Abstract
Lecture course reconstructing the history of philosophy as the necessary, dialectical development of the idea, from Thales and the Presocratics through the Sophists and Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, Stoics, Epicureans and Sceptics, the Neo-Platonists and Scholastics, to modern philosophy (Bacon, Kant, Fichte, Schelling). Compiled by Michelet from several courses of lectures.
Traduzione di Elizabeth Sanderson Haldane · Delphi Classics, 2000 · pubblico dominio
INTRODUCTION
SECTION ONE. First Period, from Thales to Aristotle
A. The Ionic Philosophy.
B. Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans.
E. Empedocles, Leucippus and Democritus.
F. Anaxagoras.
A. — The Sophists.
B. — Socrates.
ENDNOTES.
A. Plato.
B. Aristotle.
α. Ethics.
β. Politics.
SECTION TWO Second Period: Dogmatism and Scepticism.
A. The Philosophy of the Stoics.
B. Epicurus.
SECTION THREE Third Period: The Neo-Platonists.
A. Philo.
B. Cabala and Gnosticism.
ENDNOTES.
PART TWO. PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES
INTRODUCTION
SECTION ONE. Arabian Philosophy
A. Philosophy of the Medabberim.
B. Commentators of Aristotle.
SECTION TWO. The Scholastic Philosophy
A. Relationship of the Scholastic Philosophy to Christianity.
B. General Historical Points of View.
SECTION THREE. Revival of the Sciences
A. Study of the Ancients.
B. Certain Attempts in Philosophy.
PART THREE. MODERN PHILOSOPHY
INTRODUCTION
SECTION ONE. Modern Philosophy in its First Statement
A. Bacon.
B. Jacob Boehme.
SECTION TWO. Period of the Thinking Understanding
A. First Division.
B. Second Division.
A. Idealism and Scepticism.
B. Scottish Philosophy.
SECTION THREE. Recent German Philosophy
A. Jacobi.
B. Kant.
E. Final Result.
ENDNOTES.
DELIVERED AT HEIDELBERG on the 28th October, 1816
Gentlemen, — Since the History of Philosophy is to be the subject of these lectures, and to-day I am making my first appearance in this University, I hope you will allow me to say what satisfaction it gives me to take my place once more in an Academy of Learning at this particular time. For the period seems to have been arrived at when Philosophy may again hope to receive some attention and love — this almost dead science may again raise its voice, and hope that the world which had become deaf to its teaching, may once more lend it an ear. The necessities of the time have accorded to the petty interests of every-day life such overwhelming attention: the deep interests of actuality and the strife respecting these have engrossed all the powers and the forces of the mind — as also the necessary means — to so great an extent, that no place has been left to the higher inward life, the intellectual operations of a purer sort; and the better natures have thus been stunted in their growth, and in great measure sacrificed. Because the spirit of the world was thus occupied, it could not look within and withdraw into itself. But since this stream of actuality is checked, since the German nation has cut its way out of its most material conditions, since its nationality, the basis of all higher life, has been saved, we may hope that, in addition to the State, which has swallowed up all other interests in its own, the Church may now resume her high position — that in addition to the kingdom of the world to which all thoughts and efforts have hitherto been directed; the Kingdom of God may also be considered. In other words, along with the business of politics and the other interests of every-day life, we may trust that Science, the free rational world of mind, may again flourish.
We shall see in the History of Philosophy that in other European countries in which the sciences and the cultivation of the understanding have been prosecuted with zeal and with respect, Philosophy, excepting in name, has sunk even from memory, and that it is in the German nation that it has been retained as a peculiar possession. We have received the higher call of Nature to be the conservers of this holy flame, just as the Eumolpidæ in Athens had the conservation of the Eleusinian mysteries, the inhabitants of the island of Samothrace the preservation and maintenance of a higher divine service; and as, earlier still, the World-spirit reserved to the Jewish nation the highest consciousness that it should once more rise from thence as a new spiritual force. We have already got so far, and have attained to a seriousness so much greater and a consciousness so much deeper, that for us ideas and that which our reason justifies, can alone have weight; to speak more plainly, the Prussian State is a State constituted on principles of intelligence. But the needs of the time and the interests of the events in the world already mentioned, have repressed a real and earnest effort after Philosophy and driven hence any general attention to it. It has thus happened that because vigorous natures turned to the practical, insipidity and dulness appropriated to themselves the preeminence in Philosophy and flourished there. It may indeed be said that since Philosophy began to take a place in Germany, it has never looked so badly as at the present time — never have emptiness and shallowness overlaid it so completely, and never have they spoken and acted with such arrogance, as though all power were in their hands! To combat the shallowness, to strive with German earnestness and honesty, to draw Philosophy out of the solitude into which it has wandered — to do such work as this we may hope that we are called by the higher spirit of our time. Let us together greet the dawn of a better time in which the spirit, hitherto a prey to externalities, may return within itself, come to itself again, and win space and room for a kingdom of its own, where true minds will rise above the interests of the moment, and obtain the power to receive the true, eternal and divine, the power to consider and to grasp the highest.
We elders, who in the storms of the age have ripened into men, may think you happy whose youth falls in the day in which you may devote the same undisturbed to Science and to Truth. I have dedicated my life to Science, and it is a true joy to me to find myself again in this place where I may, in a higher measure and more extensive circle, work with others in the interests of the higher sciences, and help to direct your way therein. I hope that I may succeed in deserving and obtaining your confidence. But in the first place, I can ask nothing of you but to bring with you, above all, a trust in science and a trust in yourselves. The love of truth, faith in the power of mind, is the first condition in Philosophy. Man, because he is Mind, should and must deem himself worthy of the highest; he cannot think too highly of the greatness and the power of his mind, and, with this belief, nothing will be so difficult and hard that it will not reveal itself to him. The Being of the universe, at first hidden and concealed, has no power which can offer resistance to the search for knowledge; it has to lay itself open before the seeker — to set before his eyes and give for his enjoyment, its riches and its depths.
IN THE HISTORY of Philosophy the observation is immediately forced upon us that it certainly presents great interest if its subject is regarded from a favourable point of view, but that it would still possess interest even if its end were regarded as opposite to what it is. Indeed, this interest may seem to increase in the degree in which the ordinary conception of Philosophy, and of the end which its history serves, is reversed; for from the History of Philosophy a proof of the futility of the science is mainly derived.
The demand that a history, whatever the subject may be, should state the facts without prejudice and without any particular object or end to be gained by its means, must be regarded as a fair one. But with a commonplace demand like this, we do not get far; for the history of a subject is necessarily intimately connected with the conception which is formed of it. In accordance with this what is important in it is determined, and the relation of the events to the end regulates the selection of facts to be recorded, the mode of comprehending them, and the point of view under which they are regarded. It may happen from the ideas formed of what a State really is, that a reader of the political history of a country may find therein nothing of what he looks for. Still more may this be the case in the history of Philosophy, and representations of this history may be instanced in which everything, excepting what was supposed to be Philosophy, appears to be found.
In other histories we have a clear conception of their subjects, at least so far as their principal points are concerned; we know whether they concern a particular land, people or race, or whether their subject is the science of mathematics, physics, &c., or an art, such as painting. The science of Philosophy has, however, this distinguishing feature, and, if you will, this disadvantage as compared with other sciences, that we find the most varied points of view as regards its Notion, and regarding that which it ought to and can accomplish. If this first assumption, the conception of the subject of the history, is not established, the history itself is necessarily made vacillating, and it only obtains consistency when it sets forth a definite conception: but then in view of the various ways of regarding its subject, it easily draws upon itself the reproach of one-sidedness.
That drawback relates, however, only to an external consideration of this narrative; there is another and greater disadvantage allied to it. If there are different Notions of the science of Philosophy, it is the true Notion alone that puts us in a position to understand the writings of philosophers who have worked in the knowledge of it. For in thought, and particularly in speculative thought, comprehension means something quite different from understanding the grammatical sense of the words alone, and also from understanding them in the region of ordinary conception only. Hence we may possess a knowledge of the assertions, propositions, or of the opinions of philosophers; we may have occupied ourselves largely with the grounds of and deductions from these opinions, and the main point in all that we have done may be wanting — the comprehension of the propositions. There is hence no lack of voluminous and even learned histories of Philosophy in which the knowledge of the matter itself about which so much ado has been made, is absent. The authors of such histories may be compared to animals which have listened to all the tones in some music, but to whose senses the unison, the harmony of their tones, has not penetrated.
The circumstance mentioned makes it in no science so necessary as in the history of Philosophy to commence with an Introduction, and in it correctly to define, in the first place, the subject of the history about to be related. For it may be said, How should we begin to treat a subject, the name of which is certainly mentioned often enough, but of whose nature we as yet know nothing? In treating the history of Philosophy thus, we could have no other guidance than that of seeking out and taking up whatever has received the name of Philosophy, anywhere or any time. But in fact, when the Notion of Philosophy is established, not arbitrarily but in a scientific way, such treatment becomes the science of Philosophy itself. For in this science the peculiar characteristic is that its Notion forms the beginning in appearance merely, and it is only the whole treatment of the science that is the proof, and indeed we may say the finding of its Notion; and this is really a result of that treatment.
In this Introduction the Notion of the science of Philosophy, of the subject of its history, has thus likewise to be set forth. At the same time, though this Introduction professes to relate to the history of Philosophy only, what has just been said of Philosophy on the whole, also holds good. What can be said in this Introduction is not so much something which may be stated beforehand, as what can be justified or proved in the treatment of the history. These preparatory explanations are for this reason only, not to be placed in the category of arbitrary assumptions. But to begin with stating what in their justification are really results, can only have the interest which may be possessed by a summary, given in advance, of the most general contents of a science. It must serve to set aside many questions and demands which might, from our ordinary prejudices, arise in such a history.
THERE ARE VARIOUS aspects under which the History of Philosophy may possess interest. We shall find the central point of this interest in the essential connection existing between what is apparently past and the present stage reached by Philosophy. That this connection is not one of the external considerations which may be taken into account in the history of Philosophy, but really expresses its inner character: that the events of this history, while they perpetuate themselves in their effects like all other events, yet produce their results in a special way — this it is which is here to be more clearly expounded.
What the history of Philosophy shows us is a succession of noble minds, a gallery of heroes of thought, who, by the power of Reason, have penetrated into the being of things, of nature and of spirit, into the Being of God, and have won for us by their labours the highest treasure, the treasure of reasoned knowledge.
The events and actions of this history are therefore such that personality and individual character do not enter to any large degree into its content and matter. In this respect the history of Philosophy contrasts with political history, in which the individual, according to the peculiarity of his disposition, talents, affections, the strength or weakness of his character, and in general, according to that through which he is this individual, is the subject of actions and events. In Philosophy, the less deserts and merits are accorded to the particular individual, the better is the history; and the more it deals with thought as free, with the universal character of man as man, the more this thought, which is devoid of special characteristic, is itself shown to be the producing subject.
The acts of thought appear at first to be a matter of history, and, therefore, things of the past, and outside our real existence. But in reality we are what we are through history: or, more accurately, as in the history of Thought, what has passed away is only one side, so in the present, what we have as a permanent possession is essentially bound up with our place in history. The possession of self-conscious reason, which belongs to us of the present world, did not arise suddenly, nor did it grow only from the soil of the present. This possession must be regarded as previously present, as an inheritance, and as the result of labour — the labour of all past generations of men. Just as the arts of outward life, the accumulated skill and invention, the customs and arrangements of social and political life, are the result of the thought, care, and needs, of the want and the misery, of the ingenuity, the plans and achievements of those who preceded us in history, so, likewise, in science, and specially in Philosophy, do we owe what we are to the tradition which, as Herder has put it,1 like a holy chain, runs through all that was transient, and has therefore passed away. Thus has been preserved and transmitted to us what antiquity produced.
But this tradition is not only a stewardess who simply guards faithfully that which she has received, and thus delivers it unchanged to posterity, just as the course of nature in the infinite change and activity of its forms ever remains constant to its original laws and makes no step in advance. Such tradition is no motionless statue, but is alive, and swells like a mighty river, which increases in size the further it advances from its source. The content of this tradition is that which the intellectual world has brought forth, and the universal Mind does not remain stationary. But it is just the universal Mind with which we have to do. It may certainly be the case with a single nation that its culture, art, science — its intellectual activities as a whole — are at a standstill. This appears, perhaps, to be the case with the Chinese, for example, who may have been as far advanced in every respect two thousand years ago as now. But the world-spirit does not sink into this rest of indifference; this follows from its very nature, for its activity is its life. This activity presupposes a material already present, on which it acts, and which it does not merely augment by the addition, of new matter, but completely fashions and transforms. Thus that which each generation has produced in science and in intellectual activity, is an heirloom to which all the past generations have added their savings, a temple in which all races of men thankfully and cheerfully deposit that which rendered aid to them through life, and which they had won from the depths of Nature and of Mind. To receive this inheritance is also to enter upon its use. It constitutes the soul of each successive generation, the intellectual substance of the time; its principles, prejudices, and possessions; and this legacy is degraded to a material which becomes metamorphosed by Mind. In this manner that which is received is changed, and the material worked upon is both enriched and preserved at the same time.
This is the function of our own and of every age: to grasp the knowledge which is already existing, to make it our own, and in so doing to develop it still further and to raise it to a higher level. In thus appropriating it to ourselves we make it into something different from what it was before. On the presupposition of an already existing intellectual world which is transformed in our appropriation of it, depends the fact that Philosophy can only arise in connection with previous Philosophy, from which of necessity it has arisen. The course of history does not show us the Becoming of things foreign to us, but the Becoming of ourselves and of our own knowledge.
The ideas and questions which may be present to our mind regarding the character and ends of the history of Philosophy, depend on the nature of the relationship here given. In this lies the explanation of the fact that the study of the history of Philosophy is an introduction to Philosophy itself. The guiding principles for the formation of this history are given in this fact, the further discussion of which must thus be the main object of this introduction. We must also, however, keep in mind, as being of fundamental importance, the conception of the aim of Philosophy. And since, as already mentioned, the systematic exposition of this conception cannot here find a place, such discussion as we can now undertake, can only propose to deal with the subject provisionally and not to give a thorough and conclusive account of the nature of the Becoming of Philosophy.
This Becoming is not merely a passive movement, as we suppose movements such as those of the sun and moon to be. It is no mere movement in the unresisting medium of space and time. What we must represent to ourselves is the activity of free thought; we have to present the history of the world of thought as it has arisen and produced itself.
There is an old tradition that it is the faculty of thought which separates men from beasts; and to this tradition we shall adhere. In accordance with this, what man has, as being nobler than a beast, he has through thinking. Everything which is human, however it may appear, is so only because the thought contained in it works and has worked. But thought, although it is thus the essential, substantial, and effectual, has many other elements. We must, however, consider it best when Thought does not pursue anything else, but is occupied only with itself — with what is noblest — when it has sought and found itself. The history which we have before us is the history of Thought finding itself, and it is the case with Thought that it only finds itself in producing itself; indeed, that it only exists and is actual in finding itself. These productions are the philosophic systems; and the series of discoveries on which Thought sets out in order to discover itself, forms a work which has lasted twenty-five hundred years.
If the Thought which is essentially Thought, is in and for itself and eternal, and that which is true is contained in Thought alone, how, then, does this intellectual world come to have a history? In history what appears is transient, has disappeared in the night of the past and is no more. But true, necessary thought — and it is only with such that we have to do — is capable of no change. The question here raised constitutes one of those matters first to be brought under our consideration. But in the second place, there are also many most important things outside of Philosophy, which are yet the work of Thought, and which are left unconsidered. Such are Religion, Political History, forms of Government, and the Arts and Sciences. The question arises as to how these operations differ from the subject of consideration, and how they are related in history? As regards these two points of view, it is desirable to show in what sense the history of Philosophy is here taken, in order to see clearly what we are about. Moreover, in the third place, we must first take a general survey before we descend to particulars, else the whole is not seen for the mere details — the wood is not seen for the trees, nor Philosophy for mere philosophies. We require to have a general idea of the nature and aim of the whole in order to know what to look for. Just as we first desire to obtain a general idea of a country, which we should no longer see in going into detail, so we desire to see the relation which single philosophies bear to the whole; for in reality, the high value of the detail lies in its relation to the whole. This is nowhere more the case than with Philosophy, and also with its history. In the case of a history, indeed, the establishment of the Universal seems to be less needful than in that of one of the sciences proper. For history seems at first to be a succession of chance events, in which each fact stands isolated by itself, which has Time alone as a connecting-link. But even in political history we are not satisfied with this. We see, or at least divine in it, that essential connection in which the individual events have their place and relation to an end or aim, and in this way obtain significance. For the significant in history is such only through its relation to and connection with a Universal. To perceive this Universal is thus to apprehend the significance.
There are, therefore, the following points with which I wish to deal in this introduction.
The first of these will be to investigate the character of the history of Philosophy, its significance, its nature, and its aim, from which will follow inferences as to its treatment. In particular, we shall get an insight into the relation of the history of Philosophy to the science of Philosophy, and this will be the most interesting point of all. That is to say, this history represents, not merely the external, accidental, events contained within it, but it shows how the content, or that which appears to belong to mere history, really belongs to the science of Philosophy. The history of Philosophy is itself scientific, and thus essentially becomes the science of Philosophy.
In the second place, the Notion of Philosophy must be more adequately determined, and from it must be deduced what should be excluded from the history of Philosophy out of the infinite material and the manifold aspects of the intellectual culture of the nations. Religion, certainly, and the thoughts contained in and regarding it, particularly when these are in the form of mythology, are, on account of their matter, and the sciences with their ideas on the state, duties and laws, on account of their form, so near Philosophy that the history of the science of Philosophy threatens to become quite indefinite in extent. It might be supposed that the history of Philosophy should take account of all these ideas. Has not everything been called Philosophy and philosophizing? On the one hand, the close connection has to be further considered in which Philosophy stands with its allied subjects, religion, art, the other sciences, and likewise with political history. On the other hand, when the province of Philosophy has been correctly defined, we reach, with the determination of what Philosophy is and what pertains to it, the starting-point of its history, which must be distinguished from the commencements of religious ideas and mere thoughtful conjectures.
From the idea of the subject which is contained in these first two points of view, it is necessary to pass on to the consideration of the third point, to the general review of this history and to the division of its progress into natural periods — such an arrangement to exhibit it as an organic, progressive whole, as a rational connection through which this history attains the dignity of a science. And I will not occupy further space with reflections on the use of the history of Philosophy, and other methods of treating it. The use is evident. But, in conclusion, I wish to consider the sources of the history of Philosophy, for this is customary.
THE THOUGHT WHICH may first occur to us in the history of Philosophy, is that the subject itself contains an inner contradiction. For Philosophy aims at understanding what is unchangeable, eternal, in and for itself: its end is Truth. But history tells us of that which has at one time existed, at another time has vanished, having been expelled by something else. Truth is eternal; it does not fall within the sphere of the transient, and has no history. But if it has a history, and as this history is only the representation of a succession of past forms of knowledge, the truth is not to be found in it, for the truth cannot be what has passed away.
It might be said that all this argument would affect not only the other sciences, but in like degree the Christian religion, and it might be found inconsistent that a history of this religion and of the other sciences should exist; but it would be superfluous further to examine this argument, for it is immediately contradicted by the very fact that there are such histories. But in order to get a better understanding of this apparent contradiction, we must distinguish between the outward history of a religion or a science and the history of the subject itself. And then we must take into account that the history of Philosophy because of the special nature of its subject-matter, is different from other histories. It is at once evident that the contradiction in question could not refer to the outward history, but merely to the inward, or that of the content itself. There is a history of the spread of Christianity and of the lives of those who have avowed it, and its existence has formed itself into that of a Church. This in itself constitutes an external existence such that being brought into contact with temporal affairs of the most diverse kind, its lot is a varied one and it essentially possesses a history. And of the Christian doctrine it is true that it, too, has its history, but it necessarily soon reached its full development and attained to its appointed powers. And this old creed has been an acknowledged influence to every age, and will still be acknowledged unchanged as the Truth, even though this acknowledgment were become no more than a pretence, and the words an empty form. But the history of this doctrine in its wider sense includes two elements: first the various additions to and deviations from the truth formerly established, and secondly the combating of these errors, the purification of the principles that remain from such additions, and a consequent return to their first simplicity.
The other sciences, including Philosophy, have also an external history like Religion. Philosophy has a history of its origin, diffusion, maturity, decay, revival; a history of its teachers, promoters, and of its opponents — often, too, of an outward relation to religion and occasionally to the State. This side of its history likewise gives occasion to interesting questions. Amongst other such, it is asked why Philosophy, the doctrine of absolute Truth, seems to have revealed itself on the whole to a small number of individuals, to special nations, and how it has limited itself to particular periods of time. Similarly with respect to Christianity, to the Truth in a much more universal form than the philosophical, a difficulty has been encountered in respect to the question whether there is a contradiction in the fact that this religion should have appeared so late in time, and that it should have remained so long and should still remain limited to special races of men. But these and other similar questions are too much a matter of detail to depend merely on the general conflict referred to, and when we have further touched upon the peculiar character of philosophic knowledge, we may go more specially into the aspects which relate to the external existence and external history of Philosophy.
But as regards the comparison between the history of Religion and that of Philosophy as to inner content, there is not in the latter as there is in Religion a fixed and fundamental truth which, as unchangeable, is apart from history. The content of Christianity, which is Truth, has, however, remained unaltered as such, and has therefore little history or as good as none.2 Hence in Religion, on account of its very nature as Christianity, the conflict referred to disappears. The errors and additions constitute no difficulty. They are transitory and altogether historical in character.
The other sciences, indeed, have also according to their content a History, a part of which relates to alterations, and the renunciation of tenets which were formerly current. But a great, perhaps the greater, part of the history relates to what has proved permanent, so that what was new, was not an alteration on earlier acquisitions, but an addition to them. These sciences progress through a process of juxtaposition. It is true that in Botany, Mineralogy, and so on, much is dependent on what was previously known, but by far the greatest part remains stationary and by means of fresh matter is merely added to without itself being affected by the addition. With a science like Mathematics, history has, in the main, only the pleasing task of recording further additions. Thus to take an example, elementary geometry in so far as it was created by Euclid, may from his time on be regarded as having no further history.
The history of Philosophy, on the other hand, shows neither the motionlessness of a complete, simple content, nor altogether the onward movement of a peaceful addition of new treasures to those already acquired. It seems merely to afford the spectacle of ever-recurring changes in the whole, such as finally are no longer even connected by a common aim.
At this point appear these ordinary superficial ideas regarding the history of Philosophy which have to be referred to and corrected. As regards these very current views, which are doubtless known to you, gentlemen, for indeed they are the reflections most likely to occur in one’s first crude thoughts on a history of Philosophy, I will shortly explain what requires explanation, and the explanation of the differences in philosophies will lead us further into the matter itself.
a. The History of Philosophy as an accumulation of Opinions.
History, at the first glance, includes in its aim the narration of the accidental circumstances of times, of races, and of individuals, treated impartially partly as regards their relation in time, and partly as to their content. The appearance of contingency in time-succession is to be dealt with later on. It is contingency of content which is the idea with which we have first to deal — the idea of contingent actions. But thoughts and not external actions, or griefs, or joys, form the content of Philosophy. Contingent thoughts, however, are nothing but opinions, and philosophical opinions are opinions relating to the more special content of Philosophy, regarding God, Nature and Spirit.
Thus we now meet the view very usually taken of the history of Philosophy which ascribes to it the narration of a number of philosophical opinions as they have arisen and manifested themselves in time. This kind of matter is in courtesy called opinions; those who think themselves more capable of judging rightly, call such a history a display of senseless follies, or at least of errors made by men engrossed in thought and in mere ideas. This view is not only held by those who recognize their ignorance of Philosophy. Those who do this, acknowledge it, because that ignorance is, in common estimation, held to be no obstacle to giving judgment upon what has to do with the subject; for it is thought that anybody can form a judgment on its character and value without any comprehension, of it whatever. But the same view is even held by those who write or have written on the history of Philosophy. This history, considered only as the enumeration of various opinions, thus becomes an idle tale, or, if you will, an erudite investigation. For erudition is, in the main, acquaintance with a number of useless things, that is to say, with that which has no intrinsic interest or value further than being known. Yet it is thought that profit is to be derived from learning the various opinions and reflections of other men. It stimulates the powers of thought and also leads to many excellent reflections; this signifies that now and then it occasions an idea, and its art thus consists in the spinning one opinion out of the other.
If the history of Philosophy merely represented various opinions in array, whether they be of God or of natural and spiritual things existent, it would be a most superfluous and tiresome science, no matter what advantage might be brought forward as derived from such thought-activity and learning. What can be more useless than to learn a string of bald opinions, and what more unimportant? Literary works, being histories of Philosophy in the sense that they produce and treat the ideas of Philosophy as if they were opinions, need be only superficially glanced at to find how dry and destitute of interest everything about them is.
An opinion is a subjective conception, an uncontrolled thought, an idea which may occur to me in one direction or in another: an opinion is mine,3 it is in itself a universal thought which is existent in and for itself. But Philosophy possesses no opinions, for there is no such thing as philosophical opinions. When we hear a man speaking of philosophical opinions, even though he be an historian of philosophy itself, we detect at once this want of fundamental education. Philosophy is the objective science of truth, it is science of necessity, conceiving knowledge, and neither opinion nor the spinning out of opinions.
The more precise significance of this idea is that we get to know opinions only, thus laying emphasis upon the word Opinion. Now the direct opposite of opinion is the Truth; it is Truth before which mere opinion pales. Those who in the history of Philosophy seek mere theories, or who suppose that on the whole only such are to be found within it, also turn aside when that word Truth confronts them. Philosophy here encounters opposition from two different sides. On the one hand piety openly declares Reason or Thought to be incapable of apprehending what is true, and to lead only to the abyss of doubt; it declares that independent thought must be renounced, and reason held in bounds by faith in blind authority, if Truth is to be reached. Of the relation existing between Religion and Philosophy and of its history, we shall deal later on. On the other hand, it is known just as well, that so-called reason has maintained its rights, abandoning faith in mere authority, and has endeavoured to make Christianity rational, so that throughout it is only my personal insight and conviction which obliges me to make any admissions. But this affirmation of the right of reason is turned round in an astonishing manner, so that it results in making knowledge of the truth through reason an impossibility. This so-called reason on the one hand has combated religious faith in the name and power of thinking reason, and at the same time it has itself turned against reason and is true reason’s adversary. Instinct and feeling are maintained by it against the true reason, thus making the measure of true value the merely subjective — that is a particular conviction such as each can form in and for himself in his subjective capacity. A personal conviction such as this is no more than the particular opinion that has become final for men.
If we begin with what meets us in our very first conceptions, we cannot neglect to make mention of this aspect in the history of Philosophy. In its results it permeates culture generally, being at once the misconception and true sign of our times. It is the principle through which men mutually understand and know each other; an hypothesis whose value is established and which is the ground of all the other sciences. In theology it is not so much the creed of the church that passes for Christianity, as that every one to a greater or less degree makes a Christianity of his own to tally with his conviction. And in history we often see theology driven into acquiring the knowledge of various opinions in order that an interest may thus be furnished to the science, and one of the first results of the attention paid them is the honour awarded to all convictions, and the esteem vouchsafed to what has been constituted merely by the individual. The endeavour to know the Truth is then of course relinquished. It is true that personal conviction is the ultimate and absolute essential which reason and its philosophy, from a subjective point of view, demand in knowledge. But there is a distinction between conviction when it rests on subjective grounds such as feelings, speculations and perceptions, or, speaking generally, on the particular nature of the subject, and when it rests on thought proceeding from acquaintance with the Notion and the nature of the thing. In the former case conviction is opinion.
This opposition between mere opinion and truth now sharply defined, we already recognize in the culture of the period of Socrates and Plato — a period of corruption in Greek life — as the Platonic opposition between opinion δόξα and Science ἐπιστήμη. It is the same opposition as that which existed in the decadence of Roman public and political life under Augustus, and subsequently when Epicureanism and indifference set themselves up against Philosophy. Under this influence, when Christ said, “I came into the world that I should bear witness unto the Truth,” Pilate answered, “What is Truth?” That was said in a superior way, and signifies that this idea of truth is an expedient which is obsolete: we have got further, we know that there is no longer any question about knowing the Truth, seeing that we have gone beyond it. Who makes this statement has gone beyond it indeed. If this is made our starting point in the history of Philosophy, its whole significance will consist in finding out the particular ideas of others, each one of which is different from the other: these individual points of view are thus foreign to me: my thinking reason is not free, nor is it present in them: for me they are but extraneous, dead historic matter, or so much empty content, and to satisfy oneself with empty vanity is mere subjective vanity itself.
To the impartial man, the Truth has always been a heart-stirring word and one of great import. As to the assertion that the Truth cannot be known, we shall consider it more closely in the history of Philosophy itself where it appears. The only thing to be here remarked is that if this assumption be allowed, as was the case with Tennemann, it is beyond conception why anyone should still trouble about Philosophy, since each opinion asserts falsely in its turn that it has found the truth. This immediately recalls to me the old belief that Truth consists in knowledge, but that an individual only knows the Truth in so far as he reflects and not as he walks and stands: and that the Truth cannot be known in immediate apprehension and perception, whether it be external and sensuous, or whether it be intellectual perception (for every perception as a perception is sensuous) but only through the labour of thought.
b. Proof of the futility of Philosophical Knowledge obtained through the History of Philosophy itself.
From another point of view another consequence ensues from the above conception of the history of Philosophy which may at will be looked at as an evil or a benefit. In view of such manifold opinions and philosophical systems so numerous, one is perplexed to know which one ought to be accepted. In regard to the great matters to which man is attracted and a knowledge of which Philosophy would bestow, it is evident that the greatest minds have erred, because they have been contradicted by others. “Since this has been so with minds so great, how then can ego homuncio attempt to form a judgment?” This consequence, which ensues from the diversity in philosophical systems, is, as may be supposed, the evil in the matter, while at the same time it is a subjective good. For this diversity is the usual plea urged by those who, with an air of knowledge, wish to make a show of interest in Philosophy, to explain the fact that they, with this pretence of good-will, and, indeed, with added motive for working at the science, do in fact utterly neglect it. But this diversity in philosophical systems is far from being merely an evasive plea. It has far more weight as a genuine serious ground of argument against the zeal which Philosophy requires. It justifies its neglect and demonstrates conclusively the powerlessness of the endeavour to attain to philosophic knowledge of the truth. When it is admitted that Philosophy ought to be a real science, and one Philosophy must certainly be the true, the question arises as to which Philosophy it is, and when it can be known. Each one asserts its genuineness, each even gives different signs and tokens by which the Truth can be discovered; sober reflective thought must therefore hesitate to give its judgment.
This, then, is the wider interest which the history of Philosophy is said to afford. Cicero (De natura Deorum I. 8 sq.) gives us from this point of view, a most slovenly history of philosophic thought on God. He puts it in the mouth of an Epicurean, but he himself knew of nothing more favourable to say, and it is thus his own view. The Epicurean says that no certain knowledge has been arrived at. The proof that the efforts of philosophy are futile is derived directly from the usual superficial view taken of its history; the results attendant on that history make it appear to be a process in which the most various thoughts arise in numerous philosophies, each of which opposes, contradicts and refutes the other. This fact, which cannot be denied, seems to contain the justification, indeed the necessity for applying to Philosophy the words of Christ, “Let the dead bury their dead; arise, and follow Me.” The whole of the history of Philosophy becomes a battlefield covered with the bones of the dead; it is a kingdom not merely formed of dead and lifeless individuals, but of refuted and spiritually dead systems, since each has killed and buried the other. Instead of “Follow thou Me,” here then it must indeed be said, “Follow thine own self” — that is, hold by thine own convictions, remain steadfast to thine own opinion, why adopt another?
It certainly happens that a new philosophy makes its appearance, which maintains the others to be valueless; and indeed each one in turn comes forth at first with the pretext that by its means all previous philosophies not only are refuted, but what in them is wanting is supplied, and now at length the right one is discovered. But following upon what has gone before, it would rather seem that other words of Scripture are just as applicable to such a philosophy — the words which the Apostle Peter spoke to Ananias, “Behold the feet of them that shall carry thee out are at the door.” Behold the philosophy by which thine own will be refuted and displaced shall not tarry long as it has not tarried before.
c. Explanatory remarks on the diversity in Philosophies.
Certainly the fact is sufficiently well established that there are and have been different philosophies. The Truth is, however, one; and the instinct of reason maintains this irradicable intuition or belief. It is said that only one philosophy can be true, and, because philosophies are different, it is concluded that all others must be erroneous. But, in fact, each one in turn gives every assurance, evidence and proof of being the one and true Philosophy. This is a common mode of reasoning and is what seems in truth to be the view of sober thought. As regards the sober nature of the word at issue — thought — we can tell from every-day experience that if we fast we feel hunger either at once or very soon. But sober thought always has the fortunate power of not resulting in hunger and desire, but of being and remaining as it is, content. Hence the thought expressed in such an utterance reveals the fact that it is dead understanding; for it is only death which fasts and yet rests satisfied. But neither physical life nor intellectual remains content with mere abstention; as desire it presses on through hunger and through thirst towards Truth, towards knowledge itself. It presses on to satisfy this desire and does not allow itself to feast and find sufficiency in a reflection such as this.
As to this reflection, the next thing to be said of it is that however different the philosophies have been, they had a common bond in that they were Philosophy. Thus whoever may have studied or become acquainted with a philosophy, of whatever kind, provided only that it is such, has thereby become acquainted with Philosophy. That delusive mode of reasoning which regards diversity alone, and from doubt of or aversion to the particular form in which a Universal finds its actuality, will not grasp or even allow this universal nature, I have elsewhere4 likened to an invalid recommended by the doctor to eat fruit, and who has cherries, plums or grapes, before him, but who pedantically refuses to take anything because no part of what is offered him is fruit, some of it being cherries, and the rest plums or grapes.
But it is really important to have a deeper insight into the bearings of this diversity in the systems of Philosophy. Truth and Philosophy known philosophically, make such diversity appear in another light from that of abstract opposition between Truth and Error. The explanation of how this comes about will reveal to us the significance of the whole history of Philosophy. We must make the fact conceivable, that the diversity and number of philosophies not only does not prejudice Philosophy itself, that is to say the possibility of a philosophy, but that such diversity is, and has been, absolutely necessary to the existence of a science of Philosophy and that it is essential to it.
This makes it easy to us to comprehend the aim of Philosophy, which is in thought and in conception to grasp the Truth, and not merely to discover that nothing can be known, or that at least temporal, finite truth, which also is an untruth, can alone be known and not the Truth indeed. Further we find that in the history of Philosophy we have to deal with Philosophy itself. The facts within that history are not adventures and contain no more romance than does the history of the world. They are not a mere collection of chance events, of expeditions of wandering knights, each going about fighting, struggling purposelessly, leaving no results to show for all his efforts. Nor is it so that one thing has been thought out here, another there, at will; in the activity of thinking mind there is real connection, and what there takes place is rational. It is with this belief in the spirit of the world that we must proceed to history, and in particular to the history of Philosophy.
The above statement, that the Truth is only one, is still abstract and formal. In the deeper sense it is our starting point. But the aim of Philosophy is to know this one Truth as the immediate source from which all else proceeds, both all the laws of nature and all the manifestations of life and consciousness of which they are mere reflections, or to lead these laws and manifestations in ways apparently contrary, back to that single source, and from that source to comprehend them, which is to understand their derivation. Thus what is most essential is to know that the single truth is not merely a solitary, empty thought, but one determined within itself. To obtain this knowledge we must enter into some abstract Notions which, as such, are quite general and dry, and which are the two principles of Development and of the Concrete. We could, indeed, embrace the whole in the single principle of development; if this were clear, all else would result and follow of its own accord. The product of thinking is the thought; thought is, however, still formal; somewhat more defined it becomes Notion, and finally Idea is Thought in its totality, implicitly and explicitly determined. Thus the Idea, and it alone is Truth. Now it is essentially in the nature of the Idea to develop, and only through development to arrive at comprehension of itself, or to become what it is. That the Idea should have to make itself what it is, seems like a contradiction; it may be said that it is what it is.
a. The Notion of Development.
The idea of development is well known, but it is the special characteristic of Philosophy to investigate such matters as were formerly held as known. What is dealt with or made use of without consideration as an aid to daily life, is certainly the unknown to man unless he be informed in Philosophy. The further discussion of this idea belongs to the science of Logic.
In order to comprehend what development is, what may be called two different states must be distinguished. The first is what is known as capacity, power, what I call being-in-itself (potentia, δύναμις); the second principle is that of being-for-itself, actuality (actus, ἐνέργεια). If we say, for example, that man is by nature rational, we would mean that he has reason only inherently or in embryo: in this sense, reason, understanding, imagination, will, are possessed from birth or even from the mother’s womb. But while the child only has capacities or the actual possibility of reason, it is just the same as if he had no reason; reason does not yet exist in him since he cannot yet do anything rational, and has no rational consciousness. Thus what man is at first implicitly becomes explicit, and it is the same with reason. If, then, man has actuality on whatever side, he is actually rational; and now we come to reason.
What is the real meaning of this word? That which is in itself must become an object to mankind, must arrive at consciousness, thus becoming for man. What has become an object to him is the same as what he is in himself; through the becoming objective of this implicit being, man first becomes for himself; he is made double, is retained and not changed into another. For example, man is thinking, and thus he thinks out thoughts. In this way it is in thought alone that thought is object; reason produces what is rational: reason is its own object. The fact that thought may also descend to what is destitute of reason is a consideration involving wider issues, which do not concern us here. But even though man, who in himself is rational, does not at first seem to have got further on since he became rational for himself — what is implicit having merely retained itself — the difference is quite enormous: no new content has been produced, and yet this form of being for self makes all the difference. The whole variation in the development of the world in history is founded on this difference. This alone explains how since all mankind is naturally rational, and freedom is the hypothesis on which this reason rests, slavery yet has been, and in part still is, maintained by many peoples, and men have remained contented under it. The only distinction between the Africans and the Asiatics on the one hand, and the Greeks, Romans, and moderns on the other, is that the latter know and it is explicit for them, that they are free, but the others are so without knowing that they are, and thus without existing as being free. This constitutes the enormous difference in their condition. All knowledge, and learning, science, and even commerce have no other object than to draw out what is inward or implicit and thus to become objective.
Because that which is implicit comes into existence, it certainly passes into change, yet it remains one and the same, for the whole process is dominated by it. The plant, for example, does not lose itself in mere indefinite change. From the germ much is produced when at first nothing was to be seen; but the whole of what is brought forth, if not developed, is yet hidden and ideally contained within itself. The principle of this projection into existence is that the germ cannot remain merely implicit, but is impelled towards development, since it presents the contradiction of being only implicit and yet not desiring so to be. But this coming without itself has an end in view; its completion fully reached, and its previously determined end is the fruit or produce of the germ, which causes a return to the first condition. The germ will produce itself alone and manifest what is contained in it, so that it then may return to itself once more thus to renew the unity from which it started. With nature it certainly is true that the subject which commenced and the matter which forms the end are two separate units, as in the case of seed and fruit. The doubling process has apparently the effect of separating into two things that which in content is the same. Thus in animal life the parent and the young are different individuals although their nature is the same.
In Mind it is otherwise: it is consciousness and therefore it is free, uniting in itself the beginning and the end. As with the germ in nature, Mind indeed resolves itself back into unity after constituting itself another. But what is in itself becomes for Mind and thus arrives at being for itself. The fruit and seed newly contained within it on the other hand, do not become for the original germ, but for us alone; in the case of Mind both factors not only are implicitly the same in character, but there is a being for the other and at the same time a being for self. That for which the “other” is, is the same as that “other;” and thus alone Mind is at home with itself in its “other.” The development of Mind lies in the fact that its going forth and separation constitutes its coming to itself.
This being-at-home-with-self, or coming-to-self of Mind may be described as its complete and highest end: it is this alone that it desires and nothing else. Everything that from eternity has happened in heaven and earth, the life of God and all the deeds of time simply are the struggles for Mind to know itself, to make itself objective to itself, to find itself, be for itself, and finally unite itself to itself; it is alienated and divided, but only so as to be able thus to find itself and return to itself. Only in this manner does Mind attain its freedom, for that is free which is not connected with or dependent on another. True self-possession and satisfaction are only to be found in this, and in nothing else but Thought does Mind attain this freedom. In sense-perception, for instance, and in feeling, I find myself confined and am not free; but I am free when I have a consciousness of this my feeling. Man has particular ends and interests even in will; I am free indeed when this is mine. Such ends, however, always contain “another,” or something which constitutes for me “another,” such as desire and impulse. It is in Thought alone that all foreign matter disappears from view, and that Mind is absolutely free. All interest which is contained in the Idea and in Philosophy is expressed in it.
b. The Notion of the Concrete.
As to development, it may be asked, what does develop and what forms the absolute content? Development is considered in the light of a formal process in action and as destitute of content. But the act has no other end but activity, and through this activity the general character of the content is already fixed. For being-in-self and being-for-self are the moments present in action; but the act is the retention of these diverse elements within itself. The act thus is really one, and it is just this unity of differences which is the concrete. Not only is the act concrete, but also the implicit, which stands to action in the relation of subject which begins, and finally the product is just as concrete as the action or as the subject which begins. Development in process likewise forms the content, the Idea itself; for this we must have the one element and then the other: both combined will form a unity as third, because the one in the other is at home with, and not without, itself. Thus the Idea is in its content concrete within itself, and this in two ways: first it is concrete potentially, and then it is its interest that what is in itself should be there for it.
It is a common prejudice that the science of Philosophy deals only with abstractions and empty generalities, and that sense-perception, our empirical self-consciousness, natural instinct, and the feelings of every-day life, lie, on the contrary, in the region of the concrete and the self-determined. As a matter of fact, Philosophy is in the region of thought, and has therefore to deal with universals; its content is abstract, but only as to form and element. In itself the Idea is really concrete, for it is the union of the different determinations. It is here that reasoned knowledge differs from mere knowledge of the understanding, and it is the business of Philosophy, as opposed to understanding, to show that the Truth or the Idea does not consist in empty generalities, but in a universal; and that is within itself the particular and the determined. If the Truth is abstract it must be untrue. Healthy human reason goes out towards what is concrete; the reflection of the understanding comes first as abstract and untrue, correct in theory only, and amongst other things unpractical. Philosophy is what is most antagonistic to abstraction, and it leads back to the concrete.
If we unite the Notion of the concrete with that of development we have the motion of the concrete. Since the implicit is already concrete within itself, and we only set forth what is implicitly there, the new form which now looks different and which was formerly shut up in the original unity, is merely distinguished. The concrete must become for itself or explicit; as implicit or potential it is only differentiated within itself, not as yet explicitly set forth, but still in a state of unity. The concrete is thus simple, and yet at the same time differentiated. This, its inward contradiction, which is indeed the impelling force in development, brings distinction into being. But thus, too, its right to be taken back and reinstated extends beyond the difference; for its truth is only to be found in unity. Life, both that which is in Nature and that which is of the Idea, of Mind within itself, is thus manifested. Were the Idea abstract, it would simply be the highest conceivable existence, and that would be all that could be said of it; but such a God is the product of the understanding of modern times. What is true is rather found in motion, in a process, however, in which there is rest; difference, while it lasts, is but a temporary condition, through which comes unity, full and concrete.
We may now proceed to give examples of sensuous things, which will help us further to explain this Notion of the concrete. Although the flower has many qualities, such as smell, taste, form, colour, &c., yet it is one. None of these qualities could be absent in the particular leaf or flower: each individual part of the leaf shares alike all the qualities of the leaf entire. Gold, similarly contains in every particle all its qualities unseparated and entire. It is frequently allowed with sensuous things that such varied elements may be joined together, but, in the spiritual, differentiation is supposed to involve opposition. We do not controvert the fact, or think it contradictory, that the smell and taste of the flower, although otherwise opposed, are yet clearly in one subject; nor do we place the one against the other. But the understanding and understanding thought find everything of a different kind, placed in conjunction, to be incompatible. Matter, for example, is complex and coherent, or space is continuous and uninterrupted. Likewise we may take separate points in space and break up matter dividing it ever further into infinity. It then is said that matter consists of atoms and points, and hence is not continuous. Therefore we have here the two determinations of continuity and of definite points, which understanding regards as mutually exclusive, combined in one. It is said that matter must be clearly either continuous or divisible into points, but in reality it has both these qualities. Or when we say of the mind of man that it has freedom, the understanding at once brings up the other quality, which in this case is necessity, saying, that if Mind is free it is not in subjection to necessity, and, inversely, if its will and thought are determined through necessity, it is not free — the one, they say, excludes the other. The distinctions here are regarded as exclusive, and not as forming something concrete. But that which is true, the Mind, is concrete, and its attributes are freedom and necessity. Similarly the higher point of view is that Mind is free in its necessity, and finds its freedom in it alone, since its necessity rests on its freedom. But it is more difficult for us to show the unity here than in the case of natural objects. Freedom can, however, be also abstract freedom without necessity, which false freedom is self-will, and for that reason it is self-opposed, unconsciously limited, an imaginary freedom which is free in form alone.
The fruit of development, which comes third, is a result of motion, but inasmuch as it is merely the result of one stage in development, as being last in this stage, it is both the starting point and the first in order in another such stage. Goethe somewhere truly says, “That which is formed ever resolves itself back into its elements.” Matter — which as developed has form — constitutes once more the material for a new form. Mind again takes as its object and applies its activity to the Notion in which in going within itself, it has comprehended itself, which it is in form and being, and which has just been separated from it anew. The application of thought to this, supplies it with the form and determination of thought. This action thus further forms the previously formed, gives it additional determinations, makes it more determinate in itself, further developed and more profound. As concrete, this activity is a succession of processes in development which must be represented not as a straight line drawn out into vague infinity, but as a circle returning within itself, which, as periphery, has very many circles, and whose whole is a large number of processes in development turning back within themselves.
c. Philosophy as the apprehension of the development of the Concrete.
Having thus generally explained the nature of the Concrete, I now add as regards its import, that the Truth thus determined within itself is impelled towards development. It is only the living and spiritual which internally bestirs and develops itself. Thus the Idea as concrete in itself, and self-developing, is an organic system and a totality which contains a multitude of stages and of moments in development. Philosophy has now become for itself the apprehension of this development, and as conceiving Thought, is itself this development in Thought. The more progress made in this development, the more perfect is the Philosophy.
This development goes no further out than into externality, but the going without itself of development also is a going inwards. That is to say, the universal Idea continues to remain at the foundation and still is the all-embracing and unchangeable. While in Philosophy the going out of the Idea in course of its development is not a change, a becoming “another,” but really is a going within itself, a self-immersion, the progress forward makes the Idea which was previously general and undetermined, determined within itself. Further development of the Idea or its further determination is the same thing exactly. Depth seems to signify intensiveness, but in this case the most extensive is also the most intensive. The more intensive is the Mind, the more extensive is it, hence the larger is its embrace. Extension as development, is not dispersion or falling asunder, but a uniting bond which is the more powerful and intense as the expanse of that embraced is greater in extent and richer. In such a case what is greater is the strength of opposition and of separation; and the greater power overcomes the greater separation.
These are the abstract propositions regarding the nature of the Idea and of its development, and thus within it Philosophy in its developed state is constituted: it is one Idea in its totality and in all its individual parts, like one life in a living being, one pulse throbs throughout all its members. All the parts represented in it, and their systematization, emanate from the one Idea; all these particulars are but the mirrors and copies of this one life, and have their actuality only in this unity. Their differences and their various qualities are only the expression of the Idea and the form contained within it. Thus the Idea is the central point, which is also the periphery, the source of light, which in all its expansion does not come without itself, but remains present and immanent within itself. Thus it is both the system of necessity and its own necessity, which also constitutes its freedom.
Thus we see that Philosophy is system in development; the history of Philosophy is the same; and this is the main point to be noted and the first principle to be dealt with in this treatise on that history. In order to make this evident, the difference in respect to the possible modes of manifestation must first be pointed out. That is to say, the progression of the various stages in the advance of Thought may occur with the consciousness of necessity, in which case each in succession deduces itself, and this form and this determination can alone emerge. Or else it may come about without this consciousness as does a natural and apparently accidental process, so that while inwardly, indeed, the Notion brings about its result consistently, this consistency is not made manifest. This is so in nature; in the various stages of the development of twigs, leaves, blossom and fruit, each proceeds for itself, but the inward Idea is the directing and determining force which governs the progression. This is also so with the child whose bodily powers, and above all whose intellectual activities, make their appearance one after the other, simply and naturally, so that those parents who form such an experience for the first time, marvel whence all that is now showing itself from within, comes from; for the whole of these manifestations merely have the form of a succession in time.
The one kind of progression which represents the deduction of the forms, the necessity thought out and recognized, of the determinations, is the business of Philosophy; and because it is the pure Idea which is in question and not yet its mere particularized form as Nature and as Mind, that representation is, in the main, the business of logical Philosophy. But the other method, which represents the part played by the history of Philosophy, shows the different stages and moments in development in time, in manner of occurrence, in particular places, in particular people or political circumstances, the complications arising thus, and, in short, it shows us the empirical form. This point of view is the only one worthy of this science. From the very nature of the subject it is inherently the true one, and through the study of this history it will be made manifest that it actually shows and proves itself so.
Now in reference to this Idea, I maintain that the sequence in the systems of Philosophy in History is similar to the sequence in the logical deduction of the Notion-determinations in the Idea. I maintain that if the fundamental conceptions of the systems appearing in the history of Philosophy be entirely divested of what regards their outward form, their relation to the particular and the like, the various stages in the determination of the Idea are found in their logical Notion. Conversely in the logical progression taken for itself, there is, so far as its principal elements are concerned, the progression of historical manifestations; but it is necessary to have these pure Notions in order to know what the historical form contains. It may be thought that Philosophy must have another order as to the stages in the Idea than that in which these Notions have gone forth in time; but in the main the order is the same. This succession undoubtedly separates itself, on the one hand, into the sequence in time of History, and on the other into succession in the order of ideas. But to treat more fully of this last would divert us too far from our aim.
I would only remark this, that what has been said reveals that the study of the history of Philosophy is the study of Philosophy itself, for, indeed, it can be nothing else. Whoever studies the history of sciences such as Physics and Mathematics, makes himself acquainted with Physics and Mathematics themselves. But in order to obtain a knowledge of its progress as the development of the Idea in the empirical, external form in which Philosophy appears in History, a corresponding knowledge of the Idea is absolutely essential, just as in judging of human affairs one must have a conception of that which is right and fitting. Else, indeed, as in so many histories of Philosophy, there is presented to the vision devoid of idea, only a disarranged collection of opinions. To make you acquainted with this Idea, and consequently to explain the manifestations, is the business of the history of Philosophy, and to do this is my object in undertaking to lecture on the subject. Since the observer must bring with him the Notion of the subject in order to see it in its phenomenal aspect and in order to expose the object faithfully to view, we need not wonder at there being so many dull histories of Philosophy in which the succession of its systems are represented simply as a number of opinions, errors and freaks of thought. They are freaks of thought which, indeed, have been devised with a great pretension of acuteness and of mental exertion, and with everything else which can be said in admiration of what is merely formal. But, considering the absence of philosophic mind in such historians as these, how should they be able to comprehend and represent the content, which is reasoned thought?
It is shown from what has been said regarding the formal nature of the Idea, that only a history of Philosophy thus regarded as a system of development in Idea, is entitled to the name of Science: a collection of facts constitutes no science. Only thus as a succession of phenomena established through reason, and having as content just what is reason and revealing it, does this history show that it is rational: it shows that the events recorded are in reason. How should the whole of what has taken place in reason not itself be rational? That faith must surely be the more reasonable in which chance is not made ruler over human affairs, and it is the business of Philosophy to recognize that however much its own manifestations may be history likewise, it is yet determined through the Idea alone.
Through these general preliminary conceptions the categories are now determined, the more immediate application of which to the history of Philosophy we have now to consider. This application will bring before us the most significant aspects in this history.
a. The development in Time of the various Philosophies.
The first question which may be asked in reference to this history, concerns that distinction in regard to the manifestation of the Idea, which has just been noticed. It is the question as to how it happens that Philosophy appears to be a development in time and has a history. The answer to this question encroaches on the metaphysics of Time, and it would be a digression from our object to give here more than the elements on which the answer rests.
It has been shown above in reference to the existence of Mind, that its Being is its activity. Nature, on the contrary, is, as it is; its changes are thus only repetitions, and its movements take the form of a circle merely. To express this better, the activity of Mind is to know itself. I am, immediately, but this I am only as a living organism; as Mind I am only in so far as I know myself. Γνῶθι σεαυτόν, Know thyself, the inscription over the temple of the oracle at Delphi, is the absolute command which is expressed by Mind in its essential character. But consciousness really implies that for myself, I am object to myself. In forming this absolute division between what is mine and myself, Mind constitutes its existence and establishes itself as external to itself. It postulates itself in the externality which is just the universal and the distinctive form of existence in Nature. But one of the forms of externality is Time, and this form requires to be further examined both in the Philosophy of Nature and the finite Mind.
This Being in existence and therefore Being in time is a moment not only of the individual consciousness, which as such is essentially finite, but also of the development of the philosophical Idea in the element of Thought. For the Idea, thought of as being at rest, is, indeed, not in Time. To think of it as at rest, and to preserve it in the form of immediacy is equivalent to its inward perception. But the Idea as concrete, is, as has been shown, the unity of differences; it is not really rest, and its existence is not really sense-perception, but as differentiation within itself and therefore as development, it comes into existent Being and into externality in the element of Thought, and thus pure Philosophy appears in thought as a progressive existence in time. But this element of Thought is itself abstract and is the activity of a single consciousness. Mind is, however, not only to be considered as individual, finite consciousness, but as that Mind which is universal and concrete within itself; this concrete universality, however, comprehends all the various sides and modes evolved in which it is and becomes object to the Idea. Thus Mind’s thinking comprehension of self is at the same time the progression of the total actuality evolved. This progression is not one which takes its course through the thought of an individual and exhibits itself in a single consciousness, for it shows itself to be universal Mind presenting itself in the history of the world in all the richness of its form. The result of this development is that one form, one stage in the Idea comes to consciousness in one particular race, so that this race and this time expresses only this particular form, within which it constructs its universe and works out its conditions. The higher stage, on the other hand, centuries later reveals itself in another race of people.
Now if we thus grasp the principles of the Concrete and of Development, the nature of the manifold obtains quite another signification, and what is said of the diversity in philosophies as if the manifold were fixed and stationary and composed of what is mutually exclusive, is at once refuted and relegated to its proper place. Such talk is that in which those who despise Philosophy think they possess an invincible weapon against it, and in their truly beggarly pride in their pitiful representations of it, they are in perfect ignorance even of what they have and what they have to know in any meagre ideas attained, such as in that of the manifold and diverse. Yet this category is one which anybody can understand; no difficulty is made in regard to it, for it is thoroughly known, and those who use it think they can do so as being entirely comprehensible — as a matter of course they understand what it is. But those who believe the principle of diversity to be one absolutely fixed, do not know its nature, or its dialectic; the manifold or diverse is in a state of flux; it must really be conceived of as in the process of development, and as but a passing moment. Philosophy in its concrete Idea is the activity of development in revealing the differences which it contains within itself; these differences are thoughts, for we are now speaking of development in Thought. In the first place, the differences which rest in the Idea are manifested as thoughts. Secondly, these distinctions must come into existence, one here and the other there; and in order that they may do this, they must be complete, that is, they must contain within themselves the Idea in its totality. The concrete alone as including and supporting the distinctions, is the actual; it is thus, and thus alone, that the differences are in their form entire.
A complete form of thought such as is here presented, is a Philosophy. But the Idea contains the distinctions in a peculiar form. It may be said that the form is indifferent, and that the content, the Idea, is the main consideration; and people think themselves quite moderate and reasonable when they state that the different philosophies all contain the Idea, though in different forms, understanding by this that these forms are contingent. But everything hangs on this: these forms are nothing else than the original distinctions in the Idea itself, which is what it is only in them. They are in this way essential to, and constitute the content of the Idea, which in thus sundering itself, attains to form. The manifold character of the principles which appear, is, however, not accidental, but necessary: the different forms constitute an integral part of the whole form. They are the determinations of the original Idea, which together constitute the whole; but as being outside of one another, their union does not take place in them, but in us, the observers. Each system is determined as one, but it is not a permanent condition that the differences are thus mutually exclusive. The inevitable fate of these determinations must follow, and that is that they shall be drawn together and reduced to elements or moments. The independent attitude taken up by each moment is again laid aside. After expansion, contraction follows — the unity out of which they first emerged. This third may itself be but the beginning of a further development. It may seem as if this progression were to go on into infinitude, but it has an absolute end in view, which we shall know better later on; many turnings are necessary, however, before Mind frees itself in coming to consciousness.
The temple of self-conscious reason is to be considered from this the point of view alone worthy of the history of Philosophy. It is hence rationally built by an inward master worker, and not in Solomon’s method, as freemasons build. The great assumption that what has taken place on this side, in the world, has also done so in conformity with reason — which is what first gives the history of Philosophy its true interest — is nothing else than trust in Providence, only in another form. As the best of what is in the world is that which Thought produces, it is unreasonable to believe that reason only is in Nature, and not in Mind. That man who believes that what, like the philosophies, belongs to the region of mind must be merely contingent, is insincere in his belief in divine rule, and what he says of it is but empty talk.
A long time is undoubtedly required by Mind in working out Philosophy, and when one first reflects on it, the length of the time may seem astonishing, like the immensity of the space spoken of in astronomy. But it must be considered in regard to the slow progress of the world-spirit, that there is no need for it to hasten:— “A thousand years are in Thy sight as one day.” It has time enough just because it is itself outside of time, because it is eternal. The fleeting events of the day pass so quickly that there is not time enough for all that has to be done. Who is there who does not die before he has achieved his aims? The world-spirit has time enough, but that is not all. It is not time alone which has to be made use of in the acquisition of a conception; much else is required. The fact that so many races and generations are devoted to these operations of its consciousness by Mind, and that the appearance is so perpetually presented of rising up and passing away, concern it not at all; it is rich enough for such displays, it pursues its work on the largest possible scale, and has nations and individuals enough and to spare. The saying that Nature arrives at its end in the shortest possible way, and that this is right, is a trivial one. The way shown by mind is indirect, and accommodates itself to circumstances. Considerations of finite life, such as time, trouble, and cost, have no place here. We ought, too, to feel no disappointment that particular kinds of knowledge cannot yet be attained, or that this or that is still absent. In the history of the world progression is slow.
b. The application of the foregoing to the treatment of Philosophy.
The first result which follows from what has been said, is that the whole of the history of Philosophy is a progression impelled by an inherent necessity, and one which is implicitly rational and à priori determined through its Idea; and this the history of Philosophy has to exemplify. Contingency must vanish on the appearance of Philosophy. Its history is just as absolutely determined as the development of Notions, and the impelling force is the inner dialectic of the forms. The finite is not true, nor is it what it is to be — its determinate nature is bound up with its existence. But the inward Idea abolishes these finite forms: a philosophy which has not the absolute form identical with the content, must pass away because its form is not that of truth.
What follows, secondly from what we have said, is that every philosophy has been and still is necessary. Thus none have passed away, but all are affirmatively contained as elements in a whole. But we must distinguish between the particular principle of these philosophies as particular, and the realization of this principle throughout the whole compass of the world. The principles are retained, the most recent philosophy being the result of all preceding, and hence no philosophy has ever been refuted. What has been refuted is not the principle of this philosophy, but merely the fact that this principle should be considered final and absolute in character. The atomic philosophy, for example, has arrived at the affirmation that the atom is the absolute existence, that it is the indivisible unit which is also the individual or subject; seeing, then, that the bare unit also is the abstract being-for-self, the Absolute would be grasped as infinitely many units. The atomic theory has been refuted, and we are atomists no longer. Mind is certainly explicitly existent as a unit or atom, but that is to attribute to it a barren character and qualities incapable of expressing anything of its depth. The principle is indeed retained, although it is not the absolute in its entirety. This same contradiction appears in all development. The development of the tree is the negation of the germ, and the blossom that of the leaves, in so far as that they show that these do not form the highest and truest existence of the tree. Last of all, the blossom finds its negation in the fruit. Yet none of them can come into actual existence excepting as preceded by all the earlier stages. Our attitude to a philosophy must thus contain an affirmative side and a negative; when we take both of these into consideration, we do justice to a philosophy for the first time. We get to know the affirmative side later on both in life and in science; thus we find it easier to refute than to justify.
In the third place, we shall limit ourselves to the particular consideration of the principle itself. Each principle has reigned for a certain time, and when the whole system of the world has been explained from this special form, it is called a philosophical system. Its whole theory has certainly to be learned, but as long as the principle is abstract it is not sufficient to embrace the forms belonging to our conception of the world. The Cartesian principles, for instance, are very suitable for application to mechanism, but for nothing further; their representation of other manifestations in the world, such as those of vegetable and animal nature, are insufficient, and hence uninteresting. Therefore we take into consideration the principles of these philosophies only, but in dealing with concrete philosophies we must also regard the chief forms of their development and their applications. The subordinate philosophies are inconsistent; they have had bright glimpses of the truth, which are, however, independent of their principles. This is exemplified in the Timæus of Plato, a philosophy of nature, the working out of which is empirically very barren because its principle does not as yet extend far enough, and it is not to its principle that we owe the deep gleams of thought there contained.
In the fourth place it follows that we must not regard the history of Philosophy as dealing with the past, even though it is history. The scientific products of reason form the content of this history, and these are not past. What is obtained in this field of labour is the True, and, as such, the Eternal; it is not what exists now, and not then; it is true not only to-day or to-morrow, but beyond all time, and in as far as it is in time, it is true always and for every time. The bodily forms of those great minds who are the heroes of this history, the temporal existence and outward lives of the philosophers, are, indeed, no more, but their works and thoughts have not followed suit, for they neither conceived nor dreamt of the rational import of their works. Philosophy is not somnambulism, but is developed consciousness; and what these heroes have done is to bring that which is implicitly rational out of the depths of Mind, where it is found at first as substance only, or as inwardly existent, into the light of day, and to advance it into consciousness and knowledge. This forms a continuous awakening. Such work is not only deposited in the temple of Memory as forms of times gone by, but is just as present and as living now as at the time of its production. The effects produced and work performed are not again destroyed or interrupted by what succeeds, for they are such that we must ourselves be present in them. They have as medium neither canvas, paper, marble, nor representation or memorial to preserve them. These mediums are themselves transient, or else form a basis for what is such. But they do have Thought, Notion, and the eternal Being of Mind, which moths cannot corrupt, nor thieves break through and steal. The conquests made by Thought when constituted into Thought form the very Being of Mind. Such knowledge is thus not learning merely, or a knowledge of what is dead, buried and corrupt: the history of Philosophy has not to do with what is gone, but with the living present.
c. Further comparison between the History of Philosophy and Philosophy itself.
We may appropriate to ourselves the whole of the riches apportioned out in time: it must be shown from the succession in philosophies how that succession is the systematization of the science of Philosophy itself. But a distinction is to be noted here: that which first commences is implicit, immediate, abstract, general — it is what has not yet advanced; the more concrete and richer comes later, and the first is poorer in determinations. This may appear contrary to one’s first impressions, but philosophic ideas are often enough directly opposed to ordinary ideas, and what is generally supposed, is not found to be the case. It may be thought that what comes first must be the concrete. The child, for instance, as still in the original totality of his nature, is thought to be more concrete than the man, hence we imagine the latter to be more limited, no longer forming a totality, but living an abstract life. Certainly the man acts in accordance with definite ends, not bringing his whole soul and mind into a subject, but splitting his life into a number of abstract unities. The child and the youth, on the contrary, act straight from the fulness of the heart. Feeling and sense-perception come first, thought last, and thus feeling appears to us to be more concrete than thought, or the activity of abstraction and of the universal. In reality, it is just the other way. The sensuous consciousness is certainly the more concrete, and if poorer in thought, at least richer in content. We must thus distinguish the naturally concrete from the concrete of thought, which on its side, again, is wanting in sensuous matter. The child is also the most abstract and the poorest in thought: as to what pertains to nature, the man is abstract, but in thought he is more concrete than the child. Man’s ends and objects are undoubtedly abstract in general affairs, such as in maintaining his family or performing his business duties, but he contributes to a great objective organic whole, whose progress he advances and directs. In the acts of a child, on the other hand, only a childish and, indeed, momentary “I,” and in those of the youth the subjective constitution or the random aim, form the principle of action. It is in this way that science is more concrete than sense-perception.
In applying this to the different forms of Philosophy, it follows in the first place, that the earliest philosophies are the poorest and the most abstract. In them the Idea is least determined; they keep merely to generalities not yet realized. This must be known in order that we may not seek behind the old philosophies for more than we are entitled to find; thus we need not require from them determinations proceeding from a deeper consciousness. For instance, it has been asked whether the philosophy of Thales is, properly speaking, Theism or Atheism,5 whether he asserted a personal God or merely an impersonal, universal existence. The question here regards the attribution of subjectivity to the highest Idea, the conception of the Personality of God. Such subjectivity as we comprehend it, is a much richer, more concentrated, and therefore much later conception, which need not be sought for in distant ages. The Greek gods had, indeed, personality in imagination and idea like the one God of the Jewish religion, but to know what is the mere picture of fancy, and what the insight of pure Thought and Notion, is quite another thing. If we take as basis our own ideas judged by these deeper conceptions, an ancient Philosophy may undoubtedly be spoken of as Atheism. But this expression would at the same time be false, for the thoughts as thoughts in beginning, could not have arrived at the development which we have reached.
From this it follows — since the progress of development is equivalent to further determination, and this means further immersion in and a fuller grasp of the Idea itself — that the latest, most modern and newest philosophy is the most developed, richest and deepest. In that philosophy everything which at first seems to be past and gone must be preserved and retained, and it must itself be a mirror of the whole history. The original philosophy is the most abstract, because it is the original and has not as yet made any movement forward; the last, which proceeds from this forward and impelling influence, is the most concrete. This, as may at once be remarked, is no mere pride in the philosophy of our time, because it is in the nature of the whole process that the more developed philosophy of a later time is really the result of the previous operations of the thinking mind; and that it, pressed forwards and onwards from the earlier standpoints, has not grown up on its own account or in a state of isolation.
It must also be recollected that we must not hesitate to say, what is naturally implied, that the Idea, as comprehended and shown forth in the latest and newest philosophy, is the most developed, the richest and deepest. I call this to remembrance because the designation, new or newest of all in reference to Philosophy, has become a very common by-word. Those who think they express anything by using such terms might quite easily render thanks respecting any number of philosophies just as fast as their inclination directs, regarding either every shooting-star and even every candle-gleam in the light of a sun, or else calling every popular cry a philosophy, and adducing as proof that at any rate there are so many philosophies that every day one displaces another. Thus they have the category in which they can place any apparently significant philosophy, and through which they may at the same time set it aside; this they call a fashion-philosophy.
“Scoffer, thou call’st this but a fleeting phase
When the Spirit of Man once again and anew,
Strives earnestly on, towards forms that are higher.”
A second consequence has regard to the treatment of the older philosophies. Such insight also prevents us from ascribing any blame to the philosophies when we miss determinations in them which were not yet present to their culture, and similarly it prevents our burdening them with deductions and assertions which were neither made nor thought of by them, though they might correctly enough allow themselves to be derived from the thought of such a philosophy. It is necessary to set to work on an historical basis, and to ascribe to Philosophy what is immediately given to us, and that alone. Errors crop up here in most histories of Philosophy, since we may see in them a number of metaphysical propositions ascribed to a philosopher and given out as an historical statement of the views which he has propounded, of which he neither thought nor knew a word, and of which there is not the slightest trace found in history. Thus in Brucker’s great History of Philosophy (Pt. I. pp. 465-478 seq.) a list of thirty, forty, or a hundred theorems are quoted from Thales and others, no idea of which can be traced in history as having been present to these philosophers. There are also propositions in support of them and citations taken from discussions of a similar kind with which we may occupy ourselves long enough. Brucker’s method is to endow the single theorem of an ancient philosopher with all the consequences and premises which must, according to the idea of the Wolffian Metaphysics, be the premises and conclusions of that theorem, and thus easily to produce a simple, naked fiction as if it were an actual historical fact. Thus, according to Brucker, Thales said, Ex nihilo fit nihil, since he said that water was eternal. Thus, too, he was to be counted amongst the philosophers who deny creation out of nothing; and of this, historically at least, Thales was ignorant. Professor Ritter, too, whose history of Ionic Philosophy is carefully written, and who on the whole is cautious not to introduce foreign matter, has very possibly ascribed to Thales more than is found in history. He says (pp. 12, 13), “Hence we must regard the view of nature which we find in Thales as dynamic in principle. He regarded the world as the all-embracing, living animal which has developed from a germ like every other animal, and this germ, like that of all other animals, is either damp or water. Thus the fundamental idea of Thales is that the world is a living whole which has developed from a germ and carries on its life as does an animal, by means of nourishment suitable to its nature” (cf. p. 16). This is quite a different account from that of Aristotle, and none of it is communicated by the ancients regarding Thales. The sequence of thought is evident, but historically it is not justified. We ought not by such deductions to make an ancient philosophy into something quite different from what it originally was.
We are too apt to mould the ancient philosophers into our own forms of thought, but this is just to constitute the progress of development; the difference in times, in culture and in philosophies, depends on whether certain reflections, certain thought determinations, and certain stages in the Notion have come to consciousness, whether a consciousness has been developed to a particular point or not. The history of Philosophy has simply to deal with this development and bringing forth of thought. The determinations involved certainly follow from a proposition, but whether they are put forth as yet or not is quite another thing, and the bringing forth of the inner content is the only matter of importance. We must therefore only make use of the words which are actually literal, for to use further thought determinations which do not yet belong to the consciousness of the philosopher in question, is to carry on development. Thus Aristotle states that Thales has defined the principle (ἀρχή) of every thing to be water. But Anaximander first made use of ἀρχή, and Thales thus did not possess this determination of thought at all; he recognized ἀρχή as commencement in time, but not as the fundamental principle. Thales did not once introduce the determination of cause into his philosophy, and first cause is a further determination still. There are whole nations which have not this conception at all; indeed it involves a great step forward in development. And seeing that difference in culture on the whole depends on difference in the thought determinations which are manifested, this must be so still more with respect to philosophies.
Now, as in the logical system of thought each of its forms has its own place in which alone it suffices, and this form becomes, by means of ever-progressing development, reduced to a subordinate element, each philosophy is, in the third place, a particular stage in the development of the whole process and has its definite place where it finds its true value and significance. Its special character is really to be conceived of in accordance with this determination, and it is to be considered with respect to this position in order that full justice may be done to it. On this account nothing more must be demanded or expected from it than what it actually gives, and the satisfaction is not to be sought for in it, which can only be found in a fuller development of knowledge. We must not expect to find the questions of our consciousness and the interest of the present world responded to by the ancients; such questions presuppose a certain development in thought. Therefore every philosophy belongs to its own time and is restricted by its own limitations, just because it is the manifestation of a particular stage in development. The individual is the offspring of his people, of his world, whose constitution and attributes are alone manifested in his form; he may spread himself out as he will, he cannot escape out of his time any more than out of his skin, for he belongs to the one universal Mind which is his substance and his own existence. How should he escape from this? It is the same universal Mind that is embraced by thinking Philosophy; that Philosophy is Mind’s thought of itself and therefore its determinate and substantial content. Every philosophy is the philosophy of its own day, a link in the whole chain of spiritual development, and thus it can only find satisfaction for the interests belonging to its own particular time.
On this account an earlier philosophy does not give satisfaction to the mind in which a deeper conception reigns. What Mind seeks for in Philosophy is this conception which already constitutes its inward determination and the root of its existence conceived of as object to thought; Mind demands a knowledge of itself. But in the earlier philosophy the Idea is not yet present in this determinate character. Hence the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, and indeed all philosophies, ever live and are present in their principles, but Philosophy no longer has the particular form and aspect possessed by that of Plato and of Aristotle. We cannot rest content with them, and they cannot be revived; hence there can be no Platonists, Aristotelians, Stoics, or Epicureans to-day. To re-awaken them would be to try to bring back to an earlier stage the Mind of a deeper culture and self-penetration. But this cannot be the case; it would be an impossibility and as great a folly as were a man to wish to expend his energies in attaining the standpoint of the youth, the youth in endeavouring to be the boy or child again; whereas the man, the youth, and the child, are all one and the same individual. The period of revival in the sciences, the new epoch in learning which took place in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, began not only with the revived study of, but also with the re-animation of the old philosophies. Marsilius Ficinus was a Platonist; an Academy of Platonic philosophy was established and installed with professors by Cosmos de Medici, and Ficinus was placed at the head of it. There were pure Aristotelians like Pomponius: Gassendi later on maintained the Epicurean philosophy, for his philosophy dealt with Physics after the manner of the Epicureans; Lipsius wished to be a Stoic, and so on. The sense of opposition was so great, ancient philosophy and Christianity — from or in which no special philosophy had developed — were so diverse, that no philosophy peculiar to itself could develop in Christianity. What was or could be had as philosophy, either in conformity with or in opposition to Christianity, was a certain ancient philosophy which was thus taken up anew. But mummies when brought amongst living beings cannot there remain. Mind had for long possessed a more substantial life, a more profound Notion of itself, and hence its thought had higher needs than such as could be satisfied by these philosophies. A revival such as this is then to be regarded only as the transitory period in which we learn to know the forms which are implied and which have gone before, and as the renewal of former struggles through the steps necessary in development. Such reconstructions and repetitions in a distant time of principles which have become foreign to Mind, are in history transitory only, and formed in a language which is dead. Such things are translations only and not originals, and Mind does not find satisfaction excepting in knowledge of its own origination.
When modern times are in the same way called upon to revert to the standpoint of an ancient philosophy (as is recommended specially in regard to the philosophy of Plato) in order to make this a means of escaping from the complications and difficulties of succeeding times, this reversion does not come naturally as in the first case. This discreet counsel has the same origin as the request to cultivated members of society to turn back to the customs and ideas of the savages of the North American forests, or as the recommendation to adopt the religion of Melchisedec which Fichte6 has maintained to be the purest and simplest possible, and therefore the one at which we must eventually arrive. On the one hand, in this retrogression the desire for an origin and for a fixed point of departure is unmistakable, but such must be sought for in thought and Idea alone and not in an authoritatively given form. On the other hand, the return of the developed, enriched Mind to a simplicity such as this — which means to an abstraction, an abstract condition or thought — is to be regarded only as the escape of an incapacity which cannot enjoy the rich material of development which it sees before it, and which demands to be controlled and comprehended in its very depths by thought, but seeks a refuge in fleeing from the difficulty and in mere sterility.
From what has been said it is quite comprehensible how so many of those who, whether induced by some special attraction such as this, or simply by the fame of a Plato or ancient philosophy in general, direct their way thereto in order to draw their own philosophy from these sources, do not find themselves satisfied by the study, and unjustifiably quit such altogether. Satisfaction is found in them to a certain extent only. We must know in ancient philosophy or in the philosophy of any given period, what we are going to look for. Or at least we must know that in such a philosophy there is before us a definite stage in the development of thought, and in it those forms and necessities of Mind which lie within the limits of that stage alone are brought into existence. There slumber in the Mind of modern times ideas more profound which require for their awakening other surroundings and another present than the abstract, dim, grey thought of olden times. In Plato, for instance, questions regarding the nature of freedom, the origin of evil and of sin, providence, &c., do not find their philosophic answer. On such subjects we certainly may in part take the ordinary serious views of the present time, and in part philosophically set their consideration altogether aside, or else consider sin and freedom as something negative only. But neither the one plan nor the other gives freedom to Mind if such subjects have once been explicitly for it, and if the opposition in self-consciousness has given it the power of sinking its interests therein. The case is similar with regard to questions regarding the limits of knowledge, the opposition between subjectivity and objectivity which had not yet come up in Plato’s age. The independence of the “I” within itself and its explicit existence was foreign to him; man had not yet gone back within himself, had not yet set himself forth as explicit. The subject was indeed the individual as free, but as yet he knew himself only as in unity with his Being. The Athenian knew himself to be free, as such, just as the Roman citizen would, as ingenuus. But the fact that man is in and for himself free, in his essence and as man, free born, was known neither by Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, nor the Roman legislators, even though it is this conception alone which forms the source of law. In Christianity the individual, personal mind for the first time becomes of real, infinite and absolute value; God wills that all men shall be saved. It was in the Christian religion that the doctrine was advanced that all men are equal before God, because Christ has set them free with the freedom of Christianity. These principles make freedom independent of any such things as birth, standing or culture. The progress made through them is enormous, but they still come short of this, that to be free constitutes the very idea of man. The sense of this existent principle has been an active force for centuries and centuries, and an impelling power which has brought about the most tremendous revolutions; but the conception and the knowledge of the natural freedom of man is a knowledge of himself which is not old.
THE HISTORY OF Philosophy has to represent this science in that form of time and individualities from which its outward form has resulted. Such a representation has, however, to shut out from itself the external history of the time, and to take into account only the general character of the people and time, and likewise their circumstances as a whole. But as a matter of fact, the history of Philosophy does present this character, and that indeed in the highest possible degree; its connection with it is of the closest kind, and the particular appearance presented by a philosophy belonging to one special period, is only a particular aspect or element in the character. Because of this inward correspondence we have partly to consider more closely the particular relation borne by a philosophy to its historical surroundings, and partly, but pre-eminently, what is proper to itself, from which alone, after separating everything related however closely, we can fix our standpoint. This connection, which is not merely external but essential, has thus two sides, which we must consider. The first is the distinctly historical side, the second is the connection with other matters — the connection of Philosophy with Religion, for instance, by which we at once obtain a deeper conception of Philosophy itself.
It is usually said that political affairs and such matters as Religion are to be taken into consideration because they have exercised a great influence on the Philosophy of the time, and similarly it exerts an influence upon them. But when people are content with such a category as “great influence” they place the two in an external relationship, and start from the point of view that both sides are for themselves independent. Here, however, we must think of this relationship in another category, and not according to the influence or effect of one upon the other. The true category is the unity of all these different forms, so that it is one Mind which manifests itself in, and impresses itself upon these different elements.
a. Outward and historical conditions imposed upon Philosophy.
It must be remarked in the first place, that a certain stage is requisite in the intellectual culture of a people in order that it may have a Philosophy at all. Aristotle says, “Man first begins to philosophize when the necessities of life are supplied” (Metaphysics, I. 2); because since Philosophy is a free and not self-seeking activity, cravings of want must have disappeared, a strength, elevation and inward fortitude of mind must have appeared, passions must be subdued and consciousness so far advanced, before what is universal can be thought of. Philosophy may thus be called a kind of luxury, in so far as luxury signifies those enjoyments and pursuits which do not belong to external necessity as such. Philosophy in this respect seems more capable of being dispensed with than anything else; but that depends on what is called indispensable. From the point of view of mind, Philosophy may even be said to be that which is most essential.
b. The commencement in History of an intellectual necessity for Philosophy.
However much Philosophy, as the thought and conception of the Mind of a particular time, is à priori, it is at the same time just as really a result, since the thought produced and, indeed, the life and action are produced to produce themselves. This activity contains the essential element of a negation, because to produce is also to destroy; Philosophy in producing itself, has the natural as its starting point in order to abrogate it again. Philosophy thus makes its appearance at a time when the Mind of a people has worked its way out of the indifference and stolidity of the first life of nature, as it has also done from the standpoint of the emotional, so that the individual aim has blotted itself out. But as Mind passes on from its natural form, it also proceeds from its exact code of morals and the robustness of life to reflection and conception. The result of this is that it lays hold of and troubles this real, substantial kind of existence, this morality and faith, and thus the period of destruction commences. Further progress is then made through the gathering up of thought within itself. It may be said that Philosophy first commences when a race for the most part has left its concrete life, when separation and change of class have begun, and the people approach toward their fall; when a gulf has arisen between inward strivings and external reality, and the old forms of Religion, &c., are no longer satisfying; when Mind manifests indifference to its living existence or rests unsatisfied therein, and moral life becomes dissolved. Then it is that Mind takes refuge in the clear space of thought to create for itself a kingdom of thought in opposition to the world of actuality, and Philosophy is the reconciliation following upon the destruction of that real world which thought has begun. When Philosophy with its abstractions paints grey in grey, the freshness and life of youth has gone, the reconciliation is not a reconciliation in the actual, but in the ideal world. Thus the Greek philosophers held themselves far removed from the business of the State and were called by the people idlers, because they withdrew themselves within the world of thought.
This holds good throughout all the history of Philosophy. It was so with Ionic Philosophy in the decline of the Ionic States in Asia Minor. Socrates and Plato had no more pleasure in the life of the State in Athens, which was in the course of its decline; Plato tried to bring about something better with Dionysius. Thus in Athens, with the ruin of the Athenian people, the period was reached when Philosophy appeared. In Rome, Philosophy first expanded in the decline of the Republic and of Roman life proper, under the despotism of the Roman Emperors: a time of misfortune for the world and of decay in political life, when earlier religious systems tottered and everything was in the process of struggle and disintegration. With the decline of the Roman Empire, which was so great, rich and glorious, and yet inwardly dead, the height and indeed the zenith of ancient Philosophy is associated through the Neo-Platonists at Alexandria. It was also in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when the Teutonic life of the Middle Ages acquired another form, that Philosophy first became taught, though it was later on that it attained to independence. Before that, political life still existed in unity with Religion, or if the State fought against the Church, the Church still kept the foremost place, but now the gulf between Church and State came into existence. Philosophy thus comes in at a certain epoch only in the development of the whole.
c. Philosophy as the thought of its time.
But men do not at certain epochs, merely philosophize in general, for there is a definite Philosophy which arises among a people, and the definite character of the standpoint of thought is the same character which permeates all the other historical sides of the spirit of the people, which is most intimately related to them, and which constitutes their foundation. The particular form of a Philosophy is thus contemporaneous with a particular constitution of the people amongst whom it makes its appearance, with their institutions and forms of government, their morality, their social life and the capabilities, customs and enjoyments of the same; it is so with their attempts and achievements in art and science, with their religious, warfares and external relationships, likewise with the decadence of the States in which this particular principle and form had maintained its supremacy, and with the origination and progress of new States in which a higher principle finds its manifestation and development. Mind in each case has elaborated and expanded in the whole domain of its manifold nature the principle of the particular stage of self-consciousness to which it has attained. Thus the Mind of a people in its richness is an organization, and, like a Cathedral, is divided into numerous vaults, passages, pillars and vestibules, all of which have proceeded out of one whole and are directed to one end. Philosophy is one form of these many aspects. And which is it? It is the fullest blossom, the Notion of Mind in its entire form, the consciousness and spiritual essence of all things, the spirit of the time as spirit present in itself. The multifarious whole is reflected in it as in the single focus, in the Notion which knows itself.
The Philosophy which is essential within Christianity could not be found in Rome, for all the various forms of the whole are only the expression of one and the same determinate character. Hence political history, forms of government, art and religion are not related to Philosophy as its causes, nor, on the other hand, is Philosophy the ground of their existence — one and all have the same common root, the spirit of the time. It is one determinate existence, one determinate character which permeates all sides and manifests itself in politics and in all else as in different elements; it is a condition which hangs together in all its parts, and the various parts of which contain nothing which is really inconsistent, however diverse and accidental they may appear to be, and however much they may seem to contradict one another. This particular stage is the product of the one preceding. But to show how the spirit of a particular time moulds its whole actuality and destiny in accordance with its principle, to show this whole edifice in its conception, is far from us — for that would be the object of the whole philosophic world-history. Those forms alone concern us which express the principle of the Mind in a spiritual element related to Philosophy.
This is the position of Philosophy amongst its varying forms, from which it follows that it is entirely identical with its time. But if Philosophy does not stand above its time in content, it does so in form, because, as the thought and knowledge of that which is the substantial spirit of its time, it makes that spirit its object. In as far as Philosophy is in the spirit of its time, the latter is its determined content in the world, although as knowledge, Philosophy is above it, since it places it in the relation of object. But this is in form alone, for Philosophy really has no other content. This knowledge itself undoubtedly is the actuality of Mind, the self-knowledge of Mind which previously was not present: thus the formal difference is also a real and actual difference. Through knowledge, Mind makes manifest a distinction between knowledge and that which is; this knowledge is thus what produces a new form of development. The new forms at first are only special modes of knowledge, and it is thus that a new Philosophy is produced: yet since it already is a wider kind of spirit, it is the inward birthplace of the spirit which will later arrive at actual form. We shall deal further with this in the concrete below, and we shall then see that what the Greek Philosophy was, entered, in the Christian world, into actuality.
The history of the other Sciences, of culture and above all the history of art and of religion are, partly in regard to the elements contained in them, and partly to their particular objects, related to the history of Philosophy. It is through this relationship that the treatment of the history of Philosophy has been so confused. If it is to concern itself with the possession of culture generally and then with scientific culture, and then again with popular myths and the dogmas contained only in them, and yet farther with the religious reflections which are already thoughts of a speculative kind, and which make their appearance in them, no bounds are left to Philosophy at all. This is so, partly on account of the amount of material itself and the labour required in working it up and preparing it, and partly because it is in immediate connection with so much else. But the separation must not be made arbitrarily or as by chance, but must be derived from fundamental determinations. If we merely look at the name of Philosophy, all this matter will pertain to its history.
I shall speak of this material from three points of view, for three related aspects are to be eliminated and separated from Philosophy. The first of these is that which is generally considered to be the domain of science, and in which are found the beginnings of understanding thought. The second region is that of mythology and religion; the relation of Philosophy to them seems often to be inimical both in the time of the Greeks and of the Christians. The third is that of philosophizing and the metaphysics of the understanding. While we distinguish what is related to Philosophy, we must also take note of the elements in this related matter which belong to the Notion of Philosophy, but which appear to us to be partially separated from it: and thus we may become acquainted with the Notion of Philosophy.
a. Relation of Philosophy to Scientific Knowledge.
Knowledge and thought certainly form the element of whatever has to do with particular sciences as they form the element of Philosophy; but their subjects are mainly finite subjects and appearance. A collection of facts known about this content is by its nature excluded from Philosophy: neither this content nor such a form has anything to do with it. But even if the sciences are systematic and contain universal principles and laws from which they proceed, they are still related to a limited circle of objects. The ultimate principles are assumed as are the objects themselves; that is, the outward experience or the feelings of the heart, natural or educated sense of right and duty, constitute the source from which they are created. Logic and the determinations and principles of thought in general are in their methods assumed.
The forms of thought or the points of view and principles which hold good in the sciences and constitute the ultimate support of all their matter, are not peculiar to them, but are common to the condition and culture of the time and of the people. This culture consists mainly in the general ideas and aims, in the whole extent of the particular intellectual powers dominating consciousness and life. Our consciousness has these ideas and allows them to be considered ultimate determinations; it makes use of them as guiding and connecting links, but does not know them and does not even make them the objects of its consideration. To give an abstract example, each act of consciousness has and requires the whole abstract thought-determination of Being. “The sun is in the heavens, the bunch of grapes is ripe,” and so on into infinitude. Again, in a higher culture, such relations as those of cause and effect are involved, as also those of force and its manifestation. All its knowledge and ideas are permeated and governed by a metaphysic such as this; it is the net in which all the concrete matter which occupies mankind in action and in impulses, is grasped. But this web and its knots in our ordinary consciousness are sunk into a manifold material, for it contains the objects and interests which we know and which we have before us. These common threads are not drawn up and made explicitly the objects of our reflection.
We Germans seldom now count general scientific knowledge as Philosophy. And yet traces of this are found, as for instance, in the fact that the philosophic Faculty contains all the Sciences which have not as their immediate aim the Church and State. In connection with this, the significance of the name of Philosophy, which is even now an important matter of discussion in England, comes in question. Natural Sciences are in England called Philosophy. A “Philosophic Journal” in England, edited by Thompson, treats of Chemistry, Agriculture, Manuring, Husbandry, Technology, like Hermbstädt’s Journal, and gives inventions connected therewith. The English call physical instruments, such as the barometer and thermometer, philosophical instruments. Theories too, and especially morality and the moral sciences, which are derived from the feelings of the human heart or from experience, are called Philosophy, and finally this is also so with the theories and principles of Political Economy. And thus at least in England, is the name of Philosophy respected. Some time ago a banquet took place under the presidency of Lord Liverpool, at which the minister Canning was also present. The latter in returning thanks congratulated England in having philosophic principles of government there brought into operation. There, at least, Philosophy is no by-word.
In the first beginnings of culture, however, we are more often met by this admixture of Philosophy and general knowledge. There comes a time to a nation when mind applies itself to universal objects, when, for example, in seeking to bring natural things under general modes of understanding, it tries to learn their causes. Then it is said that a people begins to philosophize, for this content has thought in common with Philosophy. At such a time we find deliverances about all the common events of Nature, as we also find intellectual maxims, moral sentences, general principles respecting morality, the will, duty, and the like, and those who expressed them have been called wise men or philosophers. Thus in the beginnings of Greek Philosophy we find the seven sages and the Ionic Philosophers. From them a number of ideas and discoveries are conveyed to us which seem like philosophic propositions. Thus Thales, amongst others, has explained that the eclipse of sun and moon is due to the intervention of the moon or earth. This is called a theorem. Pythagoras found out the principle of the harmony of sounds. Others have had ideas about the stars: the heavens were supposed to be composed of perforated metal, by which we see throughout the empyrean region, the eternal fire which surrounds the world. Such propositions as products of the understanding, do not belong to the history of Philosophy, although they imply that the merely sensuous gaze has been left behind, as also the representation of those objects by the imagination only. Earth and heaven thus become unpeopled with gods, because the understanding distinguishes things in their outward and natural qualities from Mind.
In a later time the epoch of the revival in the sciences is as noteworthy in this respect. General principles regarding the state, &c., were given expression to, and in them a philosophic side cannot be mistaken. To this place the philosophic systems of Hobbes and Descartes belong: the writings of the latter contain philosophic principles, but his Philosophy of Nature is quite empirical. Hugo Grotius composed an international law in which what was historically held by the people as law, the consensus gentium, was a main element. Though, earlier, medicine was a collection of isolated facts and a theosophic combination mixed up with astrology, &c. (it is not so long ago since cures were effected by sacred relics), a mode of regarding nature came into vogue according to which men went forth to discover the laws and forces of Nature. The à priori reasoning regarding natural things, according to the metaphysics of the Scholastic Philosophy or to Religion, has now been given up. The Philosophy of Newton contains nothing but Natural Science, that is, the knowledge of the laws, forces, and general constitution of Nature, derived from observation and from experience. However much this may seem to be contrary to the principle of Philosophy, it has in common with it the fact that the bases of both are universal, and still further that I have made this experience, that it rests on my consciousness and obtains its significance through me.
This form is in its general aspect antagonistic to the positive, and has come forward as particularly opposed to Religion and to that which is positive in it. If, in the Middle Ages, the Church had its dogmas as universal truths, man, on the contrary, has now obtained from the testimony of his “own thought,” feeling and ideas, a mistrust of these. It is merely to be remarked of this that “my own thought” is in itself a pleonasm, because each individual must think for himself, and no one can do so for another. Similarly this principle has turned against the recognized constitutions and has sought different principles instead, by them to correct the former. Universal principles of the State have now been laid down, while earlier, because religion was positive, the ground of obedience of subjects to princes and of all authority were also so. Kings, as the anointed of the Lord, in the sense that Jewish kings were so, derived their power from God, and had to give account to Him alone, because all authority is given by God. So far theology and jurisprudence were on the whole fixed and positive sciences, wherever this positive character might have been derived. Against this external authority reflection has been brought to bear, and thus, especially in England, the source of public and civil law became no longer mere authority derived from God like the Mosaic Law. For the authority of kings other justification was sought, such as the end implied in the State, the good of the people. This forms quite another source of truth, and it is opposed to that which is revealed, given and positive. This substitution of another ground than that of authority has been called philosophizing.
The knowledge was then a knowledge of what is finite — the world of the content of knowledge. Because this content proceeded through the personal insight of human reason, man has become independent in his actions. This independence of the Mind is the true moment of Philosophy, although the Notion of Philosophy through this formal determination, which limits it to finite objects, has not yet been exhausted. This independent thought is respected, has been called human wisdom or worldly wisdom, for it has had what is earthly as its object, and it took its origin in the world. This was the meaning of Philosophy, and men did rightly to call it worldly wisdom. Frederick von Schlegel revived this by-name for Philosophy, and desired to indicate by it that what concerns higher spheres, such as religion, must be kept apart; and he had many followers. Philosophy, indeed, occupies itself with finite things, but, according to Spinoza, as resting in the divine Idea: it has thus the same end as religion. To the finite sciences which are now separated also from Philosophy, the Churches objected that they led men away from God, since they have as objects only what is finite. This defect in them, conceived of from the point of view of content, leads us to the second department allied to Philosophy, — that is, to Religion.
b. Relation of Philosophy to Religion.
As the first department of knowledge was related to Philosophy principally by means of formal and independent knowledge, Religion, though in its content quite different from this first kind or sphere of knowledge, is through it related to Philosophy. Its object is not the earthly and worldly, but the infinite. In the case of art and still more in that of Religion, Philosophy has in common a content composed entirely of universal objects; they constitute the mode in which the highest Idea is existent for the unphilosophical feeling, the perceiving and imagining consciousness. Inasmuch as in the progress of culture in time the manifestation of Religion precedes the appearance of Philosophy, this circumstance must really be taken account of, and the conditions requisite for beginning the History of Philosophy have to depend on this, because it has to be shown in how far what pertains to Religion is to be excluded from it, and that a commencement must not be made with Religion.
In Religion, races of men have undoubtedly expressed their idea of the nature of the world, the substance of nature and of intellect and the relation of man thereto. Absolute Being is here the object of their consciousness; and as such, is for them pre-eminently the “other,” a “beyond,” nearer or further off, more or less friendly or frightful and alarming. In the act and forms of worship this opposition is removed by man, and he raises himself to the consciousness of unity with his Being, to the feeling of, or dependence on, the Grace of God, in that God has reconciled mankind to Himself. In conception, with the Greeks, for instance, this existence is to man one which is already in and for itself and friendly, and thus worship is but the enjoyment of this unity. This existence is now reason which is existent in and for itself, the universal and concrete substance, the Mind whose first cause is objective to itself in consciousness; it thus is a representation of this last in which not only reason in general, but the universal infinite reason is. We must, therefore, comprehend Religion, as Philosophy, before everything else, which means to know and apprehend it in reason; for it is the work of self-revealing reason and is the highest form of reason. Such ideas as that priests have framed a people’s Religion in fraud and self-interest are consequently absurd; to regard Religion as an arbitrary matter or a deception is as foolish as it is perverted. Priests have often profaned Religion — the possibility of which is a consequence of the external relations and temporal existence of Religion. It can thus, in this external connection, be laid hold of here and there, but because it is Religion, it is really that which stands firm against finite ends and their complications and constitutes a region exalted high above them. This region of Mind is really the Holy place of Truth itself, the Holy place in which are dissolved the remaining illusions of the sensuous world, of finite ideas and ends, and of the sphere of opinion and caprice.
Inasmuch as it really is the content of religions, this rational matter might now seem to be capable of being abstracted and expressed as a number of historical theorems. Philosophy stands on the same basis as Religion and has the same object — the universal reason existing in and for itself; Mind desires to make this object its own, as is done with Religion in the act and form of worship. But the form, as it is present in Religion, is different from what is found to be contained in Philosophy, and on this account a history of Philosophy is different from a history of Religion. Worship is only the operation of reflection; Philosophy attempts to bring about the reconciliation by means of thinking knowledge, because Mind desires to take up its Being into itself. Philosophy is related in the form of thinking consciousness to its object; with Religion it is different. But the distinction between the two should not be conceived of so abstractly as to make it seem that thought is only in Philosophy and not in Religion. The latter has likewise ideas and universal thoughts. Because both are so nearly related, it is an old tradition in the history of Philosophy to deduce Philosophy from Persian, Indian, or similar philosophy, a custom which is still partly retained in all histories of Philosophy. For this reason, too, it is a legend universally believed, that Pythagoras, for instance, received his Philosophy from India and Egypt; the fame of the wisdom of these people, which wisdom is understood also to contain Philosophy, is an old one. The Oriental ideas and religious worship which prevailed throughout the West up to the time of the Roman Empire, likewise bear the name of Oriental Philosophy. The Christian Religion and Philosophy are thought of in the Christian world, as more definitely divided; in these Eastern days, on the other hand, Religion and Philosophy are still conceived of as one in so far as that the content has remained in the form in which it is Philosophy. Considering the prevalence of these ideas and in order to have a definite limit to the relations between a history of Philosophy and religious ideas, it is desirable to note some further considerations as to the form which separates religious ideas from philosophical theorems.
Religion has not only universal thought as inward content implicite contained in its myths, ideas, imaginations and in its exact and positive histories, so that we require first of all to dig this content out of such myths in the form of theorems, but it often has its content explicite in the form of thought. In the Persian and Indian Religions very deep, sublime and speculative thoughts are even expressed. Indeed, in Religion we even meet philosophies directly expressed, as in the Philosophy of the Fathers. The scholastic Philosophy really was Theology; there is found in it a union or, if you will, a mixture of Theology and Philosophy which may very well puzzle us. The question which confronts us on the one side is, how Philosophy differs from Theology, as the science of Religion, or from Religion as consciousness? And then, in how far have we in the history of Philosophy to take account of what pertains to Religion? For the reply to this last question three aspects have again to be dealt with; first of all the mythical and historical aspect of Religion and its relation to Philosophy; in the second place the theorems and speculative thoughts directly expressed in Religion; and in the third place we must speak of Philosophy within Theology.
α. Difference between Philosophy and Religion.
The consideration of the mythical aspect of Religion or the historical and positive side generally, is interesting, because from it the difference in respect of form will show in what this content is antagonistic to Philosophy. Indeed, taken in its connections, its difference passes into apparent inconsistency. This diversity is not only found in our contemplation but forms a very definite element in history. It is required by Philosophy that it should justify its beginning and its manner of knowledge, and Philosophy has thus placed itself in opposition to Religion. On the other hand Philosophy is combated and condemned by Religion and by the Churches. The Greek popular religion indeed, proscribed several philosophers; but the opposition is even more apparent in the Christian Church. The question is thus not only whether regard is to be paid to Religion in the history of Philosophy, for it has been the case that Philosophy has paid attention to Religion, and the latter to the former. Since neither of the two has allowed the other to rest undisturbed, we are not permitted to do so either. Of their relations, therefore, we must speak definitely, openly and honestly — aborder la question, as the French say. We must not hesitate, as if such a discussion were too delicate, nor try to help ourselves out by beating about the bush; nor must we seek to find evasions or shifts, so that in the end no one can tell what we mean. We must not seem to wish to leave Religion alone. This is nothing else than to appear to wish to conceal the fact that Philosophy has directed its efforts against Religion. Religion, that is, the theologians, are indeed the cause of this; they ignore Philosophy, but only in order that they may not be contradicted in their arbitrary reasoning.
It may appear as if Religion demanded that man should abstain from thinking of universal matters and Philosophy because they are merely worldly wisdom and represent human operations. Human reason is here opposed to the divine. Men are, indeed, well accustomed to a distinction between divine teaching and laws and human power and inventions, such that under the latter everything is comprehended which in its manifestation proceeds from the consciousness, the intelligence or the will of mankind; which makes all this opposed to the knowledge of God and to things rendered divine by divine revelation. But the depreciation of what is human expressed by this opposition is then driven further still, inasmuch as while it implies the further view that man is certainly called upon to admire the wisdom of God in Nature, and that the grain, the mountains, the cedars of Lebanon in all their glory, the song of the birds in the bough, the superior skill and the domestic instincts of animals are all magnified as being the work of God, it also implies that the wisdom, goodness and justice of God is, indeed, pointed out in human affairs, but not so much in the disposition or laws of man or in actions performed voluntarily and in the ordinary progress of the world, as in human destiny, that is, in that which is external and even arbitrary in relation to knowledge and free-will. Thus what is external and accidental is regarded as emphatically the work of God, and what has its root in will and conscience, as the work of man. The harmony between outward relations, circumstances and events and the general aims of man is certainly something of a higher kind, but this is the case only for the reason that this harmony is considered with respect to ends which are human and not natural — such as those present in the life of a sparrow which finds its food. But if the summit of everything is found in this, that God rules over Nature, what then is free-will? Does He not rule over what is spiritual, or rather since He himself is spiritual, in what is spiritual? and is not the ruler over or in the spiritual region higher than a ruler over or in Nature? But is that admiration of God as revealed in natural things as such, in trees and animals as opposed to what is human, far removed from the religion of the ancient Egyptians, which derived its knowledge of what is divine from the ibis, or from cats and dogs? or does it differ from the deplorable condition of the ancient and the modern Indians, who held and still hold cows and apes in reverence, and are scrupulously concerned for the maintenance and nourishment of these animals, while they allow men to suffer hunger; who would commit a crime by removing the pangs of starvation through their slaughter or even by partaking of their food?
It seems to be expressed by such a view that human action as regards Nature is ungodly; that the operations of Nature are divine operations, but what man produces is ungodly. But the productions of human reason might, at least, be esteemed as much as Nature. In so doing, however, we cede less to reason than is permitted to us. If the life and the action of animals be divine, human action must stand much higher, and must be worthy to be called divine in an infinitely higher sense. The preeminence of human thought must forthwith be avowed. Christ says on this subject (Matt. vi. 26-80), “Behold the fowls of the air,” (in which we may also include the Ibis and the Kokilas,) “are ye not much better than they? Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall He not much more clothe you?” The superiority of man, of the image of God, to animals and plants is indeed implicitly and explicitly established, but in asking wherein the divine element is to be sought and seen — in making use of such expressions — none of the superior, but only the inferior nature, is indicated. Similarly, in regard to the knowledge of God, it is remarkable that Christ places the knowledge of and faith in Him not in any admiration of the creatures of nature nor in marvelling at any so-called dominion, over them, nor in signs and wonders, but in the witness of the Spirit. Spirit is infinitely high above Nature, in it the Divine Nature manifests itself more than in Nature.
But the form in which the universal content which is in and for itself, first belongs to Philosophy is the form of Thought, the form of the universal itself. In Religion, however, this content is for immediate and outward perception, and further for idea and sensation through art. The import is for the sensuous nature; it is the evidence of the Mind which comprehends that content. To make this clearer, the difference must be recollected between that which we are and have, and how we know the same — that is, in what manner we know it and have it as our object. This distinction is an infinitely important matter, and it alone is concerned in the culture of races and of individuals. We are men and have reason; what is human, or above all, what is rational vibrates within us, both in our feelings, mind and heart and in our subjective nature generally. It is in this corresponding vibration and in the corresponding motion effected that a particular content becomes our own and is like our own. The manifold nature of the determinations which it contains is concentrated and wrapt up within this inward nature — an obscure motion of Mind in itself and in universal substantiality. The content is thus directly identical with the simple abstract certainty of ourselves and with self-consciousness. But Mind, because it is Mind, is as truly consciousness. What is confined within itself in its simplicity must be objective to itself and must come to be known. The whole difference lies in the manner and method of this objectivity, and hence in the manner and method of consciousness.
This method and manner extends from the simple expression of the dulness of mere feeling to the most objective form, to that which is in and for itself objective, to Thought. The most simple, most formal objectivity is the expression of a name for that feeling and for the state of mind according with it, as seen in these words, worship, prayer, etc. Such expressions as “Let us pray” and “Let us worship” are simply the recalling of that feeling. But “Let us think about God” brings with it something more; it expresses the absolutely embracing content of that substantial feeling, and the object, which differs from mere sensation as subjective self-conscious activity; or which is content distinguished from this activity as form. This object, however, comprehending in itself the whole substantial content, is itself still undeveloped and entirely undetermined. To develop that content, to comprehend, express and bring to consciousness its relations, is the commencement, creation and manifestation of Religion. The form in which this developed content first possesses objectivity is that of immediate perception, of sensuous idea or of a more defined idea deduced from natural, physical or mental manifestations and conditions.
Art brings about this consciousness, in that it gives permanence and cohesion to the fleeting visible appearance through which objectivity passes in sensation. The shapeless, sacred stone, the mere place, or whatever it is to which the desire for objectivity first attaches itself, receives from art, form, feature, determinate character and content which can be known and which is now present for consciousness. Art has thus become the instructress of the people. This was the case with Homer and Hesiod for instance, who, according to Herodotus (II. 53), “Made the Greeks their Theogony,” because they elevated and consolidated ideas and traditions in unison with the spirit of the people, wherever and in whatever confusion they might be found, into definite images and ideas. This is not the art which merely gives expression in its own way to the content, already perfectly expressed, of a Religion which in thought, idea and words has already attained complete development; that is to say, which puts its matter into stone, canvas, or words as is done by modern art, which, in dealing either with religious or with historical objects, takes as its groundwork ideas and thoughts which are already there. The consciousness of this Religion is rather the product of thinking imagination, or of thought which comprehends through the organ of imagination alone and finds expression in its forms.
If the infinite Thought, the absolute Mind, has revealed and does reveal itself in true Religion, that in which it reveals itself is the heart, the representing consciousness and the understanding of what is finite. Religion is not merely directed to every sort of culture. “To the poor is the Gospel preached,” but it must as being Religion expressly directed towards heart and mind, enter into the sphere of subjectivity and consequently into the region of finite methods of representation. In the perceiving and, with reference to perceptions, reflecting consciousness, man possesses for the speculative relations belonging to the absolute, only finite relations, whether taken in an exact or in a symbolical sense, to serve him to comprehend and express those qualities and relationships of the infinite.
In Religion as the earliest and the immediate revelations of God, the form of representation and of reflecting finite thought cannot be the only form in which He gives existence to Himself in consciousness, but it must also appear in this form, for such alone is comprehensible to religious consciousness. To make this clearer, something must be said as to what is the meaning of comprehension. On the one hand, as has been remarked above, there is in it the substantial basis of content, which, coming to Mind as its absolute Being, affects it in its innermost, finds an answering chord, and thereby obtains from it confirmation. This is the first absolute condition necessary to comprehension; what is not implicitly there cannot come within it or be for it — that is, a content which is infinite and eternal. For the substantial as infinite, is just that which has no limitations in that to which it is related, for else it would be limited and not the true substantial. And Mind is that alone which is not implicit, which is finite and external; for what is finite and external is no longer what is implicit but what is for another, what has entered into a relation. But, on the other hand, because the true and eternal must be for Mind become known, that is, enter into finite consciousness, the Mind for which it is, is finite and the manner of its consciousness consists in the ideas and forms of finite things and relations. These forms are familiar and well known to consciousness, the ordinary mode of finality, which mode it has appropriated to itself, having constituted it the universal medium of its representation, into which everything that comes to consciousness must be resolved in order that it may have and know itself therein.
The assertion of Religion is that the manifestation of Truth which is revealed to us through it, is one which is given to man from outside, and on this account it is also asserted that man has humbly to assent to it, because human reason cannot attain to it by itself. The assertion of positive Religion is that its truths exist without having their source known, so that the content as given, is one which is above and beyond reason. By means of some prophet or other divine instrument, the truth is made known: just as Ceres and Triptolemus who introduced agriculture and matrimony, for so doing were honoured by the Greeks, men have rendered thanks to Moses and to Mahomed. Through whatever individual the Truth may have been given, the external matter is historical, and this is indifferent to the absolute content and to itself, since the person is not the import of the doctrine. But the Christian Religion has this characteristic that the Person of Christ in His character of the Son of God, Himself partakes of the nature of God. If Christ be for Christians only a teacher like Pythagoras, Socrates or Columbus, there would be here no universal divine content, no revelation or knowledge imparted about the Nature of God, and it is regarding this alone that we desire to obtain knowledge.
Whatever stage it may itself have reached, the Truth must undoubtedly in the first place come to men from without as a present object, sensuously represented, just as Moses saw God in the fiery bush, and as the Greek brought the god into conscious being by means of sculpture or other representations. But there is the further fact, that neither in Religion nor in Philosophy does this external form remain, nor can it so remain. A form of the imagination or an historical form, such as Christ, must for the spirit be spiritual; and thus it ceases to be an external matter, seeing that the form of externality is dead. We must know God “in Spirit and in Truth.” He is the absolute and actual Spirit. The relation borne by the human spirit to this Spirit involves the following considerations.
When man determines to adopt a Religion he asks himself, “What is the ground of my faith?” The Christian Religion replies— “The Spirit’s witness to its content.” Christ reproved the Pharisees for wishing to see miracles; the Spirit alone comprehends Spirit, the miracle is only a presentiment of that Spirit; and if the miracle be the suspension of natural laws, Spirit itself is the real miracle in the operations of nature. Spirit in itself is merely this comprehension of itself. There is only one Spirit, the universal divine Spirit. Not that it is merely everywhere; it is not to be comprehended as what is common to everything, as an external totality, to be found in many or in all individuals, which are essentially individuals; but it must be understood as that which permeates through everything, as the unity of itself and of a semblance of its “other,” as of the subjective and particular. As universal, it is object to itself, and thus determined as a particular, it is this individual: but as universal it reaches over this its “other,” so that its “other” and itself are comprised in one. The true universality seems, popularly expressed, to be two — what is common to the universal itself and to the particular. A division is formed in the understanding of itself, and the Spirit is the unity of what is understood and the understanding person. The divine Spirit which is comprehended, is objective; the subjective Spirit comprehends. But Spirit is not passive, or else the passivity can be momentary only; there is one spiritual substantial unity. The subjective Spirit is the active, but the objective Spirit is itself this activity; the active subjective Spirit is that which comprehends the divine, and in its comprehension of it it is itself the divine Spirit. The relation of Spirit to self alone is the absolute determination; the divine Spirit lives in its own communion and presence. This comprehension has been called Faith, but it is not an historical faith; we Lutherans — I am a Lutheran and will remain the same — have only this original faith. This unity is not the Substance of Spinoza, but the apprehending Substance in self-consciousness which makes itself eternal and relates to universality. The talk about the limitations of human thought is futile; to know God is the only end of Religion. The testimony of the Spirit to the content of Religion is itself Religion; it is a testimony that both bears witness and at the same time is that witness. The Spirit proves itself, and does so first in the proof; it is only proved because it proves itself and shows or manifests itself.
It has further to be said, that this testimony, this inward stirring and self-consciousness, reveals itself, while in the enshrouded consciousness of devotion it does not arrive at the proper consciousness of an object, but only at the consciousness of immersion in absolute Being. This permeating and permeated Spirit now enters into conception; God goes forth into the “other” and makes Himself objective. All that pertains to revelation and its reception, and which comes before us in mythology, here appears; everything which is historical and which belongs to what is positive has here its proper place. To speak more definitely, we now have the Christ who came into the world nearly two thousand years ago. But He says, “I am with you even unto the ends of the earth; where two or three are gathered together in My Name, there will I be in the midst.” I shall not be seen of you in the flesh, but “The Spirit of Truth will guide you into all Truth.” The external is not the true relation; it will disappear.
The two stages have here been given, the first of which is the stage of devotion, of worship, such as that reached in partaking of the Communion. That is the perception of the divine Spirit in the community in which the present, indwelling, living Christ as self-consciousness has attained to actuality. The second stage is that of developed consciousness, when the content becomes the object; here this present, indwelling Christ retreats two thousand years to a small corner of Palestine, and is an individual historically manifested far away at Nazareth or Jerusalem. It is the same thing in the Greek Religion where the god present in devotion changes into prosaic statues and marble; or in painting, where this externality is likewise arrived at, when the god becomes mere canvas or wood. The Supper is, according to the Lutheran conception, of Faith alone; it is a divine satisfaction, and is not adored as if it were the Host. Thus a sacred image is no more to us than is a stone or thing. The second point of view must indeed be that with which consciousness begins; it must start from the external comprehension of this form: it must passively accept report and take it up into memory. But if it remain where it is, that is the unspiritual point of view; to remain fixed in this second standpoint in this dead far-away historic distance, is to reject the Spirit. The sins of him who lies against the Holy Ghost cannot be forgiven. That lie is the refusal to be a universal, to be holy, that is to make Christ become divided, separated, to make Him only another person as this particular person in Judea; or else to say that He now exists, but only far away in Heaven, or in some other place, and not in present actual form amongst His people. The man who speaks of the merely finite, of merely human reason, and of the limits to mere reason, lies against the Spirit, for the Spirit as infinite and universal, as self-comprehension, comprehends itself not in a “merely” nor in limits, nor in the finite as such. It has nothing to do with this, for it comprehends itself within itself alone, in its infinitude.
If it be said of Philosophy that it makes reality the subject of its knowledge, the principal point is that the reality should not be one outside of that of which it is the reality. For example, if from the real content of a book, I abstract the binding, paper, ink, language, the many thousand letters that are contained in it, the simple universal content as reality, is not outside of the book. Similarly law is not outside of the individual, but it constitutes the true Being of the individual. The reality of my Mind is thus in my Mind itself and not outside of it; it is my real Being, my own substance, without which I am without existence. This reality is, so to speak, the combustible material which may be kindled and lit up by the universal reality as such as objective; and only so far as this phosphorus is in men, is comprehension, the kindling and lighting up, possible. Feeling, anticipation, knowledge of God, are only thus in men; without such, the divine Mind would not be the in and for itself Universal. Reality is itself a real content and not the destitute of content and undetermined; yet, as the book has other content besides, there is in the individual mind also a great amount of other matter which belongs only to the manifestation of this reality, and the individual surrounded with what is external, must be separated from this existence. Since reality is itself Spirit and not an abstraction, “God is not a God for the dead but for the living,” and indeed for living spirits.
The great Creator was alone
And experienced desire,
Therefore He created Spirits,
Holy mirrors of His holiness.
The noblest Being He found no equal;
From out the bowl of all the spiritual world,
There sparkled up to Him infinitude.
Religion is also the point of view from which this existence is known. But as regards the different forms of knowledge existing in Religion and Philosophy, Philosophy appears to be opposed to the conception in Religion that the universal mind first shows itself as external, in the objective mode of consciousness. Worship, commencing with the external, then turns against and abrogates it as has just been said, and thus Philosophy is justified through the acts and forms of worship, and only does what they do. Philosophy has to deal with two different objects; first as in the Religion present in worship, with the substantial content, the spiritual soul, and secondly with bringing this before consciousness as object, but in the form of thought. Philosophy thinks and conceives of that which Religion represents as the object of consciousness, whether it is as the work of the imagination or as existent facts in history. The form of the knowledge of the object is, in religious consciousness, such as pertains to the ordinary idea, and is thus more or less sensuous in nature. In Philosophy we do not say that God begot a Son, which is a relation derived from natural life. Thought, or the substance of such a relation, is therefore still recognized in Philosophy. Since Philosophy thinks its object, it has the advantage of uniting the two stages of religious consciousness — which in Religion are different moments — into one unity in philosophic thought.
It is these two forms which are different from one another and which, as opposed, may therefore seem to be mutually conflicting; and it is natural and it necessarily seems to be the case, that on first definitely coming to view they are so to speak conscious of their diversity, and hence at first appear as inimical to one another. The first stage in the order of manifestation is definite existence, or a determinate Being-for-self as opposed to the other. The later form is that Thought embraces itself in the concrete, immerses itself in itself, and Mind, as such, comes in it to consciousness. In the earlier stage, Mind is abstract, and in this constraint it knows itself to be different, and in opposition to the other. When it embraces itself in the concrete, it is no more simply confined in determinate existence, only knowing or possessing itself in that diversity, but it is the Universal which, inasmuch as it determines itself, contains its “other” within itself. As concrete intelligence, Mind thus comprehends the substantial in the form which seemed to differ from it, of which it had only grasped the outward manifestation and had turned away from it; it recognizes itself in its inward content, and so it for the first time grasps its object, and deals justice to its opposite.
Generally speaking, the course of this antithesis in history is that Thought first of all comes forth within Religion, as not free and in separate manifestations. Secondly, it strengthens itself, feels itself to be resting upon itself, holds and conducts itself inimically towards the other form, and does not recognize itself therein. In the third place, it concludes by acknowledging itself as in this other. Or else Philosophy has to begin with carrying on its work entirely on its own account, isolating Thought from all popular beliefs, and taking for itself quite a different field of operation, a field for which the world of ordinary ideas lies quite apart, so that the two exist peacefully side by side, or, to put it better, so that no reflection on their opposition is arrived at. Just as little did the thought of reconciling them occur, since in the popular beliefs the same content appeared as in any external form other than the notion — the thought that is, of explaining and justifying popular belief, in order thus to be able again to express the conceptions of free thought in the form of popular religion.
Thus we see Philosophy first restrained and confined within the range of the Greek heathen world; then resting upon itself, it goes forth against popular religion and takes up an unfriendly attitude to it, until it grasps that religion in its innermost and recognizes itself therein. Thus the ancient Greek philosophers generally respected the popular religion, or at least they did not oppose it, or reflect upon it. Those coming later, including even Xenophanes, handled popular ideas most severely, and thus many so-called atheists made their appearance. But as the spheres of popular conception, and abstract thought stood peacefully side by side, we also find Greek philosophers of even a later period in development, in whose case speculative thought and the act of worship, as also the pious invocation upon and sacrifice to the gods, coexist in good faith, and not in mere hypocrisy. Socrates was accused of teaching other gods than those belonging to the popular religion; his δαιμόνιον was indeed opposed to the principles of Greek morals and religion, but at the same time he followed quite honestly the usages of his religion, and we know besides that his last request was to ask his friends to offer a cock to Æsculapius — a desire quite inconsistent with his conclusions regarding the existence of God and above all regarding morality. Plato declaimed against the poets and their gods. It was in a much later time that the Neo-platonists first recognized in the popular mythology rejected earlier by the philosophers, the universal content; they transposed and translated it into what is significant for thought, and thus used mythology itself as a symbolical imagery for giving expression to their formulas.
Similarly do we see in the Christian Religion, thought which is not independent first placing itself in conjunction with the form belonging to this Religion and acting within it — that is to say, taking the Religion as its groundwork, and proceeding from the absolute assumption of the Christian doctrine. We see later on the opposition between so-called faith and so-called reason; when the wings of thought have become strengthened, the young eaglet flies away for himself to the sun of Truth; but like a bird of prey he turns upon Religion and combats it. Latest of all Philosophy permits full justice to be done to the content of Religion through the speculative Notion, which is through Thought itself. For this end the Notion must have grasped itself in the concrete and penetrated to concrete spirituality. This must be the standpoint of the Philosophy of the present time; it has begun within Christianity and can have no other content than the world-spirit. When that spirit comprehends itself in Philosophy, it also comprehends itself in that form which formerly was inimical to Philosophy.
Thus Religion has a content in common with Philosophy the forms alone being different; and the only essential point is that the form of the Notion should be so far perfected as to be able to grasp the content of Religion. The Truth is just that which has been called the mysteries of Religion. These constitute the speculative element in Religion such as were called by the Neo-platonists μυεῖν, μυεῖσθαι (being initiated), or being occupied with speculative Notions. By mysteries is meant, superficially speaking, the secret, what remains such and does not arrive at being known. But in the Eleusinian mysteries there was nothing unknown; all Athenians were initiated into them, Socrates alone shut himself out. Openly to make them known to strangers was the one thing forbidden, as indeed it was made a crime in the case of certain people. Such matters however, as being holy, were not to be spoken of. Herodotus often expressly says (e.g. ii. 45-47) that he would speak of the Egyptian Divinities and mysteries in as far as it was pious so to do: he knew more, but it would be impious to speak of them. In the Christian Religion dogmas are called mysteries. They are that which man knows about the Nature of God. Neither is there anything mysterious in this; it is known by all those who are partakers in that Religion, and these are thus distinguished from the followers of other Religions. Hence mystery here signifies nothing unknown, since all Christians are in the secret. Mysteries are in their nature speculative, mysterious certainly to the understanding, but not to reason; they are rational, just in the sense of being speculative. The understanding does not comprehend the speculative which simply is the concrete because it holds to the differences in their separation; their contradiction is indeed contained in the mystery, which, however, is likewise the resolution of the same.
Philosophy, on the contrary, is opposed to the so-called Rationalism of the new Theology which for ever keeps reason on its lips, but which is dry understanding only; no reason is recognizable in it as the moment of independent thought which really is abstract thought and that alone. When the understanding which does not comprehend the truths of Religion, calls itself the illuminating reason and plays the lord and master, it goes astray. Rationalism is opposed to Philosophy in content and form, for it has made the content empty as it has made the heavens, and has reduced all that is, to finite relations — in its form it is a reasoning process which is not free and which has no conceiving power. The supernatural in Religion is opposed to rationalism, and if indeed the latter is related in respect of the real content to Philosophy, yet it differs from it in form, for it has become unspiritual and wooden, looking for its justification to mere external authority. The scholastics were not supernaturalists in this sense; they knew the dogmas of the Church in thought and in conception. If Religion in the inflexibility of its abstract authority as opposed to thought, declares of it that “the gates of Hell shall not triumph over it,” the gates of reason are stronger than the gates of Hell, not to overcome the Church but to reconcile itself to the Church. Philosophy, as the conceiving thought of this content, has as regards the idea of Religion, the advantage of comprehending both sides — it comprehends Religion and also comprehends both rationalism and supernaturalism and itself likewise. But this is not the case on the other side. Religion from the standpoint of idea, comprehends only what stands on the same platform as itself, and not Philosophy, the Notion, the universal thought determinations. Often no injustice is done to a Philosophy when its opposition to Religion has been made matter of reproach; but often, too, a wrong has been inflicted where this is done from the religious point of view.
The form of Religion is necessary to Mind as it is in and for itself; it is the form of truth as it is for all men, and for every mode of consciousness. This universal mode is first of all for men in the form of sensuous consciousness, and then, secondly, in the intermingling of the form of the universal with sensuous manifestation or reflection — the representing consciousness, the mythical, positive and historical form, is that pertaining to the understanding. What is received in evidence of Mind only becomes object to consciousness when it appears in the form of the understanding, that is to say, consciousness must first be already acquainted with these forms from life and from experience. Now, because thinking consciousness is not the outward universal form for all mankind, the consciousness of the true, the spiritual and the rational, must have the form of Religion, and this is the universal justification of this form.
We have here laid down the distinction between Philosophy and Religion, but taking into account what it is we wish to deal with in the history of Philosophy, there is something still which must be remarked upon, and which partly follows from what has been already said. There is the question still confronting us as to what attitude we must take in reference to this matter in the history of Philosophy.
β. The religious element to be excluded from the content of the History of Philosophy.
αα. Mythology first meets us, and it seems as if it might be drawn within the history of Philosophy. It is indeed a product of the imagination, but not of caprice, although that also has its place here. But the main part of mythology is the work of the imaginative reason, which makes reality its object, but yet has no other means of so doing, than that of sensuous representation, so that the gods make their appearance in human guise. Mythology can now be studied for art, &c. But the thinking mind must seek out the substantial content, the thought and the theory implicitly contained therein, as reason is sought in Nature. This mode of treating mythology was that of the Neo-platonists; in recent times it has for the most part become the work of my friend Creuzer in symbolism. This method of treatment is combated and condemned by others. Man, it is said, must set to work historically alone, and it is not historic when a theory unthought of by the ancients, is read into a myth, or brought out of it. In one light, this is quite correct, for it points to a method adopted by Creuzer, and also by the Alexandrians who acted in a similar way. In conscious thought the ancients had not such theories before them, nor did anyone maintain them, yet to say that such content was not implicitly present, is an absurd contention. As the products of reason, though not of thinking reason, the religions of the people, as also the mythologies, however simple and even foolish they may appear, indubitably contain as genuine works of art, thoughts, universal determinations and truth, for the instinct of reason is at their basis. Bound up with this is the fact that since mythology in its expression takes sensuous forms, much that is contingent and external becomes intermingled, for the representation of the Notion in sensuous forms always possesses a certain incongruity, seeing that what is founded on imagination cannot express the Idea in its real aspect. This sensuous form produced as it is by an historic or natural method, must be determined on many sides, and this external determination must, more or less, be of such a nature as not to express the Idea. It may also be that many errors are contained in that explanation, particularly when a single one is brought within our notice; all the customs, actions, furnishings, vestments, and offerings taken together, may undoubtedly contain something of the Idea in analogy, but the connection is far removed, and many contingent circumstances must find their entrance. But that there is a Reason there, must certainly be recognized, and it is essential so to comprehend and grasp mythology.
But Mythology must remain excluded from our history of Philosophy. The reason of this is found in the fact that in Philosophy we have to do not with theorems generally, or with thoughts which only are implicite contained in some particular form or other, but with thoughts which are explicit, and only in so far as they are explicit and in so far as a content such as that belonging to Religion, has come to consciousness in the form of Thought. And this is just what forms the immense distinction which we saw above, between capacity and actuality. The theorems which are implicite contained within Religion do not concern us; they must be in the form of thoughts, since Thought alone is the absolute form of the Idea.
In many mythologies, images are certainly used along with their significance, or else the images are closely attended by their interpretation. The ancient Persians worshipped the sun, or fire, as being the highest existence; the first cause in the Persian Religion is Zervane Akerene — unlimited time, eternity. This simple eternal existence possesses according to Diogenes Lærtius (I. 8), “the two principles Ormuzd (Ὠρομάσδης) and Ahriman (Ἀρειμάνος), the rulers over good and evil.” Plutarch in writing on Isis and Osiris (T. II. p. 369, ed. Xyl.) says, “It is not one existence which holds and rules the whole, but good is mingled with evil; nature as a rule brings forth nothing pure and simple; it is not one dispenser, who, like a host, gives out and mixes up the drink from two different barrels. But through two opposed and inimical principles of which the one impels towards what is right, and the other in the opposite direction, if not the whole world, at least this earth is influenced in different ways. Zoroaster has thus emphatically set up the one principle (Ormuzd) as being the Light, and the other (Ahriman) as the Darkness. Between the two (μέσος δὲ ἀμφοῖν) is Mithra, hence called by the Persians the Mediator (μεσίτης).” Mithra is then likewise substance, the universal existence, the sun raised to a totality. It is not the mediator between Ormuzd and Ahriman by establishing peace and leaving each to remain as it was; it does not partake of good and evil both, like an unblest middle thing, but it stands on the side of Ormuzd and strives with him against the evil. Ahriman is sometimes called the first-born son of the Light, but Ormuzd only remained within the Light. At the creation of the visible world, Ormuzd places on the earth in his incomprehensible kingdom of Light, the firm arches of the heavens which are above yet surrounded on every side with the first original Light. Midway to the earth is the high hill Albordi, which reaches into the source of Light. Ormuzd’s empire of Light extended uninterruptedly over the firm vault of the heavens and the hill Albordi, and over the earth too, until the third age was reached. Then Ahriman, whose kingdom of night was formerly bound beneath the earth, broke in upon Ormuzd’s corporeal world and ruled in common with him. Now the space between heaven and earth was divided into light and night. As Ormuzd had formerly only a spiritual kingdom of light, Ahriman had only one of night, but now that they were intermingled he placed the terrestrial light thus created in opposition to the terrestrial night. From this time on, two corporeal worlds stand opposed, one pure and good, and one impure and evil, and this opposition permeates all nature. On Albordi, Ormuzd created Mithra as mediator for the earth. The end of the creation of the bodily world is none other than to reinstate existence, fallen from its creator, to make it good again, and thus to make the evil disappear for ever. The bodily world is the battle-ground between good and evil; but the battle between light and darkness is not in itself an absolute and irreconcilable opposition, but one which can be conquered, and in it Ormuzd, the principle of Light, will be the conqueror.
I would remark of this, that when we consider the elements in these ideas which bear some further connection with Philosophy, the universal of that duality with which the Notion is necessarily set forth can alone be interesting and noteworthy to us; for in it the Notion is just the immediate opposite of itself, the unity of itself with itself in the “other:” a simple existence in which absolute opposition appears as the opposition of existence, and the sublation of that opposition. Because properly the Light principle is the only existence of both, and the principle of Darkness is the null and void, — the principle of Light identifies itself with Mithra, which was before called the highest existence. The opposition has laid aside the appearance of contingency, but the spiritual principle is not separate from the physical, because the good and evil are both determined as Light and Darkness. We thus here see thought breaking forth from actuality, and yet not such a separation as only takes place in Religion, when the supersensuous is itself again represented in a manner sensuous, notionless and dispersed, for the whole of what is dispersed in sensuous form is gathered together in the one single opposition, and activity is thus simply represented. These determinations lie much nearer to Thought; they are not mere images or symbols, but yet these myths do not concern Philosophy. In them Thought does not take the first place, for the myth-form remains predominant. In all religions this oscillation between form and thought is found, and such a combination still lies outside Philosophy.
This is also so in the Sanchuniathonic Cosmogony of the Phœnicians. These fragments, which are found in Eusebius (Præpar. Evang. I. 10), are taken from the translation of the Sanchuniathon from Phœnician into Greek made by a Grammarian named Philo from Biblus. Philo lived in the time of Vespasian and ascribes great antiquity to the Sanchuniathon. It is there said, “The principles of things are found in Chaos, in which the elements exist undeveloped and confused, and in a Spirit of Air. The latter permeated the chaos, and with it engendered a slimy matter or mud (ἰλύν) which contained within it the living forces and the germs of animals. By mingling this mud with the component matter of chaos and the resulting fermentation, the elements separated themselves. The fire elements ascended into the heights and formed the stars. Through their influence in the air, clouds were formed and the earth was made fruitful. From the mingling of water and earth, through the mud converted into putrefying matter, animals took their origin as imperfect and senseless. These again begot other animals perfect and endowed with senses. It was the crash of thunder in a thunder-storm that caused the first animals still sleeping in their husks to waken up to life.”7
The fragments of Berosus of the Chaldeans were collected from Josephus, Syncellus and Eusebius under the title Berosi Chaldaica, by Scaliger, as an appendix to his work De emendatione temporum, and they are found complete in the Greek Library of Fabricius (T. xiv. pp. 175-211). Berosus lived in the time of Alexander, is said to have been a Priest of Bel and to have drawn upon the archives of the temple at Babylon. He says, “The original god is Bel and the goddess Omoroka (the sea), but beside them there were yet other gods. Bel divided Omoroka in two, in order to create from her parts heaven and earth. Hereupon he cut off his own head and the human race originated from the drops of his divine blood. After the creation of man, Bel banished the darkness, divided heaven and earth, and formed the world into its natural shape. Since certain parts of the earth seemed to him to be insufficiently populated, he compelled another god to lay hands upon himself, and from his blood more men and more kinds of animals were created. At first the men lived a wild and uncultivated life, until a monster” (called by Berosus, Oannes) “joined them into a state, taught them arts and sciences, and in a word brought Humanity into existence. The monster set about this end with the rising of the sun out of the sea, and with its setting he again hid himself under the waves.”
ββ. What belongs to Mythology may in the second place make a pretence of being a kind of Philosophy. It has produced philosophers who availed themselves of the mythical form in order to bring their theories and systems more prominently before the imagination, for they made the thoughts the content of the myth. But the myth is not a mere cloak in the ancient myths; it is not merely that the thoughts were there and were concealed. This may happen in our reflecting times; but the first poetry does not start from a separation of prose and poetry. If philosophers used myths, it was usually the case that they had the thoughts and then sought for images appropriate to them; Plato has many beautiful myths of this kind. Others likewise have spoken in myths, as for example, Jacobi, whose Philosophy took the form of the Christian Religion, through which he gave utterance to matter of a highly speculative nature. But this form is not suitable to Philosophy. Thought which has itself as object, must have raised itself to its own form, to the form of thought. Plato is often esteemed on account of his myths; he is supposed to have evinced by their means greater genius than other philosophers were capable of. It is contended here that the myths of Plato are superior to the abstract form of expression, and Plato’s method of representation is certainly a wonderful one. On closer examination we find that it is partly the impossibility of expressing himself after the manner of pure thought that makes Plato put his meaning so, and also such methods of expression are only used by him in introducing a subject. When he comes to the matter in point, Plato expresses himself otherwise, as we see in the Parmenides, where simple thought determinations are used without imagery. Externally these myths may certainly serve when the heights of speculative thought are left behind, in order to present the matter in an easier form, but the real value of Plato does not rest in his myths. If thought once attains power sufficient to give existence to itself within itself and in its element, the myth becomes a superfluous adornment, by which Philosophy is not advanced. Men often lay hold of nothing but these myths. Hence Aristotle has been misunderstood just because he intersperses similes here and there; the simile can never be entirely in accord with thought, for it always carries with it something more. The difficulty of representing thoughts as thoughts always attaches to the expedient of expression in sensuous form. Thought, too, ought not to be concealed by means of the myth, for the object of the mythical is just to give expression to and to reveal thought. The symbol is undoubtedly insufficient for this expression; thought concealed in symbols is not yet possessed, for thought is self-revealing, and hence the myth does not form a medium adequate for its conveyance. Aristotle (Metaph. III. 4) says, “It is not worth while to treat seriously of those whose philosophy takes a mythical form.” Such is not the form in which thought allows itself to be stated, but only is a subordinate mode.
Connected with this, there is a similar method of representing the universal content by means of numbers, lines and geometric figures. These are figurative, but not concretely so, as in the case of myths. Thus it may be said that eternity is a circle, the snake that bites its own tail. This is only an image, but Mind does not require such a symbol. There are people who value such methods of representation, but these forms do not go far. The most abstract determinations can indeed be thus expressed, but any further progress brings about confusion. Just as the freemasons have symbols which are esteemed for their depth of wisdom — depth as a brook is deep when one cannot see the bottom — that which is hidden very easily seems to men deep, or as if depth were concealed beneath. But when it is hidden, it may possibly prove to be the case that there is nothing behind. This is so in freemasonry, in which everything is concealed to those outside and also to many people within, and where nothing remarkable is possessed in learning or in science, and least of all in Philosophy. Thought is, on the contrary, simply its manifestation; clearness is its nature and itself. The act of manifestation is not a condition which may be or may not be equally, so that thought may remain as thought when it is not manifested, but its manifestation is itself, its Being. Numbers, as will be remarked in respect of the Pythagoreans, are unsuitable mediums for expressing thoughts; thus μονάς, δυάς, τριάς are, with Pythagoras, unity, difference, and unity of the unity and of the difference. The two first of the three are certainly united by addition; this kind of union is, however, the worst form of unity. In Religion the three make their appearance in a deeper sense as the Trinity, and in Philosophy as the Notion, but enumeration forms a bad method of expression. There is the same objection to it as would exist to making the mensuration of space the medium for expressing the absolute. People also quote the Philosophy of the Chinese, of the Foï, in which it is said that thoughts are represented by numbers. Yet the Chinese have explained their symbols and hence have made their meaning evident. Universal simple abstractions have been present to all people who have arrived at any decree of culture.
γγ. We have still to remark in the third place, that Religion, as such, does not merely form its representations after the manner of art; and also that Poetry likewise contains actual thoughts. In the case of the poets whose art has speech as medium, we find all through deep universal thought regarding reality; these are more explicitly expressed in the Indian Religion, but with the Indians everything is mixed up. Hence it is said that such races have also had a Philosophy proper to themselves; but the universal thoughts of interest in Indian books limit themselves to what is most abstract, to the idea of rising up and passing away, and thus of making a perpetual round. The story of the Phœnix is well known as an example of this; it is one which took its origin in the East. We are able similarly to find thoughts about life and death and of the transition of Being into passing away; from life comes death and from death comes life; even in Being, in what is positive, the negation is already present. The negative side must indeed contain within it the positive, for all change, all the process of life is founded on this. But such reflections only occasionally come forth; they are not to be taken as being proper philosophic utterances. For Philosophy is only present when thought, as such, is made the absolute ground and root of everything else, and in these modes of representation this is not so.
Philosophy does not reflect on any particular thing or object already existing as a first substratum; its content is just Thought, universal thought which must plainly come first of all; to put it otherwise, the Absolute must in Philosophy be in the form of thought. In the Greek Religion we find the thought-determination “eternal necessity;” which means an absolute and clearly universal relation. But such thought has other subjects besides; it only expresses a relation, the necessity to be the true and all-embracing Being. Thus neither must we take this form into our consideration. We might speak in that way of a philosophy of Euripides, Schiller or Goethe. But all such reflection respecting, or general modes of representing what is true, the ends of men, morality and so on, are in part only incidentally set forth, and in part they have not reached the proper form of thought, which implies that what is so expressed must be ultimate, thus constituting the Absolute.
γ. Particular theories found in Religion.
In conclusion, the philosophy which we find within Religion does not concern us. We find deep, speculative thoughts regarding the nature of God not only in the Indian Religions, but also in the Fathers and the Schoolmen. In the history of dogmatism there is a real interest in becoming acquainted with these thoughts, but they do not belong to the history of Philosophy. Nevertheless more notice must be taken of the Schoolmen than of the Fathers, for they were certainly great philosophers to whom the culture of Christendom owes much. But their speculations belong in part to other philosophies such as to that of Plato, which must in so far be considered for themselves; partly, too, they emanate from the speculative content of Religion itself which already exists as independent truth in the doctrine of the Church, and belongs primarily to faith. Thus such modes of thought rest on an hypothesis and not on Thought itself; they are not properly speaking themselves Philosophy or thought which rests on itself, but as ideas already firmly rooted, they act on its behalf either in refuting other ideas and conclusions or in philosophically vindicating against them their own religious teaching. Thought in this manner does not represent and know itself as the ultimate and absolute culmination of the content, or as the inwardly self-determining Thought. Hence, too, when the Fathers, seeing that the content of the Christian Religion can only be grasped after the speculative form, did, within the teaching of the Church, produce thoughts of a highly speculative nature, the ultimate justification of these was not found in Thought as such, but in the teaching of the Church. Philosophic teaching here finds itself within a strongly bound system and not as thought which emanates freely from itself. Thus with the scholastics, too, Thought does not construct itself out of itself, but depends upon hypotheses; and although it ever rests more and more upon itself, it never does so in opposition to the doctrine of the Church. Both must and do agree, since Thought has to prove from itself what the Church has already verified.
c. Philosophy proper distinguished from Popular Philosophy.
Of the two departments of knowledge allied to Philosophy we found that the one, that of the special sciences, could not be called a philosophy in that it, as independent seeing and thinking immersed in finite matter, and as the active principle in becoming acquainted with the finite, was not the content, but simply the formal and subjective moment. The second sphere, Religion, is deficient in that it only had the content or the objective moment in common with Philosophy. In it independent thought was an essential moment, since the subject had an imaginary or historical form. Philosophy demands the unity and intermingling of these two points of view; it unites the Sunday of life when man in humility renounces himself, and the working-day when he stands up independently, is master of himself and considers his own interests. A third point of view seems to unite both elements, and that is popular Philosophy. It deals with universal objects and philosophizes as to God and the world; and thought is likewise occupied in learning about these matters. Yet this Philosophy must also be cast aside. The writings of Cicero may be put under this category; they contain a kind of philosophy that has its own place and in which excellent things are said. Cicero formed many experiences both in the affairs of life and mind, and from them and after observing what takes place in the world, he deduced the truth. He expresses himself with culture on the concerns most important to man, and hence his great popularity. Fanatics and mystics may from another point of view be reckoned as in this category. They give expression to a deep sense of devotion, and have had experiences in the higher regions. They are able to express the highest content, and the result is attractive. We thus find the brightest gleams of thought in the writings of a Pascal — as we do in his Pensées.
But the drawback that attaches to this Philosophy is that the ultimate appeal — even in modern times — is made to the fact that men are constituted such as they are by nature, and with this Cicero is very free. Here the moral instinct comes into question, only under the name of feeling; Religion now rests not on what is objective but on religious feeling, because the immediate consciousness of God by men is its ultimate ground. Cicero makes copious use of the consensus gentium; in more modern times this appeal has been more or less left alone, since the individual subject has to rest upon himself. Feeling is first of all laid hold of, then comes reasoning from what is given, but in these we can appeal to what is immediate only. Independent thought is certainly here advanced; the content too, is taken from the self; but we must just as necessarily exclude this mode of thinking from Philosophy. For the source from which the content is derived is of the same description as in the other cases. Nature is the source in finite sciences, and in Religion it is Spirit; but here the source is in authority; the content is given and the act of worship removes but momentarily this externality. The source of popular Philosophy is in the heart, impulses and capacities, our natural Being, my impression of what is right and of God; the content is in a form which is of nature only. I certainly have everything in feeling, but the whole content is also in Mythology, and yet in neither is it so in veritable form. The laws and doctrines of Religion are that in which this content always comes to consciousness in a more definite way, while in feeling there still is intermingled the arbitrary will of that which is subjective.
Now that we have thus defined the Notion of Philosophy to be the Thought which, as the universal content, is complete Being, it will be shown in the history of Philosophy how the determinations in this content make their appearance little by little. At first we only ask where Philosophy and its History begin.
a. Freedom of Thought as a first condition.
The general answer is in accordance with what has been said. Philosophy begins where the universal is comprehended as the all-embracing existence, or where the existent is laid hold of in a universal form, and where thinking about thought first commences. Where, then, has this occurred? Where did it begin? That is a question of history. Thought must be for itself, must come into existence in its freedom, liberate itself from nature and come out of its immersion in mere sense-perception; it must as free, enter within itself and thus arrive at the consciousness of freedom. Philosophy is properly to be commenced where the Absolute is no more in the form of ordinary conception, and free thought not merely thinks the Absolute but grasps its Idea. That is to say where Thought grasps as Thought, the Being (which may be Thought itself), which it recognizes as the essence of things, the absolute totality and the immanent essence of everything, and does so as an external Being. The simple existence which is not sensuous and which the Jews thought of as God (for all Religion is thinking), is thus not a subject to be treated of by Philosophy, but just such a proposition as that “The existence or principle of things is water, fire or thought.”
Thought, this universal determination which sets forth itself, is an abstract determinateness; it is the beginning of Philosophy, but this beginning is at the same time in history, the concrete form taken by a people, the principle of which constitutes what we have stated above. If we say that the consciousness of freedom is connected with the appearance of Philosophy, this principle must be a fundamental one with those with whom Philosophy begins; a people having this consciousness of freedom founds its existence on that principle seeing that the laws and the whole circumstances of the people are based only on the Notion that Mind forms of itself, and in the categories which it has. Connected with this on the practical side, is the fact that actual freedom develops political freedom, and this only begins where the individual knows himself as an independent individual to be universal and real, where his significance is infinite, or where the subject has attained the consciousness of personality and thus desires to be esteemed for himself alone. Free, philosophic thought has this direct connection with practical freedom, that as the former supplies thought about the absolute, universal and real object, the latter, because it thinks itself, gives itself the character of universality. Thinking means the bringing of something into the form of universality; hence Thought first treats of the universal, or determines what is objective and individual in the natural things which are present in sensuous consciousness, as the universal, as an objective Thought. Its second attribute is that in recognizing and knowing this objective and infinite universal, I, at the same time, remain confronting it from the standpoint of objectivity.
On account of this general connection between political freedom and the freedom of Thought, Philosophy only appears in History where and in as far as free institutions are formed. Since Mind requires to separate itself from its natural will and engrossment in matter if it wishes to enter upon Philosophy, it cannot do so in the form with which the world-spirit commences and which takes precedence of that separation. This stage of the unity of Mind with Nature which as immediate is not the true and perfect state, is mainly found in the Oriental conception of existence, therefore Philosophy first begins in the Grecian world.
b. Separation of the East and its Philosophy.
Some explanations have to be given regarding this first form. Since Mind in it, as consciousness and will, is but desire, self-consciousness still stands upon its first stage in which the sphere of its idea and will is finite. As intelligence is thus finite too, its ends are not yet a universal for themselves; but if a people makes for what is moral, if laws and justice are possessed, the character of universality underlies its will. This presupposes a new power in Mind with which it commences to be free, for the universal will as the relation of thought to thought or as the universal, contains a thought which is at home with itself. If a people desire to be free, they will subordinate their desires to universal laws, while formerly that which was desired was only a particular. Now finitude of the will characterizes the orientals, because with them the will has not yet grasped itself as universal, for thought is not yet free for itself. Hence there can but be the relation of lord and slave, and in this despotic sphere fear constitutes the ruling category. Because the will is not yet free from what is finite, it can therein be comprehended and the finite can be shown forth as negative. This sensation of negation, that something cannot last, is just fear as distinguished from freedom which does not consist in being finite but in being for itself, and this cannot be laid hold of. Religion necessarily has this character, since the fear of the Lord is the essential element beyond which we cannot get. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” is indeed a true saying; man must begin with this in order to know the finite ends in their negative character. But man must also have overcome fear through the relinquishment of finite ends, and the satisfaction which that Religion affords is confined to what is finite, seeing that the chief means of reconciliation are natural forms which are impersonated and held in reverence.
The oriental consciousness raises itself, indeed, above the natural content to what is infinite; but it only knows itself as accidental in reference to the power which makes the individual fear. This subordination may take two forms and must indeed from one extreme pass to the other. The finite, which is for consciousness, may have the form of finitude as finite, or it may become the infinite, which is however an abstraction. The man who lives in fear, and he who rules over men through fear, both stand upon the same platform; the difference between them is only in the greater power of will which can go forth to sacrifice all that is finite for some particular end. The despot brings about what his caprice directs, including certainly what is good, not as law, but as arbitrary will: the passive will, like that of slavery, is converted into the active energy of will, which will, however, is arbitrary still. In Religion we even find self-immersion in the deepest sensuality represented as the service of God, and then there follows in the East a flight to the emptiest abstraction as to what is infinite, as also the exaltation attained through the renunciation of everything, and this is specially so amongst the Indians, who torture themselves and enter into the most profound abstraction. The Indians look straight before them for ten years at a time, are fed by those around, and are destitute of other spiritual content than that of knowing what is abstract, which content therefore is entirely finite. This, then, is not the soil of freedom.
In the East, Mind indeed begins to dawn, but it is still true of it that the subject is not presented as a person, but appears in the objectively substantial, which is represented as partly supersensuous and partly, and even more, material, as negative and perishing. The highest point attainable by the individual, the everlasting bliss, is made an immersion into substance, a vanishing away of consciousness, and thus of all distinction between substance and individuality — hence an annihilation. A spiritually dead relation thus comes into existence, since the highest point there to be reached is insensibility. So far, however, man has not attained that bliss, but finds himself to be a single existent individual, distinguished from the universal substance. He is thus outside the unity, has no significance, and as being what is accidental and without rights, is finite only; he finds himself limited through Nature — in caste for instance. The will is not here the substantial will; it is the arbitrary will given up to what is outwardly and inwardly contingent, for substance alone is the affirmative. With it greatness, nobility, or exaltitude of character, are certainly not excluded, but they are only present as the naturally determined or the arbitrary will, and not in the objective forms of morality and law to which all owe respect, which hold good for all, and in which for that same reason all are recognized. The oriental subject thus has the advantage of independence, since there is nothing fixed; however undetermined is the substance of the Easterns, as undetermined, free and independent may their character be. What for us is justice and morality is also in their state, but in a substantial, natural, patriarchal way, and not in subjective freedom. Conscience does not exist nor does morality. Everything is simply in a state of nature, which allows the noblest to exist as it does the worst.
The conclusion to be derived from this is that no philosophic knowledge can be found here. To Philosophy belongs the knowledge of Substance, the absolute Universal, that whether I think it and develop it or not, confronts me still as for itself objective; and whether this is to me substantial or not, still just in that I think it, it is mine, that in which I possess my distinctive character or am affirmative: thus my thoughts are not mere subjective determinations or opinions, but, as being my thoughts, are also thoughts of what is objective, or they are substantial thoughts. The Eastern form must therefore be excluded from the History of Philosophy, but still, upon the whole, I will take some notice of it. I have touched on this elsewhere,8 for some time ago we for the first time reached a position to judge of it. Earlier a great parade was made about the Indian wisdom without any real knowledge of what it was; now this is for the first time known, and naturally it is found to be in conformity with the rest.
c. Beginnings of Philosophy in Greece.
Philosophy proper commences in the West. It is in the West that this freedom of self-consciousness first comes forth; the natural consciousness, and likewise Mind disappear into themselves. In the brightness of the East the individual disappears; the light first becomes in the West the flash of thought which strikes within itself, and from thence creates its world out of itself. The blessedness of the West is thus so determined that in it the subject as such endures and continues in the substantial; the individual mind grasps its Being as universal, but universality is just this relation to itself. This being at home with self, this personality and infinitude of the “I” constitutes the Being of Mind; it is thus and can be none else. For a people to know themselves as free, and to be only as universal, is for them to be; it is the principle of their whole life as regards morality and all else. To take an example, we only know our real Being in so far as personal freedom is its first condition, and hence we never can be slaves. Were the mere arbitrary will of the prince a law, and should he wish slavery to be introduced, we would have the knowledge that this could not be. To sleep, to live, to have a certain office, is not our real Being, and certainly to be no slave is such, for that has come to mean the being in nature. Thus in the West we are upon the soil of a veritable Philosophy.
Because in desire I am subject to another, and my Being is in a particularity, I am, as I exist, unlike myself; for I am “I,” the universal complete, but hemmed in by passion. This last is self-will or formal freedom, which has desire as content. Amongst the Greeks we first find the freedom which is the end of true will, the equitable and right, in which I am free and universal, and others, too, are free, are also “I” and like me; where a relationship between free and free is thus established with its actual laws, determinations of the universal will, and justly constituted states. Hence it is here that Philosophy began.
In Greece we first see real freedom flourish, but still in a restricted form, and with a limitation, since slavery was still existent, and the states were by its means conditioned. In the following abstractions we may first of all superficially describe the freedom of the East, of Greece, and of the Teutonic world. In the East only one individual is free, the despot; in Greece the few are free; in the Teutonic world the saying is true that all are free, that is, man is free as man. But since the one in Eastern countries cannot be free because that would necessitate the others also being free to him, impulse, self-will, and formal freedom, can there alone be found. Since in Greece we have to deal with the particular, the Athenians, and the Spartans, are free indeed, but not the Messenians or the Helots. The principle of the “few” has yet to be discovered, and this implies some modifications of the Greek point of view which we must consider in connection with the History of Philosophy. To take these into consideration means simply to proceed to the dividing up of Philosophy.
C
SINCE WE SET to work systematically this division must present itself as necessary. Speaking generally, we have properly only two epochs to distinguish in the history of Philosophy, as in ancient and modern art — these are the Greek and the Teutonic. The Teutonic Philosophy is the Philosophy within Christendom in so far as it belongs to the Teutonic nations; the Christian-European people, inasmuch as they belong to the world of science, possess collectively Teutonic culture; for Italy, Spain, France, England, and the rest, have through the Teutonic nations, received a new form. The influence of Greece also reaches into the Roman world, and hence we have to speak of Philosophy in the territory of the Roman world; but the Romans produced no proper Philosophy any more than any proper poets. They have only received from and imitated others, although they have often done this with intelligence; even their religion is derived from the Greek, and the special character that it has, makes no approach to Philosophy and Art, but is unphilosophical and inartistic.
A further description of these two outstanding opposites must be given. The Greek world developed thought as far as to the Idea; the Christian Teutonic world, on the contrary, has comprehended Thought as Spirit; Idea and Spirit are thus the distinguishing features. More particularly the facts are as follows. Because God, the still undetermined and immediate Universal, Being, or objective Thought, jealously allowing nothing to exist beside Him, is the substantial groundwork of all Philosophy, which never alters, but ever sinks more deeply within itself, and through the development of determinations manifests itself and brings to consciousness, we may designate the particular character of the development in the first period of Philosophy by saying that this development is a simple process of determinations, figurations, abstract qualities, issuing from the one ground that potentially already contains the whole.
The second stage in this universal principle is the gathering up of the determinations manifested thus, into ideal, concrete unity, in the mode of subjectivity. The first determinations as immediate, were still abstractions, but now the Absolute, as the endlessly self-determining Universal, must furthermore be comprehended as active Thought, and not as the Universal in this determinate character. Hence it is manifested as the totality of determinations and as concrete individuality. Thus, with the νοῦς of Anaxagoras, and still more with Socrates, there commences a subjective totality in which Thought grasps itself, and thinking activity is the fundamental principle.
The third stage, then, is that this totality, which is at first abstract, in that it becomes realized through the active, determining, distinguishing thought, sets itself forth even in the separated determinations, which, as ideal, belong to it. Since these determinations are contained unseparated in the unity, and thus each in it is also the other, these opposed moments are raised into totalities. The quite general forms of opposition are the universal and the particular, or, in another form, Thought as such, external reality, feeling or perception. The Notion is the identity of universal and particular; because each of these is thus set forth as concrete in itself, the universal is in itself at once the unity of universality and particularity, and the same holds good of particularity. Unity is thus posited in both forms, and the abstract moments can be made complete through this unity alone; thus it has come to pass that the differences themselves are each raised up to a system of totality, which respectively confront one another as the Philosophy of Stoicism and of Epicureanism. The whole concrete universal is now Mind; and the whole concrete individual, Nature. In Stoicism pure Thought develops into a totality; if we make the other side from Mind — natural being or feeling — into a totality, Epicureanism is the result. Each determination is formed into a totality of thought, and, in accordance with the simple mode which characterizes this sphere, these principles seem to be for themselves and independent, like two antagonistic systems of Philosophy. Implicitly both are identical, but they themselves take up their position as conflicting, and the Idea is also, as it is apprehended, in a one-sided determinateness.
The higher stage is the union of these differences. This may occur in annihilation, in scepticism; but the higher point of view is the affirmative, the Idea in relation to the Notion. If the Notion is, then, the universal — that which determines itself further within itself, but yet remains there in its unity and in the ideality and transparency of its determinations which do not become independent — the further step is, on the other hand, the reality of the Notion in which the differences are themselves brought to totalities. Thus the fourth stage is the union of the Idea, in which all these differences, as totalities, are yet at the same time blended into one concrete unity of Notion. This comprehension first takes place without constraint, since the ideal is itself only apprehended in the element of universality.
The Greek world got as far as this Idea, since they formed an ideal intellectual world; and this was done by the Alexandrian Philosophy, in which the Greek Philosophy perfected itself and reached its end. If we wish to represent this process figuratively, A. Thought, is (α) speaking generally abstract, as in universal or absolute space, by which empty space is often understood; (β) then the most simple space determinations appear, in which we commence with the point in order that we may arrive at the line and angle; (γ) what comes third is their union into the triangle, that which is indeed concrete, but which is still retained in this abstract element of surface, and thus is only the first and still formal totality and limitation which corresponds to the νοῦς. B. The next point is, that since we allow each of the enclosing lines of the triangle to be again surface, each forms itself into the totality of the triangle and into the whole figure to which it belongs; that is the realization of the whole in the sides as we see it in Scepticism or Stoicism. C. The last stage of all is, that these surfaces or sides of the triangle join themselves into a body or a totality; the body is for the first time the perfect spacial determination, and that is a reduplication of the triangle. But in as far as the triangle which forms the basis is outside of the pyramid, this simile does not hold good.
Grecian Philosophy in the Neo-platonists finds its end in a perfect kingdom of Thought and of bliss, and in a potentially existent world of the ideal, which is yet unreal because the whole only exists in the element of universality. This world still lacks individuality as such, which is an essential moment in the Notion; actuality demands that in the identity of both sides of the Idea, the independent totality shall be also posited as negative. Through this self-existent negation, which is absolute subjectivity, the Idea is first raised into Mind. Mind is the subjectivity of self-knowledge; but it is only Mind inasmuch as it knows what is object to itself, and that is itself, as a totality, and is for itself a totality. That is to say, the two triangles which are above and below in the prism must not be two in the sense of being doubled, but they must be one intermingled unity. Or, in the case of body, the difference arises between the centre and the peripheral parts. This opposition of real corporeality and centre as the simple existence, now makes its appearance, and the totality is the union of the centre and the substantial — not, however, the simple union, but a union such that the subjective knows itself as subjective in relation to the objective and substantial. Hence the Idea is this totality, and the Idea which knows itself is essentially different from the substantial; the former manifests itself independently, but in such a manner that as such it is considered to be for itself substantial. The subjective Idea is at first only formal, but it is the real possibility of the substantial and of the potentially universal; its end is to realize itself and to identify itself with substance. Through this subjectivity and negative unity, and through this absolute negativity, the ideal becomes no longer our object merely, but object to itself, and this principle has taken effect in the world of Christianity. Thus in the modern point of view the subject is for itself free, man is free as man, and from this comes the idea that because he is Mind he has from his very nature the eternal quality of being substantial. God becomes known as Mind which appears to itself as double, yet removes the difference that it may in it be for and at home with itself. The business of the world, taking it as a whole, is to become reconciled with Mind, recognizing itself therein, and this business is assigned to the Teutonic world.
The first beginning of this undertaking is found in the Religion which is the contemplation of and faith in this principle as in an actual existence before a knowledge of the principle has been arrived at. In the Christian Religion this principle is found more as feeling and idea; in it man as man is destined to everlasting bliss, and is an object of divine grace, pity and interest, which is as much as saying that man has an absolute and infinite value. We find it further in that dogma revealed through Christ to men, of the unity of the divine and human nature, according to which the subjective and the objective Idea — man and God — are one. This, in another form, is found in the old story of the Fall, in which the serpent did not delude man, for God said, “Behold, Adam has become as one of us, to know good and evil.” We have to deal with this unity of subjective principle and of substance; it constitutes the process of Mind that this individual one or independent existence of subject should put aside its immediate character and bring itself forth as identical with the substantial. Such an aim is pronounced to be the highest end attainable by man. We see from this that religious ideas and speculation are not so far asunder as was at first believed, and I maintain these ideas in order that we may not be ashamed of them, seeing that we still belong to them, and so that if we do get beyond them, we may not be ashamed of our progenitors of the early Christian times, who held these ideas in such high esteem.
The first principle of that Philosophy which has taken its place in Christendom is thus found in the existence of two totalities. This is a reduplication of substance which now, however, is characterized by the fact that the two totalities are no longer external to one another, but are clearly both required through their relation to one another. If formerly Stoicism and Epicureanism, whose negativity was Scepticism, came forth as independent, and if finally the implicitly existent universality of both was established, these moments are now known as separate totalities, and yet in their opposition they have to be thought of as one. We have here the true speculative Idea, the Notion in its determinations, each of which is brought into a totality and clearly relates to the other. We thus have really two Ideas, the subjective Idea as knowledge, and then the substantial and concrete Idea; and the development and perfection of this principle and its coming to the consciousness of Thought, is the subject treated by modern Philosophy. Thus the determinations are in it more concrete than with the ancients. This opposition in which the two sides culminate, grasped in its widest significance, is the opposition between Thought and Being, individuality and substance, so that in the subject himself his freedom stands once more within the bounds of necessity; it is the opposition between subject and object, and between Nature and Mind, in so far as this last as finite stands in opposition to Nature.
The Greek Philosophy is free from restraint because it does not yet have regard to the opposition between Being and Thought, but proceeds from the unconscious presupposition that Thought is also Being. Certainly certain stages in the Greek Philosophy are laid hold of which seem to stand on the same platform as the Christian philosophies. Thus when we see, for instance, in the Philosophy of the Sophists, the new Academics, and the Sceptics, that they maintain the doctrine that the truth is not capable of being known, they might appear to accord with the later subjective philosophies in asserting that all thought-determinations were only subjective in character, and that hence from these no conclusions could be arrived at as regards what is objective. But there is really a difference. In the case of ancient philosophies, which said that we know only the phenomenal, everything is confined to that; it is as regards practical life that the new Academy and the Sceptics also admitted the possibility of conducting oneself rightly, morally and rationally, when one adopts the phenomenal as one’s rule and guide in life. But though it is the phenomenal that lies at the foundation of things, it is not asserted that there is likewise a knowledge of the true and existent, as in the case of the merely subjective idealists of a more modern day. These last still keep in the background a potentiality, a beyond which cannot be known through thought or through conception. This other knowledge is an immediate knowledge — a faith in, a view of, and a yearning after, the beyond such as was evinced by Jacobi. The ancients have no such yearning; on the contrary, they have perfect satisfaction and rest in the certitude that only that which appears is for Knowledge. Thus it is necessary in this respect to keep strictly to the point of view from which we start, else through the similarity of the results, we come to see in that old Philosophy all the determinate character of modern subjectivity. Since in the simplicity of ancient philosophy the phenomenal was itself the only sphere, doubts as to objective thought were not present to it.
The opposition defined, the two sides of which are in modern times really related to one another as totalities, also has the form of an opposition between reason and faith, between individual perception and the objective truth which must be taken without reason of one’s own, and even with a complete disregard for such reason. This is faith as understood by the church, or faith in the modern sense, i.e. a rejection of reason in favour of an inward revelation, called a direct certainty or perception, or an implicit and intuitive feeling. The opposition between this knowledge, which has first of all to develop itself, and that knowledge which has already developed itself inwardly, arouses a peculiar interest. In both cases the unity of thought or subjectivity and of Truth or objectivity is manifested, only in the first form it is said that the natural man knows the Truth since he intuitively believes it, while in the second form the unity of knowledge and Truth is shown, but in such a way that the subject raises itself above the immediate form of sensuous consciousness and reaches the Truth first of all through Thought.
The final end is to think the Absolute as Mind, as the Universal, that which, when the infinite bounty of the Notion in its reality freely emits its determinations from itself, wholly impresses itself upon and imparts itself to them, so that they may be indifferently outside of or in conflict with one another, but so that these totalities are one only, not alone implicitly, (which would simply be our reflection) but explicitly identical, the determinations of their difference being thus explicitly merely ideal. Hence if the starting-point of the history of Philosophy can be expressed by saying that God is comprehended as the immediate and not yet developed universality, and that its end — the grasping of the Absolute as Mind through the two and a half thousand years’ work of the thus far inert world-spirit — is the end of our time, it makes it easy for us from one determination to go on through the manifestation of its needs, to others. Yet in the course of history this is difficult.
We thus have altogether two philosophies — the Greek and the Teutonic. As regards the latter we must distinguish the time when Philosophy made its formal appearance as Philosophy and the period of formation and of preparation for modern times. We may first begin Teutonic philosophy where it appears in proper form as Philosophy. Between the first period and those more recent, comes, as an intermediate period, that fermentation of a new Philosophy which on the one side keeps within the substantial and real existence and does not arrive at form, while on the other side, it perfects Thought, as the bare form of a presupposed truth, until it again knows itself as the free ground and source of Truth. Hence the history of Philosophy falls into three periods — that of the Greek Philosophy, the Philosophy of the Middle Ages and the modern Philosophy. Of these the first is speaking generally, regulated by Thought, the second falls into the opposition between existence and formal reflection, but the third has the Notion as its ground. This must not be taken to mean that the first contains Thought alone; it also has conceptions and ideas, just as the latter begins from abstract thoughts which yet constitute a duality.
First Period. — This commences at the time of Thales, about 600 B.C., and goes on to the coming to maturity of the Neo-platonic philosophy with Plotinus in the third century; from thence to its further progress and development with Proclus in the fifth century until the time when all philosophy was extinguished. The Neo-platonic philosophy then made its entrance into Christianity later on, and many philosophies within Christianity have this philosophy as their only groundwork. This is a space of time extending to about 1000 years, the end of which coincides with the migration of the nations and the decline of the Roman Empire.
Second Period. — The second period is that of the Middle Ages. The Scholastics are included in it, and Arabians and Jews are also historically to be noticed, but this philosophy mainly falls within the Christian Church. This period is of something over 1000 years’ duration.
Third Period. — The Philosophy of modern times made its first independent appearance after the Thirty Years’ War, with Bacon, Jacob Böhm and Descartes; it begins with the distinction contained in: cogito ergo sum. This period is one of a couple of centuries and the philosophy is consequently still somewhat modern.
We have to seek for sources of another kind in this than in political history. There historians are the fountainheads, which again have as sources the deeds and sayings of individuals; and the historians who are not original have over and above performed their work at secondhand. But historians always have the deeds already present in history, that is to say, here brought into the form of ordinary conception; for the name of history has two meanings: it signifies on the one hand the deeds and events themselves, and on the other, it denotes them in so far as they are formed through conception for conception. In the history of Philosophy there are, on the contrary, not any sources which can be derived from historians, but the deeds themselves lie before us, and these — the philosophic operations themselves — are the true sources. If we wish to study the history of Philosophy in earnest, we must go to such springs as these. Yet these operations form too wide a field to permit of our keeping to it alone in this history. In the case of many philosophers it is absolutely necessary to confine oneself to the original authors, but in many periods, in which we cannot obtain original sources, seeing that they have not been preserved to us, (as, for instance, in that of the older Greek philosophy) we must certainly confine our attention simply to historians and other writers. There are other periods, too, where it is desirable that others should have read the works of the philosophers and that we should receive abstracts therefrom. Several schoolmen have left behind them works of sixteen, twenty-four and twenty-six folios, and hence we must in their case confine ourselves to the researches of others. Many philosophic works are also rare and hence difficult to obtain. Many philosophers are for the most part important from an historic or literary point of view only, and hence we may limit ourselves to the compilations in which they are dealt with. The most noteworthy works on the history of Philosophy are, however, the following, regarding which I refer for particulars to the summary of Tennemann’s History of Philosophy, by A. Wendt, since I do not wish to give any complete list.
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One of the first Histories of Philosophy, which is only interesting as an attempt, is the “History of Philosophy,” by Thomas Stanley (London, 1655, folio ed. III., 1701, 4. translated into Latin by Godofr. Olearius, Lipsiæ, 1711, 4). This history is no longer much used, and only contains the old philosophic schools in the form of sects and as if no new ones had existed. That is to say, it keeps to the old belief commonly held at that time, that there only were ancient philosophies and that the period of philosophy came to an end with Christianity, as if Philosophy were something belonging to heathendom and the truth only could be found in Christianity. In it a distinction was drawn between Truth as it is created from the natural reason in the ancient philosophies, and the revealed truth of the Christian religion, in which there was consequently no longer any Philosophy. In the time of the Revival of Learning there certainly were no proper philosophies, and above all in Stanley’s time systems of Philosophy proper were too young for the older generations to have the amount of respect for them necessary to allow of their being esteemed as realities.
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Jo. Jac. Bruckeri Historia critica philosophiæ, Lipsiæ, 1742-1744, four parts, or five volumes in four, for the fourth part has two volumes. The second edition, unaltered, but with the addition of a supplement, 1766-1767, four parts in six quartos, the last of which forms the supplement. This is an immense compilation which is not formed straight from the original sources, but is mixed with reflections after the manner of the times. As we have seen from an example above (p. 43) the accounts given are in the highest degree inaccurate. Brucker’s manner of procedure is entirely unhistoric, and yet nowhere ought we to proceed in a more historic manner than in the history of Philosophy. This work is thus simply so much useless ballast. An epitome of the same is Jo. Jac. Bruckeri Institutiones historiæ philosophicæ, usui academicæ juventutis adornatæ, Lipsiæ, 1747, 8; second edition, Leipzig, 1756; third edition prepared by Born, Leipzig, 1790, 8.
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Dietrich Tiedmann’s Geist der Speculativen Philosophie, Marburg, 1791-1797, 6 vols., 8. He treats of political history diffusely, but without any life, and the language is stiff and affected. The whole work is a melancholy example of how a learned professor can occupy his whole life with the study of speculative philosophy, and yet have no idea at all of speculation. His argumenta to the Plato of Brucker are of the same description. In every history he makes abstracts from the philosophers so long as they keep to mere ratiocination, but when the speculative is arrived at, he becomes irate, declaring it all to be composed of empty subtleties, and stops short with the words “we know better.” His merit is that he has supplied valuable abstracts from rare books belonging to the Middle Ages and from cabalistic and mystical works of that time.
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Joh. Gottlieb Buhle: Lehrbuch der Geschichte der Philosophie und einer kritischen Literatur derselben, Göttingen, 1796 to 1804, eight parts, 8. Ancient philosophy is treated with disproportionate brevity; the further Buhle went on, the more particular he became. He has many good summaries of rare works, as for instance those of Giordano Bruno, which were in the Göttingen Library.
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Wilh. Gottl. Tennemann’s Geschichte der Philosophie, Leipzig, 1798 — 1819, eleven parts, 8. The eighth part, the Scholastic Philosophy, occupies two volumes. The philosophies are fully described, and the more modern times are better done than the ancient. The philosophies of recent times are easier to describe, since it is only necessary to make an abstract or to interpret straight on, for the thoughts contained in them lie nearer to ours. It is otherwise with the ancient philosophers, because they stand in another stage of the Notion, and on this account they are likewise more difficult to grasp. That is to say, what is old is easily overthrown by something else more familiar to us, and where Tennemann comes across such he is almost useless. In Aristotle, for instance, the misinterpretation is so great, that Tennemann foists upon him what is directly opposite to his beliefs, and thus from the adoption of the opposite to what Tennemann asserts to be Aristotle’s opinion, a correct idea of Aristotelian philosophy is arrived at. Tennemann is then candid enough to place the reference to Aristotle underneath the text, so that the original and the interpretation often contradict one another. Tennemann thinks that it is really the case that the historian should have no philosophy, and he glories in that; yet he really has a system and he is a critical philosopher. He praises philosophers, their work and their genius, and yet the end of the lay is that all of them will be pronounced to be wanting in that they have one defect, which is not to be Kantian philosophers and not yet to have sought the source of knowledge. From this the result is that the Truth could not be known.
Of compendiums, three have to be noticed. 1. Frederick Aft’s Grundriss einer Geschichte der Philosophie. (Landshut, 1807, 8; second edition, 1825) is written from a better point of view; the Philosophy is that of Schelling for the most part, but it is somewhat confused. Aft by some formal method has distinguished ideal philosophy from real. 2. Professor Wendt’s Göttingen edition of Tennemann (fifth edition, Leipzig, 1828, 8). It is astonishing to see what is represented as being Philosophy, without any consideration as to whether it has any meaning or not. Such so-called new philosophies grow like mushrooms out of the ground. There is nothing easier than to comprehend in harmony with a principle; but it must not be thought that hence something new and profound has been accomplished. 3. Rirner’s Handbuch der Geschichte der Philosophie, 3 vols., Sulzbach, 1822-1823, 8 (second amended edition, 1829) is most to be commended, and yet I will not assert that it answers all the requirements of a History of Philosophy. There are many points which leave much to desire, but the appendices to each volume in which the principal original authorities are quoted, are particularly excellent for their purpose. Selected extracts, more specially from the ancient philosophers, are needed, and these would not be lengthy, since there are not very many passages to be given from the philosophers before Plato.
As regards external history I shall only touch upon that which is the concern of universal history, the spirit or the principle of the times, and hence I will treat of conditions of life in reference to the outstanding philosophers. Of philosophies, however, only those are to be made mention of the principles of which have caused some sensation, and through which science has made an advance; hence I shall put aside many names which would be taken up in a learned treatise, but which are of little value in respect to Philosophy. The history of the dissemination of a doctrine, its fate, those who have merely taught a particular doctrine, I pass over, as the deduction of the whole world from one particular principle.
The demand that in Philosophy an historian should have no system, should put into the philosophy nothing of his own, nor assail it with his ideas, seems a plausible one. The history of Philosophy should show just this impartiality, and it seems in so far that to give only summaries of the philosophers proves a success. He who understands nothing of the matter, and has no system, but merely historic knowledge, will certainly be impartial. But political history has to be carefully distinguished from the history of Philosophy. That is to say, though in the former, one is not indeed at liberty to limit oneself to representing the events chronologically only, one can yet keep to what is entirely objective, as is done in the Homeric epic. Thus Herodotus and Thucydides, as free men, let the objective world do freely and independently as it would; they have added nothing of their own, neither have they taken and judged before their tribunal the actions which they represented. Yet even in political history there is also a particular end kept in view. In Livy the main points are the Roman rule, its enlargement, and the perfecting of the constitution; we see Rome arise, defend itself, and exercise its mastery. It is thus that the self-developing reason in the history of Philosophy makes of itself an end, and this end is not foreign or imported, but is the matter itself, which lies at the basis as universal, and with which the individual forms of themselves correspond. Thus when the history of Philosophy has to tell of deeds in history, we first ask, what a deed in Philosophy is; and whether any particular thing is philosophic or not. In external history everything is in action — certainly there is in it what is important and that which is unimportant — but action is the idea immediately placed before us. This is not the case in Philosophy, and on this account the history of Philosophy cannot be treated throughout without the introduction of the historian’s views.
THE FIRST PHILOSOPHY in order is the so-called Oriental, which, however, does not enter into the substance or range of our subject as represented here. Its position is preliminary, and we only deal with it at all in order to account for not treating of it at greater length, and to show in what relation it stands to Thought and to true Philosophy. The expression Eastern philosophy is specially employed in reference to the period in which this great universal Oriental conception aroused the East — the land of circumscription and of limitation, where the spirit of subjectivity reigns. More particularly in the first centuries of Christendom — that significant period — did these great Oriental ideas penetrate into Italy; and in the Gnostic philosophy they began to force the idea of the illimitable into the Western mind, until in the Church the latter again succeeded in obtaining the ascendency and hence in firmly establishing the Divine. That which we call Eastern Philosophy is more properly the religious mode of thought and the conception of the world belonging generally to the Orientals and approximates very closely to Philosophy; and to consider the Oriental idea of religion just as if it were religious philosophy, is to give the main reason why it is so like.
We do not similarly maintain that the Roman, Greek and Christian Religions constitute Philosophy. These bear all the less similarity thereto in that the Greek and Roman gods as also Christ and the God of the Jews, on account of the principle of individual freedom which penetrates the Greek and still more the Christian element, make their appearance immediately as the explicit, personal forms, which, being mythological or Christian, must first be themselves interpreted and changed into a philosophic form. In the case of Eastern Religion, on the contrary, we are much more directly reminded of the philosophic conception, for since in the East the element of subjectivity has not come forth, religious ideas are not individualized, and we have predominating a kind of universal ideas, which hence present the appearance of being philosophic ideas and thoughts. The Orientals certainly have also individual forms, such as Brahma, Vishnu and Civa, but because freedom is wanting the individuality is not real, but merely superficial. And so much is this the case, that when we suppose that we have to deal with a human form, the same loses itself again and expands into the illimitable. Just as we hear amongst the Greeks of a Uranus and Chronos — of Time individualized — we find with the Persians, Zeroane Akerene, but it is Time unlimited. We find Ormuzd and Ahriman to be altogether general forms and ideas; they appear to be universal principles which thus seem to bear a relationship to Philosophy or even seem to be themselves philosophic.
Just as the content of the Eastern religions, God, the essentially existent, the eternal, is comprehended somewhat in the light of universal, we find the relative positions of individuals to Him to be the same. In the Eastern religions the first condition is that only the one substance shall, as such, be the true, and that the individual neither can have within himself, nor can he attain to any value in as far as he maintains himself as against the being in and for itself. He can have true value only through an identification with this substance in which he ceases to exist as subject and disappears into unconsciousness. In the Greek and Christian Religion, on the other hand, the subject knows himself to be free and must be maintained as such; and because the individual in this way makes himself independent, it is undoubtedly much more difficult for Thought to free itself from this individuality and to constitute itself in independence. The higher point of view implicitly contained in the Greek individual freedom, this happier, larger life, makes more difficult the work of Thought, which is to give due value to the universal. In the East, on the contrary, the substantial in Religion is certainly on its own view the principal matter, the essential — and with it lawlessness, the absence of individual consciousness is immediately connected — and this substance is undoubtedly a philosophic idea. The negation of the finite is also present, but in such a manner that the individual only reaches to its freedom in this unity with the substantial. In as far as in the Eastern mind, reflection, consciousness come through thought to distinction and to the determination of principles, there exist such categories and such definite ideas not in unity with the substantial. The destruction of all that is particular either is an illimitable, the exaltitude of the East, or, in so far as that which is posited and determined for itself is known, it is a dry, dead understanding, which cannot take up the speculative Notion into itself. To that which is true, this finite can exist only as immersed in substance; if kept apart from this it remains dead and arid. We thus find only dry understanding amongst the Easterns, a mere enumeration of determinations, a logic like the Wolffian of old. It is the same as in their worship, which is complete immersion in devotion and then an endless number of ceremonials and of religious actions; and this on the other side is the exaltitude of that illimitable in which everything disappears.
There are two Eastern nations with which I wish just now to deal — the Chinese and the Indian.
IT IS TRUE of the Chinese as well as of the Indians that they have a great reputation for culture; but this, as well as the amount of Indian literature which exists, has largely diminished through a further knowledge of it. The great knowledge of these people bears upon such subjects as Religion, Science, the constitution and administration of the state, poetry, handicrafts and commerce. But when we compare the laws and constitution of China with the European, we find that we can only do so in respect of what is formal, for the content is very different. It is also felt, however consistently they may be constituted as to form, that they cannot find their place with us, that we could not allow of their giving us satisfaction, and that they take the place of law, or rather that they put an end to it. It is the same thing when we compare Indian poetry with European; considered as a mere play of the imagination it is as brilliant, rich and cultured as that of any other people. But in poetry we have to do with content, and that is the important part of it. Even the Homeric poetry is not serious for us, and hence such poetry cannot last. It is not the lack of genius in the Oriental poetry; the amount of genius is the same and the form may be very much developed, but the content remains confined within certain bounds and cannot satisfy us, nor can it be our content. This is at outset a fact applying universally to such comparisons, inasmuch as men let themselves be dazzled by form, making it equal with, or even preferring it to ours.
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Confucius. The first subject of remark with regard to the Chinese respects the teaching of Confucius (500 years before Christ) which made a great sensation in Liebnitz’ time; this teaching is a moral philosophy. Confucius has, besides, commented upon the old traditional principles of the Chinese; his high moral teaching, however, gave him his great fame, and that teaching is the authority most esteemed in China. Confucius’ Biography has been translated by French missionaries from the original Chinese; from this he appears to have been almost contemporaneous with Thales, to have been for a considerable time Minister, to have then fallen into disfavour, lost his place and lived and philosophized amongst his own friends, while still being often asked to give advice. We have conversations between Confucius and his followers in which there is nothing definite further than a commonplace moral put in the form of good, sound doctrine, which may be found as well expressed and better, in every place and amongst every people. Cicero gives us De Officiis, a book of moral teaching more comprehensive and better than all the books of Confucius. He is hence only a man who has a certain amount of practical and worldly wisdom — one with whom there is no speculative philosophy. We may conclude from his original works that for their reputation it would have been better had they never been translated. The treatise which the Jesuits produced9 is, however, more a paraphrase than a translation.
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The Philosophy of the Y-king. A second matter of remark is that the Chinese have also taken up their attention with abstract thoughts and with pure categories. The old book Y-king, or the Book of Principles, serves as the foundation for such; it contains the wisdom of the Chinese, and its origin is attributed to Fohi. That which is there by him related passes into what is quite mythological, fabulous and even senseless. The main point in it is the ascription to him of the discovery of a table with certain signs or figures (Ho-tu) which he saw on the back of a horse-dragon as it rose out of the river.10 This table contains parallel lines above one another, which have a symbolical signification; and the Chinese say that these lines are the foundation of their characters as also of their philosophy. These symbols are quite abstract categories, and consequently the most superficial determinations of the understanding. It must certainly be considered that pure thoughts are brought to consciousness, but in this case we make no advance, merely remaining stationary so far as they are concerned. The concrete is not conceived of speculatively, but is simply taken from ordinary ideas, inasmuch as it is expressed in accordance with their forms of representation and of perception. Hence in this collection of concrete principles there is not to be found in one single instance a sensuous conception of universal natural or spiritual powers.
To satisfy the curious, I will give these principles in greater detail. The two fundamental, figures are a horizontal line (⚊, Yang) and the one which is broken into two equal parts (⚋, Yin). The first which is the perfect, the father, the manlike, the unity, such as is represented by the Pythagoreans, represents the affirmative; the second is the imperfect, the mother, the womanly, the duality and the negation. These signs are held in high esteem, for they are considered to be the Principles of things. First of all they are placed in combination of two from which four figures result:⚌, ⚍, ⚎, ⚏, or the great Yang, the little Yang, the little Yin, and the great Yin. The signification of these four representations is matter as perfect and imperfect. The two Yangs are perfect matter: the first is in the category of youth and power; the second is the same matter, but as old and powerless. The third and fourth images, where Yin constitutes the basis, are imperfect matter, which has again the two determinations of youth and age, strength and weakness. These lines are further united in sets of three, and thus eight figures result, which are called Kua, ☰, ☱, ☲, ☳, ☴, ☵, ☶, ☷. I will give the interpretation of these Kua just to show how superficial it is. The first sign, containing the great Yang and the Yang is the Heavens (Tien) or the all-pervading ether. The Heavens to the Chinese means what is highest, and it has been a great source of division amongst the missionaries whether they ought to call the Christian God, Tien, or not. The second sign is pure water (Tui), the third pure fire (Li), the fourth thunder (Tschin), the fifth wind (Siun), the sixth common water (Kan), the seventh mountains (Ken), the eighth the earth (Kuen). We should not place heaven, thunder, wind and mountains on the same footing. We may thus obtain a philosophic origin for everything out of these abstract thoughts of absolute unity and duality. All symbols have the advantage of indicating thoughts and of calling up significations, and in this way such are likewise present there. Thought thus forms the first beginning, but afterwards it goes into the clouds, and Philosophy does likewise. Therefore if Windischmann11 in his commentary recognizes in this system of Confucius, a “thorough interconnection between all Kua in the whole series,” it should be remembered that not a particle of the Notion is to be found in it.
United further in sets of four, the lines produce sixty-four figures, which the Chinese consider to be the origin of their characters, since there have been added to these straight lines those which are perpendicular and inclined in different directions.
In Schuking there is also a chapter on Chinese wisdom, where the five elements from which everything is made make their appearance. These are fire, water, wood, metal and earth, which exist all in confusion, and which we should no more than we did before, allow to be principles. The first canon in the law is found in the Schuking, as the naming of the five elements; the second, considerations upon the last, and so it goes on.12 Universal abstraction with the Chinese thus goes on to what is concrete, although in accordance with an external kind of order only, and without containing anything that is sensuous. This is the principle of all Chinese wisdom and of all the objects of study in China.
- The Sect of the Tao-See. There is yet another separate sect, that of the Tao-See, the followers of which are not mandarins and attached to the state religion, nor are they Buddhists or Lamaics. The originator of this philosophy and the one who was closely connected with it in his life, is Lao-Tsö, who was born in the end of the seventh century before Christ and who was older than Confucius, for this representative of the more political school went to him in order to ask his advice. The book of the Lao-Tsö, Tao-king, is certainly not included in the proper Kings and has not their authority, but it is an important work amongst the Taosts or the followers of reason, who call their rule in life Tao-Tao, which means the observation of the dictates or the laws of reason. They dedicate their lives to the study of reason, and maintain that he who knows reason in its source will possess universal science, remedies for every ill and all virtue; he will also have obtained a supernatural power of being able to fly to heaven and of not dying.13
His followers say of Lao-Tsö himself that he is Buddha who as man became the ever-existent God. We still have his principal writings; they have been taken to Vienna, and I have seen them there myself. One special passage is frequently taken from them: “Without a name Tao14 is the beginning of Heaven and Earth, and with a name she is the Mother of the Universe. It is only in her imperfect state that she is considered with affection; who desires to know her must be devoid of passions.” Abel Rémusat says that taken at its best this might be expressed by the Greek in όογος. The celebrated passage which is often quoted by the ancients is this,15 “Reason has brought forth the one; the one has brought forth the two; the two have brought forth the three; and the three have produced the whole world.” In this men have tried to find a reference to the Trinity. “The Universe rests upon the principle of Darkness, the universe embraces the principle of Light,” or “it is embraced by ether;” it can be thus reversed, because the Chinese language has no case inflection, the words merely standing in proximity. Another passage in the same place has this sense, “He whom ye look at and do not see, is named I; thou hearkenest to him and hearest him not, and he is called Hi; thou seekest for him with thy hand and touchest him not, and his name is Weï. Thou meetest him and seest not his head; thou goest behind him and seest not his back.” These contradictory expressions are called the “chain of reason.” One naturally thinks in quoting these passages of יהרה and of the African kingly name of Juba and also of Jovis. This I-hi-weï or I-H-W16 is further made to signify an absolute vacuity and that which is Nothing; to the Chinese what is highest and the origin of things is nothing, emptiness, the altogether undetermined, the abstract universal, and this is also called Tao or reason. When the Greeks say that the absolute is one, or when men in modern times say that it is the highest existence, all determinations are abolished, and by the merely abstract Being nothing has been expressed excepting this same negation, only in an affirmative form. But if Philosophy has got no further than to such expression, it still stands on its most elementary stage. What is there to be found in all this learning?
IF WE HAD formerly the satisfaction of believing in the antiquity of the Indian wisdom and of holding it in respect, we now have ascertained through being acquainted with the great astronomical works of the Indians, the inaccuracy of all figures quoted. Nothing can be more confused, nothing more imperfect than the chronology of the Indians; no people which has attained to culture in astronomy, mathematics, &c., is as incapable for history; in it they have neither stability nor coherence. It was believed that such was to be had in the time of Wikramaditya, who was supposed to have lived about 50 B.C., and under whose reign the poet Kalidasa, author of Sakontala, lived. But further research discovered half a dozen Wikramadityas and careful investigation has placed this epoch in our eleventh century. The Indians have lines of kings and an enormous quantity of names, but everything is vague.
We know how the ancient glory of this land was held in the highest estimation even by the Greeks, just as they knew about the Gymnosophists, who were excellent men, though people ventured to call them otherwise — men who having dedicated themselves to a contemplative life, lived in abstraction from external life, and hence, wandering about in hordes, like the Cynics renounced all ordinary desires. These latter in their capacity as philosophers, were also more especially known to the Greeks, inasmuch as Philosophy is also supposed to exist in this abstraction, in which all the relationships of ordinary life are set aside; and this abstraction is a feature which we wish to bring into prominence and consider.
Indian culture is developed to a high degree, and it is imposing, but its Philosophy is identical with its Religion, and the objects to which attention is devoted in Philosophy are the same as those which we find brought forward in Religion. Hence the holy books or Vedas also form the general groundwork for Philosophy. We know the Vedas tolerably well; they contain principally prayers addressed to the many representations of God, direction as to ceremonials, offerings, &c. They are also of the most various periods; many parts are very ancient, and others have taken their origin later, as, for instance, that which treats of the service of Vishnu. The Vedas even constitute the basis for the atheistical Indian philosophies; these, too, are not wanting in gods, and they pay genuine attention to the Vedas. Indian Philosophy thus stands within Religion just as scholastic Philosophy stands within Christian dogmatism, having at its basis and presupposing the doctrines of the church. Mythology takes the form of incarnation or individualization, from which it might be thought that it would be opposed to Philosophy in its universality and ideality; incarnation is not, however, here taken in so definite a sense, for almost everything is supposed to partake of it, and the very thing that seems to define itself as individuality falls back directly within the mist of the universal. The idea of the Indians more appropriately expressed, is that there is one universal substance which may be laid hold of in the abstract or in the concrete, and out of which everything takes its origin. The summit of man’s attainment is that he as consciousness should make himself identical with the substance, in Religion by means of worship, offerings, and rigid acts of expiation, and in Philosophy through the instrumentality of pure thought.
It is quite recently that we first obtained a definite knowledge of Indian Philosophy; in the main we understand by it religious ideas, but in modern times men have learned to recognize real philosophic writings. Colebrooke,17 in particular, communicated abstracts to us from two Indian philosophic works, and this forms the first contribution we have had in reference to Indian Philosophy. What Frederick von Schlegel says about the wisdom of the Indians is taken from their religious ideas only. He is one of the first Germans who took up his attention with Indian philosophy, yet his work bore little fruit because he himself read no more than the index to the Ramayana. According to the abstract before mentioned, the Indians possess ancient philosophic systems; one part of these they consider to be orthodox, and those which tally with the Vedas are particularly included; the others are held to be heterodox and as not corresponding with the teaching of the holy books. The one part, which really is orthodox, has no other purpose than to make the deliverances of the Vedas clearer, or to derive from the text of these original treatises an ingeniously thought-out Psychology. This system is called Mimansa, and two schools proceed from it. Distinguished from these there are other systems, amongst which the two chief are those of the Sanc’hya and Nyaya. The former again divides into two parts which are, however, different in form only. The Nyaya is the most developed; it more particularly gives the rules for reasoning, and may be compared to the Logic of Aristotle. Colebrooke has made abstracts from both of these systems, and he says that there are many ancient treatises upon them, and that the versus memoriales from them are very extensive.
- The Sanc’hya Philosophy of Capila. The originator of the Sanc’hya is called Capila, and he was an ancient sage of whom it was said that he was a son of Brahma, and one of the seven great Holy men; others say that he was an incarnation of Vishnu, like his disciple Asuri, and that he was identified with fire. As to the age of the Aphorisms (Sutras) of Capila, Colebrooke can say nothing; he merely mentions that they were already mentioned in other very ancient books, but he does not feel able to say anything definite in the matter. The Sanc’hya is divided into different schools, of which there are two or three, which, however, differ from one another only in a few particulars. It is held to be partly heterodox and partly orthodox.
The real aim of all Indian schools and systems of Philosophy, whether atheistic or theistic, is to teach the means whereby eternal happiness can be attained before, as well as after, death. The Vedas say, “What has to be known is the Soul; it must be distinguished from nature, and hence it will never come again.” That means that it is exempt from metempsychosis and likewise from bodily form, so that it does not after death make its appearance in another body. This blessed condition therefore is, according to the Sanc’hya, a perfect and eternal release from every kind of ill. It reads:— “Through Thought, the true Science, this freedom can be accomplished; the temporal and worldly means of procuring enjoyment and keeping off spiritual or bodily evil are insufficient; even the methods advocated by the Vedas are not effectual for the purpose, and these are found in the revealed form of worship, or in the performance of religious ceremonies as directed in the Vedas.” The offering up of animals is specially valuable as such a means; and in this regard the Sanc’hya rejects the Vedas; such an offering is not pure, because it is connected with the death of animals, and the main tenet in the former is not to injure any animal. Other methods of deliverance from evil are in the excessive acts of penance performed by the Indians, to which a retreat within themselves is added. Now when the Indian thus internally collects himself, and retreats within his own thoughts, the moment of such pure concentration is called Brahma, the one and the clearly supersensuous state, which the understanding calls the highest possible existence. When this is so with me, then am I Brahma. Such a retreat into Thought takes place in the Religion as well as in the Philosophy of the Indians, and they assert with reference to this state of bliss that it is what is highest of all, and that even the gods do not attain to it. Indra, for example, the god of the visible heavens, is much lower than the soul in this life of internal contemplation; many thousand Indras have passed away, but the soul is exempt from every change. The Sanc’hya only differs from Religion in that it has a complete system of thought or logic, and that the abstraction is not made a reduction to what is empty, but is raised up into the significance of a determinate thought. This science is stated to subsist in the correct knowledge of the principles — which may be outwardly perceptible or not — of the material and of the immaterial world.
The Sanc’hya system separates itself into three parts: the method of knowledge, the object of knowledge, and the determinate form of the knowledge of principles.
a. As regards the methods of obtaining knowledge, the Sanc’hya says that there are three kinds of evidence possible: first of all, that of perception; secondly, that of inference; thirdly, that of affirmation, which is the origin of all others, such as reverence for authority, a teachable disposition, and tradition. Perception is said to require no explanation. Inference is a conclusion arrived at from the operation of cause and effect, by which one determination merely passes over into a second. There are three forms, because inferences are made either from cause to effect, from effect to cause, or in accordance with different relations of cause and effect. Rain, we may say, is foretold when a cloud is seen to be gathering; fire, when a hill is seen to be smoking; or the movement of the moon is inferred when, at different times, it is observed to be in different places. These are simple, dry relations, originating from the understanding. Under affirmation, tradition or revelation is understood, such as that of the orthodox Vedas; in a wider sense, immediate certainty or the affirmation in my consciousness, and in a less wide sense, an assurance through verbal communication or through tradition is so denominated.
b. Of objects of knowledge or of principles, the Sanc’hya gives five-and-twenty; and these I will mention to show the want of order that is in them.
- Nature, as the origin of everything, is said to be the universal, the material cause, eternal matter, undistinguished and undistinguishable, without parts, productive but without production, absolute substance. 2. Intelligence, the first production of Nature and itself producing other principles, distinguishable as three gods through the efficacy of three qualities, which are Goodness, Foulness and Darkness. These form one person and three gods, namely, Brahma, Vishnu, and Maheswara. 3. Consciousness, personality, the belief that in all perceptions and meditations I am present, that the objects of sense, as well as of intelligence, concern me, in short that I am I. It issues from the power of intelligence, and itself brings forth the following principles. 4-8. Five very subtle particles, rudiments or atoms, which are only perceptible to an existence of a higher order, and not through the senses of men; these proceed from the principle of consciousness, and bring forth on their own account the five elements — space and the first origination of earth, water, fire and air. 9-19. The eleven succeeding principles are the organs of feeling, which are produced by the personality. There are ten external organs, comprising the five senses and five active organs — the organs of the voice, hands and feet, the excretory and genital organs. The eleventh organ is that of the inward sense. 20 to 24. These principles are the five elements brought forth from the earlier-named rudiments — the ether which takes possession of space, air, fire, water and earth. 25. The soul. In this very unsystematic form we see only the first beginnings of reflection, which seem to be put together as a universal. But this arrangement is, to say nothing of being unsystematic, not even intelligent.
Formerly the principles were outside of and successive to one another; their unity is found in the Soul. It is said of the latter that it is not produced, and is not productive; it is individual, and hence there are many souls; it is sentient, eternal, immaterial and unchangeable. Colebrooke here distinguishes between the theistic and atheistic systems of the Sanc’hya, since the former not only admits of individual souls, but also upholds God (Iswara) as the ruler of the world. The knowledge of the soul still remains the principal point. It is through the consideration of nature and through abstraction from nature that the unity of the soul with nature is brought about, just as the lame man and the blind are brought together for the purposes of transport and of guidance — the one being the bearer and being directed (nature?), the other being borne and guiding (soul?). Through the union of Soul and Nature, the creation is effected, and this consists in the development of intelligence and of other principles. This unity is the actual support for that which is, and the means by which it is so maintained. It is at the same time an important consideration that the negation of the object which is contained in thought, is necessary in order to comprehend; this reflection has far more depth than the ordinary talk about immediate consciousness. The view is superficial and perverted which maintains the Easterns to have lived in unity with nature; the soul in its activity, mind, is indeed undoubtedly in relation with nature and in unity with the truth of nature. But this true unity essentially contains the moment of the negation of nature as it is in its immediacy; such an immediate unity is merely the life of animals, the life and perception of the senses. The idea which is present to the Indians is thus indeed the unity of nature and of soul, but the spiritual is only one with nature in so far as it is within itself, and at the same time manifests the natural as negative. As regards the creation, this is further signified. The soul’s desire and end is for satisfaction and freedom, and with this view it is endowed with a subtle environment, in which all the above-mentioned principles are contained, but only in their elementary development. Something of our ideal, or of the implicit is present in this idea; it is like the blossom which is ideally in the bud, and yet is not actual and real. The expression for this is Lingam, the generative power of nature, which holds a high place in the estimation of all Indians. This subtle form, says the Sanc’hya, also assumes a coarse bodily shape, and clothes itself in several garbs; and as a means of preventing the descent into a coarse materiality, philosophic contemplation is recommended.
Hitherto we have observed the abstract principles; the following is to be noticed regarding the creation of the concrete actuality of the universe. The bodily creation consists of the soul habited in a material body; it comprehends eight orders of higher beings and five orders of lower beings, which constitute — with men, who form a single class — fourteen orders, and these are divided into three worlds or classes. The first eight orders have appellations which appear in Indian mythology, viz. Brahma, Prajapatis, Indra, &c.; there are both gods and demi-gods, and Brahma himself is represented here as if he were created. The five lower orders are composed of animals: the four-footed animals are in two classes, birds come third, reptiles, fishes, and insects fourth, and, finally, vegetable and inorganic nature comes fifth. The abode of the eight higher classes is in heaven; they are, it is said, in the enjoyment of that which is good and virtuous, and consequently are happy, though still they are but imperfect and transient; underneath is the seat of darkness or delusion, where beings of the lower orders live; and between is the world of men, where untruth or passion reigns.
Against these three worlds, which have their place in the material creation, the system places yet another creation, and that is the Intellectual, consisting of the powers of understanding and the senses. These last are again divided into four classes, viz. those determinations which impede, those which incapacitate, those which satisfy, and those which perfect the intelligence. 1. Sixty-two of the impeding determinations are adduced; eight kinds of error, as many of opinion or of illusion, ten of passion as being illusion carried to extremity, eighteen of hate or sullenness, and the same of grief. Here there is shown somewhat of an empirical, psychological, and observing mode of treatment. 2. The incapacity of intelligence has again eight-and-twenty variations: injury, want of organs, &c. 3. Satisfaction is either inward or outward. The inward satisfaction is fourfold; the first concerns nature, the whole universal or substantial, and is set forth in the opinion that philosophic knowledge is a modification of the principle of nature itself, with which there is immediately united the anticipation of a liberty given through the act of nature; yet the true liberty is not to be expected as an act of nature, for it is the soul which has to bring forth that liberty through itself and through its thinking activity. The second satisfaction is in the belief of securing liberty through ascetic exercises, pains, torments, and penances. The third has to do with time — the idea that liberty will come in the course of time and without study. The fourth satisfaction is obtained in a belief in luck — in believing that liberty depends on fate. The external mode of obtaining satisfaction relates to continence from enjoyment, but continence from sensuous motives, such as dislike to the unrest of acquisition, and fear of the evil consequences of enjoyment. 4. There are, again, several means of perfecting the intelligence adduced, and, amongst others, there is the direct psychological mode of perfecting mind, as is seen in the act of reasoning, in friendly converse, and so on. This we may find, indeed, in our applied logic.
There is still somewhat to be remarked as to the main points of the system. The Sanc’hya, and likewise the other Indian systems of Philosophy, occupy themselves particularly with the three qualities (Guna) of the absolute Idea, which are represented as substances and as modifications of nature. It is noteworthy that in the observing consciousness of the Indians it struck them that what is true and in and for itself contains three determinations, and the Notion of the Idea is perfected in three moments. This sublime consciousness of the trinity, which we find again in Plato and others, then went astray in the region of thinking contemplation, and retains its place only in Religion, and there but as a Beyond. Then the understanding penetrated through it, declaring it to be senseless; and it was Kant who broke open the road once more to its comprehension. The reality and totality of the Notion of everything, considered in its substance, is absorbed by the triad of determinations; and it has become the business of our times to bring this to consciousness. With the Indians, this consciousness proceeded from sensuous observation merely, and they now further define these qualities as follows: The first and highest is with them the Good (Sattva); it is exalted and illuminating — allied to joy and felicity — and piety predominates within it. It prevails in fire, and therefore flames rise up and sparks fly upwards; if it has ascendency in men, as it does have in the eight higher orders, it is the origin of virtue. This also is the universal — throughout and in every aspect the affirmative — in abstract form. The second and mediate quality is deceit or passion (Najas, Tejas) which for itself is blind; it is that which is impure, harmful, hateful; it is active, vehement, and restless, allied to evil and misfortune, being prevalent in the air, on which account the wind moves transversely; amongst living beings it is the cause of vice. The third and last quality is darkness (Tamas); it is inert and obstructive, allied to care, dullness, and disappointment, predominating in earth and water, and hence these fall down and tend ever downwards. With living beings stupidity takes its origin in this. The first quality is thus the unity with itself; the second the manifestation or the principle of difference, desire, disunion, as wickedness; the third, however, is mere negation, as in mythology it is concretely represented in the form of Siva, Mahadeva, or Maheswara, the god of change or destruction. As far as we are concerned, the important distinction is that the third principle is not the return to the first which Mind and Idea demand, and which is effected by the removal of the negation in order to effect a reconciliation with itself and to go back within itself. With the Indians the third is still change and negation.
These three qualities are represented as the essential being of nature. The Sanc’hya says, “We speak of them as we do of the trees in a wood.” Yet this is a bad simile, for the wood is but an abstract universal, in which the individuals are independent. In the religious ideas of the Vedas, where these qualities also appear as Trimurti, they are spoken of as if they were successive modifications, so that “Everything was darkness first, then received the command to transform itself, and in this manner the form” — which, however, is a worse one— “of movement and activity (foulness) was assumed, until finally, by yet another command from Brahma, the form of goodness was adopted.”
Further determinations of the intelligence in respect of these qualities follow. It is said that eight kinds of intelligence are counted, of which four pertain to what is good: — virtue first, science and knowledge second, thirdly, freedom from passion, which, may have either an external and sensuous motive — the repugnance to disturbance — or be of an intellectual nature, and emanate from the conviction that nature is a dream, a mere jugglery and sham; the fourth is power. This last is eight-fold, and hence eight special qualities are given as being present; viz. the power to contract oneself into a quite small form, for which everything shall be penetrable; the power to expand into a gigantic body; the power to become light enough to be able to mount to the sun on a sunbeam; the possession of unlimited power of action in the organs, so that with the finger-tips the moon may be touched; irresistible will, so that, for instance, one may dive into the earth as easily as in the water; mastery over all living and lifeless existence; the power to change the course of nature; and the power to perform everything that is wished. “The feeling that such transcendent power,” Colebrooke goes on, “is within the reach of man in his life is not peculiar to the Sanc’hya sect, but is common to all systems and religious ideas, and such a power is in good faith ascribed to many holy men and Brahmins in dramas and popular narratives.” Sensuous evidence is of no account as opposed to this, for with the Indian, perception of the senses is, generally speaking, absent: everything adopts the form of imaginary images, every dream is esteemed just as much as truth and actuality. The Sanc’hya ascribes this power to man, in so far as he elevates himself through the working of his thought into inward subjectivity. Colebrooke says, “The Yoga-sastra names in one of its four chapters a number of acts by which such power may be attained; these are exemplified by a profound meditation, accompanied by holding back the breath and inactivity of the senses, while a fixed position is constantly preserved. By means of such acts the adept reaches the knowledge of all that is past as well as future; he has learned to divine the thoughts of others, to have the strength of elephants, the courage of lions, the swiftness of the wind, the power to fly in the air, to swim in the water, to dive into the earth, to behold every possible world in one moment, and to accomplish other wonderful deeds. But the quickest mode of reaching happiness through deep contemplation is that worship of God which consists in ever murmuring the mystic name of God, ‘Om.’” This idea is a very general one.
Colebrooke deals more particularly with the theistic and atheistic divisions of the Sanc’hya as distinguished. While in the theistic system, Iswara, the chief ruler of the world, is a soul or spirit distinguished from the other souls, Capila, in the atheistic Sanc’hya, disowns Iswara, the originator of the world by volition, alleging that there is no proof of the existence of God, since it is not shown by perception, nor is it possible that it should be deduced from argument. He recognizes, indeed, an existence proceeding from nature which is Absolute Intelligence, the source of all individual intelligences and the origin of all other existences, which gradually develop out of it: about the Creator of the world, understanding this to be creation, he emphatically remarks that “the truth of such an Iswara is proved.” But, he says, “the existence of effects depends on the soul, on consciousness, and not on Iswara. Everything proceeds from the great Principle, which is Intelligence;” to this the individual soul belongs, and through this it is brought about.
c. As to the third division of the Sanc’hya, the more particular consideration of the forms of knowledge as regards the principle, I shall make a few more remarks, which may perhaps have some interest. Of the various kinds of knowledge already given, that of reasoning, of the connection existing with the conclusion through the relation of cause and effect, remains the chief, and I will show how the Indians comprehend this relation. The understanding and all other principles derived from it are to them effects, and from these they reason to their causes; in one respect this is analogous to our inference, but in another different. They perceive that “effects exist even before the operation of the causes; for what does not exist cannot be made explicit in existence through causality.” Colebrooke says, “This means that effects are educts rather than products.” But the question is just what products are. As an example of how the effect is already contained in the cause, the following is given: — Oil is already existent in the seeds of sesamum before it is pressed out; rice is in the husk before it is thrashed; milk is in the udder of the cow before it is milked. Cause and effect are in reality the same; a piece of a dress is not really different from the yarn from which it is woven, for the material is the same. This is how this relation is understood. A consequence derived from it was the eternity of the world, for the saying “Out of nothing there comes nothing,” which Colebrooke also mentions, is opposed to the belief in a creation of the world from nothing in our religious sense. As a matter of fact, it must also be said, “God creates the world not out of nothing, but out of Himself; it is His own determination, by Him brought into existence.” The distinction between cause and effect is only a formal distinction; it is the understanding that keeps them separate, and not reason. Moisture is the same as rain; or again we speak in mechanics of different movements, whereas motion has the same velocity before as after impact. The ordinary consciousness cannot comprehend the fact that there is no real distinction between cause and effect.
The Indians infer the existence of “a universal cause which is undistinguishable, while determinate things are finite,” and on this account there must be a cause permeating through them. Even intelligence is an effect of this cause, which is the soul in so far as it is creative in this identity with nature after its abstraction from it. Effect proceeds from cause, yet, on the other hand, this last is not independent, but goes back into universal cause. General destruction is postulated along with what is called the creation of the three worlds. Just as the tortoise stretches out its limbs and then draws them back again within its shell, the five elements, earth, &c., which constitute the three worlds, are in the general ruin and dissolution of things which takes place within a certain time, again drawn back in the reverse order to that in which they emerged from the original principle, because they return, step by step, to their first cause — that is, to what is highest and inseparable, which is Nature. To this the three qualities, goodness, passion, and darkness, are attributed; the further attributes of these determinations may be very interesting, but they are understood in a very superficial way. For it is said that nature operates through the admixture of these three qualities; each thing has all three within itself, like three streams which flow together; it also works by means of modifications, just as water which is soaked in through the roots of plants and led up into the fruit, obtains a special flavour. There are hence only the categories of admixture and of modification present. The Indians say:— “Nature has these three qualities in her own right as her forms and characteristics; other things have them only because they are present in them as effects of the former.”
We still have to consider the relation of nature to spirit. “Nature, although it is quite inanimate, performs the office of preparing the soul for its freedom, just as it is the function of milk — of a substance having no sensation — to nourish the calf.” The Sanc’hya makes the following simile. Nature is like a bajadere showing herself to the soul as to an audience; she is abused for her impudence in exposing herself too often to the rude gaze of the spectators. “But she retires when she has shown herself sufficiently; she does so because she has been seen, and the audience retires because it has seen. Nature has no further use as regards the soul, and yet the union remains a lasting one.” With the attainment of intellectual knowledge through the study of principles, the final, incontrovertible, single truth is learnt, that “I neither am, nor is anything mine, nor do I exist.” That is, the personality is still distinguished from the soul, and finally personality and self-consciousness disappear for the Indian. “Everything that comes forth in consciousness is reflected by the soul, but like an image which does not dull the crystal of the soul, and does not belong to it. In possession of this self-knowledge” (without personality) “the soul contemplates nature at its ease, thus exempt from all terrible variation, and freed from every other form and operation of the understanding, with the exception of this spiritual knowledge.” This is a mediate spiritual knowledge of the likewise spiritualized content — a knowledge without personality and consciousness. “The soul still indeed remains for some time in bodily garb, but this is only so after the same manner as the potter’s wheel, when the jar is perfected, still turns round from the effect of the previously given impulse.” The soul thus has, according to the Indians, nothing further to do with the body, and its connection therewith is therefore a superfluous one. “But when the separation of the already prepared soul from its body at length comes to pass, and nature is done with soul, the absolute and final liberation is accomplished.” Here we find the crowning moments in the Sanc’hya philosophy.
- The Philosophy of Gotama and Canade. The philosophy of Gotama and that of Canade belong to one another.18 The philosophy of Gotama is called Nyaya (reasoning), and that of Canade, Vaiseshica (particular). The first is a specially perfect dialectic, and the second, on the other hand, occupies itself with physics, that is, with particular or sensuous objects. Colebrooke says:— “No department of science or of literature has taken up the attention of the Indians more than the Nyaya; and the fruit of this study is an infinite number of writings, included in which there may be found the works of very celebrated men of learning. The system which Gotama and Canade observe is that indicated in one part of the Vedas as being the path which must be trodden in the pursuit of learning and study; viz., enunciation, definition, and investigation. Enunciation is the specification of a thing by its name, that is, by the expression denoting it, as revelation directs; for language is considered as revealed to man. Definition sets forth the particular quality which constitutes the real character of a thing. Investigation consists in an inquiry into the adequacy and sufficiency of the definition. In conformity with this, the teachers of philosophy presuppose scientific terms, proceed to definitions and then come to the investigation of the thus premised subjects.” By the name, the ordinary conception is indicated, and with it what is given in definition is compared in investigation. What comes next is the object to be contemplated. “Gotama here adduces sixteen points, amongst which proof, evidence” (which is formal), “and what has to be proved, are the principal; the others are merely subsidiary and accessory, as contributing to the knowledge and confirmation of the truth. The Nyaya concurs with the other psychological schools in this, that it promises happiness, final excellence, and freedom from evil as the reward of a perfect knowledge of the principles which it teaches, that is to say, of the Truth, meaning the conviction of the eternal existence of the soul as separable from body,” which makes spirit independent. Soul then is itself the object which is to be known and proved. This has still to be shown more particularly.
a. The first point of importance, the evidence brought forth as proof, is said to be divided into four kinds: — first of all, perception; secondly, inference, of which there are three kinds, viz. inference from result to cause, that from cause to effect, and that derived from analogy. The third kind of evidence is comparison, the fourth, trustworthy authority, including both tradition and the revelation implied in it. These kinds of proof are much brought forward, both in the ancient Treatise ascribed to Gotama and in innumerable commentaries.
b. The second point of importance is found in the subjects which have to be proved, and which have to be made evident; and of these twelve are here given. The first and most important is, however, the soul, as the seat, distinguished from the body and from the senses, of feeling and of knowledge, the existence of which is proved through inclination, disinclination, will, &c. It has fourteen qualities: number, size, individuality, connection, separation, intelligence, pleasure, pain, desire, dislike, will, merit, fault, and imagination. We see in this first commencement of reflection, which is quite without order, neither connection nor any totality of determinations. The second object of knowledge is body; the third, the organs of sensation, as the five outward senses are called. These are not modifications of consciousness, as the Sanc’hya asserts, but matter constructed out of the elements, which respectively consist of earth, water, light, air, and ether. The pupil of the eye is not, they say, the organ of sight, nor the ear of hearing, but the organ of seeing is a ray of light that proceeds from the eye to the object; the organ of hearing is the ether that in the cavity of the ear communicates with the object heard, through the ether that is found between. The ray of light is usually invisible, just as a light is not seen at mid-day, but in certain circumstances it is visible. In taste, a watery substance like saliva is the organ, and so on. We find something similar to what is here said about sight in Plato’s Timæus (pp. 45, 46, Steph.; pp. 50-53, Bekk.); there are interesting remarks upon the phosphorus of the eyes in a paper by Schultz, contained in Goethe’s Morphology. Examples of men seeing at night, so that their eyes lighted up the object, are brought forward in numbers, but the demonstration certainly demands particular conditions. The objects of sense form the fourth subject. Here Cesava, a commentator, inserts the categories of Canade, of which there are six. The first of these is substance, and of this there are nine kinds: earth, water, light, air, ether, time, space, soul, understanding. The fundamental elements of material substances are by Canade regarded as if they were original atoms, and afterwards aggregates of the same; he maintains the everlasting nature of atoms, and thus much is adduced about the union of atoms, by which means motes are also produced. The second category is that of Quality, and of it there are twenty-four kinds, viz. 1, colour; 2, taste; 3, smell; 4, tangibility; 5, numbers; 6, size; 7, individuality; 8, conjunction; 9, separation; 10, priority; 11, posteriority; 12, weight; 13, fluidity; 14, viscidity; 15, sound; 16, intelligence; 17, pleasure; 18, pain; 19, desire; 20, dislike; 21, will; 22, virtue; 23, vice; 24, a capacity which includes three different qualities, viz. celerity, elasticity, and power of imagination. The third category is action; the fourth, association of qualities; the fifth, distinction; the sixth, is aggregation, and, according to Canade, this is the last; other writers add negation as the seventh. This is the manner in which philosophy is regarded by the Indians.
c. The philosophy of Gotama makes doubt the third topic, succeeding those of the evidence of knowledge, and the subjects of interest to knowledge. Another topic is regular proof, formal reasoning, or the perfect syllogism (Nyaya), which consists of five propositions: — 1, the proposition; 2, the reason; 3, the instance; 4, the application; 5, the conclusion. To take examples: — 1. This hill is burning; 2, because it smokes; 3, what smokes is burning, like a kitchen fire; 4, accordingly the hill smokes; 5, therefore it is on fire. This is propounded as syllogisms are with us, but in the manner adopted, the matter which is in point is propounded first. We should, on the contrary, begin with the general. This is the ordinary form, and these examples may satisfy us, yet we shall recapitulate the matter once more.
We have seen that in India the point of main importance is the soul’s drawing itself within itself, raising itself up into liberty, or thought, which constitutes itself for itself. This becoming explicit of soul in the most abstract mode may be called intellectual substantiality, but here it is not the unity of mind and nature that is present, but directly the opposite. To mind, the consideration of nature is only the vehicle of thought or its exercise, which has as its aim the liberation of mind. Intellectual substantiality is in India the end, while in Philosophy it is in general the true commencement; to philosophize is the idealism of making thought, in its own right, the principle of truth. Intellectual substantiality is the opposite of the reflection, understanding, and the subjective individuality of the European. With us it is of importance that I will, know, believe, think this particular thing according to the grounds that I have for so doing, and in accordance with my own free will; and upon this an infinite value is set. Intellectual substantiality is the other extreme from this; it is that in which all the subjectivity of the “I” is lost; for it everything objective has become vanity, there is for it no objective truth, duty or right, and thus subjective vanity is the only thing left. The point of interest is to reach intellectual substantiality in order to drown in it that subjective vanity with all its cleverness and reflection. This is the advantage of arriving at this point of view.
The defect in such a view is that because intellectual substantiality, while represented as end and aim for the subject, as a condition that has to be produced in the interest of the subject, even though it be most objective, is yet only quite abstractly objective; and hence the essential form of objectivity is wanting to it. That intellectual substantiality that thus remaining in abstraction, has as its existence the subjective soul alone. Just as in empty vanity, where the subjective power of negation alone remains, everything disappears, this abstraction of intellectual substantiality only signifies an escape into what is empty and without determination, wherein everything vanishes. Therefore what remains to be done is to force forward the real ground of the inwardly self-forming and determining objectivity — the eternal form within itself, which is what men call Thought. Just as this Thought in the first place, as subjective, is mine, because I think, but in the second place is universality which comprehends intellectual substantiality, it is likewise in the third place forming activity, the principle of determination. This higher kind of objectivity that unfolds itself, alone gives a place to the particular content, allows it to have free scope and receives it into itself. If in the Oriental view, the particular shakes and is destined to fall, it still has its place grounded on thought. It is able to root itself in itself, it is able to stand firm, and this is the hard European understanding. Such Eastern ideas tend to destroy it, but it is preserved active in the soil of thought; it cannot exist when regarded as independent, but must exist only as a moment in the whole system. In the Eastern Philosophy we have also discovered a definite content, which is brought under our consideration; but the consideration is destitute of thought or system because it comes from above and is outside of the unity. On that side there stands intellectual substantiality, on this side it appears dry and barren; the particular thus only has the dead form of simple reason and conclusion, such as we find in the Scholastics. Based on the ground of thought, on the other hand, the particular may receive its dues; it may be regarded and grasped as a moment in the whole organization. The Idea has not become objective in the Indian Philosophy; hence the external and objective has not been comprehended in accordance with the Idea. This is the deficiency in Orientalism.
The true, objective ground of thought finds its basis in the real freedom of the subject; the universal or substantial must itself have objectivity. Because thought is this universal, the ground of the substantial and likewise “I” — thought is the implicit and exists as the free subject — the universal has immediate existence and actual presence; it is not only an end or condition to be arrived at, but the absolute character is objective. It is this principle that we find in the Greek world, and the object of our further consideration is its development. The universal first appears as quite abstract, and as such it confronts the concrete world; but its value is both for the ground of the concrete world and for that which is implicit. It is not a beyond, for the value of the present lies in the fact that it exists in the implicit; or that which is implicit, the universal, is the truth of present objects.
PART ONE
GREEK PHILOSOPHY
PART ONE. GREEK PHILOSOPHY
INTRODUCTION
THE NAME OF Greece strikes home to the hearts of men of education in Europe, and more particularly is this so with us Germans. Europeans have taken their religion, the life to come, the far-off land, from a point somewhat further off than Greece — they took it from the East, and more especially from Syria. But the here, the present, art and science, that which in giving liberty to our spiritual life, gives it dignity as it likewise bestows upon it ornament, we know to have proceeded from Greece either directly or indirectly — through the circuitous road of Rome. The latter of these two ways was the earlier form in which this culture came to us; it also came from the formerly universal church which derived its origin as such from Rome, and has retained its speech even until now. The sources of authority in addition to the Latin Gospels have been the Fathers. Our law, too, boasts of deriving its most perfect forms from Rome. Teutonic strength of mind has required to pass through the hard discipline of the church and law which came to us from Rome, and to be kept in check; it is in this way that the European character first obtained its pliability and capacity for freedom. Thus it was after European manhood came to be at home with itself and to look upon the present, that the historical and that which is of foreign derivation was given. When man began to be at home with himself, he turned to the Greeks to find enjoyment in it. Let us leave the Latin and the Roman to the church and to jurisprudence. Higher, freer philosophic science, as also the beauty of our untrammelled art, the taste for, and love of the same, we know to have taken their root in Greek life and to have created therefrom their spirit. If we were to have an aspiration, it would be for such a land and such conditions.
But what makes us specially at home with the Greeks is that they made their world their home; the common spirit of homeliness unites us both. In ordinary life we like best the men and families that are homely and contented in themselves, not desiring what is outside and above them, and so it is with the Greeks. They certainly received the substantial beginnings of their religion, culture, their common bonds of fellowship, more or less from Asia, Syria and Egypt; but they have so greatly obliterated the foreign nature of this origin, and it is so much changed, worked upon, turned round, and altogether made so different, that what they, as we, prize, know, and love in it, is essentially their own. For this reason, in the history of Greek life, when we go further back and seem constrained so to go back, we find we may do without this retrogression and follow within the world and manners of the Greeks, the beginnings, the germination and the progress of art and science up to their maturity, even seeing the origin of their decay — and this completely comprehended within their own range. For their spiritual development requires that which is received or foreign, as matter or stimulus only; in such they have known and borne themselves as men that were free. The form which they have given to the foreign principle is this characteristic breath of spirituality, the spirit of freedom and of beauty which can in the one aspect be regarded as form, but which in another and higher sense is simply substance.
They have thus not only themselves created the substantial in their culture and made their existence their own, but they have also held in reverence this their spiritual rebirth, which is their real birth. The foreign origin they have so to speak thanklessly forgotten, putting it in the background — perhaps burying it in the darkness of the mysteries which they have kept secret from themselves. They have not only done this, that is they have not only used and enjoyed all that they have brought forth and formed, but they have become aware of and thankfully and joyfully placed before themselves this at-homeness (Heimathlichkeit) in their whole existence, the ground and origin of themselves, not merely existing in it, possessing and making use of it. For their mind, when transformed in this spiritual new birth, is just the living in their life, and also the becoming conscious of that life as it has become actual. They represent their existence as an object apart from themselves, which manifests itself independently and which in its independence is of value to them; hence they have made for themselves a history of everything which they have possessed and have been. Not only have they represented the beginning of the world — that is, of gods and men, the earth, the heavens, the wind, mountains and rivers — but also of all aspects of their existence, such as the introduction of fire and the offerings connected with it, the crops, agriculture, the olive, the horse, marriage, property, laws, arts, worship, the sciences, towns, princely races, &c. Of all these it is pleasingly represented through tales how they have arisen in history as their own work.
It is in this veritable homeliness, or, more accurately, in the spirit of homeliness, in this spirit of ideally being-at-home-with-themselves in their physical, corporate, legal, moral and political existence; it is in the beauty and the freedom of their character in history, making what they are to be also a sort of Mnemosyne with them, that the kernel of thinking liberty rests; and hence it was requisite that Philosophy should arise amongst them. Philosophy is being at home with self, just like the homeliness of the Greek; it is man’s being at home in his mind, at home with himself. If we are at home with the Greeks, we must be at home more particularly in their Philosophy; not, however, simply as it is with them, for Philosophy is at home with itself, and we have to do with Thought, with what is most specially ours, and with what is free from all particularity. The development and unfolding of thought has taken place with them from its earliest beginning, and in order to comprehend their Philosophy we may remain with them without requiring to seek for further and external influences.
But we must specify more particularly their character and point of view. The Greeks have a starting-point in history as truly as they have arisen from out of themselves: this starting-point, comprehended in thought, is the oriental substantiality of the natural unity between the spiritual and the natural. To start from the self, to live in the self, is the other extreme of abstract subjectivity, when it is still empty, or rather has made itself to be empty; such is pure formalism, the abstract principle of the modern world. The Greeks stand between both these extremes in the happy medium; this therefore is the medium of beauty, seeing that it is both natural and spiritual, but yet that the spiritual still remains the governing, determining subject. Mind immersed in nature is in substantial unity with it, and in so far as it is consciousness, it is essentially sensuous perception: as subjective consciousness it is certainly form-giving though it is devoid of measure. For the Greeks, the substantial unity of nature and spirit was a fundamental principle, and thus being in the possession and knowledge of this, yet not being overwhelmed in it, but having retired into themselves, they have avoided the extreme of formal subjectivity, and are still in unity with themselves. Thus it is a free subject which still possesses that original unity in content, essence and substratum, and fashions its object into beauty. The stage reached by Greek consciousness is the stage of beauty. For beauty is the ideal; it is the thought which is derived from Mind, but in such a way that the spiritual individuality is not yet explicit as abstract subjectivity that has then in itself to perfect its existence into a world of thought. What is natural and sensuous still pertains to this subjectivity, but yet the natural form has not equal dignity and rank with the other, nor is it predominant as is the case in the East. The principle of the spiritual now stands first in rank, and natural existence has no further value for itself, in its existent forms, being the mere expression of the Mind shining through, and having been reduced to be the vehicle and form of its existence. Mind, however, has not yet got itself as a medium whereby it can represent itself in itself, and from which it can form its world.
Thus free morality could and necessarily did find a place in Greece, for the spiritual substance of freedom was here the principle of morals, laws and constitutions. Because the natural element is, however, still contained in it, the form taken by the morality of the state is still affected by what is natural; the states are small individuals in their natural condition, which could not unite themselves into one whole. Since the universal does not exist in independent freedom, that which is spiritual still is limited. In the Greek world what is potentially and actually eternal is realized and brought to consciousness through Thought; but in such a way that subjectivity confronts it in a determination which is still accidental, because it is still essentially related to what is natural; and in this we find the reason as promised above, for the fact that in Greece the few alone are free.
The measureless quality of substance in the East is brought, by means of the Greek mind, into what is measurable and limited; it is clearness, aim, limitation of forms, the reduction of what is measureless, and of infinite splendour and riches, to determinateness and individuality. The riches of the Greek world consist only of an infinite quantity of beautiful, lovely and pleasing individualities in the serenity which pervades all existence; those who are greatest amongst the Greeks are the individualities, the connoisseurs in art, poetry, song, science, integrity and virtue. If the serenity of the Greeks, their beautiful gods, statues, and temples, as well as their serious work, their institutions and acts, may seem — compared to the splendour and sublimity, the colossal forms of oriental imagination, the Egyptian buildings of Eastern kingdoms — to be like child’s play, this is the case yet more with the thought that comes into existence here. Such thought puts a limit on this wealth of individualities as on the oriental greatness, and reduces it into its one simple soul, which, however, is in itself the first source of the opulence of a higher ideal world, of the world of Thought.
“From out of thy passions, oh, man,” exclaimed an ancient, “thou hast derived the materials for thy gods,” just as the Easterns, and especially the Indians, did from the elements, powers and forms of Nature. One may add, “out of Thought thou takest the element and material for God.” Thus Thought is the ground from which God comes forth, but it is not Thought in its commencement that constitutes the first principle from which all culture must be grasped. It is quite the other way. In the beginning, thought comes forth as altogether poor, abstract, and of a content which is meagre in comparison to that given to his subject by the oriental; for as immediate, the beginning is just in the form of nature, and this it shares with what is oriental. Because it thus reduces the content of the East to determinations which are altogether poor, these thoughts are scarcely worth observation on our part, since they are not yet proper thoughts, neither being in the form of, or determined as thought, but belonging really to Nature. Thus Thought is the Absolute, though not as Thought. That is, we have always two things to distinguish, the universal or the Notion, and the reality of this universal, for the question here arises as to whether the reality is itself Thought or Nature. We find in the fact that reality at first has still the immediate form and is only Thought potentially, the reason for commencing with the Greeks and from the natural philosophy of the Ionic school.
As regards the external and historical condition of Greece at this time, Greek philosophy commences in the sixth century before Christ in the time of Cyrus, and in the period of decline in the Ionic republics in Asia Minor. Just because this world of beauty which raised itself into a higher kind of culture went to pieces, Philosophy arose. Crœsus and the Lydians first brought Ionic freedom into jeopardy; later on the Persians were those who destroyed it altogether, so that the greater part of the inhabitants sought other spots and created colonies, more particularly in the West. At the time of the decline in Ionic towns, the other Greece ceased to be under its ancient lines of kings; the Pelopideans and the other, and for the most part foreign, princely races had passed away. Greece had in many ways come into touch with the outside world and the Greek inhabitants likewise sought within themselves for a bond of fellowship. The patriarchal life was past, and in many states it came to be a necessity that they should constitute themselves as free, organized and regulated by law. Many individuals come into prominence who were no more rulers of their fellow-citizens by descent, but who were by means of talent, power of imagination and scientific knowledge, marked out and reverenced, and such individuals came into many different relations with their fellows. Part of them became advisers, but their advice was frequently not followed; part of them were hated and despised by their fellow-citizens, and they drew back from public affairs; others became violent, if not fierce governors of the other citizens, and others again finally became the administrators of liberty.
The Seven Sages. Amongst these men just characterized, the seven sages — in modern times excluded from the history of Philosophy — take their place. In as far as they may be reckoned as milestones in the history of Philosophy, something about their character should, in the commencement of Philosophy, be shortly said. They came into prominence, partly as taking part in the battles of the Ionic towns, partly as expatriated, and partly as individuals of distinction in Greece. The names of the seven are given differently: usually, however, as Thales, Solon, Periander, Cleobulus, Chilon, Bias, Pittacus. Hermippus in Diogenes Laertius (1, 42) specifies seventeen, and, amongst these, various people pick out seven in various ways. According to Diogenes Laertius (1, 41) Dicæarchus, who came still earlier in history, only names four, and these are placed amongst the seven by all; they are Thales, Bias, Pittacus and Solon. Besides these, Myson, Anacharsis, Acusilaus, Epimenides, Pherecydes, &c., are mentioned. Dicæarchus in Diogenes (1, 40), says of them that they are neither wise men (σοφούς) nor philosophers, but men of understanding (συνετξύς) and law-givers; this judgment has become the universal one and is held to be just. They come in a period of transition amongst the Greeks — a transition from a patriarchal system of kings into one of law or force. The fame of the wisdom of these men depends, on the one hand, on the fact that they grasped the practical essence of consciousness, or the consciousness of universal morality as it is in and for itself, giving expression to it in the form of moral maxims and in part in civil laws, making these actual in the state; on the other hand it depends on their having, in theoretic form, expressed the same in witty sayings. Some of these sayings could not merely be regarded as thoughtful or good reflections, but in so far, as philosophic and speculative; they have a comprehensive, universal significance ascribed to them, which, however, does not explain them. These men have not really made science and Philosophy their aim; it is expressly said of Thales that it was in the latter part of his life that he first took to Philosophy. What had relation to politics appeared most frequently; they were practical men, men of affairs, but not in our sense of the word; with us practical activity devotes itself to a special line of administration or to a particular business, or to economics, &c. They lived in democratic states and thus shared the responsibilities of the general administration and rule. They were not statesmen like the great Greek personalities, like Miltiades, Themistocles, Pericles and Demosthenes, but they were statesmen in a time when safety, preservation and, indeed, the whole well-being, disposition and well nigh the very foundation of civic life were in question; and certainly when this was so with the foundations of legally established institutions.
Thales and Bias thus appear as the representatives of the Ionic towns. Herodotus (I. 169-171) speaks of both, and says of Thales that he advised even before the overthrow of the Ionians (apparently through Crœsus), that they should constitute a supreme council (ἓν βουλευτήριον) in Teos, in the centre of the Ionian people, and thus make a federal state with a capital and principal federal town, so that they might still remain separate nations (δῆμοι) as before. However, they did not follow this advice, and this isolated and weakened them, and the result was their conquest; it has always been a difficult thing for the Greeks to give up their individuality. Later on, when Harpagus, the general of Cyrus who accomplished their overthrow, pressed in upon them, the Ionians took no better the most excellent advice of Bias of Priene, given them at the decisive moment when they were assembled at Panionium, “to go in a common fleet to Sardinia, there to found an Ionic state. By so doing they would escape servitude, be happy, and, inhabiting the largest island, subdue the others. But if they remained in Ionia there was no hope of liberty to be seen for them.” Herodotus gives his corroboration to this advice— “If they had followed him they would have been the happiest of Greeks.” Such things take place, but through force and not voluntarily.
We find the other sages under similar conditions. Solon was an administrator in Athens, and thereby became famous; few men have attained the honourable position of being a law-giver. Solon shares it with Moses, Lycurgus, Zaleucus, Numa, &c., alone. No individuals can be found amongst Teutonic peoples who possess the distinction of being the law-givers of their people. Nowadays there can be law-givers no longer; legal institutions and regulations are in modern times always ready to hand, and the little that can still be done by means of the law-giver and by law-making assemblies is simply the further modification of details or making very insignificant additions. What is dealt with is the compilation, wording and perfecting of the particular only; and yet neither Solon and Lycurgus did more than respectively bring the Ionic mind and the Doric character — being that which had been given them and which was implicitly present — into the form of consciousness, and obviate the temporary inconvenience of disorder through effective laws. Solon was thus not a perfect statesman; this is manifest from the sequel of his history. A constitution which allowed Pisistratus in Solon’s own time to raise himself into the Tyranny, showing itself to be so destitute of strength and organization that it could not prevent its own overthrow, (and by what a power!) manifests some inward want. This may seem strange, for a constitution must be able to afford resistance to such an attack. But let us see what Pisistratus did.
What the so-called tyrants really were, is most clearly shown by the relation borne by Solon to Pisistratus. When orderly institutions and laws were necessary to the Greeks, we find law-givers and regents of states appearing, who laid down laws, and ruled accordingly. The law, as universal, seemed and still seems now to the individual to be force, inasmuch as he does not have regard to or comprehend the law: it applies first to all the people, and then only, to the individual; it is essential first of all to use constraint until the individual attains discernment, and law to him becomes his law, and ceases to be something foreign. Most of the law-givers and administrators of states undertook themselves to constrain the people and to be their tyrants. In states where they did not undertake it, it had to be done by other individuals, for it was essential. According to Diogenes Laertius’ account (I. 48-50), we find Solon — whom his friends advised to secure the mastery for himself since the people held to him (προσεῖχον), and would have liked to see him become tyrant — repulse them, and try to prevent any such occurrence, when he became suspicious of Pisistratus’ intentions. What he did when he remarked upon the attitude of Pisistratus, was to come into the assembly of the people, and tell them the design of Pisistratus, accoutred in armour and shield; this was then unusual, for Thucydides (1, 6) makes it a distinguishing feature between Greeks and Barbarians, that the former, and pre-eminently the Athenians, put aside their arms in time of peace. He said, “Men of Athens, I am wiser than some and braver than others: I am wiser than those who do not see the deceit of Pisistratus, braver than those who certainly see it, but say nothing from fear.” As he could not do anything, he left Athens. Pisistratus is said to have then written a most honourable letter to Solon in his absence, which Diogenes (I. 53, 54) has preserved for us, inviting him to return to Athens, and live with him as a free citizen. “Not only am I not the only one of the Greeks to have seized the tyranny, but I have not taken anything which was not my due, for I am of the race of Codrus. I have only taken back to myself what the Athenians swore they would preserve to Codrus and his race, and yet took from them. Moreover I am doing no evil toward gods and men, but as thou hast given laws to the Athenians, I take care (ἐπιτροπῶ) that in civil life they shall carry them out (πολιτεύειν.) His son Hippias did the same. And these relations are carried out better than they would be in a democracy, for I allow nobody to do evil (ὑβρίζειν), and as Tyrant, I lay claim to no more (πλεῖόν τι φέρομαι) than such consideration and respect and specified gifts (τὰ ῥητὰ γέρα) as would have been offered to the kings in earlier times. Every Athenian gives the tenth part of his revenue, not to me, but towards the cost of the public offering, and besides for the commonwealth, and for use in case of war. I am not angry that thou hast disclosed my project. For thou didst it more out of love to the people than hate against me, and because thou didst not know how I would conduct my rule. For if thou hadst known this, thou wouldst have submitted to it willingly, and wouldst not have taken flight;” and so he goes on. Solon, in the answer given by Diogenes, (I. 66, 67) says, that he “has not a personal grudge against Pisistratus, and he must call him the best of tyrants; but to turn back does not befit him. For he made equality of rights essential in the Athenian constitution, and himself refused the tyranny. By his return he would condone what was done by Pisistratus.” The rule of Pisistratus accustomed the Athenians to the laws of Solon, and brought them into usage, so that after this usage came to be general, supremacy was superfluous; his sons were hence driven out of Athens, and for the first time the constitution of Solon upheld itself. Solon undoubtedly gave the laws, but it is another thing to make such regulations effectual in the manners, habits and life of a people. What was separate in Solon and Pisistratus, we find united in Periander in Corinth, and Pittacus in Mitilene.
This may be enough about the outward life of the seven sages. They are also famed for the wisdom of the sayings which have been preserved to us; these sayings seem in great measure, however, to be superficial and hackneyed. The reason for this is found in the fact that, to our reflection, general propositions are quite usual; much in the Proverbs of Solomon seems to us to be superficial and commonplace for the same reason. But it is quite another thing to bring to the ordinary conception for the first time this same universal in the form of universality. Many distichs are ascribed to Solon which we still retain; their object is to express in maxims general obligations towards the gods, the family and the country. Diogenes (I. 58) tells us that Solon said: “Laws are like a spider’s web; the small are caught, the great tear it up: speech is the image of action,” &c. Such sayings are not philosophy, but general reflections, the expression of moral duties, maxims, necessary determinations. The wisdom of the sages is of this kind; many sayings are insignificant, but many seem to be more insignificant than they are. For instance, Chilon says: “Stand surety, and evil awaits thee” (ἐγγύα, πάρα δ̓ ἄτα). On the one hand this is quite a common rule of life and prudence, but the sceptics gave to this proposition a much higher universal significance, which is also accredited to Chilon. This sense is, “Ally thyself closely to any particular thing, and unhappiness will fall upon thee.” The sceptics adduced this proposition independently, as demonstrating the principle of scepticism, which is that nothing is finite and definite in and for itself, being only a fleeting, vacillating phase which does not last. Cleobulus says, μέτρον ἄριστον, another μηδὲν ἄγαν, and this has likewise a universal significance which is that limitation, the πέρας of Plato as opposed to the ἄπειρον — the self-determined as opposed to undetermined — is what is best; and thus it is that in Being limit or measure is the highest determination.
One of the most celebrated sayings is that of Solon in his conversation with Crœsus, which Herodotus (I. 30-33) has in his own way given us very fully. The result arrived at is this:— “Nobody is to be esteemed happy before his death.” But the noteworthy point in this narrative is that from it we can get a better idea of the standpoint of Greek reflection in the time of Solon. We see that happiness is put forward as the highest aim, that which is most to be desired and which is the end of man; before Kant, morality, as eudæmonism, was based on the determination of happiness. In Solon’s sayings there is an advance over the sensuous enjoyment which is merely pleasant to the feelings. Let us ask what happiness is and what there is within it for reflection, and we find that it certainly carries with it a certain satisfaction to the individual, of whatever sort it be — whether obtained through physical enjoyment or spiritual — the means of obtaining which lie in men’s own hands. But the fact is further to be observed that not every sensuous, immediate pleasure can be laid hold of, for happiness contains a reflection on the circumstances as a whole, in which we have the principle to which the principle of isolated enjoyment must give way. Eudæmonism signifies happiness as a condition for the whole of life; it sets up a totality of enjoyment which is a universal and a rule for individual enjoyment, in that it does not allow it to give way to what is momentary, but restrains desires and sets a universal standard before one’s eyes. If we contrast it with Indian philosophy, we find eudæmonism to be antagonistic to it. There the liberation of the soul from what is corporeal, the perfect abstraction, the necessity that the soul shall, in its simplicity, be at home with itself, is the final end of man. With the Greeks the opposite is the case; the satisfaction there is also satisfaction of the soul, but it is not attained through flight, abstraction, withdrawal within self, but through satisfaction in the present, concrete satisfaction in relation to the surroundings. The stage of reflection that we reach in happiness, stands midway between mere desire and the other extreme, which is right as right and duty as duty. In happiness, the individual enjoyment has disappeared; the form of universality is there, but the universal does not yet come forth on its own account, and this is the issue of the conversation between Crœsus and Solon. Man as thinking, is not solely engrossed with present enjoyment, but also with the means for obtaining that to come. Crœsus points out to him these means, but Solon still objects to the statement of the question of Crœsus. For in order that any one should be conceived of as happy, we must await his death, for happiness depends upon his condition to the end, and upon the fact that his death should be a pious one and be consistent with his higher destiny. Because the life of Crœsus had not yet expired, Solon could not deem him happy. And the history of Crœsus bears evidence that no momentary state deserves the name of happiness. This edifying history holds in its embrace the whole standpoint of the reflection of that time.
Division of the Subject. In the consideration of Greek philosophy we have now to distinguish further three important periods: — in the first place the period from Thales to Aristotle; secondly, Greek philosophy in the Roman world; thirdly, the Neo-platonic philosophy.
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We begin with thought, as it is in a quite abstract, natural or sensuous form, and we proceed from this to the Idea as determined. This first period shows the beginning of philosophic thought, and goes on to its development and perfection as a totality of knowledge in itself; this takes place in Aristotle as representing the unity of what has come before. In Plato there is just such a union of what came earlier, but it is not worked out, for he only represents the Idea generally. The Neo-platonists have been called eclectics, and Plato was said to have brought about the unity; they were not, however, eclectics, but they had a conscious insight into the necessity for uniting these philosophies.
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After the concrete Idea was reached, it came forth as if in opposites, perfecting and developing itself. The second period is that in which science breaks itself up into different systems. A one-sided principle is carried through the whole conception of the world; each side is in itself formed into a totality, and stands in the relation of one extreme to another. The philosophical systems of Stoicism and Epicureanism are such; scepticism forms the negative to their dogmatism, while the other philosophies disappear.
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The third period is the affirmative, the withdrawal of the opposition into an ideal world or a world of thought, a divine world. This is the Idea developed into totality, which yet lacks subjectivity as the infinite being-for-self.
SECTION ONE. First Period, from Thales to Aristotle
IN THIS FIRST period we shall again make three divisions: —
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The first extends from Thales to Anaxagoras, from abstract thought which is in immediate determinateness to the thought of the self-determining Thought. Here a beginning is made with the absolutely simple, in which the earliest methods of determination manifest themselves as attempts, until the time of Anaxagoras; he determines the true as the νοῦς, and as active thought which no longer is in a determinate character, but which is self-determining.
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The second division comprises the Sophists, Socrates, and the followers of Socrates. Here the self-determining thought is conceived of as present and concrete in me; that constitutes the principle of subjectivity if not also of infinite subjectivity, for thought first shows itself here only partly as abstract principle and partly as contingent subjectivity.
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The third division, which deals with Plato and Aristotle, is found in Greek science where objective thought, the Idea, forms itself into a whole. The concrete, in itself determining Thought, is, with Plato, the still abstract Idea, but in the form of universality; while with Aristotle that Idea was conceived of as the self-determining, or in the determination of its efficacy or activity.
SINCE WE POSSESS only traditions and fragments of this epoch, we may speak here of the sources of these.
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The first source is found in Plato, who makes copious reference to the older philosophers. For the reason that he makes the earlier and apparently independent philosophies, which are not so far apart when once their Notion is definitely grasped, into concrete moments of one Idea, Plato’s philosophy often seems to be merely a clearer statement of the doctrines of the older philosophers, and hence it draws upon itself the reproach of plagiarism. Plato was willing to spend much money in procuring the writings of the older philosophers, and, from his profound study of these, his conclusions have much weight. But because in his writings he never himself appeared as teacher, but always represented other people in his dialogues as the philosophers, a distinction never has been made between what really belonged to them in history and what was added by him through the further development which he effected in their thoughts. In the Parmenides, for instance, we have the Eleatic philosophy, and yet the working out of this doctrine belongs peculiarly to Plato.
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Aristotle is our most abundant authority; he studied the older philosophers expressly and most thoroughly, and he has, in the beginning of his Metaphysics especially, and also to a large extent elsewhere, dealt with them, in historical order: he is as philosophic as erudite, and we may rely upon him. We can do no better in Greek philosophy than study the first book of his Metaphysics. When the would-be-wise man depreciates Aristotle, and asserts that he has not correctly apprehended Plato, it may be retorted that as he associated with Plato himself, with his deep and comprehensive mind, perhaps no one knew him better.
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Cicero’s name may also occur to us here — although he certainly is but a troubled spring — since he undoubtedly gives us much information; yet because he was lacking in philosophic spirit, he understood Philosophy rather as if it were a matter of history merely. He does not seem to have himself studied its first sources, and even avows that, for instance, he never understood Heraclitus; and because this old and deep philosophy did not interest him, he did not give himself the trouble to study it. His information bears principally on later philosophers — the Stoics, Epicureans, the new Academy, and the Peripatetics. He saw what was ancient through their medium, and, generally speaking, through a medium of reasoning and not of speculation.
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Sextus Empiricus, a later sceptic, has importance through his writings, Hypotyposes Pyrrhonicæ and adversus Mathematicos. Because, as a sceptic, he both combated the dogmatic philosophy and also adduced other philosophers as testifying to scepticism (so that the greater part of his writings is filled with the tenets of other philosophers), he is the most abundant source we have for the history of ancient philosophy, and he has retained for our use many valuable fragments.
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The book of Diogenes Laertius (De vitis, &c., Philoss. lib. x., ed. Meibom. c. notis Menagii, Amstel. 1692) is an important compilation, and yet it brings forward copious evidence without much discrimination. A philosophic spirit cannot be ascribed to it; it rambles about amongst bad anecdotes extraneous to the matter in hand. For the lives of philosophers, and here and there for their tenets, it is useful.
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Finally, we must speak of Simplicius, a later Greek, from Cilicia, living under Justinian, in the middle of the sixth century. He is the most learned and acute of the Greek commentators of Aristotle, and of his writings there is much still unpublished: to him we certainly owe our thanks.
I need give no more references, for they may be found without trouble in any compendium. In the progress of Greek philosophy men were formerly accustomed to follow the order that showed, according to ordinary ideas, an external connection, and which is found in one philosopher having had another as his teacher — this connection is one which might show him to be partly derived from Thales and partly from Pythagoras. But such a connection is in part defective in itself, and in part it is merely external. The one set of philosophic sects, or of philosophers classed together, which is considered as belonging to a system — that which proceeds from Thales — pursues its course in time and mind far separate from the other. But, in truth, no such series ever does exist in this isolation, nor would it do so even though the individuals were consecutive and had been externally connected as teacher and taught, which never is the case; mind follows quite another order. These successive series are interwoven in spirit just as much as in their particular content.
We come across Thales first amongst the Ionic people, to whom the Athenians belonged, or from whom the Ionians of Asia Minor, as a whole, derived their origin. The Ionic race appears earlier in Peloponnesus, but seems to have been removed from thence. It is, however, not known what nations belonged to it, for, according to Herodotus (I. 143), the other Ionians, and even the Athenians, laid aside the name. According to Thucydides (I. 2 and 12), the Ionic colonies in Asia Minor and the islands proceeded principally from Athens, because the Athenians, on account of the over-population of Attica, migrated there. We find the greatest activity in Greek life on the coasts of Asia Minor, in the Greek islands, and then towards the west of Magna Græcia; we see amongst these people, through their internal political activity and their intercourse with foreigners, the existence of a diversity and variety in their relations, whereby narrowness of vision is done away with, and the universal rises in its place. These two places, Ionia and Greater Greece, are thus the two localities where this first period in the history of Philosophy plays its part until the time when, that period being ended, Philosophy plants itself in Greece proper, and there makes its home. Those spots were also the seat of early commerce and of an early culture, while Greece itself, so far as these are concerned, followed later.
We must thus remark that the character of the two sides into which these philosophies divide, the philosophy of Asia Minor in the east and that of Grecian Italy in the west, partakes of the character of the geographical distinction. On the Asia Minor side, and also in the islands, we find Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, Heraclitus, Leucippus, Democritus, Anaxagoras, and Diogenes from Crete. On the other side are the inhabitants of Italy: Pythagoras from Samos, who lived in Italy, however; Xenophanes, Parmenides, Zeno, Empedocles; and several of the Sophists also lived in Italy. Anaxagoras was the first to come to Athens, and thus his science takes a middle place between both extremes, and Athens was made its centre. The geographical distinction makes its appearance in the manifestation of Thought, in the fact that, with the Orientals a sensuous, material side is dominant, and in the west, Thought, on the contrary, prevails, because it is constituted into the principle in the form of thought. Those philosophers who turned to the east knew the absolute in a real determination of nature, while towards Italy there is the ideal determination of the absolute. These explanations will be sufficient for us here; but Empedocles, whom we find in Sicily, is somewhat of a natural philosopher, while Gorgias, the Sicilian sophist, remains faithful to the ideal side.
We now have to consider further: — 1, The Ionians, viz. Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes; 2, Pythagoras and his followers; 3, the Eleatics, viz. Xenophanes, Parmenides, &c.; 4, Heraclitus; 5, Empedocles, Leucippus and Democritus; 6, Anaxagoras. We have to trace and point out the progression of this philosophy also. The first and altogether abstract determinations are found with Thales and the other Ionians; they grasped the universal in the form of a natural determination, as water and air. Progression must thus take place by leaving behind the merely natural determination; and we find that this is so with the Pythagoreans. They say that number is the substance or the essence of things; number is not sensuous, nor is it pure thought, but it is a non-sensuous object of sense. It was with the Eleatics that pure thought appeared, and that its forcible liberation from the sensuous form and the form of number came to pass; and thus from them proceeds the dialectic movement of thought, which negates the definite particular in order to show that it is not the many but only the one that is true. Heraclitus declares the Absolute to be this very process, which, according to the Eleatics, was still subjective; he arrived at objective consciousness, since in it the Absolute is that which moves or changes. Empedocles, Leucippus, and Democritus, on the contrary, rather go to the opposite extreme, to the simple, material, stationary principle, to the substratum which underlies the process; and thus this last, as being movement, is distinguished from it. With Anaxagoras it is the moving, self-determining thought itself that is then known as existence, and this is a great step forward.
A. The Ionic Philosophy.
HERE WE HAVE the earlier Ionic philosophy, which we desire to treat as shortly as possible; and this is so much the easier, that the thought contained in it is very abstract and barren. Other philosophers than Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes, only come under our consideration as names. We have no more than half a dozen passages in the whole of the early Ionic philosophy, and that makes it an easy study. Yet learning prides itself most upon the ancients, for we may be most learned about that of which we know the least.
With Thales we, properly speaking, first begin the history of Philosophy. The life of Thales occurred at the time when the Ionic towns were under the dominion of Crœsus. Through his overthrow (Ol. 58, 1; 548 B.C.), an appearance of freedom was produced, yet the most of these towns were conquered by the Persians, and Thales survived the catastrophe only a few years. He was born at Miletus; his family is, by Diogenes (I. 22, 37), stated to be the Phœnician one of Thelides, and the date of his birth, according to the best calculation, is placed in the first year of the 35th Olympiad (640 B.C.), but according to Meiners it was a couple of Olympiads later (38th Olympiad, 629 B.C.). Thales lived as a statesman partly with Crœsus and partly in Miletus. Herodotus quotes him several times, and tells (I. 75) that, according to the narratives of the Greeks, when Crœsus went to battle against Cyrus and had difficulty in passing over the river Halys, Thales, who accompanied the army, diverted the river by a trench, which he made in the form of a crescent behind the camp, so that it could then be forded. Diogenes (I. 25) says further of him as regards his relations to his country, that he restrained the men of Miletus from allying themselves with Crœsus when he went against Cyrus, and that hence, after the conquest of Crœsus, when the other Ionic States were subdued by the Persians, the inhabitants of Miletus alone remained undisturbed. Diogenes records, moreover (I. 23), that he soon withdrew his attention from the affairs of the State and devoted himself entirely to science.
Voyages to Phœnicia are recorded of him, which, however, rest on vague tradition; but that he was in Egypt in his old age seems undoubted.19 There he was said to have learned geometry, but this would appear not to have been much, judging from the anecdote, which Diogenes (I. 24, 27) retails from a certain Hieronymus. It was to the effect that Thales taught the Egyptians to measure the height of their pyramids by shadow — by taking the relation borne by the height of a man to his shadow. The terms of the proportion are: as the shadow of a man is to the height of a man, so is the shadow of a pyramid to its height. If this were something new to the Egyptians, they must have been very far back in the theory of geometry. Herodotus tells (I. 74), moreover, that Thales foretold an eclipse of the sun that happened exactly on the day of the battle between the Medians and Lydians, and that he ascribed the rising of the Nile to the contrary Etesian winds, which drove back the waters.20 We have some further isolated instances of, and anecdotes about his astronomical knowledge and works.21 “In gazing at and making observations on the stars, he fell into a ditch, and the people mocked him as one who had knowledge of heavenly objects and yet could not see what lay at his own feet.” The people laugh at such things, and boast that philosophers cannot tell them about such matters; but they do not understand that philosophers laugh at them, for they do not fall into a ditch just because they lie in one for all time, and because they cannot see what exists above them. He also showed, according to Diogenes (I. 26), that a wise man, if he wishes, can easily acquire riches. It is more important that he fixed that the year, as solar year, should have 365 days. The anecdote of the golden tripod to be given to the wisest man, is recorded by Diogenes (I. 27-33); and it carries with it considerable weight, because he combines all the different versions of the story. The tripod was given to Thales or to Bias; Thales gave it to some one else, and thus it went through a circle until it again came to Thales; the latter, or else Solon, decided that Apollo was wisest, and sent it to Didyma or to Delphi. Thales died, according to Diogenes (I. 38), aged seventy-eight or ninety, in the 58th Olympiad; according to Tennemann (vol. i. p. 414), it was in Olympiad 59, 2 (543 B.C.), when Pythagoras came to Crotona. Diogenes relates that he died at one of the games, overcome by heat and thirst.
We have no writings by Thales, and we do not know whether he was in the habit of writing. Diogenes Laertius (I. 23, 34, 35) speaks of two hundred verses on astronomy, and some maxims, such as “It is not the many words that have most meaning.”
As to his philosophy, he is universally recognized as the first natural philosopher, but all one knows of him is little, and yet we seem to know the most of what there is. For since we find that the further philosophic progress of which his speculative idea was capable, and the understanding of his propositions, which they alone could have, make their first appearance and form particular epochs with the philosophers succeeding him, who may be recognized thereby, this development ascribed to Thales never took place with him at all. Thus if it is the case that a number of his other reflections have been lost, they cannot have had any particular speculative value; and his philosophy does not show itself to be an imperfect system from want of information about it, but because the first philosophy cannot be a system.
We must listen to Aristotle as regards these ancient philosophers, for he speaks most sympathetically of them. In the passage of most importance (Metaph. I. 3), he says: “Since it is clear that we must acquire the science of first causes (ἐξ ἀρχῆς αἰτίν), seeing that we say that a person knows a thing when he becomes acquainted with its cause, there are, we must recollect, four causes — Being and Form first (for the ‘why’ is finally led back to the Notion, but yet the first ‘why’ is a cause and principle); matter and substratum, second; the cause whence comes the beginning of movement, third; and fourth the cause which is opposed to this, the aim in view and the good (for that is the end of every origination). Hence we would make mention of those who have undertaken the investigation of Being before us, and have speculated regarding the Truth, for they openly advance certain principles and first causes. If we take them under our consideration, it will be of this advantage, so far as our present investigation goes, that we shall either find other kinds of causes or be enabled to have so much the more confidence in those just named. Most of the earliest philosophers have placed the principles of everything in something in the form of matter (ἐν ὕλης εἴδει), for, that from which everything existent comes, and out of which it takes its origin as its first source, and into which it finally sinks, as substance (οὐσία), ever remains the same and only changes in its particular qualities (πάθεσι); and this is called the element (στοιχεῖον) and this the principle of all that exists” (the absolute prius). “On this account they maintain that nothing arises or passes away, because the same nature always remains. For instance, we say that, absolutely speaking, Socrates neither originates if he becomes beautiful or musical, nor does he pass away if he loses these qualities, because the subject (τὸ ὑποκείμενον), Socrates, remains the same. And so it is with all else. For there must be one nature, or more than one, from which all else arises, because it maintains its existence” (σωζομένης ἐκείνης), that means that in its change there is no reality or truth. “All do not coincide as to the number of this principle or as to its description (εἶδος); Thales, the founder of this philosophy,” (which recognizes something material as the principle and substance of all that is), “says that it is water. Hence he likewise asserts the earth to be founded on water.” Water is thus the ὑποκείμενον, the first ground, and, according to Seneca’s statement (Quæst. Nat. vi. 6), it seems to him to be not so much the inside of the earth, as what encloses it which is the universal existence; for “Thales considered that the whole earth has water as its support (subjecto humore), and that it swims thereon.”
We might first of all expect some explanation of the application of these principles, as, for example, how it is to be proved that water is the universal substance, and in what way particular forms are deduced from it. But as to this we must say that of Thales in particular, we know nothing more than his principle, which is that water is the god over all. No more do we know anything further of Anaximander, Anaximenes and Diogenes than their principles. Aristotle brings forward a conjecture as to how Thales derived everything directly out of water, “Perhaps (ἴσως) the conclusions of Thales have been brought about from the reflection that it was evident that all nourishment is moist, and warmth itself comes out of moisture and thereby life continues. But that from which anything generates is the principle of all things. This was one reason for holding this theory, and another reason is contained in the fact that all germs are moist in character, and water is the principle of what is moist.” It is necessary to remark that the circumstances introduced by Aristotle with a “perhaps” which are supposed to have brought about the conclusions of Thales, making water the absolute essence of everything, are not adduced as the grounds acknowledged by Thales. And furthermore, they can hardly be called grounds, for what Aristotle does is rather to establish, as we would say from actuality, that the latter corresponds to the universal idea of water. His successors, as for instance Pseudo-Plutarch (De plac. phil. I. 3), have taken Thales’ assertion as positive and not hypothetical; Tiedmann (Geist der spec. Phil. vol. I. p. 36) remarks with great reason that Plutarch omits the “perhaps.” For Plutarch says, “Thales suggests (στοχάζεται) that everything takes its origin from water and resolves itself into the same, because as the germs of all that live have moisture as the principle of life, all else might likewise (εἰκός) take its principle from moisture; for all plants draw their nourishment, and thus bear fruit, from water, and if they are without it, fade away; and even the fires of sun, and stars and world are fed through the evaporation of water.” Aristotle is contented with simply showing in regard to moisture that, at least, it is everywhere to be found. Since Plutarch gives more definite grounds for holding that water is the simple essence of things, we must see whether things, in so far as they are simple essence, are water, (α) The germ of the animal, of moist nature, is undoubtedly the animal as the simple actual, or as the essence of its actuality, or undeveloped actuality. (β) If, with plants, water may be regarded as for their nourishment, nourishment is still only the being of a thing as formless substance that first becomes individualized by individuality, and thus succeeds in obtaining form. (γ) To make sun, moon and the whole world arise through evaporation, like the food of plants, certainly approximates to the idea of the ancients, who did not allow the sun and moon to have obtained independence as we do.
“There are also some,” continues Aristotle, “who hold that all the ancients who, at the first and long before the present generation, made theology their study, understood Nature thus. They made Oceanus and Tethys the producers of all origination (τῆς γενέσεως), and water, which by the poets is called Styx, the oath of the gods. For what is most ancient is most revered, and the oath is that most held in reverence.” This old tradition has within it speculative significance. If anything cannot be proved or is devoid of objective form, such as we have in respect of payment in a discharge, or in witnesses who have seen the transaction, the oath, the confirmation of myself as object, expresses the fact that my assurance is absolute truth. Now since, by way of confirmation, men swear by what is best, by what is absolutely certain, and the gods swore by the subterranean water, it follows that the essence of pure thought, the inmost being, the reality in which consciousness finds its truth, is water; I, so to speak, express this clear certainty of myself as object, as God.
- The closer consideration of this principle in its bearings would have no interest. For since the whole philosophy of Thales lies in the fact that water is this principle, the only point of interest can be to ask how far that principle is important and speculative. Thales comprehends essence as devoid of form. While the sensuous certitude of each thing in its individuality is not questioned, this objective actuality is now to be raised into the Notion that reflects itself into itself and is itself to be set forth as Notion; in commencement this is seen in the world’s being manifested as water, or as a simple universal. Fluid is, in its Notion, life, and hence it is water itself, spiritually expressed; in the so-called grounds or reasons, on the contrary, water has the form of existent universal. We certainly grant this universal activity of water, and for that reason call it an element, a physical universal power; but while we find it thus to be the universal of activity, we also find it to be this actual, not everywhere, but in proximity to other elements — earth, air and fire. Water thus has not got a sensuous universality, but a speculative one merely; to be speculative universality, however, would necessitate its being Notion and having what is sensuous removed. Here we have the strife between sensuous universality and universality of the Notion. The real essence of nature has to be defined, that is, nature has to be expressed as the simple essence of thought. Now simple essence, the Notion of the universal, is that which is devoid of form, but this water as it is, comes into the determination of form, and is thus, in relation to others, a particular existence just like everything that is natural. Yet as regards the other elements, water is determined as formless and simple, while the earth is that which has points, air is the element of all change, and fire evidently changes into itself. Now if the need of unity impels us to recognize for separate things a universal, water, although it has the drawback of being a particular thing, can easily be utilized as the One, both on account of its neutrality, and because it is more material than air.
The proposition of Thales, that water is the Absolute, or as the ancients say, the principle, is the beginning of Philosophy, because with it the consciousness is arrived at that essence, truth, that which is alone in and for itself, are one. A departure from what is in our sensuous perception here takes place; man recedes from this immediate existence. We must be able to forget that we are accustomed to a rich concrete world of thought; with us the very child learns, “There is one God in Heaven, invisible.” Such determinations are not yet present here; the world of Thought must first be formed and there is as yet no pure unity. Man has nature before him as water, air, stars, the arch of the heavens; and the horizon of his ideas is limited to this. The imagination has, indeed, its gods, but its content still is natural; the Greeks had considered sun, mountains, earth, sea, rivers, &c., as independent powers, revered them as gods, and elevated them by the imagination to activity, movement, consciousness and will. What there is besides, like the conceptions of Homer, for instance, is something in which thought could not find satisfaction; it produces mere images of the imagination, endlessly endowed with animation and form, but destitute of simple unity. It must undoubtedly be said that in this unconsciousness of an intellectual world, one must acknowledge that there is a great robustness of mind evinced in not granting this plenitude of existence to the natural world, but in reducing it to a simple substance, which, as the ever enduring principle, neither originates nor disappears, while the gods have a Theogony and are manifold and changing. This wild, endlessly varied imagination of Homer is set at rest by the proposition that existence is water; this conflict of an endless quantity of principles, all these ideas that a particular object is an independent truth, a self-sufficient power over others existing in its own right, are taken away, and it is shown likewise that there is only one universal, the universal self-existent, the simple unimaginative perception, the thought that is one and one alone.
This universal stands in direct relationship to the particular and to the existence of the world as manifested. The first thing implied in what has been said, is that the particular existence has no independence, is not true in and for itself, but is only an accidental modification. But the affirmative point of view is that all other things proceed from the one, that the one remains thereby the substance from which all other things proceed, and it is only through a determination which is accidental and external that the particular existence has its being. It is similarly the case that all particular existence is transient, that is, it loses the form of particular and again becomes the universal, water. The simple proposition of Thales therefore, is Philosophy, because in it water, though sensuous, is not looked at in its particularity as opposed to other natural things, but as Thought in which everything is resolved and comprehended. Thus we approach the divorce of the absolute from the finite; but it is not to be thought that the unity stands above, and that down here we have the finite world. This idea is often found in the common conception of God — where permanence is attributed to the world and where men often represent two kinds of actuality to themselves, a sensuous and a supersensuous world of equal standing. The philosophic point of view is that the one is alone the truly actual, and here we must take actual in its higher significance, because we call everything actual in common life. The second circumstance to be remembered is that with the ancient philosophers, the principle has a definite and, at first, a physical form. To us this does not appear to be philosophic but only physical; in this case, however, matter has philosophic significance. Thales’ theory is thus a natural philosophy, because this universal essence is determined as real; consequently the Absolute is determined as the unity of thought and Being.
- Now if we have this undifferentiated principle predominating, the question arises as to the determination of this first principle. The transition from universal to particular at once becomes essential, and it begins with the determination of activity; the necessity for such arises here. That which is to be a veritable principle must not have a one-sided, particular form, but in it the difference must itself be absolute, while other principles are only special kinds of forms. The fact that the Absolute is what determines itself is already more concrete; we have the activity and the higher self-consciousness of the spiritual principle, by which the form has worked itself into being absolute form, the totality of form. Since it is most profound, this comes latest; what has first to be done is merely to look at things as determined.
Form is lacking to water as conceived by Thales. How is this accorded to it? The method is stated (and stated by Aristotle, but not directly of Thales), in which particular forms have arisen out of water; it is said to be through a process of condensation and rarefaction (πυκνότητι καὶ μανότητι), or, as it may be better put, through greater or less intensity. Tennemann (vol. I. p. 59) in reference to this, cites from Aristotle, De gen. et corrupt. I. 1, where there is no mention of condensation and rarefaction as regards Thales, and further, De cælo, III. 5, where it is only said that those who uphold water or air, or something finer than water or coarser than air, define difference as density and rarity, but nothing is said of its being Thales who gave expression to this distinction. Tiedmann (vol. I. p. 38) quotes yet other authorities; it was, however, later on, that this distinction was first ascribed to Thales.22 Thus much is made out, that for the first time in this natural philosophy as in the modern, that which is essential in form is really the quantitative difference in its existence. This merely quantitative difference, however, which, as the increasing and decreasing density of water, constitutes its only form-determination, is an external expression of the absolute difference; it is an unessential distinction set up through another and is not the inner difference of the Notion in itself; it is therefore not worth while to spend more time over it.
Difference as regards the Notion has no physical significance, but differences or the simple duality of form in the sides of its opposition, must be comprehended as universally in the Notion. On this account a sensuous interpretation must not be given to the material, that is to particular determinations, as when it is definitely said that rare water is air, rare air, fiery ether, thick water, mud, which then becomes earth; according to this, air would be the rarefaction of the first water, ether the rarefaction of air, and earth and mud the sediment of water. As sensuous difference or change, the division here appears as something manifested for consciousness; the moderns have experimented in making thicker and thinner what to the senses is the same.
Change has consequently a double sense; one with reference to existence and another with reference to the Notion. When change is considered by the ancients, it is usually supposed to have to do with a change in what exists, and thus, for instance, inquiry would be made as to whether water can be changed through chemical action, such as heat, distillation, &c., into earth; finite chemistry is confined to this. But what is meant in all ancient philosophies is change as regards the Notion. That is to say, water does not become converted into air or space and time in retorts, &c. But in every philosophic idea, this transition of one quality into another takes place, i.e. this inward connection is shown in the Notion, according to which no one thing can subsist independently and without the other, for the life of nature has its subsistence in the fact that one thing is necessarily related to the other. We certainly are accustomed to believe that if water were taken away, it would indeed fare badly with plants and animals, but that stones would still remain; or that of colours, blue could be abstracted without harming in the least yellow or red. As regards merely empirical existence, it may easily be shown that each quality exists on its own account, but in the Notion they only are, through one another, and by virtue of an inward necessity. We certainly see this also in living matter, where things happen in another way, for here the Notion comes into existence; thus if, for example, we abstract the heart, the lungs and all else collapse. And in the same way all nature exists only in the unity of all its parts, just as the brain can exist only in unity with the other organs.
- If the form is, however, only expressed in both its sides as condensation and rarefaction, it is not in and for itself, for to be this it must be grasped as the absolute Notion, and as an endlessly forming unity. What is said on this point by Aristotle (De Anima, I. 2, also 5) is this: “Thales seems, according to what is said of him, to consider the soul as something having movement, for he says of the loadstone that it has a soul, since it moves the iron.” Diogenes Laertius (I. 24) adds amber to this, from which we see that even Thales knew about electricity, although another explanation of it is that ἤλεκτρον was besides a metal. Aldobrandini says of this passage in Diogenes, that it is a stone which is so hostile to poison that when touched by such it immediately hisses. The above remark by Aristotle is perverted by Diogenes to such an extent that he says: “Thales has likewise ascribed a soul to what is lifeless.” However, this is not the question, for the point is how he thought of absolute form, and whether he expressed the Idea generally as soul so that absolute essence should be the unity of simple essence and form.
Diogenes certainly says further of Thales (I. 27), “The world is animated and full of demons,” and Plutarch (De plac. phil. I. 7) says, “He called God the Intelligence (νοῦς) of the world.” But all the ancients, and particularly Aristotle, ascribe this expression unanimously to Anaxagoras as the one who first said that the νοῦς is the principle of things. Thus it does not conduce to the further determination of form according to Thales, to find in Cicero (De Nat. Deor. I. 10) this passage: “Thales says that water is the beginning of everything, but God is the Mind which forms all that is, out of water.” Thales may certainly have spoken of God, but Cicero has added the statement that he comprehended him as the νοῦς which formed everything out of water. Tiedmann (vol. I. p. 42) declares the passage to be possibly corrupt, since Cicero later on (c. 11) says of Anaxagoras that “he first maintained the order of things to have been brought about through the infinite power of Mind.” However, the Epicurean, in whose mouth these words are put, speaks “with confidence only fearing that he should appear to have any doubts” (c. 8) both previously and subsequently of other philosophers rather foolishly, so that this description is given merely as a jest. Aristotle understands historic accuracy better, and therefore we must follow him. But to those who make it their business to find everywhere the conception of the creation of the world by God, that passage in Cicero is a great source of delight, and it is a much disputed point whether Thales is to be counted amongst those who accepted the existence of a God. The Theism of Thales is maintained by Plouquet, whilst others would have him to be an atheist or polytheist, because he says that everything is full of demons. However, this question as to whether Thales believed in God does not concern us here, for acceptation, faith, popular religion are not in question; we only have to do with the philosophic determination of absolute existence. And if Thales did speak of God as constituting everything out of this same water, that would not give us any further information about this existence; we should have spoken unphilosophically of Thales because we should have used an empty word without inquiring about its speculative significance. Similarly the word world-soul is useless, because its being is not thereby expressed.
Thus all these further, as also later, assertions do not justify us in maintaining that Thales comprehended form in the absolute in a definite manner; on the contrary, the rest of the history of philosophical development refutes this view. We see that form certainly seems to be shown forth in existence, but as yet this unity is no further developed. The idea that the magnet has a soul is indeed always better than saying that it has the power of attraction; for power is a quality which is considered as a predicate separable from matter, while soul is movement in unison with matter in its essence. An idea such as this of Thales stands isolated, however, and has no further relation to his absolute thought. Thus, in fact, the philosophy of Thales is comprised in the following simple elements: (a) It has constituted an abstraction in order to comprehend nature in a simple sensuous essence. (b) It has brought forth the Notion of ground or principle; that is, it has defined water to be the infinite Notion, the simple essence of thought, without determining it further as the difference of quantity. That is the limited significance of this principle of Thales.
Anaximander was also of Miletus, and he was a friend of Thales. “The latter,” says Cicero (Acad. Quaest. IV. 37), “could not convince him that everything consisted of water.” Anaximander’s father was called Praxiades; the date of his birth is not quite certain; according to Tennemann (vol. I. p. 413), it is put in Olympiad 42, 3 (610 B.C.), while Diogenes Laertius (II. I, 2) says, taking his information from Apollodorus, an Athenian, that in Ol. 58, 2 (547 B.C.), he was sixty-four years old, and that he died soon after, that is to say about the date of Thales’ death. And taking for granted that he died in his ninetieth year, Thales must have been nearly twenty-eight years older than Anaximander. It is related of Anaximander that he lived in Samos with the tyrant Polycrates, where were Pythagoras and Anacreon also. Themistius, according to Brucker (Pt. I. p. 478), says of him that he first put his philosophic thoughts into writing, but this is also recorded of others, as for example, of Pherecydes, who was older than he. Anaximander is said to have written about nature, the fixed stars, the sphere, besides other matters; he further produced something like a map, showing the boundary (πρίμετρον) of land and sea; he also made other mathematical inventions, such as a sun-dial that he put up in Lacedæmon, and instruments by which the course of the sun was shown, and the equinox determined; a chart of the heavens was likewise made by him.
His philosophical reflections are not comprehensive, and do not extend as far as to determination. Diogenes says in the passage quoted before: “He adduced the Infinite” (τὸ ἄπειρον, the undetermined), “as principle and element; he neither determined it as air or water or any such thing.” There are, however, few attributes of this Infinite given. (α.) “It is the principle of all becoming and passing away; at long intervals infinite worlds or gods rise out of it, and again they pass away into the same.” This has quite an oriental tone. “He gives as a reason that the principle is to be determined as the Infinite, the fact that it does not need material for continuous origination. It contains everything in itself and rules over all: it is divine, immortal, and never passes away.”23 (β.) Out of the one, Anaximander separates the opposites which are contained in it, as do Empedocles and Anaxagoras; thus everything in this medley is certainly there, but undetermined.24 That is, everything is really contained therein in possibility (δυνάμει), “so that,” says Aristotle (Metaphys. XI. 2), “it is not only that everything arises accidentally out of what is not, but everything also arises from what is, although it is from incipient being which is not yet in actuality.” Diogenes Laertius adds (II. 1): “The parts of the Infinite change, but it itself is unchangeable.” (γ.) Lastly, it is said that the infinitude is in size and not in number, and Anaximander differs thus from Anaxagoras, Empedocles and the other atomists, who maintain the absolute discretion of the infinite, while Anaximander upholds its absolute continuity.25 Aristotle (Metaphys. I. 8) speaks also of a principle which is neither water nor air, but is “thicker than air and thinner than water.” Many have connected this idea with Anaximander, and it is possible that it belongs to him.
The advance made by the determination of the principle as infinite in comprehensiveness rests in the fact that absolute essence no longer is a simple universal, but one which negates the finite. At the same time, viewed from the material side, Anaximander removes the individuality of the element of water; his objective principle does not appear to be material, and it may be understood as Thought. But it is clear that he did not mean anything else than matter generally, universal matter.26 Plutarch reproaches Anaximander “for not saying what (τι) his infinite is, whether air, water or earth.” But a definite quality such as one of these is transient; matter determined as infinitude means the motion of positing definite forms, and again abolishing the separation. True and infinite Being is to be shown in this and not in negative absence of limit. This universality and negation of the finite is, however, our operation only: in describing matter as infinite, Anaximander does not seem to have said that this is its infinitude.
He has said further (and in this, according to Theophrastus, he agrees with Anaxagoras), “In the infinite the like separates itself from the unlike and allies itself to the like; thus what in the whole was gold becomes gold, what was earth, earth, &c., so that properly nothing originates, seeing that it was already there.”27 These, however, are poor determinations, which only show the necessity of the transition from the undetermined to the determined; for this still takes place here in an unsatisfying way. As to the further question of how the infinite determines the opposite in its separation, it seems that the theory of the quantitative distinction of condensation and rarefaction was held by Anaximander as well as by Thales. Those who come later designate the process of separation from the Infinite as development. Anaximander supposes man to develop from a fish, which abandoned water for the land.28 Development comes also into prominence in recent times, but as a mere succession in time — a formula in the use of which men often imagine that they are saying something brilliant; but there is no real necessity, no thought, and above all, no Notion contained in it.
But in later records the idea of warmth, as being the disintegration of form, and that of cold, is ascribed to Anaximander by Stobæus (Eclog. Phys. c. 24, p. 500); this Aristotle (Metaphys. I. 5) first ascribed to Parmenides. Eusebius (De præp. Evang. I. 8), out of a lost work of Plutarch, gives us something from Anaximander’s Cosmogony which is dark, and which, indeed, Eusebius himself did not rightly understand. Its sense is approximately this: “Out of the Infinite, infinite heavenly spheres and infinite worlds have been set apart; but they carry within them their own destruction, because they only are through constant dividing off.” That is, since the Infinite is the principle, separation is the positing of a difference, i.e. of a determination or something finite. “The earth has the form of a cylinder, the height of which is the third part of the breadth. Both of the eternally productive principles of warmth and cold separate themselves in the creation of this earth, and a fiery sphere is formed round the air encircling the earth, like the bark around a tree. As this broke up, and the pieces were compressed into circles, sun, moon, and stars were formed.” Hence Anaximander, according to Stobæus (Ecl. Phys. 25, p. 510), likewise called the stars “wheel-shaped with fire-filled wrappings of air.” This Cosmogony is as good as the geological hypothesis of the earth-crust which burst open, or as Buffon’s explosion of the sun, which beginning, on the other hand, with the sun, makes the planets to be stones projected from it. While the ancients confined the stars to our atmosphere, and made the sun first proceed from the earth, we make the sun to be the substance and birthplace of the earth, and separate the stars entirely from any further connection with us, because for us, like the gods worshipped by the Epicureans, they are at rest. In the process of origination, the sun, indeed, descends as the universal, but in nature it is that which comes later; thus in truth the earth is the totality, and the sun but an abstract moment.
Anaximenes still remains as having made his appearance between the 55th and 58th Olympiads (560-548 B.C.). He was likewise of Miletus, a contemporary and friend of Anaximander; he has little to distinguish him, and very little is known about him. Diogenes Laertius says neither with consideration nor consistency (II. 3): “He was born, according to Apollodorus in the 63rd Olympiad, and died in the year Sardis was conquered” (by Cyrus, Olympiad 58th).
In place of the undetermined matter of Anaximander, he brings forward a definite natural element; hence the absolute is in a real form, but instead of the water of Thales, that form is air. He found that for matter a sensuous being was indeed essential, and air has the additional advantage of being more devoid of form; it is less corporeal than water, for we do not see it, but feel it first in movement. Plutarch (De plac. phil. I. 3) says: “Out of it everything comes forth, and into it everything is again resolved.” According to Cicero (De Nat. Deor. I. 10), “he defined it as immeasurable, infinite, and in constant motion.” Diogenes Laertius expresses this in the passage already quoted: “The principle is air and the infinite” (οὖτος ἀρχὴν ἀέρα εἶπε καὶ τὸ ἄπειρον) as if there were two principles; however, ἀρχὴν καὶ ἄπειρον may be taken together as subject, and ἀέρα regarded as the predicate in the statement. For Simplicius, in dealing with the Physics of Aristotle, expressly says (p. 6, a) “that the first principle was to him one and infinite in nature as it was to Anaximander, but it was not indefinite as with the latter, but determined, that is, it was air,” which, however, he seems to have understood as endowed with soul.
Plutarch characterizes Anaximenes’ mode of representation which makes everything proceed from air — later on it was called ether — and resolve itself therein, better thus: “As our soul, which is air, holds us together (συγρατεῖ), one spirit (πνεῦμα) and air together likewise hold (περιέχει) the whole world together; spirit and air are synonymous.” Anaximenes shows very clearly the nature of his essence in the soul, and he thus points out what may be called the transition of natural philosophy into the philosophy of consciousness, or the surrender of the objective form of principle. The nature of this principle has hitherto been determined in a manner which is foreign and negative to consciousness; both its reality, water or air, and the infinite are a “beyond” to consciousness. But soul is the universal medium; it is a collection of conceptions which pass away and come forth, while the unity and continuity never cease. It is active as well as passive, from its unity severing asunder the conceptions and sublating them, and it is present to itself in its infinitude, so that negative signification and positive come into unison. Speaking more precisely, this idea of the nature of the origin of things is that of Anaxagoras, the pupil of Anaximenes.
Pherecydes has also to be mentioned as the teacher of Pythagoras; he is of Syros, one of the Cyclades islands. He is said to have drawn water from a spring, and to have learned therefrom that an earthquake would take place in three days; he is also said to have predicted of a ship in full sail that it would go down, and it sank in a moment. Theopompus in Diogenes Laertius (I. 116), relates of this Pherecydes that “he first wrote to the Greeks about Nature and the gods” (which was before said of Anaximander). His writings are said to have been in prose, and from what is related of them it is clear that it must have been a theogony of which he wrote. The first words, still preserved to us, are: “Jupiter and Time and what is terrestrial (χθών) were from eternity (εἰς ἀεί); the name of earthly (χθονίῃ) was given to the terrestrial sphere when Zeus granted to it gifts.”29 How it goes on is not known, but this cannot be deemed a great loss. Hermias tells us only this besides:30 “He maintained Zeus or Fire (αἰθέρα), Earth and Chronos or Time as principles — fire as active, earth as passive, and time as that in which everything originates.” Diogenes of Apollonia, Hippasus, and Archelaus are also called Ionic philosophers, but we know nothing more of them than their names, and that they gave their adherence to one principle or the other.
We shall leave these now and go on to Pythagoras, who was a contemporary of Anaximander; but the continuity of the development of the principle of physical philosophy necessitated our taking Anaximenes with him. We see that, as Aristotle said, they placed the first principle in a form of matter — in air and water first, and then, if we may so define Anaximander’s matter, in an essence finer than water and coarser than air. Heraclitus, of whom we have soon to speak, first called it fire. “But no one,” as Aristotle (Metaph. I. 8) remarks, “called earth the principle, because it appears to be the most complex element” (διὰ τὴν μεγαλομέρειαν); for it seems to be an aggregate of many units. Water, on the contrary, is the one, and it is transparent; it manifests in sensuous guise the form of unity with itself, and this is also so with air, fire, matter, &c. The principle has to be one, and hence must have inherent unity with itself; if it shows a manifold nature as does the earth, it is not one with itself, but manifold. This is what we have to say about the early Ionic Philosophy. The importance of these poor abstract thoughts lies (a) in the comprehension of a universal substance in everything, and (b) in the fact that it is formless, and not encumbered by sensuous ideas.
No one recognized better the deficiencies in this philosophy than did Aristotle in the work already quoted. Two points appear in his criticism of these three modes of determining the absolute: “Those who maintain the original principle to be matter fall short in many ways. In the first place, they merely give the corporeal element and not the incorporeal, for there also is such.” In treating of nature in order to show its essence, it is necessary to deal with it in its entirety, and everything found in it must be considered. That is certainly but an empirical instance. Aristotle maintains the incorporeal to be a form of things opposed to the material, and indicates that the absolute must not be determined in a one-sided manner; because the principle of these philosophers is material only, they do not manifest the incorporeal side, nor is the object shown to be Notion. Matter is indeed itself immaterial as this reflection into consciousness; but such philosophers do not know that what they express is an existence of consciousness. Thus the first great defect here rests in the fact that the universal is expressed in a particular form.
Secondly, Aristotle says (Metaph. I. 3): “From this it may be seen that first cause has only been by all these expressed in the form of matter. But because they proceeded thus, the thing itself opened out their way for them, and forced them into further investigation. For whether origin and decay are derived from one or more, the question alike arises, ‘How does it happen and what is the cause of it?’ For the fundamental substance (τὸ ὑποκείμενον) does not make itself to change, just as neither wood nor metal are themselves the cause of change; wood neither forms a bed nor does brass a statue, but something else is the cause of the change. To investigate this, however, is to investigate the other principle, which, as we would say, is the Principle of Motion.” This criticism holds good even now, where the Absolute is represented as the one fixed substance. Aristotle says that change is not conceivable out of matter as such, or out of water not itself having motion; he reproaches the older philosophers for the fact that they have not investigated the principle of motion for which men care most. Further, object is altogether absent; there is no determination of activity. Hence Aristotle says in the former passage: “In that they undertake to give the cause of origin and decay, they in fact remove the cause of movement. Because they make the principle to be a simple body (earth being excepted), they do not comprehend the mutual origination and decay whereby the one arises out of the other: I am here referring to water, air, fire, and earth. This origination is to be shown as separation or as union, and hence the contradiction comes about that one in time comes earlier than the other. That is, because this kind of origination is the method which they have adopted, the way taken is from the simple universal, through the particular, to the individual as what comes latest. Water, air, and fire are, however, universal. Fire seems to be most suitable for this element, seeing that it is the most subtle. Thus those who made it to be the principle, most adequately gave expression to this method (λόγῳ) of origination; and others thought very similarly. For else why should no one have made the earth an element, in conformity with the popular idea? Hesiod says that it was the original body — so ancient and so common was this idea. But what in Becoming comes later, is the first in nature.” However, these philosophers did not understand this so, because they were ruled by the process of Becoming only, without again sublating it, or knowing that first formal universal as such, and manifesting the third, the totality or unity of matter and form, as essence. Here, we see, the Absolute is not yet the self-determining, the Notion turned back into itself, but only a dead abstraction; the moderns were the first, says Aristotle, (Metaph. I. 6; III. 3) to understand the fundamental principle more in the form of genus.
We are able to follow the three moments in the Ionic philosophy: (α) The original essence is water; (β) Anaximander’s infinite is descriptive of movement, simple going out of and coming back into the simple, universal aspects of form — condensation and rarefaction; (γ) the air is compared to the soul. It is now requisite that what is viewed as reality should be brought into the Notion; in so doing we see that the moments of division, condensation, and rarefaction are not in any way antagonistic to the Notion. This transition to Pythagoras, or the manifestation of the real side as the ideal, is Thought breaking free from what is sensuous, and, therefore, it is a separation between the intelligible and the real.
B. Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans.
THE LATER NEO-PYTHAGOREANS have written many extensive biographies of Pythagoras, and are especially diffuse as regards the Pythagorean brotherhood. But it must be taken into consideration that these often distorted statements must not be regarded as historical. The life of Pythagoras thus first comes to us in history through the medium of the ideas belonging to the first centuries after Christ, and more or less in the style in which the life of Christ is written, on the ground of ordinary actuality, and not in a poetic atmosphere; it appears to be the intermingling of many marvellous and extravagant tales, and to take its origin in part from eastern ideas and in part from western. In acknowledging the remarkable nature of his life and genius and of the life which he inculcated on his followers, it was added that his dealings were not with right things, and that he was a magician and one who had intercourse with higher beings. All the ideas of magic, that medley of unnatural and natural, the mysteries which pervade a clouded, miserable imagination, and the wild ideas of distorted brains, have attached themselves to him.
However corrupt the history of his life, his philosophy is as much so. Everything engendered by Christian melancholy and love of allegory has been identified with it. The treatment of Plato in Christian times has quite a different character. Numbers have been much used as the expression of ideas, and this on the one hand has a semblance of profundity. For the fact that another significance than that immediately presented is implied in them, is evident at once; but how much there is within them is neither known by him who speaks nor by him, who seeks to understand; it is like the witches’ rhyme (one time one) in Goethe’s “Faust.” The less clear the thoughts, the deeper they appear; what is most essential, but most difficult, the expression of oneself in definite conceptions, is omitted. Thus Pythagoras’ philosophy, since much has been added to it by those who wrote of it, may similarly appear as the mysterious product of minds as shallow and empty as they are dark. Fortunately, however, we have a special knowledge of the theoretic, speculative side of it, and that, indeed, from Aristotle and Sextus Empiricus, who have taken considerable trouble with it. Although later Pythagoreans disparage Aristotle on account of his exposition, he has a place above any such disparagement, and therefore to them no attention must be given.
In later times a quantity of writings were disseminated and foisted upon Pythagoras. Diogenes Laertius (VIII. 6, 7) mentions many which were by him, and others which were set down to him in order to obtain authority for them. But in the first place we have no writings by Pythagoras, and secondly it is doubtful whether any ever did exist. We have quotations from these in unsatisfactory fragments, not from Pythagoras, but from Pythagoreans. It cannot be decisively determined which developments and interpretations belonged to the ancients and which to the moderns; yet with Pythagoras and the ancient Pythagoreans the determinations were not worked out in so concrete a way as later.
As to the life of Pythagoras, we hear from Diogenes Laertius (VIII. 1-3, 45) that he flourished about the 60th Olympiad (540 B.C.). His birth is usually placed in the 49th or 50th Olympiad (584 B.C.); by Larcher in Tennemann (Vol. I., pp. 413, 414), much earlier — in the 43rd Olympiad (43, 1, i.e. 608 B.C.). He was thus contemporaneous with Thales and Anaximander. If Thales’ birth were in the 38th Olympiad and that of Pythagoras in the 43rd, Pythagoras was only twenty-one years younger than he; he either only differed by a couple of years from Anaximander (Ol. 42, 3) in age, or the latter was twenty-six years older. Anaximenes was from twenty to twenty-five years younger than Pythagoras. His birthplace was the Island of Samos, and hence he belonged to the Greeks of Asia Minor, which place we have hitherto found to be the seat of philosophy. Pythagoras is said by Herodotus (IV., 93 to 96) to have been the son of Mnesarchus, with whom Zalmoxis served as slave in Samos; Zalmoxis obtained freedom and riches, became ruler of the Getæ, and asserted that he and his people would not die. He built a subterranean habitation and there withdrew himself from his subjects; after four years he re-appeared;31 hence the Getans believed in immortality. Herodotus thinks, however, that Zalmoxis was undoubtedly much older than Pythagoras.
His youth was spent at the court of Polycrates, under whose rule Samos was brought, not only to wealth, but also to the possession of culture and art. In this prosperous period, according to Herodotus (III., 39), it possessed a fleet of a hundred ships. His father was an artist or engraver, but reports vary as to this, as also as to his country, some saying that his family was of Tyrrhenian origin and did not go to Samos till after Pythagoras’ birth. That may be as it will, for his youth was spent in Samos and he must hence have been naturalized there, and to it he belongs. He soon journeyed to the main land of Asia Minor and is said there to have become acquainted with Thales. From thence he travelled to Phœnicia and Egypt, as Iamblichus (III., 13, 14) says in his biography of Pythagoras. With both countries Asia Minor had many links, commercial and political, and it is related that he was recommended by Polycrates to King Amasis, who, according to Herodotus (II. 154), attracted many Greeks to the country, and had Greek troops and colonies. The narratives of further journeys into the interior of Asia, to the Persian magicians and Indians, seem to be altogether fabulous, although travelling, then as now, was considered to be a means of culture. As Pythagoras travelled with a scientific purpose, it is said that he had himself initiated into nearly all the mysteries of Greeks and of Barbarians, and thus he obtained admission into the order or caste of the Egyptian priesthood.
These mysteries that we meet with amongst the Greeks, and which are held to be the sources of much wisdom, appear in their religion to have stood in the relationship of doctrine to worship. This last existed in offerings and solemn festivals only, but to ordinary conceptions, to a consciousness of these conceptions, there is no transition visible unless they were preserved in poems as traditions. The doctrines themselves, or the act of bringing the actual home to the conception, seems to have been confined to the mysteries; we find it to be the case, however, that it is not only the ideas as in our teaching, but also the body that is laid claim to — that there was brought home to man by sending him to wander amongst his fellow-men, both the abandonment of his sensuous consciousness and the purification and sanctification of the body. Of philosophic matter, however, there is as little openly declared as possible, and just as we know the system of freemasonry, there is no secret in those mysteries.
His alliance with the Egyptian priesthood had a most important influence upon Pythagoras, not through the derivation of profound speculative wisdom therefrom, but by the idea obtained through it of the realization of the moral consciousness of man; the individual, he learned, must attend to himself, if inwardly and to the outer world he is to be meritorious and to bring himself, morally formed and fashioned, into actuality. This is a conception which he subsequently carried out, and it is as interesting a matter as his speculative philosophy. Just as the priests constituted a particular rank and were educated for it, they also had a special rule, which was binding throughout the whole moral life. From Egypt Pythagoras thus without doubt brought the idea of his Order, which was a regular community brought together for purposes of scientific and moral culture, which endured during the whole of life. Egypt at that time was regarded as a highly cultured country, and it was so when compared with Greece; this is shown even in the differences of caste which assumes a division amongst the great branches of life and work, such as the industrial, scientific and religious. But beyond this, we need not seek great scientific knowledge amongst the Egyptians, nor think that Pythagoras got his science there. Aristotle (Metaph. I.) only says that “in Egypt mathematical sciences first commenced, for there the nation of priests had leisure.”32
Pythagoras stayed a long time in Egypt, and returned from thence to Samos; but he found the internal affairs of his own country in confusion, and left it soon after. According to Herodotus’ account (III. 45-47), Polycrates had — not as tyrant — banished many citizens from Samos, who sought and found support amongst the Lacedæmonians, and a civil war had broken out. The Spartans had, at an earlier period, given assistance to the others, for, as Thucydides says (I. 18), to them thanks were generally ascribed for having abolished the rule of the few, and caused a reversion to the system of giving public power to the people; later on they did the opposite, abolishing democracy and introducing aristocracy. Pythagoras’ family was necessarily involved in these unpleasant relations, and a condition of internal strife was not congenial to Pythagoras, seeing that he no longer took an interest in political life, and that he saw in it an unsuitable soil for carrying out his plans. He traversed Greece, and betook himself from thence to Italy, in the lower parts of which Greek colonies from various states and for various motives had settled, and there flourished as important trading towns, rich in people and possessions.
In Crotona he settled down, and lived in independence, neither as a statesman, warrior, nor political law-giver to the people, so far as external life was concerned, but as a public teacher, with the provision that his teaching should not be taken up with mere conviction, but should also regulate the whole moral life of the individual. Diogenes Laertius says that he first gave himself the name φιλόσοφος, instead of σοφός; and men called this modesty, as if he thereby expressed, not the possession of wisdom, but only the struggle towards it, as towards an end which cannot be attained.33 But σοφός at the same time means a wise man, who is also practical, and that not in his own interest only, for that requires no wisdom, seeing that every sincere and moral man does what is best from his own point of view. Thus φιλόσοφος signifies more particularly the opposite to participation in practical matters, that is in public affairs. Philosophy is thus not the love of wisdom, as of something which one sets oneself to acquire; it is no unfulfilled desire. Φιλόσοφος means a man whose relation to wisdom is that of making it his object; this relationship is contemplation, and not mere Being; but it must be consciously that men apply themselves to this. The man who likes wine (φίλοινος) is certainly to be distinguished from the man who is full of wine, or a drunkard. Then does φίλοινος signify only a futile aspiration for wine?
What Pythagoras contrived and effected in Italy is told us by later eulogists, rather than by historians. In the history of Pythagoras by Malchus (this was the Syrian name of Porphyry) many strange things are related, and with the Neo-Platonists the contrast between their deep insight and their belief in the miraculous is surprising. For instance, seeing that the later biographers of Pythagoras had already related a quantity of marvels, they now proceeded to add yet more to these with reference to his appearance in Italy. It appears that they were exerting themselves to place him, as they afterwards did with Apollonius of Tyana, in opposition to Christ. For the wonders which they tell of him seem partly to be an amplification of those in the New Testament, and in part they are altogether absurd. For instance, they make Pythagoras begin his career in Italy with a miracle. When he landed in the Bay of Tarentum, at Crotona, he encountered fishermen on the way to the town who had caught nothing. He called upon them to draw their nets once more, and foretold the number of fishes that would be found in them. The fishermen, marvelling at this prophecy, promised him that if it came true they would do whatever he desired. It came to pass as he said, and Pythagoras then desired them to throw the fishes alive back into the sea, for the Pythagoreans ate no flesh. And it is further related as a miracle which then took place, that none of the fishes whilst they were out of the water died during the counting. This is the kind of miracle that is recorded, and the stories with which his biographers fill his life are of the same silly nature. They then make him effect such a general impression upon the mind of Italy, that all the towns reformed upon their luxurious and depraved customs, and the tyrants partly gave up their powers voluntarily, and partly they were driven out. They thereby, however, commit such historical errors as to make Charondas and Zaleucus, who lived long before Pythagoras, his disciples; and similarly to ascribe the expulsion and death of the tyrant Phalaris to him, and to his action.34
Apart from these fables, there remains as an historic fact, the great work which he accomplished, and this he did chiefly by establishing a school, and by the great influence of his order upon the principal part of the Greco-Italian states, or rather by means of the rule which was exercised in these states through this order, which lasted for a very long period of time. It is related of him that he was a very handsome man, and of a majestic appearance, which captivated as much as it commanded respect. With this natural dignity, nobility of manners, and the calm propriety of his demeanour, he united external peculiarities, through which he seemed a remarkable and mysterious being. He wore a white linen garment, and refrained from partaking of certain foods.35 Particular personality, as also the externalities of dress and the like, are no longer of importance; men let themselves be guided by general custom and fashion, since it is a matter outside of and indifferent to them not to have their own will here; for we hand over the contingent to the contingent, and only follow the external rationality that consists in identity and universality. To this outward personality there was added great eloquence and profound perception; not only did he undertake to impart this to his individual friends, but he proceeded to bring a general influence to bear on public culture, both in regard to understanding and to the whole manner of life and morals. He not merely instructed his friends, but associated them in a particular life in order to constitute them into persons and make them skilful in business and eminent in morals. The Institute of Pythagoras grew into a league, which included all men and all life in its embrace; for it was an elaborately fashioned piece of work, and excellently plastic in design.
Of the regulations of Pythagoras’ league, we have descriptions from his successors, more especially from the Neo-Platonists, who are particularly diffuse as regards its laws. The league had, on the whole, the character of a voluntary priesthood, or a monastic order of modern times. Whoever wished to be received was proved in respect of his education and obedience, and information was collected about his conduct, inclinations, and occupations. The members were subject to a special training, in which a difference was made amongst those received, in that some were exoteric and some esoteric. These last were initiated into the highest branches of science, and since political operations were not excluded from the order, they were also engaged in active politics; the former had to go through a novitiate of five years. Each member must have surrendered his means to the order, but he received them again on retiring, and in the probationary period silence was enjoined (ἐχεμυθία).36
This obligation to cease from idle talk may be called an essential condition for all culture and learning; with it men must begin if they wish to comprehend the thoughts of others and relinquish their own ideas. We are in the habit of saying that the understanding is cultivated through questioning, objecting and replying, &c., but, in fact, it is not thus formed, but made from without. What is inward in man is by culture got at and developed; hence though he remains silent, he is none the poorer in thought or denser of mind. He rather acquires thereby the power of apprehension, and comes to know that his ideas and objections are valueless; and as he learns that such ideas are valueless, he ceases to have them. Now the fact that in Pythagoras there is a separation between those in the course of preparation and those initiated, as also that silence is particularly enjoined, seems most certainly to indicate that in his brotherhood both were formal elements and not merely as present in the nature of things, as might occur spontaneously in the individual without any special law or the application of any particular consideration. But here it is important to remark that Pythagoras may be regarded as the first instructor in Greece who introduced the teachings of science; neither Thales, who was earlier than he, nor his contemporary Anaximander taught scientifically, but only imparted their ideas to their friends. There were, generally speaking, no sciences at that time; there was neither a science of philosophy, mathematics, jurisprudence or anything else, but merely isolated propositions and facts respecting these subjects. What was taught was the use of arms, theorems, music, the singing of Homer’s or Hesiod’s songs, tripod chants, &c., or other arts. This teaching is accomplished in quite another way. Now if we said that Pythagoras had introduced the teaching of science amongst a people who, though like the Greeks, untaught therein, were not stupid but most lively, cultured and loquacious, the external conditions of such teaching might in so far be given as follows: — (α) He would distinguish amongst those who as yet had no idea of the process of learning a science, so that those who first began should be excluded from that which was to be imparted to those further on; and (β) he would make them leave the unscientific mode of speaking of such matters, or their idle prattle, alone, and for the first time study science. But the fact that this action both appeared to be formal and likewise required to be made such, was, on account of its unwonted character, a necessary one, just because the followers of Pythagoras were not only numerous, necessitating a definite form and order, but also, generally speaking, they lived continually together. Thus a particular form was natural to Pythagoras, because it was the very first time that a teacher in Greece arrived at a totality, or a new principle, through the cultivation of the intelligence, mind and will. This common life had not only the educational side and that founded on the exercise of physical ingenuity or skill, but included also that of the moral culture of practical men. But even now everything relating to morality appears and is or becomes altogether formal, or rather this is so in as far as it is consciously thought of as in this relation, for to be formal is to be universal, that which is opposed to the individual. It appears so particularly to him who compares the universal and the individual and consciously reflects over both, but this difference disappears for those living therein, to whom it is ordinary habit.
Finally, we have sufficient and full accounts of the outward forms observed by the Pythagoreans in their common life and also of their discipline. For much of this, however, we are indebted to the impressions of later writers. In the league, a life regulated in all respects was advocated. First of all, it is told us, that the members made themselves known by a similar dress — the white linen of Pythagoras. They had a very strict order for each day, of which each hour had its work. The morning, directly after rising, was set aside for recalling to memory the history of the previous day, because what is to be done in the day depends chiefly on the previous day; similarly the most constant self-examination was made the duty of the evening in order to find whether the deeds done in the day were right or wrong. True culture is not the vanity of directing so much attention to oneself and occupying oneself with oneself as an individual, but the self-oblivion that absorbs oneself in the matter in hand and in the universal; it is this consideration of the thing in hand that is alone essential, while that dangerous, useless, anxious state does away with freedom. They had also to learn by heart from Homer and from Hesiod; and all through the day they occupied themselves much with music — one of the principal parts of Greek education and culture.37 Gymnastic exercises in wrestling, racing, throwing, and so on, were with them also enforced by rule. They dined together, and here, too, they had peculiar customs, but of these the accounts are different. Honey and bread were made their principal food, and water the principal, and indeed only, drink; they must thus have entirely refrained from eating meat as being associated with metempsychosis. A distinction was also made regarding vegetables — beans, for example, being forbidden. On account of this respect for beans, they were much derided, yet in the subsequent destruction of the political league, several Pythagoreans, being pursued, preferred to die than to damage a field of beans.38
The order, the moral discipline which characterized them, the common intercourse of men, did not, however, endure long; for even in Pythagoras’ life-time the affairs of his league must have become involved, since he found enemies who forcibly overthrew him. He drew down upon him, it is said, the envy of others, and was accused of thinking differently from what he seemed to indicate, and thus of having an arrière pensée. The real fact of the case was that the individual belonged, not entirely to his town, but also to another. In this catastrophe, Pythagoras himself, according to Tennemann (Vol. I. p. 414), met his death in the 69th Olympiad (504, B.C.) in a rising of the people against these aristocrats; but it is uncertain whether it happened in Crotona or in Metapontum, or in a war between the Syracusans and the Agrigentines. There is also much difference of opinion about the age of Pythagoras, for it is given sometimes as 80, and sometimes as 104.39 For the rest, the unity of the Pythagorean school, the friendship of the members, and the connecting bond of culture have even in later times remained, but not in the formal character of a league, because what is external must pass away. The history of Magna Græcia is in general little known, but even in Plato’s40 time we find Pythagoreans appearing at the head of states or as a political power.
The Pythagorean brotherhood had no relation with Greek public and religious life, and therefore could not endure for long: in Egypt and in Asia exclusiveness and priestly influence have their home, but Greece, in its freedom, could not let the Eastern separation of caste exist. Freedom here is the principle of civic life, but still it is not yet determined as principle in the relations of public and private law. With us the individual is free since all are alike before the law; diversity in customs, in political relations and opinions may thus exist, and must indeed so do in organic states. In democratic Greece, on the contrary, manners, the external mode of life, necessarily preserved a certain similarity, and the stamp of similarity remained impressed on these wider spheres; for the exceptional condition of the Pythagoreans, who could not take their part as free citizens, but were dependent on the plans and ends of a combination and led an exclusive religious life, there was no place in Greece. The preservation of the mysteries certainly belonged to the Eumolpidæ, and other special forms of worship to other particular families, but they were not regarded in a political sense as of fixed and definite castes, but as priests usually are, politicians, citizens, men like their fellows; nor, as with the Christians, was the separation of religious persons driven to the extreme of monastic rule. In ordinary civic life in Greece, no one could prosper or maintain his position who held peculiar principles, or even secrets, and differed in outward modes of life and clothing; for what evidently united and distinguished them was their community of principles and life — whether anything was good for the commonwealth or not, was by them publicly and openly discussed. The Greeks are above having particular clothing, maintaining special customs of washing, rising, practising music, and distinguishing between pure and impure foods. This, they say, is partly the affair of the particular individual and of his personal freedom, and has no common end in view, and partly it is a general custom and usage for everybody alike.
What is most important to us is the Pythagorean philosophy — not the philosophy of Pythagoras so much as that of the Pythagoreans, as Aristotle and Sextus express it. The two must certainly be distinguished, and from comparing what is given out as Pythagorean doctrine, many anomalies and discrepancies become evident, as we shall see. Plato bears the blame of having destroyed Pythagorean philosophy through absorbing what is Pythagorean in it into his own. But the Pythagorean philosophy itself developed to a point which left it quite other than what at first it was. We hear of many followers of Pythagoras in history who have arrived at this or that conclusion, such as Alcmæon and Philolaus; and we see in many cases the simple undeveloped form contrasted with the further stages of development in which thought comes forth in definiteness and power. We need, however, go no further into the historical side of the distinction, for we can only consider the Pythagorean philosophy generally; similarly we must separate what is known to belong to the Neo-Platonists and Neo-Pythagoreans, and for this end we have sources to draw from which are earlier than this period, namely the express statements found in Aristotle and Sextus.
The Pythagorean philosophy forms the transition from realistic to intellectual philosophy. The Ionic school said that essence or principle is a definite material. The next conclusion is (α) that the absolute is not grasped in natural form, but as a thought determination. (β) Then it follows that determinations must be posited while the beginning was altogether undetermined. The Pythagorean philosophy has done both.
- The System of Numbers. Thus the original and simple proposition of the Pythagorean philosophy is, according to Aristotle (Metaph. I. 5), “that number is the reality of things, and the constitution of the whole universe in its determinations is an harmonious system of numbers and of their relations.” In what sense is this statement to be taken? The fundamental determination of number is its being a measure; if we say that everything is quantitatively or qualitatively determined, the size and measure is only one aspect or characteristic which is present in everything, but the meaning here is that number itself is the essence and the substance of things, and not alone their form. What first strikes us as surprising is the boldness of such language, which at once sets aside everything which to the ordinary idea is real and true, doing away with sensuous existence and making it to be the creation of thought. Existence is expressed as something which is not sensuous, and thus what to the senses and to old ideas is altogether foreign, is raised into and expressed as substance and as true Being. But at the same time the necessity is shown for making number to be likewise Notion, to manifest it as the activity of its unity with Being, for to us number does not seem to be in immediate unity with the Notion.
Now although this principle appears to us to be fanciful and wild, we find in it that number is not merely something sensuous, therefore it brings determination with it, universal distinctions and antitheses. The ancients had a very good knowledge of these. Aristotle (Metaph. I. 6) says of Plato: “He maintained that the mathematical elements in things are found outside of what is merely sensuous, and of ideas, being between both; it differs from what is sensuous in that it is eternal and unchangeable, and from ideas, in that it possesses multiplicity, and hence each can resemble and be similar to another, while each idea is for itself one alone.” That is, number can be repeated; thus it is not sensuous, and still not yet thought. In the life of Pythagoras, this is further said by Malchus (46, 47): “Pythagoras propounded philosophy in this wise in order to loose thought from its fetters. Without thought nothing true can be discerned or known; thought hears and sees everything in itself, the rest is lame and blind. To obtain his end, Pythagoras makes use of mathematics, since this stands midway between what is sensuous and thought, as a kind of preliminary to what is in and for itself.” Malchus quotes further (48, 53) a passage from an early writer, Moderatus: “Because the Pythagoreans could not clearly express the absolute and the first principles through thought, they made use of numbers, of mathematics, because in this form determinations could be easily expressed.” For instance, similarity could be expressed as one, dissimilarity as two. “This mode of teaching through the use of numbers, whilst it was the first philosophy, is superseded on account of its mysterious nature. Plato, Speusippus, Aristotle, &c., have stolen the fruits of their work from the Pythagoreans by making a simple use of their principle.” In this passage a perfect knowledge of numbers is evident.
The enigmatic character of the determination through number is what most engages our attention. The numbers of arithmetic answers to thought-determinations, for number has the “one” as element and principle; the one, however, is a category of being-for-self, and thus of identity with self, in that it excludes all else and is indifferent to what is “other.” The further determinations of number are only further combinations and repetitions of the one, which all through remains fixed and external; number, thus, is the most utterly dead, notionless continuity possible; it is an entirely external and mechanical process, which is without necessity. Hence number is not immediate Notion, but only a beginning of thought, and a beginning in the worst possible way; it is the Notion in its extremest externality, in quantitative form, and in that of indifferent distinction. In so far, the one has within itself both the principle of thought and that of materiality, or the determination of the sensuous. In order that anything should have the form of Notion, it must immediately in itself, as determined, relate itself to its opposite, just as positive is related to negative; and in this simple movement of the Notion we find the ideality of differences and negation of independence to be the chief determination. On the other hand, in the number three, for instance, there are always three units, of which each is independent; and this is what constitutes both their defect and their enigmatic character. For since the essence of the Notion is innate, numbers are the most worthless instruments for expressing Notion-determinations.
Now the Pythagoreans did not accept numbers in this indifferent way, but as Notion. “At least they say that phenomena must be composed of simple elements, and it would be contrary to the nature of things if the principle of the universe pertained to sensuous phenomena. The elements and principles are thus not only intangible and invisible, but altogether incorporeal.”41 But how they have come to make numbers the original principle or the absolute Notion, is better shown from what Aristotle says in his Metaphysics (I. 5), although he is shorter than he would have been, because he alleges that elsewhere (infra., p. 214) he has spoken of it. “In numbers they thought that they perceived much greater similitude to what is and what takes place than in fire, water, or earth; since a certain property of numbers (τοιονδὶ πάθος) is justice, so is it with (τοιονδὶ) the soul and understanding; another property is opportunity, and so on. Since they further saw the conditions and relations of what is harmonious present in numbers, and since numbers are at the basis of all natural things, they considered numbers to be the elements of everything, and the whole heavens to be a harmony and number.” In the Pythagoreans we see the necessity for one enduring universal idea as a thought-determination. Aristotle (Met. XII. 4), speaking of ideas, says: “According to Heraclitus, everything sensuous flows on, and thus there cannot be a science of the sensuous; from this conviction the doctrine of ideas sprang. Socrates is the first to define the universal through inductive methods; the Pythagoreans formerly concerned themselves merely with a few matters of which they derived the notions from numbers — as, for example, with what opportuneness, or right, or marriage are.” It is impossible to discern what interest this in itself can have; the only thing which is necessary for us as regards the Pythagoreans, is to recognize any indications of the Idea, in which there may be a progressive principle.
This is the whole of the Pythagorean philosophy taken generally. We now have to come to closer quarters, and to consider the determinations, or universal significance. In the Pythagorean system numbers seem partly to be themselves allied to categories — that is, to be at once the thought-determinations of unity, of opposition and of the unity of these two moments. In part, the Pythagoreans from the very first gave forth universal ideal determinations of numbers as principles, and recognized, as Aristotle remarks (Metaph. I. 5), as the absolute principles of things, not so much immediate numbers in their arithmetic differences, as the principles of number, i.e. their rational differences. The first determination is unity generally, the next duality or opposition. It is most important to trace back the infinitely manifold nature of the forms and determinations of finality to their universal thoughts as the most simple principles of all determination. These are not differences of one thing from another, but universal and essential differences within themselves. Empirical objects distinguish themselves by outward form; this piece of paper can be distinguished from another, shades are different in colour, men are separated by differences of temperament and individuality. But these determinations are not essential differences; they are certainly essential for the definite particularity of the things, but the whole particularity defined is not an existence which is in and for itself essential, for it is the universal alone which is the self-contained and the substantial. Pythagoras began to seek these first determinations of unity, multiplicity, opposition, &c. With him they are for the most part numbers; but the Pythagoreans did not remain content with this, for they gave them the more concrete determinations, which really belong to their successors. Necessary progression and proof are not to be sought for here; comprehension, the development of duality out of unity are wanting. Universal determinations are only found and established in a quite dogmatic form, and hence the determinations are dry, destitute of process or dialectic, and stationary.
a. The Pythagoreans say that the first simple Notion is unity (μονάς); not the discrete, multifarious, arithmetic one, but identity as continuity and positivity, the entirely universal essence. They further say, according to Sextus (adv. Math. X. 260, 261): “All numbers come under the Notion of the one; for duality is one duality and triplicity is equally a ‘one,’ but the number ten is the one chief number. This moved Pythagoras to assert unity to be the principle of things, because, through partaking of it, each is called one.” That is to say, the pure contemplation of the implicit being of a thing is the one, the being like self; to all else it is not implicit, but a relationship to what is other. Things, however, are much more determined than being merely this dry “one.” The Pythagoreans have expressed this remarkable relationship of the entirely abstract one to the concrete existence of things through “simulation” (μίμησις). The same difficulty which they here encounter is also found in Plato’s Ideas; since they stand over against the concrete as species, the relation of concrete to universal is naturally an important point. Aristotle (Metaph. I. 6) ascribes the expression “participation” (μέθεξις) to Plato, who took it in place of the Pythagorean expression “simulation.” Simulation is a figurative, childish way of putting the relationship; participation is undoubtedly more definite. But Aristotle says, with justice, that both are insufficient; that Plato has not here arrived at any further development, but has only substituted another name. “To say that ideas are prototypes and that other things participate in them is empty talk and a poetic metaphor; for what is the active principle that looks upon the ideas?” (Metaph. I. 9). Simulation and participation are nothing more than other names for relation; to give names is easy, but it is another thing to comprehend.
b. What comes next is the opposition, the duality (δυάς), the distinction, the particular; such determinations have value even now in Philosophy; Pythagoras merely brought them first to consciousness. Now, as this unity relates to multiplicity, or this being-like-self to being another, different applications are possible, and the Pythagoreans have expressed themselves variously as to the forms which this first opposition takes.
(α) They said, according to Aristotle (Metaph. I. 5): “The elements of number are the even and the odd; the latter is the finite” (or principle of limitation) “and the former is the infinite; thus the unity proceeds from both and out of this again comes number.” The elements of immediate number are not yet themselves numbers: the opposition of these elements first appears in arithmetical form rather than as thought. But the one is as yet no number, because as yet it is not quantity; unity and quantity belong to number. Theon of Smyrna42 says: “Aristotle gives, in his writings on the Pythagoreans, the reason why, in their view, the one partakes of the nature of even and odd; that is, one, posited as even, makes odd; as odd, it makes even. This is what it could not do unless it partook of both natures, for which reason they also called the one, even-odd” (ἀρτιοπέριττον).
(β) If we follow the absolute Idea in this first mode, the opposition will also be called the undetermined duality (ἀόριστος δυάς). Sextus speaks more definitely (adv. Math. X. 261, 262) as follows: “Unity, thought of in its identity with itself (κατ̓ αὐτότητα ἑαυτῆς), is unity; if this adds itself to itself as something different (καθ̓ ἑτερότητα), undetermined duality results, because no one of the determined or otherwise limited numbers is this duality, but all are known through their participation in it, as has been said of unity. There are, according to this, two principles in things; the first unity, through participation in which all number-units are units, and also undetermined duality through participation in which all determined dualities are dualities.” Duality is just as essential a moment in the Notion as is unity. Comparing them with one another, we may either consider the unity to be form and duality matter, or the other way; and both appear in different modes. (αα) Unity, as the being-like-self, is the formless; but in duality, as the unlike, there comes division or form. (ββ) If, on the other hand, we take form as the simple activity of absolute form, the one is what determines; and duality as the potentiality of multiplicity, or as multiplicity not posited, is matter. Aristotle (Met. I. 6) says that it is characteristic of Plato that “he makes out of matter many, but with him the form originates only once; whereas out of one matter only one table proceeds, whoever brings form to matter, in spite of its unity, makes many tables.” He also ascribes this to Plato, that “instead of showing the undetermined to be simple (ἀντὶ τοῦ ἀπείρου ὡς ἑνός), he made of it a duality — the great and small.”
(γ) Further consideration of this opposition, in which Pythagoreans differ from one another, shows us the imperfect beginning of a table of categories which were then brought forward by them, as later on by Aristotle. Hence the latter was reproached for having borrowed these thought-determinations from them; and it certainly was the case that the Pythagoreans first made the opposite to be an essential moment in the absolute. They further determined the abstract and simple Notions, although it was in an inadequate way, since their table presents a mixture of antitheses in the ordinary idea and the Notion, without following these up more fully. Aristotle (Met. I. 5) ascribes these determinations either to Pythagoras himself, or else to Alcmæon “who flourished in the time of Pythagoras’ old age,” so that “either Alcmæon took them from the Pythagoreans or the latter took them from him.” Of these antitheses or co-ordinates to which all things are traced, ten are given, for, according to the Pythagoreans, ten is a number of great significance: —
This is certainly an attempt towards a development of the Idea of speculative philosophy in itself, i.e. in Notions; but the attempt does not seem to have gone further than this simple enumeration. It is very important that at first only a collection of general thought-determinations should be made, as was done by Aristotle; but what we here see with the Pythagoreans is only a rude beginning of the further determination of antitheses, without order and sense, and very similar to the Indian enumeration of principles and substances.
(δ) We find the further progress of these determinations in Sextus (adv. Math. X. 262-277), when he speaks about an exposition of the later Pythagoreans. It is a very good and well considered account of the Pythagorean theories, which has some thought in it. The exposition follows these lines: “The fact that these two principles are the principles of the whole, is shown by the Pythagoreans in manifold ways.”
א. “There are three methods of thinking things; firstly, in accordance with diversity, secondly, with opposition, and thirdly, according to relation. (αα) What is considered in its mere diversity, is considered for itself; this is the case with those subjects in which each relates only to itself, such as horse, plant, earth, air, water and fire. Such matters are thought of as detached and not in relation to others.” This is the determination of identity with self or of independence. (ββ) “In reference to opposition, the one is determined as evidently contrasting with the other; we have examples of this in good and evil, right and wrong, sacred and profane, rest and movement, &c. (γγ) According to relation (πρός τι), we have the object which is determined in accordance with its relationship to others, such as right and left, over and under, double and half. One is only comprehensible from the other; for I cannot tell which is my left excepting by my right.” Each of these relations in its opposition, is likewise set up for itself in a position of independence. “The difference between relationship and opposition is that in opposition the coming into existence of the ‘one’ is at the expense of the ‘other,’ and conversely. If motion is taken away, rest commences; if motion begins, rest ceases; if health is taken away, sickness begins, and conversely. In a condition of relationship, on the contrary, both take their rise, and both similarly cease together; if the right is removed, so also is the left; the double goes and the half is destroyed.” What is here taken away is taken not only as regards its opposition, but also in its existence. “A second difference is that what is in opposition has no middle; for example, between sickness and health, life and death, rest and motion, there is no third. Relativity, on the contrary, has a middle, for between larger and smaller there is the like; and between too large and too small the right size is the medium.” Pure opposition passes through nullity to opposition; immediate extremes, on the other hand, subsist in a third or middle state, but in such a case no longer as opposed. This exposition shows a certain regard for universal, logical determinations, which now and always have the greatest possible importance, and are moments in all conceptions and in everything that is. The nature of these opposites is, indeed, not considered here, but it is of importance that they should be brought to consciousness.
ב. “Now since these three represent three different genera, the subjects and the two-fold opposite, there must be a higher genus over each of them which takes the first place, since the genus comes before its subordinate kinds. If the universal is taken away, so is the kind; on the other hand, if the kind, not the genus, for the former depends on the latter, but not the contrary way.” (αα) “The Pythagoreans have declared the one to be the highest genus of what is considered as in and for itself” (of subjects in their diversity); this is, properly speaking, nothing more than translating the determinations of the Notion into numbers. (ββ) “What is in opposition has, they say, as its genus the like and the unlike; rest is the like, for it is capable of nothing more and nothing less; but movement is the unlike. Thus what is according to nature is like itself; it is a point which is not capable of being intensified (ἀνεπίτατος); what is opposed to it is unlike. Health is like, sickness is unlike. (γγ) The genus of that which is in an indifferent relationship is excess and want, the more and the less;” in this we have the quantitative relation just as we formerly had the qualitative.
ג. We now come for the first time to the two opposites: “These three genera of what is for itself, in opposition and in relationship, must now come under” — yet simpler, higher— “genera,” i.e. thought-determinations. “Similarity reduces itself to the determination of unity.” The genus of the subjects is the very being on its own account. “Dissimilarity, however, consists of excess and want, but both of these come under undetermined duality;” they are the undetermined opposition, opposition generally. “Thus from all these relationships the first unity and the undetermined duality proceed;” the Pythagoreans said that such are found to be the universal modes of things. “From these, there first comes the ‘one’ of numbers and the ‘two’ of numbers; from the first unity, the one; from the unity and the undetermined duality the two; for twice the one is two. The other numbers take their origin in a similar way, for the unity over moves forward, and the undetermined duality generates the two.” This transition of qualitative into quantitative opposition is not clear. “Hence underlying these principles, unity is the active principle” or form, “but the two is the passive matter; and just as they make numbers arise from them, so do they make the system of the world and that which is contained in it.” The nature of these determinations is to be found in transition and in movement. The deeper significance of this reflection rests in the connection of universal thought-determinations with arithmetic numbers — in subordinating these and making the universal genus first.
Before I say anything of the further sequence of these numbers, it must be remarked that they, as we see them represented here, are pure Notions. (α) The absolute, simple essence divides itself into unity and multiplicity, of which the one sublates the other, and at the same time it has its existence in the opposition. (β) The opposition has at the same time subsistence, and in this is found the manifold nature of equivalent things. (γ) The return of absolute essence into itself is the negative unity of the individual subject and of the universal or positive. This is, in fact, the pure speculative Idea of absolute existence; it is this movement: with Plato the Idea is nothing else. The speculative makes its appearance here as speculative; whoever does not know the speculative, does not believe that in indicating simple Notions such as these, absolute essence is expressed. One, many, like, unlike, more or less, are trivial, empty, dry moments; that there should be contained in them absolute essence, the riches and the organization of the natural, as of the spiritual world, does not seem possible to him who, accustomed to ordinary ideas, has not gone back from sensuous existence into thought. It does not seem to such a one that God is, in a speculative sense, expressed thereby — that what is most sublime can be put in those common words, what is deepest, in what is so well known, self-evident and open, and what is richest, in the poverty of these abstractions.
It is at first in opposition to common reality that this idea of reality as the manifold of simple essence, has in itself its opposition and the subsistence of the same; this essential, simple Notion of reality is elevation into thought, but it is not flight from what is real, but the expression of the real itself in its essence. We here find the Reason which expresses its essence; and absolute reality is unity immediately in itself. Thus it is pre-eminently in relation to this reality that the difficulties of those who do not think speculatively have become so intense. What is its relation to common reality? What has taken place is just what happens with the Platonic Ideas, which approximate very closely to these numbers, or rather to pure Notions. That is to say, the first question is, “Numbers, where are they? Dispersed through space, dwelling in independence in the heaven of ideas? They are not things immediately in themselves, for a thing, a substance, is something quite other than a number: a body bears no similarity to it.” To this we may answer that the Pythagoreans did not signify anything like that which we understand by prototypes — as if ideas, as the laws and relations of things, were present in a creative consciousness as thoughts in the divine understanding, separated from things as are the thoughts of an artist from his work. Still less did they mean only subjective thoughts in our consciousness, for we use the absolute antithesis as the explanation of the existence of qualities in things, but what determines is the real substance of what exists, so that each thing is essentially just its having in it unity, duality, as also their antithesis and connection. Aristotle (Met. I. 5, 6) puts it clearly thus: “It is characteristic of the Pythagoreans that they did not maintain the finite and the infinite and the One, to be, like fire, earth, &c., different natures or to have another reality than things; for the Infinite and the abstract One are to them, the substance of the things of which they are predicated. Hence too, they said, Number is the essence of all things. Thus they do not separate numbers from things, but consider them to be things themselves. Number to them is the principle and matter of things, as also their qualities and forces;” hence it is thought as substance, or the thing as it is in the reality of thought.
These abstract determinations then became more concretely determined, especially by the later philosophers, in their speculations regarding God. We may instance Iamblichus, for example, in the work θεολογούμενα ἀριθμητικῆς, ascribed to him by Porphyry and Nicomachus. Those philosophers sought to raise the character of popular religion, for they inserted such thought-determinations as these into religious conceptions. By Monas they understood nothing other than God; they also call it Mind, the Hermaphrodite (which contains both determinations, odd as well as even), and likewise substance, reason, chaos (because it is undetermined), Tartarus, Jupiter, and Form. They called the duad by similar names, such as matter, and then the principle of the unlike, strife, that which begets, Isis, &c.
c. The triad (τριάς) has now become a most important number, seeing that in it the monad has reached reality and perfection. The monad proceeds through the duad, and again brought into unity with this undetermined manifold, it is the triad. Unity and multiplicity are present in the triad in the worst possible way — as an external combination; but however abstractly this is understood, the triad is still a profound form. The triad then is held to be the first perfect form in the universal. Aristotle (De Cœlo I. 1) puts this very clearly: “The corporeal has no dimension outside of the Three; hence the Pythagoreans also say that the all and everything is determined through triplicity,” that is, it has absolute form. “For the number of the whole has end, middle, and beginning; and this is the triad.” Nevertheless there is something superficial in the wish to bring everything under it, as is done in the systematization of the more modern natural philosophy. “Therefore we, too, taking this determination from nature, make use of it in the worship of the gods, so that we believe them to have been properly apostrophized only when we have called upon them three times in prayer. Two we call both, but not all; we speak first of three as all. What is determined through three is the first totality (πᾶν); what is in triple form is perfectly divided. Some is merely in one, other is only in two, but this is All.” What is perfect, or has reality, is its identity, opposition and unity, like number generally; but in triplicity this is actual, because it has beginning, middle, and end. Each thing is simple as beginning; it is other or manifold as middle, and its end is the return of its other nature into unity or mind; if we take this triplicity from a thing, we negate it and make of it an abstract construction of thought.
It is now comprehensible that Christians sought and found the Trinity in this threefold nature. It has often been made a superficial reason for objecting to them; sometimes the idea of the Trinity as it was present to the ancients, was considered as above reason, as a secret, and hence, too high; sometimes it was deemed too absurd. But from the one cause or from the other, they did not wish to bring it into closer relation to reason. If there is a meaning in this Trinity, we must try to understand it. It would be an anomalous thing if there were nothing in what has for two thousand years been the holiest Christian idea; if it were too holy to be brought down to the level of reason, or were something now quite obsolete, so that it would be contrary to good taste and sense to try to find a meaning in it. It is the Notion of the Trinity alone of which we can speak, and not of the idea of Father and Son, for we am not dealing with these natural relationships.
d. The Four (τετράς) is the triad but more developed, and hence with the Pythagoreans it held a high position. That the tetrad should be considered to be thus complete, reminds one of the four elements, the physical and the chemical, the four continents, &c. In nature four is found to be present everywhere, and hence this number is even now equally esteemed in natural philosophy. As the square of two, the fourfold is the perfection of the two-fold in as far as it — only having itself as determination, i.e. being multiplied with itself — returns into identity with itself. But in the triad the tetrad is in so far contained, as that the former is the unity, the other-being, and the union of both these moments, and thus, since the difference, as posited, is a double, if we count it, four moments result. To make this clearer, the tetrad is comprehended as the τετρακτύς, the efficient, active four (from τέτταρα and ἄγω); and afterwards this is by the Pythagoreans made the most notable number. In the fragments of a poem of Empedocles, who originally was a Pythagorean, it is shown in what high regard this tetraktus, as represented by Pythagoras, was held:
“If thou dost this,
It will lead thee in the path of holy piety. I swear it
By the one who to our spirit has given the Tetraktus,
Which has in it eternal nature’s source and root.”43
e. From this the Pythagoreans proceed to the ten, another form of this tetrad. As the four is the perfect form of three, this fourfold, thus perfected and developed so that all its moments shall be accepted as real differences, is the number ten (δεκάς), the real tetrad. Sextus (adv. Math. IV. 3; VII. 94, 95) says: “Tetraktus means the number which, comprising within itself the four first numbers, forms the most perfect number, that is the number ten; for one and two and three and four make ten. When we come to ten, we again consider it as a unity and begin once more from the beginning. The tetraktus, it is said, has the source and root of eternal nature within itself, because it is the Logos of the universe, of the spiritual and of the corporeal.” It is an important work of thought to show the moments not merely to be four units, but complete numbers; but the reality in which the determinations are laid hold of, is here, however, only the external and superficial one of number; there is no Notion present although the tetraktus does not mean number so much as idea. One of the later philosophers, Proclus, (in Timæum, p. 269) says, in a Pythagorean hymn: —
“The divine number goes on,”…
“Till from the still unprofaned sanctuary of the Monad
It reaches to the holy Tetrad, which creates the mother of all that is;
Which received all within itself, or formed the ancient bounds of all,
Incapable of turning or of wearying; men call it the holy Dekad.”
What we find about the progression of the other numbers is more indefinite and unsatisfying, and the Notion loses itself in them. Up to five there may certainly be a kind of thought in numbers, but from six onwards they are merely arbitrary determinations.
- Application of the System to the Universe. This simple idea and the simple reality contained therein, must now, however, be further developed in order to come to reality as it is when put together and expanded. The question now meets us as to how, in this relation, the Pythagoreans passed from abstract logical determinations to forms which indicate the concrete use of numbers. In what pertains to space or music, determinations of objects formed by the Pythagoreans through numbers, still bear a somewhat closer relation to the thing, but when they enter the region of the concrete in nature and in mind, numbers become purely formal and empty.
a. To show how the Pythagoreans constructed out of numbers the system of the world, Sextus instances (adv. Math. X. 277-283), space relations, and undoubtedly we have in them to do with such ideal principles, for numbers are, in fact, perfect determinations of abstract space. That is to say, if we begin with the point, the first negation of vacuity, “the point corresponds to unity; it is indivisible and the principle of lines, as the unity is that of numbers. While the point exists as the monad or One, the line expresses the duad or Two, for both become comprehensible through transition; the line is the pure relationship of two points and is without breadth. Surface results from the threefold; but the solid figure or body belongs to the fourfold, and in it there are three dimensions present. Others say that body consists of one point” (i.e. its essence is one point), “for the flowing point makes the line, the flowing line, however, makes surface, and this surface makes body. They distinguish themselves from the first mentioned, in that the former make numbers primarily proceed from the monad and the undetermined duad, and then points and lines, plane surfaces and solid figures, from numbers, while they construct all from one point.” To the first, distinction is opposition or form set forth as duality; the others have form as activity. “Thus what is corporeal is formed under the directing influence of numbers, but from them also proceed the definite bodies, water, air, fire, and the whole universe generally, which they declare to be harmonious. This harmony is one which again consists of numeral relations only, which constitute the various concords of the absolute harmony.”
We must here remark that the progression from the point to actual space also has the signification of occupation of space, for “according to their fundamental tenets and teaching,” says Aristotle (Metaph. I. 8), “they speak of sensuously perceptible bodies in nowise differently from those which are mathematical.” Since lines and surfaces are only abstract moments in space, external construction likewise proceeds from here very well. On the other hand, the transition from the occupation of space generally to what is determined, to water, earth, &c., is quite another thing and is more difficult; or rather the Pythagoreans have not taken this step, for the universe itself has, with them, the speculative, simple form, which is found in the fact of being represented as a system of number-relations. But with all this, the physical is not yet determined.
b. Another application or exhibition of the essential nature of the determination of numbers is to be found in the relations of music, and it is more especially in their case that number constitutes the determining factor. The differences here show themselves as various relations of numbers, and this mode of determining what is musical is the only one. The relation borne by tones to one another is founded on quantitative differences whereby harmonies may be formed, in distinction to others by which discords are constituted. The Pythagoreans, according to Porphyry (De vita Pyth. 30), treated music as something soul-instructing and scholastic (Psychagogisches und Pädagogisches). Pythagoras was the first to discern that musical relations, these audible differences, are mathematically determinable, that what we hear as consonance and dissonance is a mathematical arrangement. The subjective, and, in the case of hearing, simple feeling which, however, exists inherently in relation, Pythagoras has justified to the understanding, and he attained his object by means of fixed determinations. For to him the discovery of the fundamental tones of harmony are ascribed, and these rest on the most simple number-relations. Iamblichus (De vita Pyth. XXVI. 115) says that Pythagoras, in passing by the workshop of a smith, observed the strokes that gave forth a particular chord; he then took into consideration the weight of the hammer giving forth a certain harmony, and from that determined mathematically the tone as related thereto.44 And finally he applied the same, and experimented in strings, by which means there were three different relations presented to him — Diapason, Diapente, and Diatessaron. It is known that the tone of a string, or, in the wind instrument, of its equivalent, the column of air in a reed, depends on three conditions; on its length, on its thickness, and on the amount of tension. Now if we have two strings of equal thickness and length, a difference in tension brings about a difference in sound. If we want to know what tone any string has, we have only to consider its tension, and this may be measured by the weight depending from the string, by means of which it is extended. Pythagoras here found that if one string were weighted with twelve pounds, and another with six (λόγος διπλάσιος, 1 : 2) it would produce the musical chord of the octave (διὰ πασῶν); the proportion of 8 : 12, or of 2 : 3 (λόγος ἡμιόλιος) would give the chord of the fifth (διὰ πέντε); the proportion of 9 : 12, or 3 : 4 (λόγος ἐπίτριτος), the fourth (διὰ τεσσάρων).45 A different number of vibrations in like times determines the height and depth of the tone, and this number is likewise proportionate to the weight, if thickness and length are equal. In the first case, the more distended string makes as many vibrations again as the other; in the second case, it makes three vibrations for the other’s two, and so it goes on. Here number is the real factor which determines the difference, for tone, as the vibration of a body, is only a quantitatively determined quiver or movement, that is, a determination made through space and time. For there can be no determination for the difference excepting that of number or the amount of vibrations in one time; and hence a determination made through numbers is nowhere more in place than here. There certainly are also qualitative differences, such as those existing between the tones of metals and catgut strings, and between the human voice and wind instruments; but the peculiar musical relation borne by the tone of one instrument to another, in which harmony is to be found, is a relationship of numbers.
From this point the Pythagoreans enter into further applications of the theory of music, in which we cannot follow them. The à priori law of progression, and the necessity of movement in number-relations, is a matter which is entirely dark; minds confused may wander about at will, for everywhere ideas are hinted at, and superficial harmonies present themselves and disappear again. But in all that treats of the further construction of the universe as a numerical system, we have the whole extent of the confusion and turbidity of thought belonging to the later Pythagoreans. We cannot say how much pains they took to express philosophic thought in a system of numbers, and also to understand the expressions given utterance to by others, and to put in them all the meaning possible. When they determined the physical and the moral universe by means of numbers, everything came into indefinite and insipid relationships in which the Notion disappeared. In this matter, however, so far as the older Pythagoreans are concerned, we are acquainted with the main principles only. Plato exemplifies to us the conception of the universe as a system of numbers, but Cicero and the ancients always call these numbers the Platonic, and it does not appear that they were ascribed to the Pythagoreans. It was thus later on that this came to be said; even in Cicero’s time they had become proverbially dark, and there is but little after all that is really old.
c. The Pythagoreans further constructed the heavenly bodies of the visible universe by means of numbers, and here we see at once the barrenness and abstraction present in the determination of numbers. Aristotle says (Met. I. 5), “Because they defined numbers to be the principles of all nature, they brought under numbers and their relationships all determinations and all sections, both of the heavens and of all nature; and where anything did not altogether conform, they sought to supply the deficiency in order to bring about a harmony. For instance, as the Ten or dekad appeared to them to be the perfect number, or that which embraces the whole essence of numbers, they said that the spheres moving in the heavens must be ten; but as only nine of these are visible, they made out a tenth, the Antichthone (ἀντίχθονα).” These nine are, first the milky way, or the fixed stars, and after that the seven stars which were then all held to be planets: Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, Mercury, the Sun, Moon, and in the last and ninth place, the Earth. The tenth is thus the Antichthone, and in regard to this it must remain uncertain whether the Pythagoreans considered it to be the side of the Earth which is turned away, or as quite another body.
Aristotle says, in reference to the specially physical character of these spheres (De cœlo II. 13 and 9), “Fire was by the Pythagoreans placed in the middle, but the Earth was made a star that moved around this central body in a circle.” This circle is, then, a sphere, which, as the most perfect of figures, corresponds to the dekad. We here find a certain similarity to our ideas of the solar system, but the Pythagoreans did not believe the fire to be the sun. “They thus,” says Aristotle, “rely, not on sensuous appearance, but on reasons,” just as we form conclusions in accordance with reasons as opposed to sensuous appearances; and indeed this comes to us still as the first example of things being in themselves different from what they appear. “This fire, that which is in the centre, they called Jupiter’s place of watch. Now these ten spheres make, like all that is in motion, a tone; but each makes a different one, according to the difference in its size and velocity. This is determined by means of the different distances, which bear an harmonious relationship to one another, in accordance with musical intervals; by this means an harmonious sound arises in the moving spheres” — a universal chorus.
We must acknowledge the grandeur of this idea of determining everything in the system of the heavenly spheres through number-relations which have a necessary connection amongst themselves, and have to be conceived of as thus necessarily related; it is a system of relations which must also form the basis and essence of what can be heard, or music. We have, comprehended here in thought, a system of the universe; the solar system is alone rational to us, for the other stars are devoid of interest. To say that there is music in the spheres, and that these movements are tones, may seem just as comprehensible to us as to say that the sun is still and the earth moves, although both are opposed to the dictates of sense. For, seeing that we do not see the movement, it may be that we do not hear the notes. And there is little difficulty in imagining a universal silence in these vast spheres, since we do not hear the chorus, but it is more difficult to give a reason for not hearing this music. The Pythagoreans say, according to the last quoted passage of Aristotle, that we do not hear it because we live in it, like the smith who gets accustomed to the blows of his hammer. Since it belongs to our substance and is identical with ourselves, nothing else, such as silence, by which we might know the other, comes into relationship with us, for we are conceived of as entirely within the movement. But the movement does not become a tone, in the first place, because pure space and time, the elements in movement, can only raise themselves into a proper voice, unstimulated from without, in an animate body, and movement first reaches this definite, characteristic individuality in the animal proper; and, in the next place, because the heavenly bodies are not related to one another as bodies whose sound requires for its production, contact, friction, or shock, in response to which, and as the negation of its particularity its own momentary individuality resounds in elasticity; for heavenly bodies are independent of one another, and have only a general, non-individual, free motion.
We may thus set aside sound; the music of the spheres is indeed a wonderful conception, but it is devoid of any real interest for us. If we retain the conception that motion, as measure, is a necessarily connected system of numbers, as the only rational part of the theory, we must maintain that nothing further has transpired to the present day. In a certain way, indeed, we have made an advance upon Pythagoras. We have learned from Kepler about laws, about eccentricity, and the relation of distances to the times of revolution, but no amount of mathematics has as yet been able to give us the laws of progression in the harmony through which the distances are determined. We know empirical numbers well enough, but everything has the semblance of accident and not of necessity. We are acquainted with an approximate rule of distances, and thus have correctly foretold the existence of planets where Ceres, Vesta, Pallas, &c., were afterwards discovered — that is, between Mars and Jupiter. But astronomy has not as yet found in it a consistent sequence in which there is rationality; on the other hand, it even looks with disdain on the appearance of regularity presented by this sequence, which is, however, on its own account, a most important matter, and one which should not be forgotten.
d. The Pythagoreans also applied their principle to the Soul, and thus determined what is spiritual as number. Aristotle (De anim. I. 2) goes on to tell that they thought that solar corpuscles are soul, others, that it is what moves them; they adopted this idea because the corpuscles are ever moving, even in perfect stillness, and hence they must have motion of their own. This does not signify much, but it is evident from it that the determination of self-movement was sought for in the soul. The Pythagoreans made a further application of number-conceptions to the soul after another form, which Aristotle describes in the same place as follows:— “Thought is the one, knowledge or science is the two, for it comes alone out of the one. The number of the plane is popular idea, opinion; the number of the corporeal is sensuous feeling. Everything is judged of either by thought, or science, or opinion, or feeling.” In these ideas, which we must, however, ascribe to later Pythagoreans, we may undoubtedly find some adequacy, for while thought is pure universality, knowledge deals with something “other,” since it gives itself a determination and a content; but feeling is the most developed in its determinateness. “Now because the soul moves itself, it is the self-moving number,” yet we never find it said that it is connected with the monad.
This is a simple relationship to number-determinations. Aristotle instances (De anim. I. 3) one more intricate from Timæus: “The soul moves itself, and hence also the body because it is bound up with body; it consists of elements and is divided according to harmonic numbers, and hence it has feeling and an immediately indwelling (σύμφυτον) harmony. In order that the whole may have an harmonious movement, Timæus has bent the straight line of harmony (εὐθυωρίαν) into a circle, and again divided off from the whole circle two circles, which are doubly connected; and the one of these circles is again divided into seven circles, so that the movements of the soul may resemble those of the heavens.” The more definite significance of these ideas Aristotle unfortunately has not given; they contain a profound knowledge of the harmony of the whole, but yet they are forms which themselves remain dark, because they are clumsy and unsuitable. There is always a forcible turning and twisting, a struggle with the material part of the representation, as there is in mythical and distorted forms: nothing has the pliability of thought but thought itself. It is remarkable that the Pythagoreans have grasped the soul as a system which is a counterpart of the system of the heavens. In Plato’s Timæus this same idea is more definitely brought forward. Plato also gives further number-relations, but not their significance as well; even to the present day no one has been able to make any particular sense out of them. An arrangement of numbers such as this is easy, but to give to it a real significance is difficult, and, when done, it always must be arbitrary.
There is still something worthy of attention in what is said by the Pythagoreans in reference to the soul, and this is their doctrine of the transmigration of souls. Cicero (Tusc. Quæst. I. 16) says: “Pherecydes, the teacher of Pythagoras, first said that the souls of men were immortal.” The doctrine of the transmigration of souls extends even to India, and, without doubt, Pythagoras took it from the Egyptians; indeed Herodotus (II. 123) expressly says so. After he speaks of the mythical ideas of the Egyptians as to the lower world, he continues: “The Egyptians were the first to say that the soul of man is immortal, and that, when the body disappears, it goes into another living being; and when it has gone through all the animals of land and sea, and likewise birds, it again takes the body of a man, the period being completed in 3000 years.” Diogenes Laertius says in this connection (VIII. 14) that the soul, according to Pythagoras, goes through a circle. “These ideas,” proceeds Herodotus, “are also found amongst the Greeks; there are some who, earlier or later, have made use of this particular doctrine, and have spoken of it as if it were their own; I know their names very well, but I will not mention them.” He undoubtedly meant Pythagoras and his followers. In the sequel, much that is given utterance to is fictitious: “Pythagoras himself is said to have stated that his former personality was known to him. Hermes granted him a knowledge of his circumstances before his birth. He lived as the son of Hermes, Æthalides, and then in the Trojan war as Euphorbus, the son of Panthous, who killed Patroclus, and was killed by Menelaus; in the third place he was Hermotimus; fourthly, Pyrrhus, a fisherman of Delos; in all he lived 207 years. Euphorbus’ shield was offered up to Apollo by Menelaus, and Pythagoras went to the temple and, from the mouldering shield, showed the existence of signs, hitherto not known of, by which it was recognized.”46 We shall not treat further of these very various and foolish stories.
As in the case of the brotherhood copied from the Egyptian priesthood, so must we here set aside this oriental and un-Greek idea of the transmigration of souls. Both were too far removed from the Greek spirit to have had a place and a development there. With the Greeks, the consciousness of a higher, freer individuality has become too strong to allow any permanence to the idea of metempsychosis, according to which, man, this independent and self-sufficing Being, takes the form of a beast. They have, indeed, the conception of men as becoming springs of water, trees, animals, &c., but the idea of degradation which comes as a consequence of sin, lies at its root. Aristotle (De anim. I. 3) shortly and in his own manner deals with and annihilates this idea of the Pythagoreans. “They do not say for what reason soul dwells in body, nor how the latter is related to it. For owing to their unity of nature when one acts the other suffers: one moves and the other is moved, but none of this happens in what is mutually contingent. According to the Pythagorean myths any soul takes to any body, which is much like making architects take to flutes. For crafts must necessarily have tools and soul body; but each tool must have its proper form and kind.” It is implied in the transmigration of souls that the organization of the body is something accidental to the human soul; this refutation by Aristotle is complete. The eternal idea of metempsychosis had philosophic interest only as the inner Notion permeating all these forms, the oriental unity which appears in everything; we have not got this signification here, or at best we have but a glimmering of it. If we say that the particular soul is, as a definite thing, to wander about throughout all, we find firstly, that the soul is not a thing such as Leibnitz’ Monad, which, like a bubble in the cup of coffee, is possibly a sentient, thinking soul; in the second place an empty identity of the soul-thing such as this has no interest in relation to immortality.
- Practical Philosophy. As regards the practical philosophy of Pythagoras, which is closely connected with what has gone before, there is but little that is philosophic known to us. Aristotle (Magn. Moral. I. 1) says of him that “he first sought to speak of virtue, but not in the right way, for, because he deduced the virtues from numbers, he could not form of them any proper theory.” The Pythagoreans adopted ten virtues as well as ten heavenly spheres. Justice, amongst others, is described as the number which is like itself in like manner (ἴσακις ἴσος); it is an even number, which remains even when multiplied with itself. Justice is pre-eminently what remains like itself; but this is an altogether abstract determination, which applies to much that is, and which does not exhaust the concrete, thus remaining quite indeterminate.
Under the name of the “Golden words,” we have a collection of hexameters which are a succession of moral reflections, but which are rightly ascribed to later Pythagoreans. They are old, well-known, moral maxims, which are expressed in a simple and dignified way, but which do not contain anything remarkable. They begin with the direction “to honour the immortal gods as they are by law established,” and further, “Honour the oath and then the illustrious heroes;” elsewhere they go on to direct “honour to be paid to parents and to relatives,” &c.47 Such matter does not deserve to be regarded as philosophy, although it is of importance in the process of development.
The transition from the form of outward morals to morality as existent, is more important. As in Thales’ time, law-givers and administrators of states were preeminent in possessing a physical philosophy, so we see that with Pythagoras practical philosophy is advocated as the means of constituting a moral life. There we have the speculative Idea, the absolute essence, in its reality, and in a definite, sensuous existence; and similarly the moral life is submerged in actuality as the universal spirit of a people, and as their laws and rule. In Pythagoras, on the contrary, we have the reality of absolute essence raised, in speculation, out of sensuous reality, and expressed, though still imperfectly, as the essence of thought. Morality is likewise partly raised out of actuality as ordinarily known; it is certainly a moral disposition of all actuality, but as a brotherhood, and not as the life of a people. The Pythagorean League is an arbitrary existence and not a part of the constitution recognized by public sanction; and in his person Pythagoras isolated himself as teacher, as he also did his followers. The universal consciousness, the spirit of a people, is the substance of which the accident is the individual consciousness; the speculative is thus the fact that pure, universal law is absolute, individual consciousness, so that this last, because it draws therefrom its growth and nourishment, becomes universal self-consciousness. These two sides do not, however, come to us in the form of the opposition; it is first of all in morality that there is properly this Notion of the absolute individuality of consciousness which does everything on its own account. But we see that it was really present to the mind of Pythagoras that the substance of morality is the universal, from an example in Diogenes Laertius (VIII. 16). “A Pythagorean answered to the question of a father who inquired as to the best education he could give his son, that it should be that which would make him the citizen of a well-regulated State.” This answer is great and true; to the great principle of living in the spirit of one’s people, all other circumstances are subordinate. Nowadays men try to keep education free from the spirit of the times, but they cannot withdraw themselves from this supreme power, the State, for even if they try to separate themselves, they unconsciously remain beneath this universal. The speculative meaning of the practical philosophy of Pythagoras thus is, that in this signification, the individual consciousness shall obtain a moral reality in the brotherhood. But as number is a middle thing between the sensuous and Notion, the Pythagorean brotherhood is a middle between universal, actual morality and maintaining that in true morality the individual, as an individual, is responsible for his own behaviour; this morality ceases to be universal spirit. If we wish to see practical philosophy reappear, we shall find it; but, on the whole, we shall not see it become really speculative until very recent times.
We may satisfy ourselves with this as giving us an idea of the Pythagorean system. I will, however, shortly give the principal points of the criticism which Aristotle (Met. I. 8) makes upon the Pythagorean number-form. He says justly, in the first place: “If only the limited and the unlimited, the even and odd are made fundamental ideas, the Pythagoreans do not explain how movement arises, and how, without movement and change there can be coming into being and passing away, or the conditions and activities of heavenly objects.” This defect is significant; arithmetical numbers are dry forms and barren principles in which life and movement are deficient. Aristotle says secondly, “From number no other corporeal determinations, such as weight and lightness, are conceivable;” or number thus cannot pass into what is concrete. “They say that there is no number outside of those in the heavenly spheres.” For instance, a heavenly sphere and a virtue, or a natural manifestation in the earth, are determined as one and the same number. Each of the first numbers may be exhibited in each thing or quality; but in so far as number is made to express a further determination, this quite abstract, quantitative difference becomes altogether formal; it is as if the plant were five because it has five stamens. This is just as superficial as are determination through elements or through particular portions of the globe; it is a method as formal as that by which men now try to apply the categories of electricity, magnetism, galvanism, compression and expansion, of manly and of womanly, to everything. It is a purely empty system of determination where reality should be dealt with.
To Pythagoras and his disciples there are, moreover, many scientific conclusions and discoveries ascribed, which, however, do not concern us at all. Thus, according to Diogenes Laertius (VIII. 14, 27), he is said to have known that the morning and evening star is the same, and that the moon derives her light from the sun. We have already mentioned what he says of music. But what is best known is the Pythagorean Theorem; it really is the main proposition in geometry, and cannot be regarded like any other theorem. According to Diogenes, (VIII. 12), Pythagoras, on discovering the theorem, sacrificed a hecatomb, so important did he think it; and it may indeed seem remarkable that his joy should have gone so far as to ordain a great feast to which rich men and all the people were invited. It was worth the trouble; it was a rejoicing, a feast of spiritual cognition — at the cost of the oxen.
Other ideas which are brought forward by the Pythagoreans casually and without any connection, have no philosophic interest, and need only be mentioned. Aristotle, for instance, says (Phys. IV. 6) that “the Pythagoreans believed in an empty space which the heavens inspire, and an empty space which separates natural things and brings about the distinction between continuous and discrete; it first exists in numbers and makes them to be different.” Diogenes Laertius (VIII. 26-28) says much more, all of which is dull; this is like the later writers, who, generally speaking, take up what is external and devoid of any intellectual meaning. “The air which encircles the earth is immovable” (ἄσειστον, at least through itself) “and diseased, and all that is in it is mortal; but what is highest is in continual movement, pure and healthy, and in it everything is immortal — divine. Sun, moon and the other stars are gods, for in them warmth has predominance and is the cause of life. Man is related to the gods because he participates in warmth, and hence God cares for us. A ray penetrates from the sun through the thick and cold ether and gives life to everything; they call air, cold ether, the sea and moisture, thick ether. The soul is a detached portion of ether.”
THE PYTHAGOREAN PHILOSOPHY has not yet got the speculative form of expression for the Notion. Numbers are not pure Notion, but Notion in the form of ordinary idea or sensuous perception, and hence a mixture of both. This expression of absolute essence in what is a pure Notion or something thought, and the movement of the Notion or of Thought, is that which we find must come next, and this we discover in the Eleatic school. In it we see thought becoming free for itself; and in that which the Eleatics express as absolute essence, we see Thought grasp itself in purity, and the movement of Thought in Notions. In the physical philosophy we saw movement represented as an objective movement, as an origination and passing away. The Pythagoreans similarly did not reflect upon these Notions, and also treated their essence, Number, as fleeting. But since alteration is now grasped in its highest abstraction as Nothing, this objective movement changes into a subjective one, comes over to the side of consciousness, and existence becomes the unmoved. We here find the beginning of dialectic, i.e. simply the pure movement of thought in Notions; likewise we see the opposition of thought to outward appearance or sensuous Being, or of that which is implicit to the being-for-another of this implicitness, and in the objective existence we see the contradiction which it has in itself, or dialectic proper. When we reflect in anticipation on how the course of pure thought must be formed, we find (α) that pure thought (pure Being, the One) manifests itself immediately in its rigid isolation and self-identity, and everything else as null; (β) that the hitherto timid thought — which after it is strengthened, ascribes value to the “other” and constitutes itself therefrom — shows that it then grasps the other in its simplicity and even in so doing shows its nullity; (γ) finally, Thought manifests the other in the manifold nature of its determinations. We shall see this in the development and culture of the Eleatics in history. These Eleatic propositions still have interest for Philosophy, and are moments which must necessarily there appear.
Xenophanes, Parmenides, Melissus and Zeno are to be reckoned as belonging to this school. Xenophanes may be regarded as the founder of it; Parmenides is supposed to have been his pupil, and Melissus, and especially Zeno, are called the pupils of Parmenides. In fact, they are to be taken together as forming the Eleatic school; later on it lost the name, being then called Sophistic, and its locality was transferred to Greece proper. What Xenophanes began, Parmenides and Melissus developed further, and similarly Zeno perfected what these two taught. Aristotle (Metaph. I. 5) characterizes the first three thus: “Parmenides seems to comprehend the one as Notion (κατὰ τὸν λόγον), Melissus as matter (κατὰ τὴν ὕλην); hence the former says that it is limited (πεπερασμένον) and the latter that it is unlimited (ἄπειρον). But Xenophanes, who was the first of them to express the theory of the One, made the matter no plainer (διεσαφήνισεν), nor did he deal with either of these aspects (φύσεως), but looking into the heavens” — as we say, into the blue— “said, God is the One. Xenophanes and Melissus are on the whole less civilized (μικρὸν ἀγροικότεροι); Parmenides, however, is more acute (μᾶλλον βλέπων).” There is less to say of Xenophanes and Melissus, and what has come to us from the latter in particular — in fragments and derived from the sayings of others — is still in a state of ferment, and in his case there is least knowledge obtainable. On the whole, philosophic utterances and Notions are still poor, and it was in Zeno that Philosophy first attained to a purer expression of itself.
The period at which he lived is clear enough, and as this suffices, it is a matter of indifference that the year of his birth and of his death is unknown. According to Diogenes Laertius (IX. 18), he was contemporary with Anaximander and Pythagoras. Of his circumstances further than this, it is only known that he, for reasons which are unknown, escaped from his native town, Colophon, in Asia Minor, to Magna Græcia, and resided for the most part at Zancle, (now Messina) and Catana (still called Catania) in Sicily. I find it nowhere said by the ancients that he lived at Elea, although all recent writers on the history of Philosophy repeat it, one after the other. Tennemann, in particular, says (Vol. I. pp. 151 and 414), that about the 61st Olympiad (536 B.C.), he repaired from Colophon to Elea. Diogenes Laertius (IX. 20), however, only says that he flourished about the 60th Olympiad and that he made two thousand verses on the colonization of Elea, from which it might be easily concluded that he was also born at Elea. Strabo says this in the beginning of his sixth book — when describing Elea — of Parmenides and Zeno only, and these he called Pythagoreans; hence, according to Cicero (Acad. Quæst. IV. 42) the Eleatic school took its name from these two. Xenophanes was nearly a hundred years old, and lived to see the Median wars: it is said that he became so poor that he had not the means of having his children buried, and was obliged to do so with his own hands. Some say that he had no teacher; others name Archelaus, which is a chronological error.
He wrote a book “On Nature,” the general subject and title of Philosophy at that time; some verses have been preserved to us which so far show no powers of reasoning. Professor Brandis of Bonn collected them together, with the fragments of Parmenides and Melissus, under the title “Commentationum Eleaticarum, P. 1,” Altonæ, 1813. The older philosophers wrote in verse, for prose comes much later on; on account of the awkward and confused mode of expression in Xenophanes’ poems, Cicero calls them (Acad. Quæst. IV. 23): minus boni versus.
As to his philosophy, Xenophanes in the first place maintained absolute existence to be the one, and likewise called this God. “The all is One and God is implanted in all things; He is unchangeable, without beginning, middle or end.”48 In some verses by Xenophanes found in Clemens of Alexandria (Strom. V. 14, p. 714, ed. Potter), it is said:
“One God is greatest amongst gods and men.
Neither like unto mortals in spirit or in form;”
and in Sextus Empiricus (adv. Math. IX. 144):
“He sees everywhere, thinks everywhere, and hears everywhere,”
to which words Diogenes Laertius (IX, 19) adds: “Thought and reason are everything and eternal.” By this Xenophanes denied the truth of the conceptions of origination and of passing away, of change, movement, &c., seeing that they merely belong to sensuous perception. “He found,” says Tennemann (Vol. I. p. 156) “all origination to be inconceivable:” the One as the immediate product of pure thought, is, in its immediacy, Being.
For us the determination of Being is already known and trivial, but if we know about Being, the One, we place this, as a particular determination, in a line with all the rest. Here, on the contrary, it signifies that all else has no reality and is only a semblance. We must forget our own ideas; we know of God as Spirit. But, because the Greeks only had before them the sensuous world, these gods of their imagination, and found in them no satisfaction, they rejected all as being untrue, and thus came to pure thought. This is a wonderful advance, and thought thus becomes for the first time free for itself in the Eleatic school. Being, the One of the Eleatic school, is just this immersion in the abyss of the abstract identity of the understanding. Just as this comes first, so it also comes last, as that to which the understanding comes back, and this is proved in recent times when God is grasped only as the highest Being. If we say of God that this the highest Being is outside of and over us, we can know nothing more of it but that it is, and thus it is the undetermined; for if we knew of determinations, this would be to possess knowledge. The truth then simply is that God is the One, not in the sense that there is one God (this is another determination), but only that He is identical with Himself; in this there is no other determination, any more than in the utterance of the Eleatic school. Modern thought has, indeed, passed through a longer path, not only through what is sensuous, but also through philosophic ideas and predicates of God, to this all negating abstraction; but the content, the result arrived at is the same.
With this the dialectic reasoning of the Eleatics is closely connected in respect that they have also proved that nothing can originate or pass away. This deduction is to be found in Aristotle’s work, De Xenophane, Zenone et Gorgia, c. 3. “It is impossible, he says,49 that if anything is, it arises (and he even applies this to the Godhead); for it must arise either from the like or from the unlike. But both are equally impossible: for it is no more probable that the like should be engendered from the like, than that it should engender it, for the like must have determinations identical with one another.” In acknowledging similarity, the distinction between begetting and begotten falls away. “Just as little can unlike arise from unlike, for if from the weaker the stronger takes its rise; or from the smaller, the greater; or from the worse, the better: or if, conversely, the worse proceeds from the better, non-being would result from Being: this is impossible, and thus God is eternal.” The same thing has been expressed as Pantheism or Spinozaism, which rests on the proposition ex nihilo fit nihil. The unity of God is further proved by Xenophanes: “If God is the mightiest, He must be One; for were He two or more, He would not have dominion over the others, but, not having dominion over the others, He could not be God. Thus were there several, they would be relatively more powerful or weaker, and thus they would not be gods, for God’s nature is to have nothing mightier than He. Were they equal, God would no longer possess the quality of being the mightiest, for the like is neither worse nor better than the like” — or it does not differ therefrom. “Hence if God is, and is such as this, He is only one; He could not, were there several, do what He willed. Since He is one, He is everywhere alike. He hears, sees and has also the other senses everywhere, for were this not the case, the parts of God would be one more powerful than the other, which is impossible. Since God is everywhere alike, He has a spherical form, for He is not here thus and elsewhere different, but is everywhere the same. Since He is eternal and one and spherical in form, He is neither unlimited nor limited. To be unlimited is non-being; for that has neither middle, beginning, end, nor part; and what is unlimited corresponds to this description. But whatever non-being is, Being is not. Mutual limitation would take place if there were several, but since there is only One, it is not limited. The one does not move itself, nor is it unmoved; to be unmoved is non-being, for to it none other comes, nor does it go into another; but to be moved must mean to be several, for one must move into another. Thus the One neither rests nor is it moved, for it is neither non-being nor is it many. In all this God is thus indicated; He is eternal and One, like Himself and spherical, neither unlimited nor limited, neither at rest nor moved.” From this result, that nothing can arise from the like or from the unlike, Aristotle (De Xenophane, Zenone et Gorgia c. 4) draws this conclusion: “that either there is nothing excepting God, or all else is eternal.”
We here see a dialectic which may be called metaphysical reasoning, in which the principle of identity is fundamental. “The nothing is like nothing and does not pass into Being or conversely; thus nothing can originate from like.” This, the oldest mode of argument, holds its place even to the present day, as, for example, in the so-called proof of the unity of God. This proceeding consists of making presuppositions such as the power of God, and from them drawing conclusions and denying the existence of predicates; that is the usual course in our mode of reasoning. In respect of determinations, it must be remarked that they, as being negative, are all kept apart from the positive and merely real being. We reach this abstraction by a more ordinary way, and do not require a dialectic such as that of the Eleatic school: we say God is unchangeable, change concerns finite things alone (which we represent as an empirical proposition); on the one hand we thus have finite things and change, and on the other, unchangeableness in this abstract absolute unity with itself. It is the same separation, only that we also allow the finite to be Being, which the Eleatics deny. Or else we too proceed from finite things to kinds and genera, leaving the negative out bit by bit; and the highest order of all is God, who, as the highest Being, is affirmative only, but devoid of any determination. Or we pass from what is finite to the infinite, for we say that the finite as limited must have its basis in the infinite. In all these different forms which are quite familiar to us, there is the same difficult question which exists in reference to the Eleatic thought. Whence comes determination and how is it to be grasped — how is it in the one, leaving the finite aside, and also how does the infinite pass out into the finite? The Eleatics in their reflections were distinguished from this our ordinary reflecting thought, in that they went speculatively to work (the speculative element being that change does not exist at all) and that they thus showed that, as Being was presupposed, change in itself is contradictory and inconceivable. For from the one, from Being, the determination of the negative, of the manifold, is withdrawn. Thus while we, in our conception, allow the actuality of the finite world, the Eleatics are more consistent, in that they proceeded to say that only the One exists and that the negative does not exist at all; — a consequence which, if it necessarily arouses in us surprise, still none the less remains a great abstraction.
Sceptics saw in this the point of view of the uncertainty of all things, and Sextus several times50 quotes verses such as these: —
“No man at any time knew clearly and truly; nor will he ever know
What of the gods I say, as also of the universe.
For what he thinks to speak most perfectly
He knows that not at all; his own opinions cleave to all.”
Sextus, generalizing, explains this in the first passage thus: “Let us imagine that in a house in which are many valuables, there were those who sought for gold by night; in such a case everyone would think that he had found the gold, but would not know certainly whether he actually had found it. Thus philosophers come into this world as into a great house to seek the truth, but were they to reach it, they could not tell whether they really had attained to it.” The indefinite expressions of Xenophanes might also merely mean that none knows that which he (Xenophanes) here makes known. In the second passage Sextus puts it thus: “Xenophanes does not make all knowledge void, but only the scientific and infallible; opinionative knowledge is, however, left. He expresses this in saying that opinion cleaves to all. So that with him the criterion is made to be opinion, i.e. the apparent, and not that which is firm and sure; Parmenides, on the contrary, condemns opinion.” But from his doctrine of the One, there follows the annihilation of ordinary ideas, which is what he did in the foregoing dialectic; it is evident, however, that nobody could know the truth which he hereby utters. If a thought such as this passed through one’s head, one could not tell that it was true, and in such a case it would only be an opinion.
We here find in Xenophanes a double consciousness; a pure consciousness and consciousness of Being, and a consciousness of opinion. The former was to him the consciousness of the divine, and it is the pure dialectic, which is negatively related to all that is determined and which annuls it. The manner in which he expresses himself towards the sensuous world and finite thought-determinations is seen most clearly in his allusions to the Greek mythological conceptions of the gods. He says, amongst other things, according to Brandis (Comment. Eleat. P. I. p. 68): —
“Did beasts and lions only have hands,
Works of art thereby to bring forth, as do men,
They would, in creating divine forms, give to them
What in image and size belongs to themselves.”
He also animadverts on the ideas of the gods held by Homer and Hesiod in verses which Sextus (adv. Math. IX. 193) has preserved to us: —
“Hesiod and Homer have attached to the gods
All that which brings shame and censure to men;
Stealing, adultery, and mutual deceit.”
As, on the one hand, he defined absolute Being to be simple, making that which is, however, break through and be immediately present in it, on the other hand he philosophizes on appearances; in reference to this certain fragments only are transmitted to us, and such physical opinions as these can have no great interest. They are meant to have no speculative significance any more than are those of our own physicists. When he says in this connection
“Out of the earth comes all, and returns to it again,
We all have come from earth and water alike,
Thus all that grows and takes its rise is only earth and water,”51
this does not signify existence, physical principles, as did the water of Thales. For Aristotle expressly says, that no one regarded the earth as the absolute principle.
Parmenides is a striking figure in the Eleatic school, and he arrives at more definite conceptions than does Xenophanes. He was, according to Diogenes (IX. 21), born at Elea of a rich and honourable race. Of his life, however, little is known; Aristotle only says (Met. I. 5) from tradition that he was a scholar of Xenophanes. Sextus Empiricus (adv. Math. VII. 111) calls him a friend (γνώριμος) of Xenophanes. Diogenes Laertius further states: “He heard Anaximander and Xenophanes also, but did not follow the latter” (which seems only to refer to his place of abode), “but he lived with Aminias and Diochartes the Pythagorean, attached himself to the latter, and by the former, and not by Xenophanes, was prevailed upon to lead a quiet life.” That the period in which his life falls comes between Xenophanes and Zeno — so that he is contemporaneous with them, though younger than the former and older than the latter — is ascertained. According to Diogenes (IX. 23) he flourished about the 69th Olympiad (504-501 B.C.). What is most important is his journey to Athens with Zeno, where Plato makes them talk with Socrates. This may be accepted generally, but what is strictly historical in it cannot be ascertained. In the Thætetus Plato makes Socrates reply to the invitation to examine the Eleatic system: “For Melissus and the others who assert the All to be One at rest, I have a certain respect; I have even more for Parmenides. For, to speak in Homeric language, he seems to me both venerable and strong. I knew him when he was an old man and I was still quite young, and I heard wonderful things from him.”52 And in the Platonic Dialogue Parmenides (p. 127. Steph. p. 4. Bekk.) where, as is well known, the conversation is carried on by Parmenides and Socrates, the historic circumstances of this interview are related in detail. “Parmenides was very old, had hair which was quite grey, was beautiful in countenance, about sixty-five years old, and Zeno almost forty.” Tennemann (Vol. I. p. 415) places the journey in the 80th Olympiad (460-457 B.C.). Thus Socrates, since he was born in Olympiad 77, 4 (469 B.C.), would seem to have been still too young to have carried on a dialogue such as Plato describes, and the principal matter of this dialogue, which is written in the spirit of the Eleatic school, belongs to Plato himself. Besides, we know from Parmenides’ life, that he stood in high respect with his fellow-citizens at Elea, whose prosperity must be chiefly ascribed to the laws which Parmenides gave them.53 We also find in the πίναξ of Cebes (towards the beginning) “a Parmenidian life” used synonymously with a moral life.
It must be remarked that here, where the Eleatic school is definitely treated of, Plato does not speak of Xenophanes at all, but only of Melissus and Parmenides. The fact that Plato, in one of his dialogues, likewise accords the chief part to Parmenides, and puts in his mouth the most lofty dialectic that ever was given, does not concern us here. If with Xenophanes, by the proposition that out of nothing nothing comes, origination and what depends upon or can be traced back to it is denied, the opposition between Being and non-being makes its appearance still more clearly with Parmenides, though still unconsciously. Sextus Empiricus and Simplicius have preserved to us the most important fragments from the poems of Parmenides; for Parmenides also propounded his philosophy as a poem. The first long fragment in Sextus (adv. Math. VII. 111) is an allegorical preface to his poem on Nature. This preface is majestic; it is written after the manner of the times, and in it all there is an energetic, impetuous soul which strives with Being to grasp and to express it. We can show Parmenides’ philosophy best in his own words. The introduction runs thus: —
“Horses that bore me, impelled by their courage,
Brought me to the much-famed streets of the goddess
Who leads the wise man to every kind of knowledge.
Maidens point out the way.
The axle sings hot as the daughters of Helios quickly approach,
Leaving the dwelling of night, pressing on to the light,
With mighty hands raising the sheltering veil.”
The maidens are, according to Sextus (adv. Math. VII. 112, 113), the senses, and Helios’ daughters are more especially the eyes: —
“These are the gates of the pathways of night and of day.
Now the heavenly maidens approach the great doors,
Whose lock double-turned the punishing Dice protects.
To this one soft words were by the maidens addressed
Subtly persuading her the barriers of oak from the gates,
Now to withdraw. Yet these,
Directly the yawning breadth of the doors was revealed,
Drove the horses and waggon, on through the gate.
The goddess received me in friendship, seized with her one hand my right,
And turning towards me, she said:
‘Oh, thou, who with guides all immortal and horses,
Camest here in my palace, — be welcome, young man.
For no evil fate has led thee into this path,
(Indeed it lies far from the ways of a man)
But Themis and Dice. Now shalt thou all things explore,
The heart never-flinching of the truth that persuades,
The transient opinions which are not to be trusted.
But from such paths keep the inquiring soul far away.
On this way let not the much followed custom
Cause thee to take the rash eye as thy guide,
Or the confused sounding ear and the tongue. Ponder considerately
With thy reason alone, the doctrine much and often examined,
Which I will proclaim. For there lacks but desire on your way.’”
The goddess develops everything from the double knowledge (α) of thought, of the truth, and (β) of opinion; these make up the two parts of the poem. In another fragment taken from Simplicius’ Commentary on Aristotle’s Physics (p. 25; 19 a) and from Proclus on the Timæus (p. 29 b), we have the principal part of what is here related preserved to us. “Understand,” says the goddess, “which are the two roads of knowledge. The one which is only Being, and which is not non-being, is the path of conviction, the truth is in it. The other that is not Being, and which is necessarily non-being, is, I must tell you, a path quite devoid of reason, for thou canst neither know, or attain to, or express, non-being.” The nothing, in fact, turns into something, since it is thought or is said: we say something, think something, if we wish to think and say the nothing. “It is necessary that saying and thinking should be Being; for Being is, but nothing is not at all.” There the matter is stated in brief; and in this nothing, falls negation generally, or in more concrete form, limitation, the finite, restriction: determinatio est negatio is Spinoza’s great saying. Parmenides says, whatever form the negation may take, it does not exist at all. To consider the nothing as the true is “the way of error in which the ignorant and double-minded mortals wander. Perplexity of mind sways the erring sense. Those who believe Being and non-being to be the same, and then again not the same, are like deaf and blind men surprised, like hordes confusedly driven.” The error is to confuse them and to ascribe the same value to each, or to distinguish them as if non-being were the limited generally. “Whichever way is taken, it leads back to the point from which it started.” It is a constantly self-contradictory and disintegrating movement. To human ideas, now this is held to be reality and now its opposite, and then again a mixture of both.
Simplicius quotes further, in writing on Aristotle’s Physics (p. 17 a; 31, 19): “But the truth is only the ‘is’; this is neither begotten of anything else, nor transient, entire, alone in its class (μουνογενές), unmoved and without end; it neither was, nor will be, but is at once the all. For what birth wouldst thou seek for it? How and whence should it be augmented? That it should be from that which is not, I shall allow thee neither to say nor to think, for neither can it be said or thought that the ‘is’ is not. What necessity had either later or earlier made it begin from the nothing? Thus must it throughout only be or not be; nor will any force of conviction ever make something else arise out of that which is not. Thus origination has disappeared, and decease is incredible. Being is not separable, for it is entirely like itself; it is nowhere more, else would it not hold together, nor is it less, for everything is full of Being. The all is one coherent whole, for Being flows into unison with Being: it is unchangeable and rests securely in itself; the force of necessity holds it within the bounds of limitation. It cannot hence be said that it is imperfect; for it is without defect, while non-existence is wanting in all.” This Being is not the undetermined (ἄπειρον) for it is kept within the limits of necessity; we similarly find in Aristotle that limitation is ascribed to Parmenides. The sense in which the expression “limit” is to be taken is uncertain. According to Parmenides, however, this absolute limitation is as Δίκη, absolute necessity clearly determined in itself; and it is an important fact that he went beyond the uncultured conception of the infinite. “Thought, and that on account of which thought is, are the same. For not without that which is, in which it expresses itself (ἐν ᾦ πεφατισμένον ἐστίν), wilt thou find Thought, seeing that it is nothing and will be nothing outside of that which is.” That is the main point. Thought produces itself, and what is produced is a Thought. Thought is thus identical with Being, for there is nothing beside Being, this great affirmation. Plotinus, in quoting (V. Ennead. I. 8) this last fragment says: “Parmenides adopted this point of view, inasmuch as he did not place Being in sensuous things; identifying Being with Thought, he maintained it to be unchangeable.” The Sophists concluded from this: “All is truth; there is no error, for error is the non-existent, that which is not to be thought.”
Since in this an advance into the region of the ideal is observable, Parmenides began Philosophy proper. A man now constitutes himself free from all ideas and opinions, denies their truth, and says necessity alone, Being, is the truth. This beginning is certainly still dim and indefinite, and we cannot say much of what it involves; but to take up this position certainly is to develop Philosophy proper, which has not hitherto existed. The dialectic that the transient has no truth, is implied in it, for if these determinations are taken as they are usually understood, contradictions ensue. In Simplicius (in Arist. Phys. p. 27 b.; 31 b.) we have further metaphorical images from Parmenides. “Since the utmost limit of Being is perfect, it resembles on every side the form of a well rounded sphere, which from its centre extends in all directions equally, for it can be neither larger or smaller in one part or another. There is no non-being which prevents it from attaining to the like” — from coming into unity with itself— “and there is no Being where it was devoid of Being, here more and there less. Because the all is without defect, it is in all places in the same way like itself in its determinations.” Plotinus in the passage quoted says: “He compares Being with the spherical form, because it comprehends all in itself, and Thought is not outside of this, but is contained in it.” And Simplicius says: “We must not wonder at him, for on account of the poetic form, he adopts a mythological fiction (πλάσματος).” It immediately strikes us that the sphere is limited, and furthermore in space, and hence another must be above it; but then the Notion of the sphere is the similarity of withholding the different, notwithstanding that even the undifferentiated must be expressed; hence this image is inconsistent.
Parmenides adds to this doctrine of the truth, the doctrine of human opinions, the illusive system of the world. Simplicius, writing on Aristotle’s Physics (p. 7 b; 39 a), tells us that he says: “Men have two forms of opinion, one of which should not be, and in it they are mistaken; they set them in opposition to one another in form and symbol. The one, the ethereal fire of the flame, is quite fine, identical with itself throughout, but not identical with the other, for that is also for itself; on the other hand there is what belongs to night, or thick and ponderous existence.” By the former, warmth, softness, lightness is expressed, and by the latter, cold. “But since everything is called light and night, and their qualities are suited both to the one kind of things and the other, everything alike is filled with light and dark night; both are alike since nothing exists without both.” Aristotle (Met. I. 3 and 5), and the other historians, likewise unanimously attribute to Parmenides the fact that he sets forth two principles for the system of manifest things, warmth and cold, through the union of which everything is. Light, fire, is the active and animate; night, cold, is called the passive.
Parmenides also speaks like a Pythagorean — he was called ἀνὲρ Πυθαγορεῖος by Strabo — in the following, and likewise mythological conception: “There are circlets wound round one another, one of which is of the rare element and the other of the dense, between which others are to be found, composed of light and darkness mingled. Those which are less are of impure fire, but those over them of night, through which proceed the forces of the flames. That which holds this all together, however, is something fixed, like a wall, under which there is a fiery wreath, and the most central of the rare spheres again is fiery. The most central of those mixed is the goddess that reigns over all, the Divider (κληροῦχος), Dice and Necessity. For she is the principle of all earthly produce and intermingling, which impels the male to mix with the female, and conversely; she took Love to help her, creating him first amongst the gods. The air is an exhalation (ἀναπνοή) of the earth; the sun and the milky way, the breath of fire; and the moon is air and fire mingled, &c.”54
It still remains to us to explain the manner in which Parmenides regarded sensation and thought, which may undoubtedly at first sight seem to be materialistic. Theophrastus,55 for example, remarks in this regard: “Parmenides said nothing more than that there are two elements. Knowledge is determined according to the preponderance of the one or of the other; for, according as warmth or cold predominate, thought varies; it becomes better and purer through warmth, and yet it requires also a certain balance.”
“For as in each man there still is in his dispersive limbs an intermingling,
So is the understanding of man; for that
Which is thought by men, is the nature of the limbs,
Both in one and all; for thought is indeed the most.”56
He thus takes sensation and thought to be the same, and makes remembrance and oblivion to arise from these through mingling them, but whether in the intermingling they take an equal place, whether this is thought or not, and what condition this is, he leaves quite undetermined. But that he ascribes sensation to the opposites in and for themselves is clear, because he says: “The dead do not feel light or warmth or hear voices, because the fire is out of them; they feel cold, stillness and the opposite, however, and, speaking generally, each existence has a certain knowledge.” In fact, this view of Parmenides is really the opposite of materialism, for materialism consists in putting together the soul from parts, or independent forces (the wooden horse of the senses).
There is little to tell about the life of Melissus. Diogenes Laertius (IX. 24) calls him a disciple of Parmenides, but the discipleship is uncertain; it is also said of him that he associated with Heraclitus. He was born in Samos, like Pythagoras, and was besides a distinguished statesman amongst his people. It is said by Plutarch (in Pericle, 26) that, as admiral of the Samians, he gained in battle a victory over the Athenians. He flourished about the 84th Olympiad (444 B.C.).
In regard to his philosophy, too, there is little to say. Aristotle, where he mentions him, places him always with Parmenides, as resembling him in mode of thought. Simplicius, writing on Aristotle’s Physics (p. 7 sqq.), has preserved several fragments of his prose writings on Nature, which show the same kind of thoughts and arguments as we find in Parmenides, but, in part, somewhat more developed. It was a question whether the reasoning in which it is shown that change does not exist, or contradicts itself, which, by Aristotle in his incomplete, and, in some parts, most corrupt work on Xenophanes, Zeno, and Gorgias (c. 2.), was ascribed to Xenophanes, did not really belong to Melissus.57
Since the beginning, in which we are told whose reasoning it is, is wanting, conjecture only applies it to Xenophanes. The writing begins with the words “He says,” without any name being given. It thus depends on the superscription alone whether Aristotle speaks of the philosophy of Xenophanes or not, and it must be noticed that different hands have put different superscriptions. Indeed, there is in this work (c. 2) an opinion of Xenophanes mentioned in such a way that it appears as though had what was previously quoted by Aristotle been by him ascribed to Xenophanes, the expression would have been different. It is possible that Zeno is meant, as the internal evidence abundantly shows. There is in it a dialectic more developed in form, more real reflexion, than from the verses could be expected, not from Xenophanes alone, but even from Parmenides. For Aristotle expressly says that Xenophanes does not yet determine with precision; thus the cultured reasoning contained in Aristotle must certainly be denied to Xenophanes; at least, it is so far certain that Xenophanes himself did not know how to express his thoughts in a manner so orderly and precise as that found here. We find it said: —
“If anything is, it is eternal (ἀΐδιον).” Eternity is an awkward word, for it immediately makes us think of time and mingle past and future as an infinite length of time; but what is meant is that ἀΐδιον is the self-identical, supersensuous, unchangeable, pure present, which is without any time-conception. It is, origination and change are shut out; if it commences, it does so out of nothing or out of Being. “It is impossible that anything should arise from the nothing. If everything could have arisen, or could it merely not have been everything eternally, it would equally have arisen out of nothing. For, if everything had arisen, nothing would once have existed. If some were alone the existent out of which the rest sprang, the one would be more and greater. But the more and greater would thus have arisen out of the nothing of itself, for in the less there is not its more, nor in the smaller its greater.”
Simplicius makes this note to the Physics of Aristotle (p. 22 b): “No more can anything arise out of the existent, for the existent already is, and thus does not first arise from the existent.”
“As eternal, the existent also is unlimited, since it has no beginning from which it came, nor end in which it ceases. The infinite all is one, for, if there were two or more, they would limit one another,” and thus have a beginning and end. The one would be the nothing of the other and come forth from this nothing. “This one is like itself; for if it were unlike it would no longer be the one that was posited, but many. This one is likewise immovable, inasmuch as it does not move itself, since it does not pass out into anything. In passing out, it would require to do so into what is full or what is empty; it could not be into the full, for that is an impossibility, and just as little could it be into what is empty, for that is the nothing. The one, therefore, is in this way devoid of pain or suffering, not changing in position or form, or mingling with what is different. For all these determinations involve the origination of non-being and passing away of Being, which is impossible.” Thus here again the contradiction which takes place when origination and passing away are spoken of, is revealed.
Now Melissus places opinion in opposition to this truth. The change and multiplicity extinguished in Being appears on the other side, in consciousness, as in what is opinionative; it is necessary to say this if only the negative side, the removal of these moments, the Absolute as destitute of predicate, is laid hold of. “In sensuous perception the opposite is present for us; that is to say, a number of things, their change, their origination and passing away, and their intermingling. Thus that first knowledge must take its place beside this second, which has as much certainty for ordinary consciousness as the first.” Melissus does not seem to have decided for the one or the other, but, oscillating between both, to have limited the knowledge of the truth to the statement that, speaking generally, between two opposite modes of presentation, the more probable opinion is to be preferred, but that what is so preferred is only to be regarded as the stronger opinion, and not as truth. This is what Aristotle says of him.
Since Aristotle, in distinguishing his philosophy from the philosophy of Parmenides, maintains that in the first place Parmenides seems to understand the One as the principle of thought, and Melissus as matter, we must remark that this distinction falls away in pure existence, Being, or the One. Pure matter, as also pure thought (if I am to speak of such a distinction), are not present to Parmenides and Melissus, since they are abrogated; and it must only be in the manner of his expression that one of them — according to Aristotle (Phys. I. 2), on account of his clumsier mode of treatment (μᾶλλον φορτικός) — could seem to have conceived of the other sense. If the difference consisted secondly in the fact that Parmenides regarded the one as limited and Melissus as unlimited, this limitation of the one would, in effect, immediately contradict the philosophy of Parmenides; for since limit is the non-being of Being, non-being would thus be posited. But when Parmenides speaks of limit, we see that his poetic language is not altogether exact; limit, however, as pure limit, is just simple Being and absolute negativity, in which all else said and set forth is sublated. Necessity, as this pure negativity and movement within itself, although impassive thought, is absolutely bound to its opposite. In the third place it may be said that Parmenides set forth a concomitant philosophy of opinion or reality, to which Being as existence for thought was thus more opposed than was the case with Melissus.
What specially characterizes Zeno is the dialectic which, properly speaking, begins with him; he is the master of the Eleatic school in whom its pure thought arrives at the movement of the Notion in itself and becomes the pure soul of science. That is to say, in the Eleatics hitherto considered, we only have the proposition: “The nothing has no reality and is not at all, and thus what is called origin and decease disappears.” With Zeno, on the contrary, we certainly see just such an assertion of the one and removal of what contradicts it, but we also see that this assertion is not made the starting point; for reason begins by calmly demonstrating in that which is established as existent, its negation. Parmenides asserts that “The all is immutable, for, in change, the non-being of that which is would be asserted, but Being only is; in saying that non-being is, the subject and the predicate contradict themselves.” Zeno, on the other hand, says: “Assert your change; in it as change there is the negation to it, or it is nothing.” To the former change existed as motion, definite and complete. Zeno protested against motion as such, or pure motion. “Pure Being is not motion; it is rather the negation of motion.” We find it specially interesting that there is in Zeno the higher consciousness, the consciousness that when one determination is denied, this negation is itself again a determination, and then in the absolute negation not one determination, but both the opposites must be negated. Zeno anticipated this, and because he foresaw that Being is the opposite of nothing, he denied of the One what must be said of the nothing. But the same thing must occur with all the rest. We find this higher dialectic in Plato’s Parmenides; here it only breaks forth in respect to some determinations, and not to the determination of the One and of Being. The higher consciousness is the consciousness of the nullity of Being as of what is determined as against the nothing, partly found in Heraclitus and then in the Sophists; with them it never has any truth, it has no existence in itself, but is only the for-another, or the assurance of the individual consciousness, and assurance as refutation, i.e. the negative side of dialectic.
According to Diogenes Laertius, (IX. 25) Zeno was likewise an Eleat; he is the youngest, and lived most in company with Parmenides. The latter became very fond of him and adopted him as a son; his own father was called Telentagoras. Not in his State alone was his conduct held in high respect, for his fame was universal, and he was esteemed particularly as a teacher. Plato mentions that men came to him from Athens and other places, in order to profit from his learning.58 Proud self-sufficiency is ascribed to him by Diogenes (IX. 28) because he — with the exception of a journey made to Athens — continued to reside in Elea, and did not stay a longer time in the great, mighty Athens, and there attain to fame. In very various narratives his death was made for ever celebrated for the strength of his mind evinced in it; it was said that he freed a State (whether his own home at Elea or in Sicily, is not known) from its Tyrant (the name is given differently, but an exact historical account has not been recorded) in the following way, and by the sacrifice of his life. He entered into a plot to overthrow the Tyrant, but this was betrayed. When the Tyrant now, in face of the people, caused him to be tortured in every possible way to get from him an avowal of his confederates, and when he questioned him about the enemies of the State, Zeno first named to the Tyrant all his friends as participators in the plot, and then spoke of the Tyrant himself as the pest of the State. The powerful remonstrances or the horrible tortures and death of Zeno aroused the citizens, inspired them with courage to fall upon the Tyrant, kill him, and liberate themselves. The manner of the end, and his violent and furious state of mind, is very variously depicted. He is said to have pretended to wish to say something into the Tyrant’s ear, and then to have bitten his ear, and thus held him fast until he was slain by the others. Others say that he seized him by the nose between his teeth; others that as on his reply great tortures were applied, he bit off his tongue and spat it into the Tyrant’s face, to show him that he could get nothing from him, and that he then was pounded in a mortar.59
It has just been noticed that Zeno had the very important character of being the originator of the true objective dialectic. Xenophanes, Parmenides, and Melissus, start with the proposition: “Nothing is nothing; the nothing does not exist at all, or the like is real existence,” that is, they make one of the opposed predicates to be existence. Now when they encounter the opposite in a determination, they demolish this determination, but it is only demolished through another, through my assertion, through the distinction that I form, by which one side is made to be the true, and the other the null. We have proceeded from a definite proposition; the nullity of the opposite does not appear in itself; it is not that it abrogates itself, i.e. that it contains a contradiction in itself. For instance, I assert of something that it is the null; then I show this by hypothesis in motion, and it follows that it is the null. But another consciousness does not assert this; I declare one thing to be directly true; another has the right of asserting something else as directly true, that is to say, motion. Similarly what seems to be the case when one philosophic system contradicts another, is that the first is pre-established, and that men starting from this point of view, combat the other. The matter is thus easily settled by saying: “The other has no truth, because it does not agree with me,” and the other has the right to say the same. It does not help if I prove my system or my proposition and then conclude that thus the opposite is false; to this other proposition the first always seems to be foreign and external. Falsity must not be demonstrated through another, and as untrue because the opposite is true, but in itself; we find this rational perception in Zeno.
In Plato’s Parmenides (pp. 127, 128, Steph., pp. 6, 7, Bekk.) this dialectic is very well described, for Plato makes Socrates say of it: “Zeno in his writings asserts fundamentally the same as does Parmenides, that All is One, but he would feign delude us into believing that he was telling something new. Parmenides thus shows in his poems that All is One; Zeno, on the contrary, shows that the Many cannot be.” Zeno replies, that “He wrote thus really against those who try to make Parmenides’ position ridiculous, for they try to show what absurdities and self-contradictions can be derived from his statements; he thus combats those who deduce Being from the many, in order to show that far more absurdities arise from this than from the statements of Parmenides.” That is the special aim of objective dialectic, in which we no longer maintain simple thought for itself, but see the battle fought with new vigour within the enemy’s camp. Dialectic has in Zeno this negative side, but it has also to be considered from its positive side.
According to the ordinary ideas of science, where propositions result from proof, proof is the movement of intelligence, a connection brought about by mediation. Dialectic is either (α) external dialectic, in which this movement is different from the comprehension of the movement, or (β) not a movement of our intelligence only, but what proceeds from the nature of the thing itself, i.e. from the pure Notion of the content. The former is a manner of regarding objects in such a way that reasons are revealed and new light thrown, by means of which all that was supposed to be firmly fixed, is made to totter; there may be reasons which are altogether external too, and we shall speak further of this dialectic when dealing with the Sophists. The other dialectic, however, is the immanent contemplation of the object; it is taken for itself, without previous hypothesis, idea or obligation, not under any outward conditions, laws or causes; we have to put ourselves right into the thing, to consider the object in itself, and to take it in the determinations which it has. In regarding it thus, it shows from itself that it contains opposed determinations, and thus breaks up; this dialectic we more especially find in the ancients. The subjective dialectic, which reasons from external grounds, is moderate, for it grants that: “In the right there is what is not right, and in the false the true.” True dialectic leaves nothing whatever to its object, as if the latter were deficient on one side only; for it disintegrates itself in the entirety of its nature. The result of this dialectic is null, the negative; the affirmative in it does not yet appear. This true dialectic may be associated with the work of the Eleatics. But in their case the real meaning and quality of philosophic understanding was not great, for they got no further than the fact that through contradiction the object is a nothing.
Zeno’s dialectic of matter has not been refuted to the present day; even now we have not got beyond it, and the matter is left in uncertainty. Simplicius, writing on the Physics of Aristotle (p. 30), says: “Zeno proves that if the many is, it must be great and small; if great, the many must be infinite in number” (it must have gone beyond the manifold, as indifferent limit, into the infinite; but what is infinite is no longer large and no longer many, for it is the negation of the many). “If small, it must be so small as to have no size,” like atoms. “Here he shows that what has neither size, thickness nor mass, cannot be. For if it were added to another, it would not cause its increase; were it, that is to say, to have no size and be added thereto, it could not supplement the size of the other and consequently that which is added is nothing. Similarly were it taken away, the other would not be made less, and thus it is nothing. If what has being is, each existence necessarily has size and thickness, is outside of one another, and one is separate from the other; the same applies to all else (περὶ τοῦ προὔχοντος), for it, too, has size, and in it there is what mutually differs (προέξει αὐτοῦ τι). But it is the same thing to say something once and to say it over and over again; in it nothing can be a last, nor will there not be another to the other. Thus if many are, they are small and great; small, so that they have no size; great, so that they are infinite.”
Aristotle (Phys. VI. 9) explains this dialectic further; Zeno’s treatment of motion was above all objectively dialectical. But the particulars which we find in the Parmenides of Plato are not his. For Zeno’s consciousness we see simple unmoved thought disappear, but become thinking movement; in that he combats sensuous movement, he concedes it. The reason that dialectic first fell on movement is that the dialectic is itself this movement, or movement itself the dialectic of all that is. The thing, as self-moving, has its dialectic in itself, and movement is the becoming another, self-abrogation. If Aristotle says that Zeno denied movement because it contains an inner contradiction, it is not to be understood to mean that movement did not exist at all. The point is not that there is movement and that this phenomenon exists; the fact that there is movement is as sensuously certain as that there are elephants; it is not in this sense that Zeno meant to deny movement. The point in question concerns its truth. Movement, however, is held to be untrue, because the conception of it involves a contradiction; by that he meant to say that no true Being can be predicated of it.
Zeno’s utterances are to be looked at from this point of view, not as being directed against the reality of motion, as would at first appear, but as pointing out how movement must necessarily be determined, and showing the course which must be taken. Zeno now brings forward four different arguments against motion; the proofs rest on the infinite divisibility of space and time.
(a) This is his first form of argument:— “Movement has no truth, because what is in motion must first reach the middle of the space before arriving at the end.” Aristotle expresses this thus shortly, because he had earlier treated of and worked out the subject at length. This is to be taken as indicating generally that the continuity of space is presupposed. What moves itself must reach a certain end, this way is a whole. In order to traverse the whole, what is in motion must first pass over the half, and now the end of this half is considered as being the end; but this half of space is again a whole, that which also has a half, and the half of this half must first have been reached, and so on into infinity. Zeno here arrives at the infinite divisibility of space; because space and time are absolutely continuous, there is no point at which the division can stop. Every dimension (and every time and space always have a dimension) is again divisible into two halves, which must be measured off; and however small a space we have, the same conditions reappear. Movement would be the act of passing through these infinite moments, and would therefore never end; thus what is in motion cannot reach its end. It is known how Diogenes of Sinope, the Cynic, quite simply refuted these arguments against movement; without speaking he rose and walked about, contradicting them by action.60 But when reasons are disputed, the only valid refutation is one derived from reasons; men have not merely to satisfy themselves by sensuous assurance, but also to understand. To refute objections is to prove their non-existence, as when they are made to fall away and can hence be adduced no longer; but it is necessary to think of motion as Zeno thought of it, and yet to carry this theory of motion further still.
We have here the spurious infinite or pure appearance, whose simple principle Philosophy demonstrates as universal Notion, for the first time making its appearance as developed in its contradiction; in the history of Philosophy a consciousness of this contradiction is also attained. Movement, this pure phenomenon, appears as something thought and shown forth in its real being — that is, in its distinction of pure self-identity and pure negativity, the point as distinguished from continuity. To us there is no contradiction in the idea that the here of space and the now of time are considered as a continuity and length; but their Notion is self-contradictory. Self-identity or continuity is absolute cohesion, the destruction of all difference, of all negation, of being for self; the point, on the contrary, is pure being-for-self, absolute self-distinction and the destruction of all identity and all connection with what is different. Both of these, however, are, in space and time, placed in one; space and time are thus the contradiction; it is necessary, first of all, to show the contradiction in movement, for in movement that which is opposed is, to ordinary conceptions, inevitably manifested. Movement is just the reality of time and space, and because this appears and is made manifest, the apparent contradiction is demonstrated, and it is this contradiction that Zeno notices. The limitation of bisection which is involved in the continuity of space, is not absolute limitation, for that which is limited is again continuity; however, this continuity is again not absolute, for the opposite has to be exhibited in it, the limitation of bisection; but the limitation of continuity is still not thereby established, the half is still continuous, and so on into infinity. In that we say “into infinity,” we place before ourselves a beyond, outside of the ordinary conception, which cannot reach so far. It is certainly an endless going forth, but in the Notion it is present, it is a progression from one opposed determination to others, from continuity to negativity, from negativity to continuity; but both of these are before us. Of these moments one in the process may be called the true one; Zeno first asserts continuous progression in such a way that no limited space can be arrived at as ultimate, or Zeno upholds progression in this limitation.
The general explanation which Aristotle gives to this contradiction, is that space and time are not infinitely divided, but are only divisible. But it now appears that, because they are divisible — that is, in potentiality — they must actually be infinitely divided, for else they could not be divided into infinity. That is the general answer of the ordinary man in endeavouring to refute the explanation of Aristotle. Bayle (Tom. IV. art. Zénon, not. E.) hence says of Aristotle’s answer that it is “pitoyable: C’est se moquer du monde que de se servir de cette doctrine; car si la matière est divisible à l’infini, elle contient un nombre infini de parties. Ce n’est donc point un infini en puissance, c’est un infini, qui existe réellement, actuellement. Mais quand-même on accorderait cet infini en puissance, qui deviendrait un infini par la division actuelle de ses parties, on ne perdrait pas ses avantages; car le mouvement est une chose, qui a la même vertu, que la division. Il touche une partie de l’espace sans toucher l’autre, et il les touche toutes les unes après les autres. N’est-ce pas les distinguer actuellement? N’est-ce pas faire ce que ferait un géomètre sur une table en tirant des lignes, qui désignassent tous les demi-pouces? Il ne brise pas la table en demi-pouces, mais il y fait néanmoins une division, qui marque la distinction actuelle des parties; et je ne crois pas qu’Aristote eut voulu nier, que si l’on tirait une infinité de lignes sur un pouce de matière, on n’y introduisît une division, qui réduirait en infini actuel ce qui n’était selon lui qu’un infini virtual.” This si is good! Divisibility is, as potentiality, the universal; there is continuity as well as negativity or the point posited in it — but posited as moment, and not as existent in and for itself. I can divide matter into infinitude, but I only can do so; I do not really divide it into infinitude. This is the infinite, that no one of its moments has reality. It never does happen that, in itself, one or other — that absolute limitation or absolute continuity — actually comes into existence in such a way that the other moment disappears. There are two absolute opposites, but they are moments, i.e. in the simple Notion or in the universal, in thought, if you will; for in thought, in ordinary conception, what is set forth both is and is not at the same time. What is represented either as such, or as an image of the conception, is not a thing; it has no Being, and yet it is not nothing.
Space and time furthermore, as quantum, form a limited extension, and thus can be measured off; just as I do not actually divide space, neither does the body which is in motion. The partition of space as divided, is not absolute discontinuity (Punktualität), nor is pure continuity the undivided and indivisible; likewise time is not pure negativity or discontinuity, but also continuity. Both are manifested in motion, in which the Notions have their reality for ordinary conception — pure negativity as time, continuity as space. Motion itself is just this actual unity in the opposition, and the sequence of both moments in this unity. To comprehend motion is to express its essence in the form of Notion, i.e., as unity of negativity and continuity; but in them neither continuity nor discreteness can be exhibited as the true existence. If we represent space or time to ourselves as infinitely divided, we have an infinitude of points, but continuity is present therein as a space which comprehends them: as Notion, however, continuity is the fact that all these are alike, and thus in reality they do not appear one out of the other like points. But both these moments make their appearance as existent; if they are manifested indifferently, their Notion is no longer posited, but their existence. In them as existent, negativity is a limited size, and they exist as limited space and time; actual motion is progression through a limited space and a limited time and not through infinite space and infinite time.
That what is in motion must reach the half is the assertion of continuity, i.e. the possibility of division as mere possibility; it is thus always possible in every space, however small. It is said that it is plain that the half must be reached, but in so saying, everything is allowed, including the fact that it never will be reached; for to say so in one case, is the same as saying it an infinite number of times. We mean, on the contrary, that in a larger space the half can be allowed, but we conceive that we must somewhere attain to a space so small that no halving is possible, or an indivisible, non-continuous space which is no space. This, however, is false, for continuity is a necessary determination; there is undoubtedly a smallest in space, i.e. a negation of continuity, but the negation is something quite abstract. Abstract adherence to the subdivision indicated, that is, to continuous bisection into infinitude, is likewise false, for in the conception of a half, the interruption of continuity is involved. We must say that there is no half of space, for space is continuous; a piece of wood may be broken into two halves, but not space, and space only exists in movement. It might equally be said that space consists of an endless number of points, i.e. of infinitely many limits and thus cannot be traversed. Men think themselves able to go from one indivisible point to another, but they do not thereby get any further, for of these there is an unlimited number. Continuity is split up into its opposite, a number which is indefinite; that is to say, if continuity is not admitted, there is no motion. It is false to assert that it is possible when one is reached, or that which is not continuous; for motion is connection. Thus when it was said that continuity is the presupposed possibility of infinite division, continuity is only the hypothesis; but what is exhibited in this continuity is the being of infinitely many, abstractly absolute limits.
(b) The second proof, which is also the presupposition of continuity and the manifestation of division, is called “Achilles, the Swift.” The ancients loved to clothe difficulties in sensuous representations. Of two bodies moving in one direction, one of which is in front and the other following at a fixed distance and moving quicker than the first, we know that the second will overtake the first. But Zeno says, “The slower can never be overtaken by the quicker.” And he proves it thus: “The second one requires a certain space of time to reach the place from which the one pursued started at the beginning of the given period.” Thus during the time in which the second reached the point where the first was, the latter went over a new space which the second has again to pass through in a part of this period; and in this way it goes into infinity.
c
d
e
f
g
B
A
B, for instance, traverses two miles (c d) in an hour, A in the same time, one mile (d e); if they are two miles (c d) removed from one another, B has in one hour come to where A was at the beginning of the hour. While B, in the next half hour, goes over the distance crossed by A of one mile (d e), A has got half a mile (e f) further, and so on into infinity. Quicker motion does not help the second body at all in passing over the interval of space by which he is behind: the time which he requires, the slower body always has at its avail in order to accomplish some, although an ever shorter advance; and this, because of the continual division, never quite disappears.
Aristotle, in speaking of this, puts it shortly thus. “This proof asserts the same endless divisibility, but it is untrue, for the quick will overtake the slow body if the limits to be traversed be granted to it.” This answer is correct and contains all that can be said; that is, there are in this representation two periods of time and two distances, which are separated from one another, i.e. they are limited in relation to one another; when, on the contrary, we admit that time and space are continuous, so that two periods of time or points of space are related to one another as continuous, they are, while being two, not two, but identical. In ordinary language we solve the matter in the easiest way, for we say: “Because the second is quicker, it covers a greater distance in the same time as the slow; it can therefore come to the place from which the first started and get further still.” After B, at the end of the first hour, arrives at d and A at e, A in one and the same period, that is, in the second hour, goes over the distance e g, and B the distance d g. But this period of time which should be one, is divisible into that in which B accomplishes d e and that in which B passes through e g. A has a start of the first, by which it gets over the distance e f, so that A is at f at the same period as B is at e. The limitation which, according to Aristotle, is to be overcome, which must be penetrated, is thus that of time; since it is continuous, it must, for the solution of the difficulty, be said that what is divisible into two spaces of time is to be conceived of as one, in which B gets from d to e and from e to g, while A passes over the distance e g. In motion two periods, as well as two points in space, are indeed one.
If we wish to make motion clear to ourselves, we say that the body is in one place and then it goes to another; because it moves, it is no longer in the first, but yet not in the second; were it in either it would be at rest. Where then is it? If we say that it is between both, this is to convey nothing at all, for were it between both, it would be in a place, and this presents the same difficulty. But movement means to be in this place and not to be in it, and thus to be in both alike; this is the continuity of space and time which first makes motion possible. Zeno, in the deduction made by him, brought both these points into forcible opposition. The discretion of space and time we also uphold, but there must also be granted to them the overstepping of limits, i.e. the exhibition of limits as not being, or as being divided periods of time, which are also not divided. In our ordinary ideas we find the same determinations as those on which the dialectic of Zeno rests; we arrive at saying, though unwillingly, that in one period two distances of space are traversed, but we do not say that the quicker comprehends two moments of time in one; for that we fix a definite space. But in order that the slower may lose its precedence, it must be said that it loses its advantage of a moment of time, and indirectly the moment of space.
Zeno makes limit, division, the moment of discretion in space and time, the only element which is enforced in the whole of his conclusions, and hence results the contradiction. The difficulty is to overcome thought, for what makes the difficulty is always thought alone, since it keeps apart the moments of an object which in their separation are really united. It brought about the Fall, for man ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; but it also remedies these evils.
(c) The third form, according to Aristotle, is as follows: — Zeno says: “The flying arrow rests, and for the reason that what is in motion is always in the self-same Now and the self-same Here, in the indistinguishable;” it is here and here and here. It can be said of the arrow that it is always the same, for it is always in the same space and the same time; it does not get beyond its space, does not take in another, that is, a greater or smaller space. That, however, is what we call rest and not motion. In the Here and Now, the becoming “other” is abrogated, limitation indeed being established, but only as moment; since in the Here and Now as such, there is no difference, continuity is here made to prevail against the mere belief in diversity. Each place is a different place, and thus the same; true, objective difference does not come forth in these sensuous relations, but in the spiritual.
This is also apparent in mechanics; of two bodies the question as to which moves presents itself before us. It requires more than two places — three at least — to determine which of them moves. But it is correct to say this, that motion is plainly relative; whether in absolute space the eye, for instance, rests, or whether it moves, is all the same. Or, according to a proposition brought forward by Newton, if two bodies move round one another in a circle, it may be asked whether the one rests or both move. Newton tries to decide this by means of an external circumstance, the strain on the string. When I walk on a ship in a direction opposed to the motion of the ship, this is in relation to the ship, motion, and in relation to all else, rest.
In both the first proofs, continuity in progression has the predominance; there is no absolute limit, but an overstepping of all limits. Here the opposite is established; absolute limitation, the interruption of continuity, without however passing into something else; while discretion is presupposed, continuity is maintained. Aristotle says of this proof: “It arises from the fact that it is taken for granted that time consists of the Now; for if this is not conceded, the conclusions will not follow.”
(d) “The fourth proof,” Aristotle continues, “is derived from similar bodies which move in opposite directions in the space beside a similar body, and with equal velocity, one from one end of the space, the other from the middle. It necessarily results from this that half the time is equal to the double of it. The fallacy rests in this, that Zeno supposes that what is beside the moving body, and what is beside the body at rest, move through an equal distance in equal time with equal velocity, which, however, is untrue.”
In a definite space such as a table (A B) let us suppose two bodies of equal length with it and with one another, one of which (C D) lies with one end (C) on the middle (g) of the table, and the other (E F), being in the same direction, has the point (E) only touching the end of the table (h); and supposing they move in opposite directions, and the former (C D) reaches in an hour the end (h) of the table; we have the result ensuing that the one (E F) passes in the half of the time through the same space (i k) which the other does in the double (g h); hence the half is equal to the double. That is to say, this second passes (let us say, in the point l) by the whole of the first C D. In the first half-hour l goes from m to i, while k only goes from g to n.
In the second half-hour l goes past o to k, and altogether passes from m to k, or the double of the distance.
This fourth form deals with the contradiction presented in opposite motion; that which is common is given entirely to one body, while it only does part for itself. Here the distance travelled by one body is the sum of the distance travelled by both, just as when I go two feet east, and from the same point another goes two feet west, we are four feet removed from one another; in the distance moved both are positive, and hence have to be added together. Or if I have gone two feet forwards and two feet backwards, although I have walked four feet, I have not moved from the spot; the motion is then nil, for by going forwards and backwards an opposition ensues which annuls itself.
This is the dialectic of Zeno; he had a knowledge of the determinations which our ideas of space and time contain, and showed in them their contradiction; Kant’s antinomies do no more than Zeno did here. The general result of the Eleatic dialectic has thus become, “the truth is the one, all else is untrue,” just as the Kantian philosophy resulted in “we know appearances only.” On the whole the principle is the same; “the content of knowledge is only an appearance and not truth,” but there is also a great difference present. That is to say, Zeno and the Eleatics in their proposition signified “that the sensuous world, with its multitudinous forms, is in itself appearance only, and has no truth.” But Kant does not mean this, for he asserts: “Because we apply the activity of our thought to the outer world, we constitute it appearance; what is without, first becomes an untruth by the fact that we put therein a mass of determinations. Only our knowledge, the spiritual, is thus appearance; the world is in itself absolute truth; it is our action alone that ruins it, our work is good for nothing.” It shows excessive humility of mind to believe that knowledge has no value; but Christ says, “Are ye not better than the sparrows?” and we are so inasmuch as we are thinking; as sensuous we are as good or as bad as sparrows. Zeno’s dialectic has greater objectivity than this modern dialectic.
Zeno’s dialectic is limited to Metaphysics; later, with the Sophists, it became general. We here leave the Eleatic school, which perpetuates itself in Leucippus and, on the other side, in the Sophists, in such a way that these last extended the Eleatic conceptions to all reality, and gave to it the relation of consciousness; the former, however, as one who later on worked out the Notion in its abstraction, makes a physical application of it, and one which is opposed to consciousness. There are several other Eleatics mentioned, to Tennemann’s surprise, who, however, cannot interest us. “It is so unexpected,” he says (Vol. I., p. 190), “that the Eleatic system should find disciples; and yet Sextus mentions a certain Xeniades.”
IF WE PUT aside the Ionics, who did not understand the Absolute as Thought, and the Pythagoreans likewise, we have the pure Being of the Eleatics, and the dialectic which denies all finite relationships. Thought to the latter is the process of such manifestations; the world in itself is the apparent, and pure Being alone the true. The dialectic of Zeno thus lays hold of the determinations which rest in the content itself, but it may, in so far, also be called subjective dialectic, inasmuch as it rests in the contemplative subject, and the one, without this movement of the dialectic, is abstract identity. The next step from the existence of the dialectic as movement in the subject, is that it must necessarily itself become objective. If Aristotle blames Thales for doing away with motion, because change cannot be understood from Being, and likewise misses the actual in the Pythagorean numbers and Platonic Ideas, taken as the substances of the things which participate in them, Heraclitus at least understands the absolute as just this process of the dialectic. The dialectic is thus thre-fold: (α) the external dialectic, a reasoning which goes over and over again without ever reaching the soul of the thing; (β) immanent dialectic of the object, but falling within the contemplation of the subject; (γ) the objectivity of Heraclitus which takes the dialectic itself as principle. The advance requisite and made by Heraclitus is the progression from Being as the first immediate thought, to the category of Becoming as the second. This is the first concrete, the Absolute, as in it the unity of opposites. Thus with Heraclitus the philosophic Idea is to be met with in its speculative form; the reasoning of Parmenides and Zeno is abstract understanding. Heraclitus was thus universally esteemed a deep philosopher and even was decried as such. Here we see land; there is no proposition of Heraclitus which I have not adopted in my Logic.
Diogenes Laertius says (IX. 1) that Heraclitus flourished about the 69th Olympiad (500 B.C.), and that he was of Ephesus and in part contemporaneous with Parmenides: he began the separation and withdrawal of philosophers from public affairs and the interests of the country, and devoted himself in his isolation entirely to Philosophy. We have thus three stages: (α) the seven sages as statesmen, regents and law-givers; (β) the Pythagorean aristocratic league; (γ) an interest in science for its own sake. Little more is known of Heraclitus’ life than his relations to his countrymen the Ephesians, and according to Diogenes Laertius (IX. 15, 3), these were for the most part found in the fact that they despised him and were yet more profoundly despised by him — a relationship such as we have now-a-days, when each man exists for himself, and despises everyone else. In the case of this noble character, the disdain and sense of separation from the crowd emanates from the deep sense of the perversity of the ordinary ideas and life of his people: in reference to this, isolated expressions used on various occasions are still preserved. Cicero (Tusc. Quæst. V. 36) and Diogenes Laertius (IX. 2) relate that Heraclitus said: “The Ephesians all deserve to have their necks broken as they grow up, so that the town should be left to minors” (people now say that only youth knows how to govern), “because they drove away his friend Hermodorus, the best of them all, and gave as their reason for so doing that amongst them none should be more excellent than the rest; and if any one were so, it should be elsewhere and amongst others.” It was for the same reason that in the Athenian Democracy great men were banished. Diogenes adds: “His fellow-citizens asked him to take part in the administration of public affairs, but he declined, because he did not like their constitution, laws and administration.” Proclus (T. III. pp. 115, 116, ed. Cousin) says: “The noble Heraclitus blamed the people for being devoid of understanding or thought. ‘What is,’ he says, ‘their understanding or their prudence? Most of them are bad, and few are good.’” Diogenes Laertius (IX. 6) furthermore says: “Antisthenes cites, as a proof of Heraclitus’ greatness, that he left his kingdom to his brother.” He expresses in the strongest manner his contempt for what is esteemed to be truth and right, in the letter preserved to us by Diogenes (IX. 13, 14), in which, to the invitation of Darius Hystaspes, “to make him acquainted with Greek wisdom — for his work on Nature contains a very forcible theory of the world, but it is in many passages obscure — to come to him and explain to him what required explanation” (this is certainly not very probable if Heraclitus’ turn of mind was also Oriental), he is said to have replied: “All mortal men depart from truth and justice and are given over to excess and vain opinions according to their evil understandings. But I, since I have attained to an oblivion of all evil, and shun the overpowering envy that follows me, and the vanity of high position, shall not come to Persia. I am content with little and live in my own way.”
The only work that he wrote, and the title of which, Diogenes tells us, was by some stated to be “The Muses” and by others “On Nature,” he deposited in the temple of Diana at Ephesus. It seems to have been preserved until modern times; the fragments which have come down to us are collected together in Stephanus’ Poësis philosophica (p. 129, seq.). Schleiermacher also collected them and arranged them in a characteristic way. The title is “Heraclitus, the Dark, of Ephesus, as represented in fragments of his work and by the testimony of the ancients,” and it is to be found in Wolf and Buttmann’s “Museum of ancient Learning,” vol. I. (Berlin, 1807) pp. 315-533. Seventy-three passages are given. Kreuzer made one hope that he would work at Heraclitus more critically and with a knowledge of the language. He made a more complete collection, particularly from grammarians; however, as, for lack of time, he left it to be worked up by a younger scholar, and as the latter died, it never came before the public. Compilations of the kind are as a rule too copious: they contain a mass of learning and are more easily written than read. Heraclitus has been considered obscure, and is indeed celebrated for this; it also drew upon him the name of σκοτεινός. Cicero (De Nat. Deor. I. 26; III. 14; De Finib. II. 5) takes up a wrong idea, as often happens to him; he thinks that Heraclitus purposely wrote obscurely. Any such design would, however, be a very shallow one, and it is really nothing but the shallowness of Cicero himself ascribed by him to Heraclitus. Heraclitus’ obscurity is rather a result of neglecting proper composition and of imperfect language; this is what was thought by Aristotle (Rhet. III. 5), who, from a grammatical point of view, ascribed it to a want of punctuation: “We do not know whether a word belongs to what precedes or what succeeds.” Demetrius is of the same opinion (De Elocutione, § 192, p. 78, ed. Schneider). Socrates, as Diogenes Laertius relates (II. 22; IX. 11-12), said of this book: “What he understood of it was excellent, and what he did not understand he believed to be as good, but it requires a vigorous (Δηλίου) swimmer to make his way through it.” The obscurity of this philosophy, however, chiefly consists in there being profound speculative thought contained in it; the Notion, the Idea, is foreign to the understanding and cannot be grasped by it, though it may find mathematics quite simple.
Plato studied the philosophy of Heraclitus with special diligence; we find much of it quoted in his works, and he got his earlier philosophic education most indubitably from this source, so that Heraclitus may be called Plato’s teacher. Hippocrates, likewise, is a philosopher of Heraclitus’ school. What is preserved to us of Heraclitus’ philosophy at first seems very contradictory, but we find the Notion making its appearance, and a man of profound reflection revealed. Zeno began to abrogate the opposed predicates, and he shows the opposition in movement, an assertion of limitation and an abrogation of the same; Zeno expressed the infinite, but on its negative side only, in reference to its contradiction as being the untrue. In Heraclitus we see the perfection of knowledge so far as it has gone, a perfecting of the Idea into a totality, which is the beginning of Philosophy, since it expresses the essence of the Idea, the Notion of the infinite, the potentially and actively existent, as that which it is, i.e. as the unity of opposites. From Heraclitus dates the ever-remaining Idea which is the same in all philosophers to the present day, as it was the Idea of Plato and of Aristotle.
- The Logical Principle. Concerning the universal principle, this bold mind, Aristotle tells us (Metaph. IV. 3 and 7), first uttered the great saying: “Being and non-being are the same; everything is and yet is not.” The truth only is as the unity of distinct opposites and, indeed, of the pure opposition of being and non-being; but with the Eleatics we have the abstract understanding that Being is alone the truth. We say, in place of using the expression of Heraclitus, that the Absolute is the unity of being and non-being. When we understand that proposition as that “Being is and yet is not,” this does not seem to make much sense, but only to imply complete negation and want of thought. But we have another sentence that gives the meaning of the principle better. For Heraclitus says: “Everything is in a state of flux; nothing subsists nor does it ever remain the same.” And Plato further says of Heraclitus: “He compares things to the current of a river: no one can go twice into the same stream,”61 for it flows on and other water is disturbed. Aristotle tells us (Met. IV. 5) that his successors even said “it could not once be entered,” for it changed directly; what is, is not again. Aristotle (De Cœlo, III. 1) goes on to say that Heraclitus declares that “there is only one that remains, and from out of this all else is formed; all except this one is not enduring (παγίως).”
This universal principle is better characterized as Becoming, the truth of Being; since everything is and is not, Heraclitus hereby expressed that everything is Becoming. Not merely does origination belong to it, but passing away as well; both are not independent, but identical. It is a great advance in thought to pass from Being to Becoming, even if, as the first unity of opposite determinations, it is still abstract. Because in this relationship both must be unrestful and therefore contain within themselves the principle of life, the lack of motion which Aristotle has demonstrated in the earlier philosophies is supplied, and this last is even made to be the principle. This philosophy is thus not one past and gone; its principle is essential, and is to be found in the beginning of my Logic, immediately after Being and Nothing. The recognition of the fact that Being and non-being are abstractions devoid of truth, that the first truth is to be found in Becoming, forms a great advance. The understanding comprehends both as having truth and value in isolation; reason, on the other hand, recognizes the one in the other, and sees that in the one its “other” is contained. If we do not take the conception of existence as complete, the pure Being of simple thought in which everything definite is denied, is the absolute negative; but nothing is the same, or just this self-identity. We here have an absolute transition into the opposite which Zeno did not reach, for he remained at the proposition, “From nothing, comes nothing.” With Heraclitus, however, the moment of negativity is immanent, and the Notion of Philosophy as complete is therefore dealt with.
In the first place we have here the abstract idea of Being and non-being in a form altogether immediate and general; but when we look closer, we find that Heraclitus also conceived of the opposites and their unification in a more definite manner. He says: “The opposites are combined in the self-same one, just as honey is both sweet and bitter.” Sextus remarks of this (Pyrrh. Hyp. I. 29, §§ 210, 211; II. 6, § 63): “Heraclitus, like the Sceptics, proceeds from ordinary ideas; no one will deny that healthy men call honey sweet, while those who are sick will say it is bitter.” If it is only sweet, it cannot alter its nature in another individual; it would in all places and even to the jaundiced patient be sweet. Aristotle (De mundo, 5) quotes this from Heraclitus: “Join together the complete whole and the incomplete” (the whole makes itself the part, and the meaning of the part is to become the whole), “what coincides and what conflicts, what is harmonious and what discordant, and from out of them all comes one, and from one, all.” This one is not an abstraction, but the activity of dividing itself into opposites; the dead infinite is a poor abstraction as compared with the depths of Heraclitus. All that is concrete, as that God created the world, divided Himself, begot a Son, is contained in this determination. Sextus Empiricus mentions (adv. Math. IX. 337) that Heraclitus said: “The part is something different from the whole and is yet the same as the whole; substance is the whole and the part, the whole in the universe and the part in this living being.” Plato says in his Symposium (p. 187, Steph.; p. 397, Bekk.) of Heraclitus’ principle: “The one, separated from itself, makes itself one with itself like the harmony of the bow and the lyre.” He then makes Eryximachus, who speaks in the Symposium, criticize this thus: “In harmony there is discord, or it arises from opposites; for harmony does not arise from height and depth in that they are different, but from their union through the art of music.” But this does not contradict Heraclitus, who means the same thing. That which is simple, the repetition of a tone, is no harmony; difference is clearly necessary to harmony, or a definite antithesis; for it is the absolute becoming and not mere change. The real fact is that each particular tone is different from another — not abstractly so from any other, but from its other — and thus it also can be one. Each particular only is, in so far as its opposite is implicitly contained in its Notion. Subjectivity is thus the “other” of objectivity and not of a piece of paper, which would be meaningless; since each is the “other” of the “other” as its “other,” we here have their identity. This is Heraclitus’ great principle; it may seem obscure, but it is speculative. And this to the understanding which maintains the independence of Being and non-being, the subjective and objective, the real and the ideal, is always difficult and dim.
- Natural Philosophy. In his system Heraclitus did not rest content with thus expressing himself in Notions, or with what is purely logical. But in addition to this universal form in which he advanced his principle, he gave his idea a real and more natural form, and hence he is still reckoned as belonging to the Ionic school of natural philosophers. However, as regards this form of reality, historians are at variance; most of them, and amongst others, Aristotle (Met. I. 3, 8), say that he maintained fire to be the existent principle; others, according to Sextus (adv. Math. IX. 360; X. 233), say it was air, and others again assert that he made vapour to be the principle rather than air;62 even time is, in Sextus (adv. Math. X. 216), given as the primary existence. The question arises as to how this diversity is to be comprehended. It must not be believed that all these accounts are to be ascribed to the inaccuracy of historians, for the witnesses are of the best, like Aristotle and Sextus Empiricus, who do not speak casually of these forms, but definitely, without, however, remarking upon any such differences and contradictions. We seem to have a better reason in the obscurity of the writing of Heraclitus, which might, by the confusion of its expression, give occasion to misunderstanding. But when regarded closer, this difficulty, which is evident when merely looked at superficially, disappears; it is in the profoundly significant conceptions of Heraclitus that the true way out of this difficulty manifests itself. Heraclitus could no longer, like Thales, express water, air or anything similar as an absolute principle — he could no longer do so in the form of a primeval element from which the rest proceeds — because he thought of Being as identical with non-being, or the infinite Notion; thus the existent, absolute principle cannot with him come forth as a definite and actual thing such as water, but must be water in alteration, or as process only.
a. Understanding the abstract process as time, Heraclitus said: “Time is the first corporeal existence,” as Sextus (adv. Math. X. 231, 232) puts it. Corporeal is an unfortunate expression; the Sceptics frequently pick out the crudest expressions or make thoughts crude in the first place so that they may afterwards dispense with them. Corporeal here means abstract sensuousness; time, as the first sensuous existence, is the abstract representation of process. It is because Heraclitus did not rest at the logical expression of Becoming, but gave to his principle the form of the existent, that it was necessary that time should first present itself to him as such; for in the sensuously perceptible it is the first form of Becoming. Time is pure Becoming as perceived, the pure Notion, that which is simple, and the harmony issuing from absolute opposites; its essential nature is to be and not to be in one unity, and besides this, it has no other character. It is not that time is or is not, for time is non-being immediately in Being and Being immediately in non-being: it is the transition out of Being into non-being, the abstract Notion, but in an objective form, i.e. in so far as it is for us. In time there is no past and future, but only the now, and this is, but is not as regards the past; and this non-being, as future, turns round into Being. If we were to say how that which Heraclitus recognized as principle, might, in the pure form in which he recognized it, exist for consciousness, we could mention nothing else but time; and it quite accords with the principle of thought in Heraclitus to define time as the first form of Becoming.
b. But this pure, objective Notion must realize itself more fully, and thus we find in fact, that Heraclitus determined the process in a more markedly physical manner. In time we have the moments of Being and non-being manifested as negative only, or as vanishing immediately; if we wish to express both these moments as one independent totality, the question is asked, which physical existence corresponds to this determination. To Heraclitus the truth is to have grasped the essential being of nature, i.e. to have represented it as implicitly infinite, as process in itself; and consequently it is evident to us that Heraclitus could not say that the primary principle is air, water, or any such thing. They are not themselves process, but fire is process; and thus he maintains fire to be the elementary principle, and this is the real form of the Heraclitean principle, the soul and substance of the nature-process. Fire is physical time, absolute unrest, absolute disintegration of existence, the passing away of the “other,” but also of itself; and hence we can understand how Heraclitus, proceeding from his fundamental determination, could quite logically call fire the Notion of the process.
c. He further made this fire to be a real process; because its reality is for itself the whole process, the moments have become concretely determined. Fire, as the metamorphosis of bodily things, is the transformation and exhalation of the determinate; for this process Heraclitus used a particular word — evaporation (ἀναθυμίασις) — but it is rather transition. Aristotle (De anim. I. 2) says of Heraclitus in this regard, that, according to his view, “the soul is the principle because it is evaporation, the origination of everything; it is what is most incorporeal and always in a state of flux.” This is quite applicable to the primary principle of Heraclitus.
Furthermore he determined the real process in its abstract moments by separating two sides in it— “the way upwards (ὁδὸς ἄνω) and the way downwards (ὁδὸς κάτω)” — the one being division, in that it is the existence of opposites, and the other the unification of these existent opposites. Corresponding to these, he had, according to Diogenes (IX. 8), the further determinations “of enmity and strife (πόλεμος, ἔρις), and friendship and harmony (ὁμολογία, εἰρήνη); of these two, enmity and strife is that which is the principle of the origination of differences; but what leads to combustion is harmony and peace.” In enmity amongst men, the one sets himself up independently of the other, or is for himself and realizes himself; but unity and peace is sinking out of independence into indivisibility or non-reality. Everything is thre-fold and thereby real unity; nature is the never-resting, and the all is the transition out of the one into the other, from division into unity, and from unity into division.
The more detailed accounts of this real process are, in great measure, deficient and contradictory. In this connection, it is in some accounts63 said of Heraclitus that he defined it thus: “Of the forms taken by fire there is first of all the sea, and then of it half is the earth and the other half the lightning flash (πρηστήρ),” the fire which springs up. This is general and very obscure. Diogenes Laertius (IX. 9) says: “Fire is condensed into moisture, and when concrete it becomes water; water hardens into earth and this is the way downwards. The earth then again becomes fluid, and from it moisture supervenes, and from this the evaporation of the sea, from which all else arises; this is the way upwards. Water divides into a dark evaporation, becoming earth, and into what is pure, sparkling, becoming fire and burning in the solar sphere; what is fiery becomes meteors, planets and stars.” These are thus not still, dead stars, but are regarded as in Becoming, as being eternally productive. We thus have, on the whole, a metamorphosis of fire. These oriental, metaphorical expressions are, however, in Heraclitus not to be taken in their strictly sensuous signification, and as if these changes were present to the outward observation; but they depict the nature of these elements by which the earth eternally creates its suns and comets.
Nature is thus a circle. With this in view, we find Heraclitus, according to Clement of Alexandria (Strom. V. 14, p. 711), saying: “The universe was made neither by God nor man, but it ever was and is, and will be, a living fire, that which, in accordance with its laws, (μέτρῳ) kindles and goes out.” We now understand what Aristotle says of the principle being the soul, since the latter is evaporation; that is to say, fire, as this self-moving process of the world, is the soul. Another statement follows, which is also found in Clement of Alexandria (Strom. VI. 2, p. 746): “To souls (to the living) death is the becoming water; to water death is the becoming earth; on the other hand from earth, water arises, and from water, the soul.” Thus, on the whole, this process is one of extinction, of going back from opposition into unity, of the re-awakening of the former, and of issuing forth from one. The extinction of the soul, of the fire in water, the conflagration that finally results, some, and amongst others, Diogenes Laertius (IX. 8), Eusebius (Præp. Evang. XIV. 3) and Tennemann (Vol. I. p. 218), falsely assert to be a conflagration of the world. What Heraclitus is said to have spoken of as a conflagration of this world, was thought to be an imaginary idea that after a certain time — as, according to our ideas, at the end of the world — the world would disappear in flames. But we see at once from passages which are most clear,64 that this conflagration is not meant, but that it is the perpetual burning up as the Becoming of friendship, the universal life and the universal process of the universe. In respect of the fact that, according to Heraclitus, fire is the animating, or the soul, we find in Plutarch (De esu. carn. I. p. 995, ed. Xyl.) an expression which may seem odd, namely, that “the driest soul is the best.” We certainly do not esteem the most moist the best, but, on the other hand, the one which is most alive; however dry here signifies fiery and thus the driest soul is pure fire, and this is not lifeless but life itself.
These are the principal moments of the real life-process; I will stop here a moment because we here find expressed the whole Notion of speculative reflection regarding Nature. In this Notion, one moment and one element goes over into the other; fire becomes water, water earth and fire. The contention about the transmutation and immutability of the elements is an old one; in this conception the ordinary, sensuous science of nature separates itself from natural philosophy. In the speculative point of view, which is that of Heraclitus, the simple substance in fire and the other elements in itself becomes metamorphosed; in the other, all transition is abolished and only an external separation of what is already there is maintained. Water is just water, fire is fire, &c. If the former point of view upholds transmutation, the latter believes in the possibility of demonstrating the opposite; it no longer, indeed, maintains water, fire, &c., to be simple realities, for it resolves them into hydrogen, oxygen, &c., but it asserts their immutability. It justly asserts that what is asserted and implied in the speculative point of view, must also have the truth of actuality; for if to be the speculative means to be the very nature and principle of its elements, this must likewise be present. We are wrong in representing the speculative to be something existent only in thought or inwardly, which is no one knows where. It is really present, but men of learning shut their eyes to it because of their limited point of view. If we listen to their account, they only observe and say what they see; but their observation is not true, for unconsciously they transform what is seen through their limited and stereotyped conception; the strife is not due to the opposition between observation and the absolute Notion, but between the one Notion and the other. They show that changes — such as that of water into earth — are non-existent. Even in modern times this transformation was indeed maintained, for when water was distilled, a residuum of earth was found. On this subject, however, Lavoisier carried on a number of very conclusive researches; he weighed all the receptacles, and it was shown that the residuum proceeded from the vessels. There is a superficial process that does not carry us beyond the determinate nature of substance. They say in reference to it, “water does not change into air but only into moisture, and moisture always condenses back into water again.” But in this they merely fix on a one-sided, insufficient process, and give it out to be the absolute process. In the real process of nature they, however, found by experience that the crystal dissolved gives water, and in the crystal, water is lost and solidifies, or becomes the so-called water of crystallization; they found that the evaporation of the earth is not to be found as moisture, in outward form in the air, for air remains quite pure, or hydrogen entirely disappears in pure air; they have sought in vain to find hydrogen in the atmospheric air. Similarly they discovered that quite dry air in which they can show neither moisture nor hydrogen, passes into mist, rain, &c. These are their observations, but they spoilt all their perceptions of changes by the fixed conception which they brought with them of whole and part, and of consistence out of parts, and of the previous presence as such, of what manifests itself in coming into existence. When the crystal dissolved reveals water, they say, “it is not that water has arisen, for it was already present there.” When water in its decomposition reveals hydrogen and oxygen, that means, according to them, “these last have not arisen for they were already there as such, as the parts of which the water subsists.” But they can neither demonstrate water in crystal nor oxygen and hydrogen in water, and the same is true of “latent heat.” As we find in all expression of perception and experience, as soon as men speak, there is a Notion present; it cannot be withheld, for in consciousness there always is a touch of universality and truth. For the Notion is the real principle, but it is only to cultured reason that it is absolute Notion, and not if it remains, as here, confined in a determinate form. Hence these men necessarily attain to their limits, and they are troubled because they do not find hydrogen in air; hygrometers, flasks full of air brought down from heights by an air-balloon, do not show it to exist. And similarly the water of crystallization is no longer water, but is changed into earth.
To come back to Heraclitus, there is only one thing wanting to the process, which is that its simple principle should be recognized as universal Notion. The permanence and rest which Aristotle gives, may be missed. Heraclitus, indeed, says that everything flows on, that nothing is existent and only the one remains; but that is the Notion of the unity which only exists in opposition and not of that reflected within itself. This one, in its unity with the movement of the individuals, is the genus, or in its infinitude the simple Notion as thought; as such, the Idea has still to be determined, and we shall thus find it again as the νοῦς of Anaxagoras. The universal is the immediate simple unity in opposition which goes back into itself as a process of differences; but this is also found in Heraclitus; he called this unity in opposition Fate (εἱμαρμένη) or Necessity.65 And the Notion of necessity is none other than this, that determinateness constitutes the principle of the existent as individual, but in that very way, relates it to its opposite: this is the absolute “connection (λόγος) that permeates the Being of the whole.” He calls this “the ethereal body, the seed of the Becoming of everything”;66 that to him is the Idea, the universal as reality, as process at rest.
- Relation of the Principle to Consciousness. There is still something else to consider, and that is what position in this principle Heraclitus gives to consciousness; his philosophy has, on the whole, a bent towards a philosophy of nature, for the principle, although logical, is apprehended as the universal nature-process. How does this λόγος come to consciousness? How is it related to the individual soul? I shall explain this here in greater detail: it is a beautiful, natural, childlike manner of speaking truth of the truth. The universal and the unity of the principle of consciousness and of the object, and the necessity of objectivity, make their first appearance here. Several passages from Heraclitus are preserved respecting his views of knowledge. From his principle that everything that is, at the same time is not, it immediately follows that he holds that sensuous certainty has no truth; for it is the certainty for which something exists as actual, which is not so in fact. Not this immediate Being, but absolute mediation, Being as thought of, Thought itself, is the true Being. Heraclitus in this relation says of sensuous perception — according to Clement of Alexandria — (Strom. III. 3, p. 520): “What we see waking is dead, but what we see sleeping, a dream,” and in Sextus (adv. Math. VII. 126, 127), “Men’s eyes and ears are bad witnesses, for they have barbarous souls. Reason (λόγος) is the judge of truth, not the arbitrary, but the only divine and universal judge” — this is the measure, the rhythm, that runs through the Being of everything. Absolute necessity is just the having the truth in consciousness; but every thought, or what proceeds from the individual, every relation in which there is only form and which has the content of the ordinary idea, is not such; what is so is the universal understanding, the developed consciousness of necessity, the identity of subjective and objective. Heraclitus says in this connection, according to Diogenes (IX. 1): “Much learning (πολυμαθίν) does not instruct the mind, else it had instructed Hesiod, Pythagoras, Xenophanes and Hecatæus. The only wisdom is to know the reason that reigns over all.”
Sextus (adv. Math. VII. 127-133), further describes the attitude of the subjective consciousness, of particular reason, to the universal, to this nature-process. That attitude has still a very physical appearance, resembling the state of mind we suppose in men who are mad or asleep. The waking man is related to things in a universal way, which is in conformity with the relation of the things and is the way in which others also regard them, and yet he still retains his independence. If, and in so far as I stand in the objectively intelligent connection of this state of mind, I am, just because of this externality, in finitude; but waking, I have the knowledge of the necessity of a connection in the form of objectivity, the knowledge of the universal existence, and thus the Idea in finite form. Sextus puts this in definite form: “Everything that surrounds us is logical and intelligent” — yet not therefore accompanied by consciousness. “If we draw this universal reality through our breath, we shall be intelligent, but we are so waking only, sleeping we are in oblivion.” The waking consciousness of the outer world, what belongs to the sphere of the understanding, is rather what may be called a condition; but here it is taken as the whole of rational consciousness. “For in sleep the channels of feeling are closed and the understanding that is in us is prevented from uniting (συμφυΐας) with the surroundings; the breath is the only connection (πρόσφυσις) maintained, and it may be compared to a root.” This breath is thus distinguished from the universal breath, i.e. from the being of another for us. Reason is this process with the objective: when we are not in connection with the whole, we only dream. “Separated, the understanding loses the power of consciousness (μνημονικὴν δύναμιν) that it formerly had.” The mind as individual unity only, loses objectivity, is not in individuality universal, is not the Thought which has itself as object. “In a waking condition, however, the understanding — gazing through the channels of sense as though it were through a window, and forming a relationship with the surroundings — maintains the logical power.” We here have the ideal in its native simplicity. “In the same way as coals which come near fire, themselves take fire, but apart from it, go out, the part which is cut off from the surroundings in our bodies becomes, through the separation, almost irrational.” This confutes those who think that God gives wisdom in sleep or in somnambulism. But in connection with the many channels it becomes similar to the whole. This whole, the universal and divine understanding, in unity with which we are logical, is, according to Heraclitus, the essence of truth. Hence that which appears as the universal to all, carries with it conviction, for it has part in the universal and divine Logos, while what is subscribed to by an individual carries with it no conviction from the opposite cause. He says in the beginning of his book on Nature: “Since the surroundings are reason, men are irrational both before they hear and when they first hear. For since what happens, happens according to this reason, they are still inexperienced when they search the sayings and the works which I expound, distinguishing the nature of everything and explaining its relations. But other men do not know what they do awake, just as they forget what they do in sleep.” Heraclitus says further: “We do and think everything in that we participate in the divine understanding (λόγος). Hence we must follow the universal understanding. But many live as if they had an understanding (φρόνησιν) of their own; the understanding is, however, nothing but interpretation” (being conscious) “of the manner in which all is ordered. Hence in so far as we participate in the knowledge (μνήμης) of it, we are in the truth; but in so far as we are singular (ἰδιάσωμεν) we are in error.” Great and important words! We cannot speak of truth in a truer or less prejudiced way. Consciousness as consciousness of the universal, is alone consciousness of truth; but consciousness of individuality and action as individual, an originality which becomes a singularity of content or of form, is the untrue and bad. Wickedness and error thus are constituted by isolating thought and thereby bringing about a separation from the universal. Men usually consider, when they speak of thinking something, that it must be something particular, but this is quite a delusion.
However much Heraclitus may maintain that there is no truth in sensuous knowledge because all that exists is in a state of flux, and that the existence of sensuous certainty is not while it is, he maintains the objective method in knowledge to be none the less necessary. The rational, the true, that which I know, is indeed a withdrawal from the objective as from what is sensuous, individual, definite and existent; but what reason knows within itself is necessity or the universal of being; it is the principle of thought, as it is the principle of the world. It is this contemplation of truth that Spinoza in his Ethics (P. II. propos. XLIV., coroll. II. p. 118, ed. Paul), calls “a contemplation of things in the guise of eternity.” The being-for-self of reason is not an objectless consciousness, or a dream, but a knowledge, that which is for itself; but this being-for-self is awake, or is objective and universal, i.e. is the same for all. The dream is a knowledge of something of which I alone know; fancy may be instanced as just such a dream. Similarly it is by feeling that something is for me alone, and that I have something in me as in this subject; the feeling may profess to be ever so elevated, yet it really is the case that for me as this subject, it is what I feel, and not an object independent of me. But in truth, the object is for me something essentially free, and I am for myself devoid of subjectivity; similarly this object is no imaginary one made an object by me alone, but is in itself a universal.
There are, besides, many other fragments of Heraclitus, solitary expressions, such as his saying, “men are mortal gods, and gods immortal men; living is death to the former and dying is their life.”67 Life is the death of the gods, death is the life of the gods; the divine is the rising through thought above mere nature which belongs to death. Hence Heraclitus also says, according to Sextus (adv. Math. VII., 349): “the power of thinking is outside the body,” which, in a remarkable way, Tennemann makes into: “outside of men.” In Sextus (Pyrrh. Hyp. III. 24, § 230) we further read: “Heraclitus says that both life and death are united in our life as in our death; for if we live, our souls are dead and buried in us, but if we die, our souls arise and live.” We may, in fact, say of Heraclitus what Socrates said: “What remains to us of Heraclitus is excellent, and we must conjecture of what is lost, that it was as excellent.” Or if we wish to consider fate so just as always to preserve to posterity what is best, we must at least say of what we have of Heraclitus, that it is worthy of this preservation.
E. Empedocles, Leucippus and Democritus.
WE SHALL TAKE Leucippus and Democritus with Empedocles; in them there is manifested the ideality of the sensuous and also universal determinateness or a transition to the universal. Empedocles was a Pythagorean Italian, whose tendencies were Ionic; Leucippus and Democritus, who incline to the Italians, in that they carried on the Eleatic school, are more interesting. Both these philosophers belong to the same philosophic system; they must be taken together as regards their philosophic thought and considered thus.68 Leucippus is the older, and Democritus perfected what the former began, but it is difficult to say what properly speaking belongs to him historically. It is certainly recorded that he developed Leucippus’ thought, and there is, too, some of his work preserved, but it is not worthy of quotation. In Empedocles we see the commencement of the determination and separation of principles. The becoming conscious of difference is an essential moment, but the principles here have in part the character of physical Being, and though partaking also of ideal Being, this form is not yet thought-form. On the other hand we find in Leucippus and Democritus the more ideal principles, the atom and the Nothing, and we also find thought-determination more immersed in the objective — that is, the beginning of a metaphysics of body; or pure Notions possess the significance of the material, and thus pass over thought into objective form. But the teaching is, on the whole, immature, and is incapable of giving satisfaction.
Nothing is accurately known of the circumstances of Leucippus’ life, not even where he was born. Some, like Diogenes Laertius (IX. 30), make him out to be an Eleatic; others to have belonged to Abdera (because he was with Democritus), or to Melos — Melos is an island not far from the Peloponnesian coast — or else, as is asserted by Simplicius in writing on Aristotle’s Physics (p. 7), to Miletus. It is definitely stated that he was a disciple and a friend of Zeno; yet he seems to have been almost contemporaneous with him as well as with Heraclitus.
It is less doubtful that Democritus belonged to Abdera in Thrace, on the Aegean Sea, a town that in later times became so notorious on account of foolish actions. He was born, it would appear, about the 80th Olympiad (460 B.C.), or Olympiad 77, 3 (470 B.C.); the first date is given by Apollodorus (Diog. Laert. IX. 41), the other by Thrasyllus; Tennemann (Vol. I. p. 415) makes his birth to fall about the 71st Olympiad (494 B.C.). According to Diogenes Laertius (IX. 34), he was forty years younger than Anaxagoras, lived to the time of Socrates, and was even younger than he — that is supposing him to have been born, not in Olympiad 71, but in Olympiad 80. His connection with the Abderites has been much discussed, and many bad anecdotes are told regarding it by Diogenes Laertius. That he was very rich, Valerius Maximus (VIII. 7, ext. 4) judges from the fact that his father entertained the whole of Xerxes’ army on its passage to Greece. Diogenes tells (IX. 35, 36) that he expended his means, which were considerable, on journeys to Egypt and in penetrating into the East, but this last is not authentic. His possessions are stated to have amounted to a hundred talents, and if an Attic talent was worth about from 1000 to 1200 thalers, he must undoubtedly have been able to get far enough with that. It is always said that he was a friend and disciple of Leucippus, as Aristotle relates (Met. I. 4), but where they met is not told. Diogenes (IX. 39) goes on: “After he returned from his journeys into his own country, he lived very quietly, for he had consumed all his substance, but he was supported by his brother and attained to high honour amongst his countrymen” — not through his philosophy, but— “by some prophetic utterances. According to the law, however, he who ran through his father’s means could not have a place in the paternal burial-place. To give no place to the calumniator or evil speaker” — as though he had spent his means through extravagance— “he read his work Διάκοσμος to the Abderites, and the latter gave him a present of 500 talents, had his statue publicly erected, and buried him with great pomp when, at 100 years old, he died.” That this was also an Abderite jest, those who left us this narrative, at least, did not see.
Leucippus is the originator of the famous atomic system which, as recently revived, is held to be the principle of rational science. If we take this system on its own account, it is certainly very barren, and there is not much to be looked for in it; but it must be allowed that we are greatly indebted to Leucippus, because, as it is expressed in our ordinary physics, he separated the universal and the sensuous, or the primary and the secondary, or the essential and the nonessential qualities of body. The universal quality means, in speculative language, the fact that the corporeal is really universally determined through the Notion or the principle of body: Leucippus understood the determinate nature of Being, not in a superficial manner, but in a speculative. When it is said that body has those universal qualities, such as form, impenetrability and weight, we think that the indeterminate conception of body is the essence, and that its essence is something other than these qualities. But speculatively, essential existence is just universal determinations; they are existent in themselves, or the abstract content and the reality of existence. To body as such, there is nothing left for the determination of reality but pure singularity; but it is the unity of opposites, and the unity of these predicates constitutes its reality.
Let us recollect that in the Eleatic philosophy Being and non-being were looked at as in opposition; that only Being is, and non-being, in which category we find motion, change, &c., is not. Being is not as yet the unity turning back, and turned back into itself, like Heraclitus’ motion and the universal. It may be said of the point of view that difference, change, motion, &c., fall within sensuous, immediate perception, that the assertion that only Being is, is as contradictory to appearances as to thought; for the nothing, that which the Eleatics abolished, is. Or within the Heraclitean Idea, Being and non-being are the same; Being is, but non-being, since it is one with Being, is as well, or Being is both the predicate of Being and of non-being. But Being and non-being are both expressed as having the qualities of objectivity, or as they are for sensuous perception, and hence they are the opposition of full and empty. Leucippus says this; he expresses as existent what was really present to the Eleatics. Aristotle says (Met. I. 4): “Leucippus and his friend Democritus maintain that the full and the empty are the elements, and they call the one the existent, and the other the non-existent; that is, the full and solid are the existent, the empty and rare, the non-existent. Hence they also say that Being is no more than non-being because the empty is as well as the bodily; and these form the material sources of everything.” The full has the atom as its principle. The Absolute, what exists in and for itself, is thus the atom and the empty (τὰ ἄτομα καὶ τὸ κενόν): this is an important, if at the same time, an insufficient explanation. It is not atoms as we should speak of them, such, for example, as we represent to ourselves as floating in the air, that are alone the principle, for the intervening nothing is just as essential. Thus here we have the first appearance of the atomic system. We must now give the further signification and determination of this principle.
a. The Logical Principle
The principal point of consideration is the One, existent for itself: this determination is a great principle and one which we have not hitherto had. Parmenides establishes Being or the abstract universal; Heraclitus, process; the determination of being-for-self belongs to Leucippus. Parmenides says that the nothing does not exist at all; with Heraclitus Becoming existed only as the transition of Being into nothing where each is negated; but the view that each is simply at home with itself, the positive as the self-existent one and the negative as empty, is what came to consciousness in Leucippus, and became the absolute determination. The atomic principle in this manner has not passed away, for it must from this point of view always exist; the being-for-self must in every logical philosophy69 be an essential moment and yet it must not be put forward as ultimate. In the logical progression from Being and Becoming to this thought-determination, Being as existent here and now70 certainly first appears, but this last belongs to the sphere of finality and hence cannot be the principle of Philosophy. Thus, though the development of Philosophy in history must correspond to the development of logical philosophy, there will still be passages in it which are absent in historical development. For instance, if we wished to make Being as existent here the principle, it would be what we have in consciousness — there are things, these things are finite and bear a relation to one another — but this is the category of our unthinking knowledge, of appearance. Being-for-self, on the other hand, is, as Being, simple relation to itself, but through negation of the other-Being. If I say I am for myself, I not only am, but I negate in me all else, exclude it from me, in so far as it seems to me to be external. As negation of other being, which is just negation in relation to me, being-for-self is the negation of negation and thus affirmation; and this is, as I call it, absolute negativity in which mediation indeed is present, but a mediation which is just as really taken away.
The principle of the One is altogether ideal and belongs entirely to thought, even though we wish to say that atoms exist. The atom may be taken materially, but it is supersensuous, purely intellectual. In our times, too, more especially through the instrumentality of Gassendi, this conception of atoms has been renewed. The atoms of Leucippus are, however, not molecules, the small particles of Physics. In Leucippus, according to Aristotle, (De gen. et corr. I. 8) there is to be found the idea that “atoms are invisible because of the smallness of their body,” which is much like the way in which molecules are now-a-days spoken of: but this is merely a way of speaking of them. The One can neither be seen nor shown with magnifying glasses or measures, because it is an abstraction of thought; what is shown is always matter that is put together. It is just as futile when, as in modern times, men try by the microscope to investigate the inmost part of the organism, the soul, and think they can discover it by means of sight and feeling. Thus the principle of the One is altogether ideal, but not in the sense of being in thought or in the head alone, but in such a way that thought is made the true essence of things. Leucippus understood it so, and his philosophy is consequently not at all empirical. Tennemann (Vol. 1, p. 261), on the other hand, says, quite wrongly, “The system of Leucippus is opposed to that of the Eleatics; he recognizes the empirical world as the only objective reality, and body as the only kind of existence.” But the atom and the vacuum are not things of experience; Leucippus says that it is not the senses through which we become conscious of the truth, and thereby he has established an idealism in the higher sense and not one which is merely subjective.
b. The Constitution of the World
However abstract this principle might be to Leucippus, he was anxious to make it concrete. The meaning of atom is the individual, the indivisible; in another form the One is thus individuality, the determination of subjectivity. The universal and, on the other side, the individual, are great determinations which are involved in everything, and men first know what they have in these abstract determinations, when they recognize in the concrete that even there they are predominant. To Leucippus and Democritus this principle, which afterwards came to light with Epicurus, remained physical; but it also appears in what is intellectual. Mind indeed, is also an atom and one; but as one within itself, it is at the same time infinitely full. In freedom, right and law, in exercising will, our only concern is with this opposition of universality and individuality. In the sphere of the state the point of view that the single will is, as an atom, the absolute, may be maintained; the more modern theories of the state which also made themselves of practical effect, are of this kind. The state must rest on the universal, that is, on the will that exists in and for itself; if it rests on that of the individual, it becomes atomic and is comprehended in accordance with the thought-determination of the one, as is the case in Rousseau’s Contrat Social. From what Aristotle tells us in the passage last quoted, Leucippus’ idea of all that is concrete and actual is further this: “The full is nothing simple, for it is an infinitely manifold. These infinitely many, move in the vacuum, for the vacuum exists; their conglomeration brings about origination” (that is, of an existing thing, or what is for the senses), “disintegration and separation result in passing away.” All other categories are included here. “Activity and passivity subsist in the fact, that they are contiguous; but their contiguity is not their becoming one, for from that which is truly” (abstractly) “one there does not come a number, nor from that which is truly many, one.” Or, it may be said, they are in fact neither passive nor active, “for they merely abide through the vacuum” without having as their principle, process. Atoms thus are, even in their apparent union in that which we call things, separated from one another through the vacuum which is purely negative and foreign to them, i.e. their relation is not inherent in themselves, but is with something other than them, in which they remain what they are. This vacuum, the negative in relation to the affirmative, is also the principle of the movement of atoms; they are so to speak solicited by the vacuum to fill up and to negate it.
These are the doctrines of the atomists. We see that we have reached the extreme limits of these thoughts, for when relation comes into question, we step beyond them. Being and non-being, as something thought, which, when represented for consciousness as differing in regard to one another, are the plenum and the vacuum, have no diversity in themselves; for the plenum has likewise negativity in itself; as independent, it excludes what is different; it is one and infinitely many ones, while the vacuum is not exclusive, but pure continuity. Both these opposites, the one and continuity, being now settled, nothing is easier to imagine than that atoms should float in existent continuity, now being separated and now united; and thus that their union should be only a superficial relation, or a synthesis that is not determined through the inherent nature of what is united, but in which these self-existent beings really remain separated still. But this is an altogether external relationship; the purely independent is united to the independent, and thus a mechanical combination alone results. All that is living, spiritual, &c., is then merely thrown together; and change, origination, creation, are simple union.
However highly these principles are to be esteemed as a forward step, they at once reveal to us their total inadequacy, as is also the case when we enter with them on further concrete determinations. Nevertheless, we need not add what is in great measure added by the conception of a later date, that once upon a time, there was a chaos, a void filled with atoms, which afterwards became united and orderly, and that the world thereby arose; it is now and ever that what implicitly exists is the plenum and the vacuum. The satisfying point of view which natural science found in such thoughts, is just the simple fact that in these the existent is in its antithesis as what is thought and what is opposed to thought, and is hereby what exists in and for itself. The Atomists are therefore, generally speaking, opposed to the idea of the creation and maintenance of this world by means of a foreign principle. It is in the theory of atoms that science first feels released from the sense of having no foundation for the world. For if nature is represented as created and held together by another, it is conceived of as not existent in itself, and thus as having its Notion outside itself, i.e. its principle or origin is foreign to it and it has no principle as such, only being conceivable from the will of another; as it is, it is contingent, devoid of necessity and Notion in itself. In the conception of the atomist, however, we have the conception of the inherency of nature, that is to say, thought finds itself in it, or its principle is in itself something thought, and the Notion finds its satisfaction in conceiving and establishing it as Notion. In abstract existence, nature has its ground in itself and is simply for itself; the atom and the vacuum are just such simple Notions. But we cannot here see or find more than the formal fact that quite general and simple principles, the antithesis between the one and continuity, are represented.
If we proceed from a wider, richer point of view in nature, and demand that from the atomic theory, it, too, must be made comprehensible, the satisfaction at once disappears and we see the impossibility of getting any further. Hence we must get beyond these pure thoughts of continuity and discontinuity. For these negations, the units, are not in and for themselves; the atoms are indivisible and like themselves, or their principle is made pure continuity, so that they may be said to come directly into one clump. The conception certainly keeps them separate and gives them a sensuously represented Being; but if they are alike, they are, as pure continuity, the same as what is empty. But that which is, is concrete and determined. How then can diversity be conceived of from these principles? Whence comes the determinate character of plants, colour, form? The point is, that though these atoms as small particles may be allowed to subsist as independent, their union becomes merely a combination which is altogether external and accidental. The determinate difference is missed; the one, as that which is for itself, loses all its determinateness. If various matters, electrical, magnetic and luminous, are assumed, and, at the same time, a mechanical shifting about of molecules, on the one hand unity is quite disregarded, and, on the other, no rational word is uttered in regard to the transition of phenomena, but only what is tautological.
Since Leucippus and Democritus wished to go further, the necessity of a more definite distinction than this superficial one of union and separation was introduced, and they sought to bring this about by ascribing diversity to atoms, and, indeed, by making their diversity infinite. Aristotle (Met. I. 4) says: “This diversity they sought to determine in three ways. They say that atoms differ in figure, as A does from N; in order” (place) “as AN from NA; in position” — as to whether they stand upright or lie— “as Z from N. From these all other differences must come.” We see that figure, order and posture are again external relationships, indifferent determinations, i.e. unessential relations which do not affect the nature of the thing in itself nor its immanent determinateness, for their unity is only in another. Taken on its own account, this difference is indeed inconsistent, for as the entirely simple one, the atoms are perfectly alike, and thus any such diversity cannot come into question.
We here have an endeavour to lead the sensuous back into few determinations. Aristotle (De gen. et corr. I. 8) says in this connection of Leucippus: “He wished to bring the conception of the phenomenal and sensuous perception nearer, and thereby represented movement, origination and decease, as existent in themselves.” In this we see no more than that actuality from him receives its rights, while others speak only of deception. But when Leucippus in the end represents the atom as also fashioned in itself, he brings existence certainly so much nearer to sensuous perception, but not to the Notion; we must, indeed, go on to fashioning, but so far we are still a long way off from the determination of continuity and discretion. Aristotle (De sensu, 4) therefore says: “Democritus, and most of the other ancient philosophers are, when they speak of what is sensuous, very awkward, because they wish to make all that is felt into something tangible; they reduce everything to what is evident to the sense of touch, black being rough, and white smooth.” All sensuous qualities are thus only led back to form, to the various ways of uniting molecules which make any particular thing capable of being tasted or smelt; and this endeavour is one which is also made by the atomists of modern times. The French particularly, from Descartes onward, stand in this category. It is the instinct of reason to understand the phenomenal and the perceptible, only the way is false; it is a quite unmeaning, undetermined universality. Since figure, order, posture and form, constitute the only determination of what is in itself, nothing is said as to how these moments are experienced as colour, and indeed variety of colour, &c.; the transition to other than mechanical determinations is not made, or it shows itself to be shallow and barren.
How it was that Leucippus, from these poor principles of atoms and of the vacuum, which he never got beyond, because he took them to be the absolute, hazarded a construction of the whole world (which may appear to us as strange as it is empty), Diogenes Laertius tells us (IX. 31-33) in an account which seems meaningless enough. But the nature of the subject allows of little better, and we can do no more than observe from it the barrenness of this conception. It runs thus: “Atoms, divergent in form, propel themselves through their separation from the infinite, into the great vacuum.” (Democritus adds to this, “by means of their mutual resistance (ἀντιτυπία) and a tremulous, swinging motion (παλμός).”)71 “Here gathered, they form one vortex (δίνην) where, by dashing together and revolving round in all sorts of ways, the like are separated off with the like. But since they are of equal weight, when they cannot, on account of their number, move in any way, the finer go into outer vacuum, being so to speak forced out; and the others remain together and, being entangled, run one against another, and form the first round system. But this stands apart like a husk that holds within it all sorts of bodies; since these, in pressing towards the middle, make a vortex movement, this encircling skin becomes thin, because from the action of the vortex, they are continually running together. The earth arises in this way, because these bodies, collected in the middle, remain together. That which encircles and which is like a husk, again becomes increased by means of the adherence of external bodies, and since it also moves within the vortex, it draws everything with which it comes in contact to itself. The union of some of these bodies again forms a system, first the moist and slimy, and then the dry, and that which circles in the vortex of the whole; after that, being ignited, they constitute the substance of the stars. The outer circle is the sun, the inner the moon,” &c. This is an empty representation; there is no interest in these dry, confused ideas of circle-motion, and of what is later on called attraction and repulsion, beyond the fact that the different kinds of motion are looked at as the principle of matter.
c. The Soul
Finally Aristotle relates (De anim. I. 2) that in regard to the soul, Leucippus and Democritus said that “it is spherical atoms.” We find further from Plutarch (De plac. phil. IV. 8) that Democritus applied himself to the relation borne by consciousness to the explanation, amongst other things, of the origin of feelings, because with him, the conceptions that from things fine surfaces, so to speak, free themselves, and fly into the eyes, ears, &c., first began. We see that, thus far, Democritus expressed the difference between the moments of implicit Being and Being-for-another more distinctly. For he said, as Sextus tells us (adv. Math. VII. 135): “Warmth exists according to opinion (νόμῳ), and so do cold and colour, sweet and bitter: only the indivisible and void are truthful (ἐτεῇ).” That is to say, only the void and indivisible and their determinations are implicit; unessential, different Being, such as warmth, &c., is for another. But by this the way is at once opened up to the false idealism that means to be done with what is objective by bringing it into relation with consciousness, merely saying of it that it is my feeling. Thereby sensuous individuality is, indeed, annulled in the form of Being, but it still remains the same sensuous manifold; a sensuously notionless manifold of feeling is established, in which there is no reason, and with which this idealism has no further concern.
The fragments of Empedocles left, have several times been collected. Sturz of Leipzig collected above 400 verses.72 Peyron arranged a collection of fragments of Empedocles and Parmenides,73 which was put into print in Leipzig in 1810. In Wolff’s Analects, a treatise is to be found on Empedocles by Ritter.
Empedocles’ birthplace was Agrigentum in Sicily, while Heraclitus belonged to Asia Minor. We thus come back to Italy, for our history changes about between these two sides; from Greece proper, as the middle point, we have as yet had no philosophies at all. Empedocles, according to Tennemann (Vol. I. p. 415), flourished about the 80th Olympiad (460 B.C.). Sturz (pp. 9, 10) quotes Dodwell’s words: (De ætate Pythag. p. 220), which indicate that Empedocles was born in Olympiad 77, 1 (472 B.C.). They are as follows: “In the second year of the 85th Olympiad Parmenides had reached his 65th year, so that Zeno was born in the second year of the 75th Olympiad;74 thus he was six years older than his fellow-student Empedocles, for the latter was only one year old when Pythagoras died in the first or second year of the 77th Olympiad.” Aristotle says (Met. I. 3): “In age Empedocles is subsequent to Anaxagoras, but his works are earlier.” But not only did he philosophize earlier as regards time, that is, at a younger age, but in reference to the stage reached by the Notion, his philosophy is earlier and less mature than that of Anaxagoras.
From Diogenes’ accounts of his life (VIII. 59, 60-73), he also seems to have been a kind of magician and sorcerer, like Pythagoras. During his life he was much respected by his fellow-citizens, and, after his death, a statue was erected to him in his native town; his fame extended very far. He did not live apart, like Heraclitus, but in the exercise of great influence on the affairs of the town of Agrigentum, like Parmenides in Elea. He acquired the credit, after the death of Meton, the ruler of Agrigentum, of bringing about a free constitution and equal rights to all citizens. He likewise frustrated several attempts which were made by people of Agrigentum to seize upon the rulership of their city; and when the esteem of his fellow-citizens rose so high that they offered him the crown, he rejected their offers, and lived ever after amongst them as a respected private individual. Both of his life and death much which was fabulous was told. Seeing that he was famous in life, we are told that he wished not to appear to die an ordinary death, as a proof that he was not a mortal man, but had merely passed out of sight. After a feast he is said either to have suddenly disappeared, or else to have been on Etna with his friends, and suddenly to have been seen of them no more. But what became of him was revealed by the fact that one of his shoes was thrown up by Etna, and found by one of his friends; this made it clear that he threw himself into Etna, thereby to withdraw himself from the notice of mankind, and to give rise to the idea that he did not really die, but that he was taken up amongst the gods.
The origin and occasion for this fable seems to lie in a poem in which there are several verses that, taken alone, make great professions. He says, according to Sturz, (p. 530: Reliquiæ τῶν καθαρμῶν, v. 364-376): —
“Friends who dwell within the fort on yellow Acragas
And who in the best of works are busy, I greet you!
To you I am an immortal god, no more a mortal man,
Do ye not see how that where’er I go, all honour me,
My head being ‘circled round with diadems and crowns of green?
When so decked out, I show myself in towns of wealth,
Men and women pray to me. And thousands follow
My steps, to seek from me the way to bliss,
Others ask for prophecies; others again,
Healing words for ailments manifold beseech.
But what is this to me — as though ‘twere anything
By art to conquer much corrupted man.”
But, taken in the context, this laudation means that I am highly honoured, but what is the value of that to me; it expresses weariness of the honour given him by men.
Empedocles had Pythagoreans as pupils, and went about with them; he is sometimes considered to have been a Pythagorean like Parmenides and Zeno, but this is the only ground for such a statement. It is a question whether he belonged to the League; his philosophy has no resemblance to the Pythagorean. According to Diogenes Laertius (VIII. 56), he was also called Zeno’s fellow-pupil. There have, indeed, been many isolated reflections of a physical kind preserved to us, as also some words of exhortation, and in him thought as penetrating within reality, and the knowledge of nature seem to have attained to greater breadth and compass; we find in him, however, less speculative depth than in Heraclitus, but a Notion more imbued with the point of view of reality, and a culture derived from natural philosophy or the contemplation of nature. Empedocles is more poetic than definitely philosophical; he is not very interesting, and much cannot be made of his philosophy.
As to the particular Notion which governs it, and which really begins in it to appear, we may call it Combination or Synthesis. It is as combination that the unity of opposites first presents itself; this Notion, first opening up with Heraclitus, is, while in a condition of rest, conceived of as combination, before thought grasps the universal in Anaxagoras. Empedocles’ synthesis, as a completion of the relationship, thus belongs to Heraclitus, whose speculative Idea, though in reality, is process, but this is so without the individual moments in reality being mutually related as Notions. Empedocles’ conception of synthesis holds good to the present day. He also is the originator of the common idea that has even come down to us, of regarding the four known physical elements of fire, air, water, and earth, as fundamental; by chemists they are certainly no longer held to be elements, because they understand by elements a simple chemical substance. I will now give Empedocles’ ideas shortly, and draw the many units mentioned into the connection of a whole.
His general ideas Aristotle75 shortly sums up thus: “To the three elements, fire, air, and water, each of which was in turn considered as the principle from which everything proceeded, Empedocles added the Earth as the fourth corporeal element, saying that it is these which always remain the same, never becoming, but being united and separated as the more or the less, combining into one and coming out of one.” Carbon, metal, &c., are not something existing in and for itself which remains constant and never becomes; thus nothing metaphysical is signified by them. But with Empedocles this undoubtedly is the case: every particular thing arises through some kind of union of the four. These four elements, to our ordinary idea, are not so many sensuous things if we consider them as universal elements; for, looked at sensuously, there are various other sensuous things. All that is organic, for example, is of another kind; and, further, earth as one, as simple, pure earth, does not exist, for it is in manifold determinateness. In the idea of four elements we have the elevation of sensuous ideas into thought.
Aristotle further says in reference to the abstract Notion of their relation to one another (Met. I. 4), that Empedocles did not only require the four elements as principles, but also Friendship and Strife, which we have already met with in Heraclitus; it is at once evident that these are of another kind, because they are, properly speaking, universal. He has the four natural elements as the real, and friendship and strife as the ideal principles, so that six elements, of which Sextus76 often speaks, make their appearance in lines that Aristotle (Met. II. 4) and Sextus (adv. Math. VII. 92) have preserved: —
“With the earth, we see the earth, with water, water,
With air, heavenly air, with fire, eternal fire,
With love, love is seen, and strife with sorrowful strife.”
Through our participation in them they become for us. There we have the idea that spirit, the soul, is itself the unity, the very totality of elements, in which the principle of earth relates to earth, water to water, love to love, &c.77 In seeing fire, the fire is in us for whom objective fire is, and so on.
Empedocles also speaks of the process of these elements, but he did not comprehend it further; the point to be remarked is that he represented their unity as a combination. In this synthetic union, which is a superficial relation devoid of Notion, being partly related and partly unrelated, the contradiction necessarily results that at one time the unity of elements is established and at another, their separation: the unity is not the universal unity in which they are moments, being even in their diversity one, and in their unity different, for these two moments, unity and diversity, fall asunder, and union and separation are quite indeterminate relationships. Empedocles says in the first book of his poem on Nature, as given by Sturz (p. 517, v. 106-109): “There is no such thing as a Nature, only a combination and separation of what is combined; it is merely called Nature by men.” That is to say, that which constitutes anything, as being its elements or parts, is not as yet called its nature, but only its determinate unity. For example, the nature of an animal is its constant and real determinateness, its kind, its universality, which is simple. But Empedocles does away with nature in this sense, for every thing, according to him, is the combination of simple elements, and thus not in itself the universal, simple and true: this is not what is signified by us when we speak of nature. Now this nature in which a thing moves in accordance with its own end, Aristotle (De gen. et corr. II. 6) misses in Empedocles; in later times this conception was still further lost. Because the elements were thus existent simply in themselves, there was, properly speaking, no process established in them, for in process they are only vanishing moments, and not existent in themselves. Being thus implicit, they must have been unchangeable, or they could not constitute themselves into a unity; for in the one their subsistence, or their implicit existence would be destroyed. But because Empedocles says that things subsist from these elements, he immediately establishes their unity.
These are the principal points in Empedocles’ philosophy. I will quote the remarks that Aristotle (Met. I. 4) makes in this regard.
(α) “If we wish to follow this up, and do so in accordance with the understanding, not merely stumbling over it like Empedocles, we should say that friendship is the principle of good and strife the principle of evil, so that in a measure we may assert that Empedocles maintained — and was the first to do so — that the evil and the good are the absolute principles, because the good is the principle of all good, and the bad the principle of all evil.” Aristotle shows the trace of universality present here; for to him it may be termed essential in dealing with the Notion of the principle, that which is in and for itself. But this is only the Notion, or the thought which is present in and for itself; we have not yet seen such a principle, for we find it first in Anaxagoras. If Aristotle found the principle of motion missed in ancient philosophers, in the Becoming of Heraclitus, he again missed in Heraclitus the still deeper principle of the Good, and hence wished to discover it in Empedocles. By the good the “why” is to be understood, that which is an end in and for itself, which is clearly established in itself, which is on its own account, and through which all else is; the end has the determination of activity, the bringing forth of itself, so that it, as end to itself, is the Idea, the Notion that makes itself objective and, in its objectivity, is identical with itself. Aristotle thus entirely controverts Heraclitus, because his principle is change alone, without remaining like self, maintaining self, and going back within self.
(β) Aristotle also says in criticizing further the relationship and determination of these two universal principles of Friendship and Strife, as of union and separation, that “Empedocles neither adequately made use of them nor discovered in them what they involved (ἐξευρίσκει τὸ ὁμολογούμενον); for with him friendship frequently divides and strife unites. That is, when the All falls asunder through strife amongst the elements, fire is thereby united into one, and so is each of the other elements.” The separation of the elements which are comprised within the All, is just as necessarily the union amongst themselves of the parts of each element; that which, on the one hand, is the coming into separation, as independent, is at the same time something united within itself. “But when everything through friendship goes back into one, it is necessary that the parts of each element undergo separation again.” The being in one is itself a manifold, a diverse relation of the four diversities, and thus the going together is likewise a separation. This is the case generally with all determinateness, that it must in itself be the opposite, and must manifest itself as such. The remark that, speaking generally, there is no union without separation, no separation without union, is a profound one; identity and non-identity are thought-determinations of this kind which cannot be separated. The reproach made by Aristotle is one that lies in the nature of the thing. And when Aristotle says that Empedocles, although younger than Heraclitus, “was the first to maintain such principles, because he did not assert that the principle of motion is one, but that it is different and opposed,” this certainly relates to the fact that he thought it was in Empedocles that he first found design, although his utterances on the subject were dubious.
(γ) As to the real moments in which this ideal realizes itself, Aristotle further says, “He does not speak of them as four” — equivalents in juxtaposition— “but on the contrary as two; fire he puts by itself on the one side, and the three others, earth, air, and water, on the other.” What would be most interesting is the determination of their relationship.
(δ) In what deals with the relationship of the two ideal moments, friendship and strife, and of the four real elements, there is thus nothing rational, for Empedocles, according to Aristotle (Met. XII. 10), did not properly separate, but co-ordinated them, so that we often see them in proximity and counted as having equal value; but it is self-evident that Empedocles also separated these two sides, the real and the ideal, and expressed thought as their relation.
(ε) Aristotle says with justice (De gen. et corr. I. 1) that “Empedocles contradicts both himself and appearances. For at one time he maintains that none of the elements springs out of the other, but all else comes from them; and, at another time, he makes them into a whole through friendship, and again destroys this unity through strife. Thus through particular differences and qualities, one becomes water, the other fire, &c. Now if the particular differences are taken away (and they can be taken away since they have arisen), it is evident that water arises from earth, and the reverse. The All was not yet fire, earth, water, and air, when these were still one, so that it is not clear whether he made the one or the many to be, properly speaking, real existence.” Because the elements become one, their special character, that through which water is water, is nothing in itself, that is, they are passing into something different; but this contradicts the statement that they are the absolute elements, or that they are implicit. He considers actual things as an intermingling of elements, but in regard to their first origin, he thinks that everything springs from one through friendship and strife. This customary absence of thought is in the nature of synthetic conceptions; it now upholds unity, then multiplicity, and does not bring both thoughts together; as sublated, one is also not one.78
F. Anaxagoras.
With Anaxagoras79 a light, if still a weak one, begins to dawn, because the understanding is now recognized as the principle. Aristotle says of Anaxagoras (Met. I. 3): “But he who said that reason (νοῦς), in what lives as also in nature, is the origin of the world and of all order, is like a sober man as compared with those who came before and spoke at random (εἰκῆ).” As Aristotle says, hitherto philosophers may “be compared to the fencers who fence in an unscientific way. Just as the latter often make good thrusts in their struggle, though not by any skill, these philosophers seem to speak without any knowledge of what they say.” Now if Anaxagoras, as a sober man amongst drunkards, was the first to reach this consciousness — for he says that pure thought is the actually existent universal and true — he yet, to a considerable extent, still thrusts into space.
The connection of his philosophy with what precedes is as follows: In Heraclitus’ Idea as motion, all moments are absolutely vanishing. Empedocles represents the gathering together of this motion into a unity, but into a synthetic unity; and with Leucippus and Democritus it is the same. With Empedocles, however, the moments of this unity are the existent elements of fire, water, &c., and with the others, pure abstractions, implicit being, thoughts. But in this way universality is directly asserted, for the opposing elements have no longer any sensuous support. We have had Being, Becoming, the One, as principles; they are universal thoughts and not sensuous, nor are they figures of the imagination; the content and its parts are, however, taken from what is sensuous, and they are thoughts in some sort of a determination. Anaxagoras now says that it is not gods, sensuous principles, elements, or thoughts — which really are determinations of reflection — but that it is the Universal, Thought itself, in and for itself, without opposition, all embracing, which is the substance or the principle. The unity as universal, returns from the opposition into itself, while in the synthesis of Empedocles, what is opposed is still apart from it and independent, and Thought is not Being. Here, however, Thought as pure, free process in itself, is the self-determining universal, and is not distinguished from conscious thought. In Anaxagoras quite new ground is thus opened up.
Anaxagoras concludes this period, and after him a fresh one begins. In accordance with the favourite idea of there being a genealogical descent of principles from the teacher to the taught, because he was an Ionian, he is often represented as perpetuating the Ionic school, and as an Ionic philosopher: Hermotimus of Clazomenæ, too, was his teacher. To support this theory Diogenes Laertius (II. 6) makes him a disciple of Anaximenes, whose birth is, however, placed in Ol. 55-58, or about sixty years earlier than that of Anaxagoras.
Aristotle says (Met. I. 3) that Anaxagoras first began by these determinations to express absolute reality as understanding. Aristotle and others after him, such as Sextus (adv. Math. IX. 7), mention the bare fact that Hermotimus gave rise to this conception, but it was clearly due to Anaxagoras. Little is gained if such a fact were true, since we learn no more about the philosophy of Hermotimus; it cannot have been much. Others have made numerous historical researches respecting this Hermotimus. The name we have already mentioned amongst those of whom it is said that Pythagoras existed in them before he lived as Pythagoras. We also have a story of Hermotimus to the effect that he possessed the peculiar gift of being able to make his soul quit his body. But this did him bad service in the end, since his wife, with whom he had a dispute, and who besides knew very well how matters stood, showed to their acquaintances this soul-deserted body as dead, and it was burnt before the soul reinstated itself — which soul must have been astonished.80 It is not worth while to investigate what lies at the ground of these ancient stories, i.e. into how we should regard the matter: we may think of it as implying a state of ecstasy.
We must consider the life of Anaxagoras before his philosophy. Anaxagoras, according to Diogenes (II. 7), born in Ol. 70 (500 B.C.), comes earlier than Democritus, and in age also precedes Empedocles, yet, on the whole, he was contemporaneous with these, as also with Parmenides; he was as old as Zeno, and lived somewhat earlier than Socrates, but still they were acquainted with one another. His native town was Clazomenæ, in Lydia, not very far from Colophon and Ephesus, and situated on an isthmus by which a great peninsula is connected with the mainland. His life is shortly summed up in the statement that he devoted himself to the study of the sciences, withdrew from public affairs; according to Valerius Maximus (VIII. 7, extr. 6) he made numerous journeys, and finally, according to Tennemann (Vol. I. pp. 300, 415), in the forty-fifth year of his age, in the 81st Olympiad (456 B.C.), and at a propitious time, he came to Athens.
With him we thus find Philosophy in Greece proper, where so far there had been none, and coming, indeed, as far as Athens; hitherto either Asia Minor or Italy had been the seat of Philosophy, though, when the inhabitants of Asia Minor fell under Persian rule, with their loss of freedom, it expired amongst them. Anaxagoras, himself a native of Asia Minor, lived in the important period between the war of the Medes and the age of Pericles, principally in Athens, which had now reached the zenith of its greatness, for it was both the head of Grecian power, and the seat and centre of the arts and sciences. Athens, after the Persian wars, brought the greater part of the Greek islands into subjection, as also a number of maritime towns in Thrace, and even further into the Black Sea. As the greatest artists collected in Athens, so also did the most noted philosophers and sophists live there — a circle of luminaries in the arts and sciences such as we have in Æschylus, Sophocles, Aristophanes, Thucydides, Diogenes of Apollonia, Protagoras, Anaxagoras, and others from Asia Minor. Pericles then ruled the State, and raised it to that height of splendour which may be called the golden age in Athenian life; Anaxagoras, although living in the most flourishing time of Athenian life, touches on its decay, or rather reaches the first threatening of that decay, which ended in a total extermination of this beautiful life.
What is of special interest at this time is the opposition between Athens and Lacedæmon, the two Greek nations which contended with one another for the foremost place in Greece; here we must therefore allude to the principles of these celebrated States. While the Lacedæmonians had no arts or sciences, Athens had to thank the character of its constitution, and of its whole spirit, for the fact that it was the seat of the sciences and fine arts. But the constitution of Lacedæmon is also worthy of high esteem, for it regulated and restrained the high Doric spirit, and its principal feature was that all personal peculiarity was subordinated, or rather sacrificed, to the general aim of the life of the State, and the individual had the consciousness of his honour and sufficiency only in the consciousness of working for the State. A people of such genuine unity, in whom the will of the individual had, properly speaking, quite disappeared, were united by an indestructible bond, and Lacedæmon was hence placed at the head of Greece, and obtained the leadership, which, we find, it held among the Argives in the days of Troy. This is a great principle which must exist in every true State, but which with the Lacedæmonians retained its one-sided character; this one-sidedness was avoided by the Athenians, and by that means they became the greater. In Lacedæmon personality proper was so much disregarded that the individual could not have free development or expression; individuality was not recognized, and hence not brought into harmony with the common end of the State. This abrogation of the rights of subjectivity, which, expressed in his own way, is also found in Plato’s Republic, was carried very far with the Lacedæmonians. But the universal is living spirit only in so far as the individual consciousness finds itself as such within it; the universal is not constituted of the immediate life and being of the individual, the mere substance, but formed of conscious life. As individuality which separates itself from the universal is powerless and falls to the ground, the one-sided universal, the morality of individuality cannot stand firm. The Lacedæmonian spirit, which had not taken into account the freedom of consciousness, and whose universal had isolated itself therefrom, had hence to see it break forth in opposition to the universal; and though the first to come forward as the liberators of Greece from its tyranny were the Spartans, whom even Athens thanks for the expulsion of the descendants of Pisistratus, their relationship to their confederates soon passes into that of common, mean, tyranny. Within the State it likewise ends in a harsh aristocracy, just as the fixed equilibrium of property (each family retaining its inheritance, and through forbidding the possession of money, or trade and commerce, preventing the possibility of inequality in riches) passes into an avarice which, as opposed to this universal, is brutal and mean. This essential moment of particularity, not being taken into the State, and hence not made legal and moral (moral first of all), comes forth as vice. In a rational organization all the elements of the Idea are present; if the liver were isolated as bile it would become not more, and not less active, but becoming antagonistic, it would isolate itself from the corporate economy of the body. Solon, on the contrary, gave to the Athenians not only equality of laws and unity of spirit in their constitution (which was a purer democracy than in Sparta), but although each citizen had his substantial consciousness in unity with the laws of the State, he also gave free play to the individual mind, so that each might do as he would, and might find expression for himself. Solon entrusted the executive to the people, not to the Ephors, and this became self-government after the displacement of the tyrants, and thus in truth a free people arose; the individual had the whole within himself, as he had his consciousness and action in the whole. Thus we see in this principle the formation of free consciousness and the freedom of individuality in its greatness. The principle of subjective freedom appears at first, however, still in unison with the universal principle of Greek morality as established by law, and even with mythology; and thus in its promulgation, because the genius of its conceptions could develop freely, it brought about these masterpieces in the beautiful plastic arts, and the immortal works of poetry and history. The principle of subjectivity had, thus far, not taken the form that particularity, as such, should be set free, and that its content should be a subjectively particular, at least distinguished from the universal principle, universal morality, universal religion, universal laws. Thus we do not see the carrying out of isolated ideas, but the great, moral, solid, divine content made in these works object for consciousness, and generally brought before consciousness. Later we shall find the form of subjectivity becoming free for itself, and appearing in opposition to the substantial, to morality, religion, and law.
The basis of this principle of subjectivity, though it is still a merely general one, we now see in Anaxagoras. But amongst this noble, free, and cultured people of Athens, he who had the happiness to be first, was Pericles, and this circumstance raised him in the estimation of the individual to a place so high that few could reach it. Of all that is great amongst men, the power of ruling over the will of men who have but one will, is the greatest, for this controlling individuality must be both the most universal and the most living — a lot for a mortal being than which hardly any better can be found. His individuality was, according to Plutarch, (in Pericle 5) as deep as it was perfect; as serious (he never laughed), as full of energy and restfulness: Athens had him the whole day long. Thucydides has preserved some of Pericles’ speeches to the people which allow of few works being compared to them. Under Pericles the highest culture of the moral commonwealth is to be found, the juncture where individuality is still under and also in the universal. Presently individuality prevails, because its activity falls into extremes, since the state as state, is not yet independently organized within itself. Because the essence of the Athenian State was the common spirit, and the religious faith of individuals in this constituted their essence, there disappears with the disappearance of this faith, the inner Being of the people, since the spirit is not in the form of the Notion as it is in our states. The speedy transition to this last is the νοῦς, subjectivity, as Being, self-reflection. When Anaxagoras at this time, the principle of which has just been given, came to Athens, he was sought out by Pericles, and, as his friend, lived in very intimate relations with him, before the latter occupied himself with public affairs. But Plutarch (in Pericle 4, 16) also relates that Anaxagoras came to want because Pericles neglected him — did not supply the illuminating lamp with oil.
A more important matter is that Anaxagoras (as happened later with Socrates and many other philosophers) was accused of despising those whom the people accepted as gods. The prose of the understanding came into contact with the poetic, religious point of view. It is distinctly said by Diogenes Laertius (II. 12) that Anaxagoras believed the sun and stars to be burning stones; and he is, according to Plutarch, (in Pericle, 6) blamed for having explained something that the prophets stated to be a marvellous omen, in a natural way; it quite tallies with this that he is said to have foretold that on the day of Ægos-Potamos, where the Athenians lost their last fleet against Lysander, a stone should fall from heaven.81 The general remark might be made of Thales, Anaximander, &c., that the sun, moon, earth and stars were counted as mere things, i.e. as objects external to mind, and that they no longer held them to be living gods, but represented them in different ways — which ideas, for the rest, deserve no further consideration, since these matters belong properly to ordinary learning. Things may be derived from thought; thought really brings about the result that certain objects which may be called divine, and certain conceptions of these which may be called poetic, together with the whole range of superstitious beliefs, are demolished — they are brought down to being what are called natural things. For in thought, as the identity of itself and of Being, mind knows itself as the truly actual, so that for mind in thought, the unspiritual and material is brought down to being mere things, to the negative of mind. All the ideas of those philosophers have this in common, that nature is through them undeified; they brought the poetic view of nature down to the prosaic, and destroyed the poetic point of view which ascribes to all that is now considered to be lifeless, a life proper to itself, perhaps also sensation, and, it may be, a being after the usual order of consciousness. The loss of this point of view is not to be lamented as if unity with nature, pure faith, innocent purity and childlike spirit went with it. Innocent and childlike it may certainly have been, but reason is just the going forth from such innocence and unity with nature. So soon as mind grasps itself, is for itself, it must for that very reason confront the ‘other’ of itself as a negation of consciousness, i.e. look on it as something devoid of mind, an unconscious and lifeless thing, and it must first come to itself through this opposition. There is in this a fixing of self-moving things such as are met with in the myths of the ancients, who relate such tales as that the Argonauts secured the rocks on the Straits of the Hellespont which formerly moved like scissors. Similarly progressive culture consolidated that which formerly was thought to have its own motion and life in itself, and made it into unmoving matter. This transition of the mythical point of view into the prosaic, here comes to be recognized by the Athenians. A prosaic point of view such as this, assumes that man has requirements quite different from those he formerly had; in this we find traces of the powerful, necessary conversion brought about in the ideas of man through the strengthening of thought, through knowledge of himself, and through Philosophy.
The institution of charges of atheism, which we shall touch upon more fully in dealing with Socrates, is, in Anaxagoras’ case, quite comprehensible, from the specific reason that the Athenians, who were envious of Pericles, who contended with him for the first place, and who did not venture to proceed against him openly, took his favourites to law, and sought through charges against his friend, to injure him. Thus his friend Aspasia was brought under accusation, and the noble Pericles had, according to Plutarch (in Pericle, 32), in order to save her from condemnation, to beg the individual citizens of Athens with tears for her acquittal. The Athenian people in their freedom, demanded such acts of the potentates to whom they allowed supremacy, for thereby an acknowledgment was given of their subordination to the people; they thus made themselves the Nemesis in respect to the high place accorded to the great, for they placed themselves in a position of equality with these, while these again made evident their dependence, subjection and powerlessness before the others. What is told about the result of this charge against Anaxagoras is quite contradictory and uncertain: Pericles certainly saved him from condemnation to death. He was either, as some say, condemned only to banishment after Pericles had led him before the people, speaking and entreating for him, after, by reason of his age, attenuation and weakness the sympathy of the people had been aroused; or else, as others say, with the help of Pericles, he escaped from Athens and was in absence condemned to death, the judgment never being executed upon him. Others again say that he was liberated, but from the vexation that he felt respecting these charges, and from apprehension as to their repetition, he voluntarily left Athens. And at about sixty or seventy years of age, he died in Lampsacus in the 88th Olympiad (428 B.C.).82
- The Universal Principle. The logical principle of Anaxagoras was that he recognized the νοῦς as the simple, absolute essence of the world. The simplicity of the νοῦς is not a Being but a universality which is distinguished from itself, though in such a way that the distinction is immediately sublated and the identity is set forth for itself. This universal for itself, sundered, exists in purity only as thought; it exists also in nature as objective existence, but in that case no longer purely for itself, but as having particularity as an immediate in it. Space and time are, for example, the most ideal, universal facts in nature as such, but there is no pure space, no pure time and motion any more than any pure matter — for this universal is immediately defined space, air, earth, &c. In thought, when I say, I am I, or I = I, I certainly distinguish something from me, but the pure unity remains; there is no movement but a distinction which is not distinguished, or the being-for-me. And in all that I think, if the thought has a definite content, it is my thought: I am thus known to myself in this object. This universal which thus exists for itself and the individual, or thought and being, thus, however, come into definite opposition. Here the speculative unity of this universal with the individual should be considered as it is posited as absolute unity, but the comprehension of the Notion itself is certainly not found with the ancients. We need not expect a pure Notion such as one of an understanding realizing itself into a system, organized as a universe.
How Anaxagoras enunciated the Notion of the νοῦς, Aristotle (De anim. I. 2) goes on to tell: “Anaxagoras maintains that the soul is the principle of movement. Yet he does not always express himself fully about the soul and νοῦς: he seems to separate νοῦς and soul from one another, and still he makes use of them as though they were the same existence, only that by preference he makes the νοῦς the principle of everything. He certainly speaks frequently of the νοῦς as of the cause of the beautiful and right, but another time he calls it the soul. For it is in all animals, in large as well as small, the higher kind and the lower; it alone of all existence is the simple, unadulterated and pure; it is devoid of pain and is not in community with any other.”83 What we therefore have to do is to show from the principle of motion, that it is the self-moving; and this thought is, as existent for itself. As soul, the self-moving is only immediately individual; the νοῦς, however, as simple, is the universal. Thought moves on account of something: the end is the first simple which makes itself result; this principle with the ancients is grasped as good and evil, i.e. end as positive and negative. This determination is a very important one, but with Anaxagoras it was not fully worked out. While in the first place the principles are material, from these Aristotle then distinguishes determination and form, and thirdly he finds in the process of Heraclitus, the principle of motion. Then in the fourth place there comes the reason why, the determination of end, with the νοῦς; this is the concrete in itself. Aristotle adds in the above-mentioned passage (p. 192), “according to these men” (the Ionians and others) “and in reference to such causes” (water, fire, &c.), “since they are not sufficient to beget the nature of things, the philosophers are, as already said, compelled by the truth to go on to the principle following (ἐχομένην). For neither the earth nor any other principle is capable of explaining the fact that while on the one hand all is good and beautiful, on the other, something else is produced, and those men do not seem to have thought that this was so; nor is it seemly to abandon such matters to hazard (αὐτομάτῳ) and to chance.” Goodness and beauty express the simple restful Notion, and change the Notion in its movement.
With this principle comes the determination of an understanding as of self-determining activity; this has hitherto been wanting, for the Becoming of Heraclitus, which is only process, is not yet as fate, the independently self-determining. By this we must not represent to ourselves subjective thought; in thinking we think immediately of our thought as it is in consciousness. Here, on the contrary, quite objective thought is meant, active understanding — as we say, there is reason in the world, or we speak of genera in nature which are the universal. The genus animal is the substantial of the dog; the dog itself is this; the laws of nature are themselves nature’s immanent essence. The nature is not formed from without as men make a table; this is also made with understanding, but through an understanding outside of this wood. This external form, which is called the understanding, immediately occurs to us in speaking of the understanding; but here the universal is meant, that which is the immanent nature of the object itself. The νοῦς is thus not a thinking existence from without which regulates the world; by such the meaning present to Anaxagoras would be quite destroyed and all its philosophic interest taken away. For to speak of an individual, a unit from without, is to fall into the ordinary conception and its dualism; a so-called thinking principle is no longer a thought, but is a subject. But still the true universal is for all that not abstract, but the universal is just the determining in and out of itself of the particular in and for itself. In this activity, which is independently self-determining, the fact is at once implied that the activity, because it constitutes process, retains itself as the universal self-identical. Fire, which, according to Heraclitus, was process, dies away and merely passes over, without independent existence, into the opposite; it is certainly also a circle and a return to fire, but the principle does not retain itself in its determinateness as the universal, seeing that a simple passing into the opposite takes place. This relation to itself in determination which we see appearing in Anaxagoras, now, however, contains the determination of the universal though it is not formally expressed, and therein we have the end or the Good.
I have just recently (p. 316) spoken of the Notion of the end, yet by that we must not merely think of the form of the end as it is in us, in conscious beings. At first, end, in as far as I have it, is my conception, which is for itself, and the realization of which depends on my wish; if I carry it out, and if I am not unskilful, the object produced must be conformable to the end, containing nothing but it. There is a transition from subjectivity to objectivity through which this opposition is always again sublated. Because I am discontented with my end in that it is only subjective, my activity consists in removing this defect and making it objective. In objectivity the end has retained itself; for instance, if I have the end in view of building a house and am active for that end, the house results in which my end is realized. But we must not, as we usually do, abide at the conception of this subjective end; in this case both I and the end exist independently and externally in relation to each other. In the conception that God, as wisdom, rules the world in accordance with an end, for instance, the end is posited for itself in a wise, figuratively conceiving Being. But the universal of end is the fact that since it is a determination independently fixed, that rules present existence, the end is the truth, the soul of a thing. The Good in the end gives content to itself, so that while it is active with this content, and after it has entered into externality, no other content comes forth than what was already present. The best example of this is presented in life; it has desires, and these desires are its ends; as merely living, however, it knows nothing of these ends, but yet they are first, immediate determinations which are established. The animal works at satisfying these desires, i.e. at reaching the end; it relates itself to external things, partly mechanically, partly chemically. But the character of its activity does not remain mechanical or chemical; the product is rather the animal itself, which, as its own end, brings forth in its activity only itself, since it negates and overturns those mechanical or chemical relationships. In mechanical and chemical process, on the other hand, the result is something different, in which the subject does not retain itself; but in the end, beginning and end are alike, for we posit the subjective objectively in order to receive it again. Self-preservation is a continual production by which nothing new, but always the old, arises; it is a taking back of activity for the production of itself.
Thus this self-determining activity, which is then active on something else, enters into opposition, but it again negates the opposition, governs it, in it reflects upon itself; it is the end, the thought, that which conserves itself in its self-determination. The development of these moments is the business of Philosophy from henceforth. But if we look more closely as to how far Anaxagoras has got in the development of this thought, we find nothing further than the activity determining from out of itself, which sets up a limit or measure; further than the determination of measure, development does not go. Anaxagoras gives us no more concrete definition of the νοῦς, and this we are still left to consider; we thus have nothing more than the abstract determination of the concrete in itself. The above-mentioned predicates which Anaxagoras gives the νοῦς, may thus indeed be affirmed, but they are, on their own account, one-sided only.
- The Homœomeriæ. This is the one side in the principle of Anaxagoras; we now have to consider the going forth of the νοῦς into further determinations. This remaining part of the philosophy of Anaxagoras at first, however, makes us think that the hopes in which such a principle justified us must be very much diminished. On the other side, this universal is confronted by Being, matter, the manifold generally, potentiality as distinguished from the former as actuality. For if the Good or the end is also determined as potentiality, the universal, as the self-moving, may rather be called the actual in itself, the being-for-self, as opposed to implicit being, potentiality, passivity. Aristotle says in an important passage (Met. I. 8): “If any one should say of Anaxagoras that he adopted two principles, he would rest his statement on a point respecting which the latter never really clearly defined himself, but which he had necessarily to acknowledge to those who adduced it… That is, Anaxagoras says that originally everything is mingled… But where nothing is yet separated, no distinguishing feature is present; such substance is neither a white, black, gray, nor any other colour, but colourless; it has no quality nor quantity nor determination (τί). All is mingled except the νοῦς; this is unmingled and pure. With this in view, it thus occurs to him to denominate as principles the one, for it alone is single and unmingled, and the other-being (θάτερον), what we call the indeterminate, before it has become determined or partakes of any kind of form.”
This other principle is celebrated under the name of homœomeries (ὁμοιομερῆ), of like parts or homogeneous, in Aristotle’s rendering (Met. I. 3, 7); Riemer translates ἡ ὁμοιομερεια “the similarity of individual parts to the whole,” and αἱ ὁμοιομέρειαι “the elementary matter,” yet this latter word seems to be of a later origin.84 Aristotle says, “Anaxagoras sets forth” (in respect of the material) “infinitely many principles, for he maintained that, like water and fire in Empedocles’ system, nearly all that is formed of like parts only arises from union and passes away through separation; other arising and passing away there is none, for equal parts remain eternal.” That is, the existent, the individual matter, such as bones, metal, flesh, &c., in itself consists of parts like itself — flesh of small particles of flesh, gold of small gold particles, &c. Thus he said at the beginning of his work, “All has been alike” (i.e. unseparated as in a chaos), “and has rested for an infinitude of time; then came the νοῦς, and it brought in movement, separated and brought order into the separated creation (διεκόσμησεν), in that it united the like.”85
The homœomeriæ become clearer if we compare them with the conceptions of Leucippus and Democritus and others. In Leucippus and Democritus, as well as Empedocles, we saw this matter, or the absolute as objective existence, determined so that simple atoms — with the latter the four elements and with the former infinitely many — were set forth as separate only in form; their syntheses and combinations were existing things. Aristotle (De cœlo, III. 3) says further on this point, “Anaxagoras asserts of the elements the opposite to Empedocles. For the latter takes as original principles, fire, air, earth, and water, through whose union all things arise. On the other hand, Anaxagoras maintains what are of like parts such as flesh, bones, or the like to be simple materials; such things as water and fire, on the contrary, are a mixture of the original elements. For any one of these four consists of the infinite admixture of all invisible, existing things of like parts, which hence come forth from these.” The principle held good for him as for the Eleatics, that “the like only comes out of the like; there is no transition into the opposite, no union of opposites possible.” All change is hence to him only a separation and union of the like; change as true change, would be a Becoming out of the negative of itself. “That is, because Anaxagoras,” says Aristotle (Phys. I, 4), “partook of the view of all physicists that it is impossible that anything can come out of nothing, there was nothing left but to admit that what becomes was already present as an existent, but that, on account of its small size, it was imperceptible to us.” This point of view is also quite different from the conception of Thales and Heraclitus, in which, not only the possibility, but the actuality of the transformation of these like qualitative differences is essentially maintained. But to Anaxagoras with whom the elements are a mingled chaos formed therefrom, having only an apparent uniformity, concrete things arise through the severance of these infinitely many principles from such a chaos, since like finds like. Respecting the difference between Empedocles and Anaxagoras, there is further what Aristotle adds in the same place: “The former allows a change (περίοδον) in these conditions, the latter only their one appearance.” The conception of Democritus is similar to that of Anaxagoras in so far as that an infinite manifold is the original source. But with Anaxagoras the determination of the fundamental principles appears to contain that which we consider as organized, and to be by no means an independently existent simple; thus perfectly individualized atoms such as particles of flesh and of gold, form, through their coming together, that which appears to be organized. That comes near our ordinary ideas. Means of nourishment, it is thought, contain such parts as are homogeneous to blood, flesh, &c. Anaxagoras hence says, according to Aristotle (De gen. anim. I. 18), “Flesh comes to flesh through food.” Digestion is thus nothing more than the taking up of the homogeneous and separation of the heterogeneous; all nourishment and growth is thus not true assimilation but only increase, because each internal organ of the animal only draws its parts to itself out of the various plants, bodies, &c. Death is, on the other hand, the separation of the like and the mingling with the heterogeneous. The activity of the νοῦς, as the sundering of the like out of the chaos and the putting together of the like, as also the setting at liberty again of this like, is certainly simple and relative to itself, but purely formal and thus for itself contentless.
This is the general standpoint of the philosophy of Anaxagoras, and quite the same standpoint which in more recent times reigns in chemistry for instance; flesh is certainly no longer regarded as simple, but as being hydrogen, &c. The chemical elements are oxygen, hydrogen, carbon and metals, &c. Chemistry says, if you want to know what flesh, wood, stone, &c., really are, you must set forth their simple elements, and these are ultimate. It also says that much is only relatively simple, e.g. platinum consists of three or four metals. Water and air were similarly long held to be simple, but chemistry at length analyzed them. From this chemical point of view, the simple principles of natural things are determined as infinitely qualitative and thus accepted as unchangeable and invariable, so that all else consists only of the combination of these simples. Man, according to this, is a collection of carbon and hydrogen, some earth, oxides, phosphorus, &c. It is a favourite idea of the physicists to place in the water or in the air, oxygen and carbon, which exist and only require to be separated. This idea of Anaxagoras certainly also differs from modern chemistry; that which we consider as concrete, is for him qualitatively determined or elementary. Yet he allows, with regard to flesh, that the parts are not all alike. “For this reason, they say,” remarks Aristotle (Phys. I. 4; Met. IV. 5), — but not particularly of Anaxagoras— “everything is contained in everything, for they saw everything arise out of everything: it only appears to be different and is called different in accordance with the predominating number of the particular kind of parts which have mingled themselves with others. In truth the whole is not white, or black, or sweet, or flesh, or bones; but the homœomeriæ which have most accumulated in any place, bring about the result that the whole appears to us as this determinate.” As thus each thing contains all other things, water, air, bones, fruits, &c., on the other hand, the water contains flesh as flesh, bones, &c. Into this infinitely manifold nature of the principles, Anaxagoras thus goes back; the sensuous has first arisen through the accumulation of all those parts, and in it the one kind of parts then has a predominance.
While he defines absolute existence as universal, we see here that in objective existence, or in matter, universality and thought abandon Anaxagoras. The implicit is to him, indeed, no absolutely sensuous Being; the homœomeriæ are the non-sensuous, i.e. the invisible and inaudible, &c. This is the highest point reached by common physicists in passing from sensuous Being to the non-sensuous, as to the mere negation of the being-for-us; but the positive side is that existent Being is itself universal. The objective is to Anaxagoras certainly the νοῦς, but for him the other-Being is a mixture of simple elements, which are neither flesh nor fish, red nor blue; again this simple is not simple in itself, but in its essence consists of homœomeriæ, which are, however, so small that they are imperceptible. The smallness thus does not take away their existence, for they are still there; but existence is just the being perceptible to sight, smell, &c. These infinitely small homœomeriæ undoubtedly disappear in a more complete conception; flesh, for instance, is such itself, but it is also a mixture of everything, i.e. it is not simple. Further analysis equally shows how such a conception must, to a greater or lesser degree, become confused; on the one side each form is thus in its main elements, original, and these parts together constitute a corporeal whole; this whole has, however, on the other side, to contain everything in itself. The νοῦς, then, is only what binds and separates, what divides and arranges (das diakosmirende). This may suffice us; however easily we may get confused with the homœomeriæ of Anaxagoras, we must hold fast to the main determination. The homœomeriæ still form a striking conception, and it may be asked how it conforms with the rest of Anaxagoras’ principle.
- The Relation of the Two. Now as to the relation of the νοῦς to that matter, both are not speculatively posited as one, for the relation itself is not set forth as one, nor has the Notion penetrated it. Here the ideas become in some measure superficial, and in some measure the conceptions are more consistent as regards the particular, than they at first appear. Because the understanding is the self-determining, the content is end, it retains itself in relation to what is different; it does not arise and pass away although it is in activity. The conception of Anaxagoras that concrete principles subsist and retain themselves, is thus consistent; he abolishes arising and passing away and accepts only an external change, a uniting together, and a severance of what is so united. The principles are concrete and have content, i.e. so many ends; in the change that takes place the principles really retain themselves. Like only goes with like even if the chaotic mixture is a combination of the unlike; but this is only a combination and not an individual, living form which maintains itself, binding like to like. Thus, however rude these ideas are, they are still really in harmony with the νοῦς.
But if the νοῦς is with Anaxagoras the moving soul in all, it yet remains to the real, as the soul of the world and the organic system of the whole, a mere word. For the living as living, since the soul was conceived of as principle, the ancients demanded no further principle (for it is the self-moving), but for determinateness, which the animal is as element in the system of the whole, they again required only the universal of these determinations. Anaxagoras calls the understanding such a principle, and in fact the absolute Notion, as simple existence, the self-identical in its differences, the dividing, the reality-establishing, must be known as such. But that Anaxagoras showed forth the understanding in the universe, or had grasped it as a rational system — of this not only do we not find a trace, but the ancients expressly say that he simply let the matter pass, just as when we say that the world or nature is a great system, the world is wisely ordered or is generally speaking rational. By this we are shown no more of the realization of this reason or the comprehensibility of the world. The νοῦς of Anaxagoras is thus still formal, although the identity of the principle with the realization was recognized. Aristotle (Met. I. 4) recognizes the insufficiency of the Anaxagorean principle: “Anaxagoras, indeed, requires the νοῦς for his formation of the world-system; that is, when he has a difficulty in showing the reason for which it is in accordance with necessity, he brings it in; otherwise he employs anything for the sake of explanation, rather than thought.”
It is nowhere more clearly set forth that the νοῦς of Anaxagoras is still formal, than in the well-known passage out of Plato’s Phædo (p. 97-99, Steph.; p. 85-89, Bekk.), which is noteworthy for its exposition of the philosophy of Anaxagoras. Socrates, according to Plato, states most definitely both what the absolute to them was, and why Anaxagoras did not satisfy them. I quote this because it will best of all lead us on to the main conception which we recognize in the philosophic consciousness of the ancients; at the same time it is an example of the loquacity of Socrates. Socrates’ understanding of the νοῦς as end is better because its determinations are congenial to him, so that we also see in it the principal forms that appear in Socrates. Plato makes Socrates, in prison, an hour before his death, relate at considerable length his experiences with regard to Anaxagoras: “When I heard it read from a book of Anaxagoras, that he said that the understanding is the disposer of the world and the first cause, I rejoiced in such a cause, and I held that if Mind apportioned out all reality, it would apportion it for the best” (the end would be shown forth). “Now if anyone wished to find the cause of the individual thing, how it becomes, and how it passes away, or how it is, he must discover this from what is best for that thing, whether it is being or in some way suffering or doing.” That the understanding is cause, or that everything is made for the best, means the same thing; this will become clearer from the opposite. It is further said, “For this reason a man has only to consider for himself, as for all others, what is best and most perfect, and then he would of necessity know the worse, for the same science comprises both. Thus reflecting, I rejoiced that I could believe that I had found in Anaxagoras a teacher of the cause of existence” (of the good) “such as I approved of; he would, I believed, tell me whether the earth was flat or round, and if he told me this, he would show me the cause and necessity of the fact, because he would show me the one or the other as being the better; and if he said that the earth is in the centre, he would show me that it was better that it should be in the centre” (i.e. its implicitly and explicitly determined end, and not utility as an externally determined end). “And when he had shown me this, I should be satisfied though he brought forward no other kind of causes, for the same would hold good for the sun, the moon, and the other stars, their respective velocities, returnings, and other conditions. Because he assigned its cause to each and to all in common, I thought that he would explain what was best for each and what was best for all” (the free, implicitly and explicitly existent Idea, the absolute end). “I would not have given up this hope for a great deal, but seized these writings zealously and read them as soon as possible in order to learn as soon as possible the good and the evil. These bright hopes faded when I saw that he did not require thought at all nor any reason for the formation of things, but had recourse to air, fire, water and many other eccentricities.” We here see how to what is best, according to the understanding (the relation of final end), that which we call natural causes is opposed, just as in Leibnitz the operating and the final causes are different.
Socrates explains this in the following way: “It appears to me to be as if some one were to say that Socrates performs all his actions with understanding, and then in going on to give the reasons for each of my actions, were to say that I sit here because my body consists of bones and muscles; the bones are fixed and have joints that divide them (διαφυὰς), but the muscles have the power of extending and bending, and they cover the bones with flesh and skin; it is as though he were further to bring forward as the cause of my talking with you, other similar causes, sounds, and air, hearing, and a thousand other things, but omitted to give the true cause” (free independent determination), “which is that the Athenians judged it fit to condemn me, and therefore I judged it better and more just to sit here and to suffer the punishment which they accorded” (we must recollect that one of his friends had arranged everything for the flight of Socrates, but that he refused to go) “for else, by the dog of Egypt, how long ago would these bones and muscles have gone to Megara or to Boeotia, had they been moved only by their opinion of what was best, and had I not considered it juster and better to bear the punishment which the State laid upon me, instead of escaping and fleeing from it.” Plato here correctly places the two kinds of reason and cause in opposition to one another — the cause proceeding from ends, and the inferior, subject, and merely external causes of chemistry, mechanism, &c. — in order to show the discrepancy between them, as here exemplified in the case of a man with consciousness. Anaxagoras seems to define an end and to wish to proceed from it; but he immediately lets this go again and proceeds to quite external causes. “But to call these” (these bones and muscles) “causes is quite improper. If, however, anyone were to say that without having bones and muscles and whatever else I have, I could not do that which I consider best, he would be quite right. But to say that from such causes, I do that which I do, and do with understanding; to say that I do not do it from the choice of what is best — to make such an assertion shows a great want of consideration; it signifies an incapacity to distinguish that the one is the true cause and the other is only that without which the cause could not operate,” i.e. the conditions.
This is a good example for showing that we miss the end in such modes of explanation. On the other hand, it is not a good example, because it is taken from the kingdom of the self-conscious will, where deliberate and not unconscious end reigns. In this criticism of the Anaxagorean νοῦς we can certainly see it generally expressed that Anaxagoras made no application of his νοῦς to reality. But the positive element in the conclusion of Socrates seems, on the other hand, to be unsatisfying, because it goes to the other extreme, namely, to desire causes for nature which do not appear to be in it, but which fall outside of it in consciousness. For what is good and beautiful is partly due to the thought of consciousness as such; end or purposive action is mainly an act of consciousness and not of nature. But in so far as ends become posited in nature, the end, as end, on the other hand, falls outside of it in our judgment only; as such it is not in nature itself, for in it there are only what we call natural causes, and for its comprehension we have only to seek and show causes that are immanent. According to this, we distinguish, for instance, in Socrates the end and ground of his action as consciousness, and the causes of his actual action: and the latter we would undoubtedly seek in his bones, muscles, nerves, &c. Since we banish the consideration of nature in relation to ends — as present in our thought and not existent in nature — we also banish from our consideration teleological explanations in nature formerly admired, e.g. that grass grows that animals may eat it, and that these last exist and eat grass, so that we may eat them. The end of trees is said to be that their fruit may be consumed and that they should give us wood for heat; many animals have skins for warm clothing; the sea in northern climates floats timber to the shores because on these shores themselves no wood grows, and the inhabitants can hence obtain it, and so on. Thus presented, the end, the Good, lies outside of the thing itself: the nature of a thing then becomes considered, not in and for itself, but only in relation to another which is nothing to it. Thus, because things are only useful for an end, this determination is not their own but one foreign to them. The tree, the grass, is as natural existence, independent, and this adaptation of it to an end, such as making grass that which is to be eaten, does not concern the grass as grass, just as it does not concern the animal that man should clothe himself in his skin; Socrates may hence seem to miss in Anaxagoras this mode of looking at nature. But this to us familiar way of regarding the good and expedient is on the one hand not the only one, and does not represent Plato’s meaning, while, on the other, it is likewise necessary. We have not to represent the good or the end in so one-sided a manner that we think of it existing as such in the perceiving mind, and in opposition to what is; but set free from this form, we must take it in its essence as the Idea of all existence. The nature of things must be recognized in accordance with the Notion, which is the independent, unfettered consideration of things; and because it is that which things are in and for themselves, it controls the relationship of natural causes. This Notion is the end, the true cause, but that which recedes into itself; it is the implicitly existent first from which movement proceeds and which becomes result; it is not only an end present in the imagination before its actuality exists, but is also present in reality. Becoming is the movement through which a reality or totality becomes; in the animal or plant its essence as universal genus, is that which begins its movement and brings it forth. But this whole is not the product of something foreign, but its own product, what is already present as germ or seed; thus it is called end, the self-producing, that which in its Becoming is already implicitly existent. The Idea is not a particular thing, which might have another content than reality or appear quite different. The opposition is the merely formal opposition of possibility and actuality; the active impelling substance and the product are the same. This realization goes right through the opposition; the negative in the universal is just this process. The genus sets itself in a state of opposition as individual and universal, and thus, in what lives, the genus realizes itself in the opposition of races which are opposed, but whose principle is the universal genus. They, as individuals, aim at their own self-preservation as individuals in eating, drinking, &c., but what they thereby bring to pass is genus. Individuals sublate themselves, but genus is that which is ever brought forth; plants bring forth only the same plants whose ground is the universal.
In accordance with this, the distinction between what have been badly named natural causes and the final causes has to be determined. Now if I isolate individuality and merely regard it as movement and the moments of the same, I show what are natural causes. For example, where has this life taken its origin? Through the generation of this its father and mother. What is the cause of these fruits? The tree whose juices so distil themselves that the fruit forthwith arises. Answers of this kind give the causes, i.e. the individuality opposed to an individuality; but their principle is the genus. Now nature cannot represent essence as such. The end of generation is the sublation of the individuality of Being; but nature which in existence certainly brings about this sublation of individuality, does not set the universal in its place, but another individual. Bones, muscles, &c., bring forth a movement; they are causes, but they themselves are so through other causes, and so on into infinitude. The universal, however, takes them up into itself as moments which undoubtedly appear in movement as causes, though the fundamental ground of these parts actually is the whole. It is not they which come first, but the result into which the juices of the plants, &c., pass, is the first, just as in origination it appears only as product, as seed, that which constitutes the beginning and the end, even though they be in different individuals. Their real nature is the same.
But such a genus is itself a particular genus and is essentially related to another, e.g. the Idea of the plant to that of the animal; the universal moves on. This looks like external teleology — that plants are eaten by animals, &c., in which their limitation as genus lies. The genus of the plant has the absolute totality of its realization in the animal, the animal in the conscious existence, just as the earth has it in the plant. This is the system of the whole in which each moment is transitory. The double method of considering the matter thus is that each Idea is a circle within itself, the plant or the animal the Good of its kind; and, on the other hand, each is a moment in the universal Good. If I consider the animal merely as externally adapted to an end, as created for something else, I consider it in a one-sided way; it is real existence, in and for itself universal. But it is just as one-sided to say that the plant, for instance, is only in and for itself, only end to itself, only shut up within itself and going back into itself. For each idea is a circle which is complete in itself, but whose completion is likewise a passing into another circle; it is a vortex whose middle point, that into which it returns, is found directly in the periphery of a higher circle which swallows it up. Thus, for the first time, we reach the determination of an end in the world which is immanent within it.
These explanations are necessary here, since hereafter we see the speculative Idea coming more into the universal; it was formerly expressed as Being and the moments and movements were called existent. What has to be avoided in this transition is that we should thereby think that Being is given up and that we pass into consciousness as opposed to Being (in so doing the universal would lose all its speculative significance); the universal is immanent in nature. This is the meaning which is present when we represent to ourselves that thought constitutes, orders, &c., the world. It is not, so to speak, the activity of the individual consciousness, in which I stand here on one side and, opposite to me, an actuality, matter, which I form, dispose and order as I will; for the universal, Thought, must abide in Philosophy without this opposition. Being, pure Being, is universal when we thereby keep in mind that Being is absolute abstraction, pure thought; but Being as it is thus set forth as Being, has the significance of the opposite to this Being-reflected-into-itself, to thought and recollection; the universal, on the contrary, has reflection immediately in itself. So far, the ancients really got: it does not seem far. “Universal” is a dry determination; everyone knows about the universal, but not of it as real existence. Thought, indeed, reaches to the invisibility of the sensuous; not to the positive determinateness of thinking it as universal, but only to the predicateless absolute as to the merely negative; and that is as far as the common ideas of the present day have come. With this discovery of thought we conclude the first Section and enter upon the second period. The profit to be derived from the first period is not very great. Some, indeed, think that there is still some special wisdom in it, but thought is still young, the determinations are thus still poor, abstract and arid. Thought here has but few determinations — water, Being, number, &c. — and these cannot endure; the universal must go forth on its own account as the self-determining activity, and this we find it doing in Anaxagoras alone.
We have still to consider the relationship of the universal as opposed to Being, or consciousness as such in its relation to what is. By Anaxagoras’ determination of real existence, this relationship of consciousness is also determined. In this regard nothing satisfactory can be found; for he recognized, on the one hand, thought as real existence, without, however, bringing this thought to bear on ordinary reality. Thus, on the other hand, this is destitute of thought and independent, an infinite number of homœomeriæ, i.e. an infinite amount of a sensuous implicit existence, which now, however, is sensuous Being; for existent Being is an accumulation of homœomeriæ. The relationship borne by consciousness to real existence may likewise be various. Anaxagoras could thus either say that the truth is only in thought and in rational knowledge, or that it is sensuous perception; for in this we have the homœomeriæ which are themselves implicit. Thus, in the first place, we find from him — as Sextus tells us, (adv. Math. VII., 89-91) “that the understanding (λόγος) is the criterion of the truth; the senses cannot judge of the truth on account of their weakness” — weakness for the homœomeriæ are the infinitely small; the senses could not grasp them, do not know that they have to be something ideal and thought. A celebrated example of this is given by him according to Sextus (Pyrrh. Hyp. I. 13, §. 33), in the assertion that “the snow is black, for it is water, and water is black.” He here asserts the truth in a reason. In the second place, according to Aristotle (Met. III. 7), Anaxagoras is said to have asserted that, “there is a medium between contradiction (ἀντιφάσεως); so that everything is untrue. For because the two sides of the opposition are mingled, what is mingled is neither good nor not good, and thus not true.” Aristotle also quotes another time from him (Met. III. 5): “That one of his apothegms to his disciples was that to them things were as they supposed them.” This may relate to the fact that because existent Being is an accumulation of homœomeriæ which are what really exists, sensuous perception takes things as they are in truth.
There is little more to be made of this. But here we have the beginning of a more distinct development of the relationship of consciousness to Being, the development of the nature of knowledge as a knowledge of the true. The mind has gone forth to express real existence as Thought; and thus real existence as existent, is in consciousness as such; it is implicit but likewise in consciousness. This Being is such only in so far as consciousness recognizes it, and real existence is only the knowledge of it. The mind has no longer to seek existence in something foreign, since it is in itself; for what formerly appeared foreign is Thought, i.e. consciousness has this real existence in itself. But this consciousness in opposition is an individual consciousness; thereby in fact, implicit Being is sublated, for the implicit is what is not opposed, not singled out, but universal. It is, indeed, known, but what is, only is in knowledge, or it is no other Being than that of the knowledge of consciousness. We see this development of the universal in which real existence goes right over to the side of consciousness, in the so much decried worldly wisdom of the Sophists; we may view this as indicating that the negative nature of the universal is now developing.
IN THIS SECOND division we have first to consider more particularly the Sophists, secondly Socrates, and thirdly the Socratics, while we distinguish from these Plato, and take him along with Aristotle in the third division. The νοῦς, which is at first only grasped in a very subjective manner as end, that is to say as that which is end to men, i.e. the Good, in Plato and Aristotle became understood in what is on the whole an objective way, as genus or Idea. Because thought has now become set forth as principle, and this at first presents a subjective appearance as being the subjective activity of thought, there now sets in (since the absolute is posited as subject) an age of subjective reflection; i.e. there begins in this period — which coincides with the disintegration of Greece in the Peloponnesian war — the principle of modern times.
Since in the νοῦς of Anaxagoras, as the still formal self-determining activity, determination is as yet quite undetermined, general and abstract, and along with that contentless throughout, the universal standpoint is the immediate necessity of going on to a content which begins actual determination. But what is this absolute, universal content which abstract thought as self-determining activity gives itself? That is the real question here. Consciousness now confronts the untrammeled thought of those ancient philosophers, whose general ideas we have considered. While hitherto the subject, when it reflected on the absolute, only produced thoughts, and had this content before it, it is now seen that what is here present is not the whole, but that the thinking subject likewise really belongs to the totality of the objective. Furthermore, this subjectivity of thought has again the double character of at once being the infinite, self-relating form, which as this pure activity of the universal, receives content-determinations; and, on the other hand, as consciousness reflects that it is the thinking subject which is thus positing, of also being a return of spirit from objectivity into itself. Thus if thought, because it immersed itself in the object, had as such, and like the νοῦς of Anaxagoras, at first no content, because this stood on the other side, so now, with the return of thought as to the consciousness that the subject is what thinks, we have the other side — that what has to be dealt with is the attainment of a truly absolute content. This content, taken abstractly, may itself be again a double one. Either the “I” is in respect of determination the real when it makes itself and its interests the content, or the content becomes determined as the altogether universal. According to this, we have two questions to deal with, which are — how the determination of what is in and for itself is to be comprehended, and how this is likewise in immediate relation to the “I” as thinking. It comes to pass in Philosophy that although the “I” is the positing, yet the posited content of that which is thought is the object existent in and for itself. If one were to remain at saying that the “I” is that which posits, this would be the false idealism of modern times: in earlier times men did not remain at saying that what is thought is bad because I posit it.
To the Sophists the content is mine, and subjective: Socrates grasped the content which is in and for itself, and the followers of Socrates have, in direct connection with him, merely further defined this content.
A. — The Sophists.
THE NOTION, WHICH reason has found in Anaxagoras to be real existence, is the simple negative into which all determination, all that is existent and individual sinks. Before the Notion nothing can exist, for it is simply the predicateless absolute to which everything is clearly a moment only; for it there is thus nothing so to speak permanently fixed and sealed. The Notion is just the constant change of Heraclitus, the movement, the causticity, which nothing can resist. Thus the Notion which finds itself, finds itself as the absolute power before which everything vanishes; and thereby all things, all existence, everything held to be secure, is now made fleeting. This security — whether it be a security of natural Being or the security of definite conceptions, principles, customs and laws — becomes vacillation and loses its stability. As universal, such principles, &c., certainly themselves pertain to the Notion, yet their universality is only their form, for the content which they have, as determinate, falls into movement. We see this movement arising in the so-called Sophists whom we here encounter for the first time. They gave themselves the name σοφισταί, as teachers of wisdom, i.e. as those who could make wise (σοφίζειν). The learning of the Sophists is thus directly the opposite to ours, which only aspires to acquire information and investigate what is and has been — it is a mass of empirical matter, in which the discovery of a new form, a new worm, or other vermin is held to be a point of great importance. Our learned professors are in so far much less responsible than the Sophists; however, Philosophy has nothing to do with this lack of responsibility.
But as regards the relation of the Sophists to what is ordinarily believed, they are, by the healthy human understanding, as much decried as by morality. By the former this is on account of their theoretic teaching, since it is senseless to say that nothing is; and in respect of practice because they subvert all principles and laws. For the first mentioned, things certainly cannot be left in this confusion of movement and in their negative aspect merely; yet the rest into which they pass is not the restoration of what is moved into its former condition of security, as if in the end the result were the same and the action were a superfluous one. Now the sophistry of common opinion, which is without the culture of thought and without scientific knowledge, is found in the fact that to it its determinations are, as such, held to be existent in and for themselves, and a number of rules of life, maxims, principles, &c., are considered as absolutely fixed truths. Mind itself is, however, the unity of these in many ways limited truths, which in it are all recognized as being present as sublated only, as merely relative truths, i.e. with their restrictions, in their limitation, and not as existent in themselves. Hence these truths to the ordinary understanding, are, in fact, no more, for on another occasion it allows and even asserts the opposite to have a value also for consciousness; or it does not know that it says directly the opposite to what it means, its expression being thus only an expression of contradiction. In its actions generally, and not in its bad actions, ordinary understanding breaks these its maxims and its principles itself, and if it leads a rational life, it is properly speaking only a standing inconsistency, the making good of one narrow maxim of conduct through breaking off from others. For example, a statesman of experience and culture is one who knows how to steer a middle course, and has practical understanding, i.e. deals with the whole extent of the case before him and not with one side of it, which expresses itself in one maxim only. On the other hand, he, whoever he is, who acts on one maxim, is a pedant and spoils things for himself and others. Most commonly it is thus. For example, we hear it said, “it is certain that the things that I see are; I believe in their reality.” Anyone can say this quite easily. But in fact it is not true that he believes in their reality; really he assumes the contrary. For he eats and drinks them, i.e. he is convinced that these things are not in themselves, and their being has no security, no subsistence. Thus common understanding is in its actions better than it thinks, for in action it is Mind as a whole. But it is not here known to itself as Mind, for what comes within its consciousness are definite laws, rules, general propositions, such as by its understanding are esteemed to be the absolute truth, whose limitation it, however, sets aside in action. Now, when the Notion turns to the riches which consciousness thinks to possess, and when the latter is sensible of the danger to its truth without which it would not be, when its fixed realities are destroyed, it is enraged; and the Notion which in this its realization applies itself to the common verities, draws hatred and disdain upon itself. This is the ground of the universal denunciation of the Sophists; a denunciation of healthy human understanding which does not know how else to help itself.
Sophistry is certainly a word of ill-repute, and indeed it is particularly through the opposition to Socrates and Plato that the Sophists have come into such disrepute that the word usually now signifies that, by false reasoning, some truth is either refuted and made dubious, or something false is proved and made plausible. We have to put this evil significance on one side and to forget it. On the other hand, we now wish to consider further from the positive and properly speaking scientific side, what was the position of the Sophists in Greece.
It was the Sophists who now applied the simple Notion as thought (which with Zeno in the Eleatic school had commenced to turn towards its pure counterpart, motion) to worldly objects generally, and with it penetrated all human relations. For it is conscious of itself as the absolute and single reality, and, jealous of all else, exercises its power and rule in this reality as regards all else, since this desires to be considered as the determinate which is not Thought. The thought identical with itself, thus directs its negative powers towards the manifold determination of the theoretical and the practical, the truths of natural consciousness and the immediately recognized laws and principles; and what to the ordinary conception is established, dissolves itself in it, and in so doing leaves it to particular subjectivity to make itself first and fixed, to relate everything to itself.
Now that this Notion has appeared, it has become a more universal Philosophy, and not so much simple Philosophy as the universal culture of which every man who did not belong to those devoid of thought, partook, and necessarily partook. For we call culture just the Notion as applied in actuality, in so far as it makes its appearance not purely in its abstraction, but in unity with the manifold content of all ordinary conceptions. But in culture, the Notion is the predominant as also the actuating, because in both the determinate is recognized in its limits, in its transition into something else. This culture became the general aim of education, and there were hence a number of teachers of Sophistry. Indeed, the Sophists are the teachers of Greece through whom culture first came into existence in Greece, and thus they took the place of poets and of rhapsodists, who before this were the ordinary instructors. For religion was no instructress, since no teaching was in it imparted; and though priests certainly offered sacrifices, prophesied and interpreted the sayings of the oracle, instruction is something quite different from this. But the Sophists educated men in wisdom, in the sciences, music, mathematics, &c., and this was their foremost aim. Before Pericles appeared in Greece, the desire for culture through thought and through reflection was awakened; men wished to be cultured in their ideas, and in their various relations to guide themselves by thought, and no longer merely through oracles, or through custom, passion, the feelings of the moment. For the end of the State is the universal, under which the particular is comprehended. Because the Sophists kept in view and enlarged upon this culture, they prosecuted teaching as a special calling, business, or profession, as an office taking the place of schools; they travelled round the towns of Greece, the youth of which was by them instructed.
Now culture is certainly an indefinite expression. It has, however, this meaning, that what free thought is to attain must come out of itself and be personal conviction; it is then no longer believed but investigated — in short, it is the so-called enlightenment of modern times. Thought seeks general principles by which it criticizes everything which is by us esteemed, and nothing has value to us which is not in conformity with these principles. Thus, thought undertakes to compare the positive content with itself, to dissolve the former concrete of belief; on one side to split the content up, and, on the other, to isolate these individualities, these particular points of view and aspects, and to secure them on their own account. These aspects, which are properly not independent, but only moments of a whole, when detached from it, relate themselves to themselves, and in this way assume the form of universality. Any one of them can thus be elevated to a reason, i.e. to a universal determination, which is again applied to particular aspects. Thus, in culture, it is requisite that men should be acquainted with the universal points of view which belong to a transaction, event, &c., that this point of view and thereby the thing, should be grasped in a universal way, in order to afford a present knowledge of what is in question. A judge knows the various laws, i.e. the various legal points of view under which a thing is to be considered; these are already for him universal aspects through which he has a universal consciousness, and considers the matter in a universal way. A man of culture thus knows how to say something of everything, to find points of view in all. Greece has to thank the Sophists for this culture, because they taught men to exercise thought as to what should have authority for them, and thus their culture was culture in philosophy as much as in eloquence.
In order to reach this double end, the Sophists were one in their desire to be wise. To know what constitutes power amongst men and in the State, and what I have to recognize as such, is counted as wisdom; and because I know the power, I also know how to direct others in conformity with my end. Hence the admiration that Pericles and other statesmen excited, just because they knew their own standpoint, and had the power of putting others in their proper place. That man is powerful who can deduce the actions of men from the absolute ends which move them. The object of the Sophists has thus been to teach what is the mainspring of the world, and since Philosophy alone knows that this is the universal thought which resolves all that is particular, the Sophists were also speculative philosophers. Learned in the proper sense they hence were not, because there were as yet no positive sciences without Philosophy, such as in their aridity did not concern all mankind and man’s essential aspects.
They further had the most ordinary practical end, to give a consciousness of that which is involved in the moral world and which satisfies man. Religion taught that the gods are the powers which rule over men. Immediate morality recognized the rule of laws; man was to find satisfaction in conforming to laws, and was to assume that others also find satisfaction because they follow these laws. But from the reflection which here breaks in, it no longer satisfies man to obey law as an authority and external necessity, for he desires to satisfy himself in himself, to convince himself, through his reflection, of what is binding upon him, what is his end and what he has to do for this end. Thus the impulses and desires that man has, become his power; and only inasmuch as he affords them satisfaction does he become satisfied. Now the Sophists taught how these powers could be moved in empirical man, for the good as ordinarily recognized, no longer determined them. Rhetoric, however, teaches how circumstances may be made subject to such forces; it even makes use of the wrath and passions of the hearer in order to bring about a conclusion. Thus the Sophists were more especially the teachers of oratory, and that is the aspect in which the individual could make himself esteemed amongst the people as well as carry out what was best for the people; this certainly characterizes a democratic constitution, in which the citizens have the ultimate decision. Because, in this way, oratory was one of the first requirements for the rule of a people, or for making something clear to them through their ordinary ideas, the Sophists trained men for common Greek life, for citizenship and for statesmen, without appearing to prepare State officials for an examination in specific subjects. For the particular characteristic of eloquence is to show the manifold points of view existing in a thing, and to give force to those which harmonize with what appears to me to be most useful; it thus is the art of putting forward various points of view in the concrete case, and placing others rather in the shade. Aristotle’s Topica comes to mind in the connection, inasmuch as it gives the categories or thought-determinations (τόπους), according to which we have to regard things in order to learn to speak; but the Sophists were the first to apply themselves to a knowledge of these.
This is the position taken up by the Sophists. But we find a perfectly definite picture of their further progress and procedure in Plato’s Protagoras. Plato here makes Protagoras express himself more precisely respecting the art of the Sophists. That is to say, Plato in this dialogue represents that Socrates accompanies a young man named Hippocrates, who desires to place himself under Protagoras, then newly arrived in Athens, for instruction in the science of the Sophists. On the way, Socrates now asks Hippocrates what is this wisdom of the Sophists which he wishes to learn. Hippocrates at first replies Rhetoric, for the Sophist is one who knows how to make men clever (δεινόν) in speech. In fact, what is most striking in a man or people of culture is the art of speaking well, or of turning subjects round and considering them in many aspects. The uncultivated man finds it unpleasant to associate with people who know how to grasp and express every point of view with ease. The French are good speakers in this sense, and the Germans call their talking prattle; but it is not mere talk that brings about this result, for culture is also wanted. We may have mastered a speech quite completely, but if we have not culture, it is not good speaking. Men thus learn French, not only to be able to speak French well, but to acquire French culture. What is to be obtained from the Sophists is thus the power of keeping the manifold points of view present to the mind, so that the wealth of categories by which an object may be considered, immediately occurs to it. Socrates, indeed, remarks that the principle of the Sophists is not hereby determined in a sufficiently comprehensive way, and thus it is not sufficiently known what a Sophist is, “yet,” he says, “we have a desire to go on.”86 For likewise, if anyone wishes to study Philosophy, he does not as yet know what Philosophy is, else he would not need to study it.
Having reached Protagoras with Hippocrates, Socrates finds him in an assemblage of the foremost Sophists and surrounded by listeners, “walking about and like an Orpheus entrancing all men by his words, Hippias sitting meanwhile on a chair with not so many round him, and Prodicus lying amongst a great number of admirers.” After Socrates brought before Protagoras the request to have Hippocrates placed under his instruction, in order that he might by him be taught how to become eminent in the State, he also asks whether they might speak with him in public or alone. Protagoras praises his discretion, and replies that they act wisely to make use of this precaution. For because the Sophists wandered about the towns, and thus youths, deserting fathers and friends, followed them in view of improving themselves through their intercourse with them, they drew upon themselves much envy and ill-will — for everything new is hated. On this point Protagoras speaks at length: “I assert that the art of the Sophists is old; but that those of the ancients who practised it in fear of giving offence” (for the uncultured world is antagonistic to the cultured) “veiled and concealed it. One section, like Homer and Hesiod, taught it in their poetry; others, like Orpheus and Musæus, through mysteries and oracles. Some, I believe, like Iccus of Tarentum, and the Sophist now living and unsurpassed — Herodicus, of Selymbria — in gymnastics, but many more through music.” We see that Protagoras usually describes the end of mental culture as being to bring about morality, presence of mind, sense of order and general capacity. He adds: “all those who feared envy arising against the sciences, required such veils and screens. But I think that they do not attain their end, for men of penetration in the State see the end appearing through, while the people notice nothing, and only quote the others. If people behave so, they make themselves more hated, and appear to be impostors. I have therefore taken the opposite way, and openly acknowledge (ὁμολογῶ), and do not deny that I am a Sophist” (Protagoras first used the name of Sophist), “and that my business is to give men culture (παιδεύειν).”87
Further on, where the arts which Hippocrates was to acquire under Protagoras’ instruction were discussed, Protagoras answered Socrates: “What you ask is sensible, and I like to answer a sensible question. Hippocrates will not have the same experience that he would have with other teachers (σοφιστῶν). These latter are at variance with (λωβῶνται) their pupils, for they take them against their wills straight back to the arts and sciences which they just wished to escape, inasmuch as they teach them arithmetic, geometry and music. But he who comes to me will be instructed in nothing else than that in which he comes to be instructed.” Thus the youths came freely, with the wish to be made men of culture through his instruction, and in the hope that he, as teacher, knew the way to succeed in so doing. As to his general aim, Protagoras says, “The instruction consists in bringing about a right perception and understanding (εὐβουλία) of the best way of regulating one’s own family affairs, and similarly as regards citizenship, in qualifying men both to speak on the affairs of the State, and to do the best for the State.” Thus two interests are here apparent, that of the individual and that of the State. Now Socrates expresses dissent and surprise at Protagoras’ assertion as to imparting instruction in political aptitude. “I thought that the political virtues could not be learned,” for it is Socrates’ main tenet that virtue cannot be taught. And Socrates now brings forward the following argument, after the manner of the Sophists appealing to experience. “Those who are masters of the art of politics cannot impart that art to others. Pericles, the father of these youths, gave them instruction in all that instructors could teach; but not in the science for which he is celebrated; here he left them free to wander in the chance of their lighting upon wisdom. Similarly other great statesmen did not teach it to others, whether friends or strangers.”88
Protagoras now replied that it could be taught, and shows the reason why great statesmen did not give this instruction, while he asks whether he is to speak as an elder to younger men in a myth, or whether he should give his reasons. The company left the matter to him and he began with the following myth of everlasting interest: “The gods commanded Prometheus and Epimetheus to adorn the world and confer on it its qualities and powers. Epimetheus imparted strength, power of flight, arms, clothing, herbs and fruits, but in some incomprehensible way he gave all to the beasts, so that nothing remained to men. Prometheus saw them unclothed, unarmed, helpless, when the moment came in which the form of man had to go forth into the light. Then he stole fire from heaven, the arts of Vulcan and Minerva, to equip man for his needs. But political wisdom was wanting, and, living without any common bond, they were in a constant state of strife and misery. Then Zeus gave the command to Hermes to grant reverence” (natural obedience, honour, docility, respect of children for parents, and of men for higher and better natures), “and justice. Hermes asks, ‘How shall I impart them? To individuals, as particular arts are distributed, just as some have a knowledge of medicine sufficient for assisting others?’ But Zeus answers that it must be to all, for no body of men (πόλις) can exist if only a few partake of those qualities. And it shall be the law that whoever cannot acknowledge authority and justice must be exterminated as a plague to the State. Hence the Athenians when they wish to build, call builders into counsel, and when they contemplate any other business, those who have experience in it, but when they wish to come to a decision or make a regulation in State affairs, they admit all. For all must partake of this virtue or no State could exist. Thus if anyone is inexperienced in the art of flute-playing and yet professes to be a master in it, he is justly thought to be mad. But in justice it is otherwise; if anyone is not just and confesses it, he is thought to be mad. He must profess to be so, for everybody must either share in it or be shut out from social life.”89
For the fact that this political science is also so constituted “that everyone by education and diligence (ἐξ ἐπιμελείας) may acquire it,” Protagoras gives additional reasons in the following argument: “No one blames or punishes on account of a defect or evil that has come to anyone by nature or by chance. But defects and faults which can be removed through diligence, exercise and teaching are considered to be blameworthy and punishable. Impiety and injustice are of this description and, generally speaking, all that opposes public virtue. Men guilty of these sins are thus reproached; they are punished in the idea that they had the power to remove the wrong and still more to acquire political virtue through diligence and teaching. Thus men do not punish on account of what is past — excepting as we strike a vicious beast on the head — but on account of what is to come, so that neither the one who committed the crime nor any other misled by his example, should do the same again. Thus it is in this implied that virtue can be acquired through education and exercise.”90 This is a good argument for the teachability of virtue.
As to the statement of Socrates that men such as Pericles, who were famed for their political virtues, did not impart these to their children and friends, Protagoras in the first place says that it may on the other hand be replied, that in these virtues all men are instructed by all men. Political virtue is so constituted that it is the common province of all; this one essential for all men is justice, temperance, and holiness — in one word, whatever comprises manly virtue. In it no particular education from men of eminence is thus required. The children are from their earliest infancy exhorted and admonished to do what is good, and are accustomed to that which is right. Instruction in music and gymnastics contributes to temper the indulgence of self-will and pleasure, and to accustom men to conform to a law or rule; and the reading of the poets who enforce this does the same. When man steps outside this circle of education, he enters into that of the constitution of a State which likewise contributes to keep everyone within the bounds of law and order, so that political virtue is a result of the education of youth. But the objection that distinguished men did not impart their distinction to their children and friends, Protagoras answered secondly and very well as follows: “Let us say that in a State all the citizens had to become flute-players, all would be instructed in the art; some would be distinguished, many good, some mediocre, a few perhaps bad, and yet all would have a certain amount of skill. But it might very well be the case that the son of an artist should be a bad player, for the distinction depends on particular talents, and a particularly good natural capacity. From very skilful players very unskilful might descend, and conversely, but all would have a certain knowledge of the flute, and all would certainly be infinitely better than those who were quite ignorant of the art. Similarly all, even the worst citizens of a rational State are better and juster than citizens of a State where there is no culture nor justice nor law, in a word, where there is no necessity to bring them up to be just. For this superiority they have to thank the education given in their State.”91 All these are quite good examples and striking arguments which are not at all worse than Cicero’s reasoning — a natura insitum. The arguments of Socrates and the development of these arguments are, on the contrary, examples based upon experience, and are often not better than what is here placed in the mouth of a Sophist.
What now confronts us is the question of how far this may be inadequate, and particularly how far Socrates and Plato came into collision with the Sophists and constituted the antagonism to them. For the claim made by the Sophists in Greece was that they had given a higher culture to their people; for this, indeed, great credit was ascribed to them in Greece, but they were met by the reproach that was encountered by all culture. That is to say, because the Sophists were masters of argument and reasoning, and were within the stage of reflective thought, they wished, passing from the particular to the universal, to awaken attention through examples and illustrations to what in his experience and to his mind appears to man to be right. This, the necessary course of free, thinking reflection, which with us has also been adopted by culture, must, however, necessarily lead beyond implicit trust and unrestricted faith in the current morality and religion. The statement that the Sophists thereby fell into one-sided principles rests upon the fact that in Greek culture the time had not yet come when, out of thinking consciousness itself, the ultimate principles had become manifested, and thus there was something firm to rest upon, as is the case with us in modern times. Because, on the one hand, the need of subjective freedom existed merely to give effect to that which man himself perceives and finds present in his reason (thus laws, religious ideas, only in so far as I recognize them through my thought), on the other hand, no fixed principle had so far been found in thought; thought was rather reasoning, and what remained indeterminate could thus only be fulfilled through self-will. It is otherwise in our European world where culture is, so to speak, introduced under the protection and in presupposition of a spiritual religion, i.e. not of a religion of the imagination, but by presupposing a knowledge of the eternal nature of Spirit and of the absolute end, of the end of man, to be in a spiritual way actual and to posit himself in unity with the absolute spirit. Thus here there is a groundwork of a fixed spiritual principle which thus satisfies the needs of the subjective mind; and from this absolute principle all further relationships, duties, laws, &c., are established. Consequently culture cannot receive the variety of direction — and hence the aimlessness — of the Greeks and of those who extended culture over Greece, the Sophists. As regards the religion of the imagination, as regards the undeveloped principle of the Greek State, culture was able to divide itself into many points of view, or it was easy to it to represent particular subordinate points of view as highest principles. Where, on the contrary, as is the case with us, a universal aim so high, indeed the highest possible, floats before the imagination, a particular principle cannot so easily reach this rank, even if the reflection of reason attains to the position of determining and recognizing from itself what is highest; for the subordination of special principles is already determined, although in form our enlightenment may have the same standpoint as that of the Sophists.
As regards content, the standpoint of the Sophists differed from that of Socrates and Plato, in that the mission of Socrates was to express the beautiful, good, true, and right, as the end and aim of the individual, while with the Sophists the content was not present as an ultimate end, so that all this was left to the individual will. Hence came the evil reputation obtained by the Sophists through the antagonism of Plato, and this is certainly their defect. As to their outward lives, we know that the Sophists accumulated great riches;92 they became very proud, and some of them lived very luxuriously. But in respect of the inward life, reasoning thought has, in distinction to Plato, this prevailing characteristic, that it makes duty, that which has to be done, not come from the Notion of the thing as determined in and for itself; for it brings forward external reasons through which right and wrong, utility and harmfulness, are distinguished. To Plato and Socrates, on the other hand, the main point is that the nature of the conditions should be considered, and that the Notion of the thing in and for itself should become evolved. Socrates and Plato wished to bring forward this Notion as opposed to the consideration of things from points of view and reasonings which are always merely particular and individual, and thus opposed to the Notion itself. The distinction in the two points of view is thus that cultured reasoning only belongs, in a general way, to the Sophists, while Socrates and Plato determined thought through a universal determination (the Platonic Idea), or something fixed, which mind finds eternally in itself.
If sophistry is bad in the sense that it signifies a quality of which only bad men are guilty, it is at the same time much more common than this would imply; for all argumentative reasoning, adducing of arguments and counterarguments, bringing into prominence particular points of view, is sophistry. And just as utterances of the Sophists are adduced against which nothing can be said (as they are by Plato), men of our day are urged to all that is good for the very reasons that are reasons to the Sophists. Thus it is said, “do not cheat, else you lose your credit, hence your wealth,” or, “be temperate, or you will spoil your appetite and have to suffer.” Or for punishment men give the external reasons of improvement, &c.; or else an action is defended on external grounds taken from the result. If, on the other hand, firmly rooted principles lie at the foundation — as in the Christian Religion, although men now remember this no longer — it is said, “the grace of God in respect of holiness, &c., thus directs the life of men;” and these external grounds fall away. Sophistry thus does not lie so far from us as we think. When educated men discuss matters now-a-days, it may seem all very good, but it is in no way different from what Socrates and Plato called sophistry — although they themselves have adopted this standpoint as truly as did the Sophists. Educated men fall into it when they judge of concrete cases in which a particular point of view determines the result, and we must in ordinary life do the same if we wish to make up our minds in action. If duties and virtues are advocated as in sermons (this is so in most sermons), we must hear such reasons given. Other speakers, such as those in parliament, likewise make use of arguments and counterarguments similar to these, through which they try to persuade and convince. On the one hand something definite is in question, such as the constitution, or a war, and from the fixed direction thus given, certain provisions have to be deduced consistently; but this consistency, on the other, soon disappears, just because the matter can be arranged either this way or that, and thus particular points of view always are decisive. Men likewise make use of good arguments, after the manner of the Sophists, against Philosophy. There are, they say, various philosophies, various opinions, and this is contrary to the one Truth; the weakness of human reason allows of no knowledge. What is Philosophy to the feelings, mind, and heart? Abstract thinking about such matters produces abstruse results which are of no use in the practical life of man. We no longer apply the word sophistry thus, but it is the way of the Sophists not to take things as they are, but to bring about their proofs by arguments derived from feelings as ultimate ends. We shall see this characteristic of the Sophists more clearly still in Socrates and Plato.
With such reasoning men can easily get so far as to know (where they do not, it is owing to the want of education — but the Sophists were very well educated) that if arguments are relied upon, everything can be proved by argument, and arguments for and against can be found for everything; as particular, however, they throw no light upon the universal, the Notion. Thus what has been considered the sin of the Sophists is that they taught men to deduce any conclusion required by others or by themselves; but that is not due to any special quality in the Sophists, but to reflective reasoning. In the worst action there exists a point of view which is essentially real; if this is brought to the front, men excuse and vindicate the action. In the crime of desertion in time of war, there is, for example, the duty of self-preservation. Similarly in more modern times the greatest crimes, assassination, treachery, &c., have been justified, because in the purpose there lay a determination which was actually essential, such as that men must resist the evil and promote the good. The educated man knows how to regard everything from the point of view of the good, to maintain in everything a real point of view. A man does not require to make great progress in his education to have good reasons ready for the worst action; all that has happened in the world since the time of Adam has been justified by some good reason.
It appears that the Sophists were conscious of this reasoning, and knew, as educated men, that everything could be proved. Hence in Plato’s Gorgias it is said that the art of the Sophists is a greater gift than any other; they could convince the people, the senate, the judges, of what they liked.93 The advocate has similarly to inquire what arguments there are in favour of the party which claims his help, even if it be the opposite one to that which he wished to support. That knowledge is no defect, but is part of the higher culture of the Sophists; and if uneducated men naturally form conclusions from external grounds which are those alone coming to their knowledge, they may perhaps be mainly determined by something besides what they know (by their integrity, for instance). The Sophists thus knew that on this basis nothing was secure, because the power of thought treated everything dialectically. That is the formal culture which they had and imparted, for their acquaintanceship with so many points of view shook what was morality in Greece (the religion, duties, and laws, unconsciously exercised), since through its limited content, that came into collision with what was different. Once it was highest and ultimate, then it was deposed. Ordinary knowledge thus becomes confused, as we shall see very clearly in Socrates, for something is held to be certain to consciousness, and then other points of view which are also present and recognized, have similarly to be allowed; hence the first has no further value, or at least loses its supremacy. We saw in the same way, how bravery, which lies in the hazarding of one’s life, is made dubious by the duty of preserving life, if put forward unconditionally. Plato quotes several examples of this unsettling tendency, as when he makes Dionysodorus maintain: “Whoever gives culture to one who does not possess knowledge, desires that he should no longer remain what he is. He desires to direct him to reason, and this is to make him not the same as he is.” And Euthydemus, when the others say that he lies, answers, “Who lies, says what is not; men cannot say what is not, and thus no one can lie.”94 And again Dionysodorus says, “You have a dog, this dog has young, and is a father; thus a dog is your father, and you are brother to its young.”95 Sequences put together thus are constantly found in critical treatises.
With this comes the question which the nature of thought brings along with it. If the field of argument, that which consciousness holds to be firmly established, is shaken by reflection, what is man now to take as his ultimate basis? For something fixed there must be. This is either the good, the universal, or the individuality, the arbitrary will of the subject; and both may be united, as is shown later on in Socrates. To the Sophists the satisfaction of the individual himself was now made ultimate, and since they made everything uncertain, the fixed point was in the assertion, “it is my desire, my pride, glory, and honour, particular subjectivity, which I make my end.” Thus the Sophists are reproached for countenancing personal affections, private interests, &c. This proceeds directly from the nature of their culture, which, because it places ready various points of view, makes it depend on the pleasure of the subject alone which shall prevail, that is, if fixed principles do not determine. Here the danger lies. This takes place also in the present day where the right and the true in our actions is made to depend on good intention and on my own conviction. The real end of the State, the best administration and constitution, is likewise to demagogues very vague.
On account of their formal culture, the Sophists have a place in Philosophy; on account of their reflection they have not. They are associated with Philosophy in that they do not remain at concrete reasoning, but go on, at least in part, to ultimate determinations. A chief part of their culture was the generalization of the Eleatic mode of thought and its extension to the whole content of knowledge and of action; the positive thus comes in as, and has become, utility. To go into particulars respecting the Sophists would lead us too far; individual Sophists have their place in the general history of culture. The celebrated Sophists are very numerous; the most celebrated amongst them are Protagoras, Gorgias, and also Prodicus, the teacher of Socrates, to whom Socrates ascribes the well-known myth of “The choice of Hercules”96 — an allegory, beautiful in its own way, which has been repeated hundreds and thousands of times. I will deal only with Protagoras and Gorgias, not from the point of view of culture, but in respect of proving further how the general knowledge which they extended to everything, has, with one of them, the universal form which makes it pure science. Plato is the chief source of our acquaintanceship with the Sophists, for he occupied himself largely with them; then we have Aristotle’s own little treatise on Gorgias; and Sextus Empiricus, who preserved for us much of the philosophy of Protagoras.
Protagoras, born at Abdera,97 was somewhat older than Socrates; little more is known of him, nor, indeed, could there be much known. For he led a uniform life, since he spent it in the study of the sciences; he appeared in Greece proper as the first public teacher. He read his writings98 like the rhapsodists and poets, the former of whom sang the verses of others, and the latter their own. There were then no places of learning, no books from which men could be taught, for to the ancients, as Plato says,99 “the chief part of culture” (ραιδείας) “consisted in being skilled” (δεινόν) “in poetry,” just as with us fifty years ago the principal instruction of the people consisted of Bible History and Biblical precepts. The Sophists now gave, in place of a knowledge of the poets, an acquaintanceship with thought. Protagoras also came to Athens and there lived for long, principally with the great Pericles, who also entered into this culture. Indeed, the two once argued for a whole day as to whether the dart or the thrower or he who arranged the contest was guilty of the death of a man who thus met his death.100 The dispute is over the great and important question of the possibility of imputation; guilt is a general expression, the analysis of which may undoubtedly become a difficult and extensive undertaking. In his intercourse with such men, Pericles developed his genius for eloquence; for whatever kind of mental occupation may be in question, a cultivated mind can alone excel in it; and true culture is only possible through pure science. Pericles was a powerful orator, and we see from Thucydides how deep a knowledge he had of the State and of his people. Protagoras had the same fate as Anaxagoras, in being afterwards banished from Athens. The cause of this sentence was a work written by him beginning, “As to the gods, I am not able to say whether they are or are not; for there is much which prevents this knowledge, both in the obscurity of the matter, and in the life of man which is so short.” This book was also publicly burned in Athens by command of the State, and, so far as we know, it was the first to be treated so. At the age of seventy or ninety years Protagoras was drowned while on a voyage to Sicily.101
Protagoras was not, like other Sophists, merely a teacher of culture, but likewise a deep and solid thinker, a philosopher who reflected on fundamental determinations of an altogether universal kind. The main point in his system of knowledge he expressed thus: “Man is the measure of all things; of that which is, that it is; of that which is not, that it is not.”102 On the one hand, therefore, what had to be done was to grasp thought as determined and as having content; but, on the other, to find the determining and content-giving; this universal determination then becomes the standard by which everything is judged. Now Protagoras’ assertion is in its real meaning a great truth, but at the same time it has a certain ambiguity, in that as man is the undetermined and many-sided, either he may in his individual particularity, as this contingent man, be the measure, or else self-conscious reason in man, man in his rational nature and his universal substantiality, is the absolute measure. If the statement is taken in the former sense, all is self-seeking, all self-interest, the subject with his interests forms the central point; and if man has a rational side, reason is still something subjective, it is “he.” But this is just the wrong and perverted way of looking at things which necessarily forms the main reproach made against the Sophists — that they put forward man in his contingent aims as determining; thus with them the interest of the subject in its particularity, and the interest of the same in its substantial reason are not distinguished.
The same statement is brought forward in Socrates and Plato, but with the further modification that here man, in that he is thinking and gives himself a universal content, is the measure. Thus here the great proposition is enunciated on which, from this time forward, everything turns, since the further progress of Philosophy only explains it further: it signifies that reason is the end of all things. This proposition further expresses a very remarkable change of position in asserting that all content, everything objective, is only in relation to consciousness; thought is thus in all truth expressed as the essential moment, and thereby the Absolute takes the form of the thinking subjectivity which comes before us principally in Socrates. Since man, as subject, is the measure of everything, the existent is not alone, but is for my knowledge. Consciousness is really the producer of the content in what is objective, and subjective thinking is thus really active. And this view extends even to the most modern philosophy, as when, for instance, Kant says that we only know phenomena, i.e. that what seems to us to be objective reality, is only to be considered in its relation to consciousness, and does not exist without this relation. The fact that the subject as active and determining brings forth the content, is the important matter, but now the question comes as to how the content is further determined — whether it is limited to the particularity of consciousness or is determined as the universal, the existent in and for itself. God, the Platonic Good, is certainly at first a product of thought, but in the second place He is just as really in and for Himself. Since I, as existent, fixed and eternal, only recognize what is in its content universal, this, posited as it is by me, is likewise the implicitly objective, not posited by me.
Protagoras himself shows us much more of what is implied in his theory, for he says, “Truth is a manifestation for consciousness. Nothing is in and for itself one, but everything has a relative truth only,” i.e. it is what it is but for another, which is man. This relativity is by Protagoras expressed in a way which seems to us in some measure trivial, and belongs to the first beginnings of reflective thought. The insignificant examples which he adduces (like Plato and Socrates when they follow out in them the point of view of reflection), by way of explanation, show that in Protagoras’ understanding what is determined is not grasped as the universal and identical with self. Hence the exemplifications are taken mostly from sensuous manifestation. “In a wind it may be that one person is cold and another is not; hence of this wind we cannot tell whether in itself it is cold or hot.”103 Frost and heat are thus not anything which exist, but only are in their relation to a subject; were the wind cold in itself, it would always be so to the subject. Or again, “if we have here six dice, and place by them four others, we should say of the former that there are more of them. But, again, if we put twelve by them we say that these first six are the fewer.”104 Because we say of the same number that it is more and fewer, the more and the less is merely a relative determination; thus what is the object, is so in the idea present to consciousness only. Plato, on the contrary, considered one and many, not like the Sophists in their distinction, but as being one and the same.
Plato says further on this point, that the white, warm, &c., or everything that we say of things, does not exist for itself, but that the eye, sensation, is necessary to make it for us. This reciprocal movement is what first creates the white, and in it the white is not a thing in itself, but what we have present is a seeing eye, or, to speak generally, sight, and particularly the seeing of white, the feeling of warmth, &c. Undoubtedly warmth, colour, &c., really are only in relation to another, but the conceiving mind divides itself into itself and into a world in which each also has its relation. This objective relativity is expressed better in the following way. If the white were in itself, it would be that which brought forth the sensation of it; it would be the action or the cause, and we, on the contrary, the passive and receptive. But the object which thus requires to be active, is not active until it enters into (ξυνέλθῃ) relation with the passive; similarly the passive is only in relation to the active. Thus what is said in defining anything never concerns the thing as in itself, but clearly only as being related to something else. Nothing is thus constituted in and for itself as it appears, but the truth is just this phenomenon to which our activity contributes. As things appear to the healthy man they are thus not in themselves, but for him; as they appear to the sick or deranged man, they are to him, without our being able to say that as they appear to him, they are not true.105 We feel the awkwardness of calling any such thing true, for after all the existent, if related to consciousness, is yet not related to it as fixed, but to sensuous knowledge; and then this consciousness itself is a condition, i.e. something which passes away. Protagoras rightly recognized this double relativity when he says, “Matter is a pure flux, it is not anything fixed and determined in itself, for it can be everything, and it is different to different ages and to the various conditions of waking and sleep, &c.”106 Kant separates himself from this standpoint only in that he places the relativity in the “I,” and not in objective existence. The phenomenon is, according to him, nothing but the fact of there being outside an impulse, an unknown x, which first receives these determinations through our feeling. Even if there were an objective ground for our calling one thing cold and another warm, we could indeed say that they must have diversity in themselves, but warmth and cold first become what they are in our feeling. Similarly it can only be in our conception that things are outside of us, etc. But if the experience is quite correctly called a “phenomenon,” i.e. something relative, because it does not come to pass without the determinations of the activity of our senses, nor without categories of thought, yet that one, all-pervading, universal, which permeates all experience, which to Heraclitus was necessity, has to be brought into consciousness.
We see that Protagoras possesses great powers of reflective thought, and indeed reflection on consciousness came to consciousness with Protagoras. But this is the form of manifestation which was again taken by the later sceptics. The phenomenal is not sensuous Being, for because I posit this as phenomenal, I assert its nullity. But the statements “What is, is only for consciousness,” or “The truth of all things is the manifestation of them in and for consciousness,” seem quite to contradict themselves. For it appears as though a contradiction were asserted — first that nothing is in itself as it appears, and then that it is true as it appears. But objective significance must not be given to the positive, to what is true, as if, for example, this were white in itself because it appears so; for it is only this manifestation of the white that is true, the manifestation being just this movement of the self-abrogating sensuous Being, which, taken in the universal, stands above consciousness as truly as above Being. The world is consequently not only phenomenal in that it is for consciousness, and thus that its Being is only one relative to consciousness, for it is likewise in itself phenomenal. The element of consciousness which Protagoras has demonstrated, and owing to which the developed universal has in it the moment of the negative Being-for-another, has thus indeed to be asserted as a necessary moment; but taken for itself, alone and isolated, it is one-sided, since the moment of implicit Being is likewise essential.
This scepticism reached a much deeper point in Gorgias of Leontium in Sicily, a man of great culture, and also distinguished as a statesman. During the Peloponnesian war he was, in Ol. 88, 2 (427 B.C.), a few years after Pericles’ death in Ol. 87, 4, sent from his native town to Athens.107 And when he attained his object, he went through many other Greek towns, such as Larissa in Thessaly, and taught in them. Thus he obtained great wealth, along with much admiration, and this lasted till his death at over a hundred years of age.
He is said to have been a disciple of Empedocles, but he also knew the Eleatics, and his dialectic partakes of the manner and method of the latter; indeed Aristotle, who preserves this dialectic, in the work De Xenophane, Zenone et Gorgia, which has indeed only come to us in fragments, deals with them together. Sextus Empiricus also gives us in full the dialectic of Gorgias. He was strong in the dialectic requisite for eloquence, but his preeminence lies in his pure dialectic respecting the quite universal categories of Being and non-being, which indeed is not like that of the Sophists. Tiedemann (Geist. der Spec. Phil. vol. I. p. 362) says very falsely: “Gorgias went much further than any man of healthy mind could go.” Tiedemann could say of every philosopher that he went further than healthy human understanding, for what men call healthy understanding is not Philosophy, and is often far from healthy. Healthy human understanding possesses the modes of thought, maxims, and judgments of its time, the thought-determinations of which dominate it without its being conscious thereof. In this way Gorgias undoubtedly went further than healthy understanding. Before Copernicus it would have been contrary to all healthy human understanding if anyone had said that the earth went round the sun, or before the discovery of America, if it were said that there was a continent there. In India or in China a republic would even now be contrary to all healthy understanding. The dialectic of Gorgias moves more purely in Notion than that found in Protagoras. Since Protagoras asserted the relativity, or the non-implicit nature of all that is, this only exists in relation to another which really is essential to it; and this last, indeed, is consciousness. Gorgias’ demonstration of the non-implicitness of Being is purer, because he takes in itself what passes for real existence without presupposing that other, and thus shows its own essential nullity and separates therefrom the subjective side and Being as it is for the latter.
Gorgias’ treatise “On Nature,” in which he composes his dialectic, falls, according to Sextus Empiricus (adv. Math. VII. 65), into three parts. “In the first he proves that” (objectively) “nothing exists, in the second” (subjectively), “that assuming that Being is, it cannot be known; and in the third place” (both subjectively and objectively), “that were it to exist and be knowable, no communication of what is known would be possible.” Gorgias was a congenial subject to Sextus, but the former still proved, and this is what the Sceptics ceased to do. Here very abstract thought-determinations regarding the most speculative moments of Being and non-being, of knowledge, and of bringing into existence, of communicating knowledge, are involved; and this is no idle talk, as was formerly supposed, for Gorgias’ dialectic is of a quite objective kind, and is most interesting in content.
a. “If anything is,” (this “anything” is, however, a makeshift that we are in the habit of using in our conversation, and which is, properly speaking, inappropriate, for it implies an opposition of subject and predicate, while at present the “is” alone is in question) — then “if it is” (and now it becomes for the first time defined as subject) “it is either the existent or the non-existent, or else existence and non-existence. It is now evident of these three that they are not.”108
α. “That which is not, is not; for if Being belonged to it, there would at the same time be existence and non-existence. That is, in so far as it is thought of as non-existent, it is not; but in so far as it is the non-existent, it must exist. But it cannot at the same time be and not be. Again, if the non-existent is, the existent is not, for the two are opposed. Thus, if Being pertained to non-being, non-being would belong to Being. But if Being does not exist, no more does non-being.”109 This is with Gorgias a characteristic mode of reasoning.110
β. “But in proving,” Aristotle adds to the passages just quoted, “that the existent is not, he follows Melissus and Zeno.” This is the dialectic already brought forward by them. “If Being is, it is contradictory to predicate a quality to it, and if we do this, we express something merely negative about it.”
αα. For Gorgias says: “What is, either is in itself (ἀΐδιον) being without beginning, or it has originated,” and he now shows that it could neither be the one nor the other, for each leads to contradiction. “It cannot be the former, for what is in itself has no beginning, and is the infinite,” and hence likewise undetermined and indeterminable. “The infinite is nowhere, for if it is anywhere, that in which it is, is different from it.” Where it is, it is in another, “but that is not infinite which is different from another, and contained in another. Just as little is it contained in itself, for then that in which it is, and that which is therein, would be the same. What it is in, is the place; that which is in this, is the body; but that both should be the same is absurd. The infinite does not thus exist.”111 This dialectic of Gorgias regarding the infinite is on the one hand limited, because immediate existence has certainly no beginning and no limit, but asserts a progression into infinitude; the self-existent Thought, the universal Notion, as absolute negativity, has, however, limits in itself. On the other hand, Gorgias is quite right, for the bad, sensuous infinite is nowhere present, and thus does not exist, but is a Beyond of Being; only we may take what Gorgias takes as a diversity of place, as being diversity generally. Thus, instead of placing the infinite, like Gorgias, sometimes in another, sometimes within itself, i.e. sometimes maintaining it to be different, sometimes abrogating the diversity, we may say better and more universally, that this sensuous infinite is a diversity which is always posited as different from the existent, for it is just the being different from itself.
“In the same way Being has not originated, because it must then have come either from the existent or from the non-existent. From the existent it did not arise, for then it would be already; just as little from the non-existent, because this cannot beget anything.”112 The sceptics followed this up further. The object to be contemplated hence ever becomes posited under determinations with ‘either’ ‘or,’ which then contradict one another. But that is not the true dialectic, because the object resolves itself into those determinations only; when nothing follows respecting the nature of the object itself, then, as is already proved, the object must be necessarily in one determination, and not in and for itself.
ββ. In a similar way Gorgias shows “of what exists, that it must either be one or many; but neither is possible. For as one, it would have a certain magnitude, or continuity, or number, or body, but all this is not one, but different, divisible. Every sensuous one is, in fact, necessarily another, a manifold. If it is not one, it cannot be many, for the many is many ones.”113
γ. “Similarly both, Being and non-being, cannot exist at the same time. If one exists as much as the other, they are the same, and therefore neither of them is, for the non-being does not exist, and hence neither does the Being, since it is identical with it. Nor can they, on the other hand, both exist, for if they are identical, I cannot express them both,”114 and thus both do not exist, for if I express both, I differentiate. This dialectic, which Aristotle (De Xenoph. &c., c. 5) likewise designates as peculiar to Gorgias, has its truth. In speaking of Being and non-being, we always say the opposite to what we wish. Being and non-being are the same, just as they are not the same; if they are the same, I speak of the two as different: if different, I express the same predicate of them, diversity. This dialectic is not to be despised by us, as if it dealt with empty abstractions, for these categories are, on the one hand, in their purity the most universal, and if, on the other hand, they are not the ultimate, yet it is always Being or non-being that are in question; they are not, however, definitely fixed and divided off, but are self-abrogating. Gorgias is conscious that they are vanishing moments, while the ordinary unconscious conception also has present to it this truth, but knows nothing about it.
b. The relation of the conceiver to conception, the difference between conception and Being, is a subject which is in our mouths to-day. “But if there is an ’is,’ it is unknowable and unthinkable, for what is presented is not the existent” but only a presentation. “If what is presented is white, it is the case that white is presented; if what is presented is not the really existent, it is the case that what is, is not presented. For if what is presented is the real existent, everything that is presented also exists, but no one says that if a flying man, or waggon riding on the sea were presented to us, it would exist. Further, if what is presented is the existent, the non-existent is not presented, for opposites are in opposition. But this non-existent is everywhere presented as it is in Scylla and the Chimæra.115 Gorgias on the one hand pronounces a just polemic against absolute realism, which, because it represents, thinks to possess the very thing itself, when it only has a relative, but he falls, on the other hand, into the false idealism of modern times, according to which thought is always subjective only, and thus not the existent, since through thought an existent is transformed into what is thought.”
c. We finally have the basis of the dialectic of Gorgias in respect of the third point, that knowledge cannot be imparted, in this: “If the existent were presented, it could still not be expressed and imparted. Things are visible, audible, &c., or are experienced. The visible is grasped through sight, the audible through hearing, and not the contrary way; thus, the one cannot be indicated by the other. Speech, by which the existent has to be expressed, is not the existent; what is imparted is thus not the existent, but only words.116 In this manner Gorgias’ dialectic is the laying hold of this difference exactly as again occurred in Kant; if I maintain this difference, certainly that which is, cannot be known.”
This dialectic is undoubtedly impregnable to those who maintain sensuous Being to be real. But its truth is only this movement to posit itself negatively as existent, and the unity is the reflection that the existent, comprehended also as non-existent, becomes, in this comprehension of it, universal. That this existent cannot be imparted, must likewise be held most strongly, for this individual cannot be expressed. Philosophic truth is thus not only expressed as if there were another truth in sensuous consciousness; but Being is present in that philosophic truth expresses it. The Sophists thus also made dialectic, universal Philosophy, their object, and they were profound thinkers.
B. — Socrates.
CONSCIOUSNESS HAD REACHED this point in Greece, when in Athens the great form of Socrates, in whom the subjectivity of thought was brought to consciousness in a more definite and more thorough manner, now appeared. But Socrates did not grow like a mushroom out of the earth, for he stands in continuity with his time, and thus is not only a most important figure in the history of Philosophy — perhaps the most interesting in the philosophy of antiquity — but is also a world-famed personage. For a mental turning-point exhibited itself in him in the form of philosophic thought. If we shortly recall the periods already passed over, we find that the ancient Ionic philosophers certainly thought, but without reflecting on the thought or defining its product as thought. The Atomists made objective existence into thoughts, but these were to them only abstractions, pure entities. Anaxagoras, on the other hand, raised thought as such, into a principle which thereby presented itself as the all-powerful Notion, as the negative power over all that is definite and existent. Protagoras finally expresses thought as real existence, but it is in this its movement, which is the all-resolving consciousness, the unrest of the Notion. This unrest is in itself at the same time something restful or secure. But the fixed point of motion as such, is the ‘I,’ for it has the moments of movement outside of it; as the self-retaining, which only abrogates what is different, the ‘I’ is negative unity, but just in that very way individual, and not yet the universal reflected within itself. Now we here find the ambiguity of dialectic and sophistry, which rests in the fact that if the objective disappears, the signification of the fixed subjective is either that of the individual opposed to the objective, and thereby the contingent and lawless will, or that of the objective and universal in itself. Socrates expresses real existence as the universal ‘I,’ as the consciousness which rests in itself; but that is the good as such, which is free from existent reality, free from individual sensuous consciousness of feeling and desire, free finally from the theoretically speculative thought about nature, which, if indeed thought, has still the form of Being and in which I am not certain of my existence.
Socrates herein adopted firstly the doctrine of Anaxagoras that thought, the understanding, is the ruling and self-determining universal, though this principle did not, as with the Sophists, attain the form of formal culture or of abstract philosophizing. Thus, if with Socrates, as with Protagoras, the self-conscious thought that abrogates all that is determined, was real existence, with Socrates this was the case in such a way that he at the same time grasped in thought rest and security. This substance existing in and for itself, the self-retaining, has become determined as end, and further as the true and the good.
To this determination of the universal, we have, in the second place, to add that this good, which has by me to be esteemed as substantial end, must be known by me; with this the infinite subjectivity, the freedom of self-consciousness in Socrates breaks out. This freedom which is contained therein, the fact that consciousness is clearly present in all that it thinks, and must necessarily be at home with itself, is in our time constantly and plainly demanded; the substantial, although eternal and in and for itself, must as truly be produced through me; but this my part in it is only the formal activity. Thus Socrates’ principle is that man has to find from himself both the end of his actions and the end of the world, and must attain to truth through himself. True thought thinks in such a way that its import is as truly objective as subjective. But objectivity has been the significance of substantial universality, and not of external objectivity; thus truth is now posited as a product mediated through thought, while untrained morality, as Sophocles makes Antigone say (vers. 454-457), is “the eternal law of the Gods”:
“And no one knew from whence it came.”
But though in modern times we hear much said of immediate knowledge and belief, it is a misconception to maintain that their content, God, the Good, Just, &c., although the content of feeling and conception, is not, as spiritual content, also posited through thought. The animal has no religion, because it only feels; but what is spiritual rests on the mediation of thought, and pertains to man.
Since Socrates thus introduces the infinitely important element of leading back the truth of the objective to the thought of the subject, just as Protagoras says that the objective first is through relation to us, the battle of Socrates and Plato with the Sophists cannot rest on the ground that these, as belonging to the old faith, maintained against the others the religion and customs of Greece, for the violation of which Anaxagoras was condemned. Quite the contrary. Reflection, and the reference of any judgment to consciousness, is held by Socrates in common with the Sophists. But the opposition into which Socrates and Plato were in their philosophy necessarily brought in regard to the Sophists, as the universal philosophic culture of the times, was as follows: — The objective produced through thought, is at the same time in and for itself, thus being raised above all particularity of interests and desires, and being the power over them. Hence because, on the one hand, to Socrates and Plato the moment of subjective freedom is the directing of consciousness into itself, on the other, this return is also determined as a coming out from particular subjectivity. It is hereby implied that contingency of events is abolished, and man has this outside within him, as the spiritual universal. This is the true, the unity of subjective and objective in modern terminology, while the Kantian ideal is only phenomenal and not objective in itself.
In the third place Socrates accepted the Good at first only in the particular significance of the practical, which nevertheless is only one mode of the substantial Idea; the universal is not only for me, but also, as end existent in and for itself, the principle of the philosophy of nature, and in this higher sense it was taken by Plato and Aristotle. Of Socrates it is hence said, in the older histories of Philosophy, that his main distinction was having added ethics as a new conception to Philosophy, which formerly only took nature into consideration. Diogenes Laertius, in like manner says (III., 56), that the Ionics founded natural philosophy, Socrates ethics, and Plato added to them dialectic. Now ethics is partly objective, and partly subjective and reflected morality (Sittlichkeit und Moralität),117 and the teaching of Socrates is properly subjectively moral, because in it the subjective side, my perception and meaning, is the prevailing moment, although this determination of self-positing is likewise sublated, and the good and eternal is what is in and for itself. Objective morality is, on the contrary, natural, since it signifies the knowledge and doing of what is in and for itself good. The Athenians before Socrates were objectively, and not subjectively, moral, for they acted rationally in their relations without knowing that they were particularly excellent. Reflective morality adds to natural morality the reflection that this is the good and not that; the Kantian philosophy, which is reflectively moral, again showed the difference.
Because Socrates in this way gave rise to moral philosophy, all succeeding babblers about morality and popular philosophy constituted him their patron and object of adoration, and made him into a cloak which should cover all false philosophy. As he treated it, it was undoubtedly popular; and what contributed to make it such was that his death gave him the never-failing interest derived from innocent suffering. Cicero (Tusc. Quæst. V. 4), whose manner of thought was, on the one hand, of the present, and who, on the other hand, had the belief that Philosophy should yield itself up, and hence succeeded in attaining to no content in it, boasted of Socrates (what has often enough been said since) that his most eminent characteristic was to have brought Philosophy from heaven to earth, to the homes and every-day life of men, or, as Diogenes Laertius expresses it (II. 21), “into the market place.” There we have what has just been said. This would seem as if the best and truest Philosophy were only a domestic or fireside philosophy, which conforms to all the ordinary ideas of men, and in which we see friends and faithful ones talk together of righteousness, and of what can be known on the earth, without having penetrated the depths of the heavens, or rather the depths of consciousness. But this last is exactly what Socrates, as these men themselves indicate, first ventured to do. And it was not incumbent on him to reflect upon all the speculations of past Philosophy, in order to be able to come down in practical philosophy to inward thought. This gives a general idea of his principle.
We must examine more closely this noteworthy phenomenon, and begin with the history of Socrates’ life. This is, however, closely intertwined with his interest in Philosophy, and the events of his life are bound up with his principles. We have first of all to consider the beginning of his life only. Socrates, whose birth occurs in the fourth year of the 77th Olympiad (469 B.C.), was the son of Sophroniscus, a sculptor, and of Phænarete, a midwife. His father brought him up to sculpture, and it is said that Socrates acquired skill in the art, and long after, statues of draped Graces, found in the Acropolis, were ascribed to him. But his art did not satisfy him; a great desire for Philosophy, and love of scientific research, got possession of him. He pursued his art merely to get money for a necessary subsistence, and to be able to apply himself to the study of the sciences; and it is told of Crito, an Athenian, that he defrayed the cost of Socrates’ instruction by masters in all the arts. During the exercise of his art, and specially after he gave it up altogether, he read the works of ancient philosophers in so far as he could get possession of them. At the same time he attended Anaxagoras’ instructions, and, after his expulsion from Athens, at which time Socrates was thirty-seven years old, those of Archelaus, who was regarded as Anaxagoras’ successor, besides those of Sophists celebrated in other sciences. Amongst these he heard Prodicus, a celebrated teacher of oratory, whom, according to Xenophon (Memorab. II. c. 1, §§ 21, 34), he mentions with affection, and other teachers of music, poetry, etc. He was esteemed as on all sides a man of culture, who was instructed in everything then requisite thereto.118
Another feature in his life was that he fulfilled the duty of protecting his country, which rested on him as an Athenian citizen. Hence he made three campaigns in the Peloponnesian war, which occurred during his life. The Peloponnesian war led to the dissolution of Greek life, inasmuch as it was preparatory to it; and what took place politically was by Socrates carried out in thinking consciousness. In these campaigns he not only acquired the fame of a brave warrior, but, what was best of all, the merit of having saved the lives of other citizens. In the first, he was present at the tedious siege of Potidæa in Thrace. Here Alcibiades had already attached himself to him, and, according to Plato, he recited in the Banquet (p. 219-222, Steph.; p. 461-466, Bekk.), a eulogy on Socrates for being able to endure all toil, hunger and thirst, heat and cold, with mind at rest and health of body. In an engagement in this campaign he saw Alcibiades wounded in the midst of the enemy, lifted him up, forced his way through, and saved both him and his arms. The generals rewarded him with a wreath, which was the prize of the bravest; Socrates did not, however, take it, maintaining that it was given to Alcibiades. In this campaign it is said that once, sunk in deep meditation, he stood immovable on one spot the whole day and night, until the morning sun awoke him from his trance — a condition in which he is said often to have been. This was a cataleptic state, which may bear some relation to magnetic somnambulism, in which Socrates became quite dead to sensuous consciousness. From this physical setting free of the inward abstract self from the concrete bodily existence of the individual, we have, in the outward manifestation, a proof of how the depths of his mind worked within him. In him we see pre-eminently the inwardness of consciousness that in an anthropological way existed in the first instance in him, and became later on a usual thing. He made his other campaign in Bœotia at Delium, a small fortification which the Athenians possessed not far from the sea, and where they had an unfortunate, though not an important engagement. Here Socrates saved another of his favourites, Xenophon; he saw him in the flight, for Xenophon, having lost his horse, lay wounded on the ground. Socrates took him over his shoulders, carried him off, defending himself at the same time with the greatest tranquillity and presence of mind from the pursuing enemy. Finally he made his last campaign at Amphipolis in Edonis, on the Strymonian Bay.119
Besides this, he occupied various civil offices. At the time when the democratic constitution of Athens hitherto existing, was taken away by the Lacedemonians, who now introduced everywhere an aristocratic and indeed tyrannical rule, whereby they in great measure put themselves at the head of affairs, he was chosen for the council, which, as a representative body, took the place of the people. Here he distinguished himself by his immovable firmness in what he held to be right as against the wills of the thirty tyrants, as formerly against the will of the people. For he sat in the tribunal which condemned the ten generals to death, because, as admirals at the battle of Arginusæ, though they certainly had conquered, yet, being kept back through storm, they had not dragged out the bodies nor buried them on the shore, and because they neglected to erect trophies; i.e. really because they did not stand their ground, and thus appeared to have been beaten. Socrates alone did not agree with this decision, declaring himself more emphatically against the people than against the rulers.120 To-day he fares badly who says anything against the people. “The people have excellent intelligence, understand everything, and have only the most excellent intentions.” As to rulers, governments, ministers, it is self-evident that “they understand nothing, and only desire and bring forth what is bad.”
Along with these to him more accidental relationships to the State, in which he acted only from the ordinary sense of citizenship, without spontaneously making the affairs of the State his real business, or pressing on to the head of public affairs, the real business of his life was to discuss moral philosophy with any who came in his way. His philosophy, which asserts that real existence is in consciousness as a universal, is still not a properly speculative philosophy, but remained individual; yet the aim of his philosophy was that it should have a universal significance. Hence we have to speak of his own individual being, of his thoroughly noble character, which usually is depicted as a complete catalogue of the virtues adorning the life of a private citizen; and these virtues of Socrates are certainly to be looked at as his own, and as made habitual to him by his own will. It has to be noted that with the ancients these qualities have generally more of the character of virtue, because with the ancients, in ordinary morality, individuality, as the form of the universal, was given free scope, so that virtues were regarded more as the actions of the individual will, and thus as personal qualities; while with us they seem to be less what is meritorious to the individual, or what comes from himself as this unit. We are accustomed to think of them much more as what exists, as duty, because we have a fuller consciousness of the universal, and consider the pure individual, the personal inward consciousness, as real existence and duty. With us virtues are hence actually either elements in our dispositions and nature, or they have the form of the universal and of what is necessary; but with Socrates they have the form, not of ordinary morality or of a natural or necessary thing, but of an independent determination. It is well known that his appearance indicated naturally low and hateful qualities, which, as indeed he says, he himself subdued.
He lived amongst his fellow-citizens, and stands before us as one of those great plastic natures consistent through and through, such as we often see in those times — resembling a perfect classical work of art which has brought itself to this height of perfection. Such individuals are not made, but have formed themselves into what they are; they have become that which they wished to be, and are true to this. In a real work of art the distinguishing point is that some idea is brought forth, a character is presented in which every trait is determined by the idea, and, because this is so, the work of art is, on the one hand, living, and, on the other, beautiful, for the highest beauty is just the most perfect carrying out of all sides of the individuality in accordance with the one inward principle. Such works of art are also seen in the great men of every time. The most plastic individual as a statesman is Pericles, and round him, like stars, Sophocles, Thucydides, Socrates, &c., worked out their individuality into an existence of its own — into a character which regulated their whole being, and which was one principle running throughout the whole of their existence. Pericles alone lived with the sole end of being a statesman. Plutarch (in Pericle, c. 5, 7) says of him that, from the time that he devoted himself to the business of the State, he laughed no more, and never again went to a feast. Thus, too, Socrates formed himself, through his art and through the power of self-conscious will, into this particular character, and acquired this capacity for the business of his life. Through his principle he attained that far-reaching influence which has lasted to the present day in relation to religion, science, and justice, for since his time the genius of inward conviction has been the basis which must be fundamental. And since this principle proceeded from the plasticity of his character, it is very inappropriate when Tennemann regrets (Vol. II. p. 26) “that though we know what he was, we do not know how he became such.”
Socrates was a peaceful, pious example of the moral virtues — of wisdom, discretion, temperance, moderation, justice, courage, inflexibility, firm sense of rectitude in relation to tyrants and people; he was equally removed from cupidity and despotism. His indifference to money was due to his own determination, for, according to the custom of the times, he could acquire it through the education of youth, like other teachers. On the other side, this acquisition was purely matter of choice, and not, as with us, something which is accepted, so that to take nothing would be to break through a custom, thus to present the appearance of wishing to become conspicuous, and to be more blamed than praised. For this was not yet a State affair; it was under the Roman emperors that there first were schools with payment. This moderation of his life was likewise a power proceeding from conscious knowledge, but this is not a principle found to hand, but the regulation of self in accordance with circumstances; in company he was, however, a good fellow. His sobriety in respect to wine is best depicted in Plato’s “Symposium,” in a very characteristic scene in which we see what Socrates called virtue. Alcibiades there appears, no longer sober, at a feast given by Agathon, on the occasion of a success which his tragedy had obtained on the previous day at the games. Since the company had drunk much on the first day of the feast, the assembled guests, amongst whom was Socrates, this evening took a resolution, in opposition to the Greek custom at meals, to drink little. Alcibiades, finding that he was coming in amongst abstemious men, and that there was no one else in his own frame of mind, made himself king of the feast, and offered the goblet to the others, in order to bring them into the condition reached by himself; but with Socrates he said that he could do nothing, because he remained as he was, however much he drank. Plato then makes the individual who tells what happened at the Banquet, also tell that he, with the others, at last fell asleep on the couch, and as he awoke in the morning, Socrates, cup in hand, still talked with Aristophanes and Agathon about comedy and tragedy, and whether one man could write both comedies and tragedies, and then went at the usual time into the public places, to the Lyceum, as if nothing had happened, and walked about the whole day as usual.121 This is not a moderation which exists in the least possible enjoyment, no aimless abstemiousness and self-mortification, but a power belonging to consciousness, which keeps its self-possession in bodily excess. We see from this that we have not to think of Socrates throughout after the fashion of the litany of moral virtues.
His behaviour to others was not only just, true, open, without rudeness, and honourable, but we also see in him an example of the most perfect Attic urbanity; i.e. he moves in the freest possible relations, has a readiness for conversation which is always judicious, and, because it has an inward universality, at the same time always has the right living relationship to the individual, and bears upon the case on which it operates. The intercourse is that of a most highly cultured man who, in his relation to others, never places anything personal in all his wit, and sets aside all that is unpleasant. Thus Xenophon’s, but particularly Plato’s Socratic Dialogues belong to the highest type of this fine social culture.
Because the philosophy of Socrates is no withdrawal from existence now and here into the free, pure regions of thought, but is in a piece with his life, it does not proceed to a system; and the manner of his philosophizing, which appears to imply a withdrawal from actual affairs as it did to Plato, yet in that very way gives itself this inward connection with ordinary life. For his more special business was his philosophic teaching, or rather his philosophic social intercourse (for it was not, properly speaking, teaching) with all; and this outwardly resembled ordinary Athenian life in which the greater part of the day was passed without any particular business, in loitering about the market-place, or frequenting the public Lyceum, and there partly partaking of bodily exercises, and partly and principally, talking with one another. This kind of intercourse was only possible in the Athenian mode of life, where most of the work which is now done by a free citizen — by a free republican and free imperial citizen alike — was performed by slaves, seeing that it was deemed unworthy of free men. A free citizen could in Athens certainly be a handicraftsman, but he had slaves who did the work, just as a master now has workmen. At the present day such a life of movement would not be suitable to our customs. Now Socrates also lounged about after this manner, and lived in this constant discussion of ethical questions.122 Thus what he did was what came naturally to him, and what can in general be called moralizing; but its nature and method was not that of preaching, exhortation or teaching; it was not a dry morality. For amongst the Athenians and in Attic urbanity, this had no place, since it is not a reciprocal, free, and rational relationship. But with all men, however different their characters, he entered on one kind of dialogue, with all that Attic urbanity which, without presumption on his part, without instructing others, or wishing to command them, while maintaining their perfect right to freedom, and honouring it, yet causes all that is rude to be suppressed.
- The Socratic Method. In this conversation Socrates’ philosophy is found, as also what is known as the Socratic method, which must in its nature be dialectic, and of which we must speak before dealing with the content. Socrates’ manner is not artificial; the dialogues of the moderns, on the contrary, just because no internal reason justifies their form, are necessarily tedious and heavy. But the principle of his philosophy falls in with the method itself, which thus far cannot be called method, since it is a mode which quite coincides with the moralizing peculiar to Socrates. For the chief content is to know the good as the absolute, and that particularly in relation to actions. Socrates gives this point of view so high a place, that he both puts aside the sciences which involve the contemplation of the universal in nature, mind, &c., himself, and calls upon others to do the same.123 Thus it can be said that in content his philosophy had an altogether practical aspect, and similarly the Socratic method, which is essential to it, was distinguished by the system of first bringing a person to reflection upon his duty by any occasion that might either happen to be offered spontaneously, or that was brought about by Socrates. By going to the work-places of tailors and shoemakers, and entering into discourse with them, as also with youths and old men, Sophists, statesmen, and citizens of all kinds, he in the first place took their interests as his topic — whether these were household interests, the education of children, or the interests of knowledge or of truth. Then he led them on from a definite case to think of the universal, and of truths and beauties which had absolute value, since in every case, from the individual’s own thoughts, he derived the conviction and consciousness of that which is the definite right. This method has two prominent aspects, the one the development of the universal from the concrete case, and the exhibition of the notion which implicitly exists in every consciousness,124 and the other is the resolution of the firmly established, and, when taken immediately in consciousness, universal determinations of the sensuous conception or of thought, and the causing of confusion between these and what is concrete.
a. If we proceed from the general account of Socrates’ method to a nearer view, in the first place its effect is to inspire men with distrust towards their presuppositions, after faith had become wavering and they were driven to seek that which is, in themselves. Now whether it was that he wished to bring the manner of the Sophists into disrepute, or that he was desirous to awaken the desire for knowledge and independent thought in the youths whom he attracted to himself, he certainly began by adopting the ordinary conceptions which they considered to be true. But in order to bring others to express these, he represents himself as in ignorance of them, and, with a seeming ingenuousness, puts questions to his audience as if they were to instruct him, while he really wished to draw them out. This is the celebrated Socratic irony, which in his case is a particular mode of carrying on intercourse between one person and another, and is thus only a subjective form of dialectic, for real dialectic deals with the reasons for things. What he wished to effect was, that when other people brought forward their principles, he, from each definite proposition, should deduce as its consequence the direct opposite of what the proposition stated, or else allow the opposite to be deduced from their own inner consciousness without maintaining it directly against their statements. Sometimes he also derived the opposite from a concrete case. But as this opposite was a principle held by men as firmly as the other, he then went on to show that they contradicted themselves. Thus Socrates taught those with whom he associated to know that they knew nothing; indeed, what is more, he himself said that he knew nothing, and therefore taught nothing. It may actually be said that Socrates knew nothing, for he did not reach the systematic construction of a philosophy. He was conscious of this, and it was also not at all his aim to establish a science.
On the one view, this irony seems to be something untrue. But when we deal with objects which have a universal interest, and speak about them to one and to another, it is always the case that one does not understand another’s conception of the object. For every individual has certain ultimate words as to which he presupposes a common knowledge. But if we really are to come to an understanding, we find it is these presuppositions which have to be investigated. For instance, if in more recent times belief and reason are discussed as the subjects of present intellectual interest, everyone pretends that he knows quite well what reason, &c., is, and it is considered ill-bred to ask for an explanation of this, seeing that all are supposed to know about it. A very celebrated divine, ten years ago,125 published ninety theses on reason, which contained very interesting questions, but resulted in nothing, although they were much discussed, because one person’s assertions issued from the point of view of faith, and the other’s from that of reason, and each remained in this state of opposition, without the one’s knowing what the other meant. Thus what would make an understanding possible is just the explanation of what we think is understood, without really being so. If faith and knowledge certainly differ from one another at the first, yet through this declaration of their notional determinations the common element will at once appear; in that way questions like these and the trouble taken with them may, for the first time, become fruitful; otherwise men may chatter this way and that for years, without making any advance. For if I say I know what reason, what belief is, these are only quite abstract ideas; it is necessary, in order to become concrete, that they should be explained, and that it should be understood that what they really are, is unknown. The irony of Socrates has this great quality of showing how to make abstract ideas concrete and effect their development, for on that alone depends the bringing of the Notion into consciousness.
In recent times much has been said about the Socratic irony which, like all dialectic, gives force to what is taken immediately, but only in order to allow the dissolution inherent in it to come to pass; and we may call this the universal irony of the world. Yet men have tried to make this irony of Socrates into something quite different, for they extended it into a universal principle; it is said to be the highest attitude of the mind, and has been represented as the most divine. It was Friedrich von Schlegel who first brought forward this idea, and Ast repeated it, saying, “The most ardent love of all beauty in the Idea, as in life, inspires Socrates’ words with inward, unfathomable life.” This life is now said to be irony! But this irony issues from the Fichtian philosophy, and is an essential point in the comprehension of the conceptions of most recent times. It is when subjective consciousness maintains its independence of everything, that it says, “It is I who through my educated thoughts can annul all determinations of right, morality, good, &c., because I am clearly master of them, and I know that if anything seems good to me I can easily subvert it, because things are only true to me in so far as they please me now.” This irony is thus only a trifling with everything, and it can transform all things into show: to this subjectivity nothing is any longer serious, for any seriousness which it has, immediately becomes dissipated again in jokes, and all noble or divine truth vanishes away or becomes mere triviality. But the Greek gaiety, as it breathes in Homer’s poems, is ironical, for Eros mocks the power of Zeus and of Mars; Vulcan, limping along, serves the gods with wine, and brings upon himself the uncontrollable laughter of the immortal gods. Juno boxes Diana’s ears. Thus, too, there is irony in the sacrifices of the ancients, who themselves consumed the best; in the pain that laughs, in the keenest joy which is moved to tears, in the scornful laughter of Mephistopheles, and in every transition from one extreme to another — from what is best to what is worst. Sunday morning may be passed in deep humility, profoundest contrition and self-abasement, in striking the breast in penitence, and the evening in eating and drinking to the full, going the round of pleasures, thus allowing self to re-assert its independence of any such subjection. Hypocrisy, which is of the same nature, is the truest irony. Socrates and Plato were falsely stated to be the originators of this irony, of which it is said that it is the “inmost and deepest life,” although they possessed the element of subjectivity; in our time it was not permitted to us to give effect to this irony. Ast’s “inmost, deepest life” is just the subjective and arbitrary will, the inward divinity which knows itself to be exalted above all. The divine is said to be the purely negative attitude, the perception of the vanity of everything, in which my vanity alone remains. Making the consciousness of the nullity of everything ultimate, might indeed indicate depth of life, but it only is the depth of emptiness, as may be seen from the ancient comedies of Aristophanes. From this irony of our times, the irony of Socrates is far removed; as is also the case with Plato, it has a significance which is limited. Socrates’ premeditated irony may be called a manner of speech, a pleasant rallying; there is in it no satirical laughter or pretence, as though the idea were nothing but a joke. But his tragic irony is his opposition of subjective reflection to morality as it exists, not a consciousness of the fact that he stands above it, but the natural aim of leading men, through thought, to the true good and to the universal Idea.
b. Now the second element is what Socrates has called the art of midwifery — an art which came to him from his mother.126 It is the assisting into the world of the thought which is already contained in the consciousness of the individual — the showing from the concrete, unreflected consciousness, the universality of the concrete, or from the universally posited, the opposite which already is within it. Socrates hence adopts a questioning attitude, and this kind of questioning and answering has thus been called the Socratic method; but in this method there is more than can be given in questions and replies. For the answer seems occasionally to be quite different from what was intended by the question, while in printed dialogue, answers are altogether under the author’s control; but to say that in actual life people are found to answer as they are here made to do, is quite another thing. To Socrates those who reply may be called pliable youths, because they reply directly to the questions, which are so formed that they make the answer very easy, and exclude any originality in reply. To this plastic manner, which we see in the method of Socrates, as represented by Plato and Xenophon, it is objected that we do not answer in the same relation in which the questioner asks; while, with Socrates, the relation which the questioner adopts is respected in the reply. The other way, which is to bring forward another point of view, is undoubtedly the spirit of an animated conversation, but such emulation is excluded from this Socratic method, in which the principal matter is to keep to the point. The spirit of dogmatism, self-assertion, stopping short when we seem to get into difficulties, and escaping from them by a jest, or by setting them aside — all these attitudes and methods are here excluded; they do not constitute good manners, nor do they have a place in Socrates’ dialogues. In these dialogues, it is hence not to be wondered at that those questioned answered so precisely to the point, while in the best modern dialogues there is always an arbitrary element.
This difference concerns only what is external and formal. But the principal point, and the reason why Socrates set to work with questions in bringing the good and right into consciousness in universal form, was that he did not proceed from what is present in our consciousness in a simple form through setting forth the conception allied to it in pure necessity, which would be a deduction, a proof or, speaking generally, a consequence following from the conception. But this concrete, as it is in natural consciousness without thinking of it, or universality immersed in matter, he analyzed, so that through the separation of the concrete, he brought the universal contained therein to consciousness as universal. We see this method also carried on to a large extent in Plato’s dialogues, where there is, in this regard, particular skill displayed. It is the same method which forms in every man his knowledge of the universal; an education in self-consciousness, which is the development of reason. The child, the uncultured man, lives in concrete individual ideas, but to the man who grows and educates himself, because he thereby goes back into himself as thinking, reflection becomes reflection on the universal and the permanent establishment of the same; and a freedom — formerly that of moving in concrete ideas — is now that of so doing in abstractions and in thoughts. We see such a development of universal from particular, where a number of examples are given, treated in a very tedious way. For us who are trained in presenting to ourselves what is abstract, who are taught from youth up in universal principles, the Socratic method of so-called deference, with its eloquence, has often something tiresome and tedious about it. The universal of the concrete case is already present to us as universal, because our reflection is already accustomed to the universal, and we do not require, first of all, to take the trouble of making a separation; and thus, if Socrates were now to bring what is abstract before consciousness, we should not require, in order to establish it as universal, that all these examples should be adduced, so that through repetition the subjective certainty of abstraction might arise.
c. The next result of this method of procedure may be that consciousness is surprised that what it never looked for should be found in consciousness. If we reflect, for example, on the universally known idea of Becoming, we find that what becomes is not and yet it is; it is the identity of Being and non-being, and it may surprise us that in this simple conception so great a distinction should exist.
The result attained was partly the altogether formal and negative one of bringing home to those who conversed with Socrates, the conviction that, however well acquainted with the subject they had thought themselves, they now came to the conclusion, “that what we knew has refuted itself.” Socrates thus put questions in the intent that the speaker should be drawn on to make admissions, implying a point of view opposed to that from which he started. That these contradictions arise because they bring their ideas together, is the drift of the greater part of Socrates’ dialogues; their main tendency consequently was to show the bewilderment and confusion which exist in knowledge. By this means, he tries to awaken shame, and the perception that what we consider as true is not the truth, from which the necessity for earnest effort after knowledge must result. Plato, amongst others, gives these examples in his Meno (p. 71-80, Steph.; p. 327-346, Bekk.). Socrates is made to say, “By the gods, tell me what is virtue.” Meno proceeds to make various distinctions: “Man’s virtue is to be skilful in managing state affairs, and thereby to help friends and harm foes; woman’s to rule her household; other virtues are those of boys, of young men, of old men,” &c. Socrates interrupts him by saying, that it is not that about which he inquires, but virtue in general, which comprehends every thing in itself. Meno says “It is to govern and rule over others.” Socrates brings forward the fact that the virtue of boys and slaves does not consist in governing. Meno says that he cannot tell what is common in all virtue. Socrates replies that it is the same as figure, which is what is common in roundness, squareness, &c. There a digression occurs. Meno says, “Virtue is the power of securing the good desired.” Socrates interposes that it is superfluous to say the good, for from the time that men know that something is an evil, they do not desire it; and also the good must be acquired in a right way. Socrates thus confounds Meno, and he sees that these ideas are false. The latter says, “I used to hear of you, before I knew you, that you were yourself in doubt (ἀπορεῖς), and also brought others into doubt, and now you cast a spell on me too, so that I am at my wits’ end (ἀπορίας). You seem, if I may venture to jest, to be like the torpedo fish, for it is said of it that it makes torpid (ναρκᾷν) those who come near it and touch it. You have done this to me, for I am become torpid in body and soul, and I do not know how to answer you, although I have talked thousands of times about virtue with many persons, and, as it seemed to me, talked very well. But now I do not know at all what to say. Hence you do well not to travel amongst strangers, for you might be put to death as a magician.” Socrates again wishes to “inquire.” Now Meno says, “How can you inquire about what you say you do not know? Can you have a desire for what you do not know? And if you find it out by chance, how can you know that it is what you looked for, since you acknowledge that, you do not know it?” A number of dialogues end in the same manner, both in Xenophon and Plato, leaving us quite unsatisfied as to the result. It is so in the Lysis, where Plato asks the question of what love and friendship secures to men; and similarly the Republic commences by inquiring what justice is. Philosophy must, generally speaking, begin with a puzzle in order to bring about reflection; everything must be doubted, all presuppositions given up, to reach the truth as created through the Notion.
- The Principle of the Good. This, in short, is Socrates’ method. The affirmative, what Socrates develops in the consciousness, is nothing but the good in as far as it is brought forth from consciousness through knowledge — it is the eternal, in and for itself universal, what is called the Idea, the true, which just in so far as it is end, is the Good. In this regard Socrates is opposed to the Sophists, for the proposition that man is the measure of all things, to them still comprehends particular ends, while to Socrates the universal brought forth through free thought is thereby expressed in objective fashion. Nevertheless, we must not blame the Sophists because, in the aimlessness of their time, they did not discover the principle of the Good; for every discovery has its time, and that of the Good, which as end in itself is now always made the starting point, had not yet been made by Socrates. It now seems as if we had not yet shown forth much of the Socratic philosophy, for we have merely kept to the principle; but the main point with Socrates is that his knowledge for the first time reached this abstraction. The Good is nevertheless no longer as abstract as the νοῦς of Anaxagoras, but is the universal which determines itself in itself, realizes itself, and has to be realized as the end of the world and of the individual. It is a principle, concrete within itself, which, however, is not yet manifested in its development, and in this abstract attitude we find what is wanting in the Socratic standpoint, of which nothing that is affirmative can, beyond this, be adduced.
a. As regards the Socratic principle, the first determination is the great determination which is, however, still merely formal, that consciousness creates and has to create out of itself what is the true. This principle of subjective freedom was present to the consciousness of Socrates himself so vividly that he despised the other sciences as being empty learning and useless to mankind; he has to concern himself with his moral nature only in order to do what is best — a one-sidedness which is very characteristic of Socrates. This religion of the Good is to Socrates, not only the essential point to which men have to direct their thoughts, but it is that exclusively. We see him showing how from every individual this universal, this absolute in consciousness may be found as his reality. Here we see law, the true and good, what was formerly present as an existent, return into consciousness. But it is not a single chance manifestation in this individual Socrates, for we have to comprehend Socrates and his manifestation. In the universal consciousness, in the spirit of the people to which he belongs, we see natural turn into reflective morality, and he stands above as the consciousness of this change. The spirit of the world here begins to change, a change which was later on carried to its completion. From this higher standpoint, Socrates, as well as the Athenian people and Socrates in them, have to be considered. The reflection of consciousness into itself begins here, the knowledge of the consciousness of self as such, that it is real existence — or that God is a Spirit, or again, in a cruder and more sensuous form, that God takes human form. This epoch begins where essence is given up as Being — even though it be, as hitherto, abstract Being, Being as thought. But this epoch in a naturally moral people in the highest state of development, makes its appearance as the destruction threatening them or breaking in upon them unprevented. For its morality, as was usually so with the ancients, consisted in the fact that the Good was present as a universal, without its having had the form of the conviction of the individual in his individual consciousness, but simply that of the immediate absolute. It is the authoritative, present law, without testing investigation, but yet an ultimate ground on which this moral consciousness rests. It is the law of the State; it has authority as the law of the gods, and thus it is universal destiny which has the form of an existent, and is recognized as such by all. But moral consciousness asks if this is actually law in itself? This consciousness turned back within itself from everything that has the form of the existent, requires to understand, to know, that the above law is posited in truth, i.e. it demands that it should find itself therein as consciousness. In thus returning into themselves the Athenian people are revealed to us: uncertainty as to existent laws as existent has arisen, and a doubt about what was held to be right, the greatest freedom respecting all that is and was respected. This return into itself represents the highest point reached by the mind of Greece, in so far as it becomes no longer the mere existence of these moralities, but the living consciousness of the same, which has a content which is similar, but which, as spirit, moves freely in it. This is a culture which we never find the Lacedæmonians reach. This deepest life of morality is so to speak a free personal consciousness of morality or of God, and a happy enjoyment of them. Consciousness and Being have here exactly the same value and rank; what is, is consciousness; neither is powerful above another. The authority of law is no oppressive bond to consciousness, and all reality is likewise no obstacle to it, for it is secure in itself. But this return is just on the point of abandoning the content, and indeed of positing itself as abstract consciousness, without the content, and, as existent, opposed to it. From this equilibrium of consciousness and Being, consciousness takes up its position as independent. This aspect of separation is an independent conception, because consciousness, in the perception of its independence, no longer immediately acknowledges what is put before it, but requires that this should first justify itself to it, i.e. it must comprehend itself therein. Thus this return is the isolation of the individual from the universal, care for self at the cost of the State; to us, for instance, it is the question as to whether I shall be in eternal bliss or condemnation, whereas philosophic eternity is present now in time, and is nothing other than the substantial man himself. The State has lost its power, which consisted in the unbroken continuity of the universal spirit, as formed of single individuals, so that the individual consciousness knew no other content and reality than law. Morals have become shaken, because we have the idea present that man creates his maxims for himself. The fact that the individual comes to care for his own morality, means that he becomes reflectively moral; when public morality disappears, reflective morality is seen to have arisen. We now see Socrates bringing forward the opinion, that in these times every one has to look after his own morality, and thus he looked after his through consciousness and reflection regarding himself; for he sought the universal spirit which had disappeared from reality, in his own consciousness. He also helped others to care for their morality, for he awakened in them this consciousness of having in their thoughts the good and true, i.e. having the potentiality of action and of knowledge. This is no longer there immediately, but must be provided, just as a ship must make provision of water when it goes to places where none is to be found. The immediate has no further authority but must justify itself to thought. Thus we comprehend the special qualities of Socrates, and his method in Philosophy, from the whole; and we also understand his fate from the same.
This direction of consciousness back into itself takes the form — very markedly in Plato — of asserting that man can learn nothing, virtue included, and that not because the latter has no relation to science. For the good does not come from without, Socrates shows; it cannot be taught, but is implied in the nature of mind. That is to say, man cannot passively receive anything that is given from without like the wax that is moulded to a form, for everything is latent in the mind of man, and he only seems to learn it. Certainly everything begins from without, but this is only the beginning; the truth is that this is only an impulse towards the development of spirit. All that has value to men, the eternal, the self-existent, is contained in man himself, and has to develop from himself. To learn here only means to receive knowledge of what is externally determined. This external comes indeed through experience, but the universal therein belongs to thought, not to the subjective and bad, but to the objective and true. The universal in the opposition of subjective and objective, is that which is as subjective as it is objective; the subjective is only a particular, the objective is similarly only a particular as regards the subjective, but the universal is the unity of both. According to the Socratic principle, nothing has any value to men to which the spirit does not testify. Man in it is free, is at home with himself, and that is the subjectivity of spirit. As it is said in the Bible, “Flesh of my flesh, and bone of my bone,” that which is held by me as truth and right is spirit of my spirit. But what spirit derives from itself must come from it as from the spirit which acts in a universal manner, and not from its passions, likings, and arbitrary desires. These, too, certainly come from something inward which is “implanted in us by nature,” but which is only in a natural way our own, for it belongs to the particular; high above it is true thought, the Notion, the rational. Socrates opposed to the contingent and particular inward, that universal, true inward of thought. And Socrates awakened this real conscience, for he not only said that man is the measure of all things, but man as thinking is the measure of all things. With Plato we shall, later on, find it formulated that what man seems to receive he only remembers.
As to the question of what is the Good, Socrates recognized its determination as being not only a determination in particularity to the exclusion of the natural side, as determination is understood in empirical science, but even in relation to the actions of men, he holds the Good to be still undetermined, and the ultimate determinateness, or the determining, is what we may call subjectivity generally. That the Good should be determined, primarily signifies that while, at first, in opposition to the Being of reality, it was a general maxim only, that to which the activity of individuality was still wanting, in the second place it was not permitted to be inert, to be mere thought, but had to be present as the determining and actual, and thus as the effectual. It is such only through subjectivity, through the activity of man. That the Good is a determinate thus further means that individuals know what the Good is, and we call this standpoint reflective morality, while natural morality does right unconsciously. Thus to Socrates virtue is perception. For to the proposition of the Platonic Protagoras that all other virtues have a relationship to one another, but that it is not so with valour, since many brave men are to be found who are the most irreligious, unjust, intemperate and uncultured of people (such as a band of robbers), Plato makes Socrates answer that valour, like all virtues, also is a science, that is, it is the knowledge and the right estimation of what is to be feared.127 By this the distinctive qualities of valour are certainly not unfolded. The naturally moral and upright man is such without his having considered the matter at all; it is his character, and what is good is securely rooted within him. When, on the other hand, consciousness is concerned, the question arises as to whether I directly desire the good or not. Hence this consciousness of morality easily becomes dangerous, and causes the individual to be puffed up by a good opinion of himself, which proceeds from the consciousness of his own power to decide for the good. The ‘I’ is then the master, he who chooses the Good, and in that there is the conceit of my knowing that I am an excellent man. With Socrates this opposition of the good and the subject as choosing is not reached, for what is dealt with is only the determination of the Good and the connection therewith of subjectivity; this last, as an individual person who can choose, decides upon the inward universal. We have here on the one side the knowledge of the Good, but, on the other, it is implied that the subject is good, since this is his ordinary character; and the fact that the subject is such, was by the ancients called virtue.
We understand from this the following criticism which Aristotle makes (Magna Mor. I. 1) on the quality of virtue as expounded by Socrates. He says: “Socrates spoke better of virtue than did Pythagoras, but not quite justly, for he made virtues into a science (ἐπιστήμας). But this is impossible, since, though all knowledge has some basis (λόγος) this basis only exists in thought. Consequently, he places all the virtues in the thinking (λογιστικῷ) side of the soul. Hence it comes to pass that he does away with the feeling (ἄλογον) part of the soul, that is, the inclination (πᾶθος) and the habits (ἠθος),” which, however, also pertain to virtue. “But Plato rightly distinguished the thinking and the feeling sides of the soul.” This is a good criticism. We see that what Aristotle misses in the determination of virtue in Socrates, is the side of subjective actuality, which we now call the heart. Certainly virtue is determination in accordance with universal, and not with particular ends, but perception is not the only element in virtue. For in order that the good perceived should be virtue, it must come to pass that the whole man, the heart and mind, should be identical with it, and this aspect of Being or of realization generally, is what Aristotle calls τὸ ἄλογον. If we understand the reality of the good as universal morality, substantiality is wanting to the perception; but matter, when we regard the inclination of the individual subjective will as this reality. This double want may also be considered as a want of content and of activity, in so far as to the universal development is wanting; and in the latter case, determining activity comes before us as negative only in reference to the universal. Socrates thus omits, in characterizing virtue, just what we saw had also disappeared in actuality, that is, first the real spirit of a people, and then reality as the sympathies of the individual. For it is just when consciousness is not yet turned back into itself, that the universal good appears to the individual as the object of his sympathy. To us, on the other hand, because we are accustomed to put on one side the good or virtue as practical reason, the other side, which is opposed to a reflective morality, is an equally abstract sensuousness, inclination, passion, and hence the bad. But in order that the universal should be reality, it must be worked out through consciousness as individual, and the carrying into effect pertains to this individuality. A passion, as for example, love, ambition, is the universal itself, as it is self-realizing, not in perception, but in activity; and if we did not fear being misunderstood, we should say that for the individual the universal is his own interests. Yet this is not the place in which to unravel all the false ideas and contradictions present in our culture.
Aristotle (Eth. Nicom. VI. 13), supplementing the one-sidedness of Socrates, further says of him: “Socrates in one respect worked on right lines, but not in the other. For to call virtue scientific knowledge is untrue, but to say that it is not without scientific basis is right. Socrates made virtues into perceptions (λόγους), but we say that virtue exists with perception.” This is a very true distinction; the one side in virtue is that the universal of end belongs to thought. But in virtue, as character, the other side, active individuality, real soul, must necessarily come forth; and indeed with Socrates the latter appears in a characteristic form of which we shall speak below (p. 421 et seq.).
b. If we consider the universal first, it has within it a positive and a negative side, which we find both united in Xenophon’s “Memorabilia,” a work which aims at justifying Socrates. And if we inquire whether he or Plato depicts Socrates to us most faithfully in his personality and doctrine, there is no question that in regard to the personality and method, the externals of his teaching, we may certainly receive from Plato a satisfactory, and perhaps a more complete representation of what Socrates was. But in regard to the content of his teaching and the point reached by him in the development of thought, we have in the main to look to Xenophon.
The fact that the reality of morality had become shaken in the mind of the people, came to consciousness in Socrates; he stands so high because he gave expression to what was present in the times. In this consciousness he elevated morality into perception, but this action is just the bringing to consciousness of the fact that it is the power of the Notion which sublates the determinate existence and the immediate value of moral laws and the sacredness of their implicitude. When perception likewise positively acknowledges as law that which was held to be law (for the positive subsists through having recourse to laws), this acknowledgment of them always passes through the negative mode, and no longer has the form of absolute being-in-itself: it is, however, just as far from being a Platonic Republic. To the Notion too, because to it the determinateness of laws in the form in which they have value to unperceiving consciousness has dissolved, only the purely implicit universal Good is the true. But since this is empty and without reality, we demand, if we are not satisfied with a dull monotonous round, that again a movement should be made towards the extension of the determination of the universal. Now because Socrates remains at the indeterminateness of the good, its determination means for him simply the expression of the particular good. Then it comes to pass that the universal results only from the negation of the particular good; and since this last is just the existing laws of Greek morality, we have here the doubtlessly right, but dangerous element in perception, the showing in all that is particular only its deficiencies. The inconsistency of making what is limited into an absolute, certainly becomes unconsciously corrected in the moral man; this improvement rests partly on the morality of the subject and partly on the whole of the social life; and unfortunate extremes resulting in conflict are unusual and unfrequent. But since the dialectic sublates the particular, the abstract universal also becomes shaken.
α. Now as regards the positive side, Xenophon tells us in the fourth book of the Memorabilia (c. 2, § 40), how Socrates, once having made the need for perception sensible to the youths, then actually instructed them, and no longer wandered through mere subtleties in his talk, but taught them the good in the clearest and most open way. That is, he showed them the good and true in what is determined, going back into it because he did not wish to remain in mere abstraction. Xenophon gives an example of this (Memorab. IV. c. 4, §§ 12-16, 25) in a dialogue with the Sophist Hippias. Socrates there asserts that the just man is he who obeys the law, and that these laws are divine. Xenophon makes Hippias reply by asking how Socrates could declare it to be an absolute duty to obey the laws, for the people and the governors themselves often condemn them by changing them, which is allowing that they are not absolute. But Socrates answers by demanding if those who conduct war do not again make peace, which is not, any more than in the other case, to condemn war, for each was just in its turn. Socrates thus says, in a word, that the best and happiest State is that in which the citizens are of one mind and obedient to law. Now this is the one side in which Socrates looks away from the contradiction and makes laws and justice, as they are accepted by each individually, to be the affirmative content. But if we here ask what these laws are, they are, we find, just those which have a value at some one time, as they happen to be present in the State and in the idea; at another time they abrogate themselves as determined, and are not held to be absolute.
β. We hence see this other negative side in the same connection when Socrates brings Euthydemus into the conversation, for he asks him whether he did not strive after the virtue without which neither the private man nor the citizen could be useful to himself or to his people or the State. Euthydemus declares that this undoubtedly is so. But without justice, replies Socrates, this is not possible, and he further asks whether Euthydemus had thus attained to justice in himself. Euthydemus answers affirmatively, for he says that he thinks he is no less just than any other man. Socrates now replies, “Just as workmen can show their work, the just will be able to say what their works are.” This he also agrees to, and replies that he could easily do so. Socrates now proposes if this is so to write, “on the one hand under Δ the actions of the just, and on the other, under Α, those of the unjust?” With the approbation of Euthydemus, lies, deceit, robbery, making a slave of a free man, thus fall on the side of the unjust. Now Socrates asks, “But if a general subdues the enemy’s State, would this not be justice?” Euthydemus says “Yes.” Socrates replies, “Likewise if he deceives and robs the enemy and makes slaves?” Euthydemus has to admit the justice of this. It is thus shown “that the same qualities come under the determination both of justice and of injustice.” Here it strikes Euthydemus to add the qualification that he intended that Socrates should understand the action to be only in reference to friends; as regards them it is wrong. Socrates accepts this, but proceeds, “If a general at the decisive moment of the battle saw his own army in fear, and he deceived them by falsely saying that help was coming in order to lead them on to victory, could it be deemed right?” Euthydemus acknowledges that it could. Socrates says, “If a father gives a sick child a medicine which it does not wish to take, in its food, and makes it well through deceit, is this right?” Euthydemus— “Yes.” Socrates— “Or is anyone wrong who takes arms from his friend secretly or by force, when he sees him in despair, and in the act of taking his own life?” Euthydemus has to admit that this is not wrong.128 Thus it is again shown here, that as regards friends also, the same determinations have to hold good on both sides, as justice as well as injustice. Here we see that abstention from lying, deceit, and robbery, that which we naturally hold to be established, contradicts itself by being put into connection with something different, and something which holds equally good. This example further explains how through thought, which would lay hold of the universal in the form of the universal only, the particular becomes uncertain.
γ. The positive, which Socrates sets in the place of what was fixed and has now become vacillating, in order to give a content to the universal, is, on the one hand, and in opposition to this last, obedience to law (p. 416), that is, the mode of thought and idea which is inconsistent; and, on the other hand, since such determinations do not hold good for the Notion, it is perception, in which the immediately posited has now, in the mediating negation, to justify itself as a determination proceeding out of the constitution of the whole. But it is both true that we do not find this perception present in Socrates, for it remains in its content undetermined, and that in reality it is a contingent, which is seen in the fact, that the universal commands, such as “Thou shalt not kill,” are connected with a particular content which is conditioned. Now whether the universal maxim in this particular case has value or not, depends first on the circumstances; and it is the perception which discovers the conditions and circumstances whereby exceptions to this law of unconditioned validity arise. However, because through this contingency in the instances, the fixed nature of the universal principle disappears, since it, too, appears as a particular only, the consciousness of Socrates arrives at pure freedom in each particular content. This freedom, which does not leave the content as it is in its dissipated determination to the natural consciousness, but makes it to be penetrated by the universal, is the real mind which, as unity of the universal content and of freedom, is the veritable truth. Thus if we here consider further what is the true in this consciousness, we pass on to the mode in which the realization of the universal appeared to Socrates himself.
Even the uneducated mind does not follow the content of its consciousness as this content appears in it; but, as mind, it corrects that which is wrong in its consciousness, and is thus implicitly, if not explicitly as consciousness, free. That is, though this consciousness expresses the universal law, “Thou shalt not kill,” as a duty, that consciousness — if no cowardly spirit dwells within it — will still bravely attack and slay the enemy in war. Here, if it is asked whether there is a command to kill one’s enemies, the reply would be affirmative, as likewise when a hangman puts to death a criminal. But when in private life we become involved with adversaries, this command to kill one’s enemies will not occur to us. We may thus call this the mind which thinks at the right time, first of the one, and then of the other; it is spirit, but an unspiritual consciousness. The first step towards reaching a spiritual consciousness is the negative one of acquiring freedom for one’s consciousness. For since perception attempts to prove individual laws, it proceeds from a determination to which, as a universal basis, particular duty is submitted; but this basis is itself not absolute, and falls under the same dialectic. For example, were moderation commanded as a duty on the ground that intemperance undermined the health, health is the ultimate which is here considered as absolute; but it is at the same time not absolute, for there are other duties which ordain that health, and even life itself, should be risked and sacrificed. The so-called conflict of duties is nothing but duty, which is expressed as absolute, showing itself as not absolute; in the constant contradiction morals become unsettled. For a consciousness which has become consistent, law, because it has then been brought into contact with its opposite, has been sublated. For the positive truth has not yet become known in its determination. But to know the universal in its determination, i.e. the limitation of the universal which comes to us as fixed and not contingent, is only possible in connection with the whole system of actuality. Thus if with Socrates the content has become spiritualized, yet manifold independent grounds have merely taken the place of manifold laws. For the perception is not yet expressed as the real perception of these grounds over which it rules; but the truth of consciousness simply is this very movement of pure perception. The true ground is, however, spirit, and the spirit of the people — a perception of the constitution of a people, and the connection of the individual with this real universal spirit. Laws, morals, the actual social life, thus have in themselves their own corrective against the inconsistent, which consists of the expression of a definite content as absolute. In ordinary life we merely forget this limitation of universal principles, and these still hold their place with us; but the other point of view is thus when the limitation comes before our consciousness.
When we have the perfect consciousness that in actual life fixed duties and actions do not exist, for each concrete case is really a conflict of many duties which separate themselves in the moral understanding, but which mind treats as not absolute, comprehending them in the unity of its judgment, we call this pure, deciding individuality, the knowledge of what is right, or conscience, just as we call the pure universal of consciousness not a particular but an all-comprehensive one, duty. Now both sides here present, the universal law and the deciding spirit which is in its abstraction the active individual, are also necessary to the consciousness of Socrates as the content and the power over this content. That is, because with Socrates the particular law has become vacillating, there now comes in the place of the universal single mind, which, with the Greeks, was unconscious determination through unreflective morality, individual mind as individuality deciding for itself. Thus with Socrates the deciding spirit is transformed into the subjective consciousness of man, since the power of deciding originates with himself; and the first question now is, how this subjectivity appears in Socrates himself. Because the person, the individual, now gives the decision, we come back to Socrates as person, as subject, and what follows is a development of his personal relations. But since the moral element is generally placed in the personality of Socrates, we see the contingent nature of the instruction and of the culture which was obtained through Socrates’ character; for it was the actual basis on which men fortified themselves in associating with Socrates, by actual communication with him and by their manner of life. Thus it was true that “the intercourse with his friends was, on the whole, beneficial and instructive to them, but in many cases they became unfaithful to Socrates,”129 because not everyone attains to perception, and he who possesses it may remain at the negative. The education of the citizens, life in the people, is quite a fresh force in the individual, and does not mean that he educates himself through arguments; hence, however truly educative the intercourse with Socrates was, this contingency still entered into it. We thus see as an unhappy symptom of disorder, how Socrates’ greatest favourites, and those endowed with the most genial natures (such as Alcibiades, that genius of levity, who played with the Athenian people, and Critias, the most active of the Thirty) afterwards experienced the fate of being judged in their own country, one as an enemy and traitor to his fellows, and the other as an oppressor and tyrant of the State. They lived according to the principle of subjective perception, and thus cast a bad light on Socrates, for it is shown in this how the Socratic principle in another form brought about the ruin of Greek life.130
c. The characteristic form in which this subjectivity — this implicit and deciding certainty — appears in Socrates, has still to be mentioned. That is, since everyone here has this personal mind which appears to him to be his mind, we see how in connection with this, we have what is known under the name of the Genius (δαιμόνιον) of Socrates; for it implies that now man decides in accordance with his perception and by himself. But in this Genius of Socrates — notorious as a much discussed bizarrerie of his imagination — we are neither to imagine the existence of protective spirit, angel, and such-like, nor even of conscience. For conscience is the idea of universal individuality, of the mind certain of itself, which is at the same time universal truth. But the Genius of Socrates is rather all the other and necessary sides of his universality, that is, the individuality of mind which came to consciousness in him equally with the former. His pure consciousness stands over both sides. The deficiency in the universal, which lies in its indeterminateness, is unsatisfactorily supplied in an individual way, because Socrates’ judgment, as coming from himself, was characterized by the form of an unconscious impulse. The Genius of Socrates is not Socrates himself, not his opinions and conviction, but an oracle which, however, is not external, but is subjective, his oracle. It bore the form of a knowledge which was directly associated with a condition of unconsciousness; it was a knowledge which may also appear under other conditions as a magnetic state. It may happen that at death, in illness and catalepsy, men know about circumstances future or present, which, in the understood relations of things, are altogether unknown. These are facts which are usually rudely denied. That in Socrates we should discover what comes to pass through reflection in the form of the unconscious, makes it appear to be an exceptional matter, revealed to the individual only, and not as being what it is in truth. Thereby it certainly receives the stamp of imagination, but there is nothing more of what is visionary or superstitious to be seen in it, for it is a necessary manifestation, though Socrates did not recognize the necessity, this element being only generally before his imagination.
In connection with what follows, we must yet further consider the relationship of the Genius to the earlier existent form of decision, and that into which it led Socrates; regarding both Xenophon expresses himself in his history most distinctly. Because the standpoint of the Greek mind was natural morality, in which man did not yet determine himself, and still less was what we call conscience present, since laws were, in their fundamental principles, regarded as traditional, these last now presented an appearance of being sanctioned by the gods. We know that the Greeks undoubtedly had laws on which to form their judgments, but on the other hand, both in private and public life, immediate decisions had to be made. But in them the Greeks, with all their freedom, did not decide from the subjective will. The general or the people did not take upon themselves to decide as to what was best in the State, nor did the individual do so in the family. For in making these decisions, the Greeks took refuge in oracles, sacrificial animals, soothsayers, or, like the Romans, asked counsel of birds in flight. The general who had to fight a battle was guided in his decision by the entrails of animals, as we often find in Xenophon’s Anabasis. Pausanias tormented himself thus a whole day long before he gave the command to fight.131 This element, the fact that the people had not the power of decision but were determined from without, was a real factor in Greek consciousness; and oracles were everywhere essential where man did not yet know himself inwardly as being sufficiently free and independent to take upon himself to decide as we do. This subjective freedom, which was not yet present with the Greeks, is what we mean in the present day when we speak of freedom; in the Platonic Republic we shall see more of it. Our responsibility for what we do is a characteristic of modern times; we wish to decide according to grounds of common sense, and consider this as ultimate. The Greeks did not possess the knowledge of this infinitude.
In the first book of Xenophon’s Memorabilia (chap. I, §§ 7-9), on the occasion of the defence by Socrates of his δαιμόνιον, Socrates says at the very beginning: “The gods have reserved to themselves what is most important in knowledge. Architecture, agriculture, forging, are human arts, as also government, the science of law, management of the household and generalship. In all this man can attain to skill, but for the other, divination is necessary. He who cultivates a field does not know who will enjoy the fruit, nor does he who builds a house know who will inhabit it; the general does not know whether the army should be brought into the field; he who rules a State whether it is good for him” (the individual) “or bad. Nor does he who marries a wife know whether he will experience happiness or whether grief and sorrow will not come through this to him; neither can he who has powerful relations in the State, know whether, on account of these, he may not be banished from the State. Because of this uncertainty, men have to take refuge in divination.” Regarding it Xenophon expresses himself (ibid. §§ 3, 4) to the effect that it manifests itself in different ways through oracles, sacrifices, flight of birds, &c., but to Socrates this oracle is his Genius. To hold the future, or what is foreseen by the somnambulist or at death to be a higher kind of insight, is a perversion which easily arises even in our ideas; but looked at more closely, we find in this the particular interests of individuals merely, and the knowledge of what is right and moral is something much higher. If anyone wishes to marry or to build a house, &c., the result is important to the individual only. The truly divine and universal is the institution of agriculture, the state, marriage, &c.; compared to this it is a trivial matter to know whether, when I go to sea, I shall perish or not. The Genius of Socrates moreover reveals itself in him through nothing other than the counsel given respecting these particular issues, such as when and whether his friends ought to travel. To anything true, existing in and for itself in art and science, he made no reference, for this pertains to the universal mind, and these dæmonic revelations are thus much more unimportant than those of his thinking mind. There is certainly something universal in them, since a wise man can often foresee whether anything is advisable or not. But what is truly divine pertains to all, and though talents and genius are also personal characteristics, they find their first truth in their works which are universal.
Now because with Socrates judgment from within first begins to break free from the external oracle, it was requisite that this return into itself should, in its first commencement, still appear in physiological guise (supra, pp. 390, 391). The Genius of Socrates stands midway between the externality of the oracle and the pure inwardness of the mind; it is inward, but it is also presented as a personal genius, separate from human will, and not yet as the wisdom and free will of Socrates himself. The further investigation of this Genius consequently presents to us a form which passes into somnambulism, into this double of consciousness; and in Socrates there clearly appears to be something of the kind, or something which is magnetic, for, as we already mentioned (p. 390), he is said often to have fallen into trances and catalepsy. In modern times we have seen this in the form of a rigid eye, an inward knowledge, perception of this thing and that, of what is gone, of what is best to do, &c.; but magnetism carries science no further than this. The Genius of Socrates is thus to be taken as an actual state, and is remarkable because it is not morbid but was necessarily called up through a special condition of his consciousness. For the turning point in the whole world-famed change of views constituting the principle of Socrates, is that in place of the oracle, the testimony of the mind of the individual has been brought forward and that the subject has taken upon itself to decide.
- The Fate of Socrates. With this Genius of Socrates as one of the chief points of his indictment, we now enter upon the subject of his fate, which ends with his condemnation. We may find this fate out of harmony with his professed business of instructing his fellow-citizens in what is good, but taken in connection with what Socrates and his people were, we shall recognize the necessity of it. The contemporaries of Socrates, who came forward as his accusers before the Athenian people, laid hold on him as the man who made known that what was held as absolute was not absolute. Socrates, with this new principle, and as one who was an Athenian citizen whose express business was this form of instruction, came, through this his personality, into relationship with the whole Athenian people; and this relationship was not merely with a certain number or with a commanding number, but it was a living relationship with the spirit of the Athenian people. The spirit of this people in itself, its constitution, its whole life, rested, however, on a moral ground, on religion, and could not exist without this absolutely secure basis. Thus because Socrates makes the truth rest on the judgment of inward consciousness, he enters upon a struggle with the Athenian people as to what is right and true. His accusation was therefore just, and we have to consider this accusation as also the end of his career. The attacks which Socrates experienced are well known, and were from two sources; Aristophanes attacked him in the “Clouds,” and then he was formally accused before the people.
Aristophanes regarded the Socratic philosophy from the negative side, maintaining that through the cultivation of reflecting consciousness, the idea of law had been shaken, and we cannot question the justice of this conception. Aristophanes’ consciousness of the one-sidedness of Socrates may be regarded as a prelude to his death; the Athenian people likewise certainly recognized his negative methods in condemning him. It is known that Aristophanes brought upon the stage along with Socrates, not only such men as Aeschylus, and more specially Euripides, but also the Athenians generally and their generals — the personified Athenian people and the gods themselves — a freedom which we would not dream of were it not historically authenticated. We have not here to consider the real nature of the Comedy of Aristophanes, nor the wanton way in which he was said to have treated Socrates. As to the first, it should not startle us, nor do we require to justify Aristophanes or to excuse him. The Comedy of Aristophanes is in itself as real a part of the Athenian people, and Aristophanes is as essential a figure, as were the sublime Pericles, the happy Alcibiades, the divine Sophocles, and the moral Socrates, for he belongs as much as any other to this circle of luminaries (Vol. I., p. 322). Thus much can alone be said, that it certainly goes against our German seriousness to see how Aristophanes brings on the boards men living in the State, by name, in order to make a jest of them; and we feel this specially in regard to so upright a man as Socrates.
By chronological considerations, some have tried hard to refute the fact that Aristophanes’ representations had no influence on the condemnation of Socrates. It is seen that, on the one hand, Socrates was treated quite unjustly; but then we must recognize the merit of Aristophanes, who in his “Clouds” was perfectly right. This poet, who exposed Socrates to scorn in the most laughable and bitter way, was thus no ordinary joker and shallow wag who mocked what is highest and best, and sacrificed all to wit with a view to making the Athenians laugh. For everything has to him a much deeper basis, and in all his jokes there lies a depth of seriousness. He did not wish merely to mock; and moreover to mock what was worthy of honour would be perfectly bald and flat. It is a pitiful wit which has no substance, and does not rest on contradictions lying in the matter itself. But Aristophanes was no bad jester. It is, generally speaking, not possible to joke in an external way about what does not contain matter for joking or irony in itself. For what really is comic is to show a man or a thing as they disclose themselves in their extent; and if the thing is not itself its contradiction, the comic element is superficial and groundless. Hence, when Aristophanes makes merry over the Democracy, there is a deep political earnestness at heart, and from all his works it appears what a noble, excellent, true Athenian citizen he was. We thus have a real patriot before us, who, though it involved the punishment of death, did not fear in one of his works to counsel peace. In him, as one who had a patriotism of the most enlightened kind, we find the blissful self-satisfied enjoyment of a people giving free rein to itself. There is, in what is humorous, a self-security which, though with all seriousness it strives after some particular thing, while the opposite of what it aims at always comes to pass, never has for that reason any doubts nor any reflection about itself, since it remains perfectly certain of itself and of what concerns it. We enjoy in Aristophanes this side of the free Athenian spirit, this perfect enjoyment of itself in loss, this untroubled certainty of itself in all miscarriage of the result in real life, and this is the height of humour.
In the “Clouds” we do not indeed see this natural humour, but a contradiction with definite intention. Aristophanes indeed depicts Socrates humorously too, for he brings forth in his moral works the opposite of that from which he starts, and his scholars derive delight from the far-extending discoveries reached through him, which they think are made by their own good luck, but which afterwards turn hateful to them, and become the very opposite of what they intended. The wonderful perception which the followers of Socrates are here represented as having attained, is just a perception of the nullity of the laws of the determinate good as it is to the natural consciousness. Aristophanes made fun of the fact that Socrates occupied himself with elementary researches as to how far fleas spring, and of his putting wax on their feet in order to discover this. This is not historic, but it is well known that Socrates had in his philosophy the side which Aristophanes showed up with such acrimony. Shortly, the fable of the “Clouds” is this: Strepsiades, an honourable Athenian citizen of the old school, had great trouble with his new-fashioned extravagant son, who, spoiled by mother and uncle, kept horses and led a life out of keeping with his position. The father thus got into trouble with his creditors, and went in distress to Socrates, and became his disciple. There the old man learned that not this or that, but another is the right, or rather he learned the stronger (κρείττων) and weaker reasons (ἕττων λόγος). He learned the dialectic of laws, and how, by reasoning, the payment of debts can be disregarded, and he then required that his son should go to the School of Socrates; and the latter likewise profited from his wisdom. But we find the result ensuing from the universal which has now through the Socratic dialectic become empty, in the private interest or the wrong spirit of Strepsiades and his son, which spirit is merely the negative consciousness of the content of laws. Equipped with this new wisdom of reasons, and the discovery of reasons, Strepsiades is armed against the chief evil that presses on him, as regards his threatening creditors. These now come one after another to obtain payment. But Strepsiades knows how to put them off with excellent reasons, and to argue them away, for he pacifies them by all sorts of titulos, and shows them that he does not need to pay them; indeed he even mocks them, and is very glad that he learned all this from Socrates. But soon the scene changes, and the whole affair alters. The son comes, behaves in a very unseemly way to his father, and finally beats him. The father cries to the supreme power, as if this were the last indignity, but the son shows him, with equally good reasons, obtained by the method derived by him from Socrates, that he had a perfect right to strike him. Strepsiades ends the comedy with execrations on the Socratic dialectic, with a return to his old ways, and with the burning of Socrates’ house. The exaggeration which may be ascribed to Aristophanes, is that he drove this dialectic to its bitter end, but it cannot be said that injustice is done to Socrates by this representation. Indeed we must admire the depth of Aristophanes in having recognized the dialectic side in Socrates as being a negative, and — though after his own way — in having presented it so forcibly. For the power of judging in Socrates’ method is always placed in the subject, in conscience, but where this is bad, the story of Strepsiades must repeat itself.
With regard to the formal public accusation of Socrates, we must not, like Tennemann (Vol. II., p. 39 seq.), say of Socrates’ treatment, that “it is revolting to humanity that this excellent man had to drink the cup of poison as a sacrifice to cabals — so numerous in democracies. A man like Socrates, who had made right” (right is not being discussed, but we may ask what right? The right of moral freedom) “the sole standard of his action, and did not stray from the straight path, must necessarily make many enemies” (Why? This is foolish; it is a moral hypocrisy to pretend to be better than others who are then called enemies) “who are accustomed to act from quite different motives. When we think of the corruption, and of the rule of the thirty tyrants, we must simply wonder that he could have worked on to his sixtieth year unmolested. But since the Thirty did not venture to lay hands on him themselves, it is the more to be wondered at that in the reconstituted and just rule and freedom which followed the overthrow of despotism” — in that very way the danger in which their principle was, came to be known— “a man like Socrates could be made a sacrifice to cabals. This phenomenon is probably explained by the fact that the enemies of Socrates had first of all to gain time in order to obtain a following, and that under the rule of the Thirty, they played too insignificant a part,” and so on.
Now, as regards the trial of Socrates, we have to distinguish two points, the one the matter of the accusation, the judgment of the court, and the other the relation of Socrates to the sovereign people. In the course of justice there are thus these two parts — the relation of the accused to the matter on account of which he is accused, and his relation to the competency of the people, or the recognition of their majesty. Socrates was found guilty by the judges in respect of the content of his accusation, but was condemned to death because he refused to recognize the competency and majesty of the people as regards the accused.
a. The accusation consisted of two points: “That Socrates did not consider as gods those who were held to be such by the Athenian people, but introduced new ones; and that he also led young men astray.”132 The leading away of youth was his casting doubt on what was held to be immediate truth. The first accusation has in part the same foundation, for he made it evident that what was usually so considered, was not acceptable to the gods; and in part it is to be taken in connection with his Dæmon, not that he called this his god. But with the Greeks this was the direction which the individuality of judgment took; they took it to be a contingency of the individual, and hence, as contingency of circumstances is an external, they also made the contingency of judgment into something external, i.e. they consulted their oracles — conscious that the individual will is itself a contingent. But Socrates, who placed the contingency of judgment in himself, since he had his Dæmon in his own consciousness, thereby abolished the external universal Dæmon from which the Greeks obtained their judgments. This accusation, as also Socrates’ defence, we wish now to examine further; Xenophon represents both to us, and Plato has also supplied us with an Apology. Meanwhile we may not rest content with saying that Socrates was an excellent man who suffered innocently, &c. (p. 430), for in this accusation it was the popular mind of Athens that rose against the principle which became fatal to him.
α. As regards the first point of the accusation, that Socrates did not honour the national gods, but introduced new ones, Xenophon133 makes him answer that he always brought the same sacrifices as others to the public altars, as all his fellow-citizens could see — his accusers likewise. But as to the charge that he introduced new Dæmons, in that he heard the voice of God showing him what he should do, he appealed to them whether by soothsayers the cry and flight of birds, the utterances of men (like the voice of Pythia), the position of the entrails of sacrificial animals, and even thunder and lightning were not accepted as divine revelations. That God knows the future beforehand, and, if He wishes, reveals it in these ways, all believe with him; but God can also reveal the future otherwise. He could show that he did not lie in maintaining that he heard the voice of God, from the testimony of his friends, to whom he often announced what was said; and in its results this was always found to be true. Xenophon (Memorab. I. c. 1, § 11) adds, “No one ever saw or heard Socrates do or say anything godless or impious, for he never tried to find out the nature of the Universe, like most of the others, when they sought to understand how what the Sophists called the world began.” That is, from them came the earlier atheists, who, like Anaxagoras, held that the sun was a stone.134
The effect which the defence against this part of the accusation made on the judges is expressed thus by Xenophon:135 “One section of them was displeased because they did not believe what Socrates said, and the other part because they were envious that he was more highly honoured of the gods than they.” This effect is very natural. In our times this also happens in two ways. Either the individual is not believed when he boasts of special manifestations, and particularly of manifestations which have to do with individual action and life; it is neither believed that such manifestations took place at all, or that they happened to this subject. Or if anyone does have dealings with such divinations, rightly enough his proceedings are put an end to, and he is shut up. By this it is not denied in a general way that God foreknows everything, or that He can make revelations to individuals; this may be admitted in abstracto, but not in actuality, and it is believed in no individual cases. Men do not believe that to him, to this individual, there has been a revelation. For why to him more than to others? And why just this trifle, some quite personal circumstances — as to whether someone should have a successful journey, or whether he should converse with another person, or whether or not he should in a speech properly defend himself? And why not others amongst the infinitely many things which may occur to the individual? Why not much more important things, things concerning the welfare of whole States? Hence it is not believed of an individual, in spite of the fact that if it is possible, it must be to the individual that it happens. This unbelief, which thus does not deny the general fact and general possibility, but believes it in no particular case, really does not believe in the actuality and truth of the thing. It does not believe it because the absolute consciousness — and it must be such — certainly knows nothing of a positive kind of trivialities such as form the subject of these divinations and also those of Socrates; in spirit such things immediately vanish away. The absolute consciousness does not know about the future as such, any more than about the past; it knows only about the present. But because in its present, in its thought, the opposition of future and past to present becomes apparent, it likewise knows about future and past, but of the past as something which has taken shape. For the past is the preservation of the present as reality, but the future is the opposite of this, the Becoming of the present as possibility, and thus the formless. From out of this formlessness the universal first comes into form in the present; and hence in the future no form can be perceived. Men have the dim feeling that when God acts it is not in a particular way, nor for particular objects. Such things are held to be too paltry to be revealed by God in a particular case. It is acknowledged that God determines the individual, but by this the totality of individuality, or all individualities, is understood; hence it is said that God’s way of working is found in universal nature.
Now while with the Greeks judgment had the form of a contingency externally posited through the flight and cries of birds, in our culture we decide by an inward contingency, because I myself desire to be this contingency, and the knowledge of individuality is likewise a consciousness of this contingency. But if the Greeks, for whom the category of the contingency of consciousness was an existent, a knowledge of it as an oracle, had this individuality as a universal knowledge of which everyone could ask counsel, in Socrates — in whom what was here externally established had become inward consciousness, as with us, though not yet fully, being still represented as an actual voice, and conceived of as something which he separated from his individuality — the decision of the single individual had the form of personality as a particular, and it was not a universal individuality. This his judges could not in justice tolerate, whether they believed it or not. With the Greeks such revelations had to have a certain nature and method; there were, so to speak, official oracles (not subjective), such as Pythia, a tree, etc. Hence when this appeared in any particular person like a common citizen, it was considered incredible and wrong; the Dæmon of Socrates was a medium of a different kind to any formerly respected in the Greek Religion. It is so much the more noteworthy, that nevertheless the oracle of the Delphian Apollo, Pythia, declared Socrates to be the wisest Greek.136 Socrates it was who carried out the command of the God of knowledge, “Know Thyself,” and made it the motto of the Greeks, calling it the law of the mind, and not interpreting it as meaning a mere acquaintanceship with the particular nature of man. Thus Socrates is the hero who established in the place of the Delphic oracle, the principle that man must look within himself to know what is Truth. Now seeing that Pythia herself pronounced that utterance, we find in it a complete revolution in the Greek mind, and the fact that in place of the oracle, the personal self-consciousness of every thinking man has come into play. This inward certainty, however, is undoubtedly another new god, and not the god of the Athenians existing hitherto, and thus the accusation of Socrates was quite just.
β. If we now consider the second point of the accusation, that Socrates led youth astray, we find that he first sets against it the fact that the oracle of Delphi declared that none could be nobler, juster or wiser than he.137 And then he sets against this accusation his whole manner of life, and asks whether by the example that he gave, particularly to those with whom he went about, he ever led any into evil.138 The general accusation had to be further defined and witnesses came forward. “Melitus said that he knew some whom he advised to obey him rather than their parents,”139 This point of the accusation principally related to Anytus, and since he made it good by sufficient testimony, the point was undoubtedly proved, in accordance with law. Socrates explained himself further on this point when he left the court. For Xenophon tells us (Apol. Socr. §§ 27, 29 — 31) that Anytus was inimical to Socrates, because he said to Anytus, a respected citizen, that he should not bring up his son to the trade of a tanner, but in manner befitting a free man. Anytus was himself a tanner, and although his business was mostly conducted by slaves, it was in itself not ignominious, and Socrates’ expression was hence wrong, although, as we have seen (p. 366), quite in the spirit of Greek thought. Socrates added that he had made acquaintance with this son of Anytus and discovered no evil in him, but he prophesied that he would not remain at this servile work to which his father kept him. Nevertheless, because he had no rational person near to look after him, he would come to have evil desires and be brought into dissolute ways. Xenophon added that Socrates’ prophecy had come to pass literally, and that the young man gave himself up to drink, and drank day and night, becoming totally depraved. This can be easily understood, for a man who feels himself to be fit for something better (whether truly so or not) and through this discord in his mind is discontented with the circumstances in which he lives, yet capable of attaining to no other, is led out of this disgust into listlessness, and is thus on the way to the evil courses which so often ruin men. The prediction of Socrates is thus quite natural. (Supra, p. 424.)
To this definite accusation that he led sons into disobedience to their parents, Socrates replied by asking the question whether in selecting men for public offices, such as that of general, parents, or those experienced in war, were selected. Similarly in all cases those most skilful in an art or science are picked out. He demanded whether it was not matter of astonishment that he should be brought before a judge because he was preferred to parents by the sons in their aspirations after the highest human good which is to be made a noble man.140 This reply of Socrates is, on the one hand, quite just, but we see at the same time that we cannot call it exhaustive, for the real point of the accusation is not touched. What his judges found unjust was the intrusion morally of a third into the absolute relation between parents and children. On the whole not much can be said on this point, for all depends on the mode of intervention, and if it is necessary in certain cases, it need not take place generally, and least of all when some private individual takes that liberty. Children must have the feeling of unity with their parents; this is the first immediately moral relationship; every teacher must respect it, keep it pure, and cultivate the sense of being thus connected. Hence when a third person is called into this relation between parents and children, what happens through the new element introduced, is that the children are for their own good prevented from confiding in their parents, and made to think that their parents are bad people who harm them by their intercourse and training; and hence we find this revolting. The worst thing which can happen to children in regard to their morality and their mind, is that the bond which must ever be held in reverence should become loosened or even severed, thereby causing hatred, disdain, and ill-will. Whoever does this, does injury to morality in its truest form. This unity, this confidence, is the mother’s milk of morality on which man is nurtured; the early loss of parents is therefore a great misfortune. The son, like the daughter, must indeed come out of his natural unity with the family and become independent, but the separation must be one which is natural or unforced, and not defiant and disdainful. When a pain like this has found a place in the heart, great strength of mind is required to overcome it and to heal the wound. If we now speak of the example given us by Socrates, he seems, through his intervention, to have made the young man dissatisfied with his position. Anytus’ son might, indeed, have found his work generally speaking uncongenial, but it is another thing when such dislike is brought into consciousness and established by the authority of a man such as Socrates. We may very well conjecture that if Socrates had to do with him, he strengthened and developed in him the germ of the feeling of incongruity. Socrates remarked on the subject of his capacities, saying that he was fit for something better, and thus established a feeling of dissatisfaction in the young man, and strengthened his dislike to his father, which thus became the reason of his ruin. Hence this accusation of having destroyed the relationship of parents and children may be regarded as not unfounded, but as perfectly well established. It was also thought very bad in Socrates’ case particularly, and made a matter of reproach that he had such followers as Critias and Alcibiades, who brought Athens almost to the brink of ruin (supra, p. 421). For when he mixed himself in the education which others gave their children, men were justified in the demand that the result should not belie what he professed to do for the education of youth.
The only question now is, how the people came to take notice of this, and in how far such matters can be objects of legislation and be brought into court. In our law, as regards the first part of the accusation, divination such as Cagliostro’s is illegal, and it would be forbidden as it formerly was by the Inquisition. Respecting the second point, such a moral interference is no doubt more recognized with us, where there is a particular office having this duty laid upon it; but this interference must keep itself general, and dare not go so far as to call forth disobedience to parents, which is the first immoral principle. But should such questions come before the court? This first of all brings up the question of what is the right of the State, and here great laxity is now allowed. Nevertheless, when some professor or preacher attacks a particular religion, the legislature would certainly take notice of it, and it would have a complete right to do so, although there would be an outcry when it did it. There is undoubtedly a limit which in liberty of thought and speech is difficult to define and rests on tacit agreement; but there is a point beyond which we find what is not allowed, such as direct incitement to insurrection. It is indeed said, that “bad principles destroy themselves by themselves and find no entrance.” But that is only true in part, for with the populace the eloquence of sophistry stirs up their passions. It is also said, “This is only theoretic, no action follows.” But the State really rests on thought, and its existence depends on the sentiments of men, for it is a spiritual and not a physical kingdom. Hence it has in so far maxims and principles which constitute its support, and if these are attacked, the Government must intervene. Added to this, it was the case that in Athens quite a different state of things was present than with us; in order to be able to judge rightly of Socrates’ case we must first consider the Athenian State and its customs. According to Athenian laws, i.e. according to the spirit of the absolute State, both these things done by Socrates were destructive of this spirit, while in our constitution the universal of the states is a stronger universal, which last undoubtedly permits of individuals having freer play, since they cannot be so dangerous to this universal. Hence it would undoubtedly in the first place mean the subversion of the Athenian State, if this public religion on which everything was built and without which the State could not subsist, went to pieces; with us the State may be called an absolute and independent power. The Dæmon is now, in fact, a deity differing from any known, and because it stood in contradiction to the public religion, it gave to it a subjective arbitrariness. But since established religion was identified with public life so closely that it constituted a part of public law, the introduction of a new god who formed self-consciousness into a principle and occasioned disobedience, was necessarily a crime. We may dispute with the Athenians about this, but we must allow that they are consistent. In the second place, the moral connection between parents and children is stronger, and much more the moral foundation of life with the Athenians than with us, where subjective freedom reigns; for family piety is the substantial key-note of the Athenian State. Socrates thus attacked and destroyed Athenian life in two fundamental points; the Athenians felt and became conscious of it. Is it then to be wondered at that Socrates was found guilty? We might say that it had to be so. Tennemann (Vol. II., p. 41) says: “Though these charges contained the most palpable untruths, Socrates was condemned to death because his mind was too lofty for him to descend to the common unworthy means, by which the judgment of the court was usually perverted.” But all this is false; he was found guilty of these deeds, but not for that reason condemned to death.
b. We here come to the second occurrence in his history. In accordance with Athenian laws, the accused had, after the Heliasts (resembling the English jury) pronounced him guilty, the liberty of suggesting (ἀντιτιμᾶσθαι) a penalty different from the punishment which the accuser proposed; this implied a mitigation of the punishment without a formal appeal — an excellent provision in Athenian law, testifying to its humanity. In this penalty the punishment in itself is not brought into question, but only the kind of punishment; the judges had decided that Socrates deserved punishment. But when it was left to the accused to determine what his punishment should be, it might not be arbitrary, but must be in conformity with the crime, a money or bodily punishment (ὄ, τι χρὴ παθεῖν ἢ ἀποτῖθαι).141 But it was implied in the guilty persons constituting himself his own judge, that he submitted himself to the decision of the court and acknowledged himself to be guilty. Now Socrates declined to assign a punishment for himself consisting either of fine or banishment, and he had the choice between these and death, which his accusers proposed. He declined to choose the former punishment because he, according to Xenophon’s account (Apol. Socr. § 23), in the formality of the exchange-penalty (τὸ ὐποτιμᾶσθαι), as he said, would acknowledge guilt; but there was no longer any question as to the guilt, but only as to the kind of punishment.
This silence may indeed be considered as moral greatness, but, on the other hand, it contradicts in some measure what Socrates says later on in prison, that he did not wish to flee, but remained there, because it seemed better to the Athenians and better to him to submit to the laws (Vol. I., p. 342). But the first submission would have meant that as the Athenians had found him guilty, he respected this decision, and acknowledged himself as guilty. Consistently he would thus have held it better to impose his punishment, since thereby he would not only have submitted himself to the laws, but also to the judgment. We see in Sophocles (Antig. verses 925, 926), the heavenly Antigone, that noblest of figures that ever appeared on earth, going to her death, her last words merely stating —
“If this seems good unto the gods,
Suffering, we may be made to know our error.”
Pericles also submitted himself to the judgment of the people as sovereign; we saw him (Vol. I., p. 328) going round the citizens entreating for Aspasia and Anaxagoras. In the Roman Republic we likewise find the noblest men begging of the citizens. There is nothing dishonouring to the individual in this, for he must bend before the general power, and the real and noblest power is the people. This acknowledgment the people must have direct from those who raise themselves amongst them. Here, on the contrary, Socrates disclaims the submission to, and humiliation before the power of the people, for he did not wish to ask for the remission of his punishment. We admire in him a moral independence which, conscious of its own right, insists upon it and does not bend either to act otherwise, or to recognize as wrong what it itself regards as right. Socrates hence exposed himself to death, which could not be regarded as the punishment for the fault of which he was found guilty; for the fact that he would not himself determine the punishment, and thus disdained the juridical power of the people, was foremost in leading to his condemnation. In a general way he certainly recognized the sovereignty of the people, but not in this individual case; it has, however, to be recognized, not only in general, but in each separate case. With us the competency of the court is presupposed, and the criminal judged without further ado; to-day the whole matter is also open to the light of day and accepted as an acknowledged fact. But with the Athenians we find the characteristic request that the prisoner should, through the act of imposing on himself a penalty, sanction the judge’s sentence of guilt. In England this is certainly not the case, but there still remains a like form of asking the accused by what law he wishes to be judged. He then answers, by the law of the land and by the judges of his country. Here we have the recognition of legal operations.
Socrates thus set his conscience in opposition to the judges’ sentence, and acquitted himself before its tribunal. But no people, and least of all a free people like the Athenians, has by this freedom to recognize a tribunal of conscience which knows no consciousness of having fulfilled its duty excepting its own consciousness. To this government and law, the universal spirit of the people, may reply: “If you have the consciousness of having done your duty, we must also have the consciousness that you have so done.” For the first principle of a State is that there is no reason or conscience or righteousness or anything else, higher than what the State recognizes as such. Quakers, Anabaptists, &c., who resist any demands made on them by the State, such as to defend the Fatherland, cannot be tolerated in a true State. This miserable freedom of thinking and believing what men will, is not permitted, nor any such retreat behind personal consciousness of duty. If this consciousness is no mere hypocrisy, in order that what the individual does should be recognized as duty, it must be recognized as such by all. If the people can make mistakes the individual may do so much more easily, and he must be conscious that he can do this much more easily than the people. Now law also has a conscience and has to speak through it; the law-court is the privileged conscience. Now if the miscarriage of justice in a trial is shown by every conscience clamouring for something different, the conscience of the court alone possesses any value as being the universal legalized conscience, which does not require to recognize the particular conscience of the accused. Men are too easily convinced of having fulfilled their duty, but the judge finds out whether duty is in fact fulfilled, even if men have the consciousness of its being so.
We should expect nothing else of Socrates than that he should go to meet his death in the most calm and manly fashion. Plato’s account of the wonderful scene his last hours presented, although containing nothing very special, forms an elevating picture, and will be to us a permanent representation of a noble deed. The last dialogue of Plato is popular philosophy, for the immortality of the soul is here first brought forward; yet it brings no consolation, for, as Homer makes Achilles say in the nether world, he would prefer to be a ploughboy on the earth.
But though the people of Athens asserted through the execution of this judgment the rights of their law as against the attacks of Socrates, and had punished the injury caused to their moral life by Socrates, Socrates was still the hero who possessed for himself the absolute right of the mind, certain of itself and of the inwardly deciding consciousness, and thus expressed the higher principle of mind with consciousness. Now because, as has been said, this new principle by effecting an entrance into the Greek world, has come into collision with the substantial spirit and the existing sentiments of the Athenian people, a reaction had to take place, for the principle of the Greek world could not yet bear the principle of subjective reflection. The Athenian people were thus, not only justified, but also bound to react against it according to their law, for they regarded this principle as a crime. In general history we find that this is the position of the heroes through whom a new world commences, and whose principle stands in contradiction to what has gone before and disintegrates it: they appear to be violently destroying the laws. Hence individually they are vanquished, but it is only the individual, and not the principle, which is negated in punishment, and the spirit of the Athenian people did not in the removal of the individual, recover its old position. The false form of individuality is taken away, and that, indeed, in a violent way, by punishment; but the principle itself will penetrate later, if in another form, and elevate itself into a form of the world-spirit. This universal mode in which the principle comes forth and permeates the present is the true one; what was wrong was the fact that the principle came forth only as the peculiar possession of one individual. His own world could not comprehend Socrates, but posterity can, in as far as it stands above both. It may be conceived that the life of Socrates had no need to have such an end, for Socrates might have lived and died a private philosopher, and his teaching might have been quietly accepted by his disciples, and have spread further still without receiving any notice from State or people; the accusation thus would seem to have been contingent. But it must be said that it was through the manner of that event that this principle became so highly honoured. The principle is not merely something new and peculiar to itself, but it is an absolutely essential moment in the self-developing consciousness of self which is designed to bring to pass as a totality, a new and higher actuality. The Athenians perceived correctly that this principle not only meant opinion and doctrine, for its true attitude was that of a direct and even hostile and destructive relation to the actuality of the Greek mind; and they proceeded in accordance with this perception. Hence, what follows in Socrates’ life is not contingent, but necessarily follows upon his principle. Or the honour of having recognized that relation, and indeed of having felt that they themselves were tinged with this principle, is due to the Athenians.
c. The Athenians likewise repented of their condemnation of Socrates, and punished some of his accusers with death itself, and others with banishment; for according to Athenian laws, the man who made an accusation, and whose accusation was found to be false, usually underwent the same punishment that otherwise the criminal would have borne. This is the last act in this drama. On the one hand the Athenians recognized through their repentance the individual greatness of the man; but on the other (and this we find by looking closer) they also recognized that this principle in Socrates, signifying the introduction of new gods and disrespect to parents, has — while destructive and hostile to it — been introduced even into their own spirit, and that they themselves are in the dilemma of having in Socrates only condemned their own principle. In that they regretted the just judgment of Socrates, it seems to be implied that they wished that it had not occurred. But from the regret it does not follow that in itself it should not have occurred, but only that it should not have happened for their consciousness. Both together constitute the innocence which is guilty and atones for its guilt; it would only be senseless and despicable if there were no guilt. An innocent person who comes off badly is a simpleton; hence it is a very flat and uninteresting matter when tyrants and innocent persons are represented in tragedies, just because this is an empty contingency. A great man would be guilty and overcome the great crisis that ensues; Christ thus gave up his individuality, but what was brought forth by him remained.
The fate of Socrates is hence really tragic, not in the superficial sense of the word and as every misfortune is called tragic. The death of an estimable individual must, in such a sense, be specially tragic, and thus it is said of Socrates, that because he was innocent and condemned to death, his fate was tragic. But such innocent suffering would only be sad and not tragic, for it would not be a rational misfortune. Misfortune is only rational when it is brought about by the will of the subject, who must be absolutely justified and moral in what he does, like the power against which he wars — which must therefore not be a merely natural power, or the power of a tyrannic will. For it is only in such a case that man himself has any part in his misfortune, while natural death is only an absolute right which nature exercises over men. Hence, in what is truly tragic there must be valid moral powers on both the sides which come into collision; this was so with Socrates. His is likewise not merely a personal, individually romantic lot; for we have in it the universally moral and tragic fate, the tragedy of Athens, the tragedy of Greece. Two opposed rights come into collision, and the one destroys the other. Thus both suffer loss and yet both are mutually justified; it is not as though the one alone were right and the other wrong. The one power is the divine right, the natural morality whose laws are identical with the will which dwells therein as in its own essence, freely and nobly; we may call it abstractly objective freedom. The other principle, on the contrary, is the right, as really divine, of consciousness or of subjective freedom; this is the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, i.e. of self-creative reason; and it is the universal principle of Philosophy for all successive times. It is these two principles which we see coming into opposition in the life and the philosophy of Socrates.
The Athenian people had come into a period of culture, in which this individual consciousness made itself independent of the universal spirit and became for itself. This was perceived by them in Socrates, but at the same time it was felt that it meant ruin, and thus they punished an element which was their own. The principle of Socrates is hence not the transgression of one individual, for all were implicated; the crime was one that the spirit of the people committed against itself. Through this perception the condemnation of Socrates was retracted; Socrates appeared to have committed no crime, for the spirit of the people has now generally reached the consciousness which turns back from the universal into itself. This meant the disintegration of this people, whose mind and spirit consequently soon disappeared from the world, but yet out of its ashes a higher took its rise, for the world-spirit had raised itself into a higher consciousness. The Athenian State, indeed, endured for long, but the bloom of its character soon faded. It is characteristic of Socrates that he grasped the principle of the inwardness of knowledge, not practically merely, as did Critias and Alcibiades (supra, pp. 421, 438), but in thought, making it valid to thought, and this is the higher method. Knowledge brought about the Fall, but it also contains the principle of Redemption. Thus what to others was only ruin, to Socrates, because it was the principle of knowledge, was also a principle of healing. The development of this principle, which constitutes the content of all successive history, is explicitly the reason that the later philosophers withdrew from the affairs of the State, restricted themselves to cultivating an inner world, separated from themselves the universal aim of the moral culture of the people, and took up a position contrary to the spirit of Athens and the Athenians. From this it came to pass that particularity of ends and interests now became powerful in Athens. This has, in common with the Socratic principle, the fact that what seems right and duty, good and useful to the subject in relation to himself as well as to the State, depends on his inward determination and choice, and not on the constitution and the universal. This principle of self-determination for the individual has, however, become the ruin of the Athenian people, because it was not yet identified with the constitution of the people; and thus the higher principle must in every case appear to bring ruin with it where it is not yet identified with the substantial of the people. The Athenian life became weak, and the State outwardly powerless, because its spirit was divided within itself. Hence it was dependent on Lacedæmon, and we finally see the external subordination of these States to the Macedonians.
We are done with Socrates. I have been more detailed here because all the features of the case have been so completely in harmony, and he constitutes a great historic turning point. Socrates died at sixty-nine years of age, in Olympiad 95, 1 (399-400 B.C.), an Olympiad after the end of the Peloponnesian war, twenty-nine years after the death of Pericles, and forty-four years before the birth of Alexander. He saw Athens in its greatness and the beginning of its fall; he experienced the height of its bloom and the beginning of its misfortunes.
THE RESULT OF the death of Socrates was, that the little company of his friends went off from Athens to Megara, where Plato also came. Euclides had settled there and received them gladly.142 When Socrates’ condemnation was retracted and his accusers punished, certain of the Socratics returned, and all was again brought into equilibrium. The work of Socrates was far-reaching and effectual in the kingdom of Thought, and the stimulation of a great amount of interest is always the principal service of a teacher. Subjectively, Socrates had the formal effect of bringing about a discord in the individual; the content was subsequently left to the free-will and liking of each person, because the principle was subjective consciousness and not objective thought. Socrates himself only came so far as to express for consciousness generally the simple existence of one’s own thought as the Good, but as to whether the particular conceptions of the Good really properly defined that of which they were intended to express the essence, he did not inquire. But because Socrates made the Good the end of the living man, he made the whole world of idea, or objective existence in general, rest by itself, without seeking to find a passage from the Good, the real essence of what is known as such, to the thing, and recognizing real essence as the essence of things. For when all present speculative philosophy expresses the universal as essence, this, as it first appears, has the semblance of being a single determination, beside which there are a number of others. It is the complete movement of knowledge that first removes this semblance, and the system of the universe then shows forth its essence as Notion, as a connected whole.
The most varied schools and principles proceeded from this doctrine of Socrates, and this was made a reproach against him, but it was really due to the indefiniteness and abstraction of his principle. And in this way it is only particular forms of this principle which can at first be recognized in philosophic systems which we call Socratic. Under the name of Socratic, I understand, however, those schools and methods which remained closer to Socrates and in which we find nothing but the one-sided understanding of Socratic culture. One part of these kept quite faithfully to the direct methods of Socrates, without going any further. A number of his friends are mentioned as being of this description, and these, inasmuch as they were authors, contented themselves with correctly transcribing dialogues after his manner, which were partly those he actually had held with them, and partly those they had heard from others; or else with working out similar dialogues in his method. But for the rest they abstained from speculative research, and by directing their attention to what was practical, adhered firmly and faithfully to the fulfilment of the duties of their position and circumstances, thereby maintaining calm and satisfaction. Xenophon is the most celebrated of those mentioned, but besides him a number of other Socratics wrote dialogues. Æschines, some of whose dialogues have come down to us, Phædo, Antisthenes and others are mentioned, and amongst them a shoemaker, Simon, “with whom Socrates often spoke at his workshop, and who afterwards carefully wrote out what Socrates said to him.” The title of his dialogues, as also those of the others which are left to us, are to be found in Diogenes Laërtius (II. 122, 123; 60, 61; 105; VI. 15-18); they have, however, only a literary interest, and hence I will pass them by.
But another section of the Socratics went further than Socrates, inasmuch as they, starting from him, laid hold of and matured one of the particular aspects of his philosophy and of the standpoint to which philosophic knowledge was brought through him. This standpoint maintained the absolute character of self-consciousness within itself, and the relation of its self-existent universality to the individual. In Socrates, and from him onward, we thus see knowledge commencing, the world raising itself into the region of conscious thought, and this becoming the object. We no longer hear question and answer as to what Nature is, but as to what Truth is; or real essence has determined itself not to be the implicit, but to be what it is in knowledge. We hence have the question of the relationship of self-conscious thought to real essence coming to the front as what concerns us most. The true and essence are not the same; the true is essence as thought, but essence is the simply implicit. This simple is, indeed, thought, and is in thought, but when it is said that essence is pure Being or Becoming, as the being-for-self of the atomists, and then that the Notion is thought generally (the νοῦς of Anaxagoras), or finally measure, this is asserted directly, and in an objective manner. Or it is the simple unity of the objective and of thought; it is not purely objective — for Being cannot be seen, heard, &c.; nor is it pure thought in opposition to the existent — for this is the explicitly existent self-consciousness which separates itself from essence. It is finally not the unity going back into itself from the difference in the two sides, which is understanding and knowledge. In these self-consciousness on the one hand presents itself as being-for-self, and on the other, as Being; it is conscious of this difference, and from this difference turns back into the unity of both. This unity, the result, is the known, the true. One element in the true is the certainty of itself; this moment has attained to reality — in consciousness and for consciousness. It is through this movement and the investigation of the subject, that the succeeding period of Philosophy is distinguished, because it does not contemplate essence as left to itself, and as purely objective, but as in unity with the certainty of itself. It is not to be understood by this that such knowledge had itself been made into essence, so that it is held to be the content and definition of absolute essence, or that essence had been determined for the consciousness of these philosophers as the unity of Being and Thought, i.e. as if they had thought of it thus; but they could merely no longer speak of essence and actuality without this element of self-certainty. And this period is hence, so to speak, the middle period, which is really the movement of knowledge, and considers knowledge as the science of essence, which first brings about that unity.
From what has been said, it can now be seen what philosophic systems can come before us. That is to say, because in this period the relation of Thought to Being, or of the universal to the individual, is made explicit, we see, on the one hand, as the object of Philosophy, the contradiction of consciousness coming to consciousness — a contradiction as to which the ordinary modes of thought have no knowledge, for they are in a state of confusion, seeing that they go on unthinkingly. On the other hand we have Philosophy as perceiving knowledge itself, which, however, does not get beyond its Notion, and which, because it is the unfolding of a more extensive knowledge of a content, cannot give itself this content, but can only think it, i.e. determine it in a simple manner. Of those Socratics who hold a place of their own, there are, according to this, three schools worthy of consideration; first the Megaric School, at whose head stands Euclid of Megara, and then the Cyrenaic and Cynic Schools; and from the fact that they all three differ very much from one another, it is clearly shown that Socrates himself was devoid of any positive system. With these Socratics the determination of the subject for which the absolute principle of the true and good likewise appears as end, came into prominence; this end demands reflection and general mental cultivation, and also requires that men should be able to tell what the good and true really are. But though these Socratic schools as a whole rest at saying that the subject itself is end, and reaches its subjective end through the cultivation of its knowledge, the form of determination in them is still the universal, and it is also so that it does not remain abstract, for the development of the determinations of the universal gives real knowledge. The Megarics were most abstract, because they held to the determination of the good which, as simple, was to them the principle; the unmoved and self-related simplicity of thought becomes the principle of consciousness as individual, as it is of conscious knowledge. The Megaric school associated with the assertion of the simplicity of the good, the dialectic, that all that was defined and limited is not true. But because with the Megarics the principal point was to know the universal, and this universal was to them the Absolute which had to be retained in this form of the universal, this thought, as Notion which holds a negative position in relation to all determinateness and thus to that of Notion also, was equally turned against knowledge and perception.
The Cyrenaics take knowledge in its subjective signification, and as signifying individuality as certainty of self, or feeling; to this as to that which is essential, they restrict the exercise of consciousness, and, generally speaking, make existence for consciousness consist therein. Now because they thereby sought to define the Good more closely, they called it simply pleasure or enjoyment, by which, however, anything can be understood. This principle of the Cyrenaic school would seem to have been far removed from that of Socrates, since we at once think of the transient existence of feeling as directly in opposition to the Good; this, however, is not the case. The Cyrenaics likewise upheld the universal, for, if it is asked what the Good is, we find they certainly made pleasurable feeling, which presents the appearance of a determinate, to be its content, but seeing that a cultured mind is also requisite, enjoyment, as it is obtained through thought, is here indicated.
The Cynics also further defined the principle of the Good, but in another way from the Cyrenaics; its content, they said, lay in man’s keeping to what is in conformity with nature and to the simple needs of nature. They similarly call all that is particular and limited in the aims of men that which is not to be desired. To the Cynics, too, mental culture through the knowledge of the universal is the principle; but through this knowledge of the universal the individual end must be attained, and this is, that the individual should keep himself in abstract universality, in freedom and independence, and be indifferent to all he formerly esteemed. Thus we see pure thought recognized in its movement with the individual, and the manifold transformations of the universal coming to consciousness. These three schools are not to be treated at length. The principle of the Cyrenaics became later on more scientifically worked out in Epicureanism, as that of the Cynics did in Stoicism.
Because Euclides (who is regarded as the founder of the Megaric way of thinking) and his school held to the forms of universality, and, above all, sought, and with success, to show forth the contradictions contained in all particular conceptions, they were reproached with having a rage for disputation, and hence the name of Eristics was given them. The instrument for bringing all that is particular into confusion and annulling this particular, was supplied by dialectic, which, indeed, was brought by them to very great perfection, but, as was privately stated, they did it in a kind of anger, so that others said that they should not be called a School (σχολή) but a gall (χολή).143 With a dialectic thus constituted, we find them taking the place of the Eleatic School and of the Sophists; and it seems as though the Eleatic School had merely been reproduced,144 since they were essentially identical with it. But this was only partly true — in that the Eleatic dialecticians maintained Being as the one existence in relation to which nothing particular is a truth, and the Megarics considered Being as the Good. The Sophists, on the other hand, did not seek their impulse in simple universality as fixed and as enduring; and similarly we shall find in the Sceptics, dialecticians who maintain that the subjective mind rests within itself. Besides Euclides, Diodorus and Menedemus are mentioned as distinguished Eristics, but particularly Eubulides, and later on Stilpo, whose dialectic likewise related to contradictions which appeared in external conception and in speech, so that it in great measure passed into a mere play upon words.
a. Euclides.
Euclides, who is not to be confused with the mathematician, is he of whom it is said that during the enmity between Athens and his birthplace, Megara, and in the period of most violent animosity, he often secretly went to Athens, dressed as a woman, not fearing even the punishment of death in order to be able to hear Socrates and be in his company.145 Euclides is said, in spite of his stubborn manner of disputing, to have been, even in his disputation, a most peaceful man. It is told that once in a quarrel his opponent was so irritated, that he exclaimed, “I will die if I do not revenge myself upon you!” Euclides replied, “And I will die if I do not soften your wrath so much by the mildness of my speech that you will love me as before.”146 It was Euclides who said that “the Good is one,” and it alone is, “though passing under many names; sometimes it is called Understanding, sometimes God; at another time Thought (νοῦς), and so on. But what is opposed to the good does not exist.”147 This doctrine Cicero (ibid.) calls noble, and says that it differs but little from the Platonic. Since the Megarics make the Good, as the simple identity of the true, into a principle, it is clearly seen that they expressed the Good as the absolute existence in a universal sense, as did Socrates; but they no longer, like him, recognized all the approximate conceptions, or merely opposed them as being indifferent to the interests of man, for they asserted definitely that they were nothing at all. Thus they come into the category of the Eleatics, since they, like them, showed that only Being is, and that all else, as negative, does not exist. While the dialectic of Socrates was thus incidental, in that he merely shook some current moral ideas, or the very first conceptions of knowledge, the Megarics, on the contrary, raised their philosophic dialectic into something more universal and real, for they applied themselves more to what is formal in idea and speech, though not yet, like the later Sceptics, to the determinations of pure Notions; for knowledge, thought, was not yet present in abstract conceptions. Of their own dialectic not much is told, but more is said of the embarrassment into which they brought ordinary consciousness, for they were in all kinds of ways alert in involving others in contradictions. Thus they applied dialectic after the manner of an ordinary conversation, just as Socrates applied his mind to every side of ordinary subjects, and as we also, in our conversation, try to make an assertion interesting and important. A number of anecdotes are told of their disputations, from which we see that what we call joking was their express business. Others of their puzzles certainly deal with a positive category of thought; they take these and show how, if they are held to be true, they bring about a contradiction.
b. Eubulides.
Of the innumerable multitude of ways in which they tried to confuse our knowledge in the categories, many are preserved with their names, and the principal of these are the Sophisms, whose discovery is ascribed to Eubulides of Miletus, a pupil of Euclides.148 The first thing which strikes us when we hear them is that they are common sophisms which are not worth contradiction, and scarcely of being heard, least of all have they a real scientific value. Hence we call them stupid, and look at them as dreary jokes, but it is in fact easier to set them aside than to refute them. We let ordinary speech pass, and are content with it, so long as everyone knows what the other means (when this is not so — we trust that God understands us), but these sophisms seem in a way to mislead common speech, for they show the contradictory and unsatisfactory nature of it when taken strictly as it is spoken. To confuse ordinary language so that we do not know how to reply, seems foolish, as leading to formal contradictions, and if it is done we are blamed for taking mere empty words and playing upon them. Our German seriousness, therefore, dismisses this play on words as shallow wit, but the Greeks honoured the word in itself, and the mere treatment of a proposition as well as the matter. And if word and thing are in opposition, the word is the higher, for the unexpressed thing is really irrational, since the rational exists as speech alone.
It is in Aristotle, and in his Sophistical Elenchi that we first find numerous examples of these contradictions (coming from the old Sophists equally with the Eristics), and also their solutions. Eubulides, therefore, likewise wrote against Aristotle,149 but none of this has come down to us. In Plato we also find, as we saw before (p. 370), similar jokes and ambiguities mentioned to make the Sophists ridiculous, and to show with what insignificant matters they took up their time. The Eristics went yet further, for they, like Diodorus, became jesters to courts, such as to that of the Ptolemies.150 From historic facts we see that this dialectic operation of confusing others and showing how to extricate them again was a general amusement of the Greek philosophers, both in public places and at the tables of kings. Just as the Queen of the East came to Solomon to put riddles to him, we find at the tables of kings witty conversation and assemblages of philosophers joking and making merry over one another. The Greeks were quite enamoured of discovering contradictions met with in speech and in ordinary ideas. The contradiction does not make its appearance as a pure contradiction in the conception, but only as interwoven with concrete ideas; such propositions neither apply to the concrete content nor to the pure Notion. Subject and predicate, of which every proposition consists, are different, but in the ordinary idea we signify their unity; this simple unity, which does not contradict itself, is to ordinary ideas the truth. But in fact, the simple self-identical proposition is an unmeaning tautology; for in any affirmation, differences are present, and because their diversity comes to consciousness, there is contradiction. But the ordinary consciousness is then at an end, for only where there is a contradiction is there the solution, self-abrogation. Ordinary consciousness has not the conception that only the unity of opposites is the truth — that in every statement there is truth and falsehood, if truth is to be taken in the sense of the simple, and falsehood in the sense of the opposed and contradictory; in it the positive, the first unity, and the negative, this last opposition, fall asunder.
In Eubulides’ propositions the main point was that because the truth is simple, a simple answer is required; that thus the answer should not, as happened in Aristotle (De Sophist. Elench. c. 24), have regard to certain special considerations; and, after all, this is really the demand of the understanding. Thus the mistake is to desire an answer of yes or no, for since no one ventures on either, perplexity ensues, because it is a fool’s part not to know what to reply. The simplicity of the truth is thus grasped as the principle. With us this appears in the form of making such statements as that one of opposites is true, the other false; that a statement is either true or not true; that an object cannot have two opposite predicates. That is the first principle of the understanding, the principium exclusi tertii, which is of great importance in all the sciences. This stands in close connection with the principle of Socrates and Plato (supra, pp. 455, 456), “The true is the universal;” which is abstractly the identity of understanding, according to which what is said to be true cannot contradict itself. This comes more clearly to light in Stilpo (p. 464). The Megarics thus kept to this principle of our logic of the understanding, in demanding the form of identity for the Truth. Now in the cases that they put, they did not keep to the universal, but sought examples in ordinary conception, by means of which they perplexed people; and this they formed into a kind of system. We shall bring forward some examples that are preserved to us; some are more important, but others are insignificant.
α. One Elench was called the Liar (ψευδόμενος); in it the question is put: “If a man acknowledges that he lies, does he lie or speak the truth?”151 A simple answer is demanded, for the simple whereby the other is excluded, is held to be the true. If it is said that he tells the truth, this contradicts the content of his utterance, for he confesses that he lies. But if it is asserted that he lies, it may be objected that his confession is the truth. He thus both lies and does not lie; but a simple answer cannot be given to the question raised. For here we have a union of two opposites, lying and truth, and their immediate contradiction; in different forms this has at all times come to pass, and has ever occupied the attention of men. Chrysippus, a celebrated Stoic, wrote six books on the subject,152 and another, Philetas of Cos, died in the decline which he contracted through over-study of these paradoxes.153 We have the same thing over again when, in modern times, we see men worn out by absorbing themselves in the squaring of the circle — a proposition which has well nigh become immortal. They seek a simple relation from something incommensurable, i.e. they fall into the error of demanding a simple reply where the content is contradictory. That little history has perpetuated and reproduced itself later on; in Don Quixote the very same thing appears. Sancho, governor of the island of Barataria, was tested by many insidious cases as he sat in judgment, and, amongst others, with the following: In his domain there was a bridge which a rich man had erected for the good of passengers — but with a gallows close by. The crossing of the bridge was restricted by the condition that everyone must say truly where he was going, and if he lied, he would be hung upon the gallows. Now one man came to the bridge, and to the question whither he went, answered that he had come here to be hung on the gallows. The bridge-keepers were much puzzled by this. For if they hanged him, he would have spoken the truth and ought to have passed, but if he crossed he would have spoken an untruth. In this difficulty they applied to the wisdom of the governor, who uttered the wise saying that in such dubious cases the mildest measures should be adopted, and thus the man should be allowed to pass. Sancho did not break his head over the matter. The result which the statement was to have, is made its content, with the condition that the opposite of the content should be the consequence. Hanging, understanding it to be truly expressed, should not have hanging as result; non-hanging as an event, should, on the other hand, have hanging as result. Thus death is made the consequence of suicide, but by suicide death itself is made into the content of the crime, and cannot thus be the punishment.
I will give another similar example along with the answer. Menedemus was asked whether he had ceased to beat his father. This was an attempt to place him in a difficulty, since to answer either yes or no, would be equally risky. For if he said ‘yes,’ then he once beat him, and if ‘no,’ then he still beats him. Menedemus hence replied that he neither ceased to beat him, nor had beaten him; and with this his opponents were not satisfied.154 Through this answer, which is two-sided, the one alternative, as well as the other, being set aside, the question is in fact answered; and this is also so in the former question as to whether the man spoke truly who said he lied, when the reply is made, “He speaks the truth and lies at the same time, and the truth is this contradiction.” But a contradiction is not the true, and cannot enter into our ordinary conceptions; hence Sancho Panza likewise set it aside in his judgment. If the consciousness of opposition is present, our ordinary ideas keep the contradictory sides apart; but in fact the contradiction appears in sensuous things, such as space, time, &c., and has in them only to be demonstrated. These sophisms thus not only appear to be contradictory, but are so in truth: this choice between two opposites, which is set before us in the example, is itself a contradiction.
β. The Concealed one (διαλανθάνων) and the Electra155 proceed from the contradiction of knowing and not knowing someone at the same time. I ask someone ‘Do you know your father?’ He replies ‘Yes.’ I then ask ‘Now if I show you someone hidden behind a screen, will you know him?’ ‘No.’ ‘But it is your father, and thus you do not know your father.’ It is the same in the Electra. ‘Can it be said that she knows her brother Orestes who stands before her or not?’ These twists and turns seem superficial, but it is interesting to consider them further. (αα) To know means, on the one hand, to have someone as ‘this one,’ and not vaguely and in general. The son thus knows his father when he sees him, i.e. when he is a ‘this’ for him; but hidden, he is not a ‘this’ for him, but a ‘this’ abrogated. The hidden one as a ‘this’ in ordinary conception, becomes a general, and loses his sensuous being, thereby is in fact not a true ‘this.’ The contradiction that the son both knows and does not know his father, thus becomes dissolved through the further qualification that the son knows the father as a sensuous ‘this,’ and not as a ‘this’ of idea. (ββ) On the other hand Electra knows Orestes, not as a sensuous ‘this,’ but in her own idea; the ‘this’ of idea and the ‘this’ here, are not the same to her. In this way there enters into these histories the higher opposition of the universal and of the ‘this,’ in as far as to have in the ordinary idea, means in the element of the universal; the abrogated ‘this’ is not only an idea, but has its truth in the universal. The universal is thus found in the unity of opposites, and thus it is in this development of Philosophy the true existence, in which the sensuous being of the ‘this’ is negated. It is the consciousness of this in particular which, as we shall soon see (p. 465), is indicated by Stilpo.
γ. Other quibbles of the same kind have more meaning, like the arguments which are called the Sorites (σωρείτης) and the Bald (φαλακρός).156 Both are related to the false infinite, and the quantitative progression which can reach no qualitative opposite, and yet at the end finds itself at a qualitative absolute opposite. The Bald head is the reverse of the problem of the Sorites. It is asked, “Does one grain of corn make a heap, or does one hair less make a bald head?” The reply is “No.” “Nor one again?” “No, it does not.” This question is now always repeated while a grain is always added, or a hair taken away. When at last it is said that there is a heap or a bald head, it is found that the last added grain or last abstracted hair has made the heap or the baldness, and this was at first denied. But how can a grain form a heap which already consists of so many grains? The assertion is that one grain does not make a heap; the contradiction, that one thus added or taken away brings about the change into the opposite — the many. For to repeat one is just to obtain many, the repetition causes certain ‘many’ grains to come together. The one thus becomes its opposite, — a heap, and the taking of one away brings about baldness. One and a heap are opposed to one another, but yet one; or the quantitative progression seems not to change but merely to increase or diminish, yet at last it has passed into its opposite. We always separate quality and quantity from one another, and only accept in the many a quantitative difference; but this indifferent distinction of number or size here turns finally into qualitative distinction, just as an infinitely small or infinitely great greatness is no longer greatness at all. This characteristic of veering round is of the greatest importance, although it does not come directly before our consciousness. To give one penny or one shilling is said to be nothing, but with all its insignificance the purse becomes emptied, which is a very qualitative difference. Or, if water is always more and more heated, it suddenly, at 80° Reamur, turns into steam. The dialectic of this passing into one another of quantity and quality is what our understanding does not recognize; it is certain that qualitative is not quantitative, and quantitative not qualitative. In those examples which seem like jokes, there is in this way genuine reflection on the thought-determinations which are in question.
The examples which Aristotle brings forward in his Elenchi, all show a very formal contradiction, appearing in speech, since even in it the individual is taken into the universal. “Who is that? It is Coriscus. Is Coriscus not masculine? Yes. That is neuter sex, and thus Coriscus is said to be neuter.”157 Or else Aristotle (De Sophist. Elench. c. 24) quotes the argument: “To thee a dog is father (σὸς ὁ κύων πατήρ). Thou art thus a dog;” that is what Plato, as we already mentioned (p. 370), made a Sophist say: it is the wit of a journeyman such as we find in Eulenspiegel. Aristotle is really at great pains to remove the confusion, for he says the ‘thy’ and the ‘father’ are only accidentally (παρὰ τὸ συμβεβηκός), and not in substance (κατὰ τὴν οὐσίαν) joined to one another. In the invention of such witticisms, the Greeks of that and of later times were quite indefatigable. With the Sceptics we shall later on see the dialectic side further developed and brought to a higher standpoint.
c. Stilpo.
Stilpo, a native of Megara, is one of the most celebrated of the Eristics. Diogenes tells us that “he was a very powerful debater, and excelled all so greatly in readiness of speech that all Greece, in looking to him, was in danger (μικροῦ δεῆσαι) of becoming Megareans.” He lived in the time of Alexander the Great, and after his death (Ol. 114, 1; 324 B.C.) in Megara, when Alexander’s generals fought together. Ptolemy Soter, Demetrius Poliorcetes, Antigonus’ son, when they conquered Megara, bestowed many honours on him. “In Athens all came out of their work-places to see him, and when anyone said that they admired him like a strange animal, he replied, No, but like a true man.”158 With Stilpo it was pre-eminently true that the universal was taken in the sense of the formal abstract identity of the understanding. The main point in his examples is, however, always the fact of his having given prominence to the form of universality as opposed to the particular.
α. Diogenes (II. 119) first quotes from him in relation to the opposition of the ‘this’ and the universal, “Whoever speaks of any man (ἄνθρωπον εἶναι), speaks of no one, for he neither speaks of this one nor that. For why should it rather be of this one than that? Hence it is not of this one.” That man is the universal, and that no one is specially indicated, everyone readily acknowledges, but some one still remains present to us in our conception. But Stilpo says that the ‘this’ does not exist at all, and cannot be expressed — that the universal only exists. Diogenes Laërtius certainly understands this as though “Stilpo abolished distinction of genera (ἀνῄρει καὶ τὰ εἴδη),” and Tennemann (Vol II., p. 158) supports him. But from what is quoted from him the opposite may clearly be deduced — that he upheld the universal and did away with the individual. And the fact that the form of universality is maintained, is further expressed in a number of anecdotes which are taken by Stilpo from common life. Thus he says: “The cabbage is not what is here shown (τὸ λάχανον οὐκ ἔστι τὸ δεικνύμενον). For the cabbage has existed for many thousand years, and hence this (what is seen) is not cabbage,” i.e. the universal only is, and this cabbage is not. If I say this cabbage, I say quite another thing from what I mean, for I say all other cabbages. An anecdote is told in the same reference. “He was conversing with Crates, a Cynic, and broke off to buy some fish;” Crates said, “What, you would avoid the question?” (for even in ordinary life anyone is laughed at or thought stupid who is unable to reply, and here where the subject was so important and where it would seem better to reply anything than nothing at all, no answer was forthcoming). Stilpo replied, “By no means, for I have the conversation, but I leave you, since the conversation remains but the fish will be sold.” What is indicated in these simple examples seems trivial, because the matter is trivial, but in other forms it seems important enough to be the subject of further inquiry.
That the universal should in Philosophy be given a place of such importance that only the universal can be expressed, and the ‘this’ which is meant, cannot, indicates a state of consciousness and thought which the philosophic culture of our time has not yet reached. As regards the ordinary human understanding, or the scepticism of our times, or in general the Philosophy which asserts that sensuous certainty (that which we see, hear, &c.), is the truth, or else that it is true that there are sensuous things outside of us — as to these, nothing, so far as the reasons for disbelieving them are concerned, need be said. For because the direct assertion that the immediate is the true is made, such statements only require to be taken with respect to what they say, and they will always be found to say something different from what they mean. What strikes us most is that they cannot say what they mean; for if they say the sensuous, this is a universal; it is all that is sensuous, a negative of the ‘this,’ or ‘this’ is all ‘these.’ Thought contains only the universal, the ‘this’ is only in thought; if I say ‘this’ it is the most universal of all. For example, here is that which I show; now I speak; but here and now is all here and now. Similarly when I say ‘I,’ I mean myself, this individual separated from all others. But I am even thus that which is thought of and cannot express the self which I mean at all. ‘I’ is an absolute expression which excludes every other ‘I,’ but everyone says ‘I’ of himself, for everyone is an ‘I.’ If we ask who is there, the answer ‘I’ indicates every ‘I.’ The individual also is thus the universal only, for in the word as an existence born of the mind, the individual, if it is meant, cannot find a place, since actually only the universal is expressed. If I would distinguish myself and establish my individuality by my age, my place of birth, through what I have done and where I have been or am at a particular time, it is the same thing. I am now so many years old, but this very now which I say is all now. If I count from a particular period such as the birth of Christ, this epoch is again only fixed by the ‘now’ which is ever displaced. I am now thirty-five years old, and now is 1805 A.D.; each period is fixed only through the other, but the whole is undetermined. That ‘now’ 1805 years have passed since Christ’s birth, is a truth which soon will become empty sound, and the determinateness of the ‘now’ has a before and after of determinations without beginning or end. Similarly everyone is at a ‘here’ — this here, for everyone is in a ‘here.’ This is the nature of universality, which makes itself evident in speech. We hence help ourselves through names with which we define perfectly anything individual, but we allow that we have not expressed the thing in itself. The name as name, is no expression which contains what I am; it is a symbol, and indeed a contingent symbol, of the lively recollection.
β. Inasmuch as Stilpo expressed the universal as the independent, he disintegrated everything. Simplicius says (in Phys. Arist. p. 26), “Since the so-called Megarics took it as ascertained that what has different determinations is different (ὧν οἱλόγοι ἕτεροι, ταῦτα ἕτερα ἐστιν), and that the diverse are separated one from the other (τὰ ἕτερα κεχώρισται ἀλλήλων), they seemed to prove that each thing is separated from itself (αὐτὸ αὑτοῦ κεχωρισμένον ἔκασον). Hence since the musical Socrates is another determination (λόγος) from the wise Socrates, Socrates was separated from himself.” That means that because the qualities of things are determinations for themselves, each of these is fixed independently, but yet the thing is an aggregate of many independent universalities. Stilpo asserted this. Now because, according to him, universal determinations are in their separation only the true reality, and the individual is the unseparated unity of different ideas, to him nothing individual has any truth.
γ. It is very remarkable that this form of identity came to be known in Stilpo, and he in this way only wished to know propositions identically expressed. Plutarch quotes from him: “A different predicate may in no case be attributed to any object (ἕτερον ἑτέρου μὴ κατηγορεῖσθαι). Thus we could not say that the man is good or the man is a general, but simply that man is only man, good is only good, the general is only the general. Nor could we say ten thousand knights, but knights are only knights, ten thousand are only ten thousand, &c. When we speak of a horse running, he says that the predicate is not identical with the object to which it is attributed. For the concept-determination man is different (τοῦ τί ἦν εἶναι τὸν λόγον) from the concept-determination good. Similarly horse and running are distinct: when we are asked for a definition of either, we do not give the same for both. Hence those who say something different of what is different are wrong. For if man and good were the same, and likewise horse and running, how could good be used of bread and physic, and running of lions and dogs”?159 Plutarch remarks here that Colotes attacks Stilpo in a bombastic manner (τραγῷδίαν ἐπάγει) as though he ignored common life (τὸν βίον ἀναιρεῖσθαι). “But what man,” Plutarch reflects, “lived any the worse for this? Is there any man who hears this said, and who does not know that it is an elaborate joke (παῖζοντός ἐστιν εὐμούσως)?”
The Cyrenaics took their name from Aristippus of Cyrene in Africa, the originator and head of the school. Just as Socrates wished to develop himself as an individual, his disciples, or those of the Cyrenaic and Cynic Schools, made individual life and practical philosophy their main object. Now if the Cyrenaics did not rest content with the determination of good in general, seeing that they inclined to place it in the enjoyment of the individual, the Cynics appear to be opposed to the whole doctrine, for they expressed the particular content of satisfaction as natural desires in a determination of negativity with regard to what is done by others. But as the Cyrenaics thereby satisfied their particular subjectivity, so also did the Cynics, and both schools have hence on the whole the same end — the freedom and independence of the individual. Because we are accustomed to consider happiness, which the Cyrenaics made the highest end of man, to be contentless, because we obtain it in a thousand ways, and it may be the result of most various causes, this principle appears at first to us as trivial, and indeed, generally speaking, it is so; we are likewise accustomed to believe that there is something higher than pleasure. The philosophic development of this principle which, for the rest, has not much in it, is mainly ascribed to Aristippus’ follower, Aristippus the younger. But Theodorus, Hegesias, and Anniceris, of the later Cyrenaics, are specially mentioned as having scientifically worked out the Aristippian principle, until it degenerated and merged into Epicureanism. But the consideration of the further progress of the Cyrenaic principle is specially interesting because this progression, in the essential nature of things, is carried quite beyond the principle, and has really abrogated it. Feeling is the indeterminate individual. But if thought, reflection, mental culture, are given a place in this principle, through the principle of the universality of thought that principle of contingency, individuality, mere subjectivity, disappears; and the only really remarkable thing in this school is that this greater consistency in the universal is therefore an inconsistency as regards the principle.
a. Aristippus.
Aristippus went about with Socrates for a long time, and educated himself under him, although at the same time he was a strong and highly cultivated man before he sought out Socrates at all. He heard of him either in Cyrene or at the Olympian Games, which, as Greeks, the Cyrenians likewise visited. His father was a merchant, and he himself came to Athens on a journey which had commerce as its object. He was first amongst the Socratics to ask money of those whom he instructed; he also sent money to Socrates, who, however, returned it.160 He did not content himself with the general expressions, good and beautiful, to which Socrates adhered, but took existence reflected in consciousness in its extreme determinateness as individuality; and because universal existence, as thought, was to him, from the side of reality, individual consciousness, he fixed on enjoyment as the only thing respecting which man had rationally to concern himself. The character and personality of Aristippus is what is most important, and what is preserved to us in his regard is his manner and life rather than his philosophic doctrines. He sought after enjoyment as a man of culture, who in that very way had raised himself into perfect indifference to all that is particular, all passions and bonds of every kind. When pleasure is made the principle, we immediately have the idea before us that in its enjoyment we are dependent, and that enjoyment is thus opposed to the principle of freedom. But neither of the Cyrenaic teaching, nor the Epicurean, whose principle is on the whole the same, can this be stated. For by itself the end of enjoyment may well be said to be a principle in opposition to Philosophy; but when it is considered in such a way that the cultivation of thought is made the only condition under which enjoyment can be attained, perfect freedom of spirit is retained, since it is inseparable from culture. Aristippus certainly esteemed culture at its highest, and proceeded from this position — that pleasure is only a principle for men of philosophic culture; his main principle thus was that what is found to be pleasant is not known immediately but only by reflection.
Aristippus lived in accordance with these principles, and what in him interests us most is the number of anecdotes told about him, because they contain traces of a mentally rich and free disposition. Since in his life he went about to seek enjoyment, not without understanding (and thereby he was in his way a philosopher), he sought it partly with the discretion which does not yield itself to a momentary happiness, because a greater evil springs therefrom; and partly (as if philosophy were merely preservation from anxiety) without that anxiety which on every side fears possible evil and bad results; but above all without any dependence on things, and without resting on anything which is itself of a changeable nature. He enjoyed, says Diogenes, the pleasures of the moment, without troubling himself with those which were not present; he suited himself to every condition, being at home in all; he remained the same whether he were in regal courts or in the most miserable conditions. Plato is said to have told him that it was given to him alone to wear the purple and the rags. He was specially attached to Dionysius, being very popular with him; he certainly clung to him, but always retained complete independence. Diogenes, the Cynic, for this reason called him the royal dog. When he demanded fifty drachms from someone who wished to hand over to him his son, and the man found the sum too high, saying that he could buy a slave for it, Aristippus answered, “Do so, and you will have two.” When Socrates asked him, “How do you have so much money?” he replied, “How do you have so little?” When a courtesan said to him that she had a child by him, he replied, “You know as little whether it is mine as, were you walking through briars, would you know which thorn pricked you.” A proof of his perfect indifference is given in the following: When Dionysius once spat at him, he bore it patiently, and when blamed, said, “The fishermen let themselves be wet by the sea to catch the little fish, and I, should I not bear this to catch such a good one?” When Dionysius asked him to choose one of three courtesans, he took them all with him, observing that it had been a dangerous thing even to Paris to choose out one; but after leading them to the vestibule of the house, he let all three go. He made nothing of the possession of money as contrasted with the results which appear to follow from pursuing pleasure, and hence he wasted it on dainties. He once bought a partridge at fifty drachms (about twenty florins). When someone rebuked him, he asked, “Would you not buy it for a farthing?” And when this was acknowleged, he answered, “Now fifty drachms are no more than that to me.” Similarly in journeying in Africa, the slave thought it hard to be troubled with a sum of money. When Aristippus knew this he said, “Throw away what is too much and carry what you can.”
As regards the value of culture, he replied to the question as to how an educated man differs from an uneducated, that a stone would not fit in with the other, i.e. the difference is as great as that of a man from the stone. This is not quite wrong, for man is what he ought to be as man, through culture; it is his second nature through which he first enters into possession of that which he has by nature, and thus for the first time he is Mind. We may not, however, think in this way of our uncultured men, for with us such men through the whole of their conditions, through customs and religion, partake of a source of culture which places them far above those who do not live in such conditions. Those who carry on other sciences and neglect Philosophy, Aristippus compares to the wooers of Penelope in the Odyssey, who might easily have Melantho and the other maidens, but who could not obtain the queen.161
The teaching of Aristippus and his followers is very simple, for he took the relation of consciousness to existence in its most superficial and its earliest form, and expressed existence as Being as it is immediately for consciousness, i.e. as feeling simply. A distinction is now made between the true, the valid, what exists in and for itself, and the practical and good, and what ought to be our end; but in regard to both the theoretic and practical truth, the Cyrenaics make sensation what determines. Hence their principle is more accurately not the objective itself, but the relation of consciousness to the objective; the truth is not what is in sensation the content, but is itself sensation, it is not objective, but the objective subsists only in it. “Thus the Cyrenaics say, sensations form the real criterion; they alone can be known, and are infallible, but what produces feeling is neither knowable nor infallible. Thus when we perceive a white and sweet, we may assert this condition as ours with truth and certainty. But that the causes of these feelings are themselves a white and sweet object we cannot with certainty affirm. What these men say about ends is also in harmony with this, for sensations also extend to ends. The sensations are either pleasant or unpleasant or neither of the two. Now they call the unpleasant feelings the bad, the end of which is pain; the pleasant is the good, whose invariable end is happiness. Thus feelings are the criteria of knowledge and the ends for action. We live because we follow them from testimony (ἐναργείᾳ) received and satisfaction (εὑδοκήσει) experienced, the former in accordance with theoretic intuitions (κατὰ τὰ ἄλλα πάθη), and the latter with what gives us pleasure.”162 That is to say, as end, feeling is no longer a promiscuous variety of sensuous affections (τὰ ἄλλα πάθη), but the setting up of the Notion as the positive or negative relation to the object of action, which is just the pleasant or the unpleasant.
Here we enter on a new sphere where two kinds of determinations constitute the chief points of interest; these are everywhere treated of in the many Socratic schools which were being formed, and though not by Plato and Aristotle, they were specially so by the Stoics, the new Academy, &c. That is to say, the one point is determination itself in general, the criterion; and the second is what determination for the subject is. And thus the idea of the wise man results — what the wise do, who the wise are, &c. The reason that these two expressions are now so prominent is one which rests on what has gone before. On the one hand the main interest is to find a content for the good, for else men may talk about it for years. This further definition of the good is just the criterion. On the other hand the interest of the subject appears, and that is the result of the revolution in the Greek mind made by Socrates. When the religion, constitution, laws of a people, are held in esteem, and when the individual members of a people are one with them, the question of what the individual has to do on his own account, will not be put. In a moralized, religious condition of things we are likely to find the end of man in what is present, and these morals, religion and laws are also present in him. When, on the contrary, the individual exists no longer in the morality of his people, no longer has his substantial being in the religion, laws, &c., of his land, he no longer finds what he desires, and no longer satisfies himself in his present. But if this discord has arisen, the individual must immerse himself in himself, and there seek his end. Now this is really the cause that the question of what is the essential for the individual arises. After what end must he form himself and after what strive? Thus an ideal for the individual is set up, and this is the wise man: what was called the ideal of the wise man is the individuality of self-consciousness which is conceived of as universal essence. The point of view is the same when we now ask, What can I know? What should I believe? What ought I to hope? What is the highest interest of the subject? It is not what is truth, right, the universal end of the world, for instead of asking about the science of the implicitly and explicitly objective, the question is what is true and right in as far as it is the insight and conviction of the individual, his end and a mode of his existence? This talk about wise men is universal amongst the Stoics, Epicureans, &c., but is devoid of meaning. For the wise man is not in question, but the wisdom of the universe, real reason. A third definition is that the universal is the good; the real side of things is enjoyment and happiness as a simple existence and immediate actuality. How then do the two agree? The philosophic schools which now arise and their successors have set forth the harmony of both determinations, which are the higher Being and thought.
b. Theodorus.
Of the later Cyrenaics, Theodorus must be mentioned first; he is famous for having denied the existence of the gods, and being, for this reason, banished from Athens. Such a fact can, however, have no further interest or speculative significance, for the positive gods which Theodorus denied, are themselves not any object of speculative reason. He made himself remarkable besides for introducing the universal more into the idea of that which was existence for consciousness, for “he made joy and sorrow the end, but in such a way that the former pertained to the understanding and the latter to want of understanding. He defined the good as understanding and justice, and the bad as the opposite; enjoyment and pain, however, were indifferent.”163 When we reach the consciousness that the individual sensuous feeling, as it is immediately, is not to be considered as real existence, it is then said that it must be accepted with understanding; i.e. feeling, just as it is, is not reality. For the sensuous generally, as sensation, theoretic or practical, is something quite indeterminate, this or that unit; a criticism of this unit is hence required, i.e. it must be considered in the form of universality, and hence this last necessarily reappears. But this advance on individuality is culture, which, through the limitation of individual feelings and enjoyments, tries to make these harmonious, even though it first of all only calculates as to that by which the greater pleasure is to be found. Now, to the question as to which of the many enjoyments which I, as a many-sided man, can enjoy, is the one which is in completest harmony with me, and in which I thus find the greatest satisfaction, it must be replied that the completest harmony with me is only found in the accordance of my particular existence and consciousness with my actual substantial Being. Theodorus comprehended this as understanding and justice, in which we know where to seek enjoyment. But when it is said that felicity must be sought by reflection, we know that these are empty words and thoughtless utterances. For the feeling in which felicity is contained, is in its conception the individual, self-changing, without universality and subsistence. Thus the universal, understanding, as an empty form, adheres to a content quite incongruous with it; and thus Theodorus distinguished the Good in its form, from the end as the Good in its nature and content.
c. Hegesias.
It is remarkable that another Cyrenaic, Hegesias, recognized this incongruity between sensation and universality, which last is opposed to the individual, having what is agreeable as well as disagreeable within itself. Because, on the whole, he took a firmer grasp of the universal and gave it a larger place, there passed from him all determination of individuality, and with it really the Cyrenaic principle. It came to his knowledge that individual sensation is in itself nothing; and, as he nevertheless made enjoyment his end, it became to him the universal. But if enjoyment is the end, we must ask about the content; if this content is investigated, we find every content a particular which is not in conformity with the universal, and thus falls into dialectic. Hegesias followed the Cyrenaic principle as far as to this consequence of thought. That universal is contained in an expression of his which we often enough hear echoed, “There is no perfect happiness. The body is troubled with manifold pains, and the soul suffers along with it; it is hence a matter of indifference whether we choose life or death. In itself nothing is pleasant or unpleasant.” That is to say, the criterion of being pleasant or unpleasant, because its universality is removed, is thus itself made quite indeterminate; and because it has no objective determinateness in itself, it has become unmeaning; before the universal, which is thus held secure, the sum of all determinations, the individuality of consciousness as such, disappears, but with it even life itself as being unreal. “The rarity, novelty, or excess of enjoyment begets in some cases enjoyment and in others discontent. Poverty and riches have no meaning for what is pleasant, since we see that the rich do not enjoy pleasures more than the poor. Similarly, slavery and liberty, noble and ignoble birth, fame and lack of fame, are equivalent as regards pleasure. Only to a fool can living be a matter of moment; to the wise man it is indifferent,” and he is consequently independent. “The wise man acts only after his own will, and he considers none other equally worthy. For even if he attain from others the greatest benefits, this does not equal what he gives himself. Hegesias and his friends also take away sensation, because it gives no sufficient knowledge,” which really amounts to scepticism. “They say further that we ought to do what we have reason to believe is best. The sinner should be forgiven, for no one willingly sins, but is conquered by a passion. The wise man does not hate, but instructs; his endeavours go not so much to the attainment of good, as to the avoidance of evil, for his aim is to live without trouble and sorrow.”164 This universality, which proceeds from the principle of the freedom of the individual self-consciousness, Hegesias expressed as the condition of the perfect indifference of the wise men — an indifference to everything into which we shall see all philosophic systems of the kind going forth, and which is a surrendering of all reality, the complete withdrawal of life into itself. It is told that Hegesias, who lived in Alexandria, was not allowed to teach the Ptolemies of the time, because he inspired many of his hearers with such indifference to life that they took their own.165
d. Anniceris.
We also hear of Anniceris and his followers, who, properly speaking, departed from the distinctive character of the principle of the Cyrenaic school, and thereby gave philosophic culture quite another direction. It is said of them that “they acknowledged friendship in common life, along with gratitude, honour to parents, and service for one’s country. And although the wise man has, by so doing, to undergo hardship and work, he can still be happy, even if he therein obtains few pleasures. Friendships are not to be formed on utilitarian grounds alone, but because of the good will that develops; and out of love to friends, even burdens and difficulties are to be undertaken.”166 The universal, the theoretically speculative element in the school, is thus lost; it sinks more into what is popular. This is then the second direction which the Cyrenaic school has taken; the first was the overstepping of the principle itself. A method of philosophizing in morals arises, which later on prevailed with Cicero and the Peripatetics of his time, but the interest has disappeared, so far as any consistent system of thought is concerned.
There is nothing particular to say of the Cynics, for they possess but little Philosophy, and they did not bring what they had into a scientific system; it was only later that their tenets were raised by the Stoics into a philosophic discipline. With the Cynics, as with the Cyrenaics, the point was to determine what should be the principle for consciousness, both as regards its knowledge and its actions. The Cynics also set up the Good as a universal end, and asked in what, for individual men, it is to be sought. But if the Cyrenaic, in accordance with his determinate principle, made the consciousness of himself as an individual, or feeling, into real existence for consciousness, the Cynic took this individuality, in as far as it has the form of universality directly for me, i.e. in as far as I am a free consciousness, indifferent to all individuality. Thus they are opposed to the Cyrenaics for while to these feeling, which, because it has to be determined through thought, is undoubtedly extended into universality and perfect freedom, is made the principle, the former begin with perfect freedom and independence as the property of man. But since this is the same indifference of self-consciousness which Hegesias expressed as real existence, the extremes in the Cynic and Cyrenaic modes of thought destroy themselves by their own consequences, and pass into one another. With the Cyrenaics there is the impulse to turn things back into consciousness, according to which nothing is real existence for me; the Cynics had also only to do with themselves, and the individual self-consciousness was likewise principle. But the Cynic, at least in the beginning, set up for the guidance of men the principle of freedom and indifference, both in regard to thought and actual life, as against all external individuality, particular ends, needs, and enjoyments; so that culture not only sought after indifference to these and independence within itself, as with the Cyrenaics, but for express privation, and for the limitation of needs to what is necessary and what nature demands. The Cynics thus maintained as the content of the good, the greatest independence of nature, i.e. the slightest possible necessities; this meant a rebound from enjoyment, and from the pleasures of feeling. The negative is here the determining; later on this opposition of Cynics and Cyrenaics likewise appeared between Stoics and Epicureans. But the same negation which the Cynics made their principle, had already shown itself in the further development which the Cyrenaic philosophy had taken. The School of the Cynics had no scientific weight; it only constitutes an element which must necessarily appear in the knowledge of the universal, and which is that consciousness must know itself in its individuality, as free from all dependence on things and on enjoyment. To him who relies upon riches or enjoyment such dependence is in fact real consciousness, or his individuality is real existence. But the Cynics so enforced that negative moment that they placed freedom in actual renunciation of so-called superfluities; they only recognized this abstract unmoving independence, which did not concern itself with enjoyment or the interests of an ordinary life. But true freedom does not consist in flying from enjoyment and the occupations which have as their concern other men and other ends in life; but in the fact that consciousness, though involved in all reality, stands above it and is free from it.
a. Antisthenes.
Antisthenes, an Athenian and friend of Socrates, was the first who professed to be a Cynic. He lived at Athens, and taught in a gymnasium, called Cynosarges, and he was called the “simple dog” (ἁπλοκύων). His mother was Thracian, which was often made a reproach to him — a reproach which to us would be unmeaning. He replied that the mother of the gods was a Phrygian, and that the Athenians, who make so much of their being native born, are in no way nobler than the native fish and grasshoppers. He educated himself under Gorgias and Socrates, and went daily from the Piræus to the city to hear Socrates. He wrote several works, the titles of which Diogenes mentions, and, according to all accounts, was esteemed a highly cultivated and upright man.167
Antisthenes’ principles are simple, because the content of his teaching remains general; it is hence superfluous to say anything further about it. He gives general rules, which consist of such excellent maxims as that “virtue is self-sufficing, and requires nothing more than a Socratic strength of character. The good is excellent, the bad discreditable. Virtue consists of works, and does not require many reasons or theories. The end of man is a virtuous life. The wise man is contented with himself, for he possesses everything that others seem to possess. His own virtue satisfies him; he is at home all over the world. If he lacks fame, this is not to be regarded as an evil, but as a good,” &c.168 We here, once more, have the tedious talk about the wise man, which by the Stoics, as also by the Epicureans, was even more spun out and made more tedious. In this ideal, where the determination of the subject is in question, its satisfaction is placed in simplifying its needs. But when Antisthenes says that virtue does not require reasons and theories, he forgets that he himself acquired, through the cultivation of mind, its independence and the power of renouncing all that men desire. We see directly that virtue has now obtained another signification; it no longer is unconscious virtue, like the simple virtue of a citizen of a free people, who fulfils his duties to fatherland, place, and family, as these relationships immediately require. The consciousness which has gone beyond itself must, in order to become Mind, now lay hold of and comprehend all reality, i.e. be conscious of it as its own. But conditions such as are called by names like innocence or beauty of soul, are childish conditions, which are certainly to be praised in their own place, but from which man, because he is rational, must come forth, in order to re-create himself from the sublated immediacy. The freedom and independence of the Cynics, however, which consists only in lessening to the utmost the burden imposed by wants, is abstract, because it, as negative in character, has really to be a mere renunciation. Concrete freedom consists in maintaining an indifferent attitude towards necessities, not avoiding them, but in their satisfaction remaining free, and abiding in morality and in participation in the moral life of man. Abstract freedom, on the contrary, surrenders its morality, because the individual withdraws into his subjectivity, and is consequently an element of immorality.
Yet Antisthenes bears a high place in this Cynical philosophy. But the attitude he adopted comes very near to that of rudeness, vulgarity of conduct and shamelessness; and later on Cynicism passed into such. Hence comes the continual mockery of, and the constant jokes against the Cynics; and it is only their individual manners and individual strength of character which makes them interesting. It is even told of Antisthenes that he began to attribute value to external poverty of life. Cynicism adopted a simple wardrobe — a thick stick of wild olive, a ragged double mantle without any under garment, which served as bed by night, a beggar’s sack for the food that was required, and a cup with which to draw water.169 This was the costume with which these Cynics used to distinguish themselves. That on which they placed highest value was the simplification of their needs; it seems very plausible to say that this produces freedom. For needs are certainly dependence upon nature, and this is antagonistic to freedom of spirit; the reduction of that dependence to a minimum is thus an idea which commends itself. But at the same time this minimum is itself undetermined, and if such stress is laid on thus merely following nature, it follows that too great a value is set on the needs of nature and on the renunciation of others. This is what is also evident in the monastic principle. The negative likewise contains an affirmative bias towards what is renounced; and the renunciation and the importance of what is renounced is thus made too marked. Socrates hence declares the clothing of the Cynics to be vanity. For “when Antisthenes turned outside a hole in his cloak, Socrates said to him, I see thy vanity through the hole in thy cloak.”170 Clothing is not a thing of rational import, but is regulated through needs that arise of themselves. In the North the clothing must be different from that in Central Africa; and in winter we do not wear cotton garments. Anything further is meaningless, and is left to chance and to opinion; in modern times, for instance, old-fashioned clothing had a meaning in relation to patriotism. The cut of my coat is decided by fashion, and the tailor sees to this; it is not my business to invent it, for mercifully others have done so for me. This dependence on custom and opinion is certainly better than were it to be on nature. But it is not essential that men should direct their understanding to this; indifference is the point of view which must reign, since the thing itself is undoubtedly perfectly indifferent. Men are proud that they can distinguish themselves in this, and try to make a fuss about it, but it is folly to set oneself against the fashion. In this matter I must hence not decide myself, nor may I draw it within the radius of my interests, but simply do what is expected of me.
b. Diogenes.
Diogenes of Sinope, the best known Cynic, distinguished himself even more than Antisthenes by the life he led, as also by his biting and often clever hits, and bitter and sarcastic retorts; but he likewise received replies which were often aimed as well. He is called the Dog, just as Aristippus was called by him the royal Dog, for Diogenes bore the same relation to idle boys as Aristippus did to kings. Diogenes is only famed for his manner of life; with him, as with the moderns, Cynicism came to signify more a mode of living than a philosophy. He confined himself to the barest necessities, and tried to make fun of others who did not think as he, and who laughed at his ways. That he threw away his cup when he saw a boy drinking out of his hands is well known. To have no wants, said Diogenes, is divine; to have as few as possible is to come nearest to the divine. He lived in all sorts of places, in the streets of Athens, in the market in tubs; and he usually resided and slept in Jupiter’s Stoa in Athens; he hence remarked that the Athenians had built him a splendid place of residence.171 Thus the Cynics thought not only of dress, but also of other wants. But a mode of life such as that followed by the Cynics, which professed to be a result of culture, is really conditioned by the culture of the mind. The Cynics were not anchorites; their consciousness was still essentially related to other consciousness. Antisthenes and Diogenes lived in Athens, and could only exist there. But in culture the mind is also directed to the most manifold needs, and to the methods of satisfying these. In more recent times the needs have much increased, and hence a division of the general wants into many particular wants and modes of satisfaction has arisen; this is the function of the activity of the understanding, and in its application luxury has a place. We may declaim against the morality of this, but in a State all talents, natural inclinations and customs must have free scope and be brought into exercise, and every individual may take what part he will, only he must in the main make for the universal. Thus the chief point is to place no greater value on such matters than what is demanded, or generally, to place no importance either on possessing or dispensing with them.
Of Diogenes we have only anecdotes to relate. In a voyage to Ægina he fell into the hands of sea-robbers, and was to be sold as a slave in Crete. Being asked what he understood, he replied, “To command men,” and told the herald to call out, “Who will buy a ruler?” A certain Xeniades of Corinth bought him, and he instructed his sons.
There are very many stories told of his residence in Athens. There he presented a contrast in his rudeness and disdainfulness to Aristippus’ fawning philosophy. Aristippus set no value on his enjoyments any more than on his wants, but Diogenes did so on his poverty. Diogenes was once washing his greens when Aristippus passed by, and he called out, “If you knew how to wash your greens yourself, you would not run after kings.” Aristippus replied very aptly, “If you knew how to associate with men, you would not wash greens.” In Plato’s house he once walked on the beautiful carpets with muddy feet, saying, “I tread on the pride of Plato.” “Yes, but with another pride,” replied Plato, as pointedly. When Diogenes stood wet through with rain, and the bystanders pitied him, Plato said, “If you wish to compassionate him, just go away. His vanity is in showing himself off and exciting surprise; it is what made him act in this way, and the reason would not exist if he were left alone.” Once when he got a thrashing, as anecdotes often tell, he laid a large plaster on his wounds, and wrote on it the names of those who had struck him in order that they might be blamed of all. When youths standing by him said, “We are afraid that you will bite us,” he replied, “Don’t mind, a dog never eats turnips.” At a feast a guest threw bones to him like a dog, and he went up to him and behaved to him like a dog. He gave a good answer to a tyrant who asked him from what metal statues should be cast: “From the metal from which the statues of Harmodius and Aristogiton were cast.” He tried to eat raw meat, which did not, however, agree with him; he could not digest it, and died at a very great age, as he lived — in the streets.172
c. Later Cynics.
Antisthenes and Diogenes, as already mentioned, were men of great culture. The succeeding Cynics are not any the less conspicuous by their exceeding shamelessness, but they were, generally speaking, nothing more than swinish beggars, who found their satisfaction in the insolence which they showed to others. They are worthy of no further consideration in Philosophy, and they deserve in its full the name of dogs, which was early given to them; for the dog is a shameless animal. Crates, of Thebes, and Hipparchia, a Cynic, celebrated their nuptials in the public market.173 This independence of which the Cynics boasted, is really subjection, for while every other sphere of active life contains the affirmative element of free intelligence, this means the denying oneself the sphere in which the element of freedom can be enjoyed.
ENDNOTES.
1 Zur Philosophie und Geschichte. Pt. V. pp. 184 — 186. (Edition of 1828, in 12 vols.)
2 S. Marheineke: “Lehrbuch des Christlichen Glaubens und Lebens.” Berlin, 1823. § 133, 134.
3 “Meinung ist mein.”
4 Cf. Hegels Werke, vol. VI. § 13, pp. 21, 22.
5 Flatt: De Theismo Thaleti Milesio abjudicando. Tub. 1785. 4.
6 Grundzüge des gegenwärtigen Zeitalters, pp. 211, 212; cf. Anweisung zum Seligen Leben, pp. 178, 348.
7 Sanchuniathonis Fragm. ed. Rich. Cumberland, Lond. 1720, 8; German by J. P. Kassel, Magdeburg, 1755, 8, pp. 1-4.
8 That is to say in the Lectures preceding these, delivered in the Winter Session 1825 — 1826.
9 Confucius, Sinarum philosophus, s. scientia Sinensis, latine exposita studio et opera Prosperi Juonetta, Herdtrich, Rougemont, Couplet, PP. S. J., Paris, 1687, fol.
10 Mémoires concernant les Chinois (Paris, 1776, sqq.), Vol. II., pp. 1-361. Antiquité des Chinois, par le Père Amiot, pp. 20, 54, &c.
11 Die Philosophie im Fortgang der Weltgeschichte, Vol. I., p. 157.
12 Cf. Windischmann, ibid., p. 125.
13 Mémoire sur la vie et les opinions de Lao-Tseu, par Abel Rémusat (Paris, 1823), p. 18 sqq.; Extrait d’une lettre de Mr. Amiot, 16 Octobre, 1787, de Peking (Mémoires concernant les Chinois, T. xv.), p. 208, sqq.
14 Dr. Legge states in “The Religions of China” that Tâo was not the name of a person, but of a concept or idea. Of the English terms most suitable for it, he suggests the Way in the sense of Method. — (Translator’s note.)
15 Abel Rémusat, l.c. p. 31, seq.; Lettre sur les caractères des Chinois (Mémoires concernant les Chinois, Tome 1) p. 299, seq.
16 Rémusat thought that he discovered in these three syllables the word Jehovah. — (Translator’s note.)
17 Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. I., Part I. London, 1824, pp. 19-43. (II., on the Philosophy of the Hindus, Part I., by Henry Thomas Colebrooke, read June 21, 1823).
18 Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. i., Part I., pp. 92 — 118. (VII. Essay on the Philosophy of the Hindus, Part II., by Henry Thomas Colebrooke.)
19 Brucker, Hist. Phil. T. I. p. 460; Plutarch, De plac. phil. I. 3.
20 Herod. II. 20; Senec. Quæst. natur. IV. 2; Diog. Laert. I. 37.
21 Diog. Laert. 1. § 34, et Menag. ad. h. 1.
22 Cf. Ritter: Geschichte der Ionischen Philosophie, p. 15.
23 Plutarch, De plac. phil. I. 3; Cicero, De Natura Deorum, I. 10. Aristot. Phys. III. 4.
24 Cf. Aristot. Phys. I. 4.
25 Simplicius ad Arist. Phys. (I. 2), p. 5, 6.
26 Stobæi Eclog. Physic. c. 11., p. 294, ed. Heeren.
27 Simplicius ad Phys. Arist. p. 6, b.
28 Cf. Plutarch Quæst. convival. VIII. 8.
29 Diog. Laert. I. 119; Menagius ad h. 1.
30 In irrisione gentilium, c. 12 (citante Fabricio ad Sext. Emp. Hyp. Pyrrh. III. 4, § 30).
31 Cf. Porphyr. De vita Pythag., §§ 14, 15; et Ritterhus, ad. h. I.
32 Cf. Porphyr. De vita Pyth. 6, Iamblich. De vita Pyth. XXIX. 158.
33 Diog. Laert. I. 12; VIII. 8; Iamblich. VIII. 44; XII. 58.
34 Porphyr. De vita Pyth. 25, 21, 22; Iamblich. De vita Pyth. 36; VII. 33, 34; XXXII. 220-222.
35 Diog. Laert. VIII. 11, Porphyr., 18-20; Iamblich. II. 9, 10, XXIV. 108, 109; Menag. et Casaub. ad Diog. Laert. VIII. 19.
36 Porphyr. 37; Iamblich. XVII. 71-74; XVIII. 80-82; XXVIII. 150; XX. 94, 95; Diog. Laert. VIII. 10.
37 Iamblich. XXI. 100; XXIX. 165; Diog. Laert. VIII. 22; Porphyr. 40.
38 Porphyr. 32-34; Iamblich. XXIX. 163, 164; XX. 96; XXI. 97; XXIV. 107; Diog. Laert. VIII. 19, 21, 39.
39 Diog. Laert., VIII. 39, 40; Iamblich. XXXV. 248-264; Porphyrius, 54-59; Anonym. De vita Pyth. (apud Photium), 2.
40 Cf. Platon. Timæum, p. 20, Steph. (p. 8, ed. Bekk.).
41 Sext. Pyrrh. Hyp. III. 18, § 152; adv. Math. X. § 250, 251.
42 Mathem. c. 5, p. 30, ed. Bullialdi: cf. Aristoxen. ap. Stob. Ecl. Phys. 2, p. 16.
43 Gnomicorum poetarum opera: Vol. I. Pythagoreorum aureum carmen, ed. Glandorf Fragm. I. v. 45-48; Sext. Empir. adv. Math. IV. § 2, et Fabric. ad h. 1.
44 Burney points out the fallacy of this statement in his History of Music. (Translator’s note.)
45 Sext. Empiricus Pyrrh. Hyp. III. 18, § 155; adv. Math. IV. §§ 6, 7; VII. §§ 95-97; X. § 283.
46 Diog. Laert. VIII. §§ 4, 5, 14; Porphyrius, §§ 26, 27; Iamblichus, c. XIV. § 63. (Homer’s Iliad XVI. v. 806-808; XVII. v. 45, seq.).
47 Gnomicorum poëtarum opera, Vol. I. Pyth. aureum carmen, ed. Glandorf. Fragm. I. v. 1-4.
48 Sext. Empir. Pyrrh. Hyp. I. 33, § 225; Simpl. ad Phys. Arist. pp. 5, 6; Plut. de plac. philos. II. 4.
49 That Xenophanes is here meant is shown from the titles of the collected Becker manuscripts, as also from comparing this passage with the verses remaining to us, which are by Xenophanes, though they were earlier ascribed to Zeno; this was done by Hegel when he did not, as in many lectures, take the Eleatic passages together. The editor found a justification in this for placing the passage in its proper place. (Note by editor.)
50 Adv. Math. VII. 47-52; 110, 111; VIII. 326; Pyrrh. Hyp. II. 4, § 18.
51 Sext. Empir. adv. Math. X. 313, 314; Simplic. in Phys. Arist., p. 41.
52 Platon. Theaet. p. 183. Steph. (p. 263, ed. Bekk.); Sophist, p. 217 (p. 127).
53 Diog. Laert. IX. 23; et Casaubonus ad. h. 1.
54 Plutarch, De plac. phil. II. 7; Euseb. XV. 38; Stob. Ecl. Phys. c. 23, p. 482-484; Simplicius in Arist. Phys. p. 9 a, 7 b; Arist. Met. I. 4; Brandis Comment. Eleat. p. 162.
55 De Sensu, p. 1, ed. Steph. 1557 (citante Fülleborn, p. 92).
56 This obscure clause has been differently interpreted. Dr. Hutchison Stirling, in his annotations on Schwegler’s “History of Philosophy,” says: “Zeller accepts (and Hegel, by quoting and translating the whole passage, already countenanced him in advance) the equivalent of Theophrastus for τὸ πλέον, τὸ ὑπέρβαλλον namely, and interprets the clause itself thus:— ‘The preponderating element of the two is thought occasions and determines the ideas;’ that is as is the preponderating element (the warm or the cold) so is the state of mind. In short, the more is the thought is the linguistic equivalent of the time for according to the more is the thought.” (Translator’s note.)
57 As a matter of fact, since a comparison of this reasoning with the fragments of Melissus which Simplicius (in Arist. Physica and De Cœlo) has retained, places this conjecture beyond doubt, the editor is constrained to place it here, although Hegel, when he dealt with the Eleatics separately, put it under the heading of Xenophanes. (Note by Editor.)
58 Cf. Plat. Parmenid. pp. 126, 127, Steph. (pp. 3 — 5 Bekk.).
59 Diog. Laert. IX. 26, 27, et Menag. ad h. 1. Valer. Max. III. 3 ext. 2, 3.
60 Diog. Laert. VI. 39, Sext. Empir. Pyrrh. Hyp. III. 8, § 66.
61 Plat. Cratyl. p. 402, Steph. (p. 42, Bekk.); Aristot. Met. I. 6, XIII. 4.
62 Johannes Philoponus ad Aristot. de Anima (I. 2) fol. 4 a.
63 Clemens Alex.: Stromata V. 14, p. 712, ed. Pott. (cit. Steph. Poës. phil. p. 131).
64 Cf. Stobaei Ecl. Phys. 22, p. 454.
65 Diog. Laërt. IX. 7; Simplic. ad Arist. Phys. p. 6; Stob. Eclog. Phys. c. 3, p. 58-60.
66 Plutarch. de plac. phil. I. 28.
67 Heraclides; Allegoriæ Homericæ, pp. 442, 443, ed. Gale.
68 In writing of them Hegel very seldom separates these two philosophers, though he does so in the Jena edition.
69 See Hegel’s “Werke,” Vol. III. p 181, et seq.
70 Ib. p. 112.
71 Plutarch, de plac. phil. I., 26; Stobæi Ecl. Phys. 20, p. 394. (Tennemann, Vol. I. p. 278.)
72 Empedocles Agrigentinus. De vita et philosophia ejus exposuit, carminum reliquias ex antiquis scriptoribus collegit, recensuit, illustravit, præfationem et indices adjecit Magister Frid. Guil. Sturz, Lipsiæ, 1805.
73 Empedoclis et Parmenidis fragmenta, &c., restituta et illustrata ab Amadeo Peyron.
74 Cf. Plat. Parmenid. p. 127 (p. 4).
75 Metaph. I. 3 and 8; De gener. et corrupt. I. 1.
76 Adv. Math. VII. 120; IX. 10; X. 317.
77 Arist. De anim. I. 2; Fabricius ad Sext. adv. Math. VII. 92, p. 389, not. T; Sextus adv. Math. I. 303; VII. 121.
78 Hegel certainly used in his lectures, to follow the usual order, and treat Empedocles before the Atomists. But since, in the course of his treatment of them, he always connected the Atomists with the Eleatics and Heraclitus, and took Empedocles, in so far as he anticipated design, as the forerunner of Anaxagoras, the present transposition is sufficiently justified. If we further consider that Empedocles swayed to and fro between the One of Heraclitus and the Many of Leucippus, without, like them, adhering to either of these one-sided determinations, it is clear that both moments are assumptions through whose variations he opened a way for the Anaxagorean conception of end, which, by comprehending them, is the essential unity from which proceeds the manifold of phenomena, as from their immanent source. — (Note by Editor.)
79 Anaxagoræ Clazomenii fragmenta, quæ supersunt omnia, edita ab E. Schaubach, Lipsiæ, 1827.
80 Plin. Hist. Nat. VII. 53; Brucker, T. I. pp. 493, 494, not.
81 Diog. Laert. II. 16; Plutarch in Lysandro, 12.
82 Diog. Laert. II., 12-14; Plutarch, in Pericle, c. 32.
83 Cf. Aristot. Phys. VIII. 5; Met. XII. 10.
84 Cf. Sext. Empiric. Hypotyp Pyrrh. III. 4, § 33.
85 Diog. Laert. II. 6; Sext. Emp. adv. Math. IX. 6; Arist. Phys. VIII. 1.
86 Platonis Protagoras, pp. 310-314, Steph. (pp. 151-159, Bekk.).
87 Plat. Protag., pp. 314-317 (pp. 159-164).
88 Plat. Protag. pp. 318-320 (pp. 166-170).
89 Plat. Protag. pp. 320-323 (pp. 170-176).
90 Ibid. pp. 323, 324 (pp. 176-178).
91 Plat. Protag. pp. 324-328 (pp. 178-184.)
92 Plat. Meno., p. 91 (p. 371).
93 Plat. Gorg. pp. 452 et 457 (pp. 15 et 24).
94 Plat. Euthydem. pp. 283, 284 (pp. 416-418).
95 Ibid. p. 298 (p. 446).
96 Xenoph. Memorab. II. c. 1, § 21 seq.
97 Diog. Laert. IX. 50.
98 Ibid. 54.
99 Plat. Protag. p. 338 fin. (p. 204).
100 Plutarch in Pericle, c. 36.
101 Diog. Laërt. IX. 51, 52; 55, 56 (Sext. Empir. adv. Math. IX. 56).
102 Plat. Theætet. p. 152 (p. 195); Sext. Emp. Pyrrh. Hyp. I, c. 32, § 216.
103 Sext. Empir. adv. Math. VII. 388, 60; Plat. Theætet. p. 152. (p. 195-197).
104 Plat. Theætet. p. 154 (p. 201).
105 Plat. Theæt. pp. 153, 154 (pp. 199, 200); pp. 156, 157 (pp. 204-206); pp. 158-160 (pp. 208-213).
106 Sext. Empir. Pyrrh. Hyp. I. c. 32, §§ 217-219.
107 Diodorus Siculus: XII. p. 106 (ed. Wesseling).
108 Sext. Empir. adv. Math. VII. 66.
109 Ibid. 67.
110 Aristotel. de Xenophane, Zenone et Gorgia, c. 5.
111 Sext. Empir. adv. Math. VII. 68-70.
112 Ibid. 71.
113 Sext. Empir. adv. Math. VII. 73, 74.
114 Ibid. 75, 76.
115 Sext. Empir. adv. Math. VII. 77-80.
116 Sext. Empir. adv. Math. VII. 83, 84.
117 The distinction between these two words is a very important one. Schwegler, in explaining Hegel’s position in his “History of Philosophy,” states that Hegel asserts that Socrates set Moralität, the subjective morality of individual conscience, in the place of Sittlichkeit, “the spontaneous, natural, half-unconscious (almost instinctive) virtue that rests in obedience to established custom (use and wont, natural objective law, that is at bottom, according to Hegel, rational, though not yet subjectively cleared, perhaps, into its rational principles).” As Dr. Stirling says in his Annotations to the same work (p. 394), “There is a period in the history of the State when people live in tradition; that is a period of unreflected Sittlichkeit, or natural observance. Then there comes a time when the observances are questioned, and when the right or truth they involve is reflected into the subject. This is a period of Aufklärung, and for Sittlichkeit there is substituted Moralität, subjective morality: the subject will approve nought but what he finds inwardly true to himself, to his conscience.” — (Translator’s Note.)
118 Diog. Laert. II, 44 (cf. Menag. ad h. 1); 18-20, 22.
119 Diog. Laert. II. 22, 23; Plat. Apol. Socr. p. 28 (p. 113).
120 Diog. Laert. II. 24; Xenoph. Memorab. I. c. 1, § 18; Plat. Apol. Socrat. p. 32 (pp. 120-122); Epist. VII. pp. 324, 325 (p. 429).
121 Plat. Convivium, pp. 212, 176, 213, 214, 223 (pp. 447, 376-378, 449, 450, 468, 469).
122 Xenoph. Memorab. I. c. 1, § 10.
123 Xenoph. Memorab. I. c. 1, § 11-16; Aristot. Metaph. I. 6.
124 Aristot. Metaph. XIII. 4
125 From the Lectures of the winter 1825-1826. — (Note by Editor.)
126 Platonis Theætetus, p. 210 (p. 322).
127 Plat. Protag. p. 349 (pp. 224, 225); pp. 360, 361 (pp. 245-247).
128 Xenoph. Memorab. IV. c. 2, §§ 11-17.
129 Xenoph. Memorab. IV. c. 1, § 1; c. 2, § 40.
130 Cf. Xenoph. Memorab. I. c. 2, §§ 12-16, sqq.
131 Herodot. IX. 33, seq.
132 Xenoph. Apologia Socrat. § 10; Memorab. I. c. 1, § 1 Plat. Apologia Socrat. p. 24 (p. 104).
133 Apologia Socrat. §§ 11 — 13; Memorab. I. c. 1, §§ 2 — 6; 19.
134 Plat. Apol. Socrat. p. 26 (108, 109).
135 Apologia Socrat. § 14 (cf. Memorab. I. c. 1, § 17).
136 Plato. Apol. Socrat. p. 21 (p. 97).
137 Xenoph. Apol. Socrat. § 14.
138 Xenoph. Apol. Socrat. §§ 16 — 19; Memorab. I. c. 2, §§ 1 — 8.
139 Xenoph. Apol. Socrat. § 20; cf. Memorab. I. c. 2, § 49 seq.
140 Xenoph. Apol. Socrat. §§ 20, 21; Memorab. I. c. 2, §§ 51 — 55; Plat. Apol. Socrat. pp. 24 — 26 (pp. 103 — 107).
141 Meier und Schömann: Der Attische Process, pp. 173-177.
142 Diog. Laërt. II. 106.
143 Diog. Laërt. VI. 24.
144 Cicer. Acad. Quæst. II. 42.
145 Menag. ad Diog. Laërt. II. 106; Aul. Gellius: Noct. Atticæ, VI. 10.
146 Plutarch. de fraterno amore, p. 489, D. (ed. Xyl.); Stobæi Sermones: LXXXIV. 15 (T. III. p. 160, ed. Gaisford); Brucker. Hist. Crit. Philos. T. I. p. 611.
147 Diog. Laërt. II. 106.
148 Diog. Laërt. II. 108.
149 Diog. Laërt. II. 109.
150 Diog. Laërt. II. 111, 112.
151 Diog. Laërt. II. 108; Cicero, Acad. Quæst. IV. 29; De divinat. II. 4.
152 Diog. Laërt. VII. 196.
153 Athenæus IX. p. 401 (ed. Casaubon, 1597); Suidas, s. v. Φιλητᾶς, T. III. p. 600; Menag. ad Diog. Laërt. II. 108.
154 Diog. Laërt. II. 135.
155 Diog. Laërt. II. 108; Bruckeri Hist. Crit. Phil. T. I. p. 613.
156 Diog. Laërt. II. 108; Cicer. Acad. Quæst. IV. 29; Bruck. Hist. Crit. Philos. T. I. p. 614, not. s.
157 Aristoteles: De Soph. Elench. c. 14; Buhle ad h. 1. argumentum, p. 512.
158 Diog. Laërt. II. 113, 115, 119.
159 Plutarch, advers. Coloten. c. 22, 23, pp. 1119, 1120, ed. Xyl. pp. 174-176, Vol. XIV. ed. Hutten.
160 Diog. Laërt. II. 65; Tennemann, Vol. II. p. 103: Bruck. Hist. Crit. Philos. T. I. p. 584, seq.
161 Diog. Laërt. II. 66, 67, 72, 77 (Horat. Serm. II. 3, v. 101), 79-81.
162 Sext. Empir. adv. Math. VII. 191, 199, 200.
163 Diog. Laërt. II. 97, 98 (101, 102).
164 Diog. Laërt. II. 93-95.
165 Cic. Tusc. Quest. I. 34; Val. Max. VIII. 9.
166 Diog. Laërt. II. 96, 97.
167 Diog. Laërt. VI. 13, 1, 2, 15-18.
168 Diog. Laërt. VI. 11, 12 (104).
169 Diog. Laërt. VI. 13, 6, 22, 37; Tennemann, Vol. II. p. 89.
170 Diog. Laërt. VI. 8; II. 36.
171 Diog. Laërt. VI. 74, 61, 37, 105, 22.
172 Diog. Laërt. VI. 29, 30 (74); II. 68; VI. 26, 41, 33, 45, 46, 50, 76, 77 (34).
173 Diog. Laërt. VI. 85, 96, 97.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF philosophic science as science, and, further, the progress from the Socratic point of view to the scientific, begins with Plato and is completed by Aristotle. They of all others deserve to be called teachers of the human race.
A. Plato.
PLATO, WHO MUST be numbered among the Socratics, was the most renowned of the friends and disciples of Socrates, and he it was who grasped in all its truth Socrates’ great principle that ultimate reality lies in consciousness, since, according to him, the absolute is in thought, and all reality is Thought. He does not understand by this a one-sided thought, nor what is understood by the false idealism which makes thought once more step aside and contemplate itself as conscious thought, and as in opposition to reality; it is the thought which embraces in an absolute unity reality as well as thinking, the Notion and its reality in the movement of science, as the Idea of a scientific whole. While Socrates had comprehended the thought which is existent in and for itself, only as an object for self-conscious will, Plato forsook this narrow point of view, and brought the merely abstract right of self-conscious thought, which Socrates had raised to a principle, into the sphere of science. By so doing he rendered it possible to interpret and apply the principle, though his manner of representation may not be altogether scientific.
Plato is one of those world-famed individuals, his philosophy one of those world-renowned creations, whose influence, as regards the culture and development of the mind, has from its commencement down to the present time been all-important. For what is peculiar in the philosophy of Plato is its application to the intellectual and supersensuous world, and its elevation of consciousness into the realm of spirit. Thus the spiritual element which belongs to thought obtains in this form an importance for consciousness, and is brought into consciousness; just as, on the other hand, consciousness obtains a foothold on the soil of the other. The Christian religion has certainly adopted the lofty principle that man’s inner and spiritual nature is his true nature, and takes it as its universal principle, though interpreting it in its own way as man’s inclination for holiness; but Plato and his philosophy had the greatest share in obtaining for Christianity its rational organization, and in bringing it into the kingdom of the supernatural, for it was Plato who made the first advance in this direction.
We must begin by mentioning the facts of Plato’s life. Plato was an Athenian, born in the third year of the 87th Olympiad, or, according to Dodwell, Ol. 87, 4 (B.C. 429), at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war, in the year in which Pericles died. He was, according to this, thirty-nine or forty years younger than Socrates. His father, Ariston, traced his lineage from Cadrus; his mother, Perictione, was descended from Solon. The paternal uncle of his mother was the celebrated Critias, who was for a time among the associates of Socrates, and who was the most talented and brilliant, but also the most dangerous and obnoxious, of the Thirty Tyrants of Athens (supra, Vol. I. p. 421). Critias is usually represented by the ancients as an atheist, with the Cyrenaic Theodoras and Diagoras of Melos; Sextus Empiricus (adv. Math. IX. 51-54) has preserved to us a fine fragment from one of his poems. Sprung from this noble race, and with no lack of means for his culture, Plato received from the most highly esteemed of the Sophists an education in all the arts which were then thought to befit an Athenian. In his family he was called Aristocles; it was only later that he received from his teacher the name of Plato. Some say that he was so styled because of the breadth of his forehead; others, because of the richness and breadth of his discourse; others again, because of his well-built form.1
In his youth he cultivated poetry, and wrote tragedies — very much like young poets in our day — also dithyrambs and songs. Various specimens of the last are still preserved to us in the Greek anthology, and have as subject his various loves; we have amongst others a well-known epigram on a certain Aster, one of his best friends, which contains a pretty fancy, found also in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet:
“To the stars thou look’st, mine Aster,
O would that I were Heaven,
With eyes so many thus to gaze on thee.”2
In his youth he had every intention of devoting himself to politics. He was brought by his father to Socrates when in his twentieth year, and enjoyed intimate friendship with him for eight years. It is related that Socrates dreamt on the preceding night that he had a young swan perched on his knees, whose wings quickly developed, and which then flew up to heaven, singing the sweetest songs. Many such incidents are mentioned by the ancients, and they bear witness to the deep reverence and love with which both contemporaries and those of later times regarded the calm dignity of Plato, and that loftiness of demeanour which he combined with extreme simplicity and lovableness, traits of character which won for him the name of “the divine.” Plato did not content himself with the society and wisdom of Socrates, but studied in addition the older philosophers, particularly Heraclitus. Aristotle (Met. I. 6) states that Plato, before he ever came to Socrates, associated with Cratylus, and had been initiated into the doctrines of Heraclitus. He also studied the Eleatics, and very particularly the Pythagoreans, and he frequented the society of the most noted Sophists. Thus deeply immersed in Philosophy, he lost his interest in poetry and politics, and gave them up altogether, that he might devote himself entirely to scientific pursuits. He fulfilled, like Socrates, his term of military service as an Athenian citizen, and is said to have taken part in three campaigns.3
We have already mentioned (Vol. I. p. 448) that, after Socrates was put to death, Plato, like many other philosophers, fled from Athens, and betook himself to Euclides at Megara. Leaving Megara before long, he travelled first to Cyrene in Africa, where he turned his attention specially to mathematics, under the guidance of the celebrated mathematician Theodoras, whom he introduces as taking part in several of his dialogues. Plato himself soon attained to high proficiency in mathematics. To him is attributed the solution of the Delian or Delphic problem, which was proposed by the oracle, and, like the Pythagorean dogma, has reference to the cube. The problem is, to draw a line the cube of which will be equal to the sum of two given cubes. This requires a construction through two curves. The nature of the tasks then set by the oracles is very curious; on this particular occasion application had been made to the oracle in a time of pestilence, and it responded by proposing an entirely scientific problem; the change indicated in the spirit of the oracle is highly significant. From Cyrene Plato went to Italy and Egypt. In Magna Græcia he made the acquaintance of the Pythagoreans of that day, Archytas of Tarentum, the celebrated mathematician, Philolaus and others; and he also bought the writings of the older Pythagoreans at a high price. In Sicily he made friends with Dion. Returning to Athens, he opened a school of Philosophy in the Academy, a grove or promenade in which stood a gymnasium, and there he discoursed to his disciples.4 This pleasure-ground had been laid out in honour of the hero Academus, but Plato was the true hero of the Academy who did away with the old significance of the name, and overshadowed the fame of the original hero, whose place he so completely took that the latter comes down to after ages only as connected with Plato.
Plato’s busy life in Athens was twice interrupted by a journey to Sicily, to the Court of Dionysius the younger, ruler of Syracuse and Sicily. This connection with Dionysius was the most important, if not the only external relation into which Plato entered; it had, however, no lasting result. Dion, the nearest relative of Dionysius, and other respected Syracusans, his friends, deluded themselves with vain hopes regarding Dionysius. He had been allowed by his father to grow up almost without education, but his friends had instilled into him some notion of and respect for Philosophy, and had roused in him a desire to make acquaintance with Plato. They hoped that Dionysius would profit greatly by his intimacy with Plato, and that his character, which was still unformed, and to all appearance far from unpromising, would be so influenced by Plato’s idea of the constitution of a true state, that this might, through him, come to be realized in Sicily. It was partly his friendship with Dion, and partly and more especially the high hopes he himself cherished of seeing a true form of government actually established by Dionysius, that induced Plato to take the mistaken step of journeying to Sicily. On the surface it seems an excellent idea that a young prince should have a wise man at his elbow to instruct and inspire him; and on this idea a hundred political romances have been based; the picture has, however, no reality behind it. Dionysius was much pleased with Plato, it is true, and conceived such a respect for him that he desired to be respected by him in turn; but this did not last long. Dionysius was one of those mediocre natures who may indeed in a half-hearted way aspire to glory and honour, but are capable of no depth and earnestness, however much they may affect it, and who lack all strength of character. His intentions were good, but the power failed him to carry them out; it was like our own satirical representations in the theatre, of a person who aspires to be quite a paragon, and turns out an utter fool. The position of affairs represented thereby can be nothing but this, seeing that lack of energy alone allows itself to be guided; but it is also the same lack of energy which renders impossible of execution even a plan made by itself. The rupture between Plato and Dionysius took place on personal grounds. Dionysius fell out with his relative Dion, and Plato became involved in the quarrel, because he would not give up his friendship with Dion. Dionysius was incapable of a friendship based on esteem and sympathy in pursuits; it was partly his personal inclination to Plato, and partly mere vanity, which had made him seek the philosopher’s friendship. Dionysius could not, however, induce Plato to come under any obligation to him; he desired that Plato should give himself up to him entirely, but this was a demand that Plato refused to entertain.5
Plato accordingly took his departure. After the separation, however, both felt the desire to be again together. Dionysius recalled Plato, in order to effect a reconciliation with him; he could not endure that he should have failed in the attempt to attach Plato permanently to himself, and he found it specially intolerable that Plato would not give up Dion. Plato yielded to the urgent representations, not only of his family and Dion, but also of Archytas and other Pythagoreans of Tarentum, to whom Dionysius had applied, and who were taking an interest in the reconciliation of Dionysius with Dion and Plato; indeed, they went so far as to guarantee safety and liberty of departure to Plato. But Dionysius found that he could endure Plato’s presence no better than his absence; he felt himself thereby constrained. And though, by the influence of Plato and his other companions, a respect for science had been awakened in Dionysius, and he had thus become more cultured, he never penetrated beyond the surface. His interest in Philosophy was just as superficial as his repeated attempts in poetry; and while he wished to be everything — poet, philosopher, and statesman — he would not submit to be under the guidance of others. Thus no closer tie between Plato and Dionysius was formed; they drew together again, and again parted, so that the third visit to Sicily ended also in coldness, and the connection was not again established. This time the ill-feeling with regard to the continued relations with Dion ran so high, that when Plato wished to leave Sicily, on account of the treatment his friend had met with from Dionysius, the latter deprived him of the means of conveyance, and at last would have forcibly prevented his departure from Sicily. The Pythagoreans of Tarentum came at length to the rescue,6 demanded Plato back from Dionysius, got him conveyed away safely, and brought him to Greece. They were aided by the circumstance that Dionysius was afraid of an ill report being spread that he was not on good terms with Plato.7 Thus Plato’s hopes were shattered, and his dream of shaping the constitution in accordance with the demands of his own philosophic ideas, through the agency of Dionysius, proved vain.
At a later date, therefore, he actually refused to be the lawgiver of other States, though they had made application to him for that very purpose; amongst these applicants were the inhabitants of Cyrene and the Arcadians. It was a time when many of the Greek States found their constitutions unsatisfactory, and yet could not devise anything new.8 Now in the last thirty years9 many constitutions have been drawn up, and it would be no hard task for anyone having had much experience in this work to frame another. But theorizing is not sufficient for a constitution; it is not individuals who make it; it is something divine and spiritual, which develops in history. So strong is this power of the world-spirit that the thought of an individual is as nothing against it; and when such thoughts do count for something, i.e. when they can be realized, they are then none other than the product of this power of the universal spirit. The idea that Plato should become lawgiver was not adapted for the times; Solon and Lycurgus were lawgivers, but in Plato’s day such a thing was impracticable. He declined any further compliance with the wishes of these States, because they would not agree to the first condition which he imposed, namely, the abolition of all private property,10 a principle which we shall deal with later, in considering Plato’s practical philosophy. Honoured thus throughout the whole land, and especially in Athens, Plato lived until the first year of the 108th Olympiad (B.C. 348); and died on his birthday, at a wedding feast, in the eighty-first year of his age.11
We have to speak, in the first place, of the direct mode in which Plato’s philosophy has come down to us; it is to be found in those of his writings which we possess; indubitably they are one of the fairest gifts which fate has preserved from the ages that are gone. His philosophy is not, however, properly speaking, presented there in systematic form, and to construct it from such writings is difficult, not so much from anything in itself, as because this philosophy has been differently understood in different periods of time; and, more than all, because it has been much and roughly handled in modern times by those who have either read into it their own crude notions, being enable to conceive the spiritual spiritually, or have regarded as the essential and most significant element in Plato’s philosophy that which in reality does not belong to Philosophy at all, but only to the mode of presentation; in truth, however, it is only ignorance of Philosophy that renders it difficult to grasp the philosophy of Plato. The form and matter of these works are alike of interest and importance. In studying them we must nevertheless make sure, in the first place, what of Philosophy we mean to seek and may find within them, and, on the other hand, what Plato’s point of view never can afford us, because in his time it was not there to give. Thus it may be that the longing with which we approached Philosophy is left quite unsatisfied; it is, however, better that we should not be altogether satisfied than that such conclusions should be regarded as final. Plato’s point of view is clearly defined and necessary, but it is impossible for us to remain there, or to go back to it; for Reason now makes higher demands. As for regarding it as the highest standpoint, and that which we must take for our own — it belongs to the weaknesses of our time not to be able to bear the greatness, the immensity of the claims made by the human spirit, to feel crushed before them, and to flee from them faint-hearted. We must stand above Plato, i.e. we must acquaint ourselves with the needs of thoughtful minds in our own time, or rather we must ourselves experience these needs. Just as the pedagogue’s aim is to train up men so as to shield them from the world, or to keep them in a particular sphere — the counting-house, for instance, or bean-planting, if you wish to be idyllic — where they will neither know the world nor be known by it; so in Philosophy a return has been made to religious faith, and therefore to the Platonic philosophy.12 Both are moments which have their due place and their own importance, but they are not the philosophy of our time. It would be perfectly justifiable to return to Plato in order to learn anew from him the Idea of speculative Philosophy, but it is idle to speak of him with extravagant enthusiasm, as if he represented beauty and excellence in general. Moreover, it is quite superfluous for Philosophy, and belongs to the hypercriticism of our times, to treat Plato from a literary point of view, as Schleiermacher does, critically examining whether one or another of the minor dialogues is genuine or not. Regarding the more important of the dialogues, we may mention that the testimony of the ancients leaves not the slightest doubt.
Then of course the very character of Plato’s works, offering us in their manysidedness various modes of treating Philosophy, constitutes the first difficulty standing in the way of a comprehension of his philosophy. If we still had the oral discourses (ἄγραφα δόγματα) of Plato, under the title “Concerning the Good” (περὶ τἀγαθοῦ), which his scholars noted down, we should have had his philosophy before us in simpler, because in more systematic form.13 Aristotle seems to have had these discourses before him, when dealing with the philosophy of Plato, and he quotes them in his work “On Philosophy,” or, “On the Ideas,” or, “On the Good” (Brandis has written on this topic). But, as it happens, we have only Plato’s Dialogues, and their form renders it all the more difficult for us to gather a definite idea of his philosophy. For the dialogue form contains very heterogeneous elements; Philosophy proper in the treatment of absolute Being, and, intermingled with that, its particular mode of representation. It is just this which constitutes the manysidedness of Plato’s works.
A second difficulty is said to lie in the distinction drawn between exoteric and esoteric philosophy. Tennemann (Vol. II. p. 220) says: “Plato exercised the right, which is conceded to every thinker, of communicating only so much of his discoveries as he thought good, and of so doing only to those whom he credited with capacity to receive it. Aristotle, too, had an esoteric and an exoteric philosophy, but with this difference, that in his case the distinction was merely formal, while with Plato it was also material.” How nonsensical! This would appear as if the philosopher kept possession of his thoughts in the same way as of his external goods: the philosophic Idea is, however, something utterly different, and instead of being possessed by, it possesses a man. When philosophers discourse on philosophic subjects, they follow of necessity the course of their ideas; they cannot keep them in their pockets; and when one man speaks to another, if his words have any meaning at all, they must contain the idea present to him. It is easy enough to hand over an external possession, but the communication of ideas requires a certain skill; there is always something esoteric in this, something more than the merely exoteric. This difficulty is therefore trifling.
Thirdly, as one of the circumstances that render it difficult to comprehend Plato’s own speculative thought, we can scarcely reckon the external consideration that in his Dialogues he does not speak in his own person, but introduces Socrates and many others as the speakers, without always making it plain which of them expresses the writer’s own opinion. By reason of this historic circumstance, which seems to bear out the manysidedness of Plato, it has of course been often said, by ancients as well as moderns, that he merely expounded, from a historical point of view, the system and doctrine of Socrates, that he adapted much in the Dialogues from various Sophists, and avowedly advanced many theorems belonging to an earlier date, especially those of the Pythagoreans, Heraclitics, and Eleatics, even adopting, in the last case, the Eleatic mode of treatment. Hence it was said that to these philosophies the whole matter of the treatise belonged, the outward form alone being Plato’s. It is therefore necessary to distinguish what is peculiarly his and what is not, or whether the component parts are in harmony. In the Socratic Dialogues that we have from Cicero, the personages can be much more readily made out; but in Cicero there is nothing of real interest offered to us. With Plato there can be no talk of this ambiguity, and the difficulty is only in appearance. In the Dialogues of Plato his philosophy is quite clearly expressed; they are not constructed as are the conversations of some people, which consist of many monologues, in which one person expresses a certain opinion and another person differs from him, and both hold to their own way of thinking. Here, on the contrary, the divergency of opinions which comes out is examined, and a conclusion arrived at as to the truth; or, if the result is negative, the whole process of knowledge is what is seen in Plato. There is, therefore, no need to inquire further as to what belongs to Socrates in the Dialogues, and what belongs to Plato. This further observation we must, however, make, that since Philosophy in its ultimate essence is one and the same, every succeeding philosopher will and must take up into his own, all philosophies that went before, and what falls specially to him is their further development. Philosophy is not a thing apart, like a work of art; though even in a work of art it is the skill which the artist learns from others that he puts into practice. What is original in the artist is his conception as a whole, and the intelligent use of the means already at his command; there may occur to him in working an endless variety of ideas and discoveries of his own. But Philosophy has one thought, one reality, as its foundation; and nothing can be put in the place of the true knowledge of this already attained; it must of necessity make itself evident in later developments. Therefore, as I have already observed (Vol. I. p. 166), Plato’s Dialogues are not to be considered as if their aim were to put forward a variety of philosophies, nor as if Plato’s were an eclectic philosophy derived from them; it forms rather the knot in which these abstract and one-sided principles have become truly united in a concrete fashion. In giving a general idea of the history of Philosophy, we have already seen (Vol. I. p. 54) that such points of union, in which the true is concrete, must occur in the onward course of philosophical development. The concrete is the unity of diverse determinations and principles; these, in order to be perfected, in order to come definitely before the consciousness, must first of all be presented separately. Thereby they of course acquire an aspect of one-sidedness in comparison with the higher principle which follows: this, nevertheless, does not annihilate them, nor even leave them where they were, but takes them up into itself as moments. Thus in Plato’s philosophy we see all manner of philosophic teaching from earlier times absorbed into a deeper principle, and therein united. It is in this way that Plato’s philosophy shows itself to be a totality of ideas: therefore, as the result, the principles of others are comprehended in itself. Frequently Plato does nothing more than explain the doctrines of earlier philosophers; and the only particular feature in his representation of them is that their scope is extended. His Timæus is, by unanimous testimony, the amplification of a still extant work of Pythagoras;14 and, in like manner, his amplification of the doctrine of Parmenides is of such a nature that its principle is freed from its one-sided character.
These last two difficulties having been disposed of, if we would likewise solve the first mentioned, we must proceed to describe the form in which Plato has propounded his ideas, keeping it, on the other hand, distinct from Philosophy proper, as we find it with him. The form of the Platonic philosophy is, as is well known, the dialogue. The beauty of this form is highly attractive; yet we must not think, as many do, that it is the most perfect form in which to present Philosophy; it is peculiar to Plato, and as a work of art is of course to be much esteemed.
In the first place, scenery and dramatic form belong to what is external. Plato gives to his Dialogues a setting of reality, both as regards place and persons, and chooses out some particular occasion which has brought his characters together; this in itself is very natural and charming. Socrates takes the leading part, and among the other actors there are many stars well known to us, such as Agathon, Zeno, and Aristophanes. We find ourselves in some particular spot; in the Phædrus (p. 229 Steph.; p. 6 Bekk.) it is at the plane tree beside the clear waters of the Ilyssus, through which Socrates and Phædrus pass; in other dialogues we are conducted to the halls of the gymnasia, to the Academy, or to a banquet. By never allowing himself to appear in person, but putting his thoughts always in the mouth of others, any semblance of preaching or of dogmatizing is avoided by Plato, and the narrator appears just as little as he does in the History of Thucydides or in Homer. Xenophon sometimes brings himself forward, sometimes he entirely loses sight of the aim he had in view, of vindicating by what he tells of them the life of Socrates and his method of instruction. With Plato, on the contrary, all is quite objective and plastic; and he employs great art in removing from himself all responsibility for his assertions, often assigning them even to a third or fourth person.
As regards the tone of the intercourse between the characters in these Dialogues, we find that the noblest urbanity of well-bred men reigns supreme; the Dialogues are a lesson in refinement; we see in them the savoir faire of a man acquainted with the world. The term courtesy does not quite express urbanity; it is too wide, and includes the additional notion of testifying respect, of expressing deference and personal obligation; urbanity is true courtesy, and forms its real basis. But urbanity makes a point of granting complete liberty to all with whom we converse, both as regards the character and matter of their opinions, and also the right of giving expression to the same. Thus in our counter-statements and contradictions we make it evident that what we have ourselves to say against the statement made by our opponent is the mere expression of our subjective opinion; for this is a conversation carried on by persons as persons, and not objective reason talking with itself. However energetically we may then express ourselves, we must always acknowledge that our opponent is also a thinking person; just as one must not take to speaking with the air of being an oracle, nor prevent anyone else from opening his mouth in reply. This urbanity is, however, not forbearance, but rather the highest degree of frankness and candour, and it is this very characteristic which gives such gracefulness to Plato’s Dialogues.
Finally, this dialogue is not a conversation, in which what is said has, and is meant to have, a merely casual connection, without any exhaustive treatment of the subject. When one talks only for amusement, the casual and arbitrary sequence of ideas is quite to be expected. In the introduction, to be sure, the Dialogues of Plato have sometimes this very character of being mere conversations, and consequently appear to take an accidental form; for Socrates is made to take his start from the particular conceptions of certain individuals, and from the circle of their ideas (Vol. I. p. 397). Later, however, these dialogues become a systematic development of the matter in hand, wherein the subjective character of the conversation disappears, and the whole course of the argument shows a beautifully consistent dialectic process. Socrates talks, turns the conversation, lays down his own views, draws a conclusion, and does all this through the apparent instrumentality of the question; most questions are so framed as to be answered by merely Yes or No. The dialogue seems to be the form best adapted for representing an argument, because it sways hither and thither; the different sides are allotted to different persons, and thus the argument is made more animated. The dialogue has, however, this disadvantage, that it seems to be carried on arbitrarily, so that at the end the feeling always remains that the matter might have turned out differently. But in the Platonic Dialogues this arbitrary character is apparent only; it has been got rid of by limiting the development to the development of the subject in hand, and by leaving very little to be said by the second speaker. Such personages are, as we already saw in connection with Socrates (Vol. I. p. 402), plastic personages as regards the conversation; no one is put there to state his own views, or, as the French express it, pour placer son mot. Just as in the Catechism the answers are prescribed to the questions asked, so is it in these dialogues, for they who answer have to say what the author pleases. The question is so framed that a quite simple answer is alone possible, and, thanks to the artistic beauty and power of the dialogues, such an answer appears at the same time perfectly natural.
In the next place, there is connected with this outward aspect of personality the circumstance that the Platonic philosophy does not proclaim itself to be one particular field, where some one begins a science of his own in a sphere of his own; for it sometimes enters into the ordinary conceptions of culture, like those of Socrates, sometimes into those of the Sophists, at other times into those of earlier philosophers, and in so doing brings before us exemplifications from ordinary knowledge, and also uses the methods of the same. A systematic exposition of Philosophy we cannot in this way find; and of course it is all the less easy for us to take a comprehensive view of the subject, since there are at hand no means of judging whether the treatment has been exhaustive or not. Nevertheless, there is present there one spirit, one definite point of view as regards Philosophy, even though Mind does not make its appearance in the precise form which we demand. The philosophic culture of Plato, like the general culture of his time, was not yet ripe for really scientific work; the Idea was still too fresh and new; it was only in Aristotle that it attained to a systematic scientific form of representation.
Connected with this deficiency in Plato’s mode of representation, there is also a deficiency in respect of the concrete determination of the Idea itself, since the various elements of the Platonic philosophy which are represented in these dialogues, namely the merely popular conceptions of Being and the apprehending knowledge of the same, are really mixed up in a loose, popular way, so that the former more especially come to be represented in a myth or parable; such intermingling is inevitable in this beginning of science proper in its true form. Plato’s lofty mind, which had a perception or conception of Mind, penetrated through his subject with the speculative Notion, but he only began to penetrate it thus, and he did not yet embrace the whole of its reality in the Notion; or the knowledge which appeared in Plato did not yet fully realize itself in him. Here it therefore happens sometimes that the ordinary conception of reality again separates itself from its Notion, and that the latter comes into opposition with it, without any statement having been made that the Notion alone constitutes reality. Thus we find Plato speaking of God, and again, in the Notion, of the absolute reality of things, but speaking of them as separated, or in a connection in which they both appear separated; and God, as an uncomprehended existence, is made to belong to the ordinary conception. Sometimes, in order to give greater completeness and reality, in place of following out the Notion, mere pictorial conceptions are introduced, myths, spontaneous imaginations of his own, or tales derived from the sensuous conception, which no doubt are determined by thought, but which this has never permeated in truth, but only in such a way that the intellectual is determined by the forms of ordinary conception. For instance, appearances of the body or of nature, which are perceptible by the senses, are brought forward along with thoughts regarding them, which do not nearly so completely exhaust the subject as if it had been thoroughly thought out, and the Notion allowed to pursue an independent course.
Looking at this as it bears on the question of how Plato’s philosophy is to be apprehended, we find, owing to these two circumstances, that either too much or too little is found in it. Too much is found by the ancients, the so-called -, who sometimes dealt with Plato’s philosophy as they dealt with the Greek mythology. This they allegorized and represented as the expression of ideas — which the myths certainly are — and in the same way they first raised the ideas in Plato’s myths to the rank of theorems: for the merit of Philosophy consists alone in the fact that truth is expressed in the form of the Notion. Sometimes, again, they took what with Plato is in the form of the Notion for the expression of Absolute Being — the theory of Being in the Parmenides, for instance, for the knowledge of God — just as if Plato had not himself drawn a distinction between them. But in the pure Notions of Plato the ordinary conception as such is not abrogated; either it is not said that these Notions constitute its reality, or they are to Plato no more than a conception, and not reality. Again, we certainly see that too little is found in Plato by the moderns in particular; for they attach themselves pre-eminently to the side of the ordinary conception, and see in it reality. What in Plato relates to the Notion, or what is purely speculative, is nothing more in their eyes than roaming about in abstract logical notions, or than empty subtleties: on the other hand, they take that for theorem which was enunciated as a popular conception. Thus we find in Tennemann (Vol. II. p. 376) and others an obstinate determination to lead back the Platonic Philosophy to the forms of our former metaphysic, e.g. to the proof of the existence of God.
However much, therefore, Plato’s mythical presentation of Philosophy is praised, and however attractive it is in his Dialogues, it yet proves a source of misapprehensions; and it is one of these misapprehensions, if Plato’s myths are held to be what is most excellent in his philosophy. Many propositions, it is true, are made more easily intelligible by being presented in mythical form; nevertheless, what is not the true way of presenting them; propositions are thoughts which, in order to be pure, must be brought forward as such. The myth is always a mode of representation which, as belonging to an earlier stage, introduces sensuous images, which are directed to imagination, not to thought; in this, however, the activity of thought is suspended, it cannot yet establish itself by its own power, and so is not yet free. The myth belongs to the pedagogic stage of the human race, since it entices and allures men to occupy themselves with the content; but as it takes away from the purity of thought through sensuous forms, it cannot express the meaning of Thought. When the Notion attains its full development, it has no more need of the myth. Plato often says that it is difficult to express one’s thoughts on such and such a subject, and he therefore will employ a myth; no doubt this is easier. Plato also says of simple Notions that they are dependent, transitory moments, which have their ultimate truth in God; and in this first mention of God by Plato, He is made a mere conception. Thus the manner of conception and the genuinely speculative element are confounded.
In order to gather Plato’s philosophy from his dialogues, what we have to do is to distinguish what belongs to ordinary conception — especially where Plato has recourse to myths for the presentation of a philosophic idea — from the philosophic idea itself; only then do we know that what belongs only to the ordinary conception, as such, does not belong to thought, is not the essential. But if we do not recognize what is Notion, or what is speculative, there is inevitably the danger of these myths leading us to draw quite a host of maxims and theorems from the dialogues, and to give them out as Plato’s philosophic propositions, while they are really nothing of the kind, but belong entirely to the manner of presentation. Thus, for instance, in the Timæus (p. 41 Steph.; p. 43 Bekk.) Plato makes use of the form, God created the world, and the dæmons had a certain share in the work; this is spoken quite after the manner of the popular conception. If, however, it is taken as a philosophic dogma on Plato’s part that God made the world, that higher beings of a spiritual kind exist, and, in the creation of the world, lent God a helping hand, we may see that this stands word for word in Plato, and yet it does not belong to his philosophy. When in pictorial fashion he says of the soul of man that it has a rational and an irrational part, this is to be taken only in a general sense; Plato does not thereby make the philosophic assertion that the soul is compounded of two kinds of substance, two kinds of thing. When he represents knowledge or learning as a process of recollection, this may be taken to mean that the soul existed before man’s birth. In like manner, when he speaks of the central point of his philosophy, of Ideas, of the Universal, as the permanently self-existent, as the patterns of things sensible, we may easily be led to think of these Ideas, after the manner of the modern categories of the understanding, as substances which exist outside reality, in the Understanding of God; or on their own account and as independent — like the angels, for example. In short, all that is expressed in the manner of pictorial conception is taken by the moderns in sober earnest for philosophy. Such a representation of Plato’s philosophy can be supported by Plato’s own words; but one who knows what Philosophy is, cares little for such expressions, and recognizes what was Plato’s true meaning.
In the account of the Platonic philosophy to which I must now proceed, the two cannot certainly be separated, but they must be noted and judged of in a very different manner from that which has prevailed amongst the moderns. We have, on the one hand, to make clear Plato’s general conception of what Philosophy and Knowledge really are, and on the other to develop the particular branches of Philosophy of which he treats.
In considering his general conception of Philosophy, the first point that strikes us is the high estimation in which Plato held Philosophy. The lofty nature of the knowledge of Philosophy deeply impressed him, and he shows a real enthusiasm for the thought which deals with the absolute. Just as the Cyrenaics treat of the relation of the existent to the individual consciousness, and the Cynics assert immediate freedom to be reality, Plato upholds the self-mediating unity of consciousness and reality, or knowledge. He everywhere expresses the most exalted ideas regarding the value of Philosophy, as also the deepest and strongest sense of the inferiority of all else; he speaks of it with the greatest energy and enthusiasm, with all the pride of science, and in a manner such as nowadays we should not venture to adopt. There is in him none of the so-called modest attitude of this science towards other spheres of knowledge, nor of man towards God. Plato has a full consciousness of how near human reason is to God, and indeed of its unity with Him. Men do not mind reading this in Plato, an ancient, because it is no longer a present thing, but were it coming from a modern philosopher, it would be taken much amiss. Philosophy to Plato is man’s highest possible possession and true reality; it alone has to be sought of man. Out of many passages on this subject I shall quote in the first instance the following from the Timæus (p. 47 Steph.; p. 54 Bekk.): “Our knowledge of what is most excellent begins with the eyes. The distinction between the visible day and the night, the months and courses of the planets, have begotten a knowledge of time, and awakened a desire to know the nature of the whole. From this we then obtained Philosophy, and no greater gift than this, given by God to man, has ever come or will come.”
The manner in which Plato expresses his opinions on this subject in the Republic is very well known, as it is greatly decried, because it so completely contradicts the common ideas of men, and it is all the more surprising in that it concerns the relation of Philosophy to the state, and therefore to actuality. For before this, though a certain value might indeed be attributed to Philosophy, it still remained confined to the thoughts of the individual; here, however, it goes forth into questions of constitution, government, actuality. After Plato made Socrates, in the Republic, expound the nature of a true state, he caused Glaucon to interrupt by expressing his desire that Plato should show how it could be possible for such a state to exist. Socrates parries the question, will not come to the point, seeks evasive pleas, and tries to extricate himself by asserting that in describing what is just, he does not bind himself to show how it might be realized in actuality, though some indication must certainly be given of how an approximate, if not a complete realization of it might be possible. Finally, when pressed, he says: “Then it shall be expressed, even though a flood of laughter and utter disbelief overwhelm me. When philosophers rule the states, or the so-called kings and princes of the present time are truly and completely philosophers, when thus political greatness and Philosophy meet in one, and the many natures who now follow either side to the exclusion of the other, come together, then, and not till then, can there be an end, dear Glaucon, either to the evils of the state or, as I believe, to those of the human race. Then only will this state of which I spoke be possible or see the light of day.” “This,” adds Socrates, “is what I have so long hesitated to say, because I know that it is so much opposed to ordinary ideas.” Plato makes Glaucon answer, “Socrates, you have expressed what, you must recollect, would cause many men, and not bad men either, to pull off their coats and seize the first weapon that comes to hand, and set upon you one and all with might and main; and if you don’t know how to appease them with your reasons, you will have to answer for it.”15
Plato here plainly asserts the necessity for thus uniting Philosophy with government. As to this demand, it may seem a piece of great presumption to say that philosophers should have the government of states accorded to them, for the territory or ground of history is different from that of Philosophy. In history, the Idea, as the absolute power, has certainly to realize itself; in other words, God rules in the world. But history is the Idea working itself out in a natural way, and not with the consciousness of the Idea. The action is certainly in accordance with general reflections on what is right, moral, and pleasing to God; but we must recognize that action represents at the same time the endeavours of the subject as such for particular ends. The realization of the Idea thus takes place through an intermingling of thoughts and Notions with immediate and particular ends. Hence it is only on the one side produced through thoughts, and on the other through circumstances, through human actions in their capacity of means. These means often seem opposed to the Idea, but that does not really matter; all those particular ends are really only means of bringing forth the Idea, because it is the absolute power. Hence the Idea comes to pass in the world, and no difficulty is caused, but it is not requisite that those who rule should have the Idea.
In order, however, to judge of the statement that the regents of the people should be philosophers, we must certainty consider what was understood by Philosophy in the Platonic sense and in the sense of the times. The word Philosophy has had in different periods very different significations. There was a time when a man who did not believe in spectres or in the devil was called a philosopher. When such ideas as these pass away, it does not occur to people to call anyone a philosopher for a reason such as this. The English consider what we call experimental physics to be Philosophy; a philosopher to them is anyone who makes investigations in, and possesses a theoretic knowledge of chemistry, mechanics, &c. (Vol. I. p. 57). In Plato Philosophy becomes mingled with the knowledge of the supersensuous, or what to us is religious knowledge. The Platonic philosophy is thus the knowledge of the absolutely true and right, the knowledge of universal ends in the state, and the recognition of their validity. In all the history of the migration of the nations, when the Christian religion became the universal religion, the only point of interest was to conceive the supersensuous kingdom — which was at first independent, absolutely universal and true — as actualized, and to determine actuality in conformity thereto. This has been from that time forth the business of culture. A state, a government and constitution of modern times has hence quite a different basis from a state of ancient times, and particularly from one of Plato’s day. The Greeks were then altogether dissatisfied with their democratic constitution, and the conditions resulting from it (supra, p. 8), and similarly all philosophers condemned the democracies of the Greek states in which such things as the punishment of generals (supra, Vol. I. p. 391) took place. In such a constitution it might certainly be thought that what was best for the state would be the first subject of consideration; but arbitrariness prevailed, and this was only temporarily restrained by preponderating individualities, or by masters in statesmanship like Aristides, Themistocles, and others. This condition of matters preceded the disintegration of the constitution. In our states, on the other hand, the end of the state, what is best for all, is immanent and efficacious in quite another way than was the case in olden times. The condition of the laws and courts of justice, of the constitution and spirit of the people, is so firmly established in itself that matters of the passing moment alone remain to be decided; and it may even be asked what, if anything, is dependent on the individual.
To us government means that in the actual state procedure will be in accordance with the nature of the thing, and since a knowledge of the Notion of the thing is requisite to this, actuality is brought into harmony with the Notion, and thereby the Idea is realized in existence. The result of this thus is that when Plato says that philosophers should rule, he signifies the determination of the whole matter through universal principles. This is realized much more in modern states, because universal principles really form the bases — certainly not of all, but of most of them. Some have already reached this stage, others are striving to reach it, but all recognize that such principles must constitute the real substance of administration and rule.
What Plato demands is thus, in point of fact, already present. But what we call Philosophy, movement in pure thoughts, has to do with form, and this is something peculiar to itself; nevertheless, the form is not responsible if the universal, freedom, law, is not made a principle in a state. Marcus Aurelius is an example of what a philosopher upon a throne could effect; we have, however, only private actions to record of him, and the Roman Empire was made no better by him. Frederick II. was, on the other hand, justly called the philosopher king. He occupied himself with the Wolffian metaphysics and French philosophy and verses, and was thus, according to his times, a philosopher. Philosophy appears to have been an affair of his own particular inclination, and quite distinct from the fact that he was king. But he was also a philosophic king in the sense that he made for himself an entirely universal end, the well-being and good of the state, a guiding principle in his actions and in all his regulations in respect to treaties with other states, and to the rights of individuals at home; these last he entirely subordinated to absolutely universal ends. If, however, later on, procedure of this kind became ordinary custom, the succeeding princes are no longer called philosophers, even if the same principle is present to them, and the government, and especially the institutions, are founded on it.
In the Republic, Plato further speaks in a figure of the difference between a condition of philosophic culture and a lack of Philosophy: it is a long comparison which is both striking and brilliant. The idea which he makes use of is as follows:— “Let us think of an underground den like a cave with a long entrance opening to the light. Its inhabitants are chained so that they cannot move their necks, and can see only the back of the cave. Far behind their backs a torch burns above them. In the intervening space there is a raised way and also a low wall; and behind this wall” (towards the light) “there are men who carry and raise above it all manner of statues of men and animals like puppets in a marionette show, sometimes talking to one another meanwhile, and sometimes silent. Those who are chained would see only the shadows which fall on the opposite wall, and they would take them for reality; they would hear, moreover, by means of the echo, what was said by those who moved the figures, and they would think that it was the voice of the shadows. Now if one of the prisoners were released, and compelled to turn his neck so as to see things as they are, he would think that what he saw was an illusive dream, and that the shadows were the reality. And if anyone were to take him out of the prison into the light itself, he would be dazzled by the light and could see nothing; and he would hate the person who brought him to the light, as having taken away what was to him the truth, and prepared only pain and evil in its place.”16 This kind of myth is in harmony with the character of the Platonic philosophy, in that it separates the conception of the sensuous world present in men from the knowledge of the supersensuous.
Since we now speak more fully of this matter, we must in the second place consider the nature of knowledge according to Plato, and in so doing commence our account of the Platonic philosophy itself.
a. Plato gave a more precise definition of philosophers as those “who are eager to behold the truth.” — Glaucon: “That is quite right. But how do you explain it?” Socrates: “I tell this not to everyone, but you will agree with me in it.” “In what?” “In this, that as the Beautiful is opposed to the Ugly, they are two things.” “Why not?” “With the Just and the Unjust, the Good and the Evil, and every other Idea (εἶδος) the case is the same, that each of them is by itself a One; on the other hand, on account of its combination with actions and bodies and other Ideas springing up on every side, each appears as a Many.” “You are right.” “I distinguish now, according to this, between the sight-loving, art-loving, busy class on the one side, and those on the other side, of whom we were just speaking as alone entitled to be called philosophers.” “What do you mean by that?” “I mean by that, such as delight in seeing and hearing, who love beautiful voices, and colours, and forms, and all that is composed thereof, while their mind is still incapable of seeing and loving the Beautiful in its own nature.” “Such is the case.” “Those, however, who have the power of passing on to the Beautiful itself, and seeing what it is in itself (καθ̓ αὐτό), are they not rare?” “They are indeed.” “He then who sees that beautiful things are beautiful, but does not apprehend Beauty itself, and cannot follow if another should seek to lead him to the knowledge of the same, — think you that he lives his life awake, or in a dream?” (That is to say, those who are not philosophers are like men who dream.) “For look, is it not dreaming when one in sleep, or even when awake, takes what merely resembles a certain thing to be not something that resembles it, but the very thing that it is like?” “I should certainly say of such an one that he was dreaming.” “The waking man, on the other hand, is he who holds the Beautiful itself to be the Existent, and can recognize its very self as well as that which only partakes of it (μετέχονυα), and does not confuse between the two.”17
In this account of Philosophy, we at once see what the so much talked of Ideas of Plato are. The Idea is nothing else than that which is known to us more familiarly by the name of the Universal, regarded, however, not as the formal Universal, which is only a property of things, but as implicitly and explicitly existent, as reality, as that which alone is true. We translate εἶδος first of all as species or kind; and the Idea is no doubt the species, but rather as it is apprehended by and exists for Thought. Of course when we understand by species nothing but the gathering together by our reflection, and for convenience sake, of the like characteristics of several individuals as indicating their distinguishing features, we have the universal in quite an external form. But the specific character of the animal is its being alive; this being alive is that which makes it what it is, and deprived of this, it ceases to exist. To Plato, accordingly, Philosophy is really the science of this implicitly universal, to which, as contrasted with the particular, he always continues to return. “When Plato spoke of tableness and cupness, Diogenes the Cynic said: ‘I see a table and a cup, to be sure, but not tableness and cupness.’ ‘Right,’ answered Plato; ‘for you have eyes wherewith to see the table and the cup, but mind, by which one sees tableness and cupness, you have not (νοῦν οὐκ ἔχεις).’”18 What Socrates began was carried out by Plato, who acknowledged only the Universal, the Idea, the Good, as that which has existence. Through the presentation of his Ideas, Plato opened up the intellectual world, which, however, is not beyond reality, in heaven, in another place, but is the real world. With Leucippus, too, the Ideal is brought closer to reality, and not — metaphysically — thrust away behind Nature. The essence of the doctrine of Ideas is thus the view that the True is not that which exists for the senses, but that only what has its determination in itself, the implicitly and explicitly Universal, truly exists in the world; the intellectual world is therefore the True, that which is worthy to be known — indeed, the Eternal, the implicitly and explicitly divine. The differences are not essential, but only transitory; yet the Absolute of Plato, as being the one in itself and identical with itself, is at the same time concrete in itself, in that it is a movement returning into itself, and is eternally at home with itself. But love for Ideas is that which Plato calls enthusiasm.
The misapprehension of Plato’s Ideas takes two directions; one of these has to do with the thinking, which is formal, and holds as true reality the sensuous alone, or what is conceived of through the senses — this is what Plato asserts to be mere shadows. For when Plato speaks of the Universal as the real, his conception of it is met either by the statement that the Universal is present to us only as a property, and is therefore a mere thought in our understanding, or else that Plato takes this same Universal as substance, as an existence in itself, which, however, falls outside of us. When Plato further uses the expression that sensuous things are, like images (εἰκόνες), similar to that which has absolute existence, or that the Idea is their pattern and model (παραδεῖγμα), if these Ideas are not exactly made into things, they are made into a kind of transcendent existences which lie somewhere far from us in an understanding outside this world, and are pictures set up which we merely do not see; they are like the artist’s model, following which he works upon a given material, and thereon impresses the likeness of the original. And owing to their not only being removed from this sensuous present reality, which passes for truth, but also being liberated from the actuality of the individual consciousness, their subject, of which they are originally the representations, passes out of consciousness, and even comes to be represented only as something which is apart from consciousness.
The second misapprehension that prevails with regard to these Ideas takes place when they are not transferred beyond our consciousness, but pass for ideals of our reason, which are no doubt necessary, but which produce nothing that either has reality now or can ever attain to it. As in the former view the Beyond is a conception that lies outside the world, and in which species are hypostatized, so in this view our reason is just such a realm beyond reality. But when species are looked on as if they were the forms of reality in us, there is again a misapprehension, just as if they were looked at as æsthetic in nature. By so doing, they are defined as intellectual perceptions which must present themselves immediately, and belong either to a happy genius or else to a condition of ecstasy or enthusiasm. In such a case they would be mere creations of the imagination, but this is not Plato’s nor the true sense. They are not immediately in consciousness, but they are in the apprehending knowledge; and they are immediate perceptions only in so far as they are apprehending knowledge comprehended in its simplicity and in relation to the result; in other words, the immediate perception is only the moment of their simplicity. Therefore we do not possess them, they are developed in the mind through the apprehending knowledge; enthusiasm is the first rude shape they take, but knowledge first brings them to light in rational developed form; they are in this form none the less real, for they alone are Being.
On this account Plato first of all distinguishes Science, the Knowledge of the True, from opinion. “Such thinking (διάνοιαν) as of one who knows, we may justly call knowledge (γνώμην); but the other, opinion (δόξαν). Knowledge proceeds from that which is; opinion is opposed to it; but it is not the case that its content is Nothing — that would be ignorance — for when an opinion is held, it is held about Something. Opinion is thus intermediate between ignorance and science, its content is a mixture of Being and Nothing. The object of the senses, the object of opinion, the particular, only participates in the Beautiful, the Good, the Just, the Universal; but it is at the same time also ugly, evil, unjust, and so on. The double is at the same time the half. The particular is not only large or small, light or heavy, and any one of these opposites, but every particular is as much the one as the other. Such a mixture of Being and non-Being is the particular, the object of opinion;”19 — a mixture in which the opposites have not resolved themselves into the Universal. The latter would be the speculative Idea of knowledge, while to opinion belongs the manner of our ordinary consciousness.
b. Before we commence the examination of the objective implicitly existent content of knowledge, we must consider more in detail, on the one hand, the subjective existence of knowledge in consciousness as we find it in Plato, and, on the other, how the content is or appears in ordinary conception as soul; and the two together form the relation of knowledge, as the universal, to the individual consciousness.
α. The source through which we become conscious of the divine is the same as that already seen in Socrates (Vol. I. pp. 410, 411). The spirit of man contains reality in itself, and in order to learn what is divine he must develop it out of himself and bring it to consciousness. With the Socratics this discussion respecting the immanent nature of knowledge in the mind of man takes the form of a question as to whether virtue can be taught or not, and with the sophist Protagoras of asking whether feeling is the truth, which is allied with the question of the content of scientific knowledge, and with the distinction between that and opinion. But Plato goes on to say that the process by which we come to know is not, properly speaking, learning, for that which we appear to learn we really only recollect. Plato often comes back to this subject, but in particular he treats of the point in the Meno, in which he asserts (p. 81, 84 Steph.; p. 349, 355, 356 Bekk.) that nothing can, properly speaking, be learned, for learning is just a recollection of what we already possess, to which the perplexity in which our minds are placed, merely acts as stimulus. Plato here gives the question a speculative significance, in which the reality of knowledge, and not the empirical view of the acquisition of knowledge, is dealt with. For learning, according to the immediate ordinary conception of it, expresses the taking up of what is foreign into thinking consciousness, a mechanical mode of union and the filling of an empty space with things which are foreign and indifferent to this space itself. An external method of effecting increase such as this, in which the soul appears to be a tabula rasa, and which resembles the idea we form of growth going on in the living body through the addition of particles, is dead, and is incompatible with the nature of mind, which is subjectivity, unity, being and remaining at home with itself. But Plato presents the true nature of consciousness in asserting that it is mind in which, as mind, that is already present which becomes object to consciousness, or which it explicitly becomes. This is the Notion of the true universal in its movement; of the species which is in itself its own Becoming, in that it is already implicitly what it explicitly becomes — a process in which it does not come outside of itself. Mind is this absolute species, whose process is only the continual return into itself; thus nothing is for it which it is not in itself. According to this, the process of learning is not that something foreign enters in, but that the mind’s own essence becomes actualized, or it comes to the knowledge of this last. What has not yet learned is the soul, the consciousness represented as natural being. What causes the mind to turn to science is the semblance, and the confusion caused through it, of the essential nature of mind being something different, or the negative of itself — a mode of manifestation which contradicts its real nature, for it has or is the inward certainty of being all reality. In that it abrogates this semblance of other-being, it comprehends the objective, i.e. gives itself immediately in it the consciousness of itself, and thus attains to science. Ideas of individual, temporal, transitory things undoubtedly come from without, but not the universal thoughts which, as the true, have their root in the mind and belong to its nature; by this means all authority is destroyed.
In one sense recollection [Erinnerung] is certainly an unfortunate expression, in the sense, namely, that an idea is reproduced which has already existed at another time. But recollection has another sense, which is given by its etymology, namely that of making oneself inward, going inward, and this is the profound meaning of the word in thought. In this sense it may undoubtedly be said that knowledge of the universal is nothing but a recollection, a going within self, and that we make that which at first shows itself in external form and determined as a manifold, into an inward, a universal, because we go into ourselves and thus bring what is inward in us into consciousness. With Plato, however, as we cannot deny, the word recollection has constantly the first and empirical sense. This comes from the fact that Plato propounds the true Notion that consciousness in itself is the content of knowledge, partly in the form of popular idea and in that of myths. Hence here even, the already mentioned (p. 18) intermingling of idea and Notion commences. In the Meno (p. 82-86 Steph.; p. 350-360 Bekk.) Socrates tries to show, by experiment on a slave who had received no instruction, that learning is a recollection. Socrates merely questions him, leaving him to answer in his own way, without either teaching him or asserting the truth of any fact, and at length brings him to the enunciation of a geometrical proposition on the relation which the diagonal of a square bears to its side. The slave obtains the knowledge out of himself alone, so that it appears as though he only recollected what he already knew but had forgotten. Now if Plato here calls this coming forth of knowledge from consciousness a recollection, it follows that this knowledge has been already in this consciousness, i.e. that the individual consciousness has not only the content of knowledge implicitly, in accordance with its essential nature, but has also possessed it as this individual consciousness and not as universal. But this moment of individuality belongs only to the ordinary conception, and recollection is not thought; for recollection relates to man as a sensuous “this,” and not as a universal. The essential nature of the coming forth of knowledge is hence here mingled with the individual, with ordinary conception, and knowledge here appears in the form of soul, as of the implicitly existent reality, the one, for the soul is still only a moment of spirit. As Plato here passes into a conception the content of which has no longer the pure significance of the universal, but of the individual, he further depicts it in the form of a myth. He represents the implicit existence of mind in the form of a pre-existence in time, as if the truth had already been for us in another time. But at the same time we must remark that he does not propound this as a philosophic doctrine, but in the form of a saying received from priests and priestesses who comprehend what is divine. Pindar and other holy men say the same. According to these sayings, the human soul is immortal; it both ceases to be, or, as men say, it dies, and it comes again into existence, but in no way perishes. “Now if the soul is immortal and often reappears” (metempsychosis), “and if it has seen that which is here as well as in Hades,” (in unconsciousness) “and everything else, learning has no more meaning, for it only recollects what it has already known.”20 Historians seize upon this allusion to what is really an Egyptian idea, and a sensuous conception merely, and say that Plato has laid down that such and such was the case. But Plato made no such statement whatever; what he here says has nothing to do with Philosophy, and more particularly nothing to do with his philosophy, any more than what afterwards is said regarding God.
β. In other Dialogues this myth is further and more strikingly developed; it certainly employs remembrance in its ordinary sense, which is that the mind of man has in past time seen that which comes to his consciousness as the true and absolutely existent. Plato’s principal effort is, however, to show through this assertion of recollection, that the mind, the soul, thought, is on its own account free, and this has to the ancients, and particularly to the Platonic idea, a close connection with what we call immortality of the soul.
αα. In the Phædrus (p. 245 Steph.; p. 38 Bekk.) Plato speaks of this in order to show that the Eros is a divine madness (μανία), and is given to us as the greatest happiness. It is a state of enthusiasm, which here has a powerful, predominating aspiration towards the Idea (supra, p. 30): but it is not an enthusiasm proceeding from the heart and feeling, it is not an ordinary perception, but a consciousness and knowledge of the ideal. Plato says that he must expound the nature of the divine and human soul in order to demonstrate the Eros. “The first point is that the soul is immortal. For what moves itself is immortal and eternal, but what obtains its movement from another is transient. What moves itself is the first principle, for it certainly has its origin and first beginning in itself and derived from no other. And just as little can it cease to move, for that alone can cease which derives its motion from another.” Plato thus first develops the simple Notion of the soul as of the self-moving, and, thus far, an element in mind; but the proper life of the mind in and for itself is the consciousness of the absolute nature and freedom of the “I.” When we speak of the immortality of the soul, the idea is most frequently present to us that the soul is like a physical thing which has qualities of all kinds, and while these can certainly be changed, it yet seems that, as being independent of them, it is not subject to change. Now thought is one of these qualities, which are thus independent of the thing; and thought is also here defined as a thing, and as if it could pass away or cease to be. As regards this point, the main feature of the idea is that the soul should be able to subsist as an imperishable thing without having imagination, thought, &c. With Plato the immortality of the soul is, on the other hand, immediately connected with the fact that the soul is itself that which thinks; and hence that thought is not a quality of soul, but its substance. It is as with body, where the weight is not a quality, but its substance; for as the body would no longer exist if the weight were abstracted, the soul would not exist if thought were taken away. Thought is the activity of the universal, not an abstraction, but the reflection into self and the positing of self that takes place in all conceptions. Now because thought is an eternal which remains at home with itself in every change, soul preserves its identity in what is different, just as, for instance, in sensuous perception it deals with what is different, with outside matter, and is yet at home with itself. Immortality has not then the interest to Plato which it has to us from a religious point of view; in that to him it is associated in greater measure with the nature of thought, and with the inward freedom of the same, it is connected with the determination that constitutes the principle of what is specially characteristic of Platonic philosophy, it is connected with the supersensuous groundwork which Plato has established. To Plato the immortality of the soul is hence likewise of great importance.
He proceeds: “To seek to make clear the Idea of the soul would involve investigation laborious for any but a god; but the tongue of man may speak of this more easily through a figure.” Here follows an allegory in which there is, however, something extravagant and inconsistent. He says: “The soul resembles the united power of a chariot and charioteer.” This image expresses nothing to us. “Now the horses” (the desires) “of the gods and the charioteers are good, and of a good breed. With us men, the charioteer at first takes the reins, but one of the horses only is noble and good and of noble origin; the other is ignoble and of ignoble origin. As might be expected, the driving is very difficult. How mortal differ from immortal creatures, we must endeavour to discover. The soul has the care of the inanimate everywhere, and traverses the whole heavens, passing from one idea to another. When perfect and fully winged, she soars upwards” (has elevated thoughts), “and is the ruler of the universe. But the soul whose wings droop roams about till she has found solid ground; then she takes an earthly form which is really moved by her power, and the whole, the soul and body, put together, is called a living creature, a mortal.”21 The one is thus the soul as thought, existence in and for itself; the other is the union with matter. This transition from thought to body is very difficult, too difficult for the ancients to understand; we shall find more about it in Aristotle. From what has been said, we may find the ground for representing Plato as maintaining the dogma that the soul existed independently prior to this life, and then lapsed into matter, united itself to it, contaminating itself by so doing, and that it is incumbent on it to leave matter again. The fact that the spiritual realizes itself from itself is a point not sufficiently examined by the ancients; they take two abstractions, soul and matter, and the connection is expressed only in the form of a deterioration on the part of soul.
“But as to the immortal,” continues Plato, “if we do not express it in accordance with an apprehending thought, but form an ordinary conception of it, owing to our lack of insight and power to comprehend the nature of God, we conclude that the immortal life of God is that which has a body and soul which, however, are united in one nature (συμπεφυκότα),22 i.e. not only externally but intrinsically made one. Soul and body are both abstractions, but life is the unity of both; and because God’s nature is to popular conception the holding of body and soul unseparated in one, He is the Reason whose form and content are an undivided unity in themselves.” This is an important definition of God — a great idea which is indeed none other than the definition of modern times. It signifies the identity of subjectivity and objectivity, the inseparability of the ideal and real, that is, of soul and body. The mortal and finite is, on the contrary, correctly defined by Plato as that of which the existence is not absolutely adequate to the Idea, or, more definitely, to subjectivity.
Plato now further explains what happens in the life of the divine Being, which drama the soul thus has before it, and how the wasting of its wings occurs. “The chariots of the gods enter in bands, led by Zeus, the mighty leader, from his winged chariot. An array of other gods and goddesses follow him, marshalled in eleven bands. They present — each one fulfilling his work — the noblest and most blessed of scenes. The colourless and formless and intangible essence requires thought, the lord of the soul, as its only spectator, and thus true knowledge takes its rise. For there it sees what is (τὸ ὄν), and lives in the contemplation of reality, because it follows in an ever-recurring revolution” (of ideas). “In this revolution” (of gods), “it beholds justice, temperance, and knowledge, not in the form of what men call things, for it sees what in truth is absolute (τὸ ὄντως ὄν).” This is thus expressed as though it were something which had happened. “When the soul returns from thus beholding, the charioteer puts up his horses at the stall, gives them ambrosia to eat and nectar to drink. This is the life of the gods. But other souls, through fault of charioteer or horses, fall into confusion, with broken wings depart from these heavenly places, cease to behold the truth, nourish themselves on opinion as their food, and fall to the ground; according as a soul has beheld more or less of truth, it takes a higher or lower place. In this condition it retains a recollection of what it has seen, and if it perceives anything beautiful or right, it is rapt in amazement. The wings once more obtain strength, and the soul, particularly that of a philosopher, recollects its former condition in which, however, it had not seen what was beautiful, just, etc., but beauty and justice themselves.”23 Thus because the life of the gods is for the soul, when in individual beauty it is reminded of the universal, it is implied that in the soul, as thus absolutely existing, there is the Idea of the beautiful, good and just, as absolute and as potentially and actually universal. This constitutes the general principle of the Platonic conception. But when Plato speaks of knowledge as of a recollection, he knows all the time that this is only putting the matter in similes and metaphors; he did not ask, as theologians used gravely to do, whether the soul had existed before its birth, and, if so, in what particular place. It cannot be said of Plato that he had any such belief, and he never speaks of the matter in the sense that theologians did; in the same way he never spoke about a Fall from a perfect state, for example, as if man had to look on the present life as an imprisonment. But what Plato expressed as the truth is that consciousness in the individual is in reason the divine reality and life; that man perceives and recognizes it in pure thought, and that this knowledge is itself the heavenly abode and movement.
ββ. Knowledge in the form of soul, is more clearly dealt with in the Phædo, where Plato has further developed the ideas about the immortality of the soul. What in the Phædrus is kept definitely apart as myth and truth respectively, and which is made to appear as such, appears less evidently so in the Phædo — that celebrated dialogue in which Plato makes Socrates speak of the immortality of the soul. That Plato should have connected this discussion with the account of the death of Socrates has in all time been matter of admiration. Nothing could seem more suitable than to place the conviction of immortality in the mouth of him who is in the act of leaving life, and to make this conviction living to us through the scene, just as, on the other hand, a death-scene like this is made living to us through that conviction. We must at the same time remark that in what is fitting the following conditions are implied. It must first be really appropriate for the dying person to occupy himself with himself instead of with the universal, with this certainty of himself as a “this” instead of with the Truth. We hence here meet with the ordinary point of view but slightly separated from that of the Notion, but, although this is so, this ordinary point of view is far removed from sinking into that coarse conception of the soul which considers it to be a thing, and asks about its continuance or subsistence as if it were a thing. Thus we find Socrates expressing himself to the effect that the body and what relates to the body is a hindrance in striving after wisdom, the sole business of Philosophy, because the sensuous perception shows nothing purely, or as it is in itself, and what is true becomes known through the removal of the spiritual from the corporeal. For justice, beauty and such things are what alone exists in verity; they are that to which all change and decay is foreign; and these are not perceived through the body, but only in the soul.24
We see in this separation the essence of the soul not considered in a material category of Being, but as the universal; we see it still more in what follows, by which Plato proves immortality. A principal point in this argument is that already considered, that the soul has existed before this life, because learning is only a recollection,25 and this implies that the soul is already implicitly what it becomes. We must not think that the bald conception of innate ideas is hereby indicated — such an expression implies the existence of ideas by nature, as though our thoughts were in part already implanted, and had in part a natural existence which did not first produce itself through the movement of the mind. But Plato mainly founds the idea of immortality on the fact that what is put together is liable to dissolution and decay, while the simple can in no manner be dissolved or destroyed; what is always like itself and the same, is, however, simple. The beautiful, the good, the like, being simple, are incapable of all change; that, on the contrary, in which these universals are, men, things, &c., are the changeable. They are perceptible by the senses, while the former is the supersensuous. Hence the soul which is in thought, and which applies itself to this, as to what is related to it, must therefore be held to have itself a simple nature.26 Here, then, we again see that Plato does not take simplicity as the simplicity of a thing — not as if it were of anything like a chemical ingredient, for example, which can no longer be represented as inherently distinguished; this would only be empty, abstract identity or universality, the simple as an existent.
But finally the universal really does appear to take the form of an existent, as Plato makes Simmias assert: a harmony which we hear is none else than a universal, a simple which is a unity of the diverse; but this harmony is associated with a sensuous thing and disappears with it, just as music does with the lyre. On the other hand Plato makes Socrates show that the soul is not a harmony in this sense, for the sensuous harmony first exists after its elements, and is a consequence that follows from them. The harmony of the soul is, however, in and for itself, before every sensuous thing. Sensuous harmony may further have diversities within it, while the harmony of the soul has no quantitative distinction.27 From this it is clear that Plato receives the reality of the soul entirely in the universal, and does not place its true being in sensuous individuality, and hence the immortality of the soul cannot in his case be understood in the ordinary acceptation, as that of an individual thing. Although later on we come across the myth of the sojourn of the soul after death in another and more brilliant earth,28 we have seen above (pp. 40, 41) what kind of heaven this would be.
γ. The development and culture of the soul must be taken in connection with what precedes. However the idealism of Plato must not be thought of as being subjective idealism, and as that false idealism which has made its appearance in modern times, and which maintains that we do not learn anything, are not influenced from without, but that all conceptions are derived from out of the subject. It is often said that idealism means that the individual produces from himself all his ideas, even the most immediate. But this is an unhistoric, and quite false conception; if we take this rude definition of idealism, there have been no idealists amongst the philosophers, and Platonic idealism is certainly far removed from anything of the kind. In the seventh book of his Republic (p. 518 Steph., pp. 333, 334 Bekk.) Plato says in connection with what I have already stated (pp. 27-29), and in particular reference to the manner in which this learning is created, by which the universal which before was secreted in the mind, developes out of it alone: “We must believe of science and learning (παιδείας), that its nature is not as some assert” (by this he means the Sophists), “who speak of culture as though knowledge were not contained within the soul, but could be implanted therein as sight into blind eyes.” The idea that knowledge comes entirely from without is in modern times found in empirical philosophies of a quite abstract and rude kind, which maintain that everything that man knows of the divine nature comes as a matter of education and habituation, and that mind is thus a quite indeterminate potentiality merely. Carried to an extreme, this is the doctrine of revelation in which everything is given from without. In the Protestant religion we do not find this rude idea in its abstract form, for the witness of the spirit is an essential part of faith, i.e. faith demands that the individual subjective spirit shall on its own account accept and set forth the determination which comes to it in the form of something given from without. Plato speaks against any such idea, for, in relation to the merely popularly expressed myth given above, he says: “Reason teaches that every man possesses the inherent capacities of the soul and the organ with which he learns. That is, just as we might imagine the eye not capable of turning from darkness to light otherwise than with the whole body, so must we be turned with the whole soul from the world of Becoming” (contingent feelings and ideas) “to that of Being, and the soul must gradually learn to endure this sight, and to behold the pure light of Being. But we say that this Being is the good. The art of so doing is found in culture, as being the art of the conversion of the soul — that is, the manner in which a person can most easily and effectually be converted; it does not seek to implant (ἐμποιῆσαι) sight, but — inasmuch as he already possesses it only it has not been properly turned upon himself and hence he does not see the objects that he ought to see — it brings it into operation. The other virtues of the soul are more in conformity with the body; they are not originally in the soul, but come gradually through exercise and habit. Thought (τὸ φρονῆσαι) on the contrary, as divine, never loses its power, and only becomes good or evil through the manner of this conversion.” This is what Plato establishes in regard to the inward and the outward. Such ideas as that mind determines the good from out of itself are to us much more familiar than to Plato; but it was by Plato that they were first maintained.
c. In that Plato places truth in that alone which is produced through thought, and yet the source of knowledge is manifold — in feelings, sensations, &c. — we must state the different kinds of knowledge, as given by Plato. Plato is entirely opposed to the idea that the truth is given through sensuous consciousness, which is what is known and that from which we start; for this is the doctrine of the Sophists with which we met in dealing with Protagoras, for instance. As regards feeling, we easily make the mistake of placing everything in feeling, as indeed that Platonic rage for beauty contained the truth in the guise of feeling; but this is not the true form of the truth, because feeling is the entirely subjective consciousness. Feeling as such is merely a form with which men make the arbitrary will the principle of the truth, for what is the true content is not given through feeling; in it every content has a place. The highest content must likewise be found in feeling; to have a thing in thought and understanding is quite different from having it in heart and feeling, i.e. in our most inward subjectivity, in this “I”; and we say of the content that it is for the first time in its proper place when it is in the heart, because it then is entirely identical with our individuality. The mistake, however, is to say that a content is true because it is in our feeling. Hence the importance of Plato’s doctrine that the content becomes filled by thought alone; for it is the universal which can be grasped by the activity of thought alone. Plato has defined this universal content as Idea.
At the close of the sixth book of the Republic (pp. 509-511 Steph.; pp. 321-325 Bekk.) Plato distinguishes the sensuous and the intellectual in our knowledge more exactly, so that in each sphere he again presents two modes of consciousness. “In the sensuous (ὁρατόν) the one division is the external manifestation, for in it are shadows, reflections in water, and also in solid, smooth, and polished bodies, and the like. The second section, of which this is only the resemblance, includes animals, plants” (this concrete life), “and everything in art. The intelligible (νοητόν) is also divided into two parts. In the one sub-division the soul uses the sensuous figures given before, and is obliged to work on hypotheses (ἐξ ὑποθέσεων) because it does not go to the principle but to the result.” Reflection, which is not on its own account sensuous, but undoubtedly belongs to thought, mingles thought with the first sensuous consciousness, although its object is not as yet a pure existence of the understanding. “The other division” (what is thought in the soul itself) “is that in which the soul, proceeding from an hypothesis, makes its way (μέθοδον) to a principle which is above hypotheses, not by means of images, as in the former cases, but through the ideas themselves. Those who study geometry, arithmetic, and kindred sciences, assume the odd and the even, the figures, three kinds of angles, and the like. And since they start from these hypotheses, they do not think it necessary to give any account of them, for everybody is supposed to know them. You further know that they make use of figures which are risible, and speak of them, although they are not thinking of them, but of the ideals which they represent; for they think of the” (absolute) “square itself and of its diagonals, and not of the” (sensuous) “images that they draw. And so it is with other things.” Thus, according to Plato, this is certainly the place where real knowledge begins, because we have nothing further to do with the sensuous as such; at the same time this is not the true knowledge which considers the spiritual universal on its own account, but the arguing and reasoning knowledge that forms universal laws and particular kinds or species out of what is sensuous. “These figures which they draw or make, and which also have shadows and images in water, they use only as images, and seek to behold their originals, which can only be seen with the understanding” (διανοίᾳ).— “That is true.”— “This I have named above that species of the intelligible, in inquiring into which the soul is compelled to use hypotheses, not proceeding to a first principle, because it is not able to get above those hypotheses, but employing those secondary images as images which are made absolutely similar to the originals in every respect”— “I understand that you are speaking of geometry and the kindred arts”— “Now learn about the other division of the intelligible in which reason (λόγος) itself is concerned, since by the power of the dialectic it makes use of hypotheses, not as principles but only as hypotheses — that is to say, as steps and points of departure in order to reach a region above hypotheses, the first principle of all” (which is in and for itself), “and clinging to this and to that which depends on this, it descends again to the result, for it requires no sensuous aid at all, but only ideas, and thus it reaches the ideas finally through the ideas themselves.” To know this is the interest and business of Philosophy; this is investigated by pure thought in and for itself, which only moves in such pure thoughts. “I understand you, but not perfectly. You seem to me to wish to assert that what is contemplated in Being and Knowledge through the science of dialectic is clearer than what is contemplated by the so-called sciences which have hypotheses as their principle, and where those who contemplate them have to do so with the understanding and not with the senses. Yet because in their contemplation they do not ascend to the absolute principle, but speculate from hypotheses, they appear not to exercise thought (νοῦν) upon these objects, although these objects are cognizable by thought if a principle is added to them (νοητῶν ὄντων μετὰ ἀρχῆς). The methods (ἕξιν) of geometry and its kindred sciences you appear to me to call understanding; and that because it stands midway between reason (νοῦς) and ‘sensuous’ opinion (δόξα).”— “You have quite grasped my meaning. Corresponding to these four sections, I will suppose four faculties (παθήματα) in the soul — conceiving reason (νόησις) has the highest place (ἐπὶ τῷ ἀνωτάτῳ), understanding the second; the third is called faith (πίστις)” — the true conception for animals and plants in that they are living, homogeneous and identical with ourselves; “and the last the knowledge of images (εἰκασία),” opinion. “Arrange them according to the fact that each stage has as much clearness (σαφηνείας) as that to which it is related has truth.” This is the distinction which forms the basis of Plato’s philosophy, and which came to be known from his writings.
Now if we go from knowledge to its content, in which the Idea becomes sundered, and thereby organizes itself more completely into a scientific system, this content, according to Plato, begins to fall into three parts which we distinguish as the logical, natural, and mental philosophy. The logical Philosophy the ancients called dialectic, and its addition to philosophy is by the ancient writers on the subject ascribed to Plato (Vol. I. p. 387). This is not a dialectic such as we met with in the Sophists, which merely brings one’s ideas altogether into confusion, for this first branch of Platonic philosophy is the dialectic which moves in pure Notions — the movement of the speculatively logical, with which several dialogues, and particularly that of Parmenides, occupy themselves. The second, according to Plato, is a kind of natural philosophy, the principles of which are more especially propounded in the Timæus. The third is the philosophy of the mind — an ethical philosophy — and its representation is essentially that of a perfect state in the Republic. The Critias should be taken in connection with the Timæus and the Republic, but we need not make further reference to it, for it is only a fragment. Plato makes these three dialogues one connected conversation. In the Critias and the Timæus the subject is so divided that while the Timæus dealt with the speculative origin of man and of nature, the Critias was intended to represent the ideal history of human culture, and to be a philosophical history of the human race, forming the ancient history of the Athenians as preserved by the Egyptians. Of this, however, only the beginning has come down to us.29 Hence if the Parmenides be taken along with the Republic and the Timæus, the three together constitute the whole Platonic system of philosophy divided into its three parts or sections. We now wish to consider the philosophy of Plato more in detail in accordance with these three different points of view.
We have already remarked by way of preparation that the Notion of true dialectic is to show forth the necessary movement of pure Notions, without thereby resolving these into nothing; for the result, simply expressed, is that they are this movement, and the universal is just the unity of these opposite Notions. We certainly do not find in Plato a full consciousness that this is the nature of dialectic, but we find dialectic itself present; that is, we find absolute existence thus recognized in pure Notions, and the representation of the movement of these Notions. What makes the study of the Platonic dialectic difficult is the development and the manifestation of the universal out of ordinary conceptions. This beginning, which appears to make knowledge easier, really makes the difficulty greater, since it introduces us into a field in which there is quite a different standard from what we have in reason, and makes this field present to us; when, on the contrary, progression and motion take place in pure Notions alone, the other is not remembered at all. But in that very way the Notions attain greater truth. For otherwise pure logical movement might easily appear to us to exist on its own account, like a private territory, which has another region alongside of it, also having its own particular place. But since both are there brought together, the speculative element begins to appear as it is in truth; that is, as being the only truth, and that, indeed, through the transformation of sensuous opinion into thought. For in our consciousness we first of all find the immediate individual, the sensuous real; or there are also categories of the understanding which are held by us to be ultimate and true. But contrasted with merely external reality, it is rather the ideal that is the most real, and it was Plato who perceived that it was the only real, for he characterized the universal or thought as the true, in opposition to what is sensuous.
Thus the aim of many of Plato’s Dialogues, which conclude without any positive affirmation (Vol. I. p. 406; II. p. 13), is to show that the immediately existent, the many things that appear to us, although we may have quite true conceptions of them, are still not in themselves, in an objective sense, the true, because they alter and are determined through their relation to something else and not through themselves; thus we must even in the sensuous individuals consider the universal, or what Plato has called the Idea (p. 29). The sensuous, limited, and finite is, in fact, both itself and the other, which is also considered as existent; and thus there is an unsolved contradiction, for the other has dominion in the first. We have been before reminded (Vol. I. p. 404; II. p. 33) that the aim of the Platonic dialectic is to confuse and to resolve the finite ideas of men, in order to bring about in their consciousness what science demands, the consideration of that which is. By being thus directed against the form of the finite, dialectic has in the first place the effect of confounding the particular, and this is brought about by the negation therein present being shown forth, so that, in fact, it is proved that it is not what it is, but that it passes into its opposite, into the limitations which are essential to it. But if this dialectic is laid hold of, the particular passes away and becomes another than that which it is taken to be. Formal philosophy cannot look at dialectic in any other way than as being the art of confusing ordinary conceptions or even Notions, and demonstrating their nullity, thus making their result to be merely negative. For this reason, Plato in his Republic (VII. pp. 538, 539, Steph.; pp. 370, 371, Bekk.) advised the citizens not to allow dialectic to be studied before the thirtieth year, because by its means anyone might transform the beautiful, as he had received it from his masters, into that which is hateful. We find this dialectic a great deal in Plato, both in the more Socratic and moralizing dialogues, and in the many dialogues which relate to the conceptions of the Sophists in regard to science.
In connection with this, the second part of dialectic makes its first aim the bringing of the universal in men to consciousness, which, as we formerly remarked when speaking of Socrates (Vol. I. p. 398), was the main interest of Socratic culture. From this time on, we may look at such an aim as having been discarded, and simply remark that a number of Plato’s Dialogues merely aim at bringing to consciousness a general conception, such as we have without taking any trouble at all (Vol. I. pp. 403, 404); hence this prolixity on Plato’s part often wearies us. This dialectic is, indeed, also a movement of thought, but it is really only necessary in an external way and for reflecting consciousness, in order to allow the universal, what is in and for itself, unalterable and immortal, to come forth. Hence these first two sides of the dialectic, directed as they are towards the dissolution of the particular and thus to the production of the universal, are not yet dialectic in its true form: it is a dialectic which Plato has in common with the Sophists, who understood very well how to disintegrate the particular. A subject which Plato very often treats of with this end in view, is virtue, which he proves to be only one (Vol. I. pp. 405, 411), and thereby he makes the universal good emerge from the particular virtues.
Now because the universal which has emerged from the confusion of the particular, i.e. the true, beautiful and good, that which taken by itself is species, was at first undetermined and abstract, it is, in the third place, a principal part of Plato’s endeavours further to determine this universal in itself. This determination is the relation which the dialectic movement in thought bears to the universal, for through this movement the Idea comes to these thoughts which contain the opposites of the finite within themselves. For the Idea, as the self-determining, is the unity of these differences, and thus the determinate Idea. The universal is hence determined as that which resolves and has resolved the contradictions in itself, and hence it is the concrete in itself; thus this sublation of contradiction is the affirmative. Dialectic in this higher sense is the really Platonic; as speculative it does not conclude with a negative result, for it demonstrates the union of opposites which have annulled themselves. Here begins what is difficult for the understanding to grasp. The form of Plato’s methods being not yet, however, developed purely on its own account, this is the reason that his dialectic is still often merely reasoning, and that it proceeds from individual points of view and frequently remains without result. On the other hand, Plato’s own teaching is directed against this merely reasoning dialectic; yet we see that it gives him trouble properly to show forth the difference. The speculative dialectic which commences with him, is thus the most interesting but also the most difficult part of his work; hence acquaintance is not usually made with it when the Platonic writings are studied. Tennemann, for example, did not at all comprehend what was most important in the Platonic philosophy, and only gathered some of it together in the form of dry ontological determinations — for that was what he could comprehend. But it shows the greatest lack of intellect in a historian of Philosophy only to see in a great philosophic form whether there is anything yielding profit to himself or not.
What we have thus to deal with in the dialectic of Plato is the pure thought of reason, from which he very clearly distinguishes the understanding (διάνοια), (supra, p. 47). We may have thoughts about many things — if indeed, we do have thought at all — but this is not what Plato means. Plato’s true speculative greatness, and that through which he forms an epoch in the history of Philosophy, and hence in the history of the world, lies in the fuller determination of the Idea; this extension of knowledge is one which some centuries later constituted the main element in the ferment which took place in universal history, and in the transformation which the human mind passed through. This fuller determination may, from what has gone before, be understood thus: Plato first comprehended the Absolute as the Being of Parmenides, but as the Universal which, as species, is also end, i.e. which rules, penetrates, and produces the particular and manifold. Plato, however, had not yet developed this self-producing activity, and hence often stumbled into an external teleology. As the union of the preceding principles, Plato further led this Being into determinateness and into difference, as the latter is contained in the triad of Pythagorean number-determinations, and expressed the same in thought. That is, he grasped the Absolute as the unity of Being and non-being — in Becoming, as Heraclitus says — or of the one and the many,30 &c. He further now took into the objective dialectic of Heraclitus the Eleatic dialectic, which is the external endeavour of the subject to show forth contradiction, so that in place of an external changing of things, their inward transition in themselves, i.e. in their Ideas, or, as they are here, in their categories, has come to pass out of and through themselves. Plato finally set forth the belief of Socrates, which the latter put forward in regard to the moral self-reflection of the subject only, as objective, as the Idea, which is both universal thought and the existent. The previous philosophies thus do not disappear because refuted by Plato, being absorbed in him.
In addition to Being and non-being, one and many, the unlimited and limiting are, for instance, likewise pure thoughts such as these, in whose absolute contemplation, from an all-embracing point of view, the Platonic investigation occupies itself. The purely logical and quite abstruse consideration of such objects certainly contrasts strongly with our conception of the beautiful, pleasing, and attractive content of Plato. Such consideration to him signifies all that is best in Philosophy, and it is that which he everywhere calls the true method of Philosophy, and the knowledge of the truth; in it he places the distinction between philosophers and Sophists. The Sophists on their part look at appearances, and these they obtain in opinion; this, indeed, implies thought, but not pure thought, or what is in and for itself. This is one reason why many turn from the study of Plato’s works unsatisfied. When we commence a Dialogue, we find, in the free Platonic method of composition, beautiful scenes in nature, a superb introduction (p. 14) that promises to lead us through flowery fields into Philosophy — and that the highest Philosophy, the Platonic. We meet with elevated thoughts, which are responded to more specially by youth, but these soon disappear. If at first we have allowed ourselves to be carried away by these bright scenes, they must now be all renounced, and as we have come to the real dialectic, and truly speculative, we must keep to the wearisome path, and allow ourselves to be pricked by the thorns and thistles of metaphysics. For behold, we then come to what is best and highest, to investigations respecting the one and many, Being and nothing; this was not what was anticipated, and men go quietly away, only wondering that Plato should seek knowledge here. From the most profound dialectic investigation, Plato then again proceeds to representations and images, to the description of dialogues amongst intelligent men. Thus in the Phædo, for example, which Mendelssohn has modernized and transformed into Wolffian metaphysics, the beginning and end are elevating and beautiful, and the middle deals with dialectic. Hence in making one’s way through Plato’s Dialogues very many mental qualities are called into play, and in their study we consequently ought to keep our minds open and free as regards the very various points of interest. If we read with interest what is speculative, we are apt to overlook what is most beautiful; if our interest lies in the elevation and culture of the mind, we forget the speculative element and find that it does not appeal to us. With some it is like the young man in the Bible, who had fulfilled his various duties, and who asked Christ what good thing he still had to do to become His follower. But when the Lord commanded him to sell what he had and give to the poor, the young man went away sorrowful; this was not what he had anticipated. Just in the same way many mean well as regards Philosophy; they study Fries, and heaven knows whom else. Their hearts are full of the true, good and beautiful; they would know and see what they ought to do, but their breasts swell with goodwill alone.
While Socrates remained at the good and universal, at implicitly concrete thoughts, without having developed them or having revealed them through development, Plato certainly goes on to the Idea as determined. His defect, however, is that this determinateness and that universality are still outside one another. We should certainly obtain the determinate Idea by reducing the dialectic movement to its result, and that forms an important element in knowledge. Yet when Plato speaks of justice, beauty, goodness, truth, their origin is not revealed; they are not shown as being results, but merely as hypotheses accepted in their immediacy. Consciousness certainly has an innate conviction that they form the highest end, but this their determination is not discovered. Since Plato’s dogmatic expositions of Ideas are lost (supra, p. 11), the dialectic of pure thought is only placed before us by the Dialogues dealing with the subject, and these, just because they deal with pure thought, are amongst the most difficult, viz.: the Sophist, the Philebus, and, more especially, the Parmenides. We here pass over the Dialogues which contain only negative dialectic and Socratic dialogue, because they treat only of concrete ideas and not of dialectic in its higher signification; they leave us unsatisfied, because their ultimate end is only to confuse one’s opinions, or awaken a sense of the necessity for knowledge. But those three express the abstract speculative Idea in its pure Notion. The embracing of the opposites in one, and the expression of this unity, is chiefly lacking in the Parmenides, which has hence, like some other Dialogues, only a negative result. But both in the Sophist and the Philebus Plato expresses the unity also.
a. The fully worked-out and genuine dialectic is, however, contained in the Parmenides — that most famous masterpiece of Platonic dialectic. Parmenides and Zeno are there represented as meeting Socrates in Athens; but the most important part of it is the dialectic which is put in the mouths of Parmenides and Zeno. At the very beginning the nature of this dialectic is given in detail as follows: Plato makes Parmenides praise Socrates thus: “I notice that in conversing with Aristoteles,” (one of those present; it might quite well have been the philosopher, but that he was born sixteen years after Socrates’ death) “you were trying to define in what the nature of the beautiful, just and good, and all such ideas lay. This your endeavour is noble and divine. But train and exercise yourself even more in what the multitude call idle chatter, and look on as useless, as long as you are young, for otherwise the truth will escape you. — In what, Socrates asks, does this exercise consist? — I was much pleased because you said before that we must not be content with contemplating the sensuous and its illusions, but must consider that which thought alone can grasp, and that which alone exists.” I have before31 remarked that men at all times have believed that the truth could be found through reflection only, for in reflection thought is found, and that which we have before us in the guise of ordinary conception and of belief is transformed into thought. Socrates now replies to Parmenides: “I believed that I should in that way best discern the like and unlike, and the other general determinations in things.” Parmenides replies, “Certainly. But if you begin from a point of view such as that, you must not only consider what follows from such an hypothesis, but also what follows from the opposite of that hypothesis. For example, in the case of the hypothesis ‘the many is,’ you have to consider what will be the consequences of the relation of the many to itself and to the one, and likewise what the consequences of the relation of the one to itself and to the many.” The marvellous fact that meets us in thought when we take determinations such as these by themselves, is that each one is turned round into the opposite of itself. “But again we must consider, if the many is not, as to what will be the result as regards the one and the many, both to themselves and to one another. The same consideration must be employed in respect of identity and non-identity, rest and motion, origination and passing away, and likewise in regard to Being and non-being. We must ask what is each of these in relation to itself, and what is their relation in event of the one or the other being accepted? In exercising yourself fully in this, you will learn to know real truth.”32 Plato thus lays great stress on the dialectical point of view, which is not the point of view of the merely external, but is a living point of view whose content is formed of pure thoughts only, whose movement consists in their making themselves the other of themselves, and thus showing that only their unity is what is truly justified.
Plato makes Socrates say, as regards the meaning of the unity of the one and many, “If anyone proved to me that I am one and many, it would not surprise me. For since he shows me that I am a many, and points out in me the right and left side, an upper and lower half, a front and back, I partake of the manifold; and again I partake of unity because I am one of us seven. The case is the same with stone, wood, &c. But if anyone, after determining the simple ideas of similarity and dissimilarity, multiplicity, and unity, rest and movement, and so on, were to show that these in their abstract form admit of admixture and separation, I should be very much surprised.”33 The dialectic of Plato is, however, not to be regarded as complete in every regard. Though his main endeavour is to show that in every determination the opposite is contained, it can still not be said that this is strictly carried out in all his dialectic movements, for there are often external considerations which exercise an influence in his dialectic. For example, Parmenides says: “Are either of the two parts of the one which is — I mean the One and Being — ever wanting to one another? Is the One ever set free from being a part (τοῦ εἶναι μόριον) and Being set free from the one part (τοῦ ἑνὸς μόριου)? Once more, each part thus possesses both the one and Being, and the smallest part still always consists of these two parts.”34 In other words: “The one is; from this it follows that the one is not synonymous with ’is,’ and thus the one and ‘is’ are distinguished. There hence is in the proposition ‘the one is’ a distinction; the many is therefore contained in it, and thus even with the one I express the many.” This dialectic is certainly correct, but it is not quite pure, because it begins from this union of two determinations.
The result of the whole investigation in the Parmenides is summarized at the close by saying “that whether the one is or is not, it, as also the many (τἆλλα), in relation to themselves and in relation to one another — all of them both are and are not, appear and do not appear.”35 This result may seem strange. We are far from accepting, in our ordinary conception of things, quite abstract determinations such as the one, Being, non-being, appearance, rest, movement, &c., as Ideas; but these universals are taken by Plato as Ideas, and this Dialogue thus really contains the pure Platonic doctrine of Ideas. He shows of the one that when it is as well as when it is not, whether like itself or not like itself, both in movement and rest, origination and decay, it both is and is not; or the unity as well as all these pure Ideas, both are and are not, the one is one as much as it is many. In the proposition “the one is,” it is also implied that “the one is not one but many;” and, conversely, “the many is” also indicates that “the many is not many, but one.” They show themselves dialectically and are really the identity with their ‘other’; and this is the truth. An example is given in Becoming: in Becoming Being and non-being are in inseparable unity, and yet they are also present there as distinguished; for Becoming only exists because the one passes into the other.
In this respect, perhaps, the result arrived at in the Parmenides may not satisfy us, since it seems to be negative in character, and not, as the negation of the negation, expressive of true affirmation. Nevertheless, the Neo-platonists, and more especially Proclus, regard the result arrived at in the Parmenides as the true theology, as the true revelation of all the mysteries of the divine essence. And it cannot be regarded as anything else, however little this may at first appear, and though Tiedemann (Platon. Argumenta, p. 340) speaks of these assertions as merely the wild extravagances of the Neo-platonists. In fact, however, we understand by God the absolute essence of things, which even in its simple Notion is the unity and movement of these pure realities, the Ideas of the one and many, &c. The divine essence is the Idea in general, as it is either for sensuous consciousness or for thought. In as far as the divine Idea is the absolute self-reflection, dialectic is nothing more than this activity of self-reflection in itself; the Neo-Platonists regarded this connection as metaphysical only, and have recognized in it their theology, the unfolding of the secrets of the divine essence. But here there appears the double interpretation already remarked upon (p. 19), which has now to be more clearly expounded. It is that God and the essential reality of things may be understood in two different ways. For, on the one hand, when it is said that the essential reality of things is the unity of opposites, it would seem as though only the immediate essence of these immediately objective things were indicated, and as if this doctrine of real essence or ontology were distinguished from the knowledge of God, or theology. These simple realities and their relation and movement seem only to express moments of the objective and not mind, because there is lacking in them one element — that is to say, reflection into themselves — which we demand for the existence of the divine essence. For mind, the truly absolute essence, is not only the simple and immediate, but that which reflects itself into itself, for which in its opposition the unity of itself and of that which is opposed is; but these moments and their movement do not present it as such, for they make their appearance as simple abstractions. On the other hand, they may also be taken to be pure Notions, which pertain purely to reflection into itself. In this case Being is wanting to them, or what we likewise demand for reflection into itself as essential to the divine essence; and then their movement is esteemed an empty round of empty abstractions, which belong only to reflection and have no reality. For the solution of this contradiction we must know the nature of apprehension and knowledge, in order to obtain in the Notion everything there present. Thus shall we have the consciousness that the Notion is in truth neither the immediate only, although it is the simple, nor merely that which reflects itself into itself, the thing of consciousness; for it is of spiritual simplicity, thus really existent — as it is thought turned back on itself, so it is also Being in itself, i.e. objective Being, and consequently all reality. Plato did not state this knowledge of the nature of the Notion so expressly, nor did he say that this essential Being of things is the same as the divine essence. But really it is simply not put into words, for the fact is undoubtedly present, and the only distinction is one of speech as between the mode of the ordinary conception and that of the Notion. On the one hand, this reflection into itself, the spiritual, the Notion, is present in the speculation of Plato; for the unity of the one and many, &c., is just this individuality in difference, this being-turned-back-within-itself in its opposite, this opposite which is implicit; the essential reality of the world is really this movement returning into itself of that which is turned back within itself. But, on the other hand, for this very reason, this being reflected into self — like the God of ordinary conception — still remains with Plato something separated; and in his representation of the Becoming of Nature in the Timæus, God, and the essential reality of things, appear as distinguished.
b. In the Sophist Plato investigated the pure Notions or Ideas of movement and rest, self-identity and other-being, Being and non-being. He here proves, as against Parmenides, that non-being is, and likewise that the simple self-identical partakes of other-being, and unity of multiplicity. He says of the Sophists that they never get beyond non-being, and he also refutes their whole ground-principle, which is non-being, feeling, and the many. Plato has thus so determined the true universal, that he makes it the unity of, for example, the one and many, Being and non-being; but at the same time he has avoided, or it was his endeavour to avoid, the double meaning which lies in our talk of the unity of Being and nothing, &c. For in this expression we emphasize the unity, and then the difference disappears, just as if we merely abstracted from it. Plato tried, however, to preserve the difference likewise. The Sophist is a further development of Being and non-being, both of which are applicable to all things; for because things are different, the one being the other of the other, the determination of the negative is present. First of all, however, Plato expresses in the Sophist a clearer consciousness of Ideas as abstract universalities, and his conviction that this point of view could not endure, because it was opposed to the unity of the Idea with itself. Plato thus first refutes what is sensuous, and then even the Ideas themselves. The first of these points of view is what is later on called materialism, which makes the corporeal alone to be the substantial, admitting nothing to have reality excepting what can be laid hold of by the hand, such as rocks and oaks. “Let us,” says Plato, in the second place, “proceed to the other, to the friends of Ideas.” Their belief is that the substantial is incorporeal, intellectual, and they separate from it the region of Becoming, of change, into which the sensuous falls, while the universal is for itself. These represent Ideas as immovable, and neither active nor passive. Plato asserts, as against this, that movement, life, soul, and thought, cannot be denied to true Being (παντελῶς ὄντι), and that the holy reason (ἄγιον νοῦν) can be nowhere, and in nothing that is unmoved.36 Plato thus has a clear consciousness of having got further than Parmenides when he says: —
“Keep your mind from this way of inquiry,
For never will you show that non-being is.”
Plato says that Being in anyone partakes both of Being and non-being; but what thus participates is different both from Being and non-being as such.37
This dialectic combats two things in particular; and in the first place it is antagonistic to the common dialectic in the ordinary sense, of which we have already spoken. Examples of this false dialectic to which Plato often comes back, are specially frequent amongst the Sophists; yet he did not show sufficiently clearly how they are distinguished from the purely dialectical knowledge which is in the Notion. For example, Plato expressed his dissent when Protagoras and others said that no determination is absolutely certain — that bitter is not objective, for what to one person is bitter, to another is sweet. Similarly, large and small, more and less, &c., are relative, because the large will be, in other circumstances, small, and the small will be great. That is to say, the unity of opposites is present to us in everything we know, but the common way of looking at things, in which the rational does not come to consciousness, always holds the opposites asunder, as though they were simply opposed in a determinate way. As in each thing we demonstrate unity, so do we also show its multiplicity, for it has many parts and qualities. In the Parmenides, Plato, as we saw above (p. 58), objected to this unity of opposites, because it must thereby be said that something is one in quite another respect from that in which it is many. We thus do not here bring these thoughts together, for the conception and the words merely go backwards and forwards from the one to the other; if this passing to and fro is performed with consciousness, it is the empty dialectic which does not really unite the opposites. Of this Plato says, “If anyone thinks he has made a wonderful discovery in ascertaining that he can drag thoughts this way and that, from one determination to another, he may be told that he has done nothing worthy of praise; for in so doing there is nothing excellent or difficult.” The dialectic that annuls a determination because it reveals in it some defect, and then goes on to establish another, is thus wrong. “The point of difficulty, and what we ought to aim at, is to show that what is the other is the same, and what is the same, is another, and likewise in the same regard and from the same point of view to show that the one has in them come into existence if the other determination is revealed within them. But to show that somehow the same is another, and the other also the same, that the great is also small” (e.g. Protagoras’s die), “and the like also unlike, and to delight in thus always proving opposites, is no true inquiry (ἔλενχος), but simply proves that he who uses such arguments is a neophyte,” in thought, “who has just begun to investigate truth. To separate all existences from one another is the crude attempt of an uncultured and unphilosophical mind. To cause everything to fall asunder means the perfect annihilation of all thought, for thought is the union of ideas.”38 Thus Plato expressly speaks against the dialectic of showing how anything may be refuted from some point of view or another. We see that Plato, in respect of content, expresses nothing excepting what is called indifference in difference, the difference of absolute opposites and their unity. To this speculative knowledge he opposes the ordinary way of thinking, which is positive as well as negative; the former, not bringing the thoughts together, allows first one and then the other to have value in their separation; the latter is, indeed, conscious of a unity, though it is of a superficial, differentiating unity in which the two moments are separate, as standing in different aspects.
The second point against which Plato argues is the dialectic of the Eleatics, and their assertion, which in its nature resembles that of the Sophists, that only Being is, and non-being is not. To the Sophists this means, as Plato puts it: Since the negative is not, but only Being is, there is nothing false; everything existent, everything which is for us, is thus necessarily true, and what is not, we do not know or feel. Plato reproaches the Sophists for thus doing away with the difference between true and false.39 Having arrived at this stage in the knowledge of the dialectic (and the whole matter is merely a difference of stages) the Sophists could allow what they promise — that everything that the individual, according to his belief, makes his end and interest, is affirmative and right. Hence it cannot be said that such and such an act is wrong, wicked, a crime; for this would be to say that the maxim of the action is wrong. No more can it be said that such and such opinion is deceptive, for in the opinion of the Sophists the proposition implies that what I feel or represent to myself, in as far as it is mine, is an affirmative content, and thus true and right. The proposition in itself seems quite abstract and innocent, but we first notice what is involved in such abstractions when we see them in concrete form. According to this innocent proposition there would be no wickedness and no crime. The Platonic dialectic is essentially different from this kind of dialectic.
What is further present to the mind of Plato is that the Idea, the absolute universal, good, true, and beautiful, is to be taken for itself. The myth, which I have already quoted (p. 27 et seq.), indeed goes to prove that we must not consider a good action, a noble man — not the subject of which these determinations are predicated. For that which appears in such conceptions or perceptions as predicate, must be taken for itself, and this is the absolute truth. This tallies with the nature of the dialectic which has been described. An action, taken in accordance with the empirical conception, may be called right; in another aspect, quite opposite determinations may be shown to be in it. But the good and true must be taken on their own account without such individualities, without this empirical and concrete character; and the good and true thus taken alone, constitute that which is. The soul which, according to the divine drama, is found in matter, rejoices in a beautiful and just object; but the only actual truth is in absolute virtue, justice, and beauty. It is thus the universal for itself which is further determined in the Platonic dialectic; of this several forms appear, but these forms are themselves still very general and abstract. Plato’s highest form is the identity of Being and non-being. The true is that which is, but this Being is not without negation. Plato’s object is thus to show that non-being is an essential determination in Being, and that the simple, self-identical, partakes of other-being. This unity of Being and non-being is also found in the Sophists; but this alone is not the end of the matter. For in further investigation Plato comes to the conclusion that non-being, further determined, is the essence of the ‘other’: “Ideas mingle, and Being and the other (θάτερον) go through everything and through one another; the other, because it participates (μετασχόν) in Being, certainly is through this indwelling Being, but it is not identical with that of which it partakes, being something different, and being other than Being, it is clearly non-being. But since Being likewise partakes of other-being, it also is different from other Ideas, and is not any one of them; so that there are thousands of ways in which it is not, and as regards all else, whether looked at individually or collectively, it in many respects is, and in many respects is not.”40 Plato thus maintains that the other, as the negative, non-identical, is likewise in one and the same respect the self-identical; there are not different sides which are in mutual opposition.
These are the principal points in Plato’s peculiar dialectic. The fact that the Idea of the divine, eternal, beautiful, is absolute existence, is the beginning of the elevation of consciousness into the spiritual, and into the consciousness that the universal is true. It may be enough for the ordinary idea to be animated and satisfied by the conception of the beautiful and good, but thinking knowledge demands the determination of this eternal and divine. And this determination is really only free determination which certainly does not prevent universality — a limitation (for every determination is limitation) which likewise leaves the universal in its infinitude free and independent. Freedom exists only in a return into itself; the undistinguished is the lifeless; the active, living, concrete universal is hence what inwardly distinguishes itself, but yet remains free in so doing. Now this determinateness consists in the one being identical with itself in the other, in the many, in what is distinguished. This constitutes the only truth, and the only interest for knowledge in what is called Platonic philosophy, and if this is not known, the main point of it is not known. While in the example already often quoted (pp. 58, 64),41 in which Socrates is both one and many, the two thoughts are made to fall asunder, it is left to speculative thought alone to bring the thoughts together, and this union of what is different, of Being and non-being, of one and many, &c., which takes place without a mere transition from one to another, constitutes the inmost reality and true greatness of Platonic philosophy. This determination is the esoteric element in Platonic philosophy, and the other is the exoteric; the distinction is doubtless an unwarranted one, indicating, as it seems to do, that Plato could have two such philosophies — one for the world, for the people, and the other, the inward, reserved for the initiated. But the esoteric is the speculative, which, even though written and printed, is yet, without being any secret, hidden from those who have not sufficient interest in it to exert themselves. To this esoteric portion pertain the two dialogues hitherto considered, along with which the Philebus may in the third place be taken.
c. In the Philebus Plato investigates the nature of pleasure; and the opposition of the infinite and finite, or of the unlimited (ἄπειρον) and limiting (πέρας), is there more especially dealt with. In keeping this before us, it would scarcely occur to us that through the metaphysical knowledge of the nature of the infinite and undetermined, what concerns enjoyment is likewise determined; but these pure thoughts are the substantial through which everything, however concrete or seemingly remote, is decided. When Plato treats of pleasure and wisdom as contrasted, it is the opposition of finite and infinite. By pleasure we certainly represent to ourselves the immediately individual, the sensuous; but pleasure is the indeterminate in respect that it is the merely elementary, like fire and water, and not the self-determining. Only the Idea is the self-determinate, or self-identity. To our reflection the infinite appears to be what is best and highest, limitation being inferior to it; and ancient philosophers so determined it. By Plato, however, it is, on the other hand, shown that the limited is the true, as the self-determining, while the unlimited is still abstract; it certainly can be determined in many different ways, but when thus determined it is only the individual. The infinite is the formless; free form as activity is the finite, which finds in the infinite the material for self-realization. Plato thus characterizes enjoyment dependent on the senses as the unlimited which does not determine itself; reason alone is the active determination. But the infinite is what in itself passes over to the finite; thus the perfect good, according to Plato, is neither to be sought for in happiness or reason, but in a life of both combined. But wisdom, as limit, is the true cause from which what is excellent arises.42 As that which posits measure and end, it is what absolutely determines the end — the immanent determination with which and in which freedom likewise brings itself into existence.
Plato further considers the fact that the true is the identity of opposites, thus. The infinite, as the indeterminate, is capable of a more or less, it may be more intensive or not; thus colder and warmer, drier and moister, quicker and slower, &c., are all such. What is limited is the equal, the double, and every other measure; by this means the opposite ceases to be unlike and becomes uniform and harmonious. Through the unity of these opposites, such as cold and warm, dry and moist, health arises; similarly the harmony of music takes its origin from the limitation of high tones and deep, of quicker and slower movement, and, generally speaking, everything beautiful and perfect arises through the union of opposites. Health, happiness, beauty, &c., would thus appear to be begotten, in as far as the opposites are allied thereto, but they are likewise an intermingling of the same. The ancients make copious use of intermingling, participation, &c., instead of individuality; but for us these are indefinite and inadequate expressions. But Plato says that the third, which is thus begotten, pre-supposes the cause or that from which it is formed; this is more excellent than those through whose instrumentality that third arose. Hence Plato has four determinations; first the unlimited, the undetermined; secondly the limited, measure, proportion, to which pertains wisdom; the third is what is mingled from both, what has only arisen; the fourth is cause. This is in itself nothing else than the unity of differences, subjectivity, power and supremacy over opposites, that which is able to sustain the opposites in itself; but it is only the spiritual which has this power and which sustains opposition, the highest contradiction in itself. Weak corporeality passes away as soon as ‘another’ comes into it. The cause he speaks of is divine reason, which governs the world; the beauty of the world which is present in air, fire, water, and in all that lives, is produced thereby.43 Thus the absolute is what in one unity is finite and infinite.
When Plato speaks thus of the beautiful and good, these are concrete ideas, or rather there is only one idea. But we are still far from these concrete ideas when we begin with such abstractions as Being, non-being, unity, and multiplicity. If Plato, however, has not succeeded in bringing these abstract thoughts through further development and concretion, to beauty, truth, and morality, there at least lies in the knowledge of those abstract determinations, the criterion by which the concrete is determined, as also its sources. This transition to the concrete is made in the Philebus, since the principle of feeling and of pleasure is there considered. The ancient philosophers knew very well what they had of concrete in those abstract thoughts. In the atomic principle of multiplicity we thus find the source of a construction of the state, for the ultimate thought-determination of such state-principles is the logical. The ancients in their pure Philosophy had not the same end in view as we — they had not the end of a metaphysical sequence placed before them like a problem. We, on the other hand, have something concrete before us, and desire to reduce it to settled order. With Plato Philosophy offers the path which the individual must follow in order to attain to any knowledge, but, generally speaking, Plato places absolute and explicit happiness, the blessed life itself, in the contemplation during life of the divine objects named above.44 This contemplative life seems aimless, for the reason that all its interests have disappeared. But to live in freedom in the kingdom of thought had become the absolute end to the ancients, and they knew that freedom existed only in thought.
With Plato Philosophy likewise commenced to devote more attention to the understanding of what is further determined, and in this way the matter of knowledge began to fall into divisions. In the Timæus the Idea thus makes its appearance as expressed in its concrete determinateness, and the Platonic Philosophy of Nature hence teaches us to have a better knowledge of the reality of the world; we cannot, however, enter into details, and if we did, they have little interest. It is more especially where Plato treats of physiology that his statements in no way correspond with what we now know, although we cannot fail to wonder at the brilliant glimpses of the truth there found, which have been only too much misconceived by the moderns. Plato derived a great deal from the Pythagoreans; how much is theirs, however, cannot be satisfactorily determined. We remarked before (p. 14) that the Timæus is really the fuller version of a Pythagorean treatise; other would-be wise persons have indeed said that the treatise is only an abstract made by a Pythagorean of the larger work of Plato, but the first theory is the more probable. The Timæus has in all times been esteemed the most difficult and obscure of the Platonic dialogues. This difficulty is due in part to the apparent mingling of conceiving knowledge and ordinary perception already mentioned (p. 20), just as we shall presently find an intermingling of Pythagorean numbers; and it is due still more to the philosophic nature of the matter in hand, of which Plato was as yet unconscious. The second difficulty lies in the arrangement of the whole, for what at once strikes one is that Plato repeatedly breaks off the thread of his argument, often appearing to turn back and begin again from the beginning.45 This moved critics such as August Wolff and others, who could not understand it philosophically, to take the Timæus to be an accumulation of fragments put together, or else to be several works which had only been loosely strung together into one, or into the Platonic portion of which much that is foreign had been introduced. Wolff accordingly thought it was evident from this that the dialogue, like Homer’s poems, had been, in its first form, spoken and not written. But although the connection seems unmethodical, and Plato himself makes what maybe called copious excuses for the confusion, we shall find how the whole matter really falls into natural divisions, and we shall also find the deep inward reason which makes necessary the frequent return to what apparently is the beginning.
An exposition of the reality of nature or of the becoming of the world is introduced by Plato in the following way: “God is the Good,” this stands also at the head of the Platonic Ideas in the verbally delivered discourses (supra, p. 11); “goodness, however, has no jealousy of anything, and being free from jealousy, God desired to make all things like Himself.”46 God here is still without determination, and a name which has no meaning for thought; nevertheless, where Plato in the Timæus again begins from the beginning, he is found to have a more definite idea of God. That God is devoid of envy undoubtedly is a great, beautiful, true, and childlike thought. With the ancients, on the contrary, we find in Nemesis, Dike, Fate, Jealousy, the one determination of the gods: moved by this they cast down the great and bring it low, and suffer not what is excellent and elevated to exist. The later high-minded philosophers controverted this doctrine. For in the mere idea of the Nemesis no moral determination is as yet implied, because punishment there is only the humiliation of what oversteps limits, but these limits are not yet presented as moral, and punishment is thus not yet a recognition of the moral as distinguished from the immoral. Plato’s thought is thus much higher than that of most of our moderns, who, in saying that God is a hidden God who has not revealed Himself to us and of whom we can know nothing, ascribe jealousy to God. For why should He not reveal Himself to us if we earnestly seek the knowledge of Him? A light loses nothing by another’s being kindled therefrom, and hence there was in Athens a punishment imposed on those who did not permit this to be done. If the knowledge of God were kept from us in order that we should know only the finite and not attain to the infinite, God would be a jealous God, or God would then become an empty name. Such talk means no more than that we wish to neglect what is higher and divine, and seek after our own petty interests and opinions. This humility is sin — the sin against the Holy Ghost.
Plato continues: “God found the visible” (παραλαβών) — a mythical expression proceeding from the necessity of beginning with an immediate, which, however, as it presents itself, cannot in any way be allowed— “not at rest, but moving in an irregular and disorderly manner; and out of disorder he brought order, considering that this was far better than the other.” From this it appears as if Plato had considered that God was only the δημιοῦργος, i.e. the disposer of matter, and that this, being eternal and independent, was found by Him as chaos; but in view of what has been said, this is false. These are not the philosophic doctrines which Plato seriously held, for he speaks here only after the manner of the ordinary conception, and such expressions have hence no philosophic content. It is only the introduction of the subject, bringing us, as it does, to determinations such as matter. Plato then comes in course of his progress to further determinations, and in these we first have the Notion; we must hold to what is speculative in Plato, and not to the first-mentioned ordinary conception. Likewise, when he says that God esteemed order to be the best, the mode of expression is naïve. Nowadays we should ask that God should first be proved; and just as little should we allow the visible to be established without much further ado. What is proved by Plato from this more naïve method of expression is, in the first place, the true determination of the Idea, which only appears later on. It is further said: “God reflecting that of what is visible, the unintelligent (ἀνόητον) could not be fairer than the intelligent (νοῦς), and that intelligence could not exist in anything devoid of soul, for these reasons put intelligence in the soul, and the soul in the body, and so united them that the world became a living and intelligent system, an animal.” We have reality and intelligence, and the soul as the bond connecting the two extremes, without which intelligence could not have part in the visible body; we saw the true reality comprehended by Plato in a similar way in the Phædrus (supra, p. 39). “There is, however, only one such animal, for were there two or more, these would be only parts of the one, and only one.”47
Plato now first proceeds to the determination of the Idea of corporeal existence: “Because the world was to become corporeal, visible and tangible, and since without fire nothing can be seen, and without solidity, without earth, nothing can be touched, God in the beginning made fire and earth.” In this childlike way Plato introduces these extremes, solidity and life. “But two things cannot be united without a third, there must be a bond between them, uniting both” — one of Plato’s simple methods of expression. “The fairest bond, however, is that which most completely fuses itself and that which is bound by it.” That is a profound saying, in which the Notion is contained; the bond is the subjective and individual, the power which dominates the other, which makes itself identical with it. “Proportion” (ἀναλογία) is best adapted to effect such a fusion; that is, whenever of three numbers or magnitudes or powers, that which is the mean is to the last term what the first term is to the mean, and again when the mean is to the first term as the last term is to the mean (a : b = b : c) “then the mean having become the first and last, and the first and last both having become means, all things will necessarily come to be the same; but having come to be the same, everything will be one.”48 This is excellent, we have still preserved this in our Philosophy; it is the distinction which is no distinction. This diremption from which Plato proceeds, is the conclusion which we know from logic; it appears in the form of the ordinary syllogism, in which, however, the whole rationality of the Idea is, at least externally, contained. The distinctions are the extremes, and the mean is the identity which in a supreme degree makes them one; the conclusion is thus speculative, and in the extremes unites itself with itself, because all the terms pass through all the different positions. It is hence a mistake to disparage the conclusion and not to recognize it as the highest and absolute form; in respect of the conclusions arrived at by the understanding, on the contrary, we should be right in rejecting it. This last has no such mean; each of the differences is there recognized as different in its own independent form, as having a character different from that of the other. This, in the Platonic philosophy, is abrogated, and the speculative element in it constitutes the proper and true form of conclusion, in which the extremes neither remain in independence as regards themselves, nor as regards the mean. In the conclusion of the understanding, on the contrary, the unity which is constituted is only the unity of essentially different contents which remain such; for here a subject, a determination, is, through the mean, simply bound up with another, or “some conception is joined to some other conception.” In a rational conclusion, however, the main point of its speculative content is the identity of the extremes which are joined to one another; in this it is involved that the subject presented in the mean is a content which does not join itself with another, but only through the other and in the other with itself. In other words, this constitutes the essential nature of God, who, when made subject, is the fact that He begot His Son, the world; but in this reality which appears as another, He still remains identical with Himself, does away with the separation implied in the Fall, and, in the other, merely unites Himself to Himself and thus becomes Spirit. When the immediate is elevated over the mediate and it is then said that God’s actions are immediate, there is, indeed, good ground for the assertion; but the concrete fact is that God is a conclusion which, by differentiating itself, unites itself to itself, and, through the abrogation of the mediation, reinstates its own immediacy. In the Platonic philosophy we thus have what is best and highest; the thoughts are, indeed, merely pure thoughts, but they contain everything in themselves; for all concrete forms depend on thought-determinations alone. The Fathers thus found in Plato the Trinity which they wished to comprehend and prove in thought: with Plato the truth really has the same determination as the Trinity. But these forms have been neglected for two thousand years since Plato’s time, for they have not passed into the Christian religion as thoughts; indeed they were considered to be ideas which had entered in through error, until quite recent times, when men began to understand that the Notion is contained in these determinations, and that nature and spirit can thus be comprehended through their means.
Plato continues: “Since what is solid requires two means, because it not only has breadth but also depth, God has placed air and water between fire and earth; and indeed He gave to them the same proportion, so that fire is related to air as air to water, and as air is to water, so is water to earth.”49 Thus we have, properly speaking, four methods of representing space, inasmuch as the point is, through line and surface, closely bound up with the solid body. The sundered mean here discovered, again indicates an important thought of logical profundity; and the number four which here appears, is in nature a fundamental number. For as being the different which is turned towards the two extremes, the mean must be separated in itself. In the conclusion in which God is the One, the second (the mediating), the Son; the third, the Spirit; the mean indeed is simple. But the cause why that which in the rational conclusion is merely three-fold, passes in nature to the four-fold, rests in what is natural, because what in thought is immediately the one, becomes separate in Nature. But in order that in Nature the opposition should exist as opposition, it must itself be a twofold, and thus, when we count, we have four. This also takes place in the conception of God, for when we apply it to the world, we have nature as mean and the existent spirit as the way of return for nature: when the return is made, this is the absolute Spirit. This living process, this separation and unifying of differences, is the living God.
Plato says further: “Through this unity the visible and tangible world has been made. And it comes to pass by God’s having given to it these elements entire and unseparated, that it is perfect, and unaffected by age and disease. For old age and disease only arise from a body’s being worked upon by a superabundance of such elements from without. But here this is not so, for the world contains those elements entirely in itself, and nothing can come to it from without. The world is spherical in form,” (as it was to Parmenides and the Pythagoreans) “as being most perfect, and as containing all others in itself; it is perfectly smooth, since for it there is nothing outside, and it requires no limbs.” Finitude consists in this, that a distinction as regards something else is an externality to some other object. In the Idea we certainly have determination, limitation, difference, other-being, but it is at the same time dissolved, contained, gathered together, in the one. Thus it is a difference through which no finitude arises, seeing that it likewise is sublated. Finitude is thus in the infinite itself, and this is, indeed, a great thought. “God gave the world the most appropriate motion of all the seven, being that which harmonizes best with mind and consciousness, motion in a circle; the other six He took away from it and liberated it from their variations”50 (movements backwards and forwards). This is only a popular way of putting it.
We read further: “Since God wished to make the world a God, He gave it soul, and this was placed in the centre and diffused through the whole, which was also surrounded by it externally; and in this way He brought to pass the self-sufficing existence which required no other, and which needed no other friendship or acquaintance than itself. Through these means God created the world as a blessed God.” We may say that here, where the world is a totality through the world-soul, we first have the knowledge of the Idea; for the first time this newly-begotten God, as the mean and identity, is the true absolute. That first God which was only goodness, is, on the contrary, a mere hypothesis, and hence neither determined nor self-determining. “Now though we have spoken of the soul last,” Plato goes on, “it does not for that reason come last; for this is merely our manner of speech. The soul is the ruler, the king, and the body is its subject.” It is only Plato’s naïvety which ascribes the reversal of the order of the two to a manner of speech. What here appears as contingent is really necessary — that is, to begin with the immediate and then come to the concrete. We must likewise adopt this method, but with the consciousness that when we begin with determinations such as Being, or God, Space, Time, &c., we speak of them in an immediate manner, and this content, in accordance with its nature, is at first immediate, and consequently undetermined in itself. God, for example, with whom we begin as an immediate, is proved only at the last, and then, indeed, as the true first. Thus we can, as already remarked, (p. 72) show Plato’s confusion of mind in such presentations; but it depends entirely on what Plato’s standard of truth is.
Plato further shows us the nature of the Idea in one of the most famous and profound of passages, where in the essence of the soul he recognizes again the very same idea that he also expressed as the essence of the corporeal. For he says: “The soul is created in the following way: Of the indivisible and unchangeable and also of the divisible which is corporeal, God made a third kind of intermediate essence, which partook of the nature of the same and of the nature of the other or diverse.” (The divisible is to Plato likewise the other as such, or in itself, and not of anything else.) “And God in like manner made the soul a sort of intermediate between the indivisible and the divisible.” Here the abstract determinations of the one which is identity, of the many or non-identical, which is opposition and difference, once more appear. If we say: “God, the Absolute, is the identity of the identical and non-identical,” a cry is raised of barbarism and scholasticism. Those who speak of it so still hold Plato in high esteem, and yet it was thus that he determined the truth. “And taking these three elements as separate, God mingled them all into one Idea, because he forcibly compressed the incongruous nature of the other into the same.”51 This is undoubtedly the power of the Notion, which posits the many, the separate, as the ideal, and that is also the force applied to the understanding when anything is placed before it.
Plato now describes how the self-identical, as itself a moment, and the other or matter, and the third, the apparently dissoluble union which has not returned into the first unity — which three were originally separated — have now, in simple reflection into self and resumption of that beginning, been degraded into moments. “Mingling the identical and the other with the essence (οὐσία),” the third moment, “and making them all one, God again divided this whole into as many parts was as fitting.”52 Since this substance of the soul is identical with that of the visible world, the one whole is for the first time the now systematized substance, the true matter, the absolute element which is internally divided, an enduring and unseparable unity of the one and many; and no other essence must be demanded. The manner and mode of the division of this subjectivity contain the famous Platonic numbers, which doubtless originally pertain to the Pythagoreans, and respecting which both ancients and moderns, and even Kepler himself in his Harmonia mundi, have taken much pains, but which no one has properly understood. To understand would mean two things, and in the first place, the recognition of their speculative significance, their Notion. But, as already remarked of the Pythagoreans (Vol. I. p. 224), these distinctions of number give only an indefinite conception of difference, and that only in the earlier numbers; where the relationships become more complicated, they are quite incapable of designating them more closely. In the second place, because of their being numbers, they express, as differences of magnitude, differences in what is sensuous only. The system of apparent magnitude — and it is in the heavenly system that magnitude appears most purely and freely, liberated from what is qualitative — must correspond to them. But these living number-spheres are themselves systems composed of many elements — both of the magnitude of distance and of velocity and mass. No one of these elements, taken as a succession of simple numbers, can be likened to the system of heavenly spheres, for the series corresponding to this system can, as to its members, contain nothing else than the system of all these moments. Now if the Platonic numbers were also the elements of each system such as this, it would not be only this element which would have to be taken into account, for the relationship of moments which become distinguished in movement has to be conceived of as a whole, and is the true object of interest and reason. What we have to do is to give briefly the main points as matter of history; we have the most thorough treatment of it given us by Böckh “On the Constitution of the World-Soul in the Timæus of Plato,” in the third volume of the Studies of Daub and Creuzer (p. 26 et seq.).
The fundamental series is very simple: “God first took one part out of the whole; then the second, the double of the first; the third is one and a half times as many as the second, or three times the first; the next is double the second; the fifth is three times the third; the sixth is eight times the first; the seventh is twenty-seven times greater than the first.” Hence the series is: 1; 2; 3; 4 = 2²; 9 = 3²; 8 = 2³; 27 = 3³. “Then God filled up the double and triple intervals” (the relations 1 : 2 and 1 : 3) “by again abstracting portions from the whole. These parts he placed in the intervals in such a way that in each interval there were two means, the one exceeding and exceeded by the extremes in the same ratio, the other being that kind of mean which by an equal number exceeds and is exceeded by the extremes.” That is, the first is a constant geometric relationship, and the other is an arithmetical. The first mean, brought about through the quadration, is thus in the relation 1 : 2, for example, the proportion 1 : √¯2 : 2; the other is in the same relation, the number 1½. Hereby new relations arise which are again in a specially given and more difficult method inserted into that first, but this is done in such a way that everywhere something has been left out, and the last relation of number to number is 256 : 243, or 28 : 35.
Much progress is not, however, made with these number-relations, for they do not present much to the speculative Notion. The relationships and laws of nature cannot be expressed by these barren numbers; they form an empirical relation which does not constitute the basis of the proportions of nature. Plato now says: “God divided this entire series lengthways into two parts which he set together crosswise like an X, and he bent their ends into a circular form and comprehended them in a uniform motion — forming an inner circle and an outer — and he called the motion of the outer circle the motion of the same, and that of the inner the motion of the diverse, giving supremacy to the former, and leaving it intact. But the inner motion he again split into seven orbits after the same relations; three of these he made to move with equal velocity, and four with unequal velocity to the three and to one another. This is the system of the soul within which all that is corporeal is formed; the soul is the centre, it penetrates the whole and envelopes it from without and moves in itself. Thus it has the divine beginning of a never-ceasing and rational life in itself.”53 This is not quite devoid of confusion, and from it we can only grasp the general fact that as to Plato with the idea of the corporeal universe that of the soul enters in as the all-embracing and simple, to him the essence of the corporeal and of the soul is unity in difference. This double essence, posited in and for itself in difference, becomes systematized within the one in many moments, which are, however, movements; thus this reality and that essence both pertain to this whole in the antithesis of soul and body, and this again is one. Mind is what penetrates all, and to it the corporeal is opposed as truly as that it itself is mind.
This is a general description of the soul which is posited in the world and reigns over it; and in as far as the substantial, which is in matter, is similar to it, their inherent identity is asserted. The fact that in it the same moments which constitute its reality are contained, merely signifies that God, as absolute Substance, does not see anything other than Himself. Plato hence describes the relation of soul to objective reality thus: it, if it touches any of the moments, whether dispersed in parts or indivisible, is stirred in all its powers to declare the sameness and the difference of that or some other thing, and how, where, and when, the individual is related to the other and to the universal. “Now when the orbit of the sensuous, moving in its due course, imparts knowledge of itself to its whole soul” (where the different orbits of the world’s course show themselves to correspond with the inwardness of mind) “true opinions and beliefs arise. But when the soul applies itself to the rational and the orbit of the self-identical makes itself known, thought is perfected into knowledge.”54 This is the essential reality of the world as of the inherently blessed God; here the Idea of the whole is for the first time perfected, and, in accordance with this Idea, the world first makes its appearance. What had hitherto appeared was the reality of the sensuous only and not the world as sensuous, for though Plato certainly spoke before of fire, &c. (p. 75), he there gave only the reality of the sensuous; he would hence have done better to have omitted these expressions. In them we have the reason for its appearing as if Plato had here begun to consider from the beginning that of which he has already treated (supra, p. 72). For since we must begin from the abstract in order to reach the true and the concrete, which first appears later on (supra, p. 79), this last, when it has been found, has the appearance and form of a new commencement, particularly in Plato’s loose style.
Plato now goes on further, for he calls this divine world the pattern which is in thought (νοητόν) alone, and always in self-identity; but he again places this whole in opposition to itself, so that there is a second, the copy of the first, the world, which has origination and is visible. This second is the system of the heavenly movement, the first is the eternally living. The second, which has origination and becoming within it, cannot be made perfectly like the first, the eternal Idea. But it is made a self-moving image of the eternal that remains in the unity; and this eternal image that moves rhythmically, after the manner of numbers, is what we call time. Plato says of it that we are in the habit of calling the ‘was’ and ‘will be’ parts of time, and we transfer these indications of change which operate in time, into absolute essence. But the true time is eternal, or the present. For the substance can neither become older nor younger, and time, as the immediate image of the eternal, has neither the future nor the present in its parts. Time is ideal, like space, not sensuous, but the immediate mode in which mind comes forth in objective form, the sensuous non-sensuous. The real moments of the principle of absolute movement in what is temporal, are those in which changes appear. “From the mind and will of God in the creation of time, there arose the sun, moon, and five other stars which are called the planets, and which serve to distinguish and preserve the relations of time.”55 For in them the numbers of time are realized. Thus the heavenly movement, as the true time, is the image of the eternal which yet remains in unity, i.e. it is that in which the eternal retains the determination of the ‘same.’ For everything is in time, that is, in negative unity which does not allow anything to root itself freely in itself, and thus to move and to be moved according to chance.
But this eternal is also in the determinateness of the other reality, in the Idea of the self-changing and variable principle whose universal is matter. The eternal world has a likeness in the world which belongs to time, but opposed to this there is a second world where change really dwells. The ‘same’ and the ‘other’ are the most abstract opposes that we hitherto have had. The eternal world as posited in time has thus two forms — the form of similarity and the form of differentiality, of variability. The three moments as they appear in the last sphere, are, in the first place, simple essence which is begotten, which has arisen, or determinate matter; secondly the place in which it is begotten, and thirdly that in which what is begotten has its pattern. Plato gives them thus: “Essence (ὄν), place, and generation.” We thus have the conclusion in which space is the mean between individual generation and the universal. If we now oppose this principle to time in its negativity, the mean is this principle of the ‘other’ as the universal principle— “a receiving medium like a mother” — an essence which contains everything, gives to everything an independent subsistence and the power to do as is desired. This principle is destitute of form, yet capable of receiving all forms, the universal principle of all that appears different; it is the false passive matter that we understand when we speak of it — the relative substantial, existence generally, but external existence here, and only abstract Being-for-self. Form is in our reflection distinguished from it, and this, Plato tells us, first comes into existence through the mother. In this principle we have what we call the phenomenal, for matter is just this subsistence of individual generation, in which division is posited. But what appears herein is not to be posited as the individual of earthly existence, but is to be apprehended as the universal in such determinateness. Since matter, as the universal, is the principle of all that is individual, Plato in the first place reminds us that we cannot speak of these sensuous things — fire, water, earth, air, &c. (which thus once more come before us here); for hereby they are expressed as a fixed determination which remains as such — but what remains is only their universality, or they, as universal, are only the fiery, earthly, &c.56
Plato further expounds the determinate reality of these sensuous things, or their simple determinateness. In this world of change form is figure in space; for as in the world, which is the immediate image of the eternal, time is the absolute principle, here the absolute ideal principle is pure matter as such, i.e. the existence of space. Space is the ideal essence of this phenomenal world, the mean which unites positivity and negativity, but its determinations are figures. And, indeed, of the different dimensions of space, it is surface which must be taken as true reality, for it is the absolute mean between the line and point in space, and in its first real limitation it is three; similarly the triangle is first among the figures, while the circle has no limit as such within it. Here Plato comes to the deduction of configuration, in which the triangle forms the principle; thus triangles form the essence of sensuous things. Hence he says, in Pythagorean fashion, that the compounding and uniting together of these triangles, as their Idea pertaining to the mean, constitutes once more, according to the original number-relations, the sensuous elements. This is the principle, but how Plato determines the figures of the elements, and the union of the triangles, I refrain from considering.57
From this point Plato passes to a system of Physics and Physiology into which we have no intention of following him. It is to be regarded as a first, childlike endeavour to understand sensuous phenomena in their manifold character, but as yet it is superficial and confused. Sensuous manifestations, such as the parts and limbs of the body, are here taken into consideration, and an account of this is given intermingled with thoughts which resemble our formal explanations, and in which the Notion really vanishes. We have to remember the elevated nature of the Idea, as being the main point of excellence in his explanations, for, as far as the realization of the same is concerned, Plato merely felt and expressed it to be a necessity. Speculative thought is often recognizable, but, for the most part, consideration is directed to quite external modes of explanation, such as that of end. The method of treating Physics is a different one from ours, for while with Plato empirical knowledge is still deficient, in modern Physics, on the other hand, the deficiency is found in the Idea. Plato, although he does not seem to conform to our theory of Physics, ignoring as it does the theory of life, and though he proceeds to talk in a childlike way in external analogies, yet in certain cases gives utterance to very deep perceptions, which would be well worthy of our consideration if the contemplation of nature as living had any place with our physicists. His manner of relating the physiological to the physical would be as interesting. Certain portions of his system contain a general element, such as his representation of colours, and from this he goes on to more general considerations. For when Plato begins to talk on this subject, he says of the difficulty of distinguishing and recognizing the individual, that in the contemplation of nature there are “two causes to be distinguished, the one necessary and the other divine. The divine must be sought for in all things with the view of attaining to a blessed life” (this endeavour is an end in and for itself, and in it we find happiness) “in as far as our nature admits, but the necessary causes need be sought only for the sake of divine things, considering that without these necessary causes” (as conditions of knowledge) “we cannot know them.” Contemplation in accordance with necessity is the external contemplation of objects, their connection, relation, &c. “Of the divine, God Himself was the creator,” the divine belongs to that first eternal world — not as to one beyond, but to one now present. “But the creation and disposition of the mortal He committed to His offspring (γεννήμασι).” This is a simple way of passing from the divine to the finite and earthly. “Now they, imitating the divine, because they had received the immortal principle of a soul, fashioned a mortal body, and placed in this a soul of another nature, which was mortal. This mortal nature was subject to violent and irresistible affections — the first of these was pleasure, the greatest incitement to evil, and then pain which is the deterrent (φυγάς) from doing good; also rashness (θάῤῥος) and fear, two foolish counsellors; anger, hope, &c. These sensations all belong to the mortal soul. And that the divine might not be polluted more than necessary, the subordinate gods separated this mortal nature from the seat of the divine, and gave it a different habitation in another part of the body, placing the neck so as to be the isthmus and boundary between head and breast.” The sensations, affections, &c., dwell in the breast or in the heart (we place that which is immortal in the heart); the spiritual is in the head. But in order to make the former as perfect as might be, “they placed,” for instance, “as a supporter to the heart which was burnt with passion, the lung, soft and bloodless, and which had within it hollows like the pores of a sponge, in order that, receiving the breath and drink, it might cool the heart and allow of refreshment and an alleviation of the heat.”58
What Plato says of the liver is specially worthy of notice. “Since the irrational part of the soul which desires eating and drinking does not listen to reason, God made the liver so that the soul might be inspired with terror by the power of thought which originates from reason, and which descends upon the liver as on a mirror, receiving upon it figures and giving back images. But if this part of the soul is once more assuaged, in sleep it participates in visions. For the authors of our being, remembering the command of their father to make the human race as good as they could, thus ordered our inferior parts in order that they also might obtain a measure of truth, and placed the oracle in them.” Plato thus ascribes divination to the irrational, corporeal part of man, and although it is often thought that revelation, &c., is by Plato ascribed to reason, this is a false idea; he says that there is a reason, but in irrationality. “Herein we have a conclusive proof that God has given the art of divination to the irrationality of man, for no man when in his wits, attains prophetic truth and inspiration, but when he receives the inspiration either his intelligence is enthralled by sleep or he is demented by some distemper or possession.” Thus Plato makes divination of a lower grade than conscious knowledge. “And when he has recovered his senses he has to remember and explain what he has received, for while he is demented, he cannot judge of it. The ancient saying is therefore very true, that only a man who has his wits can act or judge about himself or his own affairs.”59 Plato is called the patron saint of mere possession, but, according to this, the assertion is entirely false. These are the principal points in Plato’s Philosophy of Nature.
We have already dealt generally from the theoretical side with the speculative nature of mind as yet unrealized, as well as with the highly important differences with respect to the kinds of knowledge (pp. 28-48). It must also be considered that we find in Plato as yet no developed consciousness of the organization of the theoretic mind, though certainly sensation, memory, &c., are distinguished by him from reason; these moments of the mind are, however, neither accurately discriminated, nor exhibited in their connection, so as to show the necessary relations between them. The only point of interest for us then in Plato’s philosophy of mind is his view of man’s moral nature; and this real, practical side of consciousness is Plato’s greatest glory, and hence must now be specially dealt with by us. Its form certainly does not suggest that Plato gave himself much trouble to discover a supreme moral principle, as it is now called, which, for the very reason that it is supposed to be all-embracing, has in it a certain lack of content. Neither did he trouble himself about a natural right, which is but a trivial abstraction foisted on to the real practical existence, the right; but it is of man’s moral nature that he treats in the Republic. Man’s moral nature seems to us to have little to do with the State; to Plato, however, the reality of mind — that is, of mind as opposed to nature — appeared in its highest truth as the organization of a state which, as such, is essentially moral; and he recognized that the moral nature (free will in its rationality) comes to its right, to its reality, only in an actual nation.
We must further remark that in the Republic Plato introduces the investigation of his subject with the object of showing what justice (δικαιοσύνη) is. After much discussion has taken place, and several definitions of justice have been taken into consideration only to be rejected, Plato at last says in his simple way: “The present investigation is very like the case of a man who is required to read small handwriting at a distance; if it were observed that the same letters were to be seen at a shorter distance and of a larger size, he would certainly prefer to read first the letters where they were written larger, and then would be able to read more easily the small letters also. The same plan should be followed now with justice. Justice is not only in the individual, but also in the state, and the state is greater than the individual; justice is therefore imprinted on states in larger characters, and is more easily recognizable.” (This is different from what the Stoics say of the wise man.) “It is therefore preferable to consider justice as it is to be found in the state.”60 By making this comparison Plato transforms the question anent justice into an investigation of the state; it is a very simple and graceful transition, though it seems arbitrary. It was great force of insight that really led the ancients to the truth; and what Plato brings forward as merely simplifying the difficulty, may, in fact, be said to exist in the nature of the thing. For it is not convenience which leads him to this position, but the fact that justice can be carried out only in so far as man is a member of a state, for in the state alone is justice present in reality and truth. Justice, not as the understanding, but as mind in its striving to realize itself, is the existence of freedom here and now, the actuality of the self-conscious, intelligent existence in and at home with itself and possessing activity — just as in property, for instance, I place my freedom in this particular thing. But the principle of the state again is the objective reality of justice, the reality in which the whole mind is present and not only the knowledge of myself as this individual. For as the free and reasonable will determines itself, there are laws of freedom; but these laws are nothing else than state-laws, for the Notion of the state implies the existence of a reasoning will. Thus laws have force in the state, and are there matter of practice and of custom; but because self-will is also there in its immediacy, they are not only matter of custom, but must also be a force operating against arbitrary self-will, and showing itself in the courts of justice and in governments. Thus Plato, in order to discern the features of justice, with the instinct of reason fixes his attention on their manner of representation in the state.
Justice in itself is ordinarily represented by us in the form of a natural right, right in a condition of nature; such a condition of nature is, however, a direct moral impossibility. That which is in itself is, by those who do not attain to the universal, held to be something natural, as the necessary moments of the mind are held to be innate ideas. The natural is rather what should be sublated by the mind, and the justice of the condition of nature can only emerge as the absolute injustice of the mind. In contrast with the state, which is the real spirit, the spirit in its simple and as yet unrealized Notion is the abstract implicitude; this Notion must of course precede the construction of its reality; it is this which is conceived of as a condition of nature. We are accustomed to take our start from the fiction of a condition of nature, which is truly no condition of mind, of reasonable will, but of animals among themselves: wherefore Hobbes has justly remarked that the true state of nature is a war of every man against his neighbour. This implicitude of the mind is at the same time the individual man, for in the ordinary conception the universal separates itself from the particular, as if the particular were absolutely and in and for itself what it certainly is, and the Universal did not make it that which it is in truth — as if this were not its essence, but as if the individual element were the most important. The fiction of a state of nature starts from the individuality of the person, his free will, and his relation to other persons according to this free will. Natural justice has thus been a term applied to that which is justice in the individual and for the individual; and the condition of society and of the state has been recognized only as a medium for the individual person, who is the chief end and object. Plato, in direct contrast with this, lays as his foundation the substantial, the universal, and he does this in such a way that the individual as such has this very universal as his end, and the subject has his will, activity, life and enjoyment in the state, so that it may be called his second nature, his habits and his customs. This moral substance which constitutes the spirit, life and Being of individuality, and which is its foundation, systematizes itself into a living, organic whole, and at the same time it differentiates itself into its members, whose activity signifies the production of the whole.
This relation of the Notion to its reality certainly did not come into consciousness with Plato, and thus we do not find in him a philosophic method of construction, which shows first the absolute Idea, then the necessity, inherently existent, for its realization, and this realization itself. The judgment that has been delivered respecting Plato’s Republic therefore is that Plato has therein given a so-called ideal for the constitution of a state; this has become proverbial as a sobriquet, in the sense that this conception is a chimera, which may be mentally conceived of — and in itself, as Plato describes it, it is doubtless excellent and true — that it is also capable of being carried out, but only on the condition that men should be of an excellence such as may possibly be present among the dwellers in the moon, but that it is not realizable for men like those on the earth. But since men most be taken as they are, this ideal cannot be realized by reason of men’s wickedness; and to frame such an ideal is therefore altogether idle.
As to this, the first remark to be made is that in the Christian world in general there passes current an ideal of a perfect man which certainly cannot be carried out in the great body of a nation. We may, perhaps, see it realized in monks or Quakers, or other similar pious folk, but a set of melancholy specimens such as these could never form a nation, any more than lice or parasitic plants could exist for themselves, or otherwise than on an organic body. If such men were to constitute a nation, there would have to be an end of this lamb-like gentleness, this vanity which occupies itself exclusively with its own individual self, which pets and pampers itself, and ever has the image and consciousness of its own excellence before its eyes. For life in the universal and for the universal demands, not that lame and cowardly gentleness, but gentleness combined with a like measure of energy, and which is not occupied with itself and its own sins, but with the universal and what is to be done for it. They before whose eyes that false ideal floats of course find men to be always compassed with weakness and depravity, and never find that ideal realized. For they raise into importance the veriest trifles, which no reasonable man would give heed to; and they think such weaknesses and defects are present even when they overlook them. But we need not esteem this forbearance to be generosity; for it rather implies a perception on their part that from what they call weakness and defect proceeds their own destruction, which comes to pass from their making such defects of importance. The man who has them is immediately through himself absolved from them, in so far as he makes nothing of them. The crime is a crime only when they are real to him, and his destruction is in holding them to be something real. Such an ideal must therefore not stand in our way, whatever be the fairness of its form, and this even when it does not appear exactly as it does to monks and Quakers, but, for instance, when it is the principle of renouncing sensuous things, and abandoning energy of action, which principle must bring to nought much that would otherwise be held of value. It is contradictory to try to keep intact all our relationships, for in those that otherwise hold good there always is a side where opposition is encountered. Moreover, what I have already said regarding the relation between philosophy and the state (p. 23 et seq.) shows that the Platonic ideal is not to be taken in this sense. When an ideal has truth in itself through the Notion, it is no chimera, just because it is true, for the truth is no chimera. Such an idea is therefore nothing idle and powerless, but the real. It is certainly permissible to form wishes, but when pious wishes are all that a man has in regard to the great and true, he may be said to be godless. It is just as if we could do nothing, because everything was so holy and inviolable, or as if we refused to be anything definite, because all that is definite has its defects. The true ideal is not what ought to be real, but what is real, and the only real; if an ideal is held to be too good to exist, there must be some fault in the ideal itself, for which reality is too good. The Platonic Republic would thus be a chimera, not because excellence such as it depicts is lacking to mankind, but because it, this excellence, falls short of man’s requirements. For what is real, is rational. The point to know, however, is what exactly is real; in common life all is real, but there is a difference between the phenomenal world and reality. The real has also an external existence, which displays arbitrariness and contingency, like a tree, a house, a plant, which in nature come into existence. What is on the surface in the moral sphere, men’s action, involves much that is evil, and might in many ways be better; men will ever be wicked and depraved, but this is not the Idea. If the reality of the substance is recognized, the surface where the passions battle must be penetrated. The temporal and transitory certainly exists, and may cause us trouble enough, but in spite of that it is no true reality, any more than the particularity of the subject, his wishes and inclinations, are so.
In connection with this observation, the distinction is to be called to mind which was drawn when we were speaking above (pp. 84, 88) of Plato’s Philosophy of Nature: the eternal world, as God holy in Himself, is reality, not a world above us or beyond, but the present world looked at in its truth, and not as it meets the senses of those who hear, see, &c. When we thus study the content of the Platonic Idea, it will become clear that Plato has, in fact, represented Greek morality according to its substantial mode, for it is the Greek state-life which constitutes the true content of the Platonic Republic. Plato is not the man to dabble in abstract theories and principles; his truth-loving mind has recognized and represented the truth, and this could not be anything else than the truth of the world he lived in, the truth of the one spirit which lived in him as well as in Greece. No man can overleap his time, the spirit of his time is his spirit also; but the point at issue is, to recognize that spirit by its content.
On the other hand, a constitution that would be perfect in respect to one nation, is to be regarded as not, perhaps, suitable for every nation. Thus, when it is said that a true constitution does not do for men as they now are, we must no doubt keep in mind that the more excellent a nation’s constitution is, it renders the nation also so much the more excellent; but, on the other hand, since the morals commonly practised form the living constitution, the constitution in its abstraction is nothing at all in its independence; it must relate itself to the common morality, and be filled with the living spirit of the people. It can, therefore, certainly not be said that a true constitution suits any and every nation; and it is quite the case that for men as they are — for instance, as they are Iroquois, Russians, French — not every constitution is adapted. For the nation has its place in history. But as the individual man is trained in the state, that is, as individuality is raised into universality, and the child grows into a man, so is every nation trained; or barbarism, the condition in which the nation is a child, passes over into a rational condition. Men do not remain at a standstill, they alter, as likewise do their constitutions. And the question here is, What is the true constitution which the nation must advance towards; just as it is a question which is the true science of mathematics or of anything else, but not whether children or boys should possess this science, as they must rather be first so educated that they may be capable of understanding it. Thus the true constitution stands before the nation of history, so that it may advance towards it. Every nation in course of time makes such alterations in its existing constitution as will bring it nearer to the true constitution. The nation’s mind itself shakes off its leading-strings, and the constitution expresses the consciousness of what it is in itself, — the form of truth, of self-knowledge. If a nation can no longer accept as implicitly true what its constitution expresses to it as the truth, if its consciousness or Notion and its actuality are not at one, then the nation’s mind is torn asunder. Two things may then occur. First, the nation may either by a supreme internal effort dash into fragments this law which still claims authority, or it may more quietly and slowly effect changes on the yet operative law, which is, however, no longer true morality, but which the mind has already passed beyond. In the second place, a nation’s intelligence and strength may not suffice for this, and it may hold to the lower law; or it may happen that another nation has reached its higher constitution, thereby rising in the scale, and the first gives up its nationality and becomes subject to the other. Therefore it is of essential importance to know what the true constitution is; for what is in opposition to it has no stability, no truth, and passes away. It has a temporary existence, but cannot hold its ground; it has been accepted, but cannot secure permanent acceptance; that it must be cast aside, lies in the very nature of the constitution. This insight can be reached through Philosophy alone. Revolutions take place in a state without the slightest violence when the insight becomes universal; institutions, somehow or other, crumble and disappear, each man agrees to give up his right. A government must, however, recognize that the time for this has come; should it, on the contrary, knowing not the truth, cling to temporary institutions, taking what — though recognized — is unessential, to be a bulwark guarding it from the essential (and the essential is what is contained in the Idea), that government will fall, along with its institutions, before the force of mind. The breaking up of its government breaks up the nation itself; a new government arises, — or it may be that the government and the unessential retain the upper hand.
Thus the main thought which forms the groundwork of Plato’s Republic is the same which is to be regarded as the principle of the common Greek morality, namely, that established morality has in general the relation of the substantial, and therefore is maintained as divine. This is without question the fundamental determination. The determination which stands in contrast to this substantial relation of the individual to established morality, is the subjective will of the individual, reflective morality. This exists when individuals, instead of being moved to action by respect and reverence for the institutions of the state and of the fatherland, from their own convictions, and after moral deliberation, come of themselves to a decision, and determine their actions accordingly. This principle of subjective freedom is a later growth, it is the principle of our modern days of culture: it, however, entered also into the Greek world, but as the principle of the destruction of Greek state-life. It was looked on as a crime, because the spirit, political constitution, and laws of the Greeks were not, and could not be calculated to admit of the rise of this principle within them. Because these two elements were not homogeneous, traditional and conventional morality in Greece was overthrown. Plato recognized and caught up the true spirit of his times, and brought it forward in a more definite way, in that he desired to make this new principle an impossibility in his Republic. It is thus a substantial position on which Plato takes his stand, seeing that the substantial of his time forms his basis, but this standpoint is at the same time relative only, in so far as it is but a Greek standpoint, and the later principle is consciously banished. This is the universal of Plato’s ideal of the state, and it is from this point of view that we must regard it. Investigations as to whether such a state is possible, and the best possible, which start from quite modern points of view, can only lead us astray. In modern states we have freedom of conscience, according to which every individual may demand the right of following out his own interests; but this is excluded from the Platonic idea.
a. I will now indicate more fully the main features, in so far as they possess philosophic interest. Though Plato represents what the state is in its truth, yet this state has a limit, which we shall learn to know, namely, that the individual — in formal justice — is not opposed to this universality, as in the dead constitution of the ideal states founded on the theory of legal right. The content is but the whole; the nature of the individual, no doubt, but as reflecting itself into the universal, not unbending, or as having absolute validity; so that practically the state and the individual are the same in essence. Because Plato thus takes his start from that justice which implies that the just man exists only as a moral member of the state, in dealing with his subject in greater detail, in order to show how this reality of the substantial mind is produced, he in the first place opens up before us the organism of the moral commonwealth, i.e. the differences which lie in the Notion of moral substance. Through the development of these moments it becomes living and existing, but these moments are not independent, for they are held in unity. Plato regards these moments of the moral organism under three aspects, first, as they exist in the state as classes; secondly, as virtues, or moments in morality; thirdly, as moments of the individual subject, in the empirical actions of the will. Plato does not preach the morality of reflection, he shows how traditional morality has a living movement in itself; he demonstrates its functions, its inward organism. For it is inner systematization, as in organic life, and not solid, dead unity, like that of metals, which comes to pass by means of the different functions of the organs which go to make up this living, self-moving unity.
α. Without classes, without this division into great masses, the state has no organism; these great distinctions are the distinction of the substantial. The opposition which first comes before us in the state is that of the universal, in the form of state life and business, and the individual, as life and work for the individual; these two fields of activity are so distinct that one class is assigned to the one, and another to the other. Plato further cites three systems of reality in the moral, the functions (αα) of legislation, counsel, in short, of diligence and foresight in the general behalf, in the interest of the whole as such; (ββ) of defence of the commonwealth against foes from without; (γγ) of care for the individual, the supplying of wants, agriculture, cattle-rearing, the manufacture of clothing and utensils, the building of houses, &c. Speaking generally, this is quite as it should be, and yet it appears to be rather the satisfaction of external necessities, because such wants are found without being developed out of the Idea of mind itself. Further, these distinct functions are allotted to different systems, being assigned to a certain number of individuals specially set apart for the purpose, and this brings about the separate classes of the state, as Plato is altogether opposed to the superficial conception that one and the same must be everything at one time. He accordingly represents three classes, (αα) that of the governors, men of learning and wisdom, (ββ) that of the warriors, (γγ) that of the producers of necessaries, the husbandmen and handicraftsmen. The first he also speaks of as guardians (φύλακας), who are really philosophically educated statesmen, possessing true knowledge; they have the warriors to work on their behalf (ἐπικούρους τε καὶ βοηθούς), but in such a way that there is no line of separation between the civil and military classes, both being united,61 and the most advanced in years are the guardians.62 Although Plato does not deduce this division of the classes, they follow from the constitution of the Platonic state, and every state is necessarily a system within itself of these systems. Plato then passes on to particular determinations, which are in some measure trifling, and might with advantage have been dispensed with; for instance, among other things, he goes so far as to settle for the highest rank their special titles, and he states what should be the duties of the nurses.63
β. Then Plato points out that the moments which are here realized in the classes, are moral qualities which are present in individuals, and form their true essence, the simple ethical Notion divided into its universal determinations. For he states as the result of this distinction of the classes that through such an organism all virtues are present in the commonwealth; he distinguishes four of these,64 and they have been named cardinal virtues.
αα. Wisdom (σοφία) or knowledge appears as the first virtue; such a state will be wise and good in counsel, not because of the various kinds of knowledge therein present which have to do with the many particular ordinary occupations falling to the multitude, such as the trade of blacksmith, and the tillage of the soil (in short, what we should call skill in the industrial arts, and in finance). The state is called wise, by reason of the true knowledge which is realized in the presiding and governing class, who advise regarding the whole state, and decide upon the policy that is best, both at home and in relation to foreign states. This faculty of perception is properly the peculiar possession of the smallest class.65
ββ. The second virtue is courage (ἀνδρία) which Plato defines as a firm opinion about what may justly and lawfully be considered an object of fear, courage which, in its strength of purpose, remains unshaken either by desires or pleasures. To this virtue corresponds the class of the warriors.66
γγ. The third virtue is temperance (σωφροσύνη), the mastery over the desires and passions, which like a harmony pervades the whole; so that, whether understanding, or strength, or numbers, or wealth, or anything else be regarded, the weaker and the stronger work together for one and the same object, and are in agreement one with another. This virtue therefore is not, like wisdom and courage, confined to one part of the state, but like a harmony it is shared by governors and governed alike, and is the virtue of all classes.67 Notwithstanding that this temperance is the harmony in which all work towards one end, it is yet peculiarly the virtue of the third class, to whom it is allotted to procure the necessaries of life by work, although at the first glance the one does not appear to have much correspondence with the other. But this virtue is present precisely when no moment, no determination or particularity isolates itself; or, more closely viewed in a moral aspect, it is when no want asserts its reality and thus becomes a crime. Now work is just this moment of activity concentrating itself on the particular, which nevertheless goes back into the universal, and is for it. Therefore, if this virtue is universal, it yet has special application to the third class, which at first is the only one to be brought into harmony, as it has not the absolute harmony which the other classes possess in themselves.
δδ. Finally, the fourth virtue is justice, which was what Plato began by considering. This, as right-doing, is to be found in the state when each individual does only one kind of work for the state, that work for which by the original constitution of his nature he is best fitted; so that in this way each man is not a jack-of-all-trades, but all have their special work, young and old, women and children, bond and free, handicraftsmen, rulers and subjects. The first remark we make on this is, that Plato here places justice on a level with the other moments, and it thus appears as one of the four determinations. But he now retracts this statement and makes it justice which first gives to wisdom, courage and temperance the power to exist at all, and when they have once come into existence, the power to continue. This is the reason of his also saying that justice will be met with independently, if only the other virtues spoken of are forthcoming.68 To express it more definitely, the Notion of justice is the foundation, the Idea of the whole, which falls into organic divisions, so that every part is only, as it were, a moment in the whole, and the whole exists through it. Thus the classes or qualities spoken of are nothing else than the moments of this whole. Justice is only the general and all-pervading quality; but at the same time it implies the independence of every part, to which the state gives liberty of action.
In the second place, it is clear from what he says, that Plato did not understand by justice the rights of property, the meaning which the term commonly bears in jurisprudence, but rather this, that the mind in its totality makes for itself a law as evidence of the existence of its freedom. In a highly abstract sense my personality, my altogether abstract freedom, is present in property. To explain what comes under this science of law, Plato considers on the whole superfluous (De Republica, IV. p. 425 Steph.; p. 176 Bekk.). To be sure we find him giving laws concerning property, police regulations, &c., “But,” he says, “to impose laws about such matters on men of noble character does not repay the trouble.” In truth, how can we expect to find divine laws in what contains contingencies alone? Even in the Laws he considers ethics chiefly, though he gives a certain amount of attention to the rights of property. But as justice, according to Plato, is really the entire being, which presents itself to the individual in such a way that each man learns to do the work he is born to do as well as it can be done, and does it, it is only as determined individuality that man reaches what is law for him; only thus does he belong to the universal spirit of the state, coming in it to the universal of himself as a “this.” While law is a universal with a definite content, and thus a formal universal only, the content in this case is the whole determined individuality, not this or that thing which is mine by the accident of possession; what I properly hold as my own is the perfected possession and use of my nature. To each particular determination justice gives its rights, and thus leads it back into the whole; in this way it is by the particularity of an individual being of necessity developed and brought into actuality, that each man is in his place and fulfils his vocation. Justice, therefore, according to its true conception, is in our eyes freedom in the subjective sense, because it is the attainment of actuality by the reason, and seeing that this right on the part of liberty to attain to actuality is universal, Plato sets up justice as the determination of the whole, indicating that rational freedom comes into existence through the organism of the state, — an existence which is then, as necessary, a mode of nature.
γ. The particular subject, as subject, has in the same way these qualities in himself; and these moments of the subject correspond with the three real moments of the state. That there is thus one rhythm, one type, in the Idea of the state, forms for Plato’s state a great and grand basis. This third form, in which the above moments are exhibited, Plato characterizes in the following manner. There manifest themselves in the subject, first of all sundry wants and desires (ἐπιθυμίαι), like hunger and thirst, each of which has something definite as its one and only object. Work for the satisfaction of desires corresponds to the calling of the third class. But, secondly there is also at the same time to be found in the individual consciousness something else which suspends and hinders the gratification of these desires, and has the mastery over the temptation thus to gratify them; this is reasonableness (λόγος). To this corresponds the class of rulers, the wisdom of the state. Besides these two ideas of the soul there is a third, anger (θυμός), which on one side is allied to the desires, but of which it is just as true that it resists the desires and takes the side of reason. “It may happen that a man has done wrong to another, and suffers hunger and cold at the hands of him whom he considers entitled to inflict them upon him; in this case, the nobler he is, the less will his anger be excited. But it may also happen that he suffers a wrong; if this is the case, he boils and chafes, and takes the side of what he believes to be justice, and endures hunger and cold and other hardships, and overcomes them, and will not desist from the right until he conquers or dies, or is calmed down by reason, as a shepherd quiets his dog.” Anger corresponds with the class of the brave defenders in the state; as these grasp their weapons in behalf of reason within the state, so does anger take the part of reason, if it has not been perverted by an evil up-bringing. Therefore wisdom in the state is the same as in the individual, and this is true of courage also. For the rest, temperance is the harmony of the several moments of what pertains to nature; and justice, as in external matters it consists in each doing his own duty, so, in the inner life, it consists in each moment of the mind obtaining its right, and not interfering in the affairs of the others, but leaving them to do as they will.69 We have thus the deduction of three moments, where the middle place between universality and particularity is filled by anger in its independence and as directed against the objective: it is the freedom which turns back within itself and acts negatively. Even here, where Plato has no consciousness of his abstract ideas, as he has in the Timæus, this of a truth is inwardly present to him, and everything is moulded thereby. This is given as the plan according to which Plato draws up the great whole. To fill up the outlines is a mere detail, which in itself has no further interest.
b. In the second place Plato indicates the means of maintaining the state. As, speaking generally, the whole commonwealth rests on common morality as the minds of individuals grown into nature, this question is asked: How does Plato arrange that everyone takes as his own that form of activity for which he is specially marked out, and that it presents itself as the moral acting and willing of the individual, — that everyone, in harmony with temperance, submits to filling this his post? The main point is to train the individuals thereto. Plato would produce this ethical quality directly in the individuals, and first and foremost in the guardians, whose education is therefore the most important part of the whole, and constitutes the very foundation. For as it is to the guardians themselves that the care is committed of producing this ethical quality through maintenance of the laws, in these laws special attention must be given to the guardians’ education; after that also to the education of the warriors. The condition of affairs in the industrial class causes the state but little anxiety, “for though cobblers should prove poor and worthless, and should be only in appearance what they ought to be, that is no great misfortune for the state.”70 The education of the presidents should, however, be carried on chiefly by means of philosophic science, which is the knowledge of the universal and absolute. Plato in this passes over the particular means of education, religion, art, science. Further on he speaks again and more in detail on the question of how far music and gymnastic are to be permitted as means. But the poets Homer and Hesiod he banishes from his state, because he thinks their representations of God unworthy.71 For then began in real earnest an inquiry into the belief in Jupiter and the stories told by Homer, inasmuch as such particular representations had been taken as universal maxims and divine laws. At a certain stage of education childish tales do no harm; but were they to be made the foundation of the truth of morality, as present law, the case would be different. The extermination of the nations which we read of in the writings of the Israelites, the Old Testament, might for instance be taken as a standard of national rights, or we might try to make a precedent of the numerous base acts committed by David, the man of God, or of the horrors which the priesthood, in the person of Samuel, practised and authorized against Saul. Then it would be high time to place these records on a lower level, as something past, something merely historical. Plato would further have preambles to the laws, wherein citizens would be admonished as to their duties, and convinced that these exist, &c.72 They also should be shown how to choose that which is most excellent, in short, to choose morality.
But here we have a circle: the public life of the state subsists by means of morality, and, conversely, morality subsists by means of institutions. Morals cannot be independent of institutions, that is, institutions cannot be brought to bear on morals through educational establishments or religion only. For institutions must be looked on as the very first condition of morality, for this is the manner in which institutions are subjective. Plato himself gives us to understand how much contradiction he expects to find. And even now his defect is commonly considered to lie in his being too idealistic, while his real deficiency consists in his not being ideal enough. For if reason is the universal force, it is essentially spiritual; thus to the realm of the spiritual belongs subjective freedom, which had already been held up as a principle in the philosophy of Socrates. Therefore reason ought to be the basis of law, and so it is, on the whole. But, on the other hand, conscience, personal conviction, — in short, all the forms of subjective freedom — are essentially therein contained. This subjectivity at first, it is true, stands in opposition to the laws and reason of the state-organism as to the absolute power which desires to appropriate to itself — through the external necessity of wants, in which, however, there is absolute reason — the individual of the family. Individual conscience proceeds from the subjectivity of free-will, connects itself with the whole, chooses a position for itself, and thus makes itself a moral fact. But this moment, this movement of the individual, this principle of subjective freedom, is sometimes ignored by Plato, and sometimes even intentionally disparaged, because it proved itself to be what had wrought the ruin of Greece; and he considers only how the state may best be organized, and not subjective individuality. In passing beyond the principle of Greek morality, which in its substantial liberty cannot brook the rise of subjective liberty, the Platonic philosophy at once grasps the above principle, and in so doing proceeds still farther.
c. In the third place, in regard to the exclusion of the principle of subjective freedom, this forms a chief feature in the Republic of Plato, the spirit of which really consists in the fact, that all aspects in which particularity as such has established its position, are dissolved in the universal, — all men simply rank as man in general.
α. It specially harmonizes with this particular quality of excluding the principle of subjectivity, that Plato in the first place does not allow individuals to choose their own class; this we demand as necessary to freedom. It is not, however, birth which marks off the different ranks, and determines individuals for these; but everyone is tested by the governors of the state, who are the elders of the first class, and have the education of individuals in their hands. According as anyone has natural ability and talents, these elders make choice and selection, and assign each man to a definite occupation.73 This seems in direct contradiction to our principle, for although it is considered right that to a certain class there should belong a special capacity and skill, it always remains a matter of inclination which class one is to belong to; and with this inclination, as an apparently free choice, the class makes itself for itself. But it is not permitted that another individual should prescribe as to this, or say, for example: “Because you are not serviceable for anything better, you are to be a labourer.” Everyone may make the experiment for himself; he must be allowed to decide regarding his own affairs as subject in a subjective manner, by his own free will, as well as in consideration of external circumstances; and nothing must therefore be put in his way if he says, for instance: “I should like to apply myself to study.”
β. From this determination it further follows that Plato (De Republica, III. pp. 416, 417 Steph.; pp. 162-164 Bekk.) in like manner altogether abolished in his state the principle of private property. For in it individuality, the individual consciousness, becomes absolute; or the person is looked on as implicit, destitute of all content. In law, as such, I rank as “this” implicitly and explicitly. All rank thus, and I rank only because all rank, or I rank only as universal; but the content of this universality is fixed particularity. When in a question of law we have to do with law, as such, to the judges of the case it matters not a whit whether this or that man actually possesses the house, and likewise the contending parties think nothing of the possession of the thing for which they strive, but of right for right’s sake, (as in morality duty is done for duty’s sake): thus a firm hold is kept of the abstraction, and from the content of reality abstraction is made. But Being to Philosophy is no abstraction, but the unity of the universal and reality, or its content. The content has therefore weight only in as far as it is negatively posited in the universal; thus only as returning into it, and not absolutely. In so far as I use things, — not in so far as I have them merely in my possession, or as they have worth for me as existent, as definitely fixed on me, — they stand in living relation to me. With Plato, then, those of the other class (cf. supra, p. 101, note) carry on handicrafts, trade, husbandry, and procure what will satisfy the general requirements, without acquiring personal property by means of their work, for they are all one family, wherein each has his appointed occupation; but the product of the work is common, and he receives as much as he requires both of his own and of the general product. Personal property is a possession which belongs to me as a certain person, and in which my person as such comes into existence, into reality; on this ground Plato excludes it. It remains, however, unexplained how in the development of industries, if there is no hope of acquiring private property, there can be any incentive to activity; for on my being a person of energy very much depends my capacity for holding property. That an end would be put to all strifes and dissensions and hatred and avarice by the abolition of private property, as Plato thinks, (De Republica, V. p. 464 Steph.; pp. 243, 244 Bekk.) may very well be imagined in a general way; but that is only a subordinate result in comparison with the higher and reasonable principle of the right of property: and liberty has actual existence only so far as property falls to the share of the person. In this way we see subjective freedom consciously removed by Plato himself from his state.
γ. For the same reason Plato also abolishes marriage, because it is a connection in which persons of opposite sex, as such, remain mutually bound to one another, even beyond the mere natural connection. Plato does not admit into his state family life — the particular arrangement whereby a family forms a whole by itself, — because the family is nothing but an extended personality, a relationship to others of an exclusive character within natural morality, — which certainly is morality, but morality of such a character as belongs to the individual as particularity. According to the conception of subjective freedom, however, the family is just as necessary, yea, sacred to the individual as is property. Plato, on the contrary, causes children to be taken away from their mothers immediately after birth, and has them gathered together in a special establishment, and reared by nurses taken from among the mothers who gave them birth; he has them brought up in common, so that no mother can possibly recognize her child. There are certainly to be marriage celebrations, and each man is to have his particular wife, but in such a way that the intercourse of man and wife does not pre-suppose a personal inclination, and that it should not be their own pleasure which marks out individuals for one another. The women should bear children from the twentieth to the fortieth year, the men should have wives from the thirtieth to the fifty-fifth year. To prevent incest, all the children born at the time of a man’s marriage shall be known as his children.74 The women, whose natural vocation is family life, are by this arrangement deprived of their sphere. In the Platonic Republic it therefore follows that as the family is broken up, and the women no longer manage the house, they are also no longer private persons, and adopt the manners of the man as the universal individual in the state. And Plato accordingly allows the women to take their part like the men in all manly labours, and even to share in the toils of war. Thus he places them on very nearly the same footing as the men, though all the same he has no great confidence in their bravery, but stations them in the rear only, and not even as reserve, but only as arrière-garde, in order that they may at least inspire the foe with terror by their numbers, and, in case of necessity, hasten to give aid.75
These are the main features of the Platonic Republic, which has as its essential the suppression of the principle of individuality; and it would appear as though the Idea demanded this, and as if this were the very point on which Philosophy is opposed to the ordinary way of looking at things, which gives importance to the individual, and thus in the state, as also in actualized mind, looks on the rights of property, and the protection of persons and their possessions, as the basis of everything that is. Therein, however, lies the very limit of the Platonic Idea — to emerge only as abstract idea. But, in fact, the true Idea is nothing else than this, that every moment should perfectly realize and embody itself, and make itself independent, while at the same time, in its independence, it is for mind a thing sublated. In conformity with this Idea, individuality must fully realize itself, must have its sphere and domain in the state, and yet be resolved in it. The element of the state is the family, that is, the family is the natural unreasoning state; this element must, as such, be present. Then the Idea of the state constituted by reason has to realize all the moments of its Notion in such a way that they become classes, and the moral substance divides itself into portions, as the bodily substance is separated into intestines and organs, each of which lives on in a particular way of its own, yet all of which together form only one life. The state in general, the whole, must finally pervade all. But in exactly the same way the formal principle of justice, as abstract universality of personality with individual Being as its existent content, must pervade the whole; one class, nevertheless, specially belongs to it. There must, then, also be a class in which property is held immediately and permanently, the possession of the body and the possession of a piece of land alike; and in the next place, a class where acquisition is continually going on, and possession is not immediate, as in the other, but property is ever fluctuating and changing. These two classes the nation gives up as a part of itself to the principle of individuality, and allows rights to reign here, permitting the constant, the universal, the implicit to be sought in this principle, which really is a principle of variability. This principle must have its full and complete reality, it must indeed appear in the shape of property. We have here for the first time the true, actual mind, with each moment receiving its complete independence, and the mind itself attaining to being-another in perfect indifference of Being. Nature cannot effect this production of independent life in her parts, except in the great system.76 This is, as we shall elsewhere see, the great advance of the modern world beyond the ancient, that in it the objective attains to greater, yea, to absolute independence, but for the very same reason returns with all the greater difficulty into the unity of the Idea.
The want of subjectivity is really the want of the Greek moral idea. The principle which became prominent with Socrates had been present up to this time only in a more subordinate capacity; now it of necessity became an even absolute principle, a necessary moment in the Idea itself. By the exclusion of private property and of family life, by the suspension of freedom in the choice of the class, i.e. by the exclusion of all the determinations which relate to the principle of subjective freedom, Plato believes he has barred the doors to all the passions; he knew very well that the ruin of Greek life proceeded from this, that individuals, as such, began to assert their aims, inclinations, and interests, and made them dominate over the common mind. But since this principle is necessary through the Christian religion — in which the soul of the individual is an absolute end, and thus has entered into the world as necessary in the Notion of the mind — it is seen that the Platonic state-constitution cannot fulfil what the higher demands of a moral organism require. Plato has not recognized the knowledge, wishes, and resolutions of the individual, nor his self-reliance, and has not succeeded in combining them with his Idea; but justice demands its rights for this just as much as it requires the higher resolution of the same, and its harmony with the universal. The opposite to Plato’s principle is the principle of the conscious free will of individuals, which in later times was by Rousseau more especially raised to prominence: the theory that the arbitrary choice of the individual, the outward expression of the individual, is necessary. In this the principle is carried to the very opposite extreme, and has emerged in its utter one-sidedness. In opposition to this arbitrariness and culture there must be the implicitly and explicitly universal, that which is in thought, not as wise governor or morality, but as law, and at the same time as my Being and my thought, i.e. as subjectivity and individuality. Men must have brought forth from themselves the rational along with their interests and their passions, just as it must enter into reality through the necessities, opportunities, and motives that impel them.
There is still another celebrated side of the Platonic philosophy which may be considered, namely æsthetics, the knowledge of the beautiful. In respect to this, Plato has in like manner seized the one true thought, that the essence of the beautiful is intellectual, the Idea of reason. When he speaks of a spiritual beauty, he is to be understood in the sense that beauty, as beauty, is sensuous beauty, which is not in some other place — no one knows where; but what is beautiful to the senses is really the spiritual. The case is the same here as it is with his Idea. As the essence and truth of phenomena in general is the Idea, the truth of phenomenal beauty must also be this Idea. The relation to the corporeal, as a relation of the desires, or of pleasure and utility, is no relation to it as the beautiful; it is a relation to it as the sensuous alone, or a relation of particular to particular. But the essence of the beautiful is just the simple Idea of reason present to the sensuous apprehension as a thing; the content of the thing is nothing else than this.77 The beautiful is essentially of spiritual nature; it is thus not merely a sensuous thing, but reality subject to the form of universality, to the truth. This universal does not, however, retain the form of universality, but the universal is the content whose form is the sensuous mode; and therein lies the determination of the beautiful. In science, the universal has again the form of the universal or of the Notion; but the beautiful appears as an actual thing — or, when put into words, as a popular conception, in which mode the material exists in mind. The nature, essence, and content of the beautiful is recognized and judged by reason alone, as its content is the same as that of Philosophy. But because reason appears in the beautiful in material guise, the beautiful ranks below knowledge, and Plato has for this very reason placed the true manifestation of reason in knowledge, where it is spiritually manifested.
This may be regarded as the kernel of Plato’s philosophy. His standpoint is: first, the contingent form of speech, in which men of noble and unfettered nature converse without other interest than that of the theory which is being worked out; secondly, led on by the content, they reach the deepest Notions and the finest thoughts, like jewels on which one stumbles, if not exactly in a sandy desert, yet at least upon the arid path; in the third place, no systematic connection is to be found, though one interest is the source of all; in the fourth place, the subjectivity of the Notion is lacking throughout; but in the fifth place, the substantial Idea forms the principle.
Plato’s philosophy had two stages through which it of necessity developed and worked its way up to a higher principle. The universal which is in reason had first to fall into two divisions opposed to each other in the most direct and unmitigated contradiction, in the independence of the personal consciousness which exists for itself: thus in the New Academy self-consciousness goes back into itself, and becomes a species of scepticism — the negative reason, which turns against all that is universal, and fails to find the unity of self-consciousness and the universal, coming accordingly to a standstill at that point. But, in the second place, the Neo-Platonists constitute the return, this unity of self-consciousness and the absolute essence; to them God is directly present in reason, reasoned knowledge itself is the Divine Spirit, and the content of this knowledge is the Being of God. Both of these we shall consider later.
B. Aristotle.
HERE WE LEAVE Plato, and we do so with regret. But seeing that we pass to his disciple, Aristotle, we fear that it behoves us to enter even more into detail, since he was one of the richest and deepest of all the scientific geniuses that have as yet appeared — a man whose like no later age has ever yet produced. Because we still possess so large a number of his works, the extent of the material at hand is proportionately greater; unfortunately, however, I cannot give to Aristotle the amount of attention that he deserves. For we shall have to confine ourselves to a general view of his philosophy, and simply remark on one particular phase of it, viz. in how far Aristotle in his philosophy carried out what in the Platonic principle had been begun, both in reference to the profundity of the ideas there contained, and to their expansion; no one is more comprehensive and speculative than he, although his methods are not systematic.
As regards the general character of Aristotle’s writings, he may be said to have extended his attention to the whole circle of human conceptions, to have penetrated all regions of the actual universal, and to have brought under the subjection of the Notion both their riches and their diversitude. For most of the philosophic sciences have to render thanks to him both for their characterization and first commencement. But although in this way Science throughout falls into a succession of intellectual determinations of determinate Notions, the Aristotelian philosophy still contains the profoundest speculative Notions. Aristotle proceeds in reference to the whole in the same way as in the individual case. But a general view of his philosophy does not give us the impression of its being in construction a self-systematized whole, of which the order and connection pertain likewise to the Notion; for the parts are empirically selected and placed together in such a way that each part is independently recognized as a determinate conception, without being taken into the connecting movement of the science. We need not try to demonstrate necessity from the standpoint of the philosophy of that time. But although Aristotle’s system does not appear to be developed in its parts from the Notion, and its parts are merely ranged side by side, they still form a totality of truly speculative philosophy.
One reason for treating of Aristotle in detail rests in the fact that no philosopher has had so much wrong done him by the thoughtless traditions which have been received respecting his philosophy, and which are still the order of the day, although for centuries he was the instructor of all philosophers. For to him views are ascribed diametrically opposite to his philosophy. And while Plato is much read, the treasures contained in Aristotle have for centuries, and until quite modern times, been as good as unknown, and the falsest prejudices reign respecting him. Almost no one knows his speculative and logical works; in modern times more justice has been done to his writings regarding nature, but not to his philosophic views. For instance, there is a quite generally held opinion that the Aristotelian and Platonic philosophies are directly opposed, the one being idealistic and the other realistic, and that, indeed, in the most trivial sense. For Plato is said to have made the ideal his principle, so that the inward idea creates from itself; according to Aristotle, on the contrary, we are told that the soul is made a tabula rasa, receiving all its determinations quite passively from the outer world; and his philosophy is thus mere empiricism — Locke’s philosophy at its worst. But we shall see how little this really is the case. In fact Aristotle excels Plato in speculative depth, for he was acquainted with the deepest kind of speculation — idealism — and in this upholds the most extreme empirical development. Quite false views respecting Aristotle even now exist in France. An example of how tradition blindly echoes opinions respecting him, without having observed from his works whether they are justified or not, is the fact that in the old Æsthetics the three unities of the drama — action, time and place — were held to be règles d’Aristote, la saine doctrine. But Aristotle speaks (Poet. c. 8 et 5)78 only of the unity of treatment, or very occasionally of the unity of time; of the third unity, that of place, he says nothing.
As regards Aristotle’s life, he was born at Stagira, a Thracian town on the Strymonian Gulf, but a Greek colony. Thus, though a Thracian, he was by birth a Greek. This Greek colony fell, however, like The rest of the country, under the rule of Philip of Macedon. The year of Aristotle’s birth is the first of the 99th Olympiad (384 B.C.), and if Plato was born in the third year of the 87th Olympiad (430 B.C.), Aristotle must have been forty-six years younger than he. His father Nicomachus was physician to the Macedonian king, Amyntas, the father of Philip. After the death of his parents, whom he lost early, he was brought up by a certain Proxenus, to whom he was ever grateful; and during all his life he held the memory of this friend in such high esteem, that he honoured it by erecting statues to him. He also requited Proxenus for the education given him, by later on bringing up his son Nicanor, adopting him as his own son and making him his heir. In the seventeenth year of his age Aristotle came to Athens, and remained there twenty years in company with Plato.79 He thus had the best possible opportunity of becoming thoroughly acquainted with Plato’s philosophy, and therefore, if we are told that he did not understand it (Vol. I p. 167), this is shown, by the evident facts of the case, to be an arbitrary and quite unfounded assumption. As regards the relation of Plato to Aristotle, and particularly as regards the fact that Plato did not select Aristotle as his successor in the Academy, but chose Speusippus, a near relative, instead, a number of idle and contradictory anecdotes have come to us from Diogenes (V. 2). If the continuation of the Platonic school was designed to express the hope that the philosophy of Plato, as comprehended by himself, was to be there satisfactorily maintained, Plato could certainly not designate Aristotle as his successor, and Speusippus was the right man to be selected. However, Plato had nevertheless Aristotle as his successor, for Aristotle understood Philosophy in Plato’s sense, though his philosophy was deeper and more worked out, and thus he carried it further. Displeasure at being thus passed over is said to have been the cause of Aristotle’s leaving Athens after Plato’s death, and living for three years with Hermias, the Tyrant of Atarneus in Mysia, who had been a disciple of Plato along with Aristotle, and who had then struck up a close friendship with the latter. Hermias, an independent prince, was, together with other absolute Greek princes and some Republics, brought under the subjection of a Persian satrap in Asia Minor. Hermias was even sent as prisoner to Artaxerxes in Persia, and he at once caused him to be crucified. In order to avoid a similar fate, Aristotle fled with his wife Pythias, the daughter of Hermias, to Mitylene, and lived there for some time. He, however, erected a statue to Hermias in Delphi, with an inscription which has been preserved. From it we know that it was by cunning and treachery that he came under the power of the Persians. Aristotle also honoured his name in a beautiful hymn on Virtue, which has likewise come down to us.80
From Mitylene he was (Ol. 109, 2; 343 B.C.) summoned by Philip of Macedon to undertake the education of Alexander, who was then fifteen years old. Philip had already invited him to do this in the well-known letter that he addressed to him just after Alexander’s birth: “Know that a son is born to me, but I thank the gods less that they have given him to me, than that they have caused him to be born in your time. For I hope that your care and your wisdom will make him worthy of me and of his future kingdom.”81 It certainly would appear to be a brilliant historic destiny to be the instructor of an Alexander, and Aristotle at this court enjoyed the favour and esteem of Philip and of Olympias in the highest degree. What became of Aristotle’s pupil is known to all, and the greatness of Alexander’s mind and deeds, as also his enduring friendship, are the best witnesses of the success, as also of the spirit of this up-bringing, if Aristotle required such testimony. Alexander’s education utterly refuted the common talk about the practical uselessness of speculative philosophy. Aristotle had in Alexander another and worthier pupil than Plato found in Dionysius. Plato’s great interest was his Republic, the ideal of a state; he enters into relation with a person through whom it might be carried out; the individual was thus to him a medium only, and in so far indifferent to him. With Aristotle, on the other hand, this purpose was not present, he merely had the simple individual before him; and his end was to bring up and to develop the individuality as such. Aristotle is known to be a profound, thorough, and abstract metaphysician, and it is evident that he meant seriously with Alexander. That Aristotle did not follow with Alexander the ordinary superficial method of educating princes, might be confidently expected from the earnestness of one who well knew what was truth and true culture. It is also evident from the circumstance that Alexander, while in the midst of his conquests in the heart of Asia, when he heard that Aristotle had made known his acroamatic doctrines in speculative (metaphysical) writings, wrote him a reproachful letter, in which he said that he should not have made known to the common people what the two had worked out together. To this Aristotle replied that, though published, they were really just as much unpublished as before.82
This is not the place to estimate Alexander as an historic personage. What can be ascribed in Alexander’s education to Aristotle’s philosophic instruction is the fact that what was natural to him, the inherent greatness of his mental disposition, acquired inward freedom also, and became elevated into the perfect, self-conscious independence which we see in his aims and deeds. Alexander attained to that perfect certainty of himself which the infinite boldness of thought alone gives, and to an independence of particular and limited projects, as also to their elevation into the entirely universal end of bringing about in the world a social life and intercourse of a mutual kind, through the foundation of states which were free from contingent individuality. Alexander thus carried out the plan which his father had already conceived, which was, at the head of the Greeks, to avenge Europe upon Asia, and to subject Asia to Greece; so that as it was in the beginning of Greek history that the Greeks were united, and that only for the Trojan war, this union likewise brought the Greek world proper to an end. Alexander thereby also avenged the faithlessness and cruelty perpetrated by the Persians on Aristotle’s friend Hermias. But Alexander further disseminated Greek culture over Asia, in order to elevate into a Greek world this wild medley of utter barbarism, bent solely on destruction, and torn by internal dissensions, these lands entirely sunk in indolence, negation, and spiritual degeneracy. And if it be said that he was merely a conqueror who was unable to establish an enduring kingdom, because his kingdom at his death once more fell to pieces, we must acknowledge that, from a superficial view of the case, this is true, as his family did not retain their rule; Greek rule was, however, maintained. Thus Alexander did not found an extensive kingdom for his family, but he founded a kingdom of the Greek nation over Asia; for Greek culture and science have since his time taken root there. The Greek kingdoms of Asia Minor, and particularly of Egypt, were for centuries the home of science; and their influence may have extended as far as to India and to China. We certainly do not know definitely whether the Indians may not have obtained what is best in their sciences in this way, but it is probable that at least the more exact portion of Indian astronomy came to them from Greece. For it was from the Syrian kingdom, stretching into Asia Minor as far as to a Greek kingdom in Bactria, that there was doubtless conveyed to the interior of India and China, by means of Greek colonies migrating thither, the meagre scientific knowledge which has lingered there like a tradition, though it has never flourished. For the Chinese, for example, are not skilful enough to make a calendar of their own, or to think for themselves. Yet they exhibited ancient instruments unsuited to any work done by them, and the immediate conjecture was that these had come from Bactria. The high idea that men had of the sciences of the Indians and of the Chinese hence is false.
According to Ritter (Erdkunde, Vol. II. p. 839, of the first edition), Alexander did not set out merely with a view of conquering, but with the idea that he was the Lord. I do not think that Aristotle placed this notion, which was connected with another Oriental conception, in the mind of Alexander. The other idea is that in the East the name of Alexander still flourishes as Ispander, and as Dul-k-ar-nein, i.e. the man with two horns, just as Jupiter Ammon is an ancient Eastern hero. The question would now be whether the Macedonian kings did not, through their descent from the ancient race of Indian heroes, claim to rule this land; by this the progress of Dionysius from Thrace to India could likewise be explained; whether the “knowledge of this was not the real and fundamental religious idea inspiring the young hero’s soul when, before his journey to Asia, he found on the lower Ister (Danube) Indian priestly states where the immortality of the soul was taught, and when, certainly not without the counsel of Aristotle, who, through Plato and Pythagoras, was initiated into Indian wisdom, he began the march into the East, and first of all visited the Oracle of Ammonium (now Siwah), and then destroyed the Persian kingdom and burnt Persepolis, the old enemy of Indian religion, in order to take revenge upon it for all the violence exercised through Darius on the Buddhists and their co-religionists.” This is an ingenious theory, formed from a thorough investigation of the connection which exists between Oriental and European ideas from the higher point of view in history. But, in the first place, this conjecture is contrary to the historical basis on which I take my stand. Alexander’s expedition has quite another historic, military, and political character than this, and had not much to do with his going to India; it was, on the face of it, an ordinary conquest. In the second place, Aristotle’s metaphysic and philosophy is far from recognizing any such foolish and extravagant imaginations. The elevation of Alexander in the Oriental mind into an acknowledged hero and god, which followed later, is, in the third place, not matter for surprise; the Dalai-Lama is still thus honoured, and God and man are never so very far asunder. Greece likewise worked its way to the idea of a God becoming man, and that not as a remote and foreign image, but as a present God in a godless world: Demetrius Phalereus and others were thus soon after honoured and worshipped in Athens as God. Was the infinite not also now transplanted into self-consciousness? Fourthly, the Buddhists did not interest Alexander, and in his Indian expedition they do not appear; the destruction of Persepolis is, however, sufficiently justified as a measure of Greek vengeance for the destruction by Xerxes of the temples in Greece, especially in Athens.
While Alexander accomplished this great work — for he was the greatest individual at the head of Greece, he ever kept science and art in mind. Just as in modern times we have once more met with warriors who thought of science and of art in their campaigns, we also find that Alexander made an arrangement whereby whatever was discovered in the way of animals and plants in Asia should be sent to Aristotle, or else drawings and descriptions of the same. This consideration on Alexander’s part afforded to Aristotle a most favourable opportunity of collecting treasures for his study of nature. Pliny (Histor. natur. VIII., 17 ed. Bip.) relates that Alexander directed about a thousand men, who lived by hunting, fishing and fowling, the overseers of the zoological gardens, aviaries, and tanks of the Persian kingdom, to supply Aristotle with what was remarkable from every place. In this way Alexander’s campaign in Asia had the further effect of enabling Aristotle to found the science of natural history, and to be the author, according to Pliny, of a natural history in fifty parts.
After Alexander commenced his journey to Asia, Aristotle returned to Athens, and made his appearance as a public teacher in the Lyceum, a pleasure-ground which Pericles had made for the exercising of recruits; it consisted of a temple dedicated to Apollo (Λύκειος), and shady walks (περίπατοι), which were enlivened by trees, fountains and colonnades. It was from these walks that his school received the name of Peripatetics, and not from any walking about on the part of Aristotle — because, it is said, he delivered his discourses usually while walking. He lived and taught in Athens for thirteen years. But after the death of Alexander there broke out a tempest which had, as it appeared, been long held back through fear of Alexander; Aristotle was accused of impiety. The facts are differently stated: amongst other things it is said that his hymn to Hermias and the inscription on the statue dedicated to him were laid to his charge. When he saw the storm gathering, he escaped to Chalcis in Eub\na, the present Negropont, in order, as he himself said, that the Athenians should not have an opportunity of once more sinning against Philosophy. There he died, in the next year, in the sixty-third year of his age, Ol. 114, 3 (322 B.C.).83
We derive Aristotle’s philosophy from his writings; but when we consider their history and nature, so far as externals are concerned, the difficulty of deriving a knowledge of his philosophy from them seems much increased. I cannot certainly enter into details regarding these last. Diogenes Laërtius (V. 21-27) mentions a very large number of them, but by their titles we do not always quite know which of those now in our possession are indicated, since the titles are entirely different. Diogenes gives the number of lines as four hundred and forty-five thousand, two hundred and seventy, and, if we count about ten thousand lines in a printer’s alphabet, this gives us forty-four alphabets. What we now have might perhaps amount to about ten alphabets, so that we have only about the fourth part left to us. The history of the Aristotelian manuscripts has been stated to be such that it would really seem impossible, or almost hopeless, that any one of his writings should have been preserved to us in its original condition, and not corrupted. Doubts regarding their genuine character could not in such circumstances fail to exist; and we can only wonder at seeing them come down to us even in the condition in which they are. For, as we have said, Aristotle made them known but little during his lifetime, and he left his writings to Theophrastus, his successor, with the rest of his immense library. This, indeed, is the first considerable library, collected as it was by means of personal wealth along with Alexander’s assistance, and hence it also reveals to us Aristotle’s learning. Later on, it came partially, or in some cases in duplicate, to Alexandria, and formed the basis of the Ptolemaic library, which, on the taking of Alexandria by Julius Cæsar, became a prey to fire. But of the manuscripts of Aristotle himself it is said that Theophrastus left them by will to a certain Neleus, from whom they came into the hands of ignorant men, who either kept them without care or estimation of their value, or else the heirs of Neleus, in order to save them from the Kings of Pergamus, who were very anxious to collect a library, hid them in a cellar, where they lay forgotten for a hundred and thirty years, and thus got into bad condition. Finally, the descendants of Theophrastus found them again after long search, and sold them to Apellicon of Teos, who restored what had been destroyed by worms and mould, but who did not possess the learning or the capacity so to do. Hence others went over them, filled up the blanks as they thought best, replaced what was damaged, and thus they were sufficiently altered. But still it was not enough. Just after Apellicon’s death, the Roman Sulla conquered Athens, and amongst the spoil carried off to Rome were the works of Aristotle. The Romans, who had just begun to become acquainted with Greek science and art, but who did not yet appreciate Greek philosophy, did not know how to profit from this spoil. A Greek, named Tyrannion, later on obtained permission to make use of and publish the manuscripts of Aristotle, and he prepared an edition of them, which, however, also bears the reproach of being inaccurate, for here they had the fate of being given by the dealers into the hands of ignorant copyists, who introduced a number of additional corruptions.84
This is the way in which the Aristotelian philosophy has come to us. Aristotle certainly made known much to his contemporaries, that is to say, the writings in the Alexandrian library, but even those works do not seem to have been widely known. In fact, many of them are most corrupt, imperfect, and, as, for example, the Poetics, incomplete. Several of them, such as the Metaphysical treatises, seem to be patched up from different writings, so that the higher criticism can give rein to all its ingenuity, and, according to one clever critic, the matter may with much show of probability be decided in one particular way, while another ingenious person has a different explanation to oppose to this.85 So much remains certain, that the writings of Aristotle are corrupt, and often both in their details and in the main, not consistent; and we often find whole paragraphs almost verbally repeated. Since the evil is so old, no real cure can certainly be looked for; however, the matter is not so bad as would appear from this description. There are many and important works which may be considered to be entire and uninjured, and though there are others corrupt here and there, or not well arranged, yet, as far as the essentials are concerned, no such great harm has been done as might appear. What we possess therefore places us in a sufficiently good position to form a definite idea of the Aristotelian philosophy, both as a whole, and in many of its details.
But there is still an historic distinction to be noted. For there is an old tradition that Aristotle’s teaching was of a twofold nature and that his writings were of two different kinds, viz. esoteric or acroamatic and exoteric — a distinction which was also made by the Pythagoreans (Vol. I. p 202). The esoteric teaching was given within the Lyceum in the morning, the exoteric in the evening; the latter related to practice in the art of rhetoric and in disputation, as also to civic business, but the other to the inward and more profound philosophy, to the contemplation of nature and to dialectic proper.86 This circumstance is of no importance; we see by ourselves which of his works are really speculative and philosophic, and which are rather empirical in character; but they are not to be regarded as antagonistic in their content, and as if Aristotle intended some for the people and others for his more intimate disciples.
a. We have first to remark that the name Aristotelian philosophy is most ambiguous, because what is called Aristotelian philosophy has at different times taken very different forms. It first of all signifies Aristotelian philosophy proper. As regards the other forms of the Aristotelian philosophy, however, it had, in the second place, at the time of Cicero, and specially under the name of Peripatetic philosophy, more of the form of a popular philosophy, in which attention was principally directed to natural history and to morals (Vol. I. p. 479). This period does not appear to have taken any interest in working out and bringing to consciousness the deep and properly speaking speculative side of Aristotelian philosophy, and indeed with Cicero there is no notion of it present. A third form of this philosophy is the highly speculative form of the Alexandrine philosophy, which is also called the Neo-Pythagorean or Neo-Platonic philosophy, but which may just as well be called Neo-Aristotelian — the form as it is regarded and worked up by the Alexandrines, as being identical with the Platonic. An important signification of the expression, in the fourth place, is that which it had in the middle ages where, through insufficient knowledge, the scholastic philosophy was designated Aristotelian. The Scholastics occupied themselves much with it, but the form that the philosophy of Aristotle took with them cannot be held by us to be the true form. All their achievements, and the whole extent of the metaphysics of the understanding and formal logic which we discover in them, do not belong to Aristotle at all. Scholasticism is derived only from traditions of the Aristotelian doctrines. And it was not until the writings of Aristotle became better known in the West, that a fifth Aristotelian philosophy was formed, which was in part opposed to the Scholastic — it arose on the decline of scholasticism and with the revival of the sciences. For it was only after the Reformation that men went back to the fountainhead, to Aristotle himself. The sixth signification which Aristotelian philosophy bears, is found in false modern ideas and conceptions, such as those that we find in Tennemann, who is gifted with too little philosophic understanding to be able to grasp the Aristotelian philosophy (Vol. I. p. 113). Indeed, the general opinion of Aristotelian philosophy now held is that it made what is called experience the principle of knowledge.
b. However false this point of view on the one hand is, the occasion for it may be found in the Aristotelian manner. Some particular passages to which in this reference great importance has been given, and which have been almost the only passages understood, are made use of to prove this idea. Hence we have now to speak of the character of the Aristotelian manner. Since in Aristotle, as we already said (p. 118), we need not seek a system of philosophy the particular parts of which have been deduced, but since he seems to take an external point of departure and to advance empirically, his manner is often that of ordinary ratiocination. But because in so doing Aristotle has a quality, altogether his own, of being throughout intensely speculative in his manner, it is further signified that in the first place he has comprehended the phenomenal as a thinking observer. He has the world of appearance before himself complete and in entirety, and sets nothing aside, however common it may appear. All sides of knowledge have entered into his mind, all have interest for him, and he has thoroughly dealt with all. In the empirical details of a phenomenon abstraction may easily be lost sight of, and its application may be difficult: our progress may be one-sided, and we may not be able to reach the root of the matter at all. But Aristotle, because he looks at all sides of the universe, takes up all those units as a speculative philosopher, and so works upon them that the profoundest speculative Notion proceeds therefrom. We saw, moreover, thought first proceeding from the sensuous, and, in Sophistry, still exercising itself immediately in the phenomenal. In perception, in ordinary conception, the categories appear: the absolute essence, the speculative view of these elements, is always expressed in expressing perceptions. This pure essence in perception Aristotle takes up. When, in the second place, he begins conversely with the universal or the simple, and passes to its determination, this looks as if he were enumerating the number of significations in which it appears; and, after dealing with them all, he again passes all their forms in review, even the quite ordinary and sensuous. He thus speaks of the many significations that we find, for example, is the words οὐσία, ἀρχή, αἰτία, ὁμοῦ, &c. It is in some measure wearisome to follow him in this mere enumeration, which proceeds without any necessity being present, and in which the significations, of which a list is given, manifest themselves as comprehended only in their essence, or in that which is common to all, and not in their determinations; and thus the comprehension is only external. But, on the one hand, this mode presents a complete series of the moments, and on the other, it arouses personal investigation for the discovery of necessity. In the third place, Aristotle takes up the different thoughts which earlier philosophers have had, contradicts them — often empirically — justifies them, reasoning in all sorts of ways, and then attains to the truly speculative point of view. And finally, in the fourth place, Aristotle passes on thoughtfully to consider the object itself of which he treats, e.g. the soul, feeling, recollection, thought, motion, time, place, warmth, cold, &c. Because he takes all the moments that are contained within the conception to be, so to speak, united, he does not omit determinations; he does not hold now to one determination and then to another, but takes them as all in one; while reflection of the understanding, which has identity as the rule by which it goes, can only preserve harmony with this by always, while in one determination, forgetting and withholding the other. But Aristotle has the patience to go through all conceptions and questions, and from the investigation of the individual determinations, we have the fixed, and once more restored determination of every object. Aristotle thus forms the Notion, and is in the highest degree really philosophic, while he appears to be only empiric. For Aristotle’s empiricism is a totality because he always leads it back again immediately to speculation; he may thus be said to be a perfect empiricist, yet at the same time a thinking one. If, for example, we take away from space all its empirical determinations, the result will be in the highest degree speculative, for the empirical, comprehended in its synthesis, is the speculative Notion.
In this gathering up of determinations into one Notion, Aristotle is great and masterly, as he also is in regard to the simplicity of his method of progression, and in the giving of his decisions in few words. This is a method of treating of Philosophy which has great efficacy, and which in our time has likewise been applied, e.g. by the French. It deserves to come into larger use, for it is a good thing to lead the determinations of the ordinary conception from an object to thought, and then to unite them in a unity, in the Notion. But undoubtedly this method in one respect appears to be empirical, and that, indeed, in the acceptation of objects as we know them in our consciousness; for if no necessity is present, this still more appears merely to pertain to manner externally regarded. And yet it cannot be denied that with Aristotle the object was not to bring everything to a unity, or to reduce determinations to a unity of opposites, but, on the contrary, to retain each in its determination and thus to follow it up. That may, on the one hand, be a superficial method, e.g. when everything is brought to an empty determinateness, such as those of irritability and sensibility, sthenic and asthenic, but, on the other, it is likewise necessary to grasp reality in simple determinateness, though without making the latter in this superficial way the starting point. Aristotle, on the other hand, simply forsakes determination in another sphere where it no longer has this form; but he shows what it is like here, or what change has taken place within it, and thus it comes to pass that he often treats one determination after the other without showing their connection. However, in his genuine speculation Aristotle is as profound as Plato, and at the same time more developed and explicit, for with him the opposites receive a higher determination. Certainly we miss in him the beauty of Plato’s form, the melodious speech, or, as we might almost call it, chatting — the conversational tone adopted, which is as lively as it is cultured and human. But where in Plato we find, as we do in his Timæus, the speculative Idea definitely expressed in the thesis form, we see in it a lack both of comprehension and purity; the pure element escapes it, while Aristotle’s form of expression is marked both by purity and intelligibility. We learn to know the object in its determination and its determinate Notion; but Aristotle presses further into the speculative nature of the object, though in such a way that the latter remains in its concrete determination, and Aristotle seldom leads it back to abstract thought-determinations. The study of Aristotle is hence inexhaustible, but to give an account of him is difficult, because his teaching must be reduced to universal principles. Thus in order to set forth Aristotelian philosophy, the particular content of each thing would have to be specified. But if we would be serious with Philosophy, nothing would be more desirable than to lecture upon Aristotle, for he is of all the ancients the most deserving of study.
c. What ought to come next is the determination of the Aristotelian Idea, and here we have to say, in quite a general way, that Aristotle commences with Philosophy generally, and says, in the first place, regarding the value of Philosophy (in the second chapter of the first book of the Metaphysics), that the object of Philosophy is what is most knowable, viz. the first and original causes, that is, the rational. For through these and from these all else is known, but principles do not become known through the facts which form their groundwork (ὑποκείμενα). In this we already have the opposite to the ordinary point of view. Aristotle has further declared the chief subject of investigation, or the most essential knowledge (ἐπιστήμη ἀρχικωτάτη) to be the knowledge of end; but this is the good in each thing and, generally speaking, the best in the whole of nature. This also holds good with Plato and Socrates; yet the end is the true, the concrete, as against the abstract Platonic Idea. Aristotle then says of the value of Philosophy, “Men have begun to philosophize through wonder,” for in it the knowledge of something higher is at least anticipated. “Thus since man, to escape from ignorance, began to philosophize, it is clear that for the sake of knowledge he followed after knowledge, and not for any utility which it might possess for him. This is also made evident by the whole course of its external history. For it was after men had done with all their absolute requirements, and with what concerns their comfort, that they first began to seek this philosophic knowledge. We hence seek it not for the sake of any outside utility that it may have. And thus as we say that a free man is he who exists on his own account and not for another, Philosophy is the only science that is free, because it alone exists for itself — it is knowledge on account of knowledge. Therefore in justice it will not be held to be a human possession,” in the sense that, as we said above, (p. 11) it is not in the possession of a man. “For in many ways the nature of man is dependent, so that, according to Simonides, God alone possesses the prerogative (γέρας), and yet it is unworthy on man’s part not to seek after the science that is in conformity with his own condition (τὴν καθ̓ αὑτὸν ἐπιστήνην). But if the poets were right, and envy characterized divinity, all who would aim higher must be unfortunate;” Nemesis punishes whatever raises itself above the commonplace, and makes everything again equal. “But the divine cannot be jealous,” i.e. cannot refuse to impart that which it is, as if this knowledge should not come to man (supra, pp. 72, 73) “and — according to the proverb — the poets utter many falsehoods. Nor ought we to consider that any science is more entitled to honour than the one we now investigate, for that which is most divine, is also most worthy of honour.” That is to say, what has and imparts what is best is honoured: the gods are thus to be honoured because they have this knowledge. “God is held to be the cause and principle of everything, and therefore God has this science alone, or for the most part.” But for this reason it is not unworthy of man to endeavour to seek the highest good which is in conformity with him, this knowledge pertaining to God. “All other sciences are, however, more requisite than Philosophy, but none more excellent.”
It is difficult to give a more detailed account of the Aristotelian philosophy, the universal Idea with the more important elements, for Aristotle is much more difficult to comprehend than Plato. In the latter there are myths, and we can pass over the dialectic and yet say that we have read Plato; but with Aristotle we enter at once upon what is speculative. Aristotle always seems to have philosophized only respecting the individual and particular, and not to have risen from it to the thought of the absolute and universal, to the thought of God; he always goes from the individual to the individual. His task concerns what is, and is just as clearly divided off as a professor has his work divided into a half year’s course; and though in this course he examines the whole of the world of conception, he yet appears only to have recognized the truth in the particular, or only a succession of particular truths. This has nothing dazzling about it, for he does not appear to have risen to the Idea (as Plato speaks of the nobility of Idea), nor to have led back to it the individual. But if Aristotle on the one hand did not logically abstract the universal Idea, (for then his so-called logic, which is something very different, would have had as its principle the recognition of one Notion in all) on the other hand there appears in Aristotle the one Absolute, the idea of God, as itself a particular, in its place beside the others, although it is all Truth. It is as if we said, “there are plants, animals, men, and also God, the most excellent of all.”
From the whole list of conceptions which Aristotle enumerates, we shall now select some for further examination, and I will first speak of his metaphysics and its determinations. Then I will deal with the particular sciences which have been treated by Aristotle, beginning by giving the fundamental conception of nature as it is constituted with Aristotle; in the third place I will say something of mind, of the soul and its conditions, and finally the logical books of Aristotle will follow.
Aristotle’s speculative Idea is chiefly to be gathered from his Metaphysics, especially from the last chapters of the twelfth book (Λ) which deal with the divine Thought. But this treatise has the peculiar drawback noticed above (p. 128) of being a compilation, several treatises having been combined into one. Aristotle and the ancients did not know this work by the name of the Metaphysics; it was by them called πρώτη φιλοσοφία.87 The main portion of this treatise has a certain appearance of unity given to it by the connection of the argument,88 but it cannot be said that the style is orderly and lucid. This pure philosophy Aristotle very clearly distinguishes (Metaph. IV. 1) from the other sciences as “the science of that which is, in so far as it is, and of what belongs to it implicitly and explicitly.” The main object which Aristotle has in view (Metaph. VII. 1) is the definition of what this substance (οὐσία) really is. In this ontology or, as we call it, logic, he investigates and minutely distinguishes four principles (Metaph. I. 3): first, determination or quality as such, the wherefore of anything, essence or form; secondly, the matter; thirdly, the principle of motion; and fourthly, the principle of final cause, or of the good. In the later part of the Metaphysics Aristotle returns repeatedly to the determination of the Ideas, but here also a want of connection of thought appears, even though all is subsequently united into an entirely speculative Notion.
To proceed, there are two leading forms, which Aristotle characterizes as that of potentiality (δύναμις) and that of actuality (ἐνέργεια); the latter is still more closely characterized as entelechy (ἐντελεχεια) or free activity, which has the end (τὸ τέλος) in itself, and is the realization of this end. These are determinations which occur repeatedly in Aristotle, especially in the ninth book of the Metaphysics, and which we must be familiar with, if we would understand him. The expression δύναμις is with Aristotle the beginning, the implicit, the objective; also the abstract universal in general, the Idea, the matter, which can take on all forms, without being itself the form-giving principle. But with an empty abstraction such as the thing-in-itself Aristotle has nothing to do. It is first in energy or, more concretely, in subjectivity, that he finds the actualizing form, the self-relating negativity. When, on the other hand, we speak of Being, activity is not yet posited: Being is only implicit, only potentiality, without infinite form. To Aristotle the main fact about Substance is that it is not matter merely (Metaph. VII. 3); although in ordinary life this is what is generally taken to be the substantial. All that is contains matter, it is true, all change demands a substratum (ὑποκείμενον) to be affected by it; but because matter itself is only potentiality, and not actuality — which belongs to form — matter cannot truly exist without the activity of form (Metaph. VIII. 1, 2). With Aristotle δύναμις does not therefore mean force (for force is really an imperfect aspect of form), but rather capacity which is not even undetermined possibility; ἐνέργεια is, on the other hand, pure, spontaneous activity. These definitions were of importance throughout all the middle ages. Thus, according to Aristotle, the essentially absolute substance has potentiality and actuality, form and matter, not separated from one another; for the true objective has most certainly also activity in itself, just as the true subjective has also potentiality.
From this definition we now see clearly the sort of opposition in which the Idea of Aristotle stands to that of Plato, for although the Idea of Plato is in itself essentially concrete and determined, Aristotle goes further. In so far, namely, as the Idea is determined in itself, the relation of the moments in it can be more closely specified, and this relation of the moments to each other is to be conceived of as nothing other than activity. It is easy for us to have a consciousness of what is deficient in the universal, that is, of that which is implicit only. The universal, in that it is the universal, has as yet no reality, for because implicitude is inert, the activity of realization is not yet posited therein. Reason, laws, etc., are in this way abstract, but the rational, as realizing itself, we recognize to be necessary, and therefore we take such universal laws but little into account. Now the standpoint of Plato is in the universal; what he does is to express Being rather as the objective, the Good, the end, the universal. To this, however, the principle of living subjectivity, as the moment of reality, seems to be lacking, or it appears at least to be put in the background. This negative principle seems indeed not to be directly expressed in Plato, but it is essentially contained in his definition of the Absolute as the unity of opposites; for this unity is essentially a negative unity of those opposites, which abrogates their being-another, their opposition, and leads them back into itself. But with Aristotle this negativity, this active efficacy, is expressly characterized as energy; in that it breaks up itself — this independence — abrogating unity, and positing separation; for, as Aristotle says (Metaph. VII. 13), “actuality separates.” The Platonic Idea, on the other hand, is rather that abrogation of opposites, where one of the opposites is itself unity. While, therefore, with Plato the main consideration is the affirmative principle, the Idea as only abstractly identical with itself, in Aristotle there is added and made conspicuous the moment of negativity, not as change, nor yet as nullity, but as difference or determination. The principle of individualization, not in the sense of a casual and merely particular subjectivity, but in that of pure subjectivity, is peculiar to Aristotle. Aristotle thus also makes the Good, as the universal end, the substantial foundation, and maintains this position against Heraclitus and the Eleatics. The Becoming of Heraclitus is a true and real determination, but change yet lacks the determination of identity with itself, the constancy of the universal. The stream is ever changing, yet it is nevertheless ever the same, and is really a universal existence. From this it is at once evident that Aristotle (Metaph. IV. 3-6) is controverting the opinions of Heraclitus and others when he says that Being and non-being are not the same (Vol. I. p. 282), and in connection with this lays down the celebrated maxim of contradiction, that a man is not at the same time a ship. This shows at once that Aristotle does not understand by this pure Being and non-being, this abstraction which is really only the transition of the one into the other; but by that which is, he understands Substance, the Idea, Reason, viewed likewise as an impelling end. As he maintains the universal against the principle of mere change, he puts forward activity in opposition to the numbers of the Pythagoreans, and to the Platonic Ideas. However frequently and fully Aristotle controverts both of these, all his objections turn on the remark already quoted (Vol. I. p. 213) that activity is not to be found in these principles, and that to say that real things participate in Ideas is empty talk, and a poetic metaphor. He says also that Ideas, as abstract universal determinations, are only as far as numbers go equal to things, but are not on that account to be pointed out as their causes. Moreover, he maintains that there are contradictions involved in taking independent species, since in Socrates, for instance, there are several ideas included: man, biped, animal (Metaph. I. 7 and 9). Activity with Aristotle is undoubtedly also change, but change that is within the universal, and that remains self-identical; consequently a determination which is self-determination, and therefore the self-realizing universal end: in mere alteration, on the contrary, there is not yet involved the preservation of identity in change. This is the chief point which Aristotle deals with.
Aristotle distinguishes various moments in substance, in so far as the moments of activity and potentiality do not appear as one, but still in separation. The closer determination of this relation of energy to potentiality, of form to matter, and the movement of this opposition, gives the different modes of substance. Here Aristotle enumerates the substances; and to him they appear as a series of different kinds of substance, which he merely takes into consideration one by one, without bringing them together into a system. The three following are the chief among these: —
a. The sensuous perceptible substance is that in which the matter is still distinguished from the efficient form. Hence this substance is finite; for the separation and externality of form and matter are precisely what constitute the nature of the finite. Sensuous substance, says Aristotle (Metaph. XII. 2), involves change, but in such a way that it passes over into the opposite; the opposites disappear in one another, and the third beyond these opposites, that which endures, the permanent in this change, is matter. Now the leading categories of change which Aristotle names are the four differences, in regard to the What (κατὰ τὸ τί), or in regard to quality (ποιόν), or in regard to quantity (ποσόν), or in regard to place where (ποῦ). The first change is the origination and decay of simple determinate Being (κατὰ τόδε); the second change is that of the further qualities (κατὰ τὸ πάθος); the third, increase and diminution; the fourth, motion. Matter is the dead substance on which take place the changes which matter passes through. “The change itself is from potential into actual existence; possible whiteness transforms itself into actual whiteness. Thus things do not arise casually out of nothing, but all arises out of what exists, though it exists only in potentiality, not in actuality.” The possible is thus really a general implicit existence, which brings about these determinations, without producing one out of the other. Matter is thus simple potentiality, which, however, is placed in opposition to itself, so that a thing in its actuality only becomes that which its matter was also in potentiality. There are thus three moments posited: matter, as the general substratum of change, neutral in respect of what is different (ἐξ οὗ); the opposed determinations of form, which are negative to each other as that which is to be abrogated and that which is to be posited (τι and εἴς τι); the first mover (ὑφ̓ οὗ), pure activity (Metaph. VII. 7; IX. 8; XII. 3).89 But activity is the unity of form and matter; how these two are in the other, Aristotle does not, however, further explain. Thus in sensuous substance there appears the diversity of the moments, though not as yet their return into themselves; but activity is the negative which ideally contains in itself the opposite, therefore that also which is about to be.
b. A higher kind of substance, according to Aristotle (Metaph. IX. 2; VII. 7; XII. 3), is that into which activity enters, which already contains that which is about to be. This is understanding, absolutely determined, whose content is the aim which it realizes through its activity, not merely changing as does the sensuous form. For the soul is essentially actuality, a general determination which posits itself; not only formal activity, whose content comes from somewhere else. But while the active posits its content in reality, this content yet remains the same; there is an activity present which is different from matter, although substance and activity are allied. Thus here we still have a matter which understanding demands as its hypothesis. The two extremes are matter as potentiality, and thought as efficiency: the former is the passive universal, and the latter the active universal; in sensuous substance the active is, on the contrary, still quite different from matter. In these two moments themselves change does not take place, for they are the implicit universal in opposed forms.
c. The highest point is, however, that in which potentiality, activity and actuality are united; the absolute substance which Aristotle (Metaph. XII. 6, 7; IX. 8), defines in general as being the absolute (ἀϊδιον), the unmoved, which yet at the same time moves, and whose essence is pure activity, without having matter. For matter as such is passive and affected by change, consequently it is not simply one with the pure activity of this substance. Here as elsewhere we certainly see an instance of merely denying a predicate, without saying what its truth is; but matter is nothing else than that moment of unmoved Being. If in later times it has seemed something new to define absolute Being as pure activity, we see that this arises from ignorance as to the Aristotelian conception. But the Schoolmen rightly looked upon this as the definition of God, since they define God as actus purus; and higher idealism than this there is none. We may also express this as follows: God is the Substance which in its potentiality has reality also unseparated from it; therein potentiality is not distinguished from form, since it produces from itself the determinations of its content. In this Aristotle breaks away from Plato, and for this reason controverts number, the Idea, and the universal, because if this, as inert, is not defined as identical with activity, there is no movement. Plato’s inert Ideas and numbers thus bring nothing into reality; but far different is the case with the Absolute of Aristotle, which in its quiescence is at the same time absolute activity.
Aristotle further says on this subject (Metaph. XII. 6): “It may be that what has potentiality is not real; it is of no avail therefore to make substances eternal, as the idealists do, if they do not contain a principle which can effect change. And even this is insufficient, if it is not active, because in that case there is no change. Yea, even if it were active, but its substance only a potentiality, there would be in it no eternal movement, for it is possible that what is according to potentiality may not exist. We must therefore have a principle whose substance must be apprehended as activity.” Thus in mind energy is substance itself. “But here a doubt seems to spring up. For all that is active seems to be possible, but all that is possible does not seem to energize, so that potentiality seems to be antecedent,” for it is the universal. “But if this were the case, no one of the entities would be in existence, for it is possible that a thing may possess a capacity of existence, though it has never yet existed. But energy is higher than potentiality. We must thus not assert, as theologians would have us do, that in the eternal ages there was first chaos or night” (matter), “nor must we say with natural philosophers that everything existed simultaneously. For how could the First be changed, if nothing in reality were cause? For matter does not move itself, it is the Master who moves it. Leucippus and Plato accordingly say that motion has always existed, but they give no reason for the assertion.” Pure activity is, according to Aristotle (Metaph. IX. 8), before potentiality, not in relation to time, but to essence. That is to say, time is a subordinate moment, far removed from the universal; for the absolute first Being is, as Aristotle says at the end of the sixth chapter of the twelfth book, “that which in like activity remains always identical with itself.” In the former assumption of a chaos and so on, an activity is posited which has to do with something else, not with itself, and has therefore a pre-supposition; but chaos is only bare possibility.
That which moves in itself, and therefore, as Aristotle continues (Metaph. XII. 7), “that which has circular motion;” is to be posited as the true Being, “and this is evident not merely from thinking reason, but also from the fact itself.” From the definition of absolute Being as imparting motion, as bringing about realization, there follows that it exists in objectivity in visible nature. As the self-identical which is visible, this absolute Being is “the eternal heavens.” The two modes of representing the Absolute are thus thinking reason and the eternal heavens. The heavens are moved, but they also cause movement. Since the spherical is thus both mover and moved, there is a centre-point which causes movement but remains unmoved, and which is itself at the same time eternal and a substance and energy.90 This great definition given by Aristotle of absolute Being as the circle of reason which returns into itself, is of the same tenor as modern definitions; the unmoved which causes movement is the Idea which remains self-identical, which, while it moves, remains in relation to itself. He explains this as follows: “Its motion is determined in the following manner. That moves which is desired and thought, whereas itself it is unmoved, and the original of both is the same.” That is the end whose content is the desire and thought; such an end is the Beautiful or the Good. “For the thing that is desired is that which appears beautiful” (or pleases): “whose first” (or end), “on which the will is set, is what is beautiful. But it is rather the case that we desire it because it appears beautiful, than that it appears beautiful because we desire it.” For if that were so, it would be simply posited by activity, but it is posited independently, as objective Being, through which our desire is first awakened. “But thought is the true principle in this, for thought is moved only by the object of thought. But the intelligible” (we scarcely believe our eyes) “is essentially the other co-element (συστοιχία)”91 namely, that which is posited as objective, as absolutely existent thought, “and the substance of this other element is the first; but the first substance is simple pure activity. Such are the Beautiful and the Good, and the first is ever the absolutely best or the best possible. But the Notion shows that the final cause belongs to the unmoved. What is moved may also subsist in a different manner. Motion (φορά) is the first change; the first motion, again, is circular motion, but this is due to the above cause.” Therefore, according to Aristotle, the Notion, principium cognoscendi, is also that which causes movement, principium essendi; he expresses it as God, and shows the relation of God to the individual consciousness. “The First Cause is necessary. But the term necessary has three meanings: first what is accomplished by violence, because it goes contrary to one’s inclination (παρὰ τὴν ὁρμήν); secondly, that without which the Good does not subsist; thirdly, that which can exist in no other way than it does, but involves absolute existence. On such a principle of the unmoved the heavens depend and the whole of nature” — the visible that is eternal, and the visible that changes. This system is ever-enduring. “But to us” as individuals, “there is granted, for a short time only, a sojourn therein of surpassing excellence. For the system continues ever the same, but for us that is impossible. Now this activity is in its very self enjoyment, and therefore vigilance, exercise of the senses, thinking in general, are most productive of enjoyment; and for the same reason hopes and memories bring pleasure. But thinking, in its pure essence, is a thinking of that which is absolutely the most excellent;” the thought is for itself absolute end. The difference and contradiction in activity and the abrogation of the same, Aristotle expresses thus: “But thought thinks itself by participation (μετάληψιν) in that which is thought, but thought becomes thought by contact and apprehension, so that thought and the object of thought are the same.” Thought, as being the unmoved which causes motion, has an object, which, however, becomes transformed into activity, because its content is itself something thought, i.e. a product of thought, and thus altogether identical with the activity of thinking. The object of thought is first produced in the activity of thinking, which in this way separates the thought as an object. Hence, in thinking, that which is moved and that which moves are the same; and as the substance of what is thought is thought, what is thought is the absolute cause which, itself unmoved, is identical with the thought which is moved by it; the separation and the relation are one and the same. The chief moment in Aristotle’s philosophy is accordingly this, that the energy of thinking and the object of thought are the same; “for thought is that which is receptive of objects of perception and the existent. When in possession of these it is in a condition of activity (ἐνεργεῖ δὲ ἔχων); and thus all this” operation by which it thinks itself, “is more divine than the divine possession which thinking reason supposes itself to have,” — the content of thought. It is not the object of thought that is the more excellent, but the very energy of thinking; the activity of apprehension brings that to pass which appears as something that is being apprehended. “Speculation (ἡ θεωρία) is thus the most pleasing and the best. If then God has eternally subsisted in such surpassing excellence as for a limited time pertains to us” (in whom this eternal Thought, which is God Himself, occurs only as a particular condition), “He is worthy of admiration; if He possesses it in a more eminent degree, His nature is still more admirable. But this is His mode of subsistence. Life is also inherent in Him, for the activity of thought is life. But He constitutes this efficient power; essential energy belongs to God as His most excellent and eternal life. We therefore say that with God there is life perfect and everlasting.” From this substance Aristotle moreover excludes magnitude.
We in our way of speaking designate the Absolute, the True, as the unity of subjectivity and objectivity, which is therefore neither the one nor the other, and yet just as much the one as the other; and Aristotle busied himself with these same speculations, the deepest forms of speculation even of the present day, and he has expressed them with the greatest definiteness. With Aristotle it is thus no dry identity of the abstract understanding that is indicated, for he distinguishes subjective and objective precisely and decisively. Not dead identity such as this, but energy, is for him what is most to be reverenced, God. Unity is thus a poor, unphilosophic expression, and true Philosophy is not the system of identity; its principle is a unity which is activity, movement, repulsion, and thus, in being different, is at the same time identical with itself. If Aristotle had made the jejune identity of understanding, or experience, his principle, he would never have risen to a speculative Idea like this, wherein individuality and activity are placed higher than universal potentiality. Thought, as the object of thought, is nothing else than the absolute Idea regarded as in itself, the Father; yet this First and unmoved, as distinguished from activity, is, as absolute, simply activity, and is first through this activity set forth as true. In what he teaches respecting the soul we shall find Aristotle recurring to this speculative thought; but to Aristotle it is again an object, like other objects, a kind of condition which he separates from the other conditions of the soul which he understands empirically, such as sleep, or weariness. He does not say that it alone is truth, that all is summed up in Thought, but he says it is the first, the strongest, the most honourable. We, on the other hand, say that Thought, as that which relates to itself, has existence, or is the truth; that Thought comprehends the whole of Truth, even, though we ordinarily represent to ourselves sensation and so on, besides thought, as having reality. Thus, although Aristotle does not express himself in modern philosophic language, he has yet throughout the same fundamental theory; he speaks not of a special kind of reason, but of the universal Reason. The speculative philosophy of Aristotle simply means the direction of thought on all kinds of objects, thus transforming these into thoughts; hence, in being thoughts, they exist in truth. The meaning of this is not, however, that natural objects have thus themselves the power of thinking, but as they are subjectively thought by me, my thought is thus also the Notion of the thing, which therefore constitutes its absolute substance. But in Nature the Notion does not exist explicitly as thought in this freedom, but has flesh and blood, and is oppressed by externalities; yet this flesh and blood has a soul, and this is its Notion. The ordinary definition of truth, according to which it is “the harmony of the conception with the object,” is certainly not borne out by the conception; for when I represent to myself a house, a beam, and so on, I am by no means this content, but something entirely different, and therefore very far from being in harmony with the object of my conception. It is only in thought that there is present a true harmony between objective and subjective; that constitutes me. Aristotle therefore finds himself at the highest standpoint; nothing deeper can we desire to know, although he has always the appearance of making ordinary conceptions his starting-point.
Aristotle (Metaph. XII. 9) now solves many other doubtful questions, for instance, whether thought is compound, and whether science is the object of science itself. “Some further doubts arise as to thought (νοῦς), which seems to be of all things the most divine; but it is only with difficulty that we can conceive under what conditions (πῶς δ̓ ἔχων) it is a thing of this sort. When it thinks of nothing, but is in a state like that of a sleeper, what constitutes its superiority? And when it thinks, but something else is dominant all the time (ἄλλο κύριον), that which is its substance is not thought (νόησις), but a potentiality;” it would not be in eternal activity. “In this way it would not be the highest substance; for it is” (active) “thought (τὸ νοεῖν) that gives it its high rank. If now, further, thought or thinking is its substance, what does it think? Itself or another? And if another, is it always the same, or something different? Does it also not make a difference, whether it thinks of what is beautiful or what is casual? In the first place, if thought is not thinking, but only the power to think, continuous thinking would be laborious for it,” for every power wears itself out. “In the next place, something else would be more excellent than thought, namely that which is thought (νοούμενον); and thinking and thought (τὸ νοεῖν καὶ ἡ νόησις) will be present to the mind in understanding what is most inferior. As this is to be avoided (in the same way that it is better not to see some things than to see them), thinking would not constitute the best. Thought is therefore this, to think itself, because it is the most excellent; and it is the thinking, which is the thinking of thinking. For understanding and sensation and opinion and deliberation seem always to have an object other than themselves, and to be their own objects only in a secondary sense. Further, if thinking and being thought of are different, in relation to which of the two is the Good inherent in thought? For the Notion92 of thinking and that of the object of thought are not the same. Or, in the case of some things, does the science itself constitute that which is the object of science? In what is practical the thing is the immaterial substance and the determination of the end (ἡ οὐσία καὶ τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι), and in what is theoretical it is the reason and the thinking. As therefore thought and the object of thought are not different, these opposites, so far as they involve no connection with matter, are the same thing, and there is only a thought of the thing thought of.” Reason which thinks itself, is the absolute end or the Good, for it only exists for its own sake. “There still remains a doubt whether that which thinks is of composite nature or not; for it might undergo change in the parts of the whole. But the Good is not in this or that part, for it is the best in the universe, as distinguished from it. In this way the Thought which is its own object subsists to all eternity.”
As this speculative Idea, which is the best and most free, is also to be seen in nature, and not only in thinking reason, Aristotle (Metaph. XII. 8) in this connection passes on to the visible God, which is the heavens. God, as living God, is the universe; and thus in the universe God, as living God, shows Himself forth. He comes forth as manifesting Himself or as causing motion, and it is in manifestation alone that the difference between the cause of motion and that which is moved comes to pass. “The principle and the first cause of that which is, is itself unmoved, but brings to pass the original and eternal and single motion,” that is, the heaven of the fixed stars. “We see that besides the simple revolution of the universe, which is brought about by the first unmoved substance, there are other eternal motions, those of the planets.” We must not, however, enter into further details on this subject.
Regarding the organization of the universe in general, Aristotle says (Metaph. XII. 10), “We must investigate in what manner the nature of the whole has within it the Good and the Best; whether as something set apart and absolute, or as an order, or in both ways, as in the case of an army. For the good condition of an army depends upon the order enforced, as much as on the general, and the general is the cause of the army’s good condition in all the greater degree from the fact of the order being through him, and not from his being through the order. All things are co-ordinated in a certain way, but not all in the same way: take, for example, animals which swim, and those which fly, and plants; they are not so constituted that one of them is not related to another, but they stand in mutual relations. For all are co-ordinated into one system just as in a house it is by no means permitted to the free inmates to do freely whatever they like, but all that they do, or the most of it, is done according to orderly arrangement. By slaves and animals, on the contrary, little is done for the general good, but they do much that is casual. For the principle of each is his own nature. In the same way it is necessary that all should attain to a position where distinction is drawn” (the seat of judgment) “but there are some things so constituted that all participate in them for the formation of a whole.” Aristotle then goes on to refute some other notions; showing, for instance, the embarrassments into which they fall who make all things proceed from oppositions, and he corroborates, on the other hand, the unity of the principle by quoting Homer’s line (Iliad II. 204):
“It is not good that many govern; let one alone bear rule.”
Amongst the special sciences treated by Aristotle, the Physics is contained in a whole series of physical treatises, which form a tolerably complete system of what constitutes the Philosophy of Nature in its whole extent. We shall try to give their general plan. Aristotle’s first work is his Treatise, in eight books, on Physics, or on the Principles (φυσικὴ ἀκρόασις ἢ περὶ ἀρχῶν). In this he deals, as is fitting, with the doctrine of the Notion of nature generally, with movement, and with space and time. The first manifestation of absolute substance is movement, and its moments are space and time; this conception of its manifestation is the universal, which realizes itself first in the corporeal world, passing into the principle of separation. Aristotle’s Physics is what for present physicists would, properly speaking, be the Metaphysics of Nature; for our physicists only say what they have seen, what delicate and excellent instruments they have made, and not what they have thought. This first work by Aristotle is followed by his treatises concerning the Heavens, which deal with the nature of body and the first real bodies, the earth and heavenly bodies in general, as also with the general abstract relation of bodies to one another through mechanical weight and lightness, or what we should call attraction; and finally, with the determination of abstract real bodies or elements. Then follow the treatises on Production and Destruction, the physical process of change, while formerly the ideal process of movement was considered. Besides the physical elements, moments which are only posited in process, as such, now enter in: for instance, warmth, cold, &c. Those elements are the real existent facts, while these determinations are the moments of becoming or of passing away, which exist only in movement. Then comes the Meteorology; it represents the universal physical process in its most real forms. Here particular determinations appear, such as rain, the saltness of the sea, clouds, dew, hail, snow, hoar-frost, winds, rainbows, boiling, cooking, roasting, colours, &c. On certain matters, such as the colours, Aristotle wrote particular treatises. Nothing is forgotten, and yet the presentation is, on the whole, empiric. The book On the Universe, which forms the conclusion, is said not to be genuine; it is a separate dissertation, addressed to Alexander, which contains in part the doctrine of the universality of things, a doctrine found already in the other treatises; hence this book does not belong to this series.
From this point Aristotle proceeds to organic nature, and here his works not only contain a natural history, but also a physiology and anatomy. To the anatomy pertain his works on the Locomotion of Animals, and on the Parts of Animals. He deals with physiology in the works on the Generation of Animals, on the common Movement of Animals; and then he comes to the distinction between Youth and Age, Sleeping and Waking, and treats of Breathing, Dreaming, the Shortness and Length of Life, &c., all of which he deals with partly in an empiric, and partly in a more speculative manner. Finally, there comes the History of Animals, not merely as a history of Nature, but also as the history of the animal in its entirety — what we may call a kind of physiologico-anatomical anatomy. There is likewise a botanical work On Plants (περὶ φυτῶν) which is ascribed to him. Thus we here find natural philosophy in the whole extent of its outward content.
As regards this plan, there is no question that this is not the necessary order in which natural philosophy or physics must be treated. It is long since physics adopted in its conception the form and tendency derived from Aristotle, of deducing the parts of the science from the whole; and thus even what is not speculative still retains this connection as far as outward order goes. This is plainly to be preferred to the arrangement in our modern text-books, which is a wholly irrational succession of doctrines accidentally put together, and is undoubtedly more suitable to that method of contemplating nature, which grasps the sensuous manifestation of nature quite irrespective of sense or reason. Physics before this contained some metaphysics, but the experience which was met with in endeavouring unsuccessfully to work it out, determined the physicists, so far as possible, to keep it at a distance, and to devote their attention to what they call experience, for they think that here they come across genuine truth, unspoiled by thought, fresh from the hand of nature; it is in their hands and before their faces. They can certainly not dispense with the Notion, but through a kind of tacit agreement they allow certain conceptions, such as forces, subsistence in parts, &c., to be valid, and make use of these without in the least knowing whether they have truth and how they have truth. But in regard to the content they express no better the truth of things, but only the sensuous manifestation. Aristotle and the ancients understand by physics, on the other hand, the comprehension of nature — the universal; and for this reason Aristotle also calls it the doctrine of principles. For in the manifestation of nature this distinction between the principle and what follows it, manifestation, really commences, and it is abrogated only in genuine speculation. Yet if, on the one hand, what is physical in Aristotle is mainly philosophic and not experimental, he yet proceeded in his Physics in what may be called an empiric way. Thus, as it has been already remarked of the Aristotelian philosophy in general that the different parts fall into a series of independently determined conceptions, so we find that this is the case here also; hence an account can only be given of a part of them. One part is not universal enough to embrace the other part, for each is independent. But that which follows, and which has in great measure reference to what is individual, no longer comes under the dominion of the Notion, but becomes a superficial suggestion of reasons, and an explanation from the proximate causes, such as we find in our physics.
In regard to the general conception of nature, we must say that Aristotle represents it in the highest and truest manner. For in the Idea of nature Aristotle (Phys. II. 8) really relies on two determinations: the conception of end and the conception of necessity. Aristotle at once grasps the whole matter in its principles, and this constitutes the old contradiction and divergence of view existing between necessity (causæ efficientes) and end (causæ finales), which we have inherited. The first mode of consideration is that in accordance with external necessity, which is the same as chance — the conception that all that pertains to nature is determined from without by means of natural causes. The other mode of consideration is the teleological, but conformity to end is either inward or outward, and in the more recent culture the latter has long retained the supremacy. Thus men vibrate in their opinion between these two points of view, seek external causes, and war against the form of an external teleology which places the end outside of nature. These determinations were known to Aristotle, and he thoroughly investigates them and considers what they are and mean. Aristotle’s conception of nature is, however, nobler than that of to-day, for with him the principal point is the determination of end as the inward determinateness of natural things. Thus he comprehended nature as life, i.e. as that which has its end within itself, is unity with itself, which does not pass into another, but, through this principle of activity, determines changes in conformity with its own content, and in this way maintains itself therein. In this doctrine Aristotle has before his eyes the inward immanent end, to which he considers necessity an external condition. Thus, on the one hand, Aristotle determines nature as the final cause, which is to be distinguished from what is luck or chance; it is thus opposed by him to what is necessary, which it also contains within itself; and then he considers how necessity is present in natural things. In nature we usually think of necessity first, and understand as the essentially natural that which is not determined through end. For long men thought that they determined nature both philosophically and truly in limiting it to necessity. But the aspect of nature has had a stigma removed from it, because, by means of its conformity to the end in view, it is elevated above the commonplace. The two moments which we have considered in substance, the active form and matter, correspond with these two determinations.
We must first consider the conception of adaptation to end as the ideal moment in substance. Aristotle begins (Phys. II. 8) with the fact that the natural is the self-maintaining, all that is difficult is its comprehension. “The first cause of perplexity is, what hinders nature from not operating for the sake of an end, and because it is better so to operate, but” being, for example, “like Jupiter, who rains, not that the corn may grow, but from necessity. The vapour driven upwards cools, and the water resulting from this cooling falls as rain, and it happens that the corn is thereby made to grow. In like manner, if the corn of any one is destroyed, it does not rain for the sake of this destruction, but this is an accidental circumstance.” That is to say, there is a necessary connection which, however, is an external relation, and this is the contingency of the cause as well as of the effect. “But if this be so,” Aristotle asks, “what hinders us from assuming that what appears as parts” (the parts of an animal, for instance) “may thus subsist in nature, too, as contingent? That, for example, the front teeth are sharp and adapted for dividing, and that the back teeth, on the contrary, are broad and adapted for grinding the food in pieces, may be an accidental circumstance, not necessarily brought about for these particular ends. And the same is true with respect to the other parts of the body which appear to be adapted for some end; therefore those living things in which all was accidentally constituted as if for some end, are now, having once been so existent, preserved, although originally they had arisen by chance, in accordance with external necessity.” Aristotle adds that Empedocles especially had these reflections, and represented the first beginnings of things as a world composed of all sorts of monstrosities, such as bulls with human heads; such, however, could not continue to subsist, but disappeared because they were not originally constituted so that they should endure; and this went on until what was in conformity with purpose came together. Without going back to the fabulous monstrosities of the ancients, we likewise know of a number of animal tribes which have died out, just because they could not preserve the race. Thus we also require to use the expression development (an unthinking evolution), in our present-day natural philosophy. The conception that the first productions were, so to speak, attempts, of which those which did not show themselves to be suitable could not endure, is easily arrived at by natural philosophy. But nature, as entelecheia or realization, is what brings forth itself. Aristotle hence replies: “It is impossible to believe this. For what is produced in accordance with nature is always, or at least for the most part, produced” (external universality as the constant recurrence of what has passed away), “but this is not so with what happens through fortune or through chance. That in which there is an end (τέλος), equally in its character as something which precedes and as something which follows, is made into end; as therefore a thing is made, so is its nature, and as is its nature, so is it made; it exists therefore for the sake of this.” The meaning of nature is that as something is, it was in the beginning; it means this inward universality and adaptation to end that realizes itself; and thus cause and effect are identical, since all individual parts are related to this unity of end. “He who assumes contingent and accidental forms, subverts, on the other hand, both nature itself and that which subsists from nature, for that subsists from nature which has a principle within itself, by whose means, and being continually moved, it attains its end.” In this expression of Aristotle’s we now find the whole of the true profound Notion of life, which must be considered as an end in itself — a self-identity that independently impels itself on, and in its manifestation remains identical with its Notion: thus it is the self-effectuating Idea. Leaves, blossoms, roots thus bring the plant into evidence and go back into it; and that which they bring to pass is already present in the seed from which they took their origin. The chemical product, on the contrary, does not appear to have itself similarly present, for from acid and base a third appears to come forth; but here, likewise, the essence of both these sides, their relationship, is already present, though it is there mere potentiality, as it is in the product merely a thing. But the self-maintaining activity of life really brings forth this unity in all relationships. What has here been said is already contained in that which was asserted by those who do not represent nature in this way, but say, “that which is constituted as though it were constituted for an end, will endure.” For this is the self-productive action of nature. In the modern way of looking at life this conception becomes lost in two different ways; either through a mechanical philosophy, in which we always find as principle pressure, impulse, chemical relationships and forces, or external relations generally — which certainly seem to be inherent in nature, but not to proceed from the nature of the body, seeing that they are an added, foreign appendage, such as colour in a fluid; or else theological physics maintain the thoughts of an understanding outside of the world to be the causes. In the Kantian philosophy we for the first time have that conception once more awakened in us, for organic nature at least; life has there been made an end to itself. In Kant this indeed had only the subjective form which constitutes the essence of the Kantian philosophy, in which it seems as though life were only so determined by reason of our subjective reasoning; but still the whole truth is there contained that the organic creation is the self-maintaining. The fact that most recent times have brought back the rational view of the matter into our remembrance, is thus none else than a justification of the Aristotelian Idea.
Aristotle also speaks of the end which is represented by organic nature in itself, in relation to the means, of which he says (Phys. II. 8): “If the swallow builds her nest, and the spider spreads her web, and trees root themselves in the earth, for the sake of nutriment, there is present in them a self-maintaining cause of this kind, or an end.” For this instinctive action exhibits an operation of self-preservation, as a means whereby natural existence becomes shut up and reflected into itself. Aristotle then brings what is here said into relation with general conceptions which he had earlier maintained (p. 138): “Since nature is twofold as matter and form, but since the latter is end, and the rest are on account of the end, this is final cause.” For the active form has a content, which, as content of potentiality, contains the means which make their appearance as adapted for an end, i.e. as moments established through the determinate Notion. However much we may, in the modern way of regarding things, struggle against the idea of an immanent end, from reluctance to accept it, we must, in the case of animals and plants, acknowledge such a conception, always re-establishing itself in another. For example, because the animal lives in water or in air, it is so constructed that it can maintain its existence in air or water; thus it requires water to explain the gills of fishes; and, on the other hand, because the animal is so constructed, it lives in water. This activity in transformation thus does not depend in a contingent way on life; it is aroused through the outward powers, but only in as far as conformity with the soul of the animal permits.
In passing, Aristotle here (Phys. II. 8) makes a comparison between nature and art, which also connects what results with what goes before, in accordance with ends. “Nature may commit an error as well as art; for as a grammarian sometimes makes a mistake in writing, and a physician in mixing a medicinal draught, nature, too, sometimes does not attain its ends. Its errors are monstrosities and deformities, which, however, are only the errors of that which operates for an end. In the production of animals and plants, an animal is not at first produced, but the seed, and even in it corruption is possible.” For the seed is the mean, as being the not as yet established, independent, indifferent, free actuality. In this comparison of nature with art we ordinarily have before us the external adaptation to end, the teleological point of view, the making for definite ends. And Aristotle declaims against this, while he remarks that if nature is activity for a certain end, or if it is the implicitly universal, “it is absurd to deny that action is in conformity with end, because that which moves cannot be seen to have deliberated and considered.” The understanding comes forward with the determination of this end, and with its instruments and tools, to operate on matter, and we carry this conception of an external teleology over into nature. “But art also,” says Aristotle, “does not deliberate. If the form of a ship were the particular inward principle of the timber, it would act as nature prompted. The action of nature is very similar to the exercise of the art whereby anyone heals himself.” Through an inward instinct the animal avoids what is evil, and does what is good for him; health is thus essentially present to him, not as a conscious end, but as an understanding which accomplishes its ends without conscious thought.
As Aristotle has hitherto combated an external teleology, he directs another equally applicable remark (Phys. II. 9) against merely external necessity, and thus we come to the other side, or to how necessity exists in nature. He says in this regard: “Men fancy that necessity exists in this way in generation, just as if it were thought that a house existed from necessity, because heavy things were naturally carried downwards, and light things upwards, and that, therefore, the stones and foundation, on account of their weight, were under the earth, and the earth, because it was lighter, was further up, and the wood in the highest place because it is the lightest.” But Aristotle thus explains the facts of the case. “The house is certainly not made without these materials, but not on account of, or through them (unless the material so demands), but it is made for the sake of concealing and preserving certain things. The same takes place in everything which has an end in itself; for it is not without that which is necessary to its nature, and yet it is not on account of this, unless the matter so demands, but on account of an end. Hence the necessary is from hypothesis only, and not as end, for necessity is in matter, but end is in reason (λόγῳ). Thus it is clear that matter and its movement are necessity in natural things; both have to be set forth as principle, but end is the higher principle.” It undoubtedly requires necessity, but it retains it in its own power, does not allow it to give vent to itself, but controls external necessity. The principle of matter is thus turned into the truly active ground of end, which means the overthrow of necessity, so that that which is natural shall maintain itself in the end. Necessity is the objective manifestation of the action of its moments as separated, just as in chemistry the essential reality of both the extremes — the base and the acid — is the necessity of their relation.
This is the main conception of Aristotelian Physics. Its further development concerns the conceptions of the different objects of nature, a material for speculative philosophy which we have spoken of above (pp. 153-155), and regarding which Aristotle puts before us reflections both difficult and profound. Thus he at first (Phys. III. 1-3) proceeds from this point to movement (κίνησις), and says that it is essential that a philosophy of nature should speak of it, but that it is difficult to grasp; in fact, it is one of the most difficult conceptions. Aristotle thus sets to work to understand movement in general, not merely in space and time, but also in its reality; and in this sense he calls it “the activity of an existent thing which is in capacity, so far as it is in capacity.” He explains this thus: “Brass is in capacity a statue; yet the motion to become a statue is not a motion of the brass so far as it is brass, but a motion of itself, as the capacity to become a statue. Hence this activity is an imperfect one (ἀτελής),” i.e. it has not its end within itself, “for mere capacity, whose activity is movement, is imperfect.” The absolute substance, the moving immovable, the existent ground of heaven which we saw as end, is, on the contrary, both activity itself and the content and object of activity. But Aristotle distinguishes from this what falls under the form of this opposition, “That moving is also moved which has movement as a capacity, and whose immobility is rest. That in which movement is present has immobility as rest; for activity in rest, as such, is movement.” That is to say, rest is capacity for motion. “Hence movement is the activity of that which is movable (κινητοῦ),93 so far as it is movable; but this happens from the contact of that which is motive (κινητικοῦ), so that at the same time it is posited as passive likewise. But that which moves always introduces a certain form or end (εἶδος), either this particular thing (τόδε), or a quality or a quantity, which is the principle and cause of the motion when it moves; thus man, as he is in energy, makes man from man as he is in capacity. Thus, too, it is evident that movement is in the movable thing: for it is the activity of this, and is derived from that which is motive. The activity of that which is motive is likewise not different, for both are necessarily activity. It is motive because it has the capacity for being so; but it causes motion because it energizes. But it is the energetic of the moveable (ἔστιν ἐνεργητικὸν τοῦ κινετοῦ), so that there is one energy of both; just as the relation between one and two is the same as that between two and one, and there also is the same relation between acclivity and declivity, so the way from Thebes to Athens is the same as from Athens to Thebes. Activity and passivity are not originally (κυρίως) the same, but in what they are inherent, in motion, they are the same. In Being (τῷ εἶναι) they are identical, but activity, in so far as it is activity of this in this” (what is moved), “and the activity of this from this” (what moves), “is different as regards its conception (τῷ λόγῳ).” Aristotle subsequently deals with the infinite (Phys. III. 4-8).
“In like manner it is necessary,” says Aristotle (Phys. IV. 1-5), “that the natural philosopher should consider the subject of place (τόπος).” Here come various definitions and determinations under which space generally and particular space or place appear. “Is place a body? It cannot be a body, for then there would be in one and the same, two bodies. Again, if it is the place and receptacle (χώρα) of this body, it is evident that it is so also of the superficies and the remaining boundaries; but the same reasoning applies to these, for where the superficies of water were before, there will now be the superficies of air,” and thus the places of both superficies would be in one. “But in truth there is no difference between the point and the place of the point, so that if place is not different from the other forms of limitation, neither is it something outside of them. It is not an element, and neither consists of corporeal nor of incorporeal elements, for it possesses magnitude, but not body. The elements of bodies are, however, themselves bodies, and no magnitude is produced from intelligible elements. Place is not the material of things, for nothing consists of it — neither the form, nor the Notion, nor the end, nor the moving cause; and yet it is something.” Aristotle now determines place as the first unmoved limit of that which is the comprehending: it comprehends the body whose place it is, and has nothing of the thing in itself; yet it co-exists with the thing, because the limits and the limited co-exist. The uttermost ends of what comprehends and of what is comprehended are identical, for both are bounds; but they are not bounds of the same, for form is the boundary of the thing, place is that of the embracing body. Place, as the comprehending, remains unchangeably passive while the thing which is moved is moved away; from which we see that place must be separable from the thing. Or place, according to Aristotle, is the boundary, the negation of a body, the assertion of difference, of discretion; but it likewise does not merely belong to this body, but also to that which comprehends. There is thus no difference at all, but unchangeable continuity. “Place is neither the universal (κοινός) in which all bodies are” (heaven), “nor the particular (ἴδιος), in which they are as the first (πρώτῳ).” Aristotle also speaks of above and below in space, in relation to heaven as that which contains, and earth as what is beneath. “That body, outside of which is a comprehending body, is in space. But the whole heavens are not anywhere, since no body comprehends them. Outside the universe nothing is, and hence everything is in the heavens, for the heavens are the whole. Place, however, is not the heavens, but its external quiescent boundary which touches the body moved. Hence the earth is in water, water in air, air in ether, but ether in the heavens.”
From this point Aristotle goes on (Phys. IV. 6, 7) to empty space, in which an old question is involved which physicists even now cannot explain: they could do so if they studied Aristotle, but as far as they are concerned there might have been no thought nor Aristotle in the world. “Vacuum, according to ordinary ideas, is a space in which there is no body, and, fancying that all Being is body, they say that vacuum is that in which there is nothing at all. The conception of a vacuum has its justification for one thing in the fact that a vacuum,” the negative to an existent form, “is essential to motion; for a body could not move in a plenum,” and in the place to which it does move there must be nothing. “The other argument in favour of a vacuum is found in the compression of bodies, in which the parts press into the empty spaces.” This is the conception of varying density and the alteration of the same, in accordance with which an equal weight might consist of an equal number of parts, but these, as being separated by vacuum, might present a greater volume. Aristotle confutes these reasonings most adroitly, and first of all in this way; “The plenum could be changed, and bodies could yield to one another even if no interval of vacuum separated them. Liquids as well as solids are not condensed into a vacuum; something that they contained is expelled, just as air is expelled if water is compressed.”
Aristotle deals more thoroughly, in the first place (Phys. IV. 8), with the erroneous conception that the vacuum is the cause of movement. For, on the one hand, he shows that the vacuum really abolishes motion, and consequently in vacuum a universal rest would reign. He calls it perfect indifference as to the greater or less distance to which a thing is moved; in vacuum there are no distinctions. It is pure negation without object or difference; there is no reason for standing still or going on. But body is in movement, and that, indeed, as distinguished; it has a positive relation, and not one merely to nothing. On the other hand, Aristotle refutes the idea that movement is in vacuum because compression is possible. But this does not happen in a vacuum; there would be established in it not one movement, but a movement towards all sides, a general annihilation, an absolute yielding, where no cohesion would remain in the body. “Again, a weight or a body is borne along more swiftly or more slowly from two causes; either because there is a difference in that through which it is borne along, as when it moves through air or water or earth, or because that which is borne along differs through excess of weight or lightness.” As regards difference of movement on account of the first difference — that in the density of the medium — Aristotle says: “The medium through which the body is borne along is the cause of the resistance encountered, which is greater if the medium is moving in a contrary direction (and less if it is at rest); resistance is increased also if the medium is not easily divided. The difference in velocity is in inverse ratio to the specific gravity of the medium, air and water, so that if the medium has only half the density, the rate of progress will be double as quick. But vacuum has to body no such relation of differences of specific gravity. Body can no more contain a vacuum within its dimensions than a line can contain a point, unless the line were composed of points. The vacuum has no ratio to the plenum.” But as to the other case, the difference in weight and lightness, which has to be considered as being in bodies themselves, whereby one moves more quickly than another through the same space: “this distinction exists only in the plenum, for the heavy body, by reason of its power, divides the plenum more quickly.” This point of view is quite correct, and it is mainly directed against a number of conceptions that prevail in our physics. The conception of equal movement of the heavy and the light, as that of pure weight, pure matter, is an abstraction, being taken as though they were inherently like, only differing through the accidental resistance of the air.
Aristotle (Phys. IV. 9) now comes to the second point, to the proof of the vacuum because of the difference in specific gravity. “Many believe that the vacuum exists because of the rare and the dense;” the former is said to be a rare body, and the latter a perfect continuity; or they at least differ quantitatively from one another through greater or less density. “For if air should be generated from a quantity of water, a given quantity of water must produce a quantity of air the same in bulk, or there must necessarily be a vacuum; for it is only on the hypothesis of a vacuum that compression and rarefaction are explicable. Now if, as they say, the less dense were that which has many separate void spaces, it is evident that since a vacuum cannot be separated any more than a space can have intervals, neither can the rare subsist in this manner. But if it is not separable, and yet a vacuum is said to exist in the body, in the first place movement could thus only be upwards; for the rare is the light, and hence they say that fire is rare,” because it always moves upwards. “In the next place the vacuum cannot be the cause of motion as that in which something moves, but must resemble bladders that carry up that which adheres to them. But how is it possible that a vacuum can move, or that there can be a place where there is a vacuum? For that into which it is carried would be the vacuum of a vacuum. In short, as there can be no movement in vacuum, so also a vacuum cannot move.” Aristotle set against these ideas the true state of matters, and states generally the ideal conception of nature: “that the opposites, hot and cold, and the other physical contraries, have one and the same matter, and that from what is in capacity that which is in energy is produced; that matter is not separable though it is different in essence94 (τῷ εἶναι), and that it remains one and the same in number (ἀριθμῷ) even if it possesses colour, or is hot and cold. And again, the matter of a small body and a large is the same, because at one time a greater proceeds from a smaller, and at another time a smaller from a greater. If air is generated from water it is expanded, but the matter remains the same and without taking to itself anything else; for that which it was in capacity it becomes in actuality. In a similar way if air is compressed from a greater into a less volume, the process will be reversed, and air will similarly pass into water, because the matter which is in capacity both air and water, also becomes both.” Aristotle likewise asserts that increase and decrease of warmth, and its transition into cold, is no addition or otherwise of warm matter, and also one and the same is both dense and rare. This is very different from the physical conceptions which assert more or less matter to correspond with more or less density, thus comprehending the difference in specific weight as the external addition of matter. Aristotle, on the contrary, takes this dynamically, though certainly not in the sense in which dynamics are to-day understood, viz. as an increase of intensity or as a degree, for he accepts intensity in its truth as universal capacity. Undoubtedly the difference must also be taken as a difference in amount, but not as an increase and decrease, or as an alteration in the absolute quantity of the matter. For here intensity means force, but again not as being a thing of thought separated from matter, but as indicating that if anything has become more intensive, it has had its actuality diminished, having, however, according to Aristotle, attained to a greater capacity. If the intensity is again directed outwards, and compared with other things, it undoubtedly becomes degree, and therefore magnitude immediately enters in. It then is indifferent whether greater intension or greater extension is posited; more air is capable of being warmed to the same degree as less, through the greater intensity of the warmth; or the same air can thereby become intensively warmer.
As regards the investigation of time, Aristotle remarks (Phys. IV. 10, 11, 13) that if time is externally (exoterically, ἐξωτερικῶς) regarded, we are inevitably led to doubt (διαπορῆσαι) whether it has any being whatever, or whether it has bare existence, as feeble (μόλις καὶ ἀμυδρῶς) as if it were only a potentiality. “For one part of it was and is not: another part will be and is not as yet; but of these parts infinite and everlasting (ἀεὶ λαμβανόμενος), time is composed. But it now appears that time, if composed of things that are not, may be incapable of existence. And also as regards everything divisible, if it exists, either some or all of its parts must be. Time is certainly divisible; but some of the parts are past, others are future, and no part is present. For the now is no part, since a part has a measure, and the whole must consist of the parts; but time does not appear to consist of the Now.” That is to say, because the Now is indivisible, it has no quantitative determination which could be measured. “Besides it is not easy to decide whether the Now remains, or always becomes another and another. Again, time is not a movement and change, for movement and change occur in that which is moved and changed, or accompany time in its course; but time is everywhere alike. Besides change is swifter and slower, but time is not. But it is not without change and motion” (which is just the moment of pure negativity in the same) “for when we perceive no change, it appears as if no time had elapsed, as in sleep. Time is hence in motion but not motion itself.” Aristotle defines it thus: “We say that time is, when we perceive the before and after in movement; but these are so distinguished that we apprehend them to be another and another, and conceive that there is something between, as a middle. Now when we understand that the extremes of the conclusion are different from the middle, and the soul says that the Now has two instants, the one prior and the other posterior, then we say that this is time. What is determined through the Now, we call time, and this is the fundamental principle. But when we are sensible of the Now as one, and not as a prior and posterior in motion, nor as the identity of an earlier or later, then there does not appear to us to have been any time, because neither was there any motion.” Tedium is thus ever the same. “Time is hence the number of motion, according to priority and posteriority; it is not motion itself, unless so far as motion has number. We judge of the more or less through number, but of a greater or less motion by time. But we call number that which can be numbered, as well as that with which we number; but time is not the number with which we number, but that which is numbered, and, like motion, always is changing. The Now is, which is the unity of number, and it measures time. The whole of time is the same, for the Now which was is the same” (universality as the Now destroyed) “but in Being it is another. Time thus is through the Now both continuous (συνεχής) and discrete (διῇρηται). It thereby resembles the point, for that also is the continuity of the line and its division, its principle and limit; but the Now is not an enduring point. As continuity of time the Now connects the past and the future, but it likewise divides time in capacity,” the Now is only divisibility and the moments only ideal. “And in as far as it is such, it is always another; but, in as far as it unites, it is ever one and the same. Similarly, in as far as we divide the line, other and yet other points always arise for thought; but in as far as it is one, there is only one point. Thus the Now is both the division of time in capacity, and the limit and union of both” i.e. of the prior and posterior. The universally dividing point is only one as actual; but this actual is not permanently one, but ever and again another, so that individuality has universality, as its negativity, within it. “But division and union are the same, and similarly related; however their Notion (τὸ εἶναι)95 is different.” In one and the same respect the absolute opposite of what was posited is immediately set forth as existent; in space, on the other hand, the moments are not set forth as existent, but in it first appears this being and its motion and contradiction. Thus the identity of the understanding is not a principle with Aristotle, for identity and non-identity to him are one and the same. Because the Now is only now, past and future are different from it, but they are likewise necessarily connected in the Now, which is not without before and after; thus they are in one, and the Now, as their limit, is both their union and their division.
Aristotle (Phys. V. 1) then goes on to movement as realized in a thing, to change (μεταβολή) or to the physical processes — while before we had pure movement. “In movement there is first something which moves, also something which is moved, and the time in which it is moved; besides these, that from which, and that into which it is moved.” (Cf. supra, p. 141.) “For all motion is from something and into something; but there is a difference between that which is first moved and that into which and from which it is moved, as, for instance, wood, warmth and cold. The motion is in the wood and not in the form; for neither form nor place, nor quantity moves or is moved, but” (in the order in which they follow) “there is that which is moved and that which moves, and that into which it is moved. That to which movement is made, more than that out of which movement is made, is named change. Hence to pass into non-being is also change, although what passes away is changed from Being: and generation is a mutation into Being, even though it is from non-being.” The remark is to be interpreted as meaning that for the first time in real becoming motion, i.e. in change, the relation whereto enters, while the relation wherefrom is that in which change is still the mere ideal motion. Besides this first form of difference between motion and change, Aristotle further gives another, since he divides change into three: “into change from a subject (ἐξ ὑποκειμένον) into a subject; or from a subject into a non-subject; or from a non-subject into a subject.” The fourth, “from a non-subject into a non-subject,” which may also appear in the general division, “is no mutation, for it contains no opposition.” It may certainly be merely thought or ideal, but Aristotle indicates the actual phenomenon. “The mutation from a non-subject into a subject is generation (γένεσις); that from a subject into a non-subject is corruption (φθορά); that from a subject into a subject, is motion as such;” because that which is transformed remains the same, there is no becoming-another of the actual, but a merely formal becoming-another. This opposition of the materialized motion as mutation, and of merely formal motion, is noteworthy.
In the sixth book Aristotle comes to the consideration of the dialectic of this motion and change as advanced by Zeno, that is, to the endless divisibility which we have already (Vol. I. pp. 266-277) considered. Aristotle solves it through the universal. He says that they are the contradiction of the universal turned against itself; the unity in which its moments dissolve is not a nothing, so that motion and change are nothing, but a negative universal, where the negative is itself again posited as positive, and that is the essence of divisibility.
Of the further details into which Aristotle enters, I shall only give the following. As against atoms and their motion, he remarks (Phys. VI. 10) that the indivisible has no motion and mutation, which is the direct opposite of the proposition of Zeno that only simple indivisible Being and no motion exists. For as Zeno argues from the indivisibility of atoms against motion, Aristotle argues from motion against atoms. “Everything which moves or changes is in the first division of this time partly here and partly there. The atom, as simple indivisible Being, can, however, not have any part of it in both points in space, because it then would be divisible. The indivisible could thus only move if time consisted of the Now; this is, however, impossible, as we proved before.” Because atoms thus neither have change in themselves, nor can this come to them from without through impulse, &c., they are really without truth.
The determination of the pure ideality of change is important. Aristotle says of this (Phys. VII. 3), “That which is changed is alone the sensuous and perceptible (αἰσθητόν); and forms and figures, as also capacities, are not changed, they arise and disappear in a thing only, without being themselves changed.” In other words: the content of change is unchangeable; change as such belongs to mere form. “Virtues or vices belong, for example, to habits acquired. Virtue is the perfection (τελείωσις) in which something has reached the end of its nature. Vice, however, is the corruption and non-attainment of this. They are not changes, for they only arise and pass away while another alters.” Or the difference becomes a difference of Being and non-being, i.e. a merely sensuous difference.
From these conceptions Aristotle now comes nearer to the first real or physical motion (Phys. VIII. 6, 8, 9; De C\nlo, I. 4): The first principle of motion is itself unmoved. An endless motion in a straight line is an empty creation of thought; for motion is necessarily an effort after something. The absolute motion is the circular, because it is without opposition. For because movement has to be considered in regard to the starting-place and the end in view, in the straight movement the directions from A to B and from B to A are opposed, but in motion in a circle they are the same. The idea that heavenly bodies would of themselves have moved in a straight line, but that they accidentally came into the sphere of solar attraction, is an empty reflection which is far from occurring to Aristotle.
Aristotle then shows (De C\nlo, II. I; I. 3) that “the whole heavens neither arose nor can pass away, for they are one and eternal: they neither have beginning nor end in eternal time, for they contain infinite time shut up within them.” All the other ideas are sensuous which try to speak of essential reality, and in them there always is that present which they think they have excluded. For when they assert a vacuum before the beginning of generation, this is the quiescent, self-identical, i.e. the eternal matter, which is thus already established before origination; they will not allow that before origination nothing exists. But in fact a thing does not exist before its origination, i.e. in movement there is something to move, and where reality is, there is motion. They do not, however, bring together that vacuum, the self-identical, the un-originated matter and this nothing. “That which has this absolute circular movement is neither heavy nor light; for the heavy is what moves downwards, and the light what moves upwards.” In modern physics the heavenly bodies, on the other hand, are endowed with weight, and seek to rush into the sun, but cannot do so on account of another force. “It is indestructible and ungenerated, without decrease or increase, without any change. It is different from earth, fire, air and water; it is what the ancients called ether, as the highest place, from its continuous course (ἀεὶ θεῖν) in infinite time.” This ether thus appears to be eternal matter which does not, however, take such a definite form, but which remains as it is, just as the heavens do in our conception, although here the juxtaposition begins ever to strike us more forcibly.
Aristotle (De C\nlo, III. 6) shows further that the elements do not proceed from one body, but from one another; for in generation they neither proceed from what is incorporeal, nor from what is corporeal. In the first case they would have sprung from the vacuum, for the vacuum is the immediate incorporeal; but in that case the vacuum must have existed independently as that in which determinate corporeality arose. But neither do the elements arise from a corporeal, for else this body itself would be a corporeal element before the elements. Thus it only remains that the elements must spring from one another. Regarding this we must remark that Aristotle understands by origination, actual origination — not the transition from the universal to the individual, but the origination of one determinate corporeal, not from its principle, but from the opposite as such. Aristotle does not consider the universal as it contains the negative within it; else the universal would be the absolute matter whose universality, as negativity, is set forth, or is real.
From this point Aristotle comes (De C\nlo, IV. I-5) to a kind of deduction of the elements, which is noteworthy. He shows that there must be four of them, in the following way — because he starts from the fundamental conceptions of weight and of lightness, or what we should call attraction and centrifugal force. The corporeal, he says, in its motion is neither light nor heavy, and, indeed, it is not only relative but also absolute. The relatively light and heavy is what, while equal in volume, descends more slowly or quickly. Absolute lightness goes up to the extremity of the heavens, absolute weight down into the middle. These extremes are fire and earth. Between these there are mediums, other than they, which relate to one another like them; and these are air and water, the one of which has weight, and the other lightness, but only relatively. For water is suspended under everything except earth, and air over everything except fire. “Hence,” Aristotle concludes, “there now are these four matters, but they are four in such a way that they have one in common; more particularly, because they arise out of one another, but exist as different.” Yet it is not the ether that Aristotle designates as this common matter. We must in this regard remark that however little these first determinations may be exhaustive, Aristotle is still far further on than the moderns, since he had not the conception of elements which prevails at the present time, according to which the element is made to subsist as simple. But any such simple determination of Being is an abstraction and has no reality, because such existence would be capable of no motion and change; the element must itself have reality, and it thus is, as the union of opposites, resolvable. Aristotle hence makes the elements, as we have already seen with those who went before (Vol. I., pp. 181, 182; 290-293; 336), arise out of one another and pass into one another; and this is entirely opposed to our Physics, which understands by elements an indelible, self-identical simplicity only. Hence men are wonderfully discerning in reproaching us for calling water, air, &c., elements! Nor yet in the expression “neutrality” have the modern physicists been able to grasp a universality conceived of as a unity, such as Aristotle ascribes to the elements; in fact, however, the acid which unites with a base is no longer, as is asserted, present within it as such. But however removed Aristotle may be from understanding simplicity as an abstraction, just as little does he recognize here the arid conception of consisting of parts. Quite the contrary. He strives enough against this, as, for instance, in relation to Anaxagoras (De C\nl. III. 4).
I shall further mention the moments of the real process in relation to motion, in which Aristotle finally passes on (De gen. et corr. II. 2-4) to the “principles of perceptible body”; we here see the elements in process, as formerly in their restful determinateness. Aristotle excludes the relations which concern sight, smell, &c., and brings forward the others as being those which are of sensible weight or lightness. He gives as these fundamental principles — warmth and cold, dryness and moisture; they are the sensible differences for others, while weight and lightness are different for themselves. Now in order to prepare for the transition of the elements into sensible relations, Aristotle says: “Because there are those four principles, and four things have properly six relations to one another, but the opposite cannot here be connected (the moist cannot be connected with the dry, or the warm with the cold), there are four connections of these principles, warm and dry, warm and moist, cold and moist, cold and dry. And these connections follow those first elements, so that thus fire is warm and dry, air warm and moist (vapour), water cold and moist, earth cold and dry.” From this Aristotle now makes the reciprocal transformation of the elements into one another comprehensible thus: Origination and decay proceed from the opposite and into the opposite. All elements have a mutual opposite; each is as non-being to the Being of the other, and one is thus distinguished from the other as actuality and capacity. Now amongst these some have an equal part in common; fire and water, for example, have warmth; thus if in fire dryness were overcome by moisture, out of fire air would arise. On the contrary, as regards those which have nothing in common with one another, like earth, which is cold and dry, and air, which is warm and moist, the transition goes more slowly forward. The transition of all elements into one another, the whole process of nature, is thus to Aristotle the constant rotation of their changes. This is unsatisfactory, because neither are the individual elements comprehended nor is the remainder rounded into a whole.
As a matter of fact, Aristotle now goes on, in meteorology, to the consideration of the universal process of nature. But here we have reached his limits. Here, in the natural process, the simple determination as such — this system of progressive determination — ceases to hold good, and its whole interest is lost. For it is in the real process that these determinate conceptions always lose their signification again and become their opposite, and in it also this contingent succession is forced together and united. In determining time and motion, we certainly saw Aristotle himself uniting opposite determinations; but movement, in its true determination, must take space and time back into itself; it must represent itself as being the unity of these its real moments and in them; that is, as the realization of this ideal. But still more must the following moments, moisture, warmth, &c., themselves come back under the conception of process. But the sensuous manifestation here begins to obtain the upper hand; for the empirical has the nature of the isolated form, which is to fall out of relation. The empirical manifestation thus outstrips thought, which merely continues everywhere to stamp it as its own, but which has no longer power to permeate the manifestation, since it withdraws out of the sphere of the ideal, while it is still in the region of time, space and movement.
As regards the other side from the Philosophy of Nature, the Philosophy of Mind, we find that Aristotle has constituted in it also a separation into special sciences, in a series of works which I shall name. In the first place, his three books “On the Soul” deal partly with the abstract universal nature of the soul, though mainly in an antagonistic spirit; and even more, and in a fashion both profound and speculative, they deal with the soul’s essential nature — not with its Being, but with the determinate manner and potentiality of its energy; for this is to Aristotle the Being and essence of the soul. Thus there are several different treatises, viz.: On Sense-perception and the Sensible, On Memory and Recollection, On Sleeping and Waking, On Dreams, On Divination (μαντική) through Dreams, besides a treatise on Physiognomy; there is no empirical point of view or phenomenon, either in the natural or the spiritual world, that Aristotle has considered beneath his notice. With respect to the practical side, he in like manner devotes his attention to man in his capacity of householder, in a work on economics (οἰκονομικά); then he takes into his consideration the individual human being, in a moral treatise (ἠθικά), which is partly an inquiry into the highest good or the absolute end, and partly a dissertation on special virtues. The manner of treatment is almost invariably speculative, and sound understanding is displayed throughout. Finally, in his Politics, he gives a representation of the true constitution of a state and the different kinds of constitution, which he deals with from the empirical point of view; and in his Politics an account is given of the most important states, of which we are, however, told very little.
a. Psychology.
In Aristotle’s teaching on this subject we must not expect to find so-called metaphysics of the soul. For metaphysical handling such as this really pre-supposes the soul as a thing, and asks, for example, what sort of a thing it is, whether it is simple, and so on. Aristotle did not busy his concrete, speculative mind with abstract questions such as these, but, as already remarked, he deals rather with the manner of the soul’s activity; and though this appears in a general way as a series of progressive determinations which are not necessarily blended into a whole, each determination is yet apprehended in its own sphere with as much correctness as depth.
Aristotle (De Anima, I. 1) makes in the first place the general remark that it appears as if the soul must, on the one hand, be regarded in its freedom as independent and as separable from the body, since in thinking it is independent; and, on the other hand, since in the emotions it appears to be united with the body and not separate, it must also be looked on as being inseparable from it; for the emotions show themselves as materialized Notions (λόγοι ἔνυλοι), as material modes of what is spiritual. With this a twofold method of considering the soul, also known to Aristotle, comes into play, namely the purely rational or logical view, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the physical or physiological; these we still see practised side by side. According to the one view, anger, for instance, is looked on as an eager desire for retaliation or the like; according to the other view it is the surging upward of the heart-blood and the warm element in man. The former is the rational, the latter the material view of anger; just as one man may define a house as a shelter against wind, rain, and other destructive agencies, while another defines it as consisting of wood and stone; that is to say, the former gives the determination and the form, or the purpose of the thing, while the latter specifies the material it is made of, and its necessary conditions.
Aristotle characterizes the nature of the soul more closely (De Anima, II. 1) by referring to the three moments of existence: “First there is matter (ὕλη), which is in itself no individual thing; secondly, the form and the universal (μορφὴ καὶ εἶδος), which give a thing individuality; thirdly, the result produced by both, in which matter is potentiality and form is energy (ἐντελέχεια);” matter thus does not exist as matter, but only implicitly. “The soul is substance, as being the form of the physical organic body which is possessed potentially of life; but its substance is energy (ἐντελέχεια), the energy of a body such as has been described” (endowed with life). “This energy appears in twofold form: either as knowledge (ἐπιστήμη) or as active observation (τὸ θεωρεῖν). But it is evident that here it is to be regarded as the former of these. For the soul is present with us both when we sleep and when we wake; waking corresponds with active observation, and sleep with possession and passivity. But knowledge is in origination prior to all else. The soul is thus the first energy of a physical but organic body.” It is in respect of this that Aristotle gives to the soul the definition of being the entelechy (supra, pp. 143, 144).
In the same chapter Aristotle comes to the question of the mutual relation of body and soul. “For this reason” (because soul is form) “we must no more ask if soul and body are one than we ask if wax and its form are one, or, in general, if matter and its forms are one. For though unity and Being are used in various senses. Being is essentially energy.” Were we, namely, to pronounce body and soul one in the same way that a house, which consists of a number of parts, or as a thing and its properties, or the subject and predicate, and so on, are called one, where both are regarded as things, materialism results. An identity such as this is an altogether abstract, and therefore a superficial and empty determination, and a term which it is a mistake to employ, for form and material do not rank equally as regards Being; identity truly worthy of the name is to be apprehended as nothing else than energy such as has been described. The only question that now arises is whether activity and the organ it employs are one; and our idea is to answer in the affirmative. The more definite explanation of this relation is to be found in the following; “The soul is substance, but only according to the Notion (κατὰ τὸν λόγον); but that is the substantial form (τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι)96 for such and such a body. For suppose that an instrument, such as an axe, were a natural body, this form, this axehood, would be its substance, and this its form would be its soul, for if this were to be taken away from it, it would no longer be an axe, the name only would remain. But soul is not the substantial form and Notion of such a body as an axe, but of a body which has within itself the principle of movement and of rest.” The axe has not the principle of its form in itself, it does not make itself an axe, nor does its form, its Notion, in itself constitute its substance, as its activity is not through itself. “If, for instance, the eye were in itself a living thing, vision would be its soul, for vision is the reality which expresses the Notion of the eye. But the eye, as such, is only the material instrument of vision, for if vision were lost, the eye would be an eye only in name, like an eye of stone or a painted eye.” Thus to the question, What is the substance of the eye? Aristotle answers: Are the nerves, humours, tissues, its substance? On the contrary, sight itself is its substance, these material substances are only an empty name. “As this is the case in the part, so it also holds good of the body as a whole. The potentiality of life is not in any such thing as has lost its soul, but in that which still possesses it. The seed or the fruit is such and such a body potentially. Like hewing and seeing,” in the axe and the eye, “waking” in general “is activity; but the corporeal is only potentiality. But as the” living “eye is both vision and the eyeball” (the two being connected as actuality and potentiality), “so also are soul and body the living animal, the two are not to be separated. But it is not yet clear whether the soul is the activity of the body in the same way as the steersman is of the ship.” That the active form is the true substance, while matter is so only potentially, is a true speculative Notion.
As settling the question asked in the above-mentioned metaphor, we may quote what Aristotle says later (De Anima, II. 4): “As the principle of motion and as end (οὗ ἕνεκα), and as substance of living bodies, the soul is the cause. For substance is to all objects the cause of their existence, but life is the existence of the living, and its cause and principle is the soul; and further, its energy is the existing Notion of what has potential existence. The soul is cause also as end,” that is, as self-determining universality, “for nature, like thought, acts for the sake of an object, which object is its end, but in living beings this is soul. All the parts of the body are thus the organs of the soul, and hence exist for its sake.” In like manner Aristotle shows that the soul is the cause of motion.
Aristotle (De Anima, II. 2, 3) further states that the soul is to be determined in three ways, namely as nutrient or vegetable, as sensitive, and as intelligent, corresponding with plant life, animal life and human life. The nutrient soul, when it is alone, belongs to plants; when it is at the same time capable of sense-perception, it is the animal soul; and when at once nutrient, sensitive and intelligent, it is the mind of man. Man has thus three natures united in himself; a thought which is also expressed in modern Natural Philosophy by saying that a man is also both an animal and a plant, and which is directed against the division and separation of the differences in these forms. That difference has also been revived in recent times in the observation of the organic, and it is highly important to keep these sides separate. The only question (and it is Aristotle who raises it) is how far these, as parts, are separable. As to what concerns more nearly the relation of the three souls, as they may be termed (though they are incorrectly thus distinguished), Aristotle says of them, with perfect truth, that we need look for no one soul in which all these are found, and which in a definite and simple form is conformable with any one of them. This is a profound observation, by means of which truly speculative thought marks itself out from the thought which is merely logical and formal. Similarly among figures only the triangle and the other definite figures, like the square, the parallelogram, &c., are truly anything; for what is common to them, the universal figure, is an empty thing of thought, a mere abstraction. On the other hand, the triangle is the first, the truly universal figure, which appears also in the square, &c., as the figure which can be led back to the simplest determination. Therefore, on the one hand, the triangle stands alongside of the square, pentagon, &c., as a particular figure, but — and this is Aristotle’s main contention — it is the truly universal figure. In the same way the soul must not be sought for as an abstraction, for in the animate being the nutritive and the sensitive soul are included in the intelligent, but only as its object or its potentiality; similarly, the nutritive soul, which constitutes the nature of plants, is also present in the sensitive soul, but likewise only as being implicit in it, or as the universal. Or the lower soul inheres only in the higher, as a predicate in a subject: and this mere ideal is not to be ranked very high, as is indeed the case in formal thought; that which is for itself is, on the contrary, the never-ceasing return into itself, to which actuality belongs. We can determine these expressions even more particularly. For if we speak of soul and body, we term the corporeal the objective and the soul the subjective; and the misfortune of nature is just this, that it is objective, that is, it is the Notion only implicitly, and not explicitly. In the natural there is, no doubt, a certain activity, but again this whole sphere is only the objective, the implicit element in one higher. As, moreover, the implicit in its sphere appears as a reality for the development of the Idea, it has two sides; the universal is already itself an actual, as, for example, the vegetative soul. Aristotle’s meaning is therefore this: an empty universal is that which does not itself exist, or is not itself species. All that is universal is in fact real, as particular, individual, existing for another. But that universal is real, in that by itself, without further change, it constitutes its first species, and when further developed it belongs, not to this, but to a higher stage. These are the general determinations which are of the greatest importance, and which, if developed, would lead to all true views of the organic, &c., since they give a correct general representation of the principle of realization.
α. The nutritive or vegetative soul is therefore, according to Aristotle (De Anima, II. 4), to be conceived as the first, which is energy, the general Notion of the soul itself, just as it is, without further determination; or, as we should say, plant life is the Notion of the organic. What Aristotle goes on to say of nourishment, for instance, whether the like is nourished by the like, or by the opposite, is of little importance. It may, however, be mentioned that Aristotle (De Anima, II. 12) says of the vegetative soul that it is related only to matter, and that only after a material manner, as when we eat and drink, but that it cannot take up into itself the forms of sensible things: we, too, ourselves in practical matters are related as particular individuals to a material existence here and now, in which our own material existence comes into activity.
β. There is more to interest us in Aristotle’s determination of sense-perception (De Anima, II. 5), as to which I shall make some further quotations. Sense-perception is in general a potentiality (we should say a receptivity), but this potentiality is also activity; it is therefore not to be conceived as mere passivity. Passivity and activity pertain to one and the same, or passivity has two senses. “On the one hand a passivity is the destruction of one state by its opposite; on the other hand, it is a preservation of what is merely potential by means of what is actual.” The one case occurs in the acquisition of knowledge, which is a passivity in so far as a change takes place from one condition (ἕξις) into an opposite condition; but there is another passivity, in which something only potentially posited is maintained, therefore knowledge is knowing in an active sense (supra, p. 182). From this Aristotle concludes: “There is one change which is privative; and another which acts on the nature and the permanent energy (ἕξις). The first change in the subject of perception (αἰσθητικοῦ) is caused by that which produces the perception; but, once produced, the perception is possessed as knowledge (επιστήμη).” Because that which produces the change is different from the result, perception is passivity; but it is just as much spontaneity, “and sense-perception, like knowledge (θεωρεῖν), has to do with this aspect of activity. But the difference is, that what causes the perception is external. The cause of this is that perceptive activity is directed on the particular, while knowledge has as its object the universal; but the universal is, to a certain extent, in the soul itself as its substance. Everyone can therefore think when he will,” and for this very reason thought is free, “but perception does not depend on him, having the necessary condition that the object perceived be present.” The influence from without, as a passivity, comes therefore first; but there follows the activity of making this passive content one’s own. This is doubtless the correct point from which to view perception, whatever be the manner of further development preferred, subjective idealism, or any other way. For it is a matter of perfect indifference whether we find ourselves subjectively or objectively determined; in both there is contained the moment of passivity, by which the perception comes to pass. The monad of Leibnitz appears, it is true, to be an idea opposed to this, since every monad, every point of my finger, as atom or individual, is an entire universe, the whole of which develops in itself without reference to other monads. Here seems to be asserted the highest idealistic freedom, but it is of no avail to imagine that all in me develops out of me; for we must always recollect that what is thus developed in me is passive, and not free. With this moment of passivity Aristotle does not fall short of idealism; sensation is always in one aspect passive. That is, however, a false idealism which thinks that the passivity and spontaneity of the mind depend on whether the determination given is from within or from without, as if there were freedom in sense-perception, whereas it is itself a sphere of limitation. It is one thing when the matter — whether it be sensation, light, colour, seeing or hearing — is apprehended from the Idea, for it is then shown that it comes to pass from the self-determination of the Idea. But it is different when, in so far as I exist as an individual subject, the Idea exists in me as this particular individual; there we have the standpoint of finitude established, and therefore of passivity. Thus there need be no standing on ceremony with sense-perception, nor can a system of idealism be based on the theory that nothing comes to us from without: as Fichte’s theory about himself was, that when he put on his coat, he constituted it in part by drawing it on, or even by looking at it. The individual element in sensation is the sphere of the individuality of consciousness; it is present therein in the form of one thing as much as of another, and its individuality consists in this fact, that other things exist for it. Aristotle continues: “Speaking generally, the difference is that potentiality is twofold; as we say a boy may become a general, and a grown man may also become so,” for the latter has the effective power. “This is the nature of the faculty of sense-perception (αἰσθητικόν); it is in potentiality what the object of sense (αἰσθητόν) is in actuality. Sense-perception is therefore passive, in so far as it does not resemble its object, but after the impression has been made it becomes similar to its object, and is identified with it.” The reaction of sense-perception consists therefore in this active receiving into itself of that which is perceived; but this is simply activity in passivity, the spontaneity which abrogates the receptivity in sense-perception. Sense-perception, as made like to itself, has, while appearing to be brought to pass by means of an influence working on it, brought to pass the identity of itself and its object. If then subjective idealism declares that there are no external things, that they are but a determination of our self, this must be admitted in respect to pure sense-perception, since sense-perception is a subjective existence or state in me, which yet, however, is not for that reason freedom.
In speaking of sense-perception, Aristotle (De Anima, II. 12) makes use of his celebrated simile, which has so often occasioned misapprehension, because it has been understood quite incorrectly. His words are: “Sense-perception is the receiving of sensible forms without matter, as wax receives only the impress of the golden signet ring, not the gold itself, but merely its form.” For the form is the object as universal; and theoretically we are in the position, not of the individual and sensuous, but of the universal. The case is different with us in our practical relations, where the influence working upon us pre-supposes in return the contact of the material, for which reason, as Aristotle asserts, plants do not perceive (supra, p. 186). On the other hand, in receiving form, the material is lost sight of; for the receiving of form indicates no positive relation to the matter, which is no longer something offering resistance. If, therefore, sense-perceptions are termed in general sensuous impressions, we, in matter-of-fact fashion, do not get beyond this crude way of putting it; and in making the transition to soul, we take refuge behind popular conceptions, which are partly ill-defined Notions, and partly not Notions at all. Thus it is said that all sense-perceptions are impressed on the soul by external things, just as the matter of the signet ring works on the matter of the wax; and then we hear it alleged that this is Aristotle’s philosophy. It is the same with most other philosophers; if they give any sort of illustration that appeals to the senses, everyone can understand it, and everyone takes the content of the comparison in its full extent: as if all that is contained in this sensuous relationship should also hold good of the spiritual. No great importance is therefore to be attached to this conception, as it is only an illustration, professing to show by a side comparison that the passive element in sense-perception is in its passivity for pure form only; this form alone is taken up into the percipient subject, and finds a place in the soul. It does not, however, remain in the same relation to it as that in which the form stands to the wax, nor is it as in chemistry where one element is permeated by another as regards its matter. The chief circumstance, therefore, and that which constitutes the difference between this illustration and the condition of the soul is altogether overlooked. That is to say, the wax does not, indeed, take in the form, for the impression remains on it as external figure and contour, without being a form of its real Being; if it were to become such, it would cease to be wax; therefore, because in the illustration there is lacking this reception of form into the Being, no thought is given to it. The soul, on the contrary, assimilates this form into its own substance, and for the very reason, that the soul is in itself, to a certain extent, the sum of all that is perceived by the senses (infra, p. 198): as it was said above (p. 183), if the axe had its form in the determination of substance, this form would be the soul of the axe. The illustration of the wax has reference to nothing but the fact that only the form comes to the soul; and has nothing to do with the form being external to the wax and remaining so, or with the soul having, like wax, no independent form. The soul is by no means said to be passive wax and to receive its determinations from without; but Aristotle, as we shall soon see (p. 194), really says that the spirit repels matter from itself, and maintains itself against it, having relation only to form. In sense-perception the soul is certainly passive, but the manner in which it receives is not like that of the wax, being just as truly activity of the soul; for after the perceptive faculty has received the impression, it abrogates the passivity, and remains thenceforth free from it (supra, p. 187). The soul therefore changes the form of the external body into its own, and is identical with an abstract quality such as this, for the sole reason that it itself is this universal form.
This description of sense-perception Aristotle explains more fully in what follows (De Anima, III. 2), and expatiates upon this unity and its contrasts, in the course of which explanation there appear many clear and far-reaching glimpses into the Nature of consciousness. “The bodily organ of each sense-perception receives the object perceived without matter. Hence, when the object of sense is removed, the perceptions and the images which represent them remain in the organs. In the act of sense-perception the object perceived is no doubt identical with the subject that perceives, but they do not exist97 as the same; for instance, sound and the hearing are the same when in active exercise, but that which has hearing does not always hear, and that which has sound is not always sounding. When that which is the potentiality of hearing comes into exercise, and likewise that which is the potentiality of sound, hearing and sound, being in full activity, coincide,” they do not remain separate energies. “If then movement and action, as well as passivity, have a place in the object on which activity is exercised (ἐν τῷ ποιουμένῳ), it follows necessarily that the energy of hearing and sound is contained in that which potentially is hearing, for the energy of the active and moving is in the passive. As therefore activity and passivity are manifested in the subject which receives the effect, and not in the object which produces it (ποιοῦντι), the energy both of the object and of the faculty of sense-perception is in the faculty itself. For hearing and sounding there are two words, for seeing only one; seeing is the activity of the person who sees, but the activity of the colour is without name. Since the energy of that which is perceived and that which perceives is one energy, and the aspect they present is alone different, the so-called sounding and hearing must cease simultaneously.” There is a body which sounds and a subject which hears; they are twofold in the aspect they present, but hearing, taken by itself, is intrinsically an activity of both. In like manner, when I have by sense the perception of redness and hardness, my perception is itself red and hard: that is, I find myself determined in that way, even though reflection says that outside of me there is a red, hard thing, and that it and my finger are two; but they are also one, my eye is red and the thing. It is upon this difference and this identity that everything depends; and Aristotle demonstrates this in the most emphatic way, and holds firmly to his point. The later distinction of subjective and objective is the reflection of consciousness; sense-perception is simply the abrogation of this separation, it is that form of identity which abstracts from subjectivity and objectivity. What is simple, the soul proper or the I, is in sense-perception unity in difference. “Further, every sense-perception is in its organ, and distinguishes everything that is perceived, like black and white, and so on. It is thus not possible for separate perceptions, white and sweet, to be distinguished as separate indifferent moments, for both must be present (δῆλα) to one subject. This one subject must therefore determine one thing to be different from another. This, as distinguished, can also not be in a different place or time, for it must be undivided and in undivided time. But it is impossible that one and the same thing should be affected by contrary movements, in so far as it is undivided and in undivided time. If sweetness affects sense-perception in one way, and bitterness in the contrary way, and whiteness in yet another way, the power of judging is numerically not discrete nor divisible, but according to the Notion (τῷ εἶναι)98 it is distinguished. That which is the same and indivisible thus possesses in potentiality opposite qualities; but with its true existence (τῷ εἶναι) that cannot be the case, for in its activity it is separable, and cannot at the same time be both white and black. Sense-perception and thinking are like that which some term a point, which, in so far as it is one, is inseparable, and in so far as it is two, is separable. So far as it is undivided, the judging faculty is one and acts in a single point of time, but so far as it is divided” (not one) “it employs the same sign twice simultaneously. So far as it employs two, it by limitation distinguishes two, and separates them as having separate origin; but so far as it is one, it judges by one act in one single point of time” (supra, p. 172). For as the point in time, which resembles the point in space, contains future and past, and thus is something different and at the same time one and the same, since it is in one and the same respect separation and union; sense-perception is also one and at the same time separation, separated and not separated, seeing that the faculty of perception has before it in one unity the distinct sense-perception, which by this means receives for the first time a determinate content. Another example is that of number; one and two are different, and, at the same time, even in two one is used and posited as one.
γ. From sense-perception Aristotle passes on to thought, and becomes here really speculative. “Thinking,” he says (De Anima, III. 4) “is not passive (ἀπαθές), but receptive of the form, and is in potentiality similar to it. Therefore the understanding (νοῦς), because it thinks all things, is free from all admixture (ἀμιγής), in order that it may overcome (κρατῇ), as Anaxagoras says, that is, in order that it may acquire knowledge; for, coming forth in its energy (παρεμφαινόμενον), it holds back what is alien to it, and fortifies itself against it (ἀντιφράττει). Therefore the nature of the understanding is none other than this potentiality.” But potentiality itself is here not matter; that is to say, the understanding has no matter, for potentiality pertains to its very substance. For thinking is really the not being implicit; and on account of its purity its reality is not the being-for-another, but its potentiality is itself a being-for-self. A thing is real because it is this determinate thing; the opposite determination, its potentiality to be, for instance, smoke, ashes, and so on, is not posited in it. In the corporeal, therefore, matter, as potentiality, and external form, as reality, are opposed to one another; but the soul is, in contrast with this, universal potentiality itself, without matter, because its essence is energy. “Understanding, then, in the soul, as that which possesses consciousness, is nothing in reality before it thinks;” it is absolute activity, but exists only when it is active. “It is therefore not incorporated with the body. For what should it be like, warm or cold? Or should it be an organ? But it is none of these. That it is, however, different from the faculty of sense-perception is clear. For sense-perception cannot perceive after a violent perception; for instance, it cannot smell nor see after experiencing strong smells or colours. But the understanding, after it has thought something which can only be thought with difficulty, will not have more but less difficulty in thinking of something that is easier. For there is no sense-perception independent of the body, but the understanding is separable from it. When it has then become something individual, like him who is really possessed of a faculty of knowing (and this happens when he can energize through himself), it then is also in a certain degree according to potentiality, but yet not so in the same manner as it was before learning and finding.” (Cf. supra, pp. 182, 187.)
Thinking makes itself into passive understanding, that is, into what is for it the objective; and thus it here becomes plain to what extent the dictum nihil est in intellectu quod non fuerit in sensu expresses Aristotle’s meaning. Aristotle, raising difficulties, goes on to ask, “If reason is simple and unaffected by impressions, and has nothing in common with other objects, how can it think, since thinking is certainly a state of receptivity?” That is to say, in thinking there is a reference to an object distinct from itself. “For it is when two objects have something in common that the one appears to produce and the other to receive an impression. There is a further difficulty, whether understanding can itself be the object of thought. In that case understanding would either be inherent in other things — unless it is the object of thought in a different sense from that in which other things are so, but there is only one sense in which things can be objects of thought — or, on the other hand, it would have something compounded with it, making it an object of thought as other things are. Now it has been already said that passivity is so determined that understanding is in potentiality all that thought is exercised on: but at the same time it is in actuality nothing before the exercise of thought.” That is to say, thought is implicitly the content of the object of what is thought, and in coming into existence it only coincides with itself; but the self-conscious understanding is not merely implicit, but essentially explicit, since it is within itself all things. That is an idealistic way of expressing it; and yet they say that Aristotle is an empiricist.
The passivity of understanding has therefore here only the sense of potentiality before actuality, and that is the great principle of Aristotle; in regard to this he brings forward at the end of the same chapter another much-decried illustration, which has been just as much misunderstood as the preceding. “Reason is like a book upon whose pages nothing is actually written;” that is, however, paper, but not a book. All Aristotle’s thoughts are overlooked, and only external illustrations such as this are comprehended. A book on which nothing is written everyone can understand. And the technical term is the well-known tabula rasa, which is to be found wherever Aristotle is spoken of: Aristotle is said to have alleged that the mind is a blank page, on which characters are first traced by external objects, so that thinking thus comes to it from without.99 But that is the very opposite of what Aristotle says. Instead of the Notion being adhered to, casual comparisons such as these have been caught up here and there by the imagination, as if they expressed the matter itself. But Aristotle did not in the least intend that the analogy should be pushed to its furthest extent: the understanding is of a surety not a thing, and has not the passivity of a writing-tablet; it is itself the energy, which is not, as it would be in the case of a tablet, external to it. The analogy is therefore confined to this, that the soul has a content only in so far as actual thought is exercised. The soul is this book unwritten on, and the meaning consequently is that the soul is all things implicitly, but it is not in itself this totality; it is like a book that contains all things potentially, but in reality contains nothing before it is written on. Before real activity nothing truly exists; or “Understanding itself can enter thought, like the objects of thought in general. For in that which is without matter” (in mind), “the thinker” (the subjective) “and the thought” (the objective) “are the same; theoretical knowledge and that which comes to be known are the same. In that which is material, thinking is only in potentiality, so that understanding itself does not belong to it; for understanding is a potentiality without matter, but the object of thought exists in it,” while Nature contains the Idea only implicitly. It is plain from this that the above illustration has been taken in quite a false sense, utterly contrary to Aristotle’s meaning.
Until now we have spoken of the passive understanding, which is the nature of the soul, but also in equal degree its faculty of sense-perception and imagination. Aristotle now proceeds to distinguish active understanding from this, as follows (De Anima, III. 5): “In nature as a whole there is present in every species of things, on the one hand, matter, which in potentiality is the whole of this species, and, on the other hand, cause and energy, operative in all things, in the same way that art is related to matter. It therefore necessarily follows that in the soul also these different elements should be present. The faculty of understanding is thus, in one view of it, the capacity of becoming all things; but in another view it is the capacity of creating all things, as is done by an efficient power (ἕξις), light, for instance, which first causes the colours which exist in potentiality to exist in reality. This understanding is absolute (χωριστός), uncompounded, and not influenced from without, as it is essentially activity. For the active is always more in honour than the passive, and the principle more in honour than the matter that it forms. Knowledge, when in active exercise, is identical with the thing (πρᾶγμα) known; but what is in potentiality” (that is, external reason, imagination, sense-perception) “is certainly prior in respect of time in one and the same individual, but in the universal (ὅλως) it is not even so in respect of time. Active understanding is not such that it sometimes thinks and sometimes does not. When it is absolute, it is the one and only existence; and this alone is eternal and immortal. We, however, do not remember this process, because this understanding is unaffected from without; but the passive understanding is transitory, and without the former it is incapable of thought.”
The seventh and eighth chapters are expositions of the maxims contained in the fourth and fifth; they begin with these maxims, and have the appearance of being from the hand of a commentator. “The soul,” says Aristotle (De Anima, III. 8), “is in a certain sense the whole of existence. For existent objects are either perceived by the senses or thought; but knowledge itself is in a manner the object of knowledge, and perception the object of perception. What are known and perceived are either the things themselves or their forms. Knowledge and sense-perception are not the things themselves (the stone is not in the soul), but their form; so that the soul is like the hand. As this is the instrument by which we grasp instruments, so the understanding is the form by which we apprehend forms, and sense-perception the form of the objects cf sense.” Before this Aristotle had remarked (De Anima, III. 4): “It has been truly said that the soul is the place of ideas (τόπος εἰδῶν): not the whole soul, but only the thinking soul, and these ideas do not exist in the soul actually, but only potentially.” That is to say, the ideas are at first only quiescent forms, not activities, and so Aristotle is not a realist. But the understanding makes these forms, like those of external nature, its objects, its thoughts, its potentiality, Aristotle therefore says in the seventh chapter: “The understanding thinks the abstract (τὰ ἐν ἀφαιρέσει λεγόμενα), just as it conceives snubnosedness not as snubnosedness that cannot be separated from the flesh, but as hollowness.” Then in the eighth chapter Aristotle goes on to say: “But as no object is separated from its perceived dimensions, so in the forms perceived by sense there are also objects of thought, both abstract conceptions and the qualities (ἕξεις) and determinations of the objects of sense. In this way he who perceives nothing by his senses learns nothing and understands nothing; when he discerns anything (θεωρῇ), he must necessarily discern it as a pictorial conception, for such conceptions are like sense-perceptions, only without matter. In what way then are our primary ideas distinguished, so as not to be mistaken for conceptions? Or is it not the case also that other thoughts even are not pictorial conceptions, but only that they are never found unassociated with such conceptions?” Since what follows contains no answer to the questions raised here at the very end, this would seem an additional indication that these portions follow later.100 Aristotle concludes the seventh chapter with the words: “Speaking generally, the understanding is the faculty which thinks things in their real activity. Whether, however, it can think the absolute or not, unless it be itself separated from the sensuous, we shall inquire later (ὕστερον).” This “later” Buhle considers to have reference to the “highest philosophy.”101
This identity of the subjective and objective, which is present in the active understanding — while finite things and mental states are respectively one separated from the other, because there the understanding is only in potentiality — is the highest point which speculation can reach: and in it Aristotle reverts to his metaphysical principles (p. 147), where he termed self-thinking reason absolute Thought, divine Understanding, or Mind in its absolute character. It is only in appearance that thought is spoken of as on a level with what is other than thought; this fashion of bringing what is different into conjunction certainly appears in Aristotle. But what he says of thought is explicitly and absolutely speculative, and is not on the same level with anything else, such as sense-perception, which has only potentiality for thought. This fact is moreover involved, that reason is implicitly the true totality, but in that case thought is in truth the activity which is independent and absolute existence; that is, the thought of Thought, which is determined thus abstractly, but which constitutes the nature of absolute mind explicitly. These are the main points which are to be taken note of in Aristotle with regard to his speculative ideas, which it is impossible for us, however, to treat in greater detail.
We have now to pass on to what follows, which is a practical philosophy, and in doing so we must first establish firmly the conception of desire, which is really the turning round of thought into its negative side, wherein it becomes practical. Aristotle (De Anima, III. 7 and 6) says: “The object of knowledge and active knowledge are one and the same; what is in potentiality is in the individual prior in point of time, although not so in itself. For all that comes into being originates from that which operates actively. The object perceived by sense appears as that which causes the faculty of perception in potentiality to become the faculty of perception in actuality, for the latter is not receptive of influence, and does not undergo change. On that account it has a different kind of movement from the ordinary, for movement, as we have seen (p. 163) is the activity of an unaccomplished end (ἐνέργεια ἀτελοῦς); pure activity (ἁπλῶς ἐνέργεια), on the contrary, is that of the accomplished end (τοῦ τετελεσμένον).”— “The simple thoughts of the soul are such that in regard to them there can be no falsity; but that in which there is falsity or truth is a combination of thoughts as constituting one conception; for example, ‘the diameter is incommensurate.’ Or if by mistake white has been stated to be not white, not-white has been brought into connection with it. All this process may, however, just as well be termed separation. But that which makes everything one is reason, which in the form of its thinking thinks the undivided in undivided time and with the undivided action of the soul.”— “Sense-perception resembles simple assertion and thought, but pleasant or unpleasant sense-perception has the relation of affirmation or negation,” therefore of the positive and negative determination of thought. “And to perceive the pleasant or unpleasant is to employ the activity” (spontaneity) “of the middle state of sense-perception upon good or evil, in so far as they are such. But desire and aversion are the same in energy; it is only in manifestation that they are different. To the reasoning soul pictorial conceptions take the place of sense-perceptions, and when the mind affirms or denies something to be good or bad, it desires or avoids its object. It has the relation both of unity and limit. The understanding,” as that which determines opposites, “recognizes the forms underlying pictorial conceptions; and in the same manner as what is desirable in them and what is to be avoided have been determined for it, so it also is determined independently of actual sense-perceptions when it is in mental conceptions. And when, in dealing with conception or thought, as if seeing them, it compares the future with the present and passes judgment accordingly, and determines what is pleasant or unpleasant in this respect; it desires or seeks to avoid it, and in general it finds itself in practical operation. But independently of action true and false are of the same character as good or evil.”
b. Practical Philosophy.
From this the conception of will, or the practical element is shown to us, and it has to be reckoned as still belonging to the Philosophy of Mind. Aristotle has treated it in several works which we now possess.
α. Ethics.
WE HAVE THREE great ethical works: the Nicomachean Ethics (Ἠθικὰ Νικομάχεια) in ten books, the Magna Moralia (Ἠθικὰ μεγάλα) in two books, and the Eudemean Ethics (Ἠθικὰ Εὐδήμια) in seven books; the last deals for the most part with particular virtues, while in the first two general investigations on the principles are contained. Just as the best that we even now possess in reference to psychology is what we have obtained from Aristotle, so is it with his reflections on the actual agent in volition, on freedom, and the further determinations of imputation, intention, &c. We must simply give ourselves the trouble to understand these, and to translate them into our own form of speech, conception and thought; and this is certainly difficult. Aristotle follows the same course here as in his Physics, determining one after the other, in the most thorough and accurate fashion, the many moments which appear in desire: the purpose, the decision, voluntary or forced action, the act of ignorance, guilt, moral responsibility, &c. I cannot enter upon this somewhat psychological presentation of the subject.102 I shall only make the following remarks on the Aristotelian definitions.
Aristotle103 defines the principle of morality or the highest good, as happiness (εὐδαιμονία), which later on became a much disputed expression. It is good generally, not as abstract idea, but in such a way that the moment of realization is what actually answers to it. Aristotle thus does not content himself with the Platonic idea of the good, because it is only general; with him the question is taken in its determinateness. Aristotle then says that the good is what has its end in itself (τέλειον). If we tried to translate τέλειον by “perfect” here, we should translate it badly; it is that which, as having its end (τὸ τέλος) in itself, is not desired for the sake of anything else, but for its own sake (supra, pp. 162, 201). Aristotle determines happiness in this regard as the absolute end existing in and for itself, and gives the following definition of it: It is “the energy of the life that has its end in itself in accordance with absolute virtue (ζωῆς τελείας ἐνέργεια κατ̓ ἀρετὴν).” He makes rational insight an essential condition; all action arising from sensuous desires, or from lack of freedom generally, indicates lack of insight; it is an irrational action, or an action which does not proceed from thought as such. But the absolute rational activity is alone knowledge, the action which in itself satisfies itself, and this is hence divine happiness; with the other virtues, on the contrary, only human happiness is obtained, just as from a theoretic point of view feeling is finite as compared with divine thought. Aristotle goes on to say much that is good and beautiful about virtue and the good and happiness in general, and states that happiness, as the good attainable by us, is not to be found without virtue, &c.; in all of which there is no profound insight from a speculative point of view.
In regard to the conception of virtue I should like to say something more. From a practical point of view, Aristotle104 first of all distinguishes in soul a rational and an irrational side; in the latter reason only exists potentially; under it come the feelings, passions and affections. On the rational side understanding, wisdom, discretion, knowledge, have their place; but they still do not constitute virtue, which first subsists in the unity of the rational and the irrational sides. When the inclinations are so related to virtue that they carry out its dictates, this, according to Aristotle, is virtue. When the perception is either bad or altogether lacking, but the heart is good, goodwill may be there, but not virtue, because the principle — that is reason — which is essential to virtue, is wanting. Aristotle thus places virtue in knowledge, yet reason is not, as many believe, the principle of virtue purely in itself, for it is rather the rational impulse towards what is good; both desire and reason are thus necessary moments in virtue. Hence it cannot be said of virtue that it is misemployed, for it itself is the employer. Thus Aristotle, as we have already seen (Vol. I. pp. 412-414), blames Socrates, because he places virtue in perception alone. There must be an irrational impulse towards what is good, but reason comes in addition as that which judges and determines the impulse; yet when a beginning from virtue has been made, it does not necessarily follow that the passions are in accordance, since often enough they are quite the reverse. Thus in virtue, because it has realization as its aim, and pertains to the individual, reason is not the solitary principle; for inclination is the force that impels, the particular, which as far as the practical side of the individual subject is concerned, is what makes for realization. But then the subject must, in this separation of his activity, bring likewise his passions under the subjection of the universal, and this unity, in which the rational is pre-eminent, is virtue. This is the correct determination; on the one hand this definition is opposed to these ideals of the utter subjection of the passions, by which men are guided from their youth up, and, on the other, it is opposed to the point of view that declares desires to be good in themselves. Both these extreme views have been frequent in modern times, just as sometimes we hear that the man who by nature is beauteous and noble, is better than he who acts from duty; and then it is said that duty must be performed as duty, without taking into account the particular point of view as a moment of the whole.
Aristotle then passes through the particular virtues at great length. Because the virtues, considered as the union of the desiring or realizing with the rational, have an illogical moment within them, Aristotle places105 their principle on the side of feeling in a mean, so that virtue is the mean between two extremes; e.g. liberality is the mean between avarice and prodigality; gentleness between passion and passive endurance; bravery between rashness and cowardice; friendship between egotism and self-effacement, &c. For the good, and specially that good which has to do with the senses, which would suffer if affected to an excessive degree (supra, p. 195), is therefore a mean, just because the sensuous is an ingredient in it. This does not appear to be a sufficient definition, and it is merely a quantitative determination, just because it is not only the Notion that determines, but the empirical side is also present. Virtue is not absolutely determined in itself, but likewise has a material element, the nature of which is capable of a more or a less. Thus if it has been objected to Aristotle’s definition of virtue as a difference in degree, that it is unsatisfactory and vague, we may say that this really is involved in the nature of the thing. Virtue, and determinate virtue in its entirety, enters into a sphere where that which is quantitative has a place; thought here is no more as such at home with itself, and the quantitative limit undetermined. The nature of particular virtues is of such a kind, that they are capable of no more exact determination; they can only be spoken of in general, and for them there is no further determination than just this indefinite one.106 But in our way of looking at things, duty is something absolutely existent in itself, and not a mean between existent extremes through which it is determined; but this universal likewise results in being empty, or rather undetermined, while that determinate content is a moment of being that immediately involves us in conflicting duties. It is in practice that man seeks a necessity in man as individual, and endeavours to express it; but it is either formal, or as in particular virtues, a definite content, which, in so being, falls a prey to empiricism.
β. Politics.
WE HAVE STILL to speak of Aristotle’s Politics; he was conscious more or less that the positive substance, the necessary organization and realization of practical spirit, is the state, which is actualized through subjective activity, so that this last finds in it its determination and end. Aristotle hence also looks on political philosophy as the sum total of practical philosophy, the end of the state as general happiness. “All science and all capacity (δύναμις),” he says (Magn. Mor. I. 1), “have an end, and this is the good: the more excellent they are, the more excellent is their end; but the most excellent capacity is the political, and hence its end is also the good.” Of Ethics Aristotle recognizes that it indubitably also applies to the individual, though its perfection is attained in the nation as a whole. “Even if the highest good is the same for an individual and for a whole state, it would yet surely be greater and more glorious to win and maintain it for a state; to do this for an individual were meritorious, but to do it for a nation and for whole states were more noble and godlike still. Such is the object of practical science, and this pertains in a measure to politics.”107
Aristotle indeed appreciates so highly the state, that he starts at once (Polit. I. 2) by defining man as “a political animal, having reason. Hence he alone has a knowledge of good and evil, of justice and injustice, and not the beast,” for the beast does not think, and yet in modern times men rest the distinction which exists in these determinations on sensation, which beasts have equally with men. There is also the sense of good and evil, &c., and Aristotle knows this aspect as well (supra, p. 202); but that through which it is not animal sensation merely, is thought. Hence rational perception is also to Aristotle the essential condition of virtue, and thus the harmony between the sensational point of view and that of reason is an essential moment in his eudæmonism. After Aristotle so determines man, he says: “The common intercourse of these, forms the family and the state; in the understanding, however, that the state, in the order of nature” (i.e. in its Notion, in regard to reason and truth, not to time) “is prior to the family” (the natural relation, not the rational) “and to the individual among us.” Aristotle does not place the individual and his rights first, but recognizes the state as what in its essence is higher than the individual and the family, for the very reason that it constitutes their substantiality. “For the whole must be prior to its parts. If, for example, you take away the whole body, there is not a foot or hand remaining, excepting in name, and as if anyone should call a hand of stone a hand; for a hand destroyed is like a hand of stone.” If the man is dead, all the parts perish. “For everything is defined according to its energy and inherent powers, so that when these no longer remain such as they were, it cannot be said that anything is the same excepting in name. The state is likewise the essence of the individuals; the individual when separate from the whole, is just as little complete in himself as any other organic part separated from the whole.” This is directly antagonistic to the modern principle in which the particular will of the individual, as absolute, is made the starting-point; so that all men by giving their votes, decide what is to be the law, and thereby a commonweal is brought into existence. But with Aristotle, as with Plato, the state is the prius, the substantial, the chief, for its end is the highest in respect of the practical. “But whoever was incapable of this society, or so complete in himself as not to want it, would be either a beast or a god.”
From these few remarks it is clear that Aristotle could not have had any thought of a so-called natural right (if a natural right be wanted), that is, the idea of the abstract man outside of any actual relation to others. For the rest, his Politics contain points of view even now full of instruction for us, respecting the inward elements of a state,108 and a description of the various constitutions;109 the latter, however, has no longer the same interest, on account of the different principle at the base of ancient and modern states. No land was so rich as Greece, alike in the number of its constitutions, and in the frequent changes from one to another of these in a single state; but the Greeks were still unacquainted with the abstract right of our modern states, that isolates the individual, allows of his acting as such, and yet, as an invisible spirit, holds all its parts together. This is done in such a way, however, that in no one is there properly speaking either the consciousness of, or the activity for the whole; but because the individual is really held to be a person, and all his concern is the protection of his individuality, he works for the whole without knowing how. It is a divided activity in which each has only his part, just as in a factory no one makes a whole, but only a part, and does not possess skill in other departments, because only a few are employed in fitting the different parts together. It is free nations alone that have the consciousness of and activity for the whole; in modern times the individual is only free for himself as such, and enjoys citizen freedom alone — in the sense of that of a bourgeois and not of a citoyen. We do not possess two separate words to mark this distinction. The freedom of citizens in this signification is the dispensing with universality, the principle of isolation; but it is a necessary moment unknown to ancient states. It is the perfect independence of the points, and therefore the greater independence of the whole, which constitutes the higher organic life. After the state received this principle into itself, the higher freedom could come forth. These other states are sports and products of nature which depend upon chance and upon the caprice of the individual, but now, for the first time, the inward subsistence and indestructible universality, which is real and consolidated in its parts, is rendered possible.
Aristotle for the rest has not tried like Plato to describe such a state, but in respect of the constitution he merely points out that the best must rule. But this always takes place, let men do as they will, and hence he has not so very much to do with determining the forms of the constitution. By way of proving that the best must rule, Aristotle says this: “The best would suffer injustice if rated on an equality with the others inferior to them in virtue and political abilities, for a notable man is like a god amongst men.” Here Alexander is no doubt in Aristotle’s mind, as one who must rule as though he were a god, and over whom no one, and not even law, could maintain its supremacy. “For him there is no law, for he himself is law. Such a man could perhaps be turned out of the state, but not subjected to control any more than Jupiter. Nothing remains but, what is natural to all, quietly to submit to such an one, and to let men like this be absolutely and perpetually (ἀΐδιοι) kings in the states”110 The Greek Democracy had then entirely fallen into decay, so that Aristotle could no longer ascribe to it any merit.
On the other side of the Philosophy of Mind, we have still Aristotle’s science of abstract thought, a Logic, to consider. For hundreds and thousands of years it was just as much honoured as it is despised now. Aristotle has been regarded as the originator of Logic: his logical works are the source of, and authority for the logical treatises of all times; which last were, in great measure, only special developments or deductions, and must have been dull, insipid, imperfect, and purely formal. And even in quite recent times, Kant has said that since the age of Aristotle, logic — like pure geometry since Euclid’s day — has been a complete and perfect science which has kept its place even down to the present day, without attaining to any further scientific improvements or alteration. Although logic is here mentioned for the first time, and in the whole of the history of Philosophy that is to come no other can be mentioned (for no other has existed, unless we count the negation of Scepticism), we cannot here speak more precisely of its content, but merely find room for its general characterization. The forms he gives to us come from Aristotle both in reference to the Notion and to the judgment and conclusion. As in natural history, animals, such as the unicorn, mammoth, beetle, mollusc, &c., are considered, and their nature described, so Aristotle is, so to speak, the describer of the nature of these spiritual forms of thought; but in this inference of the one from the other, Aristotle has only presented thought as defined in its finite application and aspect, and his logic is thus a natural history of finite thought. Because it is a knowledge and consciousness of the abstract activity of pure understanding, it is not a knowledge of this and that concrete fact, being pure form. This knowledge is in fact marvellous, and even more marvellous is the manner in which it is constituted: this logic is hence a work which does the greatest honour to the deep thought of its discoverer and to the power of his abstraction. For the greatest cohesive power in thought is found in separating it from what is material and thus securing it; and the strength shows itself almost more, if thus secured when it, amalgamated with matter, turns about in manifold ways and is seen to be capable of numberless alterations and applications. Aristotle also considers, in fact, not only the movement of thought, but likewise of thought in ordinary conception. The Logic of Aristotle is contained in five books, which are collected together under the name Ὀργανον.
a. The Categories (κατηγορίαι), of which the first work treats, are the universal determinations, that which is predicated of existent things (κατηγορεῖται): as well that which we call conceptions of the understanding, as the simple realities of things. This may be called an ontology, as pertaining to metaphysics; hence these determinations also appear in Aristotle’s Metaphysics. Aristotle (Categor. I.) now says: “Things are termed homonyms (ὁμώνυμα) of which the name alone is common, but which have a different substantial definition (λόγος τῆς οὐσίας); thus a horse and the picture of a horse are both called an animal.”
Thus the Notion (λόγος) is opposed to the homonym; and since Aristotle deduces herefrom τὰ λεγόμενα, of which the second chapter treats, it is clear that this last expression indicates more than mere predication, and is here to be taken as determinate Notions. “Determinate conceptions are either enunciated after a complex (κατὰ συμπλοκήν) or after an incomplex manner (ἄνευ συμπλοκῆς); the first as ‘a man conquers,’ ‘the ox runs,’ and the other as ‘man,’ ‘ox,’ ‘to conquer,’ ‘to run.’” In the first rank of this division Aristotle places τὰ ὄντα, which are undoubtedly purely subjective relations of such as exist per se, so that the relation is not in them but external to them. Now although τὰ λεγόμενα and τὰ ὄντα are again distinguished from one another, Aristotle yet again employs both λέγεται, and ἐστί of the ὄντα, so that λέγεται is predicated of a species, in relation to its particular; ἐστί is, on the contrary, employed of a universal, which is not Idea but only simple. For Aristotle says, “There are predicates (ὄντα) which can be assigned to a certain subject (καθ̓ ὑποκειμένον), yet are in no subject, as ‘man’ is predicated of ‘some certain man,’ and yet he is no particular man. Others are in a subject (ἐν ὑποκειμένῳ ἐστί) yet are not predicated of any subject (I mean by a thing being in a subject, that it is in any thing not as a part, but as unable to subsist without that in which it is), as ‘a grammatical art’ (τὶς γραμματική) is in a subject, ‘the soul,’ but cannot be predicated of any,’ or related as genus to a subject. Some are predicated of a subject (λέγεται) and are in it; science is in the soul and is predicated of the grammatical art. Some again are neither in, nor are predicated of any subject, as ‘a certain man,’ the individual, the one in number; but some of them can be in a subject like ‘a certain grammatical art.’” Instead of subject we should do better to speak of substratum, for it is that to which the Notion necessarily relates, i.e. that which is neglected in abstraction, and thus the individual opposed to the Notion. We can see that Aristotle has the difference of the genus or universal and the individual present to his mind.
The first thing which Aristotle has indicated in the foregoing is thus the genus, which is predicated of a man, but which is not in him, at least not as a particular quality; the brave man, for example, is an actual, but expressed as a universal conception. In formal logic and its conceptions and definitions there is always present opposition to an actual; and the logical actual is in itself something thought, bravery thus being, for example, a pure form of abstraction. This logic of the understanding seeks, however, in its three stages to imitate the categories of the absolute. The conception or definition is a logical actual, and thus in itself merely something thought, i.e. possible. In the judgment this logic calls a conception A the actual subject and connects with it another actual as the conception B; B is said to be the conception and A to be dependent on it — but B is only the more general conception. In the syllogism necessity is said to be simulated: even in a judgment there is a synthesis of a conception and something whose existence is assumed; in the syllogism it should bear the form of necessity, because both the opposites are set forth in a third as through the medius terminus of reason, e.g. as was the case with the mean of virtue (supra, p. 206). The major term expresses logical being and the minor term logical potentiality, for Caius is a mere potentiality for logic; the conclusion unites both. But it is to reason that life first unfolds itself, for it is true reality. What comes second in Aristotle is the universal, which is not the genus, i.e. it is not in itself the unity of universal and particular — nor is it absolute individuality and hence infinitude. This is the moment or predicate in a subject certainly, but it is not absolutely in and for itself. This relation is now expressed through οὐ λέγεται; for ὅ λέγεται is that which, as universal in itself, is likewise infinite. The third is the particular which is predicated: just as science in itself is infinite and thus the genus, e.g. of the grammatical art; but at the same time as universal, or as not individual, it is the moment of a subject. The fourth indicated by Aristotle is what is called immediate conception — the individual. The reservation that something such as a definite grammatical art is also in a subject, has no place here, for the definite grammatical art is not really in itself individual.
Aristotle, himself,111 makes the following remarks on this matter: “When one thing is predicated (κατηγορεῖται) of another, as of a subject, whatever things are said (λέγεται) of the predicate,” i.e. what is related to it as a universal, “may be also said of the subject.” This is the ordinary conclusion; from this we see, since this matter is so speedily despatched, that the real conclusion has with Aristotle a much greater significance. “The different genera not arranged under one another (μὴ ὑπ̓ ἄλλμλα τεταγμένα), such as ‘animal’ and ‘science,’ differ in their species (διαφοράς). For instance, animals are divided into beasts, bird, fishes — but science has no such distinction. In subordinate genera, however, there may be the same distinctions; for the superior genera are predicated of the inferior, so that as many distinctions as there are of the predicate, so many will there be of the subject.”
After Aristotle had thus far spoken of what is enunciated respecting that which is connected, or the complex, he now comes to “that which is predicated without any connection,” or the incomplex; for as we saw (p. 212) this was the division which he laid down in the second chapter. That which is predicated without any connection he treats of more fully as the categories proper, in what follows; yet the work in which these categories are laid down is not to be regarded as complete. Aristotle112 takes ten of them; “Each conception enunciated signifies either Substance (οὐσίαν), or Quality (ποιόν), or Quantity (ποσόν),” matter, “or Relation (πρός τι), or Where (ποῦ), or When (ποτέ), or Position (κεῖσθαι), or Possession (ἕχειν), or Action (ποιεῖν), or Passion (πάσχειν). None of these is considered by itself an affirmation (κατάφασις) or a negation (κατάφασις), i.e. none is either true or false.” Aristotle adds to these predicables five post predicaments, but he only ranges them all side by side.113 The categories of relation are the syntheses of quality and quantity, and consequently they belonged to reason; but in as far as they are posited as mere relation, they belong to the understanding and are forms of finitude. Being, essence, takes the first place in them; next to it is possibility, as accident or what is caused; the two are, however, separated. In substance A is Being, B, potentiality; in the relation of causality A and B are Being, but A is posited in B as being posited in a postulation of A. A of substance is logical Being; it is its essence opposed to its existence, and this existence is in logic mere potentiality. In the category of causality the Being of A in B is a mere Being of reflection; B is for itself another. But in reason A is the Being of B as well as of A, and A is the whole Being of A as well as of B.
Aristotle114 goes on to speak of Substance; first Substance, “in its strictest (κυριώτατα), first and chief sense” is to him the individual, the fourth class of the divisions enunciated above (pp. 212-214). “Secondary substances are those in which as species (εἴδεσι) these first are contained, that is to say, both these and the genera of these species. Of the subject both name and definition (λόγος) of all things predicated of a subject (τῶν καθ̓ ὑποκειμένον λεγομένον) — of secondary substances — are predicated; for example of the particular man, as subject, both the name and the definition of ‘man’ (living being) are also predicated. But of things which are in a subject (ἐν ὑποκειμένῳ ὄντος) it is impossible to predicate the definition of the” subordinate “subjects, yet with some we predicate the name: the definition of ‘whiteness’ thus is not of the body in which it is, but only the name. All other things however,” besides Definition (λόγος) and “in most cases name, are related to primary substances as subjects” (the individual), “or are inherent in them. Thus without the primary substances none of the rest could exist, for they are the basis (ὑποκεῖσθαι) of all else. Of secondary substances, species is more substance than genus; for it is nearer to the primary substance, and genus is predicated of the species and not the other way.” For species is here the subject, or what does not always require to be something really determined as individual, but which also signifies that which is generally speaking subordinate. “But the species are not more substance one than another, just as in primary substances one is not more substance than the other. Species and genera are likewise, before the rest” (qualities or accidents) “to be called secondary substances: the definition ‘man’ before the fact that he is ‘white’ or ‘runs.’” Abstraction has thus two kinds of objects; ‘man’ and ‘learned’ are both qualities of a certain individual; but the former only abstracts from the individuality and leaves the totality, and is thus the elevation of the individual into the rational, where nothing is lost but the opposition of reflection. “What is true of substances is also true of differences; for as synonyms (συνώνυμα) they have both name and definition in common.”
b. The second treatise is on Interpretation (περὶ ἑρμηνείας); it is the doctrine of judgments and propositions. Propositions exist where affirmation and negation, falsehood and truth are enunciated;115 they do not relate to pure thought when reason itself thinks; they are not universal but individual.
c. The Analytics come third, and there are two parts of them, the Prior and the Posterior; they deal most fully with proof (ἀπόδειξις) and the syllogisms of the understanding. “The syllogism is a reason (λόγος) in which if one thing is maintained, another than what was maintained follows of necessity.”116 Aristotle’s logic has treated the general theory of conclusions in the main very accurately, but they do not by any means constitute the universal form of truth; in his metaphysics, physics, psychology, &c., Aristotle has not formed conclusions, but thought the Notion in and for itself.
d. The Topics (τοπικά) which treat of ‘places’ (τόποι) come fourth; in them the points of view from which anything can be considered are enumerated. Cicero and Giordano Bruno worked this out more fully. Aristotle gives a large number of general points of view which can be taken of an object, a proposition or a problem; each problem can be directly reduced to these different points of view, that must everywhere appear. Thus these ‘places’ are, so to speak, a system of many aspects under which an object can be regarded in investigating it; this constitutes a work which seems specially suitable and requisite for the training of orators and for ordinary conversation, because the knowledge of points of view at once places in our hands the possibility of arriving at the various aspects of a subject, and embracing its whole extent in accordance with these points of view (Vol. I. p. 358). This, according to Aristotle, is the function of Dialectic, which he calls an instrument for finding propositions and conclusions out of probabilities.117 Such ‘places’ are either of a general kind, such as difference, similarity, opposition, relation, and comparison,118 or special in nature, such as ‘places’ which prove that something is better or more to be desired, since in it we have the longer duration of time, that which the one wise man or several would choose, the genus as against the species, that which is desirable for itself; also because it is present with the more honourable, because it is end, what approximates to end, the more beautiful and praiseworthy, &c.119 Aristotle (Topic VIII. 2) says that we must make use of the syllogism by preference, with the dialectician, but of induction with the multitude. In the same way Aristotle separates120 the dialectic and demonstrative syllogisms from the rhetorical and every kind of persuasion, but he counts induction as belonging to what is rhetorical.
e. The fifth treatise, finally, deals with the Sophistical Elenchi (σοφιστικοὶ ἔλεγχοι), or ‘On Refutations,’ as in the unconscious escape of thought in its categories to the material side of popular conception, it arrives at constant contradiction with itself. The sophistical elenchi betray the unconscious ordinary idea into these contradictions, and make it conscious of them, in order to entrap and puzzle it; they were mentioned by us in connection with Zeno, and the Sophists sought them out, but it was the Megarics who were specially strong in them. Aristotle goes through a number of such contradictions by the way of solving them; in so doing he proceeds quietly and carefully, and spares no pains, though they might have been made more dramatic. We have before (Vol. I. pp. 456-459) found specimens of these in treating of the Megarics, and we have seen how Aristotle solves such contradictions through distinction and determination.
Of these five parts of the Aristotelian Organon, what is produced in our ordinary systems of logic is, as a matter of fact, of the slightest and most trivial description, consisting as it does mainly of what is contained in the introduction of Porphyry. More particularly in the first parts, in the Interpretation and in the Analytics, this Aristotelian logic contains these representations of universal forms of thought, such as are now dealt with in ordinary logic, and really form the basis of what in modern times is known as logic. Aristotle has rendered a never-ending service in having recognized and determined the forms which thought assumes within us. For what interests us is the concrete thought immersed as it is in externalities; these forms constitute a net of eternal activity sunk within it, and the operation of setting in their places those fine threads which are drawn throughout everything, is a masterpiece of empiricism, and this knowledge is absolutely valuable. Even contemplation, or a knowledge of the numerous forms and modes assumed by this activity, is interesting and important enough. For however dry and contentless the enumeration of the different kinds of judgments and conclusions, and their numerous limitations may appear to us to be, and though they may not seem to serve their purpose of discovering the truth, at least no other science in opposition to this one can be elevated into its place. For instance, if it is held to be a worthy endeavour to gain a knowledge of the infinite number of animals, such as one hundred and sixty-seven kinds of cuckoo, in which one may have the tuft on his head differently shaped from another, or to make acquaintance with some miserable new species of a miserable kind of moss which is no better than a scab, or with an insect, vermin, bug, &c., in some learned work on entomology, it is much more important to be acquainted with the manifold kinds of movement present in thought, than to know about such creatures. The best of what is stated respecting the forms of judgment, conclusion, &c., in ordinary logic, is taken from the works of Aristotle; as far as details are concerned, much has been spun out and added to it, but the truth is to be found with Aristotle.
As regards the real philosophic nature of the Aristotelian logic, it has received in our text-books a position and significance as though it gave expression only to the activity of the understanding as consciousness; hence it is said to direct us how to think correctly. Thus it appears as though the movement of thought were something independent, unaffected by the object of thought; in other words, as if it contained the so-called laws of thought of our understanding, through which we attain to perception, but through a medium which was not the movement of things themselves. The result must certainly be truth, so that things are constituted as we bring them forth according to the laws of thought; but the manner of this knowledge has merely a subjective significance, and the judgment and conclusion are not a judgment and conclusion of things themselves. Now if, according to this point of view, thought is considered on its own account, it does not make its appearance implicitly as knowledge, nor is it without content in and for itself; for it is a formal activity which certainly is exercised, but whose content is one given to it. Thought in this sense becomes something subjective; these judgments and conclusions are in and for themselves quite true, or rather correct — this no one ever doubted; but because content is lacking to them, these judgments and conclusions do not suffice for the knowledge of the truth. Thus by logicians they are held to be forms whose content is something entirely different, because they have not even the form of the content; and the meaning which is given to them — namely that they are forms — is found fault with. The worst thing said of them, however, is that their only error is their being formal; both the laws of thought as such, and also its determinations, the categories, are either determinations of the judgment only, or merely subjective forms of the understanding, while the thing-in-itself is very different. But in that point of view and in the blame awarded the truth itself is missed, for untruth is the form of opposition between subject and object, and the lack of unity in them; in this case the question is not put at all as to whether anything is absolutely true or not. These determinations have certainly no empirical content, but thought and its movement is itself the content — and, indeed, as interesting a content as any other that can be given; consequently this science of thought is on its own account a true science. But here again we come across the drawback pertaining to the whole Aristotelian manner, as also to all succeeding logic — and that indeed in the highest degree — that in thought and in the movement of thought as such, the individual moments fall asunder; there are a number of kinds of judgment and conclusion, each of which is held to be independent, and is supposed to have absolute truth as such. Thus they are simply content, for they then have an indifferent, undistinguished existence, such as we see in the famous laws of contradiction, conclusions, &c. In this isolation they have, however, no truth; for their totality alone is the truth of thought, because this totality is at once subjective and objective. Thus they are only the material of truth, the formless content; their deficiency is hence not that they are only forms but rather that form is lacking to them, and that they are in too great a degree content. Thus as many individual qualities of a thing are not anything, such as red, hard, &c., if taken by themselves, but only in their unity constitute a real thing, so it is with the unity of the forms of judgment and conclusion, which individually have as little truth as such a quality, or as a rhythm or melody. The form of a conclusion, as also its content, may be quite correct, and yet the conclusion arrived at may be untrue, because this form as such has no truth of its own; but from this point of view these forms have never been considered, and the scorn of logic rests simply on the false assumption that there is a lack of content. Now this content is none other than the speculative Idea. Conceptions of the understanding or of reason constitute the essence of things, not certainly for that point of view, but in truth; and thus also for Aristotle the conceptions of the understanding, namely the categories, constitute the essential realities of Being. If they are thus in and for themselves true, they themselves are their own, and thus the highest content. But in ordinary logic this is not the case, and even as these are represented in the Aristotelian works they are only universal thought-determinations, between which the abstract understanding makes distinctions. This, however, is not the logic of speculative thought, i.e. of reason as distinguished from understanding; for there the identity of the understanding which allows nothing to contradict itself is fundamental. However little this logic of the finite may be speculative in nature, yet we must make ourselves acquainted with it, for it is everywhere discovered in finite relationships. There are many sciences, subjects of knowledge, &c., that know and apply no other forms of thought than these forms of finite thought, which constitute in fact the general method of dealing with the finite sciences. Mathematics, for instance, is a constant series of syllogisms; jurisprudence is the bringing of the particular under the general, the uniting together of both these sides. Within these relationships of finite determinations the syllogism has now, indeed, on account of its terms being three in number, been called the totality of these determinations, and hence by Kant (Kritik der reinen Vernunft, p. 261) also the rational conclusion; but this syllogism addressed to the intelligence as it appears in the ordinary logical form, is only the intelligible form of rationality, and, as we saw above (p. 76), is very different from the rational syllogism proper. Aristotle is thus the originator of the logic of the understanding; its forms only concern the relationship of finite to finite, and in them the truth cannot be grasped. But it must be remarked that Aristotle’s philosophy is not by any means founded on this relationship of the understanding; thus it must not be thought that it is in accordance with these syllogisms that Aristotle has thought. If Aristotle did so, he would not be the speculative philosopher that we have recognized him to be; none of his propositions could have been laid down, and he could not have made any step forward, if he had kept to the forms of this ordinary logic.
Like the whole of Aristotle’s philosophy, his logic really requires recasting, so that all his determinations should be brought into a necessary systematic whole — not a systematic whole which is correctly divided into its parts, and in which no part is forgotten, all being set forth in their proper order, but one in which there is one living organic whole, in which each part is held to be a part, and the whole alone as such is true. Aristotle, in the Politics, for instance (supra, pp. 207-208), often gives expression to this truth. For this reason the individual logical form has in itself no truth, not because it is the form of thought, but because it is determinate thought, individual form, and to be esteemed as such. But as system and absolute form ruling this content, thought has its content as a distinction in itself, being speculative philosophy in which subject and object are immediately identical, and the Notion and the universal are the realities of things. Just as duty certainly expresses the absolute, but, as determinate, a determinate absolute which is only a moment and must be able again to abrogate its determination, the logical form which abrogates itself as this determinate in this very way gives up its claim to be in and for itself. But in this case logic is the science of reason, speculative philosophy of the pure Idea of absolute existence, which is not entangled in the opposition of subject and object, but remains an opposition in thought itself. Yet we certainly may allow that much in logic is an indifferent form.
At this point we would leave off as far as the Aristotelian philosophy is concerned, and from this it is difficult to break away. For the further we go into its details, the more interesting it becomes, and the more do we find the connection which exists among the subjects. The fulness with which I have set forth the principal content of the Aristotelian philosophy is justified both by the importance of the matter itself, because it offers to us a content of its own, and also by the circumstances already mentioned (p. 118), that against no philosophy have modern times sinned so much as against this, and none of the ancient philosophers have so much need of being defended as Aristotle.
One of the immediate followers of Aristotle was Theophrastus, born Ol 102, 2 (371 B.C.); though a man of distinction, he can still only be esteemed a commentator on Aristotle. For Aristotle is so rich a treasure-house of philosophic conceptions, that much material is found in him which is ready for further working upon, which may be put forward more abstractly, and in which individual propositions may be brought into prominence. However Aristotle’s manner of procedure, which is to take an empirical starting point of ratiocination [Raisonnement], and to comprehend this in the focus of the speculative Notion, is characteristic of his mind, without being one which, on its own account, can be freely elevated into a method and a principle. Thus of Theophrastus as of many others (Dicæarchus of Messina, for instance), amongst whom Strato of Lampsacus, the successor of Theophrastus, is best known, there is not much to tell. As regards Dicæarchus, Cicero says, (Tusc. Quæst. I. 31, 10) that he controverted the immortality of the soul, for he asserted that “the soul is no more than an empty name, and the whole of the capacities and powers with which we act and feel are equally extended over all living bodies, and inseparable from the body; for it is nothing but the body so constituted as to live and feel through a certain symmetry and proportion in its body.” Cicero gives in an historical manner a result as he made it comprehensible to himself, without any speculative conception. Stobæus (Eclog. phys. p. 796), on the other hand, quotes from Dicæarchus that he held the soul to be “a harmony of the four elements.” We have only a little general information to give of Strato, that he acquired great fame as a physicist, and that his conception of nature went upon mechanical lines, and yet not on those of Leucippus and Democritus, and later, of Epicurus; for, according to Stobæus (Eclog. phys. p. 298), he made warmth and cold into elements. Hence, if what is said of him is accurate, he was most unfaithful to the beliefs of Aristotle, because he led everything back to mechanism and chance and did away with the immanent end, without accepting the false teleology of modern times. At least, Cicero (De nat. Deor. I. 13) relates of him that he maintained that “divine strength lies altogether in nature, which has in itself the causes of origination, of growth, and of decay, but lacks all sensation and conformation.” The other Peripatetics occupied themselves more with working up individual doctrines of Aristotle, with bringing out his works in a commentated form, which is more or less rhetorical in character, though similar in content. But in practical life the Peripatetic school maintained as the principle of happiness, the unity of reason and inclination. We thus may set aside any further expansion of the Peripatetic philosophy, because it has no longer the same interest, and later on tended to become a popular philosophy (Vol. I. p. 479, Vol. II. p. 130); in this mode it no longer remained an Aristotelian philosophy, although this, too, as what is really speculative, must coincide most closely with actuality. This decay of the Aristotelian philosophy is, indeed, closely connected with the circumstance already mentioned (pp. 126-128), that the Aristotelian writings soon disappeared, and that the Aristotelian philosophy did not retain its place so much through these documents as through the traditions in the school, whereby they soon underwent material changes; and amplifications of Aristotle’s doctrines were brought about, as to which it is not known whether some may not have slipped into what pass for his works.
Since Aristotle’s leading thought has penetrated all spheres of consciousness, and this isolation in the determination through the Notion, because it is likewise necessary, contains in every sphere the profoundest of true thoughts, Aristotle, to anticipate here the external history of his philosophy as a whole, for many centuries was the constant mainstay of the cultivation of thought. When in the Christian West science disappeared amongst the Christians, the fame of Aristotle shone forth with equal brilliance amongst the Arabians, from whom, in later times, his philosophy was again passed over to the West. The triumph which was celebrated upon the revival of learning, on account of the Aristotelian philosophy having been expelled from the schools, from the sciences, and specially from theology, as from the philosophy which deals with absolute existence, must be regarded in two different aspects. In the first place we must remember that it was not the Aristotelian philosophy which was expelled, so much as the principle of the science of theology which supported itself thereon, according to which the first truth is one which is given and revealed — an hypothesis which is once for all a fundamental one, and by which reason and thought have the right and power to move to and fro only superficially. In this form the thought which was awakened in the Middle Ages reconstructed its theology more especially, entered into all dialectic movements and determinations, and erected an edifice where the material that was given was only superficially worked up, disposed and secured. The triumph over this system was thus a triumph over that principle, and consequently the triumph of free, spontaneous thought. But another side of this triumph is the triumph of the commonplace point of view that broke free from the Notion and shook off the yoke of thought. Formerly, and even nowadays, enough has been heard of Aristotle’s scholastic subtleties; in using this name, men thought that they had a right to spare themselves from entering on abstraction, and, in place of the Notion, they thought that it justified them in seeing, hearing, and thus making their escape to what is called healthy human understanding. In science, too, in place of subtle thoughts, subtle sight has commenced; a beetle or a species of bird is distinguished with as great minuteness as were formerly conceptions and thoughts. Such subtleties as whether a species of bird is red or green in colour, or has a more or less perfect tail, are found more easy than the differences in thought; and in the meantime, until a people has educated itself up to the labour of thought, in order to be able thus to support the universal, the former is a useful preparation, or rather it is a moment in this course of culture.
But inasmuch as the deficiency in the Aristotelian philosophy rests in the fact, that after the manifold of phenomena was through it raised into the Notion, though this last again fell asunder into a succession of determinate Notions, the unity of the absolute Notion which unites them was not emphasized, and this is what succeeding time had to accomplish. What now appears is that the unity of the Notion which is absolute existence, makes its appearance as necessity, and it presents itself first as the unity of self-consciousness and consciousness, as pure thought. The unity of existence as existence is objective unity, thought, as that which is thought. But unity, as Notion, the implicitly universal negative unity, time as absolutely fulfilled time, and in its fulfilment as being unity, is pure self-consciousness. Hence we see it come to pass, that pure self-consciousness makes itself reality, but, at the same time, it first of all does so with subjective significance as a self-consciousness that has taken up its position as such, and that separates itself from objective existence, and hence is first of all subject to a difference which it does not overcome.
Here we have concluded the first division of Greek philosophy, and we have now to pass to the second period. The first period of Greek philosophy extended to Aristotle, to the attainment of a scientific form in which knowledge has reached the standing of free thought. Thus in Plato and Aristotle the result was the Idea; yet we saw in Plato the universal made the principle in a somewhat abstract way as the unmoved Idea; in Aristotle, on the other hand, thought in activity became absolutely concrete as the thought which thinks itself. The next essential, one which now is immediately before us, must be contained in that into which Philosophy under Plato and Aristotle had formed itself. This necessity is none other than the fact that the universal must now be proclaimed free for itself as the universality of the principle, so that the particular may be recognized through this universal; or the necessity of a systematic philosophy immediately enters in, what we formerly called one in accordance with the unity of the Notion. We may speak of the Platonic and Aristotelian systems, but they are not in the form of a system; for that it is requisite that one principle should be maintained and consistently carried through the particular. In the perfect complex of the conception of the universe as it is to Aristotle, where everything is in the highest form of scientific knowledge led back to what is speculative, however empiric may be his manner of setting to work, there certainly is one principle brought forward, and that a speculative one, though it is not brought forward as being one. The nature of the speculative has not been explicitly brought to consciousness as the Notion — as containing in itself the development of the manifold nature of the natural and spiritual universe, consequently it is not set forth as the universal, from which the particular was developed. Aristotle’s logic is really the opposite of this. He in great measure passes through a series of the living and the dead, makes them confront his objective, that is, conceiving thought, and grasps them in his understanding; each object is on its own account a conception which is laid open in its determinations, and yet he also brings these reflections together, and thereby is speculative. If even Plato on the whole proceeded in an empiric way, taking up this and that idea, each of which is in turn examined, with Aristotle this loose method of procedure appears still more clearly. In the Aristotelian teaching the Idea of the self-reflecting thought is thus grasped as the highest truth; but its realization, the knowledge of the natural and spiritual universe, constitutes outside of that Idea a long series of particular conceptions, which are external to one another, and in which a unifying principle, led through the particular, is wanting. The highest Idea with Aristotle consequently once more stands only as a particular in its own place and without being the principle of his whole philosophy. Hence the next necessity in Philosophy is that the whole extent of what is known must appear as one organization of the Notion; that in this way the manifold reality may be related to that Idea as the universal, and thereby determined. This is the standpoint which we find in this second period.
A systematic philosophy such as this becomes in the first place dogmatism, in antagonism to which, because of its one-sided character, scepticism immediately arises. In the same way the French call what is dogmatic systématique, and système that in which all the conceptions must consistently proceed from one determination; hence to them systématique is synonymous with one-sided. But the philosophies that ensue are one-sided, because in them it was only the necessity of one principle that was recognized, without their meanwhile developing from themselves, as might well have come to pass in and for itself, the Idea as the real universal, and thus comprehending the world in such a way that the content is only grasped as the determination of the self-reflective thought. Hence this principle stands up formally and abstractly, and the particular is not yet deduced from it, for the universal is only applied to the particular and the rules for this application sought out. In Aristotle the Idea is at least implicitly concrete, as the consciousness of the unity of subjective and objective, and therefore it is not one-sided. Should the Idea be truly concrete, the particular must be developed from it. The other relation would be the mere bringing of the particular under the universal, so that both should be mutually distinguished; in such a case the universal is only a formal principle, and such a philosophy is therefore one-sided. But the true difficulty is that the two endeavours, the development of the particular from the Idea, and the bringing of the particular under the universal, collide with one another. The manifestations of the physical and spiritual world must first, from their respective sides, be prepared for and worked into the Notion, so that the other sciences can form therefrom universal laws and principles. Then for the first time can speculative reason present itself in determinate thoughts, and bring perfectly to consciousness the inwardly existing connection between them. As dogmatic, however, those philosophies, it may be further said, are assertive likewise, because in such a method the principle is only asserted and is not truly proved. For a principle is demanded under which everything is subsumed; thus it is only pre-supposed as the first principle. Before this we have had abstract principles such as pure Being, but here the particular, with which begins the distinction from what is different, became posited as the purely negative. That necessity, on the other hand, makes for a universal which must likewise be in the particular, so that this should not be set aside, but should have its determinate character through the universal.
This demand for a universal, even though still unproved principle, is henceforth present to knowledge. What answers to this demand now appears in the world through the inward necessity of mind — not externally, but as being in conformity with the Notion. This necessity has produced the philosophy of the Stoics, Epicureans, New Academy, and Sceptics, which we have now to consider. If we have remained too long in the consideration of this period, we may now make amends for this protraction, for in the next period we may be brief.
SECTION TWO Second Period: Dogmatism and Scepticism.
IN THIS SECOND period, which precedes the Alexandrian philosophy, we have to consider Dogmatism and Scepticism — the Dogmatism which separates itself into the two philosophies, the Stoic and the Epicurean; and the third philosophy, of which both partake and which yet differs from them both, Scepticism. Along with this last we would take the New Academy, which has entirely merged in it — while in the Older Academy, Plato’s philosophy indubitably still maintained its purity. We saw at the close of the previous period the consciousness of the Idea, or of the Universal, which is an end in itself — a principle, universal indeed, but at the same time determined in itself, which is thus capable of subsuming the particular, and of being applied thereto. The application of universal to particular is here the relationship that prevails, for the reflection that from the universal itself the separation of the totality is developed, is not yet present. There always is in such a relationship the necessity of a system and of systematization; that is to say, one determinate principle must consistently be applied to the particular, so that the truth of all that is particular should be determined according to this abstract principle, and be at the same time likewise recognized. Now since this is what we have in so-called Dogmatism, it is a philosophizing of the understanding, in which Plato’s and Aristotle’s speculative greatness is no longer present.
In respect of this relationship, the task of Philosophy now comes to be summed up in the twofold question which we spoke of earlier (Vol. I. pp. 474, 475), and which has regard to a criterion of truth and to the wise man. At this point we may better than before, and also from a different point of view, explain the necessity for this phenomenon. For because truth has now become conceived as the harmony of thought and reality, or rather as the identity of the Notion, as the subjective, with the objective, the first question is what the universal principle for judging and determining this harmony is; but a principle through which the true is judged (κρίνεται) to be true, is simply the criterion. Yet because this question had only been formally and dogmatically answered, the dialectic of Scepticism, or the knowledge of the one-sidedness of this principle as a dogmatic principle, at once appeared. A further result of this mode of philosophizing is that the principle, as formal, is subjective, and consequently it has taken the real significance of the subjectivity of self-consciousness. Because of the external manner in which the manifold is received, the highest point, that in which thought finds itself in its most determinate form, is self-consciousness. The pure relation of self-consciousness to itself is thus the principle in all these philosophies, since in it alone does the Idea find satisfaction, just as the formalism of the understanding of the present so-called philosophizing seeks to find its fulfilment, the concrete which is opposed to this formalism, in the subjective heart, in the inward feelings and beliefs. Nature and the political world are certainly also concrete, but externally concrete; the arbitrary concrete is, on the other hand, not in the determinate universal Idea, but only in self-consciousness and as being personal. The second ruling determination is consequently that of the wise men. Not reason alone, but everything must be something thought, that is, subjectively speaking, my thought; that which is thought, on the contrary, is only implicit, that is to say, it is itself objective in so far as it appears in the form of the formal identity of thought with itself. The thought of the criterion as of the one principle is, in its immediate actuality, the subject itself; thought and the thinker are thus immediately connected. Because the principle of this philosophy is not objective but dogmatic, and rests on the impulse of self-consciousness towards self-satisfaction, it is the subject whose interests are to be considered. The subject seeks on its own account a principle for its freedom, namely, immovability in itself; it must be conformable to the criterion, i.e. to this quite universal principle, in order to be able to raise itself into this abstract independence. Self-consciousness lives in the solitude of its thought, and finds therein its satisfaction. These are the fundamental determinations in the following philosophies: the exposition of their main principles will come next, but to go into details is not advisable.
Although, as no doubt is the case, these philosophies, as regards their origin, pertain to Greece, and their great teachers were always Greeks, they were yet transferred to the Roman world; thus Philosophy passed into the Roman world and these systems in particular constituted under Roman rule the philosophy of the Roman world, in opposition to which world, unsuited as it was to the rational practical self-consciousness, this last, driven back into itself from external actuality, could only seek for reason in itself and could only care for its individuality — just as abstract Christians only care for their own salvation. In the bright Grecian world the individual attached himself more to his state or to his world, and was more at home in it. The concrete morality, the impulse towards the introduction of the principle into the world through the constitution of the state, which we see in Plato, the concrete science that we find in Aristotle, here disappear. In the wave of adversity which came across the Roman world, everything beautiful and noble in spiritual individuality was rudely swept away. In this condition of disunion in the world, when man is driven within his inmost self, he has to seek the unity and satisfaction, no longer to be found in the world, in an abstract way. The Roman world is thus the world of abstraction, where one cold rule was extended over all the civilized world. The living individualities of national spirit in the nations have been stifled and killed; a foreign power, as an abstract universal, has pressed hard upon individuals. In such a condition of dismemberment it was necessary to fly to this abstraction as to the thought of an existent subject, that is, to this inward freedom of the subject as such. As what was held in estimation was the abstract will of the individual ruler of the world, the inward principle of thought also had to be an abstraction which could bring forth a formal, subjective reconciliation only. A dogmatism erected on a principle made effectual through the form of the understanding could alone satisfy the Roman mind. These philosophies are thus conformable to the spirit of the Roman world, as indeed Philosophy in general ever stands in close connection with the world in its ordinary aspect (Vol. I. pp. 53, 54). The Roman world has, indeed, produced a formal patriotism and corresponding virtue, as also a developed system of law; but speculative philosophy could not proceed from such dead material — we could only expect good advocates and the morality of a Tacitus. These philosophies, always excepting Stoicism, also arose amongst the Romans in opposition to their ancient superstitions, just as now Philosophy comes forward in the place of religion.
The three principles of Stoicism, Epicureanism and Scepticism are necessary; in the first there is the principle of thought or of universality itself, but yet determined in itself; the abstract thought is here the determining criterion of the truth. There is opposed to thought, in the second place, the determinate as such, the principle of individuality, feeling generally, sensuous perception and observation. These two form the principles of the Stoic and Epicurean philosophies. Both principles are one-sided and, as positive, become sciences of the understanding; just because this thought is not in itself concrete but abstract, the determinateness falls outside of thought and must be made a principle for itself; for it has an absolute right as against abstract thought. Besides Stoicism and Epicureanism, there is, in the third place, Scepticism, the negation of these two one-sided philosophies which must be recognized as such. The principle of Scepticism is thus the active negation of every criterion, of all determinate principles of whatever kind they be, whether knowledge derived from the senses, or from reflection on ordinary conceptions, or from thought. Thus the next result arrived at is that nothing can be known. Yet the imperturbability and uniformity of mind in itself, which suffers through nothing, and which is affected neither by enjoyment, pain, nor any other bond, is the common standpoint and the common end of all these philosophies. Thus however gloomy men may consider Scepticism, and however low a view they take of Epicureanism, all these have in this way been philosophies.
A. The Philosophy of the Stoics.
WE MUST, FIRST of all, and in a general way, remark of Stoicism, as also of Epicureanism, that they came in the place of the philosophy of the Cynics and Cyrenaics as their counterpart, just as Scepticism took the place of the Academy. But in adopting the principle of these philosophies, they at the same time perfected it and elevated it more into the form of scientific thought. Yet because in them, just as in the others, the content is a fixed and definite one, since self-consciousness therein sets itself apart, this circumstance really puts an end to speculation, which knows nothing of any such rigidity, which rather abolishes it and treats the object as absolute Notion, as in its difference an unseparated whole. Hence with the Stoics, as also really with the Epicureans, instead of genuine speculation, we only meet with an application of the one-sided, limited principle, and thus we require in both to enter merely upon a general view of their principle. Now if Cynicism made reality for consciousness the fact of being immediately natural (where immediate naturalness was the simplicity of the individual, so that he is independent and, in the manifold movement of desire, of enjoyment, of holding many things to be reality, and of working for the same, really keeps up the external simple life) the Stoic elevation of this simplicity into thought consists in the assertion, not that immediate naturalness and spontaneity is the content and the form of the true Being of consciousness, but that the rationality of nature is grasped through thought, so that everything is true or good in the simplicity of thought. But while with Aristotle what underlies everything is the absolute Idea as unlimited and not set forth in a determinate character and with a difference — and its deficiency is only the deficiency which is present in realization, the not being united into one Notion — here the one Notion is undoubtedly set forth as real existence, and everything is related to it, and hence the requisite relation is undoubtedly present; but that in which everything is one is not the true. With Aristotle each conception is considered absolutely in its determination and as separate from any other; here the conception certainly is in this relation and is not absolute, but at the same time it is not in and for itself. Because thus the individual is not considered absolutely but only relatively, the whole working out is not interesting, for it is only an external relation. Likewise with Aristotle the individual only is taken into consideration, but this consideration is lost sight of by the speculative treatment adopted: here, however, the individual is taken up and the treatment is likewise external. This relation is not even consistent, if, as also happens, something such as nature is considered in itself; for the absolute falls outside of it, since its consideration is only a system of reasoning from indeterminate principles, or from principles which are only the first that come to hand.
As a contribution to the history of the philosophy of the Stoics, we first of all desire to mention the more eminent Stoics. The founder of the Stoic School is Zeno (who must be distinguished from the Eleatic); he belonged to Cittium, a town in Cyprus, and was born about the 109th Olympiad. His father was a merchant who, from his business visits to Athens, then, and for long afterwards, the home of Philosophy and of a large number of philosophers, brought with him books, particularly those of the Socratics, whereby a love and craving for knowledge was awakened in his son. Zeno himself travelled to Athens, and, according to some, he found a further motive to live for Philosophy, in that he lost all his possessions by a shipwreck. What he did not lose was the cultured nobility of his mind and his love of rational understanding. Zeno visited several sections of the Socratics, and particularly Xenocrates, a man belonging to the Platonic School, who, on account of the strictness of his morality and the austerity of his whole demeanour, was very celebrated. Thus he underwent the same ordeals as those to which the holy Francis of Assisi subjected himself, and succumbed to them just as little. This may be seen by the fact that while no testimony was given without oath in Athens, the oath was in his case dispensed with, and his simple word believed — and his teacher Plato is said often to have remarked to him that he might sacrifice to the Graces. Then Zeno also visited Stilpo, a Megaric, whom we already know about (Vol. I. p. 464), and with whom he studied dialectic for ten years. Philosophy was considered as the business of his life, and of his whole life, and not studied as it is by a student who hurries through his lectures on Philosophy in order to hasten on to something else. But although Zeno principally cultivated dialectic and practical philosophy, he did not, like other Socratics, neglect physical philosophy, for he studied very specially Heraclitus’ work on Nature, and finally came forward as an independent teacher in a porch called Poecile (στοὰ ποικίλη), which was decorated with the paintings of Polygnotus. From this his school received the name of Stoic. Like Aristotle his principal endeavour was to unite Philosophy into one whole. As his method was characterized by special dialectic skill and training, and by the acuteness of his argumentation, so he himself was distinguished, in respect of his personality, by stern morality, which resembles somewhat that of the Cynics, though he did not, like the Cynics, try to attract attention. Hence with less vanity his temperance in the satisfaction of his absolute wants was almost as great, for he lived on nothing but water, bread, figs and honey. Thus amongst his contemporaries Zeno was accorded general respect; even King Antigonus of Macedonia often visited him and dined with him, and he invited him to come to him in a letter quoted by Diogenes: this invitation, however, Zeno in his reply refused, because he was now eighty years of age. But the circumstance that the Athenians trusted to him the key of their fortress, speaks for the greatness of their confidence in him; indeed, according to Diogenes, the following resolution was passed at a meeting of the people: “Because Zeno, the son of Mnaseas, has lived for many years in our town as a philosopher, and, for the rest, has proved himself to be a good man, and has kept the youths who followed him in paths of virtue and of temperance, having led the way thereto with his own excellent example, the citizens decide to confer on him a public eulogy, and to present him with a golden crown, on account both of his virtue and his temperance. In addition to this he shall be publicly buried in the Ceramicus. And for the crown and the building of the tomb, a commission of five men shall be appointed.” Zeno flourished about the 120th Olympiad (about 300 B.C.) at the same time as Epicurus, Arcesilaus of the New Academy, and others. He died at a great age, being ninety-eight years of age (though some say he was only seventy-two), in the 129th Olympiad; for being tired of life, he put an end to it himself either by strangulation or by starvation — just because he had broken his toe.121
Amongst the succeeding Stoics Cleanthes must be specially singled out; he was a disciple and the successor of Zeno in the Stoa, and author of a celebrated Hymn to God, which Stobæus has preserved. He is well known by an anecdote told respecting him. It is said that he was called in accordance with the law before a court of justice in Athens to give an account of the means by which he maintained himself. He then proved that at night he carried water for a gardener, and by means of this occupation, earned as much as he required in order in the day to be in Zeno’s company — as to which the only point which is not quite comprehensible to us is how, even in such a way, philosophy, of all things, could be studied. And when for this a gratuity was voted to him from the public treasury, he refused it at Zeno’s instigation. Like his teacher, Cleanthes also died voluntarily, in his eighty-first year, by abstaining from food.122
Of the later Stoics there were many more who could be named as having been famous. More distinguished in science than Cleanthes was his disciple, Chrysippus of Cilicia, born Ol. 125, 1 (474 A.U.C.; 280 B.C.), who likewise lived in Athens, and who was specially active in promoting the wide cultivation and extension of the philosophy of the Stoics. His logic and dialectic were what contributed most largely to his fame, and hence it was said that if the gods made use of dialectic, they would use none other than that of Chrysippus. His literary activity is likewise admired, for the number of his works, as Diogenes Laërtius tells us, amounted to seven hundred and five. It is said of him in this regard that he wrote five hundred lines every day. But the manner in which his writings were composed detracts very much from our wonder at this facility in writing, and shows that most of his works consisted of compilations and repetitions. He often wrote over again respecting the very same thing; whatever occurred to him he put down on paper, dragging in a great variety of evidence. Thus he quoted almost entire books by other writers; and someone gave expression to the belief that if all that belonged to others were taken away from his books, only white paper would be left. But of course it is not so bad as all this, as we may see by all the quotations from the Stoics, where the name of Chrysippus is placed at the head, as it always is, and his conclusions and explanations are used by preference. His writings, of which Diogenes Laërtius mentions a long list, have, however, all been lost to us; so much is nevertheless correct, that he was the main constructor of the Stoic logic. While it is to be regretted that some of his best works have not come down to us, it is, perhaps, a good thing that all are not preserved; if we had to choose between having all or none, the decision would be a hard one. He died in the 143rd Olympiad (212 B.C.).123
In the period immediately following, Diogenes of Seleucia in Babylonia is a distinguished figure; Carneades, the celebrated Academic, is said to have learned dialectic from him, and he is also noteworthy because with this Carneades and Critolaus, a Peripatetic thinker, in Olympiad 156, 2 (598 A.U.C., or 156 B.C.) and in the time of the elder Cato, he was sent as Athenian ambassador to Rome — an embassy which first caused the Romans to make acquaintance with Greek philosophy, dialectic and rhetoric, in Rome itself. For those philosophers there gave lectures and discourses.124
Besides these, Panaetius is well known as having been Cicero’s instructor; the latter wrote his treatise, De Officiis, after Panaetius. Finally, we have Posidonius, another equally famous teacher, who lived for long in Rome in the time of Cicero.125
Later on we see the philosophy of the Stoics pass over to the Romans, that is to say, it became the philosophy of many Romans, though this philosophy did not gain anything as a science by so doing. On the contrary, as in the case of Seneca and the later Stoics, in Epictetus or Antoninus, all speculative interest was really lost, and a rhetorical and hortatory disposition shown, of which mention cannot be made in a history of Philosophy any more than of our sermons. Epictetus of Hierapolis in Phrygia, born at the end of the first century after Christ, was first of all the slave of Epaphroditus, who, however, freed him, after which he betook himself to Rome. When Domitian banished the philosophers, poisoners and astrologers from Rome (94 A.D.), Epictetus went to Nicopolis, in Epirus, and taught there publicly. From his lectures Arrian compiled the voluminous Dissertationes Epicteteæ, which we still possess, and also the manual ἐγχειρίδιον of Stoicism.126 We still have the Meditations εἰς ἑαυτόν of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, in twelve books; he first of all ruled along with Lucius Aurelius Verus from 161 to 169 A.D., and then from 169 to 180 alone and he conducted a war with the Marcomanni. In his Meditations he always speaks to himself; these reflections are not, however, speculative in nature, being admonitions, such as that man should exercise himself in every virtue.
We have no other original works by the older Stoics. For the Stoic Philosophy, too, the sources on which we formerly could count are cut off. The sources from which a knowledge of the philosophy of the Stoics is to be derived are, however, well known. There is Cicero, who was himself a Stoic, though in his representation there is great difficulty in discovering how, for instance, the principle of Stoic morality is to be distinguished from that which constitutes the principle of the morality of the Peripatetics. And, more particularly, we have Sextus Empiricus, whose treatment is mainly theoretic, and is thus interesting from a philosophic point of view. For Scepticism has had to do with Stoicism more especially. But also Seneca, Antoninus, Arrian, the manual of Epictetus, and Diogenes Laërtius must really be called into council.
As regards the philosophy of the Stoics themselves, they definitely separated it into those three parts which we have already met with (Vol. I. p. 387, Vol. II. pp. 48, 49), and which will, generally speaking, be always found. There is Logic in the first place; secondly, Physics, or Natural Philosophy; and thirdly, Ethics, or the Philosophy of Mind, on the practical side especially. The content of their philosophy has, however, not much that is original or productive.
As regards the Physics of the Stoics, we may in the first place say that it does not contain much that is peculiar to itself, since it is rather a compendium of the Physics of older times, and more especially of that of Heraclitus. However, each of the three schools now being dealt with has had a very characteristic and definite terminology, which is more than can be altogether said of the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle. Thus we must now make ourselves familiar with the particular expressions used and with their significance. The following is the essence of the Physics of the Stoics: The determining reason (λόγος) is the ruling, all-productive substance and activity, extended throughout all, and constituting the basis of all natural forms; this preponderating substance, in its rational effectuating activity, they call God. It is a world-soul endowed with intelligence, and, since they called it God, this is really Pantheism. But all Philosophy is pantheistic, for it goes to prove that the rational Notion is in the world. The hymn of Cleanthes is to this effect: “Nothing happens on earth without thee, O Dæmon, neither in the ethereal pole of the heavens, nor in the sea, excepting what the wicked do through their own foolishness. But thou knowest how to make crooked things straight, and thou orderest that which is without order, and the inimical is friendly to thee. For thus hast thou united everything into one, the good to the evil; thus one Notion (λόγος) is in everything that ever was, from which those mortals who are evil flee. How unhappy are they, too, who, ever longing to possess the good, do not perceive God’s universal law, nor listen thereto, the which if they but obeyed with reason, (σὺν νῷ) they would attain a good and happy life!”127 The Stoics thus believed the study of nature to be essential, in order to know in nature its universal laws, which constitute the universal reason, in order that we might also know therefrom our duties, the law for man, and live conformably to the universal laws of nature. “Zeno,” according to Cicero (De nat. Deor. I. 14), “holds this natural law to be divine, and believes that it has the power to dictate the right and prohibit what is wrong.” Thus the Stoics desired to know this rational Notion which rules in nature not altogether on its own account; and the study of nature was consequently to them rather a mere matter of utility.
If we are now to give some further idea of what these Physics are, we may say that the Stoics distinguish in the corporeal — although nature is only the manifestation of one common law — the moment of activity and that of passivity; the former is, according to Aristotle, active reason, or, according to Spinoza, natura naturans; the latter passive reason, or natura naturata. The latter is matter, substance without quality, for quality is, generally speaking, form, i.e. that which forms universal matter into something particular. This is indeed the reason likewise that with the Greeks quality is called τὸ ποιόν, just as we in German derive Beschaffenheit from Schaffen — that which is posited, the negative moment. But the actuating, as the totality of forms, is, according to the Stoics, the Notion in matter; and this is God. (Diog. Laërt. VII. 134.)
As regards the further nature of these forms, these universal laws of nature, and the formation of the world, the Stoics have in the main adopted the ideas of Heraclitus, for Zeno studied him very particularly (supra, p. 239). They thus make fire the real Notion, the active principle which passes into the other elements as its forms. The world arises by the self-existent gods driving the universal material substance (οὐσίαν) out of the fire, through the air, into the water; and as in all generation the moisture which surrounds a seed comes first as the begetter of all that is particular, so that conception, which in this respect is called seed-containing (σπερματικός), remains in the water and then actuates the indeterminate Being of matter into the origination of the other determinations. The elements, fire, water, air and earth, are consequently primary. Respecting them the Stoics speak in a manner which has no longer any philosophic interest. “The coagulation of the denser parts of the world forms the earth; the thinner portion becomes air, and if this becomes more and more rarefied, it produces fire. From the combination of these elements are produced plants, animals, and other kinds of things.” The thinking soul is, according to them, of a similar fiery nature, and all human souls, the animal principle of life, and also plants, are parts of the universal world-soul, of the universal fire; and this central point is that which rules and impels. Or, as it is put, souls are a fiery breath. Sight, in the same way, is a breath of the ruling body (ἡγεμονικοῦ) transmitted to the eyes; similarly hearing is an extended, penetrating breath, sent from the ruling body to the ears.128
Respecting the process of nature we may further say this: Fire, Stobæus tells us (Eclog. phys. I. p. 312), is called by the Stoics an element in a pre-eminent sense, because from it, as the primary element, all else arises through a transformation, and in it, as in an ultimate, everything is fused and becomes dissolved. Thus Heraclitus and Stoicism rightly comprehended this process as a universal and eternal one. This has even been done by Cicero, though in a more superficial way; in this reflection he falsely sees the conflagration of the world in time and the end of the world, which is quite another matter. For in his work De natura Deorum (II. 46) he makes a Stoic speak thus: “In the end (ad extremum) everything will be consumed by fire; for if all moisture becomes exhausted the earth can neither be nourished, nor can air return into existence. Thus nothing but fire remains, through whose reanimation and through God the world will be renewed and the same order will return.” This is spoken after the manner of the ordinary conception. But to the Stoics everything is merely a Becoming. However deficient this may be, God, as the fiery principle, is yet to them the whole activity of nature, and likewise the rational order of the same, and in this lies the perfect pantheism of the Stoic conception of nature. Not only do they call this ordering force God, but also nature, fate or necessity (εἱμαρμένην), likewise Jupiter, the moving force of matter, reason (νοῦν) and foresight (πρόνοιαν); to them all these are synonymous.129 Because the rational brings forth all, the Stoics compare this impelling activity to a seed, and say: “The seed which sends forth something rational (λογικόν) is itself rational. The world sends forth the seeds of the rational and is thus in itself rational;” that is to say, rational both generally, in the whole, and in each particular existent form. “All beginning of movement in any nature and soul rises from a ruling principle, and all powers which are sent forth upon the individual parts of the whole proceed from the ruling power as from a source; so that each force that is in the part is also in the whole, because the force is distributed by the ruling power in it. The world embraces the seed-containing conceptions of the life which is in conformity with the conception,” i.e. all particular principles.130 The Physics of the Stoics is thus Heraclitean, though the logical element is entirely at one with Aristotle; and we may regard it as being such. However, speaking generally, only those belonging to earlier times had a physical element in their philosophy: those coming later neglected Physics entirely and kept alone to Logic and to Ethics.
The Stoics again speak of God and the gods according to the popular manner of regarding them. They say that “God is the ungenerated and imperishable maker of all this disposition of things, who after certain periods of time absorbs all substance in Himself, and then reproduces it from Himself.”131 There no definite perception is reached, and even the above relation of God, as absolute form, to matter has attained no developed clearness. The universe is at one time the unity of form and matter, and God is the soul of the world; at another time, the universe, as nature, is the Being of the constituted matter, and that soul is antagonistic to it, but the activity of God is a disposition of the original forms of matter.132 This opposition is devoid of the essentials of union and division.
Thus the Stoics remain at the general conception that each individual is comprehended in a Notion, and this again in the universal Notion, which is the world itself. But because the Stoics recognized the rational as the active principle in nature, they took its phenomena in their individuality as manifestations of the divine; and their pantheism has thereby associated itself with the common ideas about the gods as with the superstitions which are connected therewith (p. 235), with belief in all sorts of miracles and with divination — that is to say, they believe that in nature there are intimations given which men must receive through divine rites and worship. Epicureanism, on the contrary, proceeds towards the liberation of men from this superstition to which the Stoics are entirely given over. Thus Cicero, in his work De divinatione, has taken the most part of his material from them, and much is expressly given as being the reasoning of the Stoics. When, for example, he speaks of the premonitory signs given in connection with human events, all this is conformable with the Stoic philosophy. The fact that an eagle flies to the right, the Stoics accepted as a revelation of God, believing that thereby it was intimated to men what it was advisable for them to do in some particular circumstances. Just as we find the Stoics speaking of God as having universal necessity, to them God, as Notion, has hence a relation to men and human ends likewise, and in this respect He is providence; thus they now arrived at the conception of particular gods also. Cicero says in the work quoted above (II. 49): “Chrysippus, Diogenes and Antipater argued thus: If gods exist, and if they do not let men know beforehand what is to happen in the future, they cannot love men, or else they themselves do not know what stands before them in the future, or they are of opinion that it does not signify whether man knows it or not, or they consider such a revelation beneath the dignity of their majesty, or they cannot make it comprehensible to men.” All this they refute, for amongst other things they say that nothing can exceed the beneficence of the gods, &c. Thus they draw the conclusion that “the gods make known to men the future” — a system of reasoning in which the entirely particular ends of individuals also form the interests of the gods. To make men know and comprehend at one time and not at another, is an inconsistency, i.e. an incomprehensibility, but this very incomprehensibility, this obscurity, is the triumph of the common way of regarding religions affairs. Thus in the Stoics all the superstitions of Rome had their strongest supporters; all external, teleological superstition is taken under their protection and justified. Because the Stoics started from the assertion that reason is God (it certainly is divine, but it does not exhaust divinity), they immediately made a bound from this universal to the revelation of that which operates for the sake of individual ends. The truly rational is doubtless revealed to men as the law of God; but the useful, what is in conformity with individual ends, is not revealed in this truly divine revelation.
In the second place, as to the intellectual side of the philosophy, we must first of all. consider the principle of the Stoics in answering the question of what the true and rational is. In regard to the source of our knowledge of truth, or of the criterion, which in those times used to be discussed (Vol. I. p. 474, Vol. II. p. 233), the Stoics decided that the scientific principle is the conception that is laid hold of (φαντασία καταληπτική), for the true as well as for the good; for the true and good are set forth as content or as the existent. Thus a unity of apprehending thought and Being is set forth in which neither can exist without the other; by this is meant not sensuous conception as such, but that which has returned into thought and become proper to consciousness. Some of the older Stoics, amongst whom we certainly find Zeno, called this criterion the very truth of reason (ὀρθὸς λόγος). Ordinary conception on its own account (φαντασία) is an impression (τύπωσις), and for it Chrysippus used the expression alteration (ἐτεροίωσις).133 But that the conception should be true, it must be comprehended; it begins with feeling, whereby in fact the type of another is brought into us; the second step is that we should transform this into part of ourselves, and this first of all occurs through thought.
According to Cicero’s account (Academ. Quæst. IV. 47), Zeno illustrated the moments of this appropriation by a movement of the hand. When he showed the open palm he said that this was a sensuous perception; when he bent the fingers somewhat, this was a mental assent through which the conception is declared to be mine; when he pressed them quite together and formed a fist, this was comprehension (κατάληψις), just as in German we speak of comprehension [Begreifen] when by means of our senses we lay hold of anything in a similar way; when he then brought the left hand into play and pressed together that fist firmly and forcibly, he said that this was science, in which no one but the wise man participated. This double pressure, my pressing with the other hand that which is grasped, is said to signify conviction, my being conscious of the identity of thought with the content. “But who this wise man is or has been the Stoics never say,” adds Cicero; and of this we shall afterwards have to speak in greater detail. In fact, the matter is not made clear through this gesticulation of Zeno’s. The first action, the open hand, is sensuous apprehension, immediate seeing, hearing, &c.; the first motion of the hand is then, speaking generally, spontaneity in grasping. This first assent is likewise given by fools; it is weak, and may be false. The next moment is the closing of the hand, comprehension, taking something in; this makes the ordinary conception truth, because the ordinary conception becomes identical with thought. By this my identity with this determination is indeed set forth, but this is not yet scientific knowledge, for science is a firm, secure, unchangeable comprehension through reason or thought, which is that which rules or directs the soul. Midway between scientific knowledge and folly is the true Notion as the criterion, although as yet it is not itself science; in it thought gives its approbation to existence and recognizes itself, for approbation is the harmony of a thing with itself. But in scientific knowledge a perception of the first elements and determinate knowledge through thought of the object is contained. Thus the ordinary conception as apprehended is thought; scientific knowledge is the consciousness of thought, the knowledge of that harmony.
We may also give our assent to these conclusions of the Stoics with their various stages, since in them there is a perception which is undoubtedly true. In this we have an expression of the celebrated definition of the truth, by which it is made the harmony of object and consciousness; but at the same time it is well to remark that this is to be understood simply, and not as indicating that consciousness had a conception, and that on the other side stood an object, which two had to harmonize with one another, and hence that a third was necessarily brought into existence which had to compare them. Now this would be consciousness itself, but what this last can compare is nothing more than its conception, and — not the object, but — its conception again. Consciousness thus really accepts the conception of the object; it is by this approbation that the conception actually receives truth — the testimony of mind to the objective rationality of the world. It is not, as is ordinarily represented, that a round object here impresses itself upon wax, that a third compares the form of the round and of the wax and, finding them to be similar, judges that the impress must have been correct, and the conception and the thing have harmonized. For the action of thought consists in this, that thought in and for itself gives its approbation and recognizes the object as being in conformity with itself; this it is in which lies the power of truth — or approbation is the expression of this harmony, or judgment itself. In this, say the Stoics, the truth is contained; it is an object which is likewise thought, so that the thought that gives its assent is the ruling thought which posits the harmony of subject with content. The fact that anything is or has truth is thus not because it is (for this moment of Being is only ordinary conception), but the fact that it is, has its power in the approbation of consciousness. But this thought alone and for itself is not the truth, nor is the truth as such contained in it, for the Notion requires the objective element and is only the rational consciousness respecting the truth. But the truth of the object itself is contained in the fact that this objective corresponds to thought, and not the thought to the objective; for this last may be sensuous, changeable, false, and contingent, and thus it is untrue for mind. This is the main point as far as the Stoics are concerned, and even if we discover the Stoic speculative doctrines from their antagonists better than from their originators and advocates, yet from them, too, this idea of unity proceeds; and while both sides of this unity are opposed, both are necessary, but thought is essential reality. Sextus Empiricus (adv. Math. VIII. 10) understands this thus: “The Stoics say that as regards the perceptible and that which is thought some things alone are true; what is felt, however, is not immediate (έξ εὐθείας), for it becomes true for the first time through its relation to the thought that corresponds to it.” Thus neither is immediate thought the true, excepting in so far us it corresponds to the Notion and is known through the working out of rational thought.
This general idea is the only one which is interesting in the Stoics, but even in this very principle, limitations are found to be present. It merely expresses the truth as subsisting in the object, as thought of, yet for that very reason it is still a very formal determination, or not in itself the real Idea. From this point of view Sextus Empiricus (adv. Math. X. 183) examines the Stoics, and he considers and discusses them in all sorts of ways. The most striking thing that he says is what relates to the following. The fact that anything is, rests in its being thought — the fact that it is thought in something being there; the one is the pre-supposition of the other. That is to say, the Stoics assert that a thing exists, not because it is, but through thought; but consciousness for its existence requires another, for thought is likewise one-sided. In this criticism by Sextus it is indicated that thought requires an object as an external to which it gives its approbation. There can be no talk of its being here indicated that the thinking mind in order to exist as consciousness does not require the object; this is really inherent in its conception. But the “this” of the object as an external is only a moment which is not the only one or the essential. It is the manifestation of mind, and mind exists only in that it appears; this therefore must come to pass in it, that it must have its object as external and give its approbation to it — that is, it must withdraw from this relationship into itself and therein recognize its unity. But likewise, having gone into itself, it has now from itself to beget its object and give itself the content which it sends forth from itself. Stoicism is only this return of mind into itself, positing the unity of itself and the object, and recognizing the harmony; but not the going forth again to the extension of the real knowledge of a content from itself. We do not find Stoicism getting any farther, for it stops short at making the consciousness of this unity its object, without developing it in the slightest; thus reason remains the simple form which does not go on to the distinction of the content itself. Hence the formalism of this celebrated standard, and of the standpoint from which all truth of content is judged, rests farther in the fact that the thought of thought, as what is highest, finds this content indeed conformable to itself and appropriates it, since it transforms it into the universal, but its determinations are given. For if thought predominates, still it is always universal form alone. On account of this universality thought yields nothing but the form of identity with itself; the ultimate criterion is thus only the formal identity of the thought which discovers harmony. But it may be asked, with what? For there no absolute self-determination, no content that proceeds from thought as such is to be found; and hence everything may harmonize with my thought. The criterion of the Stoics is consequently only the principle of contradiction; yet when we remove the contradiction from absolute reality, it is indeed self-identical, but for that very reason empty. The harmony must be a higher one; there must be harmony with self in what is other than self, in content, in determination; and thus it must be harmony with harmony.
In accordance with this recognition of the principle of the Stoics, both their logic and their morality is judged; neither the one nor the other arrives at being immanent free science. We have already remarked (p. 241) that they also occupied themselves with logical definitions, and since they made abstract thought the principle, they have brought formal logic to great perfection. Logic is hence to them logic in the sense that it expresses the activity of the understanding as of conscious understanding; it is no longer as with Aristotle, at least in regard to the categories, undecided as to whether the forms of the understanding are not at the same time the realities of things; for the forms of thought are set forth as such for themselves. Then along with this comes in, for the first time, the question respecting the harmony of thought and object or the demand that an appropriate content of thought be shown. However, since all given content may be taken into thought and posited as something thought without therefore losing its determinate character, and this determinate character contradicts and does not support the simplicity of thought, the taking of it up does not help at all; for its opposite may also be taken up and set forth as something thought. The opposition is thereby, however, only in another form; for instead of the content being in outward sensation as something not pertaining to thought and not true, as it formerly was, it now pertains to thought, but is unlike it in its determinateness, seeing that thought is the simple. Thus what was formerly excluded from the simple Notion, now comes into it again; this separation between activity of the understanding and object must indeed be made, but likewise the unity in the object as such has to be shown, if it is only something thought. Hence Scepticism cast up this opposition more especially to the Stoics, and the Stoics amongst themselves had always to improve on their conceptions. As we have just seen (p. 250) in Sextus Empiricus, they did not quite know whether they should define conception as impression or alteration, or in some other way. Now if this conception is admitted into that which directs the soul, into pure consciousness, Sextus further asks (since thought in abstracto is the simple and self-identical which, as incorporeal, is neither passive nor active), How can an alteration, an impression, be made on this? Then the thought-forms are themselves incorporeal. But, according to the Stoics, only the corporeal can make an impression or bring about an alteration.134 That is to say, on the one hand, because corporeal and incorporeal are unlike they cannot be one; and, on the other, incorporeal thought-forms, as capable of no alteration, are not the content, for this last is the corporeal only.
If the thought-forms could in fact have attained the form of content, they would have been a content of thought in itself. But as they were they had value as laws of thought (λεκτά)135 merely. The Stoics indeed had a system of immanent determinations of thought, and actually did a great deal in this direction; for Chrysippus specially developed and worked out this logical aspect of things, and is stated to have been a master in it (supra, pp. 240, 241). But this development took a very formal direction; there are the ordinary well-known forms of inference, five of which are given by Chrysippus, while others give sometimes more and sometimes fewer. One of them is the hypothetical syllogism through remotion, “When it is day it is light, but now it is night and hence it is not light.” These logical forms of thought are by the Stoics held to be the unproved that requires no proof; but they are likewise only formal forms which determine no content as such. The wise man is specially skilful in dialectic, we are told by the Stoics, for all things, both physical and ethical, are perceived through a knowledge of logic.136 But thus they have ascribed this perception to a subject, without stating who this wise man is (p. 250). Since objective grounds by which to determine the truth are wanting, the ultimate decision is attributed to the will of the subject; and this talk about the wise man consequently has its ground in nothing but the indefiniteness of the criterion, from which we cannot get to the determination of content.
It would be superfluous to speak further of their logic any more than of their theory of judgments, which in part coincides with it, and in part is a grammar and a rhetoric; by it no real scientific content can be reached. For this logic is not, like Plato’s dialectic, the speculative science of the absolute Idea; but, as formal logic, as we saw above (p. 254), it is science as the firm, secure, unalterable comprehension of reasons, and stops short at the perception of the same. This logical element, whose essence consists pre-eminently in escaping to the simplicity of the conception to that which is not in opposition to itself nor falls into contradiction, obtains the upper hand. This simplicity, which has not negativity and content in itself, requires a given content which it may not abrogate — but consequently it cannot thus attain to a genuine “other” through itself. The Stoics have constituted their logic often in the most isolated fashion; the principal point that is established here is that the objective corresponds to thought, and they investigated this thought more closely. If in a manner it is quite correct to say that the universal is the true, and that thought has a definite content that must also be concrete, the main difficulty, which is to deduce the particular determination from the universal, so that in this self-determination it may remain identical with itself, has not been solved by the Stoics: and this the Sceptics brought to consciousness. This is the point of view most important in the philosophy of the Stoics; it thus showed itself in their physics also.
Since the theory of mind, the doctrine of knowledge, came before us in the investigation of the criterion, we have, in the third and last place, to speak of the morality of the Stoics, to which is due their greatest fame, but which does not rise above this formal element any more than what precedes, although it cannot be denied that in presenting it they have taken a course which seems very plausible to the popular conception, but which in fact is to a great extent external and empiric.
a. In order, in the first place, to find the definition of virtue, Chrysippus gives some good expositions of practical ethics which Diogenes Laërtius (VII. 85, 86) quotes at considerable length; they are psychological in character and in them Chrysippus establishes his formal harmony with himself. For according to him the Stoics say: “The first desire (ὁρμή) of the animal is for self-preservation, because nature from the beginning reconciled each existence with itself. This first object innate in every animal” (immanent desire) “is thus the harmony of the animal with itself, and the consciousness of the same,” the self-consciousness through which “the animal is not alienated from itself. Thus it repels what is injurious and accepts what is serviceable to it.” This is Aristotle’s conception of the nature of adaptation to an end, in which, as the principle of activity, both the opposite and its sublation are contained. “Enjoyment is not the first object, for it” (the sense of satisfaction) “is only for the first time added when the nature of an animal that seeks itself through itself, receives into itself that which is in conformity with its harmony with itself.” This is likewise worthy of approbation: self-consciousness, enjoyment, is just this return into self, the consciousness of this unity in which I enjoy something and thereby have my unity as this individual in the objective element. The case is similar in regard to man; his end is self-preservation, but with a conscious end, with consideration, according to reason. “In plants nature operates without voluntary inclination (ὁρμῆς) or sense-perception, but some things in us take place in the same manner as in plants.” For in the plant there also is the seed-containing conception, but it is not in it as end, nor as its object, for it knows nothing about it. “In animals inclination comes in; in them nature makes their impulses conformable to their first principle;” i.e. the end of inclination is simply the first principle of their nature, and that through which they make for their own preservation. “Rational creatures likewise make nature their end, but this is to live according to reason, for reason becomes in them the artist who produces inclination,” i.e. it makes a work of art in man from what in the animal is desire merely. To live in accordance with nature is thus, to the Stoics, to live rationally.
This now appears somewhat like certain receipts given by the Stoics for the purpose of discovering right motive forces in regard to virtue. For their principle put generally is this: “Men must live in conformity with nature, i.e. with virtue; for to it” (rational) “nature leads us.” That is the highest good, the end of everything — a most important form in Stoic morality, which appears in Cicero as finis bonorum or summum bonum. With the Stoics right reason and the securing of it on its own account, is the highest principle. But here, too, we immediately see that we are thereby merely led round in a circle in a manner altogether formal, because virtue, conformity to nature, and reason, are only determined through one another. Virtue consists in living conformably with nature, and what is conformable to nature is virtue. Likewise thought must further determine what is in conformity with nature, but conformity with nature again is that alone which is determined through reason. The Stoics further say, according to Diogenes Laërtius (VII. 87, 88) “To live according to nature is to live according to that which experience teaches us of the laws both of universal nature and of our own nature, by doing nothing which universal law forbids; and that law is the right reason which pervades everything, being the same with Jupiter, the disposer (καθηγεμόνι) of the existing system of things. The virtue of the happy man is when everything occurs according to the harmony of the genius (δαίμονος) of each individual with reference to the will of the disposer of all things.” Thus everything remains as it was in a universal formalism.
We must throughout allow to the Stoics that virtue consists in following thought, i.e. the universal law, right reason; anything is moral and right only in as far as a universal end is in it fulfilled and brought into evidence. This last is the substantial, the essential nature of a relationship, and in it we have that which is really in thought alone. The universal which must be the ultimate determination in action, is, however, not abstract, but the universal in this relationship, just as, for example, in property the particular is placed on one side. Because man, as a man of thought and culture, acts according to his perception, he subordinates his impulses and desires to the universal; for they are individual. There is in each human action an individual and particular element; but there is a distinction as to whether the particular as such is solely insisted upon or whether in this particular the universal is secured. It is to the securing of this universal that the energy of Stoicism is directed. But this universal has still no content and is undetermined, and thereby the Stoic doctrines of virtue are incomplete, empty, meaningless and tedious. Virtue indeed is commended in a forcible, lively and edifying manner, but as to what this universal law of virtue is, we have no indications given us.
b. The other side as regards the good is external existence, and the agreement of circumstances, of external nature, with the end aimed at by man. For although the Stoics have expressed the good as being conformity with law, in relation to the practical will, they yet defined it, according to Diogenes Laërtius (VII. 94, 95), as being at the same time the useful, “either absolutely and immediately useful or not contrary to utility,” so that generally speaking the useful is, as it were, the accident of virtue. “The Stoics likewise distinguished manifold good into good having reference to the soul, and external good; the former indicates virtues and their actions; the latter the fact of pertaining to a noble country, having a virtuous friend, and so on. In the third place it is neither external nor is it a matter of self-consciousness alone, when the self-same man is virtuous and happy.” These conclusions are quite good. Morality does not require to look so coldly on what concerns utility, for every good action is in fact useful, i.e. it has actuality and brings forth something good. An action which is good without being useful is no action and has no actuality. That which in itself is useless in the good is its abstraction as being a non-reality. Men not only may, but must have the consciousness of utility; for it is true that it is useful to know the good. Utility means nothing else but that men have a consciousness respecting their actions. If this consciousness is blameworthy, it is still more so to know much of the good of one’s action and to consider it less in the form of necessity. Thus the question was raised as to how virtue and happiness are related to one another, a theme of which the Epicureans have also treated. Here it was, as in more recent times, regarded as the great problem to discover whether virtue gives happiness, taken altogether by itself, whether the conception of happiness is included in its conception. That union of virtue and happiness, as the mean, is thus rightly represented as being perfect, neither pertaining only to self-consciousness nor to externality.
α. In order to be able to give a general answer to this question, we most recollect what was said above of the principle of self-preservation, according to which virtue has to do with the rational nature. The fulfilment of its end is happiness as finding itself realized, and as the knowledge or intuitive perception of itself as an external — a harmony of its Notion or its genius with its Being or its reality. The harmony of virtue with happiness thus means that the virtuous action realizes itself in and for itself, man becomes in it an immediate object to himself, and he comes to the perception of himself as objective, or of the objective as himself. This rests in the conception of action and particularly of good action. For the bad destroys reality and is opposed to self-preservation; but the good is what makes for its self-preservation and effectuates it — the good end is thus the content that realizes itself in action. But in this general answer to that question, properly speaking, the consciousness of the implicitly existent end has not sufficiently exactly the signification of virtue, nor has action proceeding from the same exactly the signification of virtuous action, neither has the reality which it attains the signification of happiness. The distinction rests in the fact that the Stoics have merely remained at this general conception, and set it forth immediately as actuality; in it however, the conception of virtuous action is merely expressed, and not reality.
β. A further point is that just because the Stoics have remained at this position, the opposition between virtue and happiness immediately enters in, or, in abstract form, that between thought and its determination. These opposites are with Cicero honestum and utile, and their union is the question dealt with.137 Virtue, which is living in accordance with the universal law of nature, is confronted by the satisfaction of the subject as such in his particularity. The two sides are, in the first place, this particularity of the individual, which, in the most varied aspects has existence in me as the abstract “this,” for example, in the pre-supposition of determinate inclinations; and here we have pleasure and enjoyment in which my existence harmonizes with the demands of my particularity. In the second place, I, as the will that fulfils law, am only the formal character which has to carry out the universal; and thus, as willing the universal, I am in accord with myself as thinking. The two now come into collision, and because I seek the one satisfaction or the other, I am in collision with myself, because I am also individual. As to this we may hear many trivial things said, such as that things often go badly with the virtuous and well with the wicked, and that the latter is happy, &c. By going well all external circumstances are understood, and on the whole the content is quite uninteresting, for it is constituted by the attainment of commonplace ends, points of view and interests. Such at once show themselves, however, to be merely contingent and external; hence we soon get past this standpoint in the problem, and thus external enjoyment, riches, noble birth, &c., do not accord with virtue or happiness. The Stoics indeed said: “The implicitly good is the perfect” (that which fulfils its end) “in accordance with the nature of the rational; now virtue is such, but enjoyment, pleasure and such-like are its accessories”138 — the end of the satisfaction of the individual on his own account. Thus these may be the concomitants of virtue, although it is a matter of indifference whether they are so or not, for since this satisfaction is not end, it is equally a matter of indifference if pain is the concomitant of virtue. Conduct which is according to reason only, thus further contains man’s abstract concentration within himself, and the fact that the consciousness of the true enters into him, so that he renounces everything that belongs to immediate desires, feelings, &c.
In this quite formal principle of holding oneself in a pure harmony with oneself of a merely thinking nature, there now rests the power of becoming indifferent to every particular enjoyment, desire, passion and interest. Because this following of the determinations of reason is in opposition to enjoyment, man should seek his end or satisfaction in nothing else than in the satisfaction of his reason, in satisfying himself in himself, but not in anything outwardly conditioned. Hence much has been said by the Stoics in respect of that which pertains to the passions being something that is contradictory. The writings of Seneca and Antoninus contain much that is true in this regard, and they may be most helpful to those who have not attained to the higher degree of conviction. Seneca’s talent must be recognized, but we must also be convinced that it does not suffice. Antoninus (VIII. 7) shows psychologically that happiness or pleasure is not a good. “Regret is a certain self-blame, because something useful has failed, the good must be something useful, and the noble and good man must make the same his interest. But no noble and good man will feel regret that he has fallen short in pleasure; pleasure is thus neither useful nor good. The man who has the desire for glory after his death does not recollect that he who holds him in remembrance himself dies also, and again he who follows this one, until all recollection through these admiring ones who have passed away, has been extinguished.” Even if this independence and freedom is merely formal, we must still recognize the greatness of this principle. However, in this determination of the abstract inward independence and freedom of the character in itself lies the power which has made the Stoics famous; this Stoic force of character which says that man has only to seek to remain like himself, thus coincides with the formal element which I have already given (p. 254). For if the consciousness of freedom is my end, in this universal end of the pure consciousness of my independence all particular determinations of freedom which are constituted by duties and laws, have disappeared. The strength of will of Stoicism has therefore decided not to regard the particular as its essence, but to withdraw itself therefrom; we see on the one hand, that this is a true principle, but on the other, it is at the same time abstract still.
Now because the principle of the Stoic morality professes to be the harmony of mind with itself, what should be done is not to let this remain formal, and therefore not to let what is not contained in this self-contained be any longer shut out of it. That freedom which the Stoics ascribe to man is not without relation to what is other than himself; thus he is really dependent, and under this category happiness really falls. My independence is only one side, to which the other side, the particular side of my existence, hence does not yet correspond. The old question, which at this time again came up, thus concerns the harmony between virtue and happiness. We speak of morality rather than virtue, because that according to which I ought to direct my actions is not, as in virtue, my will, as it has become custom. Morality really contains my subjective conviction that that which I do is in conformity with rational determinations of will, with universal duties. That question is a necessary one, a problem which even in Kant’s time occupied men, and in endeavouring to solve it we must begin by considering what is to be understood by happiness. Much more is afterwards said of that in which satisfaction is to be sought. However, from what is external and exposed to chance we must at once break free. Happiness in general means nothing more than the feeling of harmony with self. That which is pleasing to the senses is pleasing because a harmony with ourselves is therein contained. The contrary and unpleasing is, on the other hand, a negation, a lack of correspondence with our desires. The Stoics have posited as the very essence of enjoyment this harmony of our inner nature with itself, but only as inward freedom and the consciousness, or even only the feeling of this harmony, so that enjoyment such as this is contained in virtue itself. Yet this enjoyment ever remains a secondary matter, a consequence, which in so far as it is so cannot be made end, but should only be considered as an accessory. The Stoics said in this regard that virtue is alone to be sought, but with virtue happiness on its own account is found, for it confers blessing explicitly as such. This happiness is true and imperturbable even if man is in misfortune;139 thus the greatness of the Stoic philosophy consists in the fact that if the will thus holds together within itself, nothing can break into it, that everything else is kept outside of it, for even the removal of pain cannot be an end. The Stoics have been laughed at because they said that pain is no evil.140 But toothache and the like are not in question as regards this problem. We cannot but know we are subject to such; pain like this, and unhappiness are, however, two different things. Thus the problem throughout is only to be understood as the demand for a harmony of the rational will with external reality. To this reality there also belongs the sphere of particular existence, of subjectivity, of personality, of particular interests. But of these interests the universal alone truly pertains to this reality, for only in so far as it is universal, can it harmonize with the rationality of the will. It is thus quite right to say that suffering, pain, &c., are no evil, whereby the conformity with myself, my freedom, might be destroyed; I am elevated over such in the union which is maintained with myself, and even if I may feel them, they can still not make me at variance with myself. This inward unity with myself as felt, is happiness, and this is not destroyed by outward evil.
γ. Another opposition is that within virtue itself. Because the universal law of right reason is alone to be taken as the standard of action, there is no longer any really absolutely fixed determination, for all duty is always, so to speak, a particular content, which can plainly be grasped in universal form, without this, however, in any way affecting the content. Because virtue is thus that which is conformable to the real essence or law of things, in a general sense the Stoics called virtue everything, in every department, which is in conformity with law in that department. Hence, Diogenes tells us (VII. 92), they also speak of logical and physical virtues, just as their morality represents individual duties (τὰ καθήκοντα) by passing in review the individual natural relationships in which man stands, and showing what in them is rational.141 But this is only a kind of quibbling such as we have also seen in Cicero’s case. Thus in as far as an ultimate deciding criterion of that which is good cannot be set up, the principle being destitute of determination, the ultimate decision rests with the subject, Just as before this it was the oracle that decided, at the commencement of this profounder inwardness the subject was given the power of deciding as to what is right. For since Socrates’ time the determination of what was right by the standard of customary morality had ceased in Athens to be ultimate; hence with the Stoics all external determination falls away, and the power of decision can only be placed in the subject as such, which in the last instance determines from itself as conscience. Although much that is elevated and edifying may find its support here, an actual determination is still wanting; hence there is according to the Stoics only one virtue,142 and the wise man is the virtuous.
c. The Stoics have thus in the third place likewise been in the way of representing an ideal of the wise man which, however, is nothing more than the will of the subject which in itself only wills itself, remains at the thought of the good, because it is good, allows itself in its steadfastness to be moved by nothing different from itself, such as desires, pain, &c., desires its freedom alone, and is prepared to give up all else — which thus, if it experiences outward pain and misfortune, yet separates these from the inwardness of its consciousness. The question of why the expression of rel morality has with the Stoics the form of the ideal of the wise man finds its answer, however, in the fact that the mere conception of virtuous consciousness, of action with respect to an implicitly existent end, finds in individual consciousness alone the element of moral reality. For if the Stoics had gone beyond the mere conception of action for the implicitly existent end, and had reached to the knowledge of the content, they would not have required to express this as a subject. To them rational self-preservation is virtue. But if we ask what it is that is evolved by virtue, the answer is to the effect that it is just rational self-preservation; and thus they have not by this expression got beyond that formal circle. Moral reality is not expressed as that which is enduring, which is evolved and ever evolving itself. And moral reality is just this, to exist; for as nature is an enduring and existent system, the spiritual as such must be an objective world. To this reality the Stoics have, however, not reached. Or we may understand this thus. Their moral reality is only the wise man, an ideal and not a reality — in fact the mere conception whose reality is not set forth.
This subjectivity is already contained in the fact that moral reality, expressed as virtue, thereby immediately presents the appearance of being present only as a quality of the individual. This virtue, as such, in as far as only the moral reality of the individual is indicated, cannot attain to happiness in and for itself, even though happiness, regarded in the light of realization, were only the realization of the individual. For this happiness would be just the enjoyment of the individual as the harmony of existence with him as individual; but with him as individual true happiness does not harmonize, but only with him as universal man. Man must likewise not in the least desire that it should harmonize with him as individual man, that is, he must be indifferent to the individuality of his existence, and to the harmony with the individual as much as to the want of harmony; he must be able to dispense with happiness just as, if he possesses it, he must be free from it; or it is only a harmony of him with himself as a universal. If merely the subjective conception of morality is therein contained, its true relationship is yet thereby expressed; for it is this freedom of consciousness which in its enjoyment rests in itself and is independent of objects, — what we expressed above (p. 264) as the special characteristic of the Stoic morality. Stoic self-consciousness has not here to deal with its individuality as such, but solely with the freedom in which it is conscious of itself only as the universal. Now could one call this happiness, in distinction to the other, true happiness, happiness would still, on the whole, remain a wrong expression. The satisfaction of rational consciousness in itself as an immediate universal, is a state of being which is simulated by the determination of happiness; for in happiness we have the moment of self-consciousness as an individuality. But this differentiated consciousness is not present in that self-satisfaction; for in that freedom the individual has rather the sense of his universality only. Striving after happiness, after spiritual enjoyment, and talking of the excellence of the pleasures of science and art, is hence dull and insipid, for the matter with which we are occupied has no longer the form of enjoyment, or it does away with that conception. This sort of talk has indeed passed away and it no longer has any interest. The true point of view is to concern oneself with the matter itself and not with enjoyment, that is, not with the constant reflection on the relation to oneself as individual, but with the matter as a matter, and as implicitly universal. We must take care besides that things are tolerable to us as individuals, and the pleasanter the better. But no further notice or speech about this is requisite, nor are we to imagine that there is much that is rational and important within it. But the Stoic consciousness does not get beyond this individuality to the reality of the universal, and therefore it has only to express the form, the real as an individual, or the wise man.
The highest point reached by Aristotle, the thought of thought, is also present in Stoicism, but in such a way that it does not stand in its individual capacity as it appears to do in Aristotle, having what is different beside it, but as being quite alone. Thus in the Stoic consciousness there is just this freedom, this negative moment of abstraction from existence, an independence which is capable of giving up everything, but not as an empty passivity and self-abnegation, as though everything could be taken from it, but an independence which can resign it voluntarily, without thereby losing its reality; for its reality is really just the simple rationality, the pure thought of itself. Here pure consciousness thus attains to being its own object, and because reality is to it only this simple object, its object annuls in itself all modes of existence, and is nothing in and for itself, being therein only in the form of something abrogated.
All is merged into this: the simplicity of the Notion, or its pure negativity, is posited in relation to everything. But the real filling in, the objective mode, is wanting, and in order to enter into this, Stoicism requires that the content should be given. Hence the Stoics depicted the ideal of the wise man in specially eloquent terms, telling how perfectly sufficient in himself and independent he is, for what the wise man does is right. The description of the ideal formed by the Stoics is hence a common subject of discussion and is even devoid of interest; or at least the negative element in it is alone noteworthy. “The wise man is free and likewise in chains, for he acts from himself, uncorrupted by fear or desire.” Everything which belongs to desire and fear he does not reckon to himself, he gives to such the position of being something foreign to him; for no particular existence is secure to him. “The wise man is alone king, for he alone is not bound to laws, and he is debtor to no one.” Thus we here see the autonomy and autocracy of the wise man, who, merely following reason, is absolved from all established laws which are recognized, and for which no rational ground can be given, or which appear to rest somewhat on a natural aversion or instinct. For even in relation to actual conduct no definite law has properly speaking reality for him, and least of all those which appear to belong to nature as such alone, e.g. the prohibition against entering into marriage relations which are considered incestuous, the prohibition of intercourse between man and man, for in reason the same thing is fitting as regards the one which is so as regards the others. Similarly the wise man may eat human flesh,143 &c. But a universal reason is something quite indeterminate. Thus the Stoics have not passed beyond their abstract understanding in the transgression of these laws, and therefore they have allowed their king to do much that was immoral; for if incest, pederasty, the eating of human flesh, were at first forbidden as though through a natural instinct only, they likewise can by no means exist before the judgment-seat of reason. The Stoic wise man is thus also ‘enlightened,’ in the sense that where he did not know how to bring the natural instinct into the form of a rational reason, he trampled upon nature. Thus that which is called natural law or natural instinct comes into opposition with what is set forth as immediately and universally rational. For example, those first actions seem to rest on natural feelings, and we must remember that feelings are certainly not the object of thought; as opposed to this, property is something thought, universal in itself, a recognition of my possession from all, and thus it indeed belongs to the region of the understanding. But should the wise man hence not be bound by the former because it is not something immediately thought, this is merely the fault of his want of comprehension. As we have, however, seen that in the sphere of theory the thought-out simplicity of the truth is capable of all content, so we find this also to be the case with the good, that which is practically thought-out, without therefore being any content in itself. To wish to justify such a content through a reason thus indicates a confusion between the perception of the individual and that of all reality, it means a superficiality of perception which does not acknowledge a certain thing because it is not known in this and that regard. But this is so for the reason that it only seeks out and knows the most immediate grounds and cannot know whether there are not other aspects and other grounds. Such grounds as these allow of reasons for and against everything being found — on the one hand a positive relation to something which, though in other cases necessary, as such can also be again sublated; and, on the other hand, a negative relation to something necessary, which can likewise again be held to be valid.
Because the Stoics indeed placed virtue in thought, but found no concrete principle of rational self-determination whereby determinateness and difference developed, they, in the first place, have carried on a reasoning by means of grounds to which they lead back virtue. They draw deductions from facts, connections, consequences, from a contradiction or opposition; and this Antoninus and Seneca do in an edifying way and with great ingenuity. Reasons, however, prove to be a nose of wax; for there are good grounds for everything, such as “These instincts, implanted as they are by nature,” or “Short life,” &c. Which reasons should be esteemed as good thereby depends on the end and interest which form the pre-supposition giving them their power. Hence reasons are as a whole subjective. This method of reflecting on self and on what we should do, leads to the giving to our ends the breadth of reflection due to penetrative insight, the enlargement of the sphere of consciousness. It is thus I who bring forward these wise and good grounds. They do not constitute the thing, the objective itself, but the thing of my own will, of my desire, a bauble through which I set up before me the nobility of my mind; the opposite of this is self-oblivion in the thing. In Seneca himself there is more folly and bombast in the way of moral reflection than genuine truth; and thus there has been brought up against him both his riches, the splendour of his manner of life, his having allowed Nero to give him wealth untold, and also the fact that he had Nero as his pupil; for the latter delivered orations composed by Seneca.144 This reasoning is often brilliant, as with Seneca: we find much that awakens and strengthens the mind, clever antitheses and rhetoric, but we likewise feel the coldness and tediousness of these moral discourses. We are stimulated but not often satisfied, and this may be deemed the character of sophistry: if acuteness in forming distinctions and sincere opinion must be there recognized, yet final conviction is ever lacking.
In the second place there is in the Stoic standpoint the higher, although negatively formal principle, that what is thought is alone as such the end and the good, and therefore that in this form of abstract thought alone, as in Kant’s principle of duty, there is contained that by which man must establish and secure his self-consciousness, so that he can esteem and follow nothing in himself in as far as it has any other content for itself. “The happy life,” says Seneca (De vita beata, 5), “is unalterably grounded on a right and secure judgment.” The formal security of the mind which abstracts from everything, sets up for us no development of objective principles, but a subject which maintains itself in this constancy, and in an indifference not due to stupidity, but studied; and this is the infinitude of self-consciousness in itself.
Because the moral principle of the Stoics remains at this formalism, all that they treat of is comprised in this. For their thoughts are the constant leading back of consciousness to its unity with itself. The power of despising existence is great, the strength of this negative attitude sublime. The Stoic principle is a necessary moment in the Idea of absolute consciousness; it is also a necessary manifestation in time. For if, as in the Roman world, the life of the real mind is lost in the abstract universal; the consciousness, where real universality is destroyed, must go back into its individuality and maintain itself in its thoughts. Hence, when the political existence and moral actuality of Greece had perished, and when in later times the Roman Empire also became dissatisfied with the present, it withdrew into itself, and there sought the right and moral which had already disappeared from ordinary life. It is thus herein implied, not that the condition of the world is a rational and right one, but only that the subject as such should assert his freedom in himself. Everything that is outward, world, relationships, &c., are so disposed as to be capable of being abrogated; in it there is thus no demand for the real harmony of reason and existence; or that which we might term objective morality and rectitude is not found in it. Plato has set up the ideal of a Republic, i.e. of a rational condition of mankind in the state; for this esteem for right, morality and custom which is to him the principal matter, constitutes the side of reality in that which is rational; and it is only through a rational condition of the world such as this, that the harmony of the external with the internal is in this concrete sense present. In regard to morality and power of willing the good, nothing more excellent can be read than what Marcus Aurelius has written in his Meditations on himself; he was Emperor of the whole of the then known civilized world, and likewise bore himself nobly and justly as a private individual. But the condition of the Roman Empire was not altered by this philosophic emperor, and his successor, who was of a different character, was restrained by nothing from inaugurating a condition of things as bad as his own wicked caprice might direct. It is something much higher when the inward principle of the mind, of the rational will, likewise realizes itself, so that there arises a rational constitution, a condition of things in accordance with culture and law. Through such objectivity of reason, the determinations which come together in the ideal of the wise man are first consolidated. There then is present a system of moral relationships which are duties; each determination is then in its place, the one subordinated to the other, and the higher is predominant. Hence it comes to pass that the conscience becomes bound (which is a higher point than the Stoic freedom), that the objective relationships which we call duties are consolidated after the manner of a just condition of things, as well as being held by mind to be fixed determinations. Because these duties do not merely appear to hold good in a general sense, but are also recognized in my conscience as having the character of the universal, the harmony of the rational will and reality is established. On the one hand, the objective system of freedom as necessity exists, and, on the other, the rational in me is real as conscience. The Stoic principle has not yet reached to this more concrete attitude, as being on the one hand abstract morality, and, on the other, the subject that has a conscience. The freedom of self-consciousness in itself is the principle, but it has not yet attained to its concrete form, and its relation to happiness exists only in its determination as indifferent and contingent, which relation must be given up. In the concrete principle of rationality the condition of the world, as of my conscience, is not, however, indifferent.
This is a general description of Stoic morality; the main point is to recognize its point of view and chief relationships. Because in the Roman world a perfectly consistent position, and one conformable to existing conditions, has attained to the consciousness of itself, the philosophy of the Stoics has more specially found its home in the Roman world. The noble Romans have hence only proved the negative, an indifference to life and to all that is external; they could be great only in a subjective or negative manner — in the manner of a private individual. The Roman jurists are also said to have been likewise Stoic philosophers, but, on the one hand, we find that our teachers of Roman law only speak ill of Philosophy, and, on the other, they are yet sufficiently inconsistent to state it to the credit of the Roman jurists that they were philosophers. So far as I understand law, I can find in it, among the Romans, nothing either of thought, Philosophy or the Notion. If we are to call the reasoning of the understanding logical thought, they may indeed be held to be philosophers, but this is also present in the reasoning of Master Hugo, who certainly does not claim to be a philosopher. The reasoning of the understanding and the philosophic Notion are two different things. We shall now proceed to what is in direct contrast to the Stoic philosophy, Epicureanism.
B. Epicurus.
THE EPICUREAN PHILOSOPHY, which forms the counterpart to Stoicism, was just as much elaborated as the Stoic, if, indeed, it were not more so. While the latter posited as truth existence for thought — the universal Notion — and held firmly to this principle, Epicurus, the founder of the other system, held a directly opposite view, regarding as the true essence not Being in general, but Being as sensation, that is, consciousness in the form of immediate particularity. As the Stoics did not seek the principle of the Cynics — that man must confine himself to the simplicity of nature — in man’s requirements, but placed it in universal reason, so Epicurus elevated the principle that happiness should be our chief end into the region of thought, by seeking pleasure in a universal which is determined through thought. And though, in so doing, he may have given a higher scientific form to the doctrines of the Cyrenaics. it is yet self-evident that if existence for sensation is to be regarded as the truth, the necessity for the Notion is altogether abrogated, and in the absence of speculative interest things cease to form a united whole, all things being in point of fact lowered to the point of view of the ordinary human understanding. Notwithstanding this proviso, before we take this philosophy into consideration, we must carefully divest ourselves of all the ideas commonly prevalent regarding Epicureanism.
As regards the life of Epicurus, he was born in the Athenian village of Gargettus in Ol. 109, 3 (B.C. 342), and therefore before the death of Aristotle, which took place in Ol. 114, 3. His opponents, especially the Stoics, have raked up against him more accusations than I can tell of, and have invented the most trivial anecdotes respecting his doings. He had poor parents; his father, Neocles, was village schoolmaster, and Chærestrata, his mother, was a sorceress: that is, she earned money, like the women of Thrace and Thessaly, by furnishing spells and incantations, as was quite common in those days. The father, taking Epicurus with him, migrated with an Athenian colony to Samos, but here also he was obliged to give instruction to children, because his plot of land was not sufficient for the maintenance of his family. At the age of about eighteen years, just about the time when Aristotle was living in Chalcis, Epicurus returned to Athens. He had already, in Samos, made the philosophy of Democritus a special subject of study, and now in Athens he devoted himself to it more than ever; in addition to this, he was on intimate terms with several of the philosophers then flourishing, such as Xenocrates, the Platonist, and Theophrastus, a follower of Aristotle. When Epicurus was twelve years old, he read with his teacher Hesiod’s account of Chaos, the source of all things; and this was perhaps not without influence on his philosophic views. Otherwise he professed to be self-taught, in the sense that he produced his philosophy entirely from himself; but we are not to suppose from this that he did not attend the lectures or study the writings of other philosophers. Neither is it to be understood that he was altogether original in his philosophy as far as content was concerned; for, as will be noted later, his physical philosophy especially is that of Leucippus and Democritus. It was at Mitylene in Lesbos that he first came forward as teacher of an original philosophic system, and then again at Lampsacus in Asia Minor; he did not, however, find very many hearers. After having for some years led an unsettled life, he returned in about the six and thirtieth year of his age to Athens, to the very centre of all Philosophy; and there, some time after, he bought for himself a garden, where he lived and taught in the midst of his friends. Though so frail in body that for many years he was unable to rise from his chair, in his manner of living he was most regular and frugal, and he devoted himself entirely to science, to the exclusion of all other interests. Even Cicero, though in other respects he has little to say in his favour, bears testimony to the warmth of his friendships, and adds that no one can deny he was a good, a humane, and a kindly man. Diogenes Laërtius gives special commendation to his reverence towards his parents, his generosity to his brothers, and his benevolence to all. He died of stone in the seventy-first year of his age. Just before his death he had himself placed in a warm bath, drank a cup of wine, and charged his friends to remember what he had taught them.145
No other teacher has ever been loved and reverenced by his scholars as much as Epicurus; they lived on such intimate terms of friendship that they determined to make common stock of their possessions with him, and so continue in a permanent association, like a kind of Pythagorean brotherhood. This they were, however, forbidden to do by Epicurus himself, because it would have betrayed a distrust in their readiness to share what they had with one another; but where distrust is possible, there neither friendship, nor unity, nor constancy of attachment can find a place. After his death he was held in honoured remembrance by his disciples: they carried about with them everywhere his likeness, engraved on rings or drinking-cups, and remained so faithful to his teaching that they considered it almost a crime to make any alteration in it (while in the Stoic philosophy development was continually going on), and his school, in respect of his doctrines, resembled a closely-barricaded state to which all entrance was denied. The reason for this lies, as we shall presently see, in his system itself; and the further result, from a scientific point of view, ensued that we can name no celebrated disciples of his who carried on and completed his teaching on their own account. For his disciples could only have gained distinction for themselves by going further than Epicurus did. But to go further would have been to reach the Notion, which would only have confused the system of Epicurus; for what is devoid of thought is thrown into confusion by the introduction of the Notion, and it is this very lack of thought which has been made a principle. Not that it is in itself without thought, but the use made of thought is to hold back thought, and thought thus takes up a negative position in regard to itself; and the philosophic activity of Epicurus is thus directed towards the restoration and maintaining of what is sensuous through the very Notion which renders it confused. Therefore his philosophy has not advanced nor developed, but it must also be said that it has not retrograded; a certain Metrodorus alone is said to have carried it on further in some directions. It is also told to the credit of the Epicurean philosophy that this Metrodorus was the only disciple of Epicurus who went over to Carneades; for the rest, it surpassed all others in its unbroken continuity of doctrine and its long duration; for all of them became degenerate or suffered interruption. When some one called the attention of Arcesilaus to this attachment to Epicurus, by the remark that while so many had gone over from other philosophers to Epicurus, scarcely a single example was known of any one passing over from the Epicurean system to another, Arcesilaus made the witty rejoinder: “Men may become eunuchs, but eunuchs can never again become men.”146
Epicurus himself produced in his lifetime an immense number of works, being a much more prolific author than Chrysippus, who vied with him in the number of his writings,147 if we deduct from the latter his compilations from the works of others or from his own. The number of his writings is said to have amounted to three hundred; it is scarcely to be regretted that they are lost to us. We may rather thank Heaven that they no longer exist; philologists at any rate would have had great trouble with them. The main source of our knowledge of Epicurus is the whole of the tenth book of Diogenes Laërtius, which after all gives us but scanty information, though it deals with the subject at great length. We should, of course, have been better off had we possessed the philosopher’s own writings, but we know enough of him to make us honour the whole. For, besides this, we know a good deal about the philosophy of Epicurus through Cicero, Sextus Empiricus and Seneca; and so accurate are the accounts they give of him, that the fragment of one of Epicurus’s own writings, found some years ago in Herculaneum, and reprinted by Orelli from the Neapolitan edition (Epicuri Fragmenta libri II. et XI. De natura, illustr. Orellius, Lipsiæ 1818), has neither extended nor enriched our knowledge; so that we must in all earnestness deprecate the finding of the remaining writings.
With regard to the Epicurean philosophy, it is by no means to be looked on as setting forth a system of Notions, but, on the contrary, as a system of ordinary conceptions or even of sensuous existence, which, looked at from the ordinary point of view as perceived by the senses, Epicurus has made the very foundation and standard of truth (p. 277). A detailed explanation of how sensation can be such, he has given in his so-called Canonic. As in the case of the Stoics, we have first to speak of the manner which Epicurus adopted of determining the criterion of truth; secondly, of his philosophy of nature; and thirdly and lastly, of his moral teaching.
Epicurus gave the name of Canonic to what is really a system of logic, in which he defines the criteria of truth, in regard to the theoretic, as in fact sensuous perceptions, and, further, as conceptions or anticipations (προλήψεις); in regard to the practical, as the passions, impulses, and affections.148
a. On the theoretic side the criterion, closely considered, has, according to Epicurus, three moments, which are the three stages of knowledge; first, sensuous perception, as the side of the external; secondly, ordinary conception, as the side of the internal; thirdly, opinion (δόξα), as the union of the two.
α. “Sensuous perception is devoid of reason,” being what is given absolutely. “For it is not moved by itself, nor can it, if if is moved by something else, take away from or add to” that which it is, but it is exactly what it is. “It is beyond criticism or refutation. For neither can one sensation judge another, both being alike, since both have equal authority;” — when the presentations of sight are of the same kind, every one of them must admit the truth of all the rest. “Nor can one of them pass judgment on another when they are unlike, for they each have their value as differing;” red and blue, for example, are each something individual. “Nor can one sensation pass judgment on another when they are heterogeneous; for we give heed to all. Thought, in the same way, cannot criticize the senses; for all thought itself depends on the sensation,” which forms its content. But sensuous perception may go far wrong. “The truth of what our senses perceive is first evinced by this, that the power of perception remains with us; sight and hearing are permanent powers of this kind as much as the capacity of feeling pain. In this way even the unknown” (the unperceived) “may be indicated by means of that which appears” (perception). Of this conception of objects of perception which are not immediate we shall have to speak more particularly hereafter (p. 292) in dealing with physical science. “Thus all” (unknown, imperceptible) “thoughts originated in the senses either directly in respect of their chance origin or in respect of relationship, analogy, and combination; to these operations thought also contributes something,” namely as the formal connection of the sensuous conceptions. “The fancies of the insane or of our dreams are also true; for they act upon us, but that which is not real does not act.”149 Thus every sensuous perception is explicitly true, in so far as it shows itself to be abiding, and that which is not apparent to our senses must be apprehended after the same manner as the perception known to us. We hear Epicurus say, just as we hear it said in everyday life: What I see and hear, or, speaking generally, what I perceive by my senses, comprises the existent; every such object of sense exists on its own account, one of them does not contradict the other, but all are on the same level of validity, and reciprocally indifferent. These objects of perception are themselves the material and content of thought, inasmuch as thought is continually making use of the images of these things.
β. “Ordinary conception is now a sort of comprehension (κατάληψις), or correct opinion or thought, or the universal indwelling power of thinking; that is to say, it is the recollection of that which has often appeared to us,” — the picture. “For instance, when I say, ‘this is a man,’ I, with the help of previous perceptions, at once by my power of representation recognize his form.” By dint of this repetition the sensuous perception becomes a permanent conception in me, which asserts itself; that is the real foundation of all that we hold true. These representations are universal, but certainly the Epicureans have not placed universality in the form of thinking, but only said it is caused by frequency of appearance. This is further confirmed by the name which is given to the image which has thus arisen within us. “Everything has its evidence (ἐναργές) in the name first conferred on it.”150 The name is the ratification of the perception. The evidence which Epicurus terms ἐνάργεια is just the recognition of the sensuous through subsumption under the conceptions already possessed, and to which the name gives permanence; the evidence of a conception is therefore this, that we affirm an object perceptible by the senses to correspond with the image. That is the acquiescence which we have found taking place with the Stoics when thought gives its assent to a content; thought, however, which recognizes the thing as its own, and receives it into itself, with the Stoics remained formal only. With Epicurus the unity of the conception of the object with itself exists also as a remembrance in consciousness, which, however, proceeds from the senses; the image, the conception, is what harmonizes with a sense-perception. The recognition of the object is here an apprehension, not as an object of thought, but as an object of imagination; for apprehension belongs to recollection, to memory. The name, it is true, is something universal, belongs to thinking, makes the manifold simple, yea, is in a high degree ideal; but in such a way that its meaning and its content are the sensuous, and are not thus to be counted as simple, but as sensuous. In this way opinion is established instead of knowledge.
γ. In the last place, opinion is nothing but the reference of that general conception, which we have within us, to an object, a perception, or to the testimony of the senses; and that is the passing of a judgment. For in a conception we have anticipated that which comes directly before our eyes; and by this standard we pronounce whether something is a man, a tree, or not. “Opinion depends on something already evident to us, to which we refer when we ask how we know that this is a man or not. This opinion is also itself termed conception, and it may be either true or false: — true, when what we see before our eyes is corroborated or not contradicted by the testimony of the conception; false in the opposite case.”151 That is to say, in opinion we apply a conception which we already possess, or the type, to an object which is before us, and which we then examine to see if it corresponds with our mental representation of it. Opinion is true if it corresponds with the type; and it has its criterion in perceiving whether it repeats itself as it was before or not. This is the whole of the ordinary process in consciousness, when it begins to reflect. When we have the conception, it requires the testimony that we have seen or still see the object in question. From the sensuous perceptions blue, sour, sweet, and so on, the general conceptions which we possess are formed; and when an object again comes before us, we recognize that this image corresponds with this object. This is the whole criterion, and a very trivial process it is; for it goes no further than the first beginnings of the sensuous consciousness, the immediate perception of an object. The next stage is without doubt this, that the first perception forms itself into a general image, and then the object which is present is subsumed under the general image. That kind of truth which anything has of which it can only be said that the evidence of the senses does not contradict it, is possessed by the conceptions of the unseen, for instance, the apprehension of heavenly phenomena: here we cannot approach nearer, we can see something indeed, but we cannot have the sensuous perception of it in its completeness; we therefore apply to it what we already know by other perceptions, if there is but some circumstance therein which is also present in that other perception or conception (supra, p. 282).
b. From these external perceptions of objects presently existing, with which we here began, the affections, the internal perceptions, which give the criteria for practical life are however distinguished; they are of two kinds, either pleasant or unpleasant. That is to say, they have as their content pleasure or satisfaction, and pain: the first, as that which peculiarly belongs to the perceiver, is the positive; but pain, as something alien to him, is the negative. It is these sensuous perceptions which determine action; they are the material from which general conceptions regarding what causes me pain or pleasure are formed; as being permanent they are therefore again conceptions, and opinion is again this reference of conception to perception, according to which I pass judgment on objects — affections, desires, and so on.152 It is by this opinion, therefore, that the decision to do or to avoid anything is arrived at.
This constitutes the whole Canon of Epicurus, the universal standard of truth; it is so simple that nothing can well be simpler, and yet it is very abstract. It consists of ordinary psychological conceptions which are correct on the whole, but quite superficial; it is the mechanical view of conception having respect to the first beginnings of observation. But beyond this there lies another and quite different sphere, a field that contains determinations in themselves; and these are the criteria by which the statements of Epicurus must be judged. Nowadays even Sceptics are fond of speaking of facts of consciousness; this sort of talk goes no further than the Epicurean Canon.
In the second place, Epicurus enters on a metaphysical explanation of how we are related to the object; for sensuous perception and outside impressions he unhesitatingly regards as our relation to external things, so that he places the conceptions in me, the objects outside of me. In raising the question of how we come by our conceptions, there lies a double question: on the one hand, since sense-perceptions are not like conceptions, but require an external object, what is the objective manner in which the images of external things enter into us? On the other hand, it may be asked how conceptions of such things as are not matter of perception arise in us; this seems to be an activity of thought, which derives conceptions such as these from other conceptions; we shall, however, see presently (pp. 287, 288) and more in detail, how the soul, which is here related to the object in independent activity, arrives at such a point.
“From the surfaces of things,” says Epicurus in the first place, “there passes off a constant stream, which cannot be detected by our senses” (for things would in any other case decrease in size) and which is very fine; “and this because, by reason of the counteracting replenishment, the thing itself in its solidity long preserves the same arrangement and disposition of the atoms; and the motion through the air of these surfaces which detach themselves is of the utmost rapidity, because it is not necessary that what is detached should have any thickness;” it is only a surface. Epicurus says, “Such a conception does not contradict our senses, when we take into consideration how pictures produce their effects in a very similar way, I mean by bringing us into sympathy with external things. Therefore emanations, like pictures, pass out from them into us, so that we see and know the forms and colours of things.”153 This is a very trivial way of representing sense-perception. Epicurus took for himself the easiest criterion of the truth that is not seen, a criterion still in use, namely that it is not contradicted by what we see or hear. For in truth such matters of thought as atoms, the detachment of surfaces, and so forth, are beyond our powers of sight. Certainly we manage to see and to hear something different; but there is abundance of room for what is seen and what is conceived or imagined to exist alongside of one another. If the two are allowed to fall apart, they do not contradict each other; for it is not until we relate them that the contradiction becomes apparent.
“Error,” as Epicurus goes on to say on the second point “comes to pass when, through the movement that takes place within us on the conception therein wrought, such a change is effected that the conception can no longer obtain for itself the testimony of perception. There would be no truth, no likeness of our perceptions, which we receive as in pictures or in dreams or in any other way, if there were nothing on which we, as it were, put out our faculty of observation. There would be no untruth if we did not receive into ourselves another movement, which, to be sure, is conformable to the entering in of the conception, but which has at the same time an interruption.”154 Error is therefore, according to Epicurus, only a displacement of the pictures in us, which does not proceed from the movement of perception, but rather from this, that we check their influence by a movement originating in ourselves; how this interruption is brought about will be shown more fully later on (pp. 290, 300).
The Epicurean theory of knowledge reduces itself to these few passages, some of which are also obscurely expressed, or else not very happily selected or quoted by Diogenes Laërtius; it is impossible to have a theory less explicitly stated. Knowledge, on the side of thought, is determined merely as a particular movement which makes an interruption; and as Epicurus, as we have already seen, looks on things as made up of a multitude of atoms, thought is the moment which is different from the atoms, the vacuum, the pores, whereby resistance to this stream of atoms is rendered possible. If this negative is also again, as soul, affirmative, Epicurus in the notional determination of thinking has only reached this negativity, that we look away from something, i.e. we interrupt that inflowing stream. The answer to the question of what this interrupting movement exactly is, when taken for itself, is connected with the more advanced conceptions of Epicurus; and in order to discuss them more in detail, we must go back to the implicit basis of his system.
This constitutes on the whole the metaphysic of Epicurus; in it he has expounded his doctrine of the atom, but not with greater definiteness than did Leucippus and Democritus. The essence and the truth of things were to him, as they were to them, atoms and vacuum: “Atoms have no properties except figure, weight and magnitude.” Atoms, as atoms, must remain undetermined; but the Atomists have been forced to take the inconsistent course of ascribing properties to them: the quantitative properties of magnitude and figure, the qualitative property of weight. But that which is in itself altogether indivisible can have neither figure nor magnitude; and even weight, direction upon something else, is opposed to the abstract repulsion of the atom. Epicurus even says: “Every property is liable to change, but the atoms change not. In all dissolutions of the composite, something must remain a constant and indissoluble, which no change can transform into that which is not, or bring from non-being into Being. This unchangeable element, therefore, is constituted by some bodies and figures. The properties are a certain relation of atoms to each other.”155 In like manner we have already seen with Aristotle (p. 178) that the tangible is the foundation of properties: a distinction which under various forms is still always made and is in common use. We mean by this that an opposition is established between fundamental properties, such as we here have in weight, figure and magnitude, and sensuous properties, which are only in relation to us, and are derived from the former original differences. This has frequently been understood as if weight were in things, while the other properties were only in our senses: but, in general, the former is the moment of the implicit, or the abstract essence of the thing, while the latter is its concrete existence, which expresses its relation to other things.
The important matter now would be to indicate the relation of atoms to sensuous appearance, to allow essence to pass over into the negative: but here Epicurus rambles amidst the indeterminate which expresses nothing; for we perceive in him, as in the other physicists, nothing but an unconscious medley of abstract ideas and realities. All particular forms, all objects, light, colour, &c., the soul itself even, are nothing but a certain arrangement of these atoms. This is what Locke also said, and even now Physical Science declares that the basis of things is found in molecules, which are arranged in a certain manner in space. But these are empty words, and a crystal, for instance, is not a certain arrangement of parts, which gives this figure. It is thus not worth while to deal with this relation of atoms; for it is an altogether formal way of speaking, as when Epicurus again concedes that figure and magnitude, in so far as pertaining to atoms, are something different from what they are as they appear in things. The two are not altogether unlike; the one, implicit magnitude, has something in common with apparent magnitude. The latter is transitory, variable; the former has no interrupted parts,156 that is, nothing negative. But the determination of the atoms, as originally formed in this or that fashion, and having original magnitude of such and such a kind, is a purely arbitrary invention. That interruption, which we regarded above (p. 288) as the other side to atoms, or as vacuum, is the principle of movement: for the movement of thought is also like this and has interruptions. Thought in man is the very same as atoms and vacuum are in things, namely their inward essence; that is to say, atoms and vacuum belong to the movement of thought, or exist for this in the same way as things are in their essential nature. The movement of thinking is thus the province of the atoms of the soul; so that there takes place simultaneously therein an interruption of the inward flow of atoms from without. There is therefore nothing further to be seen in this than the general principle of the positive and negative, so that even thought is affected by a negative principle, the moment of interruption. This principle of the Epicurean system, further applied to the difference in things, is the most arbitrary and therefore the most wearisome that can be imagined.
Besides their different figures, atoms have also, as the fundamental mode in which they are affected, a difference of movement, caused by their weight; but this movement to some extent deviates from the straight line in its direction. That is to say, Epicurus ascribes to atoms a curvilinear movement, in order that they may impinge on one another and so on.157 In this way there arise particular accumulations and configurations; and these are things.
Other physical properties, such as taste and smell, have their basis again in another arrangement of the molecules. But there is no bridge from this to that, or what results is simply empty tautology, according to which the parts are arranged and combined as is requisite in order that their appearance may be what it is. The transition to bodies of concrete appearance Epicurus has either not made at all, or what has been cited from him as far as this matter is concerned, taken by itself, is extremely meagre.
The opinion that one hears expressed respecting the Epicurean philosophy is in other respects not unfavourable; and for this reason some further details must be given regarding it. For since absolute Being is constituted by atoms scattered and disintegrated, and by vacuum, it directly follows that Epicurus denies to these atoms any relationship to one another which implies purpose. All that we call forms and organisms, or generally speaking, the unity of Nature’s end, in his way of thinking, belongs to qualities, to an external connection of the configurations of the atoms, which in this way is merely an accident, brought about by their chance-directed motion; the atoms accordingly form a merely superficial unity, and one which is not essential to them. Or else Epicurus altogether denies that Notion and the Universal are the essential, and because all originations are to him chance combinations, for him their resolution is just as much a matter of chance. The divided is the first and the truly existent, but at the same time chance or external necessity is the law which dominates all cohesion. That Epicurus should in this fashion declare himself against a universal end in the world, against every relation of purpose — as, for instance, the inherent conformity to purpose of the organism — and, further, against the teleological representations of the wisdom of a Creator in the world, his government, &c., is a matter of course; for he abrogates unity, whatever be the manner in which we represent it, whether as Nature’s end in itself, or as end which is in another, but is carried out in Nature. In contrast to this, the teleological view enters largely into the philosophy of the Stoics, and is there very fully developed. To show that conformity to an end is lacking, Epicurus brings forward the most trivial examples; for instance, that worms and so on are produced by chance from mud through the warmth of the sun. Taken in their entirety, they may very well be the work of chance in relation to others; but what is implicit in them, their Notion and essence is something organic: and the comprehension of this is what we have now to consider. But Epicurus banishes thought as implicit, without its occurring to him that his atoms themselves have this very nature of thought; that is, their existence in time is not immediate but essentially mediate, and thus negative or universal; — the first and only inconsistency that we find in Epicurus, and one which all empiricists are guilty of. The Stoics take the opposite course of finding essential Being in the object of thought or the universal; and they fail equally in reaching the content, temporal existence, which, however, they most inconsistently assume. We have here the metaphysics of Epicurus; nothing that he says farther on this head is of interest.
The natural philosophy of Epicurus is based on the above foundation; but an aspect of interest is given it by the fact that it is still peculiarly the method of our times; his thoughts on particular aspects of Nature are, however, in themselves feeble and of little weight, containing nothing but an ill-considered medley of all manner of loose conceptions. Going further, the principle of the manner in which Epicurus looks on nature, lies in the conceptions he forms, which we have already had before us (pp. 282, 285). That is to say, the general representations which we receive through the repetition of several perceptions, and to which we relate such perceptions in forming an opinion, must be then applied to that which is not exactly matter of perception, but yet has something in common with what we can perceive. In this way it comes about that by such images we can apprehend the unknown which does not lend itself immediately to perception; for from what is known we must argue to what is unknown. This is nothing else but saying that Epicurus judged by analogy, or that he makes so-called evidence the principle of his view of Nature; and this is the principle which to this day has authority in ordinary physical science. We go through experiences and make observations, these arising from the sensuous perceptions which are apt to be overlooked. Thus we reach general concepts, laws, forces, and so on, electricity and magnetism, for instance, and these are then applied by us to such objects and activities as we cannot ourselves directly perceive. As an example, we know about the nerves and their connection with the brain; in order that there may be feeling and so on, it is said that a transmission from the finger-tips to the brain takes place. But how can we represent this to ourselves? We cannot make it a matter of observation. By anatomy we can lay bare the nerves, it is true, but not the manner of their working. We represent these to ourselves on the analogy of other phenomena of transmission, for instance as the vibration of a tense string that passes through the nerves to the brain. As in the well-known phenomenon of a number of billiard balls set close together in a row, the last of which rolls away when the first is struck, while those in the middle, through each of which the effect of the stroke has been communicated to the next, scarcely seem to move, so we represent to ourselves the nerves as consisting of tiny balls which are invisible even through the strongest magnifying glass, and fancy that at every touch, &c., the last springs off and strikes the soul. In the same way light is represented as filaments, rays, or as vibrations of the ether, or as globules of ether, each of which strikes on the other. This is an analogy quite in the manner of Epicurus.
In giving such explanations as those above, Epicurus professed to be most liberal, fair and tolerant, saying that all the different conceptions which occur to us in relation to sensuous objects — at our pleasure, we may say, — can be referred to that which we cannot ourselves directly observe; we should not assert any one way to be the right one, for many ways may be so. In so saying, Epicurus is talking idly; his words fall on the ear and the fancy, but looked on more narrowly they disappear. So, for instance, we see the moon shine, without being able to have any nearer experience of it. On this subject Epicurus says: “The moon may have its own light, or a light borrowed from the sun; for even on earth we see things which shine of themselves, and many which are illuminated by others. Nothing hinders us from observing heavenly things in the light of various previous experiences, and from adopting hypotheses and explanations in accordance with these. The waxing and waning of the moon may also be caused by the revolution of this body, or through changes in the air” (according as vapour is modified in one way or another), “or also by means of adding and taking away somewhat: in short, in all the ways whereby that which has a certain appearance to us is caused to show such appearance.” Thus there are to be found in Epicurus all these trivialities of friction, concussion, &c., as when he gives his opinion of lightning on the analogy of how we see fire of other kinds kindled: “Lightning is explained by quite a large number of possible conceptions; for instance, that through the friction and collision of clouds the figuration of fire is emitted, and lightning is produced.” In precisely the same way modern physicists transfer the production of an electric spark, when glass and silk are rubbed against each other, to the clouds. For, as we see a spark both in lightning and electricity, we conclude from this circumstance common to both that the two are analogical; therefore, we come to the conclusion that lightning also is an electric phenomenon. But clouds are not hard bodies, and by moisture electricity is more likely to be dispersed; therefore, such talk has just as little truth in it as the fancy of Epicurus. He goes on to say: “Or lightning may also be produced by being expelled from the clouds by means of the airy bodies which form lightning — by being struck out when the clouds are pressed together either by each other or by the wind,” &c. With the Stoics things are not much better. Application of sensuous conceptions according to analogy is often termed comprehension or explanation, but in reality there is in such a process not the faintest approach to thought or comprehension. “One man,” adds Epicurus, “may select; one of these modes, and reject the others, not considering what is possible for man to know, and what is impossible, and therefore striving to attain to a knowledge of the unknowable.”158
This application of sensuous images to what has a certain similarity to them, is pronounced to be the basis and the knowledge of the cause, because, in his opinion, a transference such as this cannot be corroborated by the testimony of mere immediate sensation; thus the Stoic method of seeking a basis in thought is excluded, and in this respect the mode of explanation adopted by Epicurus is directly opposed to that of the Stoics. One circumstance which strikes us at once in Epicurus is the lack of observation and experience with regard to the mutual relations of bodies: but the kernel of the matter, the principle, is nothing else than the principle of modern physics. This method of Epicurus has been attacked and derided, but on this score no one need be ashamed of or fight shy of it, if he is a physicist; for what Epicurus says is not a whit worse than what the moderns assert. Indeed, in the case of Epicurus the satisfactory assurance is likewise always present of his emphasizing the fact most strongly that just because the evidence of the senses is found to be lacking, we must not take our stand on any one analogy. Elsewhere he in the same way makes light of analogy, and when one person accepts this possibility and another that other possibility, he admires the cleverness of the second and troubles himself little about the explanation given by the first; it may be so, or it may not be so.159 This is a method devoid of reason, which reaches no further than to general conceptions. Nevertheless, if Physical Science is considered to relate to immediate experience on the one hand, and, on the other hand — in respect of that which cannot be immediately experienced — to relate to the application of the above according to a resemblance existing between it and that which is not matter of experience, in that case Epicurus may well be looked on as the chief promoter, if not the originator of this method, and also as having asserted that it is identical with knowledge. Of the Epicurean method in philosophy we may say this, that it likewise has a side on which it possesses value, and we may in some measure assent when we hear, as we frequently do, the Epicurean physics favourably spoken of. Aristotle and the earlier philosophers took their start in natural philosophy from universal thought a priori, and from this developed the Notion; this is the one side. The other side, which is just as necessary, demands that experience should be worked up into universality, that laws should be found out; that is to say, that the result which follows from the abstract Idea should coincide with the general conception to which experience and observation have led up. The a priori is with Aristotle, for instance, most excellent but not sufficient, because to it there is lacking connection with and relation to experience and observation. This leading up of the particular to the universal is the finding out of laws, natural forces, and so on. It may thus be said that Epicurus is the inventor of empiric Natural Science, of empiric Psychology. In contrast to the Stoic ends, conceptions of the understanding, experience is the present as it appears to the senses: there we have abstract limited understanding, without truth in itself, and therefore without the present in time and the reality of Nature; here we have this sense of Nature, which is more true than these other hypotheses.
The same effect which followed the rise of a knowledge of natural laws, &c., in the modern world was produced by the Epicurean philosophy in its own sphere, that is to say, in so far as it is directed against the arbitrary invention of causes. The more, in later times, men made acquaintance with the laws of Nature, the more superstition, miracles, astrology, &c. disappeared; all this fades away owing to the contradiction offered to it by the knowledge of natural laws. The method of Epicurus was directed more especially against the senseless superstition of astrology, &c., in whose methods there is neither reason nor thought, for it is quite a thing of the imagination, downright fabrication being resorted to, or what we may even term lying. In contrast with this, the way in which Epicurus works, when the conceptions and not thought are concerned, accords with truth. For it does not go beyond what is perceived by the sight, and hearing, and the other senses, but keeps to what is present and not alien to the mind, not speaking of certain things as if they could be seen and heard, when that is quite impossible, seeing that the things are pure inventions. The effect of the Epicurean philosophy in its own time was therefore this, that it set itself against the superstition of the Greeks and Romans, and elevated men above it.160 All the nonsense about birds flying to right or to left, or a hare running across the path, or men deciding how they are to act according to the entrails of animals, or according as chickens are lively or dull — all that kind of superstition the Epicurean philosophy made short work of, by permitting that only to be accepted as truth which is counted as true by sense perception through the instrumentality of anticipations; and from it more than anything those conceptions which have altogether denied the supersensuous have proceeded. The physics of Epicurus were therefore famous for the reason that they introduced more enlightened views in regard to what is physical, and banished the fear of the gods. Superstition passes straightway from immediate appearances to God, angels, demons; or it expects from finite things other effects than the conditions admit of, phenomena of a higher kind. To this the Epicurean natural philosophy is utterly opposed, because in the sphere of the finite it refuses to go beyond the finite, and admits finite causes alone; for the so-called enlightenment is the fact of remaining in the sphere of the finite. There connection is sought for in other finite things, in conditions which are themselves conditioned; superstition, on the contrary, rightly or wrongly, passes at once to what is above us. However correct the Epicurean method may be in the sphere of the conditioned, it is not so in other spheres. Thus if I say that electricity comes from God, I am right and yet wrong. For if I ask for a cause in this same sphere of the conditioned, and give God as answer, I say too much; though this answer fits all questions, since God is the cause of everything, what I would know here is the particular connection of the phenomenon. On the other hand, in this sphere even the Notion is already something higher; but this loftier way of looking at things which we met with in the earlier philosophers, was quite put an end to by Epicurus, since with superstition there also passed away self-dependent connection and the world of the Ideal.
To the natural philosophy of Epicurus there also belongs his conception of the soul, which he looks on as having the nature of a thing, just as the theories of our own day regard it as nerve-filaments, cords in tension, or rows of minute balls (p. 294). His description of the soul has therefore but little meaning, since here also he draws his conclusion by analogy, and connects therewith the metaphysical theory of atoms: “The soul consists of the finest and roundest atoms, which are something quite different from fire, being a fine spirit which is distributed through the whole aggregate of the body, and partakes of its warmth.” Epicurus has consequently established a quantitative difference only, since these finest atoms are surrounded by a mass of coarser atoms and dispersed through this larger aggregate. “The part which is devoid of reason is dispersed in the body” as the principle of life, “but the self-conscious part (τὸ λογικόν) is in the breast, as may be perceived from joy and sadness. The soul is capable of much change in itself, owing to the fineness of its parts, which can move very rapidly: it sympathizes with the rest of the aggregate, as we see by the thoughts, emotions and so on; but when it is taken away from us we die. But the soul, on its part, has also the greatest sympathy with sensuous perception; yet it would have nothing in common with it, were it not in a certain measure covered by the rest of the aggregate” (the body) — an utterly illogical conception. “The rest of this aggregate, which this principle provides for the soul, is thereby also partaker, on its part, of a like condition” (sensuous perception), “yet not of all that the former possesses; therefore, when the soul escapes, sensuous perception exists no more for it. The aggregate spoken of above has not this power in itself, but derives it from the other which is brought into union with it, and the sentient movement comes to pass through the flow of sympathy which they have in common.”161 Of such conceptions it is impossible to make anything. The above-mentioned (p. 287) interruption of the streaming together of images of external things with our organs, as the ground of error, is now explained by the theory that the soul consists of peculiar atoms, and the atoms are separated from one another by vacuum. With such empty words and meaningless conceptions we shall no longer detain ourselves; we can have no respect for the philosophic thoughts of Epicurus, or rather he has no thoughts for us to respect.
Besides this description of the soul the philosophy of mind contains the ethics of Epicurus, which of all his doctrines are the most decried, and therefore the most interesting; they may, however, also be said to constitute the best part of that philosophy. The practical philosophy of Epicurus depends on the individuality of self-consciousness, just as much as does that of the Stoics; and the end of his ethics is in a measure the same, the unshaken tranquillity of the soul, and more particularly an undisturbed pure enjoyment of itself. Of course, if we regard the abstract principle involved in the ethics of Epicurus, our verdict cannot be other than exceedingly unfavourable. For if sensation, the feeling of pain and pleasure, is the criterion for the right, good, true, for that which man should make his aim in life, morality is really abrogated, or the moral principle is in fact not moral; at least we hold that the way is thereby opened up to all manner of arbitrariness in action. If it is now alleged that feeling is the ground of action, and that because I find a certain impulse in myself it is for that reason right — this is Epicurean reasoning. Everyone may have different feelings, and the same person, may feel differently at different times; in the same way with Epicurus it may be left to the subjectivity of the individual to determine the course of action. But it is of importance to notice this, that when Epicurus sets tip pleasure as the end, he concedes this only so far as its enjoyment is the result of philosophy. We have before now remarked (vol. i., p. 470) that even with the Cyrenaics, while on the one hand sensation was certainly made the principle, on the other hand it was essential that thought should be in intimate connection with it. Similarly it is the case with Epicurus that while he designated pleasure as the criterion of the good, he demanded a highly cultured consciousness, a power of reflection, which weighs pleasure to see if it is not combined with a greater degree of pain, and in this way forms a correct estimate of what it is. Diogenes Laërtius (X. 144) quotes from him with regard to this point of view: “The wise man owes but little to chance; Reason attains what is of the greatest consequence, and both directs it and will direct it his whole life long.” The particular pleasure is therefore regarded only with reference to the whole, and sensuous perception is not the one and only principle of the Epicureans; but while they made pleasure the principle, they made a principle at the same time of that happiness which is attained, and only attainable by reason; so that this happiness is to be sought in such a way that it may be free and independent of external contingencies, the contingencies of sensation. The true Epicureans were therefore, just as much as the Stoics, raised above all particular ties, for Epicurus, too, made his aim the undisturbed tranquillity of the wise man. In order to be free from superstition Epicurus specially requires physical science, as it sets men free from all the opinions which most disturb their rest — opinions regarding the gods, and their punishments, and more particularly from the thought of death.162 Freed from all this fear, and from the imaginings of the men who make any particular object their end and aim, the wise man seeks pleasure only as something universal, and holds this alone to be positive. Here the universal and the particular meet; or the particular, regarded only in its bearings to the whole, is raised into the form of universality. Thus it happens that, while materially, or as to content, Epicurus makes individuality a principle, on the other hand he requires the universality of thinking, and his philosophy is thus in accordance with that of the Stoics.
Seneca, who is known as a thorough-going and uncompromising Stoic, when in his treatise De Vita Beata (c. 12, 13) he happens to speak of the Epicureans, gives testimony which is above suspicion to the ethical system of Epicurus: “My verdict is, however — and in thus speaking I go, to some extent, against many of my own countrymen — that the moral precepts of Epicurus prescribe a way of life that is holy and just, and, when closely considered, even sorrowful. For every pleasure of Epicurus turns on something very paltry and poor, and we scarcely know how restricted it is, and how insipid. The self-same law which we lay down for virtue he prescribes for pleasure; he requires that Nature be obeyed; but very little in the way of luxury is required to satisfy Nature. What have we then here? He who calls a lazy, self-indulgent, and dissolute life happiness merely seeks a good authority for a thing that is evil, and while, drawn on by a dazzling name, he turns in the direction where he hears the praise of pleasure sounding, he does not follow the pleasures to which he is invited by Epicurus, but those which he himself brings with him. Men who thus abandon themselves to crime seek only to hide their wickedness under the mantle of philosophy, and to furnish for their excesses a pretext and an excuse. Thus it is by no means permitted that youth should hold up its head again for the reason that to the laxity of its morality an honourable title has been affixed.” By the employment of our reflective powers, which keep guard over pleasure and consider whether there can be any enjoyment in that which is fraught with dangers, fear, anxiety and other troubles, the possibility of our obtaining pleasure pure and unalloyed is reduced to a minimum. The principle of Epicurus is to live in freedom and ease, and with the mind at rest, and to this end it is needful to renounce much of that which men allow to sway them, and in which they find their pleasure. The life of a Stoic is therefore but little different from that of an Epicurean who keeps well before his eyes what Epicurus enjoins.
It might perhaps occur to us that the Cyrenaics had the same moral principle as the Epicureans, but Diogenes Laërtius (X. 139, 136, 137) shows us the difference that there was between them. The Cyrenaics rather made pleasure as a particular thing their end, while Epicurus, on the contrary, regarded it as a means, since he asserted painlessness to be pleasure, and allowed of no intermediate state. “Neither do the Cyrenaics recognize pleasure in rest (καταστηματικήν), but only in the determination of motion,” or as something affirmative, that consists in the enjoyment of the pleasant; “Epicurus, on the contrary, admits both — the pleasure of the body as well as that of the soul.” He meant by this that pleasure in rest is negative, as the absence of the unpleasant, and also an inward contentment, whereby rest is maintained within the mind. Epicurus explained these two kinds of pleasure more clearly as follows: “Freedom from fear and desire (ἀταραξία) and from pain and trouble (ἀπονία) are the passive pleasures (καταστηματικὶα ἡδοναί),” — the setting of our affections on nothing which we may run the risk of losing; pleasures of the senses, on the other hand, like “joy and mirth (χαρὰ δὲ καὶ εὐφροσύνη), are pleasures involving movement (κατὰ κίνησιν ἐνεργείᾳ βλέπονται.9)” The former pleasures Epicurus held to be the truest and highest. “Besides this, pain of the body was held by the Cyrenaics to be worse than sorrow of the soul, while with the Epicureans this is reversed.”
The main teaching of Epicurus in respect of morals is contained in a letter to Men\nceus, which Diogenes Laërtius has preserved, and in which Epicurus expresses himself as follows: “The youth must neither be slow to study philosophy, nor must the old man feel it a burden, for no one is either too young or too old to study the health of his soul. We must therefore endeavour to find out wherein the happy life consists; the following are its elements: First, we must hold that God is a living Being, incorruptible and happy, as the general belief supposes Him to be; and that nothing is lacking to His incorruptibility nor to His happiness. But though the existence of the gods is known to be a fact, yet they are not such as the multitude suppose them to be. He is therefore not impious who discards his faith in the gods of the multitude, but he who applies to them the opinions entertained of them by the mass.” By these gods of Epicurus we can understand nothing else than the Holy, the Universal, in concrete form. The Stoics held more to the ordinary conception, without indeed giving much thought to the Being of God; with the Epicureans, on the other hand, the gods express an immediate Idea of the system. Epicurus says: “That which is holy and incorruptible has itself no trouble nor causes it to others; therefore it is unstirred by either anger or show of favour, for it is in weakness only that such find a place. The gods may be known by means of Reason; they consist partly in Number; others are the perfected type of man, which, owing to the similarity of the images, arises from the continuous confluence of like images on one and the same subject.”163 The gods are thus the altogether general images which we receive into ourselves; and Cicero says (De Natura Deorum, 18, 38) that they come singly upon us in sleep. This general image, which is at the same time an anthropomorphic conception, is the same to which we give the name of Ideal, only that here the source assigned to it is the reiterated occurrence of images. The gods thus seem to Epicurus to be Ideals of the holy life; they are also existent things, consisting of the finest atoms; they are, however, pure souls, unmixed with any grosser element, and therefore exempt from toil and trouble and pain. Their self-enjoyment is wholly passive, as it must be if consistent, for action has always in it something alien, the opposition of itself and reality, and the toil and trouble which are involved in it really represent the aspect of consciousness of opposition rather than that of realization. The gods lead an existence of pure and passive self enjoyment, and trouble themselves not with the affairs of the world and of men. Epicurus goes on to say: “Men must pay reverence to the gods on account of the perfection of their nature and their surpassing holiness, not in order to gain from them some special good, or for the sake of this or that advantage,”164 The manner in which Epicurus represents the gods as corporeal Beings in human likeness has been much derided; thus Cicero, for instance, in the passage quoted (c. 18) laughs at Epicurus for alleging that the gods have only quasi bodies, flesh and blood. But from this there follows only that they are, as it were, the implicit, as we see it stated of the soul and things palpable to the senses, that they have behind them what is implicit. Our talk of qualities is no better; for if justice, goodness, and so on, are to be taken in sensu eminentiori, and not as they are with men, we have in God a Being in the same way possessed of only something resembling justice and the other qualities. With this there is closely connected the theory of Epicurus that the gods dwell in vacant space, in the intermediate spaces of the world, where they are exposed neither to rain or wind or snow or the like.165 For the intermediate spaces are the vacuum, wherein, as the principle of movement, are the atoms in themselves. Worlds, as phenomena, are complete continuous concretions of such atoms, but concretions which are only external relations. Between them, as in vacuum, there are thus these Beings also, which themselves are certainly concretions of atoms, but concretions which remain implicit. Yet this leads only to confusion, if a closer definition is given, for concretion constitutes what is for the senses, but the gods, even if they were concretions, would not be realities exactly such as these. In illogical fashion the general, the implicit, is taken out of reality and set above it, not as atoms, but just as before, as a combination of these atoms; in this way this combination is not itself the sensuous. This seems ridiculous, but it is connected with the interruptions spoken of, and with the relation of the vacuum to the plenum, the atom. So far, therefore, the gods belong to the category of negativity as against sensuality, and as this negative is thought, in that sense what Epicurus said of the gods may still to some extent be said. To this determination of God a larger measure of objectivity of course belongs, but it is a perfectly correct assertion that God, as Thought, is a holy Being, to whom reverence is due for His own sake alone. The first element in a happy life is therefore reverence for the gods, uninfluenced by fear or hope.
Further, a second point with Epicurus is the contemplation of death, the negative of existence, of self-consciousness in man; he requires us to have a true conception of death, because otherwise it disturbs our tranquillity. He accordingly says: “Accustom thyself then to the thought that death concerns us not; for all good and evil is a matter of sensation, but death is a deprivation (στέρησις) of sensation. Therefore the true reflection that death is no concern of ours, makes our mortal life one of enjoyment, since this thought does not add an endless length of days, but does away with the longing after immortality. For nothing in life has terrors for him who has once truly recognized the fact that not to live is not a matter of dread. Thus it is a vain thing to fear death, not because its presence but because the anticipation of it brings us pain. For how can the anticipation of a thing pain us when its reality does not? There is therefore in death nothing to trouble us. For when we are in life, death is not there, and when death is there, we are not. Therefore death does not concern either the living or the dead.” This is quite correct, if we look at the immediate; it is a thought full of meaning, and drives away fear. Mere privation, which death is, is not to be confounded with the feeling of being alive, which is positive; and there is no reason for worrying oneself about it. “But the future in general is neither ours, nor is it not ours; hence we must not count upon it as something that will come to pass, nor yet despair of it, as if it would not come to pass.”166 It is no concern of ours either that it is or that it is not; and it need not therefore cause us uneasiness. This the right way in which to regard the future also.
Epicurus passes on to speak of impulses, saying: “This moreover is to be kept in mind, that amongst impulses some are natural, but others are vain; and of those that are natural some are necessary while others are natural only. Those that are necessary are either necessary to happiness, or tend to save the body from pain, or to self-preservation in general. The perfect theory teaches how to choose that which promotes health of body and steadfastness of soul, and how to reject what impairs them, this being the aim of the holy life. This is the end of all our actions, to have neither pain of body nor uneasiness of mind. If we but attain to this, all turmoil of the soul is stilled, since the life no longer has to strive after something which it needs, and no longer has to seek anything outside of itself by which the welfare of soul and body is arrived at. But even on the supposition that pleasure is the first and the inborn good, we do not for that reason choose all pleasures, but many we renounce, when they are more than counterbalanced by their painful results; and many pains we prefer to pleasures, if there follows from them a pleasure that is greater. Contentment we hold to be a good, not that we may aim at merely reducing our requirements to a minimum, as the Cynics did, but that we may seek not to be discontented even when we have not very much, knowing that they most enjoy abundance who can do without it, and that what is naturally desired is easy to procure, while what is a mere idle fancy can be procured only with difficulty. Simple dishes afford just as much enjoyment as costly banquets, if they appease hunger. Therefore when we make pleasure our aim, it is not the enjoyments of the gourmand, as is often falsely thought, but freedom from both pain of body and uneasiness of mind. We attain to this life of happiness by sober reason alone, which examines the grounds of all choice and all rejection, and expels the thoughts by which the soul’s rest is most disturbed. It is surely better to be unhappy and reasonable than to be happy and unreasonable; for it is better that in our actions we should judge correctly than that we should be favoured by luck. Meditate on this day and night, and let thyself be shaken by nought from thy peace of soul, that thou mayest live as a god amongst men; for the man who lives amongst such imperishable treasures has nothing in common with mortal men. Of all those the first and foremost is reasonableness (φρόνησις), which on this account is still more excellent than philosophy; from it spring all the other virtues. For they show that one cannot live happily, unless he lives wisely and honourably and justly: nor can he live wisely and honourably and justly without living happily.”167
Therefore, although at first sight there seems not much to be said for the principle of Epicurus, nevertheless by means of the inversion of making the guiding principle to be found in thought proceeding from Reason, it passes into Stoicism, as even Seneca himself has admitted (v. supra, pp. 302, 303); and actually the same result is reached as with the Stoics. Hence the Epicureans describe their wise man in at least as glowing terms as the Stoics do theirs; and in both these systems the wise man is depicted with the same qualities, these being negative. With the Stoics the Universal is the essential principle, — not pleasure, the self-consciousness of the particular as particular; but the reality of this self-consciousness is equally something pleasant. With the Epicureans pleasure is the essential principle, but pleasure sought and enjoyed in such a way that it is pure and unalloyed, that is to say, in accordance with sound judgment, and with no greater evil following to destroy it: therefore pleasure is regarded in its whole extent, that is, as being itself a universal. In Diogenes Laërtius, however (X. 117-121), the Epicurean delineation of the wise man has a character of greater mildness; he shapes his conduct more according to laws already in operation, while the Stoic wise man, on the other hand, does not take these into account at all. The Epicurean wise man is less combative than the Stoic, because the latter makes his starting-point the thought of self-dependence, which, while denying self, exercises activity: the Epicureans, on the other hand, proceed from the thought of existence, which is not so exacting, and seeks not so much this activity directed outwards, as rest; this, however, is not won by lethargy, but by the highest mental culture. Yet although the content of the Epicurean philosophy, its aim and result, stands thus on as high a level as the Stoic philosophy, and is its exact parallel, the two are nevertheless in other respects directly opposed to one another; but each of these systems is one-sided, and therefore both of them are dogmatisms inconsistent with themselves by the necessity of the Notion, that is, they contain the contrary principle within them. The Stoics take the content of their thought from Being, from the sensuous, demanding that thought should be the thought of something existent: the Epicureans, on the contrary, extend their particularity of existence to the atoms which are only things of thought, and to pleasure as a universal; but in accordance with their respective principles, both schools know themselves to be definitely opposed to each other.
The negative mean to these one-sided principles is the Notion, which, abrogating fixed extremes of determination such as these, moves them and sets them free from a mere state of opposition. This movement of the Notion, the revival of dialectic — directed as it is against these one-sided principles of abstract thinking and sensation — we now see in its negative aspect, both in the New Academy and in the Sceptics. Even the Stoics, as having their principle in thought, cultivated dialectic, though theirs was (pp. 254, 255) a common logic, in which the form of simplicity passes for the Notion, while the Notion, as such, represents the negative element in it, and dissolves the determinations, which are taken up into that simplicity. There is a higher form of the Notion of dialectic reality, which not only applies itself to sensuous existence, but also to determinate Notions, and which brings to consciousness the opposition between thought and existence; not expressing the Universal as simple Idea, but as a universality in which all comes back into consciousness as an essential moment of existence. In Scepticism we now really have an abrogation of the two one-sided systems that we have hitherto dealt with; but this negative remains negative only, and is incapable of passing into an affirmative.
AS OPPOSED TO the Stoic and Epicurean Dogmatism, we first of all have the New Academy, which is a continuation of Plato’s Academy in as far as the followers of Plato are divided into the Old, Middle, and New Academies; some indeed allow of a fourth Academy and even a fifth.168 The most noteworthy figures here are those of Arcesilaus and Carneades. The establishment of the Middle Academy is ascribed to Arcesilaus, and the New Academy is said to contain the philosophy of Carneades; but this distinction has no signification. Both of these are closely connected with Scepticism, and the Sceptics themselves have often trouble in distinguishing their standpoint from the Academic principle. Both have been claimed by Scepticism as Sceptics, but between the Academics and pure Scepticism a distinction has been drawn, which is certainly very formal, and has but little signification, but to which the Sceptics in their subtlety undoubtedly attached some meaning. The distinction often consists in the meanings of words only, and in quite external differences.
The standpoint of the Academics is that they express the truth as a subjective conviction of self-consciousness; and this tallies with the subjective idealism of modern times. The truth, in so far as it is only a subjective conviction, has hence been called, by the New Academy, the probable. Although followers of Plato, and hence, Platonists, the Academicians did not remain at the standpoint of Plato, nor could they have done so. But we easily see the connection of this principle with the Platonic doctrines, if we recollect that with Plato the Idea has been the principle, and that, indeed, on the whole, in the form of universality. Plato remained, as we saw above (pp. 139, 140), in the abstract Idea; to him the one great matter in Philosophy is to combine the infinite and finite. Plato’s Ideas are derived from the necessities of reason, from enthusiasm for the truth, but they are in themselves devoid of movement, and only universal, while Aristotle demands actuality, self-determining activity. Plato’s dialectic has only attempted to assert the universal as such, and to demonstrate the determinate and particular to be null, thus leaving nothing at all but abstract universality. His dialectic has hence very often a negative result, in which determinations are merely done away with and annulled. With Plato the working out of the concrete has thus not gone far, and where he, as in the Timæus, proceeds into the determinate, e.g. of organic life, he becomes infinitely trivial and quite unspeculative, while with Aristotle matters are very different. The necessity for a scientific ground has necessarily caused us to be carried on beyond this Platonic point of view. The Stoics and Epicureans were imbued with the scientific necessity, not yet recognized by Plato, of giving a content to the universal of the Idea, i.e. of grasping particular determinateness, but the succeeding Academicians stand in a negative attitude to them in this regard. To the end they made a point of holding to the Platonic universality, uniting to this the Platonic dialectic also. The principle of the New Academy could thus, like the Platonic dialectic, possess a dialectic attitude and bearing which proceeded to nothing affirmative; as, indeed, in many of Plato’s dialogues, mere confusion is what is arrived at. But while with Plato the affirmative result is essentially the result of dialectic, so that with him we have really found the universal Idea as species, during all this time, on the other hand, the tendency to abstract apprehension is predominant; and as this showed itself in the Stoic and Epicurean philosophy, it has also extended to the Platonic Idea and degraded it into being a form of the understanding. Plato’s Ideas were thus torn from their rest through thought, because in such universality thought has not yet recognized itself as self-consciousness. Self-consciousness confronted them with great pretensions, actuality in general asserted itself against universality; and the rest of the Idea necessarily passed into the movement of thought. This movement now, however, in the New Academy turned dialectically against the determination of the Stoics and Epicureans, which rested on the fact that the criterion of the truth ought to be a concrete. For example, in the conception as comprehended by the Stoics, there is a thought which likewise has a content, although, again, this union still remains very formal. But the two forms in which the dialectic of the New Academy turns against this concrete, are represented by Arcesilaus and Carneades.
Arcesilaus kept to the abstraction of the Idea as against the criterion; for though in the Idea of Plato, i.e. in the Timæus and in his dialectic, the concrete was derived from quite another source, this was only admitted for the first time later on by the Neo-platonists, who really recognized the unity of the Platonic and the Aristotelian principles. The opposition to the Dogmatists thus does not in the case of Arcesilaus proceed from the dialectic of the Sceptics, but from keeping to abstraction; and here we perceive the gulf marking out this epoch from any other.
Arcesilaus was born at Pitane in Æolia in the 116th Olympiad (318 B.C.), and was a contemporary of Epicurus and Zeno. Though he originally belonged to the Old Academy, yet the spirit of the time and the progressive development of Philosophy did not now admit of the simplicity of the Platonic manner. He possessed considerable means, and devoted himself entirely to the studies requisite for the education of a noble Greek, viz. to rhetoric, poetry, music, mathematics, &c. Mainly for the purpose of exercising himself in rhetoric, he came to Athens, here was introduced to Philosophy, and lived henceforth for its sake alone; he held intercourse with Theophrastus, Zeno, &c., and it is a subject of dispute whether he did not hear Pyrrho also. Arcesilaus, familiar with all the Philosophy of those days, was by his contemporaries held to be as noble a man as he was a subtle and acute philosopher; being without pride in himself, he recognized the merits of others. He lived in Athens, occupied the post of scholarch in the Academy, and was thus a successor of Plato. After the death of Crates, the successor of Speusippus, the place of honour in the Academy devolved on Sosicrates, but he willingly gave it up in favour of Arcesilaus on account of the superiority of the latter in talent and philosophy. What really happened as regards the transference of the chair to others, is, for the rest, unknown to us. He filled this office, in which he made use of the method of disputation, with approbation and applause, until his death, which took place in Olympiad 134, 4 (244 B.C.), in the seventy-fourth year of his age.169
The principal points in the philosophy of Arcesilaus are preserved by Cicero in his Academics Quæstiones, but Sextus Empiricus is more valuable as an authority, for he is more thorough, definite, philosophic and systematic.
a. This philosophy is specially known to us as being a dialectic directed against Stoicism, with which Arcesilaus had much to do, and its result, as far as its main principles are concerned, is expressed thus: “The wise man must restrain his approbation and assent.”170 This principle was called ἐποχή, and it is the same as that of the Sceptics; on the other hand this expression is connected with the principle of the Stoics as follows. Because to Stoic philosophy truth consists in the fact that thought declares some content of existence to be its own, and the conception as comprehended gives its approbation to this content, the content of our conceptions, principles and thoughts undoubtedly appears to be different from thought, and the union of the two, which is the concrete, only arises by means of some determinate content being taken up into the form of thought and thus being expressed as the truth. But Arcesilaus saw this consequence, and his saying that approbation most be withheld is thus as much as saying that by thus taking up the content no truth comes to pass, but only phenomenon; and this is true, because, as Arcesilaus puts it, conception and thought likewise remain apart. Arcesilaus has certainly unthinkingly allowed that this content united to consciousness is a concrete such as was indicated, only he has asserted that this connection merely gives a perception with a good ground, and not what he calls truth. This is called probability, but not quite appropriately; it is a universal set forth through the form of thought, and is only formal, having no absolute truth. Sextus (Pyrrh. Hyp. I. c. 33, § 233) puts this plainly in saying that “Arcesilaus has declared the withholding of approbation in relation to parts, to be a good, but the assenting to parts to be an evil,” because the assent only concerns parts. That is, if thought is to be retained as a universal, it cannot come to be a criterion; and that is the meaning of Arcesilaus when he asks that the wise man should remain at the universal, and not go on to the determinate as if this determinate were the truth.
Sextus Empiricus gives us (adv. Math. VII. 155, 151-153) a more particular explanation of this philosophy, which is preserved to us only as being in opposition to the Stoics. Arcesilaus asserted as against the Stoics, that everything is incomprehensible (ἀκατάληπτα). He thus combated the conception of thought (καταληπτικὴν φαντασίαν), which to the Stoics is the point of most importance and the concrete truth. Arcesilaus further attacked the Stoics thus: “They themselves say that the conception of thought is the mean between scientific knowledge and opinion, the one of which pertains alone to fools and the other alone to wise men; the conception of thought is common to both, and the criterion of the truth. Arcesilaus here argued in such a way as to show that between scientific knowledge and opinion the conception of thought is no criterion, for it is either in the wise man or the fool, and in the former it is knowledge, and in the latter, opinion. If it is nothing excepting these, there remains to it nothing but an empty name.” For knowledge must be a developed consciousness derived from reasons, but these reasons, as conceptions of thought, Arcesilaus states to be just such thoughts as those of the fool. They are thus, no doubt, the concrete directing power which constitutes the principal content of our consciousness; but it is not proved that they are the truth. Thus this mean, as judging between reason and opinion, pertains equally to the wise man and the fool, and may be error or truth equally; and thus the wise man and the fool have the same criterion, and yet they must, in relation to the truth, be distinguished from one another.
Arcesilaus further gives effect to the distinctions which are more particularly brought up in modern times, and relied upon. “If comprehension is the assent given to a conception of thought, it does not exist. For, in the first place, the assent is not on account of a conception, but of a reason; that is to say, it is only as regards axioms that this assent holds good.”171 That is good; more fully the purport would be something like this: Thought, as subjective, is made to assent to an existence which is a determinate content of the conception. A sensuous image such as this, however, is foreign to thought, and with it thought cannot accord, because it is something different from it, something from which thought, on the contrary, holds itself aloof. It is, in general, only to a thought that thought finds itself conformable, and only in a thought that it finds itself; thus only a universal axiom is capable of such accord, for only such abstract principles are immediately pure thoughts. Arcesilaus thus holds it up against the Stoics that their principle contains a contradiction within itself, because the conception of thought is made to be the thought of another, but thought can only think itself. This is a thought which concerns the inmost essence of the thing. Arcesilaus thus here makes the same celebrated distinction as in recent times has again been brought forward with so much force as the opposition between thought and Being, ideality and reality, subjective and objective. Things are something different from me. How can I attain to things? Thought is the independent determination of a content as universal; but a given content is individual and hence we cannot assent to such. The one is here, the other there; subjective and objective cannot pass to one another — this is a form of thought upon which for long the whole culture of modern philosophy has turned, and which we still find to-day. It is important to have a consciousness of this difference, and to assert this consciousness against the principle of the Stoics. It was of this unity of thought and reality that the Stoics ought to have given an account; and this they did not do, and indeed it was never done in ancient times. For the ancients did not prove that the subjective element of thought and this objective content are really in their diversity the passing into one another, and that this identity is their truth; this was only found in Plato in an abstract form and as a first commencement. The unity of thought and conception is the difficult matter; thus if thought, as such, is the principle, it is abstract. The logic of the Stoics hence remained formal merely, and the attainment of a content could not be demonstrated. Thought and Being are themselves such abstractions, and we may move to and fro between them for long without arriving at any determination. Thus this unity of universal and particular cannot be the criterion. With the Stoics the conception as comprehended appears to be immediately asserted; it is a concrete, but it is not shown that this is the truth of these distinct elements. Against this immediately accepted concrete, the assertion of the difference of the two is thus quite consistent.
“In the second place,” says Arcesilaus, “there is no apprehended conception that is not also false, as has been confirmed many times and oft,” just as the Stoics themselves say that the apprehended conception could be both true and false. Determinate content has its opposite in a determinate which must likewise as an object of thought be true; and this destroys itself. In this consists the blind wandering about in thoughts and reasons such as these, which are not grasped as Idea, as the unity of opposites, but in one of the opposites asserts one thing, and then, with as good reason, the opposite. The truth of the world is, on the contrary, quite different, the universal law of reason which is as such for thought. Reasons are relatively ultimate for a content, but not absolutely ultimate; they can only be regarded as good reasons, as probability, as the Academics express it. This is a great truth which Arcesilaus had attained. But because no unity can thus come forth, he then draws the conclusion that the wise man must withhold his assent, that is, not that he should not think, but that he must not merely for that reason regard as true that which is thought. “For since nothing is comprehensible, he will, if he assents, assent to an incomprehensible; now because such an assent is opinion, the wise man will only be wise in opinion.”172 We still likewise hear this said: Man thinks, but does not thereby arrive at the truth; it remains beyond. Cicero (Acad. Quæst. IV. 24) thus expresses this: “Neither the false nor the true can be known, if the true were simply to be such as is the false.”
b. In relation to what is practical, Arcesilaus says: “But since the conduct of life without a criterion of the true or the false is impossible, and the end of life, or happiness, can only be determined through such grounds, the wise man, not withholding his approbation regarding everything, will, as regards what has to be done and left undone, direct his actions in accordance with the probable (εὔλογον),” as the subjectively convincing conception. What is right in this is that the good ground does not extend as far as truth. “Happiness is brought about by discretion (φρόνησις), and rational conduct operates in fitting and right action (κατορθώμασι); that is rightly done which is permitted by a well-grounded justification,” so that it appears to be true. “Thus, he who regards what is well-founded will do rightly and be happy,” but for this culture and intelligent thought are requisite. Arcesilaus thus remains at the indeterminate, at subjectivity of conviction, and a probability justified by good grounds. Thus we see that in regard to what is positive, Arcesilaus does not really get any further than the Stoics, nor say anything different from what they do; only the form is different, because, what the Stoics call true, Arcesilaus calls well-founded or probable. But, on the whole, he possessed a higher kind of knowledge than the Stoics, because what is thus founded cannot be held to have the significance of an implicit existence, but only a relative truth in consciousness.
Carneades was equally famous; he was one of the followers of Arcesilaus in the Academy, and he also lived in Athens, though considerably later. He was born in Cyrene in Ol. 141, 3 (217 B.C.), and died in Ol. 162, 4 (132 B.C.), thus being eighty-five years old; though, according to others he was as much as ninety.173 During the already mentioned (pp. 241, 242) embassy of the three philosophers to Rome, it was chiefly Carneades’ quickness, eloquence, and power of conviction, as also his great fame, which aroused remark, attracted men together, and gained great approbation in Rome. For he here held, after the manner of the Academics, two discourses on justice; the one for and the other against justice. That on which both generally speaking rested, can easily be discovered. In the justification of justice he took the universal as principle; but in showing its nullity, he laid weight on the principle of individuality, of self-interest. To the young Romans who knew little of the opposition in the Notion, this was something new; they had no idea of such methods of applying thought, were much attracted by them, and were soon won over to them. But the older Romans, and particularly the elder Cato, the Censor, who was then still living, saw this very unwillingly, and declaimed much against it, because the youths were thereby turned away from the strictness of ideas and virtues which prevailed in Rome. As the evil gained ground, Caius Acilius made a proposition in the Senate to banish all philosophers from the city, amongst whom, naturally, without their names being mentioned, those three ambassadors were included. The elder Cato, however, moved the Senate to conclude the business with the ambassadors as quickly as possible, so that they might again set forth, and return to their schools, and might henceforth instruct only the sons of the Greeks. The Roman youths might then as formerly give ear to their laws and magistrates, and learn wisdom from intercourse with the senators.174 But this taint can no more be avoided than could in Paradise the desire for knowledge. The knowledge which is a necessary moment in the culture of a people, thus makes its appearance as the Fall from innocence, and as corruption. An epoch such as this, in which thought appears to veer about, is then regarded as an evil as far as the security of the ancient constitution is concerned. But this evil of thought cannot be prevented by laws, &c.; it can and must be the healer of itself through itself alone, if thought through thought itself is truly brought to pass.
a. The philosophy of Carneades has been given to us in most detail by Sextus Empiricus; and all else of Carneades that we possess is likewise directed against the dogmatism of the Stoic and Epicurean philosophy. The fact that the nature of consciousness is what is most particularly considered makes his propositions interesting. While in Arcesilaus we still found a good reason or argument maintained, the principle which Carneades supported is expressed as that “in the first place there is absolutely no criterion of the truth, neither feeling, conception, nor thought, nor any other such thing; for all this put together deceives us.” This general empirical proposition is still in vogue. In developing the matter further, Carneades proves what he says from reasons, and we have the nature of consciousness more definitely expressed in the following: “In the second place he shows that even if such a criterion existed, it could not be without an affection (πάθος) of consciousness, which proceeds from perception.”175 For this, speaking generally, is his principal reflection, that every criterion must be constituted so that it has two elements, one being the objective, existent, immediately determined, while the other element is an affection, an activity, an attribute of consciousness, and belongs to the sensitive, conceiving or thinking subject — but as such it could not be the criterion. For this activity of consciousness consists in the fact that it changes the objective, and thus does not allow the objective as it is to come to us immediately. Hence the same attitude of separation is pre-supposed as formerly, viz. that the understanding is to be regarded as an ultimate and clearly absolute relationship.
α. As against the Epicureans, Carneades maintains this: “Because the living is distinguished from the dead through the activity of sensation, by this means it will comprehend itself and what is external. But this sensation which,” as Epicurus puts it (supra, p. 281), “remains unmoved and is impassive and unchangeable, is neither sensation nor does it comprehend anything. For not until they have been changed and determined by the invasion of the actual does sensation show forth things.”176 The sensation of Epicurus is an existent, but there is in it no principle of judgment, because each sensation is independent. But sensation must be analyzed in accordance with the two points of view there present, for as the soul is therein, determined, so likewise is that which determines determined by the energy of the conscious subject. Because I, as a living being, have sensation, a change in my consciousness takes place, which means that I am determined from without and from within. Consequently the criterion cannot be a simple determinateness, for it is really an implicit relationship in which two moments, sensation and thought, must be distinguished.
β. Since to Carneades sensation is merely what comes first, he then says: “The criterion is thus to be sought for in the affection of the soul by actuality.” For it is only in the mean between the energy of the soul and that of outward things that the criterion can fall. A determinate content of sensation such as this, which is at the same time again determined through consciousness, this passivity and activity of consciousness, this third something, Carneades called the conception which constituted to the Stoics the content of thought. Respecting this criterion, he says: “This being determined must, however, be an indication both of itself and of the apparent, or of the thing through which it is affected; this affection is none other than the conception. Hence in life the conception is something which presents both itself and the other. If we see something, the sight has an affection, and it no longer is just as it was before seeing. Through an alteration such as this there arise in us two things: first change itself, i.e. the ordinary conception” (the subjective side) “and then that which change produced, what is seen” (the objective). “Now just as the light shows itself and everything in it, the conception reigns over knowledge in the animal, and it must, like the light, make itself evident, and reveal the actual through which consciousness is affected.” This is quite the correct standpoint for consciousness, and it is in itself comprehensible, but it is only for the phenomenal mind that the other in the determinateness of consciousness is present. We now expect a development of this opposition; but Carneades passes into the region of empiricism without giving this further development. “Since the conception,” he continues, “does not always point to the truth, but often lies, and resembles bad messengers in that it misrepresents what it proceeds from, it follows that not every conception can give a criterion of the truth, but only that which is true, if any are so. But because none is so constituted that it might not also be false, conceptions are likewise a common criterion of the true as of the false, or they form no criterion.” Carneades also appealed to the fact of a conception proceeding even from something not existing, or — if the Stoics asserted that what in the objective is thinkingly apprehended is an existent — to the fact that the false may also be apprehended.177 In a popular way that is stated thus: There are also conceptions of untruth. Although I am convinced, it is still my conception merely, even if men think they have said something by saying that they have this conviction. They likewise say that insight or objective knowledge is still only the conviction of difference, but really the content is in its nature universal.
γ. Finally, “because no conception is a criterion, neither can thought be taken as such, for this depends on conception” — and must hence be just as uncertain as it is. “For to thought, that respecting which it judges must be conception; but conception cannot exist without unthinking sensation” — this may, however, be either true or false, “so that there is no criterion.”178 This constitutes the principle in the Academic philosophy — that on the one hand the conception is in itself this distinction of thought and existence, and that there is likewise a unity of both, which, however, is no absolutely existing unity. Philosophic culture of those times remained at this standpoint, and in modern times Reinhold also arrived at the same result.
b. Now what Carneades gave expression to of an affirmative nature respecting the criterion, is found in the statement that undoubtedly criteria are to be maintained for the conduct of life and for the acquisition of happiness, but not for the speculative consideration of what is in and for itself. Thus Carneades passes more into what is psychological, and into finite forms of the understanding consciousness; this is consequently no criterion respecting truth, but respecting the subjective habits and customs of the individual, and hence it also is of subjective truth alone, although it still remains a concrete end. “The conception is a conception of something; of that from which it comes as of the externally perceived object, and of the subject in which it is, e.g. of man. In this way it has two relationships — on the one hand to the object, and, on the other, to that which forms the conception. According to the former relationship it is either true or false; true if it harmonizes with what is conceived of, false if this is not so.” But this point of view cannot here in any way come under consideration, for the judgment respecting this harmony is most certainly not in a position to separate the matter itself from the matter as conceived. “According to the relationship to that which conceives, the one is conceived (φαινομένε) to be true, but the other is not conceived to be true.” Merely this relationship to the conceiver, however, comes under the consideration of the Academicians. “That conceived of as true is called by the Academician appearance (ἔμφασις) and conviction, and convincing conception; but what is not conceived as true is called incongruity (ἀπέμφασις) and non-conviction and non-convincing conception. For neither that which is presented to us through itself as untrue, nor what is true but is not presented to us, convinces us.”179
Carneades thus determines the leading principle very much as does Arcesilaus, for he recognizes it merely in the form of a “convincing conception;” but as convincing it is “likewise a firm and a developed conception,” if it is to be a criterion of life. These distinctions, on the whole, pertain to a correct analysis, and likewise approximately appear in formal logic; they are very much the same stages as are found, according to Wolff, in the clear, distinct, and adequate conception. “We have now shortly to show what is the distinction between these three steps.”180
α. “A convincing conception (πιθανή) is that which appears to be true and which is sufficiently obvious; it has a certain breadth as well, and may be applied in many ways and in a great variety of cases; ever verifying itself more through repetitions,” as in the case of Epicurus, “it makes itself ever more convincing and trustworthy.” No further account of its content is given, but what is so frequently produced is, as empirical universality, made the first criterion.181 But this is only an individual and, speaking generally, an immediate and quite simple conception.
β. “Because, however, a conception is never for itself alone, but one depends on another as in a chain, the second criterion is added, viz. that it should be both convincing and secure (ἀπερίσπαστος),” i.e. connected and determined on all sides, so that it cannot be changed, nor drawn this way and that and made variable by circumstances; and other conceptions do not contradict it, because it is known in this connection with others. This is quite a correct determination, which everywhere appears in the universal. Nothing is seen or said alone, for a number of circumstances stand in connection with it. “For example, in the conception of a man much is contained, both as to what concerns himself and what surrounds him: as to the former, there is colour, size, form, movement, dress, &c.; and in reference to the latter, air, light, friends, and the like. If none of such circumstances make us uncertain or cause us to think the others false, but when all uniformly agree, the conception is the more convincing.”182 Thus when a conception is in harmony with the manifold circumstances in which it stands, it is secure. A cord may be thought to be a snake, but all the circumstances of the same have not been considered. “Thus, as in judging of an illness all the symptoms must be brought under our consideration, so the fixed conception has conviction because all circumstances agree.”183
γ. “Even more trustworthy than the fixed conception is the conception as developed (διεξωδευμένη), which brings about perfect conviction,” the third moment. “While in the case of the fixed conception we only investigate whether the circumstances agree with one another, in the developed conception each one of the circumstances existing in harmony is strictly inquired into on its own account. Thus he who judges as well as what is judged and that according to which judgment is given, are subject to investigations. Just as in common life in some unimportant matter one witness satisfies us, in one more important several are required, and in a case which is more material still the individual witnesses are themselves examined through a comparison of their testimonies, so in less important matters a general convincing conception satisfies us, in things of a certain importance one which is established, but in those which pertain to a good and happy life one which is investigated in its parts is required.”184 We thus see — in contradistinction to those who place truth in what is immediate, and, especially in recent times, in sensuous perception, in an immediate knowledge, whether as inward revelation or outward perception — that this kind of certainty with Carneades rightly takes the lowest place; the conception worked out and developed really is to him the essential one, and yet it appears in a formal manner only. In fact, the truth is only in thinking knowledge, and if Carneades does not exhaust all that can be said of the nature of this knowledge, he still has rightly emphasized an essential moment in it, the opening out and the judging movements of the moments.
In the New Academy we see the subjective side of conviction expressed, or the belief that not the truth as truth, but its manifestation, or really what it is to the conception, is present in consciousness. Thus only subjective certainty is demanded; of the truth nothing more is said, for only what is relative in respect of consciousness is considered. Just as the Academic principle limited itself to the subjective act of the convincing conception, so likewise did the Stoics really place implicit existence in thought, and Epicurus in perception; but they called this the truth. The Academicians, on the contrary, set it up against the truth, and asserted that it is not the existent as such. They had thus a consciousness that the implicit really has the moment of consciousness in it, and that without this it cannot exist; this was also a fundamental principle to the former, but they were not conscious of it. Though, according to this, the implicit has now an essential relation to consciousness, this last is still in contrast with the truth; to conscious knowledge, as to the moment of explicitude, the implicit thus still stands in the background, it still confronts it, but at the same time it includes the explicit as an essential moment, even in antagonism to itself; in other words, consciousness is not yet set forth in and for itself. Now, if this Academic standpoint is driven to its ultimate limit, it amounts to this, that everything is clearly for consciousness alone, and that the form of an existent, and of the knowledge of existence, also quite disappears as form; this, however, is Scepticism. Thus if the Academicians still preferred one conviction, one estimate of truth to another, as that in which the aim of a self-existent truth might be said to dwell, or float before their eyes, there still remains this simple belief in the validity of opinion without distinction, or the fact that everything is in like manner only related to consciousness, and is, in fact, phenomenal alone. Thus the Academy had no longer any fixed subsistence, but hereby really passed into Scepticism, which merely asserted a subjective belief in truth, so that all objective truth has really been denied.
SCEPTICISM COMPLETED THE theory of the subjectivity of all knowledge by the fact that in knowledge it universally substituted for Being the expression appearance. Now this Scepticism undoubtedly appears to be something most impressive, to which great respect is due from man. In all times as now, it has been held to be the most formidable, and, indeed, the invincible opponent of Philosophy, because it signifies the art of dissolving all that is determinate, and showing it in its nullity. Thus it might almost appear as though it were held to be in itself invincible, and as though the only difference in convictions were whether the individual decided for it or for a positive, dogmatic philosophy. Its result undoubtedly is the disintegration of the truth, and, consequently, of all content, and thus perfect negation. The invincibility of Scepticism must undoubtedly be granted, only, however, in a subjective sense as regards the individual, who may keep to the point of view of taking no notice of Philosophy, and only asserting the negative. Scepticism in this way seems to be something to which men give themselves over, and we have the impression that we are not able to get within reach of anyone who thus throws himself entirely into Scepticism; another man, however, simply rests content with his philosophy, because he takes no notice of Scepticism, and this is really what he ought to do, for, properly speaking, it cannot be refuted. Certainly if we were merely to escape from it, it would not in reality have been defeated, for on its side it would remain where it was, and in possession of the field. For positive philosophy allows Scepticism to exist beside it; Scepticism, on the other hand, encroaches upon the domain of positive philosophy, for Scepticism has power to overcome the other, while positive philosophy cannot do the same to it. If anyone actually desires to be a Sceptic, he cannot be convinced, or be brought to a positive philosophy,185 any more than he who is paralyzed in all his limbs can be made to stand. Scepticism is, in fact, such paralysis — an incapacity for truth which can only reach certainty of self, and not of the universal, remaining merely in the negative, and in individual self-consciousness. To keep oneself in individuality depends on the will of the individual; no one can prevent a man from doing this, because no one can possibly drive another out of nothing. But thinking Scepticism is quite different; it is the demonstration that all that is determinate and finite is unstable. As to this, positive philosophy may have the consciousness that it has the negation to Scepticism in itself; thus it does not oppose it, nor is it outside of it, for Scepticism is a moment in it. But this is true in such a way that this philosophy comprehends in itself the negative in its truth, as it is not present in Scepticism.
The relation of Scepticism to Philosophy is further this, that the former is the dialectic of all that is determinate. The finitude of all conceptions of truth can be shown, for they contain in themselves a negation, and consequently a contradiction. The ordinary universal and infinite is not exalted over this, for the universal which confronts the particular, the indeterminate which opposes the determinate, the infinite which confronts the finite, each form only the one side, and, as such, are only a determinate. Scepticism is similarly directed against the thought of the ordinary understanding which makes determinate differences appear to be ultimate and existent. But the logical Notion is itself this dialectic of Scepticism, for this negativity which is characteristic of Scepticism likewise belongs to the true knowledge of the Idea. The only difference is that the sceptics remain at the result as negative, saying, “This and this has an internal contradiction, it thus disintegrates itself, and consequently does not exist.” But this result as merely negative is itself again a one-sided determinateness opposed to the positive; i.e. Scepticism only holds its place as abstract understanding. It makes the mistake of thinking that this negation is likewise a determinate affirmative content in itself; for it is, as the negation of negation, the self-relating negativity or infinite affirmation. This, put quite abstractly, is the relation of Philosophy to Scepticism. The Idea, as abstract Idea, is the quiescent and inert; it only is in truth in as far as it grasps itself as living. This occurs because it is implicitly dialectic, in order to abrogate that inert quiescence, and to change itself. But if the philosophic Idea is thus implicitly dialectic, it is not so in a contingent manner. Scepticism, on the contrary, exercises its dialectic contingently, for just as the material comes up before it, it shows in the same that implicitly it is negative.
The older Scepticism must further be distinguished from the modern, and it is only with the former that we have to do, for it alone is of a true, profound nature; the modern more resembles Epicureanism. Thus Schulze of Göttingen has in recent times boasted of his Scepticism; he wrote an “Ænesidemus” in order thus to compare himself with that sceptic; and in other works, too, he put forward Scepticism in opposition to Leibnitz and to Kant. Nevertheless, he ignores entirely the true position of Scepticism as it has just been described, and instead of representing the true distinction which exists between his Scepticism and the ancient, Schulze recognizes nothing but Dogmatism and Scepticism, and not the third philosophy at all. Schulze and others make it fundamental that we must consider sensuous Being, what is given to us by sensuous consciousness, to be true; all else must be doubted. What we think is ultimate, the facts of consciousness. The older sceptics, indeed, allowed that men must direct their actions in accordance with this last, but to assert it to be the truth did not occur to them. Modern Scepticism is only directed against thought, against the Notion and the Idea, and thus against what is in a higher sense philosophic; it consequently leaves the reality of things quite unquestioned, and merely asserts that from it nothing can be argued as regards thought. But that is not even a peasants’ philosophy, for they know that all earthly things are transient, and that thus their Being is as good as their non-being. Modern Scepticism is the subjectivity and vanity of consciousness, which is undoubtedly invincible, not, however, to science and truth, but merely to itself, this subjectivity. For it goes no further than saying, “This is held by me to be true, my feeling, my heart is ultimate to me.” But here certainty is alone in question, and not truth; and, indeed, this nowadays is no longer called Scepticism. But the conviction of this individual subject expresses nothing at all, however high the matter which we talk of is supposed to be. Thus because on the one hand it is said that the truth is merely the conviction of another, and on the other hand personal conviction, which is also a ‘merely,’ is set on high, we must leave this subject alone, first on account of its high pretensions, and then on account of its lowliness. The result of the older Scepticism is indeed the subjectivity of knowledge only, but this is founded on an elaborately thought out annihilation of everything which is held to be true and existent, so that everything is made transient.
According to this, the function of Scepticism is wrongly termed the inculcation of proneness to doubt; nor can we translate σκέψις by Doubt, if Scepticism was also called by Sextus (Pyrrh. Hyp. I. 3, § 7) ephectic (ἐφεκτική) because one of its chief points was that judgment must be suspended. Doubt, however, is only uncertainty, irresolution, indecision, the thought which is opposed to something held to be valid. Doubt proceeds from the fact of there being two; it is a passing to and fro between two or more points of view, so that we neither rest at the one nor the other — and yet we ought to remain at one point or another. Thus doubt in man is quite likely to involve a rending asunder of mind and spirit; it gives unrest and brings unhappiness with it; doubts, for instance, arise respecting the immortality of the soul and the existence of God. Forty years ago,186 much was written about this; in poetry, too, we found the situation of the doubter was a subject of the greatest interest, the unhappiness of doubt being depicted to us as in the “Messias.” This supposes a deep interest in a content, and the desire of the mind that this content should either be established in it or not, because it desires to find its rest either in the one or the other. Such doubt is said to betoken a keen and sharp-witted thinker, but it is only vanity and simple verbiage, or a feebleness that can never arrive at anything. This Scepticism has nowadays entered into our life, and it thus makes itself of account as this universal negativity. But the older Scepticism does not doubt, being certain of untruth, and indifferent to the one as to the other; it does not only flit to and fro with thoughts that leave the possibility that something may still be true, but it proves with certainty the untruth of all. Or its doubt to it is certainty which has not the intention of attaining to truth, nor does it leave this matter undecided, for it is completely at a point, and perfectly decided, although this decision is not truth to it. This certainty of itself thus has as result the rest and security of the mind in itself, which is not touched with any grief, and of which doubt is the direct opposite. This is the standpoint of the imperturbability of Scepticism.
Now what has to be considered even before treating of Scepticism itself, is its external history. As regards the origin of Scepticism the Sceptics say that it is very old, that is, if we take it in the quite indeterminate and universal sense, in so far as to say “Things are, but their Being is not true, for it likewise involves their non-being; or they are changeable. For example, this day is to-day, but to-morrow is also to-day, &c.; it is day now but night is also now, &c.” Thus of what in this way is allowed to be a determinate, the opposite is also expressed. Now if it be said that all things are transient, things may in the first place be changed; however this is not only possible, but the fact that all things are transient really means when taken in its universality:— “Nothing exists in itself, for its reality is the abrogation of self, because things in themselves, in accordance with their necessity, are transient. Only now are they thus; at another time they are different, and this time, the now, is itself no more while I am speaking of it; for time is not itself fixed, and it makes nothing fixed.” This uncertainty in what is sensuous represents a long-standing belief amongst the unphilosophic public as well as amongst philosophers up to this time; and this negativity in all determinations likewise constitutes the characteristic feature of Scepticism. The Sceptics have also presented this position in an historic way, and they show that even Homer was a sceptic, because he speaks of the same things in opposite ways. They also count in this category Bias, with his maxim “Pledge thyself never.” For this has the general sense “Do not consider anything to be anything, do not attach yourself to any object to which you devote yourself, do not believe in the security of any relationship, &c.” Likewise the negative aspect of the philosophy of Zeno and Xenophanes is said to be sceptical, and further, Heraclitus, too, with his principle that everything flows, that everything is consequently contradictory and transient; finally Plato and the Academy are sceptical, only here Scepticism is not yet quite clearly expressed.187 All this may be taken as being in part the sceptical uncertainty of everything; but that is not its real meaning. It is not this conscious and universal negativity; as conscious, it must prove, as universal, it must extend the untruth of the objective to everything; thus it is not a negativity which says definitely that everything is not implicit but is only for self-consciousness, and everything merely goes back into the certainty of itself. As philosophic consciousness Scepticism is consequently of later date. By Scepticism we must understand a specially constituted consciousness for which in some measure not only sensuous Being, but also Being for thought does not hold true, and which can then with consciousness account for the nullity of that which is asserted to be reality; and finally, in a general way, it not only annuls this and that sensuous fact or thought, but is adapted for the recognition in everything of its untruth.
The history of Scepticism, properly so called, is usually commenced with Pyrrho as being its founder; and from him the names Pyrrhonism and Pyrrhonic are derived. Sextus Empiricus (Pyrrh. Hyp. I. c. 3, § 7) says of him “that he went into Scepticism more fully (σωματικώτερον) and clearly than did his predecessors.” He is earlier than some of the philosophers already considered; but because Scepticism is to be taken as a whole, Pyrrho’s Scepticism, even if it is merely aimed against the immediate truth both of the senses and of morality, must be taken along with the later Scepticism, which directs its attention rather against the truth as thought, as will be farther shown on a closer consideration; for this last was the first, properly speaking, to make a sensation. As to the events of Pyrrho’s life, they appear to be as much a matter of doubt as his doctrine; for they are without any connection, and little is known for certain concerning them. Pyrrho lived in the time of Aristotle and was born at Elis. I shall not give the names of his instructors; Anaxarchus, a disciple of Democritus, is specially mentioned amongst them. We cannot discover where he really lived, for the most part at least. As a proof of how very much he was esteemed during his life, it is said that his native town chose him as head priest, and the town of Athens gave him the right of citizenship. It is finally stated that he accompanied Alexander the Great in his journey to Asia; and that there he had considerable dealings with magicians and Brahmins. We are told that Alexander had him put to death because he desired the death of a Persian satrap; and this fate befel him in his ninetieth year. If all this is to be accepted, since Alexander spent between twelve and fourteen years in Asia, Pyrrho must at the earliest have set out on his travels in his seventy-eighth year. Pyrrho does not appear to have come forward as a public teacher, but merely to have left behind him individual friends who had been educated by him. Anecdotes are told, not so much about the circumstances of his life as about the sceptical manner in which he conducted himself, and in them his behaviour is made to look ridiculous; in this the universal of Scepticism is set against a particular case, so that what is absurd shoots up as of itself into relationships which appear to be consistent. For because he asserted that the reality of sensuous things has no truth, it is, for instance, said that were he walking he would go out of the way of no object, no waggon or horse that came towards him; or he would go straight up against a wall, completely disbelieving in the reality of sensuous sensations and such like. They also said that it was only the friends surrounding him who drew him away from such dangers and saved him.188 But such anecdotes are evidently extravagant, because, for one thing, it is not conceivable that he could have followed Alexander to Asia at ninety years of age. It is also very clear that such stories are simply invented with the object of ridiculing the sceptical philosophy, by following out its principle to such extreme consequences. To the Sceptics sensuous existence undoubtedly holds good as phenomenal in so far as the regulation of ordinary conduct is concerned (infra, p. 343), but not in as far as it is held to be the truth; for even the followers of the New Academy said that men must not only direct their lives in accordance with rules of prudence, but also in accordance with the laws of sensuous manifestation (supra, pp. 319, 324).
After Pyrrho, Timon of Phliasis, the sillographist, became specially famous.189 Of his Silli, i.e. biting remarks respecting all philosophies, many are quoted by the ancients; they are certainly bitter and disdainful enough, but many of them are not very witty or worthy of being preserved. Dr. Paul collected them in an essay, but in it much is given that is meaningless. Goethe and Schiller certainly show more capacity in works of a similar nature. The Pyrrhonians hereupon disappear, — they seem in general only to have shown themselves in a more or less isolated way; for a long time after this we read in history of the Peripatetics, Stoics and Epicureans being confronted only by the Academicians and perhaps some of the older Sceptics who are mentioned likewise.
Ænesidemus was the first to reawaken Scepticism; he was of Cnossus in Crete, and lived in Cicero’s time in Alexandria,190 which soon began to compete with Athens for the honour of being the seat of Philosophy and the sciences. Subsequently, when the Academy lost itself in Scepticism, we see the latter, from which the former is all the same only separated by a thin partition, taking up a position of predominance as representing the purely negative point of view. But a scepticism such as that of Pyrrho, which does not as yet show much culture or tendency towards thought, but which is directed only against what is sensuous, could have no interest in the culture of Philosophy as it is found in Stoicism, Epicureanism, Platonism, &c. Thus it is requisite, in order that Scepticism should appear with the dignity pertaining to Philosophy, that it should itself be developed on its philosophic side; and this was first done by Ænesidemus.
However, one of the most celebrated of the Sceptics, whose works we still in great measure possess, and who for us is by far the most important writer upon Scepticism, because he gives us detailed accounts of this philosophy, is Sextus Empiricus, of whose life unfortunately as good as nothing is known. He was a physician, and that he was an empirical physician, who did not act according to theory but in accordance with what appears, his name tells us. He lived and taught about the middle of the second century after Christ.191 His works are divided into two parts: first, his Pyrrhoniæ Hypotyposes, in three books, which give us somewhat of a general presentation of Scepticism, and secondly his books adversus Mathematicos, i.e. against scientific knowledge generally, and more especially against the geometricians, arithmeticians, grammarians, musicians, logicians, physicists, and moral philosophers. There were in all eleven books, six of which are actually directed against mathematicians, but the other five against the philosophers.
The distinction between the Academy and Scepticism was a matter as to which the Sceptics exercised themselves much. The New Academy really bordered so closely upon Scepticism, that the Sceptics had enough to do to dissociate themselves from it, and in the Sceptic school a long and important battle raged as to whether Plato, and subsequently the New Academy, belonged to Scepticism or not;192 in the course of this we also see that Sextus did not really know what to make of Plato. The Sceptics are, on the whole, very careful to distinguish their own from other systems. Sextus (Pyrrh. Hyp. I. c. 1, §§ 1-4) distinguishes three philosophies: “He who seeks an object must either find it or deny that it can be found, or persevere in the search. Now the same holds good with philosophic investigations; some assert that they have found the truth; others deny that it can be grasped; a third set are still engaged in search. The first, like Aristotle, Epicurus, the Stoics, and others, are the so-called Dogmatists; those who assert incomprehensibility are the Academicians; the Sceptics still continue to seek. Hence there are three philosophies: the Dogmatic, the Academic and the Sceptical.” For this reason, the Sceptics called themselves the seekers (ζητητικοί), and their philosophy the seeking (ζητητική).193 However, the distinction between Scepticism and the New Academy rests in the form of expression only, and is thus not a great one: indeed it is founded only on the mania of the Sceptics to cut off and to shun any sort of assertive statement. Sextus (Pyrrh. Hyp. I. c. 7, § 13; c 10, §§ 19-20) says: “The Sceptic does not dogmatize, but only assents to the affections into which he is impelled, not of his own will, by the conceptions; thus, if for example, he is warm or cold, he will certainly not say, I seem not to be cold or warm. But if it be asked if the subject is as it appears, we allow appearance (φαίνεσθαι); yet we do not investigate the thing that appears, but only the predicate predicate (ὃ λέγεται)194 expressing its appearance. Thus, whether anything is sweet or not, we consider only as regards the Notion Notion (ὄσον ἐπὶ τῷ λόγῳ); but that is not what appears, but what is said of what appears. But if we institute direct investigations respecting what appears, we do so not in order to destroy what appears, but in order to condemn the rashness (προπέτειαν) of the dogmatists.” Thus the Sceptics endeavour to bring about the result that in what they say no expression of a Being can be demonstrated, so that, for example, in a proposition, they always set appearance in the place of existence. According to Sextus they say (Pyrrh. Hyp. I. c. 7, § 14; c. 28, § 206): “The Sceptic makes use of his propositions — for example, determine nothing (οὐδὲν ὁρίζειν), not the more (οὐδὲν μᾶλλον), nothing is true, &c. — not as if they really did exist. For he believes, for instance, that the proposition, everything is false, asserts that itself as well as the others is false, and consequently limits it (συμπεριγράφει). Thus we must similarly in all sceptical propositions recollect that we do not at all assert their truth; for we say that they may destroy themselves, since that limits them of which they are predicated.” Now, the New Academy of Carneades does not express anything as being the true and existent, or as anything to which thought could agree; the Sceptics thus come very near to the Academy. Pure Scepticism merely makes this objection to the Academy, that it is still impure. Sextus says (Pyrrh. Hyp. I. c. 33, §§ 226-233): “But clearly they differ from us in the judgment of good and evil. For they assert that something is good or evil,” that is to say, the former is the withholding of assent, and the latter the granting of it (supra, p. 315), “whereby they are convinced of its being probable that what of good is attributed to the predicate, is more likely to be good than the opposite.” Thus they have not elevated themselves to the purity of Scepticism, because they speak of existence, and not of appearance. But this is nothing more than a mere form, for the content immediately destroys that which in form appears to be an assertion. If we say: “Something is a good, thought assents to it,” and then ask, “But what is the good to which thought assents?” the content here is that it should not assent. Hence the form is, “It is a good,” but the content is that nothing should be held to be good or true. Thus the Sceptics also assert this: To the Sceptics “all conceptions are alike in trustworthiness or untrustworthiness in relation to the ground,” to truth. “But the Academicians say that some are probable, and others improbable, and amongst the probable, some again are to be preferred to the others.” Preference is thus one of the forms which the Sceptics also object to (infra, p. 345); for such expressions strike them as still too positive.
Now, speaking generally, the essential nature of Scepticism consists in its considering that to self-consciousness on its own account, there proceeds from the disappearance of all that is objective, all that is held to be true, existent or universal, all that is definite, all that is affirmative, through the withholding of assent, the immovability and security of mind, this imperturbability in itself. Hence the same result is obtained, that we have already seen in systems of philosophy immediately preceding this. Thus as soon as anything is held to be truth to self-consciousness, we find the result that to self-consciousness this truth is the universal reality, passing beyond itself, and in regard to this, self-consciousness esteems itself as nothing. But this external and determinate truth, as finite, is not implicitly existent, so that its necessity is to vacillate and give way. Then when this security disappears, self-consciousness itself loses its equilibrium, and becomes driven hither and thither in unrest, fear and anguish; for its stability and rest is the permanence of its existence and truth. But sceptical self-consciousness is just this subjective liberation from all the truth of objective Being, and from the placing of its existence in anything of the kind; Scepticism thus makes its end the doing away with the unconscious servitude in which the natural self-consciousness is confined, the returning into its simplicity, and, in so far as thought establishes itself in a content, the curing it of having a content such as this established in thought. “The effective principle of Scepticism,” Sextus hence tells us (Pyrrh. Hyp. I. c. 6, § 12, c. 12, §§ 25-30), “is the hope of attaining to security. Men of distinguished excellence, disquieted through the instability of things, and dubious as to which should in preference be given assent to, began the investigation of what is the truth and what false in things, as if they could reach imperturbability through the decision of such matters. But while engaged in this investigation, man attains the knowledge that opposite determinations,” desires, customs, &c., “have equal power,” and thus resolve themselves; “since in this way he cannot decide between them, he really only then attains to imperturbability when he withholds his judgment. For if he holds anything to be good or evil by nature, he never is at rest, whether it be that he does not possess what he holds to be good, or that he thinks himself vexed and assailed by natural evil. But he who is undecided respecting that which is good and beautiful in nature, neither shuns nor seeks anything with zeal; and thus he remains unmoved. What happened to the painter Apelles, befalls the Sceptic. For it is told that when he was painting a horse, and was altogether unsuccessful in rendering the foam, he finally in anger threw the sponge on which he had wiped his brushes, and in which every colour was therefore mixed, against the picture, and thereby formed a true representation of foam.” Thus, the Sceptics find in the mingling of all that exists, and of all thoughts, the simple self-identity of self-consciousness which “follows mind as the shadow does the body,” and is only acquired, and can only be acquired through reason. “Hence we say that the end of the Sceptic is imperturbability in the conceptions and moderation in the affections which he is compelled to have.” This is the indifference which the animals have by nature, and the possession of which through reason distinguishes men from animals. Thus, Pyrrho once showed to his fellow-passengers on board a ship, who were afraid during a storm, a pig, which remained quite indifferent and peacefully ate on, saying to them: in such indifference the wise man must also abide.195 However the indifference must not be like that of the pig, but must be born of reason. But if to Scepticism existence was only a manifestation or conception, it was yet esteemed by it as that in respect to which the Sceptics directed their conduct, both in what they did, and what they left undone. The above-quoted (p. 336) anecdotes about Pyrrho are thus opposed to what the Sceptics themselves said on the subject: “We undoubtedly direct our conduct in accordance with a reason which, in conformity with sensuous phenomena, teaches us to live conformably to the customs and laws of our country, and in consonance with recognized institutions and personal affections.”196 But for them this had only the significance of a subjective certainty and conviction, and not the value of an absolute truth.
Thus the universal method of Scepticism was, as Sextus Empiricus puts it (Pyrrh. Hyp. I. c. 4, §§ 8-10; c. 6, § 12): “a power of in some way or other setting what is felt, and what is thought, in opposition, whether it be the sensuous to the sensuous, and what is thought to what is thought, or what is sensuous to what is thought, or what is thought to what is sensuous, i.e. showing that any one of these has as much force and weight as its opposite, and is hence equivalent as far as conviction and non-conviction are concerned. From this the suspension of judgment (ἐποχή) results, in conformity with which we select and posit nothing, and thereby complete freedom from all mental emotion is attained. The principle of Scepticism is thus found in the proposition that each reason is confronted by another, which holds equally good. We do not, however, necessarily accept affirmation and negation as opposite grounds, but merely those that conflict with one another.” That which is felt is really existence for sensuous certainty, which simply accepts it as truth; or it is that which is felt in the Epicurean form, which consciously asserts it to be true. What is thought is in the Stoic form a determinate Notion, a content in a simple form of thought; both these classes, immediate consciousness and thinking consciousness, comprehend everything which is in any way to be set in opposition. In as far as Scepticism limits itself to this, it is a moment in Philosophy itself, which last, having an attitude of negativity in relation to both, only recognizes them as true in their abrogation. But Scepticism thinks that it reaches further; it sets up a pretension of venturing against the speculative Idea and conquering it; Philosophy, however, since Scepticism itself is present in it as a moment, rather overcomes it (supra, p. 330). As far as what is sensuous and what is thought in their separation are concerned, it certainly may conquer, but the Idea is neither the one nor the other, and it does not touch on the rational at all. The perpetual misunderstanding which those who do not know the nature of the Idea are under concerning Scepticism, is that they think that the truth necessarily falls into the one form or the other, and is thus either a determinate Notion or a determinate Being. Against the Notion as Notion, i.e. against the absolute Notion, Scepticism does not in any way proceed; the absolute Notion is rather its weapon of defence, though Scepticism has no consciousness of this. We shall on the one hand see Scepticism use that weapon against the finite, and on the other, how it tries its skill upon the rational.
But though, according to this, Scepticism always expresses itself as if everything were in appearance only, the Sceptics go further than those who support the newer and purely formal idealism. For they deal with content, and demonstrate of all content that it is either experienced by the senses or thought, and consequently that it has something in opposition to it. Thus they show in the same thing the contradiction that exists, so that of everything that is presented the opposite also holds good. This is the objective element in Scepticism in its manifestation, and that through which it is not subjective idealism. Sextus (Pyrrh. Hyp. I. c. 13, §§ 32, 33) says: “Thus, for instance, the sensuous is set against the sensuous by our being reminded of the fact that the same tower when looked at near is square and when regarded in the distance looks round;” and hence the one assertion is as good as the other. This, indeed, is a very trivial example, but its interest lies in the thought that is present in it. “Or what is thought is set in opposition to what is thought. As to the fact that there is a providence,” which rewards the good and punishes the evil, “men appeal,” as against those who deny it, “to the system of the heavenly bodies; to this it is objected that the good often fare badly and the evil well, from which we demonstrate that there is no providence.” As to the “opposition of what is thought to the sensuous,” Sextus adduces the conclusion of Anaxagoras, who asserts of the snow, that although it appears to be white, regarded in relation to the reasons given by reflection it is black. For it is frozen water, but water has no colour and hence is black; consequently snow must be the same.
We must now consider further the method in which the Sceptics proceed, and it consists in this, that they have brought the universal principle that each definite assertion has to be set over against its ‘other,’ into certain forms, not propositions. Thus, in view of the nature of Scepticism, we cannot ask for any system of propositions, nor will this philosophy really be a system; just as little did it lie in the spirit of Scepticism to form a school, properly speaking, but only an external connection in the wider sense of the word. Sextus (Pyrrh. Hyp. I. c. 8, § 16, c. 3, § 7) hence says that Scepticism is no selection (αἵρεσις) of dogmas, it is not a preference for certain propositions, but only that which leads, or rather which directs us (ἀγωγή) to live rightly and think correctly; thus it is in this way rather a method or manner by which only universal modes of that opposition are shown. Now since what sort of thoughts reveal themselves is a matter of contingency, the manner and mode of grasping them is contingent likewise; for in one the contradiction appears thus and in another otherwise. These determinate modes of opposition, whereby the withholding of assent comes to pass, the Sceptics called tropes (τρόποι), which are turned upon everything that is thought and felt in order to show that this is not what it is implicitly, but only in relation to another — that it thus itself appears in another, and allows this other to appear in it, and consequently that, speaking generally, what is, only seems; and this, indeed, follows directly from the matter in itself, and not from another which is assumed as true. If, for example, men say that empiric science has no truth because truth exists only in reason, this is only assuming the opposite of empiricism; likewise the truth of reason proved in itself is not a refutation of empiric science, for this last stands alongside of the former with equal rights as, and within the same.
Now since the sceptical doctrine consists in the art of demonstrating contradictions through these tropes, we only require to elucidate these modes. The Sceptics themselves, like Sextus, for example (Pyrrh. Hyp. I. c. 14, 15) distinguish in these forms the earlier and the later: ten of them belong to the elder Sceptics, that is to say to Pyrrho, and five were afterwards added by the later Sceptics, and Diogenes Laertius indeed tells us (IX. 88) that this was first done by Agrippa. From a specification of these it will be shown that the earlier are directed against the ordinary consciousness generally and belong to a thought of little culture, to a consciousness which has sensuous existence immediately before it. For they proceed against what we call common belief in the immediate truth of things, and refute it in a manner which is immediate likewise, not through the Notion but through the existence which is opposed to it. In their enumeration, too, there is this same absence of the Notion. But the five others appear to be better, have more interest, and are manifestly of later origin; they proceed against reflection, i.e. against a consciousness which relates itself to the developed understanding, and thus specially against thought-forms, scientific categories, the thought of the sensuous, and the determination of the same through Notions. Now though the most part of these may appear to us to be quite trivial, we must still be indulgent towards them, for they are historically, and consequently really, directed against the form “it is.” But without doubt it is a very abstract consciousness that makes this abstract form “it is” its object and combats it. However trivial then and commonplace these tropes may always appear to be, even more trivial and commonplace is the reality of the so-called external objects, that is, immediate knowledge, as when, for instance, I say “This is yellow.” Men ought not to talk about philosophy, if in this innocent way they assert the reality of such determinations. But this Scepticism was really far from holding things of immediate certainty to be true; thus it actually stands in contrast to modern Scepticism, in which it is believed that what is in our immediate consciousness, or indeed, all that is sensuous, is a truth (supra, pp. 331, 332). As distinguished from this, the older Scepticism, the modes of which we would now consider further, is directed against the reality of things.
In the earlier tropes we see the lack of abstraction appearing as the incapacity to grasp their diversitude under more simple general points of view, although they all, in fact, partly under a simple conception and partly in their difference, do in fact converge into some necessary simple determinations. From all alike, in relation to immediate knowledge, is the insecurity demonstrated of that of which we say “it is.” Sextus Empiricus (Pyrrh. Hyp. I. c. 14, § 38) even remarks, that “all the tropes may be summed up in three: the one is the judging subject; the other that respecting which the judgment is made; the third that which contains both sides” — the relation of subject and object. If thought is developed further, it embraces things in these more general determinations.
a. “The first trope is the diversitude in animal organization, according to which different living beings experience different conceptions and sensations respecting the same object. This the Sceptics conclude from the different nature of their origin, because some are brought into being through copulation and others without copulation” (from a generatio æquivoca): “but of the first some are hatched from eggs, and others come immediately living into the world, &c. Thus it is a matter of no doubt that this difference of origin produces opposite constitutions, temperaments, &c. The variety in the parts of the body, and particularly in those which are given to the animal for purposes of distinguishing and feeling, thus produces in them the greatest differences in conceptions. For instance, the jaundiced patient sees as yellow what to others appears white,” and as green, what to the latter seems blue. “Similarly the eyes of animals are differently constructed in different species, and have different colours, being pale, grey or red; consequently what is perceived thereby must be different.”197
This difference in the subject undoubtedly establishes a difference in perception, and this last a difference between the conception and the nature of the object of perception. But if we say “That is,” we mean something fixed, maintaining itself under all conditions; whereas in opposition to this the Sceptics show that everything is variable. But if they thereby destroy similarity and identity for the senses, and consequently this universality, another steps in, for universality or existence rests simply in the fact of men knowing that, in the hackneyed example of the jaundiced man, things appear so to him, i.e. the necessary law is known whereby a change of sensation arises for him. But certainly it is implied in this that the first sensuous universality is not true universality, because it is one immediate and unknown; and in it as sensuous existence, its non-universality is rightly demonstrated within itself through another universality. As against the statement “This is blue because I see it as such,” which clearly makes sight the ground of its being asserted to be blue, it is quite fair to point to another who has immediate perception of the object and for whom it is not blue.
b. The second trope, the diversitude of mankind in reference to feelings and conditions, amounts very much to the same thing as in the first case. In respect to difference in constitution of body, the Sceptics discover many idiosyncrasies. As regards the proposition “Shade is cool,” for instance, they say that someone felt cold in the sunlight, but warm in shadow; as against the statement “Hemlock is poisonous,” they instance an old woman in Attica who could swallow a large dose of hemlock without harm — thus the predicate poisonous is not objective, because it suits the one and not the other. Because such great bodily differences are present amongst men, and the body is the image of the soul, men must have a diversity of mind likewise and give the most contradictory judgments, so that no one can know whom to believe. To judge by the greater number would be foolish, for all men cannot be inquired of.198 This trope again relates to the immediate; if, therefore, what has to be done is merely to believe some statement inasmuch as it is made by others, undoubtedly nothing but contradiction takes place. But a belief like this, that is ready to believe anything, is, as a matter of fact, incapable of understanding what is said; it is an immediate acceptance of an immediate proposition. For it did not demand the reason; but the reason is, in the first place, the mediation and the meaning of the words of the immediate proposition. Diversitude in men is really something which now likewise appears in other forms. It is said that men differ in regard to taste, religion, &c.; that religion must be left for each to decide for himself; that each, from a standpoint of his own, must settle how things are to be regarded as far as religion is concerned. The consequence of this is that in regard to religion there is nothing objective or true, everything ends in subjectivity, and the result is indifference to all truth. For then there is no longer a church; each man has a church and a liturgy of his own, each has his own religion. The Sceptics more particularly — as those who in all times spare themselves the trouble of philosophizing, on some sort of pretext, and who try to justify this evasion — persistently preach the diversity of philosophies; Sextus Empiricus does this very expressly, and it may even be brought forward here, although it will appear more definitely as the first of the later tropes. If the principle of the Stoics, as it is in its immediacy, holds good, the opposite principle, that of the Epicureans, has just as much truth, and holds equally good. In this way, when it is said that some particular philosophy asserts and maintains certain propositions, the greatest diversity is undoubtedly to be found. For here we have the talk which we censured earlier (Vol. I. p. 16): “Since the greatest men of all times have thought so differently and have not been able to come to an agreement, it would be presumptuous on our part to believe we had found what they could not attain to,” and with those who speak thus, the timid shrinking from knowledge makes out the inertness of their reason to be a virtue. Now if the diversity cannot be denied, because it is a fact that the philosophies of Thales, Plato, and Aristotle were different, and that this was not merely apparently the case, but that they contradicted one another, this way of wishing in such statements of them to gain a knowledge of the philosophies, shows a want of understanding as regards Philosophy; for such propositions are not Philosophy, nor do they give expression to it. Philosophy is quite the reverse of this immediacy of a proposition, because in that the very knowledge that is essential is not taken into account; hence such men see everything in a philosophy excepting Philosophy itself, and this is overlooked. However different the philosophic systems may be, they are not as different as white and sweet, green and rough; for they agree in the fact that they are philosophies, and this is what is overlooked. But as regards the difference in philosophies, we must likewise remark upon this immediate validity accorded to them, and upon the form, that the essence of Philosophy is expressed in an immediate manner. As regards this ‘is’ the trope undoubtedly does its work, for all tropes proceed against the ’is,’ but the truth is all the time not this dry ’is,’ but genuine process. The relative difference in philosophies is, in their mutual attitude towards one another (see the fifth trope), always to be comprehended as a connection, and therefore not as an ’is.’
c. The third trope turns on the difference in the constitution of the organs of sense as related to one another; e.g. in a picture something appears raised to the eye but not to the touch, to which it is smooth, &c.199 This is, properly speaking, a subordinate trope, for in fact a determination such as this coming through some sense, does not constitute the truth of the thing, what it is in itself. The consciousness is required that the unthinking description which ascribes existence to blue, square, &c., one after the other, does not exhaust and express the Being of the thing; they are only predicates which do not express the thing as subject. It is always important to keep in mind that the different senses grasp the same thing in contradictory ways, for by this the nullity of sensuous certainty is revealed.
d. The fourth trope deals with the diversitude of circumstances in the subject, in reference to its condition, the changes taking place in it, which must prevent our making an assertion respecting any particular thing. The same thing manifests itself differently to the same man, according as he, for instance, is at rest or moving, asleep or awake, moved by hatred or love, sober or drunk, young or old, &c. In the diversitude of these circumstances very different judgments are passed regarding one and the same object, hence we must not talk of anything as being more than a manifestation.200
e. The fifth trope relates to the different positions, distances and places, for from every different standpoint the object appears to be different. In respect to position, a long passage appears to the man who stands at the one end to taper to a point at the other; but if he goes there he finds it to be of the same breadth at that end as it was at the other. Distance is likewise, properly speaking, a difference in the greatness and smallness of objects. In respect to place, the light in a lantern is quite feeble in the sunshine, and yet in darkness it shines quite brightly. Pigeons’ necks, regarded from different points of view, shimmer quite differently.201 In regard to motion in particular very different views prevail. The best known example of such is found in the course of the sun round the earth, or the earth round the sun. As the earth is said to go round the sun, even though the opposite appears to be the case, the former assertion is based on reasons. This example does not, however, come in here, but this trope will show that because one sensuous feeling contradicts another, existence is not expressed in it.
f. The sixth trope is taken from intermixture, because nothing comes within the scope of the sense alone and isolated, but only as mingled with something else; this admixture with something else, however, causes change, just as scents are stronger in the sunshine than in cold air, &c. Further, through the subject himself, this admixture comes in; the eyes consist of various tunics and humours, the ear has different passages, &c., consequently they cannot allow sensations — the light or the voice — to come to us in their purity, for the sensuous element comes to us first of all modified by these tunics of the eye and likewise by the passages of the ear.202 But if we are to express ourselves in this particular manner, the direct opposite might likewise be maintained, that the sensuous element there present is simply purified; the apprehending ear, for example, again purifies the voice that comes in bodily form from a soul.
g. The seventh trope is the cohesion, the size or quantity of things, through which they appear different; for instance, we see how glass is transparent, but loses this transparency when it is pounded, and thus has its cohesion altered. Shavings of goat’s-horn appear to be white, but the whole piece looks black; or Carrara marble ground into powder looks white, though the whole piece is yellow. The same holds good as regards quantity. A moderate portion of wine fortifies and exhilarates, a large quantity of it destroys the body, and the case is similar with drugs.203 If the quantity is not to be spoken of as the substance, it is still an abstraction that quantity and combination are matters of indifference as regards quality and disintegration; the change of quantity likewise changes the quality.
h. The eighth trope arises from the relativity of things, and is thus the universal trope of relationship. This relativity of everything existent and thought is a more inward, real determinateness, and all the tropes already mentioned really aim at it. “According to this trope,” says Sextus (Pyrrh. Hyp. I. c. 14, §§ 135, 136), “we conclude that since everything is in relation to something, we must withhold our judgment as to what it is on its own account and in its nature. But it must be remarked that we here make use of ‘is’ in the sense of appearance only. Relationship is used in two respects: first in relation to the judging subject,” and this difference we saw in the previous tropes, “and in the second place in relation to the object which is to be judged, like right and left.” Sextus, in the passage above (§§ 137, 140), argues as follows: “As regards what is set forth on its own account and separate from others, is it distinguished from the mere relative or not? If it were not different from it, it would itself be a relative. If it is different, it again is a relative. That is to say, what is different is related to something, for it is set forth in relation to that from which it is distinguished.” Relativity, generally, is present in what is absolutely predicated, for relationship is a relationship in itself and not to another. Relationship contains opposition: what is in relation to another is on the one hand independent on its own account, but on the other, because it is in relationship, it is likewise not independent. For if anything is only in relation to something else, the other likewise belongs to it; it is thus not on its own account. But if its other already belongs to it, its non-being also already belongs to it, and it is a contradictory as soon as it is not without its other. “But because we cannot separate the relative from its other, we likewise do not know what it is on its own account and in its nature, and we must consequently suspend our judgment.”
i. The ninth trope is the more or less frequent occurrence of things, which likewise alters one’s judgment upon the things. What happens seldom is more highly esteemed than what comes to pass frequently; and custom brings about the fact that one judges in this way and the other in that way. Custom is thus made a circumstance which also permits us to say that things appear so and so to us, but not universally and generally that they are so.204 When men say of any particular things that “this is so,” circumstances may be instanced in which the opposite predicate is applicable to them also. If, for example, we remain at the abstraction of the man, does it really signify whether or not we have a prince? — No. States? — No. A republic? — No, and so on, for they are here and not there.
k. The tenth trope mainly concerns ethics and is related to manners, customs and laws. What is moral and legal is likewise not such; for what is here considered to be right is elsewhere held to be wrong. The attitude of Scepticism in this regard is to show that the opposite of what is maintained as valid law holds equally good. As regards the ordinary understanding respecting the validity of this and that maxim, e.g. that the son has to pay the debts of his father, the ultimate and indeed only ground lies in its being said that this is true in its immediacy, for it holds good as law or custom. As against this the Sceptics likewise prove the opposite, saying for instance, that the son has, indeed, to undertake the debts of the father by the law of Rhodes; but in Rome he does not require to do so, if he has renounced his claim on the paternal goods.205 As in the existence of what is determined, which is held to be true because it is, the opposite is shown to exist; so in the case of laws, if their ground is that they are in force, their opposite can be demonstrated. The natural man has no consciousness of the presence of opposites; he lives quite unconsciously in his own particular way, in conformity with the morality of his town, without ever having reflected on the fact that he practises this morality. If he then comes into a foreign land, he is much surprised, for through encountering the opposite he for the first time experiences the fact that he has these customs, and he immediately arrives at uncertainty as to whether his point of view or the opposite is wrong. For the opposite of what held good to him holds equally good, and he does not possess any further ground for his practice; so that since the one holds good equally with the other, neither holds good.
We now see in these modes that, properly speaking, they are not logical modes at all, nor have they to do with the Notion, for they proceed directly against empiricism. Something is by immediate certainty given out as being true, the opposite of this last is from some other point of view demonstrated to be equally true, and thus its other-being is set forth as valid. The different modes in which the non-validity of the first and the validity of the other-being relate to one another, are ranged under the above heads. If we now classify these ten tropes in conformity with the plan indicated above by Sextus (p. 347), we find in the first four tropes the dissimilarity of the object to depend on the judging subject, because that which judges is either the animal or the man or one of his senses or particular dispositions in him. Or the dissimilarity depends on the object, and here we come to the seventh and tenth tropes, since first the amount makes a thing into something quite different, and then the code of morals in different places makes itself the only absolute, excluding and prohibiting any other. The fifth, sixth, eighth and ninth tropes finally deal with a union of both sides, or these all together contain the relationship; this is a demonstration that the object does not present itself in itself, but in relation to something else.
From content and form we see in these modes their early origin; for the content, which has only to deal with Being, shows its change only, takes up only the variability of its manifestation, without showing its contradiction in itself, i.e. in its Notion. But in form they show an unpractised thought, which does not yet bring the whole of these examples under their universal points of view, as is done by Sextus, or which places the universal, relativity, alongside of its particular modes. On account of their dulness we are not accustomed to lay great stress on such methods, nor esteem them of any value; but, in fact, as against the dogmatism of the common human understanding they are quite valid. This last says directly, “This is so because it is so,” taking experience as authority. Now through these modes this understanding will be shown that its belief has contingencies and differences within it, which at one time present a thing in this way and at another time in that way; and thereby it will be made aware that it itself, or another subject, with equal immediacy and on the same ground (on none at all), says: “It is not so, for it really is the opposite,” Thus the signification of these tropes has still its value. Should faith or right be founded on a feeling, this feeling is in me, and then others may say: “It is not in me.” If one person’s tastes are to be accepted as authoritative, it is not difficult to demonstrate that another person’s tastes are utterly opposite, but Being is thereby degraded into seeming, for in every assurance such as that, the opposite holds equally good.
The five other sceptical tropes have an entirely different character, and it is at once evident that they indicate quite another point of view and degree of culture as regards philosophic thought; for they pertain more to thinking reflection, and contain the dialectic which the determinate Notion has within it. Sextus Empiricus206 sets them forth as follows: —
a. The first trope is the diversitude in opinions (ἀπὸ τῆς διαφωνίας), and that not among animals and men, but expressly among philosophers; of this matter we have just spoken above (pp. 349, 350). Sextus, and an Epicurean quoted by Cicero (Vol. I. p. 16), adduce the manifold nature of dogmas, and from this the conclusion is drawn that the one has just as much support as the other. Philosophers and others still make copious use of this sceptical trope, which is consequently in great favour: on account of the diversitude in philosophies, they say, Philosophy has no value, and truth is unattainable because men have thought about it in ways so contradictory. This diversitude in philosophic opinion is said to be an invincible weapon against Philosophy; but the category of difference is very barren, and we have said in the introduction (Vol. I. pp. 17-19) how it is to be understood. The Idea of Philosophy is to all philosophers one and the same, even if they themselves are not aware of it; but those who speak so much of this diversity know as little about it. The true difference is not a substantial one, but a difference in the different stages of development; and if the difference implies a one-sided view, as it does with the Stoics, Epicureans, and Sceptics, in their totality undoubtedly we first reach truth.
b. A very important trope is that of failing into an infinite progression (ἡ εἰς ἄπειρον ἔκπτωσις); by it the Sceptics show that the reason which is brought forward for an assertion itself again requires a reason, and this again another, and so on into infinitude; from this suspension of judgment thus likewise follows, for there is nothing which can furnish a solid foundation. Consequently no permanent ground can be pointed out, for each continues to press further and further back, and yet finally a cessation must be made. In more recent times many have plumed themselves on this trope, and, in fact, it is as regards the understanding and the so-called syllogism (supra, pp. 222, 223), a trope of great force. For if deduction from reasons is made the power of knowledge, we must, on the other hand, remember that by so doing we have premises which are quite ungrounded.
c. The trope of Relationship, the relativity of determinations (ὀ ἀπὸ τοῦ πρός τι), has already been found among those mentioned above (p. 353). It is that what is maintained shows itself as it appears, partly merely in relation to the judging subject and partly to other things, but not as it is in itself by nature.
d. The fourth trope is that of Pre-supposition (ὀ ἐξ ὑποθέσεως): “When the dogmatists see that they are thrown back into the infinite, they put forward something as principle which they do not prove, but wish to have conceded to them simply and without proof:” that is an axiom. If the dogmatist has the right to pre-suppose an axiom as unproved, the sceptic has equally the right, or, if we choose to say so, equally no right, to pre-suppose the opposite as unproved. One is as good as the other. Thus all definitions are pre-suppositions. For instance, Spinoza pre-supposes definitions of the infinite, of substance, of attribute, &c.; and the rest follows consistently from them. Nowadays men prefer to give assurances and speak of facts of consciousness.
e. The last trope is that of Reciprocity (διάλληλος), or proof in a circle. “That which is dealt with is grounded on something which itself again requires something else as its ground; now that which has been said to be proved by it is used for this purpose, so that each is proved through the other.” When we would avoid infinite progression and the making of pre-suppositions, we use again that which was proved to prove its own proof. To the question, “What is the ground of the phenomenon?” the reply is “Power,” but this is itself merely deduced from the moments of the phenomenon.
Now Sextus shows (Pyrrh. Hyp. I. c. 15, §§ 169-177) in the following way that, speaking generally, all sceptical investigations pass into these five modes of reasoning; and from this it is likewise clear that Scepticism is not really a reasoning against anything from reasons which can be found, which quick-wittedness discovers in the particular object, but that it has a profound knowledge of the categories. (α) “The object before us is either one felt” (according to Epicurus), “or one thought” (according to the Stoics). “But however it may be determined, there always is a difference of opinion respecting it,” and specially of sophic opinions. This is the first trope. “For some believe what is felt and others what is thought to be alone the truth,” i.e. the criterion; “others, however, again accept partly what is thought and partly what is felt.” There consequently is a contradiction present here. “Now is it possible to harmonize this contradiction or not? If not, we must withhold our judgment. But if it is to be solved, the question is, ‘How shall we decide?’” What is to contain the criterion, the standard, the implicit? “Is what is felt to be judged by what is felt, or by what is thought?” (β) Either side, individually considered as the implicit, passes, according to the Sceptics, into the infinite; but this is a description which must necessarily be proved on its own account. “If what is felt is to be judged by what is felt, it is allowed (since feeling is in question) that this sensation requires another sensation as its reason;” for the conviction of its truth is not without contradiction. “But if that which constitutes the reason is again a feeling, that which is said to be a reason must have a reason just as much; thus we go on into infinitude” — and here we have the second trope. The case is, however, similar if what is thought is the criterion, or if the implicit is made to rest on it. “If to what is thought is given the power of judging what is felt, this likewise, since it is that respecting which no harmony prevails, requires another as its ground. This reason is, however, something thought likewise, and it again requires a reason; thus this, too, passes into the infinite.” From effect men thus reach cause; nevertheless this too is not original, but is itself an effect; and so on. But if men thus progress into infinitude, they have no first original ground to stand on, for what is accepted as first cause is itself merely effect; and since they merely progress continually, it is implied that no ultimate is posited. The false belief that this progression is a true category, is also to be found in Kant and Fichte; but there is really no true ultimate, or, what is the same, no true first. The understanding represents infinite progression as something great; but its contradiction is that men speak of a first cause and it is then shown that it is only an effect. Men only attain to the contradiction and constant repetition of the same, but not to the solution of it, and consequently to the true prius. (γ) But should this endless progression not satisfy us — which the Sceptics indeed perceived — and therefore have to be put a stop to, this may happen by what is or what is felt having its foundation in thought, and, on the other hand, by likewise taking for the foundation of thought that which is felt. In this way each would be founded without there having been a progression into infinitude; but then that which founds would also be that which is founded, and there would merely be a passing from one to the other. Thus, in the third place, this falls into the trope of Reciprocity, in which, however, there is no more than there was before any true foundation. For in it each merely exists through the other, neither is really set forth absolutely, but each is the implicit only for the other, and this is self-abrogation. (δ) But if this is avoided by an unproved axiom which is taken as an implicit fact, a first and absolute ground, this way of arguing falls into the mode of Pre-supposition — the fourth trope. But if an assumption such as this were to be allowed, it would also be legitimate for anyone to assume the contrary. Thus against the absolute assertion of idealism, “The Absolute is the I,” it is with equal force maintained that “The Absolute is existence.” The one man says in the immediate certainty of himself: “I am absolute to myself;” another man likewise in certainty of himself says, “It is absolutely certain to me that things exist.” Idealism did not prove the former, nor did it destroy the latter; it takes its stand alongside of it, and only bases its assertions on its own principle. Everything, however, then, comes round to this, that because the ‘I’ is absolute, the ‘not-I’ cannot be absolute. On the other hand it may be said as justly: “Because the thing is absolute, the ‘I’ cannot be absolute.” If it is legitimate, Sextus further says, immediately to pre-suppose something as unproved, it is absurd to pre-suppose anything else as proof of that on whose behalf it is pre-supposed; we only require to posit straightway the implicit existence of that which is in question. But as it is absurd to do so, so also is the other absurd. Men set to work in the finite sciences in a similar way. But when, as in a dogmatism like this, a man asserts his right of pre-supposing something, every other man has equally the right of pre-supposing something. Consequently the modern immediate revelation of the subject now appears. It does no good for any man to affirm, for example, that he finds in his consciousness that God exists; since anyone has the right to say that he finds in his consciousness that God does not exist. In modern times men have not got very far with this immediate knowledge — perhaps not further than the ancients, (ε) In the fifth place everything perceived has, according to the trope of Relationship, a relation to something else, to what perceives; its Notion is just that of being for another. The same holds good with what is thought; as the universal object of thought it likewise has the form of being something for another.
If we sum this up in a general way, the determinate, whether it is existent or thought, is (α) really, as determinate, the negative of another, i.e. it is related to another and exists for the same, and is thus in relationship; in this everything is really exhausted. (β) In this relationship to another this last, posited as its universality, is its reason; but this reason, as opposed to that which is proved, is itself a determinate, and consequently has its reality only in what is proved. And for the reason that I really again consider this universal as a determinate, it is conditioned by another like the one that goes before, and so on into infinity. (γ) In order that this determinate for which, as in consciousness, the other is, should have existence, this other must exist, for in this it has its reality; and because this its object is likewise for another, they mutually condition each other and are mediated through one another, neither being self-existent. And if the universal as the basis has its reality in the existent, and this existent its reality in the universal, this forms the Reciprocity whereby what in themselves are opposites mutually establish one another. (δ) But what is implicit is something which is not mediated through another; as the immediate, that is because it is, it is, however, an Hypothesis. (ε) Now if this determinate is taken as pre-supposed, so also may another be. Or we might say more shortly that the deficiency in all metaphysics of the understanding lies partly in (α) the Demonstration, by which it falls into the infinite; and partly in (β) the Hypotheses, which constitute an immediate knowledge.
These tropes thus form an effective weapon against the philosophy of the ordinary understanding, and the Sceptics directed them with great acuteness, sometimes against the common acceptation of things, and sometimes against principles of philosophic reflection. These sceptical tropes, in fact, concern that which is called a dogmatic philosophy — not in the sense of its having a positive content, but as asserting something determinate as the absolute; and in accordance with its nature, such a philosophy must display itself in all these forms. To the Sceptics, the Notion of dogmatic philosophy is in effect that something is asserted as the implicit; it is thus opposed to idealism by the fact of its maintaining that an existence is the absolute. But there is a misunderstanding or a formal understanding in considering that all philosophy that is not Scepticism is Dogmatism. Dogmatism, as the Sceptics quite correctly describe it, consists in the assertion that something determinate, such as ‘I’ or ‘Being,’ ‘Thought’ or ‘Sensation,’ is the truth. In the talk about idealism, to which dogmatism has been opposed, just as many mistakes have been made, and misunderstandings taken place. To the criticism which knows no implicit, nothing absolute, all knowledge of implicit existence as such is held to be dogmatism, while it is the most wanton dogmatism of all, because it maintains that the ‘I,’ the unity of self-consciousness, is opposed to Being, is in and for itself, and that the implicit in the outside world is likewise so, and therefore that the two absolutely cannot come together. By idealism that is likewise held to be dogmatism in which, as is the case in Plato and Spinoza, the absolute has been made the unity of self-consciousness and existence, and not self-consciousness opposed to existence. Speculative philosophy thus, indeed, asserts, but does not assert a determinate; or it cannot express its truth in the simple form of a proposition, although Philosophy is often falsely understood as pre-supposing an original principle from which all others are to be deduced. But though its principle can be given the form of a proposition, to the Idea what pertains to the proposition as such is not essential, and the content is of such a nature that it really abrogates this immediate existence, as we find with the Academicians. As a matter of fact, that which is now called a proposition, absolutely requires a mediation or a ground; for it is an immediate determinate that has another proposition in opposition to it, which last is again of a similar nature, and so on into infinitude. Consequently, each, as being a proposition, is the union of two moments between which there is an inherent difference, and whose union has to be mediated. Now dogmatic philosophy, which has this way of representing one principle in a determinate proposition as a fundamental principle, believes that it is therefore universal, and that the other is in subordination to it. And undoubtedly this is so. But at the same time, this its determinateness rests in the fact that it is only universal; hence such a principle is always conditioned, and consequently contains within it a destructive dialectic.
As against all these dogmatic philosophies, such criticism and idealism not excepted, the sceptical tropes possess the negative capacity of demonstrating that what the former maintain to be the implicit is not really so. For implicitude such as this is a determinate, and cannot resist negativity, its abrogation. To Scepticism is due the honour of having obtained this knowledge of the negative, and of having so definitely thought out the forms of negativity. Scepticism does not operate by bringing forward what is called a difficulty, a possibility of representing the matter otherwise; that would merely indicate some sort of fancy which is contingent as regards this asserted knowledge. Scepticism is not an empiric matter such as this, for it contains a scientific aim, its tropes turn on the Notion, the very essence of determinateness, and are exhaustive as regards the determinate. In these moments Scepticism desires to assert itself, and the Sceptic therein recognizes the fancied greatness of his individuality; these tropes prove a more cultivated dialectic knowledge in the process of argumentation than is found in ordinary logic, the logic of the Stoics, or the canon of Epicurus. These tropes are necessary contradictions into which the understanding falls; even in our time progression into infinitude and pre-supposition (immediate knowledge) are particularly common (supra, p. 363).
Now, speaking generally, this is the method of Scepticism, and it is most important. Because the sceptical conscience demonstrates that in all that is immediately accepted there is nothing secure and absolute, the Sceptics have taken in hand all particular determinations of the individual sciences, and have shown that they are not fixed. The further details of this application to the different sciences do not concern us here: this far-seeing power of abstraction is also requisite in order to recognize these determinations of negation or of opposition everywhere present in all concrete matter, and in all that is thought, and to find in this determinate its limits. Sextus, for example, takes up the individual sciences concretely, thereby demonstrating much capacity for abstraction, and he shows in all their determinations the opposite of themselves. Thus he sets the definitions of mathematics against one another, and that not externally, but as they are in themselves; he lays hold of the fact (adv. Math. III. 20-22) that there is said to be a point, space, line, surface, one, &c. We unquestioningly allow the point to rank as a simple unit in space, according to which it has no dimension; but if it has no dimension, it is not in space, and therefore is no longer a point. On the one hand it is the negation of space, and, on the other, inasmuch as it is the limit of space, it touches space. Thus this negation of space participates in space, itself occupies space, and thus it is in itself null, but at the same time it is also in itself a dialectic. Scepticism has thus also treated of ideas which are, properly speaking, speculative, and demonstrated their importance; for the demonstration of the contradiction in the finite is an essential point in the speculatively philosophic method.
The two formal moments in this sceptical culture are firstly the power of consciousness to go back from itself, and to take as its object the whole that is present, itself and its operation included. The second moment is to grasp the form in which a proposition, with whose content our consciousness is in any way occupied, exists. An undeveloped consciousness, on the other hand, usually knows nothing of what is present in addition to the content. For instance, in the judgment “This thing is one,” attention is paid only to the one and the thing, and not to the circumstance that here something, a determinate, is related to the one. But this relation is the essential, and the form of the determinate; it is that whereby this house which is an individual, makes itself one with the universal that is different from it. It is this logical element, i.e. the essential element, that Scepticism brings to consciousness, and on this it depends; an example of this is number, the one, as the hypothetical basis of arithmetic. Scepticism does not attempt to give the thing, nor does it dispute as to whether it is thus or thus, but whether the thing itself is something; it grasps the essence of what is expressed, and lays hold of the whole principle of the assertion. As to God, for example, the Sceptics do not inquire whether He has such and such qualities, but turn to what is most inward, to what lies at the ground of this conception, and they ask whether this has reality. “Since we do not know the reality of God,” says Sextus (Pyrrh. Hyp. III. c. I, § 4), “we shall not be able to know and perceive His qualities.” Likewise in the preceding books (II. c. 4, sqq.), inquiry is made as to whether the criterion of truth as fixed by the understanding is anything, whether we know the thing in itself, or whether the ‘I’ is to itself the only absolute certainty. This is the way to penetrate to reality.
In these ways the operations of Scepticism are undoubtedly directed against the finite. But however much force these moments of its negative dialectic may have against the properly-speaking dogmatic knowledge of the understanding, its attacks against the true infinite of the speculative Idea are most feeble and unsatisfactory. For this last is in its nature nothing finite or determinate, it has not the one-sided character which pertains to the proposition, for it has the absolute negative in itself; in itself it is round, it contains this determinate and its opposite in their ideality in itself. In so far as this Idea, as the unity of these opposites, is itself again outwardly a determinate, it stands exposed to the power of the negative; indeed its nature and reality is just to move continually on, so that as determinate it again places itself in unity with the determinates opposed to it, and thus organizes itself into a whole whose starting-point again coincides with the final result. This identity is quite different from that of the understanding; the object as concrete in itself, is, at the same time, opposed to itself; but the dialectic solution of this finite and other is likewise already contained in the speculative, without Scepticism having first had to demonstrate this; for the rational, as comprehended, does, as regards the determinate, just what Scepticism tries to do. However, if Scepticism attempts to deal with this properly speculative element, it can in no way lay hold of it, nor make any progress except by doing violence to the speculative itself; thus the method of its procedure against the rational is this, that it makes the latter into a determinate, and always first of all introduces into it a finite thought-determination or idea of relationship to which it adheres, but which is not really in the infinite at all; and then it argues against the same. That is to say it comprehends it falsely and then proceeds to contradict it. Or it first of all gives the infinite the itch in order to be able to scratch it. The Scepticism of modern times, with which for crudity of comprehension and false teaching the old cannot compare, is specially noteworthy in this respect. Even now what is speculative is transformed into something crude; it is possible to remain faithful to the letter, and yet to pervert the whole matter, because the identity of the determinate has been carried over to the speculative. What here appears to be most natural and impartial is to have an investigation made of what the principle of a speculative philosophy is; its essential nature seems to be expressed thereby, and nothing is apparently added or imputed to it, nor does any change appear to be effected in it. Now, here, according to the conception of the non-speculative sciences, it is placed in this dilemma: the principle is either an unproved hypothesis or demands a proof which in turn implies the principle. The proof that is demanded of this principle itself pre-supposes something else, such as the logical laws of proof; these rules of logic are, however, themselves propositions such as required to be proved; and so it goes on into infinitude, if an absolute hypothesis to which another can be opposed is not made (supra, p. 362). But these forms of proposition, of consecutive proof, &c., do not in this form apply to what is speculative (supra, p. 364) as though the proposition were before us here, and the proof were something separate from it there; for in this case the proof comes within the proposition. The Notion is a self-movement, and not, as in a proposition, a desire to rest; nor is it true that the proof brings forward another ground or middle term and is another movement; for it has this movement in itself.
Sextus Empiricus (adv. Math. VII., 310-312), for example, thus reaches the speculative Idea regarding reason, which, as the thought of thought, comprehends itself, and is thus in its freedom at home with itself. We saw this (pp. 147-151) with Aristotle. In order to refute this idea, Sextus argues in the following way: “The reason that comprehends is either the whole or it is only a part.” But to know the speculative it is requisite that there should be, besides the ‘either … or,’ a third; this last is ‘both … and’ and ‘neither … nor.’ “If reason as the comprehending is the whole, nothing else remains to be comprehended. If the comprehending reason is, however, only a part which comprehends itself, this part again, as that which comprehends, either is the whole (and in that case again nothing at all remains to be comprehended), or else, supposing what comprehends to be a part in the sense that what is comprehended is the other part, that which comprehends does not comprehend itself,” &c. In the first place, however, it is clear that by arguing thus nothing is shown further than the fact that here Scepticism in the first place brings into the relationship of thought thinking about thought, the very superficial category of the relationship of the whole and the parts, as understood by the ordinary understanding, which last is not found in that Idea, although as regards finite things the whole is simply composed of all the parts, and these parts constitute the whole, the parts and the whole being consequently identical. But the relationship of whole and part is not a relationship of reason to itself, being much too unimportant, and quite unworthy of being brought into the speculative Idea. In the second place Scepticism is wrong in allowing this relationship to hold good immediately, as it does in the ordinary and arid conception, where we make no objection to it. When reflection speaks of a whole, there is for it beyond this nothing else remaining. But the whole is just the being opposed to itself. On the one hand it is as whole simply identical with its parts, and, on the other hand, the parts are identical with the whole, since they together constitute the whole. The self-comprehension of reason is just like the comprehension by the whole of all its parts, if it is taken in its real speculative significance; and only in this sense could this relationship be dealt with here. But in the sense implied by Sextus, that there is nothing except the whole, the two sides, the whole and the parts, remain in mutual, isolated opposition; in the region of speculation the two indeed are different, but they are likewise not different, for the difference is ideal. Outside of the whole there thus undoubtedly remains another, namely itself as the manifold of its parts. The whole argument thus rests upon the fact that a foreign determination is first of all brought within the Idea, and then arguments against the Idea are brought forward, after it has been thus corrupted by the isolation of a one-sided determination unaccompanied by the other moment of the determination. The case is similar when it is said; “Objectivity and subjectivity are different, and thus their unity cannot be expressed.” It is indeed maintained that the words are literally adhered to; but even as contained in these words, the determination is one-sided, and the other also pertains to it. Hence this difference is not what remains good, but what has to be abrogated.
We may perhaps have said enough about the scientific nature of Scepticism, and we have concluded therewith the second section of Greek philosophy. The general point of view adopted by self-consciousness in this second period, the attainment of the freedom of self-consciousness through thought, is common to all these philosophies. In Scepticism we now find that reason has got so far that all that is objective, whether of Being or of the universal, has disappeared for self-consciousness. The abyss of the self-consciousness of pure thought has swallowed up everything, and made entirely clear the basis of thought. It not only has comprehended thought and outside of it a universe in its entirety, but the result, positively expressed, is that self-consciousness itself is reality. External objectivity is not an objective existence nor a universal thought; for it merely is the fact that the individual consciousness exists, and that it is universal. But though for us there is an object, yet this is for it no object, and thus it still has itself the mode of objectivity. Scepticism deduces no result, nor does it express its negation as anything positive. But the positive is in no way different from the simple; or if Scepticism aims at the disappearance of all that is universal, its condition, as immovability of spirit, is itself in fact this universal, simple, self-identical — but a universality (or a Being) which is the universality of the individual consciousness. Sceptical self-consciousness, however, is this divided consciousness to which on the one hand motion is a confusion of its content; it is this movement which annuls for itself all things, in which what is offered to it is quite contingent and indifferent; it acts according to laws which are not held by it to be true, and is a perfectly empiric existence. On another side its simple thought is the immovability of self-identity, but its reality, its unity with itself is something that is perfectly empty, and the actual filling in is any content that one chooses. As this simplicity, and at the same time pure confusion, Scepticism is in fact the wholly self-abrogating contradiction. For in it the mind has got so far as to immerse itself in itself as that which thinks; now it can comprehend itself in the consciousness of its infinitude as the ultimate. In this way Scepticism flourishes in the Roman world, because, as we saw (p. 281), in this external, dead abstraction of the Roman principle (in the principle of Republicanism and imperial Despotism) the spirit has flown from an existence here and now, that could give it no satisfaction, into intellectuality. Then because here the mind can only seek reconciliation and eudæmonism inwardly through cultured thought, and the whole aim of the world is merely the satisfaction of the individual, good can only be brought forth as individual work in each particular case. Under the Roman emperors we certainly find famous men, principally Stoics, such as Marcus Aurelius and others; they, however, only considered the satisfaction of their individual selves, and did not attain to the thought of giving rationality to actuality through institutions, laws and constitutions. This solitude of mind within itself is then truly Philosophy; but the thought is abstractly at home with itself as dead rigidity, and as to outward things it is passive. If it moves it only moves while bearing with it a contempt of all distinctions. Scepticism thus belongs to the decay both of Philosophy and of the world.
The stage next reached by self-consciousness is that it receives a consciousness respecting that which it has thus become, or its essential nature becomes its object. Self-consciousness is to itself simple essence; there is for it no longer any other reality than this, which its self-consciousness is. In Scepticism this reality is not yet an object to it, for to it its object is merely confusion. Because it is consciousness, something is for it; in this opposition only the vanishing content is for the sceptical consciousness, without its having been comprehended in its simple permanence. Its truth, however, is its immersion in self-consciousness, and the fact of self-consciousness becoming an object to itself. Thus reality has indeed the form of a universal in existence or in thought, but in this its self-consciousness is really not a foreign thing as it is in Scepticism. In the first place it is not simple as immediate and merely existent, a complete ‘other,’ as when we speak of the soul being simple; for this last is the simple negative that turns back out of movement, out of difference, as the universal, into itself. In the second place this universal power that expresses that “I am at home with myself,” has likewise the significance of the Being, which, as objective reality, has a permanence for consciousness, and does not merely, as with the Sceptics, disappear; for reason in it alone knows how to possess and to find itself. This inwardness of mind at home with itself has built in itself an ideal world, has laid the foundation and groundwork of the intellectual world, of a kingdom of God which has come down into actuality and is in unity with it, and this is the standpoint of the Alexandrian philosophy.
SECTION THREE Third Period: The Neo-Platonists.
SINCE SCEPTICISM IS the annulling of the opposites which in Stoicism and Epicureanism were accepted as the universal principles from which all other opposites took their rise, it likewise is the unity in which these opposites are found as ideal determinations, so that the Idea must now come into consciousness as concrete in itself. With this third development, which is the concrete result of all that has gone before, an entirely new epoch begins. Philosophy is now on quite a different footing, since, with the rejection of the criterion for subjective knowledge, finite principles in general also disappear; for it is with these that the criterion has to do. This then is the form which Philosophy takes with the Neo-Platonists, and which is closely connected with the revolution which was caused in the world by Christianity. The last stage which we reached — that subjective contentment and return of self-consciousness into itself which is attained by the renunciation of all that is fixed and objective, by flight into the pure, infinite abstraction in itself, by the absolute dearth of all determinate content — this stage had come to perfection in Scepticism, although the Stoic and Epicurean systems have the same end in view. But with this complete entering into and abiding within itself of infinite subjectivity, Philosophy had reached the standpoint at which self-consciousness knew itself in its thought to be the Absolute (Vol. II. p. 372); and since Philosophy now rejected the subjective and finite attitude of self-consciousness, and its manner of distinguishing itself from an unmeaning external object, it comprehended in itself the difference, and perfected the truth into an intelligible world. The consciousness of this, expressing itself as it did in the spirit of the world, now constitutes the object of Philosophy; it was principally brought about by employing and reasoning from Platonic conceptions and expressions, but also by making use of those of the Aristotelians and Pythagoreans.
The idea which had now come home to men that absolute existence is nothing alien to self-consciousness, that nothing really exists for it in which self-consciousness is not itself immediately present — this is the principle which is now found as the universal of the world-spirit, as the universal belief and knowledge of all men; at once it changes the world’s whole aspect, destroying all that went before, and bringing about a regeneration of the world. The manifold forms which this knowledge assumes do not belong to the history of Philosophy, but to the history of consciousness and culture. This principle appears as a universal principle of justice, by which the individual man, in virtue of his existence, has absolute value as a universal being recognized by all. Thus, as far as external politics are concerned, this is the period of the development of private rights relating to the property of individual persons. But the character of Roman culture, under which this form of philosophy falls, was at the same time abstract universality (Vol. II. p. 235), in the lifelessness of which all characteristic poetry and philosophy, and all citizen life perished. Cicero, for example, shows, as few philosophers do, an utter want of appreciation of the state of affairs in his country. Thus the world has in its existence separated into two parts; on the one side we have the atoms, private individuals, and on the other side a bond connecting them, though only externally, which, as power, had been relegated to one subject, the emperor. The Roman power is thus the real Scepticism. In the domain of thought we find an exact counterpart to this species of abstract universality, which, as perfect despotism, is in the decline of national life directly connected with the isolation of the atom, showing itself as the withdrawal into the aims and interests of private life.
It is at this point that mind once more rises above the ruin, and again goes forth from its subjectivity to the objective, but at the same time to an intellectual objectivity, which does not appear in the outward form of individual objects, nor in the form of duties and individual morality, but which, as absolute objectivity, is torn of mind and of the veritable truth. Or, in other words, we see here on the one hand the return to God, on the other hand the manifestation of God, as He comes before the human mind absolutely in His truth. This forms the transition to the mind’s restoration, by the fact of thought, which had conceived itself only subjectively, now becoming objective to itself. Thus in the Roman world the necessity became more and more keenly felt of forsaking the evil present, this ungodly, unrighteous, immoral world, and withdrawing into mind, in order here to seek what there no longer can be found. For in the Greek world the joy of spiritual activity has flown away, and sorrow for the breach that has been made has taken its place. These philosophies are thus not only moments in the development of reason, but also in that of humanity; they are forms in which the whole condition of the world expresses itself through thought.
But in other forms some measure of contempt for nature here began to show itself, inasmuch as nature is no longer anything for itself, seeing that her powers are merely the servants of man, who, like a magician, can make them yield obedience, and be subservient to his wishes. Up to this time oracles had been given through the medium of trees, animals, &c., in which divine knowledge, as knowledge of the eternal, was not distinguished from knowledge of the contingent. Now it no longer is the gods that work their wonders, but men, who, setting at defiance the necessities of nature, bring about in the same that which is inconsistent with nature as such. To this belief in miracle, which is at the same time disbelief in present nature, there is thus allied a disbelief in the past, or a disbelief that history was just what it was. All the actual history and mythology of Romans, Greeks, Jews, even single words and letters, receive a different meaning; they are inwardly broken asunder, having an inner significance which is their essence, and an empty literal meaning, which is their appearance. Mankind living in actuality have here forgotten altogether how to see and to hear, and have indeed lost all their understanding of the present. Sensuous truth is no longer accepted by them; they constantly deceive us, for they are incapable of comprehending what is real, since it has lost all meaning for their minds. Others forsake the world, because in it they can now find nothing, the real they discover in themselves alone. As all the gods meet together in one Pantheon, so all religions rush into one, all modes of representation are absorbed in one; it is this, that self-consciousness — an actual human being — is absolute existence. It is to Rome that all these mysterious cults throng, but the real liberation of the spirit appeared in Christianity, for it is therein that its true nature is reached. Now it is revealed to man what absolute reality is; it is a man, but not yet Man or self-consciousness in general.
The one form of this principle is therefore the infinitude in itself of the consciousness that knows itself, distinguishes itself in itself, but yet remains in perfectly transparent unity with itself; and only as this concretely self-determining thought has mind any meaning. An actual self-consciousness is the fact that the Absolute is now known in the form of self-consciousness, so that the determinations of the former are manifested in all the forms of the latter; this sphere does not properly belong to Philosophy, but is the sphere of Religion, which knows God in this particular human being. This knowledge, that self-consciousness is absolute reality, or that absolute reality is self-consciousness, is the World-spirit. It is this knowledge, but knows this knowledge not; it has merely an intuition of it, or knows it only immediately, not in thought. Knowing it only immediately means that to the World-spirit this reality as spirit is doubtless absolute self-consciousness, but in existent immediacy it is an individual man. It is this individual man, who has lived at a particular time and in a particular place, and not the Notion of self-consciousness, that is for the World-spirit absolute spirit: or self-consciousness is not yet known nor comprehended. As an immediacy of thought, absolute reality is immediate in self-consciousness, or only like an inward intuition, in the same way that we have pictures present in our mind.
The other form is that this concrete is grasped in a more abstract way, as the pure identity of thought, and thus there is lost to thought the point of self-hood pertaining to the concrete. This aspect, expressed as absolute reality in the form of mind in conceiving thought, but yet as in some measure existing immediately in self-consciousness as absolute reality, comes under Philosophy. But spirit, if complete in every aspect, must have also the natural aspect, which in this form of philosophy is still lacking. Now as in Christianity universal history makes this advance of mind in the consciousness of itself, so in the innermost mysteries of the same, in Philosophy, this same change must just as inevitably take place; in fact, Philosophy in her further development does nothing else than grasp this Idea of absolute reality, which in Christianity is merely shadowed forth. Absolute Spirit implies eternal self-identical existence that is transformed into another and knows this to be itself; the unchangeable, which is unchangeable in as far as it always, from being something different, returns into itself. It signifies the sceptical movement of consciousness, but in such a form that the transient objective element at the same time remains permanent, or in its permanence has the signification of self-consciousness.
In the Christian religion this spiritual reality was first of all represented as indicating that eternal reality becomes for itself something different, that it creates the world, which is posited purely as something different. To this there is added later this moment, that the other element in itself is not anything different from eternal reality, but that eternal reality manifests itself therein. In the third place there is implied the identity of the other and eternal reality, Spirit, the return of the other into the first: and the other is here to be understood as not only the other at that point where eternal reality manifested itself, but as the other in a universal sense. The world recognizes itself in this absolute reality which becomes manifest; it is the world, therefore, which has returned into reality; and spirit is universal Spirit. But since this Idea of spirit appeared to the Christians first of all in the bare form of ordinary conception, God, the simple reality of the Jews, was for them beyond consciousness; such a God doubtless thinks, but He is not Thought, for He remains beyond reality, and He is only that which is distinguished from the world that our senses perceive. There likewise stands in opposition to the same an individual man — the moment of unity of the world and reality, and spirit, the universality of this unity, as a believing community, which possesses this unity only in the form of ordinary conception, but its reality in the hope of a future.
The Idea in pure Thought — that God’s way of working is not external, as if He were a subject, and therefore that all this does not come to pass as a casual resolution and decree of God, to whom the thought of so acting happened to occur, but that God is this movement as the self-revealing moments of His essence, as His eternal necessity in Himself, which is not at all conditioned by chance — this we find expressed in the writings of philosophic or expressly Platonic Jews. The place where this point of view took its origin happens to be the country where East and West have met in conflict; for the free universality of the East and the determinateness of Europe, when intermingled, constitute Thought. With the Stoics the universality of thought has a place, but it is opposed to sensation, to external existence. Oriental universality is, on the contrary, entirely free; and the principle of universality, posited as particular, is Western Thought. In Alexandria more especially this form of philosophy was cultivated, but at the same time regard was had to the earlier development of thought, in which lie the partially concealed beginnings of the building up in thought of the concrete, which is now the point mainly regarded. Even in the Pythagorean philosophy we found difference present as the Triad; then in Plato we saw the simple Idea of spirit as the unity of indivisible substance and other-being, though it was only as a compound of both. That is the concrete, but only in simple moments, not in the comprehensive manner in which other-being is in general all reality of nature and of consciousness, — and the unity which has returned as this self-consciousness is not only a thought, but living God. With Aristotle, finally, the concrete is ἐνέργεια, Thought which is its own object, the concrete. Therefore although this philosophy is known as Neo-Pythagorean and Neo-Platonic, it may also be termed Neo-Aristotelian; for the Alexandrians studied Aristotle just as much as Plato, and valued both very highly, later on combining their philosophies in one unity.
But we must have a clearer grasp of the difference between this point of view and the earlier. Already in the earlier philosophies we have seen, that νοῦς is the essence of the world, and similarly Aristotle comprehended the whole series of things endued with life and mind in such a way as to recognize the Notion to be the truth of these things. In the case of the Stoics this unity, this system, was most definitely brought forward, while Aristotle rather followed up the particulars. This unity of thought we saw among the Stoics more especially on the one side as the return of self-consciousness into itself, so that spirit through the purity of thought is independent in itself; on the other hand we have seen there an objectivity in which the λόγος became essentially the all-penetrating basis of the whole world. With the Stoics, however, this basis remained as substance only, and thus took on the form of Pantheism, for that is the first idea that we light on when we determine the universal to be the true. Pantheism is the beginning of the elevation of spirit, in that it conceives everything in the world to be a life of the Idea. For when self-consciousness emerges from itself, from its infinitude, from its thought directed on self, and turns to particular things, duties, relationships; or when thought, which thinks this universal substance, passes over from it to the particular, and makes the heavens, the stars, or man its object, it descends from the universal immediately into the particular, or immediately into the finite, since all these are finite forms. But the concrete is the universal which makes itself particular, and in this making of itself particular and finite yet remains eternally at home with itself. In Pantheism, on the contrary, the one universal substance merely makes itself finite, and thereby lowers itself. That is the mode of emanation, according to which the universal, in making itself the particular, or God in creating the world, by becoming particular becomes debased or deteriorated and sets a limit to Himself; so that this making of Himself finite is incompatible with any return into Himself. The same relation is also found in the mythology of the Greeks and Romans; the giving definiteness and form to God, who remains no empty abstraction, is a rendering finite of God, who thus becomes a mere work of art; but the Beautiful itself remains a finite form, which is not brought to such a point as to express the free Idea. The determination, the specialization, the reality of objectivity, must now be of such a nature that it shall be adequate to the absolute universal; the forms of the gods, as also natural forms and the forms which are known as duties, fail to be thus adequate.
What is therefore now required is that the knowing mind, which thus out of objectivity returns into itself and its inwardness, should reconcile with itself the world which it has left, so that the world’s objectivity may of course be distinct from mind, yet adequate thereto. This concrete standpoint which, as it is that of the world, is also that of Philosophy, is the development of Mind, for it is requisite to Mind that it should not merely be pure thought, but that it should be thought which makes itself objective, and therein maintains itself and is at home with itself. The earlier efforts of thought towards objectivity constitute a passing into determinateness and finitude merely, and not into an objective world adequate to absolute existence. The universal standpoint of the Neo-Platonic or Alexandrian philosophy now is from the loss of the world to produce a world which in its outwardness shall still remain an inward world, and thus a world reconciled; and this is the world of spirituality, which here begins. Thus the fundamental Idea was Thought which is its own object, and which is therefore identical with its object, with what is thought; so that we have the one and the other, and the unity of both.
This concrete Idea has again come to the front, and in the development of Christianity, as thought also penetrated there, it became known as the Trinity; and this Idea is absolute reality. This Idea did not develop directly from Plato and Aristotle, but took the circuitous path of Dogmatism. With the earlier thinkers it doubtless immediately emerged as supreme; but beside and beyond it appears the other content in addition, the riches of the thoughts of Mind and of Nature; and so it is conceived. Aristotle has thus comprehended the kingdom of Nature; and with Plato development is represented only in a loose multiplicity. But in order that the Idea should appear as the truth that encompasses and includes all within itself, it was requisite that this finite, this wider content of determinations which had been collected, should be comprehended on its finite side also, that is, in the finite form of a universal opposition. That was the function of Dogmatism, which was then dissolved by Scepticism. The dissolution of all that is particular and finite, which constitutes the essence of the latter, was not taken in hand by Plato and Aristotle, and therefore the Idea was not posited by them as all-inclusive. Now the contradiction is done away with, and Mind has attained to its negative rest. The affirmative, on the other hand, is the repose of mind in itself, and to this freedom from all that is particular Mind now proceeds. It is the knowledge of what Mind is in itself, after it has come to be reconciled in itself through the dissolution of all finality. This eternal rest of Mind in itself now constitutes its object; it is aware of the fact, and strives to determine and develop it further by thought. In this we likewise possess the principle of evolution, of free development; everything except Mind is only finite and transitory. When therefore Mind goes forth to the particular, the particular is determined as something plainly contained in this ideality, which Mind knows as something subject to itself. That is the affirmative result of sceptical philosophy. It is evident that, starting from this point of view, an utterly different opinion will be expressed. God, as absolute pure Mind in and for Himself, and His activity in Himself, are now the object. But God is no longer known as the Abstract, but as the Concrete in Himself, and this Concrete is nothing but Mind. God is living, the One and the Other and the unity of these distinct determinations; for the abstract is only the simple, but the living has difference in itself, and is yet therein at home with itself.
Further, the following points have specially claimed the attention of Mind; firstly, that this consciousness which has become subjective makes its object the absolute as truth, placing this absolute outside of itself; or that it attains to faith in God, that God is now manifested, and reveals Himself, that is, exists for consciousness. The absolute, altogether universal, posited at the same time as objective, is God. Here comes in the relation of man to this his object, to absolute truth. This new standpoint, which from this time acquires an absolute interest, is therefore not a relation to external things, duties and the like; these are all determined, limited, they are not the all-embracing determination, as that is which has just been spoken of. In this relation the mere turning of the subject on himself, this talk of the wise man. in his one-sidedness, is likewise done away with. The same liberty, happiness, steadfastness, which were the aim of Epicureanism, Stoicism and Scepticism are doubtless still to be reached by the subject, but now this can only be brought about by turning to God, by giving heed to absolute truth, not by fleeing from the objective; so that by means of the objective itself, liberty and happiness are attained for the subject. This is the standpoint of reverencing and fearing God, so that by man’s turning to this his object, which stands before him free and firm, the object of the subject’s own freedom is attained.
In the second place, there are contradictions herein contained which necessarily attract the attention of mind, and whose reconciliation is essential. If we adopt this one-sided position, God is on the one side, and man in his freedom is on the other. A freedom such as this, standing in contrast to the objective, a freedom in which man, as thinking self-consciousness, conceives as the absolute the relation of his pure inwardness to himself, is, however, only formally, and not concretely absolute. In so far then as the human will determines itself negatively towards the objective, we have the origin of sin, evil in contrast to the absolute Affirmative.
A third essential point of interest is the form in which God must now be apprehended in general, for since it pertains essentially to the Notion of Mind to determine God as concrete, living God, it is indispensable that God should be thought of in relation to the world and to man. This relation to the world is then a relation to an ‘other,’ which thereby at first appears to be outside of God; but because this relation is His activity, the fact of having this relation in Himself is a moment of Himself. Because the connection of God with the world is a determination in Himself, so the being another from the one, the duality, the negative, the distinction, the self-determination in general, is essentially to be thought of as a moment in Him, or God reveals Himself in Himself, and therefore establishes distinct determinations in Himself. This distinction in Himself, His concrete nature, is the point where the absolute comes into connection with man, with the world, and is reconciled with the same. We say God has created man and the world, this is His determination in Himself, and at the same time the point of commencement, the root of the finite in God Himself. In this manner, therefore, that which afterwards appears finite is yet produced by Him in Himself — the particular Ideas, the world in God Himself, the Divine world, where God has begun to separate Himself, and has His connection with the temporal world. In the fact that God is represented as concrete, we have immediately a Divine world in Himself.
Since the Divine forms, as natural and political, have now separated themselves from the True, and the temporal world has appeared to men as the negative, the untrue, so, in the fourth place, man recognizes God in Mind; he has recognized that natural things and the State are not, as in mythology, the mode in which God exists, but that the mode, as an intelligible world, exists in Himself. The unhappiness of the Roman world lay in its abstraction from that in which man had hitherto found his satisfaction; this satisfaction arose out of that pantheism, in which man found his highest truth in natural things, such as air and fire and water, and further in his duties, in the political life of the State. Now, on the contrary, in the world’s grief over her present woes, despair has entered in, and disbelief in these forms of the natural finite world and in the moral world of citizen life; to this form of reality, in its external and outwardly moral character, man has proved untrue. That condition which man terms the life of man in unity with nature, and in which man meets with God in nature because he finds his satisfaction there, has ceased to exist. The unity of man with the world is for this end broken, that it may be restored in a higher unity, that the world, as an intelligible world, may be received into God. The relation of man to God thereby reveals itself in the way provided for our salvation in worship, but more particularly it likewise shows itself in Philosophy; and that with the express consciousness of the aim that the individual should render himself capable of belonging to this intelligible world. The manner in which man represents to himself his relation to God is more particularly determined by the manner in which man represents to himself God. What is now often said, that man need not know God, and may yet have the knowledge of this relation, is false. Since God is the First, He determines the relation, and therefore in order to know what is the truth of the relation, man must know God. Since therefore thought goes so far as to deny the natural, what we are now concerned with is not to seek truth in any existing mode, but from our inner Being to go forth again to a true objective, which derives its determination from the intrinsic nature of thought.
These are the chief moments of the present standpoint, and the reflections of the Neo-Platonists belong to it. Before entering upon them we must, however, make cursory mention of Philo the Jew, and also notice sundry moments appearing in the history of the Church.
A. Philo.
PHILO, A LEARNED Jew of Alexandria, lived before and after the birth of Christ, in the reigns of the first Roman Emperors; that is to say, he was born B.C. 20, but lived until after Christ’s death. In him we for the first time see the application of the universal consciousness as philosophical consciousness. In the reign of Caligula, before whom very heinous charges against the Jews had been brought by Apion, he was, when advanced in years, sent to Rome as ambassador from his people, in order to give to the Romans a more favourable account of the Jews. There is a tradition that he came also in the reign of the Emperor Claudius to Rome, and there fell in with the Apostle Peter.207
Philo wrote a long series of works, many of which we still possess; for instance, those on The Creation of the World, on Rewards and Punishments, the Offerers of Sacrifices, the Law of Allegories, Dreams, the Immutability of God, &c.; they were published in folio at Frankfort in 1691, and afterwards by Pfeiffer at Erlangen. Philo was famous for the great extent of his learning, and was well acquainted with Greek philosophy.
He is more especially distinguished for his Platonic philosophy, and also for the pains he took to demonstrate the presence of Philosophy in the sacred writings of the Jews. In his explanation of the history of the Jewish nation, the narratives and statements therein contained have lost for him the immediate significance of reality. He reads into them throughout a mystical and allegorical meaning, and finds Plato present in Moses; in short, the endeavour of Philo resembled that of the Alexandrians when they recognized philosophic dogmas in Greek mythology. He treats of the nature of Mind, not, indeed, as comprehended in the element of thought, but as expressed therein, and this expression is still both far from pure and is associated with all sorts of imageries. By the spirit of Philosophy the Jews were compelled to seek in their sacred books, as the heathen sought in Homer and in the popular religion, a deeper speculative meaning, and to represent their religious writings as a perfect system of divine wisdom. That is the character of the time, in consequence of which all that appealed to the finite understanding in popular conceptions has not endured. The important point, then, is that on the one hand the popular conception is here still allied with the forms of reality; but as, on the other hand, what these forms express only immediately is no longer sufficient, the desire arises to understand them in a deeper sense. Although in the external histories of the Jewish and heathen religions men had the authority and starting-point of truth, they yet grasped the thought that truth cannot be given externally. Therefore, men read deep thoughts into history, as the expression is, or they read them out of it, and this latter is the true conception. For in the case of the Divine Book, whose author is the Spirit, it cannot be said that this spirituality is absent. The point of importance comes to be, whether this spirituality lies deeper down or nearer to the surface; therefore, even if the man who wrote the book had not the thoughts, they are implicitly contained in the inward nature of the relation. There is, generally speaking, a great difference between that which is present therein and that which is expressed. In history, art, philosophy, and the like, the point of importance is that what is contained therein should also be expressed; the real work of the mind is wholly and solely that of bringing to consciousness what is contained therein. The other side of the matter is that although all that lies within a form, a-religion, &c., does not come before consciousness, one can still not say that it did not enter into the human mind; it was not in consciousness, neither did it come into the form of the ordinary conception, and yet it was in mind. On the one side, the bringing of thought into definite consciousness is a bringing in from without, but on the other side, as far as matter is concerned, there is nothing brought in from without. Philo’s methods present this aspect in a pre-eminent sense. All that is prosaic has disappeared, and, therefore, in writers of the period that follows, miracles are of common occurrence, inasmuch as external connection is no longer required as a matter of necessity. The fundamental conceptions of Philo, and these alone need be taken into consideration, are then somewhat as follows: —
- With Philo the main point is the knowledge of God. In regard to this, he says, in the first place: God can be known only by the eye of the soul, only by Beholding (ὅρασις). This he also calls rapture, ecstasy, God’s influence; we often find these terms. For this it is requisite that the soul should break loose from the body, and should give up its sensuous existence, thus rising to the pure object of thought, where it finds itself nearer to God. We may term this a beholding by the intelligence. But the other side is that God cannot be discerned by the eye of the soul; the soul can only know that He is, and not what He is. His essence is the primordial light.208 Philo here speaks in quite Oriental fashion; for light is certainly simple, in contrast with which perception has the signification of knowing something as determined, as concrete in itself. So long, therefore, as the determination of simplicity is adhered to, this First Light permits not itself to be known, and since Philo says, “This One is God as such,” we cannot know what God is. In Christianity, on the contrary, simplicity is only a moment, and only in the Whole do we find God the Spirit.
Philo continues: “The First is the space of the universe, encompassing and filling it; this existence is itself place, and is filled by itself. God is sufficient for Himself; all other things are paltry and meaningless; He fills all other things and gives them coherence, but He Himself is surrounded by nothing, because He Himself is One and All. Similarly, God exists in the primordial form of time (αἰών),”209 that is, in the pure Notion of time. Why is it necessary that God should fill Himself with Himself? Even the subjective and abstract has need also of an object. But the all is likewise, as with Parmenides, the abstract, because it is only substance, which remains empty beside that which fills it. Absolute fulness, on the other hand, is the concrete, and we reach this first in the λόγος, in which we have that which fills, that which is filled, and a third composed of both.
- To this Philo now comes in the second place: “God’s image and reflection is thinking reason (λόγος), the Firstborn Son, who rules and regulates the world. This λόγος is the innermost meaning of all Ideas; God Himself, in contrast to this, as the One, as such, is pure Being (τὸ ὄν) only210 — an expression which Plato also used. Here verily we come upon a contradiction; for the image can only represent what the thing is; if therefore the image is concrete, its original must also be understood to be concrete. For the rest, it is therefore only logical, after Philo has once limited the name of God to the First Light or to pure Being, to assert that only the Son can be known. For as this Being God is only abstract existence, or only His own Notion; and it is quite true that the soul cannot perceive what this Being is, since it is really only an empty abstraction. What can be perceived is that pure existence is only an abstraction, and consequently a nothing, and not the true God. Of God as the One it may therefore be said that the only thing perceived is that He does exist. Perception is the knowledge of the concrete self-determination of the living God. If we therefore desire to know God, we must add to Being, as the First, this other moment also; the former is defective, and as abstract as when we say, ‘God the Father,’” that is, this undisclosed One, this indeterminate in Himself, who has not yet created anything; the other moment is, however, the determination and distinction of Himself in Himself, the begetting. What is begotten is His other, which at the same time is in Him, and belongs to Him, and is thus a moment of Himself, if God is to be thought of as concrete and living it is this that is here by Philo called λόγος. In Christianity the name of God is therefore not limited to Essence, but the Son is conceived of as a determination which itself belongs to the true Essence of God. That which God is, He is therefore as Spirit only, and that is the unity of these moments.
God’s differences therefore, according to Philo, constitute the finite understanding (λόγος) itself, which is then the archangel (ἀρχάγγελος), a realm of thought which contains determinateness. That is man as heavenly man, primeval man, who is also represented under the name of Wisdom (σοφία, תגמה), as Adam Kadmon, as the rising of the sun — man in God. This finite understanding now separates itself into Ideas, which by Philo are also named angels or messengers (ἄγγελοι). This mode of conception is not yet conception in pure thought, for forms of the imagination are still interwoven with it. Moreover there comes in here for the first time that which determines, where God is looked on as activity, which so far Being was not. This λόγος is therefore itself, we might say, the first restful world of thought, although it is already differentiated; but another λόγος is that which gives utterance (λόγος προφορικός) as speech. That is the activity, the creation of the world, as the former is its preservation, its permanent understanding. Speech has always been regarded as a manifestation of God, because it is not corporeal; as sound it is momentary and immediately disappears; its existence is therefore immaterial. “God created by the word of His month, interposing nothing;” what He created remains ideal, like speech. “If we would express the dogma in a still truer form, the Logos is the ‘Work of God.’”211
This Logos is at the same time the teacher of wisdom for self-consciousness. For natural things are upheld only in their laws; but self-conscious beings know also of these laws, and this is wisdom. Thus the λόγος is the high priest, who is the mediator between God and man, the Spirit of the Godhead, who teaches man — even the self-conscious return of God into Himself, into that first unity of the primordial light. That is the pure intelligible world of truth itself, which is nothing other than the Word of God.212
- In the third place, since thought has come to negativity, the sensuous existent world stands in opposition to this ideal world. Its principle with Philo, as with Plato, is matter, the negative (οὐκ ὄν).213 As God is Being, so the essence of matter is non-being; it is not nothing, as when we say that God created the world out of nothing, for non-being, the opposite of Being, is itself a positive, and as good as Being. It exists, in so far as there is placed within it a resemblance to implicit truth. Philo had the true perception that the opposite of Being is just as positive as Being. If this seems absurd to anyone, he need only be reminded that really when we posit Being, the negative of Being is thinking — which is something very positive. But the next step, the Notion of this opposition, and the passing of Being into non-being, is not to be found in Philo. In general this philosophy is less a metaphysic of the Notion or of Thought itself, than a philosophy in which Mind appears only in pure Thought, and not here in the mode of ordinary conception — Notions and Ideas are still represented as independent forms. Thus, for instance, it is said: “In the beginning the Word of God created the heavens, which consist of the purest Being and are the dwelling-place of the purest angels, which do not appear, and are not perceptible by the senses,” but by thought alone; these are the Ideas. “The Creator before the whole of the intelligible world made the incorporeal heavens and the non-sensuous earth, and the Idea of the air and of the void, and after this the incorporeal essence of the water and an incorporeal light, and a non-sensuous archetype (ἀρχέτυπος) of the sun and all the stars;”214 and the sensuous world is the anti-type of this. Philo now proceeds according to the Mosaic record. In the Old Testament history of creation, grass, plants, and trees are created on the third day, and on the fourth day lights in the firmament of heaven, the sun and moon. Philo therefore says (De mundi opificio, pp. 9, 10) that on the fourth day a number adorned the heavens, the four, the tetractys, the most perfect, &c. These are the main points in Philo’s philosophy.
B. Cabala and Gnosticism.
THE CABALISTIC PHILOSOPHY and the Gnostic theology both occupied themselves with these same conceptions which Philo also had. To them also the First is the abstract, the unknown, the nameless; the Second is the unveiling, the concrete, which goes forth into emanation. But there is also to be found in some degree the return to unity, especially among Christian philosophers: and this return, which is accepted as the Third, belongs to the λόγος; so with Philo Wisdom, the teacher, the high priest, was that which in the contemplation of God leads back the Third to the First.
Cabala is the name given to the secret wisdom of the Jews, with which, however, much that is dark and mysterious is mingled; regarding its origin also many fables are related. We are told of it that it is contained in two books, Jezirah (Creation) and Sohar (Brightness). Jezirah, the more important of these two books, is ascribed to a certain Rabbi Akibha; it is about to be published in a more complete form by Herr von Mayer, in Frankfort. The book has certain very interesting general principles, and this better portion of it consists of ideas, which in some respects resemble those of Philo, though they are more fancifully presented, and often sink into the fantastic. It is not of the antiquity which those who reverence the Cabala would assign to it; for they relate that this heavenly book was given to Adam to console him after his fall. It is a medley of astronomy, magic, medicine, and prophecy; sundry traces followed up historically indicate that such were cultivated in Egypt. Akibha lived soon after the destruction of Jerusalem, and took an active part in a revolt of the Jews against Hadrian, in the course of which they collected an army two hundred thousand strong, in order to establish Barcochba as the Messiah; the revolt was, however, suppressed, and the Rabbi was flayed alive. The second book is said to have been the work of his disciple, Rabbi Simeon Ben Jochai, who was called the Great Light, the Spark of Moses.215 Both books were translated into Latin in the seventeenth century. A speculative Israelite, Rabbi Abraham Cohen Irira, also wrote a book, the Door of Heaven (Porta c\nlorum); it is later, dating from the fifteenth century, and sundry references to the Arabians and Scholastics are contained in it. These are the sources of the high cabalistic wisdom.
In earlier times there is no representation among the Jews of God as being in His essence Light, of an opposite to God, Darkness and Evil, which is at strife with the Light; there is nothing of good and evil angels, of the Fall of the wicked, of their condemnation, of their being in Hell, of a future day of judgment for the good and the evil, of the corruption of the flesh. It was not until this time that the Jews began to carry their thoughts beyond their reality; only now does a world of spirit, or at least of spirits, begin to open itself up before them; before this these Jews cared only for themselves, being sunk in the filth and self-conceit of their present existence, and in the maintenance of their nation and tribes.
Further particulars of the Cabala are these. One is expressed as the principle of all things, as it is likewise the first source of all numbers. As unity itself is not one number among the rest, so is it with God, the basis of all things, the En-Soph. The emanation therewith connected is the effect of the first cause by the limitation of that first infinite whose boundary (ὅρος) it is. In this one cause all is contained eminenter, not formaliter but causaliter. The second element of importance is the Adam Kadmon, the first man, Kether, the first that arose, the highest crown, the microcosm, the macrocosm, with which the world that emanated stands in connection as the efflux of light. By further expansion the other spheres or circles of the world came into being; and this emanation is represented as streams of light. In the first place there come forth ten of such emanations, Sephiroth, forming the pure world Azilah, which exists in itself and changes not. The second is the world Beriah, which does change. The third is the created world, Jezirah, the world of pure spirits set in matter, the souls of the stars — that is, further distinctions into which this dark and mysterious philosophy proceeds. In the fourth place comes the created world, the Asijja: it is the lowest, the vegetative and sensible world.216
Though there are various sects of the Gnostics, we find certain common determinations constituting their basis.
\Joe Cooper\roddr\charliehoward\ — Professor Neander has with great learning made a collection of these, and elaborated them exhaustively; some of the forms correspond with those which we have given. Their general aim was that of knowledge (γνῶσις); whence they also derived their name.
One of the most distinguished Gnostics is Basilides. For him, too, the First is the unspeakable God (θεὸς ἄῤῥητος) — the En-Soph of the Cabala; He is, as with Philo also, that which is (τὸ ὄν), He who is (ὁ ὤν), the nameless one (ἀνωνόμαστος) — that is, the immediate. The second is then the Spirit (νοῦς), the first-born, also λόγος, the Wisdom (σοφία), Power (δύναμις): more closely defined, it is Righteousness (δικαιοσύνη), and Peace (εἰρήνη). These are followed by principles still further determined, which Basilides names archons, heads of spiritual kingdoms. One main point in this is likewise the return, the refining process of the soul, the economy of purification (οἰκονονία καθάρσεων): the soul from matter must come back to wisdom, to peace. The First Essence bears all perfection sealed up in Himself, but only in potentiality; Spirit, the first-born, is the first revelation of the latent. It is, moreover, only through being made one with God that all created beings can attain to a share in true righteousness and the peace which flows therefrom.217
The Gnostics, for instance Marcus, term the First also the Unthinkable (ἀνεννόητος), even the Non-existent (ἀνούσιος) which proceeds not to determinateness, the Solitude (μονότης), and the pure Silence (σιγή); the Ideas, the angels, the æons, then form the Other. These are termed the Notions, roots, seeds of particular fulfillings (πληρώματα), the fruit; every æon in this bears its own special world in itself.218
With others, as for instance Valentinus, the First is also termed “the completed æon in the heights that cannot be seen or named,” or the unfathomable, the primordial cause, the absolute abyss (ἄβυσσον, βῦθος), wherein all is, as abrogated: also what is even before the beginning (προάρχη), before the Father (προπάτωρ). The active transition of the One signifies then the differentiation (διάθεσις) of this abyss; and this development is also termed the making itself comprehensible of the incomprehensible (κατάληψις τοῦ ἀκαταλήπτου), in the same way that we found comprehension spoken of by the Stoics (Vol. II. p. 250). Æons, particular expositions, are Notions. The second step is likewise termed limitation (ὅρος); and inasmuch as the development of life is conceived more clearly by contrast, the key to this is stated to be contained in two principles, which appear in the form of male and female. The one is required to perfect the other, each has its complement (σύζυγος) in the other; from their conjunction (σύνθεσις, συξυγία), which first constitutes the real, a perfect whole proceeds. The inward significance of these fulfilments generally is the world of æons, the universal filling of the abyss, which therefore, inasmuch as what was distinguished in it was still unrevealed, is also termed hermaphrodite, man-woman (ἀῤῥενόθηλυς),219 — very much the same theory as was held long before by the Pythagoreans (Vol. I. p. 221).
Ptolemæus assigns two conjunctions (σύζυγους) to the abyss, and two separations, which are pre-supposed throughout all temporal existence, Will and Perception (θέλημα καὶ ἔννοια). Complicated and motley forms here appear, but the fundamental determination is the same throughout, and abyss and revelation are the most important matters. The revelation which has come down is also conceived as the glory (δόξα, Shekinah) of God; as heavenly wisdom, which is itself a beholding of God; as unbegotten powers which encircle Him and are radiant with the most brilliant light. To these Ideas the name of God is more especially given, and in this regard He is also called the many-named (πολυώνυμος), the demiurge; this is the manifestation, the determination of God.220
All these forms pass into the mysterious, but they have on the whole the same determinations as principle; and the general necessity which forms their basis is a profound necessity of reason, namely, the determination and comprehension of what is absolute as the concrete. I have, however, merely been desirous of calling these forms to remembrance, in order to indicate their connection with the universal.
THE UNITY OF self-consciousness and Being appears in more philosophical and intelligent form in the Alexandrian School, which constitutes the most important, and at the same time the most characteristic form of philosophy pertaining to this sphere. For Alexandria had for some time past, mainly through the Ptolemies, become the principal seat of the sciences. Here, as if in their centre-point, all the popular religions and mythologies of the East and West, and likewise their history, came into touch and intermingled with one another in various forms and shapes. Religions were compared with one another: in each of them there was, on the one hand, a searching for and putting together of that which was contained also in the other, and, on the other hand, there was the more important task of reading into the popular conceptions of religion a deeper meaning, and of giving to them a universal allegorical signification. This endeavour has doubtless given birth to much that is dim and mystical; its purer product is the Alexandrian Philosophy. The bringing together of the philosophies naturally succeeded better than those connections which, on the side of religion, are only the mystic products of a Reason that as yet is unintelligible to itself. For while in fact there is but one Idea in Philosophy, it annuls by its own means the special form which it has adopted, the one-sidedness in which it expresses itself. In Scepticism had been reached this negative stage of seeing annulled the definite modes of Being in which the Absolute was posited.
Since the form of philosophy which arose in Alexandria did not attach itself to any of the earlier philosophic schools, but recognized all the different systems of philosophy, and more especially the Pythagorean, Platonic, and Aristotelian, to be in their various forms but one, it was frequently asserted to be Eclecticism. Brucker (Hist. crit. phil. T. II., p. 193) is the first to do so, as I have found, and Diogenes Laërtius gave him the occasion thereto, by speaking (Pr\nmium, § 21) of a certain Potamo of Alexandria, who not so very long before (ρπὸ ὀλίγου) had selected from the different philosophies their principal maxims and the best of their teaching. Then Diogenes goes on to quote several passages from Potamo, saying that this writer had produced an eclectic philosophy; but these maxims drawn from Aristotle, Plato, and the Stoics are not of importance, and the distinguishing characteristics of the Alexandrians cannot be recognized therein. Diogenes is also earlier than the Alexandrian School; but Potamo, according to Suidas (s.v. Ποτάμον, T. III., p. 161), was tutor of the stepsons of Augustus, and for the instructor of princes eclecticism is a very suitable creed. Therefore, because this Potamo is an Alexandrian, Brucker has bestowed on the Alexandrian philosophy the name of Eclectic; but that is neither consistent with fact, nor is it true to history. Eclecticism is something to be utterly condemned, if it is understood in the sense of one thing being taken out of this philosophy, and another thing out of that philosophy, altogether regardless of their consistency or connection, as when a garment is patched together of pieces of different colours or stuffs. Such an eclecticism gives nothing but an aggregate which lacks all inward consistency. Eclectics of this kind are sometimes ordinary uncultured men, in whose heads the most contradictory ideas find a place side by side, without their ever bringing these thoughts together and becoming conscious of the contradictions involved; sometimes they are men of intelligence who act thus with their eyes open, thinking that they attain the best when, as they say, they take the good from every system, and so provide themselves with a vade mecum of reflections, in which they have everything good except consecutiveness of thought, and consequently thought itself. An eclectic philosophy is something that is altogether meaningless and inconsequent: and such a philosophy the Alexandrian philosophy is not. In France the Alexandrians are still called Eclectics; and there, where système is synonymous with narrowness of views, and where indeed one must have the name which sounds least systematic and suspicious, that may be borne with.
In the better sense of the word the Alexandrians may, however, very well be called eclectic philosophers, though it is quite superfluous to give them this designation at all. For the Alexandrians took as their groundwork the philosophy of Plato, but availed themselves of the general development of Philosophy, which after Plato they became acquainted with through Aristotle and all the following philosophies, and especially through the Stoics; that is to say, they reinstated it, but as invested with a higher culture. Therefore we find in them no refutation of the views of the philosophers whom they quote. To this higher culture there more especially belongs the deeper principle that absolute essence must be apprehended as self-consciousness, that its very essence is to be self-consciousness, and that it is therefore in the individual consciousness. This is not to be understood as signifying that God is a Spirit who is outside of the world and outside self-consciousness, as is often said, but as indicating that His existence as self-conscious spirit is really self-consciousness itself. The Platonic universal, which is in thought, accordingly receives the signification of being as such absolute essence. In the higher sense a wider point of view as regards the Idea thus signifies its concretely blending into one the preceding principles, which contain only single one-sided moments of the Idea. This really indicates a deeper knowledge of the philosophical Idea which is known concretely in itself, so that the more abstract principles are contained in the deeper form of the Idea. For after some divergence has taken place in the past it must from time to time come about that the implicit identity of the divergent views is recognized, so that difference has force only as form. In this sense even Plato is eclectic, since he harmonized Pythagoras, Heraclitus, and Parmenides; and the Alexandrians are also thus eclectics, seeing that they were just as much Pythagoreans as Platonists and Aristotelians; the only thing is that this term always at once calls up the idea of an arbitrary selection.
All earlier philosophies could therefore find a place in that of the Alexandrians. For in Alexandria the Ptolemies had attracted to themselves science and the learned, partly by reason of their own interest in science, and partly on account of the excellence of their institutions. They founded the great and celebrated library for which the Greek translation of the Old Testament was made; after Cæsar had destroyed it, it was again restored. There was also there a museum, or what would nowadays be called an Academy of Science, where philosophers and men of special learning received payments of money, and had no other duties than that of prosecuting scientific study. In later times such foundations were instituted in Athens also, and each philosophic school had its own public establishment,221 without favour being shown to one philosophy or to the other. Thus the Neo-Platonic philosophy arose beside the others, and partly upon their ruins, and overshadowed the rest, until finally all earlier systems were merged therein. It, therefore, did not constitute an individual philosophical school similar to those which went before; but, while it united them all in itself, it had as its leading characteristic the study of Plato, of Aristotle, and of the Pythagoreans.
With this study was combined an interpretation of the writings of these men, which aimed at exhibiting their philosophic ideas in their unity; and the principal mode in which the Neo-Platonic teachers carried on and elaborated Philosophy consisted in their explaining the various philosophical works, especially the writings of Plato and Aristotle, or giving sketches of these philosophies. These commentaries on the early philosophers were either given in lectures or written; and many of them have come down to us, some in the number being excellent. Aristotle’s works were commented on by Alexander Aphrodisiensis, Andronicus Rhodius, Nicolaus Damascenus, and also Porphyrius. Plato had as commentators Numenius and Maximus Tyrius. Other Alexandrians combined a commentary on Plato with study of the other philosophic maxims or philosophies, and managed to grasp the point of unity of the various modes of the Idea very successfully. The best commentaries date from this period; most of the works of Proclus are commentaries on single dialogues of Plato and similar subjects. This school has the further peculiarity of expressing speculation as actual divine Being and life, and, therefore, it makes this appear to be mystical and magical.
Ammonius Saccas, that is, the sack-bearer, is named as one of the first or most celebrated teachers of this school; he died A.D. 243.222 But we have none of his writings, nor have any traditions regarding his philosophy come down to us. Among his very numerous disciples Ammonius had many men celebrated in other branches of science, for example, Longinus and Origen; it is, however, uncertain if this were the Christian Father of that name. But his most renowned disciple in philosophy is Plotinus, through whose writings as they are preserved to us we derive our chief knowledge of the Neo-Platonic philosophy. The systematized fabric of this philosophy is, indeed, ascribed to him by those who came after, and this philosophy is known specially as his philosophy.
As the disciples of Ammonius had, by their master’s desire, made an agreement not to commit his philosophy to writing, it was not until late in life that Plotinus wrote; or, rather, the works received from him were published after his death by Porphyrius, one of his disciples. From the same disciple we have an account of the life of Plotinus; what is remarkable in it is that the strictly historical facts recounted are mixed up with a great variety of marvellous episodes. This is certainly the period when the marvellous plays a prominent part; but when the pure system of Philosophy, the pure meaning of such a man, is known, it is impossible to express all one’s astonishment at anecdotes of this kind. Plotinus was an Egyptian; he was born at Lycopolis about A.D. 205, in the reign of Septimius Severus. After he had attended the lectures of many teachers of Philosophy, he became melancholy and absorbed in thought; at the age of eight and twenty he came to Ammonius, and, finding here at last what satisfied him, he remained for eleven years under his instruction. As at that time wonderful accounts of Indian and Brahminical wisdom were being circulated, Plotinus set out on his way to Persia in the army of the Emperor Gordian; but the campaign ended so disastrously that Plotinus did not attain his object, and had difficulty even in procuring his own safety. At the age of forty he proceeded to Rome, and remained there until his death, twenty-six years later. In Rome his outward demeanour was most remarkable; in accordance with the ancient Pythagorean practice, he refrained from partaking of flesh, and often imposed fasts on himself; he wore, also, the ancient Pythagorean dress. As a public lecturer, however, he gained a high reputation among all classes. The Emperor of those days, Gallienus, whose favour Plotinus enjoyed, as well as that of the Empress, is said to have been inclined to hand over to him a town in Campania, where he thought to realize the Platonic Republic. The ministers, however, prevented the carrying out of this plan, and therein they showed themselves men of sense, for in such an outlying spot of the Roman Empire, and considering the utter change in the human mind since Plato’s days, when another spiritual principle had of necessity to make itself universal, this was an enterprise which was far less calculated than in Plato’s time to bring honour to the Platonic Republic. It does little credit to the sagacity of Plotinus that this idea ever entered into his head; but we do not exactly know if his plan were limited to the Platonic Republic, or if it did not admit of some extension or modification thereof. Of course an actual Platonic state was contrary to the nature of things; for the Platonic state is free and independent, which such an one as this, within the Roman Empire, could of course not be. Plotinus died at Rome, in the sixty-sixth year of his age, A.D. 270.223
The writings of Plotinus are originally for the most part answers given as occasion required to questions proposed by his auditors; he committed them to writing during the last sixteen years of his life, and Porphyrius edited them some time later. In his teaching Plotinus adopted, as has been already mentioned, the method of commenting in his lectures on the writings of various earlier philosophers. The writings of Plotinus are known as Enneads, and are six in number, each of them containing nine separate treatises. We thus have altogether fifty-four of such treatises or books, which are subdivided into many chapters; it is consequently a voluminous work. The books do not, however, form a connected whole; but in each book, in fact, there are special matters brought forward and philosophically handled; and it is thus laborious to go through them. The first Ennead has for the most part a moral character; the first book proposes the question of what animals are, and what man is; the second deals with the virtues; the third with dialectic; the fourth with happiness (περὶ εὐδαιμονίας); the fifth investigates whether happiness consists in protraction of time (παρατάσει χρόνου); the sixth speaks of the beautiful; the seventh of the highest (πρώτου) good and of the other goods; the eighth inquires into the origin of evil; the ninth treats of a rational departure from life. Other Enneads are of a metaphysical nature. Porphyrius says in his Life of Plotinus (pp. 3-5, 9, 17-19) that they are unequal. He states that twenty-one of these books were already in written form before he came to Plotinus, which was when the latter was fifty-nine years of age; and in that year and the five following, which Porphyrius spent with Plotinus as his disciple, other four-and-twenty were added. During the absence of Porphyrius in Sicily, Plotinus wrote nine more books, in the last years before his death, which later books are weaker. Creuzer is preparing to bring out an edition of Plotinus. To give an account of him would be a difficult task, and would amount to a systematic explanation. The mind of Plotinus hovers over each of the particular matters that he deals with; he treats them rationally and dialectically, but traces them all back to one Idea. Many beautiful detached quotations could be made from Plotinus, but as there is in his works a continual repetition of certain leading thoughts, the reading of them is apt to prove wearisome. Since then it is the manner of Plotinus to lead the particular, which he makes his starting-point, always back again to the universal, it is possible to grasp the ideas of Plotinus from some of his books, knowing that the reading of those remaining would not reveal to us any particular advance. Plato’s ideas and expressions are predominant with him, but we find also many very lengthy expositions quite in the manner of Aristotle; for he makes constant use of terms borrowed from Aristotle — force, energy, &c. — and their relations are essentially the object of his meditations. The main point is that he is not to be taken as placing Plato and Aristotle in opposition; on the contrary, he went so far as to adopt even the Logos of the Stoics.
It is very difficult to give a systematic account of his philosophy. For it is not the aim of Plotinus, as it was of Aristotle, to comprehend objects in their special determinations, but rather to emphasize the truth of the substantial in them as against the phenomenal. The point of greatest importance and the leading characteristic in Plotinus is his high, pure enthusiasm for the elevation of mind to what is good and true, to the absolute. He lays hold of knowledge, the simply ideal, and of intellectual thought, which is implicitly life, but not silent nor sealed. His whole philosophy is on the one hand metaphysics, but the tendency which is therein dominant is not so much an anxiety to explain and interpret and comprehend what forces itself on our attention as reality, or to demonstrate the position and the origin of these individual objects, and perhaps, for instance, to offer a deduction of matter, of evil; but rather to separate the mind from these externals, and give it its central place in the simple, clear Idea. The whole tenor of his philosophy thus leads up to virtue and to the intellectual contemplation of the eternal, as source of the same; so that the soul is brought to happiness of life therein. Plotinus then enters to some extent on special considerations of virtue, with the view of cleansing the soul from passions, from false and impure conceptions of evil and destiny, and also from incredulity and superstition, from astrology and magic and all their train. This gives some idea of the general drift of his teaching.
If we now go on to consider the philosophy of Plotinus in detail, we find that there is no longer any talk of the criterion, as with the Stoics and Epicureans, — that is all settled; but a strenuous effort is made to take up a position in the centre of things, in pure contemplation, in pure thought. Thus what with the Stoics and Epicureans is the aim, the unity of the soul with itself in untroubled peace, is here the point of departure; Plotinus takes up the position of bringing this to pass in himself as a condition of ecstasy (ἔκστασις), as he calls it, or as an inspiration. Partly in this name and partly in the facts themselves, a reason has been found for calling Plotinus a fanatic and visionary, and this is the cry universally raised against this philosophy; to this assertion the fact that for the Alexandrian school all truth lies in reason and comprehension alone, presents a very marked antithesis and contradiction.
And firstly, with regard to the term ecstasy, those who call Plotinus a fanatic associate with the idea nothing but that condition into which crazy Indians, Brahmins, monks and nuns fall, when, in order to bring about an entire retreat into themselves, they seek to blot out from their minds all ordinary ideas and all perception of reality; thus this in some measure exists as a permanent and fixed condition; and again as a steady gaze into vacuity it appears as light or as darkness, devoid of motion, distinction, and, in a word, of thought. Fanaticism like this places truth in an existence which stands midway between reality and the Notion, but is neither the one nor the other, — and therefore only a creature of the imagination. From this view of ecstasy, however, Plotinus is far removed.
But in the second place there is something in the thing itself which has contributed to bring upon him this reproach, and it is this, that very often the name of fanaticism is given to anything that transcends sensuous consciousness or the fixed notions of the finite understanding, which in their limitation are held to constitute real existence. Partly, however, the imputation is due to the manner in which Plotinus speaks in general of Notions, spiritual moments as such, as if they had a substantial existence of their own. That is to say, Plotinus sometimes introduces sensuous modes, modes of ordinary conception, into the world of Notions, and sometimes he brings down Ideas into the sphere of the sensuous, since, for instance, he utilizes the necessary relations of things for purposes of magic. For the magician is just he who attributes to certain words and particular sensuous signs a universal efficacy, and who attempts by prayers, &c., to lift them up to the universal. Such a universal this is not, however, in itself, in its own nature: universality is only attributed to it; or the universal of thought has not yet given itself therein a universal reality, while the thought, the act of a hero is the true, the universal, whose effects and whose means have equal greatness and universality. In a certain sense therefore the Neo-Platonists have well deserved the reproach of fanaticism, for in the biographies of the great teachers of this school, Plotinus, Porphyrius and Iamblichus we certainly find much recounted that comes under the category of miracle-working and sorcery, just as we found it in the case of Pythagoras (Vol. I. p. 200). Upholding as they did the belief in the gods of heathendom, they asserted in reference to the worship of images that these really were filled with the divine power and presence. Thus the Alexandrian school cannot be altogether absolved from the charge of superstition.224 For in the whole of that period of the world’s history, among Christians and heathen alike, the belief in miracle-working prevailed, because the mind, absorbed in itself and filled with astonishment at the infinite power and majesty of this self, paid no heed to the natural connection of events, and made the interference of a supreme power seem easy. But what the philosophers taught is utterly remote therefrom; except the quite theoretical observation regarding the images of the gods which we mentioned above, the writings of Plotinus contain nothing in any way related thereto.
He then who gives the name of fanaticism to every effort of the soul to rise to the supersensuous, to every belief that man can have in the virtuous, the noble, the divine, the eternal, to every religious conviction, — may count the Neo-Platonists as being fanatics; but fanaticism is in this case an empty name employed only by the dull finite understanding, and by unbelief in all that is high and noble. If we, however, give the name of fanatics to those who rise to speculative truths which contradict the categories of the finite understanding, the Alexandrians have indeed incurred this imputation, but with quite equal reason may the Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy be also termed fanaticism. For Plato most certainly speaks with enthusiasm of the elevation of the spirit into thought, or rather the Platonic enthusiasm proper consists in rising into the sphere of the movement of thought. Those who are convinced that the absolute essence in thought is not thought itself, constantly reiterate that God is beyond consciousness, and that the thought of Him is the notion of One whose existence or reality is nevertheless an utterly different thing; just as, when we think of or imagine an animal or a stone, our notion or imagination is something quite different from the animal itself, — which is making this last to be the truth. But we are not speaking of this or that animal perceived by our senses, but of its essential reality, and this is the Notion of it. The essential reality of the animal is not present as such in the animal of our senses, but as being one with the objective individuality, as a mode of that universal; as essence it is our Notion, which indeed alone is true, whereas what the senses perceive is negative. Thus our Notion of absolute essence is the essence itself, when it is the Notion of absolute essence, not of something else. But this essence does not seem to be co-extensive with the idea of God; for He is not only Essence or His Notion, but His existence. His existence, as pure essence, is our thought of Him; but His real existence is Nature. In this real existence the ‘I’ is that which has the faculty of individual thought; it belongs to this existence as a moment present in it, but does not constitute it. From the existence of essence as essence we must pass over to existence, to real existence as such. As such, God is doubtless a Beyond to individual self-consciousness, that is to say, of course, in the capacity of essence or pure thought; thus to a certain extent He, as individual reality, is Nature which is beyond thought. But even this objective mode comes back into essence, or the individuality of consciousness is overcome. Therefore what has brought upon Plotinus the reproach of fanaticism is this, that he had the thought of the essence of God being Thought itself and present in Thought. As the Christians said that He was once present to sensuous perception at a certain time and in a certain place — but also that He ever dwells in His people and is their Spirit — so Plotinus said that absolute essence is present in the self-consciousness that thinks, and exists in it as essence, or Thought itself is the Divine.
In further defining the relation of individual self-consciousness to the knowledge of absolute essence, Plotinus asserts (Ennead. VI. l. 7, c. 35, 36) that the soul which withdraws from the corporeal and loses every conception but that of pure essence brings itself nigh to the Deity. The principle of the philosophy of Plotinus is therefore the Reason which is in and for itself. The condition of ecstasy through which alone that which has true Being comes to be known, is named by Plotinus (Ennead. VI. l. 9, c. 11) a simplification of the soul, through which it is brought into a state of blissful repose, because its object is itself simple and at rest. But it is evident that we are not to imagine this simplification of self-consciousness to be a condition of fanaticism, seeing that even an immediate knowledge of God such as this is a thinking of Him and a comprehension of Him, and not a vacant feeling, or what is quite as vacant, an intuition. This withdrawal of the soul from the body takes place through pure thought; thought is the activity and at the same time the object. It is thus a tranquil state, without any wild turmoil of the blood or of the imagination. Ecstasy is not a mere rapturous condition of the senses and fancy, but rather a passing beyond the content of sensuous consciousness; it is pure thought that is at home with itself, and is its own object. Plotinus often speaks of this condition in the same way as in the following passage: “Often when I out of the body awaken to myself, and am beyond the other,” the external, “and have entered into my inmost nature, and have a wondrous intuition, and live a godlike life,” &c.225 In this way Plotinus certainly approaches to the intuitive point of view. Yet his figurative mode of expression separates itself still more from the, in great measure, confused mythical ideas. The Idea of the philosophy of Plotinus is thus an intellectualism or a higher idealism, which indeed from the side of the Notion is not yet a perfect idealism; that of which Plotinus becomes conscious in his ecstasy is, however, philosophic thought, speculative Notions and Ideas.
As for the determinate principle of Plotinus, the objective, the content, which is at home with itself in this ecstasy, in this Being of Thought — this content, as regards its chief moments in the universal, is that already dealt with. The three principles are for him the One, the νοῦς and the soul.
a. The first, the absolute, the basis, is here, as with Philo, pure Being, the unchangeable, which is the basis and the cause of all Being that appears, whose potentiality is not apart from its actuality, but is absolute actuality in itself. It is the unity which is likewise essence, or unity as the essence of all essence. The true principle is not the multiplicity of present Being, the ordinary substantiality of things, according to which each appears as one separated from the others, for really and truly their unity is their essence. This unity is, properly speaking, not All; for All is nothing but the result of the units, the comprehension of them — forming the basis, as they do, as essence — in a unity which is strange to them. Nor is it before all; for it is not different from the all in actual existence, since otherwise it would again be only something thought.226 The later unity, as regulative of the Reason, has the force of a subjective principle; but Plotinus establishes it as the highest objectivity, as Being.
This unity has no multiplicity in it, or multiplicity is not implicit; unity is only as it was for Parmenides and Zeno, absolute, pure Being; or else the absolute Good, in the sense in which the absolute was spoken of in the writings of Plato and especially in those of Aristotle. In the first place, what is the Good?— “It is that on which all depends (ἀνήρτηται),227 and which all things desire (ἐφίεται)” — also according to Aristotle— “and have as principle, and which they are all in want of, while itself it has lack of nothing, is sufficient for itself, and is the measure and limit of all, which out of itself gives the νοῦς and essence (οὐσίαν) and soul and life, and the activity of reason (περὶ νοῦν ἐνήργειαν). And up to this point all is beautiful, but it is more than beautiful (ὑπέρκαλος) and better than the best (ἐπέκεινα τῶν ἀρίστων), the superlatively good, bearing free rule, exercising royal rights in Thought (βασιλεύων ἐν τῷ νοητῷ). But it is itself by no means that whose principle it is. For when thou hast said “the Good,” add nothing thereto, and think of nothing beyond. When thou hast abrogated Being itself, and takest it in this wise, astonishment will seize thee; and, making this thy aim and resting therein, thou wilt understand it and its greatness by what is derived from it. And when thou hast Being thus before thee, and regardest it in this purity, wonder will lay hold of thee.”228
Of absolute Being Plotinus then asserted that it is unknowable — which Philo also said — and that it remains in itself. On this point Plotinus expatiates at great length, and frequently recurs to the fact that the soul must really first attain to the thought of this unity through negative movement, which is something different from mere assertion, and is rather sceptical movement which makes trial of all predicates and finds nothing except this One. All such predicates as Being and substance do not conform to it in the opinion of Plotinus; for they express some determination or other. There is no sensation, no thought, no consciousness; for in all these there lies a distinction. Because the determination of the One is the main point, with Plotinus the Good is the aim for subjective thought as well as for practical; but although the Good is the absolutely free, it is nevertheless without resolution and will; for will has in it the distinction of itself and the Good.229
That Being is and remains God, and is not outside of Him, but is His very self: “Absolute unity upholds things that they fall not asunder; it is the firm bond of unity in all, penetrating all — bringing together and unifying things which in mutual opposition were in danger of separation. We term it the One and the Good. It neither is, nor is it something, nor is it anything, but it is over all. All these categories are negatived; it has no magnitude, is not infinite. It is the middle point of the universe, the eternal source of virtue and the origin of divine love, around which all moves, by which every thing directs its course, in which νοῦς and self-consciousness ever have their beginning and their end.”230 To this substance Plotinus leads back everything; it alone is the true, and in all remains simply identical with itself.
But out of this First all proceeds, owing to its revealing itself; that is the connection with creation and all production. But the Absolute cannot be conceived as creative, if it is determinate as an abstract, and is not rather comprehended as the One which has energy in itself. This transition to the determinate is thus not made by Plotinus philosophically or dialectically, but the necessity of it is expressed in representations and images. Thus he says (Ennead. III. l. 8, c. 9) of the νοῦς, his second principle, “The one absolute Good is a source which has no other principle, but is the principle for all streams, so that it is not swallowed up by these, but as source remains at rest in itself,” and thus contains these streams as such in itself; so that they, “flowing out in one direction and another, have yet not flowed away, but know whence and whither they are flowing.” This distinction is the point to which Plotinus often returns, and this advance from the unrevealed to the revelation, this production, is a point of importance.
b. Now what is first begotten by this Unity, the Son, is finite understanding (νοῦς), the second Divine Being, the other principle. Here the main difficulty confronts us — the task known and recognized long years ago — the comprehension of how the One came to the decision to determine itself; and the endeavour to elucidate this fact still constitutes the essential point of interest. The ancients did not frame this question in the definite form in which we have it; but they nevertheless occupied themselves with it. For the νοῦς is nothing more or less than the self-finding of self; it is the pure duality (δυάς), itself and its object; it contains all that is thought, it is this distinction, but pure distinction that remains at the same time identical with itself. Simple unity is, however, the First. Plotinus thus also says in a somewhat Pythagorean fashion that things are as numbers in this λόγος. “But number is not the First, for unity is not a number. The first number is the two, but as indeterminate duality; and the one is what determines it; the two is also the soul. Number is the solid; what sensuous perception takes to be existent, is a later development.”231
Plotinus has here (Ennead. V. l. 1, c. 6) all sorts of modes of representation in order to make clear to himself the development out of the One: “How then this process is accomplished, how out of unity proceed two and plurality in general — if we would know how to express this, we must call on God, not, however, with audible voice, but pouring out our soul in prayer to Him; this we can do only by coming all alone to Him who is alone. He who contemplates must retire into his secret heart as into a temple, and remain there at rest, being elevated above all things, and in such contemplation as admits of no change.” This is always the mood of the thinking soul, to which Plotinus exhorts and would lead everything back. In this pure thought or contemplation the νοῦς is actual; and this is divine activity itself.
Plotinus continues: “This production is not a movement nor a change; change and what comes to pass through change, the changeable, we arrive at only in the third place;” change implies other-Being and is directed to something else, νοῦς is still the remaining at home with self of meditation. “The finite understanding originating thus from absolute essence, yet without change, is the immediate reflection of the same; it is not established by an act of will or a resolution. But God,” as One, the Good, “is the immovable; and production is a light proceeding from Him who endures. The One sheds light round about Himself; the finite understanding flows from Him, the enduring one, just as the light from the sun encircles it. All things which are permanent give forth and diffuse from their substance an essence which is dependent upon them;” or, as Plotinus really says, it is identical with them. “As fire diffuses warmth, and snow cold, around itself, but especially as the fragrance of things clings round them,” so does νοῦς, like light, diffuse Being around. “That which has come to perfection passes into the emanation, into the circle of light,” spreads a fragrance around.232 For this going forth (πρόοδον) or production, Plotinus also employs the image of overflowing, whereby, however, the One remains simply one. “Because it is complete in itself, without anything lacking, it overflows; and this overflow is what is produced. This that is produced merely, however, returns to the One,” the Good, “which is its object, content and fulfilling; and this is finite understanding,” — this the reversion of what is produced to the original unity. “The first state of Being that is restful is absolute essence, and finite understanding is the contemplation of this essence;” or it comes into existence by means of the first essence, through return upon itself, seeing itself, by its being a seeing seeing. The light shed around is a contemplation of the One; this reflection of self on self (ἐπιστρέφειν) is then thought, or the νοῦς is this movement in a circle (ἐπιστροφή).233
These are the main principles of Plotinus; and he has in this way truly determined the nature of the Idea in all its moments. Only there is a difficulty here which makes us pause; and it is found in this development. We can imagine the infinite disclosing itself in a variety of ways; in later times there has been much talk of an issuing-forth from God, which, however, is still a sensuous conception or something quite immediate. The necessity of self-disclosure is not expressed thereby, for it is stated only as something having come to pass. That the Father begets the eternal Son satisfies the imagination; the Idea is according to its content quite correctly conceived as the Trinity, and this is an important matter. But although these determinations are true, the form of the immediacy of movement is at the same time neither sufficient nor satisfying for the Notion. For because the Becoming of the simple unity, as the abrogation of all predicates, is that same absolute negativity which is implicitly the production of itself, we must not begin with unity and only then pass over into duality, but we must grasp them both as one. For, according to Plotinus, the object of the finite understanding is clearly nothing which is alien or opposite to this or to itself; the manifold Ideas are alone the content of the same. God therefore through distinction and extension is likewise a return to Himself, that is, this very duality is simply in the unity, and is its object. What is thought is not outside of νοῦς in thought νοῦς merely possesses itself as thinking. The object of thought, that to which thought turns back, is absolute unity; into this, however, as such, there is no forcing a way, and it is not determined, but remains the unknown. Since thinking is, however, only the fact of having itself as object, it has thus already an object which contains mediation and activity, or, to speak generally, duality in itself. This is Thought as the thought of Thought. Or in the perfecting of this thought in itself, inasmuch as it is its own object, there lies for Plotinus the first and truly intellectual world, which thus stands to the world of sense in such a relation that the latter is only a distant imitation of the former. Things, looked at as they exist in this absolute Thought, are their own Notions and essence (λόγοι); and these are the patterns of sensuous existences, as Plato also expressed it.234
That the nature of thought is to think itself, is a quite Aristotelian definition. But with Plotinus and the Alexandrians it is likewise the case that the true universe, the intellectual worlds is produced from thought; what Plato termed the Ideas, is here the understanding that forms, the intelligence that produces, which is actual in that which is produced, and has itself as object, thinks itself. Of the relation of these many Notions in the understanding, Plotinus states that they are present there, just as the elements are present in a thing, and therefore not as mutually indifferent species, but as being diverse and yet entirely one. They are not indifferent through space, but only differ through an inner difference, that is, not in the manner of existent parts.235 The finite understanding is thereby expressed as negative unity. But it is utterly inappropriate when the relation of the elements which constitute a thing is defined as that of the parts of which the whole consists, and each of which is absolute — for instance, when it is represented that in a crystal, water, flint, &c., are still present as such. Their Being is really neutrality, in which each of them is abrogated as indifferent and existent: therefore their unity is negative unity, the inner essence, the principle of individuality as containing in itself elements that differ.
c. The world that changes, which is subject to difference, arises from this, that the multiplicity of these forms is not only implicitly in the understanding, but they also exist for it in the form of its object. Further, there is for it a three-fold mode of thinking: in the first place it thinks the unchangeable, its unity, as object. This first mode is the simple undifferentiated contemplation of its object, or it is light; not matter, but pure form, activity. Space is the abstract pure continuity of this activity of light, not the activity itself, but the form of its uninterruptedness. The understanding, as the thought of this light, is itself light, but light real in itself, or the light of light.236 In the second place the understanding thinks the difference between itself and essence; the differentiated multiplicity of the existent is object for it. It is the creation of the world; in it everything has its determinate form in regard to everything else, and this constitutes the substance of things. Since, in the third place, substantiality or permanency in the faculty of thought is determination, its production, or the flowing out of all things from it, is of such a nature that it remains filled with all things, or likewise absorbs all immediately. It is the abrogation of these differences, or the passing over from one to another; this is its manner of thinking itself, or it is object to itself in this fashion. This is change; thinking has thus the three principles in it. Inasmuch as νοῦς thinks of itself as changing, but yet in change remaining simple and at home with itself, the subject of its thought is life as a whole; and the fact of its establishing its moments as existing in opposition to each other is the true, living universe. This turning round on itself of the outflow from itself, this thinking of itself, is the eternal creation of the world.237 It is plain that in these thoughts of Plotinus the Being-another, the foreign element, is abrogated, existent things are implicitly Notions. The Divine understanding is the thinking of them, and their existence is nothing else than this very fact of their being the object of thought of the Divine understanding; they are moments of thought and, for this very reason, of Being. Plotinus thus distinguishes in νοῦς thinking (νοῦς), the object thought of (νοητόν), and thought (νόησις), so that νοῦς is one, and at the same time all; but thought is the unity of what had been distinguished.238 We would term thought not so much unity as product; yet even thought, that is, the subject, soars upwards to God. The distinction between thought and an external God is thus doubtless at an end; for this reason the Neo-Platonists are accused of being visionaries, and in truth they do themselves propound wondrous things.
α. Plotinus now goes on to describe the third principle, the soul: “Νοῦς is eternally active in exactly the same way as now. The movement to it and around it is the activity of the soul. Reason (λόγος), which passes from it to the soul, confers on the soul a power of thought, placing nothing between them. Thinking (νοῦς) is not a manifold; thinking is simple, and consists in the very fact of thinking. The true νοῦς (not ours, as it is found, for instance, in desire) thinks in thoughts, and the object of its thought is not beyond it; for it is itself the object of its thought, has of necessity itself in thought and sees itself; and sees itself not as non-thinking, but as thinking. Our soul is partly in the eternal” (light), “a part of the universal soul; this itself is in part in the eternal, and flows out thence, remaining in contemplation of itself, without any designed regulation. The embellishment of the whole gives to every corporeal object what in view of its determination and nature it is capable of carrying out, just as a central fire diffuses warmth all around it. The One must not be solitary, for were it so all things would be hidden, and would have no form present in them; nothing of what exists would exist if the One stood by itself, neither would there be the multitude of existent things, produced by the One, if those who have attained to the order of souls had not received the power to go forth. Similarly souls must not exist alone, as if what is produced through them should not appear, for in every nature it is immanent to make and bring to light something in conformity with itself, as the seed does from an undivided beginning. There is nothing to prevent all from having a share in the nature of the Good.”239 Plotinus leaves the corporeal and sensuous on one side, as it were, and does not take pains to explain it, his sole and constant aim being to purify therefrom, in order that the universal soul and our soul may not be thereby endangered.
β. Plotinus speaks, moreover, of the principle of the sensuous world, which is matter, and with which the origin of evil is closely connected. He dwells much on this subject of matter in his philosophy. Matter is the non-existent (οῦκ ὄν), which presents an image of the existent. Things differ in their pure form, the difference that distinguishes them; the universal of difference is the negative, and this is matter. As Being is the first absolute unity, this unity of the objective is the pure negative; it lacks all predicates and properties, figure, &c. It is thus itself a thought or pure Notion, and indeed the Notion of pure indeterminateness; or it is universal potentiality without energy. Plotinus describes this pure potentiality very well, and defines it as the negative principle. He says, “Brass is a statue only in potentiality; for in what is not permanent, the possible, as we have seen, was something utterly different. But when the grammarian in potentiality becomes the grammarian in actuality, the potential is the same as the actual. The ignorant man may be a grammarian, as it were by accident (κατὰ συμβεβηκός), and it is not in virtue of his present ignorance that he has the possibility of knowledge. It is for the very reason of its possessing a certain measure of knowledge that the soul which is actual attains to what it was potentially. It would not be inappropriate to give the name of form and idea to energy, in so far as it exists as energy and not as mere potentiality — not simply as energy, but as the energy of something determinate. For we might give the name more properly, perhaps, to another energy, namely that which is opposed to the potentiality which leads to actuality, for the possible has the possibility of being something else in actuality. But through possibility the possible has also in itself actuality, just as skill has the activity related thereto, and as bravery has brave action. When in the object of thought (ἐν τοῖς νοηντοῖς)240 there is no matter, — as in the case of something existing in potentiality — and it does not become something that does not yet exist, nor something that changes into something else, nor something that — itself permanent — produces another, or emerging from itself permits another to exist in its place — in that case we have then no mere potential but the existent, which has eternity and not time. Should we consider matter to be there as form, as even the soul, although a form, is matter in respect to what is different? But, speaking generally, matter is not in actuality, it is what exists in potentiality. Its Being only announces a Becoming, so that its Being has always to do with future Being. That which is in potentiality is thus not something, but everything;” energy alone is determinate. “Matter consequently always leans towards something else, or is a potentiality for what follows; it is left behind as a feeble and dim image that cannot take shape. Is it then an image in respect to reality, and therefore a deception? This is the same as a true deception, this is the true non-existent;” it is untrue by reason of energy. “That is therefore not existent in actuality which has its truth in the non-existent;” it exists not in truth, for “it has its Being in non-Being. If you take away from the false its falseness, you take away all the existence that it has. Similarly, if you introduce actuality into that which has its Being and its essence in potentiality, you destroy the cause of its substance (ὑποστάσεως), because Being consisted for it in potentiality. If we would therefore retain matter uninjured, we must keep it as matter; apparently we must therefore say that it is only in potentiality, in order that it may remain what it is.”241
In accordance with this, therefore, Plotinus (Ennead. III. l. 6, c. 7, 8) defines it: “Matter is truly non-existent, a motion which abrogates itself, absolute unrest, yet itself at rest — what is opposed in itself; it is the great which is small, the small which is great, the more which is less, the less which is more. When defined in one mode, it is really rather the opposite; that is to say, when looked at and fixed, it is not fixed and escapes, or when not fixed it is fixed — the simply illusory.” Matter itself is therefore imperishable; there is nothing into which it can change. The Idea of change is itself imperishable, but what is implied in this Idea is changeable. This matter is nevertheless not without form; and we have seen that the finite understanding has a third relationship to its object, namely in reference to differences. As now this relation and alteration, this transition, is the life of the universe, the universal soul of the same, its Being is in like manner not a change which takes place in the understanding, for its Being is its being the immediate object of thought through the understanding.
γ. The Evil likewise, as contrasted with the Good, now begins to be the object of consideration, for the question of the origin of evil must always be a matter of interest to the human consciousness. These Alexandrians set up as matter the negative of thought, but since the consciousness of the concrete mind entered in, the abstract negative is apprehended in this concrete fashion as within the mind itself, therefore as the mentally negative. Plotinus regards this question of evil from many sides; but thoughtful consideration of this subject does not yet go very far. The following conceptions are those that prevail at this time: “The Good is νοῦς, but not the understanding in the sense it used to bear for us, which from a pre-supposition both satisfies itself and understands what is said to it, which forms a conclusion and from what follows draws up a theory, and from the consequence comes to a knowledge of what is, having now obtained something not formerly possessed; for before this its knowledge was empty, although it was understanding. But νοῦς, as we now understand it, contains all things in itself, is all things, and is at home with itself; it has all things while not having them,” because it is in itself ideal. “But it does not possess all in the sense in which we regard what we possess as something different or alien from ourselves; what is possessed is not distinguished from itself. For it is each thing and everything and not confounded, but absolute. What partakes of the same does not partake of all things at once, but partakes in so far as it can. Νοῦς is the first energy and the first substance of the soul, which has activity in regard thereto. The soul, externally revolving round νοῦς, contemplating it and gazing into its depths, beholds God by means of it; and this is the life of the gods, free from evil and filled with blessedness” — in so far as the intelligence which goes forth from itself has in its difference to do only with itself, and remains in its divine unity. “If it remained thus constant there would be no evil. But there are goods of the first and second and third rank, all surrounding the King over all; and He is the originator of all good, and all is His, and those of the second rank revolve round the second, and those of the third round the third. If this is the existent and something even higher than the existent, evil is not included in what is existent or higher than the existent; for this is the good. Nothing remains then but that evil, if it exists, is in the non-existent, as a form of the non-existent — but the non-existent not as altogether non-existent, but only as something other than the existent.” Evil is no absolute principle independent of God, as the Manichæans held it to be. “It is not non-existent in the same way that motion and rest are existent, but is like an image of the existent, or non-existent in an even greater degree; it is the sensuous universe.”242. Thus evil has its root in the non-existent.
In the eighth book of the first Ennead Plotinus says (c. 9, 3, 4, 7): “But how is evil recognized? It is owing to thought turning away from itself that matter arises; it exists only through the abstraction of what is other than itself. What remains behind when we take away the Ideas is, we say, matter; thought accordingly becomes different, the opposite of thought, since it dares to direct itself on that which is not within its province. Like the eye turning away from the light in order to see the darkness which in the light it does not see — and this is a seeing which yet is non-seeing — so thought experiences the opposite of what it is, in order that it may see what is opposed to itself.” This abstract other is nothing but matter, and it is also evil; the seeing of the less measure is nothing but a non-seeing. “The sensuous in regard to measure, or the limited, is the less measure, the boundless, the undefined, unresting, insatiable, the utterly deficient; such is not accidental to it, but its substance.” Its aim is always Becoming; we cannot say that it is, but only that it is always about to be. “The soul which makes νοῦς its aim is pure, holds off matter and all that is indeterminate and measureless. But why then, when there is the Good, is there also necessarily Evil? Because there must be matter in the whole, because the whole necessarily consists of opposites. It would not be there, if matter were not present; the nature of the world is compounded of νοῦς and necessity. To be with the gods means to be in thought; for they are immortal. We may also apprehend the necessity of evil in this wise: As the Good cannot exist alone, matter is a counterpart to the Good, necessary to its production. Or we might also say that Evil is that which by reason of constant deterioration and decay has sunk until it can sink no lower; but something is necessary after the first, so that the extreme is also necessary. But that is matter, which has no longer any element of good in it; and this is the necessity of evil.”
With Plotinus, as with Pythagoras, the leading of the soul to virtue is also an important subject. Plotinus has for this reason blamed the Gnostics frequently, especially in the ninth book of the second Ennead (c. 15), because “they make no mention at all of virtue and the Good, nor of how they may be reached, and the soul rendered better and purer. For no purpose is served by saying,243 ‘Look unto God;’ it must also be shown how we can succeed in causing man thus to behold God. For it may be asked, What is to prevent a man from beholding, while at the same time he refrains from the gratification of no desire, and allows anger to take possession of him? Virtue, which sets a final end before itself and dwells in the soul with wisdom, manifests God; but without true virtue God is an empty word.” The Gnostics limit truth to the mental and intellectual; to this mere intellectuality Plotinus declares himself distinctly opposed, and holds firmly to the essential connection of the intelligible and the real. Plotinus honoured the heathen gods, attributing to them a deep meaning and a profound efficacy. He says in the same treatise (c. 16), “It is not by despising the world and the gods in it, and all else that is beautiful, that man attains to goodness. The wicked man holds the gods in contempt, and it is only when he has completely reached this stage that he becomes utterly depraved. The above-mentioned reverence of the Gnostics for the intelligible gods (νοητοὺς θεούς) is nothing corresponding with this (ἀσυμπαθὴς ἂν γένοιτο):” that is to say, there is no harmony between thoughts and the real world, when one does not go beyond the object of thought. “He who loves anything loves also all things related to the same, therefore also the children of the father whom he loves. Every soul is the daughter of this father. But souls in the heavenly spheres are more intelligible, and better, and far more nearly related to the higher Power than our souls are. For how could this world of reality be cut off from that higher sphere? Those who despise that which is related thereto know it only in name. How could it be pious to believe that Divine providence (πρόνοια) does not reach to matters here below? Why is God not also here? For how otherwise could He know what takes place within this sphere? Therefore He is universally present, and is in this world, in whatever way it be, so that the world participates in Him. If He is at a distance from the world, He is at a distance also from us, and you could say nothing of Him or of what He produces. This world also partakes of Him, and is not forsaken by Him, and never will be so. For the whole partakes of the divine much more than the part does, and the world-soul shares in it to a still greater degree. The Being and the rationality of the world are a proof of this.”
In this we have the main ideas on which the intellectualism of Plotinus is based, the general conceptions to which everything particular is led back; the instances in which this is done are often, however, figurative. What, in the first place, is lacking in them, as we have already remarked, is the Notion. Severance, emanation, effluence or process, emergence, occurrence, are words which in modern times have also had to stand for much, but in fact nothing is expressed by them. Scepticism and dogmatism, as consciousness or knowledge, establish the opposition of subjectivity and objectivity. Plotinus has rejected it, has soared upwards into the highest region, into the Aristotelian thought of Thought; he has much more in common with Aristotle than with Plato, and thereby he is not dialectic, nor does he proceed out of himself, nor as consciousness does he go back out of himself into himself again. With this, in the second place, there is connected the fact that the further descent either to nature or to manifested consciousness, even when expressed as the operation of the higher soul, yet contains much that is arbitrary, and is devoid of the necessity of the Notion; for that which ought to be defined in Notions is expressed in many-coloured pictures, in the form of a reality; and this, to say the least, is a useless and inadequate expression. I quote one example only: our soul belongs not only to the sphere of the finite understanding, where it was perfect, happy, lacking nothing; its power of thought alone belongs to the first, the finite understanding. Its power of motion, or itself looked on as life, had as its source the intelligent world-soul, but sensation had its source in the soul of the world of sensation. That is to say, Plotinus makes the first world-soul to be the immediate activity of the finite understanding, which is an object to itself; it is pure soul above the sublunar region, and dwells in the upper heaven of the fixed stars. This world-soul has power to originate; from it again there flows an entirely sensuous soul. The desire of the individual and particular soul separated from the whole gives it a body; this it receives in the higher region of the heavens. With this body it obtains fancy and memory. At last it repairs to the soul of the sensible world; and from this it acquires sensation, desires, and the life that is vegetative in nature.244
This declension, this further step towards the corporeality of the soul, is described by the followers of Plotinus as if the soul sank from the Milky Way and the Zodiac into the orbits of planets which have their place lower down, and in each of these it receives new powers, and in each begins also to exercise these powers. In Saturn the soul first acquires the power of forming conclusions with regard to things; in Jupiter it receives the power of effectiveness of the will; in Mars, affections and impulses; in the Sun, sensation, opinion, and imagination; in Venus, sensuous desires aiming at the particular; in the Moon, lastly, the power of production.245 In such a way as this Plotinus makes into a particular existence for the spiritual the very things that he declares to be, on the one hand, intelligible moments. The soul which only has desires is the beast; that which only vegetates, which has only power of reproduction, is the plant. But what we spoke of above are not particular conditions of mind, outside of the universal spirit, in the world-spirit’s particular stages of its self-consciousness regarding itself; and Saturn and Jupiter have nothing further to do with it. When they in their potency are expressed as moments of the soul, this is not a whit better than when each of them was supposed to express a particular metal. As Saturn expresses lead, Jupiter tin, and so forth, so Saturn also expresses argumentation, Jupiter will, &c. It is doubtless easier to say that Saturn corresponds with lead, &c., that it is the power of drawing conclusions, or that it represents lead and the power of drawing conclusions, or anything else you like, instead of expressing its Notion, its essence. The above is a comparison with a thing that in like manner does not express a Notion, but is apparent to the senses, which is laid hold of out of the air, or rather indeed from the ground. Such representations are warped and false; for if we say that this is lead, we mean thereby the essence or the implicitness of lead, with which the soul has an affinity; but this is no longer the sensuous Being which is known as lead, nor has this moment of such a state any reality for the soul.
Porphyry and Iamblichus, who have already been mentioned as the biographers of Pythagoras (Vol. I. p. 197), are distinguished followers of Plotinus. The first, a Syrian, died in 304: the latter, likewise of Syria, in the year 333.246 Amongst other works by Porphyrius, we possess an “Introduction to the Organon of Aristotle on Genera, Species, and Judgments,” in which his logic is propounded in its principal elements. This work is one which has at all times been the text-book of Aristotelian Logic, and also an authority from which the knowledge of its form has been derived; and our ordinary books of logic contain little more than what is found in this Introduction. The fact that Porphyry devoted himself to logic shows that a determinate form of thought was coming into favour with the Neo-Platonists; but this is something pertaining altogether to the understanding and very formal. Thus we here have the characteristic fact that with the Neo-Platonists the logic of the understanding, the quite empiric treatment of the sciences, is found in conjunction with the entirely speculative Idea, and in respect of practical life with a belief in theurgy, the marvellous and strange: in his life of Plotinus, Porphyry, indeed, describes him a miracle-worker, which statement we, however, must set aside as appertaining to literature.
Iamblichus evinces more mistiness and confusion still; he certainly was a teacher highly esteemed in his time, so that he even received the name of divine instructor; but his philosophic writings form a compilation without much specially to characterize them, and his biography of Pythagoras does not do much credit to his understanding. It was likewise in the Pythagorean philosophy that the Neo-Platonists gloried, and more particularly they revived the form of number-determination which pertains to it. In Iamblichus thought sinks into imagination, the intellectual universe to a kingdom of demons and angels with a classification of the same, and speculation comes down to the methods of magic. The Neo-Platonists called this theurgy (θεουργία); for in the miracle speculation, the divine Idea, is, so to speak, brought into immediate contact with actuality, and not set forth in a universal way. As to the work De mysteriis Ægyptiorum, it is not known for certain whether it had Iamblichus as its author or not; later on Proclus makes great ado concerning him, and testifies that he was indebted to Iamblichus for his main ideas.247
Proclus, a later Neo-Platonist who has still to be mentioned, is more important. He was born in 412 at Constantinople, but carried on his studies and spent most of his life with Plutarchus in Athens, where he also died in 485. His life is written by Marinus, in a style similar to that of the biographies just mentioned. According to this his parents came from Xanthus in Lycia, a district of Asia Minor; and since Apollo and Minerva were the tutelary deities of this town, he rendered grateful worship to them. They, themselves, vouchsafed to him, as their favourite, particular regard and personal manifestations; indeed, he was healed of an illness by Apollo touching his head; by Minerva, however, he was called upon to go to Athens. First of all he went to Alexandria to study rhetoric and philosophy, and then to Athens, to be with Plutarchus and Syrianus, the Platonists. Here he first studied Aristotelian and then Platonic philosophy. Above all the daughter of Plutarchus, Asclepigenia, initiated him into the profound secrets of philosophy; she, as Marinus assures us, was the only individual at that time who retained the knowledge, transmitted to her by her father, of the mystic ceremonies and of the whole theurgic discipline. Proclus studied everything pertaining to the mysteries, the Orphic hymns, the writings of Hermes, and religious institutions of every kind, so that, wherever he went, he understood the ceremonies of the pagan worship better than the priests who were placed there for the purpose of performing them. Proclus is said to have had himself initiated into all the pagan mysteries. He himself kept all the religious festivals and observances pertaining to nations the most various; he was even familiar with the Egyptian form of worship, observed the Egyptian days of purification and festivals, and spent certain fast days in offering up prayers and praise. Proclus himself composed many hymns — of which we still possess some that are very beautiful — both in honour of the better known divinities and of those whose fame is entirely local. Of the circumstance that he— “the most God-fearing man” — had dealings with so many religions, he himself says: “It is not fitting for a philosopher to be minister (θεραπευτήν) to the worship of one town or of what pertains to the few, for he should be the universal hierophant of the whole world.” He considered Orpheus to be the originator of all Greek theology, and set a specially high value on the Orphic and Chaldaic oracles. It was in Athens that he taught. Of course his biographer, Marinus, relates the most marvellous things about him, that he brought down rain from heaven and tempered great heat, that he stilled the earthquake, healed diseases, and beheld visions of the divine.248
Proclus led a most intellectual life; he was a profoundly speculative man, and the scope of his knowledge was very great. In his case, as also in that of Plotinus, the contrast between the insight of such philosophers and what their disciples relate of them in biographies, must strike one very forcibly, for of the wonders described by the biographers few traces are to be found in the works of the subjects themselves. Proclus left behind him a great number of writings, many of which we now possess; he was the author of several mathematical works which we also have, such as that on the Sphere. His more important philosophic works are the Commentaries on Plato’s Dialogues, certain of which have been published from time to time; that on the Timæus was the most famous. But several were only found in manuscript, and of these Cousin issued in Paris the Commentaries on the Alcibiades (Vols. II. III.), and the Parmenides (Vols. IV.-VI.) for the first time. The first volume of Cousin’s edition contains some writings by Proclus which now exist only in Latin, on Freedom, Providence, and Evil. Works separately published are his important writings, The Platonic Theology (εἰς τὲν Πλάτωνος θεολογίαν) and his Theological Elements (συοιχείωσις θεολογική); the latter short work Creuzer has had re-published, as also some of the before-mentioned Commentaries.
Proclus lived, so to speak, in the worship of science. We cannot fail to see in him great profundity of perception, and greater capacity for working a matter out and clearness of expression than are found in Plotinus; scientific development also advanced with him, and on the whole he possesses an excellent manner of expression. His philosophy, like that of Plotinus, has the form of a Commentary on Plato; his book “On the Theology of Plato,” is in this respect his most interesting work. The main ideas of his philosophy may easily be recognized from this work, which possesses many difficulties for this reason in particular, that in it the pagan gods are considered, and philosophic significations derived from them. But he distinguishes himself entirely from Plotinus by the fact that with him the Neo-Platonic philosophy, as a whole, has at least reached a more systematic order, and also a more developed form; thus in his Platonic theology especially (dialectic as the work undoubtedly is) a more distinct progression and distinction between the spheres in the Idea is to be found, than is noticeable in Plotinus. His philosophy is an intellectual system; we must see how we can work it out. His way of putting it is not perfectly clear, but leaves much to be desired.
Proclus differs first of all from Plotinus in not making Being his principle or purely abstract moment, but by beginning from unity, and for the first time understanding Being or subsistence as the third; thus to him everything has a much more concrete form. But the self-development of this unity is not made the necessity of the Notion with Proclus any more than with Plotinus; we must once for all give up seeking here for the Notion of disunion. Proclus (Theol. Plat. II. p. 95) says, “The one is in itself inexpressible and unknowable; but it is comprehended from its issuing forth and retiring into itself.” Proclus in the same place (pp. 107, 108) defines this self-differentiation, the first characteristic of unity, as a production (παράγειν), a going forth (πρόοδος), and also as a representation or demonstration. The relation to difference of the unity which brings forth is, however, not an issuing forth from self, for an issuing forth would be a change, and unity would be posited as no more self-identical. Hence through its bringing forth unity suffers no loss or diminution, for it is the thought that suffers no deterioration through the creation of a determinate thought, but remains the same, and also receives what is brought forth into itself.249 As far as this goes, the Notion is, properly speaking, no clearer than with Plotinus.
What distinguishes Plotinus is his more profound study of the Platonic dialectic; in this way he occupies himself in his Platonic theology with the most acute and far-reaching dialectic of the One. It is necessary for him to demonstrate the many as one and the one as many, to show forth the forms which the One adopts. But it is a dialectic which to a greater or less extent is externally worked out, and which is most wearisome. But while with Plato these pure notions of unity, multiplicity, Being, &c., appear naturally, and so to speak devoid of other significance than that which they immediately possess (for we designate them as universal ideas which are present in our thought), with Proclus they have another and higher meaning; and hence it comes to pass that, as we have seen (pp. 59, 60), he found in the apparently negative result of the Platonic Parmenides the nature of absolute existence particularly and expressly recognized. Proclus now shows, according to the Platonic dialectic, how all determinations, and particularly that of multiplicity, are resolved into themselves and return into unity. What to the conceiving consciousness is one of its most important truths — that many substances exist, or that the many things, each of which is termed a one, and hence substance, exist in truth in themselves — is lost in this dialectic, and the result ensues that only unity is true existence, all other determinations are merely vanishing magnitudes, merely moments, and thus their Being is only an immediate thought. But since we now ascribe no substantiality, no proper Being to a thought, all such determinations are only moments of a thing in thought. The objection at this point made and constantly maintained against the Neo-Platonists and Proclus is this, that certainly for thought everything goes back within unity, but that this is a logical unity alone, a unity of thought and not of actuality, and that consequently there can be no arguing from the formal to actuality. From this they say it by no means follows that all actual things are not actual substances, that they have not different principles independent of one another, and even that they are not different substances, each of which is separated from the other and in and for itself. That is to say, this contradiction always begins the whole matter over again when it says of actuality that it is something implicit, for those who do this call actuality a thing, a substance, a one — which last are merely thoughts; in short they always again bring forward, as something implicitly existent, that whose disappearance or non-implicitude has been already demonstrated.
But in this regard Proclus displays great sagacity in a remark he makes on the manner in which this mode of production appears in the Parmenides of Plato, who shows in a negative way in this Dialogue that if the existence of unity is affirmed, the existence of multiplicity, &c., must be denied. Respecting these negations (ἀποφάσεις) Proclus now says (Theol. Plat. II. pp. 108, 109) that they do not signify an abrogation of the content (στερητικαὶ τῶν ὑποκειμένων) of which they are predicated, but are the creation of determinatives in accordance with their opposites (γεννητικαὶ τῶν οἷον ἀντικειμένων). “Thus if Plato shows that the first is not many, this has the significance that the many proceed from the first; if he shows that it is not a whole, it proves that the fact of being a whole proceeds from it. The mode (τρόπος) of negations is thus to be taken as perfection which remains in unity, issues forth from everything, and is in an inexpressible and ineffable preponderance of simplicity. On the other hand, God must likewise be derived from these negations; else there would be no Notion (λόγος) of them, and also no negation. The Notion of the inexpressible revolves round itself, never resting, and it strives with itself;” i.e. the one implies its determinations ideally, the whole is contained in the one. Multiplicity is not taken empirically and then merely abrogated; the negative, as dividing, producing, and active, not merely contains what is privative, but also affirmative determinations. In this way the Platonic dialectic wins for Proclus a positive significance; through dialectic he would lead all differences back to unity. With this dialectic of the one and many Proclus makes much ado, more especially in his famous elementary doctrines. The submersion of everything in unity remains, however, merely beyond this unity, instead of which this very negativity must really be grasped as signifying its production.
That which brings forth, according to Proclus, furthermore brings forth through a superfluity of power. There certainly also is a bringing forth through want; all need, all desire, for example, becomes cause through want; and its bringing forth is its satisfaction. The end here is incomplete, and the energy arises from the endeavour to complete itself, so that only in production the need becomes less, the desire ceases to be such, or its abstract Being-for-self disappears. Unity, on the other hand, goes forth out of itself through the superfluity of potentiality, and this superabundant potentiality is actuality generally: this reflection of Proclus is quite Aristotelian. Hence the coming forth of the unity consists in the fact that it multiplies itself, pure number comes forth; but this multiplication does not negate or diminish that first unity, but rather takes place in the method of unity (ἑνιαίως). The many partakes of the unity, but the unity does not partake of multiplicity.250 The absolute unity which multiplies itself into many ones has consequently generated multiplicity as it is in these ones. Proclus makes use of a many-sided dialectic to show that the many does not exist in itself, is not the creator of the many, that everything goes back into unity, and thus unity is also the originator of the many. It is, however, not made clear how this is the negative relation of the one to itself; what we see is then a manifold dialectic, which merely passes backwards and forwards over the relationship of the one to the many.
To Proclus an important characteristic of this progression is the fact that it takes place through analogy, and what is dissimilar to the truth is the further removed from the same. The many partakes of unity, but it is in a measure likewise not one, but dissimilar to one. But since the many is also similar to what produces it, it likewise has unity as its essence; hence the many are independent unities (ἑνάδες). They contain the principle of unity within themselves, for if as being many they are likewise different, they are, so to speak, only many for a third, being in and for themselves unities. These unities again beget others which must, however, be less perfect, for the effect is not exactly like the cause, that which is brought forth is not quite similar to what brings it forth. These next unities are wholes, i.e., they are no longer real unities, unities in themselves, since in them the unity is only an accident. But because things themselves are in their synthetic nature merely wholes because their souls bind them together, they are dissimilar to the first unity, and cannot be immediately united to it. The abstractly conceived multiplicity is thus their mean; multiplicity is analogous to absolute unity, and is that which unites unity with the whole universe. Pure multiplicity makes the different elements like one another, and hence unites them to unity; but things only have similarity to unity. Thus things that are begotten ever remove themselves more and more from unity, and partake of it less and less.251
The further determination of the Idea is known as the trinity (τριάς). Of this Proclus (Theol. Plat. III. p. 140) first of all gives the abstract definition that its three forms are three gods, and now we have more especially to find out how he defined the trinity. This trinity is certainly interesting in the Neo-Platonists, but it is specially so in the case of Proclus, because he did not leave it in its abstract moments. For he again considers these three abstract determinations of the absolute, each on its own account, as a totality of triunity, whereby he obtains one real trinity. Thus in the whole there are three spheres, separated from one another, which constitute the totality, but in such a way that each has again to be considered as complete and concrete in itself; and this must be acknowledged as a perfectly correct point of view which has been reached. Because each of these differences in the Idea, as remaining in unity with itself, is really again the whole of these moments, there are different orders in production; and the whole is the process of the three totalities establishing themselves in one another as identical. It will be shown directly which orders these are, and Proclus occupies himself much with these, because he tries to demonstrate the different powers again in them. Proclus is hence much more detailed, and he went much further than did Plotinus; it may indeed be said that in this respect we find in him the most excellent and best that was formulated by any of the Neo-Platonists.
As regards the further details of his trinity there are, according to his account, three abstract moments present in it, which are worked out in his Platonic theology — the one, the infinite and the limitation; the last two we have likewise seen in Plato (p. 68). The first, God, is just the absolute unity already frequently discussed, which by itself is unknowable and undisclosed, because it is a mere abstraction; it can only be known that it is an abstraction, since it is not yet activity. This unity is the super-substantial (ὑπερούσιον), and in the second place its first production is the many ones (ἑνάδες) of things, pure numbers. In these we have the thinking principles of things, through which they partake of absolute unity; but each partakes of it only through a single individual unity, through the one, while souls do so through thought-out, universal unities. To this Proclus refers the forms of ancient mythology. That is to say, as he calls that first unity God, he calls these numerous unities of thought that flow from it, gods, but the following moments are likewise so called. He says, (Institut. theol. c. 162): “The gods are named in accordance with what depends upon the orders (τάξεων); hence it is possible to know from this their unknowable substances, which constitute their determinate nature. For everything divine is inexpressible on its own account and unknowable as forming part of the inexpressible one; but from differentiation, from change, it comes to pass that we know its characteristics. Thus there are gods capable of being known, which radiate true Being; hence true Being is the knowable divine, and the incommunicable is made manifest for the νοῦς.” But there always remains a compulsion to represent mythology in the determinateness of the Notion. These gods or unities do not correspond to the order of things in such a way that there are just as many and such unities (ἑνάδες) or gods as there are things; for these unities only unite things with the absolute unity. The third is just the limit which holds these unities (ἑνάδες) together, and constitutes their unity with the absolute unity; the limit asserts the unity of the many and the one.252
This is better expressed by what follows, in which Proclus takes up the three fundamental principles — the limit, the infinite and what is mingled — of Plato’s Philebus, because the opposition is thus more clearly determined; and therefore these appear to be the original gods. But to such abstractions the name gods is not applicable, for it is as returning that we first of all see them as divine. Proclus says (Theol. Plat. III. pp. 133-134): “From that first limit (πέρας),” the absolute one, “things have (ἐξέρτηται) union, entirety and community,” the principle of individuality, “and divine measure. All separation and fertility and what makes for multiplicity, on the contrary, rest on the first infinitude (ἄπειρον);” the infinite is thus quantity, the indeterminate, just as Plato in the Philebus calls the infinite the evil, and pleasure the untrue, because no reason is present in it (pp. 68, 69). “Hence when we speak of the process of anything divine, it is implied that in the individuals it remains steadfastly one, and only progresses towards infinitude,” continuity as self-production, “and has at the same time the one and multiplicity present in it — the former from the principle of limitation, and the latter from the principle of infinitude. In all opposition which is found in species that are divine, what is more excellent belongs to limitation, and what is less excellent to the infinite. From these two principles everything derives its progress until it steps forth into Being. Thus the eternal, in so far as it is measure as intellectual, partakes of limitation, but in so far as it is the cause of unceasing effort after Being, of infinitude. Thus the understanding in so far as it has the standard (ραραδειγματικὰ μέτρα) within it, is a product of limitation; in so far as it eternally produces everything, it has undiminished capacity for infinitude.” Multiplicity as Notion, not as the many, is itself unity; it is duality, or the determinateness which stands over against indeterminateness. Now according to Proclus (Theol. Plat. III. p. 137) the third is a whole, the unity of determinate and indeterminate, or that which is mingled (μικτόν). “This is first of all everything existent, a monad of many possibilities, a completed reality, a many in one (ἓν πολλά).” The expression “mingled” is not very suitable, is indeed faulty, because mixture at first expresses only an external union, while here the concrete, the unity of opposites, and even more the subjective, is properly speaking indicated.
Now if we consider further the nature of what is mingled we find the three triads likewise, for each of those three abstract principles is itself a similar complete triad, but under one or these particular forms. Proclus says (Theol. Plat. III. p. 135); “The first Being (τὸ πρώτως ὄν) is the mingled, the unity of the triad with itself; it is the Being of the life as well as of the understanding. The first of what is mingled is the first of all existence, the life and the spirit are the two other orders; everything is consequently in triads. These three triads determine themselves thus as absolute Being, life and spirit; and they are spiritual and to be grasped in thought.” According to this only the intelligible world is true for Proclus. But that Proclus did not make the understanding proceed immediately from the unity, is the second point in which he differs from Plotinus; in this Proclus is more logical, and he follows Plato more closely. His sequence is excellent, and he is right in placing the understanding, as the richer, last, since it is not until after the development of the moments which are present in life that the understanding springs forth, and from it in turn the soul.253 Proclus says (Theol. Plat. I. pp. 21, 22, 28) that certainly in the first unity all agree, but that Plotinus makes the thinking nature appear just after the unity; yet the instructor of Proclus, who led him into all divine truth, limited better this indefinite way of looking at things adopted by the ancients, and differentiated this disorderly confusion of various orders into a comprehensible plan, and succeeded in satisfactorily following and maintaining the distinction of determinations. As a matter of fact we find more distinction and clearness in Proclus than in the turbidity of Plotinus; he is quite correct in recognizing the νοῦς as the third, for it is, that which turns back.
Regarding the relationship of the three orders Proclus now expresses himself in the passage already quoted (Theol. Plat. III. pp. 135-136) thus: “These three are themselves really contained in the existent, for in it is substance, life, the νοῦς and254 what is the culminating point of all existence (ἀκρότης τῶν ὄντων),” the individuality of the self, the existent on its own account, the subjective, the point of negative unity. “The life that is grasped by thought is the very centre-point of existence. But the understanding is the limit of the existent, and it is thought as known (ὁ νοητὸς νοῦς), for in what is thought is thinking, and in thinking what is thought. But in what is thought thinking is in the mode of thought (νοητῶς), in thinking what is thought is in the mode of thinking (νοερῶς). Substance is the enduring element in existence and that which is interwoven with the first principles and which does not proceed from the one.” The second, “the life, is however that which proceeds from the principles and is born with infinite capacity;” it is itself the whole totality in the determination of infinitude, so that it is a concrete manifold. “The understanding is, again, the limit which leads back once more to the principles, brings about conformity with the principle, and accomplishes an intellectual circle. Now since it is a three-fold in itself, in part it is the substantial in itself, in part the living, in part the intellectual, but everything is substantially contained in it, and hence it is the foremost in existence, that which is united from the first principles.” That is the first reality. Excellent! “I call it substance, since the first substance (αὐτοουσία) is supreme over all existence and is, so to speak, the monad of everything. The understanding itself is that which knows, but life is thinking, and Being is just what is thought. Now if the whole of what exists is mingled, but the first existence (τὸ αὐτοόν) is substance, the substance that comes from the three principles (ὑφισταμένε) is mingled. What is mingled is thus substance as thought; it is from God, from whom also come the infinite and limitation. There are thus four moments, since what is mingled is the fourth.” The first is the monad, the absolute one, then come the many which themselves are units, the infinite of Plato; the third is limitation. The one is clearly all-penetrating, remaining at home with itself, all-embracing; it does not thus appear as one of the three moments, for Proclus adds a fourth which then likewise appears as the third moment, since it is the totality. “This united one is not only derived from those principles which are according to the one, but it also goes forth from them and is three-fold.” It is one trinity and three trinities. The limit and the infinite are, according to Proclus (Theol. Plat. III. pp. 138, 139), before substance and again in it; and this unity of moments is what comes first in all existence (πρωτίστη οὐσία). In the abstract trinity everything is thus contained in itself. Proclus says (Theol. Plat. III. pp. 139, 140): “The truly existent has the trinity of Beauty, Truth, and Symmetry in itself” (this is the way in which, like Plato, he names these three triads), “Beauty for order, Truth for purity, and Symmetry for the unity of what is joined together. Symmetry gives the cause that the existent is unity; Truth, that it is Being; Beauty, that it is thought.” Proclus shows that in each of the three triads, limit, the unlimited, and that which is mingled, are contained; each order is thus the same, but set forth in one of the three forms which constitute the first triad.
a. Proclus says (Theol. Plat. III. p. 140): “Now this is the first triad of all that is thought — the limit, the infinite, and that which is mingled. The limit is God going forth to the culminating point of thought from the uncommunicable and first God, measuring and determining everything, admitting all that is paternal and coherent, and the unblemished race of gods. But the infinite” (quantity) “is the inexhaustible potentiality of this God, that which makes all productions and orders to appear, and the whole infinitude, the primeval essence as well as the substantial, and even the ultimate matter. What is mingled is, however, the first and highest order (διάκοσμος) of the gods, and it is that which holds everything concealed in itself, completed in accordance with the intelligible and all-embracing triad, comprehending in simple form the cause of all that exists, and establishing in the first objects of thought the culminating point which is derived from the wholes.” The first order is thus in its culminating point the abstract substance in which the three determinations as such are shut up without development and maintained in strict isolation; this pure reality is in so far the undisclosed. It is the greatest height reached by thought and likewise really the turning back, as this likewise appears in Plotinus; and this first begets in its culminating point the second order which in the whole is life, and culminates in its turn in the νοῦς.
b. This second triad is placed in the determination of the infinite. On making this step forward Proclus (Theol. Plat. III. pp. 141, 142) breaks into a transport of bacchanalian ecstasy, and says, “After this first triad which remains in unity, let us now in hymns praise the second which proceeds from this, and is brought to pass through the abolition of that which comes before it. As the first unity begets the culminating point of existence, the middle unity begets the middle existence; for it is likewise begetting and self-retaining.” In the second order three moments again appear as before: “Here the principle or the first is the substance which was the completion of the first triad; the second, which was there the infinite, is here potentiality (δύναμις). The unity of both these is Life (ζωή),” the centre, or what gives determinateness to the whole order; “the second existence is life as thought, for in the most external thought Ideas have their subsistence (ὑπόστασιν). The second order is a triad analogous to the first, for the second is likewise a God.” The relationship of these trinities is hence this: “As the first triad is everything, but is so intellectually (νοητῶς) and as proceeding immediately from the one (ἑνκαίως), and remaining within limits (περατοειδῶς), so the second is likewise everything, but in living fashion and in the principle of infinitude (ζωτικῶς καὶ ἀπειροειδῶς), and similarly the third has proceeded after the manner of what is mingled. Limitation determines the first trinity, the unlimited the second, the concrete (μικτόν) the third. Each determination of unity, the one placed beside the other, also explains the intelligible order of gods; each contains all three moments subordinate to itself, and each is this trinity set forth under one of these moments.” These three orders are the highest gods; later on, we find in Proclus (in Timæum, pp. 291, 299) four orders of gods appearing.
c. Proclus comes (Theol. Plat. III. p. 143) to the third triad, which is thought itself as such, the νούς: “The third monad places round itself the νούς as thought, and fills it with divine unity; it places the middle between itself and absolute existence, fills this last by means of the middle and turns it to itself. This third triad does not resemble cause (κατ̓ αἰτίαν), like the first existence, nor does it reveal the all like the second; but it is all as act and expression (ἐκφανῶς); hence it is also the limit of all that is thought. The first triad remains concealed in limit itself, and has all subsistence of intellectuality fixed in it. The second is likewise enduring, and at the same time steps forward;” the living appears, but is in so doing led back to unity. “The third after progression shifts and turns the intelligible limit back to the beginning, and bends the order back into itself; for the understanding is the turning back to what is thought” (to unity), “and the giving of conformity with it. And all this is one thought, one Idea: persistence, progression and return.” Each is a totality on its own account, but all three are led back into one. In the νοῦς the first two triads are themselves only moments; for spirit is just the grasping in itself of the totality of the first two spheres. “Now these three trinities announce in mystic form the entirely unknown (ἄγνωστον) cause of the first and unimparted (ἀμεθεκτοῦ) God,” who is the principle of the first unity, but is manifested in the three: “the one has inexpressible unity, the second the superfluity of all powers, but the third the perfect birth of all existence.” In this the mystic element is that these differences which are determined as totalities, as gods, become comprehended as one. The expression “mystic” often appears with the Neo-Platonists. Thus Proclus for example says (Theol. Plat. III. p. 131): “Let us once more obtain initiation into the mysteries (μυσταγωγίαν) of the one.” Mysticism is just this speculative consideration of Philosophy, this Being in thought, this self-satisfaction and this sensuous perception. However, μυστήριον has not to the Alexandrians the meaning that it has to us, for to them it indicates speculative philosophy generally. The mysteries in Christianity have likewise been to the understanding an incomprehensible secret, but because they are speculative, reason comprehends them, and they are not really secret, for they have been revealed.
In conclusion, Proclus institutes a comparison between these triads. “In the first order the concrete is itself substance, in the second it is life, and in the third the thought that is known.” Proclus calls substance likewise Ἑστία, the fixed, the principle. “The first trinity is the God of thought (θεὸς νοητός); the second the thought of and thinking (θεὸς νοητὸς καὶ νοερός)” the active; “the third the” pure, “thinking God (θεὸς νοερός),” who is in himself this return to unity in which, as return, all three are contained; for “God is the whole in them.” These three are thus clearly the absolute one, and this then constitutes one absolute concrete God. “God knows the divided as undivided, what pertains to time as timeless, what is not necessary as necessary, the changeable as unchangeable, and, speaking generally, all things more excellently than in accordance with their order. Whose are the thoughts, his also are the substances, because the thought of every man is identical with the existence of every man, and each is both the thought and the existence,” and so on.255
These are the principal points in the theology of Proclus, and it only remains to us to give some external facts. The individuality of consciousness is partially in the form of an actuality, as magic and theurgy; this often appears among the Neo-Platonists and with Proclus, and is called making a god. The element of theurgy is thus brought into relation with the heathen divinities: “The first and chief names of the gods, one must admit, are founded in the gods themselves. Divine thought makes names of its thoughts, and finally shows the images of the gods; each name gives rise, so to speak, to an image of a god. Now as theurgy through certain symbols calls forth the unenvying goodness of God to the light of the images of the artist, the science of thought makes the hidden reality of God appear through the uniting and separating of the tones.”256 Thus the statues and pictures of artists show the inward speculative thought, the being replete with the divinity that brings itself into externality; thus the consecration of images is likewise represented. This connecting fact — that the Neo-Platonists have even inspired the mythical element with the divine — is thereby expressed, so that in images, &c., the divine power is present. Nevertheless I have only wished to call this moment to mind because it plays a great part at this particular time.
In Proclus we have the culminating point of the Neo-Platonic philosophy; this method in philosophy is carried into later times, continuing even through the whole of the Middle Ages. Proclus had several successors who were scholarchs at Athens — Marinus, his biographer, and then Isidorus of Gaza, and finally Damascius. Of the latter we still possess some very interesting writings; he was the last teacher of the Neo-Platonic philosophy in the Academy. For in 529 A.D. the Emperor Justinian caused this school to be closed, and drove all heathen philosophers from his kingdom: amongst these was Simplicius, a celebrated commentator on Aristotle, several of whose commentaries are not yet printed. They sought and found protection and freedom in Persia under Chosroïs. After some time they ventured to return to the Roman Empire, but they could no longer form any school at Athens; thus as far as its external existence is concerned, the heathen philosophy went utterly to ruin.257 Eunapius treats of this last period, and Cousin has dealt with it in a short treatise. Although the Neo-Platonic school ceased to exist outwardly, ideas of the Neo-Platonists, and specially the philosophy of Proclus, were long maintained and preserved in the Church; and later on we shall on several occasions refer to it. In the earlier, purer, mystical scholastics we find the same ideas as are seen in Proclus, and until comparatively recent times, when in the Catholic Church God is spoken of in a profound and mystical way, the ideas expressed are Neo-Platonic.
In the examples given by us perhaps the best of the Neo-Platonic philosophy is found; in it the world of thought has, so to speak, consolidated itself, not as though the Neo-Platonists had possessed this world of thought alongside of a sensuous world, for the sensuous world has disappeared and the whole been raised into spirit, and this whole has been called God and His life in it. Here we witness a great revolution, and with this the first period, that of Greek philosophy, closes. The Greek principle is freedom as beauty, reconciliation in imagination, natural free reconciliation that is immediately realized, and thus represents an Idea in sensuous guise. Through philosophy thought, however, desires to tear itself away from what is sensuous, for philosophy is the constitution of thought into a totality beyond the sensuous and the imaginary. Herein is this simple progression contained, and the points of view which we have noticed are, as cursorily surveyed, the following.
First of all we saw the abstract in natural form: then abstract thought in its immediacy, and thus the one, Being. These are pure thoughts, but thought is not yet comprehended as thought; for us these thoughts are merely universal thoughts to which the consciousness of thought is still lacking. Socrates is the second stage, in which thought appears as self, the absolute is the thought of itself; the content is not only determined, e.g. Being, the atom, but is concrete thought, determined in itself and subjective. The self is the most simple form of the concrete, but it is still devoid of content; in as far as it is determined it is concrete, like the Platonic Idea. This content, however, is only implicitly concrete and is not yet known as such; Plato, beginning with what is given, takes the more determinate content out of sensuous perception. Aristotle attains to the highest idea; the thought about thought takes the highest place of all; but the content of the world is still outside of it. Now in as far as this manifold concrete is led back to the self as to the ultimate simple unity of the concrete, or, on the other hand, the abstract principle has content given to it, we saw the systems of dogmatism arising. That thought of thought is in Stoicism the principle of the whole world, and it has made the attempt to comprehend the world as thought. Scepticism, on the other hand, denies all content, for it is self-consciousness, thought, in its pure solitude with itself, and likewise reflection on that beginning of pre-suppositions. In the third place the absolute is known as concrete, and this is as far as Greek philosophy goes. That is to say, while in the system of Stoics the relation of difference to unity is present only as an “ought,” as an inward demand, without the identity coming to pass, in the Neo-Platonist school the absolute is finally set forth in its entirely concrete determination, the Idea consequently as a trinity, as a trinity of trinities, so that these ever continue to emanate more and more. But each sphere is a trinity in itself, so that each of the abstract moments of this triad is itself likewise grasped as a totality. Only that which manifests itself, and therein retains itself as the one, is held to be true. The Alexandrians thus represent the concrete totality in itself, and they have recognized the nature of spirit; they have, however, neither gone forth from the depths of infinite subjectivity and its absolute chasm, nor have they grasped the absolute, or, if we will, abstract freedom of the “I” as the infinite value of the subject.
The Neo-Platonic standpoint is thus not a philosophic freak, but a forward advance on the part of the human mind, the world and the world-spirit. The revelation of God has not come to it as from an alien source. What we here consider so dry and abstract is concrete. “Such rubbish,” it is said, “as we consider when in our study we see philosophers dispute and argue, and settle things this way and that at will, are verbal abstractions only.” No, no; they are the deeds of the world-spirit, gentlemen, and therefore of fate. The philosophers are in so doing nearer to God than those nurtured upon spiritual crumbs; they read or write the orders as they receive them in the original; they are obliged to continue writing on. Philosophers are the initiated ones — those who have taken part in the advance which has been made into the inmost sanctuary; others have their particular interests — this dominion, these riches, this girl. Hundreds and thousands of years are required by the world-spirit to reach the point which we attain more quickly, because we have the advantage of having objects which are past and of dealing with abstraction.
ENDNOTES.
1 Diog. Laërt. III. 1-4 (Tennemann, Vol. I. p. 416; II. p. 190).
2 Diog. Laërt. III. 5, 29.
3 Plat. Epist. VII, p. 324-326 (p. 428-431); Diog. Laërt. III., 5, 6, 8.
4 Diog. Laërt. III, 6, 7, 9, 18-21; Plat. Epist. VII., p. 326, 327 (p. 431-433).
5 Plat. Epist. VII. p. 327-330 (p. 433-439); III. p. 316, 317 (p. 410, 411).
6 This circumstance is assigned by Diogenes Laërtius, in the passage quoted (III. 21, 22), not to the time of Plato’s second journey to Dionysius the younger, i.e. of his third visit to Sicily, where it is placed by the writers of Plato’s Letters, but to the second journey of Plato to Sicily, which corresponds with his first visit to Dionysius the younger. — [Editor’s note.]
7 Plat. Epist. VII. p. 337-342 (p. 453-461), p. 344-350 (p. 466-477); III. p. 317, 318 (p. 411-415).
8 Plat. Epist. VII. p. 326 (p. 431).
9 From the lectures of 1825.
10 Diog. Laërt. III. 23 (Menag. ad h.l.); Ælian Var. Histor. II. 42; Plutarch, ad principem ineruditum, init. p. 779, ed. Xyl.
11 Diog. Laërt. III. 2; Bruckeri Hist. Crit. Philos. Vol. I, p. 653.
12 Compare Vol. I. p. 47-53.
13 Brandis: De perditis Aristotelis libris de ideis et de bono, sive philosophia, p. 1-13. (Compare Michelet: Examen critique de l’ouvrage d’Aristote intitulé Métaphysique, 1835, p. 28-78.) — [Editor’s note.]
14 Scholia in Timæum, p. 423, 424 (ed. Bekk: Commentar crit. in Plat. Vol. II.).
15 Plat. De Republica, V. p. 471-474 (p. 257-261).
16 Plat. De Republica VII. pp. 514-516 (pp. 326-328).
17 Plato De Republica, V. p. 475, 476 (p. 265, 266).
18 Diog. Laërt. VI. 53; cf. Plato De Rep. VI. p. 508 (p. 319).
19 Plat. De Republ. V. p. 476-479 (p. 266-273).
20 Plat. Meno, p. 81 (p. 348, 349).
21 Plat. Phædrus, p. 246 (p. 39, 40).
22 Plat. Phædrus, p. 246 (p. 40).
23 Plat. Phædrus, pp. 246-251 (pp. 40-50).
24 Plat. Phædo, pp. 65-67 (pp. 18-23).
25 Ibid. p. 72 (p. 35), p. 75 (p. 41).
26 Ibid. pp. 78-80 (pp. 46-51).
27 Plat. Phædo, pp. 85, 86 (pp. 62, 63), pp. 92-94 (pp. 74-80).
28 Ibid. pp. 110-114 (pp. 111-120).
29 Plat. Timæus, p. 20 et seq. (p. 10 seq.); Critias, p. 108 seq. (p. 149 seq.).
30 Cf. Vol. I. pp. 318, 319, and the remarks there made. [Editor’s Note.]
31 Hegel’s Werke, Vol. VI., Pt. I, p. 8.
32 Plat. Parmenides, pp. 135, 136 (pp. 21-23).
33 Ibid. p. 129 (pp. 9, 10).
34 Plat. Parmenides, p. 142 (pp. 35, 36); cf. Arist. Eth. Nicom. ed. Michelet, T. I. Præf. p. VII. sqq.
35 Plat. Parmenides, p. 166 (p. 84); cf. Zeller; Platonische Studien, p. 165.
36 Plat. Sophist, pp. 246-249 (pp. 190-196).
37 Ibid. p. 258 (p. 219).
38 Plat. Sophist. p. 259 (pp. 220, 221).
39 Plat. Sophist. pp. 260, 261 (pp. 222-224).
40 Plat. Sophist. pp. 258, 259 (pp. 218-220).
41 Cf. also Plat. Phileb. p. 14 (p. 138).
42 Plat. Phileb. pp. 11-23 (pp. 131-156); pp. 27, 28 (pp. 166, 167).
43 Plat. Phileb. pp. 23-30 (pp. 156-172).
44 Plat. Phileb. p. 33 (p. 178).
45 Cf. Plat. Tim. p. 34 (p. 31); p. 48 (pp. 56, 57); p. 69 (p. 96).
46 Ibid. p. 29 (p. 25).
47 Plat. Timæus, p. 30, 31 (pp. 25-27).
48 Plat. Timæus, pp. 31, 32 (pp. 27, 28).
49 Plat. Timæus p. 32 (p. 28).
50 Plat. Timæus, pp. 32-34 (pp. 28-31).
51 Plat. Timæus, p. 35 (p. 32).
52 Ibid.
53 Plat. Timæus, pp. 35, 36 (pp. 32-34).
54 Plat. Timæus, p. 37 (p. 35).
55 Plat. Timæus, p. 48 (p. 57); pp. 37, 38 (pp. 36, 37).
56 Plat, Timæus, pp. 47-53 (pp. 55-66).
57 Plat. Timæus, pp. 53-56 (pp. 66-72).
58 Plat. Timæus, pp. 67-70 (pp. 93-99).
59 Plat. Timæus pp. 70-72 (pp. 99-102).
60 Plat. De Republica, II., pp. 368, 369 (p. 78.)
61 Following the outline here given by Plato, Hegel, in an earlier attempt to treat the philosophy of Justice (Werke, Vol. I. pp. 380, 381), included in one these two classes, and later named them the general class (Werke, Vol. VIII. p. 267); the “other” class (as Hegel expresses it, in the first of the passages referred to above), which by Plato is not included in this, Hegel divided, however, in both his narratives, into the second class (that of city handicraftsmen), and the third (that of tillers of the soil). — [Editor’s note.]
62 Plat. de Republica, II. pp. 369-376 (pp. 79-93); III. p. 414 (pp. 158, 159).
63 Plat. De Republica, V. p. 463, (p. 241,); p. 460 (p. 236).
64 Plat. De Republica, IX. pp. 427, 428 (pp. 179-181).
65 Ibid. IV. pp. 428, 429 (pp. 181, 182).
66 Ibid. pp. 429, 430 (pp. 182-185).
67 Plat. De Republica, IV. pp. 430-432 (pp. 185-188).
68 Plat. De Republica, IV. pp. 432, 433 (pp. 188-191).
69 Plat. De Republica, IV. pp. 437-443 (pp. 198-210).
70 Plat. De Republica, IV. p. 421 (pp. 167, 168).
71 Ibid. II. p.376-III. p. 412 (pp. 93-155); V. p. 472-VII. fin. (pp. 258-375).
72 Plat. De Legibus, IV. pp. 722, 723 (pp. 367-369).
73 Plat. De Republica, III. pp. 412-415 (pp. 155-161.)
74 Plat. De Republica, V. pp. 457-461 (pp. 230-239).
75 Ibid. pp. 451-457 (pp. 219-230); p. 471 (p. 257).
76 Cf. Hegel: On the Scientific Modes of treating Natural Law (Werke, Vol. I.), pp. 383-386.
77 Plat. Hippias Major, p. 292 (p. 433); p. 295 sqq. (p. 439 sqq.) p. 302 (pp. 455, 456).
78 In quoting the chapters of Aristotle both hitherto and in future, Becker’s edition is adopted; where a second number is placed in brackets after the first, different editions are indicated, e.g., for the Organon, Buhle’s edition, for the Nicomachiean Ethics those of Zell and the editor, &c. — [Editor’s note.]
79 Diog. Laërt. V. 1, 9, 12, 15; Buhle: Aristotelis vita (ante Arist. Opera, T. I.) pp. 81, 82; Ammonius Saccas: Aristotelis vita (ed. Buhle in. Arist. Op. T. I.), pp. 43, 44.
80 Diog. Laërt. V. 3, 4; 7, 8; Buhle: Aristotel. vita, pp. 90-92.
81 Aristotelis Opera (ed. Pac. Aurel. Allobrog, 1607), T. I., in fine: Aristotelis Fragmenta. (Cf. Stahr. Aristotelia, Pt. I. pp. 85-91.)
82 Aulus Gellius: Noctis Atticæ, XX. 5
83 Diog. Laërt. V. 5, 6; Suidas, s. v. Aristoteles; Buhle: Aristot. vit. p. 100; Ammon. Saccas: Arist. vit. pp. 47, 48; Menag. ad. Diog. Laërt. V. 2; Stahr. Aristotelia, Pt. I. pp. 108, 109; Bruckeri Hist. crit. phil. T. I. pp. 788, 789.
84 Strabo, XIII. p. 419 (ed. Casaub. 1587); Plutarch in Sulla, c. 26; Brucker. Hist. crit. phil. T. I. pp. 798-800 (cf. Michelet: Examen critique de l’ouvrage d’Aristote, intitulé Métaphysique, pp. 5-16.)
85 Cf. Michelet: Examen critique, &c., pp. 17-23; 28-114; 199-241.
86 Gellius: Noct. Atticæ, XX. 5; Stahr: Aristotelia, Pt. I. pp 110-112.
87 Arist. Metaphys. VI. 1; Physic. II. 2; I. 9. (Cf. Michelet: Examen critique, etc., pp. 23-27.)
88 Michelet: Examen critique, pp. 115-198.
89 Not only the form which is to be abrogated, but also matter is spoken of by Aristotle as τι, because in truth the form which is to be abrogated serves only as material for the form which is to be posited; so that he in the first passage names the three moments ἔκ τινος, τι, ὑπό τινος, and in the last passage names them τι, εἴς τι, ὑπό τινος. — [Editor’s Note.]
90 As this explanation by Hegel of Aristotle’s celebrated passage has so many authorities to support it, the editor cannot here, as frequently elsewhere in these lectures, remain faithful to the directions of his colleagues, quietly to set right anything that is incorrect. It is, nevertheless, clear that Aristotle is speaking of three substances: a sublunar world, which the heavens move; the heavens as the centre which is both mover and moved; and God, the unmoved Mover. The passage must therefore, on the authority of Alexander of Aphrodisias (Schol. in Arist. ed. Brandis, p. 804 b), of Cardinal Bessarion (Aristoteles lat. ed. Bekk. p. 525 b) and others, be thus read: ἔστι τοίνυν τι καὶ ὃ κινεῖ (sc. ὁ οὐρανός)· ἐπεὶ δε τὸ κινούμενον καὶ κινοῦν καὶ μέσον τοίνυν, ἔυτι τι ὃ οὐ κινούμενον κινεῖ. The translation, if this reading be adopted, would be as follows: Besides the heavens in perpetual motion “there is something which the heavens move. But since that which at the same time is moved and causes movement cannot be other than a centre, there is also a mover that is unmoved.” (Cf. Michelet: Examen critique, etc., p. 192; Jahrbücher für wisseuschaftliche Kritik, November, 1841, No. 84, pp. 668, 669). [Editor’s note]
91 συστοιχία is a good word, and might also mean an element which is itself its own element, and determines itself only through itself.
92 The word τὸ εἶναι, when it governs the dative (τὸ εἶναι νοήσεί καὶ νοουμένῳ) invariably expresses the Notion, while, when it governs the accusative, it denotes concrete existence. (Trendelenburg: Comment, in Arist. De anima, III. 4, p. 473.) [Editor’s Note.]
93 Aristotle here distinguishes four determinations: what is moved in capacity, or the movable [das Bewegbare] (κινητόν); what is moved in actuality (κινούμενον); the moving in capacity (κινητικόν), or what Hegel calls the motive [das Bewegliche]; the moving in actuality (κινοῦν). It might have been better to translate κινητόν by motive [Beweglich] and κινητικόν by mobile [Bewegerisch]. — [Editor’s note.]
94 While above (p. 164) we must take the expression τὸ εἶναι as immediate existence because it is opposed to the Notion, here it has the meaning of Notion, because it stands in opposition to immediate existence (καὶ οὺ χωριστὴ μὲν ὕλη, δ̓ εἶναι, καὶ μία τῷ ἀριθμῷ). Cf. Michelet: Comment. in Arist. Eth. Nicom. V. I., pp. 209-214. — [Editor’s note.]
95 Here τὸ εἶναι has again the signification of Notion, as above (p. 169), because in the preceding words (ἔστι δὲ ταὐτὸ καὶ κατὰ ταὐτὸ ἡ διαίρεσις καὶ ἥ ἕνωσις) immediate existence is expressed. — [Editor’s note.]
96 The editor has considered himself justified in adopting this rendering, which was commonly used by the Scholastics, and revived by Leibnitz. (Cf. Michelet, Examen Critique, &c., pp. 165, 261, 265.)
97 Here and once again on this page τὸ εἶναι is the immediate existence of the separate sides of sense-perception, therefore their mere potentiality; while, on the other hand, the active unity of the perceived and the percipient may be expressed as the true Notion of sense-perception. — [Editor’s Note.]
98 Cf. supra, p. 169, and note there given. The two significations of τῷ εἶναι here come into immediate contact with one another, being likewise intermingled; for immediate existence (ἀριθμῷ ἀδιαίρετον καὶ ἀχωριστον), which is opposed to the Notion (τῷ εἶναι) becomes in what directly follows mere possibility, to which the true reality (δυνάμει μὲν γὰρ τὸ αὐτὸ καὶ ἀδιαίρετον εἶναι) is opposed (δυνάμει μὲν γὰρ τὸ αὐτὸ καὶ ἀδιαίρετον τἀναντία, δ̓ εἶναι ου, ἀλλα τῷ ἐνεργεῖσθαι διαίρετον). — [Editor’s Note.]
99 Cf. Tenneman, Vol. III. p. 198.
100 While Aristotle’s reply is short, and given in the manner usually adopted by him, that of following up by a second question the first question proposed (ἢ οὐδὲ τἆλλα φαντάσματα, ἀλλʹ οὐκ ἄνευ φαντασμάτον;), this answer seems quite sufficient. For Aristotle’s words certainly bear the meaning that the original thoughts of the active understanding (the reason), in contradistinction to those of the passive understanding, have quite obliterated in themselves the element of pictorial conception; while in the latter this has not been thoroughly carried out, though even in them pictorial conception is not the essential moment. — [Editor’s Note.]
101 Against this we have only to remember that in Aristotle’s way of speaking ὕστερον and πρότερον always refer to the work they occur in, while he marks quotations from his other writings by the words: ἐν ἄλλοις, ἐν ἑτέροις, ἄλλοτε, or εἰς ἐκεῖνον τὸν καιρὸν ἀποκείσθω (De Ausc. phys. I. 9). And if it be said, as it may be with truth, that all the physical and psychological works, including the Metaphysics, form one great scientific system, so that ὕστερον and πρότερον may very well be used in relating these works to one another, I have yet proved that the treatise περὶ ψυχῆς must be placed much later than the Metaphysics (Michelet: Examen Critique, &c., pp. 209-222). Might not then the expression ὕστερον refer to the following chapter? In truth, the difficulty raised at the end of the seventh chapter seems completely solved by the words of the eighth chapter quoted above (pp. 198, 199). — [Editor’s Note.]
102 See Michelet, De doli et culpæ in jure criminali notionibus; System der philosophischen Moral. Book II. Part I; Afzelius, Aristotelis De imputatione actionum doctrina. — [Editor’s Note.]
103 Ethic, Nicom. I. 2-12 (4-12); X. 6-8; Eth. Eudem. II. 1.
104 Magn. Moral. I. 5, 35; Eth. Nic. I. 13; Eth. Eud. II. 1.
105 Ethic. Nicomach. II. 5-7 (6, 7); Maga. Moral. I. 5-9; Eth. Eud. II. 3.
106 Cf. Arist. Ethic. Nicom. I. 1 (3).
107 Arist. Eth. Nic. I. 1 (2).
108 Arist. Polit. III. 1; IV. 14-16.
109 Ibid. III. 7 (5)-IV. 13.
110 Arist. Polit. III. 13 (8-9).
111 Categor. c. 3 (c. 2, § 3-5.)
112 Categor. c. 4 (c. 2, § 6-8).
113 Categor. c. 10-14 (8-11); cf. Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, p. 79 (6th Ed.).
114 Categor. c. 5 (3).
115 Arist. Categor. c. 4 (2); De Interpretat. c. 4-6.
116 Arist. Analytic. prior. I. 1; Topic I. 1.
117 Arist. Topic I. 13 (11) et 1.
118 Ibid. I. 16-18 (14-16); II. 7, 8, 10.
119 Ibid. III. 1; Buhle, Argum. p. 18.
120 Analyt. prior. II. 23 (25).
121 Diog. Laërt. VII. I, 12, 31, 32, 5, 2 (IV. 6, 7), 13, 6-11, 28, 29. Tennemann, Vol. IV. p. 4; Vol. II. pp. 532, 534; Bruck. Hist. Crit. Phil. T. I. pp. 895, 897-899. (Cf. Fabric. Biblioth. Græc. T. II. p. 413), 901.
122 Diog. Laërt, VII. 168, 169, 176.
123 Diog. Laërt. VII. 179-181, 184, 189-202; Tennemann, Vol. IV. p. 443.
124 Diog. Laërt. VI. 81; Cicer. Acad. Quæst. IV. 30; De Oratore II. 37, 38; De Senectute, c. 7; Tennemann, Vol. IV. p. 444.
125 Cic. De Officiis III. 2; De Nat. Deor. I. 3; Suidas: s. v. Posidonius, T. III. p. 159.
126 Aul. Gell. Noct. Att. I. 2 (Gronovius ad h. 1.); II. 18; XV. 11; XIX. 1.
127 Stob. Eclog. phys. I. p. 32.
128 Diog. Laërt. VII. 136, 142, 156, 157; Plutarch, de plac. philos. IV. 21.
129 Diog. Laërt. VII. 135; Stob. Eclog. phys. I. p. 178.
130 Sext. Empir. adv. Math. IX. 101-103.
131 Diog. Laërt. VII. 137.
132 Sext. Empir. adv. Math. VII. 234; Diog. Laërt. VII. 138-140, 147, 148.
133 Diog. Laërt. VII. 54, 46; Sext. Empir. adv. Math. VII. 227-230.
134 Sext. Empir. adv. Math. VIII. 403, sqq.; cf. Senec. Epist. 107.
135 Diog. Laërt. VII. 63; Sext. Emp. adv. Math. VIII. 70.
136 Diog. Laërt. VII. 79, 80, 83.
137 Cicer. De Officiis I. 3, III.; Diog. Laërt. VII. 98, 99.
138 Diog. Laërt. VII. 94.
139 Diog. Laërt. VII. 127, 128; Cicer. Paradox, 2.
140 Cicer. De finibus III. 13; Tusculan. Quæst. II. 25.
141 Diog. Laërt. VII. 107, 108.
142 Plutarch. De Stoicorum repugnantia, p. 1031 (ed. Xyl.); Stob. Eclog. ethic. P. II. p. 110 Diog. Laërt. VII. 125.
143 Diog. Laërt. VII. 121, 122, 116, 117, 129; Sext. Empir. adv. Math. XI. 190-194.
144 Tacit. Annal. XIV. 53; XIII. 42, 3.
145 Diog. Laërt. X. 1-8, 10-15; Cic. De Nat. Deor. I. 26; De Finibus, II. 25; Bruck. Hist. Crit. Phil. T. I. pp. 1230, 1231, 1233, 1236; Sext. Emp. adv. Math. X. 18; I. 3.
146 Diog. Laërt. X. 11, 24, 9; IV. 43; Cic. De Finib. V. 1; Euseb. Præp. evangel. XIV. 5.
147 Diog. Laërt. X. 26.
148 Diog. Laërt. X. 31.
149 Diog. Laërt. X. 31, 32.
150 Diog. Laërt. X. 33.
151 Diog. Laërt. X. 33, 34.
152 Diog. Laërt. X. 34.
153 Diog. Laërt. X. 48, 49.
154 Diog. Laërt. X. 50, 51.
155 Diog. Laërt. X. 54, 55.
156 Diog. Laërt. X. 55-58.
157 Diog. Laërt. X. 43, 44, 60, 61; Cic. De fato, c. 10; De finibus, l. 6; Plutarch. De animæ procreat. e Timæo, p. 1015.
158 Diog. Laërt. X. 78-80, 86, 87, 93-96, 101, 97.
159 Diog. Laërt. X. 113, 114.
160 Cicer. De natura Deorum, I. 20.
161 Diog. Laërt. X. 66, 63, 64.
162 Diog. Laërt. X. 141-143.
163 Diog. Laërt. X. 122, 123, 139.
164 Cicer. De nat. Deor. I. 17, 19, 20.
165 Cicer. De divinat. II. 17; De nat. Deor. I. 8.
166 Diog. Laërt. X. 124, 125, 127.
167 Diog. Laërt. X. 127-132 (119, 135).
168 Sext. Empir. Pyrrh. Hyp. I. c. 33, § 220.
169 Diog. Laërt. IV. 28-33, 36-38, 42, 44; Bruck. Hist. crit. phil. T. I. p. 746; Tennemann, Vol. IV. p. 443; Cic. De finib. II. 1.
170 Sext. Empir. Pyrrh. Hyp. I. c. 33, § 232; Diog. Laërt. IV. 32.
171 Sext. Empir. adv. Math. VII. 154.
172 Sext. Empir. adv. Math. VII. 154-156.
173 Diog. Laërt. IV. 62, 65; Tennemann, Vol. IV. pp. 334, 443, 444; Cicer. Acad. Quæst. II. 6; Valer. Maxim. VIII. 7, ext. 5.
174 Plutarch. Cato major, c. 22; Gell. Noct. Attic. VII. 14; Cic. De orat. II. 37, 38; Aelian. Var. hist. III. 17; Bruck. Hist. crit. phil. T. I. p. 763.
175 Sext. Empir. adv. Math. VII. 159, 160.
176 Sext. Empir. adv. Math. VII. 160, 161.
177 Sext. Empir. adv. Math. VII. 161-164, 402.
178 Sext. Empir. adv. Math. VII. 165.
179 Sext. Empir. adv. Math. VII. 166-169.
180 Ibid. 166, 167.
181 Sext. Empir. adv. Math. VII. 173-175.
182 Ibid. 176, 177; 187-189; 179.
183 Ibid. 176, 177; 179; 187-189.
184 Sext. Empir. adv. Math. VII. 181-184.
185 As it is used here and shortly afterwards, “positive philosophy” has quite an opposite meaning from what we have just seen it to bear in two previous passages (p. 329), because speculation certainly stands in opposition to dogmatism; and at the same time we must in Hegel distinguish altogether this expression in its double significance from the positivism so prevalent in modern times, which, merely escaping from the necessity for thinking knowledge, finally throws itself into the arms of revelation and simple faith, whether it tries to call itself free thought or not. — [Editor’s note.]
186 Lectures of 1825-1826.
187 Diog. Laërt. IX. 71-73; cf. Vol. I. pp. 161, 246, 284.
188 Diog. Laërt. IX. 61-65, 69, 70; Bruck. Hist. crit. phil. T. I. pp. 1320-1323.
189 Diog. Laërt. IX. 109.
190 Diog. Laërt. IX. 116; Bruck. Hist. crit. phil. T. I. p. 1328.
191 Bruck. Hist. crit. phil. T. II. pp. 631-636.
192 Sext. Empir. Pyrrh. Hyp. I. c. 39, §§ 221-225.
193 Sext. Empir. Pyrrh. Hyp. I. c. 3, § 7; Diog. Laërt. IX. 69, 70.
194 Cf. supra, p. 212.
195 Diog. Laërt. IX. 68.
196 Sext. Emp. Pyrrh. Hypot. I. c. 8, § 17.
197 Sext. Emp. Pyrrh. Hyp. I. c. 14, §§ 40-44.
198 Sext. Emp, Pyrrh. Hyp. I. c. 14, §§ 79-82, 85-89.
199 Sext. Emp. Pyrrh. Hyp. I. c. 14, §§ 91, 92.
200 Sext. Emp. Pyrrh. Hyp. I. c. 14, §§ 100, 112.
201 Ibid, §§ 118-120.
202 Sext. Emp. Pyrrh. Hyp. I. c. 14, §§ 124-126.
203 Ibid. §§ 129-131, 133.
204 Sext. Emp. Pyrrh. Hyp. I. c. 14, §§ 141-144.
205 Sext. Emp. Pyrrh. Hyp. I. c. 14, §§ 145, 148, 149.
206 Pyrrh. Hyp. I. c. 15, §§ 164-169. (Diog. Laërt. IX. 88, 89.)
207 Bruck. Hist. crit. philos. T. II. pp. 797, 799, et notæ; Phil. De legatione ad Cajum, p. 992 (ed. Francf. 1691): Joseph. Antiq. Jud. XVIII. c. 10, p. 649; Euseb. Hist, eccles. II. c. 18; cf. Fabric Biblioth. Gr. Vol. III. p. 115 (Hamburg, 1708).
208 Phil. De confusione linguarum, p. 358; De special. legib. II. pp. 806, 807; De mundi opificio, p. 15; De migratione Abrahami, pp. 393, 417, 418; Quis. rer. divin. hæres. p. 518; Quod Deus sit immutabilis, pp. 301, 302; De monarchia, I. p. 816; De nominum mutatione, p. 1045; De Cherub. p. 124; De somniis, p. 576.
209 Phil. De somniis, pp. 574, 575; Liber legis allegoriarum, I. p. 48; Quod Deus sit immut. p. 298.
210 Phil. De mundi opificio, pp. 4-6; De agricultura, p. 195; De somniis, pp. 597, 599.
211 Phil. Leg. allegor. I. p. 46, et II. p. 93; Quod deterius potiori insidiari soleat, p. 165; De temulentia, p. 244; De somniis, pp. 578, 586, 588; De confus. ling. pp. 341, 345; Euseb. Præp. ev. VII. c. 13; Phil. De vita Mosis, III. p. 672; De sacrif. Abel., p. 140.
212 Buhle: Lehrbuch d. Gesch. d. Phil. Pt. IV. p. 124; Phil. De mundi opificio, p. 5.
213 Phil. De mund. opific. p. 4; De victimas offerentibus, p. 857 (Buhle, ibid. p. 125).
214 De mundi opificio, pp. 5, 6 (Brucker Hist. crit. phil. Tom. II. pp. 802, 803).
215 Brucker Hist. crit. phil. T. II. pp. 834-840, 924-927.
216 Irira: Porta c\nlorum, Dissertatio I. c. 4; c. 6, § 13 et c. 7, § 2; IV. c. 4, sqq.; II. c. 1; V. c. 7, 8; Tiedemann: Geist der speculat. Philosophie, Pt. III. pp. 149, 150, 155-157; Buhle: Lehrbuch der Gesch. der Phil. Pt. IV. pp. 156, 162, 160, 157.
217 Neander: Genetische Entwickelung der vornehmsten gnostischen Systeme, pp. 10, 33, 34; Philo De nominum mutat. p. 1046.
218 Neander: Genet. Entwickelung, &c., pp. 168, 170, 171.
219 Neander: Genet. Entwickelung, &c., pp. 94-97.
220 Ibid. pp. 160, 10-13; Phil. Quod Deus sit immut. p. 304.
221 Cf. Buhle, Lehrb. d. Gesch. d. Phil. Pt. IV. pp. 195-200.
222 Brucker, Hist. crit. phil. T. II. pp. 205, 213, 214.
223 Porphyrius, Vita Plotini (præmissa Ennead. Plot. Basil. 1580), pp. 2, 3, 5-8; Brucker, Hist. crit. phil. T. II. pp. 218-221; Tiedemann, Geist d. spec. Phil. Vol. III. p. 272; Buhle, Lehrb. d. Gesch. d. Phil. Pt. IV. p. 306.
224 Cf. Plotin. Ennead. I. l. 6, c. 7; IV. l. 4, c. 39-43; Procli Theol. Plat. I. pp. 69, 70 (ed. Aem. Portus, Hamburg, 1618).
225 Plot. Ennead. IV. l. 8, c. 1; cf. ibidem, c. 4-7.
226 Plot. Ennead. III. l. 6, c. 6; VI. l. 9, c. 1, 2; III. l. 8, c. 8.
227 This Aristotelian word, and also ἐξέρτηται (Procl. Theol. Plat. III. p. 133), often occur in the Neo-Platonists.
228 Plot. Ennead. I. l. 8: Περὶ τοῦ τίνα καὶ πόθεν τὰ κακά, c. 2 (VI. l. 9, c. 6); III. l. 8, c. 9, 10.
229 Plot. Ennead. V. l. 3, c. 13, 14; l. 2, c. 1; VI. l. 2, c. 9, 10; l. 8, c. 8, 9; l. 9, c. 3, VI. l. 9, c. 6; l. 8, c. 7 (13, 21).
230 Steinhart: Quæstiones de dialectica Plotini ratione, p. 21; Plotini Ennead. VI. l. 9, c. 1-9, passim.
231 Plot. Ennead. III. l. 8, c. 10 fin.; IV. l. 3, c. 17; V. l. 1, c. 4, 5; c. 7; l. 4, c. 2; l. 5, c. 1.
232 Plot. Ennead. V. l. 1, c. 6 (IV. l. 3, c. 17).
233 Plot. Ennead. V. l. 2, c. 1; l. 1, c. 7; VI. l. 9, c. 2.
234 Plot. Ennead. V. l. 3, c. 5; VI. l. 2, c. 8; II. l. 4, c. 4; VI. l. 4, c. 2; V. l. 9, c. 8, 9.
235 Plot. Ennead. VI. l. 2, c. 2; V. l. 9, c. 8.
236 Plot. Ennead. IV. l. 3, c. 17.
237 Plot. Ennead. V. l. 1, c. 7; l. 2, c. 1, 2; l. 6, c. 4; VI. l. 2, c. 22.
238 Plot. Ennead. V. l. 3, c. 5; ἕν ἅμα πάντα ἔσται, νοῦς, νόησις, τὸ νοητόν.
239 Plot. Ennead. II. l. 9, c. 1-3, 6.
240 If we were to translate this by “in the intelligible world,” the expression would be misleading; for “the world” is nowhere. Neither may we say, “intelligible things,” as if there were things of some other kind; such distinctions and definitions are nowhere found.
241 Plot. Ennead. II. l. 4, c. 4, 12-15; l. 5, c. 2-5.
242 Plot. Ennead. I. l. 8, c. 2, 3.
243 Instead of δεῖ in the sentence οὐ γὰρ δεῖ τὸ εἰπεῖν we should certainly read δή, or something of the kind.
244 Buhle, Lehrb. d. Gesch. d. Phil. Part IV. pp. 418, 419; Tiedemann, Geist. d. spec. Phil. Vol. III. pp. 421-423; cf. Plotini Ennead. IV. l. 3 et 8 passim.
245 Buhle, Lehrb. d. Gesch. d. Phil. Part IV. pp. 419, 420.
246 Brucker: Hist. crit. phil. T. II. pp. 248, 268.
247 Cf. Procli. Theol. Plat. III. p. 140.
248 Brucker: Hist. cr. phil. T. II. p. 320; Tennemann, Vol. VI. pp. 284-289; Marinus: Vita Procli, passim (præm. Theol. Plat.).
249 Procli Institutionis theologicæ, c. 26.
250 Procli Institut. theol. c. 27; Theol. Plat. III. p. 119; II. pp. 101, 102; III. p. 121; Institut. theol. c. 5.
251 Procli Institut. theol. c. 1-2; c. 28; Theol. Plat. III. pp. 118, 122-125; II. pp. 108, 109.
252 Procli Theol. Plat. III. pp. 123-124.
253 Procli Theol. Plat. III. pp. 141, 127; Instit. theol. c. 192.
254 It is doubtful whether the καὶ should not be omitted, so that ἡ ἁκρότης τῶν ὄντων would stand in apposition to νοῦς.
255 Procli Theol. Plat. III. p. 144 (VI. p. 403); Instit. theol. c. 124, 170.
256 Procli Theol. Plat. I. pp. 69, 70.
257 Brucker: Hist. cr. phil. T. II. pp. 350, 347; Joan. Malala: Hist. chron. P. II. p. 187; Nic. Alemannus ad Procopii anecdot. c. 26. p. 377.
PART TWO. PHILOSOPHY OF THE MIDDLE AGES
INTRODUCTION
THE FIRST PERIOD embraces a space of one thousand years — from Thales, 550 B.C., to Proclus, who died 485 A.D., and until the disappearance of pagan philosophy as an outward institution, 529 A.D. The second period extends to the sixteenth century, and thus again embraces a thousand years, to pass over which we must provide ourselves with seven-leagued boots. While Philosophy has hitherto found its place in the religion of the heathen, from this time on it has its sphere within the Christian world; for Arabians and Jews have only to be noticed in an external and historic way.
- Through the Neo-Platonic philosophy we have come into quite familiar acquaintance with the Idea of Christianity, as the new religion which has entered into the world. For the Neo-Platonic philosophy has as its essential principle the fact that the Absolute is determined as spirit in a concrete way, that God is not a mere conception. Although the Absolute is Thought, it must, in order to be true, be concrete in itself and not abstract; in what we have just seen we have, then, the first appearance of the absolutely existent spirit. But in spite of their profound and true speculation, the Neo-Platonists still had not proved their doctrine that the Trinity is the truth, for there is lacking to it the form of inward necessity. The Neo-Platonists begin from the One that determines itself, that sets a limit to itself from which the determinate proceeds; this, however, is itself an immediate method of presentation, and it is this that makes such philosophers as Plotinus and Proclus so tiresome. Undoubtedly dialectic considerations enter in, in which the opposites which are conceived as absolute are shown to be null; but this dialectic is not methodical, but occurs only disconnectedly. The principle of retroversion and comprehension found with the Neo-Platonists is that of substantiality generally, but because subjectivity is lacking, this idea of Spirit is deficient in one moment, the moment of actuality, of the point which draws all moments into one, and which thereby becomes immediate unity, universality, and Being. To them spirit is thus not individual spirit; and this deficiency is made good through Christianity, in which spirit is found as actual, present spirit, immediately existent in the world here and now, and the absolute spirit is known in the immediate present as man.
In order to grasp and apply the Idea of Christianity, the philosophic Idea of which we have already spoken in connection with the Neo-Platonists must have been comprehended for itself; but within Christianity the basis of Philosophy is that in man has sprung up the consciousness of the truth, or of spirit in and for itself, and then that man requires to participate in this truth. Man must be qualified to have this truth present to him; he must further be convinced of this possibility. This is the absolute demand and necessity; the consciousness must be arrived at that this alone is true. The first point of interest in the Christian religion thus is that the content of the Idea should be revealed to man; more particularly that the unity of the divine and human nature should come to the consciousness of man, and that, indeed, on the one hand as an implicitly existent unity, and, on the other, in actuality as worship. The Christian life signifies that the culminating point of subjectivity is made familiar with this conception, the individual himself is laid claim to, is made worthy of attaining on his own account to this unity, which is to make himself worthy of the Spirit of God — Grace, as it is called — dwelling in him. Hence the doctrine of reconciliation is that God is known as reconciling Himself with the world, i.e. as we have seen in the Neo-Platonic philosophy, that He particularizes Himself and does not remain abstract. Not external nature alone, but the whole world pertains to the particular; above all must human individuality know itself in God. The interest of the subject is itself involved, and here it plays an essential rôle in order that God may be realized and may realize Himself in the consciousness of individuals who are spirit and implicitly free. Thus through the process these accomplish that reconciliation in themselves, actualize their freedom; that is to say, they attain to the consciousness of heaven upon earth, the elevation of man to God. Thus the true intellectual world is not a beyond, but the so-called finite is an element in it, and no division exists between this side and that. The real concrete in regard to the absolute Idea is the knowing of the mundane, the ‘other’ in God, as implicitly divine, as universal, as the world of intellect, as having its root in God, but only the root. In God man is accepted only in his truth, and not in his immediacy, and thus this doctrine is not what we call Pantheism, for that leaves the immediate just as it is. Man then has himself to accomplish the process of reconciliation in himself in order to attain to his truth. We have thus seen that man possesses the determination and attributes of God as the first begotten son, Adam Kadmon, the first man; we may call this unity the concrete Idea, which, however, is still only implicit.
But the fact that because man is capable of the divine, the identity of the divine and human nature must likewise be present for him, has in an immediate way become known to him in Christ, as one in whom the divine and human nature are implicitly one. In the world what has come to pass is that the Absolute has been revealed as the concrete, and, further, not only in thought in a general way as intelligible world, but because it has in itself proceeded to its ultimate point of intensity. Thus it is an actual self, an “I,” the absolute universal, the concrete universal, that is God; and also the absolute opposite of this determination, the clearly finite as it exists in space and time, but this finite determined in unity with the eternal as self. The Absolute comprehended as concrete, the unity of these two absolutely different determinations, is the true God; each of them is abstract, and either of them taken by itself is thus not the true God. The fact that the concrete is thus known to men in this perfection as God, brings about the whole revolution that has taken place in the world’s history. The Trinity is thereby not only present in conception, which would not yet constitute the perfect concrete, but actuality is perfectly united to it. In the consciousness of the world it has consequently broken in upon men that the Absolute has attained to this “culminating point” of immediate actuality, as Proclus says; and that is the manifestation of Christianity. The Greeks were anthropomorphic, their gods were humanly constituted; but the deficiency in them is that they were not anthropomorphic enough. Or rather the Greek religion is on the one hand too much, and, on the other hand, too little anthropomorphic — too much, because immediate qualities, forms, actions, are taken up into the divine; too little, because man is not divine as man, but only as a far-away form and not as ‘this,’ and subjective man.
Thus man reaches this truth, because for him it becomes a sure intuition that in Christ the λόγος has become Flesh. We thus first have man through this process attaining to spirituality, and in the second place we have man as Christ, in whom this original identity of both natures is known. Now since man really is this process of being the negation of the immediate, and from this negation attaining to himself — to a unity with God — he must consequently renounce his natural will, knowledge, and existence. This giving up of his natural existence is witnessed in Christ’s sufferings and death, and in His resurrection and elevation to the right hand of the Father. Christ became a perfect man, endured the lot of all men, death; as man He suffered, sacrificed Himself, gave up His natural existence, and thereby elevated Himself above it. In Him this process, this conversion of His other-being into spirit, and the necessity of pain in the renunciation of the natural man is witnessed; but this pain, the pain of feeling that God Himself is dead, is the starting point of holiness and of elevation to God. Thus what must come to pass in the subject — this process, this conversion of the finite — is known as implicitly accomplished in Christ. This constitutes the great leading Idea of Christianity.
From what has been said it follows, in the second place, that the world must not be left in its immediate naturalness. The original, implicitly existent, is found only in the strictest conception of mind, or as its determination: immediately, man is only a living being, who has indeed the capacity to become actual spirit — but spirit does not pertain to nature. Man is thus not by nature this particular in which the spirit of God lives and dwells: man is not by nature what he ought to be. The animal is by nature what it ought to be. But what has to be noticed in this respect is that natural things merely remain in their implicit Notion, or their truth does not enter into their sensuous life, for this their natural individuality is only a fleeting fact that cannot look back on itself. The misfortune in natural things is that they get no further, that their essential nature is not for itself and independent; from this it follows that they do not attain to infinitude, to liberation from their immediate individuality, i.e. they do not attain to freedom, but only remain in the necessity which is the connection of the “one” with an “other,” so that when this other unites itself to natural things, these last perish because they cannot bear the contradiction. But because the truth exists for man as consciousness, and in it he has the qualities necessary for freedom, he is capable of perceiving the Absolute, of placing himself in a relation to the same, and having knowledge as an end; and the liberation of mind depends on the fact that consciousness does not remain in its natural condition, but becomes spiritual, i.e. that for it the eternal, that is the reconciliation of the finite as this subject with the infinite, exists. Thus consciousness does not signify remaining in the sphere of nature, but the existence of the process whereby the universal becomes object or end to man. Man makes himself divine, but in a spiritual, that is to say not in an immediate way. In the ancient religions the divine is also united to the natural or human; but this unity is no reconciliation, but an immediate, undeveloped, and thus unspiritual unity, just because it is merely natural. But because mind is not natural but only that into which it makes itself, the spiritual is first met with in this very process of producing unity. To this spiritual unity pertains the negation of nature, of the flesh, as that in which man must not rest; for nature is from the beginning evil. Man is likewise naturally evil, for all the wickedness that man does proceeds from a natural desire. Now because man is in himself the image of God, but in existence is only natural, that which is implicit must be evolved, while the first natural condition must be abrogated. So much the more is it true that man first becomes spiritual, and attains to truth through rising above the natural, inasmuch as God Himself is a spirit only in that He transformed the hidden unity into the other of Himself, in order from this other to turn back again into Himself.
Now the fact that this is given as, or asserted to be the fundamental Idea of Christianity, implies on the one hand an historic question; at different times this idea has been grasped in different ways, and now, for example, men again have their particular conceptions of it. In order to bring about the conclusion that this is the historic idea of Christianity, we should have to enter upon an historic disquisition; but because we cannot deal with this here, we must accept it as an historic axiom. On the other hand, in so far as this question falls within the history of Philosophy, the assertion that this is the idea of Christianity has another ground to stand on than that of history, and this constitutes the third point of interest. In connection with the preceding forms it has been shown that this Idea of Christianity must have now come forth, and indeed become the universal consciousness of the nations. The fact that it has come forth as the world-religion, is the content of history; it is this necessity in the Idea which has to be expounded more clearly in the philosophy of history. To this end the conception of mind must be made fundamental, and it must now be shown that history is the process of mind itself, the revelation of itself from its first superficial, enshrouded consciousness, and the attainment of this standpoint of its free self-consciousness, in order that the absolute command of mind, “Know thyself,” may be fulfilled. The recognition of this necessity has been called the à priori construction of history; there is no good in decrying it as inadmissible, and indeed as arrogant. The development of history may be represented as contingent. Or, if the providence and government of God are seriously accepted, these are represented as though Christianity were so to speak ready made in the mind of God; then, when thrust into the world, it appears to be contingent. But the rationality and likewise the necessity of this decree of God’s has now to be considered, and this may be called a theodicy, a justification of God, i.e. a vindication of our Idea. It is a demonstration that, as I have just said, things have happened rationally in the world, and it implies the fact that the world-history represents the process of mind partially as the history of mind, which has to be reflected into itself in order to come to a consciousness of what it is. It is this which is shown forth in temporal history, and as history, indeed, just because mind is the living movement, proceeding from its immediate existence to beget revolutions in the world, as well as in individuals.
Since it is hereby presupposed that this Idea must necessarily become universal religion, there is, in the fourth place, present in it the source of a method of knowledge proper to the particular consciousness. That is to say, the new religion has made the intelligible world of Philosophy the world of common consciousness. Tertullian hence says: “Even children in our day have a knowledge of God, which the wisest men of antiquity alone attained to.” But in order that all may know the truth, this Idea must come to them as an object, not for the thinking, philosophic and cultured consciousness, but for the sensuous consciousness which still adheres to uncultured methods of regarding things. If this Idea were not to receive and to retain this form of outward consciousness, it would be a philosophy of the Christian religion; for the standpoint of Philosophy is the Idea in the form of the merely universal thought, and not the Idea as it is for the subject and directed to the subject. That through which this Idea appears as religion, belongs, however, to the history of religion, and this development of its form must here be passed over. Through these forms we must however not mistake the content, much less reject it altogether, for we must rather recognize its presence more completely; the forms must likewise not be held to be absolute, and we must not try to maintain the doctrines in this form alone, as was at one time done by an orthodoxy “of straw.”
Only one example will here be given. The so-called doctrine of original sin implies that our first parents have sinned, that this sin has thus descended to all mankind as an hereditary disorder, and has come upon posterity in an external way as something inherent in their nature, which does not pertain to freedom of the mind, nor has its ground therein. Through this original sin, it is further signified, man has drawn upon himself the wrath of God. Now if these forms be adhered to, we have in the first place there the first parents in time, and not in thought; but the thought of these first parents is none other than man as he is in and for himself. What is said of him as such, what every member of the human race really is in himself, is represented here in the form of the first man, Adam; and in this first man sin manifests itself as something contingent, or, more particularly, in his allowing himself to be enticed into eating of the apple. But it is again not merely represented that he simply partook of the fruit, but that he ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; it is as man that he must partake of it, and not as beast. The fundamental characteristic, however, through which he distinguishes himself from the animal, is the very fact that he knows what good and evil are. For God likewise says, “Behold, Adam has become as one of us, to know good and evil.” But it is only through man’s having the power of thinking that he can make this distinction between good and evil; in thought alone is there thus the source of good and evil, but the healing of the evil which is brought about through thought is also there. The second point is that man is by nature evil and transmits the evil. On the other hand, it is said: “Why should the sinner suffer punishment seeing that there is no responsibility for what is inborn in him?” As a matter of fact the statement that man is implicitly or by nature evil would seem to be a hard saying. But if we set aside this hard saying, and do not speak of a divine punishment, but make use of milder general expressions, in this idea of original sin the fact remains for us that man as he is by nature is not what he ought to be before God, but has the power of becoming explicitly what he only is implicitly; and the fact that this rests in the determination of man as such is represented as inheritance. The abrogation of mere naturalness is known to us simply as education, and arises of itself; through education subjection is brought about, and with that a capacity for becoming good is developed. Now if this appears to come to pass very easily, we must recollect that it is of infinite importance that the reconciliation of the world with itself, the making good, is brought about through the simple method of education.
- What concerns us now is to make the Principle of Christianity, which has been explained at considerable length, into the principle of the world; the task set before the world is to bring this absolute Idea within itself, to actualize it in itself, and thereby to reconcile itself to God. This task once more falls into three separate divisions.
In the first place we have the dissemination of the Christian religion and the bringing of it within the hearts of men; this, however, lies outside the limits of our consideration. The heart signifies the subjective man as ‘this,’ and through this principle the latter has a different position from before; it is essential that this subject should be present. The individual subject is the object of divine grace; each subject, or man as man, has on his own account an infinite value, is destined to partake of this spirit which must, as God, be born within the heart of every man. Man is determined for freedom, he is here recognized as implicitly free; this freedom is, however, at first only formal, because it remains within the principle of subjectivity.
The second point is that the principle of the Christian religion should be worked out for thought, and be taken up into thinking knowledge, and realized in this; and thus that it should attain to reconciliation, having the divine Idea within itself, and that the riches of thought and culture belonging to the philosophic Idea should become united to the Christian principle. For the philosophic Idea is the Idea of God, and thought has the absolute right of reconciliation, or the right to claim that the Christian principle should correspond with thought. The Fathers have rendered the service of thus elaborating the Christian religion in thinking knowledge; but neither have we to consider further this development of the Christian principle, since it belongs to the history of the Church. We have only here to give the point of view adopted regarding the relation of the Fathers to Philosophy. They for the most part lived within the ancient Roman world and in Latin culture, though the Byzantines likewise are included with them. We know that the Fathers were men of great philosophic culture, and that they introduced Philosophy, and more especially Neo-Platonic philosophy, into the Church; in this way they worked out a Christian system by which the first mode in which Christianity was manifested in the world was supplemented, for system was not present in this first manifestation. The Fathers have dealt with all questions respecting the nature of God, the freedom of man, the relationship to God — who is the objective — the origin of evil, and so on; and whatever thought decided regarding these questions was by them brought into and incorporated with the Christian system. The nature of spirit, the way of salvation, i.e. the various stages in the spiritualizing of the subject, his growth, the process of spirit, whereby it is spirit, the changes it has undergone, they have likewise treated in its freedom, and recognized its moments in the depths to which it reaches.
We may thus describe the attitude of the Christian Fathers, and likewise remark that this first philosophic development of the Christian principle has been looked on as a crime on their part, and it has been said that they have thus corrupted the purity of Christianity as originally manifested. We must speak of the nature of this corruption. It is well known that Luther in his Reformation made his aim the bringing of the Church back to the purity of its first estate in the early centuries, but this first condition already shows the fabric of an extensive and closely interwoven system, an elaborate tissue of doctrines regarding what God is and what is man’s relation to Him. Hence at the time of the Reformation no particular system was built up, but what was originally there was purified from later additions; it is a complicated erection, in which the most intricate pieces of workmanship are to be found. In modern times this elaborately woven system has been entirely pulled to pieces, because men have wished to bring Christianity back to the simple lines of the Word of God as found in the writings of the New Testament. Men have likewise given up the propagation of the system, the doctrine of Christianity as determined through the Idea and by the Idea, and have returned to the manner of its first appearance (and that, indeed, in eclectic fashion, and having regard to what will fit in with their own notions), so that now only the original Gospel narrative is regarded as forming the basis of Christianity. As regards the title of Philosophy and the Fathers to bring Philosophy into Christianity we have the following remarks to make.
Modern Theology on the one hand derives its formulas from the words of the Bible, which are made to form their basis, so that the whole business of the individual, as regards his thoughts and his conceptions, is merely exegetical; religion must be retained in its positive form, and thus it is from something received and given, something most evidently externally posited and revealed, that a beginning must be made. These words and this text are, however, of a nature such that they allow full latitude to the will of the interpreter; hence the other side is also present, or the application of the Bible saying: “The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.” This must be assented to, and the spirit means none else than the power which dwells within those who apply themselves to the letter in order that they may spiritually apprehend and animate it. This signifies that it is the conceptions which we bring along with us which have in the letter to give efficacy to themselves. Now these reflections brought along with us may be grasped by the most ordinary human understanding, which is what is indicated in modern times when we say that dogmas must be popular. In that way the right to act upon the letter with the spirit is assumed, i.e. the right to approach it with our individual judgment; but to the Fathers this is forbidden. They did act upon it with the Spirit; and it is expressly said that the Spirit dwells within the Church, directs, teaches, and illuminates it. The Fathers have hence a similar right to relate themselves with the Spirit to the positive, to what is given by the senses. Only it will depend absolutely upon what the nature of the Spirit is, for spirits are very different.
The assertion that the spirit must give life to the mere letter is certainly more definitely stated as that spirit has only to expound what is given, i.e. it must leave the actual sense of what is immediately contained in the words. We must, however, be far behind in culture if we do not see the fallacy in the attitude here adopted. To expound without the individual spirit, as though the sense were one entirely given, is impossible. To elucidate signifies to make clear, and it must be made clear to me; this can be done by nothing excepting what was already present in me. It must be in conformity with my subjective judgment, the necessities of my knowledge, of my apprehension, of my heart, &c.; thus only is it for me. We find what we look for, and just because I make it clear to myself, I make my conception, my thought, a factor in it; otherwise it is a dead and external thing, which is not present for me at all. It is hence very difficult to make clear to ourselves those foreign religions which lie far below our spiritual needs; but yet they touch a side of my spiritual necessities and standpoints, although it is but a dim and sensuous side. Thus when we talk of “making clear,” we conceal the real matter in a word; but if this word itself is made clear we find nothing in it but the fact that the spirit which is in man desires therein to recognize itself, and that it cannot know anything which does not rest in him. Thus have men made of the Bible what may be called a nose of wax. This man finds this thing, the other man that; what was secure now shows itself as insecure, because it is considered by the subjective spirit.
In this regard the nature of the text describing the method in which the first manifestation of Christianity took place, must be remarked upon; it cannot as yet expressly contain that which rests in the principle of Christianity, but only somewhat of an anticipation of what spirit is and will know as true. This also is expressly said in the text itself. Christ says: “If I depart, I will send the Comforter, the Holy Ghost… He will guide you into all truth,” He — and not Christ’s earthly presence nor His spoken words. It was only to be after Him, and after His teaching through the text, that the Spirit was to come into the Apostles, and that they were to become full of the Spirit. It might almost be said that when Christianity is carried back to its first appearing, it is brought down to the level of unspirituality, for Christ Himself says that the Spirit will not come until He Himself has departed. In the text of the first manifestation of Christianity we, on the other hand, see Christ only as the Messiah, or under the more explicit designation of a mere teacher; for His friends and apostles He is a present man whom they can perceive by the senses, and who does not yet hold to them the relationship of the Holy Ghost. His friends have seen Him, heard His doctrine, seen His miracles, and have thereby been brought to believe in Him. But Christ Himself sternly rebukes those who demand miracles of Him; if He thus be made as God to man, God in the heart of man, He cannot have a sensuous and immediate presence. The Dalai-lama, in the form of a sensuous man, is God to the inhabitants of Thibet, but in the Christian principle, where God dwells in the hearts of men, He cannot be present to them in sensuous form.
The second point then is that the sensuous and present form must disappear, so that it may be taken into the Mnemosyne, into the realm of popular conception; then for the first time can the spiritual consciousness, the spiritual relation, enter in. To the question of whither Christ has gone, the answer is given, “He sits on the right hand of God,” which signifies that it is only now that God can be known as this concrete One, as the One who has the other moment, His Son (λόγος, σοφία), in Himself. Thus to know what is the principle of Christianity as truth, the truth of the Idea of spirit must be known as concrete spirit, and this is the form peculiar to the Fathers of the Church. With this the idea that the abstractly divine breaks up and has broken up within itself, first began to appear. This other moment in the divine must not, however, be grasped in the mode of an intelligible world, or, as we certainly have it in the ordinary conception, of a kingdom of heaven with many angels, who are also finite, limited, thus approaching closer to humanity. But it is not sufficient that the concrete moment should be known in God, for the further knowledge is requisite that Christ is an actual present man. This moment of Christ’s actual present humanity is of immense importance to Christianity, because it is the union of the most tremendous opposites. This higher conception could not have been present in the text, in the first manifestation; the greatness of the Idea could only come in later on, after the Spirit had perfected the Idea.
That the revelation of Christ has this significance is the belief of Christians, while the profane, immediate and direct significance of this history is that Christ was a mere prophet and met the fate of all the prophets in being misunderstood. But the fact that it has the significance given by us is known through the Spirit, for the Spirit is revealed in this history. This history is the Notion, the Idea of Spirit itself, and the world-history has in it found its end, which is in this immediate way to know the truth. It is therefore the Spirit which so comprehends that history, and at the time of Pentecost this is shown in an immediate and evident manner. For before this time the Apostles did not know the infinite significance of Christ; they did not yet know that this is the infinite history of God; they had believed in Him, but not yet as seeing in Him this infinite truth.
This is the truth which the Fathers developed; the general relation of the first Christian Church to Philosophy is hereby given. On the one hand, the philosophic Idea has been transplanted into this religion; on the other, this moment in the Idea — according to which the latter breaks up within itself into wisdom, the active Logos, the Son of God, &c., but yet in so doing remains in universality — has been brought to a culmination in subjectivity, and further in the sensuous immediate individuality and present existence of a human individual appearing in time and space. These two elements are essentially intermingled in this Christian system, the Idea itself, and secondly the form as it presents itself through its connection with a single individuality present in time and space. To the Fathers this history had thus the Idea as its principle; the true Idea of the Spirit was consequently to them likewise in the determinate form of history. But the Idea was not yet, as such, separated from history; because the Church thus held to this Idea in historic form, it determined the doctrines. This, then, is the general character of the time.
From this Idea as comprehended through the Spirit, many so-called heresies arose in the first centuries after Christ. Among such heretics must be included those of the Gnostics who take the Christian literature as their basis, but give a spiritual significance to everything therein present. For they did not remain at this historical form of the Idea of Spirit, since they interpreted the history and deprived it of its historical value. The reflections which they introduced are, as we have seen (Vol. II., pp. 396-399), to a greater or less extent such as are to be found in the philosophy of the Alexandrians or of Philo. In conformity with their principles they adopted a speculative attitude, but they proceeded into extravagances both of the imagination and morality, although in this dim fantastic region the elements which we found in history may always be recognized. But the form of immediate existence, an essential moment in Christ, is by them etherealized into a universal thought, so that the determination of the individual as a ‘this’ disappears. The Docetæ, for example, said that Christ had only a phantom body, a phantom life; yet in such assertions thought still constituted the background. The Gnostics were thus antagonistic to the Western Church, and, like Plotinus and the Neo-Platonists, this last strove hard against Gnosticism, because it remained in what is general, grasped the conception in the form of imagination, and because this conception was opposed to that of Christ in the Flesh (Χριστὸς ἐν σαρκί).1 The Church, on the contrary, held to the definite form of personality as the principle of concrete actuality.
From the East other forms of opposition in the principles than those we mentioned in connection with the Gnostics have been introduced, namely, Light and Darkness, Good and Evil. But more particularly has this Parsee opposition emerged in Manichæism, in which God, as the Light opposes the evil, non-existent (οὐκ ὄν), the ὕλη, the material, self-annihilating. Evil is that which contains contradiction in itself: the powers of evil (ὕλη), given over to themselves and raging in blind enmity against one another, were met by a gleam from the Kingdom of Light and thereby attracted, and this light pacified the powers of evil, so as to cause them to cease from strife and unite together in order to penetrate into the Kingdom of Light. As an inducement to make them so act, in order to weaken and mitigate their blind fury through a power operating irresistibly, and in order to bring about their final overthrow, and the universal supremacy of light, of life, of the soul, the Father of Light delivered over one of the powers of good. That is the world-soul (ψυχὴ ἁπάντων); it was swallowed up by the material, and this intermixture is the basis of the whole creation. Hence the soul is everywhere disseminated, and in the dead husk it is everywhere working and striving in man, the microcosm, as in the universe, the macrocosm, but with unequal power; for where beauty reveals itself, the Light-principle, the soul, obtains the mastery over matter, but in the ugly, the hateful, it is subordinate, and matter is the conqueror. This captive soul Mani likewise called the Son of Man — that is, of the primitive man, the heavenly man, of Adam Kadmon. But only a part of the Light-principle which was destined to strive with the Kingdom of Evil is in this manner delivered over; being too weak, it incurred the danger of being vanquished, and had to deliver over to matter a part of its armour, this soul. The part of the soul which had not suffered through such intermingling with matter, but had raised itself freely to heaven, works from above for the purification of the imprisoned souls, its kindred portions of light; and that is Jesus, the Son of Man, in so far as he has not suffered (ἀπαθής), as distinguished from the suffering Son of Man, the soul confined within the universe. But that delivering soul remains in the second and visible light which is still distinguished from the first and unapproachable, having its seat there, and by means of sun and moon exercising influence in the purification of nature. To Mani the whole course of the physical as of the spiritual world appears as a process of purification by means of this soul. The captive principle of Light required to be raised from the cycle of metempsychosis to an immediate re-union with the Kingdom of Light. Hence the pure heavenly soul came down to earth and appeared in the semblance of human form in order to reach to the suffering soul (to the νοῦς παθητικός of Aristotle?) a helping hand. The Manichæans also express themselves to the effect that God, the Good, goes forth, illumines, and thus produces an intelligible world. What comes third is Spirit as turning round, establishing the unity of the second and first, and experiencing feeling, and this feeling is Love. This heresy fully recognizes the Idea, but does away with the form of individual existence in which the Idea is presented in the Christian religion. The crucifixion of Christ is consequently taken as merely a semblance, as allegorical only, simply an image. That merely phantom crucifixion of the non-suffering Jesus, the fellow-suffering, only imaginary certainly, of the soul unmingled with matter, shows forth the actual suffering of the captive soul. Thus as the forces of Darkness could exercise no power over Christ, they must also show themselves powerless over the soul allied thereto. With the Manichæans originates the conception of a Jesus who is crucified in all the world and in the soul; the crucifixion of Christ thus mystically signifies only the wounds of our suffering souls. Through vegetation the particles of light were held fast, and thus held fast they were brought forth as plants. The earth becoming fruitful brings forth the suffering (patibilis) Jesus, who is the life and salvation of men and is crucified on every tree. The νοῦς which appeared in Jesus signifies all things.2 The Church has likewise made a principal point of asserting the unity of the divine and human nature. But because this unity in the Christian religion attained to conceiving consciousness, human nature was in its actuality taken as ‘this,’ and not merely in an allegorical or philosophic sense.
Now if, on the one hand, the essential matter with the orthodox Fathers who opposed themselves to these Gnostic speculations, is the fact that they held firmly to the definite form of an objectively conceived Christ, on the other hand they attacked the Arians and all that pertain to them; for these recognize the individual as manifested, but do not place the Person of Christ in connection with the separation, with the breaking up of the divine Idea. They took Christ to be a man, accorded to Him indeed a higher nature, not, however, making Him a moment of God, of Spirit itself. The Arians did not indeed go so far as the Socinians, who accepted Christ merely as a man of noble nature, a teacher, and so on; this sect hence did not form part of the Church at all, being simply heathen. But still the Arians, since they did not recognize God in Christ, did away with the idea of the Trinity, and consequently with the principle of all speculative philosophy. The according to Him of a higher nature is likewise a hollow mockery which cannot satisfy us; as against this the Fathers accordingly asserted the unity of the divine and human nature, which has come to consciousness in the individual members of the Church, and this is a point of fundamental importance. The Pelagians again, denied original sin, and maintained that man has by nature sufficient virtue and religion. But man should not be what he is by nature; he should be spiritual. And thus this doctrine is likewise excluded as heretical. Therefore the Church was ruled by Spirit, to enable it to hold to the determinations of the Idea, though always in the historic form. This is the philosophy of the Fathers; they produced the Church, as the developed Spirit required a developed doctrine, and nothing is so out of place as the endeavour or desire of some men of the present day to lead the Church back to her original form.
What follows thirdly is that the Idea permeates reality, is immanent therein, that not only is there a multitude of believing hearts, but that from the heart, just as the natural law rules over a sensuous world, a higher life of the world, a kingdom, is constituted — the reconciliation of God with Himself is accomplished in the world, and not as a heavenly kingdom that is beyond. This community is the kingdom of God upon earth in the Church; “Where two or three are gathered together in my name,” says Christ, “there am I in the midst of them.” The Idea is only for spirit, for subjective consciousness, in so far as it realizes itself in actuality, and thus it not only has to bring itself to perfection in the heart, but has to perfect itself also into a kingdom of actual consciousness. The Idea which man, self-consciousness, should recognize, must become altogether objective to him, so that he may truly apprehend himself as spirit and the Spirit, and then that he may be spiritual in a spiritual, and not in an emotional way. The first objectification is found in the first immediate consciousness of the Idea, where it appeared as an individual object, as the individual existence of a man. The second objectivity is the spiritual worship and communion extended to the Church. We might imagine a universal community of Love, a world of piety and holiness, a world of brotherly kindness, of innocent little lambs and pretty triflings with things spiritual, a divine republic, a heaven upon earth. But this is not supposed to come to pass on earth; that imagination is relegated to heaven, i.e. to some other place, that is to say, it is put off until death. Each living actuality directs his feelings, actions, and affairs in a very different way from this. On the appearance of Christianity it is first of all said: “My kingdom is not of this world;” but the realization has and ought to be in the present world. In other words the laws, customs, constitutions, and all that belongs to the actuality of spiritual consciousness should be rational. The kingdom of rational actuality is quite a different one, and must be organized and developed thinkingly and with understanding; the moment of the self-conscious freedom of the individual must maintain its rights against objective truth and objective command. This, then, is the true and actual objectivity of mind in the form of an actual temporal existence as state, just as Philosophy is the objectivity of thought which comes to us in the form of universality. Such objectivity cannot be in the beginning, but must come forth after being worked upon by mind and thought.
In Christianity these absolute claims of the intellectual world and of spirit had become the universal consciousness. Christianity proceeded from Judaism, from self-conscious abjectness and depression. This feeling of nothingness has from the beginning characterized the Jews; a sense of desolation, an abjectness where no reason was, has possession of their life and consciousness. This single point has later on, and in its proper time, become a matter of universal history, and into this element of the nullity of actuality the whole world has raised itself, passing out of this principle indeed, but also into the kingdom of Thought, because that nothingness has transformed itself into what is positively reconciled. This is a second creation which came to pass after the first; in it Mind became aware of itself as I = I, that is, as self-consciousness. This second creation has first of all appeared in self-consciousness equally directly in the form of a sensuous world, in the form of a sensuous consciousness. As much of the Notion as has entered in was adopted by the Fathers from the philosophers already mentioned; their Trinity, in so far as a rational thought, and not a mere ordinary conception, comes from these, and certain other ideas also. But what mainly distinguishes them is the fact that for the Christian this intelligible world had likewise this immediate sensuous truth of an ordinary course of events — a form which it must have and retain for the majority of men.
- This new world has therefore, however, to be adopted by a new race of men, by Barbarians; for it is characteristic of barbarians to apprehend the spiritual in a sensuous way. And it must be by northern barbarians, for it is the northern self-containedness alone that is the immediate principle of this new world-consciousness. With this self-consciousness of the intelligible world as a world immediately actual, mind, having regard to what it has in itself become, is higher than before, but, on the other side, in respect of its consciousness it is thrown quite back to the beginning of culture, and this consciousness had to commence from the beginning again. What it had to overcome was on the one hand this sensuous immediacy of its intelligible world, and secondly the opposed sensuous immediacy of actuality, by its consciousness held as null. It excludes the sun, replaces it with tapers, is furnished with images merely; it is in itself alone, and inward, not reconciled for consciousness — to self-consciousness a sinful, wicked world is present. For the intelligible world of Philosophy had not yet completed in itself the task of making itself the actual world — of recognizing the intelligible in the actual, as well as the actual in the intelligible. It is one thing to have the Idea of Philosophy, to recognize absolute essence as absolute essence, and quite another thing to recognize it as the system of the universe, of nature, and of individual self-consciousness, as the whole development of its reality. The Neo-Platonists had found that principle of realization — namely, this real substance which again places itself in quite opposed, though in themselves real determinations — but having got so far they did not find the form, the principle of self-consciousness.
On the Teutonic nations the world-spirit imposed the task of developing an embryo into the form of the thinking man. What comes first is the mind as apprehended, and to that is opposed the subjectivity of will which has not been taken up into mind; the kingdom of truth and that of the world are bound together and at the same time evidently divided. An intelligible world has thus in the conception of men established itself in the mode of this same actuality, like a far-away land that is just as really conceived of by us, peopled and inhabited, as the world we see, but which is hidden from us as though by a mountain. It is not the Greek or any other world of gods and of mythology — a simple, undivided faith; for there is likewise present in it the highest negativity, that is, the contradiction between actuality and that other world. This intellectual world expresses the nature of real absolute existence. It is on it that Philosophy tries its powers, and on it that thought also moils and toils. We have in general outline to deal with these not very pleasing manifestations.
Our first view of Philosophy, as revealed in Christianity (pp. 10-21) is that of a dim groping which is carried on within the depths of the Idea — as being the forms assumed by the same, which constitute its moments; we see a hard struggle made by reason, which cannot force its way out of the imagination and popular conceptions to the Notion. There is no venture too rash for the imagination to undertake, because, impelled by reason, it cannot satisfy itself with beautiful images, but has to pass beyond them. There is likewise no extravagance of reason into which it does not fall, because it cannot obtain the mastery of the image, but within this element is merely in the act of warfare with it. Later on than this Western self-immersion, there arose in the East expansion, negation of all that is concrete, abstraction from all determinations; this pure contemplation or pure thought present in Mohammedanism corresponds to the Christian descent into self. Within Christianity itself, however, the intellectual world is set in opposition to that first Cabalistic principle; in it pure conceptions rule which constitute the ideas present in thought, and with this we enter upon the Scholastic philosophy. Philosophy, like the arts and sciences, when, through the rule of the Barbarians of Germany, they became dumb and lifeless, took refuge with the Arabians, and there attained a wonderful development; they were the first sources from which the West obtained assistance. Through the presupposition of the immediately present and accepted truth, thought had lost its freedom and the truth its presence in conceiving consciousness; and philosophy sank into a metaphysics of the understanding and into a formal dialectic. We have thus in this period first of all to consider philosophy in the East, and secondly in the West; that is, the philosophy of the Arabians first, and subsequently the philosophy of the Schools. The Schoolmen are the principal figures in this period; they represent European philosophy in the European Middle Ages. The third stage is the dissolution of what is upheld in the scholastic philosophy; new meteor-like apparitions are now seen, which precede the third period, the genuine revival of free Philosophy.
SECTION ONE. Arabian Philosophy
IN THE WEST the Germanic tribes had obtained possession of what had hitherto formed a section of the Roman Empire, and their conquests were attaining to shape and solidity, when another religion dawned in the East, namely the Mohammedan. The East purified itself of all that was individual and definite, while the West descended into the depths and actual presence of spirit. As quickly as the Arabians with their fanaticism spread themselves over the Eastern and the Western world, so quickly were the various stages of culture passed through by them, and very shortly they advanced in culture much farther than the West. For in Mohammedanism, which quickly reached its culminating point, both as regards external power and dominion and also spiritual development, Philosophy, along with all the other arts and sciences, flourished to an extraordinary degree, in spite of its here not displaying any specially characteristic features. Philosophy was fostered and cherished among the Arabians; the philosophy of the Arabians must therefore be mentioned in the history of Philosophy. What we have to say, however, chiefly concerns the external preservation and propagation of Philosophy. The Arabians became acquainted with Greek philosophy mainly through the medium of the Syrians in Western Asia, who had imbibed Greek culture, and who were under the Arabian sway. In Syria, which formed a Greek kingdom, at Antioch, especially in Berytus and Edessa, there were great institutes of learning; and thus the Syrians constituted the connecting link between Greek philosophy and the Arabians. Syrian was the language of the people even in Bagdad.3
Moses Maimonides, a learned Jew, gives further historical particulars in his Doctor Perplexorum of this transition of Philosophy to the Arabians. He says: “All that the Ishmaelites have written of the unity of God and other philosophic dogmas” — especially the sect of the Muatzali (מעתוזלה, i.e. the Separated), who were the first to take an interest in the abstract intellectual knowledge of such subjects, while the sect Assaria (האשערייה) arose later— “is based upon arguments and propositions which have been taken from the books of the Greeks and Aramæans” (Syrians), “who strove to refute and deny the teachings of the philosophers.” The cause of this is as follows: The Christian community came to include within it these nations also, and the Christians defended many dogmas which were contradictory of philosophic tenets; among these nations, however, the teachings of philosophers were very widely and generally diffused (for with them Philosophy had its origin), and kings arose who adopted the Christian religion. The Christian Greeks and learned Aramæans, therefore, when they perceived that their doctrines were so clearly and plainly refuted by the philosophers, thought out a wisdom of their own, the “Wisdom of the Words” (Devarim), and they themselves received on that account the name of the Speakers (Medabberim, מִדַבְרִים). They set up principles which served the purpose both of confirming their faith and of refuting the opposite teaching of the philosophers. When the Ishmaelites followed and attained supremacy, and the books of the philosophers themselves fell into their hands, and along with them the answers which “Christian Greeks and Aramæans had written against the philosophic books, as for instance the writings of Johannes Grammaticus, Aben Adi, and others, they eagerly laid hold of these and adopted them bodily.”4 Christians and Ishmaelites felt the same need of philosophy; the Ishmaelites, moreover, strove all the more eagerly after knowledge of this kind, because their first desire was to defend Mohammedanism against Christianity, which was the religion of a large proportion of the nations they had conquered.
The external sequence of events is this. Syriac versions of Greek works were to be had, and these were now translated into Arabic by the Arabians; or translations were made from the Greek directly into Arabic. In the reign of Harun al-Raschid several Syrians are named who lived in Bagdad, and who had been called upon by the Caliphs to translate these works into Arabic. They were the first scientific teachers among the Arabians, and were chiefly physicians; hence the works they translated were on medicine. Among these translators was Johannes Mesue of Damascus, who lived in the reigns of Al-Raschid (d. A.D. 786), Al-Mamun (d. A.D. 833) and Al-Motawakkil (d. A.D. 847), rather earlier than the rise of the Turks to supremacy (A.D. 862); he was a hospital superintendent in Bagdad. Al-Raschid appointed him to make translations from Syriac into Arabic; he opened a public school for the study of medicine and all the sciences then known. Honain was a Christian, as was also his master Johannes, and belonged to the Arab tribe Ebadi; he applied himself to the study of Greek, and made a number of translations into Arabic, and also into Syriac, for example, Nicolaus De summa philosophiæ Aristotelicæ, Ptolemy, Hippocrate and Galen. Another is Ebn Adda, an eminent dialectician, who is quoted by Abulfaraj.5 Among the works of the Greek philosophers it was almost exclusively the writings of Aristotle which were translated by these Syrians, and the later commentaries on the same. It was thus not the Arabians themselves who translated the above works.
In the Arabic philosophy, which shows a free, brilliant and profound power of imagination, Philosophy and the sciences took the same bent that they had taken earlier among the Greeks. Plato with his Ideas or universals laid the foundation of the independent world of intellect, and established absolute existence as an existence which is manifestly present in the mode of thought; Aristotle developed, completed and peopled the realm of thought; the Neo-Platonic philosophy reached the further conception of the intelligible world as Idea of the existence which is independent in itself, of spirit; and then this first Idea, which we have already met with in connection with Proclus, passed over into a similar Aristotelian development and completion. Consequently it is the Alexandrian or Neo-Platonic Idea which forms the essential principle or basis of the Arabian as well as the Scholastic philosophy, and all that Christian philosophy offers; it is on it that the determinations of the Notion expend their strength, and around this that they career. A particular description of Arabian philosophy has in some parts but little interest; in other parts it will be found that the main dogmas of this philosophy have much in common with those of the Scholastics.
We may say of the Arabians that their philosophy constitutes no characteristic stage in the development of philosophy. The principal points in this, as in the later philosophy, were the question whether the world is eternal, and the task of proving the unity of God and similar dogmas. One great consideration in all this, however, was to defend the doctrines of Mohammedanism, and owing to this all philosophizing had to be carried on within the limits of these doctrines. The Arabians, like the Christians of the West, were restricted by the dogmas of their Church (if one may call it so), few though these dogmas were; yet this last circumstance of the small number of the dogmas certainly gave them greater liberty. But according to all that we know of them, they established no principle of self-conscious reason that was truly higher, and thus they brought Philosophy no further. They have no other principle than that of revelation, therefore only a principle that is external.
A. Philosophy of the Medabberim.
THE MEDABBERIM ARE specially mentioned by Moses Maimonides as a widely extended philosophic school or sect of considerable eminence. He speaks (More Nevochim, P. I. c. 71, pp. 134, 135) of the peculiarity of their method of philosophy somewhat as follows: “The Ishmaelites, however, have extended their discourses still further, and have aspired to other wonderful doctrines, of which none of the Greek Medabberim knew anything, because they were still on some points in agreement with the philosophers. The main point to be remarked is that all the Medabberim, whether among the Greeks who had become Christians, or among the Ishmaelites, in the building up of their principles did not follow the nature of the matter itself, or draw their arguments from it, but only had in view how the subject must be regarded in order to support their assertion, or at least not to refute it altogether: afterwards they boldly asserted that these were the circumstances of the case, and adduced further arguments and maxims in support of their object. They insisted on that, and that alone, which concurred with their opinions, even though it were in the most remote degree, through a hundred links of reasoning. The earliest of their learned men adopted this practice, though professing that they reached these reflections through speculation alone, without reference to any preconceived opinion. Their successors did not follow their example,” &c.
In the pure philosophy of the so-called “Speakers” was expressed the principle, peculiar to the Oriental mind, of the dissolution of definite thought in all its consequences as the dissolution of all connection and relation. Maimonides says (P. I. c. 71, p. 135; c. 73, p. 149): “The ground-principle of the Medabberim is that men can have no certain knowledge of the nature of things, because in the understanding the contrary may ever exist and be thought. Besides this they in the majority of instances confound imagination with understanding, and give to the former the name of the latter. They adopted as a principle, atoms and empty space,” where all connection appears as something contingent. “Production is nothing but a connection of atoms, and decay nothing but a separation of the same; and time consists of many ‘nows.’” In this way nothing but the atom really exists. They have thus in the more advanced cultivation of thought brought to consciousness the main standpoint, then as now the standpoint of the Orientals — that of substance, the one substance. This pantheism, or Spinozism, if you like to call it so, is thus the universal view of Oriental poets, historians and philosophers.
The Medabberim go on to say: “Substances, i.e. individuals, which,” for the rest, “are created by God, have many accidental qualities, as in snow every particle is white. But no quality can endure for two moments; as it comes, it goes again, and God creates another and yet another in its place.” All determinations are thus fleeting or perishable; the individual alone is permanent. “If it pleases God to create another quality in a substance, it continues; but if He ceases to create, the substance perishes.” Thereby all necessary connection is done away with, so that Nature has no meaning. “They therefore deny that anything exists by nature, likewise that the nature of this or that body necessitates that it should have certain qualities rather than others. But they say that God creates all qualities instantaneously, without natural means and without the help of anything else.” General permanence is substance, and the particular is altered every moment, and so exists through the substance. “According to this principle they say, for instance, that when we think we have dyed a garment red with red dye we have not dyed it red at all; for God created the red colour in the garment at the very moment at which we thought we had brought about the result with the red dye. God observes the invariable custom of not permitting that the colour black should be produced except when the garment is dyed with that hue; and the first colour which comes to pass on the occasion of the connection is not permanent, but disappears on the instant, and every moment another appears which is created in its turn. In the same way knowledge also is an accident, which is created by God at every moment that I know anything; to-day we no longer possess the knowledge which we yesterday possessed. A man,” when writing, “does not move the pen when he thinks he moves it, but the motion is an accident of the pen, created by God at the moment.” In this way God alone is in truth the operative cause; but He might have made everything differently. “Their eighth proposition is to the effect that nothing but substance or accident exists, and natural forms are themselves accidents; substances alone are individuals. The ninth proposition is that accidents have nothing to do with one another; they have no causal connection or other relation; in every substance all accidents may exist. The tenth proposition is transition (אִפִשָׁרות, transitus, possibilitas):” “All that we can fancy may also pass over into the understanding, i.e. be possible. But in this way everything is possible,” since there are no laws of the understanding; this transition of thought is thus perfectly accidental. “A man as large as a mountain, a flea as large as an elephant, are possible. Everything may just as well be something else as what it is, and there is no reason at all why anything should be one way rather than another. They term it a mere habit that the earth revolves round a centre-point, that fire moves upward and that it is hot; it is just as possible, they say, that fire should be cold.”6
We thus see an utter inconstancy of everything; and this whirl of all things is essentially Oriental. But at the same time this is certainly also a complete dissolution of all that pertains to reasonableness, in harmony of course with Eastern exaltation of spirit, which allows of nothing definite. God is in Himself the perfectly undefined, His activity is altogether abstract, and hence the particulars produced thereby are perfectly contingent; if we speak of the necessity of things, the term is meaningless and incomprehensible, and no attempt should be made to comprehend it. The activity of God is thus represented as perfectly devoid of reason. This abstract negativity, combined with the permanent unity, is thus a fundamental conception in the Oriental way of looking at things. Oriental poets are in a marked degree pantheists; the pantheistic is their ordinary point of view. Thus the Arabians developed the sciences and philosophy, without further defining the concrete Idea; their work is rather the dissolution of all that is definite in this substance, with which is associated mere changeableness as the abstract moment of negativity.
B. Commentators of Aristotle.
THE ARABIANS, MOREOVER, made a point for the most part of studying the writings of Aristotle very diligently, and of availing themselves more especially both of his metaphysical and logical writings, and also of his Physics; they occupied themselves particularly with multiplying commentaries on Aristotle, and developing still further the abstract logical element there present. Many of these commentaries are still extant. Works of this kind are known in the West, and have been even translated into Latin and printed; but much good is not to be got from them. The Arabians developed the metaphysics of the understanding and a formal logic. Some of the famous Arabians lived as early as the eighth and ninth centuries; their progress was therefore very rapid, for the West had as yet made very little advance in culture.
Alkendi, who wrote a commentary on the Logic, flourished in and about A.D. 800, under Almamun.7 Alfarabi died in 966; he wrote commentaries on Aristotle’s Organon, which were made diligent use of by the Scholastics, and was also author of a work “On the Origin and Division of the Sciences.” It is related of him that he read through Aristotle’s treatise On Hearing forty times, and his Rhetoric two hundred times, without getting at all tired of them;8 he must have had a good stomach. The very physicians made a study of philosophy, and formulated theories; among them was Avicenna (b. A.D. 984, d. A.D. 1064), who belonged to Bokhara, to the east of the Caspian Sea; he wrote a commentary on Aristotle.9 Algazel (d. A.D. 1127 at Bagdad) wrote compendiums of logic and metaphysics; he was a sceptic of great ability, with a powerful mind of the Oriental cast; he held the words of the Prophet to be pure truth, and wrote Destructio Philosophorum.10 Tofail died in Seville in A.D. 1193.11 Averroës, who died A.D. 1217, was specially distinguished as the commentator of Aristotle.12
The acquaintance of the Arabians with Aristotle has this interest in history that it was thus that Aristotle first became known also in the West. The commentaries on Aristotle and the collections of passages from his writings become thus for the Western world a fountain of philosophy. Western nations long knew nothing of Aristotle, excepting through such retranslations of his works and translations of Arabian commentaries on them. For such translations were made from Arabic into Latin by Spanish Arabs, and especially by Jews in the south of Spain and Portugal and in Africa; there was often even a Hebrew translation between.
WITH THE ARABIANS are closely connected the Jewish philosophers, among whom the above-mentioned Moses Maimonides held a distinguished place. He was born at Cordova, in Spain, A.D. 1131 (Anno Mundi 4891, or, according to others, 4895), and lived in Egypt.13 Besides More Nevochim, which has been translated into Latin, he composed other works; of him and other Jews much more of a literary character might be said. In their philosophy a strong Cabalistic element, on the one hand, makes itself felt throughout, in astrology, geomancy, &c.; on the other hand, we find in Moses Maimonides, as in the Fathers, that the foundation is laid in history. He deals with this in a strictly abstract system of metaphysics, which is connected, in Philo’s fashion, with the Mosaic books and their interpretation. We find in these Jewish philosophers proofs brought forward that God is One, that the world was created, and that matter is not eternal; Maimonides also speaks of the nature of God. The unity of God is dealt with as it was among the ancient Eleatics and the Neo-Platonists; to prove, namely, that not the Many, but the self-begetting and self-abrogating One is the truth.14
SECTION TWO. The Scholastic Philosophy
ALL THE PHILOSOPHY which we first encounter in the Middle Ages, when independent states begin to rise, consists of bare remnants of the Roman world, which on its Fall had sunk in all respects so low that the culture of the world seemed to have come entirely to an end. Thus in the West hardly anything was known beyond the Isagoge of Porphyry, the Latin Commentaries of Boethius on the Logical works of Aristotle, and extracts from the same by Cassiodorus — most barren compilations; there is also what is just as barren, the dissertations ascribed to Augustine De dialectica and De categoriis, which last is a paraphrase of the Aristotelian work upon the categories.15 These were the first make-shifts or expedients for carrying on Philosophy; in them the most external and most formal reasoning is applied.
The whole effect of the scholastic philosophy is a monotonous one. In vain have men hitherto endeavoured to show in this theology, which reigned from the eighth or even sixth century almost to the sixteenth, particular distinctions and stages in development. In this case as in that of the Arabian philosophy, time does not allow — and if it did the nature of things would not allow — us to separate the scholastic philosophy into its individual systems or manifestations, but only to give a general sketch of the main elements present therein which it has actually taken up into thought. It is not interesting by reason of its matter, for we cannot remain at the consideration of this; it is not a philosophy. The name, however, properly speaking indicates a general manner rather than a system — if we may speak of a philosophic system. Scholasticism is not a fixed doctrine like Platonism or Scepticism, but a very indefinite name which comprehends the philosophic endeavours of Christendom for the greater part of a thousand years. However, this history which occupies nearly a thousand years is, as a matter of fact, comprised within one Notion which we propose to consider more closely; it has ever occupied the same standpoint, and been grounded on the same principle; for it is the faith of the Church that we catch sight of, and a formalism which is merely an eternal analysis and constant re-iteration within itself. The more general acceptance of the Aristotelian writings has merely brought forth a difference of degree and caused no real scientific progress. Here there is indeed a history of men, but speaking properly none of scientific knowledge; the men are noble, pious, and in all respects most distinguished.
The study of the scholastic philosophy is a difficult one, even if its language only be considered. The Scholastics certainly make use of a barbaric Latin, but this is not the fault of the Scholastics but of their Latin culture. Latin forms a quite unsuitable instrument for applying to philosophic categories such as these, because the terms which the new culture adopts could not possibly be expressed by this language without unduly straining it; the beautiful Latin of Cicero is not adapted for use in profound speculations. It cannot be expected of anyone to know at first hand this philosophy of the Middle Ages, for it is as comprehensive and voluminous as it is barren and ill-expressed.
Of the great schoolmen we still have many works left to us which are very lengthy, so that it is no easy task to study them: the later they are, the more formal do they become. The Schoolmen did not only write compendiums — for the writings of Duns Scotus amount to twelve, and those of Thomas Aquinas to eighteen folios. Abstracts of them are to be found in various works. The principal sources from which we obtain our knowledge are: 1, Lambertus Danæus in the Prolegomena to his Commentarius in librum primum sententiarum Petri Lombardi, Genevæ, 1580. (This is the best authority we have in abridged form); 2, Launoi: De varia Aristotelis in Academia Parisiensi fortuna; 3, Cramer: Continuation of Bossuet’s History of the World, in the last two volumes; 4, the Summa of Thomas Aquinas. In Tiedemann’s History of Philosophy extracts from the Scholastics are also to be found, as likewise in Tennemann; Rixner also makes judicious extracts.
We shall limit ourselves to general points of view. The name finds its origin in this way. From the time of Charles the Great it was only in two places — in the great schools attached to the great cathedral churches and monasteries — that a cleric, that is a canon who had the oversight of the instructors (informatores), was called scholasticus; he likewise gave lectures on the most important branch of science, theology. In the monasteries he who was the most advanced instructed the monks. We have not, properly speaking, to deal with these; but although scholastic philosophy was something altogether different, the name of Scholastics attached itself to those alone who propounded their theology scientifically and in a system. In place of the patres ecclesiæ there thus arose later on the doctores.
The scholastic philosophy is thus really theology, and this theology is nothing but philosophy. The further content of theology is merely that which is present in the ordinary conceptions of religion; theology, however, is the science of the system as it must necessarily be present within every Christian, every peasant, &c. The science of theology is often placed in an external historical content, in exegesis, in the enumeration of the various manuscripts of the New Testament, in considering whether these are written on parchment, cotton fabrics or paper, whether in uncial letters or otherwise, and which century they belong to; further matters for consideration are the Jewish conceptions of time, the history of the Popes, Bishops and Fathers, and what took place at the councils of the Church. All these matters, however, do not pertain to the nature of God and its relation to mankind. The one essential object of theology as the doctrine of God, is the nature of God, and this content is in its nature really speculative; those theologians who consider this are therefore nothing less than philosophers. The science of God is nothing but Philosophy. Philosophy and theology have hence here also been counted one, and it is their separation that constitutes the transition into modern times, seeing that men have thought that for thinking reason something could be true which is not true for theology. Down to the Middle Ages, on the contrary, it was held as fundamental that there should be but one truth. Thus the theology of the scholastics is not to be represented as though, as with us, it merely contained doctrines about God, &c., in historic guise, for in fact it also has within it the profoundest speculations of Aristotle and of the Neo-Platonists. Their philosophy, and much in them that is excellent, is found in Aristotle, only in a simpler and purer form; and to them too the whole lay beyond actuality and mingled with Christian actuality as it is represented to us.
From Christianity, within whose bounds we now have our place, Philosophy has to re-establish its position. In heathendom the root of knowledge was external nature as thought devoid of self, and subjective nature as the inward self. Both Nature and the natural self of mankind, and likewise thought, there possessed affirmative significance; hence all this was good. In Christianity the root of truth has, however, quite another meaning; it was not only the truth as against the heathen gods, but as against Philosophy also, against nature, against the immediate consciousness of man. Nature is there no longer good, but merely a negative; self-consciousness, the thought of man, his pure self, all this receives a negative position in Christianity. Nature has no validity, and affords no interest; its universal laws, as the reality under which the individual existences of nature are collected, have likewise no authority: the heavens, the sun, the whole of nature is a corpse. Nature is given over to the spiritual, and indeed to spiritual subjectivity; thus the course of nature is everywhere broken in upon by miracles. With this surrender of natural necessity we have the fact associated that all further content, all that truth which constitutes the universal of that nature, is given and revealed. The one starting-point, the contemplation of nature, is thus for knowledge undoubtedly not present. Then this fact is likewise set aside that I am present as a self. The self as this immediate certainty has to be abrogated; it must also merge itself in another self, but in one beyond, and only there does it have its value. This other self, in which the proper self is made to have its freedom, is first of all likewise a particular self, that has not the form of universality: it is determined and limited in time and space, and at the same time has the significance of an absolute in and for itself. A real sense of self is thus abandoned, but what self-consciousness on the other hand gains is not a universal, a thought. In thought I have real affirmative significance, not as an individual, but as universal ‘I’; the content of truth is now, however, plainly individualized, and thus the thought of the ‘I’ falls away. Thereby, however, the highest concrete content of the absolute Idea is set forth, in which the opposites that are plainly infinite are united; it is the power which unites in itself what appears to consciousness infinitely removed from one another — the mortal and the absolute. This absolute is itself ‘this’ first of all as this concrete, not as abstraction, but as the unity of universal and individual; this concrete consciousness is for the first time truth. The reason of the former content being also true, comes to me as something not pertaining to myself, but as a thing received outside of self. The testimony of spirit, indeed, pertains thereto, and my inmost self is present there; but the testimony of spirit is a thing concealed, which does not further reveal itself, does not beget the content from itself, but receives it. The Spirit which bears witness is further itself distinguished from me as an individual; my testifying spirit is another, and there only remains to me the empty shell of passivity. Conditioned by this inflexible standpoint, Philosophy had to go forth once more. The first working up of this content, the inward operation of universal thought in the same, is the task scholastic philosophy has to undertake. The opposition between faith and reason forms the end arrived at; reason, on the one hand, feels the necessity of setting to work on nature in order to obtain immediate certainty, and on the other hand of finding in genuine thought, in specific production out of self, this same satisfaction.
We must now speak of the methods and manners of the scholastics. In this scholastic activity thought pursues its work quite apart from all regard to experience; we no longer hear anything of taking up actuality and determining it through thought. Although the Notion came into recognition earlier than this, in Aristotle, in the first place, the Notion was not apprehended as the necessity of carrying the content further; for this was received in its successive manifestations, and there was present merely an intermingling of actuality accepted as truth and of thought. Still less, in the second place, was the greater part of the content permeated by Notions, for this content was taken up superficially into the form of thought — more especially with the Stoics and Epicureans. The scholastic philosophy altogether dissociates itself from any such endeavours; it leaves actuality to exist alongside itself as if it were despised and had no interest. For reason found its true existence, its actualization, in another world and not in this; the whole progress of the cultivated world goes, however, to the re-instalment of a faith in the present world. Nevertheless, at first all knowledge and action, and whatever relates to an interest in this world, were entirely banished. Branches of knowledge that pertain to such ordinary matters as sight and hearing, restful contemplation and occupation with ordinary actuality here found no place; nor did such sciences as recognize a definite sphere of actuality after their own particular fashion, and constitute the material for genuine philosophy, nor arts which give to the Idea a sensuous existence. Likewise law and right, the recognition of the actual man, were not esteemed as pertaining to the social relationships of life, but to some other sphere. In this absence of rationality in the actual, or of rationality which has its actuality in ordinary existence, is found the utter barbarism of thought, in that it keeps to another world, and does not have the Notion of reason — the Notion that the certainty of self is all truth.
Now thought as sundered has a content, the intelligible world, as an actuality existent for itself, to which thought applies itself. Its conduct is here to be compared with that which takes place when the understanding applies itself to the sensuous and perceptible world, makes it as substance its basis, having a fixed object in it, and reasoning respecting it; it is then not the independent movement of Philosophy proper which penetrates existence and expresses it, for all it does is to find predicates regarding it. The scholastic philosophy has thus the intelligible world of the Christian religion, God and all His attributes and works therewith connected, as an independent object; and thought is directed to God’s unchangeableness, to such questions as whether matter is eternal, whether man is free, &c. — just as the understanding passes to and fro over the phenomenal and perceived. Now the scholastic philosophy was here given over to the infinite movement of determinate Notions; the categories of possibility and actuality, freedom and necessity, constitution and substance, &c., are of this nature, they are not fixed, but pure movements. Anything whatever, determined as potential, transforms itself equally into the opposite, and must necessarily be surrendered; and determination can only save itself by a new distinction, because it must, on the one hand, be given up, and on the other retained. The scholastics are thus decried on account of the endless distinctions which they draw. For the sake of these determinations through the abstract Notion the Aristotelian philosophy was predominant, though not in its whole extent. It was the Aristotelian Organon that was held in such favour, and that indeed just as much for its laws of thought as for its metaphysical conceptions — the categories. These abstract Notions constituted in their determinateness the understanding of the scholastic philosophy, which could not pass beyond itself and attain to freedom, nor seize upon the freedom given by reason.
With this finite form a finite content is likewise directly associated. From one determination we pass on to another, and such determinations, as particular, are finite; the determination there relates itself externally and not as self-comprehensive and self-embracing. The result of this determination is that thought will really act as if it brought about conclusions, for to draw conclusions is the mode of formal logical progression. Philosophy thus consists of a methodical and syllogistic reasoning. Just as the Sophists of Greece wandered about amongst abstract conceptions on behalf of actuality, so did the scholastics on behalf of their intellectual world. To the former Being had validity; it they had rescued and delivered as against the negativity of the Notion, while along with that they had justified it through the same. The principal endeavour of the scholastics was in the same way to vindicate the Christian intellectual world as against the confusion of the Notion, and through the latter to demonstrate its conformity with the same. The universal form of the scholastic philosophy thus consisted in this — that a proposition was laid down, the objections to it brought forward, and these contradicted through counter-propositions and distinctions. Philosophy was hence not separated from theology, as it is not in itself, for Philosophy is the knowledge of absolute existence, that is to say, theology. But to that theology the Christian absolute world was a system which was held to be an actuality, as was ordinary actuality for the Greek sophists. Of Philosophy proper there thus remained only the laws of thought and abstractions.
A. Relationship of the Scholastic Philosophy to Christianity.
PHILOSOPHY WITH THE scholastics had consequently the same quality of want of independence as it had before this with the Christian Fathers and the Arabians. The Church as already constituted established itself amongst the Teutonic nations, and through its constitution it conditioned philosophy. The Christian Church had indeed spread itself abroad throughout the Roman world, but, more especially in the beginning, it merely formed a community of its own, by whom the world was renounced, and which made no special claims to recognition — or if such claims were made they were merely negative, because the individuals in the world were simply martyrs, thus renouncing the world. But the Church in time became dominant, and the Roman emperors, both of the East and of the West, embraced Christianity. Thus the Church attained to a position openly recognized and undisturbed, from which it exercised much influence upon the world. The political world, however, fell into the hands of the Teutonic nations, and thereby a new form arose, and to this the scholastic philosophy pertains. We know the revolution by the name of the Migration of the Nations (supra, pp. 23, 24). Fresh races inundated the ancient Roman world and established themselves therein; they thus erected their new world on the ruins of the old — a picture which Rome in its present aspect still presents. There the splendour of the Christian temples is due in part to the remnants of the ancient, and new palaces are built on ruins and have ruins all around.
- The principal feature in the Middle Ages is found in this disunion, the two sides here present; there are revealed in it two nations, two manners of speech. We see people who have hitherto ruled, a previous world having its own language, arts, and sciences, and on this to them foreign element the new nations grafted themselves, and these thus started upon their course internally dissevered. In this history we have thus before us not the development of a nation from itself, but one proceeding from its opposite, and one which is and remains burdened by this opposite, and which takes it up into itself and has to overcome it. Hence these people have in this way represented in themselves the nature of the spiritual process. Spirit is the making for itself a presupposition, the giving to itself the natural as a counterpoise, the separating itself therefrom, thus the making it an object, and then for the first time the working upon this hypothesis, formulating it, and from itself bringing it forth, begetting it, internally reconstructing it. Hence in the Roman as in the Byzantine world, Christianity has triumphed as a Church; but neither of these worlds was capable of effectuating the new religion in itself and of bringing forth a new world from this principle. For in both there was a character already present — customs, laws, a juridical system, a constitution (if it can be called constitution), a political condition, capacities, art, science, spiritual culture — in short, everything was there. The nature of spirit, on the contrary, requires that the world thus constituted should be begotten from it, and that this process of begetting should take place through the agency of reaction, through the assimilation of something which has gone before. These conquerors have thus established themselves in a foreign sphere, and have become the rulers over it; but at the same time they have come under the dominion of a new spirit which has been imposed upon them. Although on the one hand predominant, on the other they have come under the dominion of the spiritual element, because they conducted themselves passively in regard to it.
The spiritual Idea or spirituality has become imposed upon the dulness, both in mind and spirit, of these rough barbarians; their hearts were thereby pricked. The rough nature has in this way become immanent in the Idea as an eternal opposition, or there is kindled in them infinite pain, the most terrible suffering — such that it may even be represented as a crucified Christ. They had to sustain this conflict within themselves, and one side of it is found in the philosophy which later on made its appearance amongst them, and was first of all received as something given. They are still uncultured people, but for all their barbaric dulness they are deep in heart and mind; on them, then, has the principle of mind been bestowed, and along with it this pain, this war between spiritual and natural, has necessarily been instituted. Culture here begins from the most terrible contradiction, and this has to be by it resolved. It is a kingdom of pain, but of purgatory, for that which is in the pain is spirit and not animal, and spirit does not die, but goes forth from its grave. The two sides of this contradiction are really thus related to one another in such a way that it is the spiritual which has to reign over the barbarians.
The true dominion of spirit cannot, however, be a dominion in the sense that its opposite is in subjection to it; spirit in and for itself cannot have the subjective spirit to which it relates confronting it as an externally obedient slave, for this last is itself also spirit. The dominion that exists must take up this position, that spirit is in subjective spirit in harmony with itself. The universal is thus that opposition in which the one can only have supremacy by the subjection of the other, but which already contains the principle of resolution in itself because mind must necessarily bear rule. And hence the consequent development is only this, that mind as reconciliation attains the mastery. To this it pertains that not the subjective consciousness, mind and heart alone, but also the worldly rule, laws, institutions, the human life, in so far as these rest in mind, must become rational. In the Republic of Plato we have met with the idea that the philosophers are those who ought to reign. Now is the time in which it is said that the spiritual are to govern, but this talk about the spiritual has been made to bear the significance that ecclesiasticism and the ecclesiastics ought to govern. The spiritual is thus made a particular form, an individual, but the real meaning that it bears is that the spiritual as such ought to be the determining factor; and this has passed current until the present day. Thus in the French Revolution we see that abstract thought is made to rule; in accordance with it constitution and laws are determined, it forms the bond between man and man; and men come to have the consciousness that what is esteemed amongst them is abstract thought, and that liberty and equality are what ought to be regarded; in this the subject also has his real value, even in relation to actuality.
One form of this reconciliation is likewise this, that the subject is satisfied with himself and in himself as he stands and moves, with his thoughts, his desires, with his spirituality; and thus that his knowledge, his thought, his conviction, has come to be the highest, and has the determination of the divine, of what holds good as absolute. The divine and spiritual is thus implanted in my subjective spirit, is identical with me; I myself am the universal, and it has efficacy for me only as I directly know it. This form of reconciliation is the newest, but the most one-sided. For the spiritual is not there determined as objective, but is only comprehended as it is in my subjectivity, in my consciousness: my conviction as such is taken as ultimate, and that is the formal reconciliation of subjectivity with itself. If the reconciliation has this form, the point of view of which we spoke before has no longer any interest; it is past and a mere matter of history. If the conviction as it immediately reveals itself within every subject is the true, the absolute, this process of mediation between God, as the true and absolute, and mankind, is no longer in us a necessity. The doctrines of the Christian religion have likewise the position of something foreign, pertaining to a particular time, that with which certain men have occupied themselves. The conception that the Idea is absolutely concrete, and is as spirit in a relation of opposition to the subject, has disappeared, and only shows itself as having passed away. In so far that which I have said about the principle of the Christian system, and shall still say of the scholastics, has interest only from the standpoint which I have given, when the interest is in the Idea in its concrete determination, and not from the standpoint of the immediate reconciliation of the subject with himself.
- We have now to consider further the character of the opposition to any agreement with Philosophy; and to do this we must shortly call to mind the historical aspect of the case, although we need only treat of the main points therein. The first matter to consider is the opposition that exists in the world. This form of opposition as it appears in history is as follows. Spirituality as such should be the spirituality of the heart; spirit, however, is one, and thus the communion of those who have this spirituality is asserted. Hence a community arises, which then becomes an external order, and thus, as we have seen (pp. 21, 22), expands into a church. In as far as spirit is its principle, it is, as spiritual, immediately universal, for isolation in feeling, opinion, &c., is unspiritual. The Church organizes itself, but yet it goes forth into worldly existence, attains to riches, possesses goods, and even becomes worldly and imbued with all the brute passions; for the spiritual is merely the original principle. The heart that is set on ordinary existence, on the world, and the whole of such human relationships as are hereby involved, is guided by these inclinations, desires and passions, by all this grossness and vulgarity. Thus the Church merely has the spiritual principle within itself without its being truly real, and in such a way that its further relationships are not yet rational; for such is their character before the development of the spiritual principle in the world. The worldly element without being conformable to the spiritual, is present as existence, and is the immediately natural worldly element; in this way the Church comes to have in itself the immediately natural principle. All the passions it has within itself — arrogance, avarice, violence, deceit, rapacity, murder, envy, hatred — all these sins of barbarism are present in it, and indeed they belong to its scheme of government. This government is thus already a rule of passion, although it professes to be a spiritual rule, and thus the Church is for the most part wrong in its worldly principles, though right in its spiritual aspect.
Hence the new religion separated our whole conception of the world into two different worlds, the intellectual but not subjectively conceived world, and the temporal world. Therefore life as a whole fell into two parts, two kingdoms. Directly opposite the spiritual worldly kingdom there stands the independent worldly kingdom, emperor against pope, papacy and Church — not a state, but a worldly government; there the world beyond, here the world beside us. Two absolutely essential principles conflict with one another; the rude ways of the world, the ruggedness of the individual will, beget an opposition most terrible and severe. The culture which now begins to show itself is confronted by this incomplete reality, as an actual world in opposition to its world of thought; and it does not recognize the one as present in the other. It possesses two establishments, two standards of measure and of weight, and these it does not bring together but leaves mutually estranged.
The spiritual kingdom likewise has as Church an immediate present of ordinary actuality, but the worldly kingdom, both as external nature and as the real self of consciousness, has no truth or value in itself; for truth, as lying beyond it — the measure of truth that shines in it — is given to it from without as something inconceivable and in itself complete. The worldly kingdom must thus be subject to the spiritual become worldly; the emperor is hence defender and protector of the Church (advocatus ecclesiæ). The worldly element, in a certain sense, takes up a position of independence, no doubt, but it is still in unity with the other in such a way that it recognizes the spiritual as dominant. In this opposition a war must arise both on account of the worldly element which is present in the Church itself, and likewise on account of the directly worldly element of violence and of barbarism in worldly rule as it exists per se. The war must at first, however, prove disastrous to the worldly side, for just as its own position is asserted, the other is likewise recognized by it, and it is forced humbly to submit to this last, to the spiritual and its passions. The bravest, noblest emperors have been excommunicated by popes, cardinals, legates, and even by archbishops and bishops; and they could do nothing in self-defence, nor put their trust in outward power, for it was internally broken; and thus they were ever vanquished and finally forced to surrender.
In the second place, as regards morality in the individual, we see on the one hand religion in its truly noble and attractive form in a few isolated individuals alone. I refer to those solitary spirits who are dead to the world and far removed therefrom, who find in their emotions what satisfies them, and, living in a little circle, can limit themselves to the sphere of religion. This is the case with women in the Middle Ages, or with the monks or other solitaries who were able to preserve themselves in a restricted and contracted state of fervour such as this, in which the spiritual side makes itself infinitely felt, although it lacks actuality. The one truth stood isolated and alone in man, the whole actuality of mind was not yet penetrated by it. On the other hand it is, however, essential that mind as will, impulse and passion, should demand quite another position, another mode of venting and realizing itself, than any such solitary and contracted sphere affords, that the world should require a more extended sphere of existence, an actual association of individuals, reason and thought coming together in actual relations and actions. This circle in which mind is realized — the human life — is, however, at first separated from the spiritual region of truth. Subjective virtue partakes more of the character of suffering and privation on its own account, morality is just this renunciation and self-surrender, and virtue as regards others merely has the character of benevolence, a fleeting, accidental character destitute of relation. All that pertains to actuality is hence not perfected by the truth, which remains a heavenly truth alone, a Beyond. Actuality, the earthly element, is consequently God-forsaken and hence arbitrary; a few isolated individuals are holy, and the others are not holy. In these others we first see the holiness of a moment in the quarter of an hour of worship, and then for weeks a life of rudest selfishness and violence and the most ruthless passion. Individuals fall from one extreme into another, from the extreme of rude excess, lawlessness, barbarism, and self-will, into the renunciation of all things without exception, the conquest of all desires.
The great army of the Crusaders gives us the best example of this. They march forth on a holy errand, but on the way they give free vent to all the passions, and in this the leaders show the example; the individuals allow themselves to fall into violence and heinous sin. Their march accomplished, though with an utter lack of judgment and forethought, and with the loss of thousands on the way, Jerusalem is reached: it is beautiful when Jerusalem comes in view to see them all doing penance in contrition of heart, falling on their faces and reverently adoring. But this is only a moment which follows upon months of frenzy, foolishness and grossness, which everywhere displayed itself on their march. Animated by the loftiest bravery, they go on to storm and conquer the sacred citadel, and then they bathe themselves in blood, revel in endless cruelties, and rage with a brutal ferocity. From this they again pass on to contrition and penance; then they get up from their knees reconciled and sanctified, and once more they give themselves up to all the littleness of miserable passions, of selfishness and envy, of avarice and cupidity: their energies are directed to the satisfaction of their lusts, and they bring to nought the fair possession that their bravery had won. This comes to pass because the principle is only present in them in its implicitude as an abstract principle, and the actuality of man is not as yet spiritually formed and fashioned. This is the manner in which the opposition in actuality manifests itself.
In the third place, we reach the opposition existing in the content of religion, in the religious consciousness; this has many forms, though we have here only to call to mind those that are most inward. On the one hand, we have the Idea of God — that He is known as the Trinity; on the other, we have worship, i.e. the process of individuals making themselves conformable to spirit, to God, and reaching the certainty of entering the kingdom of God. A present and actual church is an actuality of the kingdom of God upon earth, in such a way that this last is present for every man — every individual lives and must live in the kingdom of God. In this disposition we have the reconciliation of every individual; thereby each becomes a citizen of this kingdom, and participates in the enjoyment of this certainty. But this reconciliation is allied to the fact that in Christ the unity of the divine and human nature is shown forth, that is to say, the way in which the spirit of God must be present in man. This Christ thus cannot be one who is past and gone, and the life of reconciliation cannot be a mere recollection of that past. For as the just behold Christ in heaven, so must Christ be an object on earth which may likewise be beheld. In that case this process must be present — the individual must be united to this to him objective form, and it becomes identical with him; the history of Christ, that God reveals Himself as man, sacrifices Himself, and through this sacrifice raises Himself to the right hand of God, is in the individual always being accomplished in the culminating point which is called the sacrifice of the mass. The mediating element to which the individual relates himself in worship, is ever present in the mass as the objective of which the individual must be made to partake, as the Host and the act of partaking of the same. This Host, on the one hand, as objective, is held to be divine, and, on the other, it is in form an unspiritual and external thing. But that is the lowest depth of externality reached in the Church; for in this perfect externality it is before the thing that the knee must be bowed, and not in as far as it is an object that may be partaken of. Luther changed this way of regarding matters; in what is called the Supper, he has retained the mystical fact that the subject receives the divine element into himself; but he maintains that it is only divine in so far as it is partaken of in this subjective spirituality of faith, and ceases to be an external thing. But in the Church of the Middle Ages, in the Catholic Church generally, the Host is honoured even as an external thing; thus if a mouse eats of the Host, both it and its excrements are reverenced; there the divine element has altogether the form of externality. This is the central point of intense opposition which is on the one hand dissolved, and on the other remains in perfect contradiction, so that the Host, still held to be a merely external thing, must nevertheless be thus high and absolute.
With this externality the other side is connected — the consciousness of this relation — and here we then have the consciousness of what is spiritual, of what is the truth, in the possession of a priesthood. Thus as thing it is naturally also in the possession of another, from whom, since it is something distinguished by itself, it has to receive its distinction — or it must be consecrated — and this last is likewise an external action only, performed by individuals. The power to give this distinction to the thing is in the possession of the Church; from the Church the laity receive it.
But besides all this, the relationship of the subject in himself, the fact that he belongs to the Church and is a true member of the same, must be considered. After the admission of individuals into the Church their participation therein must likewise be brought about — that is, their purification from sin. To this it is, however, essential, in the first place, that it should be known what evil is, and secondly, that the individual should desire the good and that pertaining to religion; and thirdly, that sin should be committed from an innate and natural sinfulness. Now since what is inward, or conscience, must be of a right nature, the sins that are committed must be removed, and made as though they had not happened; man must ever be purified, baptized anew, so to speak, and received back again: the negation that shuts him out must ever be removed. Against this sinfulness positive commands and laws are now given, so that from the nature of spirit men cannot know what is good and evil. Thus the divine law is an external, which must hence be in someone’s possession; and priests are separated from others, so that they are exclusively acquainted both with the particular details of doctrine and the means of grace, i.e. the mode whereby the individual is religious in his worship and comes to know that he participates in the divine. In the same way that the administration of the means of grace belongs as an outward possession to the Church in relation to worship, so is the Church also in possession of a moral estimate for judging of the actions of individuals; it is in the possession of the conscience, as of knowledge as a whole, so that man’s inmost essence, his accountability, passes into other hands and to another person, and the subject is devoid of individuality even in his inmost self. The Church also knows what the individual ought to do; his faults must be known, and another, the Church, knows them; the sins must be taken away, and this also is effected in an external way, through purchase, fasting and stripes, through journeyings, pilgrimages, &c. Now this is a relation of self-suppression, unspirituality and deadness both of knowledge and will, in the highest things as well as in the most trivial actions.
These are the main facts as regards externality in religion itself, on which all further determinations depend.
- We have now obtained a better idea of the elements present in this philosophy; but in barbaric nations Christianity could have this form of externality alone, and this pertains to history. For the dulness and frightful barbarism of such nations must be met by servitude, and through this service must their education be accomplished. Man serves under this yoke; this fearful discipline had to be gone through if the Teutonic nations were to be raised into spiritual life. But this severe and wearisome service has an end, an object; infinite spring and infinite elasticity, the freedom of spirit, is the prize. The Indians are in equal servitude, but they are irrevocably lost — identified and identical with nature, yet in themselves opposed to nature. Knowledge is thus limited to the Church, but in this very knowledge a positive authority is firmly rooted, and it is a prominent feature of this philosophy, whose first quality is consequently that of lack of freedom. Thought thus does not appear as though it proceeded from itself and was grounded in itself, but as being really independent of self and depending on a given content, the doctrine of the Church — which, although speculative itself, also contains the mode of the immediate existence of external objects.
In theological form it may be said that, in general, the Middle Ages signify the dominion of the Son and not of Spirit; for this last is still in the possession of the priesthood. The Son has differentiated Himself from the Father, and is regarded as remaining in this differentiation, so that the Father in Him is only implicit; but in the unity of both we first reach Spirit, the Son as Love. If we remain a moment too long in the difference without likewise asserting the identity, the Son is the Other; and in this we find the Middle Ages defined and characterized. The character of Philosophy in the Middle Ages is thus in the second place an attempt to think, to conceive, to philosophize under the burden of absolute hypotheses; for it is not the thinking Idea in its freedom, but set forth in the form of an externality. We thus find here in Philosophy the same character as is present in the general condition of things, and for this reason I before called to mind the concrete character that prevails; for on every period of time one special characteristic is always imprinted. The philosophy of the Middle Ages thus contains the Christian principle, which is the highest incentive to thought, because the Ideas therein present are thoroughly speculative. Of this one side is that the Idea is grasped by the heart, if we call the individual man the heart. The identity of the immediate individuality with the Idea rests in this, that the Son, the mediator, is known as this man; this is the identity of spirit with God for the heart as such. But the connection itself, since it is likewise a connection with God in God, is hence immediately mystical and speculative; thus here there is the call to thought which was first of all responded to by the Fathers, and then by the scholastics.
But since, in the third place, there exists the opposition between the doctrine of the Church and the worldly man — who has indeed through thought worked his way out of this same barbarism, but who in his healthy human understanding has not yet penetrated to reason — the mode in which Philosophy was treated at this time for the setting forth of formal thought, has still no concrete content. We may appeal to the human concrete mind; in it we have a living present as thinking and feeling; a concrete content such as this has its root in the thought of man, and constitutes the material for his independent consciousness. Formal thought directs its course by this; the wanderings of abstract reflection have in such consciousness an aim, which sets a limit upon them, and leads them back to a human concrete. But the reflections of the scholastics on such a content depend unsupported on the determinations of formal thought, on formal conclusions; and all the determinations regarding natural relationships, laws of nature, &c., that may issue, receive as yet no sustenance from experience; they are not yet determined by the healthy human understanding. In this respect the content likewise is unspiritual, and these unspiritual relationships are inverted and carried into the spiritual in so far as advance is made to determinateness of a higher kind. These three points constitute the main characteristics of this philosophy.
More particularly we would shortly deal with the chief representatives of this philosophy. Scholastic philosophy is considered to begin with John Scotus Erigena who flourished about the year 860, and who must not be confused with the Duns Scotus of a later date. We do not quite know whether he belonged to Ireland or to Scotland, for Scotus points to Scotland, and Erigena to Ireland. With him true philosophy first begins, and his philosophy in the main coincides with the idealism of the Neo-Platonists. Here and there stray works of Aristotle were likewise known, even to John Scotus, but the knowledge of Greek was very limited and rare. He shows some knowledge of the Greek and Hebrew tongues, and even of Arabic as well; but we do not know how he attained to this. He also translated from Greek to Latin writings of Dionysius the Areopagite, a later Greek philosopher of the Alexandrian school, who more especially followed Proclus: namely, De cœlesti hierarchia, and others which Brucker calls (Hist. crit. phil. T. III. p. 521), nugæ et deliria Platonica. Michael Balbus, Emperor of Constantinople, had in the year 824 made a present of these works to the Emperor Louis the Pious; Charles the Bald caused them to be translated by Scotus, who long resided at his court. In this way something of the Alexandrian philosophy became known in the West. The Pope quarrelled with Charles, and complained to him of the translator, against whom he made the reproach that “he should have first sent the book to him in conformity with the general usage, and asked his approval.” John Scotus afterwards lived in England as head of a school at Oxford, which had been founded by King Alfred.16
Scotus was also the author of some original works, which are not without depth and penetration, upon nature and its various orders (De naturæ divisione), &c. Dr. Hjort, of Copenhagen, published an epitome of the writings of Scotus Erigena, in 1823. Scotus Erigena sets to work philosophically, expressing himself in the manner of the Neo-Platonists, and not freely, and as from himself. Thus in the method of expression adopted by Plato, and also by Aristotle, we are rejoiced to find a new conception, and on bringing it to the test of philosophy, to find it both correct and profound; but here everything is ready to hand, cut and dry. Yet, with Scotus, theology is not yet built on exegesis, and on the authority of the Church; the Church in many cases rejected his writings. Thus Scotus is reproached by a Lyons church council in these words: “There have come to us the writings of a boastful, chattering man, who disputes about divine providence and predestination, in human fashion, or, as he himself boasts, with philosophic arguments, and without relying on the holy scriptures and bringing forward the authority of the Fathers. And he dares to defend this on its own merit, and to establish it on its own laws, without submitting himself to the holy scriptures and the authority of the Fathers.”17 Scotus Erigena hence even said: “The true Philosophy is the true Religion, and the true Religion is the true Philosophy.”18 The separation came later on. Scotus then made a beginning, but properly he does not belong to the scholastics.
B. General Historical Points of View.
ALL FURTHER SCHOLASTIC philosophy attaches itself more to the doctrines of the Christian Church; the ecclesiastical system which it thereby made its necessary basis, became early established through church councils, while the faith of the Evangelical Church already prevailed before the time of these councils from which the Catholic Church derives its support. The most important and most interesting thoughts which pertain to the scholastics, are, on the one hand, the strife between nominalism and realism; and, on the other, the proof of the existence of God — quite a new manifestation.
The efforts of the scholastics were further directed, firstly, to the building up of the dogmas of the Christian Church on metaphysical bases. After this, the collected doctrines of the Church were systematically treated. Then the scholastics had branches or modifications of these dogmas, which were not determined by the doctrinal system. Those grounds themselves, and then these further and special points of view, were objects handed over for free discussion. Neo-Platonic philosophy was what lay before the theologians first of all; the manner of this school is recognized in the older and purer scholastics. Anselm and Abelard are the more distinguished of those who follow later.
a. Anselm.
Amongst those who wished to give additional proof of the doctrines of the Church through thought, is Anselm, a man of great distinction and high repute. He was born at Aosta, in Piedmont, about 1034; in 1060 he became a monk at Bec, and in 1093 was raised to the rank of Archbishop of Canterbury; in 1109 he died.19 He sought to consider and prove philosophically the doctrines of the Church, and it has even been said of him that he laid the basis for scholastic philosophy.
He speaks as follows of the relation of faith to thought: “Our faith must be defended by reason against the godless, and not against those who glory in the name of Christian; for of these we may rightly demand that they should hold firm to the obligations which they came under in baptism. Those others must be shown through reason how irrationally they strive against us. The Christian must go on through faith to reason, and not come from reason to faith; but if he cannot attain to comprehension, he must still less depart from faith. For if he is able to press on to knowledge, he rejoices therein; when he is unable so to do, he humbly adores.”20 He makes a noteworthy remark, which contains his whole philosophy, in his work Cur Deus homo (I. 2), which is rich in speculative thought: “It appears to me great negligence if we are firm in the faith, and do not seek also to comprehend what we believe.” Now this is declared to be arrogance; immediate knowledge, faith, is held to be higher than knowledge. But Anselm and the scholastics maintained the opposite view.
Anselm may be regarded from this point of view as quite specially the founder of scholastic theology. For the thought of proving through a simple chain of reasoning what was believed — that God exists — left him no rest day and night, and tortured him for long. At first he believed his desire to prove the divine truths through reason to be a temptation of the devil, and he was in great anxiety and distress on that account; finally, however, success came to him by the grace of God in his Proslogium.21 This is the so-called ontological proof of the existence of God which he set forth, and which made him specially famous. This proof was included among the various proofs up to the time of Kant, and — by some who have not yet reached the Kantian standpoint — it is so included even to the present day. It is different from what we find and read of amongst the ancients. For it was said that God is absolute thought as objective; for because things in the world are contingent, they are not the truth in and for itself — but this is found in the infinite. The scholastics also knew well from the Aristotelian philosophy the metaphysical proposition that potentiality is nothing by itself, but is clearly one with actuality. Later, on the other hand, the opposition between thought itself and Being began to appear with Anselm. It is noteworthy that only now for the first time through the Middle Ages and in Christianity, the universal Notion and Being, as it is to ordinary conception, became established in this pure abstraction as these infinite extremes; and thus the highest law has come to consciousness. But we reach our profoundest depths in bringing the highest opposition into consciousness. Only no advance was made beyond the division as such, although Anselm also tried to find the connection between the sides. But while hitherto God appeared as the absolute existent, and the universal was attributed to Him as predicate, an opposite order begins with Anselm — Being becomes predicate, and the absolute Idea is first of all established as the subject, but the subject of thought. Thus if the existence of God is once abandoned as the first hypothesis, and established as a result of thought, self-consciousness is on the way to turn back within itself. Then we have the question coming in, Does God exist? while on the other side the question of most importance was, What is God?
The ontological proof, which is the first properly metaphysical proof of the existence of God, consequently came to mean that God as the Idea of existence which unites all reality in itself, also has the reality of existence within Himself; this proof thus follows from the Notion of God, that He is the universal essence of all essence. The drift of this reasoning is, according to Anselm (Proslogium, c. 2), as follows: “It is one thing to say that a thing is in the understanding, and quite another to perceive that it exists. Even an ignorant person (insipiens) will thus be quite convinced that in thought there is something beyond which nothing greater can be thought; for when he hears this he understands it, and everything that is understood is in the understanding. But that beyond which nothing greater can be thought cannot certainly be in the understanding alone. For if it is accepted as in thought alone, we may go on farther to accept it as existent; that, however, is something greater” than what is merely thought. “Thus were that beyond which nothing greater can be thought merely in the understanding, that beyond which nothing greater can be thought would be something beyond which something greater can be thought. But that is truly impossible; there thus without doubt exists both in the understanding and in reality something beyond which nothing greater can be thought.” The highest conception cannot be in the understanding alone; it is essential that it should exist. Thus it is made clear that Being is in a superficial way subsumed under the universal of reality, that to this extent Being does not enter into opposition with the Notion. That is quite right; only the transition is not demonstrated — that the subjective understanding abrogates itself. This, however, is just the question which gives the whole interest to the matter. When reality or completion is expressed in such a way that it is not yet posited as existent, it is something thought, and rather opposed to Being than that this is subsumed under it.
This mode of arguing held good until the time of Kant; and we see in it the endeavour to apprehend the doctrine of the Church through reason. This opposition between Being and thought is the starting point in philosophy, the absolute that contains the two opposites within itself — a conception, according to Spinoza, which involves its existence likewise. Of Anselm it is however to be remarked that the formal logical mode of the understanding, the process of scholastic reasoning is to be found in him, the content indeed is right, but the form faulty. For in the first place the expression “the thought of a Highest” is assumed as the prius. Secondly, there are two sorts of objects of thought — one that is and another that is not; the object that is only thought and does not exist, is as imperfect as that which only is without being thought. The third point is that what is highest must likewise exist. But what is highest, the standard to which all else must conform, must be no mere hypothesis, as we find it represented in the conception of a highest acme of perfection, as a content which is thought and likewise is. This very content, the unity of Being and thought, is thus indeed the true content; but because Anselm has it before him only in the form of the understanding, the opposites are identical and conformable to unity in a third determination only — the Highest — which, in as far as it is regulative, is outside of them. In this it is involved that we should first of all have subjective thought, and then distinguished from that, Being. We allow that if we think a content (and it is apparently indifferent whether this is God or any other), it may be the case that this content does not exist. The assertion “Something that is thought does not exist” is now subsumed under the above standard and is not conformable to it. We grant that the truth is that which is not merely thought but which likewise is. But of this opposition nothing here is said. Undoubtedly God would be imperfect, if He were merely thought and did not also have the determination of Being. But in relation to God we must not take thought as merely subjective; thought here signifies the absolute, pure thought, and thus we must ascribe to Him the quality of Being. On the other hand if God were merely Being, if He were not conscious of Himself as self-consciousness, He would not be Spirit, a thought that thinks itself.
Kant, on the other hand, attacked and rejected Anselm’s proof — which rejection the whole world afterwards followed up — on the ground of its being an assumption that the unity of Being and thought is the highest perfection. What Kant thus demonstrates in the present day — that Being is different from thought and that Being is not by any means posited with thought — was a criticism offered even in that time by a monk named Gaunilo. He combated this proof of Anselm’s in a Liber pro insipiente to which Anselm himself directed a reply in his Liber apologeticus adversus insipientem.22 Thus Kant says (Kritik der reinen Vernunft, p. 464 of the sixth edition): If we think a hundred dollars, this conception does not involve existence. That is certainly true: what is only a conception does not exist, but it is likewise not a true content, for what does not exist, is merely an untrue conception. Of such we do not however here speak, but of pure thought; it is nothing new to say they are different — Anselm knew this just as well as we do. God is the infinite, just as body and soul, Being and thought are eternally united; this is the speculative, true definition of God. To the proof which Kant criticizes in a manner which it is the fashion to follow now-a-days, there is thus lacking only the perception of the unity of thought and of existence in the infinite; and this alone must form the commencement.
Other proofs such, for example, as the cosmological, which argues from the contingency of the world to an absolute existence, have thereby not reached the idea of absolute essence as spirit, and are without consciousness of the fact that it is an object of thought. The old physico-theological proof, which even Socrates possessed, from beauty, order, organic ends, indeed implies an understanding, a richer thought of absolute existence, and not alone an indeterminate Being, but in this proof it likewise remains unknown that God is the Idea. And then what sort of an understanding is God? A different and immediate one; then this spirit is independent. Further, disorder likewise exists, and thus there must be something else conceived of than this apparent order of nature only. But from asking about the existence of God, from making his objective mode a predicate and thus knowing that God is Idea, to pass to making the absolute existence I = I, thinking self-consciousness, not as predicate but in such a way that each thinking I is the moment of this self-consciousness — is still a long stride. Here, where we see this form first emerge, absolute existence is clearly to be taken as the Beyond of finite consciousness; this is to itself the null and void, and it has not yet grasped its sense of self. Its thoughts regarding things are manifold, and the mere fact of being a thing is to it likewise just such a predicate as the rest; but it is thereby not yet turned back within itself, it knows of existence, but not of itself.
In this, says Tennemann (Vol. VIII. Sec. I. p. 121), “Anselm has laid the first formal ground of scholastic theology;” but even before this the same was present, only to a more limited extent, and merely for individual dogmas — as is also the case with Anselm. His writings bear witness of great penetration and mental ability; and he gave rise to the philosophy of the scholastics, inasmuch as he united theology to philosophy. The theology of the Middle Ages thus stands much higher than that of modern times; never have Catholics been such barbarians as to say that there should not be knowledge of the eternal truth, and that it should not be philosophically comprehended. This is one point which has to be specially noted in Anselm, the other is that he apprehended in its unity that highest opposition between thought and Being spoken of above.
b. Abelard.
With Anselm Peter Abelard is associated, both being mainly concerned in the introduction of philosophy into theology. Abelard lived about 1100 — from 1079 to 1142 — and is famed for his learning, but still more famed in the world of sentiment and passion for his love to Heloise and his after fate.23 After the days of Anselm he attained to great repute, and he followed him in his treatment of the doctrines of the Church, more especially seeking to give a philosophic proof of the Trinity. He taught at Paris. Paris about this time was to the theologians what Bologna was to the jurists, the central point of the sciences; it was at that time the seat of philosophizing theology. Abelard often delivered his lectures there before a thousand listeners. Theological science and philosophizing regarding it, was in France (as was jurisprudence in Italy) a matter of great importance, which, as most significant in the development of France, has hitherto been too much neglected. The conception prevailed that philosophy and religion were one and the same; which they absolutely speaking are. But the distinction was soon reached, “that much may be true in philosophy and false in theology:” this the Church denied. Tennemann (Vol. VIII. Sec. II. pp. 460, 461) quotes as follows from a rescript of the Bishop Stephen: “They say that this is true according to philosophy, and not according to the Catholic faith, just as if there were two contradictory truths, and as if in the doctrines of the accursed heathen a truth contradictory to the truth of the holy scriptures could be present.” While then undoubtedly, through the separation of the four faculties in the University of Paris which came about in 1270, philosophy became separated from theology, it was yet forbidden to it to subject theological beliefs and dogmas to disputation.24
We now go on to the more definite form which the scholastic theology reached; for in a second development of scholastic philosophy the main endeavour became to make the teaching of the Christian Church methodical, while still keeping its connection with all previous metaphysical arguments. These and their counter-arguments were placed side by side in stating every dogma, so that theology became represented in a scientific system, while before this the ecclesiastical teaching in the general education of the clergy was limited to the propounding of successive dogmas, and the writing down of passages from Augustine and other Fathers bearing on each proposition.
a. Peter Lombard.
Peter of Novara in Lombardy was the first of those who brought this to pass; he dates from the middle of the twelfth century, and was the originator of this method. He died in the year 1164. Petrus Lombardus set forth a whole system of scholastic theology which remained for several centuries the basis of the doctrine of the Church. He composed to that end his Quatuor libros sententiarum, and hence he likewise received the name Magister sententiarum. For in those times every learned schoolman had some predicate such as Doctor acutus, invincibilis, sententiosus, angelicus, &c. Others also availed themselves of the same title for their works; thus Robert Pulleyn wrote Sententiarum libros octo.25
Lombard collected the principal points in church doctrines from councils and Fathers, and then added subtle questions respecting particular items; with these the schools occupied themselves, and they became a subject of disputation. He himself, indeed, answered these questions, but he caused counter-arguments to follow, and his answer often left the whole matter problematical, so that the questions were not properly decided. The arguments are thus enumerated on either side; even the Fathers contradicted themselves, and numerous passages from them were quoted by both the opposed sides in support of their respective views. In this way theses arose, then quæstiones, in reply to these argumenta, then again positiones, and finally dubia; according as men chose to take the words in this sense or that, and followed this or that authority. Yet a certain degree of method began to enter in.
Speaking generally, this middle of the twelfth century forms the epoch in which scholasticism became more universal as a learned theology. The book of Lombard was all through the Middle Ages commentated by the doctores theologicæ dogmaticæ, who were now held to be the recognized guardians of ecclesiastical doctrine, while the clergy had charge of the soul. Those doctors had great authority, they held synods, criticized and condemned this or that doctrine and book as heretical, &c., in synods or as the Sorbonne, a society of such doctors in the University of Paris. They took the place of assemblages of the Church, and were something like the Fathers in reference to the Christian doctrine. In particular they rejected the writings of the mystics like Amalrich and his disciple David of Dinant, who, resembling Proclus in their point of view, went back to unity. Amalrich, who was attacked as a heretic in 1204, for instance said, “God is all, God and the Creature are not different, in God all things are, God is the one universal substance.” David asserted, “God is the first matter and everything is one in matter, and God is just this unity.” He divided everything into three classes, bodies, souls, eternal immaterial substances or spirits. “The indivisible principle of souls is the νοῦς, and that of spirits is God. These three principles are identical and hence all things in essence are one.” His books were burned.26
b. Thomas Aquinas.
The other individual who was equally famous with Peter Lombard, was Thomas Aquinas, born in 1224 of the noble race Aquino, in his paternal castle Roccasicca, in the province of Naples. He entered the Order of Dominicans, and died in 1274 on a journey to a church council at Lyons. He possessed a very extensive knowledge of theology, and also of Aristotle; he was likewise called Doctor angelicus and communis, a second Augustine. Thomas Aquinas was a disciple of Albertus Magnus, he wrote commentaries on Aristotle and on Petrus Lombardus; and he also himself composed a summa theologiæ (that is, a system) which with his other writings obtained for him the greatest honour, and which became one of the principal text-books in scholastic theology.27 In this book there are found, indeed, logical formalities — not, however, dialectical subtleties, but fundamental metaphysical thoughts regarding the whole range of theology and philosophy.
Thomas Aquinas likewise added questions, answers and doubts, and he gave the point on which the solution depended. The main business of scholastic theology consisted in working out the summa of Thomas. The principal point was to make theology philosophic and more widely systematic; Peter Lombard and Thomas Aquinas are best known in respect of this endeavour, and for long their works formed the basis of all further learned elaborations of doctrine. With Thomas, Aristotelian forms constitute the basis — that of substance (forma substantialis) is, for instance, analogous to the entelechy (ἐνέργεια) of Aristotle. He said of the doctrine of knowledge, that material things consist of form and matter; the soul has the substantial form of the stone in itself.28
c. John Duns Scotus.
In respect of the formal development of philosophic theology a third individual is famous, namely, Duns Scotus, Doctor subtilis, a Franciscan, who was born at Dunston in the county of Northumberland, and who little by little obtained thirty thousand disciples. In the year 1304 he came to Paris, and in 1308 to Cologne, as a doctor in the university newly instituted there. He was received with great rejoicings, but he died there of apoplexy soon after his arrival, and is said to have been buried alive. He is supposed to have been only 34, according to others 43, and according to others again 63 years old, for the year of his birth is not known.29 He wrote commentaries on the Magister sententiarum, which procured for him the fame of a very keen thinker, following the order of beginning with the proof of the necessity of a supernatural revelation as against the mere light of reason.30 On account of his power of penetration he has been likewise called the Deus inter philosophos. He was accorded the most excessive praise. It was said of him: “He developed philosophy to such an extent that he himself might have been its discoverer if it had not already been discovered; he knew the mysteries of the faith so well that he can scarcely be said to have believed them; he knew the secrets of providence as though he had penetrated them, and the qualities of angels as though he were himself an angel; he wrote so much in a few years that scarcely one man could read it all, and hardly any were able to understand it.”31
According to all testimony it appears that Scotus helped the scholastic method of disputation to reach its height, finding the material for the same in arguments and counter-arguments arranged in syllogisms; his manner was to add to each sententia a long succession of distinctiones, quæstiones, problemata, solutiones, argumenta pro et contra. Because he also refuted his arguments in a similar series, everything fell once more asunder; hence he was held to be the originator of the quodlibetan method. The Quodlibeta signified collections of miscellaneous dissertations on individual objects in the every-day manner of disputation, which speaks of everything, but without systematic order and without any consistent whole being worked out and set forth; others, on the other hand, wrote summas. The Latin of Scotus is exceedingly barbarous, but well suited for exact philosophic expression; he invented an endless number of new propositions, terms and syntheses.
We must further remark a third development, which proceeded from the external historical circumstance that in the end of the twelfth and in the thirteenth century the Western theologians became more generally acquainted with the Aristotelian writings and their Greek and Arabian commentators, in Latin translations from the Arabic. These now became much used by them, and were made the subject of further commentaries and discussions. The veneration, admiration and respect which Aristotle received, now reached its height.
a. Alexander of Hales.
The familiar acquaintance with Aristotle and the Arabians became first evident in Alexander of Hales (died 1245), the Doctor irrefragabilis. The earlier stages by which this familiarity came about has been shown above (p. 35). Hitherto the acquaintance with Aristotle was very slight, and through many centuries it was limited, as we saw above (p. 37), more especially to his Logic, which had survived from the earliest times and was transmitted in the works of Boethius, Augustine and Cassiodorus. It was only when we came to Scotus Erigena that we found (p. 59) a knowledge of Greek, although it was quite unusual in his day. In Spain, under the Arabians, the sciences flourished greatly. In particular the university of Cordova in Andalusia was a centre-point of learning; many from the lands of the West journeyed thither, just as even the Pope Sylvester II., so well known in his earlier days as Gerbert, escaped as a monk to Spain for the purpose of studying with the Arabs.32 The sciences of medicine and alchemy were diligently pursued. Christian doctors there studied medicine under the Jewish-Arabian teachers. It was principally the Aristotelian metaphysics and physics which were then known, and from these abstracts (summæ) were constructed. The logic and metaphysics of Aristotle were spun out with extreme fineness into endless distinctions, and brought into genuine syllogistic forms of the understanding, which constituted for the most part the principle for the treatment of the subject dealt with. In this way dialectic subtlety was much increased, while the properly speculative side in Aristotle remained for the spirit of externality, and consequently also of irrationality, in the background.
The Hohenstaufen emperor Frederick II. then sent for Aristotelian books from Constantinople and had them translated into Latin. At first, indeed, on the first appearance of the Aristotelian writings, the Church made difficulties; the reading of his metaphysics and physics and the abstracts prepared therefrom, as also the exposition of the same, was forbidden by a church synod held at Paris 1209. Likewise in 1215 the cardinal Robert Corceo came to Paris and there held a visitation of the university, on which occasion he ordained that regular lectures on the dialectical writings of Aristotle should be held while he forbade the reading of and lecturing on the metaphysics and natural philosophy of Aristotle, and the abstracts prepared from them; he also condemned the doctrines of the heretics David of Dinant and Amalrich and likewise the Spaniard Mauritius. Pope Gregory, in a bull issued to the University of Paris in 1231, without mentioning metaphysics, forbade the books of the Physics to be read until they had been examined and purified from all suspicion of error. But later on, in 1366, it was on the other hand ordained by two cardinals that no one could be made a magister unless he had studied the prescribed books of Aristotle — amongst which were the Metaphysics and some of the Physics — and had proved himself capable of explaining them.33 It was only much later on, however, when Greek literature in general had again become widely diffused, that men became better acquainted with the Greek text of the Aristotelian writings.
b. Albertus Magnus.
Amongst those who distinguished themselves through their commentaries on Aristotle’s writings, we must specially mention Albertus Magnus, the most celebrated German schoolman, of the noble race of Bollstadt. Magnus either was his family name, or it was given him on account of his fame. He was born in 1193 or 1205 at Lauingen on the Danube in Swabia, and began by studying at Padua, where his study is still shown to travellers. In the year 1221 he became a Dominican friar, and afterwards lived at Cologne as Provincial of his Order in Germany: in 1280 he died. It is said of him that in his youth he showed himself very dull and stupid, until, according to a legend, the Virgin Mary appeared to him in company with three other beautiful women, incited him to the study of Philosophy, liberated him from his dulness of understanding, and promised him that he should enlighten the Church, and, in spite of his science, should still die in the faith. What happened was in accordance with this prophecy, for five years before his death he forgot all his philosophy as quickly as he learned it, and then actually died in the dulness and orthodoxy of his earlier years. Hence there is current regarding him an old saying: “Albert changed quickly from an ass into a philosopher, and from a philosopher into an ass.” His learning was generally understood to consist largely of magic. For although natural objects have nothing to do with scholasticism proper, which was really perfectly blind to nature, he occupied himself much therewith; and amongst other devices he manufactured a talking machine which alarmed his pupil Thomas of Aquino, who even aimed a blow at it, thinking he saw therein a work of the devil. Likewise the fact that he received and entertained William of Holland34 in the middle of winter in a garden full of blossom, is counted as magic.35 While as for us — we find the winter-garden in Faust quite natural.
Albert wrote a great deal, and twenty-one folios remain to us of his writings. He wrote on Dionysius the Areopagite, commentated the Magister sententiarum, was specially conversant with the Arabians and the Rabbis, as he was also well acquainted with the works of Aristotle, although he himself understood neither Greek nor Arabic. He likewise wrote on the Physics of Aristotle. There is found in him a remarkable instance of deficient knowledge of the history of Philosophy. He derived the name Epicurean (Opera, T.V. pp. 530, 531) from the fact that they idled away their time [auf der faulen Haut lagen] (ἐπὶ cutem) or else from cura because they concerned themselves with many useless things (supercurantes). He represents the Stoics as being something like our choir-boys; he says that they were people who made songs (facientes cantilenas), and roamed about in porticoes. For, as he here remarks in a very learned way, the first philosophers clothed their philosophy in verses, and then sang them in halls and porches, and hence they are called standers in the porch (Stoici). Gassendi relates (Vita Epicuri, I. c. 11, p. 51) that Albertus Magnus mentioned as the first Epicureans, Hesiodus, Athalius or Achalius (of whom we know nothing), Cæcina, or, as others call him, Tetinnus, a friend of Cicero, and Isaacus, the Jewish philosopher. How that is arrived at we do not know at all. Of the Stoics Albertus, on the contrary, mentions Speusippus, Plato, Socrates and Pythagoras. These anecdotes give us a picture of the condition of culture in these times.
In the fourth place we must mention an important matter, to which much attention was devoted in the Middle Ages, namely that particular philosophic question which formed the subject of controversy between the Realists and the Nominalists, and the discussion of which was continued through very nearly the whole of the Scholastic period. Speaking generally, this controversy is concerned with the metaphysical opposition between the universal and the individual; it occupies the attention of Scholastic philosophy for several centuries, and reflects great credit upon it. A distinction is drawn between the earlier and later Nominalists and Realists, but otherwise their history is very obscure; and we know more of the theological aspect of the subject than of this.
a. Roscelinus.
The beginning of the controversy dates back to the eleventh century, Roscelinus being the earliest Nominalist. The famous Abelard, although he professes to be an opponent of Roscelinus, is himself nothing more or less than a Nominalist. Roscelinus wrote also against the doctrine of the Trinity, and was pronounced guilty of heresy in 1092 at an ecclesiastical council which met at Soissons. His influence was, however, but small.36
The matter in question is the universal as such (universale), or the genus, the essence of things, what in Plato was called the Idea — for instance, Being, humanity, the animal. The followers of Plato asserted that these universals exist; their existence was individualized, and thus ‘tableness’ was said to be also a real existence (supra, Vol. II. p. 29). We make representations of a thing to ourselves, and say “it is blue;” this is a universal. The question now is whether such universals are something real in and for themselves, apart from the thinking subject, and independent of the individual existing thing, so that they exist in the individual things independently of the individuality of the thing and of each other; or whether the universal is only nominal, only in the subjective representation, a thing of thought. Those who maintained that the universals had a real existence apart from the thinking subject and distinct from the individual thing, and that the Idea alone constitutes the essence of things, were termed Realists — a use of the term in quite an opposite sense to that which passes current now. I mean that this expression has for us the signification that things as they are in their immediacy have an actual existence; and to this idealism is opposed, that being a name which was given later to the philosophy which ascribes reality to ideas alone, and asserts that things as they appear in their individuality have no truth. The realism of the Scholastics in the same way maintained that the Universal has an independent, absolute existence, for Ideas are not liable to destruction, like natural things, therefore they are immutable and the only true existence. In opposition to this, the others, the Nominalists or Formalists, asserted that if generals or universals are formed, these are only names, matters of form, representations which we make to ourselves, a subjective generalization, a product of the thinking mind; the individual alone is the real.
This is then the matter in question; it is of great interest, and is founded upon a much higher opposition than any the ancients knew of. Roscelinus made universal conceptions arise only from the necessities of language. He maintained that ideas or universals, like Being, life, reason, are in themselves nothing but mere abstract notions or generic names, which, as such, have in and for themselves no universal reality of their own: that which has Being and life is found in the individual alone. Against these assertions arguments are brought forward by which one can see that the manner in which the Christian world was taken as basis, often became in the highest degree ridiculous. For instance, Abelard reproaches Roscelinus for having asserted that no thing has parts, that only the words which denote the things are divisible. Abelard proved that according to Roscelinus, Christ did not eat a real part of the broiled fish, but only a part — I do not know which — of the word “broiled fish,” since according to him there were no parts — which interpretation would be preposterous and highly blasphemous.37 Our way of reasoning from “healthy human understanding,” is not much better.
b. Walter of Mortagne.
Walter of Mortagne (d. 1174) aimed at the union of the particular and the universal, saying that the universal must be individual, that universals must be united with individuals in accordance with their essence.38 In later times the two rival factions were known to fame as Thomists, from the Dominican Thomas Aquinas, and Scotists, from the Franciscan Johannes Duns Scotus. Nevertheless, the original question as to whether universal notions have reality, and, if so, to what extent they have it, underwent a great variety of modifications and gradations, just as the opposing parties received very various names. Nominalism, in its crude form, declared universal notions to be mere names, which have reality only in speech, and it ascribed reality to individuals alone; Realism followed the exactly opposite course of attributing reality only to universals, while it considered that what distinguished individual things was an accident only or a pure difference. Neither of these two theories was correct in the manner of passing from the universal to the particular. There were some, however, among the Schoolmen who grasped the true conception that individuation, the limitation of the universal, and indeed of what is most universal, Being and entity, is a negation. Others said that the limit is itself something positive, but that it is not one with the universal by union with it, for it rather stands in a metaphysical connection with it, that is, in a connection such as that which binds thought with thought. This implies that the individual is only a clearer expression of what is already contained in the general conception; so that these conceptions, in spite of their being divided into parts and differentiated, still remain simple; Being or entity, moreover, really is a Notion.39
Thomas, who was a Realist, declared the universal Idea to be indeterminate, and placed individuation in determinate matter (materia signata), i.e. matter in its dimensions or determinations. According to him, the original principle is the universal Idea; the form, as actus purus, may, as with Aristotle, exist on its own account; the identity of matter and form, the forms of matter, as such, are further removed from the original principle, — while thinking substances are mere forms.40 But for Scotus the universal is rather the individual One, the one he thinks may appear also in the other; he maintained therefore the principle of individuation, and the formal character of the universal. In his view indeterminate matter becomes individual through an inward positive addition; the substantial forms of things are their real essence. Occam thus represents the views of Scotus: “In the thing that exists outside of the soul the same Nature exists realiter with the difference limiting (contrahente) it to a determinate individual, being only formally distinguished, and in itself neither universal nor individual, but incompletely universal in the thing, and completely universal in the understanding.”41 Scotus racked his brains much over this subject. To universals the Formalists allowed only an ideal reality in the divine and human intellect beholding them.42 We thus see how closely connected with this is the thought which we first meet with in the Scholastics, namely the seeking and giving of so-called proofs of God’s existence (supra, pp. 62-67).
c. William Occam.
The opposition between Idealists and Realists appeared at an early stage, it is true, but it was not until later, after the time of Abelard, that it became the order of the day, and was invested with general interest. This was brought about chiefly by the Franciscan William Occam, of the village of Occam in the county of Surrey in England, who was surnamed Doctor invincibilis, and flourished in the beginning of the fourteenth century: the year of his birth is unknown. He is greatly celebrated for his skill in handling the weapons of logic; he is keen in discrimination and fertile in devising arguments and counter-arguments. Occam was a leading champion of Nominalism, which up to this time had found only here and there a defender, like Roscelinus and Abelard; his numerous followers received the name of Occamists and were Franciscans, while the Dominicans retained the name of Thomists. The conflict between Nominalists and Realists raged with a burning vehemence, and was carried to the greatest extremes; a pulpit is still shown which was separated by a wooden partition from the platform of the opponent, in order that the disputants might not come to blows. Henceforth theology was taught under two forms (theologia scholastica secundum utramque partem). Owing to the civil wars in France, politics also began gradually to affect the relationship between the orders, and this lent increased importance to the conflict into which jealousy had plunged the rival factions. In 1322, at a convention of his order, and also on other occasions, Occam and his order defended to the utmost of their power the claims of the different princes, such as the King of France and the Emperor of Germany, Louis of Bavaria, against the pretensions of the Pope. Among the words of William to the Emperor were these, “Do thou defend me with the sword, and I will defend thee with the pen.” Interdicts of the Paris University and Papal bulls were issued against Occam. The Paris University forbade his doctrines to be taught or his works quoted. A special prohibition was issued in 1340: “No teacher shall venture to assert plainly, or in so many words, that some familiar maxim of the author on whom he is lecturing is false, but shall either assent to it, or distinguish the true and the false significance; otherwise the dangerous result is to be apprehended that the truths of the Bible might be in like manner rejected. No teacher shall assert that a maxim cannot be thus explained or further defined.” Occam was excommunicated in 1328, and died at Munich in 1343.43
Occam asks in one of his writings (in libr. I. Sentent. Dist. II. Quæst. 4), “Whether what is immediately and proximately denoted by the universal and by the generic name is a real thing outside of the soul, something intrinsic and essential in the things to which it is common and which are called by its name, and yet in reality distinguished from them.” This definition of the Realists is given more in detail by Occam as follows: “As to this question, one opinion is that each generic designation or universal is a thing really existing outside of the soul in each and every individual, and that the Being (essentia) of each individual is really distinguished from each individual” (i.e. from its individuality), “and from each universal. Thus man, the universal, is a true thing outside of the soul, which exists in reality in each human being, but is distinguished from each human being, from Universal living nature, and from the universal substance, and in this way from all species and genera, those that are subordinate as well as those that are not subordinate.” The universal, the common designation of all the individuals, is therefore, according to this, not identical with the Self, the ultimate point of subjectivity. “As many universal predicables as there are of any individual thing” — e.g. humanity, reason, Being, life, quality, &c.— “so many really different things there are in nature, each of which is really distinct from the other and from that individual, and all these things are in no wise multiplied in themselves, however much the separate predicables are multiplied, which are in every individual of the same kind.” That is the most uncompromising way of stating the independence and isolation of every universal quality in a thing. Occam refutes this, saying: “Nothing which is one in number can, without being changed or multiplied, be present in several subjects or individuals. Science invariably restricts itself to propositions regarding the known; it is, therefore, a matter of no moment whether the terms of the propositions are known things outside of the soul, or only in the soul; and therefore it is not necessary for the sake of science to assume universal things, really distinct from individual things.”
Occam proceeds to state other opinions opposed to that first given; he does not exactly give his own decision, yet in this same passage (Quæst. 8) he, in the main, argues in favour of the opinion “that the universal is not something real that has explicit subjectivity (esse subjectivum) neither in the soul nor in the thing. It is something conceived, which, however, has objective reality (esse objectivum) in the soul, while the external thing has this objective reality as an explicitly existent subject (in esse subjectivo). This comes to pass in the following manner. The understanding, which perceives a thing outside the soul, forms the mental image of a similar thing, so that, if it had productive power, it would, like an artist, exhibit it in an absolutely existing subject, as numerically an individual distinct from any preceding. Should anyone be displeased by this manner of speaking of the mental image as being formed, it may be said that the mental image and every universal conception is a quality existing subjectively in the mind, which by its nature is the sign of a thing outside of the soul, just as the spoken word is a sign of the thing, arbitrarily instituted for marking out that thing.” Tennemann says (Vol. VIII. Section II. p. 864): “One result of this theory was that the principle of individuation, which had occupied to such an extent the attention of the Scholastics, was cast aside as utterly unnecessary.” Thus the main question with the Scholastics concerns the definition of the universal, and this was in itself highly important and significant for the culture of more modern times. The universal is the One, but not abstract; it is conceived or thought of as comprehending all things in itself. With Aristotle the universal was, in a judgment, the predicate of the subject in question; in a syllogism it was the terminus major. With Plotinus, and especially with Proclus, the One is still incommunicable, and is known only by its subordinate forms. But because the Christian religion is a revelation, God is no longer therein the unapproachable, incommunicable, a hidden mystery: for the various stages of the progression from Him are verily His manifestation, and the Trinity is thus the revealed. In this way the triads and the One are not distinguished, but these three Persons in the Godhead are themselves God and One, i.e. One as it is for another, as in itself relative. The Father, the God of Israel, is this One; the moment of the Son and of the Spirit is the Most High in spiritual and bodily presence, the former in the Church, the latter in Nature. With the Neo-Platonists the universal is, on the contrary, only the first condition of things which then merely opens out and develops; with Plato and Aristotle it is rather the Whole, the All, the All in One.
d. Buridan.
Buridan, a Nominalist, inclines to the view of the Determinists that the will is determined by circumstances. Against him is cited the case of the ass which, being placed between two equal bundles of hay, perforce perished from hunger.
Louis XI., in 1473, confiscated the books of the Nominalists and interdicted the teaching of their doctrines, but in the year 1481 this interdict was removed. In the theological and philosophical faculty Aristotle is said to have been interpreted and studied, as were also his commentators, Averroës, Albertus Magnus, and Thomas Aquinas.44
The study of dialectics was carried to a very great height, but it was quite formal in character; this constitutes the fifth point for consideration. With this is closely connected the interminable finding out of termini technici. This formal dialectic was very ingenious in devising objects, problems and questions, destitute of all religious and philosophic interest, on which to practise its method of procedure. The last remark that we have, however, in this connection to make regarding the Scholastics is this, that it was not only into the ecclesiastical system that they introduced all possible formal relations of the understanding, but that also objects intelligible in themselves — the intellectual conceptions and religious ideas — they represented as immediately and sensuously real, as brought down into the externality of altogether sensuous relations, and in these relations subjected to systematic investigation. Originally, it is true, the basis was spiritual, but the externality in which it was at once comprehended, made of the spiritual something perfectly unspiritual. It may therefore be said that, on the one hand, the Scholastics showed great profundity in their treatment of Church dogma; and, on the other hand, that they secularized it by placing it in quite inappropriate external relations; thus here we have the worst kind of secularity. For the dogma of the Church explicitly contains, in the historical form of the Christian religion, a number of ordinary conceptions determined in an external way, which are connected with the spiritual, it is true, but trench upon sensuous relationships. If a network of such relationships is then contrived, there arises a host of oppositions, contrasts, contradictions, which have not the very slightest interest for us. It is this aspect of the matter that the Scholastics have taken up and handled with finite dialectic; and it is on this account that the Scholastics in later times were so much ridiculed. Of this I have some examples to give.
a. Julian, Archbishop of Toledo.
Julian, Archbishop of Toledo, sought, with as great earnestness as if the salvation of the human race depended on it, to answer questions which contain an absurd assumption. In doing so he no less gives himself up to petty triflings than do the philologists when they institute investigations regarding Greek accents, metres, and verse-divisions. For instance, there arises a question of this kind as to the dead. It is a dogma of the Church, that man will rise again; now if to this it be added that he will be clothed with the body, we thereby enter the sensuous sphere. The following were inquiries which arose in connection with this question: “What will be the age of the dead when they rise? Will they rise as children, youths, grown men, or aged? In what form will they rise? What will be the constitution of their bodies? Will the fat be again fat, and the lean again lean? Will the distinction of sex continue in that future life? Will those who rise again recover all that they lost here in the way of nails and hair?”45 Thus a special distinction was drawn between the actual dogma, which was indisputable, and the various aspects of the supersensuous world which are connected with that dogma. These were regarded, though often only for the time being, as detached from the doctrinal system of the Church. For the system was not so definitely formulated but that anything in it might have to be proved from the Fathers, until a council or a special synod decided the point. Disputes were also possible regarding the proofs which were given of the content of this system; and besides there was quite a large amount of matter which was open to discussion, and respecting which the Scholastics — with the exception, of course, of the noble men, renowned as Doctores and writers, — expressed themselves in finite syllogisms and forms, which degenerated into an utterly empty and formal craze for disputation. The Scholastic Philosophy is thus the direct opposite of the empirical science of the understanding, with which curiosity is largely mingled, and which, careless of the Notion, follows after facts alone.
b. Paschasius Radbertus.
About 840 another subject of discussion was raised, namely, the birth of Christ, whether it was natural or supernatural. This led to a protracted controversy. Paschasius Radbertus wrote two volumes, De partu beatæ virginis; and many others wrote and argued on the same topic.46 They went so far as even to speak of an accoucheur, and to discuss this subject; and many questions were raised, to which our sense of what is fitting forbids us even to turn our thoughts.
God’s wisdom, omnipotence, foresight, and predetermination led in the same way to a host of contradictions in abstract, meaningless, local and trivial particulars, which concern not God. In the works of Petrus Lombardus, where the Trinity, the Creation, and the Fall are dealt with, as also angels and their orders and ranks, questions are found such as whether God’s providence and predetermination would have been possible, had nothing been created; and where God was before the Creation. Thomas of Strasburg answered: Tunc ubi nunc, in se, quoniam sibi sufficit ipse.47
Lombardus goes on to ask “If God can know more than He knows?” as if potentiality and actuality still remained distinguished; “If God retains at all times all power that He has once possessed? Where the angels were after their creation? If the angels have always existed?” A multitude of other questions of this kind are raised regarding the angels. Then he asks: “At what age was Adam created? Why was Eve made from the rib, and not from some other part of the man? Why during sleep, and not when the man was awake? Why did the first human pair not have intercourse in Paradise? How the human race would have been propagated, if man had not sinned? If in Paradise children would have been born with limbs fully grown, and the complete use of their senses? Why it was the Son, and not the Father or the Holy Ghost, who became man?” To do this rests in the very Notion of the Son. “If God could not have also become incarnate in female form?”48
Additional examples of quæstiones of this kind are given by those who ridiculed such dialectic, for instance by Erasmus in his Encomium moriæ: “Could there be several sonships (filiationes) in Christ? Is the proposition possible that God the Father hates the Son? Might God not have also taken the form of a woman, or have passed into the devil? Might He not also have appeared in the form of an ass or of a pumpkin? In what manner would the pumpkin have preached and wrought miracles, and how would it have been crucified?”49 Thus were intellectual determinations combined and distinguished in a manner altogether without sense or thought. The main point is that the Scholastics were like barbarians in their way of handling divine things and bringing them into sensuous determinations and relations. They thus introduced a completely sensuous rigidity and these altogether external and senseless forms into the purely spiritual, thus bringing it to a lower and unspiritual level; Hans Sachs similarly made a Nürnberg version of sacred history [die göttliche Geschichte vernürnbergert]. In such representations as are given in the Bible of the wrath of God, or of the history of God’s work of creation, it is said that God did this or that, naming some human and homely action. God is certainly not to be looked on as something alien and unapproachable; on the contrary, we are to come to Him with courage and with all our heart. But to bring Him into the province of thought, and strive in earnest after a knowledge of Him, is a very different matter. The reverse of this is to bring forward arguments pro and contra, for they decide nothing, and are of no use; they are no more than the assumptions which are only sensuous and finite determinations, and therefore infinite differences and distinctions. This barbarous use of the understanding is utterly irrational; it is like putting a golden necklace on a sow. The One is the Idea of the Christian religion, and it is also the philosophy of the great and noble Aristotle; neither of the two could have been more bedraggled and besmirched, to so low a pass had the Christians brought their spiritual Idea.
In the above sketch we have mentioned the principal heads which come under our consideration in studying Scholastic philosophy. With regard to this intrusion of distinctions of the understanding and sensuous relations into that which in and for itself and by virtue of its very nature is spiritual, absolute and infinite, it is to be remarked that to this craze for reducing everything to the finite, some noble spirits here and there opposed themselves. As such we must here, in the sixth place, make honourable mention of the many great Scholastics who have been named Mystics, for although they are to be distinguished from the real ecclesiastical Scholastics, they followed upon identical lines, and are closely connected with them. They took but little interest in these discussions and arguments, and maintained their purity in regard to Church doctrines and philosophic speculation. Some of them were pious and spiritual men, who carried on their philosophic studies upon the lines of the Neo-Platonic philosophy, as Scotus Erigena had done in earlier times. Among them genuine philosophy is to be found — termed also Mysticism; it tends to inwardness and bears a great resemblance to Spinozism. They also derived morality and the religious sentiment from actual feelings, and the meditations and maxims we have from them embody these views.
a. John Charlier.
John Charlier, more generally known as Von Jerson or Gerson, was born in 1363; he wrote a theologia mystica.50
b. Raymundus of Sabunde.
Very similar were the views expressed by Raymundus of Sabunde or Sabeyde, a Spaniard of the fifteenth century, and professor at Toulouse about the year 1437. In his theologia naturalis, which he handled in a speculative spirit, he dealt with the Nature of things, and with the revelation of God in Nature and in the history of the God-man. He sought to prove to unbelievers the Being, the trinity, the incarnation, the life, and the revelation of God in Nature, and in the history of the God-man, basing his arguments on Reason. From the contemplation of Nature he rises to God; and in the same way he reaches morality from observation of man’s inner nature.51 This purer and simpler style must be set off against the other, if we are to do justice to the Scholastic theologians in their turn.
c. Roger Bacon.
Roger Bacon treated more especially of physics, but remained without influence. He invented gunpowder, mirrors, telescopes, and died in 1294.52
d. Raymundus Lullus.
Raymundus Lullus, the Doctor illuminatus, made himself famous chiefly by the art of thinking which he invented, which was called the ars magna. He was born at Majorca in 1234, and was one of those eccentric, unsettled natures whose activity finds vent in all directions. He had a strong inclination towards alchemy and great enthusiasm for the sciences in general, as well as a fiery, restless power of imagination. In his youth he led a reckless life, throwing himself headlong into a round of pleasures; then he retreated to a desert, and had there many visions of Jesus. At this time the impulse shaped itself in his ardent nature to dedicate his life to spreading the blessings of Christianity among the Mohammedans in Asia and Africa. In order to carry on this work of conversion he learned Arabic, travelled through Europe and Asia, sought for assistance from the Pope and all the crowned heads of Europe, without giving up, for all that, his interest in his ‘Art.’ He suffered persecution and passed through many hardships and strange adventures, perils of death, imprisonments, cruelties. He lived long in Paris at the beginning of the fourteenth century, and was the author of well-nigh four hundred works. After a life of the utmost restlessness, he died in 1315, revered as a saint and martyr, his death being the result of cruel treatment which he had suffered in Africa.53
The chief object aimed at in this man’s ‘Art’ was an enumeration and arrangement of the various concepts under which all objects fall, or of the pure categories according to which they can be determined, so that it may be possible in regard to every object to indicate with ease the conceptions applicable to it. Lullus is so systematic that he becomes at times mechanical. He constructed a diagram in circles, on which were marked triangles through which the circles pass. In these circles he arranged the various concepts, and strove to give a complete catalogue of them. Some of the circles were fixed, others movable, and they were six in number, two of them indicating the subjects, three the predicates, while the outermost circle represented possible questions. For each class he had nine qualities, to indicate which he chose nine letters, B C D E F G H I K. Thus in the first place he wrote round the diagram nine absolute predicates, goodness, greatness, duration, power, wisdom, volition, virtue, truth, splendour; then he wrote nine relative predicates, diversity, unanimity, opposition, beginning, middle, end, the qualities of being greater, equal, or less; in the third place he set down the questions Whether? What? Whence? Why? How great? Of what nature? When? Where? How and wherewith? the ninth of which contains two determinations; in the fourth place he put nine substances (esse), viz. God (divinum), angel (angelicum), heaven (cæleste), man (humanum), imaginativum, sensitivum, vegetativum, elementativum, instrumentativum; in the fifth place were nine accidents, i.e. natural relations, viz. quantity, quality, relation, activity, passivity, possession, position, time, place; and sixthly nine moral relations, the virtues, viz. justice, prudence, courage, temperance, faith, hope, love, patience, piety; and the vices, viz. envy, wrath, inconstancy, covetousness, falsehood, gluttony, riotousness, pride, sluggishness (acedia). These circles had to be placed in a certain way, in order to give proper combinations. By turning them round according to certain rules, by which all substances received the absolute and relative predicates which fitted them, it was supposed that there would be obtained in every possible combination universal science, truth, and the knowledge of concrete objects in general.54
AFTER THUS DEALING with the subject in detail, we must pronounce judgment on the Scholastics, and give an estimate of them. Though the subjects which they investigated were lofty, and though there were noble, earnest and learned individuals in their ranks, yet this Scholasticism on the whole is a barbarous philosophy of the finite understanding, without real content, which awakens no true interest in us, and to which we cannot return. For although religion is its subject matter, thought here reached such an excessive point of subtlety that, as a form of the mere empty understanding, it does nothing but wander amongst baseless combinations of categories. Scholastic philosophy is this utter confusion of the barren understanding in the rugged North German nature. We see here two different worlds, a kingdom of life and a kingdom of death. The intellectual kingdom, which is outside and above, while in the popular conception, is thereby brought within the sphere of the mere understanding and the senses, even though by nature it is purely peculative; and this does not take place as in art, but, on the contrary, after the fashion of ordinary reality. As the relationship of Father and Son, to begin with, appealed to the senses, so the divine world was furnished for the imaginative faculty and for purposes of devotion (in a way unknown to the disciples of Plato) with angels, saints and martyrs, instead of with thoughts; — or the thoughts are nothing but a rubbishy metaphysic of the understanding. In the supersensuous world there was no reality of the thinking, universal, rational self-consciousness to be met with: in the immediate world of sensuous nature, on the other hand, there was no divinity, because nature was but the grave of God, in the same way that God was outside of nature. The existence of the Church, as the government of Christ upon earth, is higher, it is true, than the external existence which stands in contrast to it; for religion must rule our temporal affairs, and through the subjection of worldly power the Church became a theocracy. But the divine kingdom, the dwelling-place of the dead, was to be reached only through the gate of death; yet the natural world was dead to an equal degree — all that lived in it was the vision of that other world, and hope — it had no present. It was of no avail to introduce mediators as a connecting link, the Virgin Mary, or the dead in a world beyond. The reconciliation was formal, not absolute; for it was nothing but the longing of man for a satisfaction to be found only in another world. What purpose does all this serve? It lies behind us as a thing of the past, and must continue useless to us on its own merits. There is no good, however, in calling the Middle Ages a barbarous period. It is a singular kind of barbarism, and is not simple and rude; for the absolute Idea and the highest culture have sunk into barbarism, and that through the agency of thought. Thus we have here, on the one hand, the most hideous form of barbarism and perversion, but, on the other hand, the never-failing source of a higher reconciliation.
If we seek an immediate contrast to scholastic philosophy and theology and their methods, we may say that it is to be found in the “healthy human understanding,” in outward and inward experience, in the contemplation of nature, and in humanity. The character of Greek humanity, for instance, was that everything concrete, everything that possessed interest for mind, had its place in the human breast, and its root in the feelings and thoughts of man. Intelligent consciousness, cultured science, has in such content its real material — that in which it is and remains at home with itself; knowledge busies itself on all sides with that which concerns it, and remains true to itself, while both on its serious and its playful side it finds in this material, in Nature and its uniform laws, a standard and a guide by which to direct its course aright. Even should we go astray on ground like this, our errors keep in view the fixed centre-point of the self-consciousness of the human mind, and as errors even they have a root therein, which as such forms the justification for them. It is only a one-sided withdrawal from the unity of this root with the altogether concrete ground-work and original, that is really faulty. What we see here, in contrast with the above, is the infinite truth, expressed as spirit, committed to a nation of barbarians who have not the self-consciousness of their spiritual humanity — they have a human breast, it is true, but not yet a human spirit. The absolute truth does not yet make itself real and present in actual consciousness, but men are torn out of themselves. They still find this content of spirit within themselves, introduced as into a strange vessel full of the most intense impulses and desires of physical and intellectual life, but it is like a ponderous stone, whose enormous pressure they only feel, but which they neither digest nor assimilate with their own impulses or desires. Thus they can only find rest and reconciliation when they come absolutely out of themselves, and they have become fierce and savage in the very circumstances and by the very means which ought to have rendered their spirit peaceable and mild.
Just as truth was not yet the foundation of reality, so science was likewise destitute of firm basis. The understanding, when it comes to think, applies itself, it is true, in the first place to the mysteries of religion, which, as an altogether speculative content, exist for the rational Notion only. But as Spirit, the rational element in question, has not yet taken its place in thought, thought is still God-forsaken, it is still only abstract, finite understanding, a manner of thinking which is in itself quite formal and devoid of content, which is a stranger to subjects of such profundity as this, even when it is ostensibly occupying itself with the same. This understanding therefore draws its content entirely from things to which it remains altogether alien, and which remain altogether alien to it; yet it is not thereby at all circumscribed, for it observes no bounds in its determinations and distinctions. It is just as if one were to arbitrarily form and connect propositions, words and tones — without making the presupposition that they should by themselves express a concrete sense — which need be only capable of being uttered, without having any restriction except possibility, that is, that they must not contradict each other.
In the second place, in so far as the understanding keeps to the given religious content, it can prove this content; one can demonstrate that it must be so, just as if it were a geometrical proposition. But there still remains something to be desired, in order that the satisfaction may be complete; the content is proved, but I nevertheless do not understand it. Thus Anselm’s excellent proposition (supra, pp. 63, 64) in which we may perceive the general character of the scholastic understanding, is a proof, it may be admitted, of the existence of God, but it shows no comprehension of it. Though I see the truth of the proposition, I have not attained to the final point, the object of my desire; for there is lacking the I, the inner bond, as inwardness of thought. This lies only in the Notion, in the unity of the particular and the universal, of Being and thought. For the comprehension of this unity, without which there could be no true proof, it was implied that further progress should not take place after the manner of the understanding. It was necessary that from the nature of thought itself it should become evident how, taken on its own account, it negates itself, and how the determination of Being itself rests therein, or that the manner in which thought determines itself into Being should be shown forth. On the other hand it must in like manner be demonstrated in the case of Being that it is its peculiar dialectic to abrogate itself, and from itself to make itself a universal Notion. The determination of itself into Being is certainly an object of thought, whose content is thought itself. This is inwardness, not a mere conclusion drawn from presuppositions. Here in scholastic philosophy, however, the object is not the nature of thought and Being, for what they are is a mere matter of assumption.
The understanding may take its start from experience, a given concrete content, a determinate contemplation of nature, the human heart, right, duty, which are just exactly what inwardness means. It may find its determinations, so to speak, on behalf of this content, and starting from this point it may come to abstractions, such as matter and force in physics. In this case, although a general form such as this does not satisfy the content, it has at any rate therein a fixed point, by which it can regulate itself, and a boundary line for speculation, which would otherwise have no limit set to its roaming. Or when we have the concrete perception of state and family, reasoning has in this content a fixed point which gives it guidance — a conception, which is the main thing; the deficiency in its form becomes concealed and forgotten, and emphasis is not laid on it. But in scholastic philosophy, in the third place, a basis was not sought in such objects as direct the course of reflection; with this understanding of the Scholastics it was rather the case that they received in the categories the external culture of the understanding as tradition, and enlarged upon it. Because there was no standard set up for this scholastic understanding, either by concrete intuition or by the pure Notion, it remained unregulated in its externality. In later times this spirit-forsaken understanding came across the philosophy of Aristotle, in an external way; but that philosophy is a two-edged sword, a highly determinate, clear understanding, which is at the same time speculative Notion; in it the abstract determinations of the understanding, taken by themselves, and powerless thus to stand, pass away by means of dialectic, and have truth only when taken in their connexion. The speculation that we find in Aristotle has this condition, that such thought never abandons itself to free reflection, but keeps ever before it the concrete nature of the object; this nature is the Notion of the thing, and this speculative essence of the thing is the ruling spirit, which does not leave the determinations of reflection free on their own account. But the Scholastics laid down hard and fast the abstract determinations of the understanding, which are always inadequate to their absolute subject, and in like manner they took every example from life as subject, and since the concrete contradicts them, they could hold fast by these determinations of the understanding only by defining and limiting. In so doing, however, they involved themselves in an endless web of distinctions, which could themselves be held in the concrete, and maintained thereby alone. There is thus no “healthy human understanding” in such procedure of the Scholastics; the former cannot oppose itself to speculation, but it can very well take up a position hostile to ungrounded reflection, seeing that it contains a basis and a rule of guidance for abstract determinations of the understanding. The Aristotelian philosophy is quite opposed to this Scholastic procedure, but it became therein alienated from itself. The fixed conception of the supersensuous world with its angels and so on was a subject which the Scholastics elaborated without any regulating standard, in barbaric fashion, and they enriched and embellished it with the finite understanding and with the finite relationships of the same. There is present no immanent principle in the thinking itself, but the understanding of the Scholastics got into its possession a ready-made metaphysic, without the need of making it relate to the concrete; this metaphysic was killed, and its parts in their lifelessness were separated and parcelled out. It might be said of the Scholastics that they philosophized without conception, that is, without a concrete; for esse reale, esse formale, esse objectivum, quidditas (τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι) they made their subjects of discussion.
This crude understanding, in the fourth place, made everything equal, reduced it all to the same level, and that in virtue of its abstract universality, which was held to be valid. In politics also the understanding aims at making all alike equal. This crude understanding did not make away with itself and its finitude, but in its dealings with them simply reduced to finite relations Heaven, the Idea, the intellectual, mystic, speculative world; for it makes no difference (and can make none) whether its finite determinations are valid here or not. Hence arose these senseless questions, and the endeavours to decide them; for it is senseless, I may even say it is distasteful and revolting, although it may be logically correct, to carry over determinations into a field where they are utterly out of place, as soon as it comes to be a matter of comprehending a concrete content in its universality. This understanding in its operations furnishes no bridge from the universal to the particular, and the conclusions which it draws it leaves up in the clouds as conceptions of its fancy. If, for instance, law is divided into canonical law, criminal law, and so on, the ground of division is not taken from the universal itself; and it is thus left vague which particular determination is in accordance with the universal object. If this object is God, — for instance, such a determination as that He became man — the relation between God and man is not derived from their nature. Because God only manifests Himself, He can do so in any way whatever; then, because nothing is impossible with God, the pumpkin idea is easily introduced (p. 90), since it is a matter of indifference in which determination the Universal is supposed to be. Regarding the apple in Paradise the understanding asks to what species of apple it belonged.
We must go on to indicate the principles which have been adopted and stand opposed to one other, and the development of the same, in order to comprehend the transition into modern history and the present standpoint of philosophy. For this reason we must speak of the further progress of universal spirit. For thought was distorted by reason of its being bound to an externality, and spirit was in it no longer acting for spirit. Because then in this and similar ways the Idea of spirit had, as it were, its heart pierced through, the parts remained without spirit and life, and were worked upon by the understanding. Amongst the learned ignorance of the rational was displayed, a complete and unnatural lack of spirituality; and in the same way there was the most utter and terrible ignorance amongst the others, the monks. This destruction of knowledge brought about the transition to a different state of affairs; while heaven and the divine were thus degraded, the lofty aspirations and high spiritual claims of the clerical element rose above the secular. For we saw that the supersensuous world of truth, as the world of religious conceptions, was ruined by the understanding making all things equal. We saw, on the one hand, a handling of dogma in philosophic fashion, but we saw also a development of formal logical thought, the secularization of the absolutely existent content. In the same way the existing Church, this presence of heaven upon earth, brought itself down to the level of the secular, by entering upon the possession of riches and lands. In this way the distinction between the world and the Church is blotted out, not in a rational manner as regards the Church, but in a way that is altogether revolting, and which amounts to destruction: it is a reality, I grant, but one most terrible and barbarous. For state, government, right, property, civil order, all these enter into religion as rational differences, that is, laws on their own account fixed. The acknowledgment of ranks, classes, divisions, their different occupations, the stages and degrees of evil, as well as of good, are an entering into the form of finitude, actuality, existence of the subjective will, while what is religious has only the form of infinity. But the Church in its outward existence is inviolable, it can throw over all the laws of the good; every offence against it is a violation of sanctity. Evil and its penalties are made eternal, divergences of opinion are punished even with death: so are heresy and also heterodoxy in respect of the most abstract and empty determinations of an endless system of dogmas. Abominable practices and evil passions, utter wantonness, voluptuousness, bribery, dissoluteness, avarice, crimes of all kinds found their way into the Church, because it was unrestrained by laws; and it founded and maintained the system of government. The secular ought to be only secular; but this whole secular government of the Church claims at the same time the dignity and authority of the divine. This mingling of the sacred, divine, inviolable, with temporal interests, begets, on the one hand, fanaticism, as among the Turks, and on the other hand, the humility and obedientia passiva of the laity against this dread power. It was this ruin of the supersensuous world, as represented in knowledge and as the actual Church, that inevitably forced man out of a temple such as this, the Holy of Holies degraded into finitude.
Against this disunion, on the other hand, the secular element has spiritualized itself in itself; or it has established itself firmly in itself, and that in a manner which the Spirit justifies. To religion was lacking the presence of its culminating point, the present reality of its head; to the present secularity there is lacking the presence in it of thought, reason, spirit. In the tenth century there was manifested in Christendom a general impulse to build churches, although it was not possible to regard God Himself as present therein. It was thus that Christianity rose up, in her longing to take to herself the principle of reality as absolutely her own. But neither these buildings, nor external wealth, nor the power and dominion of the Church, nor monks, nor clergy, nor Pope, are the principle of real actual presence in her; they were insufficient for the spiritual. The Pope or the Emperor is not Dalai-lama, the Pope is only the Vicar of Christ; Christ, as a past existence, is in memory and hope alone. Impatient at the lack of reality and at the want of holiness, Christendom goes to seek this true Head; and this is the ruling motive of the Crusades. Christendom sought Christ’s outward presence in the land of Canaan, the traces of Him, the mount where He suffered, His grave; they took possession of the Holy Sepulchre. What they represent to themselves as real they also take possession of in fact as real; but a grave is a grave — all that they find is a grave, and even that is torn from them. “Because Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, neither wilt Thou suffer Thine Holy One to see corruption.” Christians made the mistake of thinking that they would find satisfaction in this; this was the true object of their search; but they did not understand themselves. These holy spots, the Mount of Olives, the Jordan, Nazareth, as external sensuous presence of place without presence of time, are things of the past, a mere memory, no perception of the immediate present; the Christians found only their loss, their grave, in this present. Barbarians all the time, they did not seek the universal, the world-controlling position of Syria and Egypt, this central point of the earth, the free connection of commerce; Bonaparte did this when mankind became rational. The Crusaders were by the Saracens and by their own violence and repulsiveness, as also by their own misery (p. 53), brought to confess that they had in this deceived themselves. This experience taught them that they must hold to the actual reality which they despised, and seek in this the realization of their intelligible world. What they sought for they were to find in themselves, in the present of the understanding; thought, personal knowledge and will constitute this present. Because their acts, their aims and their interests are upright, and thus are constituted the Universal, the present is rational. What pertains to the world has thus become fixed in itself, that is, it has received into itself thought, justice, reason.
With reference to the general aspect of the period, from an historical point of view, it may be remarked that as on the one side we see the selflessness of spirit, the fact that spirit is not at home with itself, the torn and rent condition of man, on the other side we see the political condition becoming more consolidated, in the establishment of an independence which is no longer merely selfish. In the first independence there is contained the moment of barbarism, which has need of fear in order to be held within bounds. Now, however, we see justice and order enter in; it is true that the ruling order is the feudal system with its servitude, but everything therein has certainly a firm basis in justice. Justice, however, has its root in freedom, and thus the individual therein brings himself into existence, and is recognized; nevertheless relationships which properly belong to the state are here still made the concern of private individuals. Feudal monarchy, which now emerges in opposition to the self-abnegation of the Church, determines essential rights, it is true, according to birth; ranks are not, however, like the system of caste among the Indians, for in the ecclesiastical hierarchy, for instance, anyone might from the lowest class rise to the very highest position. Even under the feudal system, moreover, justice, civil order, legal freedom gradually emerged. In Italy and Germany cities obtained their rights as citizen republics, and caused these to be recognized by the temporal and ecclesiastical power; wealth displayed itself in the Netherlands, Florence and the free cities on the Rhine. In this way men gradually began to emerge from the feudal system; an example of this is seen in the case of the Capitani. The fact that the lingua volgare became the language used may also be looked on as a springing up of self-abnegation of spirit: as in Dante’s Divina Commedia.
The spirit of the times took this new direction; it forsook the intellectual world, and looked upon its present world, this hither side. The finite heaven, the content which had lost its religious character, drove it to the finite present. With this revolution the scholastic philosophy sinks and is lost, as its thoughts are outside of reality. While the Church heretofore believed itself to be in possession of divine truth, so now the temporal government, as it received into itself order and right, and worked its way out through the hard discipline of service, felt itself to be a divine institution, and consequently considered that it had the divine element here present in it, and that it was justified in having an independent existence in opposition to the divine element in the Church, which takes up an exclusive position as regards the laity. Since in this way the temporal power, the worldly life, self-consciousness, has taken into itself the higher and more divine ecclesiastical principle, the harsh contrast has disappeared. The power of the Church appeared as the violence of the Church, not aiming at operating in accordance with reality and in reality, but at being mighty in the spirit. There at once came into the secular element the consciousness that abstract Notions were filled with the reality of the present, so that this was no longer a nullity, but had truth also in itself.
With this commerce and the arts are associated. It is implied in the arts that man brings what is divine out of himself; as artists were at one time so pious that as individuals they had self-abnegation as their principle, it was they from whose subjective abilities these representations were produced. With this is connected the circumstance that the secular knew that it had in itself the right to hold to such determinations as are founded on subjective freedom. In his handicraft the individual is taken in reference to his work, and is himself the producer. Thus men came to the point of knowing that they were free, and insisting on the recognition of that freedom, and having the power of exercising their activity for their own objects and interests. Thus spirit came again to itself; it drew itself together again, and looked into its reason, as if looking into its own hands. This new birth is pointed out as the revival of the arts and sciences which were concerned with present matter, the epoch when the spirit gains confidence in itself and in its existence, and finds its interest in its present. It is in reality reconciled with the world, not implicitly, far away in mere thought, at the last day, at the world’s transfiguration, i.e. when the world is reality no more, but it has to do with the world as not by any means annihilated. The man who was moved to seek what was moral and right, could no longer find it on such soil, but looked round about him to seek it elsewhere. The place which was pointed out to him is himself, his inner life, and external Nature; in the contemplation of Nature the spirit begins to have a sense of being present therein.
SECTION THREE. Revival of the Sciences
THE DEEPER INTEREST of the subject had been lost sight of, as we have seen, in the dryness and dulness of the content of thought, and in speculations which went wandering off into endless details. But now spirit gathered itself together, and rose to claim the right to find and know itself as actual self-consciousness, both in the supersensuous world and in immediate nature. This awakening of the self-hood of spirit brought with it the revival of the arts and sciences of the ancient world. This looked like a falling back into childhood, but it was really a spontaneous ascent into the Idea, a movement originating with self — while up to this time the intellectual world had been rather something given from without. From this proceeded all efforts and all inventions, the discovery of America and of the way to the East Indies. Thus in a very special way the love for the old, so-called heathen sciences once more awoke, for men turned to the works of the ancients, which had now become objects of study, as studia humaniora, where man is recognized in what concerns himself and in what he effects. These sciences, though at first they were placed in opposition to the divine, are rather themselves the divine, as living, however, in the reality of spirit. Men, because they are men, find it interesting to study men as men. With this a further consideration is intimately connected, namely, that when the formal culture of the mind, found among the Scholastics, became transformed into the Universal, the result necessarily was that thought knew and found itself in itself; from this the antithesis between the finite understanding and ecclesiastical dogma or faith consequently arose. The idea became prevalent that the understanding can recognize something to be false which the Church affirms to be true; and it was of importance that the understanding did so apprehend itself, although it was in opposition to the positive in general.
A. Study of the Ancients.
THE FIRST WAY in which the desire to find the human element in reference to what pertains to science manifested itself, was that an interest in such matters sprang up in the West, a receptive power where the ancients in their definiteness and beauty are concerned. But the revival of the arts and sciences, and especially of the study of ancient literature bearing on Philosophy, was at first in some measure a simple revival of the old philosophy in its earlier and original form, without anything new being added; this working up of old philosophies, to which a great number of writings were devoted, was thus the restoration of something forgotten only. The study of the Greeks was more especially revived; the knowledge of the Greek originals which the West acquired is connected with external political events. The West kept up constant intercourse with the Greeks through the Crusades, and Italy did so by means of commerce; yet there were no special diplomatic relations. Even the Roman laws were brought back from the East, until a code of the corpus juris was by chance discovered. But the West was again, and more effectually, brought into touch with the Greek East when, on the disastrous fall of the Byzantine Empire, the noblest and most distinguished of the Greeks fled to Italy. Earlier than this even, when the Greek Empire was being harassed by the Turks, ambassadors had been sent to the West in order to solicit help. These ambassadors were men of learning, and by their means — for as a rule they settled in the West — there was transplanted thither that love for antiquity to which we have referred. Petrarch in this way learned Greek from Barlaam, a monk in Calabria, where dwelt many belonging to the order of St. Basil; this order had monasteries in the south of Italy, and used Greek ritual. In Constantinople Barlaam had made the acquaintance of Greeks, particularly of Chrysoloras, who from 1395 chose Italy as his permanent dwelling-place. These Greeks made the West familiar with the works of the ancients, especially of Plato.55 Too much honour is done to the monks when it is asserted that they preserved for us the writings of the ancients; these works, at least such as were in Greek, came rather from Constantinople, while the Latin portion of them, it is true, were preserved in the West. Acquaintance was now also for the first time made with Aristotle’s own writings (supra, p. 75), and thereby the old philosophies were again revived, although mingled with intellectual vagaries of the utmost wildness.
Thus it was partly the old Platonic philosophy that was sought out, and partly the Neo-Platonic, as also the Aristotelian and Stoic, the Epicurean as far as it regarded physics, and the popular philosophy of Cicero in its first form; these were brought forward as authorities against Scholasticism, being in direct contradiction to it. Such endeavours are, however, connected rather with the history of literature and culture, and with the advancement of the same; we do not find originality in this philosophic work, nor can we recognize therein any forward step. We have still writings of that period, by which we find that each school of the Greeks found its adherents, and that Aristotelians, Platonists, and so on appeared on the scenes, though they were of a very different stamp from those of olden times. For true instruction in philosophy we must, however, go to the original sources, the ancients.
Pomponatius was one of the most remarkable of these Aristotelians; among other subjects he wrote in 1534 on the immortality of the soul, and in so doing he showed — following a practice which was specially in vogue at that time — that this dogma, which he believed as a Christian, was according to Aristotle and reason incapable of proof.56 The disciples of Averroës alleged that the universal νοῦς, which is present in thought, is immaterial and immortal, while the soul as numerically one is mortal; and Alexander Aphrodisiensis also maintained its mortality. Both of these opinions were condemned in 1513 at the Council of Benevento, under Leo X.57 The vegetative and sensitive soul Pomponatius asserted to be mortal (c. VIII. p. 36; c. IX. pp. 51, 62-65): and he maintained that it is only through thought and reason that man partakes of immortality. Pomponatius was summoned before the Inquisition; but as cardinals protected him, no further notice was taken of the matter.58 There were many other pure Aristotelians; especially among the Protestants at a later time were they general. The Scholastics were erroneously termed Aristotelians; therefore the Reformation was opposed to Aristotle only in appearance, but to the Scholastics it was opposed in fact.
Men now began to form acquaintance more especially with Plato, when manuscripts of his works were brought from Greece; Greeks, refugees from Constantinople, gave lectures on Plato’s philosophy. Cardinal Bessarion of Trapezunt, at one time Patriarch of Constantinople, was specially active in making Plato known in the West.59
Ficinus, who was born in Florence in 1433, and died in 1499, the accomplished translator of Plato, was a man of note; it was mainly due to him that the study of Neo-Platonism, as presented by Proclus and Plotinus, was again revived. Ficinus wrote also a Platonic Theology. One of the Medici in Florence, Cosmo II., went so far as to found a Platonic Academy even in the fifteenth century. These Medici, the elder Cosmo, Lorenzo, Leo X., Clement VII., were patrons of all the arts and sciences, and made their court the resort of classical Greek scholars.60
Two counts of the name of Pico della Mirandola — Giovanni, and Giovanni Francesco, his nephew — were influential rather by virtue of their marked personality and their originality; the elder propounded nine hundred theses, fifty-five of which were taken from Proclus, and invited philosophers one and all to a solemn discussion of the same; he also in princely fashion undertook to pay the travelling expenses of those at a distance.61
Somewhat later, and specially by Gassendi, the opponent of Descartes, the atom theory of Epicurus was again revived. As a development therefrom the theory of molecules maintained its place thenceforth in physical science.
The revival of Stoic philosophy due to Lipsius was not so clearly evidenced.
In Reuchlin (Kapnio), who was born at Pforzheim in Swabia in 1455, and who was himself the translator of several comedies of Aristophanes, the Cabalistic philosophy found a defender. He endeavoured also to reconstruct the Pythagorean philosophy proper; but he mingled with it much that is vague and mysterious. There was in hand a project to destroy all Hebrew books in Germany by an imperial decree, as had been done in Spain; Reuchlin deserves great credit for having prevented this.62 On account of the entire lack of dictionaries, the study of the Greek language was rendered so difficult that Reuchlin travelled to Vienna for the purpose of learning Greek from a Greek.
Later on we find many profound thoughts in Helmont, an Englishman, who was born in 1618, and died in 1699.63
All these philosophies were carried on side by side with belief in Church dogmas, and without prejudice thereto; not in the sense in which the ancients conceived them. A mass of literature exists on this subject, containing the names of a multitude of philosophers, but it is a literature of the past, without the vitality characteristic of higher principles; it is in fact not a true philosophy at all, and I shall therefore not dwell any longer upon it.
Cicero’s mode of philosophizing, a very general mode, was revived in an especial degree. It is a popular style of philosophizing, which has no real speculative value, but in regard to general culture it has this importance, that in it man derives more from himself as a whole, from his outer and inner experience, and speaks altogether from the standpoint of the present. He is a man of understanding who says, —
“What helps a man in life, is what life itself has taught him.”
The feelings, &c., of man obtained due recognition, we must observe, as against the principle of self-abnegation. A very large number of writings of this kind were issued, some of them simply on their own account, others aimed against the Scholastics. Although all that great mass of philosophical writings — much, for instance, that Erasmus wrote on similar subjects — has been forgotten, and though it possesses little intrinsic value, it was still of very great service, as succeeding the barrenness of the Scholastics and their groundless maunderings in abstractions: — groundless I say, for they had not even self-consciousness as their basis. Petrarch was one of those who wrote from himself, from his heart, as a thinking man.
This new departure in Philosophy applies in this regard to the reform of the Church by Protestantism also. Its principle is simply this, that it led man back to himself, and removed what was alien to him, in language especially. To have translated for German Christians the book on which their faith is grounded, into their mother-tongue, is one of the greatest revolutions which could have happened. Italy in the same way obtained grand poetic works when the vernacular came to be employed by such writers as Dante, Boccaccio and Petrarch; Petrarch’s political works were however written in Latin. It is not until a thing is expressed in my mother tongue that it becomes my own possession. Luther and Melancthon cast the Scholastic element quite aside, and drew their conclusions from the Bible, from faith, from the human heart. Melancthon presents to us a calm popular philosophy, in which the human element makes itself felt, and which therefore forms the most striking contrast to the lifeless and jejune Scholasticism. This attack against the Scholastic method was made in the most different directions and in the most various forms. But all this belongs rather to the history of Religion than to that of Philosophy.
B. Certain Attempts in Philosophy.
A SECOND SERIES of writers who now appeared have mainly to do with particular attempts made in Philosophy which remained attempts merely, and are only found while this terrible time of upheaval lasted. Many individuals of that period saw themselves forsaken by what had hitherto been accepted by them as content, by the object which up to this time had formed the stay and support of their consciousness — by faith. Side by side with the peaceful reappearance of the ancient philosophy there displayed itself, on the other hand, a multitude of individuals in whom a burning desire after the conscious knowledge of what is deepest and most concrete was violently manifested. It was spoilt, however, by endless fancies, extravagances of the imagination and a craze for secret, astrological, geomantic and other knowledge. These men felt themselves dominated, as they really were, by the impulse to create existence and to derive truth from their very selves. They were men of vehement nature, of wild and restless character, of enthusiastic temperament, who could not attain to the calm of knowledge. Though it cannot be denied that there was in them a wonderful insight into what was true and great, there is no doubt on the other hand that they revelled in all manner of corruption in thought and heart as well as in their outer life. There is thus to be found in them great originality and subjective energy of spirit; at the same time the content is heterogeneous and unequal, and their confusion of mind is great. Their fate, their lives, their writings — which often fill many volumes — manifest only this restlessness of their being, this tearing asunder, the revolt of their inner being against present existence and the longing to get out of it and reach certainty. These remarkable individuals really resemble the upheavals, tremblings and eruptions of a volcano which has become worked up in its depths and has brought forth new developments, which as yet are wild and uncontrolled. The most outstanding men of this nature are Cardanus, Bruno, Vanini, Campanella, and lastly Ramus. They are representative of the character of the time in this interval of transition, and fall within the period of the Reformation.
Hieronymus Cardanus is of their number; he was remarkable as an individual of world-wide reputation, in whom the upheaval and fermentation of his time manifested itself in its utmost violence. His writings fill ten folio volumes. Cardanus was born in 1501 at Pavia, and died at Rome in 1575. He recounted his own history and described his character in his book De vita propria, where he makes an extraordinary confession of his sins, passing the severest possible judgment upon them. The following may serve to give a picture of these contradictions. His life was a series of the most varied misfortunes, external and domestic. He speaks first of his pre-natal history. He relates that his mother, when pregnant with him, drank potions in order to produce abortion. When he was still at the breast, there was an outbreak of the plague; the nurse who suckled him died of the pestilence, he survived. His father was very severe in his treatment of him. He lived sometimes in the most crushing poverty and the utmost want, sometimes in the greatest luxury. Afterwards he applied himself to science, became a Doctor of Medicine, and travelled much. He was celebrated far and wide; summons came to him from every quarter, several times he was called to Scotland. He writes that he cannot tell the sums of money that were offered to him. He was professor at Milan, first of mathematics and then of medicine; after that he lay for two years in Bologna in the strictest imprisonment, and had to undergo the most frightful tortures. He was a profound astrologer, and predicted the future for many princes, who on that account held him in the greatest awe and reverence.64 He is a name of note in mathematics; we have from him still the regula Cardani for the solution of equations of the third degree, the only rule we have had up to this time.
He lived his whole life in perpetual inward and outward storms. He says that he suffered the greatest torments in his soul. In this inward agony he found the greatest delight in inflicting torture both on himself and others. He scourged himself, bit his lips, pinched himself violently, distorted his fingers, in order to free himself from the tortures of his spiritual disquietude and induce weeping, which brought him relief. The same contradictions were to be seen in his outward demeanour, which was sometimes quiet and decorous, while at other times he behaved as if he were crazy and demented, and that without any external provocation whatever, and in matters the most indifferent. Sometimes he put on decent clothes and made himself neat and trim, at other times he went in rags. He would be reserved, diligent, persevering in his work, and then would break out into excesses, wasting and squandering all that he had, his household goods and his wife’s jewels. Sometimes he would walk quietly along, like other men; at other times he would rush on as if he were mad. The upbringing of his children, as was quite to be expected under the circumstances, was very bad. He had the unhappiness of seeing his sons turn out ill; one of them poisoned his own wife and was executed with the sword; he had his second son’s ears cut off, to chastise him for being dissipated.65
He himself was of the wildest temperament, brooding deeply within himself, and yet breaking out into violence in the most contradictory manner; within him there also raged a consuming restlessness. I have epitomized the description which he gives of his own character, and now quote it: “I have by nature a mind of philosophic and scientific cast; I am witty, elegant, well-bred, fond of luxury, cheerful, pious, faithful, a lover of wisdom, reflective, enterprising, studious, obliging, emulous, inventive, self-taught. I have a longing to perform prodigies, I am crafty, cunning, bitter, versed in secrets, sober, diligent, careless, talkative, contemptuous of religion, vindictive, envious, melancholy, malicious, treacherous, a sorcerer, a magician, unhappy; I am surly to my family, ascetic, difficult to deal with, harsh, a soothsayer, jealous, a ribald talker, a slanderer, compliant, inconstant; such contradictoriness of nature and manners is to be found in me.”66
His writings are in parts just as utterly unequal as his character. In them he gave vent to the wild vehemence of his nature; they are disconnected and contradictory, and were often written in the direst poverty. They contain a medley of all kinds of astrological and chiromantic superstition, yet lit up here and there with profound and brilliant flashes; there are Alexandrine and Cabalistic mysteries side by side with perfectly lucid psychological observations of his own. He treated astrologically the life and deeds of Christ. His positive merit consists, however, rather in the stimulus which he gave to original production, and in this direction he exercised an important influence on his times. He boasted of the originality and novelty of his ideas, and the craze to be original drove him to the strangest devices. This represents the first form taken by the newly awakened and energizing reason in its spontaneous activity; to be new and different from others was regarded as tantamount to possessing a private claim to science.
Tommaso Campanella, a student of Aristotle, represents just such another medley of all possible dispositions. He was born at Stilo, in Calabria, in 1568, and died at Paris in 1639. Many of his writings still remain to us. For seven-and-twenty years of his life he was kept in strict imprisonment at Naples.67 Such men as he aroused enormous interest and gave great offence, but on their own account they were productive of very little result. We have still to make special mention of Giordano Bruno and Vanini as belonging to this period.
Giordano Bruno was of an equally restless and effervescent temperament, and we see in him a bold rejection of all Catholic beliefs resting on mere authority. In modern times he has again been brought into remembrance by Jacobi (Werke, Vol. IV. Section II. pp. 5-46), who appended to his letters on Spinoza an abstract of one of Bruno’s works.68 Jacobi caused great attention to be paid to Bruno, more especially by his assertion that the sum of Bruno’s teaching was the One and All of Spinoza, or really Pantheism; on account of the drawing of this parallel Bruno obtained a reputation which passes his deserts. He was less restless than Cardanus; but he had no fixed habitation on the earth. He was born at Nola in the province of Naples, and lived in the sixteenth century; the year of his birth is not known with certainty. He roamed about in most of the European states, in Italy, France, England, Germany, as a teacher of philosophy: he forsook Italy, where at one time he had been a Dominican friar, and where he had made bitter reflections both upon various Catholic dogmas — for instance, on transubstantiation and the immaculate conception of the Virgin — and upon the gross ignorance and scandalous lives of the monks. He then lived in Geneva in 1582, but there he fell out in the same way with Calvin and Beza, and could not live with them: he made some stay in several other French cities, such as Lyons; and after a time he came to Paris, where in 1585 he formally challenged the adherents of Aristotle, by following a practice greatly in favour in those days (supra, p. 112), and proposing for public disputation a series of philosophic theses, which were specially directed against Aristotle. They appeared under the title Jord. Bruni Nol. Rationes articulorum physicorum adversus Peripateticos Parisiis propositorum, Vitebergæ apud Zachariam Cratonem, 1588; he was not successful in them, however, as the position of the Aristotelians was still too well assured. Bruno was also in London; he visited Wittenberg in the year 1586; he likewise stayed in Prague and other universities and towns. In Helmstedt he was high in the favour of the Dukes of Brunswick-Lüneburg in 1589; after that he went to Frankfort-on-Main, where he had several of his works printed. He was a wandering professor and author. Finally he came back to Italy in 1592, and lived in Padua for some time undisturbed, but at last he was seized in Venice by the Inquisition, cast into prison, sent on to Rome, and there in the year 1600, refusing to recant, he was burned at the stake as a heretic. Eye-witnesses, and amongst them Scioppius, recount that he met death with the most unflinching courage. He had become a Protestant when in Germany, and had broken the vows of his order.69
Among both Catholics and Protestants his writings were held to be heretical and atheistic, and therefore they were burned and destroyed, or kept in concealment. His complete works are hence very seldom met with; the greatest number of them are to be found in the University Library at Gottingen; the fullest account of them is given in Buhle’s History of Philosophy (supra, Vol. I. p. 113). His works are for the most part rare, and in many cases interdicted; in Dresden they are still included among prohibited writings, and are therefore not to be seen there. Lately70 an edition of them in the Italian language was prepared,71 which possibly has never yet been issued. Bruno also wrote a great deal in Latin. Wherever he took up his abode for a time, he gave public lectures, wrote and published works; and this increases the difficulty of making complete acquaintance with his books. Many of his writings are for the above reason very similar in their matter, the form only being different, and in the evolution of his thoughts he never consequently advanced very much nor attained to any results. But the leading characteristic of his various writings is really to some extent the grand enthusiasm of a noble soul, which has a sense of indwelling spirit, and knows the unity of its own Being and all Being to be the whole life of thought. There is something bacchantic in his way of apprehending this deep consciousness; it overflows in becoming thus an object of thought, and in the expression of its riches. But it is only in knowledge that spirit can bring itself forth as a whole; when it has not yet attained to this point of scientific culture, it reaches out after all forms, without bringing them first into due order. Bruno displays just such an unregulated and multiform profusion; and on that account his expositions have frequently a dreamy, confused, allegorical appearance of mystical enthusiasm. Many of his writings are in verse, and much that is fantastic finds a place in them, as for instance when he says in one of his works, entitled La Bestia Trionfante, that something else must be put in place of the stars.72 He sacrificed his personal welfare to the great enthusiasm which filled him, and which left him no peace. It is easy to say that he was “a restless being, who could get on with nobody.” But whence did this restlessness come to him? What he could not get on with was the finite, the evil, the ignoble. Thence arose his restlessness. He rose to the one universal substantiality by putting an end to this separation of self-consciousness and nature, whereby both alike are degraded. God was in self-consciousness, it was admitted, but externally, and as remaining something different from self-consciousness, another reality; while Nature was made by God, being His creature, not an image of Him. The goodness of God displayed itself only in final causes, finite ends, as when it is said: “Bees make honey for man’s food; the cork tree grows to provide stoppers for bottles.”73
As to his reflections, Jacobi has by his recent74 exposition of them made it seem as if it were a theory specially characteristic of Bruno that one living Being, one World-Soul, should penetrate all existence, and should be the life of all. Bruno asserted, in the first place, the unity of life and the universality of the World-Soul, and, in the second place, the indwelling presence of reason; but Bruno in so saying is far from being original, and in fact this doctrine is a mere echo of the Alexandrian. But in his writings there are two specially marked features. The first is the nature of his system, based as it is on his leading thoughts, or his philosophic principles generally, namely the Idea as substantial unity. The second, which is closely connected with the first, is his use of the Art of Lullius; this is specially emphasized and highly esteemed by him, the art of finding differences in the Idea: it he wished to bring into special recognition.
a. His philosophic thoughts, to express which he sometimes made use of Aristotle’s concepts, give evidence of a peculiar, highly strung and very original mind. The substance of his general reflections is found in the greatest enthusiasm for the above-mentioned vitality of Nature, divinity, the presence of reason in nature. His philosophy is thus on the whole certainly Spinozism, Pantheism. The separation of man from God or the world, all such relations of externality, have been superadded to his living idea of the absolute, universal unity of all things, for the expression of which idea Bruno has been so greatly admired. In his conception of things the main points are that, on the one hand, he gives the universal determination of matter, and, on the other hand, that of form.
α. The unity of life he thus determines as the universal, active understanding (νοῦς), which manifests itself as the universal form of all the world, and comprehends all forms in itself; it bears the same relation to the production of natural objects as does the understanding of man, and moulds and systematizes them, as the human understanding moulds the multitude of its concepts. It is the artist within, who shapes and forms the material without. From within the root or the seed-grain it makes the shoot come forth; from this again it brings the branches, and from them the twigs, and from out of the twigs it calls forth the buds, and leaves, and flowers. All is planned, prepared and perfected within. In the same way this universal reason within calls back their saps from the fruits and blossoms to the twigs, and so on. The universe is thus an infinite animal, in which all things live and move and have their being in modes the most diverse. The formal understanding is thus in no wise different from the Final Cause (the Notion of end, the entelechy, the unmoved principle, which we meet with in Aristotle); but these are just as truly also active understanding, the efficient cause (causa efficiens), this same producing force. Nature and Spirit are not separated; their unity is the formal understanding, in which is contained the pure Notion, not as in consciousness, but as free and independent, remaining within itself, and at the same time exercising activity and passing beyond itself. The understanding working towards one particular end is the inward form of the thing itself, an inward principle of the understanding. What is continually produced is in accordance with this form, and contained within it; what appears is determined as the form is in itself determined.75 With Proclus in the same way the understanding, as substantial, is that which includes all things in its unity: life is the outgoing, the producing force: and the understanding as such similarly includes the returning force, which brings all things back into unity. In dealing with Kant’s philosophy we shall have again to mention this determination of final purpose. That which has organic life, whose principle is formative, which has its efficacy in itself, and in the same only remains at home with itself and maintains itself, is nothing but the end, the activity determined in itself, which in its relation to what is different does not comport itself as mere cause, but returns upon itself.
β. Bruno, who asserts the final cause to be immediately operative, and the life immanent in the universe, asserts it also to be existent, as substance; he is therefore opposed to the conception of a merely extra-mundane understanding. To a certain extent Bruno distinguishes form and matter in substance, which itself, as the aforesaid activity of the Idea, is the unity of form and matter; thus matter has life in itself. The permanent element in the endless changes of existence is, he says, the first and absolute matter; although without form, it is nevertheless the mother of all forms, and receptive of all forms. Because matter is not without the first universal form, it is itself principle or in itself final cause. Form is immanent in matter; the one simply cannot exist without the other; thus matter itself brings about these changes of form, and the same matter runs through them all. What was at first seed becomes blade, then ear, then bread, chyle, blood, seed of animal, an embryo, a human being, a corpse, then once more earth, stone, or other substance; from sand and water frogs are produced. Here then we can perceive something which, although it transforms itself into all these things in turn, yet still in itself remains one and the same. This matter cannot be a body, for bodies have form; nor can it belong to the class which we term properties, attributes, or qualities, for these are liable to change. Thus nothing seems to be eternal and worthy of the name of a principle, except matter. Many have for this reason held matter to be the only reality, and all forms to be accidental. This error arises from the fact of their recognizing only a form of the second kind, and not that necessary first and eternal form, which is the form and source of all forms. In the same way the aforesaid matter, on account of its identity with the understanding which causes form beforehand, is itself intelligible, as the universal presupposition of all corporeality. Because it is everything in general, it is nothing in particular, neither air nor water, nor anything else, abstract or otherwise; it has no dimensions, in order to have all dimensions. The forms of matter are the inward power of matter itself; it is, as intelligible, the very totality of form.76 This system of Bruno’s is thus objective Spinozism, and nothing else; one can see how deeply he penetrated.
Bruno here asks the question: “But this first universal form and that first universal matter, how are they united, inseparable? Different — and yet one Being?” He answers by making use of the Aristotelian forms of δύναμις and ἐνέργεια: Matter is to be regarded as potentiality; in this way all possible forms of existence in a certain sense are included in the Notion of it. The passivity of matter must be regarded as pure and absolute. Now it is impossible to attribute existence to a thing which lacks the power to exist. Existence has, however, such an express reference to the active mode, that it is at once clear that the one cannot exist without the other, but that each of them presupposes the other. If therefore at all times a capacity of working, producing, creating, was there, so must there also have been at all times a capacity of being worked upon, produced, created. The perfect potentiality of the existence of things (matter) cannot precede their actual existence, and just as little can it remain after that is past. The first and most perfect principle includes all existence in itself, can be all things, and is all things. Active power and potentiality, possibility and actuality are therefore in it one undivided and indivisible principle.77 This simultaneousness of acting and being acted upon is a very important determination; matter is nothing without activity, form is therefore the power and inward life of matter. If matter were nothing but indeterminate potentiality, how would the determinate be arrived at? This simplicity of matter is itself only one moment of form: in wishing therefore to tear asunder matter and form, matter is at once established in one determination of form, but in so doing there is immediately established also the existence of the Other.
Thus the Absolute is determined for Bruno: it is not so with other things, which may exist and also may not exist, and which may be determined in one way or in another way. In regard to finite things and in finite determinations of the understanding the distinction between form and matter is thus present. The individual man is at every moment what he may be at that moment, but not everything which he may be in general and with reference to substance. The things which appear to be different are only modifications of one single thing which includes in its existence all other existence. The universe, unbegotten Nature, is, however, everything which it can be in reality and at one time, because it includes in itself the whole of matter, as well as the eternal, unchangeable form of its changing forms. But in its developments from moment to moment, its particular parts, qualities, individual existences, in its externality as a whole, it is no more what it is and may be; but a part such as this is only a shadow of the image of the first principle.78 Thus Bruno wrote also a book, De umbris idearum.
γ. This is Bruno’s fundamental idea. He says: “To recognize this unity of form and matter in all things, is what reason is striving to attain to. But in order to penetrate to this unity, in order to investigate all the secrets of Nature, we must search into the opposed and contradictory extremes of things, the maximum and the minimum.” It is in these very extremes that they are intelligible, and become united in the Notion; and this union of them is infinite Nature. “To find the point of union is not the greatest matter; but to develop from the same its very opposite, this is the real and the deepest secret of the art.”79 It is saying much if we speak of knowing the development of the Idea as a necessity of determinations; we shall see later how Bruno proceeded to do this. He represents the original principle, which is elsewhere known as the form, under the Notion of the minimum, which is at the same time the maximum — One, which at the same time is All; the universe is this One in All. In the universe, he says, the body is not distinguished from the point, nor the centre from the circumference, nor the finite from the infinite, nor the maximum from the minimum. There is nothing but centre point; or the centre point is everywhere and in everything. The ancients expressed the same by saying of the Father of the gods, that he really had his dwelling-place in every point of the universe. It is the universe that first gives to things true reality; it is the substance of all things, the monad, the atom, the spirit poured out on all things, the innermost essence, the pure form.80
b. The second object to which Bruno devoted himself was the so-called Lullian Art, which received its name from its first inventor, the Scholastic Raymundus Lullus (supra, pp. 92-94). Bruno adopted this and carried it to completion; he termed it also his ars combinatoria. This art is in some respects like what we met with in Aristotle under the name of the Topics (Vol. II. pp. 217, 218), seeing that both give an immense number of “places” and determinations which were fixed in the conception like a table with its divisions, in order that these headings might be applied to all that came to hand. But the Topics of Aristotle did this in order to apprehend and determine an object in its various aspects, while Bruno rather worked for the sake of lightening the task of memory. He thus really connected the Lullian Art with the art of mnemonics as practised by the ancients, which has come into notice again in recent times, and which will be found described in greater detail in the Auctor ad Herennium (Libr. III. c. 17, sqq.). To give an example: one establishes for oneself a certain number of different departments in the imagination, which are to be chosen at pleasure; there may be perhaps twelve of these, arranged in sets of three, and indicated by certain words, such as Aaron, Abimelech, Achilles, Berg, Baum, Baruch, etc., into which divisions one inserts, as it were, what has to be learnt by heart, and forms it into a succession of pictures. In this way when we repeat it, we have not to say it from memory or out of our head, as we are accustomed to do, but we have only to read it off as if from a table. The only difficulty lies in making some ingenious connection between the content in question and the picture; that gives rise to the most unholy combinations, and the art is therefore not one to be commended. Bruno also soon abandoned it, since what had been a matter of memory became a matter of imagination; which was, of course, a descent. But since with Bruno the diagram is not only a picture of external images, but a system of universal determinations of thought, he certainly gave to this art a deeper inward meaning.81
α. Bruno passes over to this art from universal ideas which are given. Since namely one life, one understanding is in all things, Bruno had the dim hope of apprehending this universal understanding in the totality of its determinations, and of subsuming all things under it — of setting up a logical philosophy by its means, and making it applicable in all directions.82 He says: The object of consideration therein is the universe, in so far as it enters into the relation of the true, the knowable and the rational. Like Spinoza he distinguishes between the intelligible thing of reason and the actual thing: As metaphysics has for object the universal thing, which is divided into substance and accident, so the chief matter is that there is a single and more universal art which knits together and compasses round the thing of reason and the actual thing, and recognizes them both as harmonizing with one another, so that the many, be they of what kind they may, are led back to simple unity.83
β. For Bruno the principle in all this is the understanding generally: None other than the understanding whose activity extends beyond itself, which brings into existence the sensuous world. It is related to the illumination of the spirit as the sun is related to the eye: it relates therefore to a phenomenal manifold, illuminating this, not itself. The Other is the active understanding in itself, which is related to the objects of thought in their various classes, as the eye is to things visible.84 The infinite form, the active understanding which dwells in reason, is the first, the principle, which develops; the process in some respects resembles what was met with in the Neo-Platonists. Bruno’s great endeavour is really now to apprehend and demonstrate the modes of organizing this active understanding.
γ. This is presented more in detail as follows: To the pure truth itself, the absolute light, man approaches only; his Being is not absolute Being itself, which alone is the One and First. He rests only under the shadow of the Idea, whose purity is the light, but which at the same time partakes of the darkness. The light of substance emanates from this pure First Light, the light of accident emanates from the light of substance. This we met with also in Proclus (supra, Vol. II. p. 446) as the third moment in the first triad. This absolute principle in its unity is for Bruno the first matter, and the first act of this principle he names the original light (actus primus lucis). But substances and accidents, which are many, cannot receive the full light, they are therefore only included in the shadow of the light; in like manner the ideas also are only shadows thereof.85 The development of Nature goes on from moment to moment; created things are only a shadow of the first principle, not the first principle itself.
δ. Bruno continues: From this super-essential (super-essentiale) — an expression which is also met with in Proclus (supra, Vol. II. p. 441) — advance is made to the essences, from the essences to that which is, from that which is to their traces, images and shadows, and that in a double direction: both towards matter, in order to be produced within her (these shadows are then present in natural fashion), and also towards sensation and reason, in order to be known by means of these. Things withdraw themselves from the First Light towards the darkness. But since all things in the universe are in close connection, the lower with the middle, and those with the upper, the compound with the simple, the simple with those which are more simple, the material with the spiritual, in order that there may be one universe, one order and government of the same, one principle and aim, one first and last; so, following the sound of the lyre of the universal Apollo (an expression which we saw used by Heraclitus, Vol. I. pp. 284, 285), the lower can be led back step by step to the higher, as fire was condensed and transformed into air, air into water, water into earth. Thus One Being is in all. That process is the same as this return, and they form a circle. Nature within her limits can produce all from all, and so the understanding can also know all from all.86
ε. The unity of opposites is explained more in detail as follows: The diversity of shadows is no real opposition. In the same conception the opposites are known, the beautiful and the ugly, the appropriate and the inappropriate, the perfect and the imperfect, the good and the evil. Imperfection, evil, ugliness, do not rest upon special ideas of their own; they become known in another conception, not in one peculiar to themselves, which is nothing. For this that is peculiarly theirs is the non-existent in the existent, the defect in the effect. The first understanding is the original light; it streams its light out of the innermost to the outermost, and draws it again from the outermost to itself. Every Being can, according to its capacity, appropriate somewhat of this light.87
ζ. The real element in things is just that which is intelligible, not that which is perceived or felt, or what is peculiar to the individual; whatever else is termed real, the sensuous, is non-Being. All that comes to pass beneath the sun, all that dwells in the region of matter, falls under the notion of vanity (finitude). Seek to take from Ideas a firm basis for thy conceptions, if thou art wise. The pure light of things is nothing but this knowableness, which proceeds from the first understanding and is directed towards it; the non-existent is not known. What is here contrast and diversity, is in the first understanding harmony and unity. Try therefore if thou canst identify the images thou hast received, if thou canst harmonize and unite them; thus thou wilt not render thy mind weary, thy thoughts obscure, and thy memory confused. Through the idea which is in the understanding a better conception of anything will be formed than by means of the form of the natural thing in itself, because this last is more material: but that conception is reached in a supreme degree through the idea of the object as it exists in the divine understanding.88 The differences which are here given, are therefore no differences at all; but all is harmony. To develop this was therefore Bruno’s endeavour; and the determinations, as natural in that divine understanding, correspond with those which appear in the subjective understanding. Bruno’s art consists only in determining the universal scheme of form, which includes all things within itself, and in showing how its moments express themselves in the different spheres of existence.
η. The main endeavour of Bruno was thus to represent the All and One, after the method of Lullus, as a system of classes of regular determinations. Hence in the manner of Proclus he specifies the three spheres: First, the original form (ὑπερουσία) as the originator of all forms; secondly, the physical world, which impresses the traces of the Ideas on the surface of matter, and multiplies the original picture in countless mirrors set face to face; thirdly, the form of the rational world, which individualizes numerically for the senses the shadows of the Ideas, brings them into one, and raises them to general conceptions for the understanding. The moments of the original form itself are termed Being, goodness (nature or life), and unity. (Something similar to this we also met with in Proclus, Vol. II. p. 445) In the metaphysical world the original form is thing, good, principle of plurality (ante multa); in the physical world it manifests itself in things, goods, individuals; in the rational world of knowledge it is derived from things, goods and individuals.89 Unity is the agent that brings them back once more; and Bruno, while distinguishing the natural and metaphysical world, seeks to set up the system of the above determinations, in order to show at once how the same thing is in one way a natural appearance, and in another way an object existing for thought.
Since Bruno sought to apprehend this connection more closely, he considers thinking as a subjective art and activity of the soul, representing inwardly and in accordance with the ordinary conception, as it were through an inward writing, what Nature represents externally, as it were, through an outward writing. Thinking, he says, is the capability both of receiving into one’s self this external writing of nature and of imagining and substantiating the inward writing in the outward. This art of thinking inwardly and organizing outwardly in accordance with the same, and the capacity to reverse the process — an art possessed by the soul of man — Bruno places in the closest connection with the art of the nature of the universe, with the energy of the absolute World-principle, by means of which all is formed and fashioned. It is one form which develops; it is the same world-principle which causes form in metals, plants and animals, and which in man thinks and organizes outside himself, only that it expresses itself in its operations in an endlessly varied manner throughout the entire world. Inwardly and outwardly there is consequently one and the same development of one and the same principle.90
In his Ars Lulliana Bruno made the attempt to determine and systematize these various writings of the soul, by means of which also the organizing world-principle reveals itself. He assumes therein twelve principal kinds of writing, or classes of natural forms, to form a starting-point: “Species, Formæ, Simulacra, Imagines, Spectra, Exemplaria, Indicia, Signa, Notæ, Characteres et Sigilli. Some kinds of writing are connected with the external sense, like external forms, pictures and ideals (extrinseca forma, imago, exemplar); these painting and other plastic arts represent, by imitating Mother Nature. Some are connected with the inner sense, where — with regard to mass, duration, number — they are magnified, extended in time and multiplied; such are the products of fancy. Some are connected with a common point of similarity in several things; some are so divergent from the objective nature of things that they are quite imaginary. Finally, some appear to be peculiar to art, as signa, notæ, characteres et sigilli; by means of these the powers of art are so great that it seems to be able to act independently of Nature, beyond Nature, and, when the matter in question involves it, even against Nature.”91
So far all, on the whole, goes well; it is the carrying out of the same scheme in all directions. All respect is due to this attempt to represent the logical system of the inward artist, the producing thought, in such a way that the forms of external Nature correspond thereto. But while the system of Bruno is otherwise a grand one, in it the determinations of thought nevertheless at once become superficial, or mere dead types, as in later times was the case with the classification of natural philosophy; for Bruno merely enumerates the moments and contrasts of the system, just as the natural philosophers developed the three-fold character in every sphere, regarded as absolute. Further or more determinate moments Bruno has done nothing more than collect together; when he tries to represent them by figures and classifications, the result is confusion. The twelve forms laid down as basis neither have their derivation traced nor are they united in one entire system, nor is the further multiplication deduced. To this part of his subject he devoted several of his writings (De sigillis), and in different works it is presented in different ways; the appearances of things are as letters, or symbols, which correspond with thoughts. The idea is on the whole praiseworthy compared with the fragmentariness of Aristotle and the Scholastics, according to whom every determination is fixed once for all. But the carrying out of the idea is in part allied with the Pythagorean numbers, and consequently unmethodical and arbitrary; and in part we find metaphorical, allegorical combinations and couplings, where we cannot follow Bruno; in this attempt to introduce order, all things are mingled together in the wildest disorder.
It is a great beginning, to have the thought of unity; and the other point is this attempt to grasp the universe in its development, in the system of its determinations, and to show how the outward appearance is a symbol of ideas. These are the two aspects of Bruno’s teaching which had to be taken into consideration.
Julius Cæsar Vanini has also to be mentioned as belonging to this period; his first name was really Lucilius. He has many points of similarity with Bruno, and, like him, he suffered as a martyr on account of philosophy; for he shared Bruno’s fate, which was to be burned at the stake. He was born in 1586 at Taurozano in the province of Naples. He wandered from country to country; we find him in Geneva, and then in Lyons, whence he fled to England in order to save himself from the Inquisition. After two years he returned to Italy. In Genoa he taught Natural Philosophy on the system of Averroës, but did not bring himself into favour. In his travels he met with all manner of strange adventures, and engaged in many and various disputations on philosophy and theology. He became more and more an object of suspicion, and fled from Paris; he was summoned before the tribunal on a charge of impiety, not of heresy. Franconus, his accuser, stated on oath that Vanini had uttered blasphemies. Vanini protested that he had remained faithful to the Catholic Church, and to his belief in the Trinity; and in answer to the charge of atheism he took up a straw from the ground in the presence of his judges, and said that even this straw would convince him of the existence of God. But it was of no avail; in 1619 at Toulouse in France he was condemned to the stake, and before the carrying out of this sentence his tongue was torn out by the executioner. How the case was proved against him is not, however, clear; the proceedings seem to have been in great part due to personal enmity, and to the zeal for persecution which filled the clergy in Toulouse.92
Vanini derived his chief stimulus from the originality of Cardanus. In him we see reason and philosophy taking a direction hostile to theology, while Scholastic philosophy went hand in hand with theology, and theology was supposed to be confirmed thereby. Art developed in the Catholic Church, but free thought broke off from, and remained alien to it. In Bruno and Vanini the Church took her revenge for this; she renounced science, and took up a position of hostility to it.
Vanini’s philosophy does not go very far; he admires the living energy of Nature; his reasonings were not deep, but were more of the nature of fanciful ideas. He always chose the dialogue form; and it is not evident which of the opinions stated are his own. He wrote commentaries on Aristotle’s works on Physics. We have two other works by Vanini, which are very rare. The one is styled: Amphitheatrum æternæ providentiæ divino-magicum, christiano-physicum, nec non astrologo-catholicum, adversus veteres philosophos, Atheos, Epicureos, Peripateticos et Stoicos. Auctore Julio Cæsare Vanino, Lugd. 1615; in this he gives a very eloquent account of all these philosophies and their principles, but the manner in which he refutes them is rather feeble. The second work is entitled “On the Wonderful Secrets of Nature, the Queen and Goddess of Mortals” (De admirandis Naturæ, reginæ Deæque mortalium, arcanis libr. IV., Lutetiæ 1616); it was printed “with the approval of the Sorbonne,” which at first found in it nothing “which contradicted and was hostile to the Catholic Apostolic and Roman religion.” It contains scientific investigations into various matters belonging to physics and natural history, and is also in dialogue form, without definite indication being given as to which of the characters is made the mouthpiece of Vanini’s own opinions. What one finds is assurances from him that he would believe this or that doctrine if he had not received Christian teaching. Vanini’s tendency, however, was towards naturalism; he showed that it is Nature that is the Deity, that all things had a mechanical genesis. He therefore explained the whole universe in its connection by efficient causes alone, not by final causes; but the statement of this is made in such a way that the writer does not give it as his own conclusion.93
Thus Vanini placed reason in opposition to faith and church dogma, as had already been done by Pomponatius (supra, p. 111) and others. Yet all the time that they were proving by reason this or that dogma which is in direct contradiction to the Christian belief, they were declaring that they submitted their conviction to the Church — a course which was always adopted by Bayle afterwards in the reformed church. Another practice of these philosophers was to bring forward all sorts of arguments and theories contradictory of theological dogmas, as so many insoluble difficulties and contradictions brought about by reason, which were, however, by them submitted to faith. Thus, for instance, Bayle says in the article “Manichæans” found in his critical Dictionnaire — in which he touches on many philosophic conceptions — that the assertion of the existence of two principles cannot be disproved, but that we must submit herein to the Church. In this fashion all possible arguments were advanced against the Church. Vanini thus states objections against the Atonement, and brings forward arguments to prove that Nature is God. Now men were convinced that reason could not be contradictory of the Christian dogmas, and no faith was placed in the sincerity of a submission which consisted in giving up what one was convinced of by reason; therefore Galileo, because he defended the system of Copernicus, had to recant on his knees, and Vanini was burned at the stake. Both of them had in vain chosen the dialogue form for their writings.
Vanini certainly made one of the speakers in the Dialogues prove (De naturæ arcanis, p. 420) even “out of the text of the Bible, that the devil is mightier than God,” and that therefore God does not rule the world. Among his arguments are the following: It was against the will of God that Adam and Eve sinned, and thus brought the whole human race to ruin (ad interitum): Christ also was crucified by the powers of darkness. Moreover it is the will of God that all men should be saved. But of Catholics there are very few in comparison with the rest of the world, and the Jews often fell away from their faith; the Catholic religion extends only over Spain, France, Italy, Poland and a part of Germany. If there were to be deducted also the atheists, blasphemers, heretics, whoremongers, adulterers, and so on, there would be still fewer left. Consequently the devil is mightier than God. These are arguments of reason; they are not to be refuted; but he submitted himself to the faith. It is remarkable that no one believed this of him; the reason thereof being that it was impossible for him to be in earnest with the refutation of what he asserted to be rational. That the refutation was but weak and subjective does not justify anyone in doubting Vanini’s sincerity; for poor reasons may be convincing for the subject, just as the subject holds to his own rights in respect of objective matters. What lies at the bottom of the proceedings against Vanini is this, that when a man by means of his reason has come to perceive something which seems to him incontrovertible, he cannot but adhere to these definite perceptions, he cannot believe what is opposed to them. It is impossible to believe that faith is stronger in him than this power of perception.
The Church in this way fell into the strange contradiction of condemning Vanini, because he did not find her doctrines in accordance with reason, and yet submitted himself to them; she thus appeared to demand — a demand which she emphasized with the burning pile — not that her doctrines should be considered above reason, but in accordance with it, and that reason should have merely the formal function of explaining the content of theology, without adding anything of her own. This susceptibility of the Church is inconsistent, and entangled her in contradictions. For in earlier times she certainly admitted that reason could not grasp what was revealed, and that it was consequently a matter of little importance to refute and solve by reason the objections which reason itself brought forward. But as she now would not permit the contradiction of faith and reason to be taken seriously, but burned Vanini at the stake as an atheist for professing so to do, it was implied that the doctrine of the Church cannot contradict reason, while man has yet to submit reason to the Church.
There is kindled here the strife between so-called revelation and reason, in which the latter emerges independently, and the former is separated from it. Up to this time both were one, or the light of man was the light of God; man had not a light of his own, but his light was held to be the divine. The Scholastics had no knowledge having a content of its own beyond the content of religion; philosophy remained entirely formal. But now it came to have a content of its own, which was opposed to the content of religion; or reason felt at least that it had its own content, or was opposing the form of reasonableness to the immediate content of the other.
This opposition had a different meaning in former times from what it bears now-a-days; the earlier meaning is this, that faith is the doctrine of Christianity, which is given as truth, and by which as truth man has to remain. We have here faith in this content, and opposed to this stands conviction by means of reason. But now this faith is transferred into the thinking consciousness itself; it is a relation of self-consciousness itself to the facts which it finds within itself, not to the objective content of the doctrine. In respect to the earlier opposition a distinction must be drawn in the objective creed; the one part of it is the teaching of the Church as dogma, the teaching as to the nature of God, that He is Three in One; to this pertains the appearing of God in the world, in the flesh, the relation of man to this divine nature, His holiness and divinity. That is the part which has to do with the eternal verities, the part which is of absolute interest for men; this part is in its content essentially speculative, and can be object only for the speculative Notion. The other part, belief in which is also required, has reference to other external conceptions, which are connected with that content; to this pertains the whole extent of what belongs to history, in the Old and New Testament as well as in the Church. A belief in all this finite element may be demanded also. If a man, for instance, did not believe in ghosts, he would be taken for a free-thinker, an atheist: it would be just the same if a man did not believe that Adam in Paradise ate of the forbidden fruit. Both parts are placed upon the one level; but it tends to the destruction of Church and faith, when belief is demanded for these parts alike. It is to the external conceptions that attention has been chiefly directed by those who have been decried as opponents of Christianity and as atheists, down to the time of Voltaire. When external conceptions such as these are held to firmly, it is inevitable that contradictions should be pointed out.
Pierre de la Ramée was born in 1515 in Vermandois, where his father worked as a day-labourer. He early betook himself to Paris, in order to satisfy his desire for learning: he was, however, obliged on two occasions to leave it on account of the difficulty he experienced in procuring a subsistence, before he obtained employment as a servant at the Collége de Navarre. Here he found an opportunity of extending his knowledge; he occupied himself with the Aristotelian philosophy and with mathematics, and he distinguished himself in disputation by extraordinary oratorical and dialectical readiness. In a disputation for obtaining the degree of magister, he came publicly forward with a thesis that caused a great sensation: “All that Aristotle taught is not true;” and the honour fell to him. Having became magister, he attacked so bitterly and violently the Aristotelian logic and dialectic, that the government took notice of it. He was now accused of undermining by his anti-Aristotelian opinions the foundations of religion and science; this accusation was brought before the parliament of Paris by the enemies of Ramus, as a criminal case. But because the parliament appeared disposed to act in a judicial way, and seemed favourably inclined to Ramus, the complaint was withdrawn, and brought before the council of the king. The latter decided that Ramus should hold a disputation with his opponent Goveanus before a special commission of five judges, two of whom Goveanus was to choose, and two Ramus, while the king was to appoint the president; these judges were to lay their opinion of the result before the king. The interest of the public was intense, but the contest was conducted in the most pedantic way. On the first day Ramus maintained that the Aristotelian logic and dialectic were imperfect and faulty, because the Organon did not begin with a definition. The commission decided that a disputation or a dissertation requires indeed a definition, but in dialectic it is not necessary. On the second day Ramus criticized the Aristotelian logic for its want of arrangement; this, he asserted, is essential. The majority of the judges, consisting of the commissioner of the king and the two nominees of the opponent Goveanus, now wished to annul the investigation as far as it had gone, and to set to work in another way, since the assertions of Ramus put them in a difficulty. He appealed to the king, who, however, refused to hear him, and decided that the decision of the judges should be considered final. Ramus was hence condemned, but the other two took no share in the matter, and, indeed, resigned. The decision was publicly placarded in all the streets of Paris, and sent to all the academies of learning throughout Europe. Plays aimed against Ramus were performed in the theatres, greatly to the delight of the Aristotelians. The public generally took a very lively interest in such disputes, and a number of contests of this kind had already taken place on similar questions of the schools. For example, the professors in a royal Collége disputed with the theologians of the Sorbonne whether quidam, quisquis, quoniam should be said or kidem, kiskis, koniam, and from this dispute a case before parliament arose, because the doctors took away his benefice from a theologian who said quisquis. Another hot and bitter controversy came before the magistrates as to whether ego amat was as correct as ego amo, and this dispute had to be suppressed by them. Finally Ramus obtained a public educational appointment, a professorship in Paris; but because he had become a Huguenot he had to vacate this office several times in the internal disquietude that prevailed; on one occasion he even went to travel in Germany. On St. Bartholomew’s Eve in 1572, Ramus finally fell, murdered through the instrumentality of his enemies; one of his colleagues who was among his bitterest enemies, Charpentier, had engaged assassins for the purpose, by whom Ramus was frightfully maltreated, and then thrown down from an upper window.94
Ramus aroused great interest, more especially by his attacks on the Aristotelian dialectic as it had hitherto existed, and he contributed very greatly to the simplification of the formal nature of the rules of dialectic. He is specially famed for his extreme hostility to the scholastic logic, and for having set up in opposition to it a logic of Ramus — an opposition which has spread so far that even in the history of literature in Germany we find various factions of Ramists and anti-Ramists and semi-Ramists mentioned.
There are many other remarkable men who come within this period and who are usually mentioned in the history of Philosophy, such as Michael of Montaigne, Charron, Macchiavelli, etc. The popular writings of the first two contain pleasing, refined and spiritual thoughts on human life, social relationships, the right and good. The efforts of such men are counted as philosophy in as far as they have drawn from their consciousness, from the sphere of human experience, from observation, from what takes place in the world and in the heart. It is in a philosophy of life that they have comprehended and imparted such experiences; they are thus both entertaining and instructive. In accordance with the principle on which they worked, they entirely forsook the sources from which Scholastic knowledge had up to this time been derived, and also the methods hitherto prevalent of acquiring it. But because they do not make the question of highest interest to Philosophy the object of their investigation, and do not reason from thought, they do not properly belong to the history of Philosophy, but to general culture and to the healthy human understanding. They have contributed to man’s taking a greater interest in his own affairs, to his obtaining confidence in himself; and this is their main service. Man has looked within his heart again and given to it its proper value; then he has restored to his own heart and understanding, to his faith, the essence of the relationship of the individual to absolute existence. Although still a divided heart, this division, this yearning, has become a disunion within itself; and man feels this disunion within himself, and along with that his rest in himself. But here we must notice a transition, with which we are concerned, on account of the universal principle which in it is known in a higher way and in its true authority.
IT WAS IN the Lutheran Reformation that the great revolution appeared, as, after the eternal conflicts and the terrible discipline which the stiff-necked Germanic character had undergone and which it had to undergo, mind came to the consciousness of reconciliation with itself, a reconciliation whose form required that it should be brought about within the mind. From the Beyond man was thus called into the presence of spirit, as earth and her bodily objects, human virtues and morality, the individual heart and conscience, began to have some value to him. In the church, if marriage was not held to be immoral, self-restraint and celibacy were considered higher, but now marriage came to be looked on as a divine institution. Then poverty was esteemed better than possession, and to live on alms was considered higher than to support oneself honestly by the work of one’s hands; now, however, it becomes known that poverty is not the most moral life, for this last consists in living by one’s work and taking pleasure in the fruits thereof. The blind obedience by which human freedom was suppressed, was the third vow taken by the monks, as against which freedom, like marriage and property, was now also recognized as divine. Similarly on the side of knowledge man turned back into himself from the Beyond of authority; and reason was recognized as the absolutely universal, and hence as divine. Now it was perceived that it is in the mind of man that religion must have its place, and the whole process of salvation be gone through — that man’s salvation is his own affair, and that by it he enters into relationship with his conscience and into immediate connection with God, requiring no mediation of priests having the so-called means of grace within their hands. There is indeed a mediation present still by means of doctrine, perception, the observation of self and of one’s actions; but that is a mediation without a separating wall, while formerly a brazen wall of division was present separating the laity from the church. It is thus the spirit of God that must dwell within the heart of man, and this indwelling spirit must operate in him.
Although Wycliffe, Huss, and Arnold of Brescia had started from scholastic philosophy with similar ends in view, they did not possess the character requisite to enable them modestly, and without any learned scholastic convictions, to set aside everything but mind and spirit. It was with Luther first of all that freedom of spirit began to exist in embryo, and its form indicated that it would remain in embryo. This beginning of the reconciliation of man with himself, whereby divinity is brought into man’s actuality, is thus, at first principle alone. The unfolding of this freedom and the self-reflecting grasp of the same was a subsequent step, in the same way as was the working out of the Christian doctrine in the Church in its time. The subjective thought and knowledge of man, which enables him, being satisfied in his activity, to have joy in his work and to consider his work as something both permissible and justifiable — this value accorded to subjectivity now required a higher confirmation, and the highest confirmation, in order to be made perfectly legitimate, and even to become absolute duty; and to be able to receive this confirmation it had to be taken in its purest form. The mere subjectivity of man, the fact that he has a will, and with it directs his actions this way or that, does not constitute any justification: for else the barbarous will, which fulfils itself in subjective ends alone, such as cannot subsist before reason, would be justified. If, further, self-will obtains the form of universality, if its ends are conformable to reason, and it is apprehended as the freedom of mankind, as legal right which likewise belongs to others, there is therein only indeed the element of permission, but still there is much in the end being recognized as permitted, and not as absolutely sinful. Art and industry receive through this principle new activity, since now their activity is justified. But we always find the principle of personal spirituality and independence at first limited to particular spheres of objects merely, in accordance with its content. Not until this principle is known and recognized in relation to the absolutely existent object, i.e. in relation to God, and is likewise grasped in its perfect purity, free from desires and finite ends, does it receive its highest confirmation, and that is its sanctification through religion.
This, then, is the Lutheran faith, in accordance with which man stands in a relation to God which involves his personal existence: that is, his piety and the hope of his salvation and the like all demand that his heart, his subjectivity, should be present in them. His feelings, his faith, the inmost certainty of himself, in short, all that belongs to him is laid claim to, and this alone can truly come under consideration: man must himself repent from his heart and experience contrition; his own heart must be filled with the Holy Ghost. Thus here the principle of subjectivity, of pure relation to me personally, i.e. freedom, is recognized, and not merely so, but it is clearly demanded that in religious worship this alone should be considered. The highest confirmation of the principle is that it alone has value in the eyes of God, that faith and the subjection of the individual heart are alone essential: in this way this principle of Christian freedom is first presented and brought to a true consciousness. Thereby a place has been set apart in the depths of man’s inmost nature, in which alone he is at home with himself and at home with God; and with God alone is he really himself, in the conscience he can be said to be at home with himself. This sense of being at home should not be capable of being destroyed through others; no one should presume to have a place therein. All externality in relation to me is thereby banished, just as is the externality of the Host; it is only in communion and faith that I stand in relation to God. The distinction between the laity and the priests is by it removed; there are no longer any laymen, for in religion each by himself is enjoined to know personally what it is. Responsibility is not to be avoided; good works without spiritual reality in them are no longer of avail; there must be the heart which relates itself directly to God without mediation, without the Virgin, and without the Saints.
This is the great principle — that all externality disappears in the point of the absolute relation to God; along with this externality, this estrangement of self, all servitude has also disappeared. With it is connected our ceasing to tolerate prayer in foreign tongues, or to study the sciences in such. In speech man is productive; it is the first externality that he gives himself, the simplest form of existence which he reaches in consciousness. What man represents to himself, he inwardly places before himself as spoken. This first form is broken up and rendered foreign if man is in an alien tongue to express or conceive to himself what concerns his highest interest. This breach with the first entrance into consciousness is accordingly removed; to have one’s own right to speak and think in one’s own language really belongs to liberty. This is of infinite importance, and without this form of being-at-home-with-self subjective freedom could not have existed; Luther could not have accomplished his Reformation without translating the Bible into German. Now the principle of subjectivity has thus become a moment in religion itself, and in this way it has received its absolute recognition, and has been grasped as a whole in the form in which it can only be a moment in religion. The injunction to worship God in spirit is now fulfilled. Spirit, however, is merely conditioned by the free spirituality of the subject. For it is this alone which can be related to spirit; a subject who is not free does not stand in an attitude of spirituality, does not worship God in spirit. This is the general signification of the principle.
Now this principle was at first grasped in relation to religious objects only, and thereby it has indeed received its absolute justification, but still it has not been extended to the further development of the subjective principle itself. Yet in so far as man has come to the consciousness of being reconciled to himself, and of only being able to reconcile himself in his personal existence, he has in his actuality likewise attained another form. The otherwise hearty and vigorous man may also, in as far as he enjoys, do so with a good conscience; the enjoyment of life for its own sake is no longer regarded as something which is to be given up, for monkish renunciation is renounced. But to any other content the principle did not at first extend. Yet further, the religious content has more specially been apprehended as concrete, as it is for the recollection, and into this spiritual freedom the beginning and the possibility of an unspiritual mode of regarding things has thus entered. The content of the Credo, speculative as it is in itself, has, that is to say, an historical side. Within this barren form the old faith of the church has been admitted and allowed to exist, so that in this form it has to be regarded by the subject as the highest truth. The result then follows that all development of the dogmatic content in a speculative manner is quite set aside. What was required is man’s inward assurance of his deliverance, of his salvation — the relation of the subjective spirit to the absolute, the form of subjectivity as aspiration, repentance, conversion. This new principle has been laid down as paramount, so that the content of truth is clearly of importance; but the teaching respecting the nature and the process of God is grasped in the form in which it at first appears for the ordinary conception. Not only have all this finality, externality, unspirituality, this formalism of scholastic philosophy, been on the one hand discarded, and with justice, but, on the other, the philosophic development of the doctrines of the church has been also set aside, and this is done in connection with the very fact that the subject is immersed in his own heart. This immersion, his penitence, contrition, conversion, this occupation of the subject with himself, has become the moment of first importance; but the subject has not immersed himself in the content, and the earlier immersion of spirit therein has also been rejected. Even to this present day we shall find in the Catholic Church and in her dogmas the echoes, and so to speak the heritage of the philosophy of the Alexandrian school; in it there is much more that is philosophic and speculative than in the dogmatism of Protestantism, even if there is still in this an objective element, and if it has not been made perfectly barren, as though the content were really retained only in the form of history. The connection of Philosophy with the theology of the Middle Ages has thus in the Catholic Church been retained in its essentials; in Protestantism, on the contrary, the subjective religious principle has been separated from Philosophy, and it is only in Philosophy that it has arisen in its true form again. In this principle the religious content of the Christian Church is thus retained, and it obtains its confirmation through the testimony of spirit that this content shall only hold good for me in as far as it makes its influence felt in my conscience and heart. This is the meaning of the words: “If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God.” The criterion of truth is how it is confirmed in my heart; the fact that I judge and know rightly — or that what I hold to be true is the truth — must be revealed to my heart. Truth is what it is in my mind; and, on the other hand, my spirit is only then in its proper attitude to truth when truth is within it, when the spirit and its content are related thus. One cannot be isolated from the other. The content has not thus the confirmation in itself which was given to it by philosophical theology in the fact that the speculative Idea made itself therein effectual; neither has it the historic confirmation which is given to a content in so far as it has an outward and historic side in which historic witnesses are heard in evidence, and in which its correctness is determined by their testimony. The doctrine has to prove itself by the condition of my heart, by penitence, conversion and joy in God. In doctrine we begin with the external content, and thus it is external only; but taken thus, independently of the state of my mind, it properly speaking has no significance. Now this beginning is, as Christian baptism and education, a working upon the nature in addition to an acquaintance with externals. The truth of the gospel and of Christian doctrines only, however, exists in true relation to the same; it is really so to speak a use of the content to make it educative. And this is just what has been said, that the nature is reconstructed and sanctified in itself, and it is this sanctification for which the content is a true one. No further use can be made of the content than to build up and edify the mind, and awaken it to assurance, joy, penitence, conversion. Another and wrong relation to the content is to take it in an external way, e.g. according to the great new principle of exegesis, and to treat the writings of the New Testament like those of a Greek, Latin or other author, critically, philologically, historically. Spirit is alone in true relation to spirit; and it is a wrong beginning of a wooden and unyielding exegesis to prove in such an external and philological way the truth of the Christian religion. This has been done by orthodoxy, which thereby renders the content devoid of spirituality. This, then, is the first relation of spirit to this content; here the content is indeed essential, but it is as essential that the holy and sanctifying spirit should bear a relation to it.
This spirit is, however, in the second place really thinking spirit likewise. Thought as such must also develop itself therein, and that really as this form of inmost unity of spirit with itself; thought must come to the distinction and contemplation of this content, and pass over into this form of the purest unity of spirit with itself. At first thought, however, reveals itself as abstract thought alone, and it possesses as such a relation to theology and religion. The content which is here in question, even in so far as it is historic merely and externally accepted, must yet be religious; the unfolding of the nature of God must be present therein. In this we have the further demand that the thought for which the inward nature of God is, should also set itself in relation to this content. But inasmuch as thought is at first understanding and the metaphysic of the understanding, it will remove from the content the rational Idea and make it so empty that only external history remains, which is devoid of interest.
The third position arrived at is that of concrete speculative thought. According to the standpoint which has just been given, and as religious feeling and its form are here determined, all speculative content as such, as well as its developments, are at first rejected. And as for the enrichment of the Christian conceptions through the treasures of the philosophy of the ancient world, and through the profound ideas of all earlier oriental religions, and the like, — all this is set aside. The content had objectivity; but this merely signified that the objective content, without subsisting for itself, was to constitute the beginning only, on which the mind had spiritually to build up and sanctify itself. All the enrichment of the content whereby it became philosophic, is thus abandoned, and what follows later simply is that the mind, as thinking, again immerses itself in itself, in order to be concrete and rational. What forms the basis of the Reformation is the abstract moment of a mind being within self, of freedom, of coming to self; freedom signifies the life of the spirit in being turned back within itself in the particular content which appears as another; while spirit is not free if it allows this other-being, either unassimilated or dead, to exist in it as something foreign. In as far as spirit now goes on to knowledge, to spiritual determinations, and as it looks around and comes forth as a content, so far will it conduct itself therein as in its own domain, as in its concrete world, so to speak — and it will there really assert and possess its own. This concrete form of knowledge which, however, in the beginning remains but dim, we have now to consider, and it forms the third period of our treatise, into which we properly step with the Reformation, although Bruno, Vanini and Ramus, who lived later, still belong to the Middle Ages.
PART THREE. MODERN PHILOSOPHY
INTRODUCTION
IF WE CAST a glance back over the period just traversed, we find that in it a turning-point had been reached, that the Christian religion had placed its absolute content in the mind and will of man, and that it was thus, as a divine and supersensuous content, separated from the world and shut up within itself in the centre-point of the individual. Over against the religious life an external world stood as a natural world — a world of heart or feeling, of desire, of human nature — which had value only in as far as it was overcome. This mutual independence of the two worlds had much attention bestowed on it throughout the Middle Ages; the opposition was attacked on all quarters and in the end overcome. But since the relation of mankind to the divine life exists upon earth, this conquest at first presented the appearance of bringing with it the destruction of the church and of the eternal through the sensuous desires of man. The eternal truth was likewise grafted upon the dry, formal understanding, so that we might say that the separation of self-consciousness has in itself disappeared, and thereby a possibility has been given of obtaining reconciliation. But because this implicit union of the Beyond and the Here was of so unsatisfactory a nature that the better feelings were aroused and forced to turn against it, the Reformation made its appearance, partly, no doubt, as a separation from the Catholic Church, but partly as a reformation from within. There is a mistaken idea that the Reformation only effected a separation from the Catholic Church; Luther just as truly reformed the Catholic Church, the corruption of which one learns from his writings, and from the reports of the emperors and of the empire to the Pope; if further evidence be required, we need only read the accounts given even by the Catholic bishops, the Fathers of the councils at Constance, Basle, &c., of the condition of the Catholic priesthood and of the Roman Court. The principle of the inward reconciliation of spirit, which was in itself the very Idea of Christianity, was thus again estranged, and appeared as a condition of external, unreconciled alienation and discord; this gives us an example of the slow operation of the world-spirit in overcoming this externality. It eats away the inward substance, but the appearance, the outward form, still remains; at the end, however, it is an empty shell, the new form breaks forth. In such times this spirit appears as if it — having so far proceeded in its development at a snail’s pace, and having even retrograded and become estranged from itself — had suddenly adopted seven-leagued boots.
Since thus the reconciliation of self-consciousness with the present is implicitly accomplished, man has attained to confidence in himself and in his thought, in sensuous nature outside of and within him; he has discovered an interest and pleasure in making discoveries both in nature and the arts. In the affairs of this world the understanding developed; man became conscious of his will and his achievements, took pleasure in the earth and its soil, as also in his occupations, because right and understanding were there present. With the discovery of gunpowder the individual passion of battle was lost. The romantic impulse towards a casual kind of bravery passed into other adventures, not of hate or revenge, or the so-called deliverance from what men considered the wrongs of innocence, but more harmless adventures, the exploration of the earth, or the discovery of the passage to the East Indies. America was discovered, its treasures and people — nature, man himself; navigation was the higher romance of commerce. The present world was again present to man as worthy of the interests of mind; thinking mind was again capable of action. Now the Reformation of Luther had inevitably to come — the appeal to the sensus communis which does not recognize the authority of the Fathers or of Aristotle, but only the inward personal spirit which quickens and animates, in contradistinction to works. In this way the Church lost her power against it, for her principle was within it and no longer lacking to it. To the finite and present due honour is accorded; from this honour the work of science proceeds. We thus see that the finite, the inward and outward present, becomes a matter of experience, and through the understanding is elevated into universality; men desire to understand laws and forces, i.e. to transform the individual of perceptions into the form of universality. Worldly matters demand to be judged of in a worldly way; the judge is thinking understanding. The other side is that the eternal, which is in and for itself true, is also known and comprehended through the pure heart itself; the individual mind appropriates to itself the eternal. This is the Lutheran faith without any other accessories — works, as they were called. Everything had value only as it was grasped by the heart, and not as a mere thing. The content ceases to be an objective thing; God is thus in spirit alone, He is not a beyond but the truest reality of the individual.
Pure thought is likewise one form of inwardness; it also approaches absolute existence and finds itself justified in apprehending the same. The philosophy of modern times proceeds from the principle which ancient philosophy had reached, the standpoint of actual self-consciousness — it has as principle the spirit that is present to itself; it brings the standpoint of the Middle Ages, the diversity between what is thought and the existent universe, into opposition, and it has to do with the dissolution of this same opposition. The main interest hence is, not so much the thinking of the objects in their truth, as the thinking and understanding of the objects, the thinking this unity itself, which is really the being conscious of a presupposed object. The getting rid of the formal culture of the logical understanding and the monstrosities of which it was composed, was more essential than the extension of it: investigation in such a case becomes dissipated and diffused, and passes into the false infinite. The general points of view which in modern philosophy we reach are hence somewhat as follows: —
- The concrete form of thought which we have here to consider on its own account, really appears as subjective with the reflection of implicitude, so that this has an antithesis in existence; and the interest is then altogether found in grasping the reconciliation of this opposition in its highest existence, i.e. in the most abstract extremes. This highest severance is the opposition between thought and Being, the comprehending of whose unity from this time forward constitutes the interest of all philosophies. Here thought is more independent, and thus we now abandon its unity with theology; it separates itself therefrom, just as with the Greeks it separated itself from mythology, the popular religion, and did not until the time of the Alexandrians seek out these forms again and fill the mythological conceptions with the form of thought. The bond remains, but for this reason it is clearly implicit: theology throughout is merely what philosophy is, for this last is simply thought respecting it. It does not help theology to strive against philosophy, or to say that it wishes to know nothing about it, and that philosophic maxims are thus to be set aside. It has always to do with the thought that it brings along with it, and these its subjective conceptions, its home and private metaphysics, are thus frequently a quite uncultured, uncritical thought — the thought of the street. These general conceptions are, indeed, connected with particular subjective conviction, and this last is said to prove the Christian content to be true in a sense all its own; but these thoughts which constitute the criterion are merely the reflections and opinions which float about the surface of the time. Thus, when thought comes forth on its own account, we thereby separate ourselves from theology; we shall, however, consider one other in whom both are still in unity. This individual is Jacob Boehme, for since mind now moves in its own domains, it is found partly in the natural and finite world, and partly in the inward, and this at first is the Christian.
While earlier than this, moreover, the spirit, distracted by outward things, had to make its influence felt in religion and in the secular life, and came to be known in the popular philosophy so-called, it was only in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that the genuine Philosophy re-appeared, which seeks to grasp the truth as truth because man in thought is infinitely free to comprehend himself and nature, and along with that seeks to understand the present of rationality, reality, universal law itself. For this is ours, since it is subjectivity. The principle of modern philosophy is hence not a free and natural thought, because it has the opposition of thought and nature before it as a fact of which it is conscious. Spirit and nature, thought and Being, are the two infinite sides of the Idea, which can for the first time truly make its appearance when its sides are grasped for themselves in their abstraction and totality. Plato comprehended it as the bond, as limiting and as infinite, as one and many, simple and diverse, but not as thought and Being; when we first thinkingly overcome this opposition it signifies comprehending the unity. This is the standpoint of philosophic consciousness generally; but the way in which this unity must be thinkingly developed is a double one. Philosophy hence falls into the two main forms in which the opposition is resolved, into a realistic and an idealistic system of philosophy, i.e. into one which makes objectivity and the content of thought to arise from the perceptions, and one which proceeds to truth from the independence of thought.
a. Experience constitutes the first of these methods, viz. Realism. Philosophy now signified, or had as its main attribute, self-thought and the acceptance of the present as that in which truth lay, and which was thereby knowable. All that is speculative is pared and smoothed down in order to bring it under experience. This present is the existent external nature, and spiritual activity as the political world and as subjective activity. The way to truth was to begin from this hypothesis, but not to remain with it in its external self-isolating actuality, but to lead it to the universal.
α. The activities of that first method operate, to begin with, on physical nature, from the observation of which men derive universal laws, and on this basis their knowledge is founded; the science of nature, however, only reaches to the stage of reflection. This kind of experimental physics was once called, and is still called philosophy, as Newton’s Principia philosophiæ naturalis (Vol. I. p. 59) show. This work is one in which the methods of the finite sciences through observation and deduction are alone present — those sciences which the French still call the sciences exactes. To this, the understanding of the individual, piety was opposed, and hence in this respect philosophy was termed worldly wisdom (Vol. I. p. 60). Here the Idea in its infinitude is not itself the object of knowledge; but a determinate content is raised into the universal, or this last in its determinateness for the understanding is derived from observation, just as is, for instance, done in Keppler’s Laws. In Scholastic philosophy, on the other hand, man’s power of observation was set aside, and disputations respecting nature at that time proceeded from abstruse hypotheses.
β. In the second place, the spiritual was observed as in its realization it constitutes the spiritual world of states, in order thus to investigate from experience the rights of individuals as regards one another, and as regards rulers, and the rights of states against states. Before this popes anointed kings, just as was done in Old Testament times to those appointed by God; it was in the Old Testament that the tithe was commanded; the forbidden degrees of relationship in marriage were also adopted from the Mosaic laws. What was right and permissible for kings was demonstrated from Saul’s and David’s histories, the rights of priesthood from Samuel — in short, the Old Testament was the source of all the principles of public law, and it is in this way even now that all papal bulls have their deliverances confirmed. It may easily be conceived how much nonsense was in this manner concocted. Now, however, right was sought for in man himself, and in history, and what had been accounted right both in peace and in war was explained. In this way books were composed which even now are constantly quoted in the Parliament of England. Men further observed the desires which could be satisfied in the state and the manner in which satisfaction could be given to them, in order thus from man himself, from man of the past as well as of the present, to learn what is right.
b. The second method, that of Idealism, proceeds from what is inward; according to it everything is in thought, mind itself is all content. Here the Idea itself is made the object; that signifies the thinking it and from it proceeding to the determinate. What Realism draws from experience is now derived from thought à priori; or the determinate is also comprehended but not led back to the universal merely, but to the Idea.
The two methods overlap one another, however, because experience on its side desires to derive universal laws from observations, while, on the other side, thought proceeding from abstract universality must still give itself a determinate content; thus a priori and a posteriori methods are mingled. In France abstract universality was the more predominant; from England experience took its rise, and even now it is there held in the greatest respect; Germany proceeded from the concrete Idea, from the inwardness of mind and spirit.
- The questions of present philosophy, the opposites, the content which occupies the attention of these modern times, are as follows: —
a. The first form of the opposition which we have already touched upon in the Middle Ages is the Idea of God and His Being, and the task imposed is to deduce the existence of God, as pure spirit, from thought. Both sides must be comprehended through thought as absolute unity; the extremest opposition is apprehended as gathered into one unity. Other subjects which engage our attention are connected with the same general aim, namely, the bringing about of the inward reconciliation in the opposition which exists between knowledge and its object.
b. The second form of opposition is that of Good and Evil — the opposition of the assertion of independent will to the positive and universal; the origin of evil must be known. Evil is plainly the “other,” the negation of God as Holiness; because He is, because He is wise, good, and at the same time almighty, evil is contradictory to Him; an endeavour is made to reconcile this contradiction.
c. The third form of opposition is that of the freedom of man and necessity.
α. The individual is clearly not determined in any other way than from himself, he is the absolute beginning of determination; in the ‘I,’ in the self, a power of decision is clearly to be found. This freedom is in opposition to the theory that God alone is really absolutely determining. Further, when that which happens is in futurity, the determining of it through God is regarded as Providence and the fore-knowledge of God. In this, however, a new contradiction is involved, inasmuch as because God’s knowledge is not merely subjective, that which God knows likewise is.
β. Further still, human freedom is in opposition to necessity as the determinateness of nature; man is dependent on nature, and the external as well as the inward nature of man is his necessity as against his freedom.
γ. Considered objectively, this opposition is that between final causes and efficient causes, i.e. between the acts of freedom and the acts of necessity.
δ. This opposition between the freedom of man and natural necessity has finally likewise the further form of community of soul and body, of commercium animi cum corpore, as it has been called, wherein the soul appears as the simple, ideal, and free, and the body as the manifold, material and necessary.
These matters occupy the attention of science, and they are of a completely different nature from the interests of ancient philosophy. The difference is this, that here there is a consciousness of an opposition, which is certainly likewise contained in the subjects with which the learning of the ancients was occupied, but which had not come to consciousness. This consciousness of the opposition, this ‘Fall,’ is the main point of interest in the conception of the Christian religion. The bringing about in thought of the reconciliation which is accepted in belief, now constitutes the whole interest of knowledge. Implicitly it has come to pass; for knowledge considers itself qualified to bring about in itself this recognition of the reconciliation. The philosophic systems are therefore no more than modes of this absolute unity, and only the concrete unity of those opposites is the truth.
- As regards the stages which were reached in the progress of this knowledge we have to mention three of the principal.
a. First of all we find the union of those opposites stated; and to prove it genuine attempts are made, though not yet determined in purity.
b. The second stage is the metaphysical union; and here, with Descartes, the philosophy of modern times as abstract thought properly speaking begins.
α. Thinking understanding seeks to bring to pass the union, inasmuch as it investigates with its pure thought-determinations; this is in the first place the standpoint of metaphysics as such.
β. In the second place, we have to consider negation, the destruction of this metaphysics — the attempt to consider knowledge on its own account, and the determinations which proceed from it.
c. The third stage is that this union itself which is to be brought about, and which is the only subject of interest, comes to consciousness and becomes an object. As principle the union has the form of the relationship of knowledge to the content, and thus this question has been put: ‘How is, and how can thought be identical with the objective?’ With this the inward element which lies at the basis of this metaphysic is raised into explicitude and made an object; and this includes all modern philosophy in its range.
- In respect to the external history and the lives of the philosophers, it will strike us that from this time on, these appear to be very different from those of the philosophers of ancient times, whom we regarded as self-sufficing individualities. It is required that a philosopher should live as he teaches, that he should despise the world and not enter into connection with it; this the ancients have accomplished, and they are such plastic individualities just because the inward spiritual aim of philosophy has likewise frequently determined their external relations and conditions. The object of their knowledge was to take a thoughtful view of the universe; they kept the external connection with the world all the further removed from themselves because they did not greatly approve of much therein present; or, at least, it ever proceeds on its way, according to its own particular laws, on which the individual is dependent. The individual likewise participates in the present interests of external life, in order to satisfy his personal ends, and through them to attain to honour, wealth, respect, and distinction; the ancient philosophers, however, because they remained in the Idea, did not concern themselves with things that were not the objects of their thought. Hence with the Greeks and Romans the philosophers lived in an independent fashion peculiar to themselves, and in an external mode of life which appeared suitable to and worthy of the science they professed; they conducted themselves independently as private persons, unfettered by outside trammels, and they may be compared to the monks who renounced all temporal goods.
In the Middle Ages it was chiefly the clergy, doctors of theology, who occupied themselves with philosophy. In the transition period the philosophers showed themselves to be in an inward warfare with themselves and in an external warfare with their surroundings, and their lives were spent in a wild, unsettled fashion.
In modern times things are very different; now we no longer see philosophic individuals who constitute a class by themselves. With the present day all difference has disappeared; philosophers are not monks, for we find them generally in connection with the world, participating with others in some common work or calling. They live, not independently, but in the relation of citizens, or they occupy public offices and take part in the life of the state. Certainly they may be private persons, but if so, their position as such does not in any way isolate them from their other relationships. They are involved in present conditions, in the world and its work and progress. Thus their philosophy is only by the way, a sort of luxury and superfluity. This difference is really to be found in the manner in which outward conditions have taken shape after the building up of the inward world of religion. In modern times, namely, on account of the reconciliation of the worldly principle with itself, the external world is at rest, is brought into order — worldly relationships, conditions, modes of life, have become constituted and organized in a manner which is conformable to nature and rational. We see a universal, comprehensible connection, and with that individuality likewise attains another character and nature, for it is no longer the plastic individuality of the ancients. This connection is of such power that every individuality is under its dominion, and yet at the same time can construct for itself an inward world. The external has thus been reconciled with itself in such a way that both inward and outward may be self-sufficing and remain independent of one another; and the individual is in the condition of being able to leave his external side to external order, while in the case of those plastic forms the external could only be determined entirely from within. Now, on the contrary, with the higher degree of strength attained by the inward side of the individual, he may hand the external over to chance; just as he leaves clothing to the contingencies of fashion, not considering it worth while to exert his understanding upon it. The external he leaves to be determined by the order which is present in the particular sphere in which his lot is cast. The circumstances of life are, in the true sense, private affairs, determined by outward conditions, and do not contain anything worthy of our notice. Life becomes scholarly, uniform, commonplace, it connects itself with outwardly given relationships and cannot represent or set itself forth as a form pertaining only to itself. Man must not take up the character of showing himself an independent form, and giving himself a position in the world created by himself. Because the objective power of external relationships is infinitely great, and for that reason the way in which I perforce am placed in them has become a matter of indifference to me, personality and the individual life generally are equally indifferent. A philosopher, it is said, should live as a philosopher, i.e., should be independent of the external relationships of the world, and should give up occupying himself with and troubling himself concerning them. But thus circumscribed in respect of all necessities, more especially of culture, no one can suffice for himself; he must seek to act in connection with others. The modern world is this essential power of connection, and it implies the fact that it is clearly necessary for the individual to enter into these relations of external existence; only a common mode of existence is possible in any calling or condition, and to this Spinoza forms the solitary exception. Thus in earlier times bravery was individual; while modern bravery consists in each not acting after his own fashion, but relying on his connection with others — and this constitutes his whole merit. The calling of philosopher is not, like that of the monks, an organized condition. Members of academies of learning are no doubt organized in part, but even a special calling like theirs sinks into the ordinary commonplace of state or class relationships, because admission thereinto is outwardly determined. The real matter is to remain faithful to one’s aims.
SECTION ONE. Modern Philosophy in its First Statement
THE FIRST TWO philosophers whom we have to consider are Bacon and Boehme; there is as complete a disparity between these individuals as between their systems of philosophy. None the less both agree that mind operates in the content of its knowledge as in its own domain, and this consequently appears as concrete Being. This domain in Bacon is the finite, natural world; in Boehme it is the inward, mystical, godly Christian life and existence; for the former starts from experience and induction, the latter from God and the pantheism of the Trinity.
A. Bacon.
THERE WAS ALREADY being accomplished the abandonment of the content which lies beyond us, and which through its form has lost the merit it possessed of being true, and is become of no significance to self-consciousness or the certainty of self and of its actuality; this we see for the first time consciously expressed, though not as yet in a very perfect form, by Francis Bacon, Baron Verulam, Viscount St. Albans. He is therefore instanced as in the fore-front of all this empirical philosophy, and even now our countrymen like to adorn their works with sententious sayings culled from him. Baconian philosophy thus usually means a philosophy which is founded on the observation of the external or spiritual nature of man in his inclinations, desires, rational and judicial qualities. From these conclusions are drawn, and general conceptions, laws pertaining to this domain, are thus discovered. Bacon has entirely set aside and rejected the scholastic method of reasoning from remote abstractions and being blind to what lies before one’s eyes. He takes as his standpoint the sensuous manifestation as it appears to the cultured man, as the latter reflects upon it; and this is conformable to the principle of accepting the finite and worldly as such.
Bacon was born in London in 1561. His progenitors and relatives held high office in the state, and his father was Keeper of the Great Seal to Queen Elizabeth. He in his turn, having been educated to follow the same vocation, at once devoted himself to the business of the state, and entered upon an important career. He early displayed great talent, and at the age of nineteen he produced a work on the condition of Europe (De statu Europæ). Bacon in his youth attached himself to the Earl of Essex, the favourite of Elizabeth, through whose support he, who as a younger son had to see his paternal estate pass to his elder brother, soon attained to better circumstances, and was elevated to a higher position. Bacon, however, sullied his fame by the utmost ingratitude and faithlessness towards his protector; for he is accused of having been prevailed upon by the enemies of the Earl after his fall to charge him publicly with High Treason. Under James I., the father of Charles I. who was beheaded, a weak man, to whom he recommended himself by his work De augmentis scientiarum, he received the most honourable offices of state by attaching himself to Buckingham: he was made Keeper of the Great Seal, Lord Chancellor of England, Baron Verulam. He likewise made a rich marriage, though he soon squandered all his means, and high though his position was, he stooped to intrigues and was guilty of accepting bribes in the most barefaced manner. Thereby he brought upon himself the ill-will both of people and of nobles, so that he was prosecuted, and his case was tried before Parliament. He was fined 40,000l., thrown into the Tower, and his name was struck out of the list of peers; during the trial and while he was in prison he showed the greatest weakness of character. He was, however, liberated from prison, and his trial was annulled, owing to the even greater hatred of the king and his minister Buckingham, under whose administration Bacon had filled these offices, and whose victim he appeared to have been; for he fell earlier than his comrade Buckingham, and was deserted and condemned by him. It was not so much his innocence as the fact that those who ruined him had made themselves hated to an equal degree through their rule, that caused the hatred and indignation against Bacon to be somewhat mitigated. But he neither recovered his own sense of self-respect nor the personal esteem of others, which he had lost through his former conduct. He retired into private life, lived in poverty, had to beg sustenance from the king, occupied himself during the remainder of his life with science only, and died in 1626.95
Since Bacon has ever been esteemed as the man who directed knowledge to its true source, to experience, he is, in fact, the special leader and representative of what is in England called Philosophy, and beyond which the English have not yet advanced. For they appear to constitute that people in Europe which, limited to the understanding of actuality, is destined, like the class of shopkeepers and workmen in the State, to live always immersed in matter, and to have actuality but not reason as object. Bacon won great praise by showing how attention is to be paid to the outward and inward manifestations of Nature, and the esteem in which his name is thus held is greater than can be ascribed directly to his merit. It has become the universal tendency of the time and of the English mode of reasoning, to proceed from facts, and to judge in accordance with them. Because Bacon gave expression to the tendency, and men require to have a leader and originator for any particular manner of thinking, he is credited with having given to knowledge this impulse towards experimental philosophy generally. But many cultured men have spoken and thought regarding what concerns and interests mankind, regarding state affairs, mind, heart, external nature, &c., in accordance with experience and in accordance with a cultured knowledge of the world. Bacon was just such a cultured man of the world, who had seen life in its great relations, had engaged in state affairs, had dealt practically with actual life, had observed men, their circumstances and relations, and had worked with them as cultured, reflecting, and, we may even say, philosophical men of the world. He thus did not escape the corruption of those who stood at the helm of the state. With all the depravity of his character he was a man of mind and clear perception; he did not, however, possess the power of reasoning through thoughts and notions that are universal. We do not find in him a methodical or scientific manner of regarding things, but only the external reasoning of a man of the world. Knowledge of the world he possessed in the highest degree: “rich imagination, powerful wit, and the penetrating wisdom which he displays upon that most interesting of all subjects, commonly called the world. This last appears to us to have been the characteristical quality of Bacon’s genius… It was men rather than things that he had studied, the mistakes of philosophers rather than the errors of philosophy. In fact he was no lover of abstract reasoning,” and although it pertains to philosophy, we find as little as possible of it in him. “His writings are indeed full of refined and most acute observations, but it seldom requires any effort on our part to apprehend their wisdom.” Hence mottoes are often derived from him. “His judgments,” however, “are commonly given ex cathedra, or, if he endeavours to elucidate them, it is by similes and illustrations and pointed animadversions more than by direct and appropriate arguments. General reasoning is absolutely essential in philosophy; the want of it is marked in Bacon’s writings.”96 His practical writings are specially interesting; but we do not find the bright flashes of genius that we expected. As during his career in the state he acted in accordance with practical utility, he now, at its conclusion, likewise applied himself in a practical way to scientific endeavours, and considered and treated the sciences in accordance with concrete experience and investigation. His is a consideration of the present, he makes the most of, and ascribes value to it as it appears; the existent is thus regarded with open eyes, respect is paid to it as to what reigns pre-eminent, and this sensuous perception is reverenced and recognized. Here a confidence on the part of reason in itself and in nature is awakened; it thinkingly applies itself to nature, certain of finding the truth in it, since both are in themselves harmonious.
Bacon likewise treated the sciences methodically; he did not merely bring forward opinions and sentiments, he did not merely express himself regarding the sciences dogmatically, as a fine gentleman might, but he went into the matter closely, and established a method in respect of scientific knowledge. It is only through this method of investigation introduced by him that he is noteworthy — it is in that way alone that he can be considered to belong to the history of the sciences and of philosophy. And through this principle of methodical knowledge he has likewise produced a great effect upon his times, by drawing attention to what was lacking in the sciences, both in their methods and in their content. He set forth the general principles of procedure in an empirical philosophy. The spirit of the philosophy of Bacon is to take experience as the true and only source of knowledge, and then to regulate the thought concerning it. Knowledge from experience stands in opposition to knowledge arising from the speculative Notion, and the opposition is apprehended in so acute a manner that the knowledge proceeding from the Notion is ashamed of the knowledge from experience, just as this again takes up a position of antagonism to the knowledge through the Notion. What Cicero says of Socrates may be said of Bacon, that he brought Philosophy down to the world, to the homes and every-day lives of men (Vol. I. p. 389). To a certain extent knowledge from the absolute Notion may assume an air of superiority over this knowledge; but it is essential, as far as the Idea is concerned, that the particularity of the content should be developed. The Notion is an essential matter, but as such its finite side is just as essential. Mind gives presence, external existence, to itself; to come to understand this extension, the world as it is, the sensuous universe, to understand itself as this, i.e. with its manifest, sensuous extension, is one side of things. The other side is the relation to the Idea. Abstraction in and for itself must determine and particularize itself. The Idea is concrete, self-determining, it has the principle of development; and perfect knowledge is always developed. A conditional knowledge in respect of the Idea merely signifies that the working out of the development has not yet advanced very far. But we have to deal with this development; and for this development and determination of the particular from the Idea, so that the knowledge of the universe, of nature, may be cultivated — for this, the knowledge of the particular is necessary. This particularity must be worked out on its own account; we must become acquainted with empirical nature, both with the physical and with the human. The merit of modern times is to have accomplished or furthered these ends; it was in the highest degree unsatisfactory when the ancients attempted the work. Empiricism is not merely an observing, hearing, feeling, etc., a perception of the individual; for it really sets to work to find the species, the universal, to discover laws. Now because it does this, it comes within the territory of the Notion — it begets what pertains to the region of the Idea; it thus prepares the empirical material for the Notion, so that the latter can then receive it ready for its use. If the science is perfected the Idea must certainly issue forth of itself; science as such no longer commences from the empiric. But in order that this science may come into existence, we must have the progression from the individual and particular to the universal — an activity which is a reaction on the given material of empiricism in order to bring about its reconstruction. The demand of a priori knowledge, which seems to imply that the Idea should construct from itself, is thus a reconstruction only, or what is in religion accomplished through sentiment and feeling. Without the working out of the empirical sciences on their own account, Philosophy could not have reached further than with the ancients. The whole of the Idea in itself is science as perfected and complete; but the other side is the beginning, the process of its origination. This process of the origination of science is different from its process in itself when it is complete, just as is the process of the history of Philosophy and that of Philosophy itself. In every science principles are commenced with; at the first these are the results of the particular, but if the science is completed they are made the beginning. The case is similar with Philosophy; the working out of the empirical side has really become the conditioning of the Idea, so that this last may reach its full development and determination. For instance, in order that the history of the Philosophy of modern times may exist, we must have a history of Philosophy in general, the process of Philosophy during so many thousand years; mind must have followed this long road in order that the Philosophy may be produced. In consciousness it then adopts the attitude of having cut away the bridge from behind it; it appears to be free to launch forth in its ether only, and to develop without resistance in this medium; but it is another matter to attain to this ether and to development in it. We must not overlook the fact that Philosophy would not have come into existence without this process, for mind is essentially a working upon something different.
- Bacon’s fame rests on two works. In the first place, he has the merit of having in his work De augmentis scientiarum presented to us a systematic encyclopedia of the sciences, an outline which must undoubtedly have caused a sensation amongst his contemporaries. It is important to set before men’s eyes a well arranged picture such as this of the whole, when that whole has not been grasped in thought. This encyclopedia gives a general classification of the sciences; the principles of the classification are regulated in accordance with the differences in the intellectual capacities. Bacon thus divides human learning according to the faculties of memory, imagination, and reason, for he distinguishes what pertains (1) to memory; (2) to imagination; (3) to reason. Under memory he considered history; under imagination, poetry, and art; and finally, under reason, philosophy.97 According to his favourite method of division these again are further divided, since he brings all else under these same heads; this is, however, unsatisfactory. To history belong the works of God — sacred, prophetic, ecclesiastical history; the works of men — civil and literary history; and likewise the works of nature, and so on.98 He goes through these topics after the manner of his time, a main characteristic of which is that anything can be made plausible through examples, e.g. from the Bible. Thus, in treating of Cosmetica, he says in regard to paint that “He is surprised that this depraved custom of painting has been by the penal laws both ecclesiastical and civil so long overlooked. In the Bible we read indeed of Jezebel that she painted her face; but nothing of the kind is said of Esther or Judith.”99 If kings, popes, etc., are being discussed, such examples as those of Ahab and Solomon must be brought forward. As formerly in civil laws — those respecting marriage, for instance — the Jewish forms held good, in Philosophy, too, the same are still to be found. In this work theology likewise appears, as also magic; there is contained in it a comprehensive system of knowledge and of the sciences.
The arrangement of the sciences is the least significant part of the work De augmentis scientiarum. It was by its criticism that its value was established and its effect produced, as also by the number of instructive remarks contained in it; all this was at that time lacking in the particular varieties of learning and modes of discipline, especially in as far as the methods hitherto adopted were faulty, and unsuitable to the ends in view: in them the Aristotelian conceptions of the schools were spun out by the understanding as though they were realities. As it was with the Schoolmen and with the ancients, this classification is still the mode adopted in the sciences, in which the nature of knowledge is unknown. In them the idea of the science is advanced beforehand, and to this idea a principle foreign to it is added, as a basis of division, just as here is added the distinction between memory, imagination and reason. The true method of division is found in the self-division of the Notion, its separating itself from itself. In knowledge the moment of self-consciousness is undoubtedly found, and the real self-consciousness has in it the moments of memory, imagination and reason. But this division is certainly not taken from the Notion of self-consciousness, but from experience, in which self-consciousness finds itself possessed of these capacities.
- The other remarkable feature in Bacon is that in his second work, his Organon, he sought at great length to establish a new method in learning; in this regard his name is still held greatly in honour by many. What chiefly distinguishes his system is his polemical attitude towards scholastic methods as they had hitherto existed, towards syllogistic forms. He calls these methods anticipationes naturæ; in them men begin with presuppositions, definitions, accepted ideas, with a scholastic abstraction, and reason further from these without regarding that which is present in actuality. Thus regarding God and His methods of operating in nature, regarding devils, &c., they make use of passages from the Bible, such as “Sun, stand thou still,” in order to deduce therefrom certain metaphysical propositions from which they go further still. It was against this a priori method that Bacon directed his polemic; as against these anticipations of nature he called attention to the explanation, the interpretation of nature.100 “The same action of mind,” he says, “which discovers a thing in question, judges it; and the operation is not performed by the help of any middle term, but directly, almost in the same manner as by the sense. For the sense in its primary objects at once apprehends the appearance of the object, and consents to the truth thereof.”101 The syllogism is altogether rejected by Bacon. As a matter of fact, this Aristotelian deduction is not a knowledge through itself in accordance with its content: it requires a foreign universal as its basis, and for that reason its movement is in its form contingent. The content is not in unity with the form, and this form is hence in itself contingent, because it, considered on its own account, is the movement onwards in a foreign content. The major premise is the content existent for itself, the minor is likewise the content not through itself, for it goes back into the infinite, i.e. it has not the form in itself; the form is not the content. The opposite may always be made out equally well through the syllogism, for it is a matter of indifference to this form what content is made its basis. “Dialectic does not assist in the discovery of the arts; many arts were found out by chance.”102
It was not against this syllogism generally, i.e. not against the Notion of it (for Bacon did not possess this), but against deduction as it was put into operation, as it was to the scholastics — the deduction which took an assumed content as its basis — that Bacon declaimed, urging that the content of experience should be made the basis, and the method of induction pursued. He demanded that observations on nature and experiments should be made fundamental, and pointed out the objects whose investigation was of special importance in the interests of human society, and so on. From this there then resulted the establishment of conclusions through induction and analogy.103 In fact it was only to an alteration in the content that, without being aware of it, Bacon was impelled. For though he rejected the syllogism and only permitted conclusions to be reached through induction, he unconsciously himself drew deductions; likewise all these champions of empiricism, who followed after him, and who put into practice what he demanded, and thought they could by observations, experiments and experiences, keep the matter in question pure, could neither so do without drawing deductions, nor without introducing conceptions; and they drew their deductions and formed their notions and conceptions all the more freely because they thought that they had nothing to do with conceptions at all; nor did they go forth from deduction to immanent, true knowledge. Thus when Bacon set up induction in opposition to the syllogism, this opposition is formal; each induction is also a deduction, which fact was known even to Aristotle. For if a universal is deduced from a number of things, the first proposition reads, “These bodies have these qualities;” the second, “All these bodies belong to one class;” and thus, in the third place, this class has these qualities. That is a perfect syllogism. Induction always signifies that observations are instituted, experiments made, experience regarded, and from this the universal determination is derived.
We have already called to mind how important it is to lead on to the content as the content of actuality, of the present; for the rational must have objective truth. The reconciliation of spirit with the world, the glorification of nature and of all actuality, must not be a Beyond, a Futurity, but must be accomplished now and here. It is this moment of the now and here which thereby comes into self-consciousness. But those who make experiments and observations, do not realize what they are really doing, for the sole interest taken by them in things, is owing to the inward and unconscious certainty which reason has of finding itself in actuality; and observations and experiments, if entered upon in a right way, result in showing that the Notion is the only objective existence. The sensuous individual eludes the experiments even while it is being operated upon, and becomes a universal; the best known example of this is to be found in positive and negative electricity in so far as it is positive and negative. There is another shortcoming of a formal nature, and one of which all empiricists partake, — that is that they believe themselves to be keeping to experience alone; it is to them an unknown fact that in receiving these perceptions they are indulging in metaphysics. Man does not stop short at the individual, nor can he do so. He seeks the universal, but thoughts, even if not Notions likewise, are what constitute the same. The most remarkable thought-form is that of force; we thus speak of the force of electricity, of magnetism, of gravity. Force, however, is a universal and not a perceptible; quite uncritically and unconsciously the empiricists thus permit of determinations such as these.
- Bacon finally gives the objects with which Philosophy mainly has to deal. These objects contrast much with that which we derive from perception and experience. “In the summary which Bacon gives of what he conceives ought to be the objects of philosophical inquiry, are the following; and we select those which he principally dwells upon in his works: ‘The prolongation of life; the restitution of youth in some degree; the retardation of old age, and the altering of statures; the altering of features; versions of bodies into other bodies; making of new species; impression of the air and raising tempests; greater pleasures of the senses, &c.’” He likewise deals with objects such as these, and he seeks to direct attention upon whether in their regard the means could not be found to carry out their ends; in such powers we should be able to make some progress. “He complains that such investigations have been neglected by those whom he designates ignavi regionum exploratores. In his Natural History he gives formal receipts for making gold, and performing many wonders.”104 Bacon thus does not by any means take the intelligent standpoint of an investigation of nature, being still involved in the grossest superstition, false magic, &c. This we find to be on the whole propounded in an intelligent way, and Bacon thus remains within the conceptions of his time. “The conversion of silver, quicksilver, or any other metal into gold is a thing difficult to believe, yet it is far more probable that a man who knows clearly the natures of weight, of the colour of yellow, of malleability and extension, of volatility and fixedness, and who has also made diligent search into the first seeds and menstruums of minerals, may at last by much and sagacious endeavour produce gold, than that a few grains of an elixir may so do… So again a man who knows well the nature of rarefaction, of assimilation, and of alimentation, shall by diets, bathings, and the like prolong life, or in some degree renew the vigour of youth.”105 These assertions are thus not as crude as they at first appear. In dealing with Medicine Bacon speaks amongst other things of maceration (Malacissatio per exterius)106 and so forth.
Bacon emphasizes what has reference to the formal aspect of investigation. For he says, “Natural philosophy is divided into two parts, the first consists in the investigation of causes; the second in the production of effects; the causes to be investigated are either final or formal causes, or else material or efficient causes. The former constitutes metaphysics; the latter physics. This last Bacon looks upon as a branch of philosophy very inferior in point of dignity and importance to the other and accordingly to ascertain the most probable means of improving our knowledge of metaphysics is the great object of his Organon.”107 He himself says: “It is a correct position that ‘true knowledge is knowledge by causes. And causes, again, are not improperly distributed into four kinds: the material, the formal, the efficient, and the final.’”108 (Vol. I. p. 174, Vol. II. p. 138.)
But in this connection an important point is that Bacon has turned against the teleological investigation of nature, against the investigation into final causes. “The investigation of final causes is useless; they corrupt rather than advance the sciences except such as have to do with human action.”109 To Bacon the important matter is to investigate by the study of causæ efficientes. To the consideration of final causes such assertions as these belong: “That the hairs of the eyelids are for a protection to the eyes; that the thick skins and hides of living creatures are to defend them from heat and cold; that the trees have leaves so that the fruit may not suffer from sun and wind”110: the hair is on the head on account of warmth; thunder and lightning are the punishment of God, or else they make fruitful the earth; marmots sleep during the winter because they can find nothing to eat; snails have a shell in order that they may be secure against attacks; the bee is provided with a sting. According to Bacon this has been worked out in innumerable different ways. The negative and external side of utility is turned round, and the lack of this adaptation to end is likewise drawn within the same embrace. It may, for example, be said that if sun or moon were to shine at all times, the police might save much money, and this would provide men with food and drink for whole months together. It was right that Bacon should set himself to oppose this investigation into final causes, because it relates to external expediency, just as Kant was right in distinguishing the inward teleology from the outward. As against the external end, there is, in fact, the inward end, i.e. the inward Notion of the thing itself, as we found it earlier in Aristotle (Vol. II. pp. 156-163). Because the organism possesses an inward adaptation to its ends, its members are indeed likewise externally adapted as regards one another; but the ends, as external ends, are heterogeneous to the individual, are unconnected with the object which is investigated. Speaking generally, the Notion of nature is not in nature itself, which would mean that the end was in nature itself; but as teleological, the Notion is something foreign to it. It does not have the end in itself in such a way that we have to accord respect to it — as the individual man has his end in himself and hence has to be respected. But even the individual man as individual has only a right to respect from the individual as such, and not from the universal. He who acts in the name of the universal, of the state, as a general does for instance, does not require to respect the individual at all; for the latter, although an end in himself, does not cease to be relative. He is this end in himself, not as excluding himself and setting himself in opposition, but only in so far as his true reality is the universal Notion. The end of the animal in itself as an individual is its own self-preservation; but its true end in itself is the species. Its self-preservation is not involved in this; for the self-preservation of its individuality is disadvantageous to the species, while the abrogation of itself is favourable thereto.
Now Bacon separates the universal principle and the efficient cause, and for that reason he removes investigation into ends from physics to metaphysics. Or he recognizes the Notion, not as universal in nature, but only as necessity, i.e. as a universal which presents itself in the opposition of its moments, not one which has bound them into a unity — in other words he only acknowledges a comprehension of one determinate from another determinate going on into infinity, and not of both from their Notion. Bacon has thus made investigation into the efficient cause more general, and he asserts that this investigation alone belongs to physics, although he allows that both kinds of investigation may exist side by side.111 Through that view he effected a great deal, and in so far as it has counteracted the senseless superstition which in the Germanic nations far exceeded in its horrors and absurdity that of the ancient world, it has the very merit which we met with in the Epicurean philosophy. That philosophy opposed itself to the superstitious Stoics and to superstition generally — which last makes any existence that we set before ourselves into a cause (a Beyond which is made to exist in a sensuous way and to operate as a cause), or makes two sensuous things which have no relation operate on one another. This polemic of Bacon’s against spectres, astrology, magic, &c.,112 can certainly not be regarded exactly as Philosophy like his other reflections, but it is at least of service to culture.
He also advises that attention should be directed to formal causes, the forms of things, and that they should be recognized.113 “But to give an exact definition of the meaning which Bacon attaches to the phrase formal causes is rather difficult; because his language upon this subject is uncertain in a very remarkable degree.”114 It may be thought that he understood by this the immanent determinations of things, the laws of nature; as a matter of fact the forms are none else than universal determinations, species, &c.115 He says: “The discovery of the formal is despaired of. The efficient and the material (as they are investigated and received, that is as remote causes, without reference to the latent process leading to the forms) are but slight and superficial, and contribute little, if anything, to true and active science. For though in nature nothing really exists beside individual bodies, performing pure individual acts according to a fixed law, yet in philosophy this very law, and the investigation, discovery and explanation of it, is the foundation as well of knowledge as of operation. And it is this law, with its clauses, that I mean when I speak of Forms… Let the investigation of Forms which are eternal and immutable constitute metaphysics. Whosoever is acquainted with Forms embraces the unity of nature in substances the most unlike.”116 He goes through this in detail, and quotes many examples to illustrate it, such as that of Heat. “Mind must raise itself from differences to species. The warmth of the sun and that of the fire are diverse. We see that grapes ripen by the warmth of the sun. But to see whether the warmth of the sun is specific, we also observe other warmth, and we find that grapes likewise ripen in a warm room; this proves that the warmth of the sun is not specific.”117
“Physic,” he says, “directs us through narrow rugged paths in imitation of the crooked ways of nature. But he that understands a form knows the ultimate possibility of superinducing that nature upon all kinds of matter; that is to say, as he himself interprets this last expression, is able to superinduce the nature of gold upon silver,” that is to say to make gold from silver, “and to perform all those other marvels to which the alchymists pretended. The error of these last consisted alone in hoping to arrive at these ends by fabulous and fantastical methods;” the true method is to recognize these forms. “One leading object of the Instauratio Magna and of the Novum Organon is to point out the necessity of ascertaining the formal causes and logical rules.”118 They are good rules, but not adapted to attain that end.
This is all that we have to say of Bacon. In dealing with Locke we shall have more to say of these empirical methods which were adopted by the English.
B. Jacob Boehme.
WE NOW PASS on from this English Lord Chancellor, the leader of the external, sensuous method in Philosophy, to the philosophus teutonicus, as he is called — to the German cobbler of Lusatia, of whom we have no reason to be ashamed. It was, in fact, through him that Philosophy first appeared in Germany with a character peculiar to itself: Boehme stands in exact antithesis to Bacon. He was also called theosophus teutonicus, just as even before this philosophia teutonica was the name given to mysticism.119 This Jacob Boehme was for long forgotten and decried as being simply a pious visionary; the so-called period of enlightenment, more particularly, helped to render his public extremely limited. Leibnitz thought very highly of him, but it is in modern times that his profundity has for the first time been recognized, and that he has been once more restored to honour. It is certain, on the one hand, that he did not merit the disdain accorded him; on the other, however, he did not deserve the high honour into which he was elevated. To call him an enthusiast signifies nothing at all. For if we will, all philosophers may be so termed, even the Epicureans and Bacon; for they all have held that man finds his truth in something else than eating and drinking, or in the common-sense every-day life of wood-cutting, tailoring, trading, or other business, private or official. But Boehme has to attribute the high honour to which he was raised mainly to the garb of sensuous feeling and perception which he adopted; for ordinary sensuous perception and inward feeling, praying and yearning, and the pictorial element in thought, allegories and such like, are in some measure held to be essential in Philosophy. But it is only in the Notion, in thought, that Philosophy can find its truth, and that the Absolute can be expressed and likewise is as it is in itself. Looked at from this point of view, Boehme is a complete barbarian, and yet he is a man who, along with his rude method of presentation, possesses a deep, concrete heart. But because no method or order is to be found in him, it is difficult to give an account of his philosophy.
Jacob Boehme was born in 1575 of poor parents, at Altseidenburg, near Görlitz, in Upper Lusatia. In his youth he was a peasant boy who tended the cattle. He was brought up as a Lutheran, and always remained such. The account of his life which is given with his works was drawn up by a clergyman who knew him personally, from information given by Boehme himself. Much is there related as to how he attained to more profound knowledge and wisdom by means of certain experiences through which he passed. Even when a herd tending the cattle, as he tells of himself, he had these wonderful manifestations. The first marvellous awakening that occurred to him took place in a thicket in which he saw a cavern and a vessel of gold. Startled by the splendour of this sight he was inwardly awakened from a dull stupor, but afterwards he found it was impossible for him to discover the objects of his vision. Subsequently he was bound apprentice to a shoemaker. More especially “was he spiritually awakened by the words: ‘Your heavenly Father will give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him’ (Luke xi. 13), so that, desiring to come to a knowledge of the truth, and yet retaining the simplicity of his mind, he prayed and sought, and knocked, fervently and earnestly, until, while travelling about with his master, he was, through the influence of the Father in the Son, spiritually transported into the glorious peace and the Sabbath of the soul, and thus his request was granted. According to his own account, he was then surrounded with divine light, and for seven days he remained in the supremest divine contemplation and joy.” His master for this dismissed him, saying he could not keep in his service “house-prophets such as he was.” After that he lived at Görlitz. In 1594 he rose in his trade to be master, and married. Later on, “in the year 1600, and in the twenty-fifth year of his age, once more” the light broke upon him in a second vision of the same kind. He tells that he saw a brightly scoured pewter dish in the room, and “by the sudden sight of this shining metal with its brilliant radiance” he was brought (into a meditation and a breaking free of his astral mind) “into the central point of secret nature,” and into the light of divine essence. “He went out into the open air in order that he might rid his brain of this hallucination, and none the less did he continue all the more clearly as time went on to experience the vision in this way received. Thus by means of the signatures or figures, lineaments, and colours which were depicted, he could, so to speak, look into the heart and inmost nature of all creatures (in his book De signatura rerum this reason which was impressed upon him is found and fully explained); and for this he was overwhelmed with joy, thanked God, and went peacefully about his affairs.” Later on he wrote several works. He continued to pursue his handicraft at Görlitz, and died at the same place in 1624, being then a master shoemaker.120
His works are especially popular with the Dutch, and for that reason most of the editions are issued from Amsterdam, though they were also surreptitiously printed in Hamburg. His first writing is the “Aurora” or “Morgenröthe im Aufgange,” and this was followed by others; the work “Von den drei Principien,” and another “Vom dreifachen Leben des Menschen,” are, along with several others, the most noteworthy. Boehme constantly read the Bible, but what other works he read is not known. A number of passages in his works, however, prove that he read much — evidently mystical, theosophic, and alchemistic writings for the most part, and he must certainly have included in his reading the works of Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, known as Paracelsus, a philosopher of a somewhat similar calibre, but much more confused, and without Boehme’s profundity of mind. He met with much persecution at the hands of the clergy, but he aroused less attention in Germany than in Holland and England, where his writings have been often printed.121 In reading his works we are struck with wonder, and one must be familiar with his ideas in order to discover the truth in this most confused method of expression.
The matter of Jacob Boehme’s philosophy is genuinely German; for what marks him out and makes him noteworthy is the Protestant principle already mentioned of placing the intellectual world within one’s own mind and heart, and of experiencing and knowing and feeling in one’s own self-consciousness all that formerly was conceived as a Beyond. Boehme’s general conceptions thus on the one hand reveal themselves as both deep and sound, but on the other, with all his need for and struggle after determination and distinction in the development of his divine intuitions of the universe, he does not attain either to clearness or order. There is no systematic connection but the greatest confusion in his divisions — and this exists even in his tables,122 in which three numbers are made use of.
What God is beside nature and creation.
Separability:
God in Love.
Mysterium
magnum.
The first Principium.
God in Wrath.
God in wrath and love.
Here nothing definite to hold the moments asunder is shown, and we have the sense of merely doing it by effort; now these and now other distinctions are set forth, and as they are laid down disconnectedly, they again come into confusion.
The manner and system which Boehme adopts must accordingly be termed barbarous; the expressions used in his works prove this, as when, for example, he speaks of the divine Salitter, Marcurius, &c. As Boehme places the life, the movement of absolute existence in the heart, so does he regard all conceptions as being in a condition of actuality; or he makes use of actuality as Notion, that is to say he forcibly takes natural things and sensuous qualities to express his ideas rather than the determinations of the Notion. For instance, sulphur and such like are not to him the things that we so name, but their essence; or the Notion has this form of actuality. Boehme’s profoundest interest is in the Idea, and he struggles hard to express it. The speculative truth which he desires to expound really requires, in order to be comprehended, thought and the form of thought. Only in thought can this unity be comprehended, in the central point of which his mind has its place; but it is just the form of thought that is lacking to him. The forms that he employs are really no longer determinations of the Notion at all. They are on the one hand sensuous, chemical determinations, such qualities as acid, sweet, sour, fierce, and, on the other, emotions such as wrath and love; and, further, tincture, essence, anguish, &c. For him these sensuous forms do not, however, possess the sensuous significance which belongs to them, but he uses them in order to find expression for his thought. It is, however, at once clear to us how the form of manifestation must necessarily appear forced, since thought alone is capable of unity. It thus appears strange to read of the bitterness of God, of the Flagrat, and of lightning; we first require to have the Idea, and then we certainly discern its presence here. But the other side is that Boehme utilizes the Christian form which lies nearest to him, and more especially that of the Trinity, as the form of the Idea: he intermingles the sensuous mode and the mode of popularly conceived religion, sensuous images and conceptions. However rude and barbarous this may on the one hand be, and however impossible it is to read Boehme continuously, or to take a firm grasp of his thoughts (for all these qualities, spirits and angels make one’s head swim), we must on the other hand recognize that he speaks of everything as it is in its actuality, and that he does this from his heart. This solid, deep, German mind which has intercourse with what is most inward, thus really exercises an immense power and force in order to make use of actuality as Notion, and to have what takes place in heaven around and within it. Just as Hans Sachs represented God, Christ and the Holy Ghost, as well as patriarchs and angels, in his own particular manner and as ordinary people like himself, not looking upon them as past and historic, so was it with Boehme.
To faith spirit has truth, but in this truth the moment of certainty of self is lacking. We have seen that the object of Christianity is the truth, the Spirit; it is given to faith as immediate truth. Faith possesses the truth, but unconsciously, without knowledge, without knowing it as its self-consciousness; and seeing that thought, the Notion, is necessarily in self-consciousness — the unity of opposites with Bruno — this unity is what is pre-eminently lacking to faith. Its moments as particular forms fall apart, more especially the highest moments — good and evil, or God and the Devil. God is, and the Devil likewise; both exist for themselves. But if God is absolute existence, the question may be asked, What absolute existence is this which has not all actuality, and more particularly evil within it? Boehme is hence on one side intent on leading the soul of man to the divine life, on inducing the soul to pay attention to the strife within itself, and make this the object of all its work and efforts; and then in respect of this content he strives to make out how evil is present in good — a question of the present day. But because Boehme does not possess the Notion and is so far back in intellectual culture, there ensues a most frightful and painful struggle between his mind and consciousness and his powers of expression, and the import of this struggle is the profoundest Idea of God which seeks to bring the most absolute opposites into unity, and to bind them together — but not for thinking reason. Thus if we would comprehend the matter, Boehme’s great struggle has been — since to him God is everything — to grasp the negative, evil, the devil, in and from God, to grasp God as absolute; and this struggle characterizes all his writings and brings about the torture of his mind. It requires a great and severe mental effort to bring together in one what in shape and form lie so far asunder; with all the strength that he possesses Boehme brings the two together, and therein shatters all the immediate significance of actuality possessed by both. But when thus he grasps this movement, this essence of spirit in himself, in his inward nature, the determination of the moments simply approaches more nearly to the form of self-consciousness, to the formless, or to the Notion. In the background, indeed, there stands the purest speculative thought, but it does not attain to an adequate representation. Homely, popular modes of conception likewise appear, a free out-spokenness which to us seems too familiar. With the devil, particularly, he has great dealings, and him he frequently addresses. “Come here,” he says, “thou black wretch, what dost thou want? I will give thee a potion.”123 As Prospero in Shakespeare’s “Tempest”124 threatens Ariel that he will “rend an oak and peg him in his knotty entrails … twelve winters,” Boehme’s great mind is confined in the hard knotty oak of the senses — in the gnarled concretion of the ordinary conception — and is not able to arrive at a free presentation of the Idea.
I shall shortly give Boehme’s main conceptions, and then several particular forms which he in turn adopts; for he does not remain at one form, because neither the sensuous nor the religious can suffice. Now even though this brings about the result that he frequently repeats himself, the forms of his main conceptions are still in every respect very different, and he who would try to give a consistent explanation of Boehme’s ideas, particularly when they pass into further developments, would only delude himself in making the attempt. Hence we must neither expect to find in Boehme a systematic presentation nor a true method of passing over into the individual. Of his thoughts we cannot say much without adopting his manner of expression, and quoting the particular passages themselves, for they cannot otherwise be expressed. The fundamental idea in Jacob Boehme is the effort to comprise everything in an absolute unity, for he desires to demonstrate the absolute divine unity and the union of all opposites in God. Boehme’s chief, and one may even say, his only thought — the thought that permeates all his works — is that of perceiving the holy Trinity in everything, and recognizing everything as its revelation and manifestation, so that it is the universal principle in which and through which everything exists; in such a way, moreover, that all things have this divine Trinity in themselves, not as a Trinity pertaining to the ordinary conception, but as the real Trinity of the absolute Idea. Everything that exists is, according to Boehme, this three-fold alone, and this three-fold is everything.125 To him the universe is thus one divine life and revelation of God in all things, so that when examined more closely, from the one reality of God, the sum and substance of all powers and qualities, the Son who shines forth from these powers is eternally born; the inward unity of this light with the substance of the powers is Spirit. Sometimes the presentation is vague, and then again it is clearer. What comes next is the explanation of this Trinity, and here the different forms which he uses to indicate the difference becoming evident in the same, more especially appear.
In the Aurora, the “Root or Mother of Philosophy, Astrology and Theology,” he gives a method of division in which he places these sciences in proximity, and yet appears merely to pass from one to the other without any clear definition or determination. “(1) In Philosophy divine power is treated of, what God is, and how in the Being of God nature, stars and Elementa are constituted; whence all things have their origin, what is the nature of heaven and earth, as also of angels, men and devils, heaven and hell and all that is creaturely, likewise what the two qualities in nature are, and this is dealt with out of a right ground in the knowledge of spirit, by the impulse and motion of God. (2) In astrology the powers of nature, of the stars and elements, are treated of, and how all creatures proceed from them, how evil and good are through them effected in men and animals. (3) In theology the kingdom of Christ is dealt with, as also its nature, and how it is set in opposition to hell, and how in nature it wars with the kingdom of darkness.”126
- What comes first is God the Father; this first is at once divided in itself and the unity of both its parts. “God is all,” he says, “He is the Darkness and the Light, Love and Anger, Fire and Light, but He calls Himself God only as to the light of His love. There is an eternal Contrarium between darkness and light; neither comprehends the other and neither is the other, and yet there is but one essence or substance, though separated by pain; it is likewise so with the will, and yet there is no separable essence. One single principle is divided in this way, that one is in the other as a nothing which yet exists; but it is not manifest in the property of that thing in which it is.”127 By anguish is expressed that which we know as the absolute negativity — that is the self-conscious, self-experienced, the self-relating negativity which is therefore absolute affirmation. All Boehme’s efforts were directed towards this point; the principle of the Notion is living in him, only he cannot express it in the form of thought. That is to say, all depends on thinking of the negative as simple, since it is at the same time an opposite; thus anguish [Qual] is the inward tearing asunder and yet likewise the simple. From this Boehme derives sources or springs [Quellen], a good play on the words. For pain [die Qual], this negativity, passes into life, activity, and thus he likewise connects it with quality [Qualität], which he makes into Quallity.128 The absolute identity of difference is all through present to him.
a. Boehme thus represents God not as the empty unity, but as this self-separating unity of absolute opposites; one must not, however, here expect a clearly defined distinction. The first, the one, the Father, has likewise the mode of natural existence; thus, like Proclus, he speaks of this God being simple essence. This simple essence he calls the hidden; and he therefore names it the Temperamentum, this unity of what is different, in which all is tempered. We find him also calling it the great Salitter — now the divine and now the natural Salitter — as well as Salniter. When he talks of this great salitter as of something known to us, we cannot first of all conceive what it means. But it is a vulgar corruption of the word sal nitri, saltpetre (which is still called salniter in Austria), i.e. just the neutral and in truth universal existence. The divine pomp and state is this, that in God a more glorious nature dwells, trees, plants, &c. “In the divine pomp or state two things have principally to be considered; salitter or the divine power, which brings forth all fruits, and marcurius or the sound.”129 This great salitter is the unrevealed existence, just as the Neo-Platonic unity is without knowledge of itself and likewise unrecognized.
b. This first substance contains all powers or qualities as not yet separated; thus this salitter likewise appears as the body of God, who embraces all qualities in Himself. Quality thus becomes an important conception, the first determination with Boehme; and he begins with qualities in his work “Morgenröthe im Aufgang.” He afterwards associates with this the conferring of quality, and in the same place says: “Quality is the mobility, boiling, springing, and driving of a thing.” These qualities he then tries to define, but the account he gives of them is vague. “As for example heat which burns, consumes and drives forth all whatsoever comes into it which is not of the same property; and again it enlightens and warms all cold, wet, and dark things; it compacts and hardens soft things. It contains likewise two other kinds in it, namely Light and Fierceness” (Negativity); “of which the light or the heart of the heat is in itself a pleasant, joyful glance or lustre, a power of life … and a source of the heavenly kingdom of joy. For it makes all things in this world living and moving; all flesh, trees, leaves, and grass grow in this world, as in the power of the light, and have their light therein, viz. in the good. Again, it contains also a fierceness or wrath which burns, consumes and spoils. This wrath or fierceness springs, drives, and elevates itself in the light, and makes the light movable. It wrestles and fights together in its two-fold source. The light subsists in God without heat, but it does not subsist so in nature. For all qualities in nature are one in another, in the same manner as God is all. For God” (the Father) “is the Heart.” On another occasion (Vom dreifachen Leben des Menschen, chap. iv. § 68, p. 881) the Son is the heart of God; and yet again the Spirit is called the heart (Morgenröthe, chap. ii. § 13, p. 29) “or fountain of nature, and from Him comes all. Now heat reigns and predominates in all powers in nature and warms all, and is one source or spring in all. But the light in the heat gives power to all qualities, for that all grow pleasant and joyful.” Boehme goes over quite a list of qualities: cold, hot, bitter, sweet, fierce, acid, hard, dense, soft qualities, sound, etc. “The bitter quality is in God also, but not in that manner as the gall is in man, but it is an everlasting power, in an elevating, triumphing spring or source of joy. All the creatures are made from these qualities, and live therein as in their mother.”130
“The virtues of the stars are nature itself. Everything in this world proceeds from the stars. That I shall prove to you if you are not a blockhead and have a little reason. If the whole Curriculum or the whole circumference of the stars is considered, we soon find that this is the mother of all things, or the nature from which all things have arisen and in which all things stand and live, and through which all things move. And all things are formed from these same powers and remain eternally therein.” Thus it is said that God is the reality of all realities. Boehme continues: “You must, however, elevate your mind in the Spirit, and consider how the whole of nature, with all the powers which are in nature, also extension, depth and height, also heaven and earth and all whatsoever is therein, and all that is above the heavens, is together the Body and Corporeity of God; and the powers of the stars are the fountain veins in the natural Body of God, in this world. You must not conceive that in the Body of the stars is the whole triumphing Holy Trinity, God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. But we must not so conceive as if God was not at all in the Corpus or Body of the stars, and in this world… Here now the question is, From whence has heaven, or whence borrows it this power, that it causes such mobility in nature? Here you must lift up your eyes beyond nature into the light, holy, triumphing, divine power, into the unchangeable holy Trinity, which is a triumphing, springing, movable Being, and all powers are therein, as in nature: of this heaven, earth, stars, elements, devils, angels, men, beasts, and all have their Being; and therein all stands. When we nominate heaven and earth, stars and elements, and all that is therein, and all whatsoever is above the heaven, then thereby is nominated the total God, who has made Himself creaturely in these above-mentioned” many “Beings, in His power which proceedeth forth from Him.”131
c. Boehme further defines God the Father as follows: “When we consider the whole nature and its property, then we see the Father: when we behold heaven and the stars, then we behold His eternal power and wisdom. So many stars as stand in the whole heaven, which are innumerable, so manifold and various is the power and wisdom of God the Father. Every star differs in its quality.” But “you must not conceive here that every power which is in the Father stands in a peculiar severed or divided part and place in the Father, as the stars do in heaven. No, but the Spirit shows that all the powers in the Father,” as the fountainhead, “are one in another as one power.” This whole is the universal power which exists as God the Father, wherein all differences are united; “creaturely” it, however, exists as the totality of stars, and thus as separation into the different qualities. “You must not think that God who is in heaven and above the heaven does there stand and hover like a power and quality which has in it neither reason nor knowledge, as the sun which turns round in its circle and shoots forth from itself heat and light, whether it be for benefit or hurt to the earth and creatures. No, the Father is not so, but He is an All-mighty, All-wise, All-knowing, All-seeing, All-hearing, All-smelling, All-tasting God, who in Himself is meek, friendly, gracious, merciful, and full of joy, yea Joy itself.”132
Since Boehme calls the Father all powers, he again distinguishes these as the seven first originating spirits.133 But there is a certain confusion in this and no thought-determination, no definite reason for there being exactly seven — such precision and certainty is not to be found in Boehme. These seven qualities are likewise the seven planets which move and work in the great Salitter of God; “the seven planets signify the seven spirits of God or the princes of the angels.” But they are in the Father as one unity, and this unity is an inward spring and fermentation. “In God all spirits triumph as one spirit, and a spirit ever calms and loves the others, and nothing exists excepting mere joy and rapture. One spirit does not stand alongside the others like stars in heaven, for all seven are contained within one another as one spirit. Each spirit in the seven spirits of God is pregnant with all seven spirits of God;” thus each is in God itself a totality. “One brings forth the other in and through itself;” this is the flashing forth of the life of all qualities.134
- As what came first was the source and germ of all powers and qualities, what comes second is process. This second principle is a very important conception, which with Boehme appears under very many aspects and forms, viz. as the Word, the Separator, Revelation — speaking generally the “I,” the source of all difference, and of the will and implicit Being which are in the powers of natural things; but in such a way that the light therein likewise breaks forth which leads them back to rest.
a. God as the simple absolute existence is not God absolutely; in Him nothing can be known. What we know is something different — but this “different” is itself contained in God as the perception and knowledge of God. Hence of the second step Boehme says that a separation must have taken place in this temperament. “No thing can become manifest to itself without opposition; for if it has nothing to withstand it, it always goes forward on its own account and does not go back within itself. But if it does not go back into itself as into that from which it originally arose, it knows nothing of its original state.” Original state [Urstand] he makes use of for substance; and it is a pity that we cannot use this and many other striking expressions. “Without adversity life would have no sensibility nor will nor efficacy, neither understanding nor science. Had the hidden God who is one solitary existence and will not of His own will brought Himself out of Himself, out of the eternal knowledge in the Temperamento, into divisibility of will, and introduced this same element of divisibility into an inclusiveness” (Identity) “so as to constitute it a natural and creaturely life, and had this element of separation in life not come into warfare, how was the will of God which is only one to be revealed to Himself? How could a knowledge of itself be present in a solitary will?”135 We see that Boehme is elevated infinitely above the empty abstraction of the highest reality, etc.
Boehme continues: “The commencement of all Beings is the Word as the breath of God, and God has become the eternal One of eternity and likewise remains so in eternity. The Word is the eternal beginning and remains so eternally, for it is the revelation of the eternal One through and by which the divine power is brought into one knowledge of somewhat. By the Word we understand the revealed will of God: by the Word we mean God the hidden God, from whom the Word eternally springs forth. The Word is the efflux of the divine One, and yet God Himself as His revelation.” Λόγος is more definite than Word, and there is a delightful double significance in the Greek expression indicating as it does both reason and speech. For speech is the pure existence of spirit; it is a thing which when once heard goes back within itself. “What has flowed out is wisdom, beginning and cause of all powers, colours, virtue and qualities.”136
Of the Son Boehme says: “The Son is” of the Father and “in the Father, the heart of the Father or light, and the Father beareth him ever, from eternity to eternity.” Thus “the Son is” indeed “another Person from the Father, though no other,” but the same “God as the Father,” whose image he is.137 “The Son is the Heart” or the pulsating element “in the Father; all the powers which are in the Father are the propriety of the Father; and the Son is the heart or the kernel in all the powers in the whole Father, and he is the cause of the springing joy in all powers in the whole Father. From the Son the eternal joy rises and springs in all the powers of the Father, as the sun does in the heart of the stars. It signifies the Son, as the circle of the stars signifies the manifold powers of the Father; it lightens the heavens, the stars and the deep above the earth, working in all things that are in this world; it enlightens and gives power to all the stars and tempers their power. The Son of God is continually generated from all the powers of his Father from eternity, just as the sun is born of the stars; He is ever born and is not made, and is the heart and lustre shining forth from all powers. He shines in all powers of the Father, and his power is the moving, springing joy in all the powers of the Father, and shines in the whole Father as the sun does in the whole world. For if the Son did not shine in the Father, the Father would be a dark valley; for the Father’s power would not rise from eternity to eternity, and so the divine Being would not subsist.”138 This life of the Son is an important matter; and in regard to this issuing forth and manifestation Boehme has likewise brought forward the most important assertions.
b. “From such a revelation of powers in which the will of the eternal One contemplates itself, flows the understanding and the knowledge of the something [Ichts], since the eternal will contemplates itself in the something [Ichts].” “Ichts” is a play upon the word “Nichts” (nothing), for it is simply the negative; yet it is at the same time the opposite of nothing, since the Ich (Ego) of self-consciousness is contained in it. The Son, the something, is thus “I,” consciousness, self-consciousness: God is not only the abstract neutral but likewise the gathering together of Himself into the point of Being-for-self. The “other” of God is thus the image of God. “This similitude is the Mysterium magnum, viz. the creator of all beings and creatures; for it is the separator” (of the whole) “in the efflux of the will which makes the will of the eternal One separable — the separability in the will from which powers and qualities take their rise.” This separator is “constituted the steward of nature, by whom the eternal will rules, makes, forms and constitutes all things.” The separator is effectuating and self-differentiating, and Boehme calls this “Ichts,” likewise Lucifer, the first-born Son of God, the creaturely first-born angel who was one of the seven spirits. “But this Lucifer has fallen and Christ has come in his place.”139 This is the connection of the devil with God, namely other-Being and then Being-for-self or Being-for-one, in such a way that the other is for one; and this is the origin of evil in God and out of God. This is the furthest point of thought reached by Jacob Boehme. He represents this Fall of Lucifer as that the “Ichts,” i.e. self-knowledge, the “I” [Ichheit] (a word which we find used by him), the inward imagining of self, the inward fashioning of self (the being-for-self), is the fire which absorbs all things. This is the negative side in the separator, the anguish; or it is the wrath of God. This divine wrath is hell and the devil, who through himself imagines himself into himself. This is very bold and speculative; Boehme here seeks to show in God Himself the sources of the divine anger. He also calls the will of the something [“Ichts”] self-hood; it is the passing over of the something [“Ichts”] into the nothing [Nichts], the “I” imagining itself within itself. He says: “Heaven and hell are as far removed from one another as day and night, as something and nothing.” Boehme has really here penetrated into the utmost depths of divine essence; evil, matter, or whatever it has been called, is the I = I, the Being-for-self, the true negativity. Before this it was the nonens which is itself positive, the darkness; but the true negativity is the “I.” It is not anything bad because it is called the evil; it is in mind alone that evil exists, because it is conceived therein as it is in itself. “Where the will of God willeth in anything, there God is manifested, and in that manifestation the angels also dwell; but where God in any thing willeth not with the will of the thing, there God is not manifested to it, but dwelleth” (there) “in Himself without the co-operating of the thing;” in that case “in that thing is its own will, and there the devil dwelleth and all whatever is without God.”140
Boehme in his own way sets forth the form further assumed in this process in a pictorial manner. This “Separator deduces qualities from itself, from which the infinite manifold arises, and through which the eternal One makes itself perceptible” (so that it is for others) “not according to the unity, but in accordance with the efflux of the unity.” Implicit Being and the manifold are absolutely opposed through the Notion, which Boehme did not have: Being-for-self implies Being-for-another and retrogression into the opposite. Boehme sways backwards and forwards in apparent contradictions, and does not well know how to find a way out of the difficulty. “But the efflux is carried on to the greatest extreme possible, to the generation of fire” — dark fire without light, darkness, the hidden, the self;141— “in which fiery nature,” however, since this fire rises and shoots up, “the eternal One becomes majestic and a light,” and this light which there breaks forth is the form which the other principle assumes. This is the return to the One. “Thereby” (through fire) “the eternal power becomes desirous and effectual and” (fire) “is the original condition” (essence) “of the sensitive” (feeling) “life, where in the Word of power an eternal sensitive life first takes its origin. For if life had no sensitiveness, it would have no will nor efficacy; but pain” — anguish, suffering — first “makes it” (all life) “effectual and endows it with will. And the light of such kindling through fire makes it joyous, for it is an anointment,” joy and loveliness “of painfulness.”142
Boehme turns this round in many ways in order to grasp the something [Ichts], the Separator, as it “rises”143 from the Father. The qualities rise in the great Salitter, stir, raise, and move [rügen] themselves. Boehme has there the quality of astringency in the Father, and he then represents the process of the something [Ichts] as a sharpness, a drawing together, as a flash of lightning that breaks forth. This light is Lucifer. The Being-for-self, the self-perception, is by Boehme called the drawing together into a point. That is astringency, sharpness, penetration, fierceness; to this pertains the wrath of God, and here Boehme in this manner grasps the “other” of God in God Himself. “This source can be kindled through great motion or elevation. Through the contraction the creaturely Being is formed so that a heavenly Corpus may be” intelligibly “formed. But if it” — the sharpness— “be kindled through elevation, which those creatures only can do which are created out of the divine Salitter, then it is a burning source-vein of the wrath of God. The flash is the mother of light; for the flash generates the light, and is the Father of the fierceness; for the fierceness abides in the flash as a seed in the father, and that flash generates also the tone or sound” — the flash is, speaking generally, the absolute generator. The flash is still connected with pain; light is what brings intelligence. The divine birth is the going forth of the flash, of the life of all qualities.144 This is all from the Aurora.
In the Quæstionibus theosophicis Boehme makes particular use of the form of Yes and No for the separator, for this opposition. He says: “The reader must know that in Yes and No all things consist, whether divine, devilish, earthly, or what they may be called. The One as the Yes is pure power and life, and it is the truth of God or God Himself. He would be unknowable in Himself, and in Him there would be no joy nor elevation, nor feeling” — life— “without the No. The No is a counterstroke of the Yes, or of the truth” (this negativity is the principle of all knowledge, comprehension), “that the truth may be manifest and be a something wherein there is a contrarium in which there is the eternal love, moving, feeling, and willing, and demanding to be loved. And yet we cannot say that the Yes is separated from the No, and that they are two things in proximity; for they are only one thing, but they separate themselves into two beginnings and make two centra, where each works and wills in itself. Without those two, which are continually in strife, all things would be a nothing, and would stand still without movement. If the eternal will did not itself flow from itself and introduce itself into receptibility, there would be no form nor distinction, for all powers would” then “be one power. Neither could there be understanding in that case, for the understanding arises” (has its substance) “in the differentiation of the manifold, where one property sees, proves and wills the others. The will which has flowed out wills dissimilarity, so that it may be distinguished from similarity and be its own something — and that something may exist, that the eternal seeing may see and feel. And from the individual will arises the No, for it brings itself into ownness, i.e. receptivity of self. It desires to be something and does not make itself in accordance with unity; for unity is a Yes which flows forth, which ever stands thus in the breathing forth of itself, being imperceptible; for it has nothing in which it can find itself excepting in the receptivity of the dissentient will, as in the No which is counterstroke to the Yes, in which the Yes is indeed revealed, and in which it possesses something which it can will. And the No is therefore called a No, because it is a desire turned inwards on itself, as if it were a shutting up into negativity. The emanated seeking will is absorbent and comprehends itself within itself, from it come forms and qualities: (1) Sharpness, (2) Motion, (3) Feeling. (4) The fourth property is Fire as the flash of light; this rises in the bringing together of the great and terrible sharpness and the unity. Thus in the contact a Flagrat [Schrack] results, and in this Flagrat [Schrack] unity is apprehended as being a Flash or Gleam, an exulting joy.” That is the bursting forth of the unity. “For thus the light arises in the midst of the darkness, for the unity becomes a light, and the receptivity of the carnal will in the qualities becomes a Spirit-fire which has its source and origin out of the sharp, cold astringency. And according to that, God is an angry” and “jealous God,” and in this we have evil. “(a) The first quality of the absorption is the No; (b) Sharpness; (c) Hardness; (d) Feeling; (e) the source of fire, hell or hollowness, Hiddenness. (5) The fifth quality, Love, makes in the fire, as in pain, another Principium as a great fire of love.”145 These are the main points under the second head. In such depths Boehme keeps struggling on, for to him conceptions are lacking, and there are only religious and chemical forms to be found; and because he uses these in a forced sense in order to express his ideas, not only does barbarism of expression result, but incomprehensibility as well.
c. “From this eternal operation of the sensation the visible world sprang; the world is the Word which has flowed forth and has disposed itself into qualities, since in qualities the particular will has arisen. The Separator has made it a will of its own after such a fashion.”146 The world is none other than the essence of God made creaturely.147 Hence “If thou beholdest the Deep” of the heavens, “the Stars, the Elements and the Earth,” and what they have brought forth, “then thou” certainly “comprehendest not with thy eyes the bright and clear Deity, though indeed it is” likewise “there and in them.” Thou seest only their creaturely manifestation. “But if thou raisest thy thoughts and considerest … God who rules in holiness in this government or dominion, then thou breakest through the heaven of heavens and apprehendest God at His holy heart. The powers of heaven ever operate in images, growths and colours, in order to reveal the holy God, so that He may be in all things known.”148
- Finally what comes third in these three-fold forms is the unity of the light, of the separator and power: this is the spirit, which is already partially implied in what has preceded. “All the stars signify the power of the Father, and from them issues the sun” (they make themselves a counterstroke to unity). “And from all the stars there goes forth the power which is in every star, into the Deep, and the power, heat and shining of the sun goes likewise into the Deep” — back to the stars, into the power of the Father. “And in the Deep the power of all stars, together with the heat and lustre of the sun, are all but one thing, a moving, boiling Hovering, like a spirit or matter. Now in the whole deep of the Father, externally without the Son, there is nothing but the manifold and unmeasurable or unsearchable power of the Father and the Light of the Son. The Light of the Son is in the Deep of the Father a living, all-powerful, all-knowing, all-hearing, all-seeing, all-smelling, all-tasting, all-feeling Spirit, wherein is all power, splendour, and wisdom, as in the Father and the Son.”149 That is Love, the softener of all powers through the light of the Son. We see that the sensuous element thus pertains to this.
Boehme really has the idea that “God’s essence” (which has proceeded from the eternal deep as world) “is thus not something far away which possesses a particular position or place, for” essence, “the abyss of nature and creation, is God Himself. Thou must not think that in heaven there was some manner of Corpus” — the seven spirits generate this Corpus or heart— “which above all other things is called God. No; but the whole divine power which itself is heaven and the heaven of all heavens, is so generated, and that is called God the Father; of whom all the holy angels are generated, in like manner also the spirit of all men. Thou canst name no place, either in heaven or in this world, where the divine birth is not. The birth of the divine Trinity likewise takes place in thine own heart; all three persons are generated in thy heart, God the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. In the divine power everywhere we find the fountain spring of the divine birth; and there already are all the seven qualifying or fountain spirits of God, as if thou wouldst make a spacious creaturely circumscribed circle and hadst the deity therein.”150 In every spirit all are contained.
To Boehme this trinity is the complete universal life in each individual, it is absolute substance. He says: “All things in this world are according to the similitude of this ternary. Ye blind Jews, Turks, and Heathens, open wide the eyes of your mind: I will show you, in your body, and in every natural thing, in men, beasts, fowls, and worms, also in wood, stone, leaves, and grass, the likeness of the holy ternary in God. You say, there is but one Being in God, and that God has no Son. Open your eyes and consider your selves: man is made according to the similitude and out of the power of God in his ternary. Behold thy inward man, and then thou wilt see it most plainly and clearly, if thou art not a fool and an irrational beast. Therefore observe, in thy heart, in thy veins, and in thy brain, thou hast thy spirit; and all the powers which move in thy heart, in thy veins, and in thy brain, wherein thy life consists, signify God the Father. From that power springs up [gebaret] thy light, so that thou seest, understandest, and knowest in the same power what thou art to do; for that light glimmers in thy whole body; and the whole body moves in the power and knowledge of the light; this is the Son which is born in thee.” This light, this seeing and understanding, is the second determination; it is the relationship to itself. “Out of thy light goes forth into the same power, reason, understanding, skill, and wisdom, to govern the whole body, and to distinguish all whatsoever is externally without the body. And both these are but one in the government of thy mind, viz. thy spirit, which signifies God the Holy Ghost. And the Holy Ghost from God rules in this spirit in thee, if thou art a child of light and not of darkness. Now observe: in either wood, stone, or herbs there are three things contained, neither can anything be generated or grow, if but one of the three should be left out. First, there is the power, from which a body comes to be, whether wood, stone, or herbs; after that there is in that” thing “a sap which is the heart of the thing. And thirdly there is in it a springing, flowing power, smell, or taste, which is the spirit of the thing whereby it grows and increases. Now if any of these three fail, the thing cannot subsist.”151 Thus Boehme regards everything as this ternary.
When he comes into particulars we see that he is obscure; from his detailed explanations there is therefore not much to be derived. As showing his manner of apprehending natural things I shall give one more example of the manner in which, in the further working out of the existence of nature as a counterstroke to the divine knowledge, he makes use of what we call things as Notions (supra, p. 192). The creaturely, he says, has “three kinds of powers or Spiritus in different Centris, but in one Corpore. (α) The first and external Spiritus is the coarse sulphur, salt and Mercurius, which is a substance of four elements” (fire, water, earth, air) “or of the stars. It forms the visible Corpus according to the constellation of the stars or property of the planets and now enkindled elements — the greatest power of the Spiritus mundi. The Separator makes the signature or sign” — the self. The salt, the salitter, is approximately the neutral: mercury [Merk or Mark] the operating, unrest as against nourishment; the coarse sulphur, the negative unity. (β) “The other Spiritus is found in the oil of sulphur, the fifth essence, viz. a root of the four elements. That is the softening and joy of the coarse, painful spirit of sulphur and salt; the real cause of growing life, a joy of nature as is the sun in the elements” — the direct principle of life. “In the inward ground of that coarse spirit we see a beautiful, clear Corpus in which the ideal light of nature shines from the divine efflux.” The outward separator signs what is taken up with the shape and form of the plant which receives into itself this coarse nourishment. (γ) “What comes third is the tincture, a spiritual fire and light; the highest reason for which the first separation of qualities takes place in the existence of this world. Fiat is the Word of each thing and belongs according to its peculiar quality to eternity. Its origin is the holy power of God. Smell [Ruch] is the sensation of this tincture. The elements are only a mansion and counterstroke of the inward power, a cause of the movement of the tincture.”152 Sensuous things entirely lose the force of sensuous conceptions. Boehme uses them, though not as such, as thought determinations, that constitutes the hard and barbarous element in Boehme’s representations, yet at the same time this unity with actuality and this present of infinite existence.
Boehme describes the opposition in creation in the following way. If nature is the first efflux of the Separator, two kinds of life must yet be understood as in the counterstroke of the divine essence, beyond that temporal one there is an eternal, to which the divine understanding is given. It stands at the basis of the eternal, spiritual world, in the Mysterium Magnum of the divine counterstroke (personality) — a mansion of divine will through which it reveals itself and is revealed to no peculiarity of personal will. In this centrum man has both lives in himself, he belongs to time and eternity. He is (α) universal in the “eternal understanding of the one good will which is a temperament; (β) the original will of nature, viz. the comprehensibility of the Centra, where each centrum in the divisibility shuts itself in one place to egotism and self-will as a personal Mysterium or mind. The former only requires a counterstroke to its similarity; this latter, the self-generated natural will also requires in the place of the egotism of the dark impression a likeness, that is a counterstroke through its own comprehensibility, through which comprehension it requires nothing but its corporality as a natural ground.” Now it is this “I,” the dark, pain, fire, the wrath of God, implicitude, self-comprehension, which is broken up in regeneration; the I is shattered, painfulness brought into true rest — just as the dark fire breaks into light.153
Now these are the principal ideas found in Boehme; those most profound are (α) the generating of Light as the Son of God from qualities, through the most living dialectic; (β) God’s diremption of Himself. Barbarism in the working out of his system can no more fail to be recognized than can the great depths into which he has plunged by the union of the most absolute opposites. Boehme grasps the opposites in the crudest, harshest way, but he does not allow himself through their unworkableness to be prevented from asserting the unity. This rude and barbarous depth which is devoid of Notion, is always a present, something which speaks from itself, which has and knows everything in itself. We have still to mention Boehme’s piety, the element of edification, the way in which the soul is guided in his writings. This is in the highest degree deep and inward, and if one is familiar with his form these depths and this inwardness will be found. But it is a form with which we cannot reconcile ourselves, and which permits no definite conception of details, although we cannot fail to see the profound craving for speculation which existed within this man.
SECTION TWO. Period of the Thinking Understanding
AFTER NEO-PLATONISM AND all that is associated with it is left behind, it is not until Descartes is arrived at that we really enter upon a philosophy which is, properly speaking, independent, which knows that it comes forth from reason as independent, and that self-consciousness is an essential moment in the truth. Philosophy in its own proper soil separates itself entirely from the philosophizing theology, in accordance with its principle, and places it on quite another side. Here, we may say, we are at home, and like the mariner after a long voyage in a tempestuous sea, we may now hail the sight of land; with Descartes the culture of modern times, the thought of modern Philosophy, really begins to appear, after a long and tedious journey on the way which has led so far. It is specially characteristic of the German that the more servile he on the one hand is, the more uncontrolled is he on the other; restraint and want of restraint — originality, is the angel of darkness that buffets us. In this new period the universal principle by means of which everything in the world is regulated, is the thought that proceeds from itself; it is a certain inwardness, which is above all evidenced in respect to Christianity, and which is the Protestant principle in accordance with which thought has come to the consciousness of the world at large as that to which every man has a claim. Thus because the independently existent thought, this culminating point of inwardness, is now set forth and firmly grasped as such, the dead externality of authority is set aside and regarded as out of place. It is only through my own free thought within that thought can however be recognized and ratified by me. This likewise signifies that such free thought is the universal business of the world and of individuals; it is indeed the duty of every man, since everything is based upon it; thus what claims to rank as established in the world man must scrutinize in his own thoughts. Philosophy is thus become a matter of universal interest, and one respecting which each can judge for himself; for everyone is a thinker from the beginning.
On account of this new beginning to Philosophy we find in the old histories of Philosophy of the seventeenth century — e.g. that of Stanley — the philosophy of the Greeks and Romans only, and Christianity forms the conclusion. The idea was that neither in Christianity nor subsequently any philosophy was to be found, because there was no longer a necessity for it, seeing that the philosophic theology of the Middle Ages had not free, spontaneous thought as its principle (Vol. I. pp. 111, 112). But though it is true that this has now become the philosophic principle, we must not expect that it should be at once methodically developed out of thought. The old assumption is made, that man only attains to the truth through reflection; this plainly is the principle. But the determination and definition of God, the world of the manifold as it appears, is not yet revealed as necessarily proceeding from thought; for we have only reached the thought of a content which is given through ordinary conception, observation, and experience.
On the one hand we see a metaphysic, and, on the other, the particular sciences: on the one hand abstract thought as such, on the other its content taken from experience; these two lines in the abstract stand opposed to one another, and yet they do not separate themselves so sharply. We shall indeed come to an opposition, viz. to that between a priori thought — that the determinations which are to hold good for thought must be taken from thought itself — and the determination that we must commence, conclude and think from experience. This is the opposition between rationalism and empiricism; but it is really a subordinate one, because even the metaphysical mode in philosophy, which only allows validity to immanent thought, does not take what is methodically developed from the necessity of thought, but in the old way derives its content from inward or outward experience, and through reflection and meditation renders it abstract. The form of philosophy which is first reached through thought is metaphysics, the form of the thinking understanding; this period has, as its outstanding figures, Descartes and Spinoza, likewise Malebranche and Locke, Leibnitz and Wolff. The second form is Scepticism and Criticism with regard to the thinking understanding, to metaphysics as such, and to the universal of empiricism; here we shall go on to speak of representatives of the Scottish, German, and French philosophies; the French materialists again turn back to metaphysics.
METAPHYSICS IS WHAT reaches after substance, and this implies that one unity, one thought is maintained in opposition to dualism, just as Being was amongst the ancients. In metaphysics itself we have, however, the opposition between substantiality and individuality. What comes first is the spontaneous, but likewise uncritical, metaphysics, and it is represented by Descartes and Spinoza, who assert the unity of Being and thought. The second stage is found in Locke, who treats of the opposition itself inasmuch as he considers the metaphysical Idea of experience, that is the origin of thoughts and their justification, not yet entering on the question of whether they are absolutely true. In the third place we have Leibnitz’s monad — the world viewed as a totality.
A. First Division.
WE HERE ENCOUNTER the innate ideas of Descartes. The philosophy of Spinoza, in the second place, is related to the philosophy of Descartes as its necessary development only; the method is an important part of it. A method which stands alongside of Spinozism and which is also a perfected development of Cartesianism, is, in the third place, that by which Malebranche has represented this philosophy.
René Descartes is a bold spirit who re-commenced the whole subject from the very beginning and constituted afresh the ground-work on which Philosophy is based, and to which, after a thousand years had passed, it once more returned. The extent of the influence which this man exercised upon his times and the culture of Philosophy generally, cannot be sufficiently expressed; it rests mainly in his setting aside all former presuppositions and beginning in a free, simple, and likewise popular way, with popular modes of thought and quite simple propositions, in his leading the content to thought and extension or Being, and so to speak setting up this before thought as its opposite. This simple thought appeared in the form of the determinate, clear understanding, and it cannot thus be called speculative thought or speculative reason. There are fixed determinations from which Descartes proceeds, but only of thought; this is the method of his time. What the French called exact science, science of the determinate understanding, made its appearance at this time. Philosophy and exact science were not yet separated, and it was only later on that this separation first took place.
To come to the life of Descartes — he was born in 1596, at La Haye in Touraine, of an ancient and noble race. He received an education of the usual kind in a Jesuit school, and made great progress; his disposition was lively and restless; he extended his insatiable zeal in all directions, pursued his researches into all systems and forms; his studies, in addition to ancient literature, embraced such subjects as philosophy, mathematics, chemistry, physics, and astronomy. But the studies of his youth in the Jesuit school, and those studies which he afterwards prosecuted with the same diligence and strenuous zeal, resulted in giving him a strong disinclination for learning derived from books; he quitted the school where he had been educated, and yet his eagerness for learning was only made the keener through this perplexity and unsatisfied yearning. He went as a young man of eighteen to Paris, and there lived in the great world. But as he here found no satisfaction, he soon left society and returned to his studies. He retired to a suburb of Paris and there occupied himself principally with mathematics, remaining quite concealed from all his former friends. At last, after the lapse of two years, he was discovered by them, drawn forth from his retirement, and again introduced to the great world. He now once more renounced the study of books and threw himself into the affairs of actual life. Thereafter he went to Holland and entered the military service; soon afterwards, in 1619, and in the first year of the Thirty Years’ War, he went as a volunteer with the Bavarian troops, and took part in several campaigns under Tilly. Many have found learning unsatisfying; Descartes became a soldier — not because he found in the sciences too little, but because they were too much, too high for him. Here in his winter quarters he studied diligently, and in Ulm, for instance, he made acquaintance with a citizen who was deeply versed in mathematics. He was able to carry out his studies even better in winter quarters at Neuberg on the Danube, where once more, and now most profoundly, the desire awoke in him to strike out a new departure in Philosophy and entirely reconstruct it; he solemnly promised the Mother of God to make a pilgrimage to Loretto if she would prosper him in this design, and if he should now at last come to himself and attain to peace. He was also in the battle at Prague in which Frederick the Elector-Palatine lost the Bohemian crown. Yet since the sight of these wild scenes could not satisfy him, he gave up military service in 1621. He made several other journeys through the rest of Germany, and then proceeded to Poland, Prussia, Switzerland, Italy and France. On account of its greater freedom he withdrew to Holland, in order there to pursue his projects; here he lived in peace from 1629 to 1644 — a period in which he composed and issued most of his works, and also defended them against the manifold attacks from which they suffered, and which more especially proceeded from the clergy. Queen Christina of Sweden finally called him to her court at Stockholm, which was the rendezvous for all the most celebrated men of learning of the time, and there he died in 1650.154
As regards his philosophic works, those which contain his first principles have in particular something very popular about their method of presentation, which makes them highly to be recommended to those commencing the study of philosophy. Descartes sets to work in a quite simple and childlike manner, with a narration of his reflections as they came to him. Professor Cousin of Paris has brought out a new edition of Descartes in eleven octavo volumes; the greater part consists of letters on natural phenomena. Descartes gave a new impetus to mathematics as well as to philosophy. Several important methods were discovered by him, upon which the most brilliant results in higher mathematics were afterwards built. His method is even now an essential in mathematics, for Descartes is the inventor of analytic geometry, and consequently the first to point out the way in this field of science to modern mathematics. He likewise cultivated physics, optics, and astronomy, and made the most important discoveries in these; we have not, however, to deal with such matters. The application of metaphysics to ecclesiastical affairs, investigations, etc., has likewise no special interest for us.
- In Philosophy Descartes struck out quite original lines; with him the new epoch in Philosophy begins, whereby it was permitted to culture to grasp in the form of universality the principle of its higher spirit in thought, just as Boehme grasped it in sensuous perceptions and forms. Descartes started by saying that thought must necessarily commence from itself; all the philosophy which came before this, and specially what proceeded from the authority of the Church, was for ever after set aside. But since here thought has properly speaking grasped itself as abstract understanding only, in relation to which the more concrete content still stands over on the other side, the determinate conceptions were not yet deduced from the understanding, but taken up only empirically. In Descartes’ philosophy we have thus to distinguish what has, and what has not universal interest for us: the former is the process of his thoughts themselves, and the latter the mode in which these thoughts are presented and deduced. Yet we must not consider the process as a method of consistent proof; it is indeed a deep and inward progress, but it comes to us in an ingenuous and naïve form. In order to do justice to Descartes’ thoughts it is necessary for us to be assured of the necessity for his appearance; the spirit of his philosophy is simply knowledge as the unity of Thought and Being. And yet on the whole there is little to say about his philosophy.
a. Descartes expresses the fact that we must begin from thought as such alone, by saying that we must doubt everything (De omnibus dubitandum est); and that is an absolute beginning. He thus makes the abolition of all determinations the first condition of Philosophy. This first proposition has not, however, the same signification as Scepticism, which sets before it no other aim than doubt itself, and requires that we should remain in this indecision of mind, an indecision wherein mind finds its freedom. It rather signifies that we should renounce all prepossessions — that is, all hypotheses which are accepted as true in their immediacy — and commence from thought, so that from it we should in the first place attain to some fixed and settled basis, and make a true beginning. In Scepticism this is not the case, for with the sceptics doubt is the end at which they rest.155 But the doubting of Descartes, his making no hypotheses, because nothing is fixed or secure, does not occur in the interests of freedom as such, in order that nothing should have value except freedom itself, and nothing exist in the quality of an external objective. To him everything is unstable indeed, in so far as the Ego can abstract from it or can think, for pure thought is abstraction from everything. But in consciousness the end is predominant, and it is to arrive at something fixed and objective — and not the moment of subjectivity, or the fact of being set forth, known and proved by me. Yet this last comes along with the other, for it is from the starting point of my thought that I would attain my object; the impulse of freedom is thus likewise fundamental.
In the propositions in which Descartes gives in his own way the ground of this great and most important principle, there is found a naïve and empirical system of reasoning. This is an example: “Because we were born as children, and formed all manner of judgments respecting sensuous things before we had the perfect use of our reason, we are through many preconceived ideas hindered from the knowledge of the truth. From these we appear not to be able to free ourselves in any other way but by once in our lives striving to doubt that respecting which we have the very slightest suspicion of an uncertainty. Indeed it is really desirable to hold as false everything in respect to which we have any doubt, so that we may find more clearly what is most certain and most knowable. Yet this doubt has to be limited to the contemplation of the truth, for in the conduct of our life we are compelled to choose the probable, since there the opportunity for action would often pass away before we could solve our doubts. But here, where we have only to deal with the search for truth, we may very reasonably doubt whether any thing sensuous and perceptible exists — in the first place because we find that the senses often deceive us and it is prudent not to trust in what has even once deceived us, and then because every day in dreaming we think we feel or see before ourselves innumerable things which never were, and to the doubter no signs are given by which he can safely distinguish sleeping from waking. We shall hereby likewise doubt everything else, even mathematical propositions, partly because we have seen that some err even in what we hold most certain, and ascribe value to what to us seems false, and partly because we have heard that a God exists who has created us, and who can do everything, so that He may have created us liable to err. But if we conceive ourselves not to derive our existence from God, but from some other source, perhaps from ourselves, we are all the more liable, in that we are thus imperfect, to err. But we have so far the experience of freedom within us that we can always refrain from what is not perfectly certain and well founded.”156 The demand which rests at the basis of Descartes’ reasonings thus is that what is recognized as true should be able to maintain the position of having the thought therein at home with itself. The so-called immediate intuition and inward revelation, which in modern times is so highly regarded, has its place here. But because in the Cartesian form the principle of freedom as such is not brought into view, the grounds which are here advanced are for the most part popular.
b. Descartes sought something in itself certain and true, which should neither be only true like the object of faith without knowledge, nor the sensuous and also sceptical certainty which is without truth. The whole of Philosophy as it had been carried on up to this time was vitiated by the constant presupposition of something as true, and in some measure, as in the Neo-Platonic philosophy, by not giving the form of scientific knowledge to its matter, or by not separating its moments. But to Descartes nothing is true which does not possess an inward evidence in consciousness, or which reason does not recognize so clearly and conclusively that any doubt regarding it is absolutely impossible. “Because we thus reject or declare to be false everything regarding which we can have any doubt at all, it is easy for us to suppose that there is no God, no heaven, no body — but we cannot therefore say that we do not exist, who think this. For it is contradictory to say that what thinks does not exist. Hence the knowledge that ‘I think, therefore I am,’ is what we arrive at first of all, and it is the most certain fact that offers itself to everyone who follows after philosophy in an orderly fashion. This is the best way of becoming acquainted with the nature of spirit and its diversity from body. For if we inquire who we are who can set forth as untrue everything which is different from ourselves, we clearly see that no extension, figure, change of position, nor any such thing which can be ascribed to body, constitutes our nature, but only thought alone; which is thus known earlier and more certainly than any corporeal thing.”157 ‘I’ has thus significance here as thought, and not as individuality of self-consciousness. The second proposition of the Cartesian philosophy is hence the immediate certainty of thought. Certainty is only knowledge as such in its pure form as self-relating, and this is thought; thus then the unwieldy understanding makes its way on to the necessity of thought.
Descartes begins, just as Fichte did later on, with the ‘I’ as indubitably certain; I know that something is presented in me. By this Philosophy is at one stroke transplanted to quite another field and to quite another standpoint, namely to the sphere of subjectivity. Presuppositions in religion are given up; proof alone is sought for, and not the absolute content which disappears before abstract infinite subjectivity. There is in Descartes likewise a seething desire to speak from strong feeling, from the ordinary sensuous point of view, just as Bruno and so many others, each in his own fashion, express as individualities their particular conceptions of the world. To consider the content in itself is not the first matter; for I can abstract from all my conceptions, but not from the ‘I.’ We think this and that, and hence it is — is to give the common would-be-wise argument of those incapable of grasping the matter in point; that a determinate content exists is exactly what we are forced to doubt — there is nothing absolutely fixed. Thought is the entirely universal, but not merely because I can abstract, but because ‘I’ is thus simple, self-identical. Thought consequently comes first; the next determination arrived at, in direct connection with it, is the determination of Being. The ‘I think’ directly involves my Being; this, says Descartes, is the absolute basis of all Philosophy.158 The determination of Being is in my ‘I’; this connection is itself the first matter. Thought as Being and Being as thought — that is my certainty, ‘I’; in the celebrated Cogito, ergo sum we thus have Thought and Being inseparably bound together.
On the one hand this proposition is regarded as a syllogism: from thought Being is deduced. Kant more especially has objected to this that Being is not contained in thinking, that it is different from thinking. This is true, but they are still inseparable, or constitute an identity; their difference is not to the prejudice of their unity. Yet this maxim of pure abstract certainty, the universal totality in which everything implicitly exists, is not proved;159 we must therefore not try to convert this proposition into a syllogism. Descartes himself says: “There is no syllogism present at all. For in order that there should be such, the major premise must have been ‘all that thinks exists’” — from which the subsumption would have followed in the minor premise, ‘now I am.’ By this the immediacy which rests in the proposition, would be removed. “But that major premise” is not set forth at all, being “really in the first instance derived from the original ‘I think, therefore, I am.’”160 For arriving at a conclusion three links are required — in this case we ought to have a third through which thought and Being should have been mediated, and it is not to be found here. The ‘Therefore’ which binds the two sides together is not the ‘Therefore’ of a syllogism; the connection between Being and Thought is only immediately posited. This certainty is thus the prius; all other propositions come later. The thinking subject as the simple immediacy of being-at-home-with-me is the very same thing as what is called Being; and it is quite easy to perceive this identity. As universal, thought is contained in all that is particular, and thus is pure relation to itself, pure oneness with itself. We must not make the mistake of representing Being to ourselves as a concrete content, and hence it is the same immediate identity which thought likewise is. Immediacy is, however, a one-sided determination; thought does not contain it alone, but also the determination to mediate itself with itself, and thereby — by the mediation being at the same time the abrogation of the mediation — it is immediacy. In thought we thus have Being; Being is, however, a poor determination, it is the abstraction from the concrete of thought. This identity of Being and Thought, which constitutes the most interesting idea of modern times, has not been further worked out by Descartes; he has relied on consciousness alone, and for the time being placed it in the fore-front. For with Descartes the necessity to develop the differences from the ‘I think’ is not yet present; Fichte first applied himself to the deduction of all determinations from this culminating point of absolute certainty.
Other propositions have been set against that of Descartes. Gassendi,161 for example, asks if we might not just as well say Ludificor, ergo sum: I am made a fool of by my consciousness, therefore I exist — or properly speaking, therefore I am made a fool of. Descartes himself recognized that this objection merited consideration, but he here repels it, inasmuch as it is the ‘I’ alone and not the other content which has to be maintained. Being alone is identical with pure thought, and not its content, be it what it may. Descartes further says: “By thought I, however, understand all that takes place in us within our consciousness, in as far as we are conscious of it; thus will, conception, and even feeling are identical with thought. For if I say ‘I see,’ or ‘I walk out,’ and ‘therefore I am,’ and understand by this the seeing and walking which is accomplished by the body, the conclusion is not absolutely certain, because, as often happens in a dream, I may imagine that I can see or walk even if I do not open my eyes nor move from my place, and I might also possibly do so supposing I had no body. But if I understand it of the subjective feeling or the consciousness of seeing or walking itself, because it is then related to the mind that alone feels or thinks that it sees or walks, this conclusion is perfectly certain.”162 “In a dream” is an empirical mode of reasoning, but there is no other objection to it. In willing, seeing, hearing, &c., thought is likewise contained, it is absurd to suppose that the soul has thinking in one special pocket, and seeing, willing, &c., in others. But if I say ‘I see,’ ‘I walk out,’ there is present on the one hand my consciousness ‘I,’ and consequently thought, on the other hand, however, there is present willing, seeing, hearing, walking, and thus a still further modification of the content. Now because of this modification I cannot say ‘I walk, and therefore I am,’ for I can undoubtedly abstract from the modification, since it is no longer universal Thought. Thus we must merely look at the pure consciousness contained in the concrete ‘I.’ Only when I accentuate the fact that I am present there as thinking, is pure Being implied, for only with the universal is Being united.
“In this it is implied,” says Descartes, “that thought is more certain to me than body. If from the fact that I touch or see the earth I judge that it exists, I must more certainly judge from this that my thought exists. For it may very well happen that I judge the earth to exist, even if it does not exist, but it cannot be that I judge this, and that my mind which judges this does not exist.”163 That is to say, everything which is for me I may assert to be non-existent, but when I assert myself to be non-existent, I myself assert, or it is my judgment. For I cannot set aside the fact that I judge, even if I can abstract from that respecting which I judge. In this Philosophy has regained its own ground that thought starts from thought as what is certain in itself, and not from something external, not from something given, not from an authority, but directly from the freedom that is contained in the ‘I think.’ Of all else I may doubt, of the existence of bodily things, of my body itself; or this certainty does not possess immediacy in itself. For ‘I’ is just certainty itself, but in all else this certainty is only predicate; my body is certain to me, it is not this certainty itself.164 As against the certainty we feel of having a body, Descartes adduces the empirical phenomenon that we often hear of persons imagining they feel pain in a limb which they have lost long ago.165 What is actual, he says is a substance, the soul is a thinking substance; it is thus for itself, separate from all external material things and independent. That it is thinking is evident from its nature: it would think and exist even if no material things were present; the soul can hence know itself more easily than its body.166
All else that we can hold as true rests on this certainty; for in order that anything should be held as true, evidence is requisite, but nothing is true which has not this inward evidence in consciousness. “Now the evidence of everything rests upon our perceiving it as clearly and vividly as that certainty itself, and on its so entirely depending from, and harmonizing with this principle, that if we wished to doubt it we should also have to doubt this principle likewise” (our ego).167 This knowledge is indeed on its own account perfect evidence, but it is not yet the truth, or if we take that Being as truth, it is an empty content, and it is with the content that we have to do.
c. What comes third is thus the transition of this certainty into truth, into the determinate; Descartes again makes this transition in a naïve way, and with it we for the first time begin to consider his metaphysics. What here takes place is that an interest arises in further representations and conceptions of the abstract unity of Being and Thought; there Descartes sets to work in an externally reflective manner. “The consciousness which merely knows itself to be certain now however seeks to extend its knowledge, and finds that it has conceptions of many things — in which conceptions it does not deceive itself, so long as it does not assert or deny that something similar outside corresponds to them.” Deception in the conceptions has meaning only in relation to external existence. “Consciousness also discovers universal conceptions, and obtains from them proofs which are evident, e.g. the geometric proposition that the three angles of a triangle are together equal to two right angles is a conception which follows incontrovertibly from others. But in reflecting whether such things really exist doubts arise.”168 That there is such a thing as a triangle is indeed in this case by no means certain, since extension is not contained in the immediate certainty of myself. The soul may exist without the bodily element, and this last without it, they are in reality different; one is conceivable without the other. The soul thus does not think and know the other as clearly as the certainty of itself.169
Now the truth of all knowledge rests on the proof of the existence of God. The soul is an imperfect substance, but it has the Idea of an absolute perfect existence within itself; this perfection is not begotten in itself, just because it is an imperfect substance; this Idea is thus innate. In Descartes the consciousness of this fact is expressed by his saying that as long as the existence of God is not proved and perceived the possibility of our deceiving ourselves remains, because we cannot know whether we do not possess a nature ordered and disposed to err (supra, p. 226).170 The form is rather a mistaken one, and it only generally expresses the opposition in which self-consciousness stands to the consciousness of what is different, of the objective; and we have to deal with the unity of both — the question being whether what is in thought likewise possesses objectivity. This unity rests in God, or is God Himself. I shall put these assertions in the manner of Descartes: “Amongst these various conceptions possessed by us there likewise is the conception of a supremely intelligent, powerful, and absolutely perfect Being; and this is the most excellent of all conceptions.” This all-embracing universal conception has therefore this distinguishing feature, that in its case the uncertainty respecting Being which appears in the other conceptions, finds no place. It has the characteristic that “In it we do not recognize existence as something merely possible and accidental, as we do the conceptions of other things which we perceive clearly, but as a really essential and eternal determination. For instance, as mind perceives that in the conception of a triangle it is implied that the three angles are equal to two right angles, the triangle has them; and in the same way from the fact that mind perceives existence to be necessarily and eternally implied in the Notion of the most perfect reality, it is forced to conclude that the most perfect reality exists.”171 For to perfection there likewise pertains the determination of existence, since the conception of a non-existent is less perfect. Thus we there have the unity of thought and Being, and the ontological proof of the existence of God; this we met with earlier (p. 63, seq.) in dealing with Anselm.
The proof of the existence of God from the Idea of Him is in this wise: In this Notion existence is implied; and therefore it is true. Descartes proceeds further in the same direction, in so far as after the manner of empirical axioms he sets forth: (α) “There are different degrees of reality or entity, for the substance has more reality than the accident or the mode, and infinite substance has more than finite.” (β) “In the Notion of a thing existence is implied, either the merely potential or the necessary,” i.e. in the ‘I’ there is Being as the immediate certainty of an other-being, of the not-I opposed to the I. (γ) “No thing or no perfection of a thing which really exists actu can have the Nothing as original cause of its existence. For if anything could be predicated of nothing, thought could equally well be predicated of it, and I would thus say that I am nothing because I think.” Descartes here arrives at a dividing line, at an unknown relationship; the Notion of cause is reached, and this is a thought indeed, but a determinate thought. Spinoza says in his explanation, “That the conceptions contain more or less reality, and those moments have just as much evidence as thought itself, because they not only say that we think, but how we think.” These determinate modes as differences in the simplicity of thought, had, however, to be demonstrated. Spinoza adds to this step in advance that “The degrees of reality which we perceive in ideas are not in the ideas in as far as they are considered merely as kinds of thought, but in so far as the one represents a substance and the other a mere mode of substance, or, in a word, in so far as they are considered as conceptions of things.” (δ) “The objective reality of Notions” (i.e., the entity of what is represented in so far as it is in the Notion), “demands a first cause in which the same reality is contained not merely objectively” (that is to say in the Notion), “but likewise formally or even eminenter — formally, that is perfectly likewise: eminenter, more perfectly. For there must at least be as much in the cause as in the effect.” (ε) “The existence of God is known immediately” — a priori— “from the contemplation of His nature. To say that anything is contained in the nature or in the Notion of a thing is tantamount to saying that it is true: existence is directly contained in the Notion of God. Hence it is quite true to say of Him that existence pertains of necessity to Him. There is implied in the Notion of every particular thing either a possible or a necessary existence — a necessary existence in the Notion of God, i.e. of the absolutely perfect Being, for else He would be conceived as imperfect.”172
Descartes likewise argues after this manner: “Problem: to prove a posteriori from the mere Notion within us the existence of God. The objective reality of a Notion demands a cause in which the same reality is not merely contained objectively” (as in the finite), “but formally” (freely, purely for itself, outside of us) “or eminenter” (as original). (Axiom δ.) “We now have a Notion of God, but His objective reality is neither formally nor eminenter contained within us, and it can thus be only in God Himself.”173 Consequently we see that with Descartes this Idea is an hypothesis. Now we should say we find this highest Idea in us. If we then ask whether this Idea exists, why, this is the Idea, that existence is asserted with it. To say that it is only a conception is to contradict the meaning of this conception. But here it is unsatisfactory to find that the conception is introduced thus: ‘We have this conception,’ and to find that it consequently appears like an hypothesis. In such a case it is not proved of this content in itself that it determines itself into this unity of thought and Being. In the form of God no other conception is thus here given than that contained in Cogito, ergo sum, wherein Being and thought are inseparably bound up — though now in the form of a conception which I possess within me. The whole content of this conception, the Almighty, All-wise, &c., are predicates which do not make their appearance until later; the content is simply the content of the Idea bound up with existence. Hence we see these determinations following one another in an empirical manner, and not philosophically proved — thus giving us an example of how in a priori metaphysics generally hypotheses of conceptions are brought in, and these become objects of thought, just as happens in empiricism with investigations, observations, and experiences.
Descartes then proceeds: “Mind is the more convinced of this when it notices that it discovers within itself the conception of no other thing wherein existence is necessarily implied. From this it will perceive that that idea of highest reality is not imagined by it, it is not chimerical, but a true and unalterable fact which cannot do otherwise than exist, seeing that existence is necessarily involved in it. Our prejudices hinder us from apprehending this with ease, for we are accustomed to distinguish in all other things the essence” (the Notion) “from the existence.” Respecting the assertion that thought is not inseparable from existence, the common way of talking is as follows: ‘If what men think really existed, things would be different.’ But in saying this men do not take into account that what is spoken of in this way is always a particular content, and that in it the essential nature of the finality of things simply signifies the fact that Notion and Being are separable. But how can one argue from finite things to the infinite? “This Notion,” Descartes continues, “is furthermore not made by us.” It is now declared to be an eternal truth which is revealed in us. “We do not find in ourselves the perfections which are contained in this conception. Thus we are certain that a first cause in which is all perfection, i.e. God as really existent, has given them to us; for it is certain to us that from nothing, nothing arises” (according to Boehme God derived the material of the world from Himself), “and what is perfect cannot be the effect of anything imperfect. From Him we must thus in true science deduce all created things.”174 With the proof of the existence of God the validity of and evidence for all truth in its origin is immediately established. God as First Cause is Being-for-self, the reality which is not merely entity or existence in thought. An existence such as this first cause (which is not what we know as a thing) rests in the Notion of the not-I, not of each determinate thing — since these as determinate are negations — but only in the Notion of pure existence or the perfect cause. It is the cause of the truth of ideas, for the aspect that it represents is that of their Being.
d. Fourthly, Descartes goes on to assert: “We must believe what is revealed to us by God, though we cannot understand it. It is not to be wondered at, since we are finite, that there is in God’s nature as inconceivably infinite, what passes our comprehension.” This represents the entrance of a very ordinary conception. Boehme on the other hand says (supra, p. 212): ‘The mystery of the Trinity is ever born within us.’ Descartes, however, concludes: “Hence we must not trouble ourselves with investigations respecting the infinite; for seeing that we are finite, it is absurd for us to say anything about it.”175 This matter we shall not, however, enter upon at present.
“Now the first attribute of God is that He is true and the Giver of all light; it is hence quite contrary to His nature to deceive us. Hence the light of nature or the power of acquiring knowledge given us by God can affect no object which is not really true in as far as it is affected by it” (the power of acquiring knowledge) “i.e. as it is perceived clearly and distinctly.” We ascribe truth to God. From this Descartes goes on to infer the universal bond which exists between absolute knowledge and the objectivity of what we thus know. Knowledge has objects, has a content which is known; we call this connection truth. The truth of God is just this unity of what is thought by the subject or clearly perceived, and external reality or existence. “Thereby an end is put to doubt, as if it could be the case that what appears quite evident to us should not be really true. We can thus no longer have any suspicion of mathematical truths. Likewise if we give heed to what we distinguish by our senses in waking or in sleeping, clearly and distinctly, it is easy to recognize in each thing what in it is true.” By saying that what is rightly and clearly thought likewise is, Descartes maintains that man comes to know by means of thought what in fact is in things; the sources of errors lie on the other hand in the finitude of our nature. “It is certain, because of God’s truth, that the faculty of perceiving and that of assenting through the will, if it extends no further than to that which is clearly perceived, cannot lead to error. Even if this cannot be in any way proved, it is by nature so established in all things, that as often as we clearly perceive anything, we assent to it from ourselves and can in no wise doubt that it is true.”176
All this is set forth very plausibly, but it is still indeterminate, formal, and shallow; we only have the assertion made to us that this is so. Descartes’ method is the method of the clear understanding merely. Certainty with him takes the first place; from it no content is deduced of necessity, no content generally, and still less its objectivity as distinguished from the inward subjectivity of the ‘I.’ At one time we have the opposition of subjective knowledge and actuality, and at another their inseparable union. In the first case the necessity of mediating them enters in, and the truth of God is asserted to be this mediating power. It consists in this, that His Notion contains reality immediately in itself. The proof of this unity then rests solely upon the fact of its being said that we find within us the idea of complete perfection; thus this conception here appears simply as one found ready to hand. With this is compared the mere conception of God which contains no existence within it, and it is found that without existence it would be imperfect. This unity of God Himself, of His Idea, with His existence, is undoubtedly the Truth; in this we find the ground for holding as true what is for us just as certain as the truth of ourselves. As Descartes proceeds further we thus find that in reality everything has truth for him only in so far as it is really an object of thought, a universal. This truth of God has been, as we shall see, expressed even more clearly and in a more concise way by a disciple of Descartes, if one may venture to call him so — I mean Malebranche (who might really be dealt with here),177 in his Recherche de la vérité.
The first of the fundamental determinations of the Cartesian metaphysics is from the certainty of oneself to arrive at the truth, to recognize Being in the Notion of thought. But because in the thought “I think,” I am an individual, thought comes before my mind as subjective; Being is hence not demonstrated in the Notion of thought itself, for what advance has been made is merely in the direction of separation generally. In the second place the negative of Being likewise comes before self-consciousness, and this negative, united with the positive I, is so to speak implicitly united in a third, in God. God, who before this was a non-contradictory potentiality, now takes objective form to self-consciousness, He is all reality in so far as it is positive, i.e. as it is Being, unity of thought and Being, the highest perfection of existence; it is just in the negative, in the Notion of this, in its being an object of thought, that Being is contained. An objection to this identity is now old — Kant urged it likewise — that from the Notion of the most perfect existence more does not follow than that in thought existence here and now and the most perfect essence are conjoined, but not outside of thought. But the very Notion of present existence is this negative of self-consciousness, not out of thought, — but the thought of the ‘out of thought.’
- Descartes accepts Being in the entirely positive sense, and has not the conception of its being the negative of self-consciousness: but simple Being, set forth as the negative of self-consciousness, is extension. Descartes thus separates extension from God, remains constant to this separation, unites the universe, matter, with God in such a way as to make Him its creator and first cause: and he has the true perception that conservation is a continuous creation, in so far as creation as activity is asserted to be separated. Descartes does not, however, trace extension in a true method back to thought; matter, extended substances, stand over against the thinking substances which are simple; in as far as the universe is created by God, it could not be as perfect as its cause. As a matter of fact the effect is less perfect than the cause, since it is that which is posited, if we are to remain at the conception of cause pertaining to the understanding. Hence according to Descartes extension is the less perfect. But as imperfect the extended substances cannot exist and subsist through themselves or their Notion; they thus require every moment the assistance of God for their maintenance, and without this they would in a moment sink back into nothing. Preservation is, however, unceasing reproduction.178
Descartes now proceeds to further particulars, and expresses himself as follows: “We consider what comes under consciousness either as things or their qualities, or as eternal truths which have no existence outside our thought” — which do not belong to this or that time, to this or that place. He calls those last something inborn within us, something not made by us or merely felt,179 but the eternal Notion of mind itself and the eternal determinations of its freedom, of itself as itself. From this point the conception that ideas are inborn (innatæ ideæ) hence proceeds; this is the question over which Locke and Leibnitz dispute. The expression “eternal truths” is current even in these modern times, and it signifies the universal determinations and relations which exist entirely on their own account. The word ‘inborn’ is however a clumsy and stupid expression, because the conception of physical birth thereby indicated, does not apply to mind. To Descartes inborn ideas are not universal, as they are to Plato and his successors, but that which has evidence, immediate certainty, an immediate multiplicity founded in thought itself — manifold conceptions in the form of a Being, resembling what Cicero calls natural feelings implanted in the heart. We would rather say that such is implied in the nature and essence of our mind and spirit. Mind is active and conducts itself in its activity in a determinate manner; but this activity has no other ground than its freedom. Yet if this is the case more is required than merely to say so; it must be deduced as a necessary product of our mind. We have such ideas, for instance, in the logical laws: “From nothing comes nothing,” “A thing cannot both be and not be,”180 as also in moral principles. These are facts of consciousness which Descartes however soon passes from again; they are only present in thought as subjective, and he has thus not yet inquired respecting their content.
As regards things, on which Descartes now directs his attention, the other side to these eternal verities, the universal determinations of things are substance, permanence, order, &c.181 He then gives definitions of these thoughts, just as Aristotle draws up a list of the categories. But although Descartes laid it down formerly as essential that no hypotheses must be made, yet now he takes the conceptions, and passes on to them as something found within our consciousness. He defines substance thus: “By substance I understand none other than a thing (rem) which requires no other something for existence; and there is only one thing, namely God, which can be regarded as such a substance requiring no other thing.” This is what Spinoza says; we may say that it is likewise the true definition, the unity of Notion and reality: “All other” (things) “can only exist by means of a concurrence (concursus) of God”; what we still call substance outside of God thus does not exist for itself, does not have its existence in the Notion itself. That is then called the system of assistance (systema assistentiæ) which is, however, transcendental. God is the absolute uniter of Notion and actuality; other things, finite things which have a limit and stand in dependence, require something else. “Hence if we likewise call other things substances, this expression is not applicable both to them and to God univoce, as is said in the schools; that is to say no definite significance can be given to this word which would equally apply both to God and to the creatures.”182
“But I do not recognize more than two sorts of things; the one is that of thinking things, and the other that of things which relate to what is extended.” Thought, the Notion, the spiritual, the self-conscious, is what is at home with itself, and its opposite is contained in what is extended, spatial, separated, not at home with itself nor free. This is the real distinction (distinctio realis) of substances: “The one substance can be clearly and definitely comprehended without the other. But the corporeal and the thinking and creating substance can be comprehended under this common notion, for the reason that they are things which require God’s support alone in order to exist.” They are universal; other finite things require other things as conditions essential to their existence. But extended substance, the kingdom of nature, and spiritual substance, do not require one another.183 They may be called substances, because each of them constitutes an entire range or sphere, an independent totality. But because, Spinoza concluded, each side, the kingdom of thought as well as nature, is one complete system within itself, they are likewise in themselves, that is absolutely, identical as God, the absolute substance; for thinking spirit this implicit is thus God, or their differences are ideal.
Descartes proceeds from the Notion of God to what is created, to thought and extension, and from this to the particular. “Now substances have several attributes without which they cannot be thought” — that signifies their determinateness— “but each has something peculiar to itself which constitutes its nature and essence” — a simple universal determinateness— “and to which the others all relate. Thus thought constitutes the absolute attribute of mind,” thought is its quality; “extension is” the essential determination of corporeality, and this alone is “the true nature of body. What remains are merely secondary qualities, modes, like figure and movement in what is extended, imagination, feeling and will in thinking; they may be taken away or thought away. God is the uncreated, thinking substance.”184
Descartes here passes to what is individual, and because he follows up extension he arrives at matter, rest, movement. One of Descartes’ main points is that matter, extension, corporeality, are quite the same thing for thought; according to him the nature of body is fulfilled in its extension, and this should be accepted as the only essential fact respecting the corporeal world. We say that body offers resistance, has smell, taste, colour, transparency, hardness, &c., since without these we can have no body. All these further determinations respecting what is extended, such as size, rest, movement, and inertia, are, however, merely sensuous, and this Descartes showed, as it had long before this been shown by the Sceptics. Undoubtedly that is the abstract Notion or pure essence, but to body or to pure existence, there likewise of necessity pertains negativity or diversity. By means of the following illustration Descartes showed that with the exception of extension, all corporeal determinations may be annihilated, and that none can be absolutely predicated. We draw conclusions respecting the solidity and hardness of matter from the resistance which a body offers to our disturbance, and by means of which it seeks to hold its place. Now if we admit that matter as we touch it always gives way to us like space, we should have no reason for ascribing to it solidity. Smell, colour, taste, are in the same way sensuous qualities merely; but what we clearly perceive is alone true. If a body is ground into small parts, it gives way, and yet it does not lose its nature; resistance is thus not essential.185 This not-being-for-itself is however a quantitatively slighter resistance only; the resistance always remains. But Descartes desires only to think; now he does not think resistance, colour, &c., but apprehends them by the senses only. Hence he says that all this must be led back to extension as being special modifications of the same. It is undoubtedly to the credit of Descartes that he only accepts as true what is thought; but the abrogation of these sensuous qualities simply represents the negative movement of thought: the essence of body is conditioned through this thought, that is, it is not true essence.
Descartes now makes his way from the Notion of extension to the laws of motion, as the universal knowledge of the corporeal in its implicitude; he shows (α) that there is no vacuum, for that would be an extension without bodily substance, i.e. a body without body; (β) that there are no atoms (no indivisible independent existence), for the same reason, viz., because the essence of body is extension. (γ) He further shows that a body is set in motion by something outside of it, but of itself it continues in a condition of rest, and likewise it must, when in a condition of movement, be brought to rest by another outside of it — this is the property of inertia.186 These are unmeaning propositions, for an abstraction is involved for instance in asserting simple rest and movement in their opposition.
Extension and motion are the fundamental conceptions in mechanical physics; they represent the truth of the corporeal world. It is thus that ideality comes before the mind of Descartes, and he is far elevated above the reality of the sensuous qualities, although he does not reach so far as to the separation of this ideality. He thus remains at the point of view of mechanism pure and simple. Give me matter (extension) and motion and I will build worlds for you, is what Descartes virtually says.187 Space and time were hence to him the only determinations of the material universe. In this, then, lies the mechanical fashion of viewing nature, or the natural philosophy of Descartes is seen to be purely mechanical.188 Hence changes in matter are due merely to motion, so that Descartes traces every relationship to the rest and movement of particles, and all material diversity such as colour, and taste — in short, all bodily qualities and animal phenomena — to mechanism. In living beings processes such as that of digestion are mechanical effects which have as principles, rest and movement. We here see the ground and origin of the mechanical philosophy; but further on we find that this is unsatisfactory, for matter and motion do not suffice to explain life. Yet the great matter in all this is that thought goes forward in its determinations, and that it constitutes from these thought-determinations the truth of nature.
In his consideration of the system of the world and the movement of the heavenly bodies, Descartes has worked out the mechanical view more fully. He thus comes to speak of the earth, the sun, &c., and of his conception of the circling motion of the heavenly bodies in the form of vortices: of metaphysical hypotheses as to how small particles pass into, out of, and through pores and act on one another; and finally to saltpetre and gunpowder.189
Universal reflections should have the first claim on our attention; but on the other hand the transition to the determinate is accomplished in a system of Physics which is the result of observations and experiences, and this is done entirely by means of the understanding. Descartes thus mingles many observations with a metaphysic of this nature, and to us the result is hence obscure. In this philosophy the thinking treatment of empiricism is thus predominant, and a similar method has been adopted by philosophers from this time on. To Descartes and others, Philosophy had still the more indefinite significance of arriving at knowledge through thought, reflection, and reasoning. Speculative cognition, the derivation from the Notion, the free independent development of the matter itself, was first introduced by Fichte, and consequently what is now called philosophic knowledge is not yet separated in Descartes from the rest of scientific knowledge. In those times all the knowledge of mankind was called philosophy; in Descartes’ metaphysics we thus saw quite empirical reflection and reasoning from particular grounds, from experiences, facts, phenomena, being brought into play in the naivest manner, and one has no sense of speculation in the matter. The strictly scientific element here really consisted mainly in the method of proof as it has long been made use of in geometry, and in the ordinary method of the formal logical syllogism. Hence it likewise happens that Philosophy, which ought to form a totality of the sciences, begins with logic and metaphysics; the second part is composed of ordinary physics and mathematics, mingled no doubt with metaphysical speculations, and the third part, ethics, deals with the nature of man, his duties, the state, the citizen. And this is the case with Descartes. The first part of the Principia philosophiæ treats De principiis cognitionis humanæ, the second De principiis rerum materialium. This natural philosophy, as a philosophy of extension, is, however, none other than what a quite ordinary physics or mechanics might at that time be, and it is still quite hypothetical; we, on the other hand, accurately distinguish empirical physics and natural philosophy, even though the first likewise pertains to thought.
- Descartes never reached the third part, the philosophy of Mind, for, while he made a special study of physics, in the region of ethics he published one tract only, De passionibus. In this reference Descartes treats of thought and human freedom. He proves freedom from the fact of the soul thinking that the will is unrestrained, and of that constituting the perfection of mankind. And this is quite true. In respect to the freedom of the will he comes across the difficulty of how to reconcile it with the divine prescience. As free, man might do what is not ordained of God beforehand — this would conflict with the omnipotence and omniscience of God; and if everything is ordained of God, human freedom would thereby be done away with. Yet he does not solve the contradiction contained in these two different aspects without falling into difficulty. But conformably to the method which he adopts, and which we pointed out above (pp. 238, 239), he says: “The human mind is finite, God’s power and predetermination are infinite; we are thus not capable of judging of the relationship in which the freedom of the human soul stands to the omnipotence and omniscience of God — but in self-consciousness we have the certainty of it given us as a fact. And we must hold only to what is certain.”190 When he proceeds further much appears to him still incapable of explanation; but we see obstinacy and caprice likewise exhibited in his stopping short at the assertion as to the best of his knowledge. The method of knowledge as set forth by Descartes, takes the form of a reasoning of the understanding, and is thus without special interest.
These, then, are the principal points in the Cartesian system. Some particular assertions made by Descartes, which have been specially instrumental in giving him fame, have still to be mentioned — particular forms which have been formerly considered in metaphysics, and likewise by Wolff. For example, in the first place we gather that Descartes regarded animals and other organisms as machines moved by another, and not possessing the principle of the spontaneity of thought within them191 — a mechanical physiology, a cut and dry thought pertaining to the understanding, which is of no further importance. In the sharp opposition between thought and extension, the former is not considered as sensation, so that the latter can isolate itself. The organic must as body reduce itself to extension; any further development of this last thus only proves its dependence on the first determinations.
In the second place, the relation between soul and body now becomes an important question, that is, the return of the object within itself in such a way that thought posits itself in another, in matter. As to this, many systems are offered to us in metaphysics. One of these is the influxus physicus, that the relation of spirit is of a corporeal nature, that the object is related to mind as bodies are to one another — a conception like this is very crude. How does Descartes understand the unity of soul and body? The former belongs to thought, the latter to extension; and thus because both are substance, neither requires the Notion of the other, and hence soul and body are independent of one another and can exercise no direct influence upon one another. Soul could only influence body in so far as it required the same, and conversely — that is, in so far as they have actual relation to one another. But since each is a totality, neither can bear a real relation to the other. Descartes consistently denied the physical influence of one on the other; that would have signified a mechanical relation between the two. Descartes thus established the intellectual sphere in contradistinction to matter, and on it based the independent subsistence of mind; for in his cogito ‘I’ is at first only certain of itself, since I can abstract from all. Now we find the necessity of a mediator to bring about a union of the abstract and the external and individual. Descartes settles this by placing between the two what constitutes the metaphysical ground of their mutual changes, God. He is the intermediate bond of union, in as far as He affords assistance to the soul in what it cannot through its own freedom accomplish, so that the changes in body and soul may correspond with one another.192 If I have desires, an intention, these receive corporeal realization; this association of soul and body is, according to Descartes, effected through God. For above (p. 239) we saw that Descartes says of God that He is the Truth of the conception: as long as I think rightly and consistently, something real corresponds to my thought, and the connecting link is God. God is hereby the perfect identity of the two opposites, since He is, as Idea, the unity of Notion and reality. In the Idea of Spinoza this is worked out and developed in its further moments. Descartes’ conclusion is quite correct; in finite things this identity is imperfect. Only the form employed by Descartes is inadequate; for it implies that in the beginning there are two things, thought or soul and body, and that then God appears as a third thing, outside both — that He is not the Notion of unity, nor are the two elements themselves Notion. We must not however forget that Descartes says that both those original elements are created substances. But this expression ‘created’ pertains to the ordinary conception only and is not a determinate thought; it was Spinoza, therefore, who first accomplished this return to thought.
The philosophy of Descartes underwent a great variety of unspeculative developments, but in Benedict Spinoza a direct successor to this philosopher may be found, and one who carried on the Cartesian principle to its furthest logical conclusions. For him soul and body, thought and Being, cease to have separate independent existence. The dualism of the Cartesian system Spinoza, as a Jew, altogether set aside. For the profound unity of his philosophy as it found expression in Europe, his manifestation of Spirit as the identity of the finite and the infinite in God, instead of God’s appearing related to these as a Third — all this is an echo from Eastern lands. The Oriental theory of absolute identity was brought by Spinoza much more directly into line, firstly with the current of European thought, and then with the European and Cartesian philosophy, in which it soon found a place.
First of all we must, however, glance at the circumstances of Spinoza’s life. He was by descent a Portuguese Jew, and was born at Amsterdam in the year 1632; the name he received was Baruch, but he altered it to Benedict. In his youth he was instructed by the Rabbis of the synagogue to which he belonged, but he soon fell out with them, their wrath having been kindled by the criticisms which he passed on the fantastic doctrines of the Talmud. He was not, therefore, long in absenting himself from the synagogue, and as the Rabbis were in dread lest his example should have evil consequences, they offered him a yearly allowance of a thousand gulden if he would keep away from the place and hold his tongue. This offer he declined; and the Rabbis thereafter carried their persecution of him to such a pitch that they were even minded to rid themselves of him by assassination. After having made a narrow escape from the dagger, he formally withdrew from the Jewish communion, without, however, going over to the Christian Church. He now applied himself particularly to the Latin language, and made a special study of the Cartesian philosophy. Later on he went to Rhynsburg, near Leyden, and from the year 1664 he lived in retirement, first at Voorburg, a village near the Hague, and then at the Hague itself, highly respected by numerous friends: he gained a livelihood for himself by grinding optical glasses. It was no arbitrary choice that led him to occupy himself with light, for it represents in the material sphere the absolute identity which forms the foundation of the Oriental view of things. Although he had rich friends and mighty protectors, among whom even generals were numbered, he lived in humble poverty, declining the handsome gifts offered to him time after time. Nor would he permit Simon von Vries to make him his heir; he only accepted from him an annual pension of three hundred florins; in the same way he gave up to his sisters his share of their father’s estate. From the Elector Palatine, Carl Ludwig, a man of most noble character and raised above the prejudices of his time, he received the offer of a professor’s chair at Heidelberg, with the assurance that he would have liberty to teach and to write, because “the Prince believed he would not put that liberty to a bad use by interfering with the religion publicly established.” Spinoza (in his published letters) very wisely declined this offer, however, because “he did not know within what limits that philosophic liberty would have to be confined, in order that he might not appear to be interfering with the publicly established religion.” He remained in Holland, a country highly interesting in the history of general culture, as it was the first in Europe to show the example of universal toleration, and afforded to many a place of refuge where they might enjoy liberty of thought; for fierce as was the rage of the theologians there against Bekker, for example (Bruck. Hist. crit. phil. T. IV. P. 2, pp. 719, 720), and furious as were the attacks of Voetius on the Cartesian philosophy, these had not the consequences which they would have had in another land. Spinoza died on the 21st of February, 1677, in the forty-fourth year of his age. The cause of his death was consumption, from which he had long been a sufferer; this was in harmony with his system of philosophy, according to which all particularity and individuality pass away in the one substance. A Protestant divine, Colerus by name, who published a biography of Spinoza, inveighs strongly against him, it is true, but gives nevertheless a most minute and kindly description of his circumstances and surroundings — telling how he left only about two hundred thalers, what debts he had, and so on. A bill included in the inventory, in which the barber requests payment due him by M. Spinoza of blessed memory, scandalizes the parson very much, and regarding it he makes the observation: “Had the barber but known what sort of a creature Spinoza was, he certainly would not have spoken of his blessed memory.” The German translator of this biography writes under the portrait of Spinoza: characterem, reprobationis in vultu gerens, applying this description to a countenance which doubtless expresses the melancholy of a profound thinker, but is otherwise mild and benevolent. The reprobatio is certainly correct; but it is not a reprobation in the passive sense; it is an active disapprobation on Spinoza’s part of the opinions, errors and thoughtless passions of mankind.193
Spinoza used the terminology of Descartes, and also published an account of his system. For we find the first of Spinoza’s works entitled “An Exposition according to the geometrical method of the principles of the Cartesian philosophy.” Some time after this he wrote his Tractatus theologico-politicus, and by it gained considerable reputation. Great as was the hatred which Spinoza roused amongst his Rabbis, it was more than equalled by the odium which he brought upon himself amongst Christian, and especially amongst Protestant theologians — chiefly through the medium of this essay. It contains his views on inspiration, a critical treatment of the books of Moses and the like, chiefly from the point of view that the laws therein contained are limited in their application to the Jews. Later Christian theologians have written critically on this subject, usually making it their object to show that these books were compiled at a later time, and that they date in part from a period subsequent to the Babylonian captivity; this has become a crucial point with Protestant theologians, and one by which the modern school distinguishes itself from the older, greatly pluming itself thereon. All this, however, is already to be found in the above-mentioned work of Spinoza. But Spinoza drew the greatest odium upon himself by his philosophy proper, which we must now consider as it is given to us in his Ethics. While Descartes published no writings on this subject, the Ethics of Spinoza is undoubtedly his greatest work; it was published after his death by Ludwig Mayer, a physician, who had been Spinoza’s most intimate friend. It consists of five parts; the first deals with God (De Deo). General metaphysical ideas are contained in it, which include the knowledge of God and nature. The second part deals with the nature and origin of mind (De natura et origine mentis). We see thus that Spinoza does not treat of the subject of natural philosophy, extension and motion at all, for he passes immediately from God to the philosophy of mind, to the ethical point of view; and what refers to knowledge, intelligent mind, is brought forward in the first part, under the head of the principles of human knowledge. The third book of the Ethics deals with the origin and nature of the passions (De origine et natura affectuum); the fourth with the powers of the same, or human slavery (De servitute humana seu de affectuum viribus); the fifth, lastly, with the power of the understanding, with thought, or with human liberty (De potentia intellectus seu de libertate humana).194 Kirchenrath Professor Paulus published Spinoza’s works in Jena; I had a share in the bringing out of this edition, having been entrusted with the collation of French translations.
As regards the philosophy of Spinoza, it is very simple, and on the whole easy to comprehend; the difficulty which it presents is due partly to the limitations of the method in which Spinoza presents his thoughts, and partly to his narrow range of ideas, which causes him in an unsatisfactory way to pass over important points of view and cardinal questions. Spinoza’s system is that of Descartes made objective in the form of absolute truth. The simple thought of Spinoza’s idealism is this: The true is simply and solely the one substance, whose attributes are thought and extension or nature: and only this absolute unity is reality, it alone is God. It is, as with Descartes, the unity of thought and Being, or that which contains the Notion of its existence in itself. The Cartesian substance, as Idea, has certainly Being included in its Notion; but it is only Being as abstract, not as real Being or as extension (supra, p. 241). With Descartes corporeality and the thinking ‘I’ are altogether independent Beings; this independence of the two extremes is done away with in Spinozism by their becoming moments of the one absolute Being. This expression signifies that Being must be grasped as the unity of opposites; the chief consideration is not to let slip the opposition and set it aside, but to reconcile and resolve it. Since then it is thought and Being, and no longer the abstractions of the finite and infinite, or of limit and the unlimited, that form the opposition (supra, p. 161), Being is here more definitely regarded as extension; for in its abstraction it would be really only that return into itself, that simple equality with itself, which constitutes thought (supra, p. 229). The pure thought of Spinoza is therefore not the simple universal of Plato, for it has likewise come to know the absolute opposition of Notion and Being.
Taken as a whole, this constitutes the Idea of Spinoza, and it is just what τὸ ὄν was to the Eleatics (Vol. I. pp. 244, 252). This Idea of Spinoza’s we must allow to be in the main true and well-grounded; absolute substance is the truth, but it is not the whole truth; in order to be this it must also be thought of as in itself active and living, and by that very means it must determine itself as mind. But substance with Spinoza is only the universal and consequently the abstract determination of mind; it may undoubtedly be said that this thought is the foundation of all true views — not, however, as their absolutely fixed and permanent basis, but as the abstract unity which mind is in itself. It is therefore worthy of note that thought must begin by placing itself at the standpoint of Spinozism; to be a follower of Spinoza is the essential commencement of all Philosophy. For as we saw above (Vol I. p. 144), when man begins to philosophize, the soul must commence by bathing in this ether of the One Substance, in which all that man has held as true has disappeared; this negation of all that is particular, to which every philosopher must have come, is the liberation of the mind and its absolute foundation. The difference between our standpoint and that of the Eleatic philosophy is only this, that through the agency of Christianity concrete individuality is in the modern world present throughout in spirit. But in spite of the infinite demands on the part of the concrete, substance with Spinoza is not yet determined as in itself concrete. As the concrete is thus not present in the content of substance, it is therefore to be found within reflecting thought alone, and it is only from the endless oppositions of this last that the required unity emerges. Of substance as such there is nothing more to be said; all that we can do is to speak of the different ways in which Philosophy has dealt with it, and the opposites which in it are abrogated. The difference depends on the nature of the opposites which are held to be abrogated in substance. Spinoza is far from having proved this unity as convincingly as was done by the ancients; but what constitutes the grandeur of Spinoza’s manner of thought is that he is able to renounce all that is determinate and particular, and restrict himself to the One, giving heed to this alone.
- Spinoza begins (Eth. P. I pp. 35, 36) with a series of definitions, from which we take the following.
a. Spinoza’s first definition is of the Cause of itself. He says: “By that which is causa sui, its own cause, I understand that whose essence” (or Notion) “involves existence, or which cannot be conceived except as existent.” The unity of existence and universal thought is asserted from the very first, and this unity will ever be the question at issue. “The cause of itself” is a noteworthy expression, for while we picture to ourselves that the effect stands in opposition to the cause, the cause of itself is the cause which, while it operates and separates an “other,” at the same time produces only itself, and in the production therefore does away with this distinction. The establishing of itself as an other is loss or degeneration, and at the same time the negation of this loss; this is a purely speculative Notion, indeed a fundamental Notion in all speculation. The cause in which the cause is identical with the effect, is the infinite cause (infra, p. 263); if Spinoza had further developed what lies in the causa sui, substance with him would not have been rigid and unworkable.
b. The second definition is that of the finite. “That thing is said to be finite in its kind which can be limited by another of the same nature,” For it comes then to an end, it is not there; what is there is something else. This something else must, however, be of a like nature; for those things which are to limit each other must, in order to be able to limit each other, touch each other, and consequently have a relation to each other, that is to say they must be of one nature, stand on a like basis, and have a common sphere. That is the affirmative side of the limit. “Thus a thought is” only “limited by another thought, a body by another body, but thoughts are not limited by bodies nor” conversely “bodies by thoughts.” We saw this (p. 244) with Descartes: thought is an independent totality and so is extension, they have nothing to do with one another; they do not limit each other, each is included in itself.
c. The third definition is that of substance. “By substance I understand that which exists in itself and is conceived by itself, i.e. the conception of which does not require the aid of the conception of any other thing for its formation (a quo formari debeat);” otherwise it would be finite, accidental. What cannot have a conception formed of it without the aid of something else, is not independent, but is dependent upon that something else.
d. In the fourth place Spinoza defines attributes, which, as the moment coming second to substance, belong to it. “By attribute I understand that which the mind perceives as constituting the essence of substance;” and to Spinoza this alone is true. This is an important determination; the attribute is undoubtedly a determinateness, but at the same time it remains a totality. Spinoza, like Descartes, accepts only two attributes, thought and extension. The understanding grasps them as the reality of substance, but the reality is not higher than the substance, for it is only reality in the view of the understanding, which falls outside substance. Each of the two ways of regarding substance — extension and thought — contains no doubt the whole content of substance, but only in one form, which the understanding brings with it; and for this very reason both sides are in themselves identical and infinite. This is the true completion; but where substance passes over into attribute is not stated.
e. The fifth definition has to do with what comes third in relation to substance, the mode. “By mode I understand the affections of substance, or that which is in something else, through the aid of which also it is conceived.” Thus substance is conceived through itself; attribute is not conceived through itself, but has a relation to the conceiving understanding, in so far as this last conceives reality; mode, finally, is what is not conceived as reality, but through and in something else.
These last three moments Spinoza ought not merely to have established in this way as conceptions, he ought to have deduced them; they are especially important, and correspond with what we more definitely distinguish as universal, particular and individual. They must not, however, be taken as formal, but in their true concrete sense; the concrete universal is substance, the concrete particular is the concrete species; the Father and Son in the Christian dogma are similarly particular, but each of them contains the whole nature of God, only under a different form. The mode is the individual, the finite as such, which enters into external connection with what is “other.” In this Spinoza only descends to a lower stage, the mode is only the foregoing warped and stunted. Spinoza’s defect is therefore this, that he takes the third moment as mode alone, as a false individuality. True individuality and subjectivity is not a mere retreat from the universal, not merely something clearly determinate; for, as clearly determinate, it is at the same time Being-for-itself, determined by itself alone. The individual, the subjective, is even in being so the return to the universal; and in that it is at home with itself, it is itself the universal. The return consists simply and solely in the fact of the particular being in itself the universal; to this return Spinoza did not attain. Rigid substantiality is the last point he reached, not infinite form; this he knew not, and thus determinateness continually vanishes from his thought.
f. In the sixth place, the definition of the infinite is also of importance, for in the infinite Spinoza defines more strictly than anywhere else the Notion of the Notion. The infinite has a double significance, according as it is taken as the infinitely many or as the absolutely infinite (infra, p. 263). “The infinite in its kind is not such in respect of all possible attributes; but the absolutely infinite is that to whose essence all belongs that expresses an essence and contains no negation.” In the same sense Spinoza distinguishes in the nine-and-twentieth Letter (Oper. T. I. pp. 526-532) the infinite of imagination from the infinite of thought (intellectus), the actual (actu) infinite. Most men, when they wish to strive after the sublime, get no farther than the first of these; this is the false infinite, just as when one says “and so on into infinity,” meaning perhaps the infinity of space from star to star, or else the infinity of time. An infinite numerical series in mathematics is exactly the same thing. If a certain fraction is represented as a decimal fraction, it is incomplete; ⅐\u2150 is, on the contrary, the true infinite, and therefore not an incomplete expression, although the content here is of course limited. It is infinity in the incorrect sense that one usually has in view when infinity is spoken of; and even if it is looked on as sublime, it yet is nothing present, and only goes ever out into the negative, without being actual (actu). But for Spinoza the infinite is not the fixing of a limit and then passing beyond the limit fixed — the sensuous infinity — but absolute infinity, the positive, which has complete and present in itself an absolute multiplicity which has no Beyond. Philosophic infinity, that which is infinite actu, Spinoza therefore calls the absolute affirmation of itself. This is quite correct, only it might have been better expressed as: “It is the negation of negation.” Spinoza here also employs geometrical figures as illustrations of the Notion of infinity. In his Opera postuma, preceding his Ethics, and also in the letter quoted above, he has two circles, one of which lies within the other, which have not, however, a common centre.
“The inequalities of the space between A B and C D exceed every number; and yet the space which lies between is not so very great.” That is to say, if I wish to determine them all, I must enter upon an infinite series. This “beyond” always, however, remains defective, is always affected with negation; and yet this false infinite is there to hand, circumscribed, affirmative, actual and present in that plane as a complete space between the two circles. Or a finite line consists of an infinite number of points; and yet the line is present here and determined; the “beyond” of the infinite number of points, which are not complete, is in it complete and called back into unity. The infinite should be represented as actually present, and this comes to pass in the Notion of the cause of itself, which is therefore the true infinity. As soon as the cause has something else opposed to it — the effect — finitude is present; but here this something else is at the same time abrogated and it becomes once more the cause itself. The affirmative is thus negation of negation, since, according to the well-known grammatical rule, duplex negatio affirmat. In the same way Spinoza’s earlier definitions have also the infinite already implied in them, for instance in the case of the just mentioned cause of itself, inasmuch as he defines it as that whose essence involves existence (supra, p. 258). Notion and existence are each the Beyond of the other; but cause of itself, as thus including them, is really the carrying back of this “beyond” into unity. Or (supra, p. 259) “Substance is that which is in itself and is conceived from itself;” that is the same unity of Notion and existence. The infinite is in the same way in itself and has also its Notion in itself; its Notion is its Being, and its Being its Notion; true infinity is therefore to be found in Spinoza. But he has no consciousness of this; he has not recognized this Notion as absolute Notion, and therefore has not expressed it as a moment of true existence; for with him the Notion falls outside of existence, into the thought of existence.
g. Finally Spinoza says in the seventh place: “God is a Being absolutely infinite, i.e. a substance consisting of infinite attributes, each of which expresses an eternal and infinite essence.” Does substance, one might here ask, possess an infinite number of attributes? But as with Spinoza there are only two attributes, thought and extension, with which he invests God, “infinite” is not to be taken here in the sense of the indeterminate many, but positively, as a circle is perfect infinity in itself.
The whole of Spinoza’s philosophy is contained in these definitions, which, however, taken as a whole are formal; it is really a weak point in Spinoza that he begins thus with definitions. In mathematics this method is permitted, because at the outset we there make assumptions, such as that of the point and line; but in Philosophy the content should be known as the absolutely true. It is all very well to grant the correctness of the name-definition, and acknowledge that the word “substance” corresponds with the conception which the definition indicates, but it is quite another question to determine whether this content is absolutely true. Such a question is not asked in the case of geometrical propositions, but in philosophic investigation it is the very thing to be first considered, and this Spinoza has not done. Instead of only explaining these simple thoughts and representing them as concrete in the definitions which he makes, what he ought to have done was to examine whether this content is true. To all appearance it is only the explanation of the words that is given; but the content of the words is held to be established. All further content is merely derived from that, and proved thereby; for on the first content all the rest depends, and if it is established as a basis, the other necessarily follows. “The attribute is that which the understanding thinks of God.” But here the question is: How does it come that besides the Deity there now appears the understanding, which applies to absolute substance the two forms of thought and extension? and whence come these two forms themselves? Thus everything proceeds inwards, and not outwards; the determinations are not developed from substance, it does not resolve itself into these attributes.
- These definitions are followed by axioms and propositions in which Spinoza proves a great variety of points. He descends from the universal of substance through the particular, thought and extension, to the individual. He has thus all three moments of the Notion, or they are essential to him. But the mode, under which head falls individuality, he does not recognize as essential, or as constituting a moment of true existence in that existence; for it disappears in existence, or it is not raised into the Notion.
a. The main point then is that Spinoza proves from these Notions that there is only One Substance, God. It is a simple chain of reasoning, a very formal proof. “Fifth Proposition: There cannot be two or more substances of the same nature or of the same attribute.” This is implied already in the definitions; the proof is therefore a useless and wearisome toil, which only serves to render Spinoza more difficult to understand. “If there were several” (substances of the same attribute) “they must be distinguished from one another either by the diversity of their attributes or by the diversity of their affections” (modes). “If they are distinguished by their attributes, it would be directly conceded that there is only one substance having the same attribute.” For the attributes are simply what the understanding grasps as the essence of the one substance, which is determined in itself, and not through anything else. “But if these substances were distinguished by their affections, since substance is by nature prior to its affections it would follow that if from substance its affections were abstracted and it were regarded in itself, i.e. in its truth, it could henceforth not be regarded as distinct from other substances.” “Eighth Proposition: All substance is necessarily infinite. Proof: For otherwise it must be limited by another substance of the same nature, in which case there would be two substances of the same attribute, which is contrary to the fifth proposition.” “Every attribute must be conceived for itself,” as determination reflected on itself. “For attribute is what the mind conceives of substance as constituting its essence, from which it follows that it must be conceived through itself,” i.e. substance is what is conceived through itself (see the fourth and third definitions). “Therefore we may not argue from the plurality of attributes to a plurality of substances, for each is conceived by itself, and they have all been, always and at the same time, in substance, without the possibility of the one being produced by the other.” “Substance is indivisible. For if the parts retained the nature of the substance, there would be several substances of the same nature, which is contrary to the fifth proposition. If not, infinite substance would cease to exist, which is absurd.”195
“Fourteenth Proposition: No other substance than God can either exist or be conceived. Proof: God is the absolutely infinite substance, to whom can be denied no attribute which expresses the essence of substance, and He exists necessarily; therefore if there were a substance other than God, it must be explained by means of an attribute of God.” Consequently the substance would not have its own being, but that of God, and therefore would not be a substance. Or if it were still to be substance, “then there would necessarily follow the possibility of there being two substances with the same attribute, which according to the fifth proposition is absurd. From this it then follows that the thing extended and the thing that thinks” are not substances, but “are either attributes of God, or affections of His attributes.” By these proofs and others like them not much is to be gained. “Fifteenth, proposition: What is, is in God, and cannot exist or be conceived without God.” “Sixteenth proposition: By the necessity of the divine nature infinite things must follow in infinite modes, i.e., all that can fall under the infinite understanding. God is therefore the absolute First Cause.”196
Spinoza then ascribes freedom and necessity to God: “God is the absolute free cause, who is determined by nothing outside of Himself, for He exists solely by the necessity of His nature. There is no cause which inwardly or outwardly moves Him to act, except the perfection of His nature. His activity is by the laws of His Being necessary and eternal; what therefore follows from His absolute nature, from His attributes, is eternal, as it follows from the nature of the triangle from eternity and to eternity that its three angles are equal to two right angles.” That is to say, His Being is His absolute power; actus and potentia, Thought and Being, are in Him one. God has not therefore any other thoughts which He could not have actualized. “God is the immanent cause of all things, not the transient (transiens),” i.e., external cause. “His essence and His existence are the same, namely, the truth. A thing which is determined to perform some action, is, since God is cause, necessarily determined thereto by God; and a thing which is thus determined cannot render itself undetermined. In nature nothing is contingent. Will is not a free cause, but only a necessary cause, only a mode; it is therefore determined by another. God acts in accordance with no final causes (sub ratione boni). Those who assert that He does so, appear to establish something apart from God, which does not depend on God, and which God in His working keeps in view, as though it were an end. If this view is taken, God is not a free cause, but is subject to fate. It is equally inadmissible to subject all things to the arbitrary pleasure of God, i.e., to His indifferent will.”197 He is determined solely by His own nature; the activity of God is thus His power, and that is necessity. He is then absolute power in contrast to wisdom, which sets up definite aims, and consequently limitations; particular aims, thoughts of what is about to come to pass, and the like are therefore put out of the question. But beyond this universal, no advance is made; for it must be noticed as specially singular, that Spinoza in the fiftieth Letter (Oper. T. I. p. 634) says that every determination is a negation. Moreover, if God is the cause of the world, it is implied that He is finite; for the world is here put beside God as something different from Him.
b. The greatest difficulty in Spinoza is, in the distinctions to which he comes, to grasp the relation of this determinate to God, at the same time preserving the determination. “God is a thinking Being, because all individual thoughts are modes which express God’s nature in a certain and determinate manner; there pertains therefore to God an attribute the conception of which all individual thoughts involve, and by means of this they also are conceived. God is an extended Being for the same reason.” This means that the same substance, under the attribute of thought, is the intelligible world, and under the attribute of extension, is nature; nature and thought thus both express the same Essence of God. Or, as Spinoza says, “The order and system of natural things is the same as the order of the thoughts. Thus, for instance, the circle which exists in nature, and the idea of the existing circle, which is also in God, are one and the same thing” (they are one and the same content), “which is” merely “expressed by means of different attributes. If we therefore regard nature either under the attribute of extension or of thought, or under any other attribute whatever, we shall find one and the same connection of causes, i.e., the same sequence of things. The formal Being of the idea of the circle can be conceived only by means of the mode of thought, as its proximate cause, and this mode again by means of another, and so on infinitely; so that we must explain the order of the whole of nature, or the connection of causes, by the attribute of thought alone, and if things are considered by the attribute of extension, they must be considered only by the attribute of extension, — and the same holds good of other causes.”198 It is one and the same system, which at one time appears as nature, and at another time in the form of thought.
But Spinoza does not demonstrate how these two are evolved from the one substance, nor does he prove why there can only be two of them. Neither are extension and thought anything to him in themselves, or in truth, but only externally; for their difference is a mere matter of the understanding, which is ranked by Spinoza only among affections (Eth. P. I. Prop. XXXI. Demonst. p. 62), and as such has no truth. This has in recent times been served up again by Schelling in the following form: In themselves, the intelligent world and the corporeal world are the same, only under different forms; so that the intelligent universe is in itself the whole absolute divine totality, and the corporeal universe is equally this same totality. The differences are not in themselves, but the different aspects from which the Absolute is regarded are matters external to it. We take a higher tone in saying that nature and mind are rational; but reason is for us no empty word, for it means the totality which develops itself within itself. Again, it is the standpoint of reflection to regard aspects only, and nothing in itself. This defect appears in Spinoza and Schelling in the fact that they see no necessity why the Notion, as the implicit negative of its unity, should make a separation of itself into different parts; so that out of the simple universal the real, the opposed, itself becomes known. Absolute substance, attribute and mode, Spinoza allows to follow one another as definitions, he adopts them ready-made, without the attributes being developed from the substance, or the modes from the attributes. And more especially in regard to the attributes, there is no necessity evident, why these are thought and extension in particular.
c. When Spinoza passes on to individual things, especially to self-consciousness, to the freedom of the ‘I,’ he expresses himself in such a way as rather to lead back all limitations to substance than to maintain a firm grasp of the individual. Thus we already found the attributes not to be independent, but only the forms in which the understanding grasps substance in its differences; what comes third, the modes, is that under which for Spinoza all difference of things alone falls. Of the modes he says (Ethic. P. I. Prop. XXXII. Demonst. et Coroll. II. p. 63): In every attribute there are two modes; in extension, these are rest and motion, in thought they are understanding and will (intellectus et voluntas). They are mere modifications which only exist for us apart from God; therefore whatever refers to this difference and is specially brought about by it, is not absolute, but finite. These affections Spinoza sums up (Ethices, P. I. Prop. XXIX. Schol. pp. 61, 62) under the head of natura naturata: “Natura naturans is God regarded as free cause, in so far as He is in Himself and is conceived by Himself: or such attributes of substance as express the eternal and infinite essence. By natura naturata, I understand all that follows from the necessity of the divine nature, or from any of the attributes of God, all modes of the divine attributes, in so far as they are regarded as things which are in God, and which without God can neither exist nor be conceived.” From God proceeds nothing, for all things merely return to the point whence they came, if from themselves the commencement is made.
These then are Spinoza’s general forms, this is his principal idea. Some further determinations have still to be mentioned. He gives definitions of the terms modes, understanding, will, and of the affections, such as joy and sadness.199 We further find consciousness taken into consideration. Its development is extremely simple, or rather it is not developed at all; Spinoza begins directly with mind. “The essence of man consists of certain modifications of the attributes of God”; these modifications are only something related to our understanding. “If we, therefore, say that the human mind perceives this or that, it means nothing else than that God has this or that idea, not in so far as He is infinite, but in so far as He is expressed by the idea of the human mind. And if we say that God has this or that idea, not in so far as He constitutes the idea of the human mind, but in so far as He has, along with the human mind, the idea of another thing, then we say that the human mind perceives the thing partially or inadequately.” Truth is for Spinoza, on the other hand, the adequate.200 The idea that all particular content is only a modification of God is ridiculed by Bayle,201 who argues from it that God modified as Turks and Austrians, is waging war with Himself; but Bayle has not a trace of the speculative element in him, although he is acute enough as a dialectician, and has contributed to the intelligent discussion of definite subjects.
The relation of thought and extension in the human consciousness is dealt with by Spinoza as follows: “What has a place in the object” (or rather in the objective) “of the idea which constitutes the human mind must be perceived by the human mind; or there must necessarily be in the mind an idea of this object. The object of the idea which constitutes the human mind is body, or a certain mode of extension. If, then, the object of the idea which constitutes the human mind, is the body, there can happen nothing in the body which is not perceived by the mind. Otherwise the ideas of the affections of the body would not be in God, in so far as He constitutes our mind, but the idea of another thing: that is to say, the ideas of the affections of our body would not be likewise in our mind.” What is perplexing to understand in Spinoza’s system is, on the one hand, the absolute identity of thought and Being, and, on the other hand, their absolute indifference to one another, because each of them is a manifestation of the whole essence of God. The unity of the body and consciousness is, according to Spinoza, this, that the individual is a mode of the absolute substance, which, as consciousness, is the representation of the manner in which the body is affected by external things; all that is in consciousness is also in extension, and conversely. “Mind knows itself only in so far as it perceives the ideas of the affections of body,” it has only the idea of the affections of its body; this idea is synthetic combination, as we shall immediately see. “The ideas, whether of the attributes of God or of individual things, do not recognize as their efficient cause their objects themselves, or the things perceived, but God Himself, in so far as He is that which thinks.”202 Buhle (Geschichte der neuern Philos. Vol. III. Section II. p. 524) sums up these propositions of Spinoza thus: “Thought is inseparably bound up with extension; therefore all that takes place in extension must also take place in consciousness.” Spinoza, however, also accepts both in their separation from one another. The idea of body, he writes (Epistol. LXVI. p. 673), includes only these two in itself, and does not express any other attributes. The body which it represents is regarded under the attribute of extension; but the idea itself is a mode of thought. Here we see a dividing asunder; mere identity, the undistinguishable nature of all things in the Absolute, is insufficient even for Spinoza.
The individuum, individuality itself, is thus defined by Spinoza (Ethic. P. II. Prop. XIII. Defin. p. 92): “When several bodies of the same or of different magnitudes are so pressed together that they rest on one another, or when, moving with like or different degrees of rapidity, they communicate their movement to one another in a certain measure, we say that such bodies are united to one another, and that all together they form one body or individuum, which by this union distinguishes itself from all the other bodies.” Here we are at the extreme limit of Spinoza’s system, and it is here that his weak point appears. Individuation, the one, is a mere synthesis; it is quite a different thing from the Ichts or self-hood of Boehme (supra, pp. 205-207), since Spinoza has only universality, thought, and not self-consciousness. If, before considering this in reference to the whole, we take it from the other side, namely from the understanding, the distinction really falls under that head; it is not deduced, it is found. Thus, as we have already seen (p. 270) “the understanding in act (intellectus actu), as also will, desire, love, must be referred to natura naturata, not to natura naturans. For by the understanding, as recognized for itself, we do not mean absolute thought, but only a certain mode of thought — a mode which is distinct from other modes like desire, love, etc., and on that account must be conceived by means of absolute thought, i.e. by means of an attribute of God which expresses an eternal and infinite essentiality of thought; without which the understanding, as also the rest of the modes of thought, could neither be nor be conceived to be.” (Spinoza, Ethices, P. I. Propos. XXXI. pp. 62, 63). Spinoza is unacquainted with an infinity of form, which would be something quite different from that of rigid, unyielding substance. What is requisite is to recognize God as the essence of essences, as universal substance, identity, and yet to preserve distinctions.
Spinoza goes on to say: “What constitutes the real (actuale) existence of the human mind is nothing else than the idea of a particular” (individual) “thing, that actually exists,” not of an infinite thing. “The essence of man involves no necessary existence, i.e. according to the order of nature a man may just as well be as not be.” For the human consciousness, as it does not belong to essence as an attribute, is a mode — a mode of the attribute of thought. But neither is the body, according to Spinoza, the cause of consciousness, nor is consciousness the cause of the body, but the finite cause is here only the relation of like to like; body is determined by body, conception by conception. “The body can neither determine the mind to thought, nor can the mind determine the body to motion, or rest, or anything else. For all modes of thought have God as Cause, in so far as He is a thinking thing, and not in so far as He is revealed by means of another attribute. What therefore determines the mind to thought, is a mode of thought and not of extension; similarly motion and rest of the body must be derived from another body.”203 I might quote many other such particular propositions from Spinoza, but they are very formal, and a continual repetition of one and the same thing.
Buhle (Gesch. d. neuern Phil. Vol. III. Section 2, pp. 525-528), attributes limited conceptions to Spinoza: “The soul experiences in the body all the ‘other’ of which it becomes aware as outside of the body, and it becomes aware of this ‘other’ only by means of the conceptions of the qualities which the body perceives therein. If, therefore, the body can perceive no qualities of a thing, the soul also can come to no knowledge of it. On the other hand, the soul is equally unable to arrive at the perception of the body which belongs to it; the soul knows not that the body is there, and knows itself even in no other way than by means of the qualities which the body perceives in things which are outside of it, and by means of the conceptions of the same. For the body is an individual thing, determined in a certain manner, which can only gradually, in association with and amidst other individual things, attain to existence, and can preserve itself in existence only as thus connected, combined and associated with others,” i.e. in infinite progress; the body can by no means be conceived from itself. “The soul’s consciousness expresses a certain determinate form of a Notion, as the Notion itself expresses a determinate form of an individual thing. But the individual thing, its Notion, and the Notion of this Notion are altogether and entirely one and the same thing, only regarded under different attributes. As the soul is nothing else than the immediate Notion of the body, and is one and the same thing with this, the excellence of the soul can never be anything else than the excellence of the body. The capacities of the understanding are nothing but the capacities of the body, if they are looked at from the corporeal point of view, and the decisions of the will are likewise determinations of the body. Individual things are derived from God in an eternal and infinite manner” (i.e. once and for all), “and not in a transitory, finite and evanescent manner: they are derived from one another merely inasmuch as they mutually produce and destroy each other, but in their eternal existence they endure unchangeable. All individual things mutually presuppose each other; one cannot be thought without the other; that is to say they constitute together an inseparable whole; they exist side by side in one utterly indivisible, infinite Thing, and in no other way whatever.”
- We have now to speak of Spinoza’s system of morals, and that is a subject of importance. Its great principle is no other than this, that the finite spirit is moral in so far as it has the true Idea, i.e. in so far as it directs its knowledge and will on God, for truth is merely the knowledge of God. It may be said that there is no morality loftier than this, since its only requisite is to have a clear idea of God. The first thing Spinoza speaks of in this regard is the affections: “Everything strives after self-preservation. This striving is the actual essence of the thing, and involves only indefinite time; when referred exclusively to mind, it is termed will; when referred to both mind and body together, it is called desire. Determination of the will (volitio) and Idea are one and the same thing. The sense of liberty rests on this, that men do not know the determining causes of their actions. The affection is a confused idea; the more clearly and distinctly, therefore, we know the affection, the more it is under our control.”204 The influence of the affections, as confused and limited (inadequate) ideas, upon human action, constitutes therefore, according to Spinoza, human slavery; of the passionate affections the principal are joy and sorrow; we are in suffering and slavery in so far as we relate ourselves as a part.205
“Our happiness and liberty consist in an enduring and eternal love to God; this intellectual love follows from the nature of mind, in so far as it is regarded as eternal truth through the nature of God. The more a man recognizes God’s existence and loves Him, the less does he suffer from evil affections and the less is his fear of death.”206 Spinoza requires in addition the true kind of knowledge. There are, according to him, three kinds of knowledge; in the first, which he calls opinion and imagination, he includes the knowledge which we obtain from an individual object through the senses — a knowledge fragmentary and ill-arranged — also knowledge drawn from signs, pictorial conceptions and memory. The second kind of knowledge is for Spinoza that which we derive from general conceptions and adequate ideas of the properties of things. The third is intuitive knowledge (scientia intuitiva) which rises from the adequate idea of the formal essence of certain attributes of God to the adequate knowledge of the essence of things.207 Regarding this last he then says: “The nature of reason is not to contemplate things as contingent, but as necessary … to think of all things under a certain form of eternity (sub quadam specie œternitatis);” i.e. in absolutely adequate Notions, i.e. in God. “For the necessity of things is the necessity of the eternal nature of God Himself. Every idea of an individual thing necessarily includes the eternal and infinite essence of God in itself. For individual things are modes of an attribute of God; therefore they must include in themselves His eternal essence. Our mind, in so far as it knows itself and the body under the form of eternity, has to that extent necessarily the knowledge of God, and knows that it is itself in God and is conceived through God. All Ideas, in so far as they are referable to God, are true.”208 Man must trace back all things to God, for God is the One in All; the eternal essence of God is the one thing that is, the eternal truth is the only thing for man to aim at in his actions. With Spinoza this is not a knowledge arrived at through philosophy, but only knowledge of a truth. “The mind can succeed in tracing back all affections of the body or images of things to God. In proportion as the mind regards all things as necessary, it has a greater power over its affections,” which are arbitrary and contingent. This is the return of the mind to God, and this is human freedom; as mode, on the other hand, the spirit has no freedom, but is determined from without. “From the third kind of knowledge there arises the repose of the mind; the supreme good of the mind is to know God, and this is its highest virtue. This knowledge necessarily produces the intellectual love of God; for it produces a joyfulness accompanied by the Idea of God as cause — i.e. the intellectual love of God. God Himself loves Himself with an infinite intellectual love.”209 For God can have only Himself as aim and cause; and the end of the subjective mind is to be directed on Him. This is therefore the purest, but also a universal morality.
In the thirty-sixth Letter (pp. 581-582) Spinoza speaks of Evil. The allegation is made that God, as the originator of all things and everything, is also the originator of evil, is consequently Himself evil; in this identity all things are one, good and evil are in themselves the same thing, in God’s substance this difference has disappeared. Spinoza says in answer to this: “I assert the fact that God absolutely and truly” (as cause of Himself) “is the cause of everything that has an essential content” (i.e. affirmative reality) “be it what it may. Now if you can prove to me that evil, error, crime, etc., are something that expresses an essence, I will freely admit to you that God is the originator of crime and evil and error. But I have elsewhere abundantly demonstrated that the form of evil cannot subsist in anything that expresses an essence, and therefore it cannot be said that God is the cause of evil.” Evil is merely negation, privation, limitation, finality, mode — nothing in itself truly real. “Nero’s murder of his mother, in so far as it had positive content, was no crime. For Orestes did the same external deed, and had in doing it the same end in view — to kill his mother; and yet he is not blamed,” and so on. The affirmative is the will, the intention, the act of Nero. “Wherein then consists Nero’s criminality? In nothing else but that he proved himself ungrateful, merciless, and disobedient. But it is certain that all this expresses no essence, and therefore God was not the cause of it, though He was the cause of Nero’s action and intention.” These last are something positive, but yet they do not constitute the crime as such; it is only the negative element, such as mercilessness, etc. that makes the action a crime. “We know that whatever exists, regarded in itself and without taking anything else into consideration, contains a perfection which extends as widely as the essence of the thing itself extends, for the essence is in no way different therefrom.”— “Because then,” we find in the thirty-second letter (pp. 541, 543), “God does not regard things abstractly, or form general definitions,” (of what the thing ought to be) “and no more reality is required of things than the Divine understanding and power has given and actually meted out to them; therefore it clearly follows that such privation exists only and solely in respect to our understanding, but not in respect to God;” for God is absolutely real. It is all very well to say this, but it does not meet the case. For in this way God and the respect to our understanding are different. Where is their unity? How is this to be conceived? Spinoza continues in the thirty-sixth letter: “Although the works of the righteous (i.e. of those who have a clear idea of God, to which they direct all their actions and even their thoughts), and” also the works “of the wicked (i.e. of those who have no idea of God, but only ideas of earthly things,” — individual, personal interests and opinions,— “by which their actions and thoughts are directed), and all whatsoever exists, necessarily proceed from God’s eternal laws and counsels, and perpetually depend on God, they are yet not distinguished from one another in degree, but in essence; for although a mouse as well as an angel depends on God, and sorrow as well as joy, yet a mouse cannot be a kind of angel, and sorrow cannot be a kind of joy,” — they are different in essence.
There is therefore no ground for the objection that Spinoza’s philosophy gives the death-blow to morality; we even gain from it the great result that all that is sensuous is mere limitation, and that there is only one true substance, and that human liberty consists in keeping in view this one substance, and in regulating all our conduct in accordance with the mind and will of the Eternal One. But in this philosophy it may with justice be objected that God is conceived only as Substance, and not as Spirit, as concrete. The independence of the human soul is therein also denied, while in the Christian religion every individual appears as determined to salvation. Here, on the contrary, the individual spirit is only a mode, an accident, but not anything substantial. This brings us to a general criticism of the philosophy of Spinoza, in the course of which we shall consider it from three different points of view.
In the first place Spinozism is asserted to be Atheism — by Jacobi, for instance (Werke, Vol. IV. Section I. p. 216) — because in it no distinction is drawn between God and the world; it makes nature the real God, or lowers God to the level of nature, so that God disappears and only nature is established. But it is not so much God and nature that Spinoza sets up in mutual opposition, as thought and extension; and God is unity, not One made up of two, but absolute Substance, in which has really disappeared the limitation of the subjectivity of thought and nature. Those who speak against Spinoza do so as if it were on God’s account that they were interested; but what these opponents are really concerned about is not God, but the finite — themselves. The relationship between God and the finite, to which we belong, may be represented in three different ways: firstly, only the finite exists, and in this way we alone exist, but God does not exist — this is atheism; the finite is here taken absolutely, and is accordingly the substantial. Or, in the second place, God alone exists; the finite has no reality, it is only phenomena, appearance. To say, in the third place, that God exists and we also exist is a false synthetic union, an amicable compromise. It is the popular view of the matter that the one side has as much substantiality as the other; God is honoured and supreme, but finite things also have Being to exactly the same extent. Reason cannot remain satisfied with this “also,” with indifference like this. The philosophic requisite is therefore to apprehend the unity of these differences in such a way that difference is not let slip, but proceeds eternally from substance, without being petrified into dualism. Spinoza is raised above this dualism; religion is so also, if we turn its popular conceptions into thoughts. The atheism of the first attitude — when men set up as ultimate the arbitrariness of the will, their own vanity, the finite things of nature, and the world dwells for ever in the mind — is not the standpoint of Spinoza, for whom God is the one and only substance, the world on the contrary being merely an affection or mode of this substance. In the respect that Spinoza does not distinguish God from the world, the finite, it is therefore correct to term his theory atheism, for his words are these: Nature, the human mind, the individual, are God revealed under particular forms. It has been already remarked (pp. 257, 258, 280) that undoubtedly Substance with Spinoza does not perfectly fulfil the conception of God, since it is as Spirit that He is to be conceived. But if Spinoza is called an atheist for the sole reason that he does not distinguish God from the world, it is a misuse of the term. Spinozism might really just as well or even better have been termed Acosmism, since according to its teaching it is not to the world, finite existence, the universe, that reality and permanency are to be ascribed, but rather to God alone as the substantial. Spinoza maintains that there is no such thing as what is known as the world; it is merely a form of God, and in and for itself it is nothing. The world has no true reality, and all this that we know as the world has been cast into the abyss of the one identity. There is therefore no such thing as finite reality, it has no truth whatever; according to Spinoza what is, is God, and God alone. Therefore the allegations of those who accuse Spinoza of atheism are the direct opposite of the truth; with him there is too much God. They say: If God is the identity of mind and nature, then nature or the individual man is God. This is quite correct, but they forget that nature and the individual disappear in this same identity: and they cannot forgive Spinoza for thus annihilating them. Those who defame him in such a way as this are therefore not aiming at maintaining God, but at maintaining the finite and the worldly; they do not fancy their own extinction and that of the world. Spinoza’s system is absolute pantheism and monotheism elevated into thought. Spinozism is therefore very far removed from being atheism in the ordinary sense; but in the sense that God is not conceived as spirit, it is atheism. However, in the same way many theologians are also atheists who speak of God only as the Almighty Supreme Being, etc., who refuse to acknowledge God, and who admit the validity and truth of the finite. They are many degrees worse than Spinoza.
The second point to be considered is the method adopted by Spinoza for setting forth his philosophy; it is the demonstrative method of geometry as employed by Euclid, in which we find definitions, explanations, axioms, and theorems. Even Descartes made it his starting-point that philosophic propositions must be mathematically handled and proved, that they must have the very same evidence as mathematics. The mathematical method is considered superior to all others, on account of the nature of its evidence; and it is natural that independent knowledge in its re-awakening lighted first upon this form, of which it saw so brilliant an example. The mathematical method is, however, ill-adapted for speculative content, and finds its proper place only in the finite sciences of the understanding. In modern times Jacobi has asserted (Werke, Vol. IV. Section I. pp. 217-223) that all demonstration, all scientific knowledge leads back to Spinozism, which alone is a logical method of thought; and because it must lead thither, it is really of no service whatever, but immediate knowledge is what we must depend on. It may be conceded to Jacobi that the method of demonstration leads to Spinozism, if we understand thereby merely the method of knowledge belonging to the understanding. But the fact is that Spinoza is made a testing-point in modern philosophy, so that it may really be said: You are either a Spinozist or not a philosopher at all. This being so, the mathematical and demonstrative method of Spinoza would seem to be only a defect in the external form; but it is the fundamental defect of the whole position. In this method the nature of philosophic knowledge and the object thereof, are entirely misconceived, for mathematical knowledge and method are merely formal in character and consequently altogether unsuited for philosophy. Mathematical knowledge exhibits its proof on the existent object as such, not on the object as conceived; the Notion is lacking throughout; the content of Philosophy, however, is simply the Notion and that which is comprehended by the Notion. Therefore this Notion as the knowledge of the essence is simply one assumed, which falls within the philosophic subject; and this is what represents itself to be the method peculiar to Spinoza’s philosophy. Of this demonstrative manner we have already seen these examples: (α) The definitions from which Spinoza takes his start — as in geometry a commencement is made with the line, triangle, &c. — concern universal determinations, such as cause of itself, the finite, substance, attribute, mode, and so on, which are solely and simply accepted and assumed, not deduced, nor proved to be necessary: for Spinoza is not aware of how he arrives at these individual determinations. (β) He further speaks of axioms, for instance (Ethic. P. I. Ax. I. p. 36): “What is, is either in itself or in another.” The determinations “in itself” and “in another” are not shown forth in their necessity: neither is this disjunction proved, it is merely assumed. (γ) The propositions have, as such, a subject and predicate which are not similar. When the predicate is proved of the subject and necessarily combined with it, the discrepancy remains that the one as universal is related to the other as particular: therefore even although the relation is proved, there is present at the same time a secondary relation. Mathematical science, in its true propositions respecting a whole, escapes from the difficulty by proving also the converse of the propositions, in this way obtaining for them a special definiteness by proving each proposition in both ways. True propositions may, therefore, be looked on as definitions, and the conversion is the proof of the proposition in the form in which it is expressed. But this means of escaping the difficulty Philosophy cannot well employ, since the subject of which something is proved is itself only the Notion or the universal, and the proposition form is therefore quite superfluous and out of place. What has the form of the subject is in the form of an existent thing, as contrasted with the universal, the content of the proposition. The existent thing is taken as signifying existent in the ordinary sense; it is the word which we use in every-day life, and of which we have a conception that has nothing of the Notion in it. The converse of a proposition would simply read like this: The Notion is that which is thus popularly conceived. This proof from the usage of language — that we also understand this to be the meaning in every-day life, or in other words that the name is correct — has no philosophic significance. But if the proposition is not one like this, but an ordinary proposition, and if the predicate is not the Notion, but some general term or other, a predicate of the subject, such propositions are really not philosophic: we might instance the statement that substance is one and not several, but only that in which substance and unity are the same. Or, in other words, this unity of the two moments is the very thing which the proof has to demonstrate, it is the Notion or the essence. In this case it looks as if the proposition were the matter of chief importance, the truth. But if in these really only so-called propositions, subject and predicate are in truth not alike, because one is individual and the other universal, their relation is essential, i.e. the reason for which they are one. The proof has here a false position indeed, as if that subject were implicit or in itself, whereas subject and predicate are, fundamentally even, moments in separation; in the judgment “God is One,” the subject itself is universal, since it resolves itself into unity. On the other side it is implied in this false position that the proof is brought in from outside merely, as in mathematics from a preceding proposition, and that the proposition is not therefore conceived through itself; thus we see the ordinary method of proof take its middle term, the principle, from anywhere it can, in the same way as in classification it takes its principle of classification. The proposition is then, as it were, a secondary affair; but we must ask if this proposition is true. The result as proposition ought to be truth, but is only knowledge. The movement of knowledge, as proof, falls therefore, in the third place, outside of the proposition, which ought to be the truth. The essential moments of the system are really already completely contained in the presuppositions of the definitions, from which all further proofs have merely to be deduced. But whence have we these categories which here appear as definitions? We find them doubtless in ourselves, in scientific culture. The existence of the understanding, the will, extension, is therefore not developed from infinite substance, but it is directly expressed in these determinations, and that quite naturally; for of a truth there exists the One into which everything enters, in order to be absorbed therein, but out of which nothing comes. For as Spinoza has set up the great proposition, all determination implies negation (supra, p. 267), and as of everything, even of thought in contrast to extension, it may be shown that it is determined and finite, what is essential in it rests upon negation. Therefore God alone is the positive, the affirmative, and consequently the one substance; all other things, on the contrary, are only modifications of this substance, and are nothing in and for themselves. Simple determination or negation belongs only to form, but is quite another thing from absolute determinateness or negativity, which is absolute form; in this way of looking at it negation is the negation of negation, and therefore true affirmation. This negative self-conscious moment, the movement of knowledge, which pursues its way in the thought which is present before us, is however certainly lacking to the content of Spinoza’s philosophy, or at least it is only externally associated with it, since it falls within self-consciousness. That is to say, thoughts form the content, but they are not self-conscious thoughts or Notions: the content signifies thought, as pure abstract self-consciousness, but an unreasoning knowledge, into which the individual does not enter: the content has not the signification of ‘I.’ Therefore the case is as in mathematics; a proof is certainly given, conviction must follow, but yet the matter fails to be understood. There is a rigid necessity in the proof, to which the moment of self-consciousness is lacking; the ‘I’ disappears, gives itself altogether up, merely withers away. Spinoza’s procedure is therefore quite correct; yet the individual proposition is false, seeing that it expresses only one side of the negation. The understanding has determinations which do not contradict one another; contradiction the understanding cannot suffer. The negation of negation is, however, contradiction, for in that it negates negation as simple determination, it is on the one hand affirmation, but on the other hand also really negation; and this contradiction, which is a matter pertaining to reason, is lacking in the case of Spinoza. There is lacking the infinite form, spirituality and liberty. I have already mentioned before this (pp. 93, 94; 129-137) that Lullus and Bruno attempted to draw up a system of form, which should embrace and comprehend the one substance which organizes itself into the universe; this attempt Spinoza did not make.
Because negation was thus conceived by Spinoza in one-sided fashion merely, there is, in the third place, in his system, an utter blotting out of the principle of subjectivity, individuality, personality, the moment of self-consciousness in Being. Thought has only the signification of the universal, not of self-consciousness. It is this lack which has, on the one side, brought the conception of the liberty of the subject into such vehement antagonism to the system of Spinoza, because it set aside the independence of the human consciousness, the so-called liberty which is merely the empty abstraction of independence, and in so doing set aside God, as distinguished from nature and the human consciousness — that is as implicit or in Himself, in the Absolute; for man has the consciousness of freedom, of the spiritual, which is the negative of the corporeal, and man has also the consciousness that his true Being lies in what is opposed to the corporeal. This has been firmly maintained by religion, theology, and the sound common sense of the common consciousness, and this form of opposition to Spinoza appears first of all in the assertion that freedom is real, and that evil exists. But because for Spinoza, on the other hand, there exists only absolute universal substance as the non-particularized, the truly real — all that is particular and individual, my subjectivity and spirituality, has, on the other hand, as a limited modification whose Notion depends on another, no absolute existence. Thus the soul, the Spirit, in so far as it is an individual Being, is for Spinoza a mere negation, like everything in general that is determined. As all differences and determinations of things and of consciousness simply go back into the One substance, one may say that in the system of Spinoza all things are merely cast down into this abyss of annihilation. But from this abyss nothing comes out; and the particular of which Spinoza speaks is only assumed and presupposed from the ordinary conception, without being justified. Were it to be justified, Spinoza would have to deduce it from his Substance; but that does not open itself out, and therefore comes to no vitality, spirituality or activity. His philosophy has only a rigid and unyielding substance, and not yet spirit; in it we are not at home with ourselves. But the reason that God is not spirit is that He is not the Three in One. Substance remains rigid and petrified, without Boehme’s sources or springs; for the individual determinations in the form of determinations of the understanding are not Boehme’s originating spirits, which energize and expand in one another (supra, pp. 202, 203). What we find regarding this particular then is that it is only a modification of absolute substance, which, however, is not declared to be such; for the moment of negativity is what is lacking to this rigid motionlessness, whose single form of activity is this, to divest all things of their determination and particularity and cast them back into the one absolute substance, wherein they are simply swallowed up, and all life in itself is utterly destroyed. This is what we find philosophically inadequate with Spinoza; distinctions are externally present, it is true, but they remain external, since even the negative is not known in itself. Thought is the absolutely abstract, and for that very reason the absolutely negative; it is so in truth, but with Spinoza it is not asserted to be the absolutely negative. But if in opposition to Spinozism we hold fast to the assertion that Spirit, as distinguishing itself from the corporeal, is substantial, actual, true, and in the same way that freedom is not something merely privative, then this actuality in formal thought is doubtless correct, yet it rests only upon feeling; but the further step is that the Idea essentially includes within itself motion and vitality, and that it consequently has in itself the principle of spiritual freedom. On the one hand, therefore, the defect of Spinozism is conceived as consisting in its want of correspondence with actuality; but on the other side it is to be apprehended in a higher sense, I mean in the sense that substance with Spinoza is only the Idea taken altogether abstractly, not in its vitality.
If, in conclusion, we sum up this criticism that we have offered, we would say that on the one hand with Spinoza negation or privation is distinct from substance; for he merely assumes individual determinations, and does not deduce them from substance. On the other hand the negation is present only as Nothing, for in the absolute there is no mode; the negative is not there, but only its dissolution, its return: we do not find its movement, its Becoming and Being. The negative is conceived altogether as a vanishing moment — not in itself, but only as individual self-consciousness; it is not like the Separator we met with in Boehme’s system (supra, p. 206). Self-consciousness is born from this ocean, dripping with the water thereof, i.e. never coming to absolute self-hood; the heart, the independence is transfixed — the vital fire is wanting. This lack has to be supplied, the moment of self-consciousness has to be added. It has the following two special aspects, which we now perceive emerging and gaining acceptance; in the first place the objective aspect, that absolute essence obtains in self-consciousness the mode of an object of consciousness for which the “other” exists, or the existent as such, and that what Spinoza understood by the “modes” is elevated to objective reality as an absolute moment of the absolute; in the second place we have the aspect of self-consciousness, individuality, independence. As was formerly the case with respect to Bacon and Boehme, the former aspect is here taken up by the Englishman, John Locke, the latter by the German Leibnitz; in the first case it did not appear as a moment, nor did it in the second appear as absolute Notion. Now while Spinoza only takes notice of these ordinary conceptions, and the highest point of view he reaches in regard to them is that they sink and disappear in the one Substance, Locke on the contrary examines the genesis of these conceptions, while Leibnitz opposes to Spinoza the infinite multiplicity of individuals, although all these monads have one monad as the basis of their Being. Both Locke and Leibnitz therefore came forward as opponents of the above-mentioned one-sidedness of Spinoza.
The philosophy of Malebranche is in point of matter entirely identical with that of Spinoza, but it has another, a more religious and more theological form; on account of this form it never encountered the opposition met with by Spinoza, and for the same reason Malebranche has never been reproached with Atheism.
Nicholas Malebranche was born at Paris in 1638. He was sickly and deformed in body, and was hence brought up with great care. He was diffident and loved solitude; in his twenty-second year he entered the congrégation de l’oratoire, a sort of spiritual order, and devoted himself to the sciences. In passing a bookseller’s shop he happened accidentally to see Descartes’ work De homine; he read it, and it interested him greatly — so much so that the reading of it brought on severe palpitation and he was forced to cease. This decided his future life; there awoke in him an irrepressible inclination for Philosophy. He was a man of most noble and gentle character, and of the most genuine and unswerving piety. He died at Paris in 1715, and in the seventy-seventh year of his age.210 His principal work bears the title: De la recherche de la vérité. One part of it is entirely metaphysical, but the greater part is altogether empirical. For instance, Malebranche in the first three books treats logically and psychologically of the errors in sight and hearing, in the imagination and understanding.
a. What is most important in this book is his idea of the origin of our knowledge. He says: “The essence of the soul is in thought, just as that of matter is in extension. All else, such as sensation, imagination and will, are modifications of thought”. He thus begins with two sides, between which he sets an absolute chasm, and then he follows out in detail the Cartesian idea of the assistance of God in knowledge. His main point is that “the soul cannot attain to its conceptions and notions from external things.” For when I and the thing are clearly independent of one another and have nothing in common, the two can certainly not enter into relation with one another nor be for one another. “Bodies are impenetrable; their images would destroy one another on the way to the organs.” But further: “The soul cannot beget ideas from itself, nor can they be inborn,” for as “Augustine has said, ‘Say not that ye yourselves are your own light.’” But how then comes extension, the manifold, into the simple, into the spirit, since it is the reverse of the simple, namely the diverse? This question regarding the association of thought and extension is always an important one in Philosophy. According to Malebranche the answer is, “That we see all things in God.” God Himself is the connection between us and them, and thus the unity between the thing and thought. “God has in Him the ideas of all things because He has created all; God is through His omnipresence united in the most intimate way with spirits. God thus is the place of spirits,” the Universal of spirit, “just as space” is the universal, “the place of bodies. Consequently the soul knows in God what is in Him,” bodies, “inasmuch as He sets forth” (inwardly conceives) “created existence, because all this is spiritual, intellectual, and present to the soul.”211 Because things and God are intellectual and we too are intellectual, we perceive them in God as they are, so to speak, intellectual in Him. If this be further analyzed it in no way differs from Spinozism. Malebranche indeed in a popular way allows soul and things to subsist as independent, but this independence vanishes away like smoke when the principle is firmly grasped. The catechism says: “God is omnipresent,” and if this omnipresence be developed Spinozism is arrived at; and yet theologians then proceed to speak against the system of identity, and cry out about Pantheism.
b. We must further remark that Malebranche also makes the universal, thought, the essential, by placing it before the particular. “The soul has the Notion of the infinite and universal: it knows nothing excepting through the Idea which it has of the infinite; this Idea must hence come first. The universal is not a mere confusion of individual ideas, it is not a union of individual things.” According to Locke the individual from which the universal is formed precedes (infra, p. 299); according to Malebranche the universal Idea is what comes first in man. “If we wish to think of anything particular we think first of the universal;” it is the principle of the particular, as space is of things. All essentiality precedes our particular conceptions, and this essentiality comes first. “All essential existences (essences) come before our ordinary conception; they cannot be such excepting by God’s presence in the mind and spirit. He it is who contains all things in the simplicity of His nature. It seems evident that mind would not be capable of representing to itself the universal Notions of species, kind, and suchlike, if it did not see all things comprehended in one.” The universal is thus in and for itself, and it does not take its rise through the particular. “Since each existent thing is an individual, we cannot say that we see something actually created when, for example, we see a triangle in general,” for we see it through God. “No account can be given of how spirit knows abstract and common truths, excepting through the presence of Him who can enlighten spirit in an infinite way,” because He is in and for Himself the universal. “We have a clear idea of God,” of the universal: “We can have such only through union with Him, for this idea is not a created one,” but is in and for itself. As with Spinoza, the one universal is God, and in so far as it is determined, it is the particular; we see this particular only in the universal, as we see bodies in space. “We already have a conception of infinite Being, inasmuch as we have a conception of Being without regard to whether it is finite or infinite. To know a finite we must limit the infinite; and this last must thus precede. Thus spirit perceives all in the infinite; this is so far from being a confused conception of many particular things that all particular conceptions are merely participations in the universal Idea of infinitude — in the same way that God does not receive this Being from” finite “creatures, but,” on the contrary, “all creatures only subsist through Him.”212
c. As regards the turning of the soul to God, Malebranche says what Spinoza said from his ethical point of view: “It is impossible that God should have an end other than Himself (the Holy Scriptures place this beyond doubt);” the will of God can only have the good, what is without doubt universal as its end. “Hence not only is it essential that our natural love, i.e. the emotion which He brings forth in our spirit, should strive after Him”— “the will is really love towards God”— “but it is likewise impossible that the knowledge and the light which He gives to our spirit should make anything else known than what is in Him,” for thought only exists in unity with God. “If God were to make a spirit and give it the sun as an idea or as the immediate object of its knowledge, God would have made this spirit and the idea of this spirit for the sun and not for Himself.” All natural love, and still more knowledge, and the desire after truth, have God as their end. “All motions of the will as regards the creatures are only determinations of motion as regards the creator.” Malebranche quotes from Augustine “that we see God even from the time we first enter upon this life (dès cette vie), through the knowledge that we have of eternal truths. The truth is uncreated, unchangeable, immeasurable, eternal above all things; it is true through itself, and has its perfection from no thing. It makes the creator more perfect, and all spirits naturally seek to know it: now there is nothing that has these perfections but God, and thus the truth is God. We perceive these unchangeable and eternal truths, hence we see God.” “God indeed sees but He does not feel sensuous things. If we see something sensuous, sensation and pure thought are to be found in our consciousness. Sensation is a modification of our spirit; God occasions this because He knows that our soul is capable of it. The Idea which is bound up with the sensation is in God; we see it, etc. This relation, this union of our mind and spirit with the Word (Verbe) of God, and of our will with His love, is that we are formed after the image of God and in His likeness.”213 Thus the love of God consists in relating one’s affections to the Idea of God; whoever knows himself and thinks his affections clearly, loves God. We further find sundry empty litanies concerning God, a catechism for children of eight years of age respecting goodness, justice, omnipresence, the moral order of the world; in all their lifetime theologians do not get any further.
We have given the principal of Malebranche’s ideas; the remainder of his philosophy is composed partly of formal logic, and partly of empirical psychology. He passes to the treatment of errors, how they arise, how the senses, the imagination, the understanding, deceive us, and how we must conduct ourselves in order to effect a remedy. Then Malebranche goes on (T. III. L. VI. P. I. chap. i. pp. 1-3) to the rules and laws for recognizing the truth. Thus here the term Philosophy was even applied to the manner in which reflections on particular objects are drawn from formal logic and external facts.
B. Second Division.
IT WAS LOCKE who became the instrument of setting forth this entire manner of thinking in a systematic way, for he worked out Bacon’s position more fully. And if Bacon made sensuous Being to be the truth, Locke demonstrated the universal, Thought, to be present in sensuous Being, or showed that we obtained the universal, the true, from experience. From Locke a wide culture proceeds, influencing English philosophers more especially; the forms adopted by this school were various, but the principle was the same; it became a general method of regarding things in a popular way, and calls itself Philosophy, although the object of Philosophy is not to be met with here.
When experience means that the Notion has objective actuality for consciousness, it is indeed a necessary element in the totality; but as this reflection appears in Locke, signifying as it does that we obtain truth by abstraction from experience and sensuous perception, it is utterly false, since, instead of being a moment, it is made the essence of the truth. It is no doubt true that against the hypothesis of the inward immediacy of the Idea, and against the method of setting it forth in definitions and axioms, as also against absolute substance, the demand that ideas should be represented as results, and the claims of individuality and self-consciousness, assert their rights to recognition. In the philosophy of Locke and Leibnitz, however, these necessities make themselves known in an imperfect manner only; the one fact which is common to both philosophers is that they, in opposition to Spinoza and Malebranche, take for their principle the particular, finite determinateness and the individual. According to Spinoza and Malebranche substance or the universal is the true, the sole existent, the eternal, that which is in and for itself, without origin, and of which particular things are only modifications which are conceived through substance. But hereby Spinoza has done an injury to this negative; he hence arrived at no immanent determination, for all that is determined and individual is merely annihilated in his system. Now, on the contrary, the general inclination of consciousness is to maintain the difference, partly in order to mark itself out as implicitly free in opposition to its object — Being, nature, and God, and partly in order to recognize the unity in this opposition, and from the opposition itself to make the unity emerge. But those who were the instruments of this tendency comprehended themselves but little, they had still no clear consciousness of their task, nor of the manner in which their claims could be satisfied. With Locke, this principle makes its first entrance into Philosophy in a manner so completely at variance with the inflexible undifferentiated identity of the substance of Spinoza, that the sensuous and limited, the immediate present and existent, is the main and fundamental matter. Locke does not get beyond the ordinary point of view of consciousness, viz. that objects outside of us are the real and the true. The finite is thus not grasped by Locke as absolute negativity, i.e. in its infinitude; this we shall not find until we come to deal in the third place with Leibnitz. It is in a higher sense that Leibnitz asserts individuality, the differentiated, to be self-existent and indeed objectless, to be true Being. That is to say, it is not according to him finite, but is yet distinguished; thus, each monad is itself the totality. Leibnitz and Locke hence likewise stand in a position of mutual independence and antagonism.
John Locke was born in 1632, at Wrington, in England. He studied for himself the Cartesian philosophy at Oxford, setting aside the scholastic philosophy which was still in vogue. He devoted himself to the study of medicine, which, however, on account of his delicate health, he never really practised. In 1664 he went with an English ambassador for a year to Berlin. After his return to England, he became acquainted with the intellectual Earl of Shaftesbury of that time, who availed himself of his medical advice, and in whose house he lived without requiring to give himself up to practice. When Lord Shaftesbury became Lord Chancellor of England, Locke received an office from him, which, however, he soon lost by a change of ministry. Owing to his dread of falling a prey to consumption, he betook himself in 1675 to Montpellier for the benefit of his health. When his patron came into power again he once more recovered the place he had lost, only to be again deposed on a fresh overthrow of this minister, and he was now compelled to flee from England. “The act by means of which Locke was driven from Oxford” (what post he held there we are not told) “was not an enactment of the University, but of James II., by whose express command, and by the peremptory authority of a written warrant, the expulsion was carried out. From the correspondence that took place, it is evident that the college submitted itself against its will to a measure which it could not resist without compromising the peace and quiet of its members.” Locke went to Holland, which was at that time the land wherein all who were obliged to effect their escape from any oppression, whether political or religious, found protection, and in which the most famous and liberal-minded men were to be met with. The Court party persecuted him even here, and by royal warrant he was ordered to be taken prisoner and sent to England; consequently he had to remain hidden with his friends. When William of Orange ascended the English throne, after the Revolution of 1688, Locke returned with him to England. He was there made Commissioner of Trade and Plantations, gave to the world his famous treatise on the Human Understanding, and finally, having withdrawn from public office on account of the delicacy of his health, he spent his remaining years in the country houses of English nobles; he died on the 28th day of October, 1704, in the seventy-third year of his life.214
The philosophy of Locke is much esteemed; it is still, for the most part, the philosophy of the English and the French, and likewise in a certain sense of the Germans. To put it in a few words, it asserts on the one hand that truth and knowledge rest upon experience and observation; and on the other the analysis of and abstraction from general determinations is prescribed as the method of knowledge; it is, so to speak, a metaphysical empiricism, and this is the ordinary method adopted in the sciences. In respect of method, Locke thus employs an exactly opposite system to that of Spinoza. In the methods of Spinoza and Descartes an account of the origin of ideas may be dispensed with; they are accepted at once as definitions, such as those of substance, the infinite, mode, extension, etc., all of which constitute a quite incoherent list. But we require to show where these thoughts come in, on what they are founded, and how they are verified. Thus Locke has striven to satisfy a true necessity. For he has the merit of having deserted the system of mere definitions, which were before this made the starting point, and of having attempted to make deduction of general conceptions, inasmuch as he was, for example, at the pains to show how substantiality arises subjectively from objects. That is a further step than any reached by Spinoza, who begins at once with definitions and axioms which are unverified. Now they are derived, and no longer oracularly laid down, even if the method and manner whereby this authentication is established is not the right one. That is to say, here the matter in question is merely subjective, and somewhat psychological, since Locke merely describes the methods of mind as it appears to us to be. For in his philosophy we have more especially to deal with the derivation of the general conceptions, or ideas, as he called them, that are present in our knowledge, and with their origin as they proceed from what is outwardly and inwardly perceptible. Malebranche no doubt likewise asks how we arrive at conceptions, and thus he apparently has before him the same subject of investigation as has Locke. But firstly, this psychological element in Malebranche is merely the later development, and then to him the universal or God is plainly first, while Locke commences at once with individual perceptions, and only from them does he proceed to Notions, to God. The universal to Locke is, therefore, merely a later result, the work of our minds; it is simply something pertaining to thought, as subjective. Every man undoubtedly knows that when his consciousness develops empirically, he commences from feelings, from quite concrete conditions, and that it is only later on that general conceptions come in, which are connected with the concrete of sensation by being contained therein. Space, for example, comes to consciousness later than the spacial, the species later than the individual; and it is only through the activity of my consciousness that the universal is separated from the particular of conception, feeling, etc. Feeling undoubtedly comes lowest, it is the animal mode of spirit; but in its capacity as thinking, spirit endeavours to transform feeling into its own form. Thus the course adopted by Locke is quite a correct one, but all dialectic considerations are utterly and entirely set aside, since the universal is merely analyzed from the empirical concrete. And in this matter Kant reproaches Locke with reason, the individual is not the source of universal conceptions, but the understanding.
As to Locke’s further reflections, they are very simple. Locke considers how the understanding is only consciousness, and in being so is something in consciousness, and he only recognizes the implicit in as far as it is in the same.
a. Locke’s philosophy is more especially directed against Descartes, who, like Plato, had spoken of innate ideas. Locke likewise makes special examination of the “inborn impressions (notiones communes in foro interiori descriptæ)” which Lord Herbert assumes in his work De veritate. In the first book of his work Locke combats the so-called innate ideas, theoretic as well as practical, i.e. the universal, absolutely existent ideas which at the same time are represented as pertaining to mind in a natural way. Locke said that we arrive first at that which we call idea. By this he understands not the essential determinations of man, but conceptions which we have and which are present and exist in consciousness as such: in the same way we all have arms and legs as parts of our bodies, and the desire to eat exists in everyone. In Locke we thus have the conception of the soul as of a contentless tabula rasa which is by-and-by filled with what we call experience.215 The expression “innate principles” was at that time common, and these innate principles have sometimes been foolishly spoken of. But their true signification is that they are implicit, that they are essential moments in the nature of thought, qualities of a germ, which do not yet exist: only in relation to this last there is an element of truth in Locke’s conclusions. As diverse conceptions essentially determined they are only legitimatized by its being shown that they are implied in the essential nature of thought; but as propositions which hold good as axioms, and conceptions which are immediately accepted as laid down in definitions, they undoubtedly possess the form of that which is present and inborn. As they are regarded they are bound to have value in and for themselves; but this is a mere assertion. From the other point of view the question of whence they come is a futile one. Mind is undoubtedly determined in itself, for it is the explicitly existent Notion; its development signifies the coming to consciousness. But the determinations which it brings forth from itself cannot be called innate, for this development must be occasioned by an external, and only on that does the activity of mind react, in order that it may for the first time become conscious of its reality.
The grounds on which Locke refutes innate ideas are empirical. “There is nothing more commonly taken for granted than that there are certain principles, both speculative and practical, universally agreed upon by all mankind: which therefore, they argue, must needs be constant impressions which the souls of men receive in their first Beings.” But this universal consent is not to be found. We may instance the proposition, “Whatsoever is, is; and It is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be; which of all others I think have the most allowed title to innate.” But this proposition does not hold good for the Notion; there is nothing either in heaven or earth which does not contain Being and non-Being. Many men, “All children and idiots,” says Locke, “have not the least apprehension of these propositions.” “No proposition can be said to be in the mind which it never yet knew, which it was never yet conscious of… ’Tis usually answered, That all men know and assent to them” (the propositions) “when they come to the use of reason… If it be meant that the use of reason assists us in the knowledge of these maxims, it would prove them not to be innate.” Reason is said to be the deriving from principles already known unknown truths. How then should the application of reason be required to discover supposed innate principles? This is a weak objection, for it assumes that by innate ideas we understand those which man possesses in consciousness as immediately present. But development in consciousness is something altogether different from any inherent determination of reason, and therefore the expression innate idea is undoubtedly quite wrong. Innate principles must be found “clearest and most perspicuous nearest the fountain, in children and illiterate people, who have received least impression from foreign opinion.” Locke gives further reasons of a similar nature, more especially employing those which are of a practical kind — the diversity in moral judgments, the case of those who are utterly wicked and depraved, devoid of sense of right or conscience.216
b. In the second book Locke goes on to the next stage, to the origin of ideas, and seeks to demonstrate this process from experience — this is the main object of his efforts. The reason that the positive point of view which he opposes to any derivation from within, is so false, is that he derives his conceptions only from outside and thus maintains Being-for-another, while he quite neglects the implicit. He says: “Every man being conscious to himself, that he thinks; and that which his mind is applied about, while thinking, being the ideas that are there; ’tis past doubt, that men have in their minds several ideas, such as those expressed in the words, whiteness, hardness, sweetness, thinking, motion, man, elephant, army, drunkenness, and others.” Idea here signifies both the ordinary conception and thought; we understand something quite different by the word idea. “It is in the first place then to be inquired, how he comes by them” (these ideas)? Innate ideas have already been refuted. “Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas; how comes it to be furnished?… To this I answer in a word, from Experience: in that all our knowledge is founded.”217
As to the question in point we must in the first place say that it is true that man commences with experience if he desires to arrive at thought. Everything is experienced, not merely what is sensuous, but also what excites and stimulates my mind. Consciousness thus undoubtedly obtains all conceptions and Notions from experience and in experience; the only question is what we understand by experience. In a usual way when this is spoken of the idea of nothing particular is conveyed; we speak of it as of something quite well known. But experience is nothing more than the form of objectivity; to say that it is something which is in consciousness means that it has objective form for consciousness or that consciousness experiences it, it sees it as an objective. Experience thus signifies immediate knowledge, perception, i.e. I myself must have and be something, and the consciousness of what I have and am is experience. Now there is no question as to this, that whatever we know, of whatever kind it may be, must be experienced, that rests in the conception of the thing. It is absurd to say that one knows anything which is not in experience. I undoubtedly know men, for instance, from experience, without requiring to have seen them all, for I have, as man, activity and will, a consciousness respecting what I am and what others are. The rational exists, i.e. it is as an existent for consciousness, or this last experiences it; it must be seen and heard, it must be there or have been there as a phenomenon in the world. This connection of universal with objective is however in the second place not the only form, that of the implicit is likewise absolute and essential — that is, the apprehension of what is experienced or the abrogation of this apparent other-being and the knowledge of the necessity of the thing through itself. It is now quite a matter of indifference whether anything is accepted as something experienced, as a succession of empirical ideas, if one may so say, or conceptions; or whether the succession is a succession of thoughts, i.e. implicitly existent.
Locke treats of the various kinds of these ideas imperfectly and empirically merely.
α. According to Locke simple ideas arise partly from outward, and partly from inward experience. For experiences, he says, are in the first place sensations; the other side is reflection, the inward determinations of consciousness.218 From sensation, from the organs of sight for instance, the conceptions of colour, light, etc., arise; there further arises from outward experience the idea of impenetrability, of figure, rest, motion and such like. From reflections come the ideas of faith, doubt, judgment, reasoning, thinking, willing, etc.; from both combined, pleasure, pain, etc. This is a very commonplace account of the matter.
β. After Locke has presupposed experience, he goes on to say that it is the understanding which now discovers and desires the universal — the complex ideas. The Bishop of Worcester made the objection that “If the idea of substance be grounded upon plain and evident reason, then we must allow an idea of substance which comes not in by sensation or reflection.” Locke replies: “General ideas come not into the mind by sensation or reflection, but are the creatures or inventions of the understanding. The mind makes them from ideas which it has got by sensation and reflection.” The work of the mind now consists in bringing forth from several simple so-called ideas a number of new ones, by means of its working upon this material through comparing, distinguishing and contrasting it, and finally through separation or abstraction, whereby the universal conceptions, such as space, time, existence, unity and diversity, capacity, cause and effect, freedom, necessity, take their rise. “The mind in respect of its simple ideas is wholly passive, and receives them all from the existence and operation of things, such as sensation or reflection offers them, without being able to make any one idea.” But “the mind often exercises an active power in making these several combinations. For it being once furnished with simple ideas it can put them together in several combinations.” According to Locke therefore thought itself is not the essence of the soul, but one of its powers and manifestations. He maintains thought to be existent in consciousness as conscious thought, and thus brings it forward as a fact in his experience, that we do not always think. Experience demonstrates dreamless sleep when the sleep is profound. Locke quotes the example of a man who remembered no dream until he had reached his twenty-fifth year. It is as in the Xenien, — 219
Oft schon war ich, und hab’ wirklich an gar nichts gedacht.
That is to say, my object is not a thought. But sensuous perception and recollection are thought, and thought is truth.220 Locke, however, places the reality of the understanding only in the formal activity of constituting new determinations from the simple conceptions received by means of perception, through their comparison and the combination of several into one; it is the apprehension of the abstract sensations which are contained in the objects. Locke likewise distinguishes (Bk. II. chap. xi. § 15-17) between pure and mixed modes. Pure modes are simple determinations such as power, number, infinitude; in such expressions as causality we reach, on the other hand, a mixed mode.
Locke now explains in detail the manner in which the mind, from the simple ideas of experience, reaches more complex ideas; but this derivation of general determinations from concrete perception is most unmeaning, trivial, tiresome and diffuse; it is entirely formal, an empty tautology. For instance we form the general conception of space from the perception of the distance of bodies by means of sight and feeling.221 Or in other words, we perceive a definite space, abstract from it, and then we have the conception of space generally; the perception of distances gives us conceptions of space. This however is no deduction, but only a setting aside of other determinations; since distance itself is really space, mind thus determines space from space. Similarly we reach the notion of time through the unbroken succession of conceptions during our waking moments,222 i.e. from determinate time we perceive time in general. Conceptions follow one another in a continual succession; if we set aside the particular element that is present we thereby receive the conception of time. Substance (which Locke does not accept in so lofty a sense as Spinoza), a complex idea, hence arises from the fact that we often perceive simple ideas such as blue, heavy, etc., in association with one another. This association we represent to ourselves as something which so to speak supports these simple ideas, or in which they exist.223 Locke likewise deduces the general conception of power.224 The determinations of freedom and necessity, cause and effect, are then derived in a similar way. “In the notice that our senses take of the constant vicissitude of things, we cannot but observe, that several particulars, both qualities and substance, begin to exist; and that they receive this their existence from the due application and operation of some other being. From this observation we get our ideas of cause and effect,” for instance when wax is melted by the fire.225 Locke goes on to say: “Every one, I think, finds in himself a power to begin or forbear, continue or put an end to several actions in himself. From the consideration of the extent of this power of the mind over the actions of the man, which every one finds in himself, arise the ideas of liberty and necessity.”226
We may say that nothing can be more superficial than this derivation of ideas. The matter itself, the essence, is not touched upon at all. A determination is brought into notice which is contained in a concrete relationship; hence the understanding on the one hand abstracts and on the other establishes conclusions. The basis of this philosophy is merely to be found in the transference of the determinate to the form of universality, but it was just this fundamental essence that we had to explain. As to this Locke confesses of space, for example, that he does not know what it really is.227 This so-called analysis by Locke of complex conceptions, and his so-called explanation of the same, has, on account of its uncommon clearness and lucidity of expression, found universal acceptance. For what can be clearer than to say that we have the notion of time because we perceive time, if we do not actually see it, and that we conceive of space because we see it? The French have accepted this most readily and they have carried it further still; their Idéologie contains nothing more nor less.
γ. When Locke starts by saying that everything is experience and we abstract for ourselves from this experience general conceptions regarding objects and their qualities, he makes a distinction in respect of external qualities which was before this made by Aristotle (De anima, II. 6), and which we likewise met with in Descartes (supra, pp. 245, 246). That is to say, Locke distinguishes between primary and secondary qualities; the first pertain to the objects themselves in truth, the others are not real qualities, but are founded on the nature of the organs of sensation. Primary qualities are mechanical, like extension, solidity, figure, movement, rest; these are qualities of the corporeal, just as thought is the quality of the spiritual. But the determinations of our individual feelings such as colours, sounds, smells, taste, etc., are not primary.228 In Descartes’ case this distinction has however another form, for the second class of these determinations is defined by him in such a way as that they do not constitute the essence of body, while Locke says that they exist for sensation, or fall within existence as it is for consciousness. Locke, however, no doubt reckons figure, etc., as still pertaining to reality, but by so doing nothing is ascertained as to the nature of body. In Locke a difference here appears between the implicit and being ‘for-another,’ in which he declares the moment of ‘for-another’ to be unreal — and yet he sees all truth in the relation of ‘for-another’ only.
c. Since the universal as such, the idea of species, is, according to Locke, merely a product of our mind, which is not itself objective, but relates merely to objects which are germane to it, and from which the particular of qualities, conditions, time, place, etc., are separated, Locke distinguishes essences into real essences and nominal essences; the former of these express the true essence of things, while species on the other hand are mere nominal essences which no doubt express something which is present in the objects, but which do not exhaust these objects. They serve to distinguish species for our knowledge, but the real essence of nature we do not know.229 Locke gives good reasons for species being nothing in themselves — for their not being in nature, or absolutely determined — instancing in exemplification the production of monstrosities (Bk. III. chap. iii. § 17): were species absolute no monster would be born. But he overlooks the fact that since it pertains to species to exist, it thereby likewise enters into relationship with other determinations; thus that is the sphere in which individual things operate upon one another, and may hence be detrimental to the existence of the species. Locke thus argues just as one would who wished to prove that the good does not exist in itself, because there are likewise evil men, that the circle does not exist absolutely in nature, because the circumference of a tree, for example, represents a very irregular circle, or because I draw a circle badly. Nature just signifies the lack of power to be perfectly adequate to the Notion; it is only in spirit that the Notion has its true existence. To say that species are nothing in themselves, that the universal is not the essential reality of nature, that its implicit existence is not the object of thought, is tantamount to saying that we do not know real existence: it is the same litany which has since been so constantly repeated that we are tired of listening to it:
Das Innere der Natur kennt kein erschaffener Geist,
and which goes on until we have perceived that Being-for-another, perception, is not implicit; a point of view which has not made its way to the positive position that the implicit is the universal. Locke is far back in the nature of knowledge, further back than Plato, because of his insistence on Being-for-another.
It is further noteworthy that from the sound understanding Locke argues (Vol. III. Bk. IV. chap. vii. § 8-11) against universal propositions or axioms such as that A = A, i.e. if anything is A it cannot be B. He says they are superfluous, of very little use or of no use at all, for nobody yet has built up a science on a proposition which asserts a contradiction. From such the true may be proved as easily as the false; they are tautological. What Locke has further achieved in respect of education, toleration, natural rights or universal state-right, does not concern us here, but has to do with general culture.
This is the philosophy of Locke, in which there is no trace of speculation. The great end of Philosophy, which is to know the truth, is in it sought to be attained in an empiric way; it thus indeed serves to draw attention to general determinations. But such a philosophy not only represents the standpoint of ordinary consciousness, to which all the determinations of its thought appear as if given, humble as it is in the oblivion of its activity, but in this method of derivation and psychological origination that which alone concerns Philosophy, the question of whether these thoughts and relationships have truth in and for themselves, is not present at all, inasmuch as the only object aimed at is to describe the manner in which thought accepts what is given to it. It may be held with Wolff that it is arbitrary to begin with concrete conceptions, as when our conception of identity is made to take its origin from such things as blue flowers and the blue heavens. One can better begin directly from universal conceptions and say that we find in our consciousness the conceptions of time, cause and effect; these are the later facts of consciousness. This method forms the basis of the Wolffian system of reasoning, only here we must still distinguish amongst the different conceptions those that are to be regarded as most essential; in Locke’s philosophy, this distinction cannot really be said to come under consideration. From this time, according to Locke, or in this particular aspect of Philosophy, there is a complete and entire change in the point of view adopted; the whole interest is limited to the form in which the objective, or individual sensations, pass into the form of conceptions. In the case of Spinoza and Malebranche, we undoubtedly likewise saw that it was made a matter of importance to recognize this relation of thought to what is sensuously perceived, and thus to know it as falling into relation, as passing into the relative; the main question hence was: How are the two related? But the question was answered to the effect that it is only this relation for itself that constitutes the point of interest, and this relation itself as absolute substance is thus identity, the true, God, it is not the related parts. The interest does not lie in the related parts; the related parts as one-sided are not the existent, presupposed and permanently established, they are accidental merely. But here the related sides, the things and the subject, have their proper value, and they are presupposed as having this value. Locke’s reasoning is quite shallow; it keeps entirely to the phenomenal, to that which is, and not to that which is true.
There is another question however: Are these general determinations absolutely true? And whence come they not alone into my consciousness, into my mind and understanding, but into the things themselves? Space, cause, effect, etc., are categories. How do these categories come into the particular? How does universal space arrive at determining itself? This point of view, the question whether these determinations of the infinite, of substance, etc., are in and for themselves true, is quite lost sight of. Plato investigated the infinite and the finite, Being and the determinate, etc., and pronounced that neither of these opposites is of itself true; they are so only as together constituting an identity, wherever the truth of this content may come from. But here the truth as it is in and for itself is entirely set aside and the nature of the content itself is made the main point. It does not matter whether the understanding or experience is its source, for the question is whether this content is in itself true. With Locke, the truth merely signifies the harmony of our conceptions with things; here relation is alone in question, whether the content is an objective thing or a content of the ordinary conception. But it is quite another matter to investigate the content itself, and to ask, “Is this which is within us true?” We must not dispute about the sources, for the Whence, the only important point to Locke, does not exhaust the whole question. The interest of the content in and for itself wholly disappears when that position is taken up, and thereby the whole of what is aimed at by Philosophy is given up. On the other hand, when thought is from the beginning concrete, when thought and the universal are synonymous with what is set before us, the question of the relation of the two which have been separated by thought is destitute of interest and incomprehensible. How does thought overcome the difficulties which itself has begotten? Here with Locke none at all have been begotten and awakened. Before the need for reconciliation can be satisfied, the pain of disunion must be excited.
The philosophy of Locke is certainly very comprehensible, but for that very reason it is likewise a popular philosophy to which the whole of the English philosophy as it exists at this day is allied; it is the thinking method of regarding things which is called philosophy carried to its perfection, the form which was introduced into the science which then took its rise in Europe. This is an important moment in culture; the sciences in general and specially the empiric sciences have to ascribe their origin to this movement. To the English, Philosophy has ever signified the deduction of experiences from observations; this has in a one-sided way been applied to physical and economic subjects. General principles of political economy such as free-trade in the present day, and all matters which rest on thinking experience, the knowledge of whatever reveals itself in this sphere as necessary and useful, signifies philosophy to the English (Vol. I. pp. 57, 58). The scholastic method of starting from principles and definitions has been rejected. The universal, laws, forces, universal matter, etc., have in natural science been derived from perceptions; thus to the English, Newton is held to be the philosopher κατ’ ἐξοχήν. The other side is that in practical philosophy regarding society or the state, thought applies itself to concrete objects such as the will of the prince, subjects and their ends and personal welfare. Inasmuch as we have an object such as that before us, the indwelling and essential universal is made evident; it must, however, be made clear which conception is the one to which the others must yield. It is in this way that rational politics took their rise in England, because the institutions and government peculiar to the English led them specially and in the first place to reflection upon their inward political and economic relationships. Hobbes must be mentioned as an exemplification of this fact. This manner of reasoning starts from the present mind, from what is our own, whether it be within or without us, since the feelings which we have, the experiences which fall directly within us, are the principles. This philosophy of reasoning thought is that which has now become universal, and through which the whole revolution in the position taken up by mind has come to pass.
Hugo Grotius was studying the laws of nations at the same time as Locke; and in him the very same methods may be found as those already mentioned, inasmuch as he also falls into a quite empirical system of associating nations with one another, combining with that an empirical mode of reasoning. Hugo van Groot, born 1583 at Delft, was a lawyer, fiscal general, and council pensionary; in 1619, however, he was implicated in the Barneveldt trial, and was compelled to fly the country. For a long time he remained in France, but in 1634 he entered the service of Queen Christina of Sweden. In 1635 he was made Swedish ambassador in Paris, and in 1645 he died at Rostock, while on a journey from Stockholm to Holland.230 His principal work, De jure belli et pacis, he composed in 1625; now it is not read, but at one time it exercised a very great and important influence. In it Grotius presented a comparative historical account, the material of which was partly derived from the Old Testament, of the manner in which nations in the various relationships of war and peace have acted towards one another, and what usages they held to be binding. The following may serve as an example of his empirical method of reasoning: Prisoners ought not to be killed; for the object is to disarm the enemy, and if this end be attained nothing further should be done.231 This empirical way of connecting facts had the effect of bringing general comprehensible and rational principles into consciousness, of making them recognized, and of causing them to be more or less acceptable. Thus we see principles set forth, respecting the righteousness of a king’s power for instance; for thought applied itself to everything. We are unsatisfied by such proofs and deductions, but we must not overlook what is thereby accomplished; and this is the establishment of principles which have their ultimate confirmation in the objects themselves, in mind and thought.
Hobbes, who was celebrated and distinguished on account of the originality of his views, was tutor to the Earl of Devonshire; he was born in 1588 at Malmesbury, and died in 1679.232 As a contemporary of Cromwell, he found in the events of that time, in the Revolution which then took place in England, an occasion for reflecting on the principles of state and law, and in fact he succeeded in making his way to quite original conceptions. He wrote much, including a treatise on Philosophy, entitled “The Elements of Philosophy.” The first section (Sectio) of this work, De corpore, appeared in London in 1655; in it he first of all treats of Logic (Pars I.), and secondly of philosophia prima (Pars II.); this last is an ontology and metaphysic. The next sub-division (Pars III.), “On the relation between motion and magnitude,” is a system of mechanism, a quite popular system of physics; and a study of the human organs. The second section was to treat of the nature of man (De homine), and the third of the state (De cive), but the intellectual sections of the work Hobbes did not entirely finish. He says in his preface that Copernicus first opened up astronomy, and Galileo physics, before them there was nothing certain in either science. Harvey worked out the science of the human body, and physics generally as well as astronomy were perfected by Keppler. All this was termed Philosophy, in accordance with the point of view which has been already given (p. 313), since in it the reflective understanding desires to know the universal. Hobbes further says concerning the philosophy of the state (philosophia civilis), that it only dates from the publication of his book De cive.233 This work, which appeared at Paris in 1642,234 is, like his Leviathan, a much decried book; the second mentioned writing was forbidden to be circulated, and is hence very rare. Both works contain sounder reflections on the nature of society and government than many now in circulation. Society, the state, is to Hobbes absolutely pre-eminent, it is the determining power without appeal as regards law and positive religion and their external relations; and because he placed these in subjection to the state, his doctrines were of course regarded with the utmost horror. But there is nothing speculative or really philosophic in them, and there is still less in Hugo Grotius.
Before this ideals were set before us, or Holy Scripture or positive law was quoted as authoritative. Hobbes, on the contrary, sought to derive the bond which holds the state together, that which gives the state its power, from principles which lie within us, which we recognize as our own. In this way two opposite principles arise. The first is the passive obedience of subjects, the divine authority of rulers, whose will is absolute law, and is itself elevated above all other law. All this is represented in close connection with religion, and proved by examples from the Old Testament, by such stories as those of Saul and David. Criminal and marriage laws, too, for long derived their character from the Mosaic laws, or, speaking generally, from those the provisions of which possessed their value by the fact of being established by express divine command. On the other hand we have in the second place the reasoning wherein we ourselves are the determining agents, and which was called sound reason. In the movement which Cromwell made use of there was allied with this a fanaticism, which from the written letter drew opposite conclusions to the above, and this we see exemplified in the equality of property, for instance. Hobbes, it is true, likewise maintained passive obedience, the absolute freedom of the royal will and power; but at the same time he sought to derive the principles of monarchical power, etc., from universal determinations. The views that he adopts are shallow and empirical, but the reasons he gives for them, and the propositions he makes respecting them, are original in character, inasmuch as they are derived from natural necessities and wants.
Hobbes maintained that “The origin of all society is to be found in the mutual fear of all its members;” it is hence a phenomenon in consciousness. “Each association is thus formed in its own interest or for its own renown, that is, from selfish motives.” All such matters as security of life, property, and enjoyment, are not to be found outside it. “But men have in all dissimilarity of strength a natural similarity as well.” This Hobbes proves by a characteristic reason, viz. that “each individual can make away with the other,” each is the ultimate power over the others. “Each can be supreme.”235 Thus their similarity is not derived from the greatest strength; it is not, as in modern times, founded on the freedom of the spirit, or on an equality of merit and independence, but on the equal weakness of mankind; each man is weak as regards others.
b. Hobbes further takes up the position that this natural condition is of such a nature that all possess the desire to rule over one another. “All in their natural condition are possessed of the will to injure others,” to tyrannize over other men; each has thus to fear the other. Hobbes looks at this condition in its true light, and we find in him no idle talk about a state of natural goodness; the natural condition is really far more like that of the animals — a condition in which there is an unsubdued individual will. All thus wish to “secure themselves against the pretensions of others, to acquire for themselves advantages and superior rights. Opinions, religions, desires, arouse strife; the stronger bears away the victory. The natural condition is consequently a condition of mistrust on the part of all towards all; it is a war of all against all (bellum omnium in omnes),” and the endeavour of one to overreach another. The expression nature has a double significance: In the first place the nature of man signifies his spiritual and rational Being; but his natural condition indicates quite another condition, wherein man conducts himself according to his natural impulses. In this way he conducts himself in conformity with his desires and inclinations, while the rational, on the contrary, is the obtaining supremacy over the immediately natural. “In the condition of nature a certain irresistible power grants the right to rule over those who cannot resist; it is absurd to leave those whom we have in our power to become free and strong again.” From this Hobbes draws the conclusion that “man must go forth from the natural condition.”236 This is true; the natural condition is not what it should be, and must hence be cast off.
c. Hobbes finally passes to the laws of reason which preserve tranquillity. This condition of law is the subjection of the natural, particular will of the individual to the universal will, which, however, is not that of all individuals, but is the will of the ruler; this is consequently not responsible to individuals, but is directed against this private will, and to it all must be obedient.237 Thus the whole matter is now placed on quite another footing. But because the universal will is made to reside in the will of one monarch, there nevertheless proceeds from this point of view, which is really correct, a condition of absolute rule, of perfect despotism. The condition of law does not, however, mean that the arbitrary will of one man constitutes absolute law, for the universal will is no despotism, being rational, inasmuch as it is consistently expressed and determined in laws.
Rixner (Handbuch der Geschichte der Philosophie, Vol. III. p. 30) says: “Law to him is nothing but the sum of the conditions of peace extorted by iron necessity from the original wickedness of mankind.” We might add that in Hobbes we at least find this, that the nature and organism of the State is established on the principle of human nature, human desire, &c. The English concerned themselves greatly with that principle of passive obedience, in accordance with which it is said that kings receive their power from God. This, in one aspect, is quite true, but in another it is falsely taken to mean that they have no responsibility, that their blind desires, their merely subjective will, is what must be obeyed.
Cudworth wished to revive Plato in England, but to do this after the manner of the demonstrations which we met with in Descartes, and through a trivial metaphysic of the understanding. He wrote a celebrated work: “The true intellectual System of the Universe,” but the Platonic ideas expressed are often in a clumsy form and mingled with the Christian conceptions of God and angels — all regarded as particular existent things. What in Plato is mythical, is here taken as reality in the form of existence; this is reasoned about just as we reason respecting a matter of ordinary fact, such as whether it is probable that the French seek to effect a landing in England, and if so, whether they will successfully accomplish it. The Christian intellectual world is dragged down to the form of ordinary actuality, and consequently it is ruined.
The name of Clarke is likewise famous in connection with his proof of the existence of God. There were quite a number of other English philosophers, whom we do not, however, require to notice; for Clarke, Wollaston, and others carry on their speculations within forms such as belong to a very commonplace metaphysic of the understanding. The manifold systems of moral philosophy which we find taking their rise in England are drawn up from this same mental standpoint; in them the implicitude of mind appears in a form of natural existence, namely, of desires and feelings. Their principles are found in moral sentiments, benevolent desires, sympathy, &c. That form alone is worthy of notice which, on the one hand, represents duty as something which is not foreign, given, commanded, but as clearly belonging to self-consciousness, even while, on the other hand, it represents this property as a natural, unconscious, unspiritual, and irrational existence. Impulse is blind, a solid existence which cannot get beyond itself like thinking self-consciousness. It is indeed true of impulse that its pure activity or its process, and the content, are, as in thought, immediately posited as the same; it has its content in itself, and this is not dead and passive, but self-acting and impelling. But that unity has the form of immediacy only as existent; in the first place it is not a knowledge, it is not necessary, for it is only taken from inward perception; in the second place, it is a determinate which does not abrogate itself, beyond which we cannot get, and which thus is not a universal. Impulse is no more an infinite than is the fixed category of force. Such reasoning takes the impulses in their determinate character from experience, and expresses the appearance of necessity in the same as an inward existence, as a force. For instance, the social instinct is a moment which is found in experience, because man derives all manner of utility from society. Wherein does the necessity of the State, of society, find its basis? In a social desire. This is cause, just as in the physical world a formal interpretation such as this is always to be found. The necessity of any existent fact, such as what pertains to electrical phenomena, finds its basis in a force which brings it forth; it is merely the form of returning from the external to an inward, of passing from the existent to what is thought, which is again in turn represented as an existent. Force is necessitated by reason of the manifestation, we must argue from the latter to the former. On the other hand, the manifestation takes place through the force, for it is the cause of the manifestation; we hence have force in one place as reason, and in another as cause. But in all this there is no realization of the fact that in respect of form there is a transition from the Notion into Being and the other way, while in respect of content there is a perfect contingency of manifestation; we look at electricity in the same way as we look at the fact that men have social instincts, sympathetic inclinations, and so on.
In the struggle to give to just and equitable relations in the State an independent basis of their own, and to found a judicial system of government, reflective thought put forth its efforts; and this became to it a real interest and concern. And, as in the case of Grotius, it was also true of Puffendorf, that the instinct of mankind — that is, the social instinct, &c. — was made the principle. Samuel von Puffendorf was born in 1632 in Saxony; he studied public law, philosophy, and mathematics at Leipzig and Jena; in 1661, as a professor at Heidelberg, he made natural and civil law for the first time academic studies; in 1668 he became tutor in a Swedish family, which office he later on exchanged for the service of the House of Brandenburg, and in 1694 he died at Berlin as a privy councillor. He wrote several works on political law and history; we must specially mention his work, De jure naturæ et gentium, Libr. viii., Londin. Scan. 1672, 4; and also his compendium De officio hominis, published at the same place in 1673, 8, and Elementa jurisprudentiæ universalis.238 While the divine right of kings was here still recognized — whereby they rendered account to God alone, or, at all events, were still bound to take counsel of the Church — the impulses and necessities present in mankind were now considered as well. These were regarded as the inward principles for private and political law, and from them the duties both of the government and of rulers were deduced, so that the freedom of mankind might not be interfered with. The basis of the state in Puffendorf’s view is the social instinct: the highest end of the state is the peace and security of social life through the transformation of inward duties as prescribed by conscience into external duties as compelled by law.239
The other side is that thought likewise applied itself to nature, and in this connection Isaac Newton is famous by reason of his mathematical discoveries and his work in physics. He was born in 1642 at Cambridge, made a special study of mathematics, and became professor of the same at Cambridge; later on he was made president of the Royal Society in London, and he died in 1727.240
Newton was indisputably the chief contributor to the popularity of the philosophy of Locke, or the English method of treating of Philosophy, and more especially did he promote its application to all the physical sciences. “Physics, beware of metaphysics,” was his maxim,241 which signifies, Science, beware of thought; and all the physical sciences, even to the present day, have, following in his wake, faithfully observed this precept, inasmuch as they have not entered upon an investigation of their conceptions, or thought about thoughts. Physics can, however, effect nothing without thought; it has its categories and laws through thought alone, and without thought it does not effect any progress. Newton was mainly instrumental in introducing to physics the determinations respecting forces, which pertain to reflection; he raised science to the standpoint of reflection, and set the laws of forces in the place of the laws of phenomena. Regarding matters as he did, Newton derived his conclusions from his experiences; and in physics and the theory of colour-vision, he made bad observations and drew worse conclusions. He passed from experiences to general points of view, again made them fundamental, and from them constructed the individual; this is how his theories are constructed. The observation of things, the discovery of the law immanent therein, and the universal which is found within them, has become the real point of interest. In this way, Newton is so complete a barbarian as regards his conceptions that his case is like that of another of his countrymen who was surprised and rejoiced to learn that he had talked prose all his life, not having had any idea that he was so accomplished. This Newton, like all the Physicists, indeed, never learned; he did not know that he thought in, and had to deal with Notions, while he imagined he was dealing with physical facts: and he presented the extremest contrast to Boehme, who handled sensuous things as Notions, and, by sheer force of mind, obtained entire possession of their actuality and subjugated them. Instead of this Newton treated Notions like sensuous things, and dealt with them just as men deal with wood and stone. And this is even now the case. In the beginnings of physical science we read of the power of inertia, for instance, of the force of acceleration, of molecules, of centripetal and centrifugal force, as of facts which definitely exist; what are really the final results of reflection are represented as their first grounds. If we ask for the cause of there being no advance made in such sciences, we find that it is because men do not understand that they should apply themselves to Notions, but make up their minds to adopt these determinations without sense or understanding. Hence in Newton’s Optics, for instance, there are conclusions derived from his experience which are so untrue and devoid of understanding, that while they are set forth as the finest example of how men can learn to know nature by means of experiments and conclusions derived from experiments, they may also serve as an example of how we should neither experiment nor draw conclusions, of how nothing at all can be learned. A miserable kind of experience like this itself contradicts itself through nature, for nature is more excellent than it appears in this wretched experience: both nature itself and experience, when carried a little further, contradict it. Hence, of all the splendid discoveries of Newton in optics, none now remain excepting one — the division of light into seven colours. This is partly because the conception of whole and part come into play, and partly from an obdurate closing of the eyes to the opposite side. From this empirical method in Philosophy, we shall now pass on to Leibnitz.
THE THIRD DEVELOPMENT of the philosophy of the understanding is that represented by Leibnitz and Wolff. If Wolff’s metaphysics is divested of its rigid form, we have as a result the later popular philosophy.
As in other respects Leibnitz represents the extreme antithesis to Newton, so in respect of philosophy he presents a striking contrast to Locke and his empiricism, and also to Spinoza. He upholds thought as against the perception of the English school, and in lieu of sensuous Being he maintains Being for thought to be the essence of truth, just as Boehme at an earlier time upheld implicit Being. While Spinoza asserted the universality, the oneness of substance merely, and while with Locke we saw infinite determinations made the basis, Leibnitz, by means of his fundamental principle of individuality, brings out the essentiality of the opposite aspect of Spinoza’s philosophy, existence for self, the monad, but the monad regarded as the absolute Notion, though perhaps not yet as the “I.” The opposed principles, which were forced asunder, find their completion in each other, since Leibnitz’s principle of individuation completed Spinoza’s system as far as outward aspect goes.
Gottfried Wilhelm, Baron von Leibnitz, was born in 1646 at Leipzig, where his father was professor of Philosophy. The subject that he studied in view of a profession was jurisprudence, but first, in accordance with the fashion of the day, he made a study of Philosophy, and to it he devoted particular attention. To begin with, he picked up in Leipzig a large and miscellaneous stock of knowledge, then he studied Philosophy and mathematics at Jena under the mathematician and theosophist Weigel, and took his degree of Master of Philosophy in Leipzig. There also, on the occasion of his graduation as Doctor of Philosophy, he defended certain philosophical theses, some of which discourses are still contained in his works (ed. Dutens, T. II. P. I. p. 400). His first dissertation, and that for which he obtained the degree of doctor of philosophy, was: De principio individui, — a principle which remained the abstract principle of his whole philosophy, as opposed to that of Spinoza. After he had acquired a thorough knowledge of the subject, he wished to graduate also as Doctor of Laws. But though he died an imperial councillor, it was his ill fortune to receive from the Faculty at Leipzig a refusal to confer the doctorate upon him, his youth being the alleged reason. Such a thing could scarcely happen now-a-days. It may be that it was done because of his over-great philosophical attainments, seeing that lawyers are wont to hold the same in horror. He now quitted Leipzig, and betook himself to Altdorf, where he graduated with distinction. Shortly afterwards he became acquainted in Nürnberg with a company of alchemists, with whose ongoings he became associated. Here he made extracts from alchemistic writings, and studied the mysteries of this occult science. His activity in the pursuit of learning extended also to historical, diplomatic, mathematical and philosophical subjects. He subsequently entered the service of the Elector of Mayence, becoming a member of council, and in 1672 he was appointed tutor to a son of Von Boineburg, Chancellor of State to the Elector. With this young man he travelled to Paris, where he lived for four years. He at this time made the acquaintance of the great mathematician Huygens, and was by him for the first time properly introduced into the domain of mathematics. When the education of his pupil was completed, and the Baron Von Boineburg died, Leibnitz went on his own account to London, where he became acquainted with Newton and other scholars, at whose head was Oldenburg, who was also on friendly terms with Spinoza. After the death of the Elector of Mayence, the salary of Leibnitz ceased to be paid; he therefore left England and returned to France. The Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg then took him into his service, and gave him the appointment of councillor and librarian at Hanover, with permission to spend as much time as he liked in foreign countries. He therefore remained for some time longer in France, England, and Holland. In the year 1677 he settled down in Hanover, where he became busily engaged in affairs of state, and was specially occupied with historical matters. In the Harz Mountains he had works constructed for carrying off the floods which did damage to the mines there. Notwithstanding these manifold occupations he invented the differential calculus in 1677, on occasion of which there arose a dispute between him and Newton, which was carried on by the latter and the Royal Society of London in a most ungenerous manner. For it was asserted by the English, who gave themselves the credit of everything, and were very unfair to others, that the discovery was really made by Newton. But Newton’s Principia only appeared later, and in the first edition indeed Leibnitz was mentioned with commendation in a note which was afterwards omitted. From his headquarters in Hanover, Leibnitz, commissioned by his prince, made several journeys through Germany, and also went to Italy in order to collect historical evidence relative to the House of Este, and for the purpose of proving more clearly the relationship between this princely family and that of Brunswick-Lüneburg. At other times he was likewise much occupied with historical questions. Owing to his acquaintance with the consort of Frederick I. of Prussia, Sophia Charlotte, a Hanoverian princess, he was enabled to bring about the foundation of an Academy of Science in Berlin, in which city he lived for a considerable time. In Vienna he also became acquainted with Prince Eugène, which occasioned his being appointed finally an Imperial Councillor. He published several very important historical works as the result of this journey. His death took place at Hanover in 1716, when he was seventy years of age.242
It was not only on Philosophy, but also on the most varied branches of science that Leibnitz expended toil and trouble and energy; it was to mathematics, however, that he specially devoted his attention, and he is the inventor of the methods of the integral and differential calculus. His great services in regard to mathematics and physics we here leave out of consideration, and pay attention to his philosophy alone. None of his books can be exactly looked on as giving a complete systematic account of his philosophy. To the more important among them belongs his work on the human understanding (Nouveaux essais sur l’entendement humain) in reply to Locke; but this is a mere refutation. His philosophy is therefore scattered through various little treatises which were written in very various connections, in letters, and replies to objections which caused him to bring out one aspect of the question more strongly than another; we consequently find no elaborated systematic whole, superintended or perfected by him. The work which has some appearance of being such, his Théodicée, better known to the public than anything else he wrote, is a popular treatise which he drew up for Queen Sophia Charlotte in reply to Bayle, and in which he took pains not to present the matter in very speculative form. A Wurtemberg theologian, Pfaff by name, and others who were correspondents of Leibnitz and were themselves only too well versed in philosophy, brought it as a charge against Leibnitz — a charge which he never denied — that his philosophy was written in popular form.243 They laughed very much afterwards at Wolff, who had taken them to be quite in earnest; his opinion was that if Leibnitz were not perfectly serious in this sense with his Théodicée, yet he had unconsciously written his best therein. Leibnitz’s Théodicée is not what we can altogether appreciate; it is a justification of God in regard to the evil in the world. His really philosophic thoughts are most connectedly expressed in a treatise on the principles of Grace (Principes de la Nature et de la Grace),244 and especially in the pamphlet addressed to Prince Eugène of Savoy.245 Buhle (Geschichte der neuern Philosophie, vol. iv. section 1, p. 131) says: “His philosophy is not so much the product of free, independent, original speculation, as the result of well-tested earlier” and later “systems, an eclecticism whose defects he tried to remedy in his own way. It is a desultory treatment of Philosophy in letters.”
Leibnitz followed the same general plan in his philosophy as the physicists adopt when they advance a hypothesis to explain existing data. He has it that general conceptions of the Idea are to be found, from which the particular may be derived; here, on account of existing data, the general conception, for example the determination of force or matter furnished by reflection, must have its determinations disposed in such a way that it fits in with the data. Thus the philosophy of Leibnitz seems to be not so much a philosophic system as an hypothesis regarding the existence of the world, namely how it is to be determined in accordance with the metaphysical determinations and the data and assumptions of the ordinary conception, which are accepted as valid246 — thoughts which are moreover propounded without the sequence pertaining to the Notion and mainly in narrative style, and which taken by themselves show no necessity in their connection. Leibnitz’s philosophy therefore appears like a string of arbitrary assertions, which follow one on another like a metaphysical romance; it is only when we see what he wished thereby to avoid that we learn to appreciate its value. He really makes use of external reasons mainly in order to establish relations: “Because the validity of such relations cannot be allowed, nothing remains but to establish the matter in this way.” If we are not acquainted with these reasons, this procedure strikes us as arbitrary.
a. Leibnitz’s philosophy is an idealism of the intellectuality of the universe; and although from one point of view he stands opposed to Locke, as from another point of view he is in opposition to the Substance of Spinoza, he yet binds them both together again. For, to go into the matter more particularly, on the one hand he expresses in the many monads the absolute nature of things distinguished and of individuality; on the other hand, in contrast to this and apart from it, he expresses the ideality of Spinoza and the non-absolute nature of all difference, as the idealism of the popular conception. Leibnitz’s philosophy is a metaphysics, and in sharp contrast to the simple universal Substance of Spinoza, where all that is determined is merely transitory, it makes fundamental the absolute multiplicity of individual substances, which after the example of the ancients he named monads — an expression already used by the Pythagoreans. These monads he then proceeds to determine as follows.
Firstly “Substance is a thing that is capable of activity, it is compound or simple, the compound cannot exist without the simple. The monads are simple substances.” The proof that they constitute the truth in all things is very simple, it is a superficial reflection. For instance, one of Leibnitz’s maxims is “Because there are compound things, the principles of the same must be simple, for the compound consists of the simple.”247 This proof is poor enough, it is an example of the favourite way of starting from something definite, say the compound, and then drawing conclusions therefrom as to the simple. It is quite light in a way, but really it is tautology. Of course, if the compound exists, so does the simple, for the compound means something in itself manifold whose connection or unity is external. From the very trivial category of the compound it is easy to deduce the simple. It is a conclusion drawn from a certain premiss, but the question is whether the premiss is true. These monads are not, however, something abstract and simple in itself, like the empty Epicurean atoms, which, as they were in themselves lacking in determination, drew all their determination from their aggregation alone. The monads are, on the contrary, substantial forms, a good expression, borrowed from the Scholastics (supra, p. 71), or the metaphysical points of the Alexandrian School (Vol II. p. 439), they are the entelechies of Aristotle taken as pure activity, which are forms in themselves (Vol II. pp. 138, 182, 183). “These monads are not material or extended, nor do they originate or decay in the natural fashion, for they can begin only by a creative act of God, and they can end only by annihilation.”248 Thereby they are distinguished from the atoms, which are regarded simply as principles. The expression creation we are familiar with from religion, but it is a meaningless word derived from the ordinary conception; in order to be a thought and to have philosophic significance, it must be much more closely defined.
Secondly: “On account of their simplicity the monads are not susceptible of alteration by another monad in their inner essence; there is no causal connection between them.” Each of them is something indifferent and independent as regards the rest, otherwise it would not be an entelechy. Each of them is so much for itself that all its determinations and modifications go on in itself alone, and no determination from without takes place. Leibnitz says: “There are three ways in which substances are connected: (1) Causality, influence; (2) The relation of assistance; (3) The relation of harmony. The relation of influence is a relation pertaining to a commonplace or popular philosophy. But as it is impossible to understand how material particles or immaterial qualities can pass from one substance into another, such a conception as this must be abandoned.” If we accept the reality of the many, there can be no transition at all; each is an ultimate and absolutely independent entity. “The system of assistance,” according to Descartes, “is something quite superfluous, a Deus ex machina, because continual miracles in the things of nature are assumed.” If we, like Descartes, assume independent substances, no causal nexus is conceivable; for this presupposes an influence, a bearing of the one upon the other, and in this way the other is not a substance. “Therefore there remains only harmony, a unity which is in itself or implicit. The monad is therefore simply shut up in itself, and cannot be determined by another; this other cannot be set into it. It can neither get outside itself, nor can others get inside it.”249 That is also Spinoza’s way of regarding matters: each attribute entirely represents the essence of God for itself, extension and thought have no influence on each other.
In the third place, “however, these monads must at the same time have certain qualities or determinations in themselves, inner actions, through which they are distinguished from others. There cannot be two things alike, for otherwise they would not be two, they would not be different, but one and the same.”250 Here then Leibnitz’s axiom of the undistinguishable comes into words. What is not in itself distinguished is not distinguished. This may be taken in a trivial sense, as that there are not two individuals which are alike. To such sensuous things the maxim has no application, it is prima facie indifferent whether there are things which are alike or not; there may also be always a difference of space. This is the superficial sense, which does not concern us. The more intimate sense is, however, that each thing is in itself something determined, distinguishing itself from others implicitly or in itself. Whether two things are like or unlike is only a comparison which we make, which falls within our ken. But what we have further to consider is the determined difference in themselves. The difference must be a difference in themselves, not for our comparison, for the subject must have the difference as its own peculiar characteristic or determination, i.e. the determination must be immanent in the individual. Not only do we distinguish the animal by its claws, but it distinguishes itself essentially thereby, it defends itself, it preserves itself. If two things are different only in being two, then each of them is one; but the fact of their being two does not constitute a distinction between them; the determined difference in itself is the principal point.
Fourthly: “The determinateness and the variation thereby established is, however, an inward implicit principle; it is a multiplicity of modifications, of relations to surrounding existences, but a multiplicity which remains locked up in simplicity. Determinateness and variation such as this, which remains and goes on in the existence itself, is a perception;” and therefore Leibnitz says all monads perceive or represent (for we may translate perceptio by representation [Vorstellung]). In other words, they are in themselves universal, for universality is just simplicity in multiplicity, and therefore a simplicity which is at the same time change and motion of multiplicity. This is a very important determination; in substance itself there is negativity, determinateness, without its simplicity and its implicitude being given up. Further, in it there is this idealism, that the simple is something in itself distinguished, and in spite of its variation, that it yet remains one, and continues in its simplicity. An instance of this is found in “I,” my spirit. I have many conceptions, a wealth of thought is in me, and yet I remain one, notwithstanding this variety of state. This identity may be found in the fact that what is different is at the same time abrogated, and is determined as one; the monads are therefore distinguished by modifications in themselves, but not by external determinations. These determinations contained in the monads exist in them in ideal fashion; this ideality in the monad is in itself a whole, so that these differences are only representations and ideas. This absolute difference is what is termed the Notion; what falls asunder in the mere representation is held together. This is what possesses interest in Leibnitz’s philosophy. Such ideality in the same way pertains to the material, which is also a multiplicity of monads; therefore the system of Leibnitz is an intellectual system, in accordance with which all that is material has powers of representation and perception. As thus representing, the monad, says Leibnitz, possesses activity; for activity is to be different, and yet to be one, and this is the only true difference. The monad not only represents, it also changes; but in doing so, it yet remains in itself absolutely what it is. This variation is based on activity. “The activity of the inner principle, by means of which it passes from one perception to another, is desire (appetitus).” Variation in representation is desire, and that constitutes the spontaneity of the monad; all is now complete in itself, and the category of influence falls away. Indeed, this intellectuality of all things is a great thought on the part of Leibnitz: “All multiplicity is included in unity;”251 determination is not a difference in respect of something else, but reflected into itself, and maintaining itself. This is one aspect of things, but the matter is not therein complete; it is equally the case that it is different in respect of other things.
Fifthly: These representations and ideas are not necessarily conscious representations and ideas, any more than all monads as forming representations are conscious. It is true that consciousness is itself perception, but a higher grade of the same; perceptions of consciousness Leibnitz calls apperceptions. The difference between the merely representing and the self-conscious monads Leibnitz makes one of degrees of clearness. The expression representation has, however, certainly something awkward about it, since we are accustomed to associate it only with consciousness, and with consciousness as such; but Leibnitz admits also of unconscious representation. When he then adduces examples of unconscious representations, he appeals to the condition of a swoon or of sleep, in which we are mere monads: and that representations without consciousness are present in such states he shows from the fact of our having perceptions immediately after awakening out of sleep, which shows that others must have been there, for one perception arises only out of others.252 That is a trivial and empirical demonstration.
Sixthly: These monads constitute the principle of all that exists. Matter is nothing else than their passive capability. This passive capability it is which constitutes the obscurity of the representations, or a confusion which never arrives at distinction, or desire, or activity.253 That is a correct definition of the conception; it is Being, matter, in accordance with the moment of simplicity. This is implicitly activity; “mere implicitness without actualization” would therefore be a better expression. The transition from obscurity to distinctness Leibnitz exemplifies by the state of swooning.
Seventhly: Bodies as bodies are aggregates of monads: they are mere heaps which cannot be termed substances, any more than a flock of sheep can bear this name.254 The continuity of the same is an arrangement or extension, but space is nothing in itself;255 it is only in another, or a unity which our understanding gives to that aggregate.256
b. Leibnitz goes on to determine and distinguish more clearly as the principal moments, inorganic, organic, and conscious monads, and he does it in the following way.
α. Such bodies as have no inner unity, whose elements are connected merely by space, or externally, are inorganic; they have not an entelechy or one monad which rules over the rest.257 The continuity of space as a merely external relation has not the Notion in itself of the likeness of these monads in themselves. Continuity is in fact to be regarded in them as an arrangement, a similarity in themselves. Leibnitz therefore defines their movements as like one another, as a harmony in themselves;258 but again, this is as much as saying that their similarity is not in themselves. In fact continuity forms the essential determination of the inorganic; but it must at the same time not be taken as something external or as likeness, but as penetrating or penetrated unity, which has dissolved individuality in itself like a fluid. But to this point Leibnitz does not attain, because for him monads are the absolute principle, and individuality does not annul itself.
β. A higher degree of Being is found in bodies with life and soul, in which one monad has dominion over the rest. The body which is bound up with the monad, of which the one monad is the entelechy or soul, is with this soul named a living creature, an animal. One such entelechy rules over the rest, yet not really, but formally: the limbs of this animal, however, are again themselves such living things, each of which has in its turn its ruling entelechy within it.259 But ruling is here an inappropriate expression. To rule in this case is not to rule over others, for all are independent; it is therefore only a formal expression. If Leibnitz had not helped himself out with the word rule, and developed the idea further, this dominant monad would have abrogated the others, and put them in a negative position; the implicitness of the other monads, or the principle of the absolute Being of these points or individuals would have disappeared. Yet we shall later on come across this relation of the individuals to one another.
γ. The conscious monad distinguishes itself from the naked (material) monads by the distinctness of the representation. But this is of course only an indefinite word, a formal distinction; it indicates that consciousness is the very thing that constitutes the distinction of the undistinguished, and that distinction constitutes the determination of consciousness. Leibnitz more particularly defined the distinction of man as that “he is capable of the knowledge of necessary and eternal truths,” — or that he conceives the universal on the one hand, and on the other what is connected with it; the nature and essence of self-consciousness lies in the universality of the Notions. “These eternal truths rest on two maxims; the one is that of contradiction, the other is that of sufficient reason.” The former of these is unity expressed in useless fashion as a maxim, the distinction of the undistinguishable, A = A; it is the definition of thinking, but not a maxim which could contain a truth as content, or it does not express the Notion of distinction as such. The other important principle was, on the other hand: What is not distinguished in thought is not distinguished (p. 333). “The maxim of the reason is that everything has its reason,”260 — the particular has the universal as its essential reality. Necessary truth must have its reason in itself in such a manner that it is found by analysis, i.e. through that very maxim of identity. For analysis is the very favourite plan of resolving into simple ideas and principles: a resolution which annihilates their relation, and which therefore in fact forms a transition into the opposite, though it does not have the consciousness of the same, and on that account also excludes the Notion; for every opposite it lays hold of only in its identity. Sufficient reason seems to be a pleonasm; but Leibnitz understood by this aims, final causes (causæ finales), the difference between which and the causal nexus or the efficient cause he here brings under discussion.261
c. The universal itself, absolute essence, which with Leibnitz is something quite different from the monads, separates itself also into two sides, namely universal Being and Being as the unity of opposites.
α. That universal is God, as the cause of the world, to the consciousness of whom the above principle of sufficient reason certainly forms the transition. The existence of God is only an inference from eternal truths; for these must as the laws of nature have a universal sufficient reason which determines itself as none other than God. Eternal truth is therefore the consciousness of the universal and absolute in and for itself; and this universal and absolute is God, who, as one with Himself, the monad of monads, is the absolute Monas. Here we again have the wearisome proof of His existence: He is the fountain of eternal truths and Notions, and without Him no potentiality would have actuality; He has the prerogative of existing immediately in His potentiality.262 God is here also the unity of potentiality and actuality, but in an uncomprehending manner; what is necessary, but not comprehended, is transferred to Him. Thus God is at first comprehended chiefly as universal, but already in the aspect of the relation of opposites.
β. As regards this second aspect, the absolute relation of opposites, it occurs in the first place in the form of absolute opposites of thought, the good and the evil. “God is the Author of the world,” says Leibnitz; that refers directly to evil. It is round this relation that philosophy specially revolves, but to the unity of which it did not then attain; the evil in the world was not comprehended, because no advance was made beyond the fixed opposition. The result of Leibnitz’s Théodicée is an optimism supported on the lame and wearisome thought that God, since a world had to be brought into existence, chose out of infinitely many possible worlds the best possible — the most perfect, so far as it could be perfect, considering the finite element which it was to contain.263 This may very well be said in a general way, but this perfection is no determined thought, but a loose popular expression, a sort of babble respecting an imaginary or fanciful potentiality; Voltaire made merry over it. Nor is the nature of the finite therein defined. Because the world, it is said, has to be the epitome of finite Beings, evil could not be separated from it, since evil is negation, finitude.264 Reality and negation remain standing in opposition to one another exactly in the same way as before. That is the principal conception in the Théodicée. But something very like this can be said in every-day life. If I have some goods brought to me in the market at some town, and say that they are certainly not perfect, but the best that are to be got, this is quite a good reason why I should content myself with them. But comprehension is a very different thing from this. Leibnitz says nothing further than that the world is good, but there is also evil in it; the matter remains just the same as it was before. “Because it had to be finite” is then a mere arbitrary choice on the part of God. The next question would be: Why and how is there finitude in the Absolute and His decrees? And only then should there be deduced from the determination of finitude the evil which no doubt exists therein.
It is true that Leibnitz has a reply to the above question: “God does not will what is evil; evil comes only indirectly into the results” (blind), “because oftentimes the greater good could not be achieved if evils were not present. Therefore they are means to a good end.” But why does not God employ other means? They are always external, not in and for themselves. “A moral evil may not be regarded as a means, nor must we, as the apostle says, do evil that good may come; yet it has often the relation of a conditio sine qua non of the good. Evil is in God only the object of a permissive will (voluntatis permissivæ);” but everything that is wrong would be such. “God has therefore among the objects of His will the best possible as the ultimate object, but the good as a matter of choice (qualemcunque), also as subordinate; and things indifferent and evils often as means. Evil is, however, an object of His will only as the condition of something otherwise necessary (rei alioqui debitæ), which without it could not exist; in which sense Christ said it must needs be that offences come.”265
In a general sense we are satisfied with the answer: “In accordance with the wisdom of God we must accept it as a fact that the laws of nature are the best possible,” but this answer does not suffice for a definite question. What one wishes to know is the goodness of this or that particular law; and to that no answer is given. If, for example, it is said that “The law of falling bodies, in which the relation of time and space is the square, is the best possible,” one might employ, as far as mathematics are concerned, any other power whatever. When Leibnitz answers: “God made it so,” this is no answer at all. We wish to know the definite reason of this law; such general determinations sound pious, but are not satisfying.
γ. He goes on to say that the sufficient reason has reference to the representation of the monads. The principles of things are monads, of which each is for itself, without having influence on the others. If now the Monad of monads, God, is the absolute substance, and individual monads are created through His will, their substantiality comes to an end. There is therefore a contradiction present, which remains unsolved in itself — that is between the one substantial monad and the many monads for which independence is claimed, because their essence consists in their standing in no relation to one another. Yet at the same time, in order to show the harmony that exists in the world, Leibnitz understands the relation of monads to monads more generally as the unity of contrasted existences, namely of soul and body. This unity he represents as a relation without difference, and notionless, i.e. as a pre-established harmony.266 Leibnitz uses here the illustration of two clocks, which are set to the same hour, and keep the same time;267 in the same way the movement of the kingdom of thought goes on, determined in accordance with ends, and the movement onward of the corporeal kingdom which corresponds with it, proceeds according to a general causal connection.268 The case is the same as with Spinoza, that these two sides of the universe have no connection with each other, the one does not influence the other, but both are entirely indifferent to one another; it is really the differentiating relation of the Notion that is lacking. In abstract thought that is without Notion, that determination now receives the form of simplicity, of implicitude, of indifference with regard to what is other, of a self-reflection that has no movement: in this way red in the abstract is in a position of indifference as regards blue, &c. Here, as before, Leibnitz forsakes his principle of individuation; it has only the sense of being exclusively one, and of not reaching to and including what is other; or it is only a unity of the popular conception, not the Notion of unity. The soul has thus a series of conceptions and ideas which are developed from within it, and this series is from the very first placed within the soul at its creation, i.e. the soul is in all immediacy this implicit determination; determination is, however, not implicit, but the reflected unfolding of this determination in the ordinary conception is its outward existence. Parallel with this series of differentiated conceptions, there now runs a series of motions of the body, or of what is external to the soul.269 Both are essential moments of reality; they are mutually indifferent, but they have also an essential relation of difference.
Since now every monad, as shut up within itself, has no influence upon the body and its movements, and yet the infinite multitude of their atoms correspond with one another, Leibnitz places this harmony in God; a better definition of the relation and the activity of the Monad of monads is therefore that it is what pre-establishes harmony in the changes of the monads.270 God is the sufficient reason, the cause of this correspondence; He has so arranged the multitude of atoms that the original changes which are developed within one monad correspond with the changes of the others. The pre-established harmony is to be thought of somewhat in this style; when a dog gets a beating, the pain develops itself in him, in like fashion the beating develops itself in itself, and so does the person who administers the beating: their determinations all correspond with one another, and that not by means of their objective connection, since each is independent.271 The principle of the harmony among the monads does not consequently belong to them, but it is in God, who for that very reason is the Monad of monads, their absolute unity. We saw from the beginning how Leibnitz arrived at this conception. Each monad is really possessed of the power of representation, and is as such a representation of the universe, therefore implicitly the totality of the whole world. But at the same time this representation is not in consciousness; the naked monad is implicitly the universe, and difference is the development of this totality in it.272 What develops itself therein is at the same time in harmony with all other developments; all is one harmony. “In the universe all things are closely knit together, they are in one piece, like an ocean: the slightest movement transmits its influence far and wide all around.”273 From a single grain of sand, Leibnitz holds, the whole universe might be comprehended in its entire development — if we only knew the sand grain thoroughly. There is not really much in all this, though it sounds very fine; for the rest of the universe is considerably more than a grain of sand, well though we knew it, and considerably different therefrom. To say that its essence is the universe is mere empty talk: for the fact is that the universe as essence is not the universe. To the sand grain much must be added which is not present; and since thought adds more than all the grains of sand that exist, the universe and its development may in this way certainly be comprehended. Thus according to Leibnitz every monad has or is the representation of the entire universe, which is the same as saying that it is really representation in general; but at the same time it is a determinate representation, by means of which it comes to be this particular monad, therefore it is representation according to its particular situation and circumstances.274
The representations of the monad in itself, which constitute its universe, develop themselves from themselves, as the spiritual element in it, according to the laws of their own activity and desire, just as the movements of their outer world do according to laws of bodies; hence liberty is nothing other than this spontaneity of immanent development, but as in consciousness. The magnetic needle, on the contrary, has only spontaneity without consciousness, and consequently without freedom. For, says Leibnitz, the nature of the magnetic needle is to turn to the north; if it had consciousness it would imagine that this was its self-determination; it would thus have the will to move round in accordance with its nature.275 But it is clear that in the course of conscious representations there is involved no necessary connection, but contingency and want of sequence are to be found, the reason of this according to Leibnitz (Oper. T. II P. I. p. 75) being “because the nature of a created substance implies that it changes incessantly according to a certain order, which order guides it spontaneously (spontanément) in all the circumstances which befall it; so that one who sees all things recognizes in the present condition of substance the past also and the future. The law of order, which determines the individuality of the particular substance, has an exact reference to what takes place in every other substance and in the whole universe.” The meaning of this is that the monad is not a thing apart, or that there are two views of it, the one making it out as spontaneously generating its representations, so far as form is concerned, and the other making it out to be a moment of the whole of necessity; Spinoza would call this regarding it from both sides. An organic whole, a human being, is thus for instance the assertion of his aim from out of himself: at the same time the being directed on something else is involved in his Notion. He represents this and that to himself, he wills this and that; his activity employs itself and brings about changes. His inward determination thus becomes corporeal determination, and then change going beyond himself; he appears as cause, influencing other monads. But this Being-for-another is only an appearance. For the other, i.e. the actual, in so far as the monad determines it or makes it negative, is the passive element which the monad has in itself: all moments are indeed contained therein, and for that very reason it has no need of other monads, but only of the laws of the monads in itself. But if the Being-for-another is mere appearance, the same may be said of Being-for-self; for this has significance only in reference to Being-for-another.
The important point in Leibnitz’s philosophy is this intellectuality of representation which Leibnitz, however, did not succeed in carrying out; and for the same reason this intellectuality is at the same time infinite multiplicity, which has remained absolutely independent, because this intellectuality has not been able to obtain mastery over the One. The separation in the Notion, which proceeds as far as release from itself, or appearance in distinct independence, Leibnitz did not succeed in bringing together into unity. The harmony of these two moments, the course of mental representations and the course of things external, appearing mutually as cause and effect, is not brought by Leibnitz into relation in and for themselves; he therefore lets them fall asunder, although each is passive as regards the other. He moreover considers both of them in one unity, to be sure, but their activity is at the same time not for themselves. Every forward advance becomes therefore incomprehensible when taken by itself, because the course of the representation as through aims in itself, requires this moment of Other-Being or of passivity; and again the connection of cause and effect requires the universal: each however lacks this its other moment. The unity which according to Leibnitz is to be brought about by the pre-established harmony, namely that the determination of the will of man and the outward change harmonize, is therefore brought about by means of another, if not indeed from without, for this other is God. Before God the monads are not to be independent, but ideal and absorbed in Him.
At this point the demand would come in that in God Himself there should be comprehended the required unity of that which before fell asunder; and God has the special privilege of having laid on Him the burden of what cannot be comprehended. The word of God is thus the makeshift which leads to a unity which itself is only hypothetical; for the process of the many out of this unity is not demonstrated. God plays therefore in the later philosophy a far greater part than in the early, because now the comprehension of the absolute opposition of thought and Being is the chief demand. With Leibnitz the extent to which thoughts advance is the extent of the universe; where comprehension ceases, the universe ceases, and God begins: so that later it was even maintained that to be comprehended was derogatory to God, because He was thus degraded into finitude. In that procedure a beginning is made from the determinate, this and that are stated to be necessary; but since in the next place the unity of these moments is not comprehended, it is transferred to God. God is therefore, as it were, the waste channel into which all contradictions flow: Leibnitz’s Théodicée is just a popular summing up such as this. There are, nevertheless, all manner of evasions to be searched out — in the opposition of God’s justice and mercy, that the one tempers the other; how the fore-knowledge of God and human freedom are compatible — all manner of syntheses which never come to the root of the matter nor show both sides to be moments.
These are the main moments of Leibnitz’s philosophy. It is a metaphysic which starts from a narrow determination of the understanding, namely, from absolute multiplicity, so that connection can only be grasped as continuity. Thereby absolute unity is certainly set aside, but all the same it is presupposed; and the association of individuals with one another is to be explained only in this way, that it is God who determines the harmony in the changes of individuals. This is an artificial system, which is founded on a category of the understanding, that of the absoluteness of abstract individuality. What is of importance in Leibnitz lies in the maxims, in the principle of individuality and the maxim of indistinguishability.
The philosophy of Wolff is directly connected with that of Leibnitz, for really it is a pedantic systematization of the latter, for which reason it is likewise called the Leibnitz-Wolffian system of philosophy. Wolff attained to great distinction in mathematics and made himself famous by his philosophy as well; the latter was for long predominant in Germany. In Wolff, as a teacher dealing with the understanding, we find a systematic exposition of the philosophic element present in human conceptions as a whole. As regards his connection with German culture generally, great and immortal praise is more especially due to him; before all others he may be termed the teacher of the Germans. We may indeed say that Wolff was the first to naturalize philosophy in Germany. Tschirnhausen and Thomasius likewise participated in this honour, for the special reason that they wrote upon Philosophy in the German language. In regard to the matter of the philosophy of Tschirnhausen and Thomasius we have not much to say; it is so-called healthy reason — there is in it the superficial character and the empty universality always to be found where a beginning is made with thought. In this case the universality of thought satisfies us because everything is present there, just as it is present in a moral maxim which has, however, no determinate content in its universality. Wolff, then, was the first to make, not exactly Philosophy, but thoughts in the form of thought, into a general possession, and he substituted this in Germany for mere talk originating from feeling, from sensuous perception, and from the ordinary conception. This is most important from the point of view of culture, and yet it does not really concern us here, excepting in so far as the content in this form of thought has caused itself to be recognized as Philosophy. This philosophy, as a philosophy of the understanding, became the ordinary culture of the day; in it determinate, intelligent thought is the fundamental principle, and it extends over the whole circle of objects which fall within the region of knowledge. Wolff defined the world of consciousness for Germany, and for the world in general, in the same wide sense in which we may say that this was done by Aristotle. What distinguishes him from Aristotle is that in so doing the point of view that he adopted was that of the understanding merely, while Aristotle treated the subject speculatively. The philosophy of Wolff is hence no doubt built on foundations laid by Leibnitz, but yet in such a manner that the speculative interest is quite eliminated from it. The spiritual philosophy, substantial in a higher sense, which we found emerging first in Boehme, though still in a peculiar and barbarous form, has been quite lost sight of, and has disappeared without leaving any traces or effects in Germany; his very language was forgotten.
The principal events in Christian Wolff’s life are these: He was the son of a baker, and was born at Breslau in 1679. He first studied Theology and then Philosophy, and in 1707 he became Professor of Mathematics and Philosophy at Halle. Here the pietistic theologians, and more especially Lange, treated him in the basest manner. Piety did not trust this understanding; for piety, if it is true, embodies a content which is speculative in nature, and which passes beyond the understanding. As his opponents could make no headway by their writings, they resorted to intrigues. They caused it to be conveyed to King Frederick William I., the father of Frederick II., a rough man who took an interest in nothing but soldiers, that according to the determinism of Wolff, free will was impossible, and that soldiers could not hence desert of their own free will, but by a special disposition of God (pre-established harmony) — a doctrine which, if disseminated amongst the military, would be extremely dangerous. The king, much enraged by this, immediately issued a decree that within forty-eight hours Wolff should leave Halle and the Prussian States, under penalty of the halter. Wolff thus left Halle on the 23rd of November, 1723. The theologians added to all this the scandal of preaching against Wolff and his philosophy, and the pious Franke thanked God on his knees in church for the removal of Wolff. But the rejoicings did not last long. Wolff went to Cassel, was there immediately installed first professor in the philosophic faculty at Marburg, and at the same time made a member of the Academies of Science of London, Paris, and Stockholm. By Peter the First of Russia he was made Vice-President of the newly instituted Academy in St. Petersburg. Wolff was also summoned to Russia, but this invitation he declined; he received, however, an honorary post, he was made a Baron by the Elector of Bavaria, and, in short, loaded with public honours which, more especially at that time, though even now it is the case, were very much thought of by the general public, and which were too great not to make a profound sensation in Berlin. In Berlin a commission was appointed to pass judgment on the Wolffian philosophy — for this it had not been possible to eradicate — and it declared the same to be harmless, that is to say, free from all danger to state and religion; it also forbade the theologians to make it a subject of dispute, and altogether put an end to their clamour. Frederick William now issued a recall in very respectful terms to Wolff, who, however, hesitated to comply with it owing to his lack of confidence in its sincerity. On the accession of Frederick II. in 1740 he was again recalled in terms of the highest honour (Lange had meanwhile died), and only then did he comply. Wolff became Vice-Chancellor of the University, but he outlived his repute, and his lectures at the end were very poorly attended. He died in 1754.276
Like Tschirnhausen and Thomasius, Wolff wrote a great part of his works in his mother tongue, while Leibnitz for the most part wrote only in Latin or French. This is an important matter, for, as we have already noticed (pp. 114 and 150), it is only when a nation possesses a science in its own language that it can really be said to belong to it; and in Philosophy most of all this is requisite. For thought has in it this very moment of pertaining to self-consciousness or of being absolutely its own; when one’s own language is the vehicle of expression, as when we talk of “Bestimmtheit” instead of “Determination,” and “Wesen” instead of “Essenz,” it is immediately present to our consciousness that the conceptions are absolutely its own; it has to deal with these at all times, and they are in no way foreign to it. The Latin language has a phraseology, a definite sphere and range of conception; it is at once taken for granted that when men write in Latin they are at liberty to be dull; it is impossible to read or write what men permit themselves to say in Latin. The titles of Wolff’s philosophic works are perpetually of this nature: “Rational thoughts on the powers of the human understanding and their right uses in the knowledge of the truth,” Halle, 1712, 8vo; “Rational thoughts on God, the world, and the soul of man, likewise on all things generally,” Frankfort and Leipzig, 1719; “On the action and conduct of men,” Halle, 1720; “On Social Life,” Halle, 1720; “On the operations of Nature,” Halle, 1723, and so on. Wolff wrote German and Latin quartos on every department of Philosophy, even on economics — twenty-three thick volumes of Latin, or about forty quartos altogether. His mathematical works make a good many more quartos. He brought into general use the differential and integral calculus of Leibnitz.
It is only in its general content and taken as a whole that Wolff’s philosophy is the philosophy of Leibnitz, that is to say, only in relation to the fundamental determinations of monads and to the theodicy — to these he remained faithful; any other content is empiric, derived from our feelings and desires. Wolff likewise accepted in their entirety all the Cartesian and other definitions of general ideas. Hence we find in him abstract propositions and their proofs mingled with experiences, on the indubitable truth of which he builds a large part of his propositions; and he must so build and derive his foundations if a content is to result at all. With Spinoza, on the contrary, no content is to be found excepting absolute substance and a perpetual return into the same. The greatness of Wolff’s services to the culture of Germany, which now appeared quite independently and without any connection with an earlier and profounder metaphysical standpoint (supra, p. 350), are in proportion to the barrenness and inward contentless condition into which Philosophy had sunk. This he divided into its formal disciplines, spinning it out into determinations of the understanding with a pedantic application of geometric methods; and, contemporaneously with the English philosophers, he made the dogmatism of the metaphysics of the understanding fashionable, that is a philosophizing which determines the absolute and rational by means of self-exclusive thought-determinations and relationships (such as one and many, simple and compound, finite and infinite, causal connection, &c.). Wolff entirely displaced the Aristotelian philosophy of the schools, and made Philosophy into an ordinary science pertaining to the German nation. But besides this he gave Philosophy that systematic and requisite division into sections which has down to the present day served as a sort of standard.
In theoretic philosophy Wolff first treats of Logic purified from scholastic interpretations or deductions; it is the logic of the understanding which he has systematized. The second stage is Metaphysics, which contains four parts: first there is Ontology, the treatment of abstract and quite general philosophic categories, such as Being (ὄν) and its being the One and Good; in this abstract metaphysic there further comes accident, substance, cause and effect, the phenomenon, &c. Next in order is Cosmology, a general doctrine of body, the doctrine of the world; here we have abstract metaphysical propositions respecting the world, that there is no chance, no leaps or bounds in nature — the law of continuity. Wolff excludes natural science and natural history. The third part of the metaphysic is rational psychology or pneumatology, the philosophy of the soul, which deals with the simplicity, immortality, immateriality of the soul. Finally, the fourth is natural theology, which sets forth the proofs of the existence of God.277 Wolff also inserts (chap. iii.) an empirical psychology. Practical philosophy he divides into the Rights of Nature, Morality, the Rights of Nations or Politics, and Economics.
The whole is propounded in geometric forms such as definitions, axioms, theorems, scholia, corollaries, &c. In mathematics the understanding is in its proper place, for the triangle must remain the triangle. Wolff on the one hand started upon a large range of investigation, and one quite indefinite in character, and on the other, held to a strictly methodical manner with regard to propositions and their proofs. The method is really similar to that of Spinoza, only it is more wooden and lifeless than his. Wolff applied the same methods to every sort of content — even to that which is altogether empirical, such as his so-called applied mathematics, into which he introduces many useful arts, bringing the most ordinary reflections and directions into the geometric form. In many cases this undoubtedly gives his work a most pedantic aspect, especially when the content directly justifies itself to our conception without this form at all. For Wolff proceeds by first laying down certain definitions, which really rest upon our ordinary conceptions, since these he translated into the empty form of determinations of the understanding. Hence the definitions are merely nominal definitions, and we know whether they are correct only by seeing whether they correspond to conceptions which are referred to their simple thoughts. The syllogism is the form of real importance in this mode of reasoning, and with Wolff it often attains to its extreme of rigidity and formalism.
Under mathematics, which is the subject of four small volumes, Wolff also treats of architecture and military science. One of the propositions in Architecture is this: “Windows must be wide enough for two persons.” The making of a door is also propounded as a task, and the solution thereof given. The next best example comes from the art of warfare. The “Fourth proposition. The approach to the fortress must always be harder for the enemy the nearer he comes to it.” Instead of saying, because the danger is greater, which would be trivial, there follows the “Proof. The nearer the enemy comes to the fortress, the greater the danger. But the greater the danger the greater the resistance that must be offered in order to defy the attacks, and, so far as may be, avert the danger. Hence the nearer the enemy is to the fort the harder must the approach be made for him. Q.E.D.”278 Since the increase of the danger is given as the reason, the whole is false, and the contrary may be said with equal truth. For if at the beginning all possible resistance is offered to the enemy, he cannot get nearer the fortress at all, and thus the danger cannot become greater. The greater resistance has a real cause, and not this foolish one — namely, that because the garrison is now at closer quarters, and consequently operates in a narrow field, it can offer a greater resistance. In this most trivial way Wolff proceeds with every sort of content. This barbarism of pedantry, or this pedantry of barbarism, represented as it is in its whole breadth and extent, necessarily brought itself into disrepute; and without there being a definite consciousness of the reason why the geometric method is not the only and ultimate method of knowledge, instinct and an immediate consciousness of the foolishness of its applications caused this method to be set aside.
Popular philosophy flatters our ordinary consciousness, makes it the ultimate standard. Although with Spinoza we begin with presupposed definitions, the content is still profoundly speculative in nature, and it is not derived from the ordinary consciousness. In Spinoza thinking is not merely the form, for the content belongs to thinking itself; it is the content of thought in itself. In the speculative content the instinct of reason satisfies itself on its own account, because this content, as a totality which integrates itself within itself, at once in itself justifies itself to thought. The content in Spinoza is only without ground in so far as it has no external ground, but is a ground in itself. But if the content is finite, a demand for an external ground is indicated, since in such a case we desire to have a ground other than this finite. In its matter the philosophy of Wolff is indeed a popular philosophy, even if in form it still makes thought authoritative. Until the time of Kant the philosophy of Wolff was thus pre-eminent. Baumgarten, Crusius, and Moses Mendelssohn worked each of them independently on the same lines as Wolff; the philosophy of the last-mentioned was popular and graceful in form. The Wolffian philosophy was thus carried on, although it had cast off its pedantic methods: no further progress was however made. The question dealt with was how perfection could be attained — what it is possible to think and what not; metaphysic was reduced to its slightest consistency and to its completest vacuity, so that in its texture not a single thread remained secure. Mendelssohn considered himself, and was considered, the greatest of philosophers, and was lauded as such by his friends. In his “Morgenstunden” we really find a dry Wolffian philosophy, however much these gentlemen endeavoured to give their dull abstractions a bright Platonic form.
The forms of Philosophy which we have considered bear the character which pertains specially to metaphysics, of proceeding from general determinations of the understanding, but of combining therewith experience and observation, or the empiric method in general. One side of this metaphysic is that the opposites of thought are brought into consciousness, and that attention is directed upon the solution of this contradiction. Thought and Being or extension, God and the world, good and evil, the power and prescience of God on the one side, and the evil in the world and human freedom on the other: these contradictions, the opposites of soul and spirit, things conceived and things material, and their mutual relation, have occupied all men’s attention. The solution of these opposites and contradictions has still to be given, and God is set forth as the One in whom all these contradictions are solved. This is what is common to all these philosophies as far as their main elements are concerned. Yet we must likewise remark that these contradictions are not solved in themselves, i.e. that the nullity of the supposition is not demonstrated in itself, and thereby a true concrete solution has not come to pass. Even if God is recognized as solving all contradictions, God as the solution of these contradictions is a matter of words rather than something conceived and comprehended. If God is comprehended in His qualities, and prescience, omnipresence, omniscience, power, wisdom, goodness justice, &c., are considered as qualities of God Himself, they simply lead to contradictions; and these contradictions, Leibnitz (supra, p. 348) sought to remove by saying that the qualities temper one another, i.e. that they are combined in such a way that one annuls the other. This, however, is no real comprehension of such contradiction.
This metaphysic contrasts greatly with the old philosophy of a Plato or an Aristotle. To the old philosophy we can always turn again and admit its truth; it is satisfying in the stage of development it has reached — a concrete centre-point which meets all the problems set by thought as these are comprehended. In this modern metaphysic, however, the opposites are merely developed into absolute contradictions. God is indeed given as their absolute solution, but only as an abstract solution, as a Beyond; on this side all contradictions are, as regards their content, unsolved and unexplained. God is not comprehended as the One in whom these contradictions are eternally resolved; He is not comprehended as Spirit, as the Trinity. It is in Him alone as Spirit, and as Spirit which is Three in One, that this opposition of Himself and His Other, the Son, is contained, and with it the resolution of the same; this concrete Idea of God as reason, has not as yet found an entrance into Philosophy.
In order that we may now cast a retrospective glance over the philosophic efforts of other nations, we shall apply ourselves to the further progress of Philosophy. Once more we see Scepticism making its way into this arid philosophy of the understanding. But this time it is, properly speaking, in the form of Idealism, or the determinations are subjective determinations of self-consciousness. In the place of thought we consequently find the Notion now making its appearance. Just as with the Stoics determinateness is held to be an object of thought, we have in modern times this same manifestation of thought as the unmoved form of simplicity. Only here the image or inner consciousness of totality is present, the absolute spirit which the world has before it as its truth and to whose Notion it makes its way — this is another inward principle, another implicitude of mind which it endeavours to bring forth from itself and for itself, so that reason is a comprehension of the same, or has the certitude of being all reality. With the ancients reason (λόγος), as the implicit and explicit Being of consciousness, had only an ethereal and formal existence as language, but here it has certainty as existent substance. Hence with Descartes there is the unity of the Notion and Being, and with Spinoza the universal reality. The first commencement of the Notion of the movement of fixed thoughts in themselves is found in this, that the movement which, as method, simply falls outside its object, comes within it, or that self-consciousness comes within thought. Thought is implicitude without explicitude, an objective mode bearing no resemblance to a sensuous thing; and yet it is quite different from the actuality of self-consciousness. This Notion which we now find entering into thought, has the three kinds of form which we still have to consider; in the first place it has that of individual self-consciousness or the formal conception generally; secondly, that of universal self-consciousness, which applies itself to all objects whether they be objects of thought, determinate conceptions, or have the form of actuality — that is to say it applies itself to what is established in thought, to the intellectual world with the riches of its determinations and looked on as a Beyond, or to the intellectual world in as far as it is its realization, the world here and around us. It is in those two ways, and in those ways alone, that the actual Notion is present in the succeeding chapter; for not as yet is it in the third place to be found as taken back into thought, or as the self-thinking or thought-of Notion. While that universal self-consciousness is, on the whole, a thought which grasps and comprehends, this third kind of thought is the Notion itself recognized as constituting reality in its essence, that is to say as Idealism. These three aspects again divide themselves as before into the three nations which alone count in the civilized world. The empirical and perfectly finite form of Notion pertains to the English; to the French belongs its form as making an attempt at everything, as establishing itself in its reality, abolishing all determination, and therefore being universal, unlimited, pure self-consciousness; and, lastly, to the German pertains the entering into itself of this implicitude, the thought of the absolute Notion.
THE DECADENCE WHICH we find in thought until the philosophy of Kant is reached, is manifested in what was at this time advocated in opposition to the metaphysic of the understanding, and which may be called a general popular philosophy, a reflecting empiricism, which to a greater or less extent becomes itself a metaphysic; just as, on the other hand, that metaphysic, in as far as it extended to particular sciences, becomes empiricism. As against these metaphysical contradictions, as against the artificialities of the metaphysical synthesis, as against the assistance of God, the pre-established harmony, the best possible world, &c., as against this merely artificial understanding, we now find that fixed principles, immanent in mind, have been asserted or maintained respecting what is felt, intuitively perceived and honoured in the cultured human breast. And in distinction to the assertion that we only find the solution in the Beyond, in God, these concrete principles of a fixed and permanent content form a reconciliation here and now, they adopt a position of independence, and assume an intellectual standing-ground which they find in what has generally been termed the healthy human understanding. Such determinations may indeed be found to be perfectly good and valid if the feelings, intuitions, heart and understanding of man be morally and intellectually fashioned; for in that case better and more noble feelings and desires may rule in men and a more universal content may be expressed in these principles. But when men make what we call sound reason — that which is by nature implanted in man’s breast — into the content and the principle, the healthy human understanding discovers itself to be identical with a feeling and knowledge belonging to nature. The Indians who worship a cow, and who expose or slay new-born children, and commit all sorts of barbarous deeds, the Egyptians who pray to a bird, the apis, &c., and the Turks as well, all possess a healthy human understanding similar in nature. But the healthy human understanding and the natural feeling of rude and barbarous Turks, when taken as a standard, result in shocking principles. When we speak of healthy human understanding, however, of natural feelings, we always have before our eyes a cultured mind; and those who make the healthy human reason, the natural knowledge, the immediate feelings and inspirations found in themselves, into a rule and standard, do not know that when religion, morality, and rectitude are discovered to be present in the human breast, this is due to culture and education, which are the first to make such principles into natural feelings. Here natural feelings and the healthy human understanding are thus made the principle; and much may be recognized as coming under these heads. This then is the form taken by Philosophy in the eighteenth century. Taken as a whole, three points of view have to be considered; in the first place, Hume must be regarded on his own account, then the Scottish, and, thirdly, the French philosophy. Hume is a sceptic; the Scottish philosophy opposes the scepticism of Hume, the French philosophy has in the “enlightenment” of Germany (by which expression is indicated that form of German philosophy which is not Wolffian metaphysics) an appendage of a feebler form. Since from the metaphysical God we can make no further progress in the concrete, Locke grounds his content on experience. But that empiricism leads thought to no fixed standpoint, Hume demonstrates by denying every universal; the Scottish philosophers, on the contrary, undoubtedly maintain universal propositions and truths, but not through thought. Hence in empiricism itself the fixed standpoint has now to be adopted; thus the French find the universal in the actuality which they call réalité. They do not, however, find its content in and from thought, but as living substance, as nature and matter. All this is a further working out of reflecting empiricism, and some more details respecting it must still be given.
A. Idealism and Scepticism.
THOUGHT GENERALLY IS simple, universal self-identity, but in the form of negative movement, whereby the determinate abrogates itself. This movement of Being-for-self is now an essential moment of thought, while hitherto it was outside it; and thus grasping itself as movement in itself, thought is self-consciousness — at first indeed formal, as individual self-consciousness. Such a form it has in scepticism, but this distinction marks it off from the older scepticism, that now the certainty of reality is made the starting point. With the ancients, on the contrary, scepticism is the return into individual consciousness in such a way that to it this consciousness is not the truth, in other words that scepticism does not give expression to the results arrived at, and attains no positive significance. But since in the modern world this absolute substantiality, this unity of implicitude and self-consciousness is fundamental — that is, this faith in reality generally — scepticism has here the form of idealism, i.e. of expressing self-consciousness or certainty of self as all reality and truth. The crudest form of this idealism is when self-consciousness, as individual or formal, does not proceed further than to say: All objects are our conceptions. We find this subjective idealism in Berkeley,279 and another form of the same in Hume.
This idealism, in which all external reality disappears, has before it the standpoint of Locke, and it proceeds directly from him. For we saw that to Locke the source of truth is experience, or Being as perceived. Now since this sensuous Being, as Being, has in it the quality of being for consciousness, we saw that it necessarily came to pass that in Locke’s case some qualities, at least, were so determined that they were not in themselves, but only for another; and that colour, figure, &c., had their ground only in the subject, in his particular organization. This Being-for-another, however, was not by him accepted as the Notion, but as falling within self-consciousness — i.e. self-consciousness not looked on as universal, — not within mind, but within what is opposed to the implicit.
George Berkeley was born in 1684 at Kilcrin, near Thomastown, in the county of Kilkenny, Ireland: in 1754 he died as an English Bishop.280 He wrote the “Theory of Vision,” 1709; “A Treatise concerning the principles of human knowledge,” 1710; “Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous,” 1713. In 1784 his collected works were published in London in two quarto volumes.
Berkeley advocated an idealism which came very near to that of Malebranche. As against the metaphysic of the understanding, we have the point of view that all existence and its determinations arise from feeling, and are constituted by self-consciousness. Berkeley’s first and fundamental thought is consequently this: “The Being of whatever is called by us a thing consists alone in its being perceived,” i.e. our determinations are the objects of our knowledge. “All objects of human knowledge are ideas” (so called by Berkeley as by Locke), “which arise either from the impressions of the outward senses, or from perceptions of the inward states and activities of the mind, or finally, they are such as are constituted by means of memory and imagination through their separation and rearrangement. A union of different sensuous feelings appears to us to be a particular thing, e.g. the feeling of colour, taste, smell, figure, &c.; for by colours, smells, sounds, something of which we have a sensation is always understood.”281 This is the matter and the object of knowledge; the knower is the percipient “I,” which reveals itself in relation to those feelings in various activities, such as imagination, remembrance, and will.
Berkeley thus indeed acknowledges the distinction between Being-for-self and Other-Being, which in his case, however, itself falls within the “I.” Of the matter on which activity is directed, it is no doubt in regard to one portion allowed that it does not exist outside of mind — that is to say, so far as our thoughts, inward feelings and states, or the operations of our imaginary powers are concerned. But in like manner the manifold sensuous conceptions and feelings can only exist in a mind. Locke certainly distinguished extension and movement, for example, as fundamental qualities, i.e. as qualities which pertain to the objects in themselves. But Berkeley very pertinently points out inconsistency here from the point of view that great and small, quick and slow, hold good as something relative; thus were extension and movement to be inherent or implicit, they could not be either large or small, quick or slow; that is, they could not be, for these determinations rest in the conception282 of such qualities. In Berkeley the relation of things to consciousness is alone dealt with, and beyond this relationship they do not in his view come. From this it follows that it is only self-consciousness that possesses them; for a perception which is not in a conceiving mind is nothing: it is a direct contradiction. There can be no substance, he says, which neither conceives nor perceives, and which is yet the substratum of perceptions and conceptions. If it is represented that there is something outside of consciousness which is similar to the conceptions, this is likewise contradictory; a conception can alone be similar to a conception, the idea to the idea alone.283
Thus, while Locke’s ultimate point is abstract substance, Being generally with the real determination of a substratum of accidents, Berkeley declares this substance to be the most incomprehensible assumption of all; but the incomprehensibility does not make this Being into an absolute nullity, nor does it make it in itself incomprehensible.284 For Berkeley brings forward against the present existence of external objects only the inconceivability of the relation of a Being to mind. This inconceivability, however, is destroyed in the Notion, for the Notion is the negative of things; and this moved Berkeley and Leibnitz to shut up the two sides in themselves. There nevertheless remains a relationship of what is “other” to us; these feelings do not develop from us as Leibnitz represents, but are determined through somewhat else. When Leibnitz speaks of development within the monads, it is nothing but empty talk; for the monads as they follow in succession have no inward connection. Each individual is thus determined through another, and not through us; and it does not matter what this external is, since it remains a contingent. Now in relation to the two sides of Leibnitz which are indifferent to one another, Berkeley says that such an “other” is quite superfluous. Berkeley calls the other the objects; but these, he says, cannot be what we call matter, for spirit and matter cannot come together.285 But the necessity of conceptions directly contradicts this Being-within-self of the conceiver; for the Being-within-self is the freedom of the conceiver; the latter does not, however, produce the conceptions with freedom; they have for him the form and determinateness of an independent “other.” Berkeley likewise does not accept idealism in the subjective sense, but only in respect that there are spirits which impart themselves (in the other case the subject forms his own conceptions), and consequently that it is God alone who brings to pass such conceptions; thus the imaginations or conceptions which are produced by us with our individual activity remain separate from these others,286 i.e. from the implicit.
This conception gives an instance of the difficulties which appear in regard to these questions, and which Berkeley wished to escape from in a quite original way. The inconsistency in this system God has again to make good; He has to bear it all away; to Him the solution of the contradiction is left. In this idealism, in short, the common sensuous view of the universe and the separation of actuality, as also the system of thought, of judgments devoid of Notion, remain exactly as before; plainly nothing in the content is altered but the abstract form that all things are perceptions only.287 Such idealism deals with the opposition between consciousness and its object merely, and leaves the extension of the conceptions and the antagonisms of the empirical and manifold content quite untouched; and if we ask what then is the truth of these perceptions and conceptions, as we asked formerly of things, no answer is forthcoming. It is pretty much a matter of indifference whether we believe in things or in perceptions, if self-consciousness remains possessed entirely by finalities; it receives the content in the ordinary way, and that content is of the ordinary kind. In its individuality it stumbles about amid the conceptions of an entirely empirical existence, without knowing and understanding anything else about the content: that is to say in this formal idealism reason has no content of its own.
As to what Berkeley further states in respect of the empirical content, where the object of his investigation becomes entirely psychological, it relates in the main to finding out the difference between the sensations of sight and feeling, and to discovering which kind of sensations belong to the one and which to the other. This kind of investigation keeps entirely to the phenomenal, and only therein distinguishes the various sorts of phenomena; or comprehension only reaches as far as to distinctions. The only point of interest is that these investigations have in their course chiefly lighted on space, and a dispute is carried on as to whether we obtain the conception of distance and so on, in short all the conceptions relating to space, through sight or feeling. Space is just this sensuous universal, the universal in individuality itself, which in the empirical consideration of empirical multiplicity invites and leads us on to thought (for it itself is thought), and by it this very sensuous perception and reasoning respecting perception is in its action confused. And since here perception finds an objective thought, it really would be led on to thought or to the possession of a thought, but at the same time it cannot arrive at thought in its completion, since thought or the Notion are not in question, and it clearly cannot come to the consciousness of true reality. Nothing is thought in the form of thought, but only as an external, as something foreign to thought.
We must add to what has preceded an account of the Scepticism of Hume, which has been given a more important place in history than it deserves from its intrinsic nature; its historic importance is due to the fact that Kant really derives the starting point of his philosophy from Hume.
David Hume was born in 1711 at Edinburgh and died there in 1776. He held a librarian’s post in that town for some time, then he became secretary to the Embassy in Paris; for quite a long period, indeed, he moved in diplomatic circles. In Paris he came to know Jean Jacques Rousseau and invited him to England, but Rousseau’s terribly distrustful and suspicious nature very soon estranged the two.288 Hume is more celebrated as a writer of history than through his philosophic works. He wrote: “A Treatise of human nature,” 3 vols., 1739, translated into German by Jacob, Halle, 1790, 8vo; likewise “Essays and Treatises on several subjects,” 2 vols. (Vol. I. containing “Essays moral, political and literary,” printed for the first time in Edinburgh, 1742; Vol. II. containing an “Inquiry concerning human understanding,” a further development of the Treatise, and first printed separately in London, 1748, 8vo). In his “Essays,” which contributed most to his fame as far as the philosophic side is concerned, he treated philosophic subjects as an educated, thoughtful man of the world would do — not in a systematic connection, nor showing the wide range which his thoughts should properly have been able to attain; in fact in some of his treatises he merely dealt with particular points of view.
We must shortly deal with the main aspects of Hume’s philosophy. He starts directly from the philosophic standpoint of Locke and Bacon, which derives our conceptions from experience, and his scepticism has the idealism of Berkeley as its object. The sequence of thought is this: Berkeley allows all ideas to hold good as they are; in Hume the antithesis of the sensuous and universal has cleared and more sharply defined itself, sense being pronounced by him to be devoid of universality. Berkeley does not make any distinction as to whether in his sensations there is a necessary connection or not. Formerly experience was a mixture of the two elements. Hume tells us that all perceptions of the mind may be divided into two classes or species, that of impressions, i.e. sensuous perceptions, and thoughts or ideas; the latter are similar in content to the former, but less forcible and lively. All objects of reason are consequently either relations of thoughts such as mathematical axioms, or facts of experience.289 Since Hume makes these into the content he naturally rejects innate ideas.290
Now when Hume goes on to consider more closely what is subsumed under experience, he finds categories of the understanding present there, and more especially the determination of the universal and of universal necessity; he took under his consideration more particularly the category of cause and effect, and in it set forth the rational element, inasmuch as in this causal relationship necessity is especially contained. Here Hume really completed the system of Locke, since he consistently drew attention to the fact that if this point of view be adhered to, experience is indeed the principle of whatever one knows, or perception itself contains everything that happens, but nevertheless the determination of universality and necessity are not contained in, nor were they given us by experience. Hume has thus destroyed the objectivity or absolute nature of thought-determinations. “Our conviction of the truth of a fact rests on feeling, memory, and the reasonings founded on the causal connection, i.e. on the relation of cause and effect. The knowledge of this relation is not attained by reasonings a priori, but arises entirely from experience; and we draw inferences, since we expect similar results to follow from similar causes, by reason of the principle of the custom or habit of conjoining different manifestations, i.e. by reason of the principle of the association of ideas. Hence there is no knowledge and no metaphysics beyond experience.”291
The simple thought we have here is exactly what Locke says, that we must receive the conception of cause and effect, and thus of a necessary connection, from experience; but experience, as sensuous perception, contains no necessity, has no causal connection. For in what we term such, that which we properly speaking perceive is merely the fact that something first of all happens and that then something else follows. Immediate perception relates only to a content of conditions or things which are present alongside of and in succession to one another, but not to what we call cause and effect; in time-succession there is thus no relation of cause and effect, and consequently no necessity either.292 When we say the pressure of the water is the cause of the destruction of this house, that is no pure experience. We have merely seen the water pressing or moving along in this direction, and subsequently the house falling down; and so with other examples. Necessity is thus not justified by experience, but we carry it into experience; it is accidentally arrived at by us and is subjective merely. This kind of universality which we connect with necessity, Hume calls custom. Because we have often seen results to follow we are accustomed to regard the connection as a necessary one; the necessity to him is thus a quite contingent association of ideas, which is custom.
It is the same thing in respect of the universal. What we perceive are individual phenomena and sensations in which we see that this is now one thing and now another. It may likewise be that we perceive the same determination frequently repeated and in manifold ways. But this is still far removed from universality; universality is a determination which is not given to us through experience. It may be said that this is quite a correct remark on Hume’s part, if by experience we understand outward experience. Experience is sensible that something exists, but nevertheless the universal is not as yet present in it. Indeed, sensuous existence as such is something which is set forth as indifferent, not differentiated from anything else; but sensuous existence is likewise universal in itself, or the indifference of its determinateness is not its only determinateness. But since Hume regards necessity, the unity of opposites, as resting quite subjectively on custom, we cannot get any deeper in thought. Custom is indeed so far a necessity in consciousness, and to this extent we really see the principle of this idealism in it; but in the second place this necessity is represented as something quite devoid of thought or Notion.
This custom obtains both in our perception which relates to sensuous nature, and in relation to law and morality. The ideas of justice and morality rest upon an instinct, on a subjective, but very often deceptive moral feeling.293 From a sceptical point of view the opposite may likewise be demonstrated. From this side Hume considers justice, morality, religious determinations, and disputes their absolute validity. That is to say when it is assumed that our knowledge arises from experience, and that we must consider only what we obtain thereby to be the truth, we find indeed in our feeling, the sentiment e.g. that the murderer, the thief, &c., must be punished; and because this is likewise felt by others it is universally allowed. But Hume, like the sceptics of former days, appeals to the various opinions of various nations: amongst different nations and in different times various standards of right have been held.294 There are those who in this case do not have the feeling of wrong-doing in respect of stealing, e.g. the Lacedæmonians or the so-called innocent inhabitants of the South Sea Islands. What is by one nation called immoral, shameful and irreligious, is by another not considered so at all. Thus because such matters rest upon experience, one subject has such and such an experience, finds, for instance, in his religious feelings this determination which inclines him to God, while another subject has different experiences altogether. We are in the habit of allowing one thing to be just and moral, others have another mode of regarding it. Hence if the truth depends upon experience, the element of universality, of objectivity, &c., comes from elsewhere, or is not justified by experience. Hume thus declared this sort of universality, as he declared necessity, to be rather subjectively than objectively existent; for custom is just a subjective universality of this kind. This is an important and acute observation in relation to experience looked at as the source of knowledge; and it is from this point that the Kantian reflection now begins.
Hume (Essays and Treatises on several subjects, Vol. III. Sect. 8, 11) then extended his scepticism to the conceptions and doctrines of freedom and necessity, and to the proofs of the existence of God; and in fact scepticism here possesses a wide field. To such a system of reasoning from thoughts and possibilities another method of reasoning may again be opposed, and this reasoning is no better than the other. What is said to be metaphysically established regarding immortality, God, nature, &c., lacks a real ground for resting upon, such as is professed to be given; for the inferences on which men ground their proofs are subjectively formed conceptions. But where a universality is found, it does not rest in the matter in itself, but is simply a subjective necessity which is really mere custom. Hence the result which Hume arrives at is necessarily astonishment regarding the condition of human knowledge, a general state of mistrust, and a sceptical indecision — which indeed does not amount to much. The condition of human knowledge regarding which Hume so much wonders, he further describes as containing an antagonism between reason and instinct; this instinct, it is said, which embraces many sorts of powers, inclinations, &c., deceives us in many different ways, and reason demonstrates this. But on the other side it is empty, without content or principles of its own; and if a content is in question at all, it must keep to those inclinations. In itself reason thus has no criterion whereby the antagonism between individual desires, and between itself and the desires, may be settled.295 Thus everything appears in the form of an irrational existence devoid of thought; the implicitly true and right is not in thought, but in the form of an instinct, a desire.
B. Scottish Philosophy.
IN SCOTLAND QUITE another school of thought developed, and the Scotch are the foremost of Hume’s opponents; in German philosophy, on the other hand, we have to recognize in Kant another opposing force to that of Hume. To the Scottish school many philosophers belong; English philosophy is now restricted to Edinburgh and Glasgow, in which places a number of professors belonging to this school succeeded one another. To the scepticism of Hume they oppose an inward independent source of truth for all that pertains to religion and morality. This coincides with Kant, who also maintains an inward source or spring as against external perception; but in the case of Kant this has quite another form than that which it possesses with the Scottish philosophers. To them this inward independent source is not thought or reason as such, for the content which comes to pass from this inwardness is concrete in its nature, and likewise demands for itself the external matter of experience. It consists of popular principles, which on the one hand are opposed to the externality of the sources of knowledge, and, on the other, to metaphysics as such, to abstract thought or reasoning on its own account. This sort of reasoning understanding applied itself to ethics and to politics — sciences which have been much developed by German, French, and above all by Scottish philosophers (supra, p. 320): they regarded morality as cultured men would, and sought to bring moral duties under a principle. Many of their works are translated into German; several of these on ethics or morality are translated by Garve, for instance, who also translated Cicero De Officiis, and they are written in a manner similar to that of Cicero when he uses the expression Insitum est a natura (Vol. I. p. 93). This moral sentiment and the ordinary human understanding hereafter formed the common principle to a whole succession of Scots, such as Thomas Reid, Beattie, Oswald, and others; in this way they frequently made sagacious observations, but with them speculative philosophy quite disappears. One special characteristic of these Scottish philosophers is that they have sought accurately to define the principle of knowledge; but on the whole they start from the same point as that which was in Germany likewise accepted as the principle. That is to say they represented the so-called healthy reason, or common-sense (sensus communis), as the ground of truth. The following are the principal members of this school, each of whom has some special feature distinguishing him from the rest.
Thomas Reid, born in 1710, died as a professor in Glasgow in 1796.296 He maintained the principle of common-sense. His endeavour was to discover the principles of knowledge, and the following are his conclusions: “(a) There are certain undemonstrated and undemonstrable fundamental truths which common-sense begets and recognizes as immediately conclusive and absolute.” This hence constitutes an immediate knowledge; in it an inward independent source is set forth which is hereby opposed to religion as revealed. “(b) These immediate truths require no support from any elaborated science, nor do they submit to its criticism;” they cannot be criticized by philosophy. “(c) Philosophy itself has no root other than that of an immediate, self-enlightening truth; whatever contradicts such truth is in itself false, contradictory, and absurd.” This is true for knowledge and “(d) Morality; the individual is moral if he acts in accordance with the perfect principles of the perfection of the whole and with his own duty as it is known to him.”297
James Beattie, born 1735, was a professor of moral philosophy in Edinburgh and Aberdeen, and died in 1803. He likewise made common-sense the source of all knowledge. “The common-sense of the plain human understanding is the source of all morality, of all religion, and all certainty. The confirmation of common-sense must be added to the testimony of our senses. The truth is what the necessities of my nature call upon me to believe. Belief signifies conviction in the case of truths which are certain, in that of those which are probable, approbation. The truth which is certain is known by means of intuition, the probable truth by means of proofs.”298 Such convictions as are quite certain form the basis of actions.
James Oswald, a Scottish clergyman, made use of an expression which indicates that we have the principles just mentioned as facts existing within us.299 “The existence of the Divine Being is (according to him) a fact absolutely raised above all reasoning and all doubt, and immediately certain for the common-sense of morality.”300 The same principle was likewise established in Germany at this time — an inward revelation, a knowledge of the conscience, and specially of God and His Being.
To this school also belong Dugald Stewart, Edward Search,301 Ferguson, and Hutcheson, most of whom have written on morals. The political economist Adam Smith from this point of view is likewise a philosopher, and the best known of them all. This Scottish philosophy is now given forth in Germany as something new. It is a popular philosophy, which, on the one hand, has the great merit of seeking in man, and in his consciousness, for the source of all that should be held by him as true, the immanence of what should be by him esteemed. The content is at the same time a concrete content; in a certain degree, it is the antithesis of metaphysics proper, of the wandering about in abstract determinations of the understanding. Of these Scots, Dugald Stewart, who is living still,302 appears to be the last and least significant; in them all there is the same ground-work to be found, the same circle of reflection, namely, an a priori philosophy, though not one which is to be pursued in a speculative way. The general idea which pervades their principle is that of the healthy human understanding; to this they have added benevolent desires, sympathy, a moral sense, and from such grounds composed very excellent moral writings. That is certainly all very well in order to understand approximately, up to a certain degree of culture, what universal thoughts are, in order to narrate their history, to appeal to examples, and to explain them; but further it does not extend.
In more recent times this Scottish philosophy has passed to France, and Professor Royer-Collard, now president of the Second Chamber,303 as also his disciple, Jouffroy, in conformity with it, pass from the facts of consciousness through cultured reasoning and experience, to a further stage in development. What by the French is called Idéologie (supra, p. 308) has also its place here; it is abstract metaphysics, in so far as it is an enumeration and analysis of the most simple thought-determinations. They are not treated dialectically, but from our reflection, from our thoughts, the material is derived, and in this the determinations therein contained are demonstrated.
WE PASS ON to the French philosophy; the relation it bears to metaphysics is this, that while man as a metaphysician stands to himself in the attitude of a layman or outsider, French philosophy does away with the lay or outside position in regard alike to politics, religion, and philosophy. Two forms have to be mentioned which are of the greatest importance in respect to culture — French philosophy and the Aufklärung. With the English we saw a certain idealism only: this was either formal, as the mere general translation of Being into Being-for-another, i.e. into perceptibility, or else what is implicit in this perceptibility, instincts, impulses, habits, &c. — blind determinate forces; a return into self-consciousness, which itself appears as a physical thing. In that first idealism the whole finitude and extension of appearances, of sensations, and likewise of thoughts and determinate fixed conceptions, remain just what they are in the unphilosophic consciousness. The scepticism of Hume makes all that is universal sink into habits and instincts, i.e. it consists in a more simple synthesis of the phenomenal world; but these simpler elements, these instincts, impulses, and forces, are just as much a fixed present existence in self-consciousness, unspiritual, and without movement. The French philosophy has more life, more movement, more spirit; it would perhaps be more correct to describe it as full of life and spirit. It is the absolute Notion, which revolts against the whole reigning system of prevalent conceptions and established ideas, which overthrows all that has settled into fixity, and acquires the consciousness of perfect liberty. At the root of this idealistic activity lies the certainty that whatever is, whatever counts for anything in itself, is all a matter of self-consciousness; and as to Notions (individual and isolated existences ruling actual self-consciousness), such as the Notions of good and evil, of power and riches, and the fixed conceptions regarding faith in God and His relation to the world, His mode of government and, further, the duties of self-consciousness towards Him — that all these are not truths in themselves, having validity beyond the bounds of self-consciousness. All these forms, the real implicitude of the actual world and also of the supersensuous world, are therefore set aside in this spirit conscious of itself. It does not trouble itself seriously about those who admit the validity of these conceptions just as they are, and accept them as true, respecting them as independent and free apart from self-consciousness, but it speaks of such conceptions with intelligence and spirit, that is to say, it asserts that self-consciousness by its activity is the first to make anything of them, and to make that a something very different from what they profess to be; for the self-conscious spirit only intellectual relations, these processes of formation and movement by means of its self-consciousness, possess validity and interest. This is the character of the Notion in its actuality; what has reality for this all-perceiving and all-comprehending consciousness is held to be valid.
We must now consider what form existence takes for this absolutely comprehending self-consciousness. In the first place this Notion is fixed as the negative movement of the Notion only; the positive and simple, or existence, falls outside of this movement. There remains to the Notion no distinction, no content; for all determinate content is lost in that negativity. This empty existence is for us pure thought generally, what the French call être suprême, or if represented objectively as existent, and as in opposition to consciousness, it is matter. Absolute Being is therefore determined as matter, as empty objectivity, through a Notion which destroys all content and determination, and has as its object this universal alone. It is a Notion which acts only destructively, and does not again construct itself out of this matter or pure thought or pure substantiality. We here see so-called materialism and atheism freely emerge, as the necessary result of the pure comprehending self-consciousness. From one point of view there perishes in this negative movement all determination which represents spirit as something beyond self-consciousness, and more especially all determinations within the spirit, and also those which express it as spirit, indeed all the conceptions formed of it by faith, for which it has validity as an existent self-consciousness beyond self-consciousness — in short, all that is traditional or imposed by authority. There remains only a present, actual Being, for self-consciousness recognizes implicit existence only in the form which it has for self-consciousness, and in which it is actually known to itself; in matter, and matter as actively extending and realizing itself in multiplicity, i.e. as nature. In the present I am conscious to myself of my reality, and consequently self-consciousness finds itself as matter, finds the soul to be material, and conceptions to be movements and changes in the inner organ of the brain, which result from external impressions on the senses. Thought is therefore a mode of the existence of matter. The One Substance of Spinoza, to which French materialism as naturalism is parallel, really finds its accomplishment here in this object as in all respects the ultimate; but while in Spinoza this category is a possession which we find ready to hand, here it appears as the result of the abstraction of the understanding proceeding from empiricism.
The other form of the Aufklärung is, on the contrary, when absolute Being is set forth as something beyond self-consciousness, so that of itself, of its implicit Being, nothing whatever can be known. It bears the empty name of God. For though God may be determined in any way whatever, all these determinations fall away; He is, like x, the altogether unknown quantity. This view is not therefore to be termed atheism, in the first place because it still employs the empty, meaningless name, and in the second place because it expresses the necessary relations of self-consciousness, duties, &c., not as necessary in an absolute sense, but as necessary through relation to another, namely to the unknown — although there can be no positive relation to an unknown except by abrogating the self as particular. Yet it is not matter, because this simple and empty something is negatively defined as non-existent for self-consciousness. This all comes to the same thing, however, for matter is the universal, and is Being-for-self represented as abrogated. But the true reflection on that unknown is this, that it exists for self-consciousness simply as a negative of the same, i.e. as matter, reality, the present; it is this negative for me, this is its Notion. The difference distinguishing this from what appears to be in its entirety something “other,” and in which any one side is not permitted to say that what it thinks is such is that particular thing, is the difference which rests on this last abstraction.
Since then the Notion is present only in its negative form, positive extension remains without a Notion; it has the form of nature, of an existent, both in the physical and in the moral sphere. The knowledge of nature remains the ordinary, scientifically unspeculative knowledge, and as to its essence, in so far as it claims to be philosophy, it is a general way of speaking that plays with the words, “forces, relations, manifold connections,” but arrives at nothing definite. Similarly, in the spiritual sphere, it is so far true that the metaphysic of the spirit is of such a nature that it is nothing more nor less than a particular organization by means of which the powers which are termed sensation, perception, &c., come into existence; but this is a wearisome way of talking, which can make nothing intelligible, which accepts appearances and perceptions and reasons about them, but none the less reduces their implicit existence to certain determinate forces, of the inward nature of which we know nothing further. The determination and knowledge of the moral sphere has similarly for its object to bring man back to his so-called natural promptings; its essence has the form of a natural impulse, and this natural impulse is termed self-love, selfishness, or benevolence. It is required that man should live in conformity with nature; but this nature does not reach further than general expressions and descriptions, such as the state of nature we find depicted by Rousseau. What is called the metaphysic of ordinary conceptions is the empiricism of Locke, which seeks to show their origin to be in consciousness, in as far as it is individual consciousness; which, when born into the world, emerges out of unconsciousness in order to acquire knowledge as sensuous consciousness. This external origin they confound with the Becoming and Notion of the matter in point. If one were to ask vaguely what is the origin and genesis of water, and the answer were to be given that it comes from the mountains or from rain, this would be a reply in the spirit of the above philosophy. In short, it is only the negative aspect that is interesting, and as for this positive French philosophy, it is out of the question. But even the negative side of it belongs properly to culture mainly, with which we have here nothing to do, and the Aufklärung likewise belongs to the same. In the French philosophic writings, which in this respect are of importance, what is worthy of admiration is the astonishing energy and force of the Notion as directed against existence, against faith, against all the power of authority that had held sway for thousands of years. On the one hand we cannot help remarking the feeling of utter rebellion against the whole state of affairs at present prevailing, a state which is alien to self-consciousness, which would fain dispense with it, and in which self-consciousness does not find itself; there is a certainty of the truth of reason, which challenges the whole intellectual world as it stands aloof, and is confident of destroying it. French atheism, materialism, or naturalism has overcome all prejudices, and has been victorious over the senseless hypotheses and assumptions of the positive element in religion, which is associated with habits, manners, opinions, determinations as to law and morality and civil institutions. With the healthy human understanding and earnestness of spirit, and not with frivolous declamations, it has rebelled against the condition of the world as legally established, against the constitution of the state, the administration of justice, the mode of government, political authority, and likewise against art.
Contrasting with this barren content there is the other and fertile side. The positive is in its turn constituted by so-called immediately enlightening truths of the healthy human understanding, which contains nothing except this truth and the claim to find itself, and beyond this form does not pass. But in so doing there arises the endeavour to grasp the absolute as something present, and at the same time as an object of thought and as absolute unity: an endeavour which, as it implies denial of the conception of design both in the natural and in the spiritual sphere — the former involving the idea of life, and the latter that of spirit and freedom — only reaches to the abstraction of a nature undetermined in itself, to sensation, mechanism, self-seeking, and utility. It is this then that we shall have to make evident in the positive side of French philosophy. In their political constitutions the French have, it is true, started from abstractions, but they have done so as from universal thoughts, which are the negative of reality; the English, on the other hand, proceed from concrete reality, from the unwieldy structure of their constitution; just as their writers even have not attained to universal principles. What Luther began in the heart only and in the feelings — the freedom of spirit which, unconscious of its simple root, does not comprehend itself, and yet is the very universal itself, for which all content disappears in the thought that fills itself with itself — these universal determinations and thoughts the French asserted and steadfastly adhered to: they are universal principles, in the form of the conviction of the individual in himself. Freedom becomes the condition of the world, connects itself with the world’s history and forms epochs in the same; it is the concrete freedom of the spirit, a concrete universality; fundamental principles as regards the concrete now take the place of the abstract metaphysic of Descartes. Among the Germans we find mere chatter; they would have liked to offer explanations also, but all they have to give is in the form of miserable phenomena and individualism. The French, from their starting-point of the thought of universality, and the German liberty of conscience starting from the conscience which teaches us to “Prove all things,” to “hold fast that which is good,” have, however, joined hands with one another, or they follow the same path. Only the French, as though they were without conscience, have made short work of everything, and have systematically adhered to a definite thought — the physiocratic system; while the Germans wish to leave themselves a free retreat, and examine from the standpoint of conscience whether a certain course is permissible. The French warred against the speculative Notion with the spirit, the Germans did so with the understanding. We find in the French a deep all-embracing philosophic need, different from anything in the English and Scotch and even in the Germans, and full of vitality: it is a universal concrete view of all that exists, with entire independence both of all authority and of all abstract metaphysics. The method employed is that of development from perception, from the heart; it is a comprehensive view of the entire matter, which keeps the whole ever in sight, and seeks to uphold and attain to it.
This healthy human understanding, this sound reason, with its content taken from the human breast, from natural feeling, has directed itself against the religious side of things in various moments: on the one hand and first of all, as French philosophy, it did so against the Catholic religion, the fetters of superstition and of the hierarchy; on the other hand, in less pronounced form, as the German “illumination,” against the Protestant religion, in as far as it has a content which it has derived from revelation, from ecclesiastical authority in general. On the one hand the form of authority in general was challenged, and on the other hand its matter. The content can be easily enough disposed of by this form of thought, which is not what we understand by reason, but which must be termed understanding; it is easy for the understanding to show objections to the ultimate principles of what can be comprehended only by means of speculation. The understanding has thus tried the content of religion by its standard, and has condemned it; the understanding proceeds in the same way against a concrete philosophy. What of religion has in many theologies been very commonly left remaining is what is termed theism, faith in general; this is the same content which is found also in Mohammedanism. But along with this attack upon religion on the part of the reasoning understanding there has been also a movement towards materialism, atheism and naturalism. It is true that we should not make the charge of atheism lightly, for it is a very common occurrence that an individual whose ideas about God differ from those of other people is charged with lack of religion, or even with atheism. But here it really is the case that this philosophy has developed into atheism, and has defined matter, nature, &c., as that which is to be taken as the ultimate, the active, and the efficient. Some Frenchmen, Rousseau for instance, are not, however, to be included with the rest; one of this author’s works, “The Confession of Faith of a Vicar,”304 contains the very same theism which is found in German theologians. Thus French metaphysics finds a parallel not only in Spinoza (supra, p. 382) but also in the German metaphysics of Wolff. Other Frenchmen have confessedly gone over to naturalism; among them is specially to be mentioned Mirabaud, to whom the Système de la Nature is attributed.
In what has been termed French philosophy, represented by Voltaire, Montesquieu, Rousseau, d’Alembert, Diderot, and in what subsequently appeared in Germany as the Aufklärung, and has been also stigmatized as atheism, we may now distinguish three aspects, first, the negative side, to which most exception has been taken; secondly, the positive side; thirdly, the philosophical, metaphysical side.
Justice must be done even to this negative side, as to everything else; what is substantial in it is the attack of the reasoning instinct against a condition of degeneracy, I may even say of utter and universal falsehood; for instance, against the positive side of a religion that has become wooden and lifeless. What we call religion is firm faith, conviction that there is a God; if this is faith in the doctrines of Christianity, it is more or less abstracted from. But in this attack against religion we have to think of something quite different from the above; in what we find here, the positive of religion is the negative of reason. If we would understand the feeling of indignation to which these writers give utterance, we must keep before our eyes the state of religion in those days, with its might and magnificence, the corruption of its manners, its avarice, its ambition, its luxury, for which nevertheless reverence was claimed — a state of contradiction present and existent. We perceive into what a frightful condition of formalism and deadness positive religion had sunk, as had the bonds of society as well, the means employed for the administration of justice, the power of the state. This French philosophy also attacked the state; it assailed prejudices and superstition, especially the depravity of civic life, of court manners and of Government officials; it laid hold of and brought to light the evil, the ridiculous, the base, and exposed the whole tissue of hypocrisy and unjust power to the derision, the contempt and the hatred of the world at large, and thus brought men’s minds and hearts into a state of indifference to the idols of the world and indignation against them. Old institutions, which in the sense of self-conscious freedom and humanity that had developed, no longer found a place, and which had formerly been founded and upheld by mutual good feeling and the obtuseness of a consciousness unconscious of self, institutions which were no longer in harmony with the spirit that had established them, and now, in consequence of the advance that had been made in scientific culture, were bound to make good to reason their claim to be sacred and just, — this was the formalism that those philosophers overthrew. In making their attacks, they wrote sometimes with reasoned argument, sometimes satirically, sometimes in the language of plain common-sense, and they did not wage war on what we call religion; that was left quite unharmed, and its claims were urged with words of choicest eloquence. Those who enforced these views were therefore agents of destruction against that alone which was in itself already destroyed. We place it to our credit when we reproach the French for their attacks upon religion and on the state. We must represent to ourselves the horrible state of society, the misery and degradation in France, in order to appreciate the services that these writers rendered. Hypocrisy and cant, imbecility of mind and the tyranny which sees itself robbed of its prey, may say that attacks were made on religion, on the state, and on manners. But what a religion! Not the religion that Luther purified, but the most wretched superstition, priestly domination, stupidity, degradation of mind, and more especially the squandering of riches and the revelling in temporal possessions in the midst of public misery. And what a state! The blindest tyranny of ministers and their mistresses, wives and chamberlains; so that a vast army of petty tyrants and idlers looked upon it as a right divinely given them to plunder the revenues of the state and lay hands upon the product of the nation’s sweat. The shamelessness, the dishonesty were past belief; and morals were simply in keeping with the corruptness of the institutions. We see the law defied by individuals in respect to civil and political life; we see it likewise set at nought in respect to conscience and thought.
In regard to practical politics, the writers in question never even thought of a revolution, but desired and demanded reforms alone, and that these should be subjective mainly; they called on the Government to sweep away abuses, and appoint honourable men as ministers. The positive recommendations made by them as to the course to be pursued were, for example, that the royal children should receive a good upbringing, that princes should be of frugal habits, &c. The French Revolution was forced on by the stiff-necked obstinacy of prejudices, by haughtiness, utter want of thought, and avarice. The philosophers of whom we are speaking were able to give only a general idea of what ought to be done; they could not indicate the mode in which the reforms were to be carried out. It was the Government’s business to make arrangements and carry out reforms in concrete shape; but it did not perceive this. What the philosophers brought forward and maintained as a remedy for this horrible state of disorder was, speaking generally, that men should no longer be in the position of laymen, either with regard to religion or to law; so that in religious matters there should not be a hierarchy, a limited and selected number of priests, and in the same way that there should not be in legal matters an exclusive caste and society (not even a class of professional lawyers), in whom should reside, and to whom should be restricted, the knowledge of what is eternal, divine, true, and right, and by whom other men should be commanded and directed; but that human reason should have the right of giving its assent and its opinion. To treat barbarians as laymen is quite as it should be — barbarians are nothing but laymen; but to treat thinking men as laymen is very hard. This great claim made by man to subjective freedom, perception and conviction, the philosophers in question contended for heroically and with splendid genius, with warmth and fire, with spirit and courage, maintaining that a man’s own self, the human spirit, is the source from which is derived all that is to be respected by him. There thus manifests itself in them the fanaticism of abstract thought. We Germans were passive at first with regard to the existing state of affairs, we endured it; in the second place, when that state of affairs was overthrown, we were just as passive: it was overthrown by the efforts of others, we let it be taken away from us, we suffered it all to happen.
In Germany, Frederick II. allied himself with this culture, a rare example in those days. French court manners, operas, gardens, dresses, were widely adopted in Germany, but not French philosophy; yet in the form of wit and jest much of it found its way into this upper world, and much that was evil and barbarous was driven away. Frederick II., without having been brought up on melancholy psalms, without having had to learn one or two of them every day by heart, without the barbarous metaphysics and logic of Wolff (for what did he find to admire in Germany except Gellert?), was well acquainted with the great, although formal and abstract principles of religion and the state, and governed in accordance therewith, as far as circumstances allowed. Nothing else was at that time required in his nation; one cannot ask that he should have reformed and revolutionized it, since not a single person yet demanded representative government and the publicity of courts of justice. He introduced what there was need of, religious tolerance, legislation, improvements in the administration of justice, economy in the revenues of state; of the wretched German law there remained no longer in his states even the merest phantom. He showed what was the object and purpose of the state, and at the same time cast down all privileges, the private rights which pertained to Germans, and arbitrary statute laws. It is foolish when cant and German pseudo-patriotism pounce down upon him now, and try to disparage the greatness of a man whose influence was so enormous, and would even detract from his fame by a charge of vanity and wickedness. What German patriotism aims at should be reasonable.
The affirmative content of this philosophy certainly does not satisfy the requirements of profundity. A leading characteristic of its teaching, which is found also with the Scottish philosophers and with ourselves, is the assumption of primitive feelings of justice which man has in himself, as for example benevolence and social instincts which should be cultivated. The positive source of knowledge and of justice is placed in human reason and the common consciousness of mankind, in the healthy human reason, and not in the form of the Notion. It is certainly wonderful to find truths expressed in the form of universal thoughts, respecting which it is of infinite importance that they should be assumptions present in the human mind: that man has in his heart the feeling of right, of love to his fellow-creatures: that religion and faith are not matters of compulsion; that merit, talent, virtue are the true nobility, &c. An important question, especially among the Germans, was what is the end and character of man, by which was meant the nature of his mind and spirit; and certainly, as far as the spiritual is concerned, it is to this point that we must return. But in order to find the nature of spirit, to discover what this determination is, a return was made to perception, observation, experience, to the existence of certain impulses. These are certainly determinations in ourselves, but we have not known them in their necessity. Such an impulse is besides taken as natural, and thus it is here indeterminate in itself, it has its limitation only as a moment of the whole. In regard to knowledge, very abstract thoughts are to be found — though of a truth they are quite as good as ours, and more ingenious — which according to their content ought to be concrete, and also were so. But so superficially were they comprehended that they soon showed themselves far from sufficient for what had to be derived from them. They said, for instance, that Nature is a whole, that all is determined by laws, through a combination of different movements, through a chain of causes and effects, and so on; the various properties, materials, connections of things bring everything to pass. These are general phrases, with which one can fill whole books.
a. Système de la Nature.
To this philosophy belongs the Système de la Nature, the leading work on the subject, written in Paris by a German, Baron von Hollbach, who was the central figure of all those philosophers. Montesquieu, d’Alembert, Rousseau, were for a time in his circle; however much these men were moved to indignation at the existing state of things, they were yet in other respects very different from one another. The Système de la Nature may very easily be found tiresome to read, because it treats discursively of general conceptions, which are often repeated; it is not a French book, for vivacity is lacking and the mode of presentation is dull.
The great Whole of Nature (le grand tout de la nature) is the ultimate: “The universe displays nothing but an immense collection of matter and motion” (as with Descartes), “an unbroken chain of causes and effects, of which causes some directly affect our senses, while others are unknown to us, because their effects, which we perceive, are too remote from their causes. The different qualities of these materials, their manifold connections, and the effects which result therefrom, constitute essences for us. From the diversity of these essences arise the different orders, species, systems, under which things fall, and whose sum total, the great whole, is what we call Nature.”305 It is like what Aristotle (vide Vol. I. p. 241) says of Xenophanes, that he gazed into the blue, i.e. into Being. According to Hollbach all is movement, matter moves itself: beer ferments, the soul is moved by its passions.306 “The manifold variety of natural phenomena, and their incessant rise and disappearance, have their sole ground in the variety of motions and of their material.” Through different combinations and modifications, through a different arrangement, another thing is originated. “Material substances have either a tendency to combine with one another, or else they are incapable of so combining. Upon this are based by physical scientists the forces of attraction and repulsion, sympathy and antipathy, affinity and relation; and the moralists base thereon hatred and love, friendship and enmity.” Spirit, the incorporeal, contradicts or opposes itself to motion, to a change of the relations of a body in space.307
b. Robinet.
Another work of importance is the still more “dangerous” treatise, De la Nature, by Robinet. In it there reigns quite a different and a deeper spirit; one is frequently struck by the depth of earnestness which the writer displays. He begins thus: “There is a God, i.e. a cause of the phenomena of that Whole which we call Nature. Who is God? We know not, and we are so constituted that we can never know in what order of things we have been placed. We cannot know God perfectly, because the means of doing so will always be lacking to us. We too might write over the doors of our temples the words which were to be read upon the altar which the Areopagite raised, ‘To the unknown God.’” The very same thing is said now-a-days: there can be no transition from the finite to the infinite. “The order which reigns in the universe is just as little the visible type of His wisdom, as our weak mind is the image of His intelligence.” But this First Cause, God, is according to Robinet a creative God, He has brought Nature into existence; so that for him the only possible knowledge is that of Nature. “There is only One Cause. The eternal Cause, who so to speak had sown (engrainé) events one in the other, in order that they might without fail follow one upon another as He chose, in the beginning set in motion the endless chain of things. Through this permanent impression the Universe goes on living, moving and perpetuating itself. From the unity of cause there follows the unity of activity, for even it does not appear as something to be more or less admitted. By virtue of this single act all things come to pass. Since man has made Nature his study, he has found no isolated phenomenon, and no independent truth, because there are not and cannot be such. The whole sustains itself through the mutual correspondence of its parts.”308 The activity of Nature is one, as God is One.
This activity, more particularly regarded, signifies that germs unfold themselves in everything: everywhere there are organic Beings which produce themselves; nothing is isolated, everything is combined and connected and in harmony. Robinet here goes through the plants, the animals, and also the metals, the elements, air, fire, water, &c.; and seeks from them to demonstrate the existence of the germ in whatever has life, and also how metals are organized in themselves. “The example of the polypus is convincing as to the animal nature (animalité) of the smallest portions of organized matter; for the polypus is a group of associated polypi, each of which is as much a true polypus as the first. It stands proved that from the same point of view the living consists only of the living, the animals of minute animals, every animal in particular of minute animals of the same kind, a dog of dog-germs, man of human germs.” In proof of this Robinet states in a “Recapitulation” that “animal sperm swarms with spermatic animalcules.” Since he then connects every propagation properly so-called with the co-operation of both sexes, he alleges that every individual is inwardly or also in the external organs a hermaphrodite. Of the minerals he says: “Are we not compelled to regard as organic bodies all those in which we meet with an inward structure such as this? It presupposes throughout a seed, seed-granules, germs, of which they are the development.” In the same way the air must have its germ, which does not come to reality until it is nourished by water, fire, &c. “The air, as principle, is only the germ of the air; as it impregnates or saturates itself in varying degrees with water and fire, it will gradually pass through different stages of growth: it will become first embryo, then perfect air.”309 Robinet gives the name of germ to the simple form in itself, the substantial form, the Notion. Although he seeks to prove this too much from the sensuous side, he yet proceeds from principles in themselves concrete, from the form in itself.
He speaks also of the evil and good in the world. The result of his observation is that good and evil balance each other; this equilibrium constitutes the beauty of the world. In order to refute the assertion that there is more good than evil in the world, he says that everything to which we reduce the good consists only in an enjoyment, a pleasure, a satisfaction; but this must be preceded by a want, a lack, a pain, the removal of which constitutes satisfaction.310 This is not only a correct thought empirically, but it also hints at the deeper idea that there is no activity except through contradiction.
The result of the French philosophy is that it insisted on maintaining a general unity, not abstract, but concrete. Thus Robinet now propounded the theory of a universal organic life, and a uniform mode of origination; this concrete system he called Nature, over which God was set, but as the unknowable; all predicates which could be expressed of Him contained something inapplicable. We must admit that grand conceptions of concrete unity are to be found here, as opposed to the abstract metaphysical determinations of the understanding, e.g. the fruitfulness of Nature. But, on the other hand, the point of most importance with these philosophers is that what is to be accepted as valid must have presence, and that man in all knowledge must be himself the knower; for, as we may see, those philosophers made war on all external authority of state and church, and in particular on abstract thought which has no present meaning in us. Two determinations found in all philosophy are the concretion of the Idea and the presence of the spirit in the same; my content must at the same time be something concrete, present. This concrete was termed Reason, and for it the more noble of those men contended with the greatest enthusiasm and warmth. Thought was raised like a standard among the nations, liberty of conviction and of conscience in me. They said to mankind, “In this sign thou shalt conquer,” for they had before their eyes what had been done in the name of the cross alone, what had been made a matter of faith and law and religion — they saw how the sign of the cross had been degraded. For in the sign of the cross lying and deceit had been victorious, under this seal institutions had become fossilized, and had sunk into all manner of degradation, so that this sign came to be represented as the epitome and root of all evil. Thus in another form they completed the Reformation that Luther began. This concrete had manifold forms; social instincts in the practical sphere, laws of nature in the theoretical. There is present the absolute impulse to find a compass immanent in themselves, i.e. in the human mind. For the human mind it is imperative to have a fixed point such as this, if, indeed, it is to be within itself, if it is to be free in its own world at least. But this striving after really present vitality took forms which as by-paths were themselves one-sided. In this striving after unity, which was, however, concrete unity, the further varieties of the content likewise lie.
On the theoretic side of their philosophy, therefore, the French proceeded to materialism or naturalism, because the requirements of the understanding, as abstract thought, which from a firmly fixed principle allows the most monstrous consequences to be drawn, drove them to set up one principle as ultimate, and that a principle which had at the same time to be present and to lie quite close to experience. Hence they accept sensation and matter as the only truth, to which must be reduced all thought, all morality, as a mere modification of sensation. The unities which the French propounded were in this way one-sided.
a. Opposition of Sensation and Thought.
To this one-sidedness belongs the opposition between sentir and penser, or else, if you like, their identity, making the latter only a result of the former; there is not, however, any speculative reconciliation of this opposition in God, such as we find in Spinoza and Malebranche. This reduction of all thought to sensation, which in certain respects took place with Locke, becomes a widely extended theory. Robinet (De la Nature, T. I. P. IV. chap. iii. pp. 257-259) lights also on this opposition, beyond which he does not get, that mind and body are not separate, but that the manner in which they are united is inexplicable. The Système de la Nature (T. I. chap. x. p. 177) is marked by an especially plain reduction of thought to sensation. The leading thought is this: “Abstract thoughts are only modes in which our inmost organ views its own modifications. The words goodness, beauty, order, intelligence, virtue, &c., have no meaning for us if we do not refer and apply them to objects which our senses have shown to be capable of these qualities, or to modes of being and acting which are known to us.” Thus even psychology passed into materialism, as for instance we may find in La Mettrie’s work L’homme Machine: All thought and all conception have meaning only if they are apprehended as material; matter alone exists.
b. Montesquieu.
Other great writers have opposed to the above the feeling in the breast, the instinct of self-preservation, benevolent dispositions towards others, the impulse to fellowship, which last Puffendorf also made the foundation of his system of law (supra, p. 321). From this point of view much that is excellent has been said. Thus Montesquieu, in his charming book, L’Esprit des Lois, of which Voltaire said it was an esprit sur les lois, regarded the nations from this important point of view, that their constitution, their religion, in short, everything that is to be found in a state, constitutes a totality.
c. Helvetius.
This reduction of thought to feeling in the case of Helvetius takes the form that if in man as a moral being a single principle is sought, this ought to be called self-love, and he endeavoured to demonstrate by ingenious analysis that whatever we term virtue, all activity and law and right, has as its foundation nothing but self-love or selfishness, and is resolvable thereinto.311 This principle is one-sided, although the “I myself” is an essential moment. What I will, the noblest, the holiest, is my aim; I must take part in it, I must agree to it, I must approve of it. With all self-sacrifice there is always conjoined some satisfaction, some finding of self; this element of self, subjective liberty, must always be present. If this is taken in a one-sided sense, there may be consequences drawn from it which overthrow all that is sacred; but it is found in equal degree in a morality as noble as any possibly can be.
d. Rousseau.
In connection with the practical side of things this particular must also be noted, that when the feeling of right, the concrete practical mind, and, speaking generally, humanity and happiness were made the principle, this principle, universally conceived, had certainly the form of thought; but in the case of such concrete content derived from our impulse or inward intuition, even though that content were religious, the thought itself was not the content. But now this further phase appeared, that pure thought was set up as the principle and content, even if again there was lacking to this content the true consciousness of its peculiar form; for it was not recognized that this principle was thought. We see it emerge in the sphere of will, of the practical, of the just, and so apprehended that the innermost principle of man, his unity with himself, is set forth as fundamental and brought into consciousness, so that man in himself acquired an infinite strength. It is this that Rousseau from one point of view said about the state. He investigated its absolute justification, and inquired as to its foundation. The right of ruling and associating, of the relation of order, of governing and being governed, he apprehends from his own point of view, so that it is made to rest historically on power, compulsion, conquest, private property, &c.312
Rousseau makes free-will the principle of this justification, and without reference to the positive right of states he made answer to the above question (chap. iv. p. 12), that man has free-will, because “liberty is the distinguishing feature of man. To renounce his liberty signifies to renounce his manhood. Not to be free is therefore a renunciation of a man’s rights as a human being, and even of his duties.” The slave has neither rights nor duties. Rousseau therefore says (chap. vi. p. 21): “The fundamental task is to find a form of association which will shield and protect with the power of the whole commonwealth combined the person and property of every one of its members, and in which each individual, while joining this association, obeys himself only, and thus remains as free as before. The solution is given by the Social Contract;” this is the association of which each is a member by his own will. These principles, thus abstractly stated, we must allow to be correct, yet the ambiguity in them soon begins to be felt. Man is free, this is certainly the substantial nature of man; and not only is this liberty not relinquished in the state, but it is actually in the state that it is first realized. The freedom of nature, the gift of freedom, is not anything real; for the state is the first realization of freedom.
The misunderstanding as to the universal will proceeds from this, that the Notion of freedom must not be taken in the sense of the arbitrary caprice of an individual, but in the sense of the rational will, of the will in and for itself. The universal will is not to be looked on as compounded of definitively individual wills, so that these remain absolute; otherwise the saying would be correct: “Where the minority must obey the majority, there is no freedom.” The universal will must really be the rational will, even if we are not conscious of the fact; the state is therefore not an association which is decreed by the arbitrary will of individuals. The wrong apprehension of these principles does not concern us. What does concern us is this, that thereby there should come into consciousness as content the sense that man has liberty in his spirit as the altogether absolute, that free-will is the Notion of man. Freedom is just thought itself; he who casts thought aside and speaks of freedom knows not what he is talking of. The unity of thought with itself is freedom, the free will. Thought, as volition merely, is the impulse to abrogate one’s subjectivity, the relation to present existence, the realizing of oneself, since in that I am endeavouring to place myself as existent on an equality with myself as thinking. It is only as having the power of thinking that the will is free. The principle of freedom emerged in Rousseau, and gave to man, who apprehends himself as infinite, this infinite strength. This furnishes the transition to the Kantian philosophy, which, theoretically considered, made this principle its foundation; knowledge aimed at freedom, and at a concrete content which it possesses in consciousness.
THE GERMANS WERE at this time quietly drifting along in their Leibnitzo-Wolffian philosophy, in its definitions, axioms and proofs. Then they were gradually breathed upon by the spirit of foreign lands, they made acquaintance with all the developments which there came to pass, and took very kindly to the empiricism of Locke; on the other hand they at the same time laid aside metaphysical investigations, turned their attention to the question of how truths can be grasped by the healthy human understanding, and plunged into the Aufklärung and into the consideration of the utility of all things — a point of view which they adopted from the French. Utility as the essence of existent things signifies that they are determined as not being in themselves, but for another: this is a necessary moment, but not the only one. The German Aufklärung warred against ideas, with the principle of utility as its weapon. Philosophic investigations on this subject had degenerated into a feeble popular treatment of it which was incapable of going deeper; they displayed a rigid pedantry and an earnestness of the understanding, but were unspiritual. The Germans are busy bees who do justice to all nations, they are old-clothesmen for whom anything is good enough, and who carry on their haggling with everyone. Picked up as it was from foreign nations, all this had lost the wit and life, the energy and originality which with the French had made the content to be lost sight of in the form. The Germans, who honestly sift a matter to its root, and who would put rational arguments in the place of wit and vivacity, since wit and vivacity really prove nothing, in this way reached a content which was utterly empty, so much so that nothing could be more wearisome than this profound mode of treatment; such was the case with Eberhard, Tetens, and those like them.
Others, like Nicolai, Sulzer and their fellows, were excellent in their speculations on questions of taste and the liberal sciences; for literature and art were also to flourish among the Germans. But with all this they only arrived at a most trivial treatment of æsthetics — Lessing313 called it shallow chatter. As a matter of fact, indeed, the poems of Gellert, Weisse and Lessing sank almost, if not quite as much into the same poetic feebleness. Moreover, previous to the philosophy of Kant, the general principle was really the theory of happiness, which we have already met with in the philosophy of the Cyrenaics (Vol. I. p. 477), and the point of view of pleasant or unpleasant sensations held good among the philosophers of that time as an ultimate and essential determination. Of this manner of philosophizing I will quote an example which Nicolai gives in the account of a conversation which he had with Mendelssohn: what is in question is the pleasure in tragic subjects which is held to be awakened even by means of the unpleasant emotions depicted in a tragedy:
Herr Moses.
“The power of having an inclination for perfections and of shunning imperfections is a reality.” Therefore the exercise of this power brings a pleasure with it, which, however, is in nature comparatively less than the displeasure which arises from the contemplation of the object.
Yet even then, when the violence of passion causes us unpleasant sensations, the movement (what else is this movement than the power of loving perfections, &c.?) which it brings with it has still delights for us. It is the strength of the movement which we enjoy, even in spite of the painful sensations which oppose what is pleasant in the passion, and in a short time obtain the victory.
Herr Moses.
In a stage play, on the contrary, as the imperfect object is absent, pleasure must gain the upper hand and eclipse the small degree of displeasure.
A passion therefore which is not followed by these results must be altogether pleasant. Of this sort are the imitations of the passions which the tragedy affords.”314
With such vapid and meaningless drivel they rambled on. In addition to these, the eternity of punishment in hell, the salvation of the heathen, the difference between uprightness and godliness, were philosophic matters on which much labour was expended among the Germans, while the French troubled themselves little about them. Finite determinations were made to hold good against the infinite; against the Trinity it was asserted that One cannot be Three; against original sin, that each must bear his own guilt, must have done his own deeds of himself, and must answer for them; in the same way against redemption, that another cannot take upon himself punishment that is due; against forgiveness of sin, that what is done cannot be rendered undone; to sum up generally, the incommensurability of the human nature with the divine. On the one side we see healthy human understanding, experience, facts of consciousness, but on the other side there was still in vogue the Wolffian metaphysics of the dry, dead understanding; thus we see Mendelssohn take his stand by the healthy human understanding, and make it his rule.
Some movement was brought into this authority, which had settled into perfect peace and security and let no dreams of other matters cross its path, by the chance dispute of Mendelssohn with Jacobi, first as to whether Lessing had been a disciple of Spinoza, and then regarding the doctrines of Spinoza himself. On this occasion it came to light how much Spinoza was really forgotten, and in what horror Spinozism was held. But while Jacobi in this way once more unexpectedly brought to remembrance in connection with Spinozism a quite different content of philosophy, faith, i.e. the simply immediate certainty of external, finite things, as well as of the divine (which faith in the divine he called reason) was certainly placed by him, as an independent thinker, in opposition to mediating knowledge, which he apprehended as mere understanding. This continued until Kant gave a new impulse in Germany to philosophy, which had died out in the rest of Europe.
As far as the transition to modern German philosophy is concerned, it is from Hume and Rousseau, as we have said (pp. 369, 374, 402), that it took its start. Descartes opposes extension to thought, as what is simply one with itself. He is charged with dualism, but, like Spinoza and Leibnitz, he did away with the independence of the two sides, and made supreme their unity, God. But, as this unity, God is first of all only the Third; and He is further determined in such a way that no determination pertains to Him. Wolff’s understanding of the finite, his school metaphysics generally, his science of the understanding, and his divergence into the observation of nature, after it has grown strong in its conformity with law and in its finite knowledge, turns against the infinite and the concrete determinations of religion, and comes to a standstill with abstractions in his theologia naturalis; for the determinate is his domain. But from this time an utterly different point of view is introduced. The infinite is transported into abstraction or incomprehensibility. This is an incomprehensible position to adopt. Nowadays it is looked on as most pious, most justifiable. But as we see the third, the unity of differences, defined as something which cannot be thought or known, this unity is not one of thought, for it is above all thought, and God is not simply thought. Nevertheless this unity is defined as the absolutely concrete, i.e. as the unity of thought and Being. Now we have come so far that this unity is a unity simply in thought, and pertaining to consciousness, so that the objectivity of thought — reason — comes forth as One and All. This is dimly conceived by the French. Whether the highest Being, this Being divested of all determination, is elevated above nature, or whether nature or matter is the highest unity, there is always present the establishing of something concrete, which at the same time belongs to thought. Since the liberty of man has been set up as an absolutely ultimate principle, thought itself has been set up as a principle. The principle of liberty is not only in thought but the root of thought; this principle of liberty is also something in itself concrete, at least in principle it is implicitly concrete. Thus far have general culture and philosophic culture advanced. Since what is knowable has now been placed entirely within the sphere of consciousness, and since the liberty of the spirit has been apprehended as absolute, this may be understood to mean that knowledge has entered altogether into the realm of the finite. The standpoint of the finite was at the same time taken as ultimate, and God as a Beyond outside consciousness; duties, rights, knowledge of nature, are finite. Man has thereby formed for himself a kingdom of truth, from which God is excluded; it is the kingdom of finite truth. The form of finitude may here be termed the subjective form; liberty, self-consciousness [Ichheit] of the mind, known as the absolute, is essentially subjective — in fact it is the subjectivity of thought. The more the human reason has grasped itself in itself, the more has it come down from God and the more has it increased the field of the finite. Reason is One and All, which is at the same time the totality of the finite; reason under these conditions is finite knowledge and knowledge of the finite. The question is, since it is this concrete that is established (and not metaphysical abstractions), how it constitutes itself in itself; and then, how it returns to objectivity, or abrogates its subjectivity, i.e. how by means of thought God is to be again brought about, who at an earlier time and at the beginning of this period was recognized as alone the true. This is what we have to consider in the last period, in dealing with Kant, Fichte, and Schelling.
SECTION THREE. Recent German Philosophy
IN THE PHILOSOPHY of Kant, Fichte, and Schelling, the revolution to which in Germany mind has in these latter days advanced, was formally thought out and expressed; the sequence of these philosophies shows the course which thought has taken. In this great epoch of the world’s history, whose inmost essence is laid hold of in the philosophy of history, two nations only have played a part, the German and the French, and this in spite of their absolute opposition, or rather because they are so opposite. The other nations have taken no real inward part in the same, although politically they have indeed so done, both through their governments and their people. In Germany this principle has burst forth as thought, spirit, Notion; in France, in the form of actuality. In Germany, what there is of actuality comes to us as a force of external circumstances, and as a reaction against the same. The task of modern German philosophy is, however, summed up in taking as its object the unity of thought and Being, which is the fundamental idea of philosophy generally, and comprehending it, that is, in laying hold of the inmost significance of necessity, the Notion (supra, p. 360). The philosophy of Kant sets forth, in the first place, the formal aspect of the task, but it has the abstract absoluteness of reason in self-consciousness as its sole result, and, in one respect, it carried with it a certain character of shallowness and want of vigour, in which an attitude of criticism and negativity is retained, and which, as far as any positive element is concerned, adheres to the facts of consciousness and to mere conjecture, while it renounces thought and returns to feeling. On the other hand, however, there sprang from this the philosophy of Fichte, which speculatively grasps the essence of self-consciousness as concrete egoism, but which does not reach beyond this subjective form pertaining to the absolute. From it again comes the philosophy of Schelling, which subsequently rejects Fichte’s teaching and sets forth the Idea of the Absolute, the truth in and for itself.
A. Jacobi.
IN CONNECTION WITH Kant we must here begin by speaking of Jacobi, whose philosophy is contemporaneous with that of Kant; in both of these the advance beyond the preceding period is very evident. The result in the two cases is much the same, although both the starting point and the method of progression are somewhat different. In Jacobi’s case the stimulus was given mainly by French philosophy, with which he was very conversant, and also by German metaphysics, while Kant began rather from the English side, that is, from the scepticism of Hume. Jacobi, in that negative attitude which he preserved as well as Kant, kept before him the objective aspect of the method of knowledge, and specially considered it, for he declared knowledge to be in its content incapable of recognizing the Absolute: the truth must be concrete, present, but not finite. Kant does not consider the content, but took the view of knowledge being subjective; and for this reason he declared it to be incapable of recognizing absolute existence. To Kant knowledge is thus a knowledge of phenomena only, not because the categories are merely limited and finite, but because they are subjective. To Jacobi, on the other hand, the chief point is that the categories are not merely subjective, but that they themselves are conditioned. This is an essential difference between the two points of view, even if they both arrive at the same result.
Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, born at Düsseldorf in 1743, held office first in the Duchy of Berg, and then in Bavaria. He studied in Geneva and Paris, associating in the former place with Bonnet and in the latter with Diderot. Jacobi was a man of the highest character and culture. He was long occupied with State affairs, and in Düsseldorf he held a public office which was connected with the administration of the finance department in the State. At the time of the French Revolution he was obliged to retire. As a Bavarian official he went to Munich, there became President of the Academy of Sciences in 1804, which office he, however, resigned in 1812; for in the Napoleonic period Protestants were decried as demagogues. He lived at Munich till the end of his life, and died at the same place on the 10th of March, 1819.315
In the year 1785, Jacobi published Letters on Spinoza, which were written in 1783, on the occasion of the dispute with Mendelssohn above-mentioned (p. 406); for in none of his writings did Jacobi develop his philosophy systematically, he set it forth in letters only. When Mendelssohn wished to write a life of Lessing, Jacobi sent to ask him if he knew that “Lessing was a Spinozist” (Jacobi’s Werke, Vol. IV. Sec. 1, pp. 39, 40). Mendelssohn was displeased at this, and it was the occasion of the correspondence. In the course of the dispute it was made evident that those who held themselves to be professed philosophers and possessed of a monopoly of Lessing’s friendship, such as Nicolai, Mendelssohn, &c., knew nothing about Spinozism; not only was there manifested in them the superficial character of their philosophic insight, but ignorance as well; with Mendelssohn, for instance, this was shown respecting even the outward history of the Spinozistic philosophy, and much more regarding the inward (Jacobi’s Werke, Vol. IV. Sec. 1, p. 91). That Jacobi asserted Lessing to be a Spinozist, and gave a high place to the French — this serious statement came to these good men as a thunderbolt from the blue. They — the self-satisfied, self-possessed, superior persons — were quite surprised that he also made pretensions to knowledge, and of such a “dead dog” as Spinoza (ibidem, p. 68). Explanations followed upon this, in which Jacobi further developed his philosophic views.
Mendelssohn is directly opposed to Jacobi, for Mendelssohn took his stand on cognition, placed true existence immediately in thought and conception, and maintained: “What I cannot think as true does not trouble me as doubt. A question which I do not understand, I cannot answer, it is for me as good as no question at all.”316 He continued to argue on these same lines. His proof of the existence of God thus carries with it this necessity of thought, viz. that actuality must plainly be in thought, and a thinker must be presupposed, or the possibility of the actual is in the thinker. “What no thinking Being conceives as possible is not possible, and what is thought by no thinking creature as actual cannot be actual in fact. If we take away from anything whatsoever the conception formed by a thinking Being that that thing is possible or actual, the thing itself is done away with.” The Notion of the thing is thus to man the essence of the same. “No finite Being can think the actuality of a thing in its perfection as actual, and still less can he perceive the possibility and actuality of all present things. There must thus be a thinking Being or an understanding which in the most perfect way thinks the content of all possibilities as possible, and the content of all actualities as actual; i.e. there must be an infinite understanding, and this is God.”317 Here on the one hand we see a unity of thought and Being, on the other the absolute unity as infinite understanding — the former is the self-consciousness which is apprehended as finite merely. Actuality, Being, has its possibility in thought, or its possibility is thought; it is not a process from possibility to actuality, for the possibility remains at home in the actuality.
Jacobi maintains against these demands of thought — and this in one view is the chief thought in his philosophy — that every method of their demonstration leads to fatalism, atheism, and Spinozism,318 and presents God as derived and founded upon something else; for comprehending Him signifies demonstrating His dependence. Jacobi thus asserts that mediate knowledge consists in giving a cause of something which has in its turn a finite effect, and so on; so that a knowledge such as this can all through relate to the finite only.
Jacobi further states upon this subject, in the first place, that “Reason” — later on when he distinguished reason and understanding (of which more hereafter319), he altered it to understanding320— “can never bring to light more than the conditions of what is conditioned, natural laws and mechanism. We comprehend a thing when we can deduce it from its proximate causes,” and not from the remoter causes; the most remote and quite universal cause is always God. “Or” we know the thing if we “perceive its immediate conditions as they come in due succession. Thus, for instance, we comprehend a circle when we can clearly represent to ourselves the mechanism of its origination or its physical conditions; we know the syllogistic formulæ when we have actually come to know the laws to which the human understanding is subject in judgment and conclusion, its physical nature and its mechanism. For this reason we have no conceptions of qualities as such, but only intuitions. Even of our present existence we have a feeling only, but no conceptions. Genuine conceptions we have merely of figure, number, position, movement and the forms of thought; qualities are known and understood, if they are traced back to these and objectively annulled.” This is undoubtedly really finite knowledge, which is to give the determinate conditions of anything determinate, to demonstrate it as resulting from another cause, in such a way that each condition is again conditioned and finite. Jacobi continues: “The business of reason is really progressive union and connection, and its speculative business is union and connection in accordance with the known laws of necessity, i.e. of identity. Everything that reason can bring forth by means of analysis, combination, judgment, conclusion, and re-conception, consists in nothing but things of nature” (i.e. finite things), “and reason itself, as a limited existence, belongs to these things. But the whole of nature, the sum of all conditioned existence, cannot reveal more to the investigating understanding than what is contained in it, namely, manifold existence, changes, a succession of forms” (the conditioned), “and not an actual beginning” (of the world), “nor a real principle of any objective existence.”321
But Jacobi in the second place here accepts reason in a wider sense and says: “If we understand by reason the principle of knowledge generally, it is the mind from which the whole living nature of man is constituted; through it man arises; he is a form which it has adopted.” With this Jacobi’s view of the attempt to know the unconditioned is connected. “I take the whole human being, and find that his consciousness is composed of two original conceptions, the conceptions of the conditioned and the unconditioned. Both are inseparably bound up with one another, and yet in such a way that the conception of the conditioned presupposes the conception of the unconditioned, and can be given in this alone. We are just as certain of its existence as we are of our own conditioned existence, or even more so. Since our conditioned existence rests on an infinitude of mediations, there is opened up to our investigation a vast field which, for the sake of our preservation even, we are forced to work upon.” It would, however, be quite another thing to wish to know the unconditioned apart from this practical end. However Jacobi here remarks, “To try to discover the conditions of the unconditioned, to find a possibility for absolute necessity, and to construct this last in order to be able to comprehend it, is what we undertake when we endeavour to make nature an existence comprehensible to us, i.e. a merely natural existence, and to bring the mechanism of the principle of mechanism into the light of day. For if everything which can be said to arise and be present in a way comprehensible to us, must arise and be present in a conditioned way, we remain, so long as we continue to comprehend, in a chain of conditioned conditions. Where this chain breaks off, we cease to comprehend, and there the connection which we call nature likewise ceases. The conception of the possibility of the outward existence of nature would thus be the conception of an absolute beginning or origin of nature; it would be the conception of the unconditioned itself in so far as it is a conditioning of nature not naturally connected, i.e. a conditioning of nature unconnected and unconditioned for us. Now should a conception of what is thus unconditioned and unconnected, and consequently supernatural, be possible, the unconditioned must cease to be unconditioned, it must itself receive conditions; and absolute necessity must commence to be possibility in order that it may allow itself to be constructed.”322 This is contradictory.
Jacobi then passes on from this point to the second of his main propositions, “The unconditioned is called the supernatural. Now since everything which lies outside the connection of what is conditioned, of what is naturally mediated, also lies outside the sphere of our clear and certain knowledge, and cannot be understood through conceptions, the supernatural cannot be accepted in any other way by us than that in which it is given to us — namely as a fact. It is! This supernatural, this essence of all essence, all tongues join in proclaiming to be God.”323 God as the universal, the true, is here taken in the sense of a spiritual generally, in the sense of power, wisdom, &c. That God is, however, is to Jacobi not absolutely true; for to knowledge pertains His objective absolute existence, but He cannot be said to be known. It is thus merely a fact of my consciousness that God exists independently apart from my consciousness; this, however, is itself maintained through my consciousness; the subjective attitude of thought is thus to Jacobi the element of most importance. The consciousness of God, which is in our consciousness, is, however, of such a nature that along with the thought of God we have immediately associated the fact that He is. The existence of the supernatural and supersensuous, to which the thought of man regarding the natural and finite passes on, is just as certain to Jacobi as he is himself. This certainty is identical with his self-consciousness; as certainly as I am, so certainly is God (Jacobi’s Werke, Vol. III. p. 35). Since he thus passes back into self-consciousness, the unconditioned is only for us in an immediate way; this immediate knowledge Jacobi calls Faith, inward revelation (Werke, Vol. II. pp. 3, 4); to this appeal can be made in man. God, the absolute, the unconditioned, cannot, according to Jacobi, be proved. For proof, comprehension, means to discover conditions for something, to derive it from conditions; but a derived absolute, God, &c., would thus not be absolute at all, would not be unconditioned, would not be God (Jacobi’s Werke, Vol. III. p. 7). This immediate knowledge of God is then the point which is maintained in the philosophy of Jacobi. The faith of Kant and of Jacobi are, however, different. To Kant it is a postulate of reason, it is the demand for the solution of the contradiction between the world and goodness; to Jacobi it is represented on its own account as immediate knowledge.
Everything which has been written upon God since Jacobi’s time, by philosophers such as Fries and by theologians, rests on this conception of immediate intellectual knowledge, and men even call this revelation, though in another sense than the revelation of theology. Revelation as immediate knowledge is in ourselves, while the Church holds revelation to be something imparted from without.324 In the theological sense, faith is faith in something which is given to us through teaching. It is a sort of deception when faith and revelation are spoken of and represented as if faith and revelation in the theological sense were here in question; for the sense in which they are used, and which may be termed philosophic, is quite a different one, however pious an air may be assumed in using the terms. This is Jacobi’s standpoint, and whatever is by philosophers and theologians said against it, this teaching is eagerly accepted and disseminated. And nowhere is there anything to be found but reflections originating from Jacobi, whereby immediate knowledge is opposed to philosophic knowledge and to reason; and people speak of reason, philosophy, &c., as a blind man speaks of colours. It is, indeed, allowed that a man cannot make shoes unless he is a shoemaker, even although he have the measure and foot, and also the hands. But when Philosophy is concerned, immediate knowledge signifies that every man as he walks and stands is a philosopher, that he can dogmatize as he chooses, and that he is completely acquainted with Philosophy.
By reason, however, mediate knowledge merely is on the one hand understood, and on the other the intellectual perception which speaks of facts (supra, pp. 413-415). In this respect it is true that reason is the knowledge and revelation of absolute truth, since the understanding is the revelation of the finite (Jacobi’s Werke, Vol. II. pp. 8-14, 101). “We maintained that two different powers of perception in man have to be accepted: a power of perception through visible and tangible and consequently corporeal organs of perception, and another kind of power, viz. through an invisible organ which in no way represents itself to the outward senses, and whose existence is made known to us through feeling alone. This organ, a spiritual eye for spiritual objects, has been called by men — generally speaking — reason. He whom the pure feelings of the beautiful and good, of admiration and love, of respect and awe, do not convince that in and with these feelings he perceives something to be present which is independent of them, and which is unattainable by the outward senses or by an understanding directed upon their perceptions alone — such an one cannot be argued with” (Jacobi’s Werke, Vol. II. pp. 74, 76). But by faith Jacobi likewise understands all that has immediacy of Being for me: “Through faith we know that we have a body, we become aware of other actual things, and that indeed with the same certainty with which we are aware of ourselves. We obtain all conceptions through the qualities which we receive and accept, and there is no other way of attaining real knowledge; for reason, when it begets objects, begets phantoms of the brain. Thus we have a revelation of nature.”325 Hence the expression faith, which had a deep significance in religion, is made use of for different contents of every kind; this in our own time is the point of view most commonly adopted.
Jacobi here brings faith into opposition with thought. Let us compare the two, and discover whether they are separated by so great a chasm as those who thus oppose them think. On the one hand absolute existence is to faith immediate; believing consciousness feels itself penetrated by this as by its essence: that existence is its life, believing consciousness asserts itself to be in direct unity with it. Thought thinks the absolute existence; such existence is to it absolute thought, absolute understanding, pure thought; but that signifies that it is likewise immediate itself. On the other hand to faith the immediacy of absolute existence has also the significance of a Being: it is, and is another than ‘I.’ And the same is true of the thinker; to him it is absolute Being, actual in itself, and different from self-consciousness or thought as finite understanding, to use the common term. Now what is the reason that faith and thought do not understand one another, and each recognize itself in the other? In the first place faith has no consciousness of being a thought, inasmuch as it asserts absolute consciousness to be identical with it as self-consciousness, and has direct inward knowledge of the same. But it expresses this simple unity; in its consciousness it is only immediacy so to speak in the signification of Being, a unity of its unconscious substance. In the second place Being-for-self is contained in thought; to this faith opposes the immediacy of Being. Thought, on the contrary, has the immediate as absolute potentiality, as absolutely a thing of thought: and the immediacy belonging to this thing of thought is without the determination of Being, of life. On the heights of this abstraction the two stand opposed to each other, as the Aufklärung which asserts absolute existence to be a Beyond of self-consciousness, and as the materialism which makes it so to speak present matter (supra, pp. 382, 383). In the one case it is in faith and thought as positive existence or thought, and in the other it is the negative of self-consciousness, which is thus either only determined as negative, as a Beyond, or likewise as existent for self-consciousness. Hence faith and thought are both of them knowledge. We call universal knowledge thought, particular knowledge we call sensuous perception; and we term the introduction of external determinations understanding. The universal element in man is thought, but to it likewise appertains religious feeling for instance; the animal does not possess it, for it has no human feeling; and in so far as this feeling is religious, it is the feeling of a thinker, and what determines this feeling is not the determination of natural desire, &c., but a universal determination. Thus God, even though He is only felt and believed in, is yet the universal taken quite abstractly — even in His personality He is the absolutely universal personality.
As thought and faith are thus one, the same is true of the antithesis between mediated and immediate knowledge. We must, it is true, keep before our eyes the fact that what is revealed in immediate knowledge is the universal. But abstract immediate knowledge is natural, sensuous knowledge; the immediate man in his natural condition, in his desires, does not know this universal. Children, the Esquimaux, &c., know nothing of God; or what the natural man knows of Him is not a real knowledge of Him. Thus the intuitive knowledge of the Egyptians told them that God was an ox or a cat, and the Indians still possess similar sorts of knowledge. On the other hand when man has come so far as to know God as merely an object of the mind, i.e. as spiritual, it is easy to perceive that this knowledge which is asserted to be immediate is really a result mediated through instruction, through a long continued culture. It is only by means of being elevated above nature that man arrives at a consciousness of what is higher, and at a knowledge of the universal; there indeed his knowledge is immediate, but he has only arrived at this through mediation. I think, and thus I know the universal immediately, but this very thought is just process in itself, movement and life. All life is process within itself, is mediated, and this is all the more true of spiritual life; for it is the passing from one to the other, that is, from the merely natural and sensuous to the spiritual. It thus indicates a deficiency in the most simple reflection not to know that the universal is not in immediate knowledge, but is a result of the culture, the education, and the self-revelation of the human race. If immediate knowledge is to be allowed, everyone will be responsible merely to himself: this man knows this, another that, and consequently everything is justified and approved, however contrary to right and religion. This opposition between immediacy and mediacy is thus a very barren and quite empty determination; it is a platitude of the extremest type to consider anything like this to be a true opposition; it proceeds from a most wooden understanding, which thinks that an immediacy can be something on its own account, without a mediation within itself. If Philosophy were to result in this it would be a poor affair; these determinations are merely forms, none of which has intrinsic truth. The form into which Philosophy has in Jacobi’s case finally fallen, which is that immediacy is grasped as absolute, manifests a lack of all critical faculty, of all logic. The Kantian philosophy is critical philosophy, but from it the fact has been omitted that we cannot constitute the infinite with finite categories — and immediacy is such an one. When we regard this opposition more closely all knowledge may be termed immediate, but all immediate knowledge is likewise mediated in itself. This we know within our consciousness, and we may see it in the most general phenomena. I know, for example, of America immediately, and yet this knowledge is very much mediated. If I stand in America and see its soil, I must first of all have journeyed to it, Columbus must first have discovered it, ships must have been built, &c.; all these discoveries and inventions pertain to it. That which we now know immediately is consequently a result of infinitely many mediations. Likewise when I see a right-angled triangle I know that the squares of the two sides are equal to the square of the hypotenuse: I know this immediately, and yet I have merely learned it and am convinced of it through the mediation of proof. Immediate knowledge is thus everywhere mediated, and Philosophy does nothing but bring this to consciousness — demonstrating the mediation which in point of fact is already present there, e.g. in religion, &c.
The philosophy of Jacobi, inasmuch as it says: “Thought cannot proceed further than to the feeling of God,” has been accepted utiliter; it was more easily arrived at than in the case of Kant. Knowledge, however, is something very different from what Jacobi calls such; against finite knowledge his arguments are quite correct. Immediate knowledge is not knowledge, comprehension, for that implies that the content is determined in itself, i.e. is grasped as concrete. But in immediate knowledge it is the case that the only fact known of God is that He exists. For should there be determinations respecting God, they must, according to Jacobi, be grasped as a finite, and the knowledge of them would again merely be a progression from finite to finite. There thus remains only the indeterminate conception of God, an “Above me,” an indeterminate Beyond. This gives accordingly the same result as does the Aufklärung, viz. that the highest reality is ultimate: we find the same in French philosophy and in Kant — only here we still have the opinion that this emptiness is the highest philosophy possible. But if each standpoint has an aspect wherein it is justified, there always rests in the proposition that the human mind knows God immediately, the important consideration that we have here a recognition of the freedom of the human spirit: in it we have the source of the knowledge of God, and all externality of authority is thus abrogated in this principle. The principle is hereby gained, but only the principle of freedom of spirit; and the greatness of our time rests in the fact that freedom, the peculiar possession of mind whereby it is at home with itself in itself, is recognized, and that mind has this consciousness within itself. This however is merely abstract, for the next step is that the principle of freedom is again purified and comes to its true objectivity, so that not everything which strikes me or springs up within me must, because it is manifested in me, hold good as true. It is only through thought, which casts off the particular and accidental, that the principle receives this objectivity which is independent of mere subjectivity and in and for itself — though in such a way that the freedom of mind still remains respected. One’s own spirit must bear witness to spirit that God is Spirit; the content must be true. But this does not give authenticity to itself by its being revealed with certainty to me. This is the standpoint, and we have thus seen its deficiency and the greatness of the principle which is involved in it.
B. Kant.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF Kant, which we have now more particularly to consider, made its appearance at the same time as the above. While Descartes asserted certainty to be the unity of thought and Being, we now have the consciousness of thought in its subjectivity, i.e. in the first place, as determinateness in contrast with objectivity, and then as finitude and progression in finite determinations. Abstract thought as personal conviction is that which is maintained as certain; its contents are experience, but the methods adopted by experience are once more formal thought and argument. Kant turns back to the standpoint of Socrates; we see in him the freedom of the subject as we saw it with the Stoics, but the task in respect of content is now placed on a higher level. An endless aiming at the concrete is required for thought, a filling up in accordance with the rule which completion prescribes, which signifies that the content is itself the Idea as the unity of the Notion and reality. With Jacobi thought, demonstration, does not in the first place reach beyond the finite and conditioned, and in the second place, even when God is likewise the metaphysical object, the demonstration is really the making Him conditioned and finite; in the third place the unconditioned, what is then immediately certain, only exists in faith, a subjectively fixed point of view but an unknowable one, that is to say an undetermined, indeterminable, and consequently an unfruitful one. The standpoint of the philosophy of Kant, on the contrary, is in the first place to be found in the fact that thought has through its reasoning got so far as to grasp itself not as contingent but rather as in itself the absolute ultimate. In the finite, in connection with the finite, an absolute standpoint is raised which acts as a connecting bond; it binds together the finite and leads up to the infinite. Thought grasped itself as all in all, as absolute in judgment; for it nothing external is authoritative, since all authority can receive validity only through thought. This thought, determining itself within itself and concrete, is, however, in the second place, grasped as subjective, and this aspect of subjectivity is the form which from Jacobi’s point of view is predominant; the fact that thought is concrete Jacobi has on the other hand for the most part set aside. Both standpoints remain philosophies of subjectivity; since thought is subjective, the capacity of knowing the absolute is denied to it. To Kant God cannot on the one hand be found in experience; He can neither be found in outward experience — as Lalande discovered when he swept the whole heavens and found no God — nor can He be discovered within; though no doubt mystics and enthusiasts can experience many things in themselves, and amongst these God, i.e. the Infinite. On the other hand Kant argues to prove the existence of God, who is to him an hypothesis necessary for the explanation of things, a postulate of practical reason. But in this connection another French astronomer made the following reply to the Emperor Napoleon: “Je n’ai pas eu besoin de cette hypothèse.” According to this the truth underlying the Kantian philosophy is the recognition of freedom. Even Rousseau represented the absolute to be found in freedom; Kant has the same principle, but taken rather from the theoretic side. The French regard it from the side of will, which is represented in their proverb: “Il a la tête près du bonnet.” France possesses the sense of actuality, of promptitude; because in that country conception passes more immediately into action, men have there applied themselves more practically to the affairs of actuality. But however much freedom may be in itself concrete, it was as undeveloped and in its abstraction that it was there applied to actuality; and to make abstractions hold good in actuality means to destroy actuality. The fanaticism which characterized the freedom which was put into the hands of the people was frightful. In Germany the same principle asserted the rights of consciousness on its own account, but it has been worked out in a merely theoretic way. We have commotions of every kind within us and around us, but through them all the German head quietly keeps its nightcap on and silently carries on its operations beneath it.
Immanuel Kant was born at Königsberg in 1724, and there studied theology to begin with; in the year 1755 he entered upon his work as an academic teacher; in 1770 he became professor of logic, and in 1804 he died at Königsberg on the 12th of February, having almost attained his eightieth year (Tennemann’s Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie by Wendt, § 380, pp. 465, 466), without ever having left his native town.
While to Wolff thought as thought was merely positive self-identity and grasped itself as such, we saw the negative self-moving thought, the absolute Notion, appear in all its power in France; and in the Aufklärung it likewise made its way to Germany in such a manner that all existence, all action, was called upon to serve a useful purpose, i.e. the implicit was done away with and everything had to be for another; and that for which everything had to be is man, self-consciousness, taken, however, as signifying all men generally. The consciousness of this action in abstract form is the Kantian philosophy. It is thus the self-thinking absolute Notion that passes into itself which we see making its appearance in Germany through this philosophy, in such a way that all reality falls within self-consciousness; it is the idealism which vindicates all moments of the implicit to self-consciousness, but which at first itself remains subject to a contradiction, inasmuch as it still separates this implicit from itself. In other words the Kantian philosophy no doubt leads reality back to self-consciousness, but it can supply no reality to this essence of self-consciousness, or to this pure self-consciousness, nor can it demonstrate Being in the same. It apprehends simple thought as having difference in itself, but does not yet apprehend that all reality rests on this difference; it does not know how to obtain mastery over the individuality of self-consciousness, and although it describes reason very well, it does this in an unthinking empiric way which again robs it of the truth it has. Theoretically the Kantian philosophy is the “Illumination” or Aufklärung reduced to method; it states that nothing true can be known, but only the phenomenal; it leads knowledge into consciousness and self-consciousness, but from this standpoint maintains it to be a subjective and finite knowledge. Thus although it deals with the infinite Idea, expressing its formal categories and arriving at its concrete claims, it yet again denies this to be the truth, making it a simple subjective, because it has once for all accepted finite knowledge as the fixed and ultimate standpoint. This philosophy made an end of the metaphysic of the understanding as an objective dogmatism, but in fact it merely transformed it into a subjective dogmatism, i.e. into a consciousness in which these same finite determinations of the understanding persist, and the question of what is true in and for itself has been abandoned. Its study is made difficult by its diffuseness and prolixity, and by the peculiar terminology found in it. Nevertheless this diffuseness has one advantage, that inasmuch as the same thing is often repeated, the main points are kept before us, and these cannot easily be lost from view.
We shall endeavour to trace the lines which Kant pursued. The philosophy of Kant has in the first place a direct relation to that of Hume as stated above (p. 370). That is to say, the significance of the Kantian philosophy, generally expressed, is from the very beginning to allow that determinations such as those of universality and necessity are not to be met with in perception, and this Hume has already shown in relation to Locke. But while Hume attacks the universality and necessity of the categories generally, and Jacobi their finitude, Kant merely argues against their objectivity in so far as they are present in external things themselves, while maintaining them to be objective in the sense of holding good as universal and necessary, as they do, for instance, in mathematics and natural science.326 The fact that we crave for universality and necessity as that which first constitutes the objective, Kant thus undoubtedly allows. But if universality and necessity do not exist in external things, the question arises “Where are they to be found?” To this Kant, as against Hume, maintains that they must be a priori, i.e. that they must rest on reason itself, and on thought as self-conscious reason; their source is the subject, “I” in my self-consciousness.327 This, simply expressed, is the main point in the Kantian philosophy.
In the second place the philosophy of Kant is likewise called a critical philosophy because its aim, says Kant, is first of all to supply a criticism of our faculties of knowledge; for before obtaining knowledge we must inquire into the faculties of knowledge. To the healthy human understanding that is plausible, and to it this has been a great discovery. Knowledge is thereby represented as an instrument, as a method and means whereby we endeavour to possess ourselves of the truth. Thus before men can make their way to the truth itself they must know the nature and function of their instrument. They must see whether it is capable of supplying what is demanded of it — of seizing upon the object; they must know what the alterations it makes in the object are, in order that these alterations may not be mixed up with the determinations of the object itself.328 This would appear as though men could set forth upon the search for truth with spears and staves. And a further claim is made when it is said that we must know the faculty of knowledge before we can know. For to investigate the faculties of knowledge means to know them; but how we are to know without knowing, how we are to apprehend the truth before the truth, it is impossible to say. It is the old story of the σχολαστικός who would not go into the water till he could swim. Thus since the investigation of the faculties of knowledge is itself knowing, it cannot in Kant attain to what it aims at because it is that already — it cannot come to itself because it is already with itself; the same thing happens as happened with the Jews, the Spirit passes through the midst of them and they know it not. At the same time the step taken by Kant is a great and important one — that is, the fact that he has made knowledge the subject of his consideration.
On the one hand this critique of knowledge applies to the empirical knowledge of Locke, which asserts itself to be grounded on experience, and, on the other hand, it also deals with what claims to be on the whole a more metaphysical kind of philosophy — the Wolffian and German — which had also taken up the line of proceeding on the more empiric method which has been depicted. But this last has at the same time kept itself separate from the merely empiric method, inasmuch as its main efforts have been directed towards making such categories of thought as those of potentiality, actuality, God, &c., have as their foundation categories of the understanding, and then reasoning from them. The Kantian philosophy is in the first instance directed against both. Kant takes away the objective significance of the determinations of the Wolffian metaphysics, and shows how they must be ascribed to subjective thought alone. At the same time Jacobi likewise declared himself against this metaphysic, but since he started more especially from the standpoint of the French and Germans, his point of view was different: he asserts that our finite thought can set forth finite determinations alone, and thus can only consider God and Spirit in accordance with finite relationships. On the practical side there reigned at that time the so-called happiness theory, since man’s inherent Notion and the way to realize this Notion was apprehended in morality as a satisfaction of his desires. As against this Kant has very rightly shown that it involves a heteronomy and not an autonomy of reason — a determination through nature and consequently an absence of freedom. But because the rational principle of Kant was formal, and his successors could not make any further progress with reason, and yet morality had to receive a content, Fries and others must still be called Hedonists though they avoid giving themselves the name.
In the third place, as regards the relation of the categories to the material which is given through experience, there is according to Kant already inherent in the subjective determinations of thought, e.g. in those of cause and effect, the capacity of themselves to bind together the differences which are present in that material. Kant considers thought as in great measure a synthetic activity, and hence he represents the main question of Philosophy to be this, “How are synthetic judgments a priori possible?”329 Judgment signifies the combination of thought-determinations as subject and predicate. Synthetic judgments a priori are nothing else than a connection of opposites through themselves, or the absolute Notion, i.e. the relations of different determinations such as those of cause and effect, given not through experience but through thought. Space and time likewise form the connecting element; they are thus a priori, i.e. in self-consciousness. Since Kant shows that thought has synthetic judgments a priori which are not derived from perception, he shows that thought is so to speak concrete in itself. The idea which is present here is a great one, but, on the other hand, quite an ordinary signification is given it, for it is worked out from points of view which are inherently rude and empirical, and a scientific form is the last thing that can be claimed for it. In the presentation of it there is a lack of philosophical abstraction, and it is expressed in the most commonplace way; to say nothing more of the barbarous terminology, Kant remains restricted and confined by his psychological point of view and empirical methods.
To mention one example only of his barbarous expressions, Kant calls his philosophy (Kritik der reinen Vernunft, p. 19) a Transcendental philosophy, i.e. a system of principles of pure reason which demonstrate the universal and necessary elements in the self-conscious understanding, without occupying themselves with objects or inquiring what universality and necessity are; this last would be transcendent. Transcendent and transcendental have accordingly to be clearly distinguished. Transcendent mathematics signifies the mathematics in which the determination of infinitude is made use of in a pre-eminent degree: in this sphere of mathematics we say, for instance, that the circle consists of an infinitude of straight lines; the periphery is represented as straight, and since the curve is represented as straight this passes beyond the geometric category and is consequently transcendent. Kant, on the contrary, defines the transcendental philosophy as not a philosophy which by means of categories passes beyond its own sphere, but one which points out in subjective thought, in consciousness, the sources of what may become transcendent. Thought would thus be transcendent if the categories of universality, of cause and effect, were predicated of the object, for in this way men would from the subjective element ‘transcend’ into another sphere. We are not justified in so doing as regards the result nor even to begin with, since we merely contemplate thought within thought itself. Thus we do not desire to consider the categories in their objective sense, but in so far as thought is the source of such synthetic relationships; the necessary and universal thus here receive the significance of resting in our faculties of knowledge. But from this faculty of knowledge Kant still separates the implicit, the thing-in-itself, so that the universality and necessity are all the time a subjective conditionment of knowledge merely, and reason with its universality and necessity does not attain to a knowledge of the truth.330 For it requires perception and experience, a material empirically given in order, as subjectivity, to attain to knowledge. As Kant says, these form its “constituent parts”; one part it has in itself, but the other is empirically given.331 When reason desires to be independent, to exist in itself and to derive truth from itself, it becomes transcendent; it transcends experience because it lacks the other constituent, and then creates mere hallucinations of the brain. It is hence not constitutive in knowledge but only regulative; it is the unity and rule for the sensuous manifold. But this unity on its own account is the unconditioned, which, transcending experience, merely arrives at contradictions. In the practical sphere alone is reason constitutive. The critique of reason is consequently not the knowing of objects, but of knowledge and its principles, its range and limitations, so that it does not become transcendent.332 This is an extremely general account of what we shall now consider in its separate details.
In dealing with this matter Kant adopts the plan of first considering theoretic reason, the knowledge which relates to outward objects. In the second place he investigates the will as self-actualization; and, in the third place, the faculty of judgment, the special consideration of the unity of the universal and individual; how far he gets in this matter we shall likewise see. But the critique of the faculty of knowledge is the matter of main importance.
- In the first place, as to the theoretic philosophy, Kant in the Critique of Pure Reason sets to work in a psychological manner, i.e. historically, inasmuch as he describes the main stages in theoretic consciousness. The first faculty is sensuousness generally, the second understanding, the third reason. All this he simply narrates; he accepts it quite empirically, without developing it from the Notion or proceeding by necessity.
a. The a priori fact of sensuous existence, the forms of sensuous existence, constitute the beginning of this transcendentalism. Kant calls the judgment of the same the transcendental æsthetic. Nowadays æsthetic signifies the knowledge of the beautiful. But here the doctrine of intuition or perception is taken from the point of view of its universality, i.e. from what in it pertains to the subject as such. Perception, says Kant, is the knowledge of an object given to us through the senses; sensuousness, however, is the capacity of being affected by conceptions as external. Now, according to Kant, in perception there are to be found all manner of contents, and in dealing with this he first of all distinguishes feeling as external, such as redness, colour, hardness, &c., and then as internal, such as justice, wrath, love, fear, pleasurable and religious feelings, &c. He says content such as this forms the one constituent and pertains to feeling; all this is subjective and merely subjective. In this sensuous element there is, however, a universal sensuous element likewise contained, which as such does not belong to feeling in so far as it is immediately determined; in such a content this ‘other’ consists in the categories of space and time, which of themselves are void and empty. The filling in is performed by the content, by colour, softness, hardness, &c., as regards space; while as regards time, the same content, so soon as it is something transient, or again some other content, and in particular inward feelings are what causes the determination. Space and time are consequently pure, i.e. abstract perceptions in which we place outside of us the content of individual sensations, either in time as succeeding one another, or in space as separate from one another. Here we thus meet with the division between subjectivity and objectivity, for if we isolate the ‘alongside of’ and ‘after’ we have space and time. It is the act of a priori sensuousness to project the content; the forms of intuition or perception constitute this pure perception.333 Now everything indeed is termed perception, even thought and consciousness; God, who certainly pertains to thought alone, is said to be comprehended by perception or intuition, the so-called immediate consciousness.
Kant further remarks in this regard, (1) “Space is no empirical Notion which has been derived from outward experiences.” But the Notion is never really anything empiric: it is in barbarous forms like this that Kant, however, always expresses himself: “For in order that I may relate my sensations to something outside of me, I must presuppose space.” Of time Kant speaks in similar terms: “In order that something outside of me may be represented in separate space or time, the conception of space and time must come first, or it cannot be derived from experience, for experience first becomes possible through this antecedent conception.” That is to say, time and space which may appear as objective, since their particular filling in certainly belongs to subjective feeling, are not empirical; for consciousness has time and space first of all in itself. (2) “Space is a necessary conception which lies at the basis of all external perceptions. Space and time are conceptions a priori, because we cannot represent things without space and time. Time is a necessary basis for all phenomena.” As a priori, space and time are universal and necessary, that is to say we find this to be the case; but it does not follow that they must be previously present as conceptions. They are fundamental indeed, but they are likewise an external universal. Kant however places the matter somewhat in this fashion: there are things-in-themselves outside, but devoid of time and space; consciousness now comes, and it has time and space beforehand present in it as the possibility of experience, just as in order to eat it has mouth and teeth, &c., as conditions necessary for eating. The things which are eaten have not the mouth and teeth, and as eating is brought to bear on things, so space and time are also brought to bear on them; just as things are placed in the mouth and between the teeth, so is it with space and time. (3) “Space and time are not general Notions of the relations of things, but pure intuitive perceptions. For we can only represent to ourselves one space; there are not different component parts of space.” The same is the case with time. The abstract conception tree, for example, is in its actuality a number of individual and separate trees, but spaces are not such particulars, nor are they parts; for one immediate continuity remains, and hence a simple unity. Ordinary perception has always something individual before it; space or time are always however one only, and therefore a priori. It might however be replied to Kant: The nature of space and time undoubtedly involves their being an abstract universal; but there is in like manner only one blue. (4) “Each Notion or conception certainly comprises an infinite number of conceptions under itself, but not within itself; nevertheless this last is the case in space and time, and they are therefore intuitive perceptions and not Notions or conceptions.”334 Space and time, then, are certainly not thought-determinations, if no thoughts are there present, but a Notion, so soon as we have a Notion of them.
From the transcendental point of view it is likewise maintained that this conception of space and time contains synthetic propositions a priori, connected with the consciousness of its necessity. Examples of these synthetic propositions are sought in statements such as that of space having three dimensions, or in the definition of a straight line, that it is the shortest distance between two points, and likewise in the statement that 5 + 7 = 12.335 All these propositions are however very analytic. Kant nevertheless in the first place holds that such propositions do not take their rise from experience, or, as we might better express it, are not an individual contingent perception; this is very true, the perception is universal and necessary. In the second place he states that we acquire them from pure sensuous perception, and not through the understanding or Notion. But Kant does not grasp the two together, and yet this comprehension of them is involved in such propositions being immediately certain even in ordinary perception. When Kant then expresses himself (Kritik der reinen Vernunft, p. 49) to the effect that we have many sensations which constitute “the real matter,” with which we externally and inwardly “occupy our minds,” and that the mind has in itself in space and time “formal conditions of the mode in which we place them” (those manifold feelings) “in our mind,” the question of how mind arrives at having just these special forms now forces itself upon us. But what the nature of time and space is, it does not occur to the Kantian philosophy to inquire. To it what space and time are in themselves does not signify ‘What is their Notion,’ but ‘Are they external things or something in the mind?’
b. The second faculty, the understanding, is something very different from sensuousness; the latter is Receptivity, while Kant calls thought in general Spontaneity — an expression which belongs to the philosophy of Leibnitz. The understanding is active thought, I myself; it “is the faculty of thinking the object of sensuous perception.” Yet it has thoughts merely without real content: “Thoughts without content are void and empty, sensuous perceptions without Notions are blind.” The understanding thus obtains from the sensuous its matter, both empirical and a priori, time and space; and it thinks this matter, but its thoughts are very different from this matter. Or it is a faculty of a particular kind, and it is only when both occur, when the sensuous faculty has supplied material and the understanding has united to this its thoughts, that knowledge results.336 The thoughts of the understanding as such are thus limited thoughts, thoughts of the finite only.
Now logic, as transcendental logic, likewise sets forth the conceptions which the understanding has a priori in itself and “whereby it thinks objects completely a priori.” Thoughts have a form which signifies their being the synthetic function which brings the manifold into a unity. I am this unity, the transcendental apperception, the pure apperception of self-consciousness. I = I; I must ‘accompany’ all our conceptions.337 This is a barbarous exposition of the matter. As self-consciousness I am the completely void, general I, completely indeterminate and abstract; apperception is determination generally, the activity whereby I transplant an empirical content into my simple consciousness, while perception rather signifies feeling or conceiving. In order that a content may enter this One, it must be infected by its simplicity; it is thus that the content first becomes my content. The comprehending medium is ‘I’; whatever I have to do with must allow itself to be forced into these forms of unity. This is a great fact, an important item of knowledge; what thought produces is unity; thus it produces itself, for it is the One. Yet the fact that I am the one and, as thinking, the simplifier, is not by Kant satisfactorily set forth. The unity may likewise be called relation; for in so far as a manifold is presupposed, and as this on the one side remains a manifold while on the other side it is set forth as one, so far may it be said to be related.
Now as ‘I’ is the universal transcendental unity of self-consciousness which binds together the empirical matter of conception generally, there are various modes in this relationship, and here we have the transcendental nature of the categories or universal thought-determinations. But Kant (Kritik der reinen Vernunft, pp. 70, 77) approaches these modes of simplicity by accepting them as they are classified in ordinary logic. For he says that in common logic particular kinds of judgment are brought forward; and since judgment is a special kind of relationship of the manifold, the various functions of thought which ‘I’ has in it are shown therein. But the following kinds of judgment have been noticed, viz. Universal, Particular and Singular; Affirmative, Negative, Infinite; Categorical, Hypothetical, Disjunctive; Assertoric, Problematic and Apodictic judgments. These particular modes of relationship now brought forward are the pure forms of the understanding. There are thus, according to Kant (Kritik der reinen Vernunft, pp. 75, 76, 78-82), twelve fundamental categories, which fall into four classes; and it is noteworthy, and deserves to be recognized, that each species of judgment again constitutes a triad. (1) The first kind of categories are those of Quantity, viz. Unity, Plurality and Totality. Plurality is negation of the one, the assertion of difference; and the third, the bringing of the other two into one, plurality circumscribed, the indeterminate plurality comprehended as one, is the Totality. (2) In the second series are the categories of Quality: Reality, Negation, Limitation. Limitation is as real or positive as negation. (3) The third series comprises the categories of relation, of connection; and first of all, indeed, the relation of Substantiality, Substance and Accident: then the relation of Causality, the relation of Cause and Effect, and finally Reciprocity. (4) The categories of Modality, of the relation of the objective to our thought, come fourth, viz. Possibility, Existence (actuality) and Necessity. Possibility should come second; in abstract thought, however, the empty conception comes first. It betrays a great instinct for the Notion when Kant says that the first category is positive, the second the negative of the first, the third the synthesis of the two. The triplicity, this ancient form of the Pythagoreans, Neo-Platonists and of the Christian religion, although it here reappears as a quite external schema only, conceals within itself the absolute form, the Notion. But since Kant says that a conception can determine itself in me as accidental, as cause, effect, unity, plurality, &c., we thereby have the whole of the metaphysics of the understanding. Kant does not follow up further the derivation of these categories, and he finds them imperfect, but he says that the others are derived from them. Kant thus accepts the categories in an empiric way, without thinking of developing of necessity these differences from unity. Just as little did Kant attempt to deduce time and space, for he accepted them likewise from experience — a quite unphilosophic and unjustifiable procedure.
Thinking understanding is thus indeed the source of the individual categories, but because on their own account they are void and empty, they only have significance through their union with the given, manifold material of perception, feeling, &c. Such connection of sensuous material with categories now constitutes the facts of experience, i.e. the matter of sensation after it is brought under the categories; and this is knowledge generally.338 The matter of perception which pertains to the feelings or sensuous perception is not left in the determination of individuality and immediacy, but I am active in relation to it, inasmuch as I bring it into connection through the categories and elevate it into universal species, natural laws, &c. The question of whether a completed sensuousness or the Notion is the higher may accordingly be easily decided. For the laws of the heavens are not immediately perceived, but merely the change in position on the part of the stars. It is only when this object of immediate perception is laid hold of and brought under universal thought-determinations that experience arises therefrom, which has a claim to validity for all time. The category which brings the unity of thought into the content of feeling is thus the objective element in experience, which receives thereby universality and necessity, while that which is perceived is rather the subjective and contingent. Our finding both these elements in experience demonstrates indeed that a correct analysis has been made. Kant (Kritik der reinen Vernunft, pp. 119, 120) however connects with this the statement that experience grasps phenomena only, and that by means of the knowledge which we obtain through, experience we do not know things as they are in themselves, but only as they are in the form of laws of perception and sensuousness. For the first component part of experience, sensation, is doubtless subjective, since it is connected with our organs. The matter of perception is only what it is in my sensation. I know of this sensation only and not of the thing. But, in the second place, the objective, which ought to constitute the opposite to this subjective side, is itself subjective likewise: it does not indeed pertain to my feeling, but it remains shut up in the region of my self-consciousness; the categories are only determinations of our thinking understanding. Neither the one nor the other is consequently anything in itself, nor are both together, knowledge, anything in itself, for it only knows phenomena — a strange contradiction.
The transition of the category to the empiric is made in the following way: “Pure conceptions of the understanding are quite of a different nature from empiric, indeed from any sensuous perceptions;” we have thus “to show how pure conceptions of the understanding can be applied to phenomena.” This is dealt with by the transcendental faculty of judgment. For Kant says that in the mind, in self-consciousness, there are pure conceptions of the understanding and pure sensuous perceptions; now it is the schematism of the pure understanding, the transcendental faculty of the imagination, which determines the pure sensuous perception in conformity with the category and thus constitutes the transition to experience.339 The connection of these two is again one of the most attractive sides of the Kantian philosophy, whereby pure sensuousness and pure understanding, which were formerly expressed as absolute opposites, are now united. There is thus here present a perceptive understanding or an understanding perception; but Kant does not see this, he does not bring these thoughts together: he does not grasp the fact that he has here brought both sides of knowledge into one, and has thereby expressed their implicitude. Knowledge itself is in fact the unity and truth of both moments; but with Kant the thinking understanding and sensuousness are both something particular, and they are only united in an external, superficial way, just as a piece of wood and a leg might be bound together by a cord. Thus, for example, the conception of substance in the schema becomes permanent in time,340 i.e. the pure conception of the understanding, the pure category, is brought into unity with the form of pure sensuous perception.
In as far as we have to deal with our own determinations only and as we do not reach the implicit, the true objective, the Kantian philosophy called itself Idealism. But in this connection Kant (Kritik der reinen Vernunft, pp. 200, 201) brings forward a refutation of empirical or material idealism, thus: “I am conscious of my existence as determined in time. But all time-determination presupposes something permanent in perception. This permanence cannot be” a sensuous perception “in me.” For all the determining grounds of my existence which are met with in me are conceptions, and as such themselves require a constant element different from them, and in relation to which the change taking place in them — consequently “my existence in time,” in which they change, “may be determined.” Or I am conscious of my existence as of an empirical consciousness which is only capable of being determined in relation to something which is outside of me; i.e. I am conscious of something external to me. Conversely it may be said: I am conscious of external things as determined in time and as changing; these hence presuppose something constant which is not in them but outside of them. And this is ‘I,’ the transcendental ground of their universality and necessity, of their implicitude, the unity of self-consciousness. On another occasion Kant regards it thus (Kritik der reinen Vernunft, p. 101): These moments confuse themselves, because the constant element is itself a category. Idealism, when we regard it as signifying that nothing exists outside of my individual self-consciousness as individual, as also the refutation of this, the assertion that things exist outside of my self-consciousness as individual, are the one as bad as the other. The former is the idealism of Berkeley, in which self-consciousness as individual is alone in question, or the world of self-consciousness appears as a number of limited, sensuous, individual conceptions, which are as completely devoid of truth as though they were called things. The truth or untruth does not rest in their being things or conceptions, but in their limitation and contingency, whether as conceptions or things. The refutation of this idealism is nothing more than calling attention to the fact that this empirical consciousness does not exist in itself — just as those empiric things do not exist in themselves. But the knowing subject does not with Kant really arrive at reason, for it remains still the individual self-consciousness as such, which is opposed to the universal. As a matter of fact there is described in what we have seen only the empirical finite self-consciousness which requires a material from outside, or which is limited. We do not ask whether these facts of knowledge are in and for themselves true or untrue; the whole of knowledge remains within subjectivity, and on the other side there is the thing-in-itself as an external. This subjectivity is however concrete in itself; even the determinate categories of the thinking understanding are concrete, and much more is experience so — the synthesis of the sensation and the category.341
c. The third faculty Kant finds in reason, to which he advances from the understanding after the same psychological method; that is to say, he hunts through the soul’s sack to see what faculties are still to be found there; and thus by merest chance he lights on Reason. It would make no difference if there had been no Reason there, just as with physicists it is a matter of perfect indifference whether, for instance, there is such a thing as magnetism or not. “All our knowledge begins from the senses, thence proceeds to the understanding, and finishes up with reason; nothing higher than this is to be found in us, for it signifies the working up of the material of perception, and the reducing of it to the highest unity of thought.” Reason is therefore, according to Kant, the power of obtaining knowledge from principles, that is, the power of knowing the particular in the universal by means of Notions; the understanding, on the contrary, reaches its particular by means of perception. But the categories are themselves particular. The principle of reason, according to Kant, is really the universal, inasmuch as it finds the unconditioned involved in the conditioned knowledge of the understanding. Understanding is hence for him thought in finite relations; reason, on the contrary, is thought which makes the unconditioned its object. Since Kant’s time it has become customary in the language of philosophy to distinguish understanding and reason, while by earlier philosophers this distinction was not drawn. The product of reason is, according to Kant, the Idea — a Platonic expression — and he understands by it the unconditioned, the infinite.342 It is a great step forward to say that reason brings forth Ideas; with Kant, however, the Idea is merely the abstract universal, the indeterminate.
This, the unconditioned, must now be grasped as concrete, and therein lies the main difficulty. For to know the unconditioned means to determine it and to deduce its determinations. Much has been written and said on the subject of knowledge, without a definition of it ever having been offered. But it is the business of Philosophy to see that what is taken for granted as known is really known. Now on this point Kant says that reason has certainly the desire to know the infinite, but has not the power. And the reason which Kant gives for this (Kritik der reinen Vernunft, pp. 277, 278), is on the one hand that no psychologically sensuous intuition or perception corresponds with the infinite, that it is not given in outward or inward experience; to the Idea “no congruent or corresponding object can be discovered in the sensuous world.” It depends, however, on how the world is looked at; but experience and observation of the world mean nothing else for Kant than a candlestick standing here, and a snuff-box standing there. It is certainly correct to say that the infinite is not given in the world of sensuous perception; and supposing that what we know is experience, a synthesis of what is thought and what is felt, the infinite can certainly not be known in the sense that we have a sensuous perception of it. But no one wishes to demand a sensuous proof in verification of the infinite; spirit is for spirit alone. The second reason for considering that the infinite cannot be known, lies in this, that Reason has no part in it except as supplying the forms of thought which we call categories; and these doubtless afford what Kant calls objective determinations, but in such a way that in themselves they are still only subjective. If therefore for the determination of the infinite we employ these categories which are applicable only to phenomena, we entangle ourselves in false arguments (paralogisms) and in contradictions (antinomies); and it is an important point in the Kantian philosophy that the infinite, so far as it is defined by means of categories, loses itself in contradictions. Although reason, says Kant, becomes transcendent by the exhibition of these contradictions, it still retains its claim to trace perception, experience, and knowledge pertaining to the understanding, back to the infinite. This union of the infinite, the unconditioned, with the finite and conditioned as existing in the knowledge given by the understanding, or even in perception, would signify that the acme of concreteness had been reached.
Of this Unconditioned there are several kinds, objects having special features of their own and proceeding from reason, transcendental Ideas; they are thus themselves particular in their nature. The manner in which Kant arrives at these Ideas is again derived from experience, from formal logic, according to which there are various forms of the syllogism. Because, says Kant, there are three forms of the syllogism, categorical, hypothetical, and disjunctive, the Unconditioned is also three-fold in its nature: “Firstly, an Unconditioned of the categorical synthesis in a subject.” Synthesis is the concrete; but the expression is ambiguous, since it indicates an external association of independent elements. “In the second place, an Unconditioned of the hypothetical synthesis of the members of a series will have to be looked for; and in the third place, an Unconditioned of the disjunctive synthesis of the parts in a system.” We make the first connection, expressed as object of Reason or transcendental Idea, when we conceive “the thinking subject;” the second “is the sum total of all phenomena, the world;” and the third is “the thing which contains the supreme condition of the possibility of all that can be thought, the Being of all Beings,” i.e. God. When brought to an ultimate point, the question which meets us is whether Reason can bring these objects to reality, or whether they remain confined to subjective thought. Now, according to Kant, Reason is not capable of procuring reality for its Ideas — otherwise it would be transcendent, its limits would be overstepped; it produces only paralogisms, antinomies, and an ideal without reality.343
α. “A. paralogism is a syllogism false in its form.” Since Reason credits with reality that mode of the Unconditioned which constitutes the categorical synthesis in a subject, and therefore the thinking subject, it is termed substance. Now is the thinking ego a substance, a soul, a soul-thing? Further questions are whether it is permanent, immaterial, incorruptible, personal and immortal, and such as to have a real community with the body. The falsity of the syllogism consists in this, that the idea of the unity of the transcendental subject essential to Reason is expressed as a thing; for it is only in this way that the permanency of the same becomes substance. Otherwise I find myself permanent in my thought, of course, but only within perceiving consciousness, not outside of that. The ego is therefore the empty, transcendental subject of our thoughts, that moreover becomes known only through its thoughts; but of what it is in itself we cannot gather the least idea. (A horrible distinction! For thought is nothing more or less than the “in-itself” or implicit.) We cannot assert of it any present Being, because thought is an empty form, we have a conception of what thinking Beings are through no outward experience, but only by means of self-consciousness, — i.e. because we cannot take the “I” in our hands, nor see it, nor smell it. We therefore know very well that the ego is a subject, but if we pass beyond self-consciousness, and say that it is substance, we go farther than we are entitled to do. I cannot therefore assign any reality to the subject.344
We here see Kant fall into contradiction, what with the barbarity of the conceptions which he refutes, and the barbarity of his own conceptions which remain behind when the others are refuted. In the first place, he is perfectly correct when he maintains that the ego is not a soul-thing, a dead permanency which has a sensuous present existence; indeed, were it to be an ordinary thing, it would be necessary that it should be capable of being experienced. But, in the second place, Kant does not assert the contrary of this, namely that the ego, as this universal or as self-thinking, has in itself the true reality which he requires as an objective mode. For he does not get clear of the conception of reality in which reality consists in the possession of a sensuous present existence; accordingly, because the ego is given in no outward experience, it is not real. For self-consciousness, the ego as such, is not, according to Kant, reality; it is only our thought, or in other words he regards self-consciousness as being itself simply and entirely sensuous. The form which Kant accordingly bestows on Being, thing, substance, would seem to indicate that these categories of the understanding were too high for the subject, too high to be capable of being predicated of it. But really such determinations are too poor and too mean, for what possesses life is not a thing, nor can the soul, the spirit, the ego, be called a thing. Being is the least or lowest quality that one can assign to spirit, its abstract, immediate identity with itself; Being thus no doubt pertains to spirit, but it must be considered as a determination scarcely worth applying to it.
β. In the second place we have the antinomy, i.e. the contradiction in Reason’s Idea of the Unconditioned, an Idea applied to the world in order to represent it as a complete summing-up of conditions. That is to say, in the given phenomena Reason demands the absolute completeness of the conditions of their possibility, so far as these constitute a series, so that the unconditioned is contained in the world, i.e. the totality of the series. If now this completeness is expressed as existing, an antinomy is alone presented, and Reason is presented only as dialectic: i.e. in this object there is on every side a perfect contradiction found.345 For phenomena are a finite content, and the world is a conjunction of the limited; if this content is now thought by Reason, and therefore subsumed under the unconditioned and the unlimited, we have two determinations, finite and infinite, which contradict each other. Reason demands a perfectly complete synthesis, an absolute beginning; but in phenomena we have, on the contrary, a succession of causes and effects, which never come to an end. Kant here points out four contradictions (Kritik der reinen Vernunft, p. 320), which, however, is not enough; for in each Notion there are antinomies, since it is not simple but concrete, and therefore contains different determinations, which are direct opposites.
αα. These antinomies in the first place involve our making the one determination, limitation, just as valid as non-limitation. “Thesis: The world has a beginning and an end in time, and it is limited in regard to space. Antithesis: It has no beginning and no end in time, and also no limits in space.” The one, says Kant, can be proved just as easily as the other; and indeed he does prove each indirectly, though his are not “advocate’s proofs.”346 The world, as the universe, is the whole; it is thus a universal idea, and therefore unlimited. The completion of the synthesis in progression as regards time and space is, however, a first beginning of time and space. If therefore the categories of limited and unlimited are applied to the world in order to attain to a knowledge of it, we fall into contradictions, because the categories are not applicable to things-in-themselves.
ββ. The second antinomy is that atoms, from which substance is composed, must necessarily be admitted to exist, therefore simplicity can be proved; but just as easy is it to prove incompleteness, the endless process of division. The thesis is accordingly stated thus: “Every compound substance consists of simple parts,” and the antithesis is as follows: “There exists nothing simple.”347 The one is here the limit, a material self-existence, the point which is likewise the enclosing surface; the other is divisibility ad infinitum.
γγ. The third antinomy is the opposition between freedom and necessity. The first is the self-determining, the point of view pertaining to infinity: causality according to the laws of freedom is the only causality. The other is: Determinism alone is to be found: everything is determined by means of an external ground or reason.348
δδ. The fourth antinomy rests on what follows: On the one hand totality completes itself in freedom as a first beginning of action, or in an absolutely necessary Being, as the cause of the world, so that the process is interrupted: but there is opposed to that freedom the necessity of a process according to conditions of causes and effects, and to the necessity of a Being is opposed the consideration that everything is contingent. The absolute necessity of the conditioned world is therefore on the one hand maintained thus: “To the world belongs an absolutely necessary Being.” The opposite to this is, “There exists no absolutely necessary Being, either as part of the world or outside of the world.”349
One of these opposites is just as necessary as the other, and it is superfluous to carry this further here. The necessity of these contradictions is the interesting fact which Kant (Kritik der reinen Vernunft, p. 324) has brought to consciousness; in ordinary metaphysics, however, it is imagined that one of these contradictions must hold good, and the other be disproved. The most important point involved in this assertion of Kant’s is, however, unintentional on his part. For he indeed solves these antinomies (Kritik der reinen Vernunft, pp. 385, 386), but only in the particular sense of transcendental idealism, which does not doubt or deny the existence of external things (supra, p. 442), but “allows that things are perceived in space and time” (which is the case, whether it allows it or not): for transcendental idealism, however, “space and time in themselves are not things at all,” and therefore “do not exist apart from our mind;” i.e. all these determinations of a beginning in time, and so on, do not really belong to things, to the implicitude of the phenomenal world, which has independent existence outside of our subjective thought. If such determinations belonged to the world, to God, to free agents, there would be an objective contradiction; but this contradiction is not found as absolute, it pertains only to us. Or, in other words, this transcendental idealism lets the contradiction remain, only it is not Being in itself that is thus contradictory, for the contradiction has its source in our thought alone. Thus the same antinomy remains in our mind; and as it was formerly God who had to take upon Himself all contradictions, so now it is self-consciousness. But the Kantian philosophy does not go on to grapple with the fact that it is not things that are contradictory, but self-consciousness itself. Experience teaches that the ego does not melt away by reason of these contradictions, but continues to exist; we need not therefore trouble ourselves about its contradictions, for it can bear them. Nevertheless Kant shows here too much tenderness for things: it would be a pity, he thinks, if they contradicted themselves. But that mind, which is far higher, should be a contradiction — that is not a pity at all. The contradiction is therefore by no means solved by Kant; and since mind takes it upon itself, and contradiction is self-destructive, mind is in itself all derangement and disorder. The true solution would be found in the statement that the categories have no truth in themselves, and the Unconditioned of Reason just as little, but that it lies in the unity of both as concrete, and in that alone.
γ. Kant now goes on to the Idea of God; this third idea is the Being of Beings, which the other ideas presupposed. Kant says (Kritik der reinen Vernunft, pp. 441-452), that according to the definition of Wolff, God is the most real of all Beings; the object then comes to be to prove that God is not only Thought, but that He is, that He has reality, Being. This Kant calls the Ideal of Reason, to distinguish it from the Idea, which is only the sum of all possibility. The Ideal is thus the Idea as existent; just as in art we give the name of ideal to the Idea realized in a sensuous manner. Here Kant takes into consideration the proof of the existence of God, as he asks whether reality can be assigned to this Ideal.
The ontological proof proceeds from the absolute Notion, in order from it to argue up to Being. With Anselm, Descartes, and Spinoza the transition to Being is thus made; and all of them assume in so doing the unity of Being and thought. But Kant says (Kritik der reinen Vernunft, pp. 458-466): To this Ideal of Reason just as little reality can be assigned: there is no transition from the Notion to Being. “Being is not a real predicate,” like any other, “a Notion of something which might be added to the Notion of a thing. A hundred real dollars do not contain in the very least more than a hundred possible dollars,” they are the same content, i.e. the same Notion; they are also a hundred exactly. The one is the Notion, or rather the conception, the other is the object; Being is no new determination of the Notion, otherwise my Notion of a hundred real dollars would contain something different from a hundred real dollars. But “the object, as real, is not contained in my Notion alone; or to my Notion the real hundred dollars are synthetically added.” Being cannot therefore be derived from the Notion, because it is not contained therein, but must be added to it. “We must go out of the Notion in order to arrive at existence. With regard to objects of pure thought, there are no means of coming to know of their existence, because it had to be known a priori; but our consciousness of all existence belongs entirely to experience.” That is to say, Kant does not attain to the comprehension of that very synthesis of Notion and Being, or in other words, he does not comprehend existence, i.e. he does not attain to the establishment of it as Notion; existence remains for him something absolutely different from a Notion. The content is no doubt the same for him in what exists and in the Notion: but since Being is not involved in the Notion, the attempt to derive the one from the other is unavailing.
Of course the determination of Being is not found as positive and ready-made in the Notion; the Notion is something different from reality and objectivity. If we therefore abide by the Notion, we abide by Being as something different from the Notion, and adhere to the separation of the two; we then have conception, and not Being at all. That a hundred possible dollars are something different from a hundred actual ones is a reflection of a very popular nature, so much so that no proposition has been so well received as the assertion that no transition can be made from the Notion to Being; for though I imagine to myself a hundred dollars, I do not possess them for all that. But in a like popular fashion it might be said that one must leave off imagining, for that is mere conception: i.e. what is merely imaginary is untrue, the hundred imaginary dollars are and remain imaginary. Therefore to believe in them is a proof of an unsound understanding, and is of no manner of use; and he is a foolish fellow who indulges in such fancies and wishes. One possesses a hundred dollars, when they are real only; if a man has therefore so great a desire to possess a hundred dollars, he must put his hand to work in order to obtain them: i.e. he must not come to a standstill at the imagination of them, but pass out beyond it. This subjective side is not the ultimate or the absolute; the true is that which is not merely subjective. If I possess a hundred dollars, I have them actually, and at the same time I form a conception of them to myself. But according to Kant’s representation we come to a deadlock at the difference; dualism is ultimate, and each side has independent validity as an absolute. Against this false idea of what is to be absolute and ultimate, the healthy human understanding is directed; every ordinary consciousness rises above it, every action aims at setting aside a subjective conception and making it into something objective. There is no man so foolish as that philosophy; when a man feels hungry, he does not call up the imagination of food, but sets about satisfying his hunger. All activity is a conception which does not yet exist, but whose subjectivity is abrogated. Moreover the imaginary hundred dollars become real, and the real ones imaginary: this is a frequent experience, this is their fate; it depends on circumstances entirely outward whether a hundred dollars become my property or not. Of course the mere conception is of no good, if I obstinately hold by it: for I can imagine what I will, but that does not make it exist. The only important point is what I conceive to myself, and then whether I think or comprehend the subjective and Being; by means of this each passes into the other. Thought, the Notion, of necessity implies that the Notion does not remain subjective; this subjective is on the contrary abrogated and reveals itself as objective. Now that unity is expressly affirmed by Descartes solely in reference to the Notion of God, for it is just that which is God; he speaks of no hundred dollars, as these are not an existence which has a Notion in itself. That opposition does away with itself absolutely and entirely, i.e. the finite passes away; it holds good only in the philosophy of finitude. If, therefore, there is not a Notion of existence formed, we have in it a notionless, sensuous object of perception; and what is notionless is certainly not a Notion, — therefore sensation, handling, are not Notions. Such existence has of course no Absolute, no real essence: or such existence has no truth, it is only a vanishing moment. This useless thrashing of the empty grainless straw of the common logic is termed philosophizing: it is like Issachar the strong ass, which could not be made to move from the spot where it was (Gen. xlix. 14). People of this kind say: We are good for nothing, and because we are good for nothing, we are good for nothing, and wish to be good for nothing. But it is a very false idea of Christian humility and modesty to desire through one’s abjectness to attain to excellence; this confession of one’s own nothingness is really inward pride and great self-conceit. But for the honour of true humility we must not remain in our misery, but raise ourselves above it by laying hold of the Divine.
The fact to which Kant clings most strongly (Kritik der reinen Vernunft, p. 467) is this, that Being cannot be extracted from the Notion. The result of this is the proposition that to have the thought of the Infinite is certainly Reason; but that from the Idea of Reason is separated determination in general, and especially the determination which is known as Being. The Ideas of Reason cannot be proved from experience, or obtain from it their verification: if they are defined by means of categories, contradictions arise. If the Idea in general is to be defined as existent only, it is nothing more or less than the Notion; and the Being of the existent is still distinguished from it. This result, however, so highly important with reference to knowledge of the understanding, Kant does not, with reference to Reason, carry further than to say that Reason has on its own account nothing but formal unity for the methodical systematization of the knowledge of the understanding. Abstract thinking is adhered to; it is said that the understanding can only bring about order in things; but order is nothing in and for itself, it is only subjective. There therefore remains nothing for Reason except the form of its pure identity with itself, and this extends no further than to the arranging of the manifold laws and relations of the understanding, the classes, kinds and species which the understanding discovers.350 I, as Reason or conception, and the things external to me, are both absolutely different from one another; and that, according to Kant, is the ultimate standpoint. The animal does not stop at this standpoint, but practically brings about unity. This is the critique of theoretical Reason which Kant gives, and in which he states the a priori and determinate character of Reason in itself, without bringing it to the determinateness of individuality.351
Mention should still be made of the positive philosophy or metaphysics, which Kant sets a priori above objective existence, the content of the object of experience, nature; we have here his natural philosophy, which is a demonstration of the universal conceptions of Nature. But this is on the one hand very scanty and restricted in content, containing as it does sundry general qualities and conceptions of matter and motion, and with regard to the scientific side or the a priori, as Kant calls it, it is likewise altogether unsatisfactory. For Kant assumes all such conceptions as that matter has motion and also a power of attraction and repulsion,352 instead of demonstrating their necessity. The “Principles of Natural Philosophy” have nevertheless been of great service, inasmuch as at the commencement of a philosophy of nature, attention was called to the fact that physical science employs thought-determinations without further investigation; and these determinations constitute the real foundations of its objects. Density, for instance, is looked on by physical science as a variable quantity, as a mere quantum in space: instead of this Kant asserted it to be a certain degree of occupation of space, i.e. energy, intensity of action. He demands accordingly (Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft, pp. 65-68) a construction of matter from powers and activities, not from atoms; and Schelling still holds to this without getting further. Kant’s work is an attempt to think, i.e. to demonstrate the determinations of thought, whose product consists of such conceptions as matter; he has attempted to determine the fundamental Notions and principles of this science, and has given the first impulse to a so-called dynamic theory of Nature.
“Religion within pure Reason” is also a demonstration of dogmas as aspects of Reason, just as in Nature. Thus in the positive dogmas of religion, which the Aufklärung (the clearing-up) — or the Ausklärung (the clearing-out) — made short work of, Kant called to remembrance Ideas of Reason, asking what rational and, first of all, what moral meaning lies in that which men call dogmas of religion, e.g. original sin.353 He is much more reasonable than the Ausklärung, which thinks it beneath its dignity to speak of such matters. These are the principal points in respect to the theoretical part of Kant’s philosophy.
- The second subject of review in Kant’s philosophy is the practical sphere, the nature and principle of the will; this subject is dealt with in the Critique of Practical Reason, in which Kant accepted Rousseau’s conclusion that the will is absolutely free. Kant’s idea of theoretic Reason is that when Reason relates itself to an object, this object must be given to it; but when the object is given by Reason to itself, it has no truth; and Reason in knowledge of this kind does not arrive at independence. As practical, on the contrary, Reason is independent in itself; as a moral Being man is free, raised above all natural law and above all phenomena. As the theoretic Reason had in itself categories, a priori distinctions, so practical Reason has in turn the moral law in general, the further determinations of which are constituted by the notions of duty and right, lawful and unlawful; and here Reason disdains all the given material which was necessary to it on the theoretic side. The will determines itself within itself; all that is right and moral rests on freedom; in this man has his absolute self-consciousness.354 On this side self-consciousness finds essential reality in itself, as theoretical Reason found it in an “other”; and in the first place, indeed, the ego in its individuality is immediate reality, universality, objectivity; in the second place subjectivity strives after reality, but not after sensuous reality such as we had before, for here Reason holds itself to be the real. Here we have the Notion which is sensible of its own deficiency; this theoretic Reason could not be, as in it the Notion had to remain the Notion. Thus we have the standpoint of absoluteness revealed, since there is an infinite disclosed within the human breast. The satisfying part in Kant’s philosophy is that the truth is at least set within the heart; and hence I acknowledge that, and that alone, which is in conformity with my determined nature.
a. Kant divides will into lower and higher faculties of desire; this expression is not inapt. The lower faculties of desire are impulses, inclinations, etc.; the higher faculty is the will as such, which has not external, individual aims, but universal. To the question what the principle of will that should determine man in his actions is, all sorts of answers have been given; for instance, self-love, benevolence, happiness, etc. Such material principles of action, Kant now says, are all reducible to impulses, to happiness; but the rational in itself is purely formal, and consists in the maxim that what is to hold good as law, must be capable of being thought of as a law of universal application, without destroying itself. All morality of action now rests upon the conviction that the act is done with consciousness of the law, for the sake of the law and out of respect for the law and for itself, without any regard to what makes for happiness. As a moral Being man has the moral law in himself, the principle of which is freedom and autonomy of the will; for the will is absolute spontaneity. Determinations which are taken from the inclinations are heterogeneous principles as regards the will; or the will is heteronomy if it takes such determinations as its end and aim; for in that case it takes its determinations from something else than itself. But the essence of the will is to determine itself from itself; for practical Reason gives itself laws. But the empirical will is heteronomous, for it is determined by desires; and they belong to our nature, not to the realm of freedom.355
It is a highly important point in the Kantian philosophy that what self-consciousness esteems reality, law, and implicit Being, is brought back within itself. While a man is striving after this aim and that, according as he judges the world or history in one way or the other, what is he to take as his ultimate aim? For the will, however, there is no other aim than that derived from itself, the aim of its freedom. It is a great advance when the principle is established that freedom is the last hinge on which man turns, a highest possible pinnacle, which allows nothing further to be imposed upon it; thus man bows to no authority, and acknowledges no obligations, where his freedom is not respected. Great popularity has from one point of view been won for Kantian philosophy by the teaching that man finds in himself an absolutely firm, unwavering centre-point; but with this last principle it has come to a standstill. While the highest pinnacle of the theoretic Reason is abstract identity, because it can furnish only a canon, a rule for abstract classifications,356 practical Reason, as law-giving, is immediately regarded as concrete; the law which it gives to itself is the moral law. But even if it is stated that it is concrete in itself, there is the further consideration that this freedom is at first only the negative of everything else; no bond, nothing external, lays me under an obligation. It is to this extent indeterminate; it is the identity of the will with itself, its at-homeness with itself. But what is the content of this law? Here we at once come back to the lack of content. For the sole form of this principle is nothing more or less than agreement with itself, universality; the formal principle of legislation in this internal solitude comes to no determination, or this is abstraction only. The universal, the non-contradiction of self, is without content, something which comes to be reality in the practical sphere just as little as in the theoretical. The universal moral law Kant therefore expresses thus (and the setting up of such a universal form was at all times the demand of the abstract understanding): “Act from maxims” (the law is also to be my particular law), “which are capable of becoming universal laws.”357
Thus for the determination of duty (for the question which meets us is, what is duty for the free will) Kant has contributed nothing but the form of identity, which is the law of abstract Understanding. To defend one’s fatherland, to promote the happiness of another, is a duty, not because of the content, but because it is duty; as with the Stoics, what was thought was true for the very reason that, and in so far as it was thought (Vol. II., pp. 254, 260, 263). The content as such is indeed not what holds good universally in the moral law, because it contradicts itself. For benevolence, for instance, enjoins: “Give your possessions to the poor,” but if all give away what they have, beneficence is done away with (Vol. I., pp. 417, 418). Even with abstract identity, however, we do not get a step further, for every content which is put into this form is by being so put freed from self-contradiction. But nothing would be lost if it were not put into this form at all. With regard to property, for instance, the law of my actions is this: Property ought to be respected, for the opposite of this cannot be universal law. That is correct, but it is quite a formal determination: If property is, then it is. Property is here presupposed, but this determination may also in the same way be omitted, and then there is no contradiction involved in theft: If there is no such thing as property, then it is not respected. This is the defect in the principle of Kant and Fichte, that it is really formal; chill duty is the final undigested lump left within the stomach, the revelation given to Reason.
The first postulate in practical Reason is thus free, independent will which determines itself, but this concrete is still abstract. The second and third are forms which remind us that the will is concrete in a higher sense.
b. The second point is the connection of the Notion of the will with the particular will of the individual; the concrete is here the fact that my particular will and the universal will are identical, or that I am a moral human being. The unity, that man should be moral, is postulated; but beyond the “should” and this talk of morality, no advance is made. It is not said what is moral; and no thought is given to a system of the self-realizing spirit. For really, as theoretic Reason stands opposed to the objective of the senses, so practical Reason stands opposed to the practical sensuousness, to impulses and inclinations. Perfected morality must remain a Beyond; for morality presupposes the difference of the particular and universal will. It is a struggle, the determination of the sensuous by the universal; the struggle can only take place when the sensuous will is not yet in conformity with the universal. The result is, therefore, that the aim of the moral will is to be attained in infinite progress only; on this Kant founds (Kritik der prakt. Vernunft, pp. 219-223) the postulate of the immortality of the soul, as the endless progress of the subject in his morality, because morality itself is incomplete, and must advance into infinitude. The particular will is certainly something other than the universal will; but it is not ultimate or really permanent.
c. The third point is the highest concrete, the Notion of the freedom of all men, or the natural world has to be in harmony with the Notion of freedom. That is the postulate of the existence of God, whom Reason, however, does not recognize. Will has the whole world, the whole of the sensuous, in opposition to it, and yet Reason insists on the unity of Nature or the moral law, as the Idea of the Good, which is the ultimate end of the world. Since, however, it is formal, and therefore has no content on its own account, it stands opposed to the impulses and inclinations of a subjective and an external independent Nature. Kant reconciles the contradiction of the two (Kritik der prakt. Vernunft, pp. 198-200) in the thought of the highest Good, in which Nature is conformed to rational will, and happiness to virtue; — a harmony which does not enter into the question at all, although practical reality consists therein. For happiness is only one’s own sensuous consciousness, or the actuality of a particular individual, not universal reality in itself. The unification spoken of itself therefore remains only a Beyond, a thought, which is not actually in existence, but only ought to be. Kant (Kritik der prakt. Vernunft, pp. 205-209) thus agrees entirely with the talk which alleges that in this world it often fares ill with the good, and well with the wicked, and so on; and he postulates further the existence of God as the Being, the causality, through whom this harmony comes to pass, on behalf both of the sanctity of the moral law, and of the rational end to be attained in Nature, but only in infinite progress; which postulate, like that of the immortality of the soul, allows the contradiction to remain as it is all the time, and expresses only in the abstract that the reconciliation ought to come about. The postulate itself is always there, because the Good is a Beyond with respect to Nature; the law of necessity and the law of liberty are different from one another, and placed in this dualism. Nature would remain Nature no longer, if it were to become conformed to the Notion of the Good; and thus there remains an utter opposition between the two sides, because they cannot unite. It is likewise necessary to establish the unity of the two; but this is never actual, for their separation is exactly what is presupposed. Kant employs popular language thus: evil ought to be overcome, but yet must not have been overcome. God is to him, therefore, only a faith, an opinion, which is only subjectively, and not absolutely true.358 This result is also of a very popular character.
These postulates express nothing but the synthesis, devoid of thought, of the different moments which contradict each other on every hand; they are therefore a “nest”359 of contradictions. For instance, the immortality of the soul is postulated on account of imperfect morality, i.e. because it is infected with sensuousness. But the sensuous is implied in moral self-consciousness; the end, perfection, is what really destroys morality as such. Similarly the other aim, the harmony of the sensuous and the rational, to an equal extent abrogates morality; for that consists in this very opposition of Reason to the sensuous. The actuality of the God who produces harmony is of such a character that it does not enter into consciousness at all; it is accepted by consciousness for the sake of harmony, just as children make some kind of scarecrow, and then agree with each other to pretend to be afraid of it. The ground on which God is accepted — that by the conception of a holy law-giver the moral law may acquire additional reverence — contradicts the fact that morality really consists in reverence for the law simply for its own sake.360 In Practical Reason self-consciousness esteems itself to be implicit Being, as contrasted with theoretic Reason, which assigns implicitude to objective existence, but the one, we see, attains just as little as the other to unity and actuality in itself. It is hard for man to believe that Reason actually exists: but there is nothing real except Reason; it is the absolute power. The vanity of man aspires to have an ideal before him, in order to be able to find fault with everything alike. We possess all wisdom, it is within us, but is not forthcoming. That is the ultimate standpoint; it is a high standpoint, no doubt, but in it the truth is never reached. The absolute Good remains “what ought to be,” or without objectivity; and there it has to remain.
- There is still left for us to consider the third side in Kant’s philosophy, the Critique of the Faculty of Judgment, in which the demand for the concrete comes in, the demand that the Idea of unity spoken of before should be established not as a Beyond, but as present; and this side is of special importance. Kant says that the understanding no doubt regulates in the theoretic sphere and produces categories; but these remain mere general determinations, beyond which lies the particular (the other element which belongs to every item of knowledge). The two are distinguished from one another for the understanding; for its distinctions remain in universality. In the practical sphere Reason is certainly the implicit, but its free independence, its law-giving freedom in higher form, is opposed to Nature in its freedom or to Nature’s own laws. “In the theoretic sphere Reason can draw conclusions from given laws through syllogisms, only by means of the understanding, and these conclusions never get beyond Nature; it is only in the practical sphere that Reason itself gives laws. Understanding and” (practical) “Reason have two different regulative systems on one and the same ground of experience, without the one being detrimental to the other. For if the Notion of Nature has but little influence on the giving of laws by the Notion of Freedom, just as little does the latter interfere with the legislation of Nature. The possibility of the existence side by side of the two regulative systems and of the powers belonging to them was proved in the Critique of pure Reason.” (!?) “Now if a unity is not constituted by these two different spheres, which certainly do not put a limit on each other in their regulative action, but do so incessantly in their operations in the sensuous world” (i.e. where they encounter each other), “the reason is this, that the Notion of Nature represents its objects in perception, not as things in themselves, but as mere phenomena, while the Notion of Freedom, on the other hand, represents in its object a thing in itself, no doubt, but not in perception. Consequently neither of them can attain to a theoretic knowledge of its object (and even of the thinking subject) as a thing-in-itself, which last would be the supersensuous, an unlimited and inaccessible realm for our whole faculty of knowledge. Now truly there is fixed a gulf over which the eye cannot reach, between the realm of the Notion of Nature, as the sensuous, and the realm of the Notion of Freedom, as the supersensuous, so that it is not possible to pass from the one to the other, since it is just as if there were two different worlds, the first of which could have no influence on the second. Nevertheless the latter is conceived as having an influence on the former, or, in other words, freedom is conceived as having for its mission the realization in the sensuous world of the end indicated by the laws of freedom. Consequently Nature must be so conceived that, while in form it realizes its own laws, there may yet be a possibility of ends being realized in it according to the laws of freedom. Therefore there must surely be some ground for the unity of the supersensuous which lies at the foundation of Nature with that which the Notion of Freedom practically contains, the Notion of which ground of unity, although it attains neither theoretically nor practically to a knowledge of the same, and consequently has no peculiar province, yet makes possible the transition from the mode of thought in accordance with the principles of the one, to the mode of thought in accordance with the principles of the other. Between Understanding and Reason there now comes the Faculty of Judgment, as between the powers of knowledge and desire there come pleasure and its opposite; in this faculty must therefore lie the transition from the province of the Notions of Nature to the province of the Notion of Freedom.”361
Adaptation to ends has its place here, i.e. a particular reality, which is determined only through the universal, the end. The understanding is the ground of this unity of the manifold; the sensuous is therefore here determined by means of the supersensuous. This idea of a universal which implicitly contains the particular is according to Kant the precise object of the faculty of judgment, which he divides as follows:— “If the universal (the rule, principle, law) is given, the faculty of judgment which subsumes the particular under that universal, is determinative,” — the immediate faculty of judgment. But here there is also a particular which is not determined by species. “If, however, only the particular is given, for which the faculty of judgment has to find the universal, it is reflective.” The reflective judgment has as its principle the unity of particularity and the abstract universal of the understanding, the idea of a legal necessity which is at the same time free, or of a freedom which is directly one with its content. “This principle can be no other but the fact that since universal laws of Nature have their foundation in our understanding, which prescribes them to nature, although only according to their general conception, the particular, empirical laws, in so far as they are undetermined by universal laws, must be viewed as containing that unity which they would contain if they had been given by some intelligence — other, it may be, than our own — with express reference to our cognitive faculties, in order to render possible a system of experience according to particular natural laws. It is not as if such an intelligence must be assumed (for it is only the reflective faculty of judgment to which this idea serves as principle): this faculty gives a law only to itself, not to Nature in addition. Now the conception of an object (if it at the same time contains the ground of the reality of this object), the end, and the harmony of a thing with that quality of things which is only possible in conformity with ends, are termed the adaptation to purpose of the form; therefore the principle of the faculty of judgment in respect to the form of the things of Nature under empirical laws in general is the adaptability to purpose of Nature in its multiplicity. That is to say, Nature is represented by this Notion as if an intelligence contained the ground of the unity in multiplicity of Nature’s empirical laws.”362
Aristotle already regarded Nature as in itself showing this adaptation to end, and as having in itself νοῦς, intelligence, the Universal, so that in undivided unity one element is moment of another (v. Vol. II. pp. 156-162). Purpose is the Notion, and immanent; not external form and abstraction as distinguished from a fundamental material, but penetrating, so that all that is particular is determined by this universal itself. According to Kant this is Understanding: no doubt the laws of the Understanding, which it implicitly has in knowledge, leave the objective still undetermined, but because this manifold itself must have a connection in itself, which is yet contingent for human intelligence, “the faculty of judgment must assume as a principle for its own use that what is contingent for us contains a unity, which for us indeed is not knowable, but yet thinkable, in the connection of the manifold with an implicitly possible experience.”363 This principle hereby at once falls back again into the subjectivity of a thought, and is only a maxim of our reflection, by which nothing is to be expressed regarding the objective nature of the object,364 because Being-in-itself is once for all fixed outside of self-consciousness, and the Understanding is conceived only in the form of the self-conscious, not in its becoming another.
Now this principle of the reflective faculty of judgment is in itself a two-fold adaptation to end, the formal and the material; the faculty of judgment is thus either æsthetic or teleological: of these the former has to do with subjective, the latter with objective, logical adaptation to end. There are thus two objects of the faculty of judgment — the beautiful in works of art and the natural products of organic life — which make known to us the unity of the Notion of Nature and the Notion of Freedom.365 The consideration of these works involves the fact, that we see a unity of the Understanding and the particular. But as this consideration is only a subjective manner of representing such products, and does not contain the truth of the same, such things are regarded only according to this unity, and they are not in themselves of this nature; what they are in themselves lies beyond.
a. The Beautiful of the æsthetic faculty of judgment consists in the following: “Pleasure and displeasure are something subjective, which can in no way become a part of knowledge. The object has adaptation to end only to the extent that its conception is directly bound up with the feeling of pleasure; and this is an æsthetic conception. The taking up of forms into the imaginative faculty can never occur without the reflecting faculty of judgment at least comparing them, even unintentionally, by means of its power of relating perceptions to Notions.” Now if in this comparison the imaginative faculty (as a faculty of perceptions a priori?) “is, by means of a conception given” — something beautiful,— “unintentionally placed in agreement with the Understanding, as the faculty of Notions, and thereby a feeling of pleasure is awakened, the object must then be looked on as in conformity with end for the reflecting faculty of judgment. Such a judgment regarding the adaptability to end of the object, a judgment which is grounded on no previous Notion of the object, and furnishes no Notion of it, is an æsthetic judgment. An object whose form (not the material of its conception as sensation) is judged to be a cause of the pleasure which springs from the conception of such an object, is beautiful,” — the first reasonable thing said about beauty. The sensuous is one moment of the Beautiful, but it must also express the spiritual, a Notion. “The Beautiful is what is conceived without” subjective “interest,” but similarly also “without Notions” (i.e. determinations of reflection, laws) “as object of a universal pleasure. It is related to no inclination, therefore the subject feels itself quite free therein. It is not beautiful for me. The end is the object of a Notion, so far as the latter is looked on as the cause of the former” (the object); “and the causality of a Notion in respect to its object is adaptation to end.” To the ideal belongs “the Idea of reason, which makes the aims of humanity, as far as they cannot be sensuously conceived, the principle of judgment of a form through which these aims reveal themselves as their effect in the phenomenon. The ideal we may expect to find revealed only in human form.”
The sublime is the effort to give sensuous expression to an Idea in which the inconceivability of the Idea, and the impossibility of finding an adequate expression of it by means of the sensuous, are clearly evidenced.366 Here in the æsthetic faculty of judgment we see the immediate unity of the universal and the particular; for the Beautiful is this very unity, without Notion and immediate. Because Kant, however, places it in the subject, it is limited, and as æsthetic it also ranks lower, inasmuch as it is not the unity as Notion.
b. The other manner of bringing harmony to pass is the teleological way of regarding Nature, which is found in the objective and material adaptation to end. Here the immediate unity of the Notion and reality is looked upon as objective in the organic products of Nature — this being the purpose of Nature, containing in its universality the particular, in its particularity the species. But such a mode of consideration must be practised not externally, but in conformity with internal teleology. In external adaptation to end one thing has its end in another: “Snow protects the sown crops in cold lands from frost, and facilitates the intercourse of men by permitting of sleighing.”367 Internal adaptation to end signifies, on the contrary, that a thing is in itself end and means, its end is not therefore beyond itself. In the contemplation of the living creature we do not remain at the point of having something sensuous before us, which according to the categories of the Understanding is only brought into relation to something other than itself; for we regard it as cause of itself, as producing itself. This is the self-preservation of the living creature; as an individual it is no doubt perishable, but in living it produces itself, although for that purpose certain conditions are requisite. The end or purpose of Nature is therefore to be sought for in matter, to the extent that matter is an inwardly organized product of nature, “in which all is end, and all in turn is means;”368 because all the members of the organism are at the same time means and end, it is an end in itself. That is the Aristotelian Notion — the infinite that returns into itself, the Idea.
Kant at this point calls to mind the following: “We should find no difference between natural mechanism and the technique of Nature, i.e. the connection of ends in the same, were our Understanding not of such a kind that it must pass from the universal to the particular, and the faculty of judgment can therefore pronounce no determining sentences, without having a universal law under which it may subsume the particular. Now the particular as such contains a contingent element in regard to the universal, but nevertheless Reason also demands unity in the connection of particular laws of Nature, and consequently a regulative character, which character when found in the contingent is termed adaptation to end: and the derivation of particular laws from universal is, in regard to the element of contingency which those particular laws contain, a priori impossible through the determination of the Notion of the object; the Notion of the adaptation to end of Nature in its products becomes thus a Notion necessary for the human faculty of judgment, but not affecting the determination of the objects themselves, and therefore a subjective principle.”369 An organic Being is therefore, according to Kant (Kritik der Urtheilskraft, p. 354) one in which natural mechanism and end are identical. We regard it as if there dwelt in the sensuous a Notion which brings the particular into conformity with itself. In the organic products of Nature we perceive this immediate unity of the Notion and reality; for in a living creature there is perceived in one unity the soul, or the universal, and existence or particularity, which is not the case with inorganic Nature. Thus there enters into the Kantian philosophy the conception of the concrete, as that the universal Notion determines the particular. But Kant took these Ideas again in a subjective sense only, as guiding thoughts for the faculty of judgment, by which no Being-in-itself can be expressed; and thus, although he expresses the unity of the Notion and reality, he yet lays fresh emphasis on the side of the Notion. He will not therefore throw off his limitations in the moment in which he assumes them as limitations. This is the perpetual contradiction in Kant’s philosophy: Kant exhibited the extremes of opposition in their one-sidedness, and expressed also the reconciliation of the contradiction; Reason postulates unity, and this we have also in the faculty of judgment. Kant, however, says (Kritik der Urtheilskraft, pp. 355-363): This is only a mode of our reflecting faculty of judgment, life itself is not so; we are merely accustomed so to regard it. In art it is thus certainly the sensuous mode which gives us the conception of the Idea; reality and ideality are here directly in one. But at this point also Kant says that we must remain at what is one-sided, at the very moment when he is passing out beyond it. The wealth of thought therefore still unfolds itself with Kant in subjective form alone; all fulness, all content, concentrates in conceiving, thinking, postulating. The objective, according to Kant, is only what is in itself; and we know not what Things-in-themselves are. But Being-in-itself is only the caput mortuum, the dead abstraction of the “other,” the empty, undetermined Beyond.
The reason why that true Idea should not be the truth is therefore that the empty abstractions of an understanding which keeps itself in the abstract universal, and of a sensuous material of individuality standing in opposition to the same, are presupposed as the truth. Kant no doubt expressly advances to the conception of an intuitive or perceiving understanding, which, while it gives universal laws, at the same time determines the particular; and the determination thus given is deep; it is the true concrete, reality determined by the indwelling Notion, or, as Spinoza says, the adequate Idea. For “to knowledge there also belongs intuitive perception, and the possession of a perfect spontaneity of intuition would be a faculty of knowledge” specifically “distinct from the sensuous, and quite independent thereof, and therefore it would be understanding in the most universal sense. Consequently it is possible to think of an intuitive understanding which does not pass from the universal to the particular, and thus proceed through conceptions to the individual — an understanding in which we do not meet with the contingency of the harmony of Nature in her products, according to particular laws, with the understanding, a contingency which makes it so hard for our understanding to bring” together “into the unity of knowledge the manifold of Nature.” But that this “intellectus archetypus” is the true Idea of the understanding, is a thought which does not strike Kant. Strange to say, he certainly has this idea of the intuitive; and he does not know why it should have no truth — except because our understanding is otherwise constituted, namely such “that it proceeds from the analytic universal to the particular.”370 But absolute Reason and Understanding in itself, as we have already seen (pp. 432, 461), are, in Kant’s view, of such a nature that they have no reality in themselves: the Understanding requires material to work upon, theoretic Reason spins cobwebs of the brain, practical Reason has to allow its reality to come to an end with its postulates. In spite of their directly and definitely expressed non-absoluteness, they are yet looked on as true knowledge; and intuitive Understanding, which holds Notion and sensuous perception in one unity, is looked on as a mere thought which we make for ourselves.
c. The highest form in which the conception of the concrete comes into Kant’s philosophy is this, that the end is grasped in its entire universality; and thus it is the Good. This Good is an Idea; it is my thought; but there exists the absolute demand that it should be realized also in the world, that the necessity of Nature should correspond with the laws of freedom, not as the necessity of an external Nature, but through what is right and moral in human life, through life in the State, — or in other words that the world in general should be good. This identity of the Good and reality is the demand of practical Reason; but subjective Reason cannot realize this. In every good action a man no doubt accomplishes something good, but this is only limited; universal Good, as the final object of the world, can be attained to only through a third. And this power over the world, which has as its final object the Good in the world, is God.371 Thus the Critique of the Faculty of Judgment also ends with the postulate of God. Now, although the particular laws of Nature, as independent individual relations, have no relation to the Good, Reason consists in having and desiring unity as the essential or substantial in itself. The opposition of these two, the Good and the world, is contrary to that identity; Reason must therefore demand that this contradiction should be abrogated, that there should be a power which is good on its own account, and is a Power over Nature. This is the position which God assumes in Kant’s philosophy: no proof is possible, he says, of God’s existence, but the demand is there. The deficiency here is the impossibility of proving God’s existence, and it consists in this, that if we admit Kant’s dualism, it cannot be shown how the Good as abstract Idea in itself is the abrogating of its Idea as abstract; and how the world in itself is the abrogating of itself in its externality, and in its diversity from the Good — this being done in order that both may reveal themselves to be their truth, which in respect to them appears as the Third, but is at the same time determined as the First. Thus, therefore, according to Kant (Kritik der Urtheilskraft, pp. 460, 461), God can only be believed in. We associate the faith of Jacobi with this; for in this point Kant agrees with Jacobi.372
If now, in accordance with this standpoint of Kant and Jacobi, God is believed in, and we admit this standpoint for an instant, there is certainly a return to the Absolute. But the question remains: What is God? To define Him as supersensuous is not much, nor is it more to say He is universal, abstract, absolute. What then is His determination? Were we here, however, to pass over to determinations of the Absolute, the evil result would follow, as far as this standpoint is concerned, that we should pass over to knowledge; for this signifies knowledge of an object which is in itself concrete, i.e. determined. But here the furthest point reached is the general statement that God exists with the determination of being infinite, universal, indeterminate. God cannot be known in this way; for in order to be known He must as concrete possess at least two determinations. In this way mediation would be established, for a knowledge of the concrete is at once a mediate knowledge. But this standpoint lacks mediation, and thus remains at the immediate. Paul, in speaking to the Athenians, appeals to the altar which they had dedicated to the Unknown God, and declares to them what God is; but the standpoint indicated here takes us back to the Unknown God. All the life of Nature, as of Spirit, is mediation in itself; and to this mediation the philosophy of Schelling now passed on.
If we sum up the Kantian philosophy, we find on all hands the Idea of Thought, which is in itself the absolute Notion, and has in itself difference, reality. In the theoretic and practical Reason it has only abstract difference, but in the Faculty of Judgment, as the unity of the two, Kant goes so far as to establish the difference as actual, establishing not only particularity, but also individuality. But, to be sure, this Philistine conception proceeds from our human faculty of knowledge, which is valid for him in its empirical form, notwithstanding his statement that it does not know the truth, and his further description of the true idea of the same as being merely a thought which we possess. Therefore actuality counts as something sensuous, empirical, for the comprehension of which Kant takes the categories of the Understanding, giving them the same validity as they have in every-day life. This is a complete philosophy of the Understanding, which renounces Reason: the reason why it became so popular was the negative one, that men were once for all free from the old metaphysic. According to Kant something sensuous is produced, having thought-determinations, which, however, is not the thing, for if a man, for instance, feels something hard, Kant says: “I feel hardness, but I do not feel Something.” Kant’s philosophy thus ends with a dualism, with the relation which is a plainly essential “ought,” with the unreconciled contradiction. It is otherwise with Jacobi’s faith; he finds the conception of God as immediate existence, and all mediation is untrue for him. With Kant, therefore, the result is: “We know only phenomena;” with Jacobi, on the other hand, it is: “We know only the finite and conditioned.” Over these two results there has been unmingled joy among men, because the sloth of Reason (Heaven be praised!) considered itself liberated from every call to reflect, and now, being saved the trouble of penetrating to its own inward meaning and exploring the depths of Nature and Spirit, it could very well leave itself alone. The further result attending this is the autocracy of the subjective Reason, which, seeing that it is abstract and without knowledge, has only subjective certainty and not objective truth. The second cause of rejoicing was the concession to freedom of a perfect right, which I can neither understand nor justify, and need not do so; my subjective liberty of conviction and certainty holds good all round. The third cause of joy was added by Jacobi, who said that it amounted even to a crime to seek to know the truth, because the infinite was thereby only rendered finite. Truth is in a bad way, when all metaphysic is done away with, and the only philosophy acknowledged is not a philosophy at all!
But besides the general idea of synthetic judgments a priori, a universal which has difference in itself, Kant’s instinct carried this out in accordance with the scheme of triplicity, unspiritual though that was, in the whole system into which for him the entire universe was divided. This he not only practised in the three critiques, but he also followed it out in most of the sub-divisions under the categories, the ideas of Reason, &c. Kant has therefore set forth as a universal scheme the rhythm of knowledge, of scientific movement; and has exhibited on all sides thesis, antithesis and synthesis, modes of the mind by means of which it is mind, as thus consciously distinguishing itself. The first is existence, but in the form of Other-Being for consciousness; for what is only existence is object. The second is Being-for-self, genuine actuality; here the reverse relation enters in, for self-consciousness, as the negative of Being-in-itself, is itself reality. The third is the unity of the two; the absolute, self-conscious actuality is the sum of true actuality, into which are re-absorbed both the objective and the independently existent subjective. Kant has thus made an historical statement of the moments of the whole, and has correctly determined and distinguished them: it is a good introduction to Philosophy. The defect of Kant’s philosophy consists in the falling asunder of the moments of the absolute form; or, regarded from the other side, our understanding, our knowledge, forms an antithesis to Being-in-itself: there is lacking the negative, the abrogation of the “ought,” which is not laid hold of. But thought and thinking had become once for all an absolute requisite that could no longer be set aside. It was consequently in the first place demanded by consistency that particular thoughts should appear as if produced of necessity from the original unity of the ego, and in that way justified. But, in the second place, thought had spread itself over the world, had attached itself to everything, investigated everything, introduced its forms into everything, and systematized everything, so that on every hand thought-determinations had to be followed, instead of any mere feeling or routine or practical common-sense, or what is evidenced in the extraordinary lack of understanding on the part of so-called practical men. And therefore in theology, in governments and their legislation, in the object aimed at by the state, in trades and in mechanics, it is said that men ought to act according to universal determinations, i.e. rationally: and men even talk of a rational brewery, a rational brick-kiln, etc. This is the requisite of concrete thought; while in the Kantian result, which is that of phenomenon, an empty thought was alone present. It is verily also the essence of revealed religion to know what God is. There was, therefore, to be found a yearning desire for content, for truth, since man could not possibly return to the condition of a brute, nor yet sink to the form of sensation, so that this yearning was for him the only thing that held good with regard to the higher life. The first requirement — consistency — Fichte sought to satisfy; the other — content — Schelling strove to fulfil.
FICHTE CREATED A great sensation in his time; his philosophy is the Kantian philosophy in its completion, and, as we must specially notice, it is set forth in a more logical way. He does not pass beyond the fundamentals of Kant’s philosophy, and at first regarded his own philosophy as no more than a systematic working out of the other.373 In addition to these systems of philosophies, and that of Schelling, there are none. Any that pretend to be such merely pick out something from these, and over this they fight and wrangle among themselves. Ils se sont battus les flancs, pour être de grands hommes. For in those times there were in Germany many systems of philosophy, such as those of Reinhold, Krug, Bouterweck, Fries, Schulze, &c.; but in them there is only an extremely limited point of view, combined with boastfulness — a strange medley of stray thoughts and conceptions or facts which I find within me. But their thoughts are all derived from Fichte, Kant, or Schelling — that is in so far as there are thoughts there present at all. Or else some slight modification is added, and this for the most part merely consists in making the great principles barren, what points in them were living are destroyed, or else subordinate forms are changed, whereby another principle is said to be set forth, though when we look closer we find that these principles are but the principles of one of those philosophies that have gone before. This may serve as a justification for my not speaking further of all these philosophies; any exposition of them would be no more than a demonstration that everything in them is taken from Kant, Fichte, or Schelling, and that the modification in form is only the semblance of a change, while really it indicates a deterioration in the principles of those philosophies.
Johann Gottlieb Fichte was born on the 19th of May, 1762, at Rammenau, near Bischoffswerda, in Upper Lusatia. He studied at Jena, and for some time was a private tutor in Switzerland. He wrote a treatise on Religion, termed a “Critique of all Revelation,” where the Kantian phraseology is employed throughout — so much so that it was thought to be the work of Kant. After this he was in 1793 summoned to Jena by Goethe as Professor of Philosophy, which appointment he, however, resigned in the year 1799, on account of an unpleasantness which had arisen through his essay “On the ground of our Belief in a Divine Government of the World.” For Fichte published a journal in Jena, and a paper in it which was by someone else was regarded as atheistical. Fichte might have kept silence, but he published the above-mentioned essay as an introduction to the article. The authorities wished an investigation to be made into the matter. Then Fichte wrote a letter which contained threats, and respecting it Goethe said that a Government ought not to allow itself to be threatened. Fichte now taught privately for some time in Berlin; in 1805 he became professor at Erlangen, and in 1809 at Berlin, at which place he died on the 27th January, 1814.374 We cannot here deal more particularly with the details of his life.
In what is termed the philosophy of Fichte a distinction must be made between his properly-speaking speculative philosophy, in which the argument is most consistently worked out, and which is less well known, and his popular philosophy, to which belong the lectures delivered in Berlin before a mixed audience, and, for example, the work termed a “Guidance to a Blessed Life.” These last have much in them that is affecting and edifying — many who call themselves the disciples of Fichte know this side alone — and they are expressed in language most impressive to a cultured, religious temperament. In the history of Philosophy, however, such cannot be taken into consideration, although through their matter they may have the highest possible value; the content has to be speculatively developed, and that is done in Fichte’s earlier philosophic works alone.375
As we mentioned above (p. 478), the shortcoming in the Kantian philosophy was its unthinking inconsistency, through which speculative unity was lacking to the whole system; and this shortcoming was removed by Fichte. It is the absolute form which Fichte laid hold of, or in other words, the absolute form is just the absolute Being-for-self, absolute negativity, not individuality, but the Notion of individuality, and thereby the Notion of actuality; Fichte’s philosophy is thus the development of form in itself. He maintained the ego to be the absolute principle, so that from it, the direct and immediate certainty of self, all the matter in the universe must be represented as produced; hence, according to Fichte, reason is in itself a synthesis of Notion and actuality. But this principle he once more in an equally one-sided manner set aside; it is from the very beginning subjective, conditioned by an opposite, and its realization is a continual rushing onward in finitude, a looking back at what has gone before. The form in which it is presented has also the disadvantage, and indeed, the real drawback of bringing the empiric ego ever before one’s eyes, which is absurd, and quite distracting to one’s point of view.
The claims of Philosophy have advanced so far that in the first place self-consciousness refuses any longer to regard absolute essence as immediate substance which does not in itself possess difference, reality, and actuality. Against this substance self-consciousness ever struggled, for it does not find its explicit Being there, and consequently feels the lack of freedom. But besides this it demanded that this essence, objectively presented, should be personal, living, self-conscious, actual, and not shut up in abstract metaphysical thoughts alone. On the other hand consciousness, for which the other is, demanded the moment of external actuality, Being as such, into which thought must pass, truth in objective existence; and this is what we more especially noticed in connection with the English. This Notion, which is immediately actuality, and this actuality which is immediately its Notion, and that indeed in such a way that there neither is a third thought above this unity, nor is it an immediate unity which does not possess difference, separation, within it, is the ego; it is the self-distinction of opposites within itself. That whereby it distinguishes itself from the simplicity of thought, and distinguishes this other, is likewise immediately for it; it is identical with, or not distinguished from it.376 Hence it is pure thought, or the ego is the true synthetic judgment a priori, as Kant called it. This principle is apprehended actuality, for the taking back of the other-Being into self-consciousness is just apprehension. The Notion of the Notion is from this point of view found in the fact that in what is apprehended self-consciousness has the certainty of itself; what is not apprehended is something foreign to it. This absolute Notion or this absolutely existent infinitude it is which has to be developed in knowledge, and its distinction as the whole distinction of the universe has to be represented from itself, and this has in its distinction to remain reflected within itself in equal absoluteness. Nothing other than the ego anywhere exists, and the ego is there because it is there; what is there is only in the ego and for the ego.377
Now Fichte merely set forth this Notion; he did not bring it to a scientific realization from itself. For to him this Notion maintains and asserts itself as this Notion; it has absoluteness for him in so far as it is merely the unrealized Notion, and thus indeed comes once more into opposition with reality. The Fichtian philosophy has the great advantage of having set forth the fact that Philosophy must be a science derived from one supreme principle, from which all determinations are necessarily derived. The important point is this unity of principle and the attempt to develop from it in a scientifically consistent way the whole content of consciousness, or, as has been said, to construct the whole world.378 Beyond this no progress was made.379 But the great necessity in Philosophy is to possess one living Idea; the world is a flower which is eternally produced from one grain of seed. Thus Fichte does not, like Kant, throw his work into narrative form because he begins with the ego; but he has proceeded further, inasmuch as he sought to bring about a construction of determinations of knowledge from the ego. The whole extent of knowledge in all the world must be developed, and further this knowledge must be the consequence of the development of determinations; but because Fichte says that what is not for us does not concern us, he has not grasped this principle of the ego as Idea, but solely in the consciousness of the activity which we exercise in knowing, and consequently it is still laid hold of in the form of subjectivity.
Thus as Kant treats of cognition [Erkennen], so Fichte sets forth real knowledge [Wissen]. Fichte states that the task of Philosophy is to find a theory of knowledge; universal knowledge is both the object and the starting-point of Philosophy. Consciousness knows, that is its nature; the end of philosophic learning is the knowledge of this knowledge. Hence Fichte called his philosophy the Theory of Knowledge (Begriff der Wissenschaftslehre, p. 18), the science of knowledge. That is to say ordinary consciousness as the active ego finds this and that, occupies itself, not with itself, but with other objects and interests, but the necessity that I bring forth determinations, and which determinations — cause and effect, for example, — lies beyond my consciousness: I bring them forth instinctively and cannot get behind my consciousness. But when I philosophize, I make my ordinary consciousness itself my object, because I make a pure category my consciousness: I know what my ego is doing, and thus I get behind my ordinary consciousness. Fichte thus defines Philosophy as the artificial consciousness, as the consciousness of consciousness.380
a. Where Fichte in his system has attained the highest degree of determinateness, he begins, as we saw Kant did before (pp. 437, 438), from the transcendental unity of self-consciousness; in it I — as this — am one, this unity is to Fichte the same and the original. Ego is there a fact, says Fichte, but not yet a proposition. As proposition, as principle, the ego must not remain barren, nor be accepted as one, for to a proposition pertains a synthesis. Now Fichte proceeds in his system from the fact that Philosophy must begin with an absolutely unconditioned, certain principle, with something indubitably certain in ordinary knowledge. “It cannot be proved or defined, because it must be absolutely the first principle.”381 According to Wendt’s account (Tennemann’s Grundriss, § 393, pp. 494, 495) Fichte gives an exposition of the necessity of such a principle as follows: “Scientific knowledge is a system of cognition obtained through a supreme principle which expresses the content and form of knowledge. The theory of knowledge is the science of knowledge which sets forth the possibility and validity of all knowledge, and proves the possibility of principles in reference to form and content, the principles themselves, and thereby the connection existing in all human knowledge. It must have a principle which can neither be proved from it nor from another science; for it is supreme. If there is a theory of knowledge there also is a system; if there is a system there is also a theory of knowledge and an absolute first principle — and so on through an inevitable circle.”382
The simple principle of this knowledge is certainty of myself, which is the relation of me to myself; what is in me, that I know. The supreme principle, as immediate and not derived, must be certain on its own account; that is, a determination of the ego only, for it is only from the ego that I cannot abstract.383 Fichte thus begins, like Descartes, with ‘I think, therefore I am,’ and he expressly brings this proposition to mind. The Being of the ego is not a dead, but a concrete Being; but the highest Being is thought. Ego, as an explicitly self-existent activity of thought, is thus knowledge, even if it is only abstract knowledge, as in the beginning at least it cannot help being. At the same time Fichte begins from this absolute certainty with quite other necessities and demands; for from this ego not only Being but also the larger system of thought has to be derived (supra, p. 230). According to Fichte, the ego is the source of the categories and ideas, but all conceptions and thoughts are a manifold reduced to a synthesis through Thought. Thus while with Descartes in connection with the ego other thoughts appear which we simply find already in us, such as God, nature, &c., Fichte sought for a philosophy entirely of a piece, in which nothing empiric was to be admitted from without. With this reflection a false point of view was at once introduced, namely that contained in the old conception of knowledge, of commencing with principles in this form and proceeding from them; so that the reality which is derived from such a principle is brought into opposition with it, and hence in truth is something different, i.e. it is not derived: or that principle for this same reason expresses only the absolute certainty of itself and not the truth. The ego is certain, it cannot be doubted; but Philosophy desires to reach the truth. The certainty is subjective, and because it is made to remain the basis, all else remains subjective also without there being any possibility of this form being removed. Fichte now analyzes the ego, reducing it to three principles from which the whole of knowledge has to be evolved.
α. The first proposition must be simple, in it predicate and subject must be alike; for were they unlike, their connection — since in accordance with their diversity the determinations are not directly one — would have to be first of all proved by means of a third. The first principle must thus be identical. Fichte now proceeds further to distinguish in this first principle the form and content; but in order that this same may be immediately true through itself, form and content must be again the same, and the principle conditioned by neither. It signifies A = A, the abstract undetermined identity; that is the proposition of contradiction, wherein A is an indifferent content. Fichte says, “Thought is by no means essence, but only a particular determination of Being; there are outside of it many other determinations of our Being. I merely remark this, that when ‘I am’ is overstepped, Spinozism is necessarily reached. Its unity is something which ought to be produced through us, but which cannot be so; it is not anything that is.” The first proposition is then that I am identical with myself, Ego = Ego;384 that undoubtedly is the definition of the ego. The subject and the predicate are the content; and this content of the two sides is likewise their relation, i.e. form. Relation requires two sides; the relating and the related are here, however, the same; for on account of the simplicity of the ego, there is nothing but a relation of the ego to the ego. I have knowledge of myself; but in so far as I am consciousness, I know of an object which is different from me, and which is then likewise mine. But the ego is in such a way identical with its difference that what is different is immediately the same, and what is identical is likewise different; we have a difference without a difference. Self-consciousness is not dead identity, or non-Being, but the object which is identical with me. This is immediately certain; all else must be as certain to me, inasmuch as it must be my relation to myself. The content must be transformed into the ego, so that in it I have my determination alone. This principle is at first abstract and deficient, because in it no difference, or a formal difference only is expressed; whereas the principle should possess a content: a subject and a predicate are indeed distinguished in it, but only for us who reflect upon it, i.e. in itself there is no difference, and consequently no true content. In the second place, this principle is indeed the immediate certainty of self-consciousness, but self-consciousness is likewise consciousness, and in it there is likewise the certainty that other things exist to which it stands in an attitude of opposition. In the third place, that principle has not the truth in it, for the very reason that the certainty of itself possessed by the ego has no objectivity; it has not the form of the differentiated content within it — or it stands in opposition to the consciousness of an “other”.
β. Now in order that determination should come to pass, i.e. a content and difference, it is essential for Fichte that a second principle should be established, which in regard to form is unconditioned, but the content of which is conditioned, because it does not belong to the ego. This second principle, set forth under the first, is, “I assert a non-ego in opposition to the ego,” and in this something other than absolute self-consciousness is set forth.385 To this pertains the form therein present, relation; but the content is the non-ego, another content from the ego. We might say that through this content the proposition is independent, since the negative therein is an absolute, as truly as the reverse — that it is independent through the form of opposition which cannot be derived from the original. Here, then, we have no more to do with derivation, although this derivation of opposition from the first proposition was all the same demanded. Inasmuch as I posit another in opposition to the ego, I posit myself as not posited; this non-ego is the object generally, i.e. that which is opposed to me. This other is the negative of the ego; thus when Fichte called it the non-ego he was expressing himself in a very happy, suitable, and consistent manner. There has been a good deal of ridicule cast on the ego and non-ego; the expression is new, and therefore to us Germans it seems strange at first. But the French say Moi and Non-moi, without finding anything laughable in it. In this principle the positing belongs, however, to the ego; but because the non-ego is independent of the ego, we have two sides, and self-consciousness relates itself to another. This second proposition thus signifies that I posit myself as limited, as non-ego; but non-ego is something quite new to be added. On the one side we thus have before us a field which is merely appropriated from the ego; and in this way we have before us the non-ego as our object.
γ. To these is added yet a third proposition, in which I now make this division into ego and non-ego: it is the synthetic principle, the proposition of ground, which in content is unconditioned, just as in the second was the case in regard to form. This third proposition is the determination of the first two through one another, in such a way that the ego limits the non-ego. “In and through the ego both the ego and the non-ego are posited as capable of being mutually limited by means of one another, i.e. in such a way that the reality of the one abrogates the reality of the other.” In limitation both are negated, but “only in part”; only thus are synthesis and deduction possible. I posit the non-ego, which is for me, in myself, in my identity with myself; thus I take it from its non-identity, its not-being-I, that is to say I limit it. This limitation of the non-ego Fichte expresses thus: “I place in opposition to the ego,” and indeed “to the divisible ego, a divisible non-ego.” The non-ego I destroy as a complete sphere, which it was according to the second principle, and posit it as divisible; I likewise posit the ego as divisible in so far as the non-ego is present in it. The whole sphere which I have before me is supposed indeed to be the ego, but in it I have not one but two. The proposition of ground is thus the relation of reality and negation, i.e. it is limitation; it contains the ego limited by the non-ego, and the non-ego limited by the ego.386 Of this synthesis there is nothing, properly speaking, contained in the two earlier propositions. Even this first presentation of the three principles does away with the immanence of real knowledge. Thus the presentation is here also subject to an opposite from the first, as it is with Kant, even if these are two acts of the ego merely, and we remain entirely in the ego.
Now that limitation may take place for me in two different ways: at one time the one is passive, at another time the other is so. In this limitation the ego may posit the non-ego as limiting and itself as limited, in such a way that the ego posits itself as requiring to have an object; I know myself indeed as ego, but determined by the non-ego; non-ego is here active and ego passive. Or, on the other hand, the ego, as abrogating other-being, is that which limits, and non-ego is the limited. I know myself then as clearly determining the non-ego, as the absolute cause of the non-ego as such, for I can think. The first is the proposition of the theoretic reason, of intelligence: the second the proposition of practical reason, of will.387 The will is this, that I am conscious of myself as limiting the object; thus I make myself exercise activity upon the object and maintain myself. The theoretic proposition is that the object is before me and it determines me. The ego is, since I perceive, a content, and I have this content in me, which is thus outside of me. This is on the whole the same thing as we meet with in the experience of Kant: it comes to the same thing whether it is by matter or the non-ego that the ego is here determined.
b. In the theoretic consciousness the ego, although the assertive generally, finds itself limited by the non-ego. But it is identical with itself; hence its infinite activity ever sets itself to abrogate the non-ego and to bring forth itself. Now the different methods whereby the ego sets forth itself are the different methods of its activity; these we have to understand in their necessity. But since philosophic knowledge is the consideration of consciousness itself (supra, p. 483), I can only know knowledge, the act of the ego. Fichte thus appeals to consciousness, postulates ego and non-ego in their abstraction, and since philosophic knowledge is the consciousness of consciousness, it is not sufficient that I should find its determinations in consciousness, for I produce them with consciousness. Common consciousness, indeed, likewise brings forth all the determinations of the ordinary conception and of thought, but without — on the theoretic side at least — having any knowledge of it; for it is the fact of being limited alone that is present to it. Thus, when I see a large square object, such as a wall, my ordinary consciousness accepts these determinations as they are given to it; the object is. In so doing I do not think of seeing, but of the object; seeing, however, is my activity, the determinations of my faculty of sensation are thus posited through me.388 The ego as theoretic is, indeed, aware in philosophic consciousness that it is the ego which posits; but here it posits that the non-ego posits somewhat in me. The ego thus posits itself as that which is limited by the non-ego. I make this limitation mine; thus is it for me in me, this passivity of the ego is itself the activity of the ego. As a matter of fact, all reality which appears in the object for the ego is a determination of the ego,389 just as the categories and other determinations were in Kant’s case. Thus it is here more especially that we should expect Fichte to demonstrate the return of other-Being into absolute consciousness. However, because after all the other-Being was regarded as unconditioned, as implicit, this return does not come to pass. The ego determines the ‘other,’ indeed, but this unity is an altogether finite unity; non-ego has thus immediately escaped from determination once more and gone forth from this unity. What we find is merely an alternation between self-consciousness and the consciousness of another, and the constant progression of this alternation, which never reaches any end.390
The development of theoretic reason is the following-out of the manifold relationships between the ego and non-ego; the forms of this limitation which Fichte now goes through are the determinations of the object. These particular thought-determinations he calls categories, and he seeks to demonstrate them in their necessity; from the time of Aristotle onwards no one had thought of so doing. The first of these forms is the determination of reciprocity, which we already met with in the third proposition: “By the determination of the reality or negation of the ego, the negation or reality of the non-ego is equally determined;” the two in one is reciprocal action. In the second place, “Causality is the same degree of activity in the one as of passivity in the other.” In so far as something is considered as the reality of the non-ego, the ego is considered as passive, and, on the other hand, in so far as ‘I’ am real, the object is passive; this relation, that the passivity of the object is my activity or reality, and the opposite, is the conception of Causality. “As many parts of negation as the ego posits in itself, so many parts of reality it posits in the non-ego; it therefore posits itself as self-determining in so far as it is determined, and as suffering determination in so far as it determines itself. In so far,” in the third place, “as the ego is regarded as embracing the whole absolutely determined realm of all reality, it is substance; on the other hand when it is posited in a not absolutely determined sphere of this realm, in so far there is an accidence in the ego.”391 That is the first rational attempt that has ever been made to deduce the categories; this progress from one determination to another is, however, only an analysis from the standpoint of consciousness, and is not in and for itself.
The ego is so far the ideal ground of all conceptions of the object; all determination of this object is a determination of the ego. But in order that it may be object, it must be placed in opposition to the ego, i.e. the determinations set forth through the ego are another, the non-ego; this placing of the object in opposition is the real ground of conceptions. The ego is, however, likewise the real ground of the object; for it is likewise a determination of the ego that the non-ego as object is set in opposition to the ego. Both, the real ground and the ideal ground of the conception, are thus one and the same.392 Regarding the ego as ideal principle and the non-ego as real principle, Krug has likewise talked a great deal of nonsense. Regarded from the one point of view, the ego is active and the non-ego purely passive; while from the other side the ego is passive and the object active and operative. But since the ego in the non-philosophic consciousness does not have the consciousness of its activity in the conception of the object, it represents to itself its own activity as foreign, i.e. as belonging to the non-ego.
We here see the opposition adopting various forms: ego, non-ego; positing, setting in opposition; two sorts of activity of the ego, &c. The fact that I represent is undoubtedly my activity, but the matter of main importance is the content of the positing and its necessary connection through itself. If one occupies oneself only with this content, that form of subjectivity which is dominant with Fichte, and which remains in his opposition, disappears. As the ego is affirmative and determining, there now is in this determination a negative likewise present; I find myself determined and at the same time the ego is like itself, infinite, i.e. identical with itself. This is a contradiction which Fichte indeed endeavours to reconcile, but in spite of it all he leaves the false basis of dualism undisturbed. The ultimate, beyond which Fichte does not get, is only an ‘ought,’ which does not solve the contradiction; for while the ego should be absolutely at home with itself, i.e. free, it should at the same time be associated with another. To Fichte the demand for the solution of this contradiction thus adopts the attitude of being a demanded solution only, of signifying that I ever have to destroy the barriers, that I ever have to reach beyond the limitation into utter infinitude, and that I ever find a new limit; a continual alternation takes place between negation and affirmation, an identity with self which again falls into negation, and from this negation is ever again restored. To speak of the bounds of human reason is, however, an unmeaning form of words. That the reason of the subject is limited is comprehensible from the nature of the case, but when we speak of Thought, infinitude is none other than one’s own relation to self, and not to one’s limit; and the place in which man is infinite is Thought. Infinitude may then be likewise very abstract, and in this way it is also once more finite; but true infinitude remains in itself.
Fichte further deduces the ordinary conception thus: the fact that the ego in going forth at once finds its activity checked by a limitation, and returns once more into itself, brings about two opposite tendencies in me, between which I waver, and which I try to unite in the faculty of imagination. In order that a fixed determination may exist between the two, I have to make the limit a permanent one, and we have that in the understanding. All further determinations of the object are, as categories of the understanding, modes of synthesis; but each synthesis is a new contradiction. New mediations are thus once more necessary, and these are new determinations. Thus Fichte says: I can always continue to determine the non-ego, to make it my conception, i.e. to take from it its negation as regards me. I have to deal with my activity alone; but there is always an externality therein present which still remains, and which is not explained by my activity. This Beyond which alone remains to the undetermined ego Fichte calls the infinite check upon the ego, with which it ever has to deal, and beyond which it cannot get; thus the activity which proceeds into infinitude finds itself checked and driven back by this repulsive force, and then it reacts upon itself. “The ego in its self-determination has been considered both as determining and determined; if we reflect on the fact that the absolutely determined determining power must be an absolutely indeterminate, and further, that ego and non-ego are absolutely opposed to one another, in the one case ego is the indeterminate and in the other case non-ego.”393
Inasmuch as the ego here makes the object its conception and negates it, this philosophy is Idealism, in which philosophy all the determinations of the object are ideal. Everything determinate which the ego possesses it has through its own positing; I even make a coat or a boot because I put them on. There remains only the empty repulsive force, and that is the Kantian Thing-in-itself, beyond which even Fichte cannot get, even though the theoretic reason continues its determination into infinitude. “The ego as intelligence” ever “remains dependent on an undetermined non-ego; it is only through this that it is intelligence.”394 The theoretic side is thus dependent. In it we have not therefore to deal with the truth in and for itself, but with a contingent, because ego is limited, not absolute, as its Notion demands: intelligence is not here considered as spirit which is free. This is Fichte’s standpoint as regards the theoretic side.
c. Practical reason comes next; the point of view from which it starts is that “The ego posits itself as determining the non-ego.” Now the contradiction has thus to be solved of ego being at home with itself, since it determines its Beyond. The ego is thus infinite activity, and, as ego = ego, the absolute ego, it is undoubtedly abstract. But in order to have a determination, a non-ego must exist; ego is thus activity, causality, the positing of the non-ego. But as with Kant sensuousness and reason remain opposed, the same contradiction is present here, only in a more abstract form, and not in the rude empiricism of Kant. Fichte here turns and twists in all sorts of ways, or he gives the opposition many different forms; the crudest form is that ego is posited as causality, for in it another is necessitated on which it exercises its activity. “The absolute ego has accordingly to be” now “the cause of the non-ego, i.e. only of that in the non-ego which remains when we abstract from all demonstrable forms of representation or conception — of that to which is ascribed the check given to the infinitely operative activity of the ego; for the fact that the intelligent ego is, in accordance with the necessary laws of the conception, the cause of the particular determinations of that which is conceived as such, is demonstrated in the theoretic science of knowledge.”395 The limits of intelligence must be broken through, the ego must alone be active; the other side, the infinite repulsion, must be removed, in order that the ego may be liberated.
“According to our hypothesis the ego must now posit a non-ego absolutely, and without any ground, i.e. absolutely and without any ground it must limit or in part not posit itself.” This, indeed, it already does as intelligent. “It must therefore have the ground of not positing itself” only “in itself.” The ego is, however, just the ego, it posits itself, “it must” therefore “have the principle of positing itself within it, and also the principle of not positing itself. Hence the ego in its essence would be contradictory and self-repellent; there would be in it a two-fold or contradictory principle, which assumption contradicts itself, for in that case there would be no principle within it. The ego would” consequently “not exist, for it would abrogate itself. All contradictions are reconciled through the further determination of contradictory propositions. The ego must be posited in one sense as infinite, and in another as finite. Were it to be posited as infinite and finite in one and the same sense, the contradiction would be insoluble; the ego would not be one but two. In so far as the ego posits itself as infinite, its activity is directed upon itself and on nothing else but itself. In so far as the ego posits limits, and itself in these limits, its activity is not exercised directly on itself, but on a non-ego which has to be placed in opposition,” upon another and again upon another, and so on into infinitude; that is the object, and the activity of the ego “is objective activity.”396 In this way Fichte in the practical sphere also remains at opposition, only this opposition now has the form of two tendencies in the ego, both of which are said to be one and the same activity of the ego. I am called upon to proceed to determine the other in relation to which I am negative, the non-ego, in accordance with my freedom; it has indeed all determinations through the activity of the ego, but beyond my determination the same non-ego ever continues to appear. The ego clearly posits an object, a point of limitation, but where the limitation is, is undetermined. I may transfer the sphere of my determination, and extend it to an infinite degree, but there always remains a pure Beyond, and the non-ego has no positive self-existent determination.
The last point in respect of the practical sphere is hence this, that the activity of the ego is a yearning or striving397 — like the Kantian “ought”; Fichte treats this with great prolixity. The Fichtian philosophy consequently has the same standpoint as the Kantian; the ultimate is always subjectivity, as existent in and for itself. Yearning, according to Fichte, is divine; in yearning I have not forgotten myself, I have not forgotten that I possess a superiority in myself; and therefore it is a condition of happiness and satisfaction. This infinite yearning and desire has then been regarded as what is highest and most excellent in the Beautiful, and in religious feelings likewise; and with it is connected the irony of which we have spoken before (Vol. I. pp. 400, 401). In this return the ego is merely an effort, on its side it is fixed, and it cannot realize its endeavours. Striving is thus an imperfect or implicitly limited action. The ultimate result is consequently a “circle” which cannot be broken through, so that “the finite spirit must necessarily posit an absolute outside itself (a thing-in-itself), and yet on the other hand it must recognize that this same is only there for it (a necessary noumenon).”398 To put it otherwise, we see the ego absolutely determined in opposition only, we see it only as consciousness and self-consciousness which does not get beyond this, and which does not reach so far as to Spirit. The ego is the absolute Notion in so far as it does not yet reach the unity of thought, or in this simplicity does not reach difference, and in motion does not have rest; that is to say, in so far as positing, or the pure activity of the ego, and setting in opposition, are not by it comprehended as the same. Or the ego does not comprehend the infinite repulsion, the non-ego; self-consciousness determines the non-ego, but does not know how to make this Beyond its own.
The deficiency in the Fichtian philosophy is thus firstly that the ego retains the significance of the individual, actual self-consciousness, as opposed to that which is universal or absolute, or to the spirit in which it is itself a moment merely; for the individual self-consciousness simply signifies standing apart as far as another is concerned. Hence, if the ego was ever called absolute existence, the most terrible offence was given, because really the ego only came before us as signifying the individual subject as opposed to the universal.
In the second place, Fichte does not attain to the idea of Reason as the perfected, real unity of subject and object, or of ego and non-ego; it is only, as with Kant, represented as the thought of a union in a belief or faith, and with this Fichte likewise concludes (Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre, p. 301). This he worked out in his popular writings. For because the ego is fixed in its opposition to the non-ego, and is only as being opposed, it becomes lost in that unity. The attainment of this aim is hence sent further and further back into the false, sensuous infinitude: it is a progression implying just the same contradiction as that found in Kant, and having no present actuality in itself; for the ego has all actuality in its opposition only. The Fichtian philosophy recognizes the finite spirit alone, and not the infinite; it does not recognize spirit as universal thought, as the Kantian philosophy does not recognize the not-true; or it is formal. The knowledge of absolute unity is apprehended as faith in a moral disposition of the world, an absolute hypothesis in accordance with which we have the belief that every moral action that we perform will have a good result.399 As in Kant’s case, this Idea belongs to universal thought. “In a word, when anything is apprehended it ceases to be God; and every conception of God that is set up is necessarily that of a false God. Religion is a practical faith in the moral government of the world; faith in a supersensuous world belongs, according to our philosophy, to the immediate verities.”400 Fichte thus concludes with the highest Idea, with the union of freedom and nature, but a union of such a nature that, immediately regarded, it is not known; the opposition alone falls within consciousness. This union of faith he likewise finds in the Love of God. As believed and experienced, this form pertains to Religion, and not to Philosophy, and our only possible interest is to know this in Philosophy. But with Fichte it is still associated with a most unsatisfying externality of which the basis is the non-Idea, for the one determination is essential only because the other is so, and so on into infinitude. “The theory of knowledge is realistic — it shows that the consciousness of finite beings can only be explained by presupposing an independent and wholly opposite power, on which, in accordance with their empirical existence, they themselves are dependent. But it asserts nothing more than this opposed power, which by finite beings can merely be felt and not known. All possible determinations of this power or of this non-ego which can come forth into infinity in our consciousness, it pledges itself to deduce from the determining faculties of the ego, and it must actually be able to deduce these, so certainly as it is a theory of knowledge. This knowledge, however, is not transcendent but transcendental. It undoubtedly explains all consciousness from something independent of all consciousness, but it does not forget that this independent somewhat is again a product of its own power of thought, and consequently something dependent on the ego, in so far as it has to be there for the ego. Every thing is, in its ideality, dependent upon the ego; but in its reality even the ego is dependent. The fact that the finite spirit must posit for itself somewhat outside of itself, which last exists only for it, is that circle which it may infinitely extend but never break through.” The further logical determination of the object is that which in subject and object is identical, the true connection is that in which the objective is the possession of the ego; as thought, the ego in itself determines the object. But Fichte’s theory of knowledge regards the struggle of the ego with the object as that of the continuous process of determining the object through the ego as subject of consciousness, without the identity of the restfully self-developing Notion.401
Thirdly, because the ego is thus fixed in its one-sidedness, there proceeds from it, as representing one extreme, the whole of the progress that is made in the content of knowledge; and the deduction of the philosophy of Fichte, cognition in its content and form, is a progression from certain determinations to others which do not turn back into unity, or through a succession of finitenesses which do not have the Absolute in them at all. The absolute point of view, like an absolute content, is wanting. Thus the contemplation of nature, for instance, is a contemplation of it as of pure finitenesses from the point of view of another, as though the organic body were regarded thus: “Consciousness requires a sphere entirely its own for its activity. This sphere is posited through an original, necessary activity of the ego, in which it does not know itself as free. It is a sensuous perception, a drawing of lines; the sphere of activity thereby becomes something extended in space. As quiescent, continuous, and yet unceasingly changing, this sphere is matter, which, as body, has a number of parts which in relation to one another are called limbs. The person can ascribe to himself no body without positing it as being under the influence of another person. But it is likewise essential that I should be able to check this same influence, and external matter is also posited as resisting my influences on it, i.e. as a tough, compact matter.”402 These tough matters must further be separated from one another — the different persons cannot hold together like one mass of dough. For “my body is my body and not that of another; it must further operate and be active without my working through it. It is only through the operation of another that I can myself be active and represent myself as a rational being who can be respected by him. But the other being should treat me immediately as a rational being, I should be for him a rational being even before my activity begins. Or my form must produce an effect through its mere existence in space, without my activity, i.e. it must be visible. The reciprocal operation of rational beings must take place without activity; thus a subtle matter must be assumed in order that it may be modified by means of the merely quiescent form. In this way are deduced first Light and then Air.”403 This constitutes a very external manner of passing from one step to another, resembling the method of the ordinary teleology, which makes out, for instance, that plants and animals are given for the nourishment of mankind. This is how it is put: Man must eat, and thus there must be something edible — consequently plants and animals are at once deduced; plants must have their root in something, and consequently the earth is forthwith deduced. What is altogether lacking is any consideration of the object as what it is in itself; it is plainly considered only in relation to another. In this way the animal organism appears as a tough, tenacious matter which is “articulated” and can be modified; light is a subtle matter which is the medium of communication of mere existence, &c. — just as in the other case plants and animals are merely edible. As regards a philosophic consideration of the content there is nothing at all to be found.
Fichte likewise wrote both a Science of Morals and of Natural Rights, but he treats them as sciences pertaining to the understanding only, and his method of procedure is destitute of ideas and carried on by means of a limited understanding. The Fichtian deduction of the conceptions of justice and morality thus remains within the limitations and rigidity of self-consciousness, as against which Fichte’s popular presentations of religion and morality present inconsistencies. The treatise on Natural Rights is a special failure, e.g. where he, as we have just seen (p. 502), deduces even nature just as far as he requires it. The organization of the state which is described in Fichte’s Science of Rights is furthermore as unspiritual as was the deduction of natural objects just mentioned, and as were many of the French constitutions which have appeared in modern times — a formal, external uniting and connecting, in which the individuals as such are held to be absolute, or in which Right is the highest principle. Kant began to ground Right upon Freedom, and Fichte likewise makes freedom the principle in the Rights of Nature; but, as was the case with Rousseau, it is freedom in the form of the isolated individual. This is a great commencement, but in order to arrive at the particular, they have to accept certain hypotheses. The universal is not the spirit, the substance of the whole, but an external, negative power of the finite understanding directed against individuals. The state is not apprehended in its essence, but only as representing a condition of justice and law, i.e. as an external relation of finite to finite. There are various individuals; the whole constitution of the state is thus in the main characterized by the fact that the freedom of individuals must be limited by means of the freedom of the whole.404 The individuals always maintain a cold attitude of negativity as regards one another, the confinement becomes closer and the bonds more stringent as time goes on, instead of the state being regarded as representing the realization of freedom.
This philosophy contains nothing speculative, but it demands the presence of the speculative element. As the philosophy of Kant seeks in unity its Idea of the Supreme Good, wherein the opposites have to be united, so the Fichtian philosophy demands union in the ego and in the implicitude of faith; in this self-consciousness in all its actions makes its starting-point conviction, so that in themselves its actions may bring forth the highest end and realize the good. In the Fichtian philosophy nothing can be seen beyond the moment of self-consciousness, of self-conscious Being-within-self, as in the philosophy of England we find expressed — in just as one-sided a way — the moment of Being-for-another, or of consciousness, and that not as a moment simply, but as the principle of the truth; in neither of the two is there the unity of both — or spirit.
Fichte’s philosophy constitutes a significant epoch in Philosophy regarded in its outward form. It is from him and from his methods that abstract thought proceeds, deduction and construction. Hence with the Fichtian philosophy a revolution took place in Germany. The public had penetrated as far as the philosophy of Kant, and until the Kantian philosophy was reached the interest awakened by Philosophy was general; it was accessible, and men were curious to know about it, it pertained to the ordinary knowledge of a man of culture (supra, p. 218). Formerly men of business, statesmen, occupied themselves with Philosophy; now, however, with the intricate idealism of the philosophy of Kant, their wings droop helpless to the ground. Hence it is with Kant that we first begin to find a line of separation which parts us from the common modes of consciousness; but the result, that the Absolute cannot be known, has become one generally acknowledged. With Fichte the common consciousness has still further separated itself from Philosophy, and it has utterly departed from the speculative element therein present. For Fichte’s ego is not merely the ego of the empiric consciousness, since general determinations of thought such as do not fall within the ordinary consciousness have likewise to be known and brought to consciousness; in this way since Fichte’s time few men have occupied themselves with speculation. Fichte, it is true, in his later works especially, wrote with a view to meeting the popular ear as we may see in the “Attempt to force the reader into comprehension,” but this end was not accomplished. The public was through the philosophy of Kant and Jacobi strengthened in its opinion — one which it accepted utiliter — that the knowledge of God is immediate, and that we know it from the beginning and without requiring to study, and hence that Philosophy is quite superfluous.
The times called for life, for spirit. Now since mind has thus retreated within self-consciousness, but within self-consciousness as a barren ego, which merely gives itself a content or a realization through finitenesses and individualities which in and for themselves are nothing, the next stage is found in knowing this realization of self-consciousness in itself, in knowing the content in itself as a content which, penetrated throughout by spirit, is self-conscious and spiritual, or a spirit full of content. In his later popular works Fichte thus set forth faith, love, hope, religion, treating them without philosophic interest, and as for a general public: it was a philosophy calculated to suit enlightened Jews and Jewesses, councillors and Kotzebues. He places the matter in a popular form: “It is not the finite ego that is, but the divine Idea is the foundation of all Philosophy; everything that man does of himself is null and void. All existence is living and active in itself, and there is no other life than Being, and no other Being than God; God is thus absolute Being and Life. The divine essence likewise comes forth, revealing and manifesting itself — the world.”405 This immediate unity of the self-conscious ego and its content, or spirit, which merely has an intuition of its self-conscious life and knows it as the truth immediately, manifested itself subsequently in poetic and prophetic tendencies, in vehement aspirations, in excrescences which grew out of the Fichtian philosophy.
On the one hand, in respect of the content which the ego reaches in the philosophy of Fichte, the complete absence of spirituality, the woodenness, and, to put it plainly, the utter foolishness therein evidenced, strike us too forcibly to allow us to remain at his standpoint; our philosophic perception likewise tells us of the one-sidedness and deficiencies of the principle, as also of the evident necessity that the content should prove to be what it is. But on the other hand self-consciousness was therein posited as reality or essence — not as a foreign, alien self-consciousness, but as ego — a signification which all possess, and which finds an answer in the actuality of all. The Fichtian standpoint of subjectivity has thus retained its character of being unphilosophically worked out, and arrived at its completion in forms pertaining to sensation which in part remained within the Fichtian principle, while they were in part the effort — futile though it was — to get beyond the subjectivity of the ego.
a. Friedrich von Schlegel.
In Fichte’s case the limitation is continually re-appearing; but because the ego feels constrained to break through this barrier, it reacts against it, and gives itself a resting-place within itself; this last ought to be concrete, but it is a negative resting-place alone. This first form, Irony, has Friedrich von Schlegel as its leading exponent. The subject here knows itself to be within itself the Absolute, and all else to it is vain; all the conclusions which it draws for itself respecting the right and good, it likewise knows how to destroy again. It can make a pretence of knowing all things, but it only demonstrates vanity, hypocrisy, and effrontery. Irony knows itself to be the master of every possible content; it is serious about nothing, but plays with all forms. The other side is this, that subjectivity has cast itself into religious subjectivity. The utter despair in respect of thought, of truth, and absolute objectivity, as also the incapacity to give oneself any settled basis or spontaneity of action, induced the noble soul to abandon itself to feeling and to seek in Religion something fixed and steadfast; this steadfast basis, this inward satisfaction, is to be found in religious sentiments and feelings. This instinct impelling us towards something fixed has forced many into positive forms of religion, into Catholicism, superstition and miracle working, in order that they may find something on which they can rest, because to inward subjectivity everything fluctuates and wavers. With the whole force of its mind subjectivity tries to apply itself to what is positively given, to bend its head beneath the positive, to cast itself, so to speak, into the arms of externality, and it finds an inward power impelling it so to do.
b. Schleiermacher.
On the other hand the ego finds in the subjectivity and individuality of the personal view of things the height of all its vanity — its Religion. All the various individualities have God within themselves. Dialectic is the last thing to arise and to maintain its place. As this is expressed for philosophic self-consciousness, the foreign intellectual world has lost all significance and truth for ordinary culture; it is composed of three elements, a deity pertaining to a time gone by, and individualized in space and existence, a world which is outside the actuality of self-consciousness, and a world which had yet to appear, and in which self-consciousness would first attain to its reality. The spirit of culture has deserted it, and no longer recognizes anything that is foreign to self-consciousness. In accordance with this principle, the spiritual living essence has then transformed itself into self-consciousness, and it thinks to know the unity of spirit immediately from itself, and in this immediacy to be possessed of knowledge in a poetic, or at least a prophetic manner. As regards the poetic manner, it has a knowledge of the life and person of the Absolute immediately, by an intuition, and not in the Notion, and it thinks it would lose the whole as whole, as a self-penetrating unity, were it not to express the same in poetic form; and what it thus expresses poetically is the intuition of the personal life of self-consciousness. But the truth is absolute motion, and since it is a motion of forms and figures [Gestalten], and the universe is a kingdom of spirits, the Notion is the essence of this movement, and likewise of each individual form; it is its ideal form [Form] and not the real one, or that of figure [Gestalt]. In the latter case necessity is lost sight of; individual action, life and heart, remain within themselves, and undeveloped; and this poetry vacillates betwixt the universality of the Notion and the determinateness and indifference of the figure; it is neither flesh nor fish, neither poetry nor philosophy. The prophetic utterance of truths which claim to be philosophical, thus belongs to faith, to self-consciousness, which indeed perceives the absolute spirit in itself, but does not comprehend itself as self-consciousness, since it places absolute reality above Knowledge, beyond self-conscious reason, as was done by Eschenmayer and Jacobi. This uncomprehending, prophetic manner of speech affirms this or that respecting absolute existence as from an oracle, and requires that each man should find the same immediately in his own heart. The knowledge of absolute reality becomes a matter pertaining to the heart; there are a number of would-be inspired speakers, each of whom holds a monologue and really does not understand the others, excepting by a pressure of the hands and betrayal of dumb feeling. What they say is mainly composed of trivialities, if these are taken in the sense in which they are uttered; it is the feeling, the gesture, the fulness of the heart, which first gives them their significance; to nothing of more importance is direct expression given. They outbid one another in conceits of fancy, in ardent poetry. But before the Truth vanity turns pale, spitefully sneering it sneaks back into itself. Ask not after a criterion of the truth, but after the Notion of the truth in and for itself; on that fix your gaze. The glory of Philosophy is departed, for it presupposes a common ground of thoughts and principles — which is what science demands — or at least of opinions. But now particular subjectivity was everything, each individual was proud and disdainful as regards all others. The conception of independent thought — as though there could be a thought which was not such (Vol. I. p. 60) — is very much the same; men have, it is said, to bring forth a particularity of their own, or else they have not thought for themselves. But the bad picture is that in which the artist shows himself; originality is the production of what is in its entirety universal. The folly of independent thought is that it results in each bringing forth something more preposterous than another.
c. Novalis.
Subjectivity signifies the lack of a firm and steady basis, but likewise the desire for such, and thus it evermore remains a yearning. These yearnings of a lofty soul are set forth in the writings of Novalis. This subjectivity does not reach substantiality, it dies away within itself, and the standpoint it adopts is one of inward workings and fine distinctions; it signifies an inward life and deals with the minutiæ of the truth. The extravagances of subjectivity constantly pass into madness; if they remain in thought they are whirled round and round in the vortex of reflecting understanding, which is ever negative in reference to itself.
d. Fries, Bouterweck, Krug.
Yet a last form of subjectivity is the subjectivity of arbitrary will and ignorance. It maintained this, that the highest mode of cognition is an immediate knowledge as a fact of consciousness; and that is so far right. The Fichtian abstraction and its hard understanding has a repellent effect on thought; slothful reason allowed itself to be told the result of the philosophy of Kant and Jacobi, and renounced all consistent thought, all construction. This arbitrariness gave itself entire liberty — the liberty of the Tabagie — but in doing so it regarded itself from a poetic or prophetic point of view, as we have just seen (pp. 508, 509). Then it was both more sober and more prosaic, and thus brought the old logic and metaphysic once more into evidence, though with this modification that they are made facts of consciousness. Thus Fries turns back to the faith of Jacobi in the form of immediate judgments derived from reason, and dark conceptions incapable of utterance.406 He wished to improve the critique of pure reason by apprehending the categories as facts of consciousness; anything one chooses can in such a case be introduced. Bouterweck speaks of “The virtue, the living nature of power; the fact that subject and object are regarded as one, that is as absolute virtue. With this absolute virtue we have all Being and action, namely the eternal, absolute and pure unity; in one word we have grasped the world within us and we have grasped ourselves in the world, and that indeed not through conceptions and conclusions, but directly through the power which itself constitutes our existence and our rational nature. To know the All, or indeed to know God in any way, is, however, impossible for any mortal.”407 Krug wrote a “Groundwork of Philosophy,” setting forth a “Transcendental Synthesis — that is a transcendental realism and a transcendental idealism inseparably bound together,” It is an “original, transcendental synthesis of the real and the ideal, the thinking subject and the corresponding outer world;” this transcendental synthesis must “be recognized and asserted without any attempt being made at explaining it.”408
IT WAS SCHELLING, finally, who made the most important, or, from a philosophic point of view, the only important advance upon the philosophy of Fichte; his philosophy rose higher than that of Fichte, though undoubtedly it stood in close connection with it; indeed, he himself professes to be a Fichtian. Now the philosophy of Schelling from the first admitted the possibility of a knowledge of God, although it likewise started from the philosophy of Kant, which denies such knowledge. At the same time Schelling makes Jacobi’s principle of the unity of thought and Being fundamental, although he begins to determine it more closely.409 To him concrete unity is this, that the finite is no more true than the infinite, the subjective idea no more than objectivity, and that combinations in which both untruths are brought together in their independence in relation to one another, are likewise combinations of untruths merely. Concrete unity can only be comprehended as process and as the living movement in a proposition. This inseparability is in God alone; the finite, on the other hand, is that which has this separability within it. In so far as it is a truth it is likewise this unity, but in a limited sphere, and for that reason in the separability of both moments.
Frederick Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, born on the 27th January, 1775, at Schorndorf,410 in Wurtemberg, studied in Leipzig and Jena, where he came to be on terms of great intimacy with Fichte. In the year 1807 he became secretary of the Academy of Science in Munich. We cannot with propriety deal fully with his life, for he is still living.411
Schelling worked out his philosophy in view of the public. The series of his philosophic writings also represents the history of his philosophic development and the gradual process by which he raised himself above the Fichtian principle and the Kantian content with which he began. It does not thus contain a sequence of separately worked out divisions of Philosophy, but only successive stages in his own development. If we ask for a final work in which we shall find his philosophy represented with complete definiteness none such can be named. Schelling’s first writings are still quite Fichtian, and it is only by slow degrees that he worked himself free of Fichte’s form. The form of the ego has the ambiguity of being capable of signifying either the absolute Ego or God, or ego in my particularity;412 this supplied the first stimulus to Schelling. His first and quite short work of four sheets which he wrote in 1795 at Tubingen, while still at the university, was called, “On the Possibility of any Form of Philosophy”; it contains propositions respecting the Fichtian philosophy only. The next work, “On the Ego as principle of Philosophy, or on the Unconditioned in Human Knowledge” (Tubingen, 1795), is likewise quite Fichtian; in this case, however, it is from a wider and more universal point of view, since the ego is therein grasped as an original identity.413 We find, however, a summary of the Fichtian principle and the Kantian mode of presentation: “It is only by something being originally set in opposition to the ego, and by the ego being itself posited as the manifold (in time), that it is possible for the ego to get beyond the unity which belongs to it of merely being posited, and that, for example, it posits the same content on more than one occasion.”414 Schelling then passed on to natural philosophy, adopted Kantian forms and reflective determinations, such as those of repulsion and attraction, from Kant’s “Metaphysics of Nature,” and likewise dealt with quite empirical phenomena in expressions taken from Kant. All his first works on this subject come under this category, viz.: “Ideas towards a Philosophy of Nature,” 1797; “On the World-Soul,” 1798, the second edition of which possesses appendices which are entirely inconsistent with what goes before. In the writings of Herder and Kielmeyer415 we find sensibility, irritability, and reproduction dealt with, as also their laws, such as that the greater the sensibility the less the irritability, &c. — just as the powers or potencies were dealt with by Eschenmayer. It was only later on in relation to these that Schelling first apprehended nature in the categories of thought, and made general attempts of a more definite character in the direction of greater scientific development. It was only through what had been accomplished by these men that he was enabled to come into public notice so young. The spiritual and intellectual side, morality and the state, he represented on the other hand purely in accordance with Kantian principles: thus in his “Transcendental Idealism,” although it was written from a Fichtian point of view, he goes no further than Kant did in his “Philosophy of Rights” and his work “On Eternal Peace.” Schelling, indeed, later on published a separate treatise on Freedom, deeply speculative in character; this, however, remains isolated and independent, and deals with this one point alone; in Philosophy, however, nothing isolated can be worked out or developed. In the various presentations of his views Schelling on each occasion began again from the beginning, because, as we may see, what went before did not satisfy him; he has ever pressed on to seek a new form, and thus he has tried various forms and terminologies in succession without ever setting forth one complete and consistent whole. His principal works in this connection are the “First Sketch of a System of Natural Philosophy,” 1799; the “System of Transcendental Idealism,” 1800, one of his most carefully thought-out works; “Bruno, a Dialogue on the Divine and Natural Principle of Things,” 1802; “Journal of Speculative Physics,” 1801; “New Journal of Speculative Physics,” 1802 et In the second number of the second volume of his “Journal of Speculative Physics,” Schelling made the commencement of a detailed treatment of the whole of his philosophy. Here he likewise starts to a certain measure, though unconsciously, from the Fichtian form of construction; but the idea is already present that nature equally with knowledge is a system of reason.
It is not feasible here to go into details respecting what is called the philosophy of Schelling, even if time permitted. For it is not yet a scientific whole organized in all its branches, since it rather consists in certain general elements which do not fluctuate with the rest of his opinions. Schelling’s philosophy must still be regarded as in process of evolution, and it has not yet ripened into fruit;416 we can hence give a general idea of it only.
When Schelling made his first appearance the demands put forward by Philosophy were as follows. With Descartes thought and extension were in some incomprehensible way united in God, with Spinoza it was as motionless substance; and beyond this point of view neither of them ever passed. Later on we saw the form develop, partly in the sciences and partly in the Kantian philosophy. Finally, in the Fichtian philosophy, the form was subjectivity on its own account, from which all determinations were held to develop. What is thus demanded is that this subjectivity of infinite form which we saw dying into irony or arbitrariness (pp. 507-510) should be delivered from its one-sidedness in order to be united with objectivity and substantiality. To put it otherwise, the substance of Spinoza should not be apprehended as the unmoved, but as the intelligent, as a form which possesses activity within itself of necessity, so that it is the forming power of nature, but at the same time knowledge and comprehension. This then is the object of Philosophy; it is not the formal union of Spinoza that is demanded, nor the subjective totality of Fichte, but totality with the infinite form. We see this developing in the philosophy of Schelling.
- In one of his earlier writings, the “System of Transcendental Idealism,” which we shall consider first of all, Schelling represented transcendental philosophy and natural philosophy as the two sides of scientific knowledge. Respecting the nature of the two, he expressly declared himself in this work, where he once more adopts a Fichtian starting-point: “All knowledge rests on the harmony of an objective with a subjective.” In the common sense of the words this would be allowed; absolute unity, where the Notion and the reality are undistinguished in the perfected Idea, is the Absolute alone, or God; all else contains an element of discord between the objective and subjective. “We may give the name of nature to the entire objective content of our knowledge; the entire subjective content, on the other hand, is called the ego or intelligence.” They are in themselves identical and presupposed as identical. The relation of nature to intelligence is given by Schelling thus: “Now if all knowledge has two poles which mutually presuppose and demand one another, there must be two fundamental sciences, and it must be impossible to start from the one pole without being driven to the other.” Thus nature is impelled to spirit, and spirit to nature; either may be given the first place, and both must come to pass. “If the objective is made the chief,” we have the natural sciences as result, and “the necessary tendency,” the end, “of all natural science thus is to pass from nature to intelligence. This is the meaning of the effort to connect natural phenomena with theory. The highest perfection of natural science would be the perfect spiritualization of all natural laws into laws of intuitive perception and thought. The phenomenal (the material element) must entirely disappear, and laws (the formal element) alone remain. Hence it comes to pass that the more that which is in conformity with law breaks forth in nature itself, the more the outward covering disappears; the phenomena themselves become more spiritual, and finally cease altogether. The perfect theory of nature would be that by which the whole of nature should be resolved into an intelligence. The dead and unconscious products of nature are only abortive attempts on the part of nature to reflect itself, but the so-called dead nature is really an immature,” torpid, fossilized “intelligence”; it is implicit only, and thus remains in externality; “hence in its phenomena,” even though “still unconsciously, the character of intelligence shines through. Its highest end, which is to become object to itself, is first attained by nature” (instead of nature we should call it the Idea of nature), “through its highest and ultimate reflection, which is none other than man, or, more generally, it is that which we call reason, through which nature for the first time returns completely within itself, and whereby it becomes evident that nature is originally identical with what is known in us as intelligence or the conscious. Through this tendency to make nature intelligent natural science becomes the philosophy of nature.” The intelligent character of nature is thus spoken of as a postulate of science. The other point of view is “to give the subjective the foremost place.” Thus here “the problem is how to add an objective element agreeing with it. To start from the subjective as from the first and absolute, and to make the objective arise from it,” signifies a new departure; its consideration forms the content of true Transcendental Philosophy, or, as Schelling himself now named this science, “the other science fundamental to Philosophy.” The organ of transcendental philosophy is the subjective, the production of inward action. Production and reflection upon this production, the unconscious and conscious in one, is the æsthetic act of the imagination.417 Thus these two separate processes are as a whole very clearly expressed: the process which leads from nature to the subject, and that leading from the ego to the object. But the true process could only be traced out by means of logic, for it contains pure thoughts; but the logical point of view was what Schelling never arrived at in his presentation of things.
a. In respect of the ego, as principle of the transcendental philosophy, Schelling sets to work in the same way as did Fichte, inasmuch as he begins from the fact of knowledge “in which the content is conditioned through the form, and the form through the content”; this is formal A = A. But does A exist? The ego is “the point where subject and object are one in their unmediated condition”; the ego is just Ego = Ego, subject-object; and that is the act of self-consciousness wherein I am for myself object to myself. In self-consciousness there is not to be found a distinction between me and anything else; what are distinguished are directly identical, and there is so far nothing at all in opposition to this self-consciousness. How the case stands with regard to external objects is the question which must be decided later, in the further course of development. It is only the Notion of the ego which is to be laid hold of: “The Notion of the ego, that is the act whereby thought in general becomes object to itself, and the ego itself (the object) are absolutely one; independently of this act the ego is nothing.” It is the act whereby thought makes itself objective, and wherein the ego is brought into harmony with the objective, with thought; and from this standpoint it had to be demonstrated how the ego makes its way to objectivity. “The ego, as pure act, as pure action, is not objective in knowledge itself, for the reason that it is the principle of all knowledge. If it is to be object of knowledge, this must come to pass through a very different kind of knowledge than the ordinary.” The immediate consciousness of this identity is intuition, but inwardly it becomes “intellectual intuition”; it “is a knowledge which is the production of its object: sensuous intuition or perception is perception of such a nature that the perception itself appears to be different from what is perceived. Now intellectual intuition is the organ of all transcendental thought,” the act of pure self-consciousness generally. “The ego is nothing else than a process of production which ever makes itself its own object. Science can start from nothing objective,” but from “the non-objective which itself becomes object” as an “original duplicity. Idealism is the mechanism of the origination of the objective world from the inward principle of spiritual activity.”418
On the one hand Schelling’s system is related to the philosophy of Fichte, and, on the other hand, he, like Jacobi, makes his principle immediate knowledge — the intelligent intuitive perception which all who wish to philosophize must have. But what comes next is that its content is no longer the indeterminate, the essence of essence, but likewise the Absolute, God, the absolutely self-existent, though expressed as concrete, i.e. as mediating itself within itself, as the absolute unity or indifference of subjective and objective. Intellectual intuition is the Fichtian imagination oscillating between two different points. We have already spoken above (p. 417) of the form of intellectual intuition; it is the most convenient manner of asserting knowledge respecting — anything one likes. But the immediate knowledge of God as spiritual is only in the consciousness of Christian nations, and not for others. This immediate knowledge appears to be still more contingent as the intellectual intuition of the concrete, or the identity of subjectivity and objectivity. This intuition is intellectual indeed, because it is a rational intuition, and as knowledge it is likewise absolutely one with the object of knowledge. But this intuition, although itself knowledge, is not as yet known; it is the unmediated, the postulated. As it is in this way an immediate we must possess it, and what may be possessed may likewise not be possessed. Thus since the immediate presupposition in Philosophy is that individuals have the immediate intuition of this identity of subjective and objective, this gave the philosophy of Schelling the appearance of indicating that the presence of this intuition in individuals demanded a special talent, genius, or condition of mind of their own, or as though it were generally speaking an accidental faculty which pertained to the specially favoured few. For the immediate, the intuitively perceived, is in the form of an existent, and is not thus an essential; and whoever does not understand the intellectual intuition must come to the conclusion that he does not possess it. Or else, in order to understand it, men must give themselves the trouble of possessing it; but no one can tell whether he has it or not — not even from understanding it, for we may merely think we understand it. Philosophy, however, is in its own nature capable of being universal; for its ground-work is thought, and it is through thought that man is man. Schelling’s principle is thus indeed clearly a universal; but if a definite intuition, a definite consciousness is demanded, such as the consciousness or intuition of the identity of subjective and objective, this determinate particular thought is not as yet to be found in it.
It was, however, in this form of knowledge of the absolute as concrete, and, further, in the form of unity of subjective and objective, that Philosophy as represented by Schelling more especially marked itself off from the ordinary conceiving consciousness and its mode of reflection. Even less than Fichte did Schelling attain to popularity (supra, pp. 504, 505), for the concrete in its nature is directly speculative. The concrete content, God, life, or whatever particular form it has, is indeed the content and object of natural consciousness; but the difficulty lies in bringing what is contained in the concrete into concrete thought in accordance with its different determinations, and in laying hold of the unity. It pertains to the standpoint of the understanding to divide and to distinguish, and to maintain the finite thought-determinations in their opposition; but Philosophy demands that these different thoughts should be brought together. Thought begins by holding apart infinite and finite, cause and effect, positive and negative; since this is the region of reflecting consciousness, the old metaphysical consciousness was able to take part in so doing: but the speculative point of view is to have this opposition before itself and to reconcile it. With Schelling the speculative form has thus again come to the front, and philosophy has again obtained a special character of its own; the principle of Philosophy, rational thought in itself, has obtained the form of thought. In the philosophy of Schelling the content, the truth, has once more become the matter of chief importance, whereas in the Kantian philosophy the point of interest was more especially stated to be the necessity for investigating subjective knowledge. This is the standpoint of Schelling’s philosophy in its general aspects.
b. Since in further analysis the distinction between subject and object comes into view and is accepted, there follows the relationship of the ego to its other; with Fichte that forms the second proposition, in which the self-limitation of the ego is posited. The ego posits itself in opposition to itself, since it posits itself as conditioned by the non-ego; that is the infinite repulsion, for this conditionment is the ego itself. Schelling, on the one hand, says: “The ego is unlimited as the ego only in so far as it is limited,” as it relates to the non-ego. Only thus does consciousness exist, self-consciousness is a barren determination; through its intuition of self the ego becomes finite to itself. “This contradiction only allows itself to be dissolved by the ego becoming in this finitude infinite to itself, i.e. by its having an intuitive perception of itself as an infinite Becoming.” The relation of the ego to itself and to the infinite check or force of repulsion is a constant one. On the other hand it is said: “The ego is limited only in so far as it is unlimited;” this limitation is thus necessary in order to be able to get beyond it. The contradiction which we find here remains even if the ego always limits the non-ego. “Both activities — that which makes for infinitude, the limitable, real, objective activity, and the limiting and ideal, mutually presuppose one another. Idealism reflects merely on the one, realism on the other, transcendental idealism on both.”419 All this is a tangled mass of abstractions.
c. “Neither through the limiting activity nor through the limited does the ego arrive at self-consciousness. There consequently is a third activity, compounded from the other two, through which the ego of self-consciousness arises; this third is that which oscillates between the two — the struggle between opposing tendencies.” There is essential relation only, relative identity; the difference therein present thus ever remains. “This struggle cannot be reconciled by one such action, but only by an infinite succession of such,” i.e. the reconciliation of the opposition between the two tendencies of the ego, the inward and the outward, is, in the infinite course of progression, only an apparent one. In order that it may be complete, the whole inward and outward nature must be presented in all its details: but Philosophy can only set forth the epochs which are most important. “If all the intermediate links in sensation could be set forth, that would necessarily lead us to a deduction of all the qualities in nature, which last is impossible.” Now this third activity, which contains the union directly in itself, is a thought in which particularity is already contained. It is the intuitive understanding of Kant, the intelligent intuition or intuitively perceiving intelligence; Schelling, indeed, definitely names this absolute unity of contradictions intellectual intuition. The ego here is not one-sided in regard to what is different; it is identity of the unconscious and the conscious, but not an identity of such a nature that its ground rests on the ego itself.420
This ego must be the absolute principle: “All philosophy starts from a principle which as absolute identity is non-objective.” For if it is objective, separation is at once posited and it is confronted by another; but the principle is the reconciliation of the opposition, and therefore in and for itself it is non-objective. “Now how should a principle such as this be called forth to consciousness and understood, as is required if it is the condition attached to the comprehension of all philosophy? That it can no more be comprehended through Notions [Begriffe] than set forth, requires no proof.” Notion to Schelling signifies a category of the ordinary understanding; Notion is, however, the concrete thought which in itself is infinite. “There thus remains nothing more than that it should be set forth in an immediate intuition. If there were such an intuition which had as object the absolutely identical, that which in itself is neither subjective nor objective, and if for such, which,” however, “can be an intellectual intuition only, one could appeal to immediate experience,” the question would be: “How can this intuition be again made objective, i.e. how can it be asserted without doubt that it does not rest on a subjective deception, if there is not a universal objectivity in that intuition, which is recognized by all?” This intellectual principle in itself should thus be given in an experience so that men may be able to appeal to it. “The objectivity of intellectual intuition is art. The work of art alone reflects to me what is otherwise reflected through nothing — that absolute identical which has already separated itself in the ego itself.” The objectivity of identity and the knowledge of the same is art; in one and the same intuition the ego is here conscious of itself and unconscious.421 This intellectual intuition which has become objective is objective sensuous intuition — but the Notion, the comprehended necessity, is a very different objectivity.
Thus a principle is presupposed both for the content of philosophy and for subjective philosophizing: on the one hand it is demanded that the attitude adopted should be one of intellectual intuition, and, on the other hand, this principle has to be authenticated, and this takes place in the work of art. This is the highest form of the objectivization of reason, because in it sensuous conception is united with intellectuality, sensuous existence is merely the expression of spirituality. The highest objectivity which the subject attains, the highest identity of subjective and objective, is that which Schelling terms the power of imagination. Art is thus comprehended as what is inmost and highest, that which produces the intellectual and real in one, and philosophizing is conceived as this genius of art. But art and power of imagination are not supreme. For the Idea, spirit, cannot be truly given expression to in the manner in which art expresses its Idea. This last is always a method pertaining to intuitive perception; and on account of this sensuous form of existence the work of art cannot correspond to the spirit. Thus because the point last arrived at is designated as the faculty of imagination, as art, even in the subject this is a subordinate point of view, and thus in itself this point is not the absolute identity of subjectivity and objectivity. In subjective thought, rational, speculative thought is thus indeed demanded, but if this appears false to you nothing farther can be said than that you do not possess intellectual intuition. The proving of anything, the making it comprehensible, is thus abandoned; a correct apprehension of it is directly demanded, and the Idea is thus assertorically pre-established as principle. The Absolute is the absolute identity of subjective and objective, the absolute indifference of real and ideal, of form and essence, of universal and particular; in this identity of the two there is neither the one nor the other. But the unity is not abstract, empty, and dry; that would signify logical identity, classification according to something common to both, in which the difference remains all the while outside. The identity is concrete: it is subjectivity as well as objectivity; the two are present therein as abrogated and ideal. This identity may easily be shown in the ordinary conception: the conception, we may for example say, is subjective; it has, too, the determinate content of exclusion in reference to other conceptions; nevertheless, the conception is simple — it is one act, one unity.
What is lacking in Schelling’s philosophy is thus the fact that the point of indifference of subjectivity and objectivity, or the Notion of reason, is absolutely presupposed, without any attempt being made at showing that this is the truth. Schelling often uses Spinoza’s form of procedure, and sets up axioms. In philosophy, when we desire to establish a position, we demand proof. But if we begin with intellectual intuition, that constitutes an oracle to which we have to give way, since the existence of intellectual intuition was made our postulate. The true proof that this identity of subjective and objective is the truth, could only be brought about by means of each of the two being investigated in its logical, i.e. essential determinations; and in regard to them, it must then be shown that the subjective signifies the transformation of itself into the objective, and that the objective signifies its not remaining such, but making itself subjective. Similarly in the finite, it would have to be shown that it contained a contradiction in itself, and made itself infinite; in this way we should have the unity of finite and infinite. In so doing, this unity of opposites is not asserted beforehand, but in the opposites themselves it is shown that their truth is their unity, but that each taken by itself is one-sided — that their difference veers round, casting itself headlong into this unity — while the understanding all the time thinks that in these differences it possesses something fixed and secure. The result of thinking contemplation would in this former case be that each moment would secretly make itself into its opposite, the identity of both being alone the truth. The understanding certainly calls this transformation sophistry, humbug, juggling, and what-not. As a result, this identity would, according to Jacobi, be one which was no doubt conditioned and of set purpose produced. But we must remark that a one-sided point of view is involved in apprehending the result of development merely as a result; it is a process which is likewise mediation within itself, of such a nature that this mediation is again abrogated and asserted as immediate. Schelling, indeed, had this conception in a general way, but he did not follow it out in a definite logical method, for with him it remained an immediate truth, which can only be verified by means of intellectual intuition. That is the great difficulty in the philosophy of Schelling. And then it was misunderstood and all interest taken from it. It is easy enough to show that subjective and objective are different. Were they not different, nothing could be made of them any more than of A = A; but they are in opposition as one. In all that is finite, an identity is present, and this alone is actual; but besides the fact that the finite is this identity, it is also true that it is the absence of harmony between subjectivity and objectivity, Notion and reality; and it is in this that finitude consists. To this principle of Schelling’s, form, or necessity, is thus lacking, it is only asserted. Schelling appears to have this in common with Plato and the Neo-Platonists, that knowledge is to be found in the inward intuition of eternal Ideas wherein knowledge is unmediated in the Absolute. But when Plato speaks of this intuition of the soul, which has freed itself from all knowledge that is finite, empirical, or reflected, and the Neo-Platonists tell of the ecstasy of thought in which knowledge is the immediate knowledge of the Absolute, this definite distinction must be noticed, viz., that with Plato’s knowledge of the universal, or with his intellectuality, wherein all opposition as a reality is abrogated, dialectic is associated, or the recognized necessity for the abrogation of these opposites; Plato does not begin with this, for with him the movement in which they abrogate themselves is present. The Absolute is itself to be looked at as this movement of self-abrogation; this is the only actual knowledge and knowledge of the Absolute. With Schelling this idea has, however, no dialectic present in it whereby those opposites may determine themselves to pass over into their unity, and in so doing to be comprehended.
- Schelling begins with the idea of the Absolute as identity of the subjective and objective, and accordingly there evinced itself in the presentations of his system which followed, the further necessity of proving this idea; this he attempted to do in the two Journals of Speculative Physics. But if that method be once adopted, the procedure is not immanent development from the speculative Idea, but it follows the mode of external reflection. Schelling’s proofs are adduced in such an exceedingly formal manner that they really invariably presuppose the very thing that was to be proved. The axiom assumes the main point in question, and all the rest follows as a matter of course. Here is an instance: “The innermost essence of the Absolute can only be thought of as identity absolute, altogether pure and undisturbed. For the Absolute is only absolute, and what is thought in it is necessarily and invariably the same, or in other words, is necessarily and invariably absolute. If the idea of the Absolute were a general Notion” (or conception), “this would not prevent a difference being met with in it, notwithstanding this unity of the absolute. For things the most different are yet in the Notion always one and identical, just as a rectangle, a polygon and a circle are all figures. The possibility of the difference of all things in association with perfect unity in the Notion lies in the manner in which the particular in them is combined with the universal. In the Absolute this altogether disappears, because it pertains to the very idea of the Absolute that the particular in it is also the universal, and the universal the particular; and further that by means of this unity form and existence are also one in it. Consequently, in regard to the Absolute, from the fact of its being the Absolute, there likewise follows the absolute exclusion from its existence of all difference, and that at once.”422
In the former of the two above-named works, the “Journal of Speculative Physics,” Schelling began by again bringing forward the Substance of Spinoza, simple, absolute Existence, inasmuch as he makes his starting-point the absolute identity of the subjective and objective. Here, like Spinoza, he employed the method of geometry, laying down axioms and proving by means of propositions, then going on to deduce other propositions from these, and so on. But this method has no real application to philosophy. Schelling at this point laid down certain forms of difference, to which he gave the name of potencies, adopting the term from Eschenmayer, who made use of it (p. 514);423 they are ready-made differences, which Schelling avails himself of. But philosophy must not take any forms from other sciences, as here from mathematics. With Schelling, the leading form is that which was brought into remembrance again by Kant, the form of triplicity as first, second, and third potency.
Schelling, like Fichte, begins with I = I, or with the absolute intuition, expressed as proposition or definition of the Absolute, that “Reason is the absolute indifference of subject and object”: so that it is neither the one nor the other, for both have in it their true determination; and their opposition, like all others, is utterly done away with. The true reality of subject and object is placed in this alone, that the subject is not posited in the determination of subject against object, as in the philosophy of Fichte; it is not determined as in itself existent, but as subject-object, as the identity of the two; in the same way the object is not posited according to its ideal determination as object, but in as far as it is itself absolute, or the identity of the subjective and objective. But the expression “indifference” is ambiguous, for it means indifference in regard to both the one and the other; and thus it appears as if the content of indifference, the only thing which makes it concrete, were indifferent. Schelling’s next requirement is that the subject must not be hampered with reflection; that would be bringing it under the determination of the understanding, which, equally with sensuous perception, implies the separateness of sensuous things. As to the form of its existence, absolute indifference is with Schelling posited as A = A; and this form is for him the knowledge of absolute identity, which, however, is inseparable from the Being or existence of the same.424
Thus, therefore, opposition, as form and reality or existence, no doubt appears in this Absolute, but it is determined as a merely relative or unessential opposition: “Between subject and object no other than quantitative difference is possible. For no qualitative difference as regards the two is thinkable,” because absolute identity “is posited as subject and object only as regards the form of its Being, not as regards its existence. There is consequently only a quantitative difference left,” i.e. only that of magnitude: and yet difference must really be understood as qualitative, and must thus be shown to be a difference which abrogates itself. This quantitative difference, says Schelling, is the form actu: “The quantitative difference of subjective and objective is the basis of all finitude. Each determined potency marks a determined quantitative difference of the subjective and objective. Each individual Being is the result of a quantitative difference of subjectivity and objectivity. The individual expresses absolute identity under a determined form of Being:” so that each side is itself a relative totality, A = B, and at the same time the one factor preponderates in the one, and the other factor in the other, but both remain absolute identity.425 This is insufficient, for there are other determinations; difference is undoubtedly qualitative, although this is not the absolute determination. Quantitative difference is no true difference, but an entirely external relation; and likewise the preponderance of subjective and objective is not a determination of thought, but a merely sensuous determination.
The Absolute itself, in so far as the positing of difference is taken into account, is defined by Schelling as the quantitative indifference of subjective and objective: in respect to absolute identity no quantitative difference is thinkable. “Quantitative difference is only possible outside of absolute identity, and outside of absolute totality. There is nothing in itself outside of totality, excepting by virtue of an arbitrary separation of the individual from the whole. Absolute identity exists only under the form of the quantitative indifference of subjective and objective.” Quantitative difference, which appears outside of absolute identity and totality, is therefore, according to Schelling, in itself absolute identity, and consequently thinkable only under the form of the quantitative indifference of the subjective and objective. “This opposition does not therefore occur in itself, or from the standpoint of speculation. From this standpoint A exists just as much as B does; for A like B is the whole absolute identity, which only exists under the two forms, but under both of them alike. Absolute identity is the universe itself. The form of its Being can be thought of under the image of a line,” as shown by the following scheme:
“in which the same identity is posited in each direction, but with A or B preponderating in opposite directions.”426 If we go into details, the main points from an elementary point of view are the following.
The first potency is that the first quantitative difference of the Absolute, or “the first relative totality is matter. Proof: A = B is not anything real either as relative identity or as relative duplicity. As identity A = B, in the individual as in the whole, can be expressed only by the line,” — the first dimension. “But in that line A is posited throughout as existent,” i.e. it is at the same time related to B. “Therefore this line presupposes A = B as relative totality throughout; relative totality is therefore the first presupposition, and if relative identity exists, it exists only through relative totality,” — this is duplicity, the second dimension. “In the same way relative duplicity presupposes relative identity. Relative identity and duplicity are contained in relative totality, not indeed actu, but yet potentia. Therefore the two opposites must mutually extinguish each other in a third” dimension. “Absolute identity as the immediate basis of the reality of A and B in matter, is the force of gravitation. If A preponderates we have the force of attraction, if B preponderates we have that of expansion. The quantitative positing of the forces of attraction and expansion passes into the infinite; their equilibrium exists in the whole, not in the individual.”427 From matter as the first indifference in immediacy Schelling now passes on to further determinations.
The second potency (A²) is light, this identity itself posited as existent; in so far as A = B, A² is also posited. The same identity, “posited under the form of relative identity,” i.e. of the polarity which we find appearing “in A and B, is the force of cohesion. Cohesion is the impression made on matter by the self-hood” of light “or by personality, whereby matter first emerges as particular out of the universal identity, and raises itself into the realm of form.” Planets, metals and other bodies form a series which under the form of dynamic cohesion expresses particular relations of cohesion, in which on the one hand contraction preponderates, and on the other hand expansion. These potencies appear with Schelling as north and south, east and west polarity: their developments further appear as north-west, south-east, &c. He counts as the last potency Mercury, Venus, the Earth, &c. He continues: “Cohesion outside of the point of indifference I term passive. Towards the negative side” (or pole) “fall some of the metals which stand next to iron, after them the so-called precious metals,” then the “diamond, and lastly carbon, the greatest passive cohesion. Towards the positive side, again, some metals fall, in which the cohesive nature of iron gradually diminishes,” i.e. approaches disintegration, and lastly “disappears in nitrogen.” Active cohesion is magnetism, and the material universe is an infinite magnet. The magnetic process is difference in indifference, and indifference in difference, and therefore absolute identity as such. The indifference point of the magnet is the “neither nor” and the “as well as”; the poles are potentially the same essence, only posited under two factors which are opposed. Both poles depend “only upon whether + or - preponderates”; they are not pure abstractions. “In the total magnet the empirical magnet is the indifference point. The empirical magnet is iron. All bodies are mere metamorphoses of iron — they are potentially contained in iron. Every two different bodies which touch each other set up mutually in each other relative diminution and increase of cohesion. This mutual alteration of cohesion by means of the contact of two different bodies is electricity; the cohesion-diminishing factor +E is the potency of hydrogen,-E is the potency of oxygen. The totality of the dynamic process is represented only by the chemical process.”428
“By the positing of the dynamic totality the addition of light is directly posited as a product. The expression, the total product, therefore signifies light combined with the force of gravitation; by the positing of the relative totality of the whole potency, the force of gravity is directly reduced to the mere form of the Being of absolute identity.” Thus is the third potency (A³), the organism.429 Schelling launched out into too many individual details, if he desired to indicate the construction of the whole universe. On the one hand, however, he did not complete this representation, and on the other hand, he has confined himself mainly to implicit existence, and has mixed therewith the formalism of external construction according to a presupposed scheme. In this representation he advanced only as far as the organism, and did not reach the presentation of the other side of knowledge, i.e. the philosophy of spirit. Schelling began time after time, in accordance with the idea implied in this construction, to work out the natural universe, and especially the organism. He banishes all such meaningless terms as perfection, wisdom, outward adaptability; or, in other words, the Kantian formula, that a thing appears so and so to our faculty of knowledge, is transformed by him into this other formula, that such and such is the constitution of Nature. Following up Kant’s meagre attempt at demonstrating spirit in nature, he devoted special attention to inaugurating anew this mode of regarding nature, so as to recognize in objective existence the same schematism, the same rhythm, as is present in the ideal. Hence nature represents itself therein not as something alien to spirit, but as being in its general aspect a projection of spirit into an objective mode.
We have further to remark that Schelling by this theory became the originator of modern Natural Philosophy, since he was the first to exhibit Nature as the sensuous perception or the expression of the Notion and its determinations. Natural Philosophy is no new science; we met with it continually — in the works of Aristotle, for instance, and elsewhere. English Philosophy is also a mere apprehension in thought of the physical; forces, laws of Nature, are its fundamental determinations. The opposition of physics and Natural Philosophy is therefore not the opposition of the unthinking and the thinking view of Nature; Natural Philosophy means, if we take it in its whole extent, nothing else than the thoughtful contemplation of Nature; but this is the work of ordinary physics also, since its determinations of forces, laws, &c., are thoughts. The only difference is that in physics thoughts are formal thoughts of the understanding, whose material and content cannot, as regards their details, be determined by thought itself, but must be taken from experience. But concrete thought contains its determination and its content in itself, and merely the external mode of appearance pertains to the senses. If, then, Philosophy passes beyond the form of the understanding, and has apprehended the speculative Notion, it must alter the determinations of thought, the categories of the understanding regarding Nature. Kant was the first to set about this; and Schelling has sought to grasp the Notion of Nature, instead of contenting himself with the ordinary metaphysics of the same. Nature is to him nothing but the external mode of existence as regards the system of thought-forms, just as mind is the existence of the same system in the form of consciousness. That for which we have to thank Schelling, therefore, is not that he brought thought to bear on the comprehension of Nature, but that he altered the categories according to which thought applied itself to Nature; he introduced forms of Reason, and applied them — as he did the form of the syllogism in magnetism, for instance — in place of the ordinary categories of the understanding. He has not only shown these forms in Nature, but has also sought to evolve Nature out of a principle of this kind.
In the “Further Exposition of the System of Philosophy” which the “New Journal for Speculative Physics” furnishes, Schelling chose other forms; for, by reason of incompletely developed form and lack of dialectic, he had recourse to various forms one after another, because he found none of them sufficient. Instead of the equilibrium of subjectivity and objectivity, he now speaks of the identity of existence and form, of universal and particular, of finite and infinite, of positive and negative, and he defines absolute indifference sometimes in one and sometimes in another form of opposition, just according to chance. All such oppositions may be employed; but they are only abstract, and refer to different stages in the development of the logical principle itself. Form and essence are distinguished by Schelling in this way, that form, regarded on its own account, is the particular, or the emerging of difference, subjectivity. But real existence is absolute form or absolute knowledge immediately in itself, a self-conscious existence in the sense of thinking knowledge, just as with Spinoza it had the form of something objective or in thought. Speculative Philosophy is to be found in this assertion, not that it asserts an independent philosophy, for it is purely organization; knowledge is based on the Absolute. Thus Schelling has again given to transcendental Idealism the significance of absolute Idealism. This unity of existence and form is thus, according to Schelling, the Absolute; or if we regard reality as the universal, and form as the particular, the Absolute is the absolute unity of universal and particular, or of Being and knowledge. The different aspects, subject and object, or universal and particular, are only ideal oppositions; they are in the Absolute entirely and altogether one. This unity as form is intellectual intuition, which posits Thinking and Being as absolutely alike, and as it formally expresses the Absolute, it becomes at the same time the expression of its essence. He who has not the power of imagination, whereby he may represent this unity to himself, is deficient in the organ of Philosophy. But in this consists the true absoluteness of all and each, that the one is not recognized as universal, and the other as particular, but the universal in this its determination is recognized as unity of the universal and particular, and in like manner the particular is recognized as the unity of both. Construction merely consists in leading back everything determined and particular into the Absolute, or regarding it as it is in absolute unity; its determinateness is only its ideal moment, but its truth is really its Being in the Absolute. These three moments or potencies — that of the passing of existence (the infinite) into form (the finite), and of form into existence (which are both relative unities), and the third, the absolute unity, thus recur anew in each individual. Hence Nature, the real or actual aspect, as the passing of existence into form or of the universal into the particular, itself again possesses these three unities in itself, and in the same way the ideal aspect does so; therefore each potency is on its own account once more absolute. This is the general idea of the scientific construction of the universe — to repeat in each individual alike the triplicity which is the scheme of the whole, thereby to show the identity of all things, and in doing so to regard them in their absolute essence, so that they all express the same unity.430
The more detailed explanation is extremely formal: “Existence passes into form — this taken by itself being the particular (the finite) — by means of the infinite being added to it; unity is received into multiplicity, indifference into difference.” The other assertion is: “Form passes into existence by the finite being received into the infinite, difference into indifference.” But passing into and receiving into are merely sensuous expressions. “Otherwise expressed, the particular becomes absolute form by the universal becoming one with it, and the universal becomes absolute existence by the particular becoming one with it. But these two unities, as in the Absolute, are not outside of one another, but in one another, and therefore the Absolute is absolute indifference of form and existence,” as unity of this double passing-into-one. “By means of these two unities two different potencies are determined, but in themselves they are both the exactly equal roots of the Absolute.”431 That is a mere assertion, the continual return after each differentiation, which is perpetually again removed out of the Absolute.
“Of the first absolute transformation there are copies in phenomenal Nature; therefore Nature, regarded in itself, is nothing else than that first transformation as it exists in the absolute (unseparated from the other). For by means of the infinite passing into the finite, existence passes into form; since then form obtains reality only by means of existence, existence, when it has passed into form without form having (according to the assumption) similarly passed into existence, can be represented only as potentiality or ground of reality, but not as indifference of possibility and actuality. But that which may be described thus, namely as existence, in so far as that is mere ground of reality, and therefore has really passed into form, although form has not in turn passed into it, is what presents itself as Nature. — Existence makes its appearance in form, but in return form also makes its appearance in existence; this is the other unity,” that of mind. “This unity is established by the finite being received into the infinite. At this point form, as the particular, strikes into existence, and itself becomes absolute. Form which passes into existence places itself as absolute activity and positive cause of reality in opposition to the existence which passes into form, and which appears only as ground. The passing of absolute form into existence is what we think of as God, and the images or copies of this transformation are in the ideal world, which is therefore in its implicitude the other unity.”432 Each of these two transformations, then, is the whole totality, not, however, posited and not appearing as totality, but with the one or the other factor preponderating; each of the two spheres has, therefore, in itself again these differences, and thus in each of them the three potencies are to be found.
The ground or basis, Nature as basis merely, is matter, gravity, as the first potency; this passing of form into existence is in the actual world universal mechanism, necessity. But the second potency is “the light which shineth in darkness, form which has passed into existence. The absolute unification of the two unities in actuality, so that matter is altogether form, and form is altogether matter, is organism, the highest expression of Nature as it is in God, and of God as He is in Nature, in the finite.” On the ideal side “Knowledge is the essence of the Absolute brought into the daylight of form; action is a transformation of form, as the particular, into the essence of the Absolute. As in the real world form that is identified with essence appears as light, so in the ideal world God Himself appears in particular manifestation as the living form which has emerged in the passing of form into essence, so that in every respect the ideal and real world are again related as likeness and symbol. The absolute unification of the two unities in the ideal, so that material is wholly form and form wholly material, is the work of art; and that secret hidden in the Absolute which is the root of all reality comes here into view, in the reflected world itself, in the highest potency and highest union of God and Nature as the power of imagination.” On account of that permeation art and poetry therefore hold the highest rank in Schelling’s estimation. But art is the Absolute in sensuous form alone. Where and what could the work of art be, which should correspond to the Idea of the spirit? “The universe is formed in the Absolute as the most perfect organic existence and the most perfect work of art: for Reason, which recognizes the Absolute in it, it possesses absolute truth; for the imagination, which represents the Absolute in it, it possesses absolute Beauty. Each of these expresses the very same unity,” regarded “from different sides; and both arrive at the absolute indifference point in the recognition of which lies both the beginning and the aim of real knowledge.”433 This highest Idea, these differences, are grasped as a whole in a very formal manner only.
- The relation of Nature to Spirit, and to God, the Absolute, has been stated by Schelling elsewhere, i.e. in his later expositions, as follows: he defines the existence of God as Nature — in so far as God constitutes Himself its ground or basis, as infinite perception — and Nature is thus the negative moment in God, since intelligence and thought exist only by means of the opposition of one Being. For in one of his writings, directed on some particular occasion against Jacobi, Schelling explains himself further with regard to the nature of God and His relation to Nature. He says: “God, or more properly the existence which is God, is ground: He is ground of Himself as a moral Being. But” then “it is ground that He makes Himself” — not cause. Something must precede intelligence, and that something is Being— “since thought is the exact opposite of Being. That which is the beginning of an intelligence cannot be in its turn intelligent, since there would otherwise be no distinction; but it cannot be absolutely unintelligent, for the very reason that it is the potentiality of an intelligence. It will accordingly be something between these, i.e. it will operate with wisdom, but as it were with an innate, instinctive, blind, and yet unconscious wisdom; just as we often hear those who are under a spell uttering words full of understanding, but not uttering them with comprehension of their meaning, but as it were owing to an inspiration.” God, therefore, as this ground of Himself, is Nature — Nature as it is in God; this is the view taken of Nature in Natural Philosophy.434 But the work of the Absolute is to abrogate this ground, and to constitute itself Intelligence. On this account Schelling’s philosophy has later been termed a Philosophy of Nature, and that in the sense of a universal philosophy, while at first Natural Philosophy was held to be only a part of the whole.
It is not incumbent on us here to give a more detailed account of Schelling’s philosophy, or to show points in the expositions hitherto given by him which are far from satisfactory. The system is the latest form of Philosophy which we had to consider, and it is a form both interesting and true. In the first place special emphasis, in dealing with Schelling, must be laid on the idea that he has grasped the true as the concrete, as the unity of subjective and objective. The main point in Schelling’s philosophy thus is that its interest centres round that deep, speculative content, which, as content, is the content with which Philosophy in the entire course of its history has had to do. The Thought which is free and independent, not abstract, but in itself concrete, comprehends itself in itself as an intellectually actual world; and this is the truth of Nature, Nature in itself. The second great merit possessed by Schelling is to have pointed out in Nature the forms of Spirit; thus electricity, magnetism, &c., are for him only external modes of the Idea. His defect is that this Idea in general, its distinction into the ideal and the natural world, and also the totality of these determinations, are not shown forth and developed as necessitated in themselves by the Notion. As Schelling has not risen to this point of view, he has misconceived the nature of thought; the work of art thus becomes for him the supreme and only mode in which the Idea exists for spirit. But the supreme mode of the Idea is really its own element; thought, the Idea apprehended, is therefore higher than the work of art. The Idea is the truth, and all that is true is the Idea; the systematizing of the Idea into the world must be proved to be a necessary unveiling and revelation. With Schelling, on the other hand, form is really an external scheme, and his method is the artificial application of this scheme to external objects. This externally applied scheme takes the place of dialectic progress; and this is the special reason why the philosophy of Nature has brought itself into discredit, that it has proceeded on an altogether external plan, has made its foundation a ready-made scheme, and fitted into it Nature as we perceive it. These forms were potencies with Schelling, but instead of mathematical forms or a type of thought like this, by some other men sensuous forms have been taken as basis, just as were sulphur and mercury by Jacob Boehme. For instance, magnetism, electricity, and chemistry have been defined to be the three potencies in Nature, and thus in the organism reproduction has been termed chemistry; irritability, electricity; and sensibility, magnetism.435 In this way there has crept into Natural Philosophy the great formalism of representing everything as a series, which is a superficial determination without necessity, since instead of Notions we find formulas. Brilliant powers of imagination are displayed, such as were exhibited by Görres. This mistake of applying forms which are taken from one sphere of Nature to another sphere of the same has been carried a long way; Oken, for example, calls wood-fibres the nerves and brain of the plant, and is almost crazy on the subject. Philosophy would in this way become a play of mere analogical reflections; and it is not with these but with thoughts that we have to do. Nerves are not thoughts, any more than such expressions as pole of contraction, of expansion, masculine, feminine, &c. The formal plan of applying an external scheme to the sphere of Nature which one wishes to observe, is the external work of Natural Philosophy, and this scheme is itself derived from the imagination. That is a most false mode of proceeding; Schelling took advantage of it to some extent, others have made a complete misuse of it. All this is done to escape thought; nevertheless, thought is the ultimate simple determination which has to be dealt with.
It is therefore of the greatest importance to distinguish Schelling’s philosophy, on the one hand, from that imitation of it which throws itself into an unspiritual farrago of words regarding the Absolute; and, on the other hand, from the philosophy of those imitators, who, owing to a failure to understand intellectual intuition, give up comprehension, and with it the leading moment of knowledge, and speak from so-called intuition, i.e. they take a glance at the thing in question, and having fastened on it some superficial analogy or definition, they fancy they have expressed its whole nature, while in point of fact they put an end to all capacity for attaining to scientific knowledge. This whole tendency places itself, in the first place, in opposition to reflective thought, or to progress in fixed, steadfast, immovable Notions. But instead of remaining in the Notion and recognizing it as the unresting ego, they have lighted on the opposite extreme of passive intuition, of immediate Being, of fixed implicitude; and they think that they can make up for the lack of fixity by superficial observation, and can render this observation intellectual by determining it once more by some fixed Notion or other; or they bring their minds to bear on the object of consideration by saying, for instance, that the ostrich is the fish among birds, because he has a long neck — fish becomes a general term, but not a Notion. This whole mode of reasoning, which has forced its way into natural history and natural science, as well as into medicine, is a miserable formalism, an irrational medley of the crudest empiricism with the most superficial ideal determinations that formalism ever descended to. The philosophy of Locke is not so crude as it is, for it is not a whit better in either its content or its form, and it is combined with foolish self-conceit into the bargain. Philosophy on this account sank into general and well-deserved contempt, such as is for the most part extended to those who assert that they have a monopoly of philosophy. Instead of earnestness of apprehension and circumspection of thought, we find in them a juggling with idle fancies, which pass for deep conceptions, lofty surmises, and even for poetry; and they think they are right in the centre of things when they are only on the surface. Five-and-twenty years ago436 the case was the same with poetic art; a taste for ingenious conceits took possession of it, and the effusions of its poetic inspiration came forth blindly from itself, shot out as from a pistol. The results were either crazy ravings, or, if they were not ravings, they were prose so dull that it was unworthy of the name of prose. It is just the same in the later philosophies. What is not utterly senseless drivel about the indifference-point and polarity, about oxygen, the holy, the infinite, &c., is made up of thoughts so trivial that we might well doubt our having correctly apprehended their meaning, in the first place because they are given forth with such arrogant effrontery, and in the second place because we cannot help trusting that what was said was not so trivial as it seems. As in the Philosophy of Nature men forgot the Notion and proceeded in a dead unspiritual course, so here they lose sight of spirit entirely. They have strayed from the right road; for by their principle, Notion and perception are one unity, but in point of fact this unity, this spirit, itself emerges in immediacy, and is therefore in intuitive perception, and not in the Notion.
E. Final Result.
THE PRESENT STANDPOINT of philosophy is that the Idea is known in its necessity; the sides of its diremption, Nature and Spirit, are each of them recognized as representing the totality of the Idea, and not only as being in themselves identical, but as producing this one identity from themselves; and in this way the identity is recognized as necessary. Nature, and the world or history of spirit, are the two realities; what exists as actual Nature is an image of divine Reason; the forms of self-conscious Reason are also the forms of Nature. The ultimate aim and business of philosophy is to reconcile thought or the Notion with reality. It is easy from subordinate standpoints to find satisfaction in modes of intuitive perception and of feeling. But the deeper the spirit goes within itself, the more vehement is the opposition, the more abundant is the wealth without; the depth is to be measured by the greatness of the craving with which spirit seeks to find itself in what lies outside of itself. We saw the thought which apprehends itself appearing; it strove to make itself concrete within itself. Its first activity is formal; Aristotle was the first to say that νοῦς is the thought of thought. The result is the thought which is at home with itself, and at the same time embraces the universe therein, and transforms it into an intelligent world. In apprehension the spiritual and the natural universe are interpenetrated as one harmonious universe, which withdraws into itself, and in its various aspects develops the Absolute into a totality, in order, by the very process of so doing, to become conscious of itself in its unity, in Thought. Philosophy is thus the true theodicy, as contrasted with art and religion and the feelings which these call up — a reconciliation of spirit, namely of the spirit which has apprehended itself in its freedom and in the riches of its reality.
To this point the World-spirit has come, and each stage has its own form in the true system of Philosophy; nothing is lost, all principles are preserved, since Philosophy in its final aspect is the totality of forms. This concrete idea is the result of the strivings of spirit during almost twenty-five centuries of earnest work to become objective to itself, to know itself:
Tantæ molis erat, se ipsam cognoscere mentem.
All this time was required to produce the philosophy of our day; so tardily and slowly did the World-spirit work to reach this goal. What we pass in rapid review when we recall it, stretched itself out in reality to this great length of time. For in this lengthened period, the Notion of Spirit, invested with its entire concrete development, its external subsistence, its wealth, is striving to bring spirit to perfection, to make progress itself and to develop from spirit. It goes ever on and on, because spirit is progress alone. Spirit often seems to have forgotten and lost itself, but inwardly opposed to itself, it is inwardly working ever forward (as when Hamlet says of the ghost of his father, “Well said, old mole! canst work i’ the ground so fast?”437), until grown strong in itself it bursts asunder the crust of earth which divided it from the sun, its Notion, so that the earth crumbles away. At such a time, when the encircling crust, like a soulless decaying tenement, crumbles away, and spirit displays itself arrayed in new youth, the seven league boots are at length adopted. This work of the spirit to know itself, this activity to find itself, is the life of the spirit and the spirit itself. Its result is the Notion which it takes up of itself; the history of Philosophy is a revelation of what has been the aim of spirit throughout its history; it is therefore the world’s history in its innermost signification. This work of the human spirit in the recesses of thought is parallel with all the stages of reality; and therefore no philosophy oversteps its own time. The importance which the determinations of thought possessed is another matter, which does not belong to the history of Philosophy. These Notions are the simplest revelation of the World spirit: in their more concrete form they are history.
We must, therefore, in the first place not esteem lightly what spirit has won, namely its gains up to the present day. Ancient Philosophy is to be reverenced as necessary, and as a link in this sacred chain, but all the same nothing more than a link. The present is the highest stage reached. In the second place, all the various philosophies are no mere fashionable theories of the time, or anything of a similar nature; they are neither chance products nor the blaze of a fire of straw, nor casual eruptions here and there, but a spiritual, reasonable, forward advance; they are of necessity one Philosophy in its development, the revelation of God, as He knows Himself to be. Where several philosophies appear at the same time, they are different sides which make up one totality forming their basis; and on account of their one-sidedness we see the refutation of the one by the other. In the third place we do not find here feeble little efforts to establish or to criticize this or that particular point; instead of that, each philosophy sets up a new principle of its own, and this must be recognized.
If we glance at the main epochs in the whole history of Philosophy, and grasp the necessary succession of stages in the leading moments, each of which expresses a determinate Idea, we find that after the Oriental whirl of subjectivity, which attains to no intelligibility and therefore to no subsistence, the light of thought dawned among the Greeks.
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The philosophy of the ancients had the absolute Idea as its thought; and the realization or reality of the same consisted in comprehending the existing present world, and regarding it as it is in its absolute nature. This philosophy did not make its starting-point the Idea itself, but proceeded from the objective as from something given, and transformed the same into the Idea; the Being of Parmenides.
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Abstract thought, νοῦς, became known to itself as universal essence or existence, not as subjective thought; the Universal of Plato.
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In Aristotle the Notion emerges, free and unconstrained, as comprehending thought, permeating and spiritualizing all the forms which the universe contains.
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The Notion as subject, its independence, its inwardness, abstract separation, is represented by the Stoics, Epicureans and Sceptics: here we have not the free, concrete form, but universality abstract and in itself formal.
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The thought of totality, the intelligible world, is the concrete Idea as we have seen it with the Neo-Platonists. This principle is ideality generally speaking, which is present in all reality, but not the Idea which knows itself: this is not reached until the principle of subjectivity, individuality, found a place in it, and God as spirit became actual to Himself in self-consciousness.
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But it has been the work of modern times to grasp this Idea as spirit, as the Idea that knows itself. In order to proceed from the conscious Idea to the self-conscious, we must have the infinite opposition, namely the fact that the Idea has come to the consciousness of being absolutely sundered in twain. As spirit had the thought of objective existence, Philosophy thus perfected the intellectuality of the world, and produced this spiritual world as an object existing beyond present reality, like Nature, — the first creation of spirit. The work of the spirit now consisted in bringing this Beyond back to reality, and guiding it into self-consciousness. This is accomplished by self-consciousness thinking itself, and recognizing absolute existence to be the self-consciousness that thinks itself. With Descartes pure thought directed itself on that separation which we spoke of above. Self-consciousness, in the first place, thinks of itself as consciousness; therein is contained all objective reality, and the positive, intuitive reference of its reality to the other side. With Spinoza Thought and Being are opposed and yet identical; he has the intuitive perception of substance, but the knowledge of substance in his case is external. We have here the principle of reconciliation taking its rise from thought as such, in order to abrogate the subjectivity of thought: this is the case in Leibnitz’s monad, which possesses the power of representation.
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In the second place, self-consciousness thinks of itself as being self-consciousness; in being self-conscious it is independent, but still in this independence it has a negative relation to what is outside self-consciousness. This is infinite subjectivity, which appears at one time as the critique of thought in the case of Kant, and at another time, in the case of Fichte, as the tendency or impulse towards the concrete. Absolute, pure, infinite form is expressed as self-consciousness, the Ego.
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This is a light that breaks forth on spiritual substance, and shows absolute content and absolute form to be identical; — substance is in itself identical with knowledge. Self-consciousness thus, in the third place, recognizes its positive relation as its negative, and its negative as its positive, — or, in other words, recognizes these opposite activities as the same, i.e. it recognizes pure Thought or Being as self-identity, and this again as separation. This is intellectual perception; but it is requisite in order that it should be in truth intellectual, that it should not be that merely immediate perception of the eternal and the divine which we hear of, but should be absolute knowledge. This intuitive perception which does not recognize itself is taken as starting-point as if it were absolutely presupposed; it has in itself intuitive perception only as immediate knowledge, and not as self-knowledge: or it knows nothing, and what it perceives it does not really know, — for, taken at its best, it consists of beautiful thoughts, but not knowledge.
But intellectual intuition is knowledge, since, in the first place, in spite of the separation of each of the opposed sides from the other, all external reality is known as internal. If it is known according to its essence, as it is, it shows itself as not existing of itself, but as essentially consisting in the movement of transition. This Heraclitean or Sceptical principle, that nothing is at rest, must be demonstrated of each individual thing; and thus in this consciousness — that the essence of each thing lies in determination, in what is the opposite of itself — there appears the apprehended unity with its opposite. Similarly this unity is, in the second place, to be recognized even in its essence; its essence as this identity is, in the same way, to pass over into its opposite, or to realize itself, to become for itself something different; and thus the opposition in it is brought about by itself. Again, it may be said of the opposition, in the third place, that it is not in the Absolute; this Absolute is existence, the eternal, &c. This is, however, itself an abstraction in which the Absolute is apprehended in a one-sided manner only, and the opposition is apprehended only as ideal (supra, p. 536); but in fact it is form, as the essential moment of the movement of the Absolute. This Absolute is not at rest, and that opposition is not the unresting Notion; for the Idea, unresting though it is, is yet at rest and satisfied in itself. Pure thought has advanced to the opposition of the subjective and objective; the true reconciliation of the opposition is the perception that this opposition, when pushed to its absolute extreme, resolves itself; as Schelling says, the opposites are in themselves identical — and not only in themselves, but eternal life consists in the very process of continually producing the opposition and continually reconciling it. To know opposition in unity, and unity in opposition — this is absolute knowledge; and science is the knowledge of this unity in its whole development by means of itself.
This is then the demand of all time and of Philosophy. A new epoch has arisen in the world. It would appear as if the World-spirit had at last succeeded in stripping off from itself all alien objective existence, and apprehending itself at last as absolute Spirit, in developing from itself what for it is objective, and keeping it within its own power, yet remaining at rest all the while. The strife of the finite self-consciousness with the absolute self-consciousness, which last seemed to the other to lie outside of itself, now comes to an end. Finite self-consciousness has ceased to be finite; and in this way absolute self-consciousness has, on the other hand, attained to the reality which it lacked before. This is the whole history of the world in general up to the present time, and the history of Philosophy in particular, the sole work of which is to depict this strife. Now, indeed, it seems to have reached its goal, when this absolute self-consciousness, which it had the work of representing, has ceased to be alien, and when spirit accordingly is realized as spirit. For it becomes such only as the result of its knowing itself to be absolute spirit, and this it knows in real scientific knowledge. Spirit produces itself as Nature, as the State; nature is its unconscious work, in the course of which it appears to itself something different, and not spirit; but in the State, in the deeds and life of History, as also of Art, it brings itself to pass with consciousness; it knows very various modes of its reality, yet they are only modes. In scientific knowledge alone it knows itself as absolute spirit; and this knowledge, or spirit, is its only true existence. This then is the standpoint of the present day, and the series of spiritual forms is with it for the present concluded.
At this point I bring this history of Philosophy to a close. It has been my desire that you should learn from it that the history of Philosophy is not a blind collection of fanciful ideas, nor a fortuitous progression. I have rather sought to show the necessary development of the successive philosophies from one another, so that the one of necessity presupposes another preceding it. The general result of the history of Philosophy is this: in the first place, that throughout all time there has been only one Philosophy, the contemporary differences of which constitute the necessary aspects of the one principle; in the second place, that the succession of philosophic systems is not due to chance, but represents the necessary succession of stages in the development of this science; in the third place, that the final philosophy of a period is the result of this development, and is truth in the highest form which the self-consciousness of spirit affords of itself. The latest philosophy contains therefore those which went before; it embraces in itself all the different stages thereof; it is the product and result of those that preceded it. We can now, for example, be Platonists no longer. Moreover we must raise ourselves once for all above the pettinesses of individual opinions, thoughts, objections, and difficulties; and also above our own vanity, as if our individual thoughts were of any particular value. For to apprehend the inward substantial spirit is the standpoint of the individual; as parts of the whole, individuals are like blind men, who are driven forward by the indwelling spirit of the whole. Our standpoint now is accordingly the knowledge of this Idea as spirit, as absolute Spirit, which in this way opposes to itself another spirit, the finite, the principle of which is to know absolute spirit, in order that absolute spirit may become existent for it. I have tried to develop and bring before your thoughts this series of successive spiritual forms pertaining to Philosophy in its progress, and to indicate the connection between them. This series is the true kingdom of spirits, the only kingdom of spirits that there is — it is a series which is not a multiplicity, nor does it even remain a series, if we understand thereby that one of its members merely follows on another; but in the very process of coming to the knowledge of itself it is transformed into the moments of the one Spirit, or the one self-present Spirit. This long procession of spirits is formed by the individual pulses which beat in its life; they are the organism of our substance, an absolutely necessary progression, which expresses nothing less than the nature of spirit itself, and which lives in us all. We have to give ear to its urgency — when the mole that is within forces its way on — and we have to make it a reality. It is my desire that this history of Philosophy should contain for you a summons to grasp the spirit of the time, which is present in us by nature, and — each in his own place — consciously to bring it from its natural condition, i.e. from its lifeless seclusion, into the light of day.
I have to express my thanks to you for the attention with which you have listened to me while I have been making this attempt; it is in great measure due to you that my efforts have met with so great a measure of success. And it has been a source of pleasure to myself to have been associated with you in this spiritual community; I ought not to speak of it as if it were a thing of the past, for I hope that a spiritual bond has been knit between us which will prove permanent. I bid you a most hearty farewell.
(The closing lecture of the series was given on the 22nd March, 1817; on the 14th March, 1818; on the 12th August, 1819; on the 23rd March, 1821; on the 30th March, 1824; on the 28th March, 1828; and on the 26th March, 1830.)
ENDNOTES.
1 Neander. Genet. Entwickelung d. vornehmsten gnost. Systeme, p. 43.
2 Neander. Genetische Entwickelung, &c., pp. 87-91.
3 Tennemann, Vol. VIII Section I. p. 366; Buhle: Lehrb. d. Gesch. d. Phil. Part V. p. 36; Brucker. Hist. crit. phil. T. III. pp. 23, 24; 28, 29.
4 Moses Maimonides: More Nevochim, P. I. c. 71, pp. 133, 134 (Basil. 1629).
5 Abulphar. Dynast. IX. pp. 153, 171, 208, 209; Brucker. Hist. crit. phil. T. III. pp. 27-29, 44.
6 Moses Maimonides: More Nevochim, P. I. c. 73, pp. 152-155, 157-159.
7 Pocock. Specim. hist. Arab. pp. 78, 79; Hottinger. Biblioth. orient. c. 2, p. 219; Brucker. Hist. cr. phil. T. III. pp. 65, 66; Tennemann, Vol. VIII. Section I. p. 374.
8 Hottinger. Biblioth. orient. c. 2, p. 221; Gabriel Sionita: De moribus Orient. p. 16; Brucker. Hist. cr. phil. T. III. pp. 73, 74; Tennemann, Vol. VIII. Section I. pp. 374, 375.
9 Leo Africanus: De illustrib. Arabum viris, c. 9, p. 268; Abulphar. Dynast. IX. p. 230, Tiedemann, Geist. d. spec. Phil. Vol. IV. p. 112, sqq., Brucker. Hist. cr. phil. T. III. pp. 80-84.
10 Leo Afric. De illustrib. Arabum viris, c. 12, p. 274; Brucker. Hist. cr. phil. T. III. pp. 93-95; Tiedemann, Geist. d. spec. Phil. Vol. IV. pp. 120-126, Tennemann, Vol. VIII. Section I. pp. 383-396.
11 Brucker. Hist. cr. phil. T. III. p. 97.
12 Brucker. Hist. cr. phil. T. III. p. 101; Tennemann, Vol. III. Section I. pp. 420, 421.
13 Brucker. Hist. cr. phil. T. II. p. 857; Tennemann, Vol. VIII. Section I. pp. 446, 447.
14 Moses Maimonides: More Nevochim, P. I. c. 51, pp. 76-78; c. 57, 58, pp. 93-98; II. c. 1, 2, pp. 184-193; III. c. 8, pp. 344-350; &c., &c.
15 Tennemann, Vol. VIII. Pt. I. p. 49.
16 Brucker. Hist. crit. phil. T. III. pp. 614-617; Bulæus: Hist. Universitatis Parisiensis; T. I. p. 184.
17 Bulæus: Hist. Univ. Paris. T. I. p. 182. (Tennemann, Vol. VIII. pp. 71, 72.)
18 De prædestinatione. Proœmium (Veterum auctorum, qui IX. sæculo de prædestinatione et gratia scripserunt, opera et fragmenta, cura Gilb. Mauguin. Paris, 1650. T. I. p. 103.)
19 Tennemann, Vol. VIII. Sec. I. pp. 115, 117.
20 Anselmi Epistol. XLI. I. 11 (Tennemann, Vol. VIII. Sec. I. pp. 159, 160.)
21 Tennemann, Vol. VIII. Sec. I. p. 116; Eadmerus: De vita Anselmi (subjuncta operibus Anselmi editis a Gabr. Gerberon. 1721. Fol.), p. 6.
22 Gaunilo: Liber pro insipiente, c. 5; Tennemann, Vol. VIII. Sec. I. p. 139; Brucker, Hist. crit. phil. T. III. p. 665.
23 Tiedemann: Geist d. specul. Philos. Vol. IV. p. 277; Brucker. Hist. crit. phil. T. III. p. 762.
24 Tennemann, Vol. VIII. Sec. II. pp. 457, 458.
25 Brucker. Hist. crit. phil. T. III. pp. 764-768.
26 Tennemann, Vol. VIII. Sec. I. pp. 317, 325; Brucker, Hist. crit. phil. T. III. p. 688; Thomas Aquinas: in IV. libros sentent. L. II. Dist. 17, Qu. I. Art. I; Alberti Magni: Summa Theol. P. I. Tract. IV. Qu. 20 (Oper. T. XVII. p. 76).
27 Tennemann, Vol. VIII. Sec. II. pp. 550-553; Brucker, Hist. crit. phil. T. III. p. 802.
28 Tennemann, Vol. VIII. Sec. II. pp. 554-561.
29 Brucker. Hist. crit. phil. T. III. pp. 825-828; Bulæus: Hist. Univ. Paris. T. IV. p. 970.
30 Duns Scotus in Magistrum sententiarum. Proœmium (Tennemann, Vol. VIII. Sec. II. p. 706).
31 Brucker. Hist. crit. phil. T. III. p. 828; et not. from Sancrutius.
32 Trithemius: Annal. Hirsaugiens, T. I. p. 135.
33 Brucker. Hist. crit. phil. T. III. pp. 779, 697; Tennemann, Vol. VIII. Sec. I. pp. 353-359, and in the same place, note 3 (cf. Jourdain, Gesch. d. Arist. Schriften im Mittelalter, ubersetzt von Stahr pp. 165-176); Bulæus: Hist. Univers. Paris, T. III. pp. 82, 142; Launoius, De varia Arist. fortuna in Academ. Paris, c. IX. p. 210.
34 Hegel erroneously mentions this event as occurring to “William of England” instead of to William of Holland, King of the Romans. [Translator’s note.]
35 Brucker. Hist. cr. phil. T. III. pp. 788-798.
36 Anselmus: De fide trinitatis, c. 2, 3; Epist. XLI. 1. 11; Tennemann, Vol. VIII. Section I. p. 158.
37 Rixner: Handbuch der Geschichte der Philos., Vol. II. p. 26 (1st ed.); Anselmus De fide trinitatis, c. 2; Buhle: Lehrbuch d. Geschichte d. Philosoph., Part V. p. 184; Abælard, Epist. XXI.; Tennemann, Vol. VIII Section I. pp. 162, 163.
38 Tennemann, Vol. VIII. Section I. p. 339; Joh. Sarisberiensis: Metalogicus, L. II. c. 17.
39 Tiedemann: Geist d. specul. Philos. Vol. V. pp. 401, 402; Suarez. Disputationes metaphysicæ, Disp. I Sectio 6.
40 Tiedemann; Geist d. specul. Philos. Vol. IV. pp. 490, 491; Thomas Aquinas: De ente et essent. c 3 et 5.
41 Tiedemann: Geist d. spec. Philos. Vol. IV. pp. 609-613; Scotus: in Magistrum sententiar. L. II. Dist., 3. Qu. 1-6; Occam: in libr. I. sentent. Dist. II. Quæst. 6 (Tennemann, Vol. VIII. Section II. pp. 852, 853.)
42 Rixner: Handbuch der Geschichte der Philos. Vol. II. p. 110.
43 Brucker. Hist. crit. phil. T. III. pp. 846-848, 911, 912; Tennemann, Vol. VIII. Section II. pp. 903, 944, 945, 925, 939, 940; Bulæus: Hist. Univers. Paris, T. IV. pp. 257, 265.
44 Tennemann, Vol. VIII. Section II. pp. 914-919, 945-947; Bulæus: Hist. Univ. Paris. T.V. pp. 706, 739, 740.
45 Tennemann, Vol. VIII. Section I. p. 61; Cramer, Fortsetzung von Bossuet, Part V. Vol. II. p. 88.
46 Tennemann, Vol. VIII. Section I. p. 61; Bulæus: Hist. Univ. Paris. T. I. p. 169.
47 Rixner: Handbuch d. Gesch. d. Phil. Vol. II. p. 153.
48 Tennemann, Vol. VIII. Section I, pp. 236, 237.
49 Brucker. Hist. crit. phil. T. III. p. 878.
50 Tennemann, Vol. VIII. Section II. pp. 955, 956.
51 Rixner: Handbuch d. Geschichte d. Philos. Vol. II. p. 157; Tennemann, Vol. VIII. Section II. p. 964 seq.; Tiedemann: Geist d. spec. Phil. Vol. V. p. 290 seq.
52 Tennemann, Vol. VIII. Section II. pp. 824-829.
53 Rixner: Lehrbuch d. Gesch. d. Philos. Vol. II. p. 126; Tennemann, Vol. VIII. Section II. pp. 829, 833.
54 Tennemann, Vol. VIII. Section II. pp. 834-836; Rixner: Handb. d. Gesch. d. Phil. Vol. II. Appendix, pp. 86-89; Jordanus Brunus Nolanus: De compendiosa architectura et complemento artis Lullii, Sectio II. (Bruni scripta, quæ latine confecit, omnia; ed. Gfrörer, Stuttgardiæ 1835, Fasciculus II. pp. 243-264).
55 Buhle: Lehrb. d. Gesch. d. Phil., Part VI. Section I. pp. 125 — 128; Tennemann, Vol. IX. pp. 22, 23.
56 Pomponatius: Tractatus de immortalitate animæ, c. VII., VIII. p. 35; c. IX. pp. 57, 58; c. XII. pp. 89, 90; c. XV. p. 142.
57 Ficinus: Proœmium in Plotinum, p. 2, Pomponatius, l. l. c. III. p. 9; c. IV. 12; Tennemann, Vol. IX. pp. 65-67.
58 Bruck. Hist. crit. phil. T. IV. P. I. p. 164.
59 Brucker. Hist. crit. phil. T. IV. P. I. pp. 44, 45.
60 Ficinus: Proœmium in Plotinum, p. 1; Brucker. I. 1, p. 49, 55, 48.
61 Proclus: Theologia Platonis, Appendix, pp. 503-505; Tennemann, Vol. IX. p. 149.
62 Tennemann, Vol. IX. pp. 164, 165; Tiedemann: Geist d. Spec. Phil. Vol. V. p. 483; Brucker. Hist. crit. phil. T. IV. P. I. pp. 358, 365, 366; Rixner: Handbuch d. Gesch. d. Phil. Vol. II. p. 206.
63 Tennemann, Vol. IX. pp. 228-230; Brucker. 1. 1, p. 721.
64 Brucker. Hist. crit. phil. T. IV. P. II. pp. 63, 64, 66-68; Buhle: Lehrb. d. Gesch. d. Phil. Part VI. Section I. pp. 360, 362; Cardanus: De vita propria, c. 4, pp. 9-11; Tiedemann, Geist d. spec. Philosophie, Vol. V. pp. 563, 564.
65 Buhle: Lehrb. d. Gesch. d. Phil. Part VI. Section I. pp. 362-365; Tiedemann, Geist. d. Spec. Phil. Vol. V. p. 565; Brucker. Hist. crit. phil. T. IV. P. II. pp. 71-74; Cardanus: De vita propria, c. 26, p. 70.
66 Cardanus: De genitur. XII. p. 84; Buhle: Lehrbuch d. Gesch. d. Phil. Part VI. Section I. pp. 363, 364; Tiedemann: Geist. d. Spec. Phil. Vol. V. pp. 564, 565.
67 Brucker. Hist. crit. phil. T. IV. P. II. pp. 108, 114-120; Tennemann, Vol. IX. pp. 290-295.
68 Giordano Bruno: De la causa, principio et uno, Venetia 1584, 8, which was certainly not really printed at Venice, since both it and the following work, De l’infinito, Universo e Mondi, Venetia 1584, 8, appeared at Paris. Both these works are dialogues.
69 Brucker. Hist. crit. phil. T. IV. P. II. pp. 15-29.
70 Lectures of 1829-30.
71 Opere di Giordano Bruno Nolano, ora per la prima volta raccolte e pubblicate da Adolfo Wagner in due volumi. Lipsia, Weidmann 1830.
72 Cf. Opere di Giordano Bruno pubbl. da Wagner. Introduzione, pp. xxiv., xxv.
73 v. Hegel’s Werke, Vol. VII. Section II. p. 10.
74 Lectures of 1805-6.
75 Jacobi: Werke, Vol. IV. Section II. pp. 7-18; Tennemann, Vol. IX. pp. 391-394; Giordano Bruno: De la causa, principio et uno, Dialog. II. (Opere pubbl. da Ad. Wagner, Vol. I.), pp. 235-243.
76 Jacobi: Werke, Vol. IV. Section II. pp. 19-23, 28-31; Tennemann, Vol. IX. pp. 394-396, 398, 399; Giordano Bruno: De la causa, principio et uno, Dial. III. pp. 251-257; Dial. IV. pp. 269-274.
77 Jacobi: Werke, Vol. IV. Section II. pp. 23-25; Tennemann, Vol. IX. p. 396; Giordano Bruno: De la causa, principio et uno, Dial. III. pp. 260, 261.
78 Jacobi: Werke, Vol. IV. Section II. pp. 25, 26; Tennemann, Vol. IX. p. 397; Giordano Bruno: De la causa, principio et uno, Dial. III. p. 261.
79 Jacobi: Werke, Vol. IV. Section II. pp. 32, 45; Tennemann, Vol. IX. pp. 399, 403, 404; Giordano Bruno: De la causa, principio et uno, Dial. IV. p. 275; Dial. V. p. 291.
80 Jordanus Brunus: De Minimo, pp. 10, 16-18; Jacobi: Werke, Vol. IV. Section II. pp. 34-39; Tennemann, Vol. IX. pp. 400-402; Giordano Bruno: De la causa, principio et uno, Dial. V. pp. 281-284. — On this opposition of the minimum and the maximum Bruno wrote several special works, for example, De triplici Minimo et Mensura libri V. Francofurti apud Wechelium et Fischer, 1591, 8; the text is hexameters, with notes and scholia; Buhle gives the title as De Minimo libri V. Another work bears the title: De Monade, Numero et figura liber; Item De Innumerabilibus, Immenso et Infigurabili: seu de Universo et Mundis libri VIII. Francof. 1591, 8.
81 Bruno wrote many such topico-mnemonic works, of which the earliest are the following: Philotheus Jordanus Brunus Nolanus De compendiosa architectura et complemento artis Lullii, Paris. ap. Æg. Gorbinum, 1582. 12. — J. Brunus Nol. De Umbris idearum, implicantibus Artem quærendi, &c., Paris. ap. eund. 1582. 8. The second part has the title: Ars memoriæ. — Ph. Jord. Bruni Explicatio XXX sigillorum &c. Quibus adjectus est Sigillus sigillorum, &c. It is evident from the dedication that Bruno published this work in England, therefore between 1582 and 1585. — Jordanus Brunus De Lampade combinatoria Lulliana, Vitebergæ 1587. 8. In the same place he wrote De Progressu et lampade venatoria Logicorum, Anno 1587, which he dedicated to the Chancellor of the Wittenberg University. — Jordanus Brunus De Specierum scrutinio et lampade combinatoria Raym. Lullii, Pragæ, exc. Georg. Nigrinus 1588. 8; also printed in the works of Raymund Lullius. — Also De imaginum, signorum et idearum compositione Libri III. Francofurti ap. Jo. Wechel. et Petr. Fischer. 1591. 8.
82 Buhle: Geschichte der neuern Philos. Vol. II. Section II. p. 715 (717); Jordanus Brunus: De compendiosa architectura et complemento artis Lullii (Jordani Bruni Nolani scripta, quæ latine confecit, omnia. ed. A. Fr. Gfrörer, Stuttgard, 1835, Fasc. II.), c. 1, p. 238.
83 Buhle: Geschichte der neuern Philos. Vol. II. Section II. pp. 717, 718 (719, a-718, b); Jord. Brunus: De compend. architect. c. 5, p. 239.
84 Buhle: Gesch. d. neuern Philos. Vol. II. Section II. p. 717 (719, a); Jord. Brun. De compend. architect. c. 2, 3, pp. 238, 239.
85 Buhle: Gesch. d. neuern Philos. Vol. II. Section II. pp. 723, 724; Jordani Bruni De Umbris idearum (Jord. Bruni Nolani scripta, ed. A. Fr. Gfrörer, Fasc. II.): Triginta intentiones umbrarum, Intentio I-IV. pp. 300-302.
86 Buhle: Gesch. d. neuern Philos. Vol. II. Section II. pp. 724-726; Jordanus Brunus: De Umbris idearum, Intentio V-IX. pp. 302-305.
87 Buhle: Gesch. d. neuern Philos. Vol. II. Section II. pp. 727, 731; Jordanus Brunus: De Umbris idearum, Intentio XXI. p. 310; De triginta idearum conceptibus: Conceptus X. p. 319.
88 Buhle: Gesch. d. neuern Philos. Vol. II. Section II. pp. 730-734; Jordani Bruni De Umbris idearum: De triginta idearum conceptibus, Conceptus VII. X. XIII. XXVI. pp. 318-320, 323, 324.
89 Buhle: Gesch. d. neuern Philos. Vol. II. Section II. p. 745; Jordani Bruni Explicatio triginta sigillorum: Sigillus Sigillorum, P. II. § 11.
90 Buhle: Gesch. d. neuern Philos. Vol. II. Section II. p. 734; cf. Jordan. Brun. De Umbris Idearum: Ars Memoriæ, I.-XI. pp. 326-330.
91 Buhle: Gesch. d. neuern Philos. Vol. II. Section II. pp. 734, 735; Jordan. Brun. De Umbris Idearum: Ars Memoriæ, XII. pp. 330, 331.
92 Brucker. Hist. crit. phil. T. IV. P. II. pp. 671-677; Buhle: Gesch. d. neuern Phil. Vol. II. Section II. pp. 866-869.
93 Buhle: Lehrbuch. d. Gesch. d. Phil. Part VI. Section I. pp. 410-415; Brucker. Hist. crit. phil. T. IV. P. II. pp. 677-680; Buhle: Gesch. d. neuern Philos. Vol. II. Section II. pp. 870-878.
94 Buhle: Gesch. d. neuern Philos. Vol. II. Sec. II. pp. 670-680; Brucker. Hist. crit. phil. T. IV. P. II. pp. 548-562.
95 Buhle: Gesch. d. neuern Philos. Vol. II. Section II. pp. 950-954; Brucker. Hist. crit. phil. T. IV. P. II. pp. 91-95.
96 The Quarterly Review, Vol. XVII., April, 1817, p. 53.
97 Bacon, De augmentis scientiarum, II. c. 1 (Lugd. Batavor, 1652. 12), pp. 108-110 (Operum omnium, pp. 43, 44, Lipsiæ, 1694)
98 Ibidem, c. 2, p. 111 (Operum, p. 44); c. 4, pp. 123, 124 (p. 49), c. 11, pp. 145-147 (pp. 57, 58).
99 Bacon. De augmentis scientiarum, IV. c. 2, pp. 294, 295 (p. 213) (Ellis and Spedding’s translation, Vol. IV. p. 394).
100 Bacon. Novum Organon, L. I. Aphor. 11-34, pp. 280-282 (Operum).
101 Bacon. De augm. scient. V. c. 4, p. 358 (p. 137). (Ellis and Spedding’s translation. Vol. IV. p. 428.)
102 Bacon. De augmentis scientiarum, V. c. 2, pp. 320, 321 (pp. 122, 123).
103 Bacon. Novum Organon, L. I. Aphor. 105, p. 313; De augmentis scientiarum, V. c. 2, pp. 326, 327 (pp. 124, 125).
104 The Quarterly Review, Vol. XVII., April, 1817, pp. 50, 51: cf. Bacon silva silvarum sive historia naturalis, Cent. IV., Sect. 326, 327 (Operum, pp. 822, 823).
105 Bacon. De augmentis scientiarum, III. c. 5, pp. 245, 246 (p. 95).
106 Ibid. IV. c. 2, p. 293 (p. 112).
107 The Quarterly Review, Vol. XVII., April, 1817, pp. 51, 52; cf. Bacon. De augmentis scientiarum, III. c. 3, 4, pp. 200-206 (pp. 78-80).
108 Bacon. Novum Organon, L. II. Aphor. 2. (Ellis and Spedding’s translation, Vol. IV. p. 119.)
109 Bacon. Novum Organon, L. II. Aphor. 2; cf. the Quarterly Review, Vol. XVII. April, 1817, p. 52.
110 Bacon. De augmentis scientiarum, III. c. 4; p. 237 (p. 92).
111 Bacon. De augm. scient. III. c. 4, p. 239 (p. 92).
112 Bacon. De augmentis scientiarum, I. p. 46 (p. 19); III. c. 4, pp. 211-213 (pp. 82, 83); Novum Organon, L. I. Aphor. 85, p. 304.
113 Bacon. De augmentis scientiarum, III. c. 4, pp. 231-234 (pp. 89, 90).
114 The Quarterly Review, Vol. XVII. April, 1817, p. 52.
115 Bacon. Novum Organon, L. II. Aphor. 17, pp. 345, 346.
116 Bacon. Novum Organon, L II Aphor. II pp. 325, 326 (Tennemann, Vol. X. pp. 35, 36); Lib I. Aphor. 51, p. 286, L. II Aphor. 9; Aphor. 3, p. 326.
117 Bacon. Novum Organon, L II. Aphor. 35, p. 366.
118 The Quarterly Review, Vol. XVII. April, 1817, p. 52. Cf. Bacon. De augmentis scientiarum, III. c. 4, p. 236 (p. 91).
119 Jacob Böhme’s Leben und Schriften (in his Works, Hamburg, 1715, 4), No. I. § 18, pp. 11, 12; No. V., § 2, p. 54 and the title-page; No. I. § 57, pp. 27, 28.
120 Jacob Böhme’s Leben und Schriften, No. I. 2-4, pp. 3, 4; § 6, 7, p. 5; § 10, 11, pp. 7, 8; § 28, 29, pp. 17, 18.
121 Jacob Böhme’s Leben und Schriften, No. VI. § 3-8, pp. 81-87; No. I. § 12-17, pp. 8-11.
122 Theosophische Sendbriefe, 47th Letter (Werke, Hamburg, 1715, 4), p. 3879.
123 Trostschrift von vier Complexionen, § 43-63, pp. 1602-1607.
124 Act I. Scene 2.
125 Von Christi Testament der heiligen Taufe, Book II. chap. i. § 4-5, pp. 2653, 2654.
126 Morgenröthe im Aufgang, Preface, § 84, 85, 88, p. 18.
127 Von wahrer Gelassenheit, chap. ii. § 9, 10, p. 1673.
128 Von den drei Principien göttlichen Wesens, chap. x. § 42, p. 470.
129 Von der Gnadenwahl, chap. i. § 3-10, pp. 2408-2410; chap. ii. § 9, p. 2418; § 19, 20, p. 2420; Schlüssel der vornehmsten Puncten und Wörter, § 2, p. 3668; § 145, 146, pp. 3696, 3697; Morgenröthe, chap. iv. § 9-21, pp. 49-51; chap. xi. § 47, pp. 126, 127, etc.
130 Morgenröthe, chap. i. § 3-7, 9-24, pp. 23-27; chap. ii. § 38-40, pp. 34, 35; § i. p. 28 [see Law’s translation].
131 Morgenröthe, chap. 11. § 8, 14-18, 31-33, pp. 29-34 [see Law’s translation].
132 Morgenröthe, chap. iii. § 2, 8-11, pp. 36-38.
133 Morgenröthe, chap. iv. § 5, 6, p. 48; chap. viii. § 15-chap. xi. § 46, pp. 78-126.
134 Morgenröthe, chap. iii. § 18, p. 40; chap. x. § 54, p. 115; § 39, 40, p. 112; chap. xi. § 7-12, pp. 119, 120.
135 Von göttlicher Beschaulichkeit, chap. i. § 8-10, p. 1739.
136 Von göttlicher Beschaulichkeit, chap. iii. § 1-3, pp. 1755, 1756.
137 Morgenröthe, chap. iii. § 33-35, p. 44 (cf. Rixner: Handbuch d. Gesch. d. Philos. Vol. II. Appendix, p. 106, § 7).
138 Morgenröthe, chap. iii. § 15, 18-22, pp. 39-41.
139 Von göttlicher Beschaulichkeit, chap. iii. § 4, 5, p. 1756, § 12, p. 1758; Morgenröthe, chap. xii. § 99-107, p. 149, 150; chap. xiii. § 92-104, 31-52, pp. 166-168, 157-160; chap. xiv. § 36, p. 178; Von den drei Principien göttlichen Wesens, chap. iv. § 69, p. 406; chap. xv. § 5, pp. 543, 544.
140 Morgenröthe, chap. xiii. § 53-64, pp. 160-162; Vierzig Fragen von der Seele, XII. § 4, p. 1201; Von sechs theosophischen Puncten, V. 7, § 3, p. 1537; Von wahrer Gelassenheit, chap. i. § 1-7, pp. 1661-1663; Von göttlicher Beschaulichkeit, chap. i. § 23-26, pp. 1742, 1743; Von der Geburt und Bezeichnung aller Wesen, chap. xvi. § 49, p. 2391; Vom übersinnlichen Leben, § 41, 42, p. 1696 [see Law’s translation].
141 Von der Menschwerdung Jesu Christi, Pt. I. chap. v. § 14, p. 1323; Von den drei Principien göttlichen Wesens, chap. x. § 43, p. 470.
142 Von göttlicher Beschaulichkeit, chap. iii. § 11, p. 1757.
143 Infra, p. 213.
144 Morgenröthe, chap. viii. § 15-20, pp. 78, 79; chap. x. § 38, p. 112; chap. xiii. § 69-91, pp. 162-166; chap xi. § 5-13, pp. 119, 120.
145 177 Fragen von göttlicher Offenbarung, III. § 2-5, 10-16, pp. 3591-3595.
146 Von göttlicher Beschaulichkeit, chap. iii. § 12, 14, pp. 1757, 1758.
147 Rixner: Handbuch d. Gesch d. Philos. Vol. II. Appendix, p. 108, § 5 (from Boehme’s Morgenröthe, chap. ii. § 16, pp. 30, 31, § 33, p. 34).
148 Morgenröthe, chap. xxiii. § 11, 12, pp. 307, 308 (cf. Rixner: Handb. d. Gesch. d. Philos. Vol. II. Appendix, p. 108, § 5), Theosophische Sendbriefe, I. § 5, p. 3710.
149 Morgenröthe, chap. iii. § 29, 30, p. 43 [see Law’s translation].
150 Von göttlicher Beschaulichkeit, chap. iii. § 13, p. 1758; Morgenröthe, chap. x. § 55, 60, 58, pp. 115, 116 (chap. xi. § 4, p. 118).
151 Morgenröthe, chap. iii. § 36-38, 47, pp. 44-46 [see Law’s translation].
152 Von göttlicher Beschaulichkeit, chap. i. § 33, p. 1745; chap. ii. § 29, p. 1754, chap. iii. § 15, 18-24, 27, 29, pp. 1758-1761; Von den drei Principien göttlichen Wesens, chap. viii § 5, p. 433, Mysterium Magnum, oder Erklarung des ersten Buchs Mosis, chap xix § 28, pp. 2830, 2831.
153 Von göttlicher Beschaulichkeit, chap. i. § 23-39, pp. 1742-1746; chap. ii. § 1-13, 15-30, pp. 1747-1754.
154 Brucker. Hist. crit. phil. T. IV. P. II. pp. 203-217; Cartes. De Methodo, I-II (Amstelod. 1672, 4), pp. 2-7 (Œuvres complètes de Descartes publiées par Victor Cousin, T. I.), pp. 125-133; Notes sur l’éloge de Descartes par Thomas (Œuvres de Descartes publiées par Cousin, T. I.), p. 83, et suiv.; Tennemann, Vol. X. pp. 210-216.
155 Spinoza: Principia philosophiæ Cartesianæ (Benedicti de Spinoza Opera, ed. Paulus. Jenæ, 1802, T. I.), p. 2.
156 Cartes. Principia philosophiæ, P. I. § 1-6 (Amstelod. 1672, 4), pp. 1, 2 (Œuvres, T. III. pp. 63-66); cf. Meditationes de prima philosophia, I. (Amstelod. 1685, 4), pp. 5-8 (Œuvres, T. I. pp. 235-245); De Methodo, IV. p. 20 (pp. 156-158).
157 Cartes. Principia philosophiæ, P. I. § 7, 8, p. 2 (pp. 66, 67).
158 Cartes. De Methodo, IV. pp. 20, 21 (p. 158); Spinoza: Principia philosophiæ Cartes, p. 14.
159 Cartes. De Methodo, IV. p. 21 (p. 159); Epistol. T. I. ep. 118 (Amstelod. 1682, 4), p. 379 (Œuvres, T. IX. pp. 442, 443).
160 Cartes. Responsiones ad sec. objectiones, adjunctæ Meditationibus de prima philosophia, p. 74 (p. 427); Spinoza: Principia philosophiæ Cartes., pp. 4, 5.
161 Appendix ad Cartes. Meditationes, continens objectiones quint. p. 4 (Œuvres, T. II. pp. 92, 93).
162 Cartes. Principia philosophiæ, P I § 9, pp. 2, 3 (pp. 67, 68).
163 Ibid. P I § 11, p. 3 (pp. 69, 70)
164 Cartes. Respons. ad sec. object.: Rationes more geometr. dispos., Postulata, p. 86 (pp. 454, 455); Spinoza: Principia philosophiæ, Cartes., p. 13.
165 Cartes. Princip. philos., P. IV. § 196, pp. 215, 216 (pp. 507-509); Meditation. VI. p. 38 (pp. 329, 330); Spinoza: Principia philos. Cartes., pp. 2, 3.
166 Cartes. Respons. ad sec. object.: Rat. more geom. dispos., Axiomata V., VI. p. 86 (p. 453), et Propositio IV. p. 91 (pp. 464, 465); Meditationes, II. pp. 9-14 (pp. 246-262).
167 Cartes. De Methodo, IV. p. 21 (pp. 158, 159); Spinoza: Principia philosoph. Cartes., p. 14.
168 Cartes. Principia philosophiæ, P. I. § 13, pp. 3, 4 (pp. 71, 72).
169 Cartes. Respons. ad sec. object. Rationes more geom. dispos., Def. I. p. 85 (pp. 451, 452), et Proposit. IV. p. 91 (pp. 464, 465), Meditationes, III. pp. 15-17 (pp. 263-268).
170 Cartes. Principia philos., P. I. § 20, p. 6 (pp. 76, 77); Meditationes, III. pp. 17-25 (pp. 268-292); De Methodo, IV. pp. 21, 22 (pp. 159-162); Spinoza: Principia philos. Cartes., p. 10.
171 Cartes. Principia philos. P. I., § 14, p. 4 (pp. 72, 73.)
172 Cartes. Resp. ad sec. obj.: Rat. more geom. disp., Ax. III.-VI., X., Prop. I. pp. 88, 89 (pp. 458-461); Spinoza: Princ. phil. Cart., pp. 14-17.
173 Spinoza: Princip. philos. Cart., p. 20; Cartesii Resp. ad sec. obj.: Rat. more geom. dispos., Propos. II. p. 89 (pp. 461, 462).
174 Cartes. Principia philosophiæ, P. I. §. 15, 16, 18, 24, pp. 4, 5, 7 (pp. 73-75, 78, 79).
175 Cartes. Principia philosophiæ, P. I. § 24-26, p. 7 (pp. 79, 80).
176 Ibid. P. I. § 29, 30, 35, 36, 38, 43, pp. 8-11 (pp. 81-86, 89); Meditationes, IV. pp. 25, 26 (pp. 293-297).
177 In the Lectures of 1829-1830 the philosophy of Malebranche is inserted here. (Editor’s note).
178 Cartes. Principia philos. P. I. § 22, 23, pp. 6, 7 (pp. 77, 78); Responsiones quartæ, p. 133 (p. 70); Spinoza: Princip. philos. Cart. pp. 30, 31, 36, 38; Buhle: Geschichte der neuern Philosophie, Vol. III. Sec. I. pp. 17, 18.
179 Cartes. Principia philos. P. I. § 48, p. 12 (p. 92); Meditationes, III. p. 17 (pp. 268, 269).
180 Cartes. Principia philosophiæ, P. I. § 49, p. 13 (p. 93).
181 Ibid. P. I. § 48, p. 12 (p. 92).
182 Cartes. Princip. philosophiæ, P. I. § 51, p. 14 (p. 95)
183 Ibid. P. I. § 48, pp. 12, 13 (p. 92); § 60, p. 16 (p. 101); § 52, p. 14 (p. 95); Ration. more geometr. dispos., Definit. X. p. 86 (p. 454).
184 Cartes. Principia philosophiæ, P. I. § 53, 54, p. 14 (pp. 96, 97).
185 Cartes. Princip. philos., P. I. § 66-74, pp. 19-22 (pp. 107-117); P. II. § 4, p. 25 (pp. 123, 124).
186 Cartes. Principia philos. P. II. § 16, 20, 37, 38, pp. 29-31, 38, 39 (pp. 133, 134, 137, 138, 152-154).
187 Buhle: Geschichte der neuern Philosophie, Vol. III. Sec. I. p. 19; cf. Cartes. Princip. phil., P. III. § 46, 47, p. 65 (pp. 210-212).
188 Cf. Cartes. Principia philos., P. II. § 64, p. 49 (pp. 178, 179).
189 Cartes. Principia philos., P. III. § 5-42, 46 sqq. pp. 51-63, 65 sqq. (pp. 183-208, p. 210 et suiv.); P. IV. § 1 sqq., 69, 109-115, p. 137 sqq., 116, 178-180 (p. 330 et suiv., 388, 420-425).
190 Cartes. Principia philosoph, P. I. § 37, 39-41, pp. 10, 11 (pp. 85-88).
191 Cartes. De Methodo, V. pp. 35, 36 (pp. 185-189).
192 Cartes. De Methodo, V. p. 29 (173, 174).
193 Collectanea de vita B. de Spinoza (addita Operibus ed. Paulus Jenæ 1802-1803, T. II.), pp. 593-604, 612-628 (Spinoza Epist. LIII-LIV. in Oper. ed. Paul. T. I. pp. 638-640) 642-665; Spinozæ Oper. ed. Paul. T. II. Præf. p. XVI.
194 Collectanea de vita B. de Spinoza, pp. 629-641; Spinozæ Ethic. (Oper. T. II.) pp. 1, 3 et not., 33.
195 Spinoz. Ethices, P. I. Prop. V. VIII. X. et Schol., XIII. pp. 37-39, 41, 42, 45.
196 Spinoz. Ethices, P. I. Prop. XIV. et Coroll. II. Prop. XV. XVI. et Coroll. I. pp. 46, 51.
197 Spinoz. Ethices, P. I. Prop. XVII., Coroll. I., II., et Schol, Prop. XVIII., Prop. XX, et Coroll. I. Prop. XXI., XXVI., XXVII., XXIX., XXXII., XXXIII. Schol. II. pp. 51-57, 59, 61, 63, 67, 68.
198 Spinoz. Ethices, P. II. Prop. I., II., VII. et Schol. pp. 78, 79, 82, 83.
199 Spinoz. Ethic. P. I. Prop. XXX-XXXII. pp. 62, 63; P. III. Defin. III. p. 132; Prop. XI. Schol., p. 141.
200 Spinoz. Ethices, P. II. Prop. XI. Demonst. et Coroll. pp. 86, 87; Defin. IV. pp. 77, 78.
201 Dictionnaire historique et critique (édition de 1740, T. IV.), Article Spinosa, p. 261, Note N. No. IV.
202 Spinoz. Ethices, P. II. Prop. XII., XIII. et Schol. Prop. XIV., XXIII., V. pp. 87-89, 95, 102, 80, 81.
203 Spinoz. Ethices, P. II. Prop. XI. (Axiom I. p. 78) et Demonstr. Prop. X. pp. 85-87; Prop. VI. p. 81; P. III. Prop. II. pp. 133, 134.
204 Spinoz. Ethices, P. III. Prop. VI.-VIII. Prop. IX. Schol. pp. 139, 140; P. II. Prop. XLIX. Coroll. p. 123; P. III. Prop. II. Schol. p. 136; P. V. Prop. III. Demonst. et Coroll. pp. 272, 273.
205 Spinoz. Ethices, P. III. Prop. I. p. 132; Prop. III. p. 138; P. IV. Præf. p. 199; P. III. Prop. XI. Schol. pp. 141, 142; P. IV. Prop. II. p. 205; P. III. Prop. III. et Schol. p. 138.
206 Spinoz. Ethices, P. V. Prop. XXXVI. Schol. Prop. XXXVII. Demonstr., Prop. XXXVIII. et Schol. pp. 293-295.
207 Spinoz. Ethices, P. II. Prop. XL. Schol. II. pp. 113, 114.
208 Spinoz. Ethices, P. II. Prop. XLIV. et Coroll. II. pp. 117, 118; Prop. XLV. p. 119; P. V. Prop. XXX. p. 289; P. II. Prop. XXXII. p. 107.
209 Spinoz. Ethices, P. V. Prop. XIV. p. 280; Prop. VI. p. 275; Prop. XXVII. pp. 287, 288; Prop. XXXII. Coroll.; Prop. XXXV. pp. 291, 292.
210 Buhle: Gesch. d. neuern Philosophie, Vol. III. Sec. 2, pp. 430, 431.
211 Malebranche: De la recherche de la vérité (Paris, 1736), T. II. L. III. Part I. chap. i. pp. 4-6; T. I. L. I. chap. i. pp. 6, 7; P. II. chap. ii. pp. 66-68; chap. iii. p. 72; chap. iv. p. 84; chap. v. p. 92; chap. vi. pp. 95, 96.
212 Malebranche: De la recherche de la vérité, T. II. L. III. Part II. chap. vi. pp. 100-102.
213 Malebranche: De la recherche de la vérité, T. II. L. III. P. II. chap. vi. pp. 103-107, 109-111.
214 Buhle: Geschichte der neuern Philosophie, Vol. IV. Sec. 1, pp. 238-241; Quarterly Review, April, 1817, pp. 70, 71; The Works of John Locke (London, 1812), Vol. I.: The Life of the Author, pp. xix.-xxxix.
215 Locke: An Essay concerning human Understanding (The Works of John Locke, Vol. I.), Book I. chap. ii. § 1; chap. iii. § 15, § 22.
216 Locke: An Essay concerning human Understanding (Vol. I) Book I. chap. ii. § 2-9, § 27; chap. iii. § 1-15.
217 Locke: An Essay concerning human Understanding (Vol. I.) Bk. II. chap. i. § 1, 2.
218 Locke: An Essay concerning human Understanding (Vol. I.), Bk. II. chap. i. § 2-5.
219 v. Schiller’s Xenien.
220 Locke: An Essay concerning human Understanding (Vol I.), Bk. II., chap. ii. § 2, not.; chap. xii. § 1; chap. xxii. § 2; chap. i. § 10-14.
221 Locke: An Essay concerning human Understanding (Vol. I), Bk. II. chap. xiii. § 2; chap. iv. § 2.
222 Ibidem (Vol. I.), Bk. II. chap. xiv. § 3.
223 Locke: An Essay concerning human Understanding (Vol. II.), Bk. II. chap. xxiii. § 1, 2.
224 Ibidem (Vol. I.), Bk. II. chap. xxi. § 1.
225 Ibidem (Vol. II.), Bk. II. chap. xxvi. § 1.
226 Ibidem (Vol. I.), Bk. II. chap xxi. § 7.
227 Ibidem (Vol. I.), Bk. II. chap. xiii. § 17, 18.
228 Locke: An Essay concerning human Understanding (Vol. I.), Bk. II. chap. viii. § 9-26.
229 Locke: An Essay concerning human Understanding (Vol. II.), Bk. III. chap. iii. § 6; § 13, 15.
230 Brucker. Histor. critic. philos. T. IV. P. 2, pp. 731-736, 743-745.
231 Hug. Grot. De jure belli ac pacis, B. III. chap. xi. § 13-16 (Ed. Gronov. Lipsiæ, 1758, 8vo), pp. 900-905; chap. iv. § 10, pp. 792, 793.
232 Buhle: Geschichte der neuern Philosophie, Vol. III. Sec. 1, pp. 223, 224, 227.
233 Hobbes. Epistola dedicatoria ante Elementor philos Sectionem primam (Thomæ Hobbesii Opera philosophica, quæ latine scripsit omnia, Amstelod, 1668, 4to), pp. 1, 2.
234 Cf. Brucker. Histor. crit. philos. T. IV. P. II. p. 154.
235 Hobbes, De cive, chap. i. § 2, 3 (Oper. phil. etc. Amstel. 1668), pp. 3, 4.
236 Hobbes, De cive, chap. i. § 4-6, 12-14, pp. 4-8; Leviathan, chap. xiii. (Oper.), pp. 63-66.
237 Ibidem, chap. v. § 6-12, pp. 37-38; chap. vi. § 12-14, pp. 44-46.
238 Buhle: Geschichte der neuern Philosophie, Vol. IV. Sec. 2, pp. 519-523; Rixner: Handbuch der Geschichte der Philosophie, Vol. III. p. 29.
239 Rixner: Handbuch der Geschichte der Philosophie, Vol. III. p. 31; cf. Puffendorf. De jure naturæ et gent. II. 2, § 5-7 (Francof. ad Moenum, 1706, 4), pp. 157-161; VII. 1, § 3-7, pp. 900-909.
240 Buhle: Geschichte der neuern Philosophie, Vol. IV. Sec. 1, pp. 107, 108.
241 Buhle, Geschichte der neuern Philosophie, Vol. IV. p. 115, cf. Newtoni Optices. P. III (Londini, 1706, 4) p. 314.
242 La vie de Mr. Leibnitz par Mr. le Chevalier de Jaucourt (Essais de Théodicée, par Leibnitz, Amsterdam, 1747, T. I.), pp. 1-28, 45, 59-62, 66-74, 77-80, 87-92, 110-116, 148-151; Brucker. Hist. crit. phil., T. IV. P. II. pp. 335-368; Leibnitzii Opera omnia (ed. Dutens), T. II., P. I. pp. 45, 46.
243 Vie de Mr. Leibnitz, pp. 134-143; Brucker. Hist. crit. philos. T. IV. P. II. pp. 385, 389; Tennemann, vol. xi. pp. 181, 182.
244 Leibnitzii Opera, T. II. P. I. pp. 32-39.
245 Ibidem, Principia philosophiæ, pp. 20-31.
246 cf. Leibnitz: Essais de Théodicée, T. I. P. I. § 10, p. 86.
247 Leibnitz, Principes de la nature et la grace § 1, p. 32. (Recueil de diverses pieces par Des Maiseaux, T. II. p. 485, Principia philosophiæ, § 1, 2, p. 20.)
248 Leibnitzii De ipsa natura sive de vi insita actionibusque creaturarum (Oper. T. II. P. II.), § 11, p. 55, Principia philosophiæ, § 3-6, 18, pp. 20-22; Principes de la nature et de la grace, § 2, p. 32.
249 Leibnitzii Principia philosophiæ, § 7, p. 21; Troisième éclaircissement du système de la communication des substances (Oper. T. II. P. I.), p. 73 (Recueil, T. II. p. 402).
250 Leibnitzii Principia philosophiæ, § 8, 9, p. 21; Oper. T. II. P. I. pp. 128, 129, § 4, 5: Il n’y a point deux individus indiscernables. Un gentilhomme d’esprit de mes amis, en parlant avec moi en présence de Mad. l’Electrice dans le jardin de Herrenhausen, crut qu’il trouverait bien deux feuilles entièrement semblables. Mad. l’Electrice l’en défia, et il courut longtemps en vain pour en chercher. Deux gouttes d’eau ou de lait regardées par le microscope se trouveront discernables. C’est un argument contre les Atomes (Recueil, T. I. p. 50). — Cf. Hegel’s Werke, Vol. IV. p. 45.
251 Leibnitzii Principia philosophiæ, § 10-16, pp. 21, 22; Principes de la nature et de la grace, § 2, p. 32.
252 Leibnitzii Principia philosophiæ, § 19-23, pp. 22, 23; Principes de la nature et de la grace, § 4, pp. 33, 34; Nouveaux essais sur l’entendement humain (Œuvres philosophiques de Leibnitz par Raspe), Bk. II. chap. ix. § 4, p. 90.
253 Leibnitzii De anima brutorum (Op. T. II. P. I.), § 2-4, pp. 230, 231.
254 Leibnitzii Oper. T. II. P. I. pp. 214, 215, § 3; De ipsa natura sive de vi insita, § 11, p. 55; Système nouveau de la nature et de la communication des substances (Op. T. II. P. I.), pp. 50, 53.
255 Leibnitzii Oper. T. II. P. I. pp. 79, 121, 234-237, 280, 295; Nouveaux essais sur l’entendement humain, Bk. II. chap. xiii. § 15, 17, pp. 106, 107.
256 Leibnitz: Nouveaux essais sur l’entendement humain, Bk. II. chap. xii. § 7, pp. 102, 103; chap. xxi. § 72, p. 170; chap. xxiv. § 1, p. 185.
257 Leibnitzii Oper. T. II. P. I. p. 39; Nouveaux essais sur l’entendement humain, Bk. III. chap. vi. § 24, p. 278; § 39, p. 290.
258 Leibnitzii Oper. T. II. P. II. p. 60; Nouveaux essais sur l’entendement humain, Bk. II. chap. xxiii. § 23, p. 181.
259 Leibnitzii Principia philosophiæ, § 65-71, p. 28; Principes de la nature et de la grace, § 3, 4, pp. 32, 33.
260 Leibnitzii Principia philosophiæ. § 29-31, p. 24; Principes de la nature et de la grace, § 5, p. 34; Essais de Théodicée, T. I. P. I. § 44, p. 115.
261 Leibnitz. Principes de la nature et de la grace, § 7, p. 35.
262 Leibnitz: Principes de la nature et de la grace, § 8, p. 35; Principia philosophiæ, § 43-46, p. 25.
263 Leibnitz: Essais de Théodicée, T. I. P. I. § 6-8, pp. 83-85; Principes de la nature et de la grace, § 10, p. 36.
264 Leibnitz: Essais de Théodicée, T. I. P. I. § 20, pp. 96, 97; § 32, 33, pp. 106, 107; T. II. P. II. § 153, pp. 57, 58; § 378, pp. 256, 257.
265 Leibnitzii Causa Dei asserta per justitiam ejus (Essais de Théodicée, T. II.), § 34-39, pp. 385, 386.
266 Leibnitz: Principes de la nature et de la grace, §3, p. 33; Premier élaircissement du système de la communication des substances, p. 70.
267 Leibnitz: Second et troisième éclaircissements du système de la communication des substances, pp. 71-73.
268 Leibnitzii Principia philosophiæ, § 82, p. 30; Principes de la nature et de la grace, § 11, p. 36.
269 Leibnitz: Système nouveau de la nature et de la communication des substances, pp. 54, 55.
270 Leibnitzii Principia philosophiæ, § 90, p. 31; Principes de la nature et de la grace, § 12, 13, pp. 36, 37; § 15, pp. 37, 38.
271 Leibnitzii Oper. T. II. P. I. pp. 75, 76.
272 Leibnitzii Principia philosoph., § 58-62, p. 27; Oper. T. II. P. I. pp. 46, 47.
273 Leibnitz: Essais de Théodicée, T. I. P. I. § 9, pp. 85, 86.
274 Leibnitz: Principes de la nature et de la grace, § 12,13, pp. 36, 37; Oper. T. II. P. I. p. 337.
275 Leibnitz: Essais de Théodicée, T. II. P. III. § 291, pp. 184, 185; T. I. P. I. § 50, p. 119.
276 Buhle: Geschichte der neuern Philosoph., Vol. IV. Sec. II., pp. 571-582; Tiedemann: Geist der speculativen Philos., Vol. VI. pp. 511-518; Rixner: Handbuch der Geschichte der Philosophie, Vol. III. § 79, pp. 195, 196.
277 Wolf’s Vernünftige Gedanken von Gott, der Welt und der Seele des Menschen (Halle, 1741), Pt. I. chap. ii. § 114, 120, pp. 59, 60, 62, 63; chap. iv. § 575-581, 686, pp. 352-359, 425; chap. v. § 742, p. 463; § 926, p. 573; chap vi. § 928, p. 574, seq.
278 Wolff’s Anfangsgründe aller mathematischen Wissenschaften, Pt. I.: Anfangsgründe der Baukunst, Pt. II. Prop. 8, p. 414; Problem 22, pp. 452, 453; Pt. II.: Anfangsgründe der Fortification, Pt. I. p. 570.
279 In the lectures of 1825-1826 and 1829-1830 Berkeley was passed over by Hegel; in both courses Hume follows directly after the Scottish and French philosophers, and thus comes immediately before Kant; in the course of 1825-1826 the French philosophy precedes the Scottish also.
280 Nachrichten von dem Leben und den Schriften des Bischofs Berkeley (in Berkeley’s philosoph. Werk. Pt. I. Leipzig, 1781), pp. 1, 45, Buhle: Geschichte der neuern Philosophie, Vol. V Sect. 1, pp. 86-90.
281 Buhle: Geschichte der neuern Philosophie, Vol V. pp. 90, 91; The Works of George Berkeley, Prof. Fraser’s edition (Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous), Vol. I. p. 264, seq. et passim.
282 Buhle, Geschichte der neuern Philosophie, Vol. V. Sect. 1, pp. 92, 93; The Works of George Berkeley, Vol. I. p. 279 seq.
283 Buhle, ibidem, pp. 91, 92; Berkeley, ibidem, pp. 288 seq., 300 seq. et passim.
284 Buhle, ibidem, pp. 93, 94; Berkeley, ibidem, pp. 289, 308, seq.
285 Buhle: Geschichte der neuern Philosophie, Vol. V. Sect. 1, pp. 91, 95; The Works of George Berkeley, Vol. I. pp. 308, 335.
286 Buhle, ibidem, pp. 96-99; Berkeley, ibidem, p. 325, seq. et passim.
287 Cf. Berkeley, ibidem, passim.
288 Buhle: Geschichte der neuern Philosophie, Vol. V. Sect. 1, pp. 193-200.
289 Tennemann’s Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie von Wendt (Leipzig, 1829), § 370, pp. 439, 440; Hume: Essays and Treatises on several subjects, Vol. III. containing an Inquiry concerning human understanding (London, 1770), Sect. 2, pp. 21, 22, Sect. 4, P. I. p. 42, Tennemann, Vol. XI pp. 433, 434.
290 Hume: Essays and Treatises on several subjects, Vol III. Not. A, pp. 283, 284.
291 Tennemann’s Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie von Wendt, § 370, p. 440; Hume, Essays and Treatises on several subjects, Vol. III. Sect. 4, Pt. I. pp. 43-45; Sect. 5, pp. 66, 67; Buhle: Geschichte der neuern Philosophie, Vol. V. Sect. 1, pp. 204, 205; Tennemann, Vol. XI. pp. 435, 436.
292 Hume: Essays and Treatises on several subjects, Vol. III. Sect. vii. Pt. 1, pp. 102, 103; Pt. 2, pp. 108, 109; Sect. viii. pp. 118, 119.
293 Hume: Essays and Treatises on several subjects, Vol. IV. containing an Inquiry concerning the principles of morals, Sect. 1, p. 4; Appendix I. p. 170.
294 Buhle: Geschichte der neuern Philosophie, Vol. V. Sect. 1, pp. 230, 231; cf. Hume, ibidem, Vol. III. Sect. 12, P. II. p. 221; Vol. IV.; An Inquiry, &c., Sect. 4, pp. 62-65; A dialogue, pp. 235, 236, &c., &c.
295 Hume: Essays and Treatises on several subjects, Vol. III. Sect. 12, Pt. I. pp. 217, 218; Not. N. pp. 296, 297; Buhle: Geschichte der neuern Philosophie, Vol. V. Sect. 1, p. 210.
296 Tennemann’s Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie von Wendt, § 371, p. 442.
297 Rixner: Handbuch der Geschichte der Philosophie, Vol. III. § 119, p. 259; cf. Thomas Reid; An Inquiry into the human mind on the principles of common sense (Edinburgh, 1810), chap. i. Sect. 4, pp. 19, 20 (translated into German, Leipzig, 1782, pp. 17, 18); chap. vi. Sect. 20, pp. 372-375 (pp. 310, 311), &c.
298 Rixner: Handbuch der Geschichte der Philosophie, Vol. III. § 120, pp. 261, 262; cf. James Beattie: Essays on the nature and immutability of Truth, &c. (Edinburgh, 1772), Pt. I., chap, i., pp. 18-31 (translated into German, Copenhagen and Leipzig, 1772, pp. 24-42); chap. ii. Sect. 2, pp. 37-42 (pp. 49-55), &c.
299 Cf. James Oswald: An Appeal of common-sense in behalf of religion (Edinburgh, 1772), Vol. I. Book I. Introduction, p. 12 (translated by Wilmsen, Leipzig, 1774, p. 11).
300 Rixner, ibidem, § 121, p. 262; cf. James Oswald, ibidem, Vol. II. Book II. chap. i. pp. 50, 51 (pp. 54, 55).
301 The name assumed by Abraham Tucker. — [Translator’s note.]
302 Lectures of 1825-1826.
303 Lectures of 1829-1830.
304 Emile ou de l’éducation. T. II. (Paris, 1813, él. stéréotype), Book IV., Profession de foi du vicaire savoyard, p. 215 seq.
305 Buhle: Lehrbuch der Geschichte der Philosophie, Pt. VIII. pp. 62, 63: Système de la Nature par Mirabaud (Londres, 1770), T. I. chap. i. p. 10; chap. ii. p. 28.
306 Buhle: Lehrbuch der Geschichte der Philosophie, Pt. VIII. pp. 63, 64. Système de la Nature, T. I. chap. ii. pp. 18, 16, 21, et 15.
307 Buhle, ibidem, pp. 64, 65, 70; Système de la Nature, T. I. chap. ii. pp. 30, 31; chap. iii. pp. 39, 40; chap. iv. pp. 45, 46; chap. vii. pp. 90, 91.
308 Robinet: De la Nature (Troisième édition, Amsterdam, 1766), T. I. P. I. chap. iii. iv. pp. 16, 17.
309 Robinet, De la Nature, T. I. P. II. chap. ii. pp. 156, 157; chap. vii. pp. 166, 168; chap. ix.-xi.; chap. xv. pp. 202, 203, chap. xix. p. 217.
310 Robinet: De la Nature, T. I. P. I. chap. xxviii. p. 138; chap. xiii. p. 70.
311 Helvetius: De l’esprit (Oeuvres complètes, T. II. Deux-Ponts, 1784), T. I. Discours II. chap. i. pp. 62-64; chap. ii. pp. 65, 68, 69; chap. iv. p. 90; chap. v. p. 91; chap. viii. p. 114; chap. xxiv. pp. 256, 257.
312 Rousseau: Du contrat social (Lyon, 1790), Book I. chap. iii. pp. 8, 9; chap. iv. pp. 10, 11, 13-16.
313 Sämmtliche Schriften, Vol. XXXIX. (Berlin u. Stettin, 1828), pp. 111, 112.
314 Lessing’s Sämmtliche Schriften, Vol. XXIX. pp. 122, 123.
315 Tenneman’s Grundriss von Wendt, § 406, p. 531; Rixner: Handbuch der Geschichte der Philosophie, Vol. III. § 145, p. 317; Jacobi’s Werke, Vol. IV. Sec. 1, p. 3.
316 Jacobi: Briefe über die Lehre des Spinoza (second edition, 1789), pp. 85, 86 (Werke, Vol. IV. Sec. 1, p. 110).
317 Buhle: Lehrbuch der Geschichte der Philosophie, Part VIII. pp. 386, 387; Mendelssohn’s Morgenstunden (second edition, 1786), pp. 293-296.
318 Jacobi: Briefe über die Lehre des Spinoza, IV. Prop. pp. 225, 223 (pp. 223, 216).
319 Infra, pp. 418, 419.
320 Jacobi’s Werke, Vol. II. pp. 7 seq.; p. 221, note.
321 Jacobi: Briefe über die Lehre des Spinoza, supplement vii. pp. 419-421, and note (Werke, Vol. IV. Sec. 2, pp. 149-151).
322 Jacobi: Briefe über die Lehre des Spinoza, supplement vii. pp. 422-426 (pp. 151-155).
323 Ibidem, pp. 426, 427 (pp. 155, 156).
324 Cf. Jacobi’s Werke, Vol. III. p. 277.
325 Jacobi: Briefe über die Lehre des Spinoza, pp. 216, 217 (p. 211).
326 Kant: Kritik der reinen Vernunft (sixth edition, Leipzig, 1818), pp. 4, 11, 13, 93.
327 Kant: Kritik der reinen Vernunft, pp. 3-5.
328 Ibidem, Preface, pp. xviii., xix.
329 Kant: Kritik der reinen Vernunft, pp. 8, 9, 75, 77, 15.
330 Kant: Kritik der reinen Vernunft, pp. 255, 256.
331 Ibidem, p. 107.
332 Ibidem, pp. 497, 498; Kritik der prakt. Vernunft (fourth edition, Riga, 1797), p. 254; Kritik der Urtheilskraft (third edition, Berlin, 1799), Preface, p. v.
333 Kant: Kritik der reinen Vernunft, pp. 25-27.
334 Kant: Kritik der reinen Vernunft, pp. 29, 30; 34-36.
335 Kant: Kritik der reinen Vernunft, pp. 30, 31, 41; 12, 13, 150.
336 Kant: Kritik der reinen Vernunft, pp. 54, 55.
337 Ibidem, pp. 59, 97-104.
338 Kant: Kritik der reinen Vernunft, pp. 105-110.
339 Kant: Kritik der reinen Vernunft, pp. 129-132.
340 Ibidem, p. 134.
341 In the lectures of 1825-1826 the philosophy of Fichte on its theoretic side is interpolated here, while its practical side is only shortly mentioned after an account is given of the Critique of Practical Reason.
342 Kant: Kritik der reinen Vernunft, pp. 257-259, 264, 267, 268, 273.
343 Kant: Kritik der reinen Vernunft, pp. 261, 262, 274, 275, 284, 288, 289.
344 Kant: Kritik der reinen Vernunft, pp. 289-299.
345 Kant: Kritik der reinen Vernunft, pp. 312-314.
346 Kant: Kritik der reinen Vernunft, pp. 317, 318, 328, 329, 332.
347 Ibidem, pp. 318, 336, 337.
348 Ibidem, pp. 319, 346, 347.
349 Kant: Kritik der reinen Vernunft, pp. 319, 354, 355.
350 Kritik der reinen Vernunft, pp. 497, 498.
351 Here there is inserted in the lectures of 1825-1826 an examination of what the philosophy of Jacobi has to say on this point.
352 Kant: Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft (third edition, Leipzig, 1800), pp. 1, 27.
353 Kant: Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft (second edition, Königsberg, 1794), pp. 20-48.
354 Kant: Kritik der prakt. Vernunft (fourth edition, Riga, 1797), pp. 3-11, 29-32.
355 Kant: Kritik d. prakt. Vernunft, pp. 40, 41, 56, 126-135, 58, 38, 77.
356 Kant: Kritik der reinen Vernunft, pp. 62, 500.
357 Kant: Kritik d. prakt. Vernunft, pp. 54, 58 (35).
358 Kant: Kritik d. prakt. Vernunft, pp. 223-227.
359 Cf. Kant’s Kritik d. reinen Vernunft, p. 471.
360 Kant: Kritik der prakt. Vernunft, p. 146.
361 Kant: Kritik der Urtheilskraft (third edition, Berlin, 1799), Einleitung, pp. xvii.-xx. xxiv., xxv.
362 Kant: Kritik der Urtheilskraft, Introduction, pp. xxv.-xxviii.
363 Kant: Kritik der Urtheilskraft, Einleitung, pp. xxvi.-xxxiii.
364 Ibidem, p. xxxiv.
365 Ibidem, pp. xlviii.-lii.
366 Kant: Kritik der Urtheilskraft, pp. xliii.-xlv., 16-19, 32, 56, 59, 77.
367 Ibidem, pp. 279-283.
368 Kant: Kritik der Urtheilskraft, pp. 286-288, 292-296.
369 Ibidem, pp. 343, 344.
370 Kant: Kritik der Urtheilskraft. pp. 347, 348 (351).
371 Kant: Kritik der Urtheilskraft, pp. 423, 424.
372 What falls under this heading in Jacobi’s philosophy is inserted here in the lectures of 1825-1826.
373 Fichte: Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre (Leipzig, 1794), Preface, p. xii.
374 Fichte’s Leben und Briefwechsel, edited by his son, Pt. I. pp. 3, 6, 24 seq.; 38 seq.; 142, 189; 337, 338, 348, 349, 353, 354, 358-364; Pt. II. pp. 140-142; Pt. I. pp. 370-372, 442-448, 455; 518, 540; 578.
375 Fichte’s posthumous works, which were not published until after Hegel’s death, nevertheless show that the writer in his lectures at the Berlin University likewise worked out scientifically this newly developed point of view in his philosophy; Fichte made a beginning in this regard brocheven in the ure which appeared in 1810: “Die Wissenschaftslehre in ihrem allgemeinen Umrisse” (v. Michelet: Geschichte der letzten Systeme der Philosophie, Pt. I. pp. 441, 442). [Editor’s note.]
376 Fichte: Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre, pp. 10-12.
377 Fichte: Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre, pp. 13, 14.
378 Fichte: Ueber den Begriff der Wissenschaftslehre (Weimar, 1794), p. 12.
379 Fichte: Grundlage der ges. Wissenschaftsl., Preface, pp. x., xi.
380 Fichte: Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre, pp. 184, 185.
381 Fichte: Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre, p. 3.
382 Cf. Fichte: Ueber den Begriff der Wissenschaftslehre, pp. 13-17, 19-39, 50-52.
383 Fichte: Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre, pp. 4, 5.
384 Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre, pp. 23, 5, 15, 17, 8.
385 Fichte: Grundlage der ges. Wissenschaftslehre, pp. 17, 19-22.
386 Fichte: Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre, pp. 34, 31, 23, 27-30 (52), 14, 18.
387 Ibidem, pp. 52-56, 74.
388 Fichte’s Anweisung zum seligen Leben, pp. 80-82.
389 Fichte: Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre, p. 57.
390 Fichte: Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre, pp. 78, 79.
391 Fichte: Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre, pp. 60, 67, 59, 76.
392 Ibidem, pp. 121, 122.
393 Fichte: Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre, pp. 194-197, 204, 221, 222.
394 Ibidem, p. 228.
395 Fichte: Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre, pp. 225, 229, 232.
396 Fichte: Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre, pp. 233, 238, 239.
397 Fichte: Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre, pp. 302, 246, 247.
398 Ibidem, p. 273.
399 Fichte: Ueber den Grund unseres Glaubens an eine göttliche Weltregierung (Fichte’s Leben, Part II.), p. 111.
400 Fichte: Verantwortungsschreiben gegen die Anklage des Atheismus, pp. 51, 53.
401 Fichte: Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre, pp. 272-274.
402 Fichte: Grundlage des Naturrechts (Jena und Leipzig, 1796), Part I. pp. 55-71.
403 Ibidem, pp. 78-82.
404 Fichte: Grundlage des Naturrechts, Part II. p. 21.
405 Rixner: Handbuch d. Gesch. d. Phil. Vol. III., § 192, p. 416; Fichte: Ueber das Wesen des Gelehrten (Berlin, 1806), pp. 4, 5, 15, 25-27.
406 Rixner: Handbuch d. Gesch. d. Phil. Vol. III. § 158, pp. 350, 351; Fries: Neue Kritik d. Vernunft (First edition, Heidelberg, 1807), Vol. I. pp. 75, 281, 284, 343; 206.
407 Rixner: Handbuch d. Gesch. d. Phil. Vol. III. § 156, pp. 347, 348; cf. Bouterweck’s Apodiktik (1799), Part II. pp. 206-212.
408 Krug: Entwurf eines neuen Organon der Philosophie (Meissen, 1801), pp. 75, 76; Rixner: Handbuch d. Geschichte d. Philosophie, Vol. III. § 157, p. 349.
409 Schelling’s philosophische Schriften (Landshut, 1809, Vol. I. Vom Ich als Princip der Philosophie, pp. 1-114), pp. 3, 4 (first edition, Tubingen, 1795, pp. 4-7).
410 His birthplace is usually stated to have been Leonberg, a short distance from Schorndorf. — [Translators’ note.]
411 Lectures of 1816-1817. [Translators’ note.]
412 Schelling’s philosophische Schriften: Vom Ich als Princip der Philosophie, p. 99 seq. (p. 178 seq.).
413 Ibidem, pp. 23, 24 (pp. 38-42).
414 Ibidem, p. 83 (p. 150).
415 Schelling’s System des transcendentalen Idealismus, p. 257, not. Zeitschrift für speculative Physik, Vol. II. No. 2, p. 92.
416 Lectures of 1805-1806.
417 Schelling: System des transcendentalen Idealismus, pp. 1-7, 17-21.
418 Schelling: System des transcendentalen Idealismus, pp. 24-46, 49-52, 55-58, 63-65.
419 Schelling: System des transcendentalen Idealismus, pp. 69, 70, 72-79.
420 Schelling: System des transcendentalen Idealismus, pp. 85, 86, 89, 98, 442-444.
421 Schelling: System des transcendentalen Idealismus, pp. 471, 472, 475.
422 Schelling: Neue Zeitschrift für speculative Physik, Vol. I. Part I. pp. 52, 53.
423 Kritisches Journal der Philosophie, published by Schelling and Hegel, Vol. I. Part I. p. 67; Schelling: Zeitschrift für speculative Physik, Vol. II. No. II. Preface, p. xiii.
424 Schelling: Zeitschrift für speculative Physik, Vol. II. No. II. § 1, pp. 1, 2; § 4, p. 4; § 16-18, pp. 10-12.
425 Ibidem, § 22-24, pp. 13-15; § 37, 38, pp. 22, 23; § 40-42, pp. 25, 26.
426 Schelling: Zeitschrift für speculative Physik, Vol. II. No. II. § 25, 26, 28, 30-32, pp. 15-19; § 44, 46, pp. 27-29.
427 Schelling: Zeitschrift für speculative Physik, Vol. II. No. II. § 50, Note I, § 51, pp. 34-36; § 54, p. 40; § 56, Appendix 2, § 57 and note, pp. 42-44.
428 Schelling: Zeitschrift für spec. Phys., Vol. II. No. II. § 62-64, pp. 47, 48; § 92, 93, pp. 59, 60; § 67-69, pp. 49, 50; § 95, pp. 64-68; (Neue Zeitschrift für speculative Physik, Vol. I. Part II. pp. 92, 93, 98, 117-119; Erster Entwurf eines Systems der Nutur-philosophie, p. 297); § 76-78, p. 53; § 83 and Appendix, p. 54; § 103, Note, p. 76; § 112, p. 84.
429 Ibidem, § 136, 137, pp. 109, 110, § 141, Appendix I. p. 112.
430 Schelling: Neue Zeitschrift für speculative Physik, Vol. I. Part I. pp. 1-77; Part II. pp. 1-38.
431 Schelling: Ibidem, Vol. I. Part II. p. 39.
432 Schelling: Ibidem, Vol. I. Part II. pp. 39-41.
433 Schelling, Ibidem, Vol. I. Part II. pp. 41-50.
434 Schelling: Denkmal der Schrift von den göttlichen Dingen, pp. 94, 85, 86 (Philosophische Untersuchungen über das Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit in den Philosophischen Schriften, Vol. I. Landshut, 1809, p. 429). 89-93.
435 Cf. Schelling’s Erster Entwurf der Natur-philosophie, p. 297.
436 From the lectures of 1805-1806.
437 Hamlet, Act I. Scene V.