFINITE EXTER- Suggestions of Resemblance, NAL AFFECTIONS. Contrast, Contiguity. CLASS I. CLASS II. Sensations of Smell. Relative Suggestions, or Feelings of Relation. CLASS II. Sensations of Taste. SPECIES I. Relations of Coexistence, Posi. tion, Resemblance, Degree, CLASS III. Proportion, Comprehensive Sensations of Hearing. ness. BROWN. 177 SPECIES II. Feelings distin.ttive of Virtue Relations of Succession. and Vice: Love and Hate; Sympathy; ORDER II. Pride and Humility. EMOTIONS; SUCH AS LOVE, CLASS II. ETC. Retrospective Emotions. CLASS I. SPECIES I. Immediate Emotions. Retrospective Emotions, having SPECIES I. reference to others: immediate Emotions involvingr agtde. no Moral Feeling: Gratitude. Cheerfulness & Melancholy; SPECIES II. Wonder; Retrospective Emotions, having Languor; reference to ourselves: Beauty and its Opposite Simple Regret and Gladness; Sublimity; Simple Regret and Gladness; The Ludicrous. Remorse and its Opposite. SPECIES II. CLASS III. Immediate emotions involving Prospective Emotions, compre some Moral Feeling: hending our Desires & Fears. In treating of the sensations which are ascribed to touch, Brown denies the common distinction of the qualities of matter into primary and secondary, con. tending that both alike express merely states of the sentient mind, which by the constitution of our na. ture we are, irresistibly led to attribute to external causes. He therefore denies that there is any spe cial faculty called Perception distinct from the sensa. tion. There is the state of mind consequent upon the presence of an object to the sense of touch, and this state of mind, this sensation, or feeling of resist: ance, is all there is in the process of perception, ex. cept the intuitive belief in an external cause suggested by the associating principle. Reid held the intuitive knowledge both of mind and of matter, and regarded the reality of their an 178 MODERN PHILOSOPHY. tithesis, whether it could be explained or not, as a fundamental unquestionable truth. Brown held consciousness in perception to be a mere modification (state of feeling) of -the percipient subject; the idea or representative object in percep. tion to have no existence out of consciousness; and the idea and perception to be only different relations of a state of mind really the same. Attention is not a simple mental state, but a combination of feelings. It is not a special faculty, nor the result of a special faculty, but is the result of the laws of perception, by whieh the increased vividness of one sensation produces a corresponding faintness in other coexisting sensations. The cause of this increased vividness is the desire of knowing connecting itself particularly with some one among our sensations, according to the general law by which our emotions give intensity to every perception with which they harmonize. In treating of the Internal Affections of the Mind, Brown classes them all, as may be seen in the foregoing table, under two orders, Intellectual States and Emotions. These Internal Affections of the Mind are all resolved into Suggestion, or that con. stitutional principle of the mind by which the vari. ous mental states stand to each other in the relation of antecedence and consequence in a certain order.Brown repudiates the term Association of Ideas, be. cause he conceives it to limit the facts included under it to ideas, whereas it should include emotions, sentiments, judgments, all the feelings of the mind. He considers, moreover, the natural constitution of the mind to be such, that not only one affection or state of it succeeds to another, and that the successions BROWN 179 occur in a certain order, but also that the laws which regulate the recurrence are not laws of association in the strict sense of the term, as expressive of some former connecting process, but merely laws of suggestion, as expressive simply of the natural tendency of the mind, in the very moment when it is affected in a certain manner, to exist immediately afterward in a certain different state. This distinction Brown considers of great importance; and he adopts the term Suggestion not only as the simpler and more accurate expression for all the spontaneous successions of the mental states, but because otherwise we could explain but a part of the phenomena of the mind. With this general view of suggestion, Brown pro. ceeds to analyze all the Internal Affections of the Mind, which have commonly been ascribed to a variety of distinct powers or faculties, into Suggestion either Simple or Relative. SIMPLE SUGGESTION.-This comprehends all our conceptions or feelings connected with the past; and is that tendency by which the perception or conception of one object excites of itself, without any known cause external to the mind, the conception of some other object. The laws of Simple Suggestion are Primary and Secondary. Of the Primary Laws Brown admits three: Resemblance, Contrast, and Nearness in Time or Place; though he is at the same time inclined to think they might all be resolved into one, which he terms a " fine species of proximity." The Second. ary Laws are the most general circumstances which in various ways modify the primary 1lRas 180 MODERN PHILOSOPHY. Importance is to be attached to the fact that the states of the mind which succeed each other, accord. ing to the laws of suggestion, do not merely follow each other, the suggesting state departing and giving way to the suggested state, but that it may remain, coexist, and blend with the other in a complex feel. ing. Proceeding on these views, Brown attempts to resolve into forms of simple suggestion various phe. nomcna of the mind which have been referred to dis. tinct and special faculties. 1. Conception.-This has been defined the faculty by which we form a notion of an absent object of perception, or of some previous feeling of the mind. But there is no special faculty with this office. It is merely a particular determination of the general susceptibility of suggestion. When the sound of a friend's name is followed by the conception of his person, there are not two principles operating in the production of this mental state-a faculty of association and a faculty of conception-but only one, the principle of suggestion. We may call the state of mind a conception, in order to mark a more immediate reference to the object conceived; and we may call it a suggestion, with more immediate reference to the conceiving mind; but the latter is the principle of the phenomenon, and the only principle. The phenomenon is not to be referred to any special fac. ulty of conception. 2. Memory.-Remembrances are only conceptions with which the notion of past time is connected, and may in like manner be analyzed, the first element of them into suggestion, as above, and the second element into a suggestion or feeling of relation. The notion of past time added to conceptions does not BROWN. 181 require any new faculty or power of the mind dis. tinct from the general principle of' suggestion.-Rec. ollection is only remembrance modified by desire. 3. Imagination.-This is no distinct faculty, but only tile combination of conceptions or images ac. cording to the laws of suggestion. This combination may be spontaneous without the presence of desire, or it may be modified by desire in the way de. scribed in speaking of attention. When this latter is the case, it explains all that is implied in the voluntary shaping or creative imagination. Of the dis. tinction between Fancy and Imagination Brown seems to have had no notion. 4. Habit.-This is not an original principle of the mind. The term expresses a tendency to the repetition of certain actions, and greater facility in performing them. This is resolvable into the general principle of suggestion, by which feelings tend to in. duce other feelings that have been before connected with them. RELATIVE SUGGESTION. —This compi'ehends all those feelings arising directly from previous feelings which suggest them, and to which they stand in some felt relation. These feelings of relation may all be classed under two heads: relations of coexist ence, and relations of succession. Relations of Coexistence.-To this class-which includes relations of real coexistence, as in matter, or of seeming coexistence, as in the complex phe. nomena of the mind-belong the relations of Position, Resemblance or Difference, Proportion, Degree, and Comprehension. These terms sufficiently explain the relations to which they apply. The per. neption or conception of objects, according as they II.-Q 182 MODERN PHILOSOPHY. stand in these relations, suggests the relations them selves. The suggestions of resemblance and difference ex. plain tile formation of classes, the process of gener. alization, and explode all the controversy concerning universals between the Nominalists and Realists. The process of generalization and the formation of general terms is the following: 1. A perception of two or more objects; 2. A feeling of their resem. blance; 3. The expression of this feeling of their relation by a word comprehending all the objects be. tween which this relation exists. The general term expresses a state of mind entirely distinct from the primary perception of the individual objects. This process of the mind may be misconceived and vitiated in two ways: by adding to it, or by omitting. To say that between the perception of two or more individual objects, comprehended by a gen. eral term and the feeling of their relation of resemblance, there intervenes some distinct substance, or some universal form distinct from the conceiving mind and from the individual objects, and that this produces the general notion to which the general term applies, is to err in the first way: it is the er. ror of the Realists. To suppose that there is no intervening notion of general resemblance, no relative suggestion between the particulars and the formation of the general term, is to err in the second way: it is the error of the Nominalists. The opinion of Brown as to the true process of generalization and the meaning of general terms, is regarded by him as essentially the same as that of Reid, and others called Conceptualists; whose incau. tious and incongruous language, and erroneous anal. ysis of the general feeling, or feeling of resemblance, BROWN. 183 on which the whole process turns, have, however, served, in his opinion, to perplex the subject. The process of Reasoning is likewise resolved into Relative Suggestion. Of the elements of reasoning, the general terms have been already explained. Prop. ositions are only the verbal enunciation of the relation of two terms. All the relations may be expressed in propositions: there may be propositions of position, of resemblance, of proportion, of order, of degree, and of comprehension; to which last, indeed, all the others may be reduced. Every propo. sition expresses an analysis. Reasoning, which consists of a number of propositions in a certain order, is only pursuing the anal. ysis still farther, every step in the progress being only the analytic statement of what was contained in a prior comprehensive statement. However numerous the steps in the series, the last proposition is truly contained in the first. A new truth is not so much added as evolved. Relations of Succession.-These include all our feelings which stand related to each other inthe order of time. They may be casually prior and posterior when they occur as parts of different trains, or they may be invariably antecedent and consequent in a single train. The relations of cause and effect are resolved into suggestions of the latter sort. FThere is no such special faculty as Reason. There is no ground for the distinction between Rea. son and Judgment. Reasoning is nothing more than a series of relative suggestions or feelings of relation, which, when expressed in words, form a series of propositions. To the susceptibility of feeling 184 MODERN PHILOSOPHY. these relations, both the faculty called reason and the faculty called judgment may be alike reduced; the latter denoting the feeling of the relations of the terms of one proposition, the former of the series of propositions. The process of Abstraction implies no special faculty. All the phenomena of the mind included in this term may be resolved either into the relative suggestion of resemblance or into simple suggestion, in which the partial representation of a concrete or complex whole may be suggested to the omission of the rest. The Second Order of Internal Affections embraces the EMOTIONS, which Brown has classified as immediate, retrospective, and prospective. He considers emotions to be distinguished from the intellectual states of the mind by a certain peculiar vividness of feeling, none the less readily recognised because it is undefinable. It is unnecessary to notice all the phenomena which Brown has comprehended in this order. Many of them belong properly and exclusively to this order of phenomena, and are accurately and beautifully analyzed. We shall confine our exposition to some special topics. The term Beauty denotes an emotion in distinction from sensation. It is not the direct or immediate result of an affection of any organ of sense; it is a feeling distinct from, though connected with, the sen. sible perception of the object termed beautiful, just as hope, fear, etc., are distinct from the affections of the sensibility which precede and occasion them. The term beauty denotes likewise exclusively an emotion, in opposition to the doctrine which makes beauty an object for any intellectual state of the mind, an object of judgment or reason. BROWN. 185 Beauty is a mere general term, comprehensive of certain peculiar agreeable affections of the mind felt in reference to various objects. It is not anything existing independently of particular objects, nor is it any simnple quality of those objects. It no more exists in objects, than species or genera exist in indi. viduals. It is as absurd to inquire what constitutes tile beautiful, as it is to inquire what constitutes the pleasing. Hence all theories which have attempted to decide what constitutes the beautiful, are as absurd as those which should attempt to resolve the pleasing exclusively into some particular sight, or taste, or smell. The term beautiful is wholly relative to our own minds. The objects which we call beautiful are such merely because the perception of them is followed by certain agreeable feelings. Yet the beautiful is not any quality inherent in the objects; least of all is it any common quality existing alike in all the different sorts and individuals of beautiful objects, and which is the ground of our being thus affected. Some philoso. phers have regarded beauty as something existing independently of particular objects, and manifested by them; others as a simple quality common to all objects called beautiful. These incorrect views have resulted from the peculiar vividness of the feeling, and from the natural tendency of the mind to attach its own feelings to the objects that occasion them. The question why the feeling of beauty is connect. ed with certain objects, Brown resolves by suppo. sing an original tendency of the mind to be so affect. ed by some objects, while as to another and larger class of objects it is the result of association.-The Sublime differs from the Beautiful only in degree. In his Ethical system Brown resolves the essence of virtue into a certain vivid feeling or emotion of II. —15 186 MODERN PHILOSOPHY. approveableness. Certain actions, or, rather, accord. ing to a distinction upon which he much insists, cer. tain agents in certain circumstances excite in us irm. mediately and irresistibly, from thie constitution of our minds, the emotions of moral approbation. To the actions which awaken this emotion we give the generic name virtue, which denotes neither anything in itself, nor any simple quality of actions, but is a mere collective term to denote those actions which we find by experience do awaken this emnlotion. The fact that certain actions awaken the nio-tion consti. tutes their approveableness, and the vf lue of the actions. This approveableness is but a relation of the action to the emotion. Virtue, obligation, merit, all mean essentially the same thing, differing only in respect to time. The irresistible feeling of approba. tion constitutes to us who consider the action, the virtue of the action itself, the obligation to perform it, and'the merit of the performance. "Virtue," says Brown, " being a term expressive only of the relation of certain actions, as contemplated, to' certain emotions in the minds of those who contemplate them, cannot, it is evident, have any universality be. yond that of the minds in which these emotions arise. - We speak always, therefore, relatively to the constitution of our minds, not to what we might have been constituted to admire...... and the supposed immutability, therefore [of moral distinctions], has regard only to the existing constitution of things under the Divine Being who has formed our social nature." Observations. The absorbing of all thought, all the faculties of the mind into consciousness, and consciousness itself into feeling, ii the fundamental peculiarity of Brown's BROWN. 187 philosophy. This, with the principle of suggestion considered as a constitutional tendency or law of the mind regulating the combination and succession -of feelings, involves his whole system: a system widely at variance, and in its most important points in absolute contradiction, with that of Reid and Stewart. With a strong natural bias of mind towards extreme simplification, his fundamental theory became with him an hypothesis to be applied to rather than a re. sult obtained by an impartial, accurate, and complete observation of the phenomena of the mind. Hence, while we have many ingenious, beautiful, and often accurate analyses, we have also many, especially in regard to the fundamental questions of philosophy, in which the most important facts are overlooked, or distorted, or mutilated. Hence he is led not only to deny the doctrine of Reid, that consciousness is a special distinct faculty, by which we become aware of the feelings of the mind, but also to deny that it is anything but the feelings themselves, thus confounding the condition of a fact with the fact itself. Because to be conscious at any particular moment implies some particular sensation, thought, or emotion of which we are con. scious, he argues that the sensation, thought, or emo. tion is consciousness; because to be awae implies something to be aware of, therefore the being aware and the something whereof we are aware are the same thing: a conclusion as grossly illogical as it is contradictory to the best evidence which the subject admits, which is practically admitted every day, and which all goes to prove that for the mind to be affected, whether in sensibility, in thought, in volition, or emotion, is one thing, and to be conscious of it is another thing; and though the latter implies the former, the former by no means always implies the latter. 188 MODERN PHILOSOPHY. From the same systematic source, and sustained by a like gross paralogism, comes his confusion and identification of causation with succession. Because every cause is an ihvariable antecedent, therefore every invariable antecedent is a cause: a conclusion no less strangely violating the simplest rules of logic, than contradictory to the fundamental convictions of the mind, which decide that a cause is not only that which invariably precedes, but also that which produces the effect. In the same systematic spirit, he denies the dis. tinction between the primary and secondary quali-. ties of matter, and confounds perception with sensation, and a suggested belief. There is no external world as an object of percep. tion: there are only sensations, and a belief invinci. bly suggested of their relation to some antecedent out of the mind. The same excessive desire for systematic simplification is seen in his reduction of all the intellectual faculties to suggestion. His mode of settling the controversy between Real. ism and Nominalism, which is peculiar, and in perfect harmony with his system, proceeds upon a misconception in respect to the error of both the doctrines. He saw very clearly that the Realists were wrong in asserting that there is a general essence independent of particular objects, answering to every general term; but, from the nature of his system, he did not see that to some general terms, as space, time, etc., there are general objects independent of particulars, to which they apply. He held the Nominalists to be wrong, because they attached the general term to particular objects without referring to the resem. blance between the particulars: but the Nominalists did no such thing. Thew maintained that there are BROWN. 189 general terms, as quadruped, which refer to no gen. eral object apart from the individuals included under them; and herein Brown would agree they were right: but they also held the same of every general term; herein was their error: an error which Brown did not perceive, because it was also his own error. The question about Nominalism is not-as Brown takes for granted it is-a question whether there is or is not a felt relation of resemblance between indi. viduals of the same kind, which leads to the forma. tion of the general term, but whether the general term expresses any general object actually existing apart from individuals with common qualities. Denying the Beautiful to be either anything in it. self, which may be more or less represented by db. jects of perception, or any simple quality in the objects termed beautiful, Brown resolves it into a mere agreeable emotion of a peculiar kind. He thus confounds both the beautiful, and the perception and judgment of it, with a mere sentiment or affection of the sensibility which accompanies or follows the perception and judgment, and thereby destroys the possibility of any absolute standard of beauty or fix. ed rules of art. The same general confusion corrupts the Moral system of Brown. Virtue is relative wholly to our constitution. Certain actions awaken emotions of approbation, just'as certain flavours, etc., are naturally agreeable to the senses. It is supposable that our constitution might have been otherwise: and virtue and vice would have signified quite opposite actions from what they now signify. There is, then, no absolute, essential, and immutable difference between virtue and vice. The very immutability of moral distinctions affirmed by Brown is admitted by'hin to be relative to the human constitution. 190 MODERN PHILOSOPHY. According to Brown, we do not approve an action because it is virtuous, but it is virtuous because we approve it. This is contrary to the fact, and is a confusion of two distinct though inseparable things, the judgment of an act as right, and then an accompanying or consequent feeling of approbation. Brown admits that the actions which are now aPproved, and thereby made virtuous, might have been their very opposites, and that such is not our constitution is owing to the will of God. But why should God have so constituted us? We, it is true, on Brown's principles, must approve and disapprove as we do, because we are so formed: but can the same reason apply to God? In short, what other reason can be conceived why God should have formed us to ap. prove a certain action as right, except that it is right in itself independently of our feeling? MACKINTOSH. SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH was born in Invernesshire, in Scotland, in 1765, and educated at Aberdeen. He afterward studied medicine at Edinburgh, and took his degree of doctor in 1787. The celebrity he acquired by his Vindicia3 Gallicca, or Defence of the French Revolution against Burke, published in 1791, diverted his attention to politics, and led him to adopt the profession of law. He was appointed Recorder of Bombay in 1803, and resided in India till 1811. In 1813 he became a member of Parliament. He died in 1832. In his General View of the Progress of Ethical Philosophy, he has brought out a system of his- own peculiar enough to merit a brief notice in this place. Mackintosh opposes the selfish system, and believes in the reality of disinterested virtue: but he denies MACKINTOSH. 191 that our notions of right and wrong are original con. ceptions of our reason, or that reason can be the source of any principles which can influence the will. He agrees, therefore, with the advocates of the'sen. timental system and of the system of the moral sense, in making conscience a function of the sensibility. He differs from them, however, in denying that it is a primitive original principle: he thinks it is gradu. ally formed and developed out of other and primitive affections, or, in his own language, is a principle of secondary formation, like self-love. Self-love, the general desire for happiness, is not primitive; it presupposes certain original instinctive propensities, and the pleasure resulting from their gratification, and then this pleasure constructed by the mind as the object of desire, the end which it seeks. Self-love is thus a principle of secondary formation. So is it likewise with conscience. The painful or agreeable sentiment naturally attending certain emotions is transferred by association to the actions they produce, and thus the actions themselves become at length the immediate objects of approbation or repugnance. By the association of ideas, a number of secondary desires and aversions, which relate to actions or volitions, are combined in our minds, and form a sort of internal sense, which we call conscience, which approves or condemns certain actions or volitions in themselves, and without regard to their useful or injurious consequences. This conscience is the only affection of our nature whose immediate objects are volitions or voluntary actions. T'he power of this conscience over the will results from the instinctive influence of the primitive dispositions from which the moral sense is derived, from the pleasure naturally accompanying the development of those dispositions, and finally from thue pleasurr 192 MODERN PHILOSOPHY. which likewise naturally accompanies a secondary desire. —By thus making conscience a derived sense, and -making the essence of virtue to consist in the emotion or affection of that sense, the system of Mackintosh lies open to all the objections brought against those which resolve virtue into some primitive emotion or into the affection of an original sense: virtue becomes relative and contingent, and all real ground for the essential and absolute differ. ence of right and wrong is destroyed. COLERIDGE. SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE was born in Devonshire in 1772, and died in 1834. He was educated first at Christ Church Hospital school, and afterward at Camboridge. In his early life he was a follower of Hartley;' but at a later period, his philosophical, as well as his religious and political views, underwent a great change. He was a man of eminent genius as a poet and as a thinker, and was possessed of an im. mense amount of various and profound learning: but he was averse to regular and systematic production. It is not as the founder of any comnlete and peculiar system that his name is here introduced. His philosophical writings are extremely fragmentary, consisting of scattered contributions to psychology, metaphysics, morals, politics, and resthetics. These, though strongly marked by the author's profound learning, depth, and originality of mind, exhibit principles not fundamentally different from those. of the great systems which have appeared in opposition to exclusive empiricism. To analyze or to reproduce his peculiar modes of establishing or illustrating these principles, would occupy too much space to be here given to writings which present no complete and peculiar system. Yet the great influence which Cole. COLERIDGE. 193 ridge has exerted upon the character and direction of philosophical thinking, entitles his name to a place in the history of philosophy, and would make it im. proper to pass it by without, at least, some general remarks. Coleridge represents himself to have devoted the largest part of his mature life to the preparation of a systematic work, which was to contain a full and complete exposition of his philosophy, and to have substantially executed a part of his plan. Hie did not live to publish any portion of this work. Of the phl. osophical writings published by him, the most general character is critical and polemical, as against the principles of sensualism in philosophy and of the selfish system in morals. Of these, in their princi. ples and in their consequences, he was a most ear. nest opponent, and in various passages of his works he has placed the objections which may be urged against them in a very original and striking light. Coleridge sketched a psychological classification of the phenomena of the mind under the following powers or faculties: the senses; the imitative pow. er, voluntary and automatic; the imagination, or shaping and modifying power; the fancy, or aggregative and associative power; the understanding, or regulative, substantiating, and realizing power; the speculative reason, vis theoretica et scientifica, or the power by which we produce, or aim to produce, unity, necessity, and universality in all our knowledge, by means of principles d priori; the will, or practical reason; the faculty of choice; and (distinct both from the moral will and choice) the sensation of vo. lition, which is included under the head of single and double touch. Of the phenomena thus classified, he has, however, given no complete analysis; and, with the exception II.-R 194 MODERN PHILOSOPHY. of some remarks upon the distinction between fancy and imagination, has explained his views distinctly upon none of them except the moral will and the understanding and reason. In regard to the will, he strenuously maintains it to be a self:determining power, not subject to the law of cause and effect, and holds this as the only possible ground of moral accounta. bility. The distinction between the understanding and the reason he insists upon as of the utmost consequence in its relations to all the higher questions of ontology, morals, and theology. These faculties, he contends, in the same way as Kant, are different in kind: the former being the faculty of judging according to sense, or the faculty of generalizing the notices received from the senses according to certain forms, and referring them to their proper names and class. es; the latter being the faculty of originating, by oc. casion of notices of the senses, necessary and univer. sal principles. Some of the most interesting things in the wri. tings of Coleridge relate to the differences and to the analogies between life and intelligence, and to the illustration which may be derived to psychology from the consideration of the dynamic forces. From these sources he has drawn many profound and original views, of great importance in their general bearing upon the mechanical philosophy and material psychology. Coleridge borrowed largely from Kant and Schelling; and though, in reading his writings, the impres. sion can hardly be resisted that he was equal to them in original speculative ability, and their superior in learning and critical power, yet, from his indolence, and his want of constructive talent, and.particularly the talent for clear and systematic exposition, he has SCHELLING. 195 contributed little that will occupy a permanent and substantive place in the general history of philosophy. His writings contain numerous thoughts and fragments of thought, which may continue to be, as they have already been, rich germes, that may be unfolded by meditative minds endowed with more patience and skill in development than he possessed, In this way the influence of Coleridge has been very considerable in opposing the progress of a superficial and materializing spirit in philosophy, and in establishing the foundations of the great truths of morals and re ligion. GERMAN PHILOSOPHY IN THE N1NETEENTiI, CENTURY. SCHELLING'S SYSTEM OF ABSOLUTE IDENTITY. HIistorical Notices. FREDERIC WILLIAM VON SCHELLING was born -at Leonberg, in. Wirtemberg, in 1775. He studied at Leipsic and at Jena. At the latter place he was a pupil of Fichte, whom he succeeded as professor there. In 1820 he removed to Erlangen, and lectured in the University. He was-made secretary of the Academy of Fine Arts at Munich, and ennobled by the King of Bavaria. In 1827 he was appointed professor in the University of Munich. He publish. ed a great number of works, a few of which appear ed in the last years of the eighteenth century. Schelling was full of originality as a thinker; superior to Fichte in many respects, having a richer imagination, more poetic spirit, and a much greater extent of learning and information. Hte was at first a partisan of Fichte, whose system he defended 196 MODERN PHILOS02fY, against the Kantians; but he gradually separated himself from his master, and at length brought out a system of his own: a system so strange in sub. stance and form, when compared with current philo. sophical ideas and language, that it is scarcely pos. sible to give the general reader any intelligible ac. count of it within the limits of a work like this. An attempt will, however, be made. Exposition. Fichte had deduced everything from the subject. ive as creating and containing all reality. Yet why may not the objective produce the subjective, as well as the subjective the objective? No reason can be given. We can no more deduce the infinite from the finite, than the finite from the infinite, by any of the processes of reflection. In order to have com. plete science, therefore, we must find a principle in which both the finite and infinite, the subjective and objective, are originally united. This principle is the 4Absolute Identity of subject and object in cognition. In Absolute Identity, knowing and being are one. The absolute in itself contains the essence and the form of all things. The absolute and its develop. ment constitute all reality. The absolute in itself is neither being nor knowing, neither infinite nor finite, but the ground of both. All the phenomena of the universe are the development of the absolute identity either in the direction of the ideal or of the real, that is, either as the think. ing principle or as objects of thought; just as all the phenomena of magnetism are the results of one identical force manifesting itself in opposite poles. The absolute identity of being and knowing mani fests itself sometimes with a predominance of the ideal, sometimes of the real. This development of the absolute is apprehended by a process which Schel. SCHELLtNG. 197 ling sometimes calls Intellectual Intuition, sometimes a spontaneous revelation of the absolute, and sometimes a descent or fall of ideas from the absolute. Confobrmably with these views, the following are the leading propositions of this system: 1. There exists but one sole, substantial, identical Being. Finite existences, or objects produced by reflection, which is altogether relative in its nature, have only an apparent reality. 2. The absolute Being reveals himself in the eter. nal generation of things, which constitute the forms and modes of this sole and only Being. Everything is therefore a manifestation of God under a determinate form, and nothing can exist which does not partake of the Divine Being. Nature accordingly is not dead, but living and divine equally with the spiritual world. 3. The manifestation of the absolute being in op. posite directions, like that of the polar forces in nature, which are but different expressions of one idena tical force, there are various degrees of development, the ideal sometimes predominating, and sometimes the real. Science is the investigation of this devel. opment; it is an image of the universe. This ideal construction of the universe, according to which all plurality and diversity are regarded only as a relative form of absolute identity, may be thus exhibited: I. The ABSOLUTE the WHOLE, in its first form (GOD) manifests itself in II. NATURE (the Absolute in its second form). It therein projects:tself in two orders of the Relative, to wit, The Rea The Ideal. Under the following powers; Gravity-M atter. Truth-Science. Light-Motion. Goodness-Religion. Organization-Life. Beauty-Art. 198 MODERN PHILOSOPHY As reflected forms of the universe, we have, Man (the Microcosm)......... The State. The System of the World (the external Universe). History. In this way, by Intellectual Intuition, Schelling be. lieved he had discovered in ideas both the essence and the necessary form of things. Thus he imagined he had corrected the error of Kant, who admitted only a subjective notion of the phenomenal world, and a simple belief in the reality of things in them. selves; and thus, also, he pretended to refute Fichte, who made the thinking principle the sole reality, and nature a non.reality, a mere limit or negative of the absolute activity'of the thinking principle. Schelling applied his fundamental'principles chief. ly to the philosophy of nature, treating of the ideal branch only in respect to some special questions in his later writings. In morals, he taught that the belief in God is the primary basis of morality. The existence of a moral world immediately follows from the existence of God. Morality is the necessary tendency of the soul to unite itself to its centre, to God. Virtue is conform. ity to this tendency. Virtue and happiness are identical. The social life, regulated conformably to the Divine type in respect-to morals, religion, science, and art, is social order, or the State. History, in its totality, is a progressive and unceasing revelation of God. In his treatise on the freedom of man, Schelling distinguishes God, conceived in the perfect purity of' the idea, or as the absolute, from God as existent or revealing himself, in which latter relation he evolves himself out of the absolute God, in virtue of a prin. ciple contained in himself, a nature in God, and thus SCHELLING. 199 comes to the state of complete existence; so that l: is in the world that God comes to a state of person. ality. Deus implicitus explicitus. God is the absolute identity of the ideal and real evolving itself from the original absolute union, or, rather, confusion, or, adopting an image from dynamics, indifference of both. There is a like double principle in every being produced by nature. In man this principle is personality, which is com. posed of reason and will. When personality acts arbitrarily, in opposition to reason, which is the prop. er law of freedom, evil arises, which, however, is only relative. The Beautiful, which Schelling treats only in relation to works of art, is the representation of the in. finite by the finite. Creative art is an expression of ideas; it is a revelation of God in the human mind. Observations. 1. Schelling aimed to give a complete philosophy of the universe, to deduce and explain all things from speculative principles. His system reduces every. thing to a single idea, and thereby maintains the possibility for man of a certain knowledge, not only of the subjective, but also of the objective, on the ground that the human mind and God are primitively identical. It thus destroys the chasm between the finite and infinite, which philosophy, unwilling to leap it by faith, has ever been attempting to bridge. It removes likewise all distinction between ernpirical and rational cognition, between knowledge given in experience and knowledge given in the necessary laws of reason; it thus makes speculative principles equally the basis of all the sciences. 2. Yet the whole system is destitute of a solid ba 200 MODERN PHILOSOPI-IY sis. It sets out, not from a fact of consciousness, bul from Intellectual Intuition, a mere assumption nei. ther self-evident nor demonstrable. Again, thought without a thinking subject is a pure abstraction; absolute identity cannot be conceived without a relative identity; for without this condition the Absolute reduces itself to Nothing. The alleged original confusion of thought and the nature of things is a mere abstraction; and in pretending that it represents reality and the nature of things, a hypothesis without proof is set up. 3. This system is more scientific in appearance than in reality.. Schelling's problem was to deduce by a real demonstration the finite from the infinite, the relative from the absolute, the particular from the universal. This is a problem which cannot be sol. ved, and Schelling has not solved it. His demonstrations consist of assertions and assurances, support. ed by analogies, images, and notions borrowed from experience. 4. The idea of God presented in this system is both in itself and in its most important relations, objectionable. God is subjected to a blind destiny, under which he must evolve himself from non-intelli. gence to intelligence, from a nature in God to God. This is a mere hypothesis, and, besides, neither ac. counts for the existence of God, nor renders it any more comprehensible than the common theory, which supposes him to have existed from eternity as the All-perfect Being: a theory which can never be dis proved. It is, also, a system of pantheism in one sense o the word: it identifies nature with God, and asset., the immanence of-all things in him; thus destroyi. all proper notion of the creation and government,i the world by infinite wisdam and holiness. It de. SCHOOL OF SCHELLING. 201 stroys the substantial individuality and personality of creatures, and all freedom of will in man, and thiereby contradicts the law of duty in conscience, and destroys the distinction between right and wrong. Progress of the School of Schelling. The system of Schelling was attractive by the apparent facility with which it offered to explain the uni. verse; by its many novel and striking ideas; by the prospect which it held out of the indefinite extension of human knowledge; and particularly by its con. trast with the dry forms of Kant, and the lifeless system of Fichte. With many the attraction was, per. haps, increased by the very faults of the author's meth. od and style: his obscure and fluctuating terminologies, and his mystical expressions and images imitated from Plato. These circumstances, combined with the spirit of his time and of the German mind, may perhaps explain the enthusiasm excited by the philosophy of Schelling. A. numerous school was formed among philosophers, theologians, philologists, physicians, and naturalists. All branches of science were treated in the spirit of his system. The ideas of Schelling exerted especially a great influence upon physical inquiries, upon mythology, history, and the theory of the arts and criticism, in the latter of which the celebrated brothers Schlegel, at that time associates and firiends of' Schelling, contributed powerful. ly to extend the influence of his system. On the other'hand, this school was prolific in fan. tastic ideas and mystical extravagances, which al. most revived the age of New-Platonism. Of the numerous writers who belong to the school of Schelling, our limits forbid our speaking in detail. Many of them endeavoured to reconcile his system II.-16 202 MODERN PHILOSOPHY. with Revelation and Christianity; others did not deny their incompatibility. Of his early followers, some, as Eschenmayer and Wagner, became afterward his opponents; others modified his system in some re. spects; and Hegel put forth a different system. Of those who confined themselves to expounding and teaching the system of Schelling, the most faithful interpreter was Klein, professor at Wurtzburg, who died in 1820. It was reduced to didactic forms by Thanner and Rixner, and its principles were applied to theology by Daub. To these might be added a long list of writers who have developed or modified this system, or parts of it, in various degrees and applicdtions; but it would be of little use to cite their names, and we should have room for nothing more. Among the opponents of the philosophy of Schel. ling may be mentioned all the principal partisans of the system of Kant (the most distinguished of whom are Fries and Krug); the authors of some new sys. tems, as Herbart, Bardili, Bouterwek, and J7acobi and his school. Various other attempts to construct the system of philosophy were put forth in the first years of the present century; but they are either too eccen. tric and obscure, or too superficial to deserve atten. tion; and as to the rest, they are mostly the ideas of others, having a character of novelty only from their peculiar nomenclature. Of the writers that have been named, we shall briefly notice Bouterwek and the school of Jacobi. BOUTERWEK. FREDERIC BOUTERWEK, professor at G6ttingen, born in 1766, died in 1828, was a distinguished thinker, though his acuteness too often degenerated into an obscure subtlety, notwithstanding the habitual BOUTERWEK. 203 clearness of his style. At first a follower of Kant, he became convinced that his philosophy could not be maintained against skepticism. The system of Fichte appeared too exclusive to satisfy the desire for reality in the mind; and, on the other hand, it seemed to him that science cannot dispense with the absolute, without which he could not conceive the possibility of knowledge or thought, since in all our proofs we always suppose something real, an en. tity, the absolute, that unknown X, which, according to Kant, subsists under all phenomena. Bouterwek therefore proposed, in his Idea of a Universal Apodic. tic, to supply the defects and correct the vices of anterior systems, which he found fault with as investigating our cognitions and beliefs only in notions of the understanding and empty formulas, and conse. quently never attaining to any living fundamental science. The doctrine of this work may be reduced to the following points: All our sensations and thoughts have for their ba. sis a true existence, consequently an absolute existence, having its basis only in itself. This existence cannot be found and demonstrated by thought, since all thought presupposes it, and being is superior to thought. Consequently, either existence must be reduced to a caprice of the imagination, and all thought to a chimera, or there must be a faculty of absolute cognitions, which is neither sensation nor thought: a faculty upon which rests the authenticity of reason itself, and by which we arrive directly (apo. dictically) at all existence. Subsequently Bouterwek abandoned this apodicfic, and substituted for it a new scheme: one which he called a Universal Theory of Truth and Science. according to which, on the principle of the faith of rea. 204 MODERN PHILOSOPHY. son in itself, he constructed a less bold system oi transcendental rationalism. In this view, the princi. pal object of philosophy is to solve, by the. apodicti. cal distinction of the real and the apparent, the prob. lem of things and the destination of man, as far as it is possible for human reason to penetrate by itself this question. It is therefore upon an apodeictic (ac. cording to the last view adopted by Bouterwek) that philosophy must be grounded: empirical psychology and logic, ordinarily understood as the science of the forms of thought, can furnish only the preliminary notions. Here the author agrees with Jacobi, that all purely logical thinking is mediate. All our im. mediate cognitions, without which we could conceive of a discursive notion only as mediate, and conse. quently uncertain, rest upon the primitive bond ot connexion of the thinking faculty with an internal sentiment in the energy of the spiritual life, that is, in the unity of the active faculties of our being, as well subjective as objective. Reason has faith in it. self as far as it is pure reason; it believes in the truth, inasmuch as it recognises in it, in virtue of the bond of connexion just indicated, its own peculiar and original energy, and in that same energy finds the germe of ideas, by the aid of which it can rise above the sphere of the sensibility, and investigate the principle of all existence and all thought, or the idea of the absolute. Truth. in the metaphysical sense of the word, is the agreement of our thoughts with the supersensible essence of things, and their necessary relation to the principle of all being and all thought: truth is therefore immediately known by reason. To give this idea a scientific form, by showing how, upon what grounds, and to what extent, a positive knowledge of things is possible for the human mind, is the province of metaphysics SCHOOL OF J&COBI. 205 (including religious philosophy grounded in the re. ligious sentiment). Bouterwek applied his principles to a system of morals and natural law, and attempted also to form a system of aesthetics upon purely psychological principles. New Developments of the Philosophy of Sentiment. JACOBI has already been mentioned, in connexion with Kant, as one who exerted a powerful influence in the reaction against the Critical philosophy. But it should be added that he lived till 1819, and no less vigorously opposed the subsequent developments of speculation as they appeared in the systems of Fichte and Schelling. Dissatisfied with the Critical philos. ophy; as taking away all rational ground for belief in supersensible things, and equally dissatisfied with all dogmatical systems of speculation, which, if consist. ent, can only lead to fatalism or pantheism, and yet unable to find solid ground in the idea of a supernat. ural revelation, he continued to ground all philosoph. ical knowledge upon a sort of rational instinct, an immediate sentiment or direct apperception of supersensible truth. This sentiment, this instinctive faith (quite distinct from positive historical faith in revelation), gives us the knowledge of the external world, of God, of Providence, of Freedom, Immortality, Morality: in short, the whole supersensible order of things, in virtue of an internal sense, an organ of truth, to which he afterward gives the name of rea. son, or the faculty of cognition. Some obscurity in which he left his fundamental principle, and some want of precision in the distinc. tion he mnade between reason as the faculty of supersensible ideas and understanding as the faculty of logical forms, exposed him to numerous misconcep. tions and attacks on the part of those whonm he opII. 206 MODERN PHILOSOPHY. posed. He found, however, numerous partisans, and may be said to have founded a school. But the vagueness to which we have alluded gave rise to a sort of schism among his followers. Some of them considered ideas as divine revela. tions, by means of perception, and they attributed these ideas to reason as their special faculty: they held, moreover, that the notions of the understanding perform, with relation to these ideas, a part altogether negative; that is to say, that ideas could neither be attained, conceived, nor expressed by the aid of notions of the understanding; that they are man. ifested in sentiment alone; in fine, that faitth precedes and surpasses all science. Others conceded more to logical notions, r nd made philosophy consist in the unity of reason and understanding: a unity which takes its substance fi'om reason, and its form fiom understanding. This second opinion was adopted by Jacobi himself, but only in his latter years. The first of these views was'n',intained by Fred. eric k'ceppen, a genial writer, and the author of an excellent exposition of the system of this school. To the second class of opinions belong the works of James Salat. Kaeppen, the fiiend and disciple of Jrwobi, set' out with the idea of freedom: according to him, free. dom is a causative power, which takes its determi. nation in itself; without any determining principle, and independently of any relation; it is consequently the first cause, the ground of all existence; in short, Being properly called. But, at the same time, fieedom is altogether inconceivable by the understanding; even its possibility cannot be distinctly apprehended, nor its reality demonstrated; it is a fact of cognition and of activity perceived immediately. Necessity HEGEL. 207 is an order established by freedom. To speak of unlimited and absolute freedom is to speak of the divine power. But the nature of human individuality consists in the relation of the internal and external. By this relation freedom is found to be limited in man. All philosophy is consequently a dualism. On this dualism turns the everlasting and inevitable contradiction of science. From this, again, it follows that philosophy, strictly speaking, is impossible, and that all scientific pretension in the proper sense of the word, all pretension to a speculative system that shall embrace both the finite and the infinite, is destined only to fall back foiled upon itself. The writings of Kceppen, as well as those of Jacobi, whatever be thought of their system in its fundament. al principles, exerted a very salutary influence upon the philosophy of the day. They opposed the rash. ness of dogmatic speculation; they developed with great freshness and spirit many valuable ideas, some original, some borrowed from Platonism; and their very inability to substitute anything adequately satisfying to the moral wants of the mind, in place of the speculative systems they opposed, tended to recall men to a positive faith, grounded in a higher source than their principle of sentiment. It may be added that Jacobi himself is said before his death to have admitted the authority of revelation as the source of the knowledge of divine things. NOTE. The most recent German Speculations. Hegel. IT would be scarcely possible to give within the limits of this sketch anything like a clear and com-. plete view of the progress of philosophy in Germany for the last twenty years, or of its present condition. 208 MODERN PHILOSOPHY. While Fries, Krug, and some others continued to maintain the principles of Kant, and the school of Jacobi to oppose all dogmatic speculations, new de. velopments and modifications, in various directions, of the principles of Schelling from time to time ap. peared, until at length philosophical discussion received a new direction from the attempt of Hegel to eslUblish a system distinct from any of the preceding. George Will. Fred. HEGEL was born in 1770. He was professor successively at Jena, Heidelberg, and Berlin, at which latter place he died of the chol era in 1831. Hegel was at first the disciple of Schelling, and, as such, published in 1801 a tract on the difference between the systems of Fichte and Schelling. He was also associated with him in the conduct of a philosophical journal in 1802-3. But his opinions grad. ually took a different turn. He rejected Schelling's Intellectual Intuition as an unwarrantable assumption, although he continued to maintain its ground. ing idea, namely, the unity of the subjective or ide. al, and the objective or real; and in this idea endeav. oured to establish that absolute cognition and abso. lute truth, which alone, according to this school, can satisfy the demands of the philosophical spirit. Hence he maintained that pure conception in itself, and pure conception alone, is true being, without having, however, demonstrated this identity of being and thinking. Equally arbitrary, also, is the position that everything rational is real, and everything real rational: a position which, in a practical view, would make the moral law, considered as demands of the reason upon the will, without object, and therefore superfluous, since the will, by the terms of the posi. tion, can make nothing real that is not rational. The weakest part of the system of Ilegel is the HEGEL. 209 esthetical, cr philosophy of art, and the theological, >r philosophy of religion. It is said by Weisse, once a very warm partisan of Hegel, but since somewhat cooled, that asthetics and theology begin where Hegel leaves off. For what we call the ideas of the Beautiful and of God, Hegel admits only in the way of psychological and historical appearance; they are to him merely phenomenal, and the science of them is merely a part of the phenomenology of the mind. Hegel seems not, indeed, to have perfectly developed his system; and as he was very deficient in the talent for exposition, and his writings are not only extremely obscure, but dry and harsh, it is scarcely possible to be satisfied that one has a clear and com. plete view of his philosophy. Of those who would be thought to comprehend it, very many regard it as a perfect system of rational science. Certain it is that he exerted a powerful influence on the German mind; he founded a school, and drew around him a numerous body of zealous and distinguished follow. ers. He derived, indeed, external support from a prevalent impression that his system tended better than any other to secure the permanence of the ex. isting order of things in Church and State, and this political popularity increased the number of his disciples. Some eight or ten years since, it was said by one of Hegel's critics to be a remarkable thing, that among his numerous disciples, none had yet been able to relieve the obscurity, heaviness, and dryness of his mode of philosophizing by a clearer, more agreeable, and lively exposition; that they all continued to use their master's words, phrases, and turns of expres. sion, as if they were magic formulas, which would lose their power by the slightest change. The case would seem since then to have become somewhat utherwise,in some respects at least; for while a por I. —17 210 MODERN PHILOSOPHY. tion of his followers continue to adhere to the more abstruse and speculative forms and style of Hegel, others are endeavouring to popularize and extend it in every direction. A schism appears, indeed, to have' sprung up in the bosom of the school, which, joined with the powerful attacks made upon it from without, chiefly in the interest of religion and morals, would seem to betoken the dissolution and downfall of which Hegel is said, shortly before his death, to have expressed a presentiment. At present it is the centre of nearly all philosophical interest. Its prin. ciples, particularly in their applications to theology and morals, as developed and defended by its friends, and opposed by its enemies, are subjects of the most animated controversy. Some of Hegel's school en. deavour to reconcile his principles with orthodox Christianity; others impose them upon Christianity, giving its historical documents only a mythical or allegorical significance; while others reject it altogether, and openly proclaim opinions at variance with all ordinary notions of religion or morality. The system of Hegel, equally with that of Schel. ling, is charged with being a species of pantheism. That it may be so is to be inferred, not merely from its pretension of giving the knowledge of the absolute, but from its identification of the subjective and ob. jective. Some of the followers of Hegel assert the personality of God; but others expressly deny it, and maintain that they only are in harmony with Hegel. God is represented by them as the immanence of spirit in the world; as an eternal, universal principle, manifesting itself in individual existences, having no ob. jective existence but in those individuals; coming to self.consciousness only in human reason, and having no personality distinct from the personality of man. They are also represented as holding that the Abso. FRENCH PHILOSOPHIY. 211 lute attains to consciousness in a series of individu. als, no one of which perfectly represents him, each having significance only as a member of the whole. It is needless to dwell upon the consequences of pantheism as a part of the system thus represented, the subversion of all proper ideas of morality, human freedom, immortality, and another world. Whether or not Hegel admitted these consequences, one of his most respectable followers shows that some of the most important of them are logically involved in his principles, and all of them are expressly main. tained by others.-Such is a very imperfect sketch of the present state of philosophical discussion in Germany. FRENCH PHILOSOPHY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Preliminary Observations. IT has already been seen how, in the latter half of the eighteenth century, the principles of Locke were unfolded in France by Condillac into a complete system of sensualism, and carried out by Helvetius, D'Holbach, and others to their legitimate consequen. ces, materialism, fatalism, atheism, and the destruction of nmoral distinctions. From this time to the French revolution sensualism was the reigning doctrine; it pervaded every department of intellectual production, art, morals, religion, the physical and economical sciences. It extended itself from Paris throughout the provinces, and obtained complete control of the education of the country. During the Revolution all minds were absorbed by the exciting events of that period, and the little phil 212 MODERN PHILOSOPHY. osophical activity that existed was directed to politi. cal theories. With the restoration of' public order the philosophical spirit began to awaken, and naturally enough continued in the direction in which it was pro. ceeding whetn arrested. The philosophy of Condillac was revived, and, favoured by the organization of the Institute, and the establishment of the Normal Schools under the Directorial government, acquired a predominating influence. From this time to the Consulate philosophy was zealously cultivated, though always in the direction of sensualism. No opposition as yet had appeared, except incidentally in literary works. Among the most important works produced during this period are those of Cabanis and Destutt de Tracy. From the time of the Empire tokens of a reaction began to appeal more distinctly, though at first in productions of imagination and sentiment rather than scientific works. A more direct token and cause of the decline of sensualism consisted in the character of a work produced about this time by Laromiguiere, a writer avowedly of the school of Condillac, but who, by the distinctions he introduced, favoured a contrary system. But it was not until 1811 that the opposi. tion to sensualism became organized and systematic. From 1811 to 1814 the celebrated Royer-Collard expounded the philosophy of Reid, and exerted a pow. erful influence in overthrowing the system of' Condillac, and establishing a contrary system.'I'he reac. tion against sensualism was still farther strengthened by a class of writers in the interest of religion and the Church, such as Le Maistre, Chateaubriand, Bo. nald. etc. Thus, from the Empire to the Restoration, sensu. alism continued to decline. and from the latter period to the present day it may be said to have lost all au CABANIS. 213 thority and influence. The disciples and successors of Royer.Collard have completed the victory begun by him, and gone forward into a still wider sphere of speculation. For more than twenty years nearly all the leading minds have been on the side of the new movement, and the influence of a spiritual philosophy has pervaded French literature in almost every de. partment. A little more particular account of the principal writers connected with this revival and decline of sensualism, and with the progress of the new movement, will now be given. SENSUAL SCHOOL CABANIS. PETER JOHN GEORGE CABANIS was born at Cognac in 1757. He studied at Paris, where he addicted himself at first to general literature, but atterward to medical science. He was a member of the Institute, clinical professor in the medical school of Paris, and snbsequently a senator under the Empire. He died in 1808. His most important work, Rapports du Physique and du Moral de l'Homme, On the Relation of the Physical Organization of Man to his Moral Faculties (Paris, 1802), attracted great attention. Exposition. Cabanis grounded his views upon the system of Condillac, which explained all the phenomena of the mind by sensations. He adopted this system, and thought he could perfect and complete it by establish. ing the nature and origin of sensation itself. It is not certain that among all animals sensation, or rather sensibility, is a property of' the nerves: for there are some animals, as the polypi and infuso. 214 MODERN PHILOSOPIIY. rial insects, who have feeling, and yet are apparently destitute of any nervous apparatus. But in aniinals that resemble man, and in man especially, sensibil. ity resides exclusively in the nerves, as the simple experiment of cutting or tying the trunk of any set of nerves demonstrates. Sensation, moreover, depends upon every impres. sion made upon the extremities of any set of nerves being followed by a reaction from the centre of the organ towards the extremities, so that sensibility un. folds itself in two distinct stages. In the first it acts, in the second it reacts; in the first it flows back from the circumference to the centre, and in the sec. ond returns from the centre to the circumference. In whatever way this may be conceived, it is cer. tain that sensibility resides in the nerves, and thereby all the moral faculties, intelligence, will, etc. Man is a moral being only because he is a sensitive being; he is sensitive only because he has nerves: man is entirely constituted by nerves. These are the prin. ciples unfolded in the work of Cabanis. The extreme simplicity of the system is the first point with which one is struck. An impression re. ceived, an action and reaction of the nerves, a sentiment resulting: this is the whole theory. The relations between the physical and moral in man no longer offer any difficulties; the intellectual and moral faculties are the effect, the physical nervous organization the cause; sentiment or feeling is at once the last term of the phenomena which constitute life, and the first of those which we attribute to mind. It is remarkable, again, with what ease this theory submits to a multitude of particular applications. It is well known, for instance, that age, sex, temperament, regimen, climate, exert a great influence on CABANIS. 21 ) the intellectual and moral character of men nothing is more easily explained; these are only so many circumstances affecting the nervous system, and through that the sensibility, intelligence, will, etc. Only get at the causes which act upon the state of the nerves, and the feelings that result from them, and you may easily explain all the moral phenomena of the human soul. Observations. l. But all this does not establish the truth of the theory of Cabanis. That in the present state of human existence a nervous organization and nervous impressions are the necessary condition of all intellectual and moral phenomena, may be readily admitted, and is certainly true; but it does not follow that they are their constituent principle and cause. So also it may be admitted that the nervous organ. ization exercises a great influence in modifying intellectual and moral development, and yet it does not follow that the intellectual and moral in man result from this organization. In short, the facts established by Cabanis prove nothing against the distinct existence, the substantial nature, the unity and simpli. city of the soul, as a principle different in itself from the organization, though at present intimately con. nected with it, and conditioned by it in regard to its activity. 2. The theory of Cabanis is burdened by insuperable difficulties. In the first place, it is impossible to explain how feeling should result from the action and reaction of the nerves. We can conceive that the first can take place, that the external object can excite an action (affection) of the nerve; but no principle is shown that is to produce the reaction. In the second place, if the nerves themselves feel 216 MODERN PHILOSOPHY. and are conscious, there is no way of explaining the unity of consciousness, which is nevertheless a fact of experience. For, according to the theory, there must be as many selves as there are different kinds of nervous impressions. It is to no purpose to say that the different nerves and their various affections all unite in a central organ, and thus produce our consciousness of unity, of our being one and the same self. This is merely taking a verbal for a real uniity. For this nervous centre is only a collection of nerves designated by a common name. 3. It is needless to remark at length upon the mor. al consequences of this theory. It is a system of materialism, and, as such, involves fatalism, and the destruction of moral distinctions, of the belief' in a fu. ture life and in God. Cabanis himself did not derive these consequences, and did not wish to hold them. It may be added that the views of Cabanis were considerably modified at a later period, as appears fi'Min a letter of his published after his death. In his first work he did not consider the soul as a principle by itself; in this letter he no longer regards it as a result of the organization, but as a distinct living force present in the organization. DESTUTT DE TRACY. COUNT DESTUTT DE TRACY, peer of France, was born in 1754. His Elements of Ideology were pub. lished in 1801. He was the metaphysician of the sensual school of that, period, as Cabanis was its physiologist. Ca. banis, though a sensualist, and holding the principle of Oondillac, occupied himself with it less as a pni. losopher than as a naturalist, desirous to explain the principle by a physiological hypothesis. De Tracy DE TRACY. 217 implicitly adopts the principle of Cabanis without an. alyzing or unfolding it. His object is to analyze all mental phenomena into sensation. Assumning his grounding principles from Condillac, he reasons from them with great strictness and with remarkable clearness of style. His theory is very simple. The mind is nothing but sensibility. The sensibility is susceptible of four sorts of impressions: 1. Those which arise from the present action of objects upon the organs; 2. Those which result firom their past action, by means of a cer. tain disposition which that action left upon the organs; 3. Those of things which have relations, and may be compared; 4. Those which spring from our wants, and lead us to seek satisfaction for them. Ev. erything comes from the affection of the sensibility through impressions made upon the organs of sense. When the sensibility is affectedby the first sort of impressions, it feels simply; when by the second, it repeats or recollects; when by the third, it feels relations or judges; when by the fourth, it desires or wills. Thus sensation, according to the nature of its objects, manifests itself respectively as pure percep. tion, or memory, or judgment, or will. It is, there. fore, the sole principle of all our faculties, and of all operations of the mind, since there is none of them which may not be reduced to one or the other of these forms of sensibility. With respect to the fundamental principle of De Tracy, the general objections that have been indicated in regard to Cabanis, Condillac, etc., apply of course. With respect to the particular analysis by which he has endeavoured to explain all mental phe. nomena according to that principle, it may be enough briefly to remark, that there are operations of the'1X.-T 21S MODERN PHILOSOPIIY. mind which cannot be explained by his method. Generalization, for example, is neither perception, nor recollection, nor judgment, nor volition, though it may presuplposc, them all. Imagination likewise, though conditioned by perception and aided by memory, is different from either; its function is to repre. sent something that has never precisely existed for sensation. So, also, in regard to all the absolute, necessary, and universal convictions of the mind, they are presupposed in experience (sensation); they are suggested by it and applied to it; but they are never facts of sensation. By no analysis can the absolute conviction of the relations of the angles of all possible triangles to two right angles, of the relation of all possible phenomena to a cause, etc., be made facts of sensation. The same remark applies in regard to moral and religious ideas; and, finally, to select another example, without intending a complete enumeration, his confusion of will with desire, and reduction of all volitions to sensitive desires, contradicts our consciousness. If there are volitions (in his sense of the word) which he can explain as particular movements of the mind in sensation, there are others which he cannot so explain. VOLNEY. CONSTANTINE FRANCIS CHASSE-BOEUF, COUNT DE VOLNEY, was born at Craon, in Brittany, in 1755. Inspired from his youth with an ardent desire of seeing foreign countries, he travelled in Egypt and Syria, and studied the Oriental languages for some time at the convent on Mount Lebanon. He was a deputy of the tiers etat in the States-General in 1789, where he embraced the popular side. In 1794 he was professor of history at the normal school. He afterward travelled in the United States. Under the VOLNEY. 219 Consulate he was a member of the senate. After the restoration in 1814 he was made a peer of France. He died in 1820. His most celebrated work is his Ruins, an infidel production. He is connected with the history of philosophy in France by his Citizen's Catechism, or Physical Principles of Morals. He is the moral philosopher of the sensual school of his time. There is very little originality in his moral phi. losophy. It is essentially that of all the partisans of the sensual system; in particular, it is that of Helvetius, D'Holbach, and Saint-Lambert. Volney has only reduced it to its simplest expression. His principle is clear and simple. Se.fpreserva. tion, to take care of his Ifie, is man's only duty. By this he means nothing profound, refined, or out of the ordinary sense. He understands the words as all the world understand them. He means that man should take care to preserve his life, to maintain himself in a sound physical state. Even if he were not explicit, the general system of philosophy which he adopted would remove all doubt. A partisan of the physiological theory of the sensual school, man was for him a collection of nervous organs; he had no soul, or, what comes to the same thing, his soul was nothing but a result of organized matter; there could, of course, be no other self-preservation, no other end of human actions, than to maintain the functions of life in a sound condition; no other duty than to follow the rules which tend to this end. Volney was not a man to be frightened at this consequence of his prin. ciple; he goes to it without flinching, and proclaims it without circumlocution. The applications are equally simple and clear. Good and evil, right and wrong, are easily determined. Moral good, right, is 220 MODERN PHILOSOPHY. nothing but what tends to preserve and to improve the physical organization; moral evil, wrong, is nothing but what tends to destroy or impair it. The greatest good is life, the greatest evil is death; nothing is superior to physical enjoyment, nothing worse than bodily pain: the supreme good is health. Vice and virtue are and can be only the voluntary habit of actions conformed or contrary to the law of taking care of one's organization. Particular virtues and vices in the individual, domestic, and social relations are determined by the same criterion. In the particular application of his principles, Volney cannot be charged with doing violence to received moral opinions. Those things that he lays down as virtues are truly virtues: temperance, cleanliness; chastity, industry, economy, contentment; honesty, veracity, kindness: and the contrary of these he rightly denominates vices. His error is in the principle and motive on which he grounds their nature and obligation, namely, their adaptation to pro. mote physical health and long life. Considered as prudential maxims subordinated to a higher principle, his practical ethics would be faultless as far as it goes; but as actually exhibited by him, it is not only incomplete, for there are obligatory practical maxims which cannot be analyzed into maxims of wellbeing, but also, as before said, corrupt in principle; for the ground of our obligation to honesty or veracity, for instance, is not their tendency to promote tranquillity, and thereby good health; they are obligatory apart from these consequences, and in special cases may entail opposite consequences, and yet be equally obligatory. In short, in common with all the selfish systems, by erecting a partial and contingent criterion into a universal maxim, and confounding that maxim with the principle of virtue, he destroys the essence itself of all virtue. GALL. 221 GALL, AZAIS, AND OTHER WRITERS. The only other names of any note in the sen. sual school of the present century in France, are those of Garat, Lancelin, Broussais, Gall, and Azais. The writings of the first two offer nothing special. BROUSSAIS was a celebrated physiologist, and contended strongly for the sensual and materialist system against the new spiritual views that had then become predominant. His work on irritability and Madness was published in 1828. The celebrated Dr. GALL (born in 1758, died in 1828), though more properly ranked with the sensu. al school than with any other, was yet the founder of a system entirely his own. He holds, indeed, the fundamental principle of sensualism, that all our faculties are derived from the organization; and he agreed with the physiologists of that school in regard. ing the brain as the productive source of all our faculties. But he did not consider the brain as a single organ, but an assemblage of many distinct and special organs, whose locality and functions he minutely described; and from the relative size, activity, and mutual influence of which he explained all the intel. lectual and moral phenomena of man. This system was subsequently greatly developed, modified, and extended by Spurzheim, and has been, and continues still to be, zealously propagated under the name of phrenology. It is not necessarily a scheme of ma. terialism; for, though it may be held in the materialist sense that all the phenomena of the mind are produ. ced by these cerebral organs, it may also be held in the spiritualist sense that these organs are only the conditions and instruments of the manifestation of a spiritual principle distinct from them, though connect. 222 MODERN PHILOS(OPHY ed with them. As to the rest, it is not worth whiile here to go into an examination of the exclusive pre. tensions made in behalf of the system of phrenology. Its true things are no new things, and its new things (so far as they are of any importance to the proof of the system) have not yet been sufficiently proved to be true things. AZAIS was born in 1766. He belongs in strictness to no school. His doctrine is peculiar to him. self. He is here put in connexion with the sensual school, from the materialist character of his system in a moral point of view. He unfolded his system in lectures, delivered during the period of the Empire to crowded and brilliant audiences with great distinction and success; he also gave his views te the public through the press. His system is a peculiar physical explanation of the universe. Matter, the substance of being, is the passive subject of a universal action or movement impressed by God. This universal action has but one sole mode, expansion; every material substance is pervaded throughout by a force which tends to indefinite enlargement of the space it fills, and thereby to dissolution. But this dissolution of each body is prevented by the same indefinite force of expansion acting in all other bodies in the universe. Hence a force of re. pression or conservation, which results from the very aw of universal expansion. By this force the heavenly bodies, their relations and motions, the earth, its various bodies and their properties, are explained; so, also, all organized beings, with their various phenomena. Man is the most perfect of organized be. ings. The moral and social world are also explain. ed by this tendency to universal expansion, and the repression which results from the mutual action of DE MAISTRE. 223 all individuals upon each. It is needless to follow the details of these explanations. It is enough to state its conclusions in regard to the mind: the soul is a composite whole; the mind is a body, ideas are corpuscles; thought has extension, form, etc. THEOLOGICAL SPIRITUALISM. IT has been already stated that the reaction against sensualism was strengthened by the influence of many writers in the interest of religion and the Church. The most remarkable of these date from about the period of the restoration. While Royer. Collard and his disciples combated sensualism, and endeavoured to establish a contrary system by the philosophical observation of consciousness, the writers of the theological school confined all speculation within the limits of theological authority, and considered its only function to be that of explaining and justifying the doctrines received on the ground of Catholic faith. Negatively they bitterly opposed the doctrines of the sensual school, and wielded against them with great force the weapons of dialectics, invective, and ridicule. Among these writers may be named CHATEAUBRIAND. Though a writer of imagination and sentiment rather than a philosopher, yet his aversion to sensualism, and the spiritual and religious tone of his works, were in harmony with the more decidedly philosophical writers of the theological school. DE MAISTRE. COUNT JOSEPH DE MAISTRE (born in 1753 in Piedmont, died at Turin in 1821) was a statesman and diplomatist, as well as a man of letters and a philosopher. He was an enemy to liberal principles in re. ligion, politics, and philosophy, and an advocate of 224 MODERN PHILOSOPHY. the principles typified by the Holy Alliance. His principal works are On the Pope (1819), and Soirees at St. Petersburgh (1821). The latter work, which, by its popular form, and its talent and wit, exerted great influence, touches upon almost all the great problems of metaphysics, running through a series of closely connected ideas with the apparent ease and grace of unstudied conversation. The principal topic of his'writings, in a philosophical view, is the temporal government of Providence. He endeavours to explain and justify the spectacle of the world so full of calamities and miseries for the good. He maintains, 1. That the good and the bad are both subject to suffering here below, but the good less than the bad; 2. That the good man suffers not as good, but as a man; 3. That man suffers in con. sequence of original sin; 4. That there are two means of deliverance, prayer on our own part, and interces. sion and merits of the good availing for us. The foundation of political authority in the will of God; the divine right of legitimate sovereigns; pass. ive obedience; the authority of the Church in matters of faith, the supremacy of the pope, and the superi. ority of ecclesiastical over the temporal authority: these are some of the religious and political princi. ples of De Maistre. The practical tendencies of his system are to asceticism and mysticism. LA MENNAIS. To the same school, as indirectly an opponent of the sensual philosophy in behalf of the Church, belongs the celebrated Abbe de LA MENNAIS, who was born in 1780. In his earlier writings he was an ultra monarchist, and supporter of the principles of abso. lutism. In religion he was in favour of a state es. tablishmen:, though he held the doctrines called in LA MENNAIS. 225 France ultramnontane, denying the freedom of the Gal. lican Church, and asserting for the pope absolute au. thority in spiritual matters, and insisting upon the dutiful submission of all governments to God in the Church. Subsequently he abandoned the political views he had at first put forth, and became a powerful advocate of liberal principles. Bold and vigorous itn his tone of thinking, brilliant and eloquent in his style, his various writings have attracted great attention, and some of them have exerted great influence, though for the most part the ideas which they present are not within the scope of this work. He engages in philosophical investigations only for the sake of' establishing a criterion of truth independent of reason. The principal points in his book on Indifference in Religion are: his skepticism in regard to the in. tellectual faculties; authority as the sole principle of belief; and the applications of this principle. 1. He denies the possibility of philosophical knowl. edge. The senses are deceptive; sentiment is equal. ly uncertain; and reason, operating only upon data given in sensation and sentiment, is more to be dis. trusted than either. All the contradictions, conflicts, extravagances, and impieties which the history of philosophy exhibits, show that, if man is to have truth and certainty only on philosophical grounds, man must forever remain in doubt. 2. There is no resting-place for the human mind but ill the principle of authority. Authority is the sole rule of judgment. In defect of this, our judgments must be erroneous, or at least doubtful. Authority, with La Mennais, means the testimony of a sufficient number of competent witnesses. We are to confide in those who know. 3. La Mennais applies his principle chiefly to the IIs18 ~ 226 MODERN PHILOSOPHY. religious history of man. There have been three forms of religions in the world: the Patriarchal, the Mosaic, and the Christian-all derived by revelation from God. These three are substantially one. All forms of paganism and false religions are corruptions of revealed religion. His views imply tile possibility, if not the likelihood, of still other developments of re ligion in the progress of humanity. It is scarcely necessary to offer any critical remarks on this system. Unless the author allows in man some ground of truth. some faculty of cogni. tion, his scientific skepticism becomes absolute skepticism. How is man to know what is a sufficient number of competent witnesses to give to testimony the force of authority? How did the witnesses de. rive the truth? From others, and they again fiom others, till we come to God? Had the first witness. es any certain faculty of recognising the revelation not given to us? The denial of all trustworthiness to sensation, sentiment, and reason, would make it impossible to answer these questions so as to avoid universal skepticism. BONALD. OF a more philosophical cast of mind is the Viscount DE BONALD, although he has philosophized only on religious and political subjects. He was born in 1762. In 1791 he belonged to the liberal constitutional party, and was president of the departmental administration of Aveyron. Subsequently he at. tached himself to the legitimatist party., In 1815 he was a member of the chamber of deputies; afterward a peer of France, and under Villele a censor of the press. As a writer he is artificial and obscure in his style, yet sometimes expressing himself with simplicity and eloquence. BONALD. 227 Bonald rejects consciousness as the instrument of philosophical investigation. He takes his starting. point from a primitive language given to man at creation. This fact he seeks to establish by historical and by metaphysical considerations. He considers it a sufficient demonstration of the impossibility of the invention of language, and, consequently, the ne. cessity of its being a primitive revelation, that a sys. tem of words could never be invented without thought, and that thought would be impossible without words. From this fact Bonald deduces a demonstration of the existence of an intelligent first cause; but beyond this he has made but little use of his principle in explaining the human faculties and: their relations to language. In his principal work, Inquiries con. cerning the Primary Objects of Moral Knowledge, he has discussed a great variety of questions, and ar. gued with great force and eloquence against materi. alism and its moral consequences, but the arguments he employs have no dependance whatever upon the fact which he set out with proclaiming as the sole principle of science. The object and result of Bonald's speculations is to establish the Church as the highest authority in matters of truth. Everything not conformed to the Bible, as interpreted by the Church, is error and de. lusion, whether in religion, metaphysics, morals, or politics. To the same class of writers belong also Baron D'ECKSTEIN (born in Denmark in 1785, settled in France since 1815), and BALLANCHE (born in 1776). Their writings, however, offer nothing for special remark. They write in a pure and elevated, but, at the same time, somewhat mystical religious spirit. In common with the writers already noticed, they 228 MODERN PHILOSOPHY. maintain the insufficiency of philosophy, and uphold the principle of catholic authority. RATIONAL PSYCHOLOGISTS, OR ECLECTIC SCHOOL. WE come now to trace the more strictly philo. sophical movement in opposition to sensualism. We begin with the physiologists Berard and Virey. BERARD. BERARD was born in 1793, and died in 1828. Contrary to Cabanis and Bichat, he maintained the existence of an immaterial principle distinct from the organization in and through which it manifests itself. This principle is a force or power which actuates all organized nature, vegetable and animal. Be. rard distinguishes between the vital principle as man. ifested in the vegetable and merely animal world and in man; maintaining, however, the existence in both cases of an immaterial principle. In man, the bodily organs, so far from being the efficient or productive source of our faculties, are only its external instru. ments. It is not the brain that thinks, nor the stom. ach that digests; it is the intellectual power that thinks in the brain, it is the digestive power that digests in the stomach. The brain and the stomach are the conditions of the manifestation of these forces, the theatre on which they act. So far is life from result. ing from the organization, that the organization itself is formed, sustained, unfolded, and preserved by the concurrence of a vital principle totally different from matter. Organized matter and these immaterial forces are intimately united, and exert a mutual influence in manifold ways. In man the vital and the intellectual power are both united to the physical organization, and the relations become still more com-. plicated, The facts are observable. the manner of VIREY. 229 thrir union and action is inexplicable. Nevertheless, nothing can rendel the facts of observation and con. sciousness admissible, nothing can satisfy reason, but. the supposition of these spiritual forces as the principle of the phenomena of life: while, on the other hand, the theory of materialism is burdened with great difficulties. Berard shows, from various facts, that it is not so certain as has been generally held that the brain is even the sole condition of sensation. "' The soul," he concludes, therefore, " is one, indivisible, immaterial. United to a body, it can come into this union only as a spirit, and not according to the law which unites body to body. It is not in jux. taposition with the organs, it is not interposed; it is simply present to them; it there feels; it imparts and receives activity. It is linked in the exercise of its activity to certain physiological and vital condi. tions, without which it could not display its faculties; but it does not owe its faculties to them: it is a force, a power, working in harmony with other forces, which, likewise united to the organism, have yet their special functions and properties."-Doctrine of the Relations of thle Physical and Moral in Man, Paris, 1823. VIREY. VIREY, in his treatise on Vital Power (1823), takes the same general ground. The active power which is displayed in the universe is not to be conceived as a property or as a result of matter; it is a principle by itself, pervading, informing, and actuating matter, and producing all the phenomena of nature. Man is not a compound of material particles, whose or. ganic combination engenders all the vital functions, but a simple force which penetrates, animates, and disposes the organism, and there produces the pheII. — 230 MODERN PHILOSOPHY. nomena of life. God is the creator of all these pow. ers. We pass now to the psychological and metaphys. ical writers. KERATRY. KERATRY (born in 1769) published an ontological work under the title of Moral and Physiological In. ductions. In the beginning there existed nothing but the Absolute Being. He was intelligent; willed to create; penetrated the infinite void of non.being, the eternal ground of the possibility of matter and spirit - gave reality to them, in the innumerable different forms of combination with which the universe is filled. In our world there resulted three great species of beings, mineral, vegetable, and animal —mixed beings, which all exhibit the alliances of spirit (or force) and matter in different degrees. These beings subsist for a time, then die; then force and matter, before united, are dissolved,- not, however, to return to nonentity, but to go into new combinations. Of the soul of man, in particular, such is the constitution, that at the beginning it is united to the body only that it may afterward be set free, and reappear in different relations, where, doubtless, it will have oth. er organs, more delicate and more perfect than those it possesses here below. Such is his theory of the creation by God of the spiritual and material world; their terrestrial union; their restoration in another world. These ideas are developed by analogies and de. scriptions of a poetical cast, and by physiological and physical considerations. His moral principles partake of a refined selfishness, though elevated by their alliance with his belief in God, in immortality, and a future life. He makes MASSIAS. 231 moral obligation rest on the generous and benevolent satisfaction of virtue, the sentiment of well-being that accompanies it. He makes happiness exclusively the chief end of mnan, and therefore the principle of virtue, forgetting that man was made for goodness; and, if made for happiness, it is because happiness is the consequence, the token, and reward of goodness. He thus resolves virtue into a certain kind of utility, though widely different fiom the utility of Volney and the grosser utilitarians. In a similar way he explains the beautiful into a form of the useful. DIASSIAS. MAssIAS (born in 1764) published a number of philosophical works, in which he not only opposed the principles of materialism, but attempted to establish the fbundations of philosophy more securely than in his view had before been done. His disquisitions relate to nearly all branches of philosophy. His Re. lalions of Man to Nature and of Nature to Man, and his Problem of the Mind, are his principal works. His views do not appear to contain anything peculiar, except the pretension of having discovered a firm basis for philosophy in a fact overlooked, in his opin. ion, by other philosophers. To us it seems to be an attempt, so far as it amounts to anything, analogous to those of Malebranche and Cudworth, to imagine an explanation of the inexplicable fact of the mutual infltence of mind and matter in the human organism. We will, however, give the author's own words: "It is impossible to conceive any modification of our own being without an organic action; an intelligent action, which causes or which perceives it; and a universal action, which gives law both to the organization (tand the intelligence, and maintains them in their fborm and character 232 MODERN PHILOSOP.fY. " If it is undeniably true that nature acts continually upon our organization, exciting and regulating its operations, and if, nevertheless, this intervention has hitherto been made no account of, but man has always been considered apart from this primitive ele. ment of his being, it follows that no philosophy has yet been able to solve the problem of the mind, and lay the sure foundations of human knowledge.... This relation, this third element of the constitution of man, of which no account has hitherto been made, forms a TERNARY UNITY, having in itself the cause of its action, and, consequently, the means and the efect; and out of itself, consequently, its object, its stimulus, and its regulative principle, which, in per. ception, it associates with its action.... Man is thus a finite creature, dependant in his organization and his thinking upon the universe, and the laws which govern the universe, to the action of which he asso. ciates himself by perception and intelligence, and, in respect to his free-will, subject to the law of duty. which he can obey or disobey." DEGERANDO. DEGERANDO, in his earlier works, was- a fo"'ower ot Condillac, but subsequently abandoned his system, and attached himself to the spirit of the philosophy introduced by Royer-Collard and Cousin. He has not written any systematic works; but his book on Moral Improvement, and his Comparative History of Philosophy, are pervaded by an elevated and spiritual tone of thinking, and have been much esteemed. LAROI [GUIERE. LAROMIGUIERE has been mentioned as having given a special direction to the philosophical movement in France. He was a writer of eminent abilities, im. LAROMIGUIERE. 233 bued with the true philosophical spirit; simple, lively and acute in thinking; clear, easy, and graceful in style; expressing his ideas with equal elegance and precision. He was generally ranked among the disciples of Condillac; yet he introduced many impor. tant modifications, combating the sensual system on some points, and abandoning it on others. In regard to the faculties of the human mind, he does not fbllow Condillac either in the order of their development, or the number and systematic relation of them. But one of' the most important points in which he depa,,d from his master is in respect to the explanation which he gives of the principle of the faculties. Instead of seeking for the germe of them in the sensitive pass. ivity, in sensation, he finds it in an opposite element, in the activity. Condillac supposes the soul alto. gether passive; Laromiguiere believes it to be like. wise active, and makes this activity an absolutely essential condition of its development. So, also, he differs materially from Condillac on the question of the origin of ideas. With Condillac they are all derived from sensation alone as their origin and cause. Laromiguiere distinguishes be. tween the origin and matter of ideas, and the instru. ment and means of their production; between the matter of ideas or perceptions, and the form of them: the former he admits to be derived from sensation, but the latter is given by the intellectual activity. To experience a sensation is not in itself to think: this is a function of the intellectual activity. This activity is therefore admitted as' an original attribute of the mind, and a co-ordinate source of knowledge. This view is contrary to the system of Condillac, and comes much nearer to the doctrine of Reid and Kant. As to the rest, his analysis and classification of the faculties of the human mind is liable to manv ob. 234 MODERN PHILOSOPHY. jections, which were brought forward by De Biran and others. His lectures, however, exerted a very salutary influence in weakening the exclusive con. trol of sensualism; and were better adapted to this end, from the fact of their coming from a disciple of Condillac, and in the form they took, than if they had been in open, thorough, and consistent opposition. DE BIRAN. MAINE DE BIRAN (born in 1766, died in 1824) was originally a disciple of Cabanis and De Tracy, but afterward abandoned their system, and, in his Ex. amination of the Lectures of Laromiguiere, maintained that the soul is a cause, a power, an active principle: a view which he carries out to the exclusion of almost every other. He afterward maintained a modified form of the system of Leihnitz: an absolute spiritualism, which explains God. man, and the world, their essence and relations, by active princi. ples and their activities. He adopted the monadism of Leibnitz, all but. its doctrines of pre-established harmony and fatal predestination. He sets out from the observation of consciousness. This reveals the soul as an active force: active in all the modifications of the mind. External objects are only for. ces; consciousness recognises them only a. causes of certain impressions; their different properties are different modes of their action. Minerals, veretables, animals, all bodies, all beings in nature, are only forces or combinations of forces: active substances and their various actions. All forces are not, like the soul, intelligent and free, but all are more or less endowed with activity; even resistance, that most passive quality of matter, as it is commonly considered, is but a mode of activity. There are, the-efore, not two sorts of substances in the world, fores DE BIRAN. 235 and particles, but only forces; extension, form, etc., are only the impression produced by the active ele ments, whose property or mode of action is resist. ance. Matter is, accordingly, the continuity and coexistence of resisting forces producing a certain im. pression. Matter, therefore, is not denied any more than spirit; only their substantial difference is denied; both are explained in the same way; both are forces. TIo explain the relations which exist between the soul and the body on these principles, becomes, in the view of De Biran, an easy thing. It is no longer necessary to inquire how a simple and active substance, and an inert and compound substance, can act and react upon each other; no need of imagining a mediator, half spirit, half matter: a contradictory notion, and useless besides; no need of the hypothesis of occasional causes or of pre.established harmony, which suppress the fact instead of explaining it; and, finally, no need of taking refuge in our ignorance, and bowing down to a mystery. We have only to reflect that the relations of body and soul are only relations of forces, of action and reaction. These forces, according to their peculiar degrees and modes of activity, appear now active, now passive; they are some of them the body, and some of them the mind. The Creation is a composition of forces; the Creator is himself a force, an active principle; infinite, eternal, all-pervading; possessed of the plenitude of intelligence, goodness, bliss, will, and power. —Such is De Biran's doctrine of immaterialism. We shall make no other remark upon it than that the ques. tion of adopting or rejecting it turns entirely upon the question whether, in the analysis of consciousness, we find: 1. Sensations or impressions; 2. The reference of them to a cause or force; 3. An inert 236 MODERN PHILOSOPHY. passive substance, in which the force resides, or witl, which it is connected. —The common sense of man kind believes the latter. ROYER-COLLARD. PETER PAUL ROYER-COLLARD was born alt1ul the year 1768. Before the revolution he was an advo. cate in the Parliament of Paris. During the revolu. tion he was for a long time member of the Commu. nal Council and of the Council of Five Hundred His moderation, and his hatred of anarchy and blood shed, subjected him to persecution during the Reigr of Terror, and he withdrew into retirement, and de. voted himself to philosophical studies. In 1811 he became dean of the Faculty of Letters at the Nor. mal School, where he lectured with great applause. Subsequently, in 1814, he returned to public life; was president of the Council of Public Instruction, and when removed from that office on account of his liberal principles, was chosen a member of the Chamin. ber of Deputies, of which body he became president. He was at the head of the political party of the Doc. trinaires, who opposed the movements both of the ul. tra-liberal and of the royalist parties. This celebrated man is entitled to an eminent place in the history of philosophy, less as a philosopher than as a professor. He was not the founder-of a new system, but the eloquent and able expounder of the philosophy of Reid, and the successful opponent of the sensual system, which, up to the time when he began his lectures jn 1811, was the ruling philosophy. The task he undertook required eminent personal qualities, and they were combined in him; a mind singularly vigorous, profound, and clear; ease, precision, and force of language; richness of imagina. tion, and great eloquence The influence he exerted ROYER-COLLARD. 237 was prodigious; it wrought a complete revolution in the philosophy of France. Of his philosophical la. bours, nothing exists in print but fragments of his lectures, published with explanations by his pupil Jouffroy, in connexion with the works of Reid. In opposing the doctrines of Condillac and the sensual school, Royer.Collard rested chiefly upon the doctrines of Reid, whose system he expounded and enforced with great ability, though he has modified it in some respects by the manner and form of his applications, developed it more fully on some points, and added some special analyses of his own, particu. larly in regard to the theory of perception. Directing against Condillac the objections urged by Reid against the doctrine of Locke, Berkeley, and Hume, he shows that, by the system which resolves all mental phenomena into sensation, we can have no knowledge of the existence of an external world. All we know are certain states of our own mind in sensation: we call them properties of an external substance, of matter existing out of the mind. But how do we know that there is any such substance really existing? By the sensual system we cannot know it; for it is in itself not a matter of sensation. We must even pronounce that it does not exist; for sensation is all the existence there is for us. Royer.Collard then explains his view of the manner in which we attain the knowledge of the existence of the external world. It is in virtue of a fact of consciousness which he calls natural induction. It is not a reflective process, like scientific induction, but a spontaneous and necessary action of the mind which leads us to the idea and irresistible belief in the reality of the world without us. This fact is much insisted on, described and analyzed with great precision. It is at bottom, however, substantially 238 MODERN PHILOSOPHY. one of Reid's principles of common sense, or Stew. art's fundamental laws of human belief; and where Royer-Collard has gone farther than Reid in minute analysis, he has sometimes rendered himself liable to objections. In like manner, he shows that the ideas of substance, cause, time, space, etc., cannot be explained on the principles of Condillac. They are not matters of sensation: they can in no way be resolved into any modification of it. So, likewise, of moral ideas. Royer.Collard rendered important service to the progress of philosophy in France by his clear, ori. ginal, and striking expositions of the method of observation and experiment in application to philosophy. But the chief monuments of the powerful influence he exerted are his disciples and successors. "He founded a school; he gathered around him a body of ardent and elevated young minds. To them he imparted his zeal, his spirit, his method, and his principles. In their labours we recognise the heart and mind of their master; while, at the same time, in conformity with the spirit which he inculcated, they have not rested in mere repetition of his particular views: if in some respects they have more fully developed and extended the doctrines of Royer.Collard, in others they have taken the course of free and inlependent inquiry. Among his disciples, the mosi:elebrated is Cousin. COUSIN. VICTOR CoUSIN, born in 1792, was educated at the A'ormal School, where he became an instructer in b812. In 1815 he succeeded Royer-Collard as pro. fessor of philosophy in the Faculty of Letters in the University of Paris. He fell under the displeasure of government'in 1820, and his lectures in the,Jni: COUSIN. 239 Dersity were suspended; subsequently the Normal School was suppressed. On the fall of the administration of Villele in 1827, he was restored to his chair, and commenced a course of lectures, which was continued with brilliant success till 1830. He was then made member of the Council of Public instruction, and principal of the Normal School, which he reorganized. In 1831 he went to Germany, under a special commission from government to examine the state of public instruction in that coun. try. His reports have excited much attention. In 1832 he was made a peer of France, and in 1840 minister of public instruction. In philosophy, Cousin acknowledges his obligations to Laromiguidre and to De Biran, by whom his mind was put in a direction contrary to the prevailing sen. sualism; but more especially to Royer-Collard, whose pupil and disciple he was before he became his successor. In his earliest instructions he confined him. self chiefly to expounding the ideas of his master. He soon, however, extended his researches into every sphere of philosophical inquiry, particularly the critical history of philosophy, both ancient and modern; until at length he formed a system of his own, which has received the denomination of Eclecticism. This system has not been developed at large in any one complete and systematic work; but all the leading principles of it, with their systematic connex. ion and their applications, may be gathered from the author's various writings. A brief summary will be attempted..Exposition. The principal points to which everything in this system may be referred, are: its method; application of its method to psychology; passage from psy 240 MODERN PHILOSOPHY. chology to ontology; general views on the history of philosophy. I. Method. There is nothing peculiar in the principle of his mnethod; it is the method of induction, which has been everywhere proclaimed in the philosophy of the eighteenth century. It is the same method applied to the phenomena of the mind, as in physical science is applied to the phenomena of nature. Philosophy, equally with physics, is a science of facts. In physics these facts are given by the senses, in philosophy by consciousness. In both cases the application of the method of induction is substantially the same, and governed by the same general rules. In the first place, a careful and complete observation of facts; in the second place, experiment and reasoning applied to the facts observed. In philosophy no less than in physics, mere observation of facts is barren, and leads to no results. It is not sufficient merely to listen to nature, we must interrogate it; it is not enough to observe, we must experiment. In philos. ophy, reflection is the instrument of experiment, and is analogous to the artificial instruments and repro. ductive processes of physical experiment.-So much for method in general. In regard to method in particular, Cousin makes psychology the basis and starting-point of all true philosophy. Psychology is the observation and class. ification of the phenomena of the mind. These phenomena must be accurately observed; none omitted; none supposed. They must be observed in simplici. ty and good faith. If neglected, or if observed with any systematic bias, psychology, and with it all philosophy, are corrupted at the source: we fall inevi. tably into hyootheses. COUSIN. 241 The true method was proclaimed by Descartes, by Locke and his followers; but it was almost immediately corrupted in its application by systematic views. They looked only for such facts as suited their preconceived conceptions; hence facts were partialJy observed and distorted; observation, experiment, and induction were vitiated from the beginning. They fell into hypothesis. On the other hand, the new German philosophy has repudiated the psychological method. It begins with the absolute, and comes to psychology by metaphysics and physics combined. Now, even although ontology contain the root of psychology, it can never be known until verified by psychological observation; and to set out frorn it is to enter upon the hazardous path of hypothesis. It is to make philosophy, not an inductive, but a constructive science. Building thus the structure from the top downward, we are liable to substitute for facts arbitrary abstractions and the caprices of the imagination. The new German phi. losophy has committed a serious error in point of method. The psychological method is the true meth. od; psychology is not the whole of philosophy, but it is its foundation. II. Application of Method to Psychology. Cousin divides all the phenomena of consciousness into three classes, referable to three great elementary faculties, which in their combinations comprise and explain all others. These faculties are sensi. bility, activity, and reason. These three faculties enter simultaneously into exercise, and are blended together in the unity of consciousness: but, however inseparable they may be in the unity of the intellect. ual life, they are yet perfectly distinct. Sensible and rational facts have one characteristic IT —19 242 MODERN PHILOSOPHY. in common, which distinguishes them from voluntary facts: they are both independent of the control of the will; that is to say, we do not impute sensations and judgments of reason to ourselves as the products of our own voluntary activity. When the conditions of a sensation or a rational idea are accomplished, our will cannot prevent the sensibility or the reason from entering into exercise. The sensation or the idea become facts of consciousness necessarily, in spite of the will. The activity alone is marked with the characteris. tics of. personality and responsibility. The will is the constituent element of personality. It is only in the activity of the will that we are able to recognise ourselves, to say me; yet it is only by distinguishing ourselves from our sensations and their objects that we can have self-consciousness; and, as we cannot perceive ourselves, and distinguish ourselves from our sensations, except by a faculty of perception in general, it follows that the exercise of reason is con. temporaneous with the exercise of personal activity and with sensible impressions. The essential ele. ment of cognition is reason; and consciousness, though composed of three integrant and inseparable elements, has its most immediate foundation in rea. son, without which there would be no possible knowl. edge, and, consequently, no consciousness. Reason is thus intimately connected with personality and with sensibility, but it is neither the one nor the oth er. Sensibility is the external condition of conscious. ness; the wvill is its centre, and reason is its light. Of the SENSIBILITY a more particular psychological analysis is not necessary here, as there is nothing in the system of Cousin which particularly distin. guishes it from other systems in relation to the or. COUSIN. 243 gans of sensation, and the classification of their various affections with respect to the corresponding qual ities of external objects. The WILL is the element of personality and causality. Our notion of cause is first apprehended by the reason in the consciousness of our own personal activity. The movements of the sensibility, desires, passions, etc., so far from constituting the will, are entirely distinct from it, and may stand in direct op. position to it. The will is in its essence a cause, a power, a force. The internal causal energy of the will must not be confounded with any of its instruments or external manifestations. We do not find the primitive notion of cause in the action of the will on our nervous and muscular organization, and much less in the force communicated by the muscles to external objects. A perfect paralyjs of the muscles could not prevent the internal act of the will. The primitive notion of personal cause, to wit, our own will, becomes the type and condition of the notion of cause in general, and of external im personal causes. There is a twofold activity of the will, spontane ous and reflective. The spontaneous is the primitive form, the reflective is the ulterior. The fact of the former is necessarily presupposed in the latter; we cannot reflect upon what has not existed in a spontaneous form. These two forms of activity are distinguished by Cousin by the terms spontaneous and voluntary, or spontaneity and will, appropriating the terms voluntary, and activity, and will to the re. flective form of activity. All personal acts, whether spontaneous or voluntary, have their cause in an active power; the activ ity is itself the only cause of all particular actions; 244 MODERN PHILOSOPHY, in this consists the essence of freedom. The very notion of liberty is that of a power which acts by an energy within itself-a power of self-determination. Liberty is not self-determination in act, but self-determination in power, which in act, in volitions, de. termines itself in this or that particular form. In the REASON or intelligence analysis discovers three integrant elements or laws of thought, which both constitute it and govern its activity: 1. The idea of infinite (expressed likewise indifferently by the terms unity, substance, absolute cause, the abso. lute, etc.); 2. The idea of the finite (expressed like. wise by the terms plurality, phenomenon, relative cause, the conditioned, etc.); 3. The idea of the re. lation between the infinite and finite: a relation not simply of inseparable coexistence, but of cause and effeot. These three elements are given inseparably in the primitive synthesis of thought. They constitute the unity of reason, which is manifested in this triple action. Reason, which manifests itself in these three ideas, is not individual or personal. It is not a part of our free activity. Reason is constituted and governed by these absolute and necessary conceptions. It is therefore absolute in its essence; it is one with the eternal and divine reason; it is relatively human only as manifesting itself in the phenomena of human consciousness. The necessary convictions of reason which we find in our consciousness cannot be conceived by us as merely relative to our minds or to the minds of our fellow-men. They appear as universal truths, truths for all intelligences, truths to the divine intelligence equally as to us, but no more;i-in to us; that is, they are truths in themselves, COuSIN. 245 truths absolute; truths which we can neither make deny, nor modify by an act of our own will; which no will in the universe, can make, deny, or modify. It is only when, by a voluntary act of reflection, we fall back upon them as phenomena of our own con. sciousness, and they thus become blended with what is individual and personal in our consciousness, that they have any appearance of being subjective and relative to our personality. In itself and its action, reason is essentially impersonal. All the absolute laws of thought or regulative principles of reason may be reduced to two: the law of causality, that every phenomenon supposes a cause; and the law of substance, that every quality supposes a substance. These two are the fundamental principles, of which all others are derivatives. They are given to us contemporaneously in the unity of consciousness; or, if they are to be distinguished, the law of substance is logically the fiist, and that of causality the second; the idea of substance, that is, being necessarily implied, as that without which there could be no idea of' cause: but the law of cau. sality is chronologically the first, and that of substance the second; the idea of cause, that is, must be first in the order of acquisition as the condition of the idea of substance. In reducing the laws of thought fundamentally te these two, cousin differs from preceding philosophers. Plato attempted no enumeration and classification. Aristotle gave a complete enumeration of them, but he did not reduce them to their fundamental elements; and, besides, his arrangement of them is arbitrary, and does not correspond to the development of intelligence. The Cartesians recognised necessary truths, but made no attempt at a complete and pre. eise enumeration of them. The sensual school of 246 MODERN PHILOSOPHY. the eighteenth century recognised none, and, of course, gave no classification. The Scottish school restored them to honour, but gave no complete ac. count of them. Kant renewed the attempt of Aris. totle, and was the first among the moderns who attempted a complete list of the laws of thought; but he is arbitrary in his classification, and his list is ca. pable of reduction. The development of reason is twofold. The constituent elements of reason are all found in conscious. ness. But how are they found? In the developed state of human intelligence we find them by reflec. tion. The finite supposes the infinite, the infinite the finite: they are reciprocally correlatives. But these elements were not originally given in a reflect. ive process of intelligence, in which an act of attention, of will, is blended with reason. Reflection only adds itsef to what already was in the mind: it falls back upon, analyzes, distinguishes, throws clear. er light upon, but does not create the elements to which it applies itself. Reflection therefore pre. supposes an anterior operation of the intelligence. As this operation is not of reflection, it does not im. ply the exercise of the voluntary activity or will. It is therefore an instinctive development of thought; and as intelligence does not begin by negation, this primitive operation is an instinctive perception of truth, an immediate intuition and a pure affirmation. There is thus a twofold development of reason: the first primitive, unreflective, instinctive; the second ulterior, reflective, voluntary. The first is termed spontaneous reason, spontaneity of reason, or, briefly, spontaneity; the second reflective reason, reflection of reason, or, briefly, reflection. COUSIN. 247 III. Passage from Psychology to Ontology. Ontology is the science of being, It has to do, not with mere subjective or phenomenal, but with objective or substantial existence. Its province is to an. swer the question: Whether anything. exists beyond the sphere of our own consciousness, and whether we can have certain knowledge of it? Cousin maintains that we can proceed legitimately from the facts of consciousness to the knowledge of our own existence, of the world, and of God. And this knowledge he makes to be immediate, positive, and absolute. The principle of it he finds in the distinction between spontaneous and reflective reason. Reflective rea. son becomes subjective by the blending of an element of personality, an act of our own will, with the operation of reason in our consciousness; but reason in itself is impersonal, and in spontaneous reason there is nothing subjective: it is a pure apperception and absolute affirmation. It is immediate cognition, in which is given to us everything that subsequently, un. der a logical form and by means of reflection, becomes necessary truth. The regular development of reason in conscious. ness takes us legitimately beyond the limits of con. sciousness, and attains to the knowledge of external or objective existence. We must either deny the authority of consciousness altogether, or admit its authority without reserve for the facts it attests, even though they transcend the sphere of our phenomenal states. The reason, in its development in conscious. ness, is no less certain and real than the sensibility and the will; its certainty once admitted, we must follow it when it conducts us from our own sphere to things existing out of ourselves. For example, it is a rational fact attested by con. 248 MODERN PHILOSOPHY. sciousness, that, in the view of intelligence, every phe. nomenon which is presented supposes a cause. It is a fact, moreover, that this principle of causality is marked with the characteristics of universality and necessity. If it be universal and necessary, to limit it would be to destroy it. Now, in the phenomenon of sensation, the principle of causality intervenes universally and necessarily, and refers this phenomenon to a cause; and our consciousness testifying that this cause is not the personal cause which the will repre. sents, it follows that the principle of causality con. ducts us to an impersonal cause, to an external cause: the aggregate of such causes, generalized as laws, make up the outward world, nature, or the universe. Here, then, is objective existence, but existence revealed by a principle which is attested by consciousness. Here is a primary step in ontology, but by the path of psychology, that is, of internal observation. In a similar way we are led to the Cause of all causes, to the substantial Cause, to God; and not only to a God of Power, but to a God of Justice, a God of Holiness. The laws of thought thus being demonstrated to be absolute, induction can make use of them without hesitation; and from absolute principles, obtained by observation, can legitimately conduct us to a point beyond the immediate sphere of observation itself. The two fundamental laws of thought, as has been said, are the law of causality and the law of sub. stance. Applied to the phenomena of our own personal activity, they give us the knowledge of our own sub. stantial and causal existence. Applied to our sensations, which we cannot refer to ourselves as their cause, they give us the external COUSIN. 249 world, nature, in the character of the cause of the phenomena we experience. Thus we have the knowledge of the me and of the not-me. These are both given in consciousness as limited or finite. But it is equally a fact of observation that reason does not stop with the finite. As soon as the notion of the finite is given, we cannot but conceive the infinite. With every notion of finite cause and substance is immediately and necessarily connected the notion of infinite cause and substance, that is, of God, and of the relation of the finite to the infinite. Such as a psychological fact is the necessary development of reason in consciousness. In this tri. plicity the unity of consciousness unfolds itself. This we now recognise by reflection; but this process has all taken place in the spontaneous reason, and there. in gave us immediate and positive cognition before we reflected on it; and it still and always gives knowledge to such as may, perhaps, never reflect upon it. In the spontaneous operation of reason mankind instinctively distinguish between their thoughts and volitions, and the substance and subject of them, calling the latter me; instinctively, also, they recognise the relation between thoughts and volitions and themselves, referring the former to the latter, as attribute to substance, and effect to cause. They may never express this in terms; they may never reflect upon it; or they may not possess the power of reflection and expression sufficiently to state it; but none the less does the process take place. It is the universal process, the same in all minds, the peas. ant and the philosopher; only the philosopher re. flects, analyzes, abstracts, and expresses the process in logical formulas or with scientific precision. So, likewise the spontaneous reason distinguishes I.-20 250 MODERN PHILOSOPHY. between sensations and their external causes, and in. stinctively recognises the outward world as the substance and cause of all the qualities and phenomena which the mind observes in sensation. So, again, the spontaneous reason, immediately that it recognises the me and the not-me, self and the wvorld, as finite, instinctively recognises the infinite cause and substance to which everything finite must be referred. The finite and the infinite are correlatives in knowledge; the former cannot be regarded as a matter of positive cognition any more than. the latter. If we deniy the latter as an object of positive cognition, we must likewise deny the former; for they have both the same title; both are given inseparably in the unity of consciousness. Psychology thus contains and reflects all knowledge, God and nature no less than man. God is the absolute substance and cause; absolute intelligence, will, and goodness. The divine intelligence is likewise a triplicity in unity. Creation is comprehensible and necessary; that is to say, it is the manifestation of the infinite in the finite, of unity in variety. God, as absolute substance and absolute cause, is the absolute One. But, as absolute cause, we cannot but conceive that God should act; it is repugnant to reason to conceive that the absolute cause should forever remain inactive. But we cannot conceive the absolute cause to act otherwise than by determining itself; that is to say, we cannot conceive the infinite to manifest itself actively but in the finite, the unity in variety. For God to act, then, is to create; and creation, at least relatively to our mental constitution, is the necessary manifestation of the divine activity. God is not, however, to be confounded with the creation; nor is God a mere soul of the world. God COUSIN. 251 is the cause, the universe is the effect. While the universe, both of intelligent and unintelligent beings, is the necessary manifestation of the creative activity of God, the Creator still remains in his absolute divine essence and personality, distinct from, and un. exhausted by, the creation, and retaining all the superiority of cause to the effect, of infinite cause to the (necessarily) finite effect. While, therefore, the creation is a manifestation and reflection of God, it is a limited, and, therefore, necessarily imperfect reflec. tion of him. Psychology also contains the principles of all true Physics. Two laws, and their connexion in perpet. ual reaction, govern and explain the material world. These two laws are expansion and attraction. Ex. ternal nature is conceived as an assemblage of forces, governed by these two laws; the various phe. nomena of nature are results of the reciprocal action of these laws, and of the multiform determinations of these forces. In Morals, Cousin strenuously maintains, as the only possible condition of a moral law, that freedom of the will which he had also psychologically demon. strated as a fact. The moral law can command only a fiee will. The Infinite and Eternal Will is reveal. ed to us in conscience in the supreme law: " Will what is good;" and the human individual unites with the Infinite Will only in freely obeying its voice. Repudiating also the doctrine of the exclusive origin of our ideas in sensation, and demonstrating that our ideas of right and wrong, and of duty, can never be found in sensation, nor in consciousness except as revealed there by reason, he earnestly opposes every form of the selfish system by which virtue is resolvec 25CZ MODERN PHILOSOPHY. into utility, and self-interest made the ground of ob. ligation and the motive of action. He also opposes all moral systems grounded upon sympathy or benevolence, or any other sentiment, considered as mere sentiments or emotions. Mere emotion is variable and contingent, not in itself the subject of moral law; and, even if erected into a principle of obligation, would not suffice to explain all moral facts, or constitute a system. The general principles of the morality of self-in. terest are variable and contingent principles, and, if erected into an exclusive system, are destructive of the absolute moral principles revealed in the reason. The fundamental maxim of the morality of self. interest in regard to an action to be performed is: Look only at its consequences relative to personal happiness. The most important general maxims resulting from this are: Do right, abstain from wrong, from hope or fear of the rewards and penalties of civil society; Do right, abstain from wrong, from hope or fear of divine rewards or punishments; Do right, abstain from wrong, from fear of blame from others, and even of remorse, and in order to gain the pleasure of a good conscience and internal happiness. These contingent principles of self.interest oi prudence have a legitimate sphere of influence in subordination to the absolute principles of the moral law, and only in such subordination. But there is an absolute, essential, and immutable difference between right and wrong. Right and wrong are absolute and ultimate conceptions of the reason; all ac. tions, conceivable as well as real, in all times and places, are necessarily and universally qualified by COUSIN. 253 reason, according to these conceptions, as right or wrong in themselves, or else they are morally indifferent. Hence necessary moral principles. The conceptions of right and wrong necessarily and immediately awaken the idea of obligation, the moral law. The fundamental principle of obligation, or enun.:iation of the moral law, is: Do right for the sake of right; or, rather, Will the right for the sake of right. The criterion by which an act or resolution may be recognised as conformed to this principle, is the impossibility of not considering the immediate motive of the particular act or resolution as universally binding. With the conception of right and wrong is con. nected not only the absolute conviction of obligation, but also of merit and demerit; a principle not to be confounded with the moral law, nor with the instinct. ive desire for happiness. The question of the sovereign good cannot be resolved by a single element. The Epicureans make it the satisfaction of the desire for happiness; the Stoics make it the fulfilment of the moral law. The true solution is in the harmony of both, not as equiv. alent principles, but in virtue as the antecedent of happiness. In this connexion the sovereign good is constituted of both; but of the two, virtue is the chief good. In -Esthetics, Cousin maintains the idea of the Beautiful, as also an absolute conception of the rea. son, and, like other absolute ideas, having an absolute object existing independently of our necessary con. ception. This idea he distinguishes from every form of the agreeable or useful, and upon it builds a cor. responding system of _/gsthetics, or theory of the arts I I. — 254 MODERN PHILOSOPHY. and criticism of the productions of the creative im agination. IV. Application of Rational Psychology to the History of Phzlosophy. It is in relation to the views which it takes of the history of philosophy that Cousin denominates his system eclecticism. Eclecticism is a method rather than a system: it is the method by which a system is applied to the criticism of all other systems, on the ground that a truly complete and correct system will explain the whole history of philosophy, and will be itself justified by the history of philosophy. For all the great systems that have appeared in history, however subversive of each other, contain each some portion of truth, and, consequently, some things in common with the comprehensive system by which they are judged. Eclecticism is therefore a method both philosophical and historical. Rational psychology at once explains and is verified by the history of philosophy. Three things are accordingly to be distinguished in eclecticism: its starting-point, its processes, and its end; or, in other words, its principle, its instruments, and its results. It supposes a system as its starting-point and clew through the labyrinth of history; its instrument is a rigid criticism, sustained on solid and extensive erudition; its primary result is the decomposition of all systems; and its final result the reconstruction from their materiale of a new system, which shall be a complete representation of consciousness in history, and, at the same time, correspond to the results of rational psy. chology. Phe application of this eclectic method discloses, as a matter of fact in the history of phil'asophy, four great systems, which comprehend all the attempts of COUSIN. 255 the philosophical spirit, and which are found in eve. ry great philosophical epoch. These systems are sensualism, idealism, skepticism, and mysticism. Sensualism takes sensation as the sole principle of knowledge. Sensation, indeed, is the principle of a large share of our knowledge, but not of the whole. Sensualism has therefore an element of truth: its error is in its exclusive pretension of ex. plaining all knowledge by sensation. Its consequences are materialism, fatalism, and atheism. Idealism, on the other hand, makes-the intelligence or the ideas, which are the laws of reason, the sole principle of knowledge. An important part of our knowledge has, indeed, its origin in reason, but not all; and idealism, by erecting a partial truth into a universal one, finds all reality in the mind, denies matter, and absorbs all things, God and the universe into individual consciousness, and that into thought. Skepticism, disgusted with the extravagances of the two exclusive systems, easily demonstrates the error that there is in both; but not distinguishing the part of truth and the part of error that there is in both, it falls likewise into exclusiveness, declares every system false, and finally, with equal extravagance, declares that there is no such thing as certainty, thus falling into the absurd and suicidal dogmatism: it is certain that there is no certainty. Mysticism is not the despair of philosophy and Ihe renunciation of reflection to take refuge in religious authority, though this is a state of mind not infreo quent; but it is reflection itself, grounding a system on an element of consciousness overlooked by sensualism, by idealism, and by skepticism-the element of spontaneity, which is the basis of reflection, reason, namely, referred to its eternal principle, and speaking with his authority in the human intelli. 256 MODERN PHILOSOPIHY. gence.' But this system, overlooking the other ele. ments of human nature, engenders multiplied extrav. agances, such as were displayed in the Alexandrian school, and have been displayed in every age. These four systems contain all the fundamental elements of philosophy, and, consequently, of the his. tory of philosophy. They have each: their part of truth, which it is the business of eclecticism to dis. tinguish from their part of error, and to combine to. gether into the unity and harmony of a comprehensive system. Observations. 1. In adopting the method of internal observation, and making psychology the basis of all philosophy, Cousin agrees with Locke and the sensual school, with the Scottish school, and with Kant, and differs from Schelling and the new German philosophy. But he refuses to limit philosophy within the sphere of psychology, and contends for a philosophy of the absolute and infinite. In this respect he differs from Locke, Reid, and Kant, and agrees with Schelling and the later Germans. But while he agrees with Schelling in making'the absolute and infinite a positive in knowledge, he differs fundamentally from him in the mode of attainfing it. Cousin finds it in consciousness; Schelling in a faculty transcending consciousness: Cousin in the spontaneous reason; Schelling in Intellectual Intuition, which, being a faculty out of consciousness, is a pure hypothesis. It will be seen, therefore, that the peculiarity of the system of Cousin consists not merely in making the absolute and infinite a matter of positive cogni. tion, but in holding the twofold distinction of reason into spontaneous and reflective, and in making the COUSIN. 257 former, as impersonal, and, therefore, not subjective, the faculty of immediately knowing the absolute and infinite. The spontaneous reason apprehends the absolute and infinite by an act of positive knowledge; it reveals them in consciousness, but without there. by making them merely subjective. It is, indeed, the great problem of speculative in. quiry, whether there can be any objective knowledge of the unconditioned, or, in other words, whether phi-.losophy is possible, considered as anything more than the observation and analysis of the phenomena of consciousness. The objective reality of the infinite and absolute may, however, be admitted on either ground. Reid and Kant admit the existence of God on the ground of the necessary convictions of the reason (we need not here advert to the differences in their modes of arriving at their result); Schelling and Cousin admit the Divine existence on the ground of positive knowledge. The former attain to God by Faith, the latter by Cognition. In a practical point of view, it may be thought to come to the unimpor. tant verbal question whether our conviction of the Divine existence be a belief or a knowledge. But in speculation the difference is material. 2. The system of Cousin has been accused of pan. theism. This charge is denied by the author. Pan. theism is certainly not expressed anywhere in- his writings, but the reverse; nor is there anything in his principles from which it becomes a necessary consequence, taking the word either in its proper or improper sense. fie neither (in the proper sense of the word pantheism) confounds the infinite with the finite, making God to be nothing but the collective Whole of the universe, nor (in the improper sense of the word) confounds the finite with the infinite, denying, that is, the substantial existence of the finite, 258 MODERN PHILOSOPHY. and making the Infinite One the only Being. Spino. za and the Eleatics make God the sole substance, and a mere substance. of which all finite particular be. ings are merely attributes or qualities. Cousin rep. resents God, not only as the absolute substance, but also as the absolute cause, free, personal, and inte'lligent, and perfectly distinct from finite beings, whicb are his creatures. The Infinite One is neither identified with the Whole, nor is the distinct substantial existence of the, world, the substantial and personal existence of man, absorbed into the Absolute Unity. On the one hand, the collective Whole of all things does not constitute God; nor, on the other, is the collective Whole merely modes of God, the One and Sole Being. He neither makes the All the only Being, nor God the only Being. 3. The system of Cousin, from what has been seen in the exposition, must not be confounded with the Alexandrian doctrines, as perhaps the term ec. lecticism might at first lead one to imagine. That system, though professing the principle of eclecti. cism, belongs to the class denominated by Cousin mystical. Neither, as will be obvious from what has been said in the foregoing pages, is it the absence of system. Eclecticism is a system, or, rather, it supposes a system, sets out from a system, and applies a system. It takes a system as the criterion of the truth or falsehood of the systems it judges. Nor is it the mixture of all systems. It is the very opposite of syncretism. It does not mix; it chooses out: it does not confuse; it dis. criminates. JOUFFROY. 259 NOTE. Disciples of Cousin. —Joffroy. Cousin has gathered around him numerous disci. ples, several of whom have already distinguished themselves in the cultivation of philosophy. Among these are Damiron, Jouffiroy, Garnier, Vacherot. Of these, the most distinguished is THEODORE JOUFFRoY, born in 1796, and now professor of philosophy in the Faculty of Literature in Paris. He is the translator of Stewart's Outlines of Moral Philosophy, which he accompanied with a valuable preface; also of Reid's Works, with which he connected the Frag. ments of Royer-Collard's Lectures. Though adopt. ing the general conclusions of Cousin, he is no mere repeater of his ideas, but exhibits eminent abilities as an original scientific observer; his modes of thinking and developments are entirely his own. He has especially devoted himself to illustrating and establishing the general principles of the true psychological method of observation, and to morals. The great question, in his view, which lies at the bottom of all genuine philosophical inquiries, is that which concerns the nature and the destiny of man; two distinct points, yet never to be separated. This view constitutes the unity of his philosophical la. bours, which have been devoted to the progressive development of his ideas on this question. Of the lectures he has given in this course, a portion, under the title of Introduction to Ethics, has been publish. ed, which contains a criticai review of the various systems that have prevailed in relation to the fundamental principles of morality. Another volume, containing the full exposition of his own systematic views, is to complete this Introduction; and this is to 260 MODERN PHILOSo-HIY. be followed by four ather works on the different branches of ethics. Of this course it is not time to speak; only it is but just to remark of the portion already published, that it is a production of the very highest ability, characterized by a scrupulous adherence to the methods of psychological observation, by the great. est depth and accuracy of thought, united with a transparent clearness of method and style. It proclainls and vindicates the absolute and immutable distinction of right and wrong, the absolute law of mnoral obligation, and the idea of right in itself as the mnotive of moral action. CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF THE &TORIY OF PHILOSOPHY FQ'OM THE TIME OF THALES. B.C. 640 Thales born, according to Apollodorus. 630 Scion born. 629 Thales born, according to Meiners. 611 Anaximander born. 608 Pythagoras born, according to Larcher. 598 Solon publishes his laws. Pherecydes born about this time. 597 Thales prodicts an eclipse. 584 Pythagoras born, according to Meiners. 561 Solon died. 557 Anaximenes flourished. 548 Thales died. 547 Anaximander died. 543 Thales died, according to some. Pherecydes died. 540 Pythagoras founds a school at Crotona. 536 Xenophanes at Elea. 504 Pythagoras died. Parmenides flourished, according to some. 500 Anaxagoras and Philolaus born. Heraclitus and Leucippus flourished. Anaximenes died. 496 Ocellus Lucanus flourished. 494 Democritus born. 490 Battle of Marathon. 489 Pythagoras died, according to some. 480 Battle of Salamiis. 472 Diogenes of Apollonia flourished. 470 Democritus born, according to Thrasyllus. 469 SOCRATES born. Parmenides flourished. 460 Parmenidfes comes from Elea to Athens with Zeno. Archelaus flourished. Democritus born, according to Apoi lodorus. Empedocles flourished, according to some. 456 Anaxagoras comes to Athens. 450 Xenophon born. 262 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. B.C. 444 Melissus. Gorgias writes his treatise Of Nature. 442. Protagoras-Prodicus flourished. 432 Beginning of the Peloponnesian War. 431 Anaxagoras accused of impiety. 430 Plato born, according to Corsini. 428 Anaxagoras died. 427 Gorgias sent to Athens. Diagoras flourished. 414 Diogenes of Sinope born. 407 Democritus died, according to Eusebius. 404 End of the Peloponnesian War. 400 SOCRATES died. His disciples withdraw to Megara. E i did flourished. 389 First voyage of Plato to Syracuse. 384 Aristotle born. Pyrrho born. 380 Antisthenes and Aristippus flourished. Aristotle goes to Athens. Eudoxus the Pythagorean flourished. 364 Second voyage of Plato to Syracuse. 361 Third Voyage of Plato to Syracuse. 360 Xenophon died. 356 Alexander born. 348 Plato died. Spcusippus succeeds him. 347 Aristotle attaches himself to Hermias. 343 Aristotle preceptor of Alexander. 340 Diogenes and Crates, Cynics. Pyrrho and Anaxarchun flourished. Zeno of Citium born. 339 Speusippus died. Xenocrates begins to teach. 337 Battle of Cheronea. Epicurus born. 336 Philip, king of Macedon, died. Alexander succeeds him. 335 Aristotle opens his school at the Lyceum. 324 Diogenes the Cynic died. 323 Alexander the Great died. Ptolemy Lagus in Egypt. 322 Aristotle died. Theophrastus succeeds him. 320 Demetrius Phalereus and Dicaarchus of Messina flourished 316 Arcesilaus died (or later). 314 Xenocrates died. Polemo succeeds him. 313 Theophrastus becomes celebrated. Crates. 305 Epicurus opens his school at Athens. 300 Stilpo and Theodorus the Atheist flourished. Zeno founds a school at Athens. Diodorus and Philo. 288- Pyrrho died. Strato succeeds him. 286 Theophrastus died. 285 Ptolemy Philadelphus king of Egypt. 280 Chrysippus born. 272 Timon flourished. 270 Epicurus died. 269 Strato died. Lycon succeeds him. 264 Zeno the Stoic died (or later). Cleanthes succeeds himu CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 263 B.C. 260 Perseus. Aristo of Chios. Herillus flourished. 241 Arcesila{is died (or later). 217 Carneades born. 212 Zeno of Tarsus flourished. 208 Chrysippus died, according to Menage. Diogenes of Baby ion. 185 Panaetius died (according to others, later). 155 Embassy of the Athenians to Rome (Crit(laiis, Carneadets the Stoic, and Diogenes of Babylon). 146 Greece and Carthage subdued by Rome. Antipater of Tarsus. 142 Macedonia a Roman province. 135 Posidonius born. 129 Carneades died. Clitomachus succeeds him. 115 Panastius accompanies Scipio Africanus to Alexandria 107 Cicero born (or, according to some, 106). 106 Clitomachus dtied. Succeeded by Philo. Posidonius flourished. 86 Sylla takes Athens. Philo flees to Rome. Antiochus. 84 Lucretius born (according to others, earlier). 69 Antiochus died. 63. Judea a Roman province. 50 Posidonius died. Succeeded by Jason. Lucretius died. 48 Cratippus the Peripatetic flourished. 44 or 5 Cicero died. 43 ) 30 Egypt a Roman province. 27 Augustus emperor. Philo the Jew born. A.D. Roman Emperors. 2 Augustus. Seneca born. Sextius the Pythagorean. Nicholas of Damascus and Xenarmbus flourished. Athenodorus the Stoic. 14 Tiberius. 15 Sotion. 33 Death of our Lord. 34 Philo the Jew flourished 37 Caligula. Flavius Josephus born. 41 Claudius. 50 Plutarch of Cheronea born. 54 Nero. 65 Seneca put to death. 66 Cornutus and Musoius exiled. 264 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. A.D. Romaw Enperors. 69 Galba, Otho. Vitellius. Apollonius of Thyane flourished. 70 Vespasian. Euphrates of Egypt. 79 Titus. 81 Musonius recalled from exile. 82 Domitian. Philosophers and mathematicians ban. 89 ished from Rome. Justin Martyr born. Epictetus flourished. 90 Apollonius of Thvane died. 97 Nerva. Plutarch flourished. 99 Trajan. Tacitus. The Gnostics. 118 Hadrian. Secundus of Athens. Plutarch died. 120 122 Euphrates died. 131 Galienus born. Phavorinus. Basilides the Gnostic. 134 Arrian flourished. 138 The Rabbi Akhiba died. 139 Antoninus Pius. Calvisius Taurus. Apollonius the Stoic. Basilides the Stoic. Apuleius. 161 Marcus Aurelius. Alcinoiis. Numenius. 165 Peregrinus the Cynic died. Justin Martyr died. Lucian. 170 Athenagoras and Tatian. Atticus the Platonist. Bardesanes. 180 Commodus. Maximus Tyrius. Sextus Enipiricus. Irenaeus. The Rabbi Juda. The Talmud. 185 Origen born 193 Pertinax. Ammonius Saccas founds a school. Salvius. The New-Platonists. Julian. Clement of Alexandria. Septlmius Severus. Alexander of Aphrodisia. Galienus died. 20o Plotinus born. Philostratus. 205 ( 212 Caracalla. Clement of Alexandria died. Suc ceeded in the school of Alexandria by Pantaenus. 218 Marcrinus. Tertullian died. 220 Heliogabalus. 222 Alexander Severus. 232 Plotinus becomes the disciple of Am, monius. CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 265 A.D. Roman Emperors. 233 Porphyry. Ulpian. 235 Maximin. 238 Gordian. 239 Gordian II. 242 Plotinus travels in the East. 243 Plotinus comes to Rome. 244 Philip. 246 Amelius disciple of Plotinus. 250 Trajan Decius. 252 Trebonian. Gallus and Vibius Longinus flourished. Hostilianus. 253,Emilius Valerian. Origen died. 269 Flavius Claudius. 270 Aurelian. Plotinus died. 275 Longinus put to death. 276 Tacitus. 277 Probus. Manicheism. 282 Aurelius Carus. 284 Diocletian. Arnobius. 304 Constantine and Porphyry died. Maximin. 306 Constantine. 321 Constantine be- Iamb:icbhls flourished. comes a Christian. Lactantius flourished. 326 Arnobius died. Lactantius died. 333 lamblichus died. Themistius 337 Constantine and Constans. 340 Eusebius died. 354 Augustine born. 355 Themistius teaches at Constantinople 360 Claudius Julian. Sallust. 363 Jovian. 364 Valentinian and Va. lens. 379 Theodosius. Eunapius. 380 Nemesius flourished. 384 Didymus of Alexandria. Jerome flot. ished. 391 Gregory Nazianzen. 394 Gregory Nyssen. 395 Arcadius and Ho- Division of the Roman Empire. norius. 398 Ambrose died. 400 Nemesius died. 401 Plutarch, son of Nestor, flourished. II.-21 266 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. A.D. Greek Emperors. 402 Arcadius. 408 Theodosius II. 409 Macrobius. Pelagius. 410 Synesius. 412 Proclus born. 415 Death of Hypatia. 418 Pelagius condemned. 430 Augustine. 434 Syrianus flourished. 450 Marcian. Hierocles. Olympiodorus flourished. 457 Leo I. 470 Clandian of Messina flourished. Boethius died. 474 Leo l1. Marcian Capella flourished. Zeno the Isaurian. 476 End o0 the Western Empire. 480 Salvian. Cassiodorus born. 485 Proclus died. Succeeded by Marinus. Ammonius, son of Hermias. 487 /Eneas of Gaza flourished. 490 Marinus died. 491 Anastasius. Isidore succeeds Marinus. 518 Justin I. 526 Boethius beheaded. 527 Justinian. 529 Philosophical schools formed at Ath. ens. 533 Damascius returns from Persia with the Platonists. Philoponus flourished. 539 Cassiodorus shuts himself up in a cloister. 549 Damascius and Simplicius flourished. 563 Justinian II. 575 Tiberius II. Cassiodorus died. 582 Maurice. 602 Phocas. 604 Gregory the Great. 610 Heraclius. 622 Flight of Mohammed. 636 Isidore of Seville died. 641 Constans III. and IV. Constantine II. 668 Constans V. 673 The Venerable Bede born. 685 Justin II. 694 Leontius. 698 Tiberius III. CHRONOLOGICA.L TABLE. 267 A.D. Greek Emperors. 711 Philippicus. 713 Anastasius II. 716 Theodosius III. 735 Bede died. 736 Alcuinus born. 741. Constans VI. 753 (Caliph Almanzor.) 754 John of Damascus died. 776 Rhabanus Maurus born. 796 Irene. German Emperors. 800 Charlemagne. (HarounAlraschid.) Alkendi flourished. 804 Alcuinus died. 814 Lewis the Pious. 840 Lothaire. 855 Lewis II. 856 Rhabanus died. 875 Charles the Bald. J. Scott Erigena comes to Franc& 877 Lewis III. 879 Alfred the Great of England. 880 Charles the Fat. 886 Erigena died. 887 Arnolph. 891 Photius died. 899 Lewis IV. 912 Conrad. 919 Henry the Fowler. 937 Otho the Great. 954 Alfarabi died. 974 Otho II. 980 Avicenna born. 987 Otho II. 999 Pope Sylvester II. 1002 Henry II. 1003 Sylvester II. died. 1020 Michael Psellus born. 1025 Conrad Il. 1034 Anselm born. 1036 Avicenna died. 1039 Henry III. 1042 Lanfranc enters the convent of Bee. 1055 Hildebert of Lavardin born. 1056 Henry IV. 1060 Anselm prior at Bec. 1072 Father Damien died. Al Gazel boon. 1079 Abelard born. 268 HRONOLOGICAL TABLE. A.D. German Emperors. 1080 Berenger of Tours died. 1089 Lanfranc archbishop of Canterbury. 1091 Bernard of Clairveaux born. 1092 Opinions of Roscellinus condemned al Soissons. 1096 Hugo St. Victor born. 1100 Michael Psellus died (or later). Eustachius of Nicea. 1107 Henry V. 1109 Anselm archbishop of Canterbury. 1114 Alain de Lisle born. 1117 Anselm de Laon died. 1118 Abelard teaches at Paris. 1120 Abelard monk at St. Denis. William of Champeaux, bishop of Chalons, died. 1126 Lothaire. 1127 Al Gazel died at Bagdad. 1134 Hildebert died. 1138 Conrad III. 1139 Moses Maimonides born. 1140 Hugo St. Victor died. 1141 Gilbert Porretanus bishop of Poictiers. 1142 Abelard died. 1146 Ecclesiastical assemblies at Paris and Rheims against Gilbert Porretanus. 1150 Peter Lombard writes his Sentences. 1153 Frederic Barbaros- Bernard of Clairveaux died. sa. 1154 Gilbert Porretanus died. 1164 Peter Lombard and Hugo of Ainiens died. 1173 Richard St. Victor and Robert of Milan died. 1180 John of Salisbury died. Walter de St. Victor. 1190 Henry VI. Tophiil died. 1193 Albert the Great born, according to some. 1198 Otho IV. 1203 Alain de Lisle died. 1205 Maimonides and Peter of Poictiers died. Albert the Great born, according t6 others. 1206 Averroes died, according to some. 1209 David de Dinant. Amalric de Char. 1214 tres died. 1217 Roger Bacon born. Averroes died, according to others, CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 269 A.D. German Emperors. 1217 Michael Scott at Toledo. 1218 Frederic II. 1221 Bonaventura born. 1224 Thomas Aquinas born. 1234 Raymond Lully born. 1236 Albert the Great doctor of theology at Paris. 1245 Alexander of Hales. 1247 Thomas Aquinas goes to Paris. /Egidius Colonna born. 1248 William of Auvergne, bishop of Paris, died. Thomas Aquinas begins to teach according to the views of P. Lombard. 1250 Peter Albano born. 1251 Conrad IV 1252 Foundation of the Sorbonne. 1253 Robert Greathead died. 1254 Nicephorus Blemmydas flourished. 1256 Thomas Aquinas doctor of theology. 1264 Vincent de Beauvais died. 1273 Rodolph I. 1274 Thomas Aquinas died. Bonaventura died. 1275 J. Duns Scotus and Walter Burleigh born. 1277 John XXI., pope (Peter Hispanensis), died. 1280 Adolph of Nassau. Albert the Great died. 1294 Albert 1. Roger Bacon died, according to some 1300 Richard of Middleton died. 1308 Henry VIl. Duns Scotus died. 1309 1310 George Pachymeres died about this time. 1314 Lewis V. 1315 Raymond Lully died. Francis Mayronis introduces the Ac ties Sorbonnicus. 1316 LEgidius Colonna died. Peter Albano died. 1322 Occam resists the pope. 1323 Harvay (Harvaeus Natalis) died. 1325 Francis Mayronis died. 1330 Occam takes refuge with the Empal or Lewis. 1332 William Durand died. Theodore Metochyta died. 1337 Walter Burleigh died. 1343 Occam died. 270 CIIRONOLOGICAL TABLE. A.D. German Emperors. 1346 Charles IV. 1347 Occam died, according to others. 1349 Thomas de Bradwardyne and Rolert Holkot died. 1350 Peter D'Ailly born. 1357 Thomas of Strasburg died. 1358 Buridan. Gregory of Rimini died. 1261 J. Tauler died. 1363 J. Gerson born. 1374 Petrarch born. 1379 Wenceslas. 1382 Nicholas Oramus..1-88 Thomas h Kempis. 1395 Bessarion and George of Trebizond born. 1400 Robert. 1401 Nicholas of Cusa born. 1408 Laurentius Valla born. 1410 Sigismund. Matthew of Cracovia died. 1415 Emmanuel Chrysoloras died. 1419 J. Wessel Gansfort born. 1425 Peter D'Ailly died. 1429 J. Gerson died. 1430 Theodore Gaza in Italy. 1435- Marsilus Ficinus born. 1436 Raymond of Sebonde teaches at Tou louse. 1438 Albert II. Gemisthius Pletho and Bessarion come to Florence. 1440 Frederic III. Invention of Printing. Foundation of the Platonic Academy at Florence. Nicholas of Clemange died. 1443 Rodolph Agricola born. 1453 Taking of Constantinople. 1455 Nicholas V. Reuchlin born. 1457 Laurentius Valla died. 1462 Pomponatius born. 1463 John Picus Mirandola born. 1464 Nicholas of Cusa died. Cosmo de Medici and Pius II. died. 1467 Erasmnus born. 1472 Bessarion died. 1473 Persecution of the Nominalists at Paris. 1478 Theodore Gaza died. 1480 Thomas More born. 1481 Francis Philelphus died. 1483 Paul Jovius born. CHtRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 271 A.D. German Emperors. 1484 Julius Casar Scaliger born. LvTHER born. 1485 Rodolph Agricola died. 1486 J. Argyropulus and George Trebizond died, according to some. 1489 J. Wessel Gansfort died. 1492 Lorenzo de Medici died. Ludovicus Vives born. 1493 Maximilian I. Theophrastus Paracelsus born. John Picus Mirandola died. Angelo Politian died. 1497 Melancthon born. 1499 Marsilus Ficinus died. 1500 Dominic of Flanders died. 1501 Jerome Cardan born. 1508 Bernardino Telesio born. 1509 Andrew Caisalpini born. 1515 Peter Ramus born. Machiavelliflouw ished. 1517 (Beginning of ihe Refolmatiolr 1519 1520 Charles V. 1522 Reuchlin died. 1525 Pomponatius died. 1527 Machiavelli died. 1529 Patrizzi born. 1533 John Francis Picus Mirandola slain. Montaigne born. 1535 Cornelius Agrippa died. Thomas More died. 1536 Erasmus died. 1537 J. Faber died. 1540 Ludovicus Vives died. Institution of the Jesuits. 1541 Theoplirastus Paracelsus died. Charron died. 15'13 Copernicus died. 1546 Augustine Niphus died (born 1473). 1547 James Sadolet died. Nicholas Taurellus and Justus Lipsius born. 1552 Paul Jovius died. Ces, Cremonin, born. 1555 Simon Porta died. 1558 Ferdinand I, 1560 Melancthon died. 1561 Francis Bacon born. 1562 Anthony Talon died. Francis San I chez born. 272 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. A.D. German Emperors. 1564 Maximilian 11. 1568 Thomas Campanella orin. 1569 1572 Peter Ramus died. Dan. Sennert born. J. Sepulveda died. 1574 Robert Fludd born. 1575 Jacob Bcehme born. 1576 Rodolph 11. Jerome Cardan died. 1577 J. B. Van Helmont born. 1578 William Berigard born. 1580 Jordano Bruno leaves Italy. 1581 Lord Herbert of Cherbury born. 1583 I Grotius born. 1586 Jacobus Schegk died. Lucilio Vanini and Le Vayer born. 1588 Telesio died. Thomas Hobbes born. 1589 James Zabarella died. 1592 Montaigne died. Gassendi born. Comnenus born. 1596 Rene Descartes born. J. Bodin died. 1597 Francis Patrizzi died. 1600 Jordano Bruno burned. 1603 Charron and Casalpini died. 1604 Francis Picolomini died. 1606 Nicholas Taurellus and Justus Lipsius died. 1614 Matthias. Martin Schooks born. Francis Suarez died. Fred. Mere. Van Helmont born. 1619 Ferdinand I1. Vanini burned.:1621 J. Barclay died. 1623 Blaise Pascal born. 1624 Jacob Bcehme died. i625 Clanberg, Geulinx, and Wittich born 1626 Francis Bacon died. 1628 Ralph Goclenius died. 1630 Huet born. Cremonini died. 1632 Sanchez died. Benedict Spinoza, John Lock%, Syl vain Regis, Samuel Puffendorf, and Richard Cumberland born. 1634 P. Becker born. 1637 Ferdinand III. Daniel Sennert and Robert Fludd 1638 died. 1639 Nicholas Malebranche born. 1642 Thomas Campanella died. 1644 Galileo died. Newton born. 1645 John Baptist Van Helmont died. I Grotius died, CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 273 A.D. German Emiperors. 1646 Leibnilz born. Poiret born. 1647 Peter Bayle born. 1648 Herbert of Cherbury and Mersellne died. 1650 Descartes died. 1651 William de'I'schirnhausen born. 165- J. Selden died. 1655 Gassendi died. Christian Thomasius born. 1657 Leopold I. 1659 Adrian Heerebord died. Wollaston born. 1662 Pascal died. 1663 Berigard died. 1665 J. Clauberg and M. Schock died. 1666 J. de Silhon died. 1669 Geulinx and J. Cocceius died. 1670 Sorbiere died. 1671 Cornenius died. Shaftesbury born. 1672 La Mothe le Vayer died. 1675 Samuel Clarke born. 1677 Benedict Spinoza died. Thomas Gale, Francis Glisson, and Harrington died. 1679 Christian Wolff born. Hobbes died. 1680 Joseph Glanvill and La Rochefoucault died. 1684 Berkeley born. James Thomasius died. 1685 Lambert Velthuysen died. 1687 Henry More and Wittich died. 1688 Cudworth and Parker died. 1692 Bishop Butler born. 1694 Arnauld and Puffendorf died. Francis Hutcheson and Voltaire born. 1695 Nicole died. 1698 B. Becker and J. Pordage died. 1699 Frederic Merc. Van Helmont died. 1704 Locke and Bossuet died. 1705 Joseph I J. Ray died. David Hartley born. Bayle died. 1707 Sylvain Regis died. 1708 Tschirnhausen and Jacquelot died. 1711 Hume born. 1712 Crusius and Rousseau born. 1713 Shaftesbury died. 1715 Malebranche died. Condillac and Helvetius born. Gellert born. 17J16 Leibnitz died. 274 CHIRONOLOGICAL TABLE. A.D. German Emperors. 1718 Augustus Fardella died. 1719 Poiret and Richard Cumberland diea 1720 Bonnet born. 1721 Huet died. 1722 Boulainvilliers died. 1723 Adam Smith born. Richard Price born. 1724 Wollaston died. Kant born. Fergu. son born.'727 Newton died. 728 Christian Thomasius died. 729 Samuel Clarke, Collins, and Buddaeus died. Andrew Riidiger died. 731 Mandeville died.:.732 Erasmus Darwin born. 1733 W. Derham died. Joseph Priestley born. 1735 Le Clerc died. James Beattie born 1736 Charles VII. 1740 Frederic II king of Prussia. 1742 Garve born. 1743 Jacobi born. Paley born. 1744 John Baptist Vico and Joachim Lange died. Platner born. 1745 Francis I1 1747 Francis Hutcheson died. Jeremy Bentham born. 1748 Crousaz and Berlamaqui died. 1751 La Mettrie died. 1752 Hansch died. Bishop Butler died. 1753 Dugald Stewart born. De Maistre born. 1754 Berkeley and Christian Wolff died. Destutt de Tracy born. 1755 Montesquieu died. Volney born. 1756 Laromiguiere born. 1757 David Hartley died. Cabanis born. 1758 Gall born. 1759 Maupertius died. Reinhold born. 1762 Alex. Banmgarten died. Fichte born. 1764 Massias born. 1765 Joseph II. Reimarus died. Sir James Mackintosh born. 1766 Thomas Abbt and Gotsched died. 1768 Bouterwekborn. Azais born. Maine de Biran born. Royer.Collard born. 1769 Gellert died. Keratry born. 1770 Winckler, D'Argens, and Formey died. Hegel born. CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE;. 275 A.D. German Emperors..771 Helvetius died. 1772 Cramer died. Coleridge born. 1774 Quesnay died. 1775 Crusius and Walsch died. Schelling born. 1776 Hume died. Ballanche born. 1777 Meyer and Lambert died. Dr. Thomn. as Brown born. 1778 Voltaire and Rousseau died. 1779 Sulzer died. 1780 Condillac and Batteux died. De Lam. enais born. 1781 Ernesti and Lessing died. 1782 Henry Home and Iselin died. 1783 D'Alembert died. 1784 Diderot died. 1785 Beaumeister and Mably died. 1786 Mendelsohn died. 1788 Hamann and Filangieri died. 1789 French Revolution. 1790 Leopold II. Adam Smith, Fr. Hemsterhuys, and Basedow died. 1791 Richard Price, Daries, and Nettelbladl died. Victor Cousin born. 1792 Francis II. 1793 Bonnet, Moritz, Beccaria, and Con. dorcet died. Berard born. 1796 Thomas Reid died. Theodore Jouf froy born. 1798 Garve died. 1800 Maimon died. 1801 Heidenreich and Darwin died. 1802 Engel died. 1803 James Beattie and Herder died. 1804 Kant, Joseph Priestley, and St. Mai tin died. 1805 Paley died. i806 Tiedemann died. 1808 Bardili died. Cabanis died. 1809 J. A. Eberhardt and Steinbart died. 1812 Christian E. Schmidt died. 1813 J. A. H. Ulrich died. 1814 Fichte died. 1816 Ferguson died. 1817 De Dalberg (lied. 1818 Platner and Campe died. 1819 Jacobi and Solger died. 1820 Wyttenbach and Klein died. 276 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. A.D. German Emperors. 1820 Dr. Thomas Brown died Volney died. 1821 Feder and Buhle died. De Maistre died. 1822 Eschenmayer died. 1823 Reinhold and Maass died. i824 Maine de Biran died. 1828 Dugald Stewart died. Bouterwek died Gall died. Berard died. 183! Hegel died. 1832 Jeremy Bentham died. Sir Jarnes Mackintosh d 3834 Coleridge died.?Rs In e