History of Modern Philosophy Part 23

Three decades later Strauss again created a sensation by his confession of materialism and atheism, The Old Faith and the New, 1872 (since the second edition, "With a Postscript as Preface"),[1] in which he continues the conflict against religious dualism. The question "Are we"-the cultured men of the day-"still Christians?" is answered in the negative. Christianity is a cult of poverty, despising the world, and antagonistic to labor and culture; but we have learned to esteem science and art, riches and acquisition, as the chief levers of culture and of human progress. Christianity dualistically tears apart body and soul, time and eternity, the world and G.o.d; we need no Creator, for the life-process has neither beginning nor end. The world is framed for the highest reason, it is true, but it has not been framed by a highest reason. Our highest Idea is the All, which is conformed to law, and instinct with life and reason, and our feeling toward the universe-the consciousness of dependence on its laws-exercises no less of ethical influence, is no less full of reverence, and no less exposed to injury from an irreverent pessimism, than the feeling of the devout of the old type toward their G.o.d. Hence the answer to the second question "Have we still a religion?" maybe couched in the affirmative. The new faith does not need a cultus and a Church. Since the dry services of the free congregations offer nothing for the fancy and the spirit, the edification of the heart must be accomplished in other ways-by partic.i.p.ation in the interests of humanity, in the national life, and, not last, by aesthetic enjoyment. Thus in his last work, which in two appendices reaches a discussion of the great German poets and musicians, the old man returns to a thought to which he had given earlier expression, that the religious cultus should be replaced by the cultus of genius.

[Footnote 1: English translation by Mathilde Blind, 1873.]

As Strauss went over from Hegelianism to pantheism, so Ludwig Feuerbach[1] (1804-72), a son of the great jurist, Anselm Feuerbach, after he had for a short time moved in the same direction, took the opposite, the individualistic course, only, like Strauss, to end at last in materialism. "My first thought," as he himself describes the course of his development, "was G.o.d; my second, reason; my third and last, man." As theology has been overcome by Hegel's philosophy of reason, so this in turn must give place to the philosophy of man. "The new philosophy makes man, including nature as his basis, the highest and sole subject of philosophy, and, consequently, anthropology the universal science." Only that which is immediately self-evident is true and divine. But only that which is sensible is evident (sonnenklar); it is only where sensibility begins that all doubt and conflict cease. Sensible beings alone are true, real beings; existence in s.p.a.ce and time is alone existence; truth, reality, and sensibility are identical. While the old philosophy took for its starting point the principle, "I am an abstract, a merely thinking being; the body does not belong to my essence," the new philosophy, on the other hand, begins with the principle, "I am a real, a sensible being; the body in its totality is my ego, my essence itself." Feuerbach, however, uses the concept of sensibility in so wide and vague a sense that, supported-or deceived-by the ambiguity of the word sensation, he includes under it even the most elevated and sacred feelings. Even the objects of art are seen, heard, and felt; even the souls of other men are sensed. In the sensations the deepest and highest truths are concealed. Not only the external, but the internal also, not only flesh, but spirit, not only the thing, but the ego, not only the finite, the phenomenal, but also the true divine essence is an object of the senses. Sensation proves the existence of objects outside our head-there is no other proof of being than love, than sensation in general. Everything is perceivable by the senses, if not directly, yet indirectly, if not with the vulgar, untrained senses, yet with the "cultivated senses," if not with the eye of the anatomist or chemist, yet with that of the philosopher. All our ideas spring from the senses, but their production requires communication and converse between man and man. The higher concepts cannot be derived from the individual Ego without a sensuously given Thou; the highest object of sense is man; man does not reach concepts and reason in general by himself, but only as one of two. The nature of man is contained in community alone; only in life with others and for others does he attain his destiny and happiness. The conscience is the ego putting itself in the place of another who has been injured. Man with man, the unity of I and Thou, is G.o.d, and G.o.d is love.

[Footnote 1: Feuerbach was born at Landshut, studied at Heidelberg and Berlin, habilitated, 1828, at Erlangen, and lived, 1836-60, in the village of Bruckberg, not far from Bayreuth, and from 1860 until his death in Rechenberg, a suburb of Nuremberg. Collected Works in 10 vols., 1846-66. The chief works are ent.i.tled: P. Bayle, 1838, 2d ed., 1844; Philosophy and Christianity, 1839; The Essence of Christianity, 1841, 4th ed., 1883 [English translation by George Eliot, 1854]; Principles of the Philosophy of the Future, 1843; The Essence of Religion, 1845; Theogony, 1857; G.o.d, Freedom, and Immortality, 1866. Karl Grun, 1874, C.N. Starcke, 1885, and W. Bolin, 1891, treat of Feuerbach.]

To the philosophy of religion Feuerbach a.s.signs the task of giving a psychological explanation of the genesis of religion, instead of showing reason in religion. In bidding us believe in miracles dogma is a prohibition to think. Hence the philosopher is not to justify it, but to uncover the illusion to which it owes its origin. Speculative theology is an intoxicated philosophy; it is time to become sober, and to recognize that philosophy and religion are diametrically opposed to each other, that they are related to each other as health to disease, as thought to phantasy. Religion arises from the fact that man objectifies his own true essence, and opposes it to himself as a personal being, without coming to a consciousness of this divestment of self, of the ident.i.ty of the divine and human nature. Hence the Hegelian principles, that the absolute is self-consciousness, that in man G.o.d knows himself, must be reversed: self-consciousness is the absolute; in his G.o.d man knows himself only. The G.o.dhead is our own universal nature, freed from its individual limitations, intuited and wors.h.i.+ped as another, independent being, distinct from us. G.o.d is self objectified, the inner nature of man expressed; man is the beginning, the middle, and the end of religion. All theology is anthropology, for all religion is a self-deification of man. In religion man makes a division in his own nature, posits himself as double, first as limited (as a human individual), then as unlimited, raised to infinity (as G.o.d); and this deified self he wors.h.i.+ps in order to obtain from it the satisfaction of his needs, which the course of the world leaves unmet. Thus religion grows out of egoism: its basis is the difference between our will and our power; its aim, to set us free from the dependence which we feel before nature. (Like culture, religion seeks to make nature an intelligible and compliant being, only that in this it makes use of the supernatural instruments faith, prayer, and magic; it is only gradually that men learn to attack the evils by natural means.) That which man himself is not, but wishes to be, that he represents to himself in his G.o.ds as existing; they are the wishes of man's heart transformed into real beings, his longing after happiness satisfied by the fancy. The same holds true of all dogmas: as G.o.d is the affirmation of our wishes, so the world beyond is the present embellished and idealized by the fancy. Instead of "G.o.d is merciful, is love, is omnipotent, he performs miracles and hears prayers," the statement must be reversed: mercy, love, omnipotence, to perform miracles, and to hear prayers, is divine. In the sacraments of baptism and the Lord's supper Feuerbach sees the truth that water and food are indispensable and divine. As Feuerbach, following out this naturalistic tendency, reached the extreme of materialism, the influence of his philosophy-whose different phases there is no occasion to trace out in detail-had already pa.s.sed its culmination. From his later writings little more has found its way into public notice than the pun, that man is (ist) what he eats (isst).

The remaining members of the Hegelian left may be treated more briefly. Bruno Bauer[1] (died in 1882; his princ.i.p.al work is the Critique of the Synoptics, in three volumes, 1841-42, which had been preceded, in 1840, by a Critique of the Evangelical History of John) at first belonged on the right of the school, but soon went over to the extreme left. He explains the Gospel narratives as creations with a purpose (Tendenzdichtungen), as intentional, but not deceitful, inventions, from which, despite their unreality, history may well be learned, inasmuch as they reflect the spirit of the time in which they were constructed. His own publications and those of his brother Edgar are much more radical after the year 1844. In these the brothers advocate the standpoint of "pure or absolute criticism," which extends itself to all things and events for or against which sides are taken from any quarter, and calmly watches how everything destroys itself. As soon as anything is admitted, it is no longer true. Nothing is absolutely valid, all is vain; it is only the criticising, all-destroying ego, free from all ethical ties, that possesses truth.

[Footnote 1: Not to be confused with the head of the Tubingen School, Ferdinand Christian Baur (died 1860).]

One further step was possible beyond Feuerbach and Bruno Bauer, that from the community to the particular, selfish individual, from the criticising, therefore thinking, ego, to the ego of sensuous enjoyment. This step was taken in that curious book The Individual and his Property, which Kaspar Schmidt, who died in 1856 at Berlin, published in 1845 (2d ed., 1882), under the pseudonym of Max Stirner. The Individual of whom the t.i.tle speaks is the egoist. For me nothing is higher than myself; I use men and use up the world for my own pleasure. I seek to be and have all that I can be and have; I have a right to all that is within my power. Morality is a delusion, justice, like all Ideas, a phantom. Those who believe in ideals, and wors.h.i.+p such generalities as self-consciousness, man, society, are still deep in the mire of prejudice and superst.i.tion, and have banished the old orthodox phantom of the Deity only to replace it by a new one. Nothing whatever is to be respected.

Among the opponents of the Hegelian philosophy the members of the "theistic school," who have above been designated as semi-Hegelians, approximate it most closely. These endeavor, in part retaining the dialectic method, to blend the immanence of the absolute, which philosophy cannot give up and concerning which Hegel had erred only by way of over-emphasis, with the transcendence of G.o.d demanded by Christian consciousness, to establish a theism which shall contain pantheism as a moment in itself. G.o.d is present in all creatures, yet distinct from them; he is intramundane as well as extramundane; he is self-conscious personality, free creative spirit, is this from all eternity, and does not first become such through the world-development. He does not need the world for his perfection, but out of his goodness creates it. Philosophy must begin with the living G.o.dhead instead of beginning, like Hegel's Logic, with the empty concept of being. For the categories-as Sch.e.l.ling had already objected-express necessary forms or general laws only, to which all reality must conform, but which are never capable of generating reality; the content which appears in them and which obeys them, can only be created by a Deity, and only empirically cognized. This is the standpoint of Christian Hermann Weisse[1] in Leipsic (1801-66), Karl Philipp Fischer[2] in Erlangen (1807-85), Immanuel Hermann Fichte[3] (1797-1879; 1842-65 professor in Tubingen), and the follower of Schleiermacher, Julius Braniss in Breslau (1792-1873). The following hold similar views, influenced, like Weisse and K. Ph. Fischer, by Sch.e.l.ling: Jacob Sengler of Freiburg (1799-1878; The Idea of G.o.d, 1845 seq.), Leopold Schmid of Giessen (1808-69; cf. p. 516, note), Johannes Huber (died 1879), Moritz Carriere[4] (born 1817), both in Munich, K. Steffensen of Basle (1816-88; Collected Essays, 1890), and Karl Heyder in Erlangen (1812-86; The Doctrine of Ideas, vol. i. 1874). Chalybaeus at Kiel (died 1862), and Friedrich Harms at Berlin (died 1880; Metaphysics, posthumously edited by H. Wiese, 1885), who, like Fortlage and I.H. Fichte, start from the system of the elder Fichte, should also be mentioned as sympathizing with the opinions of those who have been named.

[Footnote 1: Weisse: System of Aesthetics, 1830; The Idea of the G.o.dhead, 1833; Philosophical Dogmatics, 1855. His pupil Rudolf Seydel has published several of his posthumous works; H. Lotze also acknowledges that he owes much to Weisse. Rud. Seydel in Leipsic (born 1835), Logic, 1866; Ethics, 1874; cf. p. 17.]

[Footnote 2: K. Ph. Fischer: The Idea of the G.o.dhead, 1839; Outlines of the System of Philosophy, 1848 seq.; The Untruth of Sensationalism and Materialism, 1853.]

[Footnote 3: I.H. Fichte: System of Ethics, 1850-53, the first volume of which gives a history of moral philosophy since 1750; Anthropology, 1856, 3d ed., 1876; Psychology, 1864.]

[Footnote 4: Carriere: Aesthetics, 1859, 3d ed., 1885; The Moral Order of the World, 1877, 2d ed., 1891; Art in connection with the Development of Culture, 5 vols., 1863-73.]

The same may be said, further, of Hermann Ulrici[1] of Halle (1806-84), for many years the editor of the Zeitschrift fur Philosophie und philosophische Kritik, founded in 1837 by the younger Fichte and now edited by the author of this History, which, as the organ of the theistic school, opposed, first, the pantheism of the Young Hegelians, and then the revived materialism so loudly proclaimed after the middle of the century. This Zeitschrift of Fichte and Ulrici, following the altered circ.u.mstances of the time, has experienced a change of aim, so that it now seeks to serve idealistic efforts of every shade; while the Philosophische Monatshefte (founded by Bergmann in 1868, edited subsequently by Schaarschmidt, and now) edited by P. Natorp of Marburg, favors neo-Kantianism, and the Vierteljahrsschrift fur wissenschaftliche Philosophie (begun in 1877, and) edited by R. Avenarius of Zurich, especially cultivates those parts of philosophy which are open to exact treatment.

[Footnote 1: Ulrici: On Shakespeare's Dramatic Art, 1839, 3d ed., 1868 [English, 1876]; Faith and Knowledge, 1858; G.o.d and Nature, 1861, 2d ed., 1866; G.o.d and Man, in two volumes, Body and Soul, 1866, 2d ed., 1874, and Natural Law, 1872; various treatises on Logic-in which consciousness is based on the distinguis.h.i.+ng activity, and the categories conceived as functional modes of this-on Spiritualism, etc.]

The appearance of materialism was the consequence of the flagging of the philosophic spirit, on the one hand, and, on the other, of the dissatisfaction of the representatives of natural science with the constructions of the Sch.e.l.ling-Hegelian school. If the German naturalist is especially exposed to the danger of judging all reality from the section of it with which he is familiar, from the world of material substances and mechanical motions, the reason lies in the fact that he does not find it easy, like the Englishman for example, to let the scientific and the philosophico-religious views of the world go on side by side as two entirely heterogeneous modes of looking at things. The metaphysical impulse to generalization and unification spurs him on to break down the boundary between the two spheres, and, since the physical view of things has become part of his flesh and blood, psychical phenomena are for him nothing but brain-vibrations, and the freedom of the will and all religious ideas, nothing but illusions. The materialistic controversy broke out most actively at the convention of naturalists at Gottingen in 1854, when Rudolph Wagner in his address "On the Creation of Man and the Substance of the Soul" declared, in opposition to Karl Vogt, that there is no physiological reason for denying the descent of man from one pair and an immaterial immortal soul. Vogt's answer was ent.i.tled "Collier Faith and Science." Among others Schaller (Body and Soul, 1855), J.B. Meyer in a treatise with the same t.i.tle, 1856, and the Jena physicist, Karl Snell,[1] took part in the controversy by way of criticism and mediation. A much finer nature than the famous leaders of materialism-Moleschott (The Circle of Life, 1852, in answer to Liebig's Chemical Letters), and Louis Buchner, with whose Force and Matter (1855, 16th ed., 1888; English translation by Collingwood, 4th ed., 1884) the gymnasiast of to-day still satisfies his freethinking needs-is H. Czolbe (1819-73; New Exposition of Sensationalism, 1855; The Limits and Origin of Human Knowledge, 1865), who, on ethical grounds, demands the exclusion of everything suprasensible and contentment with the given world of phenomena, but holds that, besides matter and motion, eternal, purposive forms and original sensations in a world-soul are necessary to explain organic and psychical phenomena.

[Footnote 1: Snell (1806-86): The Materialistic Question, 1858; The Creation of Man, 1863. R. Seydel has edited Lectures on the Descent of Man, 1888, from Snell's posthumous writings.]

2. New Systems: Trendelenburg, Fechner, Lotze, and Hartmann.

The speculative impulse, especially in the soul of the German people, is ineradicable. It has neither allowed itself to be discouraged by the collapse of the Hegelian edifice, nor to be led astray by the clamor of the apostles of empiricism, nor to be intimidated by the papal proclamation of the infallibility of Thomas Aquinas.[1] Manifold attempts have been made at a new conception of the world, and with varying success. Of the earlier theories[2] only two have been able to gather a circle of adherents-the dualistic theism of Gunther (1783-1863), and the organic view of the world of Trendelenburg (1802-72).

[Footnote 2: In 1879 a summons was sent forth from Rome for the revival and dissemination of the Thomistic system as the only true philosophy (cf. R. Eucken, Die Philosophic des Thomas von Aquino und die Kultur der Neuzeit, 1886). This movement is supported by the journals, Jahrbuch fur Philosophie und spekulative Theologie, edited by Professor E. Commer of Munster, 1886 seq., and Philosophisches Jahrbuch, edited, at the instance and with the support of the Gorres Society, by Professor Const. Gutberlet of Fulda, 1888 seq. While the text-books of Hagemann, Stoeckl, Gutberlet, Pesch, Commer, C.M. Schneider, and others also follow Scholastic lines, B. Bolzano (died 1848), M. Deutinger (died 1864) and his pupil Neudecker, Oischinger, Michelis, and W. Rosenkrantz (1821-74; Science of Knowledge, 1866-68), who was influenced by Sch.e.l.ling, have taken a freer course.]

[Footnote 2: Trahndorff, gymnasial professor in Berlin (1782-1863), Aesthetics, 1827 (cf. E. von Hartmann in the Philosophische Monatshefte, vol. xxii. 1886, p. 59 seq., and J. von Billewicz, in the same, vol. xxi. 1885, p. 561 seq.); J.F. Reiff in Tubingen: System of the Determinations of the Will, 1842; K. Chr. Planck (died 1880): The Ages of the World, 1850 seq.; Testament of a German, edited by Karl Kostlin, 1881; F. Rose (1815-59), On the Method of the Knowledge of the Absolute, 1841; Psychology as Introduction to the Philosophy of Individuality, 1856. Emanuel Sharer follows Rose. Friedrich Rohmer (died 1856): Science of G.o.d, Science of Man, in Friedrich Rohmer's Wissenschaft und Leben, edited by Bluntschli and Rud. Seele, 6 vols., 1871-92.]

Anton Gunther (engaged in authors.h.i.+p from 1827; Collected Writings, 1881; Anti-Savarese, edited with an appendix by P. Knoodt), who in 1857 was compelled to retract his views, invokes the spirit of Descartes in opposition to the Hegelian pantheism. In agreement with Descartes, Gunther starts from self-consciousness (in the ego being and thought are identical), and brings not only the Creator and the created world, but also nature (to which the soul is to be regarded as belonging) and spirit into a relation of exclusive opposition, yet holds that in man nature (body and soul) and spirit are united, and that they interact without prejudice to their qualitative difference. J.H. Pabst (died in 1838 in Vienna), Theodor Weber of Breslau, Knoodt of Bonn (died 1889), V. Knauer of Vienna and others are Guntherians.

Adolf Trendelenburg[1] of Berlin, the acute critic of Hegel and Herbart, in his own thinking goes back to the philosophy of the past, especially to that of Aristotle. Motion and purpose are for him fundamental facts, which are common to both being and thinking, which mediate between the two, and make the agreement of knowledge and reality possible. The ethical is a higher stage of the organic. s.p.a.ce, time, and the categories are forms of thought as well as of being; the logical form must not be separated from the content, nor the concept from intuition. We must not fail to mention that Trendelenburg introduced a peculiar and fruitful method of treating the history of philosophy, viz., the historical investigation of particular concepts, in which Teichmuller of Dorpat (1832-88; Studies in the History of Concepts, 1874; New Studies in the History of Concepts, 1876-79; The Immortality of the Soul, 2d ed., 1879; The Nature of Love, 1880; Literary Quarrels in the Fourth Century before Christ, 1881 and 1884), and Eucken of Jena (cf. pp. 17 and 623) have followed his example. Kym in Zurich (born 1822; Metaphysical Investigations, 1875; The Problem of Evil, 1878) is a pupil of Trendelenburg.

[Footnote 1: Trendelenburg: Logical Investigations, 1840, 3d ed., 1870; Historical Contributions to Philosophy, 3 vols., 1846, 1855, 1867; Natural Law on the Basis of Ethics, 1860, 2d ed., 1868. On Trendelenburg cf. Eucken in the Philosophische Monatshefte, 1884.]

Of more recent systematic attempts the following appear worthy of mention: Von Kirchmann (1802-84; from 1868 editor of the Philosophische Bibliothek), The Philosophy of Knowledge, 1865; Aesthetics, 1868; On the Principles of Realism, 1875; Catechism of Philosophy 2d ed., 1881; E. Duhring (born 1833), Natural Dialectic, 1865; The Value of Life, 1865, 3d ed, 1881; Critical History of the Principles of Mechanics, 1873, 2d ed., 1877; Course of Philosophy, 1875 (cf. on Duhring, Helene Druskowitz, 1889); J. Baumann of Gottingen (born 1837), Philosophy as Orientation concerning the World, 1872; Handbook of Ethics, 1879; Elements of Philosophy, 1891; L. Noire, The Monistic Idea, 1875, and many other works; Frohschammer of Munich (born 1821), The Phantasy as the Fundamental Principle of the World-process, 1877; On the Genesis of Humanity, and its Spiritual Development in Religion, Morality and Language, 1883; On the Organization and Culture of Human Society, 1885.

In the first rank of the thinkers who have made their appearance since Hegel and Herbart stand Fechner and Lotze, both masters in the use of exact methods, yet at the same time with their whole souls devoted to the highest questions, and superior to their contemporaries in breadth of view as in the importance and range of their leading ideas-Fechner a dreamer and sober investigator by turns, Lotze with gentle hand reconciling the ant.i.theses in life and science.

Gustav Theodor Fechner[1] (1801-87; professor at Leipsic) opposes the abstract separation of G.o.d and the world, which has found a place in natural inquiry and in theology alike, and brings the two into the same relation of correspondence and reciprocal reference as the soul and the body. The spirit gives cohesion to the manifold of material parts, and needs them as a basis and material for its unifying activity. As our ego connects the manifold of our activities and states in the unity of consciousness, so the divine spirit is the supreme unity of consciousness for all being and becoming. In the spirit of G.o.d everything is as in ours, only expanded and enhanced. Our sensations and feelings, our thoughts and resolutions are His also, only that He, whose body all nature is, and to whom not only that which takes place in spirits is open, but also that which goes on between them, perceives more, feels deeper, thinks higher, and wills better things than we. According to the a.n.a.logy of the human organism, both the heavenly bodies and plants are to be conceived as beings endowed with souls, although they lack nerves, a brain, and voluntary motion. How could the earth bring forth living beings, if it were itself dead? Shall not the flower itself rejoice in the color and fragrance which it produces, and with which it refreshes us? Though its psychical life may not exceed that of an infant, its sensations, at all events, since they do not form the basis of a higher activity, are superior in force and richness to those of the animal. Thus the human soul stands intermediate in the scale of psychical life: beneath and about us are the souls of plants and animals, above us the spirits of the earth and stars, which, sharing in and encompa.s.sing the deeds and destinies of their inhabitants, are in their turn embraced by the consciousness of the universal spirit. The omnipresence of the divine spirit affords at the same time the means of escaping from the desolate "night view" of modern science, which looks upon the world outside the perceiving individual as dark and silent. No, light and sound are not merely subjective phenomena within us, but extend around us with objective reality-as sensations of the divine spirit, to which everything that vibrates resounds and s.h.i.+nes.

[Footnote 1: Nanna, or on the Psychical Life of Plants, 1848; Zend-Avesta, or on the Things of Heaven and the World Beyond, 1851; Physical and Philosophical Atomism, 1855; The Three Motives and Grounds of Belief, 1863; The Day View, 1879; Elements of Aesthetics, 1876; Elements of Psycho-physics, 1860; In the Cause of Psycho-physics, 1877; Review of the Chief Points in Psycho-physics, 1882; Book of the Life after Death, 1836, 3d ed., 1887; On the Highest Good, 1846; Four Paradoxes, 1846; On the Question of the. Soul, 1861; Minor Works by Dr. Mises (Fechner's pseudonym), 1875. On Fechner cf. J. E. Kuntze, Leipsic, 1892.]

The door of the world beyond also opens to the key of a.n.a.logy. Similar laws unite the here with the hereafter. As intuition prepares the way for memory, and lives on in it, so the life of earth merges in the future life, and continues active in it, elevated to a higher plane. Fechner treats the problem of evil in a way peculiar to himself. We must not consider the fact of evil apart from the effort to remove it. It is the spur to all activity-without evil, no labor and no progress.

Fechner's "psycho-physics," a science which was founded by him in continuation of the investigations of Bernoulli, Euler, and especially of E.H. Weber, wears an entirely different aspect from that of his metaphysics (the "day view," moreover does not claim to be knowledge, but belief-though a belief which is historically, practically, and theoretically well-grounded). This aims to be an exact science of the relations between body and mind, and to reach indirectly what Herbart failed to reach by direct methods, that is, a measurement of psychical magnitudes, using in this attempt the least observable differences in sensations as the unit of measure. Weber's law of the dependence of the intensity of the sensation on the strength of the stimulus-the increase in the intensity of the sensation remains the same when the relative increase of the stimulus (or the relation of the stimuli) remains constant;[1] so that, e.g., in the case of light, an increase from a stimulus of intensity 1 to one of intensity 100, gives just the same increase in the intensity of the sensation as an increase from a stimulus of intensity 2 (or 3) to a stimulus of 200 (or 300)-is much more generally valid than its discoverer supposed; it holds good for all the senses. In the case of the pressure sense of the skin, with an original weight of 15 grams (laid upon the hand when at rest and supported), in order to produce a sensation perceptibly greater we must add not 1 gram, but 5, and with an original weight of 30 grams, not 5, but 10. Equal additions to the weights are not enough to produce a sensation of pressure whose intensity shall render it capable of being distinguished with certainty, but the greater the original weights the larger the increments must be; while the intensities of the sensations form an arithmetical, those of the stimuli form a geometrical, series; the change in sensation is proportional to the relative change of the stimulus. Sensations of tone show the same proportion (3:4) as those of pressure; the sensibility of the muscle sense is finer (when weights are raised the proportion is 15:16), as also that of vision (the relative brightness of two lights whose difference of intensity is just perceptible is 100:101). In addition to the investigations on the threshold of difference there are others on the threshold of stimulation (the point at which a sensation becomes just perceptible), on attention, on methods of measurement, on errors, etc. Moreover, Fechner does not fail to connect his psycho-physics, the presuppositions and results of which have recently been questioned in several quarters,[2] with his metaphysical conclusions. Both are pervaded by the fundamental view that body and spirit belong together (consequently that everything is endowed with a soul, and that nothing is without a material basis), nay, that they are the same essence, only seen from different sides. Body is the (manifold) phenomenon for others, while spirit is the (unitary) self-phenomenon, in which, however, the inner aspect is the truer one. That which appears to us as the external world of matter, is nothing but a universal consciousness which overlaps and influences our individual consciousness. This is Spinozism idealistically interpreted. In aesthetics Fechner shows himself an extreme representative of the principle of a.s.sociation.

[Footnote 1: Fechner teaches: The sensation increases and diminishes in proportion to the logarithm of the stimulus and of the psycho-physical nervous activity, the latter being directly proportional to the external stimulus. Others, on the contrary, find a direct dependence between nervous activity and sensation, and a logarithmic proportion between the external stimulus and the nervous activity.]

[Footnote 2: So by Helmholtz; Hering (Fechners psychophysisches Gesetz, 1875); P. Langer (Grundlagen der Psychophysik, 1876); G.E. Muller in Gottingen (Zur Grundlegung der Psychophysik, 1878); F.A. Muller (Das Axiom der Psychophysik, 1882); A. Elsas (Ueber die Psychophysik, 1886); O. Liebmann (Aphorismen zur Psychologie, Zeitschrift fur Philosophie, vol. ci.-Wundt has published a number of papers from his psycho-physical laboratory in his Philosophische Studien, 1881 seq. Cf. also Hugo Munsterberg, Neue Grundlegung der Psychophysik in Heft iii. of his Beitrage zur experimentellen Psychologie, 1889 seq). [Further, Delboeuf, in French, and a growing literature in English as A. Seth, Encyclopedia Britannica, vol. xxiv. 469-471; Ladd, Elements of Physiological Psychology, part ii. chap, v.; James, Principles of Psychology, vol. i. p. 533 seq.; and numerous articles as Ward, Mind, vol. i.; Jastrow, American Journal of Psychology, vols. i. and iii.-TR.]]

The most important of the thinkers mentioned in the t.i.tle of this section is Rudolph Hermann Lotze (1817-81: born at Bautzen; a student of medicine, and of philosophy under Weisse, in Leipsic; 1844-81 professor in Gottingen; died in Berlin). Like Fechner, gifted rather with a talent for the fine and the suggestive than for the large and the rigorous, with a greater reserve than the former before the mystical and peculiar, as acute, cautious, and thorough as he was full of taste and loftiness of spirit, Lotze has proved that the cla.s.sic philosophers did not die out with Hegel and Herbart. His Microcosmus (3 vols., 1856-64, 4th ed., 1884 seq; English translation by Hamilton and Jones, 3d ed., 1888), which is more than an anthropology, as it is modestly ent.i.tled, and History of Aesthetics in Germany, 1868, which also gives more than the t.i.tle betrays, enjoy a deserved popularity. These works were preceded by the Medical Psychology, 1852, and a polemic treatise against I.H. Fichte, 1857, as well as by a Pathology and a Physiology, and followed by the System of Philosophy, which remained incomplete (part i. Logic, 1874, 2d ed., 1881, English translation edited by Bosanquet, 2d ed., 1888; part ii. Metaphysics, 1879, English translation edited by Bosanquet, 2d ed., 1887). Lotze's Minor Treatises have been published by Peipers in three volumes (1885-91); and Rehnisch has edited eight sets of dictata from his lectures, 1871-84.[1] Since these "Outlines," all of which we now have in new editions, make a convenient introduction to the Lotzean system, and are, or should be, in the possession of all, a brief survey may here suffice.

[Footnote 1: Outlines of Psychology, Practical Philosophy, Philosophy of Religion, Philosophy of Nature, Logic and the Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Metaphysics, Aesthetics, and the History of Philosophy since Kant, all of which may be emphatically commended to students, especially the one first mentioned, and, in spite of its subjective position, the last. [English translations of these Outlines except the fourth and the last, by Ladd, 1884 seq.] On Lotze cf. the obituaries by J. Baumann (Philosophische Monatshefte, vol. xvii.), H. Sommer (Im Neuen Reich), A. Krohn (Zeitschrift fur Philosophie, vol. lx.x.xi. pp. 56-93), R. Falckenberg (Augsburg Allgemeine Zeitung, 1881, No. 233), and Rehnisch (National Zeitung and the Revue Philosophique, vol. xii.). The last of these was reprinted in the appendix to the Grundzuge der Aesthetik, 1884, which contains, further, a chronological table of Lotze's works, essays, and critiques, as well as of his lectures. Hugo Sommer has zealously devoted himself to the popularization of the Lotzean system. Cf., further, Fritz Koegel, Lotzes Aesthetik, Gottingen, 1886, and the article by Koppelmann referred to above, p. 330.]

The subject of metaphysics is reality. Things which are, events which happen, relations which exist, representative contents and truths which are valid, are real. Events happening and relations existing presuppose existing things as the subjects in and between which they happen and exist. The being of things is neither their being perceived (for when we say that a thing is we mean that it continues to be, even when we do not perceive it), nor a pure, unrelated position, its position in general, but to be is to stand in relations. Further, the what or essence of the things which enter into these relations cannot be conceived as pa.s.sive quality, but only abstractly, as a rule or a law which determines the connection and succession of a series of qualities. The nature of water, for example, is the unintuitable somewhat which contains the ground of the change of ice, first into the liquid condition, and then into steam, when the temperature increases, and conversely, of the possibility of changing steam back into water and ice under opposite conditions. And when we speak of an unchangeable ident.i.ty of the thing with itself, as a result of which it remains the same essence amid the change of its phenomena, we mean only the consistency with which it keeps within the closed series of forms a1, a2, a3, without ever going over into the series b1, b2. The relations, however, in which things stand, cannot pa.s.s to and fro between things like threads or little spirits, but are states in things themselves, and the change of the former always implies a change in these inner states. To stand in relations means to exchange actions. In order to experience such effects from others and to exercise them upon others, things must neither be wholly incomparable (as red, hard, sweet) and mutually indifferent, nor yet absolutely independent; if the independence of individual beings were complete the process of action would be entirely inconceivable. The difficulty in the concept of causality-how does being a come to produce in itself a different state a because another being b enters into the state [Greek: b]?-is removed only when we look on the things as modes, states, parts of a single comprehensive being, of an infinite, unconditioned substance, in so far as there is then only an action of the absolute on itself. Nevertheless the a.s.sumption that, in virtue of the unity and consistency of the absolute or of its impulse to self-preservation, state [Greek: b] in being b follows state [Greek: a] in being a as an accommodation or compensation follows a disturbance, is not a full explanation of the process of action, does not remove the difficulty as to how one state can give rise to another. Metaphysics is, in general, unable to show how reality is made, but only to remove certain contradictions which stand in the way of the conceivability of these notions. The so far empty concept of an absolute looks to the philosophy of religion for its content; the conception of the G.o.dhead as infinite personality (it is a person in a far higher sense than we) is first produced when we add to the ontological postulate of a comprehensive substance the ethical postulate of a supreme good or a universal world-Idea.

By "thing" we understand the permanent unit-subject of changing states. But the fact of consciousness furnishes the only guaranty that the different states a, [Greek: b], y, are in reality states of one being, and not so many different things alternating with one another. Only a conscious being, which itself effects the distinction between itself and the states occurring in it, and in memory and recollection feels and knows itself as their identical subject, is actually a subject which has states. Hence, if things are to be real, we must attribute to them a nature in essence related to that of our soul. Reality is existence for self. All beings are spiritual, and only spiritual beings possess true reality. Thus Lotze combines the monadology of Leibnitz with the pantheism of Spinoza, just as he understands how to reconcile the mechanical view of natural science (which is valid also for the explanation of organic life) with the teleology and the ethical idealism of Fichte. The sole mission of the world of forms is to aid in the realization of the ideal purposes of the absolute, of the world of values.

The ideality of s.p.a.ce, which Kant had based on insufficient grounds, is maintained by Lotze also, only that he makes things stand in "intellectual" relations, which the knowing subject translates into spatial language. The same character of subjectivity belongs not only to our sensations, but also to our ideas concerning the connection of things. Representations are results, not copies, of the external stimuli; cognition comes under the general concept of the interaction of real elements, and depends, like every effect, as much upon the nature of the being that experiences the effect as upon the nature of the one which exerts it, or rather, more upon the former than upon the latter. If, nevertheless, it claims objective reality, truth must not be interpreted as the correspondence of thought and its object (the cognitive image can never be like the thing itself), nor the mission of cognition, made to consist in copying a world already finished and closed apart from the realm of spirits, to which mental representation is added as something accessory. Light and sound are not therefore illusions because they are not true copies of the waves of ether and of air from which they spring, but they are the end which nature has sought to attain through these motions, an end, however, which it cannot attain alone, but only by acting upon spiritual subjects; the beauty and splendor of colors and tones are that which of right ought to be in the world; without the new world of representations awakened in spirits by the action of external stimuli, the world would lack its essential culmination. The purpose of things is to be known, experienced, and enjoyed by spirits. The truth of cognition consists in the fact that it opens up the meaning and destination of the world. That which ought to be is the ground of that which is; that which is exists in order to the realization of values in it; the good is the only real. It is true that we are not permitted to penetrate farther than to the general conviction that the Idea of the good is the ground and end of the world; the question, how the world has arisen from this supreme Idea as from the absolute and why just this world with its determinate forms and laws has arisen, is unanswerable. We understand the meaning of the play, but we do not see the machinery by which it is produced at work behind the stage. In ethics Lotze emphasizes with Fechner the inseparability of the good and pleasure: it is impossible to state in what the worth or goodness of a good is to consist, if it be conceived out of all relation to a spirit capable of finding enjoyment in it.

If Lotze's philosophy harmoniously combines Herbartian and Fichteo-Hegelian elements, Eduard von Hartmann (born 1842; until 1864 a soldier, now a man of letters in Berlin) aims at a synthesis of Schopenhauer and Hegel; with the pessimism of the former he unites the evolutionism of the latter, and while the one conceives the nature of the world-ground as irrational will, and the other as the logical Idea, he follows the example of Sch.e.l.ling in his later days by making will and representation equally legitimate attributes of his absolute, the Unconscious. His princ.i.p.al theoretical work, The Philosophy of the Unconscious, 1869 (10th ed., 1891; English translation by Coupland, 1884), was followed in 1879 by his chief ethical one, The Moral Consciousness (2d ed., 1886, in the Selected Works); the two works on the philosophy of religion, The Religious Consciousness of Humanity in the Stages of its Development, 1881, and The Religion of Spirit, 1882, together form the third chief work (The Self-Disintegration of Christianity and the Religion of the Future, 1874, and The Crisis of Christianity in Modern Theology, 1880, are to be regarded as forerunners of this); the fourth is the Aesthetics (part i. German Aesthetics since Kant, 1886; part ii. Philosophy of the Beautiful, 1887). The Collected Studies and Essays, 1876, were preceded by two treatises on the philosophy of nature, Truth and Error in Darwinism, 1875, and The Unconscious from the Standpoint of Physiology and the Theory of Descent, published anonymously in 1872, in the latter of which, disguised as a Darwinian, he criticises his own philosophy. Of his more recent publications we may mention the Philosophical Questions of the Day, 1885; Modern Problems, 1886; and the controversial treatise Lotzes Philosophy, 1888.[1]

[Footnote 1: On Hartmann cf. Volkelt in Nord und Sud, July, 1881; the same, Das Unbewusste und der Pessimismus, 1873; Vaihinger, Hartmann, Duhring und Lange, 1876; R. Koeber, Das philosophische System Ed. v, Hartmann, 1884; O. Pfleiderer, critique of the Phanomenologie des sittlichen Bewusstseins (Im neuen Reich), 1879; L. von Golther, Der moderne Pessimismus, 1878; J. Huber, Der Pessimismus, 1876; Weygoldt, Kritik des philosophischen Pessimismus der neuesten Zeit, 1875; M. Venetianer, Der Allgeist, 1874; A Taubert (Hartmann's first wife), Der Pessimismus und seine Gegner, 1873; O. Plumacher, Der Kampf ums Unbewusste (with a chronological table of Hartmann literature appended), 1881; the same, Der Pessimismus in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart, 1884; Krohn, Streifzuge (see above); Seydel (see above). During the year 1882 four publications appeared under the t.i.tle Der Pessimismus und die Sittenlehre, by Bacmeister, Christ, Rehmke, and H. Sommer (2d ed., 1883). [English translation of Truth and Error in Darwinism in the Journal of Speculative Philosophy, vols. xi.-xiii., and of The Religion of the Future, by Dare, 1886; cf. also Sully's Pessimism, chap. v.-TR.]]

In polemical relation, on the one hand, to the nave realism of life, and, on the other, to the subjective idealism of Kant, or rather of the neo-Kantians, the logical conclusion of which would be absolute illusionism, Hartmann founds his "transcendental realism," which mediates between these two points of view (the existence and true nature of the world outside our representations is knowable, if only indirectly; the forms of knowledge, in spite of their subjective origin, have a more than subjective, a transcendental, significance) by pointing out that sense-impressions, which are accompanied by the feeling of compulsion and are different from one another, cannot be explained from the ego, but only by the action of things in themselves external to us, i.e., independent of consciousness, and themselves distinct from one another. The causality of things in themselves is the bridge which enables us to cross the gulf between the immanent world of representations and the transcendent world of being. The causality of things in themselves proves their reality, their difference at different times, their changeability and their temporal character; change, however, demands something permanent, existence, an existing, unchangeable, supra-temporal, and non-spatial substance (whether a special substance for each thing in itself or a common one for all, is left for the present undetermined). My action upon the thing in itself a.s.sures me of its causal conditionality or necessity; the various affections of the same sense, that there are many things in themselves; the peculiar form of change shown by some bodies, that these, like my body, are united with a soul. Thus it is evident that, besides the concept of cause, a series of other categories must be applied to the thing in itself, hence applied transcendentally.

The "speculative results" obtained by Hartmann on an "inductive" basis are as follows: The per se (Ansich) of the empirical world is the Unconscious. The two attributes of this absolute are the active, groundless, alogical, infinite will, and the pa.s.sive, finite representation (Idea); the former is the ground of the that of the world, the latter the ground of its purposive what and how. Without the will the representation, which in itself is without energy, could not become real, and without the representation (of an end) the will, which in itself is without reason, could not become a definite willing (relative or immanent dualism of the attributes, a necessary moment in absolute monism). The empirical preponderance of pain over pleasure, which can be shown by calculation,[1] proves that the world is evil, that its non-existence were better than its existence; the purposiveness everywhere perceptible in nature and the progress of history toward a final goal (it is true, a negative one) proves, nevertheless, that it is the best world that was possible (reconciliation of eudemonistic pessimism with evolutionistic optimism). The creation of the world begins when the blind will to live groundlessly and fortuitously pa.s.ses over from essence to phenomenon, from potency to act, from supra-existence to existence, and, in irrational striving after existence, draws to itself the only content which is capable of realization, the logical Idea. This latter seeks to make good the error committed by the will by bringing consciousness into the field as a combatant against the insatiable, ever yearning, never satisfied will, which one day will force the will back into latency, into the (antemundane) blessed state of not-willing. The goal of the world-development is deliverance from the misery of existence, the peace of non-existence, the return from the will and representation, become spatial and temporal, to the original, harmonious equilibrium of the two functions, which has been disturbed by the origin of the world or to the antemundane ident.i.ty of the absolute. The task of the logical element is to teach consciousness more and more to penetrate the illusion of the will-in its three stages of childlike (Greek) expectation of happiness to be attained here, youthful (Christian) expectation of happiness to be attained hereafter, and adult expectation of happiness to be attained in the future of the world-development-and, finally, to teach it to know, in senile longing after rest, that only the doing away with this miserable willing, and, consequently, with earthly existence (through the resolve of the majority of mankind) can give the sole attainable blessedness, freedom from pain. The world-process is the incarnation, the suffering, and the redemption of the absolute; the moral task of man is not personal renunciation and cowardly retirement, but to make the purposes of the Unconscious his own, with complete resignation to life and its sufferings to labor energetically in the world-process, and, by the vigorous promotion of consciousness, to hasten the fulfillment of the redemptive purpose; the condition of morality is insight into the fruitlessness of all striving after pleasure and into the essential unity of all individual beings with one another and with the universal spirit, which exists in the individuals, but at the same time subsists above them. "To know one's self as of divine nature, this does away with all divergence between selfwill and universal will, with all estrangement between man and G.o.d, with all undivine, that is, merely natural, conduct."

[Footnote 1: Cf. Volkelt, Ueber die l.u.s.t als hochsten Werthma.s.sstab (in the Zeitschrift fur Philosophie, vol. lx.x.xviii.), 1886, and O. Pfleiderer, Philosophy of Religion, vol. ii. p. 249 seq.]

Religion, which, in common with philosophy, has for its basis the metaphysical need for, or the mystical feeling of, the unity of the human individual and the world-ground, needs transformation, since in its traditional forms it is opposed to modern culture, and the merging of religion (as a need of the heart) in metaphysics is impossible. The religion of the future, for which the way has already been prepared by the speculative Protestantism of the present, is concrete monism (the divine unity is transcendent as well as immanent in the plurality of the beings of earth, every moral man a G.o.d-man), which includes in itself the abstract monism (pantheism) of the Indian religions and the Judeo-Christian (mono-) theism as subordinate moments. (The original henotheism and its decline into polytheism, demonism, and fetichism was followed by-Egyptian and Persian, as well as Greek, Roman, and German-naturalism, and then by supernaturalism in its monistic and its theistic form. The chief defect of the Christian religion is the transcendental-eudemonistic heteronomy of its ethics.) The Religion of Spirit divides into three parts. The psychology of religion considers the religious function in its subjective aspect, faith as a combined act of representation, feeling, and will, in which one of these three elements may predominate-though feeling forms the inmost kernel of the theoretical and practical activities as well-and, as the objective correlate of faith, grace (revealing, redeeming, and sanctifying), which elevates man above peripheral and phenomenal dependence on the world, and frees him from it, through his becoming conscious of his central and metaphysical dependence upon G.o.d. The metaphysics of religion (in theological, anthropological, and cosmological sections) proves by induction from the facts of religion the existence, omnipotence, spirituality, omniscience, righteousness, and holiness of the All-one, which coincides with the moral order of the world. Further, it proves the need and the capacity of man for redemption from guilt and evil-here three spheres of the individual will are distinguished, one beneath G.o.d, one contrary to G.o.d, and one conformable to G.o.d, or a natural, an evil, and a moral sphere-and, preserving alike the absoluteness of G.o.d and the reality of the world, shows that it is not so much man as G.o.d himself, who, as the bearer of all the suffering of the world, is the subject of redemption. The ethics of religion discusses the subjective and objective processes of redemption, namely, repentance and amendment on the part of the individual and the ecclesiastical cultus of the future, which is to despise symbols and art.

It is to Hartmann's credit, though the fact has not been sufficiently appreciated by professional thinkers, that in a time averse to speculation he has devoted his energies to the highest problems of metaphysics, and in their elaboration has approached his task with scientific earnestness and a comprehensive and thorough consideration of previous results. Thus the critique of ethical standpoints in the historical part of the Phenomenology of the Moral Consciousness, especially, contains much that is worthy of consideration; and his fundamental metaphysical idea, that the absolute is to be conceived as the unity of will and reason, also deserves in general a more lively a.s.sent than has been accorded to it, while his rejection of an infinite consciousness has justly met with contradiction. It has been impossible here to go into his discussions in the philosophy of nature-they cannot be described in brief-on matter (atomic forces), on the mechanical and teleological views of life and its development, on instinct, on s.e.xual love, etc., which he very skillfully uses in support of his metaphysical principle.

3. From the Revival of the Kantian Philosophy to the Present Time.

(a) Neo-Kantianism, Positivism, and Kindred Phenomena.-The Kantian philosophy has created two epochs: one at the time of its appearance, and a second two generations after the death of its author. The new Kantian movement, which is one of the most prominent characteristics of the philosophy of the present time, took its beginning a quarter of a century ago. It is true that even before 1865 individual thinkers like Ernst Reinhold of Jena (died 1855), the admirer of Fries, J.B. Meyer of Bonn, K.A. von Reichlin-Meldegg, and others had sought a point of departure for their views in Kant; that K. Fischer's work on Kant (1860) had given a lively impulse to the renewed study of the critical philosophy; nay, that the cry "Back to Kant" had been expressly raised by Fortlage (as early as 1832 in his treatise The Gaps in the Hegelian System), and by Zeller (p. 589). But the movement first became general after F.A. Lange in his History of Materialism had energetically advocated the Kantian doctrine according to his special conception of it, after Helmholtz[1] (born 1821) had called attention to the agreement of the results of physiology with those of the Critique of Reason, and at the same time Liebmann's youthful work, Kant and the Epigones, in which every chapter ended with the inexorable refrain, "therefore we must go back to Kant," had given the strongest expression to the longing of the time.

[Footnote 1: Helmholtz: On Human Vision, 1855; Physiological Optics, 1867; Sensations of Tone, 1863, 4th ed., 1877 [English translation by Ellis, 2d ed., 1885].]

Otto Liebmann (cf. also the chapter on "The Metamorphoses of the A Priori" in his a.n.a.lysis of Reality) sees the fundamental truth of criticism in the irrefutable proof that, s.p.a.ce, time, and the categories are functions of the intellect, and that subject and object are necessary correlates, inseparable factors of the empirical world, and finds Kant's fundamental error, which the Epigones have not corrected, but made still worse, in the non-concept of the thing in itself, which must be expelled from the Kantian philosophy as a remnant of dogmatism, as a drop of alien blood, and as an illegitimate invader which has debased it.

According to Friedrich Albert Lange[1] (1828-75; during the last years of his life professor at Marburg), materialism, which is unfruitful and untenable as a principle, a system, and a view of the world, but useful and indispensable as a method and a maxim of investigation, must be supplemented by formal idealism, which, rejecting all science from mere reason limits knowledge to the sensuous, to that which can be experienced, yet at the same time conceives the formal element in the sense world as the product of the organization of man, and hence makes objects conform to our representations. Above the sensuous world of experience and of mechanical becoming, however, the speculative impulse to construction, rounding off the fragmentary truth of the sciences into a unified picture of the whole truth, rears the ideal world of that which ought to be. Notwithstanding their indefeasible cert.i.tude, the Ideas possess no scientific truth, though they have a moral value which makes them more than mere fabrics of the brain: man is framed not merely for the knowledge of truth, but also for the realization of values. But since the significance of the Ideas is only practical, and since determinations of value are not grounds of explanation, science and metaphysics or "concept poetry" (Begriffsdichtung) must be kept strictly separate.

[Footnote 1: F.A. Lange: Logical Studies, 1877. Cf. M. Heinze in the Vierteljahrsschrift fur wissenschaftliche Philosophic, 1877, and Vaihinger in the work cited above, p. 610 note.]