"
A similar conflict between hedonistic and other standards of value is evident in the ethical system of Herbert Spencer.
A similar conflict between hedonistic and other standards of value is evident in the ethical system of Herbert Spencer.
Windelband - History of Philosophy
Few were dear on the point that nature uxu thereby placed under a category of history, and that this category had experienced an essential change for such an applica tion.
For the evolutionary theory of natural science, including the theory of natural selection, can indeed explain alteration but not
progress; cannot give the rational ground for regarding the result of the development as a "higher," that is, a more valuable form.
8. In its most universal extent the principle of evolution had already been proclaimed before Darwin by his countryman Herbert Spencer, and had been made the fundamental conception of the tat ter's System of Synthetic Philosophy, in which many threads of
English philosophy are brought together. He proceeds from agnos ticism in so far as he declares the Absolute, the Unconditioned, the Unitary Being, whieh he also fain to call Force, to be unknowable. Religion and philosophy have laboured in vain to conceive this in definite ideas for us by the very nature of the case incapable of determination. Human knowledge limited to an interpretation of phenomena, that is, to the manifestations of the Unknowable. Philosophy has only the task of generalising the results of the particular sciences, and putting these generalised results together into the simplest and most complete totality possible.
The fundamental distinction in phenomena Spencer designates as that of the "vivid" and the "faint" manifestations of the Un knowable, i. e. of impressions and ideas. This indicates an attach ment to Hume which not fortunate (cf. above, 453). From this
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658 Philosophy of the nineteenth Century. [Past VII
starting-point, although Spencer rightly rejects the reproach of
material: -in. he ret introduces a turn in his view of the world which _ directs preeminent interest to the character of physical phenomena. For an examination of all the particular sciences is supposed to
yield the result that the fundamental form in which the Absolute manifests itself is evolution. And by evolution Spencer under stands — following a suggestion of the scientist, von Baer — the tendency of all natural structures to pass over from the homoge neous to the heterogeneous. This active variation in which the ever-active force manifests itself consists in two processes, which in cooperation with each other constitute evolution, and which Spencer designates as differentiation and integration. On the one band, bv virtue of the plurality of effects which belong to every cause, the simple passes into a manifold ; it differentiates and individualises itself: it divides and determines itself by virtue of the fulness of relations into which it enters. On the other hand, the thus sepa rated individual phenomena come together again to form firm com pounds and functional systems, and through these integrations new unities arise which are higher, richer, and more finely articulated than the original. So the animal organism is a higher unity than the cell ; society is a higher " individual " than a single man.
This schema is now applied by Spencer to all material and spir itual processes, and with tireless labour he has sought to enforce it in the case of the facts of all the particular sciences. Physics and chemistry are refractory; they stand under the law of the conser vation of energy. But astropbysical theory shows the differentia tion of the original gas into the suns and the peripheral structures of the planets with their satellites, and likewise the corresponding integration in the articulated and ordered system of motion which all these bodies maintain. It is, however, in biology and sociology that the system attains full unfolding. Life is regarded by Spencer as a progressive adaptation of inner to outer relations. From this the individualising growth of a single organism is explained, and from the necessary variations of the latter according to the method
\ of the theory of selection is explained the alteration of species. Social life also in its wh^le historical course is nothing other than
the progressive adaptation of raan to his natural and plastic environ ment. The perfecting which the race wins thereby rests upon the dying out of the unfit and upon the survival of the fit functions. From the standpoint of this doctrine Spencer seeks also to decide the old strife between rationalism and empiricism upon both the logical and ethical fields. As against the associational psychology he admits that there are for the individual immediately evident
i 45. ] Nature and Hiitory : Spencer. 659
principles, and truths which are innate in the sense that they cannot be explained by the experience of the individual. But the strength with which these judgments assert themselves so that consciousness finds it impossible to deny them, rests upon the fact that they are the intellectual and emotional habits acquired by the race, which have proved themselves to be adapted to further the race, and have maintained themselves on this ground. The a priori is everywhere an evolutionary product of heredity. So in particular for morals, everything in the form of intelligent feeling and modes of will sur vives which is adapted to further the self-preservation and develop ment of the individual, of society, and of the race.
Finally every particular development reaches its natural end when a condition of equilibrium has been gained in which the inner rela tions are everywhere completely adapted to the outer, so that the capacity for further articulation and variation has been exhausted. It is, therefore, only by external influence that such a system can be destroyed and disturbed, so that its individual parts may enter into new processes of evolution. On the contrary Spencer strives against the assumption of the possibility that the whole universe, with all the particular systems which it contains, can ever come to a perfect and therefore permanent condition of equilibrium. He thus con tradicts those investigators who have regarded as theoretically possi ble such a distribution of energies as to exclude all alterations ; this is due ultimately to the fact that Spencer regards the Unknowable as the ever self-manifesting force, and regards evolution itself as the most universal law of the manifestation of the Unknowable.
y. Taken all in all Spencer's development of the principle of evolution is throughout of a cosmological character, and in this is shown just the alteration in this controlling principle which is due to the prevalence of natural science in our century. This is Been
most clearly by comparing Hegel and Spencer. With the former, evolution is the nature of the self-revealing spirit ; with the latter, it is the law of the successive manifestations of an unknowable force. To speak in Hegel's language (cf. p. 611). the subject lias again become substance. In fact the Unknowable of Spencer resembles most that "indifference of real and ideal" which Schel- ling designated as the Absolute. This analogy would lead us to expect that the cosmological form of the principle of evolution will not be the final one, and that the historical standpoint and method, as the appropriate home of this principle, will give the permanent
form which it will take in philosophy. In England itself, and still more in America, a decided turn toward Hegel is to be noticed since the impressive book of Hutchinson Stirling and Wallace's excellent
666 PhUotophjf of the Smeteentk Century. [Put VII
introduction of Hegel's logic. In Germany, Kudo Fischer's exposi tion of Hegel's doctrine, which is now just reaching completion, will dissipate prejudices which hare hitherto stood in the war of its just valuation, and by stripping off the terminology which has become foreign to us, will cause this great system of e vol n tion to appear in full clearness.
The same tendency to win back the historical form for the thought of evolution is found in the logical and epistemological efforts which have as their goal what Dilthey has denoted with a fortunate expres sion, a "critique of the historical reason. r The aim is to break through that one-sidedness which has attached to logic since its Greek origins, and which prescribes as the goal and norm of logical laws in their formal aspect the relation of the universal to the par ticular (cf. $ 12), and for the content and material of those laws the knowledge of nature. Under these presuppositions stand not only the extreme of mathematical logic (cf. § 44, 4), but also the impor tant works of John Stuart Mill and Stanley Jevons, which are to be characterised essentially as the logical theory of natural science. Over against this, the elaborations of logical science by Lotze and Sigwart, especially in the tatter's second edition, show a much more universal stamp, and in connection with the movement of historical idealism which has its attachments to the Fichtean view of the world (cf. § 44, 6), a deeper comprehension of the logical forms of histori
/ cal science is on the way ; such, for example, as we find in Rickert's investigations regarding the limitations of the concepts of natural science. 1
S 46. The Problem of Values.
While the end of the century finds us in the yet unadjusted strife between the historical and the natural-science standards, we see just in this continuation of an inherited antithesis how little the philoso phy of this period has been able to win a real progress in its princi ples. Its great and varied industry has been rather at the periphery, and in the work of adjusting relations with the special sciences, while the central development falls prey to a certain stagnation which must be simply put up with as a fact easily comprehensible historically. The exhaustion of metaphysical energy and the high tide of empirical interests give a completely satisfactory explana tion. For this reason we can readily understand that the philoso phy of the nineteenth century shows a rich development along the bounding provinces in which it comes in contact with the empirical disciplines, as in psychology, philosophy of nature, anthropology,
» H. Kickert, Grenzen der naturwisaentchaftlichen Begrifsbitdvng, 1896,
9 48. ] Problem of Values : Utilitarianism. 661
philosophy of history, philosophy of law and philosophy of reli'- gion, while on the contrary it makes the impression of an eclectic and dependent attitude in the fundamental disciplines. Surely this is the inevitable consequence of the fact that it suffers from the repressive wealth of traditions which have attained complete histori cal consciousness. It is in accord with this that no earlier time has seen such a luxuriant and fruitful growth in the study of the history of philosophy. But there is need of a new central reconstruction if philosophy is to meet in satisfactory manner the wants which in recent time come once more for satisfaction from the general con sciousness and from the special sciences. 1
The direction in which the solution of this problem is to be sought is determined on the one hand by the predominance of that volun tarism which extends from psychology into'general metaphysical theories (§ 44), and on the other by the circumstance that the two forms of the principle of evolution (§ 45), viz. the historical and that of natural science, are distinguished from each other by their different attitudes toward the determinations of value. In addition the mighty upward sweep in the conditions of life which Europeans
have experienced in this century has worked at once destructively and constructively upon general convictions. Civilisation, caught in this movement of rapid enhancement and extension, is urged on by a deeper demand for comprehension of itself, and from the problem of civilisation which made its appearance in the Enlightenment (cf. f 37) a movement has developed for which the " transformation and re-valuation of all values" (Umtcertung aUer Werthe) has become the watchword.
1. The characteristic trait in this is that in the foreground of all ethical considerations the relation of the individual to society stands
'That the Catholic Church has sought to solve this problem by a revival of TbomUtn is well known, and does not need to be further set forth here. Nor on this account do we need to cite the1 numerous Tliomists (mostly Jesuits) in Italy,
Prance. Germany. Belgium, and Holland. In theory they represent no new principles, but at most seek to build out the old doctrine in details so that it may appear in some maimer adapted to modern knowledge, in particular to modern science of nature. But the freer tendencies of Catholic philosophy, which are usually called Ontoltigirm. have created nothing new and fruitful. They attach themselves for the moot part to the 1'latonism of Malebranche, and point back to Angnstine, so that the antagonism which we noted in the Middle Ages and in the
Renaissance is repeated again (cf. pp. 364, 416. ) The finest presentation of i >i>tolr>gism was found in the Italian*, Rosmini and Giobertl ; the former gave It a enrt of psychological basis ,- the latter a purely metaphysical form (L'enU rrni rrtiMUnte). In Germany GUnther introduced into it certain elements of the idealistic speculations, especially of Fichte's doctrine ; in France, Gratry fmm this standpoint combats especially the eclecticism of Cousin, and in this eclecticism he combats HegelianUm and the "pantheism" which he finds in both (cf. tltude tur la Sophistique Contemponine, tettre a M. Vaektrot,
Parte, 1861).
662 Philosophy of the Nineteenth Century. [Past VH
forth in much more conscious and explicit form than ever before, — whether in the positive form that the subordination of the individual to society is presented and grounded in some manner as the norm of all valuation, or whether it be in the negative form that the resist ance of the individual to the oppressing weight of the species is praised and justified.
The first form is that which has been transmitted from the phi losophy of the Revolution and from Utilitarianism, especially in the stamp given to it by Bentham (cf. p. 522). This Utilitarianism goes through the popular literature of the century as a broad stream in which the standard of the public good is taken as a matter of course without deep analysis of its meaning. It is characterised for the most part by limiting its care " for the greatest happiness of the greatest number " to man's earthly welfare ; the mental and spiritual goods are not indeed denied, but the measure of all valuation is found in the degree of pleasure or pain which a circumstance, a relation, an act, or a disposition may call forth. Theoretically, this doctrine rests on the unfortunate inference of the associational chology, that because every satisfied desire is accompanied with pleasure the expectation of the pleasure therefore, the ultimate motive of all willing, and every particular object willed and valued only as means for gaining this pleasure. This formal eudsemonism was earlier forced either to regard the altruistic impulses as equally original with the egoistic, or to make them proceed from the egoistic through the experiences which the individual undergoes in social life. In contrast with this the noteworthy transformation which Utili tarianism has experienced in recent time consists in its combination with the principle of evolution, as has already been mentioned in the case of Spencer's doctrine (cf. 45, 8). The valuation of altruism from the standpoint of social ethics appears according to this new point of view to be the result of the process of evolution, inasmuch as only those social groups have maintained themselves in the struggle for existence whose individual members have achieved tltruistic thought and action in relatively high degree. 1 The history of morals struggle of values or "ideals," from which we may part explain the relativity of historical systems of morals, and part their converging development to a universal human ethics. These fundamental thoughts of evolutionary ethics have been car ried out in many detailed expositions among their representatives
Benjamin Kidd, Social Evolution, London, 1895, has attempted to determine the nature of religion sociologically by considering the part which ideas of the
supernatural have played in this evolutionary process — genuinely English undertaking.
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§46. ] Problem of Value* : Bentham. 663
may be mentioned, in France, Fouillee, in Germany, Paul Kee, whose evolutionary theory of conscience excited attention for a time, and G. H. Schneider.
[Before passing to the continental representatives of Utilitarian ism it will be instructive to consider more fully the changes which have been effected in British theories both within and without the so-called Utilitarian school. ' These changes affect the standard of value, the motives to which ethical appeal is made, and the relation which the individual is conceived to sustain to the social body ; their nature shows the influence of the close relation which ethical theory in England has always sustained to social and political conditions.
During the century England has seen an almost continuous effort toward social and political reform. This movement has aimed at an extension of political privilege, and at making possible a higher standard of living for the less fortunate members of society. ' It has thus been democratic in so far as it has insisted upon the widest par ticipation in the goods of civilisation ; but by emphasising not merely material comforts, but also political rights, social justice, and educa tional opportunities, it has tended to measure human welfare, not so much in terms of feeling as in terms of " dignity " and fulness of life or "self-realisation. " The movement along these two direc- tions has been due in part to the influence of German idealism as transmitted through Coleridge, Carlyle, and later through Green and others, but the immanent forces of social progress have had a deci sive influence in the same direction.
As has been pointed out (pp. 51. 3 f. ), a general tendency of British theory has been to unite a social standard or criterion of moral value with an individualistic, and even egoistic theory of motives. This seemed the more possible to Bentham, because in the individualistic language of his day the community was defined as a " fictitious body composed of individual persons who are considered as constituting, as it were, its members. " The interest of the community, then, "is the sum of the interests of the several members who compose it. "
Hence it might seem that one way to promote the interest of the community would be for every man to seek his own interest. If, however, it should be necessary to bring pressure to l>ear upon the individual in order to keep him from interfering with the interests of others, Bentham conceived that the principal reliance should be placed upon what he called the four sanctions, which he specified as the physical, political, moral, and religious, meaning by these the
1 The material from this point to the paragraph numbered " 2 " on p. 070 has been added by the translator.
664 Philosophy of the Nineteenth Century. [Pakt VII
pleasures and pains derived from physical sources, from the penal ties of law, from public opinion, or from belief in divine rewards and punishments. It is for pain and pleasure alone " to point oat what we aught to do, as well as to determine what we shall do," and the ambiguity in the terms " pain " and " pleasure," according to which they mean in the one case pleasure or pain of the community, and in the other case pleasure or pain of the agent, permits Benthain to suppose that he is maintaining a consistent hedonistic theory. But there were two other important qualifications in this hedonistic and individualistic theory. In the first place he intimates that the indi vidual may seek public pleasure as well as private,V thus giving the theoretical statement of the principle which governed his own life, directed as it was toward the public interest. In the next place, the maxim which Bentham used to interpret the phrase, " greatest good of the greatest number," was, " everybody to count for one, nobody for more than one. " This, while apparently a principle of extreme individualism, was really a recognition of individual rights, and was based upon fairness rather than upon a purely hedonistic standpoint. It is thus essentially a social principle, and a demand that the pleasure which "determines what we should do" shall be not merely a maximum, but a particular kind of pleasure, regulated not by con siderations of quantity, but by principles of fairness and justice. A further inadequacy of Bentham's theory to account for Bentham's practice appears in his famous definition that in estimating pleasures and pains we must consider quantity only, — " push-pin is as good as poetry. " But Bentham's own activity, if not primarily directed toward poetry, was at least as little directed toward push-pin for himself or for others. His whole life-work was given toward pro moting legislative and social reform, toward securing Tights and justice; and although he had little appreciation of certain of the finer values of art and culture, he was at least as little as his suc cessor, Mill, to be explained by the hedonistic formula.
The theoretical individualism of the hedonistic standard for meas uring the values of human life and the motives for moral action found vigorous and successful opposition in the Work of Coleridge and C'arlyle. The former exerted his influence primarily in the religious field, and in special opposition to the theories of motive and obligation propounded by Paley (p. 514, above), which had wide currency in educational and religious ciroles. According to Paley, the only difference between prudence and duty is that in the^one we
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f 46. ] Problem of Value* : Coleridge, Carlyle. 665
consider the gain or loss in the present world ; in the other, we con sider also gain or loss in the world to come. Obligation, according to Paley, meaus to be urged by a violent motive, resulting from the command of another. Against these positions Coleridge urged that while man as a mere animal, or as a being endowed merely with " understanding," may know only motives which spring from the calculations of pleasures and pains, man as rational may hear another voice and respond to higher appeals. It is, in fact, in just this distinction that we find the difference between prudence and true morality. The written works of Coleridge were few and fragmen tary, but his personal influence upon the literary, religious, and philosophical thought of his own and the succeeding period, in both
Britain and America, has been powerful and far-reaching.
The criticism of Carlyle was directed against " Benthamism. " Its individualism of motive seemed to Carlyle adapted to aggravate
rather than to heal the disease of the age. The economic develop ment had been steadily in the direction of greater individualism. It had substituted the wage-system for the older personal relation. What Carlyle felt to be needed was the deeper sense of social unity, a stronger feeling of responsibility. Now the pursuit of happiness is essentially an individualising force, — "the man who goes about pothering and uproaring for his happiness, he is not the man that will help us to get our knaves and dastards arrested ; no, he is rather on the way to increase the number — by at least one unit. " A true social organisation can be secured only if the individualistic and commercial theory of interests is abandoned. This leads at once to the other point of Carlyle's attack, — measurement of value in terms of pleasure and happiness. Instead of" a " greatest happiness prin ciple,'* a "greatest nobleness principle must be substituted. Man cannot be satisfied with the results"of attempts to give him pleasure if these aim simply at pleasure. Man's unhappiness comes of his greatness ; it is because there is an infinite in him which he cannot quite bury under the finite. The shoe-black also has a soul quite other than his stomach, and would require for his permanent satis faction and saturation God's Infinite Universe. " It is to the heroes that we must look for our ideals of human life. It is in work rather than in pleasure that the end of human life is to be achieved.
It was in the thought of John Stuart Mill that the fusion of utili tarian and idealistic principles found its most instructive illustration. The social philosophy of Comte and a personal character actuated by high ideals of duty and ardent for the promotion of public welfare conspired with the influences already named to secure this result.
Educated by his father, James Mill, in the principles of association*!
686 Philosophy of the Nineteenth Century [Part VII
psychology, associated with Ricardo, the representative of an indi vidualistic economic theory, and with Bentham, he inherited thus a theory of human nature and a method of analysis from which he never completely freed himself ; but on the other hand he introduced into the scheme a new content which led him to transcend the hedo nistic position. 1 First as regards the object of desire. It had been the position of the associationalists that the individual desires originally pleasure, and pleasure only. This is the only intrinsic good. It was held that other objects, however, might become associated with the individual's happiness, and thus become independent objects of desire. In this theory it would be the purpose of moral trainiug so to associate the public good with the private good of the individual that he would come to desire the public welfare. Taught by his own experience that such external associations had no permanent motive power, Mill was led to reject this theory, and to state the hedonist! ' paradox that to find pleasure one must not consciously seek it Of greater significance for our present purpose is Mill's theory of the motives to moral action. On the one hand he retains so much of the eighteenth century atomistic view of conduct as to affirm that " the motive has nothing to do with the morality of the action, though much with the morality of the agent. " He still retains the doctrine of the external sanctions without stating explicitly that however useful these may be to control the non-moral or immoral, until other motives get a foothold, they are not moral motives. But on the other hand he lays far greater stress upon the " internal " sanctions of duty. This feeling of duty, in turn, though strengthened by edu
cation and association, has as its ultimate foundation the " social feelings of mankind. " It is because man naturally " never conceives himself otherwise, than as a member of a body " that the interest of the community is the interest of the individual. The principle of sympathy which had served alternately as a means of psychological analysis and as a term for the broader social impulse, was given its most important place as that on which rests " the possibility of any cultivation of goodness and nobleness and the hope of their ultimate entire ascendency. "
Finally, Mill transcends the hedonistic criterion of value. While maintaining that the mental pleasures are superior to the bodily
on purely quantitative grounds, he asserts that, quite apart from questions of quantity, some kinds of pleasure are more desirable and valuable than others. The test for pleasure,
1 In addition to the Utilitarianism, the Autobiography, the essays on Bentham •nul Coleridge and On Liberty are of special interest.
pleasures
i 44. J Problem of Values : Mill, Spencer. 667
whether we seek to measure its intensity or its quality, must in any case be subjective; and the question as to which of two pleasures is the better must be decided by those who have had experience of both Instead, therefore, of using pleasure as the standard for value, Mill, like Plato, would appeal to " experience and wisdom and reason" as judges. Instead of pleasure as standard, we have rather a standard for pleasure. If, then, we ask what thes° " com petent judges " will assign as the highest values, we may find differ ent names, such as love of liberty and love of«power, etc. , but the most " appropriate appellation is the sense of dignity. " " It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied ; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. " And in the fur ther development of this principle of valuation Mill even goes beyond Carlyle's position by declaring that to do without happiness is now done involuntarily by nineteen-twentieths of mankind, and often has to be done voluntarily by the hero or the martyr, who in sacrificing his own happiness for that of others displays the " high est virtue which can be found in man.
"
A similar conflict between hedonistic and other standards of value is evident in the ethical system of Herbert Spencer. On the one
hand, following the tradition of a hedonistic
maintains that life is good or bad according as it does or does not bring a surplus of agreeable feeling. The only alternative to this test is to reverse the hypothesis and suppose that pain is good and pleasure is bad. No other standard of value can be admitted. This position is fortified by the biological law that if creatures should find pleasure in what is hurtful, and pain in what is advan tageous, they would soon cease to exist. On the other hand, Spen cer propounds also a standard of value which does not easily conform to the test of pleasure and pain. According to this standard the highest conduct is that which conduces to " the great est breadth, length, and completeness of life"; the highest stage in evolution is that reached when "conduct simultaneously achieves the greatest totality of life in self, in offspring, and in fellow-men. " The subjective standard of pleasurable feeling and the objective standard of fulness of life are thus set over against each ocher. The attempt is made to bring them together by showing that the bio logical development has necessarily brought about a harmony between pleasure and progress, but on the other hand it is admitted that a condition of progress involves a lack of adaptation between the individual and the environment. It would therefore seem that, however well-suited pleasure might be as a test for the static indi vidual, it cannot be regarded as a test of value for the guidance of
psychology, Spencer
668 Phtlotofhy of the Nineteenth Century. [Pabt VII
a progressive being. Henoe Spencer maintains that the perfect application of his test supposes an ideal humanity. A consistent hedonism would require that the test of such an ideal humanity be solely the continuity and intensity of pleasurable feeling attained, but the numerous recognitions of more objective fac tors make it improbable that Spencer would regard merely sen tient beings deprived of all active faculties as the highest type of evolution.
The employment by Spencer of the principles of evolution as affording a moral standard leads to an interesting complication of the problems considered under § 45 with the problem of the indi vidual in relation to society. On the one hand, as already noted (p. 662), the social sentiments and related moral principles are regarded by Spencer as finding their basis in the evolutionary pro cess. These social qualities subserve the welfare of the family or species, and aid it in the struggle for existence. On the other hand, it is maintained that the fundamental law of progress is that " each individual shall take the consequences of his own nature and actions: survival of the fittest being the result. " Among gregarious creatures the freedom of each to act has to be restricted by the pro vision that it shall not interfere with similar freedom on the part of others. Progress is therefore dependent upon giving the greatest possible scope to individual freedom. With Bentham and Mill the maxim "everybody to count for one, nobody for more than one" had represented a socialising of the criterion and ideal. In Spen cer's opinion this represents an undue emphasis upon equality; from this to communism the step is only one from theory to prac tice. " Inequality is the primordial idea suggested " by evolution ; equality, as suggested in the need of restriction, is secondary.
From this individualistic interpretation of evolution Spencer opposes not only communism in property, but the assumption by the State of any functions beyond that of securing "justice" to the indi vidual. The State should keep the individual from interfering with the freedom of other individuals. The State is thus essentially negative in its significance. Man in his corporate capacity may not realise a positive moral value in the pursuit of common good. But while agreeing thus with the views of Gundling and von Humboldt (cf. p. 520), Spencer insists that, in denying the possibility of reach ing positive values through the State, he aims to secure these values more efficiently by voluntary and private action. " Beneficence " belongs to the family virtues ; " justice " to the State. 1
1 Cf. Ethics, Vol. U. , The Man vs. the State, and Essays, VoL lit-
-
§ 4«. ] Problem of Valut* : Huxley, Green.
The relation of evolutionary processes to the problem of moral values has been most sharply formulated by Huxley. 1 In opposi tion to certain philosophical writers who find in the evolutionary process a moral standard, Huxley points out with great vigour and incisiveness the distinction between the "cosmic process" and the "ethical process. " The attempt to find in the "cosmic pro cess" an ethical standard is based upon the ambiguity in the phrase " survival of the fittest. " Fittest, it is scarcely necessary to say, is not synonymous with ethically best. If the temperature of the earth should be reduced, the survival of the fittest would mean a return to lichens and diatoms.
The ethical process must find its standard not in the cosmic pro cess, but in the moral ideals of man. Its principle is not that of the survival of the fittest, but that of fitting as many as possible to survive. The duty of man is not to conform to the cosmic pro cess, but to combat it. In a sense it may be admitted that the moral
process is a part of the cosmic process, but the important point is that the moral process cannot take its standards from the non-moral ]>arts of the cosmic process, and the theory of government which Spencer would derive from this is characterised by Huxley as "administrative nihilism. " '
The opposition to an ethical theory based upon the conceptions of natural science, has received its most thorough-going expression in the work of T. H. Green. Previous English sympathisers with German idealism had for the most part appropriated results without attempting for themselves the " labour of the notion. " Believing that current theories of evolution and ethics were repeating the fallacies of Hume in another form, Green set himself the task of criticising those fallacies and of re-stating the conditions under which any experience, and especially any moral experience, is possible. The central, fundamental, and determining conception is found in self-consciousness. Questions as to freedom, desire, and ideals must be stated in terras of self-consciousness, and not in physical concepts, if they are to be intelligible. Nor can self- consciousness be explained in terms of the unconscious, or as developing from the unconscious. It seems rather to be compre hensible only as the reproduction in man of an eternal conscious ness. This has an important bearing on the determination of the moral ideal. In the fint place it requires that the end or ideal shall always be some desirable state of self. In this it seems to
1 In hU Romanes lecture, 1803. Reprinted m Evolution and Ethic*, 18M. Cf. J. Itowey. Evolution and Ethic*, Mooist, VIII. 321 ft.
1 Critique* and Addrt—e*.
tf70 Philosophy of the Nineteenth Century. [Part VT1.
approach hedonism, but whereas hedonism holds that pleasure makes a state or an object desirable, Green insists that the pleasure follows the attainment of desire, and that what a being desires is determined by the nature of the being. Man desires the full realisation of him self, and " in it alone he can satisfy himself. " The good is"therefore a personal good. It is also a common or social good. Without society, no persons. " While therefore it may not be possible to state definitely the specific characteristics of the " best state of man," history shows that man has bettered himself through insti tutions and habits which make the welfare of all the welfare of each, and through the arts which make nature the friend of man. " It is in political society that"self-consciousness finds fullest develop ment. The institutions of civil life give reality to the capacities of will and reason and enable them to be really exercised. " l
The ultimate justification of all rights is that they serve a moral end in the sense that the powers secured in them are essential to the fulfilment of man's vocation as a moral being, i. e. as a being who in living for himself lives for other selves. With Green's definition may be compared Spencer's formulation of the ideal as " complete ness of life. " It is a striking illustration of the strong relation which British ethical theory has always maintained to British life, that two thinkers from such opposite standpoints should approach so near in actual statement.
2. Turning now to continental theories, we note that] the con ception of life which corresponds to this utilitarian social ethics is throughout an optimistic affirmation of the world. Life as an evolutionary process is the sum total of all goods, and the progress to the more perfect is the natural necessity of the actual world ; the strengthening and broadening of life is as well the moral law as the law of nature. This consequence has been carried out with the most refinement and warmth, and not without a religious turn by Guyau.
He finds the highest meaning and enjoyment of individual existence in the conscious unity of life with society, and beyond this with the universe.
But even without the evolutionary supplement, naturalism and materialism had asserted their joyous optimism and directed it against every kind of morals which avoids or renounces the world, especially against the religious forms of such ethical theories. This was shown already in the case of Feuerbach, who set for his philo sophical activity the task of making man a " free, self-conscious
1 These principles are further developed by B. Bosanquet, The Philosophical Theory of the State, 1899.
f 4«. ] Problem of Value* : DUhring- 871
citizen of the earth. " ' The will is for him identical with the impulse to happiness, and happiness is nothing else than " life, normal, sound, without defect. " Hence the impulse to happiness is the foundation of morals ; the goal, however, consists in the vital and active combination of the striving toward one's own happiness wit ii that toward the happiness of others. In this positive action of willing the welfare of others lies the root of sympathy also. Virtue stands in contradiction with only that form of happiness which seeks to be happy at the expense of others. On the other hand, virtue has a certain degree of happiness as its indispensable presupposition, for the pressure of want forces the impulse to happiness irresistibly and one-sidedly toward the egoistic side. Just on this account human morality can be furthered only by the improvement of man
kind's external situation — a thought from which Feuerbach proceeds to very far-reaching demands. His moral sensualism is supported by the firm conviction that historical development lies along the line of his postulates, and with all his pessimistic and often bitter estimate of the present he combines a strongly hopeful optimism for the future. Man, as a bodily personality, with his sensuous feeling and willing, is for him the sole truth ; when set over against this truth all philosophic theories, echoes as they are of theological theories, collapse into nothing.
Another optimistic materialist is Eugen DUhring, who has made a peculiar " philosophy of reality " the basis of his estimation of the " worth of life. " The anti-religious character of this kind of world-affirmation appears here much more clearly than in the case of Feuerbach. DUhring sees in the pessimism of the 60's and 70's, which he has opposed with bitter relentlessness, the romantic continuation of the attitudes of Christianity and Buddhism, which are hostile to the world. He regarded the "superstitious" ideas of the "other world," or the " beyond," as the real ground of the lack of apprecia tion for the actual world of reality ; only when all superstitious belief in supernatural beings has been banished will the true and immanent worth of life be completely enjoyed, in his opinion. True knowledge apprehends reality exactly as it is, just as it lies imme diately before human experience ; it is delusion to seek still another behind it. And even as with knowledge, so also with values, they
must be found in what is given ; the only rational is reality itself. Already in the conceptions of infinity Duhring detects — not so incorrectly — a going beyond what is given; for him, therefore, the
i Cf. particularly the fragment published by K. Orun, L. Feuerbach in Seinem BHtfwckttl una Sacklau. , II. 263 ft, In which Feuerbach declare* his postUOB as apunit Schopenhauer.
672 Philosophy of the Nineteenth Century. [Pakt VIL
actual world is limited in magnitude and number. But it bean within itself all the conditions of self-satisfying happiness. Even the view that there is a lack of sufficient means of life, on which Darwin grounded his doctrine of the struggle for existence and his theory of selection, is controverted by Duhring in a most vigorous fashion, although he is not hostile to the theory of descent and the principle of evolution. On the basis of these conceptions Duhring seeks to refute pessimism by demonstrating that man's enjoyment of life is spoiled only by the bad arrangements and customs which owe their origin to ideas of the supernatural. It is the mission of the philosophy of reality alone to produce healthy life from healthy thought, and to create the satisfaction of a disposition based on a noble humanity, capacities for which have been given by nature herself in the sympathetic affections. Although Duhring has de claimed thus sharply and with irritation against the present social system, he has enlisted himself energetically in defence of the reasonableness of the actual world as a whole. As he has theoreti cally maintained the identity of the forms of human perception and thought with the laws of reality, so he has also convinced himself that this same reality contains all the conditions for ultimately realising the values presented in the rational consciousness. For this rational consciousness of ours is in the last analysis nothing more than the highest form of the life of nature.
3. All these kinds of positivistic optimism make the most instruc tive variations in the Hegelian principle of the identity of the real and the rational (p. 615); all of them show besides a trace of that faith in the goodness of nature which was characteristic of Rousseau, and in their hope for a better future of the human race they incline to give an evolutionary stamp to the thought of man's unlimited capacity for perfection, which the philosophy of the French Revolu tion had produced (cf. p. 525). All the more characteristic is it that the last factor has given an essentially altered form to the opposite conception, viz. pessimism.
In themselves optimism and pessimism, as answers to the hedonic question, whether the world contains more pleasure or pain, are equally pathological phenomena. This is true especially in the form in which these enter as factors into general literature. For science this question is as unnecessary as it is incapable of answer. The controversy gains philosophic significance only because it is brought into connection with the question as to the rationality or irrationality of the world-ground, as it had already been brought by Leibniz along one line and by Schopenhauer along another. But in both cases it was completely impossible to make the hedonistic origin of the
1 4«. J
Problem of Values : Hartmann. 678
problem disappear' by the metaphysical transformation which was given to it
The pessimistic temper which prevailed in Germany in the first decade of the second half of our century had its easily recognisable grounds in political and social relations, and the eager reception and
welcome of Schopenhauer's doctrines, supported by the brilliant qualities of the writer, are usually regarded as easily intelligible for that reason. It is more remarkable and serious that this temper has outlasted the year 1870, and indeed that precisely in the following decade it unburdened itself in an unlimited flood of tirades of a popular philosophical sort, and for a time has completely controlled
general literature. Considered from the standpoint of the history of civilisation, this fact will be regarded as a manifestation of relaxation and surfeit; the part which the history of philosophy has in the
movement is connected with the brilliant and misleading " Philos ophy of the Unconscious. " Eduard von Hartmann found a witty synthesis between Leibniz and Schopenhauer on the basis of his metaphysics, which regarded the"world-ground as a complex resultant of the irrational will and of the logical element" (cf. § 44, 9). This synthesis was that this world is indeed the best of all possible
worlds, but nevertheless that it is still so bad that it would have been better if there had been none at all. The mixture of teleologi- cal and dysteleological views of nature which had passed by inheri tance from Schelling to Schopenhauer (pp. 618 ff. ) appears here with Hartmann in grotesque and fanciful development; and the contra diction is to be solved by the theory that after the irrational will has once taken its false step of manifesting itself as life and actual existence, this life-process goes on in a progressive development whose ripest meaning is the insight into the unreason of the " will to live. " The rational element in this life-process will then consist in denying that unreason, in retracing the act of world-origination, and in redeeming the will from its own unhappy realisation.
On this account Hartmann found the essential nature of the " rational " consciousness to lie in seeing through the " illusions " with which the irrational pressure of the will produces just what must make it unhappy, and out of this relation he developed the ethical task that each one should co-operate to save the world-will by the denial of illusions. He developed also the thought of funda mental importance for the philosophy of history that all work of civilisation should be directed toward this goal of salvation. The development of the irrational will ought to have the annihilation of this will as its rational goal ; hence Hartmann approves all work of civilisation because its ultimate end is the annihilation of li*e and
674 Philotophy of the Nineteenth Century. [Part VI L
the redemption of the will from the unhappiness of existence. In this respect he comes into contact with Mainlander, who with him and after him worked out Schopenhauer's theory to an ascetic " Phi losophy of Salvation " ; but with Hartmann these thoughts take on the colouring of an evolutionary optimism which shows a much deeper intelligence for the earnestness and wealth of historic development than we find with Schopenhauer. And as von Hart mann has anonymously given the best criticism of his " Philosophy of the Unconscious," from the standpoint of the theory of descent, so in his own development the shell of pessimism has been gradually stripped off and the positive principle of evolution has emerged as the essential thing. In him, too, Hegel has triumphed over Schopen hauer.
4. All these theories of life, whose typical extremes were here set over against each other, vary indeed with regard to their recognition and gradation of individual values and goals, but they coincide in recognising on the whole the prevailing moral code, and in particular the altruism which is its chief constituent. Their differences con cern rather the general formulation, or the sanction, or the motive of morality, than morality itself. Even the more radical tendencies seek only to free human ethics from the perversions which it is said to have experienced in certain historical systems, or in their sur vivals and their after effects ; and through all the doctrines already mentioned goes a strongly democratic tendency which sets the weal of the whole above everything else, and estimates the worth of the individual much lower than was the case in the great period of Ger man philosophy. A tendency to hero-worship, like that of Carlyle (cf. p. 654), is quite isolated in our century; far more prevalent is the theory of the milieu or environment which Taine brought into circulation for the history of the mind, and which is inclined to minimise the part which the individual bears in the historical move ment as contrasted with the influence of masses.
We cannot fail to recognise that such theories correspond com pletely to certain political, social, literary, and artistic conditions and obvious manifestations of modern life; hence it is easier to understand why, here and there, the reaction of individualism in an especially passionate form has made its appearance. We must insist, in the first place, that over against that type of assiduous striving which permits itself to be driven by every tide of influence, the individualistic idea of culture which belongs to that great period, now somewhat depreciatingly denoted Romanticism, has in no wise so completely died out as is supposed. It lives on in many highly developed personalities who do not find it necessary to make a dis
s Jfl] Problem of Valuet : Stirner, Bahnten. 675
play with it in literature; for the theory of this ideal has been expressed by Fichte, Schiller, and Schleiermacher. And just for this reason it does not make common cause with the artificial para doxes which radical individualism loves to present on occasion.
The most robust example of such paradoxes came from the He gelian " left," in the fantastic book of M. Stirner (Kaspar Schmidt, 1806-1866), The Individual and his Property1 (1844). Stirner is re lated to Feuerbach as Feuerbach is to Hegel : he draws the conclu sion which would completely invert the premises. Feuerbach had looked upon "spirit" or the "idea" as the "other-being of Na ture," and as abstract and unreal as the theological ghost He had declared the only reality to be man, living man of flesh and blood ; but his ethics aimed toward humanity, active love to humanity. What is mankind? asks Stirner. A general idea, an abstraction — a last shadow of the old ghost which is still walking, even in Feuer- bach's system. The true concrete reality is the individual — the autocratic personality. Such a personality makes its world both in its acts of ideation and in its acts of will; therefore its ownership extends as far as its will extends. It recognises nothing above itself; it knows no other weal than its own, and serves no alien law or alien will. For in truth there is nothing for it except itself. Thus by reversing Fichte's doctrine of the " universal ego," Stirner attains to "egoism" in both the theoretical and the practical sense of the word. He plays the "solipsist"' and preaches unscrupulous self-seeking, — Ich hab' mein' Sach' auf nichts gesteUt. * All this sounded like an artificial cynicism, and it was a matter of doubt
whether the book was intended to be taken seriously. At all events it soon lost the interest which it momentarily excited, and fell into an oblivion from which it has only recently been rescued. But when, as now, there is a disposition to see in it a first cry of distress from the individual repressed by the mass, it ought not to be ignored that the " individual " who was here seeking to emancipate himself from the community did not give any indication of a peculiar value which would have justified him in any such emancipation. His sole originality consisted in the courage of paradox.
5. Another bizarre form of individualism was developed from Schopenhauer's " metaphysics of the will, by Julius Bahnten. Here the " unreason of the will is taken with complete seriousness, but the pantheistic aspect of the " one only will " is stripped away.
1 Dtr Einzigt uml tein Kigenthtm.
* Of. above, p. 471.
* Beitrage zur Charaktrrulogie (1887); Dtr Widertpruch im Witten %ni
Wtrnn dtr Welt (1881-1882).
'I care for nothing.
676 Philosophy of the Nineteenth Century. [Pakt VTL
We know only individuals who will, and Bahnsen sees in them the independent elementary potencies of reality, beyond which no higher principle is to be assumed. The separate and self-sufficient exist ence of finite personalities, which Bahnsen also calls " Henads. "" has never been so sharply formulated as in this atheistic atomism of the will. Each of these "wills" is, moreover, divided within itself into two, and in this consists its unreason and its unhappiness. This contradiction belongs to the essence of the will ; the will is the "as serted contradiction," and this is the true dialectic, " the real dialec tic. " This contradiction, however, cannot be grasped by logical thinking; hence all the effort which the will makes to know the world is in vain. Logical thinking which excludes contradiction is incapable of understanding a world which consists of intrinsically contradictory wills. The contradiction between the world and the intellect makes impossible even the partial salvation which Schopen hauer admitted,1 and the indestructible individual will must there fore endure forever the suffering of self-laceration in ever new existences. At so high a price is the metaphysical dignity pur chased, which personality here " receives as its " intelligible charac ter. " The living out of this intelligible character," purposeless and futile as it really is, forms the principle of all values.
Since the theory of knowledge involved in this " real dialectic " maintains that logical thinking and reality with its contradictions have no common measure, the fantasies of this " miserableism " make no claim to scientific validity; they are only the expression of the gloomy mood of the individual who is caught in the conflict of his own will. They form the melancholy counterpart to the pert frivol ity of Stirner's individual. Both show what result may be expected if " philosophy " takes moods which constitute the peculiar nature of pessimism and optimism as a basis for serious conclusions.
progress; cannot give the rational ground for regarding the result of the development as a "higher," that is, a more valuable form.
8. In its most universal extent the principle of evolution had already been proclaimed before Darwin by his countryman Herbert Spencer, and had been made the fundamental conception of the tat ter's System of Synthetic Philosophy, in which many threads of
English philosophy are brought together. He proceeds from agnos ticism in so far as he declares the Absolute, the Unconditioned, the Unitary Being, whieh he also fain to call Force, to be unknowable. Religion and philosophy have laboured in vain to conceive this in definite ideas for us by the very nature of the case incapable of determination. Human knowledge limited to an interpretation of phenomena, that is, to the manifestations of the Unknowable. Philosophy has only the task of generalising the results of the particular sciences, and putting these generalised results together into the simplest and most complete totality possible.
The fundamental distinction in phenomena Spencer designates as that of the "vivid" and the "faint" manifestations of the Un knowable, i. e. of impressions and ideas. This indicates an attach ment to Hume which not fortunate (cf. above, 453). From this
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658 Philosophy of the nineteenth Century. [Past VII
starting-point, although Spencer rightly rejects the reproach of
material: -in. he ret introduces a turn in his view of the world which _ directs preeminent interest to the character of physical phenomena. For an examination of all the particular sciences is supposed to
yield the result that the fundamental form in which the Absolute manifests itself is evolution. And by evolution Spencer under stands — following a suggestion of the scientist, von Baer — the tendency of all natural structures to pass over from the homoge neous to the heterogeneous. This active variation in which the ever-active force manifests itself consists in two processes, which in cooperation with each other constitute evolution, and which Spencer designates as differentiation and integration. On the one band, bv virtue of the plurality of effects which belong to every cause, the simple passes into a manifold ; it differentiates and individualises itself: it divides and determines itself by virtue of the fulness of relations into which it enters. On the other hand, the thus sepa rated individual phenomena come together again to form firm com pounds and functional systems, and through these integrations new unities arise which are higher, richer, and more finely articulated than the original. So the animal organism is a higher unity than the cell ; society is a higher " individual " than a single man.
This schema is now applied by Spencer to all material and spir itual processes, and with tireless labour he has sought to enforce it in the case of the facts of all the particular sciences. Physics and chemistry are refractory; they stand under the law of the conser vation of energy. But astropbysical theory shows the differentia tion of the original gas into the suns and the peripheral structures of the planets with their satellites, and likewise the corresponding integration in the articulated and ordered system of motion which all these bodies maintain. It is, however, in biology and sociology that the system attains full unfolding. Life is regarded by Spencer as a progressive adaptation of inner to outer relations. From this the individualising growth of a single organism is explained, and from the necessary variations of the latter according to the method
\ of the theory of selection is explained the alteration of species. Social life also in its wh^le historical course is nothing other than
the progressive adaptation of raan to his natural and plastic environ ment. The perfecting which the race wins thereby rests upon the dying out of the unfit and upon the survival of the fit functions. From the standpoint of this doctrine Spencer seeks also to decide the old strife between rationalism and empiricism upon both the logical and ethical fields. As against the associational psychology he admits that there are for the individual immediately evident
i 45. ] Nature and Hiitory : Spencer. 659
principles, and truths which are innate in the sense that they cannot be explained by the experience of the individual. But the strength with which these judgments assert themselves so that consciousness finds it impossible to deny them, rests upon the fact that they are the intellectual and emotional habits acquired by the race, which have proved themselves to be adapted to further the race, and have maintained themselves on this ground. The a priori is everywhere an evolutionary product of heredity. So in particular for morals, everything in the form of intelligent feeling and modes of will sur vives which is adapted to further the self-preservation and develop ment of the individual, of society, and of the race.
Finally every particular development reaches its natural end when a condition of equilibrium has been gained in which the inner rela tions are everywhere completely adapted to the outer, so that the capacity for further articulation and variation has been exhausted. It is, therefore, only by external influence that such a system can be destroyed and disturbed, so that its individual parts may enter into new processes of evolution. On the contrary Spencer strives against the assumption of the possibility that the whole universe, with all the particular systems which it contains, can ever come to a perfect and therefore permanent condition of equilibrium. He thus con tradicts those investigators who have regarded as theoretically possi ble such a distribution of energies as to exclude all alterations ; this is due ultimately to the fact that Spencer regards the Unknowable as the ever self-manifesting force, and regards evolution itself as the most universal law of the manifestation of the Unknowable.
y. Taken all in all Spencer's development of the principle of evolution is throughout of a cosmological character, and in this is shown just the alteration in this controlling principle which is due to the prevalence of natural science in our century. This is Been
most clearly by comparing Hegel and Spencer. With the former, evolution is the nature of the self-revealing spirit ; with the latter, it is the law of the successive manifestations of an unknowable force. To speak in Hegel's language (cf. p. 611). the subject lias again become substance. In fact the Unknowable of Spencer resembles most that "indifference of real and ideal" which Schel- ling designated as the Absolute. This analogy would lead us to expect that the cosmological form of the principle of evolution will not be the final one, and that the historical standpoint and method, as the appropriate home of this principle, will give the permanent
form which it will take in philosophy. In England itself, and still more in America, a decided turn toward Hegel is to be noticed since the impressive book of Hutchinson Stirling and Wallace's excellent
666 PhUotophjf of the Smeteentk Century. [Put VII
introduction of Hegel's logic. In Germany, Kudo Fischer's exposi tion of Hegel's doctrine, which is now just reaching completion, will dissipate prejudices which hare hitherto stood in the war of its just valuation, and by stripping off the terminology which has become foreign to us, will cause this great system of e vol n tion to appear in full clearness.
The same tendency to win back the historical form for the thought of evolution is found in the logical and epistemological efforts which have as their goal what Dilthey has denoted with a fortunate expres sion, a "critique of the historical reason. r The aim is to break through that one-sidedness which has attached to logic since its Greek origins, and which prescribes as the goal and norm of logical laws in their formal aspect the relation of the universal to the par ticular (cf. $ 12), and for the content and material of those laws the knowledge of nature. Under these presuppositions stand not only the extreme of mathematical logic (cf. § 44, 4), but also the impor tant works of John Stuart Mill and Stanley Jevons, which are to be characterised essentially as the logical theory of natural science. Over against this, the elaborations of logical science by Lotze and Sigwart, especially in the tatter's second edition, show a much more universal stamp, and in connection with the movement of historical idealism which has its attachments to the Fichtean view of the world (cf. § 44, 6), a deeper comprehension of the logical forms of histori
/ cal science is on the way ; such, for example, as we find in Rickert's investigations regarding the limitations of the concepts of natural science. 1
S 46. The Problem of Values.
While the end of the century finds us in the yet unadjusted strife between the historical and the natural-science standards, we see just in this continuation of an inherited antithesis how little the philoso phy of this period has been able to win a real progress in its princi ples. Its great and varied industry has been rather at the periphery, and in the work of adjusting relations with the special sciences, while the central development falls prey to a certain stagnation which must be simply put up with as a fact easily comprehensible historically. The exhaustion of metaphysical energy and the high tide of empirical interests give a completely satisfactory explana tion. For this reason we can readily understand that the philoso phy of the nineteenth century shows a rich development along the bounding provinces in which it comes in contact with the empirical disciplines, as in psychology, philosophy of nature, anthropology,
» H. Kickert, Grenzen der naturwisaentchaftlichen Begrifsbitdvng, 1896,
9 48. ] Problem of Values : Utilitarianism. 661
philosophy of history, philosophy of law and philosophy of reli'- gion, while on the contrary it makes the impression of an eclectic and dependent attitude in the fundamental disciplines. Surely this is the inevitable consequence of the fact that it suffers from the repressive wealth of traditions which have attained complete histori cal consciousness. It is in accord with this that no earlier time has seen such a luxuriant and fruitful growth in the study of the history of philosophy. But there is need of a new central reconstruction if philosophy is to meet in satisfactory manner the wants which in recent time come once more for satisfaction from the general con sciousness and from the special sciences. 1
The direction in which the solution of this problem is to be sought is determined on the one hand by the predominance of that volun tarism which extends from psychology into'general metaphysical theories (§ 44), and on the other by the circumstance that the two forms of the principle of evolution (§ 45), viz. the historical and that of natural science, are distinguished from each other by their different attitudes toward the determinations of value. In addition the mighty upward sweep in the conditions of life which Europeans
have experienced in this century has worked at once destructively and constructively upon general convictions. Civilisation, caught in this movement of rapid enhancement and extension, is urged on by a deeper demand for comprehension of itself, and from the problem of civilisation which made its appearance in the Enlightenment (cf. f 37) a movement has developed for which the " transformation and re-valuation of all values" (Umtcertung aUer Werthe) has become the watchword.
1. The characteristic trait in this is that in the foreground of all ethical considerations the relation of the individual to society stands
'That the Catholic Church has sought to solve this problem by a revival of TbomUtn is well known, and does not need to be further set forth here. Nor on this account do we need to cite the1 numerous Tliomists (mostly Jesuits) in Italy,
Prance. Germany. Belgium, and Holland. In theory they represent no new principles, but at most seek to build out the old doctrine in details so that it may appear in some maimer adapted to modern knowledge, in particular to modern science of nature. But the freer tendencies of Catholic philosophy, which are usually called Ontoltigirm. have created nothing new and fruitful. They attach themselves for the moot part to the 1'latonism of Malebranche, and point back to Angnstine, so that the antagonism which we noted in the Middle Ages and in the
Renaissance is repeated again (cf. pp. 364, 416. ) The finest presentation of i >i>tolr>gism was found in the Italian*, Rosmini and Giobertl ; the former gave It a enrt of psychological basis ,- the latter a purely metaphysical form (L'enU rrni rrtiMUnte). In Germany GUnther introduced into it certain elements of the idealistic speculations, especially of Fichte's doctrine ; in France, Gratry fmm this standpoint combats especially the eclecticism of Cousin, and in this eclecticism he combats HegelianUm and the "pantheism" which he finds in both (cf. tltude tur la Sophistique Contemponine, tettre a M. Vaektrot,
Parte, 1861).
662 Philosophy of the Nineteenth Century. [Past VH
forth in much more conscious and explicit form than ever before, — whether in the positive form that the subordination of the individual to society is presented and grounded in some manner as the norm of all valuation, or whether it be in the negative form that the resist ance of the individual to the oppressing weight of the species is praised and justified.
The first form is that which has been transmitted from the phi losophy of the Revolution and from Utilitarianism, especially in the stamp given to it by Bentham (cf. p. 522). This Utilitarianism goes through the popular literature of the century as a broad stream in which the standard of the public good is taken as a matter of course without deep analysis of its meaning. It is characterised for the most part by limiting its care " for the greatest happiness of the greatest number " to man's earthly welfare ; the mental and spiritual goods are not indeed denied, but the measure of all valuation is found in the degree of pleasure or pain which a circumstance, a relation, an act, or a disposition may call forth. Theoretically, this doctrine rests on the unfortunate inference of the associational chology, that because every satisfied desire is accompanied with pleasure the expectation of the pleasure therefore, the ultimate motive of all willing, and every particular object willed and valued only as means for gaining this pleasure. This formal eudsemonism was earlier forced either to regard the altruistic impulses as equally original with the egoistic, or to make them proceed from the egoistic through the experiences which the individual undergoes in social life. In contrast with this the noteworthy transformation which Utili tarianism has experienced in recent time consists in its combination with the principle of evolution, as has already been mentioned in the case of Spencer's doctrine (cf. 45, 8). The valuation of altruism from the standpoint of social ethics appears according to this new point of view to be the result of the process of evolution, inasmuch as only those social groups have maintained themselves in the struggle for existence whose individual members have achieved tltruistic thought and action in relatively high degree. 1 The history of morals struggle of values or "ideals," from which we may part explain the relativity of historical systems of morals, and part their converging development to a universal human ethics. These fundamental thoughts of evolutionary ethics have been car ried out in many detailed expositions among their representatives
Benjamin Kidd, Social Evolution, London, 1895, has attempted to determine the nature of religion sociologically by considering the part which ideas of the
supernatural have played in this evolutionary process — genuinely English undertaking.
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§46. ] Problem of Value* : Bentham. 663
may be mentioned, in France, Fouillee, in Germany, Paul Kee, whose evolutionary theory of conscience excited attention for a time, and G. H. Schneider.
[Before passing to the continental representatives of Utilitarian ism it will be instructive to consider more fully the changes which have been effected in British theories both within and without the so-called Utilitarian school. ' These changes affect the standard of value, the motives to which ethical appeal is made, and the relation which the individual is conceived to sustain to the social body ; their nature shows the influence of the close relation which ethical theory in England has always sustained to social and political conditions.
During the century England has seen an almost continuous effort toward social and political reform. This movement has aimed at an extension of political privilege, and at making possible a higher standard of living for the less fortunate members of society. ' It has thus been democratic in so far as it has insisted upon the widest par ticipation in the goods of civilisation ; but by emphasising not merely material comforts, but also political rights, social justice, and educa tional opportunities, it has tended to measure human welfare, not so much in terms of feeling as in terms of " dignity " and fulness of life or "self-realisation. " The movement along these two direc- tions has been due in part to the influence of German idealism as transmitted through Coleridge, Carlyle, and later through Green and others, but the immanent forces of social progress have had a deci sive influence in the same direction.
As has been pointed out (pp. 51. 3 f. ), a general tendency of British theory has been to unite a social standard or criterion of moral value with an individualistic, and even egoistic theory of motives. This seemed the more possible to Bentham, because in the individualistic language of his day the community was defined as a " fictitious body composed of individual persons who are considered as constituting, as it were, its members. " The interest of the community, then, "is the sum of the interests of the several members who compose it. "
Hence it might seem that one way to promote the interest of the community would be for every man to seek his own interest. If, however, it should be necessary to bring pressure to l>ear upon the individual in order to keep him from interfering with the interests of others, Bentham conceived that the principal reliance should be placed upon what he called the four sanctions, which he specified as the physical, political, moral, and religious, meaning by these the
1 The material from this point to the paragraph numbered " 2 " on p. 070 has been added by the translator.
664 Philosophy of the Nineteenth Century. [Pakt VII
pleasures and pains derived from physical sources, from the penal ties of law, from public opinion, or from belief in divine rewards and punishments. It is for pain and pleasure alone " to point oat what we aught to do, as well as to determine what we shall do," and the ambiguity in the terms " pain " and " pleasure," according to which they mean in the one case pleasure or pain of the community, and in the other case pleasure or pain of the agent, permits Benthain to suppose that he is maintaining a consistent hedonistic theory. But there were two other important qualifications in this hedonistic and individualistic theory. In the first place he intimates that the indi vidual may seek public pleasure as well as private,V thus giving the theoretical statement of the principle which governed his own life, directed as it was toward the public interest. In the next place, the maxim which Bentham used to interpret the phrase, " greatest good of the greatest number," was, " everybody to count for one, nobody for more than one. " This, while apparently a principle of extreme individualism, was really a recognition of individual rights, and was based upon fairness rather than upon a purely hedonistic standpoint. It is thus essentially a social principle, and a demand that the pleasure which "determines what we should do" shall be not merely a maximum, but a particular kind of pleasure, regulated not by con siderations of quantity, but by principles of fairness and justice. A further inadequacy of Bentham's theory to account for Bentham's practice appears in his famous definition that in estimating pleasures and pains we must consider quantity only, — " push-pin is as good as poetry. " But Bentham's own activity, if not primarily directed toward poetry, was at least as little directed toward push-pin for himself or for others. His whole life-work was given toward pro moting legislative and social reform, toward securing Tights and justice; and although he had little appreciation of certain of the finer values of art and culture, he was at least as little as his suc cessor, Mill, to be explained by the hedonistic formula.
The theoretical individualism of the hedonistic standard for meas uring the values of human life and the motives for moral action found vigorous and successful opposition in the Work of Coleridge and C'arlyle. The former exerted his influence primarily in the religious field, and in special opposition to the theories of motive and obligation propounded by Paley (p. 514, above), which had wide currency in educational and religious ciroles. According to Paley, the only difference between prudence and duty is that in the^one we
:. >"Snch pleasures seek, if private be thy end. If ft ■be 'pablkv'' : etc. Cf
J. Dewey, Study of Ethics.
. "■••. »" ' •:
a'. :.
-•
f 46. ] Problem of Value* : Coleridge, Carlyle. 665
consider the gain or loss in the present world ; in the other, we con sider also gain or loss in the world to come. Obligation, according to Paley, meaus to be urged by a violent motive, resulting from the command of another. Against these positions Coleridge urged that while man as a mere animal, or as a being endowed merely with " understanding," may know only motives which spring from the calculations of pleasures and pains, man as rational may hear another voice and respond to higher appeals. It is, in fact, in just this distinction that we find the difference between prudence and true morality. The written works of Coleridge were few and fragmen tary, but his personal influence upon the literary, religious, and philosophical thought of his own and the succeeding period, in both
Britain and America, has been powerful and far-reaching.
The criticism of Carlyle was directed against " Benthamism. " Its individualism of motive seemed to Carlyle adapted to aggravate
rather than to heal the disease of the age. The economic develop ment had been steadily in the direction of greater individualism. It had substituted the wage-system for the older personal relation. What Carlyle felt to be needed was the deeper sense of social unity, a stronger feeling of responsibility. Now the pursuit of happiness is essentially an individualising force, — "the man who goes about pothering and uproaring for his happiness, he is not the man that will help us to get our knaves and dastards arrested ; no, he is rather on the way to increase the number — by at least one unit. " A true social organisation can be secured only if the individualistic and commercial theory of interests is abandoned. This leads at once to the other point of Carlyle's attack, — measurement of value in terms of pleasure and happiness. Instead of" a " greatest happiness prin ciple,'* a "greatest nobleness principle must be substituted. Man cannot be satisfied with the results"of attempts to give him pleasure if these aim simply at pleasure. Man's unhappiness comes of his greatness ; it is because there is an infinite in him which he cannot quite bury under the finite. The shoe-black also has a soul quite other than his stomach, and would require for his permanent satis faction and saturation God's Infinite Universe. " It is to the heroes that we must look for our ideals of human life. It is in work rather than in pleasure that the end of human life is to be achieved.
It was in the thought of John Stuart Mill that the fusion of utili tarian and idealistic principles found its most instructive illustration. The social philosophy of Comte and a personal character actuated by high ideals of duty and ardent for the promotion of public welfare conspired with the influences already named to secure this result.
Educated by his father, James Mill, in the principles of association*!
686 Philosophy of the Nineteenth Century [Part VII
psychology, associated with Ricardo, the representative of an indi vidualistic economic theory, and with Bentham, he inherited thus a theory of human nature and a method of analysis from which he never completely freed himself ; but on the other hand he introduced into the scheme a new content which led him to transcend the hedo nistic position. 1 First as regards the object of desire. It had been the position of the associationalists that the individual desires originally pleasure, and pleasure only. This is the only intrinsic good. It was held that other objects, however, might become associated with the individual's happiness, and thus become independent objects of desire. In this theory it would be the purpose of moral trainiug so to associate the public good with the private good of the individual that he would come to desire the public welfare. Taught by his own experience that such external associations had no permanent motive power, Mill was led to reject this theory, and to state the hedonist! ' paradox that to find pleasure one must not consciously seek it Of greater significance for our present purpose is Mill's theory of the motives to moral action. On the one hand he retains so much of the eighteenth century atomistic view of conduct as to affirm that " the motive has nothing to do with the morality of the action, though much with the morality of the agent. " He still retains the doctrine of the external sanctions without stating explicitly that however useful these may be to control the non-moral or immoral, until other motives get a foothold, they are not moral motives. But on the other hand he lays far greater stress upon the " internal " sanctions of duty. This feeling of duty, in turn, though strengthened by edu
cation and association, has as its ultimate foundation the " social feelings of mankind. " It is because man naturally " never conceives himself otherwise, than as a member of a body " that the interest of the community is the interest of the individual. The principle of sympathy which had served alternately as a means of psychological analysis and as a term for the broader social impulse, was given its most important place as that on which rests " the possibility of any cultivation of goodness and nobleness and the hope of their ultimate entire ascendency. "
Finally, Mill transcends the hedonistic criterion of value. While maintaining that the mental pleasures are superior to the bodily
on purely quantitative grounds, he asserts that, quite apart from questions of quantity, some kinds of pleasure are more desirable and valuable than others. The test for pleasure,
1 In addition to the Utilitarianism, the Autobiography, the essays on Bentham •nul Coleridge and On Liberty are of special interest.
pleasures
i 44. J Problem of Values : Mill, Spencer. 667
whether we seek to measure its intensity or its quality, must in any case be subjective; and the question as to which of two pleasures is the better must be decided by those who have had experience of both Instead, therefore, of using pleasure as the standard for value, Mill, like Plato, would appeal to " experience and wisdom and reason" as judges. Instead of pleasure as standard, we have rather a standard for pleasure. If, then, we ask what thes° " com petent judges " will assign as the highest values, we may find differ ent names, such as love of liberty and love of«power, etc. , but the most " appropriate appellation is the sense of dignity. " " It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied ; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. " And in the fur ther development of this principle of valuation Mill even goes beyond Carlyle's position by declaring that to do without happiness is now done involuntarily by nineteen-twentieths of mankind, and often has to be done voluntarily by the hero or the martyr, who in sacrificing his own happiness for that of others displays the " high est virtue which can be found in man.
"
A similar conflict between hedonistic and other standards of value is evident in the ethical system of Herbert Spencer. On the one
hand, following the tradition of a hedonistic
maintains that life is good or bad according as it does or does not bring a surplus of agreeable feeling. The only alternative to this test is to reverse the hypothesis and suppose that pain is good and pleasure is bad. No other standard of value can be admitted. This position is fortified by the biological law that if creatures should find pleasure in what is hurtful, and pain in what is advan tageous, they would soon cease to exist. On the other hand, Spen cer propounds also a standard of value which does not easily conform to the test of pleasure and pain. According to this standard the highest conduct is that which conduces to " the great est breadth, length, and completeness of life"; the highest stage in evolution is that reached when "conduct simultaneously achieves the greatest totality of life in self, in offspring, and in fellow-men. " The subjective standard of pleasurable feeling and the objective standard of fulness of life are thus set over against each ocher. The attempt is made to bring them together by showing that the bio logical development has necessarily brought about a harmony between pleasure and progress, but on the other hand it is admitted that a condition of progress involves a lack of adaptation between the individual and the environment. It would therefore seem that, however well-suited pleasure might be as a test for the static indi vidual, it cannot be regarded as a test of value for the guidance of
psychology, Spencer
668 Phtlotofhy of the Nineteenth Century. [Pabt VII
a progressive being. Henoe Spencer maintains that the perfect application of his test supposes an ideal humanity. A consistent hedonism would require that the test of such an ideal humanity be solely the continuity and intensity of pleasurable feeling attained, but the numerous recognitions of more objective fac tors make it improbable that Spencer would regard merely sen tient beings deprived of all active faculties as the highest type of evolution.
The employment by Spencer of the principles of evolution as affording a moral standard leads to an interesting complication of the problems considered under § 45 with the problem of the indi vidual in relation to society. On the one hand, as already noted (p. 662), the social sentiments and related moral principles are regarded by Spencer as finding their basis in the evolutionary pro cess. These social qualities subserve the welfare of the family or species, and aid it in the struggle for existence. On the other hand, it is maintained that the fundamental law of progress is that " each individual shall take the consequences of his own nature and actions: survival of the fittest being the result. " Among gregarious creatures the freedom of each to act has to be restricted by the pro vision that it shall not interfere with similar freedom on the part of others. Progress is therefore dependent upon giving the greatest possible scope to individual freedom. With Bentham and Mill the maxim "everybody to count for one, nobody for more than one" had represented a socialising of the criterion and ideal. In Spen cer's opinion this represents an undue emphasis upon equality; from this to communism the step is only one from theory to prac tice. " Inequality is the primordial idea suggested " by evolution ; equality, as suggested in the need of restriction, is secondary.
From this individualistic interpretation of evolution Spencer opposes not only communism in property, but the assumption by the State of any functions beyond that of securing "justice" to the indi vidual. The State should keep the individual from interfering with the freedom of other individuals. The State is thus essentially negative in its significance. Man in his corporate capacity may not realise a positive moral value in the pursuit of common good. But while agreeing thus with the views of Gundling and von Humboldt (cf. p. 520), Spencer insists that, in denying the possibility of reach ing positive values through the State, he aims to secure these values more efficiently by voluntary and private action. " Beneficence " belongs to the family virtues ; " justice " to the State. 1
1 Cf. Ethics, Vol. U. , The Man vs. the State, and Essays, VoL lit-
-
§ 4«. ] Problem of Valut* : Huxley, Green.
The relation of evolutionary processes to the problem of moral values has been most sharply formulated by Huxley. 1 In opposi tion to certain philosophical writers who find in the evolutionary process a moral standard, Huxley points out with great vigour and incisiveness the distinction between the "cosmic process" and the "ethical process. " The attempt to find in the "cosmic pro cess" an ethical standard is based upon the ambiguity in the phrase " survival of the fittest. " Fittest, it is scarcely necessary to say, is not synonymous with ethically best. If the temperature of the earth should be reduced, the survival of the fittest would mean a return to lichens and diatoms.
The ethical process must find its standard not in the cosmic pro cess, but in the moral ideals of man. Its principle is not that of the survival of the fittest, but that of fitting as many as possible to survive. The duty of man is not to conform to the cosmic pro cess, but to combat it. In a sense it may be admitted that the moral
process is a part of the cosmic process, but the important point is that the moral process cannot take its standards from the non-moral ]>arts of the cosmic process, and the theory of government which Spencer would derive from this is characterised by Huxley as "administrative nihilism. " '
The opposition to an ethical theory based upon the conceptions of natural science, has received its most thorough-going expression in the work of T. H. Green. Previous English sympathisers with German idealism had for the most part appropriated results without attempting for themselves the " labour of the notion. " Believing that current theories of evolution and ethics were repeating the fallacies of Hume in another form, Green set himself the task of criticising those fallacies and of re-stating the conditions under which any experience, and especially any moral experience, is possible. The central, fundamental, and determining conception is found in self-consciousness. Questions as to freedom, desire, and ideals must be stated in terras of self-consciousness, and not in physical concepts, if they are to be intelligible. Nor can self- consciousness be explained in terms of the unconscious, or as developing from the unconscious. It seems rather to be compre hensible only as the reproduction in man of an eternal conscious ness. This has an important bearing on the determination of the moral ideal. In the fint place it requires that the end or ideal shall always be some desirable state of self. In this it seems to
1 In hU Romanes lecture, 1803. Reprinted m Evolution and Ethic*, 18M. Cf. J. Itowey. Evolution and Ethic*, Mooist, VIII. 321 ft.
1 Critique* and Addrt—e*.
tf70 Philosophy of the Nineteenth Century. [Part VT1.
approach hedonism, but whereas hedonism holds that pleasure makes a state or an object desirable, Green insists that the pleasure follows the attainment of desire, and that what a being desires is determined by the nature of the being. Man desires the full realisation of him self, and " in it alone he can satisfy himself. " The good is"therefore a personal good. It is also a common or social good. Without society, no persons. " While therefore it may not be possible to state definitely the specific characteristics of the " best state of man," history shows that man has bettered himself through insti tutions and habits which make the welfare of all the welfare of each, and through the arts which make nature the friend of man. " It is in political society that"self-consciousness finds fullest develop ment. The institutions of civil life give reality to the capacities of will and reason and enable them to be really exercised. " l
The ultimate justification of all rights is that they serve a moral end in the sense that the powers secured in them are essential to the fulfilment of man's vocation as a moral being, i. e. as a being who in living for himself lives for other selves. With Green's definition may be compared Spencer's formulation of the ideal as " complete ness of life. " It is a striking illustration of the strong relation which British ethical theory has always maintained to British life, that two thinkers from such opposite standpoints should approach so near in actual statement.
2. Turning now to continental theories, we note that] the con ception of life which corresponds to this utilitarian social ethics is throughout an optimistic affirmation of the world. Life as an evolutionary process is the sum total of all goods, and the progress to the more perfect is the natural necessity of the actual world ; the strengthening and broadening of life is as well the moral law as the law of nature. This consequence has been carried out with the most refinement and warmth, and not without a religious turn by Guyau.
He finds the highest meaning and enjoyment of individual existence in the conscious unity of life with society, and beyond this with the universe.
But even without the evolutionary supplement, naturalism and materialism had asserted their joyous optimism and directed it against every kind of morals which avoids or renounces the world, especially against the religious forms of such ethical theories. This was shown already in the case of Feuerbach, who set for his philo sophical activity the task of making man a " free, self-conscious
1 These principles are further developed by B. Bosanquet, The Philosophical Theory of the State, 1899.
f 4«. ] Problem of Value* : DUhring- 871
citizen of the earth. " ' The will is for him identical with the impulse to happiness, and happiness is nothing else than " life, normal, sound, without defect. " Hence the impulse to happiness is the foundation of morals ; the goal, however, consists in the vital and active combination of the striving toward one's own happiness wit ii that toward the happiness of others. In this positive action of willing the welfare of others lies the root of sympathy also. Virtue stands in contradiction with only that form of happiness which seeks to be happy at the expense of others. On the other hand, virtue has a certain degree of happiness as its indispensable presupposition, for the pressure of want forces the impulse to happiness irresistibly and one-sidedly toward the egoistic side. Just on this account human morality can be furthered only by the improvement of man
kind's external situation — a thought from which Feuerbach proceeds to very far-reaching demands. His moral sensualism is supported by the firm conviction that historical development lies along the line of his postulates, and with all his pessimistic and often bitter estimate of the present he combines a strongly hopeful optimism for the future. Man, as a bodily personality, with his sensuous feeling and willing, is for him the sole truth ; when set over against this truth all philosophic theories, echoes as they are of theological theories, collapse into nothing.
Another optimistic materialist is Eugen DUhring, who has made a peculiar " philosophy of reality " the basis of his estimation of the " worth of life. " The anti-religious character of this kind of world-affirmation appears here much more clearly than in the case of Feuerbach. DUhring sees in the pessimism of the 60's and 70's, which he has opposed with bitter relentlessness, the romantic continuation of the attitudes of Christianity and Buddhism, which are hostile to the world. He regarded the "superstitious" ideas of the "other world," or the " beyond," as the real ground of the lack of apprecia tion for the actual world of reality ; only when all superstitious belief in supernatural beings has been banished will the true and immanent worth of life be completely enjoyed, in his opinion. True knowledge apprehends reality exactly as it is, just as it lies imme diately before human experience ; it is delusion to seek still another behind it. And even as with knowledge, so also with values, they
must be found in what is given ; the only rational is reality itself. Already in the conceptions of infinity Duhring detects — not so incorrectly — a going beyond what is given; for him, therefore, the
i Cf. particularly the fragment published by K. Orun, L. Feuerbach in Seinem BHtfwckttl una Sacklau. , II. 263 ft, In which Feuerbach declare* his postUOB as apunit Schopenhauer.
672 Philosophy of the Nineteenth Century. [Pakt VIL
actual world is limited in magnitude and number. But it bean within itself all the conditions of self-satisfying happiness. Even the view that there is a lack of sufficient means of life, on which Darwin grounded his doctrine of the struggle for existence and his theory of selection, is controverted by Duhring in a most vigorous fashion, although he is not hostile to the theory of descent and the principle of evolution. On the basis of these conceptions Duhring seeks to refute pessimism by demonstrating that man's enjoyment of life is spoiled only by the bad arrangements and customs which owe their origin to ideas of the supernatural. It is the mission of the philosophy of reality alone to produce healthy life from healthy thought, and to create the satisfaction of a disposition based on a noble humanity, capacities for which have been given by nature herself in the sympathetic affections. Although Duhring has de claimed thus sharply and with irritation against the present social system, he has enlisted himself energetically in defence of the reasonableness of the actual world as a whole. As he has theoreti cally maintained the identity of the forms of human perception and thought with the laws of reality, so he has also convinced himself that this same reality contains all the conditions for ultimately realising the values presented in the rational consciousness. For this rational consciousness of ours is in the last analysis nothing more than the highest form of the life of nature.
3. All these kinds of positivistic optimism make the most instruc tive variations in the Hegelian principle of the identity of the real and the rational (p. 615); all of them show besides a trace of that faith in the goodness of nature which was characteristic of Rousseau, and in their hope for a better future of the human race they incline to give an evolutionary stamp to the thought of man's unlimited capacity for perfection, which the philosophy of the French Revolu tion had produced (cf. p. 525). All the more characteristic is it that the last factor has given an essentially altered form to the opposite conception, viz. pessimism.
In themselves optimism and pessimism, as answers to the hedonic question, whether the world contains more pleasure or pain, are equally pathological phenomena. This is true especially in the form in which these enter as factors into general literature. For science this question is as unnecessary as it is incapable of answer. The controversy gains philosophic significance only because it is brought into connection with the question as to the rationality or irrationality of the world-ground, as it had already been brought by Leibniz along one line and by Schopenhauer along another. But in both cases it was completely impossible to make the hedonistic origin of the
1 4«. J
Problem of Values : Hartmann. 678
problem disappear' by the metaphysical transformation which was given to it
The pessimistic temper which prevailed in Germany in the first decade of the second half of our century had its easily recognisable grounds in political and social relations, and the eager reception and
welcome of Schopenhauer's doctrines, supported by the brilliant qualities of the writer, are usually regarded as easily intelligible for that reason. It is more remarkable and serious that this temper has outlasted the year 1870, and indeed that precisely in the following decade it unburdened itself in an unlimited flood of tirades of a popular philosophical sort, and for a time has completely controlled
general literature. Considered from the standpoint of the history of civilisation, this fact will be regarded as a manifestation of relaxation and surfeit; the part which the history of philosophy has in the
movement is connected with the brilliant and misleading " Philos ophy of the Unconscious. " Eduard von Hartmann found a witty synthesis between Leibniz and Schopenhauer on the basis of his metaphysics, which regarded the"world-ground as a complex resultant of the irrational will and of the logical element" (cf. § 44, 9). This synthesis was that this world is indeed the best of all possible
worlds, but nevertheless that it is still so bad that it would have been better if there had been none at all. The mixture of teleologi- cal and dysteleological views of nature which had passed by inheri tance from Schelling to Schopenhauer (pp. 618 ff. ) appears here with Hartmann in grotesque and fanciful development; and the contra diction is to be solved by the theory that after the irrational will has once taken its false step of manifesting itself as life and actual existence, this life-process goes on in a progressive development whose ripest meaning is the insight into the unreason of the " will to live. " The rational element in this life-process will then consist in denying that unreason, in retracing the act of world-origination, and in redeeming the will from its own unhappy realisation.
On this account Hartmann found the essential nature of the " rational " consciousness to lie in seeing through the " illusions " with which the irrational pressure of the will produces just what must make it unhappy, and out of this relation he developed the ethical task that each one should co-operate to save the world-will by the denial of illusions. He developed also the thought of funda mental importance for the philosophy of history that all work of civilisation should be directed toward this goal of salvation. The development of the irrational will ought to have the annihilation of this will as its rational goal ; hence Hartmann approves all work of civilisation because its ultimate end is the annihilation of li*e and
674 Philotophy of the Nineteenth Century. [Part VI L
the redemption of the will from the unhappiness of existence. In this respect he comes into contact with Mainlander, who with him and after him worked out Schopenhauer's theory to an ascetic " Phi losophy of Salvation " ; but with Hartmann these thoughts take on the colouring of an evolutionary optimism which shows a much deeper intelligence for the earnestness and wealth of historic development than we find with Schopenhauer. And as von Hart mann has anonymously given the best criticism of his " Philosophy of the Unconscious," from the standpoint of the theory of descent, so in his own development the shell of pessimism has been gradually stripped off and the positive principle of evolution has emerged as the essential thing. In him, too, Hegel has triumphed over Schopen hauer.
4. All these theories of life, whose typical extremes were here set over against each other, vary indeed with regard to their recognition and gradation of individual values and goals, but they coincide in recognising on the whole the prevailing moral code, and in particular the altruism which is its chief constituent. Their differences con cern rather the general formulation, or the sanction, or the motive of morality, than morality itself. Even the more radical tendencies seek only to free human ethics from the perversions which it is said to have experienced in certain historical systems, or in their sur vivals and their after effects ; and through all the doctrines already mentioned goes a strongly democratic tendency which sets the weal of the whole above everything else, and estimates the worth of the individual much lower than was the case in the great period of Ger man philosophy. A tendency to hero-worship, like that of Carlyle (cf. p. 654), is quite isolated in our century; far more prevalent is the theory of the milieu or environment which Taine brought into circulation for the history of the mind, and which is inclined to minimise the part which the individual bears in the historical move ment as contrasted with the influence of masses.
We cannot fail to recognise that such theories correspond com pletely to certain political, social, literary, and artistic conditions and obvious manifestations of modern life; hence it is easier to understand why, here and there, the reaction of individualism in an especially passionate form has made its appearance. We must insist, in the first place, that over against that type of assiduous striving which permits itself to be driven by every tide of influence, the individualistic idea of culture which belongs to that great period, now somewhat depreciatingly denoted Romanticism, has in no wise so completely died out as is supposed. It lives on in many highly developed personalities who do not find it necessary to make a dis
s Jfl] Problem of Valuet : Stirner, Bahnten. 675
play with it in literature; for the theory of this ideal has been expressed by Fichte, Schiller, and Schleiermacher. And just for this reason it does not make common cause with the artificial para doxes which radical individualism loves to present on occasion.
The most robust example of such paradoxes came from the He gelian " left," in the fantastic book of M. Stirner (Kaspar Schmidt, 1806-1866), The Individual and his Property1 (1844). Stirner is re lated to Feuerbach as Feuerbach is to Hegel : he draws the conclu sion which would completely invert the premises. Feuerbach had looked upon "spirit" or the "idea" as the "other-being of Na ture," and as abstract and unreal as the theological ghost He had declared the only reality to be man, living man of flesh and blood ; but his ethics aimed toward humanity, active love to humanity. What is mankind? asks Stirner. A general idea, an abstraction — a last shadow of the old ghost which is still walking, even in Feuer- bach's system. The true concrete reality is the individual — the autocratic personality. Such a personality makes its world both in its acts of ideation and in its acts of will; therefore its ownership extends as far as its will extends. It recognises nothing above itself; it knows no other weal than its own, and serves no alien law or alien will. For in truth there is nothing for it except itself. Thus by reversing Fichte's doctrine of the " universal ego," Stirner attains to "egoism" in both the theoretical and the practical sense of the word. He plays the "solipsist"' and preaches unscrupulous self-seeking, — Ich hab' mein' Sach' auf nichts gesteUt. * All this sounded like an artificial cynicism, and it was a matter of doubt
whether the book was intended to be taken seriously. At all events it soon lost the interest which it momentarily excited, and fell into an oblivion from which it has only recently been rescued. But when, as now, there is a disposition to see in it a first cry of distress from the individual repressed by the mass, it ought not to be ignored that the " individual " who was here seeking to emancipate himself from the community did not give any indication of a peculiar value which would have justified him in any such emancipation. His sole originality consisted in the courage of paradox.
5. Another bizarre form of individualism was developed from Schopenhauer's " metaphysics of the will, by Julius Bahnten. Here the " unreason of the will is taken with complete seriousness, but the pantheistic aspect of the " one only will " is stripped away.
1 Dtr Einzigt uml tein Kigenthtm.
* Of. above, p. 471.
* Beitrage zur Charaktrrulogie (1887); Dtr Widertpruch im Witten %ni
Wtrnn dtr Welt (1881-1882).
'I care for nothing.
676 Philosophy of the Nineteenth Century. [Pakt VTL
We know only individuals who will, and Bahnsen sees in them the independent elementary potencies of reality, beyond which no higher principle is to be assumed. The separate and self-sufficient exist ence of finite personalities, which Bahnsen also calls " Henads. "" has never been so sharply formulated as in this atheistic atomism of the will. Each of these "wills" is, moreover, divided within itself into two, and in this consists its unreason and its unhappiness. This contradiction belongs to the essence of the will ; the will is the "as serted contradiction," and this is the true dialectic, " the real dialec tic. " This contradiction, however, cannot be grasped by logical thinking; hence all the effort which the will makes to know the world is in vain. Logical thinking which excludes contradiction is incapable of understanding a world which consists of intrinsically contradictory wills. The contradiction between the world and the intellect makes impossible even the partial salvation which Schopen hauer admitted,1 and the indestructible individual will must there fore endure forever the suffering of self-laceration in ever new existences. At so high a price is the metaphysical dignity pur chased, which personality here " receives as its " intelligible charac ter. " The living out of this intelligible character," purposeless and futile as it really is, forms the principle of all values.
Since the theory of knowledge involved in this " real dialectic " maintains that logical thinking and reality with its contradictions have no common measure, the fantasies of this " miserableism " make no claim to scientific validity; they are only the expression of the gloomy mood of the individual who is caught in the conflict of his own will. They form the melancholy counterpart to the pert frivol ity of Stirner's individual. Both show what result may be expected if " philosophy " takes moods which constitute the peculiar nature of pessimism and optimism as a basis for serious conclusions.
