International Congress of Arts and Science Part 33

But will Kant's a.n.a.lysis stand? Have we not here another of his few but fatal slips,--like his doctrine of the dependence of Number upon Time and s.p.a.ce, and its consequent subjection to them? It surely seems so. If the veritable postulate of categorical syllogizing be, as Kant thinks it is, merely the Subject, the self as experiencer of presented phenomena, in contrast to the Object, the causally united sum of possible phenomena; and if the true postulate of conditional syllogizing is this cosmic Object, as contrasted with the correlate Subject, then it would seem we cannot avoid certain pertinent questions. Is such a postulate Subject any fit and adequate account of the whole Self, of the Soul?--is there not a vital difference between this subject-self and the Self as Person?--does not Kant himself imply so, in his doctrine of the primacy of the Practical Reason? Again: Is not the World, as explained in Kant's a.n.a.lysis, and as afterwards made by him the solution of the Cosmological Antinomies, simply the supplemental factor necessarily correlate to the subjective aspect of the conscious life, and reduced from its uncritical role of thing-in-itself to the intelligible subordination required by Kant's theory of Transcendental Idealism?--and can this be any adequate account of the Idea that is to stand in sufficing contrast to the whole Self, the Person?--what less than the Society of Persons can meet the World-Idea for that? Further: If with Kant we take the World to mean no more than this object-factor in self-consciousness, must not the Soul, the total Self, from which, according to Kant's Transcendental Idealism, both s.p.a.ce and Time issue, supplying the basis for the immutable contrast between the experiencing subject and the really experienced objects,--must not this _whole_ Self be the real meaning of the "Totality of Conditions, itself unconditioned," which comes into view as simply the postulate of disjunctive syllogizing? How in the world can disjunctive syllogizing, the confessed act of the _I_-thinking intelligence, really postulate anything as Totality of Conditions, in any other sense than the total of conditions for such syllogizing?--namely, the conditioning _I_ that organizes and does the reasoning? There is surely no warrant for calling this total, which simply transcends and conditions the subject and the object of sensible experiences, by any loftier name than that which Kant had already given it in the Deduction of the Categories, when he designated it the "originally synthetic unity of apperception (self-consciousness)," or "the _I_-thinking (_das ich-denke_) that must accompany all my mental presentations,"--that is to say, the whole Self, or thinking Person, idealistically interpreted.

The use of the name G.o.d in this connection, where Kant is in fact only seeking the roots of the three orders of the syllogism _when reasoning has by supposition been restricted to the subject-matter of experience_, is a.s.suredly without warrant; yes, without excuse. In fact, it is because Kant sees that the third Idea, as reached through his a.n.a.lysis, is intrinsically immanent,--resident in the self that syllogizes disjunctively, and, because so resident, incapable of pa.s.sing the bounds of possible experience,--while he also sees that the idea of G.o.d should mean a Being transcendent of every other thinker, himself a distinct individual consciousness, though not an empirically limited one,--it is, I say, precisely because he sees all this, that he p.r.o.nounces the Idea, though named with the name of G.o.d, utterly without pertinence to indicate G.o.d's existence, and so enters upon that part of his Transcendental Dialectic which is, in chief, directed to exposing the transcendental illusion involved in the celebrated Ontological Proof.

Consistently, Kant in this famous a.n.a.lytic of the syllogism should be talking, not of the Soul, the World, and G.o.d, but of the Subject (as uniting-principle of its sense-_perceptions_), the Object (as uniting-principle of all possible sense-_percepts_), and the Self (the whole _I_ presiding over experience in both its aspects, as these are discriminated in Time and s.p.a.ce). By what rational t.i.tle--even granting for the sake of argument that they are the genuine postulates of categorical and of conditional syllogizing--can this Subject and this Object, these correlate factors in the Self, rank as Ideas with the Idea of their conditioning Whole--the Self, that in its still unaltered ident.i.ty fulfills, in Practical Reason, the high role of Person? If _this_ no more than meets the standard of Idea, how can _they_ meet it?

How can two somethings, neither of which is the Totality of Conditions, and both of which are therefore in fact conditioned, deserve the same t.i.tle with that which is intrinsically the Totality of Conditions, and, as such, unconditioned? To call the conditioned and the unconditioned alike Ideas is a confounding of dignities that Pure Reason should not tolerate, whether the procedure be read as a leveling down or a leveling up. Distributing the t.i.tles conferred by Pure Reason in this democratic fas.h.i.+on reminds us too much, unhappily for Kant, of the Cartesian performances with Substance; whereby G.o.d, mind, and matter became alike "substances," though only G.o.d could in truth be said to "require nothing for his existence save himself," while mind and matter, though absolutely dependent on G.o.d, and derivative from him, were still to be called substances in the "modified" and Pickwickian sense of being underived from each other.

But if Kant's naming his third syllogistic postulate the Idea of G.o.d is inconsequent upon his a.n.a.lysis; or if, when the a.n.a.lysis is made consequent by taking the third Idea to mean the whole Self, the first and second postulates sink in conceptual rank, so that they cannot with any pertinence be called Ideas, unless we are willing to keep the same name when its meaning must be changed _in genere_,--a procedure that can only enc.u.mber philosophy instead of clearing its way,--these difficulties do not close the account; we shall find other curious things in this noted pa.s.sage, upon which part of the characteristic outcome of Kant's philosophizing so much depends. Besides the misnaming of the third Idea, we have already had to question, in view of the path by which he reaches it, the fitness of his calling the first by the t.i.tle of the Soul; and likewise, though for other and higher reasons, of his calling the second by the name of the World. In fact, it comes home to us that all of the Ideas are, in one way or another, misnomers; Kant's whole procedure with them, in fine, has already appeared inexact, inconsistent, and therefore uncritical. But now we shall become aware of certain other inconsistencies. In coming to the Subject, as the postulate of categorical syllogizing, Kant, you remember, does so by the path of the relation Subject and Predicate, arguing that the chain of categorical prosyllogisms has for its limiting concept and logical motor the notion of an absolute subject that cannot be a predicate; and as no subject of a judgment can of itself give a.s.surance of fulfilling this condition, he concludes this motor-limit of judgment-subjects to be identical with the Subject as thinker, upon whom, at the last, all judgments depend, and who, therefore, and who alone, can never be a predicate merely. In similar fas.h.i.+on, he finds as the motor-limit of the series of conditional prosyllogisms, which is governed by the relation Cause and Effect, the notion of an absolute cause--a cause, that is, incapable of being an effect; and this, as undiscoverable in the chain of phenomenal causes, which are all in turn effects, he concludes is a pure Idea, the reason's native conception of a necessary linkage among all changes in s.p.a.ce, or of a Cosmic Unity among physical phenomena. In both conceptions, then, whether of the unity of the Subject or of the World, we seem to have a case of the unconditioned, as each, surely, is a totality of conditions: the one, for all possible syllogisms by Subject and Predicate; the other, for all possible syllogisms from Cause and Effect. Until it can be shown that the syllogisms of the first sort and the syllogisms of the second are both conditioned by the system of disjunctive syllogisms, so that the Idea alleged to be the totality of conditions for this system becomes the conditioning principle for both the others, there appears to be no ground for contrasting the totality of conditions presented in it with those presented in the others, as if it were the absolute Totality of all Conditions, while the two others are only "relative totalities,"--which would be as much as to say they were only pseudo-totalities, both being conditioned instead of being unconditioned. But there seems to be no evidence, not even an indication, that disjunctive reasoning conditions categorical or conditional--that it const.i.tutes the whole kingdom, in which the other two orders of reasoning form dependent provinces, or that for final validation these must appeal to the disjunctive series and the Idea that controls it. On the contrary, any such relation seems disproved by the fact that the three types of syllogism apply alike in all subject-matter, psychic or physical, subjective or objective, concerning the Self or concerning the World,--yes, concerning other Selves or even concerning G.o.d; whereas, if the relation were a fact, it would require that only disjunctive reasoning can deal with the Unconditioned, and that conditional must confine itself to cosmic material, while categorical pertains only to the things of inner sense.

Such considerations cannot but shake our confidence in the inquisition to which Kant has submitted the Ideas of Reason, both as regards what they really mean and how they are to be correlated. At all events, the a.n.a.lysis of logical procedure and connection on which his account of them is based is full of the confusions and oversights that have now been pointed out, and justifies us in saying that his case is not established. Hence we are not bound to follow when his three successors, or their later adherents, proceed in acceptance of his results, and advance into various forms of idealism, all of the monistic type, as if the general relation between the three Ideas had been demonstrably settled by Kant in the monist sense, despite his not knowing this, and that all we have to do is to disregard his recorded protests, and render his results consistent, and our idealism "absolute," by casting out from his doctrine the distinction between the Theoretical and the Practical Reason, with the "primacy" of the latter, through making an end of his a.s.sumed world of _Dinge an sich_, or "things in themselves." This movement, I repeat, we are not bound to follow: a rectification of view as to the meaning of the three Ideas becomes possible as soon as we are freed from Kant's entangled method of discovering and defining them; and when this rectification is effected, we shall find that the question between monism and rational or harmonic pluralism is at least open, to say no more. Nay, we are not to forget that by the results of our a.n.a.lysis of the concepts One and Many, Time and s.p.a.ce, and the real relation between them, plural metaphysics has already won a precedence in this contest.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

BY GEORGE TRUMBULL LADD

[George Trumbull Ladd, Professor of Philosophy, Yale University. b. January 19, 1842, Painesville, Ohio. B.A.

Western Reserve College, 1864; B.D. Andover Theological Seminary, 1869; D.D. Western Reserve, 1879; M.A. Yale, 1881; LL.D. Western Reserve, 1895; LL.D. Princeton, 1896.

Decorated with the 3d Degree of the Order of the Rising Sun of j.a.pan, 1899; Pastor, Edinburg, Ohio, 1869-71; _ibid._, Milwaukee, Wis., 1871-79; Professor of Philosophy, Bowdoin College, 1879-81; _ibid._, Yale University, 1881--; Lecturer, Harvard, Tokio, Bombay, etc., 1885--, Member American Psychological a.s.sociation, American Society of Naturalists, American Philosophical a.s.sociation, American Oriental Society, Imperial Educational Society of j.a.pan, Connecticut Academy. Author of _Elements of Physiological Psychology_; _Philosophy of Knowledge_; _Philosophy of Mind_; _A Theory of Reality_; and many other noted scientific works and papers.]

The history of man's critical and reflective thought upon the more ultimate problems of nature and of his own life has, indeed, its period of quickened progress, relative stagnation, and apparent decline. Great thinkers are born and die, "schools of philosophy," so-called, arise, flourish, and become discredited; and tendencies of various characteristics mark the national or more general Zeitgeist of the particular centuries. And always, a certain deep undercurrent, or powerful stream of the rational evolution of humanity, flows silently onward. But these periods of philosophical development do not correspond to those which have been marked off for man by the rhythmic motion of the heavenly bodies, or by himself for purposes of greater convenience in practical affairs. The proposal, therefore, to treat any century of philosophical development as though it could be taken out of, and considered apart from, this constant unfolding of man's rational life is, of necessity, doomed to failure. And, indeed, the nineteenth century is no exception to the general truth.

There is, however, one important and historical fact which makes more definite, and more feasible, the attempt to present in outline the history of the philosophical development of the nineteenth century. This fact is the death of Immanuel Kant, February 12, 1804. In a very unusual way this event marks the close of the development of philosophy in the eighteenth century. In a yet more unusual way the same event defines the beginning of the philosophical development of the nineteenth century.

The proposal is, therefore, not artificial, but in accordance with the truth of history, if we consider the problems, movements, results, and present condition of this development, so far as the fulfillment of our general purpose is concerned, in the light of the critical philosophy of Kant. This purpose may then be further defined in the following way: to trace the history of the evolution of critical and reflective thought over the more ultimate problems of Nature and of human life, in the Western World during the last hundred years, and from the standpoint of the conclusions, both negative and positive, which are best embodied in the works of the philosopher of Konigsberg. This purpose we shall try to fulfill in these four divisions of our theme: (1) A statement of the problems of philosophy as they were given over to the nineteenth century by the Kantian Critique; (2) a brief description of the lines of movement along which the attempts at the improved solution of these problems have proceeded, and of the princ.i.p.al influences contributing to these attempts; (3) a summary of the princ.i.p.al results of these movements--the items, so to say, of progress in philosophy which may be credited to the last century; and finally, (4) a survey of the present state of these problems as they are now to be handed down by the nineteenth to the twentieth century. Truly an immensely difficult, if not an impossible task, is involved in this purpose!

I. The problems which the critical philosophy undertook definitively to solve may be divided into three cla.s.ses. The first is the epistemological problem, or the problem offered by human knowledge--its essential nature, its fixed limitations, if such there be, and its ontological validity. It was this problem which Kant brought to the front in such a manner that certain subsequent writers on philosophy have claimed it to be, not only the primary and most important branch of philosophical discipline, but to comprise the sum-total of what human reflection and critical thought can successfully compa.s.s. "We call philosophy self-knowledge," says one of these writers. "The theory of knowledge is the true _prima philosophia_," says another. Kant himself regarded it as the most imperative demand of reason to establish a science that shall "determine _a priori_ the possibility, the principles, and the extent of all cognitions." The burden of the epistemological problem has pressed heavily upon the thought of the nineteenth century; the different att.i.tudes toward this problem, and its different alleged solutions, have been most influential factors in determining the philosophical discussions, divisions, schools, and permanent or transitory achievements of the century.

In the epistemological problem as offered by the Kantian philosophy of cognition there is involved the subordinate but highly important question as to the proper method of philosophy. Is the method of criticism, as that method was employed in the three Critiques of Kant, the exclusive, the sole appropriate and productive way of advancing human philosophical thought? I do not think that the experience of the nineteenth century warrants an affirmative answer to this question of method. This experience has certainly, however, resulted in demonstrating the need of a more thorough, consistent, and fundamental use of the critical method than that in which it was employed by Kant.

And this improved use of the critical method has induced a more profound study of the psychology of cognition, and of the historical development of philosophy in the branch of epistemology. More especially, however, it has led to the reinstatement of the value-judgments, as means of cognition, in their right relations of harmony with the judgments of fact and of law.

The second of the greater problems which the critical philosophy of the eighteenth handed on to the nineteenth century is the ontological problem. This problem, even far more than the epistemological, has excited the intensest interest, and called for the profoundest thought, of reflective minds during the last hundred years. This problem engages in the inquiry as to what Reality is; for to define philosophy from the ontological point of view renders it "the rational science of reality;"

or, at least, "the science of the supreme and most important realities."

In spite of the fact that the period immediately following the conclusion of the Kantian criticism was the age when the people were singing

"_Da die Metaphysik vor Kurzem unbeerbt abging,_ _Werden die Dinge an sich jetzo sub hasta verkauft,_"

the cultivation of the ontological problem, and the growth of systematic metaphysics in the nineteenth century, had never previously been surpa.s.sed. In spite of, or rather because of, the fact that Kant left the ancient body of metaphysics so dismembered and discredited, and his own ontological structure, in such hopeless confusion, all the several buildings both of Idealism and of Realism either rose quickly or were erected upon the foundations made bare by the critical philosophy.

But especially unsatisfactory to the thought of the first quarter of the nineteenth century was the Kantian position with reference to the problem in which, after all, both the few who cultivate philosophy and the mult.i.tude who share in its fruits are always most truly interested; and this is the ethico-religious problem. In the judgment of the generation which followed him, Kant had achieved for those who accepted his points of view, his method of philosophizing, and his results, much greater success in "removing knowledge" than in "finding room for faith." For he seemed to have left the positive truths of Ethics so involved in the negative positions of his critique of knowledge as greatly to endanger them; and to have entangled the conceptions of religion with those of morality in a manner to throw doubt upon them both.

The breach between the human cognitive faculties and the ontological doctrines and conceptions on which morality and religion had been supposed to rest firmly, the elaborately argued distrust and skepticism which had been aimed against the ability of human reason to reach reality, and the consequent danger which threatened the most precious judgments of worth and the ontological value of ethical and aesthetical sentiments, could not remain unnoticed, or fail to promote ceaseless and earnest efforts to heal it. The hitherto accepted solutions of the problems of cognition, of being, and of man's ethico-religious experience, could not survive the critical philosophy. But the solutions which the critical philosophy itself offered could not fail to excite opposition and to stimulate further criticism. Moreover, certain factors in human nature, certain interests in human social life, and certain needs of humanity, not fully recognized and indeed scarcely noticed by criticism, could not fail to revive and to enforce their ancient, perennial, and valid claims.

In a word, Kant left the main problems of philosophy involved in numerous contradictions. The result of his penetrating but excessive a.n.a.lysis was unwarrantably to contrast sense with understanding; to divide reason as const.i.tutive from reason as regulative; to divorce the moral law from our concrete experience of the results of good and bad conduct, true morality from many of the n.o.blest desires and sentiments, and to set in opposition phenomena and noumena, order and freedom, knowledge and faith, science and religion. Now the highest aim of philosophy is reconciliation. What wonder, then, that the beginning of the last century felt the stimulus of the unreconciled condition of the problems of philosophy at the end of the preceding century! The greatest, most stimulating inheritance of the philosophy of the nineteenth century from the philosophy of the eighteenth century was the "post-Kantian problems."

II. The lines of the movement of philosophical thought and the princ.i.p.al contributory influences which belong to the nineteenth century may be roughly divided into two cla.s.ses; namely, (1) those which tended in the direction of carrying to the utmost extreme the negative and destructive criticism of Kant, and (2) those which, either mainly favoring or mainly antagonizing the conclusions of the Kantian criticism, endeavored to place the positive answer to all three of these great problems of philosophy upon more comprehensive, scientifically defensible, and permanently sure foundations. The one cla.s.s so far completed the attempt to remove the knowledge at which philosophy aims as, by the end of the first half of the century, to have left no rational ground for any kind of faith. The other cla.s.s had not, even by the end of the second half of the century, as yet agreed upon any one scheme for harmonizing the various theories of knowledge, of reality, and of the ground of morality and religion. There appeared, however,--especially during the last two decades of the century,--certain signs of convergence upon positions, to occupy which is favorable for agreement upon such a scheme, and which now promise a new constructive era for philosophy. The terminus of the destructive movement has been reached in our present-day positivism and philosophical skepticism. For this movement there would appear to be no more beyond in the same direction. The terminus of the other movement can only be somewhat dimly descried. It may perhaps be predicted with a reasonable degree of confidence as some form of ontological Idealism (if we may use such a phrase) that shall be at once more thoroughly grounded in man's total experience, as interpreted by modern science, and also more satisfactory to human ethical, aesthetical, and religious ideals, than any form of systematic philosophy has. .h.i.therto been. But to say even this much is perhaps unduly to antic.i.p.ate.

If we attempt to fathom and estimate the force of the various streams of influence which have shaped the history of the philosophical development of the nineteenth century, I think there can be no doubt that the profoundest and the most powerful is the one influence which must be recognized and reckoned with in all the centuries. This influence is humanity's undying interest in its moral, civil, and religious ideals, and in the civil and religious inst.i.tutions which give a faithful but temporary expression to these ideals. In the long run, every fragmentary or systematic attempt at the solution of the problem of philosophy must sustain the test of an ability to contribute something of value to the realization of these ideals. The test which the past century has proposed for its own thinkers, and for its various schools of philosophy, is by far the severest which has ever been proposed. For the most part unostentatiously and in large measure silently, the thoughtful few and the comparatively thoughtless mult.i.tude have been contributing, either destructively or constructively, to the effort at satisfaction for the rising spiritual life of man. And if in some vague but impressive manner we speak of this thirst for spiritual satisfaction as characteristic of any period of human history, we may say, I believe, that it has been peculiarly characteristic and especially powerful as an influence during the last hundred years. The opinions, sentiments, and ideals which shape the development of the inst.i.tutions of the church and state, and the freer activities of the same opinions, sentiments, and ideals, have been in this century, as they have been in every century, the princ.i.p.al factors in determining the character of its philosophical development.

But a more definite and visible kind of influence has constantly proceeded from the centres of the higher education. The universities--especially of Germany, next, perhaps of Scotland, but also of England and the United States, and even in less degree of France and Italy--have both fostered and shaped the evolution of critical and reflective thought, and of its product as philosophy. In Germany during the eighteenth century the greater universities had been emanc.i.p.ating themselves from the stricter forms of political and court favoritism and of ecclesiastical protection and control. This emanc.i.p.ation had already operated at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and it continued more and more to operate throughout this century, for partic.i.p.ation in that free thought whose spirit is absolutely essential to the flouris.h.i.+ng of true philosophy. All the other colleges and universities can scarcely repay the debt which modern philosophy owes to the universities of Germany. The inst.i.tutions of the higher education which are moulded after this spirit, and which have a generous share of this spirit, have everywhere been _schools of thought_ as well as schools of learning and research. Without the increasing numbers and growing encouragement of such centres for the cultivation of the discipline of critical and reflective thinking, it is difficult to conjecture how much the philosophical development of the nineteenth century would have lost.

_Libertas docendi_ and _Academische Freiheit_--without these philosophy has one of its wings fatally wounded or severely clipped.

Not all the philosophy of the last century, however, was born and developed in academical centres and under academical influences. In Germany, Great Britain, and France, the various so-called "Academies" or other unacademical a.s.sociations of men of scientific interests and attainments--notably, the Berlin Academy, which has been called "the seat of an anti-scholastic popular philosophy"--were during the first half of the nineteenth century contributing by their conspicuous failures as well as by their less conspicuous successes, important factors to the constructive new thought of the latter half of the nineteenth century. In general, although these men decried system and were themselves inadequately prepared to treat the problems of philosophy, whether from the historical or the speculative and critical point of view, they cannot be wholly neglected in estimating its development. Clever reasoning, and witty and epigrammatic writing on scientific or other allied subjects, cannot indeed be called _philosophy_ in the stricter meaning of the word. But this so-called "popular philosophy" has greatly helped in a way to free thought from its too close bondage to scholastic tradition. And even the despite of philosophy, and sneering references to its "barrenness," which formerly characterized the meetings and the writings of this cla.s.s of its critics, but which now are happily much less frequent, have been on the whole both a valuable check and a stimulus to her devotees. He would be too narrow and sour a disciple of scholastic metaphysics and systematic philosophy, who, because of the levity or scorning of "outsiders,"

should refuse them all credit. Indeed, the lesson of the close of the nineteenth century may well enough be the motto for the beginning of the twentieth century: _In philosophy--since to philosophize is natural and inevitable for all rational beings--there really are no outsiders._

In this connection it is most interesting to notice how men of the type just referred to, were at the end of the eighteenth century found grouped around such thinkers as Mendelssohn, Lessing, F.

Nicolai,--representing a somewhat decided reaction from the French realism to the German idealism. The work of the Academicians in the criticism of Kant was carried forward by Jacobi, who, at the time of his death, was the pensioned president of the Academy at Munich. Some of these same critics of the Kantian philosophy showed a rather decided preference for the "commonsense" philosophy of the Scottish School.

But both inside and outside of the Universities and Academies the scientific spirit and acquisitions of the nineteenth century have most profoundly, and on the whole favorably, affected the development of its philosophy. In the wider meaning of the word, "science,"--the meaning, namely, in which science = _Wissenschaft_,--philosophy aims to be scientific; and science can never be indifferent to philosophy. In their common aim at a rational and unitary system of principles, which shall explain and give its due significance to the totality of human experience, science and philosophy can never remain long in antagonism; they ought never even temporarily to be divided in interests, or in the spirit which leads each generously to recognize the importance of the other. The early part of the last century was, indeed, too much under the influence of that almost exclusively speculative _Natur-philosophie_, of which Sch.e.l.ling and Hegel were the most prominent exponents. On the other hand, the conception of nature as a vast interconnected and unitary system of a rational order, unfolding itself in accordance with teleological principles,--however manifold and obscure,--is a n.o.ble conception and not destined to pa.s.s away.

On the continent--at least in France, where it had attained its highest development--the scientific spirit was, at the close of the eighteenth century, on the whole opposed to systematization. The impulse to both science and philosophy during both the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries, over the entire continent of Europe, was chiefly due to the epoch-making work of that greatest of all t.i.tles in the modern scientific development of the Western World, the _Principia_ of Newton.

In mathematics and the physical sciences, during the early third or half of the last century, Great Britain also has a roll of distinguished names which compares most favorably with that of either France or Germany. But in England, France, and the United States, during the whole century, science has lacked the breadth and philosophic spirit which it had in Germany during the first three quarters of this period. During all that time the German man of science was, as a rule, a scholar, an investigator, a teacher, _and a philosopher_. Science and philosophy thrived better, however, in Scotland than elsewhere outside of Germany, so far as their relations in interdependence were concerned. Into the Scottish universities Playfair introduced some of the continental suggestions toward the end of the eighteenth century, so that there was less of exclusiveness and unfriendly rivalry between science and philosophy; and both profited thereby. In the United States, during the first half or more of the century, so dominant were the theological and practical interests and influences that there was little free development of either science or philosophy,--if we interpret the one as the equivalent of _Wissenschaft_ and understand the other in the stricter meaning of the word.

The history of the development of the scientific spirit and of the achievements of the particular sciences is not the theme of this paper.

To trace in detail, or even in its large outlines, the reciprocal influence of science and philosophy during the past hundred years, would itself require far more than the s.p.a.ce allotted to me. It must suffice to say that the various advances in the efforts of the particular sciences to enlarge and to define the conceptions and principles employed to portray the Being of the World in its totality, have somewhat steadily grown more and more completely metaphysical, and more and more of positive importance for the reconstruction of systematic philosophy. The latter has not simply been disciplined by science, compelled to improve its method, and to examine all its previous claims.

But philosophy has also been greatly enriched by science with respect to its material awaiting synthesis, and it has been not a little profited by the unsuccessful attempts of the current scientific theories to give themselves a truly satisfactory account of that Ultimate Reality which, to understand the better, is no unworthy aim of their combined efforts.

During the nineteenth century science has seen many important additions to that Ideal of Nature and her processes, to form which in a unitary and harmonizing but comprehensive way is the philosophical goal of science. The gross mechanical conception of nature which prevailed in the earlier part of the eighteenth century has long since been abandoned, as quite inadequate to our experience with her facts, forces, and laws. The kinetic view, which began with Huygens, Euler, and Ampere, and which was so amplified by Lord Kelvin and Clerk-Maxwell in England, and by Helmholtz and others in Germany, on account of its success in explaining the phenomena of light, of gases, etc., very naturally led to the attempt to develop a kinetic theory, a doctrine of energetics, which should explain all phenomena. But the conception of "that which moves,"

the experience of important and persistent qualitative _differentiae_, and the need of a.s.suming ends and purposes served by the movement, are troublesome obstacles in the way of giving such a completeness to this theory of the Being of the World. Yet again the amazing success which the theory of evolution has shown in explaining the phenomena with which the various biological sciences concern themselves, has lent favor during the latter half of the century to the vitalistic and genetic view of nature. For all our most elaborate and advanced kinetic theories seem utterly to fail us as explanatory when we, through the higher powers of the microscope, stand wondering and face to face with the evolution of a single living cell. But from such a view of the essential Being of the World as evolution suggests to the psycho-physical theory of nature is not an impa.s.sable gulf. And thus, under its growing wealth of knowledge, science may be leading up to an Ideal of the Ultimate Reality, in which philosophy will gratefully and gladly coincide. At any rate, the modern conception of nature and the modern conception of G.o.d are not so far apart from each other, as either of these conceptions is now removed from the conceptions covered by the same terms, some centuries gone by.

There is one of the positive sciences, however, with which the development of philosophy during the last century has been particularly allied. This science is psychology. To speak of its history is not the theme of this paper. But it should be noted in pa.s.sing how the development of psychology has brought into connection with the physical and biological sciences the development of philosophy. This union, whether it be for better or for worse,--and, on the whole, I believe it to be for better rather than for worse,--has been in a very special way the result of the last century. In tracing its details we should have to speak of the dependence of certain branches of psychology on physiology, and upon Sir Charles Bell's discovery of the difference between the sensory and the motor nerves. This discovery was the contribution of the beginning of the century to an entire line of discoveries, which have ended at the close of the century with putting the localization of cerebral function upon a firm experimental basis. Of scarcely less importance has been the cellular theory as applied (1838) by Matthias Schleiden, a pupil of Fries in philosophy, to plants, and by Theodor Schwann about the same time to animal organisms. To these must be added the researches of Johannes Muller (1801-1858), the great biologist, a listener to Hegel's lectures, whose law of _specific energies_ brings him into connection with psychology and, through psychology, to philosophy. Even more true is this of Helmholtz, whose _Lehre von den Tonempfindungen_ (1862) and _Physiologische Optik_ (1867) placed him in even closer, though still mediate, relations to philosophy. But perhaps especially Gustav Theodor Fechner (1801-1887), whose researches in psycho-physics laid the foundations of whatever, either as psychology or as philosophy, goes under this name; and whether the doctrine have reference to the relation of man's mind and body, or to the wider relations of spirit and matter.

In my judgment it cannot be affirmed that the attempts of the latter half of the nineteenth century to develop an experimental science of psychology in independence of philosophical criticism and metaphysical a.s.sumption, or the claims of this science to have thrown any wholly new light upon the statement, or upon the solution of philosophical problems, have been largely successful. But certain more definitely psychological questions have been to a commendable degree better a.n.a.lyzed and elucidated; the new experimental methods, where confined within their legitimate sphere, have been amply justified; and certain _quasi_-metaphysical views respecting the nature of the human mind, and even, if you will, the nature of the Spirit in general--have been placed in a more favorable and scientifically engaging att.i.tude toward speculative philosophy. This seems to me to be especially true with respect to two problems in which both empirical psychology and philosophy have a common and profound interest. These are (1) the complex synthesis of mental functions involved in every act of true cognition, together with the bearing which the psychology of cognition has upon epistemological problems; and (2) the yet more complex and profound a.n.a.lysis, from the psychological point of view, of what it is to be a self-conscious and self-determining Will, a true Self, together with the bearing which the psychology of selfhood has upon all the problems of ethics, aesthetics, and religion.

The more obvious and easily traceable influences which have operated to incite and direct the philosophical development of the nineteenth century are, of course, dependent upon the teachings and writings of philosophers, and the schools of philosophy which they have founded. To speak of these influences even in outline would be to write a manual of the history of philosophy during that hundred of years, which has been of all others by far the most fruitful in material results, whatever estimate may be put upon the separate or combined values of the individual thinkers and their so-called schools. No fewer than seven or eight relatively independent or partially antagonistic movements, which may be traced back either directly or more indirectly to the critical philosophy, and to the form in which the problems of philosophy were left by Kant, sprung up during the century. In Germany chiefly, there arose the Faith-philosophy, the Romantic School, and Rational Idealism; in France, Eclecticism and Positivism (if, indeed, the latter can be called _a_ philosophy); in Scotland, a nave and crude form of Realism, which served well for the time as an antagonist of a skeptical idealism, but which itself contributed to an improved form of Idealism; and in the United States, or rather in New England, a peculiar kind of Transcendentalism of the sentimental type. But all these movements of thought, and others lying somewhere midway between, in a pair composed of any two, together with a steadfast remainder of almost every sort of Dogmatism, and all degrees and kinds of Skepticism, have been intermixed and contending with one another, in all these countries. Such has been the varied, undefinable, and yet intensely stimulating and interesting character of the development of systematic and scholastic philosophy, during the nineteenth century.

The early opposition to Kant in Germany was, in the main, twofold:--both to his peculiar extreme a.n.a.lysis with its philosophical conclusions, and also to all systematic as distinguished from a more popular and literary form of philosophizing. Toward the close of the eighteenth century a group of men had been writing upon philosophical questions in a spirit and method quite foreign to that held in respect by the critical philosophy. It is not wholly without significance that Lessing, whose aim had been to use common sense and literary skill in clearing up obscure ideas and improving and illumining the life of man, died in the very year of the appearance of Kant's _Kritik der reinen Vernunft_. Of this cla.s.s of men an historian dealing with this period has said, "There is hardly one who does not quote somewhere or other Pope's saying, 'The proper study of mankind is man.'" To this cla.s.s belong Hamann (1730-1788), the inspirer of Herder and Jacobi. The former, who was essentially a poet and a friend of Goethe, controverted Kant with regard to his doctrine of reason, his ant.i.thesis between the individual and the race, and his schism between things as empirically known and the known unity in the Ground of their being and becoming. Herder's path to truth was highly colored with flowers of rhetoric; but the promise was that he would lead men back to the heavenly city. Jacobi, too, with due allowance made for the injury wrought by his divorce of the two philosophies,--that of faith and that of science,--and his excessive estimate of the value-judgments which repose in the mist of a feeling-faith, added something of worth by way of exposing the barrenness of the Kantian doctrine of an unknowable "Thing-in-itself."

From men like Fr. Schlegel (1772-1829), whose valid protest against the sharp separation of speculative philosophy from the aesthetical, social, and ethical life, a.s.sumed the "standpoint of irony," little real result in the discovery of truth could be expected. But Schleiermacher (1768-1834), in spite of that mixture of unfused elements which has made his philosophy "a rendezvous for the most diverse systems," contributed valuable factors to the century's philosophical development, both of a negative and of a positive character. This thinker was peculiarly fortunate in the enrichment of the conception of experience as warranting a justifiable confidence in the ontological value of ethical, aesthetical, and religious sentiment and ideas; but he was most unfortunate in reviving and perpetuating the unjustifiable Kantian distinction between cognition and faith in the field of experience. On the whole, therefore, the Faith-philosophy and the Romantic School can easily be said to have contributed more than a negative and modifying influence to the development of the philosophy of the nineteenth century. Its more modern revival toward the close of the same century, and its continued hold upon certain minds of the present day, are evidences of the positive but partial truth which its tenets, however vaguely and unsystematically, continue to maintain in an aesthetically and practically attractive way.

The admirers of Kant strove earnestly and with varied success to remedy the defects of his system. Among the earlier, less celebrated and yet important members of this group, were K. G. Reinhold (1758-1823), and Maimon (died, 1800). The former, like Descartes, in that he was educated by the Jesuits, began the attempt, after rejecting some of the arbitrary distinctions of Kant and his barren and self-contradictory "Thing-in-itself," to unify the critical philosophy by reducing it to some one principle. The latter really transcended Kant in his philosophical skepticism, and antic.i.p.ated the Hamiltonian form of the so-called principle of relativity. Fries (1773-1843), and Hermes (1775-1831)--the latter of whom saw in empirical psychology the only true propaedeutic to philosophy--should be mentioned in this connection.

In the same group was another, both mathematician and philosopher, who strove more successfully than others of this group to accept the critical standpoint of Kant and yet to transcend his negative conclusions with regard to a theory of knowledge. I refer to Bolzano (Prague, 1781-1848), who stands in the same line of succession with Fries and Hermes, and whose works on the _Science of Religion_ (4 vols.

1834) and his _Science of Knowledge_ (4 vols. 1837) are noteworthy contributions to epistemological doctrine. In the latter we have developed at great length the important thought that the illative character of propositional judgments implies an objective relation; and that in all truths the subject-idea must be objective. In the work on religion there is found as thoroughly dispa.s.sionate and rational a defense of Catholic doctrine as exists anywhere in philosophical literature. The limited influence of these works, due in part to their bulk and their technical character, is on the whole, I think, sincerely to be regretted.

It was, however, chiefly that remarkable series of philosophers which may be grouped under the rubric of a "rational Idealism," who filled so full and made so rich the philosophical life of Germany during the first half of the last century; whose philosophical thoughts and systems have spread over the entire Western World, and who are most potent influences in shaping the development of philosophy down to the present hour. Of these we need do little more than that we can do--mention their names.

At their head, in time, stands Fichte, who--although Kant is reported to have complained of this disciple because he lied about him so much--really divined a truth which seems to be hovering in the clouds above the master's head, but which, if the critical philosophy truly meant to teach it, needed helpful deliverance in order to appear in perfectly clear light. Fichte, although he divined this truth, did not, however, free it from internal confusion and self-contradiction. It _is_ his truth, nevertheless, that in the Self, as a self-positing and self-determining activity, must somehow be found the Ground of all experience and of all Reality.

The important note which Sch.e.l.ling sounded was the demand that philosophy should recognize "Nature" as belonging to the sphere of Reality, and as requiring a measure of reflective thought which should in some sort put it on equal terms with the Ego, for the construction of our conception of the Being of the World. To Sch.e.l.ling it seemed impossible to deduce, as Fichte had done, all the rich concrete development of the world of things from the subjective needs and const.i.tutional forms of functioning which belong to the finite Self.

And, indeed, the doctrine which limits the origin, existence, and value of all that is known about this sphere of experience to these needs, and which finds the sufficient account of all experience with nature in these forms of functioning, must always seem inadequate and even grotesque in the sight of the natural sciences. Both Nature and Spirit, thought Sch.e.l.ling, must be allowed to claim actual existence and equally real value; while at the same time philosophy must reconcile the seeming opposition of their claims and unite them in an harmonious and self-explanatory way. In some common substratum, in which, to adopt Hegel's sarcastic criticism, as in the darkness of the night "all cows are black,"--that is in the Absolute, as an Identical Basis of Differences,--the reconciliation was to be accomplished.

But the constructive idealistic movement, in which Fichte and Sch.e.l.ling bore so important a part, could not be satisfied with the positions reached by either of these two philosophers. Neither the physical and psychological sciences, nor the speculative interests of religion, ethics, art, and social life, permitted this movement to stop at this point. In all the subsequent developments of philosophy during the first half or three quarters of the nineteenth century, undoubtedly the influence of Hegel was greatest of all individual thinkers. His _motif_ and plan are revealed in his letter of November 2, 1800, to Sch.e.l.ling, namely, to transform what had hitherto been an ideal into a thoroughly elaborate system. And in spite of his obvious obscurities of thought and style, there is real ground for his claim to be the champion of the common consciousness. It is undoubtedly in Hegel's _Phanomenologie des Geistes_ (1807), that the distinctive features of the philosophy of the first half of the last century most clearly define themselves. The forces of reflection now abandon the abstract a.n.a.lytic method and positions of the Kantian Critique, and concentrate themselves upon the study of man's spiritual life as an historical evolution, in a more concrete, face-to-face manner. Two important and, in the main, valid a.s.sumptions underlie and guide this reflective study: (1) The Ultimate Reality, or principle of all realities, is Mind or Spirit, which is to be recognized and known in its essence, not by a.n.a.lysis into its formal elements (the categories), but as a living development; (2) those formal elements, or categories to which Kant gave validity merely as const.i.tutional forms of the functioning of the human understanding, represent, the rather, the essential structure of Reality.

In spite of these true thoughts, fault was justly found by the particular sciences with both the speculative method of Hegel, which consists in the smooth, harmonious, and systematic arrangement of conceptions in logical or ideal relations to one another; and also with the result, which reduces the Being of the World to terms of thought and dialectical processes merely, and neglects or overlooks the other aspects of racial experience. Therefore, the idealistic movement could not remain satisfied with the Hegelian dialectic. Especially did both the religious and the philosophical party revolt against the important thought underlying Hegel's philosophy of religion; namely, that "the more philosophy approximates to a complete development, the more it exhibits the same need, the same interest, and the same content, as religion itself." This, as they interpreted it, meant the absorption of religion in philosophy.

Next after Hegel, among the great names of this period, stand the names of Herbart and Schopenhauer. The former contributes in an important way to the proper conception of the task and the method of philosophy, and influences greatly the development of psychology, both as a science that is pedagogic to philosophy, and as laying the basis for pedagogical principles and practice. But Herbart commits again the ancient fallacy, under the spell of which so much of the Kantian criticism was bound; and which identifies contradictions that belong to the imperfect or illusory conceptions of individual thinkers with insoluble antinomies inherent in reason itself. In spite of the little worth and misleading character of his view of perception, and the quite complete inadequacy of the method by which, at a single leap, he reaches the one all-explanatory principle of his philosophy, Schopenhauer made a most important contribution to the reflective thought of the century. It is true, as Kuno Fischer has said, that it seems to have occurred to Schopenhauer only twenty-five years after he had propounded his theory, that will, as it appears in consciousness, is as truly phenomenal as is intellect. It is also true that his theory of knowledge and his conception of Reality, as measured by their power to satisfy and explain our total experience, are inflicted with irreconcilable contradictions. Neither can we accord firm confidence or high praise to the "Way of Salvation" which somehow Will can attain to follow by aesthetic contemplation and ascetic self-denial.

Yet the philosophy of Schopenhauer rightly insists upon our Idealistic construction of Reality having regard to aspects of experience which his predecessors had quite too much neglected; and even its spiteful and exaggerated reminders of the facts which contradict the tendency of all Idealism to construct a smooth, regular, and altogether pleasing conception of the Being of the World, have been of great benefit to the development of the latter half of the nineteenth century.

In estimating the thoughts and the products of modern Idealism we ought not to forget the larger mult.i.tude of thoughtful men, both in Germany and elsewhere, who have contributed toward shaping the course of reflection in the attempt to answer the problems which the critical philosophy left to the nineteenth century. It is a singular comment upon the caprices of fame that, in philosophy as in science, politics, and art, some of those who have really reasoned most soundly and acutely, if not also effectively upon these problems, are little known even by name in the history of the philosophical development of the century. Among the earlier members of this group, did s.p.a.ce permit, we should wish to mention Berger, Solger, Steffens, and others, who strove to reconcile the positions of a subjective idealism with a realistic but pantheistic conception of the Being of the World. There are others, who like Weisse, I. H. Fichte, C. P. Fischer, and Braniss, more or less bitterly or moderately and reasonably, opposed the method and the conclusions of the Hegelian dialectic. Still another group earned for themselves the supposedly opprobrious but decidedly vague t.i.tle of "Dualists," by rejecting what they conceived to be the pantheism of Hegel. Still others, like Fries and Beneke and their successors, strove to parallel philosophy with the particular sciences by grounding it in an empirical but scientific psychology; and thus they inst.i.tuted a line of closely connected development, to which reference has already been made.