Philotophy
of the Enlightenment.
Windelband - History of Philosophy
From this it follows incontestably that the state has still less ground or right to trouble itself about the assent of its citizens to particular dogmas, and that it should rather by virtue of its real authority restrain erery attempt toward a con straining of the conscience, which may proceed from any of the ecclesiastically organised forms of religious life.
The mystically profound religious nature of Spinoza alienated him from the dog matic government of the churches and from belief in the literal statements of their historical documents.
He asserted the principle
that religious books, like all other phenomena of literature, must be historically explained as to their theoretical import, that is. must be understood from the point of view of the intellectual condition of their authors, and that this historical criticism takes away from those former theoretical views their binding and normative signifi cance for a later time.
3. With the political and churchly political interests became associated the social. 2so one gave them a more eloquent expression than Thomas More. After a thrilling portrayal of the misery of the masses the first book of the Utopia comes to the conclusion that society would do better if instead of the Draconian justice with which she punishes the violation of her laws, she should stop the sources of crime. The author maintains that the greater part of the guilt for the wrong-doing of the individual is due to the perverted arrange ment of the whole. This latter consists in the inequality ofproperty brought about by the use of money, for this inequality gives occasion to all the aberrations of passion, of envy, and of hatred. The ideal picture of the perfect state of society upon the island of Utopia, which More sketches in contrast to the present condition, is in its main features an imitation of the ideal state of Plato. This human istic revival however, distinguished from its prototype in manner characteristic for modern socialism, by its abolition of class- ilistinctions, which seemed necessary to the ancient thinker in conse quence of his reflection upon the actually given difference in the intellectual and moral status of individuals. In an abstraction that was prototype for the succeeding development More proceeded
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Chap. 2, § 32. ] Natural Right : Spinoza, More, Bacon. 429
from the thought of the equality of all citizens before the law, and changed into an equality of claim or title for all citizens those forms of community which Plato had demanded of the ruling classes as a renunciation of the natural impulses toward an individual sphere of interests. With Plato the preferred classes were to renounce all private property in order to devote themselves entirely to the gen eral weal : with More the abolition of private property is demanded as the surest means for doing away with crime, and is based upon the equality of title which all have to the common possession. But at the same time the English Chancellor still holds fast to the ideal model of the ancient philosopher, in so far as to treat this entire equality in the division of material interests, as the indispensable basis for makiug it possible to all citizens to enjoy in like measure the ideal goods of society, science, and art. A normal working day of six hours for all members of society will be enough, he thinks, to satisfy all external needs of the community : the remaining time should remain free for every one for nobler employment. With these characteristics the programme for all the higher forms of modern socialism grows in the thought of More out of the Platonic project.
But the spirit of the Renaissance was animated by much more worldly interests. Stimulated by the magic of discoveries, dazzled by the glitter of inventions, it set itself the task of transforming
its new insights the whole outer condition of human society as related to the natural conditions of life, and saw before itself an ideal of comfort for human life, which should develop from com plete and systematic use of the knowledge and control of Nature made possible by science. All social injuries will be healed by raising human society, by means of the scientific advancement of external civilisation, beyond all the cares and all the need which now vex it few inventions like the compass, the art of printing,
and gunpowder, says Bacon, have sufficed to give human life new motion, greater dimensions, mightier development. What trans formations stand before us when invention once becomes an intel ligently exercised art The social problem thus transferred to an improvement of the material condition of society.
In Bacon's New Atlantis1 a happy island-people in carefully guarded seclusion brought before us, which by skilful regula tions receives information of the progress in civilisation made by all other peoples, and at the same time, by the systematic prosecu tion of research, discovery, and invention, raises to the highest
Tbe title of this I'lopia and much elue in rtminiacence of Plato'i fragment. Critiat (113 f. ).
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430 The Renautanee : Natural Sciemee Period. [Past IV.
point the control of Nature for the practical interests of human life. All kinds of possible and impossible inventions are related in fan tastic prophecy,1 and the whole activity of the - House of Solomon " is directed toward improving the material state of society, while the portrayal of the political relations is only superficial and unim portant.
In Campanella's State of the Sun, on the other hand, in which the after-effects of More's Utopia are very noticeable, we come to a com plete project of the socialistic future Mate, which is even pedanti cally ordered down to all of its minor relations. This state does not shrink in any direction from the most extreme violence to the free dom of the individual's life. From the mathematically delineated plan of the imperial city to the division of hours for daily work and enjoyment, the determination of professions, the pairing of the men and women, the astrologically predetermined hour for sexual unions, —all takes place here from an arrangement by the state for the welfare of the whole, and an extended, carefully worked out system of bureaucracy (in which there is an admixture of metaphys ical motives)* is built up upon the graded knowledge of the citizens. The more any one knows, the more power he ought to have in the state, in order to rule and improve by his knowledge the course of Nature. The points of view in this improvement look essentially toward external civilisation in Campanella's system also. With
him, indeed, four hours of daily labour should suffice on the average to assure the good cheer of society, and upon this prosperity all should have a like claim.
4. In spite of all that is fantastic and whimsical,' the thought nevertheless asserts itself in Campanella's State of the Sun, still more than in More's Utopia, that the state should be an artificial product of human insight for the removal of social injuries. Neither writer desired to set up a mere creation of fancy, any more than did Plato ; they believe in the possibility of realising " the best political constitution " by rational reflection upon an order of social relations
1 In addition to the microscope and the telescope, the microphone and tele phone are not wanting ; there are giant explosive materials, flying-machines, all sorts of engines with air and water power, and even "some kinds" of perpetual motion ! But the author lays special value upon the fact that by better culture of plants and animals, by unsuspected chemical discoveries, by baths and air-cures, diseases are to be banished and life prolonged ; experiments on animals are also introduced in the interest of medicine.
* Beneath the supreme ruler, — Sol or Metaphysicus, — who must embody all knowledge within himself, stand first of all three princes, whose spheres of activity correspond to the three " primalities " of Being, Power, Wisdom and Love (cf. § 29, 3), etc.
* Fantastic is especially the strong element of astrological and magical super stition ; whimsical, his monkish rude treatment of the sexual relations.
Chap. 2, § 32. ] Natural Right : Campanella, Grotiut. 431
that shall he in accordance with Nature. In this, to be sure, they encountered much opposition. Cardanus combated Utopias on principle, and in their stead commended to science the task of comprehending the necessity with which the actual states of history develop in their special definite nature, out of the character, the relations of life, and the experiences of peoples ; he would have them regarded as natural products like organisms, and would apply to their conditions the medical categories of health and disease. In a larger way, and free from the Pythagorean astrology in which the mathematician Cardanus indulged, but with a strongly con structive fancy, the practical statesman Bodin attempted to under stand the manifold character of historical reality as manifested in political life.
But the tendency of the time was much more toward seeking a right founded in Nature for all times and relations alike, and to be recog nised by reason alone : although a man like Albericus Gentilis desired to reduce the principles of private right to physical laws by analogies of childlike crudeness. A firmer and more fruitful ground was gained when human nature, instead of general " Nature," was taken as a starting-point. This was done by Hugo Grotius. Like Thomas Aquinas, he found the fundamental principle of natural right in the social need, and found the method for its development in logical deduction. That which reason recognises as agreeing with man's social nature and following therefrom — in this consists the ju* maturate' — that cannot be changed by any historical mutation. The thought of such an absolute right, which exists only by its foundation in reason, and which exists independently of the politi cal power and rather as the ultimate ground of this power, was brought home to Grotius by the analogy of international law with which his investigation was primarily concerned. On the other hand, however, by virtue of this material principle, private right be came the authoritative presupposition for political right also. The satisfaction of individual interests, protection of life and property, ap|wared as the essential pnd to l>e subserved by the ordering of
rights. Formally and methodically, on the contrary, this philo sophical system of rights was entirely deductive; it aimed only to draw the logical consequences of the principle of society. In like manner Hnbbe* also regarded the corpus politieum as a machine capable of being deduced from the conception of its end by pure intellectual activity, and the philosophical doctrine of rights as a perfect demonstrable science. At the same time this field seemed
> De Jure Bell, et Puc I. 1. 10.
432 The Renaissance : Natural Science Period. [Part IV.
adapted in a pre-eminent degree to the application of the geometri cal method, and Puffendorf introduced the whole apparatus of this method by combining Grotius and Hobbes, and developing the whole system synthetically from the thought that the individual's instinct toward self-preservation could be rationally and successfully fulfilled only by satisfying his social need. In this form natural right per sisted as the ideal of a "geometrical" science until far on into the eighteenth century (Thomasius, Wolff, indeed, even to Fichte and Schelling), and survived the general decline of the Cartesian principle.
5. Looking now at the contents rather than at the form, we find that the ultimate ground of public life and of social coherence was placed in the interests of individuals : the mechanics of the state found in the character of the impulses of the individual man that self-intelligible and simple element,1 out of which the complex structures of life viewed as a subject of law and rights (Rechtslebens) might be explained in accordance with the Galilean principle. With this the doctrine of the state also went back to the Epicurean theory of social atomism 2 (cf. pp. 174 f. ), and the synthetic principle by which the origin of the state was to be understood was the contract. From Occam and Marsilius down to Rousseau, Kant, and Fichte, this con tract theory was dominant in political philosophy. Grotius and Hobbes devoted themselves to carrying it out in the most careful manner. To the political contract by which the individuals unite themselves to a community of interests, is attached the contract of sovereignty or subjection, by means of which the individuals hand over their rights and authority to the magistracy. This proved to be a general frame in which the most varied political theories fitted.
While Grotius, and likewise Spinoza, found the interests of the citizens to be best guaranteed by an aristocratic republican constitu tion, Hobbes could deduce from the same presupposition his theory of a purely secular absolutism, according to which the political power should be inviolably united in one personality, the universal will in the individual will of the sovereign.
In closest connection with the contract theory appears the devel opment of the conception of sovereignty. The source of all power, according to this theory, is the popular will, from which the politi cal contract and the contract of submission have proceeded; the proper bearer of the sovereignty is the people. Meanwhile the con-
1 The term "conatus" applies in this sense to both domains, the physical and the psychical, with Hobbes and Spinoza.
3 As in the theoretical domain, so also in the practical, the principle of Democritus and Epicurus obtains with great efforts a late victory.
Chap.
32. ] Natural Right Contract Theory. 438
tract and the transfer of right and power completed thereby, are regarded by some writers as irrevocable, and by others as capable
of recall. So Bodin, in spite of his doctrine of popular sovereignty, maintains the unlimited character and unconditional authority of the royal power, the inviolability of the ruler and the unjustifia- bility of all opposition against him with Hobbes the sovereignty
of the people still more completely absorbed into that of the monarch, whose will here stands quite in the sense of the Vitat c'est moi as the sole source of rights in the positive political life. In oppo sition to this view, and decidedly more consistent in view of their presupposition, the " monarchomachischen [opposed to an absolute
theories," whose chief representative besides Buchanan (1506-1582) and Languet (1518-1581) was Althus of Lower Sax
ony, maintained that the governmental contract becomes liable to dissolution as soon as the sovereign ceases to rule rightly, i. e. in the interest and according to the will of the people. If the contract broken on one side, no longer binding for the other party; in this situation the sovereignty returns again to its original bearers.
If man has made the state with purpose and under reflection, then he abolishes again when becomes evident that has failed to fulfil its purpose. Thus the Renaissance already providing in advance the theory of revolution. 1
All these theories, however, received their especial colouring from motives growing out of the particular relations of church and Mate, — a colouring which depended upon the question whether the unre stricted |»ower of the ruler was felt as dangerous or as beneficial in consequence of his relation to the Confessions. The most radical
monarchy]
in real politics was taken by Hobbes by virtue of his religious indifferentism religion private opinion, and only that opinion which the sovereign professes has political standing or value. No other religion or Confession can be tolerated in public life.
Hoblies gave the philosophical theory for the historical aijus regio illius religio. And Spinoza attached himself to him in this. He stood for freedom of thought and against all compulsion of con science, but for him religion was only matter of knowledge and disposition; for the public manifestation of religious feeling in the church and in public worship, was in the interest of order and peace that only the form fixed by the magistracy should obtain. In a more positive sense the Protestant Philosophy of Right declared for
These principle* were defended with special application to"the English con ditions of the seventeenth century, and to the right of the Revolution" of that time by the poet . Inhn Milton Defentio pro Populo Anglican**, 1661), and by Algernon Sidney {Discount* of Government, 1083).
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the sovereignty in church and state of the kingdom existing by the grace of God ; while in this school, also, as for example in the case of Althns, the sovereignty of the people was defended as over against a magistracy holding another creed. The same motive was decisive where the Jesuits maintained that the magistracy might be removed and that the assassination of the prince was excusable
(cf. above).
6. In the case of Hobbes the rationale of the contract theory
rested on more general motives. If the social and political life was to be comprehended from the point of view of " human nature," the English philosopher found the fundamental, all-determining charac teristic of human nature in the impulse toward self-preservation or egoism, the simple, self-evident principle for explaining the entire volitional life. Here his materialistic metaphysics and sensualistic psychology (cf. § 31) made it appear that this instinct toward self- preservation, in its original essence, was directed only toward the preservation and furtherance of the sensuous existence of the indi vidual. All other objects of the will could serve only as means to bring about that supreme end. Agreeably to this principle, also, there was no other norm of judgment for man as a natural being than that of furtherance or hindrance, of profit or of harm : the distinction of good and evil, of right and wrong, is not possible upon the standpoint of the individual, but only upon the social standpoint, where the common interest instead of the individual's interest forms the standard. So egoism became the principle of all practical philosophy; for if the individual's instinct toward self- preservation was to be restricted and corrected by the command of the state, yet this state itself was regarded as the most ingenious and perfect of all the contrivances which egoism had hit upon to attain and secure its satisfaction. The state of nature, in which the egoism of each stands originally opposed to the egoism of every other, is a war of all against all: to escape this the state was founded as a contract for the mutual warrant of self-preservation. The social need is not original : it only results necessarily as the most efficient and certain means for the satisfaction of egoism.
Spinoza adopted this doctrine, but gave it a more ideal signifi cance by introducing it into his metaphysics. " Suum esse con- servare " is for him also the quintessence and fundamental motive or all willing. But since every finite mode belongs equally to both attributes, its impulse toward self-preservation is directed as well toward its conscious activity, i. e. its knowledge, as toward its main tenance in the corporeal world, i. e. its power. This individual striving, interpreted along the lines of the Baconian identity of
Chap. 2, § :fci. ] Natural Right : Hobbes, Cambridge Men. 435
knowledge and power, forms for Spinoza the ground of explanation for the empirical life of the state, in accordance with the principle that each one's right extends as far as his power. In this process of explanation Spinoza moves mainly in the lines of Hobbes, and deviates from him only, as noticed above, in his view as to the best form of constitution. This same complication of conceptions, how ever, presents itself to Spinoza as affording also a starting-point for his mystico-religious ethics. For since the true "esse" of every finite thing is the deity, the only perfect satisfaction of the impulse toward self-preservation is to be found in "love to God. " That Malebranche, who spoke so vehemently of the "atheistical Jew," taught the same in slightly different words — "unit ein bischen anderen Wbrten" — has already been mentioned (§ 31, 4).
7. Hobbes' theory of egoism — the " selfish system," as it was later termed for the most part — found vigorous opposition among his countrymen. 1 The reduction of all activities of the will, without any exception, to the impulse toward self-preservation excited both ethical revolt and the theoretical contradiction of psychological expe rience. The warfare against Hobbes was undertaken
primarily by the Neo-Platonist school of Cambridge, whose chief literary repre sentatives were Ralph Cudworth and Henry More. In this contro
versy the antithesis of </>wm and 6i<nt developed after the ancient prototype. For Hobbes, right and moral order arose from social institution; for his opponents they were original and immediately certain demands of Nature. Both parties opposed the lex naturalis to the theological dogmatic grounding of practical philosophy : but for Hobbes natural law was the demonstrable consequence of intel ligent egoism ; for the " Platonists " it was an immediate certainty, innate in the human mind.
Cumberland proceeded against Hobbes in the same line. He would have man's social nature regarded as being as original as his egoism : the " benevolent " altruistic inclinations, whose actual ex istence is not to be doubted, are objects of direct self-perception which have an original independence of their own ; the social need is not the refined product of a shrewd self-seeking, but — as Hugo Grotius had conceived of it — a primary, constitutive characteristic of human nature. While egoism is directed toward one's own private weal, the altruistic motives are directed toward the uni versal weal, without which private weal is not possible. This connection between the welfare of the individual and that of the
■ Ct. J. Tulluch, Hatiunal Theology and Christian I'hilotophy in England in l*« 17th Vent. (I<ond. 1872).
436 The Renausancc : Natural Science Period. [Part IV.
public, which in Hobbes appeared as due to the shrewd insight of man, is regarded by Cumberland as a provision of God, whose commandment is hence considered to be the authoritative principle for obeying those demands which express themselves in the benevo lent inclinations.
To the side of this natural morality of reason, which was thus defeuded against orthodoxy on the one hand and sensualism on the other, came the natural religion of reason, which had been set up by Herbert of Cherbury in opposition to these same two positions. Religion also shall be based neither upon historical revelation nor upon human institution ; it belongs to the inborn possession of the human mind. The consensus gentium — so argues Herbert in the manner of the ancient Stoics — proves that belief in the deity is a necessary constituent of the human world of ideas, a demand of reason ; but on this account that only which corresponds to those demands of the reason can stand as true content of religion, as contrasted with the dogmas of religions.
Thus the questions of practical philosophy which appear in English literature in the very lively discussion excited by Hobbes, gradually became transferred to the psychological realm. What is the origin of right, morals, and religion in the human mind? — so runs the problem. With this, however, the movements of the philosophy of the Enlightenment are introduced.
PART V.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT.
In addition to the literature cited on p. 348, cf.
Leslie Stephen, History of English Thought in the 18th Cent. Lond. 1876.
J. Mackintosh, On the Progress of Ethical Philosophy during the 17th and
18th Centuries. Edin. 1872.
Ph. Damiron, Memoires pour strvir a VHistoire de la Philosophie au 18" Steele.
3 vols. , l'aria 1858-64.
K. Zeller, (iesehichte der dentschen Philosophie seit Leibniz. MUnohen, 1873. Also II. Hettner, Litteraturgesrhichte des 18. Jahr. 3 parts.
The natural rhythm of intellectual life brought with it the result that in the modern as in the Greek philosophy a first cosmologico- metaphysical period was followed by a period of an essentially anthropological character, and that thus once more the newly awakened, purely theoretical efforts of philosophy must yield to a practical conception of philosophy as " icorld-ifisdom. " In fact, all features of the Oreek sophistic movement are found again with ripened fulness of thought, with broadened variety, with deepened content, and, therefore, also, with added energy in their antitheses in the Philosophy of the Enlightenment, which coincides approxi mately in time with the eighteenth century. In the place of Athens now appears the whole breadth of the intellectual movement among European civilised peoples, and scientific tradition counts now as many thousands of years as it then counted centuries; but the tendency as a whole and the objects of thought, the points of view and the results of the philosophising, show an instructive similarity and kinship in these two periods so widely separated in time and so different in the civilisations which formed their background. There prevails in lx>th the same turning of thought toward the subject's inner nature, the same turning away from metaphysical subtlety with doubt and disgust, the same preference for an em
pirical genetic consideration of the human psychical life, the same inquiry as to the possibility and the limits of scientific knowledge, 437
438 Philosophy of the Enlightenment. [Part V.
and the same passionate interest in the discussion of the prob lems of life and society. No less characteristic, lastly, for both periods is the penetration of philosophy into the broad circles of general culture and the fusion of the scientific with the literary movement.
But the basis for the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century was given in the general features of a secular view of life, as they had been worked out during the Renaissance by the fresh move ments in art, religion, politics, and natural research. While these had found their metaphysical formulation in the seventeenth cen tury, the question now came again into the foreground, how man should conceive, in the setting of the new Weltanschauung, his own nature and his own position : and in the presence of the value set upon this question, the interest in the various metaphysical concep tions in which the new Weltanschauung had been embodied, retreated more and more decidedly into the background. Men contented themselves with the general outlines of metaphysical theories, in order to employ themselves the more thoroughly with the questions of human life ; and all the doctrines of the Enlightenment which offer such a vehement polemic against speculation are, in truth, working from the beginning with a metaphysics of the " sound com mon sense " which at last raised its voice so high, and which ulti mately only assumed as self-evident truth that which had fallen to it from the achievements of the labour of preceding centuries.
The beginnings of the philosophy of the Enlightenment are to be sought in England, where, in connection with the well-ordered con ditions which followed the close of the period of the revolution, a powerful upward movement of literary life claimed philosophy also in the interests of general culture. From England this literature was transplanted to France. Here, however, the opposition of the ideals which it brought with it to the social and political status, worked in such a way that not only was the presentation of the thoughts more excited and vehement from the outset, but the thoughts themselves also take on a sharper point, and turn their negative energy more powerfully against the existing conditions in Church and state. At first from France, and then from the direct influence of England,1 also, Germany received the ideas of the Enlightenment, for which it had already received an independent preparation in a more theoretical manner: and here these ideas found their last deepening, and a purification and ennobling as well,
1 Cf. G. Zart, Der Einjluss der englischen Philosophen auf die deutsche Philos. de. i 18. Jahrh. (Berlin, 1881).
Philotophy of the Enlightenment. 439
as they came to an end in the German poetry with which the Renaissance of classical Humanism was completed.
John Locke became the leader of the English Enlightenment by finding a popular form of empirico-psychological exposition for the general outlines of the Cartesian conception of the world. While the metaphysical tendency of the system brought forth an idealistic after-shoot in Berkeley, the anthropologico-genetic mode of con sideration extended quickly and victoriously to all problems of philosophy. Here the opposition between the sensualistic associa- tional psychology and the nativistic theories of various origin con tinued to have a decisive influence upon the course of development. It controlled the vigorous movement in moral philosophy, and the development of deism and natural religion, which was connected with it ; and it found its sharpest formulation in the epistemological field, where the most consistent and deepest of English thinkers, David Hume, developed empiricism to positivism, and thereby called
forth the opposition of the Scottish school.
The pioneer of the French Enlightenment was Pierre Bayle, whose
Uictionnaire turned the views of the cultivated world completely in the direction of religious scepticism ; and it was along this line chiefly that the English literature was then taken up in Paris. Voltaire was the great writer, who not only gave this movement its most eloquent expression, but also presented the positive elements of the Enlightenment in the most emphatic manner. But the development pressed with much greater weight toward the negative side. In the common thinking of the Encyclopaedists became com pleted step by step the change from empiricism to sensualism, from naturalism to materialism, from deism to atheism, from enthusiastic to egoistic morals. In opposition to such an Enlightenment of the intellect, whose lines all converge in the positivism of Condillac, there appeared in Rousseau a feeling-philoso]>hy of elemental power, leading to the intellectual shaping of the Revolution.
Germany was won for the Enlightenment movement by the Leibnizian philosophy and the great success which Wolff achieved, in his activity as a teacher, in developing and transforming but here, in consequence of the lack of unifying public interest, the tendency toward individual culture was predominant. For the ends of this individual culture, the ideas of the " philosophical century " were elaborated in psychological and epistemological as well as in the moral, political, and religious fields with great multiplicity, but without any new creation of principles until fresh life and higher points of view were brought by the poetical movement and the great personalities of its bearers, Lessing and Herder, to the dry intelli
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440 Philosophy of the Enlightenment. [Pabt V.
gence with which a boastful popular philosophy had extended itself, especially in connection with the Berlin Academy. 1 This circum stance kept the German philosophy of the eighteenth century from losing itself in theoretico-sceptical self-disintegration like the Eng lish, or from being shattered in practical politics like the French : contact with a great literature teeming with ideas new great epoch of philosophy was here prepared.
John Locke, born 1632, at Wrington near Bristol, was educated at Oxford, and became involved in the changeful fortunes of the statesman Lord Shaftes bury. He returned home from exile in Holland with William of Orange in 1688, filled several high political offices under the new government which he also often publicly defended, and died while living in the country at leisure, in 1704. His philosophical work bears the title An Essay concerning Human
Understanding (1690) besides this are to be mentioned Some Thoughts on Education (1693), The Reasonableness of Christianity (1695), and, among his posthumous works, Of the Conduct of the Understanding. Cf. Fox Bourne, The Life of J. L. (Lond. and N. Y. 1876); Th. Fowler, J. L. (Lond. 1880); [Locke, by A. C. Fraser, Blackwood series, Edin. and l'hila. 1890, and article Locke in Enc. Brit. ; T. H. Green in his Int. to Hume; J. Dewey, Leibniz's New Essays, Chicago, 1888 Edition of his works by Low, 1771, also ed. Loud. 1853 Philos. wks. in Bohn Lib. Crit. ed. of the Essay by Fraser, 1894].
George Berkeley was born in Killerin, Ireland, in 1685, took part as a clergy man in missionary and colonisation attempts in America, became Bishop of Cloyne 1734, and died 1753. His Theory of Vision (1709) was a preparation for his Treatise on the Principles of Unman Knowledge (1710). This main work was later followed by the Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous, and by Alciphron or the Minute Philosopher. Edition of his works by Fraser,
vols. , Lond. 1871 the same writer has also given a good exposition of his thought as whole (Blackwood series, Edin. and Lond. 1881). Cf. Collyns Simon, Universal Immaterialism, Lond. 1862.
The Associational Psychology found its chief supporters in Peter Brown (died 1735 Bishop of Cork The Procedure, Extent, and Limits of Human Un derstanding, 1719), David Hartley (1704-1757 De Motus Sensns et Idearnm Oeneratione, 1746; Observations on Man, his Frame, his Duty, and his Expec tations, 1749), Edward Search, pseudonym for Abraham Tucker (1705-1774 Light of Nature, vols. , Lond. 1788-1777), Joseph Priestley (1733-1804 Hart ley's Theory of the Human Mind on the Principle of the Association of Ideas, 1775; Disquisitions relating to Matter and Spirit, 1777), John HorneTooke (1736-1812 'EireA rrTtpUvra. or The Diversions of Parley, 1798; cf. Stephen. Memoirs of J. H. T. , Lond. 1813), Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802 Zoonomia or the Laws of Organic Life, 1794-1796), finally, Thomas Brown (1778-1820; Inquiry into the Relation of Cause and Effect, 1804 posthumously, the Lectures on the Philosophy of the Human Mind, 1820, delivered in Edinburg). Cf. Br. Schoen\a. nV. ,Hartley u. Priestley alsBegriinderdesAssociationism us (Halle, 1882); L. Ferri, Sulla Dottrina Psichologica dell' Associazione, Saggio Storico Critics (Rome, 1878) [Fr. tr. Paris, 1883. Cf. also Hartley and James Mill by G. S. Bower, Lond. 1881. For bibliography for the writers mentioned in this and the following paragraphs consult Porter's appendix to Eng. tr. Ueberweg's
Hist. Phil. }.
Of the opponents to this movement who Platonise in the older manner,
Richard Price (1723-1791) became known especially by his controversy with Priestley —
Priestley, The Doctrine of Philosophical Necessity (1777); Price, Letters on Materialism and Philosophical Necessity; Priestley, Free Discussions of the Doctrines of Materialism (1778).
Cf. Ch. Bartholmess, Histoire Philosophique de VAcademie de Prusse, Paris, 1869.
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Philoaopfiy of the Enlightenment. 441
Among the English moral philosophers. Shaftesbury (Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1071-1713) takes a most important place. His writings were collected under the title, Characteristic* of Men, Manners, Opinion* and Times (1711). Cf. G. v. Gizycki, Die Philosophie Sh. 's (Leips. and Heidelberg, 1876). — After him various groups diverge. The intellectualistic tendency is represented by Samuel Clarke (1676-1720; A Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of Hod. 1700 ; Philosophical Inquiry concerning Human Liberty, 1716; cf. his <-orrespoiid«uce with Leibniz) and William Wollaston (1659-1724 ; The Relig ion of Mature Delineated. 1722). — The morality based on feeling was repre sented by Kraut-is Hutcheson (1694-1747 ; Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue, 1726 ; A System of Moral Philosophy, 1766 ; cf.
Tli. Fowler, Shaftesbury and Hutcheson, Lond. 1882) ; Henry Home, pseud. for Lord Kaines (1680-1782 ; Essays on the Principles of Morality and Xatural Iteligion, 1751; Elements of Criticism, 1762); Edmund Burke (1730-1707; J'hitosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beauti
ful, 1766); Adam Ferguson (1724-1816; Institutions of Moral Philosophy, 1769), and in a certain sense also, Adam Smith (1723-1790; Theory of Moral Sentiments, 1760) ; the principle of authority was defended by Joseph Butler ( 1002-1762; Sermons upon Human Mature, 1726) [Butler, in Blackwood series by W. h. Collins, 1881], and William Paley (1743-1806; Principles of Moral and IWiticnl Philosophy, 1785). The ethics of the associonational psychology ww developed chiefly by Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832 ; Introduction to the Principles of . Morals and Legislation, 1789; Traiti de legislation Civile et I'rnale, brought together by E. Dumont, 1801 ; Deontology, ed. by J. Bowring, 1H34 ; works in 11 vols. , Edin. 1843). — In a peculiar isolated position appears Bernhard de Mandeville (1670-1733 ; The Fable of the Bees, or Private Vices made Public Benefits, 171)0, later with illustrative dialogues, 1728; Inquiry into the Oiigin of Moral Virtue, 1732 ; Free Thoughts on Religion, Church, tiovern- nvnt. 1720). ' On him cf. P. Sakmann (Freiburg. 1898).
The literature of Deism coincides, for the most part, with the above-named literature of moral philosophy ; but in addition to those named the following writers are also prominent : John Toland (1670-1722 ; Christianity not Myste rious. 1000 ; Letters to Serena, 1704 ; Adeisidtemon, 1700 ; Pantheisticon, 1710) ; Anthony Collins (1876-1720; . 4 Discourse of Free Thinking, 1713) ; Matthew Tindal i 1050-1733; Christianity as Old as the Creation, 17:10) ; Thomas Chubb '1079-1747 ; A Discourse concerning Reason \rith Regard to Religion, 1730) ;
rhoraa* Morgan (died 1743 ; The Moral Philosopher, 3 parts, 1737 ff. ) ; finally, I-oni BoUngbroke (1672-1761); works ed. by Mollet in 6 vols. , 1763 f. ; cf. V. v Kaumer, Ahhandl. der Berl. Akad. 1840). —Cf. V. Lechler, Oetchichte des
emjlivhen Deismus (Stuttgart and Tub. 1841).
England's greatest philosopher is David Home, bom, 1711, in Edinburg, and
rducated there. After he had spent some time as merchant, he lived for several years in France, occupied in study, and composed bis work of genius, the Treatise on Human Mature (printed 1739 f. ). The failure of this book induced
him to work it over and publish it under the title Inquiry concerning Human Cnderstanding, as a second volume of his more successful Essays, Moral, Politi- rul aud Literary (1748), and to add An Inquiry concerning the Principles of M'-rals (1761), and also The Matural History of Religion (1766). As librarian of the Advocates' Library in Edinburg he found opportunity to write his History iff England. After a stay in Paris, where he received great honour and came
into connection with Koussean among others, he was for some time I'nder- N<-t rotary of State in the Foreign Office, but finally returned to KdinburR. where hr died, 1776. The Dialogues concerning Saturn! Religion and some smaller trraiiwit appeared posthumously. Ed. of his works by (ireen and (irose In 4 vols. (Lond. 1876). His autobiography was published by his friend, Adam Smith (1777). Cf. J. H. Burton. Life and Correspondence of D. H. (Edin.
I8IO-50) ; E. Feuerlein in the Zeitschr. " iJer liedankc" (Berlin, 1863 f. ) ; K. Pfleiderer. Empirismus und Skeptis in D. H. 's Philosophic (Berlin, 1874) ; T. Huxley, D. H. (Lond. 1870) ; Fr. Jodl, Uben n. Philosophie D. H. 's (Halle, 1873); A. Meinong, Hume-Studien (Vienna, 1877, 1882) ; (i. v. Oizvcki, Die Ethlk D. H. 's (Breslsu, 1878). fW. Knight, Blackwood series, 1886; cap.
Int. by T. H. (ireen in bis ed. of the works. Selby-Bigge eds. of the Treatise i I88t>) and the Enquiry (with Introd. 1894), Clar. Press, are excellent.
442 Philosophy of the Enlightenment. [Part V.
The Scottish School was founded by Thomas Reid (1710-1796, Professor at Glasgow ; Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principle* of Common Sense, 1764 ; Essays on the. Intellectual Power* of Man, 1786 ; Essays on the Active Powers of Man, 1788, complete ed. by W. Hamilton, Edin.
that religious books, like all other phenomena of literature, must be historically explained as to their theoretical import, that is. must be understood from the point of view of the intellectual condition of their authors, and that this historical criticism takes away from those former theoretical views their binding and normative signifi cance for a later time.
3. With the political and churchly political interests became associated the social. 2so one gave them a more eloquent expression than Thomas More. After a thrilling portrayal of the misery of the masses the first book of the Utopia comes to the conclusion that society would do better if instead of the Draconian justice with which she punishes the violation of her laws, she should stop the sources of crime. The author maintains that the greater part of the guilt for the wrong-doing of the individual is due to the perverted arrange ment of the whole. This latter consists in the inequality ofproperty brought about by the use of money, for this inequality gives occasion to all the aberrations of passion, of envy, and of hatred. The ideal picture of the perfect state of society upon the island of Utopia, which More sketches in contrast to the present condition, is in its main features an imitation of the ideal state of Plato. This human istic revival however, distinguished from its prototype in manner characteristic for modern socialism, by its abolition of class- ilistinctions, which seemed necessary to the ancient thinker in conse quence of his reflection upon the actually given difference in the intellectual and moral status of individuals. In an abstraction that was prototype for the succeeding development More proceeded
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Chap. 2, § 32. ] Natural Right : Spinoza, More, Bacon. 429
from the thought of the equality of all citizens before the law, and changed into an equality of claim or title for all citizens those forms of community which Plato had demanded of the ruling classes as a renunciation of the natural impulses toward an individual sphere of interests. With Plato the preferred classes were to renounce all private property in order to devote themselves entirely to the gen eral weal : with More the abolition of private property is demanded as the surest means for doing away with crime, and is based upon the equality of title which all have to the common possession. But at the same time the English Chancellor still holds fast to the ideal model of the ancient philosopher, in so far as to treat this entire equality in the division of material interests, as the indispensable basis for makiug it possible to all citizens to enjoy in like measure the ideal goods of society, science, and art. A normal working day of six hours for all members of society will be enough, he thinks, to satisfy all external needs of the community : the remaining time should remain free for every one for nobler employment. With these characteristics the programme for all the higher forms of modern socialism grows in the thought of More out of the Platonic project.
But the spirit of the Renaissance was animated by much more worldly interests. Stimulated by the magic of discoveries, dazzled by the glitter of inventions, it set itself the task of transforming
its new insights the whole outer condition of human society as related to the natural conditions of life, and saw before itself an ideal of comfort for human life, which should develop from com plete and systematic use of the knowledge and control of Nature made possible by science. All social injuries will be healed by raising human society, by means of the scientific advancement of external civilisation, beyond all the cares and all the need which now vex it few inventions like the compass, the art of printing,
and gunpowder, says Bacon, have sufficed to give human life new motion, greater dimensions, mightier development. What trans formations stand before us when invention once becomes an intel ligently exercised art The social problem thus transferred to an improvement of the material condition of society.
In Bacon's New Atlantis1 a happy island-people in carefully guarded seclusion brought before us, which by skilful regula tions receives information of the progress in civilisation made by all other peoples, and at the same time, by the systematic prosecu tion of research, discovery, and invention, raises to the highest
Tbe title of this I'lopia and much elue in rtminiacence of Plato'i fragment. Critiat (113 f. ).
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430 The Renautanee : Natural Sciemee Period. [Past IV.
point the control of Nature for the practical interests of human life. All kinds of possible and impossible inventions are related in fan tastic prophecy,1 and the whole activity of the - House of Solomon " is directed toward improving the material state of society, while the portrayal of the political relations is only superficial and unim portant.
In Campanella's State of the Sun, on the other hand, in which the after-effects of More's Utopia are very noticeable, we come to a com plete project of the socialistic future Mate, which is even pedanti cally ordered down to all of its minor relations. This state does not shrink in any direction from the most extreme violence to the free dom of the individual's life. From the mathematically delineated plan of the imperial city to the division of hours for daily work and enjoyment, the determination of professions, the pairing of the men and women, the astrologically predetermined hour for sexual unions, —all takes place here from an arrangement by the state for the welfare of the whole, and an extended, carefully worked out system of bureaucracy (in which there is an admixture of metaphys ical motives)* is built up upon the graded knowledge of the citizens. The more any one knows, the more power he ought to have in the state, in order to rule and improve by his knowledge the course of Nature. The points of view in this improvement look essentially toward external civilisation in Campanella's system also. With
him, indeed, four hours of daily labour should suffice on the average to assure the good cheer of society, and upon this prosperity all should have a like claim.
4. In spite of all that is fantastic and whimsical,' the thought nevertheless asserts itself in Campanella's State of the Sun, still more than in More's Utopia, that the state should be an artificial product of human insight for the removal of social injuries. Neither writer desired to set up a mere creation of fancy, any more than did Plato ; they believe in the possibility of realising " the best political constitution " by rational reflection upon an order of social relations
1 In addition to the microscope and the telescope, the microphone and tele phone are not wanting ; there are giant explosive materials, flying-machines, all sorts of engines with air and water power, and even "some kinds" of perpetual motion ! But the author lays special value upon the fact that by better culture of plants and animals, by unsuspected chemical discoveries, by baths and air-cures, diseases are to be banished and life prolonged ; experiments on animals are also introduced in the interest of medicine.
* Beneath the supreme ruler, — Sol or Metaphysicus, — who must embody all knowledge within himself, stand first of all three princes, whose spheres of activity correspond to the three " primalities " of Being, Power, Wisdom and Love (cf. § 29, 3), etc.
* Fantastic is especially the strong element of astrological and magical super stition ; whimsical, his monkish rude treatment of the sexual relations.
Chap. 2, § 32. ] Natural Right : Campanella, Grotiut. 431
that shall he in accordance with Nature. In this, to be sure, they encountered much opposition. Cardanus combated Utopias on principle, and in their stead commended to science the task of comprehending the necessity with which the actual states of history develop in their special definite nature, out of the character, the relations of life, and the experiences of peoples ; he would have them regarded as natural products like organisms, and would apply to their conditions the medical categories of health and disease. In a larger way, and free from the Pythagorean astrology in which the mathematician Cardanus indulged, but with a strongly con structive fancy, the practical statesman Bodin attempted to under stand the manifold character of historical reality as manifested in political life.
But the tendency of the time was much more toward seeking a right founded in Nature for all times and relations alike, and to be recog nised by reason alone : although a man like Albericus Gentilis desired to reduce the principles of private right to physical laws by analogies of childlike crudeness. A firmer and more fruitful ground was gained when human nature, instead of general " Nature," was taken as a starting-point. This was done by Hugo Grotius. Like Thomas Aquinas, he found the fundamental principle of natural right in the social need, and found the method for its development in logical deduction. That which reason recognises as agreeing with man's social nature and following therefrom — in this consists the ju* maturate' — that cannot be changed by any historical mutation. The thought of such an absolute right, which exists only by its foundation in reason, and which exists independently of the politi cal power and rather as the ultimate ground of this power, was brought home to Grotius by the analogy of international law with which his investigation was primarily concerned. On the other hand, however, by virtue of this material principle, private right be came the authoritative presupposition for political right also. The satisfaction of individual interests, protection of life and property, ap|wared as the essential pnd to l>e subserved by the ordering of
rights. Formally and methodically, on the contrary, this philo sophical system of rights was entirely deductive; it aimed only to draw the logical consequences of the principle of society. In like manner Hnbbe* also regarded the corpus politieum as a machine capable of being deduced from the conception of its end by pure intellectual activity, and the philosophical doctrine of rights as a perfect demonstrable science. At the same time this field seemed
> De Jure Bell, et Puc I. 1. 10.
432 The Renaissance : Natural Science Period. [Part IV.
adapted in a pre-eminent degree to the application of the geometri cal method, and Puffendorf introduced the whole apparatus of this method by combining Grotius and Hobbes, and developing the whole system synthetically from the thought that the individual's instinct toward self-preservation could be rationally and successfully fulfilled only by satisfying his social need. In this form natural right per sisted as the ideal of a "geometrical" science until far on into the eighteenth century (Thomasius, Wolff, indeed, even to Fichte and Schelling), and survived the general decline of the Cartesian principle.
5. Looking now at the contents rather than at the form, we find that the ultimate ground of public life and of social coherence was placed in the interests of individuals : the mechanics of the state found in the character of the impulses of the individual man that self-intelligible and simple element,1 out of which the complex structures of life viewed as a subject of law and rights (Rechtslebens) might be explained in accordance with the Galilean principle. With this the doctrine of the state also went back to the Epicurean theory of social atomism 2 (cf. pp. 174 f. ), and the synthetic principle by which the origin of the state was to be understood was the contract. From Occam and Marsilius down to Rousseau, Kant, and Fichte, this con tract theory was dominant in political philosophy. Grotius and Hobbes devoted themselves to carrying it out in the most careful manner. To the political contract by which the individuals unite themselves to a community of interests, is attached the contract of sovereignty or subjection, by means of which the individuals hand over their rights and authority to the magistracy. This proved to be a general frame in which the most varied political theories fitted.
While Grotius, and likewise Spinoza, found the interests of the citizens to be best guaranteed by an aristocratic republican constitu tion, Hobbes could deduce from the same presupposition his theory of a purely secular absolutism, according to which the political power should be inviolably united in one personality, the universal will in the individual will of the sovereign.
In closest connection with the contract theory appears the devel opment of the conception of sovereignty. The source of all power, according to this theory, is the popular will, from which the politi cal contract and the contract of submission have proceeded; the proper bearer of the sovereignty is the people. Meanwhile the con-
1 The term "conatus" applies in this sense to both domains, the physical and the psychical, with Hobbes and Spinoza.
3 As in the theoretical domain, so also in the practical, the principle of Democritus and Epicurus obtains with great efforts a late victory.
Chap.
32. ] Natural Right Contract Theory. 438
tract and the transfer of right and power completed thereby, are regarded by some writers as irrevocable, and by others as capable
of recall. So Bodin, in spite of his doctrine of popular sovereignty, maintains the unlimited character and unconditional authority of the royal power, the inviolability of the ruler and the unjustifia- bility of all opposition against him with Hobbes the sovereignty
of the people still more completely absorbed into that of the monarch, whose will here stands quite in the sense of the Vitat c'est moi as the sole source of rights in the positive political life. In oppo sition to this view, and decidedly more consistent in view of their presupposition, the " monarchomachischen [opposed to an absolute
theories," whose chief representative besides Buchanan (1506-1582) and Languet (1518-1581) was Althus of Lower Sax
ony, maintained that the governmental contract becomes liable to dissolution as soon as the sovereign ceases to rule rightly, i. e. in the interest and according to the will of the people. If the contract broken on one side, no longer binding for the other party; in this situation the sovereignty returns again to its original bearers.
If man has made the state with purpose and under reflection, then he abolishes again when becomes evident that has failed to fulfil its purpose. Thus the Renaissance already providing in advance the theory of revolution. 1
All these theories, however, received their especial colouring from motives growing out of the particular relations of church and Mate, — a colouring which depended upon the question whether the unre stricted |»ower of the ruler was felt as dangerous or as beneficial in consequence of his relation to the Confessions. The most radical
monarchy]
in real politics was taken by Hobbes by virtue of his religious indifferentism religion private opinion, and only that opinion which the sovereign professes has political standing or value. No other religion or Confession can be tolerated in public life.
Hoblies gave the philosophical theory for the historical aijus regio illius religio. And Spinoza attached himself to him in this. He stood for freedom of thought and against all compulsion of con science, but for him religion was only matter of knowledge and disposition; for the public manifestation of religious feeling in the church and in public worship, was in the interest of order and peace that only the form fixed by the magistracy should obtain. In a more positive sense the Protestant Philosophy of Right declared for
These principle* were defended with special application to"the English con ditions of the seventeenth century, and to the right of the Revolution" of that time by the poet . Inhn Milton Defentio pro Populo Anglican**, 1661), and by Algernon Sidney {Discount* of Government, 1083).
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434 The Renaissance : Natural Science Period. [Part IV.
the sovereignty in church and state of the kingdom existing by the grace of God ; while in this school, also, as for example in the case of Althns, the sovereignty of the people was defended as over against a magistracy holding another creed. The same motive was decisive where the Jesuits maintained that the magistracy might be removed and that the assassination of the prince was excusable
(cf. above).
6. In the case of Hobbes the rationale of the contract theory
rested on more general motives. If the social and political life was to be comprehended from the point of view of " human nature," the English philosopher found the fundamental, all-determining charac teristic of human nature in the impulse toward self-preservation or egoism, the simple, self-evident principle for explaining the entire volitional life. Here his materialistic metaphysics and sensualistic psychology (cf. § 31) made it appear that this instinct toward self- preservation, in its original essence, was directed only toward the preservation and furtherance of the sensuous existence of the indi vidual. All other objects of the will could serve only as means to bring about that supreme end. Agreeably to this principle, also, there was no other norm of judgment for man as a natural being than that of furtherance or hindrance, of profit or of harm : the distinction of good and evil, of right and wrong, is not possible upon the standpoint of the individual, but only upon the social standpoint, where the common interest instead of the individual's interest forms the standard. So egoism became the principle of all practical philosophy; for if the individual's instinct toward self- preservation was to be restricted and corrected by the command of the state, yet this state itself was regarded as the most ingenious and perfect of all the contrivances which egoism had hit upon to attain and secure its satisfaction. The state of nature, in which the egoism of each stands originally opposed to the egoism of every other, is a war of all against all: to escape this the state was founded as a contract for the mutual warrant of self-preservation. The social need is not original : it only results necessarily as the most efficient and certain means for the satisfaction of egoism.
Spinoza adopted this doctrine, but gave it a more ideal signifi cance by introducing it into his metaphysics. " Suum esse con- servare " is for him also the quintessence and fundamental motive or all willing. But since every finite mode belongs equally to both attributes, its impulse toward self-preservation is directed as well toward its conscious activity, i. e. its knowledge, as toward its main tenance in the corporeal world, i. e. its power. This individual striving, interpreted along the lines of the Baconian identity of
Chap. 2, § :fci. ] Natural Right : Hobbes, Cambridge Men. 435
knowledge and power, forms for Spinoza the ground of explanation for the empirical life of the state, in accordance with the principle that each one's right extends as far as his power. In this process of explanation Spinoza moves mainly in the lines of Hobbes, and deviates from him only, as noticed above, in his view as to the best form of constitution. This same complication of conceptions, how ever, presents itself to Spinoza as affording also a starting-point for his mystico-religious ethics. For since the true "esse" of every finite thing is the deity, the only perfect satisfaction of the impulse toward self-preservation is to be found in "love to God. " That Malebranche, who spoke so vehemently of the "atheistical Jew," taught the same in slightly different words — "unit ein bischen anderen Wbrten" — has already been mentioned (§ 31, 4).
7. Hobbes' theory of egoism — the " selfish system," as it was later termed for the most part — found vigorous opposition among his countrymen. 1 The reduction of all activities of the will, without any exception, to the impulse toward self-preservation excited both ethical revolt and the theoretical contradiction of psychological expe rience. The warfare against Hobbes was undertaken
primarily by the Neo-Platonist school of Cambridge, whose chief literary repre sentatives were Ralph Cudworth and Henry More. In this contro
versy the antithesis of </>wm and 6i<nt developed after the ancient prototype. For Hobbes, right and moral order arose from social institution; for his opponents they were original and immediately certain demands of Nature. Both parties opposed the lex naturalis to the theological dogmatic grounding of practical philosophy : but for Hobbes natural law was the demonstrable consequence of intel ligent egoism ; for the " Platonists " it was an immediate certainty, innate in the human mind.
Cumberland proceeded against Hobbes in the same line. He would have man's social nature regarded as being as original as his egoism : the " benevolent " altruistic inclinations, whose actual ex istence is not to be doubted, are objects of direct self-perception which have an original independence of their own ; the social need is not the refined product of a shrewd self-seeking, but — as Hugo Grotius had conceived of it — a primary, constitutive characteristic of human nature. While egoism is directed toward one's own private weal, the altruistic motives are directed toward the uni versal weal, without which private weal is not possible. This connection between the welfare of the individual and that of the
■ Ct. J. Tulluch, Hatiunal Theology and Christian I'hilotophy in England in l*« 17th Vent. (I<ond. 1872).
436 The Renausancc : Natural Science Period. [Part IV.
public, which in Hobbes appeared as due to the shrewd insight of man, is regarded by Cumberland as a provision of God, whose commandment is hence considered to be the authoritative principle for obeying those demands which express themselves in the benevo lent inclinations.
To the side of this natural morality of reason, which was thus defeuded against orthodoxy on the one hand and sensualism on the other, came the natural religion of reason, which had been set up by Herbert of Cherbury in opposition to these same two positions. Religion also shall be based neither upon historical revelation nor upon human institution ; it belongs to the inborn possession of the human mind. The consensus gentium — so argues Herbert in the manner of the ancient Stoics — proves that belief in the deity is a necessary constituent of the human world of ideas, a demand of reason ; but on this account that only which corresponds to those demands of the reason can stand as true content of religion, as contrasted with the dogmas of religions.
Thus the questions of practical philosophy which appear in English literature in the very lively discussion excited by Hobbes, gradually became transferred to the psychological realm. What is the origin of right, morals, and religion in the human mind? — so runs the problem. With this, however, the movements of the philosophy of the Enlightenment are introduced.
PART V.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT.
In addition to the literature cited on p. 348, cf.
Leslie Stephen, History of English Thought in the 18th Cent. Lond. 1876.
J. Mackintosh, On the Progress of Ethical Philosophy during the 17th and
18th Centuries. Edin. 1872.
Ph. Damiron, Memoires pour strvir a VHistoire de la Philosophie au 18" Steele.
3 vols. , l'aria 1858-64.
K. Zeller, (iesehichte der dentschen Philosophie seit Leibniz. MUnohen, 1873. Also II. Hettner, Litteraturgesrhichte des 18. Jahr. 3 parts.
The natural rhythm of intellectual life brought with it the result that in the modern as in the Greek philosophy a first cosmologico- metaphysical period was followed by a period of an essentially anthropological character, and that thus once more the newly awakened, purely theoretical efforts of philosophy must yield to a practical conception of philosophy as " icorld-ifisdom. " In fact, all features of the Oreek sophistic movement are found again with ripened fulness of thought, with broadened variety, with deepened content, and, therefore, also, with added energy in their antitheses in the Philosophy of the Enlightenment, which coincides approxi mately in time with the eighteenth century. In the place of Athens now appears the whole breadth of the intellectual movement among European civilised peoples, and scientific tradition counts now as many thousands of years as it then counted centuries; but the tendency as a whole and the objects of thought, the points of view and the results of the philosophising, show an instructive similarity and kinship in these two periods so widely separated in time and so different in the civilisations which formed their background. There prevails in lx>th the same turning of thought toward the subject's inner nature, the same turning away from metaphysical subtlety with doubt and disgust, the same preference for an em
pirical genetic consideration of the human psychical life, the same inquiry as to the possibility and the limits of scientific knowledge, 437
438 Philosophy of the Enlightenment. [Part V.
and the same passionate interest in the discussion of the prob lems of life and society. No less characteristic, lastly, for both periods is the penetration of philosophy into the broad circles of general culture and the fusion of the scientific with the literary movement.
But the basis for the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century was given in the general features of a secular view of life, as they had been worked out during the Renaissance by the fresh move ments in art, religion, politics, and natural research. While these had found their metaphysical formulation in the seventeenth cen tury, the question now came again into the foreground, how man should conceive, in the setting of the new Weltanschauung, his own nature and his own position : and in the presence of the value set upon this question, the interest in the various metaphysical concep tions in which the new Weltanschauung had been embodied, retreated more and more decidedly into the background. Men contented themselves with the general outlines of metaphysical theories, in order to employ themselves the more thoroughly with the questions of human life ; and all the doctrines of the Enlightenment which offer such a vehement polemic against speculation are, in truth, working from the beginning with a metaphysics of the " sound com mon sense " which at last raised its voice so high, and which ulti mately only assumed as self-evident truth that which had fallen to it from the achievements of the labour of preceding centuries.
The beginnings of the philosophy of the Enlightenment are to be sought in England, where, in connection with the well-ordered con ditions which followed the close of the period of the revolution, a powerful upward movement of literary life claimed philosophy also in the interests of general culture. From England this literature was transplanted to France. Here, however, the opposition of the ideals which it brought with it to the social and political status, worked in such a way that not only was the presentation of the thoughts more excited and vehement from the outset, but the thoughts themselves also take on a sharper point, and turn their negative energy more powerfully against the existing conditions in Church and state. At first from France, and then from the direct influence of England,1 also, Germany received the ideas of the Enlightenment, for which it had already received an independent preparation in a more theoretical manner: and here these ideas found their last deepening, and a purification and ennobling as well,
1 Cf. G. Zart, Der Einjluss der englischen Philosophen auf die deutsche Philos. de. i 18. Jahrh. (Berlin, 1881).
Philotophy of the Enlightenment. 439
as they came to an end in the German poetry with which the Renaissance of classical Humanism was completed.
John Locke became the leader of the English Enlightenment by finding a popular form of empirico-psychological exposition for the general outlines of the Cartesian conception of the world. While the metaphysical tendency of the system brought forth an idealistic after-shoot in Berkeley, the anthropologico-genetic mode of con sideration extended quickly and victoriously to all problems of philosophy. Here the opposition between the sensualistic associa- tional psychology and the nativistic theories of various origin con tinued to have a decisive influence upon the course of development. It controlled the vigorous movement in moral philosophy, and the development of deism and natural religion, which was connected with it ; and it found its sharpest formulation in the epistemological field, where the most consistent and deepest of English thinkers, David Hume, developed empiricism to positivism, and thereby called
forth the opposition of the Scottish school.
The pioneer of the French Enlightenment was Pierre Bayle, whose
Uictionnaire turned the views of the cultivated world completely in the direction of religious scepticism ; and it was along this line chiefly that the English literature was then taken up in Paris. Voltaire was the great writer, who not only gave this movement its most eloquent expression, but also presented the positive elements of the Enlightenment in the most emphatic manner. But the development pressed with much greater weight toward the negative side. In the common thinking of the Encyclopaedists became com pleted step by step the change from empiricism to sensualism, from naturalism to materialism, from deism to atheism, from enthusiastic to egoistic morals. In opposition to such an Enlightenment of the intellect, whose lines all converge in the positivism of Condillac, there appeared in Rousseau a feeling-philoso]>hy of elemental power, leading to the intellectual shaping of the Revolution.
Germany was won for the Enlightenment movement by the Leibnizian philosophy and the great success which Wolff achieved, in his activity as a teacher, in developing and transforming but here, in consequence of the lack of unifying public interest, the tendency toward individual culture was predominant. For the ends of this individual culture, the ideas of the " philosophical century " were elaborated in psychological and epistemological as well as in the moral, political, and religious fields with great multiplicity, but without any new creation of principles until fresh life and higher points of view were brought by the poetical movement and the great personalities of its bearers, Lessing and Herder, to the dry intelli
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440 Philosophy of the Enlightenment. [Pabt V.
gence with which a boastful popular philosophy had extended itself, especially in connection with the Berlin Academy. 1 This circum stance kept the German philosophy of the eighteenth century from losing itself in theoretico-sceptical self-disintegration like the Eng lish, or from being shattered in practical politics like the French : contact with a great literature teeming with ideas new great epoch of philosophy was here prepared.
John Locke, born 1632, at Wrington near Bristol, was educated at Oxford, and became involved in the changeful fortunes of the statesman Lord Shaftes bury. He returned home from exile in Holland with William of Orange in 1688, filled several high political offices under the new government which he also often publicly defended, and died while living in the country at leisure, in 1704. His philosophical work bears the title An Essay concerning Human
Understanding (1690) besides this are to be mentioned Some Thoughts on Education (1693), The Reasonableness of Christianity (1695), and, among his posthumous works, Of the Conduct of the Understanding. Cf. Fox Bourne, The Life of J. L. (Lond. and N. Y. 1876); Th. Fowler, J. L. (Lond. 1880); [Locke, by A. C. Fraser, Blackwood series, Edin. and l'hila. 1890, and article Locke in Enc. Brit. ; T. H. Green in his Int. to Hume; J. Dewey, Leibniz's New Essays, Chicago, 1888 Edition of his works by Low, 1771, also ed. Loud. 1853 Philos. wks. in Bohn Lib. Crit. ed. of the Essay by Fraser, 1894].
George Berkeley was born in Killerin, Ireland, in 1685, took part as a clergy man in missionary and colonisation attempts in America, became Bishop of Cloyne 1734, and died 1753. His Theory of Vision (1709) was a preparation for his Treatise on the Principles of Unman Knowledge (1710). This main work was later followed by the Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous, and by Alciphron or the Minute Philosopher. Edition of his works by Fraser,
vols. , Lond. 1871 the same writer has also given a good exposition of his thought as whole (Blackwood series, Edin. and Lond. 1881). Cf. Collyns Simon, Universal Immaterialism, Lond. 1862.
The Associational Psychology found its chief supporters in Peter Brown (died 1735 Bishop of Cork The Procedure, Extent, and Limits of Human Un derstanding, 1719), David Hartley (1704-1757 De Motus Sensns et Idearnm Oeneratione, 1746; Observations on Man, his Frame, his Duty, and his Expec tations, 1749), Edward Search, pseudonym for Abraham Tucker (1705-1774 Light of Nature, vols. , Lond. 1788-1777), Joseph Priestley (1733-1804 Hart ley's Theory of the Human Mind on the Principle of the Association of Ideas, 1775; Disquisitions relating to Matter and Spirit, 1777), John HorneTooke (1736-1812 'EireA rrTtpUvra. or The Diversions of Parley, 1798; cf. Stephen. Memoirs of J. H. T. , Lond. 1813), Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802 Zoonomia or the Laws of Organic Life, 1794-1796), finally, Thomas Brown (1778-1820; Inquiry into the Relation of Cause and Effect, 1804 posthumously, the Lectures on the Philosophy of the Human Mind, 1820, delivered in Edinburg). Cf. Br. Schoen\a. nV. ,Hartley u. Priestley alsBegriinderdesAssociationism us (Halle, 1882); L. Ferri, Sulla Dottrina Psichologica dell' Associazione, Saggio Storico Critics (Rome, 1878) [Fr. tr. Paris, 1883. Cf. also Hartley and James Mill by G. S. Bower, Lond. 1881. For bibliography for the writers mentioned in this and the following paragraphs consult Porter's appendix to Eng. tr. Ueberweg's
Hist. Phil. }.
Of the opponents to this movement who Platonise in the older manner,
Richard Price (1723-1791) became known especially by his controversy with Priestley —
Priestley, The Doctrine of Philosophical Necessity (1777); Price, Letters on Materialism and Philosophical Necessity; Priestley, Free Discussions of the Doctrines of Materialism (1778).
Cf. Ch. Bartholmess, Histoire Philosophique de VAcademie de Prusse, Paris, 1869.
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Philoaopfiy of the Enlightenment. 441
Among the English moral philosophers. Shaftesbury (Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1071-1713) takes a most important place. His writings were collected under the title, Characteristic* of Men, Manners, Opinion* and Times (1711). Cf. G. v. Gizycki, Die Philosophie Sh. 's (Leips. and Heidelberg, 1876). — After him various groups diverge. The intellectualistic tendency is represented by Samuel Clarke (1676-1720; A Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of Hod. 1700 ; Philosophical Inquiry concerning Human Liberty, 1716; cf. his <-orrespoiid«uce with Leibniz) and William Wollaston (1659-1724 ; The Relig ion of Mature Delineated. 1722). — The morality based on feeling was repre sented by Kraut-is Hutcheson (1694-1747 ; Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue, 1726 ; A System of Moral Philosophy, 1766 ; cf.
Tli. Fowler, Shaftesbury and Hutcheson, Lond. 1882) ; Henry Home, pseud. for Lord Kaines (1680-1782 ; Essays on the Principles of Morality and Xatural Iteligion, 1751; Elements of Criticism, 1762); Edmund Burke (1730-1707; J'hitosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beauti
ful, 1766); Adam Ferguson (1724-1816; Institutions of Moral Philosophy, 1769), and in a certain sense also, Adam Smith (1723-1790; Theory of Moral Sentiments, 1760) ; the principle of authority was defended by Joseph Butler ( 1002-1762; Sermons upon Human Mature, 1726) [Butler, in Blackwood series by W. h. Collins, 1881], and William Paley (1743-1806; Principles of Moral and IWiticnl Philosophy, 1785). The ethics of the associonational psychology ww developed chiefly by Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832 ; Introduction to the Principles of . Morals and Legislation, 1789; Traiti de legislation Civile et I'rnale, brought together by E. Dumont, 1801 ; Deontology, ed. by J. Bowring, 1H34 ; works in 11 vols. , Edin. 1843). — In a peculiar isolated position appears Bernhard de Mandeville (1670-1733 ; The Fable of the Bees, or Private Vices made Public Benefits, 171)0, later with illustrative dialogues, 1728; Inquiry into the Oiigin of Moral Virtue, 1732 ; Free Thoughts on Religion, Church, tiovern- nvnt. 1720). ' On him cf. P. Sakmann (Freiburg. 1898).
The literature of Deism coincides, for the most part, with the above-named literature of moral philosophy ; but in addition to those named the following writers are also prominent : John Toland (1670-1722 ; Christianity not Myste rious. 1000 ; Letters to Serena, 1704 ; Adeisidtemon, 1700 ; Pantheisticon, 1710) ; Anthony Collins (1876-1720; . 4 Discourse of Free Thinking, 1713) ; Matthew Tindal i 1050-1733; Christianity as Old as the Creation, 17:10) ; Thomas Chubb '1079-1747 ; A Discourse concerning Reason \rith Regard to Religion, 1730) ;
rhoraa* Morgan (died 1743 ; The Moral Philosopher, 3 parts, 1737 ff. ) ; finally, I-oni BoUngbroke (1672-1761); works ed. by Mollet in 6 vols. , 1763 f. ; cf. V. v Kaumer, Ahhandl. der Berl. Akad. 1840). —Cf. V. Lechler, Oetchichte des
emjlivhen Deismus (Stuttgart and Tub. 1841).
England's greatest philosopher is David Home, bom, 1711, in Edinburg, and
rducated there. After he had spent some time as merchant, he lived for several years in France, occupied in study, and composed bis work of genius, the Treatise on Human Mature (printed 1739 f. ). The failure of this book induced
him to work it over and publish it under the title Inquiry concerning Human Cnderstanding, as a second volume of his more successful Essays, Moral, Politi- rul aud Literary (1748), and to add An Inquiry concerning the Principles of M'-rals (1761), and also The Matural History of Religion (1766). As librarian of the Advocates' Library in Edinburg he found opportunity to write his History iff England. After a stay in Paris, where he received great honour and came
into connection with Koussean among others, he was for some time I'nder- N<-t rotary of State in the Foreign Office, but finally returned to KdinburR. where hr died, 1776. The Dialogues concerning Saturn! Religion and some smaller trraiiwit appeared posthumously. Ed. of his works by (ireen and (irose In 4 vols. (Lond. 1876). His autobiography was published by his friend, Adam Smith (1777). Cf. J. H. Burton. Life and Correspondence of D. H. (Edin.
I8IO-50) ; E. Feuerlein in the Zeitschr. " iJer liedankc" (Berlin, 1863 f. ) ; K. Pfleiderer. Empirismus und Skeptis in D. H. 's Philosophic (Berlin, 1874) ; T. Huxley, D. H. (Lond. 1870) ; Fr. Jodl, Uben n. Philosophie D. H. 's (Halle, 1873); A. Meinong, Hume-Studien (Vienna, 1877, 1882) ; (i. v. Oizvcki, Die Ethlk D. H. 's (Breslsu, 1878). fW. Knight, Blackwood series, 1886; cap.
Int. by T. H. (ireen in bis ed. of the works. Selby-Bigge eds. of the Treatise i I88t>) and the Enquiry (with Introd. 1894), Clar. Press, are excellent.
442 Philosophy of the Enlightenment. [Part V.
The Scottish School was founded by Thomas Reid (1710-1796, Professor at Glasgow ; Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principle* of Common Sense, 1764 ; Essays on the. Intellectual Power* of Man, 1786 ; Essays on the Active Powers of Man, 1788, complete ed. by W. Hamilton, Edin.
