No More Learning

p. 321) : revelation is above reason, but in harmony with reason ; it is the necessary supplement to natural knowledge. That is revealed which the reason cannot find out of itself, but can understand as in harmony with itself after the revela tion has taken place.
Proceeding from this idea, the Socinians had already taken a step further. They, too, recognised very vigorously the necessity of revelation ; but they emphasised, on the other hand, that nothing can be revealed that does not prove accessible to rational knowledge. Hence only what is rational in the religious documents is to regarded as revealed truth ; i. e. reason decides what shall ! »<• held
488 The Enlightenment : Theoretical Question*. [Part V.
be revelation. From this standpoint the Socinians separated the Trinity and the Incarnation from the content of revelation, and in general transferred revelation from the realm of theoretical truths to an entirely different field. They comprehend religion under the characteristic of law, and this constitutes their peculiar position. What God reveals to man is not a metaphysics, but a law. This he did in Moses, and so in Christ he gave a new law. But if religion objectively is law-giving, subjectively it is fulfilling the law, — not an acceptance of theoretical doctrines, nor even merely a moral disposition, but subjection to the law revealed by God and a keeping of all its prescriptions. This alone has been made by God the condition of eternal blessedness — a juridical conception of religion, which, with its resort to the principle of the boundless authority of what is determined by divine power, seems to contain strongly Scotist elements.
2. If, however, the criterion of revelation is ultimately to lie solely in the rationality of the same, the completely consistent result of this theory is, that historical revelation should be set aside as superfluous, and natural religion alone retained. This was done by the English Deists; and Toland is their leader in so far as he first undertook to strip Christianity, ue. the universal religion of reason, of all mysteries, and reduce as regards the knowledge which contains, to the truths of the "natural light," i. e. to philosophical theory of the world. But the content which the Enlightenment philosophy sought to give to this, its religion of Nature, had two sources, — theoretical and practical reason. As regards the first, Deism contains a metaphysics based upon natural philosophy in the second aspect involves theory of the world from the point of view of moral philosophy. In this way the natural religion of the Enlightenment was involved in the movement of theoretical, and also in that of practical problems these its two elements stood in close connection, but found each
particular development, so that they could diverge and become mutually
isolated. The relation between these two constituents was as determining in its influence for the history of natural religion as
was the common relation which they sustained to the religions.
The complete union of the two elements found in the most important thinker of this movement, Shaftesbury. The centre oi his doctrine and of his own nature formed by what he himself called enthusiasm, — enthusiasm for all that true, good, and beau tiful, the elevation of the soul above itself to more universal values, the living out of the whole peculiar power of the individual by the
positive
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;
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Chap. 1, § 33. ] Natural Religion : Toland, Shaftesbury. 489
devotion to something higher. Nor is religion anything else : a life of increased and enhanced personality, a knowing one's self to be one with the great connected all of reality. But this noble pas sion, like every other, grows from admiration and strong emotion to love. The source of religion therefore, objectively as well as subjectively, the harmony and beauty and perfection of the universe the unavoidable impression received from this perfection awakens enthusiasm. With a warm heart Shaftsbury portrays the order of things, the purposiveness of their inter-play, the beauty of their formation, the harmony of their life, and shows that there noth ing in itself evil — nothing which entirely misses its mark. What ever appears an evil in one system of individuals, proves itself in another, or in a higher connection, to be still good, as a necessary member in the purposeful structure of the whole. All imperfection of the particular vanishes in the perfection of the universe every discord lost in the harmony of the world.
This universal optimism, whose theodicy in its conceptions com pletely Neo-Platonic in character, knows therefore but one proof for the existence of God, the physico-theological. Nature bears everywhere the marks of the artist, who has unfolded the loveli
ness of his own nature in the charm of phenomena with the highest intelligence and sensitiveness. Beauty the fundamental concep tion of this Weltanschauung. Its admiration of the universe essentially aesthetic, and the taste of the cultivated man is, for Shaftsbury, the basis of both religious and moral feeling. For this reason his teleology also the tasteful one of artistic apprehen
sion like Giordano Bruno he seeks the purposiveness of the uni verse in the harmonious beauty of each of its individual structures. All that petty and utilitarian in teleological thought here stripped off, and a wave of poetic world-glorification that carries all before goes through Shaftesbury's writings. It was on this account that they worked so powerfully upon the German poets, upon Herder,' and upon Schiller. 1
3. Few, indeed, of the philosophers of the Enlightenment stand upon this height Voltaire and Diderot* allowed themselves at first to be swept along to such an enthusiastic view of the world. Maupertuis and Robinet had also something of the universalistic tendency in Germany, Reimarus in his reflections concerning the mechanical instincts of animals, shows at least sensibility for the artistically delicate detailed work of Nature and for the internal
Henler, Vom Erkennen und Emp. Andrn.
Schilkr, PhilUophitehe Briefe (Julliu). Particularly in the Pentie* PhiloiophiQue*.
111
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490 The Enlightenment : Theoretical Questions. [Pakt V .
end which she realises in her organic structures. But the great mass of the philosophical writers of the eighteenth century is so controlled by the anthropological interest and the practical aims of philosophy that it investigates rather the uses which the arrangement of the universe and the activities of its parts yield for the wants of man; and if those of higher temper have in view principally the furthering and perfecting of the moral nature, they still do not despise the point of view of usefulness and every-day " happiness. "
Thus aesthetic teleology is cut off by the Stoic doctrine of utility, and the technical analogy, with which men like Leibniz, Newton, and Clarke had thought of the subordination of mechanism to teleol ogy, could not but be favourable to this utilitarian conception. For the purposiveness of machines consists just in yielding an advan tage, just in the fact that their product is something else, something in addition to their own working. And this analogy was quite welcome also to the "Enlighteners," who frequently praised the harmony of their philosophy with natural science ; they employed this mode of view as against the conception of miracle found in positive religion. Beimarus, too, held that only bunglers need to
assist their machines afterwards, and that it is unworthy of perfect intelligence to come into such a position. But if it was asked what the end of the world-machine the answer of the Enlightenment was, the happiness of man, or perhaps at most, that of created beings in general. This trade in the small wares of usefulness (Niitzlich- keitskrtimerei) was carried out in the most tasteless manner in the German Enlightenment. Wolffs empirical teleology (Designs Natural Things) excites one's mirth by the petty points of view which he assigns to the creative intelligence, and the Popular Phil osophers vied with each other in portraying in broad and pleasing pictures the neat and comfortable way in which this universe fitted up for the homo sapiens, and how well one may live in
he bears himself well.
A nobler thought, even at that time, was that of Kant, when in
his Natural History of the Heavens he adopted the Leibnizo-New- tonian conception, but left behind all that talk about the use of the world for man, and directed his look toward the perfection which displays itself in the infinite multiplicity of the heavenly bodies, and in the harmony of their systematic constitution; and with him, by the side of the happiness of creatures, appears always their ethical perfecting and elevation. But he, too, esteems the physico- theological proof for the existence of God as that which the most
This term points back into the seventeenth century, and seems to have
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Chap. 1, § 35. ] Natural Religion: Kant, Leibniz. 491
impressive for man, though he grants strict cogency as little to this as to the cosmological and ontological. The popular philosophy, on the contrary, had its favourite just in this proof, and it forms a gen eral characteristic of natural religion.
4. The presupposition of this course of thought was the convic tion that the world is really so perfect and purposive as to support the proof in question. Believing souls brought this conviction with them, and the literature of the eighteenth century proves that it was assumed without question in wide circles as a valid premise of the argument; sceptical minds demanded that this also should be dem onstrated, and so roused the problems of theodicy. In most cases the Enlightenment philosophy resorted here to the same (ancient) arguments which Shaftesbury brought into the field, but the scep tical-orthodox method, of pointing to the limited nature of human knowledge and to the darkness in the ways of Providence, was not despised.
A new turn was given to theodicy by Leibniz. He had been brought by Bayle's incisive criticism to the necessity of adding experimental proof to his system of Monadology by showing the perfection of the universe. Setting in motion to this end the high est conceptions of his metaphysics, he attempted to show that the actual presence of evil in the world does not make out a case against its having originated from an all-good and all-powerful creative activity. Physical evil, he maintains, is a necessary consequence of moral evil in the ethical world order ; it is the natural punish ment of sin. Moral evil, however, has its ground in the finiteness and limitation of creatures, and this latter is metaphysical evil. As a finite thing the monad has obscure and confused sensuous repre sentations or ideas, and from these follow necessarily the obscure and confused sensuous impulses, which are the motives to sin. The problem of theodicy is thus reduced to the question, Why did God create or permit metaphysical evil ?
The answer to this question is very simple. Finiteness belongs to the conception of a created being; limitation is the essential nature of all creatures. It is a logical necessity that a world can exist only out of finite beings which reciprocally limit each other and are determined by their creator himself. Hut finite beings are imperfect A world that should consist of nothing but perfect beirgs is a contradiction in terms. And since it is also an "eter nal," that is, a conceptional or rational truth, that out of metaphysi
ariM-n from the Xeo-Platonlc circle* In England. Samuel Parker published in 1000 TriUamtna Phytko-thfologica it Dro, and William Drrham, in 1713, a Pkytico-Ultology .
492 The Enlightenment : Theoretical Questions. [Part V.
cal evil follows first moral and further physical evil, that out of finiteness follows sin, aud out of sin sorrow, it is then a logical necessity that a world without evil is unthinkable. However much, therefore, the goodness of God might desire to avoid evil, the divine wisdom, the "region des verites iternelles," makes a world without evil an impossibility. Metaphysical truths are independ ent of the divine will ; the latter in its creative activity is bound to them.
But, on the other hand, the goodness, which belongs to the con ception of God as truly as does his wisdom, is a guarantee that the evils are as few as possible. The world is contingent, i. e. it may be thought as being other than it is. There is an infinite number of possible worlds, none of them entirely without evil, but some affected with much more numerous and heavy evils than others. If now from among all these possible worlds, which God's wisdom spread out before him, he created this actual world, it can only have been the choice of the best that guided him in so doing; he has made real the one which contains the least and the fewest evils. The contingency of the world consists in the fact that it exists, not with metaphysical necessity, but through a choice exercised among many possibilities ; and since this choice proceeds from the all-good
will of God, it is unthinkable that the world is any other than the best. Theodicy cannot proceed to deny the evil in the world, for evil belongs to the very idea of the world ; but it can prove that this world contains as little evil as is in any way possible in accordance with metaphysical law. God's goodness would gladly have pro duced a world without evil, but his wisdom permitted him only the best among possible worlds.
Hence arises the common expression, optimism. Whether this experimental proof of the physico-theological view of the world succeeds, may be left undecided. The eighteenth century con ceived of the matter as though it was the essential aim of Leibniz to prove that the world is the most perfect that can be thought; that he did this only under the presupposition of the metaphysical necessity of evil, was, in characteristic fashion, scarcely noted in the literature of that time, which itself was through and through "optimistic " in its thought. In a historical aspect the most note worthy thing in this theodicy is the peculiar mixture of Thomist and Scotist metaphysics. The world is such as it is only because God has so willed it ; by virtue of his omnipotence he might have chosen another ; but in the choice of the possibilities before him the divine will is bound to the divine intellect as the "eternal truths. " Above all reality hovers the fate prescribed by logic.
Chap. 1, § 35. ] Natural Religion : Voltaire, Diderot. 498
5. In the forms hitherto developed the teachers of natural religion believed that they could attain along the physico-theological path to the conception of the deity as creative intelligence, and for this phase of the development the name Deism is customarily employed. The conception of God as personality, which survived in this pro
cedure as the last remnant from positive religion, offered a hold for the moral side also of natural religion, and in turn found in that its support. But where only the theoretical element was pursued, nat ural religion found itself involved in the course of development taken by naturalistic metaphysics, and found in this finally its downfall. 'Poland already gave a completely pantheistic turn to the admiration of Nature, which for him constituted the essential con tent of religious feeling, and with the hylozoism which developed among the French natural scientists (cf. § 34, 9) the transcendence of God, as well as his personality, was at an end ; and when then the complete dominance of the mechanical explanation of Nature was proclaimed, when the organic world also was recognised as in principle the product of the universal mechanism of Nature, the physico-theological proof lost its power over the mind. In addition to this the premises of the argument were questioned. The Lisbon earthquake (1755) which shocked all Europe made many waver in their ideas of the perfection and adaptedness of the world's ar rangement; the indifference with which Nature destroys human life and all its content of ends and worth seemed to sj>eak much more for a blind necessity in all that takes place than for a teleological disposition of the world-process. Voltaire, in whom this revolution in point of view became complete, began in Candide to make sport of the " best of possible worlds," and the element of natural philos ophy in natural religion crumbled to pieces.
The Systhne de la Nature drew the last consequences with its atheism and materialism. All adaptation, all order of Nature, is only a phenomenon in the human mind. Nature itself knows only the necessity of atomic motion, and in it there are no worth-determina tions, which are dependent upon ends or norms of value. Nature's conformity to law is active with the same rigour in those things which appear to us aimless or unpurposive, irregular or anomalous, as in the things which we judge with reference to their agreement with our designs or customs, and approve as purposeful. The wise man should make this indifference of Sature his own ; he should see through the relativity of all conceptions of ends; there is no real
norm or order. This principle was applied by Diderot to (esthetics. The correctness of Suture is accordingly the only thing that art should display, the only thing that it should grasp and give back ;
494 The Enlightenment : Theoretical Question*. [Pakt V
beauty is one of those valuations which have no objective validity. Materialism knows only an art void of ideals, only the indifferent copy of any reality whatever.
6. While the foundations of Deism based on natural philosophy were thus crumbling from within, its epistemological basis began also to waver ; for all attacks upon the possibility of a metaphysics struck also at that of a natural religion, which indeed in its contents exhibited but a survival of religious metaphysics. In this respect the Baconian system was the most dangerous foe of the deistic doc trine. It allowed religion to stand only as revelation and combated the possibility of knowing its doctrines by the aid of reason, or even of merely bringing them into accord with reason. No one supported this standpoint more energetically than Pierre Bayle. He worked systematically to show that all dogmatic doctrines were contrary to reason ; he laid bare their contradictions with penetrating keenness ; he sought to prove that they were absurd for the natural reason. But he uncovered, also, the weak points in Deism ; he denied the cogency of the philosophical arguments for the existence of God and the immortality of the soul, and took special occasion in connection with the problems of theodicy to prove the inadequacy of the " nat ural light " : even in controversy with Leibniz he was not worsted. Religion is, therefore, possible for him only as positive revelation in contradiction with philosophical knowledge. He defends with all keenness the twofold truth. And therefore, although perhaps for himself he might have credit for a faith contrary to reason, — his writings and especially the articles of his much read Dictionnaire were not less dangerous to the theoretical doctrines of positive relig ion than to those of Deism.
Finally Hume, also, on epistemological grounds dissolved the union which the other English empiricists and nominalists, and indeed, even the materialists, like Hartley and Priestley, sought to maintain with natural religion. If there is no metaphysics of things at all, philosophical religion falls also. Hume, indeed (as Cleanthes in the dialogue), acknowledges in the spirit of his practical prob- abilism that the world on the whole makes the incontestable
impres sion of purposiveness and rational order, and finds, therefore, that that belief, on which all our experience rests, is applicable also to the (physico-theological) assumption of a unity in creation and in the direction of the whole. But from the standpoint of science (as Philo) he cannot regard this belief as capable of being estab
lished by reason. In particular he asserts, in accordance with the principles of the theory of probability, that it is quite explicable, even on the hypothesis of a purely mechanical theory, that amid
Chap. 1, § 35. ] Natural Religion : Bayle, Hume. 495
the countless combinations of atoms, one which was durable, pur posive, and well ordered should at last come about and become fixed. So the case remains with a problematical decision. Natural religion is a reasonable mode of view for the practical man, but it should not profess to be a scientific doctrine.
7. The more the metaphysical factor in Deism retreated for these or other reasons, the more the " true Christianity," which Deism professed to be, became restricted to a moral conviction. This had been already prepared by Herbert of Cherbury, who stood farther
removed from natural philosophy, and had been quite definitely expressed by Spinoza. According to this view the essence of religion consists in moral action, and the religious life has for its true content, deliberation upon duty, and the seriousness of a con duct of life determined by this. This in itself alone gave but very pale and vanishing lines for a Weltanschauung. There remained an indefinite idea of an all-good God, who created man for happiness, who should be worshipped by a virtuous life, and who will exercise an equalising justice in an eternal life, so that such virtue will receive the reward which is lacking to it here. No one will fail to notice the pure, noble thought which lived in this moralising Deism, or the high value which belongs to it historically, because in opposi tion to the one-sidedness and strife of confessional zeal it brought the ideals of toleration and philanthropy, respect for the purely human appreciation of the ethical disposition, and modesty in per sonal opinion, to a position of honour in literature and social life.
But, on the other hand, it is also true that there has never been a more meagre form of religious life than this. Its religion has no taste of earth, and with the mysteries which the Enlightenment would not tolerate, understanding for the depths of religious life was lost also. There is nothing more of anxiety for the soul's salva tion, of the struggle for redemption, of the ardent feeling of deliver ance. Deism, therefore, failed in vital religious power; it was an artificial product of cultured society, and when the German En- lighteners wrote books to preach the deistic morals to children, they only proved how little they understood of real religion.
Among the grfat mass of tue supporters of this standpoint in the "popular philosophy" all possible degrees of uncertainty prevail as to how far those moral remnants of the religious view of the world are still capable of a theoretical grounding, and how far they are to be regarded as merely constituents of the ethical conscious ness. Full clearness on this point rules in Voltaire's later thought. Here he has been so far seized upon by Bayle's scepticism as to acknowledge no longer any metaphysical authorisation : the deity
496 Th>. Enlightenment : Theoretical Questions. [Past V.
and immortality are now for him only valid as postulates of the moral feel* »g ; faith in them is regarded as only the condition for moral action. If this belief should perish, the motives for honest conduct, and thus the foundations of social order, would, he thinks, perish with it: n Dieu n'existait pa*, U famdrait Frnrenter.
8. Different as are these individual forms in which natural relig ion developed, they all agree on one point. — in their depreciatory criticism of positive religions. Only that is regarded as true in these religions, in which they all agree with each other and with natural religion ; all that is taught beyond this, with an appeal to a special revelation, the deists turn from the door, and it was pre cisely in this respect that they called themselves free thinker*. The claims made by the revelational doctrine encountered, therefore, an especially vigorous contradiction. Collins refuted the proof from prophecy, Woolston the proof from miracles, — both by seeking to give for the corresponding accounts in the religious documents a natural explanation so far as possible. This attempt, which aimed not to involve in doubt the credibility of the biblical narratives, but to explain them by purely natural causes, frequently in a very fan tastic fashion and excluding all that is mysterious and supernatural,
has been characterised and employed in Germany especially as rationalistic interpretation. It was here, too, that Beimarus, in his Schutzschrift, proceeded in the sharpest manner against the possi bility of revelation, which he declared to be superfluous, unthinkable, and untrue. Others directed their criticism against individual doc trines of dogmatics. Diderot attacked the moral attributes in the Christian conception of God, and Voltaire exercised his wit in un sparing derision of the dogmas and ceremonies of all religions and Confessions.
But in his case also there was at bottom the earnest thought, that all these additions of the positive religions were so many obscurations and corruptions of the true religion, for which, like the other deists, he felt called to contend. They were filled with the conviction that natural religion is an inheritance of all men, a conviction set within the nature of man himself, and that it was, therefore, the original state of the religious life. From this point of view all positive religions appear as depraved forms which have entered in the course of history, and a progress in the history of religion consists, therefore, in every case in nothing but a return to the primitive, pure, and uncorrupted religion. Hence according to Tindal the true Christianity, which coincides with Deism, is as old as creation. Jesus did not bring a revelation, he only rehabili tated the true worship of God in the face of the decay of the
CHxr. 1, § 35. ] Natural Religion : Deittt, Hume. 497
ancient religions ; but the Christian churches have again corrupted his work, and free-thinking desires to return to him. So, too, Letting distinguished between Christianity and the religion of Christ.
If now it was asked, what were the causes that brought about this distortion of true religion, the Enlighteners were entirely devoid of any historical comprehension for these : what they held to be false seemed to them possible only through voluntary inven tion. They were so strongly convinced of the evidence that their Deism was the only true system, that all other teachings seemed to them explicable only by lying and deceit, and that the proclaimers of these seemed to have acted only in their own interests. It is then the general doctrine of the deists that the historical basis of positive religions is invention and deceit. Even Shaftesbury knew no other way of explaining how enthusiasm, which constitutes true religion, could be distorted to the fanaticism of superstition. The
hatred of priests felt by the Enlighteners was most sharply ex pressed on this point also in the Sckutzachrift of Reimarus.
9. Such incapacity to do justice to the historical nature of posi tive religions agreed well with the universal lack in historical sense and understanding which was peculiar to the whole philosophy of the Enlightenment. This had its ground in the fact that modern
This was done first and with clearest consciousness by David Hume. While he found that religion cannot be based upon demon strative rational knowledge, he showed also that the question as to the origin of religion in the human mind must be completely separated from the speculative investigation. This new question he treated solely in accordance with psychological principles, as a '* Natural History of Religion. " He shows how in the primitive apprehension of Nature and in the feelings of fear and hope, of terror and of blessing, which are associated with and in the com parison of the course of Nature with the vicissitudes of human life, there lay the incitements to the formation of ideas of higher beings, and to worship designed to appease or to flatter. The natural, primitive form of religion is, therefore, polytheism, which thinks and treat* these higher jwwers in completely anthropomorphic manner. But the manifold forms assumed by myth fuse in accord ance with the laws of the association of ideas myths pass over into each other, and ultimately the whole body of religious ideas becomes condensed into the belief in single divine being, to whom the pur poseful order of the universe due, — faith, to be sure, which
thought had made its growth, hand in hand with natural
in investigating that which is either timelessly or always valid. Only in a few instances was this ban broken through.
science,
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The Enlightenment : Theoretical Questions. [Paw V.
cannot preserve itself in a pare form, bat is associated in various wars with its original presuppositions.
The history of religion is tine gradual transformation of polytheism into monotheism, and its result coincides with that theological tow of the world which Home had developed as the view of the intelligent man, not, indeed, capable of scientific proof, but bound up with the natural feeling of belief.
This mode of apprehending the subject from the point of view of
and the history of civilisation was reinforced by that from the point of view of philology and the history of literature, which found expression in the historical biblical criticism founded by Salomon Sender. This began to carry out the thought formulated by Spinoza,1 that the biblical books must be treated just as other writings as regards their theoretical contents, their origin, and their history; that they must be understood from the point of view of their time and the character of their authors. Semler directed par ticular attention to the point that the different parties of the early Christians find expression in the books of the New Testament. While it may be that the hypotheses to which he came in this respect have been left behind by later science, it is nevertheless true that a scientific way out of the radicalism into which the deistic movement had run was here shown, and Sender therefore raised his voice against the spokesmen of the Enlightenment.
Leasing took part in these questions from still another side. He was certainly not the man to make his conviction bend to a tenet; he saw through and rejected, as few others, the limitation which will find its sole truth in that which has been transmitted histori cally ; but he guarded himself well from playing the judge, who now, after thousands of years, shall decide as to the genuine ness of the three rings. But it is not merely this that separates him from the great mass of the Enlighteners ; he is himself a deep, religious nature, and, like Herder,1 sees in religion a living relation of man to God, and God to man. Hence religion is not possible with out revelation, and the history of religions is the series of the revelar tions of God, is the education of the human race by God. Lessing assumes the well-planned succession of these revelations to be such,
• In what degree Spinoza's writings were known to the religious Enlighteners in Germany appears, among other things, from the interesting fact that Lorenz Schmidt, the leader of the Wertheim translation of the Bible, is the anonymous editor of a book in which, under the mask of a "Refutation of the Doctrine of Spinoza by the Famous Philosopher Christian Wolff," an excellent translation of Spinoza'. s Bthict is offered, and Anally only a few paragraphs from Wolff's German writings are appended (printed Frankfort and Leips. 1744).
• Cf. Herder's treatise on the Aelteite Urkunde dea Menschengeschlecht*.
psychology
Chap. 1, § 35. ] Natural Religion : Letting, Herder. 499
that the deeper meaning of each is unfolded more clearly and dis tinctly in that which follows. So even the New Testament, the second elementary book, over which the more advanced scholar now " stamps and glows," gives us a premonition of an eternal gospel. In carrying out this thought of Origen's,1 Lessing indicates in but a tentative manner indefinite lines which lie in the direction of a mystico-speculative interpretation of dogmas.
1 Education of the Human Racr, § 72 S.
CHAPTER II.
PRACTICAL
Thx natural religion of the eighteenth century sought in morals the support which a metaphysics of the natural-science sort could not permanently afford it. This was possible by reason of the fact, that in the meantime this branch also of philosophical investigation had won its complete independence of positive religion. And in fact, this freeing process, which had already begun in the train of the religiously indifferent metaphysics of the seventeenth century, had completed itself in a relatively speedy and simple manner. Bu* the peculiar character of the new age asserted itself here also, in the
very early transfer of the point of interest in these investigations to the psychological domain j and here philosophy encountered the lit erary inclination of the age, which was directed toward a profounder employment of man with himself, toward an overhauling of his feel ings and an analysing of his motives, and toward the "sentimental*' fostering of personal relations. The individual revelling in his own inner life, the monad enjoying self, is the characteristic phenomenon of the age of the Enlightenment. The individualism of the Renais sance, which in the seventeenth century had been repressed by exter nal forces, now broke forth again with a more inward power from the stiff dignity of ceremonious, formal life : bounds were to be broken through, externalities cast away, and the pure, natural life of man brought out.
But the more important the individual thus became to himself, and the more many-sided his view in weighing questions regarding the import of his true happiness, the more morality, society, and the state became to him a problem. How comes the individual — so runs the fundamental practical question of the Enlightenment phil osophy — to a life connected with others, which extends in influence and authority beyond the individual himself ? Through all the ani mated discussions of these problems goes, as a tacit assumption, the view that the individual in his natural (as it was always conceived)
determinate character is the original datum, is that which is self 600
QCESTIOS&.
Chap. 2-] Practical Question*. 501
intelligible, and that all the relations which go beyond the individual are to be explained from him as a starting-point. — In so far the natu ralistic metaphysics of the seventeenth century thought here more after the analogy of atomism, there more after that of the Monad- ology — forms the background for the morals of the eighteenth.
The constantly progressing process in which these presuppositions became more clear and distinct brought with it the result, that the principles ofethics found a valuable clearing up in the discussions of this period. For inasmuch as the ethical life was regarded as something added to the natural essence of the individual, as some thing that must first be explained, it was necessary, on the one hand, to establish by an exact discrimination what the thing to be ex plained really and on the other hand, to investigate on what the worth and validity of the ethical life rests and the more morality appeared to be something foreign to the natural essence of the indi vidual, the more the question as to the motives which induce man to follow ethical commands asserted itself, side by side with the question as to the ground of the validity of those commands. And
so three main questions appeared, at the beginning much involved, and then becoming complicated anew what the content of morality on what rests the validity of the moral laws what brings man to moral action The principles of morals are set forth according to the three points of view of the criterion, the sanction, and the motive. This analysis and explanation, however, showed that the various answers to these separate questions were capable of being combined with each other in the most various ways so the clearing and separating process above named results precisely from the motley variety and changing hues exhibited by the doctrines of moral philosophy in the eighteenth century. Shaftesbury stands in the centre of the movement as the mind that stimulates in all direc tions and controls in many lines while, on the other hand, the move ment reaches no definite conclusion in this period, on account of the differences in the statements of the question (cf. 39).
typical feature of the fundamental individualistic tendency of this ethics was the repeatedly renewed consideration of the relation of virtue and happiness: the final outcome, expressed more or less sharply, was that the satisfaction of the individual's impulses was raised to be the standard of value for the ethical functions. The system of practical philosophy built up upon this principle
Utilitarianism, the varied development of which forms the centre in the complicated courses of these reflections.
But out of this arose the much more burning question, as regards the political and social order, — the question, namely, as to the value
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is,
502 The Enlightenment : Practical Questions. [Pa»t V.
for happiness of the social union, of public institutions and their historical development That which exists and has come into being historically has lost once more its immediate validity and naive valuation : it should justify itself before the critical consciousness, and prove its right to existence by the advantages which it yields for the happiness of individuals. From this point of view was developed the political and social philosophy of the eighteenth cen tury; upon this standpoint this philosophy assumed its critical attitude toward historical reality, and in accordance with this standard, finally, it examined the results of the historical progress of human civilisation. The worth of civilisation itself and the relation of Nature and history became thus a problem which received its most impressive formulation from Rousseau, and which, in opposition to the movements excited by him, and in conjunction with the con vulsions of the Revolution, gave form to the beginnings of the Philosophy of History.
§ 36. The Principles of Morals.
Fr. Schleiermacher, Grundlinien einer Kritik der bisherigen Sittenlehre (1803), W. W. III. Vol. 1.
H. Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics (4th ed. , Lond. and N. Y. 1890). [J. Martineau, Types of Ethical Theory, Vol. II. ]
[W. L. Courtney, Constructive Ethics (Lond. 1886). ]
The most fruitful incitements to the discussion of ethical prob lems proceeded in both positive and negative directions from Hobbes. The "selfish system" propounded by him extended its influence throughout the entire eighteenth century. It was carried out into all of its consequences, and was an ever-powerful stimulus to draw out opposing theories, which just for this reason were also dependent upon it. In a certain sense this is true of Cumberland, who indeed defended the validity of ethical laws as eternal truths in opposition to psychological relativity, and yet at the same time would have the universal welfare regarded as their essential and determining con tent.
1. The position of Locke with reference to these questions is still less definitely formulated than his attitude with regard to theoreti cal questions. No doubt the treatment of practical principles occupies almost the larger space in his attack upon " innate ideas," as is natural from the fact that his opposition is there directed against the Platonism of the Cambridge school. But the positive indications upon ethical subjects (and indeed there is nothing that goes beyond indications), which are found scattered through his
Chap. 2, § 36. ] Principle* of Moral* : Locke. 503
writings, do not in any important degree transcend mere psycholo gists Locke regards the moral judgment as demonstrative knowl edge, because it has for its object a relation, namely, the agreement or non-agreement of a man's action with a law [" conformity or disagreement men's voluntary actions have to a rule, to which they are referred, and by which they are judged of"]. 1 Accordingly the imperative character seems essential for ethics. The existence of such norms, however, presupposes not only a law-giver, but also his power to visit obedience to his laws with a reward, and disregard of them with punishment ; for only through the expectation of these consequences, Locke holds, can a law work upon the will.
If the philosopher was certain of not deviating from the "com mon sense " of the average man with such principles, he was equally secure in the three instances which he adduces of the law-giving authority, — public opinion, the state, and God. And in the high est of these instances he found again the point of attachment for the remnant of Cartesian metaphysics which his empiricism had preserved. For identically the same will of God is known by reve lation and by the " natural light " (according to Locke's philosophy of religion ; cf. § 35, 1). The law of God is the law of Nature. But its content is, that the order of Nature fixed by God attaches inju rious consequences to certain actions, and useful consequences to others, and that therefore the former are forbidden, the latter com manded. Thus the moral law gains a metaphysical root without losing its utilitarian content.
2. The need of a metaphysical basis of morals asserted itself also in other forms, and in part in a still stronger degree, though it was common to the whole Cartesian school to regard right will as the necessary and inevitable consequences of right insight. In this respect Cartesianism was seconded by the whole throng of Platonists, who were so hostile to it in natural philosophy — at first, Henry
More' and Cud worth,' later, especially, Richard Price. 4 They all proceeded from the thought that the moral law is given with the inmost nature of reality which has proceeded forth from God, and that it is therefore written with eternal and unchangeable letters in every reasonable being. With much enthusiasm but with few new arguments, they defended the Stoic-Platonic doctrine in its Christian- theistic transformation.
> Cf. Kssau cone. Hum. Un. , II. 28, 4 II.
1 Knchriridion Kthicum ( 1067).
* Wbone Treat it t concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality wu tint pnb-
lUn«l by Chandler, in 1731.
• Question* and Difficulties in Moral* CLond. 1768).
504 The Enlightenment : Practical Questions. [Part V.
This intellectualism, in connection with rationalistic metaphysics, took a direction that was widely removed from the Scotist recourse to the divine will which had been revived by Descartes and still more by Locke, and instead of this proceeded to determine the content of the moral law solely by metaphysical relations, and, accordingly, in the last instance, by logical criteria. Just in this appeared its contrast to all the psychologically influenced theories, which, in some form or other, always returned to feelings of pleas ure and pain as the central nerve of ethical determinations. This is clearest in the case of Clarke, who professed to find the objective principle of morals in the "fitness" of an action to its determining relations, and who claimed for the knowledge of this fitness a self- evidence analogous to the knowledge of mathematical truth, and in the Cartesian spirit was convinced that the feeling of obligation, by which the will is determined to the appropriate action, develops inevitably from such an insight into the fitness of things. Ethical inferiority, accordingly, appeared quite in the ancient fashion (cf. § 7, 6) to be the result of ignorance or of erroneous opinion. Wol- laston, stimulated by Clarke, gave to the same thought the turn, that since every action involves a (theoretical) judgment as to its underlying relations, the decision as to whether the act is right or wrong in the ethical sense depends upon the Tightness (correctness) or wrongness of this judgment.
3. Pierre Bayle takes a peculiar position with reference to these questions : he supports a rationalism without any metaphysical back ground. In his case the interest of fixing morals upon a firm basis, as opposed to all dependence upon dogmatic doctrines, was active in the strongest and most radical manner. While in declaring meta physical knowledge in general to be impossible he opposed the rational grounding of natural religion as well as that of positive dogma, he yet gave back with full hands to the " reason " in the practical domain what he had taken from it in the theoretical realm.
of knowing the essence of things, the human reason is, according to him, completely furnished with the consciousness of its duty : powerless without, it is complete master of itself. What it lacks in science it has in conscience : a knowledge of eternal and unchangeable truth.
The ethical reason, Bayle holds therefore, remains everywhere the same, however different men, peoples, and times may be in their theoretical insight. He teaches for the first time with clear con sciousness the practical reason's complete independence of the theo retical; but this, too, he is glad to bring to its sharpest point with reference to theology. Revelation and faith are regarded by him in
Incapable
Chap. 2, § 36. ] Principlet of Moral* : Clarke, Bayle. 505
the Catholic manner as essentially theoretical illumination, and just on this account they seem to him to be indifferent for morality. He admired the ethical excellence of ancient heathenism, and believed in the possibility of a morally well-ordered community of atheists. While, therefore, his theoretical scepticism might seem favourable to the Church, his moral philosophy was necessarily attacked as her most dangerous foe.
If the ethical principles were in this discussion proclaimed by Bayle also as " eternal truths," he did it in the original Cartesian sense, where interest centered not so much about the psychological question of innateness, as rather about the epistemological point of view of immediate evidence not brought about through the medium of logic. In this sense the virtual innateness of ethical truths was held of course by Leibniz, and it was in the spirit of both that Vol taire, who approached Bayle's standpoint the more in proportion as his attitude toward metaphysics became more sceptical (cf. § 35, 5), said of the ethical principles that they were innate in man just as his limbs were : he must learn to use both by experience.
4. Bayle very likely had the support of general opinion when he ascribed to the ethical convictions a worth exalted above all change and all difference of theoretical opinions; but he was successful,
perhaps, just because he treated those convictions as something known to all, and did not enter upon the work of bringing their content into a system, or of expressing them as a unity. Whoever attempted this seemed hardly able to dispense with a principle taken either from metaphysics or from psychology.
Such a determination of the conceptions of morality by a principle was made possible by the metaphysics of Leibniz, though it was only prepared by him incidentally and by way of indications, and was first carried out by Wolff in systematic, but also in cruder forms. The Monadology regards the universe as a system of living beings, whose restless activity consists in unfolding and realising their original content. In connection with this Aristotelian conception the Spinozistic fundamental idea of the " auum esse conaervare " (cf. f 32, 6) becomes transformed into that of a purposeful vocation or destiny, which Leibniz and his German disciples designated as perfection. 1 The " law of Nature," which for this ontology also is coincident with the moral law, is the striving of all beings toward perfection. Since now every process of perfecting, as such, is con nected with pleasure, and every retrogression in life's development with pain, there follows from this the ancient identification of the ethically good with well-being or happiness.
i Leibnii, Monad. 41 If.
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Natural law, therefore, demands of man that he should do all that serves his perfection, and forbids all that threatens to bring him loss in his perfection. From this thought Wolff develops the whole system of duties, bringing to his aid especially the principle of mutual furtherance: man needs for his own perfecting other men, and works toward his own perfection in helping them toward the fulfilment of their vocation. In particular, however, it followed from these premises that man must know what truly conduces to
his perfecting ; for not all that is momentarily felt to be a further ance of life proves truly and permanently a step toward perfection. Hence morality is throughout in need of ethical knowledge, — of right insight into the nature of man and things. From this point of view the enlightenment or "clearing up" of the understanding appears the pre-eminent ethical task. With Leibniz this follows immediately from the conception of the monad. 1 The monad is the more perfect, —and perfection Leibniz defines in genuine scholastic fashion as grandeur de la riaUte" positive, — the more it shows its activity in clear and distinct representations ; the natural law of its develop
ment is the clearing up of its original obscure representative content (cf. § 31, 11). Wolff's circumstantial deduction takes rather the form of pointing out in experience the useful consequences of
knowledge. It remains thus quite within the setting of the homely aim which the German teacher-philosopher (Kdthederphilosoph) set before his scientific work, viz. to make philosophy usable and prac tically efficient, by clearness of conceptions and plainness of proofs.
5. This tendency Wolff had adopted from his teacher Thomasius, the father of the Enlighteners, a man who was indeed wanting in the pre-eminence that characterised the mind of Leibniz, but was given all the more an understanding for the wants of his time, a capacity for agitation, and a spirit for efforts toward the public
Intellectual movements of the Renaissance that had been checked in the seventeenth century revived again at its close. Thomasius would transplant philosophy from the lecture hall into real life, — put it into the service of the general weal ; and since he understood little of natural science, his interest turned toward criticism of public institutions. Reason only should rule in the life of the whole, as well as in that of the individual : so he fought honour ably and victoriously against superstition and narrowness, against torture and witch-trials. Enlightenment in the sense of Thomasius is hence far from having the metaphysical dignity which Leibniz gave it. It gains its value for individuals and for society first by the uses which it yields and which can be expected from it alone.
good.
1 Cf. Leibniz, Monad. 48 ft.
Chap. 2, § 36. ] Principles of Moral* : Wolff, Thomatius. 507
Perfection and utility are accordingly the two characteristics which with Wolff make Enlightenment an ethical principle. The former comes out more strongly in connection with the general metaphysical basis ; the latter in the particular building out of the system. And in the same way this duality of criteria goes through Wolff's school and the whole popular philosophy, — only, the more superficial the doctrines become, the broader the space taken by utility. Even Mendelssohn gives as the reason for turning aside from all deeper and more refined subtilty, that philosophy has to treat only just so much as is necessary for man's happiness. But because this eudse- monism of the Enlightenment had from the outset no higher point of view than that of the education and welfare of the average man, it fell into another limitation, the most jejune philistinism and sen sible, prosaic commonplace. This might be in place and most beneficial in effect in a certain stratum of popular literature, not high, indeed, but broad; but when such a success on the part of the
Enlighteners "went to their heads," when they applied the same measuring rod to the great phenomena of society and history, when this excessive pride of the empirical understanding would allow nothing to stand except what it had known "clearly and distinctly," then the noble features of the Enlightenment became distorted to that well-intentioned lack of comprehension, as type of which Friedrich Nicolai, with all his restless concern for the public good, became a comic figure. 1
6. The great mass of the German Enlighteners did not suspect how far they were wandering from the living spirit of the great Leibniz with this dry utility of abstract rules. Wolff, indeed, had already let the pre-established harmony fall metaphysically also, and so proved that the finest meaning of the Monadology had re mained hidden from him. Hence he and his Successors had no comprehension for the fact, that Leibniz's priuciple of perfection made the unfolding of the content of the individual life and the shap ing out of its dimly felt originality, the task of the ethical life, in the same degree as his metaphysics asserted the peculiar nature of each individual being in the face of all others. This side of the matter first came into power in Germany, when the period of genius dawned in literature, and the passionate feeling of strongly indi vidual minds sought its own theory. The form which it then found in Herder's treatises, and likewise in Schiller's Philosophical Letters, was, however, much more strongly determined by another doctrine
1 Cf. FlchU? , Ft. SicolaCt I. tbtn und Bonderbare Meinungen (1801), W. W. mi. i a.
608 The Enlightenment : Practical Quettiont. [Part V.
than it was by Leibniz, — by a doctrine which, in spite of the dif ference in the conceptions in which it was carried out, had in its ethical temper the closest relationship with that of the German metaphysician.
Shaftesbury had given to the idea of perfection a form that was less systematic but all the more impressive and clear to the imagi nation. The ancient conception of life, in accordance with which morality coincides with the undisturbed unfolding of man's true and natural essence, and therefore with his true fortune, was directly congenial to him and became the living basis of his thought. Hence, with Shaftesbury, the ethical appears as the truly human, as the flower of man's life, as the complete development of his natural endowments. In this is fixed at the outset Shaftesbury's attitude toward Cumberland and Hobbes. He cannot, like the latter, regard egoism as the sole fundamental characteristic of the natural man ; he rather agrees with the former in recognising the altruistic incli nations as an original inborn endowment. But neither can he see in these inclinations the sole root of morality ; to him morality is the completion of the entire man, and therefore he seeks its principle in symmetrical development and in the harmonious interaction of the two systems of impulses. This theory of morals does not demand the suppression of one's own weal in favour of that of others ; such a suppression appears to it to be necessary only in the lower stages of development : the fully cultivated man lives as truly for himself as for the whole,1 and just by unfolding his own individual charac ter does he set himself as a perfect member in the system of the universe. Here Shaftesbury's optimism expresses itself most fully in his belief, that the conflict between the egoistic and the altruistic motives, which plays so large a part in the lower strata of humanity, must be completely adjusted in the ripe, mature man.
But for this reason the ethical ideal of life is with this thinker an entirely personal one. Morality consists for him, not in the control of general maxims, not in the subordination of the individ ual's will to norms or standards, but in the rich and full living out of an entire individuality.