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A 
 
 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 
 
 IN EPITOME, 
 
 BY 
 
 DE. ALBEET SCHWEGLEE. 
 
 TRANSLATED FROM TEE ORIGINAL GERMAN, 
 
 BY 
 
 JULIUS H. SEELYE. 
 
 FIFTH EDITION. 
 
 KEW YORK: 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, 
 
 443 & 445 BROADWAY. 
 LONDON: 16 LITTLE BRITAIN. 
 1866. 
 
4 
 
 EiTTEEED, according to act of Congress, in the year 1856, 
 By Julius H. Seelte, 
 In the Clerk's Oflace of the District Court of the TJnited States for the 
 Northern District of New York. 
 
m. 
 
 INTKODUCTOEY NOTE 
 
 BY HENBY B. SMITH. D. D. 
 
 The History of Philosophy, by Dr. Albert Schwegler, is 
 considered in Germany as the best concise manual upon 
 the subject from the school of Hegel. Its accoimt of the 
 Greek and of the German systems, is of especial value 
 and importance. It presents the whole history of specu- 
 lation in its consecutive order. Though following the 
 method of Hegel's more extended lectures upon the pro- 
 gress of philosophy, and though it makes the system of 
 Hegel to be the ripest product of philosophy, yet it also 
 rests upon independent investigations. It will well re- 
 ward diligent study, and is one of the best works for a 
 
IV INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 text-book in our colleges, upon this neglected branch of 
 scientific investigation. The translation is made by a 
 competent person, and gives, I doubt not, a faithful ren 
 dering of the original. 
 
 Henet B. Smith. 
 
 Union TnEOLoaicAii Sesiinary, New York, Nov. 6, 1855. 
 
TRANSLATOE'S 
 
 PEEFACE. 
 
 Schwegler's History of Philosophy originally appeared in 
 the Neue EncyMojpadiefuT Wissenscliaftenund KunsteP 
 Its great value soon awakened a call for its separate issue, 
 in which form it has attained a very wide circulation in 
 Germany. It is found in the hands of almost every stu- 
 dent in the philosophical department of a German uni- 
 versity, and is highly esteemed for its clearness, concise- 
 ness, and comprehensiveness. 
 
 The present translation was commenced in Germany 
 three years ago, and has been carefully finished. It was 
 undertaken with the conviction that the work would not 
 lose its interest or its value in an English dress, and with 
 
 the hope that it might be of wider service in such a form 
 1 
 
vi 
 
 translator's preface. 
 
 to students of philosophy here. It was thought espe- 
 cially, that a proper translation of this manual would 
 supply a want for a suitable text-book on this branch of 
 study, long felt by both teachers and students in our 
 American colleges. 
 
 The effort has been made to translate, and not to para- 
 phrase the author's meaning. Many of his statements 
 might have been amplified without diffuseness, and made 
 more perceptible to the superficial reader without losing 
 their interest to the more profound student, but he has so 
 happily seized upon the germs of the different systems, 
 that they neither need, nor would be improved by any 
 farther development, and has, moreover, presented them 
 so clearly, that no student need have any. difficulty in ap- 
 prehending them as they are. The translator has there- 
 fore endeavored to represent faithfully and clearly the 
 original history. As such, he offers his work to the 
 American public, indulging no hope, and making no ef- 
 forts for its success beyond that which its own merits 
 shall ensure. J. H. S. 
 
 Schenectady, N. Y., January^ 1856. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAOK 
 
 INTRODUCTORY NOTE, by Hexrt B. Smith, D. D. . . . iii 
 
 TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE v 
 
 TABLE OF CONTENTS vii 
 
 Skctiok L— what is meant BY THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY . 11 
 
 II.— CLASSIFICATION 16 
 
 IIL— GENERAL 'VIEW OF THE PRE-SOCRATIO PHILOSOPHY . 17 
 
 1. The Ionics ........ 17 
 
 2. The Pythagoreans ....... 18 
 
 3. The Eleatics 18 
 
 4. Heraclitus ........ 18 
 
 5. The Atomists , 19 
 
 6. Anasagoras ........ 19 
 
 7. The Sophists ....... 20 
 
 IV.— THE IONIC PHILOSOPHERS . . .... 21 
 
 1. Thales 21 
 
 2. Anaximander ........ 22 
 
 3. Anaximenes 23 
 
 4. Retrospect 23 
 
 V.-PYTHAGOREANISM 23 
 
 1. Its Relative Position ....... 23 
 
 2. Historical and Chronological ..... 23 
 
 3. The Pythagorean Principle ...... 24 
 
 4. Carrying out of this Principle ..... 25 
 
 VI.— THE ELEATICS 27 
 
 1. The Relation of the Eleatic Principle to the Pythagorean . 27 
 
 2. Xenophanes ........ 28 
 
 8. Parmenides ........ 28 
 
 4. Zeno ......... 80 
 
viii 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGB 
 
 Sect. VIL— HERACLITUS 31 
 
 1. Eelatlon of the Heraclitic Principle to the Eleatlc . . 81 
 
 2. Historical and Chronological . . . . , 82 
 8. The Principle of the Becoming ..... 32 
 
 4. The Principle of Fire ...... 33 
 
 5. Transition to the Ato mists ...... 83 
 
 VIII— EMPEDOCLES 35 
 
 1. General View ........ 85 
 
 2. The Four Elements ...... 85 
 
 3. The Two Powers ....... 36 
 
 4. Eelation of the Empedoclean to the Eleatlc and Heraclitic Philo- 
 
 sophy ........ 36 
 
 IX.— THE ATOMISTIC PHILOSOPHY 37 
 
 1. Its Propounders ....... 87 
 
 2. The Atoms 37 
 
 3. The Fulness and the Void ..... 88 
 
 4. The Atomistic Necessity ...... 33 
 
 5. Eelative Position of the Atomistic Philosophy ... 89 
 
 X.— ANAXAGORAS 40 
 
 1. His Personal History ...... 40 
 
 2. His Relation to his Predecessors ..... 41 
 
 3. The Principle of the j/oDs ...... 41 
 
 4. Anaxagoras as the close of the Pre-Socratic Realism , . 42 
 
 XI -THE SOPHISTIC PHILOSOPHY . . . . 43 
 
 1. The Relation of the Sophistic Philosophy to the Anaxagorcan Prin- 
 
 ciple 43 
 
 2. Relation of the Sophistic Philosophy to the Universal Life of that 
 
 Age ........ 44 
 
 8. Tendencies of the Sophistic Philosophy . , . .46 
 
 4. Significance of the Sophistic Philosophy from its relation to the 
 
 Culture of the Age . .... 47 
 
 5. Individual Sophists ....... 48 
 
 6. Transition to Socrates, and characteristic of the following Period 51 
 
 XXL— SOCRATES 52 
 
 1. His Personal Character ...... 52 
 
 2. Socrates and Aristophanes ...... 55 
 
 3. The Condemnation of Socrates ..... 57 
 
 4. The Genius of Socrates ...... 60 
 
 5. Sources of the Philosophy of Socrates .... 61 
 
 6. Universal Character of the Philosophizing of Socrates . . 62 
 
 7. The Socratic Method 64 
 
 8. The Socratic Doctrine concerning Virtue . . . .66 
 
 XIII.— THE PARTIAL DISCIPLES OF SOCRATES ... 67 
 
 1. Their Relation to the Socratic Philosophy . . . .67 
 
 2. Antisthenes and the Cynics ... . . . 68 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 ix 
 
 Sect. Xlll.— (continued.) page 
 
 3. Aristippus and the Cyrenians 69 
 
 4. Eiiclirt and the Megarians ...... 70 
 
 5. Plato as the complete Socraticist ..... 71 
 
 XIY.-PLATO 72 
 
 I. Plato's Ltfe ....... 72 
 
 1. His Youth 72 
 
 2. His Years of Discipline ..... 73 
 
 3. His Yi'ars of Travel 73 
 
 4. His Years of Instruction ..... 74 
 
 II. The Inner Development of the Platonic Philosophy and 
 
 WpvItings ........ 75 
 
 III. Classification of the Platonic System . . 82 
 lY. The Platonic Dialectics ...... 83 
 
 1. Conception of Dialectics ..... 83 
 
 ■ 2. What is Science ? 84 
 
 (1.) As opposed to Sensation .... 84 
 
 (2.) The Relation of Knowing to Opinion . . . 86 
 
 (3.) The Relation of Science to Thinking . . 86 
 
 8. The Doctrine of Ideas in its Genesis . ... 87 
 
 4. Positive Exposition of the Doctrine of Ideas . . 91 
 
 5. The Relation of Ideas to the Phenomenal World . . 93 
 
 6. The Idea of the Good and the Deity ... 95 
 V. The Platonic Physics 96 
 
 1. Nature ........ 96 
 
 2. The Soul 98 
 
 YI. The Platonic Ethics ...... 100 
 
 1. Good and Pleasure ...... 100 
 
 2, Yirtue 102 
 
 8 The State 102 
 
 XY.— THE OLD ACADEMY 107 
 
 XYI.— ARISTOTLE 103 
 
 I. Life and Writings of Aeistotlb .... 103 
 
 II. Universal Character and Division of the Aristotelian Phi- 
 
 losophy ........ 109 
 
 III. Logic and Metaphysics ...... 112 
 
 1. Conception and Relation of the Two .... 112 
 
 2. Logic ........ 113 
 
 3. Metaphysics ....... 115 
 
 (1.) The Aristotelian Criticism of the Platonic Doctrine of 
 
 Ideas ....... 116 
 
 (2.) The Forir Aristotelian Principles, or Causes, and the 
 
 Relation of Form and Matter . . . .120 
 
 (3.) Potentiality and Actuality .... 123 
 
 (4.) The Absolute Divine Spirit .... 124 
 
 lY. The Aristotelian Physics ..... 127 
 
 1. Motion, Matter, Space, and Time .... 127 
 
 2. The Collective Universe ..... 128 
 8. Nature . .129 
 
 4. Man 129 
 
X 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 Sect. XV L— (continued.) pagh 
 
 V. The Akistotelian Etuics ..... 131 
 
 1. Eelation of Ethics to Physics .... 131 
 
 2. The Highest Good 132 
 
 8. Conception of Virtue ...... 134 
 
 4. The State , . . . • . . . .135 
 
 VI. The Peripatetic School ..... 136 
 
 VII. Ti'.A>-SITION TO THE PoST-ArISTOTELIAN PHILOSOPHY . . 137 
 
 XVII.— STOICISM 13S 
 
 1. Logic ......... 139 
 
 2. Physics ........ 140 
 
 3. Ethics 142 
 
 (1.) Kespecting the Eelation of Virtue to Pleasure . . 142 
 
 (2.) The View of the Stoics concerning External Good . 142 
 
 (3.) Farther Verification of this View ... 143 
 (4.) Impossibility of furnishing a System of Concrete Moial 
 
 Duties from this Standpoint .... 143 
 
 XVIII.-EPICUEEANISM 145 
 
 XIX.-SCEPTICISM AND THE NEW ACADEMY . . .143 
 
 1. The Old Scepticism 149 
 
 2. The New Academy . ..... 150 
 
 3. The Later Scepticism ...... 151 
 
 XX.— THE EOMANS 152 
 
 XXL— NEW PLATONISM 154 
 
 1. Ecstasy as a Subjective State ..... 154 
 
 2. The Cosmical Principles ...... 154 
 
 3. The Emanation Theory of the New Platonists . . .155 
 
 XXIL-CHEISTIANITY AND SCHOLASTICISM ... 157 
 
 1. The Christian Idea ....... 157 
 
 2. Scholasticism ....... 159 
 
 3. Nominalism and Eealism ..... 160 
 
 XXIIL— TEANSITION TO THE MODEEN PHILOSOPHY . . 161 
 
 1. Fall of Scholasticism ....... 161 
 
 2. The Eesults of Scholasticism ..... 162 
 
 3. The Eevival of Letters ...... 163 
 
 4. The German Eeformation . . . . . 164 
 
 5. The Advancement of the Natural Sciences . . . 165 
 
 6. Bacon of Verulam ...... 166 
 
 7. The Italian Philosophers of the Transition Epoch . . 167 
 
 8. Jacob Boehme ....... 169 
 
 XXIV.— DESCAETES 172 
 
 1. The Beginning of Philosophy with Doubt ... 173 
 
 2. Cogito ergo sum ....... 173 
 
 8. The Nature of Mind deduced from this Principle . . 173 
 
 4. The Universal Eule of all Certainty follows from the same . 174 
 
CONTENTS. Xi 
 
 Sect. XXIY.— (continued.) pagr 
 
 5. The Existence of God 174 
 
 6. Eesults of this Fact in PLilosophy . . , . .176 
 
 7. The Two Substances 177 
 
 8. The Anthropology of Descartes . . . . .177 
 
 9. Eesults of the Cartesian System ..... 178 
 
 XXV. — GEULINCX AND MALEBEANGHE . . . .180 
 
 1. Geulincx 180 
 
 2. Malebranche 182 
 
 8. The Defects of the rhilosophy of Descartes ... 183 
 
 XXVI. -SPINOZA . . 1S4 
 
 1. The One Infinite Substance 185 
 
 2. The Two Attributes ....... 186 
 
 3. The Modes 1S8 
 
 4. His Practical Philosophy ...... 189 
 
 XXVIL— IDEALISM AND EEALISM 192 
 
 XXVIII.— LOCKE 193 
 
 XXIX.— HUME 193 
 
 XXX— CONDILLAC . . 201 
 
 XXXI.— HELVETIUS 203 
 
 XXXIL— THE FEENCH CLEAEING UP AND MATEEIALISM . . 205 
 
 1. The Common Character of the French Philosophers of this Age 205 
 
 2. Voltaire . " . . . . . . .206 
 
 3. Diderot ........ 206 
 
 4. La Mettrie's Materialism ...... 207 
 
 5. Syst^me de la Nature ...... 208 
 
 (1.) The Materiality of Man 208 
 
 (2.) The Atheism of this System .... 209 
 
 (3.) Its Denial of Freedom and Immortality . . . 2-10 
 
 (4.) The Practical Consciuences of these Principles . 210 
 
 XXXIIL-LEIBNITZ 211 
 
 1. The Doctrine of Monads ...... 213 
 
 2. The Monads more accurately determined . . . 214 
 
 3. The Pre-established Harmony . . . , .215 
 
 4. The Eelation of the Deity to the Monads ... 216 
 
 5. The Eelation of Soul and Body 217 
 
 6. The Theory of Knowledge 218 
 
 7. Leibnitz's Theodic6e ....... 219 
 
 XXXIV.— BEEKELEY 220 
 
 XXXV.-WOLFP 222 
 
 1. Ontology ........ 224 
 
 2. Cosmology ........ 225 
 
 8. Eational Psychology ...... 225 
 
 4. Natural Theology ....... 226 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGH 
 
 Sect. XXXVI.— THE GERMAN CLEARING UP 227 
 
 XXXVII.— TRANSITION TO KANT 229 
 
 1. Examination of the Faculty of Knowledge . . . 230 
 
 2. Three Chief Principles of the Kantian Theory of Knowledge 232 
 
 XXXVIII.-KANT 235 
 
 I. Ckitick of Puee Reason . . , . . 23S 
 
 1. The Transcendental Esthetics . . .233 
 
 (1.) The Metaphysical Discussion ... 239 
 (2.) The Transcendental Discussion . . .239 
 
 2. The Transcendental Analytic .... 241 
 
 3. The Transcendental Dialectics .... 246 
 
 (1.) The Psychological Ideas .... 247 
 
 (2.) The Antinomies of Cosmology . . . 248 
 
 (3.) The Ideal of the Pure Reason ... 249 
 (a.) The Ontological Proof . . .249 
 
 (&.) The Cosmological Proof ... 250 
 
 (c.) The Physico-Theological Proof . . 250 
 
 II. Critick of the Pkactical Reason . • . . 252 
 
 (1.) The Analytic . . . . . .254 
 
 (2.) The Dialectic : What is this Highest Good ? . 256 
 
 («.) Perfect Virtue or Holiness . , . 257 
 
 (&.) Perfect Happiness .... 258 
 
 (c.) Kant's Views of Religion . . . 259 
 
 III. Ckitick of the Faculty of Judgment . . . 262 
 
 1. Critick of the ^Esthetic Faculty of Judgment . . 263 
 
 (1.) Analytic ...... 263 
 
 (2.) Dialectic 265 
 
 2. Critick of the Teleological Faculty of Judgment . 266 
 
 (1.) Analytic of the Teleological Faculty of Judgment . 267 
 
 (2.) Dialectic 267 
 
 XXXIX.— TRANSITION TO THE POST-KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY . 268 
 
 XL.— JACOBI 271 
 
 XLL— FICHTE 279 
 
 I. The Fichtian Philosophy in its Original. Form . 282 
 
 1. The Theoretical Philosophy of Fichte, his "VVissenschafts- 
 
 lehre, or Theory of Science .... 282 
 
 2. Fichte's Practical Philosophy .... 295 
 II. The Later Form of Fichte's Philosophy . . .301 
 
 XLII.-HERBART 303 
 
 1. The Basis and Starting-Point of Philosophy . 304 
 
 2. The First Act of Philosophy .... 304 
 
 3. Remodelling the Conceptions of Experience . 305 
 
 4. Herbart's Reals ..... 806 
 
 5. Psychology connected with Metaphysics . . 310 
 
 6. The Importance of Herbart's Philosophy , 811 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 xiii 
 
 PAGH 
 
 Bbot. XLIII. -SCHELLING ........ 312 
 
 I. First Period: Schelling's Procession from Fichte . 314 
 II. Second Period: Standpoint op the distinguishing be- 
 tween THK Philosophy of Nature and of Mind . 318 
 
 1. Natural Philosophy . . . , . . 313 
 
 (1.) Organic Nature . . . . . .319 
 
 (2.) Inorganic Nature ..... 321 
 
 (3.) The Eeciprocal Determination of the Organic and Inor- 
 ganic World ...... 321 
 
 2. Transcendental Philosophy ..... 322 
 
 (1.) The Theoretical Philosophy . . . .323 
 
 (2.) The Practical Philosophy .... 324 
 
 (3.) Philosophy of Art 324 
 
 III. Third Period : Period of Spinozism, ok the Indifference of 
 
 THE Ideal and the Eeal ..... 326 
 ly. Fourth Period: The Direction op Schelling's xhilosophy 
 
 AS Mystical, and allied to New Platonism '. . 333 
 Y. Fifth Period: Attempt at a Theogony and Cosmogony, 
 
 AFTER THE MANNER OF JaCOB BoEHME . . . 335 
 
 (1.) The Progressive Development of Nature to Man . 337 
 
 (2.) The Development of Mind in Histoiy . . 387 
 
 VI. Sixth Period ....... 333 
 
 XLIV.— TEANSITION TO HEGEL 339 
 
 XLV.— HEGEL 343 
 
 I. Science of Logic ...... 346 
 
 1. The Doctrine of Being ...... 347 
 
 (1.) Quality 347 
 
 (2.) Quantity 348 
 
 (3.) Measure ...... 343 
 
 2. The Doctrine of Essence . . . . .349 
 
 (1.) The Essence as such .... 349 
 
 (2.) Essence and Phenomenon .... 350 
 
 (3.) Actuality ...... 351 
 
 8. The Doctrine of the Conception . . . .352 
 
 (1.) The Subjective Conception . . , 352 
 
 (2.) Objectivity 353 
 
 (3.) The Idea 353 
 
 II. The Science op Nature ...... 353 
 
 1. Mechanics ....... 354 
 
 2. Physics ...... . . 355 
 
 3. Organics ....... 355 
 
 (1.) Geological Organism ..... 355 
 
 (2.) Vegetable Organism .... 355 
 
 (3.) Animal Organism ..... 356 
 
 III. Philosophy of Mind ...... 356 
 
 1. The Subjective Mind ...... 356 
 
 2. The Objective Mind ..... 358 
 & The Absolute Mind 862 
 
XIV CONTENTS. 
 
 Sect. XLV. — (continued.) pagh 
 
 (1.) Esthetics 863 
 
 (a.) Architecture . . . . .863 
 
 (p.) Sculpture 862 
 
 (c.) Tainting ...... 864 
 
 Id.) Music 864 
 
 (e.) Poetry ...... 364 
 
 (2.) Philosophy of Ecligion .... 864 
 
 (a.) The Natural Keligion of the Oriental World . 864 
 (?>.) The Pteligion of Mental Individuality . 364 
 (c.) Eevealed, or the Christian Keligion . 365 
 (a) Absolute Philosophy .... 865 
 
A 
 
 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 SECTION I. 
 
 WHAT IS MEANT BY THE HISTOKY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 To philosophize is to reflect ; to examine things, in thought. 
 
 Yet in this is the conception of philosophy not sufficiently 
 defined. Man, as thinking, also employs those practical activities 
 concerned in the adaptation of means to an end ; the whole body 
 of sciences also, even those which do not in strict sense belong 
 to philosophy, still lie in the realm of thought. In what, then, 
 is philosophy distinguished from these sciences, e. g. from the 
 science of astronomy, of medicine, or of rights ? Certainly not 
 in that it has a different material to work upon. Its material is 
 precisely the same as that of the different empirical sciences. 
 The construction and disposition of the universe, the arrangement 
 and functions of the human body, the doctrines of property, of 
 rights and of the state — all these materials belong as truly to 
 philosophy as to their appropriate sciences. That which is given 
 in the world of experience, that which is real, is the content like- 
 wise of philosophy. It is not, therefore, in its material but in its 
 
12 
 
 A HISTORY OF , PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 form, in its method, in its mode of knowledge, that philosophy Is 
 to be distinguished from the empirical sciences. These latter 
 derive their material directly from experience ; they find it at 
 hand and take it up just as they find it. Philosophy, on the other 
 hand, is never satisfied with receiving that which is given simply 
 as it is given, but rather follows it out to its ultimate grounds ; it 
 examines every individual thing in reference to a final principle, 
 and considers it as one link in the whole chain of knowledge. In 
 this way philosophy removes from the individual thing given in 
 experience, its immediate, individual, and accidental character ; 
 from the sea of empirical individualities, it brings out that which 
 is common to all ; from the infinite and orderless mass of con- 
 tingencies it finds that which is necessary, and throws over all a 
 universal law. In short, philosophy examines the totality of 
 experience in the form of an organic system in harmony with the 
 laws of thought. From the above it is seen, that philosophy (in 
 the sense we have given it) and the empirical sciences have a 
 reciprocal influence; the latter conditioning the former, while 
 they at the same time are conditioned by it. We shall, therefore, 
 in the history of the world, no more find an absolute and complete 
 philosophy, than a complete empirical science {EmpiriJc). Rather 
 is philosophy found only in the form of the difi'erent philosophical 
 systems, which have successively appeared in the course of 
 history, advancing hand in hand with the progress of the empirical 
 sciences and the universal, social, and civil culture, and showing 
 in their advance the difi'erent steps in the development and im- 
 provement of human science. The history of philosophy has, for 
 its object, to represent the content, the succession, and the inner 
 connection of these philosophical systems. 
 
 The relation of these difi'erent systems to each other is thus 
 already intimated. The historical and collective life of the race 
 is bound together by the idea of a spiritual and intellectual pro- 
 gress, and manifests a regular order of advancing, though not 
 always continuous, stages of development. In this, the fact har- 
 monizes with what we should expect from antecedent probabilities. 
 Since, therefore, every philosophical system is only the philo* 
 
WHAT IS MEANT BY THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 13 
 
 sophical expression of the collective life of its time, it follows that 
 these different systems which have appeared in history will dis- 
 close one organic movement and form together one rational and 
 internally connected (gegliedertes) system. In all their develop- 
 ments, we shall find one constant order, grounded in the striving 
 of the spirit ever to raise itself to a higher point of consciousness 
 and knowledge, and to recognize the whole spiritual and natural 
 universe, more and more, as its outward being, as its reality, as 
 the mirror of itself. 
 
 Hegel was the first to utter these thoughts and to consider 
 the history of philosophy as a united process, hut this view, 
 which is, in its principle, true, he has applied in a way which 
 would destroy the freedom of human actions, and remove the very 
 conception of contingency, i. e. that any thing should be contrary 
 to reason. Hegel's view is, that the succession of the systems of 
 philosophy which have appeared in history, corresponds to the 
 succession of logical categories in a system of logic. According 
 to him, if, from the fundamental conceptions of these different 
 philosophical systems, we remove that which pertains to their 
 outward form or particular application, &c., so do we find the 
 different steps of the logical conceptions (e. g. being, becoming, 
 existence, being j9er se (f msichseyn) quantity, &c.). And on the 
 other hand, if we take up the logical process by itself, we find also 
 in it the actual historical process. 
 
 This opinion, however, can be sustained neither in its prin- 
 ciple nor in its historical application. It is defective in its prin- 
 ciple, because in history freedom and necessity interpenetrate, and, 
 therefore, while we find, if we consider it in its general aspects, a 
 rational connection running through the whole, we also see, if we 
 look solely at its individual parts, only a play of numberless con- 
 tingencies, just as the kingdom of nature, taken as a whole, 
 reveals a rational plan in its successions, but viewed only in ita 
 parts, mocks at every attempt to reduce them to a preconceived 
 plan. In history we have to do with free subjectivities, with in- 
 dividuals capable of originating actions, and have, therefore, a 
 factor which does not admit of a previous calculation. For how- 
 
14 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 ever accurately we may estimate tlie controlling conditions which 
 may attach to an individual, from the general circumstances in 
 which he may be placed, his age, his associations, his nationality, 
 &c., a free will can never be calculated like a mathematical pro- 
 blem. History is no example for a strict arithmetical calculation. 
 The history of philosophy, therefore, cannot admit of an apriori 
 construction ; the actual occurrences should not be joined together 
 as illustrative of a preconceived plan; but the facts, so far as 
 they can be admitted, after a critical sifting, should be received 
 as such, and their rational connection be analytically determined. 
 The speculative idea can only supply the law for the arrangement 
 and scientific connection of that which may be historically 
 furnished. 
 
 A more comprehensive view, which contradicts the above- 
 given Hegelian notion, is the following. The actual historical 
 development is, very generally, different from the theoretical. 
 Historically e. g. the State arose as a means of protection against 
 robbers, while theoretically it is derived from the idea of rights. 
 So also, even in the actual history of philosophy, while the logi- 
 cal (theoretical) process is an ascent from the abstract to the con- 
 crete, yet does the historical development of philosophy, quite 
 generally, descend from the concrete to the abstract, from intui- 
 tion to thought, and separates the abstract from the concrete in 
 those general forms of culture and those religious and social cir- 
 cumstances, in which the philosophizing subject is placed. A 
 system of philosophy proceeds synthetically, while the history of 
 philosophy, i. e. the history of the thinking process proceeds 
 analytically. We might, therefore, with great propriety, adopt 
 directly the reverse of the Hegelian position, and say that what 
 in reality is the first, is for us, in fact, the last. This is illustra- 
 ted in the Ionic philosophy. It began not with being as an ab- 
 stract conception, but with the most concrete, and most apparent, 
 e. g. with the material conception of water, air, &c. Even if we 
 leave the Ionics and advance to the being of the Eleatics or the 
 becoming of the Heraclitics, we find, that these, instead of being 
 pure thought determinations, are only unpurified conceptions, and 
 
WHAT IS MEANT BY THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 15 
 
 materially colored intuitions. Still farther, is the attempt im- 
 practicable to refer every philosophy that has appeared in history 
 to some logical category as its central principle, because the most 
 of these philosophies have taken, for their object, the idea, not as 
 an abstract conception, but in its realization as nature and mind, 
 and, therefore, for the most part, have to do, not with logical 
 questions, but with those relating to natural philosophy, psycho- 
 logy and ethics. Hegel should not, therefore, limit his compari- 
 son of the historical and systematic process of development simply 
 to logic, but should extend it to the whole system of philosophical 
 science. Grranted that the Eleatics, the Heraclitics and the 
 Atomists may have made such a category as the centre of their 
 systems, and we may find thus far the Hegelian logic in harmony 
 with the Hegelian history of philosophy. But if we go farther, 
 how is it ? How with Anaxagoras, the Sophists, Socrates, Plato, 
 Aristotle ? We cannot, certainly, without violence, press one 
 central principle into the systems of these men, but if we should 
 be able to do it, and could reduce e. g. the philosophy of Anaxa- 
 goras to the conception of " the end," that of the Sophists to the 
 conception of " the appearance," and the Socratic Philosophy to 
 the conception of " the good," — yet even then we have the new 
 difficulty that the historical does not correspond to the logical 
 succession of these categories. In fact, Hegel himself has not 
 attempted a complete application of his principle, and indeed gave 
 it up at the very threshold of the Grecian philosophy. To the 
 Eleatics, the Heraclitics and the Atomists, the logical categories 
 of "being," " becoming," and being per se may be successively 
 ascribed, and so far, as already remarked, the parallelism extends, 
 but no farther. Not only does Anaxagoras follow with the con- 
 ception of reason working according to an end, but if we go back 
 before the Eleatics, we find in the very beginning of philosophy 
 a total diversity between the logical and historical order. If 
 Hegel had carried out his principle consistently, he should have 
 thrown away entirely the Ionic philosophy, for matter is no logical 
 category he should have placed the Pythagoreans after the 
 Eleatics and the Atomists, for in logical order the categories of 
 
16 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 quantity follow those of quality ; in short, he would have been 
 obliged to set aside all chronology. Unless this be done, we must 
 be satisfied with a theoretical reproduction of the course which the 
 thinking spirit has taken in its history, only so far as we can see 
 in the grand stages of history a rational progress of thought ; only 
 so far as the philosophical historian, surveying a period of de- 
 velopment, actually finds in it a philosophical acquisition, — the 
 acquisition of a new idea : but we must guard ourselves against 
 applying to the transition and intermediate steps, as well as to the 
 whole detail of history, the postulate of an immanent conformity 
 to law, or an organism in harmony with our own thoughts. His- 
 tory often winds its way like a serpent in lines which appear retro- 
 gressive, and philosophy, especially, has not seldom withdrawn 
 herself from a wide and already fruitful field, in order to settle 
 down upon a narrow strip of land, the limits even of which she 
 has sought still more closely to abridge. At one time we fimd 
 thousands of years expended in fruitless attempts with only a 
 negative result ; — at another, a fulness of philosophical ideas are 
 crowded together in the experience of a lifetime. There is here 
 no sway of an immutable and regularly returning law, but history, 
 as the realm of freedom, will first completely manifest itself at 
 the end of time as the work of reason. 
 
 SECTION II. 
 
 CLASSIFICATION. 
 
 A FEW words will suffice to define our problem and classify its 
 elements. Where and when does philosophy begin ? Manifestly, 
 according to the analysis made in ^ I., where a final philosophical 
 principle, a final ground of being is first sought in a philosophical 
 way, — and hence with the Grecian philosophy. The Oriental — 
 Chinese and Hindoo — so named philosophies, — but which are 
 rather theologies or mythologies, — and the mythic cosmogonies of 
 
GENERAL VIEW OF THE PRE-SOCRATIC PHILOSOPHY. 17 
 
 Greece, in its earliest periods, are, therefore, excluded from our 
 more definite problem. Like Aristotle, we shall begin the history 
 of philosophy with Thales. For similar reasons we exclude also 
 the philosophy of the Christian middle ages, or Scholasticism. 
 This is not so much a philosophy, as a philosophizing or reflecting 
 within the already prescribed limits of positive religion. It is, 
 therefore, essentially theology, and belongs to the science of the 
 history of Christian doctrines. 
 
 The material which remains after this exclusion, may be 
 naturally divided into two periods ; viz : — ancient — Grecian and 
 Groeco-Romanic — and modern philosophy. Since a preliminary 
 comparison of the characteristics of these two epochs could not 
 here be given without a subsequent repetition, we shall first speak 
 of their inner relations, when we come to treat of the transition 
 from the one to the other. 
 
 The first epoch can be still farther divided into three periods ; 
 (1.) The pre-Socratic philosophy, i. e. from Thales to the Sophists 
 inclusive; (2.) Socrates, Plato, Aristotle; (3.) The post- Aris- 
 totelian phil:^sophy, including New Platonism. 
 
 SECTION III. 
 
 GENEKAL VIEW OF THE PRE-SOCRATIC PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 1. The universal tendency of the pre-Socratic philosophy is 
 to find some principle for the explanation of nature. Nature, the 
 most immediate, that which first met the eye and was the most 
 palpable, was that which first aroused the inquiring mind. At the 
 basis of its changing forms, — beneath its manifold appearances, 
 thought they, lies a first principle which abides the same through 
 all change. What then, they asked, is this principle ? What is 
 the original ground of things ? Or, more accurately, what ele- 
 ment of nature is the fundamental element ? To solve this 
 inquiry was the problem of the Ionic natural philosophers. One 
 
18 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 proposes as a solution, water, another, air, and a third, an original 
 chaotic matter. 
 
 2. The Pythagoreans attempted a higher solution of this 
 problem. The proportions and dimensions of matter rather than 
 its sensible concretions, seemed to them to furnish the true ex- 
 planation of being. They, accordingly, adopted as the principle 
 of their philosophy, that which would express a determination of 
 proportions, i. e. numbers. " Number is the essence of all things," 
 was their position. Number is the mean between the immediate 
 sensuous intuition and the pure thought. Number and measure 
 have, to be sure, nothing to do with matter only in so far as it 
 possesses extension, and is capable of division in space and time, 
 but yet we should have no numbers or measures if there were no 
 matter, or nothing which could meet the intuitions of our sense. 
 This elevation above matter, which is at the same time a cleaving 
 to matter, constitutes the essence and the character of Pythago- 
 reanism. 
 
 3. Next come the JEleatics, who step absolutely beyond that 
 which is given in experience, and make a complete abstraction of 
 every thing material. This abstraction, this negation of all divi- 
 sion in space and time, they take as their principle, and call it 
 pure being. Instead of the sensuous principle of the Ionics, or 
 the symbolic principle of the Pythagoreans, the Eleatics, there- 
 fore, adopt an intelligible principle. 
 
 4. Herewith closes the analytic, the first course in the 
 development of Grecian philosophy, to make way for the second, 
 or synthetic course. The Eleatics had sacrificed to their principle 
 of pure being, the existence of the world and every finite existence. 
 But the denial of nature and the world could not be maintained. 
 The reality of both forced itself upon the attention, and even the 
 Eleatics had affirmed it, though in guarded and hypothetical 
 terms. But from their abstract being there was no passage back 
 to the sensuous and concrete ; their principle ought to have ex- 
 plained the being of events, but it did not. To find a principle 
 for the explanation of these, a principle which would account for 
 the becoming, the event was still the problem. Heraclitus solved 
 
GENERAL VIEW OF THE PRE-SOCRATIC PHILOSOPHY. 19 
 
 it, by asserting that, inasmuch as being has no more reality than 
 not being, therefore the unity of the two, or in other words the 
 becoming, is the absolute principle. He held that it belonged to 
 the very essence of finite being that it be conceived in a continual 
 flow, in an endless stream. " Every thing flows." We have here 
 the conception of original energy, instead of the Ionic original 
 matter ; the first attempt to explain being and its motion from a 
 principle analytically attained. From the time of Heraclitus, this 
 inquiry after the cause of the becoming, remained the chief interest 
 and the moving spring of philosophical development. 
 
 5. Becoming is the unity of being and not-being, and into 
 these two elements is the Heraclitic principle consciously analyzed 
 by the Atomists. Heraclitus had uttered the principle of the 
 becoming, but only as a fact of experience. He had simply ex- 
 pressed it as a law, but had not explained it. The necessity for 
 this universal law yet remained to be proved. Why is every thing 
 in a perpetual flow — in an eternal movement? From the dy- 
 namical combination of matter and the moving force, the next 
 step was to a consciously determined distinction, to a mechanical 
 division of the two. Thus Empedocles combining the doctrines 
 of Heraclitus and Parmenides, considered matter as the abiding 
 being, while force was the ground of the movement. But the 
 Atomists still considered the moving mythic energies as forces ; 
 Empedocles regarded them as love and hate ; and Democritus as 
 unconscious necessity. The result was, therefore, that the be- 
 coming was rather limited as a means for the mechanical explana- 
 tion of nature, than itself explained. 
 
 6. Despairing of any merely materialistic explanation of the 
 becoming, Anaxagoras next appears, and places a world-forming 
 Intelligence by the side of matter. He recognized mind as the 
 primal causality, to which the existence of the world, together 
 with its determined arrangement and design (zweckmdssigkeit) 
 must be referred. In this, philosophy gained a great principle, 
 -viz. — an ideal one. But Anaxagoras did not know how to fully 
 carry out his principles. Instead of a theoretical comprehension of 
 the universe — instead of deriving being from the idea, he grasped 
 
20 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 again after some mechanical explanation. His " world forming 
 reason" serves him only as a first impulse, only as a moving 
 power. It is to liim a Deus ex machina. Notwithstanding, 
 therefore, his glimpse of something higher than matter, yet waa 
 Anaxagoras only a physical philosopher, like his predecessors 
 Mind had not yet appeared to him as a true force above nature, 
 as an organizing soul of the universe. 
 
 7. It is, therefore, a farther progress in thought, to compre- 
 hend accurately the distinction between mind and nature, and to 
 recognize mind as something higher and contra-distinguished from 
 all natural being. This problem fell to the Sophists. They en- 
 tangled in contradictions, the thinking which had been confined 
 to the object, to that which was given, and gave to the objective 
 world which had before been exalted above the subject, a sub- 
 ordinate position in the dawning and yet infantile consciousness 
 of the superiority of subjective thinking. The Sophists carried 
 their principle of subjectivity, though at first this was only nega- 
 tive, into the form of the universal religious and political chang- 
 ing condition (Aufkldrung). * They stood forth as the destroy- 
 ers of the whole edifice of thought that had been thus far built 
 until Socrates appeared, and set up against this principle of 
 empirical subjectivity, that of the absolute subjectivity, — that of 
 the spirit in the form of a free moral will, and the thought is pos- 
 itively considered as something higher than existence, as the 
 truth of all reality. With the Sophist closes our first peri- 
 od, for with these the oldest philosophy finds its self-destruction 
 (Selhstaufldsung). 
 
 * This word literally means clearin^j up, but has a philosophical sense for 
 •which no precise equivalent is found in the English language. When used 
 physically, it denotes that every ohstruction which prevented the clear sight 
 of the bodily eye is removed, and when used psychologically it implies the 
 same fact in reference to our mental vision. The AvfUarung in philosophy is 
 hence the clearing up of difficulties which have hindered a true philosophical 
 insight. To express this, I know of no better word than the literal rendering, 
 " jtp-clearing" or clearing w^," which the reader will find adopted in the fol- 
 lowing pages. — Trakslator. 
 
THE IONIC PHILOSOPHERS. 
 
 21 
 
 SECTION IV. 
 
 THE IONIC PHILOSOPHERS. 
 
 1. Thales. — At the head of the Ionic natural philosophers, 
 and therefore at the head of philosophy, the ancients are generally 
 agreed in placing Thales of Miletus, a cotemporary of Croesus and 
 Solon ; although this beginning lies more in the region of tradi- 
 tion than of history. The philosophical principle to which he 
 owes his place in the history of philosophy is, that, " the principle 
 (the primal, the original ground) of all things is water ; from 
 water everything arises and into water every thing returns." But 
 simply to assume water as the original ground of thing%- was not 
 to advance beyond his myth-making predecessors and their cos- 
 mologies. Aristotle, himself, when speaking of Thales, refers to 
 the old " theologians," — meaning, doubtless. Homer and Hesiod, 
 — who had ascribed to Oceanus and Thetis, the origin of all 
 things. Thales, however, merits his place as the beginner of 
 philosophy, because he made the first attempt to establish his 
 physical principle, without resorting to a mythical representation, 
 and, therefore, brought into philosophy a scientific procedure. 
 He is the first who has placed his foot upon the ground of a logical 
 {verstdndig) explanation of nature. We cannot now say with 
 certainty, how he came to adopt his principle, though he might 
 have been led to it, by perceiving that dampness belonged to the 
 seed and nourishment of things ; that warmth is developed from 
 moisture ; and that, generally, moisture might be the plastic, liv- 
 ing and life-giving principle. From the condensation and expan- 
 sion of this first principle, he derives, as it seems, the changes of 
 things, though the way in which this is done, he has not accurately 
 determined. 
 
 The philosophical significance of Thales does not appear to 
 extend any farther. He was not a speculative philosopher after 
 a later mode. Philosophical book-making was not at all the order 
 
22 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 of his day, and he does not seem to have given any of his opinions 
 a written form. On account of his ethico-political wisdom, he is 
 numbered among the so-named " seven wise men," and the char- 
 acteristics which the ancients furnish concerning him only testify 
 to his practical understanding. He is said e. g. to have first cal- 
 culated an eclipse of the sun, to have superintended the turning 
 of the course of the Halys under Croesus, &c. When subsequent 
 narrators relate that he had asserted the unity of the world, had 
 set up the idea of a world-soul, and had taught the immortality of 
 the soul and the personality of God, it is doubtless an unhistorical 
 reference of later ideas to a stand-point, which was, as yet, far from 
 being developed. 
 
 2. AxAxiMANDER. — Auaximaudcr, sometimes represented by 
 the ancients as a scholar and sometimes as a companion of Thales, 
 but who was, at all events, younger than the latter, sought to 
 carry out still farther his principles. The original essence which 
 he assumed, and which he is said to have been the first to have 
 named principle (apx>y), he defined as the " unlimited, eternal and 
 unconditioned," as that which embraced all things and ruled all 
 things, and which, since it lay at the basis of all determinateness 
 of the finite and the changeable, is itself infinite and undeter- 
 minate. How we are to regard this original essence of Anaxi- 
 mander is a matter of dispute. Evidently it was not one of the 
 four common elements, though we must not, therefore, think it 
 was something incorporeal and immaterial. Anaximander proba- 
 bly conceived it as the original matter before it had separated 
 into determined elements, — as that which was first in the order of 
 time, or what is in our day called the chemical indifi'erence in the 
 opposition of elements. In this respect his original essence is 
 indeed " unlimited " and " undetermined," i. e. has no determina- 
 tion of quality nor limit of quantity, yet it is not, therefore, in 
 any way, a pure dynamical principle, as perhaps the " friendship" 
 and " enmity" of Empedocles might have been, but it was only a 
 more philosophical expression for the same thought, which the old 
 cosmogonies have attempted to utter in their representation of 
 3haos. Accordingly, Anaximander sufiers the original opposition 
 
THE IONIC PHILOSOPHERS. 
 
 23 
 
 of cold and warm, of dry and moist {i. e. the basis of the four 
 elements) to be secreted from bis original essence, a clear proof 
 that it was only the undeveloped, unanalyzed, potential being of 
 these elemental opposites. 
 
 3. Anaximenes. — Anaximenes, who is called by some the 
 scholar, and by others the companion of Anaximander, turned 
 back more closely to the view of Thales, in that he made air as 
 the principle of all things. The perception that air surrounds 
 the whole world, and that breath conditions the activity of life, 
 seems to have led him to his position. 
 
 4. Retrospect. — The whole philosophy of the three Ionic 
 sages may be reduced to these three points, viz: — (1.) They 
 sought for the universal essence of concrete being; (2.) They 
 found this essence in a material substance or substratum ; (3.) 
 They gave some intimation respecting the derivation of the ele- 
 ments from this original matter. 
 
 SECTION V. 
 
 PYTHAGOREANISM. 
 
 1. Its Relative Position. — The development of the Ionic 
 philosophy discloses the tendency to abstract matter from all else; 
 though they directed this process solely to the determined quality 
 of matter. It is this abstraction carried to a higher step, when 
 we look away from the sensible concretions of matter, and no 
 more regard its qualitative determinateness as water, air, &c., but 
 only direct our attention to its quantitative determinateness, — to 
 its space-filling property. But the determinateness of quantity is 
 number, and this is the principle and stand-point of Pythagorean- 
 ism. 
 
 2. Historical and Chronological. — The Pythagorean doc- 
 trine of numbers is referred to Pythagoras of Samos, who is said 
 to have flourished between 540 and 500 B. C. He dwelt in the 
 
24 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 latter part of his life at Crotonia, in Magna Grecia, where he 
 founded a society, or, more properly, an order, for the moral and 
 political regeneration of the lower Italian cities. Through this 
 society, this new direction of philosophy seems to have been 
 introduced, — though more as a mode of life than in the form of a 
 scientific theory. What is related concerning the life of Pytha- 
 goras, his journeys, the new order which he founded, his political 
 influence upon the lower Italian cities, &c., is so thoroughly inter- 
 woven with traditions, legends, and palpable fabrications, that we 
 can be certain at no point that we stand upon a historical basis. 
 Not only the old Pythagoreans, who have spoken of him, de- 
 lighted in the mysterious and esoteric, but even his new-Plato- 
 nistic biographers. Porphyry and Jamblichus, have treated his 
 life as a historico-philosophical romance. We have the same un- 
 certainty in reference to his doctrines, i. e. in reference to his 
 share in the number-theory. Aristotle, e. g. does not ascribe 
 this to Pythagoras himself, but only to the Pythagoreans gene- 
 rally, i. e. to their school. The accounts which are given respect- 
 ing his school have no certainty till the time of Socrates, a hundred 
 years after Pythagoras. Among the few sources of light which 
 we have upon this subject, are the mention made in Plato's Phae- 
 don of the Pythagorean Philolaus and his doctrines, and the 
 writings of Archytas, a cotemporary of Plato. We possess in 
 fact the Pythagorean doctrine only in the manner in which it was 
 taken up by Philolaus, Eurytas and Archytas, since its earlier 
 adherents left nothing in a written form. 
 
 3. The Pythagorean Principle. — The ancients are united 
 in affirming that the principle of the Pythagorean philosophy was 
 number. But in what sense was this their principle — in a material 
 or a formal sense ? Did they hold number as the material of 
 things, i. e. did they believe that things had their origin in num- 
 bers, or did they regard it as the archetype of things, i. e. did 
 they believe that things were made as the copy or the representa- 
 tion of numbers ? From this very point the accounts given by 
 the ancients diverge, and even the expressions of Aristotle seem 
 to contradict each other. At one time he speaks of Pythagorean- 
 
PYTHAGOREANISM. 
 
 25 
 
 ism in the former, and at another in the latter sense. From this 
 circumstance modern scholars have concluded that the Pytha- 
 gorean doctrine of numbers had different forms of development ; 
 that some of the Pythagoreans regarded numbers as the substances 
 and others as the archetypes of things. Aristotle, however, 
 gives an intimation how the two statements may be reconciled 
 with each other. Originally, without doubt, the Pythagoreans 
 regarded number as the material, as the inherent essence of 
 things, and therefore Aristotle places them together with the 
 Hylics (the Ionic natural philosophers), and says of them that 
 " they held things for numbers " (Metaph. I., 5, 6). But as the 
 Hylics did not identify their matter, e. g. water, immediately with 
 the sensuous thing, but only gave it out as the fundamental ele- 
 ment, as the original form of the individual thing, so, on the other 
 side, numbers also might be regarded as similar fundamental types, 
 and therefore Aristotle might say of the Pythagoreans, that 
 " they held numbers to be the corresponding original forms of 
 being, as water, air, &c." But if there still remains a degree of 
 uncertainty in the expressions of Aristotle respecting the sense 
 of the Pythagorean doctrine of numbers, it can only have its 
 ground in the fact that the Pythagoreans did not make any dis- 
 tinction between a formal and material principle, but contented 
 themselves with the undeveloped view, that, " number is the essence 
 of things, every thing is number." 
 
 4. The carrying- out of this Principle. — From the very 
 nature of the " number-principle," it follows that its complete ap- 
 plication to the province of the real, can only lead to a fruitless 
 and empty symbolism. If we take numbers as even and odd, and 
 still farther as finite and infinite, and apply them as such to 
 astronomy, music, psychology, ethics, &c., there arise combina- 
 tions like the following, viz. : one is the point, two are the line, 
 three are the- superficies, four are the extension of a body, five 
 are the condition [heschaffe^iheit), &c. — still farther, the soul is a 
 musical harmony, as is also virtue, the soul of the world, &c. Not 
 only the philosophical, but even the historical interest here ceases, 
 since the ancients themselves — as was unavoidable from the 
 2 
 
26 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 arbitrary nature of such combinations — ^bave given the most con- 
 tradictory account, some affirming that the Pythagoreans reduced 
 righteousness to the number three, others, that they reduced it to 
 the number four, others again to five, and still others to nine. 
 Naturally, from such a vague and arbitrary philosophizing, there 
 would early arise, in this, more than in other schools, a great 
 diversity of views, one ascribing this signification to a certain 
 mathematical form, and another that. In this mysticism of num- 
 bers, that which alone has truth and value, is the thought, which 
 lies at the ground of it all, that there prevails in the phenomena 
 of nature a rational order, harmony and conformity to law, and 
 that these laws of nature can be represented in measure and 
 number. But this truth has the Pythagorean school hid under 
 extravagant fancies, as vapid as they are unbridled. 
 
 The physics of the Pythagoreans possesses little scientific 
 value, with the exception of the doctrine taught by Philolaus 
 respecting the circular motion of the earth. Their ethics is also 
 defective. What we have remaining of it relates more to the 
 Pythagorean life, i. e. to the practice and discipline of their order 
 than to their philosophy. The whole tendency of Pythagoreanism 
 was in a practical respect ascetic, and directed to a strict culture 
 of the character. As showing this, we need only to cite their 
 doctrines concerning the transmigration of the soul, or, as it has 
 been called, their " immortality doctrine," their notion in respect 
 of the lower world, their opposition to suicide, and their view of 
 the body as the prison of the soul — all of which ideas are referred 
 to in Plato's Phaedon, and the last two of which are indicated as 
 belonging to Philolaus. 
 
THE ELEATICS. 
 
 27 
 
 SECTION YI 
 
 THE ELEATICS. 
 
 1. Relation of the Eleatic Principle to the Pythago- 
 rean. — Wliile the Pythagoreans had made matter, in so far as it 
 is quantity and the manifold, the basis of their philosophizing, 
 and while in this they only abstracted from the determined ele- 
 mental condition of matter, the Eleatics carry the process to its 
 ultimate limit, and make, as the principle of their philosophy, a 
 total abstraction from every finite determinateness, from every 
 change and vicissitude which belongs to concrete being. While 
 the Pythagoreans had held fast to the form of being as having 
 existence in space and time, the Eleatics reject this, and make as 
 their fundamental thought the negation of all exterior and pos- 
 terior. Only being is, and there is no not-being, nor becoming. 
 This being is the purely undetermined, changeless ground of all 
 things. It is not being in becoming, but it is being as exclusive 
 of all becoming ; in other words, it is pure being. 
 
 Eleaticism is, therefore, Monism, in so far as it strove to 
 carry, back the manifoldness of all being to a single ultimate 
 principle ; but on the other hand it becomes Dualism, in so far 
 as it could neither carry out its denial of concrete existence, i. e., 
 the phenomenal world, nor yet derive the latter from its presup- 
 posed original ground. The phenomenal world, though it might 
 be explained as only an empty appearance, did yet exist ; and, 
 since the sensuous perception would not ignore this, there must 
 be allowed it, hypothetically at least, the right of existence. Its 
 origin must be explained, even though with reservations. This 
 contradiction of an unreconciled Dualism between being and ex- 
 istence, is the point where the Eleatic philosophy is at war with 
 itself — though, in the beginning of the school — with Xenoptianes^ 
 it does not yet appear. The principle itself, with its results, is 
 only fully apparent in the lapse of time. It has three periods 
 
28 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 of formation, whicli successively appear in three successive gen- 
 erations. Its foundation belongs to Xenoplianes ; its systematic 
 formation to Parmenides ; its completion and partial dissolution 
 to Zeno and Melissus — tlie latter of whom we can pass by. 
 
 2. Xenophanes. — Xenopbanes is considered as the originator 
 of the Eleatic tendency. He was born at Colophon ; emigrated 
 to Elea, a Phocian colony in Lucania, and was a younger cotem- 
 porary of Pythagoras. He appears to have first uttered the 
 proposition — " every thing is one," without, however, giving any 
 more explicit determination respecting this unity, whether it be 
 one simply in conception or in actuality. Turning his attention, 
 says Aristotle, upon the world as a whole, he names the unity 
 which he finds, Grod. God is the One. The Eleatic " One and 
 All " {%v KOL irav) had, therefore, with Xenophanes, a theological 
 and religious character. The idea of the unity of God, and an 
 opposition to the anthropomorphism of the ordinary views of re- 
 ligion, is his starting point. He declaimed against the delusion 
 that the gods were born, that they had a human voice or form, 
 and railed at the robbery, adultery, and deceit of the gods as 
 sung by Homer and Hesiod. According to him the Godhead is 
 wholly seeing, wholly understanding, wholly hearing, unmoved, 
 undivided, calmly ruling all things by his thought, like men 
 neither in form nor in understanding. In this way, with his 
 thought turned only towards removing from the Godhead all 
 finite determinations and predicates, and holding fast to its unity 
 and unchangeableness, he declared this doctrine of its being to 
 be the highest philosophical principle, without however directing 
 this principle polemically against the doctrine of finite being, or 
 carrying it out in its negative application. 
 
 3. Par]\ienides. — The proper head of the Eleatic school is 
 Parmenides of Elea, a scholar, or at least an adherent of Xeno- 
 phanes. Though we possess but little reliable information re- 
 specting the circumstances of his life, yet we have, in inverse 
 proportion, the harmonious voice of all antiquity in an expression 
 of reverence for the Eleatic sage, and of admiration for the 
 depth of his mind, as well as for the earnestness and elevation 
 
THE ELEATICS. 
 
 29 
 
 of his character. The saying — " a life like Parmenides," became 
 afterwards a proverb among the Greeks. 
 
 Parmenides embodied his philosophy in an epic poem, of 
 which we have still important fragments. It is divided into two 
 parts. In the first he discusses the conception of being. Rising 
 far above the yet unmediated view of Xenophanes, he attains a 
 conception of pure single being, which he sets up as absolutely 
 opposed to every thing manifold and changeable, i. e., to that 
 which has no being, and which consequently cannot be thought. 
 From this conception of being he not only excludes all becoming 
 and departing, but also all relation to space and time, all divisi- 
 bility and movement. This being he explains as something 
 which has not become and which does not depart, as complete 
 and of its own kind, as unalterable and without limit, as indivisi- 
 ble and present though not in time, and since all these are only 
 negative, he ascribes to it, also, as a positive determination — 
 thought. Being and thought are therefore identical with Par- 
 menides. This pure thought, directed to the pure being, he de- 
 clares is the only true and undeceptive knowledge, in opposition 
 to the deceptive notions concerning the manifoldnessL and muta- 
 bility of - the phenomenal. He has no hesitancy in holding that 
 to be only a name which mortals regard as truth, viz., becoming 
 and departing, being and not-being, change of place and vicissi- 
 tude of circumstance. We must therefore be careful not to hold 
 " the One " of Parmenides, as the collective unity of all concrete 
 being. 
 
 So much for the first part of Parmenides' poem. After the 
 principle that there is only being has been developed according 
 to its negative and positive determinations, we might believe that 
 the system was at an end. But there follows a second part, 
 which is occupied solely with the hypothetical attempt to explain 
 the phenomenal world and give it a physical derivation. Though 
 firmly convinced that, according to reason and conception, there 
 is only " the One," yet is Parmenides unable to withdraw him- 
 self from the recognition of an appearing manifoldness and 
 change. Forced, therefore, by his sensuous perception to enter 
 
30 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 upon a discussion of the phenomenal world, he prefaces this sec- 
 ond part of his poem with the remark, that he had now closed 
 what he had to say respecting the truth, and was hereafter to 
 deal only with the opinion of a mortal. Unfortunately, this sec- 
 ond part has been very imperfectly transmitted to us. Enough 
 however remains to show, that he explained the phenomena of 
 nature from the mingling of two unchangeable elements, which 
 Aristotle, though apparently only by way of example, indicates 
 as warm and cold, fire and earth. Concerning these two ele- 
 ments, Aristotle remarks still farther that Parmenides united the 
 warmth with being, and the other element with not-being. 
 
 It is scarcely necessary to remark that between the two parts 
 of the Parmenidean philosophy — between the doctrine concern- 
 ing being and the doctrine concerning appearance — there can ex- 
 ist no inner scientific connection. What Parmenides absolutely 
 denies in the first part, and indeed declares to be unutterable, 
 viz., the not-being, the many and the changeable, he yet in the 
 second part admits to have an existence at least in the represen- 
 tation of men. But it is clear that the not-being cannot once 
 exist in the representation, if it does not exist generally and 
 every where, and that the attempt to explain a not-being of the 
 representation, is in complete contradiction with his exclusive 
 recognition of being. This contradiction, this unmediated jux- 
 taposition of being and not-being, of the one and the many, Zeno^ 
 a scholar of Parmenides, sought to remove, by affirming that 
 from the very conception of being, the sensuous representation, 
 and thus the world of the not-being, are dialectically annihilated. 
 
 4. Zexo. — The Eleatic Zeno was born about 500 B. C. ; was 
 a scholar of Parmenides, and the earliest prose writer among the 
 Grecian philosophers. He is said to have written in the form of 
 dialogues. He perfected, dialectically, the doctrine of his mas- 
 ter, and carried out to the completest extent the abstraction of 
 the Eleatic One, in opposition to the manifoldness and determi- 
 nateness of the finite. He justified the doctrine of a single, sim- 
 ple, and unchangeable being, in a polemical way, by showing up 
 the contradictions into which the ordinary representations of the 
 
HERACLITUS. 
 
 81 
 
 phenomenal world become involved. While Parmenides affirms 
 that there is only the One, Zeno shows in his well-known proofs 
 (which unfortunately we cannot here more widely unfold), that 
 the many, the changing, that which has relation to space, or that 
 which has relation to time, is not. While Parmenides affirmed 
 the being, Zeno denied the appearance. On account of these 
 proofs, in which Zeno takes up the conceptions of extension, 
 manifoldness and movement, and shows their inner contradictory 
 nature, Aristotle names him the founder of dialectics. 
 
 While the philosophizing of Zeno is the completion of the 
 Eleatic principle, so is it at the same time the beginning of its 
 dissolution. Zeno had embraced the opposition of being and ex- 
 istence, of the one and the many, so abstractly, and had carried 
 it so far, that with him the inner contradiction of the Eleatic 
 principle comes forth still more boldly than with Parmenides ; 
 fcTi. the more logical he is in the denial of the phenomenal world, 
 so much the more striking must be the contradiction, of turning, 
 on the one side, his whole philosophical activity to the refutation 
 of the sensuous representation, while, on the other side, he sets 
 over against it a doctrine which destroys the very possibility of a 
 false representation. 
 
 SECTION YII. 
 
 HERACLITUS. 
 
 1. Relation of the Heraclitic Pe.inciple to the Ele- \ 
 ATic. — ^Being and existence, the one and the many, could not be 
 united by the principle of the Eleatics ; the Monism which they 
 had striven for had resulted in an ill-concealed Dualism. He- 
 raclitus reconciled this contradiction by affirming that being and - 
 not-being, the one and the many, existed at the same time as the 
 becoming. While the Eleatics could not extricate themselves 
 from the dilemma that the worlcj is either being or not-being; 
 
82 
 
 A mSTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Heraclitus removes the difficulty by answering — it is neither be- 
 ing nor not-being, because it is both. 
 
 2. Historical and Chronological. — Heraclitus, surnamed 
 by later writers the mystic, was born at Ephesus, and flourished 
 about 500 B. C. His period was subsequent to that of Xeno- 
 phanes, though partially cotemporary with that of Parmenides. 
 He laid down his philosophical thoughts in a writing " Concern- 
 ing Nature," of which we possess only fragments. Its rapid 
 transitions, its expressions so concise, and full of meaning, the 
 general philosophical peculiarity of Heraclitus, and the antique 
 character of the earliest prose writings, all combine to make this 
 work so difficult to be understood that it has long been a proverb. 
 Socrates said concerning it, that " what he understood of it was 
 excellent, and he had no doubt that what he did not understand 
 was equally good ; but the book requires an expert swimmer." 
 Later Stoics and Academicians have written commentaries 
 upon it. 
 
 3, The Principle of the Becoming. — The ancients unite in 
 ascribing to Heraclitus the principle that the totality of things 
 should be conceived in an eternal flow, in an uninterrupted move- 
 ment and transformation, and that all continuance of things is 
 only appearance. " Into the same stream," so runs a saying of 
 Heraclitus, we descend, and at the same time we do not de- 
 scend ; we are, and also we are not. For into the same stream 
 we cannot possibly descend twice, since it is always scattering 
 and collecting itself again, or rather it at the same time flows to 
 us and from us." There is, therefore, ground for the assertion 
 that Heraclitus had banished all rest and continuance from the 
 totality of things ; and it is doubtless in this very respect that he 
 accuses the eye and the ear of deception, because they reveal to 
 men a continuance where there is only an uninterrupted change. 
 
 Heraclitus has analyzed the principle of the becoming still 
 more closely, in the propositions which he utters, to accounc for 
 the origin of things, where he shows that all becoming must be 
 conceived as the product of warring opposites, as the harmonious 
 tinion of opposite determinations. Hence his two well-known 
 
HERACLITUS. 
 
 3P 
 
 propositions : " Strife is the father of things," and " The One 
 setting itself at variance with itself, harmonizes with itself, like 
 the harmony of the bow and the viol." " Unite," so runs another 
 of his sayings, " the whole and the not-whole, the coalescing and 
 the not-coalescing, the harmonious and the discordant, and thus 
 we have the one becoming from the all, and the all from the 
 one." 
 
 4. The Principle of Fire. — In what relation does the prin- 
 ciple of fire, which is also ascribed to Heraclitus, stand to the 
 principle of the becoming ? Aristotle says that he took fire as 
 his principle, in the same way that Thales took water, and Anax- 
 imenes took air. But it is clear we must not interpret this to 
 mean that Heraclitus regarded fire as the original material or 
 fundamental element of things, after the manner of the Ionics. 
 If he ascribed reality only to the becoming, it is impossible ,that 
 he should have set by the side of this becoming, yet another ele- 
 mental matter as a fundamental substance. When, therefore, 
 Heraclitus calls the world an ever-living fire, which in certain 
 stages and certain degrees extinguishes and again enkindles itself, 
 when he says that every thing can be exchanged for fire, and fire 
 for every thing, just as we barter things for gold and gold for 
 things, he can only mean thereby that fire represents the abiding 
 power of this eternal transformation and transposition, in other 
 words, the conception of life, in the most obvious and efi"ective 
 way. We might name fire, in the Heraclitic sense, the symbol 
 or the manifestation of the becoming, but that it is also with him 
 the substratum of movement, i. e. the means with which the 
 power of movement, which is antecedent to all matter, serves it 
 self in order to bring out the living process of things. In the 
 same way Heraclitus goes on to explain the manifoldness of 
 things, by affirming that they arise from certain hindrances and 
 a partial extinction of this fire. The product of its extremest 
 hindrance is the earth, and the other things lie intermediately 
 between. 
 
 6. Transition to the Atomists. — We have above regarded 
 
 the Heraclitic principle as the consequent of the Eleatic, but we 
 o* 
 
34 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 might as properly consider the two as antitheses. While Herar 
 clitus destroys all abiding being in an absolutely flowing becoming, 
 so, on the other hand, Parmenides destroys all becoming in an 
 absolutely abiding being ; and while the former charges the eye 
 and the ear with deception, in that they transform the flowing 
 becoming into a quiescent being, the latter also accuses these 
 same senses of an untrue representation, in that they draw the 
 abiding being into the movement of the becoming. We can 
 therefore say that the being and the becoming are equally valid 
 antitheses, which demand again a synthesis and reconciliation. 
 But now can we say that Heraclitus actually and satisfactorily 
 solved the problem of Zeno ? Zeno had shown every thing actual 
 to be a contradiction, and from this had inferred their not-being, 
 and it is only in this inference that Heraclitus deviates from the 
 Eleatics. He also regarded the phenomenal world as an existing 
 contradiction, but he clung to this contradiction as to an ultimate 
 fact. That which had been the negative result of the Eleatics, 
 he uttered as his positive principle. The dialectics which Zeno 
 had subjectively used against the phenomenal, he directed objec- 
 tively as a proof for the becoming. But this becoming which the 
 Eleatics had thought themselves obliged to deny entirely, Hera- 
 clitus did not explain by simply asserting that it was the only 
 true principle. The question continually returned — why is all 
 being a becoming? Why does the one go out ever into the 
 many ? To give an answer to this question, i. e. to explain the 
 becoming from the pre-supposed principle of being, forms the 
 stand-point and problem of the Empedoclean and Atomistic 
 philosophy. 
 
EMPEDOCLES. 
 
 85 
 
 SECTION VIII. 
 
 EMPEDOCLES. 
 
 1. General View. — Empedocles was born at Agrigentum, 
 and is extolled by the ancients as a natural philosopher, physician 
 and poet, and also as a seer and worker of miracles. He flourished 
 about 440 B. C, and was consequently younger than Parmenides 
 and Heraclitus. He wrote a doctrinal poem concerning nature, 
 which has been preserved to us in tolerably complete fragments. 
 His philosophical system may be characterized in brief, as an 
 attempt to combine the Eleatic being and the Heraclitic becom- 
 ing. Starting with the Eleatic thought, that neither any thing 
 which had previously been could become, nor any thing which 
 now is could depart, he sets up as unchangeable being, four 
 eternal original materials, which, though divisible, were indepen- 
 dent, and underived from each other. In this we have what in 
 our day are called the four elements. With this Eleatic thought 
 he united also the Heraclitic view of nature, and suffered his four 
 elements to become mingled together, and to receive a form by 
 the working of two moving powers, which he names unifying 
 friendship and dividing strife. Originally, these four elements 
 were absolutely alike and unmovable, dwelling together in a di- 
 vine sphere where friendship united them, until gradually strife 
 pressing from the circumference to the centre of the sphere {i. e. 
 attaining a separating activity), broke this union, and the forma- 
 tion of the world immediately began as the result. 
 
 2. The Four Elements. — With his doctrine of the four ele- 
 ments, Empedocles, on the one side, may be joined to the series 
 of the Ionic philosophers, but, on the other, he is excluded from 
 this by his assuming the original elements to be four. He is dis- 
 tinctly said by the ancients to have originated the theory of the 
 four elements. He is more definitely distinguished from the old 
 Ionics, from the fact that he ascribed to his four " root-elements" 
 a changeless being, by virtue of which they neither arose from 
 
36 
 
 A fflSTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 each other nor departed into each other, and were capable of no 
 change of essence but only of a change of state. Every thing 
 which is called arising and departing, every change rests there- 
 fore only upon the mingling and withdrawing of these eternal and 
 fundamental materials ; the inexhaustible manifoldness of being 
 rests upon the different proportions in which these elements are 
 mingled. Every becoming is conceived as such only as a change 
 of place. In this we have a mechanical in opposition to a dynamic 
 explanation of nature. 
 
 3. The Two Powers. — "Whence now can arise any becoming, 
 if in matter itself there is found no principle to account for the 
 change ? Since Empedocles did not, like the Eleatics, deny that 
 there was change, nor yet, like Heraclitus, introduce it in his 
 matter, as an indwelling principle, so there was no other course 
 left him but to place, by the side of his matter, a moving power. 
 The opposition of the one and the many which had been set up by 
 his predecessors, and which demanded an explanation, led him to 
 ascribe to this moving power, two originally diverse directions, 
 viz. : repulsion and attraction. The separation of the one into 
 the many, and the union again of the many into the one, had in- 
 dicated an opposition of powers which Heraclitus had already 
 recognized. While now Parmenides starting from the one had 
 made love as his principle, and Heraclitus starting from the many 
 had made strife as his, Empedocles combines the two as the prin- 
 ciple of his philosophy. The difficulty is, he has not sufficiently 
 limited in respect to one another, the sphere of operation of these 
 two directions of his power. Although to friendship belonged 
 peculiarly the attractive, and to strife the repelling function, yet 
 does Empedocles, on the other hand, suffer his strife to have in 
 the formation of the world a unifying, and his friendship a dividing 
 effect. In fact, the complete separation of a dividing and unify- 
 ing power in the movement of the becoming, is an unmaintainable 
 abstraction. 
 
 4. Relation of the Empedoclean to the Eleatic and 
 Heraclitic Philosophy. — Empedocles, by placing, as the prin- 
 ciple of the becoming, a moving power by the side of his matter, 
 
THE ATOMISTIC PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 37 
 
 makes his philosopliy a mediation of the Eleatic and Heraclitic 
 principles, or more properly a placing of them side by side. He 
 has interwoven these two principles in equal proportions in his 
 system. With the Eleatics he denied all arising and departing, 
 i. e. the transition of being into not-being and of not-being into 
 being, and with Heraclitus he shared the interest to find an ex- 
 planation for change. From the former he derived the abiding, 
 unchangeable being of his fundamental matter, and from the latter 
 the principle of the moving power. With the Eleatics, in fine, he 
 considered the true being in an original and undistinguishable 
 unity as a sphere, and with Heraclitus, he regarded the present 
 world as a constant product of striving powers and oppositions. 
 He has, therefore, been properly called an Eclectic, who has 
 united the fundamental thoughts of his two predecessors, though 
 not always in a logical way. 
 
 SECTION IX. 
 
 THE ATOMISTIC PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 1. Its Propounders. — Empedocles had sought to effect a 
 combination of the Eleatic and Heraclitic principle — the same 
 was attempted, though in a different way, by the Atomists, Leu- 
 oippus and Democritus. Democritus, the better known of the 
 two, was the son of rich parents, and was born about 460 B. C. in 
 Abdera, an Ionian colony. He travelled extensively, and no 
 Greek before the time of Aristotle possessed such varied attain- 
 ments. He embodied the wealth of his collected knowledge in a 
 series of writings, of which, however, only a few fragments have 
 come down to us. For rhythm and elegance of language, Cicero 
 compared him with Plato. He died in a good old age. 
 
 2. The Atoms. — Empedocles derived all determinateness of 
 the phenomenal from a certain number of qualitatively determined 
 and undistinguishable original materials, while the Atomists de- 
 
38 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 rived the same from an originally unlimited number of constituent 
 elements, or atoms, which were homogeneous in respect of quality, 
 but diverse in respect of form. These atoms are unchangeable, 
 material particles, possessing indeed extension, but yet indivisible, 
 and can only be determined in respect of magnitude. As being, 
 and without quality, they are entirely incapable of any transfor- 
 mation or qualitative change, and, therefore, all becoming is, as 
 with Empedocles, only a change of place. The manifoldness of 
 the phenomenal world is only to be explained from the different 
 form, disposition, and arrangement of the atoms as they become, 
 in various ways, united. 
 
 3. The Fulness and the Yoid. — The atoms, in order to 
 be atoms, i. e. undivided and impenetrable unities, — must be 
 mutually limited and separated. There must be something set 
 over against them which preserves them as atoms, and which is 
 the original cause of their separateness and impenetrability. This 
 is the void space, or more strictly the intervals which are found 
 between the atoms, and which hinder their mutual contact. .The 
 atoms, as being and absolute fulness, and the interval between 
 them, as the void and the not-being, are two determinations which 
 only represent in a real and objective way, what are in thought, 
 as logical conceptions, the two elements in the Heraclitic becom- 
 ing, viz. being and the not-being. But since the void space is one 
 determination of being, it must possess objective reality no less 
 than the atoms, and Democritus even went so far as to expressly 
 affirm in opposition to the Eleatics, that being is no more than 
 nothing. 
 
 4. The Atomistic Necessity. — Democritus, like Empedocles, 
 though far more extensively than he, attempted to answer the 
 question — whence arise these changes and movements which we 
 behold ? Wherein lies the ground that the atoms should enter 
 into these manifold combinations, and bring forth such a wealth 
 of inorganic and organic forms ? Democritus attempted to solve 
 the problem by affirming that the ground of movement lay in the 
 gravity or original condition of the material particles, and, there- 
 fore, in the matter itself, but in this way he only talked about the 
 
THE ATOMISTIC PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 39 
 
 question without answering it. The idea of an infinite series of 
 causalities was thus attained, but not a final ground of all the 
 manifestations of the becoming, and of change. Such a final 
 ground was still to be sought, and as Democritus expressly de- 
 clared that it could not lie in an ultimate reason (voOs), where 
 Anaxagoras placed it, there only remained for him to find it in an 
 absolute necessity, or a necessary pre-determinateness (avdyK-rj). 
 This he adopted as his '* final ground," and is said to have named 
 it chance (tvxii)j opposition to the inquiry after final causes, or 
 the Anaxagorean teleology. Consequent upon this, we find as the 
 prominent characteristic of the later Atomistic school (Diagoras 
 the Melier), polemics against the gods of the people, and a con- 
 stantly more publicly affirmed Atheism and Materialism. 
 
 5. Relative Position of the Atomistic Philosophy. — He- 
 gel characterizes the relative position of the Atomistic Philosophy 
 as follows, viz. : — " In the Eleatic Philosophy being and not-being 
 stand as antitheses, — ^being alone is, and not-being is not ; in the 
 Heraclitic idea, being and not-being are the same, — ^both together, 
 i. e. the becoming, are the predicate of concrete being ; but being 
 and not-being, as objectively determined, or in other words, as 
 appearing to the sensuous intuition, are precisely the same as the 
 antithesis of the fulness and the void. Parmenides, Heraclitus 
 and the Atomists all sought for the abstract universal ; Parme- 
 nides found it in being ^ Heraclitus in the jjrocess of being per se, 
 and the Atomists in the determiyiation of being per s^." So 
 much of this as ascribes to the Atomists the characteristic predi- 
 cate of being per se is doubtless correct, — ^but the real thought 
 of the Atomistic system is rather analogous with the Empedoc- 
 lean, to explain the possibility of the becoming, by presupposing 
 these substances as possessing being per se, but without quality. 
 To this end the not-being or the void, i. e. the side which is op- 
 posed to the Eleatic principle, is elaborated with no less care than 
 the side which harmonizes with it, i. e. that the atoms are without 
 quality and never change in their original elements. The Atom- 
 istic Philosophy is therefore a mediation between the Eleatic and 
 tbe Heraclitic principles. It is Eleatic in affirming the undivided 
 
40 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 being per se of the atoms ; — Heraclitic, in declaring their mul- 
 teity and manifoldness. It is Eleatic in the declaration of an 
 absolute fulness in the atoms, and Heraclitic in the claim of a 
 real not-being, i. e. the void space. It is Eleatic in its denial of 
 the becoming, i. e. of the arising and departing, — and Heraclitic 
 in its affirmation that to the atoms belong movement and a capa- 
 city for unlimited combinations. The Atomists carried out their 
 leading thought more logically than Empedocles, and we might 
 even say that their system is the perfection of a purely mechanical 
 explanation of nature, since all subsequent Atomists, even to our 
 own day, have only repeated their fundamental conceptions. But 
 the great defect which cleaves to every Atomistic system, Aris- 
 totle has justly recognized, when he shows that it is a contradic- 
 tion, on the one hand, to set up something corporeal or space-filling 
 as indivisible, and on the other, to derive the extended from that 
 which has no extension, and that the consciousless and inconceiv- 
 able necessity of Democritus is especially defective, in that it 
 totally banishes from nature all conception of design. This is 
 the point to which Anaxagoras turns his attention, and introduces 
 his principle of an intelligence working with design. 
 
 SECTION X. 
 
 ANAXAGORAS. 
 
 1. His Personal History. — Anaxagoras is said to have been 
 born at Clazamena, about the year 500 B. C. ; to have gone to 
 Athens immediately, or soon after the Persian war, to have lived 
 and taught there for a long time, and, finally, accused of irreve- 
 rence to the gods, to have fled, and died at Lampsacus, at the age 
 of 72. He it was who first planted philosophy at Athens, which 
 from this time on became the centre of intellectual life in Greece. 
 Through his personal relations to Pericles, Euripides, and other 
 important men, — among whom Themistocles and Thucydides 
 
ANAXAGORAS. 
 
 41 
 
 should be named — he exerted a decisive influence upon the cul- 
 ture of the age. It was on account of this that the charge of 
 defaming the gods was brought against him, doubtless by the 
 political opponents of Pericles. Anaxagoras wrote a work " Con- 
 cerning Nature,''^ which in the time of Socrates was widely circu- 
 lated. 
 
 2. His Relation to his Predecessors. — The system of An- 
 axagoras starts from the same point with his predecessors, and is 
 simply another attempt at the solution of the same problem. 
 Like Empedocles and the Atomists so did Anaxagoras most vehe- 
 mently deny the becoming. " The becoming and departing," — so 
 runs one of his sayings — " the Greeks hold without foundation, 
 for nothing can ever be said to become or depart ; but, since ex- 
 isting things may be compounded together and again divided, we 
 should name the becoming more correctly a combination, and the 
 departing a separation. From this view, that every thing arose by 
 the mingling of different elements, and departed by the withdraw- 
 ing of these elements, Anaxagoras, like his predecessors, was 
 obliged to separate matter from the moving power. But though 
 his point of starting was the same, yet was his direction essen- 
 tially different from that of any previous philosopher. It was 
 clear that neither Empedocles nor Democritus had satisfactorily 
 apprehended the moving power. The mythical energies of love 
 and hate of the one, or the unconscious necessity of the other, 
 explained nothing, and least of all, the design of the becoming 
 in nature. The conception of an activity which could thus work 
 designedly, must, therefore, be brought into the conception of 
 the moving power, and this Anaxagoras accomplished by setting 
 up the idea of a world-forming intelligence (i/o9?), absolutely sepa^ 
 rated from all matter and working with design. 
 
 3. The Principle of the voS?. — Anaxagoras described this 
 intelligence as free to dispose, unmingled with any thing, the 
 ground of movement, but itself unmoved, every where active, and 
 the most refined and pure of all things. Although these predi- 
 cates rest partly upon a physical analogy, and do not exhibit 
 purely the conception of immateriality, yet on the other hand 
 
42 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 does the attribute of thought and of a conscious acting with de- 
 sign admit no doubt to remain of the decided idealistic character 
 of the Anaxagorean principle. Nevertheless, Anaxagoras went 
 no farther than to enunciate his fundamental thought without 
 attempting its complete application. The explanation of this is 
 obvious from the reasons which first led him to adopt his princi- 
 ple. It was only the need of an original cause of motion, to 
 which also might be attributed the capacity to work designedly, 
 which had led him to the idea of an immaterial principle. His 
 vovs, therefore, is almost nothing but a mover of matter, and in 
 this function nearly all its activity is expended. Hence the uni- 
 versal complaint of the ancients, especially of Plato and Aris- 
 totle, respecting the mechanical character of his doctrine. In 
 Plato's Phsedon Socrates relates that, in the hope of being 
 directed beyond a simple occasioning, or mediate cause, he had 
 turned to the book of Anaxagoras, but had found there only a 
 mechanical instead of a truly teleological explanation of being. 
 And as Plato so also does Aristotle find fault with Anaxagoras in 
 that, while he admits mind as the ultimate ground of things, he 
 yet resorts to it only as to a Deus ex machina for the explanation 
 of phenomena, whose necessity he could not derive from the 
 causality in nature. Anaxagoras, therefore, has rather postulated 
 than proved mind as an energy above nature, and as the truth and 
 actuality of natural being. 
 
 The further extension of his system, his doctrine concerning 
 the homoiomeria (constituent elements of things), which according 
 to him existed together originally in a chaotic condition until with 
 their separation and parting the formation of the world began — 
 can here only be mentioned. 
 
 4. Anaxagoras as the close of the pre-Socratic Real- 
 isiii. — With the Anaxagorean principle of the vot)?, i. e. with the 
 acquisition of an absolutely immaterial principle, closes the real- 
 istic period of the old Grecian Philosophy. Anaxagoras com- 
 bined together the principles of all his predecessors. The infinite 
 matter of the Hylics is represented in his chaotic original ming- 
 ling of things ; the Eleatic pure being appears in the idea of the 
 
THE SOPHISTIC PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 43 
 
 vovs; the Heraclitic power of becoming and the Empedoclean 
 moving energies are both seen in the creating and arranging power 
 of the eternal mind, while the Democritic atoms come to view in 
 the homoiomeria. Anaxagoras is the closing point of an old and 
 the beginning point of a new course of development, — the latter 
 through the setting up of his ideal principle, and the former 
 through the defective and completely physical manner in which 
 this principle was yet again applied. 
 
 SECTION XI. 
 
 THE SOPHISTIC PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 1. Relation of the Sophistic Philosophy to the Anaxa- 
 GOREAN Principle. — Anaxagoras had formed the conception of 
 mind, and in this had recognized thought as a power above the 
 objective world. Upon this newly conquered field the Sophistic 
 philosophy now began its gambols, and with childish wantonness 
 delighted itself in setting at work this power, and in destroying, by 
 means of a subjective dialectic, all objective determinations. The 
 Sophistic philosophy — ^though of far more significance from its 
 relation to the culture of the age than from its philosophy — had 
 for its starting principle the breach which Anaxagoras had com- 
 menced between the subjective and the objective, — the Ego and 
 the external world. The subject, after recognizing himself as 
 something higher than the objective world, and especially as some- 
 thing above the laws of the state, above custom and religious 
 tradition and the popular faith, in the next place attempted to 
 prescribe laws for this objective world, and instead of beholding 
 in it the historical manifestation of reason, he looked upon it only 
 as an exanimated matter, upon which he might exercise his will. 
 
 The Sophistic philosophy should be characterized as the clear- 
 ing up reflection. It is, therefore, no philosophical system, for its 
 doctrines and afi&rmations exhibit often so popular and even trivial 
 
44 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 a character that for their own sake they would merit no place at 
 all in the history of philosophy. It is also no philosophical school 
 in the ordinary sense of the term, — for Plato cites a vast number 
 of persons under the common name of " Sophists," — but it is an 
 intellectual and widely spread direction of the age, which had struck 
 its roots into the whole moral, political, and religious character 
 of the Athenian life of that time, and which may be called the 
 Athenian clearing up period. 
 
 2. Relation of the Sophistic Philosophy to the Univer- 
 sal Life of that Age. — The Sophistic philosophy is, theoreti- 
 cally, what the whole Athenian life during the Peloponnesian war 
 was practically. Plato justly remarks in his Eepublic that the 
 doctrines of the Sophists only expressed the very principles which 
 guided the course of the great mass of men of that time in their 
 civil and social relations, and the hatred with which they were 
 pursued by the practical statesmen, clearly indicates the jealousy 
 with which the latter saw in them their rivals and the destroyers 
 of their polity. If the absoluteness of the empirical subject — i. e. 
 the view that the individual Ego can arbitrarily determine what 
 is true, right and good, — is in fact the theoretical principle of the 
 Sophistic philosophy, so does this in a practical direction, as an 
 unlimited Egoism meet us in all the spheres of the public and 
 private life of that age. The public life had become an arena of 
 passion and selfishness ; those party struggles which racked Athens 
 during the Peloponnesian war had blunted and stifled the moral 
 feeling ; every individual accustomed himself to set up his own 
 private interest above that of the state and the common weal, and 
 to seek in his own arbitrariness and advantage the measuring rod 
 for all his actions. The Protagorean sentence that " the man is 
 the measure of all things " became practically carried out only 
 too faithfully, and the influence of the orator in the assemblies of 
 the people and the courts, the corruptibility of the great masses 
 and their leaders, and the weak points which showed to the adroit 
 student of human nature the covetousness, vanity, and factious- 
 ness of others around him, ofl'ered only too many opportunities to 
 bring this rule into practice. Custom had lost its weight ; the 
 
THE SOPHISTIC PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 45 
 
 laws were regarded as only an agreement of the majority, the 
 civil ordinance as an arbitrary restriction, the moral feeling as the 
 effect of the policy of the state in education, the faith in the gods 
 as a human invention to intimidate the free power of action, 
 while piety was looked upon as a statute which some men have 
 enacted and which every one else is justified in using all his elo- 
 quence to change. This degradation of a necessity, which is con- 
 formable to nature and reason, and which is of universal validity, 
 — to an accidental human ordinance, is chiefly the point in which 
 the Sophistic philosophy came in contact with the universal con- 
 sciousness of the educated class of that period, and we cannot 
 with certainty determine what share science and what share the 
 life may have had in this connection, — whether the Sophistic 
 philosophy found only the theoretical formula for the practical 
 life and tendencies of the age, or whether the moral corruption 
 was rather a consequence of that destructive influence which the 
 principles of the Sophists exerted upon the whole course of 
 cotemporaneous thought. 
 
 It would be, however, to mistake the spirit of history if we 
 were only to bewail the epoch of the Sophists instead of admitting 
 for it a relative justification. These phenomena were in part the 
 necessary product of the collective development of the age. The 
 faith in the popular religion fell so suddenly to the ground simply 
 because it possessed in itself no inner, moral support. The 
 grossest vices and acts of baseness could all be justified and ex 
 cused from the examples of mythology. Even Plato himself, 
 though otherwise an advocate of a devout faith in the traditional 
 religion, accuses the poets of his nation with leading the very 
 moral feeling astray, through the unworthy representations which 
 they had spread abroad concerning the gods and the hero world. 
 It was moreover unavoidable that the advancing science should 
 clash with tradition. The physical philosophers had already long 
 lived in open hostility to the popular religion, and the more con- 
 vincingly they demonstrated by analogies and laws that many 
 things which had hitherto been regarded as the immediate efi'ect 
 of Divine omnipotence, were only the results of natural causes 
 
46 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 SO much the more easily would it happen that the educated classes 
 would become perplexed in reference to all their previous convic- 
 tions. It was no wonder then that the transformed consciousness 
 of the time should penetrate all the provinces of art and poesy ; 
 that in sculpture, wholly analogous to the rhetoric art of the 
 Sophistic philosophy, the emotive should occupy the place of the 
 elevated style ; that Euripides, the sophist among tragedians, 
 should bring the whole philosophy of the time and its manner of 
 moral reflection upon the stage ; and that, instead of like the 
 earlier poets, bringing forward his actors to represent an idea, he 
 should use them only as means to excite a momentary emotion or 
 some other stage effect. 
 
 8. Tendencies of the Sophistic Philosophy. — To give a 
 definite classification of the Sophistic philosophy, which should 
 be derived from the conception of the general phenomena of the 
 age, is exceedingly difficult, since, like the French "clearing up" 
 of the last century, it entered into every department of knowledge. 
 The Sophists directed the universal culture of the time. Prota- 
 goras was known as a teacher of virtue, Grorgias as a rhetorician 
 and politician, Prodicus as a grammarian and teacher of syn- 
 onyms, Hippias as a man of various attainments, who besides 
 astronomical and mathematical studies busied himself with a 
 theory of mnemonics ; others took for their problem the art of 
 education, and others still the explanation of the old poets ; the 
 brothers Euthydemus and Dionysidorus gave instruction in the 
 bearing of arms and military tactics; many among them, as 
 Gorgias, Prodicus, and Hippias, were intrusted with embassies : 
 in short the Sophists, each one according to his individual ten- 
 dency, took upon themselves every variety of calling and entered 
 into every sphere of science ; their method is the only thing com- 
 mon to all. Moreover the relation of the Sophists to the educated 
 public, their striving after popularity, fame and money, disclose 
 the fact that their studies and occupations were for the most part 
 controlled, not by a subjective scientific interest, but by some ex- 
 ternal motive. With that roving spirit which was an essential 
 peculiarity of the later Sophists, travelling from city to city, and 
 
I 
 
 I 
 
 THE SOPHISTIC PHILOSOPHY. 47 
 
 announcing themselves as thinkers by profession — and giving their 
 instructions with prominent reference to a good recompense and 
 the favor of the rich private classes, it was very natural that they 
 should discourse upon the prominent questions of universal inter- 
 est and of public culture, with occasional reference also to the 
 favorite occupation of this or that rich man with whom they 
 might be brought in contact. Hence their peculiar strength lay 
 far more in a formal dexterity, in an acuteness of thought and a 
 capacity of bringing it readily into exercise, in the art of discourse 
 than in any positive knowledge ; their instruction in virtue was 
 given either in positive dogmatism or in empty bombast, and even 
 where the Sophistic philosophy became really polymathic, the art 
 of speech still remained as the great thing. So we find in Xeno- 
 phon, Hippias boasting that he can speak repeatedly upon every 
 subject and say something new each time, while we hear it ex- 
 pressly affirmed of others, that they had no need of positive 
 knowledge in order to discourse satisfactorily upon every thing, 
 and to answer every question extemporaneously ; and when many 
 Sophists make it a great point to hold a well-arranged discourse 
 about something of the least possible significance {e. g. salt), so 
 do we see that with them the thing was only a means while the 
 word was the end, and we ought not to be surprised that in this 
 respect the Sophistic philosophy sunk to that empty technicality 
 which Plato in his Phaedrus, on account of its want of character, 
 subjects to so rigid a criticism. 
 
 4. The Significance of the Sophistic Philosophy from its 
 RELATION to THE CuLTURE OF THE Age. — The Scientific and moral 
 defect of the Sophistic philosophy is at first view obvious ; and. 
 since certain modern writers of history with over-officious zeal 
 have painted its dark sides in black, and raised an earnest accu- 
 sation against its frivolity, immorality, and greediness for pleasure, 
 its conceitedness and selfishness, and bare appearance of wisdom 
 and art of dispute — it needs here no farther elucidation. But the 
 point in it most apt to be overlooked is the merit of the Sophists 
 in their effect upon the culture of the age. To say, as is done, 
 that they had only the negative merit of calling out the opposi- 
 
48 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 tion of Socrates and Plato, is to leave the immense influence and 
 tlie high fame of so many among them, as well as the revolution 
 which they brought about in the thinking of a whole nation, an 
 inexplicable phenomenon. It were inexplicable that e. g. Socrates 
 should -attend the lectures of Prodicus, and direct to him other 
 students, if he did not acknowledge the worth of his grammatical 
 performances or recognize his merit for the soundness of his logic. 
 Moreover, it cannot be denied that Protagoras has hit upon many 
 correct principles of rhetoric, and has satisfactorily established 
 certain grammatical categories. Generally may it be said of the 
 Sophists, that they threw among the people a fulness in every 
 department of knowledge ; that they strewed about them a vast 
 number of fruitful germs of development ; that they called out 
 investigations in the theory of knowledge, in logic and in lan- 
 guage ; that they laid the basis for the methodical treatment of 
 many branches of human knowledge, and that they partly founded 
 and partly called forth that wonderful intellectual activity which 
 characterized Athens at that time. Their greatest merit is their 
 service in the department of language. They may even be said 
 to have created and formed the Attic prose. They are the first 
 who made style as such a separate object of attention and study, 
 and who set about rigid investigations respecting number and the 
 art of rhetorical representation. With them Athenian eloquence, 
 which they first incited, begins. Antiphon as well as Isocrates — 
 the latter the founder of the most flourishing school of Greek 
 rhetoric — are offshoots of the Sophistic philosophy. In all this 
 there is ground enough to regard this whole phenomenon as not 
 barely a symptom of decay. 
 
 5. Individual Sophists. — The first, who is said to have been 
 called, in the received sense, Sophist, is Protagoras of Abdera, 
 who flourished about 440 b. c. He taught, and for wages, in 
 Sicily and in Athens, but was driven out of the latter place as a 
 reviler of the gods, and his book concerning the gods was burnt 
 by the herald in the public market-place. It began with these 
 words : "I can know nothing concerning the gods, whether they 
 exist or not ; for we are prevented from gaining such knowledge 
 
THE SOPHISTIC PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 49 
 
 not only by the obscurity of the thing itself, but by the shortness 
 of the human life." In another writing he develops his doctrine 
 concerning knowing or not-knowing. Starting from the Heraclitic 
 position that every thing is in a constant flow, and applying this 
 preeminently to the thinking subject, he taught that the man is 
 the measure of all things, who determines in respect of being that 
 it may be, and of not-being that it may not be, i. e. that is true 
 for the perceiving subject which he, in the constant movement of 
 things and of himself, at every moment perceives and is sensible 
 of — and hence he has theoretically no other relation to the ex- 
 ternal world than the sensuous apprehension, and practically no 
 other than the sensuous desire. But now, since perception and 
 sensation are as diverse as the subjects themselves, and are in the 
 highest degree variable in the very same subject, there follows the 
 farther result that nothing has an objective validity and deter- 
 mination, that contradictory affirmations in reference to the same 
 object must be received as alike true, and that error and contra- 
 diction cannot be. Protagoras does not seem to have made any 
 efforts to give these frivolous propositions a practical and logical 
 application. According to the testimony of the ancients, a per- 
 sonal character worthy of esteem, cannot be denied him ; and even 
 Plato, in the dialogue which bears his name, goes no farther than 
 to object to his complete obscurity respecting the nature of 
 morality, while, in his Gorgias and Philebus, he charges the later 
 Sophists with affirming the principles of immorality and moral 
 baseness. 
 
 Next to Protagoras, the most famous Sophist was Gorgias. 
 During the Peloponnesian war (426 b. c), he came from Leontium 
 to Athens in order to gain assistance for his native city against the 
 encroachments of Syracuse. After the successful accomplishment 
 of his errand he still abode for some time in Athens, but resided 
 the latter part of his life in Thessaly, where he died about the 
 same time with Socrates. The pompous ostentation of his ex- 
 ternal appearance is often ridiculed by Plato, and the discourses 
 through which he was wont to exhibit himself display the same 
 character, attempting, through poetical ornament, and florid 
 3 
 
50 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 metaphors, and uncommon words, and a mass of hitherto unheard 
 of figures of speech, to dazzle and delude the mind. As a phi- 
 losopher he adhered to the Eleatics, especially to Zeno, and 
 attempts to prove upon the basis of their dialectic schematism, 
 that universally nothing is, or if there could be a being, it would 
 not be cognizable, or if cognizable it would not be communicable. 
 Hence his writing bore characteristically enough the title — " Con- 
 cerning Not-heing or Nature?'' The proof of the first proposition 
 that universally nothing is, since it can be established neither as 
 being nor as not-being, nor yet as at the same time both being 
 and not-being, rests entirely upon the position that all existence 
 is a space-filling existence (has place and body), and is in fact 
 the final consequence which overturns itself, in other words the 
 self-destruction of the hitherto physical method of philosophizing. 
 
 The later Sophists with reckless daring carried their conclu- 
 sions far beyond Gorgias and Protagoras. They were for the 
 most part free thinkers, who pulled to the ground the religion, 
 laws, and customs of their birth. Among these should be named, 
 prominently, the tyrant Critias, Polus, Callicles, and Thrasy- 
 machus. The two latter openly taught the right of the stronger 
 as the law of nature, the unbridled satisfaction of desire as the 
 natural right of the stronger, and the setting up of restraining 
 laws as a crafty invention of the weaker ; and Critias, the most 
 talented but the most abandoned of the thirty tyrants, wrote a 
 poem, in which he represented the faith in the gods as an invention 
 of crafty statesmen. Hippias of Elis, a man of great knowledge, 
 bore an honorable character, although he did not fall behind the 
 rest in bombast and boasting; but before all, was Prodicus, in 
 reference to whom it became a proverb to say — " as wise as Pro- 
 dicus," and concerning whom Plato himself and even Aristophanes 
 never spoke without veneration. Especially famous among the 
 ancients were his parenetical (persuasive) lectures concerning the 
 choice of a mode of life (Xenophon's Memorabilia, II. 1), con- 
 cerning external good and its use, concerning life and death, &c., 
 discourses in which he manifests a refined moral feeling, and hia 
 observation of life ; although through the want of a higher ethical 
 
THE SOPHISTIC PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 51 
 
 and scientific principle, lie must be placed behind Socrates, whose 
 forerunner he has been called. The later generations of Sophists, 
 as they are shown in the Euthydemus of Plato, sink to a common 
 level of bufibonery and disgraceful strife for gain, and comprise 
 their whole dialectic art in certain formulas for entangling 
 fallacies. 
 
 6. Transition to Socrates and Characteristic of the fol- 
 lowing Period. — That which is true in the Sophistic philosophy 
 is the truth of the subjectivity, of the self-consciousness, i. e. the 
 demand that every thing which I am to admit must be shown as 
 rational before my own consciousness — that which is false in it is 
 its apprehension of this subjectivity as nothing farther than finite, 
 empirical egoistic subjectivity, i. e. the demand that my accidental 
 will and opinion should determine what is rational ; its truth is 
 that it set up the principle of freedom, of self-certainty ; its un- 
 truth is that it established the accidental will and notion of the 
 individual upon the throne. To carry out now the principle of 
 freedom and self-consciousness to its truth, to gain a true world 
 of objective thought with a real and distinct content, by the same 
 means of reflection which the Sophists had only used to destroy it, 
 to establish the objective will, the rational thinking, the absolute or 
 ideal in the place of the empirical subjectivity was the problem of 
 the next advent in philosophy, the problem which Socrates took 
 up and solved. To make the absolute or ideal subjectivity instead 
 of the empirical for a principle, is to affirm that the true measure 
 of all things is not my {%. e. the individual person's) opinion, 
 fancy and will ; that what is true, right and good, does not de- 
 pend upon my caprice and arbitrary determination, or upon that 
 of any other empirical subject ; but while it is my thinking, it is 
 my thinking, the rational within me, which has to decide upon all 
 these points. But my thinking, my reason, is not something 
 specially belonging to me, but something common to every rational 
 being; something universal, and in so far as I am a rational and 
 thinking being, is my subjectivity a universal one. But every think- 
 ing individual has the consciousness that what he holds as right, 
 as duty, as good or evil, does not appear as such to him alone but 
 
52 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 to every rational being, and that consequently his thinking has 
 "the character of universality, of universal validity, in a word — of 
 objectivity. This then in opposition to the Sophistic philosophy 
 is the stand-point of Socrates, and therefore with him the phi- 
 losophy of ohjective thought begins. What Socrates could do in 
 opposition to the Sophists was to show that reflection led to the 
 same results as faith or obedience, hitherto without reflection, 
 had done, and that the thinking man guided by his free conscious- 
 ness and his own conviction, would learn to form the same judg- 
 ments and take the same course to which life and custom had 
 already and unconsciously induced the ordinary man. The posi- 
 tion, that while the man is the measure of all things, it is the 
 man as universal, as thinking, as rational, is the fundamental 
 thought of the Socratic philosophy, which is, by virtue of this 
 thought, the positive complement of the Sophistic principle. 
 
 With Socrates begins the second period of the Grecian philoso- 
 phy. This period contains three philosophical systems, whose 
 authors, standing to each other in the personal relation of teacher 
 and pupil, represent three successive generations, — Socrates, 
 Plato, Aristotle. 
 
 •♦> 
 
 SECTION XII. 
 
 SOCRATES.'''" 
 
 1. His Personal Character. — The new philosophical princi- 
 ple appears in the personal character of Socrates. His philosophy 
 is his mode of acting as an individual ; his life and doctrine can- 
 not be separated. His biography, therefore, forms the only com- 
 plete representation of his philosophy, and what the narrative of 
 Xenophon presents us as the definite doctrine of Socrates, is con- 
 sequently nothing but an abstract of his inward character, as 
 
 * The article on Socrates, from page 52 to page 64, "was translated by 
 Prof. N. G. Clark, of the University of Vermont. 
 
SOCRATES. 
 
 53 
 
 it found expression from time to time in his conversation. Plato 
 yet more regarded his master as such an archetypal personality, 
 and a luminous exhibition of the historical Socrates is the special 
 object of his later and maturer dialogues, and of these again, the 
 Symposium is the most brilliant apotheosis of the Eros incarnated 
 in the person of Socrates, of the philosophical impulse transformed 
 into character. 
 
 Socrates was born in the year 469 B. C, the son of Sophro- 
 niscus, a sculptor, and Phgenarete, a midwife. In his youth he was 
 trained by his father to follow his own profession, and in this he 
 is said not to have been without skill. Three draped figures of 
 the Graces, called the work of Socrates, were seen by Pausanias, 
 upon the Akropolis. Little farther is known of his education. 
 He may have profited by the instruction of Prodicus and the 
 musician, Damon, but he stood in no personal connection with the 
 proper philosophers, who flourished before, or cotemporaneously 
 with him. He became what he was by himself alone, and just 
 for this reason does he form an era in the old philosophy. If the 
 ancients call him a scholar of Anaxagoras, or of the natural phi- 
 losopher, Archelaus, the first is demonstrably false, and the second, 
 to say the least, is altogether improbable. He never sought other 
 means of culture than those afforded in his native city. "With 
 the exception of one journey to a public festival, the military 
 campaigns which led him as far as Potidasa, Delion, and Amphi- 
 polis, he never left Athens. 
 
 The period when Socrates first began to devote himself to 
 the education of youth, can be determined only approximately 
 from the time of the first representation of the Clouds of Aristo- 
 phanes, which was in the year 423. The date of the Delphic 
 oracle, which pronounced him the wisest of men, is not known. 
 But in the traditions of his followers, he is almost uniformly 
 represented as an old, or as a gray-headed man. His mode of 
 instruction, wholly different from the pedantry and boastful osten- 
 tation of the Sophists, was altogether unconstrained, conversa- 
 tional, popular, starting from objects lying nearest at hand and 
 the most insignificant, and deriving the necessary illustrations and 
 
54 
 
 A mSTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 proofs from the most common matters of every day life ; in fact, 
 he was reproached by his cotemporaries for speaking ever only of 
 drudges, smiths, cobblers and tanners. So we find him at the 
 market, in the gymnasia, in the workshops, busy early and late, 
 talking with youth, with young men, and with old men, on the 
 proper aim and business of life, convincing them of their igno- 
 rance, and wakening up in them the slumbering desires after 
 knowledge. In every human effort, whether directed to the 
 interests of the commonwealth, or to the private individual and the 
 gains of trade, to science or to art, this master of helps to 
 spiritual births could find fit points of contact for the awakening 
 of a true self-knowledge, and a moral and religious consciousness. 
 However often his attempts failed, or were rejected with bitter 
 scorn, or requited with hatred and unthankfulness, yet, led on by 
 the clear conviction that a real improvement in the condition of 
 the state could come only from a proper education of its youth, 
 he remained to the last true to his chosen vocation. Purely 
 Greek in these relations to the rising generation, he designated 
 himself, by preference, as the most ardent lover ; Greek too in 
 this, that with him, notwithstanding these free relations of friend- 
 ship, his own domestic life fell quite into the background. He 
 nowhere shows much regard for his wife and children ; the noto- 
 rious, though altogether too much exaggerated ill-nature of Xan- 
 tippe, leads us to suspect, however, that his domestic relations 
 were not the most happy. 
 
 As a man, as a practical sage, Socrates is pictured in the 
 brightest colors by all narrators. " He was," says Xenophon, "so 
 pious, that he did nothing without the advice of the gods; so 
 just, that he never injured any one even in the least ; so com- 
 pletely master of himself, that he never chose the agreeable in- 
 stead of the good ; so discerning, that he never failed in distin- 
 guishing the better from the worse ; " in short, he was " just the 
 best and happiest man possible." (Xen. Mem. I. 1, 11. lY. 8, 
 11.) Still that which lends to his person such a peculiar charm, 
 is the happy blending and harmonious connection of all its char- 
 acteristic traits, the perfection of a beautiful, plastic nature. In 
 
SOCRATES. 
 
 56 
 
 all this universality of his genius, in this force of character, hy 
 which he combined the most contradictory and incongruous ele- 
 ments into a harmonious whole, in this lofty elevation above every 
 human weakness, — in a word, as a perfect model, he is most strik- 
 ingly depicted in the brilliant eulogy of Alcibiades, in the Sym- 
 posium of Plato. In the scantier representation of Xenophon, 
 also, we find everywhere a classic form, a man possessed of the 
 finest social culture, full of Athenian politeness, infinitely removed 
 from every thing like gloomy asceticism, a man as valiant upon 
 the field of battle as in the festive hall, conducting himself with 
 the most unconstrained freedom, and yet with entire sobriety and 
 self-control, a perfect picture of the happiest Athenian time, 
 without the acerbity, the one-sidedness, and contracted reserve of 
 the later moralists, an ideal representation of the genuinely 
 human virtues. 
 
 2. Socrates and Aristophanes. — Socrates seems early to 
 have attained universal celebrity through the peculiarities attach- 
 ing to his person and character. Nature had furnished him with 
 a remarkable external physiognomy. His crooked, turned-up 
 nose, his projecting eye, his bald pate, his corpulent body, gave 
 his form a striking similarity to the Silenic, a comparison which 
 is carried out in Xenophon's " Feast," in sprightly jest, and 
 in Plato's Symposium, with as much ingenuity as profoundness. 
 To this was added his miserable dress, his going barefoot, his 
 posture, his often standing still, and rolling his eyes. After all 
 this, one will hardly be surprised that the Athenian comedy took 
 advantage of such a remarkable character. But there was an- 
 other and peculiar motive, which influenced Aristophanes. He 
 was a most ardent admirer of the good old times, an enthusiastic 
 eulogist of the manners and the constitution, under which the 
 fathers had been reared. As it was his great object to waken up 
 anew in his people, and to stimulate a longing after those good 
 old times, his passionate hatred broke out against all modern 
 efforts in politics, art and philosophy, of that increasing mock- 
 wisdom, which went hand in hand with a degenerating democracy. 
 Hence comes his bitter railing at Cleon, the Demagogue (in the 
 
56 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Knights), at Euripides, the sentimental play- writer (in the Erogs) 
 and at Socrates, the Sophist (in the Clouds). The latter, as the 
 representative of a subtle, destructive philosophy, must have ap- 
 peared to him just as corrupt and pernicious, as the party of pro- 
 gress in politics, who trampled without conscience upon every 
 thing which had come down from the past. It is, therefore, the 
 fundamental thought of the Clouds to expose Socrates to public 
 contempt, as the representative of the Sophistic philosophy, a 
 mere semblance of wisdom, at once vain, profitless, corrupting in 
 its influence upon the youth, and undermining all true discipline 
 and morality. Seen in this light, and from a moral stand-point, 
 the motives of Aristophanes may find some excuse, but they can- 
 not be justified ; and his representation of Socrates, into whose 
 character all the characteristic features of the Sophistic philoso- 
 phy are interwoven, even the most contemptible and hateful, yet 
 so that the most unmistakable likeness is still apparent, cannot be 
 admitted on the ground that Socrates did really have the greatest 
 formal resemblance to the Sophists. The Clouds can only be de- 
 signated as a culpable misunderstanding, and as an act of gross 
 injustice brought about by blinded passion; and Hegel, when he 
 attempts to defend the conduct of Aristophanes, forgets, that, 
 while the comic writer may caricature, he must do it without 
 having recourse to public calumniation. In fact all the political 
 and social tendencies of Aristophanes rest on a gross misunder- 
 standing of historical development. The good old times, as he 
 fancies them, are a fiction. It lies j ust as little in the realm of 
 possibility, that a morality without reflection, and a homely in- 
 genuousness, such as mark a nation's childhood, should be forced 
 upon a time in which reflection has utterly eaten out all imme- 
 diateness, and unconscious moral simplicity, as that a grown up 
 man should become a child again in the natural way. Aristo- 
 phanes himself attests the impossibility of such a return, when in 
 a fit of humor, with cynic raillery, he gives up all divine and 
 human authority to ridicule, and thereby, however commendable 
 may have been the patriotic motive prompting him to this eomic 
 extravagance, demonstrates, that he himself no longer stands 
 
SOCRATES. 
 
 57 
 
 upon the basis of the old morality, that he too is the son of his 
 time. 
 
 3. The Condemnation of Socrates. — To this same confound- 
 ing of his efforts with those of the Sophists, and the same ten- 
 dency to restore by violent means the old discipline and morality, 
 Socrates, twenty-four years later, fell a victim. After he had 
 lived and labored at Athens for many years in his usual manner> 
 after the storm of the Peloponnesian war had passed by, and this 
 city had experienced the most varied political fortunes, in his 
 seventieth year he was brought to trial and accused of neglecting 
 the gods of the state, of introducing new deities, and also of 
 corrupting the youth. His accusers were Melitus, a young poet, 
 Anytus, a demagogue, and Lycon, an orator, men in every respect 
 insignificant, and acting, as it seems, without motives of personal 
 enmity. The trial resulted in his condemnation. After a fortu- 
 nate accident had enabled him to spend thirty days more with his 
 scholars in his confinement, spurning a flight from prison, he drank 
 the poisoned cup in the year 399 B. C. 
 
 The first motive to his accusation, as already remarked, was 
 his identification with the Sophists, the actual belief that his doc- 
 trines and activity were marked with the same character of hos- 
 tility to the interests of the state, as those of the Sophists, which 
 had already occasioned so much mischief. The three points in 
 the accusation, though evidently resting on a misunderstanding, 
 alike indicate this ; they are precisely those by which Aristophanes 
 had sought to characterize the Sophist in the person of Socrates. 
 This " corruption of the youth," this bringing in of new customs, 
 and a new mode of culture and education generally, was precisely 
 the charge which was brought against the Sophists ; moreover, in 
 Plato's Menon, Anytus, one of the three accusers, is introduced 
 as the bitter enemy of the Sophists and of their manner of in- 
 struction. So too in respect to the denial of the national gods : 
 before this, Protagoras, accused of denying the god.s, had been 
 obliged to flee, and Prodicus, to drink hemlock, a victim to the 
 same distrust. Even five years after the death of Socrates, Xeno- 
 phon, who was not present at the trial, felt himself called upon 
 3* 
 
58 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 to write his Memorabilia in defence of liis teacher, so wide-spread 
 and deep-rooted was the prejudice against him. 
 
 Beside this there was also a second, probably a more decisive 
 reason. As the Sophistic philosophy was, in its very nature, 
 eminently aristocratic, and Socrates, as a supposed Sophist, con- 
 sequently passed for an aristocrat, his entire mode of life could 
 not fail to make him appear like a bad citizen in the eyes of the 
 restored democracy. He had never concerned himself in the 
 affairs of the state, had never but once sustained an official char- 
 acter, and then, as chief of the Prytanes, had disagreed with the 
 will of the people and the rulers. (Plat. Apol. ^ 32. Xen. Mem. 
 I. 1, 18.) In his seventieth year, he mounted the orator's stand 
 for the first time in his life, on the occasion of his own accusation. 
 His whole manner was somewhat cosmopolitan ; he is even said 
 to have remarked, that he was not an Athenian, nor a Greek, but 
 a citizen of the world. We must also take into account, that he 
 found fault with the Athenian democracy upon every occasion, 
 especially with the democratic institution of choice by lot, that he 
 decidedly preferred the Spartan state to the Athenian, and that 
 he excited the distrust of the "democrats by his confidential rela- 
 tions with the former leaders of the oligarchic party. (Xen. Mem. 
 I. 2, 9, sq.) Among others who were of the oligarchic interest, 
 and friendly to the Spartans, Critias in particular, one of the 
 thirty tyrants, had been his scholar ; so too Alcibiades — two men, 
 who had been the cause of much evil to the Athenian people. If 
 now we accept the uniform tradition, that two of his accusers were 
 men of fair standing in the democratic party, and farther, that 
 his judges were men who had fled before the thirty tyrants, and 
 later had overthrown the power of the oligarchy, we find it much 
 more easy to understand how they, in the case before them, should 
 have supposed they were acting wholly in the interest of the 
 democratic party, when they pronounced condemnation upon the 
 accused, especially as enough to all appearance could be brought 
 against him. The hurried trial presents nothing very remarkable, 
 in a generation which had grown up during the Peloponnesian 
 war, and in a people that adopted and repented of their passion- 
 
SOCRATES. 
 
 59 
 
 ato resolves with the like haste. Yea, more, if we consider that 
 Socrates spurned to have recourse to the usual means and forms 
 adopted by those accused of capital crime, and to gain the sym- 
 pathy of the people by lamentations, or their favor by flattery, 
 that he in proud consciousness of his innocence defied his judges, 
 it becomes rather a matter of wonder, that his condemnation was 
 carried by a majority of only three to six votes. And even now 
 he might have escaped the sentence to death, had he been willing 
 to bow to the will of the sovereign people for the sake of a com- 
 mutation of his punishment. But as he spurned to set a value upon 
 himself, by proposing another punishment, a fine, for example, 
 instead of the one moved by his accuser, because this would be 
 the same as to acknowledge himself guilty, his disdain could not 
 fail to exasperate the easily excited Athenians, and no farther ex- 
 planation is needed to show why eighty of his judges who had 
 before voted for his innocence, now voted for his death. Such 
 was the most lamentable result — a result, afterwards most deeply 
 regretted by the Athenians themselves — of an accusation, which 
 at the outset was probably only intended to humble the aristo- 
 cratic philosopher, and to force him to an acknowledgment of the 
 power and the majesty of the people. 
 
 Hegel's view of the fate of Socrates, that it was the result of 
 the collision of equally just powers — the Tragedy of Athens as he 
 calls it — and that guilt and innocence were shared alike on both 
 sides, cannot be maintained on historical grounds, since Socrates 
 can neither be regarded exclusively as the representative of the 
 modern spirit, the principle of freedom, subjectivity, the concrete 
 personality; nor his judges, as the representatives of the old 
 Athenian unreflecting morality. The first cannot be, since 
 Socrates, if his principle was at variance with the old Greek 
 morality, rested nevertheless so far on the basis of tradition, that 
 the accusations brought against him in this respect were false and 
 groundless ; and the last cannot be, since at that time, after the 
 close of the Peloponnesian war, the old morality and piety had 
 long been wanting to the mass of the people, and given place to 
 the modern culture, and the whole process against Socrates must 
 
60 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 be regarded rather as an attempt to restore by violence, in con 
 nectiou with the old constitution, the old defunct morality. The 
 fault is not therefore the same on both sides, and it must be held, 
 that Socrates fell a victim to a misunderstanding, and to an un- 
 justifiable reaction of public sentiment. 
 
 4. The "Genius" (Sai/xovtov) of Socrates. — Those traces 
 of the old religious sentiment, which have been handed down to 
 us from so many different sources, and are certainly not to be 
 explained from a bare accommodation to the popular belief, on 
 the part of the philosopher, and which distinguish him so decidedly 
 from the Sophists, show how little Socrates is really to be regarded 
 as an innovator in discipline and morals. He commends the art 
 of divination, believes in dreams, sacrifices with all proper care, 
 speaks of the gods, of their omniscience, omnipresence, goodness, 
 and complete sufficiency in themselves, even with the greatest 
 reverence, and, at the close of his defence, makes the most solemn 
 asseveration of his belief in their existence. In keeping with his 
 attaching himself in this way to the popular religion, his new 
 principle, though in its results hostile to all external authority, 
 nevertheless assumed the form of the popular belief in " Demonic" 
 signs and symbols. These suggestions of the " Demon " are a 
 knowledge, which is at the same time connected with unconscious- 
 ness. They occupy the middle ground between the bare external 
 of the Greek oracle, and the purely internal of the spirit. That 
 Socrates had the conception of a particular subject, a personal 
 " Demon," or " Genius," is altogether improbable. Just as little 
 can these " Demonic " signs, this inward oracle, whose voice 
 Socrates professed to hear, be regarded after the modern accep- 
 tation, simply as the personification of the conscience, or of the 
 practical instinct, or of the individual tact. The first article in 
 the form of accusation, which evidently refers to this very point, 
 shows that Socrates did not speak barely metaphorically of this 
 voice, to which he professed to owe his prophecies. And it was 
 not solely in reference to those higher questions of decided im- 
 portance, that Socrates had these suggestions, but rather and pre- 
 eminently with respect to matters of mere accident and arbitrary 
 
SOCRATES. 
 
 61 
 
 choice, as for example, whether, and when, his friends should set 
 out on a journey. It is no longer possible to explain the 
 " Demon " or " Genius " of Socrates on psychological grounds ; 
 there may have been something of a magnetic character about it. 
 It is possible that there may be some connection between this and 
 the many other ecstatic or cataleptic states, which are related of 
 Socrates in the Symposium of Plato. 
 
 5. The Sources of the Philosophy of Socrates. — Well 
 known is the old controversy, whether the picture of Socrates, 
 drawn by Xenophon or by Plato, is the most complete and true 
 to history, and which of the two men is to be considered as the 
 more reliable source for obtaining a knowledge of his philosophy. 
 This question is being decided more and more in favor of Xeno- 
 phon. Grreat pains has been taken in former as in later times, to 
 bring Xenophon's Memorabilia into disrepute, as a shallow and 
 insufficient source, because their plain, and any thing other than 
 speculative contents, seemed to furnish no satisfactory ground 
 for such a revolution in the world of mind as is attributed to 
 Socrates, or for the splendor which invests his name in history, 
 or for the character which Plato assigns him ; because again the 
 Memorabilia of Xenophon have especially an apologetic aim, and 
 their defence does not relate so much to the philosopher as to the 
 man ; and finally, because they have been supposed to have the 
 appearance of carrying the philosophical over into the unphilo- 
 sophical style of the common understanding. A distinction has 
 therefore been made between an exoteric and an esoteric 
 Socrates, obtaining the first from Xenophon, the latter from Plato. 
 But the preference of Plato to Xenophon has in the first place 
 no historical right in its favor, since Xenophon appears as a pro- 
 per historian and claims historical credibility, while Plato on the 
 other hand never professes to be an historical narrator, save in a 
 few passages, and will by no means have all the rest which he 
 puts in the mouth of Socrates understood as his authentic ex- 
 pressions and discourse. There is, therefore, no historical reason 
 for preferring the representation of Socrates which is given by 
 Plato. In the second place, the under-valuation of Xenophon 
 
62 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 rests, for the most part, on the false notion, that Socrates had a 
 proper philosophy, i. e. a speculative system, and on an unhistorical 
 mistaking of the limits by which the philosophical character of 
 Socrates was conditioned and restricted. There was no proper 
 Socratic doctrine, but a Socratic life ; and, just on this ground, 
 are the different philosophical tendencies of his scholars to be 
 explained. 
 
 6. The Universal Cilvracter of the Philosophizx'NG of 
 Socrates. — The philosophizing of Socrates was limited and re- 
 stricted by his opposition, partly to the preceding, and partly to 
 the Sophistic philosophy. 
 
 Philosophy before the time of Socrates had been in its essen- 
 tial character investigation of nature. But in Socrates, the 
 human mind, for the first time, turned itself in upon itself, upon 
 its own being, and that too in the most immediate manner, by 
 conceiving itself as active, moral spirit. The positive philoso- 
 phizing of Socrates, is exclusively of an ethical character, ex- 
 clusively an inquiry into the nature of virtue, so exclusively, and 
 so onesidedly, that, as is wont to be the case upon the appearance 
 of a new principle, it even expressed a contempt for the striving 
 of the entire previous period, with its natural philosophy, and its 
 mathematics. Setting every thing under the stand-point of im- 
 mediate moral law, Socrates was so far from finding any object iii 
 " irrational" nature worthy of study, that he rather, in a kind of gene- 
 ral teleological manner, conceived it simply in the light of external 
 means for the attainment of external ends ; yea, he would not even 
 go out to walk, as he says in the Phaedrus of Plato, since one can 
 learn nothing from trees and districts of country. Self-knowledge, 
 the Delphic (yyco^t aavrov) appeared to him the only object 
 worthy of a man, as the starting-point of all philosophy. Knowl- 
 edge of every other kind, he pronounced so insignificant and 
 worthless, that he was wont to boast of his ignorance, and to de- 
 clare that he excelled other men in wisdom only in this, t}».at he 
 was conscious of his own ignorance. (Plat. Ap. S. 21, 23.) 
 
 The other side of the Socratic philosophizing, is its opposition 
 to the philosophy of the time. His object, as is well understood, 
 
SOCRATES. 
 
 63 
 
 could have been only this, to place himself upon the same positior. 
 as that occupied by the philosophy of the Sophists, and overcome 
 it on its own ground, and by its own principles. That Socrates 
 shared in the general position of the Sophists, and even had msLuy 
 features of external resemblance to them — the Socratic irony, for 
 instance — has been remarked above. Many of his assertions, par- 
 ticularly these propositions, that no man knowingly does wrong, 
 and if a man were knowingly to lie, or to do some other wrong 
 act, still he would be better than he who should do the same un- 
 consciously, at first sight bear a purely Sophistic stamp. The 
 great fundamental thought of the Sophistic philosophy, that all 
 moral acting must be a conscious act, was also his. But whilst 
 the Sophists made it their object, through subjective reflection to 
 confuse and to break up all stable convictions, to make all rules re- 
 lating to outward conduct impossible, Socrates had recognized 
 thinking as the activity of the universal principle, free, objective 
 thought as the measure of all things, and, therefore, instead of 
 referring moral duties, and all moral action to the fancy and 
 caprice of the individual, had rather referred all to true knowl- 
 edge, to the essence of spirit. It was this idea of knowledge that 
 led him to seek, by the process of thought, to gain a conceivable 
 objective ground, something real, abiding, absolute, independent of 
 the arbitrary volitions of the subject, and to hold fast to uncon- 
 ditioned moral laws. Hegel expresses the same opinion, when he 
 says that Socrates put morality from ethical grounds, in the place 
 of the morality of custom and habit. Hegel distinguishes 
 morality, as conscious right conduct, resting on reflection and 
 moral principles, from the morality of unsophisticated, half-un- 
 conscious virtue, which rests on the compliance with prevailing 
 custom. The logical condition of this ethical striving of Socrates, 
 was the determining of conceptions, the method of their forma- 
 tion. To search out the " what " of every thing says Xenophon 
 (Mem. TV. 6, 1.) was the uninterrupted care of Socrates, and 
 Aristotle says expressly that a twofold merit must be ascribed to 
 him, viz. : the forming of the method of induction and the giving 
 of strictly logical definitions, — the two elements which constitute 
 
64 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 the basis of science. How these two elements stand connected 
 with the principle of Socrates we shall at once see. 
 
 7, The Socratic Method. — We must not regard the Socratic 
 method as we are accustomed to speak of method in our day, i. e. 
 as something which, as such, was distinctly in his consciousness, 
 and which he abstracted from every concrete content, but it 
 rather had its growth in the very mode of his philosophizing, 
 which was not directed to the imparting of a system but to the 
 education of the subject in philosophical thinking and life-. It 
 is only a subjective technicality for his mode of instruction, the 
 peculiar manner of his philosophical, familiar life. 
 
 The Socratic method has a twofold side, a negative and a pos- 
 itive one. The negative side is the well known Socratic irony. 
 The philosopher takes the attitude of ignorance, and would appa- 
 rently let himself be instructed by those with whom he converses, 
 but through the questions which he puts, the unexpected conse- 
 quences which he deduces, and the contradictions in which he 
 involves the opposite party, he soon leads them to see that their 
 supposed knowledge would only entangle and confuse them. In 
 the embarrassment in which they now find themselves placed, and 
 seeing that they do not know what they supposed, this supposed 
 knowledge completes its own destruction, and the subject who 
 had pretended to wisdom learns to distrust his previous opinions 
 and firmly held notions. "What we knew, has contradicted 
 itself," is the refrain of the most of these conversations. 
 
 This result of the Socratic method was only to lead the sub- 
 ject to know that he knew nothing, and a great part of the dia- 
 logues of Xenophon and Plato go no farther than to represent 
 ostensibly this negative result. But there is yet another element 
 in his method in which the irony loses its negative appearance. 
 
 The positive side of the Socratic method is the so-called ob- 
 stetrics or art of intellectual midwifery. Socrates compares him- 
 self with his mother Phaenarete, a midwife, because his position 
 was rather to help others bring forth thoughts than to produce 
 them himself, and because he took upon himself to distinguish the 
 birth of an empty thought from one rich in its content. (Plato 
 
SOCRATES. 
 
 65 
 
 TheatcBtus^ p. 149.) Through this art of midwifery the philoso- 
 pher, by his assiduous questioning, by his interrogatory dissection 
 of the notions of him with whom he might be conversing, knew 
 how to elicit from him a thought of which he had previously been 
 unconscious, and how to help him to the birth of a new thought. 
 A chief means in this operation was the method of induction^ or 
 the leading of the representation to a conception. The philoso- 
 pher, thus, starting from some individual, concrete case, and seiz- 
 ing hold of the most common notions concerning it, and finding 
 illustrations in the most ordinary and trivial occurrences, knew 
 how to remove by his comparisons that which was individual, and 
 by thus separating the accidental and contingent from the essen- 
 tial, could bring up to consciousness a universal truth and a uni- 
 versal determination, — in other words, could form conceptions. 
 In order e. g. to find the conception of justice or valor, he would 
 start from individual examples of them, and from these deduce 
 the universal character or conception of these virtues. From this 
 we see that the direction of the Socratic induction was to gain 
 logical definitions. I define a conception when I develope what 
 it is, its essence, its content. I define the conception of justice 
 when I set up the common property and logical unity of all its 
 different modes of manifestation. Socrates sought to go no far- 
 ther than this. " To seek for the essence of virtue," says an 
 Aristotelian writing {Eth. I. 5), " Socrates regarded as the 
 problem of philosophy, and hence, since he regarded all virtue as 
 a knowing, he sought to determine in respect of justice or valor 
 what they might really be, i. e. he investigated their essence or 
 conception." From this it is very easy to see the connection 
 which his method of definitions or of forming conceptions had 
 with his practical strivings. He went back to the conception of 
 every individual virtue, e. g. justice, only because he was con- 
 vinced that the knowledge of this conception, the knowledge of it 
 for every individual case, was the surest guide for every moral 
 relation. Every moral action, he believed, should start as a con- 
 scious action from the conception. 
 
 From this we might characterize the Socratic method as the 
 
66 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 skill by whiicli a certain sum of given, homogeneous and individual 
 phenomena was taken, and their logical unity, the universal prin- 
 ciple which lay at their base, inductively found. This method 
 presupposes the recognition that the essence of the objects must 
 be comprehended in the thought, that the conception is the true 
 being of the thing. Hence we see that the Platonic doctrine of 
 ideas is only the objectifying of this method which in Socrates 
 appears no farther than a subjective dexterity. The Platonic 
 ideas are the universal conceptions of Socrates posited as real 
 individual beings. Hence Aristotle [Metaph. XIII. 4) most fit- 
 tingly characterizes the relation between the Socratic method and 
 the Platonic doctrine of ideas with the words, "Socrates posits 
 the universal conceptions not as separate, individual substances, 
 while Plato does this, and names them ideas." 
 
 8. The Socratic Doctrine concerning Virtue. — The single, 
 positive doctrinal sentence which has been transmitted us from 
 Socrates is, that virtue is a knowing, — that, consequently, nothing 
 is good which happens without discernment, and nothing bad 
 which is done with discernment, or, what is the same thing, that 
 no man is voluntarily vicious, that the base are such against their 
 will, aye, even he who knowingly does wrong is better than he 
 who does it ignorantly, because in the latter case, morality and 
 true knowledge are both wanting, while in the former — if such a 
 case could happen — morality alone is violated. Socrates could 
 not conceive how a man should know the good and yet not do it ; 
 it was to him a logical contradiction that the man who sought his 
 own well being should at the same time knowingly despise it. 
 Therefore, with him the good action followed as necessarily from 
 the knowledge of the good as a logical conclusion from its pre- 
 mise. 
 
 The sentence that virtue is a knowing, has for its logical con- 
 sequence the unity of virtue and for its practical consequence the 
 teachableness of it. With these three propositions, in which 
 every thing is embraced which we can properly term the Socratic 
 philosophy, Socrates has laid the first foundation stone for a 
 Bcientific treatment of ethics, a treatment which must be dated 
 
THE PARTIAL DISCIPLES OF SOCRATES. 
 
 67 
 
 first from him. But he laid only the foundation stone, for on 
 the one side he attempted no carrying out of his principle into 
 details, nor any setting up of a concrete doctrine of ethics, but 
 only, after the ancient manner, referred to the laws of states and 
 the unwritten laws of the universal human order, and on the other 
 side, he has not seldom served himself with utilitarian motives to 
 establish his ethical propositions, in other words he has referred 
 to the external advantages and useful conseq[uences of virtue, by 
 which the purity of his ethical point of view became tarnished 
 
 SECTION XIII. 
 
 THE PARTIAL DISCIPLES OF SOCRATES. 
 
 1. Their relation to the Socratic Philosophy. — The 
 death of Socrates gave to his life an ideal perfection, and this be- 
 came an animating principle which had its working in many 
 directions. The apprehension of him as an ideal type forms the 
 common character of the immediate Socratic schools. The fun- 
 damental thought, that men should have one universal and essen- 
 tially true aim, they all received from Socrates ; but since their 
 master left no complete and systematic doctrine, but only his 
 many-sided life to determine the nature of this aim, every thing 
 would depend upon the subjective apprehension of the personal 
 character of Socrates, and of this we should at the outset naturally 
 expect to find among his different disciples a different estimate. 
 Socrates had numerous scholars, but no school. Among these, 
 three views of his character have found a place in history. That 
 of Antisthenes, or the Cynical, that of Aristippus, or the Cyre- 
 nian, and that of Euclid, or the Megarian — three modes of appre- 
 hending him, each of which contains a true element of the So- 
 cratic character, but all of which separate that which in the 
 master was a harmonious unity, and affirm of the isolated 
 
G8 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 elements that which could be truly predicated only of the whole 
 They are therefore, one-sided, and give of Socratee a false pic 
 ture. This, however, was not wholly their fault; but in that 
 Aristippus was forced to go back to the theory of knowledge of 
 Protagoras, and Euclid to the metaphysics of the Eleatics, they 
 rather testify to the subjective character and to the want of 
 method and system of the Socratic philosophy, and exhibit in 
 their defects and one-sidedness, in part, only the original weak- 
 ness which belongs to the doctrine of their master. 
 
 2, Antisthenes and the Cynics. — As a strictly literal ad- 
 herent of the doctrine of Socrates, and zealously though grossly, 
 and often with caricature imitating his method, Antisthenes stands 
 nearest his master. In early life a disciple of Grorgias, and him- 
 self a teacher of the Sophistic philosophy, he subsequently became 
 an inseparable attendant of Socrates, after whose death he founded 
 a school in the Cynosarges, whence his scholars and adherents 
 took the name of Cynics, though according to others this name 
 was derived from their mode of life. The doctrine of Antis- 
 thenes is only an abstract expression for the Socratic ideal of 
 virtue. Like Socrates he considered virtue the final cause of 
 men, regarding it also as knowledge or science, and thus as an 
 object of instruction ; but the ideal of virtue as he had beheld it 
 in the person of Socrates was realized in his estimation only in 
 the absence of every need (in his appearance he imitated a beg- 
 gar with staff and scrip) and hence in the disregarding of all 
 former intellectual interests ; virtue with him aims only to avoid 
 evil, and therefore has no need of dialectical demonstrations, but 
 only of Socratic vigor ; the wise man, according to him, is self- 
 sufficient, independent of everything, indifferent in respect of 
 marriage, family, and the public life of society, as also in respect 
 of wealth, honor, and enjoyment. In this ideal of Antisthenes, 
 which is more negative than positive, we miss entirely the genial 
 humanity and the universal susceptibility of his master, and still 
 more a cultivation of those fruitful dialectic elements which the 
 Socratic philosophizing contained. With a more decided con- 
 tempt for all knowledge, and a still greater scorn of all the cus- 
 
THE PARTIAL DISCIPLES OF SOCRATES. 
 
 69 
 
 toms of society, the later Cynicism became frequently a repulsive 
 and sliameful caricature of the Socratic spirit. This was especially 
 the case with Diogenes of Sinope, the only one of his disciples 
 whom Antisthenes suffered to remain with him. In their high 
 estimation of virtue and philosophy these Cynics, who have been 
 suitably styled the Capuchins of the Grecian world, preserved a 
 trace of the original Socratic philosophy, but they sought virtue 
 " in the shortest way," in a life according to nature as they them 
 selves expressed it, that is, in shutting out the outer world, in at- 
 taining a complete independence, and absence of every need, and 
 in renouncing art and science as well as every determinate aim. 
 To the wise man said they nothing should go amiss ; he should be 
 mighty over every need and desire, free from the restraints of civil 
 law and of custom, and of equal privileges with the gods. An 
 easy life, said Diogenes, is assigned by the gods to that man who 
 limits himself to his necessities, and this true philosophy may be 
 attained by every one, through perseverance and the power of self- 
 denial. Philosophy and philosophical interest is there none in 
 this school of beggars. All that is related of Diogenes are anec- 
 dotes and sarcasms. 
 
 We see here how the ethics of the Cynic school lost itself in 
 entirely negative statements, a consequence naturally resulting 
 from the fact that the original Socratic conception of virtue 
 lacked a concrete positive content, and was not systematically car- 
 ried out. Cynicism is the negative side of the Socratic doctrine. 
 
 3. Aristippus and the Cyrenians. — Aristippus of Cyrene, 
 numbered till the death of Socrates among his adherents, is repre- 
 sented by Aristotle as a Sophist, and this with propriety, since he 
 received money for his instructions. He appears in Xenophon as 
 a man devoted to pleasure. The adroitness with which he adapted 
 himself to every circumstance, and the knowledge of human na- 
 ture by Avhich in every condition he knew how to provide means 
 to satisfy his desire for good living and luxury, were well known 
 among the ancients. Brought in contact with the government, he 
 kept himself aloof from its cares lest he should become dependent; 
 he spent most of his time abroad in order to free himself from 
 
70 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 every restraint ; lie made it his rule that circumstances should be 
 dependent upon him, while he should be independent of them. 
 Though such a man seems little worthy of the name of a Socrati- 
 cist, yet has he two points of contact with his master which should 
 not be overlooked, Socrates had called virtue and happiness co- 
 ordinately the highest end of man, i. e. he had indeed asserted 
 most decidedly the idea of a moral action, but because he brought 
 this forward only in an undeveloped and abstract form, he was 
 only able in concrete cases to establish the obligation of the moral 
 law in a utilitarian way, by appealing to the benefit resulting from 
 the practice of virtue. This side of the Socratic principle 
 Aristippus adopted for his own, affirming that pleasure is the ulti- 
 mate end of life, and the highest good. Moreover, this pleasure, 
 as Aristippus regards it, is not happiness as a condition embracing 
 the whole life, nor pleasure reduced to a system, but is only the 
 individual sensation of pleasure which the body receives, and in 
 this all determinations of moral worth entirely disappear ; but in 
 that Aristippus recommends knowledge, self-government, temper- 
 ance, and intellectual culture as means for acquiring and preserv- 
 ing enjoyment, and, therefore, makes a cultivated mind necessary 
 to judge respecting a true satisfaction, he shows that the Socratic 
 spirit was not yet wholly extinguished within him, and that the 
 name of pseudo-Socraticist which Schleiermacher gives him, hardly 
 belongs to him. 
 
 The other leaders of the Cyrenian school, Hegesias^ Theodo- 
 rus, Anniceris, we can here only name. The farther development 
 of this school is wholly occupied in more closely defining the na- 
 ture of pleasure, i. e. in determining whether it is to be appre- 
 hended as a momentary sensation, or as an enduring condition 
 embracing the whole life ; whether it belonged to the mind or the 
 body, whether an isolated individual could possess it, or whether 
 it is found alone in the social relations of life ; whether we should 
 regard it as positive or negative, (t. e. simply the absence of pain.) 
 
 4. Euclid and the Megarians. — The union of the dialecti- 
 cal and the ethical is a common character in all the partial 
 Socratic schools ; the difierence consists only in this, that in the 
 
THE PARTIAL DISCIPLES OF SOCRATES. 
 
 71 
 
 one the ethical is made to do service to the dialectical, and that in 
 the other, the dialectical stands in subjection to the ethical. The 
 former is especially true of the Megarian school, whose essential 
 peculiarity was pointed out by the ancients themselves as a com- 
 bination of the Socratic and Eleatic principles. The idea of the 
 good is on the ethical side the same as the idea of being on the 
 physical ; it was, therefore, only an application to ethics of the 
 Eleatic view and method when Euclid called the good pure being, 
 and the not-good, not-being. "What is farther related of Euclid is 
 obscure, and may here be omitted. The Megarian school was 
 kept up under different leaders after his death, but without living 
 force, and without the independent activity of an organic develop- 
 ment. As hedonism (the philosophical doctrine of the Cyreneans 
 that pleasure is the chief good) led the way to the doctrine of 
 Epicurus, and cynicism was the bridge toward the Stoic, so the 
 later Megaric development formed the transition point to scepti- 
 cism. Directing its attention ever more exclusively towards the 
 culture of the formal and logical method of argument, it left 
 entirely out of view the moral thoughts of Socrates. Its sophis- 
 tries and quiddities which were, for the most part, only plays of 
 word and wit, were widely known and noted among the ancients. 
 
 5. Plato, as the complete Socraticist. — The attempts thus 
 far to build upon the foundation pillars of the Socratic doctrine, 
 started without a vigorous germinating principle, and ended fruit- 
 lessly. Plato was the only one of his scholars who has approached 
 and represented the whole Socrates. Starting from the Socratic 
 idea of knowledge he brought into one focus the scattered ele- 
 ments and rays of truth which could be collected from his master 
 or from the philosophers preceding him, and gave to philosophy a 
 systematic completeness. Socrates had affirmed the principle that 
 conception is the true being and the only actual, and had urged to 
 a knowledge according to the conception ; but these positions were 
 no farther developed. His philosophy is not yet a system, but is 
 only the first impulse toward a philosophical development and 
 method. Plato is the first who has approached a systematic rep- 
 
72 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 resentation and development of tlie ideal world of conceptions 
 true in themselves. 
 
 The Platonic system is Socrates objectified, the blending and 
 reconciling of preceding philosophy. 
 
 SECTION XIY. 
 
 PLATO. 
 
 I. Plato^s Life. 1. His Youth. — Plato, the son of Aristo, 
 of a noble Athenian family, was born in the year 429 B, C. It was 
 the year of the death of Pericles, the second year of the Pelopon- 
 nesian war, so fatal to Athens. Born in the centre of Grecian 
 culture and industry, and descended from an old and noble family, 
 he received a corresponding education, although no farther tidings 
 of this have been transmitted to us, than the insignificant names 
 of his teachers. That the youth growing up under such circum- 
 stances should choose the seclusion of a philosophic life rather 
 than a political career may seem strange, since many and favor- 
 able opportunities for the latter course lay open before him. 
 Critias, one of the thirty tyrants, was the cousin of his mother, 
 and Charmides, who subsequently, under the oligarchic rule at 
 Athens, found his death at Thrasybulus on the same day with 
 Critias, was his uncle. Notwithstanding this, he is never known 
 to have appeared a single time as a public speaker in the assembly 
 of the people. In view of the rising degeneracy and increasing 
 political corruption of his native land, he was too proud to court 
 for himself the favor of the many-headed Demos ; and more at- 
 tached to Doricism than to the democracy and practice of the 
 Attic public life, he chose to make science his chief pursuit, rather 
 than as a patriot to struggle in vain against unavoidable disaster, 
 and become a martyr to his political opinions. He regarded the 
 Athenian state as lost, and to hinder its inevitable ruin he would 
 not bring a useless offering. 
 
PLATO. 
 
 73 
 
 2. His Years of Discipline. — A youth of twenty, Plato came 
 to Socrates, in whose intercourse he spent eight years. Besides 
 a few doubtful anecdotes, nothing is known more particularly of 
 this portion of his history. In Xenophon's Memorabilia (III. 6) 
 Plato is only once cursorily mentioned, but this in a way that 
 indicates an intimate relation between the scholar and his master. 
 Plato himself in his dialogues has transmitted nothing concerning 
 his personal relations to Socrates; only once {Fhced. p. 59) he 
 names himself among the intimate friends of Socrates. But the 
 influence which Socrates exerted upon him, how he recognized in 
 him the complete representation of a wise man, how he found not 
 only in his doctrine but also in his life and action the most fruit- 
 ful philosophic germs, the significance which the personal character 
 of his master as an ideal type had for him — all this we learn with 
 sufficient accuracy from his writings, where he places his own 
 incomparably more developed philosophical system in the mouth 
 of his master, whom he makes the centre of his dialogues and the 
 leader of his discourses 
 
 3. His Years of" Travel.— After the death of Socrates 399 
 B. C, in the thirtieth year of his age, Plato, fearing lest he also 
 should be met by the incoming reaction against philosophy, left, 
 in company with other Socraticists, his native city, and betook 
 himself to Euclid, his former fellow-scholar, the founder of the 
 Megaric school (cf. § XIII. 4) at Megara. Up to this time a pure 
 Socraticist, he became greatly animated and energized by his 
 intercourse with the Megarians, among whom a peculiar philoso- 
 phical direction, a modification of Socraticism, was already asserted. 
 We shall see farther on the influence of this residence at Megara 
 upon the foundation of his philosophy, and especially upon the 
 elaboration and confirmation of his doctrine of Ideas. One whole 
 period of his literary activity and an entire group of his dialogues, 
 can only be satisfactorily explained by the intellectual stimulus 
 gained at this place. From Megara, Plato visited Cyrene, Egypt, 
 Magna-Grecia and Sicily. In Magna-Grecia he became acquainted 
 with the Pythagorean philosophy, which was then in its highest 
 bloom. His abode among the Pythagoreans had a marked effect 
 
 4 
 
74 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 upon liim ; as a man it made him more practical, and increased 
 his zest for life and his interest in public life and social inter- 
 course ; as a philosopher it furnished him with a new incitement 
 to science, and new motives to literary labor. The traces of the 
 Pythagoreoan philosophy may be seen through all the last period 
 of his literary life ; especially his aversion to public and political 
 life was greatly softened by his intercourse with the Pythagoreans. 
 While in the Theatsetus, he affirmed most positively the incom- 
 patibility of philosophy with public life, we find in his later dia- 
 logues, especially in the Eepublic and also in the Statesman — 
 upon which Pythagoreanism seems already to have had an influ- 
 ence — a returning favor for the actual world, and the well-known 
 sentence that the ruler must be a philosopher is an expression 
 very characteristic of this change. His visit to Sicily gave him 
 the acquaintance of the elder Dionysius and Dion his brother-in- 
 law, but the philosopher and the tyrant had little in common. 
 Plato is said to have incurred his displeasure to so high a degree, 
 that his life was in danger. After about ten years spent in travel, 
 he returned to Athens in the fortieth year of his age, (389 or 388 
 B. C.) 
 
 4. Plato as Head of the Academy ; His Years of Instruc- 
 tion. — On his return, Plato surrounded himself with a circle of 
 pupils. The place where he taught was known as the academy, a 
 gymnasium outside of Athens where Plato had inherited a garden 
 from his father. Of his school and of his later life, we have only 
 the most meagre accounts. His life passed evenly along, inter- 
 rupted only by a second and third visit to Sicily, where mean- 
 while the younger Dionysius had come to the throne. This second 
 and third residence of Plato at the court of Syracuse abounds in 
 vicissitudes, and shows us the philosopher in a great variety of 
 conditions {cf. Plutarch's Life of Dion) ; but to us, in estimating 
 his philosophical character, it is of interest only for the attempt, 
 which, as seems probable from all accounts, he there made to 
 realize his ideal of a moral state, and by the philosophical educa- 
 tion of the new ruler to unite philosophy and the reins of govern- 
 ment in one and the same hand, or at least in some way by means 
 
PLATO. 
 
 75 
 
 of philosophy to achieve a healthy change in the Sicilian state 
 constitution. His efforts were however fruitless ; the circumstances 
 were not propitious, and the character of the young Dionysius, 
 who was one of those mediocre natures who strive after renown 
 and distinction, hut are capable of nothing profound and earnest, 
 deceived the expectations concerning him which Plato, according 
 to Dion's account, thought he had reason to entertain. 
 
 When we look at Plato's philosophical labors in the academy, 
 we are struck with the different relations to public life which 
 philosophy already assumes. Instead of carrying philosophy, like 
 Socrates, into the streets and public places and making it there a 
 subject of social conversation with any one who desired it, he lived 
 and labored entirely withdrawn from the movements of the public, 
 satisfied to influence the pupils who surrounded him. In pre- 
 cisely the measure in which philosophy becomes a system and the 
 systematic form is seen to be essential, does it lose its popular 
 character and begin to demand a scientific training, and to become 
 a topic for the school, an esoteric affair. Yet such was the respect 
 for the name of a philosopher, and especially for the name of 
 Plato, that requests were made to him by different states to com- 
 pose for them a book of laws, a work which in some instances it 
 was said was actually performed. Attended by a retinue of de- 
 voted disciples, among whom were even women disguised as men, 
 and receiving reiterated demonstrations of respect, he reached 
 the age of eighty-one years, with his powers of mind unweakened 
 to the latest moment. 
 
 The close of his life seems to have been clouded by disturb- 
 ances and divisions which arose in his school under the lead of 
 Aristotle. Engaged in writing, or as others state it at a mar- 
 riage feast, death came upon him as a gentle sleep, 348 B. C. 
 His remains were buried in the Ceramicus, not far from the 
 academy. 
 
 II. The Inner Development of the Platonic Philosophy 
 AND Writings. — That the Platonic philosophy has a real develop- 
 ment, that it should not be apprehended as a perfectly finished 
 system to which the different writings stand related as constitu- 
 
76 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 ent elements, but that these are rather steps of this inner de- 
 velopment, as it -were stages passed over in the philosophical 
 journejings of the philosopher — is a view of the highest import- 
 ance for the true estimate of Plato's literary labors. 
 
 Plato's philosophical and literary labors may be divided into 
 three periods, which we can characterize in different ways. Look- 
 ing at them in a chronological or biographical respect, we might 
 call them respectively the periods of his years of discipline, of 
 travel, of instruction, or if we view them in reference to the pre- 
 vailing external influence under which they were formed, they 
 might be termed the Socratic, Heraclitic-Eleatic, and the Pytha- 
 gorean ; or if we looked at the content alone, we might term them 
 the Anti-Sophistic-Ethic, the Dialectic or mediating, and the sys- 
 tematic or constructive periods. 
 
 The First Period — the Socratic — is marked externally by 
 the predominance of the dramatic element, and in reference to its 
 philosophical stand-point, by an adherence to the method and 
 the fundamental principles of the Socratic doctrine. Not yet 
 accurately informed of the results of former inquiries, and rather 
 repelled from the study of the history of philosophy than attract- 
 ed to it by the character of the Socratic philosophizing, Plato 
 confined himself to an analytical treatment of conceptions, partic- 
 ularly of the conception of virtue, and to a reproducing of his 
 master, which, though something more than a mere recital of ver- 
 bal recollections, had yet no philosophical independence. His 
 Socrates exhibits the same view of life and the same scientific 
 stand-point which the historical Socrates of Xenophon had had. 
 His efforts were thus, like those of his contemporary fellow disci- 
 ples, directed prominently toward practical wisdom. His conflicts 
 however, like those of Socrates, had far more weight against the 
 prevailing want of science and the shallow sophisms of the day 
 than for the opposite scientific directions. The whole period 
 bears an eclectic and hortatory character. The highest point in 
 •which the dialogues of this group culminate is the attempt which 
 at the same time is found in the Socratic doctrine to determine 
 
PLATO. 
 
 77 
 
 the certainty of an absolute content (of an objective reality) to 
 the good. 
 
 The history of the development of the Platonic philosophy 
 would assume a very different form if the view of some modern 
 scholars respecting the date of the Phasdrus were correct. If, as 
 they claim, the Phsedrus were Plato's earliest work, this circum- 
 stance would betray from the outset an entirely different course 
 of culture for him than we could suppose in a mere scholar of 
 Socrates. The doctrine in this dialogue of the pre-existence of 
 souls, and their periodical transmigrations, of the relation of 
 earthly beauty with heavenly truth, of divine inspiration in con- 
 trast to human wisdom, the conception of love, — these and other 
 Pythagorean ingredients are all so distinct from the original So- 
 cratic doctrine that we must transfer the most of that which Plato 
 has creatively produced during his whole philosophical career, to 
 the beginning of his philosophical development. The improba- 
 bility of this, and numerous other grounds of objection, claim a 
 far later composition for this dialogue. Setting aside for the pre- 
 sent the Phasdrus, the Platonic development assumes the follow- 
 ing form : 
 
 Among the earliest works (if they are genuine) are the small 
 dialogues which treat of Socratic questions and themes in a So- 
 cratic way. Of these e. g. the Charmides discusses temperance, 
 the Lysis friendship, the Laches valor, the lesser Hippias know- 
 ing and wilful wrong-doing, the first Alcibiades, the moral and 
 intellectual qualifications of a statesman, &c. The immaturity 
 and the crudeness of these dialogues, the use of scenic means 
 which have only an external relation to the content, the scanti- 
 ness and want of independence in the content, the indirect man- 
 ner of investigation which lacks a satisfactory and positive result, 
 the formal and analytical treatment of the conceptions discussed 
 — all these features indicate the early character of these minor 
 dialogues. 
 
 The Protagoras may be taken as a proper type of the Socratic 
 period. Since this dialogue, though directing its whole polemic 
 against the Sophistic philosophy, confined itself almost exclusively 
 
^3 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 to tlic outward manifestation of this system, to its influence on 
 its age and its method of instruction in opposition io that of Soc- 
 rates, without entering into the ground and philosophical charac- 
 ter of the doctrine itself, and, still farther, since, when it comes 
 in a strict sense to philosophize, it confines itself, in an indirect 
 investigation, to the Socratic conception of virtue according to its 
 different sides (virtue as knowing, its unity and its teachableness, 
 cf. ^ XII. 8), — it represents in the clearest manner the tendency, 
 character and want of the first period of Plato's literary life. 
 
 The Gorgias, written soon after the death of Socrates, repre- 
 sents the third and highest stage of this period. Directed against 
 the Sophistical identification of pleasure and virtue, of the good 
 and of the agreeable, i. e. against the affirmation of an absolute 
 moral relativity, this dialogue maintains the proof that the good, 
 far from owing its origin only to the right of the stronger, and 
 thus to the arbitrariness of the subject, has in itself an indepen- 
 dent reality and objective validity, and, consequently, alone is 
 truly useful, and thus, therefore, the measure of pleasure must 
 follow the higher measure of the good. In this direct and posi- 
 tive polemic against the Sophistic doctrine of pleasure, in its ten- 
 dency to a view of the good as something firm and abiding, and 
 secure against all subjective arbitrariness, consists prominently 
 the advance which the Grorgias makes over the Protagoras. 
 ^ In the first Socratic period the Platonic philosophizing be- 
 came ripe and ready for the reception of Eleatic and Pythagorean 
 categories. To grapple by means of these categories with the 
 higher questions of philosophy, and so to free the Socratic philos- 
 ophy from its so close connection with practical life, was the task 
 of the second period. 
 
 The Second Period — the dialectic or the Megaric — is marked 
 externally, by a less prominence of form and poetic contempla- 
 tion, and not unfrequently indeed, by obscurity and difficulties of 
 Btyle, and internally, by the attempt to give a satisfactory media- 
 tion for the Eleatic doctrine and a dialectic foundation for the 
 doctrine of ideas. 
 
 By his exile at Megara, and his journeys to Italy, -Plato be- 
 
PLATO. 
 
 79 
 
 came acquainted Tvith other and opposing philosophical directions, 
 from which he must now separate himself in order to elevate the 
 Socratic doctrine to its true significance. It was now that he 
 first learned to know the philosophic theories of the earlier sages, 
 for whose study the necessary means could not at that period, so 
 wanting in literary publicity, be found at Athens. By his sepa- 
 ration from these varying stand-points, as his older fellow pupils 
 had already striven to do, he attempted striding over tne narrow 
 limits of ethical philosophizing, to reach the final ground of know- 
 ing, and to carry out the art of forming conceptions as brought 
 forward by Socrates, to a science of conceptions, i. e. to the doc- 
 trine of ideas. That all human acting depends upon knowing, 
 and that all thinking depends upon the conception, were results 
 to which Plato might already have attained through the scientific 
 generalization of the Socratic doctrine itself, but now to bring 
 this Socratic wisdom within the circle of speculative thinking, to 
 establish dialectically that the conception in its simple unity is 
 that which abides in the change of phenomena, to disclose the 
 fundamental principles of knowledge which had been evaded by 
 Socrates, to grasp the scientific theories of the opposers direct in 
 their scientific grounds, and follow them out in all their ramifica- 
 tions, — this is the problem which the Megaric family of dialogues 
 attempts to solve. 
 
 The Theatsetus stands at the head of this group. This is 
 chiefly directed against the Protagorean theory of knowledge, 
 against the identification of the thinking and the sensible percep- 
 tion, or against the claim of an objective relativity of all knowl- 
 edge. As the Grorgias before it had sought to establish the in- 
 dependent being of the ethical, so does the Theatastus ascending 
 from the ethical to the theoretical, endeavor to prove an indepen 
 dent being and objective reality for the logical conceptions which 
 lie at the ground of all representation and thinking, in a word, to 
 prove the objectivity of truth, the fact that there lies a province 
 of thought immanent in the thinking and independent of the per 
 3eptions of the senses. These conceptions, whose objective reality 
 
80 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 is thus affirmed, are those of a species, likeness and unlikenesa, 
 sameness and difference, &c. 
 
 The Theatsetus is followed by the trilogy of the Sophist, the 
 Statesman, and the Philosopher, which completes the Megaric 
 group of dialogues. The first of these dialogues examines the 
 conception of appearance, that i? of the not-being, the last (for 
 which the Parmenides may be taken) the conception of being. 
 Both dialogues are especially directed to the Eleatic doctrine. 
 After Plato had recognized the conception in its simple unity as 
 that which abides in the change of phenomena, his attention was 
 naturally turned towards the Eleatics, who in an opposite way had 
 attained the similar result that in unity consists all true substan- 
 tiality, and to multiplicity as such no true being belongs. In 
 order more easily on the one side to carry out this fundamental 
 thought of the Eleatic to its legitimate result, in which the 
 Megarians had already preceded him, he was obliged to give a 
 metaphysical substance to his abstract conceptions of species, i. e. 
 ideas. But on the other side, he could not agree with the inflex- 
 ibility and exclusiveness of the Eleatic unity, unless he would 
 wholly sacrifice the multiplicity of things ; he was rather obliged 
 to attempt to show by a dialectic development of the Eleatic 
 principle that the one must be at the same time a totality, organ- 
 ically connected, and .embracing multiplicity in itself. This 
 double relation to the Eleatic principle is carried out by the 
 Sophist and the Parmenides ; by the former polemically against the 
 Eleatic doctrine, in that it proves the being of the appearance or 
 the not-being, and by the latter pacifically, in that it analyzes the 
 Eleatic one by its own logical consequences into many. The inner 
 progress of the doctrine of Ideas in the Megaric group of dia- 
 logues is therefore this, viz., that the Theatcctus, in opposition to 
 the Heraclitico-Protagorean theory of the absolute becoming, 
 affirms the objective and independent reality of ideas, and the 
 Sophist shows their reciprocal relation and combining qualities, 
 while the Parmenides in fine exhibits their whole dialectic com- 
 pleteness with their relation to the phenomenal world. 
 
 The Third Period begins with the return of the philosopher 
 
PLATO. 
 
 81 
 
 to his native city. It unites the completeness of form belonging 
 to the first with the profounder characteristical content belonging 
 to the second. The memories of his youthful years seem at this 
 time to have risen anew before the soul of Plato, and to have im- 
 parted again to his literary activity the long lost freshness and 
 fulness of that period, while at the same time his abode in foreign 
 lands, and especially his acquaintance with the Pythagorean phi- 
 losophy, had greatly enriched his mind with a store of images and 
 ideals. This reviving of old memories is seen in the fact that the 
 writings of this group return with fondness to the personality of 
 Socrates, and represent in a certain degree the whole philosophy 
 of Plato as the exaltation of the doctrine and the ideal embodi- 
 ment of the historical character of his early master. In opposi 
 tion to both of the first two periods, the third is marked exter- 
 nally by an excess of the mythical form connected with the grow- 
 ing influence of Pythagoreanism in this period, and internally by 
 the application of the doctrine of ideas to the concrete spheres 
 of psychology, ethics and natural science. That ideas possess 
 objective reality, and are the foundation of all essentiality and 
 truth, while the phenomena of the sensible world are only copies 
 of these, was a theory whose vindication was no longer attempted, 
 but which was presupposed as already proved, and as forming a 
 dialectical basis for the pursuit of the different branches of science. 
 With this was connected a tendency to unite the hitherto separate 
 branches of science into a systematic whole, as well as to mould 
 together the previous philosophical directions, and show the inner 
 application of the Socratic philosophy for ethics, of the Eleatic 
 for dialectics, and the Pythagorean for physics. 
 
 Upon this stand-point, the Ph^cdrus, Plato's inaugural to his 
 labors in the Academy, together with the Symposium, which is 
 . closely connected with it, attempts to subject the rhetorical theory 
 and practice of their time to a thorough criticism, in order to show 
 in opposition to this theory and practice, that the fixedness and 
 stability of a true scientific principle could only be attained by 
 grounding every thing on the idea. On the same stand-point the 
 Pheedon attempts to prove the immortality of the soul from the 
 4* 
 
82 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 doctrine of ideas ; the Philebus to bring out the conception ol 
 pleasure and of the highest good ; the Republic to develop the 
 essence of the state, and the Timasus that of nature. 
 
 Having thus sketched the inner development of the Platonic 
 philosophy, we now turn to a systematic statement of its princi- 
 ples. 
 
 III. — Classification of the Platonic System. — The phi- 
 losophy of Plato, as left by himself, is without a systematic state- 
 ment, and has no comprehensive principle of classification. He 
 has given us only the history of his thinking, the statement of his 
 philosophical development ; we are therefore limited in reference 
 to his classification of philosophy to simple intimations. Accord- 
 ingly, some have divided the Platonic system into theoretical and 
 practical science, and others into a philosophy of the good, the 
 beautiful and the true. Another classification, which has some 
 support in old records, is more correct. Some of the ancients say 
 that Plato was the first to unite in one whole the scattered philo- 
 sophical elements of the earlier sages, and so to obtain for philoso- 
 phy the three parts, logic, physics, and ethics. The more accurate 
 statement is given by Sextus Umpiricus, that Plato has laid the 
 foundation for this threefold division of philosophy, but that it 
 was first expressly recognized and affirmed by his scholars, Xeno- 
 crates and Aristotle. The Platonic system may, however, with- 
 out difficulty, be divided into these three parts. True, there are 
 many dialogues which mingle together in difierent proportions the 
 logical, the ethical, and the physical element, and though even 
 where Plato treats of some special discipline, the three are suf- 
 fered constantly to interpenetrate each other, still there are some 
 dialogues in which this fundamental scheme can be clearly recog- 
 nized. It cannot be mistaken that the Timseus has predominantly 
 a physical, and the E-epublic as decidedly an ethical element, and 
 if the dialectic is expressly represented in no separate dialogue, 
 yet does the whole Megaric group pursue the common end of 
 bringing out the conception of science and its true object, being, 
 and is, therefore, in its content decidedly dialectical. Plato must 
 have been led to this threefold division by even the earlier de- 
 
PLATO. 
 
 83 
 
 velopment of philosophy, and though Xenocrates does not clearly 
 see it, yet since Aristotle presupposes it as universally admitted, 
 we need not scruple to make it the basis on which to represent 
 he Platonic system. 
 
 The order which these different parts should take, Plato him- 
 self has not declared. Manifestly, however, dialectics should 
 have the first place as the ground of all philosophy, since Plato 
 uniformly directs that every philosophical investigation should 
 begin with accurately determining the idea (Phced. p. 99. Phcedr. 
 p. 237), while he subsequently examines all the concrete spheres 
 of science on the stand-point of the doctrine of ideas. The 
 relative position of the other two parts is not so clear. Since, 
 however, the physics culminates in the ethics, and the ethics, 
 on the other hand, has for its basis physical investigations into 
 the ensouling power in nature, we may assign to physics the 
 former place of the two. 
 
 The mathematical sciences Plato has expressly excluded from 
 philosophy. He considers them as helps to philosophical think- 
 ing {Bep. VIL 526), as necessary steps of knowledge, with- 
 out which no one can come to philosophy (lb. VI. 510) ; but 
 mathematics with him is not philosophy, for it assumes its prin- 
 ciples or axioms, without at all accounting for them, as though 
 they were manifest to all, a procedure which is not permitted to 
 pure science ; it also serves itself for its demonstrations, with il- 
 lustrative figures, although it does not treat of these, but of that 
 which they represent to the understanding (lb.). Plato thus 
 places mathematics midway between a correct opinion and sci- 
 ence, clearer than the one, but more obscure than the other. {lb. 
 VII. 533.) 
 
 IV. The Platonic Dialectics. 1. Conception of Dialec- 
 tics. — The conception of dialectics or of logic, is used by the 
 ancients for the most part in a very wide sense, while Plato em- 
 ploys it in repeated instances interchangeably with philosophy, 
 though on the other hand he treats it also as a separate branch 
 of philosophy. He divides it from physics as the science of the 
 eternal and unchangeable from the science of the changeable, 
 
84 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 which never is, but is only ever becoming ; lie distinguishes also 
 between it and ethics, so far as the latter treats of the good not 
 absolutely, but in its concrete exhibition in morals and in the 
 state ; so that dialectics may be termed philosophy in a higher 
 sense, while physics and ethics follow it as two less exact sciences, 
 or as a not yet perfected philosophy. Plato himself defines dia- 
 lectics, according to the ordinary signification of the word, as the 
 art of developing knowledge by way of dialogue in questions and 
 answers. (Rep. VII. 534). But since the art of communicating 
 correctly in dialogue is according to Plato, at the same time the 
 art of thinking correctly, and as thus thinking and speaking 
 could not be separated by the ancients, but every process of 
 thought was a living dialogue, so Plato would more accurately 
 define dialectics as the science which brings speech to a correct 
 issue, and which combines or separates the species, i. e. the con- 
 ceptions of things correctly with one another. [Soph. p. 253. 
 Phcedr. p. 266). Dialectics with him has two divisions, to know 
 what can and what cannot be connected, and to know how divi- 
 sion or combination can be. But as with Plato these conceptions 
 of species or ideas are the only actual and true existence, so have 
 we, in entire conformity with this, a third definition of dialectics 
 (Pliilehus p. 57), as the science of being, the science of that 
 which is true and unchangeable, the science of all other sciences. 
 We may therefore briefly characterize it as the science of absolute 
 being or of ideas. 
 
 2. "What is Science? (1.) As opposed to sensation and the 
 sensuous representation. — The Theatastus is devoted to the dis- 
 cussion of this question in opposition to the Protagorean sensual- 
 ism. That all knowledge consists in perception, and that the 
 two are one and the same thing, was the Protagorean proposition, 
 ifrom this it followed, as Protagoras himself had inferred, that 
 •■hings are, as they appear to me, that the perception or sensation 
 *B infallible. But since perception and sensation are infinitely 
 diversified with different individuals, and even greatly vary in 
 the same individual, it follows farther, that there are no objective 
 determinations and predicates, that we can never affirm what a 
 
PLATO. 
 
 85 
 
 thing is in itself, tliat all conceptions, great, small, light, heavy, 
 to increase, to diminish, &g., have only a relative significance, 
 and consequently, also, the conceptions of species, as combinations 
 of the changeful many, are wholly wanting in constancy and sta- 
 bility. In opposition to this Protagorean thesis, Plato urges the 
 following objections and contradictions. First. The Protago- 
 rean doctrine leads to the most startling consequences. If being 
 and appearance, knowledge and perception are one and the same 
 thing, then is the irrational brute, which is capaole of perception, 
 as fully entitled to be called the measure of all things, as man, 
 and if the representation is infallible, as the expression of my 
 subjective character at a given time, then need there be no more 
 instruction, no more scientific conclusion, no more strife, and no 
 more refutation. Second. The Protagorean doctrine is a logical 
 contradiction ; for according to it Protagoras must yield the 
 question to every one who disputes with him, since, as he himself 
 afiirms, no one is incorrect, but every one judges only according 
 to truth ; the pretended truth of Protagoras is therefore true for 
 no man, not even for himself. Third. Protagoras destroys the 
 knowledge of future events. That which I may regard as profit- 
 able may not therefore certainly prove itself as such in the result. 
 To determine that which is really profitable implies a calculation 
 of the future, but since the ability of men to form such a calcu- 
 lation is very diverse, it follows from this that not man as such, 
 but only the wise man can be the measure of things. Fourth. 
 The theory of Protagoras destroys perception. Perception, ac- 
 cording to him, rests upon a distinction of the perceived object 
 and the perceiving subject, and is the common product of the 
 two. But in his view the objects are in such an uninterrupted 
 flow, that they can neither become fixed in seeing nor in hearing. 
 This condition of constant change renders all knowledge from 
 sense, and hence (the identity of the two being assumed), all 
 knowledge impossible. Fifth. Protagoras overlooks the apriori 
 element in knowledge. It is seen in an analysis of the sense- 
 perception itself, that all knowledge cannot be traced to the 
 activity of the senses, but that there must also be presupposed 
 
86 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY, 
 
 besides these, intellectual functions, and hence an hidependent 
 province of supersensible knowledge, v We see with the eyes, and 
 hear with the ears, but to group together the perceptions attained 
 through these different organs, and to hold them fast in the unity 
 of self- consciousness, is beyond the power of the activity of the 
 senses. Again, we compare the different sense-perceptions with 
 one another, a function which cannot belong to the senses, since 
 each sense can only furnish its own distinctive perception. Still 
 farther, we bring forward determinations respecting the percep- 
 tions which we manifestly cannot owe to the senses, in that we 
 predicate of these perceptions, being and not-being, likeness and 
 unlikeness, &c. These determinations, to which also belong the 
 beautiful and the odious, good and evil, constitute a peculiar prov- 
 ince of knowledge, which the soul, independently of every sense- 
 perception, brings forward through its own independent activity. 
 The ethical element of this Plato exhibits in his attack upon 
 sensualism, and also in other dialogues. He maintains (in the 
 Sophist), that men holding such opinions must be improved be- 
 fore they can be instructed, and that when made morally better, 
 they will readily recognize the truth of the soul and its moral 
 and rational capacities, and affirm that these are real things, 
 though objects of neither sight nor of feeling. 
 
 (2.) The Relation of Knowing to Opinion. — Opinion is just as 
 little identical with knowing as is the sense-perception. An in- 
 correct opinion is certainly different from knowing, and a correct 
 one is not the same, for it can be engendered by the art of speech 
 without therefore attaining the validity of true knowledge. The 
 correct opinion, so far as it is true in matter though imperfect in 
 form, stands rather midway between knowing and not-knowing, 
 and participates in both. 
 
 (3.) The Relation of Science to Thinking. — In opposition to 
 the Protagorean sensualism, we have already referred to an energy 
 of the soul independent of the sensuous perception and sensation, 
 competent in itself to examine the universal, and grasp true being 
 in thought. There is, therefore, a double source of knowledge, 
 sensation and rational thinking. Sensation refers to that which 
 
PLATO. 
 
 87 
 
 is conceived in the constant becoming and perpetual change, to 
 the pure momentary, which is in an incessant transition from the 
 was, through the now, into the shall be (Farm. p. 152) ; it is, 
 therefore, the source of dim, impure, and uncertain knowledge; 
 thinking on the other hand refers to the a,biding, which neither 
 becomes nor departs, but remains ever the same. [Tim. p. 51.) 
 Existence, says the Timasus (p. 27) is of two kinds, " that which 
 ever is but has no becoming, and that which ever becomes but 
 never is. The one kind, which is always in the same state, is 
 comprehended through reflection by the reason, the other, which 
 becomes and departs, but never properly is, may be apprehended 
 by the sensuous perception without the reason." True science, 
 therefore, flows alone from that pure and thoroughly internal ac- 
 tivity of the soul which is free from all corporeal qualities and 
 every sensuous disturbance. (Phced. p. 65.) In this state the soul 
 looks upon things purely as they are {Phced. p. 66) in their eter- 
 nal being and their unchangeable condition. Hence the true 
 state of the philosopher is announced in the Phsedon (p. 64) to 
 be a willingness to die, a longing to fly from the body, as from a 
 hinderance to true knowledge, and become pure spirit. Accord- 
 ing to all this, science is the thinking of true being or of ideas ; 
 the means to discover and to know these ideas, or the organ for 
 their apprehension is the dialectic, as the art of separating and com- 
 bining conceptions; the true objects of dialectics are ideas. 
 
 3. The Doctrine of Ideas in its Genesis. — The Platonic 
 doctrine of ideas is the common product of the Socratic method 
 of formiDg conceptions, the Heraclitic doctrine of absolute becom- 
 ing, and the Eleatic doctrine of absolute being. To the first of 
 these Plato owes the idea of a knowing through conceptions, to 
 the second the recognition of the becoming in the field of the 
 sensuous, to the third the position of a field of absolute reality. 
 Elsewhere {in the Philehus) Plato connects the doctrine of ideas 
 with the Pythagorean thought that every thing may be formed 
 from unity and multiplicity, from the limit and the unlimited. 
 The aim of the Theataetus, the Sophist, and the Parmenides is to 
 refute the principles of the Eleatics and Heraclitics ; this refuta- 
 
88 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 tion is effected in the Theatsetus by combating directly the prin- 
 ciple of an absolute becoming, in the Sophist by combating 
 directly the principle of abstract being, and in the Parmenides by 
 taking up the Eleatic one and showing its true relations. We 
 have already spoken of the Theatostus ; we will now look for the 
 development of the doctrine of ideas in the Sophist and Par- 
 menides. 
 
 The ostensible end of the former of these dialogues is to show 
 that the Sophist is really but a caricature of the philosopher, but 
 its true end is to fix the reality of the appearance, i. e. of the not- 
 being, and to discuss speculatively the relation of being and not- 
 being. The doctrine of the Eleatics ended with the rejection of 
 all sensuous knowledge, declaring that what we receive as the 
 perception of a multiplicity of things or of a becoming is only an 
 appearance. In this the contradiction was clear, the not-being 
 was absolutely denied, and yet its existence was admitted in the 
 notion of men. Plato at once draws attention to this contradic- 
 tion, showing that a delusive opinion, which gives rise to a false 
 image or representation, is not possible, since the whole theory 
 rests upon the assumption that the false, the not -true, i. e. not- 
 being cannot even be thought. This, Plato continues, is the great 
 difficulty in thinking of not-being, that both he who denies and 
 he who affirms its reality is driven to contradict himself For 
 though it is inexpressible and inconceivable either as one or as 
 many, still, when speaking of it, we must attribute to it both being 
 and multiplicity. If we admit that there is such a thing as a 
 false opinion, we assume in this very fact the notion of not-being, 
 for only that opinion can be said to be false which supposes either 
 the not-being to be, or makes that, which is not, to be. In short, 
 if there actually exists a false notion, so does there actually and 
 truly exist a not-being. After Plato had thus fixed the reality of 
 not-being, he discusses the relation of being and not-being, i. e. 
 the relation of conceptions generally in their combinations and 
 difierences. If not-being has no less reality than being, and being 
 no more than not-being, if, therefore, e. g. the not-great is as truly 
 real as the great, then every conception may be apprehended ac- 
 
PLATO. 
 
 85 
 
 cording to its opposite sides as being and not-being at the same 
 time : it is a being in reference to itself, as something identical 
 with itself, but it is not-being in reference to every one of the 
 numberless other conceptions which can be referred to it, and 
 with which, on account of its difference from them, it can have 
 nothing in common. The conception of the same (ravTov) and the 
 different (^arepov) represent the general form of an antithesis. 
 These are the universal formulae of combination for all concep- 
 tions. This reciprocal relation of conceptions as at the same time 
 being and not-being, by virtue of which they can be arranged 
 among themselves, forms now the basis for the art of dialectics, 
 which has to judge what conceptions can and what cannot be 
 joined together. Plato illustrates here by taking the conceptions 
 of being, motion (becoming), and rest (existence), and showing 
 what are the results of the combinations of these ideas. The 
 conceptions of motion and rest cannot well be joined together, 
 though both of them may be joined with that of being, since both 
 arc; the conception of rest is therefore in reference to itself a 
 being, but in reference to the conception of motion a not-being or 
 different. Thus the Platonic doctrine of ideas, after having in 
 the Theataetus attained its general foundation in fixing the objec- 
 tive reality of conceptions, becomes now still farther developed in 
 the Sophist to a doctrine of the agreement and disagreement of 
 conceptions. The category which conditions these reciprocal re- 
 lations is that of not-being or difference. This fundamental 
 thought of the Sophist, that being is not without not-being and 
 not-being is not without being, may be expressed in mo(fern phra- 
 seology thus : negation is not not-being but determinateness, and 
 on the other hand all determinateness and concreteness of concep- 
 tions, or every thing affirmative can be only through negation ; 
 in other words the conception of contradiction is the soul of a 
 philosophical method. 
 
 The doctrine of ideas appears in the Parmenides as the positive 
 consequence and progressive development of the Eleatic princi- 
 ple. Indeed in thia dialogue, in that Plato makes Parmenides the 
 chief speaker, he seems willing to allow that his doctrine is in 
 
90 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 substance that of the Eleatic sage. True, the fundamental 
 thought of the dialogue — that the one is not conceivable in its 
 complete singleness without the many, nor the many without the 
 one, that each necessarily presupposes and reciprocally conditions 
 the other — stands in the most direct contradiction to Eleaticism. 
 Yet Parmenides himself, by dividing his poem into two parts, and 
 treating in the first of the one and in the second of the many, 
 postulates an inner mediation between these two externally so dis- 
 jointed parts of his philosophy, and in this respect the Platonic 
 theory of ideas might give itself out as the farther elimination, 
 and the true sense of the Parmenidean philosophizing. This dia- 
 lectical mediation between the one and the not-one or the many 
 Plato now attempts in four antinomies, which have ostensibly only 
 a negative result in so far as they show that contradictions arise 
 both whether the one be adopted or rejected. The positive sense 
 of these antinomies, though it can be gained only 'through infer- 
 ences which Plato himself does not expressly utter, but leaves to 
 be drawn by the reader — is as follows. The first antinomy shows 
 that the one is inconceivable as such since it is only apprehended 
 in its abstract opposition to the many ; the second, that in this 
 case also the reality of the many is inconceivable ; the third, that 
 the one or the idea cannot be conceived as not-being, since there 
 can be neither conception nor predicate of the absolute not-being, 
 and since, if not-being is excluded from all fellowship with being, 
 all becoming and departing, all similarity and difi"erence, every 
 representation and explanation concerning it must also be denied ; 
 and lastly, the fourth afiirms that the not-one or the many cannot 
 be conceived without the one or the idea. What now is Plato's 
 aim in this discussion of the dialectic relations between the con- 
 ceptions of the one and the many ? "Would he use the conception 
 of the one only as an example to explain his dialectic method 
 with conceptions, or is the discussion of this conception itself the 
 very object before him ? Manifestly the latter, or the dialogue 
 ends without result and without any inner connection of its two 
 parts. But how came Plato to make such a special investigation 
 of this conception of the one ? If we bear in mind that the 
 
PLATO. 
 
 91 
 
 Eleatics had already perceived the antithesis of the actual and 
 the phenomenal world in the antithesis of the one and the many, 
 and that Plato himself had also regarded his ideas as the unity 
 of the manifold, as the one and the same in the many — since he 
 repeatedly uses " idea" and 'Uhe one" in the same sense, and 
 places (Rep. VII. 537) dialectics in the same rank with the 
 faculty of bringing many to unity — then is it clear that the one 
 which is made an object of investigation in the Parmenides is the 
 idea in its general sense, i. e. in its logical form, and that Plato 
 consequently in the dialectic of the one and the many would repre- 
 sent the dialectic of the idea and the phenomenal world, or in other 
 words would dialectically determine and establish the correct view 
 of the idea as the unity in the manifoldness of the phenomenal. 
 In that it is shown in the Parmenides, on the one side, that the 
 many cannot be conceived without the one, and on the other side, 
 that the one must be something which embraces in itself mani- 
 foldness, so have we the ready inference on the one side, that the 
 phenomenal world, or the many, has a true being only in so far 
 as it has the one or the conception within it, and on the other 
 side, that since the conception is not an abstract one but mani- 
 foldness in unity, it must actually have manifoldness in unity in 
 order to be able to be in the phenomenal world. The indirect 
 result of the Parmenides is that matter as the infinitely divisible 
 and undetermined mass has no actuality, but is in relation to the 
 ideal world a not-being, and though the ideas as the true being 
 gain their appearance in it, yet the idea itself is all that is actual 
 in the appearance or phenomenon ; the phenomenal world derives 
 its whole existence from the ideal world which appears in it, and 
 has a being only so far as it has a conception or idea for its con- 
 tent. 
 
 4. Positive Exposition of the Docteine of Ideas. — Ideas 
 may be defined according to the diff'erent sides of their historical 
 connection, as the common in the manifold, the universal in the 
 particular, the one in the many, or the constant and abiding in the 
 changing. Subjectively they are principles of knowing which 
 c ^ot be derived from experience they are the intuitively cer- 
 
92 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 tain and innate regulators of our knowledge. Objectively they 
 are the immutable principles of being and of the phenomenal 
 world, incorporeal and simple unities which have no relation to 
 space, and which may be predicated of every independent thing. 
 The doctrine of ideas grew originally out of the desire to give a 
 definite conception to the inner essence of things, and make the 
 real world conceivable as a harmoniously connected intellectual 
 world. This desire of scientific knowledge Aristotle cites ex- 
 pressly as the motive to the Platonic doctrine of ideas. " Plato," 
 he says {MetapJi. XIII. 4), " came to the doctrine of ideas be- 
 cause he was convinced of the truth of the Heraclitic view which 
 regarded the sensible world as a ceaseless flowing and changing. 
 His conclusion from this was, that if there be a science of any 
 thing there must be, besides the sensible, other substances which 
 have a permanence, for there can be no science of the fleeting." 
 It is, therefore, the idea of science which demands the reality of 
 ideas, a demand which cannot be granted unless an idea or con- 
 ception is also the ground of all being. This is the case with 
 Plato. According to him there can be neither a true knowing 
 nor a true being without ideas and conceptions which have an 
 independent reality. 
 
 What now does Plato mean by idea ? From what has already 
 been said it is clear that he means something more than ideal con- 
 ceptions of the beautiful and the good. An idea is found, as the 
 name itself (et^o?) indicates, wherever a universal conception of a 
 species or kind is found. Hence Plato speaks of the idea of a 
 bed, table, strength, health, voice, color, ideas of simple relations 
 and properties, ideas of mathematical figures, and even ideas of 
 not-being, and of that, which in its essence only contradicts the 
 idea, baseness and vice. In a word, we may put an idea wherever 
 many things may be characterized by a common name {Bep. X. 
 596) : or as Aristotle expresses it (Met. XII. 3). Plato places 
 an idea to every class of being. In this sense Plato himself 
 speaks in the beginning of the Parmenides. Parmenides asks the 
 young Socrates what he calls ideas. Socrates answers by naming 
 unconditionally the moral ideas, the ideas of the true, the beauti- 
 
PLATO. 
 
 93 
 
 fill, the good, and then after a little delay he mentions some physi- 
 cal ones, as the ideas of man, of fire, of water ; he will not allow 
 ideas to be predicated of that which is only a formless mass, or 
 which is a part of something else, as hair, mud and clay, hut in 
 this he is answered by Parmenides, that if he would be fully im- 
 bued with philosophy, he must not consider such things as these 
 to be wholly despicable, but should look upon them as truly 
 though remotely participating in the idea. Here at least the 
 claim is asserted that no province of being is excluded from the 
 idea, that even that which appears most accidental and irrational 
 is yet a part of rational knowledge, in fact that every thing ex- 
 isting may be brought within a rational conception. 
 
 5. The relation of Ideas to the Phenomenal World. 
 Analogous to the different definitions of idea are the different 
 names which Plato gives to the sensible and phenomenal world. 
 He calls it the many, the divisible, the unbounded, the undeter- 
 mined and measureless, the becoming, the relative, great and small, 
 not-being. The relation now in which these two worlds of sense 
 and of ideas stand to each other is a question which Plato has 
 answered neither fully nor consistently with himself. His most 
 common way is to characterize the relation of things to concep- 
 tions as a participant, or to call things the copies and adumbra- 
 tions, while ideas are the archetypes. Yet this is so indefinite 
 that Aristotle properly says that to talk in this way is only to 
 use poetical metaphors. The great difficulty of the docti'ine of 
 ideas is not solved but only increased by these figurative repre- 
 sentations. The difficulty lies in tlie contradiction which grows 
 out of the fact that while Plato admits the reality of the becom- 
 ing and of the province of the becoming, he still affirms that ideas 
 which are substances ever at rest and ever the same are the only 
 actual. Now in this Plato is formally consistent with himself, 
 while he characterizes the materiel of matter not as a positive 
 substratum but as not-being, and guards himself with the express 
 affirmation that he does not consider the sensible as being, but 
 only as something similar to being. (Rep. X. 597.) The position 
 laid down in the Parmenides is also consistent with this, that a 
 
94 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 perfect philosopliy should look upon the idea as the cognizable in 
 the phenomenal world, and should follow it out in the smallest 
 particulars until every part of being should be known and all 
 dualism removed. In fine, Plato in many of his expressions 
 seems to regard the world of sensation only as a subjective ap- 
 pearance, as a product of the subjective notion, as the result of a 
 confused way of representing ideas. In this sense the phenomena 
 are entirely dependent on ideas ; they are nothing but the ideas 
 themselves in the form of not being ; the phenomenal world de- 
 rives its whole existence from the ideal world which appears in it. 
 But yet when Plato calls the sensible a mingling of the same 
 with the different or the not-being {Tim. p. 35), when he charac- 
 terizes the ideas as vowels which go through every thing like a 
 chain [Soph. p. 253), when he himself conceives the possibility 
 that matter might ofi"er opposition to the formative energy of 
 ideas {Tim. p. 66), when he speaks of an evil soul of the world 
 {de Leg. X. 896), and gives intimations of the presence in the 
 world of a principle in nature hostile to God [Polit. p. 268), 
 when he in the Phsedon treats of the relation between body and 
 soul as one wholly discordant and malignant, — in all this there 
 is evidence enough, even after allowing for the mythical form of 
 the Timaeus, and the rhetorical composition which prevails in the 
 Phgedon, to substantiate the contradiction mentioned above. 
 This is most clear in the Timasus. Plato in this dialogue makes 
 the sensible world to be formed by a Creator after the pattern of 
 an idea, but in this he lays down as a condition that this Demi- 
 urge or Creator should find at hand a something which should be 
 apt to receive and exhibit this ideal image. This something 
 Plato compares to the matter which is fashioned by the artisan 
 (whence the later name hyle). He characterizes it as wholly un- 
 determined and formless, but possessing in itself an aptitude for 
 every variety of forms, an invisible and shapeless thing, a some- 
 thing which it is dijfficult to characterize, and which Plato even 
 does not seem inclined very closely to describe. In this the 
 actuality of matter is denied ; while Plato makes it equivalent to 
 space it is only the place, the negative condition of the sensible j 
 
PLATO, 
 
 95 
 
 while it possesses a being only as it receives in itself the ideal 
 form. Still matter remains the objective and phenomenal form 
 of the idea : the visible world arises only through the mingling 
 of ideas with this substratum, and if matter be metaphysically 
 expressed as " the different," then does it follow with logical ne- 
 cessity in a dialectical discussion that it is just as truly being as 
 not-being. Plato does not conceal from himself this difficulty, 
 and therefore attempts to represent with comparisons and images 
 this presupposition of a hyle which he finds it as impossible to do 
 without as to express in a conceivable form. If he would do 
 without it he must rise to the conception of an absolute creation, 
 or consider matter as an ultimate emanation from the absolute 
 spirit, or else explain it as appearance only. Thus the Platonic 
 system is only a fruitless struggle against dualism. 
 
 6. The idea of the Good and the Deity. If the true and 
 the real is exhibited in general conceptions which are so related 
 to each other that every higher conception embraces and combines 
 under it several lower, so that any one starting from a single idea 
 may eventually discover all {Meno. p. 81), -then must the sum of 
 ideas form a connected organism and succession in which the 
 lower idea appears as a stepping-stone and presupposition to a 
 higher. This succession must have its end in an idea which needs 
 no higher idea or presupposition to sustain it. This highest idea, 
 the ultimate limit of all knowledge, and itself the independent 
 ground of all other ideas, Plato calls the idea of the good, i. e. 
 not of the moral but of the metaphysical good. (Bep. YII. 517.) 
 
 What this good is in itself, Plato undertakes to show only in 
 images. " In the same manner as the sun," he says in the Repub- 
 lic (VI. 506), " is the cause of sight, and the cause not merely that 
 objects are visible but also that they grow and are produced, so 
 the good is of such power and beauty, that it is not merely the 
 cause of science to the soul, but is also the cause of being and 
 reality to whatever is the object of science, and as the sun is not 
 itself sight or the object of sight but presides over both, so the 
 good is not science and truth but is superior to both, they being 
 not the good itself but of a goodly nature." The good has uncon- 
 
96 
 
 A inSTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 ditioned wortli, and gives to every other thing all the value it 
 possesses. The idea of the good excludes all presupposition. It 
 is the ultimate ground at the same time of knowing and of being, 
 of the perceiver and the perceived, of the subjective and the ob- 
 jective, of the ideal and the real, though exalted itself above such 
 a division. [Rep. YI. 508-517.) Plato, however, has not attempt- 
 ed a derivation of the remaining ideas from the idea of the good ; 
 his course here is wholly an empirical one ; a certain class of 
 objects are taken, and having referred these to their common 
 essence this is given out as their idea. He has treated the indi- 
 vidual conceptions so independently, and has made each one so 
 complete in itself, that it is impossible to find a proper division or 
 establish an immanent continuation of one into another. 
 
 It is difficult to say precisely what relation this idea of the 
 good bore to the Deity in the Platonic view. Taking every thing 
 together it seems clear that Plato regarded the two as identical, 
 but whether he conceived this highest cause to be a personal being 
 or not is a question which hardly admits of a definite answer. 
 The logical result of his system would exclude the personality of 
 Grod. If only the universal (the idea) is the true being, then can 
 the only absolute idea, the Deity, be only the absolute universal ; 
 but that Plato was himself conscious of this logical conclusion we 
 can hardly affirm, any more than we can say on the other hand that 
 he was clearly a theist. For whenever in a mythical or popular 
 statement he speaks of innumerable gods, this only indicates that 
 he is speaking in the language of the popular religion, and when 
 he speaks in an accurate philosophical sense, he only makes the 
 relation of the personal deity with the idea a very uncertain one. 
 Most probable, therefore, is it that this whole question concerning 
 the personality of Grod was not yet definitely before him, that he 
 took up the religious idea of Grod and defended it in ethical 
 interest against the anthropomorphism of the mythic poets, that 
 be sought to establish it by arguments drawn from the evidences 
 of design in nature, and the universal prevalence of a belief in a 
 God, while as a philosopher he made no use of it. 
 
 V. The Platonic Physics. 1. Nature. — The connection 
 
PLATO. 
 
 97 
 
 ^etween the Physics and the Dialectics of Plato lies principally 
 m two points — the conception of becoming, which forms the chief 
 property of nature, and that of real being, which is at once the all 
 sufficient and good, and the true end of all becoming. Because 
 nature belongs to the province of irrational sensation we cannot 
 look for the same accuracy in the treatment of it, as is furnished 
 in dialectics. Plato therefore applied himself with much less zest 
 to physical investigations than to those of an ethical or dialectical 
 character, and indeed only attended to them in his later years. 
 Only in one dialogue, the Timaeus, do we find any extended evo- 
 lution of physical doctrines, and even here Plato seems to have 
 gone to his work with much less independence than his wont, this 
 dialogue being more strongly tinctured with Pythagoreanism than 
 any other of his writings. The difficulty of the Timaeus is in- 
 creased by the mythical form on which the old commentators 
 themselves have stumbled. If we take the first impression that 
 it gives us, we have, before the creation of the world, a Creator as 
 a moving and a reflecting principle, with on the one side the ideal 
 world existing immovable as the eternal archetype, and on the 
 other side, a chaotic, formless, irregular, fluctuating mass, which 
 holds in itself the germ of the material world, but has no deter- 
 mined character nor substance. With these two elements the 
 Creator now blends the world-soul which he distributes according 
 to the relation of numbers, and sets it in definite and harmonious 
 motion. In this way the material world, which has become actual 
 through the arrangement of the chaotic mass into the four ele- 
 ments, finds its external frame, and the process thus begun is 
 completed in its external structure by the formation of the organic 
 world. 
 
 It is difficult to separate the mythical and the philosophical 
 elements in this cosmogony of the Timaeus, especially difficult to 
 determine how far the historical construction, which gives a suc- 
 cession in time to the acts of creation, is only a formal one, and 
 also how far the affirmation that matter is absolutely a not-being 
 can be harmonized with the general tenor of Plato's statements. 
 The significance of the world-soul is clearer. Since the soul in 
 5 
 
98 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 the Platonic system is the mean between spirit and body, and as 
 in the same way mathematical relations, in their most universal 
 expression as numbers, are the mean between mere sensuous ex- 
 istence and the pure idea (between the one and the many as Plato 
 expresses it), it would seem clear that the world-soul, construed 
 according to the relation of numbers, must express the relation of 
 the world of ideas to that of sense, in other words, that it denotes 
 the sensible world as a thought represented in the form of material 
 existence. The Platonic view of nature, in opposition to the 
 mechanical attempts to explain it of the earlier philosophers, is 
 entirely teleological, and based upon the conception of the good, 
 or, on the moral idea. Plato conceives the world as the image of 
 the good, as the work of the divine munificence. As it is the 
 image of the perfect it is therefore only one, corresponding to the 
 idea of the single all-embracing substance, for an infinite number 
 of worlds is not to be conceived as actual. For the same reason 
 the world is spherical, after the most perfect and uniform struc- 
 ture, which embraces in itself all other forms ; its movement is in 
 a circle, because this, by returning into itself, is most like the 
 movement of reason. The particular points of the Timaeus, the 
 derivation of the four elements, the separation of the seven planets 
 according to the musical scale, the opinion that the stars were im- 
 mortal and heavenly substances, the affirmation that the earth 
 holds an abiding position in the middle of the world, a view which 
 subsequently became elaborated to the Ptolemaic system, the re- 
 ference of all material figures to the triangle as the simplest plane 
 figure, the division of inanimate nature, according to the four ele- 
 ments, into creatures of earth, water, and air, his discussions re- 
 specting organic nature, and especially respecting the construction 
 of the human body — all these we need here only mention. Their 
 philosophical worth consists not so much in their material content, 
 but rather in their fundamental idea, that the world should be 
 conceived as the image and the work of reason, as an organism 
 of order, harmony, and beauty, as the good actualizing itself 
 
 2. The Soul. — The doctrine of the soul, considering it simply 
 as the basis of a moral action, and leaving out of view all ques- 
 
PLATO. 
 
 99 
 
 tions of concrete ethics, forms a constituent element in the Pla- 
 tonic physics. Since the soul is united to the body, it participates 
 in the motions and changes of the body, and is, in this respect, 
 related to the perishable. But in so far as it participates in the 
 knowledge of the eternal, i. e. in so far as it knows ideas, does 
 there live within it a divine principle — reason. Accordingly, 
 Plato distinguishes two components of the soul — the divine and the 
 mortal, the rational and the irrational. These two are united by 
 an intermediate link, which Plato calls -^v/xos or spirit, and which, 
 though allied to reason is not reason itself, since it is often exhibi- 
 ted in children and also in brutes, and since even men are often car- 
 ried away by it without reflection. This threefol dness, here exhibited 
 psychologically, is found, in different applications, through all the 
 last general period of Plato's literary life. Based upon the anthro- 
 pological triplicate of reason, soul and body, it corresponds also to 
 the division of theoretical knowledge into science (or thinking), 
 correct opinions (or sense-perception), and ignorance, to the triple 
 ladder of eroticism in the Symposium and the mythological repre- 
 sentation connected with this of Poros, Eros, and Penia ; to the 
 metaphysical triplicate of the ideal world, mathematical relations 
 and the sensible world ; and furnishes ground for deriving the 
 ethical division of virtue and the political division of ranks. 
 
 So far as the soul is a mean between the spiritual and cor- 
 poreal, may we connect the Phaedon's proofs of its immortality 
 with the psychological view now before us. The common thought 
 of these arguments is that the soul, in its capacity for thinking, 
 participates in the reason, and being thus of an opposite nature to, 
 and uncontrolled by the corporeal, it may have an independent 
 existence. The arguments are wholly analytical, and possess no 
 valid and universal proof ; they proceed entirely upon a petitio 
 princijoii, they are derived partly from mythical philosophemes, 
 and manifest not only an obscure conception of the soul, but of its 
 relations to the body and the reason, and, so far as the relation of 
 the soul to the ideal world is in view, they furnish in the best case 
 only some proof for the immortality of him who has raised his 
 soul to a pure spirit, i. e. the immortality of the philosopher. Plato 
 
100 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 was not himself deceived as to the theoretical insufficiency of his 
 arguments. Their number would show this, and, besides, he ex- 
 pressly calls them proofs which amount to only human probability, 
 and furnish practical postulates alone. With this view he intro- 
 duces at the close of his arguments the myth of the lower world, 
 and the state of departed souls, in order, by complying with the 
 religious notions, and traditions of his countrymen, to gain a pos- 
 itive support for belief in the soul's immortality. Elsewhere 
 Plato also speaks of the lower world, and of the future rewards 
 and punishments of the good and the evil, in accordance with the 
 popular notions, as though he saw the elements of a divine revela- 
 tion therein ; he tells of purifying punishment in Hades, analo- 
 gous to a purgatory ; he avails himself of the common notion to 
 affirm that shades still subject to the corporeal principle will 
 hover after death over their graves, seeking to recover their life- 
 less bodies, and at times he dilates upon the migration of the soul 
 to various human and brute forms. On the whole, we find in 
 Plato's proofs of immortality, as in his psychology generally, that 
 dualism, which here expresses itself as hatred to the corporeal, 
 and is connected with the tendency to seek the ultimate ground 
 of evil in the nature of the " different" and the sensible world. 
 
 VI. The Platonic Ethics. — The ground idea of the good, 
 which in physics served only as an inventive conception, finds 
 now, in the ethics, its true exhibition. Plato has developed it 
 prominently according to three sides, as good, as individual virtue, 
 and as ethical world in the state. The conception of duty re- 
 mains in the background with him as with the older philosophers. 
 
 1. Good and Pleasure. — That the highest good can be noth- 
 ing other than the idea of the good itself, has already been shown 
 in the dialectics, where this idea was suffered to appear as the ulti- 
 mate end of all our striving. But since the dialectics represent 
 the supreme good as unattainable by human reason, and only cog 
 nizable in its different modes of manifestation, we can, therefore 
 only follow these different manifestations of the highest gooa, 
 which represent not the good itself, but the good in becoming, 
 where it appears as science, truth, beauty, virtue, &c. We are 
 
PLATO. 
 
 101 
 
 thus not required to be equal to God, but only like him (ThecEi.) 
 It is this point of view which lies at the basis of the graduated 
 table of good, given in the Philebus. 
 
 In seeking the highest good, the conception of pleasure must 
 be investigated. The Platonic stand-point here is the attempt to 
 strike a balance between Hedonism, (the Cyrenian theory that 
 pleasure is the highest good, cf. ^ XIII. 3), and Cynicism. While 
 he will not admit with Aristippus that pleasure is the true good, 
 neither will he find it as the Cynics maintain, simply in the nega- 
 tion of its contrary, pain, and thus deny that it belongs to the 
 good things of human life. He finds his refutation of Hedonism 
 in the indeterminateness and relativity of all pleasure, since that 
 which at one time may seem as pleasure, under other circum- 
 stances may appear as pain ; and since he who chooses pleasure 
 without distinction, will find impure pleasures always combined 
 in his life with more or less of pain ; his refutation of Cynicism 
 he establishes by showing the necessary connection between virtue 
 and true pleasure, showing that there is a true and enduring plea- 
 sure, the pleasure of reason, found in the possession of truth and 
 of goodness, while a rational condition separate from all pleasure, 
 cannot be the highest good of a finite being. It is most promi- 
 nently by this distinction of a true and false, of a pure and im- 
 pure pleasure, that Plato adjusts the controversy of the two 
 Socratic schools. — A detailed exhibition of the Philebus we must 
 here omit. — On the whole, in the Platonic apprehension of plea- 
 sure, we cannot but notice that same vacillation with which Plato 
 every where treats of the relation between the corporeal and the 
 spiritual, at one time considering the former as a hindrance to the 
 latter, and at another as its serving instrument ; now, regarding it 
 as a concurring cause to the good, and then, as the ground of all 
 evil ; here, as something purely negative, and there, as a positive 
 substratum which supports all the higher intellectual develop- 
 ments; and in conformity with this, pleasure is also considered at 
 one time as something equivalent to a moral act, and to knowl- 
 edge, and at another as the means and accidental consequence of 
 the good. 
 
102 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 2. Virtue. — In Ms theory of virtue, Plato is wholly Socratic. 
 He holds fast to the opinion that it is science {Protagoras), and 
 therefore, teachable (Meno), and as to its unity, it follows from 
 the dialectical principle that the one can be manifold, or the man- 
 ifold one, that, therefore, virtue must both be regarded as one, 
 and also in a different respect, as many. Plato thus brings out 
 prominently the union and connection of all virtues, and is fond 
 of painting, especially in the introductory dialogues, some single 
 virtue as comprising in itself the sum of. all the rest. Plato fol- 
 lows for the most part the fourfold division of virtues, as popu- 
 larly made; and first, in the Republic (TV. 441), he attempts a 
 scientific derivation of them, by referring to each of the three 
 parts of the soul its appropriate virtue The virtue of the reason 
 he calls prudence or wisdom, the directing or measuring virtue, 
 without whose activity valor would sink to brute impulse, and 
 calm endurance to stupid indifference; the virtue of spirit is 
 valor, the help-meet of reason, or spirit (S-v}x6<s) penetrated by 
 science, which in the struggle against pleasure and pain, desire 
 and fear, preserves the rational intelligence against the alarms 
 with which sensuous desires, would seek to sway the soul ; the 
 virtue of the sensuous desires, and which has to reduce these 
 within true and proper grounds, is temperance, and that virtue in 
 fine to which belong the due regulation and mutual adjustment of 
 the several powers of the soul, and which, therefore, constitutes 
 the bond and the unity of the three other virtues, is justice. 
 
 In this last conception, that of justice, all the elements of 
 moral culture meet together and centre, exhibiting the moral life 
 of the individual as a perfect whole, and then, by requiring an 
 application of the same principle to communities, the moral con- 
 sideration is advanced beyond the narrow circle of individual 
 life. Thus is established the whole of the moral world — Justice 
 " in great letters," the moral life in its complete totality, is the 
 state. In this is first actualized the demand for the complete 
 harmony of the human life. In and through the state comes the 
 complete formation of matter for the reason. 
 
 3. The State. — The Platonic state is generally regarded as 
 
PLATO. 
 
 103 
 
 an ideal or chimera, which it is impracticable to realize among 
 men. This view of the case has even been ascribed to Plato, and 
 it has been said that in his Eejpuhlic he attempted to sketch only 
 a fine ideal of a state constitution, while in the Laivs he traced 
 out a practicable philosophy of the state from the stand-point of 
 the common consciousness. But in the first place, this was not 
 Plato's true meaning. Although he acknowledges that the state 
 he describes cannot be found on earth, and has its archetype only 
 in heaven, by which the philosopher ought to form himself (IX. 
 592), still he demands that efforts should be made to realize it 
 here, and he even attempts to show the conditions and means un- 
 der which such a state could be made actual, not overlooking in 
 all this the defects arising from the different characters and tem- 
 peraments of men. A composition, dissociated from the idea, 
 could only appear untrue to a philosopher like Plato, who saw 
 the actual and the true only in the idea ; and the common view 
 which supposes that he wrote his Eepublic in the full conscious- 
 ness of its impracticability, mistakes entirely the stand-point of 
 the Platonic philosophy. Still farther the question whether such 
 a state as the Platonic is attainable and the best, is generally per- 
 verted. The Platonic state is the Grecian state-idea given in a 
 narrative form. It is no vain and powerless ideal to picture the 
 idea as a rational principle in every moment of the world's history, 
 since the idea itself is that which is absolutely actual, that which 
 is essential and necessary in existing things. The truly ideal 
 ought not to be actual, but is actual, and the only actual ; if an 
 idea were too good for existence, or the empirical actuality too 
 bad for it, then were this a fault of the ideal itself. Plato has 
 not given himself up merely to abstract theories ; the philosopher 
 cannot leap beyond his age, but can only see and grasp it in its 
 true content. This Plato has done. His stand-point is his own 
 age. He looks upon the political life of the Greeks as then exist- 
 ing, and it is this life, exalted to its idea, which forms the real 
 content of the Platonic Republic. Plato has here represented 
 the Grecian morality in its substantial condition. If the Platonic 
 Republic seems prominently an ideal which can never be realized 
 
104 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 this is owing much less to its ideality than to the defects of 
 the old political life. The most prominent characteristic of the 
 Hellenic conception of the state, before the Greeks began to fall 
 into unbridled licentiousness, was the constraint thrown upon 
 personal subjective freedom, in the sacrifice of every individual 
 interest to the absolute sovereignty of the state. With Plato 
 also, the state is every thing. His political institutions, so loudly 
 ridiculed by the ancients, are only the undeniable consequences 
 following from the very idea of the Grecian state, which allowed 
 neither to the individual citizen nor to a corporation, any lawful 
 sphere of action independent of itself. 
 
 The grand feature of the Platonic state is, as has been said, 
 the exclusive sacrifice of the individual to the state, the reference 
 of moral to political virtue. Since man cannot reach his complete 
 development in isolation but only as a member of an organic soci- 
 ety (the state), Plato therefore concludes that the individual pur- 
 pose should wholly conform to the general aim, and that the state 
 must represent a perfect and harmonious unity, and be a counterpart 
 of the moral life of the individual. In a perfect state all things, 
 joy and sorrow, and even eyes, ears and hands, must be common 
 to all, so that the social life would be as it were the life of one 
 man. This perfect universality and unity, can only be actualized 
 when every thing individual and particular falls away, and hence 
 the difficulty of the Platonic Republic. Private property and 
 domestic life (in place of which comes a community of goods and 
 of wives), the duty of education, the choice of rank and profession, 
 the arts and sciences, all these must be subjected and placed un- 
 der the exclusive and absolute control of the state. The individ- 
 ual may lay claim only to that happiness which belongs to him as 
 a constituent element of the state. From this point Plato goes 
 down into the minutest particulars, and gives the closest directions 
 respecting gymnastics and music, which form the two means of 
 culture of the higher ranks ; respecting the study of mathematics, 
 and philosophy, the choice of stringed instruments, and the proper 
 measure of verse ; respecting bodily exercise and the service of 
 women in war ; respecting marriage settlements, and the age at 
 
PLATO. 
 
 105 
 
 wtich any one should study dialectics, marry, and beget children. 
 The state with him is only a great educational establishment, a 
 family in the mass. — Lyric poetry he would allow only under the 
 inspection of competent judges. Epic and dramatic poetry, even 
 Homer and Hesiod, should be banished from the state, since they 
 rouse and lead astray the passions, and give unworthy representa- 
 tions of the gods. Exhibitions of physical degeneracy or weak- 
 ness should not be tolerated in the Platonic state ; deformed and 
 sickly infants should be abandoned, and food and attention should 
 be denied to the sick. — In all this we find the chief antithesis of 
 the ancient to the modern state. Plato did not recognize the will 
 and choice of the individual, and yet the individual has a right to 
 demand this. The problem of the modern state has been to unite 
 these two sides, to bring the universal end and the particular end 
 of the individual into harmony, to reconcile the highest possible 
 freedom of the conscious individual will, with the highest possible 
 supremacy of the state. 
 
 The political institutions of the Platonic state are decidedly 
 aristocratic. Grown up in opposition to the extravagances of the 
 Athenian democracy, Plato prefers an absolute monarchy to every 
 other constitution, though this should have as its absolute ruler 
 only the perfect philosopher. It is a well-known expression of his, 
 that the state can only attain its end when philosophers become 
 its rulers, or when its present rulers have carried their studies so 
 far and so accurately, that they can unite philosophy with a super- 
 intendence of public affairs (Y. 473). His reason for claiming 
 that the sovereign power should be vested only in one, is the fact 
 that very few are endowed with political wisdom. This ideal of 
 an absolute ruler who should be able to lead the state perfectly, 
 Plato abandons in the Laivs^ in which work he shows his prefer- 
 ence for a mixed constitution, embracing both a monarchical and 
 an aristocratic element. From the aristocratic tendency of the 
 Platonic ideal of a state, follows farther the sharp division of 
 ranks, and the total exclusion of the third rank from a proper 
 political life. In reality Plato makes but two classes in his state, 
 the subjects and the sovereign, analogous to his twofold psycho- 
 
106 
 
 A fflSTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 logical division of sensible and intellectual, mortal and immortal , 
 but as in psychology he had introduced a middle step, spirit, to 
 stand between his two divisions there, so in the state he brings in 
 the military class between the ruler and those intended to supply 
 the bodily wants of the community. We have thus three ranks, 
 that of the ruler, corresponding to the reason, that of the watcher 
 or warrior, answering to spirit, and that of the craftsman, which 
 is made parallel to the appetites or sensuous desires. To these 
 three ranks belong three separate functions : to the first, that of 
 making the law and caring for the general good ; to the second, 
 that of defending the public welfare from attacks of external foes; 
 and to the third, the care of separate interests and wants, as agri- 
 culture, mechanics, &c. From each of these three ranks and its 
 functions the state derives a peculiar virtue — wisdom from the 
 ruler, bravery from the warrior, and temperance from the crafts- 
 man, so far as he lives in obedience to his rulers. In the proper 
 union of these three virtues is found the justice of the state, a 
 virtue which is thus the sum of all other virtues. Plato pays 
 little attention to the lowest rank, that of the craftsman, who exists 
 in the state only as means. He held that it was not necessary to 
 give laws and care for the rights of this portion of the community. 
 The separation between the ruler and the warrior is not so broad. 
 PJato suffers these two ranks to interpenetrate each other, and 
 analogous to his original psychological division, as though the 
 reason were but spirit in the highest step of its development, h3 
 makes the oldest and the best of the warriors rise to the dignity 
 and power of the rulers. The education of its warriors should 
 therefore be a chief care of the state, in order that their spirit, 
 i hough losing none of its peculiar energy, may yet be penetrated 
 by reason. The best endowed by nature and culture among the 
 warriors, may be selected at the age of thirty, and put upon a 
 course of careful training. When he has reached the age of fifty 
 and looked upon the idea of the good, he may be bound to actual- 
 ize this archetype in the state, provided always that every one 
 wait his turn, ai:d spend his remaining time in philosophy. Only 
 thus can the state be raised to the unconditioned rule of reason 
 under the supremacy of the good. 
 
THE OLD ACADEMY. 
 
 107 
 
 SECTION XV. 
 
 THE OLD ACADEMY. 
 
 In the old Academy, we lose the presence of inventive genius ; 
 with few exceptions we find here no movements of progress, but 
 rather a gradual retrogression of the Platonic philosophizing. 
 After the death of Plato, Speusippus, his nephew and disciple, 
 held the chair of his master in the Academy during eight years. 
 He was succeeded by Xenocrates, after whom we meet with Polemo, 
 Crates, and Crantor. It was a time in which schools for high 
 culture were established, and the older teacher yielded to his 
 younger successor the post of instruction. The general charac- 
 teristics of the old Academy, so far as can be gathered from the 
 scanty accounts, were great attention to learning, the prevalence 
 of Pythagorean elements, especially the doctrine of numbers, and 
 lastly, the reception of fantastic and demonological notions, among 
 which the worship of the stars played a part. The prevalence 
 of the Pythagorean doctrine of numbers in the later instruc- 
 tions of the Academy, gave to mathematical sciences, particularly 
 arithmetic and astronomy, a high place, and at the same time as- 
 signed to the docrine of ideas a much lower position than Plato 
 had given it. Subsequently, the attempt was made to get back 
 to the unadulterated doctrine of Plato. Crantor is said to be the 
 first editor of the Platonic writings. 
 
 As Plato was the only true Socraticist, so was Aristotle the 
 only genuine disciple of Plato, though often abused by his fellow- 
 disciples as unfaithful to his master's principles. 
 
 We pass on at once to him, without stopping now to inquire 
 into his relation to Plato, or the advance which he made beyond 
 his predecessor, since these points will come up before us in the 
 exhibition of the Aristotelian philosophy. {See § XYI : III. 1.) 
 
108 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHTLOSOPHY. 
 
 SECTION XVI. 
 
 ARISTOTLE. 
 
 I. Life and Writings of Aristotle. — Aristotle was born 
 384 B. C. at Stagira, a Greek colony in Thrace. His father, 
 Nicomachus, was a physician, and the friend of Amyntas, king 
 of Macedonia. The former fact may have had its influence in 
 determining the scientific direction of the son, and the latter may 
 have procured his subsequent summons to the Macedonian court. 
 Aristotle at a very early age lost both his parents. In his seven- 
 teenth year he came to Plato at Athens, and continued with him 
 twenty years. On account of his indomitable zeal for study, 
 Plato named him " the Teacher," and said, upon comparing him 
 with Xenocrates, that the latter required the spur, the former the 
 bit. Among the many charges made against his character, most 
 prominent are those of jealousy and ingratitude towards his mas- 
 ter, but most of the anecdotes in which these charges are embo- 
 died merit little credence. It is certain that Aristotle, after 
 the death of Plato, stood in friendly relations with Xenocrates ; 
 still, as a writer, he can hardly be absolved from a certain want 
 of friendship and regard towards Plato and his philosophy, 
 though all this can be explained on psychological grounds. Af- 
 ter Plato's death, Aristotle went with Xenocrates to Hermeas, 
 tyrant of Atarneus, whose sister Pythias he married after Her- 
 meas had fallen a prey to Persian violence. After the death of 
 Pythias he is said to have married his concubine, Herpyllis, who 
 was the mother of his son Nicomachus. In the year 343 he was 
 called by Philip of Macedon, to take the charge of the education 
 of his son Alexander, then thirteen years old. Both father and 
 son honored him highly, and the latter, with royal munificence, 
 subsequently supported him in his studies. When Alexander 
 went to Persia, Aristotle betook himself to Athens, and taught 
 in the Lyceum, the only gymnasium then vacant, since Xenocrates 
 had possession of the Academy, and the Cynics of the Cyno- 
 
AKISTOTLE. 
 
 109 
 
 eaerges. From the shady walks (TreptVaTot) of the Lyceum, in 
 which Aristotle was accustomed to walk and expound his philos- 
 ophy, his school received the name of the Peripatetic. Aristotle 
 is said to have spent his mornings with his more mature disciples, 
 exercising them in the profoundest questions of philosophy, while 
 his evenings were occupied with a greater number of pupils in a 
 more general and preparatory instruction. The former investiga- 
 tions were called acroamatic, the latter exoteric. He abode at 
 Athens, and taught thirteen years, and then, after the death of 
 Alexander, whose displeasure he had incurred, he is said to have 
 been accused by the Athenians of impiety towards the gods, and 
 to have fled to Chalcis, in order to escape a fate similar to that 
 of Socrates. He died in the year 322 at Chalcis, in Eubaea. 
 
 Aristotle left a vast number of writingSj of which the smaller 
 (perhaps a fourth), but unquestionably the more important portion 
 have come down to us, though in a form which cannot be received 
 without some scruples. The story of Strabo about the fate of 
 the Aristotelian writings, and the injury which they suff'ered in 
 a cellar at Scepsis, is confessedly a fable, or at least limited to 
 the original manuscripts; but the fragmentary and descriptive 
 form which many among them, and even the most important {e. g. 
 the metaphysics) possess, the fact that scattered portions of one 
 and the same work {e. g. the ethics) are repeatedly found in dif- 
 ferent treatises, the irregularities and striking contradictions in 
 one and the same writing, the disagreement found in other par- 
 ticulars among different works, and the distinction made by Aris- 
 totle himself between acroamatic and exoterical writings, all this 
 gives reason to believe that we have, for the most part, before us 
 only his oral lectures written down, and subsequently edited by 
 his scholars. 
 
 II. Universal Character and Division of the Aristote- 
 lian Philosophy. — With Plato, philosophy had been national in 
 both its form and content, but with Aristotle, it loses its Hellenic 
 peculiarity, and becomes universal in scope and meaning ; the 
 Platonic dialogue changes into barren prose ; a rigid, artistic 
 language takes the place of the mythical and poetical dress ; the 
 
110 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 thinking which had been with Plato intuitive, is with Aristotle 
 discursive ; the immediate beholding of reason in the former, be- 
 comes reflection and conception in the latter. Turning away 
 from the Platonic unity of all being, Aristotle prefers to direct 
 his attention to the manifoldness of the phenomenal ; he seeks 
 the idea only in its concrete actualization, and consequently grasps 
 the particular far more prominently in its peculiar determinate- 
 ness and reciprocal difi"erences, than in its connection with the 
 idea. He embraces with equal interest the facts given in nature, 
 in history, and in the inner life of man. But he ever tends 
 toward the individual, he must ever have a fact given in order to 
 develop e his thought upon it ; it is always the empirical, the ac- 
 tual, which solicits and guides his speculation ; his whole course 
 is a description of the facts given, and only merits the name of a 
 philosophy because it comprehends the empirical in its totality 
 and synthesis ; because it has carried out its induction to the far- 
 thest extent. Only because he is the absolute empiricist may 
 Aristotle be called the truly philosopher. 
 
 This character of the Aristotelian philosophy explains at the 
 outset its encyclopedian tendency, inasmuch as every thing 
 given in experience is equally worthy of regard and investigation. 
 Aristotle is thus the founder of many courses of study unknown 
 before him ; he is not only the father of logic, but also of natural 
 history, empirical psychology, and the science of natural rights. 
 
 This devotion of Aristotle to that which is given will also ex- 
 plain his predominant inclination towards physics, for nature is the 
 most immediate and actual. Connected also with this is the fact 
 that Aristotle is the first among philosophers who has given to 
 history and its tendencies an accurate attention. The first book 
 of the Metaphysics is also the first attempt at a history of phi- 
 losophy, as his politics is the first critical history of the difierent 
 states and constitutions. In both these cases he brings out his 
 own theory only as the consequence of that which has been his- 
 torically given, basing it in the former case upon the works of his 
 predecessors, and in the latter case upon the constitutions which 
 lie before him. 
 
ARISTOTLE. 
 
 Ill 
 
 It is clear that according to this, the method of Aristotle must 
 be a different one from that of Plato. Instead of proceeding like 
 the latter, synthetically and dialectically, he pursues for the most 
 part an analytic and regressive course, that is, going backward 
 from the concrete to its ultimate ground and determination. 
 While Plato would take his stand-point in the idea, in order to 
 explain from this position and set in a clearer light that which is 
 given and empirical, Aristotle on the other hand, starts with that 
 which is given, in order to find and exhibit the idea in it. His 
 method is, hence, induction; that is, the derivation of certain 
 principles and maxims from a sum of given facts and phenomena; 
 his mode of procedure is, usually, argument, a barren balancing 
 of facts, phenomena, circumstances and possibilities. He stands 
 out for the most part only as the thoughtful observer. Renoun- 
 cing all claim to universality and necessity in his results, he is con- 
 tent to have brought out that which has an approximative truth, 
 and the highest degree of probability. He often affirms that 
 science does not simply relate to the changeless and necessary, but 
 also to that which ordinarily takes place, that being alone ex- 
 cluded from its province, which is strictly accidental. Philoso- 
 phy, consequently, has with him the character and worth of a 
 reckoning of probabilities, and his mode of exhibition assumes 
 not unfrequently only the form of a doubtful deliberation. Hence 
 there is no trace of the Platonic ideals, hence, also, his repugnance 
 to a glowing and poetic style in philosophy, a repugnance which, 
 while indeed it induces in him a fixed, philosophical terminology, 
 also frequently leads him to mistake and misrepresent the opinions 
 of his predecessors. Hence, also, in whatever he treated, his 
 thorough adherence to that which is actually given. 
 
 Connected in fine with the empirical character of the Aristo- 
 telian philosophizing, is the fragmentary form of his writings, and 
 their want of a systematic division and arrangement. Proceed- 
 ing always in the line of that which is given, from individual to 
 individual, he considers every province of the actual by itself, 
 and makes it the subject of a separate treatise ; but he, for the 
 most part, fails to indicate the lines by which the different parts 
 
112 
 
 A HISTORr OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 hang together, and are comprehended in a systematic whole. 
 Thus he holds up a number of co-ordinate sciences, each one of 
 which has an independent basis, but he fails to give us the highest 
 science which embraces them all. The principle is sometimes 
 affirmed that all the writings follow the idea of a whole ; but in 
 their procedure there is such a want of all systematic connection, 
 and every one of his writings is a monograph so thoroughly inde- 
 pendent and complete in itself, that we are sometimes puzzled to 
 know what Aristotle himself received as a part of philosophy, and 
 what he excluded. We are never furnished with an independent 
 scheme or outline, we rarely find definite results or summary ex- 
 planations, and even the difi"erent divisions of philosophy which 
 he gives, vary essentially from one another. At one time he 
 divides science into theoretical and practical, at another, he adds 
 to these two a poetical creative science, while still again he speaks 
 of the three parts of science, ethics, physics, and logic. At one 
 time he divides the theoretical philosophy into logic and physics, 
 and at another into theology, mathematics, and physics. Eut no 
 one of these divisions has he expressly given as the basis on which 
 to represent his system ; he himself places no value upon this 
 method of division, and, indeed, openly declares himself opposed 
 to it. It is, therefore, only for the sake of uniformity that we 
 can give the preference here to the threefold division of philoso- 
 phy as already adopted by Plato. 
 
 III. Logic and Metaphysics. 1. Coxception and Rela- 
 tion OF THE Two. — The word metaphysics was first furnished by 
 the Aristotelian commentators. Plato had used the term dialec- 
 tics, and Aristotle had characterized the same thing as " first phi- 
 losophy," while he calls physics the " second philosophy." The 
 relation of this first philosophy to the other sciences Aristotle de- 
 termines in the following way. Every science, he says, must have 
 for investigation a determined province and separate form of being, 
 but none of these sciences reaches the conception of being itself 
 Hence there is needed a science which should investigate that 
 which the other sciences take up hypothetically, or through ex- 
 perience. This is done by the first philosophy which has to do 
 
ARISTOTLE. 
 
 113 
 
 with being as such, while the other sciences relate only to deter- 
 mined and concrete being. The metaphysics, which is this science 
 of being and its primitive grounds, is the first philosophy, since 
 it is presupposed by every other discipline. Thus, says Aristotle, 
 if there were only a physical substance, then would physics be the 
 first and the only philosophy, but if there be an immaterial and 
 unmoved essence which is the ground of all being, then must there 
 also be an antecedent, and because it is antecedent, a universal 
 philosophy. The first ground of all being is God, whence Aris- 
 totle occasionally gives to the first philosophy the name of theo 
 
 logy- 
 It is difficult to determine the relation between this first phi- 
 losophy as the science of the ultimate ground of things, and that 
 science which is ordinarily termed the logic of Aristotle, and 
 which is exhibited in the writings bearing the name of the Orga- 
 non. Aristotle himself has not accurately examined the relations 
 of these two sciences, the reason of which is doubtless to be found 
 in the incomplete form of the metaphysics. But since he has em- 
 braced them both under the same name of logic, since the investi- 
 gation of the essence of things (VII. 17), and the doctrine of 
 ideas (XIII. 5), are expressly called logical, since he repeatedly 
 attempts in the Metaphysics {Booh lY.), to establish the logical 
 principle of contradiction as an absolute presupposition for all 
 thinking and speaking and philosophizing, and employs the me- 
 thod of argument belonging to that science which has to do with 
 the essence of things (III. 2. lY. 3), and since, in fine, the cate- 
 gories to which he had already dedicated a separate book in the 
 Organon are also discussed again in the Metaphysics [Booh Y.), 
 it follows that this much at least may be affirmed with certainty, 
 that he would not absolutely separate the investigations of the 
 Organon from those of the Metaphysics, and that he would not 
 counsel the ordinary division of formal logic and metaphysics, 
 although he has omitted to show more clearly their inner connec- 
 tion. 
 
 2. Logic. — The great problem both of the logical faculty and 
 also of logic both as science and art, consists in this, viz., to form 
 
114 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 and judge of conclusions, and through conclusions to be able to 
 establish a proof. The conclusions, however, arise from proposi- 
 tions, and the propositions from conceptions. According to this 
 natural point of view, which lies in the very nature of the case, 
 Aristotle has divided the content of the logical and dialectical 
 doctrine contained in the different treatises of the Organon. The 
 first treatise in the Organon is that containing the categories^ a 
 work which treats of the universal determinations of being, and 
 gives the first attempt at an ontology. Of these categories Aris- 
 totle enumerates ten ; essence, magnitude, quality, relation, the 
 where, the when, position, habit, action, and passion. The second 
 treatise (de interpretatione) investigates speech as the expression 
 of thought, and discusses the doctrine of the parts of speech, pro- 
 positions and judgments. The third are the analytic books, which 
 show how conclusions may be referred back to their principles 
 and arranged in order of their antecedence. The first Analytic 
 contains in two books the universal doctrine of the Syllogism. 
 Conclusions are according to their content and end either apodic- 
 tic, which possess a certain and incontrovertible truth, or dialectic, 
 which are directed toward that which may be disputed and is 
 probable, or, finally, sophistic, which are announced deceptively 
 as correct conclusions while they are not. The doctrine of apo- 
 dictic conclusions and thus of proofs is given in the two books of 
 the second Analytic, that of dialectic, is furnished in the eight 
 books of the Topic, and that of sophistic in the treatise concern- 
 ing " Sophistical Convictions." 
 
 A closer statement of the Aristotelian logic would be familiar 
 to every one, since the formal'^epresentations of this science ordi- 
 narily given, employ for the most part only the material furnished 
 by Aristotle. Kant has remarked, that since the time of the 
 Grecian sage, logic has made neither progress nor retrogression. 
 Only in two points has the formal logic of our time advanced be- 
 yond that of Aristotle ; first, in adding to the categorical conclu- 
 sion which was the only one Aristotle had in mind, the hypothetical 
 and disjunctive, and second, in adding the fourth to the first three 
 figures of conclusion. But the incompleteness of the Aristotelian 
 
ARISTOTLE. 
 
 115 
 
 logic, which might be pardoned in the founder of this science, yet 
 abides, and its thoroughly empirical method not only still con- 
 tinues, but has even been exalted to a principle by making the 
 antithesis, which Aristotle did not, between the form of a thought 
 and the content. Aristotle, in reality, only attempted to collect 
 the logical facts in reference to the formation of propositions, and 
 the method of conclusions ; he has given in his logic only the 
 natural history of finite thinking. However highly now we may 
 rate the correctness of his abstraction, and the clearness with 
 which he brings into consciousness the logical operation of the 
 understanding, we must make equally conspicuous with this the 
 want of all scientific derivation and foundation. The ten catego- 
 ries which he, as already remarked, has discussed in a separate 
 treatise, he simply mentions, without furnishing any ground or 
 principle for this enumeration; that there are this number of 
 categories is only a matter of fact to him, and he even cites them 
 differently in different writings. In the same way also he takes 
 up the figures of the conclusion empirically ; he considers them 
 only as forms and determinations of relation of the formal think- 
 ing, and continues thus, although he allows the conclusion to stand 
 for the only form of science within the province of the logic of the 
 understanding. Neither in his Metaphysics nor in his Physics 
 does he cite the rules of the formal methods of conclusion which 
 he develops in the Organon, clearly proving that he has nowhere 
 in his system properly elaborated either his categories or his 
 analytic ; his logical investigations do not influence generally the 
 development of his philosophical thought, but have for the most 
 part only the value of a preliminary scrutiny. 
 
 3. Metaphysics. — Among all the Aristotelian writings, the 
 Metaphysics is least entitled to be called a connected whole ; it is 
 only a connection of sketches, which, though they follow a certain 
 fundamental idea, utterly fail of an inner mediation and a per- 
 fect development. We may distinguish in i$ seven distinct 
 groups. (1) Criticism of the previous philosophic systems viewed in 
 the light of the four Aristotelian principles. Booh I. (2) Posit- 
 ing of the apories or the philosophical preliminary questions, 
 
116 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 III. (3) The principle of contradiction, IV. (4) DefinitionSj 
 V. (5) Examination of the conception of essence (ovo-lu) and 
 conceivable being (the tl rjv ilvai) or the conception of matter 
 (vXr]), form (elSos), and that which arises from the connection 
 of these two (oaVoAov), VII. VIII. (6) Potentiality and ac- 
 tuality, IX. (7) The Divine Spirit moving all, but itself un- 
 moved, XII. (8) To these we may add the polemic against the 
 Platonic doctrine of ideas and numbers, which runs through the 
 whole Metaphysics, but is especially carried out in Books XIII. 
 and XIV. 
 
 (1) The Aristotelian Criticism of the Platonic Doctrine of 
 Ideas. — In Aristotle's antagonism to the Platonic doctrine of 
 ideas, we must seek for the specific difference between the two 
 systems, a difference of which Aristotle avails himself of every 
 opportunity (especially 3Ietaph. I. and XIII.) to express. Plato 
 had beheld every thing actual in the idea, but the idea was to him 
 a rigid truth, which had not yet become interwoven with the life 
 and the movement of existence. Such a view, however, had this 
 difficulty, the idea, however little Plato would have it so, found 
 standing over against it in independent being the phenomenal 
 world, while it furnished no principle on which the being of the 
 phenomenal world could be affirmed. This Aristotle recognizes 
 and charges upon Plato, that his ideas were only " immortalized 
 things of sense," out of which the being and becoming of the 
 sensible could not be explained. In order to avoid this conse- 
 quence, he himself makes out an original reference of mind to 
 phenomenon, affirming that the relation of the two is, that of the 
 actual to the possible, or that of form to matter, and considering 
 ,also mind as the absolute actuality of matter, and matter, as the 
 potentially mind. His argument against the Platonic doctrine 
 of ideas, Aristotle makes out in the following way. 
 
 Passing by now the fact that Plato has furnished no satisfac- 
 tory proof for the objective and independent reality of ideas, and 
 that his theory is without vindication, we may affirm in the first 
 place that it is wholly unfruitful, since it possesses no ground of 
 explanation for being. The ideas have no proper and independent 
 
ARISTOTLE. 
 
 117 
 
 content. To see this -we need only refer to the manner in which 
 Plato introduced them. In order to make science possible he had 
 posited certain substances independent of the sensible, and unin- 
 fluenced by its changes. But to serve such a purpose, there was 
 offered to him nothing other than this individual thing of sense. 
 Hence he gave to this individual a universal form, which was 
 with him the idea. From this it resulted, that his ideas can 
 hardly be separated from the sensible and individual objects which 
 participate in them. The ideal duality and the empirical duality 
 is one and the same content. The truth of this we can readily 
 see, whenever we gain from the adherents to the doctrine of ideas 
 a definite statement respecting the peculiar character of their un- 
 changeable substances, in comparison with the sensible and indi- 
 vidual things which participate in them. The only difference 
 between the two consists in appending -per se to the names ex- 
 pressing the respective ideas ; thus, while the individual things are 
 e. g. man, horse, etc., the ideas are man per se, horse per se, etc. 
 There is only this formal change for the doctrine of ideas to rest 
 upon ; the finite content is not removed, but is only character- 
 ized as perpetual. This objection, that in the doctrine of ideas 
 we have in reality only the sensible posited as a not-sensible, and 
 endowed with the predicate of immutability, Aristotle urges as above 
 remarked when he calls the ideas " immortalized things of sense," 
 not as though they were actually something sensible and spacial, 
 but because in them the sensible individual loses at once its indi- 
 viduality, and becomes a universal. He compares them in this 
 respect with the gods of the popular and anthropomorphical reli- 
 gion ; as these are nothing but deified men, so the ideas are only 
 things of nature endowed with a supernatural potency, a sensible 
 exalted to a not-sensible. This identity between the ideas and 
 their respective individual things amounts moreover to this, that 
 the introduction of ideas doubles the objects to be known in a 
 burdensome manner, and without any good results. Why set up 
 the same thing over again ? Why besides the sensible twofold - 
 ness and threefoldness, affirm a twofoldness and threefoldness in 
 the idea ? The adherents of the doctrine of ideas, when they 
 
118 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 posit an idea for every class of natural things, and through this 
 theory set up two equivalent theories of sensible and not-sensible 
 substances, seem therefore to Aristotle like men who think they 
 can reckon better with many numbers than with few, and who 
 therefore go to multiplying their numbers before they begin their 
 reckoning. Therefore again the doctrine of ideas is a tautology, 
 and wholly unfruitful of the explanation of being. The ideas 
 give no aid to the knowledge of the individual things participa- 
 ting in them, since the ideas are not immanent in these things, 
 but separate from them." Equally unfruitful are the ideas when 
 considered in reference to the arising and departing of the things 
 of sense. They contain no principle of becoming, of movement. 
 There is in them no causality which might bring out the event, or 
 explain the event when it had actually happened. Themselves 
 without motion and process, if they had any effect, it could only 
 be that of perfect repose. True, Plato affirms in his Phaedon 
 that the ideas are causes both of being and becoming, but in spite 
 of the ideas, nothing ever hecomes without a moving; the ideas, 
 by their separation from the becoming, have no such capacity to 
 move. This indifferent relation of ideas to the actual becoming, 
 Aristotle brings under the " categories, potentiality and actuality, 
 and farther says that the ideas are only potential, they are only 
 bare possibility and essentiality because they are wanting in ac- 
 tuality. — The inner contradiction of the doctrine of ideas is in 
 brief this, viz., that it posits an individual immediately as a uni- 
 versal, and at the same time pronounces the universal, the species, 
 as numerically an individual, and also that the ideas are set up on 
 the one side as separate individual substances, and on the other 
 side as participant, and therefore as universal. Although the ideas 
 as the original conceptions of species are a universal, which arise 
 when being is fixed in existence, and the one brought out in the 
 many, and the abiding is given a place in the changeable, yet can 
 they not be defined as they should be according to the Platonic 
 notion, that they are individual sujbstances, for there can be neither 
 definition nor derivation of an absolute individual, since even the 
 word (and only in words is a definition possible) is in its nature a 
 
ARISTOTLE. 
 
 119 
 
 universal, and belongs also to other objects, consequently, every 
 predicate in which I attempt to determine an individual thing 
 cannot belong exclusively to that thing. The adherents of the 
 doctrine of ideas, are therefore not at all in a condition to give an 
 idea a conceivable termination ; their ideas are indefinable. — In 
 general, Plato has left the relation of the individual objects to 
 ideas very obscure. He calls the ideas archetypes, and allows 
 that the objects may participate in them ; yet are these only 
 poetical metaphors. How shall we represent to ourselves this 
 " participation," this copying of the original archetype ? We 
 seek in vain for more accurate explanations of this in Plato. It 
 is impossible to conceive how and why matter participates in the 
 ideas. In order to explain this, we must add to the ideas a still 
 higher and wider principle, which contains the cause for this " par- 
 ticipation" of objects, for without a moving principle we find no 
 ground for "participation." Alike above the idea {e. g. the idea 
 of man), and the phenomenon {e. g. the individual man), there 
 must stand a third common to both, and in which the two were 
 united, i. e. as Aristotle was in the habit of expressing this objec- 
 tion, the doctrine of ideas leads to the adoption of a " third man." 
 The result of this Aristotelian criticism is the immanence of the 
 universal in the individual. The method of Socrates in trying to 
 find the universal as the essence of the individual, and to give de- 
 finitions according to conception, was as correct (for no science is 
 possible without the universal) as the theory of Plato in exalting 
 these universal conceptions to an independent subsistence as real 
 individual substances, was erroneous. Nothing universal, nothing 
 which is a kind or a species, exists besides and separate from the 
 individual ; a thing and its conception cannot be separated from 
 each other. With these principles Aristotle hardly deviated from 
 Plato's fundamental idea that the universal is the only true being, 
 and the essence of individual things ; it may rather be said that 
 he has freed this idea from its original abstraction, and given it a 
 more profound mediation with the phenomenal world. Notwith- 
 standing his apparent contradiction to Plato, the fundamental 
 position of Aristotle is the same as that of his master, viz., that 
 
120 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 the essence of a thing (to rt eVrtv, to ri rjv dvai) is known and rep- 
 resented in the conception ; Aristotle however recognizes the uni- 
 versal, the conception to be as little separated from the determined 
 phenomenon as form from matter, and essence or substance (o^o-ta) 
 in its most proper sense is, according to him, only that which can- 
 not be predicated of another, though of this other every remain- 
 ing thing may be predicated ; it is that which is a this (toSc ti), 
 the individual thing and not a universal. 
 
 (2.) The four Aristotelian principles or causes^ and the 
 relation of form and matter. — From the criticism of the 
 Platonic doctrine of ideas arose directly the groundwork of 
 the Aristotelian system, the determinations of matter (vXrD^ 
 and form (etSos). Aristotle enumerates four metaphysical 
 principles or causes : matter, form, moving cause, and end. In 
 a house, for instance, the matter is the wood, the form is the 
 conception of the house, the moving cause is the builder, 
 and the end is the actual house. These four determinations 
 of all being resolve themselves upon a closer scrutiny into 
 the fundamental antithesis of matter and form. The concep- 
 tion of the moving cause is involved with the two other ideal 
 principles of form and of end. The moving cause is that which 
 has secured the transition of the incomplete actuality or poten- 
 tiality to the complete actuality, or induces the becoming of mat- 
 ter to form. But in every movement of the incomplete to the 
 complete, the latter antedates in conception this movement, and 
 is its motive. The moving cause of matter is therefore form. 
 So is man the moving and producing cause of man ; the form of 
 the statue in the understanding of the artist is the cause of the 
 movement by which the statue is produced ; health must be in the 
 thought of the physician before it can become the moving cause 
 of convalescence ; so in a certain degree is medicine, health, and 
 the art of building the form of the house. But in the same way, 
 the moving or first cause is also identical with the final cause or 
 end, for the end is the motive for all becoming and movement. 
 The moving cause of the house is the builder, but the moving 
 cause of the builder is the end to be attained, i. e. the house. 
 
ARISTOTLE. 
 
 121 
 
 From such examples as these it is seen that the determinations 
 of form and end may be considered under one, in so far as both 
 are united in the conception of actuality (ei/epyeta), for the end 
 of every thing is its completed being, its conception or its form, 
 the bringing out into complete actuality that which was poten- 
 tially contained in it. The end of the hand is its conception, the 
 end of the seed is the tree, which is at the same time the essence 
 of the seed. The only fundamental determinations, therefore, 
 which cannot be wholly resolved into each other, are matter and 
 form. 
 
 Matter when abstracted from form in thought, Aristotle re- 
 garded as that which was entirely without predicate, determina- 
 tion and distinction. It is that abiding thing which lies at the 
 basis of all becoming ; but which in its own being is different 
 from every thing which has become. It is capable of the widest 
 diversity of forms, but is itself without determinate form ; it is 
 every thing in possibility, but nothing in actuality. There is a 
 first matter which lies at the basis of every determinate thing, 
 precisely as the wood is related to the bench and the marble to 
 the statue. With this conception of matter Aristotle prides him- 
 self upon having conquered the difficulty so frequently urged of 
 explaining the possibility that any thing can become, since being 
 can neither come out of being nor out of not-being. For it is 
 not out of not-being absolutely, but only out of that which as to 
 actuality is not-being, but which potentially is being, that any 
 thing becomes. Possible or potential being is no more not-being 
 than actuality. Every existing object of nature is hence but a 
 potential thing which has become actualized. Matter is thus a 
 far more positive substratum with Aristotle than with Plato, who 
 had treated it as absolutely not-being. From this is clearly seen 
 how Aristotle could apprehend matter in opposition to form as 
 something positively negative and antithetic to the form, and as 
 its positive denial (o-repT^o-ts). 
 
 As matter coalesces with potentiality, so does form coincide 
 with actuality. It is that which makes a distinguishable and 
 actual object, a this (roSe n) out of the undistinguished and in- 
 6 
 
122 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 determinate matter ; it is the peculiar virtue, the completed ac- 
 tivity, the soul of every thing. That which Aristotle calls form, 
 therefore, is not to be confounded with what we perhaps may call 
 shape ; a hand severed from the arm, for instance, has still the 
 outward shape of a hand, but according to the Aristotelian appre- 
 hension, it is only a hand now as to matter and not as to form : an 
 actual hand, a hand as to form, is only that which can do the 
 proper work of a hand. Pure form is that which, in truth, is 
 without matter (to tL rjv dvaC) ; or, in other words, the conception 
 of being, the pure conception. But such pure form does not 
 exist in the realm of determined being ; every determined being, 
 every individual substance {ova la) ^ every thing which is a this, is 
 rather a totality of matter and form, a (a-vvoXov). It is, there- 
 fore, owing to matter, that being is not pure form and pure con- 
 ception ; matter is the ground of the becoming, the manifold, and 
 the accidental ; and it is this, also, which gives to science its 
 limits. For in precisely the measure in which the individual 
 thing bears in itself a material element is it uncognizable. From 
 what has been said, it follows that the opposition between matter 
 and form is a variable one, that being matter in one respect 
 which in another is form ; building-wood, e. g. is matter in rela- 
 tion to the completed house, but in relation to the unhewn tree it 
 is form ; the soul in respect to the body is form, but in respect to 
 the reason, which is the form of form (eTSo? ctSous) is it matter. 
 On this stand-point the totality of all existence may be repre- 
 sented as a ladder, whose lowest step is a prime matter (-Trpwrr] 
 vXr]), which is not at all form, and whose highest step is an ultimate 
 form which is not at all matter, but is pure form (the absolute, 
 divine spirit). That which stands between these two points is in 
 one respect matter, and in another respect form, i. e. the former 
 is ever translating itself into the latter. This position, which 
 lies at the basis of the Aristotelian view of nature, is attained 
 analytically through the observation that all nature exhibits the 
 perpetual and progressive transition of matter into form, and 
 shows the exhaustless and original ground of things as it comes 
 to view in ever ascending ideal formations. That all matter 
 
ARISTOTLE. 
 
 123 
 
 fihould become form, and all that is potential should be actual, 
 and all that is should be known, is doubtless the demand of the 
 reason and the end of all becoming ; yet is this actually imprac- 
 ticable, since Aristotle expressly affirms that matter as the anti- 
 thesis, or denial of form, can never become wholly actualized, and 
 therefore can never be perfectly known. The Aristotelian sys- 
 tem ends thus like its predecessors, in the unsubdued dualism of 
 matter and form. 
 
 (3.) PotentialUy and Actuality (Swa/xts and cvepyeia). — The 
 relation of matter to form, logically apprehended, is but the 
 relation of potentiality to actuality. These terms, which Aris- 
 totle first employed according to their philosophical signifi- 
 cance, are very characteristic for his system. We have in the 
 movement of potential being to actual being the explicit concep- 
 tion of becoming, and in the four principles we have a distribu- 
 tion of this conception in its parts. The Aristotelian system is 
 consequently a system of the becoming, in which the Heraclitic 
 principle appears again in a richer and profounder apprehension, 
 as that of the Eleatics had done with Plato. Aristotle in this 
 has made no insignificant step towards the subjection of the Pla- 
 tonic dualism. If matter is the possibility of form, or reason 
 becoming, then is the opposition between the idea and the phe- 
 nomenal world potentially overcome, at least in principle, since 
 there is one being which appears both in matter and form only 
 in different stages of development. The relation of the potential 
 to the actual Aristotle exhibits by the relation of the unfinished 
 to the finished work, of the unemployed carpenter to the one at 
 work upon his building, of the individual asleep to him awake. 
 Potentially the seed-corn is the tree, but the grown up tree is 
 it actually ; the potential philosopher is he who is not at this 
 moment in a philosophizing condition ; even before the battle the 
 better general is the potential conqueror ; potentially is space in- 
 finitely divisible ; in fact every thing is potentially which possesses 
 a principle of motion, of development, or of change, and which, if 
 unhindered by any thing external, will be of itself. Actuality or 
 entelechy on the other hand indicates the perfect act, the end as 
 
124 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 gained, the completely actual (the grown-up tree e. g. is the en- 
 telechy of the seed-corn), that activity in which the act and the 
 completeness of the act fall together, e. g. to see, to think where 
 he sees and he has seen, he thinks and he has thought (the acting 
 and the completeness of the act) are one and the same, while in 
 those activities which involve a becoming, e. g. to learn, to go, to 
 become well, the two are separated. In this apprehension of form 
 (or idea) as actuality or entelechy, i. e. in joining it with the 
 movement of the becoming, is found the chief antagonism of the 
 Aristotelian and Platonic systems. Plato considers the idea as 
 being at rest, and consisting for itself, in opposition to the becom- 
 ing and to motion; but with Aristotle the idea is the eternal 
 product of the becoming, it is an eternal energy, i. e. an activity 
 in complete actuality, it is not perfect being, but is being produced 
 in every moment and eternally, through the movement of the 
 potential to its actual end. 
 
 (4.) The Absolute, Divine Spi^^it. — Aristotle has sought to 
 establish from a number of sides, the conception of the absolute 
 spirit, or as he calls it, the first mover, and especially by joining it 
 to the relation of potentiality and actuality. 
 
 (a.) The Cosmological Form. — The actual is ever antecedent 
 to the potential not only in conception (for I can speak of poten- 
 tiality only in reference to some activity) but also in time, for the 
 acting becomes actual only through an acting ; the uneducated 
 becomes educated through the educated, and this leads to the 
 claim of a first mover which shall be pure activity. Or, again, 
 it is only possible that there should be motion, becoming, or a 
 chain of causes, except as a principle of motion, a mover exists. 
 But this principle of motion must be one whose essence is actual- 
 ity, since that which only exists in possibility cannot alone become 
 actual, and therefore cannot be a principle of motion. All becom- 
 ing postulates with itself that which is eternal and which has not 
 become, that which itself unmoved is a principle of motion, a first 
 mover. 
 
 [h.) The Ontological Form. — In the same way it follows from 
 the conception of potentiality, that the eternal and necessary 
 
ARISTOTLE. 
 
 125 
 
 being cannot be potential. For that which potentially is, may 
 just as well either be or not be ; but that which possibly is not, 
 is temporal and not eternal. Nothing therefore which is abso- 
 lutely permanent, is potential, but only actual. Or, again, if 
 potentiality be the first, then can there be no possible existence, 
 but this contradicts the conception of the absolute or that which 
 it is impossible should not be. 
 
 (c.) The Moral Form. — Potentiality always involves a 
 possibility to the most opposite. He who has the capacity to 
 be well, has also the capacity to be sick, but actually no man 
 is at the same time both sick and well. Therefore actuality 
 is better than potentiality, and only it can belong to the eter- 
 nal. 
 
 {d.) So far as the relation of potentiality and actuality is 
 identical with the relation of matter and form, we may apprehend 
 in the following way these arguments for the existence of a being 
 which is pure actuality. The supposition of an absolute matter 
 without form (the Trpwrr; vXrj) involves also the supposition of an 
 absolute form without matter (a irpoiTov etSos). And since the 
 conception of form resolves itself into the three determinations, 
 of the moving, the conceivable, and the final cause, so is the eter- 
 nal one the absolute principle of motion (the first mover TipujTov 
 Xivovv), the absolute conception or pure intelligible (the pure rt fjv 
 eti/at), and the absolute end. 
 
 All the other predicates of the first mover or the highest prin- 
 ciple of the world, follow from these premises with logical necessity. 
 Unity belongs to him, since the ground of the manifoldness of 
 Deing lies in the matter and he has no participation in matter ; 
 he is immovable and abiding ever the same, since otherwise he 
 could not be the absolute mover and the cause of all becoming ; 
 he is life as active self-end and actuality ; he is at the same time 
 intelligible and intelligence, because he is absolutely immaterial 
 and free from nature; he is active, i. e. thinking intelligence, 
 because his essence is pure actuality ; he is self-contemplating in- 
 telligence, because the divine thought cannot attain its actuality 
 in any thing extrinsic, and because if it were the thought of any 
 
126 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 thing other than itself, this would make it depend upon some 
 potential existence for its actualization. Hence the famed Aris- 
 totelian definition of the absolute that it is the thought of thought 
 (v6r](TLs voi^o-etos), the personal unity of the thinking and the 
 thought, of the knowing and the known, the absolute subject- 
 object. In the Metaphysics (XII. 1.) we have a statement in 
 order of these attributes of the Divine Spirit, and an almost 
 devout sketch of the eternally blessed Deity, knowing himself in 
 his eternal tranquillity as the absolute truth, satisfied with himself, 
 and wanting neither in activity nor in any virtue. 
 
 As would appear from this statement, Aristotle has never fully 
 developed the idea of his absolute spirit, and still less has he har- 
 monized it with the fundamental principles and demands of his 
 philosophy, although many consequences of his system would 
 seem to drive him to this, and numerous principles which he has 
 laid down would seem to prepare the way for it. This idea is 
 unexpectedly introduced in the twelfth book of the Metaphysics 
 simply as an assertion, without being farther and inductively 
 substantiated. It is at once attended with important difficulties. 
 We do not see why the ultimate ground of motion or the absolute 
 spirit must be conceived as a personal being ; we do not see how 
 any thing can be a moving cause and yet itself unmoved ; how it 
 can be the origin of all becoming, that is of the departing and 
 arising, and itself remain a changeless energy, a principle of motion 
 with no potentiality to be moved, for the moving thing must stand 
 in a relation of passive and active with the thing moved. More- 
 over, Aristotle, as would follow from these contradictory deter- 
 minations, has never thoroughly and consistently determined the 
 relation between God and the world. He has considered the ab- 
 solute spirit only as contemplative and theoretical reason, from 
 whom all action must be excluded because he is perfect end in 
 himself, but every action presupposes an end not yet perfected ; 
 we have thus no true motive for his activity in reference to the 
 world. He cannot be truly called the first mover in his theoretical 
 relation alone, and since he is in his essence extra-mundane and 
 unmoved, he cannot once permeate the life of the world with his 
 
ARISTOTLE, 
 
 127 
 
 activity ; and since also matter on one side never rises wholly to 
 form, we have, therefore, here again the unreconciled dualism 
 between the Divine spirit and the unmistakable reality of matter. 
 Many of the arguments which Aristotle brings against the gods of 
 Anaxagoras may be urged against his own theory. 
 
 IV. The Aristotelian Physics. — The Aristotelian Physics, 
 which embraces the greater portion of his writing's, follows 
 the becoming and the building up of matter into form, the 
 course through which nature as a living being progresses in 
 order to become individual soul. All becoming has an end ; 
 but end is form, and the absolute form is spirit. With per- 
 fect consistency, therefore, Aristotle regards the human indi- 
 vidual of the male sex as the end and the centre of earthly 
 nature in its realized form. All else beneath the moon is, as it 
 were, an unsuccessful attempt of nature to produce the male hu- 
 man, a superfluity which arises from the impotence of nature to 
 subdue the whole of matter and bring it into form. Every thing 
 which does not gain the universal end of nature must be regarded 
 as incomplete, and is properly an exception or abortion. For in- 
 stance, he calls it an abortion when a child does not resemble its 
 father ; and the female child he looks upon as an abortion in a 
 less degree, which he accounts for by the insufficient energy of 
 the male as the forming principle. In general, Aristotle regards 
 the female as imperfect in comparison with the male, an imper- 
 fection which belongs in a higher degree to all animals except 
 man. If nature did her work with perfect consciousness, then 
 were all these mistakes, these incomplete and improper forma- 
 tions inexplicable, but she is an artist working only after an un- 
 conscious impulse, and does not complete her work with a clear 
 and rational insight. 
 
 1, The universal conditions of all natural existence, motion^ 
 matter J space and time^ Aristotle investigates in the books of 
 Physics. These physical conceptions may, moreover, be reduced 
 to the metaphysical notions of potentiality and actuality ; motion 
 is accordingly defined as the activity of being potentially, and is 
 therefore a mean between the merely potential entity and the 
 
128 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 perfectly realized activity; — space is tlie possibility of motion 
 and possesses, therefore, potentially, though not actively, the pro- 
 perty of infinite divisibility ; time is in the same way the in- 
 finitely divisible, expressing the measure of motion in number, 
 and is the number of motion according to before and after. All 
 three are infinite, but the infinite which is represented in them is 
 only potentially but not actually a whole : it comprehends nothing, 
 but is itself comprehended, — a fact mistaken by those who are 
 accustomed to extol the infinite as though it comprehended and 
 held every thing in itself, because it had some similarity with the 
 whole. 
 
 2. From his conception of motion Aristotle derives his view 
 of the collective universe^ as brought out in his books De Ccslo. 
 The most perfect motion is the circular, because this is constant, 
 uniform, and ever returning into itself. The world as a whole is 
 therefore conditioned by the circular motion, and being a whole 
 complete in itself, it has a spherical form. But because the mo- 
 tion which returns into itself is better than every other, it fol- 
 lows, from the same ground, that in this spherical universe the 
 better sphere will be in the circumference where the circular 
 motion is most perfect, and the inferior one will arrange itself 
 around the centre of the universal sphere. The former is heaven, 
 the latter is earth, and between the two stand the planetary 
 spheres. Heaven, as the place of circular motion, and the scene 
 of unchangeable order, stands nearest the first moving cause, and 
 is under its immediate influence ; it is the place where the an- 
 cients, guided by the correct tradition of a lost wisdom, have 
 placed the Divine abode. Its parts, the fixed stars, are passion- 
 less and eternal essences, which have attained the best end, which 
 must be eternally conceived in a tireless activity, and which, 
 though not clearly cognizable, are yet much more divine than 
 man. A lower sphere, next to that of the fixed stars, is the 
 sphere of the planets, among which, besides the five known to the 
 ancients, he reckons the sun and the moon. This sphere stands 
 a little removed from the greatest perfection : instead of moving 
 directly from right to left, as do the fixed stars, the planets move 
 
ARISTOTLE. 
 
 129 
 
 in contrary directions and in oblique orbits ; they serve the fixed 
 stars, and are ruled by their motion. Lastly, the earth is in the 
 centre of the universe, farthest removed from the first mover, and 
 hence partaking in the smallest degree of the Divine. There are 
 thus three kinds of being, exhibiting three stages of perfection, and 
 necessary for the explanation of nature ; first, the absolute spirit 
 or God, an immaterial being, who, himself unmoved, produces 
 motion ; second, the super-terrestrial region of the heavens, a 
 being which is moved and which moves, and which, though not 
 without matter, is eternal and unchangeable, and possesses ever a 
 circular motion ; and, lastly, in the lowest course this earth, a 
 changeful being, which has only to play the passive part of being 
 moved. 
 
 3. Nature in a strict sense, the scene of elemental working 
 represents to us a constant and progressive transition of the ele- 
 mentary to the vegetative, and of the vegetative to the animal 
 world. The lowest step is occupied by the inanimate bodies of 
 nature, which are simple products of the elements mingling them- 
 selves together, and have their entelechy only in the determinate 
 combinations of these elements, but whose energy consists only 
 in striving after a fitting place in the universe, and in resting 
 there so far as they reach it unhindered. But now such a mere 
 external entelechy is not possessed by the living bodies ; within 
 them dwells a motion as organizing principle by which they attain 
 to actuality, and which as a preserving activity develops in them 
 towards a perfected organization, — in a word they have a soul, for 
 a soul is the entelechy of an organic body. In plants we find the 
 soul working only as persevering and nourishing energy : the 
 plant has no other function than to nourish itself and to propagate 
 its kind ; among animals — where we find a progress according to 
 the mode of their reproduction — the soul appears as sensitive ; 
 animals have sense, and are capable of locomotion ; lastly, the 
 human soul is at the same time nutritive, sensitive, and cog- 
 nitive. 
 
 4. Man, as the end of all nature, embraces in himself the 
 different steps of develonment in which the life of nature is ex- 
 
 6* 
 
130 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 hibited. The division of the faculties of the soul must thereforo 
 be necessarily regulated, according to the division of living crea- 
 tures. As the nutritive faculty is alone the property of vegeta- 
 bles, and sensation, of animals, while to the more perfect animals 
 locomotion also belongs, so are these three activities also devel- 
 opment steps of the human soul, the antecedent being the neces- 
 sary condition of, and presupposed in time by, the subsequent, 
 while the soul itself is nothing other than the union of these dif- 
 ferent activities of an organic body in one common end, as the 
 entelechy of the organic body. The fourth step, thought or rea- 
 son, which, added to the three others, constitutes the peculiarity 
 of the human soul, forms alone an exception from the general 
 law. It is not a simple product of the lower faculties of the soul, 
 it does not stand related to them simply as a higher stage of de- 
 velopment, nor simply as the soul to the body, as the end to the 
 instrument, as actuality to possibility, as form to matter. But as 
 pure intellectual activity, it completes itself without any media- 
 tion of a bodily organ ; as the reason comes into the body from 
 without, so is it separable from the body, and therefore has it no 
 inner connection with the bodily functions, but is something 
 wholly foreign in nature. True, there exists a connection be- 
 tween thought and sensation, for while the sensations are out- 
 wardly divided, according to the different objects of sense, yet 
 internally they meet in one centre, as a common sense. Here 
 they become changed into images and representations, which 
 again become transmuted into thoughts, and so it might seem as 
 if thought were only the result of the sensation, as if intelligence 
 were passively determined; (here we might notice the proposition 
 falsely ascribed to Aristotle : nihil est in intelJectu quod no7i 
 fuerit in sensu, and also the well-known though often misunder- 
 stood comparison of the soul with an unwritten tablet, which 
 only implies this much, viz., that as the unwritten tablet is po- 
 tentially but not actually a book, so does knowledge belong po- 
 tentially though not actually to the human reason ; fundamentally 
 and radically the thought may have in itself universal concep- 
 tions, eȣ far as it has the capacity to form them, but not actually; 
 
ARISTOTLE. 
 
 131 
 
 nor in a determined or developed form). But this passivity pre- 
 supposes rather an activity ; for if the thought in its actuality, in 
 that it appears as knowledge, hecomes all forms and therefore all 
 things, then must the thought constitute itself that which it be- 
 comes, and therefore all passively determined human intelligence 
 rests on an originally active intelligence, which exists as self- 
 actualizing possibility and pure actuality, and which, as such, is 
 wholly independent of the human body, and has not its entelechy 
 in it but in itself, and is not therefore participant in the death of 
 the body, but lives on as universal reason, eternal and immortal. 
 The Aristotelian dualism here again appears. Manifestly this 
 active intelligence stands related to the soul as God to nature. 
 The two sides possess no essential relation to each other. As the 
 Divine spirit could not enter the life of the world, so is the human 
 spirit unable to permeate the life of sense ; although it is deter- 
 mined as something passionless and immaterial, still must it as 
 soul be connected with matter, and although it is pure and self- 
 contemplative form, still it should be distinguished from the Divine 
 spirit which is its counterpart ; the want of a satisfactory media- 
 tion on the side of the human and on that of the Divine, is in 
 these respects unmistakable. 
 
 V. The Aristotelian Ethics. 1. Relation or Ethics to 
 Physics. — Aristotle, guided by his tendency towards the natural, 
 has more closely connected ethics and physics than either of his 
 predecessors, Socrates or Plato, had done. While Plato found 
 it impossible to speak of the good in man's moral condition, dis- 
 connected from the idea of the good in itself, Aristotle's princi- 
 pal object is to determine what is good for man solely; and he 
 supposes that the good in itself, the idea of the good, in no way 
 facilitates the knowledge of that good, which alone is attainable 
 in practical life. It is only the latter, the moral element in the 
 life of men, and not the good in the great affairs of the universe, 
 with which ethics has to do. Aristotle therefore considers the 
 good especially in its relation to the natural condition of men, 
 and affirms that it is the end towards which nature herself tends. 
 Instead of viewing the moral element as something purely Intel- 
 
132 
 
 A UISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 lectual, lie rather apprehends it as only the bloom of the physi- 
 cal, which here becomes spiritualized and ethical ; instead of 
 making virtue to be knowledge, he treats it as the normal perfec- 
 tion of the natural instinct. That man is hy nature a political 
 animal, is his fundamental proposition for the doctrine of the 
 state. 
 
 From this connection of the ethical and the physical, arose the 
 objections which Aristotle urged against the Socratic conception 
 of virtue. Socrates had looked to the dialectical exclusively for 
 the ground of all morality, and had accordingly made virtue and 
 knowledge one. But in this, said Aristotle, the pathological ele- 
 ment which is associated by nature with every moral act, is 
 destroyed. It is not reason, but the circumstances and natural 
 bias of -the soul which are the first ground of virtue. There is an 
 instinct in the soul which at first strives unconsciously after the 
 good, which is only subsequently sought with the full moral in- 
 sight. Moral virtue arises first from that which is natural. It 
 is on this ground, also, that Aristotle combats the notion that 
 virtue may be learned. It is not through the perfection of 
 knowledge, but by exercise that we become acquainted with the 
 good. It is by a practice of moral acts that we become virtuous, 
 just as by a practice of building and of music we become archi- 
 tects and musicians ; for the habit which is the ground of moral 
 constancy, is only a fruit of the abundant repetition of a moral 
 action. Hence it is that originally we have our virtuous or our 
 vicious dispositions in our power, but as soon as they are formed 
 either to virtue or to vice, we are no longer able to control them. 
 It is by three things, therefore, nature, habit, and reason, that man 
 becomes good. The stand-point of Aristotle is in these respects 
 directly opposed to that of Socrates. While Socrates regarded 
 the moral and the natural as two opposites, and made the moral 
 conduct to be the consequent of a rational enlightenment, Aris- 
 totle treated both as different steps of development, and reversing 
 the order of Socrates, made the rational enlightenment in moral 
 things consequent upon the moral conduct. 
 
 2. The Highest Good. — Every action has an end ; but since 
 
ARISTOTLE. 
 
 133 
 
 every end is only itself a means to some other, we need therefore 
 something after which we can strive for its own sake, and whicli 
 is a good absolutely, or a best. What now is this highest good 
 and supreme object of human pursuit ? In name, at least, all men 
 are agreed upon it, and call it happiness, but what happiness is, is 
 a much disputed point. If asked in what human happiness con- 
 sists, the first characteristic given would be that it belongs alone 
 to the peculiar being of man. But sensation is not peculiar to 
 man, for he shares this with the brute. A sensation of pleasure, 
 therefore, which arises when some desire is gratified, may be the 
 happiness of the brute, but certainly does not constitute the essen- 
 tial of human happiness. Human happiness must express the 
 completeness of intelligent existence, and because intelligence is 
 essentially activity, therefore the happiness of man cannot consist 
 in any merely passive condition, but must express a completeness 
 of human action. Happiness therefore is a well-being, which is 
 at the same time a well-doing, and it is a well-doing which satis- 
 fies all the conditions of nature, and which finds the highest con- 
 tentment or well-being in an unrestrained energy. Activity and 
 pleasure are thus inseparably bound together by a natural bond, 
 and happiness is the result of their union when they are sustained 
 through a perfect life. Hence the Aristotelian definition of hap- 
 piness. It is a perfect practical activity in a perfect life. 
 
 Although it might seem from this as though Aristotle placed 
 the happiness of man in the natural activity of the soul, and 
 regarded this as self-sufiicient, still he is not blind to the fact 
 that perfect happiness is dependent on other kinds of good whose 
 possession is not absolutely within our power. It is true he 
 expresses an opinion that outward things in moderation are 
 sufficient, and that only great success or signal reverses materially 
 influence the happiness of life ; still he holds that wealth, the 
 possession of friends and children, noble birth, beauty of body, 
 etc., are more or less necessary conditions of happiness, though 
 these are partly dependent on accidental circumstances. These 
 wavering and inconsistent views of Aristotle respecting the nature 
 of happiness, naturally rise from his empirical method of investi- 
 
134 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 
 
 gation. Careful in noting every thing whicli our limited experience 
 seems to utter, lie expressly avoids making either virtue or plea- 
 sure his principle, because actual experience shows the separation 
 of the two. Although therefore he gives directions in general to 
 strive after that pleasure in which the good man delights, or 
 which is connected with a virtuous activity, yet is pleasure with 
 him an end for its own sake, and not merely an accident of virtue , 
 an empiricist, Aristotle is here also a dualist, while the Stoics and 
 Epicureans have respectively taken and held fast to each of the 
 two sides. 
 
 3. Conception of Virtue. — As has already been seen in the 
 Aristotelian Polemic against Socrates, virtue is the product of 
 an oft-repeated moral action, a condition acquired through prac- 
 tice, a moral dexterity of the soul. The nature of this dexterity 
 is seen in the following way : every action completes something 
 as its work ; but now if a work is imperfect when it has either a 
 want or a superfluity, so also is every action imperfect in so far 
 as there is in it either too little or too much ; its perfection, 
 therefore, is only found as it contains the right degree, the true 
 mean between the too much and too little. Accordingly, virtue 
 in general may be explained as the observation of the right mean 
 in action, by which is meant not the arithmetical or absolute 
 mean, but the one relative to ourselves. For what is enough for 
 one individual is insufficient for another. The virtue of a man, 
 of a woman, of a child, and of a slave is respectively difierent. 
 Thus, virtue depends upon time, circumstance, and relation. The 
 determination of this correct mean will always waver. In the 
 impossibility of an active and exhaustive formula, we can only 
 say respecting it that it is the correct mean as determined by a 
 correct practical insight which is seen to be such by the intelli- 
 gent man. 
 
 It follows from this general conception of virtue, that there 
 will be as many separate virtues as there are circumstances of 
 life, and as men are ever entering into new relations, in which it 
 becomes difficult practically to determine the correct method of 
 action, Aristotle, in opposition to Plato, would limit the field of 
 
ARISTOTLE. 
 
 135 
 
 separate virtues by no definite number. Only certain fundamental 
 virtues can be named according as there are certain fixed and 
 fundamental relations among men. For instance, man has a fixed 
 relation to pleasure and pain. In relation to pain, the true moral 
 mean is found in neither fearing nor courting it, and this is valor. 
 In relation to pleasure, the true mean standing between greediness 
 and indifi"erence is temperance. In social life, the moral mean is 
 between doing and suffering wrong, which is justice. In a similar 
 way many other virtues might be characterized, each one of them 
 standing as a mean between two vices, the one of which expresses 
 a want and the other a superfluity. A closer exhibition of the 
 Aristotelian doctrine of virtue would have muv;h psychological 
 and linguistic interest, though but little philosophical worth. 
 Aristotle takes the conception of his virtues more from the use 
 of language than from a thoroughly applied principle of classifi- 
 cation. His classification of virtues is, therefore, without any 
 stable ground, and is difi"erently given in different places. The 
 conception of the correct mean which Aristotle makes the mea- 
 sure of a moral act is obviously unworthy of a systematic repre- 
 sentation, for as it cannot be determined how the intelligent man 
 would act in every case, there could never be given any specific 
 directions how others should act. In fine, the criterion of virtue 
 as the correct mean between two vices cannot be always applied 
 for in the virtue of wisdom, e. g. which Aristotle describes as the 
 mean between simplicity and cunning, there is no such thing as 
 too much. 
 
 4. The State. — Aristotle, like Plato, makes the highest con- 
 dition of moral virtue attainable only through political life. The 
 state exists before the individual, as the whole is prior to its parts. 
 The rationality and morality of the state is thus antecedent to 
 that of the individual. Hence in the best state, moral and 
 political virtue, the virtue of the man and the virtue of the citi- 
 zen are one and the same thing, although in states as they are, the 
 good citizen is not necessarily also the good man. But though 
 this principle harmonized with Plato, yet Aristotle, at whose time 
 the old aboriginal states had already begun their process of dis- 
 
136 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHT. 
 
 solution, cterished a very different view concerning the relation 
 of the individual and the family to the state. He allows to both 
 these an incomparably greater consideration, and yields to them a 
 far wider field of independent action. Hence he combats Plato's 
 community of wives and goods, not simply on the ground of its 
 practicability, but also on the ground of its principle, since the 
 state cannot be conceived as a strict unit, or as possessing any 
 such centralization as would weaken or destrcy individual activity. 
 With Plato the state is but the product of the philosophical 
 reflection, while with Aristotle it results from given circumstances, 
 from history and experience, and he therefore wholly omits to 
 sketch a model state or a normal constitution, but carefully con- 
 fines his attention to those which actually exist. Although the 
 ideal of a state constitution in the form of a limited monarchy is 
 unmistakably in his mind, still he contents himself with portray- 
 ing the difierent kinds of polities in their peculiarities, their origin, 
 and their reciprocal transitions. He does not undertake to declare 
 which is the best state absolutely, since this depends upon circum- 
 stances, and one constitution is not adapted for every state. He 
 simply attempts to show what form of the state is relatively the 
 best and the most advisable under certain historical circumstances, 
 and under given natural, climatic, geographic, economic, and in- 
 tellectual conditions. In this he is faithful to the character of 
 his whole philosophy. Standing on the basis of the empirical, he 
 aidvances here as elsewhere, critically and reflectively, and in de- 
 spair of attaining the absolutely true and good, he seeks for these 
 relatively, with his eye fixed only on the probable and the prac- 
 ticable. 
 
 VI. — The Peripatetic School. — The school of Aristotle, 
 called the Peripatetic, can here only be mentioned ; the want of 
 independence in its philosophizing, and the absence of any great 
 and universal influence, rendering it unworthy an extended notice. 
 Theophrastus, Eudemus, and Strato are its most famous leaders. 
 Like most philosophical schools, it confines itself chiefly to a more 
 thorough elaboration and explanation of the system of its master, 
 tn some empirical provinces, especially the physical, the attempt 
 
ARISTOTLE. 
 
 137 
 
 was made to carry out still further the system, while at the same 
 time its speculative basis was set aside and neglected. 
 
 YII. — Transition to the Post- Aristotelian Philosophy. — 
 The productive energy of Grecian philosophy expends itself with 
 Aristotle, contemporaneously and in connection with the universal 
 decay of Grecian life and spirit. Instead of the great and uni- 
 versal systems of a Plato and an Aristotle, we have now systems 
 of a partial and one-sided character, corresponding to that uni- 
 versal breach between the subject and the objective world which 
 characterized the civil, religious, and social life of this last epoch 
 of Greece, the time succeeding Alexander the Great. That sub- 
 jectivity-, which had been first propounded by the Sophists, was 
 at length, after numerous struggles, victorious, though its triumph 
 was gained upon the ruins of the Grecian civil and artistic life ; 
 the individual has become emancipated, the subject is no longer 
 to be given up to the objective world, the liberated subjectivity 
 must now be perfected and satisfied. This process of develop- 
 ment is seen in the post- Aristotelian philosophy, though it finds 
 its conditioning cause in the character of the preceding philoso- 
 phical strivings. The dualism which formed the chief want of 
 the systems both of Plato and Aristotle, has forced itself upon 
 our attention at every step. The attempt which had been made, 
 with the greatest expenditure of which the Grecian mind was 
 capable, to refer back to one ultimate ground both subject and 
 object, mind and matter, had produced no satisfactory result ; and 
 these two oppositions, around which all previous philosophy had 
 struggled in vain, still remained disconnected. Wearied with 
 the fruitless attempts at mediation, the subject now breaks with 
 the objective world. Its attention is directed towards itself in 
 its own self-consciousness. The result of this gives us either 
 Stoicism, where the moral subject appears in the self-sufficiency 
 of the sage to whom every external good and every objective 
 work is indifierent, and who finds a good only in a moral activity ; 
 Dr Epicureanism, where the subject delights itself in the inner 
 feeling of pleasure and the calm repose of a satisfied heart, enjoy- 
 ing the present and the past, and never fearing the future while 
 
138 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPnY. 
 
 it sees in the objective -vvorld only a means by which it can utter 
 itself; or, again, Scepticism, where the subject, doubting and 
 rejecting all objective truth and science, appears in the apathy of 
 the Sceptic, who has broken both theoretically and practically 
 with the objective world. In fine, New-Platonism, the last of the 
 ancient philosophical systems, bears this same character of sub- 
 jectivity, for this whole system turns upon the exaltation of the 
 subject to the absolute, and wherever it speculates respecting God 
 and his relation to man, it is alone in order to establish the pro- 
 gressive transition from the absolute object to the human person- 
 ality. The ruling principle in it all is the interest of the subjec- 
 tivity, and the fact that in this system there are numerous objective 
 determinations, is only because the subject has become absolute. 
 
 SECTION XVII. 
 
 STOICISM. 
 
 Zeno, of Cittium, a city of Cyprus, an elder contemporary of 
 Antigonus Gronatas, king of Macedon, is generally given as the 
 founder of the Stoical school. Deprived of his property by 
 shipwreck, he took refuge in philosophy, incited also by an inner 
 bias to such pursuits. He at first became a disciple of the Cynic 
 Crateas, then of Stilpo, one of the Megarians, and lastly he be- 
 took himself to the Academy, where he heard the lessons of 
 Xenocrates and Polemo. Hence the eclectic character of his 
 teaching. It has in fact been charged against him, that difiering 
 but little if at all from the earlier schools, he attempted to form 
 a school of his own, with a system wherein he had changed noth- 
 ing but names. He opened a school at Athens, in the " varie- 
 gated porch," so called from the paintings of Polygnotus, with 
 which it was adorned, whence his adherents received the name of 
 philosophers of the porch" (Stoics). Zeno is said to have presi- 
 ded over his school for fifty-eight years, and at a very advanced 
 
STOICISM. 
 
 139 
 
 age to have put an end to Ms existence. He is praised for the 
 temperance and the austerity of his habits, while his abstemious- 
 ness is proverbial. The monument in his honor, erected after 
 his death by the Athenians, at the instance of Antigonus, bore 
 the high but simple eulogium that his life had been in unison 
 with his philosophy. Cleanthes was the successor of Zeno in 
 the Stoic school, and faithfully carried out the method of his 
 master. Cleanthes was succeeded by Chrysippiis, who died 
 about 208 B. C. He has been regarded as the chief prop of this 
 school, in which respect it was said of him, that without a Chry- 
 sippus there would never have been a Porch. At all events, as 
 Chrysippus was an object of the greatest veneration, and of al- 
 most undisputed authority with the later Stoics, he ought to be 
 considered as the principal founder of the school. He was a 
 writer so voluminous, that his works have been said to amount to 
 seven hundred and five, among which, however, were repeated 
 treatises upon the same propositions, and citations without mea- 
 sure from poets and historians, given to prove and illustrate his 
 opinions. Not one of all his writings has come down to us. 
 Chrysippus closes the series of the philosophers who founded the 
 Porch. The later heads of the school, as Panatius, the friend 
 of the younger Scipio (his famous work De Officiis, Cicero has 
 elaborated in his treatise of the same name), and Fosidonius, 
 may be classed with Cicero, Pompeius, and others, and were 
 eclectic in their teachings. The Stoics have connected philoso- 
 phy most intimately with the duties of practical life. Philoso- 
 phy is with them the practice of wisdom, the exercise of virtue. 
 Virtue and science are with them one, in so far at least that they 
 divide virtue in reference to philosophy into physical, ethical, and 
 logical. But though they go on according to this threefold di- 
 vision, and treat of logic and physics, and though they even rank 
 physics higher than either of the other sciences, regarding it as 
 the mother of the ethical and the science of the Divine, yet do 
 we find their characteristic stand-point most prominently in their 
 theory of morals. 
 
 1. Logic. — We have already said that it is the breach be* 
 
140 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 tween subject and object, wliicli forms the basis of all post-Aris- 
 totelian philosophy. The beginning of this philosophy of sub- 
 jectivity is found with the Stoics. The feature most worthy of 
 notice in their logic, is the striving after a subjective criterion of 
 the truth, by which they might distinguish the true representa- 
 tion from the false. Since they limited all scientific knowledge 
 to the knowledge of the senses, they found this criterion in that 
 which was evident in the sensuous impression. They conceived 
 that they had answered the whole problem, in af&rming that the 
 true or conceivable representation reveals not only itself, but also 
 its object : it, they said, is nothing else than a representation 
 which is produced by a present object in a manner like itself 
 
 2. Physics. — In their physics, where they follow for the most 
 part Heraclitus, the Stoics are distinguished from their prede- 
 cessors, especially from Plato and Aristotle, by their thoroughly 
 carried out proposition that nothing uncorporeal exists, that every 
 thing essential is corporeal (just as in their logic they had sought 
 to derive all knowledge from the sensuous perception). This 
 sensualism or materialism of the Stoics which, as we have seen in 
 their logic, lies at the basis of their theory of knowledge, might 
 seem foreign to all their moral and idealistic tendencies, but is 
 clearly explained from their subjective stand-point, for, when the 
 thought has become so intensely engrossed in the subject, the ob- 
 jective world can only be regarded as a corporeal and material 
 existence. The most immediate consequence of such a view is 
 their pantheism. Aristotle before them had separated the Divine 
 Being from the world, as the pure and eternal form from the 
 eternal matter ; but so far as this separation implied a distinction 
 which was not simply logical, but actual and real, the Stoics would 
 not admit it. It seemed to them impossible to dissever God from 
 matter, and they therefore considered God and the world as power 
 and its manifestation, and thus as one. Matter is the passive 
 ground of things, the original substratum for the divine activity : 
 God is the active and formative energy of matter dwelling within 
 it, and essentially united to it : the world is the body of God, and 
 God is the soul of the world. The Stoics, therefore, considered 
 
STOICISM. 
 
 141 
 
 God and matter as one identical substance, which, on the side 
 of its passive and changeable capacity they call matter, and on 
 the side of its active and changeless energy, God. But since they, 
 as already remarked, considered the world as ensouled by God in 
 the light of a living and rational being, they were obliged to treat 
 the conception of God not only in a physical but also in its ethical 
 aspect. God is not only in the world as the ruling and living 
 energy of this great ^wov (animal), but he is also the universal 
 reason which rules the whole world and penetrates all matter ; 
 he is the gracious Providence which cares for the individual and 
 the whole ; he is wise, and is the ground of that natural law which 
 commands the good and forbids the evil; he punishes and rewards; 
 he possesses a perfect and blessed life. But accustomed to regard 
 every thing spiritual only in a sensuous way, the Stoics were 
 obliged to clothe this ideal conception of God in a material form, 
 apprehending it as the vital warmth or an original fire, analogous 
 to the view of the earlier natural philosophers, who held that the 
 soul, and even reason itself, consisted in the vital warmth. The 
 Stoics express this thought in different ways. At one time they 
 call God the rational breath which passes through all nature ; at 
 another, the artistic fire which fashions or begets the universe ; and 
 still again the ether ; which, however, they hardly distinguish from 
 the artistic fire. From these varying views, we see that it did 
 not belong to the Stoics to represent the conception of God in any 
 determinate kind of existence. They availed themselves of these 
 expressions only to indicate that God, as the universal animating 
 energy in the world, could not be disconnected from a corporeal 
 agency. This identification of God and the world, according to 
 which the Stoics regarded the whole formation of the universe as 
 but a period in the development of God, renders their remaining 
 doctrine concerning the world very simple. Every thing in the 
 world seemed to them to be permeated by the divine life, and was 
 regarded as but the flowing out of this most perfect life through 
 certain channels, until it returned in a necessary circle back again 
 to itself. It is not necessary here to speak more closely of the 
 physics of this school. 
 
142 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 3. The Ethics. — The ethics of the Stoics is most closely con- 
 nected with their physics. In the physics we saw the rational 
 order of the universe as it existed through the divine thought. 
 In the ethics, the highest law of human action, and thus the whole 
 moral legality of life is dependent upon this rational order and 
 conformity to law in universal nature, and the highest good or the 
 highest end of our strivings is to shape our life according to this 
 universal law, to live in conformity with the harmony of the world 
 or with nature. " Follow nature," or " live in harmony with na- 
 ture," is the moral maxim of the Stoics, More accurately : live 
 in harmony with thy rational nature so far as this has not been 
 distorted nor refined by art, but is held in its natural simplicity. 
 
 From this moral principle, in which we have also the Stoic 
 conception of virtue, the peculiarities of their theory of morals 
 follow with logical necessity. 
 
 (1.) Respecting the Relation of Virtue to Pleasure. — When 
 the demand is made that the life should be in conformity with 
 nature, the individual becomes wholly subjected to the universal, 
 and every personal end is excluded. Hence pleasure, which of 
 all ends is the most individual, must be disregarded. In pleasure 
 that activity in which blessedness consists is abated, and this could 
 only appear to the Stoics as a restraint of life, and thus as an evil. 
 Pleasure is not in conformity with nature, and is no end of nature, 
 says Cleanthes; and though other Stoics relax a little from the 
 strictness of this opinion, and admit that pleasure may be accord- 
 ing to nature, and is to be considered in a certain degree as a good, 
 yet they all held fast to the doctrine, that it has no moral worth 
 and is no end of nature, but is only something which is accident- 
 ally connected with the free and fitting activity of nature, while 
 itself is not an activity, but a passive condition of the soul. In 
 this lies the whole severity of the Stoic doctrine of morals; 
 every thing personal is cast aside, every external end of action is 
 foreign to the moral man, the action in wisdom is the only good. 
 From this follows directly : 
 
 (2.) The Vieiu of the Stoics Concerning External Good. — If 
 virtue, as the activity in conformity to nature, is exclusively a 
 
STOICISM. 
 
 143 
 
 good, and if it alone can lead to happiness, then external good 
 of every kind is something morally indifferent, and can neither be 
 the object of our striving nor the end of any moral action. The 
 action itself and not that towards which it tends is good. Hence 
 such special ends as health, wealth, &c., are in themselves worth- 
 less and indifferent. They may result either in good or evil, and 
 when deprived of them the happiness of the virtuous man is not 
 destroyed. The Stoics yield from the rigor of their fundamental 
 principle only in a single instance. They admit that there may 
 be a distinction among indifferent things ; that while none of these 
 can be called a moral good, yet some may be preferable to others, 
 and that the preferable, so far as it contributes to a life in con- 
 formity to nature, should enter into the account of a moral life. 
 So the sage will prefer health and wealth when these are balanced 
 in the choice with sickness and poverty, but though these objects 
 have been rationally chosen, he does not esteem them as really 
 good, for they are not the highest, they are inferior to the vir- 
 tuous acting, in comparison with which every thing else sinks to 
 insignificance. In making this distinction between the good and 
 the preferable, we see how the Stoics exclude from the good every 
 thing relative, and hold fast to it alone in its highest significance. 
 
 (3.) This abstract apprehension of the conception of virtue is 
 still farther verified in the rigid antagonism which the Stoics 
 affirmed between virtue and not-virtue, reason and sense. Either, 
 they conclude, reason is awakened in the life of man and holds 
 the mastery, over him, or it is not awakened, and he serves his 
 irrational instincts. In the former case we have a good and in the 
 latter a bad man, while between these two cases as between virtue 
 and vice, there is no mean. And since virtue cannot be partially 
 possessed, but the man must be wholly virtuous or not at all, it 
 follows that virtue as such is without degree, just as truth is, and 
 hence also all good acts are equally good, because they spring from 
 the full freedom of the reason, and all vicious ones equally bad 
 because they are impelled by the irrational instinct. 
 
 (4.) But this abstractedness of the moral stand-point, this rigid 
 opposition of reason and irrationality, of the highest good and the 
 
144 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHIXOSOPHY. 
 
 individnal good, of virtue and pleasure, has no power to furnisli 
 a system of concrete moral duties. The universal moral principle of 
 the Stoics fails in its applicability to the individual instance. The 
 Stoic morals has no concrete principle of moral self-determination. 
 How must we act in every individual instance, in every moral 
 relation, so as to act according to nature ? To this inquiry Sto- 
 icism can give no answer. Its system of particular duties is thus 
 wholly without a scientific form, and is only held together by 
 some universal conceptions which it contains. For the most part 
 they satisfy themselves with describing in general terms the action 
 according to nature, and with portraying their ideal of the wise 
 man. The characteristics which they give this ideal are partly 
 paradoxical. The wise man is free even in chains, for he acts 
 from himself unmoved by fear or desire ; the wise man alone is 
 king, for he alone is not bound by laws and owes fealty to no one ; 
 he is the true rich man, the true priest, prophet, and poet. He 
 is exalted above all law and every custom ; even that which is 
 most despicable and base — deception, suicide, murder — ^he may 
 commit at a proper time and in a virtuous character. In a word 
 the Stoics describe their wise man as a god, and yield it to him 
 to be proud and to boast of his life like Zeus. But where shall we 
 find such a sage ? Certainly not among the living. In the time 
 long ago there may have been a perfect sage of such a pattern ; 
 but now, and for a long time back, are men at best only fools 
 who strive after wisdom and virtue. The conception of the wise 
 man represented, therefore, to the Stoics only an ideal, the actu- 
 alization of which we should strive after, though without ever 
 hoping to reach it ; and yet their system of particular duties is 
 almost wholly occupied in portraying this unreal and abstract 
 ideal — a contradiction in which it is seen most clearly that their 
 whole stand-point is one of abstract subjectivity. 
 
EPICUREANISM. 
 
 145 
 
 SECTION XVIII. 
 
 EPICUKEANISM. 
 
 The Epicurean school arose at Athens, almost contemporane- 
 ously with the Porch, though perhaps a little earlier than this. 
 Epicurus, its founder, was born 342 B.C., six years after the death 
 of Plato. Of his youth and education little is inown. In his 
 thirty-sixth year he opened a philosophical school at Athens, 
 over which he presided till his death, 271 B.C. His disciples and 
 adherents formed a social league, in which they were united by 
 the closest band of friendship, illustrating the general condition 
 of things in Greece after the time of Alexander, when the social 
 took the place of the decaying poetical life. Epicurus himself 
 compared his society to the Pythagorean fraternity, although the 
 community of goods, which forms an element in the latter, Epi- 
 curus excludes, affirming that true friends can confide in one 
 another. The moral conduct of Epicurus has been repeatedly 
 assailed but, according to the testimony of the most reliable 
 witnesses, his life was blameless in every respect, and his personal 
 character was estimable and amiable. Moreover, it cannot be 
 doubted that much of that, which is told by some, of the offensive 
 voluptuousness of the Epicurean band, should be regarded as 
 calumny. Epicurus was a voluminous writer, surpassing, in this 
 respect, even Aristotle, and exceeded by Chrysippus alone. To 
 the loss of his greater works he has himself contributed, by his 
 practice of composing summaries of his system, which he recom- 
 mended his disciples to commit to memory. These summaries 
 have been for the most part preserved. 
 
 The end which Epicurus proposed to himself in science is dis- 
 tinctly revealed in his definition of philosophy. He calls it an 
 activity which, by means of conceptions and arguments, procures 
 the happiness of life. Its end is, therefore, with him essentially 
 a practical one, and on this account the object of his whole system 
 7 
 
146 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 is to produce a scheme of morals wliicli should teach us how we 
 might inevitably attain a happy life. It is true that the Epicu- 
 reans adopted the usual division of philosophy into logic, which 
 they called canonics, physics, and ethics ; but they confined logic 
 to the doctrine of the criterion of truth, and considered it only as 
 an instrument and introduction to physics, while they only treated 
 of physics as existing wholly for ethics, and being necessary in 
 order to free men from superstitious fear, and deliver them from 
 the power of fables and mythical fancies concerning nature, which 
 might hinder the attainment of happiness. "We have therefore in 
 Epicureanism the three old parts of philosophy, but in a reversed 
 order, since logic and physics here stand as the handmaids of 
 ethics. We shall confine ourselves in our exposition to the latter, 
 since the Epicurean canonics and physics ofi"er little scientific 
 interest, and since the physics especially is not only very incom- 
 plete and without any internal connection, but rests entirely upon 
 the atomic theory of Democritus. 
 
 Epicurus, like Aristotle and the other philosophers of his day, 
 placed the highest good in happiness, or a happy life. More 
 closely he makes pleasure to be the principal constituent of happi- 
 ness, and even calls it the highest good. But Epicurus goes on to 
 give a more accurate determination of pleasure, and in this he difiers 
 essentially from his predecessors, the Cyrenians. (cf. ^ XIII. 3.) 
 
 1. While with Aristippus the pleasure of the moment is made 
 the end of human efforts, Epicurus directs men to strive after 
 a system of pleasures which should insure an abiding course of 
 happiness for the whole life. True pleasure is thus the object to 
 be considered and weighed. Many a pleasure should be despised 
 because it will result in pain, and many a pain should be rejoiced 
 in because it would lead to a greater pleasure. 
 
 2. Since the sage will seek after the highest good, not simply 
 for the present but for his whole life, he will hold the pleasures 
 and pains of the soul, which like memory and hope stretch over 
 the past and the future, in greater esteem than those of the body, 
 which relate only to the present moment. The pleasure of the 
 soul consists in the untroubled tranquillity of the sage, who rests 
 
EPICUREANISM. 
 
 147 
 
 secure in the feeling of his inner worth and his exaltation above 
 the strokes of destiny. Thus Epicurus, would say that it is better 
 to be miserable but rational than to be happy and irrational, and 
 that the wise man might be happy though in torture. He would 
 even affirm, like a true follower of Aristotle, that pleasure and 
 happiness were most closely connected with virtue, that virtue is 
 in fact inseparable from true pleasure, and that there can be no 
 agreeable life without virtue, and no virtue without an agreeable 
 life. 
 
 3. While other Hedonists would regard the most positive and 
 intense feeling of pleasure as the highest good, Epicurus, on the 
 other hand, fixed his eye on a happiness which should be abiding 
 and for the whole life. He would not seek the most exquisite 
 enjoyments in order to attain to a happy life, but he rather recom- 
 mends one to be satisfied with little, and to practise sobriety and 
 temperance of life. He guards himself against such a false ap- 
 plication of his doctrine as would imply that the pleasure of the 
 debauchee were the highest good, and boasts that with a little 
 barley-bread and water he would rival Zeus in happiness. He 
 even expresses an aversion for all costly pleasures, not, however, 
 in themselves, but because of the evil consequences which they 
 entail. True, the Epicurean sage need not therefore live as a 
 Cynic. He will enjoy himself where he can without harm, and 
 will even seek to acquire means to live with dignity and ease. But 
 though all these enjoyments of life may properly belong to the 
 sage, yet he can deprive himself of them without misery — though 
 he ought not to do so — since he enjoys the truest and most essen- 
 tial pleasure in the calmness of his soul and the tranquillity of his 
 heart. In opposition to the positive pleasure of some Hedonists, 
 the theory of Epicurus expends itself in negative conceptions, re- 
 presenting that freedom from pain is pleasure, and that hence the 
 activity of the sage should be prominently directed to avoid that 
 which is disagreeable. All that man does, says Epicurus, is that 
 he may neither suffer nor apprehend pain, and in another place 
 he remarks, that not to live is far from being an evil. Hence 
 death, for which men have the greatest terror, the wise man does 
 
148 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 not fear. For while we live, death is not, and when death is, we 
 are not ; when it is present we feel it not, for it is the end of all 
 feeling, and that, which by its presence cannot affect our happiness, 
 ought not, when thought of as a future, to trouble us. Here Epi- 
 curus must bear the censure urged against him by the ancients, 
 that he does not recognize any positive end of life, and that the 
 object after which his sage should strive is a mere passionless 
 state. 
 
 The crown of Epicurus's view of the universe is his doctrine 
 of the gods, where he has carried over his ideal of happiness. To 
 the gods belong a human form, though without any fixed body or 
 human wants. In the void space they lead an undisturbed and 
 changeless life, whose happiness is incapable of increase. From 
 the blessedness of the gods he inferred that they had nothing to 
 do with the management of our affairs, for blessedness is repose, 
 and on this account the gods neither take trouble to themselves 
 nor cause it to others. It may indeed be said that these inactive 
 gods of Epicurus, these indestructible and yet not fixed forms, 
 these bodies which are not bodies, have but an ill connection with 
 his general system, in which there is in fact no point to which his 
 doctrine of the gods can be fitly joined — but a strict scientific 
 connection is hardly the merit of this whole philosophy. 
 
 SECTION XIX. 
 
 SCEPTICISM AND THE NEW ACADEMY. 
 
 This subjective direction already noticed was carried out to 
 its farthest extent by the Sceptics, who broke down completely the 
 bridge between subject and object, denying all objective truth, 
 knowledge and science, and wholly withdrawing the philosopher 
 from every thing but himself and his own subjective estimates. 
 In this direction we may distinguish between the old Scepticism, 
 the new Academy, and the later Scepticism. 
 
SCEPTICISM AND THE NEW ACADEMY. 
 
 149 
 
 1. The old ScErTiciSM. — Pyrrho of Elis, who was perhaps a 
 cotemporary of Aristotle, was the head of the old Sceptics. He 
 left no writings behind him, and we are dependent for a knowledge 
 of his opinions upon his scholar and follower, Timon of Plilius. 
 The tendency of these sceptical philosophers, like that of the 
 Stoics and Epicureans, was a practical one, for philosophy, said 
 they, ought to lead us to happiness. But in order to live happily 
 we must know how things are, and, therefore, in what kind of a 
 relation we stand to them. The first of these questions the Scep- 
 tics answered by attempting to show that all things, without ex- 
 ception, are indifferent as to truth and falsehood, uncertain, and 
 in nowise subject to man's judgment. Neither our senses nor our 
 opinions concerning any thing teach us any truth; to every 
 precept and to every position a contrary may be advanced, and 
 hence the contradictory views of men, and especially of the phi- 
 losophies of the schools respecting one and the same thing. All 
 objective knowledge and science being thus impossible, the true 
 relation of the philosopher to things consists in the entire suspen- 
 sion of judgment, and the withholding of every positive assertion. 
 In order to avoid every thing like a positive assertion, the Sceptics 
 had recourse to a variety of artifices, and availed themselves of 
 doubtful modes of expression, such as it is possible ; it may he 
 so ; perhaps ; I assert nothing^ — cautiously subjoining to this 
 last — not even that I assert nothing. By this suspension of 
 judgment the Sceptics thought they could attain their practical 
 end, happiness ; for the abstinence from all positive opinion is fol- 
 lowed by a freedom from all mental disturbance, as a substance is 
 by a shadow. He who has embraced Scepticism lives thencefor- 
 ward tranquilly, without inquietude, without agitation, with an 
 equable state of mind, and, in fact, divested of his humanity. 
 Pyrrho is said to have originated the doctrine which lies at the 
 basis of sceptical apathy, that no difference exists between sick- 
 ness and health, or between life and death. The Sceptics, for 
 the most part, derived the material for their views from the pre- 
 vious investigations in the dogmatic schools. But the grounds on 
 which they rested were far from being profound, and were for the 
 
150 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 most part either dialectic errors which could easily be refuted, oi 
 mere subtleties. The use of the following ten tropes is ascribed 
 to the old Sceptics, though these were perhaps not definitely 
 brought out by either Pyrrho or Timon, but were probably first 
 collected by ^nesidemus, soon after the time of Cicero. The 
 withholding of all decisive judgment may rest ; (1) upon the dis- 
 tinction generally existing between individual living objects ; (2) 
 upon the difi'erence among men ; (3) the diflferent functions of the 
 organs of sense; (4) the circumstances under which objects ap- 
 pear ; (5) the relative positions, intervals, and places ; (6) inter- 
 mixtures ; (7) the quantities and modifications of the objects we 
 perceive ; (8) relations; (9) the frequent or rare occurrence; (10) 
 the difi'erent ways of life, the varieties of customs and laws, the 
 mythical representations and dogmatic opinions of men. 
 
 2. The New Academy. — Scepticism, in its conflict with the 
 Stoics, as it appeared in the Platonic school established by Ar- 
 cesilaus (316-241), has a far greater significance than belongs to 
 the performances of the Pyrrhonists. In this school Scepticism 
 sought its support by its great respect for the writings and its 
 transmission of the oral teachings of Plato. Arcesilaus could 
 neither have assumed nor maintained the chair of instruction in 
 the Academy, had he not carefully cherished and imparted to his 
 disciples the impression that his own view, respecting the with- 
 holding of a decisive judgment, coincided essentially with that of 
 Socrates and of Plato, and if he had not also taught that he only 
 restored the genuine and original significance of Platonism, when 
 he set aside the dogmatic method of teaching. An immediate 
 incitement to the efl"orts of Arcesilaus is found in his opposition 
 to the rigid dogmatic system which had lately arisen in the Porch, 
 and which claimed to be in every respect an improvement upon 
 Platonism. Hence, as Cicero remarks, Arcesilaus directed all his 
 sceptical and polemic attacks against Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, 
 lie granted with his opponent that no representation should form 
 a part of undoubted knowledge, if it could possibly have arisen 
 through any other object than that from which it actually sprung, 
 but he would not admit that there might be a notion which ex- 
 
SCEPTICISM AND THE NEW ACADEMY. 
 
 15] 
 
 pressed so truly and accurately its own object, that it could not 
 nave arisen from any other. Accordingly, Arcesilaus denied the 
 existence of a criterion which could certify to us the truth of our 
 knowledge. If there he any truth in our affirmations, said he, we 
 cannot be certain of it. In this sense he taught that one can 
 know nothing, not even that he does know nothing. But in moral 
 matters, in choosing the good and rejecting the evil, he taught 
 that we should follow that which is probable. 
 
 Of the subsequent leaders in the new Academy, Garneades 
 (214-129) alone need here be mentioned, whose whole philosophy, 
 however, consists almost exclusively in a polemic against Stoicism 
 and in the attempt to set up a criterion of truth. His positive 
 performance is the attempt to bring out a philosophical theory of 
 probabilities. The later Academicians fell back to an eclectic 
 dogmaticism, 
 
 3- The later Scepticism. — Once more we meet with a pe- 
 culiar Scepticism at the time when Grecian philosophy had wholly 
 fallen to decay. To this time belong ^nesidemus, who probably 
 — though this cannot be affirmed with certainty — lived but a little 
 after Cicero ; Agrippa, whose date is also uncertain, though sub- 
 sequent to ^nesidemus, and Seztiis Empiricus — i. e. a Grecian 
 physician of the empiric sect, who probably flourished in the first 
 half of the third century of the Christian era. These are the 
 most significant names. Of these the last has the greatest interest 
 for us, from two writings which he left behind him (the hypoty- 
 poses of Pyrrho in three books, and a treatise against the mathe- 
 maticians in nine books), which are sources of much historical 
 information. In these he has profusely collected every thing 
 which the Scepticism of the ancients knew how to advance against 
 the certainty of knowledge. 
 
152 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 SECTION XX. 
 
 THE ROMANS. 
 
 The Romans have taken no independent part in tl t progress of 
 philosophy. After Grecian philosophy and literature had begun 
 to gain a foothold among them, and especially after three dis- 
 tinguished representatives of Attic culture and eloquence — 
 Carneades the Academician, Critolaus the Peripatetic, and Dio- 
 genes the Stoic — ^had appeared in Rome as envoys from Athens ; 
 and after Greece, a few years later, had become a Roman province, 
 and thus outwardly in a close connection with Rome, almost all 
 the more significant systems of Grecian philosophy, especially the 
 Epicurean (Lucretius), and the Stoic (Seneca), flourished and 
 found adherents in Rome, though without gaining any real philo- 
 sophical progress. The Romish philosophizing is wholly eclectic, 
 as is seen in Cicero, the most important and influential philosophic 
 writer among the Romans. But the popular philosophy of this 
 man and of the minds akin to him cannot be strongly assailed, for, 
 notwithstanding its want of originality and logical sequence, it 
 gave philosophy a broad dissemination, and made it a means of 
 universal culture. 
 
 SECTION XXI. 
 
 NEW PLATONISM. 
 
 In New Platonism, the ancient mind made its last and altmosfc 
 despairing attempt at a philosophy which should resolve the dual- 
 ism between the subjective and the objective. The attempt was 
 made by taking on the one side a subjective stand-point, like the 
 other philosophies of the post-Aristotelian time {cf. § XVI 7) ; 
 
NEW PLATONISM. 
 
 153 
 
 and on the other with the design to bring out objective determi- 
 nations concerning the highest conceptions of metaphysics, and 
 concerning the absolute ; in other words, to sketch a system of 
 absolute philosophy. In this respect the effort was made to copy 
 the Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy, and the claim was set 
 up by the new system to be a revival of the original Platonism. 
 On both sides the new attempt formed the closing period of an 
 ancient philosophy. It represents the last struggle, but at the 
 same time the exhaustion of the ancient thinking and the dissolu- 
 tion of the old philosophy. 
 
 The first, and also the most important, representative of New 
 Platonism, is Plotinus. He was a pupil of Ammonius Saccas, 
 who taught the Platonic philosophy at Alexandria in the begin- 
 ning of the third century, though he left no writings behind him. 
 Plotinus (A. D. 205 — 270) from his fortieth year taught philoso- 
 phy at Rome. His opinions are contained in a course of hastily 
 written and not closely connected treatises, which, after his death, 
 were collected and published in six enneads by Porphyry (who 
 was born A. D. 233, and taught both philosophy and eloquence at 
 Rome), his most noted disciple. From Rome and Alexandria, 
 the New Platonism of Plotinus passed over in the fourth century 
 to Athens, where it established itself in the Academy. In the 
 fourth century, Jamhlichus^ a scholar of Porphyry, and in the 
 fifth, Proclus, (412 — 485), were prominently distinguished among 
 the New Platonists. With the triumph of Christianity and the 
 consequent fall of heathenism, in the course of the sixth century, 
 even this last bloom of Grrecian philosophy faded away. 
 
 The common characteristic of all the New Platonists is a ten- 
 dency to mysticism, theosophy, and theurgy. The majority of 
 them gave themselves up to magic and sorcery, and the most dis- 
 tinguished boasted that they were the subjects of divine inspira- 
 tion and illumination, able to look into the future, and to work 
 miracles. They professed to be hierophants as much ^s philoso- 
 phers, and exhibited the unmistakable tendency to represent a 
 Pagan copy of Christianity, which should be at the same time a 
 7* 
 
154 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 
 
 philosophy and a universal religion. In the following sketch of 
 New Platonism we follow mainly the track of Plotinus. 
 
 1. Ecstasy as a Subjective state. — The result of the philo- 
 sophical strivings antecedent to New Platonism had been Scepti- 
 cism ; which, seeing the impracticability of both the Stoic and 
 Epicurean wisdom, had assumed a totally negative relation to 
 every positive and theoretical content. But the end which Scep- 
 ticism had actually gained was the opposite of that for which it 
 had striven. It had striven for the perfect apathy of the sage, 
 but it had gained only the necessity of incessantly opposing every 
 positive affirmation. Instead of the rest which they had sought, 
 they found rather an absolute unrest. This absolute unrest of 
 the consciousness striving after an absolute rest, begat immediate- 
 ly a longing to be freed from this unrest, a longing after some 
 content which should be absolutely satisfying, and stripped of 
 every sceptical objection. This longing after an absolutely true, 
 found its historical expression in New Platonism. The subject 
 sought to master and comprehend the absolute ; and this, neither 
 by objective knowledge nor dialectic mediation, but immediately, 
 by an inner and mystical mounting up of the subject in the form 
 of an immediate beholding, or ecstasy. The knowledge of the 
 true, says Plotinus, is not gained by proof nor by any mediation ; 
 it cannot be found when the objects known remain separate from 
 the subject knowing, but only when the distinction between know- 
 er and known disappears ; it is a beholding of the reason in itself, 
 not in the sense that we see the reason, but the reason beholds 
 itself; in no other way can knowledge come. If any one has at- 
 tained to such a beholding, to such a true unison with the divine, 
 he will despise the pure thinking which he otherwise loved, for 
 this thinking was only a movement which presupposed a difference 
 between the pcrceiver and the perceived. This mystical absorp- 
 tion into the Deity, or, the One, this resolving the self into the 
 absolute, is that which gives to New Platonism a character so. pe- 
 culiarly distinct from the genuine Grecian systems of philosophy. 
 
 2. The Cosmical Principles. — The doctrine of the three 
 cosmical principles is most closely connected with the theory just 
 
NEW PLATONISM. 
 
 155 
 
 named. To the two cosmical principles already received, viz., the 
 world-soul and the world-reason, a third and higher one was added 
 by the New Platonists. For if the reason apprehends the true by 
 means of thinking, and not within itself alone ; if, in order to grasp 
 the absolute and behold the divine, it must lose its own self-con- 
 Bciousness, and go out beyond itself, then reason cannot be the high- 
 est principle, but there stands above it that primal essence, with 
 which it must be united if it will behold the true. To this pri- 
 mal essence Plotinus gives different names, as " the first," " the 
 one," " the good," and " that which stands above being " (being 
 is with him but a conception, which, like the reason, may be re- 
 solved into a higher ground, and which, united with the reason, 
 forms but the second step in the series of highest conceptions). In 
 all these names, Plotinus does not profess to have satisfactorily 
 expressed the essence of this primal one, but only to have given a 
 representation of it. In characterizing it still farther, he denies it 
 all thinking and willing, because it needs nothing and can desire 
 nothing ; it is not energy, but above energy ; life does not belong 
 to it ; neither being nor essence nor any of the most general cate- 
 gories of being can be ascribed to it ; in short, it is that which can 
 neither be expressed nor thought. Plotinus has thoroughly 
 striven to think of this first principle not as first principle, i. e. 
 not in its relation to that of which it is the ground, but only in 
 itself, as being wholly without reference either to us or to any thing 
 else. This pure abstraction, however, he could not carry out. He 
 sets himself to show how every thing else, and especially the two 
 other cosmical principles, could emanate from this first ; but in 
 order to have a principle for his emanation theory, he was obliged 
 to consider the first in its relation to the second and as its pro- 
 ducer 
 
 3. The Emanation Theory of the New Platonists. — Every 
 emanation theory, and hence also that of the New Platonists, con- 
 siders the world as the effluence of God, and gives to the emana- 
 tion a greater or less degree of perfection, according as it is 
 nearer or more remote from its source. They all have for their 
 principle the totality of being, and represent a progressively 
 
156 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 ascending relation in its several parts. Fire, says Plotinus, 
 emits heat, snow cold, fragrant bodies odors, and every organic 
 thing so far as it is perfect begets something like itself. In the 
 same way the all-perfect and the eternal, in the overflowing of his 
 perfection sends out from himself that which is also eternal, and 
 after him, the best, viz., the reason or world-intelligence, which is 
 the immediate reflection and image of the primal one. Plotinus 
 abounds in figures to show how the primal one need lose nothing 
 ^s become weakened by this emanation of reason. Next to the 
 original one, reason is the most perfect. It contains in itself the 
 ideal world, and the whole of true and changeless being. Some 
 *otion may be formed of its exaltation and glory by carefully be- 
 A)lding the sensible world in its greatness, its beauty, and the order 
 of its ceaseless motion, and then by rising to contemplate its 
 archetype in the pure and changeless being of the intelligible 
 #orld, and then by recognizing in intelligence the author and 
 finisher of all. In it there is neither past nor future, but only an 
 over abiding present. It is, moreover, as incapable of division in 
 •^ace as of change in time. It is the true eternity, which is only 
 0opied by time. As reason flows from the primal one, so does the 
 •^rld-soul eternally emanate from reason, though the latter in- 
 ^rs no change thereby. The world-soul is the copy of reason, 
 l»ermeated by it, and actualizing it in an outer world. It gives 
 ideas externally to sensible matter, which is the last and lowest 
 step in the series of emanations and in itself is undetermined, and 
 has neither quality nor being. In this way the visible universe 
 is but the transcript of the world-soul, which forms it out of mat- 
 ter, permeates and animates it, and carries it forward in a circle. 
 Here closes the series of emanations, and, as was the aim of the 
 theory, we have been carried in a constant current from the high- 
 est to the lowest, from Grod to the mere image of true being, or 
 the sensible world. 
 
 Individual souls, like the world-soul, are linked both to the 
 higher and the lower, to reason and the sensible ; now bound with 
 the latter and sharing its destiny, and anon rising to their source 
 in reason. Their original and proper home was in the rational 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND SCHOLASTICISM. 
 
 157 
 
 world, from whence tliej have come down, each one in its proper 
 time, into the corporeal; not, however, wholly forsaking their ideal 
 abode, but as a sunbeam touches at the same time the sun and the 
 earth, so are they found alike in the world of reason and the 
 world of sense. Our calling, therefore — and here we come back 
 to the point from which we started in our exhibition of New Pla- 
 tonism — can only be to direct our senses and aspirations towards 
 our proper home, in the ideal world, and by asceticism and cruci- 
 fying of the flesh, to free our better self from its participation with 
 the body. But when our soul has once mounted up to the ideal 
 world, that image of the originally good and beautiful, it then 
 attains the final goal of all its longings and efibrts, the immediate 
 union with God, through the enraptured beholding of the primal 
 one in which it loses its consciousness and becomes buried and 
 absorbed. 
 
 According to all this, the New Platonic philosophy would seem 
 to be a monism, and thus the most perfect development of ancient 
 philosophy, in so far as this had striven to carry back the sum of 
 all being to one ultimate ground. But as it attained its highest 
 principle from which all the rest was derived, by means of ecstasy, 
 by a mystical self-destruction of the individual person (Ichheit), 
 by asceticism and theurgy, and not by means of self-conscious 
 thinking, nor by any natural or rational way, it is seen that 
 ancient philosophy, instead of becoming perfected in New Platon- 
 ism, only makes a despairing leap beyond itself to its own self- 
 destruction. 
 
 SECTION XXII. 
 
 CHKISTIANITY AND SCHOLASTICISM. 
 
 1. The Christian Idea. — The Grecian intellectual life at the 
 time of its fairest bloom, was characterized by the immediate 
 sacrifice of the subject to the object (nature, the state, &c.) : the 
 full breach between the two, between spirit and nature, had not 
 
158 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 yet arrived; the subject had not yet so far reflected upon him- 
 self that he could apprehend his own absolute worth. This breach 
 came in, with the decay of Grecian life, in the time after Alexan- 
 der the Great. As the objective world lost its influence, the 
 thinking consciousness turned back upon itself; but even in this 
 very process, the bridge between subject and object was broken 
 down. The self-consciousness had not yet become sufficiently 
 absorbed in itself to look upon the true, the divine, in any other 
 light than as separate from itself, and belonging to an opposite 
 world ; while a feeling of pain, of unsatisfied desire, took the place 
 of that fair unity between spirit and nature which had been pecu- 
 liar to the better periods of the Grecian civil and artistic life. 
 New Platonism, by its overleaping speculation, and, practically, 
 by its mortification of the sense, made a last and despairing at- 
 tempt to overcome this separation, or to bury itself within it, by 
 bringing the two sides forcibly together. The attempt was in 
 vain, and the old philosophy, totally exhausted, came to its end. 
 Dualism is therefore the rock on which it split. This problem, 
 thus left without a solution, Christianity took up. It assumed for 
 its principle the idea which the ancient thinking had not known 
 how to carry out, affirming that the separation between God and 
 man might be overcome, and that the human and the divine could 
 be united in one. The speculative fundamental idea of Chris- 
 tianity is, that God has become incarnate, and this had its practi- 
 cal exhibition (for Christianity was a practical religion) in the idea 
 of the atonement and the demand of the new birth, i. e. the posi- 
 tive purifying of the sense from its corruptions, instead of hold- 
 ing it, as asceticism, in a merely negative relation. 
 
 From the introduction of Christianity, monism has been the 
 character and the fundamental tendency of the whole modern 
 philosophy. In fact, the new philosophy started from the very point 
 at which the old had stood still. The turning of the self-con- 
 sciousness upon itself, which was the stand-point of the post- Aris- 
 totelian speculations, forms in Descartes the starting-point of the 
 new philosophy, whose whole course has been the reconciling of 
 that opposition beyond which the old could not pass. 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND SCHOLASTICISM. 
 
 159 
 
 2. Scholasticism. — It very early resulted that Christianity 
 came in contact with the cotemporaneous philosophy, especially 
 with Platonism. This arose first with the apologists of the second 
 century, and the fathers of the Alexandrian church. Subse- 
 quently, in the ninth century, Scotus Erigena made an attempt 
 to combine Christianity with New Platonism, though it was not 
 till the second half of the Middle Ages, from the eleventh century, 
 that there was developed any thing that might be properly termed 
 a Christian philosophy. This was the so-called Scholasticism. 
 
 The effort of Scholasticism was to mediate between the dogma 
 of religion and the reflecting self- consciousness ; to reconcile faith 
 and knowledge. When the dogma passed over into the schools 
 from the Church which had given it utterance, and theology be- 
 came a science of the universities, the scientific interest asserted 
 its rights, and undertook to bring the dogma which had hitherto 
 stood over against the self-consciousness as an external power, 
 into a closer relation to the thinking subject. A series of attempts 
 was now made to bring out the doctrines of the Church in the 
 form of scientific systems (the first complete dogmatic system was 
 given by Peter Lombard, who died 1164, in his four books of 
 sentences, and was voluminously commented upon by the later 
 Scholastics), all starting from the indisputable premise (beyond 
 which scholastic thinking never reached), that the faith of the 
 church is absolute truth ; but all guided likewise by the interest 
 to make this revealed truth intelligible, and to show it to be ra- 
 tional. " Credo ut intelligam^'' — this expression of Anselm, the 
 beginner and founder of Scholasticism (he was born about 1031, 
 and made Archbishop of Canterbury in 1093), was the watchword 
 of this whole direction. Scholasticism applied to the solution of 
 its problem the most remarkable logical acumen, and brought out 
 systems of doctrine like the Grothic cathedrals in their architec- 
 ture. The extended study of Aristotle, called par eminence 
 " the philosopher," whom many of the most distinguished Scholas- 
 tics wrote commentaries upon, and who was greatly studied at the 
 same period among the Arabians (Avicenna and Averroes), fur- 
 nished their terminology and most of their points of view. At 
 
160 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 the summit of Scholasticism we must place the two incontestable 
 greatest masters of the Scholastic art and method, Thomas 
 Aquinas (Dominican, who died 1274) and Duns Scotus (Fran- 
 ciscan, who died 1308), the founders of two schools, in which since 
 their time the whole Scholastic theology divides itself — the former 
 exalting the understanding (intellectus), and the latter the will 
 (voluntas)^ as their highest principle, both being driven into essen- 
 tially differing directions by this opposition of a theoretical and a 
 practical principle. Even with this began the downfall of 
 Scholasticism; its highest point was also the turning-point to its 
 self-destruction. The rationality of the dogma, the oneness of 
 faith and knowledge, had been constantly their fundamental pre- 
 mise; but this premise fell away, and the whole basis of their 
 metaphysics was given up in principle, the moment Duns Scotus 
 placed the problem of theology in the practical. When the prac- 
 tical and the theoretical became divided, and still more when 
 thought and being were separated by Nominalism {cf. 3), philos- 
 9phy broke loose from theology and knowledge from faith ; knowl- 
 edge assumed its position above faith and above authoiity (modern 
 philosophy), and the religious consciousness broke with the tra- 
 ditional dogma (the Keformation). 
 
 3. Nominalism and Kealism. — Hand in hand with the whole 
 development of Scholasticism, there was developed the opposition 
 between Nominalism and Realism, an opposition whose origin is 
 to be found in the relation of Scholasticism to the Platonic and 
 Aristotelian philosophy. The Nominalists were those who held 
 that the conceptions of the universal (the universalia) were 
 simple names, flatus vocis, representations without content and 
 without reality. According to them there are no universal con- 
 ceptions, no species, no class ; every thing which is, exists only 
 as separate in its pure individuality ; there is, therefore, no pure 
 thinking, but only a representation and sensuous perception. The 
 Realists, on the other hand, taking pattern from Plato, held fast 
 to the objective reality of the universals {universalia ante rem). 
 These opposite directions appeared first between Boscellinus, who 
 took the side of Nominalism, and Ansehn, who advocated the 
 
TRANSITION TO THE MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 161 
 
 Realistic theory, and it is seen from this time through the whole 
 period of Scholasticism, though from the age of Ahelard (born 
 1079) a middle view, which was both Nominalistic and Realistic, 
 held with some slight modifications the prominent place {univer- 
 salia in re). According to this view the universal is only some- 
 thing thought and represented, though as such it is not simply a 
 product of the representing consciousness, but has also its objective 
 reality in objects themselves, from which it was argued we could 
 not abstract it if it were not essentially contained in them. This 
 identity of thought and being, is the fundamental premise on 
 which the whole dialectic course of the Scholastics rests. All 
 their arguments are founded on the claim, that that which has 
 been syllogistically proved is in reality the same as in logical 
 thinking. If this premise is overthrown, so falls with it the whole 
 basis of Scholasticism ; and there remains nothing more for the 
 thinker to do, who has gone astray in his objectivity, but to fall 
 back upon himself. This self-dissolution of Scholasticism actually 
 appears with William of Occam (died 1347), the most influential 
 reviver of that Nominalism which had been so mighty in the 
 beginning of Scholasticism, but which now, more victorious 
 against a decaying than then against a rising form of culture, 
 plucked away its foundation from the framework of Scholastic 
 dogmatism, and brought the whole structure into inevitable rui». 
 
 SECTION XXIII. 
 
 TKANSITION TO THE MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 The emancipation of modern philosophy from the bondage of 
 Scholasticism was a gradual process. It first showed itself in a 
 series of preparative movements during the fifteenth century, and 
 became perfected, negatively, in the course of the sixteenth, and 
 positively in the first half of the seventeenth century. 
 
 1. Fall of Scholasticism. — The immediate ground of this 
 
162 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 clianged direction of the time, we have already seen in the innei 
 decay of Scholasticism itself. Just so soon as the fundamental 
 premise on which the Scholastic theology and method rested, the 
 rationality of the dogma, was abandoned, the whole structure, as 
 already remarked, fell to inevitable ruin. The conviction, directly 
 opposed to the principle of Scholasticism, that what might be 
 true dogmatically, might be false, or, at least, incapable of proof 
 in the eye of the reason — a point of view from which e. g. the 
 Aristotelian Pomponatius (1462-1530) treated the doctrines of 
 the future state, and in whose light Vanini subsequently went 
 over the chief problems of philosophy — kept gaining ground, not- 
 withstanding the opposition of the Church, and even associated 
 with itself the opinion that reason and revelation could not be 
 harmonized. The feeling became prevalent that philosophy must 
 be freed from its previous condition of minority and servitude ; a 
 struggle after a greater independence of philosophic investigation 
 was awakened, and though no one yet ventured to attack directly 
 the doctrine of the Church, the effort was made to shatter the 
 confidence in the chief bulwark of Scholasticism, the Aristotelian 
 philosophy, or what at that period was regarded as such ; (especially 
 in this connection Peter Ramus, (1515-1572) should be men- 
 tioned, who fell in the massacre of St. Bartholomew). The 
 authority of the Church became more and more weakened in the 
 faith of the people, and the great principles of Scholasticism came 
 to an end. 
 
 2. The Eesults of Scholasticism. — Notwithstanding all. 
 Scholasticism was not without its positively good results. Though 
 standing wholly in the service of the Church, it had, nevertheless, 
 grown out of a scientific impulse, and so naturally awakened a free 
 spirit of inquiry and a sense for knowledge. It made the objects 
 of faith the objects of thought, it raised men from the sphere of 
 unconditional faith to the sphere of doubt, of investigation and 
 of knowledge, and by its very effort to demonstrate the principles 
 of theology it established, though against its knowledge and de- 
 sign, the authority of reason. It thus introduced to the world 
 another principle than that of the old Church, the principle of the 
 
TRANSITION TO THE MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 163 
 
 thinking spirit, tlie self-consciousness of the reason, or at least 
 prepared the way for the victory of this principle. Even the de- 
 formities and unfavorable side of Scholasticism, the many absurd 
 questions upon which the Scholastics divided, even their thousand- 
 fold unnecessary and accidental distinctions, their inquisitiveness 
 and subtleties, all sprang from a rational principle, and grew out 
 of a spirit of investigation, which could only utter itself in this 
 way under the all powerful ecclesiastical spirit of the time. Only 
 when it was surpassed by the advancing spirit of the age, did 
 Scholasticism, falsifying its original meaning, make common cause 
 and interest with the old ecclesiasticism, and turned itself as the 
 most violent opposer against the improvements of the new period. 
 
 3. The Revival of Letters. — The revival of classic litera- ^ 
 ture contributed prominently to that change in the spirit of the 
 age which marks the beginning of the new epoch of philosophy. 
 The study of the ancients, especially of the Greeks, had almost 
 - wholly ceased in the course of the Middle Ages ; even the philoso- 
 phy of Plato and Aristotle was known, for the most part, only 
 through Latin translations or secondary sources ; no one realized 
 the spirit of classic life, and all sense for beauty of form and ele- 
 gant composition had passed away. The change was chiefly 
 brought about by means of the Greek scholars who fled from Con- 
 stantinople to Italy ; the study of the ancients in the original 
 soui'ces came up again ; the newly discovered art of printing 
 allowed the classics to be widely circulated ; the Medicis drew 
 classic scholars to their court ; all this working for a far better 
 understanding of the ancient philosophy. Besarion (died 1472) 
 and Ficinus (died 1499) were prominent in this movement. The 
 result was presently seen. The new scholars contended against 
 the stiff and uncouth manner in which the sciences had hitlierto 
 been treated, new ideas began to circulate, and there arose again 
 the free, universal, thinking spirit of antiquity. In Germany, 
 also, classic studies found a fruitful soil. Beuchlin (born 1454), 
 Melanctlion and Erasmus^ labored in this sense, and the classic 
 movement, hostile as it was to the Scholastic impulse, favored 
 most decidedly the growing tendencies to the Reformation. 
 
164 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 4. The German Reformation. — All the elements of the new 
 age, the struggle against Scholasticism, the revival of letters and 
 the more enlarged culture thus secured, the striving after national 
 independence, the attempts of the state to free itself from the 
 Church and the hierarchy, and above all, the desire of the think- 
 ing self- consciousness for autonomy, for freedom from the fetters 
 of authority — all these elements found their focus and point of 
 union in the German Reformation. Though having its root at first 
 in practical, and religious, and national interests, and expending 
 itself mainly upon the Christian doctrine and Church, yet was the 
 Reformation in principle and in its true consequences a rupture of 
 the thinking spirit with authority, a protesting against the fetters 
 of the positive, a return of the mind from its self-estrangement to 
 itself. From that which was without, the mind now came back to 
 that which is within, and the purely human as such, the individual 
 heart and conscience, the subjective conviction, in a word, the 
 rights of the subject now began to be of worth. While marriage 
 had formerly been regarded, though not immoral, as yet inferior to 
 continence and celibacy, it appeared now as a divine institution, a 
 natural law ordained of God. While poverty had formerly been 
 esteemed higher than wealth, and the contemplative life of the 
 monk was superior to the manual labor of the layman supporting 
 himself by his own toil, yet now poverty ceased to be desirable in 
 itself, and labor was no longer despised. Ecclesiastical freedom 
 took the place of spiritual bondage ; monasticism and the priest- 
 hood lost their power. In the same way, on the side of knowl- 
 edge the individual man came back to himself, and threw off the 
 restraints of authority. He was impressed with the conviction 
 that the whole process of redemption must be experienced within 
 himself, that his reconciliation to God and salvation was his own 
 concern, for which he needed no mediation of priests, and that hej 
 Btood in an immediate relation to God. He found his whole being 
 in his faith, in the depth of his feelings and convictions. 
 
 Since thus Protestantism sprang from the essence of the samoj 
 iSpirit in which modern philosophy had its birth, the two have thej 
 closest relation to each other, though of course there is a specific 
 
TRANSITION TO THE MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 165 
 
 difference between the religious and the scientific principle. Yet 
 in their origin, both kinds of Protestantism, that of religion and 
 that of thought, are one and the same, and in their progress they 
 have also gone hand in hand together. For religion, reduced to 
 its simple elements, will be found to have its source, like philoso- 
 phy, in the self-knowledge of the reason. 
 
 5. The Advancement of the Natural Sciences. — To all 
 these phenomena, which should be regarded both as causes and 
 as symptoms of the intellectual revolution of this period, we must 
 add yet another, which essentially facilitated and gave a positive 
 assistance to the freedom of the mind from the fetters of authority 
 — the starting up of the natural sciences and the inductive method 
 of examining nature. This epoch was a period of the most fruit- 
 ful and influential discoveries in nature. The discovery of Ame- 
 rica and the passage to the East Indies had already widened the 
 circle of view, but still greater revolutions are connected with the 
 name of a Copernicus (died 1543), Kepler (died 1630), and Ga- 
 lileo (died 1642), revolutions which could not remain, without an 
 influence upon the whole mode of thinking of that age, and which 
 contributed prominently to break the faith in the prevailing eccle- 
 siastical authority. Scholasticism had turned away from nature 
 and the phenomenal world, and, blind towards that which lay be- 
 fore the very eyes, had spent itself in a dreamy intellectuality ; 
 but now nature rose again in honor ; her glory and exaltation, her 
 infinite diversity and fulness of life became again the immediate 
 objects of observation; to investigate nature became an essential 
 object of philosophy, and scientific empiricism was thus regarded 
 as a universal and essential concern of the thinking man. From 
 this time the natural sciences date their historical importance, for 
 only from this time have they had an uninterrupted history. The 
 results of this new intellectual movement can be readily estimated. 
 Such a scientific investigation of nature not only destroyed a 
 series of traditional errors and prejudices, but, what was of 
 greater importance, it directed the intellectual interest towards 
 that which is real and actual, it nourished and protected the self- 
 thinking and feeling of self-dependence, the spirit of inquiry and 
 
166 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 proof. The stand-point of observation and experiment presupposes 
 an independent self-consciousness of the individual, a breaking 
 loose from authority — in a word, scepticism, with which, in fact, 
 the founders of modern philosophy, Bacon and Descartes^ began ; 
 the former by conditioning the knowledge of nature upon the re- 
 moval of all prejudice and every preconceived opinion, and the 
 latter by demanding that philosophy should be begun with uni- 
 versal doubt. No wonder that a bitter struggle should soon break 
 out between the natural sciences and ecclesiastical orthodoxy, 
 which could only result in breaking the power of the latter. 
 
 6. Bacon of Yerulam. — Francis of Yerulam was "born in 
 1561, and was Lord High Chancellor of England and keeper of 
 the king's seal under James I. From these offices he was subse- 
 quently expelled, and died in 1626, with a character which has 
 not been without reproach. He took as his principle the induc- 
 tive method, which he directed expressly against Scholasticism 
 and the ruling scientific method. On this account he is frequent- 
 ly placed at the head of modern philosophy. 
 
 The sciences, says Bacon, have hitherto been in a most sad 
 condition. Philosophy, wasted in empty and fruitless logoma- 
 chies, has failed during so many centuries to bring out a single 
 work or experiment of actual benefit to human life. Logic hith- 
 erto has served more to the establishment of error than to the 
 investigation of truth. Whence all this ? Why this penury of the 
 sciences ? Simply because they have broken away from their 
 root in nature and experience. The blame of this is chargeable 
 to many sources ; first, the old and rooted prejudice that^ the human 
 mind loses somewhat of its dignity when it busies itself much 
 and continuously with experiments and material things ; next, su- 
 perstition and a blind religious zeal, which has been the most irre- 
 concilable opposer to natural philosophy; again, the exclusive 
 attention paid to morals and politics by the Romans, and since the 
 Christain era to theology by every acute mind ; still farther, the 
 great authority which certain philosophers have professed, and 
 the great reverence given, to antiquity ; and in fine, a want of cour- 
 age and a despair of overcoming the many and great difficulties 
 
TRANSITION TO THE MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 1G7 
 
 whicli lie in the way of the investigation of nature. All these 
 causes have contributed to keep down the sciences. Hence they 
 must now be renewed, and regenerated, and reformed in their 
 most fundamental principles ; there must now be found a new 
 basis of knowledge and new principles of science. This radical 
 reformation of the sciences depends upon two conditions, object- 
 ively upon the referring of science to experience and the philos- 
 ophy of nature, and subjectively upon the purifying of the sense 
 and the intellect from all abstract theories and traditional preju- 
 dices. Both conditions furnish the correct method of natural 
 science, which is nothing other than the method of induction. 
 Upon a true induction depends all the soundness of the sciences. 
 
 In these propositions the Baconian philosophy is contained. 
 The historical significance of its founder is, therefore, in general 
 this, — that he directed the attention and reflection of his cotem- 
 poraries again upon the given actuality, upon nature ; that he af- 
 firmed the necessity of experience, which had been formerly only 
 a matter of accident, and made it as in and for itself an object of 
 thought. His merit consists in having brought up the principle 
 of scientific empiricism, and only in this. Strictly speaking, we 
 can allow no content to the Baconian philosophy, although (in his 
 treatise de augmentis scientiarum) he has attempted a systematic 
 encyclopedia of the sciences according to a new principle of classi- 
 fication, through which he has scattered an abundance of fine and 
 fruitful observations, which are still used as apothegms. 
 
 7. The Italian Philosophers of the Transition Epoch. — 
 Besides Bacon, other phenomena must be noticed which have pre- 
 pared and introduced the new age of philosophy. First among 
 these is a list of Italian philosophers, from the second half of the 
 sixteenth and the first half of the seventeenth century. These 
 philosophers are connected in a twofold manner with the movements 
 already sketched of this transition period, first by an enthusiasm 
 for nature which among them all partook in a greater or less degree 
 of pantheism ( Yanini e. g. gave to one of his writings the title " con- 
 cerning the wonderful secrets of nature, the queen and goddess 
 of mortals"), and second, by their connection with the systems of 
 
168 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 ancient philosopliy. The best known of these philosophers are 
 the following: Cardanus (1501-1575), Campanella (1568-1639), 
 Giordano Bruno ( — 1600), Vanini (1586-1619.) They were all 
 men of a passionate, enthusiastic and impetuous nature, unsteady 
 and wild in character, restless and adventurous in life, men who 
 were inspired by an eager impulse towards knowledge, but who 
 were carried away by great fantasy, wildness of imagination, and 
 a seeking after secret astrological and geomantic knowledge. For 
 these reasons they also passed away, leaving no fruitful result 
 behind. They were all persecuted by the hierarchy, and two of 
 them (Bruno and Yanini) ended their lives at the stake. In their 
 whole historical appearance they are like the eruption of a volcano, 
 and are to be regarded more as forerunners and announcers than as 
 beginners and founders of the new age of philosophy. The most 
 important among them is Giordano Bruno. He reviewed the old 
 idea of the Stoics, that the world is a living being, and that a 
 world-soul penetrates it all. The content of his general thought 
 is the profoundest enthusiasm for nature, and the plastic reason 
 which is present in it. The reason is, according to him, the inner 
 artist who shapes the matter and manifests himself in the forms 
 of the universe. From the heart of the root or the germ he sends 
 out the lobes, and from these again he evolves the shoots, and 
 from the shoots the branches, until bud, and leaf, and blossom are 
 brought forth. Every thing is arranged, adjusted, and perfected 
 within. Thus the universal reason calls back from within the 
 sap out of the fruits and flowers to the branches again, &c. The 
 universe thus is an infinite living thing, in which every thing lives 
 and moves after the most manifold way. 
 
 The relation of the reason to matter, Bruno determines wholly 
 in the Aristotelian manner ; both stand related to each other as 
 form and matter, as actuality and potentiality, neither is without 
 the other ; the form is the inner impelling might of matter, and 
 matter, as the unlimited possibility, as the capability for an infi 
 nite diversity of form, is the mother of all forms. The other side 
 of Bruno's philosophizing, his elaboration of the topics of Lullus 
 
TRANSITION TO THE MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 169 
 
 which occupies the greater part of his writings, has little philosophic 
 interest, and we therefore pass it by. 
 
 8. Jacob Boehme. — As Bacon among the English and Bruno 
 among the Italians, so Jacob Boehme is the index among the 
 Germans of this transition period. Each one of these three indi- 
 cates it in a way peculiar to his own nationality ; Bacon as the 
 herald of empiricism, Bruno as the representative of a poetic pan- 
 theism, and Boehme as the father of the theosophic mysticism. 
 If we regarded alone the profoundness of his principle, Boehme 
 should hold a much later place in the history of philosophy, but 
 if we looked chiefly at the imperfect form of his philosophizing, 
 his rank would be assigned to the mystics of the Middle Ages, 
 while chronologically we must associate him with the German 
 Reformation and the protestant elements that were nourished at 
 that time. His true position is among the forerunners and 
 prophets of the new age. 
 
 Jacob Boehme was born in 1575, in old Seidenburg, a village 
 of upper Lusace, not far from Goerlitz. His parents were poor 
 peasants. In his boyhood he took care of the cattle, and in his 
 youth, after he had acquired the rudiments of reading and writing 
 in a village school, he was sent to Goerlitz to learn the shoe- 
 maker's art. He finished his apprenticeship and settled down at 
 Goerlitz in 1594 as master of his trade. Even in his youth he 
 had received illuminations or mysterious revealings, which were 
 subsequently repeated when his soul, striving for the truth, had 
 become profoundly agitated by the religious conflicts of the age. 
 Besides the Bible, the only books which Boehme read were some 
 mystical writings of a theosophic and alchymistic content, e. g. 
 those of Paracelsus. His entire want of culture is seen as soon 
 as he undertakes to write down his thoughts, or, as he calls them, 
 his illuminations. Hence the imperious struggle of the thought 
 with the expression, which, however, not unfrequently rises to a 
 dialectical acuteness and a poetic beauty. His first treatise, Au- 
 rora, composed in the year 1612, brought Boehme into trouble 
 with the chief pastor in Goerlitz, Gregorious Richter, who pub- 
 licly condemned the book from the pulpit, and even ridiculed the 
 8 
 
170 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 person of its author. The writing of books was prohibited him 
 by a magistrate, a prohibition which Boehme observed for many 
 years, till at length the command of the spirit was too mighty 
 within him, and he took up again his literary labors. Boehme 
 was a plain, quiet, modest and gentle man. He died in 1624. 
 
 To give an exhibition of his theosophy in a few words is very 
 difficult, since Boehme, instead of clothing his thoughts in a logical 
 form, dressed them only in pictures of the sense and obscure 
 analogies, and often availed himself of the most arbitrary and 
 singular modes of expression. A twilight reigns in his writings 
 as in a Grothic cathedral where the light falls through variegated 
 windows. Hence the magic effect which he has made upon many 
 hearts. The chief thought of his philosophizing is this, viz., that 
 the distinguishing of the self from the not-self is the essential de- 
 termination of spirit, and hence of God so far as God is to be ap 
 prehended as spirit. God, according to Boehme, is living spirit 
 only at the time and in the degree in which he conceives the dis 
 tinction within himself from himself, and is in this distinction 
 object and consciousness. The distinction of God in himself is 
 the only source of his and of all actuosity and spontaneity, the 
 spring and fountain of that self-active life which produces con- 
 sciousness out of itself. Boehme is inexhaustible in images by 
 which this negativity in God, his self-distinguishing and self-re- 
 nunciation to the world, may be made conceivable. The great 
 expansion without end, he says, needs limitation and a compas 
 in which it may manifest itself, for in expansion without limit 
 there could be no manifestation, there must be a contraction and 
 an enclosing, in order that a manifestation may arise. See, he 
 says in another place, if the will were only of one kind, then would 
 the soul have only one quality, and were an immovable thing, 
 which would always lie still and never do any thing farther tha 
 one thing ; in this there could be no joy, as also no art nor science 
 of other things, and no wisdom ; every thing would be a nothing 
 and there would be neither heart nor will for any thing, for there 
 would be only the single. Hence it cannot be said that the whole 
 God is in one will and essence, there is a distinction. Nothing 
 
TRANSITION TO THE MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 171 
 
 can ever become manifest to itself without resistance, for if it hag 
 nothing resisting, it expends itself and never comes to itself again ; 
 but if it does not come to itself again except in that from which it 
 has originally sprung, it thus knows nothing of its original con- 
 dition. The above thought Boehme expresses when he says in his 
 Questionibus TTieosophicis ; the reader should know that in yea 
 and nay all things consist, whether divine, devilish, earthly, or 
 whatever may be named. The one as the yea, is simple energy 
 and love, and is the truth of Grod and God himself. But this 
 were inconceivable, and there were neither delight, nor import- 
 ance, nor sensibility, without the nay. The nay is thrown in the 
 way of the yea, or of truth, in order that the truth may be mani- 
 fest and something, in which there may be a contrarium, where 
 eternal love may work and become sensitive and willing. There 
 is nothing in the one which is an occasion for willing until the one 
 becomes duplicated, and so there can be no sensation in unity, but 
 only in duality. In brief, according to Boehme, neither know- 
 ledge nor consciousness is possible, without distinction, without 
 opposition, without duplication; a thing becomes clear and an 
 object of consciousness only through something else, through its 
 own opposition identical with its own being. It was very natural 
 to connect this thought of a unity distinguishing itself in itself, 
 with the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, as Boehme has, in fact, 
 repeatedly done when treating of the Divine life and its process 
 of duplication. Schelling afterwards took up these ideas of 
 Boehme and philosophically elaborated them. 
 
 If we should assign to the theosophy of Boehme a position in 
 the development of later philosophy corresponding to the inner 
 content of its principle, it would most properly be placed as a 
 complement to the system of Spinoza. If Spinoza taught the 
 flowing back of all the finite into the eternal one, Boehme, on the 
 other hand, shows the procession of the finite from the eternal one, 
 and the inner necessity of this procession, since the being of this 
 one would be rather a not-being without such a self-duplication. 
 Compared with Descartes, Boehme has at least more profoundly 
 apprehended the conception of self consciousness and the relation 
 
172 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 of the finite to God. But his historical position in other respects 
 is far too isolated and exceptional, and his mode of statement far 
 too impure, to warrant us in incorporating him anywhere in a 
 series of systems developed continuously and in a genetic con- 
 nection. 
 
 SECTION XXIY. 
 
 DESCARTES. 
 
 The beginner and founder of modern philosophy is Descartes. 
 While he, like the men of the transition epoch just noticed, broke 
 loose entirely from the previous philosophizing, and began his 
 work wholly de novo^ yet he did not content himself, like Bacon, 
 with merely bringing out a new method, or like Boehme and his 
 cotemporaries among the Italians, with affirming philosophical 
 views without a methodical ground. He went further than any 
 of these, and making his stand-point one of universal doubt, he 
 affirms a new, positive, and pregnant philosophical principle, from 
 which he attempted logically to deduce the chief points of hia 
 system. The character and novelty of his principle makes him 
 the beginner, and its inner fruitfulness the founder, of modern 
 philosophy. 
 
 Bene Descartes {Renatus Cartesius) was born in 1596, at La 
 Haye in Torraine. Possessing an independent property, he volun- 
 teered as a soldier in his twenty-first year, and served in the wars 
 with the Dutch, the Bavarians, and the Imperialists. After this 
 he travelled a good deal, and then abode a considerable time in 
 Paris. In 1629 he left his native land, and betook himself to 
 Holland, that he might there, undisturbed and unknown, devote 
 himself to philosophy, and elaborate his scientific ideas. He spent 
 twenty years in Holland, enduring much vexatious treatment from 
 fanatical theologians, till in 1649 he accepted an invitation froml 
 Queen Christina of Sweden, to visit Stockholm, where he died inl 
 the following year. J 
 
DESCARTES. 
 
 173 
 
 The chief content of the Cartesian system may be seen con 
 densed in the following epitome. 
 
 1. If science would have any thing fixed and abiding, it must 
 begin with the primal ground of things; every presupposition 
 which we may have cherished from infancy must be abandoned ; 
 in a word, we must doubt at every point to which the least uncer- 
 tainty is attached. We must therefore doubt not only the exist- 
 ence of the objects of sense, since the senses so frequently deceive, 
 but also the truths of mathematics and geometry — for, however 
 evident the proposition may appear that two and three make five, 
 or that the square has four sides, yet we cannot know but what 
 God may have designedly formed us for erroneous judgments. 
 It is therefore advisable to doubt every thing, in fact to deny 
 every thing, to posit every thing as false. 
 
 2. But though we posit every thing as false to which the slight- 
 est doubt maybe attached, yet we cannot deny one thing, viz., the 
 truth that we, who so think, do exist. But rather from the very 
 fact that I posit every thing as false, that I doubt every thing, 
 is it manifest that I, the doubter, exist. Hence the proposition: 
 I think, therefore I am [cogito ergo sum), is the first and most 
 certain position which offers itself to every one attempting to 
 philosophize. Upon this the most certain of all propositions, the 
 certainty of all other knowledge depends. The objection of Gas- 
 sendi that the truth of existence follows from any other activity 
 of man as well as from thinking, that I might just as well say : I 
 go to walk, therefore I exist, — has no weight; for, of all my 
 actions, I can be absolutely certain only of my thinking. 
 
 3. From the proposition I think, therefore, I am, the whole 
 nature of the mind may be determined. When we examine who 
 we are who hold every thing to be false that is distinct from our- 
 selves, we see clearly that neither extension nor figure, nor any 
 thing which can be predicated of body, but only thought, belongs 
 to our nature. I am therefore only a thinking being, i. e. mind, 
 soul, intelligence, reason. Thought is my substance. Mind can 
 therefore be apprehended clearly and completely for itself alone, 
 without any of those attributes which belong to body. Its con- 
 
174 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 ception contains nothing of that which belongs to the conception 
 of body. It is therefore impossible to apprehend it through any- 
 sensuous representation, or to make an image of it : it apprehends 
 itself only through the pure intelligence. 
 
 4. From the proposition cogiio ergo sum, follows still farther 
 the universal rule of all certainty. I am certain that I am 
 thinking being, what now is involved in the fact that I am certai 
 of any thing ? Whence comes this certainty ? From no othe 
 source than the knowledge that this first proposition contains a 
 clear conception of that which I affirm. I know of a certainty that 
 I am, and I know any thing else only when I know it as certainly 
 as I know that I am. Hence I may regard it as a universal rule, 
 that every thing is true which I know clearly and determinately. 
 
 5. This rule, however, is only a principle of certainty, not of 
 knowledge and of truth. We apply it therefore to our thought 
 or ideas, in order to discover what is objectively true. But our 
 ideas are partly innate, partly acquired, and partly self-originated 
 Among those of the first class we find the idea of a God. The 
 question arises, whence have we this idea ? Manifestly not from 
 ourselves ; this idea could only be implanted within us by a being 
 who has the fulness of all perfection in himself, i. e. only by an 
 actually existing God. If I ask now the question, whence have I 
 the faculty to conceive of a nature more perfect than my own ? the 
 answer must ever come, that I have it only from him whose nature 
 is actually more perfect. All the attributes of God, the more 
 contemplate them, show that their idea could not have originate 
 with myself alone. For though there might be in me the idc 
 of substance because I am a substance, yet I could not of myself 
 have the idea of an infinite substance, since I am finite ; such a 
 idea could only be given me through a substance actually infinite. 
 Moreover, we must not think that the conception of the infinite is 
 to be gained through abstraction and negation, as we might gain 
 darkness through the negation of light ; but I perceive, rather, 
 that the infinite contains more reality than the finite, and that, 
 therefore, the conception of the infinite must be correspondingl 
 antecedent in me to that of the finite. Since then I have a cle 
 
DESCARTES. 
 
 17£ 
 
 and determined idea of the infinite substance, and since this has a 
 greater objective reality than every other, so is there no othel 
 which I have so little reason to doubt. But now since I am cer- 
 tain that the idea of God has come to me from God himself, it 
 only remains for me to examine the way in which I have received 
 it from God. I have never derived it directly nor indirectly from 
 the sense, for ideas through the sense arise only by affecting the 
 external organs of sense ; neither have I devised it, for I can 
 neither add to it nor diminish it in any respect, — it must, there- 
 fore, be innate as the idea of myself is innate. Hence the first 
 proof we can assign for the being of a God is the fact that we 
 find the idea of a God within us, and that we must have a cause 
 for its being. ' Again, the being of a God may be concluded from 
 my own imperfection, and especially from the knowledge of my 
 imperfection. For since I know that there is a perfection which 
 is wanting in me, it follows that there must exist a being who is 
 more perfect than I, on whom I depend and from whom I receive 
 all I possess. — But the best and most evident proof for the being 
 of a God is, in fine, that which is gained from the conception of 
 a God. The mind among all its different ideas singles out the 
 chiefest of all, that of the most perfect being, and perceives that 
 this has not only the possibility of existence, i. e. accidental ex- 
 istence like all other ideas, but that it possesses necessary exist- 
 ence in itself. And as the mind knows that in every triangle its 
 three angles are equal to two right angles, because this is involved 
 in the very idea of a triangle, so does the mind necessarily infer 
 that necessary existence belongs to the conception of the most 
 perfect being, and that, therefore, the most perfect being actually 
 exists. No other idea which the mind finds within itself contains 
 necessary existence, but from the idea of the highest being exist- 
 ence cannot be separated without contradiction. It is only our 
 prejudices which keep us from seeing this. Since we are accus- 
 tomed in every thing to separate its conception from its existence, 
 and since we often make ideas arbitrarily, it readily happens, that 
 when we contemplate the highest being we are in doubt whether 
 its idea may not be one also arbitrarily devised, or at least one in 
 
176 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 whose conception existence does not lie. — This proof is essentially 
 different from that of Thomas (Anselm of Canterbury). His 
 argument was as follows : " If we understand what is indicated 
 by the word God, it is all that can be conceived of greatness ; but 
 now there is actually and in thought more belonging to him than 
 the word represents, and therefore God exists not only in word 
 (or representation), but in fact." Here the deftct in the syllogism 
 is manifest, for from the premise it could only be concluded that 
 God must therefore be represenied as existing in fact, while his 
 actual existence would not follow. My proof on the other hand 
 is this, — we may predicate of a thing what we clearly see belongs 
 to its true and changeless nature, or to its essence, or to its form. 
 But now after we had examined what God is, we found existence 
 to belong to his true and changeless nature, and therefore may we 
 properly predicate existence of God. Necessary existence is con- 
 tained in the idea of the most perfect being, not by a fiction of 
 our understanding but because existence belongs to his eternal and 
 changeless nature. 
 
 6. The result just found — the existence of God — is of the 
 highest consequence. Before attaining this we were obliged to 
 doubt every thing, and give up even every certainty, for we did 
 not know but that it belonged to the nature of the human mind 
 to err, but that God had created us for error. But so soon as we 
 look at the necessary attributes of God in the innate idea of him, 
 so soon as we know that he is true, it would be a contradiction to 
 suppose that he would deceive us, or that he could have made us 
 to err ; for though an ability to deceive might prove his skill, a 
 willingness to deceive would only demonstrate his frailty. Our 
 reason, therefore, can never apprehend an object which would not 
 be true so far as the reason 'apprehended it, i. e. so far as it is 
 clearly known. For God might justly be styled a deceiver if he 
 had given us a reason so perverted as to hold the false for the true. 
 And thus every absolute doubt with which we began is dispelled. 
 Prom the being of God we derive every certainty. For every 
 sure knowledge it is only necessary that we have clearly known a 
 
DESCARTES. 
 
 177 
 
 thiDg, and are also certain of the existence of a God, wlio would 
 not deceive. 
 
 7. From the true idea of God follow the principles of a phi« 
 losophy of nature or the doctrine of the two substances. Substance 
 is that which so exists that it needs nothing else for its existence. 
 In this (highest) sense God is the only substance. God, as the 
 infinite substance, has his ground in himself, is the cause of him- 
 self The two created substances, on the other hand, the thinking 
 and the corporeal substance, mind and matter, are substances 
 only in a broader sense of the word ; they may be apprehended 
 under the common conception that they are things which need 
 only the co-operation of God for their existence. Each of these 
 two substances has an attribute which constitutes its nature and 
 its essence, and to which all its other determinations may be re- 
 ferred. The attribute and essence of matter is extension, that of 
 mind, thought. For every thing else which can be predicated of 
 body presupposes extension, and is only a mode of extension, as 
 every thing we can find in mind is only a modification of thought. 
 A substance to which thought immediately belongs is called 
 mind, and a substance, whose immediate substratum is extension, 
 is called body. Since thought and extension are distinct from 
 each other, and since mind cannot only be known without the 
 attributes of the body, but is in itself the negation of those attri- 
 butes, we may say that the essence of these substances is in their 
 reciprocal negation. Mind and body are wholly distinct, and 
 have nothing in common. 
 
 8. We pass by the physics of Descartes, which has only a sub- 
 ordinate philosophical interest, and notice next his views of anthro- 
 pology. From this dualistic relation between mind and matter 
 there follows a dualistic relation between soul and body. If 
 matter is essentially extension, and mind essentially thought, and 
 if the two have nothing in common, then the union of soul and 
 body can be conceived only as a mechanical one. The body is ta 
 be regarded as an artistic automaton, which God has made, as h 
 statue or machine formed by God from the earth. "Within thi? 
 body the soul dwells, closely but not internally connected with it 
 
 8* 
 
178 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 The union of the two is only a powerful bringing of the two to- 
 gether, since each is not only an independent factor, but is essen- 
 tially distinct from and even opposed to the other. The body by 
 itself is a machine fully prepared, in which nothing is changed by 
 the entrance of the thinking soul, except that through it certain 
 motions are secured : the wheel-work of the machine remains as 
 it was. It is only thought which distinguishes this machine from 
 every other ; hence, therefore, brutes which are not self-conscious 
 nor thinking, must be ranked with all other machines. From this 
 stand-point arose especially the question concerning the seat of 
 the soul. If body and soul are independent substances, each essen- 
 tially opposed to the other, they cannot interpenetrate each other, 
 but can touch only at one point when they are powerfully brought 
 together. This point where the soul has its seat, is, according to 
 Descartes, not the whole brain but the pineal gland, a little kernel 
 in the middle of the brain. The proof for this claim, that the 
 pineal gland is the only place where the soul immediately exhibits 
 its energy, is found in the circumstance that all other parts of the 
 brain are twofold, which should not be in an organ where the soul 
 has its seat, else objects would appear double. There is, there- 
 fore, no other place in the body where impressions can be so well 
 united as in this gland. The pineal gland is, therefore, the chief 
 seat of the soul, and the place where all our thoughts are formed. 
 
 We have thus developed the fundamental thoughts of the Car- 
 tesian system, and will now recapitulate in a few words the fea- 
 tures characteristic of its stand-point and historic position. 
 Descartes was the founder of a new epoch in philosophy, firsts 
 from his postulate of universal freedom from all preconceptions. 
 His protesting against every thing which is not posited by the 
 thought, against taking any thing for granted in respect of the 
 truth, has remained from that time onward the fundamental prin- 
 ciple of the new age. Secondly. Descartes has brought out the 
 principle of self-consciousness (the mind or the thinking substance 
 is regarded by him as an individual self, a particular Ego) — a new 
 principle, unknown in this view to the ancients. Thirdly. Des- 
 cartes has shown the opposition between being and thought, exist* 
 
DESCARTES. 
 
 179 
 
 ence and consciousness, and the mediation of this opposition, 
 which has been the problem of the -whole modern philosophy, he 
 first afl&rmed as the true philosophical problem. But with these 
 ideas, which make an epoch in the history of philosophy, there are 
 at the same time connected the defects of the Cartesian philoso- 
 phizing. First. Descartes gained the content of his system, 
 namely his three substances, empirically. True, the system which 
 begins with a protestation against all existence would seem to take 
 nothing for granted, but to derive every thing from the thinking. 
 But in fact this protesting is not thoroughly carried out. That 
 which seems to be cast aside is afterwards, when the principle of 
 certainty is gained, taken up again unchanged. And so it hap- 
 pens that Descartes finds at hand not only the idea of God, but 
 his two substances as something immediately given. True, in 
 order to reach them, he abstracts every thing which lies immedi- 
 ately before him, but in the end the two substances are seen as 
 that which remains when all else is abstracted. They are received 
 empirically. The second defect is, that Descartes separates so 
 wholly from each other the two sides of the opposition between 
 thought and being. He posits both as "substances," i. e. as 
 powers, which reciprocally exclude and negate each other. The 
 essence of matter according to him consists only in extension, i. e. 
 in the pure being extra se (Aussersichsein), and that of mind 
 only in thought, i. e. in the pure being in se {InsicJisein.) The 
 two stand over against each other as centrifugal and centripetal. 
 But with this apprehension of mind and matter, an inner media- 
 tion of the two is an impossibility there must be a powerful act 
 of creation, there must be the divine assistance in order that the 
 two sides may ever come together, and be united as they are in 
 man. Nevertheless Descartes demands and attempts such a 
 mediation of the two sides. But the impossibility of truly over- 
 coming the dualism of his stand-point is the third, and the chief 
 defect of his system. In the proposition " I think, therefore I 
 am," or " I am thinking," the two sides, being and thought, are 
 indeed connected together, but only that they may become fixed 
 independently in respect of each other. If the question is asked, 
 
180 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 how does the Ego stand related to the extended ? the answer can 
 only be : by thinking, i. e. negatively, by excluding it. The idea 
 of God, therefore, is all that remains for the mediation of these 
 two sides. The two substances are created by God, and through 
 the divine will may be bound together; through the idea of God, 
 the Ego attains the certainty that the extended exists. God is 
 therefore in a certain degree a Deus ex machina, necessary in 
 order to mediate the conflict of the Ego with the extended. It 
 is obvious how external such a mediation is. 
 
 This defect of the Cartesian system operated as an impelling 
 motive to those which succeeded. 
 
 SECTION XXV. 
 
 GEULINCX AND MALEBRANCHE. 
 
 1. Mind and matter, consciousness and existence, Descartes 
 had fixed in the farthest separation from each other. Both, 
 with him, are substances, independent powers, reciprocally exclud- 
 ing oppositions. Mind [i. e. in his view the simple self, the Ego) 
 he regarded as essentially the abstraction from the sensuous, the 
 distinguishing itself from matter and the separating of matter 
 from itself; matter was essentially the complete opposition to 
 thought. If the relation of these two powers be as has been 
 given, then the question arises, how can there ever be a filiation 
 {Bapport) between them ? How, on the one hand, can the afioc- 
 tions of the body work upon the soul, and on the other hand, how 
 can the volition of the soul direct the body, if the two are ab- 
 solutely distinct and opposed to each other ? At this point, 
 Arnold Geulincx (a disciple of Descartes, born at Antwerp 1625, 
 and died as professor of philosophy at Leydeu 1669) took up the 
 Cartesian system, and endeavored to give it a greater logical perfec- 
 tion. According to Geulincx neither the soul works immediately 
 
GUELINCX AND MALEBRANCHE. 
 
 181 
 
 Upon the body, nor the body immediately upon the soul. Certainly 
 not the former : for though 1 can determine and move my body in 
 many respects arbitrarily, yet / am not the cause of this move- 
 ment ; for I know not how it happens, I know not in what man- 
 ner motion is communicated from my brain to the different parts 
 of my body, and it is impossible that I should do that in respect 
 of which I cannot see how it is done. But if I cannot produce 
 motion in my body, much less can I do this outside of my body. 
 I am therefore simply a contemplator of the world ; the only act 
 which is peculiarly mine is contemplation. But even this contem- 
 plation arises in a singular manner. For if we ask how we ob- 
 tain our observations of the external world, we find it impossible 
 that the external world should directly give them to us. For 
 however much we may say that, e. g. in the act of seeing, the ex- 
 ternal objects produce an image in my eye or an impression in 
 my brain as in wax, yet this impression or picture is after all only 
 something corporeal or material, and cannot therefore come into 
 my mind, which is absolutely distinct from every thing material. 
 There remains, therefore, only that we seek the mediation of the 
 two sides in God. It is God alone who can unite the outer with 
 the inner, and the inner with the outer ; who can make the outer 
 phenomena to become inner representations or notions of the mind ; 
 who can thus bring the world within the mind's observation, and 
 the inner determinations of the will outward into deed. Hence 
 every working, every act which unites the outer and inner, which 
 brings the mind and the world into connection, is neither a work- 
 ing of the mind nor of the world, but only an immediate working 
 of God. The movement of my limbs does not follow from my 
 will, but only because it is the will of God that these movements 
 should follow when I will. My will is an occasion by which God 
 moves my body — an affection of my body is an occasion by which 
 God brings within me a representation of the external world : the 
 one is only the occasional cause of the other (hence the name oc- 
 casionalism). My will, however, does not move God to move my 
 limbs, but he who has imparted motion to matter and given it its 
 laws, created also my will, and has so connected together the most 
 
182 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 diverse things, the movement of matter and the arbitrium of my 
 will, that when my will puts forth a volition, such a motion fol- 
 lows as it wills, and the motion follows the volition without any 
 interaction or physical influence exerted by the one upon the 
 other. But just as it is with two clocks which go exactly alike, 
 the one striking precisely as the other, their harmony is not the 
 result of any reciprocal interacting, but follows because both have 
 been fashioned and directed alike, — so is it with the movements 
 of the body and the will, they harmonize only through that exalted 
 artist who has in this ineffable way connected them together. 
 We see from this that Geulincx has carried to its limit the 
 dualistic basis of Descartes. While Descartes called the union 
 of mind and matter a conjunction through power, Geulincx named 
 it a miracle. There is consequently in this view no immanent, 
 but only a transcendent mediation possible. 
 
 2. Closely connected with this view of Geulincx, and at the 
 same time a real consequence and a wider development of the 
 Cartesian philosophizing, is the philosophic stand-point of Nicolas 
 Malehranclie. He was born at Paris in 1638, chosen a member 
 of the " Congregation de Voratoire^'' in his twenty-second year, 
 won over to philosophy through the writings of Descartes, and 
 died, after numerous feuds with theological opposers, in 1715. 
 
 Malebranche started with the Cartesian view of the relation 
 between mind and matter. Both are strictly distinct from each 
 ' other, and in their essence opposed. How now does the mind, 
 [i. e. the Ego) gain a knowledge of the external world and have 
 ideas of corporeal things ? For it comes to know things only by 
 means of ideas, — not through itself, not immediately. Now the 
 mind can neither gain these ideas from itself, nor from the things 
 themselves. Not from itself, for it is absolutely opposed to the 
 bodily world, and hence has no capacity to idealize, to spirit- 
 ualize material things, though' they must become spiritualized be- 
 fore they can be introduced to the mind ; in a word, the mind, 
 which in relation to the material world is only an opposition, has 
 no power to destroy this opposition. Just as little has the 
 mind derived these ideas from things : for matter is not visible 
 
GEULINCX AND MALEBRANCHE. 
 
 183 
 
 through itself, but rather as antithetic to miud is it that which is 
 absolutely unintelligible, and which cannot be idealized, that which 
 is absolutely without light and clearness. — It only remains, there 
 fore, that the mind beholds things in a third that stands above the 
 opposition of the two, viz., God. God, as the absolute substance, 
 is the absolute ideality, the infinite power to spiritualize all things. 
 Material things have no real opposition for God, to him they are 
 no impenetrable darkness, but an ideal existence ; all things are 
 in him spiritually and ideally ; the whole world, as intellectual or 
 ideal, is God. God is, therefore, the higher mean between the Ego 
 and the external world. In him we behold ideas, we being so 
 strictly united with him, that he may properly be called the place 
 of minds. 
 
 The philosophy of Malebranche, whose simple thought is this, 
 that we know and see all things in God, — shows itself, like the 
 occasionalism of Geulincx, to be a peculiar attempt to stand upon 
 the basis of the Cartesian philosophy, and with its fundamental 
 thought to overcome its dualism. 
 
 3. Two defects or inner contradictions have manifested them- 
 selves in the philosophy of Descartes. He had considered mind 
 and matter as substances, each one of which excluded the other 
 from itself, and had sought a mediation of the two. But with 
 such conditions no mediation other than an external one is possi- 
 ble. If thought and existence are each one substance, then can 
 they only negate and exclude each other. Unnatural theories, like 
 those which have been mentioned, are the inevitable result of this. 
 The simplest way out of the difficulty is to give up the principle 
 first assumed, to strip off their independence from the two oppo- 
 sites, and instead of regarding them as substances, view them as 
 accidents of one substance. This way of escape is moreover indi- 
 cated by a particular circumstance. According to Descartes, God 
 is the infinite substance, the peculiar substance in the proper sense 
 of the word. Mind and matter are indeed substances, but only in 
 relation to each other ; in relation to God they are dependent, and 
 not substances. This is, strictly taken, a contradiction. The 
 true consequence were rather to say that neither the Ego {i. e. the 
 
184 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 individual thinking) nor the material things are independent, hu.i 
 that this can be predicated only of the one substance, Grod ; this 
 substance alone has a real being, and all the being which belongs 
 to individual essences these latter possess not as a substantial be- 
 ing, but only as accidents of the one only true and real substance. 
 Malebranche approached this consequence. With him the bodily 
 world is ideally at least resolved and made to sink in God, in 
 whom are the eternal archetypes of all things. But Spinoza has 
 most decidedly and logically adopted this consequence, and affirmed 
 the accidence of all individual being and the exclusive substan- 
 tiality of God alone. His system is the perfection and the truth 
 of the Cartesian. 
 
 S E C T I N XX YI. 
 
 SPINOZA. 
 
 Baruch or Benedict Spinoza was born at Amsterdam, Nov. 
 24, 1632. His parents were Jews of Portuguese descent, and 
 being merchants of opulence, they gave him a finished education. 
 He studied with great diligence the Bible and the Talmud, but 
 soon exchanged the pursuit of theology for the study of physics 
 and the works of Descartes. He early became dissatisfied with 
 Judaism, and presently came to an open rupture with it, though 
 without going over formally to Christianity. In order to escape 
 the persecutions of the J ews, who had excommunicated him, and 
 who even went so far as to make an attempt upon his life, he left 
 Amsterdam and betook himself to Ehynsberg, near Leyden. He 
 finally settled down at the Hague, where he spent his life in the 
 greatest seclusion, devoted wholly to scientific pursuits. He sup- 
 ported himself by grinding optic glasses, which his friends sold 
 for him. The Elector Palatine, Charles Louis, ofi'ered him a Pro- 
 fessorship of Philosophy at Heidelberg, with the full permission 
 to teach as he chose, but Spinoza declined the post. Naturally 
 
SPINOZA. 
 
 185 
 
 of a weak constitution, which consumption had for many years 
 been undermining, Spinoza died at the age of 44, on the 21st of 
 February, 1677. In his life there was mirrored the unclouded 
 clearness and exalted serenity of the perfected sage. Abste- 
 mious in his habits, satisfied with little, the master of his passions, 
 never intemperately sad nor joyous, gentle and benevolent, with a 
 character of singular excellence and purity, he faithfully illustra- 
 ted in his life, the doctrines of his philosophy. His chief work, 
 the Ethica^ appeared the year of his death. His design was pro- 
 bably to have published it during his life, but the odious report 
 that he was an atheist restrained him. The friend he most trusted, 
 Louis Mayer, a physician, attended to its publication after the 
 author's death and according to his will. 
 
 The system of Spinoza rests upon three fundamental concep- 
 tions, from which all the rest may be derived with mathematical 
 necessity. These conceptions are that of substance, of attribute, 
 and of mode. 
 
 1. Spinoza starts from the Cartesian conception of substance : 
 substance is that which needs nothing other for its existence. 
 But with such a conception there can exist only one single sub- 
 stance. A number of substances like that of Descartes is neces- 
 sarily a contradiction. There can be nothing which has a sub- 
 stantial being besides the one substance of all things. This one 
 substance Spinoza calls God. Of course, with such a view, the 
 Christian idea of God, the notion of a spiritual and personal 
 being, must be laid aside. Spinoza expressly declares, that his 
 notion of God is entirely different from that of the Christian ; he 
 denied that understanding and will could be predicated of God ; 
 he ridiculed those who supposed that God worked for an end, 
 and even scorned the view which regarded the world as a product 
 of the Divine willing or thinking. God is, with him, only sub- 
 stance, and nothing more. The propositions that there is only 
 one God, and that the substance of all things is only one, are 
 with him identical. 
 
 What now peculiarly is this substance ? What is positive 
 being ? This question it is very difficult to answer directly from 
 
186 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 the stand-point of Spinoza, partly because a definition, according 
 to him, must contain (i. e. must be genetically) the immediate 
 cause of that which is to be explained, but substance is uncreated 
 and can have no cause besides itself ; but prominently because 
 Spinoza held that every determination is a negation, since it must 
 indicate a want of existence, a relative not-being. ( Omnis deter- 
 minatio est negatio is an expression which, though he uses it 
 only occasionally, expresses the fundamental idea of his whole 
 system.) Hence, by setting up any positive determinations of 
 being, we only take away from substance its infinity and make it 
 finite. When we therefore affirm any thing concerning it, we 
 can only speak negatively, e. g. that it has no foreign cause, that 
 it has no plurality, that it cannot be divided, etc. It is even 
 reluctantly that Spinoza declares concerning it that it is one, for 
 this predicate might readily be taken numerically, as implying 
 that others, the many, stood over against it. Thus there can 
 remain only such positive affirmations respecting it as express its 
 absolute reference to itself In this sense Spinoza says that sub- 
 stance is the cause of itself, i. e. its being concludes existence in 
 itself. When Spinoza calls it eternal, it is only another expression 
 for the same thought ; for by eternity he understands existence 
 itself, so far as it is conceived to follow from the definition of the 
 thing, in a sense similar to that in which geometricians speak of 
 the eternal properties of figures. Still farther he calls substance 
 infinite, because the conception of infinity expressed to him the 
 conception of true being, the absolute affirmation of existence. 
 So also the expression, Grod is free, affirms nothing more than 
 those already mentioned, viz., negatively, that every foreign re- 
 straint is excluded from him, and positively, that God is in har- 
 mony with himself, that his being corresponds to the laws of his 
 essence. 
 
 The comprehensive statement for the above is, that there is 
 only one infinite substance that excludes from itself all determi- 
 nation and negation, and is named God, or natui-e. 
 
 2. Besides the infinite substance or God, Descartes had as- 
 sumed two other substances created by God, viz., mind (thought) 
 
SPINOZA. 
 
 187 
 
 and matter (extension). These two Spinoza considers in the light 
 of attributes, though, like Descartes, he receives them empirically 
 What, now, is the relation of these attributes to the infinite sub- 
 stance ? This is the severe question, the tendon- Achilles of Spi- 
 noza's system. They cannot be essential forms in which the sub- 
 stance may manifest itself or appear, for this would make them 
 determine the essence of the substance, which would contradict its 
 conception as already given. Substance, as such, is neither un- 
 derstanding nor extension. If, then, the two attributes do not 
 flow out of the essence of the substance, and do not constitute 
 the substance, there remains only one other supposition, viz., that 
 they are externally attached to the substance ; and this is, in 
 fact, Spinoza's view. Attribute, according to him, is that which 
 the understanding perceives in the substance as constituting its 
 essence. But understanding, as Spinoza expressly says, does not 
 belong to substance as such. Attributes, therefore, are those de- 
 terminations which express the essence of the substance only for 
 the perceiving understanding ; since they express the essence of 
 the substance in a determinate way, while substance itself has no 
 determinate way of being, they can only fall outside the substance, 
 viz., in the reflective understanding. To the substance itself it is 
 indifferent whether the understanding contemplate it under these 
 two attributes or not ; the substance in itself has an infinity of 
 attributes, i. e. every possible attribute which is not a limitation, 
 may be predicated of it; it is only the human understanding 
 which attaches these two attributes to the substance, and it aflaxes 
 no more than these, because, among all the conceptions it can 
 form, these alone are actually positive, or express a reality. God, 
 or the substance, is therefore thinking, in so far as the under- 
 standing contemplates him under the attribute of thought, and is 
 extended in so far as the understanding contemj)lates him under 
 the attribute of extension. It is, says Spinoza — using a figure to 
 express this relation of substance to attribute — it is, like a surface 
 reflecting the light, which (objectively taken) may be hot, though, 
 in reference to the man looking upon it, it is white. More accu- 
 rately substance is a surface, standing opposite to a beholder who 
 
188 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 can see only througli yellow and blue glasses ; to whom, therefore, 
 the surface must appear either yellow or blue, though it is neither 
 the one nor the other. 
 
 In relation to substance, therefore, the attributes must be 
 apprehended as entirely independent : they must be conceived 
 through themselves : their conception is not dependent upon that 
 of substance. I'his is necessarily true; for since the substance 
 can have no determinateness, then the attribute which is its deter- 
 minate being, cannot be explained from the substance, but only 
 through itself. Only by apprehending the attribute independently 
 can the unity of the substance be maintained. 
 
 In relation to each other, the attributes are to be taken as 
 opposites strictly and determinately diverse. Between the bodily 
 and the ideal world there is no reciprocal influence nor interac- 
 tion : a body can only spring from a body, and an idea can only 
 have an idea for its source. Hence, therefore, neither the mind 
 can work upon the body nor the body upon the mind. Neverthe- 
 less there exists between the two worlds a perfect harmony and 
 an entire parallelism. It is one and the same substance which is 
 conceived under each of the two attributes, and under which ore 
 of the two we may contemplate it is indifferent to the substance 
 itself, for each mode of contemplation is equally correct. From 
 this follows at once the proposition of Spinoza, that the connec- 
 tion of ideas and of things is the same. Hence the solution to 
 the problem of the relation of body and soul, so difficult to find 
 from the Cartesian stand-point, is readily seen from that of Spi- 
 noza. Body and soul are one and the same thing, only viewed 
 under different attributes. Mind is nothing but the idea of body, 
 i. e. it is the same thing as body, only that it is viewed under the 
 attribute of thought. In the same way is explained the apparent 
 but not real influence of the body upon the mind, and the mind 
 upon the body. That which, in one point of view is bodily mo- 
 tion, in another is an act of thought. In short, the most perfect 
 parallelism reigns between the world of bodily things and that of 
 ideas. 
 
 3. Individual beings, which considered under the attribute of 
 
SPINOZA. 
 
 189 
 
 thouglit are ideas, and under the attribute of extension are 
 bodies, Spinoza comprehends under the conception of accidence, 
 or, as he calls it, mode. By modes we are therefore to under- 
 stand the changing forms of substance. The modes stand related 
 to the substance as the rippling -waves of the sea to the water of 
 the sea, as forms constantly disappearing and never having a real 
 being. In fact this example goes too far, for the waves of the 
 sea are at least a part of the water of the bea, while the modes, 
 instead of being parts of the substance, are essentially nothing and 
 without being. The finite has no existence as finite ; only the 
 infinite substance has actual existence. Substance, therefore, 
 could not be regarded more falsely than if it should be viewed as 
 made up of modes. That would be, Spinoza remarks, as if one 
 should say that the line is made up out of points. It is just as 
 false to affirm that Spinoza identifies God and the world. He 
 identifies them so little that he would rather say that the world, 
 as world, i. e. as an aggregate of individuals, does not at all 
 exist ; we might rather say with Hegel that he denies the world 
 (his system is an acosmism), than with Bayle, that he makes every 
 thing God, or that he ascribes divinity to every thing. 
 
 Whence do finite things or individuals arise, if they can have 
 no existence by the side of substance ? They are only the product 
 of our deceptive apprehension. There are two chief ways of know- 
 ledge — the intuitive, through the reason, and the imaginative. 
 To the latter belong the knowledge of experience, and all that is 
 abstract, superficial, and confused ; to the former, the collection 
 of all fitting (adequate) ideas. It is only the fault of the imagi- 
 nation that we should look upon the world as a manifoldness of 
 individuals; the manifoldness is only a form of representation. 
 The imagination isolates and individualizes what the reason sees 
 together in its unity. Hence it is only as considered through the 
 imagination (experience or opinion) that modes B,re things ; the 
 reason looks upon them as necessary, or, what is the same thing, 
 as eternal. 
 
 Such are the fundamental thoughts and features of Spinoza's 
 system. His practical philosophy yet remains to be characterized 
 
190 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 and in a few words. Its chief propositions follow necessarily 
 from the metaphysical grounds already cited. First, it follows 
 from these, that what is called free will cannot be admitted. For 
 since man is only a mode, he, like every other mode, stands in an 
 endless series of conditioning causes, and no free will can there- 
 fore be predicated of him. The will must thus, like the body 
 (and the resolution of the will is only a modification of the body), 
 be determined by something other than itself Men regard them- 
 selves as free only because they are conscious of their actions and 
 not of the determining causes. Just so the notions which one 
 commonly connects with the words good and evil, rest on an error 
 as follows at once from the conception of the absolute divine 
 causality. Good and evil are not something actually in the things 
 themselves, but only express relative conceptions which we have 
 formed from a comparison of things with one another. Thus, by 
 observing certain things we form a certain universal conception, 
 which we thereupon treat as though it were the rule for the being 
 and acting of all individuals, and if any individual varies from 
 this conception we fancy that it does not correspond to its nature, 
 and is incomplete. Evil or sin is therefore only something rela- 
 tive, for nothing happens against Grod's will. It is only a simple 
 negation or deprivation, which only seems to be a reality in our 
 representation. With God there is no idea of the evil. What is 
 therefore good and what evil ? That is good which is useful to 
 us, and that evil which hinders us from partaking of a good. 
 That, moreover, is useful to us which brings us to a greater reality, 
 which preserves and exalts our being. But our true being is 
 knowledge, and hence that only is useful to us which aids us in 
 knowing ; the highest good is the knowledge of God ; the highest 
 virtue of the mind is to know and love God. From the know- 
 ledge of God we gain the highest gladness and joy of the mind, 
 the highest blessedness. Blessedness, hence, is not the reward of 
 virtue, but virtue itself 
 
 The grand feature of Spinoza's philosophy is that it buries 
 every thing individual and particular, as a finite, in the abyss of 
 the divine substance. With its view unalterably fixed upon the 
 
SPINOZA. 
 
 191 
 
 eternal one, it loses sight of every thing which seems actual in 
 the ordinary notions of men. But its defect consists in its ina- 
 bility to transform this negative abyss of substance into the posi- 
 tive ground of all-being and becoming. The substance of Spi- 
 noza has been justly compared to the lair of a lion, which many 
 footsteps enter, but from which none emerge. The existence of 
 the phenomenal world, though it be only the apparent and decep- 
 tive reality of the finite, Spinoza does not explain. With his 
 abstract conception of substance he cannot explain it. And yet 
 the means to help him out of the difficulty lay near at hand. He 
 failed to apply universally his fundamental principle that all de- 
 termination is negation ; he applied it only to the finite, but the 
 abstract infinite, in so far as it stands over against the finite, is 
 also a determinate ; this infinite must be denied by its negation, 
 which is the case when a finite world is posited, Jacob Boehme 
 rightly apprehended this, when he affirmed, that without a self- 
 duplication, without an ingress into the limited, the finite, the 
 original ground of things is an empty nothing {cf. § XXIII. 8). 
 So the original ground of Spinoza is a nothing, a purely indeter- 
 minate, because with him substance was only a principle of unity 
 and not also a principle of distinction, because its attributes, in- 
 stead of being an expression of an actual difi'erence and a positive 
 distinction to itself, are rather wholly indifiierent to itself. The 
 system of Spinoza is the most abstract Monotheism that can be 
 thought. It is not accidental that its author, a Jew, should have 
 brought out again this view of the world, this view of absolute 
 identity, for it is in a certain degree with him only a consequence 
 of his national religion — an echo of the Orient. 
 
192 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 SECTION XXVII. 
 
 IDEALISM AND REALISM. 
 
 We have now reached a point of divergence in the develop- 
 ment of philosophy. Descartes had affirmed and attempted to 
 mediate the opposition, between thought and being, mind and 
 matter. This mediation, however, was hardly successful, for the 
 two sides of the opposition he had fixed in their widest separa- 
 tion, when he posited them as two substances or powers, which 
 reciprocally negated each other. The followers of Descartes 
 sought a more satisfactory mediation, but the theories to which 
 they saw themselves driven, only indicated the more clearly that 
 the whole premise from which they started must be given up. 
 At length Spinoza abandoned the false notion, and took away its 
 substantiality from each of the two opposed principles. Mind 
 and matter, thought and extension, are now one in the infinite 
 substance. Yet they are not one in themselves, which would be 
 the only true unity of the two. That they are one in the sub- 
 stance is of little avail, since they are indifi"erent to the substance, 
 and are not immanent distinctions in it. Thus even with Spinoza 
 the two remain strictly separate. The ground of this isolation 
 we find in the fact that Spinoza himself did not sufficiently re- 
 nounce the Cartesian notion, and thus could not escape the Car- 
 tesian dualism. With him, as with Descartes, thought is onl^ 
 thought, and extension only extension, and in such an apprehen- 
 sion of the two, the one necessarily excludes the other. If we 
 would find an inner mediation for the two, we must cease to ab- 
 stract every thing essential from each. The opposite sides must 
 bo mediated even in their strictest opposition. To do this, two 
 ways alone were possible. A position could be taken either on 
 the material or on the ideal side, and the attempt made to explain 
 the ideal under the material, or the material under the ideal, 
 comprehending one through the other. Both these attempts were 
 
LOCKE. 
 
 193 
 
 in fact made, and at about the same time. The two pafallel 
 courses of a one-sided idealism, and a one-sided realism (Empi- 
 ricism, Sensualism, Materialism), now begin their development. 
 
 SECTION XXVIII. 
 
 LOCKE. 
 
 The founder of the realistic course and the father of modern 
 Empiricism and Materialism, is John Locke, an Englishman. 
 Thomas Hohhes (1588-1679) was his predecessor and countryman, 
 whose name we need here only mention, as it has no importance 
 except for the history of natural rights. 
 
 John Locke was born at Wrington, 1632. His student years 
 he devoted to philosophy and prominently to medicine, though his 
 weak health prevented him from practising as a physician. Few 
 cares of business interrupted his leisure, and he devoted his time 
 mostly to literary pursuits. His friendly relations with Lord 
 Anthony Ashley, afterwards Earl of Shaftesbury, exerted a 
 weighty influence upon his course in life. At the house of this 
 distinguished statesman and author he always found the most 
 cordial reception, and an intercourse with the most important 
 men of England. In the year 1670 he sketched for a number of 
 friends the first plan of his famous Essay on the Human Under- 
 standing, though the completed work did not appear till 1689. 
 Locke died aged 72 in the year 1704. His writings are charac- 
 terized by clearness and precision, openness and determinateness. 
 More acute than profound in his philosophizing, he does not in 
 this respect belie the characteristic of his nation. The funda- 
 mental thoughts and results of his philosophy have now become 
 common property, especially among the English, though it should 
 not therefore be forgotten that he is the first who has scientifically 
 established them, and is, on this account, entitled to a true place 
 9 
 
194 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 in the history of philosophy, even though his principle was want* 
 ing in an inner capacity for development. 
 
 Locke's Philosophy {i. e. his theory of knowledge, for his 
 whole philosophizing expends itself in investigating the faculty of 
 knowing) rests upon two thoughts, to which he never ceases to re- 
 vert : first (negatively)^ there are no innate ideas ; second (posi- 
 tively), all our knowledge arises from experience. 
 
 Many, says Locke, suppose that there are innate ideas which 
 the soul receives coetaneous with its origin, and brings with it into 
 the world. In order to prove that these ideas are innate, it is 
 said that they universally exist, and are universally valid with 
 all men. But admitting that this were so, such a fact would 
 prove nothing if this universal harmony could be explained in 
 any other way. But men mistake when they claim such a fact. 
 There is, in reality, no fundamental proposition, theoretical or 
 practical, which would be universally admitted. Certainly there 
 is no such practical principle, for the example of different people 
 as well as of different ages shows that there is no moral rule uni • 
 versally admitted as valid. Neither is there a theoretical one^ 
 for even those propositions which might lay the strongest claim 
 to be universally valid, e. g. the proposition, — " what is, is," or — 
 ''it is imposible that one and the same thing should be and 
 not be at the same time," — receive by no means a universal assent. 
 Children and idiots have no notion of these principles, and even 
 uncultivated men know nothing of these abstract propositions. 
 They cannot therefore have been imprinted on all men by nature. 
 If ideas were innate, then they must be known by all from earliest 
 childhood. For " to be in the understanding," and " to become 
 known," is one and the same thing. The assertion therefore that 
 these ideas are imprinted on the understanding while it does not 
 know it, is hence a manifest contradiction. J ust as little is gained 
 by the subterfuge, that these principles come into the conscious- 
 ness so soon as men use their reason. This affirmation is direct- 
 ly false, for these maxims which are called universal come into the 
 consciousness much later than a great deal of other knowledge, 
 and children, e. g. give many proofs of their use of reason before 
 
LOCKE. 
 
 195 
 
 they know that it is impossible that a thing should be and at the 
 same time not be. It is only correct to say that no one becomes 
 conscious of these propositions without reasoning, — but to say 
 that they are all known with the first reasoning is false. More- 
 over, that which is first known is not universal propositions, but 
 relates to individual impressions. The child knows that sweet 
 is not bitter long before he understands the logical proposition of 
 contradiction. He who carefully bethinks himself, will hesitate 
 before he affirms that particular dicta as " sweet is not bitter," are 
 derived from universal ones. If the universal propositions were 
 innate, then must they be the first in the consciousness of the 
 child ; for that which nature has stamped upon th* human soul 
 must come into consciousness antecedently to any thing which 
 she has not written there. Consequently, if there are no innate 
 ideas, either theoretical or practical, there can be just as 
 truly no innate art nor science. The understanding (or the soul) 
 is essentially a tabula rasa, — a blank and void space, a white 
 paper on which nothing is written. 
 
 How now does the understanding become possessed of ideas ? 
 Only through experience, upon which all knowledge rests, and on 
 which as its principle all knowledge depends. Experience itself 
 is twofold ; . either it arises through the perception of external ob- 
 jects by means of the sense, in which case we call it sensation ; 
 or it is a perception of the activities of our own understanding, in 
 which case it is named the inner sense, or, better, reflection. 
 Sensation and reflection give to the understanding all its ideas ; 
 they are the windows through which alone the light of ideas falls 
 upon the naturally dark space of the mind ; external objects fur- 
 nish us with the ideas of sensible qualities, and the inner object, 
 which is the understanding itself, ofi'ers us the ideas of its own 
 activities. To show the derivation and to give an explanation of 
 all the ideas derived from both is the problem of the Lockian phi- 
 losophy. For this end Locke divides ideas (representations or 
 notions) into simple and compound. Simple ideas, he names those 
 which are impressed from without upon the understanding while 
 it remains wholly passive, just as the images of certain objects are 
 
196 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 represented in a mirror. These simple ideas are partly such as 
 come to the understanding through an individual sense, e. g. the 
 ideas of color, which are furnished to the mind through the eye, 
 or those of sound, which come to it through the ear, or those of 
 solidity or impenetrability, which we receive through the touch ; 
 partly such as a number of senses have combined to give us, as 
 those of space and of motion, of which we become conscious by 
 means of the sense both of touch and of sight ; partly such as we 
 receive through reflection, as the idea of thought and of will; and 
 partly^ in fine, such as arise from both sensation and reflection 
 combined, e. g. power, unity, &c. These simple ideas form the 
 material, as it were the letters of all our knowledge. But now as 
 language arises from a manifold combination of letters, syllables 
 and words, so the understanding forms complex ideas by the mani- 
 fold combination of simj^le ideas with each other. The complex 
 ideas may be referred to three classes, viz. : the ideas of mode, of 
 substance, and of relation. Under the ideas of mode, Locke con- 
 siders the modifications of space (as distance, measurement, im- 
 mensity, surface, figure, &c.), of time (as succession, duration, 
 eternity), of thought (perception, memory, abstraction, &c.), of 
 number, power, &c. Special attention is given by Locke to the 
 conception of substance. He exj^lains the origin of tliis concep- 
 tion in this way, viz. : we find both in sensation and reflection, 
 that a certain number of simple ideas seem often to be connected 
 together. But as we cannot divest ourselves of the impression 
 that these simple ideas have not been produced through them- 
 selves, we are accustomed to furnish them with a ground in some 
 existing substratum, which we indicate with the word substance. 
 Substance is something unknown, and is conceived of as possessing 
 those qualities which are necessary to furnish us with simple ideas. 
 But from the fact that substance is a product of our subjective 
 thinking, it does not follow that it has no existence outside of our- 
 selves. On the contrary, this is distinguished from all other com- 
 plex ideas in the fact that this is an idea which has its archetj^pe 
 distinct from ourselves, and possesses objective reality, while other 
 complex ideas are formed by the mind at pleasure, and have no 
 
LOCKE. 
 
 197 
 
 reality corresponding to them external to the mind. We do not 
 know what is the archetype of substance, and of the substance 
 itself we are acquainted only with its attributes. From consider- 
 ing the conception of substance, Locke next passes over to the idea 
 of relation. A relation arises when the understanding has con- 
 nected two things with each other, in such a way, that in consider- 
 ing them it passes over from the one to the other. Every thing 
 is capable of being brought by the understanding into relation, or 
 what is the same thing, to be transformed into something relative. 
 It is consequently impossible to enumerate the sum of every pos- 
 sible relation. Hence Locke treats only of some of the more 
 weighty conceptions of relation, among others, that of identity and 
 difference, but especially that of cause and effect. The idea of 
 cause and effect arises when our understanding perceives that any 
 thing whatsoever, be it substance or quality, begins to exist 
 through the activity of another. So much concerning ideas. The 
 combination of ideas among themselves gives the conception of 
 knowing. Hence knowledge stands in the same relation to the 
 simple and complex ideas as a proposition does to the letters, syl- 
 lables and words which compose it. From this it follows that our 
 knowledge does not pass beyond the compass of our ideas, and 
 hence that it is bounded by experience. 
 
 These are the prominent thoughts in the Lockian philosophy. 
 Its empiricism is clear as day. The mind, according to it, is in 
 itself bare, and only a mirror of the outer world, — a dark space 
 which passively receives the images of external objects ; its whole 
 content is made by the impressions furnished it by material things. 
 Nihil est in intellectti, quod nonfuerit in sensu — is the watch- 
 word of this standpoint. While Locke, by this proposition, ex- 
 presses the undoubted preponderance of the material over the 
 intellectual, he does so still more decisively when he declares that 
 it is possible and even probable that the mind is a material essence. 
 He does not admit the reverse possibility, that material things 
 may be classed under the intellectual as a special kind. Hence 
 with him mind is the secondary to matter, and hence he is seen to 
 take the characteristic standpoint of realism {cf. ^ XXVII). 
 
198 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 It is true that Locke was not always logically consistent, and in 
 many points did not thoroughly carry out his empiricism : but we 
 can clearly see that the road which will be taken in the farther 
 development of this direction, will result in a thorough denial of 
 the ideal factor. 
 
 The empiricism of Locke, wholly national as it is, soon be- 
 came the ruling philosophy in England. Standing on its basis 
 we find Isaac Newton, the great mathematician (1642-1727), 
 Samuel Clarke^ a disciple of Newton, whose chief attention was 
 given to moral philosophy (1675-1729), the English moralists of 
 this period, William Wollaston (1659-1724), the Earl of Shaftes- 
 hury (1671-1713), Francis Hutcheson (1694-1746), and even 
 Bome opponents of Locke, as Peter Brown, who died 1735. 
 
 SECTION XXIX. 
 
 HUME. 
 
 As already remarked, Locke had not been wholly consistent 
 with the standpoint of empiricism. Though conceding to ma- 
 terial objects a decided superiority above the thinking subject, 
 there was yet one point, viz., the recognition of substance, where 
 lie claimed for the thinking a power above the objective world. 
 Among all the comjolex ideas which are formed by the subjective 
 thinking, the idea of substance is, according to Locke, the only 
 one which has objective reality; all the rest being purely sub- 
 jective, with nothing actually corresponding to them in the ob- 
 jective world. But in the very fact that the subjective thinking 
 places the conception of substance, which it has formed, in the 
 objective world, it affirms an objective relation of things, an ob- 
 jective connection of them among each other, and an existing 
 rationality. The reason of the subject in this respect stands in a 
 certain degree above the objective world, for the relation of sub- 
 Btance is not derived immediately from the world of sense, and is 
 
HUME. 
 
 199 
 
 no product of sensation nor of perception through the sense. On 
 a pure empirical standpoint — and such was Locke's — it was 
 therefore illogical to allow the conception of substance to remain 
 possessed of objective being. If the understanding is essentially 
 a bare and empty space, a white unwritten paper, if its whole con- 
 tent of objective knowledge consists in the impressions made upon 
 it by material things, then must the conception of substance also 
 be explained as a mere subjective notion, a union of ideas joined 
 together at the mind's pleasure, and the subject itself, thus fully 
 deprived of every thing to which it could lay claim, Jiust become 
 wholly subordinated to the material world. This stride to a 
 logical empiricism Hume has made in his criticism on the concep- 
 tion of causality. 
 
 David Hume was born at Edinburgh 1711. Devoted in youth 
 to the study of law, then for some time a merchant, he afterwards 
 gave his attention exclusively to philosophy and history. His first 
 literary attempt was hardly noticed. A more favorable reception 
 was, however, given to his Essays,''^ — of which he published 
 different collections from 1742 to 1757, making in all five vol- 
 um-es. In these Hume has treated philosophical themes as a 
 thoughtful and cultivated man of the world, but without any strict 
 systematic connection. In 1752 he was elected to the care of a 
 public library in Edinburgh, and began in this same year his 
 famous history of England. Afterwards he became secretary of 
 legation at Paris, where he became acquainted with Kousseau. 
 In 1767 he became under secretary of state, an office, however, 
 which he filled for only a brief period. His last years were spent 
 in Edinburgh, in a quiet and contented seclusion. He died 
 1776. 
 
 The centre of Hume's philosophizing is his criticism of the 
 conception of cause. Locke had already expressed the thought 
 that we attain the conception of substance only by the habit of 
 always seeing certain modes together. Hume takes up this 
 thought with earnestness. Whence do we know, he asks, that 
 two things stand to each other in the relation of cause and effect ? 
 We do not know it apriori, for since the effect is something other 
 
200 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 than the cause, while knowledge apriori embraces only that which 
 is identical, the effect cannot thus be discovered in the cause; 
 neither do we know it through experience, for experience reveals 
 to us only the succession in time of two facts. All our conclu- 
 sions from experience, therefore, rest simply upon habit. Be- 
 cause we are in the habit of seeing that one thing is followed in 
 time by another, do we form the notion that the latter must fol- 
 low out of the former : we make the relation of causality out of 
 the relation of succession ; but a connection in time is naturally 
 something other than a causal connection. Hence, with the con- 
 ception of causality, we transcend that which is given in percep- 
 tion and form for ourselves, notions to which we are properly not 
 entitled. — That which belongs to causality belongs to every neces- 
 sary relation. We find within us conceptions, as those of power 
 and expression, and in general that of necessary connection ; but 
 let us note how we attain these : not through sensation, for 
 though external objects seem to us to have coetaneousness of 
 being, they show us no necessary connection. Do they then come 
 through reflection ? True, it seems as if we might get the idea 
 of power by seeing that the organs of our body move in conse- 
 quence of the dictate of our mind. But since we do not know 
 the means through which the mind works, and since all the or- 
 gans of the body cannot be moved by the will, it follows, that we 
 are indeed pointed to experience in reference to this activity ; but 
 since experience can show us only a frequent conjunction, but no 
 real connection, it follows also that we come to the conception of 
 power as of every necessary connection, only because we are ac- 
 customed to a transcending process in our notions. All concep- 
 tions which express a relation of necessity, all knowledge pre- 
 sumptive of a real objective connection of things, rests therefore 
 ultimately only upon the association of ideas. Having denied 
 the conception of substance, Hume was led also to deny that of 
 the Ego or self If the Ego or self really exists, it must be a 
 substance possessing inherent qualities. But since our concep- 
 tion of substance is purely subjective, without objective reality, 
 it follows that there is no correspondent reality to our conception 
 
CONDILLAC. 
 
 201 
 
 of the self or the Ego. The self or the Ego is, in fact, nothing 
 other than a compound of many notions following rapidly upon 
 each other ; and under this compound we lay a conceived sub- 
 stratum, which we call soul, self, Ego (I). The self, or the Ego, 
 rests wholly on an illusion. Of course, with such premises, 
 nothing can be said of the immortality of the soul. If the soul 
 is only the compound of our notions, it necessarily ceases with 
 the notions — that which is compounded of the movements of the 
 body dies with those movements. 
 
 There needs no further proof, than simply to ;itter these chief 
 thoughts of Hume, to show that his scepticism is only a logical 
 carrying out of Locke's empiricism. Every determination of 
 universality and necessity must fall away, if we derive our knowl- 
 edge only from perceptions through the sense ; these determina- 
 tions cannot be comprised in sensation. 
 
 SECTION XXX. 
 
 CONDILLAC. 
 
 The French took up the problem of carrying out the empiri- 
 cism of Locke, to its ultimate consequences in sensualism and 
 materialism. Although this empiricism had sprung up on English 
 soil, and had soon become universally prevalent there, it was re- 
 served for France to push it to the last extreme, and show that it 
 overthrew all the foundations of moral and religious life. This 
 final consequence of empiricism did not correspond to the English 
 national character. But on the contrary, both the empiricism of 
 Locke, and the scepticism of Hume, found themselves opposed 
 in the latter half of the eighteenth century, by a reaction in the 
 Scotch philosophy [Heid 1701-1799, Beattie, Oswald, Dugald 
 Stewart, 1753-1828). The attempt was here made to establish 
 certain principles of truth as innate and immanent in the sub- 
 ject, which should avail both against the tabula rasa of Locke. 
 9* 
 
202 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 and the scepticism of Hume. These principles were taken in a 
 thoroughly English way, as those of common sense, as facts of 
 experience, as facts of the moral instinct and sound human un- 
 derstanding; as something empirically given, and found in the 
 common consciousness by self-contemplation and reflection. But 
 in France, on the other hand, there was such a public and social 
 condition of things during the eighteenth century, that we can 
 only regard the systems of materialism and egoistic moralism 
 which here appeared, as the last practical consequences of the 
 empirical standpoint, — to be the natural result of the universal 
 desolation. The expression of a lady respecting the system of 
 Helvetius is well known, that it uttered only the secret of all the 
 world. 
 
 Most closely connected with the empiricism of Locke, is the 
 sensualism of the Abbe Condillac. Condillac was born at Gre- 
 noble, 1715. In his first writings he adhered to Locke, but sub- 
 sequently passed beyond him, and sought to ground a philosophi- 
 cal standpoint of his own. He was elected a member of the 
 French Academy in 1768, and died in 1780. His writings fill 
 twenty-three volumes, and have their origin in a moral and re- 
 ligious interest. 
 
 Condillac, like Locke, started with the proposition that all 
 our knowledge comes from experience. While, however, Locke 
 had indicated two sources for this knowledge, sensation and re- 
 flection, the outer and the inner sense, Condillac referred reflec- 
 tion to sensation, and reduced the two sources to one. Reflection 
 is, with him, only sensation ; all intellectual occurrences, even the 
 combination of ideas and volition, are to be regarded only as 
 modified sensations. It is the chief problem and content of Con- 
 dillac's philosophizing to carry out this thought, and derive the 
 diff"erent functions of the soul out of the sensations of the outer 
 sense. He illustrates this thought by a statue, which has been 
 made with a perfect internal organization like a man, but which 
 possesses no ideas, and in which only gradually one sense after 
 another awakens and fills the soul with impressions. In such a 
 view man stands on the same footing as the brute, for all hia 
 
HELVETIUS. 
 
 203 
 
 knowledge and all his incentives to action he receives from sen- 
 sation. Condillac consequently names men perfect animals, and 
 brutes imperfect men. Still he revolts from affirming the mate- 
 riality of the soul, and denying the existence of God. These 
 ultimate consequences of sensualism were first drawn by others 
 after him, as would naturally enough follow. As sensualism 
 affirmed that truth or being could only be perceived through the 
 sense, so we have only to reverse this proposition, and have the 
 thesis of materialism, viz. : the sensible alone is, there is no other 
 being but material being. 
 
 SECTION XXXI. 
 
 HELVETIUS. 
 
 Helvetius has exhibited the moral consequences of the sen- 
 sualistic standpoint. While theoretical sensualism affirms that 
 all our knowledge is determined by sensation, practical sensualism 
 adds to this the analogous proposition that all our volition springs 
 from the same source, and is regulated by the sensuous desire. 
 Helvetius adopted it as the principle of morals to satisfy this 
 sensuous desire. 
 
 Helvetius was born at Paris in 1715. Gaining a position in 
 his twenty-third year as farmer-general, he found himself early in 
 the possession of a rich income, but after a few years he found 
 this office so vexatious that he abandoned it. The study of 
 Locke decided his philosophic direction. Helvetius wrote his 
 famed work, de V Esprit, after he had given up his office and 
 withdrawn himself in seclusion. It appeared in 1758, and at- 
 tracted a great attention at home and abroad, though it drew 
 upon him a violent persecution, especially from the clergy. It 
 was fortunate for him that the persecution satisfied itself with 
 suppressing his book. The repose in which he spent his later 
 years was interrupted only by two journeys which he made to 
 
204 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Germany and England. He died in 1771. His personal char- 
 acter was wholly estimable, full of kindness and generosity. Es- 
 pecially in his place as farmer-general he showed himself benev- 
 olent towards the poor, and resolute against the encroachments 
 of his subalterns. The style of his writings is easy and 
 elegant. 
 
 Self-love or interest, says Helvetius, is the lever of all our 
 mental activities. Even that activity which is purely intellectual, 
 our instinct towards knowledge, our forming of ideas, rests upon 
 this. Since now all self-love refers essentially only to bodily 
 pleasure, it follows that every mental occurrence within us has its 
 peculiar source only in the striving after this pleasure ; but in 
 saying this, we have only affirmed where the principle of all mo- 
 rality is to be sought. It is an absurdity to require a man to do 
 the good simply for its own sake. This is just as impracticable 
 as that he should do the evil simply for the sake of the evil. 
 Hence if morality would not be wholly fruitless, it must return 
 to its empirical basis, and venture to adopt the true principle of 
 all acting, viz., sensuous pleasure and pain, or, in other words, self- 
 ishness as an actual moral principle. Hence, as a correct legis- 
 lation is that which secures obedience to its laws through reward 
 and punishment, i. e. through selfishness, so will a correct system 
 of morals be that which derives the duties of men from self-love, 
 which shows that that which is forbidden is something which is 
 followed by disagreeable consequences. A system of ethics which 
 does not involve the self-interest of men, or which wars against 
 this, necessarily remains fruitless. 
 
THE FRENCH CLEARING UP. 
 
 205 
 
 SECTION XXXII. 
 
 THE FRENCH CLEARING UP (AufJcIaerung) AND MATE- 
 RIALISM. 
 
 1. It has already been remarked (§ XXX.) that the carrying 
 out of empiricism to its extremes, as was attempted in France, 
 was most intimately connected with the general condition of the 
 French people and state, in the period before the revolution. The 
 contradictory element in the character of the Middle Ages, the 
 external and dualistic relation to the spiritual world, had developed 
 itself in Catholic France till it had corrupted and destroyed every 
 condition. Morality, mainly through the influence of a licentious 
 court, had become wholly corrupted ; the state had sunk to an 
 unbridled despotism, and the church to a hierarchy as hypocritical 
 as it was powerful. Thus, as every intellectual edifice was threat- 
 ened with ruin, nature, as matter without intellect, as the object 
 of sensation and desire, alone remained. Yet it is not the ma- 
 terialistic extreme which constitutes the peculiar character and 
 tendency of the period now before us. The common character of 
 the philosophers of the eighteenth century is rather, and most 
 prominently, the opposition against every ruling restraint, and 
 perversion in morals, religion, and the state. Their criticism and 
 polemics, which were much more ingenious and eloquent than 
 strictly scientific, were directed against the whole realm of tra- 
 ditional and given and positive notions. They sought to show 
 the contradiction between the existing elements in the state and 
 the church, and the incontrovertible demands of the reason. They 
 sought to overthrow in the faith of the world every fixed opinion 
 which had not been established in the eye of reason, and to give 
 the thinking man the full consciousness of his pure freedom. In 
 order that we may correctly estimate the merit of these men, we 
 must bring before us the French world of that age against which 
 their attacks were directed ; the dissoluteness of a pitiful court, 
 
206 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 the slavish obedience exacted by a corrupt priesthood, a church 
 sunken into decay yet seeking worldly honor, a state constitution, 
 a condition of rights and of society, which must be profoundly 
 revolting to every thinking man and every moral feeling. It ia 
 the immortal merit of these men that they gave over to scorn and 
 hatred the abjectness and hypocrisy which then reigned ; that 
 they brought the minds of men to look with indifference upon the 
 idols of the world, and awakened within them a consciousness of 
 their own autonomy. 
 
 2. The most famous and influential actor in this period of the 
 French clearing up, is Voltaire (1694-1778). Though a writer 
 of great versatility, rather than a philosopher, there was yet no 
 philosopher of that time who exerted so powerful an influence 
 upon the whole thinking of his country and his age. Yoltaire 
 was no atheist. On the contrary, he regarded the belief in a 
 Supreme Being to be so necessary, that he once said that if there 
 were no God we should be under the necessity of inventing one. 
 He was just as little disposed to deny the immortality of the soul, 
 though he often expressed his doubts upon it. He regarded the 
 atheistic materialism of a La Mettrie as nothing but nonsense. In 
 these respects, therefore, he is far removed from the standpoint of 
 the philosophers who followed him. His whole hatred was expend- 
 ed against Christianity as a positive religion. To destroy this 
 system he considered as his peculiar mission, and he left no means 
 untried to attain this anxiously longed-for end. His unwearied 
 warfare against every positive religion prepared the way and gave 
 weapons for the attacks against spiritualism which followed. 
 
 , 3. The Encyclopedists had a more decidedly sceptical relation 
 to the principles and the basis of spiritualism. The philosophical 
 Encyclopedia established hj Diderot (1713-1784), and published by 
 him in connection with d'Alembert, is a memorable monument of 
 the ruling spirit in France in the time before the revolution. It 
 was the pride of France at that age, because it expressed in a 
 splendid and universally accessible form the inner consciousness 
 of the French people. With the keenest wit it reasoned away 
 law from the state, and freedom from morality, and spirit and 
 
THE FRENCH CLEARING UP. 
 
 207 
 
 God from nature, though all this was done only in scRttered, and, 
 for the most part, timorous intimations. In Diderot's independent 
 writings we find talent of much philosophic importance united 
 with great earnestness. But it is very difficult to fix and accu- 
 rately to limit his philosophic views, since they were very gradually 
 formed, and Diderot expressed them always with some reserve 
 and accommodation. In general, however, it may be remarked, 
 that in the progress of his speculations he constantly approached 
 nearer the extreme of the philosophical direction of his -age. In 
 his earlier writings a Deist, he afterwards avowed the opinion 
 that every thing is God. At first defending the immateriality and 
 immortality of the soul, he expressed himself at a later period 
 decidedly against these doctrines, affirming that the species alone 
 has an abiding being while the individual passes away, and that 
 immortality is nothing other than to live in the -thoughts of coming 
 generations. But Diderot did not venture to the real extreme of 
 logical materialism ; his moral earnestness restrained him from 
 this. 
 
 4. The last word of materialism was spoken with reckless au- 
 dacity by La Meitrie (1709 — 1751), a eotemporary of Diderot : 
 every thing spiritual is a delusion, and physical enjoyment is the 
 highest end of men. Faith in the existence of a God, says La 
 Mettrie, is just as groundless as it is fruitless. The world will 
 not be happy till atheism becomes universally established. Then 
 alone will there be no more religious strife, then alone will theo- 
 logians, the most odious of combatants, disappear, and nature, 
 poisoned at present by their influence, will come again to its 
 rights. In reference to the human soul, there can be no philos- 
 ophy but materialism. All the observation and experience of the 
 greatest philosophers and physicians declare this. Soul is nothing 
 but a mere name, which has a rational signification only when we 
 understand by it that part of our body which thinks. This is 
 the brain, which has its muscles of thought, just as the limbs 
 have their muscles of motion. That which gives man his advan- 
 tage over the brutes is, first, the organization of his brain, ^nd 
 eecond, its capacity for receiving instruction. Otherwise, is man 
 
208 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 a brute like the beasts around him, though in many respects sur- 
 passed by these. Immortality is an absurdity. The soul per- 
 ishes with the body of which it forms a part. With death every 
 thing is over, la farce est jouee I The practical and selfish ap- 
 plication of all this is — let us enjoy ourselves as long as we exist, 
 and not throw away any satisfaction we can attain. 
 
 5. The SysUme de la Nature afterwards attempted to 
 elaborate with greater earnestness and scientific precision, that 
 which had been uttered so superficially and so superciliously by 
 La Mettrie, viz., the doctrine that matter alone exists, while 
 mind is nothing other than matter refined. 
 
 The Systime de la Nature appeared in London under a ficti- 
 tious name in 1770. It was then published as a posthumous 
 work of Mirabaud, late secretary of the Academy. It doubtless 
 had its origin in the circle which was wont to assemble with 
 Baron Holbach, and of which Diderot, Grimm, and others formed 
 a part. Whether the Baron Holbach himself, or his tutor La- 
 grange is the author of this work, or whether it is the joint pro- 
 duction of a number, cannot now be determined. The Sy§- 
 teme de la Nature is hardly a French book : the style is too 
 heavy and tedious. 
 
 There is, in fact, nothing but matter and motion, says this 
 work. Both are inseparably connected. If matter is at rest, it 
 is only because hindered in motion, for in its essence it is not a 
 dead mass. Motion is twofold, attraction and repulsion. The 
 different motions which we see are the product of these two, and 
 through these different motions arise the different connections 
 and the whole manifoldne«s of things. The laws which direct in 
 all this are eternal and unchangeable. — The most weighty con- 
 sequences of such a doctrine are : 
 
 (1.) The materiality of man. Man is no twofold being com- 
 pounded of mind and matter, as is erroneously believed. If the 
 inquiry is closely made what the mind is, we are answered, that 
 the most accurate philosophical investigations have shown, that 
 the principle of activity in man is a substance whose peculiar na- 
 ture cannot be known, but of which we can affirm that it is in 
 
THE FRENCH CLEARING UP. 
 
 209 
 
 divisible, unextended, invisible, &c. But now, who should con- 
 ceive any thing determinate in a substance which is only the 
 negation of that which gives knowledge, an idea which is pecu- 
 liarly only the absence of all ideas ? Still farther, how can it be 
 explained upon such a hypothesis, that a substance which itself is 
 not material can work upon material things ; and how can it set 
 these in motion, since there is no point of contact between the 
 two ? In fact, those who distinguish their soul from their body, 
 have only to make a distinction between their brain and their 
 body. Thought is only a modification of our brain, just as voli- 
 tion is another modification of the same bodily organ. 
 
 (2.) Another chimera, the belief in the being of a God, is 
 connected with the twofold division of man into body and soul. 
 This belief arises like the hypothesis of a soul-substance, because 
 mind is falsely divided from matter, and nature is thus made two- 
 fold. The evil which men experienced, and whose natural cause 
 they could not discover, they assigned to a deity which they 
 imagined for the purpose. The first notions of a Grod have their 
 source therefore in sorrow, fear, and uncertainty. We tremble 
 because our forefathers for thousands of years have done the 
 same. This circumstance awakens no auspicious prepossession. 
 But not only the rude, but also the theological idea of God is 
 worthless, for it explains no phenomenon of nature. It is, more- 
 over, full of absurdities, for, since it ascribes moral attributes to 
 God, it renders him human ; while on the other hand, by a mass 
 of negative attributes, it seeks to distinguish him absolutely from 
 every other being. The true system, the system of nature, is 
 hence atheistic. But such a doctrine requires a culture and a 
 courage which neither all men nor most men possess. If we un- 
 derstand by the word atheist one who considers only dead matter, 
 or who designates the moving power in nature with the name 
 God, then is there no atheist, or whoever would be one is a fool. 
 But if the word means one who denies the existence of a spiritual 
 being, a being whose attributes can only be a source of annoyance 
 to men, then are there indeed atheists, and there would be more 
 of them, if a correct knowledge of nature and a sound reason 
 
210 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 were more widely diffused. But if atheism is true, then should 
 it be diffused. There are, indeed, many who have cast off the 
 yoke of religion, who nevertheless think it is necessary for the 
 common people in order to keep them within proper limits. But 
 this is just as if we should determine to give a man poison lest 
 he should abuse his strength. Every kind of Deism leads neces- 
 sarily to superstition, since it is not possible to continue on the 
 stand-point of pure deism. 
 
 (3.) With such premises the freedom and immortality of the 
 soul both disappear. Man, like every other substance in nature, 
 is a link in the chain of necessary connection, a blind instrument 
 in the hands of necessity. If any thing should be endowed with 
 self-motion, that is, with a capacity to produce motion without any 
 other cause, then would it have the power to destroy motion in 
 the universe ; but this is contrary to the conception of the uni- 
 verse, which is only an endless series of necessary motions spread- 
 ing out into wider circles continually. The claim of an individual 
 immortality is absurd. For to affirm that the soul exists after 
 the destruction of the body, is to affirm that a modification of a 
 substance can exist after the substance itself has disappeared. 
 There is no other immortality than to live in the remembrance of 
 posterity. 
 
 (4.) The practical consequences of these principles are in the 
 highest degree favorable for the system of nature, the utility of 
 any doctrine being ever the first criterion of its truth. While the 
 ideas of theologians are productive only of disquiet and anxiety 
 to man, the system of nature frees him from all such unrest, 
 teaches him to enjoy the present moment, and to quietly yield to 
 his destiny, while it gives him that kind of apathy which every 
 one must regard as a blessing. If morality would be active, it 
 can rest only upon self-love and self-interest ; it must show man 
 whither his well-considered interest would lead him. He is a 
 good man who gains his own interest in such a way that others 
 will find it for their interest to assist him. The system of self- 
 interest, therefore, demands the union of men among each other 
 and henx3e we have true morality. 
 
LEIBNITZ. 
 
 211 
 
 The logical dogmatic materialism of the SysUme de la Nature 
 IS the farthest limit of an empirical direction in philosophy, and 
 consequently closes that course of the development of a one-sided 
 realism which had begun with Locke. The attempt first made hy 
 Locke to explain and derive the ideal world from the material, 
 ended in materialism with the total reduction of every thing spir- 
 itual to the material, with the total denial of the spiritual. We 
 must now, before proceeding farther, according to the classifica- 
 tion made § XXVIL, consider the idealistic course of development 
 which ran parallel with the systems of a partial realism. At the 
 head of this course stands Leibnitz. 
 
 SECTION XXXIII. 
 
 LEIBNITZ. 
 
 As empiricism sprang from the striving to subject the intel- 
 lectual to the material, to materialize the spiritual, so on the other 
 hand, idealism had its source in the effort to spiritualize the 
 material, or so to apprehend the conception of mind that matter 
 could be subsumed under it. To the empiric-sensualistic direc- 
 tion, mind was nothing but refined matter, while to the idealistic 
 direction matter was only degenerated (vergrohert) mind (" a con- 
 fused notion," as Leibnitz expresses it). The former, in its 
 
 I logical development, was driven to the principle that only material 
 things exist, the latter (as with Leibnitz and Berkeley) comes to 
 the opposite principle, that there are only souls and their ideas. 
 For the partial realistic stand-point, material things were the truly 
 substantial. But for the idealistic stand-point, the substantial 
 belongs alone to the intellectual world, to the Egos. Mind, to the 
 partial realism, was essentially void, a tabula rasa, its whole con- 
 tent came to it from the external world. But a partial idealism 
 sought to carry out the principle that nothing can come into the 
 mind which had not at least been preformed within it, that all its 
 
212 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 knowledge is furnished it by itself. According to the former view 
 knowledge was a passive relation, according to the latter was it 
 wholly active. While, in fine, a partial realism had attempted to 
 explain the becoming in nature for the most part through real, 
 i. e. through mechanical motives {lliomme machine is the title of 
 one of la Mettrie's writings), idealism had sought an explanation 
 of the same through ideal motives, i. e. teleologically. While the 
 former had made its prominent inquiry for moving causes, and 
 had, indeed, often ridiculed the search for a final cause ; it is final 
 causes toward which the latter directs its chief aim. The media- 
 tion between mind and matter, between thought and being, will 
 now be sought in the final cause, in the teleological harmony of 
 all things {pre-estahlisJied harmony). The stand-point of Leib- 
 nitz may thus be characterized in a word. 
 
 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz was born in 1646, at Leipsic, 
 where his father was professor. Having chosen the law as his 
 profession, he entered the university in 1661, and in 1663 he 
 defended for his degree of doctor in philosophy, his dissertation 
 de jprincipio individui, a theme well characteristic of the direc- 
 tion of his later philosophizing. He afterwards went to Jena, 
 and subsequently to Altdorf, where he became doctor of laws. 
 At Altdorf he was offered a professorship of jurisprudence, which 
 he refused. The rest of his life was unsettled and desultory, 
 spent for the most part in courts, where, as a versatile courtier, he 
 was employed in the most varied duties of diplomacy. In the 
 year 1672 he went to Paris, in order to induce Louis XIY. to 
 undertake the conquest of Egypt. He subsequently visited Lon- 
 don, whence he was afterwards called to Hanover, as councillor 
 of the Duke of Brunswick. He received later a post as librarian 
 at Wolfenbuttel, between which place and Hanover he spent the 
 most of his subsequent life, though interrupted with numerous 
 journeys to Vienna, Berlin, etc. He was intimately associated 
 with the Prussian Electress, Maria Charlotte, a highly talented 
 woman, who surrounded herself with a circle of the most dis- 
 tinguished scholars of the time, and for whom Liebnitz wrote, at 
 her own request, his Theodicee. In 1701, after Prussia had be- 
 
LEIBNITZ. 213 
 
 come a kingdom, an academy was established at Berlin, through 
 his efforts, and he became its first president. Similar, but fruit- 
 less attempts were made by him to establish academies in Dres- 
 den and Vienna. In 1711 the title of imperial court councillor, 
 and a baronage, was bestowed upon him by the emperor Charles VI. 
 Soon after, he betook himself to Vienna, where he remained a 
 considerable period, and wrote his Monadology, at the solicitation 
 of Prince Eugene. He died in 1716. Next to Aristotle, Leib- 
 nitz was the most highly gifted scholar that had ever lived ; with 
 the richest and most extensive learning, he united the highest and 
 most penetrating powers of mind. Germany has reason to be 
 proud of him, since, after Jacob Boehme, he is the first philoso- 
 pher of any note among the Germans. With him philosophy 
 found a home in Germany. It is to be regretted that the great 
 variety of his efi"orts and literary undertakings, together with his 
 roving manner of life, prevented him from giving any connected 
 exhibition of his philosophy. His views are for the most part 
 developed only in brief and occasional writings and letters, com- 
 posed frequently in the French language. It is hence not easy 
 to state his philosophy in its internal connection, though none of 
 his views are isolated, but all stand strictly connected with each 
 other. The following are the chief points : 
 
 1. The Doctrine of Monads. — The fundamental peculiarity 
 of Leibnitz's theory is its opposition to Spinozism. Substance, 
 as the indeterminate universal, was with Spinoza the only positive. 
 With Leibnitz also the conception of substance lay at the basis of 
 his philosophy, but his definition of it was entirely different. 
 While Spinoza had sought to exclude from his substance every 
 positive determination, and especially all acting, and had appre- 
 hended it simply as pure being, Leibnitz viewed it as living 
 activity and a*ctive energy, an example for which might be found 
 in a stretched bow, which moved and straightened itself through 
 its own energy as soon as the external hindrance was removed. 
 That this active energy forms the essence of substance is a prin- 
 ciple to which Leibnitz ever returns, and from which, in fact, all 
 the other chief points in^ his philosophy may be derived. From 
 
214 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 this there follow at the outset two determinations of suhstance 
 directly opposed to Spinozism ; first, that it is a single being, a 
 monad ; and second, that there are a multiplicity of monads. 
 The first follows because substance, in so far as it exercises an 
 activity similar to an elastic body, is essentially an excluding 
 activity, or repulsion ; the conception of an individual or a monad 
 being that which excludes another from itself The second fol- 
 lows because the existence of one monad involves the existence of 
 many. The conception of one individual postulates other indi- 
 viduals, which stand over against the one as excluded from it. 
 Hence the fundamental thesis of the Leibnitz philosophy in oppo- 
 sition to Spinozism is this, viz., there is a multiplicity of individ- 
 ual substances or monads. 
 
 2. The Monads more Accurately Determined. — The monads 
 of Leibnitz are similar to atoms in their general features. Like 
 these they are corpuscular units, independent of any external in- 
 fluence, and indestructible by any external power. But notwith- 
 standing this similarity, there is an important and characteristic 
 difi"erence between the two. First, the atoms are not distinguished 
 from each other, they are all qualitatively alike ; but each one of 
 the monads is different in quality from every other, every one is a 
 peculiar world for itself, every one is different from every other. 
 According to Leibnitz, there are no two things in the world which 
 are exactly alike. Secondly, atoms can be considered as extended 
 and divisible, but the monads are metaphysical points, and actu- 
 ally indivisible. Here, lest we should stumble at this proposition 
 (for an aggregate of unextended monads can never give an ex- 
 tended world), we must take into consideration Leibnitz's view of 
 space, which, according to him, is not something real, but only 
 confused, subjective representation. Thirdly, the monad is a 
 representatiye being. "With the atomists such a determination 
 would amount to nothing, but with Leibnitz it has a very impor- 
 tant part to play. According to him, in every monad, every other 
 is reflected ; every monad is a living mirror of the universe, and 
 ideally contains the whole within itself as in a germ. In thus 
 mirroring the world, however, the monad is not passive but spon- 
 
LEIBNITZ. 
 
 215 
 
 taneously self-active : it does not receive the images which it 
 mirrors, but produces them spontaneously itself, as the soul does a 
 dream. In every monad, therefore, the all-seeiDg and all-know- 
 ing one might read every thing, even the future, since this is po- 
 tentially contained in the present. Every monad is a kind of 
 God. {Parvus in suo genere Deus.) 
 
 3. The Pre-established Harmony. — The universe is thus 
 the sum of all the monads. Every thing, every composite, is an 
 aggregate of monads. Thus every bodily organism is not one 
 substance, but many, it is a multiplicity of monads, like a machine 
 which is made up of a number of distinct pieces of mechanism. 
 Leibnitz compared bodies to a fish-pond, which might be full of 
 living elements, though dead itself The ordinary view of things 
 is thus wholly set aside ; the truly substantial does not belong 
 to bodies, i. e. to the aggregates, but to their original elements. 
 Matter in the vulgar sense, as something conceived to be without 
 mind, does not at all exist. How now must the inner connection 
 of the universe be conceived? In the following way. Every 
 monad is a representative being, and at the same time, each one 
 is different from every other. This difference, therefore, depends 
 alone upon the difference of representation : there are just as 
 many different degrees of representation as there are monads, and 
 these degrees may be fixed according to some of their prominent 
 stages. The representations may be classified according to the 
 distinction between confused and distinct knowledge. Hence a 
 monad of the lowest rank (a monad tcute nue) will be one which 
 simply represents, i. e. which stands on the stage of most confused 
 knowledge. Leibnitz compares this state with a swoon, or with 
 our condition in a dreamy sleep, in which we are not without rep- 
 resentations, (notions) — for otherwise we could have none when 
 awaking — but in which the representations are so numerous that 
 they neutralize each other and do not come into the consciousness. 
 This is the stage of inorganic nature. In a higher rank are those 
 monads in which the representation is active as a formative vital 
 force, though still without consciousness. This is the stage of the 
 v^egetable world. Still higher ascends the life of the monad when 
 
216 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 it attains to sensation and memory, as is the case in the animal 
 kingdom. The lower monads may be said to sleep, and the brute 
 monads to dream. When still farther the soul rises to reason or 
 reflection, we call it mind, spirit. — The distinction of the monads 
 from each other is, therefore, this, that each one, though mirroring 
 the whole and the same universe in itself, does it from a different 
 point of view, and, therefore, differently, the one more, and the 
 rest less perfectly. Each one is a different centre of the world 
 which it mirrors. Each one contains the whole universe, the 
 whole infinity within itself, and in this respect is like God, the 
 only difference being that God knows every thing with perfect 
 distinctness, while the monad represents it confu£?edly, though one 
 monad may represent it more confusedly than another. The 
 limitation of a monad does not, therefore, consist in its containing 
 less than another or than God, but only in its containing more 
 imperfectly or in its representing less distinctly. — Upon this stand- 
 point the universe, in so far as every monad mirrors one and the 
 same universe, though each in a different way, represents a drama 
 of the greatest possible difference, as well as of the greatest pos- 
 sible unity and order, i. e. of the greatest possible perfection, or 
 the ahsolute harmony. For distinction in unity is harmony. — 
 But in still another respect the universe is a system of harmony. 
 Since the monads do not work upon each other, but each one fol- 
 lows only the law of its own being, there is danger lest the inner 
 harmony of the universe may be disturbed. How is this danger 
 removed ? Thus, viz., every monad mirrors the whole and the 
 same universe. The changes of the collected monads, therefore, 
 run parallel with each other, and in this consists the harmony of 
 all as pre-established by God. 
 
 4. The Relation of the Deity to the Monads. — What part 
 does the conception of God play in the system of Leibnitz ? An 
 almost idle one. Following the strict consequences of his system, 
 Leibnitz should have held to no proper theism, but the harmony 
 of the universe should have taken the place of the Deity. Ordi- 
 narily he considers God as the sufficient cause of all monads. 
 But he was also accustomed to consider the final cause of a thing 
 
LEIBNITZ. 
 
 217 
 
 as its sufficient cause. In this respect, therefore, he almost iden- 
 tifies God and the absolute final cause. Elsewhere he considers 
 the Deity as a simple primitive substance, or as the individual 
 primitive unity. Again, he speaks of God as a pure immaterial 
 actuality, actus purus^ while to the monads belongs matter, i. e, 
 restrained actuality, striving, appetitio. Once he calls him a 
 mona.d, though this is in manifest contradiction with the deter- 
 minations otherwise assigned him. It was for Leibnitz a very 
 difficult problem to bring his monadology and iis theism into har- 
 mony with each other, without giving up the premises of both. 
 If he held fast to the substantiality of the monads, he was in dan- 
 ger of making them independent of the Deity, and if he did not, 
 he could hardly escape falling back into Spinozism. 
 
 5. The Relation of Soul and Body is clearly explained on 
 the standpoint of the pre-established harmony. This relation, tak- 
 ing the premises of the monadology, might seem enigmatical. If 
 no monad can work upon any other, how can the soul work upon 
 the body to lead and move it ? The enigma is solved by the pre- 
 established harmony. While the body and soul, each one inde- 
 pendently of the other, follows the laws of its being, the body 
 working mechanically, and the soul pursuing ends, yet God has 
 established such a concordant harmony of the two activities, such 
 a parallelism of the two functions, that there is in fact a perfect 
 unity for body and soul. There are, says Leibnitz, three views 
 respecting the relation of body and soul. The first and most 
 common supposes a reciprocal influence between the two, but such 
 a view is untenable, because there can be no interchange between 
 mind and matter. The second and occasional one {cf. ^ XX Y. 1), 
 brings about this interchange through the constant assistance of 
 God, which is nothing more nor less than to make God a Deus ex 
 machina. Hence the only solution for the problem is the hypothe- 
 sis of a pre-established harmony. Leibnitz illustrates these three 
 views in the following example. Let one conceive of two watches, 
 whose hands ever accurately point to the same time. This 
 agreement may be explained, first (the common view), by sup- 
 posing an actual connection between the hands of each, so that 
 10 
 
218 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 the hand of the one watch might draw the hand of the other after 
 it, or second (the occasional view), by conceiving of a watch- 
 maker who continually keeps the hands alike, or in fine (the pre- 
 established harmony), by ascribing to each a mechanism so ex- 
 quisitely wrought that each one goes in perfect independence of 
 the other, and at the same time in entire agreement with it. — That 
 the soul is immortal (indestructible), follows at once from the 
 doctrine of monads. There is no proper death. That which is 
 called death is only the soul losing a part of the monads which 
 compose the mechanism of its body, while the living element goes 
 back to a condition similar to that in which it was before it came 
 upon the theatre of the world. 
 
 6. The monadology has very important consequences in refer- 
 ence to THE THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. As the philosophy of Leibuitz, 
 by its opposition to Spinozism, had to do with the doctrine of be- 
 ing, so by its opposition to the empiricism of Locke must it expound 
 the theory of knowledge. Locke's Essay on the Human Under- 
 standing had attracted Leibnitz without satisfying him, and he 
 therefore attempted a new investigation in his Nouveaux Essais, 
 in which he defended the doctrine of innate ideas. But this 
 hypothesis of innate ideas Leibnitz now freed from that defective 
 view which had justified the objections of Locke. The innateness 
 of the ideas must not be held as though they were explicitly and 
 consciously contained in the mind, but rather the mind possesses 
 them potentially and only virtually, though with the capacity to 
 produce them out of itself. All thoughts are properly innate, i. e. 
 they do not come into the mind from without, but are rather pro- 
 duced by it from itself. Any external influence upon the mind is 
 inconceivable, it even needs nothing external for its sensations. 
 While Locke had compared the mind to an unwritten piece of 
 paper, Leibnitz likened it to a block of marble, in which the veins 
 prefigure the form of the statue. Hence the common antithesis 
 between rational and empirical knowledge disappears with Leib- 
 nitz in the degrees of greater or less distinctness. — Among these 
 theoretically innate ideas, Leibnitz recognizes two of special 
 prominence, which take the first rank as principles of all knowl- 
 
LEIBNITZ. 
 
 219 
 
 edge and all ratiocination, — the principle of contradiction (prin- 
 cipium contradictionis), and the principle of sufficient cause 
 (principiiim rationis sufficientis). To these, as a principle of 
 the second rank, must be added the principium indiscernibilium, 
 or the principle that there are in nature no two things wholly 
 alike. 
 
 7. The most elaborate exhibition of Leibnitz's theological 
 views is given in his Theodicee. The Theodicee, is, however, his 
 weakest work, and has but a loose connection with the rest of his 
 philosophy. Written at the instigation of a woman, it belies this 
 origin neither in its form nor in its content — not in its form, for 
 in its effort to be popular it becomes diffuse and unscientific, and 
 not in its content, for it accommodates itself to the positive 
 dogmas and the premises of theology farther than the scientific 
 basis of the system of Leibnitz would permit. In this work, 
 Leibnitz investigates the relation of God to the world in order to 
 show a conformity in this relation to a final cause, and to free God 
 from the charge of acting without or contrary to an aim. Why 
 is the world as it is ? God might have created it very differently. 
 True, answers Leibnitz, God saw an infinite number of worlds as 
 possible before him, but out of all these he chose the one which 
 actually is as the best. This is the famous doctrine of the best 
 world, according to which no more perfect world is possible than 
 the one which is. — But how so ? Is not the existence of evil at 
 variance with this ? Leibnitz answers this objection by distinguish- 
 ing three kinds of evil, the metaphysical, the physical, and the 
 moral. The metaphysical evil, i. e. the finiteness and incomplete- 
 ness of things, is necessary because inseparable from finite existence, 
 and is thus independent of the will of God. Physical evil (pain, 
 &c.), though not independent of the will of God, is often a good con- 
 ditionally, i. e. as a punishment or means of improvement. Moral 
 evil or wickedness can in no way be charged to the will of God. 
 Leibnitz took various ways to account for its existence, and obviate 
 the contradiction lying between it and the conception of God. At 
 one time he says that wickedness is only permitted by God as a 
 conditio sine qua non, because without wickedness there were no 
 
220 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 freedom, and without freedom no virtue. Again, he reduces the 
 moral evil to the metaphysical, and makes wickedness nothing but 
 a want of perfection, a negation, a limitation, playing the same 
 part as do the shadows in a painted picture, or the discords in a 
 piece of music, which do not diminish the heauty, hut only in- 
 crease it through contrast. Again, he distinguishes between the 
 material and the formal element in a wicked act. The material 
 of sin, the power to act, is from God, but the formal element, the 
 wickedness of the act, belongs wholly to man, and is the result 
 of his limitation, or, as Leibnitz here and there expresses it, of his 
 eternal self-predestination. In no case can the harmony of the 
 universe be destroyed through such a cause. 
 
 These are the chief points of Leibnitz's philosophy. The 
 general characteristic of it as given in the beginning of the pres- 
 ent section, will be found to have its sanction in the specific exhi- 
 bition that has now been furnished. 
 
 SECTION XXXIV. 
 
 BERKELEY. 
 
 Leibnitz had not carried out the standpoint of idealism to its 
 extreme. He had indeed, on the one side, explained space and 
 motion and bodily things as phenomena which had their existence 
 only in a confused representation, but on the other side, he had 
 not wholly denied the existence of the bodily world, but had rec- 
 ognized as a reality lying at its basis, the world of monads. The 
 phenomenal or bodily world had its fixed and substantial founda- 
 tion in the monads. Thus Leibnitz, though an idealist, did not 
 wholly break with realism. The ultimate consequence of a sub- 
 jective idealism would have been to wholly deny the reality of 
 the objective, sensible world, and explain corporeal objects as 
 simply phenomena, as nothing but subjective notions without any 
 objective reality as a basis. This consequence the idealistic 
 
BERKELEY. 
 
 221 
 
 counterpart to the ultimate realistic result of materialism — ap- 
 pears in George Berkeleij^ who was born in Ireland, 1684, made 
 bishop of the Anglican Church in 1734, and died in 1753. Hence, 
 though he followed the empiricism of Locke, and sustained no 
 outward connection with Leibnitz, we must place him in immediate 
 succession to the latter as the perfecter of a subjective idealism. 
 
 Our sensations, says Berkeley, are entirely subjective. We 
 are wholly in error if we believe that we have a sensation of ex- 
 ternal objects or perceive them That which we have and per- 
 ceive is only our sensations. It is e. g. clear, that by the sense of 
 sight we can see neither the distance, the size, nor the form of 
 objects, but that we only conclude that these exist, because our 
 experience has taught us that a certain sensation of sight is al- 
 ways attended by certain sensations of touch. That which we 
 see is only colors, clearness, obscurity, &c., and it is therefore 
 false to say that we see and feel the same thing. So also we 
 never go out of ourselves for those sensations to which we ascribe 
 most decidedly an objective character. The peculiar objects of 
 our understanding are only our own affections ; all ideas are hence 
 only our own sensations. But just as there can be no sensations 
 outside of the sensitive subject, so no idea can have existence out- 
 side of him who possesses it. The so-called objects exist only in 
 our notion, and have a being only as they are perceived. It is 
 the great error of most philosophers that they ascribe to corporeal 
 objects a being outside the conceiving mind, and do not see that 
 they are only mental. It is not possible that material things 
 should produce any thing so wholly distinct from themselves as 
 sensations and notions. There is no such thing as a material ex- 
 ternal world ; mind alone exists as thinking being, whose nature 
 consists in thinking and willing. But whence then arise all our 
 sensations which come to us like the images of fancy, without our 
 agency, and which are thus no products of our will ? They arise 
 from a spirit superior to ourselves — for only a spirit can produce 
 within us notions — even from Grod. God gives us ideas : but as 
 it would be contradictory to assert that a being could give what 
 it does not possess, so ideas exist in God^ and we derive them 
 
222 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 from him. These ideas in God may be called archetypes, and 
 those in us ectypes. — In consequence of this view, says Berkeley, 
 we do not deny an independent reality of things, we only deny 
 that they can exist elsewhere than in an understanding. Instead 
 therefore of speaking of a nature in which, e. g. the sun is the 
 cause of warmth, &c., the accurate expression would be this : God 
 announces to us through the sense of sight that we should soon 
 perceive a sensation of warmth. Hence by nature we are only to 
 understand the succession or the connection of ideas, and by 
 natural laws the constant order in which they proceed, i. e. the 
 laws of the association of ideas. This thorough-going subjective 
 idealism, this complete denial of matter, Berkeley considered as 
 the surest way to oppose materialism and atheism. 
 
 SECTION XXXV. 
 
 WOLFF. 
 
 The idealism of Berkeley, as was to be expected from the 
 nature of the case, remained without any farther development, 
 but the philosophy of Leibnitz was taken up and subjected to a 
 farther revision by Christian Wolff. He was born in Breslau in 
 1679. He was chosen professor at Halle, where he became ob- 
 noxious to the charge of teaching a doctrine at variance with the 
 Scriptures, and drew upon himself such a violent opposition from 
 the theologians of the university, that a cabinet order was issued 
 for his dismissal on the 8th of November, 1723, and he was en- 
 joined to leave Prussia within forty-eight hours on pain of being 
 hung. He then became professor in Marburg, but was after- 
 wards recalled to Prussia by Frederic II. immediately upon his 
 accession to the throne. He was subsequently made baron, and 
 died 1754. In his chief thoughts he followed Leibnitz, a con- 
 nection which he himself admitted, though he protested against 
 the identification of his philosophy with that of Leibnitz, and ob- 
 
WOLFF. 
 
 223 
 
 jected to the name, PhilosopJiia Leibnitio-Wolffiana, which was 
 taken by his disciple Bilfinger. The historical merit of Wolff is 
 threefold. First, and most important, he laid claim again to the 
 whole domain of knowledge in the name of philosophy, and 
 sought again to build up a systematic framework, and make an 
 encyclopedia of philosophy in the highest sense of the word. 
 Though he did not himself furnish much new material for this 
 purpose, yet he carefully elaborated and arranged that which he 
 found at hand. Secondly, he made again the philosophical method 
 as such, an object of attention. His own method is, indeed, an 
 external one as to its content, namely, the mathematical or the 
 mathematico-syllogistical, recommended by Leibnitz, and by the 
 application of this his whole philosophizing sinks to a level for- 
 malism. (For instance, in his principles of architecture, the 
 eighth proposition is — " a window must be wide enough for two 
 persons to recline together conveniently," — a proposition which is 
 thus proved : " we are more frequently accustomed to recline and 
 look out at a window in company with another person than alone, 
 and hence, since the builder of the house should satisfy the owner 
 in every respect 1), he must make a window wide enough for 
 two persons conveniently to recline within it at the same time ". 
 Still this formalism is not without its advantage, for it subjects 
 the philosophical content to a logical treatment. Thirdly, Wolff 
 has taught philosophy to speak German, an art which it has not 
 since forgotten. Next to Leibnitz, he is entitled to the merit of 
 having made the German language for ever the organ of philos- 
 ophy. 
 
 The following remarks will suffice for the content and the 
 scientific classification of Wolff's philosophy. He defines philos- 
 ophy to be the science of the possible as such. But that is pos- 
 sible which contains no contradiction. Wolff defends this de- 
 finition against the charge of presuming too much. It is not 
 affirmed, he says, with this definition that either he or any other 
 philosopher knows every thing which is possible. The definition 
 only claims for philosophy the whole province of human knowl- 
 edge, and it is certainly proper that philosophy should be de- 
 
224 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 scribed according to the higliest perfection -wliich it can attain, 
 even though it has not yet actually reached it. — In what parts 
 now does this science of the possible consist ? Reding on the 
 perception that there are within the soul two faculties, one of 
 knowing and one of willing, "Wolff divides philosophy into • two 
 great parts, theoretical philosophy (an expression, however, which 
 first appears among his followers), or metaphysics, and practical 
 philosophy. Logic precedes both as a preliminary training for 
 philosophical study. Metaphysics are still farther divided by 
 Wolff into ontology, cosmology, psychology, and natural the- 
 ology ; practical philosophy he divides into ethics, whose object 
 is man as man ; economics, whose object is man as a member of 
 the family ; and politics, whose object is man as a citizen of the 
 state. 
 
 1. Ontology is the first part of Wolff's metaphysics. Ontol- 
 ogy treats of what are now called categories, or those fundamental 
 conceptions which are applied to every object, and must therefore 
 at the outset be investigated. Aristotle had already furnished a 
 table of categories, but he had derived them wholly empirically. 
 It is not much better with the ontology of Wolff ; it is laid out 
 like a philosophical dictionary. At its head he places the prin- 
 ciple of contradiction, viz. : it is not possible for any thing to be, 
 and at the same time not to be. The conception of the possible 
 at once follows from this principle. That is possible which con- 
 tains no contradiction. That is necessary, the opposite of which 
 contradicts itself, and that is accidental, the opposite of which is 
 possible. Every thing which is possible is a thing, though only 
 an imaginary one ; that which neither is, nor is possible, is no- 
 thing. When many things together compose a thing, this is a 
 whole, and the individual things comprehended by it are its parts. 
 The greatness of a thing consists in the multitude of its parts. 
 If A contains that by which we can understand the being of B, 
 then that in A by which B becomes understood is the ground 
 of B, and the whole A which contains the ground of B is its 
 cause. That which contains the ground of its properties is the 
 essence of a thing. Space is the arrangement of things which 
 
WOLFF 
 
 225 
 
 exist conjointly. Place is the determinate way in which a thing 
 exists in conjunction with others. Movement is change of place. 
 Time is the arrangement of that which exists successively, etc. 
 
 2. Cosmology. — Wolff defines the world to be a series of chans;- 
 ing objects, which exist conjointly and successively, but which are 
 so connected together that one ever contains the ground of the 
 other. Things are connected in space and in time. By virtue of 
 this universal connection, the world is one united whole; the 
 essence of the world consists in the manner of its connection. 
 But this manner cannot be changed. It can neither receive any 
 new ingredients nor lose any of those it possesses. From the 
 essence of the world spring all its changes. In this respect the 
 world is a machine. Events in the world are only hypothetically 
 necessary in so far as previous events have had a certain character ; 
 they are accidental in so far as the world might have been directed 
 otherwise. In respect to the question whether the world had a 
 beginning in time, Wolff does not express himself explicitly. 
 Since God is independent of time, but the world has been from 
 eternity in time, the world therefore is in no case eternal in any 
 sense like God. But according to Wolff, neither space nor time 
 has any substantial being. Body is a connected thing composed 
 of matter, and possessing a moving power within itself. The 
 powers of a body taken together are called its nature, and the 
 comprehension of all being is called nature in general. That 
 which has its ground in the essence of the world is called natural, 
 and that which has not, is supernatural, or a wonder. At the 
 close of his cosmology, Wolff treats of the perfection and imper- 
 fection of the world. The perfection of a world consists in the 
 harmony with each other of every thing which exists conjointly 
 and successively. But since every thing has its separate rules, 
 the individual must give up so much from its perfection as is 
 necessary for the symmetry of the whole. 
 
 3. Rational Psychology. — The soul is that within us which 
 is self-conscious. In the self-consciousness of the soul are itself and 
 other objects. Consciousness is either clear or indistinct. Clear 
 consciousness is thought. The soul is a simple incorporeal sub- 
 
 10* 
 
226 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 stance. There dwells within it a power to represent to itself a 
 world. In this sense brutes also may have a soul, but a soul 
 which possesses understanding and will is mind, and mind belongs 
 alone to men. The soul of man is a mind joined to a body, and 
 this is the distinction between men and superior spirits. The 
 movements of the soul and of the body harmonize with each other 
 by virtue of the preestablished harmony The freedom of the 
 human soul is the power according to its own arbitrament, to 
 choose of two possible things that which pleases it best. But the 
 soul does not decide without motives, it ever chooses that which 
 it holds to be the best. Thus the soul would seem impelled to its 
 action by its representations, but the understanding is not con- 
 strained to its representations of that which is good and bad, and 
 hence also the will is not constrained, but free. As a simple 
 being the soul is indivisible, and hence incorruptible ; the souls 
 of brutes, however, have no understanding, and hence enjoy no 
 conscious existence after death. This belongs alone to the human 
 soul, and hence the human soul alone is immortal. 
 
 4. Natural Theology. — Wolff uses here the cosmological 
 argument to demonstrate the existence of a God. God might 
 have made different worlds, but has preferred the present one as 
 the best. This world has been called into being by the will of 
 God. His aim in its creation was the manifestation of his own 
 perfection. Evil in the world does not spring from the Divine 
 will, but from the limited being of human things. God permits 
 it only as a means of good. 
 
 This brief aphoristic exposition of Wolff's metaphysics, shows 
 how greatly it is related to the doctrine of Leibnitz. The latter, 
 however, loses much of its speculative profoundness by the abstract 
 and logical treatment it receives in the hands of Wolff. For the 
 most part, the specific elements of the monadology remain in the 
 background ; with Wolff, his simple beings are not representative 
 like the Monads, but more like the Atoms. Hence there is with 
 him much that is illogical and contradictory. His peculiar merit in 
 metaphysics is ontology, which he has elaborated far mere strictly 
 than his predecessors. A multitude of philosophical terminations 
 
THE GERMAN CLEARING UP. 
 
 227 
 
 owe to him their origin, and their introduction into philosophical 
 language. 
 
 The philosophy of Wolff, comprehensible and distinct as it 
 was, and by its composition in the G-erman language more acces- 
 sible than that of Leibnitz, soon became the popular philosophy, 
 and gained an extensive influence. Among the names which de- 
 serve credit for their scientific treatment of it, we may mention 
 ThiLmming, 1697-1728; Bilfinger; 1693-1750; Baumeister, 
 1708-1785; Baumgarten the esthetic, 1714-1762; and his 
 scholar Meier, 1718-1777. 
 
 SECTION XXXVI. 
 
 THE GERMAN CLEARING UP. 
 
 Under the influence of the philosophy of Leibnitz and Wolff, 
 though without any immediate connection with it, there arose in 
 Germany during the latter half of the eighteenth century, an 
 eclectic popular philosophy, whose different phases may be em- 
 braced under the name of the German clearing up. It has 
 but little significance for the history of philosophy, though not 
 without importance in other respects. Its great aim was to secure 
 a higher culture, and hence a cultivated and polished style of 
 reasoning is the form in which it philosophized. It is the German 
 counterpart of the French clearing up. As the latter closed 
 the realistic period of development by drawing the ultimate con- 
 sequence of materialism, so the former closed the idealistic series 
 by its tendency to an extreme subjectivism. To the men of this 
 direction, the empirical, individual Ego becomes the absolute ; 
 they forget every thing else for it, or rather every thing else has 
 a value in their eyes only in proportion as it refers and ministers 
 to the subject by contributing to its demands and satisfying its 
 inner cravings. Hence the question of immortality becomes now 
 the great problem of philosophy (in which respect we may men- 
 
228 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 tion Mendelssohn, 1727-1786, the most important man in this 
 direction) ; the eternal duration of the individual soul is the chief 
 point of interest; objective ideas or truths of faith, e. g. the per- 
 sonality of God, though not denied, cease to have an interest ; it 
 is held as a standing article of belief that we can know nothing 
 of God. In another current of this direction, it is moral philoso- 
 phy and esthetics {Garvey, 1742-1798 ; Engel, 1741-1802 ; Ahht, 
 1738-1766 ; Sulzer, 1720-1779) which find a scientific treatment, 
 because both these preserve a subjective interest. In general, 
 every thing is viewed in its useful relations ; the useful becomes 
 the peculiar criterion of truth ; that which is not useful to the 
 subject, or which does not minister to his subjective ends, is set 
 aside. In connection with this turn of mind stands the prevail- 
 ing teleological direction which the investigations of nature as- 
 sumed {Beimarus, 1694-1765), and the utilitarian character given 
 to ethics. The happiness of the individual was considered as 
 the highest principle and the supreme end (Basedow, 1723-1790). 
 Even religion is contemplated from this point of view. Reima- 
 rus wrote a treatise upon the " advantages " of religion, in which 
 he attempted to prove that religion was not subversive of earthly 
 pleasure, but rather increased it; and Steinhart (1738-1809) 
 elaborated, in a number of treatises, the theme that all wisdom 
 consists alone in attaining happiness, i. e. enduring satisfaction, 
 and that the Christian religion, instead of forbidding this, was 
 rather itself the true doctrine of happiness. In other particulars 
 Christianity received only a temperate respect ; wherever it laid 
 claim to any authority disagreeable to the subject (as in individ- 
 ual doctrines like that of future punishment), it was opposed, and 
 in general the effort was made to counteract, as far as possible, the 
 positive dogma by natural religion. Reimarus, for exampl-e, the 
 most zealous defender of theism and of the teleological investiga- 
 tion of nature, is at the same time the author of the Wolfenbiittel 
 fragments. By criticizing the Gospel history, and every thing 
 positive and transmitted, and by rationalizing the supernatural in 
 religion, the subject displayed its new-found independence. In 
 fine, the subjective standpoint of this period exhibits itself in the 
 
TRANSITION TO KANT. 
 
 229 
 
 numerous autobiograpMes and self-confessions then so prevalent ; 
 the isolated self is the object of admiring contemplation [Rous- 
 seau^ 1712-1778, and his confessions) ; it beholds itself mirrored 
 in its particular conditions, sensations, and views — a sort of flirta- 
 tion with itself, which often rises to sickly sentimentality. Ac- 
 cording to all this, it is seen to be the extreme consequence of 
 subjective idealism which constitutes the character of the German 
 clearing up period, which thus closes the series of an idealistic 
 development. 
 
 SECTION XXXYII. 
 
 TRANSITION TO KANT. 
 
 The idealistic and the realistic stage of development to which 
 we have now been attending, each ended with a one-sided result. 
 Instead of actually and internally reconciling the opposition be- 
 tween thought and being, they both issued in denying the one or 
 the other of these factors. Realism, on its side, had made matter 
 absolute ; and idealism, on its side, had endowed the empirical 
 Ego with the same attribute — extremes in which philosophy was 
 threatened with total destruction. It had, in fact, in Germany as 
 in France, become merged in the most superficial popular philoso- 
 phy. Then Kant arose, and brought again into one channel the 
 two streams which, when separate from each other, threatened to 
 lose themselves amid the sands. Kant is the great renovator of 
 philosophy, who brought back to their point of divergence the one- 
 sided efforts which had preceded him, and embraced them in their 
 unity and totality. He stands in some special and fitting rela- 
 tion either antagonistic or harmonious to all others — to Locke 
 no less than to Hume, to the Scottish philosophers no less than 
 to the English and French moralists, to the philosophy of Leib- 
 nitz and of Wolff, as well as to the materialism of the French 
 and the utilitarianism of the German clearing up period. His 
 
230 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 relation to the development of a partial idealism and a one-sided 
 realism is thus stated : Empiricism had made the Ego purely pas- 
 sive and subordinate to the sensible external world — idealism had 
 made it purely active, and given it a sovereignty over the sensible 
 world ; Kant attempted to strike a balance between these two 
 claims, by affirming that the Ego as practical is free and autono- 
 mic, an unconditioned lawgiver for itself, while as theoretical it 
 is receptive and conditioned >y the phenomenal world ; but at the 
 same time the theoretical Ego contains the two sides within itself, 
 for if, on the one side, empiricism may be justified upon the 
 ground that the material and only field of all our knowledge is 
 furnished by experience, so on the other side, rationalism may be 
 justified on the ground that there is an apriori factor and basis 
 to our knowledge, for in experience itself we make use of concep- 
 tions which are not furnished by experience, but are contained 
 apriori in our understanding. 
 
 In order, now, that we may bring the very elaborate frame- 
 work of the Kantian philosophy into a clearer outline, let us 
 briefly glance at its fundamental conceptions, and notice its chief 
 principles and results. Kant subjected the activity of the hu- 
 man mind in knowing, and the origin of our experience, to his 
 critical investigation. Hence his philosophy is called critical 
 philosophy, or criticism, because it aims to be essentially an ex- 
 amination of our faculty of knowledge ; it is also called transcen- 
 dental philosophy, since Kant calls the reflection of the reason 
 upon its relation to the objective world, a transcendental reflec- 
 tion (transcendental must not be confounded with transcendent), 
 or, in other words, a transcendental knowledge is one " which 
 does not relate so much to objects of knowledge, as to our way 
 of knowing them, so far as this is apriori possible." The exami- 
 nation of the faculty of knowledge, which Kant attempts in his 
 " Critich of Pure Beason.j''' shows the following results. All 
 knowledge is a product of two factors, the knowing subject and 
 the external world. Of these two factors, the latter furnishes 
 our knowledge with experience, as the matter, and the former 
 with the conceptions of the understanding, as the form, through 
 
TRANSITION TO KANT. 
 
 231 
 
 which a connected knowledge, or a synthesis of our perceptions 
 in a whole of experience first becomes possible. If there were 
 no external world, then would there be no phenomena ; if there 
 were no understanding, then these phenomena, or perceptions, 
 which are infinitely manifold, would never be brought into the 
 unity of a notion, and thus no experience were possible. Thus, 
 while intuitions without conceptions are blind, and conceptions 
 without intuitions are empty, knowledge is a union of the two, 
 since it re(][uires that the form of conception should be filled with 
 the matter of experience, and that the matter of experience 
 should be apprehended in the net of the understanding's concep- 
 tions. Nevertheless, we do not know things as they are in them- 
 selves. Firsts because the categories, or the forms of our under- 
 standing prevent. Ey bringing that which is given as the mate- 
 rial of knowledge into our own conceptions as the form, there is 
 manifestly a change in respect of the objects, which become 
 thought of not as they are, but only as we apprehend them ; they 
 appear to us only as they are transmuted into categories. But 
 besides this subjective addition, there is yet another. Secondly^ 
 we do not know things as they are in themselves, because even 
 the intuitions which we bring within the form of the understand- 
 ing's conceptions, are not pure and uncolored, but are already 
 penetrated by a subjective medium, namely, by the universal form 
 of all objects of sense, space and time. Space and time are also 
 subjective additions, forms of sensuous intuition, which are just 
 as originally present in our minds as the fundamental conceptions 
 or categories of our understanding. That which we would repre- 
 sent intuitively to ourselves we must place in space and time, for 
 without these no intuition is possible. From this it follows that 
 it is only phenomena which we know, and not things in themselves 
 separate from space and time. 
 
 A superficial apprehension of these Kantian principles might 
 lead one to suppose that Kant's criticism did not essentially go 
 beyond the standpoint of Locke's empiricism. But such a sup- 
 position disappears upon a careful scrutiny. Kant was obliged to 
 recognize with Hume that the conceptions, cause and efiect, sub- 
 
232 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Etance and attribute, and the other conceptions which the human 
 understanding sees itself necessitated to think in the phenomena, 
 and in which every one of its thoughts must be found, do not arise 
 from any experience of the sense. For instance, when we become 
 afTected through different senses, and perceive a white color, a 
 sweet taste, a rough surface, &c., and predicate all these of one 
 thing, as a piece of sugar, there come from without only the plu- 
 rality of sensations, while the conception of unity cannot come 
 through sensation, but is a category^ or conception borne over to 
 the sensations from the mind itself. But instead of denying, for 
 this reason, the reality of these conceptions of the understanding, 
 Kant took a step in advance, assigning a peculiar provin<j)e to this 
 activity of the understanding, and showing that these forms of 
 thought thus furnished to the matter of experience are immanent 
 laws of the human faculty of knowledge, the peculiar laws of the 
 understanding's operations, which may be obtained by a perfect 
 analysis of our thinking activity. (Of these laws or conceptions 
 there are twelve, viz., unity, plurality, totality; reality, negation, 
 limitation ; substantiality, causality, reciprocal action ; possibili- 
 ty, actuality, and necessity.) 
 
 From what has been said we can see the three chief principles 
 of the Kantian theory of knowledge : 
 
 1. We know only Phenomena and not Things in Them- 
 selves. — The experience furnished us by the external world be- 
 comes so adjusted and altered in its relations (for we apprehend it 
 at first in the subjective framework of space and time, and then 
 in the equally subjective forms of our understanding's concep- 
 tions), that it no longer represents the thing itself in its original 
 condition, pure and unmixed. 
 
 2. Nevertheless Experience is the only Province of our 
 Knowledge, and there is no Science of the Unconditioned. 
 — This follows of course, for since every knowledge is the product 
 of the matter of experience, and the form of the understanding, and 
 depends thus upon the co-working of the sensory and the under- 
 standing, then no knowledge is possible of objects for which one of 
 these factors, experience, fails us ; a knowledge alone from theun- 
 
TRANSITION TO KANT. 
 
 233 
 
 derstanding's conceptions of the unconditioned is illusory since 
 the sensory can show no unconditioned object corresponding to the 
 conception. Hence the questions which Kant places at the head 
 of his whole Critick ; how are synthetical judgments apriori pos- 
 sible ? i. e. can we widen our knowledge apriori, by thought alone, 
 beyond the sensuous experience ? is a knowledge of the super- 
 sensible possible ? must be answered with an unconditional nega- 
 tive. 
 
 3. Still, if the human knowledge makes no effort to stride 
 beyond the narrow limits of experience, i. e. to become transcend- 
 ent, it involves itself in the greatest contradictions. The three 
 ideas of the reason, the psychological, the cosmological, and the 
 theological, viz. (a) the idea of an absolute subject, i. e. of the 
 soul, or of immortality, (h) the idea of the world as a totality of 
 all conditions and phenomena, (c) the idea of a most perfect 
 being — are so wholly without application to the empirical ac- 
 tuality, are so truly regulative, and not constitutive principles, 
 which are only the pure products of the reason, and are so en- 
 tirely without a correspondent object in experience, that when- 
 ever they are applied to experience, i. e. become conceived of as 
 actually existing objects, they lead to pure logical errors, to the 
 most obvious paralogisms and sophisms. These errors, which are 
 partly false conclusions and paralogisms, and partly unavoidable 
 contradictions of the reason with itself, Kant undertook to show 
 in reference to all the ideas of the reason. Take, e. g. the cosmo- 
 logical idea. "Whenever the reason posits any transcendental 
 expressions in reference to the universe, i. e. attempts to apply 
 the forms of the finite to the infinite, it is at once evident that 
 the antithesis of these expressions can be proved just as well as 
 the thesis. The affirmation that the world has a beginning in 
 time, and limits in space, can be proved as well as, and no bet- 
 ter than its opposite, that the world has no beginning in time, 
 and no spacial limits. Whence it follows that all speculative cos 
 mology is an assumption by the reason. So also with the theo- 
 logical idea ; it rests on bare logical paralogisms, and false con- 
 clusions, as Kant, with great acuteness, shows in reference to each 
 
234 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 of the proofs for the being of a God, which previous dogmatic 
 philosophies had attempted. It is therefore impossible to prove 
 and to conceive of the existence of a God as a Supreme Being, or 
 of the soul as a real subject, or of a comprehending universe. 
 The peculiar problems of metaphysics lie outside the province 
 of philosophical knowledge. 
 
 Such is the negative part of the Kantian philosophy ; its pos- 
 itive complement is found in the " GriticJc of the Practical 
 Beasony While the mind as theoretical and cognitive is wholly 
 conditioned, and ruled by the objective and sensible world, and 
 thus knowledge is only possible through intuition, yet as practical 
 does it go wholly beyond the given (the sense impulse), and is de- 
 termined only through the categorical imperative, and the moral 
 law, which is itself, and is therefore free and autonomic; the 
 ends which it pursues are those which itself, as moral spirit, 
 places before itself ; objects are no more its masters and lawgiv- 
 ers, to which it must yield if it would know the truth, but its 
 servants, which it may use for its own ends in actualizing its 
 moral law. While the theoretical mind is united to a world of 
 sense and phenomena, a world obedient to necessary laws, the 
 practical mind, by virtue of the freedom essential to it, by virtue 
 of its direction towards an absolute aim, belongs to a purely in- 
 telligible and supersensible world. This is the practical idealism 
 of Kant, from which he derives the three practical postulates of 
 the immortality of the soul, moral freedom, and the being of a 
 God, which, as theoretical truths, had been before denied. 
 
 With this brief sketch for our guidance, let us now pass on 
 to a more extended exposition of the Kantian Philosophy. 
 
KANT. 
 
 235 
 
 SECTION XXXVIII. 
 
 KANT. 
 
 Immanuel Kant was born at Konigsberg in Prussia, April 
 22, 1724. His father an honest saddlemaker, and his mother a 
 prudent and pious woman, exerted a good influence upon him in 
 his earliest youth. In the year 1740 he entered the university, 
 where he connected himself with the theological department, but 
 devoted the most of his time to philosophy, mathematics, and 
 physics. He commenced his literary career in his twenty-third 
 year, in 1747, with a treatise entitled " Thoughts concerning the 
 true estimate of Living Forces.''^ He was obliged by his pecu- 
 niary circumstances to spend some years as a private tutor in dif- 
 ferent families in the neighborhood of Konigsberg. In 1755 he 
 took a place in the university as privat-docent,^^ which position 
 he held for fifteen years, during which time he gave lectures upon 
 logic, metaphysics, physics, mathematics, and also, during the 
 latter part of the time, upon ethics, anthropology, and physical 
 geography. At this period he adhered for the most part to the 
 school of Wolff, though early expressing his doubts in respect of 
 dogmatism. From the publication of his first treatise he applied 
 himself to writing with unwearied activity, though his great 
 work, the " Critich of pure Beason^'' did not appear till his 
 fifty-seventh year, 1781. His Critich of the practical Beason^'' 
 was issued in 1787, and his Religion within the hounds of 
 pure Reason^'''' in 1793. In 1770, in his forty-sixth year, he was 
 chosen ordinary professor of logic and metaphysics, a chair which 
 he continued to fill uninterruptedly till 1794, when the weakness of 
 age obliged him to leave it. Invitations to professorships at Jena, 
 Erlangen, and Halle, were given him and rejected. As soon as 
 he became known, the noblest and most active minds flocked from 
 all parts of Germany to Konigsberg, to sit at the feet of the sage 
 who was master there. One of his worshippers, Reuss, professor 
 
236 
 
 A HISTORY OP PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 of philosophy at Wiirzburg, who abode but a brief time at Ko- 
 nigsberg, entered his chamber, declaring that he had come one 
 hundred and sixty miles* in order to see Kant and to speak with 
 him. — During the last seventeen years of his life he occupied a 
 little house with a garden, in a quiet quarter of the city, where 
 his calm and regular mode of life might be undisturbed. His 
 habits of life were very simple. He never left his native province 
 even to go as far as Dantzic. His longest journeys were to visit 
 some country-seats in the environs of Konigsberg. Neverthe- 
 less, as his lectures upon physical geography testify, he acquired 
 by reading the most accurate knowledge of the earth. He knew 
 all of Rousseau's works, of which Emile at its first appearance 
 detained him for a number of days from his customary walks. 
 Kant died February 12, 1804, in the eightieth year of his life. 
 He was of medium stature, finely built, with blue eyes, and always 
 enjoyed sound health till in his latter j^ears, when he became 
 childish. He was never married. His character was marked by 
 an earnest love of truth, great candor, and simple modesty. 
 
 Though Kant's great work, the " Critick of pure Reason," 
 which created an epoch in the history of philosophy, did not ap- 
 pear till 1781 ; yet had he previously shown an approach towards 
 the same standpoint in several smaller treatises, and particularly 
 in his inaugural dissertation which appeared in 1770, " Concern- 
 ing the form and the principles of the Sense- World and that 
 of the Understanding.'''' Kant himself refers the inner genesis 
 of his critical standpoint to Hume. " I freely confess," he 
 says, that it was David Hume who first roused me from my 
 dogmatic slumber, and gave a different direction to my investi- 
 gations in the field of speculative philosophy." The critical view 
 therefore first became developed in Kant as he left the dogmatic 
 metaphysical school, the Wolffian philosophy in which he had 
 grown up, and went over to the study of a sceptical empiricism 
 in Hume. " Hitherto," says Kant at the close of his Critick of 
 pure Reason, " men have been obliged to choose either a dogmati- 
 
 * A German mile is about four and a half English miles. — Tr. 
 
KANT. 
 
 237 
 
 cal direction, like "WolflF, or a sceptical one, like Hume. The 
 critical road alone is yet open. If the reader has had pleasure 
 and patience in travelling along this in my company, let him now 
 contribute his aid in making this by-path into a highway, in order 
 that that which many centuries could not effect may now be at- 
 tained before the expiration of the present, and the reason be- 
 come perfectly content in respect of that which has hitherto, but 
 in vain, engaged its curiosity." Kant had the clearest conscious- 
 ness respecting the relation of his criticism to the previous phi- 
 losophy. He compares the revolution which he himself had 
 brought about in philosophy with that wrought by Copernicus in 
 astronomy. " Hitherto it has been assumed that all our knowl- 
 edge must regulate itself according to the objects ; but all at- 
 tempts to make any thing out of them apriori, through notions 
 whereby our knowledge might be enlarged, proved, under this 
 supposition, abortive. Let us, then, try for once whether we do 
 not succeed better with the problems of metaphysics, by assuming 
 that the objects must regulate themselves according to our knowl- 
 edge, a mode of viewing the subject which accords so much better 
 with the desired possibility of a knowledge of them apriori, 
 which must decide something concerning objects before they are 
 given us. The circumstances are in this case precisely the same 
 as with the first thoughts of Copernicus, who, finding that his at- 
 tempt to explain the motions of the heavenly bodies did not suc- 
 ceed, when he assumed the whole starry host to revolve around 
 the spectator, tried whether he should not succeed better, if he 
 left the spectator himself to turn, and the stars on the contrary 
 at rest." In these words we have the principle of a subjective 
 idealism, most clearly and decidedly expressed. 
 
 In the succeeding exposition of the Kantian philosophy we 
 shall most suitably follow the classification adopted by Kant him- 
 self His principle of classification is a psychological one. All 
 the faculties of the soul, he says, may be referred to three, which 
 are incapable of any farther reduction; knowing, feeling, and 
 desire. The first faculty contains the principles, the governing 
 laws for all the three. So far as the faculty of knowledge con- 
 
238 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 taius the principles of knowledge itself, is it theoretical reason, 
 and SO far as it contains the principles of desire and action, is it 
 practical reason, while, so far as it contains the principles which 
 regulate tiie feelings of pleasure and pain, is it a faculty of 
 judgment. Thus the Kantian philosophy (on its critical side) 
 divides itself into three criticks, (1) Critick of pure i. e. theoret- 
 ical reason, (2) Critick of practical reason, (8) Critick of the 
 judgment. 
 
 I. Critick of pure Reason. — The critick of pure reason. 
 Bays Kant, is the inventory in which all our possessions through 
 pure reason are systematically arranged. What are these pos- 
 sessions ? When we have a cognition, what is it that we bring 
 thereto ? To answer these questions, Kant explores the two 
 chief fields of our theoretical consciousness, the two chief factors 
 of all knowledge, the sensory and the understanding. Firstly : 
 what does our sensory or our faculty of intuition possess apriori ? 
 Secondly ; what is the apriori possession of our understanding ? 
 The first of these questions is discussed in the transcendental 
 jEstlieiics (a title which we must take not in the sense now com- 
 monly attached to the word, but in its etymological signification 
 as the " science of the apriori principles of the sensory ") ; and 
 the second in the transcendental Logic or Analytics. Sense and 
 understanding are thus the two factors of all knowledge, the two 
 stalks — as Kant expresses it — of our knowledge, which may 
 spring from a common root, though this is unknown to us : the 
 sensory is the receptivity, and the understanding the spontaneity 
 of our cognitive faculty ; by the sensory, which can only furnish 
 intuitions, objects become given to us ; by the understanding, 
 which forms conceptions, these objects become ihought. Concep- 
 tions without intuitions are empty ; intuitions without conceptions 
 are blind. Intuitions and conceptions constitute the reciprocally 
 complemental elements of our intellectual activity. What now 
 are the apriori principles respectively of our knowledge, through 
 the sense and through the thought ? The first of these questions, 
 Rs already said, is answered by 
 
 1. The Transcendental uSIsthetics. — To anticipate at once 
 
KANT. 
 
 239 
 
 the answer, we may say that the apriori principles of our knowledge 
 through the sense, the original forms of sensuous intuition, are 
 space and time. Space is the form of the external sense, by 
 means of which objects are given to us as existing outside of our- 
 selves separately and conjointly ; time is the form of the inner 
 sense, by means of which the circumstances of our own soul-life 
 become objects to our consciousness. If we abstract every thing 
 belonging to the matter of our sensations, space remains as the 
 universal form in which all the materials of the external sense 
 must be arranged. If we abstract every thing which belongs to 
 the matter of our inner sense, time remains as the form which 
 the movement of the mind had filled. Space and time are the 
 highest forms of the outer and inner sense. That these forms 
 lie apriori in the human mind, Kant proves, first, directly from 
 the nature of these conceptions themselves ; and, secondly, indi- 
 rectly by showing that without apriori presupposing these con- 
 ceptions, it were not possible to have any certain science of un- 
 doubted validity. The first of these he calls the meta^Jiy steal, 
 and the second the transcendental discussion. 
 
 (1.) In the metaphysical discussion it is to be shown, (a) that 
 space and time are apriori given, (h) that these notions belong to 
 the sensory (assthetics) and not to the understanding (logic), i. e. 
 that they are intuitions and not conceptions, {a) That space 
 and time are apriori is clear from the fact that every experience, 
 before it can be, must presuppose already a space and time. I 
 perceive something as external to me ; but this external presup- 
 poses space. Again, I have two sensations at the same time and 
 successively ; this presupposes time. (5) Space and time, how- 
 ever, are by no means conceptions, but forms of intuition, or in- 
 tuitions themselves. For in every universal conception the indi- 
 vidual is comprehended under it, and is not a part of it ; but in 
 space and time, all individual spaces and times are parts of and 
 contained within the universal space and the universal time. 
 
 (2.) In the transcendental discussion Kant draws his proof 
 indirectly by showing that certain sciences, universally recognized 
 as sucjb, can only be conceived upon the supposition that space 
 
240 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 and time are apriori. A pure mathematics is only possible on 
 the ground that space and time are pure and not empirical intu- 
 itions. Kant comprises the whole problem of the Transcendental 
 ^Esthetics in the question — how are pure mathematical sciences 
 possible ? The ground, says Kant, upon which pure mathematics 
 moves, is space and time. But now mathematics utters its prin- 
 ciples as universal and necessary. Universal and necessary prin- 
 ciples, however, can never come from experience ; they must have 
 an apriori ground ; consequently it is impossible that space and 
 time, out of which mathematics receives its principles, should be 
 first given aposteriori ; they must be given apriori as pure in- 
 tuitions. Hence we have a knowledge apriori, and a science 
 which rests upon apriori grounds ; and the matter simply resolves 
 itself into this, viz. : whosoever should deny that apriori knowl- 
 edge can be, must also at the same time deny the possibility of 
 mathematics. But if the fundamental truths of mathematics 
 are intuitions apriori, we might conclude that there may be also 
 apriori conceptions, out of which, in connection with these pure 
 intuitions, a metaphysics could be formed. This is the positive 
 result of the Transcendental jSJsthetics, though with this positive 
 side the negative is closely connected. Intuition or immediate 
 knowledge can be attained by man only through the sensory, 
 whose universal intuitions are only space and time. But since 
 these intuitions of space and time are no objective relations, but 
 only subjective forms, there is therefore something subjective 
 mingled with all our intuitions, and we can know things not as 
 they are in themselves, but only as they appear to us through 
 this subjective medium of space and time. This is the meaning 
 of the Kantian principle, that we do not know things in them- 
 selves, but only phenomena. But if on this account we should 
 affirm that all things are in space and time, this would be too 
 much ; they are in space and time only for us, — all phenomena 
 of the external sense appearing both in space and in time, and all 
 phenomena of the inner sense appearing only in time. Notwith- 
 standing this, Kant would in no ways have admitted that the 
 world of sense is mere appearance. He affirmed, that while he 
 
KANT. 
 
 241 
 
 contended for a transcendental ideality, there was, nevertheless, an 
 empirical reality of space and time : things external to ourselves 
 exist just as certainly as do we and the circumstances within us, 
 only they are not represented to us as they are in themselves and 
 in their independence of space and of time. As to the question, 
 whether there is any thing in the thing itself back of the phe- 
 nomena, Kant intimates in the first edition of his Critick, that it 
 is not impossible that the Ego and the thing-in-itself are one and 
 the same thinking substance. This thought, which Kant threw 
 out as a mere conjecture, was the source of all the wider de- 
 velopments of the latest philosophy. It was afterwards the fun- 
 damental idea of the Fichtian system, that the Ego does not 
 become affected through a thing essentially foreign to it, but 
 purely through itself. In the second edition of his Critick, how- 
 ever, Kant omitted this sentence. 
 
 The Transcendental Esthetics closes with the discussion of 
 space and time, i. e. with finding out what is in the sensory apriori. 
 But the human mind cannot be satisfied merely with the receptive 
 relation of the sensory; it does not simply receive objects, but it 
 applies to these its own spontaneity, and attempts to think these 
 through its conceptions, and embrace them in the forms of its under- 
 standing. It is the object of the Transcendental Analytic (which 
 forms the first part of the Transcendental Logic) ^ to examine these 
 apriori conceptions or forms of thought which lie originally in the 
 understanding, as the forms of space and time do in the intuitive 
 faculty. 
 
 2. The Transcendental Analytic. — It is the first problem 
 of the Analytic to attain the pure conceptions of the understand- 
 ing. Aristotle had already attempted to form a table of these 
 conceptions or categories, but he had collected them empirically 
 instead of deriving them from a common principle, and had num- 
 bered among them space and time, though these are no pure con- 
 ceptions of the understanding, but only forms of intuition. But 
 if we would have a perfect, pure, and regularly arranged table of 
 all the conceptions of the understanding, or all the apriori forms 
 of thought, we must look for a principle out of which we may 
 11 
 
242 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 derive them. This principle is the judgment. The general funda* 
 mental conceptions of the understanding may be perfectly attained 
 if we look at all the different modes or forms of the judgment. 
 For this end Kant considers the different kinds of judgment as 
 ordinarily pointed out to us by the science of logic. Now logic 
 shows that there are four kinds of judgment, viz., judgments of 
 
 Quantity. Quxdity. Relation. Modality. 
 
 Universal, Affirmative, Categorical, Problematical, 
 
 Plurative, Negative, Hypothetical, Assertive, 
 
 Singular. Illimitable. Disjmictive. Apodictic. 
 
 From these judgments result the same number of fundamental 
 conceptions or categories of the understanding, viz. : 
 
 Quantity. 
 Totality, 
 Multiplicity, 
 Unity. 
 
 Quality. 
 Reality, 
 Negation, 
 Limitation. 
 
 Relation. 
 
 Substance and in- 
 herence. 
 
 Cause and depend- 
 ence, 
 
 Reciprocal action. 
 
 Possibility and im- 
 possibility, 
 
 Being and not-be- 
 ing, 
 
 Necessity and acci- 
 dence. 
 
 From these twelve categories all the rest may be derived by 
 combination. From the fact that these categories are shown to 
 belong apriori to the understanding, it follows, (1) that these 
 conceptions are apriori, and hence have a necessary and universal 
 validity, (2) that by themselves they are empty forms, and attain 
 a content only through intuitions. But since our intuition is 
 wholly through the sense, these categories have their validity only 
 in their application to the sensuous intuition, which becomes a 
 proper experience only when apprehended in the conceptions of 
 the understanding. — Here we meet a second question ; how does 
 this happen ? How do objects become subsumed under these 
 forms of the understanding, which for themselves are so empty ? 
 
 There would be no difficulty with this -subsumption if the ob- 
 jects and the conceptions of the understanding were the same in 
 kind. But they are not. Because the objects come to the under- 
 standing from the sensory, they are of the nature of the sense. 
 
KANT. 
 
 243 
 
 Hence the question arises : how can these sensible objects be sub- 
 sumed under pure conceptions of the understanding, and fundamen- 
 tal principles (judgments apriori), be formed from them ? This 
 cannot result immediately, but there must come in between the 
 two, a third, which must have some thing in common with each, 
 i. e. which is in one respect pure and apriori, and in another sen- 
 sible. The two pure intuitions of the Transcendental -Esthetics, 
 space and time, especially the latter, are of such a nature. A 
 transcendental time determination, as the determination of coeta- 
 neousness, corresponds on the one side to the categories, because it 
 is apriori, and on the other side to the phenomenal objects, be- 
 cause every thing phenomenal can be represented only in time. 
 The transcendental time determination, Kant calls in this respect 
 the transcendental schema, and the use which the understanding 
 makes of it, he calls the transcendental scJiematism of the pure 
 understanding. The schema is a product of the imaginative 
 faculty, which self'-actively determines the inner sense to this, 
 though the schema is something other than a mere imagef An 
 image is always merely an individual and determinate intuition, 
 but the schema merely represents the universal process of the 
 imagination, by which it furnishes for a conception a proper image. 
 Hence the schema can only exist in the conception, and never suf- 
 fers itself to be brought within the sensuous intuition. If, now, 
 we consider more closely the schematism of the understanding, 
 and seek the transcendental time determination for every category, 
 we find that : 
 
 (!) Quantity has for a universal schema the series of time or 
 number, which represents the successive addition of one and one 
 of the same kind. I can only represent to myself the pure un- 
 derstanding conception of greatness, except as I bring into the 
 imagination a number of units one after another. If I stop this 
 process at its first beginning, the result is unity ; if I let it go on 
 farther I have plurality ; and if I suffer it to continue without 
 limit, there is totality. Whenever I meet with objects in the 
 phenomenal world, which I can only apprehend successively, I 
 
244 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 am directed to apply the conception of greatness, which would not 
 be possible without the schema of the series of time. 
 
 (2) Quality has for its schema the content of time. If I wish 
 to represent to myself the understanding conception of reality, 
 which belongs to quality, I bring before me in thought a time 
 filled up, or a content of time. That is real which fills a time. 
 If also I would represent to myself the pure understanding con- 
 ception of negation, I bring into thought a void time. 
 
 (3) The categories of relation take their schemata from the 
 order of time ; for if I would represent to myself a determinate 
 relation, I always bring into thought a determinate order of things 
 in time. Substance appears as the persistence of the real in 
 time ; causality as regular succession in time ; reciprocal action 
 as the regular coetaneousness of the determinations in the one 
 substance, with the determinations in the other. 
 
 (4) The categories of modality take their schema from the 
 whole of time, i. e. from whether, and how, an object belongs to 
 time. The schema of possibility is the general harmony of a re- 
 presentation with the conditions of time ; the schema of actuality 
 is the existence of an object in a determined time ; that of neces- 
 sity is the existence of an object for all time. 
 
 We are thus furnished with all the means for forming meta- 
 physical fundamental principles (judgments apriori) ; we have, 
 firstly^ conceptions apriori, and secondly, schemata through which 
 we can apply these conceptions to objects; for since every object 
 which we can perceive, falls in time, so must it also fall under 
 one of these schemata, which have been borrowed from time, and 
 must consequently permit the corresponding category to be ap- 
 plied to it. The judgments which we here attain are synthetical. 
 They are, corresponding to the four classes of categories, the fol- 
 lowing: (1) All phenomena are, according to intuition, extensive 
 greatness, since they cannot be apprehended otherwise than 
 through space and time. On this principle the axioms of intui- 
 tion rely. (2) All phenomena are, according to sensation, inten- 
 sive greatness, since every sensation has a determined degree, and 
 is capable of increase and diminution. On this principle the an- 
 
KANT. 
 
 245 
 
 ticipations of perception rest. (3) The phenomena stand under 
 necessary time-determinations. They contain the substantial, 
 which abides, and the accidental, which changes. In reference 
 to the change of accidence, they are subject to the law of the fol- 
 lowing connection, through the relation of cause and effect : as 
 substances they are, in respect of their accidences, in a constant 
 reciprocal action. From this principle spring the analogies of 
 experience. (4) The postulates of empirical thinking are con- 
 tained in the principles : (a) that which coincides with the formal 
 conditions of experience, is possible, and can become phenome- 
 non ; (h) that which agrees with the material conditions of expe- 
 rience is actual, and is phenomenon ; (c) that, whose connection 
 with the actual is determined according to the universal condi- 
 tions of experience, is necessary, and must be phenomenon. Such 
 are the possible and authorized synthetical judgments apriori. 
 But it must not be forgotten that we are entitled to make only an 
 empirical use of all these conceptions and principles, and that we 
 must ever apply them only to things as objects of a possible ex- 
 perience, and never to things in themselves ; for the conception 
 without an object is an empty form, but the object cannot be 
 given to the conception except in intuition, and the pure intuition 
 of space and time needs to be filled by experience. Hence, with- 
 out reference to human experience, these apriori conceptions and 
 principles are nothing but a sporting of the imagination and the 
 understanding, with their representations. Their peculiar deter- 
 mination is only to enable us to spell perceptions, that we may 
 read them as experiences. But here one is apt to fall into a delu- 
 sion, which can hardly be avoided. Since the categories are not 
 grounded upon the sensory, but have an apriori origin, it would 
 seem as though their application would reach far beyond the 
 sense ; but such a view is a delusion ; our conceptions are not 
 able to lead us to a knowledge of things in themselves (noumena), 
 since our intuition gives us only phenomena for the content of 
 our conceptions, and the thing in itself can never be given in a 
 possible experience ; our knowledge remains limited to the phe- 
 nomena. The source of all the confusions and errors and strife 
 
246 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 in previous metaphysics, was in confounding the phenomenal with 
 the noumenal world. 
 
 Besides the categories or conceptions of the understanding, 
 which have been considered, and which are especially important for 
 experience, though often applied erroneously beyond the province 
 of experience, there are other conceptions "v^hose peculiar province 
 is only to deceive ; conceptions whose express determination is to 
 pass beyond the province of experience, and which may conse- 
 quently be called transcendent. These are the fundamental con- 
 ceptions and principles of the previous metaphysics. To examine 
 these conceptions, and destroy the appearance of objective science 
 and knowledge, which they falsely exhibit, is the problem of the 
 Transcendental Dialectics (the second part of the transcendental 
 logic). 
 
 3. The Transcendental Dialectics. — In a strict sense, 
 the reason is distinguished from the understanding. As the un- 
 derstanding has its categories, the reason has its ideas ; as the 
 understanding forms fundamental maxims from conceptions, the 
 reason forms principles from ideas, in which the maxims of the 
 understanding have their highest confirmation. The peculiar 
 work of the reason is, in general, to find the unconditioned for the 
 conditioned knowledge of the understanding, and to unify it. 
 Hence the reason is the faculty of the unconditioned, or of prin- 
 ciples ; but since it has no immediate reference to objects, but 
 only to the understanding and its judgments, its activity must re- 
 main an immanent one. If it would take the highest unity of 
 the reason not simply in a transcendental sense, but exalt it to an 
 actual object of knowledge, then it would become transcendent in 
 that it applied the conceptions of the understanding to the 
 knowledge of the unconditioned. From this transcending and 
 false use of the categories, arises the transcendental appearance 
 which decoys us beyond experience, by the delusive pretext of 
 widening the domain of the pure understanding. It is the prob- 
 lem of the transcendental logic to discover this transcendental 
 appearance. 
 
 The speculative' ideas of the- reason, derived from the three 
 
KANT. 
 
 247 
 
 kinds of logical conclusion, the categorical, the hypothetical, and 
 the disjunctive, are threefold. 
 
 (1.) The psychological idea, the idea of the soul, as a thinking 
 substance (the object hitherto of rational psychology). 
 
 (2.) The cosmological idea, the idea of the world as including 
 all phenomena (the object hitherto of cosmology). 
 
 (3.) The theological idea, the idea of Grod as the highest con- 
 dition of the possibility of all things (the object hitherto of rational 
 theology). 
 
 But with these ideas, in which the reason attempts to appl} 
 the categories of the understanding to the unconditioned, the 
 reason becomes unavoidably entangled in a semblance and an 
 illusion. This transcendental semblance, or this optical illusion 
 of the reason, exhibits itself differently in each of the different 
 ideas. With the psychological ideas the reason perpetrates a 
 simple paralogism, while with the cosmological it finds itself 
 driven to contradictory affirmations or antinomies, and, with the 
 theological, it wanders about in an empty ideal. 
 
 (1.) The psychologicalideasj or ihe paralogisms of the pure 
 reason. 
 
 Kant has attempted, under this rubric, to overthrow all 
 rational psychology as this had been previously apprehended. 
 E/ational psychology has considered the soul as a thing called by 
 that name with the attribute of immateriality, as a simple sub- 
 stance with the attribute of incorruptibility, as a numerically 
 identical, intellectual substance with the predicate of personality, 
 as an unextended and thinking being with the predicate of im- 
 mortality. All these principles of rational psychology, says 
 Kant, are surreptitious ; they are all derived from the one pre- 
 mise, " I think; " but this premise is neither intuition nor con- 
 ception, but a simple consciousness, an act of the mind which 
 attends, connects, and bears in itself all representations and con- 
 ceptions. This thinking is now falsely taken as a real thing ; the 
 being of the Ego as object is connected with the Ego as subject, 
 and that which is affirmed analytically of the latter is predicated 
 synthetically of the former. But in order to treat the Ego also 
 
248 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 as object, and to be able to apply to it categories, it must be given 
 empirically, in an intuition, which is not the case. From all this 
 it follows that the proofs for immortality rest upon false con- 
 clusions. I can, indeed, separate my pure thinking ideally from 
 the body ; but obviously, it does not follow from this that my 
 thinking can exist really when separate from the body. The 
 result which Kant derives from his critick of rational psychology 
 is this, viz., there is no rational psychology as a doctrine which 
 can furnish us with any addition to our self-knowledge, but only 
 as a discipline^ which places impassable limits to the speculative 
 reason in this field, in order that it may neither throw itself into 
 the bosom of a soulless materialism, nor lose itself in the delusion 
 of a groundless spiritualism. In this respect rational psychology 
 would rather remind us, that this refusal of our reason to give a 
 satisfactory answer to the questions which stretch beyond this life, 
 should be regarded as an intimation of the reason for us to leave 
 this fruitless and superfluous speculation, and apply our self- 
 knowledge to some fruitful and practical use, 
 (2.) The Antinomies of Cosmology. 
 
 The cosmological ideas cannot be fully attained without the 
 aid of the categories. (1) So far as the quantity of the world is 
 concerned, space and time are the original quanta of all intuition. 
 In a quantitative respect, therefore, the cosmological idea must 
 hold fast to something concerning the totality of the times and 
 spaces of the world. (2) In respect of quality, the divisibility of 
 matter must be regarded. (3) In respect of relation, the com- 
 plete series of causes must be sought for the existing effects in 
 the world. (4) In respect of modality, the accidental acording to 
 its conditions, or the complete dependence of the accidental in the 
 phenomenon must be conceived. When, now, the reason attempts 
 to establish determinations respecting these problems, it finds 
 itself at once entangled in a contradiction with itself. Directly 
 contrary affirmations can be made with equal validity in reference 
 to each of these four points. We can show, upon grounds equally 
 valid, (1) the thesis, the world has a beginning in time and limits 
 in space ; and the antithesis^ the world has neither beginning in 
 
KANT. 
 
 249 
 
 time nor limit in space. (2) The thesis : every compound sub- 
 stance in the world consists of simple parts, and there exists 
 nothing else than the simple and that which it composes ; and the 
 antithesis : no compound thing consists of simple parts, and there 
 exists nothing simple in the world. (3) The thesis: causality 
 according to the laws of nature, is not the only one from which 
 the phenomena of the world may be deduced, but these may be 
 explained through a causality in freedom; and the antithesis: 
 there is no freedom, but every thing in the world happens only 
 according to natural laws. Lastly, (4) the thesis : something be 
 longs to the world either as its part or its cause, which is an ab- 
 solutely necessary being ; and the antithesis : there exists no 
 absolutely necessary being as cause of the world, either in the 
 world or without it. From this dialectic conflict of the cosmo- 
 logical ideas, there follows at once the worthlessness of the whole 
 struggle. 
 
 (3.) The ideal of the 'pure Beason or the idea of God. 
 
 Kant shows at first how the reason comes to the idea of a 
 most real being, and then turns himself against the efforts of pre- 
 vious metaphysics to prove its valid existence. His critick of the 
 arguments employed to prove the existence of a God, is essential- 
 ly the following. 
 
 (a.) The Ontological proof . — The argument here is as follows : 
 it is possible that there is a most real being ; now existence is im- 
 plied in the conception of all reality, and hence, existence neces- 
 sarily belongs to the conception of the most real being. But, 
 answers Kant, existence is not at all a reality, or real predicate 
 which can be added to the conception of a thing, but it is the posi- 
 tion of a thing with all its properties. A thing, however, may 
 lose its existence, and still be deprived of none of its properties. 
 Hence if it have any property, it does not at all follow that it pos- 
 sesses existence. Being is nothing but the logical copula, which 
 does not in the least enlarge the content of the subject. A hun- 
 dred actual dollars, e. g. contain no more than a hundred possible 
 ones ; there is only a difference between them in reference to my 
 own wealth. Thus the most real being may with perfect 
 11* 
 
250 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 propriety be conceived of as the most real, while at the same time 
 it should only be conceived of as possible, and not as actual. It 
 was therefore wholly unnatural, and a simple play of school wit, 
 to take an idea which had been arbitrarily formed, and deduce 
 from it the existence of its corresponding object. Any effort and 
 toil which might be spent upon this famous proof is thus only 
 thrown away, and a man. would become no richer in knowledge 
 out of simple ideas than a merchant would increase his property 
 by adding a number of ciphers to the balance of his accounts. 
 
 (h.) The Cosmological proof . — This, like the ontological, in- 
 fers the existence of an absolute being from the necessity of ex- 
 istence. If any thing exist there must also exist an absolutely 
 necessary being as its cause. But now there exists at least I my- 
 self, and there must hence also exist an absolutely necessary being 
 as my cause. The last cosmological antinomy is here brought in 
 to criticise the argument at this stage. The conclusion is errone- 
 ous, because from the phenomenal and the accidental a necessary 
 being above experience is inferred. Moreover, if we allow the 
 conclusion to be valid, it is still no Grod which it gives us. 
 Hence the farther inference is made : that being can alone be 
 necessary which includes all reality within itself. If now this 
 proposition should be reversed, and the affirmation made that that 
 being which includes all reality is absolutely necessary, then have 
 we again the ontological proof, and the cosmological falls with this. 
 In the cosmological proof, the reast>n uses the trick of bringing 
 forth as a new argument an old one with a changed dress, that it 
 might seem to have the power of summoning two witnesses. 
 
 (c.) The Physico-theological proof. — If thus neither concep- 
 tion nor experience can furnish a proof for the divine existence, 
 there still remains a third attempt, viz., to start from a determi- 
 nate experienc, and endeavor to see whether the existence of a 
 supreme being can not be inferred from the arrangement and 
 condition of things in the world. Such is the physico-theological 
 proof, which starts from the evidences of design in nature, and 
 directs its argument as follows : there is evidently design in the 
 universe \ this is extraneous to the things of the world, and ad- 
 
KANT. 
 
 251 
 
 heres to them only contingently ; there exists therefore a neces- 
 sary cause of this design which works with wisdom and intelli- 
 gence ; this necessary cause must be the most real being ; the most 
 real being has therefore necessary existence. — To this Kant 
 answers : The physico-theological proof is the oldest, clearest, and 
 most conformable to the common reason. But it is not demon- 
 stration (apodictic). It infers, from the form of the world, a pro- 
 portionate and sufficient cause of this form; but in this way we onl^ 
 attain an originator of the form of the world, and not an originator 
 of its matter, a world-builder, and not a world-creator. To help 
 out with this difficulty the cosmological proof is brought in, and 
 the originator of the form becomes conceived as the necessary 
 being lying at the ground of the content. Thus we have an ab- 
 solute being whose perfection corresponds to that of the world. 
 But in the world there is no absolute perfection ; we have there- 
 fore only a very perfect being ; to get the most perfect, we must 
 revert again to the ontological proof. Thus the teleological proof 
 rests upon the cosmological, while this in turn has its basis in 
 the ontological, and from this circle the metaphysical modes of 
 proof cannot escape. 
 
 From these considerations, it would follow that the ideal of a 
 supreme being is nothing other than a regulative principle of the 
 reason, by which it looks upon every connection in the world as 
 if it sprang from an all-sufficient and necessary cause ; in order 
 that, in explaining this connection, it may establish the rule of a 
 systematic and necessary unity, it being also true that in this pro- 
 cess the reason through a transcendental subreption cannot avoid 
 representing to itself this formal principle as constitutive, and 
 this unity as personal. But in truth this supreme being remains 
 for the simply speculative use of the reason, a mere but faultless 
 ideal, a conception which is the summit and the crown of the 
 whole human knowledge, whose objective reality, though it cannot 
 be proved with apodictic certainty, can just as little be dis- 
 proved. 
 
 With this critick of the ideas of the reason there is still an- 
 other qi^estion. If these ideas have no objective significance, why 
 
252 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 are they found within us ? Since they are necessary, they will 
 doubtless have some good purpose to subserve. What this pur- 
 pose is, has already been indicated in speaking of the theological 
 idea. Though not constitutive, yet are they regulative principles. 
 "VVe cannot better order the faculties of our soul, than by acting 
 " as i]/" there were a soul. The cosmological idea leads us to 
 consider the world "asi/" the series of causes were infinite, 
 without, however, excluding an intelligent cause. The theologi- 
 cal idea enables us to look upon the world in all its complexity, 
 as a regulated unity. Thus, while these ideas of the reason are 
 not constitutive principles, by means of which our knowledge 
 could be widened beyond experience, they are regulative princi- 
 ples, by means of which our experience may be ordered, and 
 brought under certain hypothetical unities. These three ideas, 
 therefore, the psychological, the cosmological, and the theological, 
 do not form an organon for the discovery of truth, but only a ca- 
 non for the simplification and systematizing of our experiences. 
 
 Besides their regulative significance, these ideas of the reason 
 have also a practical importance. There is a sufficient certainty, 
 not objective, but subjective, which is especially of a practical 
 nature, and is called belief or confidence. If the freedom of the 
 will, the immortality of the soul, and the existence of a God, are 
 three cardinal principles, which, though not in afiy way contribu- 
 ting to our knowledge, are yet pressed continually upon us by the 
 reason, this difficulty is removed in the practical field where these 
 ideas have their peculiar significance for the moral confidence. 
 This confidence is not logical, but moral certainty. Since it rests 
 wholly upon subjective grounds, upon the moral character, I can- 
 not say it is morally certain that there is a Grod, but only I am 
 morally certain, &c. That is, the belief in a Grod and in another 
 world is so interwoven with my moral character, that I am in just 
 as much danger of losing this character as of being deprived of 
 this belief. "We are thus brought to the basis of the Practical 
 Reason. 
 
 II. Critick of the Practical Reason. — With the Critick of 
 the Practical Reason, we enter a wholly different world, where 
 
KANT. 
 
 253 
 
 the reason richly recovers that of which it was deprived in tha 
 theoretical province. The essential problem of the Critick of the 
 Practical Keason is almost diametrically different from that of the 
 critick of the theoretical reason. The object of investigation in 
 the critick of the speculative reason, was, — how can the pure 
 reason know objects apriori; in the practical reason it is, — how 
 can the pure reason determine apriori the will in respect of ob- 
 jects. The critick of the speculative reason inquired after the 
 cognizableness of objects apriori : the practical reason has nothing 
 to do with the cognizableness of objects, but only with the de- 
 termination of the will. Hence, in the latter critick, we have an 
 order directly the reverse of that which we find in the former. 
 As the original determinations of our theoretical knowledge are 
 intuitions, so the original determinations of our will are principles 
 and conceptions. The critick of the practical reason must, there- 
 fore, start from moral principles, and only after these are firmly 
 fixed, may we inquire concerning the relation in which the prac- 
 tical reason stands to the sensory. 
 
 Freedom, says Kant, is given to us apriori as an inner fact, it 
 is a fact of the inner experience. While, therefore, the reason in 
 the theoretical field had only a negative result, because, when it 
 would attain to a true thing in itself it became transcendent, yet 
 now in the practical province it becomes positive through the idea 
 of freedom, because with the fact of freedom we have no need 
 to go out beyond ourselves, but possess a principle immanent to 
 the reason. But why then give a critick of practical reason ? In 
 order to determine the relation of freedom to the sensory. Since 
 the free will works through its acts upon the sensory, there must 
 be a point of contact between the two. This is found in the sen- 
 suous motives of the will, which exist implanted in it by nature, in 
 the impulses and inclinations which, as the principle of the empiric 
 in opposition to the free or pure will, bear in themselves the char- 
 acter of a want of freedom. Since, then, freedom cannot be 
 touched, a critick of the practical reason can only relate to these 
 smpirical motives, in the sense of divesting these from the claim 
 of being exclusively the motives by which the will is determined 
 
254 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 While, therefore, in the theoretical reason the empirical element 
 was immanent, and the intelligible transcendent, the reverse is the 
 case in the practical reason, since here the empirical is trans- 
 cendent, and the intelligible immanent. It is the object of the 
 Analytic to show the relation of these two momenta of the will, 
 and the highest moral principle which springs therefrom, while it 
 belongs to the Dialectic to solve the antinomies which result from 
 the contradiction of the pure and empiric will. 
 
 (1.) The Analytic. — Freedom, as the one constituent element 
 which shows itself in the activity of our will, is the simple form 
 of our actions. The universal law binding the will, is that it 
 should determine itself purely from itself, independently of every 
 external incitement. This capacity of self-lawgiving, or self-de- 
 termining, Kant calls the autonomy of the will. The free auton- 
 omic will says to man : thou oughtest ! and since this moral ought 
 commands to an unconditioned obedience, the moral imperative is 
 a categorical imperative. What is it now which is categorically 
 commanded by the practical reason ? To answer this question, 
 we must first consider the empirical will, i. e. the nature-side of 
 man. 
 
 The empirical, as the other constituent element of our will, 
 first produces a definite deed when it has filled the empty form 
 of action with the matter of action. The matter of the will is 
 furnished by the sensory in the desire of pleasure and the dread 
 of pain. Since this second principle of our actions does not find 
 its seat in the freedom of the will as the higher faculty of desire, 
 but in the sensory, as the lower faculty of desire, and a foreign 
 law is thus laid upon the will, — Kant calls it, in opposition to the 
 autonomy of the reason, the Jieteronomy of the will. 
 
 The categorical imperative is the necessary law of freedom 
 binding upon all men, and is distinguished from material motives, 
 in that the latter have no fixed character. For men are at variance 
 in respect of pleasure and pain, since that which is disagreeable 
 to one may seem pleasant to another, and if they ever agree, this 
 is simply accidental. Consequently^ these material motivea can 
 never act the part of laws bindiog upon every being, but each 
 
KANT. 
 
 255 
 
 subject may find his end in a difierent motive. Such rules of act- 
 ing, Kant calls maxims of the will. He also censures those 
 moralists who have exalted such maxims as universal principles 
 of morality. 
 
 Nevertheless, these maxims, though not the highest principles 
 of morality, are yet necessary to the autonomy of the will, he- 
 cause they alone furnish for it a content. It is only by uniting 
 the two sides, that we gain the true principle of morality. To 
 this end the maxims of acting must be freed from their limitation, 
 and widened to the form of universal laws of the reason. Only those 
 maxims should be chosen as motives of action which are capable 
 of becoming universal laws of the reason. The highest jjrincijple 
 of moraliiy will therefore be this : act so that the maxims of 
 thy will can at the same time be valid as the principle of a uni- 
 versal lawgiving, i. e. that no contradiction shall arise in the 
 attempt to conceive the maxims of thy acting as a law universally 
 obeyed. Through this formal moral principle all material moral 
 principles which can only be of a heteronomic nature, are ex- 
 cluded. 
 
 The question next arises — what impels the will to act con- 
 formably to this highest moral law ? Kant answers : the moral 
 law itself, apprehended and revered, must be the only moving- 
 spring of the human will. If an act which in itself might be 
 conformable to the moral law, be done only through some impulse 
 to hippiness arising simply from an inclination of the sense, if it 
 be not done purely for the sake of the law, then have we simply 
 legality and not morality. That which is included in every in- 
 clination of the sense is self-love and self-conceit, and of these 
 the former is restricted by the moral law, and the latter wholly 
 stricken down. But that which. strikes down our self-conceit and 
 humbles us must appear to us in the highest degree worthy of es- 
 teem. But this is done by the moral law. Consequently the 
 positive feeling which we shall cherish in respect of the moral 
 law will be reverence. This reverence, though a feeling, is 
 neither sensuous nor pathological, for it stands opposed to these ; 
 but is rather an intellectual feeling^ since it arises from the notion 
 
256 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 of the practical law of the reason. On the one side as subor- 
 dination to law, the reverence includes pain; on the other side, since 
 the coercion can only be exercised through the proper reason, it 
 includes pleasure. Reverence is the single sensation befitting 
 man in reference to the moral law. Man, as creature of sense, 
 cannot rest on any inner inclination to the moral law, for he has 
 ever inclinations within him which resist the law ; love to the law 
 can only be considered as something ideal. — Thus the moral 
 purism of Kant, or his effort to separate every impulse of \he 
 sense from the motives to action, merges into rigorism, or the dark 
 view that duty can never be done except with resistance. A 
 similar exaggeration belongs to the well-known epigram of 
 Schiller, who answers the following scruple of conscience — 
 
 The friends whom I love I gladly Avould serve, 
 
 But to this inclination incites me ; 
 And so I am forced from virtue to swerve 
 
 Since my act, through aflfection, delights me — 
 
 with the following decision : 
 
 The friends whom thou lov'st, thou must first seek to scorn, 
 
 For to no other way can I guide thee : 
 'Tis alone with disgust thou canst rightly perform 
 
 The acts to which duty would lead thee. 
 
 (2.) The Dialectic. — The pure reason has always its dialectics, 
 since it belongs to the nature of the reason to demand the uncon- 
 ditioned for the given conditioned. Hence also the practical rea- 
 son seeks an unconditioned highest good for that conditioned good 
 after which man strives. What is this highest good ? If we 
 understand by the highest good the fundamental condition of all 
 other goods, then it is virtue. But virtue is not the perfect good, 
 since the finite reason as sensitive stands in need also of happi- 
 ness. Hence the highest good is only perfect when the highest 
 happiness is joined to the highest virtue. The question now 
 arises : what is the relation of these two elements of the highest 
 good to each other ? Are they analytically or synthetically con- 
 
KANT. 
 
 257 
 
 nected together ? The former would be affirmed by most of the 
 ancients, especially by the Greek moral philosophers. We might 
 allow with the Stoics, that happiness is contained as an accidental 
 element in virtue, or, with the Epicureans, that virtue is con- 
 tained as an accidental element in happiness. The Stoics said : 
 to be conscious of one's virtue is happiness ; the Epicureans said : 
 to be conscious of the maxims leading one to happiness is virtue. 
 But, says Kant, an analytic connection between these two con- 
 ceptions is not possible, since they are wholly different in kind. 
 Consequently there can be between them only a synthetic unity, 
 and this unity more closely scanned is seen to be a causal one, so 
 that the one element is cause, and the other effect. Such a rela- 
 tion must be regarded as its highest good by the practical reason, 
 whose thesis must therefore be : virtue and happiness must be 
 bound together in a correspondent degree as cause and effect. 
 But this thesis is all thwarted by the actual fact. Neither of the 
 two is the direct cause of the other. Neither is the striving 
 after happiness a moving spring to virtue, nor is virtue the 
 efficient cause of happiness. Hence the antithesis : virtue and 
 happiness do not necessarily correspond, and are not universally 
 connected as cause and effect. The critical solution of this anti- 
 nomy Kant finds in distinguishing between the sensible and the 
 intelligible world. In the world of sense, virtue and happiness 
 do not, it is true, correspond ; but the reason as noumenon is also 
 a citizen of a supersensible world, where the counter-strife be- 
 tween virtue and happiness has no place. In this supersensible 
 world virtue is always adequate to happiness, and when man 
 passes over into this he may look for the actualization of the high- 
 est good. But the highest good has, as already remarked, two 
 elements, (1) highest virtue, (2) highest happiness. The actual- 
 ization demanded for the first of these elements postulates the 
 immortality of the soul, and for the second, the existence of 
 God. 
 
 {a.) To the highest good belongs in the first place perfect 
 virtue or holiness. But no creature of sense can be holy : reason 
 united to sense can only approximate holiness as an ideal in an 
 
258 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 endless progression. But sucli an endless progress is only pos- 
 sible in an endless continuance of personal existence. If, there- 
 fore, the highest good shall ever be actualized, the immortality of 
 the soul must be presupposed. 
 
 (5.) To the highest good belongs, in the second place, perfect 
 happiness. Happiness is that condition of a rational creature in 
 the world, to whom every thing goes according to his desire and 
 will. This can only occur when all nature is in accord with his 
 ends. But this is not the case ; as acting beings we are not the 
 cause of nature, and there is not the slightest ground in the 
 moral law for connecting morality and happiness. Notwith- 
 standing this, we ought to endeavor to secure the highest good. 
 It must therefore be possible. There is thus postulated the 
 necessary connection of these tv^o elements, i. e. the existence of 
 a cause of nature distinct from nature, and which contains the 
 ground of this connection. There must be a being as the com- 
 mon cause of the natural and moral world, a being who knows 
 our characters of intelligence, and who, according to this intelli- 
 gence imparts to us happiness. Such a being is God. 
 
 Thus from the practical reason there issue the ideas of im- 
 mortality and of God, as we have already seen to be the case 
 with the idea of freedom. The reality of the idea of freedom 
 is derived from the possibility of a moral law ; that of the idea 
 of immortality is borrowed from the possibility of a ^perfect 
 virtue ; that of the idea of a God follows from the necessary 
 demand of a perfect happiness. These three ideas, therefore, 
 which the speculative reason has treated as problems that could 
 not be solved, gain a firm basis in the province of the practical 
 reason. Still they are not yet theoretical dogmas, but as Kant 
 calls them practical postulates, necessary premises of moral action. 
 My theoretical knowledge is not enlarged by them : I only know 
 now that there are objects corresponding to these ideas, but of 
 these objects I can know no more. Of God, for instance, we pos- 
 sess and know no more than this very conception; and if we 
 should attempt to establish the theory of the supersensible 
 grounded upon such categories, this would be to make theology 
 
KANT. 
 
 25£ 
 
 like a magic lantern, with its pliantasmagorical representations. 
 Yet Las the practical reason acquired for us a certainty respecting 
 the objective reality of these ideas, which the theoretical reason 
 had been obliged to leave undecided, and in this respect the prac- 
 tical reason has the primacy. This relation of the two faculties 
 of knowledge is wisely established in relation to the destiny of 
 men. Since the ideas of God and immortality are theoretically 
 obscure to us, they do not defile our moral motives by fear and 
 hope, but leave us free space to act through reverence for the 
 moral law. 
 
 Thus far Kant's Critick of the Practical Reason. In con- 
 nection with this we may here mention his vieivs of religion as 
 they appear in his treatise upon " Religion within the Bounds of 
 Pure Beasony The chief idea of this treatise is the referring 
 of religion to morality. Between morality and religion there 
 may be the twofold relation, that either morality is founded upon 
 religion, or else religion upon morality. If the first relation 
 were real, it would give us fear and hope as principles of moral 
 action ; but this cannot be, and we are therefore left alone to the 
 second. Morality leads necessarily to religion, because the high- 
 est good is a necessary ideal of the reason, and this can only be 
 realized through a God ; but in no way may religion first incite 
 us to virtue, for the idea of God may never become a moral mo- 
 tive. Religion, according to Kant, is the recognition of all our 
 duties as divine commands. It is revealed religion when I find 
 in it the divine command, and thus learn my duty ; it is natural 
 religion when I find in it my duty, and thus learn the divine com- 
 mand. The Church is an ethical community, which has for its 
 end the fulfilment and the most perfect exhibition of moral com- 
 mands, — a union of those who with united energies purpose to 
 resist evil and advance morality. The Church, in so far as it is 
 no object of a possible experience, is called the invisible Church, 
 which, as such, is a simple idea of the union of all the righteous 
 under the divine moral government of the world. The visible 
 Church, on the other hand, is that which presents the kingdom of 
 God upon earth, so far as this can be attained through men. The 
 
260 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 requisites, and hence also the characteristics of the true visible 
 Church (which are divided according to the table of the cate- 
 gories since this Church is given in experience) are the following : 
 (a) In respect of quantity the Church must be total or unive?'- 
 sal ; and though it may be divided in accidental opinions, yet 
 must it be instituted upon such principles as will necessarily lead 
 to a universal union in one single church. (5) The quality of 
 the true visible Church is purity ^ as a union under no other than 
 moral motives, since it is at the same time purified from the 
 stupidness of superstition and the madness of fanaticism, (c) 
 The relation of the members of the Church to each other rests 
 upon the principle of freedom. The Church is, therefore, a free 
 state, neither a hierarchy nor a democracy, but a voluntary, uni- 
 versal, and enduring union of heart, {d) In respect of modality 
 the Church demands that its constitution should not be changed. 
 The laws themselves may not change, though one may reserve to 
 himself the privilege of changing some accidental arrangements 
 which relate simply to the administration. — That alone which can 
 establish a universal Church is the moral faith of the reason, for 
 this alone can be shared by the convictions of every man. But, 
 because of the peculiar weakness of human nature, we can never 
 reckon enough on this pure faith to build a Church on it alone, 
 for men are not easily convinced that the striving after virtue 
 and an irreproachable life is every thing which God demands : 
 they always suppose that they must offer to God a special service 
 prescribed by tradition, in which it only comes to this — that he 
 is served. 
 
 To establish a Church, we must therefore have a statutory 
 faith historically grounded upon facts. This is the so-called 
 faith of the Church. In every Church there are therefore two 
 elements — the purely moral, or the faith of reason, and the his- 
 torico-statutory, or the faith of the Church. It depends now upon 
 the relation of the two elements whether a Church shall have any 
 worth or not. The statutory element should ever be only the 
 vehicle of the moral. Just so soon as this element becomes in 
 itself an independent end, claiming an independent validity, will 
 
KANT. 
 
 261 
 
 the Church become corrupt and irrational, and -whenever tht 
 Church passes over to the pure faith of reason, does it approx- 
 imate to the kingdom of God. Upon this principle we may dis- 
 tinguish the true from the spurious service of the kingdom of 
 God, religion from priestcraft. A dogma has worth alone in so 
 far as it has a moral content. The apostle Paul himself 
 would with difficulty have given credit to the dicta of the faith 
 of the Church without this moral faith. From the doctrine of 
 the Trinity, e. g. taken literally, nothing actually practical can be 
 derived. Whether we have to reverence in the Godhead three 
 persons or ten makes no difference, if in both cases we have the 
 same rules for our conduct of life. The Bible also, with its in- 
 terpretation, must be considered in a moral point of view. The 
 records of revelation must be interpreted in a sense which will 
 harmonize with the universal rules of the religion of reason. 
 Reason is in religious things the highest interpreter of the Bible. 
 This interpretation in reference to some texts may seem forced, 
 yet it must be preferred to any such literal interpretation as 
 would contain nothing for morality, or perhaps go against every 
 moral motive. That such a moral signification may always be 
 found without ever entirely repudiating the literal sense, results 
 from the fact that the foundation for a moral religion lay origi- 
 nally in the human reason. We need only to divest the repre- 
 sentations of the Bible of their mythical dress (an attempt which 
 Kant has himself made^ by moral explanation of some of the 
 weightiest doctrines), in order to attain a rational sense which 
 shall be universally valid. The historical element of the sacred 
 books is in itself of no account. The maturer the reason be- 
 comes, the more it can hold fast for itself the moral sense, so 
 much the more unnecessary will be the statutory institutions of 
 the faith of the Church. The transition of the faith of the 
 Church to the pure faith of reason is the approximation to the 
 kingdom of God, to which, however, we can only approach nearer 
 and nearer in an infinite progress. The actual realization of 
 the kingdom of God is the end of the world, the cessation of 
 history. 
 
262 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 III. Critick of the Faculty of Judgment. — The con- 
 ception of this science Kant gives in the following manner. 
 The two faculties of the human mind hitherto considered were 
 the faculty of knowledge and that of desire. It was proved in 
 the Critick of pure Keason, that the understanding only as faculty 
 of knowledge included constitutive principles apriori ; and it was 
 shown in the Critick of Practical Reason, that the reason pos- 
 sesses constitutive principles apriori, simply in reference to the 
 faculty of desire. Whether now the faculty of judgment^ as 
 the middle link between understanding and reason, can take its 
 object — the feeling of pleasure and pain as the middle link be- 
 tween the faculty of knowledge and that of desire — and furnish 
 it apriori with principles which shall be for themselves consti- 
 tutive and not simply regulative : this is the point upon which 
 the Critick of the Faculty of Judgment has to turn. 
 
 The faculty of judgment is the middle link between the un- 
 derstanding as the faculty of conceptions, and the reason as the 
 faculty of principles. In this position it has the following func- 
 tions : The speculative reason had taught us to consider the world 
 only according to natural laws ; the practical reason had inferred 
 for us a moral world, in which every thing is determined through 
 freedom. There was thus a gulf between the kingdom of nature 
 and that of freedom, which could not be passed unless the faculty 
 of judgment should furnish a conception which should unite the 
 two sides. That it is entitled to do this lies in the very concep- 
 tion of the faculty of judgment. Since it is the faculty of con- 
 ceiving the particular as contained under the universal, it thus 
 refers the empirical manifoldness of nature to a supersensible, 
 transcendental principle, which embraces in itself the ground for 
 the unity of the manifold. The object of the faculty of judg- 
 ment is, therefore, the conception of design in nature ; for the 
 evidence of this points to that supersensible unity which contains 
 the ground for the actuality of an object. And since all design 
 and every actualization of an end is connected with pleasure, we 
 may farther explain the faculty of judgment by saying, that it 
 contains the laws for the feeling of pleasure and pain. 
 
KANT. 
 
 263 
 
 The evidence of design in nature can be represented eithei 
 subjectively or objectively. In the first case I perceive pleasure 
 a,nd pain, immediately through the representation of an object, 
 before I have formed a conception of it ; my delight, in this in- 
 s^nce, can only be referred to a designed harmony of relation, 
 between the form of an object, and my faculty of beholding. 
 The faculty of judgment viewed thus subjectively, is called the 
 cEsthetic faculty^ In the second case, I form to myself at the 
 outset, a conception of the object, and then judge whether the 
 form of the object corresponds to this conception. In order to 
 find a flower that is beautiful to my beholding, I do not need to 
 have a conception of the flower ; but, if I would see a design in 
 it, then a conception is necessary. The faculty of judgment, 
 viewed as capacity to judge of these objective designs, is called 
 the teleological faculty. 
 
 1. Critick of the Esthetic Faculty of Judgment. (1.) 
 Analytic. — The analytic of the aesthetic faculty of judgment is 
 divided into two parts, the analytic of the beautiful^ and the an- 
 alytic of the sublime. 
 
 In order to discover what is required in naming an object 
 beautiful^ we must analyze the judgment of taste, as the faculty 
 for deciding upon the beautiful, {a) In respect of quality, the 
 beautiful is the object of a pure, uninterested satisfaction. This 
 disinterestedness enables us to distinguish between the satisfac- 
 tion in the beautiful, and the satisfaction in the agreeable and the 
 good. In the agreeable and the good I am interested ; my satis- 
 faction in the agreeable is connected with a sensation of desire ; 
 my satisfaction in the good is, at the same time, a motive for my 
 will to actualize it. My satisfaction in the beautiful alone is 
 without interest, {b) In respect of quantity, the beautiful is that 
 which universally pleases. In respect of the agreeable, every 
 one decides that his satisfaction in it is only a personal one ; but 
 if any one should affirm of a picture, that it is beautiful, he 
 would expect that not only he, but every other one, would also 
 find it so. Nevertheless, this judgment of the taste does not 
 arise from conceptions ; its universal validity is therefore purely 
 
264 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 subjective. I do not judge that all the objects of a species are 
 beautiful, but only that a certain specific object will appear beau- 
 tiful to every beholder. All the judgments of taste are indi- 
 vidual judgments, (c) In respect of relation, that is beautiful 
 in which we find the form of design, without representing to our- 
 selves any specific design, (d) In respect of modality, that is 
 beautiful which is recognized without a conception, as the object 
 of a necessary satisfaction. Of every representation, it is at least 
 possible, that it may awaken pleasure. The representation of the 
 agreeable awakens actual pleasure. The representation of the 
 beautiful, on the other hand, awakens pleasure necessarily. The 
 necessity which is conceived in an aesthetic judgment, is a neces- 
 sity for determining every thing by a judgment, which can be 
 viewed as an example of a universal rule, though the rule itself 
 cannot be stated. The subjective principle which lies at the basis 
 of the judgment of taste, is therefore a common sense, which de- 
 termines what is pleasing, and what displeasing, only through 
 feeling, and not through conception. 
 
 The sublime is that which is absolutely, or beyond all com- 
 parison, great, compared with which every thing else is small. 
 But now in nature there is nothing which has no greater. The 
 absolutely great is only the infinite, and the infinite is only to be 
 met with in ourselves, as idea. The sublime, therefore, is not 
 properly found in nature, but is only carried over to nature from 
 our own minds. We call that sublime in nature, which awakens 
 within us the idea of the infinite. As in the beautiful there is 
 prominent reference to quality, so, in the sublime, the most im- 
 portant element of all, is quantity ; and this quantity is either 
 greatness of extension (the mathematically sublime), or greatness 
 of power (the dynamically sublime). In the sublime there is a 
 greater satisfaction in the formless, than in the form. The sub- 
 lime excites a vigorous movement Of the heart, and awakens 
 pleasure only through pain, i. e. through the feeling that the 
 energies of life are for the moment restrained. The satisfaction 
 in the sublime is hence not so much a positive pleasure, but rather 
 an amazement and awe, which may be called a negative pleasure. 
 
KANT. 
 
 265 
 
 The elements for an aesthetic judgment of the sublime are the 
 same as in the feeling of the beautiful, (a) In respect of quan- 
 tity, that is sublime which is absolutely great, in comparison with 
 which every thing else is small. The aesthetic estimate of great- 
 ness does not lie, however, in numeration, but in the simple in- 
 tuition of the subject. The greatness of an object of nature, 
 which the imagination attempts in vain to comprehend, leads to a 
 supersensible substratum, which is great beyond all the measures 
 of the sense, and which has reference properly to the feeling of 
 the sublime. It is not the object itself, as the surging sea, which 
 is sublime, but rather the subject's frame of mind, in the estima- 
 tion of this object, (b) In respect of quality, the sublime does 
 not awaken pure pleasure, like the beautiful, but first pain, and 
 through this, pleasure. The feeling of the insufficiency of our 
 imagination, in the aesthetic estimate of greatness, gives rise to 
 pain ; but, on the other side, the consciousness of our independ- 
 ent reason, for which the faculty of imagination is inadequate, 
 awakens pleasure. In this respect, therefore, that is sublime 
 which immediately pleases us, through its opposition to the in- 
 terest of the sense, (c) In respect of relation, the sublime suf- 
 fers nature to appear as a power, indeed, but in reference to 
 which, we have the consciousness of superiority, (d) In respect 
 of modality, the judgments concerning the sublime are as neces- 
 sarily valid, as those for the beautiful ; only with this difference, 
 that our judgment of the sublime finds an entrance to some 
 minds, with greater difficulty than our judgment of the beautiful, 
 since to perceive the sublime, culture, and developed moral ideas, 
 are necessary. 
 
 (2.) Dialectic. — A dialectic of the aesthetic faculty of judg- 
 ment, like every dialectic, is only possible where we can meet 
 with judgments which lay claim to universality apriori. For dia- 
 lectics consists in the opposition of such judgments. The anti- 
 nomy of the principles of taste rests upon the two opposite ele- 
 ments of the judgment of taste, that it is purely subjective, and 
 at the same time, lays claim to universal validity. Hence, the 
 two common-place sayings : " there is no disputing about taste," 
 12 
 
266 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 and " there is a contest of taste." From these, we have the fol- 
 lowing antinomy, (a) Thesis : the judgment of taste cannot be 
 grounded on conception, else might we dispute it. (b) Antithe- 
 sis : the judgment of taste must be grounded on conception, else, 
 notwithstanding its diversity, there could be no contest respecting 
 it. — This antinomy, says Kant, is, however, only an apparent one, 
 and disappears as soon as the two propositions are more accu- 
 rately apprehended. The thesis should be : the judgment of 
 taste is not grounded upon a definite conception, and is not 
 strictly demonstrable ; the antithesis should be : this judgment is 
 grounded upon a conception, though an indefinite one, viz., upon 
 the conception of a supersensible substratum for the phenomenal. 
 Thus apprehended, there is no longer any contradiction between 
 the two propositions. 
 
 In the conclusion of the aesthetic faculty of judgment, we 
 can now answer the question, whether the fitness of things to our 
 faculty of judgment (their beauty and sublimity), lies in the 
 things themselves, or in us ? The assthetic realism claims that 
 the supreme cause of nature designed to produce things which 
 should affect our imagination, as beautiful and sublime, and the 
 organic forms of nature strongly support this view. But on the 
 other hand, nature exhibits even in her merely mechanical forms, 
 such a tendency to the beautiful, that we might believe that she 
 could produce also the most beautiful organic forms through me- 
 chanism alone ; and that thus the design would lie not in nature, 
 but in our soul. This is the standpoint of idealism, upon which 
 it becomes explicable how we can determine any thing apriori 
 concerning beauty and sublimity. But the highest view of the 
 gesthetical, is to use it as a symbol of the moral good. Thus 
 Kant makes the theory of taste, like religion, to be a corollary of 
 morality. 
 
 2. Cpjtick of the Teleological Faculty of Judgment. — In 
 the foregoing, we have considered the subjective sssthetical design 
 in the objects of nature. But the objects of nature have also a 
 relation of design to each other. The teleological faculty of 
 judgment has also to consider this faculty of design. 
 
KANT. 
 
 267 
 
 (1.) Analytic of the Teleological Faculty of Judgment. — The 
 analytic has to determine the kinds of objective design. Objec- 
 tive, material design, is of two kinds, external, and internal. The 
 external design is only relative, since it simply indicates a useful- 
 ness of one thing for another. Sand, for instance, which borders 
 the sea shore, is of use in bearing pine forests. In order that 
 animals can live upon the earth, the earth must produce nourish- 
 ment for them, etc. These examples of external design, show 
 that here the design never belongs to the means in itself, but only 
 accidentally. We should never get a conception of the sand by 
 saying that it is a means for pine forests ; it is conceivable for it- 
 self, without any reference to the conception of design. The 
 earth does not produce nourishment, because it is necessary that 
 men should dwell upon it. In brief, this external or relative de- 
 sign may be conceived from the mechanism of nature alone. 
 Not so the inner design of nature, which shows itself prominently 
 in the organic products of nature. In an organic product of na- 
 ture, every one of its parts is end, and every one, means or in- 
 strument. In the process of generation, the natural product ap- 
 pears as species, in growth it appears as individual, and in the 
 process of complete formation, every part of the individual shows 
 itself. This natural organism cannot be explained from mechani- 
 cal causes, but only through final causes, or teleologically. 
 
 (2.) Dialectic. — The dialectic of the teleological faculty of 
 judgment, has to adjust this opposition between this mechanism 
 of nature and teleology. On the one side we have the thesis : 
 every production of material things must be judged as possible, 
 according to simple mechanical laws. On the other side we have 
 the antithesis : certain products of material nature cannot be 
 judged as possible, according to simple mechanical laws, but de- 
 mand the conception of design for their explanation. If these 
 two maxims are posited as constitutive (objective) principles for 
 the possibility of the objects themselves, then do they contradict 
 each other, but as simply regulative (subjective) principles for 
 the investigation of nature, they are not contradictory. Earlier 
 systems treated the conception of design in nature dogmatically, 
 
268 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 and either affirmed or denied its essential existence in nature. 
 But we, convinced that teleology is only a regulative principle, 
 have nothing to do with the question whether an inner design be- 
 longs essentially to nature or not, but we only affirm that our 
 faculty of judgment must look upon nature as designed. We 
 envisage the conception of design in nature, but leave it wholly 
 undecided whether to another understanding, which does not 
 think discursively like ours, nature may not be understood, with- 
 out at all needing to bring in this conception of design. Our un- 
 derstanding thinks discursively : it proceeds frcm the parts, and 
 comprehends the whole as the product of its parts ; it cannot, 
 therefore, conceive the organic products of nature, where the 
 whole is the ground and the prius of the parts, except from the 
 point of view of the conception of design. If there were, on the 
 other hand, an intuitive understanding, which could know the 
 particular and the parts as co- determined in the universal and 
 the whole ; such an understanding might conceive the whole of 
 nature out of one principle, and would not need the conception 
 of end. 
 
 If Kant had thoroughly carried out this conception of an in- 
 tuitive understanding as well as the conception of an immanent 
 design in nature, he would have overcome, in principle, the stand- 
 point of subjective idealism, which he made numerous attempts, in 
 his critick of the faculty of judgment, to break through ; but these 
 ideas he only propounded, and left them to be positively carried 
 out by his successors. 
 
 SECTION XXXIX. 
 
 TRANSITION TO THE POST-KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 The Kantian philosophy soon gained in Germany an almost 
 undisputed rule. The imposing boldness of its standpoint, the 
 novelty of its results, the applicability of its principles, the moral 
 
TRANSITION TO THE POST-KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY. 269 
 
 severity of its view of the world, and above all, the spirit of free- 
 dom and moral autonomy which appeared in it, and which was so 
 directly counter to the efforts of that age, gained for it an assent 
 as enthusiastic as it was extended. It aroused among all culti- 
 vated classes a wider interest and participation in philosophic 
 pursuits, than had ever appeared in an equal degree among any 
 people. In a short time it had drawn to itself a very numerous 
 school : there were soon few German universities in which it had 
 not had its talented representatives, while in every department of 
 science and literature, especially in theology (it is the parent of 
 theological rationalism), and in natural rights, as also in helles- 
 lettres [Schiller) ^ it began to exert its influence. Yet most of the 
 writers who appeared in the Kantian school, confined themselves 
 to an exposition or popular application of the doctrine as Kant 
 had given it, and even the most talented and independent amon^ 
 the defenders and improvers of the critical philosophy [e. g 
 Reinhold, 1758-1823 ; Bardili, 1761-1808 ; Scliulze, Beck, 
 Fries, Krug, Bouterwech), only attempted to give a firmer basis 
 to the Kantian philosophy as they had received it, to obviate 
 some of its wants and deficiencies, and to carry out the standpoint 
 of transcendental idealism more purely and consistently. Among 
 those who carried out the Kantian philosophy, only two men, 
 FicTite and Herhart, can be named, who made by their actual 
 advance an epoch in philosophy ; and among its opposers [e. g. 
 Hamann, Herder), only one, Jacohi, is of philosophic importance. 
 These three philosophers are hence the first objects for us to con- 
 sider. In order to a more accurate development of their princi- 
 ples, we preface a brief and general characteristic of their relation 
 to the Kantian philosophy. 
 
 1. Dogmatism had been critically annihilated by Kant ; his 
 Critick of pure Reason had for its result the theoretical inde- 
 monstrableness of the three ideas of the reason, Grod, freedom, and 
 immortality. True, these ideas which, from the standpoint of 
 theoretical knowledge, had been thrust out, Kant had introduced 
 again as postulates of the practical reason ; but as postulates, as 
 only practical premises, they possess no theoretic certainty, and 
 
270 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 remain exposed to doubt. In order to do away with this uncer- 
 tainty, and this despairing of knowledge which had seemed to he 
 the end of the Kantian philosophy, Jacohi, a younger cotempo- 
 rary of Kant, placed himself upon the standpoint of the faith 
 philosophy in opposition to the standpoint of criticism. Though 
 these highest ideas of the reason, the eternal and the divine, can- 
 not be reached and proved by means of demonstration, yet is it 
 the very essence of the divine that it is indemonstrable and unat- 
 tainable for the understanding. In order to be certain of the 
 highest, of that which lies beyond the understanding, there is only 
 one organ, viz., feeling. In feeling, therefore, in immediate know- 
 ledge, in faith, Jacobi thought he had found that certainty which 
 Kant had sought in vain on the basis of discursive thinking. 
 
 2. While Jacobi stood in an antithetic relation to the Kan- 
 tian philosophy, Fichte appears as its immediate consequence. 
 Fichte carried out to its consequence the Kantian dualism, ac- 
 cording to which the Ego, as theoretic, is subjected to the external 
 world, while as practical, it is its master, or, in other words, ac- 
 cording to which the Ego stands related to the objective world, 
 now receptively and again spontaneously. He allowed the reason 
 to be exclusively practical, as will alone, and spontaneity alone, 
 and apprehended its theoretical and receptive relation to the ob- 
 jective world as only a cu'cumscribed activity, as a limitation 
 prescribed to itself by the reason. But for the reason, so far as 
 it is practical, there is nothing objective except as it is produced. 
 The will knows no being but only an ought. Hence the objec- 
 tive being of truth is universally denied, and the thing which is 
 essentially unknown must fall away of itself as an empty shadow. 
 
 Every thing which is, is the Ego," is the principle of the 
 Fichtian system, and represents at the same time the subjective 
 idealism in its consequence and completion. 
 
 3. While the subjective idealism of Fichte was carried out in 
 the objective idealism of Schelling, and the absolute idealism of 
 Hegel, there arose cotemporaneously with these systems a third 
 offshoot of the Kantian criticism, viz., the philosophy of Herhart. 
 It had its subjective origin in the Kantian philosophy, but its ob- 
 
JACOBI. 
 
 271 
 
 jective and historic connection with Kant is slight. It breaks up 
 all historic continuity, and holds an isolated position in the histo- 
 ry of philosophy. Its general basis is Kantian, in so far as it 
 makes for its problem a critical investigation of the subjective 
 experience. We place it between Fichte and Schelling. 
 
 SECTION XL. 
 
 JACOBI. 
 
 Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi was born at Diisseldorf in 1743. 
 His father destined him for a merchant. After he had studied 
 in Geneva and become interested in philosophy, he entered his 
 father's mercantile establishment, but afterwards abandoned this 
 business, having been made chancellor of the exchequer and 
 customs commissioner for Cleves and Berg, and also privy 
 councillor at Diisseldorf. In this city, or at his neighboring 
 estate of Pempelfort, he spent a great part of his life devoted to 
 philosophy and his friends. In the year 1804 he was called to 
 the newly-formed Academy of Sciences in Munich. In 1807 he 
 was chosen president of this institution, a post which he filled 
 till his death in 1819. Jacobi had a rich intellect and an amiable 
 character. Besides being a philosopher, he was also a poet and 
 citizen of the world ; and hence we find in his philosophizing an 
 absence of strict logical arrangement and precise expression of 
 thought. His writings are no systematic whole, but are occasional 
 treatises written " rhapsodically and in grasshopper gait," for the 
 most part in the form of letters, dialogues, and romances. " It 
 was never my purpose," he says himself, " to set up a system for 
 the schools. My writings have sprung from my innermost life, 
 and were the result of that which had taken place within me. 
 In a certain sense I did not make them voluntarily, but the;y 
 were drawn out of me by a higher power irresistible to myself 
 This want of an inner principle of classification and of a syste 
 
272 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 matic arrangement, renders a development of J acobi's philosophy 
 not easy. It may best be represented under the following three 
 points of view : — 1. Jacobi's polemic against mediate knowledge. 
 2. His principle of immediate knowledge. 3. His relation to the 
 cotemporaneous philosophy, especially to the Kantian criticism. 
 
 1. Spinoza was the negative starting point of Jacobi's phi- 
 losophizing. In his work " On the Doctrine of Spinoza, in 
 letters to Moses Mendelssohn'''' (1785), he directed public attention 
 again to the almost wholly forgotten philosophy of Spinoza. The 
 correspondence originated thus : Jacobi made the discovery 
 that Lessing was a Spinozist, and announces this to Mendelssohn. 
 The latter will not believe it, and thence grew the farther his- 
 torical and philosophical examination. The positive philosophic 
 views which Jacobi exhibits in this treatise can be reduced to the 
 following three principles : (1) Spinozism is fatalism and atheism. 
 (2) Every path of philosophic demonstration leads to fatalism 
 and atheism. (3) In order that we may not fall into these, we 
 must set a limit to demonstrating, and recognize faith as the 
 element of all metaphysic knowledge. 
 
 (1.) Spinozism is atheism, because, according to it, the cause 
 of the world is no person — is no being working for an end, and 
 endowed with reason and will — and hence is no God. It is fatal- 
 ism, for, according to it, the human will regards itself only falsely 
 as free. 
 
 (2.) This atheism and fatalism is, however, only the necessary 
 consequence of all strictly demonstrative philosophizing. To 
 conceive a thing, says Jacobi, is to refer a thing to its nearest 
 cause ; it is to find a possible for an actual, the condition for a 
 conditioned, the mediation for an immediate. We conceive only 
 that which we can explain out of another. Hence our conceiving 
 moves in a chain of conditioned conditions, and this connection 
 forms a mechanism of nature, in whose investigation our under- 
 standing has its immeasurable field. However far we may carry 
 conception and demonstration, we must hold, in reference to every 
 object, to a still higher one which conditions it ; where this chain 
 of the conditioned ceases, there do conception and demonstration 
 
JACOBI. 
 
 273 
 
 also cease ; till we give up demonstrating we can reach no infinite. 
 If philosophy determines to apprehend the infinite with the finite 
 understanding, then must it bring down the divine to the finite ; 
 and here is where every preceding philosophy has been entangled, 
 while it is obviously an absurd undertaking to attempt to discover 
 the conditions of the unconditioned, and make the absolutely 
 necessary a possible, in order that we may be able to construct it, 
 A Grod who could be proved is no God, for the ground of proof is 
 ever above that which is to be proved ; the latter has its whole 
 reality from the former. If the existence of God should be 
 proved, then God would be derived from a ground which were 
 before and above him. Hence the paradox of Jacobi ; it is foi 
 the interest of science that there be no God, no supernatural and 
 no extra or supramundane being. Only upon the condition that 
 nature alone is, and is therefore independent and all in all, can 
 science hope to gain its goal of perfection, and become, like its 
 object itself, all in all. Hence the result which Jacobi derives 
 from the " Drama of the history of philosophy " is this : — " There 
 is no other philosophy than that of Spinoza. He who considers 
 all the works and acts of men to be the effect of natural mechan- 
 ism, and who believes that intelligence is but an accompanying 
 consciousness, which has only to act the part of a looker-on, 
 cannot be contended with and cannot be helped till we set him 
 free from his philosophy. No philosophical conclusion can reach 
 him, for what he denies cannot be philosophically proved, and 
 what he proves cannot be philosophically denied." Whence then 
 is help to come ? " The understanding, taken by itself, is ma- 
 terialistic and irrational ; it denies spirit and God. The reason 
 taken by itself is idealistic, and has nothing to do with the under- 
 standing; it denies nature and makes itself God." 
 
 (3.) Hence we must seek another way of knowing the supersen- 
 sible, which is faith. Jacobi calls this flight from cognition through 
 conception to faith, the salto mortale of the human reason. Every 
 certainty through a conception demands another certainty, but in 
 faith we are led to an immediate certainty which needs no ground 
 nor proof, and which is in fact absolutely exclusive of all proof. 
 12* 
 
274 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Such a confidence which does not arise from arguments, is called 
 faith. We know the sensible as well as the supersensible only 
 through faith. All human knowledge springs from revelation and 
 faith. 
 
 These principles which Jacobi brought out in his letters con- 
 cerning Spinoza, did not fail to arouse a universal opposition in 
 the German philosophical world. It was charged upon him that 
 he was an enemy of reason, a preacher of blind faith, a despiser 
 of science and of philosophy, a fanatic and a papist. To rebut 
 these attacks, and to justify his standpoint, he wrote in 1787, a 
 year and a half after the first appearance of the work already 
 named, his dialogue entitled " David Hume^ or Faith, Idealism, 
 and Realism,'''' in which he developes more extensively and defi- 
 nitely his principle of faith or immediate knowledge. 
 
 2. J acobi distinguished his faith at the outset from a blind 
 credence in authority. A blind faith is that which supports it- 
 self on a foreign view, instead of on the grounds of reason. But 
 this is not the case with his faith, which rather rests upon 
 the innermost necessity of the subject itself. Still farther : his 
 faith is not an arbitrary imagination : we can imagine to our- 
 selves every thing possible, but in order to regard a thing as 
 actual, there must be an inexplicable necessity of our feeling, 
 which we cannot otherwise name than faith. J acobi was not con- 
 stant in his terminology, and hence did not always express him- 
 self alike in respect of the relation in which faith stood to the 
 dilferent sides of the human faculty of knowledge. In his earlier 
 terminology he placed faith (or as he also called it, the power of 
 faith), on the side of the sense or the receptivity, and let it stand 
 opposed to the understanding and the reason, taking these two 
 terms as equivalent expressions for the finite and immediate know- 
 ledge of previous philosophy ; afterwards he followed Kant, and, 
 distinguishing between the reason and the understanding, he 
 called that reason which he had previously named sense and faith. 
 According to him now, the faith or intuition of the reason is the 
 organ for perceiving the supersensible. As such, it stands op- 
 posed to the understanding. There must be a higher faculty 
 
JACOBI. 
 
 275 
 
 which can learn, in a way inconceivable to sense and the under- 
 standing, that which is true in and above the phenomena. Over 
 against the explaining understanding stands the reason, or the 
 natural faith of the reason, which does not explain, but positively 
 reveals and unconditionally decides. As there is an intuition of 
 the sense, so is there a rational intuition through the reason, and 
 a demonstration has no more validity in respect of the latter thaD 
 in respect of the former. Jacobi justifies his use of the term, in- 
 tuition of the reason, from the want of any other suitable designa- 
 tion. Language has no other expression to indicate the way in 
 which that, which is unattainable to the sense, becomes appre- 
 hended in the transcendental feeling. If any one affirms that he 
 knows any thing, he may properly be required to state the origin 
 of his knowledge, and in doing this, he must of necessity go back 
 either to sensation or to feeling; the latter stands above the 
 former as high as the human species above the brute. So 1 
 affirm, then, without hesitation, says Jacobi, that my philosophy/ 
 starts from pure feeling, and declares the authority of this to be 
 supreme. The faculty of feeling is the highest in man, and that 
 alone which specifically distinguishes him from the brute. This 
 faculty is one and the same with reason ; or, reason may be said 
 to find in it its single and only starting point. 
 
 Jacobi had the clearest consciousness of the opposition in 
 which he stood, with this principle of immediate knowledge, to 
 previous philosophy. In his introduction to his complete works, 
 he says : " There had arisen since the time of Aristotle an in- 
 creasing effort in philosophical schools, to subject the immediate 
 knowledge to the mediate, to make that faculty of perception which 
 originally establishes every thing, dependent on the faculty of re-- 
 flection, which is conditioned through abstraction ; to subordinate 
 the archetype to the copy, the essence to the word, the reason to 
 the understanding, and, in fact, to make the former wholly disap- 
 pear in the latter. Nothing is allowed to be true which is not 
 capable of a .double demonstration, in the intuition and in the 
 conception, in the thing and in its image or word ; the thing it- 
 self, it is said, must truly lie and actually be known only in the 
 
276 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 word." But every philosophy which allows only the reflecting 
 reason, must lose itself at length in an utter ignorance. Its end 
 is nihilism. 
 
 3. From what has been already said, the position of Jacobi 
 with his principle of faith, in relation to the Kantian philosophy, 
 can, partly at least, be seen. Jacobi had separated himself from 
 this philosophy, partly in the above-named dialogue " David 
 Hume," (especially in an appendix to this, in which he discussed 
 the transcendental Idealism), and partly in his essay " On the 
 attempt of criticism to hring the reason to the understanding " 
 (1801). His relation to it may be reduced to the following three 
 general points : 
 
 (1.) Jacobi does not agree with Kant's theory of sensuous 
 knowledge. In opposition to this theory he defends the stand- 
 point of empiricism, affirms the truthfulness of the sense-percep- 
 tion, and denies the apriority of space and time, for which Kant con- 
 tends in order to prove that objects as well as their relations are 
 simply determinations of our own self, and do not at all exist ex- 
 ternally to us. For, however much it may be affirmed that there 
 is something corresponding to our notions as their cause, yet does 
 it remain concealed what this something is. According to Kant, 
 the laws of our beholding and thinking are without objective 
 validity, our knowledge has no objective significance. But it is 
 wrong to claim that in the phenomena there is nothing revealed 
 of the hidden truth which lies behind them. With such a claim, 
 it were far better to give up completely the unknown thing-in- 
 itself, and carry out to its results the consequent idealism. " Logi- 
 cally, Kant is at fault, when he presupposes objects which make 
 impressions on our soul. He is bound to teach the strictest 
 idealism. 
 
 (2.) Yet Jacobi essentially agrees with Kant's critick of the un- 
 derstanding. Jacobi affirmed, as Kant had done, that the under- 
 standing is insufficient to know the supersensible, and that the 
 highest ideas of the reason could be apprehended only in faith. 
 Jacobi places Kant's great merit in having cleared away the ideas, 
 which were simply the products of reflection and logical phan- 
 
JACOBI. 
 
 277 
 
 tasms. " It is very easy for the understanding, when producing 
 one notion from another, and thus gradually mounting up to 
 ideas, to imagine that, hy virtue of these, which, though they 
 carry it beyond the intuitions of the sense, are nothing but logi- 
 cal phantasms, it has not only the faculty but the most decided 
 determination to fly truly above the world of sense, and to gain 
 by its flight a higher science independent of the intuition, a sci- 
 ence of the supersensible. Kant discovers and destroys this er- 
 ror and self-deception. Thus there is gained, at least, a clear 
 place for a genuine rationalism. This is Kant's truly great deed, 
 his immortal merit. But the sound sense of our sage did not al- 
 low him to hide from himself that this clear place must disappear 
 in a gulf, which would swallow up in itself all knowledge of the 
 true, unless a God should interpose to hinder it. Here Kant's 
 doctrine and mine meet." 
 
 (8.) But Jacobi does not fully agree with Kant, in wholly 
 denying to the theoretical reason the faculty of objective knowl- 
 edge. He blames Kant for complaining that the human reason 
 cannot theoretically prove the reality of its ideas. He affirm? 
 that Kant is thus still entangled in the delusion, that the onl} 
 reason why these ideas cannot be proved, is found in the nature 
 of the ideas themselves, and not in the deficient nature of our 
 knowledge. Kant therefore attempts to seek, in a practical way, 
 a kind of scientific proof; a roundabout way, which, to every 
 profound seeker, must seem folly, since every proof is as impossi- 
 ble as it is unnecessary. 
 
 Jacobi agreed better with Kant, than with the post-Kantian 
 philosophy. The atheistic tendency of the latter was especially 
 repulsive to him. " To Kant, that profound thinker and upright 
 philosopher, the words God, freedom, immortality, and religion, 
 signified the same as they have ever done to the sound human 
 understanding ; he in no way treats them as nothing but decep- 
 tion. He created offence by irresistibly showing the insufficiency 
 of all proofs of speculative philosophy for these ideas. That 
 which was wanting in the theoretical proof, he made up by the 
 necessary postulates of a pure practical reason. With these, ac- 
 
278 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 cording to Kant's assurance, philosopliy was fully helped out of 
 her difficulty, and the goal, which had been always missed, actu- 
 ally reached. But the first daughter of the critical philosophy 
 (Fichte's system) makes the living and working moral order it- 
 self to be God, a God expressly declared to be without conscious- 
 ness and self-existence. These frank words, spoken publicly and 
 without restraint, roused some attention, but the fear soon sub- 
 sided. Presently astonishment ceased wholly, for the second 
 daughter of the critical philosophy (Schelling's system) gave up 
 entirely the distinction which the first had allowed to remain be- 
 tween natural and moral philosophy, necessity and freedom, and 
 without any further ado affirmed that the only existence is na- 
 ture, and that there is nothing above ; this second daughter is 
 Spinozism transfigured and reversed, an ideal materialism." This 
 latter allusion to Schelling, connected as it was with other and 
 harder thrusts in the same essay, called out from this philosopher 
 the well-known answer : " Schelling''s Monument to the Treatise 
 on Divine Things^ 1812." 
 
 If we now take a critical survey of the philosophical stand- 
 point of Jacobi, we shall find its peculiarity to consist in the ab- 
 stract separation of understanding and feeling. These two Ja- 
 cobi could not bring into harmony. " There is light in my 
 heart," he says, " but it goes out whenever I attempt to bring it 
 into the understanding. Which is the true luminary of these 
 two ? That of the understanding, which, though it reveals fixed 
 forms, shows behind them only a baseless gulf ? Or that of the 
 heart, which points its light promisingly upwards, though deter- 
 minate knowledge escapes it ? Can the human spirit grasp the 
 truth unless it possesses these two luminaries united in one light ? 
 And is this union conceivable except through a miracle V " If 
 now, in order to escape in a certain degree this contradiction be- 
 tween understanding and feeling, Jacobi gave to immediate 
 knowledge the place of mediate as finite knowledge, this was a 
 self-deception. Even that knowledge, which is supposed to be 
 immediate, and which Jacobi regards as the peculiar organ for 
 knowing the supersensible, is also mediate, obliged to go through 
 
FICHTE. 
 
 279 
 
 a course of subjective mediations, and can only give itself out as 
 immediate when it wholly forgets its own origin. 
 
 SECTION XLI. 
 
 FICHTE 
 
 JoHANN Gottlieb Fichte was born at Eammenau, in Upper 
 Lusatia, 1762. A nobleman of Silesia became interested in the 
 boy, and having committed him first to the instruction of a 
 clergyman, he afterwards placed him at the high school at Schulp- 
 forte. In his eighteenth year, at Michaelmas, 1780, Fichte 
 entered the university at Jena to study theology. He soon found 
 himself attracted to philosophy, and became powerfully afi"ected 
 by the study of Spinoza. His pecuniary circumstances were 
 straitened, but this only served to harden his will and his energy. 
 In 1784 he became employed as a teacher in a certain family, 
 and spent some time in this occupation with different families in 
 Saxony. In 1787 he sought a place as country clergyman, but 
 was refused on account of his religious opinions. He was now 
 obliged to leave his fatherland, to which he clung with his whole 
 soul. He repaired to Zurich, where, in 1788, he took a post as 
 private tutor, and where also he became acquainted with his 
 future wife, a sister's daughter of Klopstock. At Easter, 1790, 
 he returned to Saxony and taught privately at Leipsic, where he 
 became acquainted with the Kantian philosophy, by means of 
 lessons which he was obliged to give to a student. In the spring 
 of 1791 we find him as private tutor at Warsaw, and soon after 
 in Konigsberg, where he resorted, that he might become personally 
 acquainted with the Kant he had learned to revere. Instead of 
 a letter of recommendation he presented him his " Gritich of all 
 Bevelation,^'' a treatise which Fichte composed in eight days. 
 In this he attempted to deduce, from the practical reason, the 
 possibility of a revelation. This is not seen purely apriori, but 
 
280 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 only under an empirical condition ; we must consider humanity 
 to be in a moral ruin so complete, that the moral law has lost all 
 its influence upon the will and all morality is extinguished. In 
 such a case we may expect that God, as moral governor of the 
 world, would give man, through the sense, some pure moral im- 
 pulses, and reveal himself as lawgiver to them through a special 
 manifestation determined for this end, in the world of sense. In 
 such a case a particular revelation were a postulate of the practi- 
 cal reason. Fichte sought also to determine apriori the possible 
 content of such a revelation. Since we need to know nothing 
 but God, freedom, and immortality, the revelation will contain 
 naught but these, and these it must contain in a comprehensible 
 form, yet so that the symbolical dress may lay no claim to un- 
 limitsd veneration. This treatise, which appeared anonymously 
 in 1792, at once attracted the greatest attention, and was at first 
 universally regarded as a work of Kant. It procured for its 
 author, soon after, a call to the chair of philosophy at Jena, to 
 succeed Reinhold, who then went to Kiel. Fichte received this 
 appointment in 1793 at Zurich, where he had gone to consummate 
 his marriage. At the same time he wrote and published, also 
 anonymously, his " Aids to correct views of the French Revolu- 
 tion an essay which the governments never looked upon with 
 favor. At Easter, 1794, he entered upon his new office, and soon 
 saw his public call confirmed. Taking now a new standpoint, 
 which transcended Kant, he sought to establish this, and carry it 
 out in a series of writings (the Wissenschaftslehre appeared in 
 1794, the Naturrecht in 1796, and the Sittenlehre in 1798), by 
 which he exerted a powerful influence upon the scientific move- 
 ment in Germany, aided as he was in this by the fact that Jena 
 was then one of the most flourishing of the German universi- 
 ties, and the resort of every vigorous head. With Goethe, 
 Schiller, the brothers Schlegel, William von Humboldt, and 
 Hufeland, Fichte was in close fellowship, though this was unfortu- 
 nately broken after a few years. In 1795 he became associate 
 editor of the ^^Philosophical Journal^'' which had been established 
 by Niethammer. A fellow-laborer, Rector Forberg, at Saalfeld, 
 
FICHTE. 
 
 281 
 
 offered for publication in this journal an article " to determine 
 the conception of religion." Fichte advised the author not to 
 publish it, but at length inserted it in the journal, prefacing it, 
 however, with an introduction of his own " On the ground of our 
 faith in a divine government of the world,^^ in which he en- 
 deavored to remove, or at least soften, the views in the article 
 which might give offence. Both the essays raised a great cry of 
 atheism. The elector of Saxony confiscated the journal in his 
 territory, and sent a requisition to the dukes Ernest, who held 
 in common the university of Jena, to summon the author to trial 
 and punishment. Fichte answered the edict of confiscation and 
 attempted to justify himself to the public (1799), by his " Appeal 
 to the Public. An essay which it is reqicested may be read 
 before it is confiscated while he defended his course to the 
 government by an article entitled " The Publishers of the Phi- 
 losophical Journal justified from the charge of Atheism^ The 
 government of Weimar, being as anxious to spare him as it was 
 to please the elector of Saxony, delayed its decision. But as 
 Fichte, either with or without reason, had privately learned that 
 the whole matter was to be settled by reprimanding the accused 
 parties for their want of caution ; and, desiring either a civil 
 acquittal or an open and proper satisfaction, he wrote a private 
 letter to a member of the government, in which he desired his 
 dismission in case of a reprimand, and which he closed with the 
 intimation that many of his friends would leave the university 
 with him, in order to establish together a new one in G-ermany. 
 The government regarded this letter as an application for his dis- 
 charge, indirectly declaring that the reprimand was unavoidable. 
 Fichte, now an object of suspicion, both on account of his religious 
 and political views, looked about him in vain for a place of refuge. 
 The prince of Rudolstadt, to whom he turned, denied him his 
 protection, and his arrival in Berlin (1799) attracted great notice. 
 In Berlin, where he had much intercourse with Frederick Schlegel, 
 and also with Schleiermacher and Novalis, his views became 
 gradually modified ; the catastrophe at Jena had led him from 
 the exclusive moral standpoint which he, resting upon Kant, had 
 
282 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 hitherto held, to the sphere of religion ; he now sought to recon 
 cile religion with his standpoint of the Wissenshaftshhre, and 
 turned himself to a certain mysticism (the second form of the 
 Fichtian theory). After he had privately taught a number of 
 years in Berlin, and had also held philosophical lectures for men 
 of culture, he was recommended (1806) by Beyme and Altenstein, 
 chancellor of state of Hardenberg, to a professorship of philo- 
 sophy in Erlangen, an appointment which he received together 
 with a permit to return to Berlin in the winter, and hold there 
 his philosophical lectures before the public. Thus, in the winter 
 of 1807-8, while a French marshal was governor of Berlin, and 
 while his voice was often drowned by the hostile tumults of the 
 enemy through the streets, he delivered his famous Addresses to 
 the German nation.'''' Fichte labored most assiduously for the 
 foundation of the Berlin university, for only by wholly trans- 
 forming the common education did he believe the regeneration of 
 Germany could be secured. As the new university was opened 
 1809, he was made in the first year dean of the philosophical 
 faculty, and in the second was invested with the dignity of rector. 
 In the " war of liberation," then breaking out, Fichte took the 
 liveliest participation byword and deed. His wife had contracted 
 a nervous fever by her care of the sick and wounded, and though 
 she recovered, he fell a victim to the same disease. He died Jan. 
 28, 1814, not having yet completed his fifty-second year. 
 
 In the following exposition of Fichte's philosophy, we distin- 
 guish between the two internally different periods of his philosophi- 
 zing, that of J ena and that of Berlin. The first division will include 
 two parts — Fichte's theory of science and his practical philosophy. 
 
 I. The Fichtian Philosophy in its Original Form. 1. 
 The Theoretical Philosophy of Fichte, his Wissenschafts- 
 LEHRE, OR Theory of Science. — It has already been shown (^ 39) 
 that the thoroughly-going subjective idealism of Fichte was only 
 the logical consequence of the Kantian standpoint. It was wholly 
 unavoidable that Fichte should entirely reject the Kantian essen- 
 tially thing {thing in itself)^ which Kant had himself declared to 
 be unrecognizable though real, and that he should posit as a 
 
FICHTE. 
 
 283 
 
 proper act. of the mind, that external influence which Kant had 
 referred to the essentially thing. That the Ego alone is, and that 
 which we regard as a limitation of the Ego by external objects, 
 is rather the proper self-limitation of the Ego ; this is the grand 
 feature of the Fichtian as of every idealism. 
 
 Fichte himself supported the standpoint of this Theory of 
 Science as follows : In every experience there is conjointly an 
 Ego and a thing, the intelligence and its object. Which of these 
 two sides must now be reduced to the other ? If the philosophei 
 abstracts the Ego, he has remaining an essentially thing, and must 
 then apprehend his representations or sensations as the products 
 of this object ; if he abstracts the object, he has remaining an es- 
 sentially Ego (an Ego in itself). The former is dogmatism, the 
 latter idealism. Both are irreconcilable with each other, and 
 there is no third way possible. We must therefore choose be- 
 tween the two. In order to decide between the two systems, we 
 must note the following: (1) That the Ego appears in conscious- 
 ness, wherefore the essentially thing is a pure invention, since 
 in consciousness we have only that which is perceived ; (2.) Dog- 
 matism must account for the origin of its representation through 
 some essentially object, it must start from something which does 
 not lie in the consciousness. But the effect of being is only being, 
 and not representation. Hence idealism alone can be correct 
 which does not start from being, but from intelligence. Accord- 
 ing to idealism, intelligence is only active, not passive, because it 
 is a first and absolute : and on this account there belongs to it no 
 being, but simply an acting. The forms of this acting, the system 
 of the necessary mode in which intelligence acts, must be found 
 from the essence of intelligence. If we should take the laws of 
 intelligence from experience, as Kant did his categories, we fail 
 in two respects: (1) We do not see why intelligence must so 
 act, nor whether these laws are immanent laws of intelligence ; 
 (2) We do not see how the object itself originates. Hence the 
 fundamental principles of intelligence, as well as the objective 
 world, must be derived from the Ego itself. 
 
 Fichte supposed that in these results he only expressed the 
 
284 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 true sense of the Kantian philosopliy. " Whatever my system 
 may properly be, whether the genuine criticism thoroughly car 
 ried out, as I believe it is, or howsoever it be named, is of no ac- 
 count." His system, Fichte affirms, had the same view of the 
 matter as Kant's, while the numerous followers of this philosopher 
 had wholly mistaken and misunderstood their master's idealism. 
 In the second introduction to the Theory of Science (1797), 
 Fichte grants to these expounders of the Critick of pure Eeason 
 that it contains some passages where Kant would affirm that sen- 
 sations must be given to the subject from without as the material 
 conditions of objective reality ; but shows that the innumerably 
 repeated declarations of the Critick, that there could be no influ- 
 ence upon us of a real transcendental object outside of us, cannot 
 at all be reconciled with these passages, if any thing other than a 
 simple thought be understood as the ground of the sensations. 
 " So long," adds Fichte, " as Kant does not expressly declare that 
 he derives sensations from an impression of some essentially thing, 
 or, to use his terminology, that sensation must be explained from 
 a transcendental object existing externally to us : so long will I 
 not believe what these expounders tell us of Kant. But if he 
 should give such an explanation, I should sooner regard the Crit- 
 ick of Pure Keason to be a work of chance than of design." For 
 such an explanation the aged Kant did not suffer him long to 
 wait. In the IntelligenzhlaU der Allgemeinen Litter atur 2 eitung 
 (1799), he formally, and with much emphasis, rejects the Fichtian 
 improvement of his system, and protests against every interpreta- 
 tion of his writings according to the conceit of any mind, while he 
 maintains the literal interpretation of his theory as laid down in 
 the Critick of Reason. Reinhold remarks upon all this : " Since 
 the well known and public explanation of Kant respecting Fichte's 
 philosophy, there can be no longer a doubt that Kant himself 
 would represent his own system, and desire to have it represented 
 by his readers, entirely otherwise than Fichte had represented and 
 interpreted it. But from this it irresistibly follows, that Kant 
 himself did not regard his system as illogical because it presup- 
 posed something external to the subjectivity. Nevertheless, it 
 
FICHTE. 
 
 285 
 
 does not at all follow that Fichte erred when he declared that this 
 system, with such a presupposition, must be illogical." So much 
 for Reinhold. That Kant himself did not fail to see this incon- 
 clusiveness, is evident from the changes he introduced into the 
 second edition of the Critick of Pure Reason, where he suffered 
 the idealistic side of his system to fall back decidedly behind the 
 empirical. 
 
 From what has been said, we can see the universal standpoint 
 of the Theory of Science; the Ego is made a principle, and 
 from the Ego every thing else is sought to be derived. It hardly 
 needs to be remarked, that by this Ego we are to understand, not 
 any individual, but the universal Ego, the universal rationality. 
 The Ego and the individual, the pure and the empirical Ego, are 
 wholly different conceptions. 
 
 We have still the following preface to make concerning the 
 form of the Theory of Science. A theory of science, according 
 to Fichte, must posit some supreme principle, from which every 
 other must be derived. This supreme principle must be absolute- 
 ly, and through itself, certain. If our human knowledge should 
 be any thing but fragmentary, there must be such a supreme 
 principle. But now, since such a principle does not admit of 
 proof, every thing depends upon giving it a trial. Its test and 
 demonstration can only be thus gained, viz., if we find a principle 
 to which all science may be referred, then is this shown to be a 
 fundamental principle. But besides the first fundamental princi- 
 ple, there are yet two others to be considered, the one of which is 
 unconditioned as to its content, but as to its form, conditioned 
 through and derived from the first fundamental principle ; the 
 other the reverse. The relation of these three principles to each 
 other is, in fine, this, viz., that the second stands opposed to the 
 first, while a third is the product of the two. Hence, according 
 to this plan, the first absolute principle starts from the Ego, the 
 second opposes to the Ego a thing or a non-Ego, and the third 
 brings forward the Ego again in reaction against the thing or the 
 non-Ego. This method of Fichte (thesis, — antithesis, — synthesis) 
 is the same as Hegel subsequently adopted, and applied to the 
 
286 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 whole system of philosophy, a union of the synthetical and ana- 
 lytical methods. We start with a fundamental synthesis, which 
 we analyze to produce its antitheses, in order to unite these anti- 
 theses again through a second synthesis. But in making this 
 second synthesis, our analysis discovers still farther antitheses, 
 which obliges us therefore to find another synthesis, and so on- 
 ward in the process, till we come at length to antitheses which can 
 no longer he perfectly but only approximately connected. 
 
 We stand now upon the threshold of the Theory of Science. 
 It is divided into three parts. (1) General principles of a theory 
 of science. (2) Principles of theoretical knowledge. (3) Prin- 
 ciples of practical science. 
 
 As has already been said, there are three supreme fundamen- 
 tal principles, one absolutely unconditioned, and two relatively 
 unconditioned. 
 
 (1.) The absolutely first and absolutely unconditioned funda- 
 mental principle ought to express that act of the mind which lies 
 at the basis of all consciousness, and alone makes consciousness 
 possible. Such is the principle of identity, A=A. This princi- 
 ple remains, and cannot be thought away, though every empirical 
 determination be removed. It is a fact of consciousness, and 
 must, therefore, be universally admitted : but at the same time it 
 is by no means conditioned, like every other empirical fact, but 
 unconditioned, because it is a free act. By affirming that this 
 principle is certain without any farther ground, we ascribe to our- 
 selves the faculty of positing something absolutely. We do not, 
 therefore, affirm that A is, but only that if A is, then it is equal 
 to A. It is no matter now about the content of the principle, we 
 need only regard its form. The principle A=A is, therefore, 
 conditioned (hypothetically) as to its content, and unconditioned 
 only as to its form and its connection. If we would now have a 
 principle unconditioned in its content as well as in its connection, 
 we put Ego in the place of A, as we are fully entitled to do, since 
 the connection of subject and predicate contained in the judgment 
 A=A is posited in the Ego and through the Ego. Hence A=A 
 becomes transformed into Ego=Ego. This principle is uncondi- 
 
FICHTE. 
 
 287 
 
 tioned not only as to its connection, but also as to its content. 
 While we could not, instead of A=A, say that A is, yet we can 
 instead of Ego=Ego, say that Ego is. All the facts of the em- 
 pirical consciousness find their ground of explanation in this, viz., 
 that before any thing else is posited in the Ego, the Ego itself is 
 there. This fact, that the Ego is absolutely posited and grounded 
 on itself, is the basis of all acting in the human mind, and shows 
 the pure character of activity in itself. The Ego is, because it 
 posits itself, and it only is, because this simple positing of itself is 
 wholly by itself. The being of the Ego is thus seen in the posi- 
 ting of the Ego, and on the other hand, the Ego is enabled to 
 posit simply by virtue of its being. It is at the same time the 
 acting, and the product of the action. I am, is the expression of 
 the only possible deed. Logically considered we have, in the 
 first principle of a Theory of Science, A=A, the logical law of 
 identity. From the proposition A==A, we arrive at the proposi- 
 tion Ego=Ego. The latter proposition, however, does not derive 
 its validity from the former, but contrarywise. The prius of all 
 judgments is the Ego, which posits the connection of subject and 
 predicate. The logical law of identity arises, therefore, from 
 Ego = Ego. Metaphysically considered, we have in this same first 
 principle of a Theory of Science, the category of reality. We 
 obtain this category by abstracting every thing from the content, 
 and reflecting simply upon the mode of acting of the human mind. 
 From the Ego, as the absolute subject, every category is derived 
 (2.) The second fundamental principle y conditioned in its con- 
 tent, and only unconditioned in its form, which is just as incapable 
 as the first of demonstration or derivation, is also a fact of the 
 empirical consciousness : it is the proposition non-A is not=A. 
 This sentence is unconditioned in its form, because it is free act 
 like the first, from which it cannot be derived ; but in its content, 
 as to its matter it is conditioned, because if a non-A is posited, 
 there must have previously been posited an A. Let us examine 
 this principle more closely. In the first principle, A=A, the 
 form of the act was a positing, while in this second principle it is 
 an oppositing. There is an absolute opposition, and this opposi- 
 
288 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 tioD, in its simple form, is an act absolutely possible, standing un- 
 der no condition, limited by no higher ground. But as to its 
 matter, the opposition presupposes a position; the non-A cannot 
 be posited without the A. What non-A is, I do not through that 
 yet know : I only know concerning non-A that it is the opposite 
 of A : hence I only know what non-A is under the condition that 
 I know A. But now A is posited through the Ego ; there is 
 originally nothing posited but the Ego, and nothing but this abso- 
 lutely posited. Hence there can be an absolute opposition only 
 to the Ego. That which is opposed to the Ego is the non-Ego. 
 A non-Ego is absolutely opposed to the Ego, and this is the second 
 fact of the empirical consciousness. In every thing ascribed to 
 the Ego, the contrary, by virtue of this simple opposition, must 
 be ascribed to the non Ego. — As we obtained from the first prin- 
 ciple Ego==Ego, the logical law of identity, so now we have, from 
 the second sentence Ego is not = non-Ego, the logical law of con- 
 tradiction. And metaphysically, — since we wholly abstract the 
 definite act of judgment, and, simply in the form of sequence, con- 
 clude not-being from opposite being, — -we possess from this second 
 principle the category of negation. 
 
 (3.) The third principle^ conditioned in its form, is almost 
 capable of proof, since it is determined by two others. At every 
 step we approach the province where every thing can be proved. 
 This third principle is conditioned in its form, and unconditioned 
 only in its content : i. e. the problem, but not the solution of the 
 act to be established through it, has been given through the two 
 preceding principles. The solution is afi'orded unconditionally 
 and absolutely by a decisive word of the reason. The problem to 
 be solved by this third principle is this, viz., to adjust the con- 
 tradiction contained in the two former ones. On the one side, 
 the Ego is wholly suppressed by the non-Ego : there can be no 
 positing of the Ego so far as the non-Ego is posited. On the 
 other side, the non-Ego is only an Ego posited in the conscious- 
 ness, and hence the Ego is not suppressed by the non- Ego. The 
 Ego appearing on the one side to be suppressed, is not really sup- 
 pressed. Such a result would be non-A=A. In order to remove 
 
FICHTE. 
 
 289 
 
 this contradiction, wbicli threatens to destroy the identity of our 
 consciousness, and the only absolute foundation of our knowledge, 
 we must find in x that which will justify both of the first two 
 principles, and leave the identity of our consciousness undisturbed. 
 The two opposites, the Ego and the non-Ego, should be united in 
 the consciousness, should be alike posited without either excluding 
 the other ; they should be received in the identity of the proper 
 consciousness. How shall being and not-being, reality and nega- 
 tion, be conceived together without destroying each other ? They 
 will reciprocally limit each other. Hence the unknown quantity 
 whose terms we are seeking, stands for these limits : limitation 
 is the sought-for act of the Ego, and as category in the thought, 
 we have thus the category of determination or limitation. But 
 in limitation, there is also given the category of quantity^ for 
 when we say that any thing is limited, wc mean that its reality is 
 through negation, not wholly^ but only j[>artially suppressed. 
 Thus the conception of limit contains also the conception of divisi- 
 bility, besides the conceptions of reality and negation. Through 
 the act of limitation, the Ego as well as the non-Ego, is posited as 
 divisible. Still farther, we see how a logical law follows from the 
 third fundamental principle as well as from the first two. If we 
 abstract the definite content, the Ego and the non-Ego, and leave 
 remaining the simple form of the union of opposites through the 
 conception of divisibility, we have then the logical principle of 
 the ground^ or foundation, which may be expressed in the formula : 
 A in part = non-A, non-A in part = A. Wherever two oppo- 
 sites are alike in one characteristic, we consider the ground as a 
 ground of relation, and wherever two similar things are opposite 
 in one characteristic, we consider the ground as a ground of dis- 
 tinction. — With these three principles we have now exhausted the 
 measure of that which is unconditioned and absolutely certain. 
 We can embrace the three in the following formula : 
 
 / posit in the Ego a divisible non Ego over against the 
 divisible Ego. No philosophy can go beyond this cognition, and 
 every fundamental philosophy should go back to this. Just so 
 far as it does this, it becomes science (Wissenschaftslehre). 
 13 
 
290 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Every thing which can appear in a system of knowledge, as well 
 as a farther division of the Theory of Science itself, must be de- 
 rived from this. The proposition that the Ego and the non-Ego 
 reciprocally limit each other, may be divided into the following 
 two : (1) the Ego posits itself as limited through the non-Ego 
 {i. e. the Ego is in a cognitive (or passive) relation ) ; (2) the 
 Ego posits the non-Ego as limited through the Ego {i. e. the Ego 
 is in an active relation). The former proposition is the basis of 
 the theoretical, and the latter of the practical part of the Theory 
 of Science. The latter part cannot, at the outset, be brought 
 upon the stage; for the non-Ego, which should be limited by the 
 acting Ego, does not at the outset exist, and we must wait and 
 see whether it will find, in the theoretical part, a reality. 
 
 The groundwork of theoretical knowledge advances through 
 an uninterrupted series of antitheses and syntheses. The funda- 
 mental synthesis of the theoretical Theory of Science is the pro- 
 position : the Ego posits itself as determined (limited) hy the 
 non-Ego. If we analyze this sentence, we find in it two subordi- 
 nate sentences which are reciprocally opposite. (1) The non- 
 Ego as active determines the Ego, which thus far is passive ; but 
 since all activity must start from the Ego, so (2) the Ego deter- 
 mines itself through an absolute activity. Herein is a contradic- 
 tion, that the Ego should be at the same time active and passive. 
 Since this contradiction would destroy the above proposition, and 
 also suppress the unity of consciousness, we are forced to seek 
 some point, some new synthesis, in which these given antitheses 
 may be united. This synthesis is attained when we find that the 
 conceptions of action and passion, which are contained under the 
 categories of reality and negation, find their compensation and 
 due adjustment in the conception of divisibility. The propo- 
 sitions : " the Ego determines," and " the Ego is determined," 
 are reconciled in the proposition : " the Ego determines itself in 
 part, and is determined in part." Both, however, should be con- 
 sidered as one and the same. Hence more accurately : as many 
 parts of reality as the Ego posits in itself, so many parts of nega- 
 tion does it posit in the non-Ego ; and as many parts of reality 
 
FICHTE. 
 
 291 
 
 as tlie Ego posits in tlie non-Ego, so many parts of negation does 
 it posit in itself. This determination is reciprocal determination, 
 or reciprocal action. Thus Fichte deduces the last of the three 
 categories under Kant's general category of relation. In a simi- 
 lar way (viz., by finding a synthesis for apparent contradictions), 
 he deduces the two other categories of this class, viz., that of 
 cause, and that of substance. The process is thus : So far as the 
 Ego is determined, and therefore passive, has the non-Ego reali- 
 ty. The category of reciprocal determination, to which we may 
 ascribe indifferently either of the two sides, reality or negation, 
 may, more strictly taken, imply that the Ego is passive, and the 
 non-Ego active. The notion which expresses this relation is that 
 of causality. That, to which activity is ascribed, is called cause 
 (primal reality), and that to which passiveness is ascribed, is 
 called effect; both, conceived in connection, may be termed 
 a working. On the other side, the Ego determines itself. Here- 
 in is a contradiction ; ( 1 ) the Ego determines itself ; it is there- 
 fore that which determines, and is thus active ; (2) it determines 
 itself; it is therefore that which becomes determined, and is thus 
 passive. Thus in one respect and in one action both reality and 
 negation are ascribed to it. To resolve this contradiction, we 
 must find a mode of action which is activity and passiveness in 
 one ; the Ego must determine its passiveness through activity, 
 and its activity through passiveness. This solution is attained by 
 aid of the conception of quantity. In the E'go all reality is first 
 of all posited as absolute quantum, as absolute totality, and thus 
 far the Ego may be compared to a greatest circle which contains 
 all the rest. A definite quantum of activity, or a limited sphere 
 within this greatest circle of activity, is indeed a reality ; but 
 when compared with the totality of activity, is it also a negation 
 of the totality or passiveness. Here we have found the media- 
 tion sought for ; it lies in the notion of substance. In so far as 
 the Ego is considered as the whole circle, embracing the totality 
 of all realities, is it substance ; but so far as it becomes posited 
 in a determinate sphere of this circle, is it accidental. No acci- 
 dence is conceivable without substance ; for, in order to know 
 
292 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 that any thing is a definite reality, it must first be referred to 
 reality in general, or to substance. In every change we think of 
 substance in the universal ; accidence is something specific (de- 
 terminate), which changes with every changing cause. There is 
 originally hid one substance, the Ego ; in this one substance all 
 possible accidents, and therefore all possible realities, are posited. 
 The Ego alone is the absolutely infinite. The Ego, as thinking 
 and as acting, indicates a limitation. The Fichtian theory is ac- 
 cordingly Spinozism, only (as Jacobi strikingly called it) a re- 
 versed and idealistic Spinozism. 
 
 Let us look back a moment. The objectivity which Kant 
 had allowed to exist Fichte has destroyed. There is only the 
 Ego. But the Ego presupposes a non-Ego, and therefore a kind 
 of object. How the Ego comes to posit such an object, must 
 the theoretical Theory of Science now proceed to show. 
 
 There are two extreme views respecting the relation of the 
 Ego to the non-Ego, according as we start from the conception 
 of cause, or that of substance. (1) Starting from the concep- 
 tion of cause, we have posited through the passiveness of the 
 Ego an activity of the non-Ego. This passiveness of the Ego 
 must have some ground. This cannot lie in the Ego, which in 
 itself posits only activity. Consequently it lies in the non-Ego. 
 Here the distinction between action and passion is apprehended, 
 not simply as quantitative (i. e., viewing the passiveness as a di- 
 minished activity), but the passion is in quality opposed to the 
 action ; a presupposed activity of the non-Ego is, therefore, a 
 real ground of the passiveness in the Ego. (2) Starting from 
 the conception of substance, we have posited a passiveness of the 
 Ego through its own activity. Here the passiveness in respect 
 of quality is the same as activity, it being only a diminished ac- 
 tivity. While, therefore, according to the first view, the passive 
 Ego has a ground distinct in quality from the Ego, and thus a 
 real ground, yet here its ground is only a diminished activity of 
 the Ego, distinct only in quantity from the Ego, and is thus an 
 ideal ground. The former view is dogmatic realism, the latter 
 is dogmatic idealism. The latter aflirms : all reality of the non- 
 
FICHTE. 
 
 203 
 
 Ego is only a reality given it from tlie Ego ; the former declares : 
 nothing can be given, unless there be something to receive, unless 
 an independent reality of the non-Ego, as thing in itself, be pre- 
 supposed. Both views present thus a contradiction, which can 
 only be removed by a new synthesis. Fichte attempted this syn- 
 thesis of idealism and realism, by bringing out a mediating sys- 
 tem of critical idealism. For this purpose he sought to show 
 that the ideal ground and the real ground are one and the same. 
 Neither is the simple activity of the Ego a ground for the reality 
 of the non-Ego, nor is the simple activity of the non-Ego a 
 ground for the passiveness in the Ego. Both must be conceived 
 together in this way, viz., the activity of the Ego meets a hin- 
 drance^ which is set up against it, not without some assistance of 
 the Ego, and which circumscribes and reflects in itself this activ- 
 ity of the Ego, The hindrance is found when the subjective 
 can be no farther extended, and the expanding activity of the 
 Ego is driven back into itself, producing as its result self-limita- 
 tion. What we call objects are nothing other than the different 
 impinging of the activity of the Ego on some inconceivable hin- 
 drance, and these determinations of the Ego, we carry over to 
 something external to ourselves, and represent them to ourselves 
 as space filling matter. That which Fichte calls a hindrance 
 through the non-Ego, is thus in fact the same as Kant calls thing 
 essentially, the only difference being that with Fichte it is made 
 subjective. From this point Fichte then deduces the subjective 
 activities of the Ego, which mediate, or seek to mediate, theoret- 
 ically, the Ego with the non-Ego — as imagination, representation 
 sensation, intuition, feeling), understanding, faculty of judgment, 
 reason ; and in connection with this he brought out the subjective 
 projections of the intuition, space, and time. 
 
 We have now reached the third part of the Theory of Sci- 
 ence, viz., the foundation of the practical. We have seen that 
 the Ego represents. But that it may represent does not depend 
 upon the Ego alone, but is determined by something external to 
 it. We could in no way conceive of a representation, except 
 through the presupposition that the Ego finds some hindrance to 
 
294 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 its undetermined and unlimited activity. Accordingly the Ego, 
 as intelligence, is universally dependent upon an indefinite, and 
 hitherto wholly indefinable non-Ego, and only through and by 
 means of such non-Ego, is it intelligence. A finite being is only 
 finite as intelligence. These limits, however, we shall break 
 through. The practical law which unites the finite Ego with the 
 infinite, can depend upon nothing external to ourselves. The 
 Ego, according to all its determinations, should be posited abso- 
 lutely through itself, and hence should be wholly independent of 
 every possible non-Ego. Consequently, the absolute Ego and 
 the intelligent Ego, both of which should constitute but one, are 
 opposed to each other. This contradiction is obviated, when we 
 see that because the absolute Ego is capable of no passiveness, 
 but is absolute activity, therefore the Ego determines, through it- 
 self, that hitherto unknown non-Ego, to which the hindrance has 
 been ascribed. The limits which the Ego, as theoretic, has set 
 over against itself in the non-Ego, it must, as practical, seek to 
 destroy, and absorb again the non-Ego in itself (or conceive it as 
 the self-limitation of the Ego). The Kantian primacy of the 
 practical reason is here made a truth. The transition of the 
 theoretical part into the practical, the necessity of advancing 
 from the one to the other, Fichte represents more closely thus : — 
 The theoretical Theory of Science had to do with the mediation 
 of the Ego, and the non-Ego. For this end it introduced one 
 connecting link after another, without ever attaining its end. 
 Then enters the reason with the absolute and decisive word : 
 " there ought to be no non-Ego, since the non-Ego can in no way 
 be united with the Ego ; " and with this the knot is cut, though 
 not untied. Thus it is the incongruity between the absolute 
 /practical) Ego, and the finite (intelligent) Ego, which is carried 
 over beyond the theoretical province into the practical. True, 
 this incongruity does not wholly disappear, even in the practical 
 province, where the act is only an infinite striving to surpass the 
 limits of the non-Ego. The Ego, so far as it is practical, has, 
 indeed, the tendency to pass beyond the actual world, and estab- 
 lish an ideal world, as it would be were every reality posited by 
 
nCHTE. 
 
 295 
 
 the absolute Ego ; but this striving is always confined to the 
 finite partly through itself, because it goes out towards objects, 
 and objects are finite, and partly through the resistance of the 
 sensible world. We ought to seek to reach the infinite, but we 
 cannot do it ; this striving and inability is the impress of our des- 
 tiny for eternity. 
 
 Thus — and in these words Fichte brings together the result of 
 the Theory of Science — the whole being of finite rational natures 
 is comprehended and exhausted : an original idea of our abso- 
 lute being ; an effort to reflect upon our^^elves, in order to gain 
 this idea ; a limitation, not of this striving, but of our own exist- 
 ence, which first becomes actual through this limitation, or 
 through an opposite principle, a non-Ego, or our finiteness ; a self- 
 consciousness, and especially a consciousness of our practical 
 strivings ; a determination accordingly of our representations, 
 and through these of our actions ; a constant widening of our 
 limits into the infinite. 
 
 2. Fichte's Practical Philosophy. — The principles which 
 Fichte had developed in his Theory of Science he applied to 
 practical life, especially to the theory of rights and morals. He 
 sought to deduce here every thing with methodical rigidness, 
 without admitting any thing which could not be proved from 
 experience. Thus, in the theory of rights and of morals, he will 
 not presuppose a plurality of persons, but first deduces this : even 
 that the man has a body is first demonstrated, though, to be sure, 
 not stringently. 
 
 The Theory of Bights (the rights of nature) Fichte founds 
 upon the conception of the individual. First, he deduces the 
 conception of rights, and as follows : — A finite rational being can- 
 not posit itself without ascribing to itself a free activity. Through 
 this positing of its faculties to a free activity, this rational being 
 posits an external world of sense, for it can ascribe to itself no 
 activity till it has posited an object towards which this activity 
 may be directed. Still farther, this free activity of a rational be- 
 ing presupposes other rational beings, for without these it would 
 never be conscious that it was free. We have therefore a plu- 
 
296 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 rality of free individuals, each one of whom has a sphere of free 
 activity. This co-existence of free individuals is not possible 
 without a relation of rights. Since no one with freedom passes 
 beyond his sphere, and each one therefore limits himself, they recog- 
 nize each other as rational and free. This relation of a reciprocal 
 acting through intelligence and freedom between rational beings, 
 according to which each one has his freedom limited by the con- 
 ception of the possibility of the other's freedom, under the con- 
 dition also that this other limits his own freedom also through 
 that of the first, is called a relation of rights. The supreme 
 maxim of a theory of rights is therefore this : limit thy freedom 
 through the conception of the freedom of every other person with 
 whom thou canst be connected. After Fichte has attempted the 
 application of this conception of rights, and ior this end has de- 
 duced the corporeity, the anthropological side of man, he passes 
 over to a proper theory of rights. The theory of rights may be 
 divided into three parts. (1) Rights which belong to the simple 
 conception of person are called original rights. The original 
 right is the absolute right of the person to be only a cause in the 
 sensible world, though he may be absolutely (in other relations 
 than to the sense) an effect. In this are contained, (a) the right 
 of personal (bodily) freedom, and (h) the right of property. But 
 every relation of rights between individual persons is conditioned 
 through each one's recognition of the rights of the other. Each 
 one must limit the quantum of his free acts for the sake of the 
 freedom of the other, and only so far as the other has respect to 
 my freedom need I have regard to his. In case, therefore, the 
 other does not respect my original rights, some mechanical neces- 
 sity must be sought in order to secure the rights of person, and 
 this involves (2) the Fdght of Coercion. The laws of punishment 
 have their end in securing that the opposite of that which is in- 
 tended shall follow every unrighteous aim, that every vicious pur- 
 pose shall be destroyed, and the right in its integrity be estab- 
 lished. To establish such a law of coercion, and to secure a uni- 
 versal coercive power, the free individuals must enter into cove- 
 nant among themselves. Such a covenant is only possible on the 
 
FICHTE. 
 
 297 
 
 ground of a common nature. Natural right, i. e. the rightful rela- 
 tion between man and man, presupposes thus (3) a civil right, viz., 
 (a) a free covenant, a compact of citizens by which the free individ- 
 uals guarantee to each other their reciprocal rights ; {h) positive 
 laws, a civil legislation, through which the common will of all be- 
 comes law ; (c) an executive force, a civil power which executes 
 the common will, and in which, therefore, the private will and the 
 common will are synthetically united. The particular view of 
 Fichte's theory of rights is this : on the one side there is the state 
 as reason demands (philosophical theory of rights), and on the 
 other side the state as it actually is (theory of positive rights and 
 of the state). But now comes up the problem, to make the actual 
 state ever more and more conformable to the state of reason. 
 The science which has this approximation for its aim, is polity. 
 We can demand of no actual state a perfect conformity to the 
 idea of a state. Every state constitution is according to right, if 
 it only leaves possible an advancement to a better state, and the 
 only constitution wholly contrary to right is that whose end is to 
 hold every thing just as it is. 
 
 The absolute Ego of the Theory of Science is separated in the 
 Theory of Rights into an infinite number of persons with rights : 
 to bring it out again in its unity is the problem of Ethics. Right 
 and morals are essentially different. Right is the external neces- 
 sity to omit or to do something in order not to infringe upon the 
 freedom of another ; the inner necessity to do or omit some- 
 thing wholly independent of external ends, constitutes the moral 
 nature of man. And as the theory of rights arose from the conflict 
 of the impulse of freedom in one subject with the impulse of free- 
 dom in another subject, so does the theory of morals or ethics arise 
 from such a conflict, which, in the present case, is not external but 
 internal, between two impulses in one and the same person. (1) The 
 rational being is impelled towards absolute independence, and 
 strives after freedom for the sake of freedom. This fundamental 
 impulse may be called the pure impulse, and it furnishes the 
 formal principle of ethics, the principle of absolute autonomy, of 
 absolute indeterminableness through anything external to the Ego. 
 13* 
 
298 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 But (2) as the rational being is actually empirical and finite, as it 
 by nature posits over against itself a non-Ego and posits itself as 
 corporeal, so there is found beside the pure impulse another, the 
 impulse of nature, which makes for its end not freedom but enjoy- 
 ment. This impulse of nature furnishes the material, utilitarian 
 (eudoemoniacal) principle of striving after a connected enjoyment. 
 Both impulses, which from a transcendental standpoint are one 
 and the same original impulse of the human being, strive after 
 unity, and furnish a third impulse which is a mingling of the two. 
 The pure impulse gives the form, and the natural impulse the 
 content of an action. It is true that sensuous objects will be 
 chosen, but by virtue of the pure impulse these are modified so as 
 to conform to the absolute Ego. This mingled impulse is now the 
 moral impulse. It mediates the pure and the natural impulse. 
 But since these two lie infinitely apart, the approximation of the 
 natural to the pure impulse is an infinite progression. The intent 
 in an action is directed towards a complete freeing from nature, 
 and it is only the result of our limitation that the act should re- 
 main still conformable to the natural impulse. Since the Ego 
 can never be independent so long as it is Ego, the final aim of the 
 rational being lies in infinity. There must be a course in whose 
 progress the Ego can conceive itself as approximating towards ab- 
 solute independence. This course is determined in infinity in the 
 idea ; there is, therefore, no possible case in which it is not deter- 
 mined what the pure impulse should demand. We might name 
 this course the moral determination (destiny) of the finite rational 
 being. The principle of ethics is, therefore : Alivays fulfil thy 
 destiny ! That which is in every moment conformable to our 
 moral destiny, is at the same time demanded by our natural im- 
 pulse, though it does not follow that every thing which the latter 
 demands agrees therefore with the former. I ought to act only 
 when conscious that something is duty, and I ought to discharge 
 the duty for its own sake. The blind motives of sympathy, love 
 of mankind, &c., have not, as mere impulses of nature, morality. 
 The moral impulse has causality as having none, for it demands 
 be free ! Through the conception of the absolute ought, is the 
 
FICHTE. 
 
 299 
 
 rational being absolutely independent, and is represented thus 
 only when acting from duty. The formal condition of the mo- 
 rality of our actions, is : act always according to the best con- 
 viction of thy duty ; or, act according to thy conscience. The 
 absolute criterion of the correctness of our conviction of duty is 
 a feeling of truth and certainty. This immediate feeling never 
 deceives, for it only exists with the perfect harmony of our em- 
 pirical Ego with that which is pure and original. From this 
 point Fichte developes his particular ethics, or theory of duties, 
 which, however, we must here pass by. 
 
 Fichte's theory of religion is developed in the above men- 
 tioned treatise : " On the ground of our faith in a divine gov- 
 ernjnent of the world^'' and in the writings which he subsequently 
 put forth in its defence. The moral government of the world, 
 says Fichte, we assume to be the divine. This divine government 
 becomes living and actual in us through right-doing : it is pre- 
 supposed in every one of our actions which are only performed in 
 the presupposition that the moral end is attainable in the world 
 of sense. The faith in such an order of the world comprises the 
 whole of faith, for this living and active moral order is God ; we 
 need no other God, and can comprehend no other. There is no 
 ground in the reason to go out of this moral order of the world, 
 and by concluding from design to a designer, affirm a separate being 
 as its cause. Is, then, this order an accidental one ? It is the 
 absolute First of all objective knowledge. But now if you should 
 be allowed to draw the conclusion that there is a God as a separate 
 being, what have you gained by this ? This being should be dis- 
 tinct from you and the world, it should work in the latter accord- 
 ing to conceptions ; it should, therefore, be capable of conceptions, 
 and possess personality and consciousness. But what do you call 
 personality and consciousness ? Certainly that which you have 
 found in yourself, which you have learned to know in yourself, and 
 which you have characterized with such a name. But that you 
 cannot conceive of this without limitation and finiteness, you 
 might see by the slightest attention to the construction of this 
 conception. By attaching, therefore, such a predicate to this be- 
 
300 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 ing, you bring it down to a finite, and make it a being like your- 
 self; you have not conceived God as you intended to do, but have 
 only multiplied yourself in thought. The conception of God, as 
 a separate substance, is impossible and contradictory. God has 
 essential existence only as such a moral order of the world. Every 
 belief in a divine being, which contains any thing more than the 
 conception of the moral order of the world, is an abomination to 
 me, and in the highest degree unworthy of a rational being. — Re- 
 ligion and morality are, on this standpoint, as on that of Kant, 
 naturally one ; both are an apprehending of the supersensible, the 
 former through action and the latter through faith. This " Reli- 
 gion of joyous right- doing," Fichte farther carried out in the 
 writings which he put forth to rebut the charge of atheism. He 
 affirms that nothing but the principles of the new philosophy could 
 restore the degenerate religious sense among men, and bring to 
 light the inner essence of the Christian doctrine. Especially he 
 seeks to show this in his Appeal " to the public. In this he 
 says : to furnish an answer to the questions : what is good ? what 
 is true ? is the aim of my philosophical system. "We must start 
 with the affirmation that there is something absolutely true and 
 good ; that there is something which can hold and bind the free 
 flight of thought. There is a voice in man which cannot be 
 silenced, which affirms that there is a duty, and that it must be 
 done simply for its own sake. Resting on this basis, there is 
 opened to us an entirely new world in our being ; we attain a 
 higher existence, which is independent of all nature, and is 
 grounded simply in ourselves. I would call this absolute self-sat- 
 isfaction of the reason, this perfect freedom from all dependence, 
 blessedness. As the single but unerring means of blessedness, my 
 conscience points me to the fulfilment of duty. I am, therefore, 
 impressed by the unshaken conviction, that there is a rule and 
 fixed order, according to which the purely moral disposition neces- 
 sarily makes blessed. It is absolutely necessary, and it is the 
 essential element in religion, that the man who maintains the dig- 
 nity of his reason, will repose on the faith in this order of a moral 
 world, will regard each one of his duties as an enactment of this 
 
FICHTE. 
 
 301 
 
 order, and will joyfully submit himself to, and find bliss in, every 
 consequence of his duty. Thou shalt know God if I can only 
 beget in thee a dutiful character, and though to others of us thou 
 mayest seem to be still in the world of sense, yet for thyself art 
 thou already a partaker of eternal life. 
 
 II. The later form of Fichte's Philosophy. — Every thing 
 of importance which Fichte accomplished as a speculative philoso- 
 pher, is contained in the Theory of Science as above considered. 
 Subsequently, after his departure from Jena, his system gradually 
 became modified, and from difi"erent causes. Partly, because it 
 was difficult to maintain the rigid idealism cf the Theory of 
 Science ; partly, because Schelling's natural philosophy, which 
 now appeared, was not without an influence upon Fichte's think- 
 ing, though the latter denied this and became involved in a bitter 
 controversy with Schelling; and, partly, his outward relations, 
 which were far from being happy, contributed to modify his view 
 of the world. Fichte's writings, in this second period, are for the 
 most part popular, and intended for a mixed class of readers- 
 They all bear the impress of his acute mind, and of his exalted 
 manly character, but lack the originality and the scientific sequence 
 of his earlier productions. Those of them which are scientific 
 do not satisfy the demands which he himself had previously laid 
 down with so much strictness, both for himself and others, in 
 respect of genetic construction and philosophical method. His 
 doctrine at this time seems rather as a web, of his old subjective 
 idealistic conceptions and the newly added objective idealism, so 
 loosely connected that Schelling might call it the completest 
 syncretism aud eclecticism. His new standpoint is chiefly distin- 
 guished from his old by his attempt to merge his subjective ideal- 
 ism into an objective pantheism (in accordance with the new 
 Platonism), to transmute the Ego of his earlier philosophy into 
 the absolute, or the thought of God. God, whose conception he 
 had formerly placed only at the end of his system, in the doubt- 
 ful form of a moral order of the world, becomes to him now the 
 absolute beginning, and single element of his philosophy. This 
 gave to his philosophy an entirely new color. The moral severity 
 
302 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 gives place to a religious mildness ; instead of the Ego and the 
 Ought, life and love are now the chief features of his philosophy ; 
 in place of the exact dialectic of the Theory of Science, he now 
 makes choice of mystical and metaphorical modes of expression. 
 
 This second period of Fichte's philosophy is especially charac- 
 terized by its inclination to religion and Christianity, as exhibited 
 most prominently in the essay " Direction to a Blessed Life^ 
 Fichte here affirms that his new doctrine is exactly that of Chris- 
 tianity, and especially of the Gospel according to John. He 
 would make this gospel alone the clear foundation of Christian 
 truth, since the other apostles remained half Jews after their con- 
 version, and adhered to the fundamental error of Judaism, that 
 the world had a creation in time. Fichte lays great weight upon 
 the first part of John's prologue, where the formation of the world 
 out of nothing is confuted, and a true view laid down of a revela- 
 tion co-eternal with Grod, and necessarily given with his being. 
 That which this prologue says of the incarnation of the Logos in 
 the person of Jesus, has, according to Fichte, only a historic 
 validity. The absolute and eternally true standpoint is, that at 
 all times, and in every one, without exception, who is vitally sen- 
 sible of his union with God, and who actually and in fact yields 
 up his whole individual life to the divine life within him, — the 
 eternal word becomes flesh in the same way as in Jesus Christ 
 and holds a personal, sensible, and human existence. The whole 
 communion of believers, the first-born alike with the later born, 
 coincides in the Godhead, the common source of life for all. And 
 so then, Christianity having gained its end, disappears again in 
 the eternal truth, and affirms that every man should come to a 
 union with God. So long as man desires to be himself any thing 
 whatsoever, God does not come to him, for no man can become 
 God. But just so soon as he purely, wholly, and radically gives 
 up himself, God alone remains, and is all and in all. The man 
 himself can beget no God, but he can give up himself as a proper 
 negation, and thus he disappears in God. 
 
 The result of his advanced philosophizing, Fichte has briefly 
 
HERBART. 
 
 303 
 
 and clearly comprehended in the following lines, which we extract 
 from two posthumous sonnets : 
 
 The Eternal One 
 Lives in my life and sees in my beholding. 
 Nought is but God, and God is nought but life. 
 Clearly the vail of things rises before thee ; 
 It is thyself, what though the mortal die 
 And hence there lives but God in thine endeavors , 
 If thou -wilt look through that which lives beyond this death, 
 The vail of things shall seem to thee as vail, 
 And imveiled thou shalt look upon the life divine. 
 
 SECTION XLII. 
 
 HERBAKT. 
 
 A peculiar, and in many respects noticeable, carrying out of 
 the Kantian philosophy, was attempted by JoJiann Friedrich 
 Herhart^ who was born at Oldenburg in 1776, chosen professor 
 of philosophy in Grottingen in 1805 ; made Kant's successor at 
 Konigsberg in 1808, and recalled to Gottingen in 1838, where he 
 died in 18-il. His philosophy, instead of making, like most other 
 systems, for its principle, an idea of the reason, followed the direc- 
 tion of Kant, and expended itself mainly in a critical examina- 
 tion of the subjective experience. It is essentially a criticism, 
 but with results which are peculiar, and which differ wholly from 
 those of Kant. Its fundamental position in the history of phi- 
 losophy is an isolated one ; instead of regarding antecedent sys- 
 tems as elements 'of a true philosophy, it looks upon almost all of 
 them as failures. It is especially hostile to the post-Kantian Ger- 
 man philosophy, and most of all to Schelling's philosophy of na- 
 ture, in which it could only behold a phantom and a delusion ; 
 sooner than come in contact with this, it would join Hegelianism, 
 of which it is the opposite pole. We will give a brief exposition 
 f its prominent thoughts. 
 
304 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 1. The Basis and Starting-point of Philosophy is, accord 
 ing to Herbart, the common view of things, or a knowledge which 
 shall accord with experience. A philosophical system is in reali- 
 ty nothing but an attempt by which a thinker strives to solve cer- 
 tain questions which present themselves before him. Every ques- 
 tion brought up in philosophy should refer itself singly and solely 
 to that which is given, and must arise from this source alone, be- 
 cause there is no other original field of certainty, for men, than 
 experience alone. Every philosophy should begin with it. The 
 thinking should yield itself to experience, which should lead it, 
 and not be led by it. Experience, therefore, is the only object 
 and basis of philosophy ; that which is not given cannot be an ob- 
 ject of thought, and it is impossible to establish any knowledge 
 which transcends the limits of experience. 
 
 2. The first act of Philosophy. — Though the material fur- 
 nished by experience is the basis of philosophy, yet, since it is 
 furnished, it stands outside of philosophy. The question arises, 
 what is the first act or beginning of philosophy ? The thinking 
 should first separate itself from experience, that it may clearly 
 see the difi&culties of its undertaking. The beginning of philoso- 
 phy, where the thinking rises above that which is given, is ac- 
 cordingly doubt or scepticism. Scepticism is twofold, a lower 
 and a higher. The lower scepticism simply doubts that things 
 are so constituted as they appear to us to be ; the higher scepti- 
 cism passes beyond the form of tbe phenomenon, and inquires 
 whether in reality any thing there exists. It doubts e. g. the suc- 
 cession in time ; it asks in reference to the forms of the objects 
 of nature which exhibit design, whether the design is perceived, 
 or only attached to them in the thought, &c. Thus the problems 
 which form the content of metaphysics, are gradually brought 
 out. The result of scepticism is therefore not negative, but posi- 
 tive. Doubt is nothing but the thinking upon those conceptions 
 of experience which are the material of philosophy. Through this 
 reflection, scepticism leads us to the knowledge that these con- 
 ceptions of experience, though they refer to something given, yet 
 contain no conceivable content free from logical incongruities. 
 
HERBART. 
 
 305 
 
 3. Remodelling of the conceptions of experience. — Me- 
 taphysics, according to Herbart, is the science of that which is 
 conceivable in experience. Our view thus far has been a twofold 
 one. On the one side we hold fast to the opinion that 
 the single basis of philosophy is experience, and on the other side, 
 scepticism has shaken the credibility of experience. The point 
 now is to transform this scepticism into a definite knowledge of 
 metaphysical problems. Conceptions from experience crowd upon 
 us, which cannot be thoughts, i. e. they may indeed be thought by 
 the ordinary understanding, but this thinking is obscure and con- 
 fused, and does not separate nor compare opposing characteristics. 
 But an acute process of thought, a logical analysis, will find in the 
 conceptions of experience (e.g. space, time, becoming, motion, &c.) 
 contradictions and characteristics, which are totally inconsistent 
 with each other. What now is to be done ? We may not reject 
 these conceptions, for they are given, and beyond the given we 
 cannot step ; we cannot retain them, for they are inconceivable and 
 cannot logically be established. The only way of escape which 
 remains to us is to remodel them. To remodel the conceptions of 
 experience, to eliminate their contradictions, is the proper act of 
 speculation. Scepticism has brought to light the more definite 
 problems which involve a contradiction, and whose solution it 
 therefore belongs to metaphysics to attempt ; the most important 
 of these are the problems of inherence, change, and the Ego. 
 
 The relation between Herbart and Hegel is very clear at this 
 point. Both are agreed respecting the contradictory nature of 
 the determinations of thought, and the conceptions of experience. 
 But from this point they separate. It is the nature of these con- 
 ceptions as of every thing, says Hegel, to be an inner contradic- 
 tion ; becoming, for instance, is essentially the unity of being, and 
 not being, &c. This is impossible, says Herbart, on the other 
 side, so long as the principle of contradiction is valid ; if the con- 
 ceptions of experience contain inner contradictions, this is not the 
 fault of the objective world, but of the representing subject who 
 must rectify his false apprehension by remodelling these concep- 
 tions, and eliminating the contradiction. Herbart thus charges the 
 
306 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 philosophy of Hegel with empiricism, because it receives from ex- 
 perience these contradictory conceptions unchanged, and not only 
 regards these as established, but even goes so far as to metamor- 
 phose logic on their account, and this simply because they are 
 given in experience, though their contradictory nature is clearly 
 seen. Hegel and Herbart stand related to each other as Hera- 
 clitus and Parmenides {cf. ^ ^ Yl. and VII.) 
 
 4. Herbart's Reals. — From this point Herbart reaches his 
 " reals " (Bealen) as follows : To discover the contradictions, he 
 says, in all our conceptions of experience, might lead us to abso- 
 lute scepticism, and to despair of the truth. But here we re- 
 member that if the existence of every thing real be denied, then 
 the appearance, sensation, representation, and thought itself 
 would bo destroyed. We perceive, therefore, just as strong an 
 indication of being as of appearance. We cannot, indeed, as- 
 cribe to the given any true and essential being per se, it is not 
 per se alone, but only on, or in, or through something other. 
 The truly being is an absolute being, which as such excludes 
 every thing relative and dependent ; it is absolute positio7i, 
 which it is not for us first to posit, but only to recognize. In so 
 far as this being is attributed to any thing, this latter possesses 
 reality. The truly being is, therefore, ever a quale, a something 
 which is considered as being. In order now that this posited 
 may correspond to the conditions which lie in the conception of 
 absolute position, the what of the real must be thought (a) as 
 absolutely positive or affirmative, i. e. without any negation or 
 limitation, which might destroy again the absoluteness ; (J) as ab- 
 solutely simple, i. e. in no way, as a multiplicity or admitting of 
 inner antitheses ; (c) as indeterminate by any conceptions of great- 
 ness, i. e. not as a quantum which may be divided and extended 
 in time and space ; hence, also, not as a constant greatness or con- 
 tinuity. But we must never forget that this being or this absolute 
 reality is not simply something thought, but is something inde- 
 pendent and resting on itself, and hence it is simply to be recog- 
 nized by the thinking. The conception of this thinking lies at 
 the basis of all Herbart's metaphysics. Take an example of this 
 
HERBART. 
 
 307 
 
 The first problem to he solved in metaphysics is the problem of 
 inhercneej or the thing with its characteristics. Every percepti- 
 ble thing represents itself to the senses as a complex of several 
 characteristics. But all the attributes of a thing which are given 
 in perception are relative. We say e. g. that souni is a property 
 of a certain body. It sounds — but it cannot do this without air ; 
 what now becomes of this property in a space without air ? 
 Again, we say that a body is heavy, but it is only so on the 
 earth. Or again, that a body is colored, but light is necessary 
 for this ; what now becomes of such a property in darkness ? 
 Still farther, a multiplicity of properties is incompatible with the 
 unity of an object. If you ask ivhat is this thing, you are an- 
 swered with the sum of its characteristics ; it is soft, white, full- 
 sounding, heavy, — but your question was of one, not of many. 
 The answer only affirms what the thing has, not what it is. 
 Moreover, the list of characteristics is always incomplete. The 
 what of a thing can therefore lie neither in the individual given 
 properties, nor in their unity. In determining what a thing is, 
 we have only this answer remaining, viz., the thing is that un- 
 known, which we must posit before we can posit any thing as ly- 
 ing in the given properties ; in a word, it is the substance. For 
 if, in order to see what the thing purely and essentially is, we 
 take away the characteristics which it may have, we find that 
 nothing more remains, and we perceive that what we considered 
 as the real thing was only a complex of characteristics, and the 
 union of these in one whole. But since every appearance indi- 
 cates a definite reality, and thus since there must be as much re- 
 ality as there is appearance, we have to consider the reality, 
 which lies at the basis of the thing, with its characteristics, as a 
 complex of many simple substances or monads, and whose quality 
 is different in different instances. When our experience has led 
 us to a repeated grouping together of these monads, we call the 
 group a thing. Let us now briefly look at the formation of those 
 fundamental conceptions of metaphysics, which involve the same 
 thoughts through the fundamental conception of being. First, 
 there is the conception of causality, which cannot be maintained 
 
308 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 in its ordinary form. All that we can perceive in the act is sue* 
 cession in time, and not the necessary connection of cause with 
 effect. The cause in itself can be neither transcendent nor im- 
 manent ; it cannot be transcendent, because a real influence of 
 one real thing u-poB. another, contradicts the conception of the 
 absolute reality ; nor immanent, for then the substance must be 
 thought as one with its characteristics, which contradicts the in- 
 vestigations concerning a thing with its characteristics. We can 
 just as little find in the conception of the real an answer to the 
 question, how one determinate being can be brought into contact 
 with another, for the real is the absolute unchangeable. We can 
 therefore only explain the conception of causality on the ground 
 that the different reals which lie at the basis of the characteris- 
 tics are conceived, each one for itself, as cause of the phenome- 
 non, there being just as many causes as there are phenomena. 
 The problem of change, is intimately connected with the concep- 
 tion of cause. Since, however, according to Herbart, there is no 
 inner change, no self-determination, no becoming and no life ; since 
 the monads are, and remain in themselves unchangeable, they do 
 not therefore become different in respect of quality, but they are 
 originally different one from another, and each one exhibits its 
 equality without ever any change. The problem of change can 
 thus only be solved through the theory of the disturbance and 
 self-preservation of these essences. But if that which we call 
 not simply an apparent but an actual event, in the essence of the 
 monads, may be reduced to a " self-preservation," as the last 
 gleam of an activity and life, still we have the question ever re- 
 maining, how to explain the appearance of change. For this it 
 is necessary to bring in two auxiliary conceptions ; first, that of 
 accidental views, and second, that of intellectual spaces. The 
 accidental views, an expression taken from mathematics, signify, 
 in reference to the problem before us this much, viz., one and the 
 same conception may often be considered in very different rela- 
 tions to some other essence, without the slightest change in its 
 own essence, e. g. a straight line may be considered as radius or 
 as tangent, and a tone as harmonious or discordant. By help of 
 
HERBART. 
 
 309 
 
 these accidental views, we may now regard that which actually 
 results in the monad, when other monads, opposite in quality, 
 come in contact with it, as on the one side an actual occurrence, 
 though on the other side, no actual change can be imputed to the 
 original condition of the monads (a gray color, e. g. seems com- 
 paratively white by the side of black, and comparatively black 
 by the side of white, without changing at all its quality). A 
 further auxiliary conception is that of intellectual space, which 
 arises when we must consider these essences as at the same time 
 together and not together. By means of this conception we can 
 eliminate the contradictions from the conception of movement. 
 Lastly, it can be seen that the conception of matter and that of 
 the Ego (in psychologically explaining which, the rest of the 
 metaphysics is occupied) are, like the preceding ones, no less con- 
 tradictory in themselves than they are irreconcilable with the 
 fundamental conception of the real ; for neither can an extended 
 being, like matter, be formed out of spaceless monads — and with 
 matter, therefore, fall also the ordinary conceptions of space and 
 time — nor can we admit, without transformation, the conception 
 of the Ego, since it exhibits the contradictory conception of a 
 thing with many and changing characteristics (conditions, pow- 
 ers, faculties, &c.) 
 
 We are reminded by Herbart's " reals " of the atomic theory 
 of the atomists (cf. § IX. 2), of the Eleatic theory of the one be- 
 ing {cf. ^ YI.), and of Leibnitz's monadology. His reals however 
 are distinguished from the atoms by not possessing impenetrability. 
 The monads of Herbart may be just as well represented in the 
 same space as a mathematical point may be conceived as accurate- 
 ly coexisting with another in the same place. In this respect the 
 " real " of Herbart has a far greater similarity to the " one " of the 
 Eleatics. Both are simple, and to be conceived in intellectual 
 spa>ces, but the essential difference is, that Herbart's substances ex- 
 ist in numbers distinct from one another, and even from opposites 
 among themselves. Herbart's simple quantities have already been 
 compared to the monads of Leibnitz, but these latter have essen- 
 tially a power of representation ; they are essences with inner cir- 
 
310 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 cumstances, while, according to Herbart, representation, just as lit« 
 tie as every otlier circumstance, belongs to tbe essence itself. 
 
 5. Psychology is connected with metaphysics. The Ego is 
 primarily a metaphysical problem, and comes in this respect under 
 the category of the thing with its characteristics. It is a real with 
 many properties changing circumstances, powers, faculties, activi- 
 ties, &c., and thus is not without contradictions. But then the Ego 
 is a psychological principle, and here those contradictions may be 
 considered which lie in the ideality of subject and object. The 
 subject posits itself and is therefore itself object. But this posited 
 object is nothing other than the positing subject. Thus the 
 Ego is, as Fichte says, subject-object, and, as such, full of the 
 hardest contradictions, for subject and object will never be affirmed 
 as one and the same without contradiction. But now if the Ego 
 is given it cannot be thrown away, but must be purified from its 
 contradictions. This occurs whenever the Ego is conceived as 
 that which represents, and the different sensations, thoughts, &c. 
 are embraced under the common conception of changing appear- 
 ance. The solution of this problem is similar to that of inher- 
 ence. As in the latter problem the thing was apprehended as a 
 complex of as many reals as it has characteristics, just so here the 
 Ego ; but with the Ego inner circumstances and representations 
 correspond to the characteristics. Thus that which we are accus- 
 tomed to name Ego is nothing other than the soul. The soul as 
 a monad, as absolutely being, is therefore simple, eternal, indis- 
 soluble, from which we may conclude its eternal existence. From 
 this standpoint Herbart combats the ordinary course of psychology 
 which ascribes certain powers and faculties to the soul. That 
 which stands out in the soul is nothing other than self-preserva- 
 tion, which can only be manifold and changing in opposition to 
 other reals. The causes of changing circumstances are therefore 
 these other reals, which come variously in conflict with the soul- 
 monad, and thus produce that apparently infinite manifoldness of 
 sensations, representations, and afiections. This theory of self, 
 preservation lies at the basis of all Herbart's psychology. That 
 which psychology ordinarily calls feeling, thinking, representing, 
 
HERBART. 
 
 311 
 
 &c., are only specific differences in the self-preservation of the 
 soul ; they indicate no proper condition of the inner real essence 
 itself, hut only relations between the reals, relations, which, coming 
 up together at the same time from different sides, are partly sup- 
 pressed, partly forwarded, and partly modified Consciousness is 
 the sum of those relations in which the soul stands to other essences. 
 But the relations to the objects, and hence to the represen- 
 tations corresponding to these, are not all equally strong ; one 
 presses, restricts, and obscures another, a relation of equilibrium 
 which can be calculated according to the doctrine of statics. But 
 the suppressed representations do not wholly disappear, but wait- 
 ing on the threshold of consciousness for the favorable moment 
 when they shall be permitted again to arise, they join themselves 
 with kindred representations, and press forward with united ener- 
 gies. This movement of the representations (sketched in a master- 
 ly manner by Herbart) may be calculated according to the rules 
 of mathematics, and this is Herbart's well known application of 
 mathematics to the empirical theory of the soul. The represen- 
 tations which were pressed back, which wait on the threshold of con- 
 sciousness and only work in the darkness, and of which we are on- 
 ly half conscious, are feelings. They express themselves as desires, 
 according as their struggle forward is more or less successful. 
 Desire becomes will when united with the hope of success. The 
 will is no separate faculty of the mind, but consists only in the 
 relation of the dominant representations to the others. The 
 power of deciding and the character of a man, prominently depend 
 upon the constant presence in the consciousness of a certain num- 
 ber of representations, while other representations are weakened, 
 or denied an entrance over the threshold of consciousness. 
 
 6. The Importance of Herbart's Philosophy. — Herbart's 
 philosophy is important mainly for its metaphysics and psychology. 
 In the other spheres and activities of the human mind, e. g. rights, 
 morality, the state, art, religion, his philosophy is mostly barren of 
 results, and though there are not wanting here striking observa- 
 tions, yet these have no connection with the speculative principles 
 of the system. Herbart fundamentally isolates the different phil- 
 
312 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 osopliical sciences, distinguishing especially and in the strictest 
 manner between theoretical and practical philosophy. He charges 
 the effort after unity in philosophy, with occasioning the greatest 
 errors ; for logical, metaphysical, and aesthetic forms are entirely 
 diverse. Ethics and aesthetics have to do with objects in which an 
 immediate evidence appears, but this is foreign to the whole nature 
 of metaphysics, which can only gain its knowledge as errors have 
 been removed. Esthetic judgments on which practical philoso- 
 phy rests, are independent of the reality of any object, and appear 
 with immediate certainty in the midst of the strongest metaphysi- 
 cal doubts. Moral elements, says Herbart, are pleasing and dis- 
 pleasing relations of the will. He thus grounds the whole 
 practical philosophy upon aesthetic judgments. The aesthetic 
 judgment is an involuntary and immediate judgment, which 
 attaches to certain objects, without proof, the predicates of goodness 
 and badness. — Here is seen the greatest difference between Her- 
 bart and Kant. 
 
 We may characterize, on the whole, the philosophy of Her- 
 bart as a carrying out of the monadology of Leibnitz, full of en- 
 during acuteness, but without any inner fruitfulness or capacity 
 of development. 
 
 SECTION XLIII. 
 
 SCHELLING. 
 
 Schelling sprang from Fichte. We may pass on to an expo- 
 sition of his philosophy without any farther introduction, since 
 that which it contains from Fichte forms a part of its historical 
 development, and will therefore be treated of as this is un- 
 folded. 
 
 Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling was born at Leonberg, 
 in W rtemberg, January 27th, 1775. With a very precocious 
 development, he entered the theological seminary at Tubingen in 
 
SCHELLING. 313 
 
 his fifteenth year, and devoted himself partly to philology and 
 mythology, but especially to Kant's philosophy. During his 
 course as a student, he was in personal connection with Holder- 
 lin and Hegel. Schelling came before the world as an author 
 very early. In 1792 appeared his graduating treatise on the 
 third chapter of Genesis, in which he gave an interesting philoso- 
 phical signification to the Mosaic account of the fall. In the fol- 
 lowing year, 1793, he published in Paulus' Memorabilia an essay 
 of a kindred nature ^' On the Myths and Philosophemes of the 
 Ancient Worlds To the last year of his abode at Tilbingen 
 belong the two philosophical writings : " Ori the Possibility of a 
 Form for Philosophy,'''' and " On the Ego as a Principle of 
 Philosophy, or on the Unconditioned in Human Knowledge.''^ 
 After completing his university studies, Schelling went to Leipsic 
 as tutor to the Baron von Kiedesel, but soon afterwards repaired 
 to Jena, where he became the pupil and co-laborer of Fichte. 
 After Fichte's departure from Jena, he became himself, 1798, 
 teacher of philosophy there, and now began, removing himself 
 from Fichte's standpoint, to develope more and more his own pe- 
 culiar views. He published in Jena the Journal of Specidative 
 Physics, and also in company with Hegel, the Critical Journal. 
 In the year 1803 he went to Wvirzburg as professor ordinarius 
 of philosophy. In 1807 he repaired to Munich as member ordi- 
 narius of the newly established academy of sciences there. The 
 year after he became general secretary of the Academy of the 
 plastic arts, and subsequently, when the university professorship 
 was established at Munich, he became its incumbent. After the 
 death of Jacobi, he was chosen president of the Munich Academy. 
 In 1841 he removed to Berlin, where he has sometimes held lec- 
 tures. For the last ten years Schelling has Avritten nothing of 
 importance, although he has repeatedly promised an exposition of 
 his present system. By far the greater portion of his writings 
 belongs to his early life. Schelling's philosophy is no completed 
 system of which his separate works are the constituent elements ; 
 but, like Plato's, it has a historical development, a course of 
 formative steps which the philosopher has passed through in his 
 14 
 
314 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 own life. Instead of systematically elaborating tlie separate 
 sciences from the standpoint of his principle, Schelling has gone 
 back repeatedly to the beginning again, seeking ever for new 
 foundations and new standpoints, connecting these for the most part 
 (like Plato) with some antecedent philosophemes, (Fichte, Spi- 
 noza, New Platonism, Leibnitz, Jacob Boehme, Gnosticism,) which 
 in their order he attempted to interweave with his system. We 
 must modify accordingly our exposition of Schelling's Philosophy, 
 and take up its different periods, separated according to the dif- 
 ferent groups of his writings.* 
 
 I. First Period. Schelling's Procession from Fichte. 
 
 Schelling's starting point was Fichte, whom he decidedly fol- 
 lowed in his earliest writings. In his essay, " On the Possibility 
 of a Form of Philosophy,''^ he shows the necessity of that supreme 
 principle which Fichte had first propounded. In his essay, " On 
 the ^^o," Schelling shows that the ultimate ground of our knowl- 
 edge can only lie in the Ego, and hence that every true philosophy 
 must be idealism. If our knowledge shall possess reality, there 
 must be one point in which ideality and reality, thought and be- 
 ing, can identically coincide ; and if outside of our knowledge, 
 there were something higher which conditioned it, if itself were 
 not the highest, then it could not be absolute. Fichte regarded 
 this essay as a commentary on his Theory of Science ; yet it con- 
 tains already indications of Schelling's subsequent standpoint, in 
 its expressly affirming the unity of all knowledge, the necessity 
 that in the end all the different sciences shall become merged into 
 one. In the Letters on Dogmatism and Criticism,^'' 1795, 
 Schelling combatted the notions of those Kantians who had left 
 the critical and idealistic standpoint of their master, and fallen 
 back again into the old dogmatism. It was also on the stand- 
 point of Fichte that Schelling published in Niethammer's and 
 Fichte's Journal, 1797-98, a series of articles, in which he gave 
 a survey of the recent philosophical literature. Here he begins 
 
 * Schelling died August 20th, 1854, at Ragaz, Switzerland, whither he 
 had gone for the benefit of his health, which had long been declining. — 
 Translator. 
 
SCHELLING. 
 
 315 
 
 to turn his attention towards a philosophical deduction of nature, 
 though he still remains on the standpoint of Fichte when he de- 
 duces nature wholly from the essence of the Ego. In the essay 
 which was composed soon after, and entitled Ideas for a philos- 
 ophy of Nature,^'' 1797, and the one " On the World-soul, 1798, 
 he gradually unfolded more clearly his views. The chief points 
 which are brought out in the two last named essays are the fol- 
 lowing : The first origin of the conception of matter springs 
 from nature and the intuition of the human mind. The mind is 
 the union of an unlimited and a limiting energy. If there were 
 no limit to the mind, consciousness would he just as impossible as 
 if the mind were totally and absolutely limited. Feeling, percep- 
 tion and knowledge are only conceivable, as the energy which 
 strives for the unlimited becomes limited through its opposite, and 
 as this latter becomes itself freed from its limitations. The ac- 
 tual mind or heart consists only in the antagonism of these two 
 energies, and hence only in their ever approximate or relative 
 unity. Just so is it in nature. Matter as such is not the first, 
 for the forces of which it is the unity are before it. Matter is 
 only to be apprehended as the ever becoming product of attrac- 
 tion and repulsion ; it is not, therefore, a mere inert grossness, as 
 we are apt to represent it, but these forces are its original. But 
 force in the material is like something immaterial. Force in nature 
 is that which we may compare to mind. Since now the mind or 
 heart exhibits precisely the same conflict, as matter, of opposite 
 forces, we must unite the two in a higher identity. But the organ 
 of the mind for apprehending nature is the intuition which takes, 
 as object of the external sense, the space which has been filled and 
 limited by the attracting and repelling forces. Thus Schelliug 
 was led to the conclusion that the same absolute appears in nature 
 as in mind, and that the harmony of these is somethiug more than 
 a thought in reference to them. " Or if you affirm that we only 
 carry over such an idea to nature, then have you utterly failed to 
 apprehend the only nature which there can be to us. For onr 
 view of nature is not that it accidentally meets the laws of our 
 mind — (perhaps through the mediation of a third) — but that it 
 
316 
 
 A HISTORY OP PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 necessarily and originally not only expresses, but itself realizes, 
 the laws of our mind, and that it is nature, and is called such 
 only in so far as it does this." " Nature should be the visible 
 mind, and mind invisible nature. Here, therefore, in the absolute 
 ideality of the mind within us, and nature wiihout us, must we 
 eolve the problem how it is possible for a nature outside of us to 
 be." This thought, that nature or matter is just as much the ac- 
 tual unity of an attracting and a repelling force, as the mind or 
 heart is the unity of an unlimited and a limiting tendency, and 
 that the repelling force in matter corresponds to the positive or 
 unlimited activity of the mind, while the attracting force corres- 
 ponds to the mind's negative or limiting activity — this identical 
 deduction of matter from the essence of the Ego, is very promi- 
 nent in all that Schelling wrote upon natural philosophy during 
 this period. Nature thus appears as a copy (Doppelhild) of the 
 mind, which the mind itself produces, in order to return, by its 
 means, to pure self-intuition, to self-consciousness. Hence we 
 have the successive stages of nature, in which all the stations of 
 the mind in its way to self- consciousness are externally established. 
 It is especially in the organic world that the mind can behold its 
 own self-production. Hence, in every thing organic, there is 
 something symbolical, every plant bears some feature of the soul. 
 The chief characteristics of an organic formation, — the self-form- 
 ing process from within outwards, the conformity to some end, the 
 change of interpenetration of form and matter — are equally chief 
 features of the mind. Since now there exists in our mind an end- 
 less striving to organize itself, so there must also be manifested in 
 the external world a universal tendency to organization. The 
 whole universe may thus be called a kind of organization which 
 has formed itself from a centre, rising ever from a lower to a 
 higher stage. From such a point of view, the natural philosopher 
 will make it his chief effort to bring to a unity in his contempla- 
 tions that life of nature, which by many researches into physical 
 science had been separated into numberless different powers. "It 
 is a needless trouble which many have given themselves, to show 
 how very different is the working of fire and electricity, for ever^; 
 
SCHELLING. 
 
 317 
 
 one tnows this who has ever seen or heard of the two. But oui 
 mind strives after unity in the system of its knowledge; it will 
 not endure that there should be pressed upon it a separate princi- 
 ple for every single phenomenon, and it will only believe that it 
 sees nature where it can discover the greatest simplicity of laws 
 in the greatest multiplicity of phenomena, and the highest frugality 
 of means in the highest prodigality of effects. Therefore, every 
 thought, even that which is now rough and crude, merits attention 
 so soon as it tends towards the simplifying of principles, and if it 
 serves no other end, it at least strengthens the impulse to inves- 
 tigate and trace out the hidden process of nature." The special 
 tendency of the scientific investigation of nature which prevailed 
 at that time, was to make a duality of forces the predominant ele- 
 ment in the life of nature. In mechanics, the Kantian theory of 
 the opposition of attraction and repulsion was adopted ; in chem- 
 istry, by apprehending electricity as positive and negative, its 
 phenomenon was brought near that of magnetism ; in physiology 
 there was the opposition of irritability and sensibility, &c. In 
 opposition to these dualities, Schelling now insisted upon the unity 
 of every thing opposite, the unity of all dualities, and this not 
 simply as an abstract unity, but as a concrete identity, as the har- 
 monious coworking of the heterogeneous. The world is the actual 
 unity of a positive and a negative principle, " and these two con- 
 flicting forces taken together, or represented in their conflict, lead 
 to the idea of an organizing principle which makes of the world 
 a system, in other words, to the idea of a world-soul." 
 
 In his above-cited essay on " ilie tvorld-soulj'' Schelling took 
 the great step forward of apprehending nature as entirely auto- 
 nomic. In the world-soul nature has a peculiar principle which 
 dwells within it, and works according to conception. In this way 
 the objective world was recognized as the independent life of na- 
 ture in a manner which the logical idealism of Fichte would not 
 permit. Schelling proceeeded still farther in this direction, and 
 distinguished definitely, as the two sides of philosophy, the philos- 
 ophy of nature and a transcendental philosophy. By placing a 
 philosophy of nature by the side of idealism, Schelling passed de- 
 
318 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 cidedly beyond the standpoint of science, and we thus enter a 
 second stadium of his philosophizing, though his method still re- 
 mained that of Fichte, and he continued to believe that he was 
 speculating in the spirit of the Theory of Science. 
 
 II. Second Period. Standpoint of the distinguishing be- 
 tween THE Philosophy of Nature and of Mind. 
 
 This standpoint of Schelling is chiefly carried out in the fol- 
 lowing works : — " First Draft of a System of Natural Philoso- 
 phy 1799; an introduction to this, 1799; articles in the 
 Journal of Speculative Physics,'''' 1800, 1801; System of 
 Transcendental Idealism,^ 1800. Schelling thus distinguishes 
 the two sides of philosophy. All knowledge rests upon the har- 
 mony of a subject with an object. That which is simply objective 
 is natural, and that which is simply subjective is the Ego or intel- 
 ligence. There are two possible ways of uniting these two sides : 
 we may either make nature first, and inquire how it is that intel- 
 ligence is associated with it (natural philosophy) ; or we may 
 make the subject first, and inquire how do objects proceed from the 
 subject (transcendental philosophy). The end of all philosophy 
 must be to make either an intelligence out of nature, or a nature 
 out of intelligence. As the transcendental philosophy has to sub- 
 ject the real to the ideal, so must natural philosophy attempt to 
 explain the ideal from the real. Both, however, are only the two 
 poles of one and the same knowledge which reciprocally attract 
 each other ; hence, if we start from either pole, we are necessa- 
 rily drawn towards the other. 
 
 1. Natural Philosophy. — To philosophize concerning nature 
 is, in a certain sense, to create nature — to raise it from the dead 
 mechanism in which it had seemed confined, to inspire it with free- 
 dom, and transpose it into a properly free development. And what, 
 then, is matter, other than mind which has become extinct? Ac- 
 cording to this view, since nature is only the visible organism of 
 our understanding, it can produce nothing but what is conforma- 
 ble to a rule and an end. But you radically destroy every idea of 
 nature just so soon as you allow its design to have come to it 
 from without, by passing over from the understanding of any 
 
SCHELLING. 
 
 319 
 
 1)eiDg. The complete exhibition of the intellectual world in the 
 laws and forms of the phenomenal world, and, on the other hand 
 the complete conception of these laws and forms from the intel- 
 lectual world, and therefore the exhibition of the ideality of na- 
 ture with the ideal world, is the work of natural philosophy. 
 Immediate experience is indeed its starting point ; we know 
 originally nothing except through experience ; but just as soon 
 as I gain an insight into the inner necessity of a principle of ex- 
 perience, it becomes a principle apriori. Natural philosophy is 
 empiricism extended until it becomes absolute. 
 
 Schelling expresses himself as follows, concerning the jhief 
 principles of a philosophy of nature. Nature is a suspension 
 (Schivehen) between productivity and product, which Is always 
 passing over into definite forms and products, just as it is always 
 productively passing beyond these. This suspension indicates a 
 duality of principles, through which nature is held in a constant 
 activity, and hindered from exhausting itself in its products. A 
 universal duality is thus the principle of every explanation of 
 nature ; it is the first principle of a philosophic theory of nature, 
 to end in all nature with polarity and dualism. On the other 
 hand, the final cause of all our contemplation of nature is to know 
 that absolute unity which comprehends the whole, and which suf- 
 fers only one side of itself to be known in nature. Nature is, as 
 it were, the instrument of this absolute unity, through which it 
 eternally executes and actualizes that which is prefigured in the 
 absolute understanding. The whole absolute is therefore cogni- 
 zable in nature, though phenomenal nature only exhibits in a suc- 
 cession, and produces in an endless development, that which the 
 true or real nature eternally possesses. Schelling treats of natu- 
 ral philosophy in three sections : (1) the proof that nature, in its 
 original products, is organic ; (2) the conditions of an inorganic 
 nature ; (3) the reciprocal determination of organic and inorganic 
 nature. 
 
 (1.) Organic nature Schelling thus deduces: Nature abso- 
 lutely apprehended is nothing other than infinite activity, infinite 
 productivity. If this were unhindered in expressing itself, it 
 
320 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 would at once, with infinite celerity, produce an absolute product^ 
 wliicli would allow no explanation for empirical nature. If this 
 latter may be explained — if there may be finite products, we must 
 consider the productive activity of nature as restrained by an 
 opposite, a retarding activity, which lies in nature itself. Thus 
 arises a series of finite products. But since the absolute produc- 
 tivity of nature tends towards an absolute product, these indi- 
 vidual products are only apparent ones, beyond each one of which 
 nature herself advances, in order to satisfy the absoluteness of 
 her inner productivity through an infinite series of individual 
 products. In this eternal producing of finite products, nature 
 shows itself as a living antagonism of two opposite forces, a pro- 
 ductive and a retarding tendency. And, indeed, the working of 
 this latter is infinitely manifold ; the original productive impulse 
 of nature has not only to combat a simple restraint, but it must 
 struggle with an infinity of reactions, which may be called original 
 qualities. Hence every organic being is the permanent expression 
 for a conflict of reciprocally destroying and limiting actions of 
 nature. And from this, viz., from the original limitation and in- 
 finite restraint of the formative impulse of nature, we see the 
 reason why every organization, instead of attaining to an absolute 
 product, only reproduces itself ad infinitum. Upon this rests 
 the special significance for the organic world, of the distinction of 
 sex. The distinction of sex fixes the organic products of nature, 
 it restrains them within their own processes of development, and 
 sufi"ers them only to produce the same again. But in this produc- 
 tion nature has no regard for the individual, but only for the 
 species. The individual is contrary to nature; nature desires 
 the absolute, and its constant effort is to represent this. Indi- 
 vidual products, therefore, in which the activity of nature is 
 brought to a stand, can only be regarded as abortive attempts to 
 represent the absolute. Hence the individual must be the means, 
 and the species the end of nature. Just so soon as the species is 
 secured, nature abandons the individuals and labors for their de- 
 struction. Schelling divides the dynamic scale of organic nature 
 according to the three grand functions of the organic world: 
 
8CHELLING. 
 
 321 
 
 (a) Formative impulse (reproductive energy) ; (h) Irritability ; 
 (c) Sensibility. Highest in rank are those organisms in which 
 sensibility has the preponderance over irritability ; a lower rank 
 is held by those where irritability preponderates, and lower still 
 are those where reproduction first comes out in its entire perfec- 
 tion, while sensibility and irritability are almost extinct. Yet 
 these three powers are interwoven together in all nature, and 
 hence there is but one organization, descending through all nature 
 from man to the plant. 
 
 (2.) Inorganic nature offers the antithesis to organic. The 
 existence and essence of inorganic nature are conditioned through 
 the existence and essence of organic nature. While the powers 
 of organic nature are productive, those of inorganic nature are not 
 productive. While organic nature aims only to establish the 
 species, inorganic nature regards only the individual, and offers 
 no reproduction of the species through the individual. It pos- 
 sesses a great multitude of materials, but can only use these ma- 
 terials in the way of conjoining or separating. In a word, inor- 
 ganic nature is simply a mass held together by some external 
 cause as gravity. Yet it, like organic nature, has its gradations. 
 The power of reproduction in the latter has its counterpart in the 
 chemical process in the former ; that which in the one case is 
 irritability, in the other is electricity ; and sensibility, which is 
 the highest stage of organic life, corresponds to the universal 
 magnetism, the highest stage of the inorganic. 
 
 (3.) The reciprocal determination of the organic and inor- 
 ganic ivorld, is made clear by what has already been said. The 
 result to which every genuine philosophy of nature must come, is 
 that the distinction between organic and inorganic nature is only 
 in nature as object, and that nature, as originally productive, 
 waves over both. If the functions of an organism are only pos- 
 sible on the condition that there is a definite external world, and 
 an organic world, then must the external world and the organic 
 world have a common origin. This can only be explained on the 
 ground that inorganic nature presupposes in order to its existence 
 a higher dynamical order of things, to which it is subject. There 
 
322 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 must be a third, which can unite again organic and inorganio 
 nature ; which can be a medium, holding the continuity between 
 the two. Both must be identified in some ultimate cause, through 
 which, as through one common soul of nature (world-soul), both the 
 organic and inorganic, i. e. universal nature, is inspired ; in Bome 
 common principle, which, fluctuating between inorganic and' or- 
 ganic nature, and maintaining the continuity of the two, contains 
 the first cause of all changes in the one, and the ultimate ground 
 of all activity in the other. We have here the idea of a univer- 
 sal organism. That it is one and the same organization which 
 unites in one the organic and inorganic world, would appear from 
 what has already been said of the parallel gradations of the two 
 worlds. That which in universal nature is the cause of magnet- 
 ism, is in organic nature the cause of sensibility, and the latter is 
 only a higher potency of the former. Just as in the organic 
 world through sensibility, so in universal nature through magnet- 
 ism, there arises a duality from the ideality. In this way or- 
 ganic nature appears only as a higher stage of the inorganic ; the 
 very same dualism which is seen in magnetic polarity, electrical 
 phenomena, and chemical differences, displays itself also in the 
 organic world. 
 
 2. Transcendental Philosophy. — Transcendental philoso- 
 phy is the philosophy of nature become subjective. The whole 
 succession of objects thus far described, becomes now repeated as 
 a su«cessive development of the beholding subject. It is the pe- 
 culiarity of transcendental idealism, that so soon as it is once ad- 
 mitted, it requires that the origin of all knowledge shall be sought 
 for anew ; that the truth which has long been considered as estab- 
 lished, should be subjected to a new examination, and that this 
 examination should proceed under at least an entirely new form. 
 All parts of philosophy must be exhibited in one continuity, and 
 the whole of philosophy must be regarded as that which it is, viz., 
 the advancing history of consciousness, which can use only as 
 monuments or documents that which is laid down in experience. 
 (Schelling's transcendental idealism is, in this respect, the fore- 
 runner to Hegel's Phcenomenology ^ which pursues a similar 
 
6CHELLING. 328 
 
 course). The exhibition of this connection is properly a succes- 
 sion of intuitions through which the Ego raises itself to conscious- 
 ness in the highest potency. Neither transcendental philosophy 
 nor the philosophy of nature, can alone rej)resent the parallelism 
 between nature and intelligence; but, in order to this, both 
 sciences must be united, the former being considered as a neces- 
 sary counterpart to the other. The division of transcendental 
 philosophy follows from its problem, to seek anew the origin of 
 all knowledge, and to subject to a new examination every pre- 
 vious judgment which had been held to be established truth. The 
 pre-judgments of the common understanding are principally two : 
 (1) That a world of objects exist independent of, and outside of, 
 ourselves, and are represented to us just as they are. To explain 
 this pre-judgment, is the problem of the first part of the transcen- 
 dental philosophy {theoretical philosophy). (2) That we can 
 produce an effect upon the objective world according to represen- 
 tations which arise freely within us. The solution of this prob- 
 lem is practical philosophy. But, with these two problems we 
 find ourselves entangled, (3) in a contradiction. How is it possi- 
 ble that our thought should ever rule over the world of sense, if 
 the representation is conditional in its origin by the objective? 
 The solution of this problem, which is the highest of transcenden- 
 tal philosophy, is the answer to the question : how can the repre- 
 sentations be conceived as directing themselves according to the 
 objects, and at the same time the objects be conceived as direct- 
 ing themselves according to the representations ? This is only 
 conceivable on the ground that the activity through which the 
 objective world is produced, is originally identical with that 
 which utters itself in the will. To show this identity of conscious 
 and unconscious activity, is the problem of the third part of 
 transcendental philosophy, or the science of ends in nature and 
 of art. The three parts of the transcendental philosophy corre- 
 spond thus entirely to the three criticks of Kant. 
 
 (1.) The theoretical philosophy starts from the highest prin- 
 ciple of knowledge, the self-consciousness, and from this point 
 developes the history of self-consciousness, according to its most 
 
324 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHT. 
 
 prominent epochs and stations, viz., sensation, intuition, produc- 
 tive intuition (which produces matter) — outer and inner intuition 
 (from which space and time, and all Kant's categories may be 
 derived), abstraction (by which the intelligence distinguishes 
 itself from its products) — absolute abstraction, or absolute act 
 of will. With the act of the will there is spread before us, 
 
 (2). The Field of Practical Philosophy. — In practical philos- 
 ophy the Ego is no longer beholding, i. e. consciousless, but 
 is consciously producing, i. e. realizing. As a whole, nature de- 
 velopes itself from the original act of self-consciousness, so from 
 the second act, or the act of free self-determination, there is pro- 
 duced a second nature, to find the origin for which is the object 
 of practical philosophy. In his exposition of the practical phi- 
 losophy, Schelling follows almost wholly the theory of Fichte, 
 but closes this section with some remarkable expressions respect- 
 ing the philosophy of history. History, as a whole, is, according 
 to him, a gradual and self-disclosing revelation of the absolute, a 
 progressing demonstration of the existence of a God. The his- 
 tory of this revelation may be divided into three periods. The 
 first is that in which the overruling power was apprehended only 
 as destiny, i. e. as a blind power, cold and consciousless, which 
 brings the greatest and most glorious things of earth to ruin ; it 
 is marked by the decay of the magnificence and wonders of the 
 ancient world, and the fall of the noblest manhood that has ever 
 bloomed. The second period of history is that in which this des- 
 tiny manifests itself as nature, and the hidden law seems changed 
 into a manifest law of nature, which compels freedom and every 
 choice to submit to and serve a plan of nature. This period 
 seems to begin with the spread of the great Roman republic. 
 The third period will be that where what has previously been re- 
 garded as destiny and nature, will develope itself as Providence. 
 When this period shall begin, we cannot say ; we can only affirm 
 that if it be, then God will be seen also to be. 
 
 (3.) Philosophy of Art. — The problem of transcendental 
 philosophy is to harmonize the subjective and the objective. In 
 history, with which practical philosophy closes, the identity of 
 
SCHELLING. 
 
 325 
 
 the two is not exhibited, but only approximated in an infinite 
 progress. But now the Ego must attain a position where it can 
 actually look upon this identity, which constitutes its inner es- 
 sence. If now all conscious activity exhibits design, then a con- 
 scious and consciousless activity can only coincide in a product, 
 which, though it exhibits design, was yet produced without de- 
 sign. Such a product is nature ; we have here the principle of 
 all teleology^ in which alone the solution of the given problem 
 can be sought. The peculiarity of nature is this, viz., that 
 though it exhibits itself as nothing but a blind mechanism, it yet 
 displays design, and represents an identity of the conscious sub- 
 jective, and the consciousless objective activity ; in it the Ego 
 beholds its own most peculiar essence, which consists alone in this 
 identity. But in nature the Ego beholds this identity, not as 
 something objective, which has a being only outside of it, but 
 also as that whose principle lies within the Ego itself. This be- 
 holding is the art-intuition. As the production of nature is con- 
 sciousless, though similar to that which is conscious, so the aes- 
 thetic production of the artist is a conscious production, similar 
 to that which is consciousless. Esthetics must therefore be 
 joined to teleology. That contradiction between the conscious 
 and the consciousless, which moves forward untiringly in history, 
 and which is unconsciously reconciled in nature, finds its con- 
 scious reconciliation in a work of art. In a work of art, the in- 
 telligence attains a perfect intuition of itself. The feeling which 
 accompanies this intuition, is the feeling of an endless satisfac- 
 tion ; all contradictions being resolved, and every riddle ex- 
 plained. The unknown, which unexpectedly harmonizes the ob- 
 jective and the conscious activity, is nothing other than that ab- 
 solute and unchangeable identity, to which every existence must 
 be referred. In the artist it lays aside the veil, which elsewhere 
 surrounds it, and irresistibly impels him to complete his work. 
 Thus there is no other eternal revelation but art, and this is also 
 the miracle which should convince us of the reality of that su- 
 preme, which is never itself objective, but is the cause of all ob- 
 jective. Hence art holds a higher rank than philosophy, for only 
 
826 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 in art has the intellectual intuition objectivity. There is noth- 
 ing, therefore, higher to the philosopher than art, because this 
 opens before him, as it were, the holy of holies, where that which 
 is separate in nature and history, and which in _ife and action, as 
 in thought, must ever diverge, burns, as it were, in one flame, in 
 an eternal and original union. From this we see also both the 
 fact and the reason for it, that philosophy, as philosophy, can 
 never be universally valid. Art is that alone to which is given 
 an absolute objectivity, and it is through this alone that nature, 
 consciously productive, concludes and completes itself within itself. 
 
 The " Transcendental Idealism " is the last work which 
 Schelling wrote after the method of Fichte. In its principle he 
 goes decidedly beyond the standpoint of Fichte. That which 
 was with Fichte the inconceivable limit of the Ego, Schelling 
 derives as a necessary duality, from the simple essence of the 
 Ego. While Fichte had regarded the union of subject and ob- 
 ject, only as an infinite progression towards that which ought to 
 be, Schelling looked upon it as actually accomplished in a work 
 of art. With Fichte God was apprehended only as the object of 
 a moral faith, but with Schelling he was looked upon as the im- 
 mediate object of the aesthetic intuition. This difference between 
 the two could not long be concealed from Schelling. He was 
 obliged to see that he no longer stood upon the basis of subjec- 
 tive idealism, but that his real position was that of objective ideal- 
 ism. If he had already gone beyond Fichte in setting the phi- 
 losophy of nature and transcendental philosophy opposite to each 
 other, it was perfectly consistent for him now to go one step far- 
 ther, and, placing himself on the point of indifierence between 
 the two, make the identity of the ideal and the real, of thought 
 and being, as his principle. This principle Spinoza had already 
 possessed before him. To this philosophy of identity Schelling 
 now found himself peculiarly attracted. Instead of following 
 Fichte's method, he now availed himself of that of Spinoza, the 
 mathematical, to which he ascribed the greatest evidence of proof. 
 
 III. Third Period : Period of Spinozism, or the Indif- 
 ference OF THE Ideal and the Real. 
 
SCHELLING. 
 
 327 
 
 The principal writings of this period are : — " Exposiiion of my 
 System of Philosophy " (Journal for Speculative Physics, ii. 2) ; 
 the second edition, with additions, of the " Ideas for a Philosophy 
 of Nature y'' 1803; the dialogue, Bruno, or concerning the Di 
 vine and the Natural Principle of Things,''^ 1802; ^''Lectures 
 on the Method of Academical Study, ''^ 1803; three numbers of a 
 " New Journal for Speculative Physics,''"' 1802-3. The charac- 
 teristic of the new standpoint of Schelling, to which we now arrive, 
 is perfectly exhibited in the definition of reason, which he places 
 at the head of the first of the above-named writings ; I give to 
 reason the name absolute, or the reason in so far as it is con- 
 ceived as the total indifference of the subjective and the objec- 
 tive. To think of reason is demanded of every man ; to think of 
 it as absolute, and thus to reach the standpoint which I require, 
 every thing must be abstracted from the thinking subject. To 
 him who makes this abstraction, reason immediately ceases to be 
 something subjective, as most men represent it ; neither can it be 
 conceived as something objective, since an objective, or that 
 which is thought, is only possible in opposition to that which 
 thinks. AYe thus rise through this abstraction to the reality of 
 things {zum ivahren an-sich), which reality is precisely in the 
 indifference point of the subjective and the objective. The stand- 
 point of philosophy is the standpoint of reason ; its knowledge is 
 a knowledge of things as they are in themselves, i. e. as they are in 
 the reason. It is the nature of philosophy to destroy every distinc- 
 tion which the imagination has mingled with the thinking, and 
 to see in things only that through which they express the absolute 
 reason, not regarding in them that which is simply an object for 
 that reflection which expends itself on the laws of mechanism and 
 in time. Besides reason there is nothings and in it is every 
 thing. Keason is the absolute. All objections to this principle 
 can only arise from the fact, that men are in the habit of looking 
 at things not as they are in reason, but as they appear. Every 
 thing which is, is in essence like the reason, and is one with it» 
 It is not the reason which posits something external to itself, 
 but only the false use of reason, which is connected with the 
 
328 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 incapacity of forgetting the subjective in itself. The reason is 
 absolutely one and like itself. The highest law for the being 
 of reason, and since there is nothing besides reason, the high- 
 est law for all being, is the law of identity. Between subject 
 and object therefore — since it is one and the same absolute 
 identity which displays itself in both — there can be no differ- 
 ence except a quantitative difference (a difference of more or 
 less), so that nothing is either simple object or simple subject, but 
 in all things subject and object are united, this union being in 
 different proportions, so that sometimes the subject and sometimes 
 the object has the preponderance. But since the absolute is pure 
 identity of subject and object, there can be no quantitative differ- 
 ence except outside of the identity, i. e. in the finite. As the 
 fundamental form of the infinite is A=A, so the scheme of the 
 finite is A=B (i. e. the union of a subjective with another objec- 
 tive in a different proportion). But, in reality, nothing is finite, 
 because the identity is the only reality. So far as there is differ- 
 ence in individual things, the identity exists in the form of indif- 
 ference. If we could see together every thing which is, we should 
 find in all the pure identity, because we should find in all a perfect 
 quantitative equilibrium of subjectivity and objectivity. True, 
 we find, in looking at individual objects, that sometimes the pre- 
 ponderance is on one side and sometimes on the other, but in the 
 whole this is compensated. The absolute identity is the absolute 
 totality, the universe itself. There is in reality (an-sicli) no indi- 
 vidual being or thing. There is in reality nothing beyond the 
 totality ; and if any thing beyond this is beheld, this can only 
 happen by virtue of an arbitrary separation of the individual from 
 the whole, which is done through reflection, and is the source of 
 every error. The absolute identity is essentially the same in 
 every part of the universe. Hence the universe may be conceived 
 under the figure of a line, in the centre of which is the A=A, 
 
 while at the end on one side is A=B, i. e. a transcendence of the 
 
 subjective", and at the end on the other side is A=B, i. e. a trans- 
 cendence of the objective, though this must be conceived so that a 
 
SCHELLING. 
 
 329 
 
 relative identity may exist even in these extremes. The one side 
 is the real or nature, the other side is the ideal. The real side 
 develoj^es itself according to three potences (a potence, or power, 
 indicates a definite quantitative difference of subjectivity and ob- 
 jectivity). (1) The first potence is matter and weight — the 
 greatest preponderance of the object. (2) The second potence is 
 light (A^), an inner — as weight is an outer — intuition of nature. 
 The light is a higher rising of the subjective. It is the absolute 
 identity itself. (3) The third potence is organism (A^), the 
 common product of light and weight. Organism is just as 
 original as matter. Inorganic nature, as such, does not exist : it 
 is actually organized, and is, as it were, the universal germ out of 
 which organization proceeds. The organization of every globe is 
 but the inner evolution of the globe itself ; the earth itself, by its 
 own evolving, becomes animal and plant. The organic world has 
 not formed itself out of the inorganic, but has been at least poten- 
 tially present in it from the beginning. That matter which lies 
 before us, apparently inorganic, is the residuum of organic meta- 
 morphoses, which could not become organic. The human brain 
 is the highest bloom of the whole organic metamorphosis 
 of the earth. From the above, Schelling adds, it must be per- 
 ceived that we affirm an inner identity of all things, and a poten- 
 tial presence of every thing in every other, and therefore even the 
 so-called dead matter may be viewed only as a sleeping-world of 
 animals and plants, which, in some period, the absolute identity 
 may animate and raise to life. At this point Schelling stops sud- 
 denly, without developing further the three potences of the ideal 
 series, corresponding to those of the real. Elsewhere he com- 
 pletes the work by setting up the following three potences of the 
 ideal series : (1) Knowledge, the potence of reflection ; (2) Action, 
 the potence of subsumption ; (3) the Reason as the unity of re- 
 flection and subsumptioa. These three potences represent them- 
 selves : (1) as the true, the imprinting of the matter in the form; 
 
 (2) as the good, or the imprinting of the form in the matter ; 
 
 (3) as the beautiful, or the work of art, the absolute blending to- 
 gether of form and matter. 
 
330 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHT. 
 
 Schelling sought also to furnish himself with a new method 
 for knowing the absolute identity. Neither the analytic nor the 
 synthetical method seems to him suitable for this, since both are 
 only a finite knowledge. Gradually, also, he abandoned the 
 mathematical method. The logical forms of the ordinary method 
 of knowledge, and even the ordinary metaphysical categories, were 
 now insufficient for him. Schelling now places the intellectual 
 intuition as the starting point of true knowledge. Intuition, in 
 general, is an equal positing of thought and being. When I be- 
 hold an object, the being of the object and my thought of the 
 object is for me absolutely the same. But in the ordinary intui- 
 tion, some separate sensible being is posited as one with the 
 thought. But in the intellectual or rational intuition, being in 
 general, and every being is made identical with the thought, and 
 the absolute suhj ect-ohj ect is beheld. The intellectual intuition 
 is absolute knowledge, and as such it can only be conceived as 
 that in which thought and being are not opposed to each other. 
 It is the beginning and the first step towards philosophy to behold, 
 immediately and intellectually within thyself, that same indifi'er- 
 ence of the ideal and the real which thou beholdest projected as 
 it were from thyself in space and time. This absolutely absolute 
 mode of knowledge is wholly and entirely in the absolute itself. 
 That it can never become taught is clear. It cannot, moreover, 
 be seen why philosophy is bound to have special regard to the 
 unattainable. It seems much more fitting to make so complete a 
 separation on every side between the entrance to philosophy and 
 the common knowledge, that no road nor track shall lead from the 
 latter to the former. The absolute mode of knowledge, like the 
 truth which it contains, has no true opposition outside of itself, 
 and as it cannot be demonstrated by any intelligent being, so 
 nothing can be set up in opposition to it by any. — Schelling has 
 attempted to bring the intellectual intuition into a method, and 
 has named this method construction. The possibility and the 
 necessity of the constructive method is based upon the fact that 
 the absolute is in all, and that all is the absolute. Construction 
 is nothing other than the proving that the whole is absolutely ex- 
 
SCHELLING. 
 
 331 
 
 pressed in every particular relation and object. To construe an 
 object, pbilosophically, is to prove that in this object the whole 
 inner structure of the absolute repeats itself. 
 
 In SchelliDg's Lectures on the 3Iethod of Academical 
 Study''"' (delivered in 1802, and published in 1803), he sought to 
 treat encyclopaediacally, every philosophical discipline from the 
 given standpoint of identity or indifference. They furnish a con- 
 nected and popular exposition of the outlines of his philosophy, in 
 the form of a critical modelling of the studies of the university 
 course. The most noticeable feature in them is Schelling's attempt 
 at a historical construction of Christianity. The incarnation of 
 God is an incarnation from eternity. The eternal Son of God, 
 born from the essence of the father of all things, is the finite itself, 
 as it is in the eternal intuition of God. Christ is only the his- 
 torical and phenomenal pinnacle of the incarnation ; as an indi- 
 vidual, he is a person wholly conceivable from the circumstances 
 of the age in which he appeared. Since God is eternally outside 
 of all time, it is inconceivable that he should have assumed a 
 human nature at any definite moment of time. The temporal 
 form of Christianity, the exoteric Christianity does not correspond 
 to its idea, and has its perfection yet to be hoped for. A chief 
 hindrance to the perfection of Christianity, was, and is the so- 
 called Bible, which, moreover, is far inferior to other religious 
 writings, in a genuine religious content. The future must bring 
 a new birth of the esoteric Christianity, or a new and higher form 
 of religion, in which philosophy, religion and poesy shall melt 
 together in unity. — This latter remark contains already an intima- 
 tion of the " Philosophy of Bevelation,^^ a work subsequently 
 written by Schelling, and which exhibited many of the principles 
 current in the age of the apostle J ohn. In the work we are now 
 considering, there are also many other points which correspond to 
 this later standpoint of Schelling. Thus he places at the summit 
 of history a kind of golden age. It is inconceivable, he says, that 
 man as he now appears, should have raised himself through him- 
 self from instinct to consciousness, from animality to rationality. 
 Another human race, must, therefore, have preceded the present, 
 
382 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 which the old saga have immortalized under the form of gods and 
 heroes. The first origin of religion and culture is only conceiva- 
 ble through the instruction of higher natures. I hold the condi- 
 tion of culture as the first condition of the human race, and con- 
 siderer the first foundation of states, sciences, religion and arts as 
 cotemporary, or rather as one thing : so that all these were not 
 truly separate, but in the completest interpenetration, as it will be 
 again in the final consummation. Schelling is no more than con- 
 sistent when he accordingly apprehends the symbols of mythology 
 which we meet with at the beginning of history, as disclosures of 
 the highest wisdom. There is here also a step towards his sub- 
 sequent " Philosophy of Mythologyy 
 
 The mystical element revealed in these expressions of Schelling 
 gained continually a greater prominence with him. Its growth^ 
 was partly connected with his fruitless search after an absolute 
 method, and a fitting form in which he might have satisfactorily 
 expressed his philosophic intuitions. All noble mysticism rests 
 on the incapacity of adequately expressing an infinite content in 
 the form of a conception. So Schelling, after he had been rest- 
 lessly tossed about in every method, soon gave up also his method 
 of construction, and abandoned himself wholly to the unlimited 
 current of his fancy. But though this was partly the cause of 
 his mysticism, it is also true that his philosophical standpoint was 
 gradually undergoing a change. From the speculative science of 
 nature, he was gradually passing over more and more into the 
 philosophy of mind, by which the determination of the absolute 
 in his conception became changed. While he had previously de- 
 termined the absolute as the indifierence of the ideal and the real^ 
 he now gives a preponderance to the ideal over the real, and makeb 
 ideality the fundamental determination of the absolute. The 
 first is the ideal ; secondly, the ideal determines itself in itself to 
 the real, and the real as such is the third. The earlier harmony 
 of mind and matter is dissolved : matter appears now as the nega- 
 tive of mind. Since Schelling in this way distinguishes the uni- 
 verse from the absolute as its counterpart, we see that he leaves 
 
SCHELLING. 
 
 333 
 
 decidedly the basis of Spinozism on which he had previously 
 stood, and places himself on a new standpoint. 
 
 lY. Fourth Pemod : the Direction of Schelling's Phi- 
 losophy AS Mystical and allied to New-Platonism. 
 
 The writings of this period are : — " Philosophy and JReligion,^^ 
 1804. " Exposition of the true relation of the Philosophy of 
 Nature to the improved Theory of Fichte,^^ 1806 ; " Medical 
 Annual " (published in company with Marcus) 1805-1808. — As 
 has already been said, the absolute and the universe were, on the 
 standpoint of indilference, identical. Nature and history were 
 immediate manifestations of the absolute. But now Schelling lays 
 stress upon the difference between the two, and the independence of 
 the world. This he expresses in a striking way in the first of the 
 above named writings, by placing the origin of the world wholly 
 after the manner of New-Platonism, in a breaking away or a fall- 
 ing off from the absolute. From the absolute to the actual, there 
 is no abiding transition ; the origin of the sensible world is only 
 conceivable as a complete breaking off per saltum from the abso- 
 lute. The absolute is the only real, finite things are not real ; 
 they can, therefore, have their ground in no reality imparted to 
 them from the absolute, but only in a separation and complete 
 falling away from the absolute. The reconciliation of this fall, 
 and the manifestation of God made complete, is the final cause of 
 history. With this idea there are also connected other represen- 
 tations borrowed from New-Platonism, which Schelling briugs out 
 in the same work. He speaks in it of the descent of the soul 
 from intellectuality, to the world of sense, and like the Platonic 
 myth he allows this fall of souls to be a punishment for their self- 
 hood (pride) ; he speaks also in connection with this of a regenera- 
 tion, or transmigration of souls, by which they either -begin a 
 higher life on a better sphere, or intoxicated with matter, they are 
 driven down to a still lower abode, according as they have in the 
 present life laid aside more or less of their selfhood, and become 
 purified in a greater or less degree, to an identity with the infi- 
 nite ; but we are especially reminded of New-Platonism by the high 
 place and the mystical and symbolical significance, which Schelling 
 
334 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 gives in this work to the Greek mysteries (as did Bruno), and the 
 view that if religion would be held in its pure ideality, it can only 
 exist as exoteric, or in the form of mysteries. — This notion of a 
 higher blending together of religion and philosophy goes through 
 all the writings of this period. All true experience, says Schel- 
 ling in the " Medical Annual,'''' is religious. The existence of 
 God is an empirical truth, and the ground of all experience. 
 True, religion is not philosophy, but the philosophy which does 
 not unite in sacred harmony, religion with science, were unworthy 
 of the name. True, I know something higher than science. And 
 if science has only these two ways open before it to knowledge, 
 viz., that of analysis or abstraction, and that of synthetic deriva- 
 tion, then we deny all science of the absolute. Speculation is 
 every thing, i. e. a beholding, a contemplation of that which is in 
 God. Science itself has worth only so far as it is speculative, i. e. 
 only so far as it is a contemplation of God as he is. But the time 
 will come when the sciences shall more and more cease, and 
 immediate knowledge take their place. The mortal eye closes 
 only in the highest science, where it is no longer the man who sees, 
 but the eternal beholding which has now become seeing in him. 
 
 With this theosophic view of the world, Schelling was led to 
 pay attention to the earlier mystics. He began to study their 
 writings. He answered the charge of mysticism in his controversy 
 with Fichte as follows : — Among the learned of the last century, 
 there was a tacit agreement never to go beyond a certain height, 
 and, therefore, the genuine spirit of science was given up to the 
 unlearned. These, because they were uneducated and had drawn 
 upon themselves the jealousy of the learned, were called fanat- 
 ics. But many a philosopher by profession might well have ex- 
 changed all his rhetoric for the fulness of mind and heart which 
 abound in the writings of such fanatics. Therefore I am not 
 ashamed of the name of such a fanatic. I will even seek to make 
 this reproach true ; if I have not hitherto studied the writings of 
 these men correctly, it has been owing to negligence. 
 
 Schelling did not omit to verify these words. There were 
 some special mental affinities between himself and Jacob BoeJime, 
 
SCHELLING. 
 
 335 
 
 with whom he now became more and more closely joined. A 
 study of his writings is indeed indicated in Schelling's works of 
 the present period. One of the most famous of Schelling's writ- 
 ings, his theory of freedom, which appeared after this (" Fhiloso- 
 phiscJie Untersuchungen itber das Wesen der menschlichen 
 Freiheit,^^ 1809), is composed entirely in the spirit of Jacob 
 Boehme. We begin with it a new period of Schelling's philoso- 
 phizing, where the ivill is affirmed as the essence of God, and we 
 have thus a new definition of the absolute differing from every 
 previous one. 
 
 V. Fifth Period : — Attempt at a Theggony and Cosmogo- 
 ny AFTER THE MaNNER OF JaCOB BoEHME. 
 
 Schelling had much in common with Jacob Boehme. Both con- 
 sidered the speculative cognition as a kind of immediate intuition. 
 Both made use of forms which mingled the abstract and the sen- 
 suous, and interpenetrated the definiteness of logic with the coloring 
 of fancy. Both, in fine, were speculatively in close contact. The 
 self-duplication of the absolute was a fundamental thought of 
 Boehme. He started with the principle, that the divine essence 
 was the indeterminable, infinite, and inconceivable, the absence of 
 ground ( TJngrund). This absence of ground now projects itself in 
 a proper feeling of its abstract and infinite essence, into the finite, 
 i. e. into a ground, or the centre of nature, in the dark womb of 
 which qualities are produced, from whose harsh collision the light- 
 ning streams forth, which, as mind or principle of light, is des- 
 tined to rule and explain the struggling powers of nature, so that 
 the God who has been raised from the absence of ground through 
 a ground to the light of the mind, may henceforth move in an 
 eternal kingdom of joy. This theogony of Jacob Boehme is in 
 striking accord with the present standpoint of Schelling. As 
 Boehme had apprehended the absolute as the indeterminable ab- 
 sence of ground, so had Schelling in his earlier writings appre- 
 hended it as indifierence. As Boehme had distinguished this ab- 
 sence of ground from a ground, or from nature and from God, as 
 the light of minds, so had Schelling, in the writings of the last 
 period, apprehended the absolute as a self-renunciation, and a re- 
 
336 
 
 A HISTOEY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 turn back from this renunciation into a higher unity with itself. 
 We have here the three chief elements of that history of God, 
 around which Schelling's essay on freedom turns: (1) God as 
 indifference, or the absence of ground ; (2) God as duplication 
 into ground and existence, real and ideal ; (3) Reconciliation of 
 this duplication, and elevation of the original indifference to iden- 
 tity. The first element of the divine life is that of pure indiffer- 
 ence, or indistinguishableness. This, which precedes every thing 
 existing, may be called the original ground, or the absence of 
 ground. The absence of ground is not a product of opposites, 
 nor are they contained implicite in it, but it is a proper essence 
 separate from every opposite, and having no predicate but that of 
 predicatelessness. Real and ideal, darkness and light, can never 
 be predicated of the absence of ground as opposites ; they can 
 only be affirmed of it as not-opposites in a neither-nor. From 
 this indifference now rises the duality : the absence of ground 
 separates into two co-eternal beginnings, so that ground and ex- 
 istence may become one through love, and the indeterminable and 
 lifeless indifference may rise to a determinate and living identity. 
 Since nothing is before or external to God, he must have the 
 ground of his existence in himself. But this ground is not sim- 
 ply logical, as conception, but real, as something which is actual- 
 ly to be distinguished in God from existence ; it is nature in God, 
 an essence inseparable indeed from him, but yet distinct. Hence 
 we cannot assign to this ground understanding and will, but only 
 desire after this ; it is the longing to produce itself. But in that 
 this ground moves in its longing according to obscure and un- 
 certain laws like a swelling sea, there is, self-begotten in God, 
 another and reflexive motion, an inner representation by which he 
 beholds himself in his image. This representation is the eternal 
 word in God, which rises as light in the darkness of the ground, 
 and endows its blind longing with understanding. This under- 
 standing, united with the ground, becomes pre-creating will. Its 
 work is to give order to nature, and to regulate the hitherto un- 
 regulated ground ; and from this explanation of the real through 
 the ideal, comes the creation of the world. The development of 
 
SCHELLING. 
 
 337 
 
 the world has two stadia : ( 1 ) the travail of light, or the pro- 
 gressive development of nature to man ; (2) the travail of mind, 
 or the development of mind in history. 
 
 (1.) The progressive development of nature proceeds from a 
 conflict of the ground with the understanding. The ground 
 originally sought to produce every thing solely from itself, but 
 its products had no consistence without the understanding, and 
 went again to the ground, a creation which we see exhibited in 
 the extinct classes of animals and plants of the pre- Adamite 
 world. But consecutively and gradually, the ground admitted 
 the work of the understanding, and every such step towards light 
 is indicated by a new class of nature's beings. In every creature 
 of nature we must, therefore, distinguish two principles : first, 
 the obscure principle through which the creatures of nature are 
 separate from God, and have a particular will ; second, the divine 
 principle of the understanding, of the universal will. With irra- 
 tional creatures of nature, however, these two principles are not 
 yet brought to unity ; but the particular will is simple seeking 
 and desire, while the universal will, without the individual will, 
 reigns as an external power of nature, as controlling instinct. 
 
 (2.) The two principles, the particular and the universal will, 
 are first united in man as they are in the absolute : but in God 
 they are united inseparably, and in man separably, for otherwise 
 God could not reveal himself in man. It is even this separable- 
 ness of the universal will, and the particular will, which makes 
 good and evil possible. The good is the subjection of the par- 
 ticular will to the universal will, and the reverse of this right 
 relation is evil. Human freedom consists in this possibility of 
 good and evil. The empirical man, however, is not free, but his 
 whole empirical condition is posited by a previous act of intelli- 
 gence. The man must act just as he does, but is nevertheless 
 free, because he has from eternity freely made himself that which 
 he now necessarily is. The history of the human race is founded 
 for the most part on the struggle of the individual will with the 
 universal will, as the history of nature is founded on the struggle 
 of the ground with the understanding. The difi'erent stages 
 15 
 
338 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 through which evil, as a historical power, takes its way in conflict 
 with love, constitute the periods of the world's history. Chris- 
 tianity is the centre of history : in Christ, the principle of love 
 came in personal contact with incarnate evil : Christ was the 
 mediator to reconcile on the highest stage the creation with God ; 
 for that which is personal can alone redeem the personal. The 
 end of history is the reconciliation of the particular will and love, 
 the prevalence of the universal will, so that God shall be all in 
 all. The original indifference is thus elevated to identity. 
 
 Schelling has given a farther justification of this his idea of 
 God, in his controversial pamphlet against Jacobi, (1812). The 
 charge of naturalism which Jacobi made against him, he sought to 
 refute by showing how the true idea of God was a union of 
 naturalism and theism. Naturalism seeks to conceive of God as 
 ground of the world (immanent), while theism would view him as 
 the world's cause (transcendent) : the true course is to unite both 
 determinations. God is at the same time ground and cause. It 
 no way contradicts the conception of God to afiirm that, so far as 
 he reveals himself, he developes himself from himself, advancing 
 from the imperfect to the perfect : the imperfect is in fact the 
 perfect itself, only in a state of becoming. It is necessary that 
 this becoming should be by stages, in order that the fulness of the 
 perfect may appear on all sides. If there were no obscure ground, 
 no nature, no negative principle in God, we could not speak of a 
 consciousness of God. So long as the God of modern theism 
 remains the simple essence which ought to be purely essential, 
 but which in fact is without essence, so long as an actual twofold- 
 ness is not recognized in God, and a limiting and denying energy 
 (a nature, a negative principle) is not placed in opposition to the 
 extending and affirming energy in God, so long will science be 
 entitled to make its denial of a personal God. It is universally 
 and essentially impossible to conceive of a being with conscious- 
 ness, which has not been brought into limit by some denying energy 
 within himself — as universally and essentially impossible as to 
 conceive of a circle without a centre. 
 
 VI. Since the essay against Jacobi, which in its philosophical 
 
TRANSITION TO HEGEL. 
 
 339 
 
 content accords mainly with his theory of freedom, Schelling has 
 not made public any thing of importance. He has often announced 
 a work entitled " Die Weltalter,^^ which should contain a com- 
 plete and elaborate exposition of his philosophy, but has always 
 withdrawn it before its appearance. Paiilus has surreptitiously 
 brought his later Berlin lectures before the public in a manner 
 for which he has been greatly blamed : but since this publication 
 is not recognized by Schelling himself, it cannot be used as ai: 
 authentic source of knowledge of his philosophy. During this 
 long period, Schelling has published only two articles of a philo- 
 sophical content : " On the Deities of Samothracos,^^ 1815, and 
 a " Critical Preface''^ to Becker'' s translation of a preface of 
 Cousin J 1834. Both articles are very characteristic of the pre- 
 sent standpoint of Schelling's philosophizing — he himself calls his 
 present philosophy Positive Philosophy, or the Philosophy of My- 
 thology and Revelation, — but as they give only intimations of 
 this, and do not reach a complete exposition, they do not admit 
 of being used for our purpose. 
 
 SECTION XLIV. 
 
 TRANSITION TO HEGEL. 
 
 The great want of Schelling's philosophizing, was its inability 
 to furnish a suitable form for the philosophic content. Schelling 
 went through the list of all methods, and at last abandoned all. 
 But this absence of method into which he ultimately sank, contra- 
 dicted the very principle of his philosophizing. If thought and 
 being are identical, yet form and content cannot be indifferent in 
 respect to each other. On the standpoint of absolute knowledge, 
 there must be found for the absolute content an absolute form, 
 which shall be identical with the content. This is the position 
 assumed by Hegel. Hegel has fused the content of Schelling's 
 philosophy by means of the absolute method. 
 
340 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Hegel sprang as truly from Ficlite as from Schelling ; the 
 origin of his system is found in both. His method is essentially 
 that of Fichte, but his general philosophical standpoint is Schell- 
 ing's. He has combined both Fichte and SchelliEg. 
 
 Hegel has himself, in his " Phenomenology^'''' the first work in 
 which he appeared as a philosopher on his own hook, having pre- 
 viously been considered as an adherent of Schelling — clearly ex- 
 pressed his difference from Schelling, which he comprehensively 
 affirms in the following three hits (Schlagworte): — In Schelling's 
 philosophy, the absolute is, as it were, shot out of a pistol ; it is 
 only the night in which every cow looks black ; when it is widened 
 to a system, it is like the course of a painter, who has on his 
 palette but two colors, red and green, and who would cover a 
 surface with the former when a historical piece was demanded, 
 and with the latter when a landscape was required. The first of 
 these charges refers to the mode of attaining the idea of the abso- 
 lute, viz., immediately, through intellectual intuition ; this leap 
 Hegel changes, in his Phenomenology, to a regular transit, proceed- 
 ing step by step. The second charge relates to the way in which 
 the absolute thus gained is conceived and expressed, viz., simply 
 as the absence of all finite distinctions, and not as the immanent 
 positing of a system of distinctions within itself. Hegel declares 
 that every thing depends upon apprehending and expressing the 
 true not as substance {i. e. as negation of determinateness), but as 
 subject (as a positing and producing of finite distinction). The 
 third charge has to do with Schelling's manner of carrying out his 
 principle through the concrete content of the facts given in the 
 natural and intellectual worlds, viz., by the application of a ready- 
 made schema (the opposition of the ideal and the real) to the 
 objects, instead of suffering them to unfold and separate them- 
 selves from themselves. The school of Schelling was especially 
 given to this schematizing formalism, and that which Hegel re- 
 marks, in the introduction to his Phenomenology, may very well be 
 applied to it : " If the formalism of a philosophy of nature should 
 happen to teach that the understanding is electricity, or that the 
 animate is nitrogen, the inexperienced might look upon such in- 
 
TRANSITION TO HEGEL. 
 
 341 
 
 structions with deep amazement, and perhaps revere them as dis- 
 playing the marks of profound genius. But the trick of such a 
 wisdom is as readily learned as it is easily practised ; its repetition 
 is as insufferable as the repetition of a discovered feat of legerde- 
 main. This method of affixing to every thiiig heavenly and 
 earthly, to all natural and intellectual forms, the two determina- 
 tions of the universal scheme, makes the universe like a grocer's 
 shop, in which a row of closed jars stand Avith their labels pasted 
 on them. ^ 
 
 The point, therefore, of greatest difference between Scbelling 
 and Hegel is their philosophical method, and this at the same 
 time forms the bond of close connection which unites Hegel with 
 Ficbte. Thesis, antithesis, synthesis — this was the method by 
 which Fichte had sought to deduce all being from the Ego, and 
 in precisely the same way Hegel deduces all being — the intellec- 
 tual and natural universe — from the thought, only with this dif- 
 ference, that with him that which was idealistically deduced had 
 at the same time an objective reality. While the practical ideal- 
 ism of Fichte stood related to the objective world as a producer, 
 and the ordinary empiricism as a beholder, yet with Hegel the 
 speculative (conceiving) reason is at the same time productive and 
 beholding. I produce (for myself) that which is (in itself) without 
 my producing. The result of philosophy, says Hegel, is the 
 thought which is by itself, and which comprehends in itself the 
 universe, and changes it into an intelligent world. To raise all 
 being to being in the consciousness, to knowledge, is the problem 
 and the goal of philozophizing, and this goal is reached when the 
 mind has become able to beget the whole objective world from 
 itself. 
 
 In his first great work, the " Phenomenology of the Mind,^^ 
 Hegel sought to establish the standpoint of absolute knowledge or 
 absolute idealism. He furnishes in this work a history of the 
 phenomenal consciousness (whence its title), a development of the 
 formative epochs of the consciousness in its progress to philo- 
 sophical knowledge. The inner development of consciousness 
 consists in this, viz., that the peculiar condition in which it finds 
 
342 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 itself becomes objectified (or conscious), and through this know- 
 ledge of its own being the consciousness rises ever a new step to 
 a higher condition. The " Phenomenology " seeks to show how, 
 and out of wha.t necessity the consciousness advances from step to 
 step, from reality to being per se [vom AnsicJi zum Farsich), 
 from being to knowledge. The author begins with the immediate 
 consciousness as the lowest step. He entitled this section : " The 
 Sensuous Certainty, or the This and the Mine^ At this stage 
 the question is asked the Ego : what is this, or what is here ? and 
 it answers, e. g. the tree ; and to the question, what is now ? it 
 answers now is the night. But if we turn ourselves around, here 
 is not a tree but a house ; and if we write down the second answer, 
 and look at it again after a little time, we find that now is no 
 longer night but mid-day. The this becomes, therefore, a not- 
 this, i. e. a universal. And very naturally ; for if I say : this 
 piece of paper, yet each and every paper is a this piece of paper, 
 and I have only said the universal. By such inner dialectics the 
 whole field of the immediate certainty of the sense in perception 
 is gone over. In this way — ^since every formative step (every 
 form) of the consciousness of the philosophizing subject is in- 
 volved in contradictions, and is carried by this immanent dialec- 
 tics to a higher form of consciousness — this process of develop- 
 ment goes on till the contradiction is destroyed, i. e. till all 
 strangeness between subject and object disappears, and the mind 
 rises to a perfect self-knowledge and self-certainty. To charac- 
 terize briefly the different steps of this process, we might say that 
 the consciousness is first found as a certainty of the sense, or as 
 the this and the mine ; next as perception, which apprehends the 
 objective as a thing with its properties ; and then as understand- 
 ing, i. e. apprehending the objects as being reflected in itself, or 
 distinguishing between power and expression, being and manifes- 
 tation, outer and inner. From this point the consciousness, which 
 has only recognized itself, its own pure being in its objects and 
 their determinations, and for which therefore every other thing 
 than itself has, as such, no significance, becomes the self-like Ego, 
 and rises to the truth and certainty of itself to self-consciousness. 
 
HEGEL. 
 
 348 
 
 The self-consciousness become universal, or as reason, now tra- 
 verses also a series of development-steps, until it manifests itself 
 as spirit, as the reason which, in accord with all rationality, and 
 satisfied with the rational world without, extends itself over the 
 natural and intellectual universe as its kingdom, in which it finds 
 itself at home. Mind now passes through its stages of uncon- 
 strained morality, culture and refinement, ethics and the ethical 
 view of the world to religion ; and religion itself in its perfection, 
 as revealed religion becomes absolute knowledge. At this last 
 stage being and thought are no more separate, being is no longer 
 an object for the thought, but the thought itself is the object of 
 the thought. Science is nothing other than the true knowledge 
 of the mind concerning itself. In the conclusion of the " Phe- 
 nomenology,^^ Hegel casts the following retrospect on the course 
 which he has laid down : " The goal which is to be reached, viz., 
 absolute knowledge, or the mind knowing itself as mind, requires 
 us to take notice of minds as they are in themselves, and the 
 organization of their kingdom. These elements are preserved, 
 and furnished to us either by history, where we look at the side 
 of the mind's free existence as it accidentally appears, or by the 
 science of phenomenal knowledge, where we look at the side of 
 the mind's ideal organization. These two sources taken together, 
 as the ideal history, give us the real history and the true being 
 of the absolute spirit, the actuality, truth, and certainty of his 
 throne, without which he were lifeless and alone ; only ' from the 
 cup of this kingdom of minds does there stream forth for him his 
 infinity.' " 
 
 SECTION XLV. 
 
 HEGEL. 
 
 George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was born at Stuttgart, the 
 27th of August, 1770. In his eighteenth year he entered the 
 university of Tubingen, in order to devote himself to the study 
 
344 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 of theology. During his course of study here, he attracted no 
 marked attention; Schelling, who was his junior in years, shone 
 far beyond all his cotemporaries. After leaving Tubingen, he 
 took a situation as private tutor, first in Switzerland, and after- 
 wards in Frankfort-on-the-Main till 1801, when he settled down 
 at Jena. At first he was regarded as a disciple, and defender of 
 Schelling's philosophy, and as such he wrote in 1801 his first 
 minor treatise on the " Difference hetiveen Fichte and Scliellingy 
 Soon afterwards he became associated with Schelling in publish- 
 ing the <' CriticalJournal of Philosophy,''^ 1802-8, for which he 
 furnished a number of important articles. His labors as an aca- 
 demical teacher met at first with but little encouragement ; he 
 gave his first lecture to only four hearers. Yet in 1806 he 
 became professor in the university, though the political catastro- 
 phe in which the country was soon afterwards involved, deprived 
 him again of the place. Amid the cannon's thunder of the battle 
 of Jena, he finished " the Phenomenology of the Mindj'^ his first 
 great and independent work, the crown of his Jena labors. He 
 was subsequently in the habit of calling this book which appeared 
 in 1807, his " voyage of discovery." From Jena, Hegel for want 
 of the means of subsistence went to Bamberg, where for two years 
 he was editor of a political journal published there. In the 
 fall. of 1808, he became rector of the gymnasium at Nuremberg. 
 In this situation he wrote his Logic, 1812-16. All his works 
 were produced slowly, and he first properly began his literary ac- 
 tivity as Schelling finished his. In 1816, he received a call to a 
 professorship of philosophy at Heidelberg, where in 1817 he pub- 
 lished his " Encyclopcedia of the philosophical sciences,^'' in which 
 for the first time he showed the whole circuit of his system. But 
 his peculiar fame, and his far-reaching activity, dates first from 
 his call to Berlin in 1818. It was at Berlin that he surrounded 
 himself with an extensive and very actively scientific school, and 
 where through his connection with the Prussian government he 
 gained a political influence and acquired a reputation for his phi- 
 losophy, as the philosophy of the State, though this neither speaks 
 favorably for its inner purity, nor its moral credit Yet in his 
 
HEGEL. 
 
 345 
 
 '^Philosophy of Bights,^^ whicli appeared in 1821 (a time, to be 
 Bure, when the Prussian State had not yet shown any decidedly 
 anti-constitutional tendency), Hegel does not deny the political 
 demands of the present age ; he declares in favor of popular re 
 presentation, freedom of the press, and publicity of judicial pro 
 ceedings, trial by jury, and an administrative independence of 
 corporations. 
 
 In Berlin, Hegel gave lectures upon almost every branch of 
 philosophy, and these have been published by his disciples and 
 friends after his death. His manner as a lecturer was stammer- 
 ing, clumsy, and unadorned, but was still not without a peculiar 
 attraction as the immediate expression of profound thoughtfulness. 
 His social intercourse was more with the uncultivated than with 
 the learned ; he was not fond of shining as a genius in social cir- 
 cles. In 1829 he became rector of the university, an office which 
 he administered in a more practical manner than Fichte had 
 done. Hegel died with the cholera, Nov. 14th, 1831, the day also 
 of Leibnitz's death. He rests in the same churchyard with 
 Solger and Fichte, near by the latter, and not far from the former. 
 His writings and lectures form seventeen volumes which have ap- 
 peared since 1832: Vol. I. Minor Articles; II. Phenomenology; 
 III-Y. Logic; YL-YII. Encyclopedia; VIII. Philosphy of 
 Rights; IX. Philosophy of History; X. Esthetics; XI.-XIL Phi- 
 losophy of Religion ; XIII.-XY. History of Philosophy ; XYI- 
 XYII. Miscellanies. His life has been written by Rosenkranz. 
 
 Hegel's system may be divided in a number of ways. The 
 best mode is by connecting it with Schelling. Schellings's abso- 
 lute was the identity or the indifference point of the ideal and the 
 real. From this Hegel's threefold division immediately follows. 
 (1) The exposition of the indifference point, the development of 
 the pure conceptions or determinations in thought, which lie at the 
 basis of all natural and intellectual life; in other words, the logi- 
 cal unfolding of the absolute, — the science of logic. (2) The 
 development of the real world or of nature — natural philosophy. 
 (3) The development of the ideal world, or of mind as it shows 
 itself concretely in right, morals, the state, art, religion, and 
 15* 
 
346 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 science. — Philosophy of Mind. These three parts of the system 
 represent the three elements of the absolute method, thesis, anti- 
 thesis, synthesis. The absolute is at first pure, and immaterial 
 thought ; secondly, it is differentiation (Andersseyn) of the pure 
 thought or its diremption(verzerrw?2<7) in space and time — nature ; 
 thirdly, it returns from this self-estrangement to itself, destroys 
 the differentiation of nature, and thus becomes actual self-know- 
 ing thought or mind. 
 
 I. Science of Logic. — The Hegelian logic is the scientific 
 exposition and development of the pure conceptions of reason, 
 those conceptions or categories which lie at the basis of all thought 
 and being, and which determine the subjective knowledge as 
 truly as they form the indwelling soul of the objective reality; 
 in a word, those ideas in which the ideal and the real have their 
 point of coincidence. The domain of logic, says Hegel, is the 
 truth, as it is -per se in its native character. It is as Hegel him- 
 self figuratively expresses it, the representation of Grod as he is 
 in his eternal being, before the creation of the world or a 
 finite mind. In this respect it is, to be sure, a domain of shad- 
 ows ; but these shadows are, on the other hand, those simple 
 essences freed from all sensuous matters, in whose diamond net 
 the whole universe is constructed. 
 
 Different philosophers had already made a thankworthy be- 
 ginning towards collecting and examining the pure conceptions of 
 the reason, as Aristotle in his categories, Wolff in his ontology, 
 and Kant in his transcendental analytics. But they had neither 
 completely collected, nor critically sifted, nor (Kant excepted) 
 derived them from one principle, but had only taken them up em- 
 pirically, and treated them lexicologically. But in opposition to 
 this course, Hegel attempted, (1) to completely collect the pure 
 art-conceptions ; (2) to critically sift them (^. e. to exclude every 
 thing but pure thought) ; and (3) — which is the most character- 
 istic peculiarity of the Hegelian logic — to derive these dialecti- 
 cally from one another, and carry them out to an internally con- 
 nected system of pure reason. Hegel starts with the view, that 
 in every conception of the reason, every other is contained impH- 
 
HEGEL. 
 
 347 
 
 citey and may be dialectically developed from it. Fichte had al- 
 ready claimed that the reason must deduce the whole system of 
 knowledge purely from itself, without any thing taken for granted ; 
 that some principle must he sought which should be of itself cer- 
 tain, and need no farther proof, and from which every thing else 
 could be derived. Hegel holds fast to this thought. Starting 
 from the simplest conception of reason, that of pure being, which 
 needs no farther establishing, he seeks from this, by advancing 
 from one conception ever to another and a richer one, to deduce 
 the whole system of the pure knowledge of reason. The lever of 
 this development is the dialectical method. 
 
 Hegel's dialectical method is partly taken from Plato, and 
 partly from Fichte. The conception of negation is Platonic. All 
 negation, says Hegel, is position, ajQ&rmation. If a conception is 
 negated, the result is not the pure nothing — a pure negative, but 
 a concrete positive ; there results a new conception which extends 
 around the negation of the preceding one. The negation of the one 
 e. g. is the conception of the many. In this way Hegel makes nega- 
 tion a vehicle for dialectical progress. Every pre-supposed concep- 
 tion is denied, and from its negation a higher and richer conception 
 is gained. This is connected with the method of Fichte, which 
 posits a fundamental synthesis ; and by analyzing this, seeks its 
 antitheses, and then unites again these antitheses through a second 
 synthesis, — e. g, being, nothing, becoming, quality, quantity, 
 measure, &c. This method, which is at the same time analytical 
 and synthetical, Hegel has carried through the whole system of 
 science. 
 
 We now proceed to a brief survey of the Hegelian Logic. It 
 is divided into three parts ; the doctrine of heing^ the doctrine of 
 essence^ and the doctrine of conception. 
 
 1. The Doctrine OF Being. (1.) Quality. --^oiencQhegmsYfiih. 
 the immediate and indeterminate conception of being. This, in its 
 want of content and emptiness, is nothing more than a pure negation, 
 a nothing. These two conceptions are thus as absolutely identical as 
 they are absolutely opposed; each of the two disappears immediate- 
 ly in its contrary. This oscillation of the two is the pure becoming^ 
 
348 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 which, if it be a transition from nothing to being, we call arising. 
 or, in the reverse case, we call it a departing. The still and sim- 
 ple precipitate of this process of arising and departing, is exist- 
 ence (Daseyn). Existence is being with a determinateness, or it 
 is quality ; more closely, it is reality or limited existence. Lim- 
 ited existence excludes every other from itself. This reference 
 to itself, which is seen through its negative relation to every other, 
 we call being per se {FdrsicTiseyn). Being per se which refers 
 itself only to itself, and repels every other from itself, is the one. 
 But, by means of this repelling, the one posits immediately many 
 ones. But the many ones are not distinguished from each other. 
 One is what the other is. The many are therefore one. But the 
 one is just as truly the manifold. For its exclusion is the posit- 
 ing of its contrary, or it posits itself thereby as manifold. By 
 this dialectic of attraction and repulsion, quality passes over into 
 quantity : for indifference in respect of distinction or qualitative 
 determinateness is quantity. 
 
 (2. ) Quantity. — Quantity is determination of greatness, which, 
 as such, is indifferent in respect of quality. In so far as the 
 greatness contains many ones distinguishably within itself, it is a 
 discrete, or has the element of discretion ; but on the other hand, 
 in so far as the many ones are similar, and the greatness is thus 
 indistinguishable, it is continuous, or has the element of con- 
 tinuity. Each of these two determinations is at the same time 
 identical with the other ; discretion cannot be conceived without 
 continuity, nor continuity without discretion. The existence of 
 quantity, or the limited quantity, is the quantum. The quan- 
 tum has also manifoldness and unity in itself ;. it is the enumera- 
 tion of the unities, i.. e. number. Corresponding to the quantum **' 
 or the extensive greatness, is the intensive greatness or the degree. 
 With the conception of degree, so far as degree is simple deter- 
 minateness, quantity approaches quality again. The unity of 
 quantity and quality is the measure. 
 
 (3.) The measure is a qualitative quantum, a quantum on 
 which the quality is dependent. An example of quantity deter- 
 mining the quality of a definite object is found in the temperature 
 
HEGEL. 
 
 349 
 
 of water, which decides whether the water shall remain water or 
 turn to ice or steam. Here the quantum of heat actually consti- 
 tutes the quality of the water. Quality and quantity are, there- 
 fore, ideal determinations, perpetually turning around on one 
 being, on a third, which is distinguished from the immediate what 
 and how much (quality and quantity) of a thing. This third is 
 the essence, which is the negation of every thing immediate, or 
 quality independent of the immediate being. Essence is being 
 in se, being divided in itself, a self-separation of being. Hence 
 the twofoldness of all determinations of essence. 
 
 2. The Doctrine of Essence. (1.) The Essence as such. 
 The essence as reflected being is the reference to itself only as it is 
 a reference to something other. We apply to this being the term 
 reflected analogously with the reflection of light, which, when it 
 falls on a mirror, is thrown back by it. As now the reflected light 
 is, through its reference to another object, something mediated or 
 posited, so the reflected being is that which is shown to be mediat- 
 ed or grounded through another. From the fact that philosophy 
 makes its problem to know the essence of things, the immediate 
 being of things is represented as a covering or curtain behind 
 which the essence is concealed. If, therefore, we speak of the 
 essence of an object, the immediate being standing over against 
 the essence (for without this the essence cannot be conceived), is 
 set down to a mere negative, to an appearance. The being ap- 
 pears in the essence. The essence is, therefore, the being as 
 appearance in itself. The essence when conceived in distinction 
 from the appearance, gives the conception of the essential, and 
 that which only appears in the essence, is the essenceless, or the 
 unessential. But since the essential has a being only in distinc- 
 tion from the unessential, it follows that the latter is essential to 
 the former, which needs its unessential just as much as the unes- 
 sential needs it. Each of the two, therefore, appears in the other, 
 or there takes place between them a reciprocal reference which we 
 call reflection. We have, therefore, to do in this whole sphere 
 with determinations of reflection, with determinations, each one 
 of which refers to the other, and cannot be conceived without it 
 
350 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHT. ^ 
 
 (e. g. positive and negative, ground and sequence, thing and pro- 
 perties, content and form, power and expression). We have, 
 therefore, in the development of the essence, those same deter- 
 minations which we found in the development of being, only no 
 longer in an immediate, but in a reflected form. Instead of being 
 and nothing, we have now the forms of the positive and negative ; 
 instead of the there-existent {Daseyn), we now have existence. 
 
 Essence is reflected being, a reference to itself, which, how- 
 ever, is mediated through a reference to something other which 
 appears in it. This reflected reference to itself we call identity 
 (which is unsatisfactorily and abstractly expressed in the so-called 
 first principle of thought, that A=A). This identity, as a nega- 
 tivity referring itself to itself, as a repulsion of its own from Itself, 
 contains essentially the determination of distinction. The imme- 
 diate and external distinction is the difference. The essential dis- 
 tinction, the distinction in itself, is the antithesis {positive and 
 negative). The self-opposition of the essence is the contradiction. 
 The antithesis of identity and distinction is put in agreement in 
 the conception of the ground. Since now the essence distinguishes 
 itself from itself, there is the essence as identical with itself or 
 the ground^ and the essence as distinguished from itself or the 
 sequence. In the category of ground and sequence the same 
 thing, i. e. the essence, is twice posited ; the grounded and the 
 ground are one and the same content, which makes it difficult to 
 define the ground except through the sequence, or the sequence 
 except through the ground. The two can, therefore, be divided 
 only by a powerful abstraction ; but because the two are identi- 
 cal, it is peculiarly a formalism to apply this category. If reflec- 
 tion would inquire after a ground, it is because it would see the 
 thing as it were in a twofold relation, once in its immediateness, 
 and then as posited through a ground. 
 
 (2.) Essence and Phenomenon. — The phenomenon is the ap- 
 pearance which the essence fills, and which is hence no longer 
 essenceless. There is no appearance without essence, and no 
 essence which may not enter into phenomenon. It is one and the 
 same content which at one time is taken as essence, and at another 
 
HEGEL. 
 
 351 
 
 as phenomenon. In the phenomenal essence we recognize the 
 positive element which has hitherto been called ground, but which 
 we now name content, and the negative element which we call the 
 form. Every essence is a unity of content and form, i. e. it exists. 
 In distinction from immediate being, we call that being which has 
 proceeded from some ground, existence, i. e. grounded being. 
 When we view the essence as existing, we call it thing. In the 
 relation of a thing to its properties we have a repetition of the re- 
 lation of form and content. The properties show us the thing in 
 respect of its form, but it is thing in respect of its content. The 
 reflation between the thing and its properties is commonly indica- 
 ted by the verb to have (e. g. the thing has properties), in order 
 to distinguish between the two. The essence as a negative refer- 
 ence to itself, and as repelling itself from itself in order to a 
 reflection in an alterum, is power and expression. In this category, 
 like all the other categories of essence, one and the same content 
 is posited twice. The power can only be explained from the ex- 
 pression, and the expression only from the power ; consequently 
 every explanation of which this category avails itself, is tautolo- 
 gical. To regard power as uncognizable, is only a self-deception 
 of the understanding respecting its own doing. — A higher expres- 
 sion for the category of power and expression is the category of 
 inner and outer. The latter category stands higher than the 
 former, because power needs some solicitation to express itself, 
 but the inner is the essence spontaneously manifesting itself. 
 Both of these, the inner and the outer, are also identical ; neither 
 is without the other. That, e. g. which the man is internally in 
 respect of his character, is he also externally in his action. The 
 truth of this relation will be, therefore, the identity of inner and 
 outer, of essence and phenomenon, viz. : 
 
 (3.) Actuality. — Actuality must be added as a third to being 
 and existence. In the actuality, the phenomenon is a complete 
 and adequate manifestation of the essence. The true actuality 
 is, therefore (in opposition to possibility and contingency), a 
 necessary being, a rational necessity. The well-known Hegelian 
 sentence that every thing is rational, and every thing rational is 
 
352 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 actual, is seen in this apprehension of " actuality " to be a simple 
 tautology. The necessary, when posited as its own ground, iden- 
 tical with itself, is substance. The phenomenal side, the unessen- 
 tial in the substance, and the contingent in the necessary, are acci- 
 deuces. These are no longer related to the substance, as the 
 phenomenon to the essence, or the outer to the inner, i. e. as an 
 adequate manifestation ; they are only transitory affections of the 
 substance, accidentally changing phenomenal forms, like sea waves 
 on the water of the sea. They are not produced by the substance, 
 but are rather destroyed in it. The relation of substance leads to 
 the relation of cause. In the relation of cause there is one and 
 the same thing posited on the one side as cause, and on the other 
 side as effect. The cause of warmth is warmth, and its effect is 
 again warmth. The effect is a higher conception than the acci- 
 dence, since it actually stands over against the cause, and the cause 
 itself passes over into effect. So far, however, as each side in the 
 relation of cause presupposes the other, we shall find the true 
 relation one in which each side is at the same time cause and effect, 
 i. e. reciprocal action. Reciprocal action is a higher relation 
 than causality, because these is no pure causality. There is no 
 effect without counteraction. "We leave the province of essence 
 with the category of reciprocal action. All the categories of 
 essence had shown themselves as a duplex of two sides, but when 
 we come to the category of reciprocal action, the opposition be- 
 tween cause and effect is destroyed, and they meet together ; unity 
 thus takes again the place of duplicity. We have, therefore, 
 again a being which coincides with mediate being. This unity of 
 being and essence, this inner or realized necessity, is the conception. 
 
 8. The Doctrine of the Coxceptiox. — A conception is a 
 rational necessity. We can only have a conception of that whose 
 true necessity we have recognized. The conception is, therefore, 
 the truly actual, the peculiar essence ; because it states as well 
 that which is actual as that which should be. 
 
 (1.) The subjective conception contains the elements of uni- 
 versality (the conception of species), particularity (ground of 
 classification, logical difference), and individuality (species — logi- 
 
HEGEL. 
 
 353 
 
 cal difference). The conception is therefore a unity of that which 
 is distinct. The self-separation of the conception is the judgment. 
 In the judgment, the conception appears as self-excluding dual- 
 ity. The twofoldness is seen in the difiference between subject 
 and predicate, and the unity in the copula. Progress in the dif- 
 ferent forms of judgment, consists in this, viz., that the copula 
 fills itself more and more with the conception. But thus the 
 judgment passes over into the conclusion or inference, i. e. to the 
 conception which is identical with itself through the conception. 
 In the inference one conception is concluded with a third through 
 a second. The different figures of the conclusion are the differ- 
 erent steps in the self-mediation of the conception. The concep- 
 tion is when it mediates itself with itself and the conclusion is no 
 longer subjective ; it is no longer my act, but an objective rela- 
 tion is fulfilled in it. 
 
 (2.) Ohjectivity is a reality only of the conception. The ob- 
 jective conception has* three steps, — Mechanism^ or the indifferent 
 relation of objects to each other ; Chemism, or the interpenetra- 
 tion of objects and their neutralization ; Teleology, or the inner 
 design of objects. The end accomplishing itself or the self-end is, 
 
 (8.) The idea. — The idea is the highest logical definition of 
 the absolute. The immediate existence of the idea, we call life, 
 or process of life. Every thing living is self-end immanent-end. 
 The idea posited in its difference as a relation of objective and 
 subjective, is the true and good. The true is the objective ration- 
 ality subjectively posited; the good is the subjective rationality 
 carried into the objectivity. Both conceptions together consti- 
 tute the absolute idea, which is just as truly as it should be, 
 i. e. the good is just as truly actualized as the true is living and 
 self-realizing. 
 
 The absolute and full idea is in space, because it discharges 
 itself from itself, as its reflection ; this its being in space is 
 Nature. 
 
 II. The Science op Nature. — Nature is the idea in the 
 form of differentiation. It is the idea externalizing itself; it 
 is the mind estranged from itself. The unity of the conception 
 
354 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 is therefore concealed in nature, and since philosopliy makes it ita 
 problem to seek out the intelligence which is hidden in nature, 
 and to pursue the process by which nature loses its own charac- 
 ter and becomes mind, it should not forget that the essence of 
 nature consists in being which has externalized itself, and that 
 the products of nature neither have a reference to themselves, nor 
 correspond to the conception, but grow up in unrestrained and 
 unbridled contingency. Nature is a bacchanalian god who nei- 
 ther bridles nor checks himself. It therefore represents no ideal 
 succession, rising ever in regular order, but, on the contrary, it 
 every where obliterates all essential limits by its doubtful struc- 
 tures, which always defy every fixed classification. Because it is 
 impossible to throw the determinations of the conception over 
 nature, natural philosophy is forced at every point, as it were, to 
 capitulate between the world of concrete individual structures, 
 and the regulative of the speculative idea. 
 
 Natural philosophy has its beginning, its course, and its end. 
 It begins with the first or immediate determination of nature, 
 with the abstract universality of its being extra se, space and 
 matter ; its end is the dissevering of the mind from nature in 
 the form of a rational and self-conscious individuality — man ; the 
 problem which it has to solve is, to show the intermediate link 
 between these two extremes, and to follow out successively the in- 
 creasingly successful struggles of nature to raise itself to self-con- 
 sciousness, to man. In this process, nature passes through three 
 principal stages. 
 
 1. Mechanics, or matter and an ideal system of matter. Mat- 
 ter is the being extra se [AussersicTiseyn) of nature, in its 
 most universal form. Yet it shows at the outset that tendency 
 to being per se which forms the guiding thread of natural philos- 
 ophy — gravity. Gravity is the being in se (Insichseyn) of mat- 
 ter ; it is the desire of matter to come to itself, and shows the first 
 trace of subjectivity. The centre of gravity of a body is the one 
 which it seeks. This same tendency of bringing all the manifold 
 unto being jper se lies at the basis of the solar system and of uni- 
 versal gravitation. The centrality which is the fundamental con- 
 
HEGEL. 
 
 355 
 
 ception of gravity, becomes here a system, whicli is in fact a 
 rational system so far as the form of the orbit, the rapidity of 
 motion, or the time of revolution may be referred to mathematical 
 laws. 
 
 2. Physics. — But matter possesses no individuality. Even 
 in astronomy it is not the bodies themselves, but only their geo- 
 metrical relations which interest us. We have here at the outset 
 to treat of quantitative and not yet of qualitative determinations. 
 Yet in the solar system, matter has found its centre, itself. Its 
 abstract and hollow being in se has resolved itself into form. 
 Matter now, as possessing a quality, is an object of physics. In 
 physics we have to do with matter which has particularized itself 
 in a body, in an individuality. To this province belongs inor- 
 ganic nature, its forms and reciprocal references. 
 
 3. Organics. — Inorganic nature, which was the object of phys- 
 ics, destroys itself in the chemical process. In the chemical pro- 
 cess, the inorganic body loses all its properties (cohesion, color, 
 shining, sound, transparency, &c.), and thus shows the evanes- 
 cence of its existence and that relativity which is its being. This 
 chemical process is overcome by the organic, the living process of 
 nature. True, the living body is ever on the point of passing 
 over to the chemical process ; oxygen, hydrogen and salt, are 
 always entering into a living organism, but their chemical action 
 is always overcome ; the living body resists the chemical process 
 till it dies. Life is self-preservation, self-end. While therefore 
 nature in physics had risen to individuality, in organics, it pro- 
 gresses to subjectivity. The idea, as life, represents itself in three 
 stages. 
 
 (1.) The general image of life in geological organism, or tho 
 mineral kingdom. Yet the mineral kingdom is the result, and 
 the residuum of a process of life and formation already passed. 
 The primitive rock is the stiffened crystal of life, and the geologi- 
 cal earth is a giant corpse. The present life which produces itself 
 eternally anew, breaks forth as the first moving of subjectivity, 
 
 (2.) In the organism ofj)lants or the vegetable kingdom. The 
 plant rises indeed to a formative process, to a process of assimila- 
 
356 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 tion, and to a process of species. But it is not yet a totality per' ^ 
 fectly organized in itself. Each part of the plant is the whole in- 
 dividual, each twig is the whole tree. The parts are related in- 
 differently to each other ; the crown can become a root, and the root 
 a crown. The plant, therefore, does not yet attain a true being 
 in se of individuality ; for, in order that this may be attained, an 
 absolute unity of the individual is necessary. This unity, which 
 constitutes an individual and concrete subjectivity, is first seen in 
 (8.) The animal organism, the animal kingdom. An unin- 
 terrupted intus-susception, free motion and sensation, are first 
 found in the animal organism. In its higher forms we find an 
 inner warmth and a voice. In its highest form, man, nature, or 
 rather the spirit, which works through nature, apprehends itself 
 as conscious individuality, as Ego. The spirit thus become a free 
 and rational self, has now completed its self-emancipation from 
 nature. 
 
 III. Philosophy of Mind. — 1. The Subjective Mind. — 
 The mind \s> the truth of nature ; it is being removed from its 
 estrangement, and become identical with itself. Its formal es- 
 sence, therefore, is freedom, the possibility of abstracting itself 
 from every thing else ; its material essence is the capacity of 
 manifesting itself as mind, as a conscious rationality, — of positing 
 the intellectual universe as its kingdom, and of building a struc- 
 ture of objective rationality. In order, however, to know itself, 
 and every thing rational, — in order to posit nature more and more 
 negatively, the mind, like nature, must pass through a series of 
 stages or emancipative acts. As it comes from nature and rises 
 from its externality to being, per se, it is at first soul or spirit of 
 nature, and as such, it is an object of anthropology in a strict 
 sense. As this spirit of nature, it sympathizes with the general 
 planetary life of the earth, and is in this respect subject to diver- 
 sity of climate, and change of seasons and days ; it sympathizes 
 with the geographical portion of the world which it occupies, i. e., 
 it is related to a diversity of race ; still farther, it bears a na- 
 tional type, and is moreover determined by mode of life, forma- 
 tion of the body, &c., while these natural conditions work also 
 
HEGEL. 
 
 357 
 
 upon its intelligent and moral character. Lastly, we must here 
 take notice of the way in which nature has determined the indi- 
 vidual subject, i. e. his natural temperament, character, idiosyn- 
 crasy, &c. To this belong the natural changes of life, age, sex- 
 ual relation, sleep, aod waking. In all this the mind is still 
 buried in nature, and this middle condition between being ^er se 
 and the sleep of nature, is sensation, the hollow forming of the 
 mind in its unconscious and unenlightened (verstandlos) individ- 
 uality. A higher stage of sensation is feeling, i. e. sensation in se, 
 where being per se appears ; feeling in its completed form is self- 
 feeling. Since the subject, in self-feeling, is buried in the pecu- 
 liarity of his sensations, but at the same time concludes himself 
 with himself, as a subjective one, the self-feeling is seen to be the 
 preliminary step to consciousness. The Ego now appears as the 
 shaft in which all these sensations, representations, cognitions and 
 thoughts are preserved, which is with them all, and constitutes 
 the centre in which they all come together. The mind as con- 
 scious, as a conscious being per se, as Ego, is the object of the 
 phenomenology of consciousness. 
 
 The mind was individual, so long as it was interwoven with 
 nature ; it is consciousness or Ego when it has divested itself of 
 nature. When distinguishing itself from nature, the mind with- 
 draws itself into itself, and that with which it was formerly inter- 
 woven, and which gave it a peculiar (earthly, national, &c.) de- 
 termination, stands now distinct from it, as its external world 
 (earth, people, &c). The awaking of the Ego is thus the act by 
 which the objective world, as such, is created ; while on the other 
 hand, the Ego awakens to a conscious subjectivity only in the ob- 
 jective world, and in distinction from it. The Ego, over against 
 the objective world, is consciousness in the strict sense of the 
 word. Consciousness becomes self-consciousness by passing 
 through the stages of immediate sensuous consciousness, percep- 
 tion, and understanding, and convincing itself in this its formative 
 history, that it has only to do with itself, while it believed that it 
 had to do with something objective. Again, self-consciousness 
 becomes universal or rational self-consciousness, as follows : In 
 
368 
 
 A mSTORY OP PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 its strivings to stamp the impress of the Ego upon the objective^ 
 and thus make the objective subjective, it falls in conflict with 
 other self-consciousnesses, and begins a war of extermination 
 against them, but rises from this helium omnium contra omnes, as 
 common consciousness, as the finding of the proper mean between 
 command and obedience, i. e. as truly universal, i. e. rational self 
 consciousness. The rational self-consciousness is actually free 
 because, when related to another, it is really related to itself, and 
 in all is still with itself ; it has emancipated itself from nature. 
 We have now mind as mind, divested of its naturalness and sub- 
 jectivity, and as such, it is an object of Pneumatology. 
 
 Mind is at first theoretical mind, or intelligence, and then 
 practical mind, or will. It is theoretical in that it has to do with 
 the rational as something given, and now posits it as its own ; it 
 is practical in that it immediately wills the subjective content 
 (truth), which it has as its own, to be freed from its one-sided 
 subjective form, and transformed into an objective. The practi- 
 cal mind is, so far, the truth of the theoretical. The theoretical 
 mind, in its way to the practical, passes through the stages of in- 
 tuition, representation, and thought ; and the will on its side 
 forms itself into a free will through impulse, desire, and inclina- 
 tion. The free will, as having a being in space {Daseyn), is the 
 objective mind, right, and the state. In right, morals and the 
 state, the freedom and rationality, which are chosen by the will, 
 take on an objective form. Every natural determination and im- 
 pulse now becomes moralized, and comes up to view again as ethi- 
 cal institute, as right and duty (the sexual impulse now appears 
 as marriage, and the impulse of revenge as civil punishment, &c.) 
 
 2. The Objective Mind. — (1.) The immediate objective being 
 (Daseyn) of the free will is the right. The individual, so far as 
 he is capable of rights, so far as he has rights and exercises them, 
 is a person. The maxim of right is, therefore, be a person and 
 have respect to other persons. The person allows himself an ex- 
 ternal sphere for his freedom, a substratum in which he can exer- 
 cise his will : as property, possession. As person I have the right 
 of possession, the absolute right of appropriation, the right to cast 
 
HEGEL. 
 
 359 
 
 my will over every thing, which thereby becomes mine. But 
 there exist other persons besides myself. My right is, therefore, 
 limited through the right of others. There thus arises a conflict 
 between will and will, which is settled in a compact, in a common 
 will. The relation of compact is the first step towards the state, 
 but only the ^^rs^ step, for if we should define the state as a com- 
 pact of all with all, this would sink it in the category of private 
 rights and private property. It does not depend upon the will 
 of the individual whether he will live in the state or not. The 
 relation of compact refers to private property. In a compact, 
 therefore, two wills merge themselves in a common will, which as 
 such becomes a right. But just here lies also the possibility of a 
 conflict between the individual will and the right or the universal 
 will. The separation of the two is a wrong (civil wrong, fraud, 
 crime). This separation demands a reconciliation, a restoration 
 of the right or the universal will from its momentary suppression 
 or negation by the particular will. The right restoring itself in 
 respect of the particular will, and establishing a negation of the 
 wrong, is punishment. Those theories, which found the right of 
 punishment in some end of warning or improvement, mistake the 
 essence of punishment. Threatening, warning, &c., are finite 
 ends, i. e. means, and moreover uncertain means : but an act of 
 righteousness should not be made a means ; righteousness is not 
 exercised in order that any thing other than itself shall be gained. 
 The fulfilment and self-manifestation of righteousness is absolute 
 end, self-end. The particular views we have mentioned, can only 
 be considered in reference to the mode of punishment. The pun- 
 ishment which is inflicted on a criminal, is his right, his ration- 
 ality, his law, beneath which he should be subsumed. His act 
 comes back upon himself. Hegel also defends capital punishment 
 whose abolition seemed to him as an untimely sentimentalism. 
 
 (2.) The removal of the opposition of the universal and par- 
 ticular will in the subject constitutes morality. In morality the 
 freedom of the will is carried forward to a self-determination of 
 the subjectivity, and the abstract right becomes duty and virtue. 
 The moral standpoint is the standpoint of conscience, it is the 
 
360 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 right of the subjective will, the right of a free ethical decision. 
 In the consideration of strict right, it is no inquiry what my prin- 
 ciple or my view might be, but in morality the question is at once 
 directed towards the purpose and moving spring of the will. 
 Hegel calls this standpoint of moral reflection and dutiful action 
 for a reason — morality, in distinction from a substantial, uncondi- 
 tioned and unreflecting ethics. This standpoint has three ele- 
 ments; (1) the element of resolution {vorsatz), where we consider 
 the inner determination of the acting subject, that which allows 
 an act to be ascribed only to me, and the blame of it to rest only 
 on my will (imputation) ; (2) the element of purpose, where the 
 completed act is regarded not according to its consequences, but 
 according to its relative worth in reference to myself. The reso- 
 lution was still internal ; but now the act is completed, and I must 
 suffer myself to judge according to the constituents of the act, be- 
 cause I must have known the circumstances under which I acted ; 
 (8) the element of the good, where the act is judged according to 
 its universal worth. The good is peculiarly the reconciliation of 
 the particular subjective will with the universal will, or with the 
 conception of the will ; in other words, to will the rational is good. 
 Opposed to this is evil, or the elevation of the subjective will 
 against the universal, the attempt to set up the peculiar and indi- 
 vidual choice as absolute ; in other words, to will the irrational is 
 evil. 
 
 (3.) In morality we had conscience and the abstract good (the 
 good which ought to be) standing over against each other. The 
 concrete identity of the two, the union of subjective and objective 
 good, is ethics. In the ethical the good has become actualized in 
 an existing world, and a nature of self-consciousness. 
 
 The ethical mind is seen at first immediately, or in a natural 
 form, as marriage and the family. Three elements meet together 
 in marriage, which should not be separated, and which are so often 
 and so wrongly isolated. Marriage is (1) a sexual relation, and is 
 founded upon a difference of sex ; it is, therefore, something other 
 than Platonic love or monkish asceticism ; (2) it is a civil con- 
 tract ; (3) it is love. Yet Hegel lays no great stress upon this 
 
HEGEL. 
 
 361 
 
 subjective element in concluding upon marriage, for a reciprocal 
 affection will spring up in tlie married life. It is more ethical 
 when a determination to marry is first, and a definite personal 
 affection follows afterwards, for marriage is most prominently duty 
 Hegel would, therefore, place the greatest obstacles in the way of 
 a dissolution of marriage. He has also developed and described 
 in other respects the family state with a profound ethical feeling. 
 
 Since the family becomes separated into a multitude of fami- 
 lies, it is a civil society, in which the members, though still inde- 
 pendent individuals, are bound in unity by their wants, by the 
 constitution of rights as a means of security for person and pro- 
 perty, and by an outward administrative arrangement. Hegel 
 distinguished the civil society from the state in opposition to most 
 modern theorists upon the subject, who, regarding it as the great 
 end of the state to give security of property and of personal free- 
 dom, reduced' the state to a civil society. But on such a stand- 
 point which would make the state wholly of wants and of rights, 
 it is impossible, e. g. to conceive of war. On the ground of civil 
 society each one stands for himself, is independent, and makes 
 himself as end, while every thing else is a means for him. But 
 the state, on the contrary, knows no independent individuals, each 
 one of whom may regard and pursue only his own well-being ; 
 but in the state, the whole is the end, and the individual is the 
 means. — For the administration of justice, Hegel, in opposition to 
 those of our time who deny the right of legislation, would have 
 written and intelligible laws, which should be within reach of every 
 one ; still farther, justice should be administered by a public trial 
 by jury. — In respect of the organization of civil society, Hegel ex- 
 presses a great preference for a corporation. Sanctity of mar- 
 riage, he says, and honor in corporations, are the two elements 
 around which the disorganization of civil society ttlTns. 
 
 Civil society passes over into the state since the interest of the 
 mdividual loses itself in the idea of an ethical whole. The state 
 ts the ethical idea actualized, it is the ethical mind as it rules over 
 the action and knowledge of the individuals conceived in it. 
 Finally the states themselves, since they appear as individuals in 
 16 
 
362 
 
 A HISTORY OP PHILOSOPHr. 
 
 an attracting or repelling relation to each other; represent, in their 
 destiny, in their rise and fall, the process of the iuorld''s history. 
 
 In his apprehension of the state, Hegel approached very near 
 the ancient notion, which merged the individual and the right of 
 individuality, wholly in the will of the state. He held fast to the 
 omnipotence of the state in the ancient sense. Hence his resist- 
 ance to modern liberalism, which would allow individuals to pos- 
 tulate, to criticize, and to will according to their improved knowl- 
 edge. The state is with Hegel the rational and ethical substance 
 in which the individual has to live, it is the existing reason to 
 which the individual has to submit himself with a free view. He 
 regarded a limited monarchy as the best form of government, after 
 the manner of the English constitution, to which Hegel was 
 especially inclined, and in reference to which he uttered his well- 
 known saying that the king was but the dot upon the i. There 
 must be an individual, Hegel supposes, who can affirm for the 
 state, who can prefix an " I will " to the resolves of the state, and 
 who can be the head of a formal decision. The personality of a 
 state, he says, " is only actual as a person, as monarch." Hence 
 Hegel defends hereditary monarchy, but he places the nobility by 
 its side as a mediating element between people and prince — not 
 indeed to control or limit the government, nor to maintain the 
 rights of the people, but only that the people may experience that 
 there is a good rule, that the consciousness of the people may be 
 with the government and that the state may enter into the sub- 
 jective consciousness of the people. 
 
 States and the minds of individual races pour their currents 
 into the stream of the world's history. The strife, the victory, 
 and the subjection of the spirits of individual races, and the pass- 
 ing over of the world spirit from one people to another, is the con- 
 tent of the world's history. The development of the world's his- 
 tory is generally connected with some ruling race, which carries 
 in itself the world spirit in its present stage of development, and 
 in distinction from which the spirits of other races have no rights. 
 Thus these race-spirits stand around the throne of the absolute 
 
HEGEL. 
 
 363 
 
 spirit, as the executors of its actualization, as the witnesses and 
 adornment of its glory. 
 
 3. The Absolute Mind. — (1.) JEsihetics. The absolute mind 
 is immediately present to the sensuous intuition as the beautiful or as 
 art. The beautiful is the appearance of the idea through a sensible 
 medium (a crystal, color, tone, poetry) ; it is the idea actualized 
 in the form of a limited phenomenon. To the beautiful (and to 
 its subordinate kinds, the simply beautiful, the sublime, and the 
 comical) two factors always belong, thought and matter ; but both 
 these are inseparable from each other ; the matter is the outer 
 phenomenon of the thought, and should express nothing but the 
 thought which inspires it and shines through it. The different 
 ways in which matter and form are connected, furnish the differ- 
 ent forms of art. In the symbolic form of art the matter prepon- 
 derates ; the thought presses through it, and brings out the ideal 
 only with difficulty. In the classic form of art, the ideal has at- 
 tained its adequate existence in the matter ; content and form are 
 absolutely befitting each other. Lastly, in romantic art, the mind 
 preponderates, and the matter is a mere appearance and sign 
 through which the mind every where breaks out, and struggles up 
 above the material. The system of particular arts is connected 
 with the different forms of art ; but the distinction of one par- 
 ticular art from another, depends especially upon the difference 
 of the material. 
 
 (a.) The beginning of art is Architecture. It belongs essen- 
 tially to the symbolic form of art, since in it the sensible matter 
 far preponderates, and it first seeks the true conformity between 
 content and form. Its material is stone, which it fashions ac- 
 cording to the laws of gravity. Hence it has the character of 
 magnitude, of silent earnestness, of oriental sublimity. 
 
 (6.) Sculpture. — The material of this art is also stone, but it 
 advances from the inorganic to the organic. It gives the stone a 
 bodily form, and makes it only a serving vehicle of the thought. 
 In sculpture, the material, the stone, since it represents the body, 
 that building of the soul, in its clearness and beauty, disappears 
 
364 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 wholly in the ideal ; there is nothing left of the material which 
 does not serve the idea. 
 
 (c.) Fainting. — This is pre-eminently a romantic art. It 
 represents, as sculpture cannot do, the life of the soul, the look, the 
 disposition, the heart. Its medium is no longer a coarse material 
 substratum, hut the colored surface, and the soul-like play of 
 light ; it gives the appearance only of complete spacial dimen- 
 sion. Hence it is able to represent in a complete dramatic 
 movement the whole scale of feelings, conditions of heart, and 
 actions. 
 
 {d.) Music. — This leaves out all relation of space. Its mate- 
 rial is sound, the vibration of a sonorous body. It leaves, there- 
 fore, the field of sensuous intuition, and works exclusively upon 
 the sensation. Its basis is the breast of the sensitive soul. Music 
 is the most subjective art. 
 
 {e.) Lastly in Poetry, or the speaking art, is the tongue of art 
 loosed ; poetry can represent every thing. Its material is not the 
 mere sound, but the sound as word, as the sign of a representa- 
 tion, as the expression of reason. But this material cannot be 
 formed at random, but only in verse according to certain rhythmi- 
 cal and musical laws. In poetry, all other arts return again ; as 
 epic, representing in a pleasing and extended narrative the figura- 
 tive history of races, it corresponds to the plastic arts ; as lyric, 
 expressing some inner condition of soul, it corresponds to music ; 
 as dramatic poetry, exhibiting the struggles between characters 
 acting out of directly opposite interests, it is the union of both 
 these arts. 
 
 (2.) Philosophy of Religion. — Poetry forms the transition 
 from art to religion. In art the idea was present for the intui- 
 tion, in religion it is present for the representation. The content 
 of every religion is the reconciliation of the finite with the infi- 
 nite, of the subject with God. All religions seek a union of the 
 divine and the human. This was done in the crudest form by 
 
 (a.) The natural religions of the oriental world. God is, with 
 them, but a power of nature, a substance of nature, in comparison 
 with which the finite and the individual disappear as nothing. 
 
HEGEL. 
 
 365 
 
 (5.) A higher idea of God is attained by the religions of spir- 
 itual individuality, in which the divine is looked upon as subject, — ■ 
 as an exalted subjectivity, full of power and wisdom in Judaism, 
 the religion of sublimity ; as a circle of plastic divine forms in the 
 Grecian religion, the religion of beauty ; as an absolute end of 
 the state in the Roman religion, the religion of the understand- 
 ing or of design. 
 
 (c.) The revealed or Christian religion first establishes a posi- 
 tive reconciliation between God and the world, by beholding the 
 actual unity of the divine and the human in the person of Christ, 
 the God-man, and apprehending God as triune, i. e. as Himself, as 
 incarnate, and as returning from this incarnation to Himself. The 
 intellectual content of revealed religion, or of Christianity, is thus 
 the same as that of speculative philosophy; the only difference 
 being, that in the one case the content is represented in the form 
 of the representation, in the form of a history ; while, in the other, 
 it appears in the form of the conception. Stripped of its form of 
 religious representation, we have now the standpoint of 
 
 (3.) The Absolute Philosophy, or the thought knowing itself 
 as all truth, and reproducing the whole natural and intellectual 
 universe from itself, having the system of philosophy for its de- 
 velopment — a closed circle of circles. 
 
 With Hegel closes the history of philosophy. The philosophi- 
 cal developments which have succeeded him, and which are part- 
 ly a carrying out of his system, and partly the attempt to lay a 
 new basis for philosophy, belong to the present, and not yet to 
 history. 
 
 THE END. 
 
D. APPLET ON & CO:S PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 ENGLISH LANGUAGE 
 Hand-Book of tlie English Language. 
 
 By G. R. Latham, M.D., F.R.S. 12mo, 398 pages. 
 
 The ethnological relations of the English Language, its history and ana- 
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 sought elsewhere. The elements of our tongue, the successive changes by 
 which it has been modified, the origin of its pecuUar expressions, and other 
 subjects of like importance and interest, receive due attention of the author, 
 who ranks among the most accomplished scholars of England. Whether for 
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 Hand-Book will be found one of the most useful works extant in the depart- 
 ment of belles-lettres. 
 
 Graham^s English Synonymes, 
 
 Classified and explained ; with practical exercises, designed for schools 
 and private tuition ; with an introduction and illustrative authorities. 
 By Henry Reed, LL.D. 12mo, 344 pages. 
 
 This treatise is intended to teach the right use of words. It explains the 
 principal synonymes of the language, classified and arranged in pairs, and 
 illustrates their use at different eras with passages from Shakespeare, Milton, 
 and Wordsworth. Exercises are appended, which require the pupil to fill 
 blanks by the insertion of the words compared, selecting in each case the 
 one that is adapted to the context. Thus practically impressed on the pupil's 
 mind, their distinctive meanings will not soon be forgotten. 
 
 The attention of teachers is particularly invited to this v/ork, as one of 
 the most useful that can be found for imparting a thorough acquaintance with 
 our tongue. Besides teaching the student how to avoid common inaccu- 
 racies of expression, and training him to that precision which is essential to 
 a good style, it wiU be found highly -serviceable in disciplining his mind by 
 accustommg it to a critical appreciation of nice distmctions. Wherever it 
 has been introduced into academic or coUegiate institutions, it has awakened 
 great interest in the study of words, and proved a valuable auxiUary te 
 ■ curses of grammar and rhetoric. 
 
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 History of English Literature. 
 
 By WILLIAM SPALDING, A.M., Professor of Logic, Rhetoric, and 
 Metaphysics, in the University of St. Andrews. 12mo, 413 
 pages. 
 
 The above work is ofifered as a Text-book for the use of advanced Schools 
 and Academies. It traces the literary progress of the nation from Anglo- 
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 date which are thought most worthy of attention, are described with con- 
 siderable fulness and in an attractive manner. Constant effort is made to 
 arouse reflection, both by occasional remarks on the relations between in- 
 tellectual culture and the world of reality and action, and by hints as to the 
 laws on which criticism is founded. The characteristics of the most cele- 
 brated modern works are analyzed at length. 
 
 The style of the author is remarkably clear and interesting, compelling 
 the reader to linger over his pages with unwearied attention. 
 
 Manual of Grecian and Roman Antiquities. 
 
 By Dr. E. F. BOJESEN, with Notes and Questions by Rev. THOMAS 
 K. ARNOLD. 12mo, 209 pages. 
 
 The present Manuals of Greek and Roman Antiquities are far superior 
 to any thing on the same topics as yet offered to the American public. A 
 leading Review of Germany says of the Roman Manual : — " Small as the 
 compass of it is, we may confidently affirm that it is a great improvement 
 on all preceding works of the kind. We no longer meet with the wretched 
 old method, in which subjects essentially distinct are herded together, and 
 connected subjects disconnected, but have a simple, systematic arrangement, 
 by which the reader readily receives a clear representation of Roman life. 
 We no longer stumble against countless errors in detail, which, though long 
 ago assailed and extirpated by Niebuhr and others, have found their last 
 place of refuge in our manuals. The recent investigations of philologists 
 and jurists have been extensively, but carefully and circumspectly used." 
 
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 Elements of Logic. 
 
 With an Introductory view of Philosophy in general, and a Preliminary 
 View of the Reason. By Henry W. Tappan. 12mo, 467 pages. 
 
 Not considering Logic as an abstraction, Prof. Tappan assigns it its 
 proper place among kindred sciences, and takes the student over the whole 
 field of Philosophy, that the connection of its various parts may be distinctly 
 perceived. He presents the subject, not merely as a method of obtaining 
 inferences from truths, but also as a method of estabhshing those first truths 
 and general principles that must precede all deduction. The great starting- 
 points of theory, the sources to which we must look for premises in every 
 department of science, are viewed in connection \dih. Logic ; the relations 
 between the two are examined ; and the proper understanding of both is 
 thus greatly facilitated. This is new ground ; yet it is what the profound 
 thinker and all who would master the subject have long needed. 
 
 In carrying out this plan, the author begins with Philosophy in general ; 
 shows the distinction between the Phenomenal and the Metaphenomenal, 
 the Objective and the Subjective, the Sensual and the Transcendental ; defines 
 Ideas and the laws of their development ; and then proceeds to treat of the 
 divisions of General Philosophy, Metaphysics, and homology — ia the latter 
 of which, with Ethics, ^Esthetics, and Somatology, Logic is included. 
 
 The interesting questions incidentally opened up, such as the Criteria of 
 a True Philosophy, receive attention, and then, after a brief preliminary 
 view of the Reason and its functions, we are introduced to Logic Proper. 
 The evolution of Ideas, in all their variety, is first set set forth at length ; 
 and numerous important points, now for the first time found in a system of 
 Logic, such as the relation between matter and spirit, right and wrong, free- 
 dom and responsibihty, are discussed in a manner which proves the author 
 a practical adept in the science he would teach. Inductive and Deductive 
 Logic follow; the latter of which embraces all the rules, principles, and 
 formulte to be found in the text-books of former dialecticians, and to v/hich, 
 for the most part, they confine themselves. 
 
 The work closes with a masterly dissertation on the nature of proof, its 
 different kinds, degrees of evidence, circumstantial evidence, reasoning from 
 experience and analogy, and the calculation of chances. Important as these 
 subjects are, and intimately as they are connected with the work of the 
 dialectician, they have heretofore had no place in treatises on Logic ; Mr. 
 Tappen is the first to unfold their connection with this science, and the 
 clearness and comprehensiveness with which he has treated them leave 
 nothing to be desired. 
 
D. APPLET ON & CO:S PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 An Elementary Treatise on Logic : 
 
 Including, Part I. Analysis of Formulge ; Part II. Method. With an 
 Appendix of Examples for Analysis and Criticism, and a copious 
 Index of Terms and Subjects. By W. D. Wilson, D.D., Trinity Pro- 
 fessor of Christian Ethics and Logic in Hobart Free College. 12mo, 
 425 pages. 
 
 The peculiar merits of Dr. Wilson's Elementary Treatise on Logic can 
 become known only by a thorough examination of the book itself, or daily 
 use in the class-room. But a few of its distinguishing features can be here 
 enumerated. In the first place, it is eminently clear in its arrangement, 
 language, and illustrations. Its definitions are terse and precise ; its advance 
 from step to step is natural and gradual ; every technicahty is thoroughly 
 explained, and every difficulty removed. Secondly, it covers the whole 
 ground, leaving nothing unsaid, nothing unexplained, nothing for the scholar 
 to ask, nothing for the teacher to supply from other sources. Again, it is 
 claimed that in this work many errors inherent in the old systems, and per- 
 petuated by writer after writer, from Aristotle down, have been corrected, 
 and that important new ground has been covered. 
 
 The subject of Method^ by some omitted altogether, receives special 
 attention at the hands of the author ; who, to all that is valuable in the 
 works of others, has added the results of his own careful study. If the for- 
 mulae of Logic are worth any thing, of course the method of their application 
 is important ; in fact, on this method depends much of their value. In the 
 application of his rules and precepts, Dr. Wilson is peculiarly happy. He 
 never allows the pupil to lose sight of the practical phase of the questions 
 he successively treats. 
 
 The First Part of the Elementary Treatise relates to the Analysis of 
 Formulae. A new and superior classification of syllogisms has been adopted, 
 and the different classes are defined and illustrated in such a way as to in- 
 sure their prompt recognition. The Second Part of the work, in which the 
 original labors of the author are everywhere apparent, considers in turn the 
 Methods of Investigation, of Proof and Refutation, of Instruction and Criti- 
 cism. An Appendix furnishes copious examples for the exercise of the 
 student. 
 
 The publishers are convinced that the clearness, completeness, and prac- 
 tical character of this work wiU greatly facilitate the study of Logic in 
 schools and colleges. They invite the severest test of the claims here made 
 in its behalf. 
 
L. APPLETON & C0:8 PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 Elements of Moral Philosopliy : 
 
 Analytical, Synthetical, and Practical. By Hubbard "Winslow. 12mo, 
 480 pages. 
 
 This work is an original and thorough examination of the fundamental 
 laws of Moral Science, and of their relations to Christianity and to practical 
 life. It has already taken a firm stand among our highest works of literatmre 
 and science. From the numerous commendations of it by our most learned 
 and competent men, we have room for only the following brief extracts : 
 
 From Eev. TnosiAS H. Sktnnee, D.D., of the Union Theol. Soc, Y. 
 "It is a work of tmcommon merit, on a subject very difficult to be treated well. 
 His analysis is complete. He has sbunned no question whicli his purpose required him 
 to answer, and he has met no adversary which he has not overcome." 
 
 From Kev. L. P. Hickok, Vice-President of Union College. 
 " I deem the book well adapted to the ends proposed in the preface. The style is 
 cle^, the thoughts perspicuous. I think it calculated to do good, to promote tho 
 truth, to diffuse light, and impart instruction to the community, in a department of 
 study of the deepest interest to mankind." 
 
 From Eev. James "Walker, D.D., President of Harvard University, 
 " Having carefully examined the more critical parts, to which my attention has been 
 especially directed, I am free to express my conviction of the great clearness, discrimi- 
 nation, and accuracy of the work, and of its admirable adaptation to its object." 
 
 From Eev. E ay Palmee, D.D., of Albany. 
 " I have examined this work with great pleasure, and do not hesitate to say that in 
 my judgment it is greatly superior to any treatise I have seen, in all the essential 
 requisites of a good text-book." 
 
 From Peof. Eosseatt D. HrrcHCOCK, D.D., of the Union Theol. Soc, N. Y. 
 " The task of mediating between science and the popular mind, is one that requires 
 a peculiar gift of perspicuity, both in thought and style ; and this, I think, the author 
 possesses in an eminent degree. I am pleased with its comprehensiveness, its plainness, 
 and its fidelity to the Chi-istian stand-point." 
 
 From Peof. Henet B. Smith, D.D,, of the Union Theol. Soc, N. Y. 
 " It commends itself by its clear arrangement of the topics, its perspicuity of lan- 
 guage, and its constant practical bearings. I am particularly pleased with its views of 
 conscience. Its frequent and pertinent illustrations, and the Scriptural character of its 
 explanations of the particular duties, will make the work both attractive and valuable 
 as a text-book, in imparting instruction upon this vital part of philosophy." 
 
 From "W. D. 'Wixson, D.D., Professor of Intellectual and Moral Philosophy in 
 Hob art Free College. 
 
 " I have examined the work with care, and have adopted it as a text-book in the 
 study of Moral Science. I consider it not only sound in doctrine, but clear and system- 
 atic in method, and withal pervaded with a prevailing healthy tone of sentiment, 
 which cannot fail to leave behind, in addition to the truths it inculcates, aa impression 
 in favor of those truths. I esteem this one of the greatest merits of the book. In this 
 respect it has no equal, so far as I know ; and I do not hesitate to speak of it as being 
 preferable to any other work yet published, for use in all institutions where Moral 
 Philosophy forms a department in the course of instruction." 
 
D. APPLETON & CO:S PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 A History of Philosophy : 
 
 An Epitome. By Dr. Albert Schtvtegler. Translated from the c rigi- 
 nal German, by Julius H. Seelte, 12mo, 365 pages. 
 
 This translation is designed to supply a want long felt by both teachers 
 and students in our American colleges. We have valuable histories of 
 Philosophy in English, but no manual on this subject so clear, concise, and 
 comprehensive as the one now presented. Schwegler's work bears the 
 marks of great learning, and is evidently written by one who has not only 
 studied the original sources for such a history, but has thought out for him. 
 self the systems of which he treats. He has thus seized upon the real germ 
 of each system, and traced its process of development with great clearness 
 and accuracy. The whole history of speculation, from Thales to the present 
 time, is presented in its consecutive order. This rich and important field 
 of study, hitherto so greatly neglected, will, it is hoped, receive a new im- 
 pulse among American students through Mr. Seelye's translation. It is a 
 Dook, moreover, invaluable for reference, and should be in the possession 
 of every pubUc and private library. 
 
 From L. P. Hickok, Vice-President of Union College. 
 " I have had opportunity to hear a large part of Mr. Seelye's translation of Schweg- 
 ler's History of Philosophy read from manuscript, and I do not hesitate to say that it 
 is a faithful, clear, and remarkably precise English rendering of this invaluable Epitome 
 of the History of Philosophy. It is exceedingly desirable that it should be given to 
 American students of philosophy in the English language, and I have no expectation 
 of its more favorable and successful accomplishment than in this present attempt. I 
 should immediately introduce it as a text-book in the graduate's department under my 
 own instruction, if it be favorably published, and cannot doubt that other teachers will 
 rejoice to avail themselves of the like assistance from it." 
 
 From Hekky B. Smith, Professor of Christian Theology, Union Theological 
 Seminary, JSf. T. 
 
 "It will well reward diligent study, and is one of the best works for a text -book in 
 our colleges upon this neglected branch of scientific investigation." 
 
 From N. Poetee, Professor of Intellectual Philosophy in Yale College. 
 " It is the only book translated from the German which professes to give an account 
 of the recent German systems which seems adap'ied to give any intelligible informa- 
 tion on the subject to a novice." 
 
 From Geo. P. Fishee, Professor of Divinity in Yale College. 
 " It is really the best Epitome of the History of Philosophy now accessible to the 
 English stndent." 
 
 From Joseph Havek, Professor of Mental Philosophy in Amherst College. 
 "As a manual and brief summary of the whole range of speculative inquiry, I know 
 of no work which stikes me more favorably." 
 
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 Lectures on the True, tlie Beautiful, and 
 the Good. 
 
 By M. VICTOR COUSIX. Translated by 0. W. WIGHT. 1 vol., 8vo, 
 391 pages. 
 
 Cousin is confessedly the soundest of modern philosophers. The founder 
 and head of the Eclectic School, his teachings by the intrinsic force of truth 
 have, with all earnest thinkers, superseded the insufficient systems that pro- 
 ceded it. The theory on which they are based may justly be called a high- 
 toned spu-itualism, whose tendency is to subordinate the sensual and to 
 ennoble mankind. It teaches the spirituahty of the soul, the freedom and 
 responsibility of human action, the dignity of justice, and the beauty of 
 charity. It sustains rehgious sentiment, seconds art, supports the right, 
 and purifies society. 
 
 Such is the general character of Cousin's philosophy. In these Lectures, 
 the latest production of his great mind, it is presented in a condensed, 
 striking, and attractive form. After taking a brief view of the philosophy 
 of the nineteenth centuiy, and the relation which his theory sustains to other 
 systems, the author enters at once upon his subject. Under the head of 
 "the True," he considers the existence, origin, and value of Universal and 
 Necessary Principles ; God, the principle of principles ; and mysticism of 
 sentiment and philosophy. Under "the Beautiful," he treats of Beauty in 
 nature and art, and adds a valuable chapter on French art in the seventeenth 
 century. Under the head of "the Good," he surveys the whole field of 
 Ethics, reviews the theory of Expediency and other defective systems, and 
 finally brings us to Deity as the grand embodiment of aU that is good in the 
 universe. No one can master the system of Ethics here set forth by Cousin, 
 without feeling that it has made him wiser, nobler, and better. 
 
 History of Modern Philosophy. 
 
 By M. VICTOR COUSIN. Translated by 0. W. WIGHT. 2 vols., 
 8vo, 801 pages. 
 
 Philosophy of Sir William Hamilton. 
 
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 Course of Ancient Geography : 
 
 Arranged with Special Reference to Convenience of Recitation. By 
 Prof. H. I. SCHMIDT, D.D., of Columbia CoUege. 12mo, 328 
 pages. 
 
 The object of this work is to facilitate study. With nothing new to 
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 the author begins with the Ancient Geography of Europe — Greece is de- 
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 that is known of Asia Minor. This constitutes what maj be termed Classi- 
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 constantly needs in the study of classical authors. To present this properly 
 is the main design of the work. 
 
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 the Ancient Geography of Africa. This order seemed the most natural in a 
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 of a number of distinguished instructors. 
 
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 graphs, and marked respectively with the corresponding numbers, are given 
 in the lower margin. This at once assists the pupil and the teacher. 
 
 In this work every material division of the ancient world is noted, and 
 the name of every sea, lake, river, or to\vn is given ; in many instances, the 
 derivation and etymology of the names are added. The book is sufficiently 
 fuU for every practical purpose, not only of the school-room, but for refer- 
 ence in general reading of ancient authors. It has a copious Index that 
 much enhances its value in this respect. 
 
 From the Becorder. 
 
 "This very satisfactory work makes a valuable addition to the library of the 
 classical student, and also to the series of test-books to be used during the course of 
 o^adomical and collegiate study," 
 
D. APPLETON & C0:8 PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 Historical and Miscellaneous Questions. 
 
 From the Eighty-Fourth London Edition. With large additions : Em* 
 bracing the Elements of Mythology, Astronomy, Architecture 
 Heraldry, etc., adapted for Schools in the United States, by Mrr 
 Julia Lawrence. EmbelHshed witk Nui-jnerous Engra\ings oi 
 Wood. Fourth American Edition, Revised and Corrected, with $ 
 Chapter on the American Constitution by RICHMAL MANGNALL 
 12mo, 396 pages. 
 
 Mangnairs Questions has attained an enviable reputation on both sides of the Atlan 
 tic as a condensed abstract of history, art, science, and general information. It is ir 
 the form of question and answer, and is adapted to the higher classes in common school? 
 and academies. The variety of subjects embraced, the difficulty of obtaining suitable 
 text-books relating to many of them, much more of iinding any single work that con- 
 tains them all, and the judgment displayed by the author in selecting what is important 
 and presenting great facts and leading principles in a striking manner that impressef 
 them on the mind, have gained for this work an extensive and well-deserved circula 
 tion. A careful revision and the introduction of much that is important to the 
 American student, enhance the value of the present edition. An idea may be formed 
 of the extensive and important ground it eovers from the following table of 
 CONTENTS. 
 A short View of Scripture History, from 
 the Creation to the Eeturn of the Jews. 
 
 Questions from the Early Ages to the 
 time of Julius Caesar. 
 
 Miscellaneous Questions in Grecian 
 History. 
 
 Miscellaneous Questions in General 
 History — chiefly Ancient. 
 
 Questions containing a Sketch of the 
 most remarkable Events from the Chris- 
 tian Era to the close of the Eighteenth 
 Centiiry. 
 
 Miscellaneous Questions in Eoman His- 
 tory. 
 
 Questions in English History, from the 
 Invasion of Ctesar to the Eeformation. 
 
 Continuation of Questions in English 
 History, from the Eeformation to the 
 Present Time. 
 
 Abstract of Early British History. 
 
 Abstract of English Eeigns from the 
 Conquest. 
 
 Abstract of the Scottish Eeigns. 
 
 Abstract of the French Eeigns, from 
 Pharamond to Philip I. 
 
 Continuation of the French Eeigns, from 
 Louis VI. to Louis Philippe. 
 
 Questions relating to the History of 
 America, from its Discovery to the Pres- 
 ent Time. 
 
 Abstract of Eoman Kings and most dis- 
 tinguished Heroes. 
 
 Abstract of the most celebrated Grecians. 
 
 Of Heathen Mythology in General. 
 
 Abstract of the Heathen Mythology. 
 
 The Elements of Astronomy. 
 
 Explanation of a few Astronomical 
 Terms. 
 
 List of Constellations. 
 
 Questions on Common Subjects, 
 
 Questions on Architecture. 
 
 Questions on Heraldry. 
 
 Explanation of such Latin Words and 
 Phrases as are seldom Englished. 
 
 Questions on the History of the Middle 
 Ages. 
 
B. APPLETON 6: CO:S PV PLICATIONS. 
 
 The Child's First History of Rome. 
 
 By Miss E. M. SEWELL. 18mo, 255 pages. 
 
 In the preparation of this work for the use of children, the authoress has 
 drawn her material from the most reliable sources, and incorporated them 
 into a narrative at once imostentatious, perspicuous, and graphic, ahnmg to 
 be understood by those for whom she writes, and to impress deeply and 
 permanently on their minds the facts successively presented. The entire 
 work is clothed in a style at once pleasing and intelligible to the juvenile 
 mind ; and the introduction of interesting episodes tends to rivet the atten- 
 tion and relieve the difficulty of memorizing dry details. 
 
 Small as this volume is, it covers the whole ground, from the founding 
 of the city to its destruction by the Xorthem barbarians. A condensed 
 sketch of the manners and mode of life of the ancient Romans is appended ; 
 as, also, are Questions, for the convenience of those who desire them. 
 
 A First History of Greece. 
 
 By Miss E. M. SEWELL. 18mo, 358 pages. 
 
 This work is designed to give the young a clearer idea of Grecian History 
 than is to be obtained from any of the numerous works on the subject that 
 have been accumulating during the present century. By culluig out promi- 
 aent characters and events, presenting them in a striking light, and not 
 making their perusal irksome by a mass of minor details, the authoress has 
 rendered an important service to the youth of our country. With the view 
 of removing the difficulty often encountered in the study of Grecian History, 
 in consequence of its involving events connected with numerous places, the 
 names of which are new and the position of which is unknown, a list of the 
 Grecian States and their chief cities is presented in a preliminary chapter. 
 k. Chronological Table of the contemporary events of Grecian and Jewish 
 History is appended, which will be of use to the Bible student as well as 
 the general reader. Few books wiU be found more acceptable in the school- 
 room than this. 
 
D. APPLET ON & CO:S PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 History of Rome. 
 
 By Dr. THOMAS ARNOLD. Three Yolumes in One. 8vo, 670 pages. 
 
 Arnold's History of Rome is a well-known standard, no less full and 
 accurate than the works of Niebuhr and Schmitz, while it far surpasses them 
 in interest. The style is such as the subject requires, — easy, perspicuous, 
 dignified, and eloquent. Every page glows with that truth-loving spirit for 
 which Dr. Arnold was distinguished. With him nothing is taken for 
 granted ; every statement is verified by reference to the old historians. 
 The clear-sighted judgment of the author and his profound acquirements as 
 a philologist and critic, preeminently quaUfy him for deahng with ancient 
 records, in which truth and fable are so blended that it is often exceedingly 
 difficult to distinguish them. No proper opportunity is lost of introducing 
 sage reflections on morals and poUtics, and suggesting themes of useful 
 thought to the intelligent mind. 
 
 As this history is destined to remain a standard for years, it should have 
 a place in every private and public hbrary. Its adaptation to the wants of 
 high-schools and colleges will be apparent on the most cursory examination. 
 
 Lectures on Modern History. 
 
 By Dr. THOilAS ARNOLD. Large 12mo, 428 pages. 
 
 In these Lectures, Dr. Arnold, confessedly one of the best of modem 
 historians, has presented his views on the subject of history and its uses ; 
 the difficulties a student is likely to encounter, and the best mode of sur- 
 mounting them. His object is to awaken an interest in historical studies, 
 and furnish the learner with such general information as will enable him to 
 pursue his course to the best advantage. 
 
 The present is a reprint of the second London edition. It is accompa- 
 nied with a Preface and Notes by Henry Reed, M.A., Professor of English 
 Literature in the University of Pennsylvania, who has had in view its use, 
 not only for general reading, but also as a text-book for collegiate classes. 
 
 jPVowl the Courier and Enquirer. 
 " Professor Eeed has added ^eatly to the worth and interest of the volume, by ap- 
 pending to each Lecture such extracts from Dr. Arnold's other -n-ritings as would more 
 fully illustrate its prominent points. The jSTotes and Appendix -which he has thus 
 furnished are exceedingly valuable. No student or literary man who has the least 
 regard for the philosophy of history should be without this book. So far as our 
 knowledge extends, there is no other before the public which can be compared to it for 
 Interest and permanent worth." 
 
D. AFFLETON & CO:S FUBLICATIONS. 
 
 PUTZ'S GEOGEAPHIOAL AND HISTOEIGAL SEEIES. 
 
 I. Ancient Geography and History. 
 
 ISmo, 396 pages. 
 
 This work was originally prepared by Wilhelm Piitz, an eminent German 
 scholar, translated and edited in England by the Rev. T, K. Arnold, and is 
 now revised and introduced to the American pubHc in a well-written preface, 
 by Mr. George W. Greene, Teacher of Modern Languages in Brown Uni- 
 versity. 
 
 As a Text-Book on Ancient History for colleges and advanced academies, 
 this volume is believed to be one of the best compends published. 
 
 II. Mediaeval Geography and History. 
 
 Translated by Rev. R. B. PAUL, M.A. 12mo, 211 pages. 
 The characteristics of this volume are precision, condensation, and 
 luminous arrangement. It is precisely what it pretends to be — a manual, a 
 sure and conscientious guide for the student through the crooks and tangles 
 of Mediaeval History. All the great principles of this extensive period are 
 carefully laid down, and the most important facts skilfully grouped around 
 them. 
 
 III. Manual of Modern Geography and 
 
 History. 
 
 Translated by Rev. R. B. PAUL, M.A. 12mo, 836 pages. 
 This volume completes the Series of the author's works on Geography 
 and History. Every important fact of the period, comprehensive as it is 
 both in Geography and History, is presented in a concise, yet clear and 
 connected manner, so as to be of value, not only as a text-book for students, 
 but to the general reader for reference. Although the facts are greatly 
 condensed, as of necessity they must be, yet they are presented with so 
 much distinctness as to produce a fixed impression on the mind. It is also 
 reliable as the work of an indefatigable German scholar, for correct infor- 
 mation relating to the progress and changes of States and nations, literature, 
 the sciences and the arts, and all that combines in modern civilization. 
 
D. AFPLETON iSc CO: 8 PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 Manual of Ancient and Modern History. 
 
 By W. C. Taylor, LL. D., M. R. A. S. Revised by C. S. Henry. D. D. 
 1 vol., 8vo, 8V0 pages. 
 
 ANCIENT HISTOET, Separately, 858 pages. 
 Containing the Political History, Geographical Position, and Social State 
 of the principal Nations of Antiquity, carefully digested from the ancient 
 writers, and illustrated by the discoveries of modern scholars and travellers. 
 
 MODEEN HISTOET, Sepakatelt, 812 pages. 
 Containing the Rise and Progress of the principal European Nations, their 
 Political History, and the changes in their Social Condition ; with a History 
 of the Colonies founded by Europeans. 
 
 Inquiry is often made by those who have not the time or opportunity for 
 an extended course of historical reading, for a work that embraces within 
 reasonable compass the leading events of Ancient and Modern History, and 
 will give them a correct idea of its leading features stripped of unimport- 
 ant details. Such a work will be found in this compilation of Dr. Taylor. 
 With the view of bringing a general knowledge of the past within the reach 
 of all classes of readers, he has selected the great facts connected with the 
 rise and progress of nations, their customs, religion, and pohtical institutions, 
 and carefully digested them in a clear and comprehensive summary. 
 
 For the purposes for which it is designed, it is believed that this work 
 has no equal. It is this conviction on the part of those who have examined 
 it, that has led to its extensive introduction as a text-book into the academies 
 and collegies of our land. Some of its distinguishing features are mentioned 
 below. 
 
 In presenting facts, the author has not overlooked the philosophy of 
 history, but has traced events to their causes, and directed attention to the 
 progress of civilization and its eflPects on society. Thus exhibited in their 
 connection, as parts of the great plan of Providence in the government of 
 the world, events are understood as well as remembered, and the reader 
 receives a no less valuable lesson in philosophy than in history. 
 
 A knowledge of its cHmate, natural features, towns and cities, is often 
 essential to the proper understanding of a country's history. To meet this 
 want, a brief geographical outline is in every case prefixed. The accentu- 
 ation of proper names, -as they occur, is another feature of great practical 
 value. 
 
 Dryness is generally characteristic of condensed historical outlines ; in 
 the present case it is avoided by the vigorous style of the author, and the 
 introduction of interesting anecdotes and episodes that serve to relieve the 
 mind, and bring out in clear light the pecuHarities of individual or national 
 character. 
 
 The American edition has been revised throughout by Dr. Henry, and 
 enlarged by the introduction of an admirable chapter on American Historv. 
 
D. APPLET ON & CO:S PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 A Digest of the Laws, Customs, Manners, 
 and Institutions of the Ancient and 
 Modern Nations. 
 
 By Thomas Dew, late President of the College of William and Mary. 
 8yo, 662 pages. 
 
 On examination, it will be found that more than ordinary labor has been 
 expended upon this work, and that the author has proceeded upon higher 
 principles and has had higher aims in view than historical compilers ordi- 
 narily propose to themselves. Instead of being a mere catalogue of events, 
 chronologically arranged, it is a careful, laborious, and instructive digest of 
 the laws, customs, manners, institutions, and civilization of Ancient and 
 Modern Nations. That it is thus enabled to give a clearer and fairer idea 
 of the past and its relations to the present, does not admit of a moment's 
 doubt. 
 
 No pains have been spared by the author to secure accuracy in facts and 
 figures ; and in doubtful cases references are given in parentheses, so that 
 the student can readily satisfy himself by going to original sources. The 
 department of Modern History, too often neglected in works of this kind, has 
 received special care and attention. 
 
 From John J. Owen, Professor in New York Free Academy. 
 
 " I have examined, with much pleasure, Prof. Dew's Digest of the Laws, Manners, 
 Customs, &c., of Ancient and Modern Nations. It furnishes a desideratum in the study 
 of history which I have long desired to see. The manner in which history is generally 
 studied in our institutions of learning is, in my judgment, very defective. The great 
 central points or epochs of history are not made to stand out with sufficient prominence. 
 Events of minor importance are made to embarrass the memory by the confused 
 method of their presentation to the mind. History is studied by pages, and not by 
 subjects. In the wilderness of events through which the student is groping his way, 
 he soon becomes lost and perplexed. The past is as obscure as the future. His lesson 
 soon becomes an irksome task. The memory is wearied with the monotonous task of 
 striving to retain the multitudinous events of each daily lesson. 
 
 "This evil appears to be remedied in a great degree by Prof. Dew's admirable 
 arrangement. Around the great points of history he has grouped those of subordinate 
 Importance. Each section is introduced by a caption, in which the subject is briefly 
 stated, and so as to be easily remembered. Thus the student having mastered the 
 leading events, will find little or no difficulty in treasuring up the minor points in their 
 order and connection. I trust the book will be adopted in our higher institutions of 
 learning. I greatly prefer it to any history for the use of schools which I have seen."