(Such, at least, was the thought of the
philosopher
himself.
Windelband - History of Philosophy
Dilthey {Prevss.
Jahrb.
1879).
[Eng.
tr.
of the Ham.
Dram, and Education of Human Race in Bohn Lib.
; of Laoccoon, by Phillimorc, Loud.
1875 ; cf.
Sime, Lessing, Lond.
1873, 1879. ]
Among Herder's writings belong in this period, Ueber den Ursprung der
Sprache, 1772 ; Auch eine Philosophic der Geschichte der Menschheit, 1774 ; Vom Erkennen und Empftnden der menschlichen Seele, 1778 ; Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit, 1784 ff. [Eng. tr. , Lond. 1800]; Gott, Gesprdche fiber Spinoza's System, 1787 ; Briefe zur Beforderung der Humanitat, 1793 ff. (on his later philosophical literary activity, cf. below, Part
VI. ch. 2). Cf. R. Haym, H. nach seinem Leben und seineh Werken (Berlin, 1877-85) ; E. Melzer, H. ate Geschichtsphilosoph (Neisse, 1872) ; M. Kronen- berg, H. 's Philosophie (Heidi. 1889) [art. Herder in Enc. Brit, by J. Sully].
Cf. also J. Witte, Die Philosophie unserer Dichterheroen (Bonn, 1880).
CHAPTER I.
THE THEORETICAL
QUESTIONS.
"The proper study of mankind is man. " This word of Pope's is characteristic of the whole philosophy of the Enlightenment, not only in the practical sense that this philosophy finds the ultimate end of all scientific investigation to be always man's "happiness," but also, in the theoretical point of view, in so far as this philosophy, as a whole, aims to base all knowledge upon the observation of the actual processes of the psychical life. After Locke had set up the principle,1 that prior to all metaphysical considerations and contro versies the general question must be decided of how far human insight reaches, and that this in turn is possible only by exact exhi bition of the sources from which knowledge derives, and of the course of development by which it is brought about, — from that time epistemology, the theory of knowledge, was brought into the
front rank of philosophical interests, and at the same time empirical psychology was recognised as the authoritative and decisive court of last resort for epistemology. The legitimate reach of human ideas
should be judged by the way in which they arise. Thus experiential psychology with all the tacit assumptions which are customary in it becomes at once the basis of the whole philosophical view of the world, and the favourite science of the age, and is at the same time the instrument of mediation between science and general literature. As in this latter field, the predominant characteristic among both Englishmen and Germans was that of depicting minds and reflect ing or viewing one's self in the literary looking-glass, so philosophy should draw only the image of man and of the activities of his con sciousness. Societies for the " observation of man " were founded, all sorts of dilettante accounts of remarkable experiences were gar nered in large "magazines," and the government of the French Republic in its official system of instruction,1 replaced "philoso phy " by the sounding title, "Analyse de l'entendeinent humain. "
1 Introduction to the Essay. CI. M. Drobisch, Locke, Der Vorlaufer Kant's (ZeiUehr. f. exaete Philosophic, 1861).
; Cl. the highly summing Stances de* f! coles Normal, first year. 447
448 Tlie Enlightenment: Theoretical Question*. [Part V
While accordingly among the theoretical questions of the Enlight enment philosophy, those as to the origin, development, and know ing power of human ideas stood uppermost, these were from the beginning placed beneath the presupposition of popular metaphysics, viz. that of notice realism. There, " without," is a world of things, of bodies or of who knows what else, — and here is a mind which is to know them. How do the ideas, which reproduce within the mind that world of things, get into it ? This way of stating the problem of knowledge, which is like that of the ancient Greeks, controls the theoretical philosophy of the eighteenth century completely, and attains in it both most perfect formulation and decisive disintegra tion. Just in this respect the Cartesian metaphysics with its dualism of conscious and corporeal substances takes a controlling position through the entire age of the Enlightenment, and the popular empirical mode of expression in which it was presented by Locke, made this author the leader of the new movement. The methodical and metaphysical considerations which had reached a great develop ment, and one full of character in Descartes' important disciples, were now translated into the language of empirical psychology, and so arranged for the comprehension of the ordinary mind.
In connection with this, however, the terminism which was in herent in all modern philosophy, and which had been fostered especially in England (Hobbes), forced its way victoriously to the surface ; the qualitative " separation of the content and forms of consciousness from the outer world," to which alone they were nevertheless held to relate, was carried farther and deeper, step by step, until it at last reached its extreme consequence in Humes positivism. To the scientific dissolution which metaphysics thus experienced, corresponded in turn a popularly practical and preten tiously modest turning away from all speculation of more than ordinary refinement, or an all the more express profession of adherence to the truths of sound common sense.
Whatever metaphysical interest remained vigorous in the En lightenment literature attached itself to the religious consciousness and to those endeavours which hoped to attain out of the strife of religious Confessions to a universal and rational conviction. In the deism which extended over Europe from the English free-thinking movement, the positive views of the world and of life of the En lightenment period became concentrated, and while these convic tions at the outset developed out of the connection with the natural science metaphysics of the preceding century, and in consequence of this devoted an especially lively interest to the problems of teleology, they became shifted with time more and more from the
Chap. 1, § 33. ] Innate Ideat: Cambridge Platonists. 449
metaphysical to the moral, from the theoretical to the practical domain.
§ 33. Innate Ideas.
With regard to the question as to the origin of ideas the philoso phy of the Enlightenment found already in the field the sharply pronounced antithesis of Sensualism and nationalism.
1. The first of these had been defended by Hobbes on the theo retical as also upon the practical domain, inasmuch as he held man, in so far as he is an object of scientific knowledge, to be an entirely sensuous being, bound to the sensations and impulses of the body. All ideas, in his view, have their origin in the activity of the senses, and the mechanism of association was held to explain the arising of all other psychical structures from these beginnings. Such doctrines seemed to bring in question the super-sensuous dignity of man, and
that not only in the eyes of the orthodox opponents of Hobbes ; the same motive determined the Neo-Platonists also to lively opposi tion. Cudworth especially had distinguished himself in this respect ; in his combating of atheism ' he had Hobbes in mind as one of his main opponents, and in opposition to the doctrine that all human ideas arise from the operation of the outer world upon the mind, he appeals especially to mathematical conceptions. The corporeal phenomena never completely correspond to these ; the most we can say is that they resemble them. 1 In treating the conception of God, on the other hand, he lays claim to the argument of the consensus gentium, and carries it out* in most extensive manner to show that this idea is innate. In like manner, Herbert of Cherbury had already grounded all the main doctrines of natural religion and morals by the aid of the Stoic and Ciceronian doctrine of the communes notitioz.
The doctrine of innate ideas was conceived in a somewhat differ ent sense by Descartes * and his disciples. Here the psychological question as to the origin of ideas was less in mind, although this question, too, at a decisive passage in the Meditations (Med. III. ) received the answer that the innateness of the idea of God was to be conceived of as a sign which the creator had imprinted upon his creature; but on the whole the great metaphysician had laid more weight upon the point that the criterion of innateness consists in immediate evidence or certainty. Hence he had finally extended the designation (almost stripped of the psychological meaning be
1 In the Sytrmn ItUetlertuale, especially at the close, V. 6, 28 tt.
*Il>. V. 1, 108 (I. (p. H0. 1 B. M<wh. ).
' The whole fourth chapter la devoted to this task.
* Cf. B. Grimm, Descartes' Lehre rondtn angtbortnen Idttn, Jena, 1873.
450 The Enlightenment : Theoretical Questions. [Part V.
longing to it at the outset) of the Latin idea innatoe to all that lumine naturali dare et distincte percipitur. Direct assent had been adduced by Herbert of Cherbury also as the characteristic mark of innate ideas. 1
2. Locke's polemical attitude toward the maintenance of innate ideas has, indeed, an epistemological purpose, but is really deter mined only by the psycho-genetic point of view. He asks primarily only whether the soul at its birth brings complete knowledge into the world with and finds this question deserving of negative answer. 2 In consequence of this the development of the thesis "No innate principles in the mind" in the first book of Locke's Essay directed less against Descartes than against the English Neo-Platonists. s It combats first of all the consensus gentium, by an appeal to the experience of the nursery and of ethnology finds that neither theoretical nor practical principles are universally known or acknowledged. Nor does except from this demonstra tion (with an express turn against Herbert) even the idea of God, since this not only very different among different men, but is even entirely lacking with some. Nor does Locke allow the evasion
suggested by Henry More,4 that innate ideas might be contained in the soul not actually, but implicitly this could only mean, accord ing to Locke, that the soul capable of forming and approving them, — mark which would then hold for all ideas. The imme diate assent, finally, which was held to characterise that which innate, does not apply in the case of the most general abstract truths, just where wanted and where this immediate assent
found rests upon the fact that the meaning of the words and of their connection has been already apprehended at an earlier time. *
Thus the soul again stripped of all its original possessions at birth like an unwritten sheet (cf. p. 203), — white paper void of all characters. 6 In order to prove this positively, Locke then pledges himself to show that all our "ideas "'arise from experience Here he distinguishes simple and complex ideas in the assumption that the latter arise out of the former for the simple ideas, how-
De Veritate (1656), p. 76.
In which, moreover, Descartes completely agreed with him, for was Des cartes' opinion also that was not to be assumed that the mind of the child pursues metaphysics in its mother's womb. Op. (C. ) VIII. 269.
Cf. (and also for the following) G. Geil, Die Abhangigkeit Locke's von Descartes (Strassburg, 1887).
H. More, Antidot. adv. Ath. and and Locke, 22. Cf. Geil, op.
cit. , p. 49.
Locke, " 23 " The term idea
lb. II.
had lost its Platonic sense already in later Scholasticism
and taken on the more general meaning of any mental modification whatever Vorstellung).
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Chap. 1, § 33. ] Innate Idea* : Locke. 451
ever, he announces two different sources : sensation and rejtection, outer and inner perception. Under sensation he understands the ideas of the corporeal world, brought about by the medium of the bodily senses ; under reflection, on the other hand, the knowledge of the activities of the soul itself called out by the above process. Psycho-genetically, therefore, these two kinds of perception are so related that sensation is the occasion and the presupposition for reflection, — as regards their matter or content the relation is, that all content of ideas arises from sensation, while reflection, on the contrary, contains the consciousness of the functions performed in connection with this content.
3. To these functions, however, belonged also all those by means of which the combination of the elements of consciousness into complex ideas takes place, i. e. all processes of thought. And here
Locke left the relation ^of the intellectual activities to their original sensuous contents in a popular indefiniteness which gave occasion to the most various re-shapings of his teaching soon after. For, on the one hand, those activities appear as the "faculties '' of the mind, which in reflection becomes conscious of these its own modes of
functioning (as for example, the capacity of having ideas itself,1 "perception," is treated as the most original fact of reflection, to understand which every one is sent to his own experience) ; on the other hand, the mind, even in these relating activities, such as recollecting, distinguishing, comparing, connecting, etc. , is regarded throughout as passive and bound to the content of the sensation. Hence it was possible for the most various views to develop out of Locke's doctrine, according to the varying degree of self-activity which was ascribed to the mind in its process of connecting its ideas.
Of particular interest in this connection, by reason of the problems of epistemology and metaphysics derived from the Middle Ages, was the development of the abstract ideas out of the data of sensation. Like the greater part of English philosophers, Locke was an ad herent of Nominalism, which professed to see in general concepts nothing but internal, intellectual structures. In explaining these general ideas, however, Locke made more account of the co-opera tion of "signs," and in particular of language. Signs or words, when attached more or less arbitrarily to particular parts of ideas, make it possible to lay special stress upon these parts and bring them out from their original complexes, and thereby render possible the farther functions by which such isolated and fixed contents of
1 Essay, II. 0, 1 t
462 The Enlightenment : Theoretical Questions. [Pa*t V
consciousness are put into logical relations to one another. 1 Hence for Locke, as formerly for the Epicureans, and then for the Ter- minists, logic was coincident with the science of signs, semiotics. 1 By this means room was gained for a demonstrative science of con ceptions and for all abstract operations of the knowing mind, quite in the spirit of Occam, in spite of the sensualistic basis upon which all content of ideas was held to rest. None of these determinations were philosophically new, nor has their exposition in Locke any originality or independent power of thought : it is, however, smooth and simple, of agreeable transparency and easy to understand; it despises all scholastic form and learned terminology, glides skilfully over and away from all deeper problems, and thus made its author one of the most extensively read and influential writers in the history of philosophy.
4. Strongly as Locke had emphasised the independent existence of inner experience by the side of the outer (as followed from his metaphysical attachment to Descartes, on which see below, § 34, 1), he yet made the dependence of reflection upon sensation, as regards origin and content, so strong that it proved the decisive factor in the development of his doctrine. This transformation to complete sensualism proceeded along different paths.
In the epistemological and metaphysical development of Nomi nalism this transformation led with Locke's English successors to extreme consequences. Berkeley * not only declared the doctrine of the Reality of abstract conceptions to be the most extraordinary of all errors in metaphysics, but also — like the extreme Nominalists of the Middle Ages — denied the existence of abstract ideas within the mind itself. The illusory appearance of such ideas arises from the use of words as general terms ; but in truth, even in connection with such a word, we always think merely the sensuous idea, or the group of sensuous ideas, which at the beginning gave rise to that term. Every attempt to think the abstract alone shatters upon the sensuous idea, which always remains as the sole content of intellectual activity. For even the remembered ideas and partial ideas which can be separated out, have no other content than the original sense
1 The development of these logical relations between the ideational content* which have been singled out and fixed by means of the verbal signs, appears with Locke, under the name of the lumen naturale. Descartes had understood by this as well intuitive as also demonstrative knowledge, and had set all this natural knowing activity over against revelation ; Locke, who treats the intuitive with terministic reserve (cf. § 34, 1), restricts the signification of the "light of nature" to the logical operations and to the consciousness of the principles which obtain in these, according to the nature of the thinking faculty.
■' Essay, IV. 21, 4.
* Prinr. nf Human Knowledge, 5 ff.
Chap. 1, $ 33. ] Innate Ideas : Berkeley, Hume. 453
impressions, because an idea can never copy anything else than auother idea. Abstract ideas, therefore, are a fiction of the schools ; in the actual activity of thought none but sensuous particular ideas exist, and some of these can stand for or represent others similar to the in, on account of being designated by the same term.
David Hume adopted this doctrine in its full extent, and on the ground of this substituted for Locke's distiuction of outer and inner perception another antithesis with altered terminology, viz. that of the original and the copied. A content of consciousness is either original or the copy of an original, — either an '•impression" or an " idea. " All ideas, therefore, are copies of impressions, and there is no idea that has come into existence otherwise than by being a copy of an impression, or that has any other content than that which it has received from its corresponding impression. It ap peared, therefore, to be the task of philosophy to seek out the orig inal for even the apparently most abstract conceptions in some impression, and thereby to estimate the value for knowledge which the abstract conception has. To be sure, Hume understood by im
pressions by no means merely the elements of outer experience; he meant also those of inner experience. It was, therefore, accord ing to Locke's mode of expression, the simple ideas of sensation and reflection which he declared to be impressions, and the wide vision of a great thinker prevented him from falling into a short sighted sensualism.
5. A development of another sort, which yet led to a related goal, took place in connection with the aid of physiological psychology. Ix>cke had only thought of sensation as dependent upon the activity of the bodily senses, but had regarded the elaboration of seusation in the functions underlying reflection as a work of the mind; and though he avoided the question as to immaterial substance, he had throughout treated the intellectual activities in the narrower sense as something incorporeal and independent of the body. That this should be otherwise regarded, that thinkers should begin to consider the physical organism as the bearer or agent not only of the simple ideas, but also of their combination, was easily possible in view of the indecisive ambiguity of the Lockian doctrines, but was still more called out by one-sided conclusions drawn from Cartesian and Spimotistic theories.
Descartes, namely, had treated the whole psychical life of the animal as a mechanical process of the nervous system, while he had ascribed the human psychical life to the immaterial substance, the res cogitans. The more evident the completely sensuous nature of human ideation now seemed in consequence of Locke's investigation,
454 The EnliylUenment : Theoretical Question*. [Pajit V.
the nearer lay the question whether it was possible to maintain the position, that the same processes which in the animal seemed capa ble of being understood as nervous processes, should be traced back in the case of man to the activity of an immaterial psychical sub stance. — From another side, Spinoza's parallelism of the attributes worked in the same direction (cf. above, § 31, 9). According to this view a process in the bodily life corresponds to every process of the psychical life, without either process being the cause of th«
other, or one process being the original and the other the derived.
(Such, at least, was the thought of the philosopher himself. ) This had now been conceived of at first by its opponents as materialism, as if Spinoza meant that the fundamental process was the bodik. and the psychical process only its accompanying phenomenon. But
scientists,
It is interesting that the consequences of these combinations of thought appeared in literary form first in Germany. Here as earlv as 1697 a physician named Pancratius Wolff taught in his Cogita- tiones Medico-legales that thoughts are mechanical activities of the human body, especially of the brain, and in the year 1713 appeared the anonymous Correspondence concerning the Nature of the Soul
( Briefwechsel vom Wesen der Seele),1 in which, screened by pious refutations, the doctrines of Bacon, Descartes, and Hobbes are car ried out to an anthropological materialism. A distinction of degree only is recognised between the psychical life of the animal and that of man ; ideas and activities of the will are without exception re garded as functions of excited nerve-fibres, and practice and educa tion are given as the means by which the higher position of man is reached and maintained.
In England the procedure was more cautious. In a way similar to that in which Locke had carried out the Baconian programme, men now studied primarily the internal mechanism of the psychical activ ities, and the development of the higher out of the elementary states according to purely psychological laws : such was the work of Peter Brown in the epistemological field, and that of others upon the domain of the activities of the will. In the same manner proceeded
1 Of which Lange gives an account, Qesrh. det Mat. , I. 319 ff. (3d ed. [Eng. tr. , History of Materialism, IL 37 £LJ ).
among its adherents also, both physicians and natural
such as the influential Boerhave of Leyden, a mode of thought in clining strongly toward materialism soon substituted itself for the master's doctrine. This took place in connection with the expe riences of experimental physiology which, following Descartes" stimulus, employed itself largely with a study of reflex movements.
Chap. 1, § 33. ] Innate Idea* : Hartley, Lamettrie. 455
David Hartley also, who brought into common use the expression association ' (which had already been used before this) for the com binations and relations which arise between the elements. He wished to conceive these relations, which he analysed with all the care of a natural scientist, solely as psychical processes, and held fast to their complete incoinparableness with material processes, even with the most delicate forms of corporeal motion. But he was also a physi cian, and the connection of the mental life with the states of the body was so clear to him that he made the constant correspondence of the two and the mutual relationship of the psychical functions and the nervous excitations, which, at that time, were termed " vibra tions,"* the main subject-matter of his psychology of association. In this work he held fast to the qualitative difference between the two parallel series of phenomena and left the metaphysical question, as to the substance lying at their basis, undecided : but with refer ence to causality he fell insensibly into materialism, in that he con ceived of the mechanism of the nervous states as ultimately the
primary event, and that of the psychical activities as only the phe nomenon accompanying this event To simple nervous excitations correspond simple sensations or desires ; to complex, complex. This scientific theory, to be sure, involved him in serious contradictions with his pious faith, and the " Observations " show how earnestly and fruitlessly he struggled between the two. Quite the same is true of Prientley, who even made the farther concession to material ism of letting fall the heterogeneity between the psychical and bodily processes, and desiring to replace psychology completely by nerve physiology. On this account he also abandoned entirely the standpoint of inner experience defended by the Scots, but at the same time desired to unite with his system the warmly supported conviction of a teleological deism.
Anthropological materialism was worked out in its baldest form by the Frenchman, Lamettrie. Convinced by medical observations upon himself and others of the complete dependence of the mind upon the body, he studied the mechanism of life in animals and men, following Boerhave's suggestions, and Descartes' conception of the former seemed to him completely applicable to the latter also. The distinction between the two, which is only one of degree, permits for human psychical activities also no other explanation than that they are mechanical functions of the brain. On this account it is
1 In the later, especially the Scottish literature, and in particular with Thomas lir'nen. the expression " association " U often replaced by tuggtttinn. "
* Instead of this term Erasmus Darwin Introduced the expression, motions of the seusorium. "
456 The Enlightenment : Theoretical Questions. [Part V
an encroachment of metaphysics to ascribe to the "mind" a sub stantiality of its own in addition to that of matter. The conception of matter as that of a body which is in itself dead and needs mind or spirit as its moving principle, is an arbitrary and false abstrac tion : experience shows that matter moves itself and lives. It is just Descartes' mechanics which has proved this, says Lamettrie, and therefore the inevitable consequence of this mechanics is mate rialism. And that all psychical life is only one of the functions of the body, is evident from the fact that not a single content is found in the mental life which is not due to the excitation of some one of the senses. If we think of a man as the Church Father Arnobius proposed, — so writes Lamettrie,1 to establish his sensualism which had developed from Locke, — who from his birth on had been excluded from all connection with his kind, and restricted to the experience of a few senses, we should find in him no other ideational contents than those brought to him through just these senses.
6. Less important in principle, but all the more widely extended in the literary world, were the other re-shapings which Locke's doctrine experienced in France. Voltaire, who domesticated it among his countrymen by his Lettres stir les Anglais, gave it a com pletely sensualistic stamp, and even showed himself — though with sceptical reserve — not disinclined to entrust to the Creator the power of providing the I, which is a corporeal body, with the capacity of thinking also. This sceptical sensualism became the fundamental note of the French Enlightenment. * Condillac, who at the beginning had only expounded Locke's doctrine and defended it against other systems, professed his adherence to this sceptical sensualism in his influential Traite" des Sensations. Whatever the mind may be, the content of its conscious activities is derived solely from sense-perception. Condillac develops the theory of associational psychology in connection with the fiction of a statue, which, equipped only with capacity of sensation, receives one after another the excitations of the different senses which are added to and by this means gradually unfolds an intellectual life like that of man. Here the fundamental idea that the mere co-existence of different sensations in the same consciousness brings with of itself the sensation of their relation to each other and to the
At the close of the Histoire Naturtlle de VAme. Cf. also above, p. 225,
note
The same mode of thought asserts itself also in the beginnings of aesthetic
criticism in the form of the principle that the essence of all art consists in the "imitation of beautiful Nature. " The type of this conception was E. Batttuz
(1713-1780) (1746).
with his treatise, Let Beaux Arts riduits a un meme Principe
a1 1.
it
it,
is
Chap. 1, § 33. ] Innate Ideas : Condillac, Diderot. 457
object or the self. In accordance with this principle the process is depicted by which all the manifold psychical activities become unfolded out of perception : in the theoretical series, by virtue of the differences in intensity and in repetition of sensations, there grow successively attention, recognising recollection, distinction, com parison, judgment, inference, imagination, and expectation of the future; and finally with the help of signs, especially those of language, arise abstraction and the grasping of general principles. But in addition to sensation, perception has also the feeling-element of pleasure and pain, and out of this, in connection with the move ment of ideas, develop desire, love and hate, hope, fear,1 and — as the result of all such changes of the practical consciousness —
finally, the moral will. So knowledge and morality grow upon the soil of the sensibility.
This systematic construction had great success. The systematic impulse, which was repressed in the metaphysical field (cf. § 34, 7), threw itself with all the greater energy upon this "analyst* of the hnman mind" as a substitute; and as Condillac himself had already woven many acute observations into his exposition of the develop ment process, so a whole throng of adherents found opportunity to take part in the completion of this stiucture by slight changes and sin[tings of the phases, by innovations in nomenclature and by more or less valuable deductions. The Government of the . Revolu tion recognised as philosophy only this study of the empirical development of intelligence, and Destutt de Tracy gave it later the name "Ideology. ''1 So it came about that at the beginning of our century philosophers were in France usually called ideologists.
7. With reference to the nature of the mind in which these trans formations of sensation (sentir) were held to take place, a great part of the ideologists remained by Condillac's positivistic reserve ; others went on from Voltaire's problematical to Lamettrie's assertive mate rialism, — at first, in Hartley's fashion emphasising the thorough going dependence of combinations of ideas upon nervous processes, then with express maintenance of the materiality of the psychical activities. This development is most clearly to be seen in the case of Diderot. He set out from the position of Shaftesbury and Locke, but the sensualistic literature became more potent from step to step
1 In toe development of the practical series of conscious acta, the Influence of Descartes' and Spinoza's theory of the emotions and passions asserted itself with Condillac and his disciples, as also in part among the English associa- Uunal psychologists.
* It U not impossible that this nomenclature in case of de Tracy was intended to be the counterpart to Fichie's " Wissenschaftslehre," — Science of Knowl edge (cf. below. Pan VI. ch. 8).
458 The Enlightenment : Theoretical Questions. [Part V.
in the Editor of the Encyclopaedia ; he followed up the hypotheses of hylozoism1 (cf. below, § 34, 9), and finally took part in the com
of the Sy8thne de la Nature. This work set forth the human psychical activities within the framework of its metaphysics as the fine invisible motions of the nerves, and treated their genetic process just as Lamettrie had done. Among the later ideologists
Cabanis is prominent in this respect bf the newness of his physio logical point of view ; he takes account of the progress of natural science in so far as to seek the conditions of the nerves, to which man's psychical states (le moral) must be referred, no longer merely in mechanical motions, but in chemical changes. Ideation is the secretion of the brain, just as other secretions are produced by other organs.
In opposition to this, another line of ideology held fast to Locke's principle that all content of ideas may indeed be due to the senses, but that in the functions directed toward combining such content the peculiar character of the mind's nature shows itself. The leader of this line of thought was Bonnet. He, too, in a manner similar to that of Condillac, adopts the mode of consideration commended by Lamettrie, adverting to Arnobius, but he is much too well-schooled as an investigator of Nature to fail to see that sensation can never be resolved into elements of motion, that its relation to physical states is synthetic, but not analytic. Hence he sees in the mechanism of the nervous system only the causa occasionalis for the spontaneous reaction of the mind, and the substantiality of the mind seems to him to be proved by the unity of conscioumess. He connects with this theory all sorts of fantastic hypotheses. ' Religious ideas speak in his assumption of the immaterial mind-substance, but sensualism admits an activity of this substance only in connection with the body ; for this reason, in order to explain immortality and the un interrupted activity of the mind, Bonnet helps himself by the hypothesis of an aethereal body which is joined essentially with the soul and takes on a coarser material external organism, according to its dwelling-place in each particular case.
This union of sensualism with the maintenance of self-subsistent substantiality and capacity of reaction on the part of the mind passed over to Bonnet's countryman, Rousseau, who combated with its aid the psychological theories of the Encyclopaedists. He found that this characteristic quality of the mind, the unity of its function, evinces itself in feeling (sentiment), and opposed this original natu-
- ■ > The decisive transition-writing is cPAlembert's Dream. 2 In the Paling&netie* Philosophiques.
position
Chap. 1, § 33. ] Innate Ideas : Bonnet, Rousseau, Reid. 459
ralness of its essence to the cold and indifferent mechanism of ideas, which would debase the mind to an unconditional dependence upon the outer world. The feeling of individuality rebelled with him against a doctrine according to which there is nothing in man's consciousness but the play, as if upon an indifferent stage, of a mass of foreign contents accidentally coming together, which unite and then separate again. He wished to bring out the thought that it is not the case that the mental life merely takes place within us, but that it is rather true that we are ourselves present as actively deter mining personalities. This conviction dictated Rousseau's opposi tion to the intellectualistic Enlightenment, which in the sensualism of Gondii lac and of the Encyclopaedists wished to regard man's inner life as only a mechanical product of sensational elements excited from without: to psychological atomism Rousseau opposes the principle of the Monadology.
In the same manner, and perhaps not without influence from Rousseau in his arguments, St. Martin raised his voice against the prevailing system of Condillac ; he even came out of his mystical retreat to protest in the sessions of the Ecoles Normales ' against the superficiality of sensualism. The ideologists, he says, talk a great deal about human nature; but instead of observing it they devote their energies to put it together (composer).
8. The Scottish philosophers are the psychological opponents of sensualism in all its forms. The common ground on which this contrast developed is that of psychology regarded as philosophy.
For Reid, also, and his disciples seek the task of philosophy in the investigation of man and his mental capacities ; indeed, they fixed still more energetically and one-sidedly than the various schools of their opponents the methodical point of view that all philosophy must be empirical psychology. But this view of the human physi cal activity and its development is diametrically opposed to that of the sensualists. The latter hold the simple, the former the com plex, the latter the individual ideas, the former the judgments, the latter the sensuous, the former the internal, the latter the particular, the former the general, to be the original content of the mind's activity. Reid acknowledges that Berkeley's idealism and Hume's scepticism are as correct consequences from Locke's principle as is Hartley's materialism ; but just the absurdity of these consequences refutes the principle.
In opposition to this, Reid will now apply the Baconian method of induction to the facts of inner perception in order to attain by an
i Seances dts /■>. . Vorm. , UI. 01 ft
460 The Enlightenment: Theoretical Questions. [Part V.
analysis of these to the original tiiiths, which are given from the beginning in connection with the nature of the human mind, and which assert themselves in the development of its activities as determining principles. Thus, putting aside all help of physiology, the fundamental science psychology shall be perfected as a kind of natural science of inner observation. In the solution of this task, Reid himself, and after him especially Dugald Stewart, develop a considerable breadth and comprehensiveness of vision in the appre hension of the inner processes and a great acuteness in the analysis of their essential content : a multitude of valuable observations on
the genetic processes of the mental life is contained in their exten sive investigations. And yet these investigations lack in fruitful- ness of ideas as well as in energetically comprehensive cogency. For they everywhere confuse the demonstration of that which can be discovered as universally valid content in the psychical func tions, with the assumption that this is also genetically the original and determining : and since this philosophy has no other principle than that of psychological fact, it regards without criticism all that can in this manner be demonstrated to be actual content of mental activity, as self-evident truth. The sum-total of these principles is designated as common sense, and as such is held to form the supreme rule for all philosophical knowledge.
9. In the philosophy of the German Enlightenment all these tendencies mingle with the after-workings of the Cartesian and Leibnizian rationalism. The twofold tendency in the method of this latter system had taken on a fixed systematic form through the agency of Christian Wolff. According to him, all subjects should be regarded both from the point of view of the eternal truths and from that of the contingent truths : for every province of reality there is a knowledge through conceptions and another through facts, an a priori science proceeding from the intellect and an a posteriori science arising from perception. These two sciences were to combine in the result in such a way that, for example, em pirical psychology must show the actual existence in fact of all those activities which, in rational psychology, were deduced from the metaphysical conception of the soul, and from the " faculties " resulting from this conception. On the other hand, following Leib niz's precedent, the distinction in value of the two modes of knowl edge was so far retained as to regard only the intellectual knowledge as clear and distinct insight, while empirical (or, as they said at that time, historical) knowledge was regarded as a more or less obscure and confused idea of things.
Psychologically, the two kinds of knowledge were divided, in
Chap 1, § 33. ] Innate Ideas : Wolff, Lambert. 461
accordance with the Cartesian model, into the idea; innatat and the idem adventitim. Yet Wolff himself, agreeably to the metaphysical direction of his thought, laid less weight upon the genetic element. But the opposite was the case with his adherents and opponents, who were already standing under the influence of the French and
Knglish theories. The general course of the development was that the importance which Leibniz and Wolff had conceded to empiricism was increased more and more by the penetration of the Lockian
The psychological method gained the preponderance over the metaphysico-ontological step by step, and within the psy chological method increasing concessions were made to sensualism, of such a nature that ultimately not only earnest men of science like Rudiger and"Lossius, but especially a great part of the "popu lar philosophers supported completely the doctrine that all human ideas arise from sense-perception. The motley and irregular series of stages in which this process completed itself has only a literary- historical interest,1 because no new arguments came to light in con nection with it.
Only one of these men used the psychologico-epistemological dualism which prevailed in the German philosophy of the Enlight. enment, to make an original and fruitful turn. Heinrich Lambert,
who was fully abreast of the natural science of his time, had grown into intelligent sympathy with the mathematico-logical method as completely as he had into an insight into the worth of experience : and in the phenomenology of his New Qrganon, in attempting to fix the limits for the psychological significance of these two elements of knowledge, he disposed the mixture of the a priori and a posteriori constituents requisite for knowing reality, in a way that led to the distinction ofform and content in ideas. The content-elements of thought, he taught, can be given only by per
ception : but their mode of connection, the form of relation which is thought between them, is not given from without, but is a proper activity of the mind. This distinction could be read out of Locke's ambiguous exposition:1 but no one had conceived it so sharply and precisely from this point of view as Lambert. And this point of view was of great imj>ortanee for the genetic consideration of the ideas of the human mind. It followed from that was neither possible to derive the content from the mere form, nor the form of knowledge from the content. The first refuted the logical rational
Cf. W. Winilflband, Onrh. d. nrurrrn Phttntnphlr. $$ KUA.
Ct. thr dem'inmratlon in O. Harwnnwin, Lurke'i l. *hrt ron der mrn*r\ lieken Ertrnntniu in Vergleif. htmg mil Leibnis' KritUt dentil** (l^ipa 1801, Abhandl d. tHrht. On. d. WiMMtueh. ).
principles.
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462 the Enlightenment : Theoretical Questions. [Pam V.
ism with which Wolff would spin all ontology and metaphysics oat from the most general principles of logic, and ultimately from the one principle of contradiction ; the other took the basis away from sensualism, which thought that with the contents of perception the knowledge also of their relations was immediately given. Out of this grew for the " improvement of metaphysics " the task of dis solving out these relating forms from the total mass of experience, and of making clear their relation to content. But Lambert sought in vain for a single unifying principle for this purpose,1 and his " Archilektonik" finally contented itself with making a collection of them not based on any internal principle.
10. While all these theories as to the origin of human ideas were flying about in the literary market, the reconciling word upon the problem of innate ideas had been long spoken, but was waiting in a manuscript in the Hanoverian library for the powerful effect which its publication was to produce. Leibniz, in his Nouveaux Essais, had provided the Lockian ideology with a critical commentary in detail, and had embodied within it the deepest thoughts of his phi losophy and the finest conclusions of his Monadology.
Among the arguments with which Locke combated the doctrine that ideas were innate, had been that with which he maintained that there could be nothing in the mind of which the mind knew nothing. This principle had also been pronounced by him 2 in the form that the soul thinks not always. By this principle the Car tesian definition of the soul as a res cogitans was brought into ques tion : for the essential characteristic of a substance cannot be denied it at any moment. In this sense the question had been often dis cussed between the schools. Leibniz, however, was pointed by his Monadology to a peculiar intermediate position. Since, in his view, the soul, like every monad, is a " representing " power, it must have perceptions at every moment: but since all monads, even those which constitute matter, are souls, these perceptions cannot pos sibly all be clear and distinct. The solution of the problem lies, therefore, again in the conception of unconscious representations or
petites perceptions (cf. above, § 31). The soul (as every monad) always has ideas or representations, but not always conscious, not always clear and distinct ideas ; its life consists in the development of the unconscious to conscious, of the obscure and confused to clear and distinct ideas or representations.
In this aspect Leibniz now introduced an extremely significant
1 Thi* is best seen in his interesting correspondence with Kant, printed in the works of the latter.
« Essay II. 1, 10 f.
Chap. 1, § 33. ] Innate Idea* : Leibniz. 463
conception into psychology and epistemology. He distinguished between the states in which the soul merely has ideas, and those in which it is conscious of them. The former he designated as percep tion, the latter as apperception. 1 He understood, therefore, by apperception the process by which unconscious, obscure, and con fused representations are raised into clear and distinct consciousness, and thereby recognised by the soul as its own and ajypropriated by
The genetic process of the psychical life consists in the changing of unconscious into conscious representations or ideas, in taking up perceptions into the clearness and distinctness of self-
consciousness. In the light of the Monadology Leibniz's methodo logical view of the empirical or contingent truths (cf. § 30, 7) took on a peculiar colouring. The fact that the monads have no windows makes it impossible to conceive of perception metaphysically as a working of things upon the soul : * the ideas of sense, or sense-pres entations, must rather be thought as activities which the soul, by virtue of the pre-established harmony, develops in an obscure and confused manner (as petites perceptions), and the transformation which takes place in them can be regarded only as a process of making them distinct and of clearing them up, — as a taking up into self-consciousness, as apperception.
Sensibility and understanding, the distinction between which with Leibniz coincides with that of different degrees of clearness and distinctness, have, therefore, in his view, the same content, only
that the former has in obscure and confused representation what the latter possesses as clear and distinct. Nothing comes into the soul from without; that which it consciously represents has been already unconsciously contained within it: and on the other hand, the soul cannot bring forth anything in its conscious ideas which has not been within it from the beginning. Hence Leibniz must decide that in a certain sense, that is, unconsciously, all ideas are innate ; and that in another sense, that consciously, no idea innate in the human soul. He designates this relation, which had been previously sketched in the principles of the Monadology, by the name virtual innateness of ideas.
This thought, which at once treated as the controlling point of view at the opening of the New Essays, carried out especially with reference to the universal or eternal truths. This was indeed the burning question here the one party (the Neo-1'latonists, and in part the Cartesians) maintained that these were innate "axtu-
Print, it la Nat. el At la GrOrt, where the relationship with the Lockian redaction comes out strongly Xout. Em. II.
• . V. B.
1873, 1879. ]
Among Herder's writings belong in this period, Ueber den Ursprung der
Sprache, 1772 ; Auch eine Philosophic der Geschichte der Menschheit, 1774 ; Vom Erkennen und Empftnden der menschlichen Seele, 1778 ; Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit, 1784 ff. [Eng. tr. , Lond. 1800]; Gott, Gesprdche fiber Spinoza's System, 1787 ; Briefe zur Beforderung der Humanitat, 1793 ff. (on his later philosophical literary activity, cf. below, Part
VI. ch. 2). Cf. R. Haym, H. nach seinem Leben und seineh Werken (Berlin, 1877-85) ; E. Melzer, H. ate Geschichtsphilosoph (Neisse, 1872) ; M. Kronen- berg, H. 's Philosophie (Heidi. 1889) [art. Herder in Enc. Brit, by J. Sully].
Cf. also J. Witte, Die Philosophie unserer Dichterheroen (Bonn, 1880).
CHAPTER I.
THE THEORETICAL
QUESTIONS.
"The proper study of mankind is man. " This word of Pope's is characteristic of the whole philosophy of the Enlightenment, not only in the practical sense that this philosophy finds the ultimate end of all scientific investigation to be always man's "happiness," but also, in the theoretical point of view, in so far as this philosophy, as a whole, aims to base all knowledge upon the observation of the actual processes of the psychical life. After Locke had set up the principle,1 that prior to all metaphysical considerations and contro versies the general question must be decided of how far human insight reaches, and that this in turn is possible only by exact exhi bition of the sources from which knowledge derives, and of the course of development by which it is brought about, — from that time epistemology, the theory of knowledge, was brought into the
front rank of philosophical interests, and at the same time empirical psychology was recognised as the authoritative and decisive court of last resort for epistemology. The legitimate reach of human ideas
should be judged by the way in which they arise. Thus experiential psychology with all the tacit assumptions which are customary in it becomes at once the basis of the whole philosophical view of the world, and the favourite science of the age, and is at the same time the instrument of mediation between science and general literature. As in this latter field, the predominant characteristic among both Englishmen and Germans was that of depicting minds and reflect ing or viewing one's self in the literary looking-glass, so philosophy should draw only the image of man and of the activities of his con sciousness. Societies for the " observation of man " were founded, all sorts of dilettante accounts of remarkable experiences were gar nered in large "magazines," and the government of the French Republic in its official system of instruction,1 replaced "philoso phy " by the sounding title, "Analyse de l'entendeinent humain. "
1 Introduction to the Essay. CI. M. Drobisch, Locke, Der Vorlaufer Kant's (ZeiUehr. f. exaete Philosophic, 1861).
; Cl. the highly summing Stances de* f! coles Normal, first year. 447
448 Tlie Enlightenment: Theoretical Question*. [Part V
While accordingly among the theoretical questions of the Enlight enment philosophy, those as to the origin, development, and know ing power of human ideas stood uppermost, these were from the beginning placed beneath the presupposition of popular metaphysics, viz. that of notice realism. There, " without," is a world of things, of bodies or of who knows what else, — and here is a mind which is to know them. How do the ideas, which reproduce within the mind that world of things, get into it ? This way of stating the problem of knowledge, which is like that of the ancient Greeks, controls the theoretical philosophy of the eighteenth century completely, and attains in it both most perfect formulation and decisive disintegra tion. Just in this respect the Cartesian metaphysics with its dualism of conscious and corporeal substances takes a controlling position through the entire age of the Enlightenment, and the popular empirical mode of expression in which it was presented by Locke, made this author the leader of the new movement. The methodical and metaphysical considerations which had reached a great develop ment, and one full of character in Descartes' important disciples, were now translated into the language of empirical psychology, and so arranged for the comprehension of the ordinary mind.
In connection with this, however, the terminism which was in herent in all modern philosophy, and which had been fostered especially in England (Hobbes), forced its way victoriously to the surface ; the qualitative " separation of the content and forms of consciousness from the outer world," to which alone they were nevertheless held to relate, was carried farther and deeper, step by step, until it at last reached its extreme consequence in Humes positivism. To the scientific dissolution which metaphysics thus experienced, corresponded in turn a popularly practical and preten tiously modest turning away from all speculation of more than ordinary refinement, or an all the more express profession of adherence to the truths of sound common sense.
Whatever metaphysical interest remained vigorous in the En lightenment literature attached itself to the religious consciousness and to those endeavours which hoped to attain out of the strife of religious Confessions to a universal and rational conviction. In the deism which extended over Europe from the English free-thinking movement, the positive views of the world and of life of the En lightenment period became concentrated, and while these convic tions at the outset developed out of the connection with the natural science metaphysics of the preceding century, and in consequence of this devoted an especially lively interest to the problems of teleology, they became shifted with time more and more from the
Chap. 1, § 33. ] Innate Ideat: Cambridge Platonists. 449
metaphysical to the moral, from the theoretical to the practical domain.
§ 33. Innate Ideas.
With regard to the question as to the origin of ideas the philoso phy of the Enlightenment found already in the field the sharply pronounced antithesis of Sensualism and nationalism.
1. The first of these had been defended by Hobbes on the theo retical as also upon the practical domain, inasmuch as he held man, in so far as he is an object of scientific knowledge, to be an entirely sensuous being, bound to the sensations and impulses of the body. All ideas, in his view, have their origin in the activity of the senses, and the mechanism of association was held to explain the arising of all other psychical structures from these beginnings. Such doctrines seemed to bring in question the super-sensuous dignity of man, and
that not only in the eyes of the orthodox opponents of Hobbes ; the same motive determined the Neo-Platonists also to lively opposi tion. Cudworth especially had distinguished himself in this respect ; in his combating of atheism ' he had Hobbes in mind as one of his main opponents, and in opposition to the doctrine that all human ideas arise from the operation of the outer world upon the mind, he appeals especially to mathematical conceptions. The corporeal phenomena never completely correspond to these ; the most we can say is that they resemble them. 1 In treating the conception of God, on the other hand, he lays claim to the argument of the consensus gentium, and carries it out* in most extensive manner to show that this idea is innate. In like manner, Herbert of Cherbury had already grounded all the main doctrines of natural religion and morals by the aid of the Stoic and Ciceronian doctrine of the communes notitioz.
The doctrine of innate ideas was conceived in a somewhat differ ent sense by Descartes * and his disciples. Here the psychological question as to the origin of ideas was less in mind, although this question, too, at a decisive passage in the Meditations (Med. III. ) received the answer that the innateness of the idea of God was to be conceived of as a sign which the creator had imprinted upon his creature; but on the whole the great metaphysician had laid more weight upon the point that the criterion of innateness consists in immediate evidence or certainty. Hence he had finally extended the designation (almost stripped of the psychological meaning be
1 In the Sytrmn ItUetlertuale, especially at the close, V. 6, 28 tt.
*Il>. V. 1, 108 (I. (p. H0. 1 B. M<wh. ).
' The whole fourth chapter la devoted to this task.
* Cf. B. Grimm, Descartes' Lehre rondtn angtbortnen Idttn, Jena, 1873.
450 The Enlightenment : Theoretical Questions. [Part V.
longing to it at the outset) of the Latin idea innatoe to all that lumine naturali dare et distincte percipitur. Direct assent had been adduced by Herbert of Cherbury also as the characteristic mark of innate ideas. 1
2. Locke's polemical attitude toward the maintenance of innate ideas has, indeed, an epistemological purpose, but is really deter mined only by the psycho-genetic point of view. He asks primarily only whether the soul at its birth brings complete knowledge into the world with and finds this question deserving of negative answer. 2 In consequence of this the development of the thesis "No innate principles in the mind" in the first book of Locke's Essay directed less against Descartes than against the English Neo-Platonists. s It combats first of all the consensus gentium, by an appeal to the experience of the nursery and of ethnology finds that neither theoretical nor practical principles are universally known or acknowledged. Nor does except from this demonstra tion (with an express turn against Herbert) even the idea of God, since this not only very different among different men, but is even entirely lacking with some. Nor does Locke allow the evasion
suggested by Henry More,4 that innate ideas might be contained in the soul not actually, but implicitly this could only mean, accord ing to Locke, that the soul capable of forming and approving them, — mark which would then hold for all ideas. The imme diate assent, finally, which was held to characterise that which innate, does not apply in the case of the most general abstract truths, just where wanted and where this immediate assent
found rests upon the fact that the meaning of the words and of their connection has been already apprehended at an earlier time. *
Thus the soul again stripped of all its original possessions at birth like an unwritten sheet (cf. p. 203), — white paper void of all characters. 6 In order to prove this positively, Locke then pledges himself to show that all our "ideas "'arise from experience Here he distinguishes simple and complex ideas in the assumption that the latter arise out of the former for the simple ideas, how-
De Veritate (1656), p. 76.
In which, moreover, Descartes completely agreed with him, for was Des cartes' opinion also that was not to be assumed that the mind of the child pursues metaphysics in its mother's womb. Op. (C. ) VIII. 269.
Cf. (and also for the following) G. Geil, Die Abhangigkeit Locke's von Descartes (Strassburg, 1887).
H. More, Antidot. adv. Ath. and and Locke, 22. Cf. Geil, op.
cit. , p. 49.
Locke, " 23 " The term idea
lb. II.
had lost its Platonic sense already in later Scholasticism
and taken on the more general meaning of any mental modification whatever Vorstellung).
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Chap. 1, § 33. ] Innate Idea* : Locke. 451
ever, he announces two different sources : sensation and rejtection, outer and inner perception. Under sensation he understands the ideas of the corporeal world, brought about by the medium of the bodily senses ; under reflection, on the other hand, the knowledge of the activities of the soul itself called out by the above process. Psycho-genetically, therefore, these two kinds of perception are so related that sensation is the occasion and the presupposition for reflection, — as regards their matter or content the relation is, that all content of ideas arises from sensation, while reflection, on the contrary, contains the consciousness of the functions performed in connection with this content.
3. To these functions, however, belonged also all those by means of which the combination of the elements of consciousness into complex ideas takes place, i. e. all processes of thought. And here
Locke left the relation ^of the intellectual activities to their original sensuous contents in a popular indefiniteness which gave occasion to the most various re-shapings of his teaching soon after. For, on the one hand, those activities appear as the "faculties '' of the mind, which in reflection becomes conscious of these its own modes of
functioning (as for example, the capacity of having ideas itself,1 "perception," is treated as the most original fact of reflection, to understand which every one is sent to his own experience) ; on the other hand, the mind, even in these relating activities, such as recollecting, distinguishing, comparing, connecting, etc. , is regarded throughout as passive and bound to the content of the sensation. Hence it was possible for the most various views to develop out of Locke's doctrine, according to the varying degree of self-activity which was ascribed to the mind in its process of connecting its ideas.
Of particular interest in this connection, by reason of the problems of epistemology and metaphysics derived from the Middle Ages, was the development of the abstract ideas out of the data of sensation. Like the greater part of English philosophers, Locke was an ad herent of Nominalism, which professed to see in general concepts nothing but internal, intellectual structures. In explaining these general ideas, however, Locke made more account of the co-opera tion of "signs," and in particular of language. Signs or words, when attached more or less arbitrarily to particular parts of ideas, make it possible to lay special stress upon these parts and bring them out from their original complexes, and thereby render possible the farther functions by which such isolated and fixed contents of
1 Essay, II. 0, 1 t
462 The Enlightenment : Theoretical Questions. [Pa*t V
consciousness are put into logical relations to one another. 1 Hence for Locke, as formerly for the Epicureans, and then for the Ter- minists, logic was coincident with the science of signs, semiotics. 1 By this means room was gained for a demonstrative science of con ceptions and for all abstract operations of the knowing mind, quite in the spirit of Occam, in spite of the sensualistic basis upon which all content of ideas was held to rest. None of these determinations were philosophically new, nor has their exposition in Locke any originality or independent power of thought : it is, however, smooth and simple, of agreeable transparency and easy to understand; it despises all scholastic form and learned terminology, glides skilfully over and away from all deeper problems, and thus made its author one of the most extensively read and influential writers in the history of philosophy.
4. Strongly as Locke had emphasised the independent existence of inner experience by the side of the outer (as followed from his metaphysical attachment to Descartes, on which see below, § 34, 1), he yet made the dependence of reflection upon sensation, as regards origin and content, so strong that it proved the decisive factor in the development of his doctrine. This transformation to complete sensualism proceeded along different paths.
In the epistemological and metaphysical development of Nomi nalism this transformation led with Locke's English successors to extreme consequences. Berkeley * not only declared the doctrine of the Reality of abstract conceptions to be the most extraordinary of all errors in metaphysics, but also — like the extreme Nominalists of the Middle Ages — denied the existence of abstract ideas within the mind itself. The illusory appearance of such ideas arises from the use of words as general terms ; but in truth, even in connection with such a word, we always think merely the sensuous idea, or the group of sensuous ideas, which at the beginning gave rise to that term. Every attempt to think the abstract alone shatters upon the sensuous idea, which always remains as the sole content of intellectual activity. For even the remembered ideas and partial ideas which can be separated out, have no other content than the original sense
1 The development of these logical relations between the ideational content* which have been singled out and fixed by means of the verbal signs, appears with Locke, under the name of the lumen naturale. Descartes had understood by this as well intuitive as also demonstrative knowledge, and had set all this natural knowing activity over against revelation ; Locke, who treats the intuitive with terministic reserve (cf. § 34, 1), restricts the signification of the "light of nature" to the logical operations and to the consciousness of the principles which obtain in these, according to the nature of the thinking faculty.
■' Essay, IV. 21, 4.
* Prinr. nf Human Knowledge, 5 ff.
Chap. 1, $ 33. ] Innate Ideas : Berkeley, Hume. 453
impressions, because an idea can never copy anything else than auother idea. Abstract ideas, therefore, are a fiction of the schools ; in the actual activity of thought none but sensuous particular ideas exist, and some of these can stand for or represent others similar to the in, on account of being designated by the same term.
David Hume adopted this doctrine in its full extent, and on the ground of this substituted for Locke's distiuction of outer and inner perception another antithesis with altered terminology, viz. that of the original and the copied. A content of consciousness is either original or the copy of an original, — either an '•impression" or an " idea. " All ideas, therefore, are copies of impressions, and there is no idea that has come into existence otherwise than by being a copy of an impression, or that has any other content than that which it has received from its corresponding impression. It ap peared, therefore, to be the task of philosophy to seek out the orig inal for even the apparently most abstract conceptions in some impression, and thereby to estimate the value for knowledge which the abstract conception has. To be sure, Hume understood by im
pressions by no means merely the elements of outer experience; he meant also those of inner experience. It was, therefore, accord ing to Locke's mode of expression, the simple ideas of sensation and reflection which he declared to be impressions, and the wide vision of a great thinker prevented him from falling into a short sighted sensualism.
5. A development of another sort, which yet led to a related goal, took place in connection with the aid of physiological psychology. Ix>cke had only thought of sensation as dependent upon the activity of the bodily senses, but had regarded the elaboration of seusation in the functions underlying reflection as a work of the mind; and though he avoided the question as to immaterial substance, he had throughout treated the intellectual activities in the narrower sense as something incorporeal and independent of the body. That this should be otherwise regarded, that thinkers should begin to consider the physical organism as the bearer or agent not only of the simple ideas, but also of their combination, was easily possible in view of the indecisive ambiguity of the Lockian doctrines, but was still more called out by one-sided conclusions drawn from Cartesian and Spimotistic theories.
Descartes, namely, had treated the whole psychical life of the animal as a mechanical process of the nervous system, while he had ascribed the human psychical life to the immaterial substance, the res cogitans. The more evident the completely sensuous nature of human ideation now seemed in consequence of Locke's investigation,
454 The EnliylUenment : Theoretical Question*. [Pajit V.
the nearer lay the question whether it was possible to maintain the position, that the same processes which in the animal seemed capa ble of being understood as nervous processes, should be traced back in the case of man to the activity of an immaterial psychical sub stance. — From another side, Spinoza's parallelism of the attributes worked in the same direction (cf. above, § 31, 9). According to this view a process in the bodily life corresponds to every process of the psychical life, without either process being the cause of th«
other, or one process being the original and the other the derived.
(Such, at least, was the thought of the philosopher himself. ) This had now been conceived of at first by its opponents as materialism, as if Spinoza meant that the fundamental process was the bodik. and the psychical process only its accompanying phenomenon. But
scientists,
It is interesting that the consequences of these combinations of thought appeared in literary form first in Germany. Here as earlv as 1697 a physician named Pancratius Wolff taught in his Cogita- tiones Medico-legales that thoughts are mechanical activities of the human body, especially of the brain, and in the year 1713 appeared the anonymous Correspondence concerning the Nature of the Soul
( Briefwechsel vom Wesen der Seele),1 in which, screened by pious refutations, the doctrines of Bacon, Descartes, and Hobbes are car ried out to an anthropological materialism. A distinction of degree only is recognised between the psychical life of the animal and that of man ; ideas and activities of the will are without exception re garded as functions of excited nerve-fibres, and practice and educa tion are given as the means by which the higher position of man is reached and maintained.
In England the procedure was more cautious. In a way similar to that in which Locke had carried out the Baconian programme, men now studied primarily the internal mechanism of the psychical activ ities, and the development of the higher out of the elementary states according to purely psychological laws : such was the work of Peter Brown in the epistemological field, and that of others upon the domain of the activities of the will. In the same manner proceeded
1 Of which Lange gives an account, Qesrh. det Mat. , I. 319 ff. (3d ed. [Eng. tr. , History of Materialism, IL 37 £LJ ).
among its adherents also, both physicians and natural
such as the influential Boerhave of Leyden, a mode of thought in clining strongly toward materialism soon substituted itself for the master's doctrine. This took place in connection with the expe riences of experimental physiology which, following Descartes" stimulus, employed itself largely with a study of reflex movements.
Chap. 1, § 33. ] Innate Idea* : Hartley, Lamettrie. 455
David Hartley also, who brought into common use the expression association ' (which had already been used before this) for the com binations and relations which arise between the elements. He wished to conceive these relations, which he analysed with all the care of a natural scientist, solely as psychical processes, and held fast to their complete incoinparableness with material processes, even with the most delicate forms of corporeal motion. But he was also a physi cian, and the connection of the mental life with the states of the body was so clear to him that he made the constant correspondence of the two and the mutual relationship of the psychical functions and the nervous excitations, which, at that time, were termed " vibra tions,"* the main subject-matter of his psychology of association. In this work he held fast to the qualitative difference between the two parallel series of phenomena and left the metaphysical question, as to the substance lying at their basis, undecided : but with refer ence to causality he fell insensibly into materialism, in that he con ceived of the mechanism of the nervous states as ultimately the
primary event, and that of the psychical activities as only the phe nomenon accompanying this event To simple nervous excitations correspond simple sensations or desires ; to complex, complex. This scientific theory, to be sure, involved him in serious contradictions with his pious faith, and the " Observations " show how earnestly and fruitlessly he struggled between the two. Quite the same is true of Prientley, who even made the farther concession to material ism of letting fall the heterogeneity between the psychical and bodily processes, and desiring to replace psychology completely by nerve physiology. On this account he also abandoned entirely the standpoint of inner experience defended by the Scots, but at the same time desired to unite with his system the warmly supported conviction of a teleological deism.
Anthropological materialism was worked out in its baldest form by the Frenchman, Lamettrie. Convinced by medical observations upon himself and others of the complete dependence of the mind upon the body, he studied the mechanism of life in animals and men, following Boerhave's suggestions, and Descartes' conception of the former seemed to him completely applicable to the latter also. The distinction between the two, which is only one of degree, permits for human psychical activities also no other explanation than that they are mechanical functions of the brain. On this account it is
1 In the later, especially the Scottish literature, and in particular with Thomas lir'nen. the expression " association " U often replaced by tuggtttinn. "
* Instead of this term Erasmus Darwin Introduced the expression, motions of the seusorium. "
456 The Enlightenment : Theoretical Questions. [Part V
an encroachment of metaphysics to ascribe to the "mind" a sub stantiality of its own in addition to that of matter. The conception of matter as that of a body which is in itself dead and needs mind or spirit as its moving principle, is an arbitrary and false abstrac tion : experience shows that matter moves itself and lives. It is just Descartes' mechanics which has proved this, says Lamettrie, and therefore the inevitable consequence of this mechanics is mate rialism. And that all psychical life is only one of the functions of the body, is evident from the fact that not a single content is found in the mental life which is not due to the excitation of some one of the senses. If we think of a man as the Church Father Arnobius proposed, — so writes Lamettrie,1 to establish his sensualism which had developed from Locke, — who from his birth on had been excluded from all connection with his kind, and restricted to the experience of a few senses, we should find in him no other ideational contents than those brought to him through just these senses.
6. Less important in principle, but all the more widely extended in the literary world, were the other re-shapings which Locke's doctrine experienced in France. Voltaire, who domesticated it among his countrymen by his Lettres stir les Anglais, gave it a com pletely sensualistic stamp, and even showed himself — though with sceptical reserve — not disinclined to entrust to the Creator the power of providing the I, which is a corporeal body, with the capacity of thinking also. This sceptical sensualism became the fundamental note of the French Enlightenment. * Condillac, who at the beginning had only expounded Locke's doctrine and defended it against other systems, professed his adherence to this sceptical sensualism in his influential Traite" des Sensations. Whatever the mind may be, the content of its conscious activities is derived solely from sense-perception. Condillac develops the theory of associational psychology in connection with the fiction of a statue, which, equipped only with capacity of sensation, receives one after another the excitations of the different senses which are added to and by this means gradually unfolds an intellectual life like that of man. Here the fundamental idea that the mere co-existence of different sensations in the same consciousness brings with of itself the sensation of their relation to each other and to the
At the close of the Histoire Naturtlle de VAme. Cf. also above, p. 225,
note
The same mode of thought asserts itself also in the beginnings of aesthetic
criticism in the form of the principle that the essence of all art consists in the "imitation of beautiful Nature. " The type of this conception was E. Batttuz
(1713-1780) (1746).
with his treatise, Let Beaux Arts riduits a un meme Principe
a1 1.
it
it,
is
Chap. 1, § 33. ] Innate Ideas : Condillac, Diderot. 457
object or the self. In accordance with this principle the process is depicted by which all the manifold psychical activities become unfolded out of perception : in the theoretical series, by virtue of the differences in intensity and in repetition of sensations, there grow successively attention, recognising recollection, distinction, com parison, judgment, inference, imagination, and expectation of the future; and finally with the help of signs, especially those of language, arise abstraction and the grasping of general principles. But in addition to sensation, perception has also the feeling-element of pleasure and pain, and out of this, in connection with the move ment of ideas, develop desire, love and hate, hope, fear,1 and — as the result of all such changes of the practical consciousness —
finally, the moral will. So knowledge and morality grow upon the soil of the sensibility.
This systematic construction had great success. The systematic impulse, which was repressed in the metaphysical field (cf. § 34, 7), threw itself with all the greater energy upon this "analyst* of the hnman mind" as a substitute; and as Condillac himself had already woven many acute observations into his exposition of the develop ment process, so a whole throng of adherents found opportunity to take part in the completion of this stiucture by slight changes and sin[tings of the phases, by innovations in nomenclature and by more or less valuable deductions. The Government of the . Revolu tion recognised as philosophy only this study of the empirical development of intelligence, and Destutt de Tracy gave it later the name "Ideology. ''1 So it came about that at the beginning of our century philosophers were in France usually called ideologists.
7. With reference to the nature of the mind in which these trans formations of sensation (sentir) were held to take place, a great part of the ideologists remained by Condillac's positivistic reserve ; others went on from Voltaire's problematical to Lamettrie's assertive mate rialism, — at first, in Hartley's fashion emphasising the thorough going dependence of combinations of ideas upon nervous processes, then with express maintenance of the materiality of the psychical activities. This development is most clearly to be seen in the case of Diderot. He set out from the position of Shaftesbury and Locke, but the sensualistic literature became more potent from step to step
1 In toe development of the practical series of conscious acta, the Influence of Descartes' and Spinoza's theory of the emotions and passions asserted itself with Condillac and his disciples, as also in part among the English associa- Uunal psychologists.
* It U not impossible that this nomenclature in case of de Tracy was intended to be the counterpart to Fichie's " Wissenschaftslehre," — Science of Knowl edge (cf. below. Pan VI. ch. 8).
458 The Enlightenment : Theoretical Questions. [Part V.
in the Editor of the Encyclopaedia ; he followed up the hypotheses of hylozoism1 (cf. below, § 34, 9), and finally took part in the com
of the Sy8thne de la Nature. This work set forth the human psychical activities within the framework of its metaphysics as the fine invisible motions of the nerves, and treated their genetic process just as Lamettrie had done. Among the later ideologists
Cabanis is prominent in this respect bf the newness of his physio logical point of view ; he takes account of the progress of natural science in so far as to seek the conditions of the nerves, to which man's psychical states (le moral) must be referred, no longer merely in mechanical motions, but in chemical changes. Ideation is the secretion of the brain, just as other secretions are produced by other organs.
In opposition to this, another line of ideology held fast to Locke's principle that all content of ideas may indeed be due to the senses, but that in the functions directed toward combining such content the peculiar character of the mind's nature shows itself. The leader of this line of thought was Bonnet. He, too, in a manner similar to that of Condillac, adopts the mode of consideration commended by Lamettrie, adverting to Arnobius, but he is much too well-schooled as an investigator of Nature to fail to see that sensation can never be resolved into elements of motion, that its relation to physical states is synthetic, but not analytic. Hence he sees in the mechanism of the nervous system only the causa occasionalis for the spontaneous reaction of the mind, and the substantiality of the mind seems to him to be proved by the unity of conscioumess. He connects with this theory all sorts of fantastic hypotheses. ' Religious ideas speak in his assumption of the immaterial mind-substance, but sensualism admits an activity of this substance only in connection with the body ; for this reason, in order to explain immortality and the un interrupted activity of the mind, Bonnet helps himself by the hypothesis of an aethereal body which is joined essentially with the soul and takes on a coarser material external organism, according to its dwelling-place in each particular case.
This union of sensualism with the maintenance of self-subsistent substantiality and capacity of reaction on the part of the mind passed over to Bonnet's countryman, Rousseau, who combated with its aid the psychological theories of the Encyclopaedists. He found that this characteristic quality of the mind, the unity of its function, evinces itself in feeling (sentiment), and opposed this original natu-
- ■ > The decisive transition-writing is cPAlembert's Dream. 2 In the Paling&netie* Philosophiques.
position
Chap. 1, § 33. ] Innate Ideas : Bonnet, Rousseau, Reid. 459
ralness of its essence to the cold and indifferent mechanism of ideas, which would debase the mind to an unconditional dependence upon the outer world. The feeling of individuality rebelled with him against a doctrine according to which there is nothing in man's consciousness but the play, as if upon an indifferent stage, of a mass of foreign contents accidentally coming together, which unite and then separate again. He wished to bring out the thought that it is not the case that the mental life merely takes place within us, but that it is rather true that we are ourselves present as actively deter mining personalities. This conviction dictated Rousseau's opposi tion to the intellectualistic Enlightenment, which in the sensualism of Gondii lac and of the Encyclopaedists wished to regard man's inner life as only a mechanical product of sensational elements excited from without: to psychological atomism Rousseau opposes the principle of the Monadology.
In the same manner, and perhaps not without influence from Rousseau in his arguments, St. Martin raised his voice against the prevailing system of Condillac ; he even came out of his mystical retreat to protest in the sessions of the Ecoles Normales ' against the superficiality of sensualism. The ideologists, he says, talk a great deal about human nature; but instead of observing it they devote their energies to put it together (composer).
8. The Scottish philosophers are the psychological opponents of sensualism in all its forms. The common ground on which this contrast developed is that of psychology regarded as philosophy.
For Reid, also, and his disciples seek the task of philosophy in the investigation of man and his mental capacities ; indeed, they fixed still more energetically and one-sidedly than the various schools of their opponents the methodical point of view that all philosophy must be empirical psychology. But this view of the human physi cal activity and its development is diametrically opposed to that of the sensualists. The latter hold the simple, the former the com plex, the latter the individual ideas, the former the judgments, the latter the sensuous, the former the internal, the latter the particular, the former the general, to be the original content of the mind's activity. Reid acknowledges that Berkeley's idealism and Hume's scepticism are as correct consequences from Locke's principle as is Hartley's materialism ; but just the absurdity of these consequences refutes the principle.
In opposition to this, Reid will now apply the Baconian method of induction to the facts of inner perception in order to attain by an
i Seances dts /■>. . Vorm. , UI. 01 ft
460 The Enlightenment: Theoretical Questions. [Part V.
analysis of these to the original tiiiths, which are given from the beginning in connection with the nature of the human mind, and which assert themselves in the development of its activities as determining principles. Thus, putting aside all help of physiology, the fundamental science psychology shall be perfected as a kind of natural science of inner observation. In the solution of this task, Reid himself, and after him especially Dugald Stewart, develop a considerable breadth and comprehensiveness of vision in the appre hension of the inner processes and a great acuteness in the analysis of their essential content : a multitude of valuable observations on
the genetic processes of the mental life is contained in their exten sive investigations. And yet these investigations lack in fruitful- ness of ideas as well as in energetically comprehensive cogency. For they everywhere confuse the demonstration of that which can be discovered as universally valid content in the psychical func tions, with the assumption that this is also genetically the original and determining : and since this philosophy has no other principle than that of psychological fact, it regards without criticism all that can in this manner be demonstrated to be actual content of mental activity, as self-evident truth. The sum-total of these principles is designated as common sense, and as such is held to form the supreme rule for all philosophical knowledge.
9. In the philosophy of the German Enlightenment all these tendencies mingle with the after-workings of the Cartesian and Leibnizian rationalism. The twofold tendency in the method of this latter system had taken on a fixed systematic form through the agency of Christian Wolff. According to him, all subjects should be regarded both from the point of view of the eternal truths and from that of the contingent truths : for every province of reality there is a knowledge through conceptions and another through facts, an a priori science proceeding from the intellect and an a posteriori science arising from perception. These two sciences were to combine in the result in such a way that, for example, em pirical psychology must show the actual existence in fact of all those activities which, in rational psychology, were deduced from the metaphysical conception of the soul, and from the " faculties " resulting from this conception. On the other hand, following Leib niz's precedent, the distinction in value of the two modes of knowl edge was so far retained as to regard only the intellectual knowledge as clear and distinct insight, while empirical (or, as they said at that time, historical) knowledge was regarded as a more or less obscure and confused idea of things.
Psychologically, the two kinds of knowledge were divided, in
Chap 1, § 33. ] Innate Ideas : Wolff, Lambert. 461
accordance with the Cartesian model, into the idea; innatat and the idem adventitim. Yet Wolff himself, agreeably to the metaphysical direction of his thought, laid less weight upon the genetic element. But the opposite was the case with his adherents and opponents, who were already standing under the influence of the French and
Knglish theories. The general course of the development was that the importance which Leibniz and Wolff had conceded to empiricism was increased more and more by the penetration of the Lockian
The psychological method gained the preponderance over the metaphysico-ontological step by step, and within the psy chological method increasing concessions were made to sensualism, of such a nature that ultimately not only earnest men of science like Rudiger and"Lossius, but especially a great part of the "popu lar philosophers supported completely the doctrine that all human ideas arise from sense-perception. The motley and irregular series of stages in which this process completed itself has only a literary- historical interest,1 because no new arguments came to light in con nection with it.
Only one of these men used the psychologico-epistemological dualism which prevailed in the German philosophy of the Enlight. enment, to make an original and fruitful turn. Heinrich Lambert,
who was fully abreast of the natural science of his time, had grown into intelligent sympathy with the mathematico-logical method as completely as he had into an insight into the worth of experience : and in the phenomenology of his New Qrganon, in attempting to fix the limits for the psychological significance of these two elements of knowledge, he disposed the mixture of the a priori and a posteriori constituents requisite for knowing reality, in a way that led to the distinction ofform and content in ideas. The content-elements of thought, he taught, can be given only by per
ception : but their mode of connection, the form of relation which is thought between them, is not given from without, but is a proper activity of the mind. This distinction could be read out of Locke's ambiguous exposition:1 but no one had conceived it so sharply and precisely from this point of view as Lambert. And this point of view was of great imj>ortanee for the genetic consideration of the ideas of the human mind. It followed from that was neither possible to derive the content from the mere form, nor the form of knowledge from the content. The first refuted the logical rational
Cf. W. Winilflband, Onrh. d. nrurrrn Phttntnphlr. $$ KUA.
Ct. thr dem'inmratlon in O. Harwnnwin, Lurke'i l. *hrt ron der mrn*r\ lieken Ertrnntniu in Vergleif. htmg mil Leibnis' KritUt dentil** (l^ipa 1801, Abhandl d. tHrht. On. d. WiMMtueh. ).
principles.
*•
it, I.
it
462 the Enlightenment : Theoretical Questions. [Pam V.
ism with which Wolff would spin all ontology and metaphysics oat from the most general principles of logic, and ultimately from the one principle of contradiction ; the other took the basis away from sensualism, which thought that with the contents of perception the knowledge also of their relations was immediately given. Out of this grew for the " improvement of metaphysics " the task of dis solving out these relating forms from the total mass of experience, and of making clear their relation to content. But Lambert sought in vain for a single unifying principle for this purpose,1 and his " Archilektonik" finally contented itself with making a collection of them not based on any internal principle.
10. While all these theories as to the origin of human ideas were flying about in the literary market, the reconciling word upon the problem of innate ideas had been long spoken, but was waiting in a manuscript in the Hanoverian library for the powerful effect which its publication was to produce. Leibniz, in his Nouveaux Essais, had provided the Lockian ideology with a critical commentary in detail, and had embodied within it the deepest thoughts of his phi losophy and the finest conclusions of his Monadology.
Among the arguments with which Locke combated the doctrine that ideas were innate, had been that with which he maintained that there could be nothing in the mind of which the mind knew nothing. This principle had also been pronounced by him 2 in the form that the soul thinks not always. By this principle the Car tesian definition of the soul as a res cogitans was brought into ques tion : for the essential characteristic of a substance cannot be denied it at any moment. In this sense the question had been often dis cussed between the schools. Leibniz, however, was pointed by his Monadology to a peculiar intermediate position. Since, in his view, the soul, like every monad, is a " representing " power, it must have perceptions at every moment: but since all monads, even those which constitute matter, are souls, these perceptions cannot pos sibly all be clear and distinct. The solution of the problem lies, therefore, again in the conception of unconscious representations or
petites perceptions (cf. above, § 31). The soul (as every monad) always has ideas or representations, but not always conscious, not always clear and distinct ideas ; its life consists in the development of the unconscious to conscious, of the obscure and confused to clear and distinct ideas or representations.
In this aspect Leibniz now introduced an extremely significant
1 Thi* is best seen in his interesting correspondence with Kant, printed in the works of the latter.
« Essay II. 1, 10 f.
Chap. 1, § 33. ] Innate Idea* : Leibniz. 463
conception into psychology and epistemology. He distinguished between the states in which the soul merely has ideas, and those in which it is conscious of them. The former he designated as percep tion, the latter as apperception. 1 He understood, therefore, by apperception the process by which unconscious, obscure, and con fused representations are raised into clear and distinct consciousness, and thereby recognised by the soul as its own and ajypropriated by
The genetic process of the psychical life consists in the changing of unconscious into conscious representations or ideas, in taking up perceptions into the clearness and distinctness of self-
consciousness. In the light of the Monadology Leibniz's methodo logical view of the empirical or contingent truths (cf. § 30, 7) took on a peculiar colouring. The fact that the monads have no windows makes it impossible to conceive of perception metaphysically as a working of things upon the soul : * the ideas of sense, or sense-pres entations, must rather be thought as activities which the soul, by virtue of the pre-established harmony, develops in an obscure and confused manner (as petites perceptions), and the transformation which takes place in them can be regarded only as a process of making them distinct and of clearing them up, — as a taking up into self-consciousness, as apperception.
Sensibility and understanding, the distinction between which with Leibniz coincides with that of different degrees of clearness and distinctness, have, therefore, in his view, the same content, only
that the former has in obscure and confused representation what the latter possesses as clear and distinct. Nothing comes into the soul from without; that which it consciously represents has been already unconsciously contained within it: and on the other hand, the soul cannot bring forth anything in its conscious ideas which has not been within it from the beginning. Hence Leibniz must decide that in a certain sense, that is, unconsciously, all ideas are innate ; and that in another sense, that consciously, no idea innate in the human soul. He designates this relation, which had been previously sketched in the principles of the Monadology, by the name virtual innateness of ideas.
This thought, which at once treated as the controlling point of view at the opening of the New Essays, carried out especially with reference to the universal or eternal truths. This was indeed the burning question here the one party (the Neo-1'latonists, and in part the Cartesians) maintained that these were innate "axtu-
Print, it la Nat. el At la GrOrt, where the relationship with the Lockian redaction comes out strongly Xout. Em. II.
• . V. B.
