No More Learning

It was here, too, that Beimarus, in his Schutzschrift, proceeded in the sharpest manner against the possi bility of revelation, which he declared to be superfluous, unthinkable, and untrue. Others directed their criticism against individual doc trines of dogmatics. Diderot attacked the moral attributes in the Christian conception of God, and Voltaire exercised his wit in un sparing derision of the dogmas and ceremonies of all religions and Confessions.
But in his case also there was at bottom the earnest thought, that all these additions of the positive religions were so many obscurations and corruptions of the true religion, for which, like the other deists, he felt called to contend. They were filled with the conviction that natural religion is an inheritance of all men, a conviction set within the nature of man himself, and that it was, therefore, the original state of the religious life. From this point of view all positive religions appear as depraved forms which have entered in the course of history, and a progress in the history of religion consists, therefore, in every case in nothing but a return to the primitive, pure, and uncorrupted religion. Hence according to Tindal the true Christianity, which coincides with Deism, is as old as creation. Jesus did not bring a revelation, he only rehabili tated the true worship of God in the face of the decay of the
CHxr. 1, § 35. ] Natural Religion : Deittt, Hume. 497
ancient religions ; but the Christian churches have again corrupted his work, and free-thinking desires to return to him. So, too, Letting distinguished between Christianity and the religion of Christ.
If now it was asked, what were the causes that brought about this distortion of true religion, the Enlighteners were entirely devoid of any historical comprehension for these : what they held to be false seemed to them possible only through voluntary inven tion. They were so strongly convinced of the evidence that their Deism was the only true system, that all other teachings seemed to them explicable only by lying and deceit, and that the proclaimers of these seemed to have acted only in their own interests. It is then the general doctrine of the deists that the historical basis of positive religions is invention and deceit. Even Shaftesbury knew no other way of explaining how enthusiasm, which constitutes true religion, could be distorted to the fanaticism of superstition. The
hatred of priests felt by the Enlighteners was most sharply ex pressed on this point also in the Sckutzachrift of Reimarus.
9. Such incapacity to do justice to the historical nature of posi tive religions agreed well with the universal lack in historical sense and understanding which was peculiar to the whole philosophy of the Enlightenment. This had its ground in the fact that modern
This was done first and with clearest consciousness by David Hume. While he found that religion cannot be based upon demon strative rational knowledge, he showed also that the question as to the origin of religion in the human mind must be completely separated from the speculative investigation. This new question he treated solely in accordance with psychological principles, as a '* Natural History of Religion. " He shows how in the primitive apprehension of Nature and in the feelings of fear and hope, of terror and of blessing, which are associated with and in the com parison of the course of Nature with the vicissitudes of human life, there lay the incitements to the formation of ideas of higher beings, and to worship designed to appease or to flatter. The natural, primitive form of religion is, therefore, polytheism, which thinks and treat* these higher jwwers in completely anthropomorphic manner. But the manifold forms assumed by myth fuse in accord ance with the laws of the association of ideas myths pass over into each other, and ultimately the whole body of religious ideas becomes condensed into the belief in single divine being, to whom the pur poseful order of the universe due, — faith, to be sure, which
thought had made its growth, hand in hand with natural
in investigating that which is either timelessly or always valid. Only in a few instances was this ban broken through.
science,
a is
a
;
a
it,
The Enlightenment : Theoretical Questions. [Paw V.
cannot preserve itself in a pare form, bat is associated in various wars with its original presuppositions. The history of religion is tine gradual transformation of polytheism into monotheism, and its result coincides with that theological tow of the world which Home had developed as the view of the intelligent man, not, indeed, capable of scientific proof, but bound up with the natural feeling of belief.
This mode of apprehending the subject from the point of view of
and the history of civilisation was reinforced by that from the point of view of philology and the history of literature, which found expression in the historical biblical criticism founded by Salomon Sender. This began to carry out the thought formulated by Spinoza,1 that the biblical books must be treated just as other writings as regards their theoretical contents, their origin, and their history; that they must be understood from the point of view of their time and the character of their authors. Semler directed par ticular attention to the point that the different parties of the early Christians find expression in the books of the New Testament. While it may be that the hypotheses to which he came in this respect have been left behind by later science, it is nevertheless true that a scientific way out of the radicalism into which the deistic movement had run was here shown, and Sender therefore raised his voice against the spokesmen of the Enlightenment.
Leasing took part in these questions from still another side. He was certainly not the man to make his conviction bend to a tenet; he saw through and rejected, as few others, the limitation which will find its sole truth in that which has been transmitted histori cally ; but he guarded himself well from playing the judge, who now, after thousands of years, shall decide as to the genuine ness of the three rings. But it is not merely this that separates him from the great mass of the Enlighteners ; he is himself a deep, religious nature, and, like Herder,1 sees in religion a living relation of man to God, and God to man. Hence religion is not possible with out revelation, and the history of religions is the series of the revelar tions of God, is the education of the human race by God. Lessing assumes the well-planned succession of these revelations to be such,
• In what degree Spinoza's writings were known to the religious Enlighteners in Germany appears, among other things, from the interesting fact that Lorenz Schmidt, the leader of the Wertheim translation of the Bible, is the anonymous editor of a book in which, under the mask of a "Refutation of the Doctrine of Spinoza by the Famous Philosopher Christian Wolff," an excellent translation of Spinoza'. s Bthict is offered, and Anally only a few paragraphs from Wolff's German writings are appended (printed Frankfort and Leips. 1744).
• Cf. Herder's treatise on the Aelteite Urkunde dea Menschengeschlecht*.
psychology
Chap. 1, § 35. ] Natural Religion : Letting, Herder. 499
that the deeper meaning of each is unfolded more clearly and dis tinctly in that which follows. So even the New Testament, the second elementary book, over which the more advanced scholar now " stamps and glows," gives us a premonition of an eternal gospel. In carrying out this thought of Origen's,1 Lessing indicates in but a tentative manner indefinite lines which lie in the direction of a mystico-speculative interpretation of dogmas.
1 Education of the Human Racr, § 72 S.
CHAPTER II.
PRACTICAL
Thx natural religion of the eighteenth century sought in morals the support which a metaphysics of the natural-science sort could not permanently afford it. This was possible by reason of the fact, that in the meantime this branch also of philosophical investigation had won its complete independence of positive religion. And in fact, this freeing process, which had already begun in the train of the religiously indifferent metaphysics of the seventeenth century, had completed itself in a relatively speedy and simple manner. Bu* the peculiar character of the new age asserted itself here also, in the
very early transfer of the point of interest in these investigations to the psychological domain j and here philosophy encountered the lit erary inclination of the age, which was directed toward a profounder employment of man with himself, toward an overhauling of his feel ings and an analysing of his motives, and toward the "sentimental*' fostering of personal relations. The individual revelling in his own inner life, the monad enjoying self, is the characteristic phenomenon of the age of the Enlightenment. The individualism of the Renais sance, which in the seventeenth century had been repressed by exter nal forces, now broke forth again with a more inward power from the stiff dignity of ceremonious, formal life : bounds were to be broken through, externalities cast away, and the pure, natural life of man brought out.
But the more important the individual thus became to himself, and the more many-sided his view in weighing questions regarding the import of his true happiness, the more morality, society, and the state became to him a problem. How comes the individual — so runs the fundamental practical question of the Enlightenment phil osophy — to a life connected with others, which extends in influence and authority beyond the individual himself ? Through all the ani mated discussions of these problems goes, as a tacit assumption, the view that the individual in his natural (as it was always conceived)
determinate character is the original datum, is that which is self 600
QCESTIOS&.
Chap. 2-] Practical Question*. 501
intelligible, and that all the relations which go beyond the individual are to be explained from him as a starting-point. — In so far the natu ralistic metaphysics of the seventeenth century thought here more after the analogy of atomism, there more after that of the Monad- ology — forms the background for the morals of the eighteenth.
The constantly progressing process in which these presuppositions became more clear and distinct brought with it the result, that the principles ofethics found a valuable clearing up in the discussions of this period. For inasmuch as the ethical life was regarded as something added to the natural essence of the individual, as some thing that must first be explained, it was necessary, on the one hand, to establish by an exact discrimination what the thing to be ex plained really and on the other hand, to investigate on what the worth and validity of the ethical life rests and the more morality appeared to be something foreign to the natural essence of the indi vidual, the more the question as to the motives which induce man to follow ethical commands asserted itself, side by side with the question as to the ground of the validity of those commands. And
so three main questions appeared, at the beginning much involved, and then becoming complicated anew what the content of morality on what rests the validity of the moral laws what brings man to moral action The principles of morals are set forth according to the three points of view of the criterion, the sanction, and the motive. This analysis and explanation, however, showed that the various answers to these separate questions were capable of being combined with each other in the most various ways so the clearing and separating process above named results precisely from the motley variety and changing hues exhibited by the doctrines of moral philosophy in the eighteenth century. Shaftesbury stands in the centre of the movement as the mind that stimulates in all direc tions and controls in many lines while, on the other hand, the move ment reaches no definite conclusion in this period, on account of the differences in the statements of the question (cf. 39).
typical feature of the fundamental individualistic tendency of this ethics was the repeatedly renewed consideration of the relation of virtue and happiness: the final outcome, expressed more or less sharply, was that the satisfaction of the individual's impulses was raised to be the standard of value for the ethical functions. The system of practical philosophy built up upon this principle
Utilitarianism, the varied development of which forms the centre in the complicated courses of these reflections.
But out of this arose the much more burning question, as regards the political and social order, — the question, namely, as to the value
is
A
§
is
;
:
?
?
?
:
:
is,
502 The Enlightenment : Practical Questions. [Pa»t V.
for happiness of the social union, of public institutions and their historical development That which exists and has come into being historically has lost once more its immediate validity and naive valuation : it should justify itself before the critical consciousness, and prove its right to existence by the advantages which it yields for the happiness of individuals. From this point of view was developed the political and social philosophy of the eighteenth cen tury; upon this standpoint this philosophy assumed its critical attitude toward historical reality, and in accordance with this standard, finally, it examined the results of the historical progress of human civilisation. The worth of civilisation itself and the relation of Nature and history became thus a problem which received its most impressive formulation from Rousseau, and which, in opposition to the movements excited by him, and in conjunction with the con vulsions of the Revolution, gave form to the beginnings of the Philosophy of History.
§ 36. The Principles of Morals.
Fr. Schleiermacher, Grundlinien einer Kritik der bisherigen Sittenlehre (1803), W. W. III. Vol. 1.
H. Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics (4th ed. , Lond. and N. Y. 1890). [J. Martineau, Types of Ethical Theory, Vol. II. ]
[W. L. Courtney, Constructive Ethics (Lond. 1886). ]
The most fruitful incitements to the discussion of ethical prob lems proceeded in both positive and negative directions from Hobbes. The "selfish system" propounded by him extended its influence throughout the entire eighteenth century. It was carried out into all of its consequences, and was an ever-powerful stimulus to draw out opposing theories, which just for this reason were also dependent upon it. In a certain sense this is true of Cumberland, who indeed defended the validity of ethical laws as eternal truths in opposition to psychological relativity, and yet at the same time would have the universal welfare regarded as their essential and determining con tent.
1. The position of Locke with reference to these questions is still less definitely formulated than his attitude with regard to theoreti cal questions. No doubt the treatment of practical principles occupies almost the larger space in his attack upon " innate ideas," as is natural from the fact that his opposition is there directed against the Platonism of the Cambridge school. But the positive indications upon ethical subjects (and indeed there is nothing that goes beyond indications), which are found scattered through his
Chap. 2, § 36. ] Principle* of Moral* : Locke. 503
writings, do not in any important degree transcend mere psycholo gists Locke regards the moral judgment as demonstrative knowl edge, because it has for its object a relation, namely, the agreement or non-agreement of a man's action with a law [" conformity or disagreement men's voluntary actions have to a rule, to which they are referred, and by which they are judged of"]. 1 Accordingly the imperative character seems essential for ethics. The existence of such norms, however, presupposes not only a law-giver, but also his power to visit obedience to his laws with a reward, and disregard of them with punishment ; for only through the expectation of these consequences, Locke holds, can a law work upon the will.
If the philosopher was certain of not deviating from the "com mon sense " of the average man with such principles, he was equally secure in the three instances which he adduces of the law-giving authority, — public opinion, the state, and God. And in the high est of these instances he found again the point of attachment for the remnant of Cartesian metaphysics which his empiricism had preserved. For identically the same will of God is known by reve lation and by the " natural light " (according to Locke's philosophy of religion ; cf. § 35, 1). The law of God is the law of Nature. But its content is, that the order of Nature fixed by God attaches inju rious consequences to certain actions, and useful consequences to others, and that therefore the former are forbidden, the latter com manded. Thus the moral law gains a metaphysical root without losing its utilitarian content.
2. The need of a metaphysical basis of morals asserted itself also in other forms, and in part in a still stronger degree, though it was common to the whole Cartesian school to regard right will as the necessary and inevitable consequences of right insight. In this respect Cartesianism was seconded by the whole throng of Platonists, who were so hostile to it in natural philosophy — at first, Henry
More' and Cud worth,' later, especially, Richard Price. 4 They all proceeded from the thought that the moral law is given with the inmost nature of reality which has proceeded forth from God, and that it is therefore written with eternal and unchangeable letters in every reasonable being. With much enthusiasm but with few new arguments, they defended the Stoic-Platonic doctrine in its Christian- theistic transformation.
> Cf. Kssau cone. Hum. Un. , II. 28, 4 II.
1 Knchriridion Kthicum ( 1067).
* Wbone Treat it t concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality wu tint pnb-
lUn«l by Chandler, in 1731.
• Question* and Difficulties in Moral* CLond. 1768).
504 The Enlightenment : Practical Questions. [Part V.
This intellectualism, in connection with rationalistic metaphysics, took a direction that was widely removed from the Scotist recourse to the divine will which had been revived by Descartes and still more by Locke, and instead of this proceeded to determine the content of the moral law solely by metaphysical relations, and, accordingly, in the last instance, by logical criteria. Just in this appeared its contrast to all the psychologically influenced theories, which, in some form or other, always returned to feelings of pleas ure and pain as the central nerve of ethical determinations. This is clearest in the case of Clarke, who professed to find the objective principle of morals in the "fitness" of an action to its determining relations, and who claimed for the knowledge of this fitness a self- evidence analogous to the knowledge of mathematical truth, and in the Cartesian spirit was convinced that the feeling of obligation, by which the will is determined to the appropriate action, develops inevitably from such an insight into the fitness of things. Ethical inferiority, accordingly, appeared quite in the ancient fashion (cf. § 7, 6) to be the result of ignorance or of erroneous opinion. Wol- laston, stimulated by Clarke, gave to the same thought the turn, that since every action involves a (theoretical) judgment as to its underlying relations, the decision as to whether the act is right or wrong in the ethical sense depends upon the Tightness (correctness) or wrongness of this judgment.
3. Pierre Bayle takes a peculiar position with reference to these questions : he supports a rationalism without any metaphysical back ground. In his case the interest of fixing morals upon a firm basis, as opposed to all dependence upon dogmatic doctrines, was active in the strongest and most radical manner. While in declaring meta physical knowledge in general to be impossible he opposed the rational grounding of natural religion as well as that of positive dogma, he yet gave back with full hands to the " reason " in the practical domain what he had taken from it in the theoretical realm.
of knowing the essence of things, the human reason is, according to him, completely furnished with the consciousness of its duty : powerless without, it is complete master of itself. What it lacks in science it has in conscience : a knowledge of eternal and unchangeable truth.
The ethical reason, Bayle holds therefore, remains everywhere the same, however different men, peoples, and times may be in their theoretical insight. He teaches for the first time with clear con sciousness the practical reason's complete independence of the theo retical; but this, too, he is glad to bring to its sharpest point with reference to theology. Revelation and faith are regarded by him in
Incapable
Chap. 2, § 36. ] Principlet of Moral* : Clarke, Bayle. 505
the Catholic manner as essentially theoretical illumination, and just on this account they seem to him to be indifferent for morality. He admired the ethical excellence of ancient heathenism, and believed in the possibility of a morally well-ordered community of atheists. While, therefore, his theoretical scepticism might seem favourable to the Church, his moral philosophy was necessarily attacked as her most dangerous foe.
If the ethical principles were in this discussion proclaimed by Bayle also as " eternal truths," he did it in the original Cartesian sense, where interest centered not so much about the psychological question of innateness, as rather about the epistemological point of view of immediate evidence not brought about through the medium of logic. In this sense the virtual innateness of ethical truths was held of course by Leibniz, and it was in the spirit of both that Vol taire, who approached Bayle's standpoint the more in proportion as his attitude toward metaphysics became more sceptical (cf. § 35, 5), said of the ethical principles that they were innate in man just as his limbs were : he must learn to use both by experience.
4. Bayle very likely had the support of general opinion when he ascribed to the ethical convictions a worth exalted above all change and all difference of theoretical opinions; but he was successful,
perhaps, just because he treated those convictions as something known to all, and did not enter upon the work of bringing their content into a system, or of expressing them as a unity. Whoever attempted this seemed hardly able to dispense with a principle taken either from metaphysics or from psychology.
Such a determination of the conceptions of morality by a principle was made possible by the metaphysics of Leibniz, though it was only prepared by him incidentally and by way of indications, and was first carried out by Wolff in systematic, but also in cruder forms. The Monadology regards the universe as a system of living beings, whose restless activity consists in unfolding and realising their original content. In connection with this Aristotelian conception the Spinozistic fundamental idea of the " auum esse conaervare " (cf. f 32, 6) becomes transformed into that of a purposeful vocation or destiny, which Leibniz and his German disciples designated as perfection. 1 The " law of Nature," which for this ontology also is coincident with the moral law, is the striving of all beings toward perfection. Since now every process of perfecting, as such, is con nected with pleasure, and every retrogression in life's development with pain, there follows from this the ancient identification of the ethically good with well-being or happiness.
i Leibnii, Monad. 41 If.
506 The Enlightenment : Practical Question*. [Part V.
Natural law, therefore, demands of man that he should do all that serves his perfection, and forbids all that threatens to bring him loss in his perfection. From this thought Wolff develops the whole system of duties, bringing to his aid especially the principle of mutual furtherance: man needs for his own perfecting other men, and works toward his own perfection in helping them toward the fulfilment of their vocation. In particular, however, it followed from these premises that man must know what truly conduces to
his perfecting ; for not all that is momentarily felt to be a further ance of life proves truly and permanently a step toward perfection. Hence morality is throughout in need of ethical knowledge, — of right insight into the nature of man and things. From this point of view the enlightenment or "clearing up" of the understanding appears the pre-eminent ethical task. With Leibniz this follows immediately from the conception of the monad. 1 The monad is the more perfect, —and perfection Leibniz defines in genuine scholastic fashion as grandeur de la riaUte" positive, — the more it shows its activity in clear and distinct representations ; the natural law of its develop
ment is the clearing up of its original obscure representative content (cf. § 31, 11). Wolff's circumstantial deduction takes rather the form of pointing out in experience the useful consequences of
knowledge. It remains thus quite within the setting of the homely aim which the German teacher-philosopher (Kdthederphilosoph) set before his scientific work, viz. to make philosophy usable and prac tically efficient, by clearness of conceptions and plainness of proofs.
5. This tendency Wolff had adopted from his teacher Thomasius, the father of the Enlighteners, a man who was indeed wanting in the pre-eminence that characterised the mind of Leibniz, but was given all the more an understanding for the wants of his time, a capacity for agitation, and a spirit for efforts toward the public
Intellectual movements of the Renaissance that had been checked in the seventeenth century revived again at its close. Thomasius would transplant philosophy from the lecture hall into real life, — put it into the service of the general weal ; and since he understood little of natural science, his interest turned toward criticism of public institutions. Reason only should rule in the life of the whole, as well as in that of the individual : so he fought honour ably and victoriously against superstition and narrowness, against torture and witch-trials. Enlightenment in the sense of Thomasius is hence far from having the metaphysical dignity which Leibniz gave it. It gains its value for individuals and for society first by the uses which it yields and which can be expected from it alone.
good.
1 Cf. Leibniz, Monad. 48 ft.
Chap. 2, § 36. ] Principles of Moral* : Wolff, Thomatius. 507
Perfection and utility are accordingly the two characteristics which with Wolff make Enlightenment an ethical principle. The former comes out more strongly in connection with the general metaphysical basis ; the latter in the particular building out of the system.
And in the same way this duality of criteria goes through Wolff's school and the whole popular philosophy, — only, the more superficial the doctrines become, the broader the space taken by utility. Even Mendelssohn gives as the reason for turning aside from all deeper and more refined subtilty, that philosophy has to treat only just so much as is necessary for man's happiness. But because this eudse- monism of the Enlightenment had from the outset no higher point of view than that of the education and welfare of the average man, it fell into another limitation, the most jejune philistinism and sen sible, prosaic commonplace. This might be in place and most beneficial in effect in a certain stratum of popular literature, not high, indeed, but broad; but when such a success on the part of the
Enlighteners "went to their heads," when they applied the same measuring rod to the great phenomena of society and history, when this excessive pride of the empirical understanding would allow nothing to stand except what it had known "clearly and distinctly," then the noble features of the Enlightenment became distorted to that well-intentioned lack of comprehension, as type of which Friedrich Nicolai, with all his restless concern for the public good, became a comic figure. 1
6. The great mass of the German Enlighteners did not suspect how far they were wandering from the living spirit of the great Leibniz with this dry utility of abstract rules. Wolff, indeed, had already let the pre-established harmony fall metaphysically also, and so proved that the finest meaning of the Monadology had re mained hidden from him. Hence he and his Successors had no comprehension for the fact, that Leibniz's priuciple of perfection made the unfolding of the content of the individual life and the shap ing out of its dimly felt originality, the task of the ethical life, in the same degree as his metaphysics asserted the peculiar nature of each individual being in the face of all others. This side of the matter first came into power in Germany, when the period of genius dawned in literature, and the passionate feeling of strongly indi vidual minds sought its own theory. The form which it then found in Herder's treatises, and likewise in Schiller's Philosophical Letters, was, however, much more strongly determined by another doctrine
1 Cf. FlchU? , Ft. SicolaCt I. tbtn und Bonderbare Meinungen (1801), W. W. mi. i a.
608 The Enlightenment : Practical Quettiont. [Part V.
than it was by Leibniz, — by a doctrine which, in spite of the dif ference in the conceptions in which it was carried out, had in its ethical temper the closest relationship with that of the German metaphysician.
Shaftesbury had given to the idea of perfection a form that was less systematic but all the more impressive and clear to the imagi nation. The ancient conception of life, in accordance with which morality coincides with the undisturbed unfolding of man's true and natural essence, and therefore with his true fortune, was directly congenial to him and became the living basis of his thought. Hence, with Shaftesbury, the ethical appears as the truly human, as the flower of man's life, as the complete development of his natural endowments. In this is fixed at the outset Shaftesbury's attitude toward Cumberland and Hobbes. He cannot, like the latter, regard egoism as the sole fundamental characteristic of the natural man ; he rather agrees with the former in recognising the altruistic incli nations as an original inborn endowment. But neither can he see in these inclinations the sole root of morality ; to him morality is the completion of the entire man, and therefore he seeks its principle in symmetrical development and in the harmonious interaction of the two systems of impulses. This theory of morals does not demand the suppression of one's own weal in favour of that of others ; such a suppression appears to it to be necessary only in the lower stages of development : the fully cultivated man lives as truly for himself as for the whole,1 and just by unfolding his own individual charac ter does he set himself as a perfect member in the system of the universe. Here Shaftesbury's optimism expresses itself most fully in his belief, that the conflict between the egoistic and the altruistic motives, which plays so large a part in the lower strata of humanity, must be completely adjusted in the ripe, mature man.
But for this reason the ethical ideal of life is with this thinker an entirely personal one. Morality consists for him, not in the control of general maxims, not in the subordination of the individ ual's will to norms or standards, but in the rich and full living out of an entire individuality. It is the sovereign personality which asserts its ethical right, and the highest manifestation in the ethical realm is the virtuosoship, which allows none of the forces and none of the lines of impulse in the individual's endowment to be stunted,
1 Pope compared this relation with the double motion of the planets about the sun and their own axes {Essay on Man, III. 314 ff. ). Moreover, it was through i' e same poet that Shaftesbury's theory of life worked on Voltaire, while
liiilerot (in his work upon the Inquiry concerning Virtue and Merit) attached himself directly to Shaftesbury.
Chap. 2, § 36. ] Principlet ofMorals : Shaftesbury, Hutcheson. 509
but brings all the manifold relations into harmony in a perfect con duct of life, and thus brings about both the individual's happiness and his most efficient working for the welfare of the whole. Th as the Greek ideal of the kalokagathia finds a new expression in the
Weltanschauung of the Monad ology (cf. § 7, 5).
7. While the moral principle has thus with Shaftesbury already
received an aesthetical colouring in its contents, this colouring ap pears consistently in a yet stronger degree when he deals with the question as to the source of knowledge for ethical tasks. This source, by metaphysicians and sensualists alike, was found in rational knowl edge either of the nature of things or of the empirically useful : in both cases principles resulted that were capable of demonstration and universally valid. The morals of virtuosoship, on the contrary, must take its individual life-ideal from the depths of the individual nature ; for it morality was grounded upon feeling. The ethical judgments by which man approves those impulses which Nature has implanted within him to further his own and others' weal, or, on the other hand, disapproves the " unnatural " impulses that work against those ends, — these judgments rest on man's ability to make his own functions the object of study, i. e. upon "reflection" (Locke); they are not merely, however, a knowledge of one's own states, but are emotion* of reflection, and as such they form within the " inner sense " the moral sense.
Thus the psychological root of the ethical was transplanted from the field of intellectual cognition to the feeling-side of the soul, and set in the immediate vicinity of the aesthetic. The good appeared an the beautiful in the world of will and action : it consists, like the beautiful, in a harmonious unity of the manifold, in a perfect devel opment of the natural endowments ; it satisfies and blesses as does the beautiful ; it is, like the beautiful, the object of an original a/yirveal fixed in man's deepest nature. This parallel ruled the literature of the eighteenth century from Shaftesbury on: "taste" is the fundamental faculty ethically as aesthetically. This was perhaps most distinctly expressed by Hutcheson, but with a turn which to some degree led away again from Shaftesbury's individual ism. For he understood by the " moral sense " — in the purely psychological meaning of "innateness" — an original faculty, essen tially alike in all men, and with the function of judging what is ethically to be approved. The metaphysical accessories of the
l'latonists and Cartesians were gladly thrown overboard, and in their stead he held fast the more eagerly — especially in opposition to the "selfish system" — to the principle that man possesses a natural feeling for the good as for the beautiful, and declared the analysis of this feeling to be the business of philosophy.
510 The Enlightenment : Practical Question*. [Pakt V.
The carrying over of this principle into the theoretical domain led in the Scottish School (cf . § 33, 8) to making the True parallel with the Good and the Beautiful, as the object of original approval, and thus assuming in " common sense " a kind of " logical sense. " Bat the principle of feeling as source of knowledge was proclaimed in afar more pronounced manner by Rousseau, who based bis deism upon the uncorrupted, natural feeling ' of man, in opposition to the cool intellectual analysis with which the purely theoretical Enlighten ment treated the religious life. This feeling-philosophy was carried out in a very indefinitely eclectic manner by the Dutch philosopher, Franz Hemsterhuys (of Groeningen, 1720-1790), and with quaint singularity by the talented enthusiast, Hamann, the " Wizard of the North. " *
8. It was, however, in the fusion of ethical and aesthetic investiga tions that the above theory of the feelings, prepared by Shaftesbury and Hutcheson, made its influence most felt The more the eudae- monistic morals was treated in a manner intelligible to the common mind, the more convenient it was for it to be able to invest the moral commands, as the object of a natural pleasure, with the garb of grace and attractiveness, and to be permitted to commend the good to the taste as something akin to the beautiful. The Scottish School, also, was not far from this mode of view, and Ferguson developed Shaftesbury's ideas in this manner with especial reference to the Leibniziau fundamental conception of perfection. The effect of this complication of thought for aesthetics, however, was that the beginnings toward a metaphysical treatment, which Shaftesbury had brought to the problems of the beautiful from the system of Plotinus, became completely overshadowed by the psychological method. The question asked was not, what the beautiful is, but how the feeling of the beautiful arises ; and in the solution of this question the explanation of the aesthetic was brought into more or less close connection with ethical relations. This shows itself, too, in the case of those writers upon aesthetics who stood closer to the sensualistic psychology than did the Scots. Thus Henry Home conceives of the enjoyment of the beautiful as a transition from the purely sensuous pacification of desires to" the moral" and intellectual joys, and holds that the arts have been invented for that refine ment of man's sensuous disposition which is requisite for his higher
1 Cf. the creed of the Savoyard Vicar in fimile, IV. 201 ff.
* Johann Georg Hamann (of Konigsberg, 1730-1788 ; collected writings ed. by Gildemeigter, Gotha, 1867-73) combines this line of thought with a pietism not far removed from orthodoxy in his thoughtful, but illogical and unclear form of expression.
Chap. 2, §36. ] Principles of Morah : Home, Burke. 511
destiny. He seeks, therefore, the realm of the beautiful in the higher senses, hearing and especially sight, and finds as the basis, a taste common to all men for order, regularity, and combination of the manifold into a unity. When he then further distinguishes between the "intrinsic" beauty which is immediately an "object of sense," and the beauty of " relation," these relations look essen tially toward what is for the common good ethically, in the ser vice of which beauty is thus placed. 1 Even Edmund Burke, in his effort to derive the aesthetic from elementary states of sensation in accordance with the method of associational psychology, is very strongly dependent upon the form given to the problems by contem porary moral philosophy. His attempt to determine the relation of the beautiful to the sublime — a task at which Home, also, had laboured, though with very little success * — proceeds from the antithesis of the selfish and the social impulses. That is held to be sublime which fills us with terror in an agreeable shudder, "a sort of delightful horror," while we are ourselves so far away that we feel removed from the danger of immediate pain : that is beau tiful, on the contrary, which is adapted to call forth in an agreeable manner the feelings either of sexual love or of human love in general.
In a manner similar to that of Home, Sulzer placed the feeling of the beautiful midway between that of the sensuously agreeable and that of the good, forming thus a transition from the one to the other. The possibility of this transfer he found in the intellectual factor which co-operates in our apprehension of the beautiful : it appeared to him — following the view of Leibniz (cf. § 34, 11) — as the feeling of harmonious unity in the manifold perceived by the senses. But just by reason of these presuppositions, the beautiful was for him valuable and perfect only when it was able to further the moral sense. Art, also, is thus drawn into the service of the morals of the Enlightenment, and the writer on aesthetics, who was so long celebrated in Germany, shows himself but a mechanical handicrafts man of Philistine moralising in his conception of art and its task. How infinitely freer and richer in esprit are the " Observations " which Kant instituted " concerning the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime," at the time when he, too, pursued, from the psycho logical standpoint, and with admirable knowledge of the world, the
« For more detailed treatment, we the art. Home (Karnes) by W. Windel- band in Srtrh und (trubrr't Knc, Vol. II. 38, 213 f.
1 According to Home the beautiful U sublime if it is great. The anlltheai* between the qualitatively and the quantitatively pleasing aeems to lie at the
i of hia unclear and wavering characterisations.
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.