Essays on literature and philosophy. / Caird, Edward, 1835-1908

Author: Caird, Edward, 1835-1908
Title: Essays on literature and philosophy.
Publisher: Glasgow, Maclehose, 1892.
Tag(s): descartes, renâe, 1596-1650; literature history and criticism; philosophy essays, miscellaneous; metaphysic; unity; finite; cartesianism; spinoza; kant; consciousness; aristotle; philosophy; cartes; self; logic; external; infinite; science; principle; conscious; knowledge; reality
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UBRAW 



ESSAYS ON LITERATURE AND 
PHILOSOPHY 



PUBLISHED BY 

JAMES MACLEHOSE AND SONS, GLASGOW, 
publishers to Jhr Snibzrsity. 

MACMILLAN AND CO., LONDON AND NEW YORK. 
London, . . . Simfikin, Hamilton and Co. 
Cambridge, . . Maonitlan and Boives. 
Edinburgh, . . Douglas and Foulis. 

MDCCCXCII. 



ESSAYS ON LITERATURE 
AND PHILOSOPHY 



BY 



EDWAED CAIED, 



hNOFESSOR OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY IX THE UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW, 

LATE FELLOW AND TUTOR OF MERTON COLLEGE, OXFORD, 
AUTHOR OF "THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF IMMANUEL KANT." 




* 



VOL. II. 




lasgotu 
JAMES MACLEHOSE AND SONS 

PUBLISHERS TO THE UNIVERSITY 

1892 



All rights reserved 



CONTENTS. 

CAETESIANISM. 
GENERAL EELATIONS OF DESCARTES, MALEBRANCHE, AND SPINOZA. 

1. Descartes His Relation to the Eeformers His View of Doubt and 

his. Method of Abstraction Objections to the Coyito ergo sum 
and his Answers to them Idea of God as the Link between the 
Subject and the Object Its Priority to Both, and Difficulties 
thence arising How Descartes avoids Pantheism His State 
ment of the Ontological Argument Unequal Eelation of God to 
Matter and Mind Absolute Arbitrariness of Will in God, and 
Eelative Arbitrariness of Will in Man The Idea of Matter and 
the Proof of its Existence Mechanical View of Nature, and even 
of the Animal Organism Explanation of the Feelings and Desires 
of Man Occasional Causes Ethical Views of Descartes The 
Eelation of Eeason to Passion, Pp. 267 310. 

2. Malebranche General Character of his Development of the Car 

tesian Philosophy Meaning of the Doctrine that we " see all 
things in God" Existence of Things out of God How we know 
ourselves Approximation to the Pantheism which views God 
not as Spirit but as Substance Attempt to reconcile this Phil 
osophy with Christianity Controversy with Arnauld as to a 
Particular Providence The Love of God and its Eelations to 
Other Loves Effects of the Fall of Man Tendency to Asceticism 
and Mysticism, - Pp. 310 332. 

3. Spinoza His relation to Descartes and to the Jewish Philosophers 

His Mathematical Method Negation of the Finite as the Way 



viii CONTENTS. 

to Knowledge and Love of the Infinite Distinction of Opinion 
and Knowledge Abstractness of Opinion and its Dependence on 
Imagination Knowledge based upon the Idffl. of God, or of 
Nature as a Whole Distinction of Ratio and Scientia Jntv.itira 
Individuals reduced to Modes, and Mind and Matter to Attributes 
of the Infinite Substance Consequences of the Principle that 
Determinatio est nef/atio Disappearance of Evil *wft specie ceterni- 
tatis Mind and Matter as Parallel Attributes Relation of Soul 
and Body Whether Spinoza s Distinction of Attributes is Rela 
tive to our Intelligence Conflict of the Ideas of an Abstract and 
a Concrete Unity Imperfect Return from the Infinite to- the 
Finite Ethical Consequences of Spinoza s Doctrine Relation of 
the Conatux wxe conservandi to the Amor Dei Intellectually 
Identification of Intelligence and Will New Idea of Freedom 
That Freedom is possessed by God, and may be shared by Man 
His View of the Passions His professed Rejection of Asceticism, 
and indirect Admission of it as an Element in Morality Whether 
he admits Degrees in Existence His Influence on Later Phil 
osophy, - Pp. 832883. 

METAPHYSIC. 

Introduction Origin of the Term Aristotle s Account of it, as the 
Science of the First Principles of Being and Knowing, and as 
the Science of God Fourfold Aspect of Metaphysic in Relation 
(1) to Science in General, (2) to Psychology, (3) to Logic, and (4) 
to Philosophy of Religion, Pp. 384392. 

1. Relation of Metaphysic to Science Abstract Principles of Early 
Greek Philosophy Advance of Socratic School to a Systematic 
Philosophy Difference between Plato and Aristotle as to the 
Relation of the Individual and the Universal Mediaeval Realism 
and Nominalism Nominalism and Empiricism of Bacon and 
his Successors Mr. Spencer s Attempt to explain the existence 
of an a. priori Element in Experience Kant s view of the A 
priori Why he limits Knowledge to Phenomenal Objects, while 
Thought is Intended to Noumena Change in the Meaning of 
this Distinction is the Dialectic Function of the Ideas of Reason 
The Practical Faith of the Critique of Practical Reanon 



CONTENTS. ix 

Connection established between the Phenomenal and Intelligible 
Worlds in the Critique of Judgment Necessary Divergence of the 
Interpreters of Kant, Fichte, Schelling and Hegel Hegel s 
View of the Belation of Philosophy to Science, Pp. 392442. 

2. Relation of Metaphysic to Psychology. Lgcke s jPsjfiTr^O ^f * 
Criticism of Knowledge Results of the Confusion of the 
Psychological and the Metaphysical Problems Man as a Subject 
of Knowledge and yet a Particular Object Socratic View of 
the Universal as presupposed in the Consciousness of the 
Particular Plato s Doctrine of Reminiscence and Right Opinion 
Aristotle s Combination of Empiricism with the Doctrine that 
Reason is potentially all it thinks His Admission of an absolute 
A posteriori which is not thinkable Mediaeval Compromise 
between Faith and Reason Protestant Principle of Subjectivity 
in Religion and Bacon s Objective Principle in Science How 
they correct each other Compromise between the A priori and 
the A posteriori Rejection of this Compromise from different 
sides by Locke and Leibniz Their Reconciliation under the 
Doctrine of Development How Kant prepares the way for it 
Defect of the Darwinian View of Development Relation of 
the Progressive Knowledge of the Individual to the Idea of 
Knowledge How he transcends his own Limits Possibility of 
Metaphysic as determining the First and Final Cause of Things, 

Pp. 442480. 

:-$. Relation of Metaphysic to Logic Separation of Logic from Meta 
physic Its Derivation from Aristotle Its Appearance in Schol 
asticism and in Baconian Empiricism Aristotle s Real Doctrine 
Impossibility of Separating the Form from the Matter of 
Thought What is meant by the Exclusion of Subjective Idola 
in Science Passivity and Activity of the Mind Aristotle s At 
tempt at a Synthetic Logic in the Posterior Analytics His View 
of the Unity of Self-consciousness His Vindication of the Prin 
ciple of Contradiction Necessity of a Complementary Principle 
of Relation The Three Logics : the formal Logic of Analysis, the 
real Logic of External Synthesis, and the Genetic Logic, as repre 
senting three stages in the Process of Science How Hume and 
Kant explain the Logic of Synthesis, and lead on to the Genetic 



x CONTENTS. 

Logic, which is ruled by the Categories of Organic Unity and 
Development Reconciliation of the Opposition between A priori 
and A posteriori Unity of Logic and Metaphysic, Pp. 480 512. 

4. Relation of Metaphysic to Philosophy of JteligionThsit a First 
Principle must also be a Last Principle That a True Metaphysic 
must be able to explain Eeligion Why certain Philosophies can 
not do so Essential Identity of Principle in Aristotle s Metaphysic 
and Hegel s Logic Self-consciousness as the type of Knowledge 
Relation of it to the Consciousness of the External World 
Objections to Hegel s Step from Logic to the Philosophy of 
Nature Cartesian Opposition of Mind and Matter Its Reappear 
ance in Mr. Spencer s Philosophy Mind as transcending its own 
Distinction from Matter The Subjective Synthesis of Comte an 
Illogical Compromise Impossibility of Religion under it That 
Religion implies a Unity of Principle in Nature and Spirit Con 
nection of Idealism with Christianity The Possibility of Meta 
physic, - - - Pp. 512539. 



CARTESIANISM. 

13 Y Cartesianism is here meant the philosophy 
developed in the works of Des Cartes, Male- 
branche, and Spinoza. It is impossible to exhibit 
the full meaning of these authors except in their 
relation to each other, for they are all ruled by 
one and the same thought in different stages of 
its evolution. It may be true that Malebranche 
and Spinoza were prepared, the former by the 
study of Augustine, the latter by the study of 
Jewish philosophy, to draw from Cartesian prin 
ciples consequences which Des Cartes never an 
ticipated. But the foreign light did not alter 
the picture on which it was cast, but only let 
it be seen more clearly. The consequences were 
legitimately drawn. It may be shown that they 
lay in the system from the first, and that they 
were evolved by nothing but its own immanent 
dialectic. At the same time, it is not likely that 

they would ever have been brought into such 
267 



268 CARTES I AN ISM. 

clear consciousness, or expressed with such 
consistency, except by a philosopher whose cir 
cumstances and character had completely detached 
him from all the convictions and prejudices of 
the age. In Malebranche, Cartesianisrn found an 
interpreter whose meditative spirit was fostered 
by the cloister, but whose speculative boldness 
was restrained by the traditions of the Catholic 
church. In Spinoza it found one who was in 
spirit and position more completely isolated than 
any monk, who was removed from the influence 
of the religious as well as the secular world of 
his time, and who in his solitude seemed scarcely 
ever to hear any voice but the voice of philosophy. 
It is because Cartesianism found such a pure 
organ of expression that its development is, in 
some sense, complete and typical. Its principles 
have been carried to their ultimate result, and 
we have before us all the data necessary to 
determine their value. 

Des Cartes was, in the full sense of the word, 
a partaker of the modern spirit. He was equally 
moved by the tendencies that produced the 
\ I Reformation, and the tendencies that produced 
the revival of letters and science. Like Erasmus 



CARTESIAN ISM. 269 

and Bacon, he sought to escape from a trans 
cendent and unreal philosophy of the other world 
to a knowledge of man and of the world in which 
he lives. But, like Luther, he found within human 
experience, among the matters nearest to man, 
the consciousness of God, and therefore his 
renunciation of scholasticism did not end either 
in materialism or in that absolute distinction 
between faith and reason which inevitably leads 
to the downfall of faith. What was peculiar 
to Des Cartes, however, was the speculative 
interest which made it impossible for him to 
rest in mere experience, whether of things spiritual 
or things secular, without searching, both in our 
consciousness of God and also in our consciousness 
of the world, for the links by which they are 
bound to the consciousness of self. In both cases 
it is his aim to go back to the beginning, to 
retrace the unconscious process by which the 
world of experience was built up, to discover the 
hidden logic that connects the different parts of 
the structure of belief, and to substitute a reasoned 
system, all whose elements are interdependent, 
for an unreasoned congeries of opinions. Hence 
his first step involves reflection, doubt, and 




2/0 



CARTESIANISM. 



abstraction. Turning the eye of reason upon 
itself, he tries to measure the value of that 
collection of beliefs of which he finds himself 
possessed ; and the first thing that reflection 
seems to discover is its accidental and uncon-. 
nected character. It is a mass of incongruous 
materials, accumulated without system and un 
tested. Its elements have been put together under 
all kinds of influences, without any conscious 
intellectual process, and therefore we can have 
no assurance of their reality. In order that 
we may have such assurance, we must unweave 
the web of experience and thought which we 
have first woven in our sleep, that we may begin 
at the beginning and weave it over again with 
" clear and distinct " consciousness of what we are 
doing. De omnibus dulitandum est. We must free 
ourselves by one decisive effort from the weight of 
custom, prejudice, and tradition with which our ^con 
sciousness of the world has been overlaid, that in that 
consciousness in its simplest and most elementary 
form we may find the true beginning of knowledge. 
The method of doubt is at the same time 
a method of abstraction, by which Des Cartes 
rises above the thought of the particular ob- 



CARTESIANISM. 2 ;i 

jects of knowledge, in order that he may find 
the primary truth in which lies the very defin 
ition of knowledge, or the reason why anything 
can be said to be true. First disappears the 
whole mass of dogmas and opinions as to 
God and man which are confessedly received 
on mere authority. Then the supposed evidence 
of sense is rejected, because external reality is 
not immediately given in sensation. It is ac 
knowledged by all that the senses often mislead 
us as to the nature of the things without us, 
and perhaps they may also mislead us as to there 
being anything without us at all. Nay, by a 
stretch of effort, we can carry doubt beyond this 
point, we can doubt even mathematical truth. 
When, indeed, we have our thoughts directed to 
the geometrical demonstration, when the steps of 
the process are immediately before our minds, 
we cannot but assent to the proposition that the 
angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles; 
but when we forget or turn away our thoughts 
from such demonstration, we can imagine that 
God or some powerful spirit is playing upon our 
minds to deceive them, so that even our most 
certain judgments may be illusory. 



272 



CARTESIANISM. 



In this naive manner does Des Cartes express the 
idea that there are necessities of thought prior to, 
and presupposed in, the truth of geometry. He is 
seeking to strip thought of all the " lendings " 
that seem to come to it from anything but itself, 
of all relation to being that can be supposed to 
be given to it from without, that he may dis 
cover the primary unity of thought and being on 
which all knowledge depends. And this he finds 
in pure self-consciousness. Whatever I abstract 
from, I cannot abstract from self, from the " I 
think " that, as Kant puts it, " accompanies all 
our ideas " ; for it was just the independence 
of this universal element in relation to the par 
ticulars that made all our previous abstraction 
possible. Even doubt rests on certitude ; alone 
with self I cannot get rid of this self. By an 
effort of thought I separate my thinking self 
from all that I think, but the thinking self re 
mains, and in thinking I am. Cogito ergo sum. 
The objective judgment of self-consciousness is 
bound up with or involved in the very faculty 
of judging, and therefore remains when we 
abstract from all other objective judgments. It 
is an assertion involved in the very process by 



CARTESIANISM. 273 

which we dismiss all other assertions, Have we 
not then a right to regard it as a primitive 
unity of thought and being, in which is con 
tained, or out of which may be developed, the 
yery definition of truth ? 

The sense in which Des Cartes understood 
his first principle becomes clearer when we look 
at his answers to the objections made against 
it. On the one hand it was challenged by those 
who asked, like Gasseiidi, why the argument 
should be based especially on thought, and why 
we might not say with as good a right anibulo 
ergo sum. Des Cartes explains that it is only 
as referred to consciousness that walking is an 
evidence of my existence ; but if I say " I am 
conscious of walking, therefore I exist," this is 
equivalent to saying, " I think in one particular 
way, therefore I exist." But it is not thinking 
in a particular way, but thinking in general that 
is co-extensive with my existence. I am not 
always conscious of walking, or of any other 
special state or object, but I am always con 
scious ; for except in consciousness there is no 
ego, and where there is consciousness there is 

always an ego. Do I then always think, even 

s 



274 CARTESIAN ISM. 

in sleep, asks the objector ; and Des Cartes 
exposes himself to the criticisms of Locke by 
answering that it is impossible that there should 
ever be an interval in the activity of conscious 
ness, and by insisting that, as man is essentially 
a thinking substance, the child thinks, or is 
self-conscious, even in its mother s womb. The 
difficulty disappears when we observe that the 
question as to the conditions under which self- 
consciousness is developed in the individual human 
subject, does not affect the nature of self-con 
sciousness in itself, or in its relation to knowledge. 
The force of Des Cartes s argument really lies 
in this, that the world as an intelligible world 
exists only for a conscious self, and that there 
fore the unity of thought and being which is 
realised in self-consciousness is the presup 
position of all knowledge. Of this self it 
is true to say that it exists only as it thinks, 
and that it thinks always. Cogito ergo sum is, 
as Des Cartes points out, not a syllogism, but 
the expression of an identity which is discerned 
by the simple intuition of the mind. 1 If it were 

1 Resp. ad secundas objectiones, 74. I quote from the 
Elzevir edition. 



CARTESIANISM. 



275 



otherwise, the major " omne quod cogitat existit " 
would require to have been known before the 
minor " cogito " ; whereas, on the contrary, it is 
from the immediate consciousness of being as 
contained in self-consciousness that that major 
can alone be derived. Again, when Hobbes ancT 
others argued that thinking is, or may be, a 
property of a material substance, Des Cartes 
answers that the question whether the material 
and the thinking substance are one does not meet 
us at the outset, but can only be solved after 
we have considered what is involved in the 
conception of those different substances respec 
tively. 1 In other words, to begin by treating 
thinking as a quality of a material substance is 
to go outside of the intelligible world for an 
explanation of the intelligible world. It is to 
ask for something prior to that which is first in 
thought. If it be true that the consciousness 
of self is that from which we cannot abstract, 
that which is involved in the knowledge of any 
object whatever, then to go beyond it and seek 
for a reason or explanation of it in anything else, 

1 Resp. ad tertias objectiones, 94 



276 CARTESIANISM. 

is to go beyond the beginning of knowledge ; it 
is to ask for a knowledge before knowledge. 

Des Cartes, however, is himself unfaithful to 
this point of view ; for, strictly taken, it would 
involve the consequence, not only that there is 
nothing prior to the pure consciousness of self, 
but that there can be no object which is not in 
necessary relation to it. Hence there can be no 
absolute opposition between thought and anything 
j- else, no opposition which thought itself does not 
transcend. But Des Cartes commits the error of 

^making thought the property of a substance, a res 
coyitans, which as such can immediately or directly 
apprehend nothing but thoughts or ideas ; while, alto 
gether outside of these thoughts and ideas, there 

. is another substance which is characterised by 
the property of extension, and with which thought 
has nothing to do. Matter in space is thus 
changed, in Kantian language, into " a thing in 
itself," an object out of all relation to the subject ; 
and, on the other hand, mind seems to be shut 
up in the magic circle of its own ideas, without 
any capacity of breaking out or apprehending any 
reality but itself. Between thought and being, in 

I spite of their subjective unity in self-consciousness, 



CARTESIANISM. 2/7 

a great gulf seems still to be fixed, which cannot 
be crossed, unless thought should become extended, 
or matter think. But to Des Cartes the dualism 
is absolute, because it is a presupposition with 
which he starts. Mind cannot go out of itself,* 
cannot deal with anything but thought, without 
ceasing to be mind ; and matter must cease to be 
matter ere it can lose its absolute externality, its 
nature as having partes extra paries, and acquire 
the unity of mind. They are opposed as the 
divisible and the indivisible, and there is no 
possible existence of matter in thought except a 
representative existence. The ideal (or, as Des 
Cartes calls it. objective) existence of matter in 
thought, and the real (or, as Des Cartes calls it, 
formal) existence of matter out of thought, are 
absolutely different and independent things. 

It was, however, impossible for Des Cartes to 
be content with a subjective idealism that confined 
all knowledge to the tautological expression of 
self-consciousness : " I am I," " What I perceive I 
perceive." If the individual is to find in self- 
consciousness the principle of all knowledge, there 
must be something in that consciousness which 
transcends the distinction of self and not self, 



278 CARTESIANISM. 

-^ 

which carries him beyond the limit of his own 
individuality. What, then, is the point where the 
subjective consciousness passes out into the objec 
tive, from which it seemed at first absolutely ex- 

. eluded ? Des Cartes answers that it is through 
the connection of the consciousness of self with 
the consciousness of God. It is because we find 
God in our minds that we find anything else. 
The proof of God s existence is the hinge on which 
the whole Cartesian philosophy turns. It is there 
fore necessary, before going farther, to examine 
somewhat closely the nature of that proof. 

Des Cartes, in the first place, tries to extract 
a criterion of truth out of the cogito ergo sum. 
Why am I assured of my own existence ? It is 
because the conception of existence is at once and 
immediately involved in the consciousness of self. 
I can logically distinguish the two elements, but I 

* cannot separate them ; whenever I clearly and 
distinctly conceive the one, I am forced to think 
the other along with it. But this gives me a rule 
for all judgments whatever, a principle which is 
related to the cogito ergo sum as the formal to the 
material principle of knowledge. Whatever we 
cannot separate from the clear and distinct con- 



. 



CARTESIANISM. 279 

ception of anything necessarily belongs to it in 
reality ; and, on the other hand, whatever we can 
separate from the clear and distinct conception of 
anything does not necessarily belong to it in reality. 
Let us therefore set an object clearly before us, let 
us sever it in thought so far as is possible from 
all other objects, and we shall at once be able to 
determine what properties and relations are essen 
tial, and what are not essential to it. And if 
we find empirically that any object manifests a 
property or relation not involved in the clear and 
distinct conception of it, we can say with certainty 
that such property or relation does not belong to 
it except by arbitrary arrangement, or, in other 
words, by the external combination of things which 
in their own nature have no affinity or connection.- 
Now, by the application of this principle, we 
might at once assure ourselves of many mathe 
matical truths ; but, as has been already shown, 
there is a point of view from which we may doubt 
even these, so long as the idea of a God that 
deceives us is not excluded. If it is not certain 
that there is a God who cannot lie, it is not certain 
that there is an objective matter in space to which 
mathematical truth applies. But the existence of 



280 CARTESIANISM. 

God may be proved in two ways. In the first 
place, it may be proved through the principle of 
causality, which is a self-evident principle. We 
have in our mind many ideas, and, according to 
the principle of causality, all these ideas must 
be derived from something that contains a "formal" 
reality which corresponds to their "objective" 
reality, i.e., which contains at least as much 
reality in its existence out of thought as they 
contain in their existence in thought. Now, we 
might derive from ourselves not only the ideas of 
other minds like ourselves, but possibly also the 
ideas of material objects ; for such objects are lower 
in the scale of existence than ourselves, and there 
fore the ideas of them might be got by omitting 
some of the qualities which distinguish ourselves. 
But the idea of God, of a Being who is eternal and 
immutable, all-powerful, all-wise, and all-good, 
cannot be derived from our own limited and im 
perfect existence. Its origin, therefore, must be 
sought jn a Being who contains actually in Himself 
all that is contained in our idea of Him. 

To this argument it was objected by some of the 
critics of Des Cartes that the idea of God as the 
infinite Being is merely negative, and that it is 



CARTESIAN ISM. 281 

derived from the finite simply by abstracting from 
its conditions. Des Cartes answers that the case 
is just the reverse ; the infinite is the positive idea, 
and the finite is the negative, and it is therefore the 
former which is the presupposition of the latter. As 
Kant, at a later date, pointed out that space is not 
a general conception, abstracted from the ideas of 
particular spaces, and representing the common 
element in them ; but that, on the contrary, the 
ideas of particular spaces are got by the limitation 
of the one infinite space which is prior to them, so 
Des Cartes maintains that the idea of the finite 
is attained by limitation of the infinite, and not 
the idea of the infinite by abstraction from the 
particular determinations of the finite. It is a 
necessary consequence of this that the self-con 
sciousness of a finite being presupposes the con 
sciousness of the infinite. Hence the idea of God 
is not merely one among the other ideas which we 
have, but it is the one idea that is necessary to our 
very existence as thinking beings, the idea through 
which alone we can think ourselves, or anything else. 
" It ought never to be supposed," says Des Cartes, 
" that the conception of the infinite is a negative 
idea, got by negation of the finite, just as I conceive 



282 CARTESIANISM. 

repose to be merely negation of movement, and 
darkness merely the negation of light. On the 
contrary, I see manifestly that there is more reality 
in the infinite than in the finite substance, and that 
therefore I have in me the notion of the infinite, 
even in some sense prior to the notion of the finite, 
or, in other words, that the notion of myself in 
some sense presupposes the notion of God ; for how 
could I doubt or desire, how could I be conscious of 
anything as a want, how could I know that I am 
not altogether perfect, if I had not in me the idea 
of a Being more perfect than myself, by comparison 
with whom I recognise the defects of my own 
existence ? " l Des Cartes then goes on to illustrate 
in various ways the thesis that the consciousness of 
a defective and growing nature cannot give rise to 
the idea of infinite perfection, but, on the contrary, 
presupposes it. We could not think of a series of 
approximations, unless there were somehow present 
to us the idea of the completed infinite as the goal 
at which we aim. If we had not the consciousness 
of ourselves as finite in relation to the infinite, 
either we should not be conscious of ourselves at 
all, or we should be conscious of ourselves as 
1 Meditatio tertia. 



CARTESIANISM. 283 

infinite. The image of God is so impressed by 
Him upon us that we " conceive that resemblance 
wherein the idea of God is contained by the same 
faculty whereby we are conscious of ourselves." 1 
In other words, our consciousness of ourselves is 
at the same time consciousness of our fmitude, 
and hence of our relation to a being who is 
infinite. 

The principle which underlies the reasoning of 
Des Cartes is, that to be conscious of a limit is to 
transcend it. We could not feel the limits either 
upon our thought or upon our existence, we could 
not doubt or desire, if we did not already apprehend 
something beyond these limits. Nay, we could not 
be conscious of our existence as individual selves, 
unless we were conscious of that which is not our 
selves, and of a unity in which both self and 
not-self are included. Our individual life is there- * 
fore to us, as self-conscious beings, a part of a wider 
universal life. Doubt and aspiration are but the 
manifestation of the essential division and con 
tradiction of a nature, which, as conscious of itself, 
is at the same time conscious of the whole of which 
it is a part. And as the existence of a self and 
its consciousness are one, so we may say that a 



284 CARTESIANISM. 

thinking being is not only an individual, but always 
in some sense identified with that universal unity 
of being to which it is essentially related. 

If Des Cartes had followed out this line of 

thought, he would have been led at once to the 

pantheism of Spinoza, if not beyond it. As it is, 

he is on the verge of contradiction with himself 

when he speaks of the consciousness of God as in 

some sense prior to the consciousness of self. How 

can anything be prior to the first principle of 

- knowledge ? It is no answer to say that the con- 

. sciousness of God is the principium esscndi, while 

- the consciousness of self is the principium cogno- 

scendi. For, if the idea of God is prior to the idea 
of self, knowledge must begin where existence 
begins, with God. The words " in some sense," 
with which Des Cartes qualifies his assertion of 
the priority of the idea of God, only betray his 
hesitation and his partial consciousness of the 
contradiction in which he is involved. Some of 
Des Cartes s critics presented this difficulty to him 
in another form, and accused him of reasoning in a 
circle, when he said that it is because God cannot 
lie that we are certain that our clear and distinct 
ideas do not deceive us. The very existence of 



CARTESIANISM. 285 

the conscious self, the cogito ergo sum, which is 
the first of all truths, and therefore prior in 
certitude to the existence of God, is believed 
only because of the clearness and distinctness with 
which we apprehend it. How, then, they asked, 
can God s truthfulness be our security for a 
principle which we must use in order to prove 
the being of God ? The answer of Des Cartes is 
somewhat lame. We cannot doubt any self-evident 
principle, or even any truth based on a self-evident 
principle, when we are directly contemplating it in 
all the necessity of its evidence ; it is only when 
we forget or turn away from this evidence, and 
begin to think of the possibility of a deceitful 
God, that a doubt arises which cannot be removed 
except by the conviction that God is true. 1 It can 
scarcely be said this is a dignus vindice nodus, or 
that God can fitly appear as a kind of second-best 
resource to the forgetful spirit which has lost its 
direct hold on truth and its faith in itself. God, 
truth, and the human spirit are thus conceived as 
having merely external and accidental relations 
with each other. What Des Cartes, however, is 
really expressing in this exoteric way is simply 
1 Resp. quartce, 284; 



286 CARTESIANISM. 

that, beneath and beyond all particular truths, there 
lies the great general truth of the unity of thought 
and existence. In contemplating a particular 
truth, we may not consciously relate it to this 
unity, but when we have to defend it against 
scepticism we are forced to realise this relation. 
The ultimate answer to any attack upon a special 
aspect or element of truth must be to show that 
the fate of truth itself, the possibility of knowledge, 
is bound up with it, or, in other words, that we 
cannot doubt it without doubting reason itself. 
But to doubt reason is, in the language of Des 
Cartes, to doubt the truthfulness of God ; for, in 
his view, the idea of God is involved in the very 
constitution of reason. Taken in this way, the 
import of Des Cartes s answer is, that the con 
sciousness of self, like every other particular truth, 
is not at first seen to rest on the consciousness of 
God, but that when we realise what it means we 
see that it does so rest. But if this be so, then in 
making the consciousness of self his first principle 
of knowledge Des Cartes has stopped shott of the 
truth. It can be the first principle only if it is 
understood, not as the consciousness of the indi 
vidual self, but in a sense in which the 



CARTE SI AN ISM. 287 

consciousness of self is identical with the con 
sciousness of God. 

Des Cartes, however, is far from a clear appre 
hension of the ultimate unity of thought and 
being, which, nevertheless, he strives to find in 
God. Beginning with an absolute separation of 
the res cogitans from the res extensa, he is con 
tinually falling back into dualism just when he 
seemed to have escaped from it. Even in God 
the absolute unity, idea and reality fall asunder ; 
our idea of God is not God in us, it is only an 
idea of which God s existence is the cause. But 
the category of causality, if it forms a bridge 
between different things, as here between knowing 
and being, at the same time repels them from each 
other. It is a category of external relation, which 
may be adequate to express the relation of the 
finite to the finite, but not the relation of the 
finite to the infinite. We cannot conceive God 
simply as the cause of our idea of Him, without 
making God a purely objective and therefore finite 
existence. 

Nor is the case better when we turn to the 
so-called ontological argument, that existence is 
necessarily involved in the idea of God, just as 



288 CARTESIANISM. 

the property of having its angles equal to two right 
angles is involved in the idea of a triangle. 
If, indeed, we could take this as meaning that 
thought transcends the distinction between itself 
and existence, and that therefore existence cannot 
be a thing in itself out of thought, but must 
be an intelligible world that exists as such only 
for the thinking being, there would be some force 
in the argument. But this meaning we cannot 
find in Des Cartes, or to find it we must make him 
inconsistent with himself. He was so far from 
having quelled the phantom " thing in itself " that 
he treated matter in space as such a thing, and 
ifius confused externality of space with externality 
to the mind. On this dualistic basis the ontological 
argument becomes a manifest paralogism, and lies 
open to all the objections that Kant brought 
against it. That the idea of God involves existence 
proves only that God, if He exists at all, exists by 
the necessity of His being. But the link that is to 
bind thought to existence is still wanting, and, in 
consistency with the other presuppositions of Des 
Cartes, it cannot be supplied. 

But, again, even if we allow to Des Cartes that 
God is the unity of thought and being, we must 



CARTESIANISM. 289 

still ask what is the nature of this unity ? Is it a 
mere generic unity, reached by abstraction, and 
which therefore leaves out of account all the 
distinguishing characteristics of the particulars 
under it ? Or is it a concrete unity to which 
the particular elements are subordinated, but in 
which they are nevertheless included ? To answer 
this question we need only look at the relation of 
the finite to the infinite, as it is expressed in the 
passage already quoted, and in many others. Des 
Cartes always speaks of the infinite as a purely 
affirmative or positive existence, and of the finite, 
in so far as it is distinguished from the infinite, as 
purely negative, or, in other words, as a nonentity,** 
"I am," he says, "a mean between God and nothing, 
between the Supreme Being and not-being. In so 
far as I am created by God, there is nothing in me 
that can deceive me or lead me into error. But, 
on the other hand, if I consider myself as par 
ticipating in nothingness, or not-being, inasmuch as 
I am not myself the Supreme Being, but in many 
ways defective, I find myself exposed to an infinity 
of errors. Thus error as such is not something 
real that depends on God, but simply a defect ; I 
do not need to explain it by means of any special 



CARTESIANISM. 

faculty bestowed on me by God, but merely by the 
fact that the faculty for discerning truth from error 
with which He has endowed me, is not infinite." \* 
But if we follow out this principle to its logical 
result, we must say not only that error is a 
consequence of finitude, but also that the very 
existence of the finite as such is an error or illusion. -, 
All finitude, all determination, according to the 
well-known Spinozistic aphorism, is negation, and 
negation cannot constitute reality. To know the 
reality of things, therefore, we have to abstract 
from their limits : therefore the only reality 
is the infinite. Finite being, qua finite, has no 
existence, and finite self-consciousness, conscious 
ness of a self in opposition to, or limited by, a 
not-self is an illusion. But Des Cartes does not 
thus reason. He does not see "anything in the 
nature of the infinite which should exclude the 
existence of finite things." " What," he asks, 
" would become of the power of that imaginary 
infinite if it could create nothing ? Perceiving in 
ourselves the power of thinking, we can easily 
conceive that there should be a greater intelligence 
elsewhere. And even if we should suppose that 
1 Medttatio quarta. 



CARTESIANISM. 291 

intelligence increased ad infinitum, we need not 
fear that our own would be lessened. And the 
same is true of all other attributes which we 
ascribe to God, even of His power, provided only 
that we do not suppose that the power in us is not 
subjected to God s will. In all points, therefore, 
He is infinite without any exclusion of created 
things." 1 The truth of this view we need not 
dispute ; the question is as to its consistency with 
Cartesian principles. It may be a higher idea of 
God to conceive Him as revealing Himself in and 
to finite creatures ; but it is a different idea from 
that which is implied in Des Cartes explanations 
of error. It is an inconsistency that brings Des 
Cartes nearer to Christianity, and nearer, it may 
also be said, to a true metaphysic ; but it is not the 
less an inconsistency with his fundamental princi 
ples, which must necessarily disappear in their 
subsequent development. To conceive the finite 
as not constituted merely by the absence of some 
of the positive elements of the infinite, but as in 
necessary unity with the infinite ; to conceive the 
infinite as not merely that which has no limits, 
or determinations, but as that which is self- 
1 Resp. ad. sec. object., p. 75. 



292 



CARTESIANISM. 



determined and self-manifesting, which through all 
finitude and manifestation returns upon itself, may 
not be erroneous. But it would not be difficult 
to show that the adoption of such a conception 
involves the rejection or modification of almost 
every doctrine of the Cartesian system. 

In connection with this inconsistency we may 
notice the very different relations in which Des 
Cartes conceives mind on the one side and matter 
on the other to stand towards God, who yet is the 
cause of both, and must therefore, by the principle 
of causality, contain in Himself all that is in both. 

Matter and mind are to Des Cartes absolute oppo- 
sites. Whatever can be asserted of mind can be 
denied of matter, whatever can be asserted of 
matter can be denied of mind. Matter is passive, 
mind is active ; matter is extended, and therefore 

% divisible ad infinitum ; mind is an indivisible unity. 
In fact, though of this Des Cartes is not conscious, 
the determination of the one is mediated by its 
opposition to the other ; the ideas of object and 
subject, the self and not-self, are terms of a rela 
tion distinguishable but inseparable. But in the 
idea of God we must find a unity which transcends 
this difference in one way or another, whether by 



CARTER I AN ISM. 293 

combining the two under a higher notion, or, as it 
would be more natural to expect on Cartesian 
principles, by abstracting equally from the par 
ticular characteristics of both. Des Cartes really 
does neither, or rather he acts partly on the one 
principle and partly on the other. In his idea of 
God he abstracts from the properties of matter but 
not from those of mind. " God," he says, " contains 
in Himself formaliter all that is in mind, but only 
cmincntcr all that is in matter " ; 1 or, as he else 
where expresses it more popularly, He is mind, but 
He is only the creator of matter. And for this Des 
Cartes gives as his reason that matter, as being 
divisible and passive, is essentially imperfect. Ipsa 
natura corporis multas imperfectiones involvit, and, 
therefore, " there is more analogy between sounds 
and colours than there is between material things 
and God." But the real imperfection here lies in 
the abstractness of the Cartesian conception of matter 
as merely extended, merely passive ; and this is 
balanced by the equal abstractness of the con 
ception of mind or self-consciousness as an 
absolutely simple activity, a pure intelligence 
without any object but itself. If matter as 
l llesp. ad. sec. object., 72-73. 



294 



CARTESIANISM. 



absolutely opposed to rnind is imperfect, mind as 
absolutely opposed to matter is also imperfect. 
In fact, they are the elements or factors of a 
unity, and lose all meaning when severed from 
each other, and if we are to seek this unity 
by abstraction, we must equally abstract from 
both. 

The result of this one-sidedness is seen in the 
fact that Des C artes, who begins by separating 
mind from matter, ends by finding the essence of 
mind in pure will, i.e., in pure formal self-deter 
mination. Hence God s will is conceived as 
absolutely arbitrary, not determined by any end 
or law ; for all laws, even the necessary truths 
that constitute reason, spring from God s deter 
mination, and do not precede it. " He is the 
author of the essence of things no less than their 
existence," and His will has no reason but His will. 
In man there is an intelligence with eternal laws or 
truths involved in its structure, which so far limits 
his will. " As man finds the nature of good and 
truth already determined by God, his will cannot 
be moved by anything else." His highest freedom 
consists in having his will determined by a clear 
perception of the nature of good and truth, and 



CARTES I AN ISM. 295 

" he is never indifferent except when he is ignorant 
of it, or, at least, does not see it so clearly as to be 
lifted above the possibility of doubt." 1 Indifference 
of will is to him " the lowest grade of liberty," yet, 
on the other hand, in nothing does the image of God 
in him show itself more clearly than in the fact that 
his will is not limited by his clear and distinct 
knowledge, but is " in a manner infinite." For 
"there is no object of any will, even the infinite 
will of God, to which our will does not extend." 2 
Belief is a free act, for as we can yield our assent 
to the obscure conceptions presented by sense and 
the imagination, and thus allow ourselves to be led 
into error, so, on the other hand, we can refuse to 
give this assent, or to allow ourselves to be deter 
mined by anything but the clear and distinct ideas 
of intelligence. That which makes it possible for 
us to err is that also in which the divine image in 
us is most clearly seen. We cannot have the 
freedom of God, whose will creates the object of 
His knowledge ; but in reserving our assent for the 
clear and distinct perceptions of intelligence we, as 
it were, re-enact for ourselves the divine law, and 
repeat, so far as is possible to finite beings, the 
1 Resp. Sej:tce, 160-163. -Principia, i. 35. 



296 CARTESIANISM. 

transcendent act of will in which truth and good 
had their origin. 

The inherent defect of this view is the divorce it 
makes between the form and the matter of intelli 
gence. It implies that reason or self-consciousness 
is one thing, and that truth is another and quite 
different thing, which has been united to it by the 
arbitrary will of God. The same external con 
ception of the relation of truth to the mind is 
involved in the doctrine of innate ideas. It is 
true that Des Cartes did not hold that doctrine 
in the coarse form in which it was attributed to 
him by Locke, but expressly declares that he has 
" never said or thought at any time that the mind 
required innate ideas which were separated from 
the faculty of thinking. He had simply used the 
word innate to distinguish those ideas which are 
derived from that faculty, and not from external 
objects or the determination of the will. Just as 
when we say generosity is innate in certain 
families, and in certain other diseases, like the 
gout or the stone, we do not mean to imply that 
infants in their mother s womb are affected with 
these complaints." 1 Yet Des Cartes, as we have 
1 Not<z in Programma, 1 84. 



CARTESIANISM. 297 

seen, does not hold that these truths are involved 
in the very nature of intelligence as such, so that 
we cannot conceive a self-conscious being without 
them. On the contrary, we are to regard the 
divine intelligence as by arbitrary act determining 
that two and two should be four, or that envy 
should be a vice. We are " not to conceive eternal 
truth flowing from God as rays from the sun." 1 
In other words, we are not to conceive all par 
ticular truths as different aspects of one truth. It 
is part of the imperfection of man s finite nature 
that he " finds truth and good determined for 
him." It is something given, given, indeed, 
along with his very faculty of thinking. but 
still given as an external limit to it. It belongs 
not to his nature as spirit, but to his fmitude as 
man. 

After what has been said, it is obvious that the 
transition from God to matter must be somewhat 
arbitrary and external. God s truthfulness is 
pledged for the reality of that of which we have 
clear and distinct ideas ; and we have clear and 
distinct ideas of the external world so long as we 
conceive it simply as extended matter, infinitely 
1 Epistol(e, L 110. 



298 CARTESIANISM. 

divisible, and moved entirely from without, so 
long, in short, as we conceive it as the direct 
opposite of mind, and do not attribute to it any 
one of the properties of mind. Omnes proprietaries, 
quas in ea dare percipimus, ad hoc unum reducuntur, 
quod sit partibilis ct mobilis sccundum partes. We 
must, therefore, free ourselves from the obscure and 
confused modes of thought which arise whenever 
we attribute any of the secondary qualities, which 
exist merely in our sensations, to the objects that 
cause these sensations. The subjective character 
of such qualities is proved by the constant change 
which takes place in them, without any change of 
the object in which they are perceived. A piece of 
wax cannot lose its extension ; but its colour, its 
hardness, and all the other qualities whereby it is 
presented to sense may be easily altered. What 
is objective in all this is merely an extended 
substance, and the modes of motion or rest through 
which it is made to pass. In like manner we must 
separate from our notion of matter all ideas of actio 
in distans: e.g., we must explain weight not as a 
tendency to the centre of the earth or an attraction 
of distant particles of matter, but as a consequence 
of the pressure of other bodies, immediately sur- 



CARTESIAN ISM. 299 

rounding that which is felt to be heavy. 1 For the 
only conceivable actio in distans is that which is- 
mediated by thought, and it is only in so far as we 
suppose matter to have in it a principle of activity 
like thought that we can accept such explanations 
of its motion. Again, while we must thus keep our 
conception of matter clear of all elements that do 
not belong to it, we must also be careful not to 
take away from it those that do belong to it. It i& 
a defect of distinctness in our ideas when we 
conceive an attribute as existing apart from its- 
substance, or a substance without its attribute ; 
for this is to treat elements that are only sepa 
rated by a " distinction of reason," as if they were- 
distinct things. The conception of the possibility 
of a vacuum or empty space arises merely from our 
confusing the possible separation of any particular 
mode or form of matter from matter in general, with 
the impossible separation of matter in general from 
its own essential attribute. Accordingly, in his 
physical philosophy, Des Cartes attempts to explain 
everything on mechanical principles, starting with 
the hypothesis that a certain quantity of motion 
has been communicated to the material universe 
1 Rcsp. Sextce, 16") -6. 



3oc 



CARTESIANISM. 



by God at the first, a quantity which can never be 
lost or diminished, and that space is an absolute 
plenum in which motion propagates itself in circles. 
It is unnecessary to follow Des Cartes into the 
detail of the theory of vortices. It is more to the 
purpose to notice the nature of the reasons by which 
he is driven to regard such a mechanical explanation 
of the universe as necessary. A real or substantive 
existence is, in his view, a res completa, a thing that 
can be conceived as a whole in itself without re 
lations to any other thing. Now matter and mind 
are, he thinks, such complete existences, so long as we 
conceive them, as the pure intelligence must con 
ceive them, as abstract opposites of each other ; and 
do not permit ourselves to be confused by those 
mixed modes of thought which are due to sense or 
imagination. Des Cartes does not see that in this 
very abstract opposition there is a bond of union 
between mind and matter, or, in other words, that 
they are correlative opposites, and therefore in their 
separation res incomplete^. In other words, they are 
merely elements of reality substantiated by abstract 
thought into independent realities. He indeed partly 
retracts his assertion that mind and matter severed 
from each other are res completes, when he declares 



CARTESIANISM. 301 

that neither can be conceived as existing apart from 
God, and that therefore, strictly speaking, God alone 
is a substance. But as we have seen, he avoids the 
necessary inference that in God the opposition be 
tween rnind and matter is reconciled or transcended, 
by conceiving God as abstract self-consciousness or 
will, and the material world not as His necessary 
manifestation, but simply as His creation, i.e., as 
having its origin in an act of bare volition, and that 
only. His God is the God of abstract Monotheism 
and not of Christianity, and in relation to such a 
God, the world must be conceived as a foreign 
matter which He brings into being, and acts on 
from without, but in which He is not revealed. 

It is a natural consequence of this view that nature 
is essentially dead matter, and that beyond the 
motion it has received from God at the beginning, and 
which it transmits from part to part without increase 
or diminution, it has in itself no principle of activity. 
Every trace of vitality in it must be explained away 
as a mere false reflection upon it of the nature of 
mind. The world is thus " cut in two with a hatchet," 
and there is no attraction to overcome the mutual 
repulsion of its severed parts. Nothing can be 
admitted in the material half that savours of self 



302 CARTESIANISM. 

determination, all its energy must be communi 
cated, not self-originated ; there is in it no room for 
gravitation, still less for magnetism or chemical 
affinity. A fortiori, animal life must be completely 
explained away. The machine may be very com 
plicated, but it is still, and can be nothing but a 
machine. For if we once admitted that matter could 
be anything but mechanical, we should be on the 
way to admit that matter could become mind. 
When a modern physical philosopher declares that 
everything, even life and thought, is ultimately 
reducible to matter, we cannot always be certain 
that he means what he seems to say. Not seldom 
the materialist soi-disant, when we hear his account 
of the properties of matter, turns out to be some 
thing like a spiritualist in disguise ; but when Des 
Cartes asserted that everything but mind is material, 
and that the animals are automataffhere is no such 
dubiety of interpretation. He said what he meant, 
and meant what he said, in the hardest sense his 
words can bear. His matter was not even gravitat 
ing, much less living ; it had no property except 
that of retaining and transmitting the motion re 
ceived from without by pressure and impact. And 
his animals were automata, not merely in the sense 



CARTESIAN ISM. 303 

of being governed by sensation and instinct, but 
precisely in the sense that a watch is an automaton. 
Henry More cries out against the ruthless con 
sequence with which he develops his principles to 
this result. " In this," he says, " I do not so much 
admire the penetrative power of your genius as I 
tremble for the fate of the animals. What I 
recognise in you is not only subtlety of thought, 
but a hard and remorseless logic with which you 
arm yourself as with a sword of steel, to take away 
life and sensation with one blow, from almost the 
whole animal kingdom." But Des Cartes was not 
the man to be turned from the legitimate result of 
his principles by a scream. " Nee moror astutias 
et sagacitates canum et vulpiurn, nee quaBCunque 
alia propter cibum, venerem, aut metum a brutis 
fiunt. Profiteer enim me posse perfacile ilia omnia 
ut a sola membrorum conformations profcda eocpli- 
care." 1 

The difficulty reaches its height when Des Cartes 

1 Epist. i. 66, 67. Cf., howevei 1 , the passages quoted by 
Mr. Martiueau (Types of Ethical Theory, II. 138) which show 
that Des Cartes sometimes made concessions in relation to 
the sensitive life of animals similar to those which, as we 
shall immediately see, he makes in relation to the sensitive 
life of man, see especially (Euvres, ix. 423-53 ; x. 207 -8. 



304 CARTES I AN ISM. 

attempts to explain the union of the body and 
spirit in man. Between two substances which, 
when clearly and distinctly conceived, do not imply 
each other, there can be none but an artificial unity, 
a unity of composition that still leaves them ex 
ternal to each other. Even God cannot make them 
one in any higher sense. 2 And as it is impossible 
in the nature of mind to see any reason why it 
should be embodied, or in the nature of matter to 
see any reason why it should become the organ of 
mind, the union of the two must be taken as a 
mere empirical fact. When we put on the one side 
all that belongs to intelligence, and on the other all 
that belongs to matter, there is a residuum in our 
ideas which we cannot reduce to either head. This 
residuum consists of our appetites, our passions, and 
our sensations, including not only the feelings of 
pain and pleasure, but also the perceptions of colour, 
smell, taste, of hardness and softness, and all the 
other qualities apprehended by touch. These must 
be referred to the union of mind with body. They 
are subjective in the sense that they give us no 
information either as to the nature of things or 
of mind. Their function is only to indicate what 
- Princ. i. 60. 



CARTESIANISM. 305 

things are useful or hurtful to our composite nature 
as such, or, in other words, what things tend to con 
firm or dissolve the unity of mind and body. They 
indicate that something is taking place in our body 
or without it, and so stimulate us to some kind of 
action, but what it is that is taking place they do 
not tell us. There is no resemblance in the sensa 
tion of pain produced by great heat to the tension 
of the fibres of our body that causes it. But we do 
not need to know the real origin of our sensation to 
prevent us going too near the fire. Sensation leads 
us into error only when we are not conscious that 
its office is merely practical, and when we attempt 
to make objective judgments by means of its 
obscure and confused ideas, e.g., when we say that 
there is heat in our hands or in the fire. And the 
remedy for this error is to be found simply in the 
clear conviction of the subjectivity of sensation. 

These views of the nature of sense, however, at 
once force us to ask how Des Cartes can con 
sistently admit that a subjective result such as 
sensation, a result in mind, should be produced by 
matter, and on the other hand how an objective 
result, a result in matter, should be effected by 

mind. Des Cartes explains at great length, accord- 
u 



306 CARTESIANISM. 

ing to his modification of the physiology of the day, 
that the pineal gland, which is the immediate organ 
of the soul, is acted on by the nerves through the 
" animal spirits," and again by reaction upon these 
spirits produces motions in the body. It is an 
obvious remark that this explanation either mater 
ialises mind, or else puts for the solution the very 
problem to be solved. It was therefore in the 
spirit of Des Cartes, it was only making explicit 
what is involved in many of his expressions, when 
Geulincx, one of his earliest followers, formulated 
the theory of occasional causes. The general ap 
proval of the Cartesian school showed that this was 
a legitimate development of doctrine. Yet it tore 
away the last veil from the absolute dualism of 
the system, which had stretched the antagonism of 
mind and matter so far that no mediation remained 
possible, or, what is the same thing, so far that it 
remained possible only through an inexplicable will 
of God. The intrusion of such a Dens ex machina 
into philosophy only showed that by its violent 
abstraction philosophy had destroyed the unity of the 
known and intelligible world, and was, therefore, 
forced to seek that unity in the region of the un 
known and unintelligible. If our light be darkness, 



CARTESIANISM. 



307 



then in our darkness we must seek for light ; if 
reason be contradictory in itself, truth must be 
found in unreason. The development of the 
Cartesian school was soon to show what is the 
necessary and inevitable consequence of such wor 
ship of the unknown. 

To the ethical aspect of his philosophy, Des 
Cartes, unlike his great disciple, only devoted a 
subordinate attention. In a short treatise, however, 
he discussed the relation of reason to the passions. 
After we have got over the initial difficulty, that 
matter should give rise to effects in mind, and 
mind in matter, and have admitted that in man 
the unity of mind and body turns what in the 
animals is mere mechanical reception of stimulus 
from without and reaction upon it, into an action 
and reaction mediated by sensation, emotion, and 
passion, another question presents itself. How can 
the mere natural movement of passion, the nature 
of which is fixed by the original constitution of our 
body and of the things that act upon it, be altered 
or modified by pure reason ? For while it is ob 
vious that morality consists in the determination 
of reason by itself, it is not easy to conceive how 
the same being who is determined by passion from. 



3o8 CARTESIANISM. 

without should also be determined by reason from 
within. How, in other words, can a spiritual being 
maintain its character as self-determined, or at least 
determined only by the clear and distinct ideas of 
the reason which are its innate forms, in the pres 
ence of this foreign element of passion that seems 
to make it the slave of external impressions ? Is 
reason able to crush this intruder, or to turn it into 
a servant ? Can the passions be annihilated, or can 
they be spiritualised ? 

Des Cartes could not properly adopt either alterna 
tive ; he could not adopt the ethics of asceticism, 
for the union of body and mind is, in his view, 
natural ; and hence the passions which are the 
results of that union are in themselves relatively 
good. They are provisions of nature for the protec 
tion of the unity of soul and body, and stimulate us 
to the acts necessary for that purpose. Yet, on the 
other hand, he could not admit that these passions 
are capable of being completely spiritualised ; for so 
long as the unity of body and soul is regarded as 
merely external and accidental, it is impossible to 
think that the passions which arise out of this unity 
can be transformed into the embodiment and ex 
pression of reason. Des Cartes, indeed, points out 



CARTESIANISM. 309 

that every passion has a lower and a higher form, 
and while in its lower or primary form it is based 
on the obscure ideas produced by the motion of the 
animal spirits, in its higher form it is connected with 
the clear and distinct judgments of reason regarding 
good and evil. If, however, the unity of soul and 
body be a unity of composition, there is an element 
of obscurity in the judgments of passion which can 
not be made clear, an element in desire which cannot 
be spiritualised. If the mind be external to the 
passions, it can only impose upon them an external 
rule of moderation. On such a theory no ideal 
morality is possible to man in his present state ; for, 
in order to the attainment of such an ideal morality, 
it would be necessary that the accidental element, 
which is obtruded into his life as a spiritual being 
by his connection with the body, should be expelled. 
What can be attained under present conditions is 
only, to abstract so far as is possible from external 
things, and from those relations to external things 
into which passion brings us. Hence the great im 
portance which Des Cartes attaches to the distinction 
between things in our power, and things not in our 
power. What is not in our power includes all out 
ward things, and therefore it is our highest wisdom 



310 CARTESIANISM. 

to regard them as determined by an absolute fate 
or the eternal decree of God. We cease to wish for 
that which is seen to be impossible ; and therefore, 
in order to subdue our passions we only need to 
convince ourselves that no effort of ours can enable 
us to secure their objects. On the other hand, that 
which is within our power, and which therefore we 
cannot desire too earnestly, is virtue. But virtue in 
this abstraction from all objects of desire is simply 
the harmony of reason with itself, the arapa^ia of 
the Stoic under a slight change of aspect. Thus in 
ethics, as in metaphysics, Des Cartes ends not with 
a reconciliation of the opposed elements, but with a 
dualism, or, at best, with a unity which is the result 
of abstraction. 

MALEBKANCHE was prepared, by the ascetic train 
ing of the cloister and the teaching of Augustine, to 
bring to clear consciousness and expression many of 
the tendencies that were latent and undeveloped in 
the philosophy of Des Cartes. To use a chemical 
metaphor, the Christian Platonism of the church 
father was a medium in which Cartesianism could 
precipitate the product of its elements. Yet the 
medium was, as we shall see, not a perfect one, and 



CARTESIANISM. 311 

hence the product was not quite pure. Without 
metaphor, Malebranche, by his previous habits of 
thought, was well fitted to detect and develop the 
pantheistic and ascetic elements of his master s 
philosophy. But he was not well fitted to penetrate 
through the veil of popular language under which the 
discordance of that philosophy with orthodox Chris 
tianity was hidden. On the contrary, the whole 
training of the Catholic priest, and especially his 
practical spirit, with that tendency to compromise 
which a practical spirit always brings with it, enabled 
him to conceal from himself as well as from others 
the logical result of his principles. And we do 
not wonder even when we find him treating as a 
" wretched creature " (miserable) the philosopher who 
tore away the veil. 

Malebranche " saw all things in God." In other 
words, he taught that knowledge is possible only 
in so far as thought is the expression, not of the 
nature of the individual subject as such, but of a 
universal life in which he and all other rational 
beings partake. " No one can feel my individual 
pain ; every one can see the truth which I con 
template why is it so. ? The reason is that my 
pain is a modification of my substance, but truth is 



3 I2 



CARTESIANISM. 



the common good of all spirits." 1 This idea is ever 
present to Malebranche, and is repeated by him in 
an endless variety of forms of expression. Thus, 
like Des Cartes, but with more decision, he tells us 
that the idea of the infinite is prior to the idea of 
the finite. " We conceive of the infinite being by 
the very fact that we conceive of being, without 
considering whether it be finite or no. But in 
order that we may think of a finite being, we must 
necessarily cut off or deduct something from the 
general notion of being, which consequently we 
must previously possess. Thus the mind does not 
apprehend anything whatever, except in and 
through the idea that it has of the infinite ; nor is 
it the case that, as philosophers have maintained, 
this idea is formed by the confused assemblage of 
all the ideas of particular things. On the con 
trary, all these particular ideas are only partici 
pations in the general idea of the infinite, just 
as God does not derive His being from the 
creatures, but all the creatures are imperfect par 
ticipations of the Divine Being." 2 Again, he tells 
us, in the same chapter, that " when we wish to 
think of any particular thing, we first cast our view 
1 Morale, i. 1, 2. - Recherche, III. ii. 6. 



CARTESIANISM. 313 

upon all being, and then apply it to the considera 
tion of the object in question. We could not desire 
to see any particular object, unless we saw it al 
ready in a confused and general way, and as there 
is nothing which we cannot desire to see, so all 
objects must be in a manner present to our spirit. " 
Or, as he puts it in another place, " our mind 
would not be capable of representing to itself the 
general ideas of genera and species, if it did not see 
all things as contained in one ; for, every creature 
being an individual, we cannot say that we are 
apprehending any created thing when we think the 
general idea of a triangle ! " 

The main idea that is expressed in all these 
different ways is simply this, that to determine any 
individual object as such, we must relate it to, and 
distinguish it from, the whole of which it is a part ; 
and that, therefore, thought could never apprehend 
anything, if it did not bring with itself the idea of 
the intelligible world as a unity. Des Cartes had 
already expressed this truth in his Meditations, but 
he had deprived it of its full significance by making 
a distinction between the "being and the idea of 
God, the former of which, in his view, was only the 
cause of the latter. Malebranche detects this error, 



314 



CARTESIANISM. 



and denies that there is any idea of the infinite, 
which is a somewhat crude way of saying that there 
is no division between the idea of the infinite and its 
reality. What Reid asserted of the external world, 
that it is not represented by an idea in our minds, 
but is actually present to them, Malebranche asserted 
of God. No individual thing, he tells us and 
an idea is but an individual thing could represent 
the infinite. On the contrary, all individual things 
are represented through the infinite Being, who 
contains them all in His substance Ms efficace, et 
par consequence ires intelligible^- We know God by 
Himself, material things only by their ideas in God, 
for they are " unintelligible in themselves, and we 
can see them only in the being who contains them 
in an intelligible manner." And thus, unless we 
in some way " saw God, we should be able to see 
nothing else." The vision of God or in God, there- 
for.e, is an " intellectual intuition," in which seer 
and seen, knower and known, are one. Our know 
ledge of things is our participation in God s know 
ledge of them. When we have gone so far with 
Malebranche, we are tempted to ask why he does 
not follow out his thought to its natural conclusion. 
1 Recherche, III. ii. 6, 7. 



CARTESIANISM. 315 

If the idea of God is not separable from His exist 
ence, if it is through the idea of Him that all 
things are known, and through His existence that 
all things are, then it would seem necessarily to- 
follow that our consciousness of God is but a part 
of God s consciousness of Himself, that our con 
sciousness of self and other things is but God s 
consciousness of them, and lastly, that there is no 
existence either of ourselves or other things except 
in this consciousness. To understand Malebranche 
is mainly to understand how he stopped short of 
results that seemed to lie so directly in the line of 
his thought. 

To begin with the last point, it is easy to see 
that Malebranche only asserts unity of idea and 
reality in God, in order to deny it everywhere else ; 
which with him is equivalent to asserting it in 
general and denying it in particular. To him, as 
to Des Cartes, the opposition between mind and 
matter is absolute. Material things cannot come 
into our minds, nor can our minds go out of them 
selves pour se promener dans les deux. 1 Hence they 
are in themselves absolutely unknown ; they are 
known only in God, in whom are their ideas - r 
1 Recherche, III. ii. 1. 



316 CARTESIANISM. 

and as these ideas are quite distinct from the 
reality, they " might be presented to the mind 
without anything existing." That they exist out of 
God in another manner than the intelligible manner 
of their existence in God, is explained by a mere 
act of His will, that is, it is not explained at all. 
Though we see all things in God, therefore, there 
is no connection between His existence and theirs. 
The "world is not a necessary emanation of divinity; 
God is perfectly self-sufficient, and the idea of the 
infinitely perfect Being can be conceived quite apart 
from any other. The existence of the creatures 
is due to the free decrees of God." 1 Malebranche, 
therefore, still treats of external things as " things 
in themselves," which have an existence apart from 
thought, even the divine thought, though it is only 
in and through the divine thought they can be 
known by us. " To see the material world, or 
rather to judge that it exists (since in itself it is 
invisible), it is necessary that God should reveal it 
to us, for we cannot see the result of His arbitrary 
will through necessary reason." 2 

But if we know external things only through 
their idea in God, how do we know ourselves ? Is 
1 Morale, I. i. 5. " Entretien, I. 5. 



CARTESIANISM. 317 

it also through the idea of us in God ? Here we 
come upon a point in which Malebranche diverges 
very far from his master. We do not, he says, 
properly know ourselves at all, as we know God, or 
even external objects. We are conscious of our 
selves by inner sense (sentiment interieur), and from 
this we know that we are, but we do not know 
what we are. " We know the existence of our soul 
more distinctly than of our body, but we have not 
so perfect a knowledge of our soul as of our body." 
This is shown by the fact that from our idea of 
body as extended substance, we can at once see 
what are its possible modifications. In other words, 
we only need the idea of extended substance to see 
that there is an inexhaustible number of figures 
and motions of which it is capable. The whole of 
geometry is but a development of what is given 
already in the conception of extension. But it is 
not so with our consciousness of self, which does 
not enable us to say, prior to actual experience, 
what sensations or passions are possible to us. We 
only know what heat, cold, light, colour, hunger, 
anger, and desire are by feeling them. Our know 
ledge extends as far as our experience and no 
further. Kay, we have good reason to believe that 



CARTESIANISM. 

many of these modifications exist in our soul only 
by reason of its accidental association with a body, 
and that, if it were freed from that body, it would 
be capable of far other and higher experiences. 
" We know by feeling that our soul is great, but 
perhaps we know almost nothing of what it is in 
itself." The information which sense gives has, as 
Des Cartes taught, only a practical but no theo 
retical value ; it tells us nothing of the external 
world, the real nature of which we know, not 
through touch and taste and sight, but only through 
our idea of extended substance ; while of the nature 
of the soul it does not tell us much more than that 
it exists, and that it is not material. And in this 
latter case we have no idea, nothing better than 
sense to raise us above its illusions. 

It is clear from these statements that by self- 
consciousness Malebranche means consciousness of 
desires and feelings, which belong to the individual 
as such, and not consciousness of the self as think 
ing. He begins, in fact, where Des Cartes ended, and 
identifies the consciousness of self as thinking, and 
so transcending the limits of its own particular 
being, with the consciousness or idea of God. And 
between the consciousness of the finite in sense, and 



CARTESIANISM. 319 

the consciousness of the infinite in thought, or in 
other words, between the consciousness of the uni 
versal and the consciousness of the individual, he 
sees no connection. Malebranche is just one step 
from the pantheistic conclusion that the conscious 
ness of finite individuality as such is illusory, and 
that as all bodies are but modes of one infinite 
extension, so all souls are but modes of one infinite 
thought. But while he willingly accepts this result 
in regard to matter, his religious feelings prevent 
him from accepting it in relation to mind. He is 
driven, therefore, to the inconsistency of holding 
that sense and feeling, through which in his view 
we apprehend the finite as such, give us true 
though imperfect knowledge of the soul, while the 
knowledge they give us of body is not only imper 
fect but false. 1 Thus the finite spirit is still 
allowed to be a substance, distinct from the infinite, 
though it holds its substantial existence on a pre 
carious tenure. It is left hanging, we may say, on 
the verge of the infinite, whose attraction must soon 

O 

prove too strong for it. Ideas are living things, 

and often remould the minds that admit them in 

spite of the greatest resistance of dead custom and 

1 Recherche, III. ii. 7, 4. 



320 



CARTESIANISM. 



traditionary belief. In the grasp of a logic that 
overpowers him, the more easily that he is uncon 
scious of its tendency, Malebranche is brought 
within one step of the pantheistic conclusion, and 
all that his Christian feeling and priestly training 
can do, is just to save him from the denial of the 
personality of man. 

But even this denial is not the last word of 
pantheism. When the principle that the finite is 
known only in relation to the infinite, the individual 
only in relation to the universal, is interpreted as 
meaning that the infinite and universal is complete 
in itself without the finite and individual, and 
when the finite and individual is treated as a mere 
accidental existence due to the " arbitrary will of 
God," it ceases to be possible to conceive even God 
as a spirit. Did Malebranche realise what he was 
saying when he declared that God was " being in 
general," but not any particular being ? At any 
rate we can see that the same logic which leads him 
almost to deny the reality of finite beings, leads 
him also to seek the divine nature in something 
more abstract and general even than thought. If 
we must abstract from all relation to the finite in 
order to know God as He is, is it not necessary for 



CARTESIANISM. 321 

us also to abstract from self-consciousness ? For 
self-consciousness also has a negative element in it ; 
it is something definite and therefore limited. We do 
not wonder, therefore, when we find Malebranche 
saying that reason does not tell us that God is a 
spirit, but only that He is an infinitely perfect 
being. He is conceived as a spirit rather than as 
a body only, because spirit is more perfect than 
body. " When we call God a spirit, it is not 
so much to show positively what He is, as to 
signify that He is not material." But as we ought 
not to give Him a bodily form like man s, so we 
ought not to think of His spirit as similar to our 
own spirits, although we can conceive nothing more 
perfect. " It is necessary rather to believe that as 
He contains in Himself the properties of matter 
without being material, so He comprehends in Him 
self the perfections of created spirits without being 
like any spirit we can conceive, and that His 
true name is " He who is," i.e., Being without re 
striction, Being infinite and universal." l . 

Thus the essentially self-revealing God of Chris 
tianity gives way to pure spirit, and pure spirit in 
its turn to the eternal and incomprehensible sub- 

1 Recherche, III. ii. 9. 
x 



322 CARTESIANISM. 

stance, of which we can say nothing but that it is. 
The divine substance contains in itself, indeed, all 
the elements that are in creation, but it contains 
them eminenter, in some incomprehensible form that 
is reconcilable with its infinitude. But we have no 
adequate name by which to call it except Being. 
The curious rnetaphysic of theology by which, in his 
later writings, Malebranche tried to make room for 
the incarnation, by supposing that the finite creation, 
which as finite is unworthy of God, was made 
worthy by union with Christ, the divine Word, 
shows that Malebranche had some indistinct sense 
of the necessity of reconciling his philosophy with 
his theology ; but it shows also the necessarily arti 
ficial nature of the combination. The result of the 
union of such incongruous elements was something 
which the theologians at once recognised as hetero 
dox, and the philosophers as illogical. 

There was another doctrine of Malebranche which 
brought him into trouble with the theologians, and 
which was the main subject of his long controversy 
with Arnauld. This was his denial of particular 
providence. As Leibniz maintained that this is 
the best of all possible worlds, and that its evils 
are to be explained by the negative nature of the 



CARTE SI AN ISM. 



323 



finite, so Malebranche, with a slight difference of 
expression, derived evil from the nature of particular 
or individual existence. It is not conformable to 
the nature of God to act by any but universal laws, 
and these universal laws necessarily involve par 
ticular evil consequences, though their ultimate 
result is the highest possible good. The question 
why there should be any particular existence, any 
existence but God, seeing such existence necessarily 
involves evil, remains insoluble so long as the 
purely pantheistic view of God is maintained ; and 
it is this view which is really at the bottom of the 
assertion that He can have no particular volitions. 
To the coarse and anthropomorphic conception of 
particular providence Malebranche may be right in 
objecting ; but, on the other hand, it cannot be 
doubted that any theory in which the universal is 
absolutely opposed to the particular, the infinite to 
the finite, is unchristian as well as unphilosophical. 
For under this dualistic presupposition, there seem 
to be only two possible alternatives open to thought ; 
either the particular and finite must be treated as 
something independent of the universal and infinite, - 
which involves an obvious contradiction, or else it 
must be regarded as absolute nonentity. We find 



324 



CARTESIANISM. 



Malebranche doing the one or the other as occasion 
requires. Thus he vindicates the freedom of man s 
will on the ground that the universal will of God 
does not completely determine the particular voli 
tions of man ; and then, becoming conscious of the 
difficulty involved in this conception, he tries, like 
Des Cartes, to explain the particular will as some 
thing merely negative, a defect, and not a positive 
existence. 

But to understand fully Malebranche s view of 
freedom and the ethical system connected with it, 
we must notice an important alteration which he 
makes in the Cartesian theory of the relation of 
will and intelligence. To Des Cartes, as we have 
seen, the ultimate essence of mind lay in pure 
abstract self-determination or will, and hence he 
based even moral and intellectual truth on the 
^arbitrary decrees of God. With Malebranche, 
abstraction goes a step further ; and the absolute 
is sought, not in the subject as opposed to the 
object, not in pure formal self-determination as op 
posed to that which is determined, but in a unity 
that transcends this difference. With him, there 
fore, will ceases to be regarded as the essence of 
intelligence, and sinks into a property or separable 



CARTESIANISM. 325 

attribute of it. As we can conceive an extended 
substance without actual movement, so, he says, we 
can conceive a thinking substance without actual 
volition. But " matter or extension without motion 
would be entirely useless and incapable of that 
variety of forms for which it is made ; and we 
cannot, therefore, suppose, that an all-wise Being 
would create it in this way. In like manner, if a 
spiritual or thinking substance were without will, it 
is clear that it would be quite useless, for it would 
not be attracted towards the objects of its percep 
tion, and would not love the good for which it is 
made. We cannot therefore conceive an intelligent 
being so to fashion it." 1 Xow God need not be 
conceived as creating at all, for He is self-sufficient ; 
but if He be a creator of spirits, He must create them 
for Himself. " God cannot will that there should 
exist a spirit that does not love Him, or that loves 
Him less than any other good." 2 The craving for 
good in general, for an absolute satisfaction, is a 
natural love of God that is common to all. " The 
just, the wicked, the blessed, and the damned all 
alike love God with this love." Out of this love of 
God arises the love we have to ourselves and to 
1 Recherche, I. i. 1. 2 Ibid. T. i. 4. 



326 CARTESIAN1SM. 

others, which are the natural imclinations that 
belong to all created spirits. For these inclinations 
are but the elements of the love which is in God, 
and which therefore he inspires in all his creatures. 
" // s aime, il nous dime, il aimc toutes ses creatures ; 
il ne fait done point d csprits qu il ne Ics porte a 
I aimer, a s aimer, ct a aimer toutes Ics creatures" * 
Stripping this thought of its theological vesture, 
what is expressed here is simply that, as a spiritual 
being, each man is conscious of his own limited and 
individual existence, as well as of the limited and 
individual existence of other beings like himself, 
only in relation to the whole in which they are parts. 
Hence he can find his own good only in the good 
of the whole, and he is in contradiction with himself 
so long as he rests in any good short of that. His 
love of happiness, his natural inclinations both sel 
fish and social, may be therefore regarded as an un 
developed form of the love of God ; and the ideal 
state of his inclinations is that in which the love of 
self and of others are explicitly referred to that 
higher affection ; or in which his love does not pro 
ceed from a part to the whole, but from the whole 
to the parts. 

1 Recherche, I. iv. 1. 



CARTESIANISM. 337 

The question of morals to Malebranche is the 
question how these natural inclinations are related 
to the particular passions. Sensation and passion 
arise out of the connection of body and soul, and 
their use is only to urge us to attend to the wants 
of the former. We can scarcely hear without a smile 
the simple monastic legend which Malebranche 
weaves together about the original nature of the 
passions and their alteration by the Fall. " It is a 
manifest indication of disorder that a spirit, capable 
of knowing and loving God, should be obliged to 
occupy itself with the needs of the body." " A 
being altogether occupied with what passes in his 
body and with the infinity of objects that surround 
it, cannot be thinking on the things that are truly 
good." l Hence the necessity of an immediate and 
instinctive warning from the senses in regard to the 
relations of things to our organism, andalso of pains 
and pleasures which may induce us to attend to 
this warning. " Sensible pleasure is the mark that 
nature has attached to the use of certain things in 
order that, without having the trouble of examining 
them by reason, we may employ them for the pre 
servation of the body, but not in order that we may 
1 Entretien, iv. 



328 CARTESIANISM. 

love them." ] Till the Fall __ the mind was merely 
united to the body, not subjected to it, and the 
influence of these pleasures and pains was only such 
as to make men attend to their bodily wants, but 
not to occupy the mind, or fill it with sensuous joys 
and sorrows, or trouble its contemplation of that 
which is really good. Our moral aim should there 
fore be to restore this state of things, to weaken our 
union with the body a/id strengthen our union with 
God. And to encourage us in pursuing this aim we 
have to remember that union with God is natural 
to the spirit, and that, while even the condition of 
union with the body is artificial, the condition of 
subjection to the body is wholly unnatural to it. 
Our primary tendency is towards the supreme good, 
and we love the objects of our passions only in so 
far as we " determine towards particular, and there 
fore false goods, the love that God gives us for him 
self." The search for happiness is really the search 
for God in disguise, and even the levity and incon 
stancy with which men rush from one finite good to 
another, is a proof that they were made for the 
infinite. Furthermore, this natural love of God, or 
inclination for good in general, "gives us the power 
1 Recherche, v. 4. 



CARTES I AN ISM. 329 

of suspending our consent in regard to those par 
ticular goods which do not satisfy it." l If we 
refuse to be led by the obscure and confused voice 
of instinctive feeling, which arises from and always 
tends to confirm our union with the body, and if we 
wait for the light of reason which arises from our 
union with God, and always tends to confirm it, we 
are doing all that is in our power, and the rest must 
be left to God. " If we only judge precisely of that 
which we see clearly, we shall never be deceived. 
For then it will not be we that judge, but the uni 
versal reason that judges in us." 2 And as our love, 
even of particular goods, is a confused love of the 
supreme good, so the clear vision of God inevitably 
brings with it the love of Him. " We needs must 
love the highest when we see it." When it is the 
divine reason that speaks in us, it is the divine love 
that moves us, " the same love wherewith God loves 
Himself and the things He has made." 3 

The general result of the ethics of Malebranche 
is ascetic. The passions, like the senses, have no 
relation to the higher life of the soul ; their value 
is only in relation to the union of soul and body, a 

1 Recherche, iv. 1. 2 Morale, I. i. 9. 

3 Recherche, iv. f>. 



330 CARTESIANISM. 

union which is purely accidental or due to the 
arbitrary will of God. As Pericles said of women 
that the less they were heard of in public for good 
or evil the better, so Malebranche would say of the 
sensations and passions, that the more silently they 
discharge their provisional function, and the less 
they disturb or interfere with the pure activity of 
spirit, the more nearly they approach to the only 
perfection that is possible for them. Their ideal 
state is to remain or become again simple instincts 
that act mechanically like the circulation of the 
blood. The universal light of reason casts no ray 
into the obscurity of sense ; its universal love 
cannot embrace any -of the objects of particular 
passion. It is indeed recognised by Malebranche 
that sensation in man is mixed with thought, that 
the passions in him are forms of the love of good in 
general. But this union of the rational with the 
sensuous nature is regarded merely as a confusion 
which is to be cleared up, not in a higher unity 
of the two elements, but simply by the withdrawal 
of the spirit from contact with that which darkens 
and defiles it. Of a transformation of sense into 
thought, of passion into duty, an elevation of the 
life of sense which turns it into the embodiment 



CARTESIANISM. 331 

and expression of the life of reason, Malebranche 
has no conception. 

Hence the life of reason turns with him to 
mysticism in theory and to asceticism in practice. 
His universal is abstract and opposed to the par- i 
ticular ; instead of explaining, it explains it away. 
A certain tender beauty as of twilight is spread over 
the world as we view it through the eyes of this 
cloistered philosopher, and we do not at first see 
that the softness and ideality of the picture is due 
to the gathering darkness. Abstraction seems only 
to be purifying and not destroying, till it has done 
its perfect work. Malebranche conceived himself 
to be presenting to the world only the purest and 
most refined expression of Christian ethics and 
theology. But if we obey his own continual advice 
to think clearly and distinctly, if we divest his 
system of all the sensuous and imaginative forms 
in which he has clothed it, and reduce it to the 
naked simplicity of its central thought, what we 
find is not a God that reveals Himself in the finite 
and to the finite, but an absolute Substance which 
has no revelation, and whose existence is the nega 
tion of all but itself. To tear away the veil, how 
ever, there was needed a stronger, simpler, and freer 



332 CARTESIANISM. 

spirit, a spirit less influenced by opinion, less in 
clined to practical compromise, and gifted with a 
stronger " faith in the whispers of the lonely muse " 
of speculation, than Malebranche. 

It is a remark of Hegel s that SPINOZA, as a Jew, 
first brought into European thought the idea of an 
absolute unity in which the difference of finite and 
infinite is lost. Some later writers have gone 
further, and attempted to show that the main 
doctrines by which his philosophy is distinguished 
from that of Des Cartes were due to the direct 
influences of Jewish writers like Mairnonides, and 
Chasdai Creskas, rather than to the necessary de 
velopment of Cartesian ideas. And it is undoubt 
edly true that many points of similarity with 
such writers, reaching down even to verbal coin 
cidence, may be detected in the works of Spinoza, 
although it is not so easy to determine how much 
he owed to their teaching. His own view of 
his obligations is sufficiently indicated by the fact 
that, while in his ethics he carries on a continual 
polemic against Des Cartes, and strives at every 
point to show that his own doctrines are legiti 
mately derived from Cartesian principles, he only 



CARTES I AN ISM. 



333 



once refers to Jewish philosophy as containing an 
obscure and unreasoned anticipation of these doc 
trines." "Quod quidam Hebrceorum quasi per nebulam 
vidisse videntur, qui scilicet statuunt Dcum Dei intel- 
lectum resque cib ipso intellectas unum et idem csse." l 
It may be that the undeveloped pantheism and 
rationalism of the Jewish philosophers had a deeper 
influence upon Spinoza than he himself was aware 
of, particularly in emancipating him from the tra 
ditions of the synagogue, and giving to his mind 
its first philosophical bias. In his earlier work, 
De Deo et Homini, there are Neo-Platonic ideas 
and expressions, which in the Ethics are rejected or 
remoulded into a form more suitable to the spirit 
of Cartesianisrn. But the question, after all, has 
little more than a biographical interest. In the 
Spinozistic philosophy there are few differences from 
Des Cartes which cannot be traced to the necessary 
development of Cartesian principles ; and the case 
of Malebranche shows that the development might 
take place under the most diverse intellectual con 
ditions. What is most remarkable in Spinoza is 
just the freedom and security with which these 
principles are followed out to their last result. His 
1 Eth. ii. Prop. 7. 



334 



CARTESIANISM. 



Jewish origin and his breach with Judaism com 
pletely isolated him from every influence but that 
of the thought that possessed him. And no scruple 
or hesitation, no respect for the institutions or 
feelings of his time, interfered with the speculative 
development of his principles. He exhibits to us 
the almost perfect type of a mind without super 
stitions, which has freed itself from all but reasoned 
and intelligent convictions, or, in the Cartesian 
phrase, " clear and distinct ideas " ; and when he 
fails, it is not by any inconsistency, or abitrary 
stopping short of the necessary conclusions of his 
logic, but by the essential defect of his principles. 

Spinoza takes his idea of method from mathe 
matics, and after the manner of Euclid, places at 
the head of each book of his Ethics a certain 
number of definitions, axioms, and postulates, which 
are supposed to be intuitively certain, and to form 
a sufficient basis for all that follows. Altogether 
there are twenty-seven definitions, twenty axioms, 
and eight postulates. If Spinoza is regarded as the 
most consequent of philosophers, it cannot be be 
cause he has based his system upon so many frag 
mentary views of truth ; it must be because a 
deeper unity has been discerned in the system than 



CARTESIANISM. 335 

is visible on the first aspect of it. We must, there 
fore, to a certain extent distinguish between the 
form and the matter of his thought, though it is 
also true that the defective form itself involves a 
defect in the matter. 

What in the first instance recommends the geo 
metrical method to Spinoza is, not only its apparent 
exactness and the necessity of its sequence, but, so 
to speak, its disinterestedness. Confusion of thought 
arises from the fact that we put ourselves, our 
desires and feelings and interests, into our view of 
things ; that we do not regard them as they are in 
themselves in their essential nature, but look for 
some final cause, that is, for some relation to our 
selves, by which they may be explained. For this 
reason, he says, " the truth might for ever have 
remained hid from the human race, if mathematics, 
which looks not to the final cause of figures, but to 
their essential nature and the properties involved in * 
it, had not set another type of knowledge before 
them." To understand things is to see how all 
that is true of them flows from the clear and dis 
tinct idea expressed in their definition, and ulti 
mately, it is to see how all truth flows from the 
cssentia Dei, just as geometrical truth flows, from 



336 CARTESIANISM. 

the idea of space. To take a mathematical view of 
the universe, therefore, is to raise ourselves above 
all consideration of the end or tendency of things, 
above the fears and hopes of mortality, into the 
region of truth and necessity. " When I turned 
my mind to this subject," he says in the beginning 
of his treatise on Politics, " I did not propose to 
myself any novel or strange aim, but simply to 
demonstrate by certain and indubitable reason those 
things which agree best with practice. And in 
order that I might inquire into the matters of this 
science with the same freedom of mind with which 
we are wont to treat lines and surfaces in mathe 
matics, I determined not to laugh or to weep over 
the actions of men, but simply to understand them ; 
and to contemplate their affections and passions, 
such as love, hate, anger, envy, arrogance, pity, and 
all other disturbances of soul, not as vices of human 
nature, but as properties pertaining to it, in the 
same way as heat, cold, storm, thunder pertain to 
the nature of the atmosphere. For these, though 
troublesome, are yet necessary, and have certain 
causes through which we may come to understand 
them, and thus, by contemplating them in their 
truth, gain for our minds as much joy as by the 



<j CARTESIANISM. 337 

knowledge of things that are pleasing to the senses." 
All our errors as to the nature of things arise from 
our judging them from the point of view of the part 
and not of the whole, from a point of view deter 
mined by their relation to our own individual being, 
and not from a point of view determined by the 
nature of the things themselves ; or, to put the 
same thing in another way, from the point of view 
of sense and imagination, and not from the point of 
view of intelligence. The science of mathematics 
shows us the inadequacy of such knowledge, when 
it takes us out of ourselves into things, and when it 
presents these things to us as objects of universal 
intelligence apart from all special relation to our 
individual feelings. And Spinoza only wishes that 
the same universality and freedom of thought, which 
belongs to mathematics, because its objects do not 
interest the passions, should be extended to those 
objects that do interest them. The first condition 
of the philosopher s being is to free his mind from 
subjective interests, and to get beyond the illusion 
of sense and passion, which makes our own lives 
so supremely important and interesting to us sim 
ply because they are our own. He must look at 
what is immediately present to him as it were 



338 CARTESIANISM. 

through an inverted telescope of reason, which re 
duces it to its due proportion and place in the sum 
of things. To the heat of passion and the higher 
heat of imagination, Spinoza has only one advice : 
" Acquaint yourself with God and be at peace. 
Look not to the particular but to the universal, 
view things not under the form of the finite and 
temporal, but sub quadam specie ceternitatis" 

The illusion of the finite, the illusion of sense, 
. imagination, and passion, which, in Bacon s lan 
guage, tends to make men judge of things ex 
analogia kominis and not ex analogia universi, 
which raises the individual life, and even the pre 
sent moment of the individual life with its passing 
feelings, into a standard for measuring the uni 
verse, this, in the eyes of Spinoza, is the source of 
all error and evil to man. On the other hand, his 
highest good is to live the universal life of reason, 
or, what is the same thing, to view all things from 
their centre in God, and to be moved only by the 
passion for good in general, " the intellectual love of 
God." In the treatise De Emendatione Intellcctus, 
Spinoza takes up this contrast in the first instance 
from its moral side. " All our felicity or infelicity 
is founded on the nature of the object to which we 



CARTESIANISM. 339 

are joined by love." To love the things that perish 
is to be in continual trouble and disturbance of 
passion ; it is to be full of envy and hatred towards 
others who possess them : it is to be ever striving- 
after that which, when we attain it, does not satisfy 
us ; or lamenting over the loss of that which in 
evitably passes away from us ; only " love to an 
object which is infinite and eternal feeds the soul 
with a changeless and unmingled joy." But, again, 
our love rests upon our knowledge ; if we saw 
things as they really are, we should love only the 
highest object. It is because sense and imagination 
give to the finite an independence and substantiality 
that do not belong to it, that we waste our love 
upon it as if it were infinite. And as the first 
step towards truth is to understand our error, 
Spinoza proceeds to explain the defects of common- 
sense, or, in other words, of that first and un- 
reflected view of the world, which he, like Plato, 
calls opinion. Opinion is a kind of knowledge 
derived partly from hearsay, and partly from ex- 
perientia vaga. It consists of vague and general 
conceptions of things, got either from the report 
of others or from an experience which has not 
received any special direction from intelligence. 



340 



CARTESIANISM. 



The mind that has not got beyond the stage of 
opinion, takes things as they present themselves 
in its individual experience ; and its beliefs grow 
up by association of whatever happens to have 
been found together in that experience. And as 
the combining principle of the elements of opinion 
is individual and not universal, so its conception 
of the world is at once fragmentary and accidental. 
It does not see things in their connection with the 
unity of the whole, and hence it cannot see them 
in their true relation to each other. " I assert 
expressly," says Spinoza, " that the mind has no 
adequate conception either of itself or of external 
things, but only a confused knowledge of them, so 
long as it perceives them only in the common order 
of nature, i.e., so long as it is externally determined 
to contemplate this or that object by the way in 
which it happens to present itself in experience, 
and so long as it is not internally determined, by 
the unity of thought in which it considers a number 
of things, to understand their agreements, differences, 
and contradictions." * 

There are two kinds of errors which are usually 
supposed to exclude each other, but which Spinoza 
1 Eth. i. 29 Schol. 



CARTESIANISM. 341 

finds to be united ir$ opinion. These are the errors 
of abstraction and imagination ; the former exhibits 
its vice by defect, the latter its vice by excess. 
On the one hand, opinion is abstract and one 
sided ; it is defective in knowledge and takes hold 
of things only at one point. On the other hand, 
and just because of this abstractness and one-sided- 
ness, it is forced to give an artificial completeness 
and independence to that which is essentially frag 
mentary and dependent. The word abstract is 
misleading, in so far as we are wont to associate 
with abstraction the idea of a mental effort by 
which parts are separated from a given whole ; 
but it may be applied without violence to any 
imperfect conception, in which things that are 
really elements of a greater whole are treated as 
if they were res completes, independent objects, 
complete in themselves. And in this sense the 
ordinary consciousness of man is often the victim 
of abstractions, when it supposes itself most of all 
to be dealing with realities. For, although the 
essences and substances of the schoolman may 
delude him, he cannot think these notions clearly, 
without seeing that they are only abstract elements 
of reality, and that they have a meaning only in 



342 



CARTESIAN ISM. 



relation to the other elements of it. But common 
sense remains unconscious of its abstractness, be 
cause imagination gives a kind of substantiality 
to the fragmentary and limited, and so makes it 
possible to conceive it as an independent reality. 
Pure intelligence, seeing the part as it is in 
itself, could never see it but as a part. Thought, 
when it rises to clearness and distinctness in re 
gard to any finite object, must at once discern its 
relation to other finite objects and to the whole, 
must discern, in Spinozistic language, that it is 
" modal " and not " real." But though it is not 
possible to think the part as a whole, it is possible 
to picture it as a whole. The limited image that 
fills the mind s eye seems to need nothing else for 
its reality. We cannot think a house clearly and 
distinctly in all the connection of its parts with 
each other, without seeing its necessary relation 
to the earth on which it stands, to the pressure 
of the atmosphere, etc. The very circumstances 
by which the possibility of such an existence is 
explained, make it impossible to conceive it apart 
from other things. But nothing hinders my mind 
from resting on a house by itself as a complete 
picture. Imagination represents things in the exter- 



CARTESIANISM. 343 

t 

nality of space and time, and is subjected to no other 

conditions except those of space and time. Hence 
it can begin anywhere, and stop anywhere. For 
the same cause it can mingle and confuse together 
all manner of inconsistent forms can imagine a 
man with a horse s head, a candle blazing in vacuo, 
a speaking tree, a man changed into an animal. 
There may be elements in the nature of these 
things that would prevent such combinations ; but 
these elements are not necessarily present to the 
ordinary consciousness, the abstractness of whose 
conceptions leaves it absolutely at the mercy of 
imagination or accidental association. To thought 
in this stage anything is possible that can be pic 
tured. On the other hand, as knowledge advances, 
this freedom of combination becomes limited. 
" The less the mind understands and the more it 
perceives, the greater is its power of fiction: and 
the more it understands, the narrower is the 
limitation of that power. For just as, in the 
moment of consciousness, we cannot imagine that 
we do not think, so, when once we have appre 
hended the nature of body, we cannot conceive of 
a fly of infinite size, and when once we know the 
nature of a soul, we cannot think of it as a square, 



344 



CARTESIANISM. 



though we may use the words that express these 
ideas." l Thus, according to Spinoza, the range of 
possibility narrows as knowledge widens, until to 
perfected knowledge possibility is lost in necessity. 

From these considerations, it follows that all 
thought is imperfect which stops short of the 
absolute unity of all things. Our first imperfect 
notion of things, as isolated from each other or 
connected only by co-existence and succession, is 
a mere imagination of them. It is a fictitious 
substantiation of isolated moments which in reality 
cannot exist apart. Knowledge, so far as it deals 
with the finite, is engaged in a continual process of 
self-correction which can never be completed ; for 
at every step there is an element of falsity, in so 
far as the mind rests in the contemplation of a 
certain number of the elements of the world, as 
if they constituted a complete whole by themselves, 
whereas they are only a part, the conception of 
which has to be modified at the next step by 
considering its relation to the other parts. Thus 
we rise from individuals of the first to individuals 
of the second order, and we cannot stop short of 
the idea of " all nature as one individual whose 
1 De Emend, viii. 58. 



CARTESIANISM. 345 

parts vary through an infinite number of modes, 
without change of the whole individual." l At first 
we think of pieces of matter as independent in 
dividuals, either because we can picture them 
separately, or because they preserve a certain pro 
portion or relation of parts through their changes. 
But on further consideration, these apparent sub 
stances sink into modes, each of which is depend 
ent on all the others. All nature is bound to 
gether by necessary law, and not an atom could 
be other than it is, without the change of the 
whole world. Hence it is only in the whole 
world that there is any true individuality or sub 
stance. And the same principle applies to the 
minds of men. Their individuality is a mere NY 
semblance caused by our abstracting from their 
conditions. Isolate the individual man, and he 
will not display the character of a thinking being 
at all. His whole spiritual life is bound up with 
his relations to other minds, past and present. 
He has such a life only in and through that 
universal life, of which he is so infinitesimal a 
part that his own contribution to it is as good 
as nothing. " Vis qua homo in existendo per several 
1 Eth. ii. Lemma 7, Schol. 



346 CARTESIANISM. 

limitata est, et a potentia causarum externarum in 
finite superatur." ] What can be called his own ? 
His body is a link in a cyclical chain of movement 
which involves all the matter of the world, and 
which as a whole remains without change through 
all change of the parts. His mind is a link in a 
great movement of thought, which makes him the 
momentary organ and expression of one of its 
phases. His very consciousness of self is marred 
by a false abstraction, above which he must rise ere 
he can know himself as he really is. 

" Let us imagine," says Spinoza in his fifteenth 
letter, " a little worm living in blood, which has 
vision enough to discern the particles of blood, 
lymph, etc., and reason enough to observe how 
one particle is repelled by another with which it 
comes into contact, or communicates a part of its 
own motion to it. Such a worm would live in the 
blood as we do in this part of the universe, and 
would regard each particle of it, not as a part, 
but as a whole, nor could it know how all the 
parts are influenced by the universal nature of 
the blood, and are obliged to accommodate them 
selves to each other according to a fixed law. 
1 Eth. iv. 3. 



CARTESIAN ISM. 347 

For if we suppose that there are 110 causes out 
side of the blood which could communicate new 
motions to it, and no space beyond the blood, 
nor any other bodies to which its particles could 
transfer their motion, it is certain that the blood 
as a whole would always maintain its present 
state, and its particles would suffer no other varia 
tions than those which may be inferred from the 
given relation of the motion of blood to lymph, 
chyle, etc. And thus the blood would require 
to be considered always as a whole and not as 
a part. But since there are many other causes 
which influence the laws of the nature of blood, 
and are in turn influenced thereby, other motions 
and other variations must arise in the blood which 
are not due to the reciprocal relation of the motion 
of its parts, but also to the relation between that 
motion and external causes. And therefore we 
cannot consider the blood as a whole, but only as 
a part of a greater whole." 

" Now we can think, and indeed ought to think, 
of all natural bodies in the same manner in which 
we have thought of this blood, for all bodies are 
surrounded by other bodies, and reciprocally deter 
mine and are determined by them to exist and 



348 CARTESIANISM. 

operate in a fixed and definite way, so as to pre 
serve the same ratio of motion and rest in the 
whole universe. Hence it follows that every body, 
in so far as it exists under a certain definite 
modification, ought to be considered as merely a 
part of the whole universe, which agrees with its 
whole, and thereby is in intimate union with all 
the other parts ; and since the nature of the 
universe is not limited like that of the blood, 
but absolutely infinite, it is clear that by this 
nature with its infinite powers, the parts are modi 
fied in an infinite number of ways, and compelled 
to pass through an infinity of variations. More 
over, when I think of the universe as a substance, 
I conceive of a still closer union of each part 
with the whole ; for, as I have elsewhere shown, 
it is the nature of substance to be infinite, and 
therefore every single part belongs to the nature 
of the corporeal substance, so that apart therefrom 
it neither can exist nor be conceived. And as 
to the human mind, I think of it also as a 
part of nature ; for I think of nature as having 
in it an infinite power of thinking, which, as in 
finite, contains in itself the idea of all nature, and 
whose thoughts run parallel with all existence." 



CARTESIANISM. 



349 



From this point of view it is obvious that our 
knowledge of things cannot be real and adequate, 
except in so far as it is determined by the idea 
of the whole, and proceeds from the whole to the 
parts. A knowledge that proceeds from part to 
part must always be imperfect ; it must remain 
external to its object, it must deal in abstractions 
or mere entia rationis, which it may easily be led 
to mistake for realities. Hence Spinoza, like Plato, 
distinguishes ratio, whose movement is regressive 
(from effect to cause, from variety to unity), from 
scientia intuitiva, whose movement is progressive, 
which " proceeds from the adequate idea of certain 
of God s attributes to an adequate knowledge of 
the nature of things." l The latter alone deserves 
to be called science in the highest sense of the 
term. For " in order that our mind may correspond 
to the exemplar of nature, it must develop all its 
ideas from the idea which represents the origin and 
source of nature, so that that idea may appear 
as the source of all other ideas." 2 The regressive 
mode of knowledge has its highest value in pre 
paring for the progressive. The knowledge of the 
finite, ere it can become perfectly adequate, must 

1 Eth. ii. 40, Schol. 2. 2 De Emend, vii. 42. 



350 



CARTESIANISM. 



be absorbed and lost in the knowledge of the 
infinite. In a remarkable passage in the Ethics, 
Spinoza declares that the defect of the common 
consciousness of men lies not so much in their 
ignorance, either of the infinite or of the finite, 
as in their incapacity for bringing the two 
thoughts together, so as to put the latter in its 
proper relation to the former. All are ready to 
confess that God is the cause both of the existence 
and of the nature of things created, but they do 
not realize what is involved in this confession. 
Hence they treat created things as if they 
were substances, that is, as if they were Gods. 
" Thus while they are contemplating finite things, 
they think of nothing less than of the divine 
nature : and again when they turn to consider 
the divine nature, they think of nothing less than 
of their former fictions on which they have built 
up the knowledge of finite things, as if these 
things could contribute nothing to our understand 
ing of the divine nature. Hence it is not wonderful 
that they are always contradicting themselves." l 
As Spinoza says elsewhere, it belongs to the very 
nature of the human mind to know God ; for, if we 
1 Eth. ii. 10, Schol. 2. 



CARTESIANISM. 351 

did not know God, we could not know anything 
else. The idea of the absolute unity is involved in 
the idea of every particular thing ; but the generality 
of men, deluded by sense and imagination, are unable 
to bring this implication into clear consciousness, 
and hence their knowledge of God does not modify 
their view of the finite. It is the business of 
philosophy to correct this defect, to transform our 
conceptions of the finite by relating it to the 
infinite, to complement and complete the partial 
knowledge produced by individual experience by 
bringing it into connection with the idea of the 
whole. And the vital question which Spinoza 
himself prompts us to ask is, how far and in 
what way this transformation is effected in the 
Spinozistic philosophy. 

There are two great steps in the transfor 
mation of knowledge by the idea of unity as 
that idea is conceived by Spinoza. The first 
step involves a change of the conception of in 
dividual finite things, by which they lose their 
individuality, their character as independent sub 
stances, and come to be regarded as modes of 
the infinite. But secondly, this negation of the 
finite as such is not conceived as implying the 



352 CARTESIANISM. 

negation of the distinction between mind and 
matter. Mind and matter still retain that ab 
solute opposition which they had in the philo 
sophy of Des Cartes, even after all limits have 
been removed. And therefore in order to reach 
the absolute unity, and transcend the Cartesian 
dualism, a second step is necessary, by which the 
independent substantiality of mind and matter is 
withdrawn, and they are reduced into attributes 
of the one infinite substance. Let us examine 
these steps successively. 

The method by which the finite is reduced 
into a mode of the infinite has already been 
partially explained. Spinoza follows to its legiti 
mate result the metaphysical or logical principles 
of Des Cartes and Malebranche. According to 
the former, as we have seen, the finite presup 
poses the infinite, and, indeed, so far as it is 
real, it is identical with the infinite. The infinite 
is absolute reality, because it is pure affirmation, 
because it is that which negationem nullam in- 
volmt. The finite is distinguished from it simply 
by its limit, i.e., by its wanting something which 
the infinite has. At this point Spinoza takes up 
the argument. If the infinite be the real, and 



CARTESIANISM. 353 

the finite, so far as it is distinguished therefrom, 
the unreal, then the supposed substantiality or 
individuality of finite beings is an illusion. In 
itself the finite is but an abstraction, to which 
imagination has given an apparent independence. 
All limitation or determination is negative, and 
in order to apprehend positive reality, we must 
abstract from limits. By denying the negative, 
we reach the affirmative ; by annihilating finitude, 
and so undoing the illusory work of the imagina 
tion, we reach the indeterminate or unconditioned 
being which alone truly is. All division, distinc 
tion, and relation are but cntia rationis. Imagina 
tion and abstraction can give to them, as they can 
give to mere negation and nothingness, " a local 
habitation and a name," but they have no objective 
meaning, and in the highest knowledge, in the 
scientia intuitiva, w T hich deals only with reality, 
they must entirely disappear. 

Hence to reach the truth as to matter, we 
must free ourselves from all such ideas as figure 
or number, measure or time, which imply the 
separation and relation of parts. Thus in his 
50th letter, in answer to some question about 
figure, Spinoza says, " to prove that figure is 



354 CARTESIANISM. 

negation, and not anything positive, we need only 
consider that the whole of matter conceived in 
definitely, or in its infinity, can have no figure; 
but that figure has a place only in finite or 
determinate bodies. He who says that he per 
ceives figure, says only that he has before his 
mind a limited thing and the manner in which 
it is limited. But this limitation does not per 
tain to a thing in its esse, but contrariwise in 
its non-esse (i.e., it signifies, not that some 
positive quality belongs to the thing, but that 
something is wanting to it). Since, then, figure 
is but limitation, and limitation is but negation, 
we cannot say that figure is anything." The 
same kind of reasoning is elsewhere (Epist. 29) 
applied to solve the difficulties connected with 
the divisibility of space or extension. Eeally, 
according to Spinoza, extension is indivisible, 
though niodally it is divisible. In other words, 
parts ad infinitum may be taken in space by 
the abstracting mind, but these parts have no 
separate existence. You cannot rend space, or 
take one part of it out of its connection with 
other parts. Hence arises the impossibility of 
asserting cither that there is an infinite 



CARTESIANISM. 355 

number of parts in space, or that there 
is not. The solution of the antinomy is that 
neither alternative is true. There are many 
things qucc mdlo numcro cxplicari possunt, and to 
understand these things we must abstract alto 
gether from the idea of number. The contra 
diction arises entirely from the application of 
that idea to the infinite. We cannot say that 
space has a finite number of parts, for every 
finite space must be conceived as itself included 
in infinite space. Yet, on the other hand, an 
infinite number is an absurdity ; it is a number 
which is not a number. We escape the difficulty 
only when we see that number is a category 
inapplicable to the infinite, and this to Spinoza 
means that it is not applicable to reality, that 
it is merely an abstraction, or ens imayinationis. 
The same method which solves the difficulties 
connected with the nature of matter, is applied 
to mind. Here also we reach the reality, or 
thing in itself, by abstracting from all determin 
ation. All conceptions, therefore, that involve 
the independence of the finite, all conceptions of 
good, evil, freedom, and responsibility disappear. 
When Blyenbergh accuses Spinoza of making God 



356 CARTESIANISM. 

the author of evil, Spinoza answers that evil is an 
ens rationis that has no existence for God. " Evil 
is not something positive, but a state of privation, 
something that exists not in relation to the divine, 
but simply in relation to the human intelligence. 
It is a conception that arises from that gener 
alizing tendency of our minds, which leads us 
to bring all beings that have the external form 
of man under one and the same definition, and to 
suppose that they are all equally capable of the 
highest perfection which we can deduce from such 
a definition. When, therefore, we find an indi 
vidual whose works are not consistent with this 
perfection, straightway we judge that he is de 
prived of it, or that he is diverging from his 
own nature, a judgment we should never make 
if we had not thus referred him to a general 
definition, and supposed him to be possessed of 
the nature it defines. But since God does not 
know things abstractly, or through such general 
definitions, and since there cannot be more reality 
in things than the divine intelligence and power 
bestows upon them, it manifestly follows that 
the defect which belongs to finite things, cannot 
be called a privation in relation to the intelli- 



CARTESIANISM. 357 

gence of God, but only in relation to the intelli 
gence of man." l Thus evil and good vanish 
when we consider things sub specie cetcrnitatis, 
because they are categories that imply a certain 
independence in finite beings. For the idea of 
a moral standard implies a relation of man to 
the absolute good, a relation of the finite to the 
infinite, in which the finite is not simply lost 
and absorbed in the infinite. 

But Spinoza can admit no such relation. In 
the presence of the infinite the finite disappears, 
for it exists only by abstraction and negation : 
or it seems to us to exist, not because of what 
is present to our thoughts, but because of what 
is not present to them. As we think ourselves 
free, because we are conscious of our actions but 
not of their causes, so we think that we 
have an individual existence, because the in 
finite intelligence is not wholly but only par 
tially realized in us. But as we cannot really 
divide space, though we can think of a part of 
it, so neither can we place any real division in 
the divine intelligence. In this way we can 
understand how Spinoza is able to speak of the 
1 Epist. 32. 



358 CARTESIANISM. 

human mind as part of the infinite thought of 
God, and of the human hody as part of the 
infinite extension of God, while yet he asserts 
that the divine substance is simple, and not made 
up of parts. So far as they exist, they must 
be conceived as parts of the divine substance, 
but when we look directly at that divine substance, 
their separate existence altogether disappears. 

It has, however, been already mentioned that 
this ascending movement of abstraction does not 
at once and directly bring Spinoza to the abso 
lute unity of substance. The principle that 
" determination is negation," and that therefore 
the absolute reality is to be found only in the 
indeterminate, would lead us to expect this con 
clusion ; but the Cartesian dualism prevents 
Spinoza from reaching it. Mind and matter are 
so absolutely opposed, that even when we take 
away all limit and determination from both, they 
still retain their distinctness. liaised to infinity, 
they still refuse to be identified. We are forced, 
indeed, to take from them their substantial or 
substantive existence, for there can be no other 
substance but God, who includes all reality in 
Himself. But though reduced to attributes of a 



CARTESIANISM. 359 

common substance, the difference of thought and 
extension is insoluble. The independence of in 
dividual finite things disappears whenever we 
substitute thought for imagination, but even to 
pure intelligence, extension remains extension, and 
thought remains thought. 

Spinoza seems therefore reduced to a dilemma ; 
he cannot surrender either the unity or the 
duality of things, yet he cannot relate them to 
each other. The only course left open to him 
is to conceive each attribute in its turn as the 
whole substance, and to regard their difference as 
the difference of expression. As the patriarch 
was called by the two names of Jacob and Israel, 
under different aspects, each of which included 
the whole reality of the man, so our minds 
apprehend the absolute substance in two ways, 
each of which expresses its whole nature. 1 In 
this way the extremes of absolute identity and 
absolute difference seem to be reconciled. There 
is a complete parallelism of thought and ex 
tension, or do et connexio idearum idem est ac 
ordo et connexio rerum, 2 yet there is also a 
complete independence and absence of relation 
1 Epist. 27. - Eth. ii. 7. 



360 CARTESIANISM. 

between them, for each is the whole. A thing 
in one expression cannot be related to itself in 
another expression. Hence in so far as we look 
at the substance under the attribute of thought, 
we must take no account of extension, and in 
so far as we look at it under the attribute of 
extension, we must equally refuse to take any 
account of thought. This parallelism may be 
best illustrated by Spinoza s account of the re 
lation of the human soul and body. The soul 
is the idea of the body, and the body is the 
object of the soul, whatever is in the one really 
is in the other ideally ; yet this relation of ob 
ject and subject does not imply any connection. 
The motions and changes of the body have to 
be accounted for partly by itself, partly by the 
influence of other bodies ; and the thoughts of 
the soul in like manner have to be accounted for 
partly by what God thinks as constituting the 
individual mind, and partly by what He thinks 
as constituting the minds of other individuals. 
But to account for thought by the motions of 
the body, or for the motions of the body by 
thought, is to attempt to bridge the impassable 
gulf between thought and extension. It involves 






CARTESIANISM. 361 

the double absurdity of accounting for a thing 
by itself, and of accounting for it by that which 
has nothing in common with it. 

In one point of view, this theory of Spinoza 
deserves the highest praise for that very charac 
teristic which probably excited most odium against 
it at the time it was first published, namely, its 
exaltation of matter. It is the mark of an im 
perfect spiritualism to hide its eyes from outward 
nature, and to shrink from the material as impure 
and defiling. But its horror and fear are proofs 
of weakness ; it flies from an enemy it cannot 
overcome. Spinoza s bold identification of spirit 
and matter, God and nature, contains in it the 
.germ of a higher idealism than can be found in 
any philosophy that asserts the claims of the 
former at the expense of the latter. A system 
that begins by making nature godless, will inevit 
ably end, as Schelling once said, in making God 
unnatural. The expedients by which Des Cartes 
keeps matter at a distance from God, were in 
tended to maintain His pure spirituality ; but 
their ultimate effect was seen in his reduction 
of the spiritual nature to mere will. As Chris 
tianity has its superiority over other religions in 



362 CARTESIANISM. 

this, that it does not end with the opposition 
of the human to the divine, the natural to the 
spiritual, but ultimately reconciles them, so a true 
idealism must vindicate its claims by absorbing 
materialism into itself. It was therefore a true 
instinct of philosophy that led Spinoza to raise 
matter to the co-equal of spirit, and at the same 
time to protest against the Cartesian conception 
of matter as mere inert mass, moved only by 
impulse from without. " What were a God that 
only impelled the world from without ? " says 
Goethe. " It becomes Him to stir it by an inward 
energy, to involve nature in Himself, Himself in 
nature, so that that which lives and moves and 
has a being in Him can never feel the want of His 
power or His spirit." 

While, ho\vever, Spinoza thus escapes some of 
the inconsequences of Des Cartes, the contradiction 
that was implicit in the Cartesian system between 
the duality and the unity, the attributes and the 
substance, in his system becomes explicit. When 
so much emphasis is laid upon the unity of sub 
stance, it becomes more difficult to explain the 
difference of the attributes. The result is, that 
Spinoza is forced to account for it, not by the 



CARTESIANISM. 363 

nature of substance itself, but by the nature of 
the intelligence to which it is revealed. " By 
substance," he says, " I understand that which is- 
in itself, and is conceived through itself. By 
attribute I understand the same thing, nisi quod 
attributum dicatur respectu intellcctus substantial 
cerium talem naturam tribuentis" J Hence \ve are 
naturally led with Erdmann to think of the in 
telligence dividing the substance as a kind of prism 
that breaks the white light into different colours., 
through each of which the same world is seen,. 
only with a different aspect. But if the intelli 
gence in itself is but a mode of one of the attri 
butes, how can it be itself the source of their 
distinction ? 

The key to this difficulty is that Spinoza has 
really, and almost in spite of his logical principles,, 
two opposite conceptions of substance, between 
which he alternates without ever bringing them 
to a unity. On the one hand, in accordance 
with the principle that determination is nega 
tion, substance must be taken as that which is- 
utterly indeterminate, an Absolute Being, which 
we can characterise only by denying of it 
1 Epist. 27. 



364 CARTESIANISM. 

everything that we assert of the Unite. In this 
view, no predicate can be applied univocally to 
God and to the creatures ; He differs from them, 
not only in existence, but in essence. 1 If we 
follow out this view to its legitimate result, God 
is withdrawn into His own absolute unity, and no 
difference of attributes can be ascribed to Him, 
except in respect of something else than Himself. 
It is owing to the defects of our intelligence that 
He appears under different forms or expressions ; 
in Himself He is pure Being, without form or ex 
pression at all. But, on the other hand, it is to 
be observed, that while Spinoza really proceeds 
by abstraction and negation, he does not mean to 
do so. The abstract is to him the unreal and 
imaginary, and what he means by substance is not 
simply Being in general,- the conception that re 
mains when we omit all that distinguishes the 
particulars, but the absolute totality of things, 
conceived as a unity in which all particular exist 
ence is included and subordinated. Hence at a 
single stroke the indeterminate passes into the 
most determinate Being, the Being with no attri 
butes at all passes into the Being constituted by 
1 Eth. i. 17, Schol. 



CARTESIANISM. 365 

an infinite number of attributes. And while, under 
the former conception, the defect of our intelligence 
seemed to be that it divided the substance, or saw 
a difference of attributes in its absolute unity, under 
the second conception its defect lies in its appre 
hending only two out of the infinite multitude of 
these attributes. 

To do justice to Spinoza, therefore, we must 
distinguish between the actual effect of his logic 
and its effect as he conceived it. The actual effect 
of his logic is to dissolve all things in the ultimate 
abstraction of Being, from which we can find no 
way back to the concrete. But his intent was 
simply to relate all the parts to that absolute 
unity which is the presupposition of all thought 
and being, and so to arrive at the most concrete 
and complete idea of the reality of things. He 
failed to see what is involved in his own principle 
that " determination is negation " ; for if affirmation 
is impossible without negation, then the attempt 
to divorce the two from each other, the attempt 
to find a purely affirmative being, must necessarily 
end in confusing the barest of all abstractions with 
the unity of all things. But even when the in 
finite substance is defined as the negative of fche 



366 CARTESIANISM. 

finite, the idea of the finite becomes an essential 
element in the conception of the infinite. Even 
the Pantheist, who says that God is what finite 
things are not, recognises in spite of himself that 
God has a relation to finite things. Finite things 
may in his eyes have no positive relation to God, 
yet they have a negative relation ; it is through 
their evanescence and transitoriness, through their 
nothingness, that the eternal, the infinite reality 
alone is revealed to him. 

Spinoza is quite conscious of this process, con 
scious that he reaches the affirmation of substance 
by a negation of what he conceives as the purely 
negative and unreal existence of finite things : but 
as he regards the assertion of the finite as merely 
an illusion due to our imagination, so he regards 
the correction of this illusion, the negation of the 
finite as a movement of reflection which belongs 
merely to our intelligence, and has nothing to do 
with the nature of substance in itself. We find 
the true affirmation by the negation of the negative, 
but in itself affirmation has no relation to negation. 
Hence his absolute being is the dead all-absorbing 
substance and not the self-revealing spirit. It is 
the being without determination, and not the being 



CARTESIANISM. 367 

that determines itself. There is no reason in the 
nature of substance why it should have either 
attributes or modes ; neither individual finite 
things nor the general distinction of mind and 
matter can be deduced from it. The descending 
movement of thought is not what Spinoza himself 
said it should be, an evolution, but simply an ex 
ternal and empirical process by which the elements 
dropped in the ascending movement of abstraction 
are taken up again with a merely nominal modifi 
cation. For the sole change in the conception of 
mind and matter in general and in the conception 
of individual minds and bodies, which results from 
their reference to the idea of God, is that they lose 
their substantive character and become adjectives. 
Aristotle objected to Plato that his ideas were 
merely alo-OtjTu ai Sia, that is, that his idealisation 
of the world was merely superficial, and left the 
things idealised very much what they were before 
to the sensuous consciousness ; and the same may 
be said of Spinoza s negation of finite things. It 
was an external and imperfect negation, which did 
not transform the idea of the finite, but merely sub 
stituted the names of attributes and modes for the 
names of general and individual substances. 



3 68 CARTESIANISM. 

The same defective logic, by which the movement 
of thought in determining the substance is regarded 
as altogether external to the substance itself, is seen 
again in Spinoza s conceptions of the relations of 
the attributes to each other. Adopting the Car 
tesian opposition of mind and matter, he does not 
see, any more than Des Cartes, that in their oppo 
sition they are correlative. Or if he did see it 
(as seems possible from a passage in his earliest 
treatise), 1 he regarded the correlation as merely 
subjective, merely belonging to our thought. They 
are to him only the two attributes which we happen 
to know, out of the infinite number belonging to 
God. There is no necessity that the substance 
should manifest itself in just these attributes and 
no others ; for abstract substance is equally recep 
tive of all determinations, and equally indifferent to 
them all. Just because the unity is merely generic, 
the differences are accidental, and do not form by 
their union any complete whole. If Spinoza had 
seen that matter in itself is the correlative opposite 
of mind in itself, he need not have sought by 
abstracting from the difference of these elements 
to reach a unity which is manifested in that very 
1 Tractatus de Deo ct homine, ii. 19. 



CARTESIAN ISM. 369 

difference, and his absolute would have been not 
substance but spirit. 

This idea he never reached, but we find him 
approximating to it in two ways. On the one 
hand, he condemns the Cartesian conception of 
matter as passive and self-external, or infinitely 
divisible as, in short, the mere opposite of thought. 1 
And sometimes he insists on the parallelism of 
extension and thought at the expense of their 
opposition in a way that almost anticipates the 
assertion by Leibniz of the essential identity of 
mind and matter. On the other hand, he recog 
nises that this parallelism is not complete. Thought 
is not like a picture ; it is conscious, and conscious 
not only of itself, but of extension. It transcends 
therefore the absolute distinction between itself and 
the other attributes. It is only because he cannot 
rid himself of the phantom of an extended matter, 
as a thing in itself which is entirely different from 
the idea of it, that Spinoza is prevented from recog 
nising in mind that unity which transcends all dis 
tinctions, even its own distinction from matter. 
As it is, his main reason for saying that intelli 
gence is not an attribute of God, but merely a 

1 Epist. 70. 
2 A 



370 CARTESIANISM. 

mode, seems to be this, that the thought of God 
must be conceived as producing its own object, 
i.e., as transcending the distinction of subject and 
object which is necessary to our intelligence. 1 But 
this argument of itself points to a concrete quite as 
much as to an abstract unity. It is as consistent 
with the idea of absolute spirit as with that of 
absolute substance. Spinoza s deliberate and formal 
doctrine is undoubtedly the latter ; but he con 
stantly employs expressions which imply the former, 
as when he speaks of God as causa sui. The higher 
idea inspires him, though his consciousness only 
embraces the lower idea. 

The ethical philosophy of Spinoza is determined 
by the same principles and embarrassed by the 
same difficulties as his metaphysics. In it also 
we find the same imperfect conception of the 
relation of the positive to the negative elements, 
and, as a consequence, the same confusion of the 
highest unity of thought, the affirmation that sub 
ordinates and transcends all negation with mere 
abstract affirmation. Or, to put the same thing 
in ethical language, Spinoza teaches a morality 
which is in every point the opposite of asceticism, 
1 Eth. i. 17, Schol. 



CARTES I AN ISM. 371 

a morality of self-assertion or self-seeking, and 
not of self-denial. The conatus sesc conservandi is 
to him the supreme principle of virtue ; l yet this 
self-seeking is supposed, under the guidance of 
reason, to identify itself with the love of man and 
the love of God, and to find blessedness not in 
the reward of virtue, but in virtue itself. It is 
only confusion of thought and false mysticism that 
could object to this result on the ground of the 
element of self still preserved in the amor Dei 
intdlcctualis. For it is just the power of identi 
fying himself with that which is wider and higher 
than his individual being that makes morality 
possible to man. But the difficulty lies in this, 
that Spinoza will not admit the negative element, 
the element of mortification or sacrifice, into 
morality at all, even as a moment of transition. 
For him there is no dead self, by which we may 
rise to higher things, no losing of life that we may 
find it. The negative is nothing ; it is evil in 
the only sense in which evil exists, and cannot 
be the source of good. The higher affirmation of 
our own being, the higher seeking of ourselves 
which is identical with the love of God, must 
1 Eth. iv. 22, Schol. 



372 CARTESIANISM. 

therefore be regarded as nothing distinct in kind 
from that first seeking of our natural self which 
in Spinoza s view belongs to us in common with 
the animals, and indeed in common with all beings 
whatever. It must be regarded merely as a direct 
development and extension of the same thing. The 
main interest of the Spinozistic ethics therefore lies 
in observing by what steps he accomplishes this 
transition, while excluding altogether the idea of 
a real division of the higher and the lower life, 
the spirit and flesh, and of a conflict in which the 
former is developed through the sacrifice of the 
latter. 

Finite creatures exist as modes of the divine 
substance, only so far as they partake in the in 
finite, or, what is the same thing with Spinoza, 
in the purely affirmative or self-affirming nature 
of God. They therefore must also be self-affirming. 
They can never limit themselves ; their limit lies 
in this, that they are not identified with the in 
finite substance which expresses itself also in other 
modes. In other words, the limit of any finite 
creature, that which makes it finite, lies without 
it, and its own existence, so far as it goes, must 
be pure self-assertion and self-seeking. 



CARTESIANISM. 373 

res quantum in se cst in suo esse pcrscvcrare conatur, 
and this conatus is its very essence or inmost 
nature. 1 In the animals this conatus takes the 
form of appetite, in man of desire, which is " ap 
petite with the consciousness of it." - But this 
constitutes no essential difference between appetite 
and desire, for " whether a man be conscious of 
his appetite or no, the appetite remains one and 
the same thing." 3 Man therefore, like the animals, 
is purely self-asserting and self-seeking. He can 
neither know nor will anything but his own being, 
or if he knows or wills anything else, it must be 
something involved in his own being. If he knows 
other beings, or seeks their good, it must be be 
cause their existence and their good are involved 
in his own. If he loves and knows God, it must 
be because he cannot know himself without know 
ing God, or find his supreme good anywhere but in 
God. 

What at first makes the language difficult to 
us is the identification of will and intelligence. 
Both are represented as affirming their objects. 
Des Cartes had prepared the way for this when 

1 Eth. iii. 6, 7. - Eth. iii. 0. 

3 Eth. iii. Affect. Def. 1. 



374 CARTESIANISM. 

he treated the will as the faculty of judging or 
giving assent to certain combinations of ideas, and 
distinguished it from the purely intellectual facul 
ties by which the ideas are apprehended. By this 
distinction he had, as he supposed, secured a place 
for human freedom. Admitting that intelligence is 
under a law of necessity, he claimed for the will 
a certain latitude or liberty of indifference, a power 
of giving or withholding assent in all cases where 
the relations of ideas were not absolutely clear and 
distinct. Spinoza points out that there is no 
ground for such a distinction, that the acts of 
apprehension and judgment cannot be separated 
from each other. " In the mind there is no voli 
tion, i.e., no affirmation or negation which is not 
immediately involved in the idea it apprehends," 
arid therefore " intellect and will are one and the 
same thing." l If, then, there is no freedom except 
the liberty of indifference, freedom is impossible. 
Man, like all other beings and things, is under 
an absolute law of necessity. All the actions of 
his will, as well as of his intelligence, are but 
different forms of the self-assertive tendency to 
which he cannot but yield, because it is one with 
1 Eth. ii. 49. 



CARTESIANISM. 375 

his very being, or only ideally distinguishable there 
from. 

There is, however, another idea of liberty. 
Liberty as the opposite of necessity is an absurdity 
it is impossible for either God or man ; but 
liberty as the opposite of slavery is possible, and 
it is actually possessed by God. The divine liberty 
consists in this, that God acts from the necessity 
of His own nature alone, and is not in any way 
determined from without. And the great question 
of ethics is, How far can man partake in this 
liberty ? At first it would seem impossible that 
he should partake in it. He is a finite being, 
whose power is infinitely surpassed by the power 
of other beings to which he is related. His body 
acts only as it is acted on, and his mind cannot 
therefore apprehend his body, except as affected by 
other things. His self-assertion and self-seeking 
are therefore confused with the asserting and seek 
ing of other things, and are never pure. His 
thought and activity cannot be understood except 
through the influence of other things which lie 
outside of his consciousness, and upon which his 
will has no influence. He cannot know clearly and 
distinctly either himself or anything else ; how then 



376 CARTESIANISM. 

can he know his own good or determine himself by 
the idea of it ? 

The answer is the answer of Des Cartes, that 
the apprehension of any finite thing involves the 
adequate idea of the infinite and eternal nature of 
God. 1 This is the primary object of intelligence, 
in which alone is grounded the possibility of know 
ing either ourselves or anything else. In so far as 
our knowledge is determined by this idea, or by 
the ideas of other things, which are referred to this 
idea and seen in its light, in so far its action flows 
from an internal and not an external necessity. In 
so far, on the other hand, as we are determined by 
the affections of the body, i.e., by ideas in which the 
nature of our own body and the nature of other 
things are confused together, in so far we are deter 
mined by an external necessity. Or, to put the same 
thing in what has been shown to be merely another 
way of expression, in so far as we are determined by 
pure intelligence we are free, but in so far as we are 
determined by opinion and imagination we are slaves. 

From these premises it is easy to see what form 
the opposition of reason and passion must neces 
sarily take with Spinoza. The passions belong to 
1 Eth. ii. 45. 



CARTESIANISM. 377 

our nature as finite ; they are grounded on, or 
rather are but another form of inadequate 
ideas ; but we are free only in so far as our ideas 
either immediately are, or can be made, adequate. 
Our idea of God is adequate ex vi termini ; our ideas 
of the affections of our body are inadequate, but 
can be made adequate in so far as they are referred 
to the idea of God. And as the idea of God is 
purely affirmative, this reference to the idea of God 
implies the elimination of the negative element from 
the ideas of the affections of the body, " for nothing 
that is positive in a false idea is removed by the 
presence of truth as such." l Brought into contact 
with the idea of God, all ideas become true and 
adequate, by the removal of the negative or false 
element in them. The idea of God is, as it were, 
the touchstone which distinguishes the gold from 
the dross. It enables us to detect the higher 
spiritual element in the natural passions, and to 
sever the element belonging to that pure love of 
self, which is identical with the love of perfection, 
from the elements belonging to that impure love of 
our own finite individuality as such, which is iden 
tical with the love of evil. 

1 Eth. iv. ]. 



378 CARTESIANISM. 

The imperfection in Spinoza s development of 
this principle has already been indicated. It is 
in fact the same imperfection which runs through 
his whole system. Just as he supposed that the 
ideas of finite things were at once made consistent 
with the idea of the infinite when he had named 
them modes, so here his conception of the change 
through which selfish natural desire must pass in 
order to become spiritual, is far too superficial and 
external. Hence he has no sympathy with asceti 
cism, but treats it, like Bentham, as a torva ct tristis 
supcrstitio. Joy is the " transition from less to 
greater perfection," and cannot be but good ; pain 
is the " transition from greater to less perfection," 
and cannot be but evil. The revolt against 
the mediaeval opposition of nature and spirit is 
visible in many of his sayings. " No Deity who 
is not envious can delight in my weakness or 
hurts, or can regard as virtues those fears and 
sighs and tears which are the signs of the mind s 
weakness ; but contrariwise, the greater is our joy, 
the greater is our progress to perfection, and our 
participation in the divine nature." l "A free man 
thinks of nothing so little as of death, his wisdom 
1 Eth. iv. 45, Schol. 



CARTESIANI SM. 379 

is a meditation not of death but of life." l The 
same idea, combining with the idea of necessity, 
leads him to condemn repentance and pity, as well 
as pride and humility. Unconsciously, Spinoza re 
produces the principle of asceticism, while in words 
he utterly rejects it. For though he tells us 
that pure self-complacency is the highest thing 
we can hope, yet from this self-complacency all 
regard to the finite individuality of the subject is 
eliminated. Qui Deum amat, conari nan potcst lit 
Deus ipsum contra amct. In like manner, he ab 
solutely condemns all hatred, envy, rivalry, and 
ambition, as springing out of an over-estimate of 
those finite things which only one can possess, 
while the highest good is that which is enjoyed 
the more easily and fully the greater the number 
of participants. Yet Spinoza s exaltation of the 
social life, and of the love that binds it together, 
is too like the Buddhist s universal charity that 
embraces all creatures, and all creatures equally. 
Both are based on an abstraction from all that 
is individual, only the Buddhist s abstraction goes 
a step further, and erases even the distinction 
between man and the animals. Spinoza felt the 
1 Eth. iv. 67. 



380 CARTESIANISM. 

pressure of this all-levelling logic when he said, 
" I confess I cannot understand how spirits express 
God more than the other creatures, for I know 
that between the finite and the infinite there is 
no proportion, and that the distinction between 
God and the most excellent of created things 
differs not a whit from the distinction between 
him and the lowest and meanest of them." l As 
Pope said, God is "as full, as perfect in a hair 
as heart " ; in all finite things there is a ray of 
divinity, and in nothing more than a ray. Yet 
in another epistle, Spinoza contradicts this view, 
and declares that, while he does not consider it 
necessary to "know Christ after the flesh, he does 
think it is necessary to know the eternal Son of 
God, i.e., God s eternal wisdom, which is manifested 
in all things, but chiefly in the mind of man, 
and most of all in Christ Jesus." 2 In the Ethics 
Spinoza treats the distinction of man and the 
animals as an absolute distinction, and, forgetful of 
the parallelism of the attributes, he asserts that the 
human soul cannot all be destroyed along with the 
body, for that there is something of it which is 
eternal. Yet from this eternity we must of course 
1 Epist. 57. " Epist. 21. 



CARTESIANISM. 381 

eliminate all notion of the consciousness of the 
finite self as such. 

At this point, therefore, the two opposite streams 
of Spinoza s thought, the positive method he intends 
to pursue, and the negative or abstracting method 
he really does pursue, meet in irreconcilable con 
tradiction. The finite must be related to the in 
finite so as to preserve all that is in it of reality ; 
and therefore we must abstract from its limit, i.e., 
from the negative element in it. But it turns out 
that with this abstraction the positive also disap 
pears, and God becomes all in all in a sense that 
absolutely excludes the existence of the finite. " The 
mind s intellectual love of God," says Spinoza, " is 
the very love wherewith God loves Himself, not in 
so far as He is infinite, but in so far as He can 
be expressed by the essence of the human mind, 
considered under the form of eternity ; i.e., the 
mind s intellectual love of God is part of the 
infinite love wherewith God loves Himself." l This 
double " in so far," which returns so frequently 
in Spinoza, just conceals for a moment the con 
tradiction of two streams of thought, one of which 
must be swallowed up by the other, if they are 
once allowed to meet. 

1 Eth. v. 36. 



382 CARTESIAN ISM. 

We have now reviewed the main points of 
the system, which was the ultimate result of the 
principles of Des Cartes. The importance of this 
first movement of modern philosophy lies in its 
assertion and exhibition of the unity of the in 
telligible world with itself and with the mind of 
man. In this point of view, it was the philoso 
phical counterpart of Protestantism ; but, like Pro 
testantism in its earliest phase, it passed rapidly 
from the doctrine that, without the mediation of 
priest or authority, God can reveal Himself to the 
spirit of man, to the doctrine that man s spirit 
is as nothing before God. The divine object 
seemed too powerful for the subject, who effaced 
himself before God that he might be strong 
towards rnen. But in this natural movement of 
feeling and thought it was forgotten that a 
God that effaces the world and the finite spirit 
by His presence cannot be a living God. 
Spinoza gives the ultimate expression to this 
tendency, and at the same time marks its limit, 
when he says that whatever reality is in the 
finite is of the infinite. But he is unsuccessful 
in showing that, on the principles on which he 
starts, there can be any reality in the finite at 



CARTESIANISM. 383 

all. Yet even if the finite be an illusion, still 
more if it be better than an illusion, it requires 
to be accounted for. Spinoza accounts for it 
neither as illusory nor as real. It was reserved 
for the following generation of philosophers to 
assert, in different ways, the reality of the finite, 
the value of experience, and the futility of ab 
stractions. Spinoza had declared that true know 
ledge consists in seeing things under the form of 
eternity ; but it is impossible that things can be 
seen under the form of eternity, unless they have 
been first seen under the form of time. The 
one-sided assertion of individuality and difference 
in the schools of Locke and Leibniz, was the 
natural complement of the one-sided assertion of 
universality and unity in the Cartesian school. But 
when the individualistic tendency of the eighteenth 
century had exhausted itself, and produced its 
own refutation in the works of Kant, it was 
inevitable that the minds of men should again 
turn to the great philosopher, who, with almost 
perfect insight working through imperfect logic, 
first formulated the idea of a unity pre-supposed 
in and transcending the difference of matter and 
mind, subject and object. 



METAPHYSIC. 

term metaphysic, originally intended to 
mark the place of a particular treatise in 
the collection of Aristotle s works, has, mainly 
owing to a misunderstanding, survived several 
other titles, such as " First Philosophy," " Onto 
logy," and " Theology," which Aristotle himself 
used or suggested. Neo-Platonic mystics inter 
preted it as signifying that which is not merely 
" after " but " beyond " physics, and found in it 
a fit designation for a science which, as they 
held, could not be attained except by one who 
had turned his back upon the natural world. 
And writers of a different tendency in a later 
time gladly accepted it as a convenient nickname 
for theories which they regarded as having no 
basis in experience, in the same spirit in which 
the great German minister Stein used the analo 
gous title of "metapolitics " for airy and unpractical 



METAPHYSIC. 385 

schemes of social reform. A brief indication of 
the contents of Aristotle s treatise may enable us 
to give a general definition of the science which 
was first distinctly constituted by it, and to de 
termine in what sense the subjects which that 
science has to consider are beyond nature and 
experience. 

For Aristotle, metaphysic is the science which 
has to do with Being as such, Being in general, 
as distinguished from the special sciences which 
deal with special forms of Being. There are cer 
tain questions which, in Aristotle s view, we have 
a right to ask in regard to everything that 
presents itself as real. We may ask what is 
its ideal nature or definition, and what are the 
conditions of its realisation ; we may ask by what 
or whom it was produced, and for what end ; 
we may ask, in other words, for the formal and 
the material, for the efficient and the final causes 
of everything that is. These different questions 
point to different elements in our notion of Being, 
elements which may be considered in their general 
relations apart from any particular case of their 
union. These, therefore, the first philosophy must 

investigate. 

2 B 



386 METAPHYSIC. 

But, further, this science of being cannot be 
entirely separated from the science of knowing, 
but must determine at least its most general 
principles. For the science that deals with what 
is most universal in being is, for that very 
reason, dealing with the objects which are most 
nearly akin to the intelligence. These, indeed, 
are not the objects which are first presented to 
our minds ; we begin with the particular, not the 
universal, with a -rrpwrov r]iJ.lv which is not TrpwTov 
(pva-ei ; but science reaches its true form only when 
the order of thought is made one with the order 
of nature, and the particular is known through 
the universal. Yet this conversion or revolution 
of the intellectual point of view is not to be re 
garded as an absolute change from error to 
truth ; for Aristotle holds that nihil cst in 
intellects, quod non prhis in scnsu, in the mean 
ing that in sense perception there is already the 
working of that discriminative intelligence l 
which, beginning in sense perception, with the 
distinction of particular from particular, can rest 
only when it has apprehended things in their 
universal forms or definitions. Looking at know- 
1 AiW/us Kpi.ri.Kri, Anal. Post. ii. 996. 



METAPHYSIC. 387 

ledge formally, the highest law of thought, the 
law of contradiction (or, as we might call it, to 
indicate Aristotle s meaning more exactly, the law 
of definition or distinction), is already implied in 
the first act of perception by which one thing is 
distinguished from another. Looking at it mate 
rially, the reason of man is to be conceived as 
potentially all that is knowable ; i.e., objects are 
so related to it that for it to know them in their 
essential definitions is only to know itself. The 
aim of science, in this view, is to break through 
the husk of matter, and to apprehend things in 
their forms, in which they are one with the 
mind that knows them. Hence also it follows 
that in rising to the most universal science, the 
science of being in general, the mind is not 
leaving the region of immediate experience, in 
which it is at home, for a far-off region of ab 
stractions. Rather it is returning to itself, appre 
hending that which is most closely related to 
itself, and which therefore, though it is late in 
being made the direct object of investigation, is 
yet presupposed in all that is, and is known. 1 

1 What is said here as to the intelligence is partly taken 
from the De Anima. The necessary qualifications of the 



388 METAPHYSIC. 

Metaphysic, then, is the science which deals 
with the principles whch are presupposed in all 
being and knowing, though they are brought to 
light only by philosophy. One more trait com 
pletes the Aristotelian account of it. It is 
theology, or the science of God. Now God is 
votjaris voi jrreo)^, pure self-consciousness, the absolute 
thought which is one with its object, and He is 
therefore the first cause of all existence. For, 
while the world of nature is a world of motion 
and change, in which form is realised in matter, 
this process of the finite can be explained only 
by referring it back to an unmoved mover, in 
whom there is no distinction of matter and form, 
and who is, therefore, in Aristotle s view, to be 
conceived as pure form, the purely ideal or 
theoretic activity of a consciousness whose object 
is itself. Such a conception, however, while it 
secures the independence and absoluteness of the 
unmoved mover, by detaching from him all relation 
to what is other than himself, seems to make 
his connection with the world inexplicable. We 
can on this theory refer the world to God, but 

above general statement of Aristotle s views will be given 
subsequently. 






METAPHYSIC. 389 

not God to the world. Hence Aristotle seems 
sometimes to say that God is the first mover 
only as He is the last end after which all 
creation strives, and this leads him to attribute 
to nature a desire or will which is directed 
towards the good as its object or end. 

Aristotle then brings together in his metaphysic 
three elements which are often separated from 
each other, and the connection of which is far 
from being at once obvious. It is to him the 
science of the first principles of being. It is 
also the science of the first principles of knowing. 
Lastly, it is the science of God, as the beginning 
and end of all things, the absolute unity of 
being and thought, in which all the differences 
of finite thought and existence are either excluded 
or overcome. 

To some this description of the contents of 
Aristotle s treatise, and especially the last part 
of it, may seem to be a confirmation of all the 
worst charges brought against metaphysic. For 
at both extremes this supposed science seems to 
deal with that which is beyond experience, and 
which therefore cannot be verified by it. It takes 
us back to a beginning, which is prior to the 



390 METAPHYSIC. 

existence as well as to the consciousness of finite 
objects in time and space, and on to an end, to 
which no scientific prophecy based upon our 
consciousness of such objects can reach. In the 
former aspect of it, it has to do with notions so 
abstract and general that it seems as if they 
could not be fixed or tested by reference to any 
experience, but must necessarily be the playthings 
of dialectical sophistry. In the latter aspect of 
it, it entangles us in questions as to the final 
cause and ultimate meaning of things, questions 
involving so comprehensive a view of the infinite 
universe in which we are insignificant parts 
that it seems as if any attempt to answer them 
must be for us vain and presumptuous. On both 
sides, therefore, metaphysic appears to be an 
attempt to occupy regions which are beyond the 
habitable space of the intelligible world to deal 
with ideas which are either so vague and abstract 
that they cannot be fastened to any definite mean 
ing, or so complex and far-reaching that they 
can never by any possibility be verified. For 
beings like men, fixed within these narrow limits 
of space and time, the true course, it would seem, 
is to " cultivate their gardens," asking neither 



METAPHYSIC. 391 

whence they come nor whither they go, or asking 
it only within the possible limits of history and 
scientific prophecy. To go back to the beginning 
or forward to the end, even in a temporal, still 
more in a metaphysical sense, is beyond our power. 
That which is irpwrov (fiva-ei escapes us even more 
absolutely than the prehistorical and pregeological 
records of man and his world. That which is va-ra- 
rov (pvcrei escapes us even more absolutely than 
the far-off future type of civilisation, which social 
science vainly endeavours to anticipate. Our state 
is best pictured by that early Anglican philosopher 
who compared it to a bird Hying through a lighted 
room " between the night and the night." The 
true aim of philosophy is, therefore, it would seem, 
to direct our thoughts to the careful examination 
and utilisation of the narrow space allotted to us 
by an inscrutable power, and with scientific self- 
restraint to refrain from all speculation either on 
first or on final causes. 

The main questions as to the possibility and 
the nature of metaphysic, according to Aristotle s 
conception of it, may be summed up under two heads. 
We may ask whether we can in any sense reach 
that which is beyond experience, and, if so, whether 



392 METAPHYSIC. 

this beyond " is a first or a last principle, a pre 
condition or a final cause of nature and experience, 
or both. The former question branches out into 
two subordinate questions, according as we look at 
rnetaphysic from the objective or the subjective side, 
or, to express the matter more accurately, according 
as we consider it in relation to those natural objects 
which are merely objects of knowledge, or in relation 
to those spiritual objects which are also subjects of 
knowledge. We shall, therefore, consider meta- 
physic, first, in relation to science in general, and, 
secondly, in relation to the special science of 
psychology. The latter question has also two 
aspects ; for, while the idea of a first cause or 
principle points to the connection between meta- 
physic and logic, the idea of a last principle or 
linal cause connects metaphysic with theology. 
We shall therefore consider in the third place 
the relation of metaphysic to logic, and in the 
fourth place its relation to religion and the phil 
osophy of religion. 

1. Relation of Metaphysic to Science. The 
beginnings of science and metaphysic are iden 
tical, though there is a sense in which it may be 
admitted that the metaphysical comes before the 



METAPHYSIC. 393 

scientific or positive era. The first efforts of 
philosophy grasp at once at the prize of absolute 
knowledge. No sooner did the Greeks become 
dissatisfied with the pictorial synthesis of mytho 
logy, by which their thoughts were first lifted 
above the confusion of particular things, than they 
asked for one universal principle which should 
explain all things. The Ionic school sought to 
find some one phenomenon of nature which might 
be used as . the key to all other phenomena. The 
Eleatics, seeing the futility of making one finite 
thing the explanation of all other finite things, 
tried to find that explanation in the very notion 
of Unity or Being itself. We need not under 
estimate the speculative value of such bold at 
tempts to sum up all the variety of the world 
in one idea, but it is obvious that they rather give 
a name to the problem than solve it, or in other 
words, that they put the very consciousness of the 
problem in place of the solution of it. Science is 
possible only if we can rise from the particular 
to the universal, from a subjective view of things, 
as they immediately present themselves to us in 
perception, to an objective determination of them 
through laws and principles which have no special 



394 



METAPHYSIC. 



relation to any particular set of events or to any 
one individual subject. But this is only one 
aspect of the matter. To advance from a con 
ception of the world in ordinc ad individuum 
to one in ordinc ad universum, and so to discount 
and eliminate what is merely subjective and ac 
cidental in our first consciousness of the world, 
is the beginning of knowledge. But little is 
gained unless the universal, which we reach 
through the negation of the particulars, is more 
than their mere negation ; unless it is a law or 
principle by means of which we can explain the 
particulars. Now the defect of early philosophy 
was that its universal was " the pne beyond the 
many," not the " one in the many," in other 
words, that it was not a law or principle by 
which the particulars subsumed under it could 
be explained, but simply the abstraction of an 
element common to them. But the process of 
knowledge is a process that involves both analysis 
and synthesis, both negation and reaffirmation of the 
particulars with which we start. If we exaggerate 
the former aspect of it, we enter upon the via 
neyativa of the mystics, the way of pure abstrac 
tion and negation, which would open the mind 



METAPHYSIC. 395 

to the ideal reality of things simply by shutting- 
it to all the perceptions of sensible phenomena. 
And, if we follow out this method to its legitimate 
result, we must treat the highest abstraction, the 
abstraction of Being, as if it were the sum of all 
reality ; and the Neo-Platonic ecstasy in which all 
distinction, even the distinction of subject and 
object, is lost as the only attitude of mind in 
which truth can be apprehended. 

In the philosophy of the Socratic school we find 
the first attempt at a systematic as opposed to an 
abstract theory the first attempt to bring together 
the one and the many, and so to determine the 
former that it should throw light upon the latter. 
Yet even in Plato the tendency to oppose the 
universal to the particular is stronger than the 
tendency to relate them to each other, and in 
some of his dialogues, as, e.g., in the Fliccdo, we 
find a near approach to that identification of the 
process of knowledge with abstraction which is 
the characteristic of mysticism. Aristotle, therefore, 
had some ground for taking the Platonic principle 
that " the real is the universal " in a sense which 
excludes the reality of the individual. Yet, though 
he detected Plato s error in opposing the universal 



396 METAPHYSIC. 

to the particular, and though, at the same time, 
he did not entirely lose sight of the truth which 
Plato had exaggerated, that the particular is in 
telligible only through the universal, Aristotle was 
not able to escape the influence of that dualism 
which had marred the philosophy of his prede 
cessor. 1 Hence the effect of his protest against a 
philosophy of abstraction was partly neutralised 
by his separation between the divine Being as 
pure form, and nature as the unity of form and 
matter, and again by his separation of the pure 
reason which apprehends the forms of things from 
the perceptions of sense which deal with forms 
realised in matter. And after Aristotle s time the 
tendency of philosophy .was more and more to 
withdraw from contact with experience. The Neo- 
L latonic philosophy, and the Christian theology 
which was so strongly influenced by it, contained, 
indeed, an idea of the reconciliation of God and 
nature, and hence of form and matter, which must 
ultimately be fatal to dualism, and therefore to 
the method of mere abstraction. But the explicit 
meaning of the philosophy of the Middle Ages 
was still dualistic, and the mode in which the 
1 Cf. Green s Essay on Aristotle, Works, Vol. iii. 



METAPHYSIC. 397 

Aristotelian formula- were wrought into the sub 
stance of Christian doctrine by the Scholastics, 
tended more and more to conceal that idea of 
the unity of opposites which was involved in 
Christianity. Hence mediaeval Realism presented, 
in its most one-sided form, the doctrine that "the 
real is the universal," meaning by the universal 
nothing more than the abstract. And, as a natural 
consequence, the modern insurrection of the scien 
tific spirit against scholasticism took its start from 
an equally bald and one-sided assertion of the 
opposite principle, that " the real is the individual," 
meaning by that the individual of immediate per 
ception. If Platonism had dwelt too exclusively 
on one aspect of the process of knowledge, viz., 
that it seeks to rise above the particular, the 
sensible, the subjective, to the universal, the in 
telligible, the objective, as if in the latter alone 
were reality to be found, modern men of science 
learnt from their first nominalistic teachers to 
regard the universal as nothing more than an 
abbreviated expression for the particulars, and 
science itself as a mere generalisation of the 
facts of sensible perception. But this view of 
scientific knowledge, as a mere reaffirmation of 



398 METAPHYSIC. 

what is immediately given in sense, is as im 
perfect as the opposite theory, which reduces it 
to the mere negation of what is so given. An 
ideal world utterly and entirely divorced from 
the phenomenal, and an ideal world which is 
simply a repetition of the phenomenal, are equally 
meaningless. The processes of science have both 
a negative and a positive side ; they involve a 
negation of the particular as it is immediately 
presented in sense, but only with a view to its 
being reaffirmed with a new determination through 
the universal. The fact, as it is first presented 
to us, is not the fact as it is ; for, though it is 
from the fact as given that we rise to the know 
ledge of the law, it is the law that first enables 
us to understand what the fact really means. 
Our first consciousness of things is thus, not an 
immovable foundation upon which science may 
build, but rather a hypothetical and self-contra 
dictory starting-point of investigation, which be 
comes changed and transformed as we advance. 

The Nominalism of scientific men in modern 
times is due to two special causes, one of which 
has already been mentioned. It is partly due to 
the traditions of a time when mediaeval Realism 



METAPHYSIC. 



399 



was the great enemy of science. The Baconian 
protest against the " anticipation of nature " was 
a relative truth, when it was urged against a 
class of writers who supposed that true theories 
could be attained without regard to facts ; the 
Baconian assertion of the necessity of attending 
to axiomata media was the necessary correction 
of the tendencies of mystics, who supposed that 
philosophy could attain its end by grasping at 
once at absolute unity, and contented themselves 
therefore with a unity which did nothing to explain 
the differences. But, when the former was turned 
into the dogmatic assertion that- the mind is, or 
ought to be, passive in the process of knowledge, 
as having in itself no principle for the explanation 
of things, and when the latter was turned into 
the dogmatic assertion that science can only pro 
ceed from part to part and never from the whole 
to the parts, these relative truths became a source 
of error. And this error was confirmed and in 
creased by the mistaken views of those who first 
tried to correct it. For these, admitting that 
scientific truth is entirely derived from external 
experience, only ventured to assert the existence 
of a priori knowledge alongside of, and in addition 



400 



METAPHYSIC. 



to, that which is a posteriori. In other words, 
they sought in inner experience a basis for those 
beliefs which outward experience seemed unable 
to support. But this basis was soon found to 
be treacherous. Introspection, observation of the 
inner life, as opposed to and distinguished from 
the outer life, could be only an observation of 
the facts of the individual consciousness as such ; 
and to base religion and morality on such a 
foundation was to treat God and right as sub 
jective phenomena, which do not necessarily corre 
spond to any objective reality. jSTor was this 
conclusion really evaded by the assertion of the 
self-evidencing necessity of such ideas and beliefs, 
or of the principles upon which they are founded. 
For this necessity, as a subjective phenomenon, 
might be accounted for otherwise than by the 
supposition of their objective validity. Such 
scepticism, was favoured by the progress of 
science, which, as it advanced from physics to 
biology and sociology, became more and more in 
consistent with the idea of an absolute breach 
between inner and outer experience, and narrowed 
the sphere which had hitherto been reserved for 
the former. Man, it was urged, is but a part in 



METAPHYSIC. 



4OI 



a greater whole, not exempted from the law of 
action and reaction which connects all parts of 
that whole with each other. His individual life 
contains only a few links in a chain of causation 
that goes back to a beginning and onward to an 
end of which he knows nothing. And, as Spinoza 
says, vis qua homo in cxistendo pcrscverat, limitata 
cst et a causis externis infinite superatur. 1 Hence 
to treat ideas which are only states of the indi 
vidual consciousness as the explanation of the 
world, instead of treating them as phenomena to 
be explained by its relation to that world, seemed 
to be an absurdity. The particular beliefs and 
tendencies of the mind were to be regarded, not 
as ultimate facts in reference to which everything 
is to be interpreted, but rather as facts which 
must themselves be referred to more general 
causes and laws. It thus appeared that the 
attempt to divide truth into an a posteriori and 
an a priori part, the latter of which should find 
its evidence in an inner experience as the former 
in an outer experience, is an illusive process. 
If the a priori is reduced to the level of the 
posteriori, it becomes impossible to base on the a 

1 Eth. iv. 3. 

2 c 



402 METAPHYSIC. 

priori any beliefs that go beyond the range of 
subjective experience. If the self and the not- 
self are taken simply as different finite things, 
which we can observe in turn, their relations 
must be brought under the general laws of the 
connection of finite things with each other ; and 
the phenomena of mind must be treated, like the 
phenomena of matter, as facts to be accounted 
for according to these laws. 

But this of itself indicates a way of escape 
both from the introspective theory and from the 
empiricism to which it is opposed. For it sug 
gests the question What is the source of those 
very laws which guide the procedure of science 
in accounting for facts, psychological facts among 
others ? When a scientific psychologist of the 
modern school attempts to show how, by habitua- 
tion of the individual and the race, the necessity of 
thought expressed in the law of causation has been 
produced in the minds of the present generation 
of men, it is obvious that his whole investigation 
and argument presuppose the law whose genesis 
he is accounting for. A glaring instance of such 
circular reasoning is found in the writings of the 
most prominent representative of the school in 



METAPHYSIC. 



403 



the present day. Mr. Spencer begins by laying 
down as a first postulate of science that necessity 
of thought must be taken as a criterion of truth. 
It is by the continual aid of this postulate that 
he constructs his system of nature, and finally his 
psychological theory of the development of con 
sciousness in man. Yet the main object of this 
psychological theory seems to be to account for 
the very necessities with which the author starts. 
Obviously such a philosophy contains elements of 
which the author is imperfectly conscious ; for it 
involves that mind is not only the last product 
but the first presupposition of nature, or, in other 
words, that in mind nature returns upon its first 
principle. But to admit this is at once to lift 
the conscious being as such above the position 
which he would hold as merely a finite part of 
a finite world. It is to assert that nature has 
an essential relation to a consciousness which is 
developed in man, and that in the growth of this 
consciousness we have, not an evolution which is 
the result of the action of nature as a system 
of external causes upon him, but an evolution in 
which nature is really " coming to itself," i.e., 
coming to self-consciousness, in him. 



404 



METAPHYSIC. 

it was Kant who first though with a 
certain limitation of aim brought this idea of 
the relativity of thought and being to the con 
sciousness of the modern world. In the Critique 
of Pure Reason, thought, indeed, is not set up 
as an absolute prius, in relation to which all 
existence must be conceived, but it is set up as 
the prius of experience, and so of all existences 
which are objects of our knowledge. Experience 
is for Kant essentially relative to the unity of the 
self; it exists through the necessary subsumption 
of the forms and matter of sense under the cate 
gories, as, on the other hand, the consciousness 
of self is recognised as essentially dependent on 
this process. On this view, the a priori and 
a posteriori factors of experience do not really 
exist apart as two separate portions of knowledge. 
If they are severed, each loses all its meaning. 
Perceptions in themselves are void ; categories in 
themselves are empty. We do not look outwards 
for one kind of truth and inwards for another, 
nor do we even, by an external process, bring 
facts given as a contingent under principles recog 
nised as necessary ; but the a priori is the con 
dition under which alone the a posteriori exists 



METAPHYSIC. 



405 



for us. Even if it is allowed that the facts of 
inner and outer experience contain a contingent 
element or matter, given under the conditions of 
time and space, yet neither time nor space nor 
the facts of experience conditioned by them exist 
for us, except as elements of an experience which 
is organised according to the categories. 

This is the essential truth which Kant had to 
express. It is marred in his statement of it by 
the persistent influence of the abstract division 
between contingent matter given from without 
and necessary principles supplied from within, a 
division essentially inconsistent with the attempt 
to show that the contingent matter is necessarily 
subsumed under these principles, and indeed exists 
for us only as it is so subsumed. But Kant 
himself puts into our hands the means of correct 
ing his own inadequacy, when he reduces the 
inaccessible " thing in itself," (which he at first 
speaks of as affecting our sensibility and so giving 
rise to the contingent matter of experience,) to 
a noumenon (voovfj.evov) which is projected by 
reason itself. The Dialectic exhibits the idea of 
thought as not only constituting finite experience 
but also reaching beyond it, though as yet only 



406 METAPHYSIC. 

in a negative way. The mind is, on this view, 
so far unlimited that it knows its own limits ; 
it is conscious of the defects of its experience, 
of the contingency of its sensible matter, and the 
emptiness and fmitude of its categories ; and, by 
reason of this consciousness, it is always seeking 
in experience an ideal which it is impossible to 
realise there. Thought measures experience by its 
own nature, and finds experience wanting. It de 
mands a kind of unity or identity in its objects 
which it is unable to find in the actual objects 
presented to it. It is this demand of reason which 
lifts man above a mere animal existence, and 
forces him by aid of the categories to determine 
the matter of sense as a world of objects ; yet, 
as this finite world of experience can never satisfy 
the demand of reason, the consciousness of it is 
immediately combined with the consciousness of 
its limited and phenomenal character. The student 
of the Critique of Pure Reason cannot but recog 
nise the strange balance between the real and 
the phenomenal in which it ends, allowing to 
man the consciousness of each so far as to enable 
him to see the defects of the other, so that by 
aid of the pure identity of reason he can criticise 



METAPHYSIC. 407 

and condemn the " blindness " or unresolved differ 
ence of experience, and by means of the concrete- 
ness and complexity of experience he can condemn 
the " empty " identity of reason. 

In order, however, to understand the full bearing 
of Kant s criticism of knowledge, and at the same 
time to find the meeting-point of the opposite 
currents of thought which alternately prevail in 
it, it will be necessary to consider the subject a 
little more closely. The lesson of the Critique 
may be gathered up into two points. In the 
first place, it is a refutation of the ordinary view 
of experience, as something immediately given for 
thought and not constituted by it. In the second 
place, it is a demonstration of the merely pheno 
menal character of the objects of experience, i.e., 
the demonstration that the objects of experience, 
even as determined by science, are not things 
in themselves. Both these results require to be 
kept clearly in view, if we would understand the 
movement of thought excited by Kant. On the 
one hand, Kant had to teach that what is ordi 
narily regarded as real, the world of experience, 
is transcendentally ideal, i.e., is determined as real 
by a priori forms of thought. On the other hand, 



408 METAPHYSIC. 

he had to teach that the world so determined is 
empirically and not transcendentally real, i.e., its 
reality is merely phenomenal. With the former 
lesson he met the man of science, and compelled 
him to renounce his materialistic explanation of 
the world, as a thing which exists in independence 
of the mind that knows it. The world we know 
is a world which exists only as it exists for us, 
for the thinking subject ; hence the thinking sub 
ject, the ego, cannot be taken as an object like 
other objects, an object the phenomena of which 
are to be explained like other phenomena by 
their place in the connexion of experience. Hav 
ing, however, thus repelled scientific materialism 
by the proof that the reality of experience is 
ideal, Kant refuses to proceed to the complete 
identification of reality with ideality, and meets 
the claims of the metaphysician with the asser 
tion that the reality of experience is merely 
phenomenal. Hence he rejects any idealism that 
would involve the negation of things in them 
selves beyond phenomena, or the identification of 
the objects of experience with these things. The 
reality we know is a reality which exists only 
for us as conscious subjects, but this, though it 



METAPHYSIC. 409 

is the only reality we can know, is not the 
absolute reality. 

It is, however, to be observed that the nature 
of this opposition, between phenomena and things 
in themselves, seems to change as we advance from 
the Analytic, where the existence of such things 
is presupposed, to the Dialectic, where the grounds 
of that presupposition are examined. At first the 
opposition seems to be between what is present 
in consciousness and what is absolutely beyond 
consciousness. The matter of experience is re 
garded as given externally in the affections of 
the sensible subject, affections caused by an un 
known thing in itself, of which, however, they 
can tell us nothing. On the other hand, the 
form of experience, the categories and principles 
of judgment which turn these affections into ob 
jects of knowledge, are not pure expressions of 
the real nature, the pure identity, of the subject 
in itself, but only products of the identity of the 
self in relation to the sensibility and its forms 
of time and space. Hence, on both sides we 
must regard experience as merely phenomenal, 
alike in relation to the noumenal object and in 
relation to the noumenal subject, which lurk be- 



4io 



METAPHYSIC. 



hind the veil and send forth into experience, on 
the one side, affections which become objects 
through their determination by the unity of 
thought, and, on the other side, an identity of 
thought which becomes self-conscious in relation 
to the objects so determined by itself. 

Kant, however, having thus answered the ques 
tion of the possibility of experience by reference 
to two things in themselves which are out of 
experience, is obliged to ask himself how the 
consciousness of these two things in themselves, 
and the criticism of experience in relation to 
them, is possible. And here, obviously, the oppo 
sition can no longer be conceived as an oppo 
sition between that which is and that which is 
not in consciousness. For the things in them 
selves must be present to consciousness in some 
fashion, in order that they may be contrasted with 
the phenomena. If, therefore, phenomena are now 
regarded as unreal, it must be because we have 
an idea of reality to which the reality of experi 
ence does not fully correspond. In the Analytic 
Kant had been speaking as if the real consisted 
in something which is not present to the con 
scious subject at all, though we, by analysis of 



METAPHYSIC. 



411 



his experience, can refer to it as the cause of 
that which is so present. Now, in the Dialectic, 
he has to account for the fact that the conscious- 
subject himself is able to transcend his experi 
ence, and to contrast the objects of it as pheno 
menal with things in themselves. 

Now it is obvious that such an opposition is- 
possible only so far as the thought, which con 
stitutes experience, is at the same time conscious 
of itself in opposition to the experience it con 
stitutes. The reason why experience is con 
demned as phenomenal is, therefore, not because 
it is that which exists for thought as opposed to 
that which does not exist for thought, but because 
it imperfectly corresponds to the determination of 
thought in itself. In other words, it is condemned 
as unreal, not because it is ideal, but because it 
is imperfectly ideal. 1 And the absolute reality is- 
represented, not as that which exists without re 
lation to thought, but as that which is identical 
with the thought for which it is. In the Dialectic? 
therefore, the noumenon is substituted for the 
thing in itself, and the noumenon is, as Kant 
tells us, the object as it exists for an intuitive 
1 Cf. Critical Philosophy of Kant, ii. p. 150 seq. 



412 METAPHYSIC. 

or perceptive understanding, i.e., an understanding 
which does not synthetically combine the given 
matter of sense into objects by means of cate 
gories, but whose thought is one with the exist 
ence of the objects it knows. It is the idea of 
such a pure identity of knowing and being, as 
suggested .by thought itself, which leads us to 
regard our actual empirical knowledge as imper 
fect, and its objects as not, in an absolute sense, 
real objects. The noumena are not, therefore, the 
unknown causes by whose action and reaction 
conscious experience is produced ; they represent 
a unity of thought with itself to which it finds 
experience inadequate. 

Now this higher unity of thought with itself is 
what Kant calls reason, and he identifies it with the 
faculty of syllogising. Hence the three forms of 
syllogism seem to him to point to three forms, in 
which the pure unity of reason presents itself to 
us in opposition to the merely synthetic unity of 
experience, a psychological, a cosmological, and a 
theological form. In each of these cases the em 
pirical process of knowledge is accompanied, guided, 
and stimulated by an idea which nevertheless it is 
unable to realise or verify. In psychology, our in- 



METAPHYSIC. 413 

vestigations are prompted and regulated by an idea 
of the identity of the self, which is never realised 
in our actual self-consciousness, because the self of 
which we are conscious is manifold in its states, 
and because it stands in relation to an external 
world. The idea of simple identity is, therefore, 
something we may set before us as the goal of an 
ideal psychology, to which we may approximate, in 
so far as we can trace unity of faculty through all 
the differences of mental phenomena, but to which 
we can never attain, owing to the nature of the 
matter with which we deal. Again, in our scien 
tific attempts to explain our external experience, 
the unity of reason takes the form of an idea 
of the world as a completed infinite whole, which 
contains all the objects known to us and all other 
possible objects ; but this idea cannot be realised in 
an experience which is conditioned by space and 
time, and is, therefore, ever incomplete. The idea 
of totality is, therefore, an ideal, which guides 
and stimulates our scientific progress, without 
which such a thing as science could not exist, 
but which at the same time can never be 
realised by science. Lastly, the unity of reason 
takes a third form in which identity and totality 



METAPHYSIC. 

are combined, as the idea of a unity in which 
all differences, even the difference of subject and 
object, are transcended, the idea of a unity of 
all things with each other and with the mind 
that knows them. This idea also is one which 
science can neither surrender nor realise. It 
cannot surrender it, without giving up that striv 
ing after unity without which science would not 
exist ; and it cannot realise it, for the difference 
between the world, as it is presented to us in 
actual experience, and the subjective determination 
of our thinking consciousness, cannot be overcome. 
We can, indeed, use the idea that the world is 
an organic whole, determined in relation to an 
end which consciousness sets for itself, as an 
heuristic principle to guide us in following the 
connection of things with each other ; but, as we 
cannot, by means of any such idea, anticipate 
what the facts of external experience will be, so 
we cannot prove that, for a mind other than 
ours, the unity of things which we represent in 
this way might not take a quite different aspect. 
Indeed we have reason to think it would ; for, 
while we always think of a designing mind as 
using materials which have an existence and 



METAPHYSIC. 



415 



nature independent of the purposes to which 
they are put, the absolute mind must be con 
ceived as creating the materials themselves, by 
the same act whereby they are determined to an 
end. We must conceive it, in short, as an in 
tuitive understanding, for which end and means, 
objective and subjective, are one, or, in other 
words, as an intelligence whose consciousness of 
itself is or contains the existence of all that is 
object for it. 

This new view of the things in themselves as 
noumena or ideals of reason involves a new atti 
tude of thought towards them, different from that 
dogmatic attitude which is provisionally adopted 
in the Analytic. Accordingly, we now find Kant 
speaking of them, not as things which exist in 
dependently of their being conceived, but as 
" problematical conceptions " of which we cannot 
even determine whether they correspond to any 
objects at all. They are " limitative " notions 
which have a negative value, in so far as they 
keep open a vacant space beyond experience, but 
do not enable us to fill that space with any posi 
tive realities. They are like dark lanterns which 
cast light upon the empirical world, and show 



416 METAPHYSIC. 

what are its boundaries, but leave their own 
nature in obscurity. All that we can say of the 
noumenal self or subject is, that it corresponds to 
the unity implied in all knowledge, but whether 
there is such a self, independent of the process 
of empirical synthesis and the self-consciousness 
which accompanies that process, we cannot tell. 
All that we can say of the noumenal reality of 
the objective world is, that it corresponds to the 
idea of the objects of experience as a completed 
whole in themselves apart from the process 
whereby we know them, but whether there is 
any such real world independent of the process 
of experience, it is impossible to say. Lastly, all 
that we can say of God is, that He corresponds 
to the idea of the unity of all things with the 
mind that knows them, an ideal which is in 
volved in all knowledge, but whether the reali 
sation of this idea in an intuitive understanding 
is even possible, we have no means of determining, 
however we may suspect that understanding and 
sensibility are " branches springing from the same 
unknown root." The Criticism of Pure Reason 
ends, therefore, in a kind of see-saw between two 
forms of consciousness a thinking consciousness, 



METAPHYSIC. 417 

which transcends experience and sets before us an 
idea of absolute reality, but which cannot attain 
to any knowledge or even certitude of any object 
corresponding to this idea, and an empirical con 
sciousness, which gives us true knowledge of its 
objects, but whose objects are determined as merely 
phenomenal and not absolutely real. 

The equipoise thus maintained between the em 
pirical and the intelligible world is, however, in 
the Critique of Practical Reason, overbalanced in 
favour of the latter. What the theoretical reason 
could not do "in that it was weak through the 
flesh," through its dependence on the very em 
pirical consciousness which it sought to transcend, 
is possible to the practical reason, because it is 
primarily determined by itself. In our moral con 
sciousness we find ourselves under a law which 
calls upon us to act as beings who are absolutely 
self-determined or free, and which, therefore, assures 
us that our intelligible self is our real self, and 
conclusively determines our empirical self in con 
trast with it as phenomenal. Thus the moral law 
gives reality to the intelligible world ; or, as Kant 
expresses it, " the idea of an intelligible world is 

a point of view beyond the phenomenal which the 

2 D 



41 8 METAPHYSIC. 

reason sees itself compelled to take up in order 
to think of itself as practical." In other words, 
the moral law presupposes freedom or self-deter 
mination in the rational being as such, and makes 
him regard himself, not merely as a link in the 
chain of conditioned existences in time and space, 
but as the original source of his own life. The 
blank space beyond the phenomenal thus begins 
to be filled up by the idea of a free causality, 
which in its turn postulates a world adequate and 
conformable to itself. And the man who, as an 
empiric individuality, is obliged to regard himself 
merely as an individual being, determined by 
other individual beings and things according to 
the law of necessity, is authorised as a moral 
being to treat this apparent necessity as having 
its reality in freedom, and to look upon himself 
as the denizen of a spiritual world, where nothing 
is determined for him from without which is 
not simply the expression of his own self-de 
termination from within. "Thus we have found, 
what Aristotle could not find, a fixed point on 
which reason can set its lever, not in any present 
or future world, but in its own inner idea of 
freedom, a point fixed for it by the immovable 



METAPHYSIC. 419 

moral law, as a secure basis from which it can 
move the human will, in spite of the opposition 
of all the powers of nature." 1 Starting from 
this idea of freedom, therefore, Kant proceeds to 
reconstruct for faith the unseen world, which in 
the Critique of Pure Beason he had denied as an 
object of knowledge, Nor is he content to leave 
the two worlds in sharp antithesis to each other, 
but even in the Critique of Practical Reason, and 
still more in the Critique of Judgment, he brings 
them into relation to each other, and so gives to 
theoretical reason a kind of authority to use, for 
the explanation of the phenomenal world, those 
ideas which otherwise it would be compelled to 
regard as illusive. 

In all this, however, it is difficult to avoid 
seeing a partial retractation of Kant s first view 
as to the irreconcilable opposition of the pheno 
menal and the noumenal. For, in the first place, 
the moral imperative is addressed to a self which 
is at one and the same time regarded in both 
characters, and which is called upon to subsume 
under the moral law actions which otherwise derive 
their character and meaning from the relations 
1 Kant, i. 638 (Rosenkrauz edition). 



420 METAPHYSIC. 

of the phenomenal world. That the particular 
nature of men as phenomenal individuals can be 
the means of realising the universal law of reason, 
is implied in all Kant s statements of the latter, 
and particularly in his conception of men as con 
stituting together a " kingdom of ends " ; for it is 
difficult to conceive this kingdom otherwise than 
as an organic unity of society, in which each 
individual, by reason of his special tendencies 
and capacities, has a definite office to fulfil in 
realising the universal principle that binds all 
the members of the kingdom to each other. The 
Summum Bonum, again, is said to consist in the 
union of happiness with goodness, i.e., of the em 
pirical conditions of man s individual life as a 
sensible subject with the pure self-determination 
of the intelligible self; and God is postulated as 
a Dcus ex machina to bind together these two 
unrelated elements, a conception which shows 
the difficulty into which Kant has brought him 
self by defining them as unrelated. 

In the Critique of Judgment Kant makes a final 
effort to escape from the dualism involved in his 
original analysis of experience. For in that work 
he maintains that the consciousness of the beautiful 



METAPHYSIC. 



421 



and the sublime is or involves a harmony of the 
understanding or the reason with sense ; and, what 
is still more important, he points out that the idea 
of organic unity, without which we cannot explain 
the phenomena of life, contains in it a possibility 
of the reconciliation of freedom and necessity, of 
the intelligible and the phenomenal. This idea, 
he argues, we are authorised by our moral con 
sciousness to apply to the whole course of the 
things in the phenomenal world, and so to regard 
it as a process to realise the moral ideal. No 
doubt he again partially retracts this view, when 
he declares that we must treat the idea of final 
causality as a subjective principle of judgment, which 
is to be regarded as necessary not for all intelli 
gence, but only for us as finite intelligences. But 
such saving clauses, in which Kant recurs to th<? 
dualism with which he started, cannot hide from 
us how near he has come to the renunciation 
of it. 

When we regard Kant in this way as asserting 
from one point of view an absolute limit, which 
from another point of view he permits us to 
transcend, it becomes obvious that his philosophy 
is in an unstable equilibrium, which cannot but 



422 METAPHYSIC. 

be disturbed by any one who attempts to develop 
or even to restate his ideas. Hence we need not 
wonder that those who take in earnest his de 
nunciations of any attempt to transcend experience 
generally, like Professor Huxley, reject as worth 
less all Kant s later work ; and that, on the other 
side, those who take in earnest his ideas of freedom, 
of organic unity, of an intuitive understanding, 
and of a Summum Bonum in which freedom and 
necessity meet together, are compelled to break 
through the arbitrary line which he drew between 
knowledge and belief. In favour of the former 
course it is easy in many places to appeal to the 
letter of Kant. In favour of the latter it need 
only be pointed out that, in Kant s view, all 
experience rests upon, or is in its development 
guided by, those ideas which yet he will not 
permit us to treat as sources of knowledge. 
Hence the principles of the Critique cannot legi 
timately be used against metaphysic, except by 
those who are prepared to admit the ideas of 
reason, up to the point to which he admits 
them, as ideas that limit and direct our ex 
perience, while rejecting all use of them to cast 
light upon that which is beyond experience. In 



METAPHYSIC. 423 

other words, those who would adopt his alternative 
must maintain the possibility of a purely negative 
knowledge, i.e., the possibility of the knowledge of 
a limit by one who yet cannot go beyond it. 
They must show how it is possible for us to 
have an ideal of knowledge which enables us to 
criticise experience without enabling us to trans 
form it ; they must show how ideas of the super 
sensible can so far be present to our thought as 
to make visible the boundaries of the prison of 
sense in which we are conlined, without in any 
way enabling us to escape from it. 

Is this possible ? We may gather up the 
Kantian antithesis in the assertion that experience 
is the imperfect realisation of an ideal of know 
ledge derived from reason, by means of materials 
derived from sense and understanding, the nature 
of which is such that they can never be brought 
into correspondence with the ideal. But this ideal, 
in all its three forms, as we have seen, is simply 
the idea of a pure unity or identity in which all 
differences are lost or dissolved whether they be 
differences in inner or differences in outer experi 
ence, or, finally, the differences between the inner 
and the outer, the subjective and the objective. 



424 METAPHYSIC. 

Kant s view therefore is, in effect, this : that 
thought carries with it the consciousness of an 
identity or unity, to which our actual experience in 
none of its forms fully corresponds. On the other 
hand, Kant does not hesitate, with equal emphasis, 
to condemn the identity of thought as " empty " 
and subjective, because it does not contain in 
itself nor can evolve from itself the complex 
matter of experience. But this alternate con 
demnation of experience as unreal from the point 
of view of the ideas, and of the ideas as unreal 
from the point of view of experience, seems to 
show that loth are unreal, as being abstract 
elements, which have no value save in their 
relation to each other, and which lose all their 
meaning when separated from the unity to which 
they belong. According to this view, ideas and 
experience, noumena and phenomena, if they are 
opposed, are also necessarily related to each other. 
If our empirical consciousness of the world of 
objects in space and time, as determined by the 
categories, does not correspond to the unity or 
identity of thought which is our ideal of know 
ledge, yet that idea of unity or identity is set 
up by thought in relation to experience, and 



METAPHYSIC. 425 

cannot, therefore, be essentially irreconcilable with 
it. The two terms may be opposed, but their 
opposition cannot be absolute, seeing that they 
are in essential relation to each other. It is a 
great logical error not to discern that a negative 
relation is still a relation, i.e., that it has a 
positive unity beyond it. This positive unity 
may not, indeed, be consciously present to us in 
our immediate apprehension of the relation in 
question, but is necessarily implied in it. Xow 
it is just because, in his separation of noumena 
and phenomena, Kant omits to note their essential 
relativity, that he is forced to regard the former 
as a set of abstract identities of which nothing 
can be known, and the latter as the imperfect 
products of a synthesis which can never be com 
pleted or brought to a final unity. Yet the value 
of his whole treatment of the ideas of reason in 
relation to our intellectual and moral experience 
arises from the fact that, in practice, he does not 
hold to this abstract separation of the two ele 
ments. Ideas absolutely incommensurable with 
experience could neither stimulate nor guide our 
empirical synthesis ; they could not even be 
brought into any connection with it. When, 



426 METAPHYSIC. 

therefore, Kant brings them into this connection, 
he necessarily alters their meaning. Hence the 
pure abstract identity which excludes all differ 
ence is changed in its application into the idea 
of an organic unity, of which the highest type 
is found in self-consciousness with its transparent 
difference of the subjective and objective self. It 
would be absurd and meaningless to say that 
science seeks to reduce experience to an abstract 
identity, in which there is no difference, unless 
for this were tacitly substituted what is really 
an entirely different proposition, that science seeks 
to find in the infinitely diversified world of space 
and time that unity in difference of which self- 
consciousness has in itself the pattern. It is 
in reference to the former kind of identity the 
abstract oneness of formal logic that Kant proves 
that it is impossible for experience to be made 
adequate to ideas. But it is only of the latter 
kind of identity the oneness of self-consciousness 
that it can be said that it furnishes a guiding 
principle to scientific investigation or an ideal of 
knowledge. 

The same confusion is still more evident in 
Kant s account of our moral experience, in 



METAPHYSIC. 427 

dealing with which he directly attempts to get 
synthetic propositions out of the pure identity 
of reason, in other words, to draw definite 
moral laws out of the logical principle of non 
contradiction. Whatever success he attains is 
gained by substituting for the formal principle 
of self-consistency the positive idea of consistency 
with the self, and again by conceiving this self 
as a concrete individual, the member of a society, 
and so standing in essential relation to other 
selves. The pure abstraction from all the 
external results of action and from all motives 
of desire, which at the beginning of the Metaphysic 
of Ethics Kant declares to be essential to morality, 
is modified and indeed transformed, as we go on, 
by the admissions that other rational beings are 
not external to us in any sense that excludes 
their good from being an end of our endeavour, 
and that the desires are not irrational and immoral 
except in so far as they are directed to the 
pleasures of the sensuous individual (which in a 
conscious being they never entirely are). Both in 
the speculative and in the practical sphere, there 
fore, the absolute opposition of the ideal or 
noumenal to the empirical disappears, as soon as- 



428 METAPHYSIC. 

Kant attempts to apply it. For, in both, the 
abstract identity of formal logic, which is really 
the meaning of the noumenon as absolutely opposed 
to, and incommensurable with experience, gives 
way to the unity of self-consciousness, a unity 
which is so far from being absolutely opposed to 
the difference of the empirical consciousness that 
it necessarily implies it. For self-consciousness 
presupposes the consciousness of objects, and 
though it is opposed to that consciousness, it is 
essentially correlated with it ; hence its opposition 
to it cannot be regarded as absolute, or incapable 
of being transcended. 

These considerations may throw some light on 
the relation of the Analytic and Dialectic of Kant, 
and on the nature of the opposition of noumenon 
and phenomenon as it is presented in the latter. 
In the deduction of the categories, Kant pointed 
out the essential relation of the objective world 
of experience to what he called the " transcen 
dental unity of apperception " ; i.e., he pointed 
out that the unity of consciousness is implied in 
all its objects. This unity, he further showed, 
must be conceived as " capable of self-conscious 
ness " ; but it actually becomes conscious of self 



METAPHYSIC. 429 

only in relation, though also in opposition, to the 
other objects determined by it. Now it is this 
consciousness of itself in opposition to other ob 
jects which is the source of Kant s " ideas of 
reason," of the dissatisfaction of the mind with 
its empirical knowledge, even in its scientific 
form, and of the demand for a higher kind of 
knowledge to which experience is not adequate. 
That a standard is set up for experience by which 
it is condemned, is simply a result of the further 
development of that unity which is implied in 
experience a result of the progress of thought 
from consciousness to self-consciousness, and of 
the contrast between the former and the latter. 
The problem with which Kant s Dialectic attempts 
to deal, and which it treats as insoluble, is, there 
fore, simply the problem of raising consciousness to 
the form of self-consciousness; in other words, of 
attaining to a knowledge of the world of experience 
as not merely a " synthetic," and therefore imper 
fect, unity of things external to each other, but as 
an organic unity of transparent differences, a self- 
differentiating, self-integrating unity, such as seems 
to be presented to us in pure self-consciousness. 
Nor can this problem be regarded as insoluble ; 



430 METAPHYSIC. 

for the unity of self-consciousness is identical with 
the unity of consciousness ; it is only that unity 
become self-conscious. Hence the point of view 
at which consciousness and self-consciousness seem 
to be absolutely opposed to each other, the 
highest point of view which Kant distinctly 
reaches, can be regarded only as a stage of 
transition from the point at which their relative 
difference and opposition is not yet developed, to 
the point at which they are seen to be the factors 
or elements of a still higher unity. 

The later philosophy of Germany, from Kant to 
Hegel, is little more than the development of the 
idea just stated in its twofold aspect. In the 
first place, it is an attempt to show what is in 
volved in the idea of thought or self-consciousness 
as in itself an organic whole, a many-in-one, a 
unity which expresses itself in difference, yet so 
that the difference remains transparent, and there 
fore is immediately recognised as expression of 
the unity. In the second place, it is an attempt 
to bridge over the difference between thought or 
self-consciousness and the external world of ex 
perience, and to show that this opposition also is 
.subordinated to a higher unity. Or, to put it 



METAPHYSIC. 431 

more directly, the idealistic philosophy of Germany 
seeks, on the one hand, to develop a logic or 
metaphysic which bases itself, not, like formal 
logic, on the idea of bare identity, but on the 
idea of self-consciousness ; and, on the other hand, 
to show, in a philosophy of nature and spirit, how, 
by means of this logic, the opposition of thought 
to its object, or of the a priori to the a posteriori 
in knowledge, may be transcended. In the third 
and fourth sections of this article something more 
will be said of the manner in which this task was 
fulfilled. Here only a few words are necessary 
to sum up the results reached, and to give more 
distinctness to the new ideal of knowledge which 
those results suggest. 

We have seen that Kant s critical attitude in 
volved two things, on the one hand, the asser 
tion that the existence we know is necessarily 
existence for thought, and, on the other hand, 
the denial that that which exists for our thought 
is absolute reality, a denial which again in 
volves the presence to our thought of an ideal 
of knowledge, by which our actual knowledge 
is condemned. This ideal, however, was falsely 
conceived by Kant as an identity without any 



432 METAPHYSIC. 

difference, and, in this sense, he does not hesitate 
to apply it even to self-consciousness itself. For, 
in a remarkable passage, 1 he attempts to prove 
that the consciousness of self is not a know 
ledge of the self, by a simple reference to the 
duality of the self knowing and the self known, 
arguing that the ego " stands in its own way," 
just because it exists only for itself, i.e., because 
in knowing itself it presupposes itself. Kant 
evidently thinks that to know the real self it 
would be necessary to apprehend it in simple 
identity, as purely an object without reference to 
a subject, or purely a subject without reference 
to an object. Yet to this it seems sufficient to 
answer that such an object or subject would lose 
its character as object or subject, and would become 
equivalent to mere being in general ; and that, as 
being in general is a mere abstraction, to know it 
cannot be the ideal of knowledge. If therefore 
there be a unity or identity of thought which is not 
realised in experience, and in reference to which 
we can regard experience as an imperfect form 
of knowledge, it cannot be found in this abstract 
identity of being. In truth, as we have seen, it 
1 Kritik, p. 279 (Bosenkranz edition), cf. Hegel, v. p. 258. 



METAPHYSIC. 433 

is found in that very idea of self-consciousness 
which Kant is criticising. Just because we are 
self-conscious, and therefore oppose the unity of 
the conscious self to the manifoldness of the world 
in space and time, do we seek in the world of 
space and time for a transparent unity which we 
cannot at first find there. But, when this is seen, 
we find in Kant himself the partial solution of 
the difficulty. Self-consciousness presupposes con 
sciousness ; for, while the apprehension of objects 
in consciousness is possible only in relation to 
the unity of the self, yet it is only in relation 
to and distinction from these objects that we are 
conscious of that unity. Hence the two opposites, 
self and not-self, are bound together, and pre 
suppose a unity which reveals itself in their 
opposition, and which, when made explicit, must 
reconcile them. If, therefore, self- consciousness, 
in its first opposition to consciousness, gives rise 
to an ideal of knowledge to which our empirical 
knowledge of objects is inadequate, this arises 
from the fact that not only empirical knowledge, 
but also the ideal to which it is opposed, is 
imperfect, or that they both point to a unity 
which is manifested in their difference, and which 

2 E 



434 METAPHYSIC. 

is capable of containing and resolving it. In 
other words, the opposition of science to its ideal, 
which Kant has stated in his Antinomies, is not 
an absolute opposition, but one the origin and 
end of which can be seen. 

This opposition reaches its highest point in the 
contrast between the transparent unity of self- 
consciousness, in which the difference of knower 
and known is evanescent, and the essential mani- 
foldness and self-externality of the world in space, 
in which the differences seem to be insoluble. 
We must, indeed, think of self-consciousness as 
having life in itself and therefore as differentiating 
itself from itself; but this differentiation is held 
within the limit of its unity, it is a separation 
of movements which are separated only as they 
are united. On the other hand, the world in 
space presents itself as the sphere of external 
determination, in which things are primarily dis 
united and act only as they are acted on from 
without, and in which this external influence never 
goes so far as to destroy their reciprocal exter 
nality. In this sense it is that the opposition of 
mind and matter was taken by Des Cartes, and 
it is a survival of the same mode of thought 



METAPHYSIC. 435 

that leads many even now to draw absolute lines 
of division between a priori and a posteriori, be 
tween ideas and facts, between spiritual and natural. 
Kant and Fichte give a new aspect to the difficulty 
by showing that the difficulty is one of reconciling 
consciousness and self-consciousness, and that in 
consciousness there is already present the unity 
which is manifested in self-consciousness, as, on 
the other hand, it is only through consciousness 
and in opposition to it that self-consciousness is 
possible. And Fichte made a further step when 
he attempted to show that the categories and the 
forms of perception, time and space, which Kant 
had taken as inexplicable facts, are implied in 
this contrast of consciousness and self-consciousness. 
The error that clings to Fichte s speculations is, 
however, that he treats consciousness merely as a 
necessary illusion which exists simply with a view 
to self-consciousness, and hence is led to regard 
self-consciousness itself because it is essentially 
related to this necessary illusion as a schema or 
image of an unknowable absolute. In fact, in the 
end Fichte falls back upon the abstract identity 
in which Kant had found his noumenon, and his 
philosophy seems to lose itself in mysticism. Even 



436 METAPHYSIC. 

Schelling, though he saw that the absolute unity 
must be one that transcends the difference of self 
and not-self, did not finally escape the tendency to 
merge all difference in absolute oneness. On the 
other hand, it was the endeavour of Hegel to 
proceed in the opposite way, not to lose self- 
consciousness or subjectivity in a mere unity of 
substance, but rather to show that the absolute 
substance can be truly defined only as a self- 
conscious subject. And just because he did this, 
he was prepared to take a further step, and to 
regard the external world, not as Fichte regarded 
it, as merely the opposite of spirit, nor as Schelling 
regarded it, as merely the repetition and co-equal 
of spirit, but rather as its necessary manifestation, 
or as that in and through which alone it can realise 
itself. His doctrine therefore might be summed up 
in two propositions, first, that the absolute sub 
stance is spiritual or self-conscious, and, secondly, 
that the absolute subject or spirit can be conceived 
as realising itself only through that very world of 
externality which at first appears as its opposite. 
In both respects Hegel s philosophy reverses the 
via negativa of mysticism, and teaches that it is 
only through the exhaustion of difference that 



METAPHYSIC. 437 

the unity of science, of which the mind contains 
in itself the certitude, is to be realised. For mind 
or spirit, viewed in itself, is conceived as a self- 
differentiating unity, a unity which exists only 
through opposition of itself to itself. And it is 
but a necessary result of such a conception that 
spirit can fully realise its unity only through a 
world which in the first instance must present 
itself as the extreme opposite of spirit. Hence the 
process of thought in itself, which is exhibited in 
the logic, ends in the opposition to thought of a 
world which is its negative counterpart. And the 
" absolute spirit " of Hegel is thus, not pure self- 
consciousness, but that more concrete unity of self- 
consciousness with itself which it attains through 
and by means of this world. 

The effect of this view upon the relation of 
rnetaphysic to science, which we are at present 
considering, is noticeable. It does not, as is often 
supposed, supersede science by an a priori con 
struction of the universe, nor does it leave the 
results of science unchanged and simply provide 
for it a deeper foundation. The latter was the 
point at which Kant and Fichte stopped ; for, 
while they showed the relativity of experience to 



438 METAPHYSIC. 

the principle of self-consciousness, they conceived 
that the function of metaphysic is completed in 
showing the phenomenal character of the objects 
of science, and in reserving a free space beyond 
the phenomenal world for " God, freedom, and 
immortality." Schelling, on the other hand, as 
he did not adopt this merely negative view of 
the relation of spirit to nature or of a priori to 
empirical truth, was obliged to reinterpret the 
latter by the former. As, however, he did not 
recognise any distinctions which were not merely 
quantitative, he was led to apply the same easy 
key to every lock, and to think that he had 
explained all the different forms of existence, or 
ganic and inorganic, when he had merely pointed 
out a certain analogy between them. The meta 
physic of Hegel, whatever may be said of the 
actual philosophy of nature produced by its author, 
contains no necessity for any such arbitrary pro 
cedure. In his Logic, indeed, he attempts to give 
us in abslracto the movement of thought in itself, 
from its simplest determination of being as quali 
tative or quantitative, through the reflective cate 
gories of substance and cause, up to its full con 
sciousness of itself in its organic unity. And in 



METAPHYSIC. 439 

so doing he of course gives us an account of the 
various categories which science uses in the inter 
pretation of nature. 1 He further attempts to show 
that the highest categories of science are in them 
selves imperfect and self-contradictory, in other 
words, that they mark a stage of thought which 
falls short of that unity of being and knowing 
after which science is striving, and which is the 
presupposition as well as the goal of all intelli 
gence. But, while he does this, he clearly acknow 
ledges two things, in the first place, that nature 
is essentially different from pure self-consciousness, 
and that therefore logic can never by direct evolu 
tion of its categories anticipate the investigations 
of science ; and, in the second place, that the final 
interpretation of nature through the highest cate 
gories presupposes its interpretation by the lower 
categories, and cannot be directly achieved without 
it. In other words, science must first determine 
the laws of nature according to the principles of 
causality and reciprocity, ere philosophy can be 
in a position to discover the ultimate meaning of 

1 This subject the progress of thought from lower to 
higher categories and methods will be more fully discussed 
in the third section. 



440 METAPHYSIC. 

nature by the aid of higher principles. " The 
philosophy of nature," says Hegel, " takes up the 
material, which physical science by direct dealing 
with experience has prepared for it, at the point 
to which science has brought it, and again trans 
forms this formed material without going back to 
experience to verify it. Science must, therefore, 
work into the hands of philosophy, in order that 
philosophy in its turn may translate the lower uni 
versality of the understanding realised by science 
into the higher universality of reason, and may 
show how in the light of this higher universality 
the intelligible world takes the aspect of a whole 
which has its necessity in itself. The philosophic 
way of looking at things is not a capricious attempt, 
once in a way for a change, to walk upon one s 
head after one has got tired of walking upon one s 
feet, or to transform one s work-a-day face by 
painting it over ; but, it is because the scientific 
manner of knowing does not satisfy the whole demand 
of intelligence, philosophy must supplement it by 
another manner of knowing." l 

The result then may be briefly expressed thus. 
Kant and his successors showed the relativity of 
1 Hegel, vii. p 18. 



METAPHYSIC. 441 

the object of knowledge to the knowing mind. 
He thus pointed out that the ordinary conscious 
ness, and even science, are abstract and imperfect 
modes of knowing, in so far as in their deter 
mination of objects they take no account of a 
factor which is always present, to wit, the knowing 
subject. For their purposes, indeed, this abstrac 
tion is justifiable and necessary, for by it they are 
enabled within their prescribed limits to give a 
more complete view of these objects in their re 
lation to each other, than if the attempt had been 
made to regard them also in relation to the 
knowing subject. At the same time the scientific 
result so arrived at is imperfect and incomplete, 
and it has to be reconsidered in the light of a 
philosophy which retracts this provisional abstrac 
tion. For it must be remembered that the fact 
that science looks at things only in their relation 
to each other, and not to the knowing mind, 
narrows the points of view or categories under 
which it is able to regard them, or, in other 
words, limits the questions which the mind is 
able to put to nature. Just because science does 
not treat its objects as essentially related to the 
mind, it is unable to rise to what Hegel calls 



442 METAPHYSIC. 

the point of view of reason, or of the " Begriff" ; 
i.e., it is obliged to treat objects and their re 
lations under a set of categories, the highest of 
which are those of causality and reciprocity, and 
it is incapable of attaining to the conception of 
their organic unity. In other words, it is able 
to reach only a synthetic unity of given differences, 
and it cannot discover a principle of unity out of 
which the differences spring and to which they 
return. Now philosophy goes beyond science just 
because, along with the idea of the relativity of 
things to the mind, it brings in the conception 
of such a unity. Its highest aim is, therefore, not 
merely, as Kant still held, to secure a place for 
the supersensible beyond the region of experience. 
It is to reinterpret experience, in the light of a 
unity which is presupposed in it, but which cannot 
be made conscious or explicit until the relation of 
experience to the thinking self is seen, the unity 
of all things with each other and witli the mind 
that knows them. 

2. Relation of Mctaphysic to Psychology. It has 
already been shown that the doctrine that the 
thinking subject is presupposed in all objects of 
knowledge or, in other words, that existence 



METAPHYSIC. 



443 



means existence for a conscious self is not to 
be taken in a psychological sense. The idea that 
all science is based on psychology, and that, there 
fore, metaphysic and pyschology are identical, can 
not be retained by any one who has entered into 
the full meaning of the Kantian criticism. It is, 
however, so natural a misinterpretation of it, and 
it is so much favoured by the letter of the very 
book in which it was first decisively refuted, that 
it will be useful to point out more directly the 
fallacy involved in it, especially as this will place 
us in a better position to determine the true relation 
of the two parts of philosophy thus confounded. 

The misunderstanding first took a definite form 
in the introduction to Locke s Essay, in which he 
proposes to provide against any undue application 
of the intellectual powers of man to problems 
which are too high for them, by first examining 
and measuring the powers themselves. Stated in 
this way, it is obvious that the proposal involves 
an absurdity ; for we have nothing to measure 
with, except the very powers that are to be 
measured. To see round our knowledge and find 
its boundary, we must stand outside of it, and 
where is such a standing ground to be found ? 



444 METAPHYSIC. 

We cannot by knowing prescribe limits to know 
ledge, or, if we seem to be able to do so, it can 
only be because we compare our actual knowledge 
with some idea of knowledge which we presuppose. 
In this way the ancient Sceptics and modern 
writers like Sir W. Hamilton and Mr. Spencer 
who have followed them turned the duality in 
volved in the idea of knowledge against its unity, 
and argued that because we cannot know the 
object except as different from and related to the 
subject, we cannot know it as it is in itself. 
Obviously in this argument it is involved that, in 
true or absolute knowledge, the object must not 
be distinguished at all from the subject, to which 
the easy answer is that without such distinction 
knowledge would be impossible. The sceptic ar- 
\ gument, therefore, lands us in the unhappy case 

of the German proverb : " If water chokes us, 
what shall we drink ? " The object cannot be 
known if it is distinguished from the subject, and 
it cannot be known if it is not distinguished from 
the subject. Obviously the one objection is as 
good as the other, and both combined only show 
that the idea of knowledge involves distinction as 
well as unity, and unity as well as distinction. 



METAPHYSIC. 445 

The sceptic insists on one of these characteristics 
to the exclusion of the other, and condemns our 
actual knowledge because it contains both. In 
Kant there is undoubtedly some trace of the same 
fallacy, in so far as the idea, by contrast with which 
he condemns the objects of experience as pheno 
menal, is the idea of an abstract identity without 
any difference ; but we have seen that with him 
this abstract identity is on the point of passing 
into an altogether different idea the idea of self- 
consciousness as the type of knowledge. 

It appears, then, that the idea of measuring 
our powers before we employ them rests on a 
paralogism ; for it really means that we isolate 
one of the elements of the idea of knowledge., 
and then condemn knowledge for having other 
elements in it. It is possible to criticise and 
condemn special conceptions as not conforming 
to our idea of knowledge ; but it is not possible 
to criticise the idea of knowledge itself; all we can 
do is to explain it. It is possible to see the 
limited and hypothetical character of certain of our 
ideas or explanations of things, because we are 
conscious that in developing them we have left 
out of account certain of the elements which are 



446 METAPHYSIC. 

necessary to the whole truth ; but this criticism 
itself implies, as the standard to which we appeal, 
the consciousness of truth and reality, a conscious- 

ness which we cannot further criticise. Here, 
I therefore, we come upon what must seem, to 

/ all who think it admissible to question the very 
i possibility of knowledge, an inevitable reason 
ing in a circle. We can answer objections only 
by means of the very idea which they dis 
pute. But the answer is nevertheless a good 
-one ; for the objector also stands within the 
very circle which he seeks to break, and has no 
means of breaking it except itself. As soon as he 
speaks he can be refuted by his own words ; for 
his doubts also presuppose that unity of the 
intelligence and the intelligible world which he 
pretends to deny. 

The error, however, cannot be fully corrected 
until we consider what it is that gives it plausi 
bility. The confusion of the metaphysical with the 
psychological problem is due to the fact that the 
being who is the subject of knowledge, for whom 
all exists that does exist, appears to be one, and 
only one, of the many objects of knowledge. 
When we say that existence means only an 



METAPHYSIC. 



447 



existence for a thinking self, we seem to be 
identifying the whole world with the feelings 
and ideas of men, i.e., with certain phenomena 
that belong to the life of a class of beings which 
only forms a part of that world, phenomena, 
moreover, that are not exactly the same in any 
two of that class of beings. If we are to escape 
this difficulty, it is obvious that we must be able 
to separate the conscious self or subject, as it 
is implied in all knowledge, from the nature of 
man as a being who " though formally self- 
conscious " is yet " part of this partial world," 
i.e., one of the objects which we know along 
with and in distinction from other objects, and 
in whom " the self-consciousness which is in 
itself complete, and which in its completeness 
includes the world as its object," is only pro 
gressively realised. 1 Metaphysic has to deal with 
conditions of the knowable, and hence with self- 
consciousness as that unity which is implied in 
all that is and is known. Psychology has to in 
quire how this self-consciousness is realised or 
developed in man, in whom the consciousness of 

1 Green s General Introduction to Hume s Treatise on 
Human Nature, 152. Works, i. 131. 



448 METAPHYSIC. 

self grows with the consciousness of a world in 
space and time, of which he individually is only 
a part, and only to parts of which he stands in 
immediate relation. In considering the former 
question, we are considering the sphere within 
which all knowledge and all objects of know 
ledge are contained. In considering the latter, 
we are selecting one particular object or class of 
objects within this sphere, although no doubt 
it must make a great difference in our treatment 
of this object that we have to consider it as 
existing not only for us but for itself. If nature 
" becomes self-conscious in man," it is impossible 
to treat man merely as one among the other ob 
jects of nature. But it is not less true that he 
is one of those objects, and, in this point of view, 
the department of science or philosophy that 
deals with his life is as distinct from metaphysic 
which deals with the conditions of all knowing 
and being as is astronomy or physics. In both 
cases we have before us objects which we may 
consider in themselves, apart from their relations 
to the conscious subject ; and in both cases we 
must take cognisance of these relations, if we 
would have a complete and final view of those 



METAPHYSIC. 449 

objects. It is possible to have a purely objective 
psychology, i.e., a psychology which abstracts from 
the relation of man to the mind that knows him, 
just as it is possible to have a purely objective 
science of nature. Such a natural science of man, 
however, will necessarily abstract at the same time 
from the fact, that in man there is manifested 
that universal principle, in relation to which all 
things are and are known. In other words, it 
will omit that distinctive characteristic of man s 
being, in virtue of which he is a subject of know 
ledge and a moral agent. Hence the abstraction 
in this case is more likely to lead to positive 
error, more likely to produce not only an im 
perfect but a distorted view of the object. Inor 
ganic nature, if we take it in itself, is not untruly 
viewed, under the categories of causality and reci 
procity, as a collection of objects externally deter 
mined by each other ; the error lies only in taking 
it as if it could exist in itself. Even organic 
beings do not suffer much injustice in being 
brought under such categories ; for, though, as 
living and still more as sensitive beings, they in 
volve, in themselves and in their relation to the 
world, a kind of unity of differences to which 

2 F 



450 METAPHYSIC. 

the categories of external relation imperfectly 
correspond, yet they are not such unities for 
themselves, but only for us. In other words, the 
principle, through which they are and are known, 
is still external to them. Hence also they are 
determined by outward influences, though these 
influences act rather as stimuli to what we may 
call the self-determined movement of their own 
life than as mechanical or chemical forces which 
change it. But in man, in so far as he is self- 
conscious, and it is self-consciousness that makes 
him man, the unity through which all things 
are and are known is manifested ; and therefore 
he is emancipated, or at least is continually 
emancipating himself, from the law of external 
influence. Nature and necessity exist for him as 
that from which his life starts, in relation to 
which he becomes conscious of himself, against 
which he has to assert himself, and in the com 
plete overcoming of which lies the end of all his 
endeavour. Nature is the negative rather than 
the positive starting-point of his existence, the 
presupposition against which he reacts rather than 
on which he proceeds ; and, therefore, to treat 
him simply as a natural being is even more in- 



METAPHYSIC. 451 

accurate and misleading than to forget or deny 
his relation to nature altogether. A true psycho 
logy must, however, avoid both errors ; it must 
conceive man as at once spiritual and natural ; 
it must find a reconciliation of freedom and neces 
sity. It must face all the difficulties involved in 
the conception of the absolute principle of self- 
consciousness, through which all things are and 
are known, as manifesting itself in the life of 
a being like man, who " comes to himself " only 
by a long process of development out of the un 
consciousness of a merely animal existence. 

This problem first presented itself in a distinct 
form in the discussions of the Socratic school as to 
the nature of knowledge, discussions which turned 
mainly upon the relation of the conscious to the 
unconscious element in thought. Socrates, by his 
method more than by any direct statement, drew 
attention to the fact that all particular judgments 
in morals involve or presuppose a universal prin 
ciple. At the same time he pointed out that, so 
far from this universal principle being known to 
those who are continually making such judgments, 
they are not even conscious of its existence. They 
constantly use general terms whose meaning they 



452 



METAPHYSIC 



have never even thought of denning. The begin 
ning of a rational life for them must therefore lie 
in their becoming conscious of their ignorance, i.e., 
conscious that they have been all along judging, 
and therefore acting, on untested and even unknown 
assumptions. They must bring the unconscious 
universal to the light of day and define it, for 
until that is done, it is impossible to live a moral, 
that is, a rational life. " Virtue is knowledge," i.e., 
it is acting, not according to opinions, or particular 
judgments, judgments whose universal is unknown, 
and which therefore may be regarded as expressing 
merely the impulses or habits of the individual, 
but in view of a universal principle determined 
by reason. 

The one-sidedness of this view which absolutely 
condemns as vice all virtue that is not based on 
conscious principle was partly corrected by another 
part of the doctrine of Socrates, who taught that 
knowledge is something that must be evolved from 
within the mind, and not merely communicated 
to it from without. For this implies that the 
moral principle may be present in men s minds, 
and may rule their thoughts and actions, long 
before they become directly conscious of it. They 



METAPHYSIC. 453 

are rational although they have never thought 
about reason, and they do not wait for scientific 
ethics to judge and act morally, any more than 
they wait for logic to reason correctly. It is 
this line of thought which is universalised and 
mythically expressed by Plato in his doctrine of 
" reminiscence." According to this myth, we were 
conscious of ideas or universals in our pre-natal 
state ; we forgot them in the shock of birth into 
this mortal life ; but in feeling or sharing the 
rapture of the poet or the lover we recall them, 
as identified or confused with particular objects 
which "are like them, or partake in them." The 
same explanation is given of the practical skill of 
the general and the statesman, and even of the 
" right opinion " which guides the ordinary good 
man. 1 Such opinion is neither knowledge nor 
ignorance : not knowledge, for in it general prin 
ciples or ideas are not present to the mind as ideas, 
and therefore the particular objects cannot be dis 
tinctly subsumed under them ; yet not ignorance, for 
the ideas are after all present, though wrapped up 
in the particulars or confused with them. Nay, in 
the Thecetetus, Plato endeavours to show that the 
1 Meno. 99 C. 



454 METAPHYSIC. 

pure particular without the universal, sensations 
without ideas, cannot enter into our consciousness 
at all, and that therefore the lowest point to which 
a conscious being can descend is " opinion," 
in which particular and universal, sensible 
and intelligible, are mingled together. In 
other words, no conscious being can apprehend 
the particular except through the universal, though 
that universal may be present only in consciousness 
and not to it. The task of philosophy is therefore 
only to make men "recollect" themselves, i.e., to 
make self-conscious that universality of thought in 
which all rational beings " partake," or which, in 
the language of later philosophy, constitutes reason. 
The imperfection of Plato s view lay, however, in 
this, that, while he clearly recognised that the 
condition of all consciousness of the particular is 
the universal, he did not see with equal clearness 
that the universal has a meaning only in relation 
to the particular. And this tendency to separate 
universal from particular is naturally accompanied 
by a tendency to set the subjective against the 
objective, and to regard the world, not as the 
manifestation of reason, but as a dualistic world, 
in which reason is chained to a lower principle 



METAPHYSIC. 455 

a world which can at best only give a hint or 
suggestion to the mind which may enable it to 
" recollect " itself and recover for itself its own 
treasures. Thus the false method of introspection, 
the " high priori road " of mysticism, was at least 
opened up by Plato, if he did not himself alto 
gether forsake the narrower and harder wav to the 

O v 

spiritual world through nature and experience. 

The great step in advance taken by Aristotle 
was due to his seeing the danger of this tendency. 
Those, however, who have maintained that Aristotle 
is the great a posteriori philosopher, as Plato is 
the great a priori philosopher, have entirely 
mistaken the bearing of Aristotle s criticism of 
the Platonic theory. As strongly as Plato does 
Aristotle maintain that reason is Swa/mei TTUVTU TU 
voyrd, and that, therefore, the apprehension of 
truth ~by the mind is not a mere external com 
munication of it to the mind, but rather is the 
mind coming to a consciousness of itself. As 
firmly as Plato does he declare that truth in its 
highest form is self-evidencing, i.e., that the prin 
ciples of science, the laws of nature, when once 
they have been discovered, are seen to be true by 
their own light. His statements to this effect have 



456 METAPHYSIC. 

been neglected or explained away, because they 
were supposed to be inconsistent with his still 
more frequently reiterated assertions that it is only 
from experience and by induction that the truth 
of things can be discovered. Writers of a later 
day, who came to Aristotle with an idea of a 
fixed opposition between a priori and a posteriori, 
and who held that the only possible alternatives 
were either to divide knowledge between the two 
or to explain away one of them, could not com 
prehend that Aristotle might be in earnest both 
in asserting that knowledge is derived from ex 
perience, and in asserting that it is an appre 
hension by reason of that which is identical with 
itself and needs no extraneous evidence. But 
Aristotle started with no such fixed opposition. 
On the contrary, any one who reads the last 
chapter of the Posterior Analytics will see that 
he had no difficulty in maintaining that know 
ledge begins in the apprehension of TO KaO 
CKCUTTOV in sense perception, and that it proceeds 
from many perceptions to experience, and from 
many experiences to science ; while at the 
same time he declared that the principles of 
science have their evidence in themselves. And 



METAPHYSIC. 457 

the meaning of this declaration is shown in the 
De Anima, where we find him speaking of know 
ledge as the realisation in the " passive reason " of 
man of an " active reason " which is eternal and 
unchangeable, and which in the consciousness of 
itself includes the knowledge of all things. Of 
this realisation, indeed, there is in man only the 
potentiality or capacity, but just because this is 
a pure or universal capacity, because, as Aristotle 
puts it, it has no quality or determination of its 
own to stand between it and its objects, it is a 
capacity in which the absolute reason can realise 
itself, a capacity of knowing all things. 1 Here 
we have Plato s myth of reminiscence freed from 
the metaphor of memory, and reduced to scientific 
terms ; for that myth simply meant that the 
evolution of knowledge is the development of the 
mind to that consciousness of itself, and of all that 
is potentially in it. Only, by the combination 
of this doctrine with the idea of the necessity of 
induction, Aristotle guards against the purely sub 
jective interpretation to which in Plato it was 
liable. For the process by which the mind 
" comes to itself " is conceived as a process by 
l De Anima, iii. ch. 4. 



458 METAPHYSIC. 

which at the same time it rises from the parti 
cular . to the universal, from the yva>pi/u.a. yfuv 
to the yvu>pi/u.u uTrAoj?, from the bare apprehension 
of the facts of experience to the knowledge of 
them through their principles or laws. 

Yet Aristotle was as little able as Plato to 
work out fully a theory of the relation between 
the universal and the individual reason ; and the 
cause of this failure was in both cases sub 
stantially the same. In Plato s philosophy, the 
ideal tended to divorce itself from the phenomenal 
world in such wise that the latter was regarded 
only as suggesting or partaking in the former, 
but not as entirely explicable by it. It was not 
merely that, to the mind of the individual in its 
progress, the veil was only gradually lifted from 
the rationality of the world, but that in the world 
there was an irrational element from which the 
mind could save itself only by flight into the 
region of abstraction. And, though Aristotle by 
his doctrine of the essential relation of ideas to 
experience, or of the development of the mind 
to the acquisition of knowledge of the world, 
seemed to be on the way to correct this error, 
yet he too shrinks from regarding the phenomenal 



METAPHYSIC. 459 

world as in itself intelligible. To him also an 
irrational matter mingles with things, and is in 
them a source of contingency and imperfection. 
Chance is not merely the reflection upon the 
world of our imperfect knowledge, but a fact of 
experience, and there is therefore a region in 
which our best science cannot rise above generality 
to universality. In this way there remains for 
Aristotle an absolute a posteriori, a reality which 
cannot be understood, and which we can scarcely 
conceive as existing at all for the divine intelli 
gence. At this point the Aristotelian philosophy 
appears to stand between two alternatives ; either 
that, in the sense of pantheism, the finite world 
and its contingency is an illusion, or that it is 
contingent only for the growing intelligence of 
man, which fully understands neither itself nor 
the world which is its object. Aristotle, however, 
does not choose either horn of the dilemma, and 
leaves us therefore with an unresolved dualism 
between thought and its object ; and this again 
necessarily involves a dualism between the active 
reason, which, as he asserts, realises itself in man, 
and the passive reason which constitutes his 
nature as a finite being. 



460 METAPHYSIC. 

In the Middle Ages the Platonic and Aristotelian 
idea that the apprehension of objective truth is 
one with the evolution of the mind to self-con 
sciousness seemed to be entirely lost. Knowledge 
of the finite world was regarded as of little value, 
and knowledge of the infinite was conceived to be 
something given on authority, and in reference to 
which the mind was confined to an attitude of 
passive reception or implicit faith. Xo greater 
slavery of the spirit can be conceived than that 
in which even the truths of religion and morality 
the truths that regard the inmost life of the 
spirit itself were taken as a lesson to be learned 
by rote from the lips of a teacher. Yet the 
consciousness that such truth, if it was to be 
received by the mind, still more if it was to 
transform the mind, could not be entirely foreign 
to it, found a voice in the scholastic philosophy. 
And the compromise or truce between faith and 
reason expressed in the saying of Anselm credo ut 
intelligam, according to which reason was to 
confine itself to the analysis and demonstration of 
the data received in implicit faith from the Church, 
prepared the way for the recognition that the 
two are not essentially at variance. The mind 



METAPHYSIC. 461 

that proceeds from veneratio to delectatio, from awe 
and submission to the doctrine to enjoyment and 
appreciation of it, must already in its awe and sub 
mission have the beginnings of an intelligent 
appreciation. Anselm s saying might be understood 
simply as meaning that we must have spiritual 
experience, ere we can understand the things of 
the spirit. And in this sense it was adopted by 
the Eeformers to express an idea almost the opposite 
of that with which the Scholastics had associated it, 
the idea that the direct apprehension of spiritual 
truth as entering into the inner life of the subject, 
as identified with his very consciousness of self, 
is the basis of all knowledge of it. In the 
Protestant church of the period after the Reforma 
tion, we find a growing tendency to insist on the 
subjectivity of religion, in the same exclusive and 
one-sided way in which the mediteval Church had 
insisted on its objectivity. In some extreme 
representatives of Protestantism this went so far 
as to lead to a disregard, almost to a rejection, 
of all objective doctrine, and a reduction of theology 
to an account of the religious consciousness. On 
the other hand, while religion was thus made 
subjective, science claimed to be purely objective, 



462 METAPHYSIC. 

and the followers of Bacon seemed to adopt towards 
nature the same attitude of passive receptivity 
which the mediaeval Christian was taught to hold 
towards the Church. While man was to learn 
everything from himself in religion, he was to learn 
nothing from himself in science. His aim must 
be to exclude subjective idola, in other words, to 
accept the facts as they were given, and keep 
himself out of the way. The inevitable result of 
this difference of view as to the nature of knowledge 
in these two different regions was, however, on the 
one hand a withdrawal of religion from all con 
nection with finite interests, and, especially from 
the attempt to connect religious principles with 
the knowledge of the finite world, and, on the 
other hand, an increasing tendency in those who 
represented finite science to regard religion as 
something merely subjective and even individual, 
as a feeling which could not be translated into 
thought or made the basis of any knowledge of 
the objective world. 

The opposite principles of certitude, which were 
thus set up for religious truth and truth of science, 
need only to be brought together and contrasted 
to betray that they rest upon opposite abstractions, 



METAPHYSIC. 463 

neither of which expresses the complete nature of 
truth or knowledge. On the one hand the truths 
of religion were maintained just because they were 
not, or were not merely, objective, but were 
capable of being tested by inner experience, and 
identified with the self-consciousness of the in 
dividual. On the other hand the truths of 
science were maintained because they were not, or 
were not merely, subjective, but were capable 
of being verified in objective experience. It was 
rightly seen on the one side that mere subjective 
feelings or opinions have no validity for any one 
but the subject of them, and on the other side 
that what is merely objective or externally given 
can have permanent value and interest for the 
intelligence only as it ceases to be mere isolated 
and unrelated fact nay, that, even when science 
has discovered law and order in nature, its results 
still want the highest value and interest so long 
as that law and order are not seen as standing 
in essential relation to the intelligence itself. 
The idea of truth or knowledge as that which is 
at once objective and subjective, as the unity of 
things with the mind that knows them, enables 
us to understand the condemnation which the 



464 METAPHYSIC. 

religious mind passed upon a merely external 
dogma, and even its lack of interest in a science 
which presented itself as an account of merely 
objective or external facts. And it enables us 
also to understand the way in which scientific 
men insisted upon objective fact as the basis of 
all knowledge, and the disrespect which they felt 
for a religion which seemed to admit that it had 
no such support. What is wanted to clear up 
the confusion on both sides is the growth of the 
perception among scientific men, that the objectivity 
which they are seeking cannot be mere objectivity 
(which would be unmeaning), but an objectivity 
that stands in essential relation to the intelligence, 
and, on the other hand, the growth of the perception 
among religious men, that the subjectivity of religion 
only means that God, who is the objective principle 
by whom things are and are known, is a spiritual 
Being, and can therefore be revealed to the spirit. 
When these two corrections have been made, it 
must become obvious that the religious conscious 
ness is not the consciousness of another object 
than that which is present in finite experi 
ence and science, but simply a higher way of 
knowing the same object. And in this it is 



METAPHYSIC. 465 

also involved that the two ideas of a priori and 
a posteriori, of that which is evolved from within 
and that which is given from without, are not 
essentially opposed to each other, but that the a 
posteriori is simply the first form of a consciousness 
which in its ultimate development must become a 
priori. 

In that philosophy of compromise which was 
initiated by Descartes, one part of knowledge was 
regarded as innate, or developed from within, and 
another part as empirical, or imparted from without. 
In the second period of the history of modern 
philosophy this compromise was broken, and the 
names of Locke and Leibniz though with some 
hesitation on both sides represent respectively the 
theory that all knowledge is a posteriori and the 
theory that all knowledge is a priori. The com 
promise seemed to be renewed with Kant, but the 
form in which it was renewed pointed, as has been 
already shown, to something more than a com 
promise ; for his doctrine was that the a posteriori 
element, the facts, exist for us only under a priori 
conditions, or, in other words, that what is usually 
called a posteriori is in part a priori. The criticism 

of this view need not be repeated. It is sufficient 
2 G 



466 METAPHYSIC. 

here to say that if, as Kant shows, the elements 
are inseparable or organically united, it is impossible 
to allege that so much belongs to the one and 
so much to the other. Furthermore, the conscious 
ness of an essential difference in the elements of 
knowledge is possible, only so far as that difference 
is transcended by the unity of knowledge. We 
can distinguish the a priori from the a posteriori 
only on condition that we can transcend the dis 
tinction, and this means that the distinction itself 
is not absolute, but that there is a point of view 
from which the a posteriori may be regarded as a 
priori, and that which is given from without to the 
spirit may be referred to its own self-determined 
development. 

Now it is just here that we come upon the 
great turning-point of philosophical controversy, in 
the form which it has taken in modern times. 
The problem may be expressed thus In what sense 
can we apply the idea of development to the human 
spirit ? Are we to treat that development as 
merely a determination from without, or as an 
evolution from within, or as partly the one and 
partly the other ? In a sense all writers of the 
present day would admit that this last is the case. 



METAPHYSIC. 467 

For, on the one hand, even the Darwinian theory 
accounts for development by aid of what we may 
call the a priori tendency of the individual to 
maintain itself in the struggle for existence, though 
it supposes that the condition or medium in which 
the individual is placed determines the direction in 
which that development proceeds. And, on the other 
hand, no one now would adopt the Leibnizian 
theory that the individual is a monad, whose self- 
development is entirely conditioned by itself in 
such a sense that all the relations which it has to 
other existences are merely apparent, and that the 
coincidence of its life with the life of the world is 
the result of a pre-established harmony. On both 
sides, therefore, it would be admitted that in 
some sense the individual is determined by itself, 
though the tendency of the Darwinians would be 
to regard such self-determination as something 
merely formal ; and on both sides it would also 
be admitted that self-determination does not ex 
clude a determination from without, though ex 
treme opponents of Darwin might be inclined to 
reduce this determination to a mere stimulus, or 
external condition, of the development of the nature 
of the subject to which the stimulus is applied. 



468 METAPHYSIC. 

The question, however, remains whether, after all, 
this opposition of without and within is an absolute 
one, or whether there is any point of view from 
which it may be transcended. To Aristotle it 
seemed possible to answer this question in the 
affirmative, because he conceived that the reason 
of man is a pure or universal $vva/mi$, the evolution 
of which to complete self-consciousness is one with 
the process whereby the objective world comes to 
be known. Yet, as Aristotle admitted the existence 
in the world of a material principle which was essen 
tially different from the ideal principle of reason, he 
was obliged to limit his assertion of the possible 
unity of the subjective and the objective conscious 
ness, and to say merely that " in things without 
matter the knower is identical with the known." l 
But this would immediately lead to the conclusion 
that the pure development of reason must be 
secured by abstraction from all finite and material 
objects, rather than by a thorough comprehension 
of them. The freedom of the spirit, on this theory, 
must be a negative and not a positive freedom, a 
freedom won, not by overcoming the world, but by 
withdrawing ourselves from its influence. 
1 De Anima, iii. 4. 



METAPHYSIC. 469 

It remained, therefore, for modern philosophy to 
work out the Aristotelian idea that the rational 
being as such, in spite of its necessary relation to 
and dependence on an external world, is never 
in an absolute sense externally determined. And. 
as we have already seen, the Kantian philosophy 
brought this problem within the reach of solution, 
in so far as it showed, first, that objective existence 
can have no meaning except existence for a thinking 
self, and, secondly, that existence for a thinking 
self means an existence the consciousness of which 
is " capable of being combined with the conscious 
ness of self." Add to these propositions the doc 
trine which was maintained by Kant s successors, 
that that only can be combined with the conscious 
ness of self which is essentially related to it, and 
we arrive at an idealistic theory of the world, which 
enables us at once to understand the relative value 
of the distinction between self-determination and 
determination from without, and at the same time 
to see that it is only relative. If it be true that 
nothing exists which is not a possible object of 
consciousness, and again that there is no possible 
object of consciousness which is not essentially 
related to the unity of the self, then the phenomena 



470 M ETA PHYSIC. 

of the external world, which at first present them 
selves under the aspect of contingent facts, must 
be capable of being ultimately recognised as the 
manifestation of reason ; and the history of the 
conscious being in his relations with that world is 
not a struggle between two independent and un 
related forces, but the evolution by antagonism of 
one spiritual principle. It is, on this view, the 
same life, which within us is striving for develop 
ment, and which without us conditions that develop 
ment. And the reason why the two terms, the 
self and the not-self, thus appear to be independent 
of each other, or to be brought together only as 
they externally act or react upon each other, lies 
in this, that the object is imperfectly known, and 
the subject is imperfectly self-conscious. This, 
however, does not make it less true that in self- 
consciousness is to be found the principle in refer 
ence to which the whole process may be explained, 
and therefore that the self-conscious subject, as 
such, lives a life which belongs to him, not merely 
as one object among others, but as having in him 
self the principle from which the life and being 
of all proceeds. 

From this point of view, as has been already 



MKTAPHYSIC. 471 

indicated, the relative value of a theory of human 
development, such as that which might be based 
on the ideas of Darwin, would not be denied. The 
conscious being may be regarded simply as an 
externally determined object, and the incorrectness 
of this assumption will not entirely destroy the 
value of the results attained, especially if, as is 
often the case with those who seek to construct a 
natural science of man, the assumption itself is 
not very strictly adhered to, but corrected by the 
tacit admission of other conceptions somewhat 
inconsistent with it. But, at the same time, it 
would require to be pointed out that such a science 
is necessarily abstract and imperfect, as it omits 
from its view the central fact in the life of the 
object of which it treats. It can do nothing to 
account for man s consciousness, or his capacity of 
becoming conscious, of the influences by which he 
is supposed to be determined ; or, to put it from 
the other side, it takes for granted that the objects 
that influence man are intelligible objects, "capable 
of being combined with the consciousness of self," 
without seeing how much is involved in this assump 
tion. Now it is evident that the consciousness of 
an influence cannot be explained by the influence 



472 METAPHYSIC. 

itself, nor even by that influence taken together 
with the nature of the sensitive beings subjected 
to it. It is evident also that an influence mediated 
by consciousness is not, strictly speaking, an 
external influence, but that it is already transformed, 
and in process of being further transformed, by the 
development of the self to which it is present. 
For the dawn of consciousness, in which the 
external object first comes into existence for us as 
opposed to the self, is at the same time the 
beginning of the process by which its externality 
is negated or overcome. Self-consciousness is that 
which makes us individuals in a sense in which 
individuality can be predicated of none but a self- 
conscious being. For, in determining himself as a 
self, the individual at the same time excludes from 
himself every other thing and being, and determines 
them as external objects. He emancipates himself 
from the world at the same time that he repels the 
world from himself. Yet this movement of thought, 
by which his individuality is constituted, is also 
that by which he is lifted above mere individuality, 
for, in becoming conscious of self and not-self in 
their opposition and relation, he ceases to be simply 
identified with the one to the exclusion of the other. 



METAPHYSIC. 473 

His finite individuality is regarded by him from a 
universal point of view, in which it has no less 
and no more importance than any other individual 
ity, or in which its greater or less importance is 
determined only by its place in the whole. On 
this universality of consciousness rests the possibility 
of science and of morality. For all science is just 
a contemplation of the world in online ad univcrsum 
and not in ordine ad individuum ; and all morality 
is just action with a view to an interest which 
belongs to the agent, not as this individual, but as 
a member of a greater whole, and ultimately of the 
absolute whole in which all men and all things 
are included. 

In this nature of the conscious subject lies also 
the possibility of metaphysic in the sense of Aris 
totle, as that science which goes lack to a Trputrov 
(pv/rei, a beginning which is prior to the exist 
ence in consciousness of the individual self, and 
forward to an end in which the divisions of the 
finite consciousness are transcended, as including, 
in short, ontology, or metaphysic in the narrower 
sense, on the one side, and theology, or the philo 
sophy of religion, on the other. In truth, these two 
extremes of science are necessarily bound together : 



474 



METAPHYSIC. 



we cannot go back to the beginning, unless we can 
go on to the end ; we can recover the first unity 
only if we can anticipate the last. Or, to free 
this thought from the associations of time, we can 
not apprehend the unity which is involved or pre 
supposed in all the differences of our conscious 
life, except in so far as we can look at our indi 
vidual existence from the point of view of the 
whole to which it belongs. 

This will become more evident, if we consider 
the nature of the limits which have to be trans 
cended by such a science. The individual con 
scious subject, as he finds himself at first, is but 
one being in a world that stretches out, apparently 
without limits, on every side of him. Of the 
things by which he is immediately surrounded he 
sees but a small part, and the influences which 
he receives from them are, as he knows, like the 
wave that breaks upon a shore from an unknown 
ocean, only the last partial expression of impulses- 
that come from regions beyond his ken. Again, 
he finds himself as one in a changing series of 
beings, of which he knows only the last preceding 
terms, and he is aware that in a few years he, 
as one of this series, will cease to be. He is 



METAPHYSIC. 475 

thus to himself a definitely limited being, and 
though his knowledge of himself and his world 
may be gradually widened so as to reach some 
little way back into the past, and anticipate a 
little of the future, or may go outwards in space 
to embrace a widening circle of existences around 
him, yet he always stops at a limit, of which he 
is conscious that it is no absolute limit, but 
simply an arbitrary halting-place where vision 
grows indistinct and imperfect. When he reflects 
upon himself from this point of view, he is forced 
to regard himself as but a fragment, and a frag 
ment of an unknown whole, by which his whole 
being is determined to be what it is. His 
highest knowledge seems to be but a consciousness 
of his ignorance, his highest freedom a deter 
mination by motives the ultimate meaning of 
which is hid from him. 

So far there seems to be no room for any 
metaphysical knowledge, any knowledge of our 
selves and our world, which is other than relative 
and in online ad indi ciduum. But further re 
flection shows that in this very consciousness of 
limit there is implied a consciousness of that 
which is beyond limit. While we proceed from 



476 METAPHYSIC. 

part to part, beginning with ourselves and our 
immediate surroundings, and following out lines 
of connection that lose themselves in the distance, 
we are guided by a consciousness of the whole 
as a unity through which the parts are deter 
mined. Nay, it is just the presence of this con 
sciousness that makes us capable of what seems 
the piecework of our knowledge, in which, by 
the aid of the principle of causality, we connect 
particular with particular, and so gradually extend 
the sphere of light into the encompassing darkness. 
For that principle simply means that the limited 
external object does not sufficiently explain to us 
its own existence, and that therefore we are 
forced to explain it by a reference to something 
beyond it. It means, in other words, that we 
cannot rest in that which is not a self-bounded, 
self-determined whole. The application of the 
category of external determination has therefore 
an essential reference to the higher category of 
self-determination. The mere endlessness of space 
and time has no meaning except in opposition, 
yet in relation, to the true infinity, of which we 
find the type in self-conscious thought. Or, to 
put it in the Kantian form in which it is already 



METAPHYSIC. 477 

familiar to us, the consciousness of the objective 
world in space and time stands in relation to the 
unity of self-consciousness. And if, when we 
regard the former exclusively, we are forced to 
view ourselves as insignificant and short-sighted 
finite beings in an infinite universe, when we regard 
the latter we are enabled to see that what is 
revealed in all that universe is only that spiritual 
principle which we find also in ourselves. In 
this way a new light is thrown on our first con 
sciousness of ignorance. The strivings of our 
reason after knowledge can no longer be regarded 
as strivings after an unknown goal, but rather 
after a goal which it has prescribed for itself. 
The narrow limits of our individual life are not 
removed, but they cease to be for us the limits 
of a narrow circle of definition within a form 
less infinite. They become the limits of a sphere 
within a sphere, a sphere which is defined by the 
idea of knowledge or self-consciousness itself, and 
in which therefore, however we may wander, we 
are everywhere at home. In religious language, 
the sphere is not a mere universe, but God, who is 
without us only as He is within us, so that " by the 
God within we can understand the God without." 



478 METAPHYSIC. 

Again, as this consciousness takes man beyond 
his immediate existence, and enables him to de 
termine it in relation to an absolute unity of all 
things in God, so it enables him to go back to 
n unity which is behind or prior to that exist 
ence. For, if the individual can look at himself 
just as he looks at others, and at others as he 
looks at himself, i.e., if he can regard the world 
from a point of view which is unaffected by 
his individuality, and in which that individuality 
is for him only what it is for impartial reason, 
he can have nothing in him which binds his 
consciousness to his individuality as mere in 
dividuality. As therefore he can go beyond 
himself to apprehend the whole in which his 
individuality has a place, so there is nothing to 
prevent him from going back upon himself, and 
upon the conditions which are prior to his own 
individual being. He is not tied to his immediate 
life, and can go below it just as he can rise 
above it. 

"0 God, I think Thy thoughts after Thee," 
said Kepler. In reading the " thoughts " written 
in the planetary system, Kepler was discovering 
the meaning of that which is simpler and more 



METAPHYSIC. 

elementary than the existence of man, as a cycle 
of mechanical relations is simpler and more ele 
mentary than self-consciousness. Yet it was a 
true feeling that led him to connect this descent 
into the mechanical world with God. For it is 
only in virtue of the same faculty which enables 
us to rise to the absolute life which includes and 
subordinates our own, that we can so free our 
selves from the image of our own conscious life 
as to apprehend and comprehend the simpler 
relations of purely physical existence. But the 
same faculty of going back upon ourselves has a 
still deeper manifestation. Xot only can we ab 
stract from ourselves so as to understand the 
inorganic world, we can also abstract from our 
selves so as to understand the conditions which 
are prior to the thought, and therefore to the 
existence, of any objective external world at all, 
the universal conditions of the knowable and 
therefore also of reality. In doing so, to use 
Hegel s metaphor, which is but an extension of 
Kepler s, we are " thinking what God thought and 
was before the creation of the world," i.e., we are 
thinking the spiritual unity presupposed in all 
knowledge, and therefore in all objects of know- 



480 M ETA PHYSIC. 

ledge the consciousness in relation to which 
everything is, and is known. 

3. The Relation of Metaphysic to Logic.- The 
ordinary view of logic is based on two presup 
positions which tend to separate it almost entirely 
from metaphysic : it is based on the presupposition 
of an opposition, or at least a merely external 
relation, between thought and its object, and again 
of an opposition, or merely external relation, 
between the form or method and the content or 
matter of thought. The intelligence is regarded 
as dealing with an object which is given to it 
externally, and which, therefore, it can truly represent, 
only if it leaves it unchanged and introduces into 
it nothing of its own. Truth, to use a well-known 
definition, is the agreement of our conceptions with 
their objects, and in bringing about this agreement 
all the concessions must be on the side of thought. 
Conformably to this view, the processes of thought 
must be purely analytic ; i.e., thought may break 
up the given idea of the object into its constituent 
elements, and again out of these elements it may 
recompose the idea in its unity, but it can add 
nothing and take nothing away. It is like an 
instrument which alternately dissects a solid mass 



METAPHYSIC. 481 

into smaller parts and again mechanically presses 
them together, but which never penetrates and 
dissolves the harder matter, still less fuses it into 
a new form, by bringing it into contact with new 
chemical elements. 

This conception, like much of the philosophy of 
which it is a specimen, is a kind of exaggerated 
caricature of one aspect of the philosophy of 
Aristotle. Aristotle is the great analytic philo 
sopher. He first laid down boundaries in that 
continuous domain of science which Plato had 
first surveyed. Not, that he ever completely lost 
sight of the unity or continuity of the different 
sciences which he thus distinguished. His un 
rivalled genius is shown nowhere more clearly 
than in those not unfrequent utterances, weighty 
with speculative insight into the unity of things, 
in which, at a stroke, he makes his own land 
marks and all landmarks to disappear. Yet 
such utterances generally stand by themselves, 
and do not alter the general analytic spirit of 
his philosophy. They are not so developed as to 
show distinctly the merely relative character of the 
divisions and distinctions which he elsewhere sets 

up, or the limits of the sphere within which they 
2 H 



482 METAPHYSIC. 

hold good. Hence it was easy for minds, which 
possessed something of Aristotle s keenness of 
understanding without his speculative depth, to 
neglect such expressions, or to explain them away. 
And this process of degradation was the more rapid, 
as the philosophy of Aristotle soon ceased to be 
studied in his own writings, and became a tra 
ditionary possession of the schools. In this way 
we may partly explain how logic came to be re 
garded by mediaeval philosophy as a mere form of 
thought, which could be altogether separated from 
the matter, and by the application of which that 
matter could be in no way affected or changed. 
But for such a view, indeed, it is difficult to con 
ceive how the schoolmen could have ventured to 
apply any logical processes at all to the sacred 
matter of dogma. The idea of externally adding 
anything to the faith once delivered to the saints 
was excluded by the principle of authority ; and 
the idea of developing out of that faith anything 
that was not immediately contained in it had not 
yet presented itself to any one. Hence the busi 
ness of thought seemed to be purely formal and 
analytic, and it was only on the plea of its being 
such, that its activity could be tolerated at all. 



METAPHYSIC. 483 

Xor was this view of logic at once changed by 
the revolt against scholasticism. The first philo 
sophical exponents of the modern scientific move 
ment, while they rejected the matter of dogma 
as fictitious, or at least as transcending the sphere 
of positive knowledge, and while they substituted 
in its place, as the object of investigation, the 
facts of experience, did not realise any more than 
the schoolmen that the form or method of know 
ledge could be other than analytic of given matter. 
Bacon, their protagonist, was above all solicitous 
to guard against any subjective anticipatio naturce; 
nor did he see that the questions which, in his 
theory of " forms," he proposed that science should 
ask of nature, themselves involved any precon 
ceived theory regarding it. Conscious, as every 
true scientific mind must be, that the study of nature 
involves a constant self-abnegation, a patient self- 
distrustful course of experiment and observation, 
he and his followers did not realise the presup 
positions that make the inquiry possible, and by 
which it must be guided. Still less did they 
recognise that the separation between the mind 
and its object, which they took for granted, can 
only be a relative division, i.e., a division on the 



484 METAPHYSIC. 

basis of a unity, and that therefore the self-abneg 
ation of the mind in its investigation of facts 
cannot be an absolute self-abnegation, but is only 
the first step on the way to the discovery that 
the facts are intelligible, and so essentially related 
to the intelligence. Hence to them logic still 
seemed an analytic process, the end and aim of 
which was understood to be that a world, existing 
in itself out of relation to thought, should be re 
produced in a more or less imperfect image in 
thought. And, when it came to be suspected by 
a less naive philosophy of experience that, after 
all, certain presuppositions, not given in experience 
itself, were involved in the scientific interpretation 
of it, various expedients were devised to reduce 
these presuppositions in an indirect way to em 
pirical truths, expedients of which Mill s attempt 
to base the law of causality upon an inductio per 
cnumerationcm simplicem may be taken as the 
type. 

When we go back to Aristotle, who was the 
"founder of logic" in the sense that he was the first 
who treated logical method as a separate branch 
of science, we find that his division of logic 
from metaphysic is by no means so definite and 



METAPHYSIC. 485 

complete as it was made by some of his successors. 
The vindication of the highest principle of thought. 
the law of contradiction, is treated by him as the 
business of metaphysic. And, though he separates 
the idea of truth from the idea of reality, and 
regards the former as involving a relation of 
thought to a reality which is determined in itself 
independent of thought, yet he does not regard 
this independence as by any means absolute. 
Truth is defined by him as a connection or dis 
tinction of ideas which corresponds to a union or 
separation of things, but does not necessarily so 
correspond. This definition, however, holds good 
only in so far as things not essentially related 
are brought together Kara cru/ui./3e/3>]K:o<;. Where 
necessity comes in, and is apprehended by reason, 
the case is different. For in that case we have 
not merely an external synthesis, but an essential 
identity, i.e., a unity of elements which can neither 
be, nor be known, apart from each other. In 
relation to the principles of science, therefore, 
Aristotle holds that error, i.e., a connection of 
ideas not corresponding to a connection of things, 
is impossible, and that the only alternatives are 
knowledge and ignorance. Either we possess the 



486 METAPHYSIC. 

idea or we do not possess it ; as Aristotle otherwise 
expresses it, in thought we are either in contact 
with the things or not in contact with them ; 
there is no third possibility. The meaning of 
Aristotle becomes clearer when we remember that, 
according to his view, the intelligence, in appre 
hending the indivisible unity of elements in the 
object, is at the same time apprehending the 
unity of the object with itself. The mind cannot 
be deceived in regard to that which forms a part 
of its consciousness of itself. In freeing the 
essential conception of the object from the con 
tingency of matter, science has freed the object 
from that which made it foreign to the intelligence, 
and the relation of thought to things ceases to 
be one of correspondence, and becomes one of 
identity. 

The legitimate inference from this view of the 
relation of the intelligence to the intelligible world 
would seem to be, that the partial separation of 
thought from its object, and its imperfect corre 
spondence with it, are characteristic of our first 
empirical consciousness of things, and of the stage 
in which we are advancing from that consciousness 
to science, but that in completed science the 



METAPHYSIC. 487 

division ceases. The csse of things is not their 
percipi, but their intelligi. But, if this be 
taken as the truth, then it can no longer 
be supposed that the process by which scientific 
knowledge is attained, consists simply in an analysis 
of the object as it is given in immediate perception. 
On the contrary, it must be held that, if our 
thought has to submit itself to the object, and if 
it has to be brought into conformity with the object 
by a process of induction, it is equally true that 
in this process the object also must be changed, that 
it may be brought into conformity with the principle 
of thought. The genesis of science, according to this 
view, is not merely an analysis of given facts, but 
a process of vital transformation, by which con 
sciousness on the one side and the object on the 
other are brought into unity with each other. The 
idea, indeed, of an empty process, a process in 
which the activity of the mind is merely formal, is 
one which will not stand the slightest examination. 
A mind without categories, if such a thing were 
conceivable, would have no questions to ask in 
relation to the object presented to it, and could 
therefore get no answers. Those who make a 
pretence of approaching an object in an absolutely 



4 88 METAPHYSIC. 

receptive attitude, and without any presuppositions, 
only show that they are unconscious of the cate 
gories by which their thought is ruled ; and they 
will be most slavishly guided by these categories 
just because they are unconscious of them. The 
schoolmen, indeed, when they applied their logical 
principles to the matter of Christian dogma, did not 
recognise that they were doing more than analysing 
and bringing out clearly the meaning of that dogma. 
But the effect of their work was to turn the whole 
system of theology into a collection of insoluble 
puzzles ; for the doctrine they had to analyse 
was a doctrine of reconciliation between divine 
and human, infinite and finite, universal and 
particular, and the principle of their method was 
to treat all these oppositions as absolute. In 
like manner it might be shown that the analysis 
of social phenomena which was made in the last 
century, was inadequate and superficial, just be 
cause of the latent assumption of individualism 
on which it proceeded, and that the greater 
success of writers like Comte and Spencer does not 
arise, merely or mainly, from their being more 
careful observers of the phenomena of social life, 
but in great part from the fact that, rather by the 



METAPHYSIC. 489 

unconscious movement of opinion than by any 
distinct metaphysic, their minds have become 
possessed by more adequate categories. 

The idea that the process of thought is merely 
formal, or analytic of given matter, is, however, an 
error that has a truth underlying it. This is the 
truth expressed by Aristotle in his much misunder 
stood comparison of the intelligence of man to a 
tabula rasa, upon which nothing at first is written, 
and again in his assertion already quoted that 
the mind is a pure Svvafw, without any distinguish 
ing quality of its own which could prevent it from 
apprehending the real nature of other things. For 
the meaning of these statements is that self-con 
scious reason is not a special thing in the world, 
but the principle through which all things are, 
and are understood ; and that, therefore, prior to 
experience, the undeveloped reason of man is un 
determined and indifferent, and open to be deter 
mined in one way or another, according to the 
object to which it is directed. Hence the con 
scious subject, as such, is not bound to his own 
individuality, but can regard things, nay, in a sense, 
must regard them, from a point of view which is 
independent of it. This is what makes possible 



490 METAPHYSIC. 

the self-restraint and self-abnegation prescribed to 
the scientific man, whose whole duty, as it is often 
said, is to keep himself out of the way and let the 
objects speak, to lay aside all subjective idola and 
prejudices that stand between him and the reality 
of things.. This at first sight may seem to be 
equivalent to the assertion that the mind ought to 
be in a state of simple passivity or receptivity 
towards objects. What is really meant, however, 
is not that the intelligence should go out of itself, 
or cease to be itself, that it may know its object, 
but simply that it should show itself in its univer 
sality, or freedom from the limits of the individual 
nature. The self-abnegation of science is an 
endeavour, so to speak, to see the object with its 
own eyes, but this it can do only in so far as the 
consciousness, for which the object is, is that con 
sciousness in relation to which alone all objects 
are, and are understood. Or, to put this in another 
form, the conscious self in its scientific self-abneg 
ation does not give itself up to another, and become 
purely passive ; it only gives up all activity which 
is not the activity of that universal thought, for 
which and through which all things are. Hence, 
when it has so abnegated itself, its most intense 



METAPHYSIC. 491 

constructive activity is just beginning, though, just 
so far as the self-abnegation has been real, that 
constructive activity has become one with the self- 
revelation of the object. As, however, it is only 
through the constructive activity of thought that 
there exists for us any object at all, so it is only 
through its continued activity that the conception 
of the object is changed, till it is completely 
revealed and known. And this activity involves 
a continuous synthesis, by which an ever wider 
range of facts is brought together in an ever more 
definite unity, until the mind has, if we may use 
the expression, exhausted its store of categories 
upon the world, and until the world has completely 
revealed itself in its unity with itself and with the 
mind. 

To combine these two ideas on the one hand 
that science begins in a self-abnegation by which 
the mind renounces all subjective prejudices and 
thereby attains a purely objective attitude, and on 
the. other hand that this purely objective attitude 
is not a mere attitude of reception, but one in 
which the mind is continually transforming the 
object by its own categories, to see that the 
universality of the mind in knowing is not mere 



492 METAPHYSIC. 

emptiness, and that its activity is synthetic just 
when it is most free from all pre-suppositions 
extraneous to the nature of its object, is one of 
the greatest difficulties of the student of metaphysic. 
Universality at first looks so like emptiness, and a 
universal activity so like a merely formal activity, 
that it is no wonder that the one should be mis 
taken for the other. But if we make such a 
confusion, we may soon be forced to choose between 
a sensationalism that makes knowledge impossible 
and a mysticism that makes it empty. For this 
the pure identity of thought with itself, which is 
involved in the process of analysis, is put on the 
one side, and the manifold matter of experience, 
which is the object of thought, on the other, and 
between these opposites no mediation is possible. 
If we take our stand upon the latter, we are forced 
to reject all mental synthesis as invalid, because it 
involves a subjective addition to the facts ; if we 
take our stand on the former, we are compelled to 
regard all objective experience as irrational, because 
it does not correspond to the pure identity of 
thought. 

In Aristotle s view of logic it cannot be said that 
this difficulty is clearly solved, though he seems 



METAPHYSIC. 493 

to have seen the error of both extremes. On the 
one hand, he often recognises the synthetic character 
of the process of induction, as when he speaks of 
the universal idea or law as a central principle, in 
which we must find the key to all the difficulties 
suggested by different aspects of a given subject. 
Yet in other places we trace the influence of a 
merely analytic conception of that process, as a 
process in which the universal is to be reached 
by abstracting from the peculiarities of individuals. 
And this conception of it is favoured by 
Aristotle s metaphysical theory, according to 
which the forms of things in the finite world 
are manifested in a resisting matter, a matter 
which prevents them from being perfectly or uni 
versally realised. For, in so far as this is the case, 
the facts will not be entirely explained by the 
knowledge of the form, and the knowledge of the 
form must be obtained, not by combining all the 
facts, but rather by abstracting from them. Again, 
in Aristotle s account of the process of thought in 
the Prior Analytics, he regards it as a formal 
deductive process ; and, though in the Posterior 
Analytics he attempts to give a synthetic meaning 
to the syllogism, by treating it as the process in 



494 METAPHYSIC. 

which the properties of a thing may be proved of 
it, or combined with it, through its essential defini 
tion, yet this adventitious meaning bestowed upon 
the syllogistic process does not alter its essential 
nature. 

Now the ultimate source of this inadequate 
view of the process of thought seems to lie in 
Aristotle s imperfect conception of the unity or 
identity which is for him the type of knowledge. 
For though, both in the Metapliysic and the De 
Anima, he defines that identity as a self-conscious 
ness or as a consciousness of objects which is 
identical with self-consciousness, yet he does not 
seem clearly to distinguish between a unity in 
which there is no difference, and a unity in 
which difference is transcended and reconciled. 
This seems to be shown by his description of the 
principles which reason apprehends as individua 
or indivisible unities, rather than unities which 
imply, while they transcend, difference. Yet, in 
the definition of the unity of knowledge as self- 
consciousness, Aristotle has implicitly admitted that 
there is a duality or difference in the unity itself, 
and this might have been expected to modify his 
conception of the relation of consciousness to its 



METAPHYSIC. 495 

objects. For, as self-consciousness is not simple 
like a chemical element, but only in the sense that 
it is an indissoluble unity of opposites, it might 
have been anticipated that one, who had realised 
self-consciousness as the principle of knowledge, 
would be able to regard the opposition between 
the consciousness of self and the consciousness of 
the world as itself also capable of being conceived 
as a unity. 

This misconception of Aristotle may be shown 
in another way. In the Mdaphysic we find him 
laying down what is called the logical law of 
contradiction as the ultimate principle of knowledge. 
The meaning of this principle, however, as Aristotle 
states it, is simply that thought in its essence is 
definition or distinction. If, as Heraclitus says, 
everything at once is and is not, if we cannot 
attach any definite predicates to things by which 
they may be distinguished from each other, then, 
Aristotle argues, thought is chaos, and knowledge 
is impossible. If determination be not negation, 
if the assertion of A be not the negation of not-A, 
then there is no meaning in words. The criticism 
to be made on this view is obviously, not that 
it is a false statement of the law of thought, but 



496 METAPHYSIC. 

that it is an imperfect statement of it. Thought 
is undoubtedly distinction ; and, if all distinction 
be confounded, no meaning can be apprehended 
or expressed. But thought is also relation ; or, 
in other words, it connects together the things 
which it distinguishes: and this aspect of it is 
equally important with the other. Aristotle 
shows his one-sidedness a one-sidedness which 
throws him into opposition to Plato, but which 
enables him to correct Plato only by falling into 
the opposite error when he exclusively fixes his 
attention on the " differentiating " aspect of know 
ledge, and takes no notice of the " integrating " 
aspect of it. It is easy to see that this exclusive 
attention to one side of the truth may lead in 
many ways to a distorted view, both of the world 
and of the intelligence that apprehends it. If 
Heraclitus be interpreted as simply denying the 
right of thought to introduce its definiteness into 
the flux of sense, nothing but absolute scepticism 
can come out of his philosophy ; and Aristotle 
was right in maintaining that it is only as the 
flux is brought to a stand, and the universal is 
fixed as a permanent and definite object of thought, 1 

o i rov Ka0b\ov fv rrj \}>v\ri, An. Post. ii. 19. 



M ETA PHYSIC. 497 

that knowledge becomes possible. But, on the 
other hand, if distinction be taken as absolute, 
if the definite assertion of a thing be taken as a 
negation of all relation to what it is not, if the 
fixity of thought be treated as an abstract self- 
identity, which excludes all the movement of finite 
things, wherein they show their finitude and pass 
beyond themselves into other things, then know 
ledge will be equally impossible. Our conscious 
ness, on such a theory, would be disintegrated 
into parts, which would own no connection with 
each other ; nor would it be possible for us to 
think of things as, in spite of their differences, 
bound together into the unity of one world. The 
law of contradiction or distinction, therefore, is 
likely to lead to serious misconceptions, unless 
it be complemented by a law of relation a law 
expressing the truth that there is a unity which 
transcends all distinction. For all intelligible 
distinction all distinction of things in the in 
telligible world must be subordinate to their 
unity, as belonging to that world, and therefore 
essentially connected with each other and with 
the intelligence. In such a world, in other words, 

there can be no absolute distinctions or differences 

2 i 



498 METAPHYSIC. 

(not even between being and not-being) ; for dis 
tinction without relation is impossible, and a 
conception held in absolute isolation from all 
correlated conceptions ceases to have any meaning. 
This does not, of course, imply a negation of 
the law of contradiction within its own sphere, 
but it does imply that that sphere is limited, 
and that there is no absolute contradiction. All 
opposition is within a pre-supposed unity, and 
therefore points to a higher reconciliation, a 
reconciliation which is reached when we show 
that the opposition is one of correlative elements. 
The great step in logical theory which was 
taken by the idealistic philosophy of the post- 
Kantian period, was simply to dissipate the con 
fusion which had prevailed so long between that 
bare or formal identity, which is but the beginning 
of thought and knowledge, and that concrete unity 
of differences, which is its highest idea and end. 
It was, in other words, to correct and complete 
the two imperfect conceptions of thought, as ana 
lytical, and as externally synthetical, by the con 
ception of it as self-determining, to show that it 
is a unity which manifests itself in difference and 
opposition, yet through all the antagonism into 



METAPHYSIC. 



499 



which it enters, is really developing and reveal 
ing its unity with itself. This new movement 
of thought might, in one point of view, be de 
scribed as the addition of a third logic to the 
logic of analysis and the logic of inductive syn 
thesis, which were already in existence. But it 
was really more than this ; for the new logic 
was not merely an external addition to the 
old logics, but it also put a new meaning into 
these logics, by bringing to light the principles 
that were involved in them. At the same time 
it broke down the division that had been supposed 
to exist between logic and metaphysic, between 
the form or method of thought and its matter. 
It showed that thought itself contains a matter 
from which it cannot be separated, and that it is 
only by reason of this matter that it is able to 
ask intelligent questions of nature, and to get 
from nature intelligible answers. A short space 
must be devoted to explain this relation of the 
three logics to each other. 

The analytic logic fairly represents our first 
scientific attitude to the world, in which we con 
centrate our attention upon the facts as they are 
given in experience, with no thought of any mental 



500 METAPHYSIC. 

synthesis through which they are given. To our 
selves, in this stage of consciousness, we seem 
to have to do with an object which is alto 
gether independent of our thought, and what 
we need in order to know it, is only to keep 
ourselves in a purely receptive attitude. All we 
can do is to analyse what is given, without adding 
to it anything of our own. It has, however, 
already been pointed out that this apparent self- 
abnegation is possible only because, in abnegating 
our individual point of view, we do not abnegate 
the point of view which belongs to us as universal 
or thinking subjects. In other words, the objecti 
vity of knowledge thus attained is not the ceasing 
of the activity of our thought, but rather of all 
that interferes with that activity. We seem to 
abstract from ourselves, but what we do abstract 
from is only the individuality that stands between 
us and the world. The scientific observer who 
has thus denied himself, however, is not necessarily 
conscious of the meaning of what he has done. 
The immediate expression of his consciousness is 
not " I think the object," but " it, the object, is " ; 
and the more intensely active he is, the more his 
activity is lost for him in the object of it. His 



METAPHYSIC. 501 

whole work is, for himself, only the analysis of 
given facts, and beyond that he seems to have 
nothing to do but to take the world as he finds 
it. The voice of nature to which he listens, is for 
him not his own voice but the voice of a stran 
ger ; nor does it occur to him to reflect that nature 
could not speak to any one but a conscious self. 
His business is to determine things as they present 
themselves, to enumerate their qualities, to measure 
their quantities ; and his logic therefore is a 
logic governed by the idea of the relative com 
prehension and extension of the things which he 
thus names and classifies. Such an analytic logic 
seems to be all that is necessary, because the only 
predicates by which things are as yet determined 
are those which are involved in their presence to 
us in perception, and as perceived they seem to be 
at once given in all their reality to the mind that 
apprehends them. 

A step is taken beyond this first naive conscious 
ness of things, whenever a distinction is made 
between appearance and reality, or whenever it is 
seen that the things perceived are essentially 
related to each other, and that therefore they 
cannot be known by their immediate presence to 



502 METAPHYSIC. 

sense, but only by a mind which relates that which 
is, to that which is not, immediately perceived. 
If "the shows of things are least themselves," we 
must go beyond the shows in order to know them ; 
we must seek out the permanent for that which 
is given as transient, the law for the phenomenon, 
the cause for the effect. The process of thought 
in knowledge therefore is no longer lost in its 
immediate object, but is, partly at least, dis 
tinguished from it. For, just in proportion as 
the reality is separated from the appearance, does 
the knower become conscious of an activity of 
his own thought in determining things. From 
this point of view nature is no longer an object 
which spontaneously reveals itself to us, but rather 
one which hides its meaning from us and out of 
which we must wring its secret by persistent 
questioning. And, as this questioning process 
obviously has not its direction determined purely 
by the object itself, it becomes manifest that the 
mind must bring with it the categories by which 
it seeks to make nature intelligible. To ask 
for the causes of things, or the laws of things, 
presupposes that their immediate appearance 
does not correspond to an idea of reality which 



METAPHYSIC. 503 

the mind brings with it, and by which it judges 
that appearance. Nature is supposed to be given 
to or perceived by us as a multitude of objects 
in space passing through successive changes in 
time ; and what science seeks is to discover a 
necessity of connection running through all this 
apparently contingent coexistence and succession, 
and binding it into a system. Science, therefore, 
seems to question nature by means of an idea of 
the necessary interdependence and connection of 
all things, as parts of one systematic whole 
governed by general laws an idea which it 
does not get from nature, but which it brings 
to nature. Hence the logic in which this 
process of investigation expresses its conscious 
ness of itself will be a synthetic logic, a logic 
built on certain principles which are conceived 
to be independent of experience, and by the aid 
of which we may so transform that experience, so 
penetrate into it or get beyond it, as to find for 
it a better explanation than that which it im 
mediately gives of itself. The Posterior Analytic, 
in which Aristotle brings in the idea of cause to 
vivify the syllogistic process, or supply a real 
meaning to it, may already be regarded as a first 



504 METAPHYSIC. 

essay in this direction. And the theory oi 
inductive logic, as explained by Bacon, Mill, and 
their successors, is a continuous attempt to deter 
mine what are the principles and methods on which 
experience must be questioned, in order to extract 
from it a knowledge which is not given in im 
mediate perception. 

It was, however, Hume who first brought into 
a clear light the subjectivity of the principles 
postulated in this logic, and especially of the 
principle of causality, which is the most important 
of them. In thus contrasting the subjectivity 
of the principles of science with the objectivity 
of the facts to which they are applied, it was his 
intention to cast doubt on science in so far as it is 
based on the application of the former to the latter. 
The principles, he maintained, are not legitimately 
derived from the facts, therefore they cannot 
legitimately be used to interpret them. They are 
due to the influence of habit, which by an illegiti 
mate process raises frequency of occurrence into 
the universality and necessity of law, and so 
changes a mere subjective association of ideas into 
an assured belief and expectation of objective facts. 
The answer given by Kant to this sceptical criticism 



METAPHYSIG. 505 

of science involved a rejection of that very opposi 
tion of subjective and objective upon which it was 
based. For he mentions that without necessary 
and universal principles, the experience of things 
as qualitatively and quantitatively determined ob 
jects, coexisting in space and passing through 
changes in time (or even the determination of 
the successive states of the subject as succes 
sive), would itself have been impossible. Hence 
necessity of thought cannot be derived from a 
frequent experience of such objects. It is true 
that the determination of things as permanent 
substances, reciprocally acting on each other accord 
ing to universal laws, goes beyond the determina 
tion of them as qualified and quantified phenomena 
in space and time. But both determinations are 
possible only through the same a priori principle, 
and we cannot admit the former determination 
without implicitly admitting the latter. As, 
therefore, it is through the necessity and uni 
versality of thought that objects exist for us, 
even before the application to them of the prin 
ciples of scientific induction, and as the application 
of those principles is only a further step in that 
a priori synthesis which is already involved in 



506 METAPHYSIC. 

the perception of these objects, we have no reason 
for treating the former kind of synthesis as objec 
tively valid, which does not equally apply to the 
latter. 

This vindication of the principles of induction 
has, however, a further consequence, which was 
not clearly seen by Kant. It is fatal to the 
antithesis of the " given " and the " known," of 
what is perceived and what is conceived, of natura 
materialitcr spectata and natura formaliter spectata, 
which he still admitted. For that antithesis 
really rested on the idea that there is no universal 
and necessary principle of determination of things 
involved in the apprehension of them as qualified 
and quantified phenomena in space and time. 
So soon, therefore, as it is seen that there is such 
a principle, and that the first determination of 
things as objects of perception is due to the same 
a priori synthesis which in the second place de 
termines them as objects of experience, the ground 
for that contrast between reality and appearance, 
on which the theory of induction rested, is taken 
away. Kant, indeed, finds a new meaning for 
that contrast by interpreting it as referring, not 
to the opposition between things as they are 






METAPHYSIC. 507 

given and things as they are known, but to a 
supposed opposition between things as they are 
given and known in experience and things as they 
are in themselves out of experience. This new 
antithesis of reality and experience, however, only 
means that the former antithesis has broken down,, 
and that therefore the ideal of knowledge based 
upon it has yielded to a new ideal. The so-called 
things in themselves are noumena, the objects of 
an intuitive or perceptive understanding, i.e.,. 
objects in which the contrast of perception and 
conception, of given and known, is transcended. 
We can make Kant s theory consistent only by 
supposing him to mean that the conception of 
the world as a system of substances determining 
each other according to universal laws, does not 
yet satisfy the idea of knowledge which reason 
brings with it. In other words, just as science,, 
guided by the idea of law or causal connection,, 
found something wanting in the conception of the 
world as a mere complex of quantified and qualified 
phenomena in space and time, so philosophy, in 
view of a still higher ideal of knowledge, may 
condemn the conception of the world as a system 
of objects determined by necessary laws of relation, 



508 METAPHYSIC. 

as itself inadequate and imperfect. And we have 
seen that this higher ideal is that which is involved 
in the unity of self-consciousness. Unfortunately 
Kant was unable, as Aristotle had been unable, 
to distinguish this idea from the idea of an 
abstract identity in which there is no room for 
even a relative difference of perception and con 
ception, and therefore the thought of a " perceptive 
understanding " occurs to him only to be rejected. 

If, however, we correct this inadequacy of Kant s 
statement, as his later works enable us partly to 
correct it, we see that it involves a new idea 
of knowledge and a new logic, a logic governed 
by the idea of organic unity and development, 
just as the analytic logic had been governed by 
the idea of identity, and as the inductive logic 
had been governed by the idea of necessary law. 
For, if the unity of self-consciousness be our type 
of knowledge, truth must mean to us, not the 
apprehension of objects as self-identical things, 
distinguished from each other in quantity and 
quality, nor even the determination of such things 
as standing in necessary relations to each other. 
It must mean the determination of the world (and 
of whatever in the world is in any sense an inde- 



METAPHYSIC. 509 

pendent reality, so far as it is so independent) as a 
unity which realises itself in and through difference, 
a unity which is indeed determined, but determined 
by itself. In a view of the world which is governed 
by this category, correlation must be reinterpreted 
as organic unity, and causation as development. 
Its logical method must be neither analytical nor 
synthetical, or rather it must be both at once, i.e., 
it must endeavour to exhibit the process of things 
as the evolution of a unity which is at once self- 
differentiating and self-integrating, which manifests 
itself in difference, that through difference it may 
return upon itself. Further, as this logic arises 
simply out of a deeper consciousness of that which 
was contained in the two previous logics, so it 
first enables us to explain them. In other words, 
the advance from the analytic to the inductive 
logic, and again from the inductive to what may 
be called the genetic logic, may itself be shown 
to be a self-determined development of thought, 
in which the first two steps are the imperfect 
manifestation of a principle fully revealed only 
in the last step. The consciousness of self- 
identical objects, independent of each other and of 
thought, is thus only the beginning of a process 



METAPHYSIC. 

of knowledge, which reaches its second stage in 
the determination of these objects as essentially 
related to each other, arid which finds its ultimate 
end in the knowledge of the correlated objects 
as essentially related to the mind that knows 
them. Or if, in this last point of view, things 
are still conceived as having a certain relative 
independence of the mind, it can only be in so 
far as they are in the Leibnizian sense monads, 
or microcosms, i.e., in so far as they are self- 
determined, and so have, in the narrower circle 
of their individual life, something analogous to 
the self-completed nature of the world, when it is 
contemplated in its unity with its spiritual principle. 
Such a genetic logic is inconsistent with any 
absolute distinction between the a priori and a, 
posteriori element in knowledge. For here the a 
priori is not simply a law of necessary connection 
to be applied to an external matter, but a principle 
of organic development, a principle which, from 
the very nature of it, cannot be applied to a foreign 
matter. To treat the world as organic is to apply 
to it a category which is inconsistent with its 
being something merely given or externally pre 
sented to thought. The relation of things to 



METAPHYSIC. 511 

thought must itself be brought under the same 
category of organic unity which is applied to the 
relation of things to each other in the world, 
otherwise the externality of the world to the 
thought for which it is, will contradict the con 
ception of the world as itself organic. Hence 
the distinction of a, priori and a posteriori, so far 
as it is maintained at all, must shrink to some 
thing secondary and relative. It can be maintained 
only as a distinction of thought from its object, 
which presupposes their ultimate unity. From 
this point of view logic may be said to deal with 
the a priori, in so far as it treats the general 
conditions and methods of knowledge without refer 
ence to any particular object. Logic must exhibit 
abstractly the process by which the intelligence 
establishes its unity with the intelligible world ; 
or, to put it in another way, it must demonstrate 
that the being of things can be truly conceived 
only as their being for thought. It is limited 
to the a priori, in the sense that it ends with 
the idea that the esse of things is their intdligi, 
and does not consider how this real intelligence 
or intelligible reality manifests itself in the concrete 
world of nature and spirit. 



512 METAPHYSIC. 

In this sense logic cannot be separated from 
metaphysic, if metaphysic be confined to ontology. 
They are simply two aspects of one science, which 
we may regard either as determining the idea of 
being or the idea of knowing. The process of 
knowing is never really a formal process ; it always 
involves the application of certain categories, and 
these categories are simply successive definitions 
of being or reality. We cannot separate the 
category from the movement of thought by which 
it is evolved and applied, nor the transition from 
lower to higher categories from changes of logical 
method. Hence a logic divorced from metaphysic 
inevitably becomes empty and unreal, and a 
metaphysic divorced from logic reduces itself to a 
kind of dictionary of abstract terms, which are put 
in no living relation to each other. Jb or such a 
logic and such a metaphysic must rest on the 
assumption of an absolute division between being 
and thought, the very two terms the unity of which 
it must be the utmost object of both logic and 
metaphysic to prove and to produce. 

4. The Relation of Metaphysic to Philosophy of 
Relic/ion. The possibility of a " first philosophy," 
as we have already seen, is essentially bound up 



METAPHYSIC. 513 

with the possibility of what we may call a " last 
philosophy." It is only in so far as we can rise 
above the point of view of the individual and 
the dualism of the ordinary consciousness, in so 
far, in other words, as we can have at least an 
anticipative consciousness of that last unity, in 
which all the differences of things from each other 
and from the mind that knows them are explained 
and transcended, that we are able to go back to 
that first unity which all these differences pre 
suppose. The life of man begins with a divided 
consciousness, with a consciousness of self which 
is opposed to the consciousness of what is not-self, 
with a consciousness of a multiplicity of particulars 
which do not seem to be bound together by any 
one universal principle. Such division and ap 
parent independence of what are really parts of 
one whole is characteristic of nature, and in spirit 
it is at first only so far transcended that it has 
become conscious of itself. A conscious difference, 
however, as it is a difference in consciousness, is 
no longer an unmediated difference. It is a dif 
ference through which the unity has begun to show 
itself, and which therefore that unity is on the 
way to subordinate. And all the development of 

2K 



C 14 METAPHYSIC. 

consciousness and self-consciousness is just the 
process through which this subordination is carried 
out, up to the point at which the difference is 
seen to be nothing but the manifestation of the 
unity. Just so far, therefore, as this end is present 
to us, so far as we are able to look forward to 
the solution or reconciliation of all the divisions 
and oppositions of which we are conscious, and 
to see that there is an all-embracing unity which 
they cannot destroy, is it possible that we should 
look back to the beginning or first unity, and 
recognise that these divisions and oppositions are 
but the manifestations of it. Thus the extremes 
of abstractness and of concreteness of thought are 
bound up together. The freedom of intelligence 
which enables us to free ourselves from the com 
plexity of our actual life, and to direct our thoughts 
to the simplest and most elementary conditions of 
being and knowing, is possible only to those who 
are not limited to that life, but can regard it and 
all its finite concerns from the point of view of the 
infinite and the universal. In this sense it is true 
that religion and metaphysic spring from the same 
source, and that it is possible to vindicate the 
rationality of religion only on metaphysical prin- 



METAPHYSIC. 



515 



ciples. The philosophy of religion is, in fact, 
only the last application or final expression of 
metaphysic ; and, conversely, a metaphysic which 
is not capable of furnishing an explanation of 
religion, contradicts itself. 

This last remark affords us a kind of criterion 
of a true metaphysic. Can it or can it not explain 
religion? If it cannot, it must be equally unable 
to explain its own possibility, and therefore im 
plicitly it condemns itself. Thus a pantheistic 
system, which loses the subject in the Abso 
lute, cannot explain how that subject should 
apprehend the substance of which it is but a 
transitory mode, nor, on the other hand, can it 
explain why the substance should manifest itself 
in and to a subject. And the same criticism may 
be made on all theories in which the first or meta 
physical unity is abstractly opposed to the mani- 
foldness and contingency of things. Not only of 
Spinoza, but also of Kant, of Fichte, and even 
of Schelling, it might with some truth be said 
that their absolute is like the lion s den in the 
fable ; for all the footsteps are directed towards it, 
and none seem to issue from it. It is essential that 
the first unity should be such as to explain the 



516 METAPHYSIC. 

possibility of difference and division ; for, if it is 
not, then the return to unity out of difference is 
made as accidental as the difference itself. Thus 
when Aristotle represented the Divine Being as 
pure self-consciousness, pure form without matter, 
he found himself unable to account for the existence 
of any world in which form was realised in matter. 
When therefore he speaks of the process of the 
finite world by which it returns to God, and 
attributes to nature a will, which is directed to 
the good as its final cause, his theory seems to 
be little more than a metaphor in which the 
analogy of consciousness is applied to the uncon 
scious. For, if the Divine Being is not manifested 
in the world, any tendency of the world to realise 
the good becomes an inexplicable fact. A similar 
difficulty is, as we saw, involved in Kant s con 
fusion of the bare identity of understanding with 
the absolute unity of knowledge. Reducing the 
unity of self-consciousness to such a bare identity, 
Kant could not be expected to see, what Aristotle 
had not seen, that pure self-consciousness is 
essentially related to anything but itself. Hence 
the various attempts which he made, in his ethical 
works and in his Critique of Judgment, to find a 



METAPHYSIC 517 

link of connection between the noumenal and the 
empirical, were necessarily condemned even by him 
self as the expressions of a merely regulative or sub 
jective principle of knowledge. Even Fichte, who 
found in the idea of self-consciousness a principle 
of differentiation and integration which explained 
how self-consciousness in us should be necessarily 
correlative with the consciousness of a world was, 
at least in his earlier and more important works, 
unable to free himself from the Kantian opposition 
of a noumenal identity which is without differ 
ence to a phenomenal unity which is realised in 
difference. Hence by him also the return out 
of difference is regarded as an impossibility, or as 
a proccssus in infinitum, and the absolute unity as 
that which is beyond all knowledge and only ap 
prehended by faith. 

If we look to completely elaborated theories, 
and disregard all tentative and imperfect sketches, 
it may fairly be said that all that has as yet 
been done in the region of pure metaphysic is 
summed up in two works, in the Metaphysic of 
Aristotle and the Logic of Hegel. And, up to a 
certain point, the lesson which they teach is one 
and the same, viz., that the ultimate unity which is 



5 IS METAPHYSIC. 

presupposed in all differences is the unity of thought 
with itself, the unity of self-consciousness, and that 
in this unity is contained the type of all science, 
and the form of all existence ; in other words, 
that I = I is the formula of the universe. The 
difference between these two works has, however, 
already been indicated. With Aristotle, in so far 
as he neglects the essential relation of self-con 
sciousness to consciousness, or of the conscious 
self to the world of objects in space and time, 
the unity of self-consciousness tends to pass, as 
it did pass with the Neo-Platonists, into a pure 
identity without difference. In the Hegelian logic, 
on the other hand, self-consciousness is inter 
preted as a unity which realises itself through 
difference and the reconciliation of difference, as, 
in fact, an organic unity of elements, which exist 
only as they pass into each other. In other 
words, it is shown that the differentiating move 
ment, by which the subjective and the objective 
self are opposed, and the integrating movement, 
by which they are reunited, are both essential. 
Hence we cannot think of the conscious self as 
a simple resting identity, but only as an active 
self-determining principle ; nor can we think of its 



METAPHYSIC. 519 

self-determination as a pure affirmation of itself 
without any negation, but only as an affirmation 
which involves a double negation an opposition 
of two elements which yet are essentially united. 
Each factor in this unity, in fact, is necessarily 
conceived as passing beyond itself into the other ; 
the subject is subject, only as it relates itself to 
the object, the object is object, only as it relates 
itself to the subject. It is this tension against 
each other of elements which yet are correlated 
and indissolubly united, this self-surrender to each 
other of elements which yet are maintained in 
their distinction, that constitutes the organic unity 
of thought in itself, and separates it from the mere 
abstract unity of mysticism. 

When, however, the concrete or self-differentiat 
ing character of the unity of self-consciousness is 
apprehended in this way, so that it is impossible 
to confuse its indivisible unity with the simplicity 
of that which is one with itself merely because it 
has no differences in it, the problem of the relation 
of pure self-consciousness to the world in space and 
time ceases to be insoluble. Thought, as it is seen 
to have difference in itself, is no longer irrecon 
cilable with the world of difference ; nor is it 



520 METAPHYSIC. 

necessary to introduce a foreign v\rj to make their 
connection intelligible. For, as thought is a 
principle of difference as well as of unity, of 
analysis as well as of synthesis, and as it cannot 
realise itself in its unity except through the utmost 
development of difference, abstract self-conscious 
ness, with its transparent or merely ideal differ 
ence, cannot be its ultimate form. On the con 
trary, the consciousness of self is possible only 
in distinction from, and in relation to, a world 
of objects. In other words, the unity of the 
thinking subject presupposes, not merely the op 
position of the subjective and the objective self, 
but also the opposition of the self in its pure 
self-identity to a world of externality and differ 
ence. The pure intelligence, which is the prius 
of all things, must not, therefore, be regarded 
as Aristotle regarded it as merely theoretical, 
but also as practical. It must be conceived as 
a living principle, a principle which only in self- 
manifestation can be conscious of itself, and to 
the very nature of which, therefore, self-mani 
festation is essential. In this way Hegel just 
because he grasped the concrete character of the 
unity of thought in itself was enabled to under- 



METAPHYSIC. 521 

stand the necessary unity of thought or self- 
consciousness with the world, and to heal the 
division of physics from metaphysic, which Aris 
totle had left unexplained. 

Schellirig and others who have raised objections 
to the Hegelian method have specially directed 
their criticisms against this transition from logic 
to the philosophy of nature, from pure self-con 
sciousness to the external world in space and 
time. In doing so, they have practically fallen 
back upon the Aristotelian theory, with its opposi 
tion of God, as pure form, to the finite world. 
But this in effect is to deny that " the real is 
the rational or intelligible," and to introduce into 
the world, as the ground of its distinction from 
reason, a purely irrational or contingent element. 
A modern disciple of Schelling s later positive 
philosophy 1 only draws the necessary consequence 
from this view, when he teaches the pessimist 
creed that the highest good is the negation or 
extinction of the finite. ISTor can we wonder 
that the same writer, who denies that the abso 
lute self-consciousness is essentially related to or 
manifested in the world, should proceed to reduce 
1 Von Hartmann. 



522 METAPHYSIC. 

this self-consciousness to a mystic identity, which 
comes out of itself and becomes self-conscious 
only by an inscrutable act of will. The fact, 
indeed, that those who deny the possibility of 
a rational transition from self-consciousness to the 
world, are forced by the logic of their position to 
reduce self-consciousness to an abstract identity, 
may be regarded as a kind of indirect proof that 
the principle of self-consciousness, truly conceived,, 
does involve that transition. 

Another step in the same direction may be 
made if we consider how the Cartesian philo 
sophy treated the opposition between subject and 
object, which it also regarded as absolute. By Des 
Cartes mind and matter, thought and extension, 
are defined as abstract opposites, every quality of 
each finding its contradictory counterpart in a 
quality of the other. Mind is a pure self-deter 
mined unity, which is as it knows itself and knows 
itself as it is, which has no discretion of parts or 
capacity of division or determination from without. 
Matter is essentially discrete or infinitely divided ; 
it is a pure passivity ; and all its determination 
comes to it from without. The world is therefore, 
as it were, " cut in two with a hatchet," divided 



METAPHYSIC. 523 

into two unrelated existences, which are held 
together only by the will of God. Spinoza cuts 
the knot, and avoids the arbitrariness of this 
solution, by treating extension and thought as 
two attributes, separated in relation to our in 
telligence, but each expressing fully the abso 
lute substance. And something like the same 
view has been revived in recent times, by writers 
like Lewes and Mr. Spencer, who speak of feelings 
and motions as two opposite " aspects " of the 
same fact. When we ask, however, for whom 
these attributes or aspects are a unity, it becomes 
clear that the intelligence, which is regarded as 
standing on one side of the dualism, must also- 
be taken as transcending it, and relating the two 
sides to each other. Moreover, the correspondence 
of the two attributes upon which Spinoza insists,. 
and their contrariety upon which Des Cartes 
insists, when taken together, give us the idea of 
a correlative opposition, i.e., of an opposition of 
elements which yet are necessary to each other. 
If, therefore, they cannot be simply identified as 
Spinoza identifies them, yet they need no external 
bond such as Des Cartes introduces to combine 
them ; for they cannot exist apart from each other.. 



524 METAPHYSIC. 

Their opposition is held within the limits of their 
unity, and is no absolute contradiction, but rather 
an opposition which exists only as it is tran 
scended. In other words, it is an abstract opposi 
tion, i.e., it is an opposition of elements which 
seem to be irreconcilable, till it is observed that 
they are correlative, that each exists or has a 
meaning only as it relates itself to, or passes out 
of itself into, the other, and that each, held in 
its abstraction and separation from the other, loses 
all the meaning that it seemed to have. For, as 
in an organic body each member or organ lives 
only in tension against the others, yet only as 
continually relating itself to the others, so the 
utmost opposition of mind to matter, of the in 
telligence to the intelligible world, presupposes 
their unity, and is only the realisation of it. 

There is here, however, something more than 
an ordinary case of correlation, for in this unity 
of opposites mind appears twice once as one of 
the opposites, and again as the unity which tran 
scends the opposition. This ambiguity becomes 
most obvious in theories like that of Mr. Spencer, 
who speaks of " two consciousnesses," which cannot 
be resolved into each other, but yet which strangely 



METAPHYSIC. 525 

form inseparable parts of one and the same con 
sciousness. What, however, is really involved in 
such a statement is that the external world, 
which in the first instance presents itself as ab 
solutely opposed to the subject whose object it 
is, is yet one with that subject, and that therefore 
the antagonism of mind to its object is only the 
last differentiation through which it realises its 
unity with itself. In Hegel s language, that which 
presents itself as other than mind is its other 
" an other which is not another," whose difference 
and opposition to itself it overreaches and over 
comes. We must, therefore, regard the independ 
ence and externality of nature, its indifference, 
and even, as it seems, opposition, to the develop 
ment of the moral and intellectual life of man, 
as merely apparent. For man, in this point of 
view, is not merely one natural being among 
others, but the being in whom nature is at once 
completed and transcended. If, therefore, at first 
he appears to stand in merely accidental and 
external relations to the other existences among 
which he finds himself, yet the whole process of 
his life, the process by which he comes to know 
the external world, and by which, reacting upon 



526 METAPHYSIC. 

it, he makes it the means to the realisation of 
an individual and social life of his own, is the 
negation of this contingency and externality. In 
all this process he is showing himself to be a 
being who can know himself only as he knows 
the objective world, and who can realise himself 
only as he makes himself the agent of a divine 
purpose, to which all things are contributing. 

Such an idea of man s relation to the world 
is necessarily involved in any theory that goes 
beyond that subjective idealism or sensationalism, 
which denies to him every object of knowledge 
except his own states of feeling, and every end of 
action except his own pleasures and pains. Eecent 
speculation, indeed, has suggested a compromise 
by which this dilemma is supposed to be evaded, 
and mankind are represented as forming an organic 
unity in themselves, though they are still conceived 
as standing in an external and accidental relation to 
nature, the forces of which by their knowledge 
and skill they have subdued and are more and 
more subduing to their service. Such a compromise 
we find in the philosophy of Comte, the first writer 
who, starting from an apparently empirical basis, 
was able to break through the individualistic 



METAPHYSIC. 527 

prejudices of the school of Locke. In the latter 
volumes of his Positive Philosophy, still more in 
his Positive Politics, Comte so far transcends in 
dividualism as to deny the externality of men to 
each other, and to declare that " the individual, 
as such, is an abstraction," and that in reality he 
cannot be separated from the social organism, which 
is thus not merely an extraneous condition of his 
development, but essential to his very existence as 
man. Thus individual men exist only through the 
universal through the spirit of the family, of the 
nation, of humanity, which manifests itself in them 
as a principle of life and development. Yet this 
organic unity, according to Comte, is in contact 
with a world, which in relation to it is external 
and contingent. Nature has not its final cause in 
man, but on the contrary is, at first, rather his 
enemy ; and it is to humanity itself that the praise 
is due if to a certain extent the enemy has been 
turned into a servant. The unity of life which 
manifests itself in humanity cannot therefore be 
considered as a universal principle, as the principle 
of the whole universe, but simply as the principle 
of the limited existence of man, which is hemmed 
in on every side by external and, in the main, 



528 METAPHYSIC. 

unknown conditions. If humanity therefore is an 
organism, it is an organism existing in a medium 
which, in reference to it, is inorganic, i.e., in a 
medium which has no essential relation to the 
life that animates man. 

It is obvious, however, that this theory is an 
illogical attempt to find a standing ground between 
two opposite philosophies, between the philosophy 
which treats man merely as a natural individual, 
placed among other individual beings and things, 
and which therefore regards his relation to them 
as something accidental and external and the philo 
sophy which treats him as a spiritual subject, a 
conscious and self-conscious being, and regards him 
therefore as having no merely external relations 
either to other men or to nature. Comte shrinks 
from regarding the world without us as the 
manifestation of that spiritual principle which is 
also within us, which constitutes our very nature 
as individual men, and which therefore connects us 
with the world at the same time that it separates 
us from it. Yet he recognises the existence in us 
of a principle which is so far universal that it con 
stitutes a community between all men. He thinks 
that the individual can transcend himself, so far 



METAPHYSIC. 529 

as to see all things, not indeed from a divine 
point of view, sub specie txternitatis, but from the 
point of view of universal humanity, and that in 
conformity with this theoretical consciousness, he can 
live a practical life of altruism, i.e., a life in which 
he identifies his own good with the good of human 
ity. But the philosophy that has gone so far, 
must logically go further. It is impossible to treat 
humanity as an organism without extending the 
organic idea to the conditions under which the 
social life of humanity is developed. The medium 
by aid of which, or in reacting against which, the 
organised being maintains itself, is an essential 
part of its life ; it remains organic, only in so far 
as it can mould itself to its conditions and its 
conditions to itself. This is true even of the 
animal organism in relation to the small circle of 
its environment, which, however, is part of a larger 
circle of conditions to which the animal has no re 
lation. But a conscious being is a universal centre 
of relations ; there is nothing which he, as conscious, 
cannot make part of his own life. Hence the 
application of the organic idea to him involves its 
application to the whole world. And, if the recog 
nition of a universal principle manifested in human- 

2 L 



530 METAPHYSIC 

ity naturally led Comte to the idea of the worship 
of humanity, the recognition of a universal principle 
manifested in man and nature alike must lead to 
the idea of the worship of God. 1 

The rationality of religion, then, rests on the 
possibility of an ultimate synthesis, in which man 
and nature are regarded as the manifestation of 
one spiritual principle. For religion involves a 
faith that, in our efforts to realise the good of 
humanity, we are not merely straining after an 
ideal beyond us, which may or may not be realised, 
but are animated by a principle which, within us 
and without us, is necessarily realising itself, 
because it is the ultimate principle by which all 
things are, and are known. This absolute certitude 
of religion, that man can work effectually because 
all the universe is working with him, or, in other 
words, because God is working in him, can find its 
explanation and defence only in a philosophy for 
which "the real is the rational, and the rational is 
the real." And such a philosophy, beginning with 
the Kantian doctrine that existence means existence 
for a spiritual or thinking subject, must go on to 

1 This criticism of Comte is more fully developed in my 
book on The Social Philosophy and Religion of Comte. 



METAPHYSIC. 531 

prove that that only can exist for such a subject, 
which is the manifestation of thought or spirit ; and 
conversely, that spirit or intelligence is essentially 
self-manifesting, or, in other words, that it cannot 
be conceived except as standing in essential relation 
to an external and material world. Finally, if 
nature be thus regarded as a necessary manifesta 
tion of spirit, it can be opposed to spirit only in 
so far as spirit in its realisation becomes opposed 
to itself. In other words, nature must be regarded 
as, from a higher point of view, included in spirit. 
Nature exists that it may show itself to be spiritual 
in and to man, who transcends it yet implies it, 
who finds in it the necessary basis of his thought 
and action, but only that he may build upon it a 
higher spiritual life. 

" Nature is made better by no mean 
But nature makes that mean : so over the art 
Which, you say, adds to nature is an art 
Which nature makes." 

Only the order of precedence suggested by these 
words must be inverted. For, as nature is only 
for spirit, so the spiritual energy which reacts 
upon nature is that which manifests for the first 
time what nature in reality is. It is the con- 



532 



METAPHYSIC. 



sciousness of this, i.e., of the identity of that 
which is realising itself within and without us, 
the consciousness that the necessity which is the 
precondition of our freedom is the manifestation 
of the very principle which makes us free that 
turns morality into religion. For it is this alone 
which enables us to regard the realisation of the 
highest ends of human life neither as a happy 
accident, nor as a conquest to be won by the cun 
ning of man from an unfriendly or indifferent des 
tiny, but as the result towards which all things are 
working. 

In this philosophy, which finds its most adequate 
expression in the works of Hegel, there are two 
things which may be distinguished the general 
idealistic view of the world, and the dialectical 
movement of thought in which Hegel develops and 
expresses it. And there are perhaps many at the 
present time who are prepared to accept the former, 
but who yet suspect, or even reject, the latter. 
And no doubt there is much in Hegel s Logic and 
Philosophy of Spirit, and still more in his Philosophy 
of Nature, which there is reason to regard with 
distrust. In clever hands that are not checked 
by a sufficient consciousness of the whole, the 



M ETA PHYSIC. 



533 



Hegelian dialectic may be made into the means of 
producing a seeming proof of anything. ISTor is it 
always easy to determine how far Hegel himself 
was tempted, by an impatient consciousness of the 
universality of his method, to employ it in cases 
where the conditions of its successful application 
were wanting. Sometimes he seems to forget, 
what he himself teaches, that science must first 
have generalised experience and determined it by 
its finite categories, ere it is possible for philosophy 
to give its final interpretation. Yet, when we 
realise the nature of that interpretation, and of the 
transformation of science which philosophy by 
means of it proposes to effect, it becomes clear 
that the dialectic of Hegel is no extraneous addition 
to his idealism, but is part and parcel of the same 
movement of thought. For that dialectic rests on 
the idea that thought or self-consciousness finds in 
its own organic unity the ultimate key to all diffi 
culties in regard to the objects of thought, as well 
as in regard to their relations to each other and to 
the mind. Self-consciousness, as has been already 
shown, is itself implicitly the whole web of cate 
gories, which it throws over the world, and by aid of 
which it makes the world intelligible. All these it 



534 



METAPHYSIC. 



contains in itself; and, as it proceeds to determine 
the meaning of things, it simply produces its store, 
and exhausts itself on the object. Now, if it be 
essential to idealism, to make thought or self-con 
sciousness the principle and ultimate explanation 
of all that exists, it is obvious that we cannot 
separate idealism from some such dialectic as 
this, a dialectic which is nothing more than the 
mind s consciousness of its own movement or pro 
cess of self-affirmation. If to find thought in 
things be more than an empty word, then the 
movement or process, which thought is, must 
explain at once the transition from thought to 
what in opposition we call " things," and must 
give us the means of reconciling that opposition. 
In other words, the same movement by which 
thought determines itself as self-conscious, i.e., as 
a unity realised through difference, must also be 
conceived as the explanation of the difference be- 
tiveen pure thought and the world, and as the 
solution of that difference in the idea of absolute 
spirit. 

Such idealism has a close relation to Christianity ; 
it may be even said to be but Christianity theorised. 
It has often been asserted that Hegel s philosophy 



METAPHYSIC. 



535 



of religion is but an artificial accommodation to 
Christian doctrine of a philosophy which has no 
inherent relation to Christianity. If, however, we 
regard the actual development of Hegel s thought, 
it would be truer to say that it was the study of 
Christian ideas which first produced the Hegelian 
philosophy. What delivered Hegel from the mysti 
cism in which the later philosophies of Fichte and 
Schelling tended to lose themselves, and led him, in 
his own language, to regard the absolute "not merely 
as substance but as subject," what made him re 
cognise with Fichte that the absolute principle is 
spiritual, and yet enabled him with Schelling to see 
in nature, as the opposite of spirit, the very means 
of its realisation, was his thorough appreciation 
of the ethical and religious meaning of Christianity. 
In the great Christian aphorism that " he .who 
loseth his life alone can save it " he found a key 
to the difficulties of ethics, a reconciliation of 
hedonism and asceticism. For what this saying 
implies is that a spiritual or self-conscious being 
is one who is in contradiction with himself, when 
he makes his individual self his end. In opposing 
his own interest to that of others, he is preventing 
their interests from becoming his ; all things are 



536 METAPHYSIC. 

his, and his only, who has died to himself. But 
if this be the truth of morality, it is something 
more, for " morality is the nature of things." We 
cannot separate the law of the life of man from 
the law of the world in which he lives. And, if 
it is the nature of things, as it is the nature of 
spirit, that he who loseth his life shall save it, 
the world must be referred to a spiritual principle, 
and the Christian doctrine of the. nature of God 
is only the converse of the Christian law of 
ethics. To Hegel, starting from this point, a new 
light was thrown on the Fichtean treatment of 
the idea of self, and the Fichtean proof that the 
consciousness of self implies a relation to an object, 
an object which is opposed to the self, and which 
yet from another point of view since an object 
exists only for a subject cannot be anything but 
an element of its own life. It was seen that this 
movement of thought is no mere fluctuation be 
tween contradictory positions, to be terminated 
finally by an ipse dixit of faith, but that the unity 
of the opposite elements is apprehensible by the 
intelligence, and that indeed it is its presence to 
the intelligence which makes the consciousness of 
opposition possible. It was in this sense that 



METAPHYSIC. 537 

Hegel could say that that unity of opposites, which 
had been called unintelligible by previous writers, 
was just the very nature of the intelligence, 1 and 
that only a view of the world guided by this 
idea could be properly intelligible, while every 
other view must contain in it an unsolved con 
tradiction, an element that remains permanently 
impervious to thought. 

The great objection to a inetaphysic like this, 
at least an objection which weighs much in the 
minds of many, is that which springs from the 
contrast between the claim of absolute knowledge, 
which it seems to involve, and the actual limita 
tions which our intelligence encounters in every 
direction. If the theory were true it is felt, or 
thought we ought to be nearer the solution of the 
problems of our life, practical and speculative, than 
we are ; the riddle of the painful earth ought to vex 
us less ; we ought to be able to find our way more 
easily through the entanglement of facts, and to deal 
with practical difficulties in a less tentative manner. 
Yet there is really no antagonism between such a 
doctrine and a consciousness of the limitation of 
our faculties ; nay rather, it is only on such a 
J Logik, iii. p. 256, seq. 



538 METAPHYS1C. 

theory that a rational distrust of ourselves can 
be based. When Aristotle meets the warning 
that we should think finite and human things, 
since we are finite and human, with the answer 
that we ought rather, so far as in us lies, to rise 
to what is immortal and divine, he is not denying 
the limits of man s knowledge and power ; on the 
contrary, he is rather pointing to the very principle 
which makes us conscious of those limits. For it 
is just because there is in man a principle of in 
finity that he knows his finitude, and, conversely, 
it is just in the consciousness of this finitude that 
he rises above it. A rational humility is possible 
only to one who has in himself the measure of his 
own weakness, and who, if he " trembles like a 
guilty thing surprised," is yet conscious that he is 
trembling before himself. This truth is often 
expressed by Kant with special relation to the 
moral consciousness, as where he contrasts the 
limitation of man, as a sensible being occupying an 
infinitesimal space in the boundless world of sense, 
with his freedom from all limitation as a personal 
self, a member of the truly infinite world of in 
telligence. But it is not necessary to adopt Kant s 
abstract division of the sensible from the intelligible 



METAPHYSIC. 539 

world, to see that our consciousness of the greatness 
of the problem to be solved in human life and 
thought, is deepened and widened by that very idea 
of philosophy, which yet gives us the assurance 
that the problem is not insoluble, and even that, 
in principle, it is already solved. 



INDEX. 



Absolute, An, Comte s attitude to 
wards, 199. 

Possibility of a philosophy with 
out, 200. 

Consciousness of, 225, 515. 
Abstraction, its philosophic defect, 

293, 341, 394, 395, 396. 
Agnosticism, 206. 

Modern, 220, 224. 

Ancient, 220. 
Altruism, 529. 
Ambulo ergo sum, 273. 
Analytic, 409, 410, 415, 428. 
Analytic, Prior, 493. 
Analytic, Posterior, 456, 493, 496, 

503. 

Antinomies, 434. 
Antithesis. See Opposition. 
Aristotle, 384, 418, 485, 503, 538, 

and problem of philosophy, 211. 

criticism of Plato, 367, 396-7, 
455, 458. 

on metaphysic, 385-9, 391, 473, 
485-6, 493. 

view of knowledge, 456-9, 495-7. 

on relation of intelligence to in 
telligible world, 468, 484-6, 521. 

as analytic philosopher, 481-2. 

on tabula rasa, 489. 

view of logic, 492, 497. 

on pure identity, 508, 518. 

on pure intelligence, 516, 520, 
521. 

Arnauld, 322. 

Arnold, Matthew, 147, 153. 



Art, its function, 61, 62. 
Asceticism, Early, 22. 

in middle ages, 22, 23. 

an element in Christianity, 96, 
99. 

Spinoza s attitude towards, 378. 
Awakening of Epimenides, 67. 

Bacon, 195, 269, 338, 399, 462, 483, 

504. 
Being, Thought and, 274-G, 286-7, 

404, 447. 

Science of, 385-9. 

Notion of, 385, 393, 431. 

Knowing and, 412. 
Bentham, 378. 

Bible and Protestantism, 135. 
Biography, 238. 
Blyenbergh, 355. 
Bonagiunto di Lucca, 6. 
Boniface VIII., 41. 
Bossuet, 137. 
Burke, Edmund, 120. 
Byron, 78, 169. 

Cacciaguida, 33. 
Calvin, 134. 

Campaign in France, 91. 
Can Grande della Scala, 9, 30, 39. 
Carlyle, admiration of Goethe, 10, 
84, 232. 

Influence of, on modern thought, 
231, 236. 

German literature and, 233, 245, 
248. 



INDEX. 



541 



Gaiiyle, his relation to political and 
social life, 234, 261 sqq. 

Froude s biography of, 238. 

Attitude of present generation 
towards, 240. 

Historical works of, 241, 258, 
261. 

literary characteristics, 241, 245, 
246, 248, 260. 

attitude towards metaphysics, 
248, 250. 

his humour and imagination, 
250, 258. 

his paradoxes, 251, 255, 259, 260. 

place given by him to work, 252. 
to faith, 252. 

hero-worship, 262. 

his individualism, 264. 
Cartesianism, 267-382. 

relation to modern spirit, 268, 
382. 

aim, 269. 

method, 270. 

underlying principle, 278. 

Inconsistencies in, 291, 292, 305. 

Characteristics of, 293, 382, 465. 

Dualism of, 306, 310, 352, 358, 
362, 368, 522. 

Development of, by Malebranche, 
268, 310-332; by Spinoza, 268, 
332-381. 

See also Des Carte.*, Male- 
tranche, Spinoza. 

Causality, Law of, 287, 402, 418, 
421, 449, 476, 484, 504, 509. 

Celestine, Pope, 41. 

Chance, Aristotle s idea of, 459. 

Characteristics, 249. 

Characteristics of the Present Age, 
Fichte s, 250. 

Chartism, 243, 261. 

Chasdai Creskas, 232. 

Christianity, Characteristics of, in 
Apostolic Ages, 13, 17, 20, 215. 

- in Early Church, 17, 19, 22. 

- in Middle Ages, 10, 21, 25, 
35 sqq., 397, 460, 488. 

Inherent Characteristics of, 16, 



45, 47, 49, 96, 99, 216, 225, 361, 
396, 535. 

Christianity, Goethe s attitude to 
wards, 85, 96 sqq. 

Eousseau s, 138. 

Carlyle s, 256. 
- Hegel s, 534-6. 

Church, Catholic, 135, 137, 144, 
460. 

See also Christianity. 

Cogito ergo sum, 272, 274, 278, 284. 
Comte, 218, 488. 

his view of man and the world, 
197 sqq. , 526 sqq. 

Confessions, The, 107, 111, 117, 

186. 
Consciousness of the infinite, 192-3, 

207-8, 221, 224-5, 269, 278 sqq., 

318 sqq., 464, 477. 

of the finite, 192-3, 207-8, 221, 
224, 281 sqq., 290, 317, 475-7. 

of the external world, 192-3, 201, 
222, 269, 270, 274-8, 316, 318, 
394, 398, 408, 413 sqq., 433 sqq., 
447-8, 470-7, 486, 500, 517 sqq. 

See also Experience. 

of self, 192-3, 201, 222, 269, 272 
sqq., 283-7, 290, 316 sqq., 404, 
413, 426 sqq., 471, 513 sqq., 536. 

See also Self-consciousness. 

- Process of, 269, 270, 403, 429, 
451, 457, 472-8, 490, 513, 514. 

- Unity of, 404, 428 sqq., 469. 

- Empirical, 417, 424, 428, 441. 

Moral, 417, 421, 538. 
Conscious being or subject, 403, 447, 

470-7, 489, 529. 
Contradiction, Law of, 387, 465, 

485, 495, 497-8. 
Contrat Social, 121, 123, 124. 
Credo ut intelligam, 460, 461. 
Critical Philosophy of Kant, 411. 
Critique of Judgment, 70, 71, 419, 

420, 516. 
Critique of Practical Reason, 417, 

419. 
Critique of Pure Reason, 205, 404, 

406, 407, 416, 419. 



542 



INDEX. 



Dante, Controversy on opinions of , 1 . 

characteristics as a" poet, 5 sqq. , 
11, 46,47. 

Dualism of, 24, 29, 34, 45. 

relation to mediaeval Catholi 
cism, 3 , 10, 35 sqq. 

to philosophy, 5, 6, 8, 38, 48, 

50. 
. to the Eoman Empire, 35, 42. 

transcends the mediaeval Dual 
ism, 34, 49, 51. 

Darwin, 467, 471. 

Deism, 141. 

De Anima, 387, 457, 468, 494. 

De Deo et Homini, 333, 368. 

De Emendatione Intellectus, 338, 

344, 349. 

De Monarchia, 35, 36, 37, 44. 
De omnibus dubitandum eat, 270. 
Des Cartes, 267-310, 332, 465. 

founder of modern philosophy, 
268. 

- his aim, 269, 287. 

his method, 270 sqq., 278. 

his first principle, 272 sqq., 283, 
376. 

his conception of God, 278 sqq. , 
285-9, 292-7, 301, 306, 313, 361. 

of relation between finite and 
Xinfinite, 282 sqq., 292 sqq., 352. 
-?-his dualism, 276, 287-8, 294, 

300, 304, 310, 315, 368, 522-3. 

relation to pantheism, 284. 

his theories of error, 289. 
of freedom of the will, 294, 

324, 372. 

of knowledge, 296, 465. 
of innate ideas, 296. 

of truth, 297. 

of external world, 297, 301, 

318. 
of matter and mind, 300 sqq. , 

434, 522-3. 

of animal life, 302. 

_ of union of body and soul, 
304. 

of the passions, 307-8. 
Desires, 427. 



Descriptive Sketches, 164, 166. 
Determination, Self-, 469, 476. 

from without, 469, 476, 
Development, Goethe and idea of, 

86, 91, 94, 104. 

and human spirit, 209, 466, 468, 
470. 

Darwin s theory of, 467, 471. 
Dialectic, Aristotle s, 405, 409, 411, 

428, 429. 

Dichtuixj und Wahrheit, 76, 80. 

Discourse on the Causes of In 
equality, 120, 123. 

Divina Connnedia, 5. 

its theme, 9. 

its dualism, 10, 29, 34, 38. 

its place in Middle Ages, 52. 

- Purgatorio, 6, 7, 30, 32, 33, 39, 
46. 

- Paradise, 8, 9, 30, 33, 35, 41, 51, 

52. 

Inferno, 30, 31, 32, 35, 40, 46, 
52. 

Dualism in Middle Ages, 12, 22, 25, 
28, 35, 396. 

in Early Church, 13, 396. 

in Greek philosophy, 227, 396, 
454, 458, 496. 

in Scholastic philosophy, 397, 
460, 482-3, 488. 

in Modern philosophy, 276, 
287-8, 292 s^q., 315, 330, 352 
sqq., 376, 398 sqq., 480 sqq., 523. 

See also Opposition. 

Education, Eousseau s plan of, 122, 
125, 128. 

Wordsworth s treatment of, 183. 
Emil<>, 122, 125, 127, 128. 
Empire, Eoman, 14, 35, 36, 38, 42. 
Encyclopaedists, 161. 

English Lake District as interpreted 
in the Poems of Wordsivorth, 150. 

Entia rationis, 349, 353, 356. 

Entretien, 316, 327. 

Epicureans, 200, 221. 

Epinay, Memoires de Madame d , 
114. 



INDEX. 



543 



Epistle to the Bishop of Llandaff, 

162, 166. 
Epistohe, 297, 303, 354, 357, 359, 

363, 369, 380. 
Erasmus, 269. 
Erdmann, 363. 
Error, 289, 328, 485. 
Essay on Winckelmann, 88. 
Essay on Human Understanding, 

443. 
Ethics, The, 69, 70, 333, 334, 340, 

345, 346, 349, 350, 359, 364, 370, 

371, 373, 374, 377, 378, 379, 380, 

381, 401. 

Excursion, The, 164. 
Experience, relation to metaphysic, 

387, 389-392, 396, 399-416, 426 

sqq., 456-8, 484 sqq. 

Ordinary view of, 407. 

Kant s view of, 408 sqq., 420-4, 
437, 442, 503-4. 

Objects of, 407-412, 416, 424, 
445, 506. 

Form of, 409. 

- Inner, 201, 400-2, 405, 463. 

Outer, 201, 399, 400-1, 405, 463. 

Faust, 88, 95, 210. 

Fichte, 71, 233, 245, 248, 435, 436, 

437, 535, 536. 
France, in the 18th century, 73- 

117. 

Wordsworth s attitude towards, 
162, 164, 166. 

French Revolution, The, 241, 261. 
Freedom, Idea of, 418-9, 422, 468. 

and necessity, 421, 451, 532. 
Friars, Mendicant, 40. 
Froude, J. A., 238, 263. 

Gassendi, 273. 
Geulincx, 306. 

God, Conceptions of, 99, 134, 137, 
225, 287, 464. 

- The Mediaeval, 49. 
Goethe s, 85. 

- Bousseau s, 131, 141, 173. 
Wordsworth s, 173. 



God, Conceptions of, Des Cartes , 
278 sqq., 285-9, 292-7, 301, 306, 
313, 361, 522. 

Malebranche s, 311 sqq. 

Spinoza s, 350, 357 sqq., 370. 
Aristotle s, 388-9, 396, 516. 

Kant s, 416, 420. 

a term of thought, 200, 206, 350. 

Ontological argument for, 287. 
Goethe, 54, 155, 170, 210, 232, 235. 

attitude towards philosophy, 65, 
68, 72. 

attitude towards Nature, 68, 75. 

attitude towards theology and 
Christianity, 74, 85, 96. 

towards philosophers 

Spinoza, 69, 72, 80. 
Kant, 70. 
Fichte, 71. 
Schelling, 71. 
Voltaire, 73. 
Eousseau, 75, 80. 

self -limitation, 66. 

relation to the past, 72, 88. 

storm and stress period, 75, 84. 

idea of renunciation, 80. 

practical philosophy, 83. 

Hellenic period, 84, 87, 93, 97, 
100. 

scientific views, 90, 104. 

limitations of his genius, 95. 

his task, 104. 

Goody Blake and Harry Gill, 181. 
Goiter Griechenlands, 89. 
Gotz von Berlichingen, 88. 
Greece, Goethe and, 87, 93, 100. 

its religion, 87, 212, 215. 

its morality, 212. 

Hamilton, Sir William, 444. 
Hegel, 332. 

and religion, 18, 215, 479, 534 
sqq. 

relation to Kant, 430, 436 sqq. 

his method, 521 sqq. 

philosophy of nature, 525 sqq. 
Heraclites, 495-6. 
Herder, 70. 



544 



INDEX. 



Heroes and Hero-worship, 264. 

Hettinger, 3. 

History, Carlyle s treatment of, 241, 
257, 258, 261. 

Hobbes, 275. 

Homer, 10, 56, 155. 

Humanity, Conceptions of, Rous 
seau s, 119, 178, 185. 

Wordsworth s, 179, 185. 

Comte s, 199, 204, 526, 530. 

Herbert Spencer s, 403. 

Kant s, 406, 418, 420. 

in Greek religion, 215. 

See also Man. 
Hume, 504. 
Button, 184. 

Huxley, Professor, 193, 422. 

Idealism, Later German, 71, 245, 
256, 408, 430 sqq., 469, 498 sqq. 

Cartesian, 277, 362. 
Ideas, Innate, 296, 465. 
Association of, 504, 
Identity, of the self, 409, 413, 426. 

- of thought, 410, 424, 432. 

of knowing and being, 412. 

Pure, 423, 426, 427, 435, 445, 
508, 518, 522. 

of formal logic, 428, 431, 497-8. 

Aristotle s conception of, 485-6, 
494. 

Idiot Boy, The, 181. 
Idola, 462, 490. 
Index, The, 3. 

Individual, The, as related to the 
external world, 469-528. 

as related to the universal, 473, 
478-9, 528. 

Individualism, Eousseau s, 123, 
128, 134, 146, 172, 185. 

Protestant, 134, 382. 

- Wordsworth s, 185-6. 

Greek, 220-1. 

Carlyle s, 264. 

of 18th century, 383. 

Comte and, 527. 

Induction, Necessity of, 456-7, 504- 
6. 



Induction, Process of, 493. 
Infinite. See Cansciousnes*. 

Italienifiche fieise, 103. 

Jacobi, 68, 98. 
Jacobins, The, 116. 
Jacopone di Todi, 41, 47. 
Judgments, Particular, 451-2. 

Kant and immortality, 27. 

on imagination, 60, 251. 

and Goethe, 70. 

on philosophic synthesis, 205, 

on experience and thought, 208. 

on the self, 272. 

on relation of finite to infinite, 
281. 

criticism of Des Cartes, 288. 

on relation to Cartesianism, 383, 
465. 

on relativity between thought 
and being, 383, 404 sqq. , 440-2. 

on knowledge, 404 sqq., 412-5, 
423-4, 431-3, 445. 

his dualism, 405, 407, 409-12, 
416, 419-23, 431 sqq. 

definition of reason, 412. 

definition of noumena, 415. 

on unity of reason and unity of 
experience, 412. 

his dualism not absolute, 417 
sqq., 425, 434, 445, 465-6, 469. 

on self-consciousness, 428-30, 
433-6. 

on function of metaphysic, 438. 

Logic of, 508. 
Kingdom of ends, 420. 
Knowledge, Theories of, 
Comte s, 197. 

- Des Cartes , 296, 465. 

Malebranche s, 311 .sgr/. 
Spinoza s, 340 sqq., 401. 

- Leibniz, 465, 467. 
Locke s, 465. 

Socratic, 451-2. 

Plato s, 452. 

Aristotle s, 456-9, 495-7. 



INDEX. 



545 



Knowledge, Theories of 

- Kant s, 404 sqq., 412-5, 423-4, 
431-3, 445, 506 sqq. 

Scholastic, 460. 

- Reformers , 461-2. 

Idealistic, 508 sqq. 

- Hypotheses underlying, 205, 
274, 277, 284. 

Eelation between, and science, 
386, 412. 

- Process of, 394, 412, 457-8, 502, 
509 sqq. 

Objects of, and thinking subject, 
392, 442-3, 446, 463. 

Latter Day Pamphlets, 237, 243. 

Lavater, 66. 

Law, Moral, 417, 418, 419, 427. 

of reason, 420. 
Lewes, G., 523. 

Leibniz, 70, 322, 383, 465, 467. 
Limits, Consciousness of, 443-5, 

474-5, 537-8. 

Locke, 274, 296, 383, 443, 465, 527. 
Logic, Relation of, to metaphysic, 

392, 480, 484, 493, 496, 498-9, 

510-2. 

and idealistic philosophy, 431, 

498, 499, 505-10. 

Relation of, to science, 439, 483, 
484, 499. 

Ordinary view of, 480. 

and scholasticism, 482, 488. 

Analytic, 481, 482, 483, 484, 497, 

499, 500-1, 509-10. 

Formal, 482, 498. 

Genetic, 499, 509-10. 

of inductive synthesis, 501-4, 
509-10. 

Metaphysical, 512. 

Aristotelian, 481, 484, 489, 492, 
493. 

Kantian, 508. 

Hegelian, 518 sqq. 

Logic of Hegel, 438, 517, 532. 
Luther, 134, 269. 

Maimonides, 382. 



Man, as related to nature, 403, 448, 
450, 526 sqq. 

to man, 427. 

to science, 400. 

to the knowing mind, 449-50, 
457. 

as self-determined, 418-20, 467. 

as determined from without, 
309, 467-9, 471. 

as a moral agent, 449. 

Natural science of, 471. 
Malebranche, 333, 352. 

relation to Cartesianism, 267, 
268, 310. 

theory of knowledge, 311. 

relation of the finite to the in 
finite, 312. 

conception of God, 312, 317, 
320, 325, 331. 

- Dualism of, 315, 322, 330. 

conception of the world and 
consciousness of world, 316, 318. 

divergence from Des Cartes, 317. 

criticism on his meaning of self- 
consciousness, 317. 

nearness to pantheism, 319. 

denial of particular providence, 
322. 

conception of will, 324. 

theory of natural inclinations, 
326. 

use of the passions, 327-31. 

- Ethics of, 329. 
Mark Rutherford, 194. 
Materialism, Kant s relation to, 

408. 
Matter and mind, Opposition of, 

276, 292, 300, 315, 352, 355, 358, 

405, 434, 459, 522. 

Relativity of, 441. 
Mattheiv, 175. 
Meditatio tertia, 282. 
Meditatio quarta, 290. 
Meno, The., 452. 
Metaphysic, 384. 

Origin of term, 384. 

Aristotle s conception of, 385-92, 
473. 

2 M 



546 



INDEX. 



Metaphysic, Charges brought 

against above, 389-391. 
- Relation of, to natural and 
spiritual objects, 392. 

Relation of, to SCIENCE, 392-442, 
521. 

in early philosophy, 393. 

in Socratic school, 395. 

in Neo-Platonic and mediffival 
philosophy, 396. 

Re-action of modern science 
against scholasticism, 397-402. 

Kant first introduces idea of rela 
tivity of thought and being, 404, 
441, 469. 

but confines this relativity to 
experience, 404-11, 423-G, 428, 
429. 

his dualism, 405, 407, 409- 

12, 416, 419-23, 431, 434-6. 

his view of the world, 408. 

- his definition of reason, 
412. 

opposition of pure unity of 
reason to synthetic unity of ex 
perience, 412-5. 

things in themselves viewed 

as ideals of reason, 415. 

his equipoise between a think 
ing consciousness and an empiri 
cal consciousness, 416. 

effort to transcend dualism 
by means of the moral law, 
417-21, 427. 

Kantian antithesis, 423. 

its opposite terms essentially 
related, 425, 469. 

confusion between unity of 
formal logic and unity of self- 
consciousness, 426. 

the unity of self-conscious 
ness, 428-30, 433-6, 

development of Kant s phil 
osophy, 430. 

(a) attempt to develop a 
metaphysic based on idea of 
self-consciousness, 431. 

(6) to show that opposition 



of thought to its object may be 
transcended, 431. 

Metaphysic, development of Kant s 
criticism of self-consciousness, 
433. 

opposition of science to its 
ideals not absolute, 434. 

Fichte s treatment of conscious 
ness, 435. 

Schelling s, 436. 

Hegel s, 436. 

unity of science, 437-42. 

Kant and Fichte on function of 
metaphysic, 438. 

Schelling, 438. 
- Hegel, 438. 

Relation of, to PSYCHOLOGY, 442- 
80. 

fallacy implied in idea that 
science is based on psychology, 
443. 

this fallacy traced to Locke. 
443. 

found in ancient and modern 
scepticism, 444. 

also in Kant, 445. 

rests on a paralogism, 445. 

confusion of metaphysical with 
psychological problem, 446, 448. 

the separate functions of meta 
physic and psychology, 447. 

possibility of a purely objec 
tive psychology, 449. 

function of a true psychology, 
451. 

its problem first recognised by 
Socratic school, 451. 

one-sidedness of Socratic 

view, 452. 

partly corrected by Plato, 453. 

imperfection of Plato s view, 
454. 

Aristotle s criticism of Plato s 
view, 455. 

this criticism misunderstood, 

456. 

dualism in both Plato and 
Aristotle, 458. 



INDEX. 



547 



Metaphysic, attitude of Middle Ages 
towards knowledge, 460. 

of the Keformers towards re 
ligion, 461. 

towards science, 461. 

religious and empiric conscious 
ness not really different, 464. 

compromise in modern Cartesian 
philosophy, 465. 

problem of philosophy in modern 
times, 466. 

is the opposition of without and 
within absolute ? 468. 

Aristotle s answer, 468. 

Kant s answer, 469. 

answer of Kant s successors, 
469. 

relation between nature of con 
scious subject and possibility of 
metaphysic, 473. 

nature of limits to be transcended 
by metaphysic, 474-80. 

Kelation of, to LOGIC, 480-512. 

ordinary view of logic, its re 
lation to metaphysic, 480. 

in mediteval philosophy, 482, 
488. 

in Baconian philosophy, 483, 
484. 

Aristotle s division between logic 
and metaphysic, 484, 493. 

his treatment of business of 
metaphysic, 485. 

-of relation of intelligence to 

intelligible world, 480, 486, 491, 
496. 

process of thought not simply 
analytic, 487. 

truth underlying the idea of 
a formal logic, 489. 

combining of analytic and syn 
thetic elements in thought great 
difficulty of metaphysic, 492. 

Aristotle s metaphysical theory, 
493. 

its inadequacy, 494. 

he sees thought as distinction, 
not as relation also, 496. 



Metaphysic, step taken by ideal 
istic philosophy in logical theory, 
498. 

thought self-determining, 498, 
499. 

relation of analytic, synthetic, 
and genetic logics to each other, 
499-510. 

analytic represents our first 
scientific attitude to world, 499. 

synthetic represents percep 
tion of essential relations between 
objects, 501-4. 

Hume s criticism of synthetic 
logic, 504. 

Kant s answer, 505. 

its inadequacy, 506. 

genetic logic represents per 
ception of essential relation be 
tween rnind and things known, 
508-10. 

true logic inseparable from meta 
physic, 510-2. 

Relation of, to PHILOSOPHY OF 
RELIGION, 513-39. 

a first philosophy bound up 
with a last philosophy, 512-5. 

its explanation of religion, 
criterion of true metaphysic, 
515-7. 

criticism of pure metaphysic of 
Aristotle and Hegel, 517 sqq. 

of the organic unity of Hegel, 
518 sqq. 

objections raised to it, 521, 
537. 

arguments for truth of Hegel s 
position derived from dualism of 
his opponents, 522 sqq. 

rationality of religion must 
rest on possibility of ultimate 
synthesis, 530. 

characteristics of Hegelian phil 
osophy, its idealistic view of 
world and its dialectical move 
ment of thought, 532 sqq. 

relation of Hegelian idealism 
to Christianity, 534 sqq. 



548 



INDEX. 



MetapJiysic of Ethics, 427. 
Middle Ages, Dualism of, 12, 22, 
25, 28, 35, 45, 48, 102. 

Political ideal of, 36, 43. 

Goethe and ideals of, 88. 

Goethe and art of, 97. 
Mill, John, 484, 504. 

Mind, Limits of, 406, 421, 443. 

Aristotle s conception of, 489. 

Ambiguous use of term, 524. 

See also Matter. 

Modes, 342, 345, 351, 352, 367, 370, 

372, 378. 

Monad, Theory of the, 467, 510. 
Morale, 312, 316, 329. 
Morality, Mediaeval, 23, 46. 

its universal principle, 49, 371. 

relation to religion, 50. 

Greek view of, 212, 452. 

how determined, 307. 

its great question, 375. 

moral imperative, 419. 

Spinoza s conception of, 371. 

Kant s conception of, 427. 

Eelation of, to consciousness, 
473. 

More, Henry, 303. 
Mysticism, Characteristics of, 395, 
435-6, 492. 

Plato s relation to, 480. 
- Unity of, 519. 

Nature, Goethe s attitude towards, 
76, 84, 104. 

Eousseau s,118, 120,160,171. 

Wordsworth s, 118, 160, 171. 

Carlyle s, 255, 257. 

Aristotle s conception of, 389, 
396. 

Hegel s philosophy of, 438-40, 
525 sqq. 

and science, 403, 449, 483, 502- 
4. 

and man, 403, 448, 450. 

Return to, 76, 115, 118, 120, 160, 
171, 172. 

nattira naturans, 84. 
Natural inclinations, 326. 



Necessity, Law of, 418, 485. 

and freedom, 421, 451, 532. 

in relation to man, 450. 
Non-contradiction, Principle of ,427. 
Not<x in Proyramma, 296. 
Noumena, 415, 425, 428, 435, 438, 

507, 517. 

and phenomena, 405, 407 sqq., 
415 sqq. 

Xouvelle Helo ise, 106, 121. 
Novalis, 233. 

Objectivity and subjectivity, 464, 

468-9, 504-6. 
Ode to Lycoris, 175. 
Omar Khayyam, 220, 221. 
Ontology, 473, 512. 
Opinion, 339 sqq., 453-4. 
Opposition between the natural and 

spiritual, 25, 45, 48, 435-6, 438. 
matter and mind, 276, 292, 

300, 315, 352, 355, 358, 405, 434, 

459, 522-3. 

passion and reason, 308, 330, 
376. 

phenomenal and ideal, 398, 
458. 

phenomenal and real, 406, 
409, 410, 419, 427, 438, 507. 

self-consciousness and con 
sciousness of objects, 428 sqq. , 
480 sqq., 495, 522. 

a priori and a posteriori, 456, 
465. 

faith and reason, 460. 

the given and the known, 506- 

7. 

form and matter of thought, 
516. 

Optimism, Rousseau s, 131 sqq. 

- Wordsworth s, 188. 

Christian, 216. 
Ozanam, 3. 

Pantheism, Des Cartes and, 284. 

- Malebranche and, 319, 323. 

Spinoza and, 348 sqq., 357 sqq., 
372 sqq., 381. 



INDEX. 



549 



Particular and universal, 386, 393- 

9, 451-8, 458, 493. 
Passions, 308, 327-30, 338, 376. 
Past, and Present, 243, 253, 261, 

262, 263. 

Perception, 404, 456. 
Peter Bell, 178, 181. 
Phivdo, 395. 

Phenomena, see Noumena. 
Philosophy, Dante s relation to, 5, 

8, 38, 48, 50. 

Goethe s, 65, 68, 72. 

Rousseau s, 145. 
Wordsworth s, 153. 

- Kantian, 70, 208, 272 sqq., 383, 
404 sqq. 

Comtian, 197 sqq., 488, 526 

sqQ- 

Aristotelian, 211, 367, 385, 396, 
455, 473, 485 sqq., 508 sqq. 

~ Early Greek, 393-6. 

Later German, 430 sqq. 

Baconian, 399, 462, 483-4, 504. 

- Platonic, 211, 349, 367, 453, 496. 

Hegelian, 430 sqrj., 521 sqq. 

and religion, 35, 195, 225. 

and poetry, 54-5, 63, 153. 

and science, 153, 192, 225, 228, 
396-9, 439, 442, 533. 

Problems of, 59, 63-4, 191, 196, 
206, 211, 223 sqq., 351, 385, 393, 
442, 454, 466-8. 

of religion, 512 sqq. 
Philosophy of Nature, 532. 
Philosophy of Spirit., 532. 
Plato, on Greek politics, 3. 

on relation of part to whole, 6, 
63, 395-6, 453 sqq. 

on morality, 67. 

and problem of philosophy, 211 
sqq., 227-8. 

on opinion, 339. 

on knowledge, 349, 496. 

his idealism, 367. 
Poetry, Mediaeval, 46, 47. 

and philosophy, 54, 63, 153. 

and science, 152. 

Function of, 55 sqq., 153. 



Poetry, Spontaneity of, 59. 

Conditions of, 60. 

Wordsworth s conception of, 
152. 

Importance of form in, 153. 

relation of form to content, 170. 
Positive philosophy, 527. 
Positive politics, 527. 
Positivists, 205. 

Principia, 295, 304. 
Puritanism, 106, 235. 
Politics of Spinoza, 336. 
Prelude, The, 162, 163, 185, 186. 
Principium coynoscendi, 284, 304. 
Principium essendi, 284. 
Private judgment and Protestant 
ism, 136. 

Eousseau and, 142. 
Profession of Faith of a Savoyard 

Vicar, 138, 139. 
Protestantism, 134, 136, 144, 173, 

461. 

Extreme sects of, 138. 
Psychology, Eelation of, to meta- 

physic, 392, 442 sqq., 448, 480. 

Function of, 447 sqq. 

as objective, 449. 

Ratio, 349. 

Real. See Beiny and Noumena. 

Reason, Rights of, 142. 

- Doubt of, 286. 

Demands of, 406. 

- Identity of, 406, 427. 

and faith, 460. 

- Development of, 468, 470. 

Kant s conception of, 412, 429. 
- Plato s, 454. 

Aristotle s, 455, 457, 468. 

Practical and theoretical, 417. 

Active and passive, 457, 459. 

Universal and particular, 458. 
Reciprocity, Category of, 439, 449. 
Reid, 314. 

Religion, Ancient, 27, 29, 87. 

Jewish, 27. 

- Greek, 212, 215. 

Modern, 221. 



550 



INDEX. 



Religion, Relation of, to philoso 
phy, 35, 195, 225. 

Relation of, to morality, 50. 

Rousseau s defence of, 130. 

Relation of, to metaphysic, 392, 
512-39. 

as objective, 460. 

as subjective, 461. 

and science, 461, 462, 463, 464. 
Reminiscence, Doctrine of, 453-4, 

457. 
Renunciation, Goethe and idea of, 

80, 96. 

Representative Men, 264. 
Republic, The, 3, 211. 
Res cogitans, 287. 
Res completes, 341. 
Res extensa, 287. 
Resp. ad secundas objertiones, 275, 

291, 293. 

Resi>. ad tertias objectiones, 275. 
Re.ip. quartan, 285. 
Reap, sexhe, 295, 299. 
Reveries, The, 109, 112. 
Revolution, French, 116, 120, 161, 

164, 167, 179, 185, 233, 236. 
Richter, Jean Paul, 233, 246. 
Robbers, The, 89. 
Robespierre, 106. 
Romanticism, Goethe and, 89. 
Rousseau, 105. 

- his Deism, 106, 141. 

self-contradiction, 107, 128. 

egoism, 108. 

early influences, 109. 

sensitiveness, 111. 

love of the country, 113. 

- Paris life, 113. 

literary career, 115. 

return to nature, 115, 118, 120, 
160, 171. 

doctrine of good intentions, 117. 

sympathy with the people, 119, 
178, 185. 

- social contract, 121-4, 128. 

scheme of education, 125, 128. 

- individualism, 123, 128, 134, 
140, 172, 185. 



Rousseau, defence of religion, 130. 

appeal to sentiment, 133. 

fundamental error of, 141. 

mission of, 145. 

volonte generate, 125, 128, 135, 
141, 143, 185. 

raison commun, 133, 135, 139, 
141, 173, 185. 

moi commun, 129, 130. 

sentiment interieur, 130, 131. 

Comparison between, and Words 
worth, 162, 171, 173, 178 sqq. 

Rousseau, Morley s, 142. 

Sanctuary of Sorrow, 101, 103. 
Sartor Resartus, 243, 246, 248. 
Scepticism, 206, 214. 

Modern and ancient, 218, 220, 
444. 

Scientific, 400. 
Sceptics, 200, 202, 205. 
Schelling, 71-85, 361, 436, 438. 
Schiller, 55, 70, 89, 92, 94, 233, 

257. 
Scholasticism, 397, 460, 482, 483, 

488. 
Science and poetry, 152. 

and philosophy, 153, 192, 225, 
288, 399, 439 sqq., 483, 491, 533. 

and theology, 219, 461 sqq. 

and metaphysic, 392-442. 

and idea of unity, 413, 426, 434 
sqq. 

and idea of consciousness, 473, 
486, 489. 

and nature, 483, 502-4. 

and logic, 439, 483-4, 499, 500. 
-- and psychology, 443. 

Categories of, 402, 439, 441, 442. 
Scientia intuitira, 349, 353. 
Secularism, 220. 

Self, Identity of, 409. 

The noumenal, 416. 

and not self, 402, 433, 436, 470, 
472. 

Subjective and objective, 426, 
431, 447-8, 470. 

Development of, 472. 



INDEX. 



551 



Self-consciousness, as type of 
knowledge, 445, 494. 

Absolute principle of, 451, 469, 
470, 489. 

- Definitions of, 472. 

Transition from, to world, 521 
sqq. 

See also Consciousness. 
Shakespeare, 242, 259. 
Shelley, 169. 

Slavery, 127. 

Socrates, 451, 452. 

Sonnet* on Ecclesiastical History, 

166, 167. 

Sonnets on National Liberty, 165. 
Sonnets on the River Duddon, 157. 
Sonnet ivritten near Dover, 155. 
Sophists, 213, 227. 
Sorrou-s of Werther, 56, 76, 78, 79, 

84, 88. 
Spencer, Herbert, 193, 403, 443, 

488, 523, 524. 
Spinoza, Goethe s relation to, 65, 

69, 71, 80, 81, 84, 96. 

his pantheism, 284, 332, 344, 
351 sqq., 381. 

relation to Cartesianism, 267-8, 
332. 

relation to Jewish philosophy, 
332. 

his method, 334-5, 339. 

its imperfection, 359, 365, 
368, 378. 

view of the highest good, 338. 

of the finite, 388, 353 sqq., 
401. 

of relation between finite and 

infinite, 357, 360 sqq., 372, 378. 

of God, 350, 370, 377. 

of knowledge, 340-4, 351, 401. 

of opinion, 339, 341. 

of abstraction and imagina 
tion, 341, 353. 

of thought, 342 sqq., 369. 

of science, 349. 

of matter, 353, 361, 369. 

of relation between mind and 

matter, 352 sqq., 367-8, 523. 



Spinoza s view of evil, 356, 370. 

of soul and body, 360, 367, 
380. 

of substance, 363 sqq. 

of relation of the attributes. 
368. 

of morality, 370-81. 

of will and intelligence, 373, 
376. 

of animals, 380. 

of relation between reason 

and passion, 376. 
Spirit, Hegel s absolute, 437. 
Spiritual Brethren, 41. 
St. Augustine, 22, 45, 267, 310. 
St. Francis, 47. 
St. Just, 106. 
St. Paul, 14, 20. 
St. Thomas, 45, 48. 
Sterne, Laurence, 246. 
Star-(jazers, The, 155. 
Stoics, The, 200, 202, 205. 
Summum Bonum, Kant s idea of, 

40, 422. 

Summa Theologia, 49. 
Swift, Dean, 243. 

Sub specie ceternitatis, 338, 357, 529. 
Syllogism, Kant and, 412. 

Aristotle and, 493, 512. 
Synthesis, Objective, 196, 197, 203, 

208, 224, 416, 425. 

Subjective, 198, 201, 203. 

Philosophical, 200, 205, 215, 
225. 

Systeme de la Nature, 73. 

Tabula rasa, 489. 

Tale of the Tub, 243, 245. 

Theffitetus, 452. 

Thought, Modern movement of, 

102, 195, 214, 219 sqq. 
- Progress of, 106, 144, 438. 

Three great terms of, 192. 

Universality of, 208, 223, 491 
sqq. 

Des Cartes on, 272 sqq. 

Spinoza on, 342 sqq., 369. 

Aristotle on, 486, 493, 495-6. 



552 



INDEX. 



Thought and being, 274, 276, 287, 
404. 

and experience, 405-0, 424, 431, 
480. 

and the world, 502. 

- Unity of, 400, 412, 424, 4GG, 492. 

Process of, as analytic, 480 tiqq., 
493 sqq. 

as synthetic, 491, 498. 

as self-determined, 498, 509. 

form and content, 480-2, 492 
sqq. 

Eelativity of, 483 sqq., 496 sqq., 
510 sqq. 

Truth, Poetic, 58, 152, 257. 

- Scientific, 58, 152, 222, 257, 462 
sqq. 

- Mathematical, 271-2, 279. 

- Intellectual, 324. 
Eeligious, 462-3. 

- Errors in, 399. 

- Definitions of, 480, 485. 

Relativity of, to mind, 453 sqq. , 
460. 

a priori and a posteriori, 401, 
456, 459, 465. 

Types of Ethical Theory, 303. 

Understanding, Perceptive, 412, 
508. 

- Intuitive, 415, 422, 507. 

Identity of, 512. 

Unity, An absolute, 399, 423, 436, 
478, 517. 

of self, 404, 426, 433, 469. 

of thought, 412, 424, 432, 519, 
520. 

of reason, 412, 413. 

of things and knowing mind, 
414, 439, 446, 450, 463, 483, 491, 
498. 

of experience, 412, 429. 

Organic, 421, 422, 426, 429, 
442, 476, 508-11, 533. 

of self-consciousness and of con 
sciousness, 428 sqq., 477, 508-9, 
516, 518. 



Unity, Synthetic, 429, 442. 

of knowledge, 508. 516. 

Metaphysical, 512-5. 

Unity of Comte s Life and Doc 
trine, 200. 
Universality, 491. 
Universal principle, 451-2. 

See also Particular. 

Vice, Socratic conception of, 452. 
Virtue, Socratic conception of, 452. 
Voltaire, 73, 114, 141, 144. 
Von Hartmann, 521. 

Wandering Jew, The, 88. 
Wanderjahre, 98. 
Warens, Madame de, 113. 
Werner, 98. 
Will, Human, 419. 
White Doe of Eylstone, 178. 
Wilhdm Mdster, 83. 
Wordsworth, 7, 60. 

characteristics of his poetry, 
147, 154 sqq., 170, 174 sqq. 

vocation, 151. 

conception of poetry, 152. 

place as a poet, 155. 

esthetic heresy, 159, 183. 

content of his poetry, 160, 
170. 

conception of Nature, 160, 
174. 

life at Cambridge, 163. 

political changes, 165. 

poetic method, 175. 

Influence of French Revolution 
on, 162, 164, 167, 169, 179, 185. 

Comparison between Rousseau 
and, 118, 171, 173, 178, 183, 185, 
186. 

conception of man, 179, 185. 

Optimism of, 188. 
Wordsworth, Life of, 150. 

World, conceptions of, Carlyle s, 
256. 

Des Carte s, 274 sqq. 
Malebranche s, 316. 



INDEX. 



553 



World, conceptions of, Kant s, 408, World, conceptions of, Scientific, 



413. 416, 507. 



484. 



. , 

__ Fichte and Sehelling s, 430. - in relation to philosophy, 104, 

-- Plato s, 454, 458. 200, 223, 484, 501. 

Aristotle s, 459, 408, 490, ! as phenomenal, 398, 417, 419. 
510, 522. in space, 434. 

_. __ Hegel s, 521. See also Consciousness. 

- Spinoza s, 52 2. 



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