[Footnote 2: In 1879 a summons was sent forth from Rome for the revival and
dissemination of the Thomistic system as the only true philosophy (cf. R.
Eucken, _Die Philosophic des Thomas von Aquino und die Kultur der
Neuzeit_, 1886). This movement is supported by the journals, _Jahrbuch für
Philosophie und spekulative Theologie_, edited by Professor E. Commer
of Münster, 1886 _seq_., and _Philosophisches Jahrbuch_, edited, at the
instance and with the support of the Görres Society, by Professor Const.
Gutberlet of Fulda, 1888 _seq_. While the text-books of Hagemann, Stoeckl,
Gutberlet, Pesch, Commer, C.M. Schneider, and others also follow Scholastic
lines, B. Bolzano (died 1848), M. Deutinger (died 1864) and his pupil
Neudecker, Oischinger, Michelis, and W. Rosenkrantz (1821-74; _Science of
Knowledge_, 1866-68), who was influenced by Schelling, have taken a freer
course.]
[Footnote 2: Trahndorff, gymnasial professor in Berlin (1782-1863),
_Aesthetics_, 1827 (cf. E. von Hartmann in the _Philosophische
Monatshefte_, vol. xxii. 1886, p. 59 _seq_., and J. von Billewicz, in the
same, vol. xxi. 1885, p. 561 _seq_.); J.F. Reiff in Tübingen: _System of
the Determinations of the Will_, 1842; K. Chr. Planck (died 1880): _The
Ages of the World_, 1850 _seq_.; _Testament of a German_, edited by Karl
Köstlin, 1881; F. Röse (1815-59), _On the Method of the Knowledge of
the Absolute_, 1841; _Psychology as Introduction to the Philosophy of
Individuality_, 1856. Emanuel Sharer follows Röse.
Friedrich Rohmer
(died 1856): _Science of God, Science of Man_, in _Friedrich Rohmer's
Wissenschaft und Leben_, edited by Bluntschli and Rud.
Seele, 6 vols.,
1871-92.]
Anton Günther (engaged in authorship from 1827; _Collected Writings_, 1881;
_Anti-Savarese_, edited with an appendix by P. Knoodt), who in 1857
was compelled to retract his views, invokes the spirit of Descartes in
opposition to the Hegelian pantheism. In agreement with Descartes,
Günther starts from self-consciousness (in the ego being and thought are
identical), and brings not only the Creator and the created world, but also
nature (to which the soul is to be regarded as belonging) and spirit into
a relation of exclusive opposition, yet holds that in man nature (body and
soul) and spirit are united, and that they interact without prejudice to
their qualitative difference. J.H. Pabst (died in 1838
in Vienna), Theodor
Weber of Breslau, Knoodt of Bonn (died 1889), V. Knauer of Vienna and
others are Güntherians.
Adolf Trendelenburg[1] of Berlin, the acute critic of Hegel and Herbart,
in his own thinking goes back to the philosophy of the past, especially to
that of Aristotle. Motion and purpose are for him fundamental facts, which
are common to both being and thinking, which mediate between the two, and
make the agreement of knowledge and reality possible.
The ethical is a
higher stage of the organic. Space, time, and the categories are forms of
thought as well as of being; the logical form must not be separated from
the content, nor the concept from intuition. We must not fail to mention
that Trendelenburg introduced a peculiar and fruitful method of treating
the history of philosophy, viz., the historical investigation of particular
concepts, in which Teichmüller of Dorpat (1832-88; _Studies in the History
of Concepts_, 1874; _New Studies in the History of Concepts_, 1876-79;
_The Immortality of the Soul_, 2d ed., 1879; _The Nature of Love_, 1880;
_Literary Quarrels in the Fourth Century before Christ_, 1881 and 1884),
and Eucken of Jena (cf. pp. 17 and 623) have followed his example. Kym in
Zurich (born 1822; _Metaphysical Investigations_, 1875; _The Problem of
Evil_, 1878) is a pupil of Trendelenburg.
[Footnote 1: Trendelenburg: _Logical Investigations_, 1840, 3d ed., 1870;
_Historical Contributions to Philosophy_, 3 vols., 1846, 1855, 1867;
_Natural Law on the Basis of Ethics_, 1860, 2d ed., 1868. On Trendelenburg
cf. Eucken in the _Philosophische Monatshefte_, 1884.]
Of more recent systematic attempts the following appear worthy of
mention: Von Kirchmann (1802-84; from 1868 editor of the _Philosophische
Bibliothek_), _The Philosophy of Knowledge_, 1865; _Aesthetics_, 1868; _On
the Principles of Realism_, 1875; _Catechism of Philosophy_ 2d ed., 1881;
E. Dühring (born 1833), _Natural Dialectic_, 1865; _The Value of Life_,
1865, 3d ed, 1881; _Critical History of the Principles of Mechanics_,
1873, 2d ed., 1877; _Course of Philosophy_, 1875 (cf. on Dühring, Helene
Druskowitz, 1889); J. Baumann of Göttingen (born 1837), _Philosophy as
Orientation concerning the World_, 1872; _Handbook of Ethics_, 1879;
_Elements of Philosophy_, 1891; L. Noiré, _The Monistic Idea_, 1875, and
many other works; Frohschammer of Munich (born 1821), _The Phantasy as
the Fundamental Principle of the World-process_, 1877; _On the Genesis
of Humanity, and its Spiritual Development in Religion, Morality and
Language_, 1883; _On the Organization and Culture of Human Society_, 1885.
In the first rank of the thinkers who have made their appearance since
Hegel and Herbart stand Fechner and Lotze, both masters in the use of exact
methods, yet at the same time with their whole souls devoted to the highest
questions, and superior to their contemporaries in breadth of view as in
the importance and range of their leading ideas--Fechner a dreamer and
sober investigator by turns, Lotze with gentle hand reconciling the
antitheses in life and science.
Gustav Theodor Fechner[1] (1801-87; professor at Leipsic) opposes the
abstract separation of God and the world, which has found a place in
natural inquiry and in theology alike, and brings the two into the same
relation of correspondence and reciprocal reference as the soul and the
body. The spirit gives cohesion to the manifold of material parts, and
needs them as a basis and material for its unifying activity. As our
ego connects the manifold of our activities and states in the unity of
consciousness, so the divine spirit is the supreme unity of consciousness
for all being and becoming. In the spirit of God everything is as in ours,
only expanded and enhanced. Our sensations and feelings, our thoughts and
resolutions are His also, only that He, whose body all nature is, and to
whom not only that which takes place in spirits is open, but also that
which goes on between them, perceives more, feels deeper, thinks higher,
and wills better things than we. According to the analogy of the human
organism, both the heavenly bodies and plants are to be conceived as beings
endowed with souls, although they lack nerves, a brain, and voluntary
motion. How could the earth bring forth living beings, if it were itself
dead? Shall not the flower itself rejoice in the color and fragrance which
it produces, and with which it refreshes us? Though its psychical life may
not exceed that of an infant, its sensations, at all events, since they do
not form the basis of a higher activity, are superior in force and richness
to those of the animal. Thus the human soul stands intermediate in the
scale of psychical life: beneath and about us are the souls of plants and
animals, above us the spirits of the earth and stars, which, sharing in and
encompassing the deeds and destinies of their inhabitants, are in
their turn embraced by the consciousness of the universal spirit. The
omnipresence of the divine spirit affords at the same time the means of
escaping from the desolate "night view" of modern science, which looks upon
the world outside the perceiving individual as dark and silent. No, light
and sound are not merely subjective phenomena within us, but extend around
us with objective reality--as sensations of the divine spirit, to which
everything that vibrates resounds and shines.
[Footnote 1: _Nanna, or on the Psychical Life of Plants_, 1848;
_Zend-Avesta, or on the Things of Heaven and the World Beyond_, 1851;
_Physical and Philosophical Atomism_, 1855; _The Three Motives and Grounds
of Belief_, 1863; _The Day View_, 1879; _Elements of Aesthetics_, 1876;
_Elements of Psycho-physics_, 1860; _In the Cause of Psycho-physics_, 1877;
_Review of the Chief Points in Psycho-physics_, 1882; _Book of the Life
after Death_, 1836, 3d ed., 1887; _On the Highest Good_, 1846; _Four
Paradoxes_, 1846; _On the Question of the. Soul_, 1861; _Minor Works by Dr.
Mises_ (Fechner's pseudonym), 1875. On Fechner cf. J. E.
Kuntze, Leipsic,
1892.]
The door of the world beyond also opens to the key of analogy. Similar
laws unite the here with the hereafter. As intuition prepares the way for
memory, and lives on in it, so the life of earth merges in the future life,
and continues active in it, elevated to a higher plane.
Fechner treats the
problem of evil in a way peculiar to himself. We must not consider the
fact of evil apart from the effort to remove it. It is the spur to all
activity--without evil, no labor and no progress.
Fechner's "psycho-physics," a science which was founded by him in
continuation of the investigations of Bernoulli, Euler, and especially
of E.H. Weber, wears an entirely different aspect from that of his
metaphysics (the "day view," moreover does not claim to be knowledge,
but belief--though a belief which is historically, practically, and
theoretically well-grounded). This aims to be an exact science of the
relations between body and mind, and to reach indirectly what Herbart
failed to reach by direct methods, that is, a measurement of psychical
magnitudes, using in this attempt the least observable differences in
sensations as the unit of measure. Weber's law of the dependence of the
intensity of the sensation on the strength of the stimulus--the increase
in the intensity of the sensation remains the same when the relative
increase of the stimulus (or the relation of the stimuli) remains
constant;[1] so that, _e.g._, in the case of light, an increase from a
stimulus of intensity 1 to one of intensity 100, gives just the same
increase in the intensity of the sensation as an increase from a stimulus
of intensity 2 (or 3) to a stimulus of 200 (or 300)--is much more generally
valid than its discoverer supposed; it holds good for all the senses. In
the case of the pressure sense of the skin, with an original weight of 15
grams (laid upon the hand when at rest and supported), in order to produce
a sensation perceptibly greater we must add not 1 gram, but 5, and with an
original weight of 30 grams, not 5, but 10. Equal additions to the weights
are not enough to produce a sensation of pressure whose intensity shall
render it capable of being distinguished with certainty, but the greater
the original weights the larger the increments must be; while the
intensities of the sensations form an arithmetical, those of the stimuli
form a geometrical, series; the change in sensation is proportional to the
relative change of the stimulus. Sensations of tone show the same
proportion (3:4) as those of pressure; the sensibility of the muscle sense
is finer (when weights are raised the proportion is 15:16), as also that
of vision (the relative brightness of two lights whose difference of
intensity is just perceptible is 100:101). In addition to the
investigations on the threshold of difference there are others on the
threshold of stimulation (the point at which a sensation becomes just
perceptible), on attention, on methods of measurement, on errors, etc.
Moreover, Fechner does not fail to connect his psycho-physics, the
presuppositions and results of which have recently been questioned in
several quarters,[2] with his metaphysical conclusions.
Both are pervaded
by the fundamental view that body and spirit belong together (consequently
that everything is endowed with a soul, and that nothing is without a
material basis), nay, that they are the same essence, only seen from
different sides. Body is the (manifold) phenomenon for others, while spirit
is the (unitary) self-phenomenon, in which, however, the inner aspect is
the truer one. That which appears to us as the external world of matter,
is nothing but a universal consciousness which overlaps and influences our
individual consciousness. This is Spinozism idealistically interpreted. In
aesthetics Fechner shows himself an extreme representative of the principle
of association.
[Footnote 1: Fechner teaches: The sensation increases and diminishes in
proportion to the logarithm of the stimulus and of the psycho-physical
nervous activity, the latter being directly proportional to the external
stimulus. Others, on the contrary, find a direct dependence between nervous
activity and sensation, and a logarithmic proportion between the external
stimulus and the nervous activity.]
[Footnote 2: So by Helmholtz; Hering _(Fechners psychophysisches Gesetz_,
1875); P. Langer _(Grundlagen der Psychophysik_, 1876); G.E. Müller in
Göttingen _(Zur Grundlegung der Psychophysik_, 1878); F.A. Müller _(Das
Axiom der Psychophysik_, 1882); A. Elsas _(Ueber die Psychophysik_, 1886);
O. Liebmann _(Aphorismen zur Psychologie, Zeitschrift für Philosophie_,
vol. ci.--Wundt has published a number of papers from his psycho-physical
laboratory in his _Philosophische Studien_, 1881 _seq_.
Cf. also Hugo
Münsterberg, _Neue Grundlegung der Psychophysik_ in _Heft_ iii. of his
_Beiträge zur experimentellen Psychologie_, 1889 _seq_).
[Further,
Delboeuf, in French, and a growing literature in English as A. Seth,
_Encyclopedia Britannica_, vol. xxiv. 469-471; Ladd, _Elements of
Physiological Psychology_, part ii. chap, v.; James, _Principles of
Psychology_, vol. i. p. 533 _seq_.; and numerous articles as Ward,
_Mind_, vol. i.; Jastrow, _American Journal of Psychology_, vols. i. and
iii.--TR.]]
The most important of the thinkers mentioned in the title of this section
is Rudolph Hermann Lotze (1817-81: born at Bautzen; a student of medicine,
and of philosophy under Weisse, in Leipsic; 1844-81
professor in Göttingen;
died in Berlin). Like Fechner, gifted rather with a talent for the fine and
the suggestive than for the large and the rigorous, with a greater reserve
than the former before the mystical and peculiar, as acute, cautious, and
thorough as he was full of taste and loftiness of spirit, Lotze has proved
that the classic philosophers did not die out with Hegel and Herbart. His
_Microcosmus_ (3 vols., 1856-64, 4th ed., 1884 _seq_; English translation
by Hamilton and Jones, 3d ed., 1888), which is more than an anthropology,
as it is modestly entitled, and _History of Aesthetics in Germany_, 1868,
which also gives more than the title betrays, enjoy a deserved popularity.
These works were preceded by the _Medical Psychology_, 1852, and a polemic
treatise against I.H. Fichte, 1857, as well as by a _Pathology_ and a
_Physiology_, and followed by the _System of Philosophy_, which remained
incomplete (part i. _Logic_, 1874, 2d ed., 1881, English translation
edited by Bosanquet, 2d ed., 1888; part ii.
_Metaphysics_, 1879, English
translation edited by Bosanquet, 2d ed., 1887). Lotze's _Minor Treatises_
have been published by Peipers in three volumes (1885-91); and Rehnisch has
edited eight sets of dictata from his lectures, 1871-84.[1] Since these
"Outlines," all of which we now have in new editions, make a convenient
introduction to the Lotzean system, and are, or should be, in the
possession of all, a brief survey may here suffice.
[Footnote 1: _Outlines of Psychology, Practical Philosophy, Philosophy of
Religion, Philosophy of Nature, Logic and the Encyclopedia of Philosophy,
Metaphysics, Aesthetics_, and the _History of Philosophy since Kant_, all
of which may be emphatically commended to students, especially the one
first mentioned, and, in spite of its subjective position, the last.
[English translations of these _Outlines_ except the fourth and the
last, by Ladd, 1884 _seq_.] On Lotze cf. the obituaries by J. Baumann
(_Philosophische Monatshefte_, vol. xvii.), H. Sommer (_Im Neuen Reich_),
A. Krohn (_Zeitschrift für Philosophie_, vol. lxxxi. pp.
56-93), R.
Falckenberg (Augsburg _Allgemeine Zeitung_, 1881, No.
233), and Rehnisch
(_National Zeitung_ and the _Revue Philosophique_, vol.
xii.). The last of
these was reprinted in the appendix to the _Grundzüge der Aesthetik_, 1884,
which contains, further, a chronological table of Lotze's works, essays,
and critiques, as well as of his lectures. Hugo Sommer has zealously
devoted himself to the popularization of the Lotzean system. Cf., further,
Fritz Koegel, _Lotzes Aesthetik_, Göttingen, 1886, and the article by
Koppelmann referred to above, p. 330.]
The subject of metaphysics is reality. Things which are, events which
happen, relations which exist, representative contents and truths which
are valid, are real. Events happening and relations existing presuppose
existing things as the subjects in and between which they happen and exist.
The being of things is neither their being perceived (for when we say that
a thing is we mean that it continues to be, even when we do not perceive
it), nor a pure, unrelated position, its position in general, but _to be is
to stand in relations_. Further, the _what_ or essence of the things which
enter into these relations cannot be conceived as passive quality, but
only abstractly, as a rule or a law which determines the connection and
succession of a series of qualities. The nature of water, for example, is
the unintuitable somewhat which contains the ground of the change of ice,
first into the liquid condition, and then into steam, when the temperature
increases, and conversely, of the possibility of changing steam back
into water and ice under opposite conditions. And when we speak of an
unchangeable identity of the thing with itself, as a result of which it
remains the same essence amid the change of its phenomena, we mean only the
consistency with which it keeps within the closed series of forms a1, a2,
a3, without ever going over into the series b1, b2. The relations, however,
in which things stand, cannot pass to and fro between things like threads
or little spirits, but are states in things themselves, and the change
of the former always implies a change in these inner states. To stand in
relations means to _exchange actions_. In order to experience such effects
from others and to exercise them upon others, things must neither be wholly
incomparable (as red, hard, sweet) and mutually indifferent, nor yet
absolutely independent; if the independence of individual beings were
complete the process of action would be entirely inconceivable. The
difficulty in the concept of causality--how does being _a_ come to produce
in itself a different state _a_ because another being _b_ enters into the
state [Greek: _b_]?--is removed only when we look on the things as
modes, states, parts of a single comprehensive being, of an infinite,
unconditioned substance, in so far as there is then only an action of
the absolute on itself. Nevertheless the assumption that, in virtue of
the unity and consistency of the absolute or of its impulse to
self-preservation, state [Greek: _b_] in being _b_
follows state
[Greek: _a_] in being _a_ as an accommodation or compensation follows a
disturbance, is not a full explanation of the process of action, does
not remove the difficulty as to how one state can give rise to another.
Metaphysics is, in general, unable to show how reality is made, but only to
remove certain contradictions which stand in the way of the conceivability
of these notions. The so far empty concept of an absolute looks to the
philosophy of religion for its content; the conception of the Godhead as
infinite personality (it is a person in a far higher sense than we) is
first produced when we add to the ontological postulate of a comprehensive
substance the ethical postulate of a supreme good or a universal
world-Idea.
By "thing" we understand the permanent unit-subject of changing states. But
the fact of consciousness furnishes the only guaranty that the different
states _a, [Greek: b], y_, are in reality states of one being, and not so
many different things alternating with one another. Only a conscious
being, which itself effects the distinction between itself and the states
occurring in it, and in memory and recollection feels and knows itself as
their identical subject, is actually a subject which has states. Hence,
if things are to be real, we must attribute to them a nature in essence
related to that of our soul. Reality is existence for self. All beings
are spiritual, and only spiritual beings possess true reality. Thus Lotze
combines the monadology of Leibnitz with the pantheism of Spinoza, just
as he understands how to reconcile the mechanical view of natural science
(which is valid also for the explanation of organic life) with the
teleology and the ethical idealism of Fichte. The sole mission of the
world of forms is to aid in the realization of the ideal purposes of the
absolute, of the world of values.
The ideality of space, which Kant had based on insufficient grounds, is
maintained by Lotze also, only that he makes things stand in "intellectual"
relations, which the knowing subject translates into spatial language. The
same character of subjectivity belongs not only to our sensations, but
also to our ideas concerning the connection of things.
Representations are
results, not copies, of the external stimuli; cognition comes under the
general concept of the interaction of real elements, and depends, like
every effect, as much upon the nature of the being that experiences the
effect as upon the nature of the one which exerts it, or rather, more upon
the former than upon the latter. If, nevertheless, it claims objective
reality, truth must not be interpreted as the correspondence of thought and
its object (the cognitive image can never be like the thing itself), nor
the mission of cognition, made to consist in copying a world already
finished and closed apart from the realm of spirits, to which mental
representation is added as something accessory. Light and sound are not
therefore illusions because they are not true copies of the waves of ether
and of air from which they spring, but they are the end which nature has
sought to attain through these motions, an end, however, which it cannot
attain alone, but only by acting upon spiritual subjects; the beauty and
splendor of colors and tones are that which of right ought to be in the
world; without the new world of representations awakened in spirits by the
action of external stimuli, the world would lack its essential culmination.
The purpose of things is to be known, experienced, and enjoyed by spirits.
The truth of cognition consists in the fact that it opens up the meaning
and destination of the world. That which ought to be is the ground of that
which is; that which is exists in order to the realization of values in
it; the good is the only real. It is true that we are not permitted to
penetrate farther than to the general conviction that the Idea of the good
is the ground and end of the world; the question, how the world has arisen
from this supreme Idea as from the absolute and why just this world with
its determinate forms and laws has arisen, is unanswerable. We understand
the meaning of the play, but we do not see the machinery by which it is
produced at work behind the stage. In ethics Lotze emphasizes with Fechner
the inseparability of the good and plea