History of Modern Philosophy Part 5
Substance is the being which is dependent on nothing and on which everything depends; which, itself uncaused, effects all else; which presupposes nothing, but itself const.i.tutes the presupposition of all that is: it is pure being, primal being, the cause of itself and of all. Thus in Spinoza the being which is without presuppositions is brought into the most intimate relation with the fullness of multiform existence, not coldly and abstractly exalted above it, as by the ancient Eleatics. Substance is the being in (not above) things, that in them which const.i.tutes their reality, which supports and produces them. As the cause of all things Spinoza calls it G.o.d, although he is conscious that he understands by the term something quite different from the Christians. G.o.d does not mean for him a transcendent, personal spirit, but only the ens absolute infinitum (def. s.e.xta), the essential heart of things: Deus sive substantia.
How do things proceed from G.o.d? Neither by creation nor by emanation. He does not put them forth from himself, they do not tear themselves free from him, but they follow out of the necessary nature of G.o.d, as it follows from the nature of the triangle that the sum of its angles is equal to two right angles (I. prop. 17, schol.). They do not come out from him, but remain in him; just this fact that they are in another, in G.o.d, const.i.tutes their lack of self-dependence (I. prop. 18, dem.: nulla res, quae extra Deum in se sit). G.o.d is their inner, indwelling cause (causa immanens, non vero transiens.-I. prop. 18), is not a transcendent creator, but natura naturans, over against the sum of finite beings, natura naturata (I. prop. 29, schol.): Deus sive natura.
Since nothing exists out of G.o.d, his actions do not follow from external necessity, are not constrained, but he is free cause, free in the sense that he does nothing except that toward which his own nature impels him, that he acts in accordance with the laws of his being (def. septima: ea res libera dicitur, quae ex sola suae naturae necessitate exist.i.t et a se sola ad agendum determinatur; Epist. 26). This inner necessitation is so little a defect that its direct opposite, undetermined choice and inconstancy, must rather be excluded from G.o.d as an imperfection. Freedom and (inner) necessity are identical; and ant.i.thetical, on the one side, to undetermined choice and, on the other, to (external) compulsion. Action in view of ends must also be denied of the infinite; to think of G.o.d as acting in order to the good is to make him dependent on something external to him (an aim) and lacking in that which is to be attained by the action. With G.o.d the ground of his action is the same as the ground of his existence; G.o.d's power and his essence coincide (I. prop. 34: Dei potentia est ipsa ipsius essentia). He is the cause of himself (def. prima: per causam sui intelligo id, cujus essentia involvit existentiam, sive id, cujus natura non potest concipi nisi existens); it would be a contradiction to hold that being was not, that G.o.d, or substance, did not exist; he cannot be thought otherwise than as existing; his concept includes his existence. To be self-caused means to exist necessarily (I. prop. 7). The same thing is denoted by the predicate eternal, which, according to the eighth definition, denotes "existence itself, in so far as it is conceived to follow necessarily from the mere definition of the eternal thing."
The infinite substance stands related to finite, individual things, not only as the independent to the dependent, as the cause to the caused, as the one to the many, and the whole to the parts, but also as the universal to the particular, the indeterminate to the determinate. From infinite being as pure affirmation (I. prop. 8, schol. I: absoluta affirmatio) everything which contains a limitation or negation, and this includes every particular determination, must be kept at a distance: determinatio negatio est (Epist. 50 and 41: a determination denotes nothing positive, but a deprivation, a lack of existence; relates not to the being but to the non-being of the thing). A determination states that which distinguishes one thing from another, hence what it is not, expresses a limitation of it. Consequently G.o.d, who is free from every negation and limitation, is to be conceived as the absolutely indeterminate. The results thus far reached run: Substantia una infinita-Deus sive natura-causa sui (aeterna) et rerum (immanens)-libera necessitas-non determinata. Or more briefly: Substance = G.o.d = nature. The equation of G.o.d and substance had been announced by Descartes, but not adhered to, while Bruno had approached the equation of G.o.d and nature-Spinoza decisively completes both and combines them.
A further remark may be added concerning the relation of G.o.d and the world. In calling the infinite at once the permanent essence of things and their producing cause, Spinoza raises a demand which it is not easy to fulfill, the demand to think the existence of things in substance as a following from substance, and their procession from G.o.d as a remaining in him. He refers us to mathematics: the things which make up the world are related to G.o.d as the properties of a geometrical figure to its concepts, as theorems to the axiom, as the deduction to the principle, which from eternity contains all that follows from it and retains this even while putting it forth. It cannot be doubted that such a view of causality contains error,-it has been characterized as a confusion of ratio and causa, of logical ground and real cause,-but it is just as certain that Spinoza committed it. He not only compares the dependence of the effect on its cause to the dependence of a derivative principle on that from which it is derived, but fully equates the two; he thinks that in logico-mathematical "consequences" he has grasped the essence of real "effects": for him the type of all legality, as also of real becoming, was the necessity which governs the sequence of mathematical truths, and which, on the one hand, is even and still, needing no special exertion of volitional energy, while, on the other, it is rigid and unyielding, exalted above all choice. Philosophy had sought the a.s.sistance of mathematics because of the clearness and certainty which distinguish the conclusions of the latter, and which she wished to obtain for her own. In excess of zeal she was not content with striving after this ideal of indefectible cert.i.tude, but, forgetting the diversity of the two fields, strove to imitate other qualities which are not transferable; instead of learning from mathematics she became subservient to it.
Substance does not affect us by its mere existence, but through an Attribute. By attribute is meant, according to the fourth definition, "that which the understanding perceives of substance as const.i.tuting the essence of it" (quod intellectus de substantia percipit, tanquam ejusdem essentiam const.i.tuens). The more reality a substance contains, the more attributes it has; consequently infinite substance possesses an infinite number, each of which gives expression to its essence, but of which two only fall within our knowledge. Among the innumerable divine attributes the human mind knows those only which it finds in itself, thought and extension. Although man beholds G.o.d only as thinking and extended substance, he yet has a clear and complete; an adequate-idea of G.o.d. Since each of the two attributes is conceived without the other, hence in itself (per se), they are distinct from each other realiter, and independent. G.o.d is absolutely infinite, the attributes only in their kind (in suo genere).
How can the indeterminate possess properties? Are the attributes merely ascribed to substance by the understanding, or do they possess reality apart from the knowing subject? This question has given rise to much debate. According to Hegel and Ed. Erdmann the attributes are something external to substance, something brought into it by the understanding, forms of knowledge present in the beholder alone; substance itself is neither extended nor cogitative, but merely appears to the understanding under these determinations, without which the latter would be unable to cognize it. This "formalistic" interpretation, which, relying on a pa.s.sage in a letter to De Vries (Epist. 27), explains the attributes as mere modes of intellectual apprehension, numbers Kuno Fischer among its opponents. As the one party holds to the first half of the definition, the other places the emphasis on the second half ("that which the understanding perceives-as const.i.tuting the essence of substance"). The attributes are more than mere modes of representation-they are real properties, which substance possesses even apart from an observer, nay, in which it consists; in Spinoza, moreover, "must be conceived" is the equivalent of "to be." Although this latter "realistic" party undoubtedly has the advantage over the former, which reads into Spinoza a subjectivism foreign to his system, they ought not to forget that the difference in interpretation has for its basis a conflict among the motives which control Spinoza's thinking. The reference of the attributes to the understanding, given in the definition, is not without significance. It sprang from the wish not to mar the indeterminateness of the absolute by the opposition of the attributes, while, on the other hand, an equally pressing need for the conservation of the immanence of substance forbade a bold transfer of the attributes to the observer. The real opinion of Spinoza is neither so clear and free from contradictions, nor so one-sided, as that which his interpreters ascribe to him. Fischer's further interpretation of the attributes of G.o.d as his "powers" is tenable, so long as by causa and potentia we understand nothing more than the irresistible, but non-kinetic, force with which an original truth establishes or effects those which follow from it.
As the dualism of extension and thought is reduced from a substantial to an attributive distinction, so individual bodies and minds, motions and thoughts, are degraded a stage further. Individual things lack independence of every sort. The individual is, as a determinate finite thing, burdened with negation and limitation, for every determination includes a negation; that which is truly real in the individual is G.o.d. Finite things are modi of the infinite substance, mere states, variable states, of G.o.d. By themselves they are nothing, since out of G.o.d nothing exists. They possess existence only in so far as they are conceived in their connection with the infinite, that is, as transitory forms of the unchangeable substance. They are not in themselves, but in another, in G.o.d, and are conceived only in G.o.d. They are mere affections of the divine attributes, and must be considered as such.
To the two attributes correspond two cla.s.ses of modes. The most important modifications of extension are rest and motion. Among the modes of thought are understanding and will. These belong in the sphere of determinate and transitory being and do not hold of the natura naturans: G.o.d is exalted above all modality, above will and understanding, as above motion and rest. We must not a.s.sert of the natura naturata (the world as the sum of all modes), as of the natura naturans, that its essence involves existence (I. prop. 24): we can conceive finite things as non-existent, as well as existent (Epist. 29). This const.i.tutes their "contingency," which must by no means be interpreted as lawlessness. On the contrary, all that takes place in the world is most rigorously determined; every individual, finite, determinate thing and event is determined to its existence and action by another similarly finite and determinate thing or event, and this cause is, in turn, determined in its existence and action by a further finite mode, and so on to infinity (I. prop. 28). Because of this endlessness in the series there is no first or ultimate cause in the phenomenal world; all finite causes are second causes; the primary cause lies within the sphere of the infinite and is G.o.d himself. The modes are all subject to the constraint of an unbroken and endless nexus of efficient causes, which leaves room neither for chance, nor choice, nor ends. Nothing can be or happen otherwise than as it is and happens (I. prop. 29, 33).
The causal chain appears in two forms: a mode of extension has its producing ground in a second mode of extension; a mode of thought can be caused only by another mode of thought-each individual thing is determined by one of its own kind. The two series proceed side by side, without a member of either ever being able to interfere in the other or to effect anything in it-a motion can never produce anything but other motions, an idea can result only in other ideas; the body can never determine the mind to an idea, nor the soul the body to a movement. Since, however, extension and thought are not two substances, but attributes of one substance, this apparently double causal nexus of two series proceeding in exact correspondence is, in reality, but a single one. (III. prop. 2, schol.) viewed from different sides. That which represents a chain of motions when seen from the side of extension, bears the aspect of a series of ideas from the side of thought. Modus extensionis et idea illius modi una cademque est res, sed duobus modis expressa (II. prop. 7, schol.; cf. III. prop. 2, schol.). The soul is nothing but the idea of an actual body, body or motion nothing but the object or event in the sphere of extended actuality corresponding to an idea. No idea exists without something corporeal corresponding to it, no body, without at the same time existing as idea, or being conceived; in other words, everything is both body and spirit, all things are animated (II. prop. 13, schol.). Thus the famous proposition results; Ordo et connexio idearum idem est ac ordo et connexio rerum (sive corporum; II. prop. 7), and in application to man, "the order of the actions and pa.s.sions of our body is simultaneous in nature with the order of the actions and pa.s.sions of the mind" (III. prop. 2, schol.).
The attempt to solve the problem of the relation between the material and the mental worlds by a.s.serting their thoroughgoing correspondence and substantial ident.i.ty, was philosophically justifiable and important, though many evident objections obtrude themselves upon us. The required a.s.sumption, that there is a mental event corresponding to every bodily one, and vice versa, meets with involuntary and easily supported opposition, which Spinoza did nothing to remove. Similarly he omitted to explain how body is related to motion, mind to ideas, and both to actuality. The ascription of a materialistic tendency to Spinoza is not without foundation. Corporeality and reality appear well-nigh identical for him,-the expressions corpora and res are used synonymously,-so that there remains for minds and ideas only an existence as reflections of the real in the sphere of [an] ideality (whose degree of actuality it is difficult to determine). Moreover, individualistic impulses have been pointed out, which, in part, conflict with the monism which he consciously follows, and, in part, subserve its interests. An example of this is given in the relation of mind and idea: Spinoza treats the soul as a sum of ideas, as consisting in them. An (at least apparently substantial) bond among ideas, an ego, which possesses them, does not exist for him: the Cartesian cogito has become an impersonal cogitatur or a Deus cogitat. In order to the unique substantiality of the infinite, the substantiality of individual spirits must disappear. That which argues for the latter is their I-ness (Ichheit), the unity of self-consciousness; it is destroyed, if the mind is a congeries of ideas, a composite of them. Thus in order to relieve itself from the self-dependence of the individual mind, monism allies itself with a spiritual atomism, the most extreme which can be conceived. The mind is resolved into a ma.s.s of individual ideas.
Mention may be made in pa.s.sing, also, of a strange conception, which is somewhat out of harmony with the rest of the system, and of which, moreover, little use is made. This is the conception of infinite modes. As such are cited, facies totius mundi, motus et quies, intellectus absolute infinitus. Kuno Fischer's interpretation of this difficult conception may be accepted. It denotes, according to him, the connected sum of the modes, the itself non-finite sum total of the finite-the universe meaning the totality of individual things in general (without reference to their nature as extended or cogitative); rest and motion, the totality of material being; the absolutely infinite understanding, the totality of spiritual being or the ideas. Individual spirits together const.i.tute, as it were, the infinite intellect; our mind is a part of the divine understanding, yet not in such a sense that the whole consists of the parts, but that the part exists only through the whole. When we say, the human mind perceives this or that, it is equivalent to saying that G.o.d-not in so far as he is infinite, but as he expresses himself in this human mind and const.i.tutes its essence-has this or that idea (II. prop. II, coroll).
The discussion of these three fundamental concepts exhausts all the chief points in Spinoza's doctrine of G.o.d. Pa.s.sing over his doctrine of body (II. between prop. 13 and prop. 14) we turn at once to his discussion of mind and man.
(b) Anthropology: Cognition and the Pa.s.sions.-Each thing is at once mind and body, representation and that which is represented, idea and ideate (object). Body and soul are the same being, only considered under different attributes. The human mind is the idea of the human body; it cognizes itself in perceiving the affections of its body; it represents all that takes place in the body, though not all adequately. As man's body is composed of very many bodies, so his soul is composed of very many ideas. To judge of the relation of the human mind to the mind of lower beings, we must consider the superiority of man's body to other bodies; the more complex a body is, and the greater the variety of the affections of which it is capable, the better and more adapted for adequate cognition, the accompanying mind.-A result of the ident.i.ty of soul and body is that the acts of our will are not free (Epist. 62): they are, in fact, determinations of our body, only considered under the attribute of thought, and no more free than this from the constraint of the causal law (III. prop. 2, schol.).-Since the mind does nothing without at the same time knowing that it does it-since, in other words, its activity is a conscious activity, it is not merely idea corporis humani, but also idea ideae corporis or idea mentis.
All adherents of the Eleatic separation of the one pure being from the manifold and changing world of appearance are compelled to make a like distinction between two kinds and two organs of knowledge. The representation of the empirical manifold of separately existing individual things, together with the organ thereof, Spinoza terms imaginatio; the faculty of cognizing the true reality, the one, all-embracing substance, he calls intellectus. Imaginatio (imagination, sensuous representation) is the faculty of inadequate, confused ideas, among which are included abstract conceptions, as well as sensations and memory-images. The objects of perception are the affections of our body; and our perceptions, therefore, are not clear and distinct, because we are not completely acquainted with their causes. In the merely perceptual stage, the mind gains only a confused and mutilated idea of external objects, of the body, and of itself; it is unable to separate that in the perception (e.g., heat) which is due to the external body from that which is due to its own body. An inadequate idea, however, is not in itself an error; it becomes such only when, unconscious of its defectiveness, we take it for complete and true. Prominent examples of erroneous ideas are furnished by general concepts, by the idea of ends, and the idea of the freedom of the will. The more general and abstract an idea, the more inadequate and indistinct it becomes; and this shows the lack of value in generic concepts, which are formed by the omission of differences. All cognition which is carried on by universals and their symbols, words, yields opinion and imagination merely instead of truth. Quite as valueless and harmful is the idea of ends, with its accompaniments. We think that nature has typical forms hovering before it, which it is seeking to actualize in things; when this intention is apparently fulfilled we speak of things as perfect and beautiful; when it fails, of imperfect and ugly things. Such concepts of value belong in the sphere of fictions. The same is true of the idea of the freedom of the will, which depends on our ignorance of that which constrains us. Apart from the consideration that "the will," the general conception of which comes under the rubric of unreal abstractions, is in fact merely the sum of the particular volitions, the illusion of freedom, e.g., that we will and act without a cause, arises from the fact that we are conscious of our action (and also of its proximate motives), but not of its (remoter) determining causes. Thus the thirsty child believes it desires its milk of its own free will, and the timid one, that it freely chooses to run away (Ethica, III. prop. 2, schol.; I. app.) If the falling stone were conscious, it would, likewise, consider itself free, and its fall the result of an undetermined decision.
Two degrees are to be distinguished in the true or adequate knowledge of the intellect: rational knowledge attained through inference, and intuitive, self-evident knowledge; the latter has principles for its object, the former that which follows from them. Instead of operating with abstract concepts the reason uses common notions, notiones communes. Genera do not exist, but, no doubt, something common to all things. All bodies agree in being extended; all minds and ideas in being modes of thought; all beings whatever in the fact that they are modes of the divine substance and its attributes; "that which is common to all things, and which is equally in the part and in the whole, cannot but be adequately conceived." The ideas of extension, of thought, and of the eternal and infinite essence of G.o.d are adequate ideas. The adequate idea of each individual actual object involves the idea of G.o.d, since it can neither exist nor be conceived apart from G.o.d, and "all ideas, in so far as they are referred to G.o.d, are true." The ideas of substance and of the attributes are conceived through themselves, or immediately (intuitively) cognized; they are underivative, original, self-evident ideas.
There are thus three kinds, degrees, or faculties of cognition-sensuous or imaginative representation, reason, and immediate intuition. Knowledge of the second and third degrees is necessarily true, and our only means of distinguishing the true from the false. As light reveals itself and darkness, so the truth is the criterion of itself and of error. Every truth is accompanied by certainty, and is its own witness (II. prop. 43, schol.).-Adequate knowledge does not consider things as individuals, but in their necessary connection and as eternal sequences from the world-ground. The reason perceives things under the form of eternity: sub specie aeternitatis (II. prop. 44, cor. 2).
In his theory of the emotions, Spinoza is more dependent on Descartes than anywhere else; but even here he is guided by a successful endeavor after greater rigor and simplicity. He holds his predecessor's false concept of freedom responsible for the failure of his very acute inquiry. All previous writers on the pa.s.sions have either derided, or bewailed, or condemned them, instead of investigating their nature. Spinoza will neither denounce nor ridicule human actions and appet.i.tes, but endeavor to comprehend them on the basis of natural laws, and to consider them as though the question concerned lines, surfaces, and bodies. He aims not to look on hate, anger, and the rest as flaws, but as necessary, though troublesome, properties of human nature, for which, as really as for heat and cold, thunder and lightning, a causal explanation is requisite.-As a determinate, finite being the mind is dependent in its existence and its activity on other finite things, and is incomprehensible without them; from its involution in the general course of nature the inadequate ideas inevitably follow, and from these the pa.s.sive states or emotions; the pa.s.sions thus belong to human nature, as one subject to limitation and negation.-The destruction of contingent and perishable things is effected by external causes; no one is destroyed by itself; so far as in it lies everything strives to persist in its being (III. prop. 4 and 6). The fundamental endeavor after self-preservation const.i.tutes the essence of each thing (III. prop. 7). This endeavor (conatus) is termed will (voluntas) or desire (cupiditas) when it is referred to the mind alone, and appet.i.te (appet.i.tus) when referred to the mind and body together; desire or volition is conscious appet.i.te (III. prop. 9, schol.). We call a thing good because we desire it, not desire a thing because we hold it good (cf. Hobbes, p. 75). To desire two further fundamental forms of the emotions are added, pleasure and pain. If a thing increases the power of our body to act, the idea of it increases the power of our soul to think, and is gladly imagined by it. Pleasure (laet.i.tia) is the transition of a man to a greater, and pain (trist.i.tia) his transition to a lesser perfection.
All other emotions are modifications or combinations of the three original ones, to which Spinoza reduces the six of Descartes (cf. p. 105). In the deduction and description of them his procedure is sometimes aridly systematic, sometimes even forced and artificial, but for the most part ingenious, appropriate, and psychologically acute. Whatever gives us pleasure augments our being, and whatever pains us diminishes it; hence we seek to preserve the causes of pleasurable emotions, and love them, to do away with the causes of painful ones, and hate them. "Love is pleasure accompanied by the idea of an external cause; hate is pain accompanied by the idea of an external cause." Since all that furthers or diminishes the being of (the cause of our pleasure) the object of our love, exercises at the same time a like influence on us, we love that which rejoices the object of our love and hate that which disturbs it; its happiness and suffering become ours also. The converse is true of the object of our hate: its good fortune provokes us and its ill fortune pleases us. If we are filled with no emotion toward things like ourselves, we sympathize in their sad or joyous feelings by involuntary imitation. Pity, from which we strive to free ourselves as from every painful affection, inclines us to benevolence or to a.s.sistance in the removal of the cause of the misery of others. Envy of those who are fortunate, and commiseration of those who are in trouble, are alike rooted in emulation. Man is by nature inclined to envy and malevolence. Hate easily leads to underestimation, love to overestimation, of the object, and self-love to pride or self-satisfaction, which are much more frequently met with than unfeigned humility. Immoderate desire for honor is termed ambition; if the desire to please others is kept within due bounds it is praised as unpretentiousness, courtesy, modesty (modestia). Ambition, luxury, drunkenness, avarice, and l.u.s.t have no contraries, for temperance, sobriety, and chast.i.ty are not emotions (pa.s.sive states), but denote the power of the soul by which the former are moderated, and which is discussed later under the name fort.i.tudo. Self-abas.e.m.e.nt or humility is a feeling of pain arising from the consideration of our weakness and impotency; its opposite is self-complacency. Either of these may be accompanied by the (erroneous) belief that we have done the saddening or gladdening act of our own free will; in this case the former affection is termed repentance. Hope and fear are inconstant pleasure and pain, arising from the idea of something past or to come, concerning whose coming and whose issue we are still in doubt. There is no hope unmingled with fear, and no fear without hope; for he who still doubts imagines something which excludes the existence of that which is expected. If the cause of doubt is removed, hope is transformed into a feeling of confidence and fear into despair. There are as many kinds of emotions as there are cla.s.ses among their objects or causes.
Besides the emotions to be termed "pa.s.sions" in the strict sense, states of pa.s.sivity, Spinoza recognizes others which relate to us as active. Only those which are of the nature of pleasure or desire belong to this cla.s.s of active emotions; the painful affections are entirely excluded, since without exception they diminish or arrest the mind's power to think. The totality of these n.o.bler impulses is called fort.i.tudo (fort.i.tude), and a distinction is made among them between animositas (vigor of soul) and generositas (magnanimity, n.o.ble-mindedness), according as rational desire is directed to the preservation of our own being or to aiding our fellow-men. Presence of mind and temperance are examples of the former, modesty and clemency of the latter. By this bridge, the idea of the active emotions, we may follow Spinoza into the field of ethics.
(c) Practical Philosophy.-Spinoza's theory of ethics is based on the equation of the three concepts, perfection, reality, activity (V. prop. 40, dem.). The more active a thing is, the more perfect it is and the more reality it possesses. It is active, however, when it is the complete or adequate cause of that which takes place within it or without it; pa.s.sive when it is not at all the cause of this, or the cause only in part. A cause is termed adequate, when its effect can be clearly and distinctly perceived from it alone. The human mind, as a modus of thought, is active when it has adequate ideas; all its pa.s.sion consists in confused ideas, among which belong the affections produced by external objects. The essence of the mind is thought; volition is not only dependent on cognition, but at bottom identical with it.
Descartes had already made the will the power of affirmation and negation. Spinoza advances a step further: the affirmation cannot be separated from the idea affirmed, it is impossible to conceive a truth without in the same act affirming it, the idea involves its own affirmation. "Will and understanding are one and the same" (II. prop. 49, cor.). For Spinoza moral activity is entirely resolved into cognitive activity. To the two stages of knowing, imaginatio and intellectus, correspond two stages of willing-desire, which is ruled by imagination, and volition, which is guided by reason. The pa.s.sive emotions of sensuous desire are directed to perishable objects, the active, which spring from reason, have an eternal object-the knowledge of the truth, the intuition of G.o.d. For reason there are no distinctions of persons,-she brings men into concord and gives them a common end (IV. prop. 35-37,40),-and no distinctions of time (IV. prop. 62, 66), and in the active emotions, which are always good, no excess (IV. prop. 61). The pa.s.sive emotions arise from confused ideas. They cease to be pa.s.sions, when the confused ideas of the modifications of the body are transformed into clear ones; as soon as we have clear ideas, we become active and cease to be slaves of desire. We master the emotions by gaining a clear knowledge of them. Now, an idea is clear when we cognize its object not as an individual thing, but in its connection, as a link in the causal chain, as necessary, and as a mode of G.o.d. The more the mind conceives things in their necessity, and the emotions in their reference to G.o.d, the less it is pa.s.sively subject to the emotions, the more power it attains over them: "Virtue is power" (IV. def. 8; prop. 20, dem.). It is true, indeed, that one emotion can be conquered only by another stronger one, a pa.s.sive emotion only by an active one. The active emotion by which knowledge gains this victory over the pa.s.sions is the joyous consciousness of our power (III. prop. 58, 59). Adequate ideas conceive their objects in union with G.o.d; thus the pleasure which proceeds from knowledge of, and victory over, the pa.s.sions is accompanied by the idea of G.o.d, and, consequently (according to the definition of love), by love toward G.o.d (V. prop. 15, 32). The knowledge and love of G.o.d, together, "intellectual love toward G.o.d,"[1] is the highest good and the highest virtue (IV. prop. 28). Blessedness is not the reward of virtue, but virtue itself. The intellectual love of man toward G.o.d, in which the highest peace of the soul, blessedness, and freedom consist, and in virtue of which (since it, like its object and cause, true knowledge, is eternal), the soul is not included in the destruction of the body (V. prop. 23, 33), is a part of the infinite love with which G.o.d loves himself, and is one and the same with the love of G.o.d to man. The eternal part of the soul is reason, through which it is active; the perishable part is imagination or sensuous representation, through which it is pa.s.sively affected. We are immortal only in adequate cognition and in love to G.o.d; more of the wise man's soul is immortal than of the fool's.
[Footnote 1: The conception amor Dei intellectualis in Spinoza is discussed in a dissertation by C. Lulmann, Jena, 1884.]
Spinoza's ethics is intellectualistic-virtue is based on knowledge.[1] It is, moreover, naturalistic-morality is a necessary sequence from human nature; it is a physical product, not a product of freedom; for the acts of the will are determined by ideas, which in their turn are the effects of earlier causes. The foundation of virtue is the effort after self-preservation: How can a man desire to act rightly unless he desires to be (IV. prop. 21, 22)? Since reason never enjoins that which is contrary to nature, it of necessity requires every man to love himself, to seek that which is truly useful to him, and to desire all that makes him more perfect. According to the law of nature all that is useful is allowable. The useful is that which increases our power, activity, or perfection, or that which furthers knowledge, for the life of the soul consists in thought (IV. prop. 26; app. cap. 5). That alone is an evil which restrains man from perfecting the reason and leading a rational life. Virtuous action is equivalent to following the guidance of the reason in self-preservation (IV. prop. 24).-Nowhere in Spinoza are fallacies more frequent than in his moral philosophy; nowhere is there a clearer revelation of the insufficiency of his artificially constructed concepts, which, in their undeviating abstractness, are at no point congruent with reality. He is as little true to his purpose to exclude the imperative element, and to confine himself entirely to the explanation of human actions considered as facts, as any philosopher who has adopted a similar aim. He relieves the inconsistency by clothing his injunctions under the ancient ideal of the free wise man. This, in fact, is not the only thing in Spinoza which reminds one of the customs of the Greek moralists. He renews the Platonic idea of a philosophical virtue, and the opinion of Socrates, that right action will result of itself from true insight. Arguing from himself, from his own pure and strong desire for knowledge, to mankind in general, he makes reason the essence of the soul, thought the essence of reason, and holds the direction of the impulse of self-preservation to the perfection of knowledge, which is "the better part of us," to be the natural one.
[Footnote 1: That virtue which springs from knowledge is alone genuine. The painful, hence unactive, emotions of pity and repentance may impel to actions whose accomplishment is better than their omission. Emotion caused by sympathy for others and contrition for one's own guilt, both of which increase present evil by new ones, have only the value of evils of a lesser kind. They are salutary for the irrational man, in so far as the one spurs him on to acts of a.s.sistance and the other diminishes his pride. They are harmful to the wise man, or, at least, useless; he is in no need of irrational motives to rational action. Action from insight is alone true morality.]
All men endeavor after continuance of existence (III. prop. 6); why not all after virtue? If all endeavor after it, why do so few reach the goal? Whence the sadly large number of the irrational, the selfish, the vicious? Whence the evil in the world? Vice is as truly an outcome of "nature" as virtue. Virtue is power, vice is weakness; the former is knowledge, the latter ignorance. Whence the powerless natures? Whence defective knowledge? Whence imperfection in general?
The concept of imperfection expresses nothing positive, nothing actual, but merely a defect, an absence of reality. It is nothing but an idea in us, a fiction which arises through the comparison of one thing with another possessing greater reality, or with an abstract generic concept, a pattern, which it seems unable to attain. That concepts of value are not properties of things themselves, but denote only their pleasurable or painful effects on us, is evident from the fact that one and the same thing may be at the same time good, bad, and indifferent: the music which is good for the melancholy man may be bad for the mourner, and neither good nor bad for the deaf. Knowledge of the bad is an abstract, inadequate idea; in G.o.d there is no idea of evil. If imperfection and error were something real, it would have to be conceded that G.o.d is the author of evil and sin. In reality everything is that which it can be, hence without defect: everything actual is, in itself considered, perfect. Even the fool and the sinner cannot be otherwise than he is; he appears imperfect only when placed beside the wise and the virtuous. Sin is thus only a lesser reality than virtue, evil a lesser good; good and bad, activity and pa.s.sivity, power and weakness are merely distinctions in degree. But why is not everything absolutely perfect? Why are there lesser degrees of reality? Two answers are given. The first is found only between the lines: the imperfections in the being and action of individual things are grounded in their finitude, particularly in their involution in the chain of causality, in virtue of which they are acted on from without, and are determined in their action not by their own nature only, but also by external causes. Man sins because he is open to impressions from external things, and only superior natures are strong enough to preserve their rational self-determination in spite of this. The other answer is expressly given at the end of the first part (with an appeal to the sixteenth proposition, that everything which the divine understanding conceives as creatable has actually come into existence). "To those who ask why G.o.d did not so create all men that they should be governed only by reason, I reply only: because matter was not lacking to him for the creation of every degree of perfection from highest to lowest; or, more strictly, because the laws of his nature were so ample as so suffice for the production of everything conceivable by an infinite intellect." All possible degrees of perfection have come into being, including sin and error, which represent the lowest grade. The universe forms a chain of degrees of perfection, of which none must be wanting: particular cases of defect are justified by the perfection of the whole, which would be incomplete without the lowest degree of perfection, vice and wickedness. Here we see Spinoza following a path which Leibnitz was to broaden out into a highway in his Theodicy. Both favor the quant.i.tative view of the world, which softens the ant.i.theses, and reduces distinctions of kind to distinctions of degree. Not till Kant was the qualitative view of the world, which had been first brought into ethics by Christianity, restored to its rights. An ethics which denies freedom and evil is nothing but a physics of morals.
In his theory of the state Spinoza follows Hobbes pretty closely, but rejects absolutism, and declares democracy, in which each is obedient to self-imposed law, to be the form of government most in accordance with reason. (So in the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, while in the later Tractatus Politicus he gives the preference to aristocracy.) In accordance with the supreme right of nature each man deems good, and seeks to gain, that which seems to him useful; all things belong to all, each may destroy the objects of his hate. Conflict and insecurity prevail in the state of nature as a result of the sensuous desires and emotions (homines ex natura hostes); and they can be done away with only through the establishment of a society, which by punitive laws compels everyone to do, and leave undone, that which the general welfare demands. Strife and breach of faith become sin only in the state; before its formation that alone was wrong which no one had the desire and power to do. Besides this mission, however, of protecting selfish interests by the prevention of aggression, the civil community has a higher one, to subserve the development of reason; it is only in the state that true morality and true freedom are possible, and the wise man will prefer to live in the state, because he finds more freedom there than in isolation. Thus the dislocation of concepts, which is perceptible in Spinoza's ethics, repeats itself in his politics. First, virtue is based on the impulse of self-preservation and the good is equated with that which is useful to the individual; then, with a transformation of mere utility into "true" utility, the rational moment is brought in (first as practical prudence, next as the impulse after knowledge, and then, with a gradual change of meaning, as moral wisdom), until, finally, in strange contrast to the naturalistic beginning, the Christian idea of virtue as purity, self-denial, love to our neighbors and love to G.o.d, is reached. In a similar way "Spinoza conceives the starting point of the state naturalistically, its culmination idealistically."[1]
[Footnote 1: C. Schindler in his dissertation Ueber den Begriff des Guten und Nutzlichen bei Spinoza, Jena, 1885, p. 42, a work, however, which does not penetrate to the full depth of the matter. Cf. Eucken, Lebensanschauungen, p. 406.]
The fundamental ideas of the Spinozistic system, and those which render it important, are rationalism, pantheism, the essential ident.i.ty of the material and spiritual worlds, and the uninterrupted mechanism of becoming. Besides the twisting of ethical concepts just mentioned, we may briefly note the most striking of the other difficulties and contradictions which Spinoza left unexplained. There is a break between his endeavor to exalt the absolute high above the phenomenal world of individual existence, and, at the same time, to bring the former into the closest possible conjunction with the latter, to make it dwell therein-a break between the transcendent and immanent conceptions of the idea of G.o.d. No light is vouchsafed on the relation between primary and secondary causes, between the immediate divine causality and the divine causality mediated through finite causes. The infinity of G.o.d is in conflict with his complete cognizability on the part of man; for how is a finite, transitory spirit able to conceive the Infinite and Eternal? How does the human intellect rise above modal limitations to become capable and worthy of the mystical union with G.o.d? Reference has been already made to the twofold nature of the attributes (as forms of intellectual apprehension and as real properties of substance) which invites contradictory interpretations.
3. Pascal, Malebranche, Bayle.
Returning from Holland to France, we find a combination of Cartesianism and mysticism similar to that which we have noticed in the former country. Under Geulincx these two forces had lived peacefully together; in Spinoza they had entered into the closest alliance; with Blaise Pascal (1623-62), the first to adopt a religious tendency, they came into a certain ant.i.thesis. Spinoza had taught: through the knowledge of G.o.d to the love of G.o.d; in Pascal the watchword becomes, G.o.d is not conceived through the reason, but felt with the heart. After attacking the Jesuits in his Provincial Letters, and unveiling the worthlessness of their casuistical morality, Pascal, constrained by a genuine piety, undertook to construct a philosophy of Christianity; but the attempt was ended by the early death of the author, who had always suffered under a weak const.i.tution. Fragments of this work were published by his friends, the Jansenists, under the t.i.tle, Thoughts on Religion, 1669, though not without mediating alterations. The Port-Royal Logic (The Art of Thinking, 1662), edited by Arnauld and Nicole, was based on a treatise of Pascal. His thought, which was not distinguished by clearness, but by depth and movement, and which, after the French fashion, delighted in ant.i.theses, was influenced by Descartes, Montaigne, and Epictetus. He, too, finds in mathematics the example for all science, and holds that whatever transcends mathematics transcends the reason. By the application of mathematics to the study of nature we attain a mundane science, which is certain, no doubt, and which makes constant progress,[1] but which does not satisfy, since it reveals nothing of the infinite, of the whole, without which the parts remain unintelligible. Hence all natural philosophy together is not worth an hour's toil. Pascal consoles himself for our ignorance concerning external things by the stability of ethics.
[Footnote 1: It is this uninterrupted progress which raises the reason above the operations of nature and the instincts of animals. While the bees build their cells to-day just as they did a thousand years ago, science is continually developing. This guarantees to us our immortal destiny.]
The leading principles of his ethics are as follows: In sin the love to G.o.d created in us has left us and self-love has transgressed its limits; pride has delivered us over to selfishness and misery. Our nature is corrupted, but not beyond redemption. In his actions worthless and depraved, man is seen to be exalted and incomprehensible in his ends; in reality he is worthy of abhorrence, but great in his destination. No philosophy or religion has so taught us at once to know the greatness and the misery of man as Christianity: this bids him recognize his low condition, but at the same time to endeavor to become like G.o.d. We must humbly despise the world and renounce ourselves; in order to love G.o.d, we must hate ourselves. Moral reformation is an act of divine grace, and the merit of human volition consists only in not resisting this. G.o.d transforms the heart by a heavenly sweetness, grants it to know that spiritual pleasure is greater than bodily pleasure, and infuses into it a disgust at the allurements of sin. Virtue is finding one's greatest happiness in G.o.d or in the eternal good. As morality is a matter of feeling, not of thought, so G.o.d, so even the first principles on which the cert.i.tude of demonstration depends, are the object, not of reason, but of the heart. That which certifies to the highest indemonstrable principles is a feeling, a belief, an instinct of nature: les principes se sentent. As a defender of the needs and rights of the heart, Pascal is a forerunner of the great Rousseau. His depreciation of the reason to exalt faith establishes a certain relationship with the skeptics of his native land, among whom Cousin has unjustly cla.s.sed him (etudes sur Pascal, 5th ed., 1857).[1]
[Footnote 1: Of the works on Pascal we may mention that of H. Reuchlin, 1840: Havet's edition of the Pensees, with notes, Paris, 1866; and the etude by Ed. Droz, Paris, 1886.]
Nicolas Malebranche (1638-1715), a member of the Oratory of Jesus, in Paris, which was opposed by the Jesuits, completed the development of Cartesianism in the religious direction adopted by Pascal. His thought is controlled by the endeavor to combine Cartesian metaphysics and Augustinian Christianity, those two great forces which const.i.tuted the double citadel of his order. His collected works appeared three years before his death; and a new edition in four volumes, prepared by J. Simon, in 1871. His chief work, On the Search for Truth (new edition by F. Bouillier, 1880), appeared in 1675, and was followed by the Treatise on Ethics (new edition by H. Joly, 1882) and the Christian and Metaphysical Meditations in 1684, the Discussions on Metaphysics and on Religion in 1688, and various polemic treatises. The best known among the doctrines of Malebranche is the principle that we see all things in G.o.d (que nous voyons toutes choses en Dieu.-Recherche, iii. 2, 6). What does this mean, and how is it established? It is intended as an answer to the question, How is it possible for the mind to cognize the body if, as Descartes has shown, mind and body are two fundamentally distinct and reciprocally independent substances?
The seeker after truth must first understand the sources of error. Of these there are two, or, more exactly, five-as many as there are faculties of the soul. Error may spring from either the cognitive or the appet.i.tive faculty; in the first case, either from sense-perception, the imagination, or the pure understanding, and, in the latter, from the inclinations or the pa.s.sions. The inclinations and the pa.s.sions do not reveal the nature of things, but only express how they affect us, of what value they are to us. Further still, the senses and the imagination only reproduce the impressions which things make on us as feeling subjects, express only what they are for us, not what they are in themselves. The senses have been given us simply for the preservation of our body, and so long as we expect nothing further from them than practical information concerning the (useful or hurtful) relation of things to our body, there is no reason for mistrusting them,-here we are not deceived by sensation, but at most by the overhasty judgment of the will. "Consider the senses as false witnesses in regard to the truth, but as trustworthy counselors in relation to the interests of life!"-Sensation and imagination belong to the soul in virtue of its union with the body; apart from this it is pure spirit. The essence of the soul is thought, for this function is the only one which cannot be abstracted from it without destroying it. Hence there can be no moment in the life of the soul when it ceases to think; it thinks always (l'ame pense toujours), only it does not always remember the fact.
The kinds of knowledge differ with the cla.s.ses of things cognized. G.o.d is known immediately and intuitively. He is necessary and unlimited being, the universal, infinite being, being absolutely; he only is known through himself. The concept of the infinite is the presupposition of the concept of the finite, and the former is earlier in us; we gain the conception of a particular thing only when we omit something from the idea of "being in general," or limit it. G.o.d is cogitative, like spirits, and extended, like bodies, but in an entirely different manner from created things. We know our own soul through consciousness or inner perception. We know its existence more certainly than that of bodies, but understand its nature less perfectly than theirs. To know that it is capable of sensations of pain, of heat, of light, we must have experienced them. For knowledge of the minds of others we are dependent upon conjecture, on a.n.a.logical inferences from ourselves.
But how is the unextended soul capable of cognizing extended body? Only through the medium of ideas. The ideas occupy an intermediate position between objects, whose archetypes they are, and representations in the soul, whose causes they are. The ideas, after the pattern of which G.o.d has created things, and the relations among them (necessary truths), are eternal, hence uncaused; they const.i.tute the wisdom of G.o.d and are not dependent on his will. Things are in G.o.d in archetypal form, and are cognized through these their archetypes in G.o.d. Ideas are not produced by bodies, by the emission of sensuous images,[1] nor are they originated by the soul, or possessed by it as an innate possession. But G.o.d is the cause of knowledge, although he neither imparts ideas to the soul in creation nor produces them in it on every separate occasion. The ideas or perfections of things are in G.o.d and are beheld by spirits, who likewise dwell in G.o.d as the universal reason. As s.p.a.ce is the place of bodies, so G.o.d is the place of spirits. As bodies are modes of extension, so their ideas are modifications of the idea of extension or of "intelligible extension." The principle stated at the beginning, that things are perceived in G.o.d, is, therefore, supported in the following way: we perceive bodies (through ideas, which ideas, and we ourselves, are) in G.o.d.
[Footnote 1: Malebranche's refutation of the emanation hypothesis of the Peripatetics is acute and still worthy of attention. If bodies transmitted to the sense-organs forms like themselves, these copies, which would evidently be corporeal, must, by their departure, diminish the ma.s.s of the body from which they came away, and also, because of their impenetrability, obstruct and interfere with one another, thus destroying the possibility of clear impressions. A further point against the image theory is furnished by the increase in the size of an object, when approached. And, above all, it can never be made conceivable how motion can be transformed into sensations or ideas.]
As the knowledge of truth has been found to consist in seeing things as G.o.d sees them, so morality consists in man's loving things as G.o.d loves them, or, what amounts to the same thing, in loving them to that degree which is their due in view of their greater or less perfection. If, in the last a.n.a.lysis, all cognition is knowledge of G.o.d, so all volition is loving G.o.d; there is implanted in every creature a direction toward the Creator. G.o.d is not only the primordial, unlimited being, he is also the highest good, the final end of all striving. As the ideas of things are imperfect partic.i.p.ations in, or determinations of universal being, the absolute perfection of G.o.d, so the particular desires, directed toward individual objects, are limitations of the universal will toward the good. How does it happen that the human will, so variously mistaking its fundamental direction toward G.o.d, attaches itself to perishable goods, and prefers worthless objects to those which have value, and earthly to heavenly pleasure? The soul is, on the one hand, united to G.o.d, on the other, united to the body. The possibility of error and sin rests on its union with the body, since with the ideas (as representations of the pure understanding) are a.s.sociated sensuous images, which mingle with and becloud them, and pa.s.sions with the inclinations (or the will of the soul, in so far as it is pure spirit). This gives, however, merely the possibility of the immoral, sensuous, G.o.d-estranged disposition, which becomes actual only through man's free act, when he fails to stand the test. For sin does not consist in having pa.s.sions, but in consenting to them. The pa.s.sion is not caused by the corporeal movement of which it is the sequel, but only occasioned by it; and the same is true of the movement of the limbs and the decision of the will. The one true cause of all that happens is G.o.d. It is he who produces affections in the soul, and motion in the material world. For the body possesses only the capacity of being moved; and the soul cannot be the cause of the movement, since it would then have to know how it produces the latter. In fact those who lack a medical training have no idea of the muscular and nervous processes involved. Without G.o.d we cannot even move the tongue. It is he who raises our arm, even when we use it contrary to his law.
Anxious to guard his pantheism from being identified with that of Spinoza, Malebranche points out that, according to his views, the universe is in G.o.d, not, as with Spinoza, that G.o.d is in the universe; that he teaches creation, which Spinoza denies; that he distinguishes, which Spinoza had not done, between the world in G.o.d (the ideas of things) and the world of created things, and between intelligible and corporeal extension. It may be added that he maintains the freedom of G.o.d and of man, which Spinoza rejects, and that he conceives G.o.d, who brings everything to pa.s.s, not as nature, but as omnipotent will. Nevertheless, as Kuno Fischer has shown, he approaches the naturalism of Spinoza more nearly than he is himself conscious, when he explains finite things as limitations (hence as modes) of the divine existence, posits the will of G.o.d in dependence on his wisdom (the uncreated world of ideas), thus limiting it in its omnipotence, and, which is decisive, makes G.o.d the sole author of motion, i.e., a natural cause. His attempt at a Christian pantheism was consequently unsuccessful. But its failure has not shattered the well-grounded fame of its thoughtful author as the second greatest metaphysician of France.
Pierre Poiret[1] (1646-1719; for some years a preacher in Hamburg; lived later in Rhynsburg near Leyden) was rendered hostile to Cartesianism through the influence of mystical writings (among others those of Antoinette Bourignon, which he published), and through the perception of the results to which it had led in Spinoza. All cognition is taking up the form of the object. The perfection of man is based more on his pa.s.sive capacities than on his active reason, which is concerned with mere ideas, unreal shadows; the mathematical spirit leads to fatalism, to the denial of freedom. The pa.s.sive faculties, on the contrary, are in direct intercourse with reality, the senses with external material objects, and the arcanum of the mind, the basis of the soul, the intellect, with spiritual truths and with G.o.d, whose existence is more certain than our own. Man is not unconcerned in the development of the highest power of the mind, he must offer himself to G.o.d in sincere humility. In subordination to the pa.s.sive intellect, the external faculty, the active reason, is also to be cultivated; it deserves care, like the skin. Evil consists in the absurdity that the creature, who apart from G.o.d is nothing, ascribes to himself an independent existence.
[Footnote 1: Poiret: Cogitationes Rationates de Deo, Anima, et Malo, 1677, the later editions including a vehement attack on the atheism of Spinoza: L'economie Divine, 1682; De Eruditione Solida, Superficiaria, et Falsa, 1692; Fides et Ratio Collatae, against Locke, 1707.]
Le Vayer and Huet, who have been already mentioned (pp. 50-51), mediate between the founders of skepticism and Bayle, its most gifted representative. The latter of these two wrote a Criticism of the Cartesian Philosophy, 1689, besides a Treatise on the Impotence of the Human Mind, which did not appear until after his death. He opposes, among other things, the criterion of truth based on evidence, since there is an evidence of the false not to be distinguished from that of the true, as well as the position that G.o.d becomes a deceiver in the bestowal of a weak and blind reason-for he gives us, at the same time, the power to know its deceptive character.
As the last among those influenced by Descartes but who advanced beyond him, may be mentioned the acute Pierre Bayle (1647-1706; professor in Sedan and Rotterdam; Works, 1725-31[1]), who greatly excited the world of letters by his occasional and polemic treatises, and still more by the journal, Nouvelles de la Republique des Lettres from 1684, and his Historical and Critical Dictionary, in two volumes, 1695 and 1697. Nowhere do the most opposite ant.i.theses dwell in such close proximity as in the mind of Bayle. Along with an ever watchful doubt he harbors a most active zeal for knowledge, with a sincere spirit of belief (which has been wrongly disputed by Lange, Zeller, and Punjer) a demoniacal pleasure in bringing to light absurdities in the doctrines of faith, with absolute confidence in the infallibility of conscience an entirely pessimistic view of human morality. His strength lies in criticism and polemics, his work in the latter (aside from his hostility to fanaticism and the persecution of those differing in faith) being directed chiefly against optimism and the deistic religion of reason, which holds the Christian dogmas capable of proof, or, at least, faith and knowledge capable of reconciliation. The doctrines of faith are not only above reason, incomprehensible, but contrary to reason; and it is just on this that our merit in accepting them depends. The mysteries of the Gospel do not seek success before the judgment seat of thought, they demand the blind submission of the reason; nay, if they were objects of knowledge they would cease to be mysteries. Thus we must choose between religion and philosophy, for they cannot be combined. For one who is convinced of the untrustworthiness of the reason and her lack of competence in things supernatural, it is in no wise contradictory or impossible to receive as true things which she declares to be false; he will thank G.o.d for the gift of a faith which is entirely independent of the clearness of its objects and of its agreement with the axioms of philosophy. Even, when in purely scientific questions he calls attention to difficulties and shows contradictions on every hand, Bayle by no means intends to hold up principles with contradictory implications as false, but only as uncertain.[2] The reason, he says, generalizing from his own case, is capable only of destruction, not of construction; of discovering error, not of finding truth; of finding reasons and counter-reasons, of exciting doubt and controversy, not of vouchsafing cert.i.tude. So long as it contents itself with controverting that which is false, it is potent and salutary; but when, despising divine a.s.sistance, it advances beyond this, it becomes dangerous, like a caustic drug which attacks the healthy flesh after it has consumed that which was diseased.
[Footnote 1: Cf. on Bayle, L. Feuerbach. 1838, 2d ed., 1844; Eucken in the Allgemeine Zeitung, supplement to Nos. 251, 252, October 27, 28, 1891.]
[Footnote 2: Thus, in regard to the problem of freedom, he finds it hard to comprehend how the creatures, who are not the authors of their own existence, can be the authors of their own actions, but, at the same time, inadmissible to think of G.o.d as the cause of evil. He seeks only to show the indemonstrability and incomprehensibility of freedom, not to reject it. For he sees in it the condition of morality, and calls attention to the fact that the difficulties in which those who deny freedom involve themselves are far greater than those of their opponents. He shows himself entirely averse to the determinism and pantheism of Spinoza.]
He who seeks to refute skepticism must produce a criterion of truth. If such exists, it is certainly that advanced by Descartes, the evidence, the evident clearness of a principle. Well, then, the following principles pa.s.s for evident: That one, who does not exist, can have no responsibility for an evil action; that two things, which are identical with the same thing, are identical with each other; that I am the same man to-day that I was yesterday. Now, the revealed doctrines of original sin and of the Trinity show that the first and second of these axioms are false, and the Church doctrine of the preservation of the world as a continuous creation, that the last principle is uncertain. Thus if not even self-evidence furnishes us a criterion of truth, we must conclude that none whatever exists. Further, in regard to the origin of the world from a single principle, its creation by G.o.d, we find this supported, no doubt, both by the conclusions of the pure reason and by the consideration of nature, but controvened by the fact of evil, by the misery and wickedness of man. Is it conceivable that a holy and benevolent G.o.d has created so unhappy and wicked a being?
Bayle's motives in defending faith against reason were, on the one hand, his personal piety, on the other, his conviction of the una.s.sailable purity of Christian ethics. All the sects agree in regard to moral principles, and it is this which a.s.sures u