Part 20

How now does the understanding become possessed of ideas? Only through experience, upon which all knowledge rests, and on which as its principle all knowledge depends. Experience itself is twofold; either it arises through the perception of external objects by means of the sense, in which case we call it sensation; or it is a perception of the activities of our own understanding, in which case it is named the inner sense, or, better, reflection. Sensation and reflection give to the understanding all its ideas; they are the windows through which alone the light of ideas falls upon the naturally dark space of the mind; external objects furnish us with the ideas of sensible qualities, and the inner object, which is the understanding itself, offers us the ideas of its own activities. To show the derivation and to give an explanation of all the ideas derived from both is the problem of the Lockian philosophy. For this end Locke divides ideas (representations or notions) into _simple_ and _compound_. _Simple ideas_, he names those which are impressed from without upon the understanding while it remains wholly passive, just as the images of certain objects are represented in a mirror. These simple ideas are _partly_ such as come to the understanding through an individual sense, _e. g._ the ideas of color, which are furnished to the mind through the eye, or those of sound, which come to it through the ear, or those of solidity or impenetrability, which we receive through the touch; _partly_ such as a number of senses have combined to give us, as those of space and of motion, of which we become conscious by means of the sense both of touch and of sight; _partly_ such as we receive through reflection, as the idea of thought and of will; and _partly_, in fine, such as arise from both sensation and reflection combined, _e. g._ power, unity, &c. These simple ideas form the material, as it were the letters of all our knowledge. But now as language arises from a manifold combination of letters, syllables and words, so the understanding forms complex ideas by the manifold combination of simple ideas with each other. The complex ideas may be referred to three classes, viz.: the ideas of mode, of substance, and of relation. Under the ideas of mode, Locke considers the modifications of space (as distance, measurement, immensity, surface, figure, &c.), of time (as succession, duration, eternity), of thought (perception, memory, abstraction, &c.), of number, power, &c. Special attention is given by Locke to the conception of substance. He explains the origin of this conception in this way, viz.: we find both in sensation and reflection, that a certain number of simple ideas seem often to be connected together. But as we cannot divest ourselves of the impression that these simple ideas have not been produced through themselves, we are accustomed to furnish them with a ground in some existing substratum, which we indicate with the word substance. Substance is something unknown, and is conceived of as possessing those qualities which are necessary to furnish us with simple ideas. But from the fact that substance is a product of our subjective thinking, it does not follow that it has no existence outside of ourselves. On the contrary, this is distinguished from all other complex ideas in the fact that this is an idea which has its archetype distinct from ourselves, and possesses objective reality, while other complex ideas are formed by the mind at pleasure, and have no reality corresponding to them external to the mind. We do not know what is the archetype of substance, and of the substance itself we are acquainted only with its attributes. From considering the conception of substance, Locke next passes over to the idea of _relation_. A relation arises when the understanding has connected two things with each other, in such a way, that in considering them it passes over from the one to the other. Every thing is capable of being brought by the understanding into relation, or what is the same thing, to be transformed into something relative. It is consequently impossible to enumerate the sum of every possible relation. Hence Locke treats only of some of the more weighty conceptions of relation, among others, that of identity and difference, but especially that of cause and effect. The idea of cause and effect arises when our understanding perceives that any thing whatsoever, be it substance or quality, begins to exist through the activity of another. So much concerning ideas. The combination of ideas among themselves gives the conception of knowing. Hence knowledge stands in the same relation to the simple and complex ideas as a proposition does to the letters, syllables and words which compose it. From this it follows that our knowledge does not pass beyond the compass of our ideas, and hence that it is bounded by experience.

These are the prominent thoughts in the Lockian philosophy. Its empiricism is clear as day. The mind, according to it, is in itself bare, and only a mirror of the outer world,—a dark space which passively receives the images of external objects; its whole content is made by the impressions furnished it by material things. _Nihil est in intellectu, quod non fuerit in sensu_—is the watchword of this standpoint. While Locke, by this proposition, expresses the undoubted preponderance of the material over the intellectual, he does so still more decisively when he declares that it is possible and even probable that the mind is a material essence. He does not admit the reverse possibility, that material things may be classed under the intellectual as a special kind. Hence with him mind is the secondary to matter, and hence he is seen to take the characteristic standpoint of realism (_cf._ § XXVII). It is true that Locke was not always logically consistent, and in many points did not thoroughly carry out his empiricism: but we can clearly see that the road which will be taken in the farther development of this direction, will result in a thorough denial of the ideal factor.

The empiricism of Locke, wholly national as it is, soon became the ruling philosophy in England. Standing on its basis we find _Isaac Newton_, the great mathematician (1642-1727), _Samuel Clarke_, a disciple of Newton, whose chief attention was given to moral philosophy (1675-1729), the English moralists of this period, _William Wollaston_ (1659-1724), the Earl of _Shaftesbury_ (1671-1713), _Francis Hutcheson_ (1694-1746), and even some opponents of Locke, as _Peter Brown_, who died 1735.

SECTION XXIX.

HUME.

As already remarked, Locke had not been wholly consistent with the standpoint of empiricism. Though conceding to material objects a decided superiority above the thinking subject, there was yet one point, viz., the recognition of substance, where he claimed for the thinking a power above the objective world. Among all the complex ideas which are formed by the subjective thinking, the idea of substance is, according to Locke, the only one which has objective reality; all the rest being purely subjective, with nothing actually corresponding to them in the objective world. But in the very fact that the subjective thinking places the conception of substance, which it has formed, in the objective world, it affirms an objective relation of things, an objective connection of them among each other, and an existing rationality. The reason of the subject in this respect stands in a certain degree above the objective world, for the relation of substance is not derived immediately from the world of sense, and is no product of sensation nor of perception through the sense. On a pure empirical standpoint—and such was Locke’s—it was therefore illogical to allow the conception of substance to remain possessed of objective being. If the understanding is essentially a bare and empty space, a white unwritten paper, if its whole content of objective knowledge consists in the impressions made upon it by material things, then must the conception of substance also be explained as a mere subjective notion, a union of ideas joined together at the mind’s pleasure, and the subject itself, thus fully deprived of every thing to which it could lay claim, must become wholly subordinated to the material world. This stride to a logical empiricism Hume has made in his criticism on the conception of causality.

David Hume was born at Edinburgh 1711. Devoted in youth to the study of law, then for some time a merchant, he afterwards gave his attention exclusively to philosophy and history. His first literary attempt was hardly noticed. A more favorable reception was, however, given to his “_Essays_,”—of which he published different collections from 1742 to 1757, making in all five volumes. In these Hume has treated philosophical themes as a thoughtful and cultivated man of the world, but without any strict systematic connection. In 1752 he was elected to the care of a public library in Edinburgh, and began in this same year his famous history of England. Afterwards he became secretary of legation at Paris, where he became acquainted with Rousseau. In 1767 he became under secretary of state, an office, however, which he filled for only a brief period. His last years were spent in Edinburgh, in a quiet and contented seclusion. He died 1776.

The centre of Hume’s philosophizing is his criticism of the conception of cause. Locke had already expressed the thought that we attain the conception of substance only by the _habit_ of always seeing certain modes together. Hume takes up this thought with earnestness. Whence do we know, he asks, that two things stand to each other in the relation of cause and effect? We do not know it apriori, for since the effect is something other than the cause, while knowledge apriori embraces only that which is identical, the effect cannot thus be discovered in the cause; neither do we know it through experience, for experience reveals to us only the succession in time of two facts. All our conclusions from experience, therefore, rest simply upon habit. Because we are in the habit of seeing that one thing is followed in time by another, do we form the notion that the latter _must_ follow out of the former: we make the relation of causality out of the relation of succession; but a connection in time is naturally something other than a causal connection. Hence, with the conception of causality, we transcend that which is given in perception and form for ourselves, notions to which we are properly not entitled.—That which belongs to causality belongs to every necessary relation. We find within us conceptions, as those of power and expression, and in general that of necessary connection; but let us note how we attain these: not through sensation, for though external objects seem to us to have coetaneousness of being, they show as no necessary connection. Do they then come through reflection? True, it seems as if we might get the idea of power by seeing that the organs of our body move in consequence of the dictate of our mind. But since we do not know the means through which the mind works, and since all the organs of the body cannot be moved by the will, it follows, that we are indeed pointed to experience in reference to this activity; but since experience can show us only a frequent conjunction, but no real connection, it follows also that we come to the conception of power as of every necessary connection, only because we are _accustomed_ to a transcending process in our notions. All conceptions which express a relation of necessity, all knowledge presumptive of a real objective connection of things, rests therefore ultimately only upon the association of ideas. Having denied the conception of substance, Hume was led also to deny that of the Ego or self. If the Ego or self really exists, it must be a substance possessing inherent qualities. But since our conception of substance is purely subjective, without objective reality, it follows that there is no correspondent reality to our conception of the self or the Ego. The self or the Ego is, in fact, nothing other than a compound of many notions following rapidly upon each other; and under this compound we lay a conceived substratum, which we call soul, self, Ego (I). The self, or the Ego, rests wholly on an illusion. Of course, with such premises, nothing can be said of the immortality of the soul. If the soul is only the compound of our notions, it necessarily ceases with the notions—that which is compounded of the movements of the body dies with those movements.

There needs no further proof, than simply to utter these chief thoughts of Hume, to show that his scepticism is only a logical carrying out of Locke’s empiricism. Every determination of universality and necessity must fall away, if we derive our knowledge only from perceptions through the sense; these determinations cannot be comprised in sensation.

SECTION XXX.

CONDILLAC.

The French took up the problem of carrying out the empiricism of Locke, to its ultimate consequences in sensualism and materialism. Although this empiricism had sprung up on English soil, and had soon become universally prevalent there, it was reserved for France to push it to the last extreme, and show that it overthrew all the foundations of moral and religious life. This final consequence of empiricism did not correspond to the English national character. But on the contrary, both the empiricism of Locke, and the scepticism of Hume, found themselves opposed in the latter half of the eighteenth century, by a reaction in the Scotch philosophy (_Reid_ 1701-1799, _Beattie_, _Oswald_, _Dugald Stewart_, 1753-1828). The attempt was here made to establish certain principles of truth as innate and immanent in the subject, which should avail both against the _tabula rasa_ of Locke, and the scepticism of Hume. These principles were taken in a thoroughly English way, as those of common sense, as facts of experience, as facts of the moral instinct and sound human understanding; as something empirically given, and found in the common consciousness by self-contemplation and reflection. But in France, on the other hand, there was such a public and social condition of things during the eighteenth century, that we can only regard the systems of materialism and egoistic moralism which here appeared, as the last practical consequences of the empirical standpoint,—to be the natural result of the universal desolation. The expression of a lady respecting the system of Helvetius is well known, that it uttered only the secret of all the world.

Most closely connected with the empiricism of Locke, is the sensualism of the Abbé _Condillac_. Condillac was born at Grenoble, 1715. In his first writings he adhered to Locke, but subsequently passed beyond him, and sought to ground a philosophical standpoint of his own. He was elected a member of the French Academy in 1768, and died in 1780. His writings fill twenty-three volumes, and have their origin in a moral and religious interest.

Condillac, like Locke, started with the proposition that all our knowledge comes from experience. While, however, Locke had indicated two sources for this knowledge, sensation and reflection, the outer and the inner sense, Condillac referred reflection to sensation, and reduced the two sources to one. Reflection is, with him, only sensation; all intellectual occurrences, even the combination of ideas and volition, are to be regarded only as modified sensations. It is the chief problem and content of Condillac’s philosophizing to carry out this thought, and derive the different functions of the soul out of the sensations of the outer sense. He illustrates this thought by a statue, which has been made with a perfect internal organization like a man, but which possesses no ideas, and in which only gradually one sense after another awakens and fills the soul with impressions. In such a view man stands on the same footing as the brute, for all his knowledge and all his incentives to action he receives from sensation. Condillac consequently names men perfect animals, and brutes imperfect men. Still he revolts from affirming the materiality of the soul, and denying the existence of God. These ultimate consequences of sensualism were first drawn by others after him, as would naturally enough follow. As sensualism affirmed that truth or being could only be perceived through the sense, so we have only to reverse this proposition, and have the thesis of materialism, viz.: the sensible alone is, there is no other being but material being.

SECTION XXXI.

HELVETIUS.

_Helvetius_ has exhibited the moral consequences of the sensualistic standpoint. While theoretical sensualism affirms that all our knowledge is determined by sensation, practical sensualism adds to this the analogous proposition that all our volition springs from the same source, and is regulated by the sensuous desire. Helvetius adopted it as the principle of morals to satisfy this sensuous desire.

Helvetius was born at Paris in 1715. Gaining a position in his twenty-third year as farmer-general, he found himself early in the possession of a rich income, but after a few years he found this office so vexatious that he abandoned it. The study of Locke decided his philosophic direction. Helvetius wrote his famed work, _de l’Esprit_, after he had given up his office and withdrawn himself in seclusion. It appeared in 1758, and attracted a great attention at home and abroad, though it drew upon him a violent persecution, especially from the clergy. It was fortunate for him that the persecution satisfied itself with suppressing his book. The repose in which he spent his later years was interrupted only by two journeys which he made to Germany and England. He died in 1771. His personal character was wholly estimable, full of kindness and generosity. Especially in his place as farmer-general he showed himself benevolent towards the poor, and resolute against the encroachments of his subalterns. The style of his writings is easy and elegant.

Self-love or interest, says Helvetius, is the lever of all our mental activities. Even that activity which is purely intellectual, our instinct towards knowledge, our forming of ideas, rests upon this. Since now all self-love refers essentially only to bodily pleasure, it follows that every mental occurrence within us has its peculiar source only in the striving after this pleasure; but in saying this, we have only affirmed where the principle of all morality is to be sought. It is an absurdity to require a man to do the good simply for its own sake. This is just as impracticable as that he should do the evil simply for the sake of the evil. Hence if morality would not be wholly fruitless, it must return to its empirical basis, and venture to adopt the true principle of all acting, viz., sensuous pleasure and pain, or, in other words, selfishness as an actual moral principle. Hence, as a correct legislation is that which secures obedience to its laws through reward and punishment, _i. e._ through selfishness, so will a correct system of morals be that which derives the duties of men from self-love, which shows that that which is forbidden is something which is followed by disagreeable consequences. A system of ethics which does not involve the self-interest of men, or which wars against this, necessarily remains fruitless.

SECTION XXXII.

THE FRENCH CLEARING UP (_Aufklaerung_) AND MATERIALISM.

1. It has already been remarked (§ XXX.) that the carrying out of empiricism to its extremes, as was attempted in France, was most intimately connected with the general condition of the French people and state, in the period before the revolution. The contradictory element in the character of the Middle Ages, the external and dualistic relation to the spiritual world, had developed itself in Catholic France till it had corrupted and destroyed every condition. Morality, mainly through the influence of a licentious court, had become wholly corrupted; the state had sunk to an unbridled despotism, and the church to a hierarchy as hypocritical as it was powerful. Thus, as every intellectual edifice was threatened with ruin, nature, as matter without intellect, as the object of sensation and desire, alone remained. Yet it is not the materialistic extreme which constitutes the peculiar character and tendency of the period now before us. The common character of the philosophers of the eighteenth century is rather, and most prominently, the opposition against every ruling restraint, and perversion in morals, religion, and the state. Their criticism and polemics, which were much more ingenious and eloquent than strictly scientific, were directed against the whole realm of traditional and given and positive notions. They sought to show the contradiction between the existing elements in the state and the church, and the incontrovertible demands of the reason. They sought to overthrow in the faith of the world every fixed opinion which had not been established in the eye of reason, and to give the thinking man the full consciousness of his pure freedom. In order that we may correctly estimate the merit of these men, we must bring before us the French world of that age against which their attacks were directed; the dissoluteness of a pitiful court, the slavish obedience exacted by a corrupt priesthood, a church sunken into decay yet seeking worldly honor, a state constitution, a condition of rights and of society, which must be profoundly revolting to every thinking man and every moral feeling. It is the immortal merit of these men that they gave over to scorn and hatred the abjectness and hypocrisy which then reigned; that they brought the minds of men to look with indifference upon the idols of the world, and awakened within them a consciousness of their own autonomy.

2. The most famous and influential actor in this period of the French clearing up, is _Voltaire_ (1694-1778). Though a writer of great versatility, rather than a philosopher, there was yet no philosopher of that time who exerted so powerful an influence upon the whole thinking of his country and his age. Voltaire was no atheist. On the contrary, he regarded the belief in a Supreme Being to be so necessary, that he once said that if there were no God we should be under the necessity of inventing one. He was just as little disposed to deny the immortality of the soul, though he often expressed his doubts upon it. He regarded the atheistic materialism of a La Mettrie as nothing but nonsense. In these respects, therefore, he is far removed from the standpoint of the philosophers who followed him. His whole hatred was expended against Christianity as a positive religion. To destroy this system he considered as his peculiar mission, and he left no means untried to attain this anxiously longed-for end. His unwearied warfare against every positive religion prepared the way and gave weapons for the attacks against spiritualism which followed.