But while their temper was social, their theoretical philosophy led to subjectivism. This was not a new tendency; it had existed in late antiquity, most emphatically in Saint Augustine; it was revived in modern times by Descartes’s cogito, and reached a momentary culmination in Leibniz’s windowless monads. Leibniz believed that everything in his experience would be unchanged if the rest of the world were annihilated; nevertheless he devoted himself to the reunion of
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* Hegel selects for special praise the distinction between the general will and the will of all. He says: ” Rousseau would have made a sounder contribution towards a theory of the State, if he had always kept this distinction in sight” (Logic, Sec. 163).
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the Catholic and Protestant Churches. A similar inconsistency appears in Locke, Berkeley, and Hume.
In Locke, the inconsistency is still in the theory. We saw in an earlier chapter that Locke says, on the one hand: “Since the mind, in all its thoughts and reasonings, hath no other immediate object but its own ideas, which it alone does or can contemplate, it is evident that our knowledge is only conversant about them.” And: “Knowledge is the perception of the agreement or disagreement of two ideas.” Nevertheless, he maintains that we have three kinds of knowledge of real existence: intuitive, of our own; demonstrative, of God’s; and sensitive, of things present to sense. Simple ideas, he maintains, are “the product of things operating on the mind in a natural way.” How he knows this, he does not explain; it certainly goes beyond “the agreement or disagreement of two ideas.”
Berkeley took an important step towards ending this inconsistency. For him, there are only minds and their ideas; the physical external world is abolished. But he still failed to grasp all the consequences of the epistemological principles that he took over from Locke. If he had been completely consistent, he would have denied knowledge of God and of all minds except his own. From such denial he was held back by his feelings as a clergyman and as a social being.
Hume shrank from nothing in pursuit of theoretical consistency, but felt no impulse to make his practice conform to his theory. Hume denied the Self, and threw doubt on induction and causation. He accepted Berkeley’s abolition of matter, but not the substitute that Berkeley offered in the form of God’s ideas. It is true that, like Locke, he admitted no simple idea without an antecedent impression, and no doubt he imagined an “impression” as a state of mind directly caused by something external to the mind. But he could not admit this as a definition of “impression,” since he questioned the notion of “cause.” I doubt whether either he or his disciples were ever clearly aware of this problem as to impressions. Obviously, on his view, an “impression” would have to be defined by some intrinsic character distinguishing it from an “idea,” since it could not be defined causally. He could not therefore argue that impressions give knowledge of things external to ourselves, as had been done by Locke, and, in a modified form, by Berkeley. He should, therefore, have believed him-
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self shut up in a solipsistic world, and ignorant of everything except his own mental states and their relations.
Hume, by his consistency, showed that empiricism, carried to its logical conclusion, led to results which few human beings could bring themselves to accept, and abolished, over the whole field of science, the distinction between rational belief and credulity. Locke had foreseen this danger. He puts into the mouth of a supposed critic the argument: “If knowledge consists in agreement of ideas, the enthusiast and the sober man are on a level.” Locke, living at a time when men had grown tired of “enthusiasm,” found no difficulty in persuading men of the validity of his reply to this criticism. Rousseau, coming at a moment when people were, in turn, getting tired of reason, revived “enthusiasm,” and, accepting the bankruptcy of reason, allowed the heart to decide questions which the head left doubtful. From 1750 to 1794, the heart spoke louder and louder; at last Thermidor put an end, for a time, to its ferocious pronouncements, so far at least as France was concerned. Under Napoleon, heart and head were alike silenced.
In Germany, the reaction against Hume’s agnosticism took a form far more profound and subtle than that which Rousseau had given to it. Kant, Fichte, and Hegel developed a new kind of philosophy, intended to safeguard both knowledge and virtue from the subversive doctrines of the late eighteenth century. In Kant, and still more in Fichte, the subjectivist tendency that begins with Descartes was carried to new extremes; in this respect, there was at first no reaction against Hume. As regards subjectivism, the reaction began with Hegel, who sought, through his logic, to establish a new way of escape from the individual into the world.
The whole of German idealism has affinities with the romantic movement. These are obvious in Fichte, and still more so in Schelling; they are least so in Hegel.
Kant, the founder of German idealism, is not himself politically important, though he wrote some interesting essays on political subjects. Fichte and Hegel, on the other hand, both set forth political doctrines which had, and still have, a profound influence upon the course of history. Neither can be understood without a previous study of Kant, whom we shall consider in this chapter.
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There are certain common characteristics of the German idealists, which can be mentioned before embarking upon detail.
The critique of knowledge, as a means of reaching philosophical conclusions, is emphasized by Kant and accepted by his followers. There is an emphasis upon mind as opposed to matter, which leads in the end to the assertion that only mind exists. There is a vehement rejection of utilitarian ethics in favour of systems which are held to be demonstrated by abstract philosophical arguments. There is a scholastic tone which is absent in the earlier French and English philosophers; Kant, Fichte, and Hegel were university professors, addressing learned audiences, not gentlemen of leisure addressing amateurs. Although their effects were in part revolutionary, they themselves were not intentionally subversive; Fichte and Hegel were very definitely concerned in the defence of the State. The lives of all of them were exemplary and academic; their views on moral questions were strictly orthodox. They made innovations in theology, but they did so in the interests of religion.
With these preliminary remarks, let us turn to the study of Kant.
B. OUTLINE OF KANT’S PHILOSOPHY
Immanuel Kant ( 1724-1804) is generally considered the greatest of modern philosophers. I cannot myself agree with this estimate, but it would be foolish not to recognize his great importance.
Throughout his whole life, Kant lived in or near Königsberg, in East Prussia. His outer life was academic and wholly uneventful, although he lived through the Seven Years’ War (during part of which the Russians occupied East Prussia), the French Revolution, and the early part of Napoleon’s career. He was educated in the Wolfian version of Leibniz’s philosophy, but was led to abandon it by two influences: Rousseau and Hume. Hume, by his criticism of the concept of causality, awakened him from his dogmatic slumbers–so at least he says, but the awakening was only temporary, and he soon invented a soporific which enabled him to sleep again. Hume, for Kant, was an adversary to be refuted, but the influence of Rousseau was more profound. Kant was a man of such regular habits that people used to set their watches by him as he passed their doors on his con-
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stitutional, but on one occasion his time-table was disrupted for several days; this was when he was reading Emile. He said that he had to read Rousseau’s books several times, because, at a first reading, the beauty of the style prevented him from noticing the matter. Although he had been brought up as a pietist, he was a Liberal both in politics and in theology; he sympathized with the French Revolution until the Reign of Terror, and was a believer in democracy. His philosophy, as we shall see, allowed an appeal to the heart against the cold dictates of theoretical reason, which might, with a little exaggeration, be regarded as a pedantic version of the Savoyard Vicar. His principle that every man is to be regarded as an end in himself is a form of the doctrine of the Rights of Man; and his love of freedom is shown in his saying (about children as well as adults) that “there can be nothing more dreadful than that the actions of a man should be subject to the will of another.”
Kant’s early works are more concerned with science than with philosophy. After the earthquake of Lisbon he wrote on the theory of earthquakes; he wrote a treatise on wind, and a short essay on the question whether the west wind in Europe is moist because it has crossed the Atlantic Ocean. Physical geography was a subject in which he took great interest.
The most important of his scientific writings is his General Natural History and Theory of the Heavens (
