Berkeley denies that we have ideas of pure extension or motion, because, although we do actually deal with these and find them intelligible, we can never obtain a state of mind in which they appear as the content. He applies this psychological test because of his adherence to the general empirical postulate that knowledge is limited to the individual content of its own individual states. "It is a universally received maxim," he says, "that everything which exists is particular." Now the truth of mathematical reckoning is not particular, but is valid wherever the conditions to which it refers are fulfilled. Mathematical reckoning, if it is to be particular, must be regarded as a particular act or state of some thinker. Its truth must then be construed as relative to the interests of the thinker, as a symbolism which has an instrumental rather than a purely cognitive value. This conclusion cannot be disputed short of a radical stand against the general epistemological principle to which Berkeley is so far true, the principle that the reality which is known in any state of thinking or perceiving is the state itself.

[Sidenote: The Transition to Spiritualism.]

Sect. 132. This concludes the purely phenomenalistic strain of Berkeley's thought. He has taken the immediate apprehension of sensible objects in a state of mind centring about the pleasure and pain of an individual, to be the norm of knowledge. He has further maintained that knowledge cannot escape the particularity of its own states. The result is that the universe is composed of private perceptions and ideas. Strictly on the basis of what has preceded, Hylas is justified in regarding this conclusion as no less sceptical than that to which his own position had been reduced; for while he had been compelled to admit that the real is unknowable, Philonous has apparently defined the knowable as relative to the individual. But the supplementary metaphysics which had hitherto been kept in the background is now revealed. It is maintained that though perceptions know no external world, they do nevertheless reveal a spiritual substance of which they are the states. Although it has hitherto been argued that the esse of things is in their percipi, this is now replaced by the more fundamental principle that the esse of things is in their percipere or velle. The real world consists not in perceptions, but in perceivers.

[Sidenote: Further Attempts to Maintain Phenomenalism.]

Sect. 133. Now it is at once evident that the epistemological theory which has been Berkeley's dialectical weapon in the foregoing argument is no longer available. And those who have cared more for this theory than for metaphysical speculation have attempted to stop at this point, and so to construe phenomenalism as to make it self-sufficient on its own grounds. Such attempts are so instructive as to make it worth our while to review them before proceeding with the development of the spiritualistic motive in subjectivism.

The world is to be regarded as made up of sense-perceptions, ideas, or phenomena. What is to be accepted as the fundamental category which gives to all of these terms their subjectivistic significance? So far there seems to be nothing in view save the principle of relativity. The type to which these were reduced was that of the peculiar or unsharable experience best represented by an individual's pleasure and pain. But relativity will not work as a general principle of being. It consigns the individual to his private mind, and cannot provide for the validity of knowledge enough even to maintain itself. Some other course, then, must be followed. Perception may be given a psycho-physical definition, which employs physical terms as fundamental;[282:12] but this flagrantly contradicts the phenomenalistic first principle. Or, reality may be regarded as so stamped with its marks as to insure the proprietorship of thought. But this definition of certain objective entities of mind, of beings attributed to intelligence because of their intrinsic intelligibility, is inconsistent with empiricism, if indeed it does not lead eventually to a realism of the Platonic type.[283:13] Finally, and most commonly, the terms of phenomenalism have been retained after their original meaning has been suffered to lapse. The "impressions" of Hume, e. g., are the remnant of the Berkeleyan world with the spirit stricken out. There is no longer any point in calling them impressions, for they now mean only elements or qualities. As a consequence this outgrowth of the Berkeleyanism epistemology is at present merging into a realistic philosophy of experience.[283:14] Any one, then, of these three may be the last state of one who undertakes to remain exclusively faithful to the phenomenalistic aspect of Berkeleyanism, embodied in the principle esse est percipi.

[Sidenote: Berkeley's Spiritualism. Immediate Knowledge of the Perceiver.]

Sect. 134. Let us now follow the fortunes of the other phase of subjectivism—that which develops the conception of the perceiver rather than the perceived. When Berkeley holds that

"all the choir of heaven and furniture of the Earth, in a word, all those bodies which compose the mighty frame of the world, have not any subsistence without a Mind,"

his thought has transcended the epistemology with which he overthrew the conception of material substance, in two directions. For neither mind of the finite type nor mind of the divine type is perceived. But the first of these may yet be regarded as a direct empirical datum, even though sharply distinguished from an object of perception. In the third dialogue, Philonous thus expounds this new kind of knowledge:

"I own I have properly no idea, either of God or any other spirit; for these being active, cannot be represented by things perfectly inert, as our ideas are. I do nevertheless know that I, who am a spirit or thinking substance, exist as certainly as I know my ideas exist. Farther, I know what I mean by the terms I and myself; and I know this immediately or intuitively, though I do not perceive it as I perceive a triangle, a color, or a sound."[284:15]

The knowledge here provided for may be regarded as empirical because the reality in question is an individual present in the moment of the knowledge. Particular acts of perception are said directly to reveal not only perceptual objects, but perceiving subjects. And the conception of spiritual substance, once accredited, may then be extended to account for social relations and to fill in the nature of God. The latter extension, in so far as it attributes such further predicates as universality and infinity, implies still a third epistemology, and threatens to pass over into rationalism. But the knowledge of one's fellow-men may, it is claimed, be regarded as immediate, like the knowledge of one's self. Perceptual and volitional activity has a sense for itself and also a sense for other like activity. The self is both self-conscious and socially conscious in an immediate experience of the same type.

[Sidenote: Schopenhauer's Spiritualism, or Voluntarism. Immediate Knowledge of the Will.]

Sect. 135. But this general spiritualistic conception is developed with less singleness of purpose in Berkeley than among the voluntarists and panpsychists who spring from Schopenhauer, the orientalist, pessimist, and mystic among the German Kantians of the early nineteenth century. His great book, "Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung," opens with the phenomenalistic contention that "the world is my idea." It soon appears, however, that the "my" is more profoundly significant than the "idea." Nature is my creation, due to the working within me of certain fixed principles of thought, such as space, time, and causality. But nature, just because it is my creation, is less than me: is but a manifestation of the true being for which I must look within myself. But this inner self cannot be made an object of thought, for that would be only to create another term of nature. The will itself, from which such creation springs, is "that which is most immediate" in one's consciousness, and "makes itself known in a direct manner in its particular acts." The term will is used by Schopenhauer as a general term covering the whole dynamics of life, instinct and desire, as well as volition. It is that sense of life-preserving and life-enhancing appetency which is the conscious accompaniment of struggle. With its aid the inwardness of the whole world may now be apprehended.

"Whoever has now gained from all these expositions a knowledge in abstracto, and therefore clear and certain, of what everyone knows directly in concreto, i. e., as feeling, a knowledge that his will is the real inner nature of his phenomenal being, . . . and that his will is that which is most immediate in his consciousness, . . . will find that of itself it affords him the key to the knowledge of the inmost being of the whole of nature; for he now transfers it to all those phenomena which are not given to him, like his own phenomenal existence, both in direct and indirect knowledge, but only in the latter, thus merely one-sidedly as idea alone."[287:16]

The heart of reality is thus known by an "intuitive interpretation," which begins at home in the individual's own heart.

[Sidenote: Panpsychism.]

Sect. 136. The panpsychist follows the same course of reflection. There is an outwardness and an inwardness of nature, corresponding to the knower's body on the one hand, and his feeling or will on the other. With this principle in hand one may pass down the whole scale of being and discover no breach of continuity. Such an interpretation of nature has been well set forth by a contemporary writer, who quotes the following from the botanist, C. v. Naegeli:

"Sensation is clearly connected with the reflex actions of higher animals. We are obliged to concede it to the other animals also, and we have no grounds for denying it to plants and inorganic bodies. The sensation arouses in us a condition of comfort and discomfort. In general, the feeling of pleasure arises when the natural impulses are satisfied, the feeling of pain when they are not satisfied. Since all material processes are composed of movements of molecules and elementary atoms, pleasure and pain must have their seat in these particles. . . . Thus the same mental thread runs through all material phenomena. The human mind is nothing but the highest development on our earth of the mental processes which universally animate and move nature."[288:17]

According to panpsychism, then, physical nature is the manifestation of an appetency or bare consciousness generalized from the thinker's awareness of his most intimate self. Such appetency or bare consciousness is the essential or substantial state of that which appears as physical nature.

[Sidenote: The Inherent Difficulty in Spiritualism. No Provision for Objective Knowledge.]

Sect. 137. We must now turn to the efforts which this doctrine has made to maintain itself against the sceptical trend of its own epistemology. For precisely as in the case of phenomenalism its dialectical principle threatens to be self-destructive. Immediate presence is still the test of knowledge. But does not immediate presence connote relativity and inadequacy, at best; an initial phase of knowledge that must be supplemented and corrected before objective reality and valid truth are apprehended? Does not the individuality of the individual thinker connote the very maximum of error? Indeed, spiritualism would seem to have exceeded even Protagoreanism itself, and to have passed from scepticism to deliberate nihilism. The object of knowledge is no longer even, as with the phenomenalist, the thinker's thought, but only his thinking. And if the thinker's thought is relative to him, then the thinker's act of thinking is the very vanishing-point of relativity, the negative term of a negating relation. How is a real, a self-subsistent world to be composed of such? Impelled by a half-conscious realization of the hopelessness of this situation, the exponent of spiritualism has sought to universalize his conception; to define an absolute or ultimate spirit other than the individual thinker, though known in and through him. But it is clear that this development of spiritualism, like all of the speculative procedure of subjectivism, threatens to exceed the scope of the original principle of knowledge. There is a strong presumption against the possibility of introducing a knowledge of God by the way of the particular presentations of an individual consciousness.

[Sidenote: Schopenhauer's Attempt to Universalize Subjectivism. Mysticism.]

Sect. 138. Schopenhauer must be credited with a genuine effort to accept the metaphysical consequences of his epistemology. His epistemology, as we have seen, defined knowledge as centripetal. The object of real knowledge is identical with the subject of knowledge. If I am to know the universal will, therefore, I must in knowing become that will. And this Schopenhauer maintains. The innermost heart of the individual into which he may retreat, even from his private will, is—the universal. But there is another way of arriving at the same knowledge. In contemplation I may become absorbed in principles and laws, rather than be diverted by the particular spacial and temporal objects, until (and this is peculiarly true of the aesthetic experience) my interest no longer distinguishes itself, but coincides with truth. In other words, abstract thinking and pure willing are not opposite extremes, but adjacent points on the deeper or transcendent circle of experience. One may reach this part of the circle by moving in either of two directions that at the start are directly opposite: by turning in upon the subject or by utterly giving one's self up to the object. Reality obtains no definition by this means. Philosophy, for Schopenhauer, is rather a programme for realizing the state in which I will the universal and know the universal will. The final theory of knowledge, then, is mysticism, reality directly apprehended in a supreme and incommunicable experience, direct and vivid, like perception, and at the same time universal, like thought. But the empiricism with which Schopenhauer began, the appeal to a familiar experience of self as will, has meanwhile been forgotten. The idea as object of my perception, and the will as its subject were in the beginning regarded as common and verifiable items of experience. But who, save the occasional philosopher, knows a universal will? Nor have attempts to avoid mysticism, while retaining Schopenhauer's first principle, been successful. Certain voluntarists and panpsychists have attempted to do without the universal will, and define the world solely in terms of the many individual wills. But, as Schopenhauer himself pointed out, individual wills cannot be distinguished except in terms of something other than will, such as space and time. The same is true if for will there be substituted inner feeling or consciousness. Within this category individuals can be distinguished only as points of view, which to be comparable at all must contain common objects, or be defined in terms of a system of relations like that of the physical world or that of an ethical community. The conception of pure will or pure feeling inevitably attaches to itself that of an undivided unity, if for no other reason because there is no ground for distinction. And such a unity, a will or consciousness that is no particular act or idea, can be known only in the unique experience which mysticism provides.

[Sidenote: Objective Spiritualism.]

Sect. 139. The way of Schopenhauer is the way of one who adheres to the belief that what the thinker knows must always be a part of himself, his state or his activity. From this point of view the important element of being, its very essence or substance, is not any definable nature but an immediate relation to the knower. The consequence is that the universe in the last analysis can only be defined as a supreme state or activity into which the individual's consciousness may develop. Spiritualism has, however, other interests, interests which may be quite independent of epistemology. It is speculatively interested in a kind of being which it defines as spiritual, and in terms of which it proposes to define the universe. Such procedure is radically different from the epistemological criticism which led Berkeley to maintain that the esse of objects is in their percipi, or Schopenhauer to maintain that "the world is my idea," or that led both of these philosophers to find a deeper reality in immediately intuited self-activity. For now it is proposed to understand spirit, discover its properties, and to acknowledge it only where these properties appear. I may now know spirit as an object; which in its properties, to be sure, is quite different from matter, but which like matter is capable of subsisting quite independently of my knowledge. This is a metaphysical spiritualism quite distinct from epistemological spiritualism, and by no means easily made consistent therewith. Indeed, it exhibits an almost irrepressible tendency to overstep the bounds both of empiricism and subjectivism, an historical connection with which alone justifies its introduction in the present chapter.

[Sidenote: Berkeley's Conception of God as Cause, Goodness and Order.]

Sect. 140. To return again to the instructive example of Bishop Berkeley, we find him proving God from the evidence of him in experience, or the need of him to support the claims of experience.

"But, whatever power I may have over my own thoughts, I find the ideas actually perceived by Sense have not a like dependence on my will. When in broad daylight I open my eyes, it is not in my power to choose whether I shall see or no, or to determine what particular objects shall present themselves to my view: and so likewise as to the hearing and other senses; the ideas imprinted on them are not creatures of my will. There is therefore some other Will or Spirit that produces them.

The ideas of Sense are more strong, lively, and distinct than those of the Imagination; they have likewise a steadiness, order, and coherence, and are not excited at random, as those which are the effects of human wills often are, but in a regular train or series—the admirable connection whereof sufficiently testifies the wisdom and benevolence of its Author. Now the set rules, or established methods, wherein the Mind we depend on excites in us the ideas of Sense, are called the laws of nature."[294:18]

Of the attributes of experience here in question, independence or "steadiness" is not regarded as prima facie evidence of spirit, but rather as an aspect of experience for which some cause is necessary. But it is assumed that the power to "produce," with which such a cause must be endowed, is the peculiar prerogative of spirit, and that this cause gives further evidence of its spiritual nature, of its eminently spiritual nature, in the orderliness and the goodness of its effects.

"The force that produces, the intellect that orders, the goodness that perfects all things is the Supreme Being."[294:19]

That spirit is possessed of causal efficacy, Berkeley has in an earlier passage proved by a direct appeal to the individual's sense of power.

"I find I can excite ideas in my mind at pleasure, and vary and shift the scene as oft as I think fit. It is no more than willing, and straightway this or that idea arises in my fancy; and by the same power it is obliterated and makes way for another. This making and unmaking of ideas doth very properly denominate the mind active. Thus much is certain and grounded on experience: but when we talk of unthinking agents, or of exciting ideas exclusive of volition, we only amuse ourselves with words."[295:20]

Although Berkeley is here in general agreement with a very considerable variety of philosophical views, it will be readily observed that this doctrine tends to lapse into mysticism whenever it is retained in its purity. Berkeley himself admitted that there was no "idea" of such power. And philosophers will as a rule either obtain an idea corresponding to a term or amend the term—always excepting the mystical appeal to an inarticulate and indefinable experience. Hence pure power revealed in an ineffable immediate experience tends to give place to kinds of power to which some definite meaning may be attached. The energy of physics, defined by measurable quantitative equivalence, is a case in point. The idealistic trend is in another direction, power coming to signify ethical or logical connection. Similarly, in the later philosophy of Berkeley himself, God is known by the nature of his activity rather than by the fact of his activity; and we are said "to account for a thing, when we show that it is so best." God's power, in short, becomes indistinguishable from his universality attended with the attributes of goodness and orderliness. But this means that the analogy of the human spirit, conscious of its own activity, is no longer the basis of the argument. By the divine will is now meant ethical principles, rather than the "here am I willing" of the empirical consciousness. Similarly the divine mind is defined in terms of logical principles, such as coherence and order, rather than in terms of the "here am I thinking" of the finite knower himself. But enough has been said to make it plain that this is no longer the stand-point of empirio-idealism. Indeed, in his last philosophical writing, the "Siris," Berkeley is so far removed from the principles of knowledge which made him at once the disciple and the critic of Locke, as to pronounce himself the devotee of Platonism and the prophet of transcendentalism. The former strain appears in his conclusion that "the principles of science are neither objects of sense nor imagination; and that intellect and reason are alone the sure guides to truth."[297:21] His transcendentalism appears in his belief that such principles, participating in the vital unity of the Individual Purpose, constitute the meaning and so the substantial essence of the universe.

[Sidenote: The General Tendency of Subjectivism to Transcend Itself.]

Sect. 141. Such then are the various paths which lead from subjectivism to other types of philosophy, demonstrating the peculiar aptitude of the former for departing from its first principle. Beginning with the relativity of all knowable reality to the individual knower, it undertakes to conceive reality in one or the other of the terms of this relation, as particular state of knowledge or as individual subject of knowledge. But these terms develop an intrinsic nature of their own, and become respectively empirical datum, and logical or ethical principle. In either case the subjectivistic principle of knowledge has been abandoned. Those whose speculative interest in a definable objective world has been less strong than their attachment to this principle, have either accepted the imputation of scepticism, or had recourse to the radical epistemological doctrine of mysticism.

[Sidenote: Ethical Theories. Relativism.]

Sect. 142. Since the essence of subjectivism is epistemological rather than metaphysical, its practical and religious implications are various. The ethical theories which are corollary to the tendencies expounded above, range from extreme egoism to a mystical universalism. The close connection between the former and relativism is evident, and the form of egoism most consistent with epistemological relativism is to be found among those same Sophists who first maintained this latter doctrine. If we may believe Plato, the Sophists sought to create for their individual pupils an appearance of good. In the "Theaetetus," Socrates is represented as speaking thus on behalf of Protagoras:

"And I am far from saying that wisdom and the wise man have no existence; but I say that the wise man is he who makes the evils which are and appear to a man, into goods which are and appear to him. . . . I say that they (the wise men) are the physicians of the human body, and the husbandmen of plants—for the husbandmen also take away the evil and disordered sensations of plants, and infuse into them good and healthy sensations as well as true ones; and the wise and good rhetoricians make the good instead of the evil seem just to states; for whatever appears to be just and fair to a state, while sanctioned by a state, is just and fair to it; but the teacher of wisdom causes the good to take the place of the evil, both in appearance and in reality."[299:22]

As truth is indistinguishable from the appearance of truth to the individual, so good is indistinguishable from a particular seeming good. The supreme moral value according to this plan of life is the agreeable feeling tone of that dream world to which the individual is forever consigned. The possible perfection of an experience which is "reduced to a swarm of impressions," and "ringed round" for each one of us by a "thick wall of personality" has been brilliantly depicted in the passage already quoted from Walter Pater, in whom the naturalistic and subjectivistic motives unite.[299:23] If all my experience is strictly my own, then my good must likewise be my own. And if all of my experience is valid only in its instants of immediacy, then my best good must likewise consist in some "exquisite passion," or stirring of the senses.

[Sidenote: Pessimism and Self-denial.]

Sect. 143. But for Schopenhauer the internal world opens out into the boundless and unfathomable sea of the universal will. If I retire from the world upon my own private feelings, I am still short of the true life, for I am asserting myself against the world. I should seek a sense of unison with a world whose deeper heart-beats I may learn to feel and adopt as the rhythm of my own. The folly of willing for one's private self is the ground of Schopenhauer's pessimism.

"All willing arises from want, therefore from deficiency, and therefore from suffering. The satisfaction of a wish ends it; yet for one wish that is satisfied there remain at least ten which are denied. Further, the desire lasts long, the demands are infinite; the satisfaction is short and scantily measured out. But even the final satisfaction is itself only apparent; every satisfied wish at once makes room for a new one, both are illusions; the one is known to be so, the other not yet. No attained object of desire can give lasting satisfaction, but merely a fleeting gratification; it is like the alms thrown to the beggar, that keeps him alive to-day that his misery may be prolonged till the morrow. . . . The subject of willing is thus constantly stretched on the revolving wheel of Ixion, pours water into the sieve of the Danaids, is the ever-longing Tantalus."[300:24]

The escape from this torture and self-deception is possible through the same mystical experience, the same blending with the universe that conditions knowledge.

[Sidenote: The Ethics of Welfare.]

Sect. 144. But though pleasant dreaming be the most consistent practical sequel to a subjectivistic epistemology, its individualism presents another basis for life with quite different possibilities of emphasis. It may develop into an aggressive egoism of the type represented by the sophist Thrasymachus, in his proclamation that "might is right, justice the interest of the stronger."[301:25] But more commonly it is tempered by a conception of social interest, and serves as the champion of action against contemplation. The gospel of action is always individualistic. It requires of the individual a sense of his independence, and of the real virtue of his initiative. Hence those voluntarists who emphasize the many individual wills and decline to reduce them, after the manner of Schopenhauer, to a universal, may be said to afford a direct justification of it. It is true that this practical realism threatens the tenability of an epistemological idealism, but the two have been united, and because of their common emphasis upon the individual such procedure is not entirely inconsequential. Friedrich Paulsen, whose panpsychism has already been cited, is an excellent case in point. The only good, he maintains, is "welfare," the fulfilment of those natural desires which both distinguish the individual and signify his continuity with all grades of being.

"The goal at which the will aims does not consist in a maximum of pleasurable feelings, but in the normal exercise of the vital functions for which the species is predisposed. In the case of man the mode of life is on the whole determined by the nature of the historical unity from which the individual evolves as a member. Here the objective content of life, after which the will strives, also enters into consciousness with the progressive evolution of presentation; the type of life becomes a conscious ideal of life."[302:26]

Here, contrary to the teaching of Schopenhauer, the good consists in individual attainment, the extension and fulfilment of the distinct interests that arise from the common fund of nature. To be and to do to the uttermost, to realize the maximum from nature's investment in one's special capacities and powers—this is indeed the first principle of a morality of action.

[Sidenote: The Ethical Community.]

Sect. 145. But a type of ethics still further removed from the initial relativism has been adopted and more or less successfully assimilated by subjectivistic philosophies. Accepting Berkeley's spirits, with their indefinite capacities, and likewise the stability of the ideal principles that underlie a God-administered world, and morality becomes the obedience which the individual renders to the law. The individual, free to act in his own right, cooperates with the purposes of the general spiritual community, whose laws are worthy of obedience though not coercive. The recognition of such a spiritual citizenship, entailing opportunities, duties, and obligations, rather than thraldom, partakes of the truth as well as the inadequacy of common-sense.

[Sidenote: The Religion of Mysticism.]

Sect. 146. As for religion, at least two distinct practical appreciations of the universe have been historically associated with this chapter in philosophy. The one of these is the mysticism of Schopenhauer, the religious sequel to a universalistic voluntarism. Schopenhauer's ethics, his very philosophy, is religion. For the good and the true are alike attainable only through identification with the Absolute Will. This consummation of life, transcending practical and theoretical differences, engulfing and effacing all qualities and all values, is like the Nirvana of the Orient—a positive ideal only for one who has appraised the apparent world at its real value.

"Rather do we freely acknowledge that what remains after the entire abolition of will is for all those who are still full of will certainly nothing; but, conversely, to those in whom the will has turned and has denied itself, this our world, which is so real, with all it's suns and milky-ways—is nothing."[304:27]

[Sidenote: The Religion of Individual Cooperation with God.]

Sect. 147. From the union of the two motives of voluntarism and individualism springs another and a more familiar type of religion, that of cooperative spiritual endeavor. In the religion of Schopenhauer the soul must utterly lose itself for the sake of peace; here the soul must persist in its own being and activity for the sake of the progressive goodness of the world. For Schopenhauer God is the universal solution, in which all motions cease and all differences disappear; here God is the General of moral forces. The deeper and more significant universe is

"a society of rational agents, acting under the eye of Providence, concurring in one design to promote the common benefit of the whole, and conforming their actions to the established laws and order of the Divine parental wisdom: wherein each particular agent shall not consider himself apart, but as the member of a great City, whose author and founder is God: in which the civil laws are no other than the rules of virtue and the duties of religion: and where everyone's true interest is combined with his duty."[304:28]

But so uncompromising an optimism is not essential to this religion. Its distinction lies rather in its acceptance of the manifest plurality of souls, and its appeal to the faith that is engendered by service.[305:29] As William James has said:

"Even God's being is sacred from ours. To cooperate with his creation by the best and rightest response seems all he wants of us. In such cooperation with his purposes, not in any chimerical speculative conquest of him, not in any theoretical drinking of him up, must lie the real meaning of our destiny."[305:30]

FOOTNOTES:

[267:1] PRELIMINARY NOTE. By Subjectivism is meant that system of philosophy which construes the universe in accordance with the epistemological principle that all knowledge is of its own states or activities. In so far as subjectivism reduces reality to states of knowledge, such as perceptions or ideas, it is phenomenalism. In so far as it reduces reality to a more internal active principle such as spirit or will, it is spiritualism.

[268:2] Berkeley: Complete Works, Vol. I, p. 352. Fraser's edition.

[269:3] Plato: Theaetetus, 156. Translation by Jowett. The italics are mine.

[270:4] Plato: Op. cit., 166.

[271:5] ale:thes ho hekasto: hekastote dokei.

[273:6] For another issue out of this situation, cf. Sects. 185-187.

[276:7] Berkeley: Op. cit., Vol. I, pp. 380-381.

[276:8] Ibid., p. 389.

[277:9] Ibid., p. 397.

[278:10] Ibid., p. 418.

[279:11] Ibid., pp. 403-404.

[282:12] Cf. Pearson: Grammar of Science, Chap. II. See above, Sect. 118.

[283:13] See Chap. XI. Cf. also Sect. 140.

[283:14] The same may be said of the "permanent possibilities of sensation," proposed by J. S. Mill. Such possibilities outside of actual perception are either nothing or things such as they are known to be in perception. In either case they are not perceptions.

In Ernst Mach's Analysis of Sensations, the reader will find an interesting transition from sensationalism to realism through the substitution of the term Bestandtheil for Empfindung. (See Translation by Williams, pp. 18-20.) See below, Sect. 207.

[284:15] Berkeley: Op. cit., p. 447.

[287:16] Schopenhauer: The World as Will and Idea. Translation by Haldane and Kemp, Vol. I, p. 141.

[288:17] Quoted from Naegeli: Die Mechanisch-physiologische Theorie der Abstammungslehre, by Friedrich Paulsen, in his Introduction to Philosophy. Translation by Thilly, p. 103.

[294:18] Berkeley: Op. cit., p. 273.

[294:19] Op. cit., Vol. I, pp. 272-273.

[295:20] Op. cit., Vol. III, p. 278.

[297:21] Op. cit., Vol. III, p. 249.

[299:22] Plato: Theaetetus, 167. Translation by Jowett.

[299:23] See Sect. 121.

[300:24] Schopenhauer: Op. cit. Translation by Haldane and Kemp, Vol. I, pp. 253-254.

[301:25] See Plato: Republic, Bk. I, 338.

[302:26] Paulsen: Op. cit., p. 423.

[304:27] Schopenhauer: Op. cit. Translation by Haldane and Kemp, p. 532.

[304:28] Berkeley: Op. cit., Vol. II, p. 138.

[305:29] For an interesting characterization of this type of religion, cf. Royce: Spirit of Modern Philosophy, p. 46.

[305:30] James: The Will to Believe, p. 141.



CHAPTER X

ABSOLUTE REALISM[306:1]

[Sidenote: The Philosopher's Task, and the Philosopher's Object, or the Absolute.]

Sect. 148. No one has understood better than the philosopher himself that he cannot hope to be popular with men of practical common-sense. Indeed, it has commonly been a matter of pride with him. The classic representation of the philosopher's faith in himself is to be found in Plato's "Republic." The philosopher is there portrayed in the famous cave simile as one who having seen the light itself can no longer distinguish the shadows which are apparent to those who sit perpetually in the twilight. Within the cave of shadows he is indeed less at his ease than those who have never seen the sun. But since he knows the source of the shadows, his knowledge surrounds that of the shadow connoisseurs. And his equanimity need not suffer from the contempt of those whom he understands better than they understand themselves. The history of philosophy is due to the dogged persistence with which the philosopher has taken himself seriously and endured the poor opinion of the world. But the pride of the philosopher has done more than perpetuate the philosophical outlook and problem; it has led to the formulation of a definite philosophical conception, and of two great philosophical doctrines. The conception is that of the absolute; and the doctrines are that of the absolute being, and that of the absolute self or mind. The former of these doctrines is the topic of the present chapter.

Among the early Greeks the role of the philosopher was one of superlative dignity. In point of knowledge he was less easily satisfied than other men. He thought beyond immediate practical problems, devoting himself to a profounder reflection, that could not but induce in him a sense of superior intellectual worth. The familiar was not binding upon him, for his thought was emancipated from routine and superficiality. Furthermore his intellectual courage and resolution did not permit him to indulge in triviality, doubt, or paradox. He sought his own with a faith that could not be denied. Even Heraclitus the Dark, who was also called "the Weeping Philosopher," because he found at the very heart of nature that transiency which the philosophical mind seeks to escape, felt himself to be exalted as well as isolated by that insight. But this sentiment of personal aloofness led at once to a division of experience. He who knows truly belongs to another and more abiding world. As there is a philosophical way of thought, there is a philosophical way of life, and a philosophical object. Since the philosopher and the common man do not see alike, the terms of their experience are incommensurable. In Parmenides the Eleatic this motive is most strikingly exhibited. There is a Way of Truth which diverges from the Way of Opinion. The philosopher walks the former way alone. And there is an object of truth, accessible only to one who takes this way of truth. Parmenides finds this object to be the content of pure affirmation.

"One path only is left for us to speak of, namely, that It is. In it are very many tokens that what is, is uncreated and indestructible, alone, complete, immovable, and without end. Nor was it ever, nor will it be; for now it is, all at once, a continuous one."[308:2]

The philosophy of Parmenides, commonly called the Eleatic Philosophy, is notable for this emergence of the pure concept of absolute being as the final object of knowledge. The philosopher aims to discover that which is, and so turns away from that which is not or that which ceases to be. The negative and transient aspects of experience only hinder him in his search for the eternal. It was the great Eleatic insight to realize that the outcome of thought is thus predetermined; that the answer to philosophy is contained in the question of philosophy. The philosopher, in that he resolutely avoids all partiality, relativity, and superficiality, must affirm a complete, universal, and ultimate being as the very object of that perfect knowledge which he means to possess. This object is known in the history of these philosophies as the infinite or absolute.[309:3]

[Sidenote: The Eleatic Conception of Being.]

Sect. 149. The Eleatic reasons somewhat as follows. The philosopher seeks to know what is. The object of his knowledge will then contain as its primary and essential predicate, that of being. It is a step further to define being in terms of this essential predicate.

Parmenides thinks of being as a power or strength, a positive self-maintenance to which all affirmations refer. The remainder of the Eleatic philosophy is the analysis of this concept and the proof of its implications. Being must persist through all change, and span all chasms. Before being there can be only nothing, which is the same as to say that so far as being is concerned there is no before. Similarly there can be no after or beyond. There can be no motion, change, or division of being, because being will be in all parts of every division, and in all stages of every process. Hence being is "uncreated and indestructible, alone, complete, immovable, and without end."

The argument turns upon the application to being as a whole of the meaning and the implications of only being. Being is the affirmative or positive. From that alone, one can derive only such properties as eternity or unity. For generation and decay and plurality may belong to that which is also affirmative and positive, but not to that which is affirmative and positive only. The Eleatic philosophy is due, then, to the determination to derive the whole of reality from the bare necessity of being, to cut down reality to what flows entirely from the assertion of its only known necessary aspect, that of being. We meet here in its simplest form a persistent rationalistic motive, the attempt to derive the universe from the isolation and analysis of its most universal character. As in the case of every well-defined philosophy, this motive is always attended by a "besetting" problem. Here it is the accounting for what, empirically at least, is alien to that universal character. And this difficulty is emphasized rather than resolved by Parmenides in his designation of a limbo of opinion, "in which is no true belief at all," to which the manifold of common experience with all its irrelevancies can be relegated.

[Sidenote: Spinoza's Conception of Substance.]

Sect. 150. The Eleatic philosophy, enriched and supplemented, appears many centuries later in the rigorous rationalism of Spinoza.[311:4] With Spinoza philosophy is a demonstration of necessities after the manner of geometry. Reality is to be set forth in theorems derived from fundamental axioms and definitions. As in the case of Parmenides, these necessities are the implications of the very problem of being. The philosopher's problem is made to solve itself. But for Spinoza that problem is more definite and more pregnant. The problematic being must not only be, but must be sufficient to itself. What the philosopher seeks to know is primarily an intrinsic entity. Its nature must be independent of other natures, and my knowledge of it independent of my knowledge of anything else. Reality is something which need not be sought further. So construed, being is in Spinoza's philosophy termed substance. It will be seen that to define substance is to affirm the existence of it, for substance is so defined as to embody the very qualification for existence. Whatever exists exists under the form of substance, as that "which is in itself, and is conceived through itself: in other words, that of which a conception can be formed independently of any other conception."[312:5]

[Sidenote: Spinoza's Proof of God, the Infinite Substance. The Modes and the Attributes.]

Sect. 151. There remains but one further fundamental thesis for the establishment of the Spinozistic philosophy, the thesis which maintains the exclusive existence of the one "absolutely infinite being," or God. The exclusive existence of God follows from his existence, because of the exhaustiveness of his nature. His is the nature "consisting in infinite attributes, of which each expresses eternal and infinite essentiality." He will contain all meaning, and all possible meaning, within his fixed and necessary constitution. It is evident that if such a God exist, nothing can fall outside of him. One such substance must be the only substance. But upon what grounds are we to assert God's existence?

To proceed further with Spinoza's philosophy we must introduce two terms which are scarcely less fundamental in his system than that of substance. The one of these is "attribute," by which he means kind or general property; the other is "mode," by which he means case or individual thing. Spinoza's proof of God consists in showing that no single mode, single attribute, or finite group of modes or attributes, can be a substance; but only an infinite system of all modes of all attributes. Translated into common speech this means that neither kinds nor cases, nor special groups of either, can stand alone and be of themselves, but only the unity of all possible cases of all possible kinds.

The argument concerning the possible substantiality of the case or individual thing is relatively simple. Suppose an attribute or kind, A, of which there are cases am{1}, am{2}, am{3}, etc. The number of cases is never involved in the nature of the kind, as is seen for example in the fact that the definition of triangle prescribes no special number of individual triangles. Hence am{1}, am{2}, am{3}, etc., must be explained by something outside of their nature. Their being cases of A does not account for their existing severally. This is Spinoza's statement of the argument that individual events, such as motions or sensations, are not self-dependent, but belong to a context of like events which are mutually dependent.

The question of the attribute is more difficult. Why may not an attribute as a complete domain of interdependent events, itself be independent or substantial? Spinoza's predecessor, Descartes, had maintained precisely that thesis in behalf of the domain of thought and the domain of space. Spinoza's answer rests upon the famous ontological argument, inherited from scholasticism and generally accepted in the first period of modern philosophy. The evidence of existence, he declares, is clear and distinct conceivability.

"For a person to say that he has a clear and distinct—that is, a true—idea of a substance, but that he is not sure whether such substance exists, would be the same as if he said that he had a true idea, but was not sure whether or no it was false."[314:6]

Now we can form a clear and distinct idea of an absolutely infinite being that shall have all possible attributes. This idea is a well-recognized standard and object of reference for thought. But it is a conception which is highly qualified, not only through its clearness and distinctness, but also through its abundance of content. It affirms itself therefore with a certainty that surpasses any other certainty, because it is supported by each and every other certainty, and even by the residuum of possibility. If any intelligible meaning be permitted to affirm itself, so much the more irresistible is the claim of this infinitely rich meaning. Since every attribute contributes to its validity, the being with infinite attributes is infinitely or absolutely valid. The conclusion of the argument is now obvious. If the being constituted by the infinite attributes exists, it swallows up all possibilities and exists exclusively.

[Sidenote: The Limits of Spinoza's Argument for God.]

Sect. 152. The vulnerable point in Spinoza's argument can thus be expressed: that which is important is questionable, and that which is unquestionable is of doubtful importance. Have I indeed a clear and distinct idea of an absolutely infinite being? The answer turns upon the meaning of the phrase "idea of." It is true I can add to such meaning as I apprehend the thought of possible other meaning, and suppose the whole to have a definiteness and systematic unity like that of the triangle. But such an idea is problematic. I am compelled to use the term "possible," and so to confess the failure of definite content to measure up to my idea. My idea of an absolutely infinite being is like my idea of a universal language: I can think of it, but I cannot think it out, for lack of data or because of the conflicting testimony of other data. If I mean the infinity of my being to be a term of inclusiveness, and to insist that the all must be, and that there can be nothing not included in the all, I can scarcely be denied. But it is reasonable to doubt the importance of such a truth. If, on the other hand, I mean that my infinite being shall have the compactness and organic unity of a triangle, I must admit that such a being is indeed problematic. The degree to which the meaning of the part is dependent upon the meaning of the whole, or the degree to which the geometrical analogy is to be preferred to the analogy of aggregates, like the events within a year, is a problem that falls quite outside Spinoza's fundamental arguments.

[Sidenote: Spinoza's Provision for the Finite.]

Sect. 153. But the advance of Spinoza over the Eleatics must not be lost sight of. The modern philosopher has so conceived being as to provide for parts within an individual unity. The geometrical analogy is a most illuminating one, for it enables us to understand how manyness may be indispensable to a being that is essentially unitary. The triangle as triangle is one. But it could not be such without sides and angles. The unity is equally necessary to the parts, for sides and angles of a triangle could not be such without an arrangement governed by the nature triangle. The whole of nature may be similarly conceived: as the reciprocal necessity of natura naturans, or nature defined in respect of its unity, and natura naturata, or nature specified in detail. There is some promise here of a reconciliation of the Way of Opinion with the Way of Truth. Opinion would be a gathering of detail, truth a comprehension of the intelligible unity. Both would be provided for through the consideration that whatever is complete and necessary must be made up of incompletenesses that are necessary to it.

[Sidenote: Transition to Teleological Conceptions.]

Sect. 154. This consideration, however, does not receive its most effective formulation in Spinoza. The isolation of the parts, the actual severalty and irrelevance of the modes, still presents a grave problem. Is there a kind of whole to which not only parts but fragments, or parts in their very incompleteness, are indispensable? This would seem to be true of a progression or development, since that would require both perfection as its end, and degrees of imperfection as its stages. Spinoza was prevented from making much of this idea by his rejection of the principle of teleology. He regarded appreciation or valuation as a projection of personal bias. "Nature has no particular goal in view," and "final causes are mere human figments." "The perfection of things is to be reckoned only from their own nature and power."[318:7] The philosophical method which Spinoza here repudiates, the interpretation of the world in moral terms, is Platonism, an independent and profoundly important movement, belonging to the same general realistic type with Eleaticism and Spinozism. Absolute being is again the fundamental conception. Here, however, it is conceived that being is primarily not affirmation or self-sufficiency, but the good or ideal. There are few great metaphysical systems that have not been deeply influenced by Platonism; hence the importance of understanding it in its purity. To this end we must return again to the early Greek conception of the philosopher; for Platonism, like Eleaticism, is a sequel to the philosopher's self-consciousness.

[Sidenote: Early Greek Philosophers not Self-critical.]

Sect. 155. Although the first Greek philosophers, such men as Thales, Heraclitus, Parmenides, and Empedocles, were clearly aware of their distinction and high calling, it by no means follows that they were good judges of themselves. Their sense of intellectual power was unsuspecting; and they praised philosophy without definitely raising the question of its meaning. They were like unskilled players who try all the stops and scales of an organ, and know that somehow they can make a music that exceeds the noises, monotones or simple melodies of those who play upon lesser instruments. They knew their power rather than their instrument or their art. The first philosophers, in short, were self-conscious but not self-critical.

[Sidenote: Curtailment of Philosophy in the Age of the Sophists.]

Sect. 156. The immediately succeeding phase in the history of Greek philosophy was a curtailment, but only in the most superficial sense a criticism, of the activity of the philosopher. In the Periclean Age philosophy suffered more from inattention than from refutation. The scepticism of the sophists, who were the knowing men of this age, was not so much conviction as indisposition. They failed to recognize the old philosophical problem; it did not appeal to them as a genuine problem. The sophists were the intellectual men of an age of humanism, individualism, and secularism. These were years in which the circle of human society, the state with its institutions, citizenship with its manifold activities and interests, bounded the horizon of thought. What need to look beyond? Life was not a problem, but an abundant opportunity and a sense of capacity. The world was not a mystery, but a place of entertainment and a sphere of action. Of this the sophists were faithful witnesses. In their love of novelty, irreverence, impressionism, elegance of speech, and above all in their praise of individual efficiency, they preached and pandered to their age. Their public, though it loved to abuse them, was the greatest sophist of them all—brilliant and capricious, incomparably rich in all but wisdom. The majority belonged to what Plato called "the sight-loving, art-loving, busy class." This is an age, then, when the man of practical common-sense is pre-eminent, and the philosopher with his dark sayings has passed away. The pride of wisdom has given way to the pride of power and the pride of cleverness. The many men pursue the many goods of life, and there is no spirit among them all who, sitting apart in contemplation, wonders at the meaning of the whole.

[Sidenote: Socrates and the Self-criticism of the Philosopher.]

Sect. 157. But in their midst there moved a strange prophet, whom they mistook for one of themselves. Socrates was not one who prayed in the wilderness, but a man of the streets and the market-place, who talked rather more incessantly than the rest, and apparently with less right. He did not testify to the truth, but pleaded ignorance in extenuation of an exasperating habit of asking questions. There was, however, a humor and a method in his innocence that arrested attention. He was a formidable adversary in discussion from his very irresponsibility; and he was especially successful with the more rhetorical sophists because he chose his own weapons, and substituted critical analysis, question and answer, for the long speeches to which these teachers were habituated by their profession. He appeared to be governed by an insatiable inquisitiveness, and a somewhat malicious desire to discredit those who spoke with authority.

But to those who knew him better, and especially to Plato, who knew him best, Socrates was at once the sweetest and most compelling spirit of his age. There was a kind of truth in the quality of his character. He was perhaps the first of all reverent men. In the presence of conceit his self-depreciation was ironical, but in another presence it was most genuine, and his deepest spring of thought and action. This other presence was his own ideal. Socrates was sincerely humble because, expecting so much of philosophy, he saw his own deficiency. Unlike the unskilled player, he did not seek to make music; but he loved music, and knew that such music as is indeed music was beyond his power. On the other hand he was well aware of his superiority to those in whom self-satisfaction was possible because they had no conception of the ideal. Of such he could say in truth that they did not know enough even to realize the extent of their ignorance. The world has long been familiar with the vivid portrayal of the Socratic consciousness which is contained in Plato's "Apology." Socrates had set out in life with the opinion that his was an age of exceptional enlightenment. But as he came to know men he found that after all no one of them really knew what he was about. Each "sight-loving, art-loving, busy" man was quite blind to the meaning of life. While he was capable of practical achievement, his judgments concerning the real virtue of his achievements were conventional and ungrounded, a mere reflection of tradition and opinion. When asked concerning the meaning of life, or the ground of his opinions, he was thrown into confusion or aggravated to meaningless reiteration. Such men, Socrates reflected, were both unwise and confirmed in their folly through being unconscious of it. Because he knew that vanity is vanity, that opinion is indeed mere opinion, Socrates felt himself to be the wisest man in a generation of dogged unwisdom.

[Sidenote: Socrates's Self-criticism a Prophecy of Truth.]

Sect. 158. It is scarcely necessary to point out that this insight, however negatively it be used, is a revelation of positive knowledge. Heraclitus and Parmenides claimed to know; Socrates disclaimed knowledge for reasons. Like all real criticism this is at once a confounding of error and a prophecy of truth. The truth so discovered is indeed not ordinary truth concerning historical or physical things, but not on that account less significant and necessary. This truth, it will also be admitted, is virtually rather than actually set forth by Socrates himself. He knew that life has some meaning which those who live with conviction desire at heart to realize, and that knowledge has principles with which those who speak with conviction intend to be consistent. There is, in short, a rational life and a rational discourse. Furthermore, a rational life will be a life wisely directed to the end of the good; and a rational discourse one constructed with reference to the real natures of things, and the necessities which flow from these natures. But Socrates did not conclusively define either the meaning of life or the form of perfect knowledge. He testified to the necessity of some such truths, and his testimony demonstrated both the blindness of his contemporaries and also his own deficiency.

[Sidenote: The Historical Preparation for Plato.]

Sect. 159. The character and method of Socrates have their best foil in the sophists, but their bearing on the earlier philosophers is for our purposes even more instructive. Unlike Socrates these philosophers had not made a study of the task of the philosopher. They were philosophers—"spectators of all time and all existence"; but they were precritical or dogmatic philosophers, to whom it had not occurred to define the requirements of philosophy. They knew no perfect knowledge other than their own actual knowledge. They defined being and interpreted life without reflecting upon the quality of the knowledge whose object is being, or the quality of insight that would indeed be practical wisdom. But when through Socrates the whole philosophical prospect is again revealed after the period of humanistic concentration, it is as an ideal whose possibilities, whose necessities, are conceived before they are realized. Socrates celebrates the role of the philosopher without assigning it to himself. The new philosophical object is the philosopher himself; and the new insight a knowledge of knowledge itself. These three types of intellectual procedure, dogmatic speculation concerning being, humanistic interest in life, and the self-criticism of thought, form the historical preparation for Plato, the philosopher who defined being as the ideal of thought, and upon this ground interpreted life.

There is no more striking case in history of the subtle continuity of thought than the relation between Plato and his master Socrates. The wonder of it is due to the absence of any formulation of doctrine on the part of Socrates himself. He only lived and talked; and yet Plato created a system of philosophy in which he is faithfully embodied. The form of embodiment is the dialogue, in which the talking of Socrates is perpetuated and conducted to profounder issues, and in which his life is both rendered and interpreted. But as the vehicle of Plato's thought preserves and makes perfect the Socratic method, so the thought itself begins with the Socratic motive and remains to the end an expression of it. The presentiment of perfect knowledge which distinguished Socrates from his contemporaries becomes in Plato the clear vision of a realm of ideal truth.

[Sidenote: Platonism: Reality as the Absolute Ideal or Good.]

Sect. 160. Plato begins his philosophy with the philosopher and the philosopher's interest. The philosopher is a lover, who like all lovers longs for the beautiful. But he is the supreme lover, for he loves not the individual beautiful object but the Absolute Beauty itself. He is a lover too in that he does not possess, but somehow apprehends his object from afar. Though imperfect, he seeks perfection; though standing like all his fellows in the twilight of half-reality, he faces toward the sun. Now it is the fundamental proposition of the Platonic philosophy that reality is the sun itself, or the perfection whose possession every wise thinker covets, whose presence would satisfy every longing of experience. The real is that beloved object which is "truly beautiful, delicate, perfect, and blessed." There is both a serious ground for such an affirmation and an important truth in its meaning. The ground is the evident incompleteness of every special judgment concerning experience. We understand only in part, and we know that we understand only in part. What we discover is real enough for practical purposes, but even common-sense questions the true reality of its objects. Special judgments seem to terminate our thought abruptly and arbitrarily. We give "the best answer we can," but such answers do not come as the completion of our thinking. Our thought is in some sense surely a seeking, and it would appear that we are not permitted to rest and be satisfied at any stage of it. If we do so we are like the sophists—blind to our own ignorance. But it is equally true that our thought is straightforward and progressive. We are not permitted to return to earlier stages, but must push on to that which is not less, but more, than what we have as yet found. There is good hope, then, of understanding what the ideal may be from our knowledge of the direction which it impels us to follow.

But to understand Plato's conception of the progression of experience we must again catch up the Socratic strain which he weaves into every theme. For Socrates, student of life and mankind, all objects were objects of interest, and all interests practical interests. One is ignorant when one does not know the good of things; opinionative when one rates things by conventional standards; wise when one knows their real good. In Platonism this practical interpretation of experience appears in the principle that the object of perfect knowledge is the good. The nature of things which one seeks to know better is the good of things, the absolute being which is the goal of all thinking is the very good itself. Plato does not use the term good in any merely utilitarian sense. Indeed it is very significant that for Plato there is no cleavage between theoretical and practical interests. To be morally good is to know the good, to set one's heart on the true object of affection; and to be theoretically sound is to understand perfection. The good itself is the end of every aim, that in which all interests converge. Hence it cannot be defined, as might a special good, in terms of the fulfilment of a set of concrete conditions, but only in terms of the sense or direction of all purposes. The following passage occurs in the "Symposium":

"The true order of going or being led by others to the things of love, is to use the beauties of earth as steps along which he mounts upward for the sake of that other beauty, going from one to two, and from two to all fair forms, and from fair forms to fair actions, and from fair actions to fair notions, until from fair notions he arrives at the notion of absolute beauty, and at last knows what the essence of beauty is."[329:8]

[Sidenote: The Progression of Experience toward God.]

Sect. 161. There is, then, a "true order of going," and an order that leads from one to many, from thence to forms, from thence to morality, and from thence to the general objects of thought or the ideas. In the "Republic," where the proper education of the philosopher is in question, it is proposed that he shall study arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and dialectic. Thus in each case mathematics is the first advance in knowledge, and dialectic the nearest to perfection. Most of Plato's examples are drawn from mathematics. This science replaces the variety and vagueness of the forms of experience with clear, unitary, definite, and eternal natures, such as the number and the geometrical figure. Thus certain individual things are approximately triangular, but subject to alteration, and indefinitely many. On the other hand the triangle as defined by geometry is the fixed and unequivocal nature or idea which such experiences suggest; and the philosophical mind will at once pass to it from these. But the mathematical objects are themselves not thoroughly understood when understood only in mathematical terms, for the foundations of mathematics are arbitrary. And the same is true of all the so-called special sciences. Even the scientists themselves, says Plato,

"only dream about being, but never can behold the waking reality so long as they leave the hypotheses they use unexamined, and are unable to give an account of them. For when a man knows not his own first principle, and when the conclusion and intermediate steps are also constructed out of he knows not what, how can he imagine that such a conventional statement will ever become science?"[330:9]

Within the science of dialectics we are to understand the connections and sequences of ideas themselves, in the hope of eliminating every arbitrariness and conventionality within a system of truth that is pure and self-luminous rationality. To this science, which is the great interest of his later years, Plato contributes only incomplete studies and experiments. We must be satisfied with the playful answer with which, in the "Republic," he replies to Glaucon's entreaty that "he proceed at once from the prelude or preamble to the chief strain, and describe that in like manner": "Dear Glaucon, you will not be able to follow me here, though I would do my best."

But a philosophical system has been projected. The real is that perfect significance or meaning which thought and every interest suggests, and toward which there is in experience an appreciable movement. It is this significance which makes things what they really are, and which constitutes our understanding of them. In itself it transcends the steps which lead to it; "for God," says Plato, "mingles not with men." But it is nevertheless the meaning of human life. And this we can readily conceive. The last word may transform the sentence from nonsense into sense, and it would be true to say that its sense mingles not with nonsense. Similarly the last touch of the brush may transform an inchoate mass of color into a picture, disarray into an object of beauty; and its beauty mingles not with ugliness. So life, when it finally realizes itself, obtains a new and incommensurable quality of perfection in which humanity is transformed into deity. There is frankly no provision for imperfection in such a world. In his later writings Plato sounds his characteristic note less frequently, and permits the ideal to create a cosmos through the admixture of matter. But in his moment of inspiration, the Platonist will have no sense for the imperfect. It is the darkness behind his back, or the twilight through which he passes on his way to the light. He will use even the beauties of earth only "as steps along which he mounts upward for the sake of that other beauty."

[Sidenote: Aristotle's Hierarchy of Substances in Relation to Platonism.]

Sect. 162. We have met, then, with two distinct philosophical doctrines which arise from the conception of the absolute, or the philosopher's peculiar object: the doctrine of the absolute being or substance, and that of the absolute ideal or good. Both doctrines are realistic in that they assume reality to be demonstrated or revealed, rather than created, by knowledge. Both are rationalistic in that they develop a system of philosophy from the problem of philosophy, or deduce a definition of reality from the conception, of reality. There remains a third doctrine of the same type—the philosophy of Aristotle, the most elaborately constructed system of Greek antiquity, and the most potent influence exerted upon the Scholastic Philosophy of the long mediaeval period. This philosophy was rehabilitated in the eighteenth century by Leibniz, the brilliant librarian of the court of Hanover. The extraordinary comprehensiveness of Aristotle's philosophy makes it quite impossible to render here even a general account of it. There is scarcely any human discipline that does not to some extent draw upon it. We are concerned only with the central principles of the metaphysics.

Upon the common ground of rationalism and realism, Plato and Aristotle are complementary in temper, method, and principle. Plato's is the genius of inspiration and fertility, Aristotle's the genius of erudition, mastery, and synthesis. In form, Plato's is the gift of expression, Aristotle's the gift of arrangement. Plato was born and bred an aristocrat, and became the lover of the best—the uncompromising purist; Aristotle is middle-class, and limitlessly wide, hospitable, and patient in his interests. Thus while both are speculative and acute, Plato's mind is intensive and profound, Aristotle's extensive and orderly. It was inevitable, then, that Aristotle should find Plato one-sided. The philosophy of the ideal is not worldly enough to be true. It is a religion rather than a theory of reality. Aristotle, however, would not renounce it, but construe it that it may better provide for nature and history. This is the significance of his new terminology. Matter, to which Plato reluctantly concedes some room as a principle of degradation in the universe, is now admitted to good standing. Matter or material is indispensable to being as its potentiality or that out of which it is constituted. The ideal, on the other hand, loses its exclusive title to the predicate of reality, and becomes the form, or the determinate nature which exists only in its particular embodiments. The being or substance is the concrete individual, of which these are the abstracted aspects. Aristotle's "form," like Plato's "idea," is a teleological principle. The essential nature of the object is its perfection. It is furthermore essential to the object that it should strive after a higher perfection. With Aristotle, however, the reality is not the consummation of the process, the highest perfection in and for itself, but the very hierarchy of objects that ascends toward it. The highest perfection, or God, is not itself coextensive with being, but the final cause of being—that on account of which the whole progression of events takes place. Reality is the development with all of its ascending stages from the maximum of potentiality, or matter, to the maximum of actuality, or God the pure form.

[Sidenote: The Aristotelian Philosophy as a Reconciliation of Platonism and Spinozism.]

Sect. 163. To understand the virtue of this philosophy as a basis for the reconciliation of different interests, we must recall the relation between Plato and Spinoza. Their characteristic difference appears to the best advantage in connection with mathematical truth. Both regarded geometry as the best model for philosophical thinking, but for different reasons. Spinoza prized geometry for its necessity, and proposed to extend it. His philosophy is the attempt to formulate a geometry of being, which shall set forth the inevitable certainties of the universe. Plato, on the other hand, prized geometry rather for its definition of types, for its knowledge of pure or perfect natures such as the circle and triangle, which in immediate experience are only approximated. His philosophy defines reality similarly as the absolute perfection. Applied to nature Spinozism is mechanical, and looks for necessary laws, while Platonism is teleological, and looks for adaptation and significance. Aristotle's position is intermediate. With Plato he affirms that the good is the ultimate principle. But this very principle is conceived to govern a universe of substances, each of which maintains its own proper being, and all of which are reciprocally determined in their changes. Final causes dominate nature, but work through efficient causes. Reality is not pure perfection, as in Platonism, nor the indifferent necessity, as in Spinozism, but the system of beings necessary to the complete progression toward the highest perfection. The Aristotelian philosophy promises, then, to overcome both the hard realism of Parmenides and Spinoza, and also the supernaturalism of Plato.

[Sidenote: Leibniz's Application of the Conception of Development to the Problem of Imperfection.]

Sect. 164. But it promises, furthermore, to remedy the defect common to these two doctrines, the very besetting problem of this whole type of philosophy. That problem, as has been seen, is to provide for the imperfect within the perfect, for the temporal incidents of nature and history within the eternal being. Many absolutist philosophers have declared the explanation of this realm to be impossible, and have contented themselves with calling it the realm of opinion or appearance. And this realm of opinion or appearance has been used as a proof of the absolute. Zeno, the pupil of Parmenides, was the first to elaborate what have since come to be known as the paradoxes of the empirical world. Most of these paradoxes turn upon the infinite extension and divisibility of space and time. Zeno was especially interested in the difficulty of conceiving motion, which involves both space and time, and thought himself to have demonstrated its absurdity and impossibility.[337:10] His argument is thus the complement of Parmenides's argument for the indivisible and unchanging substance. Now the method which Zeno here adopts may be extended to cover the whole realm of nature and history. We should then be dialectically driven from this realm to take refuge in absolute being. But the empirical world is not destroyed by disparagement, and cannot long lack champions even among the absolutists themselves. The reconciliation of nature and history with the absolute being became the special interest of Leibniz, the great modern Aristotelian. As a scientist and man of affairs, he was profoundly dissatisfied with Spinoza's resolution of nature, the human individual, and the human society into the universal being. He became an advocate of individualism while retaining the general aim and method of rationalism.

Like Aristotle, Leibniz attributes reality to individual substances, which he calls "monads"; and like Aristotle he conceives these monads to compose an ascending order, with God, the monad of monads, as its dominating goal.

"Furthermore, every substance is like an entire world and like a mirror of God, or indeed of the whole world which it portrays, each one in its own fashion; almost as the same city is variously represented according to the various situations of him who is regarding it. Thus the universe is multiplied in some sort as many times as there are substances, and the glory of God is multiplied in the same way by as many wholly different representations of his works."[338:11]

The very "glory of God," then, requires the innumerable finite individuals with all their characteristic imperfections, that the universe may lack no possible shade or quality of perspective.

[Sidenote: The Problem of Imperfection Remains Unsolved.]

Sect. 165. But the besetting problem is in fact not solved, and is one of the chief incentives to that other philosophy of absolutism which defines an absolute spirit or mind. Both Aristotle and Leibniz undertake to make the perfection which determines the order of the hierarchy of substances, at the same time the responsible author of the whole hierarchy. In this case the dilemma is plain. If the divine form or the divine monad be other than the stages that lead up to it, these latter cannot be essential to it, for God is by definition absolutely self-sufficient. If, on the other hand, God is identical with the development in its entirety, then two quite incommensurable standards of perfection determine the supremacy of the divine nature, that of the whole and that of the highest parts of the whole. The union of these two and the definition of a perfection which may be at once the development and its goal, is the task of absolute idealism.

[Sidenote: Absolute Realism in Epistemology. Rationalism.]

Sect. 166. Of the two fundamental questions of epistemology, absolute realism answers the one explicitly, the other implicitly. As respects the source of the most valid knowledge, Parmenides, Plato, Aristotle, Spinoza are all agreed: true knowledge is the work of reason, of pure intellection. Plato is the great exponent of dialectic, or the reciprocal affinities and necessities of ideas. Aristotle is the founder of deductive logic. Spinoza proposes to consider even "human actions and desires" as though he were "concerned with lines, planes, and solids." Empirical data may be the occasion, but cannot be the ground of the highest knowledge. According to Leibniz,

"it seems that necessary truths, such as we find in pure mathematics, and especially in arithmetic and geometry, must have principles whose proof does not depend upon instances, nor, consequently, upon the witness of the senses, although without the senses it would never have come into our heads to think of them."[340:12]

[Sidenote: The Relation of Thought and its Object in Absolute Realism.]

Sect. 167. The answers which these philosophies give to the question of the relation between the state of knowledge and its object, divide them into two groups. Among the ancients reason is regarded as the means of emancipation from the limitations of the private mind. "The sleeping turn aside each into a world of his own," but "the waking"—the wise men—"have one and the same world." What the individual knows belongs to himself only in so far as it is inadequate. Hence for Plato the ideas are not the attributes of a mind, but that self-subsistent truth to which, in its moments of insight, a mind may have access. Opinion is "my own," the truth is being. The position of Aristotle is equally clear. "Actual knowledge," he maintains, "is identical with its object."

Spinoza and Leibniz belong to another age. Modern philosophy began with a new emphasis upon self-consciousness. In his celebrated argument—"I think, hence I am" (cogito ergo sum)—Descartes established the independent and substantial reality of the thinking activity. The "I think" is recognized as in itself a fundamental being, known intuitively to the thinker himself. Now although Spinoza and Leibniz are finally determined by the same motives that obtain in the cases of Plato and Aristotle, they must reckon with this new distinction between the thinker and his object. The result in the case of Spinoza is the doctrine of "parallelism," in which mind is defined as an "infinite attribute" of substance, an aspect or phase coextensive with the whole of being. The result in the case of Leibniz is his doctrine of "representation" and "pre-established harmony," whereby each monadic substance is in itself an active spiritual entity, and belongs to the universe through its knowledge of a specific stage of the development of the universe. But both Spinoza and Leibniz subordinate such conceptions as these to the fundamental identity that pervades the whole. With Spinoza the attributes belong to the same absolute substance, and with Leibniz the monads represent the one universe. And with both, finally, the perfection of knowledge, or the knowledge of God, is indistinguishable from its object, God himself. The epistemological subtleties peculiar to these philosophers are not stable doctrines, but render inevitable either a return to the simpler and bolder realism of the Greeks, or a passing over into the more radical and systematic doctrine of absolute idealism.

[Sidenote: The Stoic and Spinozistic Ethics of Necessity.]

Sect. 168. We have met with two general motives, both of which are subordinated to the doctrine of an absolute being postulated and sought by philosophy. The one of these motives leads to the conception of the absolutely necessary and immutable substance, the other to the conception of a consummate perfection. There is an interpretation of life appropriate to each of these conceptions. Both agree in regarding life seriously, in defining reason or philosophy as the highest human activity, and in emphasizing the identity of the individual's good with the good of the universe. But there are striking differences of tone and spirit.

Although the metaphysics of the Stoics have various affiliations, the Stoic code of morality is the true practical sequel to the Eleatic-Spinozistic view of the world. The Stoic is one who has set his affections on the eternal being. He asks nothing of it for himself, but identifies himself with it. The saving grace is a sense of reality. The virtuous man is not one who remakes the world, or draws upon it for his private uses; even less one who rails against it, or complains that it has used him ill. He is rather one who recognizes that there is but one really valid claim, that of the universe itself. But he not only submits to this claim on account of its superiority; he makes it his own. The discipline of Stoicism is the regulation of the individual will to the end that it may coincide with the universal will. There is a part of man by virtue of which he is satisfied with what things are, whatever they be. That part, designated by the Stoics as "the ruling part," is the reason. In so far as man seeks to understand the laws and natures which actually prevail, he cannot be discontented with anything whatsoever that may be known to him.

"For, in so far as we are intelligent beings, we cannot desire anything save that which is necessary, nor yield absolute acquiescence to anything, save to that which is true: wherefore, in so far as we have a right understanding of these things, the endeavor of the better part of ourselves is in harmony with the order of nature as a whole."[344:13]

In agreement with this teaching of Spinoza's is the famous Stoic formula to the effect that "nothing can happen contrary to the will of the wise man," who is free through his very acquiescence. If reason be the proper "ruling part," the first step in the moral life is the subordination of the appetitive nature and the enthronement of reason. One who is himself rational will then recognize the fellowship of all rational beings, and the unitary and beneficent rationality of the entire universe. The highest morality is thus already upon the plane of religion.

[Sidenote: The Platonic Ethics of Perfection.]

Sect. 169. With Spinoza and the Stoics, the perfection of the individual is reduced to what the universe requires of him. The good man is willing to be whatever he must be, for the sake of the whole with which through reason he is enabled to identify himself. With Plato and Aristotle the perfection of the individual himself is commended, that the universe may abound in perfection. The good man is the ideal man—the expression of the type. And how different the quality of a morality in keeping with this principle! The virtues which Plato enumerates—temperance, courage, wisdom, and justice—compose a consummate human nature. He is thinking not of the necessities but of the possibilities of life. Knowledge of the truth will indeed be the best of human living, but knowledge is not prized because it can reconcile man to his limitations; it is the very overflowing of his cup of life. The youth are to

"dwell in the land of health, amid fair sights and sounds; and beauty, the effluence of fair works, will visit the eye and ear, like a healthful breeze from a purer region, and insensibly draw the soul even in childhood into harmony with the beauty of reason."[345:14]

Aristotle's account of human perfection is more circumstantial and more prosaic. "The function of man is an activity of soul in accordance with reason," and his happiness or well-being will consist in the fulness of rational living. But such fulness requires a sphere of life that will call forth and exercise the highest human capacities. Aristotle frankly pronounces "external goods" to be indispensable, and happiness to be therefore "a gift of the gods." The rational man will acquire a certain exquisiteness or finesse of action, a "mean" of conduct; and this virtue will be diversified through the various relations into which he must enter, and the different situations which he must meet. He will be not merely brave, temperate, and just, as Plato would have him, but liberal, magnificent, gentle, truthful, witty, friendly, and in all self-respecting or high-minded. In addition to these strictly moral virtues, he will possess the intellectual virtues of prudence and wisdom, the resources of art and science; and will finally possess the gift of insight, or intuitive reason. Speculation will be his highest activity, and the mark of his kinship with the gods who dwell in the perpetual contemplation of the truth.

[Sidenote: The Religion of Fulfilment, and the Religion of Renunciation.]

Sect. 170. Aristotle's ethics expresses the buoyancy of the ancient world, when the individual does not feel himself oppressed by the eternal reality, but rejoices in it. He is not too conscious of his sufferings to be disinterested in his admiration and wonder. It is this which distinguishes the religion of Plato and Aristotle from that of the Stoics and Spinoza. With both alike, religion consists not in making the world, but in contemplating it; not in cooperating with God, but in worshipping him. Plato and Aristotle, however, do not find any antagonism between the ways of God and the natural interests of men. God does not differ from men save in his exalted perfection. The contemplation and worship of him comes as the final and highest stage of a life which is organic and continuous throughout. The love of God is the natural love when it has found its true object.

"For he who has been instructed thus far in the things of love, and who has learned to see the beautiful in due order and succession, when he comes toward the end will suddenly perceive a nature of wondrous beauty—and this, Socrates, is that final cause of all our former toils, which in the first place is everlasting—not growing and decaying, or waxing and waning; in the next place not fair in one point of view and foul in another, . . . or in the likeness of a face or hands or any other part of the bodily frame, or in any form of speech or knowledge, nor existing in any other being; . . . but beauty only, absolute, separate, simple, and everlasting, which without diminution and without increase, or any change, is imparted to the ever-growing and perishing beauties of all other things."[347:15]

The religion of Spinoza is the religion of one who has renounced the favor of the universe. He was deprived early in life of every benefit of fortune, and set out to find the good which required no special dispensation but only the common lot and the common human endowment. He found that good to consist in the conviction of the necessity, made acceptable through the supremacy of the understanding. The like faith of the Stoics makes of no account the difference of fortune between Marcus the emperor and Epictetus the slave.

"For two reasons, then, it is right to be content with that which happens to thee; the one because it was done for thee and prescribed for thee, and in a manner had reference to thee, originally from the most ancient causes spun with thy destiny; and the other because even that which comes severally to every man is to the power which administers the universe a cause of felicity and perfection, nay even of its very continuance. For the integrity of the whole is mutilated, if thou cuttest off anything whatever from the conjunction and the continuity either of the parts or of the causes. And thou dost cut off, as far as it is in thy power, when thou art dissatisfied, and in a manner triest to put anything out of the way."[348:16]

FOOTNOTES:

[306:1] By Absolute Realism is meant that system of philosophy which defines the universe as the absolute being, implied in knowledge as its final object, but assumed to be independent of knowledge. In the Spinozistic system this absolute being is conceived under the form of substance, or self-sufficiency; in Platonism under the form of perfection; and in the Aristotelian system under the form of a hierarchy of substances.

[308:2] Burnet: Early Greek Philosophy, p. 185.

[309:3] When contrasted with the temporal realm of "generation and decay," this ultimate object is often called the eternal.

[311:4] Holland, 1632-1677.

[312:5] Spinoza: Ethics, Part I. Translation by Elwes, p. 45.

[314:6] Ibid., p. 49.

[318:7] Ibid., pp. 77, 81.

[329:8] Plato: Symposium, 211. Translation by Jowett.

[330:9] Plato: Republic, 533. Translation by Jowett.

[337:10] See Burnet: Op. cit., pp. 322-333.

[338:11] Leibniz: Discourse on Metaphysics. Translation by Montgomery, p. 15.

In so far as the monads are spiritual this doctrine tends to be subjectivistic. Cf. Chap. IX.

[340:12] Leibniz: New Essays on the Human Understanding. Translation by Latta, p. 363.

[344:13] Spinoza: Op. cit., Part IV. Translation by Elwes, p. 243.

[345:14] Plato: Op. cit., 401.

[347:15] Plato: Symposium, 210-211. Translation by Jowett.

[348:16] Marcus Aurelius Antoninus: Thoughts. Translation by Long, p. 141.



CHAPTER XI

ABSOLUTE IDEALISM[349:1]

[Sidenote: General Constructive Character of Absolute Idealism.]

Sect. 171. Absolute idealism is the most elaborately constructive of all the historical types of philosophy. Though it may have overlooked elementary truths, and have sought to combine irreconcilable principles, it cannot be charged with lack of sophistication or subtlety. Its great virtue is its recognition of problems—its exceeding circumspection; while its great promise is due to its comprehensiveness—its generous provision for all interests and points of view. But its very breadth and complexity render this philosophy peculiarly liable to the equivocal use of conceptions. This may be readily understood from the nature of the central doctrine of absolute idealism. According to this doctrine it is proposed to define the universe as an absolute spirit; or a being infinite, ultimate, eternal, and self-sufficient, like the being of Plato and Spinoza, but possessing at the same time the distinguishing properties of spirit. Such conceptions as self-consciousness, will, knowledge, and moral goodness are carried over from the realm of human endeavor and social relations to the unitary and all-inclusive reality. Now it has been objected that this procedure is either meaningless, in that it so applies the term spirit as to contradict its meaning; or prejudicial to spiritual interests, in that it neutralizes the properties of spirit through so extending their use. Thus one may contend that to affirm that the universe as a whole is spirit is meaningless, since moral goodness requires special conditions and relations that cannot be attributed to the universe as a whole; or one may contend that such doctrine is prejudicial to moral interests because by attributing spiritual perfection to the totality of being it discredits all moral loyalties and antagonisms. The difficulties that lie in the way of absolute idealism are due, then, to the complexity of its synthesis, to its complementary recognition of differences and resolution of them into unity. But this synthesis is due to the urgency of certain great problems which the first or realistic expression of the absolutist motive left undiscovered and unsolved.

[Sidenote: The Great Outstanding Problems of Absolutism.]

Sect. 172. It is natural to approach so deliberate and calculating a philosophy from the stand-point of the problems which it proposes to solve. One of these is the epistemological problem of the relation between the state of knowledge and its object. Naturalism and absolute realism side with common-sense in its assumption that although the real object is essential to the valid state of knowledge, its being known is not essential to the real object. Subjectivism, on the other hand, maintains that being is essentially the content of a knowing state, or an activity of the knower himself. Absolute idealism proposes to accept the general epistemological principle of subjectivism; but to satisfy the realistic demand for a standard, compelling object, by setting up an absolute knower, with whom all valid knowledge must be in agreement. This epistemological statement of absolute idealism is its most mature phase; and the culminating phase, in which it shows unmistakable signs of passing over into another doctrine. We must look for its pristine inspiration in its solution of another fundamental problem: that of the relation between the absolute and the empirical. Like absolute realism, this philosophy regards the universe as a unitary and internally necessary being, and undertakes to hold that being accountable for every item of experience. But we have found that absolute realism is beset with the difficulty of thus accounting for the fragmentariness and isolation of the individual. The contention that the universe must really be a rational or perfect unity is disputed by the evident multiplicity, irrelevance, and imperfection in the foreground of experience. The inference to perfection and the confession of imperfection seem equally unavoidable. Rational necessities and empirical facts are out of joint.

[Sidenote: The Greek Philosophers and the Problem of Evil. The Task of the New Absolutism.]

Sect. 173. Even Plato had been conscious of a certain responsibility for matters of fact. Inasmuch as he attached the predicate of reality to the absolute perfection, he made that being the only source to which they could be referred. Perhaps, then, he suggests, they are due to the very bounteousness of God.

"He was good, and no goodness can ever have any jealousy of anything. And being free from jealousy, he desired that all things should be as like himself as possible."[352:2]