badly neglected, branch of science than in physics. As knowledge and
opinion have been found reducible to the associative play of ideas, and the
store of ideas, again, to original impressions and shown derivable from
these; so man's volition and action present themselves as results of the
mechanical working of the passions, which, in turn, point further back to
more primitive principles. The ultimate motives of all action are pleasure
and pain, to which we owe our ideas of good and evil.
The direct passions,
desire and aversion, joy and sorrow, hope and fear, are the immediate
effects of these original elements. From the direct arise in certain
circumstances the indirect passions, pride and humility, love and hatred
(together with respect and contempt); the first two, if the objects which
excite feeling are immediately connected with ourselves, the latter, when
pleasure and pain are aroused by the accomplishments or the defects of
others. While love and hate are always conjoined with a readiness
for action, with benevolence or anger, pride and humility are pure,
self-centered, inactive emotions.
[Footnote 1: Cf. G. von Gizycki, _Die Ethik David Humes_, 1878.]
All moral phenomena, will, moral judgment, conscience, virtue, are not
simple and original data, but of a composite or derivative nature. They are
without exception products of the regular interaction of the passions. With
such views there can be, of course, no question of a freedom of the will.
If anyone objects to determinism, that virtues and vices, if they are
involuntary and necessary, are not praise-or blame-worthy, he is to be
referred to the applause paid to beauty and talent, which are considered
meritorious, although they are not dependent upon our choice. The legal
attitude of theology and law first caused all desert to be based upon
freedom, whereas the ancient philosophers spoke unhesitatingly of
intellectual virtues.
Hume does not, like nearly all his predecessors and contemporaries, find
the determining grounds of volition in ideas, but in the feelings. After
curtailing the rights of the reason in the theoretical field in favor of
custom and instinct, he dispossesses her also in the sphere of practice.
Impassive reason, judging only of truth and falsehood, is an inactive
faculty, which of itself can never inspire us with inclination and desire
toward an object, can never itself become a motive. It is only capable
of influencing the will indirectly, through the aid of some affection.
Abstract relations of ideas, and facts as well, leave us entirely
indifferent so long as they fail to acquire an emotional value through
their relation to our state of mind. When we speak of a victory of reason
over passion it is nothing but a conquest of one passion by another, _i.
e_., of a violent passion by a calm one. That which is commonly called
reason here is nothing but one of those general and calm affections _(e.
g_., the love of life) which direct the will to a distant good, without
exciting any sensible emotion in the mind; by passion we commonly
understand the violent passions only, which engender a marked disturbance
in the soul and the production of which requires a certain propinquity of
the object. A man is said to be industrious "from reason," when a calm
desire for money makes him laborious. It is a mistake to consider all
violent passions powerful, and all calm ones weak. The prevalence of calm
affections constitutes the essence of strength of mind.
As reason is thus degraded from a governor of the will to a "slave of the
passions," so, further, judgment concerning right and wrong is taken away
from her. Moral distinctions are determined by our sense of the agreeable
and the disagreeable. We pass an immediate judgment of taste on the actions
of our fellow-men; the good pleases, evil displeases.
The sight of virtue
gives us satisfaction; that of vice repels us.
Accordingly an action or
trait of mind is virtuous when it calls forth in the observer an agreeable,
disinterested sentiment of approbation.
What, then, are the actions which receive such general approval, and how is
the praise to be explained which the spectator bestows on them? We approve
such traits of character as are immediately agreeable or useful, either to
the person himself or to others. This yields four classes of praiseworthy
qualities. The first class, those which are agreeable to the possessor
(quite apart from any utility to himself or to others), includes
cheerfulness, greatness of mind, courage, tranquillity, and benevolence;
the second, those immediately agreeable to others, modesty, good manners,
politeness, and wit; the third, those useful to ourselves, strength of
will, industry, frugality, strength of body, intelligence and other mental
gifts. The fourth class comprises the highest virtues, the qualities useful
to others, benevolence and justice. Pleasure and utility are in all cases
the criterion of merit. The monkish virtues of humility and mortification
of the flesh, which bring no pleasure or advantage either to their
possessor or to society, are considered meritorious by no one who
understands the subject.
If the moral value of actions is thus made to depend on their effects, we
cannot dispense with the assistance of reason in judging moral questions,
since it alone can inform us concerning these results of action. Reason,
however, is not sufficient to determine us to praise or blame. Nothing but
a sentiment can induce us to give the preference to beneficial and useful
tendencies over pernicious ones. This feeling is evidently no other than
satisfaction in the happiness of men and uneasiness in view of their
misery--in short, it is sympathy. By means of the imagination we enter into
the experiences of others and participate in their joy and sorrow. Whatever
depresses or rejoices them, whatever inspires them with pride, fills us
with similar emotions. From the habit of sympathetically passing moral
judgment on the actions of others, and of seeing our own judged by them,
is developed the further one of keeping a constant watch over ourselves and
of considering our dispositions and deeds from the standpoint of the good
of others. This custom is called conscience. Allied to this is the love of
reputation, which continually leads us to ask, How will our behavior appear
in the eyes of those with whom we associate?
Within the fourth and most important class, the social virtues, Hume
distinguishes between the natural virtues of humanity and benevolence and
the artificial virtues of justice and fidelity. The former proceed from our
inborn sympathy with the good of others, while the latter, on the other
hand, are not to be derived from a natural passion, an instinctive love of
humanity, but are the product of reflection and art, and take their origin
in a social convention.
In order that an action may gain the approval of the spectator two other
things are required besides its salutary effects: it must be a mark
of character, of a permanent disposition, and it must proceed from
disinterested motives. Hume is obliged by this latter position to show that
disinterested benevolence actually exists, that the unselfish affections
do not secretly spring from self-love. To cite only one of the thousand
examples of benevolence in which no discernible interest is concerned,
we desire happiness for our friends even when we have no expectation
of participating in it. The accounts of human selfishness are greatly
overdrawn, and those who deduce all actions from it make the mistake of
taking the inevitable consequences of virtue--the pleasure of self-approval
and of being esteemed by others--for the only motives to virtue. Because
virtue, in the outcome, produces inner satisfaction and is praised by
others, it does not follow that it is practiced merely for the sake of
these agreeable consequences. Self-love is a secondary impulse, whose
appearance at all presupposes primary impulses. Only after we have
experienced the pleasure which comes from the satisfaction of such an
original impulse (_e. g_., ambition), can this become the object of a
conscious reflective search after pleasure, or of egoism. Power brings no
enjoyment to the man by nature devoid of ambition, and he who is naturally
ambitious does not desire fame because it affords him pleasure, but
conversely, fame affords him pleasure because he desires it. The natural
propensity which terminates directly on the object, without knowledge or
foresight of the pleasurable results, comes first, and egoistic reflection
directed toward the hoped-for enjoyment can develop only after this has
been satisfied. The case is the same with benevolence as with the love
of fame. It is implanted in the constitution of our minds as an original
impulse immediately directed toward the happiness of other men. After
it has been exercised and its exercise rewarded by self-satisfaction,
admiration, thanks, and reciprocation, it is indeed possible for the
expectation of such agreeable consequences to lead us to the repetition of
beneficent acts. But the original motive is not an egoistic, regard for
useful consequences. If, from the force of the passion alone, vengeance
may be so eagerly pursued that every consideration of personal quiet and
security is silenced, it may also be conceded that humanity causes us
to forget our own interests. Nay, further, the social affections, as
Shaftesbury has proven, are the strongest of all, and the man will rarely
be found in whom the sum of the benevolent impulses will not outweigh that
of the selfish ones.
In the section on justice Hume attacks the contract theory. Law, property,
and the sacredness of contracts exist first in society, but not first in
the state. The obligation to observe contracts is, indeed, made stronger by
the civil law and civil authority, but not created by them. Law arises from
convention, _i. e_., not from a formal contract, but a tacit agreement, a
sense of common interest, and this agreement, in turn, proceeds from an
original propensity to enter into social relations. The unsocial and
lawless state of nature is a philosophical fiction which has never existed;
men have always been social. They have all at least been born into the
society of the family, and they know no-more terrible punishment than
isolation. States are not created, however, by a voluntary act, but have
their roots in history. The question at issue between Hobbes and Hume was
thus adjusted at a later period by Kant: the state, it is true, has not
historically arisen from a contract, yet it is allowable and useful to
consider it under the aspect of a contract as a regulative idea.
Only once since David Hume, in Herbert Spencer, has the English nation
produced a mind of like comprehensive power. Hume and Locke form the
culminating points of English thought. They are national types, in that
in them the two fundamental tendencies of English thinking, clearness of
understanding and practical sense, were manifested in equal force. In Locke
these worked together in harmonious co-operation. In Hume the friendly
alliance is broken, the common labor ceases; each of the two demands its
full rights; a painful breach opens up between science and life. Reason
leads inevitably to doubt, to insight into its own weakness, while life
demands conviction. The doubter cannot act, the agent cannot know. It is
true that a substitute is found for defective knowledge in belief based
upon instinct and custom; but this is a makeshift, not a solution of the
problem, an acknowledgment of the evil, not a cure for it. Further, Hume's
greatness does not consist in the fact that he preached modesty to the
contending parties, that he banished the doubting reason into the study
and restricted life to belief in probabilities, but in the mental strength
which enabled him to endure sharp contradictions, and, instead of an
overhasty and easy reconciliation, to suspend the one impulse until the
other had made its demands thoroughly, completely, and regardlessly heard.
Though he is distinguished from other skeptics by the fact that he not
only shows the fundamental conceptions of our knowledge of nature and the
principles of religion uncertain and erroneous, but finds _necessary_
errors in them and acutely uncovers their origin in the lawful workings
of our inner life, yet his historical influence essentially rests on his
skepticism. In his own country it roused in the
"Scottish School" the
reaction of common sense, while in Germany it helped to wake a kindred but
greater spirit from the bonds of his dogmatic slumbers, and to fortify him
for his critical achievements.
(c) %The Scottish School%.--Priestley's associational psychology,
Berkeley's idealism, and Hume's skepticism are legitimate deductions from
Locke's assumption that the immediate objects of thought are not things but
ideas, and that judgment or knowledge arises from the combination of ideas
originally separate. The absurdity of the consequences shows the falsity of
the premises. The true philosophy must not contradict common sense. It
is not correct to look upon the mind as a sheet of white paper on which
experience inscribes single characters, and then to make the understanding
combine these originally disconnected elements into judgments by means of
comparison, and the belief in the existence of the object come in as a
later result added to the ideas by reflection. It is rather true that the
elements discovered by the analysis of the cognitive processes are far from
being the originals from which these arise. It is not isolated ideas that
come first, but judgments, self-evident axioms of the understanding, which
form part of the mental constitution with which God has endowed us; and
sensation is accompanied by an immediate belief in the reality of the
object. Sensation guarantees the presence of an external thing possessing a
certain character, although it is not an image of this property, but merely
a sign for something in no wise resembling itself.
This is the standpoint of the founder[1] of the Scottish School, Thomas
Reid (1710-96, professor in Aberdeen and Glasgow; _An Inquiry into the
Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense_, 1764; _Essays on the
Intellectual Powers of Man_, 1785, _Essays on the Active Powers_, 1788,
together under the title, _Essays on the Powers of the Human Mind.
Collected Works_, 1804, and often since, especially the edition by
Hamilton, with valuable notes and dissertations, 7th ed., 2 vols., 1872).
We may recognize in it a revival of the common notions of Herbert, as well
as a transfer of the innate faculty of judgment inculcated by the ethical
and aesthetic writers from the practical to the theoretical field; the
"common sense" of Reid is an original sense for truth, as the "taste"
of Shaftesbury and Hutcheson was a natural sense for the good and the
beautiful. Like Jacobi at a later period, Reid points out that mediate,
reasoned knowledge presupposes a knowledge which is immediate, and all
inference and demonstration, fixed, undemonstrable, immediately certain
fundamental truths. The fundamental judgments or principles of common
sense, which are true for us, even if [possibly] not true in themselves,
are discoverable by observation (empirical rationalism).
In the enumeration
of them two dangers are to be avoided: we must neither raise contingent
principles to the position of axioms, nor, from an exaggerated endeavor
after unity, underestimate the number of these self-evident principles.
Reid himself is always more sparing with them than his disciples. He
distinguishes two classes: first principles of necessary truth, and first
principles of contingent truth or truth of fact. As first principles of
necessary truth he cites, besides the axioms of logic and mathematics,
grammatical, aesthetic, moral, and metaphysical principles (among the last
belong the principles: "That the qualities which we perceive by our senses
must have a subject, which we call body, and that the thoughts we are
conscious of must have a subject, which we call mind";
"that whatever
begins to exist, must have a cause which produced it").
He lays down twelve
principles as the basis of our knowledge of matters of fact, in which his
reference to the doubt of Berkeley and Hume is evident.
The most important
of these are: "The existence of everything of which I am conscious"; "that
the thoughts of which I am conscious, are the thoughts of a being which I
call myself, my mind, my person"; "our own personal identity and continued
existence, as far back as we remember anything distinctly"; "that those
things do really exist which we distinctly perceive by our senses, and are
what we perceive them to be"; "that we have some degree of power over our
actions, and the determinations of our will"; "that there is life and
intelligence in our fellow-men"; "that there is a certain regard due... to
human authority in matters of opinion"; "that, in the phenomena of
nature, what is to be, will probably be like what has been in similar
circumstances."
[Footnote 1: In the sense of "chief founder"; cf.
McCosh's _Scottish
Philosophy_, 1875, pp. 36, 68 _seq_., which is the standard authority on
the school as a whole.--TR.]
The widespread and lasting favor experienced by this theory, with its
invitation to forget all earnest work in the problems of philosophy
by taking refuge in common sense, shows that a general relaxation had
succeeded the energetic endeavors which Hume had demanded of himself and
of his readers. With this declaration of the infallibility of common
consciousness, the theory of knowledge, which had been so successfully
begun, was incontinently thrust aside, although, indeed, empirical
psychology gained by the industrious investigation of the inner life by
means of self-observation. James Beattie continued the attack on Hume
in his _Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth in Opposition to
Sophistry and Skepticism_, 1770, on the principle that wisdom must never
contradict nature, and that whatever our nature compels us to believe,
hence whatever all agree in, is true. In his briefer dissertations Beattie
discussed Memory and Imagination, Fable and Romance, the Effects of
Poetry and Music, Laughter, the Sublime, etc. While Beattie had given the
preference to psychological and aesthetic questions, James Oswald (1772)
appealed to common sense in matters of religion, describing it as an
instinctive faculty of judgment concerning truth and falsehood. The most
eminent among the followers of Reid was Dugald Stewart (professor in
Edinburgh; _Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind_, 1792-1827;
_Collected Works_, edited by Hamilton, 1854-58), who developed the
doctrines of the master and in some points modified them. Thomas
Brown (1778-1820), who is highly esteemed by Mill, Spencer, and Bain,
approximated the teachings of Reid and Stewart to those of Hume. The
philosophy of the Scottish School was long in favor both in England and in
France, where it was employed as a weapon against materialism.
By way of appendix we may mention the beginnings of a psychological
aesthetics in Henry Home (Lord Kames, 1696-1782), and Edmund Burke
(1728-97).[1] Home, in ethics a follower of Hutcheson, is fond of
supporting his aesthetic views by examples from Shakespeare. Beauty (chap.
iii.) appears to belong to the object itself, but in reality it is only an
effect, a "secondary quality," of the object; like color, it is nothing but
an idea in the mind, "for an object is said to be beautiful for no other
reason but that it appears so to the spectator." It arises from regularity,
proportion, order, simplicity--properties which belong to sublimity as well
(chap, iv.), but to which they are by no means so essential, since it is
satisfied with a less degree of them. While the beautiful excites emotions
of sweetness and gayety, the sublime rouses feelings which are agreeable,
it is true, but which are not sweet and gay, but strong and more serious.
Burke's explanation goes deeper. He derives the antithesis of the sublime
and the beautiful from the two fundamental impulses of human nature, the
instinct of self-preservation and the social impulse.
Whatever is contrary
to the former makes a strong and terrible impression on the soul; whatever
favors the latter makes a weak but agreeable one. The terrible delights us
(first depressing and then exalting us), when we merely contemplate it,
without being ourselves affected by the danger or the pain--this is the
sublime. On the other hand, that is beautiful which inspires us with
tenderness and affection without our desiring to possess it. Sublimity
implies a certain greatness, beauty, a certain smallness. Delight in both
is based on bodily phenomena. Terror moderated exercises a beneficent
influence on the nerves by stimulating them and giving them tension;
the gentle impression of beauty exerts a quieting effect upon them. The
disturbances caused by the former, and the recovery induced by the latter,
are both conducive to health, and hence, experienced as pleasures.
[Footnote 1: Home, _Elements of Criticism_, 1762. Burke, _A Philosophical
Inquiry info the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful_,
1756.]
CHAPTER VI.
THE FRENCH ILLUMINATION.
In the last decade of the seventeenth century France had yielded the
leadership in philosophy to England. Whereas Hobbes had in Paris imbibed
the spirit of the Galilean and Cartesian inquiry, while Bacon, Locke, and
even Hume had also visited France with advantage, now French thinkers take
the watchword from the English. Montesquieu and Voltaire, returning from
England in the same year (1729), acquaint their countrymen with the ideas
of Locke and his contemporaries. These are eagerly caught up; are, step
by step, and with the logical courage characteristic of the French mind,
developed to their extreme conclusions; and, at the same time, spread
abroad in this heightened form among the people beyond the circles of the
learned, nay, even beyond the educated classes. The English temperament is
favorable neither to this advance to extreme revolutionary inferences nor
to this propagandist tendency. Locke combines a rationalistic ethics with
his semi-sensational theory of knowledge; Newton is far from finding in his
mechanical physics a danger for religious beliefs; the deists treat the
additions of positive religion rather as superfluous ballast than as
hateful unreason; Bolingbroke wishes at least to conceal from the people
the illuminating principles which he offers to the higher classes. Such
halting where farther progress threatens to become dangerous to moral
interests does more honor to the moral, than to the logical, character of
the philosopher. But with the transfer of these ideas to France, the wall
of separation is broken down between the theory of knowledge and the theory
of ethics, between natural philosophy and the philosophy of religion;
sensationalism forces its way from the region of theory into the sphere
of practice, and the mechanical theory is transformed from a principal
of physical interpretation into a metaphysical view of the world of an
atheistical character. Naturalism is everywhere determined to have its
own: if knowledge comes from the senses, then morality must be rooted
in self-interest; wh