 CHAPTER 57. British Empiricism The tendency of British philosophy has always been towards the positivistic and practical rather than towards the mystical and speculative. This trait we have already observed in the philosophy of Hobbes and Bacon. It reappeared during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in the critical and empirical philosophy of Locke in the natural philosophy of Newton and in the theological doctrines of the deists. How the British moralists of the eighteenth century applied the principle of empiricism to ethical problems will be seen in the next chapter. John Locke was born in 1632 at Rington, near Bristol. In 1646 he entered Westminster School, and in 1652 he entered Christ Church, Oxford. Here, although he found scholasticism still in the ascendancy, he began to take an interest in Cartesian philosophy, and, while it is certainly incorrect to regard Locke's empiricism as an English branch of Cartesianism, there can be no doubt as to the important influence of this early study of Descartes on the philosophical career of Locke. On leaving Oxford, Locke entered the household of Lord Ashley, afterwards Earl of Shaftesbury as secretary, tutor, and physician. After the downfall and death of his patron, Locke took up his residence in Holland, 1683. There he remained until 1689, when he returned to England in the suite of William of Orange. He died at Oates in Essex in the year 1704. Sources Locke's works, which were first published in nine volumes, London, 1714, include the essay concerning human understanding, thoughts concerning education, two treatises on government, the reasonableness of Christianity as delivered in Scripture, and other treatises. The best edition of the essay is that of Alexander Campbell Frazier, two volumes, Clarendon Press, 1894. Manuals to be consulted, Frazier's Locke, Blackwood's Philosophical Classics, Edinburgh and Philadelphia, 1890, and Marion's J. Locke, Paris, 1893. Footnote. Consult also article on Locke in Encyclopedia Britannica, Dewey's Leibniz's New Essays, Chicago, 1888, and Green's introduction in addition of Hume's works. End footnote. Doctrines. Starting point. All Locke's philosophy centers in his theory of cognition, and his theory of cognition is based on the principle which may be enunciated negatively by saying that there are no innate ideas, or affirmatively by saying that all knowledge comes from experience. There are no innate ideas. The first book of the essay is devoted to proving that there are no innate principles in the mind. Locke observes that the universal acceptance of certain principles is taken as a proof of their innateness. He then proceeds to show that facts do not sustain the contention that the principles in question, or indeed any principles, are universally accepted. Children and uneducated persons are ignorant of the principles of identity and contradiction. The existence of atheism and polytheism demonstrates that the idea of God is not present in the minds of all men from the beginning, and the well-known diversity of the moral ideals of different races and nations proves that the elementary principles of morality are not universally accepted. He further adduces positive evidence against the innateness of these principles, arguing that the ideas which compose them are abstract, and therefore do not appear in consciousness until a comparatively late period in the mental development of the individual. Here, as well as elsewhere, Locke assumes that to be in the mind and to be known are one and the same. The mind, therefore, is in the beginning a blank sheet, or, to use the Aristotelian phrase, a tabula rasa. It remains to inquire how our ideas are acquired. Analysis of Experience The second book of the essay is devoted to the task of showing how our ideas originate by experience. Experience, Locke teaches, is twofold. Sensation, or the perception of external phenomena by means of the senses, and reflection, or the perception of the internal phenomena, that is, of the activity of the understanding itself. From these two sources arise all our ideas. Now, our ideas are either simple or complex. Simple ideas are those which are furnished to the mind by sensation and reflection, the understanding itself remaining perfectly passive. Complex ideas are those which the understanding makes by repeating, comparing, and combining simple ideas. Simple ideas are divided into four classes. One, those which come into the mind by one sense only. Two, those which convey themselves into the mind by more senses than one. Three, those which are had from reflection only. Four, those which are suggested to the mind by all the ways of sensation and reflection. To the first class belong not only the ideas of color, taste, etc., but also that of solidity or impenetrability. It is this quality, and not, as Descartes thought, extension, that is the primary attribute of body. To the second class belong our ideas of motion, space, etc. As examples of the third class, Locke instances the ideas of thought and will, while to the last class he assigns our ideas of pleasure and power. With regard to the validity of simple ideas, Locke adopts Boyle's division of the qualities of bodies into primary and secondary. Secondary qualities, such as colors, tastes, etc., do not really exist in bodies. Real existence can be attributed only to primary qualities, such as bulk, figure, motion, etc., which have the power to produce in us the simple ideas of secondary qualities. Here Locke fails to distinguish between the psychic and the physical aspect of secondary qualities, and from the undeniable fact that the quality of color, for example in its psychic aspect, exists in the mind alone, concludes that, in no true sense of the word, can color be said to exist outside the mind. B. Complex Ideas In the twelfth chapter of the second book of the essay, Locke divides complex ideas into three classes. Ideas of modes, ideas of substances, and ideas of relations. A. Modes are defined as complex ideas which, however compounded, contain not in them the supposition of subsisting by themselves, but are considered as dependencies on or affections of substances. Simple modes are combinations of the same simple idea, thus distance, surface, figure, are modifications and combinations of the simple idea of space. Duration, time, and eternity are simple modes of the idea of duration, while memory, reasoning, and judging are simple modes of the idea of thinking. Mixed modes are combinations of different kinds of simple ideas. For example, the idea of sacrilege, or of murder, is made up of the simple ideas of action, circumstance, motive, etc. B. Substance Not being able to conceive how simple ideas can subsist by themselves, we form a complex idea of substance as the substratum which upholds them. Substance, then, is not primarily conceived as that which is capable of subsisting by itself, but rather as that which upholds or supports the qualities of things. Thus the substance of the rose is the complex idea of that which upholds or supports the simple ideas, color, fragrance, softness, etc. Whatever Locke may have meant, when he said that our idea of substance is obscure, his first letter to the Bishop of Worcester removes all doubt as to his belief in the real existence of substance. Indeed, the letter explicitly distinguishes between our knowledge that substance is and our knowledge of what it is. Substance is threefold, bodily, spiritual, and divine. We have as clear an idea of spiritual substance as we have of bodily substance, for thought is as easily known as extension, and will is as easily known as impulsion or force. And the idea of divine substance offers no special difficulty, for it is merely the complex idea made up of our ideas of existence, power, knowledge, etc., to which is added the idea of infinite. The idea of infinite is obtained by the addition of finite to finite. C. Relations A relation arises when the mind so considers one thing that it does as it were, bring it to, and set it by another, and carries its view from the one to the other. Relations are innumerable. Locke undertakes to discuss merely the principal relations as, for example, causality and identity. Although Locke's analysis of the relation of causality seems unimportant when compared with Hume's more thorough analysis of the causal axiom, nevertheless the mere fact of reducing causality to a relation rather than to the category of substance or action is a revolution in philosophy. Locke defines a cause as that which produces, and an effect as that which is produced. He does not therefore reduce causality to mere sequence. He teaches that there are real causes as there are real substances. The relation of identity arises when, considering anything as existing at any determined time and place, we compare it with itself existing at another time. Locke teaches that the principle of individuation is existence itself. But as the existence of living bodies is not the same as that of mere masses of matter, the identity of living bodies is the permanence of organization, while the identity of a mere mass of matter is the identity of its aggregated particles, atoms. Personal identity, the identity of man, is the continuity of consciousness. Locke apparently fails to distinguish between the psychological and the ontological aspect of the problem of personality. Between the question, how is personal identity known, and the question, the question, how is personal identity constituted? Philosophy of language. In the third book of the essay, Locke treats of the philosophy of language. Words do not, as is generally supposed, signify things. Neither do they, in their primary or immediate signification, stand for ideas common to all men, but merely for the ideas and the mind of him who uses them. Now, it is impossible that every particular thing should have its own name. Indeed, the greatest part of words are general terms used to express general ideas. The generality and universality of names and ideas are, therefore, mere creatures and inventions of the understanding and belong not to the existence of things, nominalism. Locke considers, in particular, the relation of our universal ideas to the essences of things, pointing out the distinction between nominal and real essences. Real essence is the very being of anything, whereby it is what it is. Nominal essence is the abstract idea which the general name stands for. Thus, the real essence of gold is that which makes gold to be what it is. The substantial form of Aristotle and the schoolmen, while the nominal essence is the complex idea of the color, weight, malleability, etc. of gold. Now we can and do know the nominal essences of material substances, but as to real essences, although we know that they exist, we cannot know what they are, for we have no means of judging whether the real essence which constitutes the insensible parts of gold is like the nominal essence, which is the complex idea, including yellow, malleable, etc. We know the surface qualities of things, but we are no more competent to judge what the real essence is than the countrymen who sees the exterior of the clock at Strasbourg, and hears it strike, is competent to judge of the mechanism with which the clock is provided. Locke grants that the qualities which constitute the nominal essence are produced by the real essence, but apparently overlooks the principle that, by virtue of the similarity of effect to cause, we may proceed from the knowledge of the effect to the knowledge of the cause. Theory of Knowledge The fourth book of the essay is devoted to the study of the extent and validity of knowledge. Knowledge is defined as the perception of the connection of and agreement or disagreement and repugnance of our ideas. It is of three kinds, intuitive, demonstrative, and sensitive. Intuitive knowledge is the perception of the agreement or disagreement of two ideas immediately by themselves without the intervention of any other. It is by means of this knowledge that we perceive that three equals one and two, and it is on the same kind of knowledge that the certainty and evidence of all our knowledge depend. Demonstrative knowledge is the perception of the agreement or disagreement of two ideas by the intervention of other ideas, as, for example, the perception of the agreement of the sum of the three angles of a triangle and two right angles. Sensitive knowledge is the perception of the particular existence of finite beings without us. Intuitive knowledge is the basis of all certitude. Demonstrative knowledge is less clear than intuitive knowledge and therefore inferior to it. But demonstrative knowledge is, in turn, superior to sensitive knowledge. Yet, while rating sensitive knowledge so low and describing it as going beyond bare probability, Locke does not deny the validity of sensitive knowledge when it testifies to the existence of external things. Our knowledge of our own existence is intuitive. Our knowledge of the existence of God is demonstrative, and our knowledge of other things is sensitive. Moral and political doctrines. Locke's ethical and political doctrines bear the general character of his theoretical speculations. They aim at being empirical. There are four determinants of moral good. Reason, the will of God, the general good, and self-interest. To each of these, in turn, Locke appeals without determining the relations of one to the others. In his treatises on political government, he combats the principles of state absolutism, maintaining that natural rights were in no way abrogated by the transition of primitive man from the state of nature to the conditions of political life. He defends the constitutional theory, advocates the supremacy of the legislative power, and teaches that, in a conflict between the legislative and the executive powers, the will of the nation is supreme because, in such an event, sovereign authority reverts to the source whence it is derived, namely the people. Locke is commonly regarded as the founder of that philosophy of civil government, which inspired the great modern movements towards popular representation, the extension of the rights of subjects, and the restriction of monarchical privileges. Historical position. Locke is commonly styled the successor of Bacon and Hobbes, although it is sometimes denied that he was influenced directly by the writings of either of these philosophers. The man, however, who exercised the greatest influence on Locke, was Descartes. This influence was indirect as well as direct. Thus Locke begins his essay by denying the innateness of ideas, a distinctively Cartesian doctrine, and throughout his inquiry into the nature and value of knowledge he is constantly denying what Descartes affirmed, and affirming what Descartes denied. And yet the cardinal idea of Cartesianism, namely the antithesis between mind and matter, appears as a tacit assumption in Locke's inquiry, and underlies everything that Locke wrote concerning human knowledge. Locke's original contribution to philosophy may be described by saying that he introduced the critical spirit. For him the paramount problem was to determine the nature, value, and extent of human knowledge, and the method which he employed was the empirical rather than the rational or deductive. He applied to the study of the mind the method which Bacon advocated as best suited to the study of nature. The result which he reached was the establishment of an empiricism which is, in ultimate analysis, a system of censism. His chief defect is superficiality, a defect common to his school. He stopped where the real problems of philosophy begin. And although, as the subsequent development of empiricism in France has shown, his premises led inevitably to materialism. He himself maintained, with characteristic inconsistency, the spirituality of the human soul, and the existence of purely spiritual substances. Newton Sir Isaac Newton, 1642 to 1727, is the most important representative of the scientific phase of the English empiricism of the 17th century. His chief works are philosophy naturalis principia matematica 1687 and optics 1704. The philosophical importance of his discovery of the law and theory of universal gravitation lies in this. That it established the fact that the physical laws which hold good on the surface of the earth are valid throughout the universe, as far as we can know anything about it. The Deistic Controversy Before the time of Locke, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, 1581 to 1648, had advocated a naturalistic philosophy of religion, thus planting the seed of the deistic doctrines which appeared after the days of Locke, and found a congenial soil in English empiricism. Deism may be described as a movement tending to free religious thought from the control of authority. Its chief thesis is that there is a universal natural religion, the principle tenet of which is believe in God and do your duty. That positive religion is the creation of cunning rulers and crafty priests. That Christianity in its original form was a simple though perfect expression of natural religion, and that whatever is positive in Christianity is a useless and harmful accretion. These principles naturally provoked opposition on the part of the defenders of Christianity, and there resulted a controversy between the deists or free thinkers as they were called, and the representatives of orthodoxy. To the deist side of the argument, John Toland, 1670 to 1722, contributed Christianity not mysterious. Anthony Collins, 1676 to 1729, a discourse on free thinking. Matthew Tindall, 1657 to 1733, Christianity as Old as the Creation, and Thomas Chubb, 1679 to 1747, the true Gospel of Jesus Christ. Thomas Morgan died 1743, author of the Moral Philosopher, and according to some Henry St. John, Viscount Bowlingbroke, 1678 to 1751, are also to be reckoned among the deist opponents of Christianity. Chief among the defenders of Christianity were Samuel Clark, 1675 to 1729, who was best known by his controversy with Leibniz concerning space and time. William Walliston, 1659 to 1724, George Berkeley, 1685 to 1753, Joseph Butler, 1692 to 1752, author of the Analogy of Religion, and George Campbell, 1719 to 1796. While this controversy was being waged, the principles of empiricism were being applied to psychology by the founders of the Association School and to ethical problems by the founders of the British School of Morals. As we shall have occasion to return to the beginnings of the Association School when we come to deal with the English philosophy of the nineteenth century, we shall now take up the study of the British Schools of Morals. Chapter 57 Chapter 58 of History of Philosophy This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Phyllis Vincelli. History of Philosophy by William Turner. Chapter 58 British Moralists The group of distinguished moralists, who flourished in Great Britain during the eighteenth century, may be said to represent the ethical phase of the empirical movement of that age. In determining moral values, medieval ethics had subordinated worldly interests to the interests of the future life. Hobbes, by his doctrine of state absolutism, had subjugated the moral to the political aspect of human conduct. Locke, however, admitted self-interest and the good of the many as moral determinants, and thus enabled his contemporaries and successors to develop a system of morality which should be independent of religion as well as of state authority, and should rest ultimately on the ego. Towards the end of the seventeenth century, Ralph Cudworth, 1617 to 1688, in his treatise concerning eternal and immutable morality, expounded a system of morals which, although rational rather than empirical, prepared the way for the advocates of independent morality who appeared in the following century. He taught that moral principles and ethical ideals come neither from the will of God, nor from political authority, nor from experience, but from the ideas which necessarily exist in the mind of God and are universally and immutably present in the human mind. He agreed with the schoolmen in maintaining the universality and immutability of the natural law, but differed from them in teaching that it is absolutely a priori. Shaftesbury, 1671 to 1713. Anthony Ashley Cooper Shaftesbury, the grandson of Locke's patron, and the author of characteristics of men, manners, opinions, and times, points out the consequences that follow from Locke's rejection of innate principles of morality, but instead of basing the morality of actions on innate principles, he bases it on innate sentiment. For an innate logic of conduct he substitutes an innate aesthetic. His concept of the universe as a whole is aesthetic rather than logical. He conceives the all-pervading law of creation to be unity in variety. The parts of the bodily organism are governed and held together by the soul, and thus arises the unity and diversity which is the ego. But the ego is not complete in itself, for individuals are joined together into species and genera, by unities higher than the individual soul, and above all species and all genera is the mind of the deity, which, by uniting the diversities of genera and species, makes the world a cosmos, a beautiful thing. The individual is, therefore, swayed in one direction by the impulse of self-preservation, and in another direction by the impulse to preserve the higher unity, species, to which it belongs. That individual is good in which the latter impulse is strong, and the former not too strong. Applying these principles to man, Shaftesbury defines the essence of morality as consisting in the proper balancing of the social and selfish impulses. There is no morality in sensible creatures, because although they may balance the impulse for the preservation of self with the interests of the species, they are incapable of reflecting on the nature of their impulses, or of perceiving the harmony which results when the social and the selfish impulses are properly balanced. Man, on the contrary, is endowed with the power of reflection, and of perceiving and approving the harmony which results from the proper balancing of his propensities. The faculty of moral distinction is not, therefore, a rational faculty, but an aesthetic sense, the power of perceiving harmony and beauty. As the harmony of impulses constitutes virtue, so also it constitutes happiness. Virtue is its own reward. Religion is an aid to virtue in as much as it teaches that the world is ruled by an all-loving and all protecting God, thus confirming the aesthetic concept of the universe as a harmony. Positive religion, however, is a hindrance to virtue in so far as it promises heavenly rewards, thus making men mercenary and selfish. Bernard Mandeville, 1670 to 1733, revealed by his advocacy of a startling paradox the weakness of Shaftesbury's system of morals, the danger, namely, of attaching to noble impulses so much importance as to neglect the cultivation of useful, though commonplace, virtues. In the fable of the bees, he advocates the doctrine that private vices are public benefits. He attempts to show that just as in the hive contentment and honesty cannot go hand in hand with splendor and prosperity, so in the community of social life it is the selfish impulses, the desire of food and drink, ambition, envy, and impatience, which Shaftesbury would have us balance against the social instincts that lead to labor, civilization, and the social life. We must choose between moral progress and material progress, for we cannot have both. In spite of the opposition which it provoked at the time, Shaftesbury's doctrine of moral aestheticism continued to win adherents, and the remaining moral systems of the period, those of Hutchison, Butler, and Adam Smith, are simply the logical development of Shaftesbury's teachings. Francis Hutchison, 1694 to 1746, was born in Ireland, and after teaching in a private academy in Dublin, was a pointed professor of moral philosophy at Glasgow. He wrote an inquiry into the original of our ideas of beauty and virtue, and a system of moral philosophy. By endeavoring to found a system of ethics on the observation of human nature as it actually is, Hutchison imparted to the British philosophy of morals a distinctively empirical spirit. He taught that the faculty of moral discrimination and moral approval is not rational, nor yet aesthetic in the sense of perceiving and approving merely the aspect of harmony or beauty, but a distinct power of the soul called moral sense. He maintained that there is in human nature, besides the egoistic instincts, a natural and instinctive desire to help and please others, and an equally instinctive feeling of approval of actions which aim at helping and pleasing others. The moral sense, which determines what actions are calculated to please and what actions are calculated to displease others, is distinct from reason. For reason merely aids us to find the means to given ends. The faculty of moral discrimination is not acquired by experience, having been originally planted in the soul by the Creator to enable the rational creature to know what actions promote the welfare of others and also his own welfare in conformity with the welfare of others. Joseph Butler, 1692-1752, the author of the analogy, developed in his Sermons on Human Nature, a system of morals which is practically a theological application of Shaftesbury's ethical theory. Butler agrees with Shaftesbury and Hutchison in maintaining the immediateness of the criterion of morality which, however, he identifies not with a sense of harmony, nor with a sense of the pleasure and usefulness which others experience from our actions, but with conscience. This guide of conduct is not a deduction from practical reason, as the schoolmen taught, but a faculty which directly and immediately approves or disapproves, and which must be obeyed without regard to the effect of our action on ourselves or others. It is not a distinctively religious sentiment, still religion is its greatest aid, for in the cool hour, when fervor and enthusiasm have deserted him, man finds in the thought of a future life a source of moral inspiration. Adam Smith, 1723-1790, author of The Wealth of Nations, a work justly regarded as the first modern treatise on political economy, is the last, and if we accept Hume, the most important representative of the empirical school of morals in the 18th century. His chief merit lies in the completeness and thoroughness of a psychological analysis of the criterion of morality. In his theory of moral sentiments, he develops a system of morals based on the principles that all moral judgment depends on participation in the feelings of the agent, and that an action is good if the spectator can sympathize with the end or effect of the action. He traces sympathy from its first manifestation, the power of imitating to a certain degree and participating to a certain extent in the feelings of others, to its culmination in moral appreciation and moral imperative, historical position, the change brought about in the science of ethics by the British moralists of the 18th century was practically a revolution in the theory of morals. Shaftesbury, Hutchison, and Smith, by reducing the subjective criterion of morality to feeling or sympathy, subverted the established idea of conscience as a dianetic or inferential subjective norm, and substituted for it something which may be called an aesthetic or intuitional criterion. When in studying the philosophy of the 19th century, we shall take up the course of the development of the British systems of morals, we shall find the influence of French materialism in the hedonism of Bentham, and the influence of Kant in the importance which the successors of Bentham attach to the problem of the origin of moral obligation. The moralists of the 18th century were, apart from Hutchison's unconscious lapse into hedonism, altruistic, at least in tendency, and instead of concerning themselves with the analysis of the sense of obligation, devoted their attention exclusively to the analysis of the faculty of moral discrimination and moral approval. End of Chapter 58 Chapter 59 of History of Philosophy This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by David Brent History of Philosophy by William Turner Chapter 59 French Empiricism When in 1729 Montesquieu and Voltaire returned to France from England and introduced among their fellow countrymen the ideas prevalent among the English dais and empiricists, an impetus was given to a French empirical movement which, with characteristic disregard for the restraints of convention and positive religion, advanced from psychological empiricism to materialism in metaphysics, hedonism in ethics and unbelief and revolt in matters of religious conviction. The social, political and religious conditions of France in the 18th century contributed to this result. The court of Versailles had become a synonym for frivolity if not licentiousness, and even after due allowance is made for the exaggerations of historians prejudiced against the old regime, it must be admitted that the grievances of the subjects of the monarchy were many and serious. The church whose duty it was to inculcate justice and forbearance was identified in the minds of the people with the monarchy which they feared and detested. Thus it was that the poets, philosophers and essayists of the latter half of the 18th century found in the popular mind a field ready to receive the seeds of the materialism and naturalism which flourished in the days preceding the revolution and bore fruit in the revolution itself. In England the old order gradually yielded to the action of the new forces. In France the old order maintained an attitude of unyielding antagonism. In England the establishment of new political ideas was in the nature of a slow assimilation. In France the destruction of the ancient political system assumed the proportions of a cataclysm. Speculative censism. The first to formulate a thoroughgoing system of censism as a logical development of Locke's empiricism was the Abbe Contellac, 1715-1718. In his trait de sensation he reduces all knowledge to experience and all experience to sensations. In fact consciousness with all its contents is nothing but transformed sensations. Sensation transformé. To illustrate this, Contellac imagines a statue, which is first endowed with the sense of smell and then with the other senses in succession, the sense of touch being lost, for it is by means of the sense of resistance that we distinguish between self and not self. Before being endowed with the sense of touch the statue refers odor, color and so forth to itself. After it has acquired the sense of touch it refers its sensations to the external world. Personality is therefore the sum of our sensations. Contellac teaches that it is by the superiority of the sense of touch that man differs from brutes, that every sensation is accompanied by pleasure or pain, that desire springs from the remembrance of pleasant sensations, that the good, as well as the beautiful, denies a pleasure giving quality. With Contellac is associated Charles Bolett, 1720-1793, who in his essa de psicologie advocates a mitigated form of sensationalism. Ethical Sensism. The ethical deductions from Sensistic Psychology appear in the writings of Elvitus, 1715-1771, author of Dele Sprit and Del Ome. Elvitus teaches that all men are equally endowed by nature, that the difference between men arises from education and that susceptibility to pleasure and pain, which declares itself in self-interest, is the ultimate element in the human character and the source of all mental and moral activity. Education, legislation and positive religion are doomed to failure as long as they refuse to recognize the truth that all that is good and noble and virtuous in human conduct is based on self-interest. Skeptics and Materialists. Voltaire 1694-1778. Although not a professed philosopher exercised a widespread influence on the philosophic thought of his century, his dictionnaire philosophique portative was written for the purpose of ridding philosophy of cumbersome technical terminology and presenting it in a popular form. This necessitated superficiality of treatment, but as Erdman says, in Voltaire's superficiality lies his strength. Voltaire was not an atheist. Not only did he believe that the existence of God is proclaimed by all nature, but he was even of the opinion that if God did not exist, we should be under the necessity of inventing a God. He defended immortality on the ground of practical necessity and openly declared that materialism was nonsense. It was characteristic of the superficiality of the man that the earthquake of Lisbon in 1775 should change him from an optimist to a pessimist. He attacked Christianity as a positive form of religion, waging unwearied war against the scriptures, the church and the most sacred beliefs of Christians. In this way, by helping to undermine the belief in the supernatural, he aided the cause of materialism and atheism. Materialism and atheism were openly taught and defended in the famous Encyclopedia. The work was skeptical, irrelevant and brilliant, with keen wit and caustic satire. It was by the charms of its style, rather than by the force of its arguments, that it did so much towards sapping the popular belief in God, in spirituality, in human liberty, and in the sacredness of the traditional ideas of morality. The decision La Mette, 1709-1751, author of L'histoire naturelle de Lemieux and La Homme machine was one of the most outspoken defenders of materialism. He taught that everything spiritual is a delusion, and that physical enjoyment is the highest aim of human action. The soul he maintained is nothing but a name, unless by it we mean the brain, which is an organ of thought. Thought is the function of the brain. Man excels broods simply because his brain is more highly developed. Death ends all things, and consequently we should enjoy this world and hasten the reign of atheism. For men will never truly be happy, until theologians will have ceased to trouble, and nature will have asserted her claims. The materialistic monism, thus flippantly defended by La Mette, was taught with more pretension to scientific seriousness in the work entitled Système de la nature, which was published pseudonymously in 1770, and of which Holbach, 1723-1789, is now universally admitted to be the author. The work may be said to be the Bible of the materialists of the end of the 18th century. The last representative of psychological materialism in the 18th century was the physician Cabinus, 1757-1808, who taught that the body and mind are identical, that the nerves are the man, and that thought is a secretion of the brain. Les servus, des gérœurs, les impressions, ils font organiquement la sécrétion des lapons aussi. Footnotes, rapport du physique et de moral des alhommes, cross-reference fictionaire des sciences philosophiques, article by Cabinus. And footnotes, political philosophies. It was Montesquieu, 1689-1755, author of The Esprit des Lois, who first introduced Locke's empiricism into France. In his Letraire persent, he had shown himself an ardent admire of the federal form of government. But in the work de l'esprit des Lois, written after his return from England, he holds up the English constitutional monarchy as the ideal of political organisation. He contends that, right is anterior to law, advocates the independence of the judicial power with respect to the executive and legislative powers, and defends the extension of the legislative authority of representative assemblies. He teaches that laws should be adapted to the character and spirit of the nation, and, following the empirical method, he traces the influence of climate, manners, religion, etc., on national character. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, footnote. Consult Morley, Rousseau, London, 1873, end footnote. 1712-1778 was, in one respect, the most consistent representative of the movement which we have been studying, a movement to establish the individualistic point of view in religion, philosophy and politics. Yet, in another respect, he was a most uncompromising antagonist of the movement. For, instead of insisting on the advantages of enlightenment and civilisation, he advocated a return to primitive feeling into the state of nature. Emil, a philosophical romance, is devoted to an account of his ideal education and the treaties entitled Contra Social to an exposition of his political philosophy. He draws an ideal picture of man, as he originally existed in the state of nature, before entering into the social contract by which society was first formed, and he teaches that all authority resides in the sovereign will of the people. He maintains the right of the people to assemble for the purpose of confirming, altering and abrogating all authority in the state. Thus, he rejects the division of legislative, judicial and executive powers, substituting for them the rule of popular assembly. In his religious doctrines he is a deist, rather than an atheist. Historical position The so-called French Enlightenment of the 18th century is a one-sided development of the empiricism inaugurated in England by Locke and introduced into France by Montesquieu and Voltaire. If we accept or so the representatives of the Age of Enlightenment were men of meagre or at most mediocre intellectual ability who failed to leave any lasting impression on the development of speculative thought. Indeed Voltaire, who certainly knew the age in which he lived, pronounced it to be an age of trivialities. Rousseau alone spoke as one who had seriously studied the spirit of his time when he demanded the abandonment of artificial culture and conventional refinement in favor of what is natural, simple and therefore of permanent value in human life. To this cry of an age of unrest the French Revolution was the answer. End of chapter 59. Chapter 60 of History of Philosophy This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Gillian Henry. History of Philosophy by William Turner. Chapter 60. The Idealistic Movement If post-Cartesian philosophy is to be described as busying itself with the problem of the antithesis of mind and matter, the pantheistic monism of Spinoza may be designated as an attempt to solve the problem by merging matter and mind in the unity of the infinite substance and the empirical movement as an attempt to eliminate the antagonism by reducing mind to matter. The idealistic movement, which was represented by Leibniz and Berkeley, was still another essay to remove the antithesis between mind and matter by reducing matter to mind. Perhaps, however, the true significance of the idealistic movement will be best understood if it is regarded rather as an attempt to restore the aesthetic and religious ideals which were threatened by the first empiricists and destroyed by the atheistic and materialistic empiricists of later times. But whether we represent the idealistic movement as a solution of the Cartesian problem or as a reaction against the purely scientific concept of philosophy, it will be evident in either case that Leibniz presents a more hesitating and less thorough, while Berkeley represents a more pronounced and more complete form of idealism. Leibniz. Life Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was born at Leipzig in 1646. At the age of 15, he entered the university of his native city, devoting himself to the study of law and philosophy. After obtaining the degree of master of philosophy at Leipzig and that of doctor of laws at Altdorf, he went to the court of the Elector of Mints, by whom he was sent on a diplomatic mission to Louis XIV of France. In France, England and Holland, he formed the acquaintance of the most learned men of the time, and with the ample means at his disposal, he had no difficulty in acquiring a wonderfully wide and accurate knowledge of all the scientific and philosophical literature of the day. From 1676 until his death in 1716, Leibniz resided at Hanover, where he held the offices of court councillor and librarian. Sources Leibniz did not compose a complete and extended exposition of his philosophy. His writings are, for the most part, brief treatises and essays on various scientific and philosophical problems. The most important of these are Desputatio Metaphysica de Principio Individui La monodologie The principal editions of his collected works are those of Rasp, Leipzig, and Amsterdam, 1765, Dutens, Geneva, 1768, Eltman, Berlin, 1840, Fuchet de Caray, Paris, 1859 and following, and Paul Janet, Paris, 1866. Merz's Leibniz, Blackwood's Philosophical Classics, Edinburgh and Philadelphia, 1884, and Dewey's, Leibniz's New Essays, Chicago, 1888, will be found useful in the study of Leibniz philosophy. Doctrines General standpoint Descartes had started his philosophical speculations with the desire to isolate himself from his fellow men and to build up a philosophy which should own nothing to his predecessors. Leibniz, on the contrary, was inspired with the thought of founding a system which should reconcile all the systems of his predecessors, bringing Plato into harmony with Democritus, demonstrate the agreement of Aristotle with Descartes, and prove that there is no inherent contradiction between scholasticism and modern thought. This was in keeping with the many-sided and cosmopolitan character of the man who, as discoverer of the differential calculus, ranked among the foremost mathematicians of his day and was equally eminent as a scientist, a philosopher, and a religious controversialist. With a view to effecting this universal harmony of systems, Leibniz adopted a theory of reality which centres on the doctrine of monads, the principle of pre-established harmony, and the law of continuity. He sought to establish the perfect correspondence of mind with matter and the participation of matter by mind and of mind by matter, pan-psychism. Doctrine of Monads Leibniz, like Spinoza, considers that the notion of substance is the starting point in metaphysical speculation. But while Spinoza defines substance as independent existence, Leibniz defines it as independent power of action. From this difference, there arises another. If substance be defined as self-existence, it is necessarily one, and hence Spinoza was consistent with his definition when he taught that substance is one. Whereas if substance be defined as self-activity, it is essentially individual and at the same time necessarily manifold. The manifold individual substances are monads. The monads are analogous to atoms. They are simple, indivisible, indestructible units. They differ from the atoms in this that no two monads are alike. They differ also in respect to indivisibility, for the atom is not an absolutely indivisible point, while the monad is a metaphysical point, real and indivisible. Finally, they differ from atoms in this that the atom is merely a material constituent of bodies, whereas the monad is immaterial, in so far namely as it is endowed with the power of representation. The power of representation is the essence, so to speak, of the monad. Leibniz is careful to distinguish between conscious and unconscious representation. Some monads, as for instance the human soul, are conscious of what they represent. Others represent unconsciously. Each monad, whether consciously or unconsciously, reflects every other monad in the universe. Each monad is therefore a microcosm, a multiplicity in unity, a mirror of all reality, in which an all-seeing eye might observe what is taking place all over the world. One monad differs from another merely in this, that while both represent all reality, one represents it more perfectly than the other. Now, since all the activity of the monad consists in representing, and since there are different degrees in the perfection with which a monad represents other monads, every monad must be dual, partly active and partly passive. Retaining the Aristotelian terminology, while modifying the meaning of the terms, Leibniz calls the passive element the matter, and the active element the form, or entelechy, of the monad. God alone represents all monads with perfect clearness and is therefore pure actuality. All other monads represent imperfectly and are therefore partly active, clearly representative and partly passive, confusedly representative, that is composed of form and matter. It was thus that Leibniz strove to reconcile the schoolmen with modern thought. Everything in the universe is composed of monads and everything takes its place in the scale of perfection according to the degree of clearness with which it represents other monads. Every monad is partly material and partly immaterial, so that from the lowest monad, which represents unconsciously, and shows its unconscious perception in the phenomena of attraction and repulsion, up to the highest created monad, which is the human soul, there is absolute continuity, without interruption or unnecessary duplication. This is known as the law of continuity, its counterpart is the law of indiscernible. If there is no unnecessary duplication, there is no perfect similarity of forms, and indeed since no two monads represent the universe in exactly the same manner, no two are perfectly alike. If they were exactly alike, they would not be two but one, for it is the manner of representation that constitutes the individuality of a monad. Pre-established harmony. If each monad is a little universe in itself, reflecting every other monad and individuated by its manner of representing, if it develops this power from the germs of activity inherent in itself, whence comes the correspondence of one representation with another, and the resulting harmony of the entire system of monads. Leibniz answers by postulating a divine arrangement, by virtue of which the monads have from the beginning been so adapted to one another that the changes of one monad, although imminent, are parallel to the changes in every other monad of the cosmic system. This doctrine of pre-established harmony, which is germinally contained in Descartes' doctrine of the relations of the soul to the body, finds its most important application in psychology. Soul and body have no direct influx on each other, but just as two clocks may be so perfectly constructed and so accurately adjusted that they keep exactly the same time, so it is arranged that the monads of the body put forth their activity in such a way that to each physical activity of the monads of the body, there corresponds a psychical activity of the monad of the soul. When we inquire into the ultimate foundation of this harmony and look for the reason of the divine arrangement on which the harmony of the universe depends, we find an answer in Leibniz' optimistic principle, the lex miliuris. Of possible worlds, God chose the best, and even apart from the divine choice, the best would necessarily prevail over all other possible worlds and become actual. This lex miliuris is itself founded on the law of sufficient reason, that namely things are real when there is sufficient reason for their existence. The law of sufficient reason is, according to Leibniz, a law of thought as well as a law of being. Psychology. From the definition of the monad, it is clear that all created reality is partly material and partly immaterial, that there are no bodyless souls and no soulless bodies. Moreover, the law of continuity demands that the soul always think, that reason and sense differ merely in degree, and that sense knowledge precede rational knowledge. Yet, although the soul, the queen monad, is akin to other monads, and although the law of continuity forbids a gap between the soul of man and lower forms, the human soul possesses intellectual knowledge by which it is discriminated from the souls of lower animals. Whence comes this intellectual knowledge? What is the origin of our ideas? In the Nouveau de Se, Leibniz not only contradicts Locke's doctrine that none of our ideas are innate, but lays down the contrary proposition and maintains that all our ideas are innate. He teaches that the soul has no doors or windows on the side facing the external world, that consequently all our knowledge is developed from germs of thought which are innate. The innateness of our ideas is, however, implicit rather than explicit. Ideas exist potentially in the mind, so that the acquisition of knowledge is the evolution of the virtually existent into the actually existent. To the principle, nihil est in intellectu quad prius non fuerit in sensu, Leibniz adds, nisi ipsi intellectus. Have our ideas therefore any objective value? Leibniz answers that they have because the evolution of the psychic monad from virtual to actual knowledge is paralleled by the evolution of the cosmic monad in the outside world. Here, as elsewhere, the harmony is pre-established. The immortality of the soul follows from its nature. The soul is a monad, self-active, self-sufficient, suffisant à lui-même, and is therefore as lasting as the universe itself. Theodicy. Leibniz's principal treatise on natural theology, the Theodicy, was composed for the purpose of refuting Baal, who had tried to show that reason and faith are incompatible. The work is devoted in a large measure to the discussion of the problem of evil and to the defence of optimism. Leibniz's arguments to prove the existence of God may be reduced to three. One, from the idea of God, a modification of Descartes' proof. Two, from the contingency of finite being. And three, from the character of necessity which our ideas possess. Ideas possess not merely hypothetical but absolute necessity, a necessity which cannot be explained unless we grant that an absolute necessary being exists. When it is said that the idea of God plays a teleological rather than a scientific role in Leibniz's system of thought, the meaning of this is that Leibniz is interested not so much in giving an account of the origin of the universe, as in discovering an absolute final cause towards which all created being tends. Indeed, we find that the idealist is always more inclined than is the empiricist to fall back on the teleological explanation. And in the philosophy of Leibniz, the teleological concept is of his special importance as the foundation of the principle of sufficient reason. It is also of importance as affording a solution of the problem of evil, a problem to which Leibniz devoted much attention. He distinguishes metaphysical evil, which is mere limitation or finiteness, physical evil, which is suffering, and moral evil, which is sin. The ultimate source of all evil is the imperfection which of necessity attaches to limited existence, and which therefore must be permitted by God, although it is reduced by him to the minimum, and made to serve a higher purpose, the beauty and harmony of the whole. Leibniz exhorts us to consider evil not in its relation to parts of reality, but in its relation to the totality of being. We can see, he writes, only a very small part of the chain of things, and that part moreover, which displays the most evil, and which is therefore well suited to exercise our faith and our love of God. Historical position The philosophy of Leibniz cannot, like that of Locke, be characterised as superficial. It takes up and attempts to solve the most important questions of metaphysics and psychology, in spirit and tone, rather than in method and content, it is platonic, that is inspired by idealism and inclined to the poetic, rather than to the scientific synthesis. And herein lies its principal defect, it is unreal. For although Leibniz was as fully alive as was any of his contemporaries to the importance of scientific study and experimental investigation, his philosophy is built not on the data of experience, but on a priori definitions and principles. Yet we must not, on this account, underrate the importance of Leibniz as a speculative thinker. He rendered inestimable service to the cause of philosophy, by setting himself in determined opposition to the current of empirical censism. Besides, the study of his philosophy is healthful, it expands the mind, opens up new vistas of philosophic synthesis, and is an invaluable aid to the understanding of subsequent systems. In the philosophy of Berkeley we find another phase of idealism, an idealism carried to the point of the absolute denial of the reality of matter. Berkeley. Life George Berkeley was born at Dysart in County Kilkenny, Ireland, in the year 1685. After having made his elementary studies at Kilkenny, he went in 1700 to Trinity College Dublin, where owing to the influence of Molino, the philosophy of Locke was in the ascendancy. From the commonplace book in which, as early as 1705, Berkeley began to set down his thoughts on philosophical problems, it appears that, while still at Trinity College, he had begun to study Descartes and Malbranche, as well as Locke. In 1709 he published his New Theory of Vision, and in the following year his Principles of Knowledge. In 1713 he went to London, where he formed the acquaintance of Steele, Collins, Swift, Pope, and Addison. And in the winter of the same year he visited Père Malbranche at Paris. After several years spent in France and Italy, he returned to London in 1720 to find the whole country in a turmoil over the failure of the South Sea Scheme. It was this condition of affairs that prompted Berkeley to write his essay towards preventing the ruin of Great Britain. In 1721 he returned to Ireland to receive a denary in the established church. From 1723 until 1731 he was occupied with his famous scheme for converting the American Indians, and with the project of founding, for that purpose, a college in Bermuda. The two years which he spent at Whitehall near Newport, Rhode Island, while waiting for the government grant promised by Sir Robert Walpole, afforded him an opportunity to continue his philosophical studies and to make the acquaintance of Samuel Johnson, through whom he may be said to have influenced Jonathan Edwards, the first representative of philosophy in America. On returning to London in 1731, Berkeley published his Alcifron, or the Minute Philosopher, a dialogue directed against the Free Thinkers, Minute Philosophers. In 1734 he was made Bishop of Clown in Cork. In that serene corner, he combined the study of Plato with the advocacy of Tarwater as a cure for all human ills, publishing Cyrus, a chain of philosophical reflections and inquiries concerning the virtues of Tarwater and so on. In 1752 he went to Oxford, where he died in the following year. Sources. Berkeley's most important works are an essay towards a new theory of vision, a treatise concerning the principles of human knowledge, three dialogues between Hylas and Philonoas, Alcifron, or the Minute Philosopher, the Analyst, and Cyrus. The best edition of his collected works is Fraser's, Four Volumes, Clarendon Press, 1871, new edition 1901. Fraser's, Berkeley, Blackwood's philosophical classics Edinburgh and Philadelphia, 1894, is an excellent introduction to the study of Berkeley and his philosophy. Doctrines. General aim of Berkeley's philosophy. In the commonplace book of which mention has already been made, we find the following entry. The chief thing I do or pretend to do is only to remove the mist and veil of words. The great obstacle to the discovery and acceptance of truth is, Berkeley thinks, the use of words which represent abstractions of the mind and prevent us from arriving at a knowledge of things. Locke had indeed announced the principle that our knowledge extends only to ideas, but he straightway proceeded, Berkeley observes, to violate this very principle when he maintained that we know the qualities and powers of things outside the mind and have a sensitive knowledge of their existence. Berkeley therefore starts where Locke had started, but he aims at going farther than Locke had gone at establishing the truth of the conclusion that all things are ideas. A conclusion which Berkeley regards as necessarily involved in Locke's principle that our knowledge extends to ideas only. Immaterialism. In his new theory of vision, Berkeley takes the first step in the direction of immaterialism. He shows in the first place that the only phenomena which we perceive by means of sight are colors and that with these we associate the phenomena of touch and muscular movement. He then proceeds to show that the reason of the association is custom, experience or suggestion. The conclusion is that what we see in the world around us is far more dependent on mind than we are commonly aware of. In the treatise concerning the principles of human knowledge, he takes up once more the problem of knowledge and endeavors to show that what he had proved to be true of the phenomena of sight is true of the whole phenomenal world of sense. He tries moreover to find the reason for the custom experience or suggestion by virtue of which we associate certain phenomena with certain others. He teaches that all the qualities of matter, primary as well as secondary, resolve themselves into mind dependent phenomena. What then is it that groups these phenomena, for example the color, size, shape, etc., of an orange, into those clusters or aggregates which we call things? The answer that phenomena are grouped together by an inert lifeless matter is self-contradictory because phenomena being essentially mind dependent ideas cannot exist in an unperceiving substance. Besides, matter is a mere abstraction, one of those words which merely serve to throw a veil and mist between the mind and a knowledge of truth. It is evident therefore that both the popular and the philosophical conceptions of matter are absurd. There is no material substratum of things. Mind and mind dependent phenomena alone exist. To be is to be perceived. Esse est persipe. Yet the world is not a chaos but a cosmos. There is a continual change and succession of phenomena and in all this change and succession there is order and regularity. Quote, there is therefore some cause of these ideas whereon they depend but it has been shown that there is no corporeal or material substance. It remains therefore that the cause of ideas is an incorporeal substance or spirit. End quote. Now since the ideas actually perceived by sense have no dependence on my will, it follows that it is not my mind but the external uncreated spirit that produces them. Matter does not exist. Spirit exists. The external world is spirit and the phenomena which spirit produces in the created mind. The only nominal realities are God and human minds. These are the conclusions in which Berkeley's immaterialism is summed up. It follows that there are no secondary causes and that the laws of nature are really laws of the eternal spirit. Theism. In the dialogues and especially in the alcifron, Berkeley undertook to show what is meant by the eternal spirit to whom he had in his earlier treatises referred the persistence and activity of the phenomena into which he had analysed the external world. His line of reasoning may be described as analogical. Just as we see men, we see God. As we argue from the phenomena of sight, hearing etc. to the existence of the human spirit in men, so we may argue from the phenomena of sense in general to the existence of the infinite spirit whose thoughts, physical laws, are conveyed to us in the language of sense phenomena, physical qualities. Alcifron, the skeptic, confesses, nothing so much convinces me of the existence of another person as is speaking to me. To which Euphranor replies, you have as much reason to think the universal agent or God speaks to your eyes as you can have for thinking any particular person speaks to your ears. Platonism The study of Plato, which during his residence at Clawne, Berkeley combined with the study of the medicinal properties of tarwater, developed in the mind of our philosopher a growing tendency towards a mystic view of the problem of the ultimate reality of things. In the metaphysical portion of the Cyrus, which he published at this time, he occupies himself with the problem of showing how we may arrive at a higher knowledge of God than that afforded by sense phenomena. In his dialogues, he was satisfied with refuting atheism by showing how God speaks to us in nature. But now he seeks a higher and deeper knowledge. The study of Plato has led him to the realization of the uncertain ever- fleeting and changing nature of sensible things, and to the consequent depreciation of sense knowledge as being properly no knowledge but only opinion. Therefore, he counsels the seeker after truth to cultivate the use of intellect and reason, to penetrate by the exercise of these faculties to a knowledge of the inner nature of things, and through rational faith in causality to realize that there runs a chain throughout the whole system of beings, and that by ascending from what is lower to what is higher, the mind may reach a knowledge of the highest being. This is a lifelong task. He that would make a real progress in knowledge must dedicate his age as well as his youth, the later growth as well as first fruits at the altar of truth. End quote. Historical position. It was Berkeley's intention to remove the mist and veil of words, and then from empirical principles to refute materialism and atheism. If matter does not exist, there is certainly no justification for materialism, and if all our ideas are produced in us by the eternal spirit, if every act of knowledge implies the existence of God, then atheism is undoubtedly irrational and untenable. Berkeley had not the least suspicion of the facility with which skepticism would take advantage of his immaterialism to reason away spirit as he himself had reasoned away material substance. You see, says Philonous at the end of the third dialogue, the water in yonder fountain, how it is forced upwards in a round column to a certain height at which it breaks and falls back into the basin once it rose. It's a scent as well as descent proceeding from the same uniform law or principle of gravitation. Just so, the same principles which at first view lead to skepticism pursued to a certain point bring men back to common sense. However, Berkeley built less wisely than he knew. He carried the principles of empiricism and idealism to a certain point. It is commonly said that he is to lock what Spinoza is to Descartes. But at that point they were taken up by Hume and carried to their logical conclusion, namely, pan-fidomenalism. End of chapter 60, chapters number 61 and 62 of History of Philosophy. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Katarina Glovala History of Philosophy by William Turner Chapter 61 Pan-fidomenalism Hume So far the history of philosophy of the 18th century has been the story of the empirical attempt to solve the Cartesian problem by reducing mind to matter and of the idealistic attempt to solve the same problem by reducing matter to mind. There remains one more phase of 18th century speculation, namely, Hume's answer to the Cartesian problem, if indeed it may be called an answer, since it is rather a denial of the reason for proposing such a problem at all. For, instead of trying to untie what may be called the Gordian knot of post-Cartesian speculation, Hume cut the knot by denying the substantial existence of mind and matter. Hume Life David Hume was born at Edinburgh in 1711. After an unsuccessful attempt to fit himself for the profession of law, he decided to take up the study of philosophy and literature. During the years 1734 to 1737, which he spent in France, he wrote his treatise on human nature. The work, he says, quote, fell deadborn from the press without reaching such distinction as even to excite a murmur among the zealots. End of quote. Later he recast the first book of the treatise into his inquiry concerning human understanding. The second book into his dissertation on the passions, and the third into his inquiry concerning the principles of morals. His essays, moral, political, and literary, which were published at Edinburgh in 1742, met a favorable reception. In 1747 he accompanied a military embassy to the courts of Vienna and Turin, and again in 1763 he accompanied the English ambassador to the court of Versailles, where he remained until 1766. During the interval he had held the office of Keeper of the Advocates Library at Edinburgh and had begun the publication of his History of England. In 1767 he was made Under Secretary of State in the Foreign Office. In 1769 he returned to Edinburgh and died there in 1776. Sources In addition to the works already mentioned, Hume wrote a natural history of religion and dialogues concerning natural religion. The standard edition of Hume's philosophical works is that of Green and Gross, Four Volumes, London, 1874, reprinted 1889 to 1890. The student may be referred to Huxley's Hume, Englishman of Letter Series, 1879, tonight's Hume, Blackwood's Philosophical Classics, 1886, and to the introduction to Green and Gross's edition of Hume's works. Doctrines Starting Point Hume's starting point is that of the empiricist, and his conception of the method of philosophical procedure is that of the critical philosopher. In the introduction to the treatise on human nature he writes, quote, to me it seems evident that the essence of the mind being equally unknown to us with that of external bodies, it must be equally impossible to form any notion of its powers and qualities otherwise than from careful and exact experiments. To certain we cannot go beyond experience. End of quote. The critical element appears when in this same introduction and in the opening paragraphs of the inquiry concerning human understanding he reduces our philosophy to the study of human nature, basing the study of human nature on the observation of mental phenomena and, quote, an exact analysis of the powers and capacity, end of quote, of the mind. Analysis of mind According to Hume, the mind is its contents. His analysis of the mind is, therefore, merely an inventory of the contents of the mind, or of perceptions. In Hume's philosophy, perception is synonymous with state of consciousness, the term being equivalent to the Cartesian thought and to the idea of Locke and Berkeley. Hume divides perceptions into two classes, impressions, which are defined as the more lively perceptions experienced when we hear, see, will, love, etc. Perceptions, therefore, include passions and emotions as well as sensations and ideas or thoughts, which are faint images of impressions. As to the innateness of impressions and ideas, Hume says that, if by innate we mean contemporary with our birth, the dispute seems to be frivolous. But if by innate we understand what is original or copied from no precedent perception, then we may assert that all our impressions are innate and our ideas not innate. When, therefore, Hume speaks of memory, imagination, ideas of relation, abstract ideas, etc., he's speaking of mental faculties and states which are ultimately reducible to sense faculties and to the impressions of the senses. What then are the objects of our impressions? Hume answers that we do not perceive substance nor qualities, but only our own subjective states. Quote, It is not our body we perceive when we regard our limbs and members, but certain impressions which enter by the senses. End of quote. The last words seem to indicate a belief in an external cause of our impressions and, indeed, Hume is not at all consistent in his subjectivism, for he admits in at least one passage the possibility of our impressions either arising from the object or being produced by the creative power of the mind or being derived from the author of our being. The denial of the substantiality of the mind is Hume's most distinctive contribution to psychology. It is, he says, successive perceptions only that constitute the mind. The substantiality of the ego is a delusion. What we call mind is simply, quote, a heap or collection of different perceptions united together by certain relations and supposed, though falsely, to be endowed with simplicity and identity. End of quote. Thus did Hume complete the work of empiricism. Locke reasoned away everything except the primary qualities of bodies and the unknown substratum, substance, in which they adhere. Berkeley showed that even the substance and primary qualities of bodies might be reasoned away, and now Hume applies the same solvent to the substance of mind itself and leaves nothing but phenomena. If the substantial nature of the ego is a delusion, immortality is not a datum of reason. We are not surprised, therefore, to find that in the essay on the immortality of the soul, Hume, after examining the arguments in favor of immortality, which arguments he divides into metaphysical, moral and physical, concludes that, quote, it is the gospel and the gospel alone that has brought life and immortality to light. End of quote. Analysis of causation. Quite in keeping with Hume's denial of substance is his analysis of causation into a succession of phenomena. All our ideas he teaches are connected either by resemblance, continuity in time, continuity in space or causality. Causality then is merely a relation between our ideas. But is it an a priori relation? And if not, when and how does it arise? The first of these questions, Hume answers in the negative. He formulates the principle of causality as follows. Whatever event has a beginning must have a cause. Footnote. CF Huxley's Hume, page 120. In Hume's treatise on human nature, page 381, occurs to form whatever has a beginning has also a cause of existence. End of footnote. He maintains that, quote, the knowledge of this relation, causality, is not in any instance attained by reasonings a priori, but arises entirely from experience, when we find that any particular objects are constantly conjoined with each other. All distinct ideas are separable from each other, and as the ideas of cause and effect are evidently distinct, it will be easy for us to conceive any object as non-existent this moment and existent the next, without conjoining to it the distinct idea of a cause or producing principle. End of quote. The argument, as Huxley remarks, quote, is of the circular sort, for the major premise that all distinct ideas are separable in thought assumes the question at issue. End of quote. The axiom of causality, therefore, comes from experience. But Hume observes, one instance does not constitute sufficient experimental evidence of the causal connection of two phenomena. When, however, quote, one particular series of events has always, in all instances, been conjoined with another, we make no longer any scruple in foretelling one on the appearance of the other. We then call the one cause and the other effect. We suppose that there is some connection between them, some power in the one, by virtue of which it infallibly produces the other. But there is nothing in a number of instances different from every single instance which is supposed to be exactly similar, except only that after a repetition of similar instances the mind is carried by habit upon the appearance of one event to expect its usual attendant and to believe that it will exist. End of quote. There is, therefore, no real dependence of effect on cause, no ontological nexus, but merely a psychological one. An expectation arising from habit or custom. Hume indeed admits that, in addition to the notion of sequence of phenomena, there is in our concept of causality the idea of something resident in the cause, a power, force or energy which produces the effect. When, however, he comes to analyze this notion of power, he finds it to be merely a projection of the subjective feeling of effort into the phenomenon which is the invariable antecedent. Quote. No animal can put external bodies in motion without the sentiment of a neesis or endeavor, and every animal has a sentiment or feeling from the stroke or blow of an external object that is in motion. We consider only the constant experience conjunction of the events, and as we feel the customary connection between the ideas, we transfer that feeling to the objects. End of quote. From the empirical viewpoint, Hume's analysis of the principle of causality is thorough. If there is in the mind no power superior to sensation and reflection, no faculty by which we are unable to abstract from the contingent data of sense the necessary elements of intellectual thought, then all the axioms of science, the axioms of causality included are mere associations of sense impressions. But the empirical standpoint is erroneous. In this, as in other instances, empiricism stops where the real problem of philosophy begins, as is evident from the fact that, while Hume succeeds in showing that one event is connected with another in our past experience, neither he nor any other empiricist has shown why we are entitled to expect that events which have been connected in the past will be connected in the future. Empiricism can show a connexio facti, but it cannot show a connexio uris between antecedent and consequent, between cause and effect. Ethics Hume's ethical system is a development of the fundamental doctrine of the English ethical schools of the 18th century. He restricts the role of reason as a moral criterion and develops the doctrine that moral distinctions are determined by our sense of the agreeable and the disagreeable. Abstract distinctions, mere rational intuitions or inferences, leave us perfectly indifferent as to action so long as they fail to acquire an emotional value through some relation to the passions and ultimately to the feeling of the agreeableness or disagreeableness of the action to be performed. Quote Nothing but a sentiment can induce us to give the preferrence to the beneficial and useful tendencies of a pernicious one. This sentiment is, in short, nothing but sympathy. End of quote The following is the ultimate analysis of moral value. Quote No man is absolutely indifferent to the happiness and misery of others. The first has a natural tendency to give pleasure, the second pain. This everyone may find in himself. It is not probable that these principles can be resolved into principles more simple and universal whatever attempts may be made to that purpose. End of quote Historical position Hume's philosophy is summed up in the words pan-phenomenalism and skepticism. He reduced mind as well as matter to mere phenomena and denied the ontological nexus between cause and effect. He maintained that there is no permanent immutable element in the world of our experience and that there is no valid principle which can justify metaphysical speculation concerning the world beyond our experience. It was this total subversion of the necessary and universal that awoke Kant from his dogmatic slumber and gave rise in Scotland to the movement in favour of the philosophy of common sense. It will be necessary before entering on the study of these reactions against Hume to give a brief sketch of what is known as the German illumination, the transition from Leibniz to Kant. Chapter 62 German illumination transition to Kant Philosophy of Law During the 17th century Samuel von Pufendorf, 1632 to 1694, who aimed at mediating between grozios and hubs, and Christian Tomasius, 1655 to 1728, who is considered the first of the German Illuminati, appeared as representatives of a new philosophy of law. They investigated the foundations of natural right and formulated theories in accordance with the changed political conditions of Europe. Popularizers. It was the aim of many of the philosophical writers of the 17th and 18th century to free philosophy from the technical difficulties which rendered it inaccessible to the generality of readers and in this way to reach the people as the French authors of the Encyclopedia were doing. Walter von Schoenhausen, 1651 to 1708, Johann Nicholas Tietens, 1736 to 1805, and Moses Mendelssohn, 1729 to 1786 represented different phases of this movement in different departments of thought, physical science, mental science and religious philosophy. To the same period belongs the so-called peatistic movement which aimed at counteracting the rationalistic tendencies by quickening religious feeling. During the storm and stress movement of the last decades of the 18th century, when rationalism was at its height, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, 1729 to 1781, the philosopher poet, expounded a system of religio-philosophical thought which may be said to be a system of natural religion based partly on the pantheism of Spinosas etica and partly on the theism of Leibniz's Theodice. To the same period belongs Johann Gottfried von Herder, 1744 to 1803, whose Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit marks an epoch in the history of the philosophy of history. In this work, Herder interprets history from the point of view of the organic unity of the human race. Christian von Wolff, 1679 to 1754, is of special importance on account of the influence which he exercised on Kant's early training. He attempted to reduce Leibniz's philosophy to a systematic form, but in doing so he modified the essential tenets of his predecessor, restricting the doctrine of pre-established harmony to the explanation of the relations of soul and body and so changing the doctrine of the dualism of the monad as practically to restore the Cartesian antithesis of mind and matter. He devoted special attention to philosophic method. Indeed, he sometimes carried method to the extent of formalism. Wolff is the author of the well-known division of metaphysics into ontology, cosmology, psychology and rational theology. Retrospect The period from Descartes to Jung was dominated by the influence of Cartesian thought and more particularly by the doctrine of the antithesis of mind and matter. It was the attempt to solve the problem of this antithesis that gave rise to the pantheistic monism of Spinoza, to the materialistic monism of the thoroughgoing empiricists, to the idealistic monism of Berkeley, to the partially idealistic monadism of Leibniz and to the pan-phenomenalism of Jung, which, most astounding solution of all, solves the problem of the antithesis by denying the substantial nature of both mind and matter. Here the first act ends. Kant next appears and appalled at the sight of the ruin which Jung has wrought, fearing for the spirituality of the soul, the freedom of the will, the existence of God and the obligation of the moral law, opens a new scene by proposing once more the question what are the conditions of knowledge and prepares the way for the philosophy of the nineteenth century by his attempt at constructive synthesis on the basis of moral consciousness. We cannot fail to remark also in the development of philosophy from Descartes to Kant, a struggle between the purely scientific view and the aesthetic religious view of the world. Wherever empiricism held full sway, there the scientific view prevailed, and enlightenment, as it was called, was sought rather than a deeper sense of the aesthetic and spiritual significance of things. Wherever on the contrary the idealistic movement prevailed, their greater value was attached to the spiritual and aesthetic solution than to the scientific solution of the problems of philosophy. But in spite of idealistic reactions, the principles of Desem continued to pervade English thought, the illumination continued to flourish in France and Germany, and empiricism culminated in the philosophy of Jung, which expresses the last and most violent form of antagonism between the scientific and the religious aesthetic view of life. It was left for Kant to undo the work of the Illuminati and of Jung and to lay the foundation for the constructive systems which were to give to the religious and aesthetic interest of human life a place beside the merely scientific elements of thought and a complete synthesis of philosophical knowledge. Finally, we must observe in the 18th century a gradual increase in the importance attached to the study of man in his social and political relations, and the growth and development of the idea of an antithesis between the individual and the state. But while Housseau was giving expression to the doctrine of individualism in its most extreme form, Herder, by his doctrine of the organic union of the human race, was preparing the way for the political philosophy of the 19th century. For the new century was to discard the notion of antithesis between the individual and the state, and adopting an organic instead of a mechanical concept of society was to substitute for the individualism of the 18th century a collectivism, which not only the great speculative systems such as Hegel's, but all the other important movements of the 19th century, the evolution hypothesis, the rise of romanticism in literature, the Oxford movement, and the great industrial and commercial centralization of recent years were to exemplify and confirm in theory or in practice. End of chapter 61 and 62