No More Learning

512 The Enlightenment : Practical Question*. [Part V
fine ramifications of the ethical and aesthetic life in individuals, families, and peoples !
Finally these thoughts gave occasion in Germany to a change in psychological theory that was rich in results. Before this it had been the custom to divide the psychical activities according to the Aristotelian example into theoretical and practical. But now the feelings, which became thus recognised in their various significance, seemed incapable of being brought either into the group of knowing, or into that of willing, without disadvantage ; it seemed rather that the feelings, as a peculiar mode of expression, in part lay at the basis, and in part followed, both of the above functions of the soul. Here, too, the suggestion came from the Leibnizian Monadology. Sulzer, in his Berlin lectures,1 seems first to have pointed out that the obscure, primitive states of the monad should be separated from the developed forms of life seen in completely conscious knowing and willing, and he already found the distinguishing characteristic of these obscure states to be the conditions of pleasure and pain given with them. This was done also, in a similar way, from Leibnizian presuppositions by Jacob Friedrich Weiss. 1 Mendelssohn (1755) first named these states Empfindungen i [sensations], and later the same author designated the psychical power, which lies at their common basis, as the faculty of approval (BUligungsvermogen). * But the decisive influence on terminology was exercised by Tetens and Kant. The former substituted for sensations (Empfindungen) the expression feelings (Fiihlungen or Gefiihle),* and Kant used the latter almost exclusively. It was he, too, who later made the triple divis ion of tlie psychical functions into ideation, feeling, and willing ( Vor- stellen, Fiihlen, und Wollen) the systematic basis of his philosophy,6 and since then this has remained authoritative, especially for psychology.
9. The counter-current, which proceeded from Hobbes and declared the profit or injury of the individual to be the sole possible content of the human will, maintained itself in the face of all these develop ments. In this theory, the criterion of ethical action was sought in a purely psychological manner in the consequences of such action
1 1761 f. Printed in the Vermischten Schriflen (Berlin, 1773).
* J. F. Weiss, De Natura Animi et potissimum Cordis Humani (Stuttgart,
1761).
* In this Mendelssohn, with his Letters concerning the Sensations, refers
directly to Shaftesbury.
♦ Cf. Mendelssohn, Morgenstunden, 1785, ch. 7 (W. I. 362).
6 Cf. Tetens, Versuche, X. pp. 626 ff.
• In the article written between 1780 and 1790 designed at first as an intro
duction to the Critique of Judgment which has passed over into his writings under the title Ueber Philosophic iiberhaupt. Cf. Pt. VI. ch. 1.
Vrat. 2, § 36. ] Principles of Moral* : Utilitarianism. 513
for the advantage of our fellow-men. Morality exists only within the social body. The individual, if by himself and alone, knows only his own weal and woe ; but in society his actions are judged from the point of view of whether they profit or injure others, and this alone is regarded as the standpoint of ethical judgment This conception of the ethical criterion corresponded not only to the common view, but also to the felt need of finding for ethics a basis that should be destitute of metaphysics, and rest purely on empiri cal psychology. Cumberland and Locke even acceded to it in the last resort, and not only the theological moralists like Butler and Paley, but also the associations! psychologists like Priestley and Hartley, attached themselves to it. The classical formula of this tendency was gradually worked out. An action is ethically the more pleasing in proportion as it produces more happiness, and in proportion as the number of men who can share this happiness becomes greater : the ethical ideal is the greatest happiness of the greatest number. This became the watch-word of Utilitarianism.
This formula, however, suggested the thought of determining quantitatively the ethical values for individual cases and relations. The thought of Hobbes and Locke, of grounding a knowledge of a strictly demonstrative ethics upon the utilitarian principle, seemed thereby to have found a definite form, welcome to the natural-science mode of thinking. This enticement was pursued by Bentham, and in this consists the peculiar element of utilitarian thought as carried out by him, — a work which he performed with a warm feeling for the public good, and which was later much referred to. The point is to find exact, definite points of view, according to which the value of every mode of action for the weal of the actor himself and of the community to which he belongs, can be determined, — partly in itself,
partly in its relation to other modes of conduct; and Bentham in this table of values and their opposites, with an extensive consid eration of both individual and social relations and needs, sketches a scheme of a pleasure and pain balance for reckoning the useful and injurious consequences of human activities and institutions. As with Hume (cf. below, No. 12), the reckoning of the ethically val uable falls to the province of the measuring intellect ; but the factors with which it operates in this process are solely the feelings of pleasure and pain.
10. The close connection in which this utilitarianism stood his torically after Hobbes with the selfish system — that is, with the assumption of the essentially egoistic character of human nature — led necessarily to the separation of the question as to the criterion of morality and the kind of knowledge by which it is apprehended,
514 The Enlightenment: Practical Questions. [Part V.
from that as to the sanction of the moral commands and the motives for obeying them. For the metaphysical theories, the sanction of the ethical commands lay in the eternal truths of the law of Nature : and psychologically, also, there seemed to be no further and especial motive needed for the effort toward perfection, for the living out of the personality, for the following of innate ethical inclinations; morality was self-explaining under such presuppositions. But he who thought more pessimistically of man, he who held him to be a being determined originally and in his own nature solely by regard to his own weal or woe, — he must ask with what right an altruistic way of acting is required of such a being, and by what means such a being can be determined to obedience to this requirement. If morality was not of itself inherent in man's nature, it must be declared how it comes into him from without.
Here, now, the principle of authority, already adduced by Hobbes and Locke, performed its service. Its most palpable form was the theological; it was carried out with more finely wrought conceptions by Butler, and in a crude manner, intelligible to the common mind, by Foley. Utility is for both the criterion of ethical action, and the divine command is for both the ground of the ethical requirements. But while Butler still seeks the knowledge of this divine will in the natural conscience — his re-interpretation of Shaftesbury's emotions of reflection, for which he himself uses also the term " reflection " — for Paley, it is rather the positive revelation of the divine will that is authoritative ; and obedience to this command seems to him explic able only because the authoritative power has connected its com mandment with promises of reward and threatenings of punishment. This is the sharpest separation of ethical principles, and that perhaps which corresponds most to the " common sense " of the Christian world. The criterion of the moral is the weal of one's neighbour; the ground of our knowledge of the moral is the revealed will of God ; the real ground which supplies the sanction is the will of the Supreme Being ; and the ethical motive iu man is the hope of the reward, and the fear of the punishment, which God has fixed for obedience and disobedience.
11. Paley thus explained the fact of ethical action by the hypoth esis that man, in himself egoistic, is brought at last by the agency of the equally egoistic motives of hope and fear, and by the round about way of a theological motivation, to the altruistic mode of action commanded by God. The senmtalistic psychology substituted for the theological agency the authority of the state and the con straining forces of social life. If the will of man is in the last resort always determinable only by his own weal and woe, his altru
Chat. 2, § 36. ] Principle* of Morals : Butler, Paley. 515
istic action is comprehensible only on the supposition that he sees in it the surest, simplest, and most intelligent means under the given relations for bringing about his own happiness. While, there fore, the theological utilitarians held that the natural egoism should be tamed by the rewards of heaven and punishments of hell, it seemed to the empiricists that the order of life arranged by the state and society was sufficient for this purpose. Man finds himself in such relations that when he rightly reflects he sees that he will find his own advantage best by subordination to existing morals and laws. The sanction of ethical demands lies, accordingly, in the legislation of the state and of public morality which is dictated by the principle of utility, and the motive of obedience consists in the fact that each one thus finds his own advantage. Thus Man- devitte, Lamettrie, and HelvHius developed the " selfish system " ; La- mettrie, especially, with tasteless cynicism that savoured of a desire for admiration, seeking to exhibit " hunger and love " in their lowest sensuous meaning as the fundamental motives of all human life — a wretched, because artificial, imitation of ancient Hedonism.
Morality, accordingly, appears to be only eudaemonistic shrewd ness, the polished egoism of society, the refined cunning of the man who is familiar with life, and has seen that to be happy he can pursue no better path than to act morally, even if not to be moral. This view frequently finds expression in the Enlightenment philos ophy as the governing principle of " the world " of that day : whether it be as the naive, cynical confession of a writer's own dis- jmsition, as in Lord Chesterfield's well-known letters to his son, — or in the form of moralising reflections, as in Labruyere's " Charac- tkres" (1680), and in La Rochefoucauld's " Reflections" (1690), where the mask is unsparingly torn off from man's ethical behaviour, and naked egoism is disclosed as the sole impelling motor every where, — or finally as bitter satire, as with Swift, where the true nature of the human beast is finally discovered by Gulliver among the Yahoos.
Hand in hand with this gloomy conception of the natural mean ness of man the view goes through the age of the Enlightenment that man's education to ethical action has to appeal to just this low system of impulses, working through power and authority, with the aid of fear and hope. This shows itself characteristically even with those who claim for the mature and fully developed man, a pure morality raised above all egoism. So, for example, Shaftesbury finds positive religion with its preaching of rewards and punish ments quite good enough for the education of the great mass. So,
616 The Enlightenment : Practical Question*. [Part V.
too, Prussia's philosophical king Frederick the Great,1 who for him self had a consciousness of duty so strict and pure and free from all selfish considerations, and declared such to be the highest ethical good, yet thought that in the case of the education which the state gives to men it should start with their closest interests, however low these might be ; for he granted to the Encyclopaedists that man as a genus is never to be determined by anything else than by his own personal interests. In this respect the French Enlighteners, especially, sought to analyse the motives, by awakening which the state can win the citizens to care for the interests of the whole. Montesquieu showed with fine psychology how different the forms are which this relation takes under different forms of constitution. Lamettrie pointed, as Mandeville had already done, to the sense of honour or repute as the most powerful factor in the social sentiment among civilised peoples, and Helvetius carried out this thought farther.
But if the sensualistic psychology thus looked for man's ethical education from the state alone, the degree of success with which this was accomplished must serve as a standard for estimating the value of public institutions. This consequence was drawn by Holbach, and the most winning feature of this dry book is perhaps the honourableness and energy with which it tries to show how little the rotten conditions of the public life of that time were adapted to raise the citizen above the meanness of selfish endeavours.
12. Hume's moral philosophy may be regarded as the most com plete embodiment of this movement, and as the most refined consid eration of the motives that contend within it. It, too, stands completely upon the basis of the psychological method : man's ethical life is to be understood by a genetic investigation of his passions, feelings, and volitions. The most significant element in Hume's teaching is the separation of utilitarianism from the selfish system. The criterion of ethical approval and disapproval for him, too, the effect which the quality or action to be judged adapted to produce in the form of feelings of pleasure and pain, and, like the ancients and Shaftesbury, he interprets this in the widest sense, inasmuch as he regards as objects of ethical pleasure, not only the " social virtues," such as justice, benevolence, etc. , but also the " natural abilities," such as prudence or sagacity, fortitude, energy, etc. But we feel this approval, even when these qualities
Cf. especially what adduced by E. Zeller, F. d. Q. alt PhUosoph, pp. 67 ft\, 106 ff. , and also especially Frederick's "Antimacchiavelli. "
Here, too, the old ambiguity of virtus (virtue) = moral virtue, and also ability or excellence, plays part.
a
is
'
21
is, is
Chaf. J, § 36. ] Principles of Moral* : Hume, Smith. 517
are completely indifferent to our own welfare, or indeed even inju rious to the same; and this cannot possibly be traced back to egoism through the medium of mere psychological association. On the other hand, the relation which these judgments sustain to the complicated relations of experience forbids the assumption of their inuatenes8. They must rather be reduced to a simple, elementary form, and this is sympathy,1 i. e. primarily our capacity to feel with another his weal or woe as our own, at least in a weakened form. Such sympathetic feelings, however, are not only the impulsive grounds of moral judgments, but also the original motives of moral action, for the feelings are the causes of the decisions of the will. Still, these original impulses alone are not adequate to explain ethical judgment and action. For the more complicated relations of life, there is need of a clarification, ordering, and com parative valuation of the factors of feeling, and this is the business of reason. From the reflection of reason arise, therefore, in addition to the natural and original values, derivative " artificial" virtues, as the type of which Hume treats justice and the whole system of standards of rights and law — in this, evidently, still dependent upon Hobbe8. But in the last resort these principles, also, owe
their ability to influence judgment and volition, not to rational reflection as such, but to the feelings of sympathy to which this appeals.
Thus the crude conception of a "moral sense" is refined by Hume's investigation to a finely articulated system of moral psy chology with its carefully differentiated conceptions, as the centre of which we find the principle of sympathy. A farther step in carrying out this same theory was taken in the ethical work of Adam Smith. As against the externality with which ordinary utilitarianism had placed the criterion of ethical judgment in the pleasurable or painful consequences of the act, Hume had energet ically directed attention to the fact, that ethical approval or disap proval concerns rather the disposition manifesting itself in the action, in so far as this aims at the consequences in question.
Hence Smith found the essence of sympathy, not only in the capacity of feeling these consequences with the one who experiences them, but also in the ability to transfer one's self into the disposi tion or sentiment of him who acts, and to feel his motives with him. And extending farther and farther the thought of transfer through sympathy, the judgment which the individual pronounces upon him self in the conscience is then conceived as a reflex, mediated through
> Cf. Treati**, II. I. II. wid II. 2, 6.
518 TJte Enlightenment : Practical Question*. [Part V.
feelings of sympathy, of the judgment which he receives from others and exercises upon others.
All phenomena of the ethical life are thus rooted, according to Hume and Smith, in the social life, whose psychological basis is sympathy, and the founder of political economy, with his great philosophical friend, sees in the mechanism of sympathetic transfers of feeling an adjustment of individual interests similar to that which he believed himself to have discovered in the realm of the exchange of external goods, which is conducted with reference to the strait- ness of the conditions of life, in the mechanism of supply and demand in connection with the competition of labour. 1 But with these insights into the thoroughgoing dependence of the individual upon a social body, which he does not create, but in which he finds himself actually placed, the philosophy of the Enlightenment is already pointing beyond itself.
§ 37. The Problem of Civilisation.
The fundamental thought, which the philosophy of the Enlight enment would hold as to the great institutions of human society ami its historical movement, was prescribed for it in advance, partly by its dependence upon natural-science metaphysics, and partly by its own psychological tendency. This was to see in these institutions the products of the activities of individuals; and from this followed the tendency to single out those interests whose satisfaction the individual may expect from such general social connections when once these exist, and to treat them in a genetic mode of explanation as the motives and sufficient causes for the origin of the institutions in question, while at the same time regarding them from a critical point of view, as the standard for estimating the value of the same. Whatever was regarded as having been intentionally created by men should show also whether it was then really fulfilling their purposes.
1. This conception was guided into the political and juristic track primarily by Hobbes. The state appeared as the work of individuals, constructed by them under the stress of need, when in a condition of war with each other and in fear for life and goods. With its whole system of rights, it was regarded as resting upon the compact which the citizens entered into with each other from the above motives. The same Epicurean compact-theory, which had revived in the later Middle Ages, passed over with Nominalism into modern philosophy
1 Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations fLond. 1770).
Chap. 2, § 37. ] Problem of Civilisation : Compact-Theory. 519
and extended its influence over the whole eighteenth century. But the artificial construction of absolutism, which Hobbes had erected upon it, gave place more and more in consequence of political events to the doctrines of popular sovereignty. This lay at the basis of the English Constitution of 1688, as well as at that of the theoretical shap ing which Locke gave the same in his doctrine of the separation and equilibrium of the three departments of the state, the legislative, executive, and federative. It controlled, also, as an ideal require ment, the writings of Montesquieu, who, in considering the rotten administration of law at his time, would have complete independ ence given to the judicial power, while he thought of the executive and federative departments (as administration within and without, respectively) as united in the one monarchical head. It was finally carried out to a complete system of democracy in Rousseau's Con trol Social, in which the principle of transfer and representation was to be limited as much as possible, and the exercise of the sov ereignty also to be assigned directly to the whole body of the peo ple. In all these transformations of the doctrine of Hobbes, the influence of the realities of historical politics is obvious, but the antithesis between Hobbes and Rousseau has also its theoretical background. If man is regarded as by nature essentially egoistic, he must be compelled to keep the social compact by the strong arm of the state : if he is regarded as originally good and social in his feelings, as by Rousseau, it is to be expected of him that he will of himself always take part in carrying out, in the interest of the
whole, the life prescribed by the compact.
It is interesting now to see that the compact-theory in the
eighteenth century communicated itself also to those theories of the philosophy of right which did not have a merely psychological basis. The " natural right " of this time proceeds also from the right of the individual, and seeks to derive from this the rights of individuals in their relation to each other. Yet in carrying out this principle two different tendencies show themselves in German phil osophy, leading to results that were extremely characteristic in their differences. Leibniz had derived the conceptions of right (or law) from the most general principles of practical philosophy, fol lowing the example of the ancients. 1 Wolff followed him in this respect also, but made it on this account the end of the political compact to secure the mutual furtherance of individuals in behalf of their mutual perfecting, enlightening, and happiness ; according
1 Cf. his introduction to the Codex JurU Gentium Diplomatics (1OT3), Works (Erd), 118 ff.
520 The Enlightenment : Practical Question*. [Part V.
to hiin, therefore, the state has to care, not merely for external safety, but also for the general welfare in the broadest extent The consequence of this is that Wolff assigns to the state the right and duty of a thorough tutelage of the great mass of unenlightened men who are controlled by error and passion, and of intermeddling even in their private relations in the way of education. Thus Wolff gave the theory for that " paternal " despotism of the benevolent police-state under which the Germans of his time lived with very mixed feelings.
The exactly opposite result attached itself theoretically to the separation of the philosophy of right from morals, for which the way had already been prepared by Thomasius, with his sharp parting of the justum and the honestum. In this line the disciple of Tho masius, Gundling (1671-1729), maintained that right or law teas to be treated solely as the ordering of the external relations of individuals, that it has for its end the preservation of peace without, and there fore its decrees can be enforced only as to outward relations. This limitation of the state's activity to the external protection of law evidently corresponded most fully to the dualistic spirit of the Enlightenment. If the individual has conformed to the political compact only from need and want, he will evidently be inclined to make as few concessions to the state as possible, and will be willing to sacrifice to it of his original " rights " only so much as is uncondi- ditiohally requisite for the end which it is to fulfil. This was not
merely the thought of the Philistine citizen, who is indeed ready to call for the police at once when anything is the matter, but privately regards the order of the laws as an enemy that must be kept from his throat as much as possible ; it was also the feeling of the En- lightener of high intellectual development, who had for his rich inner life only the interest of being able to devote himself unmo lested to the enjoyments of art and science. In fact, the petty spirit of the small German states, with its lack of ideals, must necessarily produce the indifference toward public life which thus found its theoretical expression. The lowest stage which the de preciation of the state reached in this respect among the cultured classes is perhaps best characterised by William von Humboldt's " Ideas toward an Attempt to determine the Bounds of the Operation of the State. " ' Here every higher interest of man is carefully ex cluded from the province of the state's authority, and the task of public government is restricted to the lower service of protecting the life and property of the citizen.
1 Written 1792, published 1851 by E. Cauer.
Cbai*. 2, $ 37. ] Problem of Civilisation : Voltaire. 521
2. If in this respect German philosophy remained quite indif ferent toward the actual political condition, on the other hand there appeared in it also the general tendency of the Enlightenment to order the life of society, as that of the individual, according to the principles of philosophy. If it is glory enough for this period to have successfully cleared away much historical lumber that had accumulated in the house-keeping of European peoples, Thoinasius and Wolff, Mendelssohn and Nicolai, certainly deserve credit for their share in the work (cf. § 36, 5). But this side of the matter came forward in an incomparably more powerful and efficient degree with the French Enlighteners. It is enough here to recall
Voltaire, who appeared as a literary power of the first rank, work ing unweariedly and victoriously for reason and justice. But the contest which he carried on to a certain extent before the bar of public opinion of all Europe was taken up in detail by his fellow- countrymen, in a criticism of social institutions and by proposals for their improvement : in a broad and often passionate discussion philosophical reflection proceeds to the task of reforming the state. And here the weakness of the Enlightenment at once appears side by side with its strength. As always, it takes the standards of its criticism for existing institutions, and of its proposals for their change, from the universal, eternal nature of man or of things; thus it loses from sight the authorisation and vital force of histori cal reality, and believes that it is only needed to make a tabula rasa of the existing conditions wherever they show themselves contrary to reason, in order to be able to build up society entire in accordance
with the principles of philosophy. In this spirit the literature of the Enlightenment, especially in France, prepared for the actual break icith history, — the Revolution. Typical in this was the pro cedure of Deism which, because none of the positive religions with stood its " rational " criticism, would abolish tbem all and put in their place the religion of Nature.
So then the French Revolution, too, attempted to decree the abstract natural state of "liberty, equality, and fraternity," the realisation of " human rights " according to Rousseau's Social Contract. And numerous pens of very moderate quality hastened to justify and glorify the procedure. 1 It is for the most part a superficial Epicureanism standing upon the basis of Condillac's positivism that acts as spokesman. Thus Volney seeks, with the System* de la Nature, the source of all the evils of society in the
1 The preference for the catechism, a form designed fur education in the Church, is characteristic of this literature.
522 The Enlightenment : Practical Question*. [Past V.
ignorance and covetousness of man, whose capacity for perfection has hitherto been restrained by religions. When all " illusions " shall be frightened away with these religions, then the newly organised society will have as its supreme rule of conduct, that "good" is only what furthers the interests of man, and the cate chism for the citizen is comprehended in the rule "Conserve toi — instruis toi — modere toi — vis pour tes semblables, ahn qu'ils vivent pour toi. " ' Still more materialistic is the form in which the theory of the Revolution appears with 6V. Lambert, from whom the defini tion that was much discussed in later literature comes : " L'homme est une masse organisee et sensible ; il recpit ^intelligence de ce qui l'environne et de ses besoins. "* With the most superficial con sideration of history, he celebrates in the Revolution the final victory of reason in history, and at the same time this Epicurean deduces that the democratic beginnings of this great event will be completed in Caesardom ! The extreme pitch of self-complacent
boasting in this aspect of parliamentary dilettantism was reached by Garat and Lancelin?
In contrast with these glittering generalities and declamations over the welfare of the people and the reign of reason, the earnest reality with which Bentham sought to make the utilitarian principle useful for legislation, appears in an extremely favourable light. This work he sought to accomplish by teaching the application of the quantitative determination of pleasure and pain values
J 36, 9) to the consideration of the ends of particular statutes, with a careful regard to the existing conditions in every case. 4 Just in this he showed his insight into the fact that in the political move ment the question at issue is not merely that of political rights, but above all that of social interest, and along just this line an enthu siastic and successful champion of the Revolution arose in Qodicin,* who was not uninfluenced by Bentham. But along other lines, too,
1 Volney, at the close of the Catechisme, (Euvr. , I. 310.
1 St. Lambert, Catech. Introd. , (Euvr. , I. 63. For the characterisation of this literature it should not remain unmentioned that in St. Lambert's cate chism the Analyse de Vhomme is followed in a second book by an Analyse de
la —femme.
* The organ of this movement most worthy of esteem was the Decade Philo-
sophique, which saw and defended in the Revolution the triumph of the philoso phy of the eighteenth century. Cf. Picavet, Ideologues, 86 ff .
4 It is the more to be lamented that Bentham later in his Deontology at tempted to give a kind of popular catechism of the utilitarian morals, which, in radical one-sidedness, in rancour and lack of understanding for other moral systems, equals the worst products of the time of the Revolution.
• William Godwin (1766-1836) published his Inquiry concerning Political Justice and its Influence on General Virtue and Happiness in 1793. Cf. C. Kegan Paul, W. Godwin, his Friends and Contemporaries, Lond. 1876, and L. Stephen, English Thought, II. 264 ff.
(cf.
Chap. 2, § 37. ] Problem of Civilisation : France. 523
the social storm is beard in the literature of the Revolution, as dull thunder still dying away in the distance. The investigations con cerning the problems of political economy, which in France especially were chiefly promoted by the physiocratic school, became more and more comprehensive, and were grounded with increasing indepen dence upon empirical principles. But while the theory of the state demanded, above all, security of possessions, there rose, from the depth of society, the question as to the right ofpersonal property ; and while the philosophers considered with more and more dissen
sion the problem, how the interests of the community could be reconciled with those of the individual (cf. below), the thought forced its way to the surface that the ground of all evil with the human race lies in the striving after individual possessions, and that a social morality and a moral society will begin with the denun ciation of this original sin, and not till then. Such communistic ideas were thrown to the world by Mably and Morelly, and a Babeuf made the first abortive conspiracy to carry out these ideas, under the Directory.
3. But the socio/ question had already before this cast up its waves from its lowest depth. The contrast between the classes representing luxurious wealth and most wretched poverty, which had so great importance among the causes of the Revolution, might indeed at first be more palpable and effective; but it first acquired its full sharpness by virtue of the antithesis between culture and non-culture, which was linked with it by the whole development of European life, and this separating chasm was deepest and baldest in the age of the Enlightenment The more the age plumed itself upon its "culture," the more evident it became that this was in the main a privilege of the property-owning class. In this point, too, English Deism had led the way with typical frankness. The religion of reason should be reserved for the cultivated man, just as the free, beautiful morality should be : for the ordinary man, on the other hand, Shajiesbury held, the promises and threatenings of positive religion must remain standing as a wheel and gallows.
Tolnnd, too, had presented his cosmopolitan natural worship as an "esoteric" doctrine, and when the later Deists began to carry these ideas among the people in popular writings, iMrd Bolingbroke, him self a free-thinker of the most pronounced kind, declared them to be a pest of society, against which the sharpest means were the best Among the German Deists, also, men like Semler would have a very careful separation made between religion as a private matter and religion as a public order.
The French Enlightenment, as the relation of Voltaire to Boling
524 The Enlightenment: Practical Question*. {Fart V.
broke shows, was from the beginning decidedly more democratic Indeed, it had the agitative tendency to play off the enlighten ment of the masses against the exclusive self-seeking of the upper ten thousand. But with this was completed a revolution, by virtue of which the Enlightenment necessarily turned against itself. . For if in those strata in which it first took hold " culture " or civilisa tion had such consequences as appeared in the luxury of the " higher " classes, if it had been able to do s« little in the way of yielding fruits that could be used for the needs of the masses also, its value must appear all the more doubtful the more philosophy regarded the "greatest happiness of the greatest number" as the proper standard for the estimation of things and actions.
In this connection the problem of civilisation shaped itself out for modern philosophy : the question whether and how far civilisation, i. e. intellectual improvement (which is a historical fact), and the change in human impulses and in the relations of human life, which has been connected with it — whether and in how far this civilisa tion has served to further the moral order and man's true happiness. The more proudly and self-complacently the average Enlightener praised the progress of the human mind, which had reached in him its summit of a clear and distinct rational life in theory and prac tice, the more burning and — uncomfortable this question became.
It is raised first, though not in a direct and square statement, by Mandeville. In his psychology an extreme adherent of the selfish system, he sought to show, as against Shaftesbury, that the whole life and charm of the social system rests solely upon the struggle which self-seeking individuals carry on in their own interests — a principle which worked also upon Adam Smith in his doctrine of supply and demand. 1 If we should think of man as stripped bare of all egoistic impulses (this is the meaning of the Fable ofthe Bees), and provided only with the "moral" qualities of altruism, the social mechanism would stand still from j^re absence of regard for self. The motive power in civilisation is solely egoism, and, therefore, we must not be surprised if civilisation displays its activity, not by heightening the moral qualities, but only by refining and dis guising egoism. And the individual's happiness is as little enhanced by civilisation as his morality. If it were increased, the egoism, on which the progress of civilisation rests, would be thereby weak ened. In truth, it appears, rather, that every improvement of the material condition, brought about by intellectual advance, calls forth new and stronger wants in the individual, in consequence of which
1 Cf. Lange, Gesch. d. Mater. , I. 285 [Eng. tr. I. 296].
Chap. J, S 37. ] Problem of Civilisation : Mandeville, Rousseau. 525
he becomes more and more discontented ; and so it turns out that the apparently so brilliant development of the whole is accomplished only at the cost of the morality and happiness of the individual.
4. In Mandeville these thoughts appear in a mild suggestion, and at the same time, in the repelling form of a cynical commendation of the egoism, whose " private vices " are " public benefits. " They attained an importance for world-literature through the brilliant turn given them by Rousseau. With him the question concerned nothing more and nothing less than the worth of all human history — its worth for the morality and happiness of individuals. And he cast into the face of the Enlightenment the reproach that all growth in knowledge, and all refinement of life, had but made man more and more untrue to his true vocation and his true nature.
History with its artificial structure of civilised society has deterio rated man : ' he came forth from the hand of Nature good and pure, but bis development has separated him from Nature step by step. The beginning of this "degeneration" Rousseau, in his second Dis course, found in the creation of property, which had for its result the division of labour, and with this the separation of the classes and, ulti mately, the awakening of all evil passions : this it was that enlisted the work of the intellect permanently in the service of self-seeking.
In comparison with this unnatural condition of civilised barbarism the state of Nature appears at first as the lost paradise, and in this sense the sentimental yearning of a time intellectually and morally blaxe" found its nourishment in Rousseau's writings, above all in the New Heloise. The ladies of the salon were carried away with enthu siasm for the Gessnerian pastoral idyl; but on this account they mis-heard the admonition of the great Genevan.
For he did not wish to lead back to that state of Nature which had no society. He was convinced that man is provided by his creator with a capacity for being perfected (perfertibilite) which makes the development of his natural endowment both a duty and a natural necessity. If this development has been guided into wrong paths by the historical process which has hitherto prevailed, and, therefore, has led to demoralisation and wretchedness, history must be begun anew; in onler to find the right way toward his devel opment man must return from the unnatural condition of intellectual pride to the simple natural state of feeling, from the narrowness and falsehood of relations of society to his pure unstunted self. For this end, according to Rousseau, humanity as a whole needs a
' The KnglUh Deinu' conception of the history of religion (cf. | 36, 8) U extended by Kou»»e«u to all niatory.
626 The Enlightenment : Practical Questions. [Pakt V.
jwlttical constitution, which affords the individual full freedom of personal activity in connection with the life of the whole body, and in accordance with the principle of equality of rights ; and as indi viduals, humanity needs an education,1 which allows the natural endowments of the individual to unfold from his own vitality without constraint. The optimism, which Rousseau finds in the constitution of the natural God-descended nature of man, makes him hope that our condition will be better, the more freely and naturally we can develop.
5. While we thus find Rousseau in lively opposition to the his torical development, and in the zealous endeavour to put in its stead a new development "according to Nature," the last reconciling synthesis of the ideas of the Enlightenment is the endeavour to understand the previous course of human history itself as the natural development of human nature ; in this thought the phil osophy of the eighteenth century strips off all its one-sided- ness and reaches its highest consummation. The first stirring of this is found in an isolated appearance of Italian literature, with
Vico. * Influenced by the Neo-Platonic metaphysics of the Renais sance, especially by Campanella, and educated by Bodin and Grotius, he had grasped the idea of a general natural law of the development of life, which manifests itself in the history of peoples as well as in that of individuals, and with great learning had sought to prove this principle of the identity of all natural development. But if in such a conception of the naturally necessary correspondences between the different historical systems and the fundamental biological scheme, the thought of a purposeful inter-relation of the destinies of nations had remained foreign to him, this had previously found
1 In its details Rousseau's Smile frequently uses the " Thoughts," which Locke had advanced with a much more limited purpose for the education of a young man of higher station in society : there, too, the complete development of the individuality was the main thing, from which the turning away from learned one-sidedness, the direction of attention to the real and practical, the appeal to perception and the use of individual instead of general truths in instruction and education, followed as a matter of course. These principles, thought out for the Englishman of superior rank, Rousseau adopts as elements in an education which sought to develop in man, not the member of a definite class or of a future profession, but only "the man. " In this spirit his peda gogical doctrines passed over to the school of German philanthropy, which, under the lead of Basedow (1723-1790), combined the principle of natural develop ment with that of utility, and thought out the appropriate forms of an education for a community by which the individual should be trained to become by the natural way a useful member of human society.
2 Giov. Battista VYco (1668-1744) became influential chiefly through his Principj d1 una scienza nuova <f intorno alia commune natura delle nazioni
Of. K. Werner, Giambatlista V. als Philosoph und gelehrter Forscher (Vienna, 1879) ; R. Flint, Vico (Edin. and Lond. 1884); and likewise for the following, Flint, The Philosophy of History in Europe, Vol new ed. , 1893.
(I72u).
I. ,
Chap. 2, § 37. ] Problem of Civilitation: Vico, Herder. 527
all the more forcible support in Boesuet} The French prelate con tinues the patristic philosophy of history , which had pushed the
into the centre of the world's events. He would have the christianising of modern nations through the empire of Charles the Great, regarded as the concluding and decisive epoch of uni versal history, the whole course of which is the work of divine
and the goal of which is the dominance of the one Catholic Church. Such a theological view of the world and of history had now, indeed, been energetically put aside by modern philosophy, but the meagreness of the results yielded for the con sideration of history by the treatment of human society from the point of view of individual psychology is seen in the trivial lucu brations of Iselin,1 in spite of his leaning upon Rousseau.
It was in a mind of Herder's universal receptiveness and fineness of feeling that Rousseau's ideas first found in this respect, also, a fruitful soil. But his optimism, which had matured in the atmos phere of Leibniz and Shaftesbury, did not allow him to believe in the possibility of that aberration which the Genevan would regard as the nature of previous history. He was rather convinced that the natural development of man is just that which has taken place in history. While Rousseau's conception of man's perfectibility was treated by the Genevan's French adherents, such as St. Lambert, and especially Contlorcet, as the voucher for a better future, and as an infinite perspective toward the perfecting of the race, Herder used it — against Rousseau — as a principle of explanation for the past, also, of the human family. History is nothing but the unin terrupted progress of natural development.
This concerned, above all, the beginning of history. The begin ning of the life of society is to be understood, not as an arbitrary act, whether of human reflection or of divine determination, but as a gradually formed result of the natural connection. It has neither been invented nor commanded, but has become. Characteristically enough, these opposing views as to the origin of history, asserted themselves earliest in theories of language. The individualism of associational psychology saw in language, as is manifest jwirticularly in the case of Condillac,* an invention of man, —supra-naturalism, defended in Germany by Suaamilch* saw a divine inspiration; here
1 Jacques Benigne Bottwt (1627-1704), the celebrated eloquent divine, wrote the Ditcourt mr T Hittoire L'nirenelle (l'aris, 1081) originally for the instruc tion of the Dauphin.
* Iaaak heiin of Ba*le (1728-1782) published in 1764 hia Philotophtichtn Mulhmatrungen iiher <lir CrKhichtt dt$ Mciuchheit, 2 vols.
* Istgiqtu and Langue <lr» Calruli.
* BeZoeiM, da$$ der Urtprung dtr menfckliehen Sprache gSttlich $ei (Berlin, 1766).
Redemption
providence,
528 The Enlightenment: Practical Questions. [Part V.
Rousseau had already spoken the word of solution when he saw in language a natural, involuntary unfolding of man's essential nature. 1
Herder not only made this conception his own (cf. above, § 33, 11), but he extended it also consistently to all man's activities in civilisation. He proceeds, therefore, in his philosophy of history from the point of view of man's position in Nature, from that of the conditions of life which the planet affords him, and from that of his peculiar constitution, to understand from these sources the beginnings and the direction of his historical development: and in the progress of his exposition of universal history he makes, like wise, the peculiar character of each people and of its historical sig nificance proceed from its natural endowments and relations. But at the same time the developments of the various nations do not fall apart in his treatment, as was still the case with Vico : on the con trary, they are all arranged organically as a great chain of ascend ing perfection. And they all form in this connected whole the ever-maturer realisation of the general constitution of human nature.
As man himself is the crown of creation, so his history is the unfolding of human nature. The Idea of Humanity explains the complicated movement of national destinies.
In this consideration, the unhistorical mode of thinking which had characterised the Enlightenment was overcome : every form in this great course of development was valued as the natural product of its conditions, and the " voices of the peoples " united to form the harmony of the world's history, of which humanity is the theme. And out of this sprang also the task of the future, — to bring to ever richer and fuller development all the stirrings of human nature, and to realise in living unity the ripe fruits of the historical development. In the consciousness of this task of the " world- literature," far from all the pride of the meaner Enlightenment, full of the presage and anticipation of a new epoch, Schiller could call out, in valedictory to the "philosophical century," the joyful words : —
" Wie schon, o Mensch, mit deinem Palmenzweige Stehst du an des Jahrhunderts Neige
In edler, s toiler Mftnnlichkeit ! " a
1 With his arguments, though in part of another opinion, St. Martin the Mystic attacked the crude presentation of Condillac's doctrine by Garat ; cf. Seances des jScoles Kormales, III. 61 ff.
* In rude paraphrase :
How fair, O man, with victory's palm,
Thou standest at the century's wane In noble pride of manliness.
PART VI.
THE GERMAN PHILOSOPHY.
F. K. Biedermann, Die deuttche Philotophie von Kant bit auf unttre Leipa. 1842 f.
K. L. Michelet, Entwiekelungtgetchichte der neueeten deuttehen Philotophie. Berlin, 1843.
C. Fortlage, Genetitche Qeschichte der Philotophie teit Kant. Leips. 1862.
O. Liebmann, Kant und die Epigonen. Stuttgart, 1886.
Fr. Harms, Die Philotophie teit Kant. Berlin, 1876.
A. S. Willm, Hittoire de la Philotophie Allemande deputt Kant jutqu'i Hegel.
Paris, 1846 ft*.
II. Lotze, Oetchirhu der ^Etthetik in Deuttchland. Munich, 1868.
B. Flint, Philosophy of History in Europe, I. Edin. and Lond. 1874.
B. Fester, Rousseau und die deuttche Oesrhichltphilotophie. Stuttgart, 1800. [J. Royce, The Spirit of Modern Philosophy. Boston, 1802. ]
A fortunate union of various intellectual movements produced in Germany, during the close of the preceding and at the beginning of the present century, a bloom of philosophy, which in the history of European thought can be compared only with the great develop ment of Greek philosophy from Socrates to Aristotle. In a devel opment, powerful alike in its intensity and extent, the German mind during the short span of four decades (1780-1820) produced a wealth of systems of philosophical Weltanschauung, grandly pro jected on all sides, such as has at no other time been compressed within so narrow a space ; and in all of these the thoughts of pre ceding philosophy combine to form characteristic and impressive structures. They appear in their totality as the ripe fruit of a long growth, out of which germs of a new development, as yet scarcely recognisable, are to spring.
This brilliant phenomenon had its general cause in the incompar able vigour and spirit with whioh the German nation at that time took up again with new strength, and carried to its completion, the movement of civilisation which began in the Renaissance and had
To the literature cited on pp. 348 and 437, we add : —
H. M. Chalybaeus, Hittorische Enttricklung der speculativen
Philosophie eon Kant bit Hegel. Dresden, 1837. [Tr. Edin. and Andover, 1864. ]
Tage.
530 The German Philosophy. [Part VL
been interrupted by external force. Germany attained the summit of its inner development at the same time that its outer history reached its lowest condition, — a process that has no equal in history. When it lay politically powerless, it created its world-conquering thinkers and poets. Its victorious power, however, lay just in the league between philosophy and poetry. The contemperaneousness of Kant and Goethe, and the combination of their ideas by Schiller, — these are the decisive characteristics of the time.
The history of philosophy at this point is most intimately inter woven with that of general literature, and the lines of mutual rela tion and stimulus run continuously back and forth.